Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the
form of an antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to
all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there they
would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of pathos
which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and fiction and
permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and romance; there,
in short—for why should we shape out the vague sunshine of their
hopes?—there all pure delights were to cluster like roses among the
pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and spontaneously.
So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set
out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her “Lily” because her form was
as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in hand
down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of Lilias
Fay’s paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged creatures
through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness where the
deep shadows fell.
But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them, the
lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their hearts
that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely unsuited
to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay, an old
man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under the
burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast between
the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They looked
as if moulded of heaven’s sunshine and he of earth’s gloomiest shade;
they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand through life,
while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all the woeful
influences which life could fling upon them.
But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
the gentle Lily, and she paused.
“What sweeter place shall we find than this?” said she. “Why should we
seek farther for the site of our temple?”
It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by any
very prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a hill,
with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a
church-spire in another. There were vistas and pathways leading onward
and onward into the green woodlands and vanishing away in the
glimmering shade. The temple, if erected here, would look toward the
west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams
out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and few of their
anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.
“Yes,” said Adam Forrester; “we might seek all day and find no lovelier
spot. We will build our temple here.”
But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site
which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and
frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to
blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal
figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered
stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as
young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now
relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.
“Not here,” cried old Walter Gascoigne. “Here, long ago, other mortals
built their temple of happiness; seek another site for yours.”
“What!” exclaimed Lilias Fay. “Have any ever planned such a temple save
ourselves?”
“Poor child!” said her gloomy kinsman. “In one shape or other every
mortal has dreamed your dream.” Then he told the lovers, how—not,
indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling—had once stood there, and
that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever at
the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.
Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake of
sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the history of
almost every household, and yet his hearers felt as if no sunshine
ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep a
stain—or, at least, that no joyous temple should be built there.
“This is very sad,” said the Lily, sighing.
“Well, there are lovelier spots than this,” said Adam Forrester,
soothingly—“spots which sorrow has not blighted.”
So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them,
looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot and
was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the midst
of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual voice of
inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side with gray
precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had not a
profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices and
wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief joy
of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the presence of
a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble merrily and
disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow, and throw
the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.
“Here, here is the spot!” cried the two lovers, with one voice, as they
reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. “This glen was
made on purpose for our temple.”
“And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears,” said
Lilias Fay.
“And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime,” said Adam
Forrester.
“Ye must build no temple here,” murmured their dismal companion.
And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim’s death-shrieks were
often heard to echo between the cliffs.
“And see!” cried old Gascoigne; “is the stream yet pure from the stain
of the murderer’s hands?”
“Methinks it has a tinge of blood,” faintly answered the Lily; and,
being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover’s
arm, whispering, “Let us flee from this dreadful vale.”
“Come, then,” said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; “we shall
soon find a happier spot.”
They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which millions—which
every child of earth—has tried in turn.
And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old
lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked lovely
in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
mother’s fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two
lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses in
each other’s arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their sad
demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were seeking,
not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and their
posterity.
“Where in this world,” exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, “shall
we build our temple of happiness?”
“Where in this world, indeed?” repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
and weary—the more so by the heaviness of her heart—the Lily drooped
her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, “Where in
this world shall we build our temple?”
“Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?” said their
companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
that dwelt on them. “Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
may build it.”
While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly thrown
their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had chanced
to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted to their
present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a certain
regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and a group
of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive shadows across
and far beyond, although some softened glory of the sunshine found its
way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers would dwell
together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where they were to
worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the ground, they
smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale lily was growing
at their feet.
“We will build our temple here,” said they, simultaneously, and with an
indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with his
sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre hat
overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a token
that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate the
site of their temple of happiness.
In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid the
solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright sunshine.
It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful pillars
supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this dome, upon a
pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books and music
might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of the
neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient mausoleum
and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of dark-veined
marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones. They doubted,
too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a creature of
this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day more fragile,
so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch her up and
waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth of the
temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot his
continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and giving
as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a tomb. In
due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple rite of
dedication.
On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the
time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which the Lily
had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning in
the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded upon
the slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had long
since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a loving
hand had now transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden of
Paradise.
But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam
Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of
many delightful hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there.
And, lo! a wonder! Digging a grave beneath the temple’s marble floor,
the sexton found no virgin earth such as was meet to receive the
maiden’s dust, but an ancient sepulchre in which were treasured up the
bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the funeral procession
brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne
standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and face
of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand the
spot would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they lowered
the coffin down.
“And so,” said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which
his insanity was wont to gleam forth, “you have found no better
foundation for your happiness than on a grave?”
But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its
birth in Adam’s mind even from the old man’s taunting words, for then
he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself
had acted, and the mystery of life and death was opened to him.
“Joy! joy!” he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. “On a grave be
the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity.”
With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and
glimmered down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape
of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom,
symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that
the darkest riddle of humanity was read.