Rose Clark Part 35

"Dimmed for me is earthly beauty, Yet the spirit's eye would fain Rest upon Thy lovely features-- Shall I seek, dear Lord, in vain?

Tarry with me, oh, my Saviour!

Let me see Thy smile again.

"Dull my ear to earth-born music; Speak Thou, Lord! in words of cheer; Feeble, faltering, my footstep; Leaps my heart with sudden fear.

Cast _Thine_ arms, dear Lord, about me, Let me feel Thy presence near!"

"Poor Rose," sighed Gertrude, as she kissed her closed lids, laid her head gently back upon the pillow, and released the little hand within her own. "If she could only bear up under this new trial; she is so pure and good that the thought of the sin the world wrongly imputes to her is wearing her life away. This journey, which I hoped would do so much for her, may fail after all. Poor wronged Rose! how can it be right the innocent should thus suffer?" but ere the murmur had found voice the answer came:

"For right is right, since G.o.d is G.o.d, And right the day must win: To doubt, would be disloyalty-- To falter, would be sin."

And laying her cheek by the side of Rose, Gertrude slept.

The next day was fine, and the faint smile on Rose's pale face was sweet as the much longed-for sunlight. Our travelers descended to the ample drawing-room of the hotel to breakfast.

Rose glanced timidly about, scanning the forms which pa.s.sed before her, as was her wont at a new place, and then the unsatisfied eye drooped beneath its snowy lid; and they who had been struck with the pensive beauty of her face, gazed upon it unnoticed by its object, whose thoughts were far away.

The tall Indian head-waiter was at his post, as purveyor of corn-cakes and coffee; and excellently well as he filled it, Gertrude protested, as an artist, against such a desecration of his fine athletic form and kingly air.

Human nature is never more _en deshabille_ than in traveling; and Gertrude's b.u.mp of mirthfulness found ample food in the length and breadth of the well-filled breakfast-table. The jaded pleasure-seekers, whose fashion-filmed eyes were blind to natural beauty, were talking of "doing the Falls in one hour." The little new-made bride sat there with love-swimming eyes, innocently expecting to escape detection in the disguise of a plain brown traveling-dress: pretty little simpleton! and casting such tell-tale glances at her new husband, too! The half-fledged "freshman" was there, with his incipient beard and his first long-tailed coat, making love and bad puns to a knot of his sister's mischief-loving female friends.

In came the pompous city aristocrat, all dignity and shirt-collar, following his abdomen and the waiter with measured steps and supercilious glance, to the court-end of the table. There, too, was the pale student, feasting his book-surfeited eyes on the pleasanter page of young beauty's April face. There, too, the unsophisticated country girl, too anxious to please, exhausting all her toilet's finery on the breakfast-table. There, too, the poor dyspeptic, surveying with longing eye the tabooed dainties, for which he must pay to Dame Nature if he ate, and to the landlord whether or no.

"Your spirits are at high-water mark this morning," said John to his sister, as Gertrude's quick eye took these notes of her neighbors. "I think you have made up your mind not to grow old. You look as handsome as a picture, this morning."

"As an artist, allow me to tell you that your compliment is a doubtful one," said Gertrude. "And as to old age, which is such a bugbear to most of my s.e.x, I a.s.sure you it has no terrors for me. My first gray hair will excite in me no regretful emotions."

"Ah! you can well afford to be philosophic now," retorted John, touching the shining curls around his sister's face.

"You don't believe me? I a.s.sure you that the only terror old age has for me is its helplessness and imbecility. My natural independence revolts at being a burden even to those whom I love;" and Gertrude's tone had a touch of sadness in it. "You remember old Aunt Hepsy, John? how long her body outlived her mind; how at eighty years she would beg for tin carts, and soldiers, and rag dolls, and amuse herself by the hour with them, like a little child. This, I confess, is humiliating. In this view I can truly say I dread old age. But the mere thinning of the luxuriant locks, the filming of the bright eye, the shrinking of the rounded limbs, these things give me no heart-pangs in the antic.i.p.ation. I can not understand the sensitiveness with which most men and women, past the season of youth, hear their age alluded to. It certainly can be no secret, for if Time deal gently with them the family register will not; and if the finger of vanity obliterate all traces of the latter, some toothless old crone yet hobbles, who, forgetful of every thing else, yet remembers the year, week, day, minute, and second in which (without your leave) you were introduced to life's cares and troubles.

"Beside, old age _need_ not be repulsive or unlovely," said Gertrude; "look at that aged couple, yonder! How beautiful those silver hairs, how genuine and heart-warming the smile with which they regard each other!

To my eye, there is beauty on those furrowed temples, beauty in those wrinkled hands, so kindly outstretched to meet each other's wants.

Life's joys and sorrows have evidently knit _their_ hearts but more firmly together. What is the mad love of youthful blood to the sun-set effulgence of their setting lives? G.o.d bless them!" said Gertrude, as, kindly leaning one on the other, they pa.s.sed out the hall. "Old age _may_ be beautiful!"

"Yes," replied John, "when the heart is kept fresh and green; that which neutralizes the counsels of old age is the ascetic severity with which it too often denounces innocent pleasure, forgetting that the blood which now flows so sluggishly in its veins had once the torrent's mad leap. But look, Gertrude, while I discuss this ham omelette, and see what is in the morning papers."

"Well--in the first place, 'dreadful casualty.' What _would_ editors do, I wonder, without these dreadful casualties? I sometimes amuse myself, when I have nothing better to do, in comparing their relative tastes for the horrible, and their skill in dishing it up spicily to the appet.i.tes of their various readers. The ingenuity they manifest in this line is quite incredible.

"Observe now, the flippant heartlessness with which these city items, are got up, as if a poor degraded drunkard were the less an object of pity that he had parted with the priceless power of self-resistance! A man who could make a jest of a sight so sad, has sunk lower even than the poor wretch he burlesques.

"Well--let me see--then here are stupid letters from watering-places, got up as pay for the writer's board, at the fashionable hotel, from which they are written and which the transparent writer puffs at every few lines. Then here are some ingenious letters which the editor has written to himself, thanking himself for 'some judicious and sensible editorials which have lately appeared in his columns, and for the general tone of independence and honesty which pervades his admirable paper.' O, dear!" said Gertrude, laughing, "what a thing it is, to be sure, to get a peep behind the scenes!

"Then here is an advertis.e.m.e.nt headed, 'Women out of employment.' I wonder none of these women have ever thought of going out to do a family's mending by the day or week. I have often thought that a _skillful_ hand would meet a hearty welcome, and a ready remuneration, from many an over-tasked mother of a family, who sighs over the ravages of the weekly wash, and whose annual baby comes ever between her and the bottom of the stereotyped I 'stocking-basket.'

"But a truce to newspapers, with such a bright sun wooing us out of doors; now for Goat Island; but first let me prepare you for a depletion of your pocket-book in the shape of admiration-fees. You will be twitched by the elbow, plucked by the skirt, solicited with a courtesy or a bow; 'moccasins' to buy from sham squaws--'stuffed beasts' to see by the roadside--'views of Niagara,' done in water-colors, 'for sale,'

at rude shanties. Then there will be boys popping from behind trees with 'ornaments made of Table Rock;' disinterested gentlemen desirous to 'take you under the sheet' in a costume that would frighten the mermaids; disinterested owners of spy-gla.s.ses 'anxious you should get the best view.' I tell you," said Gertrude, "for a damper the spray is nothing to it! You must be content to cork up your enthusiasm till these 'horse-leech' gentry are appeased.

"Do you know, John, that my '76 blood was quite up to boiling-point the first time I came here, when the toll-keeper on the Canada side demanded what was my business, and how long I intended to stay over there?"

"I can fancy it," said John, laughing; "did you answer him?"

"Not I," said Gertrude, "until I had ascertained that the same catechetical rule held good on the American side. Nevertheless, I would be willing to wager that I could smuggle any thing I pleased into Her Majesty's dominions under the toll-keeper's very nose, had I a mind to try it.

"I wonder," continued Gertrude, after a pause, "could one ever _get used_ to Niagara? Could its roar be one's cradle lullaby and the spirit not plume itself for lofty flights? Could one look at it when laughing to scorn stern winter's fetters, as did Sampson the impotent green withes of the Philistines, dashing on in its might, though all Nature beside lay wrapped in old winter's winding-sheet? see it accepting, like some old despot, the tribute of silver moon-beams, golden sun-rays, and a rainbow arch of triumph for its h.o.a.ry head to pa.s.s under;--ever absolute--unconquerable--omnipotent--eternal--as G.o.d himself! Could this be the first leaf turned over in Nature's book to the infant's eye, and _not_ make it unshrinking as the eagle's?

"Hark! what is that?" exclaimed Gertrude, starting to her feet, and bounding forward with the fleetness of a deer.

Oh, that shriek!

High it rose above Niagara's wildest roar, as the foaming waters engulfed its victim! In the transit of a moment, they who for fourscore years and ten, through storm and sunshine, had walked side by side together, were parted, and forever! With the half-uttered word on his lip--with the love-beam in his eye--he "was not!"

"G.o.d comfort her," sobbed Gertrude, as the aged and widowed survivor was carried back insensible to the hotel. "How little we thought this morning, when looking at their happy and united old age, that Death would so unexpectedly step between; and still Niagara's relentless waters plunge down the abyss, shroud and sepulcher to the loved and lifeless form beneath?"

Serene as the sky when the thunder-cloud has rolled away, calm as the ocean when the moon has lulled its crested waves to sleep, smiling as earth when from off its heaving bosom the waters of the flood were rolled, leaning on Him who is the "widow's G.o.d and Husband," the aged mourner whispered, "It is well."

"G.o.d has been so good to me," she said to Gertrude. "He has lifted the cloud even at the tomb's portal. Listen, my child, and learn to trust in Him who is the believer's Rock of Ages.

"The first years of my wedded life were all brightness. We were not rich, but Love sweetens labor, and so that we were only spared to each other (my husband and I), for us there could be no sorrow. Children blessed us, bright, active, and healthy, and, hugging my idols to my heart, I forgot to look beyond. I saw the dead borne past my door, but the sunshine still lay over my own threshhold. I saw the drunkard reel past, but _my_ mountain stood strong! As I rocked my baby's cradle, my heart sang to its sweet smile--earth only seemed near, eternity a great way off. To-day I knew was bliss--the future, what was it? A riddle which puzzled the wisest; and I was not wise, only happy. Alas, the worm was creeping silently on toward the root of my gourd. It was 'the worm of the still.' One by one its leaves fell off. Silently but relentlessly he did his blighting work. Where plenty ruled, poverty came--clouds in place of sunshine--sobs for smiles--curses for kisses--tears for laughter.

"Bitter tears fell when they rolled by me in their carriages, whose wealth was coined from my heart's blood; but I did not chide _him_; I toiled and sorrowed on, for still I loved. I know not where the strength came to labor, still I found my babes and him bread; but, as week after week rolled by, and the reeling form still staggered past me, my heart grew faint and sick; for the hand which had never been raised save to bless us, now dealt the cruel blow; and the children who had been wont to wait for his coming, and to climb his knee, now cowered when they heard his unsteady footsteps. Each day I hoped against hope, for some change for the better, but it came not.

"One day a thought occurred to me by which I might perchance keep the demon at bay; I would watch the moment at which this craving thirst took possession of my husband. I would give him a subst.i.tute in the shape of strong hot chocolate, of which he was inordinately fond; I denied myself every comfort to procure it. I prepared it exactly to his taste--it was ready to the minute that the tempting fiend was wont to whisper in his ear. I was first upon the ground; I forestalled the demon. The sated appet.i.te heeded not his Judas entreaties. My husband smiled on me again, he called me his saviour, his preserver; he again entered the shop of his employer; it was near the house, so it was easy for me to run over with the tempting beverage; I watched him night and day; I antic.i.p.ated his every wish; my husband was again clothed, and in his right mind; we both learned our dependence on a stronger arm than each other's. Riches came with industry, our last days were our best days.

"And now, my dear child," and the old lady smiled through her tears, "there is music to my ears, even in those rushing waters, for he who sleeps beneath them fills no _drunkard's_ grave. What matters it by what longer or shorter road we travel, so that heaven be gained at last?"

CHAPTER LII.

"Did I not tell you that old age was beautiful?" exclaimed Gertrude, to Rose, as they sought the privacy of their own apartments. "The world talks of 'great deeds' (ambition-nurtured though they be), yet who chronicles these beautiful un.o.btrusive acts of feminine heroism beneath hundreds of roof-trees in our land? too common to be noted, save by the recording angel! Now I understand the meaning of Solomon's words, 'Blessed is the man who hath a virtuous wife, for the number of his days shall be doubled.'

"Confess you are better, _ma pet.i.te_," and Gertrude kissed Rose's pale forehead; "nothing better helps us to bear our own troubles than to learn the struggles of other suffering hearts, and how many unwritten tragedies are locked up in memory's cabinet, pride only yielding up the keys to inexorable death!

"Sometimes, Rose, when I am mercilessly at war with human nature, I appease myself by jotting down the _good_ deeds of every day's observation; and it has been a tonic to my fainting hopes to have seen the poor beggar divide his last crust with a still poorer one who had none; to see the sinewy arm of youth opportunely offered in the crowded streets to timorous, feeble, and _obscure_ old age; to see the hurried man of business stop in the precious forenoon hours, to hunt up the whereabouts of some stray little weeping child; or to see the poor servant-girl bestow half her weekly earnings in charity. These things restore my faith in my kind, and keep the balance even, till some horribly selfish wretch comes along and again kicks the scales!

"And now Charley must needs be waking up there--see him! looking just as seraphic as if _he_ never meant to be a little sinner! The tinting of a sea-sh.e.l.l could not be more delicate than that cheek; see the faultless outline of his profile against the pillow; look at his dimpled arms and fat little calves; and that little plump cushion of a foot. Was there ever any thing so seducing? I wish that child belonged to me.

"See here, Rose, look at those ladies pacing up and down the long hall, armed for conquest to the teeth. What an insatiable appet.i.te for admiration they must needs have, to make such an elaborate toilet in the dog-days! Nothing astonishes me like the patient endurance of these fashionists at the watering-places; prisoning themselves within doors lest the damp air should uncurl a ringlet; wearing gloves with the thermometer at ninety in the shade; soliciting wasp-waists in the very face of consumption. They are what I call 'the working people;' for your mechanic has the liberty of cooling himself in his shirt-sleeves, and your sempstress, though Nature may have furnished her no hips, does not perspire in interminable piles of skirts. Rose, imagine the old age of such women--no resource but the looking-gla.s.s, and that at last casting melancholy _reflections_ in their faces. Not that vanity is confined to the female s.e.x--(Come in, John, you are just in time). I am about to give you an exemplification of the remark I have just hazarded, in the history of Theodore Vanilla.

"River House was full of summer boarders when I first saw him there; nursery-maids and children _ad infinitum_; ladies in profusion, whose husbands and brothers went and returned morning and evening to their business in the city.

"Of course the ladies were left to themselves in the middle of the day, and some of the most mischievous verified the truth of the old primer-adage; that 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' Theodore was their unconscious b.u.t.t, and they made the most of him.