“O, there will be mourning, mourning, mourning, mourning,—
O, there will be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!”
Kavanagh’s heart was full of sadness. He left Mr. Churchill at his door, and proceeded homeward. On passing his church, he could not resist the temptation to go in. He climbed to his chamber in the tower, lighted by the moon. He sat for a long time gazing from the window, and watching a distant and feeble candle, whose rays scarcely reached him across the brilliant moonlighted air. Gentler thoughts stole over him; an invisible presence soothed him; an invisible hand was laid upon his head, and the trouble and unrest of his spirit were changed to peace.
“Answer me, thou mysterious future!” exclaimed he; “tell me,—shall these things be according to my desires?”
And the mysterious future, interpreted by those desires, replied,—
“Soon thou shalt know all. It shall be well with thee!”
XXVI.
On the following morning, Kavanagh sat as usual in his study in the tower. No traces were left of the heaviness and sadness of the preceding night. It was a bright, warm morning; and the window, open towards the south, let in the genial sunshine. The odor of decaying leaves scented the air; far off flashed the hazy river.
Kavanagh’s heart, however, was not at rest. At times he rose from his books, and paced up and down his little study; then took up his hat as if to go out; then laid it down again, and again resumed his books. At length he arose, and, leaning on the window-sill, gazed for a long time on the scene before him. Some thought was laboring in his bosom, some doubt or fear, which alternated with hope, but thwarted any fixed resolve.
Ah, how pleasantly that fair autumnal landscape smiled upon him! The great golden elms that marked the line of the village street, and under whose shadows no beggars sat; the air of comfort and plenty, of neatness, thrift, and equality, visible everywhere; and from far-off farms the sound of flails, beating the triumphal march of Ceres through the land;—these were the sights and sounds that greeted him as he looked. Silently the yellow leaves fell upon the graves in the church-yard; and the dew glistened in the grass, which was still long and green.
Presently his attention was arrested by a dove, pursued by a little kingfisher, who constantly endeavoured to soar above it, in order to attack it at greater advantage. The flight of the birds, thus shooting through the air at arrowy speed, was beautiful. When they were opposite the tower, the dove suddenly wheeled, and darted in at the open window, while the pursuer held on his way with a long sweep, and was out of sight in a moment.
At the first glance, Kavanagh recognized the dove, which lay panting on the floor. It was the same he had seen Cecilia buy of the little man in gray. He took it in his hands. Its heart was beating violently. About its neck was a silken band; beneath its wing, a billet, upon which was a single word, “Cecilia.” The bird, then, was on its way to Cecilia Vaughan. He hailed the omen as auspicious, and, immediately closing the window, seated himself at his table, and wrote a few hurried words, which, being carefully folded and sealed, he fastened to the band, and then hastily, as if afraid his purpose might be changed by delay, opened the window and set the bird at liberty. It sailed once or twice round the tower, apparently uncertain and bewildered, or still in fear of its pursuer. Then, instead of holding its way over the fields to Cecilia Vaughan, it darted over the roofs of the village, and alighted at the window of Alice Archer.
Having written that morning to Cecilia something urgent and confidential, she was already waiting the answer; and, not doubting that the bird had brought it, she hastily untied the silken band, and, without looking at the superscription, opened the first note that fell on the table. It was very brief; only a few lines, and not a name mentioned in it; an impulse, an ejaculation of love; every line quivering with electric fire,— every word a pulsation of the writer’s heart. It was signed “Arthur Kavanagh.”
Overwhelmed by the suddenness and violence of her emotions, Alice sat for a long time motionless, holding the open letter in her hand. Then she read it again, and then relapsed into her dream of joy and wonder. It would be difficult to say which of the two emotions was the greater, —her joy that her prayer for love should be answered, and so answered,—her wonder that Kavanagh should have selected her! In the tumult of her sensations, and hardly conscious of what she was doing, she folded the note and replaced it in its envelope. Then, for the first time, her eye fell on the superscription. It was “Cecilia Vaughan.” Alice fainted.
On recovering her senses, her first act was one of heroism. She sealed the note, attached it to the neck of the pigeon, and sent the messenger rejoicing on his journey. Then her feelings had way, and she wept long and bitterly. Then, with a desperate calmness, she reproved her own weakness and selfishness, and felt that she ought to rejoice in the happiness of her friend, and sacrifice her affection, even her life, to her. Her heart exculpated Kavanagh from all blame. He had not deluded her; she had deluded herself. She alone was in fault; and in deep humiliation, with wounded pride and wounded love, and utter self-abasement, she bowed her head and prayed for consolation and fortitude.
One consolation she already had. The secret was her own. She had not revealed it even to Cecilia. Kavanagh did not suspect it. Public curiosity, public pity, she would not have to undergo.
She was resigned. She made the heroic sacrifice of self, leaving her sorrow to the great physician, Time,—the nurse of care, the healer of all smarts, the soother and consoler of all sorrows. And, thenceforward, she became unto Kavanagh what the moon is to the sun, for ever following, for ever separated, for ever sad!
As a traveller, about to start upon his journey, resolved and yet irresolute, watches the clouds, and notes the struggle between the sunshine and the showers, and says, “It will be fair; I will go,”—and again says, “Ah, no, not yet; the rain is not yet over,”—so at this same hour sat Cecilia Vaughan, resolved and yet irresolute, longing to depart upon the fair journey before her, and yet lingering on the paternal threshold, as if she wished both to stay and to go, seeing the sky was not without its clouds, nor the road without its dangers.
It was a beautiful picture, as she sat there with sweet perplexity in her face, and above it an immortal radiance streaming from her brow. She was like Guercino’s Sibyl, with the scroll of fate and the uplifted pen; and the scroll she held contained but three words,—three words that controlled the destiny of a man, and, by their soft impulsion, directed for evermore the current of his thoughts. They were,—
“Come to me!”
The magic syllables brought Kavanagh to her side. The full soul is silent. Only the rising and falling tides rush murmuring through their channels. So sat the lovers, hand in hand; but for a long time neither spake,—neither had need of speech!
XXVII.
In the afternoon, Cecilia went to communicate the news to Alice with her own lips, thinking it too important to be intrusted to the wings of the carrier-pigeon. As she entered the door, the cheerful doctor was coming out; but this was no unusual apparition, and excited no alarm. Mrs. Archer, too, according to custom, was sitting in the little parlour with her decrepit old neighbour, who seemed almost to have taken up her abode under that roof, so many hours of every day did she pass there.
With a light, elastic step, Cecilia bounded up to Alice’s room. She found her reclining in her large chair, flushed and excited. Sitting down by her side, and taking both her hands, she said, with great emotion in the tones of her voice,—
“Dearest Alice, I have brought you some news that I am sure will make you well. For my sake, you will be no longer ill when you hear it. I am engaged to Mr. Kavanagh!”
Alice feigned no surprise at this announcement. She returned the warm pressure of Cecilia’s hand, and, looking affectionately in her face, said very calmly,—
“I knew it would be so. I knew that he loved you, and that you would love him.”
“How could I help it?” said Cecilia, her eyes beaming
with dewy light; “could any one help loving him?”
“No,” answered Alice, throwing her arms around Cecilia’s neck, and laying her head upon her shoulder; “at least, no one whom he loved. But when did this happen? Tell me all about it, dearest!”
Cecilia was surprised, and perhaps a little hurt, at the quiet, almost impassive manner in which her friend received this great intelligence. She had expected exclamations of wonder and delight, and such a glow of excitement as that with which she was sure she should have hailed the announcement of Alice’s engagement. But this momentary annoyance was soon swept away by the tide of her own joyous sensations, as she proceeded to recall to the recollection of her friend the thousand little circumstances that had marked the progress of her love and Kavanagh’s; things which she must have noticed, which she could not have forgotten; with questions interspersed at intervals, such as, “Do you recollect when?” and “I am sure you have not forgotten, have you?” and dreamy little pauses of silence, and intercalated sighs. She related to her, also, the perilous adventure of the carrier-pigeon; how it had been pursued by the cruel kingfisher; how it had taken refuge in Kavanagh’s tower, and had been the bearer of his letter, as well as her own. When she had finished, she felt her bosom wet with the tears of Alice, who was suffering martyrdom on that soft breast, so full of happiness. Tears of bitterness,—tears of blood! And Cecilia, in the exultant temper of her soul at the moment, thought them tears of joy, and pressed Alice closer to her heart, and kissed and caressed her.
“Ah, how very happy you are, Cecilia!” at length sighed the poor sufferer, in that slightly querulous tone, to which Cecilia was not unaccustomed; “how very happy you are, and how very wretched am I! You have all the joy of life, I all its loneliness. How little you will think of me now! How little you will need me! I shall be nothing to you,—you will forget me.”
“Never, dearest!” exclaimed Cecilia, with much warmth and sincerity. “I shall love you only the more. We shall both love you. You will now have two friends instead of one.”
“Yes; but both will not be equal to the one I lose. No, Cecilia; let us not make to ourselves any illusions. I do not. You cannot now be with me so much and so often as you have been. Even if you were, your thoughts would be elsewhere. Ah, I have lost my friend, when most I needed her!”
Cecilia protested ardently and earnestly, and dilated with eagerness on her little plan of life, in which their romantic friendship was to gain only new strength and beauty from the more romantic love. She was interrupted by a knock at the street door; on hearing which, she paused a moment, and then said,—
“It is Arthur. He was to call for me.”
Ah, what glimpses of home, and fireside, and a whole life of happiness for Cecilia, were revealed by that one word of love and intimacy, “Arthur”! and for Alice, what a sentence of doom! what sorrow without a name! what an endless struggle of love and friendship, of duty and inclination! A little quiver of the eyelids and the hands, a hasty motion to raise her head from Cecilia’s shoulder,—these were the only outward signs of emotion. But a terrible pang went to her heart; her blood rushed eddying to her brain; and when Cecilia had taken leave of her with the triumphant look of love beaming upon her brow, and an elevation in her whole attitude and bearing, as if borne up by attendant angels, she sank back into her chair, exhausted, fainting, fearing, longing, hoping to die.
And below sat the two old women, talking of moths, and cheap furniture, and what was the best remedy for rheumatism; and from the door went forth two happy hearts, beating side by side with the pulse of youth and hope and joy, and within them and around them was a new heaven and a new earth!
Only those who have lived in a small town can really know how great an event therein is a new engagement. From tongue to tongue passes the swift countersign; from eye to eye flashes the illumination of joy, or the bale-fire of alarm; the streets and houses ring with it, as with the penetrating, all-pervading sound of the village bell; the whole community feels a thrill of sympathy, and seems to congratulate itself that all the great events are by no means confined to the great towns. As Cecilia and Kavanagh passed arm in arm through the village, many curious eyes watched them from the windows, many hearts grown cold or careless rekindled their household fires of love from the golden altar of God, borne through the streets by those pure and holy hands!
The intelligence of the engagement, however, was received very differently by different persons. Mrs. Wilmerdings wondered, for her part, why any body wanted to get married at all. The little taxidermist said he knew it would be so from the very first day they had met at his aviary. Miss Hawkins lost suddenly much of her piety and all her patience, and laughed rather hysterically. Mr. Hawkins said it was impossible, but went in secret to consult a friend, an old bachelor, on the best remedy for love; and the old bachelor, as one well versed in such affairs, gravely advised him to think of the lady as a beautiful statue!
Once more the indefatigable schoolgirl took up her pen, and wrote to her foreign correspondent a letter that might rival the famous epistle of Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, announcing the engagement of Mademoiselle Montpensier. Through the whole of the first page, she told her to guess who the lady was; through the whole of the second, who the gentleman was; the third was devoted to what was said about it in the village; and on the fourth there were two postscripts, one at the top and the other at the bottom, the first stating that they were to be married in the Spring, and to go to Italy immediately afterwards, and the last, that Alice Archer was dangerously ill with a fever.
As for the Churchills, they could find no words powerful enough to express their delight, but gave vent to it in a banquet on Thanksgiving-day, in which the wife had all the trouble and the husband all the pleasure. In order that the entertainment might be worthy of the occasion, Mr. Churchill wrote to the city for the best cookery-book; and the bookseller, executing the order in all its amplitude, sent him the Practical Guide to the Culinary Art in all its Branches, by Frascatelli, pupil of the celebrated Carême, and Chief Cook to Her Majesty the Queen,—a ponderous volume, illustrated with numerous engravings, and furnished with bills of fare for every month in the year, and any number of persons. This great work was duly studied, evening after evening; and Mr. Churchill confessed to his wife, that, although at first startled by the size of the book, he had really enjoyed it very highly, and had been much pleased to be present in imagination at so many grand entertainments, and to sit opposite the Queen without having to change his dress or the general style of his conversation.
The dinner hour, as well as the dinner itself, was duly debated. Mr. Churchill was in favor of the usual hour of one; but his wife thought it should be an hour later. Whereupon he re marked,—
“King Henry the Eighth dined at ten o’clock and supped at four. His queen’s maids of honor had a gallon of ale and a chine of beef for their breakfast.”
To which his wife answered,—
“I hope we shall have something a little more refined than that.”
The day on which the banquet should take place was next discussed, and both agreed that no day could be so appropriate as Thanksgiving-day; for, as Mrs. Churchill very truly remarked, it was really a day of thanksgiving to Kavanagh. She then said,—
“How very solemnly he read the Governor’s Proclamation yesterday! particularly the words ‘God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!’ And what a Proclamation it was! When he spread it out on the pulpit, it looked like a table-cloth!”
Mr. Churchill then asked,—
“What day of the week is the first of December? Let me see,—
‘At Dover dwells George Brown, Esquire,
Good Christopher Finch and Daniel Friar!’
Thursday.” “I could have told you that,” said his wife, “by a shorter process than your old rhyme. Thanksgiving-day always comes on Thursday.”
These preliminaries being duly settled, the dinner was given.
There being only six guests, an
d the dinner being modelled upon one for twenty-four persons, Russian style in November, it was very abundant. It began with a Colbert soup, and ended with a Nesselrode pudding; but as no allusion was made in the course of the repast to the French names of the dishes, and the mutton, and turnips, and pancakes were all called by their English patronymics, the dinner appeared less magnificent in reality than in the bill of fare, and the guests did not fully appreciate how superb a banquet they were enjoying. The hilarity of the occasion was not marred by any untoward accident; though once or twice Mr. Churchill was much annoyed, and the company much amused, by Master Alfred, who was allowed to be present at the festivities, and audibly proclaimed what was coming, long before it made its appearance. When the dinner was over, several of the guests remembered brilliant and appropriate things they might have said, and wondered they were so dull as not to think of them in season; and when they were all gone, Mr. Churchill remarked to his wife that he had enjoyed himself very much, and that he should like to ask his friends to just such a dinner every week!
XXVIII.
The first snow came. How beautiful it was, falling so silently, all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacy of their branches!
What silence, too, came with the snow, and what seclusion! Every sound was muffled, every noise changed to something soft and musical. No more trampling hoofs,—no more rattling wheels! Only the chiming sleigh-bells, beating as swift and merrily as the hearts of children.
All day long, all night long, the snow fell on the village and on the church-yard; on the happy home of Cecilia Vaughan, on the lonely grave of Alice Archer! Yes; for before the winter came she had gone to that land where winter never comes. Her long domestic tragedy was ended. She was dead; and with her had died her secret sorrow and her secret love. Kavanagh never knew what wealth of affection for him faded from the world when she departed; Cecilia never knew what fidelity of friendship, what delicate regard, what gentle magnanimity, what angelic patience had gone with her into the grave; Mr. Churchill never knew, that, while he was exploring the Past for records of obscure and unknown martyrs, in his own village, near his own door, before his own eyes, one of that silent sisterhood had passed away into oblivion, unnoticed and unknown.
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