She and I Volume II Part 20

"Il y a toujours des vents brulants, qui pa.s.sent sur l'ame de l'homme, et la dessechant. La priere est la rosee qui la rafraichit."

And, again,--

"Dieu sait mieux que vous ce dont vous avez besoin, et c'est pour cela qu'il veut que vous le lui demandiez; car Dieu est lui-meme votre premier besoin, et prier Dieu, c'est commencer a posseder Dieu."

The sirocco of sorrow had fanned its hot breath over my soul; but, no grateful spring shower had cooled it through prayer. G.o.d, certainly, knows better than we what we should desire; but why does He not instruct us in His wishes?

Perhaps you think this all milk-and-watery talk, and that I do not mean what I say?

But I do. Even those people whom you might think the most unlikely persons to have such thoughts, will have these reflections, so why not speak of them?

Some, I know, believe that all religious conversation should be strictly tabooed in any reference to secular matters. But it seems to me a very delicate faith that will only stand an airing once a week, like your church services on Sundays! _I_ have thought of such things, and I'm not ashamed to mention them.

Acting on my mind at the same time--in concert with these religious doubts, and the consciousness of my unlucky fortunes--was a strong feeling of home-sickness, which grew and grew with greater intensity as the months rolled by.

I got so miserable, that, I felt with Sh.e.l.ley--

"I could lie down, like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear!"

For what profit did this warring against destiny bring me? Nothing-- nothing, but the "vanity and vexation of spirit," which a more believing soul than mine had apostrophised in agony, ages before I was born.

You may not credit the fact of the Swiss mountaineers pining of what is called "Home-woe," when banished from their beloved glaciers, the same as Cyrus's legions suffered from _nostalgia_; and, may put down the Frenchman's _maladie du pays_, which some expatriated communists are probably experiencing now in New Caledonia, to blatant sentimentality; but they are each and all true expositions of feeling.

We Englishmen are generally prosaic; but some of us have known the terrible yearning which this home-sickness produces in us in foreign lands. The Devons.h.i.+re shepherd will weep over the recollections which a little daisy will bring back to him of the old country of his childhood, when standing beneath an Australian gum tree. I have seen a Scotchman in America cherish a thistle, as if it were the rarest of plants, from its native a.s.sociations; and I know of a potted shamrock which was brought all the way across the ocean in an emigrant s.h.i.+p, by an Irish miner, and which now adorns the window of a veranda-fronted cottage at the Pittsburgh mines in Pennsylvania!

Some of us _are_ "sentimental," you see. I can answer for myself, at least; and I know that the air of "Home, sweet Home," has affected me quite as much as the "Ranz des Vaches" would appeal to the sensibilities of an Alpine Jodeller!

I got home-sick now. The pa.s.sion took complete possession of me.

The burning, suffocating heat of the summer "in the States," caused me to pant after the cool shade of the old Prebend's walk at Saint Canon's; and call to mind those inviting lawns and osiered eyots along the Thames, where I used to spend the warm evenings at home. I thought as Izaak Walton, the vicar's favourite, had thought before me--that I would cheerfully sacrifice all hopes of worldly advancement, all dreams of fortune, all future success, problematical though each and all appeared--

So, I the fields and meadows green may view; And daily by fresh rivers walk at will, Among the daisies and violets blue, Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil; Purple narcissus, like the morning's rays, Pale gander gra.s.s and azure culver keys.

In the gorgeous Indian summer, when the nature of the New World seems to awake, dressing all the trees in fantastic foliage of varied hue, my fancies were recalled to a well-remembered Virginian creeper that ornamented the houses of the Terrace, where my darling lived; for its leafy colouring in the autumn was similar to that I now beheld--in the chrome-tinted maples, the silvery-toned beeches and scarlet "sumachs" of the western forests.

And in the frozen winter, of almost Arctic severity and continuance, home was brought even nearer to me--in connection with all the cherished memories of that kindly-tempered season. I thought of the old firesides where I had been a welcome guest in times past; the old Christmas festivities, the old Christmas cheer, the--bah! What good will it do to you and I thus to trace over the aching foot-prints of recollection?

I used to go down to the mouth of the Hudson river, that I might watch the red-funnelled Cunard steamers start on their pa.s.sage to England-- sending my heart after them in impotent cravings: I used, I remember, to mark off the days as they pa.s.sed, in the little almanack of my pocket- book--scoring them out, just as Robinson Crusoe was in the habit of notching his post for the same purpose:--I used to fret and fret, in fact, eating my soul away in vain repinings and foolish longings!

And, still, my fortunes did not brighten--notwithstanding that I hunted in every direction for work, and tried to wean my mind from painful a.s.sociations by hopeful antic.i.p.ations of "something turning up" on the morrow. The morrow came, sure enough; but no good luck:--my fortunes got darker and darker, as time went on; while my home yearnings grew stronger.

I would have borne my troubles much better, I'm certain, if I could only have heard from my darling.

There was no hope of that, however, as you know. Even if Min would have consented to such a thing, which I knew she would not have done, I should never have dreamt of asking her to write to me in opposition to her mother's wishes. It is true that I had dear little Miss Pimpernell's letters; but what could _they_ be in comparison with letters from Min?--although, of course, the kind old lady would tell me all about her, and how she looked, and what she said, in order to encourage me?

It was a hard fight, a bitter struggle--that first year I pa.s.sed in America; and, my memory will bear the scars of the combat, I believe, until my dying day.

Still, time brought relief; and, opportunity, success--so the world wags.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

"LIFE!"

I hold it truth with him who sings, On one clear harp, in divers tones, That men may rise, on stepping stones Of their dead lives, to higher things!

However grievous and crus.h.i.+ng we may consider the trials and troubles of life to be, while they last, they are never altogether unbearable.

The load laid upon us is seldom weighted beyond the capacity of our endurance; and then, when in course of time our ills become alleviated, and the burden we have so long borne slides off our backs, the relief we feel is proportionately all the greater, our sense of light-heartedness and mental freedom, the more intense and complete.

Existence, to follow out the argument, is not always painted in shadow, its horizon obscured by dark-tinted nebulosities! On the contrary, there is ever some light infused into it, to bring out the deeper tones--"a silver lining" generally "to every cloud," as the proverb has it. So, I now experienced, as I am going to tell you.

The second year of my residence in America opened much more brightly than the miserable twelvemonth I had just pa.s.sed through might have led me to hope--if I could have hoped on any longer, that is!

Early in the spring, when the warming breath of the power-increasing sun was slowly unloosing the chains of winter--when the rapid-running Hudson was sweeping down huge blocks and fields of ice from Albany, flooding New York Bay with a collection of little bergs, so that it looked somewhat like the Arctic effect I had seen on the Thames on that happy Christmas of the past, only on ever so much larger a scale--I received letters from England that cheered me up wonderfully, changing the whole aspect of my life.

"Good news from home, good news for me, had come across the deep blue sea"--in the words of Gilmore's touching ballad; and "though I wandered far away, my heart was full of joy to-day; for, friends across the ocean's foam had sent to me good news from home"--to further paraphrase it.

_Good_ news?--"glorious news," rather, I should say!

Yes, I had not only a glad, welcome letter from Miss Pimpernell, in which the dear little old lady made me laugh and cry again; but, I also heard from the good vicar, who was one of the worst correspondents in the world, never putting pen to paper, save in the compilation of his weekly sermons, except under the most dire necessity, or kindly compulsion.

To receive an epistle from him was an event!

And, what do you think he wrote to me about? What, can you imagine, made dear little Miss Pimpernell's lengthy missive--scribed as it was in the most puzzling of calligraphies--of so engrossing an interest, that I read it again and again; valuing it more than all her previous budgets of parish gossip put together, entertaining as I thought them before?

Once, twice, three times?

No, I do not believe you can guess what it was that gave me such delight in the "good news from home," sharp and shrewd though you may think yourself.

If you will take my advice, you had better treat it as a conundrum and "give it up."

Don't keep you in suspense, eh?

Well then, I will tell you--here goes.

It is a long story--too long to describe in detail; but the upshot of it was that my kind friend the vicar, cognisant of the sincere affection that existed between my darling and myself, and knowing the suffering that had been caused to us both by the enforced silence which we had to maintain towards each other, had interceded with Mrs Clyde on our behalf; and, what is more, had done so successfully!

There, fancy that! Don't you think I had sufficient reason to be rejoiced?

Min and I were to be allowed to write to each other for a year--as "friends," a condition of intimacy to which her mother seemed to attach a good deal of point, as she had made it an obligatory proviso to our correspondence. Mrs Clyde had, in addition to this, tacked on a sweeping clause to the agreement, to the effect that, in case my prospects at the end of the year should not warrant my returning to England and claiming Min as my promised wife--prospects of a short engagement and an easy settlement being also satisfactory--the whole negotiation should fall to the ground and be considered null and void; we, reverting to our original and hopeless position of soi-disant strangers or "friends" at a distance, and looking upon the interlude of our letter-writing as if it had never occurred.

I did not give much thought, however, to this ultimatum.

I was too full of happiness at the idea of being allowed to correspond at once with my darling, and hear from her own dear self after the weary months that had pa.s.sed since our separation. Why, I would be able to tell her all my plans and hopes and fears, conscious that her sympathy would never fail to congratulate me in success; condole with me, cheer me, encourage me, in failure!

And then, her letters! What a feast they would be, coming like grateful dew on the thirsty soil of my heart--suns.h.i.+ne succeeding to the April shower of disappointment that lay on my memory. Her letters! They would be so many little Mins, visiting me to soothe my exile, and bringing me, face to face and soul to soul, in the spirit, with their loving autotype at home!