It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun. A thousand heralds proclaim it to the listening air; a thousand ministers and messengers betray it to the eye. Tone, act, attitude and look,—the signals upon the countenance,— the electric telegraph of touch;—all these betray the yielding citadel before the word itself is uttered, which, like the key surrendered, opens every avenue and gate of entrance, and makes retreat impossible!
The day passed delightfully with all. They sat upon the stones and the roots of trees. Cecilia read, from a volume she had brought with her, poems that rhymed with the running water. The others listened and commented. Little Alfred waded in the stream, with his bare white feet, and launched boats over the falls. Noon had been fixed upon for dining; but they anticipated it by at least an hour. The great basket was opened; endless sandwiches were drawn forth, and a cold pastry, as large as that of the Squire of the Grove. During the repast, Mr. Churchill slipped into the brook, while in the act of handing a sandwich to his wife, which caused unbounded mirth; and Kavanagh sat down on a mossy trunk, that gave way beneath him, and crumbled into powder. This, also, was received with great merriment.
After dinner, they ascended the brook still farther,—indeed, quite to the mill, which was not going. It had been stopped in the midst of its work. The saw still held its hungry teeth fixed in the heart of a pine. Mr. Churchill took occasion to make known to the company his long cherished purpose of writing a poem called “The Song of the Saw-Mill,” and enlarged on the beautiful associations of flood and forest connected with the theme. He delighted himself and his audience with the fine fancies he meant to weave into his poem, and wondered nobody had thought of the subject before. Kavanagh said it had been thought of before; and cited Kerner’s little poem, so charmingly translated by Bryant. Mr. Churchill had not seen it. Kavanagh looked into his pocket-book for it, but it was not to be found; still he was sure that there was such a poem. Mr. Churchill abandoned his design. He had spoken,—and the treasure, just as he touched it with his hand, was gone forever.
The party returned home as it came, all tired and happy, excepting little Alfred, who was tired and cross, and sat sleepy and sagging on his father’s knee, with his hat cocked rather fiercely over his eyes.
XXII.
The brown Autumn came. Out of doors, it brought to the fields the prodigality of the yellow harvest,—to the forest, revelations of light,— and to the sky, the sharp air, the morning mist, the red clouds at evening. Within doors, the sense of seclusion, the stillness of closed and curtained windows, musings by the fireside, books, friends, conversation, and the long, meditative evenings. To the farmer, it brought surcease of toil,—to the scholar, that sweet delirium of the brain which changes toil to pleasure. It brought the wild duck back to the reedy marshes of the south; it brought the wild song back to the fervid brain of the poet. Without, the village street was paved with gold; the river ran red with the reflection of the leaves. Within, the faces of friends brightened the gloomy walls; the returning footsteps of the long-absent gladdened the threshold; and all the sweet amenities of social life again resumed their interrupted reign.
Kavanagh preached a sermon on the coming of Autumn. He chose his text from Isaiah,— “Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-vat?”
To Mr. Churchill, this beloved season—this Joseph with his coat of many colors, as he was fond of calling it—brought an unexpected guest, the forlorn, forsaken Lucy. The surmises of the family were too true. She had wandered away with the Briareus of boots. She returned alone, in destitution and despair; and often, in the grief of a broken heart and a bewildered brain, was heard to say,—
“O, how I wish I were a Christian! If I were only a Christian, I would not live any longer; I would kill myself! I am too wretched!”
A few days afterwards, a gloomy-looking man rode through the town on horseback, stopping at every corner, and crying into every street, with a loud and solemn voice,—
“Prepare! prepare! prepare to meet the living God!”
It was one of that fanatical sect, who believed the end of the world was imminent, and had prepared their ascension robes to be lifted up in clouds of glory, while the worn-out, weary world was to burn with fire beneath them, and a new and fairer earth to be prepared for their inheritance. The appearance of this forerunner of the end of the world was followed by numerous camp-meetings, held in the woods near the village, to whose white tents and leafy chapels many went for consolation and found despair.
XXIII.
Again the two crumbly old women sat and talked together in the little parlour of the gloomy house under the poplars, and the two girls sat above, holding each other by the hand, thoughtful, and speaking only at intervals.
Alice was unusually sad and silent. The mists were already gathering over her vision,— those mists that were to deepen and darken as the season advanced, until the external world should be shrouded and finally shut from her view. Already the landscape began to wear a pale and sickly hue, as if the sun were withdrawing farther and farther, and were soon wholly to disappear, as in a northern winter. But to brighten this northern winter there now arose within her a soft, auroral light. Yes, the auroral light of love, blushing through the whole heaven of her thoughts. She had not breathed that word to herself, nor did she recognize any thrill of passion in the new emotion she experienced. But love it was; and it lifted her soul into a region, which she at once felt was native to it,— into a subtler ether, which seemed its natural element.
This feeling, however, was not all exhilaration. It brought with it its own peculiar languor and sadness, its fluctuations and swift vicissitudes of excitement and depression. To this the trivial circumstances of life contributed. Kavanagh had met her in the street, and had passed her without recognition; and, in the bitterness of the moment, she forgot that she wore a thick veil, which entirely concealed her face. At an evening party at Mr. Churchill’s, by a kind of fatality, Kavanagh had stood very near her for a long time, but with his back turned, conversing with Miss Hawkins, from whose toils he was, in fact, though vainly, struggling to extricate himself; and, in the irritation of supposed neglect, Alice had said to herself,—
“This is the kind of woman which most fascinates men!”
But these cruel moments of pain were few and short, while those of delight were many and lasting. In a life so lonely, and with so little to enliven and embellish it as hers, the guest in disguise was welcomed with ardor, and entertained without fear or suspicion. Had he been feared or suspected, he would have been no longer dangerous. He came as friendship, where friendship was most needed; he came as devotion, where her holy ministrations were always welcome.
Somewhat differently had the same passion come to the heart of Cecilia; for as the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease. In Cecilia, it but heightened the keen sensation of life. To all eyes, she became more beautiful, more radiant, more lovely, though they knew not why. When she and Kavanagh first met, it was hardly as strangers meet, but rather as friends long separated. When they first spoke to each other, it seemed but as the renewal of some previous interrupted conversation. Their souls flowed together at once, without turbulence or agitation, like waters on the same level. As they found each other without seeking, so their intercourse was without affectation and without embarrassment.
Thus, while Alice, unconsciously to herself, desired the love of Kavanagh, Cecilia, as unconsciously, assumed it as already her own. Alice keenly felt her own unworthiness; Cecilia made no comparison of merit. When Kavanagh was present, Alice was happy, but embarrassed; Cecilia, joyous and natural. The former feared she might displease; the latter divined from the first that she already pleased. In both, this was the intuition of the heart.
So sat the friends together, as they had done so many times before. But now, for the first time, each cherished a secret, which she did not confide to the other. Daily, for many weeks, the feathered courier had come and gone from window to window, but this secret had never been intrusted to his keeping. Almost daily the friends had met and talked together, but this secret had not been told. That could not be confided to another, which had not been confided to themselves; that could not be fashioned into words, which was not yet fashioned into thoughts, but was still floating, vague and formless, through the mind. Nay, had it been stated in words, each, perhaps, would have denied it. The distinct apparition of this fair spirit, in a visible form, would have startled them; though, while it haunted all the chambers of their souls as an invisible presence, it gave them only solace and delight.
“How very feverish your hand is, dearest!” said Cecilia. “What is the matter? Are you unwell?”
“Those are the very words my mother said to me this morning,” replied Alice. “I feel rather languid and tired, that is all. I could not sleep last night; I never can, when it rains.”
“Did it rain last night? I did not hear it.”
“Yes; about midnight, quite hard. I listened to it for hours. I love to lie awake, and hear the drops fall on the roof, and on the leaves. It throws me into a delicious, dreamy state, which I like much better than sleep.”
Cecilia looked tenderly at her pale face. Her eyes were very bright, and on each cheek was a crimson signal, the sight of which would have given her mother so much anguish, that, perhaps, it was better for her to be blind than to see.
“When you enter the land of dreams, Alice, you come into my peculiar realm. I am the queen of that country, you know. But, of late, I have thought of resigning my throne. These endless reveries are really a great waste of time and strength.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes; and Mr. Kavanagh thinks so, too. We talked about it the other evening; and afterwards, upon reflection, I thought he was right.”
And the friends resolved, half in jest and half in earnest, that, from that day forth, the gate of their day-dreams should be closed. And closed it was, ere long;—for one, by the Angel of Life; for the other, by the Angel of Death!
XXIV.
The project of the new Magazine being heard of no more, and Mr. Churchill being consequently deprived of his one hundred and fifty thousand readers, he laid aside the few notes he had made for his papers on the Obscure Martyrs, and turned his thoughts again to the great Romance. A whole leisure Saturday afternoon was before him,—pure gold, without alloy. Ere beginning his task, he stepped forth into his garden to inhale the sunny air, and let his thoughts recede a little, in order to leap farther. When he returned, glowing and radiant with poetic fancies, he found, to his unspeakable dismay, an unknown damsel sitting in his arm-chair. She was rather gayly yet elegantly dressed, and wore a veil, which she raised as Mr. Churchill entered, fixing upon him the full, liquid orbs of her large eyes.
“Mr. Churchill, I suppose?” said she, rising, and stepping forward.
“The same,” replied the school-master, with dignified courtesy.
“And will you permit me,” she continued, not without a certain serene self-possession, “to introduce myself, for want of a better person to do it for me? My name is Cartwright,— Clarissa Cartwright.”
This announcement did not produce that powerful and instantaneous effect on Mr. Churchill which the speaker seemed to anticipate, or at least to hope. His eye did not brighten with any quick recognition, nor did he suddenly exclaim,—
“What! Are you Miss Cartwright, the poetess, whose delightful effusions I have seen in all the magazines?”
On the contrary, he looked rather blank and expectant, and only said,—
“I am very glad to see you; pray sit down.”
So that the young lady herself was obliged to communicate the literary intelligence above alluded to, which she did very gracefully, and then added,—
“I have come to ask a great favor of you, Mr. Churchill, which I hope you will not deny me. By the advice of some friends, I have collected my poems together,”—and here she drew forth from a paper a large, thin manuscript, bound in crimson velvet,—“and think of publishing them in a volume. Now, would you not do me the favor to look them over, and give me your candid opinion, whether they are worth publishing? I should value your advice so highly!”
This simultaneous appeal to his vanity and his gallantry from a fair young girl, standing on the verge of that broad, dangerous ocean, in which so many have perished, and looking wistfully over its flashing waters to the shores of the green Isle of Palms,—such an appeal, from such a person, it was impossible for Mr. Churchill to resist. He made, however, a faint show of resistance,—a feeble grasping after some excuse for refusal,—and then yielded. He received from Clarissa’s delicate, trembling hand the precious volume, and from her eyes a still more precious look of thanks, and then said,—
“What name do you propose to give the volume?”
“Symphonies of the Soul, and other Poems,” said the young lady; “and, if you like them, and it would not be asking too much, I should be delighted to have you write a Preface, to introduce the work to the public. The publisher says it would increase the sale very considerably.”
“Ah, the publisher! yes, but that is not very complimentary to yourself,” suggested Mr. Churchill. “I can already see your Poems rebelling against the intrusion of my Preface, and rising like so many nuns in a convent to expel the audacious foot that has dared to invade their sacred precincts.”
But it was all in vain, this pale effort at pleasantry. Objection was useless; and the soft-hearted school-master a second time yielded gracefully to his fate, and promised the Preface. The young lady took her leave with a profusion of thanks and blushes; and the dainty manuscript, with its delicate chirography and crimson cover, remained in the hands of Mr. Churchill, who gazed at it less as a Paradise of Dainty Devices than as a deed or mortgage of so many precious hours of his own scanty inheritance of time.
Afterwards, when he complained a little of this to his wife,—who, during the interview, had peeped in at the door, and, seeing how he was occupied, had immediately withdrawn,—she said that nobody was to blame but himself; that he should learn to say “No!” and not do just as every romantic little girl from the Academy wanted him to do; adding, as a final aggravation and climax of reproof, that she really believed he never would, and never meant to, begin his Romance!
XXV.
Not long afterwards, Kavanagh and Mr. Churchill took a stroll together across the fields, and down green lanes, walking all the bright, brief afternoon. From the summit of the hill, beside the old windmill, they saw the sun set; and, opposite, the full moon rise, dewy, large, and red. As they descended, they felt the heavy dampness of the air, like water, rising to meet them,—bathing with coolness first their feet, then their hands, then their faces, till they were submerged in that sea of dew. As they skirted the woodland on their homeward way, trampling the golden leaves under foot, they heard voices at a distance, singing; and then saw the lights of the camp-meeting gleaming through the trees, and, drawing nearer, distinguished a portion of the hymn:—
“Don’t you hear the Lord a-coming
To the old church-yards, With a band of music, With a band of music, With a band of music, Sounding through the air?”
These words, at once awful and ludicrous, rose on the still twilight air from a hundred voices, thrilling with emotion, and from as many beating, fluttering, struggling hearts. High above them all was heard one voice, clear and musical as a clarion.
“I know that voice,” said Mr. Churchill; “it is Elder Evans’s.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Kavanagh,—for only the impression of awe was upon him,—“he never acted in a deeper tragedy than this! How terrible it is! Let us pass on.”
They hurried away, Kavanagh trembling in every fibre. Silently they wa
lked, the music fading into softest vibrations behind them.
“How strange is this fanaticism!” at length said Mr. Churchill, rather as a relief to his own thoughts, than for the purpose of reviving the conversation. “These people really believe that the end of the world is close at hand.”
“And to thousands,” answered Kavanagh, “this is no fiction,—no illusion of an overheated imagination. To-day, to-morrow, every day, to thousands, the end of the world is close at hand. And why should we fear it? We walk here as it were in the crypts of life; at times, from the great cathedral above us, we can hear the organ and the chanting of the choir; we see the light stream through the open door, when some friend goes up before us; and shall we fear to mount the narrow staircase of the grave, that leads us out of this uncertain twilight into the serene mansions of the life eternal?”
They reached the wooden bridge over the river, which the moonlight converted into a river of light. Their footsteps sounded on the planks; they passed without perceiving a female figure that stood in the shadow below on the brink of the stream, watching wistfully the steady flow of the current. It was Lucy! Her bonnet and shawl were lying at her feet; and when they had passed, she waded far out into the shallow stream, laid herself gently down in its deeper waves, and floated slowly away into the moonlight, among the golden leaves that were faded and fallen like herself,—among the waterlilies, whose fragrant white blossoms had been broken off and polluted long ago. Without a struggle, without a sigh, without a sound, she floated downward, downward, and silently sank into the silent river. Far off, faint, and indistinct, was heard the startling hymn, with its wild and peculiar melody,—
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