THE FATHER'S STORY.

The little mansion had its fill of sunshine;
The western windows overlooked the Hudson
Where the great city’s traffic vexed the tide;
The front received the Orient’s early flush.
Here dwelt three beings, who the neighbors said
Were husband, wife, and daughter; and indeed
There was no sign that they were otherwise.
Their name was Percival; they lived secluded,
Saw no society, except some poor
Old pensioner who came for food or help;
Though, when fair days invited, they would take
The omnibus and go to see the paintings
At the Academy; or hear the music
At opera or concert; then, in summer,
A visit to the seaside or the hills
Would oft entice them.

Percival had reached
His threescore years and five, but stood erect
As if no touch of age had chilled him yet.
Simple in habit, studious how to live
In best conformity with laws divine,
Impulsive, yet by trial taught to question
All impulses, affections, appetites,
At Reason’s bar, two objects paramount
Seemed steadily before him; one, to find
The eternal truth, showing the constant right
In politics, in social life, in morals,
The other, to apply all love and wisdom
To education of his child of Linda.

Yet, if with eye anointed, you could look
On that benign and tranquil countenance,
You might detect the lines which Passion leaves
Long after its volcano is extinct
And flowers conceal its lava. Percival
Was older than his consort, twenty years;
Yet were they fitly mated; though, with her,
Time had dealt very gently, leaving face
And rounded form still youthful, and unmarred
By one uncomely outline; hardly mingling
A thread of silver in her chestnut hair
That affluent needed no deceiving braid.
Framed for maternity the matron seemed:
Thrice had she been a mother; but the children,
The first six winters of her union brought,
A boy and girl, were lost to her at once
By a wall’s falling on them, as they went,
Heedless of danger, hand in hand, to school.
To either parent terrible the blow!
But, three years afterward, when Linda came,
With her dark azure eyes and golden hair,
It was as if a healing angel touched
The parents’ wound, and turned their desolation
Into a present paradise, revealing
Two dear ones, beckoning from the spirit-land,
And one, detaining them, with infant grasp,
Feeble, yet how resistless! here below.

And so there was great comfort in that household:
And those unwhispered longings both had felt
At times, that they might pass to other scenes
Where Love would find its own, were felt no more:
For Linda grew in beauty every day;
Beauty not only of the outward mould,
Sparkling in those dear eyes, and on the wind
Tossing those locks of gold, but beauty born,
In revelations flitting o’er the face,
From the soul’s inner symmetry; from love
Too deep and pure to utter, had she words;
From the divine desire to know; to prove
All objects brought within her dawning ken;
From frolic mirth, not heedless but most apt;
From sense of conscience, shown in little things
So early; and from infant courtesy
Charming and debonair.

The parents said,
While the glad tears shone brimming in their eyes,
“Oh! lacking love and best experience
Are those who tell us that the purity
And innocence of childhood are delusion;
Or that, so far as they exist, they show
The absence of all mind; no impulses
Save those of selfish passion moving it!
And that, by nature desperately wicked,
The child learns good through evil; having no
Innate ideas, no inborn will, no bias.
Here, in this infant, is our confutation!
O self-sufficing physiologist,
Who, grubbing in the earth, hast missed the stars,
We ask no other answer to thy creed
Than this, the answer heaven and earth supply.”

Now sixteen summers had our Linda seen,
And grown to be a fair-haired, winsome maid,
In shape and aspect promising to be
A softened repetition of her mother;
And yet some traits from the paternal side
Gave to the head an intellectual grace
And to the liquid eyes a power reserved,
Brooding awhile in tender gloom, and then
Flashing emotion, as some lofty thought,
Some sight of pity, or some generous deed,
Kindled a ready sympathy whose tears
Fell on no barren purpose; for with Linda
To feel, to be uplifted, was to act;
Her sorest trials being when she found
How far the wish to do outran the power.
Often would Percival observe his child,
And study to divine if in the future
Of that organization, when mature,
There should prevail the elements that lead
Woman to find the crowning charm of life
In the affections of a happy marriage,
Or if with satisfactions of the mind
And the aesthetic faculty, the aims
Of art and letters, the pursuits of trade,
Linda might find the fresh activities
He craved for her, and which forecasting care
Might possibly provide.

His means were small,
Merged in a life-annuity which gave
All that he held as indispensable
To sanative conditions in a home:
Good air, good influences, proper food.
By making his old wardrobe do long service
He saved the wherewith to get faithful help
From the best teachers in instructing Linda;
And she was still the object uppermost.
Dawned the day fair, for Linda it was fair,
And they all three could ramble in the Park.
If on Broadway the ripe fruit tempted him,
Linda was fond of fruit; those grapes will do
For Linda. Was the music rich and rare?
Linda must hear it. Were the paintings grand?
Linda must see them. So the important thought
Was always Linda; and the mother shared
In all this fond parental providence;
For in her tender pride in the dear girl
There was no room for any selfish thought,
For any jealous balancing of dues.

“My child,” said Percival, one summer day,
As he brought in a bunch of snow-white roses,
Ringed with carnations, many-leafed and fragrant,
“Take it, an offering for your birthday; this
Is June the twelfth, a happy day for me.”
“How fresh, how beautiful!” said Linda rising
And kissing him on either cheek. “Dear father,
You spoil me for all other care, I fear,
Since none can be like yours.”

“Why speak of that?”
He with a start exclaimed; “my care must be
Prolonged till I can see you safely fixed
In an assured and happy womanhood.
Why should it not be so? Though sixty-five,
How well am I, and strong! No, Linda, no;
Dream not of other tendance yet awhile;
My father lived to eighty, and his father
To eighty-five; and I am stronger now
Than they were, at my age.”

“Live long!” cried Linda,
“For whom have I to love me, to befriend,
You and my mother gone?”

“Your mother, child?

She should outlive me by some twenty years
At least. God grant, her sweet companionship
May be your strength and light when I’m not here,
My matchless little girl, my precious Linda!”

“Ah! how Love magnifies the thing it loves!”
Smiling she said: “when I look in the glass,
I see a comely Miss; nay, perhaps pretty;
That epithet is her superlative,
So far as person is concerned, I fear.
Grant her a cheerful temper; that she gets
From both her parents. She is dutiful,
No wonder, for she never is opposed!
Strangely coincident her way is yours;
Industrious, but that’s her mother’s training.
Then if you come to gifts of mind ah me!
What can she show? We’ll not pronounce her dull;
But she’s not apt or quick; and all she gets
Is by hard work, by oft-repeated trials,
Trials with intermissions of despair.
The languages she takes to not unkindly;
But mathematics is her scourge, her kill-joy,
Pressing her like a nightmare. Logic, too,
Distresses and confuses her poor brain;
Oh! ask her not for reasons. As for music
Music she loves. Would that Love might inspire
The genius it reveres so ardently!
Has she no gift for painting? Eye for form
And coloring I truly think she has;
And one thing she can do, and do it well;
She can group flowers and ferns and autumn leaves,
Paint their true tints, and render back to nature
A not unfaithful copy.

“This the extent
Of her achievements! She has labored hard
To mould a bust or statue; but the clay
Lacked the Pygmalion touch beneath her hands.
She’ll never be a female Angelo.
She must come down content to mother Earth,
And study out the alphabet which Summer
Weaves on the sod in fields or bordering woods.
Such is your paragon, my simple father!
But now, this ordinary little girl,
So seeming frank, (whisper it low!) is yet
So deep, so crafty, and so full of wiles,
That she has quite persuaded both her parents
In most things sensible, clear-seeing people
That she is just a prodigy indeed!
Not one of goodness merely, but of wit,
Capacity, and general cleverness!”

“There, that will do, spoilt darling! What a tongue!”
Percival said, admiring while he chided.
“O the swift time! Thou’rt seventeen to-day;
And yet, except thy parents and thy teachers,
Friends and companions thou hast hardly known.
’Tis fit that I should tell thee why our life
Has been thus socially estranged and quiet.
Sit down, and let me push the arm-chair up
Where I can note the changes in thy face;
For ’tis a traitor, that sweet face of thine,
And has a sign for every fleeting thought.

“But here’s our little mother! Come, my dear,
And take a seat by Linda; thou didst help me
To graft upon the bitter past a fruit
All sweetness, and thy very presence now
Can take the sting from a too sad remembrance.”

The mother placed her hand upon his brow
And said: “The water-lily springs from mud;
So springs the future from the past.” Then he:
“My father’s death made me, at twenty-one,
Heir to a fortune which in those slow days
Was thought sufficient: I had quitted Yale
With some slight reputation as a scholar,
And, in the first flush of ingenuous youth
When brave imagination’s rosy hue
Tinges all unknown objects, I was launched
Into society in this great place;
Sisterless, motherless, and having seen
But little, in my student life, of women.

“All matrons who had marriageable girls
Looked on me as their proper prey, and spread
Their nets to catch me; and, poor, verdant youth,
Soon I was caught, caught in a snare indeed,
Though by no mother’s clever management.
Young, beautiful, accomplished, she, my Fate,
Met me with smiles, and doomed me while she smiled
Nimble as light, fluent as molten lead
To take the offered mould, apt to affect
Each preference of taste or sentiment
That best might flatter, affable and kind,
Or seeming so, and generous to a fault,
But that was when she had a part to play,
Affectionate ah! there too she was feigning
As I look calmly back, to me she seems
The simple incarnation of a mind
Possessed of all the secrets of the heart,
And quick to substitute a counterfeit
For the heart’s genuine coin, and make it pass;
But void of feeling as the knife that wounds!
And so the game was in her hands, and she
Played it with confident, remorseless skill
Even to the bitter end.

“Yet do not think
The inner prescience never stirred or spoke:
Veiled though it be from consciousness so strangely,
And its fine voice unheard amid the din
Of outward things, the quest of earthly passion,
There is an under-sense, a faculty
All independent of our mortal organs,
And circumscribed by neither space nor time.
Else whence proceed they, those clairvoyant glimpses,
That vision piercing to the distant future,
Those quick monitions of impending ruin,
If not from depths of soul which consciousness,
Limited as it is in mortal scope,
May not explore? Yet there serenely latent,
Or with a conscious being all their own,
Superior and apart from what we know
In this close keep we call our waking state,
Lie growing with our growth the lofty powers
We reck not of; which some may live a life
And never heed, nor know they have a soul;
Which many a plodding anthropologist,
Philosopher, logician, scientist,
Ignore as moonshine; but which are, no less,
Actual, proven, and, in their dignity
And grasp and space-defying attributes,
Worthy to qualify a deathless spirit
To have the range of an infinity
Through an unending period at once
A promise and a proof of life immortal.

“One night, one mild, sweet night in early June,
We two had paced the drawing-room together
Till ten o’clock, and then I took my leave
And walked along the street, a square or more,
When suddenly I looked up at a star,
And then, a thought I could not fail to heed,
From the soul’s awful region unexplored,
Rushed, crying, ‘Back! Go back!’ And back I went,
As hastily as if it were a thing
Of life or death. I did not stop to pull
The door-bell, but sprang up alert and still
To the piazza of the open window,
Drew back a blind inaudibly, looked in,
And through the waving muslin curtain, saw
Well, she was seated in a young man’s lap,
Her head upon his shoulder.

“Quick of ear
As the chased hare, she heard me; started up,
Ran to the curtain, eagerly drew me in,
And said, while joy beamed tender in her eyes,
‘My brother Ambrose, just arrived from Europe!’
So swift she was, she did not give me time
Even for one jealous pang. I took his hand,
And saying, ‘Anna’s brother must be mine,’
I bade them both good-night, and went my way:
So was I fooled, my better angel baffled!

“And yet once more the vivid warning came,
Flashed like quick truth from her own eyes. We stood
Together in a ball-room, when a lady,
To me unknown, came up, regarded me
With strange compassion in her curious glance,
And then, with something less divine than pity,
Looked down on my betrothed, and moved away.
I turned to Anna, but upon her face,
There was a look to startle like a ghost;
Defiance, deadly fear, and murderous hate
Were all so wildly blended! But ’twas gone
Gone like a flash before I well could mark it;
And in its place there came a luminous smile,
So childlike sweet, such type of heavenly candor,
It would have served for a Madonna’s mouth,
To make the pilgrim’s adoration easy.
‘Who was that lady, Anna?’ I inquired.
‘A Mrs. Lothian,’ was her reply:
‘A lovely person, although somewhat haughty.’
We returned home soon after, and no more
Was said of it.

“The rapid weeks flew by,
And Anna plied her powers to charm, but still
Not all the subtle glamour of her presence
Could bind in sleep my pleading monitor.
And so at last I said: ’We both are young:
Let us, as earnest of a mutual wish
To share a perfect love, or none at all,
Absolve each other here, without condition,
From this engagement; and, if three years hence
We both are of one heart, then shall we find
The means to make it known; of that be sure!
Are you in your own loyalty so fixed
As to accept the challenge? Would you prize
The love of any man, who could not bear
A test so simple?’

“The first word I spoke
Made all my meaning plain to her; she shook,
But more perhaps with anger than with grief;
She turned her face away, and covered it
With both her hands, and so remained until
I had done speaking; then she rose at once,
Her face averted still, (she durst not show it!)
And grasped my hand, and, in a husky tone
Sheathing her wrath, exclaimed: ’To-morrow, come
At twelve at twelve!’ and rushed out of the room.

“Prompt at the hour I went; and in the parlor
Sat down expectant; and she entered soon,
Clad all in white; upon her face the marks
Of passionate tears, and a beseeching sorrow
In every look! A desk of ivory,
Borne in her hands, she placed upon the table;
I rose to meet her, but she motioned me
To keep my seat; then, with an arm thrown over
A high-backed chair, as if to keep from falling,
(The attitude was charming, and she knew it),
She said: ’Take back the little desk you gave me;
In it are all your letters, all your gifts.
Take them, and give me mine.’

“The last few words
Came as if struggling through a crowd of sobs.
What could I do but lead her to the sofa,
Sit by her side, take her white hand, and say:
’This is no final separation, Anna;
It is a trial merely of our loves?’

“‘A light affair perhaps to you,’ she said,
’But death to me. As whim or pleasure points,
You can go here, go there, and lead the life
You most affect; while I, the home-kept slave
Of others’ humors, must brave poverty,
Neglect and cruel treatment.’ ’Did you say
Poverty, Anna?’ ’Do not breathe a word
Of what I tell you: father is a bankrupt,
Or soon will be; and we shall be compelled
To quit our freestone house, and breathe the air
Of squalid want. From that I’d not recoil,
Could I have loving looks and words; for what
Is poverty if there’s but love to gild it?
Ah! poverty’ ’Nay, Anna, poverty
You shall not know, only accept from me
The means to fix you in becoming plenty.’
‘Never!’ she cried; ‘ah! cruel to propose it!’
And then more tears; till, touched and foiled, I said,
Looking her in the face while she gazed up
In mine with eager tenderness, ’Accept
A happy home, if I can help to make it.
We will be married, Anna, when you please.’

“And so she had her way, and we were married;
And the next day all Wall Street was aroused
By news that brave Papa had won renown
Not simply as a bankrupt, but a swindler,
Escaping, by the skin of his teeth, the Tombs.
’No matter! Papa has a son-in-law,
A greenhorn, as they say, who occupies
A stately house on the Fifth Avenue,
And, in his hall, Papa will hang his hat.’
And, in all this, Rumor but hit the truth.

“Six months rolled by. Repeatedly I asked,
‘Where’s Brother Ambrose?’ He, it seems, was held
In such request by government, that rarely
Could he be spared for home enjoyment; but
At length I did encounter Brother Ambrose,
And once again I found him

“Well, the scales
Dropped from my eyes. I asked no other proof
Than a quick look I saw the two exchange,
Forgetful of a mirror at their side,
To see I was betrayed. He was no brother.
I sought more proof; but they, imagining
I knew more than I did, were swift to act.
Before I could find steps for a divorce
She stole a march upon me, and herself
Took the initiative, and played the victim,
Nipping me as a culprit in the law.

“It was a plot so dexterously framed,
All the precautions and contrivances
Were with such craft foreplanned; the perjuries
Were all so well adjusted; my pure life
Was made to seem so black; the witnesses
Were so well drilled, so perfect in their parts,
In short, it was a work of art so thorough,
I did not marvel at the Court’s decision,
Which was, for her, divorce and alimony;
For me, no freedom, since no privilege
Of marrying again. Such the decree!”

“I’m glad you spurned it as you did!” cried Linda,
While her cheeks flushed, and hot, indignant tears,
Responded to her anger. Then she kissed
Her father on each cheek, and tenderly
Embraced her mother too; and they, the while,
With a slight moisture in their smiling eyes,
Exchanged a nod. Then Percival to Linda:
“Why, what an utter rebel you would be,
You little champion of the higher law!
Sit down, and hear me out.”

“If such their justice,”
Cried Linda, irrepressible and panting,
“Who would not spurn it, and hurl back defiance
To all the Justice Shallows on the Bench
To them and their decrees!”

“My little girl,”

The father said, “the heart’s impulsive choice
May guide us safely when the act must be
Born of the instant, but let Reason rule
When Reason may. For some twelve years, I lived
A wandering life in Europe; not so crushed
By my most harsh experience but I
Could find, in study and in change of scene,
How much of relish life has for the mind
As well as the affections; still I felt
Mine was a nature in which these must play
No secondary part; and so the void
Enlarged as age drew nearer; and at forty
A weariness of life came over me,
And I was sick at heart; for many a joy
Had lost the charm that made it joy. I took
A house in London, all for solitude,
And there got what you may not find in Egypt,
Or on Mont Blanc.

“One day as I was crossing
An obscure street, I saw a crowd of workmen
Gathered around a man upon the ground:
A rafter from a half-built house had fallen,
And he was badly injured. Seeing none
To act with promptness in the case, I hailed
A cab, and had him driven to my house.
Finding he was a fellow-countryman,
I gave him one of my spare rooms, and sent
For the best surgeon near. His report was,
The wound itself was nothing serious,
But there was over-action of the brain,
Quite independent, which might lead to danger,
Unless reduced in season; and the patient
Should have the best of watching and attendance,
And not be left to brood on any trouble,
But be kept cheerful. Then with some directions
For diet, sedatives, and laxatives,
The doctor bowed, received his fee, and left.
My guest lay sad and silent for a while,
Then turned to me and said: ’My name is Kenrick;
I’m from Chicago was a broker there.
A month ago my wife eloped from me;
And her companion, as you may surmise,
Was one I had befriended raised from nothing.
I’m here upon their track.”

“‘Why so?’ I asked.
‘What do you want of them?’ ’What do I want?’
He stretched his eyes at me inquiringly.
‘How strange,’ said I, ’the inconsistency!
Here’s a true man would try to overtake
An untrue mate! If she’s not sterling gold
And loyal as the loadstone, not alone
In every act, but every thought and throb,
Why should you care who puts her to the proof,
Takes her away, and leaves you free again?
Show me ’tis an illusion I adore,
And I will thank you, though it be in anguish.
To no false gods I bow, if I can help it!’

“‘Could I,’ said Kenrick, ’have him only once
Where I could take him by the throat, and measure
My strength with his!’ ’Tut, tut! the kind physician
Who warns you of some lurking taint, to which
The cautery should be applied at once,
Is not, in act, if not intent, your friend
More certainly than he you rave against.
And you’ve been jealous, I suppose, at times,
Of the poor runaway?’ ’Ay, that I have!
Bitterly jealous.’

“’Jealousy and love
Were never yet true mates; for jealousy
Is born of selfish passion, lust, or pride,
While love is so divine and pure a thing,
It only takes what cannot be withheld.
It flies constraint. All that it gives is given,
Even as the lily renders up its perfume,
Because it cannot help it. Would it crave
Return less worthy? Would it be content
With a grudged gift? Then it is something else,
Not love not love! Ah me! how men and women
Cozen themselves with words, and let their passions
Fool them and blind, until they madly hug
Illusions which some stunning shock like yours
Puts to the proof, revealing emptiness.
Have you a loving heart, and would you feed it
On what the swine have left, mock it with lies?’
‘Speak this to me again, when I am stronger,’
Said Kenrick, smiling faintly. Then I left him,
And taking up ‘The Times’ looked thro’ the list
Of ‘Wants’; and one amid the many hundred
Instantly caught my eye. It merely said:
’Wanted, by a young woman, strong and healthy,
A place as nurse for any invalid.
Address 681, Times Office.’ So
I wrote and told 681 to call
Upon me at a certain hour.

“And now,
My dear, this little girl with eager eyes
Has, for a summer morning, heard enough.
The weather is the crown of all that June
Has of most fair, the year’s transcendent day;
When the young foliage and the perfect air
Intoxicate the birds, and put our hearts
In harmony with their extravagance
Of joy and love. Come, come! To slight this day
Would be a sin. We’ll ramble in the Park,
And take our dinner there, and see the flowers,
The children, and the swans, and all the places
Which Linda used to love in babyhood,
When, in her little carriage, like a queen
She’d sit, receiving homage from all eyes.”

The father had his way; and in the Park
They spent the happy time, and felt the charm
Which harmony complete with Nature brings
When loving spirits, unpreoccupied,
Gain by surrender, and grow rich by giving.
O sunshine and blue sky and genial airs!
To human happiness, like daily bread,
Your blessings come, till the unthinking heart
Recks not the debt we owe your silent powers.
If ye can give so much, what may not He
Of whose omnipotence ye are but shadows
Have in reserve in his eternities!