I glanced over the letter. It fully justified my husband’s encomiums. It was a most touching appeal to him to watch with paternal care over her only child; but while she spoke with a mother’s tenderness of his endearing qualities, she wished him taught implicitly, that first of all duties for the young, obedience. Then followed allusions to dark days of sorrow, during which the love of that cherished child, was the only star in her sky.
I folded the letter and sat very still, after my husband left, in my little rocking-chair, thinking. Such a gifted woman as that my husband should have married. One who could have sympathised with him and shared his intellectual pursuits; who would have been something besides a toy to amuse an idle hour, or to minister to his physical necessities. Perhaps it was of this that my husband was thinking, as he sat there with his eyes closed over the open letter. Perhaps he had wed me only from a generous impulse of pity, and that letter had suddenly revealed to him the happiness of which he was capable with a kindred spirit. I was very miserable. I wished the letter had never reached us, or that I had declined the care of the child. Other letters, of course, would come, and the boy would keep alive the interest in the intervals. I wept long and bitterly. At length I was aroused by the entrance of little Charley. A bright flush mounted to his forehead, when he saw my swollen eyes. He hesitated a moment, then gliding up to my side he said, sweetly, “Are you sick? Shall I bathe your head? I used to bathe mamma’s head when it pained her.”
I stood abashed and rebuked in the child’s angel presence, and taking the boy, her boy, in my arms, I kissed him as tenderly as if I had been his mother; while in his own sweet way he told me with childish confidence of his own dead papa; how much he loved mamma; how many, many beautiful things he used to bring her, saying that they were not half good, or half handsome enough for her; how distressed he used to be if she were ill; how carefully he closed the shutters, and tip-toed about the house, with his finger on his lip, telling the servants to close the doors gently; and how he promised him little toys, if he would not disturb mamma’s slumbers; and then, how like diamonds his eyes shone, when she got well; and what beautiful flowers he brought her for her vases; and what a nice, soft-cushioned carriage he brought for her to take the air; and how tenderly he wrapped the shawls about her, and how many charges he gave the coachman, to drive slowly and carefully. And then, how dear papa, at last, grew sick himself; and how mamma watched day and night beside his bed, forgetting to sleep, or eat, or drink; and how nobody dared to tell her that the doctor said he must die; and how papa grew fainter and weaker, and how he said, “Kiss me, Mary, and lay your cheek to mine; I can’t see you.” And then, how mamma fainted and was carried out, and for many, many long days didn’t know even her own little Charley; – and how dreadful it was when she first waked, and tried to remember what had happened; and how nobody could comfort her but Charley; and how he used often to wake up in the night, and find her with a lamp looking at him, because when he was asleep he looked so much like dear, dead papa; and how bitterly she would sob when she was sick, because papa was not there to pity her, and bathe her aching head; and how he (Charley) meant, when he grew up to be a man, to get a nice house for her, and put everything she wanted in it, and make her just as happy as he could.
Well has the Saviour said, “Of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” That night I bent over little Charley’s bed, blessing the little sleeper for his angel teachings, with a heart as calm and peaceful as the mirrored lake, reflecting only the smile of Heaven.
Time passed on. Life became earnest; for a little heart pulsated beneath my own, and a strange, sweet, nameless thrill sent to my chastened lips a trembling prayer. Tiny caps and robes, with many a hope and fear interwoven in their delicate threads, lay awaiting the infant’s advent. I, myself should know the height, and breadth, and depth of a mother’s undying love. What could come between me and this new found treasure?
Meantime letters continued to come from Charley’s mother to her boy, and my husband. It was impossible for me to blind myself to his growing interest in them. On the days they were expected, (for she wrote at regular intervals,) he would be absent and abstracted, or if any delay occurred, almost irritable. When they were received, his eye kindled, his step became elastic, and his whole face grew radiant with happiness.
As the time drew near for the birth of my infant, I grew timid with sad forebodings. I was sitting, one evening at twilight, watching the setting sun, and thinking of the quiet grave it was gilding, where my silver-haired father slept, in the old church yard, when my husband entered. An expression of pain flitted over his features, as he looked at me, and taking my hand, he said, gently, almost tenderly, “You are less well than usual, Hetty; you must not sit here, moping, by yourself.”
I laid my head upon his shoulder with a happiness I had not known for many months. “Listen to me, dear Grey,” said I; “I have a confidence to repose in you that will ease my heart.
“It was pity, only, that drew your heart to mine; you do not love me. I have known it a long while since. At first, the discovery gave me a pang keener than death; but I have had a long and bitter struggle with myself, and have conquered. It is not your fault that you cannot love me. To the many voices of your heart, which cry, ‘Give, give,’ my response is weak and unsatisfying. Your wife should be gifted. She should sympathise with you in your intellectual pursuits. She should stimulate your pride, as well as your love. Such an one is Charley’s mother. Your heart has already wed her, and as God is my witness, I have ceased to blame you. We cannot help our affections. I cannot help loving you, though I know her mysterious power over your heart. I have seen your struggles, your generous self-reproaches, in some sudden outburst of kindness toward me, after the indulgence of some bright dream, in which I had no share. Dear Grey, she is worthy of your love. She has a heart, noble, good and true; a heart purified by suffering. I see it in every line she writes. Should I not survive the birth of my infant, I could give your happiness into her keeping without a misgiving, though I have never looked upon her face.”
Little Hetty’s noble heart has long since ceased to throb with joy or pain. To her husband’s breast is folded the babe, for whose little life her own was yielded up. Threads of silver prematurely mingle amid his ebon locks; for memory writes only on bereaved hearts the virtues of the dead, while, with torturing minuteness, she pictures our own short-comings, for which, alas! we can offer no atonement but our tears.
AUNT HEPSY
It was a comical little old shop, “Aunt Hepsy’s,” with its Lilliputian counter, shelves and stove, and its pigmy assortment of old-fashioned ginghams, twilled cambrics, red flannels, factory cotton and homespun calicoes; its miniature window, with its stock of horn-combs and candy, tin horses and peppermint drops, skeins of yarn and Godfrey’s Cordial, gaudy picture books, and six-penny handkerchiefs, from whose center Lafayette and George Washington smiled approbatively upon the big A’s and little A’s printed round the border.
“Aunt Hepsy;” so every brimless-hatted urchin in the neighborhood called her, though it would have puzzled them worse than the multiplication table, had you asked them why they did so. Year in and year out, her ruddy English face glowed behind the little shop window. Sometimes she would be knitting a pair of baby’s socks, sometimes inventing most astonishing looking bags out of rainbow fragments of silk or ribbon. Sometimes netting watch-guards, or raveling the yarn from some old black stocking, to ornament the “place where the wool ought to grow,” on the head of some Topsy doll she was making. Sometimes comforting herself with a sly pinch of snuff, or, when sunbeams and customers were scarce, nodding drowsily over the daily papers.
Aunt Hepsy had been a beauty, and her pretty face had won her a thriftless husband, of whom champagne and cigars had long since kindly relieved her. And though Time had since forced her to apply to the perruquier, he had gallantly made atonement by leaving her in the undisputed possession of a pair of very brilliant black eyes. Add to this a certain air of coquetry, in the fanciful twist of her gay-colored turban, and the disposal of the folds of her lace kerchief over her ample English bust – and you have a faithful daguerreotype of “Aunt Hepsy.”
From the window of her little shop she could