Some forty years ago, there lived in one of the prettiest houses in Kensington, a rich old wine-merchant, and his two only children. These young men, Stephen and Maurice Grey, were twins, whose mother had died at their birth, and all through their infancy and childhood the old wine-merchant had been to them as father and mother in one, and the brothers had grown up to manhood, loving him and each other as dearly as heart could wish. Already Stephen, the firstborn of the twins, had become partner in his father's flourishing business, and Maurice was preparing at a military college for service in the army, which he was shortly to join, when a certain event occurred at Kensington, trifling enough in itself, but in the sequel pregnant with bitter misfortune to at least two human souls.
There came to reside in the house adjoining old Mr Gray's, an elderly widow lady and her orphan niece,—Mrs. Lamertine and Miss Adelais Cameron. They came there principally for the sake of the latter,— a pale consumptive girl of eighteen, whose delicate health and constitution it was thought might be considerably benefited by the mild soft air of that particular neighborhood. Soon after the arrival of these ladies in their new abode, the old wine-merchant in his courtesy and kindliness of heart saw fit to pay them a visit, and in due time and form the visit was returned, and a friendly come-and-go understanding established between the two houses. In this manner it happened that Stephen, the elder son, by living always in his father's house, from which he was absent only during the office-hours of the day, saw a great deal of Adelais Cameron, and learnt before long to love her with all the depth and yearning that a young man feels in his first rapturous adoration of a beautiful woman.
For a beautiful woman Adelais certainly was. Very fair to look upon was the pale, transparent face, and the plentiful braided hair, golden and soft almost as undyed silk, that wreathed about the lovely little head. Clear and sweet too were the eyes whence the soul of Adelais looked forth, clear and brown and sweet; so that people who beheld her fair countenance and heard her musical voice for the first time, were fain to say in their hearts, "Such a face and such a voice as these are not earthly things; Adelais Cameron is already far on her road towards the land of the angels."
But at least Mrs Lamertine and her friendly neighbors the Grays could perceive that the pale girl grew none the paler nor sicklier for her residence at Kensington, and as days and weeks flew pleasantly by in the long autumn season, the old lady talked more and more confidently of her niece's complete restoration to health and youthful vigour. Then by-and-by Christmas drew round, and with it Maurice Gray came home to his father's house for his last vacation-time; Maurice, with his frank handsome face and curly hair, always so cheerful, always so good-humoured, always so unconscious of his own attractiveness, that wherever he went, everybody was sure to trust and to idolise him. Ay, and to love him too sometimes, but not as Adelais Cameron did, when her full womanly soul awoke first to the living intensity of passion, and she found in him the one god at whose feet to cast all her new wealth of tenderness and homage. Never before had Maurice Gray been so beloved, never before had his own love been so desired and coveted by human soul. And now that the greatest blessing of earth lay so ready to his grasp, Maurice neither perceived the value of the gift, nor understood that it was offered to him. Such was the position when Christmas Day arrived, and the widower begged that Mrs Lamertine and her niece would do him the pleasure to dine in his house and spend the evening there, that they might sing songs and play forfeits together and keep up the ancient institutions of the time, as well as so tiny and staid a party could manage to do; to which sociable invitation, the old dame, nothing averse to pleasant fellowship at any season, readily consented. But when Adelais Cameron entered Mr Gray's drawing-room that Christmas evening with her soft white dress floating about her like a hazy cloud, and a single bunch of snowdrops in the coils of her golden hair, Stephen's heart leapt in his throat, and he said to himself that never until now had he known how exceeding perfect and sweet was the beautiful woman whom he loved with so absorbing a tenderness. Alas, that life should be at times such a terribly earnest game of cross purposes, such an intensely bitter reality of mistakes and blunders! Alas, that men and women can read so little of each other's heart, and yet can comprehend so well the language of their own!
All the evening, throughout the conversation and the forfeits and the merry-making, Stephen Gray spoke and moved and thought only for Adelais, and she for Stephen's twin brother. It was for Maurice that she sang, while Stephen stood beside her at the piano, drinking in the tender passionate notes as though they were sweet wine for which all his soul were athirst; it was at Maurice that she smiled, while Stephen's eyes were on her face, and to Maurice that she prattled and sported and made mirthful jests, while Stephen alone heeded all that she said and did; for the younger brother was reflected in every purpose and thought of hers, even as her own image lay mirrored continually in the heart and thoughts of the elder.
But before the hour of parting came that night, Stephen drew Adelais aside from the others as they sat laughing and talking over some long-winded story of the old wine-merchant's experiences, and told her what she, in the blindness of her own wild love, had never guessed nor dreamed of,—all the deep adoration and worship of his soul. And when it was told, she said nothing for a few minutes, but only stood motionless and surprised, without a blush or tremor or sigh, and he, looking earnestly into her fair uplifted face, saw with unutterable pain that there was no response there to the passionate yearning of his own.
"Adelais," said he, presently, "you do not love me?"
"Yes, yes, Stephen," she answered, softly; "as a brother, as a dear brother."
"No more?" he asked again.
She put her hand into his, and fixing the clear light of her brown eyes full upon him: "Why," she said, hurriedly, "do you ask me this? I cannot give you more, I cannot love you as a husband. Let no one know what has passed between us tonight; forget it yourself as I shall forget also, and we will always be brother and sister all our lives."
Then she turned and glided away across the room into the warm bright glow of the fireside, that lay brightest and warmest in the corner where Maurice sat; but Stephen stood alone in the darkness and hid his face in his hands and groaned. And after this there came a changeover the fortunes of the two households. Day by day Adelais faded and paled and saddened; none knew why. People said it was the winter weather, and that when the springtime came the girl would be herself again, and grow brisker and stronger than ever. But when Maurice was gone back to his college, to fulfil his last term there before leaving for India, the only brother of Adelais came up from his home by the seaside, on a month's visit to his aunt and his sister at Kensington. He was a man of middle age almost, this same Philip Cameron, tall and handsome and fair-spoken, so that the old wine-merchant, who dearly loved good looks and courteous breeding, took to him mightily from the first, and made much of his company on all occasions. But as he stayed on from week to week at Mrs Lamertine's house, Philip saw that the pale lips and cheeks of Adelais grew paler and thinner continually, that the brown eyes greatened in the dark sockets, and that the fragile limbs weakened and sharpened themselves more and more, as though some terrible blight, like the curse of an old enchantment or of an evil eye, hung over the sweet girl, withering and poisoning all the life and the youth in her veins.
She lay on a sofa one afternoon, leaning her golden head upon one of her pale wan hands, and gazing dreamily through the open casement into the depths of the broad April sky, over whose clear blue firmament the drifting clouds came and went incessantly like white- sailed ships at sea. And Adelais thought of the sea as she watched them, and longed in her heart to be away and down by the southern coast where her brother had made his home, with the free salt breeze blowing in her face, and the free happy waves beating the shore at her feet, and the sea-fowl dipping their great strong wings in the leaping surge. Ah to be free,—to be away,—perhaps then she might forget, forget and live down her old life, and bury it somewhere out of sight in the sea-sand;—forget and grow blithe and happy and strong once more, like the breeze and the waves and the wild birds, who have no memory nor regret for the past, and no thought for any joy, save the joy of their present being.
"Phil," she said, as her brother came softly into the room and sat beside her, "take me back with you to the sea-side. I am weary of living always here in Kensington. It is only London after all."
"My dearest," he answered, kindly, "if that is all you wish for, it shall certainly be. But, Adelais, is there nothing more than this that troubles you? There is a shadow in your eyes and on your lips that used not to be there, and all day long you sit by yourself and muse in silence; and you weep too at times, Adelais, when you fancy none is by to see you. Tell me, sister mine, for the sake of the love that is between us, and for the sake of our father and mother who are dead, what cloud is this that overshadows you so?"
Long time he pressed and besought her, pleading by turns his power to help, and her need of tenderness; but yet Adelais was afraid to speak, for the love that was breaking her heart was unreturned. So the next day he found her alone again, and prayed her to tell him her sorrow, that even if he could not help nor comfort her, they might at least lament together. Then at last she bowed her head upon his breast, and told him of Maurice, and of his near departure for India, and of her own disregarded love; but not a word she said of Stephen, because she had promised him to hold her peace. And when she had told her brother all, she laid her arms about his neck and cried, weeping, "Now you know everything that is in my heart, Phil; speak to me no more about it, but only promise to take me away with you when you go, that I may the sooner forget this place and all the sorrow and the pain I have suffered here."
And Philip Cameron kissed her very tenderly, and answered, "Be at rest, sister, you shall have your will."
But when the evening came, he went over to the house of the wine- merchant, and questioned him about Maurice, whether he cared for Adelais or no, and whether he had ever said a word to his father or brother of the matter.
"Ay, ay," quoth the old gentleman, musingly, when Philip had ceased, "'Tis like enough if there be anything of the sort that the boys should talk of it between them, for, God be thanked, they were always very fond of each other; yet I never heard it spoken about. But then youth has little in common with age, and when young men make confidences of this kind, it is to young men that they make them, and not to grey-beards like me. But tell me, Cameron, for you know I must needs divine something from all this; your sister loves my boy Maurice?"
"If you think so, sir," answered Philip, "you must keep her secret."
"Cameron, Cameron," cried the wine-merchant, "Adelais is failing and sickening every day. Every day she grows whiter and sadder and more silent. Don't tell me it's for love of Maurice! It's not possible such a woman as she is can love anybody in vain! She's an angel on earth, your sister Adelais!"
Then because the old man was kindly and wise and white-headed, Philip told him all that Adelais had said, and how he had promised to take her home with him, and had come unknown to any one to ask before they went whether or not there was any hope for her of the love on which she had so set her heart.
And when Philip was gone the old gentleman called his elder son, Stephen, and asked him—but warily, lest he should betray Adelais— how Maurice bore himself in Stephen's presence when they were alone together and chanced to speak of her, and if Stephen knew or guessed anything of what was in his mind towards her. Then the young man understood for the first time all the blindness of his eyes and the dulness of his heart; and the pain and the desolation and the hopelessness of his life that was to be, rose up before him, and he knew that from thenceforth the glory and the light of it were put out for ever.
"Father," he said, "I know nothing whatever of all this. Is it your wish then that these two should marry?"
"It is my wish, Stephen, and the wish also of our friend Philip himself. Maurice could not take with him to India a sweeter or a worthier wife than Adelais Cameron."
"And does she wish it too?" he asked again. "Tell me, father, for I have guessed already." He lifted his eyes to the old man's face as he spoke, and perceived at once the sudden confusion arid surprise that his words had caused there, yet he said no more, but waited still for a reply.
"My dear boy," said the old gentleman at last, "if you have guessed anything, that is enough; say no more about it, but let it rest with yourself. I have never yet deceived either of my sons. But when Maurice comes home again you can help us very much, for you can question him on the matter more naturally than I could do, and no doubt he will tell you his mind about it, as you say he always does about everything, but with me he might be reserved and bewildered perhaps. Ask him, my boy, but keep your guesses to yourself."
"Father," cried Stephen, pressing his hands together in agony as though his heart were between them, and he would fain crush it into dust and destroy it for ever; "tell me, if I am to do this, does Adelais love my brother?"
"If I tell you at all, boy," said the wine-merchant, "I shall tell you the truth; can you hold your peace like a man of discretion?"
"I have kept other secrets, father," he answered, "I can keep this."
Then his father told him.
Early in May, Adelais Cameron went to the Devonshire sea-coast with her brother and her aunt, and they stayed there together a long while. But the accounts that came from week to week to Kensington were none of the best, for Adelais had borne the long journey but ill, and her strength did not return. Then came the summer and the vacation-time, and Maurice Gray was home again, full to the brim of schemes for his future life, and busy all day with head and hands over his preparations for leaving England in the autumn. But when Stephen talked to him of Adelais, and told him she was gone to the sea-side, Maurice only laughed and answered lightly, that she was a sweet lovable girl, and that he grieved to hear of her illness; no doubt the southern breezes would bring back the color to her cheeks, and he should hear before he had been long gone that she was quite well and strong again. At least he hoped so.
"Then, Maurice, you don't care to see her once more before you sail?You don't want to say goodbye?"
"O well, if she's here, of course, but that's another thing; I wouldn't for worlds have her come back to Kensington just to bid me goodbye. And really you know, Steenie, I've too much to do just now to be running about and saying farewells everywhere. The time that's left me now to be at home with you and my father is none too long. What is Adelais Cameron to me, when all my world is here?"
"Maurice," said Stephen again, in a voice that sounded strained and hard, like the voice of an old man trying to be young; "you're a dear affectionate fellow, and as things are, perhaps this is all very well. But supposing Adelais loved you, and my father and— and—everybody else you know, wished her to be your wife, how would you feel towards her then? Supposing, Maurice—only for the sake of supposing, of course."
"What a strange fellow you are, Steenie! Why, supposing as you say, such a very wild improbable circumstance were to occur, I should be heartily sorry for poor Adelais! Only imagine me with such a wife as she would make! Why I wouldn't have so transparent, white- skinned a beauty about my house all day for a mine of gold! I should be seized with lunacy before long, through mere contemplation of her very unearthliness, and be goaded into fancying her a picture, and hanging her up framed and glazed over my drawing-room mantelpiece! No, no, I'll leave Miss Cameron for you, you're just her style, I take it; but as for me, I never thought of marrying yet, Steenie, for I never yet had the luck or ill-luck to fall in love, and certainly you'll allow that nobody ought to think of marriage until he's really in love. So I'll wish you all success, old boy, and mind you write and tell me how the wooing gets on!"
O Maurice! Maurice!
Then, by-and-by, the young officer sailed, and Adelais heard of his going, and her heart died within her for greatness of sorrow and pain, yet still she held her peace, and lived her life in patience.
And so for two whole years they kept her by the sea, hoping against hope, and whispering those idle convictions that affection always suggests, about the worst being over now, and the time of convalescence being always tedious and unpromising. But in the third year, when the autumn days grew darker, and the sun set redder in the sea, and people began to talk again of Christmas, Adelais called her brother one evening and said:—
"Philip, I have been here very long, and I know that nothing more on earth can ever make me well again now. You will not refuse me the last request I shall make you, Phil? Take me back to the old house at Kensington, that I may see dear old Mr. Gray, and my friend Stephen, once more; and you, Phil, stay with me and Auntie there until I die, for it won't be very long now, and I want to see you near me to the last."
So they brought her back again to the old house, next door to the wine merchant's, and they carried her over the threshold, because she was too weak to walk now, and laid her on the old sofa in the old place by the window, for she would have it, and Philip Cameron did her bidding in everything. And that same evening, Stephen Gray came in to see her, and they met as old friends meet who have been long parted, and sat and talked together until past sunset. But at length Adelais asked him for news of Maurice, what he was doing, and how he was, and when they heard from him last, and what he thought of India and of the new life there, and his companions, and the climate, and the customs of the place; for she never guessed that Stephen knew of her hopeless love. But Stephen turned away his face and answered her briefly, that his brother was well and prosperous, and wrote home constantly. How could he tell her that Maurice had already found himself a rich handsome wife in India?
Soon after these things, old Mr Gray fell ill of a violent cold, which attacked him suddenly one afternoon on his return from his office. It was Christmas weather then, and the cold and the frost of the season were unusually keen, so that the physician, whom Stephen called in to see his father, looked very grave and dubious; and before many days of his patient's illness were past, he asked the young man whether there were any brothers or sisters of his, whom the merchant might wish to see. Stephen's heart beat fast when he heard the ominous question, for he understood what tidings the grave tone and the strange inquiry were meant to break to him, and knew well that the physician who spoke was one of the wisest and most skillful in London. But he answered as calmly as he could, and talked of Maurice, and of the boy's fondness for his father, and added, that if there were really imminent danger, he should like his brother to be called home, because he was sure Maurice would wish it; but that otherwise the voyage was tedious and the need unimportant.
"Let him be sent for," said the physician. "There is just time."
So Stephen wrote to his brother, and bade him leave his wife with her parents in India, and come home quickly, if he would see his father again, for the time was short, and in those days the only way open to Maurice was the long circuitous sea-route.
Maurice arrived only three days before the old man's death. He had not left his wife behind him, as Stephen suggested, for she loved her husband too dearly to be parted from him, and Maurice brought her with him to his father's house.
From her place on the sofa by the window, Adelais Cameron looked wearily out, watching for the coming of the one she loved most upon earth. And at last the coach drew up at the old gentleman's gate, and she saw Maurice dismount from the box-seat by the driver and open the coach door to hand out a handsome lady, with dark hair and bright glowing eyes.
"Who is that?" she asked of the maid, who was arranging the tea-table beside her.
"Don't you know, Miss?" said the girl, surprised at the inquiry. "That's Mrs Maurice, the rich young lady he married in India a year ago; I was told all about it by the cook at Mr. Gray's, ever-so- long ago."
But as the words were spoken, Stephen entered the room with a message for Philip Cameron, and overheard both the question and the answer. Adelais turned towards him and said, "Stephen, you never told me that Maurice had a wife."
The next week they buried the old wine merchant very quietly and simply. Only three mourners attended the funeral,—Stephen and Maurice and Philip Cameron; but Adelais, looking down on them from her casement corner, as the coffin was carried forth from the house, laid her golden head on her aunt's bosom and cried, "Auntie, auntie, I never thought to live so long as this! Why must those always die who are needed most, while such as I live on from year to year? I fancied I had only a few weeks left me upon earth when we came back to Kensington, and yet here I am still!"
Then after a little while the brothers parted once more; Maurice and his wife went back to India, and Stephen was left alone, sole successor to his father's business, and master of the old house. But Adelais Cameron still lived on, like the shadow of her former self, fading in the sunset of her womanhood, the beauty sapped out from her white death-like face, and the glitter of youth and the sweetness of hope quenched for ever in the depths of her luminous eyes.
Then when the days of mourning were over, Stephen came again to Adelais, to renew the wooing of old times; for he said to himself, "Now that Maurice is married, and my father dead, she may pity me, seeing me so lone and desolate; and I may comfort her for the past, and make her amends with my love, for the pain and the bitterness that are gone by."
But when he knelt alone by the couch whereon Adelais lay, and held her white blue-veined hands in his and told his errand, she turned her face from him and wept sore, as women weep over the dead.
"Adelais, O Adelais," he cried in his despair, "Why will you refuse me always? Don't you see my heart is breaking for love of you? Come home with me and be my wife at last!"
But she made answer very sadly and slowly:—
"Stephen, ought the living and the dead to wed with one another? God forbid that you in your youth and manhood should take to wife such a death-like thing as I! Four years I have lain like this waiting for the messenger to fetch me away, and now that at last he is near at hand, shall I array myself in a bridal veil for a face-cloth, and trailing skirts of silk or satin for a shroud? Dear Stephen, don't talk to me any more about this,—we are brother and sister still,—let nothing on earth break the sweetness of the bond between us."
"Not so, Adelais," cried he, passionately; "you cannot, you must not die yet! You do not know what love can do, you do not know that love is stronger than death, and that where there is love like mine death dare not come! There is nothing in all the world that I will not do for your sake, nothing that I will leave undone to save you, nothing that shall be too hard a condition for me to perform, so that I may keep you with me still. Live, live my darling, my beloved, and be my wife! Give me the right to take you with me, my sweet; let us go together to Madeira, to Malta, to Sicily, where the land is full of life, and the skies are warm, and the atmosphere clear and pure. There is health there, Adelais, and youth, and air to breathe such as one cannot find in this dull, misty, heavy northern climate, and there you will grow well again, and we will think no more about death and sickness. O my darling, my darling, for God's sake refuse me no longer!"
She laid her thin transparent palm wearily over her left side, and turned her calm eyes on the passionate straining face beside her.
"There is that here," she said, pressing her wounded heart more tightly, "that I know already for the touch of the messenger's hand. Already I count the time of my sojourn here, not by weeks nor even by days,—the end has come so very, very near at last. How do I know but that even now that messenger of whom I speak may be standing in our presence,—even now, while you kneel here by my side and talk to me of life and youth and health?"
"Adelais," pleaded the poor lover, hoarsely, "you deceive yourself, my darling! Have you not often spoken before of dying, and yet have lived on? O why should you die now and break my heart outright?"
"I feel a mist coming over me," she answered, "even as I speak with you now. I hear a sound in my ears that is not of earth, the darkness gathers before my face, the light quivers and fades, the night is closing about me very fast. Stephen, Stephen, don't you see that I am dying?"
He bowed his head over the damp colorless brow, and whispered:"If it be so, my beloved, be as my wife yet, and die in my arms."
But while he uttered the words there came a change over her,—a shadow into the sweet eyes and a sudden spasm of pain across the white parted lips. Feebly and uncertainly she put out her hands before her face, like one groping in the darkness, her golden head drooped on his shoulder, and her breath came sharp and thick, with the sound of approaching death. Stephen folded his arms about her with a cry of agony, and pressed the poor quivering hands wildly to his bosom, as though he would fain have held them there for ever.
"O God!" he groaned in his unutterable despair; "is there no hope, no redemption, no retrieving of the past? Is this the bitter end of all, and must I lose my darling so? O Adelais, Adelais, my beloved!" But even as he spoke, the gathering shadow broke softly over all her face, the sobbing, gasping breath ceased in the stillness of the darkened room, the golden head fell lower,—lower yet upon the desolate heart whose love had been so steadfast and so true; and Stephen covered his face with the hands of the dead, and wept such tears as men can only weep once in a lifetime,—tears that make brown hairs grey and young men old.
Philip Cameron and his aunt did not stay long at Kensington. They gave up the house to strangers, and went away to the Continent for awhile, where they traveled about together, until the old lady grew tired of wandering, and settled down with her maid in a little villa near Geneva; and after that, Stephen heard no more of her nor of Philip. But Stephen himself stayed on in the old house until he grew old too, for he loved the place where Adelais had lived, and could not bear to leave it for another. And every evening when he came home from his office, he would sit alone at the window of his study whence he could see across the garden into the little chamber next door, the little chintz-curtained old-fashioned chamber where she used to lie in her weakness years and years ago, where they two had so often talked and read together, and where she had died at last in his arms. But he never wept, thinking of these things now, for he had grown into a little withered dried-up old man, and his tears were dried up also, and instead of his passionate despair and heart-breaking, had come the calm bitterness of eternal regret, and a still voiceless longing for the time that every day drew nearer and nearer, and for the coming of the messenger from the land that is very far off.
But when Maurice came home once more to settle in England with his handsome wife and his children, rich and happy and prosperous, he would fain have taken some new house in London to share with his twin brother, that they might live together; but Stephen would not. Then when Maurice had reasoned and talked with him a long time in vain, pleading by turns the love that had been between them long ago, the loneliness of his brother's estate, and his own desire that they should not separate now, he yielded the contest, and said discontentedly,—
"Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,—you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself? Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you may spend your days in happiness and comfort."
And the little old man shook his head and answered, "Nay, brother Maurice, but I will go away from here to some country village where I am not known, for I have toiled long and wearily all my life, and I cannot rest in peace beside the mill where I have ground down my life so many years. Do not trouble yourself about me, Maurice, I shall find a home for myself."
Then they parted. Maurice and his family came to live in the big house at Kensington, for they liked to be near London, and Stephen sold his father's business to another merchant, and went away, Maurice knew not whither, to bury himself and his lost life in some far-off village, until by-and-by the messenger for whom he had waited and yearned so long should come also for him, and the day break and the shadows flee away."
Such, reader mine, is in substance the story that Dr. Peyton told me. The words in which he related it I cannot of course quite remember now, so I have put it into words of my own, and here and there I have added somewhat to the dialogue. But the facts and the pathos of the romance are not mine, nor his; they are true, actual realities, such as no dressing of fiction can make more poetical or complete in their sorrowful interest.
"It was a long history," said I, "for a dying man to tell."
"Yes," answered he. "And several times it was evident enough from his quick-drawn breath and sudden pauses, that the recital wearied and pained him. But he was so set upon telling, and I, Lizzie, I confess, so much interested in hearing it, that I did not absolutely hinder his fancy, but contented myself with warning him from time to time not to overtask his strength. He always answered me that he was quite strong, and liked to go on, for that it made him happy even to talk once more about Adelais, and to tell me how beautiful and sweet and patient she had been. It was close upon sunset when he ended his story, and he begged me, that as his fashion was, he might be lifted out of bed and carried to his armchair by the window, to look, as he said, for the last time, at the going down of the sun. So I called the housekeeper, and we did what he desired together, and opened the green Venetian blinds of the casement, which had been closed all the afternoon because of the heat. You remember, Lizzie, what a wonderfully bright and beautiful sunset it was this evening? Well, as we threw back the outer shutters, the radiant glory of the sky poured into the room like a flood of transparent gold and almost dazzled us, so that I fancied the sudden brilliancy would be too much for his feeble sight, and I leaned hastily forward with the intention of partly reclosing the blinds. But he signed to me to let them be, so I relinquished my design, and sent the housekeeper downstairs to prepare him his tea, which I thought he might like to take sitting up in his chair by the window. I had no idea—doctor though I am—that his end was so near as it proved to be; for although certainly much exhausted and agitated with the exertion of telling me his story, I did not then perceive any immediate cause for apprehension. Still less did I understand that he was then actually dying; on the contrary, I began to think that my first impressions of his danger when I entered the room that afternoon had been erroneous, and that the change I had observed in him might possibly be an indication of temporary revival. At all events, I fancied the cup of tea which was then being made ready, would be of great use in stimulating and refreshing him after the weariness caused by his long talk, and I promised myself that if I could only persuade him to silence for the rest of the evening, he would be none the worse for the recent gratification of his whim. We sat some time by the open window, watching the sun as it sank lower and lower into the golden-sheeted west, and some unconnected speculations were straying through my mind about `the sea of glass mingled with fire,' when the old man's words aroused me in the midst of my dreaming, and the voice in which he spoke was so unusual and so soft that it startled me.
"`Doctor,' he said, `I think I am dying.'
"I sprang from my seat and stood at his side in a moment, but before the utterance had well passed from his lips, I perceived that it was no mere invalid's fancy.
"'Thirty-five years ago,' he continued, speaking still in that new unusual voice,—`thirty-five years ago this very selfsame day, my Adelais died in my arms as the sun went down. Today, as the sun goes down, I shall die also.'
"Surely," cried I, "this is a very singular incident! Does it not seem so to you! This evening, then, was actually the anniversary of poor Miss Cameron's death! How strange!"
"It certainly appeared so to me at first," he rejoined. "But when my mind reverted to it afterwards, I thought it exceedingly probable that his own knowledge of the fact had itself hastened his end, for he had no doubt been long brooding over it, and maybe desired that his death should occur that particular day and hour. In his enfeebled condition, such a desire would have great physical effect; I have known several similar cases. But however that may have been, I of course have no certain means of deciding. I have already told you, that immediately on my entering his chamber in the afternoon, he expressed to me his conviction that tonight he should go to his `long rest,' and in the certainty of that conviction, related to me the story you have heard. But though it has been the necessary lot of my calling to be present at so many deathbeds, I never before witnessed a calmer or a more peaceful end than Stephen Gray's. In his changed face, in his watchful eyes, in every placid feature of his countenance, I beheld the quiet anticipation of that `long rest' about which he had spoken so contentedly an hour or two since.
"He took no further heed of me whatever,—I doubt if he was even aware of my presence. Wearily he laid his head back upon the white pillows I had placed in the armchair behind him, folded his hands together, and kept his eyes fixed steadfastly, and—I thought—even reverently, upon the setting sun that was now fast sinking like a globe of fire, towards the blue ridge of the Malvern hills, and my heart beat violently as I saw it touch the topmost peak. While I watched, there broke suddenly forth from between the low lines of sunset cloud, a long ray of golden light, that fell full on the uplifted face of the little old man. He did not turn his head, or shrink from its intense brightness, but his lips moved, though the utterance of the words he spoke was so broken and indistinct, that I stooped to hear them.
"'Adelais,—O my lost darling,—my Adelais,—let me come to thee and be beloved at last!'
" Then I looked again at the western sky, and saw that the sun had gone down."
Next morning I gathered my June roses and sweet jasmin, and took them over to the house of the little old man. I went upstairs into the darkened chamber where they had laid him, and bestowed the flowers reverently about the white-draped bed. All the wrinkles were wiped out of his pallid face now, and he looked so wondrously calm and peaceful, lying there with his closed eyelids and crossed hands, in the unbroken silence of the room, that the tears of pity I thought I should have wept at the sight never rose in my eyes; but instead, as I turned away, there came to my memory certain closing lines of a most beautiful poem, written not very long ago by a master-hand that surely held God's commission to write. It is a dead hand now, but the written words remain, and the singer herself has gone to the land of the Hereafter, where the souls of the poets float for ever in the full light of their recovered Godhead, singing such songs as mortal ear hath not yet heard, nor mortal heart conceived of. And the poem of which I spoke, has this ending:—
"`Jasper first,' I said,`And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony.The rest in order,—last, an amethyst."'
VII. The Nightshade
"But silence is most noble till the end."—Atalanta in Calydon.
Somebody, the other day, presented me with a bunch of crimson roses and purple nightshade, tied together.
Roses and nightshade!
I thought the combination worthy of a poem!
For the rose, as all the world conceives, is the emblem of love; and the nightshade typifies silence.
I put my posy in a little vase filled with water, and when night came, I lay down to rest, with my head full of vague rhymes and unfledged ideas, whose theme was still my eccentric nosegay. Sleep, however, overtook the muse, and the soft divinities of darkness, weaving their tender spells about me, dissolved my contemplated sonnet into a dream.
It seemed to my sleeping fancy that I stood in a deep, serene light of shadowy purple, grave and sombre,—a light which suggested to me the sound of low minor chords, the last notes of some organ voluntary, dying beneath a master's touch, and rolling down the hazy aisles of an empty cathedral, out into the gloomy night, and upward to the stars.
A spirit floated in the air before me,—a phantom draped in heavy sweeping robes of dense purple, but with eyes of such vivid and fiery brightness, that I could not look upon them; and my heart quailed in my bosom with a strange oppressive sense of fear and wonder. Then I felt that her awful gaze was fixed upon me, and a voice, low and sonorous as the tones of an organ, broke on my ear with an intense pathos, unutterably solemn:—
Daughter of earth, I am the spirit of the purple Nightshade, the Atropa Belladonna of the south,—the scent of whose dusky chalice is the fume of bitterness; the taste of whose dark fruit is death. And because the children and the maidens shun my poisonous berries, when they go out into the woods to make garlands for Mary's shrine, or for wedding gala; and because the leech and herbalist find in me a marvellous balm to soothe the torments of physical anguish; because I give the sick man ease, and the sleepless man oblivion, and the miserable man eternal rest; because I am sombre of hue and unsweet of odour, able to calm, to hush, and to kill, the sons of earth have chosen me to be the emblem of silence. There is a shadow on your brow: my words sound strange and bitter to you; yet hear me: for once on earth I dwelt with one who thought and labored in silence. His name is inscribed upon no calendar of the world's heroes; it is written only in heaven!
Not far from a certain large town in Piedmont there was once a miserable little cottage. It had been let when I knew it, to a poor invalid woman and her only child, a boy about nine or ten years old. They were very poor, this mother and son; and the little living they had, came mostly by means of needlework, which the woman did for people in the town, and by the sale of dried herbs and suchlike. As for the cottage itself, it was a crazy, tumble-down tenement, half in ruins, and all the outside walls of it were covered with clinging ivies and weeds and wild climbing plants. I was one of these. I grew just underneath the solitary window of the small chamber wherein the poor woman slept,—the whole but consisted of only two rooms,—and I climbed and sprouted and twisted my head in and out of the network of shrubs about me, and clung to the crumbling stone of the wall, and stretched myself out and up continually, until I grew so tall, that I could look in at the casement and see the inside of the room. It was in the summertime that I first managed to do this, and I remember well what a burning, sultry summer it was! Everything seemed parched and calcined under the pitiless Italian sun, and the whole sky was like a great blazing topaz,—yellow, and hard to look at; and the water disappeared from the runlets, and there was not a breath of wind from one end of the sky to the other.
So it was no great marvel to me, when one day, not long after my first appearance at the windowsill, I saw the poor woman come into the room with a very faltering step, and a whiter, sicklier look on her wan face than was usual to it. She threw herself wearily down upon her bed in the corner, and panted for breath. She had been to the town to take thither the last piece of needlework she had done, and she laid on the wooden table by the bedside the money the people had given her for her labor. Hard-earned coins, and few of them! She put her thin, wasted hands to her head as she lay, and I heard her murmur to herself in broken words that seemed interspersed with half suppressed sobs, and I could not understand what she said. But by-and-by, when she had grown a little calmer,— there was a sharp, swift tap at the door of the room, and the boy entered, with a small book in his hand, and a sparkle of pleasure in his eyes.
"Look, mother!" he cried, holding up the volume gleefully; "this is one of the great German Professor's 'Treatises on Chemistry!' Herr Ritter has bought it for me! Isn't it good of him? And he is here, and wants to know if he may come and see you!"
She smiled,—such a poor ghost of a smile as it was!—and answered feebly, "Let him come; 'Tista." But I suppose the Herr had heard even that broken message, for at the words the door was pushed open a little further, and an old man appeared, bare-headed, wearing a long white beard, and carrying a staff in his hand. He was bent with age, and his forehead and cheeks were marked about with many lines and crosses,—deep furrows ploughed by the harrow of thought and sorrow. I had often seen him before, for he came frequently to the cottage, but I had never been so close to him as on this occasion, and had never before noticed how poor and worn his garments were. He came into the room with a courteous greeting on his lips, half-Italian, half-German in its phraseology, and signed with a nod of his head to the boy Battista to be gone, who immediately obeyed, hugging his prize, and closed the door softly behind him.
"Herr Ritter," said the woman, raising herself on the pillow, and putting both her hands into his; "you are too good to, my 'Tista, and too good to me. Why will you do these things?"
He smiled, as though the matter were not worth a word; but she went on,—
"I say you are too good, dear friend. Never a day passes, but you bring me something,—wine or fruit or some piece of dainty fare; and as for 'Tista, there is nothing he does not owe to you! All he knows, you have taught him. We can never repay you."
"My dear Frau 'Lora, who thinks of such things twice? Chut! But you look ill and over-tired this evening. You have been to the town again?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. You must lie here and rest now. It will get cooler by-and-by; and look, I have brought you some bunches of grapes and some peaches. They will do you good."
"Oh, Herr Ritter!"
"Don't cry 'oh, Herr Ritter!' in that reproachful manner, for this fruit really cost me nothing. It was given to me. Little Andrea Bruno brought it to me today."
"The fruit-seller's child? Yes, yes, I daresay; but it was not meant for me! It's no use trying to hide your good deeds, Herr Ritter! 'Tista has told me how kind you were to Andrea's little sister when she sprained her foot last month; and how you bandaged it for her, and used to go and read to her all the morning, when her father and Andrea were out selling fruit, and she would have been left alone but for you; and I know, too, all about poor crippled Antonia and Catterina Pic—. Don't go away, I won't say any more about it! But I couldn't help telling you I knew; you dear, good Herr Ritter!"
He had half-risen, but now he reseated himself, and drew his chair nearer her couch. In doing this his eyes met hers, and he looked earnestly into them a moment.
"Lora, you have been weeping. What is the matter?"
She moved restlessly on her hard pillows, and dropped her gaze from his face, and I noted that a faint blush stole over her sunken cheeks and touched her forehead. With that tender glow, under the faded skin, she looked almost beautiful. She was young, certainly, not more than thirty at the utmost; but she was very poor and desolate, and there is nothing so quick at sapping the blood and withering the beauty of women as poverty and desolation. Nothing.
"Herr Ritter," she said, after a little pause, "I will tell you what is the matter. Perhaps you may be able to advise me; I don't quite know what to do. You know how very, very much my 'Tista wants to be a chemist, so I needn't say anything about that. Well, he must be brought up to something, you know; he must learn to be something when the time comes for him to live without me, and I don't think, Herr Ritter, it will be very long— before—before that time comes, now."
I noted again that the old man did not contradict her. He only watched her drooping face, and listened.
"I have worked early and late," she went on in low, swift tones, "to try and lay by a little money towards getting him apprenticed to some chemist in the town. He has worked, too, poor child. But it is little—nothing—we could save between us; for we must live meanwhile, you know, dear friend, and there is the rent to pay. Well, now I am coming to my story. When I was a young girl, I had a sister, ten years older than I. We were orphans, and an old aunt took care of us. I married—against my aunt's wish, in the face of my sister's warnings,—a poor improvisatore. We were poor enough, of course, before that, my sister and I, but we were not beggars, and the husband I took was below me. Well, my sister was very angry, dreadfully angry, but I was young and strong, and I was in love, so I didn't care much about it then. My husband traveled from place to place, telling his stories and singing his rhymes, and I went with him, and soon lost sight of my sister. At last we came to Rome. 'Tista was born there, and soon after I got some news of my old home from a wandering pedlar, who had passed through the village where I used to live. My aunt was dead, and my sister had married,— married a rich inn-keeper; a match as far above our station as mine had been below it. Well, Herr Ritter, my husband was badly hurt in a quarrel one evening in one of the squares. Somebody insulted him before all the people as he was telling one of his stories, and his blood got up and he struck the man, and they fought; and my husband was brought home to me that night, half-murdered. He didn't live long. He had had a heavy fall, I think, in that fight, for the back of his head was cut open, and he took brain-fever from it. I did my best, but our money was scarce, and our child was too young to be left alone with a sick man, and I could get no work to do at home. So one day, at noon, my husband died. Poor Battista! I could not help it! I could not save him! Ah Jesu! what a terrible thing poverty is! what a mournful thing it is to live!"
She shrouded her face in her hands, but not to weep, for when, after a little silence, she raised her large dark eyes again to meet the old German's compassionate gaze, I saw that they were calm and tearless.
"After that, I used to leave little 'Tista in the care of a woman, next door to me, while I went out as a model. I was handsome then, the painters said, and my hair and my complexion were worth something in the studio; but not for long. My color faded, and my hair grew thin, for I pined and sorrowed day and night after the husband I had lost, and at last no one would give two scudi for me, so I took 'Tista and left Rome to tramp. Sometimes I got hired out in the vine-harvest, and sometimes I sold fruit, or eggs, or fish in the markets, till at last I got a place as a servant in a big town, and 'Tista went to school a bit. But seven months ago my mistress died, and her daughters wouldn't keep me, because I had become weak and couldn't do the work of their house as well as I used to do it. And nobody else would take me, for all the people to whom I went said I looked halfway in my grave, and should be no use to them as a servant. So I gave it up at last, and came on here and got this cottage, almost for nothing, though it's something to me; but then they give me so little for my work, you see, in the town. Well, Herr Ritter, I daresay you think my story a very long one, don't you? I am just near the end of it now. I went into the town today, and while I was standing in the shop with my needlework, a lady came in. The shop-woman, who was talking to me about the price of the things I had done, left me when the lady came in, and went to serve her. So I had to stand and wait, and when the lady put back her veil to look at something she was going to buy, I saw her face. Oh, Herr Ritter! it was my sister, my sister Carlotta! I was certain of it! I was certain of it! Nevertheless; after she had gone, I asked the shop-woman some questions about the lady. She did not tell me much, for I fancy she thought me inquisitive; but she told me, at least, all I had need to know. Her customer, she said, was the wife of a very rich inn-keeper, and her name was Carlotta Nero. She is lodging, the woman told me, at the Casa d'Oro. I didn't go to see her then, of course, because she could not then have reached home; but I want to go tomorrow, if I can manage to walk so far, for I think she would like to see me again, and I am sure I should like to see her. And, shall I tell you what else I am thinking about, Herr Ritter? It is that, perhaps,—perhaps, her husband, being so rich, he might be able to put 'Tista in the way of doing something, or of getting me some work, so that we could save up the money for his apprenticeship by-and-by. What do you think of it now, Herr Ritter? My sister, you know, is the only friend I have in the world, except you, kind, dear Herr! and I don't think she would mind my asking her this, though we did part in anger; do you? For that was ten years ago."
She paused again, and Herr Ritter gazed tenderly at the poor sharp face, with its purple eyelids and quivering parted lips, through which the heavy rapid breath came every moment with a sudden painful shudder, like a sob. I think he was wondering, pityingly, what such a feeble, shattered creature as she could have to do with work, at least, on this side of death.
"Herr Ritter! Herr Ritter!" cried 'Tista, bursting open the door of the little chamber, in a state of great delight; "look what Cristofero has just given me! These beautiful roses! Will you have them?"
"Not I, 'Tista, thank you. Gay colors and sweet odours are not for me. Put them here in this cup by your mother's side. Now, Frau 'Lora, I will not be contradicted!"
"Won't you have one of them, Herr Ritter?" asked the boy, wistfully, holding out towards the old man a spendid crimson bud.
He answered hurriedly, with a gesture of avoidance.
"No, no, 'Tista! I never touch roses! See here, I'll take a cluster of this, 'tis more in my line a great deal." He turned away to the lattice as he spoke; rather, I thought, to conceal a certain emotion that had crossed his face at the sight of the roses than for any other reason, and laid his hand upon me.
"Why, that's nightshade!" cried the boy in surprise.
"No matter," answered the old German, breaking off my blossom-head, and tucking its stalk into the buttonhole of his rusty coat; "I like it, it suits me. Belladonna is not to be despised, as you ought to know, Master Chemist!" Then, in a softer tone, "I shall come and see you tomorrow morning, Frau 'Lora, before you start. Goodnight."
He went out, shutting the door behind him gently, and I went with him. He did not walk very far. About half-a-mile from the town there stood three or four old-fashioned houses, with projecting gables and low green verandahs sloping over their wide balconies, and it was in the first of these houses that Herr Ritter lodged.
He had only one room, a little dark, studious-looking apartment, scantily furnished, with a single window, opening on to the balcony, and in one corner a deep recess, within which was his bed. There were some shelves opposite the window, and upon these several ponderous old tomes in faded covers; a human skull, and a few fossils. Nothing else at all, except a tiny picture, hung upon the wall above the head of his couch; but this I did not see at first.
Later, when he had taken me out of his coat, and put me in water, in a little glass bowl, I was able to turn my great yellow eyes full upon the painting, and I saw that it was the miniature of a beautiful young girl, dressed in a very old-fashioned costume, and wearing upon her fair bosom a knot of crimson roses. "Ah," I said to myself, "there has been a romance in this old German's life, and now there is—silence."