Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems.
children. It would be one full, as that of the child Christ must be, of
the pieces of silver that were lost and are found. But Christmas, with
its peculiar associations, has deep interest for men, and women too, no
less. It has so in their mutual relations. At the time thus celebrated,
a pure woman saw in her child what the Son of man should be as a child
of God. She anticipated for him a life of glory to God, peace and good
will to man. In every young mother's heart, who has any purity of heart,
the same feelings arise. But most of these mothers let them go without
obeying their instructions. If they did not, we should see other
children--other men than now throng our streets. The boy could not
invariably disappoint the mother, the man the wife, who steadily
demanded of him such a career.
And man looks upon woman, in this relation, always as he should. Does he
see in her a holy mother worthy to guard the infancy of an immortal
soul? Then she assumes in his eyes those traits which the Romish church
loved to revere in Mary. Frivolity, base appetite, contempt are
exorcised; and man and woman appear again in unprofaned connection, as
brother and sister, the children and the servants of the one Divine
Love, and pilgrims to a common aim.
Were all this right in the private sphere, the public would soon right
itself also, and the nations of Christendom might join in a celebration,
such as "kings and prophets waited for," and so many martyrs died to
achieve, of Christ-Mass.
MARIANA[33]
Among those whom I met in a recent visit at Chicago was Mrs. Z., the
aunt of an old schoolmate, to whom I impatiently hastened, to demand
news of Mariana. The answer startled me. Mariana, so full of life, was
dead. That form, the most rich in energy and coloring of any I had ever
seen, had faded from the earth. The circle of youthful associations had
given way in the part that seemed the strongest. What I now learned of
the story of this life, and what was by myself remembered, may be bound
together in this slight sketch.
At the boarding school to which I was too early sent, a fond, a proud,
and timid child, I saw among the ranks of the gay and graceful, bright
or earnest girls, only one who interested my fancy or touched my young
heart; and this was Mariana. She was, on the father's side, of Spanish
Creole blood, but had been sent to the Atlantic coast, to receive a
school education under the care of her aunt, Mrs. Z.
This lady had kept her mostly at home with herself, and Mariana had gone
from her house to a day school; but the aunt being absent for a time in
Europe, she had now been unfortunately committed for some time to the
mercies of a boarding school.
A strange bird she proved there--a lonely one, that could not make for
itself a summer. At first, her schoolmates were captivated with her
ways, her love of wild dances and sudden song, her freaks of passion
and of wit. She was always new, always surprising, and, for a time,
charming.
But, after a while, they tired of her. She could never be depended on to
join in their plans, yet she expected them to follow out hers with their
whole strength. She was very loving, even infatuated in her own
affections, and exacted from those who had professed any love for her,
the devotion she was willing to bestow.
Yet there was a vein of haughty caprice in her character; a love of
solitude, which made her at times wish to retire entirely; and at these
times she would expect to be thoroughly understood, and let alone, yet
to be welcomed back when she returned. She did not thwart others in
their humors, but she never doubted of great indulgence from them.
Some singular ways she had, which, when new, charmed, but, after
acquaintance, displeased her companions. She had by nature the same
habit and power of excitement that is described in the spinning
dervishes of the East. Like them, she would spin until all around her
were giddy, while her own brain, instead of being disturbed, was excited
to great action. Pausing, she would declaim verse of others or her own;
perform many parts, with strange catch-words and burdens that seemed to
act with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to
convulse the hearer with laughter, sometimes to melt him to tears. When
her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to
recommence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the
scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she
sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to heaven or
earth.
This excitement, as may be supposed, was not good for her. It oftenest
came on in the evening, and spoiled her sleep. She would wake in the
night, and cheat her restlessness by inventions that teased, while they
sometimes diverted her companions.
She was also a sleep-walker; and this one trait of her case did somewhat
alarm her guardians, who, otherwise, showed the same profound stupidity,
as to this peculiar being, usual in the overseers of the young. They
consulted a physician, who said she would outgrow it, and prescribed a
milk diet.
Meantime, the fever of this ardent and too early stimulated nature was
constantly increased by the restraints and narrow routine of the
boarding school. She was always devising means to break in upon it. She
had a taste, which would have seemed ludicrous to her mates, if they had
not felt some awe of her, from a touch of genius and power, that never
left her, for costume and fancy dresses; always some sash twisted about
her, some drapery, something odd in the arrangement of her hair and
dress; so that the methodical preceptress dared not let her go out
without a careful scrutiny and remodelling, whose soberizing effects
generally disappeared the moment she was in the free air.
At last, a vent for her was found in private theatricals. Play followed
play, and in these and the rehearsals she found entertainment congenial
with her. The principal parts, as a matter of course, fell to her lot;
most of the good suggestions and arrangements came from her, and for a
time she ruled masterly and shone triumphant.
During these performances the girls had heightened their natural bloom
with artificial red; this was delightful to them--it was something so
out of the way. But Mariana, after the plays were over, kept her carmine
saucer on the dressing table, and put on her blushes regularly as the
morning.
When stared and jeered at, she at first said she did it because she
thought it made her look prettier; but, after a while, she became quite
petulant about it--would make no reply to any joke, but merely kept on
doing it.
This irritated the girls, as all eccentricity does the world in general,
more than vice or malignity. They talked it over among themselves, till
they got wrought up to a desire of punishing, once for all, this
sometimes amusing, but so often provoking nonconformist.
Having obtained the leave of the mistress, they laid, with great glee, a
plan one evening, which was to be carried into execution next day at
dinner.
Among Mariana's irregularities was a great aversion to the meal-time
ceremonial. So long, so tiresome she found it, to be seated at a certain
moment, to wait while each one was served at so large a table, and one
where there was scarcely any conversation; from day to day it became
more heavy to her to sit there, or go there at all. Often as possible
she excused herself on the ever-convenient plea of headache, and was
hardly ever ready when the dinner bell rang.
To-day it found her on the balcony, lost in gazing on the beautiful
prospect. I have heard her say, afterwards, she had rarely in her life
been so happy--and she was one with whom happiness was a still rapture.
It was one of the most blessed summer days; the shadows of great white
clouds empurpled the distant hills for a few moments only to leave them
more golden; the tall grass of the wide fields waved in the softest
breeze. Pure blue were the heavens, and the same hue of pure contentment
was in the heart of Mariana.
Suddenly on her bright mood jarred the dinner bell. At first rose her
usual thought, I will not, cannot go; and then the _must_, which daily
life can always enforce, even upon the butterflies and birds, came, and
she walked reluctantly to her room. She merely changed her dress, and
never thought of adding the artificial rose to her cheek.
When she took her seat in the dining hall, and was asked if she would be
helped, raising her eyes, she saw the person who asked her was deeply
rouged, with a bright, glaring spot, perfectly round, in either cheek.
She looked at the next--the same apparition! She then slowly passed her
eyes down the whole line, and saw the same, with a suppressed smile
distorting every countenance. Catching the design at once she
deliberately looked along her own side of the table, at every schoolmate
in turn; every one had joined in the trick. The teachers strove to be
grave, but she saw they enjoyed the joke. The servants could not
suppress a titter.
When Warren Hastings stood at the bar of Westminster Hall; when the
Methodist preacher walked through a line of men, each of whom greeted
him with a brickbat or a rotten egg,--they had some preparation for the
crisis, and it might not be very difficult to meet it with an impassive
brow. Our little girl was quite unprepared to find herself in the midst
of a world which despised her, and triumphed in her disgrace.
She had ruled like a queen in the midst of her companions; she had shed
her animation through their lives, and loaded them with prodigal favors,
nor once suspected that a powerful favorite might not be loved. Now, she
felt that she had been but a dangerous plaything in the hands of those
whose hearts she never had doubted.
Yet the occasion found her equal to it; for Mariana had the kind of
spirit, which, in a better cause, had made the Roman matron truly say of
her death wound, "It is not painful, Poetus." She did not blench--she
did not change countenance. She swallowed her dinner with apparent
composure. She made remarks to those near her as if she had no eyes.
The wrath of the foe of course rose higher, and the moment they were
freed from the restraints of the dining room, they all ran off, gayly
calling, and sarcastically laughing, with backward glances, at Mariana,
left alone.
She went alone to her room, locked the door, and threw herself on the
floor in strong convulsions. These had sometimes threatened her life, as
a child, but of later years she had outgrown them. School hours came,
and she was not there. A little girl, sent to her door, could get no
answer. The teachers became alarmed, and broke it open. Bitter was their
penitence and that of her companions at the state in which they found
her. For some hours terrible anxiety was felt; but at last, Nature,
exhausted, relieved herself by a deep slumber.
From this Mariana rose an altered being. She made no reply to the
expressions of sorrow from her companions, none to the grave and kind,
but undiscerning comments of her teacher. She did not name the source of
her anguish, and its poisoned dart sunk deeply in. It was this thought
which stung her so.--"What, not one, not a single one, in the hour of
trial, to take my part! not one who refused to take part against me!"
Past words of love, and caresses little heeded at the time, rose to her
memory, and gave fuel to her distempered thoughts. Beyond the sense of
universal perfidy, of burning resentment, she could not get. And
Mariana, born for love, now hated all the world.
The change, however, which these feelings made in her conduct and
appearance bore no such construction to the careless observer. Her gay
freaks were quite gone, her wildness, her invention. Her dress was