OPPRESSED WITH LONELINESS.

Mrs. Holt spent much of her time alone in those days, very sadly. So completely had all the enjoyments of her former existence dropped from her, that she fell to loving the few inanimate things which had once been as nothing in her luxurious abundance, as if they were gifted with feelings and sympathies.

Thus it happened that the easy chair that had come back so unexpectedly, like drift-wood rescued from a flood, became inexpressibly dear to her. She hailed it as a sign that Providence had not quite forgotten her. At first she wept over it; and even this was a source of comfort, for usually tears lay heavily in her heart their fountain had been buried under so many troubles; and such bitter humiliation, that they came to her eyes singly, and with pain, wounding where they should have brought consolation. God help the man or woman whose tears are so buried and frozen over with a deadly weariness of life.

The return of this old armed chair came upon her so unexpectedly, that the very sight of it was like a dash of soft, warm rain upon ice,—it stirred some of the sweet emotions of former years in her bosom; and, as I have told you, she knelt down before it, feeling glad and thankful, like a little child; crying like a little child, too, as she had not done for years.

In her solitude—for the woman was left almost entirely to her own loneliness—she fell to loving this old chair, and added it to her little family of treasures, which nothing ever should induce her to part with—no, not the very depths of poverty itself, or even _his_ importunity. The chair was worn and shabby enough. In places the rich red had turned to a yellowish brown, and all its rare shading of tints had seemed to run into a confused maze of color; glimpses of the brown under-linen broke through the worn silk at the seams. In places the glorious old carving was broken hopelessly and the pieces lost. That could not be helped, but much remained that might be done to bring back something of its old splendor.

No matter how much time was needed, she would find it passing almost pleasantly while employed on the kindly work of rejuvenating that old household friend. During her whole life she had been an active woman, full of resources, gifted with a rare power of invention.

Indeed, it was in the exercise of her varied accomplishments that this lady found all the recreation she ever had. Seldom, perhaps, in this world had splendid endowments been so trampled down and wasted as you found them in the wreck of this brilliant woman. So with very little else to busy herself about, she was glad to seize upon this object as a means of distraction.

The very dilapidation of the old chair was a comfort to her. With her own hands she would build it up again, renew the faded colors, give plumpness and elasticity to the flattened cushion, darn in the damask flowers with such embroidery as she knew how to weave, stitch by stitch, as well as the best artist in Europe. So each day, through this mist of joy and pain, she examined the silken cushions and touched the frayed places with caressing fingers, sighing tenderly, as if an old friend had just returned to her needing care and help.

Sometimes the poor lady smiled as she worked; for now and then bright memories would crowd the shadows back from her heart, and throw gleams of sunshine through it, spite of all the trouble that surrounded her. She had been a joyous, beautiful, and most favored woman in her time, the mistress of a magnificent home, which had been dashed into ruin for her, as it were by a single blow. Then she had started life again to see her property shrink, year by year, into nothingness, until the only vestiges left of her first home were a few worn articles of what had been a rich wardrobe. Of her second estate nothing now remained but that shabby easy-chair, and an old work-table, gleaming with mother-of-pearl, broken here and there in its delicate workmanship far beyond her mending, clever as she was but exquisite as a work of art, and oh! how dear to the poor lady in her loneliness.

It was no wonder that Mrs. Holt prolonged that task of love, and never would consider the old chair perfectly renovated; but each day found some new flaw in the damask, which must be mended, or some stain to be removed.

One morning, feeling very sad and disheartened, she began early at her work. She had been delayed more than once from want of materials, or the means to purchase them—for small sums are, to a proud person, often as difficult of attainment as large ones; and necessity had delayed her task when she was eager to go on, especially this morning, when she had not a shilling at command in the wide world.

But a sudden thought seized her. Perhaps the work-table might contain the material she wanted among the debris of some former prodigal supply. She opened the table with eager haste, and searched among the skeleton reels and empty spools for such tints of silk as she needed. She found some tangled fragments of floss, and began to assort them as well as she could through the dull mist that floated before her eyes.

Then she knelt before the chair, and began to work in earnest, weaving in the threads dexterously, as only a thoroughbred lady can use her needle. She was greatly depressed that morning, and as she worked, a swarm of memories came, like ravens, croaking and flapping their wings around her—such memories as ask the soul why it did this rash thing, or that wild deed, and how it could evoke such bitter penalties as must hunt down the after life with ten thousand sorrows.

She remembered herself in the old country, young, beautiful, and lovely among the highest aristocracy of the land—a brilliant creature, for whom the best sunshine of the world seemed too dim and tame. Then she was on the Continent, with a father whom the statesmen of the land had selected to negotiate weighty matters of national interest; a motherless girl, impetuous from ill regulated genius, and wilful, either in the wrong or the right—so wilful, that the first step of her life was taken in defiance of that father, who understood the character of the man she married, and would gladly have saved her from the destiny she was madly shaping for herself.

Then came a few years of reckless extravagance; seasons at Baden, alternate poverty and prodigality; children that died for lack of care, one only that lived in spite of neglect; memories of a reckless life, over which she had lost all control. Then came her father's death—a grand funeral, picturesque in its solemn mournfulness; regrets deep and bitter, a sense of desolation, and a yearning desire to follow that kind, lost one even into eternity, claim forgiveness of him, and set her soul free from the remorse which, for a time, threatened her very life.

So far as he could, the wronged father had forgiven her. All that the next heir might not claim by entail he gave to his daughter, thus crowning her with coals of living fire, under which her wounded conscience writhed in mingled grief and pain. She would have given up every shilling gladly for one word of love from her father's lips. But he, her husband, had no such regrets; but ruthless in that, as in all things else, gathered up his wife's gold, and having exhausted his career in Europe, brought her and their only child to America.

The United States Senate was then a glory to the nation. Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and many another great man, held the people's love and trust in their hands with a noble sense of its importance; social life had not been entirely merged in the love of gold; and intellect held a high place even against wealth in those days.

Among those people who had engrafted much of the high-breeding of the old world upon the vivid genius that thrives so lustily in free air, this woman came with her beauty, her genius, and that wealth which an unprincipled husband lavished freely on her, thinking himself generous because he restrained her in nothing—she who, with proper restraint, would have been a glorious woman.

As it was, for a time, she moved like a goddess among those truly great Americans. Her intellect found itself fairly matched; her beauty fascinated those who could not comprehend the brilliancy of her mind. This was the great scene of her triumphs, and the color mounted into her worn face, as she remembered them, even so many years after, while on her knees darning that old easy-chair.

Then the faint red died out of those shrunken cheeks, and a look of iron, cold and bitter, crept over the countenance. She was thinking of the disgrace and humiliation that man brought upon her, when her wealth was wasted; of the struggle she had made to secure her child, and prevent the power which had crushed her from controlling him. Then came death and partial release!

Had she used her freedom wisely? She dared not ask the question even of her own heart.

After this, her mind wandered over a series of such difficulties as few women, bred like her, could have found the power to conquer. Even then, such was the force of early aristocratic education, she felt almost as much shame at the remembrance of these honest exertions for a livelihood, as burned in her heart when the panorama of her husband's baseness swept athwart her mind. But hers was a life of strange vicissitudes. In the midst of her honorable exertions, and after the bloom of her youth had faded out and was clouded over with harassing anxieties, prosperity came to her again through the almost idolatrous love of a man fifteen years younger than herself. Once more she had wealth; once more she became a star in social life—once more a leader. Yet this woman, with love and care heaped upon her, amid such luxuries as few women ever enjoy, felt a certain shame that her high birth had mated itself with a self-made man of the new world. The disgrace of her first husband had not more completely severed her from her aristocratic relatives, than the honorable marriage which had given a father to her son, and affluence back to herself. She had loved this man—she loved him yet; but trouble and humiliation had not exalted her nature. Besides, she had all those elements of self-torture and distrust, which growing age sometimes brings most bitterly into the life of a beautiful woman just upon her wane. At any rate, this mature wife was not altogether happy with her young husband, handsome and liberal though he was.

Did the woman wonder now why this had been so? Did she recognize in her own character those warring elements which had shipwrecked their happiness, and, perhaps, at last their worldly fortunes? Did she compare the middle-aged husband, still carrying under his dissipated life the vestiges of a gentleman, but whose harsh tones and bitter taunts, sometimes, made her tremble, with the splendid young man who had sworn to her a thousand times that she could never grow old to him; that the time could never come when she would not be in his sight the best and most beautiful of women?

How cruel he was to her now. Time and improvidence had swept all his possessions away; this marriage, by which love seemed to have defied time, wrecked the man both in character and fortune. I cannot tell how it was, perhaps in giving him everything else, this woman had failed in conferring that home content which is the soul of happiness. It was her doom to see everything that loved her sink into ruin. Why was it that she had dwarfed the moral natures of every man that had loved her?

Had Mrs. Holt asked these questions years before, the fate that lay so heavily upon her then might have been averted. But she had plunged into the whirling current of life, and, exhilarated by its excitement, made no effort to seek the deeper and purer waters, which should bear every woman forward toward the eternal life, where all true womanhood must seek perfection. It was too late, then—yes, too late for any hope of influence over that one man. His life was wrecked, and with it her old age went down utterly like the hull of a vessel, from which masts, rigging, boats, and bulwarks, have all been swept away. Mrs. Holt knew and felt all this. She thought it over with keen regret as her needle flew in and out of that old silk, weaving it together as the broken texture of her life never could be mended. As the lady worked, her mind slowly swerved round to the present, and a more gloomy prospect never presented itself to the mind of a weary-hearted woman. That morning her husband had gone forth to his business as he called it, taunting her for being an incumbrance to him, and reviling her because she had, in fear and trembling, given him a note from Mrs. Wheeler, which contained an urgent demand for the unpaid bill.

When things came to this pass with the unhappy pair, it frequently happened that Holt would not come home for weeks together, leaving the poor wife to the pain and dread that was sure to follow. She did not expect him now. It might be that some caprice would keep him away forever! for with her there was nothing to lure him back. Her grief angered him; her age gave him a subject for cruel taunts. How could she wish him to return?