THE ARBOR.
While the elders thus conversed in the dusky drawing-room, where the
smell of the old roses almost overpowered that of the new, another
couple sat in a little homely bower in the garden. It was Walter and his
rather distant cousin, Molly Wentworth, who for fifteen years had been
as brother and sister. Their fathers had been great friends, and when
Molly’s died in India, and her mother speedily followed him, Richard
Colman took the little orphan, who was at the time with a nurse in
England, home to his house, much to the joy of his wife, who had often
longed for a daughter to perfect the family idea. The more motherly a
woman is, the nearer will the child of another satisfy the necessities
of her motherhood. Mrs. Colman could not have said which child she loved
best.
Over the still summer garden rested a weight of peace. It was a night to
the very mind of the fastidious, twilight-loving bat, flitting about,
coming and going, like a thought we can not help. Most of Walter’s
thoughts came and went thus. He had not yet learned to think; he was
hardly more than a medium in which thought came and went. Yet when a
thought seemed worth anything, he always gave himself the credit of
it!--as if a man were author of his own thoughts any more than of his
own existence! A man can but live so with the life given him, that this
or that kind of thoughts shall call on him, and to this or that kind he
shall not be at home. Walter was only at that early stage of development
where a man is in love with what he calls his own thoughts.
Even in the dark of the summer-house one might have seen that he was
pale, and might have suspected him handsome. In the daylight his gray
eyes might almost seem the source of his paleness. His features were
well marked though delicate, and had a notable look of distinction. He
was above the middle height, and slenderly built; had a wide forehead,
and a small, pale mustache on an otherwise smooth face. His mouth was
the least interesting feature; it had great mobility, but when at rest,
little shape and no attraction. For this, however, his smile made
considerable amends.
The girl was dark, almost swarthy, with the clear, pure complexion, and
fine-grained skin, which more commonly accompany the hue. If at first
she gave the impression of delicacy, it soon changed into one of
compressed life, of latent power. Through the night, where she now sat,
her eyes were too dark to appear; they sank into it, and were as the
unseen soul of the dark; while her mouth, rather large and exquisitely
shaped, with the curve of a strong bow, seemed as often as she smiled to
make a pale window in the blackness. Her hair came rather low down the
steep of her forehead, and, with the strength of her chin, made her face
look rounder than seemed fitting.
They sat for a time as silent as the night that infolded them. They were
not lovers, though they loved each other, perhaps, more than either
knew. They were watching to see the moon rise at the head of the valley
on one of whose high sloping sides they sat.
The moon kept her tryst, and revealed a loveliness beyond what the day
had to show. She looked upon a wide valley, that gleamed with the
windings of a river. She brightened the river, and dimmed in the houses
and cottages the lights with which the opposite hill sparkled like a
celestial map. Lovelily she did her work in the heavens, her poor
mirror-work--all she was fit for now, affording fit room, atmosphere,
and medium to young imaginations, unable yet to spread their wings in
the sunlight, and believe what lies hid in the light of the workaday
world. Nor was what she showed the less true for what lay unshown in
shrouded antagonism. The vulgar cry for the real would bury in deepest
grave every eternal fact. It is the cry, “Not this man, but Barabbas!”
The day would reveal a river stained with loathsome refuse, and rich
gardens on hill-sides mantled in sooty smoke and evil-smelling vapors,
sent up from a valley where men, like gnomes, toiled and caused to toil
too eagerly. What would one think of a housekeeper so intent upon saving
that she could waste no time on beauty or cleanliness? How many who
would storm if they came home to an untidy house, feel no shadow of
uneasiness that they have all day been defiling the house of the Father,
nor at night lifted hand to cleanse it! Such men regard him as a fool,
whose joy a foul river can poison; yet, as soon as they have by
pollution gathered and saved their god, they make haste to depart from
the spot they have ruined! Oh, for an invasion of indignant ghosts, to
drive from the old places the generation that dishonors the ancient
Earth! The sun shows all their disfiguring, but the friendly night comes
at length to hide her disgrace; and that well hidden, slowly descends
the brooding moon to unveil her beauty.
For there was a _thriving_ town full of awful chimneys in the valley,
and the clouds that rose from it ascended above the Colmans’ farm to the
great moor which stretched miles and miles beyond it. In the autumn sun
its low forest of heather burned purple; in the pale winter it lay white
under snow and frost; but through all the year winds would blow across
it the dull smell of the smoke from below. Had such a fume risen to the
earthly paradise, Dante would have imagined his purgatory sinking into
hell. On all this inferno the night had sunk like a foretaste of
cleansing death. The fires lay smoldering like poor, hopeless devils,
fain to sleep. The world was merged in a tidal wave from the ocean of
hope, and seemed to heave a restful sigh under its cooling renovation.