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 headgear resembling a skullcap, 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.
To the repeated offers of his children to assist or attend their ancient relatives, he answered, “No, dear children, your mother will do better—your mother always does best.” As he spoke, his children, according to a custom now forgot, kneeled before him to ask his blessing. His hand, tremulous with affection, rested first on the curling locks of the darling Everhard, whose head towered proudly above those of his kneeling sisters, and of Maurice, who, with the irrepressible and venial levity of joyous childhood, laughed as he knelt.
“God bless you!” said Walberg—“God bless you all—and may he make you as good as your mother, and as happy as—your father is this night;” and as he spoke, the happy father turned aside and wept.
XXVII
… Quaeque ipsa miserrima vidi,
Virgil
Et quorum pars magna fui.
The wife of Walberg, who was naturally of a cool sedate temper, and to whom misfortune had taught an anxious and jealous prévoyance, was not so intoxicated with the present prosperity of the family, as its young, or even its
