Mysterious complexity of our mortal nature and estate that we should so
desire to be remembered after death, though born to be forgotten! Our
words and deeds, the influences of our silent personalities, do indeed
pass from us into the long history of the race and abide for the rest of
time: so that an earthly immortality is the heritage, nay, the
inalienable necessity, of even the commonest lives; only it is an
immortality not of self, but of its good and evil. For Nature sows us
and reaps us, that she may gather a harvest, not of us, but from us. It
is God alone that gathers the harvest of us. And well for us that our
destiny should be that general forgetfulness we so strangely shrink
from. For no sooner are we gone hence than, even for such brief times as
our memories may endure, we are apt to grow by processes of accumulative
transformation into what we never were. Thou kind, kind fate,
therefore--never enough named and celebrated--that biddest the sun of
memory rise on our finished but imperfect lives, and then lengthenest or
shortenest the little day of posthumous reminiscence, according as thou
seest there is need of early twilight or of deeper shadows!
* * * * *
Years passed. City and cemetery were each grown vaster. It was again an
afternoon when the people strolled among the graves and monuments. An
old man had courteously attached himself to a group that stood around a
crumbling memorial. He had reached a great age; but his figure was
erect, his face animated by strong emotions, and his eyes burned beneath
his brows.
"Sirs," said he, interposing in the conversation, which turned wholly on
the monument, "you say nothing of him in whose honour it was erected."
"We say nothing because we know nothing."
"Is he then wholly forgotten?"
"We are not aware that he is at all remembered."
"The inscription reads: 'He was a poet.' Know you none of his poems?"
"We have never so much as heard of his poems."
"My eyes are dim; is there nothing carved beneath his name?"
One of the bystanders went up and knelt down close to the base.
"There _was_ something here, but it is effaced by time--Wait!" And
tracing his finger slowly along, he read like a child--
"He--asked--but--for--the--common--lot.
"That is all," he cried, springing lightly up. "Oh, the dust on my
knees!" he added with vexation.
"He may have sung very sweetly," pursued the old man.
"He may, indeed!" they answered carelessly.
"But, sirs," continued he, with a sad smile, "perhaps you are the very
generation that he looked to for the fame which his own denied him;
perhaps he died believing that _you_ would fully appreciate his poems."
"If so, it was a comfortable faith to die in," they said, laughing, in
return. "He will never know that we did not. A few great poets have
posthumous fame: we know _them_ well enough." And they passed on.
"This," said the old man, as they paused elsewhere, "seems to be the
monument of a true soldier; know you aught of the victories he helped to
win?"
"He may not have helped to win any victories. He may have been a coward.
How should _we_ know? Epitaphs often lie. The dust is peopled with
soldiers." And again they moved on.
"Does any one read his sermons now, know you?" asked the old man as they
paused before a third monument.
"Read his sermons!" they exclaimed, laughing more heartily. "Are sermons
so much read in the country you come from? See how long he has been
dead! What should the world be thinking of, to be reading his musty
sermons?"
"At least does it give you no pleasure to read 'He was a good man'?"
inquired he plaintively.
"Ay; but if he was good, was not his goodness its own reward?"
"He may have also wished long to be remembered for it."
"Naturally; but we have not heard that his wish was gratified."
"Is it not sad that the memory of so much beauty and truth and goodness
in our common human life should perish? But, sirs,"--and here the old
man spoke with sudden energy--"if there should be one who combined
perfect beauty and truth and goodness in one form and character, do you
not think such a rare being would escape the common fate and be long and
widely remembered?"
"Doubtless."
"Sirs," said he, quickly stepping in front of them with flashing eyes,
"is there in all this vast cemetery not a single monument that has kept
green the memory of the being in whose honour it was erected?"
"Ay, ay," they answered readily. "Have you not heard of it?"
"I am but come from distant countries. Many years ago I was here, and
have journeyed hither with much desire to see the place once more. Would
you kindly show me this monument?"
"Come!" they answered eagerly, starting off. "It is the best known of
all the thousands in the cemetery. None who see it can ever forget it."
"Yes, yes!" murmured the old man. "That is why I have--I foresaw---- Is
it not a beautiful monument? Does it not lie--in what direction does it
lie?"
A feverish eagerness seized him. He walked now beside, now before, his
companions. Once he wheeled on them.
"Sirs, did you not say it perpetuates the memory of her--of the one--who
lies beneath it?"
"Both are famous. The story of this woman and her monument will never be
forgotten. It is impossible to forget it."
"Year after year----" muttered he, brushing his hand across his eyes.
They soon came to a spot where the aged branches of memorial evergreens
interwove a sunless canopy, and spread far around a drapery of gloom
through which the wind passed with an unending sigh. Brushing aside the
lowest boughs, they stepped in awestricken silence within the dank,
chill cone of shade. Before them rose the shape of a grey monument, at
sight of which the aged traveller, who had fallen behind, dropped his
staff and held out his arms as though he would have embraced it. But,
controlling himself, he stepped forward, and said, in tones of thrilling
sweetness--
"Sirs, you have not told me what story is connected with this monument
that it should be so famous. I conceive it must be some very touching
one of her whose name I read--some beautiful legend----"
"Judge you of that!" interrupted one of the group, with a voice of stern
sadness and not without a certain look of mysterious horror. "They say
this monument was reared to a woman by the man who once loved her. She
was very beautiful, and so he made her a very beautiful monument. But
she had a heart so hideous in its falsity that he carved in stone an
enduring curse on her evil memory, and hung it in the heart of the
monument because it was too awful for any eye to see. But others tell
the story differently. They say the woman not only had a heart false
beyond description, but was in person the ugliest of her sex. So that
while the hidden curse is a lasting execration of her nature, the
beautiful exterior is a masterpiece of mockery which her nature, and not
her ugliness, maddened his sensitive genius to perpetrate. There can be
no doubt that this is the true story, as hundreds tell it now, and that
the woman will be remembered so long as the monument stands--ay, and
longer--not only for her loathsome---- Help the old man!"
He had fallen backward to the ground. They tried in vain to set him on
his feet. Stunned, speechless, he could only raise himself on one elbow
and turn his eyes towards the monument with a look of preternatural
horror, as though the lie had issued from its treacherous shape. At
length he looked up to them, as they bent kindly over him, and spoke
with much difficulty--
"Sirs, I am an old man--a very old man, and very feeble. Forgive this
weakness. And I have come a long way, and must be faint. While you were
speaking my strength failed me. You were telling me a story--were you
not?--the story--the legend of a most beautiful woman, when all at once
my senses grew confused and I failed to hear you rightly. Then my ears
played me such a trick! O sirs! if you but knew what a damnable trick my
ears played me, you would pity me greatly, very, very greatly. This
story touches me. It is much like one I seemed to have heard for many
years, and that I have been repeating over and over to myself until I
love it better than my life. If you would but go over it
again--carefully--very carefully."
"My God, sirs!" he exclaimed, springing up with the energy of youth when
he had heard the recital a second time, "tell me _who_ started this
story! Tell me _how_ and _where_ it began!"
"We cannot. We have heard many tell it, and not all alike."
"And do they--do you--believe--it is--true?" he asked helplessly.
"We all _know_ it is true; do not _you_ believe it?"
"I can never forget it!" he said, in tones quickly grown harsh and
husky. "Let us go away from so pitiful a place."
It was near nightfall when he returned, unobserved, and sat down beside
the monument as one who had ended a pilgrimage.
"They all tell me the same story," he murmured wearily. "Ah, it was the
hidden epitaph that wrought the error! But for it, the sun of her memory
would have had its brief, befitting day and tender setting. Presumptuous
folly, to suppose they would understand my masterpiece, when they so
often misconceive the hidden heart of His beautiful works, and convert
uncomprehended good and true into a curse of evil!"
The night fell. He was awaiting it. Nearer and nearer rolled the dark,
suffering heart of a storm; nearer towards the calm, white breasts of
the dead. Over the billowy graves the many-footed winds suddenly fled
away in a wild, tumultuous cohort. Overhead, great black bulks swung
heavily at one another across the tremulous stars.
Of all earthly spots, where does the awful discord of the elements seem
so futile and theatric as in a vast cemetery? Blow, then, winds, till
you uproot the trees! Pour, floods, pour, till the water trickles down
into the face of the pale sleeper below! Rumble and flash, ye clouds,
till the earth trembles and seems to be aflame! But not a lock of hair,
so carefully put back over the brows, is tossed or disordered. The
sleeper has not stretched forth an arm and drawn the shroud closer
about his face, to keep out the wet. Not an ear has heard the riving
thunderbolt, nor so much as an eyelid trembled on the still eyes for all
the lightning's fury.
But had there been another human presence on the midnight scene, some
lightning flash would have revealed the old man, a grand, a terrible
figure, in sympathy with its wild, sad violence. He stood beside his
masterpiece, towering to his utmost height in a posture of all but
superhuman majesty and strength. His long white hair and longer white
beard streamed outward on the roaring winds. His arms, bared to the
shoulder, swung aloft a ponderous hammer. His face, ashen-grey as the
marble before him, was set with an expression of stern despair. Then, as
the thunder crashed, his hammer fell on the monument. Bolt after bolt,
blow after blow. Once more he might have been seen kneeling beside the
ruin, his eyes strained close to its heart, awaiting another flash to
tell him that the inviolable epitaph had shared in the destruction.
For days following many curious eyes came to peer into the opened heart
of the shattered structure, but in vain.
Thus the masterpiece of Nicholas failed of its end, though it served
another. For no one could have heard the story of it, before it was
destroyed, without being made to realise how melancholy that a man
should rear a monument of execration to the false heart of the woman he
once had loved; and how terrible for mankind to celebrate the dead for
the evil that was in them instead of the good.