Miriam Monfort | Page 4

discordant again.
She lived with us three years as friend and teacher. At the end of that time her vocation and sphere of action were enlarged, not changed, for she married my father, and thus our future welfare seemed secured.
Alas for human foresight! Alas for affection powerless to save! Alas for the vanity of mortal effort to contend with Fate!
Our home was in one of the chief Northern cities of that great republic which has for so many years commanded the admiration, respect, and wonder, of the whole world. The house we occupied was situated in the old and fashion-forsaken portion of the city. From its upper windows a view of the majestic Delaware and its opposite shores was afforded to the spectator; and the grounds surrounding the mansion were spacious for those of a city-house, and deeply shaded by elms that had been lofty trees in the time of General Washington.
Four squares farther on, the roar of commerce swelled and surged, in storehouse and counting-room, on mart and shipboard and quay; but here all was quiet, calm, secluded, as in the country, miles beyond.
Two houses besides our own shared the whole square between them, though ours, the central one, possessed the largest inclosure, and was the finest residence of the three, architecturally speaking; and the inmates of these dwellings, with very few exceptions, constituted for years our whole circle of friends and visitors.
So it will be seen how secluded was the life we led, how narrow the sphere we moved in, despite our acknowledged wealth, which, with some other attributes we possessed, had not failed, if desired, to confer on us both power and position in the society we shunned rather than shared.
To my father's nature, however, retirement was as essential as routine. He was one of those outwardly calm and inwardly excitable and nervous people we sometimes encounter without detecting the fire beneath the marble, the ever-burning lamp in the sarcophagus, unless we lift the lid of rock to find it--an effort scarcely worth the making in any case, for at best it lights only a tomb.
Extremely mild and self-contained in manner, and chary of opinion and expression, he was at the same time a man of strong and implacable prejudices and even bitter animosities when once engendered. I do not think his affections kept pace with these. He loved what belonged to him, it is true, in a quiet, consistent way, and his good breeding and practised equanimity were alone sufficient to secure the peace, and even happiness, of a household; but of much effort or self-sacrifice I judge him to have been incapable.
He was a handsome man in his stiff and military way--well made, tall, commanding in figure and in demeanor, stately in movement. His features were regular, his teeth and hair well preserved, especially the first, his hands and feet aristocratically small and shapely, his manner vaguely courteous. He was a shy rather than reserved person, for, when once the ice was broken, his nature bubbled over very boyishly at times, and his confidence, once bestowed, was irrevocable. Like most men of his temperament, he was keenly susceptible to deferential flattery, and impatient of the slightest infraction of his dignity, which he guarded punctiliously at all points. It was more this disposition always to wait for overtures from others, and to slightly repel their first manifestations, from his inveterate shyness, than any settled determination on his part, that made him such an alien from general association. Nervous, fastidious, exacting--what had he in common with the texture of the new society in which he found himself, and what right had he to fancy himself neglected where the "go-ahead" principle alone was recognized, and time was esteemed too precious to waste in ceremony?
Yet this injured feeling pursued him through life and made one of his peculiarities, so that he drew more and more closely, as years passed on, into his own shell, which may be said to have comprised his household, his comforts, his hobbies, and his narrow neighborhood, in which he was idolized, and the sympathy of which was very soothing to his fastidious pride.
Nothing so fosters haughtiness and egotism as a sphere like this, and it may be doubted whether the crowned heads of the world receive more adulation from their households than men so situated.
From the moment he set his foot on the threshold of his own house, nay, on the broad, quiet pavement of his own street, with its stately row of ancient Lombardy poplars on one side, and blank, high-walled lumber-yard on the other, he felt himself a sovereign--king of a principality! king of a neighborhood;--what great difference is there, after all?
It was only the hypochondriacal character of his mind that shielded him from that chief human absurdity, pomposity. He needed all the