THE BATTLE OF LIFE: A LOVE STORY. By Charles Dickens. [From the Chellenham Examiner.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 204, 14 July 1847, Page 3

THE BATTLE OF LIFE: A LOVE STORY. By Charles Dickens. [From the Chellenham Examiner.]

Mr. Dickens has thrown over his present Christmas story less of that dreamy atmosphere which was mixed up with his " Chimes," or " The Cricket on thj Earth ;" but he has amply compensated for this, by giving to his tale greater healthfullness of purpose, a more sustained interest, and greater unity of action. His;" Battle of Life" is indeed one of the se- i verest conflicts which human love could prompt, or the human heart be nerved to endure. The heroines are two 'young sisters, both' of whose affections centre in the same object, and the plot of the story, briefly told, lies in the noble self-devotion with which each attempts to sacrifice her own happiness in favour of the other. We need scarcely say that from such a theme, so worthy of his pen, Mr. Dickens has worked out a story of no ordinary interest. We indulge in a few extracts, which, we doubt not,, will whet our readers appetite for 'a perusal of ihewhole story. The .first whiph we

shall select, is the scene in which the two sisters are first brought belore the reader's view : —

THE DANCE IN THE ORCHARD. It was in a little orchard attached to an old stone house with a honeysuckle porch : where, on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds of> music and laughter, and where two girls danced merrily together on the grass, while some half-dozen peasant woraeri standing on ladders, gathering the apples from the trees, stopped to look down, and share their enjoyment. It was a pleasant, lively, natural scene ; a beautiful day, a retired spot ; and the two gils, quite unconstrained and careless, danced in the very freedom and gaiety of their hearts. If there were no such thing as display in the world, my private opinion is, and [ hope you agree with me, that we might get on a great deal better than we do, and .might be infinitely more agreeable company than we are. It was charming to see how these girls danced. They had no spectators save the apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to pleas>e them, but they danced to please themselves (or at least you would hive suppose 1 so): and you could no more help admiring, than they could help dancing. How they did dance ! Not like opera dancers. Not at all. And not like Madam Anybody's finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadri.le dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old style, nor the uew style, nor the French stylo, nor the j English style ; though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and joyous one, [ am told deriving a delightful ait ot off-band inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced among the orchard trees, and down the groves and back again, and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering skirts, ti.e elastic grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning air — the flashing leaves, their speckled shadow son the soft green ground — the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glid to turn the distant windmill, cheerily — everything betweeu the two girls, and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, where they showed against the sky as if they were the last things in the world — seemed dancing too. At last the younger of the dancing sisters, out of breath, and laughing gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest. The other leaned against a tree haid by. The music, a wandering harp and fiddle, left off with aflouiish, as if it boasted of its lreshness ; though, the the truth is, it had gone at such a pace and worked itself to such a pitch of competition with the dancing, that it could never have held on half'a- minute longer. The apple-pickeis on the ladders raised a hum and murmur of applause, and then, in keeping with the sound, bestirred themselves to work again, like bees. The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly gentleman, who was no other than Doctor Jeddler himself — it was Doctor Jeddler's house and orchard, you should know, and these were Doctor Jeddler's daughters — came bustling out to see what was the matter, and who the deuce played music on his property, before breakfast. Fur he was a great philosopher, Doctor Jeddler, and not very musical. It was agreeable to see the graceful figures of the blooming sisters, twined together, lingering among the trees, conversing thus, with earnestness opposed to lightness, yet with love responding teuderly to love. And it was very curious indeed to see the younger sister's eyes suffused with tears ; and something fervently and deeply felt, breaking through the wilfulness of what she saii, and striving with it painfully. , The d.fference between them, in respect of age, could not exceed four 3 ears at most : but Grace, as often happens in such cases, when no mother watches over both (the Doctor's wi'e was dead), seemed, in her gentle care of her young sister, and in the steadiness of her devotion to her, older than she was ; and more removed, in course of nature, from all competition with her, or anticipation, otherwise than through her sympathy and true affection, in her wayward fancies, than their ages seemed to warrant. Great character of ( mother, that, even in this shadow, and faint reflection of it, purifies the heart, and raises the exalted nature nearer to the angels ! The Doctor's reflections, as he looked after them, and heard the purport of their discourse, were limited, at first, to carry merry meditations the lolly of all loves and likings, and the idle imposition practised on themselves by young people, who believed, for a moment, that there could be anything serious in such bubbles, and were always undeceived — always ! But the home-adorning, self-deuyiug qualities of Grace, and her sweet temper, so gentle and retiring, yet including so much constancy and bravery 'of spirit, seemed all expressed to

him in the contrast between her quiet household figure and that of his younger and mote beautiful child ; and he was sorry for her sake —sorry for them both— that life should be such a ridiculous business as it was.

Marion's musings. Alfred Heathfeld, a ward of the old Doctor's is the affianced husband of the younger sister, Marion. He has left home for three years' tiavel upon' the Continent, and the time is near arriving when he shall return and claim her as his wife. In the meantime, a struggle is going on in the young girl's mind ; and on the very day that a missive arrives from her lover, apprising her of his quick return, the following scene takes place in her father's study : My siory passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same night, the sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful fireside. Grace was working at her needle. Marion read aloud' from a book before her. The Doctor, in his dressing gown , and slippers, with his feet spread out upon the warm rug, leaned back in his easy" chair, and listened to the book, and looked upon his (laughters. They weie very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside, never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference between them had been softened down in three years time ; and enthroned upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes, and thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. But she still appeared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two ; still seemed to rest her head upon her sister's breast, and put her trust in her, and look into her eyes for counsel and reliance. Those loving eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful, as of old. "'" ' And being in her own home' " read Marion, from the book ;"* her home made exquisitely dear by these remembrances, she now began to know that the great trial of her heart must soon come on, and could not.be delayed. Oh Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the graye — ' " " Marion, my love !" said Grace. "Why, Puss!" exclaimed her father " what's the matter V She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and read on ; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an effort to command it when thus interrupted. " ' To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave, is always sorrowful. Oh Home, so true to us,, so often slighted in return, be lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do not haunt their erring footsteps too reproachfully ! Let no kind looks, no well-remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of affection, welcome, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy white head. Let no old loving word or tone rise up in judgment against thy deserter ; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy to the penitent!" " Dear Marion, read no more to-night." said Grace — for she was weeping. " I cannot," she replied, and closed the book. " The words seem all on fire !" The Doctor was amused at this ; and laughed as he patted her on the head. '" What ! overcome by a story-book!" said Doctor Jeddler. "Pi hit and paper ! Well, well, it's all one. It's as rational to make a serious matter of print and paper as of anything else. But dry your eyes, love, dry your eyes. I' dare say the heroine has got home long ago, and made it uj> all round — and if she hasn't, a real home is only four walls, and a fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What's the matter now?" The day which was to witness Alfred's return is at length arrived, and Dr. Jeddler has invited Ins friends and kin»<blk to welcome his return ; but the month wllich has elapsed since our last extract, has worked a great resolve in the mind of Marion. She has been thrown in the way of another lover, and has granted him at least one stolen and midnight interview. The ball - rJ ' . Jeddler's is at Us height, and 1 Alfred ' .- ■ : . !y in time to witness —

THE MIDNIGHT FLIGHT. He dismounted from the chaise, and telliug the driver — even that was not easy in his agitation — to remain behind for a few minutes, and then to follow slowly, ran on with exceeding swiftness, tried the gate, scaled the wall, jumped down on the other side, and stood panting in the old orchard. There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the ciouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the, earth, and in the sky. But the red light came cheerily towards him from the, windows : figures passed and repassed, there; and the hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear, sweetly. .■■ ,

Listening for hers : attempting, as he crept pn, to detach it from the rest, and half believing that he had.beard it : he had nearly reached the door, when it was abruptly opened, and a figure coming out encountered his. It instantly recoiled with a half-suppressed cry. " Clemency," he said, " don't you know me?" " Don't come in," she answered, pushing him back. "Go away. Don't ask me why. Don't come in." " What is the matter ?" he exclaimed. '• I don't know. I—lI — I am afraid to think. Go back. Hark !" There was so sudden a tumult in the house. She put her hands upon her ears. A wild scream, such as- no hands could shut out, was heard ; and Grace — distraction in her look and manner — rushed out at the door. " Grace !" He caught her in his arms. " What is it ! is she dead ?" She disengaged herself, as if to recognise his face, and fell down at his feet. A crowd of figures came about them from the house. Among them was her father, with a paper in his hand. "What is it!" cried Alfred grasping his hair with his hands, and looking in an agony from face to face, as he bent upon his knee beside the insensible girl. " Will no one look at me ? Will no one speak to me ? Does no one know me ? Is there no voice among you all, to tell me what it is !" There was a murmur among them. " She is gone." ■ "Gone;" he echoed. " Fled, my dear Alfred !" said the Doctor, in a broken voice, and with his hands before his face. " Gone from her home and us. To night ! She writes that she has made her innocent and blameless choice — entreats that we will forgive her — prays that we will not forget her — and is gone." " With whom ? Where ?", He started up as if to follow in pursuit, but when they gave way to let him pass, looked wildly round upon them, staggered back, and sunk down in his former attitude, clasping one of Grace's cold hands in his own. There was a hurried running to and fro, confusion, noise, disorder, and no purpose. Some proceeded to disperse themselves about the roads, and some took horse, and some got lights, and some conversed together, urging that there was no trace or track to follow. Some approached him kindly, "with the view of offering consolation : some admonished him that Grace must be' removed into the house, and he prevented it. He never heard them, and he never moved. The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a moment in the air, and thought that those white ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery, were suited to them well. He looked round on the whitening ground, arid thought how Marion's foot-prints would be hushed and covered up, as soon as made, and even that remembrance of her blotted out. But he never felt the weather, and he never stirred.

THE MYSTERY UNRAVELS ITSELF. A period of six years "must be supposed to have passed over : no tidings have been heard of the fugitive Marion, and the love which Alfred bore towards her has long since been transferred to her sister. They have been united, and a daughter — a fair counterpart of the absent Marion — has blessed their, union. On the evening of the sixth year of her flight, we have the following scene :—: — And he was happy with his wife, dear Grace. And Marion. Had he forgotton her ? " The time had flown, dear Grace," he said, " since then :" they had been talking of that night ; " and yet it seems a long long while .ago. We count by changes and events within us. Not by'years." " Yet we have years to count by too, since Marion was with us," returned Grace. " Six times, dear husband counting to-night as one, we have sat here on her birth-day, and spoken together of that happy return, so eagerly expected and so long deferred. Ah when will it be ! When will it be ! , Her husband attentively observed her, as the tears collected in her eyes ; and drawing nearer, said : "But Marion told you, in that farewell letter which she left for you upon your table, love, and which you read so often, that years must pass away before it could be. Did she not ?" She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said, " Yes." " That through those intervening years, however happy she might be, she would look forward to the time when you would meet again, and all would be made clear : and prayed you, trustfully and hopefully to do the same. The letter runs so, does it not, my dear?" ' • " Yes, Alfred." " And every— other letter she has written since?" " Except the last — some months ago — in which she spoke of you; and what you then knew, and what I was to learn to-night.""

He, looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said that the appointed time was sunset. " Alfred !" said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoulder earnestly, " there is something in this letter — this old letter, which you say I read so of tea — that I have never told you. But to-night, dear husband, with that sunset drawing near, and all our life seeming to soften and become hushed with the departing day, I cannot keep it secret." " What is it, love ?" " When Marion went away, she wrote me here, that you had once left her a sacred trust to me, and that now she left you, Alfred, such a trust in my hands : praying and beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you, nof to reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you would transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but to encourage and return it." " — And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. Did she say so ?" " She meant, to make myself so blest and honoured in your love," nas his wi.e's answer, as he held her in his arms. " Hear me, my dear !" he said. — " No. Hear me so !" — and as he spoke, he gently laid the head she had raised, again upon his shoulder. "I know why I have never heard this passage in the letter, until now. I know why no trace of it ever shewed itself in any word or look of yours at thattime. I know why Grace, although so true a friend to me, was hard to win to be my wife. And knowing it, my own ! I know the priceless value of the heart I gird within my arms, and thank Gob for the rich possession !" She wept, but not for sorrow, as he pressed her to his heart.

THE RETURN AND EXPLANATION. The denouement of the story now hastens : on the evening on which the above scene takes place, the two sisters meet after their six years' absence, and all is explained. Marion, instead of eloping with a lover, has found an asylum with a distant relative, and has by degrees confided her secret, first to her father, next to her sister's husband, and now to her sister herself, in the following dialogue : — " When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now again, I loved him most devotedly. I would have died for him, though I was so youug. I never slighted his affection in my secret breast, for one brief in: tant. It was far beyond all price to me. Although it is long ago, and past gone, and everything is wholly changed, I could not bear to think that you, who love so well, should think I did not truly love him once. I never loved him better, Grace, than when he left this very scene upon this very day. I never loved him better, dear one, than I did that night when I left here." Her sister, bending over her, could only look into her face, and hold her fast.' ' " But he had gained, unconsciously," said Marion, with a gentle smile, " another heart, before I knew that I had one to give him. That heart — yours, my sister — was so yielded up, in all its tenderness, to me ; was so devoted and so noble ; that it plucked its love away, and kept its secret from all eyes but mme — Ah ! what other eyes were quickened by such tenderness and gratitude ! — and was content to sacrifice itself to me. But I knew something of its depths. I knew the struggle it had made. I knew its high, inestimable worth to him, and his appreciation of it, let him love me as he would. I knew the debt I owed it. I had its great example every day before me. What you had done for me, I knew that I could do, Grace, if I would, for you/ I never laid my head down on my pillow but I prayed with tears to do it. I never laid my head down on my pillow, but I thought of Alfred's own words, on the day of his peparture, and bow truly he bad said (for I knew that, by you) that there were victories gained every day, in struggling hearts, to which these fields of battle' were as nothing. Thinking more and more upon the great endurance cheerfully sustained, and never known or cared for, that there must be every day and hour, in that great strife of which he spoke, my trial seemed to grow light and easy : and He who knows our hearts, my dearest, at this moment, and who knows there is no drop of bitterness or grief — of anything but unmixed happiness — in mine, enabled me to make the resolution that I never would be Alfred's wife. That he should be my brother, and your husband, if the course I took could bring that happy end to pass ; but that I never would (Grace, I then loved him dearly, dearly!) be his wife !" "Oh, Marion! oh, Marion!" " I had tried to seems indifferent to him :" 'and she pressed her sister's face against her , own ; " but that was hard, and you were always his true advocate. I had tried to tell you of my lesolution, but you would never hear me ; you would never understand me^ The , time was drawing near for his return. I felt that I must act,- b'efore the daily intercourse between us was renewed.' I knew that one

great pang, undergone at that time, would save a lengthened agony to all of us. I knew that if I went away then, that end must follow which has followed, and which has made us both so happy, Grace ! I wrote to good Aunt Martha, for a refuge in her house : I did not then tell her all, but something of my stoiy, and she freely promised it. While I was contesting that step with myself, and with my love of you, and home, Mr. Warden, brought here by an accident, became, for some time,' our companion." " I have sometimes feared of late years, that this might have heen," exclaimed her sister, and her countenance was ashy-pale. " You never loved him — and you marriedlilm in your self-sacrifice to me !" " He was then," said Marion, drawing her sister closer to her, "on the eve of going secretly away for a long time. He wrote to me, after leaving here : told me what his condition and prospects' really were ; and offered me his hand. He told' me he had seen I was not happy in the prospect of Alfred's return. I believe he thought my heart had no part in tlat contract ; perhaps thought I might have loved him once, and did not then ; perhaps thought that when I tried to seem indifferent, I tried to hide indifference — I cannot tell. But I wished that you should feel roe wholly lost to Alfred — hopeless to him — dead. Do you understand me, love ?" Her sister looked into her face, attentively. She seemed in doubt. " I saw Mr. Warden, and confided in his honour ; charged him with my secret, on the eve of his and my departure. He kept it. Do you understand me, dear ?" Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear. "My love, my sister !" said Marion, " recal your thoughts a moment : listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries, dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would strive against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it, retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the- world against themselves and worldly loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume that name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places and among its busy life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good, — learn the same lesson ; and with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the victory long won. And such a one am I ! You understand me now ?" Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply. " Oh Grace, dear Grace," said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, "if you were not a happy wife and mother — if I had no little namesake here — if Alfred my kind brother, were not your own fond husband — from whence could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night ! But as I left here, so I have returned. My heart has known no other love, my heart has never been bestowed apart from it, lam still your maiden sister : unmarried, unbetrothed ; your own old loving Marion, in whose affection you exist alone, and have no partner, Grace !" She understood her now. Her face relaxed ; sobs came to her relief ; and falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a child again. Thus ends " The Battle of Life," a story which in many of its leading features is equal to any of Mr. Dickens' early productions. There are many accessories to the plot, which" are exceedingly well worked up, and characters hit off in the author's vein. Of these we may instance the two homely servitors, Clemency Newcome and " the Melancholy Britain ;" the brace of lawyers, Messrs. Snitchley and Craggs ; Michael Warden, the abettor and confidant of Marion's flight, and ultimately her husband 5 and the quaint and piquant scenes at " theVThimble and Nutmeggrater."