CHAPTER IX.

Mr. Neckart, standing back in the shadow of the scrubby althea-bushes,

his hands clasped behind him and his eyes following the skiff as it

drifted down the river in the twilight, compelled himself to argue the

matter out according to the rulings of common sense, just as he would

the appropriation bill.

He had been coming too close of late to this little girl in a brotherly

way--of course in a brotherly way. He must stand farther off. She must

marry. He had always looked forward to her marrying, and the time, in

all probability, had come now. Van Ness was a manly, strong fellow: her

father would urge it, and Jane would soon be won. For Neckart, with the

majority of men, regarded amiability and high-colored, beefy good looks

in his own sex as the irresistible attractions in a woman's eyes.

"They both have youth and personal attractions and culture--everything

to make a marriage suitable. I can find no objection to it," proceeded

his most reasonable meditation.

"But I can never see it!"

He had not spoken, but it seemed to him as if he had cried out. Then he

laughed to think what an egregious ass he was. What was this

yellow-haired girl in the boat to him more than any other of the

millions of women with whom the world was filled? Nothing. They all were

nothing to him.

He turned his back on the river and struck into one of the dusky alleys

of the garden, pacing up and down below the old plum trees. He whistled

to himself, and ran his hand through his shaggy hair as if to be rid of

some cobwebs in his brain. As he brushed against the branches a bird

fluttered out of its nest and chirped angrily. Why, women and their love

and their homes could no more come into his life than that silly robin

or her brood! Two years ago this inexorable necessity did not even give

him a moment's chagrin. The newspaper, his army of followers, the policy

of the country,--these made life big and full enough. If he wanted

little selfish pleasures, there was his arm-chair and open fire, his

shelf of old books, or a dinner at Delmonico's with some clever fellow,

or a dash to Europe, or across the continent, to pry into the background

against which other clever fellows, whether white or yellow or black,

lived and worked. He would go back to the office to-night; he could hear

the engine puffing at the station now, making ready for the next train;

he could finish the evening with his old friends, the books; he could

order a dinner to-morrow that would satisfy even his palate,--and he

used to be an epicure. He ought to go. He would go.

He walked up the open path leading to the house. Then he stopped, turned

and struck directly through the trees and bushes to the river-side. The

boat was at some distance: he called once or twice for her to come and

take him on board before she heard him. His voice sounded hoarse and

strange to himself: he did not know himself in what he did. As for the

world, there was nothing in it but that boat yonder which shot through

the water, and the woman with eager face rowing swiftly toward him.

There was not a Wall-street banker or a politician among Neckart's

confreres who would not have looked upon him as insane for the moment.

This dull wisp of a woman to blot out all business, power, place, from

his life? But, after all, there is no insanity so practical or

long-lived. Why does A bull and bear the market, or B sell himself and

his party, but for the sake of some ugly, faded woman and the

commonplace children she has borne him? They are not thought worth

notice by anybody but himself, but he ignores honesty, death, God

himself, for them his life long. A plodding, shrewd fellow too, probably

not a whit heroic.

Neckart was tramping along the common road which all of us know, but it

seemed to him that he was breaking ground in a new world full of misty

splendors and untried action. When he called to her his breath failed

him, as it used to do when he was a boy wild with excitement. The sand

under his feet, the brambles on the bank, the overarching sky, were not

the same they were an hour ago. When the boat darted up to the shore,

rocking as she held it fast with the oar, it seemed strange to him that

she should speak in her ordinary tone. Did she not know?

She stood up in the bow steadying the skiff as he sprang into it. His

hand touched her fingers for an instant, and she noticed that it shrank

from hers.

"Did my father call me?"

"No: I wanted to talk to you alone."

She pushed from shore and dipped her oars: in a moment they were out in

the current. It was a rippling belt of steely blue, the banks making

indistinguishable ramparts of shadow on either side. Overhead was the

soft starless twilight of June, through which a nighthawk flapped

heavily and vanished. When it was gone they were alone. Could she not

understand that they were alone? In this wide dark world that there were

only they two, a man and a woman?

He could not distinguish her face, and her figure was but a light dark

outline like a silhouette against the air. But the power of her

womanhood was upon him, a something which Neckart had never felt

before--a terrible, pure passion.

"Give me the oars," he said. "Let me help you," reaching forward to

take them. His hand rested on hers accidentally: he did not remove it.

_Now_ did she understand? His mouth was closed. It seemed to him as if

words were poor to say what was in his blood, in his soul, in the water,

the air, the very ground.

She was startled, and turned to him wondering. The moon, rising higher,

showed him the childish, sensitive mouth, the dark eyes heavy with

tears, for she had been crying. What was that which gleamed through

them, half answering him, frightened at itself? It seemed to him in this

brief pause that they had been waiting all their lives for this word--he

to speak and she to hear.

"Jane!" He took her hand in both of his and held it close, and then he

threw it from him, drawing back: "My God! I had forgotten."

"Forgotten?" She closed her eyes once or twice, bewildered, as if

suddenly wakened from sleep. "You are in trouble," she said anxiously.

"Can I help you?"

The question brought him to sober reason sharply enough. It was

precisely the frank, tender tone which she would use to her father; and

the truth was, that the girl to herself did not yet distinguish between

her father and this friend. A moment before a strange emotion had

touched her. But it had passed like a warm gust of summer. There was not

a seven-year old child in the city yonder who did not know more about

love than Jane. She had never heard servants or schoolmates chatter

about it; novels had bored her; the captain, whatever he had left

undone, had kept the air pure and cold about her as for a very nun.

"What is this trouble, Mr. Neckart? You have been ill for months, I

know. Can I--? Or perhaps father--"

She leaned forward, the oars suspended in her hands, her lips apart,

attentive and eager.

He leaned over the edge of the skiff and wet his forehead and eyes,

forcing a careless laugh: "One moment, Miss Swendon, and I will explain

to you," adding presently, precisely in the manner with which he would

have discussed the weather, "We men each have our skeleton to hide,

according to popular belief, and mine is no worse than the rest. It is

the most practical of facts. Only I am apt to forget it, and then, when

it meets me unawares, it is as grim as death."

She nodded, watching him intently as if he were physically ill: she

would not let the oars strike on the water, lest the noise might jar on

him. All kinds of wild plans for helping him filled her brain. If the

trouble were anything which money could help, there was plenty of that,

thank God! If it was political difficulty--bills maybe--she could not

even understand it. If God had only not made her so stupid! the humble

tears rising slowly to her eyes.

Mr. Neckart did not see them. He was careful not to look at her as he

spoke, and hurried on with his explanation, as if it were business of

small importance. But she was not deceived by that. "I never have talked

of this matter, and least of all should I have told it to you. I can

bear the trouble when it comes without difficulty. The most ordinary men

meet disaster coolly which they know is inevitable. Commonplace fellows

who are born with scrofula or consumption march along with them to early

death cheerfully. They make no tragedy out of it. There is no reason why

I should complain of my lifelong companion." His tone was harder than he

had ever used in speaking to Jane before.

"I have never told you of my mother?"

"No," eagerly, hastening to spare him pain. "But I have heard of her

from Cornelia Fleming, who was your neighbor in Delaware. I know all

that she suffered. You need not tell me."

"She was the last of the Davidge family. There was not one of them for

generations who had not inherited disease of the brain. They were either

epileptics from youth, or became, as she did, incurably insane. The

disease invariably manifested itself in that way after middle age, and

from that time they were helpless burdens to their children. Yet there

was not a Davidge who refrained from marriage, so entailing the curse

on another generation. It would have been more righteous to have put a

pistol to their heads and have blown out their brains."

His manner was quiet and cold. Jane made no answer.

"Naturally, I have studied the pathology of insanity closely. I know

that I have inherited the disease. The symptoms within the last six

months are unmistakable. I know that in five or ten years at the outside

I shall be of no more use in the world than any other mindless animal.

But I will have no woman, nor child, suffer for me."

When he ceased to speak the silence and the night fell oppressively on

them. The boat had drifted down to the edge of the bank and grounded.

The moonlight showed her to him sitting in the bow of the boat facing

him, her hands clasped on her knees. She was so near that if he but

opened his arms he could take her to his breast. Yet he knew that she

was separated from him now as though death itself lay between.

"I have known this necessity which lay upon me for years, Miss Swendon,"

he said quietly, but leaning forward to watch her immovable face. "It is

my duty to isolate myself as other men need not do. The more dear"--his

voice failed suddenly, but he recovered himself in a moment and went

on--"the more dear a woman is to me, the more I must shut her out of my

sight. I can never try to win her nor marry her."

Was the girl stone? Had she not even common human sympathy for him?

"You understand why I do this?"

"Yes, I understand."

"And you think I am right?"

She looked up at him with her usual blunt directness: "You are

altogether right. An honest man could not do otherwise." Her chin fell

on her breast again. Not a moan, not a breath of regret, at the blow

which struck them apart. Weaker women would have cried a little at

parting from a dog who had been sometimes a companion. This cool-blooded

Swede gave her verdict on the right and wrong of the matter as though

it had been a sale of goods, and there was the end of it! All the

long-latent passion in Neckart's nature revolted and flamed into life.

He moved restlessly, watching her sit there stony and immovable. He

would have flung away life, as men used to do against the dumb Sphinx,

to tear from her some word of pity or life.

The boat rocked in the shallow water. She rose to leave it. Neckart

mechanically held out his hand to help her jump ashore. She held it

tightly, and when she stood beside him on the grass took it in both her

own: "No. You ought never to marry. You ought to hold yourself apart

from the world. These strange people would only irritate and wear you

out. Now you can give yourself entirely to us. We are your nearest

friends. You shall give up the paper and politics: it is the work and

anxiety that are telling on your brain. You shall live here with father,

in the quiet and country air. I will take care of you both." She stroked

his hand as a mother might that of her dying child, trying to believe

that it was not growing cold. For a year the girl had fought death back

from her father step by step. Now, her one friend, who with the old man

filled all the world for her, was to be taken from her.

He seated her on a fallen log and pushed back the hair from her clammy

forehead: "Child! child! you do not understand! All I have told you has

gone for nothing!"

"I do understand. I can cure you both. Rest and the air--I am dull, but

you don't know how good a nurse I can be for my own people," with a

pitiful laugh.

He did not speak. The soft golden hair lay in his hand, warm and alive.

He looked down at her. He could soon turn this childish affection into

love: he could wrench her soul into his own. Why should he not take what

God had set before him? All the other men of his race had done it.

One moment he stood irresolute. Then the hair dropped from his hand.

"Jane," he said, as if reasoning with a child, "when I remember my

mother first she was a pretty, tender little woman, with hardly a

thought outside of her boy. For years before she died I was forced to

fasten her as one does a wild beast, that she might not kill me. Do you

understand what that was to me? Do you think I can bring the misery I

knew in those years to any woman? My wife shall never have it to bear."

"But you can have no wife!" she cried. "You said you dared not marry!

_I_ can bear the misery. You will come to us--us. Those women in

Washington of whom you tell me--how could they know what you need? I

have nobody but you and father."

She felt herself so young and strong! Death, a most horrible and certain

death, was creeping upon him. In her agony of pity she held his hand to

her wet, burning cheeks.

"Jane, you drive me mad!" stooping over her trembling. "It is you--you

that I dare not marry!"

She stood erect: "_I_ marry you? I never thought of that," simply.

"You never thought of it?" with a queer uncertain laugh. "You never

thought that I loved you?"

"That you loved me, Mr. Neckart? Me?" The blue innocent eyes that had

been fixed on his suddenly filled with light; she dropped her face into

her hands; her whole body burned with blushes, and she turned away.

Neckart slowly followed her. Jane's thoughts were always transparent as

crystal: he had read in that one brief glance all the delight, the

tender passion, whose first impulse was to escape from him.

"I have been a damned scoundrel!" he said to himself: "I have ruined her

life!"

He was now thoroughly awake to what he had done--saw it as any other

practical, honorable man would do, unbiased by his passion or his pity

for himself. He walked silently beside her as she went up the steep path

to the house.

As for Jane, she did not know that he was silent: she would scarcely

have heard if he had spoken to her. She did not know what this was that

had come to her, that had lifted her whole life upward as by a touch.

She could not look at him. If she could only reach her father and hide

from him, that he might never find her--never! She remembered how a

minute ago she had held his hand to her face, and the hot flood of shame

covered every other thought: the next she glanced shyly at him with a

sweet pride;--he loved her, he would understand! The terrible story he

had told her had passed out of her mind like a breath of smoke in

sunshine. He loved her: she could keep him out of all danger. Even if

she had remembered that she could never be his wife, it would not have

troubled her. He loved her! She thought no more of marriage than the

bird in its first song of dawn thinks of the barred lines and visible

notes to which its music might somewhere be written down.

Neckart followed her up the steps and into the wide hall, carrying his

hat behind him in his hand. The damp air wet his hair, and it hung

lankly back from his haggard face. He felt physically ill. He had acted

like a brute, a coward! This was the end of his stern resolve, his

lifelong self-denial!

A lamp burned at the foot of the wide staircase. He paused beside it:

she had gone up a step or two, and halted, her hand on the rail, looking

down. "Good-night!" she said shyly.

The light shone full on the pink glow in her cheeks, the loose hair

glistening like a golden mist, the half-frightened, half-triumphant

gleam shot down from the blue eyes.

He did not answer her.

The delicate virgin bloom of this love which he had coveted so madly an

hour ago scarcely stirred his heart now with pleasure. A man cannot live

all the time on the heights of emotion or of religion; the air is too

rarefied up there for healthy lungs; he comes down punctually to the

ordinary levels of his saner self; and Neckart, on his ordinary level,

was an exceedingly practical, honest man. He knew that he had brought

irreparable injury to this girl, and that it was his duty now to make

amends as best he could.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A WISH.

When thou, O Death! shalt wait

Without my gate--

Call not the porter out

With knock and shout:

But still unnoticed bide

The gate beside,

Till Sleep, my oft-time guest,

Doth come in quest

Of me. Quick after her,

Past bolt and bar,

Enter all silently.

Thenceforth for me

The gate thou mayest keep,

That calm-browed Sleep,

So often missed before,

Pass forth no more.

HENRIETTA R. ELIOT.

MADAME PATTERSON-BONAPARTE.

Each year adds fresh interest to this remarkable woman, whose story has

been rehearsed in every land, whose personal traits still afford food

for social chronicle. Lady Morgan said, "She belongs to history; she

lived with kings and princes, philosophers and artists; there is about

her a perpetual curiosity and romance." Speeding on to a rounded century

of life, she is still moved to eloquent agitation in reciting her

wrongs, not merely those sustained at the hands of the Bonapartes, but

those inflicted by her father. William Patterson, son of a farmer in

Donegal county, Ireland, was at fourteen years of age sent to

Philadelphia and placed in the counting-house of Samuel Jackson, a

shipping merchant. In 1775 young Patterson embarked his property in

vessels trading to France with returning cargoes of powder and arms, for

need of which the colonies were crippled. The supply arrived at a

critical time, Washington, then before Boston, not having powder

wherewithal to fire a salute. Mr. Patterson stopped at the West Indies,

where he soon made eighty thousand dollars, coming thence to Baltimore,

where he soon acquired a million of dollars and high social position.

These facts are minutely set forth in his will, a remarkable document in

its complacent personal details. Cataloguing his own virtues, he says:

"I have made the fortunes of some, saved others from ruin, and found

bread and employment for thousands of my fellow-mortals; and no one

could ever say to me, 'Neighbor and friend, you got the advantage of me,

you acted ungenerously to me.' The conduct of my daughter Betsey has

through life been so disobedient that in no instance has she ever

consulted my opinion and feelings: her folly and misconduct have first

to last cost me much money;" but yielding to the dictates of his large

heart he bequeaths her from his great wealth a few paltry houses and his

cellar of wine! _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_--a humane maxim; but when a

man deposits in the public archives his autobiography, we are incited to

inquire of what worth may be his self-laudation, and what the animus

that winged from the grave so cruel a shaft at his child's good name.

That he was of strict integrity in business relations, a citizen of no

mean "credit and renown" is true, but beneath this respectable cloak we

find on contemporary authority a man close and arbitrary in his family

and by no means impeccable in morality. One incident lets in light on

his amiable domestic relations. His wife having long expressed a wish

for a carriage, he at length imported an English chariot, but no horses

were forthcoming, and in answer to her remonstrances he said, "I never

promised you any horses;" so the chariot remained in the coach-house for

the rest of his life.

Mrs. Patterson came of that sturdy, independent Scotch-Irish race that

has peopled Pennsylvania's prosperous valleys. Her grandmother, Mrs.

Galbraith, was of remarkable force of character, taking a prominent part

in Revolutionary stir, and on one occasion traversing on horseback the

then almost wilderness to canvass votes for her husband's election to

the Assembly, which she won--whether by robust argument or in the

felicitous way of the beautiful duchess of Devonshire is not recorded.

To Mrs. Patterson--tender, religious and well cultured--her daughter

owes her familiarity with English and French classics, becoming versed

in the literature of Queen Anne's Augustan age, and able when ten years

old to recite from memory a large portion of that tough morsel, Young's

_Night Thoughts_, a page of which she recently repeated to a friend with

the remark that she "had not seen the poem for seventy-five years." She

learned Rochefoucauld's _Maxims_ by heart--an unfortunate guide, to whom

doubtless she partly owes her cynical appreciation of human motives.

She possessed a quick, logical mind and prodigious memory, while passing

years developed sparkling wit, fascinating manners and woman's crown of

beauty. This gifted child was repressed by her father with strange

bitterness, as if unnaturally jealous of her talent. In what consisted

her "folly, misconduct and disobedience"? The wayward self-will of a

mere girl could hardly merit such stern reprisal. She had barely reached

womanhood when she made the marriage on which his heart was set, which

he instigated and urged forward, allured by the alliance of his name

with that already reechoing through the world, although fully warned of

the risk of his daughter being scorned by Napoleon. Previous to her

marriage she said to her father, "Suppose the First Consul should refuse

to receive me?"--"Do not fear," he replied: "you shall come back to me

an honored daughter."

While in Martinique, Jerome Bonaparte said to a former resident of

Baltimore, "Ah! il me faut une mariage de convenance." "Not so,"

rejoined the lady; "and I know the most beautiful woman in the world,

whom you must marry--Miss Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore." And so he

first heard her name. Soon after Jerome's arrival in Baltimore one of

his suite, M. Rubelle--his father a member of the famous French

Directory--married a young lady of that city, to whom Jerome said,

"Jamais je n'epouserai une demoiselle Americaine."--"Ne soyez pas si

sur," replied she: "Mademoiselle Patterson est si belle que la voir

c'est l'epouser." Mrs. Patterson, with a maternal prevision of

misfortune, wishing to prevent their meeting, carried her daughter to

her country place, where they remained until November. This enforced

exclusion from the festivities consequent on Jerome's arrival naturally

excited the young girl, who was found by her brother in tears. "What

ails you, Betsey?" Having sobbingly disclosed her woes, she was allowed

to return to town. Meanwhile Jerome was saying, "Ma belle femme,

pourquoi ne revient-elle de la campagne." One morning, as Mme. Rubelle

entered her carriage, in which Miss Patterson awaited her as chaperon to

the races, Jerome appeared, was presented and accompanied them, to the

annoyance of the fair Betsey, who, irate at his rumored impertinence in

calling her his _belle femme_, turned from him with indifference and

even _brusquerie_, which, if coquetry, could not have been better

designed: from that moment he was captive. On this momentous occasion

she was attired in buff-colored silk, very scant as to drapery, a lace

fichu and a huge Leghorn bonnet trimmed with pink gauze and long ostrich

feathers. The wooing was ardent, but growing at one moment lukewarm, Mr.

Patterson, wise in his generation, sent Miss Betsey to Virginia; which

ruse had the desired effect, piquing the lover into an immediate

declaration on her return. Mrs. Patterson yielded a reluctant consent.

"Your father," she said, "would probably force you into something

detestable for money, so this may be for you a happy escape." The

marriage, the preliminaries of which are historically familiar, was

celebrated in her father's house on Christmas Eve, 1803, in the presence

of ecclesiastical, national and State dignitaries. There were only two

bridesmaids, the Misses Brown, great folk of that day, and no groomsman.

Jerome had imported for her a superb trousseau, but her bridal attire

was a simple India muslin, costly with old lace, a row of pearls

encircling her lovely throat--"a gown I had frequently worn," she said

in describing the event to the writer, "for I particularly wished to

avoid vulgar display; and, truth to say, there was as little as possible

of any gown at all, dress in that day being chiefly an aid in setting

off beauty to advantage." These bridal garments are still preserved, as

well as Jerome's wedding-suit of laced and embroidered purple satin--the

white satin-lined pointed skirts reaching to his heels--knee-breeches

and diamond buckles, the powdered hair enhancing his Napoleonic beauty.

In 1804, Aaron Burr wrote from Washington to his daughter: "Jerome

Bonaparte and his bride are here. She is a charming little woman--just

the figure and nearly the size of Theodosia Burr Alston, by some thought

a little like her; perhaps not so well in the shoulders; dresses with

taste and simplicity (by some thought too free); has sense, spirit and

sprightliness." Jerome now began to quake at Napoleon's fulminations

against his marriage, and but for his spirited wife would have longer

delayed confronting the imperial wrath. In 1805 they set sail from

Philadelphia, but before reaching the Capes a terrific gale drove them

on a sandbank, each moment threatening destruction. Mme. Bonaparte's

courage saved their lives. Clambering to the deck, she insisted that the

sailors should man a boat. "Pray, are you commanding this vessel?" asked

the captain.--"Yes, if necessary."--"How do you propose reaching that

boat?" he queried when at length it was launched.--"You are to throw me

in." He obeyed, but in attempting to lower her from the ship, now nearly

on its side, his strength failed and she fell into the waves. Her wadded

silk pelisse carried her down, but as she rose the sailors grasped and

hauled her into the boat. "Where is Prince Jerome?" was her first

question in that perilous moment. They reached land through a dangerous

surf, and forgot their drenching in the hospitality of a farm-house.

"You irreligious little wretch!" said her aunt: "instead of kneeling in

thanksgiving for your deliverance, you are enjoying roast goose and

apple sauce!"

Not disheartened by this ominous venture, in a few weeks they again

embarked for Lisbon, where, after Jerome's desertion, his wife remained

for seven days, and then sailed for Amsterdam. As the Erin lay in Texel

Roads, the captain of a French frigate came daily to present "ses

hommages a Mademoiselle Patterson," and to ascertain her orders for the

day. "Prisoners, sir, have no orders to give," was her reply. Perceiving

the futility of opposing the emperor's decrees, and justly apprehensive

of personal peril should she force a landing on the Continent, she

sailed for Dover, but here again she was immeshed in Bonaparte

restrictions, as no member of that family could enter England without

permission of the government. Mr. Pitt, then prime minister, sent a

military escort, which lined the way, keeping off the crowd that strove

to get a glimpse of her as she disembarked and entered her carriage. At

Camberwell, her son, Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, was born, eighteen

months after her marriage. Two months later she sailed for the United

States. Her father in the marriage contract had guaranteed to her

certain property and one thousand dollars per annum, but on her return

he declined to redeem his promise, on the plea that her rejection by the

First Consul, by invalidating the marriage, had nullified his agreement

with his child, whose misfortune he resented as a crime. Prince Jerome

at the birth of their son sent her a thousand guineas, and with this

paltry sum she began life anew.

Neither poverty nor the humiliating overthrow of her happiness daunted

this young creature's spirit, which rose always to the occasion. When

King Jerome, after his marriage with the princess of Wuertemberg, offered

his repudiated wife the principality of Smalcand with forty thousand

dollars per annum, her witty reply, that "Westphalia no doubt was a

considerable kingdom, but not large enough to hold two queens," so

pleased the emperor that he directed the French minister at Washington,

M. Serrurier, to intimate his wish to serve her. "Tell the emperor that

I am ambitious: I wish to be made a duchess of France." This the emperor

promised to do at a later moment, and offered her twenty thousand

dollars down and a life annuity of twelve thousand dollars, which she

accepted, "proud to be indebted to the greatest man of modern times,"

but with the proviso that the receipt for payment should be signed by

her as _Elizabeth Bonaparte_, which would be a virtual acknowledgment of

the legality of her marriage and her claims on the head of the family.

To this stipulation the emperor acceded, and until his abdication the

annuity was regularly paid. Jerome was stung to a protest against her

acceptance of aid from his brother while rejecting his own, to which she

retorted that she "preferred shelter beneath the wing of the eagle to

suspension from the pinion of the goose."

Mme. Bonaparte now applied to the Maryland Legislature for a divorce,

which was at once granted. This action on her part was natural, but as a

matter of policy questionable. His wife by every law human and divine,

she could better have guarded her son's interests, and even maintained

her own rightful position, by ignoring Jerome's alliance with the

princess, which was regarded by Catholic Christendom as illegal, the

pope stoutly refusing to nullify the previous marriage.

Mme. Bonaparte always expresses enthusiasm for the emperor, despite the

despotism that shivered the fair fabric of her life, seeking its excuse

in the exigencies of his anomalous position. During her residence in

Paris after the Restoration, Louis Dix-Huit--_Des Huitres_, the wits

styled him from his inordinate love of oysters--fancying that her

presence would reflect contemptuously on the late "Corsican usurper,"

made known his wish to see her at court. This honor she declined, "not

wishing to pose as a victim of imperial tyranny: she had accepted the

emperor's kindness, and ingratitude was not one of her vices." Marshal

Bertrand--"faithful among the faithless" Napoleon called him--who heard

the last sigh of the great heart at St. Helena, visited this country

thirty years ago and requested an interview with Mme. Bonaparte. "The

emperor," he said, "had spoken of her talent with admiration tinged with

regret for the shadow he had cast over her life, for he had heard of her

generous sentiments toward him, alluding to which he one day said,

'Those whom I so wronged have forgiven me: those I overwhelmed with my

bounty have forsaken me.'"

Mme. Bonaparte bore no malice to Jerome, whose nature was not of heroic

mould; and yet what touching professions of fidelity he sent

her!--letters unsurpassed in manly tenderness. A few months after their

separation a gentleman writes of him: "He is always saying, 'My wife!

my dear little wife!' He seems much affected, and declares that he

'shall for ever remember the shipwreck they had encountered: how well on

that trying occasion did she behave! how, when danger was over, he

pressed her in his arms!'" "Jerome loved me to the last," says Mme.

Bonaparte: "he thought me the handsomest woman in the world, and the

most charming. After his marriage to the princess he gave to the

court-painter several miniatures of me from which to make a portrait,

which he kept hidden from the good Catherine."

With the return of the Bourbons, Mme. Bonaparte was free to tread the

soil of France, and among the throngs of lovely women who entered Paris

after Waterloo she was no inconspicuous figure. Portraits and

contemporaries represent her as uncommonly beautiful--the spirited head

crowned with waving brown hair; large, lustrous, liquid hazel eyes,

promising a tender sensibility that did not exist; a nose of delicate

Greek outline; mouth and rounded chin nests for Cupid; arms, bust and

shoulders to satisfy a sculptor. Surgeon-General Larrey, the medical

attendant at St. Helena, meeting Mme. Bonaparte at dinner in Paris,

requested their host, Count Rochefoucauld, to intercede with her for the

privilege of looking at the back of her neck. After studying her a

moment, he said, "It is extraordinary! The bend of the neck, the contour

of face, the pose of the head, even the manner of rising from her chair,

are singular in their resemblance to the emperor." The duchess

D'Abrantes (Mme. Junot) describes in her _Memoirs_ a meeting with

Jerome, "who showed us a fine miniature of his wife, the features

exquisitely beautiful, with a resemblance to those of the princess

Borghese, which Jerome said he and many Frenchmen in Baltimore had

remarked. 'Judge,' he said, replacing the portrait in his bosom, 'if I

can abandon a being like her! I only wish the emperor would consent to

see her, to hear her voice, but for a single moment. For myself, I am

resolved not to yield.'" Walpole's friend, Miss Berry, met Mme.

Bonaparte in the _salon_ of Mme. Recamier, "who sat on a _chaise longue_

with a headache and twelve or fifteen men, only two ladies being

present--Mme. Moreau and Mrs. Patterson, the ex-wife of Jerome

Bonaparte, who is exceedingly pretty, without grace and not at all

shy.... Mme. Recamier is _the_ beauty of this _new_ world, if she can be

called handsome: her manners are _doucereuses_, thinking much of

herself, with perfect carelessness about others, for, besides being a

beauty, she has pretensions to _bel esprit_: they may be as well founded

as the other, yet not sufficient to burn her for a witch." Now, Miss

Berry--called the black-Berry, in contradistinction to her duller

sister, the goose-Berry--was jaundiced in her estimation of both

beauties, and Mme. Bonaparte bears tribute to "that rare loveliness of

temper and tact in displaying the good qualities even of rivals that

were potent weapons in Recamier's quiver of charms." Miss Berry's dictum

is also outweighed by the homage of Mme. de Stael's envying sigh, that

she "would willingly exchange her genius for Recamier's beauty." Mme.

Recamier was anxious that Mme. Bonaparte should know "Corinne." "No,

no," she replied: "De Stael est une colosse qui m'ecraserait; elle me

trouverait une jolie bete et je ne veux pas etre tuee a Paris par ce

mot-la."

The duke of Wellington succeeded Napoleon in his residence at the

Elysee-Bourbon, since then fitted up as the dower-palace of Eugenie, and

now the head-quarters of President MacMahon. Gay, fickle Paris,

oblivious of disaster, was shouting hosannas to the victor of its

erewhile idol, and in this carnival of _fetes_ those of the duke were

surpassingly magnificent. Mme. Bonaparte describes Wellington as "short,

erect, spare of figure, with long pale face, thin-lipped, obstinate

mouth, small light eyes, high, sharp, angular nose, the head

disproportionately large, and as squarely flat as an Indian's, reverence

and benevolence being undeveloped. Coldly quiet in voice and greeting,

simple and high-bred in manner, there was in this reticence a suggestion

of reserved force exceedingly attractive." At one of these balls Mme.

Bonaparte was seated in conversation with the handsome and fascinating

Lord Castlereagh, when Mme. de Stael approached, and stopping in front

of her gazed steadily for a moment, then turning to her son, Baron de

Stael-Holstein, on whose arm she leaned, an intimate friend of Mme.

Bonaparte, she said, "Oui, elle est bien, bien jolie," and walked off

without another word. Near by sat Lady Morgan, whose success, literary

and social, was phenomenal. As Sidney Owenson, soon after her _Wild

Irish Girl_ made her famous, she sat awestruck opposite to Dr. Johnson

at a large London dinner, when suddenly, to the terror of the child,

untamed as her own heroine, burly Samuel called across in severe tones,

"Little girl! little girl! where did you get so many hard

words?"--"Please, sir, in your dictionary," was the naive reply that

disarmed the lexicographer. In Lady Morgan's _Memoirs_ we read: "Mme.

Bonaparte, wife of Jerome, who had abandoned her in a cruel and

dastardly way, was not of the _pate_ out of which victims and martyrs

are made. She held her difficult position with a scornful courage that

excites pity for the woman's nature so scathed and outraged. Her letters

bear the impress of a life run to waste: they are clever, mordant and

amusing, but the bitter sense of wrong cannot be concealed: there is a

dissatisfaction--one might almost call it jealousy--in the topics

discussed." Mme. Bonaparte keeps her friend _au courant_ with Paris

gossip, but we have only space to glance at the revelation of her weary,

empty heart: "PARIS, November, 1816. DEAR LADY MORGAN: I have executed

all your commissions except that _aupres de_ Mme. de Genlis. I have been

so unwell it has been impossible for me to visit the penitent at the

Carmelites. I meet the princess de Beauveau every week at Mme.

Rumford's, where there is an assemblage of _gens d'esprit_--not that I

call myself one of them. However, people say that I am very good, which

is my passport to these _reunions_. I have been asking after the _Novice

of St. Dominic_, which has not yet been seen by any of your friends."

[William Pitt read this novel for the fifth time a few days before his

death.] "I have been very triste: tout m'ennuie dans ce mondeci, et je

ne scais pas pourquoi, unless it be the recollection of what I have

suffered. I think the best thing for me is to return to my dear child. I

love him so entirely that seeing him may render my feelings less

poignant. Any inconveniences are more supportable than being separated

from one's children. How much more we love them than our husbands! the

latter are often so selfish and cruel; but children cannot force mothers

from their affection."... "PARIS, 1817 Your kind letter by Tom Moore

reached me. He seldom sees me: I did not take with him at all.... How

happy you must be at filling the world with your name! Mme. de Stael and

Mme. de Genlis are forgotten, and if the love of fame be of any weight,

your excursion to Paris was a brilliant success. Your work on France has

appeared through a French translation, in which they have suppressed

what they thought best. Its truths cannot at this moment be admitted

here, but in all other countries it will have complete success. The

violent clamor of the Paris gazettes proves it to be too well written.

They are publishing it in America, where your talents are justly

appreciated.... I have not seen Mme. d'H---- for a long time: she dines

at half-past nine--wakes when other persons sleep, which makes it

impossible to enjoy her society without paying the price of a night's

repose.... Your friend and admirer Mr. S---- is dead of old age. I met

him two weeks previous at a party. His widow gave a dinner the next

week, because she was afraid of being _triste_--receives and appears on

the Boulevards, because 'bon ami m'a dit qu'il fallait vivre.' Her

friends flatter themselves that her sensibility will not kill her, at

the same time that it enables them to give agreeable parties.... My

desire to see my child is stronger than my taste for Paris. I am of your

opinion: the best thing a woman can do is to marry: even quarrels with

one's husband are preferable to the ennui of a solitary existence.

There are so many hours apart from those appropriated to the world that

one cannot get rid of--at least one like myself, having no useful

occupation. You never felt ennui, because you cultivate talents which

will immortalize you.... Mme. de Stael died regretting a life that she

had contrived to render very agreeable. Her most intimate friends were

ignorant that a marriage with M. Rocca existed, and unless her will had

substantiated the fact they would have treated it as a calumny. Marrying

a man twenty years younger than herself, without fortune or name, is in

France _un ridicule, pire qu'un crime_. What think you of the

_Manuscript of St. Helena_ being attributed to her and Benjamin

Constant? Is it possible to carry the desire of rendering her

inconsistent further?... Adieu! Your recollection accompanies me to the

New World, where I hope I may meet any one half so agreeable. They write

me that my son is _petri d'esprit_. I fear that after exciting my hopes

he will become, like the generality of people, mediocre and tiresome.

Yours affectionately, ELIZA PATTERSON."

The next letter is preceded by Lady Morgan's comment: "Mme. Bonaparte,

with her airy manner, beauty and wit, would have made an excellent

princess, American as she was. One wonders that Napoleon should have

been blind to her capabilities--he whose motto was, 'The tools to him

who can use them.'"--"BALTIMORE, 1818. DEAR LADY MORGAN:... The demand

for your work on France was so great that it went through three editions

with us.... My son is intelligent, good and very handsome.... You have a

great deal of imagination, but it can give you no idea of the mode of

existence inflicted on us. The men are all merchants, and commerce may

fill the purse, but clogs the brain: beyond their counting-houses they

possess not a single idea; they never visit except when they wish to

marry. The women are occupied in _les details du menage_ and nursing

children--useful occupations that do not render them agreeable to their

neighbors. The men, being all bent on marriage, do not attend to me,

because they fancy I am not inclined to change the evils of my condition

for those they could offer me. I have been thought so _ennuyee_ as to

accept very respectable offers, but I prefer remaining as I am to

marrying a person to whom I am indifferent. My letters from Paris say

that Decaze, the minister of police, is created a peer and is to marry

Princess de Beauveau. It appears very strange to my recollections of

political feelings, but nothing is too surprising with politicians. He

is very handsome at least--not a bad thing in a husband: they say, too,

that he has talents and sensibility.... Suppose you were to come to this

country: it is becoming the fashion to travel here, and you might find

materials for an interesting work.... It is impossible for me to return

to Europe: a single woman is exposed to so many disagreeable comments in

a foreign land. Besides, I have only eleven hundred pounds a year--not

enough to support me out of my own family.... I embroider and read. Do

you remember Mme. de Stael's description of the mode of life Corinne

found in an English country town, the subjects of conversation limited

to births, deaths and marriages? My opinion on these topics has long

been decided: that it is a misery to be born and married I have

painfully experienced.... Have you a good college in Dublin? I might

send my son there in two years, as he cannot go to France, and I do not

wish him to be educated in England, where his name would not recommend

him to favor."

"GENEVA, 1819. DEAR LADY MORGAN:... I should never have ventured on

another voyage to Europe could I have found the means of education for

my son.... We have been nearly ruined by commercial speculations, and

even I have suffered.... My son's education, too, demands no

inconsiderable expense, and his father never _has_, and never _will_,

contribute a single farthing toward his maintenance. We have no

correspondence since the demand that he would pay part of his necessary

expenditure, which he positively refused.... This town is intolerably

expensive--as much so as Paris: there exists, too, an _esprit de

coterie_ appalling to _women_ strangers, for men are _les bien venus

partout_. They have a custom _parmi les gens du haut_ of receiving

strangers to board at a very high price _seulement pour leur agrement_,

in which houses there is no feast to be found unless it be of reason:

the hosts are too _spirituels_ to fancy that we possess a vulgar

appetite for meat, vegetables, tarts and custards; but as I cannot

subsist altogether on the contemplation of _la belle Nature_, I have

taken an apartment, hoping to get something to eat.... My health is

restored, and I am much less in the _genre larmoyant_ than when you saw

me.... I am happy not to have gone to Edinburgh: the climate here is

finer, living cheaper and the language French--more desirable for my

son. Why do you persist in living in Ireland?"

King Jerome afterward allowed his son one hundred dollars per month for

seven years, but with malignant cruelty ignored him in his will, which

wrong at once to her son and her own wifely fame Mme. Bonaparte

contested in Paris with a spirit that elicited the sympathy of Europe;

but Napoleon III., for reasons of policy, permitted her defeat, and also

at this time discontinued the annuity of fourteen thousand dollars

allowed to her son, Jerome Bonaparte, although recognizing him at court

as his cousin; but the six thousand dollars per annum granted to her

grandson, Captain Bonaparte, ceased only with the Empire.

"GENEVA, 1820. DEAR LADY MORGAN:... Baron Bonstetten came to see me

to-day. You were the subject of our conversation: nothing but

admiration. M. Sismondi has made my acquaintance--he is married too: I

wonder that people of genius marry. I have been in such a state of

melancholy as to wish myself dead a thousand times. What think you of a

person advising me to turn Methodist? Have you read Lamartine's

_Meditations poetiques_? There are some fine things in them, but he is

too _larmoyant_ and of the bad school of politics. Miss Edgeworth is

here: she came to see me, but we have not met. She has a great deal of

good sense, which I particularly object to in my companions unless

accompanied by genius.... They are so reasonable and unmoved in this

place, their mornings devoted to the exact sciences, their evenings to

whist! There have been some English, but I have seen little of them:

they are cold, formal, affected--just my antipodes; therefore we should

not please each other: they require a year to become acquainted, and I

have too little left of life to waste on formalities.... In this

birthplace of Calvinism I found no trace of its originator, either in

actual relics or asceticism: it was rather the centre of folly and

license."

Baron Bonstetten, savant and philanthropist--whom Lady Morgan styles

"that fresh, frisky old darling"--showed Mme. Bonaparte paternal

kindness. In a morning visit she found him in his library examining

letters. He said, "Asseyez vous un peu, mon enfant, en attendant que je

finisse de ces papiers," and she sat for an hour reading letters from

celebrities which he tossed to her--among others, perhaps inadvertently,

from Mme. de Stael, proving the good baron's admiration for Corinne to

have been "warmer than friendship if colder than love." At a ball at

Bonstetten's, as Mme. Bonaparte entered the room, a stout, handsome man

covered with orders eagerly exclaimed, "Qui est-ce? qui est-ce?"--"La

premiere femme de Jerome Bonaparte," replied the princess Gallitzin. It

was Duke William of Wuertemberg, uncle of Jerome's second wife. He

requested a presentation, took both hands affectionately, and after

conversing half an hour led her to his duchess, to whom he said

afterward, "Mais, mon Dieu! que Jerome a manque son coup. Quelle grace,

quelle beaute, quel esprit! Et ma pauvre niece! il faut etre juste;

jamais ne pourrait-elle regner comme cette belle Americaine, qui par

tout droit est vraiment la reine. Jerome a ete bete de la

quitter."--"Ah," said Bonstetten, "si elle n'est pas reine de

Westphalie, elle est au moins reine des coeurs."

Jerome sent for his son, then a lad, to visit him at Rome, where he

remained several months, treated with affection by his father and with

maternal kindness by the princess, who went two leagues to meet him, and

taking his face between her hands said tearfully, "Ah! mon enfant, je

suis la cause innocente de tous vos malheurs." She evinced always the

utmost interest in her predecessor. Mme. Rubelle was appointed lady of

honor to her when queen of Westphalia, and was meaningly questioned,

"Are all the American ladies as beautiful as yourself?" Prince Woronzow

said of these rival wives, "Je suis amoureux des deux reines de

Westphalie."

On her arrival in France the princess of Wuertemberg halted at Raincy to

meet Prince Jerome, "who had sworn to me," says Mme. Junot, "never to

forget the mother of his son, the young wife who had given him a

paradise in a strange land.... The princess was not pretty; she seldom

smiled; her expression was haughty.... Her complexion was fair and

fresh, hair light, eyes blue, teeth very white.... As the princess had

made up her mind to give her hand to Jerome, it was desirable that she

should please him, as he certainly regretted his wife; and Miss

Patterson was really his wife and a charming woman.... Her dress was in

uncommon bad taste--the gown of bluish-white _moire_, trimmed in front

with badly-worked silver embroidery in a forgotten style; a little train

resembling the round tail of a beaver; tight, flat sleeves, pressing the

arm above the elbow like a bandage after blood-letting. Her pointed

shoes belonged to the era of King John, the hair old-fashioned in style.

About her neck were two rows of very fine pearls, to which was suspended

the portrait of the prince set in diamonds, and much too large to be

ornamental, as it dangled from her neck and bestowed heavy blows at

every step.... Marshal Bessieres had espoused the princess by proxy....

As Jerome entered she advanced two steps and made him her compliments

with grace and dignity.... Jerome seemed to be there because he had been

told 'You must go.' After Jerome retired the princess fainted."

The duke of Wuertemberg was a mere tool in Napoleon's hands, and his

pliancy was rewarded. In 1809 the emperor greeted him as _mon

frere_.--"Comment, Sire? No longer your cousin?"--"You _were_ mon

cousin: you are _now_ Monsieur mon frere!" And yet the domestic tragedy

of this new _frere_ was known to the imperial king-maker! In 1780 the

duke had married Princess Caroline of Brunswick, young and beautiful,

who was accused of regarding too favorably a page in her service.

Letters inculpating them were found, a family and state council was

convened, and the page sentenced to death, while all concurred in the

guilt of the duchess. A divorce was proposed, but finally her death was

decreed. The page lodged in the palace, his door opening on a corridor

beneath which were similar corridors, in each of which a trapdoor was

now arranged, one below the other, a slight flooring concealing the one

immediately above the apartment of the duchess. As the unsuspicious page

stole at midnight to the rendezvous, the trap yielded, and from floor to

floor he was dashed, mangled and dead, to the feet of the duchess. The

infatuated woman, previously warned, had refused to abandon her lover;

but now she sought escape, was intercepted, and the city executioner

immediately brought blindfolded to the great hall, where he beheld a

fair, noble woman bound hands and feet. He implored to be spared his

terrible task, but, sworn to secrecy, he was forced under penalty of

instant death to strike the fatal blow. He drew up a detailed account of

the double murder and sent it to Baron Bretueil, then French minister of

state, who laid the matter before King Louis XVI. Jerome's wife was the

daughter of this unfortunate princess. The duke afterward married a

daughter of George III. of England.

Mme. Bonaparte's last meeting with Jerome was at the Pitti Palace in

Florence in 1822, and, singular to say, these once wedded lovers did not

know each other! She chanced to be attired in her most _recherche_

costume--a rich silk halfway to the knee, then the mode, displaying

dainty prunella shoes; a gauze hat about three feet in circumference,

with high-wired bows; a crimson cashmere shawl and large green velvet

reticule. In passing through the gallery she was attracted by the eager,

persistent stare of a very handsome man whom she did not recognize, but

whose strange likeness to her son enchained her. Suddenly the truth

flashed to her heart: "It is Jerome!" He meanwhile, gazing at her, said

to one of the ladies with him, "Si belle! si belle! qui est-ce?"--"Vous

devriez la connaitre, c'est votre premiere femme," replied Mme. Joseph

Bonaparte. Jerome started, and with an agitated whisper to the other

lady, the princess Catherine, they left the gallery. For one moment only

the two "discrowned queens" were face to face. The next day Mme.

Bonaparte was driving in the Cascine, when from a passing carriage

Jerome nearly precipitated himself in a last, lingering look at the wife

of his youth.

At that period Florence was the focus of continental social brilliancy,

and Mme. Bonaparte was received with due distinction at its charming

court. "My presentation was special," she relates, "and being superbly

dressed, though caring but little for _chiffons_, I advanced with entire

composure and self-satisfaction through the apartments of the Pitti

Palace, crowded with the _elite_ of the court and diplomacy. Preceded by

the chamberlain, I was welcomed by the grand duke and duchess with such

kindness as quite to overcome me, and I nearly burst into tears; but

saying to myself, 'Good gracious! I shall spoil my lovely satin gown,

and be thought _bete_ to make a scene,' this reflection restored my

serenity and enabled me to go through the ceremony with becoming

dignity."

"Si elle etait reine avec quelle grace elle regnerait," said Talleyrand

after one of their witty jousts, in which he was not always victor. "She

charms by her eyes while she slays with her tongue," said Count Crillon:

if her unsparing repartee inspired wholesome fear, she disarmed by her

tact, sportive manner and childlike laughter. "Had she been near the

throne the Allies would have found it even more difficult to dispose of

Napoleon," said Gortschakoff, that brilliant and fascinating Russian,

noted even then for the astuteness and diplomatic resource that still

steady the Russian helm through Disraelian and Bismarckian breakers, and

who now, after fifty years, faithful in friendship, recalls to his

_belle alliee_ the _guerre spirituelle epigrammatique_ of their bright

spring-time. The duke of Buckingham and Chandos in his _Memoirs_ pays

tribute to her talent, piquant charm and "untarnished name," while her

enemy, Prince Napoleon--Plon-Plon--thus characterizes her: "Ambitieuse,

un esprit indomptable, une reputation sans tache."

She writes to Lady Morgan from Paris in 1825: "I passed only a few

months in Rome, where I saw the most beautiful woman in the world, who

has since died in her husband's palace in Florence, conjugally regretted

by Prince Borghese. He buried her in the handsomest chapel in Europe.

She left my son a legacy of twenty thousand francs.... I have paid a

short visit to America. La Fayette was caressed, adored and

substantially rewarded. I saw him, and talked to him of you, whom he

loves and admires _malgre le temps et l'absence_. Fanny Wright was with

or near him all the time he was in America. She is to write something of

which he is to be the hero.... My son has grown up handsome--a classical

profile and _un esprit juste_."

At Rome, Mme. Bonaparte first met her imperial relatives, by all of whom

she was affectionately welcomed except Madame Mere. "Qu'est-ce que vous

allez faire a son sujet?" questioned Pauline Borghese. "Je n'y ferai

rien;" and to this armed neutrality she adhered, though by request

sending her son daily to see his grandmother, until at length overtures

were made and the spirited daughter-in-law received with cordiality.

"She was not tall," says Mme. Bonaparte; "features like her great son;

fine mournful eyes; a manner touching and majestic. She was then very

_devote_. Pauline was empty-headed, selfish and vain, cared only for

luxury, but in every line exquisite as Canova's statue represents her.

Hortense was not really handsome--irregular features, a wide mouth

exposing the gums and defective teeth, a blemish in her mother, whose

faultless figure, kindly nature and caressing manner she also inherited.

She was lovely at the harp, and sang her own _romances_ in a sweet

voice."

Among the few celebrities of her day unknown by Mme. Bonaparte was

Byron, who had expressed a great wish to meet her, so his friend Captain

Medway told her. "I hate a dumpy woman," says the noble bard; and to

that complexion did the Guiccioli come at last. Mme. Bonaparte knew her

well--"a shower of golden curls; fair, with blue eyes, unlike the

typical Italian; teeth and hands perfect; naive and sweet of temper.

Byron, she said, took a woman's care of his beauty; slept in gloves--he

was so proud of his hands--and kept bits of cotton between his teeth to

preserve their regularity."

In 1839, Mme. Bonaparte writes to Lady Morgan from Paris: "Death, time

and absence have left me hardly an acquaintance here.... I hardly know

which is most distressing--to hear that our friends have gone to the

other world or have forgotten us in this.... My son is gone from Geneva

to Italy to visit his relatives and to see after a legacy which his

grand-uncle, Cardinal Fesch, had the goodness to leave him.... I have

grown fat, old and dull--good reasons for persons not to think me an

intelligent listener. They mistake: I have exactly the talent to

appreciate the powers of others. Poor Mme. Junot made a sad end, the

natural consequence of her prodigality: her pecuniary difficulties, it

is said, caused her death. I liked her very much, and felt pained at the

misery caused by her want of judgment. Her heart was generous and

warm.... I know not if the late princess Charlotte, daughter of Joseph

Bonaparte, was of your acquaintance: she possessed some mental

superiority and many noble qualities."

"Lady Morgan," says Mme. Bonaparte, "was brilliant in wit, good-natured

and flattering; short, with sparkling eyes; her hair close cut, in dark

curls. 'Why is it,' she said to me, 'that you speak French perfectly,

but English with such an American drawl?'--'For the same reason

probably that yours is a brogue'--one of the miseries of her life."

"BALTIMORE, 1849.... No one expects me to be grateful for the evil

chance of having been born here. Society and conversation belong to

older countries: you ought to thank your stars for your European

birth.... France, _je l'espere_, is in a transition state, and will not

let her brilliancy be put under an extinguisher called _la Republique_.

The emperor hurled me back on what I most hated on earth, my Baltimore

obscurity: even that shock could not destroy the admiration I felt for

his genius and glory. I have ever been an imperial Bonapartist _quand

meme_, and am enchanted at the homage paid by six millions of voices to

his memory in voting an imperial President: the prestige of the name has

elected a prince who has my most ardent wishes for an empire. Dear Lady

Morgan, having been cheated out of my inheritance from my late rich and

unjust father, I have only ten thousand dollars annually. You speak of

my 'princely' income. I have all my life been tortured and mortified by

pecuniary difficulties: but for my industry, energy and determination to

conquer a decent sufficiency to live on in Europe, I might have remained

as poor as you first saw me.... Lamartine and Chateaubriand are giving

their memoirs to the public: the first _de son vivant_. When I knew

Lamartine he was charge d'affaires from Charles X. Florence was then a

charming place. I met him every night in society. How little did I

foresee that he was to become a poetical republican, and that dear

Florence was to be travestied in a republic! Hoping that England may

remain steady and faithful to monarchical principles, that at least some

refined society may be left in the world, I shall, _Dieu permettant_,

have the satisfaction of seeing you next summer."

Neither the climate nor "the freezing social _convenance_" of England

pleased Mme. Bonaparte, though she was received with distinction.

"Abroad, these fair insulars _occasionally_ unbend and are charming" she

says, "but at all times I have found Englishmen of birth the best bred

and most agreeable men in the world."

Since her withdrawal from European life Mme. Bonaparte has lived

secluded from society. Baltimore's shrewdest banker says that he knows

"no man capable of creating legitimately, with so small a capital, the

large fortune amassed by Mme. Bonaparte." She has no accomplishment in

any branch of art, and although her love of study remains, her

fast-increasing blindness deprives her of this resource. Her diary, if

ever given to the public, will have the effect of a shower of cayenne;

but her _magnum opus_, which discretion will probably forbid seeing the

light, is entitled _Dialogues of the Dead_, the scene being laid in

Hades, where her father and King Jerome rehearse her story. Her wit is

still incisive, her conversation replete with interest, her memory

retaining minutely every incident and figure of the wondrous diorama

that has unrolled before her eyes close upon a hundred years. Her birth

was nearly coeval with that of our republic, many of whose fathers she

knew. She wept as the tidings of Marie Antoinette's tragedy reached our

shores; she was a woman when Washington died; Jefferson was her friend;

La Fayette has held her hand; and her name is imperishably associated

with one "who kept the world at bay, whose game was empires, whose

stakes were thrones."

A SUMMER EVENING'S DREAM.

It is a village street, with great elms on either side, while along the

middle stands another row set in a narrow strip of grassy common, so

that the street and roadway are in reality double. The dwellings on

either side are not only widely parted by the broad street, but are

still further isolated, each in its large garden of ancient fruit trees.

It is four o'clock of a sunny August afternoon, and a quiet,

Sabbath-like but for its lazy voluptuousness, broods over the scene. No

carriage, or even pedestrian, has passed for an hour. The occasional

voices of children at play in some garden, the latching of a gate far

down the street, the dying fall of a drowsy chanticleer, are but the

punctuation of the poem of summer silence that has been flowing on all

the afternoon. Upon the tree-tops the sun blazes brightly, and between

their stems are glimpses of outlying meadows, which simmer in the heat

as if about to come to a boil. But the shadowed street offers a cool and

refreshing vista to the eye and a veritable valley of refuge to the

parched and dusty traveller along the highway.

On the broad piazza of one of the quaint old-fashioned houses, behind a

needless screen of climbing woodbine, two girls are whiling away the

afternoon. One of them is lounging in a lazy rocking-chair, while the

other sits more primly and is industriously sewing.

"I suppose you'll be glad enough to see George when he comes to-night to

take you back to the city? I'm afraid you find it pretty dull here,"

said the latter with an intonation of uneasy responsibility sufficiently

attesting that the brilliant-looking girl opposite was a guest.

That young lady when addressed was indulging in a luxurious country

yawn, an operation by no means to be hurried, but to be fully and lazily

enjoyed in all its several and long-drawn stages, and as thus practised

a wonderfully calming and soporific relaxation wholly unknown to the

fretted denizens of cities, whose yawn is one of irritation and not of

rest. "I do so enjoy your Plainfield yawns, Lucy," she said when she had

quite finished. "Were you saying that it was a little dull? Well,

perhaps it is, but then the trees and things seem to be enjoying

themselves so hugely that it would be selfish to make a fuss, even if it

isn't exactly my kind of fun."

"Your kind of fun is due by the six-o'clock stage, I believe."

The other laughed and said, "I wish you wouldn't make another allusion

to George. I think of him so much that I'm ashamed as it is. I'm sure

this is a very aggravating place for an engaged girl to be at. One gets

so dreadfully sentimental with nothing to take up the mind, especially

with such monstrous moons as you have. I got fairly frightened of the

one last night. It drew me out through my eyes like a big plaster."

"Mabel French!"

"I don't care: it did. That was just the feeling."

There was no hurry about talking, for the rich, mellow summer silence

had a body to it that prevented pauses from seeming empty, and it might

have been half an hour afterward that Mabel suddenly leaned forward,

putting her face close to the vine-trellis, and cried in a low voice,

"Who's that? Do tell me! They're the very first persons who have gone by

this afternoon, I do believe."

A pretty phaeton was slowly passing, containing an elderly gentleman and

lady.

"Oh, that is only Lawyer Morgan and old Miss Rood," replied Lucy, just

glancing up, and then down again. "They go out driving once a week

regularly, and always at about this time in the afternoon."

"They look like afternoon sort of people," said Mabel. "But why doesn't

Lawyer Morgan take out his wife?"

"He hasn't got any. Miss Rood comes nearest to that. Oh no, you needn't

open your eyes: there's not a properer old maid in town, or old bachelor

either, for that matter."

"Are they relatives?"

"No, indeed."

"How long has this Platonic romance been going on, pray?"

"Oh, ever since they were young--forty years perhaps. I only know by

tradition, you see. It began ages before my day. They say she was very

pretty once. Old Aunty Perkins remembers that she was quite the belle of

the village as a girl. It seems strange, doesn't it?"

"Tell me the whole story," said Mabel, turning round so as to face Lucy

as the phaeton passed out of sight.

"There's not much to tell. Mr. Morgan has always lived here, and so has

Miss Rood. He lives alone with a housekeeper in that fine house at the

end of the street, and she entirely alone in that little white house

over there among the apple trees. All the people who knew them when they

were young are dead, gone away or moved off. They are relics of a past

generation, and are really about as much shut up to each other for

sympathy as an old married couple."

"Well, why on earth aren't they married?"

"People hereabouts got tired of asking that full thirty years ago,"

replied Lucy with a little shrug. "Even the gossips long since wore out

the subject, and I believe we have all of us forgotten that there is

anything peculiar about their relations. He calls on her two or three

times a week, and takes her out driving on pleasant days; escorts her to

places of amusement or social gatherings when either of them cares to

go, which isn't often; and wherever they are, people take it for granted

they will pair off together. He is never seen with any other lady."

"It's very strange," said Mabel thoughtfully, "and I'm sure it's very

romantic. Queer old couple! I wonder how they really feel toward each

other, and whether they wouldn't like to be married?"

A while after she suddenly demanded, "Don't you think Miss Rood looks

like me?"

Lucy laughed at first, but upon closer inspection of the fair questioner

admitted that there might be some such resemblance as the shrivelled

apples brought up from the cellar in spring bear to the plump,

rosy-cheeked beauties that went down in October.

If Mr. Morgan and Miss Rood, as they rode past, had chanced to overhear

Mabel's question why they had not married, it would have affected them

very differently. He would have been startled by the novelty of an idea

that had not occurred to him in twenty years, but the blush on her cheek

would have been one of painful consciousness.

As boy and girl they had been each other's chosen companion, and as

young man and maiden their childish preference had bloomed into a

reciprocal love. Thanks to the freedom and simplicity of village life,

they enjoyed as lovers a constant and easy familiarity and daily

association almost as complete in sympathy of mind and heart as anything

marriage could offer. There were none of the usual obstacles to incite

them to matrimony. They were never even formally engaged, so wholly did

they take it for granted that they should marry. It was so much a matter

of course that there was no hurry at all about it; and besides, so long

as they had it to look forward to the foreground of life was illuminated

for them: it was still morning. Mr. Morgan was constitutionally of a

dreamy and unpractical turn, a creature of habits and a victim of ruts;

and as years rolled on he became more and more satisfied with these

half-friendly, half-loverlike relations. He never found the time when it

seemed an object to marry, and now, for very many years, the idea had

not even occurred to him as possible; and so far was he from the least

suspicion that Miss Rood's experience had not been precisely similar to

his own, that he often congratulated himself on the fortunate

coincidence.

Time cures much, and many years ago Miss Rood had recovered from the

first bitterness of discovering that his love had become insensibly

transformed into a very tender but perfectly peaceful friendship. No

one but him had ever touched her heart, and she had no interest in life

besides him. Since she was not to be his wife, she was glad to be his

lifelong, tender, self-sacrificing friend. So she raked the ashes over

the fire in her heart, and left him to suppose that it had gone out as

in his. Nor was she without compensation in their friendship. It was

with a delightful thrill that she felt how fully in mind and heart he

leaned and depended upon her, and the unusual and romantic character of

their relations in some degree consoled her for the disappointment of

womanly aspirations by a feeling of distinction. She was not like other

women: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex.

The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarly

susceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect

unique--a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now.

To-day, after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had

walked in his garden, and as the evening breeze arose, it bore to his

nostrils that first indescribable flavor of autumn which warns us that

the soul of Summer has departed from her yet glowing body. He was very

sensitive to these changes of the year, and, obeying an impulse that had

been familiar to him in all unusual moods his life long, he left the

house after tea and turned his steps down the street. As he stopped at

Miss Rood's gate, Lucy, Mabel and George Hammond were under the apple

trees in the garden opposite.

"Look, Mabel! There's Mr. Morgan going to call on Miss Rood," said Lucy

softly.

"Oh, do look, George!" said Mabel eagerly. "That old gentleman has been

paying court to an old maid over in that little house for forty years.

And to think," she added in a lower tone, intended for his private ear,

"what a fuss you make about waiting six months!"

"Humph! You please to forget that it's easier to wait for some things

than for others. Six months of my kind of waiting, I take it, require

more patience than forty years of his--or any other man's," he added

with increased emphasis.

"Be quiet, sir!" replied Mabel, answering his look of unruly admiration

with one of half pique. "I'm not a sugar-plum, that's not enjoyed till

it's in the mouth. If you haven't got me now, you'll never have me. If

being engaged isn't enough, you don't deserve to be married." And then,

seeing the blank expression with which he looked down at her, she added

with a prescient resignedness, "I'm afraid, dear, you'll be so

disappointed when we're married if you find this so tedious."

Lucy had discreetly wandered away, and of how they made it up there were

no witnesses. But it seems likely that they did so, for shortly after

they wandered away together down the darkening street.

Like most of the Plainfield houses, that at which Mr. Morgan turned in

stood well back from the street. At a side window, still further

sheltered from view by a syringa-bush at the house corner, sat a little

woman with a small pale face, the still attractive features perceptibly

sharpened by years, of which the half-gray hair bore further testimony.

The eyes, just now fixed absently upon the dusking landscape, were light

gray and a little faded, while around the lips there were crowsfeet,

especially when they were pressed together, as now, in an unsatisfied,

almost pathetic look, evidently habitual to her face when in repose.

There was withal something in her features that so reminded you of Mr.

Morgan that any one conversant with the facts of his life-romance would

have at once inferred--though by just what logic he might not be able to

explain--that this must be Miss Rood. It is well known that long-wedded

couples often gain at length a certain resemblance in feature and

manner; and although these two were not married, yet their intimacy of a

lifetime was perhaps the reason why her face bore when in repose

something of that seer-like expression which communion with the bodiless

shapes of memory had given to his.

The latching of the gate broke up her depressing revery and banished the

pinched and pining look from her features. Among the neighbors Miss Rood

was sometimes called a sour old maid, but the face she kept for Mr.

Morgan would never have suggested that idea to the most ill-natured

critic.

He stopped at the window, near which the walk passed to the doorway, and

stood leaning on the sill--a tall slender figure, stooping a little,

with smooth scholarly face and thin iron-gray hair. His only noticeable

feature was a pair of eyes whose expression and glow indicated an

imaginative temperament. It was pleasant to observe the relieved

restlessness in the look and manner of the two friends, as if at the

mere being in each other's presence, though neither seemed in any haste

to exchange even the words of formal greeting.

At length she said in a tone of quiet satisfaction, "I knew you would

come, for I was sure this deathly autumn's flavor would make you

restless. Isn't it strange how it affects the nerves of memory and makes

one sad with thinking of all the sweet dear days that are dead?"

"Yes, yes," he answered eagerly: "I can think of nothing else. Do they

not seem wonderfully clear and near to-night? To-night, of all nights in

the year, if the figures and scenes of memory can be re-embodied in

visible forms, they ought to become so to the eyes that strain and yearn

for them."

"What a fanciful idea, Robert!"

"I don't know that it is: I don't feel sure. Nobody understands the

mystery of this Past, or what are the conditions of existence in that

world. These memories, these forms and faces, that are so near, so

almost warm and visible that we find ourselves smiling on the vacant air

where they seem to be, are they not real and living?"

"You don't mean you believe in ghosts?"

"I am not talking of ghosts of the dead, but of ghosts of the

past--memories of scenes or persons, whether the persons are dead or

not--of our own selves as well as others. Why," he continued, his voice

softening into a passionate, yearning tenderness, "the figure I would

give most to see just once more is yourself as a girl, as I remember you

in the sweet grace and beauty of your maidenhood. Ah well! ah well!"

"Don't!" she cried involuntarily, while her features contracted in

sudden pain.

In the years during which his passion for her had been cooling into a

staid friendship his imagination had been recurring with constantly

increasing fondness and a dreamy passion to the memory of her girlhood.

And the cruellest part of it was that he so unconsciously and

unquestioningly assumed that she could not have identity enough with

that girlish ideal to make his frequent glowing references to it even

embarrassing. Generally, however, she heard and made no sign, but the

suddenness of his outburst just now had taken her off her guard.

He glanced up with some surprise at her exclamation, but was too much

interested in his subject to take much notice of it. "You know," he

said, "there are great differences in the distinctness with which we can

bring up our memories. Very well! The only question is, What is the

limit to that distinctness, or is there any? Since we know there are

such wide degrees in distinctness, the burden of proof rests on those

who would prove that those degrees stop short of any particular point.

Don't you see, then, that it might be possible to see them?" And to

enforce his meaning he laid his hand lightly on hers as it rested on the

window-seat.

She withdrew it instantly from the contact, and a slight flush tinged

her sallow cheeks. The only outward trace of her memory of their

youthful relations was the almost prudish chariness of her person by

which she indicated a sense of the line to be drawn between the former

lover and the present friend.

"Something in your look just now," he said, regarding her musingly, as

one who seeks to trace the lineaments of a dead face in a living one,

"reminds me of you as you used to sit in this very window as a girl, and

I stood just here, and we picked out stars together. There! now it's

gone;" and he turned away regretfully.

She looked at his averted face with a blank piteousness which revealed

all her secret. She would not have had him see it for worlds, but it was

a relief just for a moment to rest her features in the sad cast which

the muscles had grown tired in repressing. The autumn scent rose

stronger as the air grew damp, and he stood breathing it in, and

apparently feeling its influence like some Delphian afflatus.

"Is there anything, Mary--is there anything so beautiful as that light

of eternity that rests on the figures of memory? Who that has once felt

it can care for the common daylight of the present any more, or take

pleasure in its prosaic groups?"

"You'll certainly catch cold standing in that wet grass: do come in and

let me shut the blinds," she said, for she had found cheerful lamplight

the best corrective for his vagaries.

So he came in and sat in his special arm-chair, and they chatted about

miscellaneous village topics for an hour. The standpoint from which they

canvassed Plainfield people and things was a peculiarly outside one.

Their circle of two was like a separate planet from which they observed

the world. Their tone was like, and yet quite unlike, that in which a

long-married couple discuss their acquaintances; for, while their

intellectual intimacy was perfect, their air expressed a constant mutual

deference and solicitude of approbation not to be confounded with the

terrible familiarity of matrimony; and at the same time they constituted

a self-sufficient circle, apart from the society around them, as man and

wife cannot. Man and wife are so far merged as to feel themselves a unit

over against society. They are too much identified to find in each other

that sense of support and countenance which requires a feeling of the

exteriority of our friend's life to our own. If these two should marry

they would shortly find themselves impelled to seek refuge in

conventional relations with that society of which now they were calmly

independent.

At length Mr. Morgan rose and threw open the blinds. The radiance of the

full harvest-moon so flooded the room that Miss Rood was fain to blow

out the poor lamp for compassion. "Let us take a walk," he said.

The streets were empty and still, and they walked in silence, spelled by

the perfect beauty of the evening. The dense shadows of the elms lent a

peculiarly rich effect to the occasional bars and patches of moonlight

on the street floor; the white houses gleamed among their orchards; and

here and there, between the dark tree-stems, there were glimpses of the

shining surface of the broad outlying meadows, which looked like a

surrounding sea.

Miss Rood was startled to see how the witchery of the scene possessed

her companion. His face took on a set, half-smiling expression, and he

dropped her arm as if they had arrived at the place of entertainment to

which he had been escorting her. He no longer walked with measured pace,

but glided along with a certain stealthiness, peering on this side and

that down moony vistas and into shadow-bowers, as if half expecting, if

he might step lightly enough, to catch a glimpse of some sort of

dream-people basking there.

Nor could Miss Rood herself resist the impression the moony landscape

gave of teeming with subtle forms of life, escaping the grosser senses

of human beings, but perceptible by their finer parts. Each cosey nook

of light and shadow was yet warm from some presence that had just left

it. The landscape fairly stirred with ethereal forms of being beneath

the fertilizing moon-rays, as the earth-mould wakes into physical life

under the sun's heat. The yellow moonlight looked warm as spirits might

count warmth. The air was electric with the thrill of circumambient

existence. There was the sense of pressure, of a throng. It would have

been impossible to feel lonely. The pulsating sounds of the insect world

seemed the rhythm to which the voluptuous beauty of the night had

spontaneously set itself. The common air of day had been transmuted

into the atmosphere of revery and Dreamland. In that magic medium the

distinction between imagination and reality fast dissolved. Even Miss

Rood was conscious of a delightful excitement, a vague expectancy. Mr.

Morgan, she saw, was moved quite beyond even his exaggerated habit of

imaginative excitement. His wet, shining, wide-opened eyes and ecstatic

expression indicated complete abandonment to the illusions of the scene.

They had seated themselves, as the concentration of the brain upon

imaginative activity made the nerves of motion sluggish, upon a rude

bench formed by wedging a plank between two elms that stood close

together. They were within the shadow of the trees, but close up to

their feet rippled a lake of moonlight. The landscape shimmering before

them had been the theatre of their fifty years of life. Their history

was written in its trees and lawns and paths. The very air of the place

had acquired for them a dense, warm, sentient feeling, to which that of

all other places was thin and raw. It had become tinctured by their own

spiritual emanations, by the thoughts, looks, words and moods of which

it had so long received the impression. It had become such vitalized

air, surcharged with sense and thought, as might be taken to make souls

for men out of.

Over yonder, upon the playground, yet lingered the faint violet

fragrance of their childhood. Beneath that elm a kiss had once touched

the air with a fire that still warmed their cheeks in passing. Yonder

the look of a face was cut on the viewless air as on marble. Surely,

death does but touch the living, for the dead ever keep their power over

us: it is only we who lose ours over them. Each vista of leafy arch and

distant meadow framed in some scene of their youth-time, painted in the

imperishable hues of memory that borrow from time an ever-richer and

more glowing tint. It was no wonder that to these two old people,

sitting on the bench between the elms, the atmosphere before them,

saturated with associations, dense with memories, should seem fairly

quivering into material forms like a distant mist turning to rain.

At length Miss Rood heard her companion say, in a whisper of tremulous

exultation, "Do you know, Mary, I think I shall see them very soon."

"See whom?" she asked, frightened at his strange tone.

"Why, see us, of course, as I was telling you," he whispered--"you and

me as we were young--see them as I see you now. Don't you remember it

was just along here that we used to walk on spring evenings? We walk

here no more, but they do evermore, beautiful, beautiful children. I

come here often to lie in wait for them. I can feel them now: I can

almost, almost see them." His whisper became scarcely audible and the

words dropped slowly. "I know the sight is coming, for every day they

grow more vivid. It can't be long before I quite see them. It may come

at any moment."

Miss Rood was thoroughly frightened at the intensity of his excitement,

and terribly perplexed as to what she should do.

"It may come at any time: I can almost see them now," he murmured.

"A--h! look!" With parted lips and unspeakably intense eyes, as if his

life were flowing out at them, he was staring across the moonlit paths

before them to the point where the path debouched from the shadow.

Following his eyes, she saw what for a moment made her head swim with

the thought that she too was going mad. Just issuing from the shadows,

as if in answer to his words, were a young man and a girl, his arm upon

her waist, his eyes upon her face. At the first glance Miss Rood was

impressed with a resemblance to her own features in those of the girl,

which her excitement exaggerated to a perfect reproduction of them. For

an instant the conviction possessed her that by some impossible,

indescribable, inconceivable miracle she was looking upon the

resurrected figures of her girlish self and her lover.

At first, Mr. Morgan had half started from his seat, and was between

rising and sitting. Then he rose with a slow, involuntary movement,

while his face worked terribly between bewilderment and abandonment to

illusion. He tottered forward a few steps to the edge of the moonlight,

and stood peering at the approaching couple with a hand raised to shade

his eyes and a dazed, unearthly smile on his face. The girl saw him

first, for she had been gazing demurely before her, while her lover

looked only at her. At sight of the gray-haired man suddenly confronting

them with a look of bedlam, she shrieked and started back in terror.

Miss Rood, recalled to her senses, sprang forward, and catching Mr.

Morgan's arm endeavored with gentle force to draw him away.

But it was too late for that. The young man, at first almost as much

startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally

experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary

interruption to his tete-a-tete, and stepped up to Mr. Morgan as if

about to inflict summary chastisement. But perceiving that he had to do

with an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedly

aggressive tone what the devil he meant by such a performance.

Mr. Morgan stared at him without seeing him, and evidently did not take

in the words. He merely gasped once or twice, and looked as if he had

fainted away on his feet. His blank, stunned expression showed that his

faculties were momentarily benumbed by the shock. Miss Rood felt as if

she should die for the pity of it as she looked at his face, and her

heart was breaking for grief as she sought to mollify the young man with

some inarticulate words of apology, meanwhile still endeavoring to draw

Mr. Morgan away. But at this moment the girl, recovering from her panic,

came up to the group and laid her hand on the young man's arm, as if to

check and silence him. It was evident that she saw there was something

quite unusual in the circumstances, and the look which she bent upon Mr.

Morgan was one of sympathy and considerate interrogation. But Miss Rood

could see no way out of their awkward situation, which grew more

intolerable every moment as they thus confronted each other. It was

finally Mr. Morgan's voice, quite firm, but with an indescribable

sadness in the tones, which broke the silence: "Young people, I owe you

an apology, such as it is. I am an old man, and the past is growing so

heavy that it sometimes quite over-balances me. My thoughts have been

busy to-night with the days of my youth, and the spell of memory has

been so strong that I have not been quite myself. As you came in view I

actually entertained the incredible idea for a moment that somehow I saw

in you the materialized memories of myself and another as we once walked

this same path."

The young man bowed as Mr. Morgan ended in a manner indicating his

acceptance of the apology, although he looked both amazed and amused.

But the explanation had a very different effect upon the girl at his

side. As she listened her eyes had filled with tears and her face had

taken on a wonderfully tender, pitiful smile. When he ended speaking,

she impulsively said, "I'm so sorry we were not what you thought us! Why

not pretend we are, to-night at least? We can pretend it, you know. The

moonlight makes anything possible;" and then glancing at Miss Rood, she

added, as if almost frightened, "Why, how much we look alike! I'm not

sure it isn't true, anyway."

This was, in fact, an unusually marked example of those casual

resemblances between strangers which are sometimes seen. The hair of the

one was indeed gray and that of the other dark, but the eyes were of the

same color by night, and the features, except for the greater fulness of

the younger face, were cast in the same mould, while figure and bearing

were strikingly similar, although daylight would doubtless have revealed

diversities enough that moonlight refused to disclose.

The two women looked at each other with an expression almost of

suspicion and fear, while the young man observed, "Your mistake was

certainly excusable, sir."

"It will be the easier to pretend," said the girl as with a

half-serious, half-sportive imperiousness she laid her hand on Mr.

Morgan's arm. "And now it is thirty years ago, and we are walking

together." He involuntarily obeyed the slight pressure, and they walked

slowly away, leaving the other two after an embarrassed pause to follow

them.

For some time they walked in silence. He was deliberately abandoning

himself to the illusion, supported as it was by the evidence of his

senses, that he was wandering in some of the mysterious between-worlds

which he had so often dreamed of, with the love of his youth in her

youth-time charm. Did he really believe it to be so? Belief is a term

quite irrelevant to such a frame as his, in which the reflective and

analytical powers are for a time purposely held in abeyance. The

circumstances of her introduction to him had dropped from his mind as

irrelevant accidents, like the absurdities which occur in our sweetest

and most solemn dreams without marring their general impression in our

memories. Every glance he threw upon his companion, while on the one

hand it shocked his illusion in that she seemed not likely to vanish

away, on the other strengthened it with an indescribable thrill by the

revelation of some fresh trait of face or figure, some new expression,

that reproduced the Miss Rood of his youth. Not, indeed, that it is

likely his companion was thus perfectly the double of that lady,

although so much resembling her, but the common graces of maidenhood

were in Mr. Morgan's mind the peculiar personal qualities of the only

woman he had ever much known.

Of his own accord he would not have dared to risk breaking the charm by

a word. But his companion--who, as is tolerably evident by this time,

was Mabel French--had meanwhile formed a scheme quite worthy of her

audacious temper. She had at once recognized both Mr. Morgan and Miss

Rood, and had gone thus far from a mere romantic impulse, without

definite intentions of any sort. But the idea now came into her head

that she might take advantage of this extraordinary situation to try a

matchmaking experiment, which instantly captivated her fancy. So she

said, while ever so gently pressing his arm and looking up into his face

with an arch smile (she was recognized as the best amateur actress in

her set at home), "I wonder if the moon will be so mellow after we are

married?"

His illusion was rudely disturbed by the shock of an articulate voice,

softly and low as she spoke, and he looked around with a startled

expression that made her fear her role was ended. But she could not know

that the eyes she turned to his were mirrors where he saw his dead

youth. The two Miss Roods--the girl and the woman, the past and the

present--were fused and become one in his mind. Their identity flashed

upon him.

An artesian well sunk from the desert surface through the underlying

strata, the layers of ages, strikes some lake long ago covered over, and

the water welling up converts the upper waste into a garden. Just so at

her words and her look his heart suddenly filled, as if it came from

afar, with the youthful passion he had felt toward Miss Rood, but which,

he knew not exactly when or how, had been gradually overgrown with the

dulness of familiarity and had lapsed into an indolent affectionate

habit. The warm voluptuous pulse of this new feeling--new, and yet

instantly recognized as old--brought with it a flood of youthful

associations, and commingled the far past with the present in a

confusion more complete and more intoxicating than ever. He saw double

again. "Married!" he murmured dreamily. "Yes, surely, we will be

married."

And as he spoke he looked at her with such a peculiar expression that

she was a little frightened. It looked like a more serious business than

she had counted on, and for a moment if she could have cut and run,

perhaps she would have done so. But she had a strain of the true

histrionic artist about her, and with a little effort rose to the

difficulty of the role. "Of course we will be married," she replied with

an air of innocent surprise. "You speak as if you had just thought of

it."

He turned toward her as if he would sober his senses by staring at her,

his pupils dilating and contracting in the instinctive effort to clear

the mind by clearing the eyes.

But with a steady pressure on his arm she compelled him to walk on by

her side. Then she said, in a soft low voice, as if a little awed by

what she were telling, while at the same time she nestled nearer his

side, "I had such a sad dream last night, and your strange talk reminds

me of it. It seemed as if we were old and white-haired and stooping, and

went wandering about, still together, but not married, lonely and

broken. And I woke up feeling you can't think how dreary and sad--as if

a bell had tolled in my ears as I slept; and the feeling was so strong

that I put my fingers to my face to find if it was withered; and when I

could not tell certainly, I got up and lit my lamp and looked in the

glass; and my face, thank God! was fresh and young; but I sat on my bed

and cried to think of the poor old people I had left behind in my

dream."

Mabel had so fallen into the spirit of her part that she was really

crying as she ended. Her tears completed Mr. Morgan's mental confusion,

and he absolutely did not know whom he was addressing or where he was

himself, as he cried, "No, no, Mary! Don't cry! It shall not be: it

shall never be."

Lightly withdrawing her hand from his arm, she glided like a sprite from

his side, and was lost in the shadows, while her whispered words still

sounded in his ear, "Good-bye for thirty years!"

A moment after three notes, clear as a bird's call, sounded from the

direction whither she had vanished, and Miss Rood's companion, breaking

off short a remark on the excessive dryness of the weather, bowed

awkwardly and also disappeared among the shadows.

When Miss Rood laid her hand on Mr. Morgan's arm to recall him to the

fact that they were now alone together, he turned quickly, and his eyes

swept her from head to foot, and then rested on her face with an

expression of intense curiosity and a wholly new interest, as if he were

tracing out a suddenly-suggested resemblance which overwhelmed him with

emotion. And as he gazed his eyes began to take fire from the faded

features on which they had rested so many years in mere complacent

friendliness, and she instinctively averted her face. Long intimacy had

made her delicately sensitive to his moods, and when he drew her arm in

his and turned to walk, although he had not uttered a word, she trembled

with agitation.

"Mary, we have had an extraordinary experience to-night," he said. The

old dreaminess in his voice, as of one narcotized or in a trance,

sometimes a little forced, as of one trying to dream, to which she had

become accustomed, and of which in her heart of hearts she was very

weary, was gone. In its place she recognized a resonance which still

further confused her with a sense of altered relations. His polarity had

changed: his electricity was no longer negative, but positive.

Her feminine instinct vaguely alarmed, she replied, "Yes, indeed, but it

is getting late. Hadn't we better go in?" What lent the unusual

intonation of timidity to her voice? Certainly nothing that she could

have explained.

"Not quite yet, Mary," he answered, turning his gaze once more fully

upon her.

Her eyes dropped before his, and a moment after fluttered up to find an

explanation for their behavior, only to fall again in blind panic. For,

mingling unmistakably with the curiosity with which he was still

studying her features, was a new-born expression of appropriation and

passionate complacency. Her senses whirled in a bewilderment that had a

suffocating sweetness about it. Though she now kept her eyes on the

ground, she felt his constant sidewise glances, and, desperately seeking

relief from the conscious silence that enveloped them like a vapor of

intoxicating fumes, she forced herself to utter the merest triviality

she could summon to her lips: "See that house." The husky tones betrayed

more agitation than the ruse concealed.

He answered as irrelevantly as she had spoken, "Yes, indeed, so it is."

That was their only attempt at conversation.

For a half hour--it might have been much more or much less--they walked

in this way, thrilling with the new magnetism that at once attracted and

estranged them with an extraordinary sense of strangeness in

familiarity. At length they paused under the little porch of Miss Rood's

cottage, where he commonly bade her good-evening after their walks. The

timidity and vague alarms that had paralyzed her while they were walking

disappeared as he was about to leave her, and she involuntarily

returned his unusual pressure of her hand.

A long time after behold her still encircled in his arms, not blushing,

but pale and her eyes full of a soft astonished glow! "Oh, Robert!" was

all she had said after one first little gasp.