"I hope nothing has gone wrong, Robert? You look unusually forlorn and
doleful."
Dr. Grey stepped out of his buggy, and accosted the gardener, who was
leaning idly on the gate, holding a trowel in his hand, and lazily
puffing the smoke from his pipe.
"I thank you, sir; with us the world wags on pretty much the same,
but when a man has been planting violets on his mother's grave he does
not feel like whistling and making merry. Besides, to tell the
truth,--which I do not like to shirk,--I am getting very tired of
this dismal, unlucky place. If I had known as much before I bought
it as I do now, all the locomotives in America could not have
dragged me here. I was a stranger, and of course nobody thought it
their special duty to warn me; so I was bitten badly enough by the
agent who sold me this den of misfortune. Now, when it is too
late, there is no lack of busy tongues to tell me the place is
haunted, and has been for, lo! these many years."
"Nonsense, Robert! I gave you credit for too much good sense to listen
to the gossip of silly old wives. Put all these ridiculous tales of
ghosts and hobgoblins out of your mind, man, and do not make me laugh
at you, as if you were a child who had been so frightened by stories
of 'raw-head and bloody-bones,' that you were afraid to blow out your
candle and creep into bed."
"I am neither a fool nor a coward, and I will fight anything that I
can feel has bone and muscle; but I am satisfied that if all the water
in Siloam were poured over this place, it would not wash out the curse
that people tell me has always rested on it since the time the pirates
first located here. I can't admit I believe in witches, but
undoubtedly I do believe in Satan, who seems to have a fee-simple to
the place. It is not enough that my poor mother is buried yonder, but
my wheat and oats took the rust; the mildew spoiled my grape crop; the
rains ruined my melons; the worms ate up every blade of my grass; the
cows have got the black-tongue; the gale blew down my pigeon-house and
mashed all my squabs; and my splendid carnations and fuchsias are
devoured by red spider. Nothing thrives, and I am sick at heart."
The dogged discontent written so legibly on his countenance, did not
encourage the visitor to enter into a discussion of the abstract
causes of blight, gales, and black-tongue, and he merely answered,--
"The evils you have enumerated are not peculiar to any locality; and
all the farmers in this neighborhood are echoing your complaints. How
is Mrs. Gerome?"
"Neither better nor worse. You know what miserable weather we have had
for a week. This morning she ordered the small carriage and horses
brought to the door, and when I took the reins, she dismissed me and
said she preferred driving herself. I told her the grays had not been
used, and were badly pampered standing so long in their stalls, and
that I was really afraid they would break her neck, as she was not
strong enough to manage them; but she laughed, and answered that if
they did, it would be the best day's work they had ever accomplished,
and she would give them a chance. Down the beach they went like a
flash, and when she came home their flanks smoked like a lime-kiln.
What is ever to be done with my mistress, I am sure I don't know. She
makes the house so doleful, that nobody wants to stay here, and only
yesterday Katie and Phoebe, the cook, gave notice that they wished to
leave when the month was out. She has no idea what she will do, or
where she will go. We have wanted a hot-house, and she ordered me to
get the builder's estimate of the cost of two plans which she drew;
but when I carried them to her, she pushed them aside, and said she
would think of the matter, but thought she might leave this place, and
therefore would not need the building. She is as notionate as a child;
and no one but my poor mother could ever manage her. Hist! sir! Don't
you hear her? You may be sure there is mischief brewing when she sings
like that."
Dr. Grey walked towards the house, and paused on the portico to
listen,--
"Quis est homo, qui non fleret
Christi matrem si videret,
In tanto supplicio."
The voice was not so strong as when he had heard it in _Addio del
Passata_, but the solemn mournfulness of its cadences was better
suited to the _Stabat Mater_, and indexed much that no other method of
expression would have reached. After some moments she forsook Rossini,
and began the _Agnus Dei_ from Haydn's Third Mass,--
"Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere."
Surely she could not render this grand strain if her soul was in
fierce rebellion; and, with strained ears and hushed breath, Dr. Grey
listened to the closing
"Dona nobis pacem,--pacem,--pacem."
It was a passionate, wailing prayer, and the only one that ever
crossed her lips, yet his heart throbbed with pleasure, as he noted
the tremor that seemed to shiver her voice into silvery fragments; and
as she ended, he knew that tears were not far from her eyes.
When he entered the room, she had left the piano, and wheeled a sofa
in front of the grate, where she sat gazing, vacantly into the fiery
fretwork of glowing coals.
A copy of Turner's "Liber Studiorum," superbly bound in purple velvet,
lay on her knee, and into a corner of the sofa she had tossed a square
of canvas almost filled with silken Parmese violets.
"Good-evening, Mrs. Gerome; I hope I do not interrupt you."
Dr. Grey removed the embroidery to the table, and seated himself in
the sofa corner.
"Good evening. Interruption argues occupation and absorbed attention,
and the term is not applicable to me. I who live as vainly, as
uselessly, as fruitlessly, as some fakir twirling his thumbs and
staring at his beard, have little right to call anything an
interruption. My existence here is as still, as stagnant, as some pool
down yonder in the sedge which last week's waves left among the sand
hillocks, and your visits are like pebbles thrown into it, creating
transient ripples and circles."
"You have gone back to the God of your aesthetic idolatry," said he,
touching the "Liber Studiorum."
"Yes, because 'Beauty pitches her tents before him,' and his pencil is
more potent in conjuring visions that enchant my wearied mind, than
Jemschid's goblet or Iskander's mirror."
"But why stand afar off, trusting to human and fallible interpreters,
when it is your privilege to draw near and dwell in the essence of the
only real and divine beauty?"
"Better reverence it behind a veil, than suffer like Semele. I know my
needs, and satisfy them fully. Once my heart was as bare of adoration
as Egypt's tawny sands of crystal rain-pools; but looking into the
realm of nature and of art, I chose the religion of the beautiful, and
said to my famished soul,
'From every channel thro' which Beauty runs,
To fertilize the world with lovely things,
I will draw freely, and be satisfied.'"
"This morbid sentimentality, this sickly gasping system of aesthetics,
_soi-disant_ 'Religion of the Beautiful,' is the curse of the
age,--is a vast, universal vampire sucking the life from humanity.
Like other idolatries it may arrogate the name of 'Religion,' but it
is simply downright pagan materialism, and its votaries of the
nineteenth century should look back two thousand years, and renew the
_Panathenoea_. The ancient Greek worship of aesthetics was a proud and
pardonable system, replete with sublime images; but the idols of
your emasculated creed are yellow-haired women with straight
noses,--are purple clouds and moon-silvered seas,--and physical
beauty constitutes their sole excellence. Lovely landscapes and
perfect faces are certainly entitled to a liberal quota of earnest
admiration; but a religion that contents itself with merely
material beauty, differs in nothing but nomenclature from the
pagan worship of Cybele, Venus, and Astarte."
A chill smile momentarily brightened Mrs. Gerome's features, and
turning towards her visitor, she answered slowly,--
"Be thankful, sir, that even the worship of beauty lingers in this
world of sin and hate; and instead of defiling and demolishing its
altars, go to work zealously and erect new ones at every cross-roads.
Lessing spoke for me when he said, 'Only a misapprehended religion can
remove us from the beautiful, and it is proof that a religion is true
and rightly understood when it everywhere brings us back to the
Beautiful.'"
"Pardon me. I accept Lessing's words, but cavil at your interpretation
of them. His reverence for Beauty embraced not merely physical and
material types, but that nobler, grander beauty which centres in pure
ethics and ontology; and a religion that seeks no higher forms than
those of clay,--whether Himalayas or 'Greek Slave,'--whether emerald
icebergs, flashing under polar auroras, or the myosotis that nods
there on the mantelpiece,--a religion that substitutes beauty for
duty, and Nature for Nature's God, is a shameful sham, and a curse to
its devotees. There is a beauty worthy of all adoration, a beauty far
above Antinous, or Gula or Greek aesthetics,--a beauty that is not the
_disjecta membra_ that modern maudlin sentimentality has left it,--but
that perfect and immortal 'Beauty of Holiness,' that outlives marble
and silver, pigment, stylus, and pagan poems that deify dust."
He leaned towards her, watching eagerly for some symptom of interest
in the face before him, and bent his head until he inhaled the
fragrance of the violets which clustered on one side of the coil of
hair.
"'Beauty of Holiness.' Show it to me, Dr. Grey. Is it at La Trappe, or
the Hospice of St. Bernard? Where are its temples? Where are its
worshippers? Who is its Hierophant?"
"Jesus Christ."
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out some painful
vision evoked by his words.
"Sir, do you recollect the reply of Laplace, when Napoleon asked him
why there was no mention of God in his '_Mecanique Celeste_?' '_Sire,
je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese._' I was not sufficiently
insane to base my religion of beauty upon a holiness that was buried
in the tomb supplied by Joseph of Arimathea,--that was long ago hunted
out of the world it might have purified. Once I believed in, and
revered what I supposed was its existence, but I was speedily
disenchanted of my faith, for,--
'I have seen those that wore Heaven's armor, worsted:
I have heard Truth lie:
Seen Life, beside the founts for which it thirsted,
Curse God and die.'
Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust, and God
knows I would give all my earthly possessions and hopes for a religion
that would insure me your calm resignation and contentment; but the
resurrection of my faith would only resemble that beautiful floral
_Palingenesis_ (asserted by Gaffarel and Kircher), which was but 'the
pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its own ashes,' and
speedily dropping back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the
only pleasure earth can afford me, the contemplation of the
beautiful."
"Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of beauty will
degenerate into the merely sensuous aesthetics, which, at the present
day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated voluptuaries. The
deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated by Feuerbach and
Strauss, is now no longer confined to realms of abstract speculation;
but cultivated sensualism has sunk so low that popular poets chant the
praises of Phryne and Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to
immortalize types that degrade the taste of all lovers of Art. The
true mission of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or
pictures, is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that
the fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing
of physical loveliness,--is rapidly sinking into a worship of the
vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan aesthetics were
purer and nobler than the system, which, under that name, finds favor
with our generation."
She listened, not assentingly, but without any manifestation of
impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily upon the
yellow beach, where,--
"Trampling up the sloping sand,
In lines outreaching far and wide,
The white-maned billows swept to land."
Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed by her
own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of ascertaining.
"Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?"
"Nothing, since my illness; and perhaps I shall never touch my brush
again. Sometimes I have thought I would paint a picture of Handel
standing up to listen to that sad song from his own 'Samson,'--'_Total
eclipse, no sun, no moon_!' But I doubt whether I could put on
canvas that grand, mournful, blind face, turned eagerly towards the
stage, while tears ran swiftly from his sightless eyes. Again, I have
vague visions of a dead Schopenhauer, seated in the corner of the sofa,
with his pet poodle, Putz, howling at his master's ghastly white
features,--with his Indian Oupnekhat lying on his rigid knee, and
his gilded statuette of Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the
mantelpiece, welcoming him to Nirwana. There stands my easel, empty
and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle, not lacking
ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor Maurice de Guerin, who
said that his 'head was parching; that, like a tree which had lived
its life, he felt as though every passing wind were blowing through
dead branches in his top,' I feel that my brain is as vigorous and
restless as ever, while my will alone is paralyzed, and my heart
withered and cold within me."
"Your brush and palette will never yield you any permanent happiness,
nor promote a spirit of contentment, until you select a different
class of subjects. Your themes are all too sombre, too dismal, and the
sole _motif_ that runs through your music and painting seems to be _in
memoriam_. Open the windows of your gloomy soul, and let God's
sunshine stream into its cold recesses, and warm and gild and gladden
it. Throw aside your morbid proclivities for the melancholy and
abnormal, and paint peaceful _genre_ pictures,--a group of sunburnt,
laughing harvesters, or merry children, or tulip-beds with butterflies
swinging over them. You need more warmth in your heart, and more light
in your pictures."
"Eminently correct,--most incontestably true; but how do you propose
to remedy the imperfect _chiaro-oscuro_ of my character? Show me
the market where that light of peace and joy is bartered, and I
will constitute you my broker, with unlimited orders. No, no. I see
the fact as plainly as you do, but I know better than you how
irremediable it is. My soul is a doleful _morgue_, and my pictures
are dim photographs of its corpse-tenants. Shut in forever from the
sunshine, I dip my brush in the shadows that surround me, for,
like Empedocles,--
... 'I alone
Am dead to life and joy; therefore I read
In all things my own deadness.'"
"If you would free yourself from the coils of an intense and selfish
egoism that fetter you to the petty cares and trials of your
individual existence,--if you would endeavor to forget for a season
the woes of Mrs. Gerome, and expend a little more sympathy on the
sorrows of others,--if you would resolve to lose sight of the caprices
that render you so unpopular, and make some human being happy by your
aid and kind words,--in fine, if, instead of selecting as your model
some cynical, half-insane woman like Lady Hester Stanhope, you chose
for imitation the example of noble Christian usefulness and
self-abnegation, analogous to that of Florence Nightingale, or Mrs.
Fry, you would soon find that your conscience--"
"Enough! You weary me. Dr. Grey, I thoroughly understand your motives,
and honor their purity, but I beg that you will give yourself no
further anxiety on my account. You cannot, from your religious
standpoint, avoid regarding me as worse than a heathen, and have
constituted yourself a missionary to reclaim and consecrate me. I am
not quite a cannibal, ready to devour you, by way of recompense for
your charitable efforts in my behalf, but I must assure you your
interest and sympathy are sadly wasted. Do you remember that
celebrated 'vase of Soissons,' which was plundered by rude soldiery in
Rheims, and which Clovis so eagerly coveted at the distribution of the
spoils? A soldier broke it before the king's hungry eyes, and forced
him to take the worthless mocking fragments. Even so flint-faced fate
shattered my happiness, and tauntingly offers me the ruins; but I will
none of it!"
"Trust God's overruling mercy, and those fragments, fused in the
furnace of affliction, may be remoulded and restored to you in
pristine perfection."
"Impossible! Moreover, I trust nothing but the brevity of human life,
which one day cannot fail to release me from an existence that has
proved an almost intolerable burden. You know Vogt says, 'The natural
laws are rude, unbending powers,' and I comfort myself by hoping that
they can neither be bribed nor browbeaten out of the discharge of
their duty, which points to death as 'the surest calculation that can
be made,--as the unavoidable keystone of every individual life.' A
grim consolation, you think? True; but all I shall ever receive. Dr.
Grey, in your estimation I am sinfully inert and self-indulgent; and
you conscientiously commend my idle hands to the benevolent work of
knitting socks for indigent ditchers, and making jackets for pauper
children. Now, although it is considered neither orthodox nor modest
to furnish left-hand with a trumpet for sounding the praises of
almsgiving right-hand, still I must be allowed to assert that I
appropriate an ample share of my fortune for charitable purposes.
Perhaps you will tell me that I do not give in a proper spirit of
loving sympathy,--that I hurl my donations at my conscience, as 'a sop
to Cerberus.' I have never injured any one, and if I have no tender
love in my heart to expend on others, it is the fault of that world
which taught me how hollow and deceitful it is. God knows I have never
intentionally wounded any living thing; and if negatively good, at
least my career has no stain of positive evil upon it. I am one of
those concerning whom Richter said, 'There are souls for whom life has
no summer. These should enjoy the advantages of the inhabitants of
Spitzbergen, where, through the winter's day, the stars shine clear as
through the winter's night.' I have neither summer nor polar stars,
but I wait for that long night wherein I shall sleep peacefully."
"Mrs. Gerome, defiant pride bars your heart from the white-handed
peace that even now seeks entrance. Some great sorrow or sin has
darkened your past, and, instead of ejecting its memory, you hug it to
your soul; you make it a mental Juggernaut, crushing the hopes and
aims that might otherwise brighten the path along which you drag this
murderous idol. Cast it away forever, and let Peace and Hope clasp
hands over its empty throne."
From that peculiar far-off expression of the human eye that generally
indicates abstraction of mind, he feared that she had not heard his
earnest appeal; but after some seconds, she smiled drearily, and
repeated with singular and touching pathos, lines which proved that
his words were not lost upon her,--
"'Ah, could the memory cast her spots, as do
The snake's brood theirs in spring! and be once more
Wholly renewed, to dwell in the time that's new,--
With no reiterance of those pangs of yore.
Peace, peace! Ah, forgotten things
Stumble back strangely! and the ghost of June
Stands by December's fire, cold, cold! and puts
The last spark out.'"
The mournful sweetness and calmness of her low voice made Dr. Grey's
heart throb fiercely, and he leaned a little farther forward to study
her countenance. She had rested her elbow on the carved side of the
sofa, and now her cheek nestled for support in one hand, while the
other toyed unconsciously with the velvet edges of the _Liber
Studiorum_. Her dress was of some soft, shining fabric, neither satin
nor silk, and its pale blue lustre shed a chill, pure light over the
wan, delicate face, that was white as a bending lily.
The faint yet almost mesmeric fragrance of orange flowers and violets
floated in the folds of her garments, and seemed lurking in the waves
of gray hair that glistened in the bright steady glow of the red
grate; and moved by one of those unaccountable impulses that sometimes
decide a man's destiny, Dr. Grey took the exquisitely beautiful hand
from the book and enclosed it in both of his.
"Mrs. Gerome, you seem strangely unsuspicious of the real nature of
the interest with which you have inspired me; and I owe it to you,
as well as to myself, to avow the feelings that prompt me to seek
your society so frequently. For some months after I met you, my
professional visits afforded me only rare and tantalizing glimpses of
you, but from the day of Elsie's death, I have been conscious that my
happiness is indissolubly linked with yours,--that my heart, which
never before acknowledged allegiance to any woman, is--"
"For God's sake, stop! I cannot listen to you."
She had wrung her hand violently from his clinging fingers, and,
springing to her feet, stood waving him from her, while an expression
of horror came swiftly into her eyes and over her whole countenance.
Dr. Grey rose also, and though a sudden pallor spread from his lips to
his temples, his calm voice did not falter.
"Is it because you can never return my love, that you so vehemently
refuse to hear its avowal? Is it because your own heart--"
"It is because your love is an insult, and must not be uttered!"
She shivered as if rudely buffeted by some freezing blast, and the
steely glitter leaped up, like the flash of a poniard, in her large,
dilating eyes.
Shocked and perplexed, he looked for a moment at her writhing
features, and put out his hand.
"Can it be possible that you so utterly misapprehend me? You surely
can not doubt the earnestness of an affection which impels me to offer
my hand and heart to you,--the first woman I have ever loved. Will you
refuse--"
"Stand back! Do not touch me! Ah,--God help me! Take your hand from
mine. Are you blind? If you were an archangel I could not listen to
you, for--for--oh, Dr. Grey!"
She covered her face with her hands, and staggered towards a chair.
A horrible, sickening suspicion made his brain whirl and his heart
stand still. He followed her, and said, pleadingly,--
"Do not keep me in painful suspense. Why is my declaration of devoted
affection so revolting to you? Why can you not at least permit me to
express the love--"
"Because that love dishonors me! Dr. Grey, I--am--a--wife!"
The words fell slowly from her white lips, as if her heart's blood
were dripping with them, and a deep, purplish spot burned on each
cheek, to attest her utter humiliation.
Dr. Grey gazed at her, with a bewildered, incredulous expression.
"You mean that your heart is buried in your husband's grave?"
"Oh, if that were true, you and I might be spared this shame and
agony."
A low wail escaped her, and she hid her face in her arms.
"Mrs. Gerome, is not your husband dead?"
"Dead to me,--but not yet in his grave. The man I married is still
alive."
She heard a half-stifled groan, and buried her face deeper in her arms
to avoid the sight of the suffering she had caused.
For some time the stillness of death reigned around them, and when at
last the wretched woman raised her eyes, she saw Dr. Grey standing
beside her, with one hand on the back of her chair, the other clasped
over his eyes. Reverently she turned and pressed her lips to his cold
fingers, and he felt her hot tears falling upon them, as she said,
falteringly,--
"Forgive me the pain that I have innocently inflicted on you. God is
my witness, I did not imagine you cared for me. I supposed you pitied
me, and were only interested in saving my miserable soul. The servants
told me you were very soon to be married to a young girl who lived
with your sister; and I never dreamed that your noble, generous heart
felt any interest in me, save that of genuine Christian compassion for
my loneliness and desolation. If I had suspected your feelings, I
would have gone away immediately, or told you all. Oh, that I had
never come here!--that I had never left my safe retreat, near Funchal!
Then I would not have stabbed the heart of the only man whom I
respect, revere, and trust."
Some moments elapsed ere he could fully command himself, and when he
spoke he had entirely regained composure.
"Do not reproach yourself. The fault has been mine, rather than
yours. Knowing that some mystery enveloped your early life, I should
not have allowed my affections to centre so completely in one
concerning whose antecedents I knew absolutely nothing. I have been
almost culpably rash and blind,--but I could not look into your
beautiful, sad eyes, and doubt that you were worthy of the love that
sprang up unbidden in my heart. I knew that you were irreligious, but
I believed I could win you back to Christ; and when I tell you that,
after living thirty-eight years, you are the only woman I ever met
whom I wished to call my wife, you can in some degree realize my
confidence in the innate purity of your character. God only knows how
severely I am punished by my rashness, how profoundly I deplore the
strange infatuation that so utterly blinded me. At least, I am
grateful that my brief madness has not involved you in sin and
additional suffering."
The burning spots faded from her cheeks as she listened to his low,
solemn words, and when he ended, she clasped her hands passionately,
and exclaimed,--
"Do not judge me, until you know all. I am not as unworthy as you
fear. Do not withdraw your confidence from me."
He shook his head, and answered, sadly,--
"A wife, yet bereft of your husband's protection! A wife, wandering
among strangers, and a deserter from the home you vowed to cheer! Your
own admission cries out in judgment against you."
He walked to the table and picked up his gloves, and Mrs. Gerome rose
and advanced a few steps.
"Dr. Grey, you will come now and then to see me?"
"No; for the present I do not wish to see you."
"Ah! how brittle are men's promises! Did you not assure Elsie that you
would never forsake her wretched child?"
"Our painful relations invalidate that promise,--cancel that pledge. I
can not visit you as formerly; still, I shall at all times be glad to
serve you; and you have only to acquaint me with your wishes to insure
their execution."
"Remember how solitary, how desolate, I am."
"A wife should be neither, while her husband lives."
The cold severity of his tone wounded her inexpressibly, and she
haughtily drew herself up.
"Dr. Grey will at least allow me an opportunity of explaining the
circumstances that he seems to regard as so heinous?"
He looked at the proud but quivering mouth,--into the great, shadowy,
gray eyes, and a heavy sigh escaped him.
"Perhaps it is better that I should know your history, for it will
diminish my own unhappiness to feel assured that you are worthy of the
estimate I placed upon you one hour ago. Shall I come to-morrow, or
will you tell me now what you desire me to know?"
"I can not sleep until I have exonerated myself in your clear,
truthful, holy eyes: I can not endure that you should think harshly of
me, even for a day. This room is suffocating! I will meet you on the
portico; and yonder, by the sea, I will show you my life."
She went to the escritoire, opened one of the drawers, and took out a
package. Wrapping a cloak around her, she quitted the parlor, and
found Dr. Grey leaning against one of the columns.
He did not offer her his arm as formerly, but slowly and silently they
walked down towards the beach, where the surf was rolling heavily in
with a steady roar, and tossing sheets of foam around the stone
piers.
... "While far across the hill,
A dark and brazen sunset ribbed with black,
Glared, like the sullen eyeballs of the plague."