CHAPTER VIII.
"Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No
human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach;
but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house; so I never
returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed
taken from my being; so I went back into books. And so a moping,
despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days,
but that Heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my
path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and am--
oh, indeed, I am a happy man!"
My mother threw herself on my father's breast, sobbing violently, and
then turned from the room without a word; my father's eye, swimming in
tears, followed her; and then, after pacing the room for some moments in
silence, he came up to me, and leaning his arm on my shoulder,
whispered, "Can you guess why I have now told you all this, my son?"
"Yes, partly: thank you, father," I faltered, and sat down, for I felt
faint.
"Some sons," said my father, seating himself beside me, "would find in
their father's follies and errors an excuse for their own; not so will
you, Pisistratus."
"I see no folly, no error, sir; only nature and sorrow."
"Pause ere you thus think," said my father. "Great was the folly and
great the error of indulging imagination that has no basis, of linking
the whole usefulness of my life to the will of a human creature like
myself. Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this tyrant;
nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human life. We dreamers,
solitary students like me, or half-poets like poor Roland, make our own
disease. How many years, even after I had regained serenity, as your
mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted! The
mainstring of my existence was snapped; I took no note of time. And
therefore now, you see, late in life, Nemesis wakes. I look back with
regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galvanically I brace up
energies half-palsied by disuse; and you see me, rather than rest quiet
and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, are sad follies, by
an Uncle Jack! And now I behold Ellinor again; and I say in wonder:
'All this--all this--all this agony, all this torpor, for that, haggard
face, that worldly spirit!' So is it ever in life: mortal things fade;
immortal things spring more freshly with every step to the tomb.
"Ah!" continued my father, with a sigh, "it would not have been so if at
your age I had found out the secret of the saffron bag!"
