medium for the removal of impressions so unlike the results of our
natural consciousness, Rachel Grierson found herself again among the
bustling crowds of the High Street. Nor could she view these busy people
in the light by which she saw them before entering the little dark room
of the philosopher. Though she did not know the classical word, she
looked upon them as so many _automata_; and the long chain of causes
came into her mind so vividly, that she found herself repeating the very
words of Paul. Then there was the reference to her own individual fate;
and was it not through the self-medium she saw all these people in so
strange a light?--with Hope's lamp dashed down at her feet, and
extinguished at the very moment when, by the communication of her
father, she thought she had the means of recruiting it with a store of
oil never to be exhausted till possession was accomplished. Still under
these impressions, she came to the door of Mr. Ainslie's house. There
were sounds of mirth and music coming from within; and so plastic is the
mind when under a deep and engrossing feeling, that she found no
difficulty in concentrating and modifying these sounds into joyful
articulations from the very mouths of Walter Grierson and Agnes Ainslie
themselves. Such are the moral echoes which respond to, because they are
formed by the suspicions of, disappointed love. No longer for the moment
were Paul's thoughts true. These happy beings inside were happy because
they had the hearts and the wills to enjoy; but she could draw no
conclusion that she herself could dispose her mind for the acceptance of
the world's pleasures also when her gloom should be away among the
shadows, and nature's innumerable enjoyments placed within her power.
Yet, withal, she could execute her commission, and upon the door being
opened, she could enter in the very face of that mirth of which she
fancied herself the victim.
On being shown into a parlour, she was presently waited upon by Mr.
Ainslie, who seemed to her to have come from the scene of enjoyment in
the drawing-room. She could even fancy that he eyed her as in some way
standing in the path of his daughter's expectations through Walter--a
fancy which of course would gain strength from the somewhat excited
manner in which he received the words of her commission, to the effect
that he would repair the next forenoon to the house of the
merchant-burgess, for the purpose of preparing his last will and
testament. The notary agreed to attend, and thus, still construing
appearances according to the assimilating bent of her mind, she departed
for home. After going through the routine of her domestic duties, and
caring for her invalid father, she retired to bed--that place of
so-called rest, where mortals chew the cud of the thoughts of the day or
of years. And how unlike the two processes, the physical and the
mental!--in the one is brought up for a second enjoyment the green grass
of nature, still fresh and palatable and nutritious; in the other, the
seared leaves of memory, feeding unavailing regrets, and filling the
microcosm with phantoms and dire shapes of evil, the types whereof never
had an existence in the outer world. Walter Grierson was lost to her for
ever, and the dire energies of fate, as described by the
artist-philosopher, seemed to hang over her, claiming, in harsh tones,
her will as a mere instrument in the working out of her own destiny.
Next day Mr. Ainslie called, and was for a long time closeted with Mr.
Grierson; but so careless was she now of the fortune about being left to
her, and which she was satisfied would not now be a means of showing her
affection for Walter, that she felt little interest in an affair which
otherwise might have appeared of so much importance to her. Her
attention was, notwithstanding, claimed by an incident. After the
interview, the notary visited Walter Grierson in his room, where the
young man seemed to have been waiting for him. In ordinary circumstances
it might have appeared strange that a man of business, bound to secrecy,
would divulge the terms of a will to any one, but far more that he
should take means for apprising a nephew that he was deprived of any
share of his uncle's means. Nor could she account for this interview on
any other supposition than that Mr. Ainslie knew of the intentions of
Walter towards his daughter, and that he took this early opportunity of
intimating that a disinherited young man, of the grade of a merchant's
clerk, would not, as a son-in-law, suit the expectations of an ambitious
writer. Yet out of this interview there came to, if not drawn by, her
fancy a glimmer of hope, inasmuch as, if the young man were rejected by
the notary in consequence of the ban of disinheritance, he would be left
to the attractions of her wealth; but this supposition involved the
assumption that her triumph would be over a mind that was mercenary, and
not over a heart predisposed to love; nay, her generosity revolted at
the thought of gratifying her long-concealed passion at the expense of
the sacrificed love of another. That other, too, had a better right to
the object than she herself, in so far that Agnes Ainslie's love had
been returned, while hers had not. But these speculations were to be
brought to the test by words and actions.
No sooner had Mr. Ainslie left than Rachel was visited in her private
parlour by Walter Grierson himself. He had seldom taken that liberty
before, for her secret passion had been ruled by a stern virtue. A
natural shyness, remote from coyness, demanded the conciliation of
respect, though ready at a moment to pass into the generosity of
confidence where she was certain of a return; but his presence before
her might have been accounted for by his appearance, which was that of
one whose excitement was only attempted to be overborne by an effort--a
result more mechanical than spiritual. His manner, not less than his
countenance, composed to gravity, was belied by the tremulous light of
his eye; and as he seized her hand and pressed it fervently, she could
feel that his trembled more than her own. Her manner was also
embarrassed, as it well might be, where so many conflicting feelings,
some revived from old memories, and some produced by the singular events
of the day and hour, agitated her frame.
"I am going to surprise you, cousin," he said, while he fixed his eye
upon her, as if to watch the effect of his words.
Rachel forgot for a moment the philosophy of Paul--why should one be
surprised when the thing that is to be is a result of a change in
something else as old as Aldebaran, let alone "the sun and the seven
stars?" She was indeed prepared for a surprise.
"It is just the old story of the heart," he resumed. "Our intercourse
began so early, and partook so much of that of mere relations, that I
never could tell when the mere social feeling gave place to another
which I need not mention. You know, Rachel, what I mean."
She was silent because she was distrustful, yet her heart beat bravely
in spite of her efforts; for was not this man the object of her love,
and is not love moved with an eloquence which makes reason ashamed of
her poor figures and modes?
"Yes," he went on, "I take it for granted that you know I am only
labouring towards a confession. Yes, dear heart, for years I have
considered you as the one sole object in all this world of fair visions
formed to make me happy. You see I cannot get out of the ordinary mode
of speech. The lover is fated to adjure, to praise, and to petition
always in the same set form of words; yet is not the confession enough?"
"So far," said she; "but I have never seen any evidence of all this;" as
if she wanted more in the same strain--sweet to the ear, though
distrusted by the reason.
"No more you have," he continued, "yet you know that love is often
suspicious of itself. I have watched with my eye your movements and
attitudes when you thought I was not observing you. My ear has followed
your voice through adjoining rooms when you thought I was listening to
other sounds. I have admired your words, without venturing the response
of admiration. Often I have wished to fold you in my arms when you
dreamt nothing of my inward thoughts. In short, Rachel, I have loved you
for years! Yes, I have enjoyed, or suffered, this gloating, yea,
delightful misery of the heart when it feeds upon its own secret
treasures, and trembles at the test which might dissolve the dream."
"And why this suppression and secrecy, Walter?" she asked. "How could
you know," she continued, as she held down her head, "that I would be
adverse to your wishes; nay, that I was not even in the same condition
as yourself?"
"Surely you do not mean to say that?" he cried, with something like the
rapture of one relieved by pleasure from pain. "I am not worthy even of
the suspicion that you speak according to the bidding of your heart.
Have I not watched your looks, and penetrated into your eyes, to
ascertain whether I might venture to know my fate, and yet never could
discover even the symptom of a return; and then was I not under a
conviction that your affections were engaged elsewhere?"
"Where?" asked Rachel, with a look of surprise.
"We are apparently drifting into confessions," responded he. "I may say
that I never could construe your visits to Paul, the ingenious artist,
merely as dictated by admiration of his wonderful genius."
"You do not know that Paul is the son of my mother's sister," replied
she. "Your uncle knows; but there may be reasons why you don't."
"Then I am relieved," was the lover's ejaculation, in a tone as if he
had got quit of a great burden.
"Yes, that is the truth," continued she; "but I also confess that I have
been attracted to his small dark workshop by the exquisite curiosities
of art on which he is so often engaged, and which, by occupying so much
of his time, keep him poor. It was only yesterday I saw on his bench a
locket which seems to transcend all his prior efforts."
The young man smiled and nodded. What could he mean? Why was he not
dumbfoundered?
"It is in the shape of a heart," she continued; "and upon touching a
spring there fly up two tiny figures, which, with fluttering wings, seem
to devour each other with kisses."
Words which forced themselves out of her in spite of her shyness, but
which she could not follow up by more than a side-look at her admirer.
"And upon which," said he, still smiling, "there is engraven the
inscription, 'From Walter Grierson to Agnes Ainslie.'"
"Yes," sighed Rachel, "the very words. I read them again and again, and
could scarcely believe my eyes."
"And well you might not," said he; "but your simple heart has never yet
informed you that love finds out strange inventions. I have been guilty
of a _ruse d'amour_, for which I beg your pardon. Knowing that you were
in the habit of visiting Paul's workroom, and seeing all the work of his
cunning fingers, I got him to make the locket out of a piece of gold I
got from my uncle, and the inscription was,"--and here he paused as if
to watch her expression,--"yes, designed, to quicken your affection for
me by awakening jealousy. I confess it. Agnes Ainslie was and is nothing
to me; and I used her name merely because I thought that you would view
her as a likely rival."
"Can all this be true?" muttered Rachel to herself, as the wish to
believe was pursued by the doubt which revolted against a departure from
all natural and rational actions.
Perhaps she was not versed in the ways of the world; but whether so or
not, the difference in effect would have been small; for what man,
beloved by a woman, ever yet pled his cause before his mistress without
other than a wise man for his client?
"And if it is your wish, my dear Rachel," he continued, "the inscription
shall be erased, and replaced by the name of Rachel Grierson. What say
you?"
His hand was held out for that acceptance which betokened consent. It
was accepted; yes, and more, His arms were next moment around her waist;
the heart of the yielding girl beat rarely, the wistful face was turned
up as even courting his eyes, the kiss was impressed;--why, more, Rachel
Grierson was surely Walter Grierson's, and he was hers, and surely to be
for ever in this world.
Rachel was now in that state of mind when the pleasantness of a
contemplated object excludes any inquiry whether it is true or false,
good or evil; and, in spite of Paul's fatalism, she was satisfied that
it was with Walter's own free will that he had done what he had done,
and said what he had said. The changed inscription on the locket, and
the delivery of that pledge to her, would complete the vowing of the
troth whereby she was to become his wife. Entirely ignorant of what had
taken place between the nephew and the uncle, by means of which she
might have been able to analyze his conduct, she had only the closeting
of Mr. Ainslie and Walter to suggest to her that the young man's sudden
declaration was the result of his knowledge that she was to be sole
heiress. The heart that is under the influence of love, as we have
hinted, is too credulous to the tongue of the lover to doubt the
sincerity of his professions. So all appeared well. The motives in
action were adequate to the will of the parties who used them; and as
she felt that her love was in the power of herself, so she could not
doubt that Walter's affection was the result of his approval of her good
qualities. Paul was now no longer an oracle. She would be pleased to
have an opportunity of showing him that his genius lay more in his
fingers than in his head. She had now, however, something else to do.
She went to her father's room. He was in one of those reveries to which,
as we have said, all the thinking of the extremely aged is reduced, when
the world and its figures of men and women, its strange oscillations and
changes, its passions, pleasures, and pains, seem as made remote by the
intervention of a long space--dim, shadowy, and ghost-like. It is one of
the stages through which the long-living must pass, and, like all the
other experiences of life, it is true only to one's self--it cannot be
communicated by words. "Old memories are spectres that do seem to chase
the soul out of the world,"--an old quotation which may be admitted
without embracing the metaphysical paradox, that "subjective thought is
the poison of life," or conceding the sharp sneer of the cynic--
"Know, ye who for your pleasures gape,
Man's life at best is but a scrape."
But the entry of his daughter brought the old man back to the margin of
real living existences. He held out his hand to her, and smiled in the
face that was dear to him, as if for a moment he rejoiced in the
experience of a feeling which connected him with breathing flesh and
blood. The object of her visit was soon explained. Whispering in his
ear, as if she were afraid of the sound of her own words, she told him
that Walter had promised her a love-token, and that she wished to give
him one in return, for which purpose she desired that she might be
permitted to use one or two old "Spanish ounces" that lay in the old
bureau.
"Yes, yes, dear child," said he. "Get a golden heart made of them. It
will be an emblem of the true heart you have to give him, and a pledge
to boot." Then, falling into one of his reveries, in which his mind
seemed occupied by some strong feeling--"I am thus reminded," he
continued, "of the old song you used to sing. There is a verse which I
hope will never be applicable to you as it was to me. I wish to hear it
for the last time," he added, with a languid smile, "in consideration of
the ounces."
Rachel knew the verse, because she had formerly noticed that it moved
some chord in his memory connected with an old love affair in which his
heart had been scathed; but she hesitated, for the meaning it conveyed
was dowie and ominous.
"Come, come," said he, "the fate will never be yours."
She complied, yet it was with a trembling voice. The tune is at best but
a sweet wail, and there was a misgiving of the heart which imparted the
thrilling effect of a gipsy's farewell--
"If I had wist ere I had kisst,
That true love was so ill to win,
I'd have lock'd my heart in some secret part,
And bound it with a silver pin."
"Now you may take the ounces," said he with a sigh. "The verse has more
meaning to me than you wot off, and surely, I hope, less to you."
And having thus gratified his whim--if that could be called a whim which
was a desire to have repeated to him a sentiment once to him, as he
hinted, a reality connected with the young heart when it was lusty, and
his pulse strong and thick with the blood of young life--- she went to
the bureau, and, taking three of the ounces, she left the room. In the
gloaming, she was again on her way to Paul's workshop, where she found
the artist, as usual, with his head bent over the bright desk on the
bench, engaged in some of his fanciful creations. Having seated herself
in the chair where she had so often sat, she commenced her story of the
circumstances of the day,--how Walter Grierson had acted and spoken to
her; how he had accounted for the locket and inscription; how he
intended to change the latter, and substitute her name for that of Agnes
Ainslie; how he had sought her love, and succeeded in his seeking; how
she was satisfied that he was sincere in his professions; and how she
had got the ounces from her father to make a love-token, to give in
exchange for Walter's. All which Paul listened to with deep attention,
now and then a faint smile passing over his delicate face, and followed
by the old pensive expression which was peculiar to one so deeply imbued
with the conviction that he was an organism in nature's plan, acted upon
to fulfil a fate of which he could know nothing.
"And so the powers work," said he, as he looked in the hopeful face of
his friend. "You are now happy, Rachel, because you believe what Walter
has said to you, and you have no power over your belief. But," he
continued, after a moment or two's silence, "I _may_ have power over
you, but not over myself. Walter Grierson has told you a falsehood, and
his motive for it is adequate to his nature. Since he gave me the order
for the locket, he has learnt that you are to inherit the whole fortune
of your father, on the condition that you are to marry him; and his love
for Agnes has been overborne by another feeling--the desire to possess
your wealth. Neither the one nor the other of these feelings could he
manufacture, or even modify, any more than he could charm the winds into
silence, or send Jove's bolt back to its thunder-cloud; and now, look
you, his game is this: if you succeed to the money, he will marry
without loving you; if not, he will marry the woman he loves--Agnes
Ainslie."
"You alarm me, Paul," said she, involuntarily holding forth her arms, as
if she would have stopped his speech.
"And you cannot help your alarm," said he calmly; "neither can I help
_not_ being alarmed by your alarm."
"Oh, you trifle with my feelings," she cried, with a kind of wail.
"What have all these strange thoughts to do with this situation in which
I am placed? Even though all things are pre-ordained, neither of us can
be absolved from doing our duty to God and ourselves."
"Absolved!" echoed Paul. "Why, Rachel, look you, we are forced to do it,
or not to do it, precisely as the motive culminates into action, but we
are not sensible of the compulsion; and so am I under the necessity to
tell you that Walter Grierson is playing false with you, according to
the inexorable law of his nature. It is not an hour yet since Agnes
Ainslie called here with some old trinkets, and requested me to make a
ring out of them; nor was I left without the means of understanding that
it was to be given in exchange for the locket."
"Is it possible?" cried she. "And can it be that I am deceived, and that
secret powers are working my ruin?"
"Not necessarily your ruin," said he; "no mortal knows the birth of the
next moment. The womb of fate is never empty; but no man shall dare to
say what is in it till the issue of every moment proves itself. Nor does
all this take away hope, for hope is in the ancient decree, like all the
other evolutions of time, including that hope's being deferred till the
heart grows sick; and," he added, as he looked sorrowfully into her
face, "that is the fate of mine, for, know you, Rachel Grierson, I have
long loved you, and have now seen that the riches you are to inherit put
you beyond the sphere of my ambition. I have often wished--pardon me
Rachel--yes, I have often wished you might be left a beggar, that I
might have the privilege of using the invention with which I am gifted
to astonish the world by my handiwork, and bring wealth to her I loved."
"I am surrounded on all sides by difficulties," sighed the young woman,
as she seemed to find herself in the mazes of an unseen destiny. As she
looked at her cousin, she thought that one of her evils was that the
capture of her affections so early by Walter had prevented her from
viewing Paul in any other light than that of an ingenious artist, and a
man of kindly sympathies, however much he was separated from mankind by
a theory of the world too esoteric for ordinary thought, and which yet,
at some time of man's life, forces its way amidst palpitations of fear
to every heart.
On reaching home she met there the notary, Mr. Ainslie, who informed
her, probably at the request of her father (for information of that kind
is seldom given gratuitously), that the will had been signed, and left
in the possession of the old man. Even this communication, so calculated
to shake from the heart so many of the sorrows of life, had no greater
effect upon her generous nature than to increase the responsibility of
fulfilling the condition upon which the inheritance was to be received
and held. If she had not been under the effect of an early prepossession
in favour of Walter, she might have doubted the sincerity of his
statement, as it came from his own mouth. Suspicion attached to every
word of it; but after the communication made by Paul, it was scarcely
possible for her to resist the conclusion that he had told her a
falsehood, and that he was aiming at the fortune, without the power or
the inclination to give her in return his love; nay, that he was
heartlessly sacrificing to his passion for gold two parties--the object
of his real love, and that of his feigned. Yet she did not resist that
conclusion; and so good an analyst was she of her own mind, that even
when in the very act of throwing away these suspicions of his honesty,
she knew in her soul that her love was in successful conflict with an
array of evidence establishing the fact which she disregarded. Then the
consciousness of this inability to cease loving the man whom she could
hardly doubt to be a liar, as well as heartless and mercenary, brought
up to her the strange theory of Paul. The motive which no man or woman
could make or even modify, was the prime spring as well as ruler of the
will, cropping out, to use his own words, from moral, if not also
physical causes, laid when God said, "Let there be light, and there was
light." A deeper thinker than most of her sex, she felt "the sublimity
in terror" of this view of God's ways with man. If she could not resist
the resolution to love Walter, how could he resist the love he bore to
another? The thought shook her to the heart; nor was she less pained
when she reflected on the hapless Paul, with his long-concealed
affection, so pure from the sordidness of a desire for money, that he
would have toiled for her under the flame of the midnight lamp,
continued into the light of the rising sun.
During the night the persistency of her resolution to remain by her past
affection was maintained; yet as it was still merely a persistency
implying the continuance of a foe ready to assert the old rights, she
was so far unhappy that she wanted that composure of mind which consists
in the absence of conflict among one's own thoughts.