FullReads

May 2d.–What a woman she is! and, in a different sense, what a man I am! How little does a man know or suspect himself until he is brought to the proof! How serenely and securely I philosophized and laid down the law yesterday! and to-day, how strange to contrast the event with my prognostication of it! And yet, again, how little has happened that might not be told in such a way as to appear nothing! It was the latent meaning, the spirit, the touch of look and tone. Her husband may have reached New York by this time; they may be together at this moment; he will find no perceptible change in her–perceptible to him! He will be told that I have been her escort during the day, and that I was polite and serviceable, and that a house has been selected. What more is there to tell? Nothing–that he could hear or understand! and yet–everything! He will say, “Yes, I recollect Campbell; nice fellow; have him to dine with us one of these days.” But I shall never sit at their table; I shall never see her again; I can not! I shall start for California next week. Meanwhile I will write down the history of one day, for it is well to have these things set visibly before one –to grasp the nettle, as it were. Nothing is so formidable as it appears when we shrink from defining it to ourselves.

I drove to the hotel in my brougham at eleven o’clock, as we had previously arranged. She was ready and waiting for me, and little Susie was with her. Ethel was charmingly dressed, and there was a soft look in her eyes as she turned them on me–a look that seemed to say, “I remember the past; it is pleasant to see you, so pleasant as to be sad!” Susie came to me as if I were an old friend, and I lifted the child from the floor and kissed her twice.

“Why did you give me two kisses?” she demanded, as I put her down. “Papa always gives me only one kiss.”

“Papa has mamma as well as you to kiss; but I have no one; I am an old bachelor.”

“When you have known mamma longer, will you kiss her too?”

“Old bachelors kiss nobody but little girls,” I replied, laughing.

“We went down to the brougham, and after we were seated and on our way,” Ethel said, “Already I feel so much at home in New York, it almost startles me. I fancied I should have forgotten old associations–should have grown out of sympathy with them; but I seem only to have learned to appreciate them more. Our memory for some things is better than we would believe.”

“There are two memories in us,” I remarked; “the memory of the heart and the memory of the head. The former never is lost, though the other may be. But I had not supposed that you cared very deeply for the American period of your life.”

“England is very agreeable,” she said, rather hastily. She turned her head and looked out of the window; but after a pause she added, as if to herself, “but I am an American!”

“There is, no doubt, a deep-rooted and substantial repose in English life such as is scarcely to be found elsewhere,” I said; “but, for all that, I have often thought that the best part of domestic happiness could exist nowhere but here. Here a man may marry the woman he loves, and their affection for each other will be made stronger by the hardships they may have to pass through. After all, when we come to the end of our lives, it is not the business we have done, nor the social distinction we have enjoyed–it is the love we have given and received that we are glad of.”

“Mamma,” inquired Susie, “does Mr. Campbell love you?”