Miles Wallingford Part 46

"Then roll me up in my cot, and launch me overboard, in the old way. I have sometimes thought it might be well to lie at my mother's side; but she'll excuse an old tar for preferring blue water to one of your country church-yards."

After this, I had several interviews with the old man, though he said nothing more on the subject of his interment, that of his property, or that of his departure. Lucy read the bible to him, two or three times every day, and she prayed with him often. On one occasion, I heard a low, sweet voice, near his cot, and taking a look, ascertained it was my little pet, my daughter Lucy, then only thirteen, reading a second time a chapter that her mother had gone through, only an hour before, with some of her own remarks. The comments were wanting now, but the voice had the same gentle earnestness, the same sweet modulations, and the same impressive distinctness as that of the mother!

Marble lived until we had pa.s.sed within the Gulf-Stream, dying easily and without a groan, with all my family, Neb and the first-mate, a.s.sembled near his cot. The only thing that marked his end was a look of singular significance that he cast on my wife, not a minute before he breathed his last. There he lay, the mere vestige of the robust hardy seaman I had once known, a child in physical powers, and about to make the last great change. Material as were the alterations in the man, from what he had been when in his pride, I thought the spiritual or intellectual part of his being was less to be recognised than the bodily. Certainly that look was full of resignation and hope; and we had reason to believe that this rude but honest creature was spared long enough to complete the primary object of his existence.

In obedience to his own earnest request, though sorely against the feelings of my wife and daughters, I buried the body of my old friend in the ocean, six days before we made the land.

And now it remains only to speak of Lucy. I have deferred this agreeable duty to the last, pa.s.sing over long years that were pregnant with many changes, in order to conclude with this delightful theme.

The first few years of my married life were years of bliss to me. I lived under a constant sense of happiness; a happiness that man can derive only from a union with a woman of whom his reason and principles as much approve, as his tastes and pa.s.sion cherish. I do not mean to be understood that the years which have succeeded were a whit less happy; for, in a certain sense, they have been more so, and have gone on increasing in happiness down to the present hour, but because time and use finally so far accustomed me to this intimate connection with purity, virtue, female disinterestedness and feminine delicacy, that I should have missed them, as things incorporated with my very existence, had I been suddenly deprived of my wife, quite as much as in the first years of my married life, I enjoyed them as things. .h.i.therto unknown to me.

As I ride over the fields of Clawbonny, even at this day, I recall with tranquil delight, and I trust with humble grat.i.tude, the manner in which those blessed early years of our marriage pa.s.sed. That was the period when every thought of mine was truly shared by Lucy. She accompanied me in my daily rides or drives, and listened to every suggestion that fell from my lips, with kind interest and the most indulgent attention, rendering me back thought for thought, feeling for feeling, laugh for laugh; and, occasionally, tear for tear. Not an emotion could become aroused in my breast that it did not meet with its reflection in her's; or a sense of the ludicrous be awakened, that her keen but chastened humour did not increase its effect by sympathy. Those were the years in which were planned and executed the largest improvements for the buildings, pleasure-grounds, and fields of Clawbonny. We built extensively, not only out-houses and stables better suited to our present means, and more enlarged mode of living, than those which existed in my father's time, but, as has been stated before, we added to the dwelling, preserving its pleasing confusion and irregularity of architecture. After pa.s.sing the first summer which succeeded our marriage in this manner, I told Lucy it was time to stop building and improving my own place, in order that some attention might be bestowed on that she had inherited from Mrs. Bradfort, and which was also old family property.

"Do not think of it, Miles," she said. "Keep Riversedge in good order, and no more. Rupert," who was then living, and in possession, "will see that nothing goes to waste; but Clawbonny, dear Clawbonny, is the true home of a Wallingford--and I am now a Wallingford, you will remember. Should this precious boy of ours live to become a man, and marry, the old West-Chester property can be used by him, until we are ready to give him up possession, here."

This plan has not been literally carried out; for Miles, my eldest son, lives with us at Clawbonny, in the summer; and his noisy boys are at this moment playing a game of ball in a field that has been expressly devoted to their amus.e.m.e.nts.

The period which succeeded the first half-dozen years of my union with Lucy, was not less happy than the first had been; though it a.s.sumed a new character. Our children then came into the account, not as mere playthings, and little beings to be most tenderly loved and cared for, but as creatures that possess the image of G.o.d in their souls, and whose future characters, in a measure, depended on our instruction. The manner in which Lucy governed her children, and led them by gentle means to virtue and truth, has always been a subject of the deepest admiration and grat.i.tude with me. Her rule has been truly one of love. I do not know that I ever heard her voice raised in anger, to any human being, much less to her own offspring; but whenever reproof has come, it has come in the language of interest and affection, more or less qualified by severity, as circ.u.mstances may have required. The result has been all that our fondest hopes could have led us to antic.i.p.ate.

When we travelled, it was with all our young people, and a new era of happiness, heightened by the strongest domestic affection, opened on us.

All who have seen the world have experienced the manner in which our intellectual existences, as it might be, expand; but no one, who has not experienced it, can tell the deep, heartfelt satisfaction there is, in receiving this enlargement of the moral creature, in close a.s.sociation with those we love most on earth. The manner in which Lucy enjoyed all she saw and learned, on our first visit to the other hemisphere; her youngest child--all four of our children were born within the first eight years of our marriage--her youngest child was then long past its infancy, and she had leisure to enjoy herself, in increasing the happiness of her offspring. She had improved her mind by reading; and her historical lore, in particular, was always ready to be produced for the common advantage.

There was no ostentation in this; but everything was produced just as if each had a right to its use. Then it was, I felt the immense importance of having a companion, in an intellectual sense, in a wife. Lucy had always been intelligent; but I never fully understood her superiority in this respect, until we travelled together, amid the teeming recollections and scenes of the old world. That America is the greatest country of ancient or modern times, I shall not deny. Everybody says it; and what everybody says, must be true. Nevertheless, I will venture to hint, that, _caeteris paribus_, and where there is the disposition to think at all, the intellectual existence of every American who goes to Europe, is more than doubled in its intensity. This is the country of action, not of thought, or speculation. Men _follow_ out their facts to results, instead of _reasoning_ them out. Then, the multiplicity of objects and events that exist in the old countries to quicken the powers of the mind, has no parallel here. It is owing to this want of the present and the past, which causes the American, the moment he becomes speculative, to run into the future. That future promises much, and, in a degree, may justify the weakness. Let us take heed, however, that it do not lead to disappointment.

After all, I have found Lucy the most dear to me, and the most valuable companion, since we have both pa.s.sed the age of fifty. Air is not more transparent, than her pure mind, and I ever turn to it for counsel, sympathy, and support, with a confidence and reliance that experience could alone justify. As we draw nearer to the close of life, I find my wife gradually loosening the ties of this world, her love for her husband and children excepted, and fastening her looks on a future world. In thus accomplis.h.i.+ng, with a truth and nature that are unerringly accurate, the great end of her being, nothing repulsive, nothing that is in the least tinctured with bigotry, and nothing that is even alienated from the affections, or her duties in life, is mingled with her devotion. My family, like its female head, has ever been deeply impressed by religion; but it is religion in its most pleasing aspect; religion that has no taint of puritanism, and in which sin and innocent gaiety are never confounded It is the most cheerful family of my acquaintance; and this, I must implicitly believe, solely because, in addition to the bounties it enjoys, under the blessing of G.o.d, it draws the just distinction between those things that the word of G.o.d has prohibited, and those which come from the excited and exaggerated feelings of a cla.s.s of theologians, who, constantly preaching the doctrine of faith, have regulated their moral discipline solely, as if, in their hearts, they placed all their reliance on the efficacy of a school of good works that has had its existence in their own diseased imaginations. I feel the deepest grat.i.tude to Lucy for having enstilled the most profound sense of their duties into our children, while they remain totally free from cant, and from those exaggerations and professions which so many mistake for piety of purer emanation.

Some of my readers may feel a curiosity to know how time has treated us elderly people, for elderly we have certainly become. As for myself, I enjoy a green old age, and I believe look at least ten years younger than I am. This, I attribute to temperance and exercise. Lucy was positively an attractive woman until turned of fifty, retaining even a good deal of her bloom down to that period of life. I think her handsome still; and old Neb, when in a flattering humour, is apt to speak of either of my daughters as his "handsome young missus," and of my wife as his "handsome ole missus."

And why should not Lucy Hardinge continue to retain many vestiges of those charms which rendered her so lovely in youth? Ingenuous, pure of mind, sincere, truthful, placid and just, the soul could scarcely fail to communicate some of its blessed properties to that countenance which even now so sensitively reflects its best impulses. I repeat, Lucy is still handsome, and in my eyes even her charming daughters are less fair. That she has so long been, and is still my wife, forms not only the delight but the pride of my life. It is a blessing, for which, I am not ashamed to say, I daily render thanks to G.o.d, on my knees.

The End.