The Wedding Guest Part 10

"Ellen! my own Ellen!"

But she could not hear!

"I have killed thee, gentlest and best!"

But the kindness of her heart was not open _now_!

"I forgive thee," could not fall from those lips so pale!

"I love thee," could never come upon his ear again--_never_--"NEVER!" thrilled his soul, every chord of which was strung to its intensity!

If anything could have added to the grief inconsolable of the man stricken in his sternness and pride, it was the grief of his two motherless boys, as they called on their mother's name in vain, and asked him why she _slept_ so long!

Few knew why Ellen died so suddenly and so young; but, while Mr.

Gorton preserved in his heart her memory and her virtues, he remembered, and mourned in bitterness and unavailing anguish, that it was him own thoughtless; but not the less cruel, unkindness, that laid her in her early grave.

Never came the smile again upon his face; and never, though fond mammas manoeuvred and insinuated, and fair daughters flattered and praised, did he wed again; for his heart was buried with his Ellen, whom he too late loved as he should have loved. His love--"It came a sunbeam on a blasted flower."

Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, in his beautiful "Affection for the Dead," says: "Go to the grave of buried love, and meditate. There settle the account with thy conscience, for every past benefit unrequited, every past endearment unregarded. Console thyself, if thou canst, with this simple, yet futile tribute of regret, and take warning by this, thine unavailing sorrow for the dead, and henceforward be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties to the living!"

MAN AND WOMAN.

AN eloquent, true, and beautiful article from the pen of a woman and a wife (and no woman not a _wife_, do we believe fully competent to write on this subject), recently met our eyes in the pages of a periodical. Its t.i.tle was "Conjugial Love." The Latin word conjugial was used by the writer to indicate the true spiritual union of man and wife in contradistinction to the mere natural union as expressed in the word conjugal. From this article let us make an extract--

"Man is an angular mathematical form, exactly _true_, but not beautiful. Woman seizes this form, and from the crucible of her warm love she moulds the truth into grace and beauty. For man's understanding deals in outermost truths. But the Lord has blessed woman with perceptive faculties above the sphere of man's reason, and while he looks to the outermost relations of things she at a glance perceives the inmost. Hence she becomes, as it were, the soul of his _thought_; she is the will and he the intellectual principle; she is governed and guided by him, while he in all things is modified by her will, and scarce recognises his own crude thought in her plastic feminine representation of it; hence he thinks oftentimes that he acts from her wisdom, forgetting that she has no wisdom except through him.

"Thus woman dwells in the heart of man, as in some fair and stately palace, and she looks forth into his garden of Eden, his whole spirit world of thought; she knows every lofty tree, every blooming flower and odorous plant and herb for the use of man, and every singing bird that soars heavenward in her beautiful domain, and she culls the fairest of flowers and weaves bright garlands, and adorns the brow of her beloved with his own thoughts, while he even thinks that she is bestowing treasures out of herself upon him. This gives to woman a sportive grace, a gentle lovingness, an apparent wilfulness, a delight in the power which she has through man, while she knows that he is the link that binds her to Heaven, and thus she is humble and grateful and yielding in the height of her power. How beautiful is the life of conjugial partners! The woman flows into the thought of man like influent life; she knows all things that are in him, hence she can adapt herself to his every variation; she calms him when excited, elevates him when he is depressed, regulates him by her heaven-given power, as a good heart regulates the judgment. The Lord loves the man through the woman, and loves the woman through the man, and these two distinct and separate confluent streams, from the fountain of Divine life, rejoice in their blessed and beautiful union, as like ever does when it meets its like. And it is only when the two streams unite that they can reflect the Divine image; they are noisy, turbulent, and turbid; until the meeting of the waters of life, and then in a calm, serene, deep, and beautiful blessedness they flow on so softly and smoothly that the holy heavens and the Divine sun mirror themselves in the clear waters; and if night, chill and drear, draws its darkening curtain around them, soon the silver moon of a trusting faith floods them with a gentle radiance, and bright stars of intelligence gild the night's darkness, and they patiently await the dawn of an eternal day, when their joyous waters will again flow in the _suns.h.i.+ne_ of heaven."

"When the Lord in His Divine Providence brings the _two_ together, in this life, that were created the one for the other, their union is wrought out by slow degrees. The false and evil is to be put off before the Divine life can ultimate itself--an unceasing regeneration is going on--a purifying from self-love is the daily life of two partners. The wisdom which the man has from the Lord, and the love which the woman has from Him, are ever seeking conjunction. But the false and the evil that clings to every earthly being is constantly warring against this Heavenly union; in conjugial partners, h.e.l.l is opposed to heaven, and it is only by a steady looking to the Lord, that Heavenly love can be preserved. The Lord opens the inmost degree of thought and feeling in the two, and elevates their love to higher planes, and thus increases their joys and felicities; and when it is a true spiritual love, an entire union of heart and mind, then the two have entered heaven, and enjoy its beautiful blessedness even while their material bodies yet dwell upon this coa.r.s.e outer world.

"How wonderful is the wisdom of the Lord! How blessed is His love, in thus creating two that they may become a _one_! The sympathy, the gentle affection, the loving tender confidence, that, like magnetic thrills, makes one conscious of the inmost life of the other, gives a charm--a fulness of satisfaction--a serene blessedness to existence, that no isolated being can possibly conceive of, let external circ.u.mstances be what they may.

"Conjugial love is independent of external circ.u.mstances; it is heaven-derived, and receives nothing from the earth. It gives heavenly joy to all of its surroundings. It is that glorious inner suns.h.i.+ne of life, that blesses the poor man as boundlessly as the rich. And how beautiful it is for _two_ to realize that time and s.p.a.ce have nothing to do with their union. In each other they see eternity; they know from whence their emotions flow, and know that the fountain is Infinite. The Lord is the beginning and end; to them, the first and the last. They live _in_ Him, _from_ Him, and _to_ Him. They love only His Divine image in each other; they seek to do good to others, as organs of His Divine life. He is the glory and blessedness of their whole being.

"And if such blissful emotions can be realized in this cold, hard, ungenial, outer life, what must it be when the two pa.s.s into the conscious presence of the Divine Father, and behold each other not in angular material forms, and dead material light, but in the Divine light of Heaven, in Heavenly forms,--radiant in intelligence glowing in the rosy love of eternal youth--beautiful in the 'beauty of the Lord?'"

How pure, how wise, how beautiful! Here is the true doctrine, that man and woman are not equal in the sense so often a.s.serted in these modern times; that they are created with radical differences, and that the life of neither is perfect until they unite in marriage union--one man with one wife.

THE FAIRY WIFE.

AN APOLOGUE.

A MERCHANT married a Fairy. He was so manly, so earnest, so energetic, and so loving, that her heart was constrained toward him, and she gave up her heritage in Fairyland to accept the lot of woman.

They were married; they were happy; and the early months glided away like the vanis.h.i.+ng pageantry of a dream.

Before the year was over he had returned to his affairs; they were important and pressing, and occupied more and more of his time. But every evening as he hastened back to her side she felt the weariness of absence more than repaid by the delight of his presence. She sat at his feet, and sang to him, and prattled away the remnant of care that lingered in his mind.

But his cares multiplied. The happiness of many families depended on him. His affairs were vast and complicated, and they kept him longer away from her. All the day, while he was amidst his bales of merchandise, she roamed along the banks of a sequestered stream, weaving bright fancy pageantries, or devising airy gayeties with which to charm his troubled spirit. A bright and sunny being, she comprehended nothing of care. Life was abounding in her. She knew not the disease of reflection; she felt not the perplexities of life. To sing and to laugh--to leap the stream and beckon him to leap after her, as he used in the old lover-days, when she would conceal herself from him in the folds of a water-lily--to tantalize and enchant him with a thousand coquetries--this was her idea of how they should live; and when he gently refused to join her in these childlike gambols, and told her of the serious work that awaited him, she raised her soft blue eyes to him in a baby wonderment, not comprehending what he meant, but acquiescing, with a sigh, because he said it.

She acquiesced, but a soft sadness fell upon her. Life to her was Love, and nothing more. A soft sadness also fell upon him. Life to him was Love, and something more; and he saw with regret that she did not comprehend it. The wall of Care, raised by busy hands, was gradually shutting him out from her. If she visited him during the day, she found herself a hindrance and retired. When he came to her at sunset he was preoccupied. She sat at his feet, loving his anxious face. He raised tenderly the golden ripple of loveliness that fell in ringlets on her neck, and kissed her soft beseeching eyes; but there was a something in his eyes, a remote look, as if his soul were afar, busy with other things which made her little heart almost burst with uncomprehended jealousy.

She would steal up to him at times when he was absorbed in calculations, and throwing her arms around his neck, woo him from his thought. A smile, revealing love in its very depths, would brighten his anxious face, as for a moment he pushed aside the world, and concentrated all his being in one happy feeling.

She could win moments from him, she could not win his life; she could charm, she could not occupy him! The painful truth came slowly over her, as the deepening shadows fall upon a sunny Day, until at last it is Night: Night with her stars of infinite beauty, but without the l.u.s.tre and warmth of Day.

She drooped; and on her couch of sickness her keen-sighted love perceived, through all his ineffable tenderness, that same remoteness in his eyes, which proved that, even as he sat there grieving and apparently absorbed in her, there still came dim remembrances of Care to vex and occupy his soul.

"It were better I were dead," she thought; "I am not good enough for him."

Poor child! Not good enough, because her simple nature knew not the manifold perplexities, the hindrances of _incomplete_ life! Not good enough, because her whole life was scattered!

And so she breathed herself away, and left her husband to all his gloom of Care, made tenfold darker by the absence of those gleams of tenderness which before had fitfully irradiated life. The night was starless, and he alone.

A BRIEF HISTORY, IN THREE PARTS, WITH A SEQUEL.

PART I.--LOVE.

A GLANCE--a thought--a blow-- It stings him to the core.

A question--will it lay him low?

Or will time heal it o'er?

He kindles at the name-- He sits and thinks apart; Time blows and blows it to a flame, Burning within his heart.

He loves it though it burns, And nurses it with care; He feels the blissful pain by turns With hope, and with despair.

PART II.--COURTs.h.i.+P.

Sonnets and serenades, Sighs, glances, tears, and vows, Gifts, tokens, souvenirs, parades, And courtesies and bows.

A purpose and a prayer; The stars are in the sky-- He wonders how e'en hope should dare To let him aim so high!

Still hope allures and flatters, And doubt just makes him bold; And so, with pa.s.sion all in tatters, The trembling tale is told.