VIII.
SHADOWS OF THE PAST.
"Memory, the warder of the brain."
MACBETH.
It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, sheddingits lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowedhead and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartmentwith its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an airof remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of itsreflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugsscattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, andwhat had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the browsand overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heartbeat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose andput them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possiblewith more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eyehad been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady'simage shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had metwith unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halothat left you at rest.
_One, two_, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet nostir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What werethe thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a manalready tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The watersthat gush at the touch of the diviner's rod are tumultuous in their flowand rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force ofrule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in thosedying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes andhearts.
First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with thecares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to youare the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means ajostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom nightis but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promisesof slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memoriesof childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling oflove and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eyeand ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Yourmother!
But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting pastfrom present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and thecottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyeslooking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started acrossthe road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp withElsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors' children to whom the man of to-daywould be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept withTom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, butfull of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He couldalmost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellowstarted upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a shortspace apart with one of Sonsie's faded ribbons, a laugh that becameunrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! isit nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through thevillage streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across yourbreast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for oldacquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolenpicnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellowblack-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headedfellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day orso's experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharpfeatured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard colddollar buried deep in their pockets.
And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother'sside with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on theriver flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday andTuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like anotherscene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon hisrestless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he didnot say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if onlythere was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.
But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brightenwhen the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! howthey mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What asparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurriedcaresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares inthe north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to beinquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; thenuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under theeaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childishdisappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childishdelights.
And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance oflater days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low inthe grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion andambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present besidehim, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the puttingout of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,gazing at the hills of his boyhood's home with a look on her face suchas he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picturewith a simple villager's daughter for its centre, but as he mused uponit to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded fromhis sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himselfquestioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walksof his busy life than that young child's innocence and faith as theyshone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.
He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whosehalf gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet tooinexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forthto cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up fromthe river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless ofeverything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and whenin the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting onthe edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep ofempty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquirewhen she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at oncewithout asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognizethe presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, noteloquent or expressive. But this child's countenance was exceptional. Itmade you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he hadnever known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charmshould fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and notspeak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinkingof as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the weething drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her greatblack eyes before she replied, "I do not know, I never know." Thenlooking back she dreamily added, "It makes me want to go away, milesaway,"--and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longinggesture; "and it makes me want to cry."
And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his lifelooked upon the river that had met his gaze f
rom childhood, with eyesthat saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rarescene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. Nowonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, shouldpause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by wouldsometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother's lips.
"It is like a fairy land, is it not?" quoth the child looking up intohis face with a wistful glance. "Do you know what it is that makes mefeel so?"
He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk withthis innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. "Itis the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness ofthe scene; is it a new one to you?"
"No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,don't you know?" and she laid her little hand on her breast.
He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made hertalk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hiddenlongings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being ina reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new worldwhere the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if therewas such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren's voice andfascination.
Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was arelative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lilyand the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a momenthe felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before thelustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enoughto be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing eveningswith light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, theremembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually fadedtill only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with itschildish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or afevered dream.
But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with thememories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he notlearned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the highthings of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and onuntil the power of resistance left him and--O dwell not here wildthoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blaststhe soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the deadpast bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, whichthe remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul hasgiven to his long darkened spirit.
One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grownchill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life's book isquite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting andmoney holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with thequestion a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet childagain, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the nobleand the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealedto his longing sight.
"She must be a great girl now," murmured he to himself, "as old as ifnot older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she willalways be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is myteacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will saveme--"
But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray laycool and ghostly over the hearthstone.
The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life Page 9