The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 29, March, 1860

And what was the end of all this? Just what you would have supposed. She had led a life of simple, unbounded love and trust,—a buoyant, elastic gladness,—a dream of sunshine. No gray cloud had ever lowered in her sky, no thunderbolt smitten her joys, no winter rain chilled her warmth. Only the white fleeciness of morning mist had flitted sometimes over her summer-sky, deepening the blue. Little cooling drops had fluttered down through the leafiness, only to span her with a rainbow in the glory of the setting sun. But the time had come. From the deep fountains of her heart the stone was to be rolled away. The secret chord was to be smitten by a master-hand,—a chord which, once stirred, may never cease to quiver.

At first Ivy worshipped very far off. Her friend was to her the embodiment of all knowledge and goodness and greatness. She marvelled to see him so at home in what was to her so strange. Every word that fell from his lips was an oracle. She secretly contrasted him with all the men she had ever met, to the utter discomfiture of the latter. Washington, the Apostle Paul, and Peter Parley were the only men of the past or present whom she considered at all worthy to be compared with him; and in fact, if these three men and Felix Clerron had all stood before her, and offered each a different opinion on any given subject, I have scarcely a doubt as to whose would have commended itself to her as combining the soundest practical wisdom and the highest Christian benevolence.

So the summer passed on, and her shyness wore off,—and their intimacy became less and less that of teacher and pupil, and more and more that of friend and friend. With the sudden awakening of her intellectual nature, there woke also another power, of whose existence she had never dreamed. It was natural, that, in ranging the fields of thought so lately opened to her, she should often revert to him whose hand had unbarred the gates; she was therefore not startled that the image of Felix Clerron was with her when she sat down and when she rose up, when she went out and when she came in. She ceased, indeed, to think of him. She thought him. She lived him. Her soul fed on his life. And so—and so—by a pleasant and flowery path, there came into Ivy's heart the old, old pain.

Now the thing was on this wise:—

One morning, when she went to recite, she did not find Mr. Clerron in the library, where he usually awaited her. After spending a few moments in looking over her lessons, she rose and was about to pass to the door to ring, when Mrs. Simm looked in, and, seeing Ivy, informed her that Mr. Clerron was in the garden, and desired her to come out. Ivy immediately followed Mrs. Simm into the garden. On the south side of the house was a piazza two stories high. Along the pillars which supported it a trellis-work had been constructed, reaching several feet above the roof of the piazza. About this climbed a vigorous grape-vine, which not only completely screened nearly the whole front of the piazza, but, reaching the top of the trellis, shot across, by the aid of a few pieces of fine wire, and overran a part of the roof of the house. Thus the roof of the piazza was the floor of a beautiful apartment, whose walls and ceiling were broad, rustling, green leaves, among which drooped now innumerable heavy clusters of rich purple grapes.

From behind this leafy wall a well-known voice cried, "Hail to thee, my twining vine!" Ivy turned and looked up, with the uncertain, inquiring smile we often wear when conscious that, though unseeing, we are not unseen; and presently two hands parted the leaves far enough for a very sunshiny smile to gleam down on the upturned face.

"Oh, I wish I could come up there!" cried Ivy, clasping her hands with childish eagerness.

"The wish is father to the deed."

"May I?"

"Be sure you may."

"But how shall I get in?"

"Are you afraid to come up the ladder?"

"No, I don't mean that; but how shall I get in where you are, after I am up?"

"Oh, never fear! I'll draw you in safely enough."

"Lorful heart! Miss Ivy, what are you going to do?" cried Mrs. Simm, in terror.

Ivy was already on the third round of the ladder, but she stopped and answered, hesitatingly,—"He said I might."

"He said you might, yes," continued Mrs. Simm,—talking to Ivy, but at Mr. Clerron, with whom she hardly dared to remonstrate in a more direct way. "And if he said you might throw yourself down Vineyard Cliff, it don't follow that you are bound to do it. He goes into all sorts of hap-hazard scrapes himself, but you can't follow him."

"But it looks so nice up there," pleaded Ivy, "and I have been twice as high at home. I don't mind it at all."

"If your father chooses to let you run the risk of your life, it's none of my look-out, but I a'n't going to have you breaking your neck right under my nose. If you want to get up there, I'll show you the way in the house, and you can step right out of the window. Just wait till I've told Ellen about the dinner."

As Mrs. Simm disappeared, Mr. Clerron said softly to Ivy, "Come!"—and in a moment Ivy bounded up the ladder and through an opening in the vine, and stood by his side.

"I'm ready now, Miss Ivy," said Mrs. Simm, reappearing. "Miss Ivy! Where is the child?"

A merry laugh greeted her.

"Oh, you good-for-nothing!" cried the good-natured old housekeeper, "you'll never die in your bed."

"Not for a good while, I hope," answered Mr. Clerron.

Then he made Ivy sit down by him, and took from the great basket the finest cluster of grapes.

"Is that reward enough for coming?"

"Coming into so beautiful a place as this is like what you read yesterday about poetry to Coleridge, 'its own exceeding great reward.'"

"And you don't want the grapes?"

"I don't know that I have any intrinsic objection to them as a free gift. It was only the principle that I opposed."

"Very well, we will go shares, then. You may have half for the free gift, and I will have half for the principle. Little tendril, you look as fresh as the morning."

"Don't I always?"

"I should say there was a little more dew than usual. Stand up and let me survey you, if perchance I may discover the cause."

Ivy rose, made a profound curtsy, and then turned slowly around, after the manner of the revolving fashion-figures in a milliner's window.

"I don't know," continued Mr. Clerron, when Ivy, after a couple of revolutions, resumed her seat. "You seem to be the same. I think it must be the frock."

"I don't wear a frock. I don't think it would improve my style of beauty, if I did. Papa wears one sometimes."

"And what kind of a frock, pray, does 'papa' wear?"

"Oh, a horrid blue thing. Comes about down to his knees. Made of some kind of woollen stuff. Horrid!"

"And what name do you give to that white thing with blue sprigs in it?"

"This?"

"Yes."

"This is a dress."

"No. This, and your collar, and hat, and shoes, and sash are your dress.

This is a frock."

Ivy shook her head doubtfully.

"You know a great deal, I know."

"So you informed me once before."

"Oh, don't mention that!" said Ivy, blushing, and quickly added, "Do you know I have discovered the reason why you like me this morning?"

"And every morning."

"Sir?"

"Go on. What is the reason?"

"It is because I clear-starched and ironed it myself with my owny-dony hands; and that, you know, is the reason it looks nicer than usual."

"Ah, me! I wish I wore dresses."

"You can, if you choose, I suppose. There is no one to hinder you."

"Simpleton! that is not what you were intended to say. You should have asked the cause of so singular a wish, and then I had a pretty little speech all ready for you,—a veritable compliment"

"It is well I did not ask, then. Mamma does not approve of compliments, and perhaps it would have made me vain."

"Incorrigible! Why did you not ask me what the speech was, and thus give me an opportunity to relieve myself. Why, a body might die of a plethora of flattery, if he had nobody but you to discharge it against."

"He must take care, then, that the supply does not exceed the demand."

"Political economy, upon my word! What shall we have next?"

"Domestic, I suppose you would like. Men generally, indeed, prefer it to the other, I am told."

"Ah, Ivy, Ivy! little you know about men, my child!"

He leaned back in his seat and was silent for some minutes. Ivy did not care to interrupt his thinking. Presently he said,—

"Ivy, how old are you?"

"I shall be seventeen the last day of this month."

A short pause.

"And then eighteen."

"And then nineteen."

"And then twenty. In three years you will be twenty."

"Horrid old, isn't it?"

He turned his head, and looked down upon her with what Ivy thought a curious kind of smile, but only said,—

"You must not say 'horrid' so much."

By-and-by Ivy grew rather tired of sitting silent and watching the rustle of the leaves, which hid every other prospect; she turned her face a little so that she could look at him. He sat with folded arms, looking straight ahead; and she thought his face wore a troubled expression. She felt as if she would like very much to smooth out the wrinkles in his forehead and run her fingers through his hair, as she sometimes did for her father. She had a great mind to ask him if she should; then she reflected that it might make him nervous. Then she wondered if he had forgotten her lessons, and how long they were to sit there. Determined, at length, to have a change of some kind, she said, softly,—

"Mr. Clerron!"

He roused himself suddenly, and stood up.

"I thought, perhaps, you had a headache."

"No, Ivy. But this is not climbing the hill of science, is it?"

"Not so much as it is climbing the piazza."

"Suppose we take a vacation to-day, and investigate the state of the atmosphere?"

"Yes, Sir, I am ready."

Ivy did not fully understand the nature of his proposition; but if he had proposed to "put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes," she would have said and acted, "Yes, Sir, I am ready," just the same.

He took up the basket of grapes which he had gathered, and led the way through the window, down-stairs. Ivy waited for him at the hall-door, while he carried the grapes to Mrs. Simm; then he joined her again and proposed to walk through the woods a little while, before Ivy went home.

"You must know, my docile pupil, that I am going to the city to-morrow, on business, to be gone a week or two. So, as you must perforce take a vacation then, why, we may as well begin to vacate today, and enjoy it."

"I am sorry you are going away."

"You are? That is almost enough to pay me for going. Why are you sorry?"

"Because I shall not see you for a week; and I have become so used to you, that somehow I don't seem to know what to do with a day without you; and then the cars may run off the track and kill you or hurt you, or you may get the smallpox, or a great many things may happen."

"And suppose some of these terrible things should happen,—the last, for instance,—what would you do?"

"I? I should advise you to send for the doctor at once."

Mr. Clerron laughed.

"So you would not come and nurse me, and take care of me, and get me well again?"

"No, because I should then be in danger of taking it myself and giving it to papa and mamma; besides, they would not let me, I am quite sure."

"So you love your papa and mamma better than"–

He stopped abruptly. Ivy finished for him.

"Better than words can tell. Papa particularly. Mamma, somehow, seems strong of herself, and don't depend upon me; but papa,—oh, you don't know how he is to me! I think, if I should die, he would die of grief. I have, I cannot help having, a kind of pity for him, he loves me so."

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De Tocqueville.