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Richard Henry Dana: Paul Felton (1822) 3

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There is a tenderness and delicacy about a 
serious man, at times, the beauty of which affects 
us even more than when we see them in a 
woman. This is partly from the contrast. They 
are in agreement with a woman's person and 
general character, and are habitual to her. And 
it may be that when the man is under their in- 
fluences, he has a more exquisite sense of them— 
may we say a finer touch for them ? 

Though Paul always showed the greatest 
fondness for Esther, except at moments when 
hunted by some fearful passion or thought, there 
was now such a kind regard, such a delicate 
propriety of the affections in his manner towards 
her, that she almost thought some new and 
higher sense of his love had been given her— it 
moved her to tears. Paul was happy that it did ; 
it made her the nearer to him. He knew that 
the tender affections have more or less of melan- 
choly in them, and that all his own were tinged 
by it.— „ Let me fasten on these bracelets," said 
he, taking out a pair he had just purchased, 
" for there is a charm in their circles to bind you 
to me." Nay, nay, Paul, no manacles, though to bind 
me to you even," she said, unclasping one of 
them and whirling it round her finger.—" Don't 
look so serious about it," she added, holding her 
wrist up to him. " There, clasp it again, and you 
shall be the first to take it off, though thou 
wouldst have me spell-bound, thou wizard man. 
I wish it had been something else, though." 

" And what would you have had it, Esther ?" This," said she, passing her hand playfully 
over his face. 
" What, a face like mine, and ' in little,' and 
set round with gold and diamonds ! And where 
would you have worn it ? Why, it would have 
made your heart beat with fear to have such a 
looking thing so near it. And to have made love 
to it, Esther," he said, half smiling, " that's past 
all faith." 
" Then there is no truth in my love, Paul." Yes, but there is," he answered rapidly, „ it's 
all truth. And yet," he added half to himself, 
and as if pondering upon it, " 'tis very strange." What is strange ?" That Esther should ever look on me, and 
after, love me. And yet you will vow it to-mor- 
row, will you not?“
" If you question it so, it may be better for us 
both that I should not. For when I have done 
it, should Paul doubt, he had better be in his 
grave than live." 
" Nor should I deserve to see the light, nor 
feel this blessed sun upon me. I was moody, 
Esther. Do not lay to heart what I say at such 
times. My joy was too much for me, and 
made me play with misery. Did'st never in 
grief have a wild and horrid mirth fork by you 
like lightning ? I have, that my eyes have been 
blenched at it. I shall be used to this joy soon, 
and then my spirit will be as quiet before you as 
that cloud which rests above us in the light. O, 
you shall be my sun and all else that is good 
and cheering to me ; and when I hold you to 
me so, to-morrow, I'll not call you Esther, but my 
wife." 

The next day they were married, and Paul 
took Esther to their new home, not quite a mile 
from the village. The building was plain and 
well proportioned ; set down in the middle of a 
level grass plat, which was broken only by the 
gravel way winding up to the door, and a clump 
of young trees a little on one side. The whole 
was open to the sun ; and about it was an air of 
perfect simplicity and quiet.  All along the even 
road to the village lay a beautiful prospect ; and 
there was a row of elms and sycamores, stretch- 
ing the whole length of the route. So that, 
though they had but one near neighbour, Mr. 
Ridgley, they had quite as much company as if 
in the midst of the village. 

Their house terminated these pleasant views ; 
for a little back of it ran a ridge of steep rocks ; 
and beyond that the country was desolate, 
stretching out into wide sand tracts, broken by 
patches of scant, short, yellowish grass, and half 
round the whole, swept a forest of low, ragged 
pines. The place was difficult of access, and 
appeared to be a land accursed; neither the 
foot-print of man nor beast was to be seen there. 
It was one of those good for nothing tracts of 
country, which are sure to lead their proprietors 
into law suits. A farmer in the neighbourhood 
had put a couple of men on it to cut down the 
wood ; and this business he carried on for many 
years, till falling into a dispute with a neighbour- 
ing farmer, notice of the trespass reached the 
owner, who would not have remembered that the 
estate was his, had it not been for his tax-bills. 
A suit was instituted, the farmer at last driven 
off from what was not worth having, and the 
true proprietor ruined. A story was current 
thereabouts that the land was good enough be- 
fore the owner gained his cause ; but that he 
was a hard man, and that the Devil had a hand 
in the suit, helped him gain it, and then danced 
over the land where the sand was now seen, 
and singed the grass as he went off in fire and 
smoke. The men said they did not know why 
they should go where there was nothing to be 
got; and a foolhardy boy who had once been a 
birds-nesting there, was ever afterwards looked 
on with suspicion, as, in some way or other, be- 
longing to the Evil One. 

When Paul now looked back, and remembered 
that till a little while before the world had been 
bare of joy to him ; that the soul, living without 
sympathy, had been a prey to itself, and that a 
solitude, more dreadful than if he had stood the 
only living thing upon the earth, had surrounded 
him— the solitude and void which estrangement 
from others makes about us,— it was as if he 
had past into another state of being ; and a new 
nature and new delights filled him with sensa- 
tions of which before he had no thought. He 
looked upon Esther and his mind was one rap- 
ture. Neglected and passed by, as he had been, 
she had stopped and spoken comfort to him and 
taken him by the hand, and he followed her like 
a child. " Thou hast been my good angel to 
me, Esther, and brought me out of the darkness 
into the comfortable light. The spring of my 
feelings was sealed up, but you have opened it, 
and they run on now taking the hues and forms 
of all the beautiful and blessed things with which 
God has filled this earth for us. My heart is 
fuller of joy than I well know how to bear— it 
aches to speak it to you ; and yet its throbbings 
can tell you better than words can." 

This was the over contentment of a mind by 
nature melancholy and not knowing how to 
measure its joys when they came. The happi- 
ness of such minds is always in excess; then 
it seems strange to them ; they question its truth ; 
it does not belong to them ; they fear it cannot 
last. They look back upon their misery as their 
true condition, as one which they are bound to 
by some fatality ; and in their hopelessness they 
rash into it further than before. 



Paul's state was so opposite to what he had 
been wonted to, that it seemed to produce some 
indistinctness of the thoughts and senses, and be 
could hardly have a clear persuasion of the reali- 
ty of his happiness. It partook of the visionary ; 
and he began to fear that his hopes and imagi- 
nation had cheated him into it. In his saner 
moments, when he could not question its truth, 
he doubted its stability ; and a vague notion that 
this was to pass away, and something, he knew 
not what, to take its place, unsettled the rest of 
his mind and disturbed its full content. A feel- 
ing, like those ill-forebodings which sometimes 
come over us and then go off again, was gaining 
possession of him, bringing back his old melan- 
choly, troubling his reason, and distorting all he 
saw. 

There is a strange infatuation in gloomy 
minds which makes all that they are concerned in 
minister to their melancholy, and they seek out 
causes of depression with an industry more eager 
and unrelaxed than that with which cheerful 
souls hunt after pleasure. It is the craving of a 
diseased appetite, which is never sated. 

Paul found his melancholy returning at inter- 
vals. At first he shrunk from it with the horror 
that the lunatic would fly from his fits of coming 
madness ; but at last, as dark thoughts began. to 
gather round him, he no longer tried to scatter 
them ; the fate that he imagined himself born to 
was oftener in his mind, and his former distrust 
of himself ; and with this came his doubts of 
others.— "It cannot be," he said to himself, 
" that I was made to be loved of one so beauti- 
ful and of so light a heart. The gloom that 
shadowed me about was a mystery to her, and 
she was curious to know it. She saw that I 
was depressed and miserable, and that moved 
her heart to pity me ; she found that her kind- 
ness touched me and made me happy, and this 
stirred an innocent pride within her, and she 
mistook it all for love. And, fool ! fool ! so did 
I. Ay, and there was no one near to place this 
uncomely form by ; and no gay, accomplished 
and ready mind, to play round the sluggish, 
unchanging movements of mine. Poor girl, she 
knew not me, nor herself then ; but the knowl- 
edge will one day be revealed to her, and with a 
curse as heavy as fell on man in paradise." 

Though Paul passed many such hours when 
alone, and was restless and impatient in com- 
pany, yet the thought that Esther was his wife 
was still a healing to his heart He loved her 
with all that intenseness his nature was made to 
feel ; and it was with a kind of joyous adoration 
that he looked on her in his undisturbed 
moments. He yet could feel the reality of her 
fondness for him ; and he thought of it as more 
than an earthly blessing. 

It was about this time that Frank Ridgley re- 
turned home after an absence of two years. He 
had been an early and ardent lover of Esther's. 
She had a great regard and liking for Frank, but 
not a particle of love for him. His case was a 
more hopeless one than if he had been her aver- 
sion ; for opposite passions run so into each other, 
particularly in women, that it is oftentimes hard to 
tell which is which. Perhaps Frank felt the truth 
of this (though he was not much in the way of 
philosophizing) when Esther refused him, telling 
him at the same time that she had a great esteem 
for him. For the matter of that, thought Frank, 
though he dared not say it, you might profess as 
much to my grandmother. He was angry, and 
mortified, and in despair ; and confounded, and 
not knowing what feeling he was suffering 
under, swore most solemnly that he would never 
survive his disappointment— " That's an unwise 
resolution in you, Frank“ said Esther. " Only 
allow yourself time to think about it till you are 
a little older, and you'll live to see the folly of it Forgive me, Frank ; I do not mean to make 
sport of your feelings ; but, for the life of me, I 
can't help thinking how bright and well you 
will look a twelvemonth hence." 

The truth was, Frank was one of those whose 
feelings spend themselves on the outer man, and 
whose passions, violently as they seem moved, 
are but healthful excitement, compared with 
what those feel who look clayey and hard when 
they are agitated most Esther knew very well 
that he was sincerely and warmly attached to 
her at the time, and that, would she consent to 
have him, he would make a fond husband, and 
wear black for her a full year after she was 
gone ; but that his mind was not one of those 
abiding places in which we find decayed, gray 
trees, and young shoots, running vines, and 
mosses, and all those close and binding growths 
which look so lasting, faithful and affectionate. 
She pitied him as we do one who has a twinge 
of the toothach — which nobody dies of. How- 
ever bent we may be upon dying of crossed love, 
it is no easy matter ; next to starving one's self 
to death, there is nothing which requires more 
resolution and perseverance. Accordingly, Frank 
returned in due time, glad to see his friends, 
with his head full of novelties, with much use- 
ful information, and a ready, lively way of show- 
ing it. 

It was a damp, uncomfortable evening ; and 
Paul and Esther were round the fire. Paul was 
sitting a little on one side, in the shade, now and 
then making some short, serious remark, after 
his usual manner, with his eyes resting on 
Esther's countenance, as she sat looking into the 
fire, pondering on what he said, and the many 
things it led the mind to. Her face appeared all 
thought, and her features had a beautiful distinct- 
ness, as their deep, silent shadows fell in strong 
outline against the warm fire-light that shone on 
her. At no time had love seemed to him so quiet 
and domestic. He thought that he had never 
before been conscious how lovely and dear to us 
humanity may be. 


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