I have forgotten nature. I barely know that July, now nearly gone, has
passed, sifted with sweetness and ablaze with light. Time has swept
on, the world run round; but I have stood motionless, abiding the hour
of my marriage as a tree the season of its leaves. For all that it
looks so calm, within goes on a tremendous surging of sap against its
moments of efflorescence.
After which I pray that, not as a tree, but as a man, I may have a
little peace. When Georgiana confessed her love, I had supposed this
confession to mark the end of her elusiveness. When later on she
presented to me the symbol of a heart pierced with needles, I had taken
it for granted that thenceforth she would settle down into something
like a state of prenuptial domestication, growing less like a swift and
more like a hen. But there is nothing gallinaceous about my Georgiana.
I took possession of her vow and the emery-ball, not of her; the
privilege was merely given to plant my flag-staff on the uncertain edge
of an unknown land. In war it sometimes becomes necessary to devastate
a whole country in order to control a single point: I should be pleased
to learn what portion of the earth's surface I am required to subdue
ere I shall hold one little citadel.
As for me, Georgiana requires that I shall be a good deal like an old
rock jutting out of the quiet earth: never ruffled, never changing
either on the surface or at heart, bearing whatever falls upon me, be
it frost or sun, and warranted to waste away only by a sort of
impersonal disintegration at the rate of half an inch to the thousand
years. Meantime she exacts for herself the privilege of dwelling near
as the delighted cave of the winds. The part of wisdom in me then is
not to heed each sallying gust, but to capture the cave and drive the
winds away.
For I know in whom I have believed; I know that this myriad caprice is
but the deepening of excitement on the verge of captivity; I know that
on ahead lie the regions of perpetual calm--my Islands of the Blest.
Georgiana does not play upon the pianoforte; or, as Mrs. Walters would
declare, she does not perform upon the instrument. Sylvia does; she
performs, she executes. There are times when she will execute a piece
called "The Last Hope" until the neighbors are filled with despair and
ready to stretch their heads on the block to any more merciful
executioner. Nor does Georgiana sing to company in the parlor. That
is Sylvia's gift; and upon the whole it was this unmitigated practice
in the bosom--and in the ears--of her family that enabled Sylvia to
shine with such vocal effulgence in the procession on the last Fourth
of July and devote a pair of unflagging lungs to the service of her
country.
But Georgiana I have never known to sing except at her sewing and
alone, as the way of women often is. During a walk across the summer
fields my foot has sometimes paused at the brink of a silvery runlet,
and I have followed it backward in search of the spring. It may lead
to the edge of a dark wood; thence inward deeper and deeper;
disappearing at last in a nook of coolness and shadow, green leaves and
mystery. The overheard rill of Georgiana's voice issues from inner
depths of being that no human soul has ever visited, or perhaps will
ever visit. What would I not give to thread my way, bidden and alone,
to that far region of uncaptured loveliness?
Of late some of the overhead lullabies have touched me inexpressibly.
They beat upon my ear like the musical reveries of future mother
hood--they betoken in Georgiana's maidenhood the dreaming unrest of the
maternal.
One morning not long ago, with a sort of pitiful gayety, her song ran
in the wise of saying how we should gather our rose-buds while we may.
The warning could not have been addressed to me; I shall gather mine
while I may--the unrifled rose of Georgiana's life, body and spirit.
Naturally she and I have avoided the subject of the Cardinal. But to
the tragedy of his death was joined one circumstance of such coarse and
brutal unconcern that it had left me not only remorseful but resentful.
As we sat together the other evening, after one of those silences that
fall unregarded between us, I could no longer forbear to face an
understanding.
"Georgiana," I said, "do you know what became of the redbird?"
Unwittingly the color of reproach must have lain upon my words, for she
answered quickly with yet more in hers,
"I had it buried!"
It was my turn to be surprised.
"Are you sure?"
"I am sure. I told them where to bury it; I showed them the very
spot--under the cedar. They told me they had. Why?"