CHAPTER 19 The Withered Heart!
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In the progress of time, a slight change took place in the condition of Mrs. Hardy's mind. The withered heart showed signs of feeling. In the brooding warmth of her eldest daughter's love, there was a pervading vitality, that, as a source of life, was ever transferring itself to the mother, until the torpid feelings of the latter began to revive and react. If the result brought a deeper capacity for enjoyment — it also brought a deeper capacity for pain. If her mind was able to see more clearly — the better vision revealed much that could not be seen without sorrow. As love, the very essence of her woman's nature, regained some of its outgoing impulses, and shot forth its clinging tendrils — the impulses fell back again in shocks upon her heart, and the tendrils wound their spirals in the formless air.
A woman, with a highly organized spiritual nature, and with woman's eternal necessity upon her — the necessity for union with a true masculine soul, the heavenly complement of her own — life could not flow into her heart with renewing warmth, without a restoration of desires never to be satisfied in this world. Then, as she realized again, with an acute perception, how strangely adverse to the right development and true growth of her spiritual nature, were all her marital relations — old questions intruded themselves, beclouding her mind, and filling it with perplexing doubts.
Taught, from earliest infancy, to confide in and reverence God as a loving Father of his human children, and still desiring to hold fast upon this estimate of her Creator, she found the ordeal of her life too fiery, and her own experience too full of suffering in its worst forms, to leave room for any instinctive conclusions that were not in contravention of all her first ideas of a God full of Divine benevolence. Every day these thoughts troubled her more and more. The new life in her heart, was but a life in the old forms of her being. It was still woman's life; and as it grew stronger, her woman's nature felt the old yearnings, and love stood looking forth, sighing for true companionship.
Ah! bitterly, as of old — yes, more bitterly, did she mourn the sad life-bondage to which her fatal error had doomed her.
But there was one thought, ever and always intruding itself, which brought a temporary relief. The end of her journey could not lie far in the distance. Yet quickly following this thought, came ever a troubled question, "What of the future, and its soul-affinities?" And there was no answer. How often her spirit stood still, as though hearkening for answers from the unknown, unseen world, and eagerly trembling in hope of some response. But the silence which followed her call, was as profound as the silence of death!
This was the state of Mrs. Hardy's mind, and such were her relations to her husband, to her family, and to society, at the period of her first introduction to the reader, from which point we now trace briefly onward, the history of her inner life. We repeat a single sentence from the conclusion of the second chapter, in order to bring back the reader's mind, by an easy transition, into the progression of the narrative.
"A little while afterwards, Mrs. Percival observed that Mr. Hardy was in the centre of a group of ladies and gentlemen, to whom he was talking in a very animated way. Mrs. Hardy was not on his arm. She sought for her through the crowded rooms, but, not finding her, went out into the garden, where she discovered her,
standing under an arbour, looking more like an immovable statue than a living woman. As she came up, the light, streaming out from the open windows, and falling upon her cheeks, glittered
among the crystal tears, and told that she was weeping."
Mrs. Percival took the hand of Mrs. Hardy and held it very tightly within her own, but without speaking. For some moments, there was not the slightest motion or response.
"Dear friend!" A world of true sympathy was in the low, tender tones of her voice.
Instantly Mrs. Hardy's hand clasped that of Mrs. Percival with a pressure that sent an electric thrill to her heart. "Dear friend!" Mrs. Percival repeated the words with added tenderness.
"Dear friend and sufferer!" she continued, "I am no curious intruder upon sorrow's sacred precincts. I ask no confidence. There are in all hearts, secret places that must ever remain hidden from all eyes but those of God, the Wise and the Merciful; and far be it from me to desire even to have the veil removed. Such places are in my own heart, and I would die rather than open the door for anyone to enter. All I ask is the privilege of a comforter, if there is power in me to speak consoling words. I have passed through many fiery trials — as fiery, it may be, as your own; and I feel that I am stronger, and I hope purer, through suffering. If you are too weak and faint, will you lean upon my arm? Dear sister!" — there came a sudden irrepressible gush of feeling into Mrs. Percival's voice, as she added, "I love you!" Never was that closing sentence uttered with more truth or tenderness — not even by the lips of enamoured manhood in the flush of love's young dreams.
"I am very weak, and the way is dark!" How mournfully those words were said! "Dear sister! my heart springs towards you. Oh! if you will let me lean upon you!"
Mrs. Percival drew her arm around her, as she replied —
"Can I say more to win your confidence?"
"No — no!" quickly answered Mrs. Hardy. My heart accepts with thankfulness, the love you offer. Ah, my friend! your tones have gone very far down amid the deeper places of my soul, awakening echoes that have slumbered for years in silence — and your words have stirred a flood of emotions, along the topmost waves of which light is glittering. Oh! if the day indeed is breaking!"
"Night, dear friend!" said Mrs. Percival, "is only the absence of day. The sun is always in mid-heavens; and the earth is forever revolving. The day-spring from on high comes as surely to the earnestly-seeking spirit, as morning to the sons of men. Lift up your eyes, and behold upon the far off mountain-tops, blessed tokens of the coming dawn!"
"My vision is feeble, and my heart full of questioning doubts," replied Mrs Hardy. "I cannot see the mountain-tops. I have no true faith in the morning — and yet hope is fluttering in my heart!"
Merry voices now broke upon the air, and a group of laughing girls came bounding into the garden. Mrs. Percival drew her arm within that of Mrs. Hardy, and they moved down one of the walks. Two or three of the girls, joining them, interrupted their conversation, which was not renewed again during the evening.
A few days afterwards, they met under circumstances more favourable. Mrs. Percival called upon Mrs. Hardy, as she had promised to do. As from the heart's fullness — the lips have utterance; the former subject of conversation was soon renewed, and the dark mystery of life presented for solution. Mrs. Hardy's mind was calmer than before, and her thoughts clearer, but very earnest.
"We too often forget," said Mrs. Percival, "in our own grief, pain, or disappointment, that others suffer as well as we — that the spirits with which we struggle in a vain antagonism are suffering spirits as well as our own — that the links of the chain which binds us to another, chafe also that other heart. Our tears are not always shed alone. The path we tread in darkness, may be dark also to another's feet. Ah, my friend! there is, in all sorrow, whether for lost friends or lost happiness, an element of selfishness that gives double anguish to the pain. If we could only think less of our own unsatisfied longings, and let our hearts go out in pity even for those who wrong and oppress us, because they are fellow-sufferers, the burdens we bear would rest lighter on our shoulders. It is a fact worthy of note, that the moment we let sympathy for another's grief find a lodging-place in our hearts, that moment our own grief's bear upon us with a diminished pressure."
Mrs. Hardy scarcely responded to these remarks; but they took strong hold upon her thoughts, and she said mentally, "How selfish I have been!"
"We censure the old recluse for retiring from the world," resumed Mrs. Percival, "instead of remaining in the midst of it, bravely meeting its wrongs, and striving to do some good in his day and generation. And are we who retire from society into the seclusion of our homes, there to brood over the ruins of our earthly hopes, any wiser or better than he? No, my friend, we are not! Nay! nay! Let us come out of ourselves. Let us look away from our own hearts, to which we can bring neither light nor comfort, and let us see if we cannot bring light and comfort into some other heart. In this work, our labour will not be in vain — and the blessing will be twofold."
"I thank you, dear friend!" said Mrs. Hardy, "for all that you have said. Ah! if we had met earlier!"
"It is never too late!" was the impressively spoken answer.
"No, thank God!" responded Mrs. Hardy, with a gush of feeling that surprised her visitor, who knew not how deeply her words had gone down into the heart of her suffering sister, nor with what better purposes they were already inspiring her.
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