THE PROUD MAN BOWED.
Dim burns the once bright star of Avenel;
There is an influence sorrowful and fearful,
That dogs its downward course.
SCOTT.
Transparent as is the meaning of the foregoing scene, it conveyed to
Manton, who knew none of these things which have been revealed to the
reader, a tremendous shock. Mind and soul were thrown into chaotic
convulsions; he knew not what to think, or which way to turn for truth.
Had the incident occurred but a short time previous, before his nature
had begun to be moved by generous sympathy and honest respect for this
loyal, persecuted, and indomitable woman; had it occurred before that
eventful walk through the slush of New York, he would have at once
turned upon her in freezing wrath, with the deliberate accusation
of having entered his room in his absence, and searched his private
papers, or else have merely sneered at it, as the accidental hit of a
reckless adventuress.
But he had admitted her to his respect as a noble and unprotected
devotee. In a word, he had, as was usual with him wherever women were
concerned, idealised her into a heroine. Could he suspect her after
this? He rejected the weakness of such suspicion almost with terror.
Had he known any thing of New York life; had he formed any relations
except those of a strictly business character; had he cultivated
acquaintances at all, who belonged to the city, and knew it, a few
inquiries might have settled all his doubts. But, alas! pride, pride,
that fatal pride! He knew nobody, he cared not for what any one said of
another.
He had heard this woman violently abused at the dinner-table below,
to be sure; but then the character of the persons who had joined in
this cowardly vituperation was, to his mind, evidently such as to
prejudice him in her favor; for he had a proud way with him, which
never permitted him to judge of the absent by what was said of them,
but by _who_ said it. Taking these things together, he would have felt
ashamed to have asked any questions concerning the woman, of those
whose opinion and opportunities of knowledge he respected.
If she had thrown herself upon him, it had been with perfect frankness,
and without any attempt at concealments. She had told him how she
was persecuted and slandered by ignorant women, because she had been
bold enough to tell them the truth about themselves. He had already
heard something of this, and the stories told were of precisely
such character as envious, vulgar, and malignant gossip circulates
about females who make themselves conspicuous by their virtues or
their talents. Besides, had he not, before he knew more of her, been
violently prejudiced, too? What more natural than that others should be
so, including these ignorant women?
And then this wonderful Clairvoyance! Who can dare to say that he
believes nothing of its claims? He held its marvels and miracles in
great contempt, and firmly believed, that whatever of truth there was
would soon be unveiled of its apparent mystery by the close analysis
of science, and shown to proceed from purely natural laws, the exact
relations of which had not been heretofore understood.
And then it might have been accident. Ah! and then it might have
been—what his thought had long struggled with, as the solution of all
such phenomena—it might have been sympathetic! a mere result of the
unconscious projection of his stronger vitality through a magnetic or
odic medium of sympathy, which had been instantly established through
the contact of his hand with the thin and sensitive region on the top
of her head.
She might thus have been made to feel him intellectually, if not
spiritually; to _see_, through this sympathetic sense, those images
with which his brain was most full, and thus express this startling
outline of his life.
Be those things as they may, he was restless and excited; his
imagination was aroused, his memory profoundly stirred. He was thus
fast hurried past the point where a cool analysis could well avail to
rescue him. Tossed to and fro by doubts and dark suspicions, which
a generous confidence strove hard to banish with its magnanimous
suggestions, backed by self-reliant pride; confounded with the fear of
acting with injustice towards a helpless female; with the fear, too, of
the soft pluckings at his heart, from those tender memories which she
had thus aroused by her offers of maternal sympathy—together with the
penetrating light and warmth of that genial and unlucky evening spent
with her, amidst the quiet of domestic surroundings—he could form no
conclusions, discriminate no clearly definite purpose—could only wander
to and fro, restless, in troubled, sad irresolution.
A vague dread of evil in advance afforded apprehension of he knew not
what, that always, when the gloaming darkened most, seemed parted to a
tremulous, dim light, like summer coming through the morn, and made his
pulse go quicker, while those yearning memories faintly glimmered, as
if within a shaded reflex of the glowing day.
He kept himself strictly secluded; yet, day by day, those dainty
missives crept in upon him by some mysterious agency. At first they
were read mechanically, and, amidst his troubled doubts, produced no
apparent effect; but, by and by, they grew more chaste, more delicately
worded, and more sweetly toned.
Was it that they were really advanced upon the blundering specimens
we have seen? or could it be that his fancy had become excited with
regard to them—that he was merely idealising unconsciously? or was
it that those awkward first attempts at producing imitations of
the rhapsodical style peculiar to himself, which had so excited his
contempt, as obviously taken from the study of his writings, had now
been cunningly improved upon, since personal intercourse had afforded
his correspondent a closer insight of his purer and more simple forms
of expression?
Had his haughty egotism been touched at last, by a skilful reflex of
himself, thrown shrewdly into his eyes, from the dazzling surface of
this snowy crow-quilled page?
We shall see, perhaps. Here is the last that he received from her:—
“MY POOR FRIEND—My heart yearns over you; I am oppressed with your
suffering, for I feel how you suffer yet—how you are struggling, by
day and by night, with those twin fiends of Doubt and Pride. I know
my letters soothe you, though they cannot heal. Had you not informed
me so, in your note, I should yet have been conscious of it. Had you
never written to me again, I should yet have known that the great deep
of your soul had been stirred at last, and that, though pride had
triumphed in the struggle, love, genial, human love, had yet found,
beneath the dark shadow of his wing, a warm resting-place once more
beside thy heart.
No human aid can save thee now—that stiff neck must be bowed—you must
be humbled! Then will come the full influx of the light from heaven.
Then you will know joy and peace again—the pure raptures of a holy
rest will calm this dark, bewildering struggle. I pray for you without
ceasing—weary the throne with supplication that you may be humbled!
Your little sister sends you her tearful greetings—she weeps for you
with me always—for she dearly loves her tiger-brother. She says that,
like all terrible creatures, he is _so_ beautiful—oh, that he were
only good!
MARIE.”
This letter strangely thrilled upon the already over-wrought
sensibilities of Manton, whose nervous organisation had been rendered
intensely susceptible by the protracted excitement under which he
had been laboring. He read it over and over again, with increasing
agitation, until it seemed, while his eyes suffused, as if the accusing
angel of his own conscience spoke to him in mild rebuke.
Long he moaned and tossed—the dim moisture struggling all the while to
brim over those parched lids, that for years before had never known a
freshening. Those tearless lids—how rigid they had been! how bleak!
Like some oasis fountain where the hot simoon had drank!—Dry! dry!
Suddenly, with a deep groan, the young man bowed his head upon his
hands, while the tears gushed between his fingers in a flood, that
seemed the more violent from its long restraint. His body shook and
rocked, while he gasped aloud—
“It is true! It is true! This woman tells what is true! This sullen
pride has been the cause of all—I feel its crushing judgment on my
shoulders now! Great God! deliver us from this thraldom! Let me but
know my race once more! let me but weep when others weep, and smile
when others smile, and it will be to me for a sign that thou hast
received the outcast into the family of thy love, once more! Forgive,
oh, forgive me, that have so long held thy goodly gifts of earthly
consolation in despite! The worm’s presumptuous arrogance has but moved
thy pity, oh, thou Infinite One! Forgive! forgive! oh, let me feel that
countenance reconciled once more! Give back to my weary soul the holy
communion of thy creatures! Pity! Pity! Pity! Ah, there is a paradise
somewhere on the earth, for the most wayworn of her darkened children—a
rift in the sunless sky, a glittering point above the darkened waters!
Men are not all and totally accursed by their defiant passions. Pity
sends star-beams through the port-holes of the dungeon. Mercy comes
down on holy light of visions, where stars cannot get in. Oh, love,
Infinite Love! Thou art so powerful of penetration—come to me now!”
For a long time he sat thus, while his frame shivered in voiceless
throes; when suddenly straightening himself, with a powerful effort,
and while the tears yet rained like an April shower, he drew towards
him his paper, and wrote—
WOMAN—I know not what to call you—you have strangely moved me! In my
most desperate and sullen pride have I not struggled long with this
great blessing, which thou hast brought me! I would have driven the
good angel from me in wrath and scorn—but it would not be offended.
In patience and long suffering it has abided near, hovering on white
wings, until now, at last, the fountain has been troubled. Ah! woman,
its depths have been broken up, indeed—and the dark, long, unnatural
winter of my life, has felt the glowing breath of spring; and in one
mighty crash, the hideous ice-crusts that had gathered, heaping over
it, have burst away before the flashing leap of unchained waters.
Once more my soul is free—once more I smile back love for love into
the sunlight, and weep for joy—that God is good. Once more I feel as
if the earth were a holy earth, and its flowers, too, might grow for
me. Thou hast conquered! Thou hast conquered, woman! Thy pure and
chastened sympathies, thy gentle and unwearied pleadings, thy meek
compassion for the harsh and wayward boy, have conquered. The stiff
neck is bowed even now before God, and thee, his minister of good.
Ah! forgive and pity me! My eyes are raining so, I can scarcely see
to write. I am shaken as in a great tempest, body and soul. I could
weep at your feet in penitence, and pray to be forgiven and for pity!
Ah, that, I know you have! I am blinded with these tears—I know not
what I say! Oh, be to me what I have lost! I faint by the wayside; my
soul dies within me for that holy rest that I have lost—for the sweet,
calm and tender peace, all the holy memories your loving gentleness
has thus recalled. Ah, be to me all that you have thus filled me with,
anew! Receive me as your adopted child, that I may rest my throbbing
head once more in peace and joy, upon a sacred bosom. Be to me,
forever, “Marie, mother!” MANTON.