Chapter II.
This compact made, my father roused himself from all his studies,
devoted his whole thoughts to me, sought with all his gentle wisdom to
wean me imperceptibly from my one fixed, tyrannical idea, ranged through
his wide pharmacy of books for such medicaments as might alter the
system of my thoughts. And little thought he that his very tenderness
and wisdom worked against him, for at each new instance of either my
heart called aloud, "Is it not that thy tenderness may be repaid, and
thy wisdom be known abroad, that I go from thee into the strange land, O
my father?"
And the two months expired, and my father saw that the magnet had turned
unalterably to the loadstone in the Great Australasian Bight; and he
said to me, "Go, and comfort your mother. I have told her your wish,
and authorized it by my consent, for I believe now that it is for your
good."
I found my mother in the little room she had appropriated to herself
next my father's study. And in that room there was a pathos which I
have no words to express; for my mother's meek, gentle, womanly soul
spoke there, so that it was the Home of Home. The care with which she
had transplanted from the brick house, and lovingly arranged, all the
humble memorials of old times dear to her affections,--the black
silhouette of my father's profile cut in paper, in the full pomp of
academics, cap and gown (how had he ever consented to sit for it?),
framed and glazed in the place of honor over the little hearth; and
boyish sketches of mine at the Hellenic Institute, first essays in sepia
and Indian ink, to animate the walls, and bring her back, when she sat
there in the twilight, musing alone, to sunny hours, when Sisty and the
young mother threw daisies at each other; and covered with a great
glass: shade, and dusted each day with her own hand, the flower-pot
Sisty had bought with the proceeds of the domino-box on that memorable
occasion on which he had learned "how bad deeds are repaired with good."
There, in one corner, stood the little cottage piano which I remembered
all my life,--old-fashioned, and with the jingling voice of approaching
decrepitude, but still associated with such melodies as, after
childhood, we hear never more! And in the modest hanging shelves, which
looked so gay with ribbons and tassels and silken cords, my mother's own
library, saying more to the heart than all the cold wise poets whose
souls my father invoked in his grand Heraclea. The Bible over which,
with eyes yet untaught to read, I had hung in vague awe and love as it
lay open on my mother's lap, while her sweet voice, then only serious,
was made the oracle of its truths. And my first lesson-books were
there, all hoarded. And bound in blue and gold, but elaborately papered
up, Cowper's Poems,--a gift from my father in the days of courtship:
sacred treasure; which not even I had the privilege to touch, and which
my mother took out only in the great crosses and trials of conjugal
life, whenever some words less kind than usual had dropped unawares from
her scholar's absent lips. Ah! all these poor household gods, all
seemed to look on me with mild anger; and from all came a voice to my
soul, "Cruel, dost thou forsake us?" And amongst them sat my mother,
desolate as Rachel, and weeping silently.
"Mother! mother!" I cried, falling on her neck, "forgive me,--it is
past; I cannot leave you!"
