And so Leonard stood beside his friend's mortal clay, and watched,
in the ineffable smile of death, the last gleam which the soul had
left there; and so, after a time, he crept back to the adjoining
room with a step as noiseless as if he had feared to disturb the
dead. Wearied as he was with watching, he had no thought of sleep.
He sate himself down by the little table, and leaned his face on his
hand, musing sorrowfully. Thus time passed. He heard the clock from
below strike the hours. In the house of death the sound of a clock
becomes so solemn. The soul that we miss has gone so far beyond the
reach of time! A cold, superstitious awe gradually stole over the
young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes with a start, half
scornful, half defying. The moon was gone--the gray, comfortless
dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw, chilling
light through the open doorway, into the death-room. And there, near
the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, weeping low,
and watching still. He returned to say a word of comfort--she
pressed his hand, but waved him away. He understood. She did not
wish for other comfort than her quiet relief of tears. Again, he
returned to his own chamber, and his eyes this time fell upon the
papers which he had hitherto disregarded. What made his heart stand
still, and the blood then rush so quickly through his veins? Why did
he seize upon those papers with so tremulous a hand--then lay them
down--pause, as if to nerve himself--and look so eagerly again? He
recognized the handwriting--those fair, clear characters--so
peculiar in their woman-like delicacy and grace--the same as in the
wild, pathetic poems, the sight of which had made an era in his
boyhood. From these pages the image of the mysterious Nora rose once
more before him. He felt that he was with a mother. He went back,
and closed the door gently, as if with a jealous piety, to exclude
each ruder shadow from the world of spirits, and be alone with that
mournful ghost. For a thought written in warm, sunny life, and then
suddenly rising up to us, when the hand that traced, and the heart
that cherished it, are dust, is verily as a ghost. It is a likeness
struck off of the fond human being, and surviving it. Far more
truthful than bust or portrait, it bids us see the tear flow, and
the pulse beat. What ghost can the church-yard yield to us like the
writing of the dead?
The bulk of the papers had been once lightly sewn to each
other--they had come undone, perhaps in Burley's rude hands; but
their order was easily apparent. Leonard soon saw that they formed a
kind of journal--not, indeed, a regular diary, nor always relating
to the things of the day. There were gaps in time--no attempt at
successive narrative. Sometimes, instead of prose, a hasty burst of
verse, gushing evidently from the heart--sometimes all narrative was
left untold, and yet, as it were, epitomized, by a single burning
line--a single exclamation--of woe, or joy! Everywhere you saw
records of a nature exquisitely susceptible; and where genius
appeared, it was so artless, that you did not call it genius, but
emotion. At the outset the writer did not speak of herself in the
first person. The MS. opened with descriptions and short dialogues,
carried on by persons to whose names only initial letters were
assigned, all written in a style of simple, innocent freshness, and
breathing of purity and happiness, like a dawn of spring. Two young
persons, humbly born--a youth and a girl--the last still in
childhood, each chiefly self-taught, are wandering on Sabbath
evenings among green dewy fields, near the busy town, in which labor
awhile is still. Few words pass between them. You see at once,
though the writer does not mean to convey it, how far beyond the
scope of her male companion flies the heavenward imagination of the
girl. It is he who questions--it is she who answers; and soon there
steals upon you, as you read, the conviction that the youth loves
the girl, and loves in vain. All in this writing, though terse, is
so truthful! Leonard, in the youth, already recognizes the rude,
imperfect scholar--the village bard--Mark Fairfield. Then, there is
a gap in description--but there are short weighty sentences, which
show deepening thought, increasing years, in the writer. And though
the innocence remains, the happiness begins to be less vivid on the
page.
Now, insensibly, Leonard finds that there is a new phase in the
writer's existence. Scenes, no longer of humble work-day rural life,
surround her. And a fairer and more dazzling image succeeds to the
companion of the Sabbath eves. This image Nora evidently loves to
paint--it is akin to her own genius--it captivates her fancy--it is
an image that she (inborn artist, and conscious of her art) feels to
belong to a brighter and higher school of the Beautiful. And yet the
virgin's heart is not awakened--no trace of the heart yet there. The
new image thus introduced is one of her own years, perhaps; nay, it
may be younger still--for it is a boy that is described, with his
profuse fair curls, and eyes new to grief, and confronting the sun
as a young eagle's; with veins so full of the wine of life, that
they overflow into every joyous whim; with nerves quiveringly alive
to the desire of glory; with the frank generous nature rash in its
laughing scorn of the world, which it has not tried. Who was this
boy, it perplexed Leonard. He feared to guess. Soon, less told than
implied, you saw that this companionship, however it chanced, brings
fear and pain on the writer. Again (as before), with Mark Fairfield,
there is love on the one side and not on the other; with her there
is affectionate, almost sisterly, interest, admiration,
gratitude--but a something of pride or of terror that keeps back
love.
Here Leonard's interest grew intense. Were there touches by which
conjecture grew certainty; and he recognized, through the lapse of
years, the boy lover in his own generous benefactor?
Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the suit of an ardent
impassioned nature, and the simple wonder and strange alarm of a
listener who pitied but could not sympathize. Some great worldly
distinction of rank between the two became visible--that distinction
seemed to arm the virtue and steel the affections of the lowlier
born. Then a few sentences, half blotted out with tears, told of
wounded and humbled feelings--some one invested with authority, as
if the suitor's parent, had interfered, questioned, reproached,
counseled. And it was now evident that the suit was not one that
dishonored;--it wooed to flight, but still to marriage.
And now these sentences grew briefer still, as with the decision of
a strong resolve. And to these there followed a passage so
exquisite, that Leonard wept unconsciously as he read. It was the
description of a visit spent at home previous to some sorrowful
departure. There rose up the glimpse of a proud and vain, but a
tender wistful mother--of a father's fonder but less thoughtful
love. And then came a quiet soothing scene between the girl and her
first village lover, ending thus--"So she put M's hand into her
sister's, and said: 'You loved me through the fancy, love her with
the heart,' and left them comprehending each other, and betrothed."
Leonard sighed. He understood now how Mark Fairfield saw in the
homely features of his unlettered wife the reflection of the
sister's soul and face.
A few words told the final parting--words that were a picture.
The long friendless highway, stretching on--on--toward the
remorseless city. And the doors of home opening on the desolate
thoroughfare--and the old pollard tree beside the threshold, with
the ravens wheeling round it and calling to their young. He too had
watched that threshold from the same desolate thoroughfare. He too
had heard the cry of the ravens. Then came some pages covered with
snatches of melancholy verse, or some reflections of dreamy gloom.
The writer was in London, in the house of some highborn
patroness--that friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of
society calls "companion." And she was looking on the bright storm
of the world as through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the
greenwood, she had need of song--it was her last link with freedom
and nature. The patroness seems to share in her apprehensions of the
boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers the fugitive had resisted: but
to fear lest the suitor should be degraded, not the one whom he
pursues--fears an alliance ill-suited to a highborn heir. And this
kind of fear stings the writer's pride, and she grows harsh in her
judgment of him who thus causes but pain where he proffers love.
Then there is a reference to some applicant for her hand, who is
pressed upon her choice. And she is told that it is her duty so to
choose, and thus deliver a noble family from a dread that endures so
long as her hand is free. And of this fear, and of this applicant,
there breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn. After this, the
narrative, to judge by the dates, pauses for days and weeks, as if
the writer had grown weary and listless--suddenly to reopen in a new
strain, eloquent with hopes, and with fears never known before. The
first person was abruptly assumed--it was the living "I" that now
breathed and moved along the lines. How was this? The woman was no
more a shadow and a secret unknown to herself. She had assumed the
intense and vivid sense of individual being. And love spoke loud in
the awakened human heart.
A personage not seen till then appeared on the page. And ever
afterward this personage was only named as "_He_," as if the one and
sole representative of all the myriads that walk the earth. The
first notice of this prominent character on the scene showed the
restless, agitated effect produced on the writer's imagination. He
was invested with a romance probably not his own. He was described
in contrast to the brilliant boy whose suit she had feared, pitied,
and now sought to shun--described with a grave and serious, but
gentle mein--a voice that imposed respect--an eye and lip that
showed collected dignity of will. Alas! the writer betrayed herself,
and the charm was in the contrast, not to the character of the
earlier lover, but her own. And now, leaving Leonard to explore and
guess his way through the gaps and chasms of the narrative, it is
time to place before the reader what the narrative alone will not
reveal to Leonard.