Chapter III.

Soon after these things, old Mr Gray fell ill of a violent cold,

which attacked him suddenly one afternoon on his return from his

office. It was Christmas weather then, and the cold and the frost

of the season were unusually keen, so that the physician, whom

Stephen called in to see his father, looked very grave and dubious;

and before many days of his patient's illness were past, he asked

the young man whether there were any brothers or sisters of his,

whom the merchant might wish to see. Stephen's heart beat fast

when he heard the ominous question, for he understood what tidings

the grave tone and the strange inquiry were meant to break to him,

and knew well that the physician who spoke was one of the wisest

and most skillful in London. But he answered as calmly as he could,

and talked of Maurice, and of the boy's fondness for his father,

and added, that if there were really imminent danger, he should

like his brother to be called home, because he was sure Maurice

would wish it; but that otherwise the voyage was tedious and the

need unimportant.

"Let him be sent for," said the physician. "There is just time."

So Stephen wrote to his brother, and bade him leave his wife with

her parents in India, and come home quickly, if he would see his

father again, for the time was short, and in those days the only

way open to Maurice was the long circuitous sea-route.

Maurice arrived only three days before the old man's death. He

had not left his wife behind him, as Stephen suggested, for she

loved her husband too dearly to be parted from him, and Maurice

brought her with him to his father's house.

From her place on the sofa by the window, Adelais Cameron looked

wearily out, watching for the coming of the one she loved most upon

earth. And at last the coach drew up at the old gentleman's gate,

and she saw Maurice dismount from the box-seat by the driver and

open the coach door to hand out a handsome lady, with dark hair

and bright glowing eyes.

"Who is that?" she asked of the maid, who was arranging the tea-table

beside her.

"Don't you know, Miss?" said the girl, surprised at the inquiry.

"That's Mrs Maurice, the rich young lady he married in India a year

ago; I was told all about it by the cook at Mr. Gray's, ever-so-

long ago."

But as the words were spoken, Stephen entered the room with a message

for Philip Cameron, and overheard both the question and the answer.

Adelais turned towards him and said, "Stephen, you never told me

that Maurice had a wife."

The next week they buried the old wine merchant very quietly and

simply. Only three mourners attended the funeral,--Stephen and

Maurice and Philip Cameron; but Adelais, looking down on them from

her casement corner, as the coffin was carried forth from the house,

laid her golden head on her aunt's bosom and cried, "Auntie, auntie,

I never thought to live so long as this! Why must those always

die who are needed most, while such as I live on from year to year?

I fancied I had only a few weeks left me upon earth when we came

back to Kensington, and yet here I am still!"

Then after a little while the brothers parted once more; Maurice

and his wife went back to India, and Stephen was left alone, sole

successor to his father's business, and master of the old house.

But Adelais Cameron still lived on, like the shadow of her former

self, fading in the sunset of her womanhood, the beauty sapped out

from her white death-like face, and the glitter of youth and the

sweetness of hope quenched for ever in the depths of her luminous eyes.

Then when the days of mourning were over, Stephen came again to

Adelais, to renew the wooing of old times; for he said to himself,

"Now that Maurice is married, and my father dead, she may pity me,

seeing me so lone and desolate; and I may comfort her for the past,

and make her amends with my love, for the pain and the bitterness

that are gone by."

But when he knelt alone by the couch whereon Adelais lay, and held

her white blue-veined hands in his and told his errand, she turned

her face from him and wept sore, as women weep over the dead.

"Adelais, O Adelais," he cried in his despair, "Why will you refuse

me always? Don't you see my heart is breaking for love of you?

Come home with me and be my wife at last!"

But she made answer very sadly and slowly:--

"Stephen, ought the living and the dead to wed with one another?

God forbid that you in your youth and manhood should take to wife

such a death-like thing as I! Four years I have lain like this

waiting for the messenger to fetch me away, and now that at last

he is near at hand, shall I array myself in a bridal veil for a

face-cloth, and trailing skirts of silk or satin for a shroud?

Dear Stephen, don't talk to me any more about this,--we are brother

and sister still,--let nothing on earth break the sweetness of the

bond between us."

"Not so, Adelais," cried he, passionately; "you cannot, you must

not die yet! You do not know what love can do, you do not know

that love is stronger than death, and that where there is love like

mine death dare not come! There is nothing in all the world that

I will not do for your sake, nothing that I will leave undone to

save you, nothing that shall be too hard a condition for me to perform,

so that I may keep you with me still. Live, live my darling, my

beloved, and be my wife! Give me the right to take you with me,

my sweet; let us go together to Madeira, to Malta, to Sicily, where

the land is full of life, and the skies are warm, and the atmosphere

clear and pure. There is health there, Adelais, and youth, and

air to breathe such as one cannot find in this dull, misty, heavy

northern climate, and there you will grow well again, and we will

think no more about death and sickness. O my darling, my darling,

for God's sake refuse me no longer!"

She laid her thin transparent palm wearily over her left side, and

turned her calm eyes on the passionate straining face beside her.

"There is that here," she said, pressing her wounded heart more

tightly, "that I know already for the touch of the messenger's hand.

Already I count the time of my sojourn here, not by weeks nor even

by days,--the end has come so very, very near at last. How do I

know but that even now that messenger of whom I speak may be standing

in our presence,--even now, while you kneel here by my side and

talk to me of life and youth and health?"

"Adelais," pleaded the poor lover, hoarsely, "you deceive yourself,

my darling! Have you not often spoken before of dying, and yet

have lived on? O why should you die now and break my heart outright?"

"I feel a mist coming over me," she answered, "even as I speak with

you now. I hear a sound in my ears that is not of earth, the darkness

gathers before my face, the light quivers and fades, the night is

closing about me very fast. Stephen, Stephen, don't you see that

I am dying?"

He bowed his head over the damp colorless brow, and whispered:

"If it be so, my beloved, be as my wife yet, and die in my arms."

But while he uttered the words there came a change over her,--a

shadow into the sweet eyes and a sudden spasm of pain across the

white parted lips. Feebly and uncertainly she put out her hands

before her face, like one groping in the darkness, her golden head

drooped on his shoulder, and her breath came sharp and thick, with

the sound of approaching death. Stephen folded his arms about her

with a cry of agony, and pressed the poor quivering hands wildly

to his bosom, as though he would fain have held them there for ever.

"O God!" he groaned in his unutterable despair; "is there no hope,

no redemption, no retrieving of the past? Is this the bitter end

of all, and must I lose my darling so? O Adelais, Adelais, my beloved!"

But even as he spoke, the gathering shadow broke softly over all her

face, the sobbing, gasping breath ceased in the stillness of the

darkened room, the golden head fell lower,--lower yet upon the desolate

heart whose love had been so steadfast and so true; and Stephen

covered his face with the hands of the dead, and wept such tears

as men can only weep once in a lifetime,--tears that make brown

hairs grey and young men old.

Philip Cameron and his aunt did not stay long at Kensington. They

gave up the house to strangers, and went away to the Continent for

awhile, where they traveled about together, until the old lady grew

tired of wandering, and settled down with her maid in a little villa

near Geneva; and after that, Stephen heard no more of her nor of

Philip. But Stephen himself stayed on in the old house until he

grew old too, for he loved the place where Adelais had lived, and

could not bear to leave it for another. And every evening when he

came home from his office, he would sit alone at the window of his

study whence he could see across the garden into the little chamber

next door, the little chintz-curtained old-fashioned chamber where

she used to lie in her weakness years and years ago, where they two

had so often talked and read together, and where she had died at

last in his arms. But he never wept, thinking of these things now,

for he had grown into a little withered dried-up old man, and his

tears were dried up also, and instead of his passionate despair

and heart-breaking, had come the calm bitterness of eternal regret,

and a still voiceless longing for the time that every day drew nearer

and nearer, and for the coming of the messenger from the land that

is very far off.

But when Maurice came home once more to settle in England with his

handsome wife and his children, rich and happy and prosperous, he

would fain have taken some new house in London to share with his

twin brother, that they might live together; but Stephen would not.

Then when Maurice had reasoned and talked with him a long time in

vain, pleading by turns the love that had been between them long

ago, the loneliness of his brother's estate, and his own desire

that they should not separate now, he yielded the contest, and said

discontentedly,--

"Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor

of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine-

office. To what end do you plod there every day,--you who are

wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself?

Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an

owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the

neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you

may spend your days in happiness and comfort."

And the little old man shook his head and answered, "Nay, brother

Maurice, but I will go away from here to some country village where

I am not known, for I have toiled long and wearily all my life,

and I cannot rest in peace beside the mill where I have ground down

my life so many years. Do not trouble yourself about me, Maurice,

I shall find a home for myself."

Then they parted. Maurice and his family came to live in the big

house at Kensington, for they liked to be near London, and Stephen

sold his father's business to another merchant, and went away,

Maurice knew not whither, to bury himself and his lost life in

some far-off village, until by-and-by the messenger for whom he

had waited and yearned so long should come also for him, and the

day break and the shadows flee away."

Such, reader mine, is in substance the story that Dr. Peyton told me.

The words in which he related it I cannot of course quite remember

now, so I have put it into words of my own, and here and there I

have added somewhat to the dialogue. But the facts and the pathos

of the romance are not mine, nor his; they are true, actual realities,

such as no dressing of fiction can make more poetical or complete

in their sorrowful interest.

"It was a long history," said I, "for a dying man to tell."

"Yes," answered he. "And several times it was evident enough from

his quick-drawn breath and sudden pauses, that the recital wearied

and pained him. But he was so set upon telling, and I, Lizzie, I

confess, so much interested in hearing it, that I did not absolutely

hinder his fancy, but contented myself with warning him from time

to time not to overtask his strength. He always answered me that

he was quite strong, and liked to go on, for that it made him happy

even to talk once more about Adelais, and to tell me how beautiful

and sweet and patient she had been. It was close upon sunset when

he ended his story, and he begged me, that as his fashion was, he

might be lifted out of bed and carried to his armchair by the window,

to look, as he said, for the last time, at the going down of the sun.

So I called the housekeeper, and we did what he desired together,

and opened the green Venetian blinds of the casement, which had been

closed all the afternoon because of the heat. You remember, Lizzie,

what a wonderfully bright and beautiful sunset it was this evening?

Well, as we threw back the outer shutters, the radiant glory of

the sky poured into the room like a flood of transparent gold and

almost dazzled us, so that I fancied the sudden brilliancy would

be too much for his feeble sight, and I leaned hastily forward with

the intention of partly reclosing the blinds. But he signed to me

to let them be, so I relinquished my design, and sent the housekeeper

downstairs to prepare him his tea, which I thought he might like

to take sitting up in his chair by the window. I had no idea--doctor

though I am--that his end was so near as it proved to be; for

although certainly much exhausted and agitated with the exertion

of telling me his story, I did not then perceive any immediate cause

for apprehension. Still less did I understand that he was then

actually dying; on the contrary, I began to think that my first

impressions of his danger when I entered the room that afternoon

had been erroneous, and that the change I had observed in him might

possibly be an indication of temporary revival. At all events, I

fancied the cup of tea which was then being made ready, would be

of great use in stimulating and refreshing him after the weariness

caused by his long talk, and I promised myself that if I could only

persuade him to silence for the rest of the evening, he would be

none the worse for the recent gratification of his whim. We sat

some time by the open window, watching the sun as it sank lower and

lower into the golden-sheeted west, and some unconnected speculations

were straying through my mind about `the sea of glass mingled with

fire,' when the old man's words aroused me in the midst of my dreaming,

and the voice in which he spoke was so unusual and so soft that it

startled me.

"`Doctor,' he said, `I think I am dying.'

"I sprang from my seat and stood at his side in a moment, but before

the utterance had well passed from his lips, I perceived that it

was no mere invalid's fancy.

"'Thirty-five years ago,' he continued, speaking still in that new

unusual voice,--`thirty-five years ago this very selfsame day, my

Adelais died in my arms as the sun went down. Today, as the sun

goes down, I shall die also.'

"Surely," cried I, "this is a very singular incident! Does it not

seem so to you! This evening, then, was actually the anniversary

of poor Miss Cameron's death! How strange!"

"It certainly appeared so to me at first," he rejoined. "But when

my mind reverted to it afterwards, I thought it exceedingly probable

that his own knowledge of the fact had itself hastened his end,

for he had no doubt been long brooding over it, and maybe desired

that his death should occur that particular day and hour. In his

enfeebled condition, such a desire would have great physical effect;

I have known several similar cases. But however that may have been,

I of course have no certain means of deciding. I have already told

you, that immediately on my entering his chamber in the afternoon,

he expressed to me his conviction that tonight he should go to his

`long rest,' and in the certainty of that conviction, related to

me the story you have heard. But though it has been the necessary

lot of my calling to be present at so many deathbeds, I never before

witnessed a calmer or a more peaceful end than Stephen Gray's. In

his changed face, in his watchful eyes, in every placid feature

of his countenance, I beheld the quiet anticipation of that `long

rest' about which he had spoken so contentedly an hour or two since.

"He took no further heed of me whatever,--I doubt if he was even

aware of my presence. Wearily he laid his head back upon the white

pillows I had placed in the armchair behind him, folded his hands

together, and kept his eyes fixed steadfastly, and--I thought--even

reverently, upon the setting sun that was now fast sinking like a

globe of fire, towards the blue ridge of the Malvern hills, and

my heart beat violently as I saw it touch the topmost peak. While

I watched, there broke suddenly forth from between the low lines

of sunset cloud, a long ray of golden light, that fell full on the

uplifted face of the little old man. He did not turn his head,

or shrink from its intense brightness, but his lips moved, though

the utterance of the words he spoke was so broken and indistinct,

that I stooped to hear them.

"'Adelais,--O my lost darling,--my Adelais,--let me come to thee

and be beloved at last!'

" Then I looked again at the western sky, and saw that the sun had

gone down."

Next morning I gathered my June roses and sweet jasmin, and took

them over to the house of the little old man. I went upstairs into

the darkened chamber where they had laid him, and bestowed the

flowers reverently about the white-draped bed. All the wrinkles

were wiped out of his pallid face now, and he looked so wondrously

calm and peaceful, lying there with his closed eyelids and crossed

hands, in the unbroken silence of the room, that the tears of pity

I thought I should have wept at the sight never rose in my eyes;

but instead, as I turned away, there came to my memory certain

closing lines of a most beautiful poem, written not very long ago

by a master-hand that surely held God's commission to write. It

is a dead hand now, but the written words remain, and the singer

herself has gone to the land of the Hereafter, where the souls of

the poets float for ever in the full light of their recovered Godhead,

singing such songs as mortal ear hath not yet heard, nor mortal

heart conceived of. And the poem of which I spoke, has this ending:--

"`Jasper first,' I said,

`And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony.

The rest in order,--last, an amethyst."'

VII. The Nightshade

"But silence is most noble till the end."--Atalanta in Calydon.

Chapter I.

Somebody, the other day, presented me with a bunch of crimson roses

and purple nightshade, tied together.

Roses and nightshade!

I thought the combination worthy of a poem!

For the rose, as all the world conceives, is the emblem of love;

and the nightshade typifies silence.

I put my posy in a little vase filled with water, and when night

came, I lay down to rest, with my head full of vague rhymes and

unfledged ideas, whose theme was still my eccentric nosegay. Sleep,

however, overtook the muse, and the soft divinities of darkness,

weaving their tender spells about me, dissolved my contemplated

sonnet into a dream.

It seemed to my sleeping fancy that I stood in a deep, serene light

of shadowy purple, grave and sombre,--a light which suggested to

me the sound of low minor chords, the last notes of some organ

voluntary, dying beneath a master's touch, and rolling down the

hazy aisles of an empty cathedral, out into the gloomy night, and

upward to the stars.

A spirit floated in the air before me,--a phantom draped in heavy

sweeping robes of dense purple, but with eyes of such vivid and

fiery brightness, that I could not look upon them; and my heart

quailed in my bosom with a strange oppressive sense of fear and

wonder. Then I felt that her awful gaze was fixed upon me, and

a voice, low and sonorous as the tones of an organ, broke on my

ear with an intense pathos, unutterably solemn:--

Daughter of earth, I am the spirit of the purple Nightshade, the

Atropa Belladonna of the south,--the scent of whose dusky chalice

is the fume of bitterness; the taste of whose dark fruit is death.

And because the children and the maidens shun my poisonous berries,

when they go out into the woods to make garlands for Mary's shrine,

or for wedding gala; and because the leech and herbalist find in

me a marvellous balm to soothe the torments of physical anguish;

because I give the sick man ease, and the sleepless man oblivion,

and the miserable man eternal rest; because I am sombre of hue

and unsweet of odour, able to calm, to hush, and to kill, the sons

of earth have chosen me to be the emblem of silence. There is a

shadow on your brow: my words sound strange and bitter to you;

yet hear me: for once on earth I dwelt with one who thought and

labored in silence. His name is inscribed upon no calendar of the

world's heroes; it is written only in heaven!

Not far from a certain large town in Piedmont there was once a

miserable little cottage. It had been let when I knew it, to a

poor invalid woman and her only child, a boy about nine or ten years

old. They were very poor, this mother and son; and the little

living they had, came mostly by means of needlework, which the woman

did for people in the town, and by the sale of dried herbs and

suchlike. As for the cottage itself, it was a crazy, tumble-down

tenement, half in ruins, and all the outside walls of it were covered

with clinging ivies and weeds and wild climbing plants. I was one

of these. I grew just underneath the solitary window of the small

chamber wherein the poor woman slept,--the whole but consisted of

only two rooms,--and I climbed and sprouted and twisted my head in

and out of the network of shrubs about me, and clung to the crumbling

stone of the wall, and stretched myself out and up continually,

until I grew so tall, that I could look in at the casement and see

the inside of the room. It was in the summertime that I first managed

to do this, and I remember well what a burning, sultry summer it was!

Everything seemed parched and calcined under the pitiless Italian

sun, and the whole sky was like a great blazing topaz,--yellow,

and hard to look at; and the water disappeared from the runlets,

and there was not a breath of wind from one end of the sky to the other.

So it was no great marvel to me, when one day, not long after my

first appearance at the windowsill, I saw the poor woman come into

the room with a very faltering step, and a whiter, sicklier look

on her wan face than was usual to it. She threw herself wearily

down upon her bed in the corner, and panted for breath. She had

been to the town to take thither the last piece of needlework she

had done, and she laid on the wooden table by the bedside the money

the people had given her for her labor. Hard-earned coins, and

few of them! She put her thin, wasted hands to her head as she

lay, and I heard her murmur to herself in broken words that seemed

interspersed with half suppressed sobs, and I could not understand

what she said. But by-and-by, when she had grown a little calmer,--

there was a sharp, swift tap at the door of the room, and the boy

entered, with a small book in his hand, and a sparkle of pleasure

in his eyes.

"Look, mother!" he cried, holding up the volume gleefully; "this

is one of the great German Professor's 'Treatises on Chemistry!'

Herr Ritter has bought it for me! Isn't it good of him? And he

is here, and wants to know if he may come and see you!"

She smiled,--such a poor ghost of a smile as it was!--and answered

feebly, "Let him come; 'Tista." But I suppose the Herr had heard

even that broken message, for at the words the door was pushed

open a little further, and an old man appeared, bare-headed, wearing

a long white beard, and carrying a staff in his hand. He was bent

with age, and his forehead and cheeks were marked about with many

lines and crosses,--deep furrows ploughed by the harrow of thought

and sorrow. I had often seen him before, for he came frequently

to the cottage, but I had never been so close to him as on this

occasion, and had never before noticed how poor and worn his garments

were. He came into the room with a courteous greeting on his lips,

half-Italian, half-German in its phraseology, and signed with a

nod of his head to the boy Battista to be gone, who immediately

obeyed, hugging his prize, and closed the door softly behind him.

"Herr Ritter," said the woman, raising herself on the

pillow, and putting both her hands into his; "you are too good to,

my 'Tista, and too good to me. Why will you do these things?"

He smiled, as though the matter were not worth a word; but she

went on,--

"I say you are too good, dear friend. Never a day passes, but you

bring me something,--wine or fruit or some piece of dainty fare;

and as for 'Tista, there is nothing he does not owe to you! All

he knows, you have taught him. We can never repay you."

"My dear Frau 'Lora, who thinks of such things twice? Chut! But

you look ill and over-tired this evening. You have been to the

town again?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. You must lie here and rest now. It will get cooler

by-and-by; and look, I have brought you some bunches of grapes and

some peaches. They will do you good."

"Oh, Herr Ritter!"

"Don't cry 'oh, Herr Ritter!' in that reproachful manner, for this

fruit really cost me nothing. It was given to me. Little Andrea

Bruno brought it to me today."

"The fruit-seller's child? Yes, yes, I daresay; but it was not

meant for me! It's no use trying to hide your good deeds, Herr

Ritter! 'Tista has told me how kind you were to Andrea's little

sister when she sprained her foot last month; and how you bandaged

it for her, and used to go and read to her all the morning, when

her father and Andrea were out selling fruit, and she would have

been left alone but for you; and I know, too, all about poor crippled

Antonia and Catterina Pic--. Don't go away, I won't say any more

about it! But I couldn't help telling you I knew; you dear, good

Herr Ritter!"

He had half-risen, but now he reseated himself, and drew his chair

nearer her couch. In doing this his eyes met hers, and he looked

earnestly into them a moment.

"Lora, you have been weeping. What is the matter?"

She moved restlessly on her hard pillows, and dropped her gaze from

his face, and I noted that a faint blush stole over her sunken cheeks

and touched her forehead. With that tender glow, under the faded

skin, she looked almost beautiful. She was young, certainly, not

more than thirty at the utmost; but she was very poor and desolate,

and there is nothing so quick at sapping the blood and withering

the beauty of women as poverty and desolation. Nothing.

"Herr Ritter," she said, after a little pause, "I will tell you

what is the matter. Perhaps you may be able to advise me; I don't

quite know what to do. You know how very, very much my 'Tista wants

to be a chemist, so I needn't say anything about that. Well, he

must be brought up to something, you know; he must learn to be

something when the time comes for him to live without me, and I

don't think, Herr Ritter, it will be very long-- before--before

that time comes, now."

I noted again that the old man did not contradict her. He only

watched her drooping face, and listened.

"I have worked early and late," she went on in low, swift tones,

"to try and lay by a little money towards getting him apprenticed

to some chemist in the town. He has worked, too, poor child. But

it is little--nothing--we could save between us; for we must live

meanwhile, you know, dear friend, and there is the rent to pay.

Well, now I am coming to my story. When I was a young girl, I had

a sister, ten years older than I. We were orphans, and an old aunt

took care of us. I married--against my aunt's wish, in the face

of my sister's warnings,--a poor improvisatore. We were poor enough,

of course, before that, my sister and I, but we were not beggars,

and the husband I took was below me. Well, my sister was very angry,

dreadfully angry, but I was young and strong, and I was in love,

so I didn't care much about it then. My husband traveled from place

to place, telling his stories and singing his rhymes, and I went

with him, and soon lost sight of my sister. At last we came to Rome.

'Tista was born there, and soon after I got some news of my old

home from a wandering pedlar, who had passed through the village

where I used to live. My aunt was dead, and my sister had married,--

married a rich inn-keeper; a match as far above our station as

mine had been below it. Well, Herr Ritter, my husband was badly

hurt in a quarrel one evening in one of the squares. Somebody

insulted him before all the people as he was telling one of his

stories, and his blood got up and he struck the man, and they fought;

and my husband was brought home to me that night, half-murdered.

He didn't live long. He had had a heavy fall, I think, in that

fight, for the back of his head was cut open, and he took brain-fever

from it. I did my best, but our money was scarce, and our child

was too young to be left alone with a sick man, and I could get

no work to do at home. So one day, at noon, my husband died. Poor

Battista! I could not help it! I could not save him! Ah Jesu!

what a terrible thing poverty is! what a mournful thing it is to live!"

She shrouded her face in her hands, but not to weep, for when, after

a little silence, she raised her large dark eyes again to meet the

old German's compassionate gaze, I saw that they were calm and tearless.

"After that, I used to leave little 'Tista in the care of a woman,

next door to me, while I went out as a model. I was handsome then,

the painters said, and my hair and my complexion were worth something

in the studio; but not for long. My color faded, and my hair grew

thin, for I pined and sorrowed day and night after the husband I

had lost, and at last no one would give two scudi for me, so I took

'Tista and left Rome to tramp. Sometimes I got hired out in the

vine-harvest, and sometimes I sold fruit, or eggs, or fish in the

markets, till at last I got a place as a servant in a big town,

and 'Tista went to school a bit. But seven months ago my mistress

died, and her daughters wouldn't keep me, because I had become weak

and couldn't do the work of their house as well as I used to do it.

And nobody else would take me, for all the people to whom I went

said I looked halfway in my grave, and should be no use to them

as a servant. So I gave it up at last, and came on here and got

this cottage, almost for nothing, though it's something to me;

but then they give me so little for my work, you see, in the town.

Well, Herr Ritter, I daresay you think my story a very long one,

don't you? I am just near the end of it now. I went into the town

today, and while I was standing in the shop with my needlework, a

lady came in. The shop-woman, who was talking to me about the price

of the things I had done, left me when the lady came in, and went

to serve her. So I had to stand and wait, and when the lady put

back her veil to look at something she was going to buy, I saw her

face. Oh, Herr Ritter! it was my sister, my sister Carlotta! I

was certain of it! I was certain of it! Nevertheless; after she

had gone, I asked the shop-woman some questions about the lady.

She did not tell me much, for I fancy she thought me inquisitive;

but she told me, at least, all I had need to know. Her customer,

she said, was the wife of a very rich inn-keeper, and her name was

Carlotta Nero. She is lodging, the woman told me, at the Casa d'Oro.

I didn't go to see her then, of course, because she could not then

have reached home; but I want to go tomorrow, if I can manage to

walk so far, for I think she would like to see me again, and I am

sure I should like to see her. And, shall I tell you what else I

am thinking about, Herr Ritter? It is that, perhaps,--perhaps,

her husband, being so rich, he might be able to put 'Tista in the

way of doing something, or of getting me some work, so that we

could save up the money for his apprenticeship by-and-by. What

do you think of it now, Herr Ritter? My sister, you know, is the

only friend I have in the world, except you, kind, dear Herr! and

I don't think she would mind my asking her this, though we did part

in anger; do you? For that was ten years ago."

She paused again, and Herr Ritter gazed tenderly at the poor sharp

face, with its purple eyelids and quivering parted lips, through

which the heavy rapid breath came every moment with a sudden painful

shudder, like a sob. I think he was wondering, pityingly, what

such a feeble, shattered creature as she could have to do with work,

at least, on this side of death.

"Herr Ritter! Herr Ritter!" cried 'Tista, bursting open the door

of the little chamber, in a state of great delight; "look what

Cristofero has just given me! These beautiful roses! Will you

have them?"

"Not I, 'Tista, thank you. Gay colors and sweet odours are not

for me. Put them here in this cup by your mother's side. Now,

Frau 'Lora, I will not be contradicted!"

"Won't you have one of them, Herr Ritter?" asked the boy, wistfully,

holding out towards the old man a spendid crimson bud.

He answered hurriedly, with a gesture of avoidance.

"No, no, 'Tista! I never touch roses! See here, I'll take a cluster

of this, 'tis more in my line a great deal." He turned away to

the lattice as he spoke; rather, I thought, to conceal a certain

emotion that had crossed his face at the sight of the roses than

for any other reason, and laid his hand upon me.

"Why, that's nightshade!" cried the boy in surprise.

"No matter," answered the old German, breaking off my blossom-head,

and tucking its stalk into the buttonhole of his rusty coat; "I like

it, it suits me. Belladonna is not to be despised, as you ought to

know, Master Chemist!" Then, in a softer tone, "I shall come and

see you tomorrow morning, Frau 'Lora, before you start. Goodnight."

He went out, shutting the door behind him gently, and I went with him.

He did not walk very far. About half-a-mile from the town there

stood three or four old-fashioned houses, with projecting gables

and low green verandahs sloping over their wide balconies, and it

was in the first of these houses that Herr Ritter lodged.

He had only one room, a little dark, studious-looking apartment,

scantily furnished, with a single window, opening on to the balcony,

and in one corner a deep recess, within which was his bed. There

were some shelves opposite the window, and upon these several ponderous

old tomes in faded covers; a human skull, and a few fossils.

Nothing else at all, except a tiny picture, hung upon the wall

above the head of his couch; but this I did not see at first.

Later, when he had taken me out of his coat, and put me in water,

in a little glass bowl, I was able to turn my great yellow eyes

full upon the painting, and I saw that it was the miniature of a

beautiful young girl, dressed in a very old-fashioned costume, and

wearing upon her fair bosom a knot of crimson roses. "Ah," I said

to myself, "there has been a romance in this old German's life,

and now there is--silence."

Chapter II.

Very early the next morning Battista came to see Herr Ritter. In

his hand the boy carried a large clay flowerpot, wherein, carefully

planted in damp mould, and supported by long sticks set crosswise

against each other, I beheld my own twining branches and pendulous

tendrils; all of myself, indeed, that had been left the day before

outside the cottage window. Battista bore the pot triumphantly

across the room, and deposited it in the balcony under the

green verandah.

"Ecco! Herr Ritter!" cried he, with vast delight. "You see I don't

forget what you say! You told me yesterday you liked the belladonna,

so when you were gone I went and dug up its root and planted it in

this pot for you, that you may always keep it in your balcony, and

always have a bunch to wear in your coat. Though, indeed, I can't

think how you can like it; it smells so nasty! But you are a

strange old darling, aren't you, Herr Ritter?"

Battista had set down his pot now, and was looking into the old

German's face with glistening eyes.

"Child," answered the Herr, smiling very gravely and tenderly, as

one may fancy that perhaps a Socrates or a Plato may have smiled

sometimes; "your gift is very welcome, and I am glad to know you

thought of me. These are the first flowers I have ever had in my

little dark room; and as for the scent of them, you know, 'Tista,

that is a matter of taste, isn't it, just like color."

"Yes," quoth 'Tista, emphatically, "I like roses!"

But Herr Ritter interposed hurriedly.

"Tista, how is your mother today?"

"That is one of the things I came to talk about. She is ill; too

ill to rise this morning, and she wants to see you. Will you come

back with me, for I think she has something particular to say to you?"

"Yes, 'Tista, I will come."

He took down his old velvet cap from its peg behind the door, and

stooping over the little glass dish in which he had placed the spray

of my blossoms the preceding day, lifted me carefully out of the

water, wiped the dripping stem, and fastened me in his coat again.

I believe he did this to show the boy a pleasure.

But a little while after this, and Herr Ritter sat again in the

old wooden chair by the widow's couch. Early that morning she had

written to her sister a long letter, which she now put into the

old German's hands, begging him to carry it for her to the Casa d'Oro,

and bring her in return whatever message or note Carlotta Nero should

give him. "For," said the poor woman, with anxious eyes, and pallid

lips that quivered under the burden of the words they uttered, "I

do not know for how long my sister may be staying here, and perhaps

I shall never meet her again. And since I am not able to go myself

into the town today, and I fear to miss her, I thought, dear friend,

you would not mind taking this for me; and, perhaps, if my sister

should ask you anything, saying you know me, and--and--'Tista?"

She faltered a little there, and the old man took her hand in his

with the tender, pitying gesture we use to little children.

"Be at ease, dear 'Lora," he murmured, "I will bring you good news.

But the hour is early yet, and if I start so soon, your sister may

not be able to receive me. So I'll go back and take my cup of

coffee at home before I set out."

He was rising, but she laid her hand on his arm gently.

"Dear friend, why should you leave us? 'Tista is getting my breakfast

ready now, let him get yours also."

So Herr Ritter stayed, and the three had their morning meal together.

There was a little loaf of coarse black bread, a tin jug filled with

coffee, and some milk in a broken mug. Only that, and yet they

enjoyed it, for they finished all the loaf, and they drank all the

coffee and the milk, and seemed wonderfully better for their frugal

symposium when 'Tista rose to clear the table. Only black bread

and coffee; and yet that sorry repast was dignified with such

discourse as those who sit at the tables of Dives are not often

privileged to hear.

For Herr Ritter was a scholar and a philosopher. He had studied

from his youth the strange and growing discoveries of geology,

astronomy, and chemistry; he had wrested from the bosom of Nature

her most subtle secrets, and the earth and the heavens were written

in a language which he understood and loved to read. I learned

that he had been a student in earlier days at a German university,

and had there first begun to think. From the time he was twenty,

until this very hour in which he sat by the side of 'Lora Delcor,

he had been thinking; and now that he had become an ancient man,

with a beard of snow, and a face full of the deep furrows of a

solitary old age, he was thinking still. He had given up the world

in order to think, and yet, he told us, he was as far from the truth

as ever, and was content to know nothing, and to be as a little

child in the presence of Life and of God.

And when 'Lora asked him why he had never cared to enter into the

lists of argument and controversy with other learned philosophers

and doctors of his time, and to make himself a name that should

have been reverenced among men, he answered mildly, that he had

no ambition, or if he had once had any, he had always felt the

mysteries of existence too profoundly to make them stepping-stones

to worldly honor. "It is impossible," he said, "that any man should

be able, in this sphere of life, and under these conditions of being,

to penetrate into the meaning of things,--or to touch their inmost

source with fingers of flesh. All that we can attain to know is

this, that we can know nothing; and the fairest answer we can give

when we are questioned, is that we do not know. If, then, we know

so little about life, much less can we ever hope to discern the

meaning of death. And as for the lesser considerations of our daily

being, what are they? Long ago I ceased to desire; ambition and

love are things of the past to me."

I thought the shadows of the hanging vine outside the lattice darkened

over the old man's face as he spoke, and there seemed to come into

his clear keen eyes a sudden mist as of tears that would not flow.

Whether or not the gentle woman beside him also saw these things,

I cannot tell, but when he paused she asked him softly, if his life

had not been a sorrowful one? She feared he must have suffered deeply.

"To all of us," he answered, "life is a sorrowful thing, because

to all of us it is a mystery past finding out. Have you found it

sweet, Frau 'Lora? no? nor have I. But what I have lost, if indeed

I lost anything, I lost not wilfully. Well,--I have realised my

destiny; the meanest can do no less, the greatest can do no more."

"But you withdrew yourself of your own accord from the world, dear

Herr; you buried yourself in your own solitude, and kept yourself

apart from the honor you might have earned by your learning in the

world? You chose to be silent?"

"Yes," he echoed, mournfully, "I chose to be silent. Why should

I have wasted my breath in idle disputation, or to what end should

I have laboured to get a string of empty letters tacked to my name,

like the flypapers of a boy's kite? I do not seek to be dragged

back to the ground, I prefer to mount without a string. Everything

we attempt to do falls short of its conception in its fulfilment.

All glory is disappointment,--all success is failure; how acutely

bitter, only the hero himself can know!"

"You lave no regrets, then, Herr Ritter?" said 'Lora, with her

clear earnest gaze full upon his face.

"None," he answered, simply.

"And will you always keep silence?"

"Always, so far as I can see," said the old German. "There are

quarrels enough in the world without my intervention, there are

dogmas enough in the world without my enunciations. I do not think

I should do any good by speaking to men. Could I make them any

wiser, purer, gentler, truer than they are? Could I teach them

to be honest in their dealings with each other, compassionate,

considerate, liberal? If they have not heard the prophets, nor

even the divine teacher of Nazareth, shall I be able to do them

any good? Are not their very creeds pretexts for slaughter and

persecution and fraud? Do they not support even their holiest

truths, their sincerest beliefs, by organised systems of deceit

and chicanery? Chut! I tell you that the very vesture which men

compel Truth to wear, is lined and stiffened with lies! The mysteries

of life are so terrible, and its sadness so profound, that blatant

tongues do not become philosophers. Words only serve to rend and

vex and divide us. Therefore I think it best to hide my thoughts

in my heart, believing that in matters which we cannot fathom,

silence is noblest; and knowing that when I say, `I am nothing,

but God is all,--I am ignorant, but God is wise,'--all I am able

to say is said. By-and-by, in the brighter light of a more perfect

day beyond the sun, I shall see the King in His beauty, face to face;

I shall know, even as I am known!"

"This, then," asked 'Lora, gently, "is why you gave up the world,

that you might be alone?"

"I gave up the world, dear Frau, because I found in it all manner

of oppression done in the names of justice and of Virtue. My heart

turned against the Wrong, and I had no power to set it Right. The

mystery of life overcame me; I refused the gold and the honours

which might have been mine, if I could have been content in being

dishonest. But God gave me grace to be strong, and the world cast

me out of its gilded nursery. I became a man, and put away childish

things."

Then he rose slowly from his seat, and as he laid his hand on the

door-latch, and lifted it to go out, a welcome little puff of outside

air darted into the chamber, and stirred the nightshade blossoms in

the breast of the old rusty coat. And I raised my dark purple head,

and perceived that the mournful shadow rested again upon the face

of Herr Ritter, like a cloud at sunset time, when the day that has

passed away has been a day of storm.

We went to the Casa d'Oro.

Carlotta Nero was in her sitting-room, and would see the Herr there,

said the dark-haired smiling contadina, who admitted the old German

into the house. She was a native of the place, and evidently remembered

him with gratitude and pleasure. So we presently found ourselves in

a small well-appointed chamber, on the first floor of the Casa.

On a tapestry-covered dormeuse, by the open window, and carefully

protected with gauze curtains from the glare of the coming noon,

reclined a handsome woman of middle age, so like, and yet so strangely

unlike 'Lora Delcor, that my dusky blooms quivered and fretted with

emotion, as the contadina closed the door behind us.

The same delicate features, the same luxuriance of hair, but--the

eyes of 'Lora! ah,--a soul, a divinity looked out of them; but in

these one saw only the metallic glitter of the innkeeper's gold!

They turned coldly upon Herr Ritter as he stood in the doorway,

and a hard ringing utterance--again how unlike 'Lora ! for this

was the dry tintinnabulation of coin--inquired his errand.

"Herr Ritter, I am told. You wish to speak to me?"

I observed that she allowed the old man to stand while she spoke.

"Yes; Signora," he answered, mildly, "I bring you this letter;

may I beg you will read it now, before I go? for the writer charged

me to carry back to her your answer."

He drew 'Lora's note from his vest with a gesture of reverent

tenderness, as though he loved the very paper his friend had touched,

and were something loath to part with it to such indifferent hands

and eyes as these. Carlotta Nero took it coldly, and glanced through

the close-written pages with the languid air of a supercilious fine

lady. Once I fancied I saw her cheek flush and her lip quiver as

she read, but when she looked up again and spoke, I thought I must

have been mistaken in that fancy, or else her emotion had been due

to another cause than that I had imagined. For there was no change

in the ungentle glittering eyes; no softening in the dry tinkle

of the voice that delivered the Signora's answer.

"I am sorry I can do nothing for your friend. You will tell her

I have read her letter, and that I leave this place tomorrow morning."

She inclined her head as she said this, I suppose by way of indication

that the Herr might accept his dismissal; and laid the letter on

an ebony console beside her sofa. But the old German kept his ground.

"Signora," he said, tremulously, and my blossoms thrilled through

all their delicate fibres with the indignant beating of his heart;

"do you know that letter comes from your sister? That she is poor,

in want, widowed, and almost dying?"

Carlotta Nero lifted her pencilled eyebrows.

"Indeed?" she said. "I am pained to hear it. Still I cannot do

anything for her. You may tell her so."

"Signora, I beg you to consider. Will you suffer the--the fault

of ten years ago to bear weight upon your sisterly kindness,--your

human compassion and sympathy, now?"

"Excuse me, Herr Ritter, I think you are talking romance. I have

no sisterly kindness, no compassion, no sympathy, for any one of--

of this description."

She motioned impatiently towards the letter on the console; and

I thought she spoke the truth.

Her Ritter was speechless.

"Dolores chose her own path," said the innkeeper's wife, seeing

that her visitor still waited for something more, "and she has no

right to appeal to me now. She disgraced herself deliberately,

and she must take the consequences of her own act. I will not move

a finger to help her out of a condition into which she wilfully

degraded herself, in spite of my most stringent remonstrances.

All imprudence brings its own punishment,--and she must bear hers

as other foolish people have to do. She is not the only widow in

the world, and she might be worse off than she is; a great deal."

"I am to tell her this"--asked Herr Ritter, recovering himself with

a prodigious effort "from you?"

"As you please," returned the great lady, still in the same indifferent

tone. "It will be useless for her to call here, I cannot see her;

and besides, I leave tomorrow with my husband."

Again she bowed her head, and this time Herr Ritter obeyed the signal.

I felt his great liberal heart heaving,--thump, thump, under the

lapel of the old rusty coat; but I breathed my spirit into his

face, and he said no more as he turned away than just a formal "Buon

giorno, Signora."

"Silence is best," I whispered.

Chapter III.

He went home to his little dark studio, where the sunlight so rarely

entered, and where the big tomes and the skull and the fossils,

and the picture of the beautiful girl and her crimson roses, greeted

him with unchanged looks. All the room was pervaded with the aroma

of the belladonna plant in the balcony, and all the soul of the

old philosopher was filled with an atmosphere of silent liberality.

He stood before the bookshelves and laid his withered fingers

falteringly upon the volumes, one after another. I knew already

what was passing in his heart, and my rising perfume assisted the

noble sacrifice. Then he lifted the books from their places,--one,

two, three,--the volumes he prized the most, ancient classical

editions that must have been an El Dorado of themselves to such a

student and connoisseur as he. For a moment he lingered over the

open pages with a loving, tremulous tenderness of look and touch,

as though they had been faces of dear and life-long friends; then

he turned and looked at the picture in the dark corner. A name

rose to his lips; a soft-sounding German diminutive, but I hardly

heard it for the exceeding bitterness of the sigh that caught and

drowned the muttered utterance. But I knew that in that moment

his liberal heart renounced a double sweetness, for surely he had

cherished the gift of a dead love no less than he had treasured

the noble work of immortal genius.

Then, with his books under his arm, he went silently out of the

studio, and back again into the town, along many a dingy winding

court, avoiding the open squares and the market-place, until we

came to a tall dark-looking house in a narrow street. There Herr

Ritter paused and entered, passing through along vestibule into a

spacious apartment at the back of the house, where there was a

gentleman lounging in an easy attitude over the back of an armchair,

from which he seemed to have just risen, and slashing with an ivory

paper-knife the leaves of a book he was holding. The room in which

we found ourselves had a curiously hybrid appearance, and I could

not determine whether it were, indeed, part of a publisher's warehouse,

or of a literary museum, or only the rather expansive sanctum of

an opulent homme de lettres.

Herr Ritter laid down his three big volumes on a table that was

absolutely littered from end to end with old manuscripts and curious

fossilised-looking tomes in vellum covers.

"Ah, 'Giorno, Herr!" said the gentleman, looking up from his book;

"what is that?"

He came towards us as he spoke, and opening the topmost volume of

the pile which the old man had deposited on the table, examined

the title-page.

"Sancta Maria! " cried he, his whole manner changing in a moment

from easy indifference to earnest interest: "what, you will part

with this after all? Why, it is the same book I offered you two

hundred pistoles for at Rome! You wouldn't sell it then at any

price, you said!"

"No, Signor, but I will now."

Ah, it was a generous martyrdom, but the pangs of it were very

grievous; what wonder that the martyr sighed a little!

"The same price, then, Herr? Don't let us bargain about it. The

Eminenza is liberal in these things, you know; and you're poor,

my friend, I know."

He nodded at the old German with a sort of familiar patronage, as

though he would have said, "Don't be modest, I'll stand by you!"

But the Herr seemed to notice neither words nor manner, though I

thought the heart beneath the shabby coat recoiled at that instant

somewhat unusually.

"The same price, if you please, Signor."

The Cardinal's agent, for such I guessed this tender-hearted individual

before us to be, flashed a keen sudden glance of mingled scrutiny

and surprise at the calm dignified face of the philosopher, whistled

pleasantly a short aria of two notes, apparently with some design

of assisting his mental digestion to victory over a tough morsel;

and then turning to an iron-bound cashbox at his elbow, unlocked it,

and produced therefrom the stipulated sum, which he counted out

with much celerity, and forthwith handed to the old German. With

tremulous fingers the Herr gathered up the money, as though it had

been the price of a friend's betrayal, and drooped his noble head

upon his breast, like a war-horse smitten to the heart in the

passionate front of battle.

What he had done was registered in Heaven.

"Addio, Herr."

"Guten-tag, Signor."

Herr Ritter did not go back to his lodgings then. He went past

the low house with its green verandah, blistering under the fierce

noon-sun, and across the pastures to the cottage of 'Lora Delcor.

She was sitting at the open door, her thin transparent palms pressed

tightly together, as though she were praying, and her great fringed

eyelids dark and heavy with their burden of pain. Ah! 'Lora! 'Lora!

"blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted!" Not

in the world that men have made, daughter of earth, ah, not in that;

but in the world that God shall make hereafter!

"Herr Ritter! you have been? O tell me what she said! 'Tista is

not here, he is gone into the woods to gather herbs."

"Have you told 'Tista anything?"

"About this? Nothing. I thought I would wait until I knew--"

She had risen from her seat to greet him, with painful agitation;

and now she staggered, and I think would have fallen, but that the

old man timely caught and held her in his gentle grasp.

"Be comforted, dear 'Lora," he whispered; " bring you good news."

She dropped into her wooden chair and covered her face with her

bloodless hands, weeping and sobbing for joy, as only women can

who have suffered much and long and alone.

Herr Ritter stood by, watching her kindly, and stroking his white

flowing beard in silence, until she had wept her fill; and her

dark blissful eyes, dreamy with the mist of fallen tears, were lifted

again to his face, like caverned pools in summer refreshed with a

happy rain.

"What did she say? she sent me a note? a message?"

Herr Ritter poured his pistoles into her lap.

"I bring you these," said he, simply.

"Jesu-Maria! She sent me all this! how good! how generous! but

ought I to take it, Herr?"

"It is for 'Tista; to pay his apprenticeship. But there is a

condition, dear Frau; 'Tista is not to know who sends him this gift.

He is to be told it comes from an unknown friend. When he is older

he will know, perhaps."

"My kind dear 'Lotta! Ah, she would have 'Tista learn to love her,

then, before she tells him of her goodness! For him I cannot refuse

the money; can I, Herr? But I may go and thank her myself; I

may go and thank her?"

"Not just yet, 'Lora. Your sister is obliged to leave this place

tomorrow morning; Signor Nero's engagements compel him to proceed;

and so for the present time she charged me to bear you with the gift,

her greeting, and her farewell."

He was looking at her with grave mild eyes, while he leant against

the cottage-wall and stroked his silver beard.

Daughter of earth, let God be judge; for He alone understands the

heart of mortal man. As for me, I am only a flower of the dust of the

ground, yet I confess I thought the deceit the old philosopher used,

at least more graceful and gentle than the candour of Carlotta Nero.

"'Lora: you are happy now?"

She looked up and smiled in his eyes.

In that smile the philosopher had his reward.

Soon afterwards Battista Delcor was apprenticed to a chemist in

the town, and the cup of his content was filled to the brim; but

as yet, neither his mother nor Herr Ritter told him the name of

his unknown friend. Then it grew towards the end of summer, and

the ferns and the brake began to tarnish in the woodlands, and Dolores

Delcor sickened, and failed, and whitened more and more from day

to day, till at last she could do no work at all, but lived only

at the hands of 'Tista and Herr Ritter.

As for me, I blossomed still in the balcony beneath the green verandah,

looking always into the dark studio, and noting how, one by one,

the tall musty books upon the old German's shelves were bartered

away for gold.

But one morning, just at dawn, the woman of that sorrowful name

and dolorous life passed away into her rest, while she slept. And

when 'Tista, with his heart almost breaking for grief, came at the

hour of sunrise to tell Herr Ritter that she was dead, the old man

looked out across the hazy blue of the eastern reaches at the sea

of golden splendour breaking beyond them, and answered only in his

quiet patient way, that he had known it could not be for long.

I heard the words and understood them, but to the boy they meant nothing.

Then there came a night when the shelves stood empty, save for the

skull and the fossils, and Herr Ritter wore a strange luminous aspect

upon his placid face, that was not of the shadows nor of the lights

of earth. For five days he had broken no bread, and his strength

had failed him for want and for age, and no friend had been to visit

him. 'Tista, I suppose, had his business now, and of late his

presence in the dark studio had become more and more rare; not

that he was unkind, but that he was full of youth, and the vigorous

love of youth; and the old man's talk was wearisome to ears that

delighted in sounds of laughter and frolic. And besides all this,

he did not know how much he owed to the old philosopher, for Herr

Ritter still kept silence.

All the autumn day had been sultry, and the wind seemed to have

fallen asleep in some remote corner of the sky, for there had scarce

been air enough to stir the feathery tassels of the pasture grasses,

and the stillness of drought and heat had been everywhere unbroken.

But when I looked towards the west at sundown, I saw that all the

long low horizon was shrouded in twirling cumuli, with tops of lurid

flame; and great shafts of red tempestuous light, shot upward from

the dying sun, launched themselves over the heavens, and hung there

like fiery swords above a city of doom.

Herr Ritter sat up late that night, reading a packet of old worn-

looking letters, which he had taken out of a small wooden box beneath

his bed; and as he read them, burning them to tinder one by one

in the flame of his lamp. A little torn morsel of a note, yellow

with age, and half charred with the smoke of the destruction it

had escaped, fluttered down from the table through the open casement,

and fell in the balcony by my side. There were words on the paper,

written in stiff German characters, orthodox and methodical in every

turn and upstroke and formal pothook. They were these:--

"I distinctly refuse to give my daughter in marriage to a man who

is so great a fool as to throw away his chances of wealth and fame

for the sake of a mere whim. Yesterday you thought fit to decline

a Professorship which was offered you, on account of a condition

being attached to your acceptance of it. You fancied you could

not honestly fulfil that condition, and you lost your promotion.

Very well: you have also lost my daughter. I see plainly that

you will never be rich, for you will never get on in the world,

and no child of mine shall be wife to you. Consider your engagement

with her at an end."

Alas! In this, then, was the story of the crimson roses!

It was far into the night when the last letter dropped to powder

upon the table, and the old German, not pausing to undress, laid

himself wearily down upon the little bed in the dark corner to take

his rest. The oil of the lamp was well-nigh spent then, and its

languid flame quivered dimly upon the wan starved hands that were

folded above the rusty coat, and on the noble face with its pale

closed eyelids and patient lips, stedfast and calm as the face of

a marble king. Over his head the beautiful woman and her crimson

flowers ever and anon brightened in the fitful leaping light, and

shone like a beacon of lost hope upon a life that had been wrecked

and cast adrift in a night of storm. He died as he had lived, in

silence; and his death was the sacrifice of a martyr, the fall of

a warrior at his post.

Then the tempest broke over all the Piedmont lands, and the wind

arose as a giant refreshed with his rest, and drove the dark thunder-

clouds upward before the sounding pinions of his might like demon

hounds upon the track of a flying world. Then came the sharp swift

hiss of the stinging hail and rain, and the baying of the hurricane,

and the awful roll of the storm that shook the whole broad heaven

from end to end. Strange! that in the tumult of such a wild and

terrible night as this, so gentle and so calm a soul should be

destined to pass away!

Once again for a single instant I saw him, in the midst of a dazzling

flash of lightning that showed me, clear and distinct as in a mirror,

the whole of the silent chamber where the lamp had gone out, and

the charred tinder of the burnt letters was scattered over the

wooden table.

He lay motionless upon the white draped bed, a hero slain in the

hour of his triumph, with broad chivalrous brows and tranquil lips,

whence speech had fled for ever, grand and serene in the repose

of a sleep that, like 'Lora's, had borne him away into peace.

For him there was no longer storm, nor darkness, nor conflict. He

beheld his God face to face in the light of the Perfect Day.

Slowly at last, beyond the farthest bounds of the dull landscape,

broke the white ghostly lines of dawn; and the shouting of the wind,

and the rage of the chattering tempest fled down the watery sky

with the flying scuds of cloud, away into the distant horizon of

the west. But the belladonna-plant lay dead on the stones of the

balcony, torn and beaten by the hail and the wind, its trailing

stem and clinging tendrils seared with the lightning, its purple

blooms scattered among the shards of the broken flowerpot and the

burnt tinder on the floor of the desolate studio.

High above the white front of the coming morning, the wind, returning

into the bosom of God, bore upon its limitless wings a twofold burden,

the spirit of a perished flower, the oblation of a Gentle Life.

The grave, sonorous intonation sank and ended as it had begun, like

the organ-roll of minor cadences; and the countenance of the phantom

grew indistinct and fluctuating, till it seemed to blend with the

sombre purple atmosphere that surrounded us. But as I perceived

her bright eyes still fastened upon my face, I lifted my hands

imploringly towards the floating presence, and would fain have

caught her fading impalpable garments.

"Spirit!" I cried, "one question more! The boy 'Tista surely came

with the morning, and learned at last, even though too late, who

had been his unknown friend?"

"Daughter of mortality," returned the dying voice of the phantom,

"I cannot tell. That night my mission upon earth was ended. But

some of my sister-flowers, which bloom about the graves of the dead,

have sent me messages from time to time by the breath of God's

messenger, the errant breeze of heaven. And they tell me that a

certain rich chemist of a large town in Piedmont, a handsome

prosperous young man, named Battista Delcor, has caused a great

white cross to be set above the resting-place of Herr Ritter. And

upon the base of the cross these words are graven in letters of gold:

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this;

to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep

oneself unspotted from the world."

And again, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these

My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

VIII. St. George the Chevalier*

During the last few years a growing interest in the subject of

religious metaphysic has shown itself in certain strata of our

intellectual world. This interest has taken many forms, and

attached itself to many developments, some of which have been

chiefly distinguished for

-----------

* Although, strictly, neither a "dream" nor a "dream-story," this paper

is included by the express wish of its writer, the interpretations

contained in it being largely the product of instructions received by

her in sleep.--Ed.

----------

eccentricity, and have attracted attention rather by this quality

than by their intrinsic value as solid contributions to thought.

Phrases, symbols, and expositions of theosophical doctrine gathered

from sources unfamiliar to the ordinary Western mind, and requiring

for their comprehension the study of a foreign tongue and of a strange

and intricate psychology, task too much the intellect of a seeker

trained in the Christian faith and seriously bent on the profitable

study of its mysteries. Fain would he learn what are these mysteries

without recourse to a foreign interpreter. His own Church, his

own creed, he thinks, should teach him all that he seeks to know,

and he cares not to set aside and reject names and symbols hallowed

by the use of ages among his people, in favour of others new to

his ear and tongue. If a revival of religious metaphysic is imminent

among us, let it then be directed along the old channels worn deep

by the prayers and aspirations of our fathers. Let us hear what

the tradition of our faith has to unfold to us of arcane secrets,

and to what mystic heights of transcendental thought the paths

trodden by Christian saints can lead us. For the legends and visions

of the saints are full of precious testimonies to the esoteric origin

and nature of Catholic dogma; and the older and more venerable

the tradition, the more fundamental and spiritual its character.

Chiefest for us, and most important among such sacred legends, is

that of ST. GEORGE the Champion, not only because he is for English

folk pre-eminent among the saintly throng celebrated by our Church

as each November-tide comes round, but also because his story is

thoroughly typical of the class of esoteric tradition in which

Catholic truth and faith crystallised themselves in simpler and

purer-hearted times than these. Students of religious mystic thought

can scarce do better than turn to such a tale by way of proem to

more elaborate research. There, in softened outlines and graceful

language, they will find an exposition of the whole argument of

spiritual metaphysics, and a complete vindication of the method of

theosophy. At the outset of a new line of inquiry the mind is

usually more quickened to interest by parable than by dissertation.

All great religious teachers have recognised this fact, and have

directed their instructions accordingly. Nor can those who care

to pursue a systematic study of Christian mysticism afford to despise

these poetic embodiments.

The highest form of thought is, after all, imaginative. Man ends,

as he begins, with images. Truth in itself is unutterable. The

loftiest metaphysic is as purely symbolic as the popular legend.

The Catholic tale of St. George, our national patron and champion,

was once of worldwide renown. But since our youth have taken to

reading Mill and Huxley, Spencer and Darwin, in place of the old

books wherein their ancestors took delight, the romances of the

Paladins and the knights-errant of Christian chivalry lie somewhat

rusty in the memories of the present generation. I propose, then,

first to recite the legend of the great St. George and his famous

conquest, and next to offer an interpretation of the story after

the esoteric manner.

According to Catholic legend, St. George was born in Cappadocia,

and early in the fourth century came to Lybia in quest of chivalrous

adventure. For this great saint was the noblest and bravest knight-

errant the ranks of chivalry have ever known, and the fame of his

prowess in arms vied with, the glory of his virtue, and made his

name a terror to all evil-doers the wide world over.

In Lybia there was, in those days, a city called Silena, near whose

walls lay a great lake, inhabited by a monstrous and fearsome dragon.

Many a redoubted knight had fallen in conflict with this terrible

beast; none had obtained the least advantage over it; and now

for a long time it had laid waste and ravaged all the country round,

no man daring to attack or hinder it. Every day for many a long

year past the miserable inhabitants of Silena had delivered up to

the dragon a certain number of sheep or kine from their herds, so

that at least the monster might be appeased without the sacrifice

of human life. At last all the flocks and the kine were devoured,

and the townspeople found themselves reduced to a terrible strait.

The dragon besieged the walls of the city, and infected all the

air with his poisonous breath, so that many persons died, as though

smitten by a pestilence. Then, in order to save the people, lots

were cast among all those who had children, and he to whom the die

fell was forced to give a son or daughter to the monster. This

terrible state of things had already continued for some time, when

one day the fatal lot fell to the king, none being exempted from

the tax.

Now the king had an only child, a fair and virgin daughter. To

save her from so horrible a doom he offered to any man who would

redeem the tax, his crown, his kingdom, and all his wealth. But

the people would hear of no exchange. They demanded that the king

should bear the stroke of fate in common with the meanest citizen.

Then the king asked for a reprieve of eight days to lament his child

and prepare her for her death. Meanwhile the dragon, infuriated at

the unusual delay, hung continually about the city gates, expecting

his victim, and poisoned all the sentinels and men-at-arms who guarded

the walls. Wherefore the people sent messengers to the king and

reproached him with his faint-heartedness. "Why," said they, "do

you suffer your subjects to die for your daughter's sake? Why doom

us to perish daily by the poisonous breath of the dragon?"

Then the king, perceiving that he could put off the evil hour no

longer, clad his daughter in royal apparel, embraced her tenderly,

and said, "Alas! dear child, I thought to see my race perpetuated

in thine heirs; I hoped to have welcomed princes to thy nuptials;

but now thou must perish in the flower of thy youth, a sacrifice

to this accursed monster! Why did not the Gods decree my death

before I brought thee into the world?"

When the princess heard these sorrowful words she fell at her father's

feet, and, with tears, besought his blessing. Weeping, he gave it,

and folded her a last time in his arms. Then, followed by her

afflicted women and a great concourse of people, she was led like

a lamb to the gates of the city. Here she parted from her companions,

the drawbridge was lowered across the deep moat, and alone she passed

forth and went towards the lake to meet her destroyer.

Now it chanced that just then St. George, in his shining armour,

came riding by, and, seeing a fair damsel alone and in tears, he

sprang from his horse, and hastened to offer her his knightly service.

But she only waved him back, and cried, "Good sir, remount your

steed and fly in haste, that you perish not with me!" But to this

the Saint responded, "Tell me first why thou art here with such

sad mien, and why this crowd of people on the city walls gaze after

us so fearfully." And the Princess answered him, "Thou hast, I see,

a great and noble heart; but make the more haste to be gone therefore.

It is not meet that one so good should die unworthily."

"I will not go," returned the knight, "until thou tell me what I

seek to know."

So she told him, weeping, all the woeful tale; and St George made

answer with a brave heart, in a voice that all the townfolk on the

walls could hear, "Fear not, fair maid; in the name of Christ I

will do battle for thee against this dragon."

Then the Princess loved him, and wrung her hands and cried, "Brave

knight, seek not to die with me; enough that I should perish. There

is no man living that can stand against this dragon. Thou canst

neither aid nor deliver me. Thou canst but share my doom."

As she spoke the words, the waters of the lake divided, and the

monster rose from its depths and espied its prey. At that the

virgin trembled, and cried again, "Fly! fly! O knight! stay not to

see me perish!"

For all answer St George flung himself upon his steed, made the

holy sign of the cross, and, commending himself to Christ, lowered

his lance and rushed full on the open jaws of the hideous beast.

With such force he directed his aim that the dragon was instantly

overthrown, and lay, disabled and powerless, at the feet of the saint.

Then, with the words of a holy spell, St. George cast a great fear

upon the monster, so that it was shorn of all its fury, and durst

not lift its body from the dust. Thereupon the blessed knight

beckoned to the Princess to approach, and bade her loose her girdle,

and, without fear, bind it about the dragon's neck. And when this

was done, behold, the beast followed the maid, spellbound, and thus

they entered the city.

But the people, when they saw the dragon approaching, fled tumultuously

on every side, crying out that they would all surely perish. St.

George therefore struck off the monster's head with his sword, and

bade them take heart and fear nothing, because the Lord had given

him grace over all evil things to deliver the earth from plagues.

So, when the people saw that the dragon was slain, they thronged

about St. George, and kissed his hands and his robe; and the king

embraced him joyfully, praising his valour and prowess above the

fame of all mortal men. And when the saint had preached to them

the faith of Christ, the whole city was straightway baptised; and

the king thereafter built a noble church to the honour of our Lady

and of the brave St. George. And from the foot of the altar flowed

forth a marvellous stream, whose waters healed all manner of sickness;

so that for many a long year no man died in that city.

Such is the legend of the patron saint of England,--a legend

reproduced in Spenser's poem of the "Faery Queen," wherein St.

George appears as the Red Cross Knight, and the Princess as Una,

the mystical maid, who, after the overthrow of the dragon, becomes

the bride of her champion.

Need I recall to any student of classic story the resemblance between

this sacred romance and that of the Greek hero Perseus, who rescued

the fair Andromeda from the fangs of the sea-monster which would

have devoured her? Or whose divine favour it was that directed

and shielded the Argive champion; whose winged sandals bore him

unharmed across sea and land; whose magic sword and helm armed

and defended him?

With all these symbols the name of HERMES is indissolubly connected.

His are the Wings of Courage, the Rod of Science, and the Helmet

of Secrecy. And his, too, is the Sword of Power, the strong and

steadfast Will, by which the elemental forces are overcome and

controlled, and the monsters of the abyss bound in obedience,--those

spiritual dragons and chimeras that ravage the hopes of humanity

and would fain devour the "King's Daughter."

For Hermes--Archangel, Messenger of Heaven, and slayer of Argos

the hundred-eyed (type of the stellar powers)--is no other than

Thought: Thought which alone exalts man above the beast, and sets

him noble tasks to do and precious rewards to win, and lifts him

at last to shine evermore with the gods above the starry heights

of heaven.

All the heroes are sons of Hermes, for he is the Master and Initiator

of spiritual chivalry. The heroes are the knights-errant of Greek

legend. Like St. George and his six holy peers; like Arthur's

knights; like the Teuton Siegfried, the British Artegal, and many

another saintly chevalier "sans peur et sans reproche," the heroes

of yet older days--Heracles, Bellerophon, Theseus, Jason, Perseus--

roamed the earth under divine guidance, waging ceaseless warfare

with tyranny and wrong; rescuing and avenging the oppressed,

destroying the agents of hell, and everywhere delivering mankind

from the devices of terrorism, thrall, and the power of darkness.

The divine Order of Chivalry is the enemy of ascetic isolation and

indifferentism. It is the Order of the Christ who goes about doing

good. The Christian knight, mounted on a valiant steed (for the

horse is the symbol of Intelligence), and equipped with the panoply

of Michael, is the type of the spiritual life,--the life of heroic

and active charity.

All the stories about knights and dragons have one common esoteric

meaning. The dragon is always Materialism in some form; the fearsome,

irrepressible spirit of Unbelief, which wages war on human peace

and blights the hopes of all mankind. In most of these tales, as

in the typical legend of St. George, there is a princess to be

delivered,--a lady, sweet and lovely, whose sacrifice is imminent

at the moment of her champion's arrival on the scene. By this

princess is intended the Soul:--the "Woman of Holy Writ," and the

central figure of all sacred dramatic art of every date and country.

That the allegory is of such wide and ancient repute, proves the

identity of the needs and troubles of humanity throughout the ages.

Yet one cannot fail to be struck with its special bearing on the

present state of thought. It seems, indeed, as though the story

of St. George and the Dragon might have been written yesterday,

and dedicated to the men and women of our own times. Never, surely,

has the dragon ravaged and despoiled the earth as he does now. When

at first he came upon us, it was not much that the monster's appetite

demanded. It was satisfied with the sacrifice of a few superstitions

and antique beliefs, which we could well spare, and the loss of

which did not greatly affect us. These were the mere sheep and

kine of our outlying pastures. But at length all these were swept

away, and the genius of Materialism remained unsatisfied. Then

we began, reluctantly, to yield up to it far more precious things,--

our religious convictions, our hold on sacred Scriptures, our trust

in prayer, our confidence in heavenly providence,--the very children

of our hearts, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, endeared to

us by the hereditary faith which had become even as nature itself.

All these we gave and with tears; many of them had made life lovely

and desirable to us, and without them our hearth seemed desolate.

But complaint and resistance we knew to be in vain; materialistic

science devoured them one by one; none were left in all that ancient

city, the Human Kingdom, whose ruler and monarch is Mind. This

our sovereign-Mind--had hitherto cherished with fond delight one

lovely and only child, the Soul. He believed that she would survive

and perpetuate him, and that for ever her heirs should sit on the

throne of his kingdom. To part with her would be blight and ruin

to all his hopes and aspirations. Better that he should never have

drawn breath than that he should be forced to see the child he had

brought into the world perish before his eyes.

Still, with ominous persistence the terrible monster hangs about

the gates of the city. All the air is filled with the pestilent

effluvium of his nostrils. Relentless, indeed, is this pessimistic

science. It demands the sacrifice of the Soul itself, the last

lovely and precious thing remaining to despoiled humanity. Into

the limbo of those horrid jaws must be swept--with all other and

meaner beliefs and hopes--faith in the higher Selfhood and its

immortal Life. The Soul must perish! Despair seizes the Mind of man.

For some time he resists the cruel demand; he produces argument

after argument, appeal after appeal. All are unavailing. Why

should the Soul be respected where nothing else is spared? Forced

into surrender, the Mind at last yields up his best-beloved. Life

is no more worth living now; black death and despair confront him;

he cares no longer to be ruler over a miserable kingdom bereft of

its fairest treasure, its only hope. For of what value to man is

the Mind without the Soul?

Poor and puny now indeed the crown, the wealth, the royalty of Mind.

Their value lay alone in this, that some day they should devolve

on her, that for her they were being garnered and stored and cherished.

So the dragon triumphs; and the Soul, cast out of the city, stands

face to face with the black abyss, expecting her Destroyer.

Then, even at that last and awful hour, the Divine Deliverer appears,

the Son of Hermes, Genius of Interpretation, Champion of the Spiritual

Life. As Hercules slew the Hydra, the Lion, and many another noxious

thing; as Theseus the Minotaur, as Bellerophon the Chimera, as

Rama the Ogre Ravan, as David the Giant, as Perseus the Gorgon and

Sea-monster, so St. George slays the Dragon and rescues from its

insatiable clutch the hope and pride of humanity.

This hero of so many names is the Higher Reason; the Reason that

knows (gnosis) as distinguished from the Lower Reason of mere opinion

(doxa). He is no earthly warrior. He carries celestial arms, and

bears the ensigns of the God. Thus the commemoration of St. George,

and of the famous legend of which he is the hero, involves the praise

of all valiant knights of the Hermetic art throughout the ages.

Every divine man who has carried the enchanted sword, or worn the

sandals of the winged God, who has fought with monsters and championed

the King's daughter--Una, the one peerless maid--is celebrated in

the person of our national patron saint. The Order to which he

belongs is a Spiritual Order of the Garter, or Girdle of the Virgin;

and its ensign is the armed chevalier trampling under his horse's

hoofs the foul and furious agent of the nether world.

The idea of knighthood implies that of activity. The pattern saint

and flower of chivalry is one who gladly fights and would as gladly

die in noble causes. The words pronounced of old times on the

dubbing of a knight, "Be gentle, valiant, and fortunate," are not

words which could realise themselves in the dullard or the churl.

To the good knight, the ardent love of beauty, in all its aspects

is indispensable. The fair lady of his dreams is the spiritual

bright-shining of goodness, which expresses itself to him fitly

and sweetly in material and visible things. Hence he is always

poet, and fighter in some cause. And he is impelled to fight because

the love of beauty burns so hot within him that he cannot abide

to see it outraged. His very gentleness of heart is the spur of

his valour. Champion and knight as well as thinker and student,

the Son of Hermes is of necessity a reformer of men, a redeemer

of the world. It is not enough for him to know the doctrine, he

must likewise do the will of the gods, and bid the kingdom of the

Lord come upon earth without, even as in the heaven within his heart.

For the rule of his Order is the Law of Love, and "Love seeketh

ssnot her own."

The End