WAR AND PEACE.
After the incidents of the evening, it was not a little discomposing to
behold, as they did, upon entering the parlor, Mrs. Atkins, Miss Atkins
and Julia, together with Fernando Witherlee. The Atkins family had been
there for a couple of hours, making a family call. Muriel was a favorite
with them, as with everybody, and they saluted her affectionately; she
responding with her usual affability. Harrington, too, was politely
favored; though Mrs. Atkins (who had been a poor country girl once) and
her daughters, also, had their misgivings as to his being of sufficient
respectability to deserve the civilities due only to Good Society. But,
despite this consideration, no woman could resist the sweet manhood of
young Harrington; and so he received from these ladies as much politeness
as though he moved, with mutton-chop whiskers and modish clothes, in
fashionable circles—which was unfair.
While Muriel was privately explaining matters to her mother, Harrington
joined in the conversation, in which all participated, save Wentworth,
who was unusually quiet, and sat a little apart, with a cold and reserved
air, the result of his feelings for Emily. The conversation, which had
been on topics more or less commonplace, and had hovered frequently
about, and several times fairly settled on, the charms and graces of Mr.
Lafitte, dipped again to that enrapturing theme, by the will of Mrs.
Atkins. Miss Atkins, by the way, though still a devotee of the chivalrous
son of the sunny South, had suffered some slight abatement of her
rapture; having learned, by chance, that Mr. Lafitte was already married.
“Oh, Mr. Harrington,” continued Mrs. Atkins, after much eulogium of the
Southern gentleman who had done us the honor of dining with us to-day,
“if you could only meet Mr. Lafitte, you would have such different ideas
of the Southern gentlemen.”
“Indeed, madam,” replied Harrington, courteously, “I should be sorry
to have my ideas of Southern gentlemen changed, for I credit them with
many fine and high qualities. Don’t think that I imagine Northerners and
Southerners in the absolute colors of good and evil—black and white; all
the white on our side, and all the black on theirs.”
“Oh, no, of course not,” responded Mrs. Atkins in her fal-lal manner;
“but I thought you were so anti-slavery, Mr. Harrington.”
“I certainly am anti-slavery, madam,” good-naturedly said Harrington,
“and if I were living in Hancock’s time, I should be on the same
principles anti-George the Third. But I hope I should not any the less
pay due regard to the Tory gentlemen of that era. As far as their Toryism
went, I should of course be their foe, and in like manner I am hostile to
the gentlemen of this day who are tyrants.”
“But, Mr. Harrington,” said Julia, pertly, “you don’t like Mr. Webster,
and I know you don’t, do you? Now do tell me, Mr. Harrington, why you
don’t like Mr. Webster.”
Witherlee smiled furtively at Miss Julia’s immature gabble, and lifted
his eyebrows in a faint sneer.
“Because, Miss Julia,” replied Harrington simply, with a gentle
impressiveness of voice and manner which brought a new sensation to the
poor child’s mind, and made her color, “because Mr. Webster helped to
pass a law which has made a great many poor people very unhappy. You
yourself wouldn’t like a man who made innocent people suffer, would you?”
“Oh, no, of course not,” stammered Julia, while Witherlee smiled
maliciously, enjoying her confusion.
“Dear me! but they’re only negroes, Mr. Harrington,” feebly remarked Mrs.
Atkins, in a deprecating tone.
“But, Mrs. Atkins, negroes have feelings,” said Emily.
“Oh, well, dear,” responded Mrs. Atkins, “but their feelings are not the
same as ours, you know. That is, they haven’t fine feelings.”
“You remember the case that was lately reported in the newspapers, Mrs.
Atkins,” said Harrington. “The rumor came that the kidnappers were in
town with a warrant for a colored man, and his wife fell down dead with
alarm when she heard it. I think you must allow that poor woman had
feelings, and it is hard to deny that Mr. Webster was responsible for her
murder. I saw those poor colored people in Southac street to-day, in wild
distress and alarm at the report that a slave-hunter was in town, and no
one who sees such things, and realizes them, can like Mr. Webster.”
“O Mr. Harrington, indeed I can’t agree with you,” returned Mrs. Atkins
with feeble excitement. “These things are unpleasant, I admit, but
Mr. Webster is a great statesman, you know—oh, there never was such a
statesman as Mr. Webster! He’s perfectly splendid, and I’m sure if he was
to have all the negroes in the country killed—the horrid creatures!—I’m
sure I would like him just as much as ever. Indeed I would, and so would
Mr. Atkins. O if you’d only heard Mr. Webster at Faneuil Hall last
Saturday, I know you’d have been converted. He didn’t say a word about
politics, and he was so majestic, and so venerable and so—so pleasant—oh,
it was beautiful!”
And Mrs. Atkins fanned herself in a feeble fluster of admiration for Mr.
Webster, whose speech, by the way, had been very decrepit, rambling, and
dull, with only a touch here and there of the true Websterian massive
power and energy.
“Well, Mrs. Atkins,” said Witherlee in his cool, polite, provoking way,
“for my part, I don’t understand how you can admire Mr. Webster’s private
life, I’m sure.”
This change in the venue, as the lawyers say, and this impudent
assumption that Mrs. Atkins had been admiring Mr. Webster’s private life,
were both highly characteristic of the good Fernando. His remark was
not prompted by even the pale esthetic anti-slavery, which he sometimes
indulged in, but by the simple desire to say something which he knew
would aggravate the lady. And Mrs. Atkins was aggravated, for she colored
and fanned herself nervously.
“I don’t know what you refer to, Mr. Witherlee,” she remarked, pettishly.
“Why, you know what Mr. Webster’s habits are, Mrs. Atkins,” said
Fernando, lifting his eyebrows with an air of painful regret, in which
there was also a bilious sneer. “You are aware of his excessive fondness
for old Otard. And then his relations to women”—
“I don’t care,” interrupted Mrs. Atkins, bridling with faint excitement.
“I don’t care at all, and I think that God gave Mr. Webster some faults
to remind us that he is mortal.”
This was smart for Mrs. Atkins, and Witherlee, somewhat nonplused, turned
pale with spite, and lifted his eyebrows, and shrugged his shoulders
with a manner that was equivalent to saying—Oh, if you talk in that way,
Mrs. Atkins, there’s no use in wasting words upon you. His manner would
have been ineffably maddening to most men, but women are less easily
transported beyond control, and Mrs. Atkins, conscious that she had the
advantage of Mr. Witherlee in her reply, fanned herself equably and took
no notice of his insulting gesture.
“For my part,” said Harrington, gravely offended by Witherlee’s remarks,
“I deprecate any reflections upon Mr. Webster’s private life. It seems to
me that our concern is with his public acts, and not with his personal
habits.”
“Oh, you’re a gentleman, Mr. Harrington,” said Mrs. Atkins, in a tone
that implied that Mr. Witherlee was not.
Witherlee looked at Mrs. Atkins with parted lips, and still, opaque eyes,
white with spleen, but perfectly cool.
“Now, fellow-citizens, what’s the row?” blithely said Muriel, approaching
the circle with her mother.
“Oh, cousin Muriel!” exclaimed Julia, “how can you talk in that way. It’s
so low!”
“So it is, dear,” archly replied Muriel, “shockingly low, and you must be
warned by my example.”
Julia looked a little foolish, and smiled.
“We were discussing, Mr. Webster,” said Fernando, tranquilly.
“Oh, Mr. Webster,” said Muriel; “I used to admire him very much when I
was a girl.”
“It’s a pity you don’t now, Muriel,” said Mrs. Atkins, “for he deserves
to be admired, I’m sure.”
“Yes, aunt, but I never recovered from a shock he gave me in my ‘sallet
days, when I was green in judgment,’” replied Muriel.
“A shock? Dear me! I can’t imagine Mr. Webster shocking anybody,” drawled
Caroline, with weak surprise.
“Nevertheless,” said Muriel, “Mr. Webster shocked me, like a torpedo
fish, and I’ll tell you how. There was a grand party, at which he was
present. Mother and I were there, and I, who was a girl of fourteen, had
no eyes for anybody but Mr. Webster. My great desire was to hear him
say something, for I thought anything he said would be remarkable, and
worth putting in an album, so I followed him whenever he went through the
crowded drawing-rooms, with my ears wide open, eagerly listening for the
golden sentence. But Mr. Webster was in a very silent humor, and wandered
about without speaking to anybody. By and by he went up-stairs to the
supper room, and I followed him, in reverent admiration and expectancy.
He approached the supper-table, bowed solemnly to some ladies near by,
took a fork, and began to eat from a dish of pickled oysters. After he
had eaten three or four, he paused, with an oyster on his fork, turned
his great head slowly and majestically to the ladies, and opened his
lips. The golden sentence was coming, and I listened breathlessly. Now
what do you think he said?”
“Well, what?” inquired Harrington, after a hushed pause.
“Said he, in his deep, grum, orotund, bass voice, like the low rolling of
distant summer thunder, ‘What nice little oysters these are!’”
Every one burst into hearty laughter, as Muriel mimicked the tones of the
Websterian ejaculation.
“That was my reward for so long waiting,” she continued, when the
laughter had subsided. “That was my golden sentence, which, of course,
never went from the tablets of memory to the album. It was an immense
shock to know that great statesmen said such things as common people
say.”
“And you heard nothing else?” said Wentworth, vastly amused at the
anecdote.
“Not another word. He devoured the oyster, and wandered down-stairs
again, leaving with me the ponderous sprat which the flavor of the
mollusc had conjured from the ocean depths of his mighty mind.”
They began to laugh again, when a ring at the door-bell was heard.
“That’s papa!” cried Julia.
Papa it was—come for his family. He came in presently, robust and
decisive, purseproud, as usual, and smiling, made his salutations with a
certain rude courtesy, and took a chair.
“Well, young ladies,” he burst out presently, “so you went to hear
Phillips harangue this evening.”
“Yes, uncle,” returned Muriel, sportively, “we had you to keep us in
countenance you know.”
“Indeed! Well, I’m sorry if my example incited you. Lafitte, our Southern
visitor, thought it would be amusing to hear some of the fanatical
blather, and so I took him along, and, just by chance, he got a dose of
Phillips.”
“I hope the dose did him good, Lemuel, and you also,” said Mrs. Eastman,
with some spirit.
“Oh, I don’t deny Phillips’s power, Serena,” replied the merchant,
carelessly. “It’s all very fine, and if he were in the Whig party, he’d
be a man of mark. It’s a pity, as I always say, to see such wonderful
ability wasted.”
“How did Mr. Lafitte enjoy it, sir?” asked Emily, blandly.
“Oh, he—well, I was rather amused at the way he took it,” responded Mr.
Atkins, laughing. “It quite upset him, and in his hot, Southern way, he
said Phillips ought to be shot. In fact, I thought Lafitte was rather
thin-skinned about it, though, to be sure, Phillips’s words are enough to
try a saint. Anyhow, Lafitte felt ’em rankle.”
“He must certainly, to have had so murderous a spirit aroused in him,”
remarked Mrs. Eastman.
“Murderous? Upon my word, Serena,” replied the merchant, bluffly, “I
think his spirit was not unworthy of a man of high tone, and I shouldn’t
blame him at all if he had pistolled your orator on the spot.”
“Like the assassin who bludgeoned Otis in Revolutionary times,” remarked
Witherlee, blandly aggravating.
“Oh, you young men are all tainted with fanaticism,” returned Mr. Atkins,
reddening. “When you’re older you’ll know better. I’m always sorry to
see young men of talent, like Mr. Harrington here, misled by Phillips’s
eloquent abstractions. But live and learn, live and learn.”
“I hope, Mr. Atkins, I shall not live to learn distrust in the
statesmanship that reprobates slavery,” said Harrington, urbanely.
“Statesmanship!” contemptuously exclaimed the merchant. “Do you call
such incendiary measures as Phillips and Parker advise, statesmanship?
Sedition and treason! I declare, Mr. Harrington—and I say this coolly,
in sober earnest—that if any one were to shoot down Phillips and Parker
in the street, and I were summoned as a Grand Juror to pass upon the
act, I would refuse to indict him on the ground that it was justifiable
homicide. Yes, sir, justifiable homicide. I have said it a hundred times,
and I now say it again. What do you think of that, Mr. Harrington?”
Harrington met the insulting exultation of the merchant’s gaze, with a
look quiet and firm.
“Since you ask me what I think of it, Mr. Atkins,” he replied,
tranquilly, “you must permit me to say that I think it atrocious.”
“And so do I,” said Mrs. Eastman, crimson with indignation. “And you
ought to blush, Lemuel, to say that you would give legality to a
ferocious murder.”
“Ought I?” replied the merchant, coolly. “Well, I don’t, Serena. In such
a case, killing’s no murder. Murder, indeed! Ha! men like those to dare
to wage war on the institutions of their country!”
“What institutions do they wage war upon, Mr. Atkins?” asked Wentworth,
civilly.
“Well, sir, slavery for one,” excitedly returned the merchant. “An
institution expressly sanctioned by the Constitution, and on the
protection of which the safety of this Union depends, Mr. Wentworth.
An institution, sir, which no statesman would think of assailing for a
moment. Where can you point to one statesman, worthy of the name, from
Webster back to Burke, or as far back as you like to go, that has ever
assailed a great politico-economical institution like slavery? You’re a
scholar, I’m told, Mr. Harrington; now just answer me that question.”
“Mr. Atkins, I am surprised beyond measure that you should ask me such
a question,” calmly replied Harrington. “The real difficulty would be
to name any statesman of the first eminence that has ever defended
slavery. You mention Burke and Webster. Why, sir, the whole record of
Mr. Webster’s life up to 1850, is against slavery. It is only eight
years ago since he stood up in Faneuil Hall, and said—I quote his very
words, for I have been lately reading them—‘What,’ said he, ‘when all
the civilized world is opposed to slavery; when morality denounces it;
when Christianity denounces it; when everything respected, everything
good, bears one united witness against it, is it for America—America, the
land of Washington, the model republic of the world—is it for America to
come to its assistance, and to insist that the maintenance of slavery is
necessary to the support of her institutions!’ Those are Daniel Webster’s
very words, sir, and yet you ask when he ever assailed slavery!”
“Good! good!” cried Mrs. Eastman, amidst a general murmur of satisfaction
from all but the Atkinses. Mr. Atkins sat dumb, wincing under the
crushing blow of the quotation. Their new-born zeal for slavery and
kidnapping gave the Boston merchants of that period terribly short
memories.
“Faneuil Hall, crowded with Whig merchants, answered those words with
six-and-twenty cheers. Have you forgotten them, Mr. Atkins?” said
Harrington. “Now the cheers are all for slavery. Now, in defiance of your
own statesman’s declaration, you assert slavery to be necessary to the
maintenance of your Union. And now, because Phillips and Parker wage war
upon slavery, as Webster did then, you would justify their murder.”
Still dumb, with his strong lip nervously twitching, the merchant sat,
whelmed in utter confusion.
“You mentioned Burke, Mr. Atkins,” continued Harrington, “and since you
have mentioned him, let me ask if you have forgotten his speech to the
electors of Bristol? Listen to the words of the greatest statesman since
Bacon—for they, too, are fresh in my memory. ‘I have no idea,’ said
Edmund Burke—‘I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and
justice. Nor do I believe that any good constitutions of government or of
freedom can find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the
people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such
can be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the
strongest faction.’ Those are the words of Burke, sir. If you doubt, Mrs.
Eastman will get the volume from the library, and you shall read them for
yourself.”
“No consequence, Mr. Harrington, no consequence,” returned the merchant,
abruptly rising. “We will not discuss the matter further, sir. Come, Mrs.
Atkins, it is time for us to go home.”
“O dear me,” drawled Mrs. Atkins, leaving her seat, “you gentlemen are so
fond of these horrid politics. Come, children, come.”
They all rose, with a flutter and rustle of movement. Presently, while
the Atkins ladies, cloaked and bonneted, were moving toward the door,
Harrington approached Mr. Atkins, who had gone into the entry for his hat
and returned, and now stood, cold, harsh and moody, apart from the rest
of the company.
“I trust, Mr. Atkins,” said the young man, with grave courtesy, “that you
are not offended by my plain speaking on these matters, or at least that
you will not understand me to intend any disrespect to you personally.”
The merchant glared at him with a sullen and insolent smile.
“Mr. Harrington,” he hissed hoarsely, bending his face close to the young
man’s, “such sentiments as yours find favor with my sister and niece. It
is politic in you to adopt them, and so curry favor with the one that you
may mend your poverty by a rich marriage with the other.”
And with these brutal words, the merchant threw back his head, glaring
at the young man with open mouth, and a frightful smile on his blanched
visage, which was at that moment the visage of a demon. Harrington met
that glare with a look of such majestic severity, such a stern glory of
anger lighting his calm eyes and brow, that the merchant’s face fell,
and he slunk a pace away. The company had left the parlor, and were
talking in the hall, as Mr. Atkins had made his reply, but Mrs. Eastman,
who was standing nearest the parlor door, had heard it all, and before
Harrington could make any rejoinder, if any he intended, she came quickly
in, shutting the door behind her, her silver tresses trembling and her
beautiful face flushed with haughty and indignant emotion.
“Permit me to tell you, Lemuel Atkins,” said she, confronting her
brother, and speaking in a proud and steady voice, “that the sentiments
which you have not the wit to controvert, nor the manhood to entertain,
were held by Mr. Harrington before we had the honor of his friendship,
and let me further say to you that while the choice of my daughter’s
heart, be he rich or poor, shall be my choice also, I should esteem it
the best hour of my life which gave me assurance that she would wed a
man worthier of her than any man I know, and dear to me as my own son!
Take that home with you, sir, and do us the honor to believe that in this
house we value gentlemen for what they are, and not for what they own.”
He shrank from the serene and haughty magnetism of her manner, and
cowering under her rebuke, slunk away to the door without a word, and
went into the hall. Harrington stood like one thunder-struck, the slow
thrill her words gave him running through his veins, while she swept
across the room to close the door the merchant had left ajar, and turning
again, came quickly toward him, her beautiful face pale and wet with
calmly-flowing tears.
“Tell me, John,” she said, seizing his hands, and speaking in low, rapid
tones, tremulous with emotion—“this pitiful insult moved me to anger, and
in my anger I have spoken the true thought of my heart—tell me that so
dear a hope is not so vain. Oh, confide in me as in your own mother, for
no mother could love you more tenderly than I do.”
In the spiritual passion of the moment, all cold prudence, all reticence,
melted, and fell away. He clasped her in his arms, and with sweet and
sorrowful emotion, kissed her fair brow and silver hair.
“I love her, my mother,” he murmured, sadly smiling—“I love her, but the
love I once thought mine, is not for me.”
“You love her—you love Muriel, and she does not love you! I do not
believe it—I cannot. John, at my age women are not easily deceived—they
do not mistake the tokens of love. Take care that you are sure of what
you say”—
“I am sure, mother, I am sure,” he interrupted, in a low voice. “Her
accepted lover told me of his happiness to-day. Do not ask me his name.
They themselves will tell you. Hush!”
The hall-door was heard closing, and the voices talking gaily in the
hall. She looked at him wonderingly for an instant, then quickly pressed
her lips to his drooping forehead, and glided from his arms to the
back-door of the parlor, out of which she passed up to her chamber, as
the others came in.
Witherlee had departed as the escort of Miss Julia, his natural impudence
perfectly ignoring the rebuff he had received from her mother.
“Where’s Mrs. Eastman?” said Emily.
“She went out as you came in,” replied Harrington.
“John,” said Muriel, coming up to him, and playfully shaking her finger.
“You quite discomfited poor Uncle Lemuel, and he went off as cross as a
bear.”
“What a memory Harrington has!” laughed Wentworth. “To think that he
gave him Burke and Webster plump! That was a double-barrelled shot, by
Jupiter!”
“Oh, it was capital,” chimed in Emily.
“Faith,” said Harrington, “it was simply lucky. I happened to have been
reading the speeches lately, and so had the passages by heart. But I
wonder at Mr. Atkins making such an absurd assertion.”
“Oh, he remembers nothing previous to 1850,” said Muriel. “These people
are perfectly wild with their Webster and Fugitive Slave Law mania,
and they repeat certain phrases until their organs of intelligence are
ossified, as Goethe says. Come, Emily, let us have some music.”
“Yes, do, Emily,” said Wentworth, half absently, and forgetting for a
moment, as was frequent with him, the state of affairs between him and
Miss Ames.
Emily looked at him with cool serenity, as if she thought his request
impertinent. Wentworth, recalled to himself, was maddened by the look and
all it brought him, and turning to conceal his anger, wandered away to
the piano, humming an air.
“Come, Emily, we must go home, for it’s getting late,” said Harrington;
“so sing us that sweet song of Körner’s—the ‘Good Night’ song—to sooth us
to dreams.”
Emily smiled with superb languor, and half-reluctant, for she was not in
a songful mood, swept over to the piano, looking steadily as she advanced
at Wentworth, who was leaning carelessly against the instrument, and
regarding her with stern eyes.
“I believe,” said she, listlessly, as she sunk upon the music-stool, and
with a parting glance of cold hauteur dropped her eyes from the steady
gaze of Wentworth, “I believe that the piano is out of tune.”
“Do you know why, Miss Ames?” asked Wentworth suddenly, in a voice at
once so quiet and so marked that both Muriel and Harrington looked at him.
“Because,” he said with bitter and terrible significance, a scowl
darkening his features—“because it has been played upon!”
Muriel and Harrington started with a low exclamation, and glanced first
at Wentworth, and then at Emily, with mute amazement. A smile arose on
Wentworth’s face, and mingled with his scowl, as he slowly walked away.
Emily rose from her seat, and gazed after him, her form dilated to its
full height, her bosom heaving, and her face and neck suffused with an
indignant scarlet glow. Turning, Wentworth looked haughtily at her for
a moment, and then, utterly reckless, with heart and brain on fire,
laughed a bitter and scornful laugh, and moved toward the parlor door.
Emily’s lip quivered, her color faded to pallor, and bursting into a
passionate flood of tears, she covered her face with her hands, and swept
by the other door from the room.
Muriel and Harrington had stood transfixed with astonishment up to this
moment, but as they saw both Emily and Wentworth leave the parlor, they
recovered with a start.
“Stay, Wentworth,” cried Harrington, rushing to the door, and “Emily,
Emily,” cried Muriel, flying after her friend.
But Harrington reached the hall, just as the front door slammed at the
heels of Wentworth, and tearing it open, he beheld him running up the
street like a madman, while Muriel, bounding up-stairs after Emily, saw
her vanish into her chamber, and heard the lock of her door click behind
her.
Both returned to the parlor at the same moment, and advancing toward
each other, pale, agitated, and almost petrified with wonder at the
lightning-like suddenness and inexplicable character of this incident,
gazed into each other’s faces. The affair was like a flash on a dark
landscape, giving a vague glimpse of some mysterious form there, and
vanishing before its nature was revealed.
“Good Heavens, John! what does this mean?” exclaimed Muriel, breaking the
lonely stillness of the lighted parlor.
“I do not know,” he murmured, vacantly gazing at her. “Is Richard mad?”
She put her hands to her bosom to repress its throbbings, and sank into a
large chair near her. Both were silent for some minutes, each trying to
think, with a whirling brain, what this could possibly mean.
“What a singular day this has been!” murmured Harrington at length, as
behind this last incident the tableau of its many-passioned hours rose in
his mind.
“Singular, indeed!” replied Muriel, in a low voice, “and how singularly
and sadly it ends!”
“Not so,” he replied with sweet gravity. “Let it end in our good night,
which is always happy with affection and peace. We will dismiss this
scene, Muriel. To-morrow we can think more clearly, and we will know its
meaning. Meanwhile, good night.”
She rose from her seat, and they came toward each other with outstretched
hands. It was strange, but for the first time in all their long
acquaintance, their hands passed each other, his arms encircled her, and
hers rested on his, with her hands upon his shoulders. A trance seemed to
glide upon them. The lighted room was very still; the sad wind sighed in
the hush around the dwelling; and gazing into each other’s faces, with a
vague thrill remotely stirring in the peace of their spirits, they stood
motionless, as in a dream.
Thus for a little while, which seemed long, lasted their communion.
Earthly cares and hopes forgotten, earthly strifes removed and dim, and
the sorrow of their hopeless love so chastened and sanctified in the
nobleness of mutual sacrifice that it knew no touch of pain.
A long, mysterious sigh of the night-wind breathed around the dwelling,
and stole into the peace of their minds. Harrington smiled, and his heart
rose in benediction as he silently laid his hands upon the fair and
sacred head of his beloved.
“The night deepens on, Muriel, and we must part,” he gently murmured.
“Yes, we must part,” she answered, in a low tone, “and our parting
to-night seems like a type of the greater parting.”
“To me the same,” he murmured, in a rapt voice. “Never before has it
seemed so like parting forever. I might feel thus when passing through
the dusks of death, with the dream of all earth’s sweet and vanished
hours fading in visions of the life to come.”
There was a long pause, in which the cadence of his words seemed to
linger like the ghost of music on the air.
“But we shall meet there,” she said. “We who have passed so many holy
and poetic hours here—we shall meet there. The earthly ‘good-night’ is
but the prelude to ‘good-morning.’ So shall the last farewell of earth
prelude the heavenly greeting.”
“Yes, we shall meet there,” he murmured. “Have we not met there
already—friends, true and loving, dwellers in Heaven’s happy star!
Who shall gainsay the alchemist who wrote that ‘Heaven hath in it this
scene of earth.’ The true life is there, and our existence here is but
a fleeting hour of absence from our heavenly home. Yes, we shall meet
there, reclothed with the divine memory, and keeping the memory of all we
wrought and were on earth, that earth might fulfill the large purposes of
God—meet there, old friends, true and loving, changed, and yet the same.”
Again there was a pause of trancing silence, filled with the floating
ghost of visionary music, keeping the sweet tradition of his words, and
telling to the soul what music tells. Again around the lonely dwelling
swelled the wind’s mysterious eolian sigh, rising in inarticulate wild
prophecies, and wailing sombrely away.
“Good night, good night,” he softly murmured, with a movement of
departure.
“Good night,” she answered, in a low and fervent voice, “friend, true and
loving, good night.”
A sense of heavenly tenderness rose trembling in their souls, and with
meeting lips they were clasped in each other’s arms. Oh, solemn ecstasy
of prayer and peace! Oh, mystic passion of a veiled true love!
Was it a dream? She was alone. Standing in the solitary room, her brow
bent upon her hand, the dim sweetness of the vision in her mind, she
floated away in vague, delicious reverie. Soft light fled pulsing through
her spirit; a sacred and passionless perfume floated in her brain; a
celestial tenderness tranced her soul. He loved another; his love for her
was the love of friend for friend—no more; but she was happier, holier,
nobler to have inspired such love, and stronger than ever to resign him
now, and to live her life alone. So thinking, like one lost in a blissful
dream, she glided away to her pillow.
Was it a dream? How strangely sweet and vague! He was wandering
noiselessly down the shadowy street in the wan moonlight, with the cold
air blowing on his cheek, as void of coldness as though he had been
a phantom, and not a man. When had he left her—how? but his thoughts
recalled only the peaceful passion of that moment, and between the
lighted room and the moonlit street, there was a blank chasm. Dear
moment, never to come again, dear magic flower that bloomed in the sad
garden of his love, never to be renewed, yet sweetening life and life’s
submissive sacrifice forever. Dear friend, true friend and sweet, whose
clasp, whose sacred kiss—the first, the last—gave tokens of no earthly
love, but rich memorials and previsions of the love that makes the hills
of heaven more fair! So ran the voiceless music of his thought, while
memory kept the phantom form of the beloved one in visioned light and
odor. To-morrow he would meet her, and the day after, and on for many a
day through months and years to come, but never again on the height of
the ideal and intimate communion where their spirits had met and said
farewell. Years hence, and she a happy wife and mother, how softly this
hour would glide from the innermost holiest cloister of memory, and lend
a more pensive and tender grace to her beauty, and shed a finer and
more ethereal essence on her happiness! Consecrating her forever, its
consecration would rest on his own life, pledging him more firmly to
lofty and generous effort, and sanctifying all low toils and struggles as
with the presence of an angel.
Softly, and without noise, he entered his dark and silent house. A
moment, and he had lit his shaded lamp, and conscious of the sleepless
vigil in his mind, he opened the volume which held for him the rich lore
of Verulam, his unfailing pleasure, and the comfort of his saddest hours,
and sat down to read the night away. Within all was still. Without, the
wind swept drearily through the wan and shadowy street around the silent
dwelling, the lilac odors had died, and the pale moonlight shone with the
blue glimmer of swords.