THE LAST CONTINUED, AFTER A BRIEF INTERVAL
After the long happy silence which followed Henry's recitation of his
verses, Angel at length spoke,--
"Shall I tell _you_ something now?" she said. "I'm almost ashamed to,
for I know you'll laugh at me, and call me superstitious."
"Go on, little child," said Henry.
"You remember the day," said Angel, in a hushed little impressive voice,
"I first saw you in father's office?"
Henry was able to remember it.
"Well, that was not the first time I had seen you."
"Really, Angel! Why didn't you tell me before? Where was it, then? In
the street, or where?"
"No, it was much stranger than that," said Angel. "Do you believe the
future can be foretold to us?"
"Oh, it was in a dream, you funny Angel; was that it?" said Henry,
whose rationalism at this period was the chief danger to his
imagination.
"No, not a dream. Something stranger than that."
"Oh, well, I give it up."
"It was like this," Angel continued; "there's a strange old gipsy woman
who lives near us--"
"Oh, I see, your hand--palmistry," said Henry, with a touch of gentle
impatience.
"Henry, dear, I said you would laugh at me. I won't tell you now, if
you're going to take it in that spirit."
Henry promptly locked up his reason for the moment, with apologies, and
professed himself open to conviction.
"Well, mother sometimes helps this poor old woman, and, one day, when
she happened to call, Alice and Edith and I were in the kitchen helping
mother. 'God bless you, lady,' she said,--you know how they
talk,--'you've got a kind heart; and how are all the young ladies? It's
time, I'm thinking, they had their fortunes told.' 'Oh, yes,' we all
said, 'tell us our fortunes, mother,'--we always called her mother.
'I'll tell you yours, my dear,' she said, taking hold of my hand. 'Your
fortunes are too young yet, ladies,' she said to Alice and Edith; 'come
to me in a year's time and, maybe, I'll tell you all about him.'"
"You dear!" said Henry, by way of interruption.
"Then," continued Angel, "she took me aside, and looked at my hand; and
she told me first what had happened to me, and then what was to come.
What she told me of the past"--as if dear Angel, whose life was as yet
all future, could as yet have had any past to speak of!--"was so true,
that I couldn't help half believing in what she said of the future. Now
you're laughing again!"
"No, indeed, I'm not," said Henry, perfectly solemn.
"She told me that just before I was twenty, I would meet a young man
with dark hair and blue eyes, very unexpectedly,--I shall be twenty in
six weeks,--and that he would be my fate. But the strangest is yet to
come. 'Would you like to see his face?' she said. She made me a little
frightened; but, of course, I said, 'Yes,' and then she brought out of
her pocket a sort of glass egg, and told me to look in it, and tell her
what I saw. So I looked, but for a long time I could see nothing; but
suddenly there seemed to be something moving in the centre of the glass,
like clouds breaking when the sun is coming out; and presently I could
see a lamp burning on a table; and then round the lamp shelves of books
began to grow out of the mist; then I saw a picture hanging in a recess,
a bowed head with a strange sort of head-dress on it, a dark thin face,
very sad-looking--"
"Why, that must have been my Dante!" said Henry, astonished in spite of
himself.
The exclamation was a "score" for Angel; and she continued, with greater
confidence, "And then I seemed to see some one sitting there; but,
though I tried and tried, I couldn't catch sight of his face. I told the
old woman what I saw. 'Wait a minute,' she said, 'then try again.' So I
waited, and presently tried again. This time I hadn't so long to wait
before I saw a room again; but it was quite different, a big desk ran
along in front of a window, and there were two tall office-stools. 'Why,
it's father's office,' I said. 'Go on looking,' said the old woman, 'and
tell me what you see.' In a moment or two, I saw some one sitting on
one of the stools, first dimly and then clearer and clearer. 'Why,' I
almost cried out, for I felt more and more frightened, 'I see a young
man sitting at a desk, with a pen behind his ear.' 'Can you see him
clearly?' 'Yes,' I said; 'he's got dark curly hair and blue eyes.'
'You're sure you won't forget his face? You'd know him if you saw him
again?' 'Indeed, I would,' I said. 'All right,' said the old woman, 'you
can give me back the crystal. You keep a look out for that young
man,--you will see him some day, mark my words, and that young man will
be your fate.'
"Now, surely, you won't deny that was strange, will you?" asked Angel,
in conclusion. "And I shall never forget the start it gave me that day
when I came in, quite unsuspecting, with your lunch-tray, and saw you
talking to father, with your pen behind your ear, and your blue eyes and
dark hair. Now, isn't it strange? How can one help being superstitious
after a thing like that?"
"Are you quite sure it was I?" Henry asked, quizzically. "It appears to
me that any presentable young man with a pen behind his ear would have
answered nearly enough to the vision. You would hardly have been quite
sure of the colour of the eyes, would you, now, if the old woman hadn't
mentioned it first, as she looked at your hand?"
"You are horrid!" said Angel; "I wish I hadn't told you now. But it
wasn't merely the colour of the eyes. It was the look in them."
"Look again, and see if you haven't made a mistake. Look very
carefully," said Henry.
"I won't," said Angel; "I think you're cruel."
"Angel, if you'll only look, and say you are quite sure, I'll believe
every word the old woman said."
At last Angel was persuaded to look, and to look again, and the old
woman's credit rose at each look.
"Yes, Henry, whatever happens, I know it is true. My life is in your
hands."
Those are solemn words for one human being to hear uttered by another;
and a shiver of new responsibility involuntarily ran through
Henry's veins.
"May the hands be always strong and clean enough to hold so precious a
gift," he answered, gravely.
"Are you sad, dear?" asked Angel, presently, with a sort of divination.
"Not sad, dear, but serious," he answered.
"Have I turned to a responsibility so soon?"
"You strange, wise child, I believe you are a witch."
"Oh, I was right then."
"Right in one way, but perhaps wrong in another. Don't you know that
some responsibilities are the most dearly coveted of mortal honours? But
then we shouldn't be worthy of them, if they didn't make us feel a
little serious. Can't you imagine that to hear another say that her life
is in one's hands makes one feel just a little solemn?"
"But isn't your life in mine, Henry?" asked Angel, simply.
"Of course it is, dear," answered Henry.
And then the moon began to rise through the trees, pouring enchantment
over the sleeping woods, and the meadows half-submerged in lakes
of mist.
Angel drew close to Henry, and watched it with big eyes.
"What a wonderful world it is! How beautiful and how sad!" she said,
half to herself.
"Yes; there is nothing in the world so sad as beauty," answered Henry.
"If only to-night could last forever! If only we could die now, sitting
just like this, with the moon rising yonder."
"But we shall have many nights like this together," said Henry.
"No; we shall never have this night again. We may have other wonderful
nights, but they will be different. This will never come again."
Henry instinctively realised that here was a mystical side to Angel's
nature which, however it might charm him, was not to be indiscriminately
encouraged, and he tried to rally her out of her sadness, but her
feeling was too much his own for him to persist; and as the moonlight
moved in its ascension from one beautiful change to another, now woven
by branches and leaves into weird tapestries of light and darkness, now
hanging like some golden fruit from the boughs, and now uplifted like a
lamp in some window of space, they sat together, alike held by the
ancient spell; and, presently, Henry so far lost himself in it as to
quote some lines entirely in Angel's mood:
"She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sov'ran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung."
"What wonderful lines!" said Angel; "who wrote them? Are they your own?"
"Ah, Angel, what would I give if they were! No, they are by John Keats.
You must let me give you his poems."
Presently, the moonlight began to lose its lustre. It grew pale, and, as
it were, anxious; dark billows of clouds threatened to swallow up its
silver coracle, and presently the world grew suddenly black with its
submergence, the woods and meadows disappeared, and Henry and Angel
began playfully to strike matches to see each other's faces. Thus they
suddenly flared up to each other out of the darkness, like Rembrandts
seen by lightning, and then they were lost again, and were only voices
fumbling for each other in the dark.
Yet, even so, lips and arms found each other without much difficulty,
and when they began to think of the last train, and fear they would miss
it, but waited for just one last good-night kiss under their sacred
tree, the world suddenly lit up again, for the moon had triumphed over
its enemies, and come out just in time to give them its blessing.