And so Leonard stood beside his friend's mortal clay, and watched, in the
ineffable smile of death, the last gleam which the soul had left there;
and so, after a time, he crept back to the adjoining room with a step as
noiseless as if he had feared to disturb the dead. Wearied as he was
with watching, he had no thought of sleep. He sat himself down by the
little table, and leaned his face on his hand, musing sorrowfully. Thus
time passed. He heard the clock from below strike the hours. In the
house of death the sound of a clock becomes so solemn. The soul that we
miss has gone so far beyond the reach of time! A cold, superstitious awe
gradually stole over the young man. He shivered, and lifted his eyes
with a start, half scornful, half defying. The moon was gone; the gray,
comfortless dawn gleamed through the casement, and carried its raw,
chilling light through the open doorway into the death-room. And there,
near the extinguished fire, Leonard saw the solitary woman, weeping low;
and watching still. He returned to say a word of comfort; she pressed
his hand, but waved him away. He understood. She did not wish for other
comfort than her quiet relief of tears. Again, he returned to his own
chamber, and his eye this time fell upon the papers which he had hitherto
disregarded. What made his heart stand still, and the blood then rush so
quickly through his veins? Why did he seize upon those papers with so
tremulous a hand, then lay them down, pause, as if to nerve himself, and
look so eagerly again? He recognized the handwriting,--those fair, clear
characters, so peculiar in their woman-like delicacy and grace, the same
as in the wild, pathetic poems, the sight of which had made an era in his
boyhood. From these pages the image of the mysterious Nora rose once
more before him. He felt that he was with a mother. He went back, and
closed the door gently, as if with a jealous piety, to exclude each ruder
shadow from the world of spirits, and be alone with that mournful ghost.
For a thought written in warm, sunny life, and then suddenly rising up to
us, when the hand that traced and the heart that cherished it are dust,
is verily as a ghost. It is a likeness struck off of the fond human
being, and surviving it. Far more truthful than bust or portrait, it
bids us see the tear flow, and the pulse beat. What ghost can the
churchyard yield to us like the writing of the dead?
The bulk of the papers had been once lightly sewn to each other; they had
come undone, perhaps in Burley's rude hands, but their order was easily
apparent. Leonard soon saw that they formed a kind of journal,--not,
indeed, a regular diary, nor always relating to the things of the day.
There were gaps in time--no attempt at successive narrative; sometimes,
instead of prose, a hasty burst of verse, gushing evidently from the
heart; sometimes all narrative was left untold, and yet, as it were,
epitomized by a single burning line--a single exclamation--of woe or joy!
Everywhere you saw records of a nature exquisitely susceptible; and,
where genius appeared, it was so artless, that you did not call it
genius, but emotion. At the onset the writer did not speak of herself
in the first person. The manuscript opened with descriptions and short
dialogues, carried on by persons to whose names only initial letters were
assigned, all written in a style of simple innocent freshness, and
breathing of purity and happiness, like a dawn of spring. Two young
persons, humbly born, a youth and a girl, the last still in childhood,
each chiefly self-taught, are wandering on Sabbath evenings among green
dewy fields, near the busy town, in which labour awhile is still. Few
words pass between them. You see at once, though the writer does not
mean to convey it, how far beyond the scope of her male companion flies
the heavenward imagination of the girl. It is he who questions, it is
she who answers; and soon there steals upon you, as you read, the
conviction that the youth loves the girl, and loves in vain. All in this
writing, though terse, is so truthful! Leonard, in the youth, already
recognizes the rude imperfect scholar, the village bard, Mark Fairfield.
Then there is a gap in description; but there are short weighty
sentences, which show deep ening thought, increasing years, in the
writer. And though the innocence remains, the happiness begins to be
less vivid on the page.
Now, insensibly, Leonard finds that there is a new phase in the writer's
existence. Scenes no longer of humble, workday rural life surround her,
and a fairer and more dazzling image succeeds to the companion of the
Sabbath eves. This image Nora evidently loves to paint,--it is akin to
her own genius; it captivates her fancy; it is an image that she (inborn
artist, and conscious of her art) feels to belong to a brighter and
higher school of the Beautiful. And yet the virgin's heart is not
awakened,--no trace of the heart yet there! The new image thus
introduced is one of her own years, perhaps; nay, it may be younger
still, for it is a boy that is described, with his profuse fair curls,
and eyes new to grief, and confronting the sun as a young eagle's; with
veins so full of the wine of life, that they overflow into every joyous
whim; with nerves quiveringly alive to the desire of glory; with the
frank generous nature, rash in its laughing scorn of the world, which it
has not tried. Who was this boy? it perplexed Leonard. He feared to
guess. Soon, less told than implied, you saw that this companionship,
however it chanced, brings fear and pain on the writer. Again (as
before, with Mark Fairfield), there is love on the one side and not on
the other; with her there is affectionate, almost sisterly, interest,
admiration, gratitude, but a something of pride or of terror that keeps
back love.
Here Leonard's interest grew intense. Were there touches by which
conjecture grew certainty; and he recognized, through the lapse of years,
the boy-lover in his own generous benefactor?
Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the suit of an ardent,
impassioned nature, and the simple wonder and strange alarm of a listener
who pitied but could not sympathize. Some great worldly distinction of
rank between the two became visible,--that distinction seemed to arm the
virtue and steel the affections of the lowlier born. Then a few
sentences, half blotted out with tears, told of wounded and humbled
feelings,--some one invested with authority, as if the suitor's parent,
had interfered, questioned, reproached, counselled. And it was evident
that the suit was not one that dishonoured; it wooed to flight, but still
to marriage.
And now these sentences grew briefer still, as with the decision of a
strong resolve. And to these there followed a passage so exquisite, that
Leonard wept unconsciously as he read. It was the description of a visit
spent at home previous to some sorrowful departure. He caught the
glimpse of a proud and vain, but a tender wistful mother, of a father's
fonder but less thoughtful love. And then came a quiet soothing scene
between the girl and her first village lover, ending thus: "So she put
M.'s hand into her sister's, and said, 'You loved me through the fancy,
love her with the heart,' and left them comprehending each other, and
betrothed."
Leonard sighed. He understood now how Mark Fairfield saw, in the homely
features of his unlettered wife, the reflection of the sister's soul and
face.
A few words told the final parting,--words that were a picture. The long
friendless highway, stretching on--on--towards the remorseless city, and
the doors of home opening on the desolate thoroughfare, and the old
pollard-tree beside the threshold, with the ravens wheeling round it and
calling to their young. He too had watched that threshold from the same
desolate thoroughfare. He too had heard the cry of the ravens. Then
came some pages covered with snatches of melancholy verse, or some
reflections of dreamy gloom.
The writer was in London, in the house of some high-born patroness,--
that friendless shadow of a friend which the jargon of society calls
"companion." And she was looking on the bright storm of the world as
through prison bars. Poor bird, afar from the greenwood, she had need of
song,--it was her last link with freedom and nature. The patroness seems
to share in her apprehensions of the boy suitor, whose wild rash prayers
the fugitive had resisted; but to fear lest the suitor should be
degraded, not the one whom he pursues,--fear an alliance ill-suited to a
high-born heir. And this kind of fear stings the writer's pride, and she
grows harsh in her judgment of him who thus causes but pain where he
proffers love. Then there is a reference to some applicant for her hand,
who is pressed upon her choice; and she is told that it is her duty so to
choose, and thus deliver a noble family from a dread that endures so long
as her hand is free. And of this fear, and of this applicant, there
breaks out a petulant yet pathetic scorn. After this the narrative, to
judge by the dates, pauses for days and weeks, as if the writer had grown
weary and listless,--suddenly to reopen in a new strain, eloquent with
hopes and with fears never known before. The first person was abruptly
assumed,--it was the living "I" that now breathed and moved along the
lines. How was this? The woman was no more a shadow and a secret
unknown to herself. She had assumed the intense and vivid sense of
individual being; and love spoke loud in the awakened human heart.
A personage not seen till then appeared on the page. And ever
afterwards this personage was only named as "He," as if the one and sole
representative of all the myriads that walk the earth. The first notice
of this prominent character on the scene showed the restless, agitated
effect produced on the writer's imagination. He was invested with a
romance probably not his own. He was described in contrast to the
brilliant boy whose suit she had feared, pitied, and now sought to shun,
--described with a grave and serious, but gentle mien, a voice that
imposed respect, an eye and lip that showed collected dignity of will.
Alas? the writer betrayed herself, and the charm was in the contrast,
not to the character of the earlier lover, but her own. And now, leaving
Leonard to explore and guess his way through the gaps and chasms of the
narrative, it is time to place before the reader what the narrative alone
will not reveal to Leonard.