if we would, as matters are now turning. Twice already, we have met
him at dinner parties, where he is the lion of the hour, and everybody
makes much of him but ourselves; and we shall continue to do so, until
the round is finished. It must be confessed that he wears his honors
modestly; at times, I cannot help feeling proud of him myself."
"I never doubted his ability, nor overlooked his pleasing manners,"
said Mr. Bergan. "But what are they but gems on a poisoned cup, if the
virus of intemperance be in his blood, or his principles be unsound?"
"The latter can hardly be the case," remarked Mrs. Bergan, "if the
report be true that he refuses to have anything to do with a cause that
he does not believe to be just. That seems to argue uncommon strength
of principle."
"I am not so sure about that," returned Mr. Bergan, shaking his head
dubiously. "Most people, I find, regard it as one of the many
eccentricities of genius. Others think he only showed his shrewdness
in declining to undertake a cause that he was sure to lose, after his
brilliant victory in the case of Corlew vs. Kenan. Besides, he has not
announced that such is to be his settled course of action. And if he
did, it would seem arrogant, in so young a man. It is, in fact,
judging the cause before it is tried."
"It strikes me that a man must needs judge things beforehand, where his
own conscience is concerned," observed Mrs. Bergan, thoughtfully. "You
would not expect him to act first, and decide afterward whether he had
done right or wrong."
"In judging his own actions, he need not judge those of his fellows,"
replied Mr. Bergan, somewhat magisterially.
His wife could not help wondering within herself how such judgment
could well be avoided, where a course of action was involved. But she
wisely forbore to press the point, and reverted to the main argument.
"At all events," said she, "if he gets to visit here frequently and
familiarly, we shall have an opportunity of seeing for ourselves what
his character really is. He may prove to be everything that is safe
and admirable; or he and Carice may never think of each other in the
way that we are contemplating. And, after all, I think we might trust
our daughter; she has never shown herself silly or wilful; she is not
likely to despise our judgment, or disregard our wishes."
"All the more reason why we should do our whole duty by her," rejoined
Mr. Bergan, "in the way of prevention as well as cure. In such
matters, parental commands generally come too late to forestall
mischief; the most that they do is to prevent it from going any
farther."
"True," replied Mrs. Bergan, quietly. "And I confess that I might have
been more puzzled what to do, if,"--Mrs. Bergan made a slight pause, to
give her words the greater effect (like a wise woman, she had kept her
strongest argument until the last),--"if I were not tolerably certain
that he is already engaged--or, at least, likely to become so--to Astra
Lyte."
"That alters the case, indeed," said Mr. Bergan, thoughtfully. "But
what reason have you for thinking so?"
"Miss Ferrars was here last evening, and she told me--in confidence,
you know--that she had no doubt of it whatever. Her window overlooks
Astra's studio, and she says that she often sees him there, helping
Astra about her work, or watching her with the most absorbing interest,
or talking to her with a very tell-tale earnestness."
"It would hardly be received as evidence in a court of justice," said
Mr. Bergan, smiling, "though it sounds suggestive. But Miss Ferrars is
given to gossip--'in confidence,' as you say."
His wife laughed. "Of course she is; else I should never have heard of
this pleasant probability. For both pleasant and probable it certainly
is. Astra is turning out a wonderfully fine, talented girl; and she
and Mrs. Lyte have been Bergan's fast friends and defenders, all along.
How can he show his gratitude more gracefully than by marrying her?"
"Does Carice know of this?" asked Mr. Bergan, after a moment.
"Yes; Miss Ferrars told me in her presence, and greatly shocked her by
doing so. She thinks it wrong to connect names so carelessly."
"She is right," said Mr. Bergan, emphatically.
"At the same time," continued Mrs. Bergan, "she remarked, that it would
be a very nice thing, if it were only true. And afterward she said
that she would like to renew her acquaintance with Astra;--you remember
that the two were very good child-friends, though circumstances have
kept them apart, of late,--as they have their mothers! I really feel
guilty when I think how fond I used to be of Catherine Lyte, and how I
have allowed her to slip out of my life. But then, we were both
invalids, for many years, with scarce strength enough for home cares,
and not a jot for friendship or society. Still, I have all my old
regard for her carefully buried in my heart, like the talent in the
parable; intact, if not in a way to increase. One of these days, I
mean to dig it up, and go with Carice to pay her a visit, and take a
look at the wonders of Astra's studio."
"I am glad to hear it," said Mr. Bergan. "Well! I suppose the
conclusion of the whole matter is, that we are to give Bergan a dinner,
and the freedom of the house."
"Precisely," replied Mrs. Bergan, nodding her head. "And now, I want
to consult you about the invitation list."
Mr. Bergan rose hastily. "I am quite content to leave that to you, my
dear."
His wife caught his arm, "You are not going to shirk the responsibility
in that way," she said, decidedly. "I really want your advice. Am I
to ask Dr. Remy?"
"Why not?"
"I don't quite like the man."
"I cannot see what you have against him, unless it be that he was not
born in the county, and you don't know his whole pedigree."
Mrs. Bergan did not answer. She knew her dislike to be a case of
spontaneous generation, and not at all qualified to give a lucid
account of itself.
"Besides," continued her husband, "he is Bergan's particular friend."
"Is he?" asked Mrs. Bergan, innocently. "I did not know that he was
anybody's friend."
"Clarissa!" exclaimed Mr. Bergan, rebukingly. "I never heard Dr. Remy
speak ill of anybody, in all my acquaintance with him."
"Did you ever hear him speak well of anybody?" responded Mrs.
Bergan,--"well enough, that is, to give you new interest, faith,
delight, in the person of whom he spoke? On the contrary, does he not
somehow manage to chill what you have?"
"I cannot say that he talks of his friends with the warm effusion of a
woman," answered Mr. Bergan, sarcastically.
"But only with the cold malice of a man," retorted Mrs. Bergan.
"There! a truce! He shall come, if only to prove what I have said.
Next, I want to invite Mrs. Lyte and Astra."
"Very well."
"And Mr. Islay, and Judge and Mrs. Morris, and--"
"You have seven already," interrupted Mr. Bergan, "making ten with
ourselves; which I hold to be the magic number for a dinner party. If
you want to invite anybody else, better wait till another time."
Mrs. Bergan was wise enough to be the bearer of her own invitation to
Mrs. Lyte; else it would scarcely have been accepted. The latter had
lost the taste for society with the habit of it; nothing short of the
personal solicitation of her old friend, now asking it as a favor to
herself, and now urging it for Astra's sake, would have induced her to
give up, even for a few hours, the seclusion that had slowly been
transformed, for her as for most invalids, from a grievous necessity
into a calm pleasantness.
Thus far, Mrs. Bergan was successful. But she missed seeing either
Astra or Bergan; both happened to be out, on their respective ways. As
regarded the former, it did not much matter; but she was sorry not to
see Bergan, and utter the few graceful words of apology for the past,
as well as of promise for the future, wherewith she had intended to
preface her invitation to dinner, and inaugurate her new policy. As it
was, she could only leave a pencilled note of invitation on his desk,
and reserve her explanation for a personal interview. Then she went
back to the studio, where she admired everything cordially, and with
wonderful impartiality. Carice, meanwhile, was hanging over the winged
cherub, with a deep, silent delight that went to Mrs. Lyte's heart.
"You will take such pleasure in meeting her again!" she said to Astra,
when she came in, a few moments after the visitors had gone. "She is
just the friend that you need."
"I am not so sure about that!" returned Astra wilfully. "I sometimes
catch a glimpse of her at church; and she looks a great deal too soft
and dainty and delicate for a friend. If I were a Roman Catholic, I
might set her up in a corner, and worship her as a madonna, or a saint.
But, being a Protestant, I really don't see that I have any need of
her,--or she, indeed, of me!"
Mrs. Lyte shook her head in mild reproof. "You do say such strange
things, Astra," said she, "things so liable to be misunderstood."
"_You_ do not misunderstand them, mamma," returned Astra, fondly.
"No, but Mr. Arling might."
Astra turned, in surprise, and met Bergan's quiet smile. He had come
in just behind her, and had heard almost the whole.
"I think not," said Astra, coolly. "Mr. Arling is pretty well used to
my ways, by this time. We were speaking," she continued, "of that
ineffable combination of snow and sunshine, lily and rose, saint and
angel, known among mortals by the name of Carice Bergan. Can you even
imagine being on familiar terms with her? Or would you if you could?
Does she not seem fitter for a pedestal or a shrine,--some place a
little above, or remote from, life's ordinary round?"
"She does, indeed," replied Bergan, earnestly. "There is a
half-unearthly purity about her, that keeps even one's thoughts at a
reverent distance. Snow and sunshine!--yes, she has something of both,
a kind of soft, white chill, interfused with a rich brightness,
half-golden, half roseate;--but it is impossible to put the idea into
words!"
And Bergan turned, musingly, toward his office door.
Astra looked after him, for a moment, and then glanced smilingly at her
mother.
"Fortunately, there are such things as household divinities," said she.
"Eh?" said Mrs. Lyte, wonderingly.
But Astra did not explain.
XIII.
DINNER-TABLE TALK.
Late wisdom is apt to taste of the flower of folly whence it is
distilled. So, at least, thought Mrs. Bergan, when, months afterward,
she looked back upon her dinner-party, and seemed to see in it the
beginning of trouble. But it is probable that nothing which she could
have done, or left undone, would have availed to alter the natural,
irresistible course of events. At the most, she may have hastened its
current a little. Her dinner-party only furnished a convenient point
of meeting for lives inevitably tending toward each other, for
influences long converging, and certain to meet at last, in clash or
harmony. Without it, there must needs have been a swift birth of
friendship between Carice and Astra, at their next meeting; which
meeting could not have been much longer deferred. Without it, Doctor
Remy would assiduously have spun his web for self-advantage, fastening
his threads indifferently to whatever or whomsoever seemed to promise
the best support, and quickly unfastening them whenever a prop failed
him. Without it, the hearts of Bergan and Carice would sooner or later
have inclined toward each other, by reason of an instinct truer and
surer than maternal foresight or forestalling.
The dinner was, _per se_, a success. The table was elegant with glass,
silver, and flowers; the viands were the creation of one of those
round, greasy Africanesses, who are born to the gridiron not less
indubitably than a poet to the lyre; and white-haired old Sancho waited
with a blending of obsequiousness and pomposity, wonderful to behold.
There were neither culinary failures to harrow the soul of the hostess,
nor glass-fractures or sauce-spillings to disconcert her guests.
The conversation was bright, easy, and desultory, as well as
interlocutory and general by turns, as dinner-table talk should be.
Only once, and that quite at the last, did it take a graver turn than
was well suited to the occasion, or seem to stir any ill-feeling. In a
pause of the more general conversation, Doctor Remy was heard saying to
Carice, who sat next him;--
"You are fortunate in being able to believe so implicitly, without
ampler proof."
"Do you think the proof insufficient, then?" asked Carice, with a
little look of wonder in her blue eyes.
"To some minds," answered Doctor Remy, evasively.
"Perhaps," interposed Mr. Islay, whose ears had been open for some
moments toward this conversation,--"perhaps such minds find the proof
insufficient only because they have not yet been able to look at it in
the right light."
"What light do you mean?" asked Doctor Remy, a little doubtfully.
"The light of a renewed heart and an obedient life. No man apprehends
the truths of Christianity clearly, nor believes them with a belief
that is worth anything, until he feels his own personal need of them.
When that time comes, he catches hold of them, without proof, as it
were,--or, at least, without other proof than their felt adaptation to
that intense need,---just as a man who is hungry and thirsty accepts
convenient food without troubling himself about its chemical analysis.
Then, holding them fast, and feeling how perfectly they meet his wants,
what strength and satisfaction they give to his mind, and what symmetry
and dignity they impart to his life, he begins to look back over the
long line of prophecy and testimony for proof, and finds it ample. Men
are prone to forget, Dr. Remy, that the natural order--as we see in
children--is through the heart to the intellect, not through the
intellect to the heart."
"But," objected Doctor Remy, "if a man is not sensible of any such
personal need, how is he to be made to feel it?"
"Who can tell?" responded Mr. Islay, solemnly. "If the eye sees no
comeliness in Christ, to desire Him, if the heart feels no void which
craves His fulness, no pang which needs His healing, who can tell when
the one will be opened, the other emptied or smitten? 'The wind
bloweth where it listeth.' But I can tell you, Doctor Remy, how a man
can postpone the time of conviction to the last moment, perhaps to the
very end."
"Indeed," answered Doctor Remy, lifting his eyebrows. "May I ask for
the formula?"
"Simply by leading a life of deliberate, habitual sin and selfishness.
There is nothing like sin for blinding the eyes, and misleading the
judgment, in regard to spiritual things. Indeed, if I desired to shake
my own faith in Christ to the very centre, I know no way in which I
could do it so surely as by committing some dreadful crime--murder, for
instance. All my views of life and death, earth and heaven, would at
once become distorted and confused, just as all my thoughts and aims
would immediately take a new direction."
Mr. Islay being on the same side of the table as his interlocutor,
could not observe the latter's sudden change of countenance; but
Bergan, sitting opposite, was surprised to see the doctor's face darken
with some powerful emotion, while he shot a furtive, suspicious glance
at the speaker. Yet his voice, when he spoke, was studiously low and
even, so much so that its latent venom was unnoticed by the majority of
the party.
"Inasmuch," said he, "as Mr. Islay is able to speak so intelligently of
religious faith, because of his thorough acquaintance therewith, so,
doubtless, his remarks upon crime and its effects are the outcome of
his own personal experience."
Bergan colored with indignation, and was about to say something in
sharp rebuke of the covert insult; but Mr. Islay stopped him by a look,
and a slight, yet decided gesture.
"You are thinking, doubtless," said he, mildly, turning to Dr. Remy,
"of the deep truth that he who would teach successfully, must know
something of his subject by experience as well as theory. A clergyman
certainly does find in his own heart both the suggestion and the proof
of the truths which he seeks to enforce upon others. Herein lies his
fitness for his office. Out of seeming weakness comes real strength.
Feeling, or having felt, in his own person, the power both of sin and
of redeeming love, he can the better set forth the hatefulness of the
one, and the efficacy of the other."
There was a slight pause; then, Mrs. Bergan made haste to break the
silence, and to do it in such a manner as to induce a speedy change of
subject. And Dr. Remy, after a brief moodiness, which seemed to
indicate some lingering effect of the preceding discussion, suddenly
unbent his brow, and threw himself into the new theme with animation,
to the immediate enlivenment of the party, and the gradual extinction
of his hostess's resentment. She acknowledged to herself that he could
be exceedingly agreeable, when it pleased him. If he would but spice
his conversation a little less freely with sarcasm!
And then she gave the signal for the ladies to leave the table.
As has been already hinted, the more immediate and visible result of
the dinner-party at Oakstead, was a swift budding and blossoming of
friendship between Carice and Astra. Despite the playful disclaimer of
the latter, when the probability of such a consummation had been
mentioned by her mother, no sooner did the two girls meet face to face,
the gray eyes and the blue ones looking straight into each other's
depths, than there was an instant, unlooked-for revival of their
childish affection and confidence; quickly informed by a deeper
sympathy and fuller comprehension. It was much like
sisters--unavoidably separated for years, but in whom the instinct of
kinship cannot be lost--that they sat talking together, in a twilight
corner of the parlor, until the gentlemen came from the dining-room.
Not only were there pleasant childhood memories to recall, but the
life-story of each was to be brought fairly up to the present time, for
the enlightenment of the other. Astra's was the more eventful; it
embraced all her art-education and life, with its toils, pleasures,
difficulties, ambitions, and disappointments. Carice's was more like
that of a flower; she had lived and grown in the home-precinct, she had
fed on sunshine and dew, sweet and right thoughts had been as natural
to her as perfume to a rose, she had made a little space very
delightsome with her beauty and her sweetness; and that was all. Each
felt a very genuine admiration for the other;--Carice bent loyally
before Astra's crown of genius; Astra held her breath, half in awe,
half in tenderness, before the aureola that she saw encircling the fair
head of Carice. As for the "chill" of which she had spoken to Bergan,
she had ceased to think of it. Carice's affections were warm enough,
she saw, when they were reached. Yet there was something about her
too, which she would still have been forced to call chill, for want of
a better word,---that indefinable quality which is inseparable from
anything at once white and pure,--a pearl, a star, or the white wing of
a dove.
As a natural consequence of this friendship, Carice came often to
Astra's studio. Not infrequently she met Bergan there. Remembering
Miss Ferrar's statement, and giving it more credit than she was really
aware of, she wondered, sometimes, that she could detect no sign of a
secret, or tacit, understanding between him and Astra. Their manner to
each other was most frank and kind, but it seemed totally devoid of any
lover-like quality. She finally settled it in her mind that no
engagement existed as yet; but she also decided that, inasmuch as they
were admirably fitted for each other, it was sure to come, in good
time. Nothing better, she thought, in her innocent heart, could well
be devised for either.
Astra, meanwhile was watching Bergan and Carice with as warm an
interest, and a far more penetrating glance; and often she smiled to
herself over the discoveries that she made. To her, they appeared to
be drifting as surely, if unconsciously, down the smooth, gliding
current of love, as could be desired. She was glad to have it so. She
believed them to be true counterparts, needing each to be completed by
the other. Bergan had strength, nobleness, enthusiasm; Carice had
sweetness, purity, repose; how beautiful and fit the union, how
symmetrical the result! There was a genuine artistic joy in the
thought.
And then, all at once, she forgot to watch them. Suddenly, or
gradually, she knew not which, a magical change had been wrought in her
surroundings; old things had vanished, all things had become new. A
new sky, a new earth,--stars and cloud-shapes of bewitching vagueness
and softness,--scenery of wondrous coloring and surpassing
loveliness,--lights that were tenderer than any shadows, and shadows
that were only subdued lights;--of what were these things the signs?
Had she also been drifting, and whither?
PART THIRD.
THE IN-GATHERING.
I.
UNFOLDINGS.
Spring was abroad in the land. No one could tell just when she had
stolen into the woods and gardens, and begun her pleasant labors, but
there was no question about the fact of her presence and industry.
Everywhere, there were the tender green of newborn foliage, and the
varied odors of opening buds and blossoms. The new leaves of the ilex
trees had quietly pushed off the old ones. The hedges were thick-sown
with the white stars of the Cherokee rose. The passion-vine trailed
its purple garments along the fences. Houstonias spread a soft blue
haze over the grass. Wild plum and cherry trees flung drifts of
fragrant snow along the road side. The air was faint with perfume from
the ivory censers of the magnolia, swinging dreamily overhead.
Wherever a vine could cling and climb, there was a seemingly miraculous
outburst of foliage and flowers; every dry stick and stem became a
leafy thyrsus, every crumbling stump a green and garlanded altar.
Mrs. Lyte's great, irregular thicket of a garden was quick to feel the
genial influence, and to twine and twist itself into a denser tangle
than ever. Rose bushes laughed the virtue of economy to scorn, with
their perfumed affluence of pink and crimson and yellow. Pomegranates
burst into scarlet flames; mimosas tossed aloft feathery balls of many
hues. Jessamines and honeysuckles, holding up vases of gold, to catch
every sunbeam, ran hither and thither at their own sweet will. So did
tiny green lizards, with scarlet throats, and swift chameleons, with
curious intelligent eyes. The air was tuneful with the flight and song
of bees and humming-birds, cooing doves, and shining-winged spindles.
Manifold, in truth, were the garden's delights: varied sound and color
and perfume, cheerful radiance and gentle gloom, unobtrusive
companionship and soft seclusion, were all to be found within its
pleasant compass.
And, as the days grew long and warm with the Spring's advance, Bergan
now and then, growing weary of the confinement and monotony of his
office, took his Blackstone, or Kent, or whatever might be the legal
authority under examination, and gave himself the refreshment of an
hour's reading, in one of the garden's shady, sequestered nooks. Doing
this, one sultry afternoon in May, the drowsy influence of the
atmosphere, and the soothing murmurousness of the insects' song, soon
proved too potent for the logical connection of the learned legal
thesis; there were unaccountable gaps between fact and deduction; and,
going back to pick up the broken thread, Bergan lost it altogether.
Sleep had stolen upon him through the dusky foliage, and she held him
fast until the latest sunbeam, through a convenient aperture in the
verdant walls, laid its light finger on his eyelids.
Waking suddenly, but completely, hushed voices, proceeding from a
neighboring thicket, met his ear.
"Impossible, Felix."
"But, Astra,--"