We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour's converse, * * *
One little hour! and then away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
To meet no more.--_Alexander Smith_.
"Good morning, Ned," said Morton to his friend Meredith. He had come
to Boston the day before, and had already seen Meredith more than
once.
"Going already? Sit down, man. Why are you in such a hurry?"
"I shall look in again before night."
"You are not well. I never thought you could look so worn and
haggard."
"Try the prison of Ehrenberg for four or five years, and see how you
will look when you get out. It's nothing, though. A little rest will
make all right again."
"You are not very likely to get it. You are a lion now, and people
will not leave you alone."
"They shall. I am not in the humor for balls and dinner parties."
He went to the house of Mrs. Ashland, whom he had accompanied homeward
from New York.
"Have you the letter for me?"
The letter was that which had come from Europe with the story of his
death. On hearing Mrs. Ashland's account, he had at once conjectured
that this was but another stroke of Vinal's diplomacy; but he had been
careful not to intimate to his friend the least suspicion against the
latter.
The commission of obtaining from Edith the letter in question was far
from an agreeable one; but Mrs. Ashland had accomplished it, and now
placed the paper in Morton's hands.
The signature was not that of Speyer; but at the first glance, Morton
was sure that the small, neat handwriting was the same with that of
the treacherous notes of introduction given him by Vinal at Paris. As
he studied the letter, reading and re-reading it, his companion, who
remembered him chiefly as a frank, good-humored young man, was
startled at the stern and almost fierce expression which once or twice
came over his features, and seemed to be banished by an effort. A
vague suspicion of some mystery rose in her mind, but Morton hastened
to divert her.
"I hope that Edith will not refuse a visit from me."
Here, again, Mrs. Ashland promised to mediate for him, and in the
afternoon he received a note from her, saying that Vinal's wife would
see him on the next morning.
At the hour named, he rang at the door, forced his lips to inquire for
"Mrs. Vinal," gave his name to the servant, and was shown into the
drawing room.
It was nearly five years since he had last seen that well-remembered
room. Nothing was changed. It remained precisely as he had known it
when he stood prosperously on the farther verge of that dreary chasm
of time; and as each familiar object met his eye, such a flood of
bitter recollection came upon him, that for a moment he bent his head
upon his breast.
He raised it, and started as he did so. Reflected in the mirror at the
end of the room, as if the art of some new Cornelius had evoked it,
stood, pale as marble, the form that had so long attended his sleeping
and waking dreams. Morton turned quickly, and saw Edith standing
motionless in the doorway.
He advanced towards her, and took her hand in both his own. She raised
her eyes to his face in silence. He tried to speak, but tried in vain.
At length he found utterance.
"I know it all. Ellen Ashland has told me every thing. I do not blame
you;--no one can blame you."
"Thank God that you think so."
"Yes, thank God; for when I thought that you had forgotten me----"
"Then you _did_ think so?"
"For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy were left on
earth; as if it had been sapped and undermined in its very citadel."
"Do not believe that I forgot you for a single hour; or that I can
ever forget you. You and I have been joined at least in an equal
sorrow and suspense. We have walked through depths together, and drank
the same gall and bitterness."
"That one month--four miserable weeks--should have worked all this!
One month sooner, and this black picture of our lives would have been
bright again as the sunshine. I could believe that some infernal power
had taken the reins of our fate."
"Do not say so, nor think so. You have fronted death; you have braved
despair; and now bear this blow victoriously as you have borne the
rest."
"The crowning blow is the heaviest of all."
"Look into my heart,--if you could look into it,--and see on which of
us it has fallen with the more sickening and withering force."
Morton looked into her face. It was like a deep lake becalmed, into
which strong springs are boiling up from rocks at the bottom. The
surface is still; but looking more closely, one may discern faint
gliding undulations and trembling lines, which betray the turmoil
below. Morton saw them, and felt their purport.
"I would to God," he said, "I could bear your burden for you."
Edith buried her face, and burst into a flood of weeping.
Grief, mixed with more ardent emotion, wrought with such violence in
Morton's breast, that he scarcely restrained his impulse to throw
himself at her feet. In a few moments, she raised her head.
"Do not think from this, that I am not resigned to what has fallen on
us. It is best. Incomprehensible as it is, it is best for us both."
A passionate denial rose to Morton's lips; but he did not utter it.
"I overrated my strength. I am weaker than I hoped to have found
myself. You wish to bear my burden! You have had enough to bear of
your own, Vassall; but with you, endurance is not the whole. You still
have youth, health, vigor. To one of your instincts, the world has
noble tasks enough. With a heart steeled by dangers, refined by
sufferings, tempered in fires of anguish, what path need you fear to
tread? Forget the past;--no, do not forget it; only forget all in it
that may damp your courage or weaken your hand. When I knew you first,
you were full of zeal in a worthy and generous enterprise. Cling to it
still. Let me see the tree which I knew in its blossoming bear a full
fruit at maturity. Let me see the ardent and earnest spirit which I
knew in the beginning, not quelled or flagging by the way, but holding
on its course to the end. The pure chivalry of your heart which
constrained me to love you, the instinct which turned towards honor
and nobleness as a tree turns its branches to the sun,--do not part
from it; keep it unstained for my sake, and let it brighten and
strengthen all your life."
"If preachers could speak with your tongue," exclaimed Morton, "the
world would forget itself and grow virtuous. The love that I have lost
on earth I will set among the stars. It shall be my beacon till the
day I die."
"We are too delicate and timorous to bear a part in the active
struggles of life; but it is a woman's office to raise and purify the
thoughts of those who do. You, whose strong natures are formed for
warfare, cannot be so sensitive as we are to every spot that dims the
brightness of your armor. It is easy for me, before one whom I have
loved as I have loved you, to hold this tone, and be borne up for a
time above the thought of grief and renouncement. But it is a
different task to still, through all a lifetime, the longings of a
woman's heart, and the impatient surgings of a woman's temperament.
This is the task assigned me, and I accept it. Life--action--are
before you. Patience is my medicine; the slow talisman which must open
in the end my door of promise."
Morton pressed her hand to his lips.
"'There is some soul of goodness in things evil.' A sorrow under
which, feebly borne, the mind would wither to the earth, borne well
will lift it above the clouds. Do not believe that I have deceived any
one. He knows on what terms he takes me. I feel respect, esteem,
confidence, warm friendship for him."
"May you never be undeceived," thought Morton to himself.
"But for any more ardent love,--that, I told him, was buried in the
grave with you."
She was silent for a moment, and then went on.
"It will not be wise, or right, for us to see each other often. In
time, you will meet some one with whom you can forget the pain of this
separation."
Morton shook his head.
"Yes--at least I trust you will. But we can never forget what we have
been to each other. Our reality is melted into a dream, but we must
not allow it to remain a dream. Let it be to us a fountain of high
thoughts, whose streams may water all our lives."
"You are an alchemist, Edith," said Morton; "you have found the secret
to change lead and iron into pure gold. And yet you make me feel, more
than ever, if that can be, what a crown I have lost."
When Morton left the house, after a half hour's interview, the
agitation with which he had entered it had sunk into quiet; for an
influence had fallen upon him as soothing and elevating as if he had
been listening to the paschal music in the chapel of the choir at St.
Peter's. And as an aeronaut, tossed among tempestuous clouds, is borne
of a sudden above the turmoil, and floats serene in a calmer sky, so
the troubled mind of Morton felt itself buoyed up for a space above
the tumult of passionate and bitter thought.