Kitabı oku: «Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864», sayfa 8

'FEED MY LAMBS.'

PART FIRST

Harry has crept to his little bed, shivering with childish dread of the dark. Ungentle hands have placed him there, guardians careless of his comfort and chary of kind words and looks, and a coarse-voiced girl has said, as she took the light away, and banged the door behind her:

'Cry out loud, you little imp, and I'll send the black bears to catch you.'

So Harry is choking down his sobs, and crying silently, very silently. The chill and melancholy night wind, as it comes moaning through the casement and rustling the light leaves of the tall poplar as they rest against the window panes, and the great round tears as they fall with a dull, heavy drop, drop on his lonely pillow, are the only sounds that break the dismal stillness, excepting now and then, when a great sob, too mighty to be choked down, bursts from the little, overcharged heart. And then Harry fancies he feels, through the thin coverlet and torn night dress, the huge black paws of these same bears grasping the tender round shoulder, blue with the cold, while the little boy lies there shivering and shuddering in an agony of apprehension. Darkness above and around him, terrible, black, silent darkness; darkness which enwraps and enfolds him and takes away his breath, like the heavy, stifling folds of a hideous black mantle; darkness that the active imagination of the timid child peoples with phantom shapes, grotesque and horrible—forms made unnaturally visible by their own light, that mouth and leer, and stretch out distorted arms to seize him, whose appalling presence fills the room from floor to ceiling, and which eddy and circle around him in horrid demon dances, whirling gradually nearer and nearer, until myriads of hideous faces are thrust close to his own, or grin above him, while he chokes for breath—forms that make the cold sweat stand on his baby forehead, and freeze the blood in his veins, that he watches night after night, with his blue eyes starting from their sockets and his hair standing on end, that make of the desolate nighttime a dread and a horror! And there is no one to kneel beside his lonely bed and tell the frightened child, sick with dread, that there are no such things as odious black dwarfs, who drag young children off to dark and dismal dungeons by the hair of their head, nor great giants, who grow always bigger as you look at them, and who eat up, at a mouthful, little boys who cry in the dark. No tender mother bends low with all but divine compassion to listen to his little sorrows, or soothe his childish fears—to teach him his simple prayers, or tell him sweet stories of a little child like himself, before whose lowly cradle wise men bowed as at a shrine, and to do whom reverence shining ones came from a far-distant country. There is no one to pillow his curly head upon a loving bosom, and lull him to sleep with quaint old lullabies. Harry is worse than motherless.

So on the night in question, as on all other nights preceding, poor Harry, worn out with fright and weariness, is dropping to sleep from sheer exhaustion, closing his swollen eyes in troubled slumber, when, half unconsciously turning his curly head upon the pillow to find a dry place for the wet cheek to rest against, something bright and shining makes long lines of light in the tears still wet on Harry's lashes, and wakes him up again.

Such a bright, beautiful star it is. One that has been slowly rising, climbing the blue outside, until it reaches a break in the foliage of the tree before the window, and shines straight into Harry's eyes. Something of that strange solemnity that fills minds of a maturer growth when gazing on the starry heavens, hushes that baby's soul into reverence as he looks upon it. The terrible shapes melt away into the gloom, he feels no dread of the dark now, and vaguely and gradually there arises the first dim consciousness of the deep spiritual want within him—the first awakened desire of the finite soul to see and find the Infinite Father and claim his protection. Fragments of childish hymns, parts of simple prayers, such poor and scattered crumbs of spiritual instruction as he has gleaned here and there somehow, and on which the infant soul has been but meagrely fed, crowd in upon him. Then come wondering thoughts of that great good Being, that strange, unfathomable mystery, whose name is God, Who lives up in the blue somewhere, and yet is everywhere. This problem of Omnipresence he has pondered and pondered over, and reasoned upon, in his childish fashion, but now it dawns with a newer and clearer light on Harry's mind. God is everywhere. To his awakened spiritual perception this holy, mysterious, and invisible presence seems pervading the sky, the air, the earth, filling and enfolding all things. Night after night, as he had lain there sobbing and crying and thought himself all alone in the darkness, this great good God had been with him all the time, and he had never known it, never felt it until now; and, overwhelmed by the mighty thought, powerfully felt, though imperfectly comprehended, awestruck Harry, tremulous with reverence, obedient to some childish fancy that the name of father is not holy and reverent enough for such a Being, folds his tiny hands, earnestly praying:

'Our Grandfather which art in heaven, stay near poor Harry in the dark, and keep the bears away!'

Is it faith or fancy, that soft, gentle, summery atmosphere that fills the room, and makes the little, lonely heart thrill as with the pleasant consciousness of a loving presence? It is real to Harry, with his child's undoubting faith. Stretching forth his rounded arms, and clasping the dark, impalpable air in a joyous embrace, he nestles closely to the wet pillow as if it were a loving bosom, and falls asleep with a smile upon his lip. A childhood robbed of childish joys and pleasures, the little, insignificant trifles which form its sum of happiness, denied the sympathetic love and tenderness which is the life of little hearts, deprived of the pleasures suited to its state, yet too immature to turn within itself for comfort in its need, its life without and within a dull, joyless, dreary blank—such was poor Harry's, for a shadow dark and terrible rested on his baby heart and home, a something that darkened and deepened day by day, and grew more and more insupportable as the weary time crept on. What it was, and how long it had rested there before he became conscious of its presence, and whether his miserable home had ever been free from it and ever been a happy one, little Harry never knew. All his brief life it had lain there. Its shadow had crept into the violet eyes with the first faint glimmer of intelligence, and when the new-born soul, mysterious breath of God, first woke from its mystic dreaming, and looked consciously out upon the world into which it had come, its baleful presence crept into that holy sanctuary, and darkened what should have been cloudless as well as sinless. He had drawn it in with every breath from the atmosphere of the little world around him; it rested on all he came in contact with, and gradually and sadly there arose in the mind too immature to comprehend the cause and the nature of this desolating power, yet feeling vaguely day by day its blighting effects, sorrowful and earnest questionings—questionings like the following, to which there came back no answer to the little, suffering heart:

Why his home (if home it may be called in which the heart finds no resting place), the four walls that enclosed the place where he ate and slept, was such a dull, joyless, lonesome spot? What that dark something was that shadowed its light and took from it all joy and comfort, causing every face within it to wear a melancholy or forbidding aspect? Why there was no glad smile even on his father's lips, when he came to seek the sad young creatures that crept silently to his knee and looked wistfully up into the care-worn face; and why, though loving and kind, he was always kind with that sorrowful tenderness which makes sad hearts the sadder? Why this craving that he feels within him, this half-undefined, insatiable longing for maternal love and sympathy? What had sealed from the thirsting heart this purest fountain of earthly tenderness?

A mother's form was present to him day by day, but where was the maternal heart of love which should have beat within that bosom? 'Can a mother forget her children?' There is a fell and terrible destroyer, which murders peace in hearts and homes, whose very breath is a mildew and a blight, in whose desolating track follow woe, want, and ruin; a fierce, insatiable appetite, trebly cursed, that makes of life a loathsome degradation, and fills dishonored graves, blighting all that is divine and godlike in human nature, sealing the gushing fountain of maternal tenderness, and teaching even a mother's heart forgetfulness. O God! of what punishment shall thy justice deem those worthy, who, by cold neglect, cruelty, or shameful slavery to such a passion, shut out the light, and check the rich and limitless expansion of all that is divine in the souls committed to their charge? Ah! what did it matter that there were honorable titles affixed to the name so disgraced, that in the home thus blighted were all the luxuries and appliances of wealth, that rare pictures hung against its walls, carpets covered the floors whose velvet surface muffled the footfalls, costly curtains shut out the too garish light, that servants were at command, well paid to take care of the neglected children, paid to care for the house, and all fine things within it, and—paid to keep its secrets! What did all this matter to the miserable possessor of wealth and name, the disgraced husband, the heart-broken father? He could comprehend this woe in all its bearings, could measure the length, the breadth, the depth of the curse that had lighted upon him? Homes there were whose walls and floors were bare, whose windows were shaded by no costly curtains, but from which happy faces looked—lowly homes, poor in this world's wealth, but rich in domestic peace and love; and for the blessed quiet of their lowly hearthstones, he would joyfully have bartered wealth and fame, and all such dross as men call happiness. And Harry saw them too. The little, lonely heart, saddened by a shadow it could not comprehend, from its own gloomy home turned longingly to their homely cheerfulness, as flowers turn to the light.

One in particular had attracted his childish notice. It was just across the road; he could see it from the window of the nursery where he played, and he used to leave his play to watch it. Such glimpses of a happy home had streamed through its opening portals and fallen on the heart of the little solitary watcher like a benison. What hasty peeps he took at its homely brightness as the door opened and closed, and what long, long looks he bestowed upon it, when it stood open for hours together, as it did now in the fine June weather! It was only a simple cottage. Too unpretending for hall or entry, the little parlor opened into the street, and from the window where he stood, Harry could see straight into it. There it was, with its bright papered walls, and gay red carpet, its deep low window seat looking like a garden, where flowers bloomed and frail exotics stretched forth their delicate leaves to bathe in the sunlight that came streaming in, and cunning little yellow birds, in quaint, tiny cages, sang the long day through. And there—oh, busy fingers! making neat and bright the little home—heart of love, shedding blessed sunlight around it—there, so busy and blithe, so happy and gay, sat the presiding genius of the place, with a face so bright and good—just such a face as you would expect to see in such a home; one that sad and disappointed mortals, meeting in the street, would turn to for a second look, and bless it as it passed; a face to which childhood cleaves instinctively, sure of ready sympathy with its little joys and sorrows; one that would never be disfigured by envy or malice; never grow black with passion, and oh! never, never look senseless, idiotic, and drivelling, as another face on which he looked so often did; but to Harry's fancy, it was like the sky on a calm summer's day, always pure and bright, and always the same. It was brighter and happier and better altogether when, in the fresh morning time, the little lady went tripping by on the pavement beneath the window with a small market basket on her arm. Then Harry, clambering to the sill, and leaning out, could see straight into it; and sometimes it happened that, attracted by that fixed gaze of earnest admiration, that happy face would be turned upward, and break into a beaming smile, as the sunny eyes met the large, blue, mournful orbs looking down upon them. Then there would be a smile on the lip and a song in the heart of the little watcher for the rest of the day. Cheering and dear as that face had ever been to him since he had first had the happiness of beholding it, much as he had watched and loved it, it had drawn him with a more potent attraction still and grown doubly dear of late. He had been within the sacred precincts of a true home; he had breathed that atmosphere of heaven; he knew how that small, snug, cosy room looked to its inmates now. Yes, he had been there, and his going in chanced in the following manner:

This lady, whose cheerful presence was fast becoming a benison to Harry, had, among her other bright possessions, a rosy-cheeked, laughing-eyed, frolicsome mischief, about Harry's age, and he had recently come from the country happier, merrier, and fresher than ever, having still, as it were, about him the fragrant breath of the wood-violets, the purity of the unvitiated air, the freedom of the broad, green fields, the fragrant atmosphere of all the delightful things with which he had been so recently in contact.

One morning, not long after his coming, the cross girl who put Harry to bed at night, marshalled him and his brother out (as was her wont in fine weather) for a dreary promenade, which usually agreeable exercise consisted in the present instance in marching down a dusty stone pavement, by a long, unbroken line of brick buildings, up one street, and down another (for they always went the same way), until they came to a huge, dreary-looking schoolhouse, where they left Charley, and came back more drearily than they went. Well, on this particular morning, Charley had forgotten his slate, and he and the girl returning to search for it left Harry at the gate to await their return. The little urchin, just at that precise moment, spying Harry solus, and impelled by the agreeable prospect of a playfellow, rushed across the street, at the imminent danger of being run over, to scrape acquaintance.

'Come, and play with me,' cried the little fellow, bounding up to Harry in all the ardor of a glowing anticipation, eagerly folding one thin hand in both his dimpled ones, and flashing a whole flood of sunlight into the sad young eyes that so timidly met his sunny ones. 'Come, and play with me, do! and we'll play at horse and build mud houses, and ma'll give us lots of candy and raisins, and a great big doughnut, ever so big, as big as my hands and your hands, and all our hands put together.'

'I can't,' said Harry, sadly resigning all thought of these rare dainties. 'Betty'll scold so!'

'We'll sit on the bank under the willow at the back of the house,' pursued the tempter, folding the hand he held still tighter within his own, 'where she can't see us; and when she comes to take you away, I'll bite her.'

The youthful pleader had unconsciously used the most potent argument possible. Harry wavered. To sit on a green bank under a willow, with such a sunny-faced companion as that, and listen to the birds singing in the branches, and the rustling of the leaves—to look up through the green, and see patches of blue sky through breaks in the foliage—and then, too, oh, blessed hope! to see the lady whom he regarded with such enthusiastic and reverent devotion, and to whose love he clung with all the wild tenacity of a desolate heart—to see her smile, and hear her speak—to him, perhaps; all this rose like a glorious vision before Harry, and the possibility of its realization sent the light to his eyes and the color to his face.

The contemplated walk in the hot, dusty streets, with the cross Betty—(which tyrannical young female, having brought the children, as it were, under military rule, and being a rigid disciplinarian, seldom failed to punish some fancied dereliction of duty by sundry shakes and pinches as they went along)—this prospect, placed beside the bright, cool picture his fancy had conjured up, seemed more unendurable than ever. With one quick glance toward the house, to see if that ogre, having in custody that form a little taller and face a little older and sadder than his own, was making her appearance, Harry, seized by an irresistible impulse, and still holding fast the chubby hand that had taken his so confidingly, bounded from the pavement, dashed across the road, and both dashed through the garden and into the cosy parlor in a trice, panting like young racehorses. And there, in the brightest spot of the snug, bright room, by that bower of a window, sat the sunny-faced lady whom Harry's childish imagination had exalted into a superior being. Abashed at having so rudely rushed into that revered presence, Harry stood shyly by the door, trembling with embarrassment, while his more active companion, releasing his hand, bounded across the room, and, clambering up into his mother's lap and putting his arms around her neck and his rosebud of a mouth close to her ear, commenced a whispered explanation.

There was something strangely attractive in that mother's face, as she pushed back the clustering hair, after smilingly listening to the story, and pressed a fervent kiss upon that baby brow—a look which had never been on any face for him, but which he had dreamed of at night, and longed for by day, with a strange, undefined, half-conscious longing. It was as if he had found something he had been blindly searching, something for which the solitary heart had vaguely felt an ever-present need; and the timid child, forgetting his timidity, his awe of the presence into which he had come—forgetting all but his heart's great need—in a burst of pathetic longing, more sorrowful than tears, cried:

'Give me a kiss, too, just one!'

He was across the room and in her arms in a moment. Blessings on the true mother's heart! it gave not one kiss, but a dozen. Ah! feeling the blessing of those tears upon his head, pressed close against the breast throbbing with pure maternal sympathy, his own starved heart eagerly drinking from that overflowing fountain, the word mother rose naturally to his lips then.—Alas for her from whom alone that beating heart, throbbing with a new delight, should have received that revelation! Alas for the heart thus robbed of its lawful heritage, to whom the highest and holiest of earth's affection had manifested itself but as a brutish instinct, which, in fits of maudlin tenderness, could fold the little form in a loathsome embrace, and smother the pure breath with drunken kisses! No other love, however high and pure it may be, can atone to the wronged heart that has been cruelly robbed of this.

In this new-found joy all heavy sorrows were forgotten. Pressed close against that sympathetic bosom, he was happy now, happier than he had ever been before; and when at last she wiped her tears away, and, lifting the hand on which his grateful tears were falling (for Harry cried too), and smilingly up-turning the tear-wet face to meet her own, that face was so changed by joy that she hardly knew it, and Harry wondered why it was that she laughed and cried together when she looked at it, and kissed him over and over again more times than he could count. Laughing and chatting gayly until she saw her own smiles reflected on the little, sorrowful features, she, with a tender mother's care, bathed the flushed face, combed out the bright silky hair, smoothed and arranged the rumpled dress, and, taking the small hand, went out to the garden gate to meet the expedition sent in search of Harry.

Now this was his red-letter day. Harry was in luck. Therefore it was not one of the many servants of the establishment, or any straggling acquaintance that had joined in the search. Luckily, it was not one of these, or the cross Betty, who first espied Harry and the lady: otherwise he would have been borne away from his friend and his recently discovered Eden in triumph, in spite of all cries and protestations. It was Harry's own papa; and it did not take many words, when the bright-faced lady was the pleader (backed by that little face, with that strange flush of joy upon it, that spoke more eloquently to the father's heart than any words could have done), to induce that gentleman to allow Harry to remain where he was all day; likewise to extort a promise that he might come to see the lady whenever and as often as she chose to trouble herself with the care of him: and this being nicely arranged, Harry's papa went his way and they went theirs. And Harry did that day what is seldom done in this world of disappointment—more than realized his anticipations. He sat on the bank and heard the birds sing; he played at horse until he was tired; and though he did not build mud houses, he ate sugar ones, which was, in every respect, a vast improvement on the original design; and, what was more than all, his little playfellow, whose temper was as sunny as his face, never gave him a cross word or look the whole day through. They had supper, when the time came, under the rustling leaves of a huge green tree; and there were raisins and nuts and candy, cakes grotesquely cut and twisted into every conceivable shape, and every imaginable dainty. All through that memorable day, Harry was the happiest of the happy. Other days succeeded this that were but a thought less bright. A time had come when the rough path seemed smooth to the little pilgrim's feet, and flowers sprang up by the lonely wayside, and golden sunlight fell through the rifted clouds and crowned the little head with its blessing, and light and warmth crept into the chilled and desolate life, and made existence beautiful: a brief and joyful time, on which was written, as on all bright things of earth, those words of mournfulness unutterable: 'Passing away!'