The rainbow to the storms of life;
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away.--_Bride of Abydos_.
Morton rode along the edge of the lake at Matherton. He passed under
the shadowy verdure of the pines, and approached the old family
mansion of the Leslies. It was years since he had seen it. His
imprisonment, his escape, his dreary greeting home, all lay between.
He was the same man, yet different;--with a mind calmed by experience,
and strong by action and endurance; an ardor which had lost all of its
intoxication, but none of its force; and which, as the past and the
present rose upon his thoughts, was tempered with a melancholy which
had in it nothing of pain.
The hall door stood open, as if to welcome him. The roses and the
laurels were in bloom; the grass, ripe for the scythe, was waving in
the meadow; and, by glimpses between the elm and maple boughs, the
lake, crisped in the June wind, was sparkling with the sunlight.
Morton dismounted; his foot was on the porch; but he had no time for
thought; for a step sounded in the hall, and Edith met him on the
threshold.
* * * * *
That evening, at sunset, Miss Leslie and Morton stood on the brink of
the lake, at the foot of the garden. It was the spot which had been
most sweet and most bitter in the latter's recollections.
"Do you remember, Edith, when we last stood here?"
"How could I ever forget?"
"The years that have passed since are like a nightmare. I could
believe them so, but that I feel their marks."
"And I, as well; we were boy and girl then."
"At least, I was a boy; and, do you know, I find you different from
what I had pictured you."
"Should I be sorry for it, or glad?"
"I had pictured you as I saw you last, very calm, very resolute, very
sad; but you are like the breaking of a long, dull storm. The sun
shines again, and the world glows the brighter for past rain and
darkness."
"Could I have welcomed you home with a sad face? Could I be calm and
cold, now that I have found what I thought was lost forever?--when the
ashes of my life have kindled into flame again? Because I, and others,
have known sorrow, should I turn my face into a homily, and be your
lifelong _memento mori_?"
"It is a brave heart that can hide a deep thought under a smile."
"And a weak one that is always crouching among the shadows."
"There is an abounding spirit of faith in you; the essence which makes
heroes, from Joan of Arc to Jeanie Deans."
"I know no one with faith like yours, which could hold to you through
all your years of living burial."
"Mine! it was wrenched to its uttermost roots. I thought the world was
given over to the devil."
"But that was only for the moment."
"I consoled myself with imagining that I had come to the worst, and
that any change must needs be for the better; but now I am lifted of a
sudden to such a pitch of fortune, that I tremble at it. Many a man,
my equal or superior, no weaker in heart or meaner in aim than I, has
been fettered through his days by cramping poverty, while I stand
mailed and weaponed at all points. Many a man of noble instincts and
high requirements has found in life nothing but a mockery of his
imaginings,--a bright dream, matched with a base reality. Who can
blame him if he turn cynic? I have dreamed a dream, too; wakened, and
found it a living truth."