PHILIP. HILIP has come. No need of telling any one who Philip is. Every journal I have kept since my girlhood has Philip in it, in some form or shape, with his mother, his father, his wife, or himself. His father was my sworn defender and friend from childhood. There was a chivalric tone in Mr. Edelhertz's regard for me, which was like that love which an enthusiastic, highly cultivated man feels for a daughter, born to him in his young manhood, and who, as she grows up, is more friend and companion than child to him. It is a feeling totally different from that which he could have for any other woman, and is one of the sweetest, tenderest emotions of which a man's heart is capable. Yes, of all masculine loves, this one is to be preferred by a woman, the tender, protecting regard of a father near enough to mid-age to have enthusiasm and appreciation, and old enough to have grown generous and indulgent, and to command obedience and reverence. Thus Gaspard Edelhertz, Philip's father, loved me, and I gave back to him the trusting, adoring love of a daughter in full measure. Ah, if he had lived, I should not be what I am! But let that pass, and "Upon the heat and flame of my distemper Mr. Edelhertz was a German of high birth and culture. He had come to America in his youth in the diplomatic service of his government, had married an American, and settled in the States. He had only one son, the possession of whom had cost him his wife; and poor Philip bid fair to be not only a costly but grievous possession to his father. Brilliant, gifted, erratic, he was exposed to numberless temptations, and just on the outer lintel of manhood he returned home from Europe, where he had been sent for his education, almost a disgraced boy. I say almost, for I never knew the details of his errors, as I was too near a friend of the family. It is the curious, prying outsider, the malicious or inquisitive acquaintance, who knows "everything" in a disgraceful family trouble, — knows more, indeed, than ever happened. I needed no further information than that which I saw, the silent sorrow of my honored friend, Mr. Edelhertz, his proud anguish that but for me would have been solitary. Philip came amongst us haughty, handsome, and with a recklessness that amounted almost to insolence; had his father been a reproachful, wordy, fretful man, he would have gone to ruin. I was only a few years his senior, but having been early settled in life, and moreover a woman, I seemed much older than he. I fancied I discovered under this recklessness resentment at injustice, and in this pride promise of future reparation. Society, that capricious, fitful goddess, who is quite ready to cry "Fie!" at vices which, at another moment or under other other circumstances, she will adore, had prepared herself to let down the grate against Philip, and he was just as willing to throw the scabbard aside, and wage perpetual war for life on this power which he has now made his slave. All the Scandinavian in his blood seemed to surge up, an indomitable pride of will, an appetite for struggle and contest, a craving for danger, a species of inner exaltation which I think would have almost gloried in destruction. Revolt and battle appeared to be his ruling tastes. His father was a man for whom nature, education, and society had done everything towards producing in him the true gentleman; he never noticed this mental and spiritual fever; he avoided all causes and chances of collision with his son; never watched him, nor uttered a syllable of warning or remonstrance, never showed that he even noticed his savage predispositions. With admirable philosophy and prudence he must have resolved to allow time and nature to cure this disorder, feeling sure that no mortal means could be applied. Philip's little ocean of passion washed up with fierce will on the shores of his petty social continent, and finding no obstacles, lashed out all its impotent fury on the dry sands of his egotism and selfishness; but at last the good in him grew weary with this useless and unopposed violence, and Love, that grand and potent power, also aided him. My cousin Ellen came to live with us after the death of her grandparents. She was, of course, the exact opposite of that which many supposed would please Philip, and yet she had in her the very qualities to suit him. She was beautiful, graceful, intelligent, and had the culture and breeding of a gentlewoman. "She was still as a mountain," he would say of her, drolly, "and gentle as a lamb." At any rate she quelled the lion in him and held him as another Una. When Philip first returned home, I luckily was in possession of sufficient position to influence the society in which we mingled. I received Philip with as much earnest friendship and attention as if he had come to us covered with honor instead of disgrace. I ignored his affairs; treated him with the confidence and respect of a valued friend; and I did more, I smoothed the road to his love, and helped to make Ellen his wife. Only once has Philip Edelhertz spoken to me of his youthful trouble. It was a year or so after his return, when our little world and his then happy father seemed to have forgotten the past, so brilliantly was the future opening to the gifted young man. With the enthusiastic exaggeration of a warm-hearted youth, he was thanking me for my friendship, and overrating, with that imprudent but natural generosity in such dispositions, its worldly value and effect. Alas! how often in life are such costly acknowledgments made to the selfish, who take advantage of them cruelly, and wring and pierce the heart that would have adored them, with instruments forged out of the very abnegation and self-sacrifice of this generous nature, to which they should have bowed down in reverence! 66 "O Ottilie!" he cried, "but for you I should have gone to ruin. You knew all, and yet "I knew nothing, Philip, and never wish to know. Nor should you ever speak of this past in confidence to me or any one. Whatever your errors may. have been, my friend, they rest between your conscience, your father, and your God." "Three very disagreeable individuals to face, Ottilie, under certain circumstances," he answered, in his own peculiar frolicsome way, which meant no irreverence. "But you are right,” he continued earnestly, "and I thank you now, not only for your frank, confiding friendship, but for your wise counsel. If anything can make me forget the past and believe in a future, it will be your kindness and regard." "Errors repented of, Philip, have no past, only a future of atonement and amendment." "And mine shall have a future, Ottilie, a future that neither you nor I shall be ashamed of, so help me God, my dear, dear friend," he added solemnly. He has kept his word, with God's help. His errors have had a golden future, for Fortune is now as prodigal of fame and good gifts, so far as worldly success is concerned, as she seemed disposed on the other hand to be churlish and frowning in his youth. But, if Fortune is gracious, Fate resents it, and poor Philip has had two great sorrows, which have made him hold lightly his more material blessings. Formerly his happy artistic nature enabled him to slide easily over the ordinary trials of existence; but when we parted, three years ago, it was with him, as "if life were worn threadbare, and he had got to the end of things, as if indeed he had worked his way through the upper coats of existence down to what Bossuet calls the 'inexorable ennui which forms the basis of human life."" First, Mr. Edelhertz was taken from us; then, shortly after, Philip's young, beautiful wife, Ellen. Poor Philip! How bitter sorrow made him! Such visitations are apt to bear thorny fruit, when grafted on the enthusiastic and deep-loving human soul. The calm nature, that never loves unwisely, or suffers immoderately, bows to the very first blow of sorrow, with a meek patience that is called beautiful; but the quick throbbing heart and active brain bound fiercely and resentfully against such trials as lost love and death. It is wrong, I know, but it is nature, the |