Everhard their eldest son, now sixteen, possessed too much
beauty for his sex, and his delicate and brilliant complexion, his
slender and exquisitely moulded form, and the modulation of his tender
and tremulous voice, inspired that mingled interest, with which we
watch, in youth, over the strife of present debility with the promise of
future strength, and infused into his parent’s hearts that fond anxiety
with which we mark the progress of a mild but cloudy morning in spring,
rejoicing in the mild and balmy glories of its dawn, but fearing lest
clouds may overshade them before noon. The daughters, Ines and Julia,
had all the loveliness of their colder climate--the luxuriant ringlets
of golden hair, the large bright blue eyes, the snow-like whiteness of
their bosoms, and slender arms, and the rose-leaf tint and peachiness of
their delicate cheeks, made them, as they attended their parents with
graceful and fond officiousness, resemble two young Hebes ministering
cups, which their touch alone was enough to turn into nectar. “The spirits of these young persons had been early depressed by the
difficulties in which their parents were involved; and even in childhood
they had acquired the timid tread, the whispered tone, the anxious and
inquiring look, that the constant sense of domestic distress painfully
teaches even to children, and which it is the most exquisite pain to a
parent to witness. But now there was nothing to restrain their young
hearts,--that stranger, a _smile_, fled back rejoicing to the lovely
home of their lips,--and the timidity of their former habits only lent a
grateful shade to the brilliant exuberance of youthful happiness. Just
opposite this picture, whose hues were so bright, and whose shades were
so tender, were seated the figures of the aged grandfather and
grandmother. The contrast was very strong; there was no connecting link,
no graduated medium,--you passed at once from the first and fairest
flowers of spring, to the withered and rootless barrenness of winter. “These very aged persons, however, had something in their looks to
soothe the eye, and Teniers or Wouverman would perhaps have valued their
figures and costume far beyond those of their young and lovely
grandchildren. They were stiffly and quaintly habited in their German
garb--the old man in his doublet and cap, and the old woman in her ruff,
stomacher, and head-gear resembling a skull-cap, with long depending
pinners, through which a few white, but very long hairs, appeared on her
wrinkled cheeks; but on the countenances of both there was a gleam of
joy, like the cold smile of a setting sun on a wintry landscape. They
did not distinctly hear the kind importunities of their son and
daughter, to partake more amply of the most plentiful meal they had ever
witnessed in their frugal lives,--but they bowed and smiled with that
thankfulness which is at once wounding and grateful to the hearts of
affectionate children. They smiled also at the beauty of Everhard and
their elder grandchildren,--at the wild pranks of Maurice, who was as
wild in the hour of trouble as in the hour of prosperity;--and finally,
they smiled at all that was said, though they did not hear half of it,
and at all they saw, though they could enjoy very little--and that
_smile of age_, that placid submission to the pleasures of the young,
mingled with undoubted anticipations of a more pure and perfect
felicity, gave an almost heavenly expression to features, that would
otherwise have borne only the withering look of debility and decay. “Some circumstances occurred during this family feast, which were
sufficiently characteristic of the partakers. Walberg (himself a very
temperate man) pressed his father repeatedly to take more wine than he
was accustomed to,--the old man gently declined it. The son still
pressed it heartfully, and the old man complied with a wish to gratify
his son, not himself. “The younger children, too, caressed their grandmother with the
boisterous fondness of children. Their mother reproached them.--“Nay,
let be,” said the gentle old woman. “They trouble you, mother,” said the
wife of Walberg.--“They cannot trouble me long,” said the grandmother,
with an emphatic smile. “Father,” said Walberg, “is not Everhard grown
very tall?”--“The last time I saw him,” said the grandfather, “I stooped
to kiss him; now I think he must stoop to kiss me.” And, at the word,
Everhard darted like an arrow into the trembling arms that were opened
to receive him, and his red and hairless lips were pressed to the snowy
beard of his grandfather. “Cling there, my child,” said the exulting
father.--“God grant your kiss may never be applied to lips less
pure.”--“They never shall, my father!” said the susceptible boy,
blushing at his own emotions--“I never wish to press any lips but those
that will bless me like those of my grandfather.”---- “And do you wish,”
said the old man jocularly, “that the blessing should _always_ issue
from lips as rough and hoary as mine?” Everhard stood blushing behind
the old man’s chair at this question, and Walberg, who heard the clock
strike the hour at which he had been always accustomed, in prosperity or
adversity, to summon his family to prayer, made a signal which his
children well understood, and which was communicated in whispers to
their aged relatives.--“Thank God,” said the aged grandmother to the
young whisperer, and as she spoke, she sunk on her knees. Her
grandchildren assisted her. “Thank God,” echoed the old man, bending his
stiffened knees, and doffing his cap--“Thank God for this ‘shadow of a
great rock in a weary land!’”--and he knelt, while Walberg, after
reading a chapter or two from a German Bible which he held in his hands,
pronounced an extempore prayer, imploring God to fill their hearts with
gratitude for the temporal blessings they enjoyed, and to enable them
“so to pass through things temporal, that they might not finally lose
the things eternal.” At the close of the prayer, the family rose and
saluted each other with that affection which has not its root in earth,
and whose blossoms, however diminutive and colourless to the eye of man
in this wretched soil, shall yet bear glorious fruit in the garden of
God. It was a lovely sight to behold the young people assisting their
aged relatives to arise from their knees,--and it was a lovelier
hearing, to listen to the happy good-nights exchanged among the parting
family. The wife of Walberg was most assiduous in preparing the comforts
of her husband’s parents, and Walberg yielded to her with that proud
gratitude, that feels more exaltation in a benefit conferred by those we
love, than if we conferred it ourselves. He loved his parents, but he
was proud of his wife loving them because they were his.