CHAPTER III.

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE MIDNIGHT QUEEN.

My childhood's home! O, is there in all the world a phrase so sweet as this, "My childhood's home!" Others may look back to childhood, and be stung by bitter memories, but my childhood was the heaven of my life. As from the hopeless present, I gaze back upon it, I seem like a traveler, half way up the Alps, surrounded by snow and clouds and mist, and looking back upon the happy valley, which, dotted with homes and rich in vines and flowers, smiles in the sunshine far below.

My childhood's home was very beautiful. It was a two-story cottage, situated upon an eminence, its white front and rustic porch, half hidden by the horse-chesnut trees, which in the early summer had snowy blossoms among their deep green leaves. Behind the cottage arose a broad and swelling hill, which, fringed with gardens at its base, and crowned on its summit by a few grand old trees standing alone against the sky, was in summer-time clad along its entire extent with a garment of golden wheat. Beneath the cottage flowed the Neprehaun, a gentle rivulet, which wound among abrupt hills,--every hill rich in foliage and dotted with homes--until it lost itself in the waves of the Hudson. Yes, the Hudson was there, grand and beautiful and visible always from the cottage porch; the Palisades rising from its opposite shore into heaven, and the broad bay of Tapaan Zee glistening in sunlight to the north.

O, that scene is before me now--the cottage with its white front, half hidden by broad green leaves intermingled with white blossoms,--the hill, which rose behind it, golden with wheat,--the Neprehaun below, winding among the hills, now in sunshine, now in shadow,--the Hudson, with its vast bay and the somber wall which rose into the sky from its western shore,--it is before me now, with the spring blossoms, the voices, the sky, the very air of my childhood's days.

In this home I found myself at the age of thirteen. I was the pupil and the charge of the occupant of the cottage, a retired clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Walworth, who having grown gray in the active service of his Master, had come there to pass his last days in the enjoyment of competence and peace. Even now, as on the day when I left him forever, I can see his tall form, bent with age and clad in black, his mild, pale face, with hair as white as snow,--I can hear that voice, whose very music was made up of the goodness of a heart at peace with God and man. When I was thirteen, myself, the good clergyman, and an aged woman--the housekeeper--were the only occupants of the cottage. His only son was away at college. And when I was thirteen, my mother, who had placed me in the care of the clergyman years before, came to see me. I shall never forget that visit. I was sitting on the cottage porch--it was a June day--the air was rich with fragrance and blossoms--my book was on my knee--when I heard her step in the garden-walk. She was tall and very beautiful, and richly clad in black, and her dark attire shone with diamonds. Very beautiful, I say, although there were threads of silver in her brown hair, and an incessant contraction of her dark brows, which gave a look of anxiety or pain to her face.

As she came up the garden-walk, pushing aside her vail of dark lace, I knew her, although I had not seen her for three years. Her presence was strange to me, yet still my heart bounded as I saw her come.

"Well, Frank," she said, as though it was but yesterday since I had seen her, "I have come to see you,"--she kissed me warmly on the lips and cheeks.--"Your father is dead, my child."

A tear stood in her dark eye, a slight tremor moved her lip--that was all. My father dead! I can scarcely describe the emotions which these words caused. I had not seen my father for years. There was still a memory of his face present with me, coupled with an indistinct memory of my early childhood, passed in a city of a foreign land, and a dim vision of a voyage upon the ocean. And at my mother's words there came up the laughing face and sunny hair of my brother Gulian, who had suddenly disappeared about the time my parents returned from Paris, and just before I had been placed in the charge of the good clergyman. These mingling memories arose at my mother's words, and although the good clergyman stood more to me in the relation of a father than my own father, still I wept bitterly as I heard the words, "Your father is dead, my child."

My mother, who seemed to me like one of those grand, rich ladies of whom I had read in story-books, seated herself beside me on the cottage porch.

"You are getting quite beautiful, Frank," she said, and lifted my sun-bonnet and put her hand through the curls of my hair, which was black as jet. "You will be a woman soon." She kissed me, and then as she turned away, I heard her mutter these words which struck me painfully although then I could not understand them: "A woman! with your mother's beauty for your dowry and your mother's fate for your future!"

The slight wrinkle between her brows grew deeper as she said these words.

"You will be a woman, and must have an education suitable to the station you will occupy," continued my mother, drawing me quietly to her, and surveying me earnestly. "Now what do _they_ teach you here?"

She laughed as I gravely related the part which good old Alice--the housekeeper--took in my education. Old Alice taught me all the details of housekeeping; to sow, to knit, the fabrication of good pies, good butter, and good bread; the mystery of the preparation of various kinds of preserves; in fact, all the details of housekeeping as she understood it. And the good old dame, with her high cap, clear, bright little eyes, sharp nose, and white apron strung with a bundle of keys, always concluded her lesson with a mysterious intimation that, saving the good Mr. Walworth only, all the men in the world were monsters, more dangerous than the bears which ate up the bad children who mocked at Elijah.

Laughing heartily as she heard me gravely enter into all these details, which I concluded with, "You see, mother, I'm quite a housekeeper already!" she continued:

"And what does _he_ teach you, my dear?"

The laughter which animated her face, was succeeded by a look of vague curiosity as I began my answer. But as I went on, her face became sad and there were tears in her eyes.

My father (as I had learned to call the good clergyman) taught me to read, to write, and to cipher. He gradually disclosed to me (more by his conversation than through the medium of books) the history of past ages, the wonders of the heavens above me, the properties of the plants and flowers that grew in my path. And oftentimes by the bright wood-fire in winter, or upon the porch under the boughs, in the rich twilight of the summer scenery--while the stars twinkled through the leaves, or the Hudson glistened in the light of the rising moon--he had talked to me of GOD. Of his love for all of us, his providence watching the sparrow's fall, his mercy reaching forth its almighty arms to the lowest of earth's stricken children. Of the other world, which stretches beyond the shores of the present, not dim and cloud-shadowed, but rich in the sunlight of eternal love, and living with the realities of a state of being in which there shall be no more sickness nor pain, and tears shall be wiped from every eye, and all things be made new.

Of the holy mother watching over her holy child, while the stars shone in upon his humble bed in the manger,--of that child, in early boyhood, sitting in the temple confounding grave men, learned in the logic of the world, by the simple intuitions of a heart felled with the presence of God,--of the way of life led by that mother's child, when thirty years had set the seal of the divine manhood on his brow. How after the day's hard travel, he stopped to rest at the cottage home of Martha and Mary,--how he took up little children and blessed them,--how the blind began to see, the deaf to hear, the dead to live, at sound of his voice,--how on the calm of evening, in a modest room, he took his last supper with the Twelve, John resting on his bosom, Judas scowling in the background,--how, amid the olives of Gethsemane, at dead of night, while his disciples slept, he went through the unutterable agony alone until an angel's hand wiped the sweat of blood from his brow,--how he died upon the felon's tree, the heavens black above him, the earth beneath him dark with the vast multitude,--and how, on the clear Sabbath morn he rose again, and called the faithful woman, who had followed him to the sepulcher, by the name which his mother bore, spoken in the old familiar tone--"Mary!" How he walked the earth in bodily form eighteen hundred years ago, shedding the presence of God around him, and even now he walked it still in spiritual body, shedding still upon sin-stricken and sorrowing hearts the presence and the love of God the Father. Lessons such as these, the good clergyman, my father (as I called him) taught me, instructing me always to do good and lead a life free from sin, not from fear of damnation or hell, but because goodness is _growth_, a _good life_ is _happiness_. A flower shut out from the light is _damned_: it cannot _grow_. An _evil life_ here or hereafter is in itself _damnation_; for it is _want of growth_, paralysis or decay of all the nobler faculties.

As in my own way, and with such words as I could command, I recounted the manner in which the good clergyman educated me, my mother's face grew sad and tearful. She did not speak for some minutes; her gaze was downcast, and through her long dark eyelashes the tears began to steal.

"A dream," she muttered, "only a dream! Did he know mankind and know but a portion of their unfathomable baseness, he would see the impossibility of making them better, would feel the necessity of an actual hell, black as the darkest that a poet ever fancied."

As she was thus occupied in her own thoughts, a step--a well-known step--resounded on the garden-walk, and the good clergyman advanced from the wicket-gate to the porch. Even now I see that pale face, with the white hair and large clear eyes!

He advanced and took my mother cordially by the hand, and was much affected when he heard of my father's death. My mother thanked him warmly for the care which he had taken of her child.

"This child will be a woman soon, and she must be prepared to enter upon life with all the accomplishments suitable to the position which she will occupy," continued my mother; "I wish her to remain with you until she is ready to enter the great world. But she must have proper instruction in music and dancing. She must not be altogether a wild country girl, when she goes into society. But, however, my dear Mr. Walworth, we will talk of this alone."

Young as I was I could perceive that there was a mystery about my mother, her previous life, or present position, which the good clergyman did not feel himself called upon to penetrate.

She took his arm and led him into the cottage, and they conversed for a long time alone, while I remained upon the porch, buried in a sort of dreamy revery, and watching the white clouds as they sailed along the summer sky.

"I shall be absent two years," I heard my mother's voice, as leaning on the good clergyman's arm she again came forth upon the porch; "see that when I return, in place of this pretty child you will present to me a beautiful and accomplished lady."

She took me in her arms and kissed me, while Mr. Walworth exclaimed:

"Indeed, my dear madam, I can never allow myself to think of Frances' leaving this home while I am living. She has been with me so long--is so dear to me--that the very thought of parting with her, is like tearing my heart-strings!"

He spoke with undisguised emotion; my mother took him warmly by the hand, and again thanked him for the care and love which he had lavished on her child.

At length she said "Farewell!" and I watched her as she went down the garden-walk to the wicket gate, and then across the road, until she entered a by-path which wound among the hills of the Neprehaun into the valley below. She was lost to my sight in the shadows of the foliage. She emerged to view again far down the valley, and I saw her enter her grand carriage, and saw her kerchief waving from the carriage window, as it rolled away.

I watched, O! how earnestly I watched, until the carriage rose to sight on the summit of a distant hill, beyond the spire of the village church. Then, as it disappeared and bore my mother from my sight, I sat down and wept bitterly.

Would I had never seen her face again!

A year passed away.