Emollient

“ I do not wish to chill one feeling in this affectionate little heart, nor check one burst of enthusiasm. Your character has been and is too great a source of unalloyed pleasure to your mother, my Emmeline; it would be misery indeed to see it in any way changed, though I do preach control so very much," she continued, more playfully, but with that same fond affection which, while it made me cry, appeared to soothe every painful emotion. "We shall not always be in society, Emmeline; come to me as of old, and tell me every thought and feeling, and all that has given you pain or pleasure. ”

“ Or is there a prophetic spirit in the human mind, which makes those of the keenest feelings often appear cold; an intuitive, though unowned, fear, repressing sensations of such deep and intense power? They can not feel only a little; and they shrink, though with an unconscious dread, from feeling too much.
But to-day Emily's gaiety took its tone from the bright sunshine. ”

“ And now, Emilie, we must not forget to put a little fence around the lake and on the border of the river. Great God! if our child should—
“You see, Emilie, as I know your heart, this fear will not appear exaggerated to you. It will not make you smile. No, no, but tears will fill your eyes. Oh, is not that true? is it not? I know you so well!
“Is there an emotion of your heart to which I am a stranger? But tell me, how have I deserved so much love? What have I done so good, so great, that Heaven should recompense me thus? ”

“ Who shall account for the cold, creeping sensation that, in the depth of the night, steals over us? Who is there that has not felt that vague, but strong terror, which induces us—to use a childish, but expressive phrase—to hide our head under the bedclothes, as if there was some appearance which to look for was to see?—when we ourselves could give no definite cause for our fear, which our reason at the very moment tells us is folly, and tells us so in vain.
Even grief gave way before this sensation in Emily. ”

“ In either case the vice consists in a want of confidence."
"What sort of a sensation is misanthropy?"
"Might as well ask me what sort of sensation is hydrophobia. Don't know; never had it. But I have often wondered what it can be like. Can a misanthrope feel warm, I ask myself; take ease? be companionable with himself? Can a misanthrope smoke a cigar and muse? How fares he in solitude? Has the misanthrope such a thing as an appetite? Shall a peach refresh him? The effervescence of champagne, with what eye does he behold it? Is summer good to him? Of long winters how much can he sleep? ”

“ He had seen [Pg 311] many faces more regularly beautiful, and many figures equally elegant, with indifference: he had heard, with coldness, the finest sentiments uttered by the fairest mouths; and had listened to the brilliant sallies of fashionable wit, with contempt. In Emmeline, he discovered a native dignity of soul, an enlarged and generous heart, a comprehensive and cultivated understanding, a temper at once soft and lively, with morals the most pure, and manners simple, undesigning and ingenuous. To these solid perfections, genius had added all the lighter graces ”

“ I think that as they lie all the long, long years in those carved and scented boxes which are like little tombs, they remember the lights and the flowers and the perfumes, the glimmer and gleam of jewels and silks, the frothy fall of laces, the laughter and whispers and glances, the murmured word, the stifled sigh: and above all, the touch of soft lips that used to brush them lightly; and the poor things wonder a bit wistfully what has become of all that gay and lovely life, all that perished bravery and beauty that once they knew. ”

“ Oh, life! ’tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to feed—Oh, life! ’tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but ’tis not me! that horror’s out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! ”

“ To be aware that so close to us a fellow-creature is probably just then passing, through the agonies of death, to that eternity to which we all look with awe, is an overpowering sensation; and Emmeline shuddered as these thoughts crossed her mind. ”

“ It is a natural impulse, in every one, when they hear a tale of distress, to think of something to say by way of consolation. Emmeline wanted to say something, but she could not think of anything to say. ”

“ This serene and laughing desolation—a mood which in Melville alternated with a deepening and less tranquil despair—is a spectacle to inspire with sardonic optimism those who gloat over the vanity of human wishes. ”

“ His face was bluish and his hair was full of mud, as if he had slept in the street; and he had grown thin, the poor fellow had, as thin as a rail. He took off his poor cloak, sat down on my trunk, and began to look at me. Well, sir, I was overjoyed, but at the same time felt a greater sadness than ever pulling at my heart-strings. This is how it was, sir: I felt that if a thing like that had happened to me, that is—I would sooner have perished like a dog, but would not have returned. And Emelian did. Well, naturally, it is hard to see a man in such a state. ”

“ When she found that the wrinkles would not come out she became mad at that, and of course, every time she got into a passion there came other wrinkles. Then, too, her temper grew worse. Her once beautiful voice began to sound like a cracked tin horn. The wrinkles soon covered her face; then they grew crosswise; you see it is all in beggars' presses. She got old; she shrivelled up; she stooped over. She became so cross that she spends most of her time in that funny little old house, to keep away from the rest of us. ”

“ Ah, sir, permit me—when I behold you on this mild summer's eve, thus eccentrically clothed in the skins of wild beasts, I cannot but conclude that the equally grim and unsuitable habit of your mind is likewise but an eccentric assumption, having no basis in your genuine soul, no more than in nature herself. ”

“ The thought that Emile could abuse, even by a careless word, her isolation and her inexperience, found no place in a mind so noble and innocent as hers, and her sacred ignorance preserved her from any suspicion of that sort. So she was the first to break the silence, and her voice, as by enchantment, brought tranquillity to the young visitor's agitated breast. There are voices so sympathetic and so penetrating, that to hear them pronounce two or three trivial words is enough to fill one with affection for the persons whose characters they describe, even before one sees them. ”

“ And Emmeline, who cheated herself, as we all do, into believing that she invariably acted from the purest and most beautiful motives, would get one of those nasty little glimpses into reality which kind friends in a temper sometimes give us, which are, indeed, almost the only link with reality that we have. ”

“ This was the obtrusion on my mind of the mental process going forward in first one person, and then another, with whom I happened to be in contact: the vagrant, frivolous ideas and emotions of some uninteresting acquaintance—Mrs Filmore, for example—would force themselves on my consciousness like an importunate, ill-played musical instrument, or the loud activity of an imprisoned insect. But this unpleasant sensibility was fitful, and left me moments of rest, when the souls of my companions were once more shut out from me, and I felt a relief such as silence brings to wearied nerves. ”

“ What started this was, to account, if necessary, for the changed air of the man with the weed, who, throwing off in private the cold garb of decorum, and so giving warmly loose to his genuine heart, seemed almost transformed into another being. This subdued air of softness, too, was toned with melancholy, melancholy unreserved; a thing which, however at variance with propriety, still the more attested his earnestness; for one knows not how it is, but it sometimes happens that, where earnestness is, there, also, is melancholy. ”

“ Usefulness marred, peace destroyed, a horrible dread on my mind, a reproving conscience within my breast, I seem now unable even to pray! I have let go the Hand that would so gently have led me; darkness is thick around me; I cannot find my Heavenly Guide! I dread to keep silent, yet dare not speak. Oh, that horrible, blasphemous oath!”
But it is time that the reader should be made acquainted with the circumstances which led to Emmie’s present state of misery. ”

“ But the blithe ceremonial is over, the embers are dying on the hearth, and the young eyelids are closed in sleep; why does Christian linger here? The room is dark, save when some expiring flame leaps up in dying energy before it passes away, yet there she bends in silent contemplation, as the dusky red grows darker and darker, and the ashes fall noiselessly{28} upon the hearth. Is she dreaming over the extinguished hopes which she has hid in mournful solitude within her steadfast heart? ”

“ It would not be possible to sit still in that noiseless house, by that lonely fireside, with such a tumult and commotion in this loud throbbing heart—forcing up its rapid cadence into the ears that thrill with sympathetic pulses—leaping to the very lips that grow so parched and faint. ”

“ Misfortune on every side appears to darken the future; I cannot look forward. Pray for me, my dearest friend, that I may be enabled to trust so implicitly in the Most High that even now my faith should not for a moment waver. Oh! Emmeline, spite of all his harshness, his coldness, and evident dislike, my heart yearns to my father. ”

“ Now the name "emulation" is taken in a double sense, so that the same word may stand for praise and dispraise: for the imitation of virtue is called emulation (however, that sense of it I shall have no occasion for here, for that carries praise with it) ; but emulation is also a term applied to grief at another's enjoying what I desired to have, and am without. ”

“ And more than all, I remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—how shall I call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say, or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me, even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his. ”

“ Such young peerlessness in such humbleness, can not have an honest origin. Lilies are not stalked on weeds, though polluted, they sometimes may stand among them. She must be both poor and vile—some chance-blow of a splendid, worthless rake, doomed to inherit both parts of her infecting portion—vileness and beauty. No, I will not think it of him. But what then? Sometimes I have feared that my pride would work me some woe incurable, by closing both my lips, and varnishing all my front, where I perhaps ought to be wholly in the melted and invoking mood. ”

“ To see her struggling against the impassibility of a nature less noble than her own—to think of her all forlorn and solitary, piteous in her youth and helplessness, on the verge of so many miseries, wrung his heart with pity, with tenderness, with—— Was it something of envy too? ”

“ The devil’s drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he wore the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the character and career of one thus wicked and thus happy, my sole consolation is in the fact that no such creature ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which evoked him. And yet, a creature, a living creature, he is, though only a poet was his maker. It may be, that in that paper-and-ink investiture of his, Autolycus acts more effectively upon mankind than he would in a flesh-and-blood one. Can his influence be salutary? True, in Autolycus there is humor ”

“ Media’s household deity, in the guise of a plethoric monster, his enormous head lolling back, and wide, gaping mouth stuffed full of fresh fruits and green leaves. Truly, had the idol possessed a soul under his knotty ribs, how tantalizing to hold so glorious a mouthful without the power of deglutition. Far worse than the inexorable lock-jaw, which will not admit of the step preliminary to a swallow. ”

“ How can I resist what is inevitable? how curb myself when all hold is lost? Are you then so cruel? Dieu merci! be not so deadly calm—it means the worst for me—be angry, vexed, any thing, but look not on me with that glazed look—it maddens me.'
"'Monsieur Dervilly,' said Emilie, without change of tone or manner, 'what you have said, if it means any thing, means every thing; it means all a maiden longs to hear from lips that are beloved. ”

“ Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? ”

“ All those imperceptible regrets, which never individually reach the consciousness, accumulate at last into a definite result; they become the voice of a feeling of emptiness and aspiration; their tone is melancholy itself. In youth the tone of these Aeolian vibrations of the heart is all hope—a proof that these thousands of indistinguishable accents make up indeed the fundamental note of our being, and reveal the tone of our whole situation. ”

“ Yet so it is, and lightly have these ten swift years—long, oh, how long and dreary to many—flown over her, effacing so entirely everything but the remembrance of those passages in her history{191} from her mind, that when she looks back now upon that troubled time, she half smiles, half blushes for her old self, and reckons of her brief but agonising trial, as sick men recall to their memories the terrible dreams of some delirious fever fit. ”