CARRY
I saidthat harsh and hot as was the present, there were joyous gleams of light playing over the future. How else could it be, when that fair being whom I met first upon the wastes of ocean, and whose name, even, is hallowed by the dying words of Isabel, is living in the same world with me? Amid all the perplexities that haunt me, as I wander from the present to the future, the thought of her image, of her smile, of her last kind adieu, throws a dash of sunlight upon my path.
And yet why? Is it not very idle? Years have passed since I have seen her; I do not even know where she may be. What is she to me?
My heart whispers—very much! but I do not listen to that in my prouder moods. She is a woman, a beautiful woman indeed, whom I have known once—pleasantly known: she is living, but she will die, or she will marry; I shall hear of it by and by, and sigh, perhaps—nothing more. Life is earnest around me; there is no time to delve in the past for bright things to shed radiance on the future.
I will forget the sweet girl who was with me upon the ocean, and think she is dead. This manly soul is strong, if we would but think so; it can make a puppet of griefs, and take down and set up at will the symbols of its hope.
—But no, I can not; the more I think thus, the less I really think thus. A single smile of that frail girl, when I recall it, mocks all my proud purposes, as if, without her, my purposes were nothing.
—Pshaw! I say—it is idle! and I bury my thought in books, and in long hours of toil; but as the hours lengthen, and my head sinks with fatigue, and the shadows of evening play around me, there comes again that sweet vision, saying with tender mockery—is it idle? And I am helpless, and am led away hopefully and joyfully toward the golden gates which open on the Future.
But this is only in those silent hours when the man is alone and away from his working thoughts. At midday, or in the rush of the world, he puts hard armor on that reflects all the light of such joyous fancies. He is cold and careless, and ready for suffering, and for fight.
One day I am traveling; I am absorbed in some present cares—thinking out some plan which is to make easier or more successful the voyage of life. I glance upon the passing scenery, and upon new faces, with that careless indifference which grows upon a man with years, and, above all, with travel. There is no wife to enlist your sympathies—no children to sport with; my friends are few and scattered, and are working out fairly what is before them to do. Lilly is living here, and Ben is living there; their letters are cheerful, contented letters; and they wish me well. Griefs even have grown light with wearing, and I am just in that careless humor—as if I said—jog on, old world—jog on! And the end will come along soon, and we shall get—poor devils that we are—just what we deserve!
But on a sudden my eyes rest on a figure that I think I know. Now the indifference flies like mist, and my heart throbs, and the old visions come up. I watch her, as if there were nothing else to be seen. The form is hers; the grace is hers; the simple dress—so neat, so tasteful—that is hers, too. She half turns her head—it is the face that I saw under the velvet cap in the park of Devon.
I do not rush forward; I sit as if I were in a trance. I watch her every action—the kind attentions to her mother who sits beside her—her naïve exclamations as we pass some point of surpassing beauty. It seems as if a new world were opening to me; yet I can not tell why. I keep my place, and think, and gaze. I tear the paper I hold in my hand into shreds. I play with my watch chain, and twist the seal until it is near breaking. I take out my watch, look at it, and put it back—yet I can not tell the hour.
—It is she—I murmur—I know it is Carry!
But when they rise to leave, my lethargy is broken; yet it is with a trembling hesitation—a faltering, as it were, between the present life and the future—that I approach. She knows me on the instant, and greets me kindly—as Bella wrote—very kindly, yet she shows a slight embarrassment, a sweet embarrassment, that I treasure in my heart more closely even than the greeting. I change my course and travel with them; now we talk of the old scenes, and two hours seem to have made with me the difference of half a lifetime.
It is five years since I parted with her, never hoping to meet again. She was then a frail girl; she is now just rounding into womanhood. Her eyes are as dark and deep as ever; the lashes that fringe them seem to me even longer than they were. Her color is as rich, her forehead as fair, her smile as sweet as they were before—only a little tinge of sadness floats upon her eye, like the haze upon a summer landscape. I grow bold to look upon her, and timid with looking. We talk of Bella; she speaks in a soft, low voice, and the shade of sadness on her face gathers—as when a summer mist obscures the sun. I talk in monosyllables; I can command no other. And there is a look of sympathy in her eye when I speak thus that binds my soul to her as no smiles could do. What can draw the heart into the fulness of love so quick as sympathy?
But this passes; we must part, she for her home, and I for that broad home that has been mine so long—the world. It seems broader to me than ever, and colder than ever, and less to be wished for than ever. A new book of hope is sprung wide open in my life: a hope of home!
We are to meet at some time not far off in the city where I am living. I look forward to that time as at school I used to look for vacation; it is apoint d’appuifor hope, for thought, and for countless journeyings into the opening future. Never did I keep the dates better, never count the days more carefully, whether for bonds to be paid or for dividends to fall due.
I welcome the time, and it passes like a dream. I am near her, often as I dare; the hours are very short with her, and very long away. She receives me kindly—always very kindly; she could not be otherwise than kind. But is it anything more? This is a greedy nature of ours, and when sweet kindness flows upon us we want more. I know she is kind; and yet, in place of being grateful, I am only covetous of an excess of kindness.
She does not mistake my feelings, surely; ah, no—trust a woman for that! But what have I or what am I to ask a return? She is pure and gentle as an angel, and I—alas—only a poor soldier in our world-fight against the devil! Sometimes, in moods of vanity, I call up what I fondly reckon my excellencies or deserts—a sorry, pitiful array that makes me shame-faced when I meet her. And in an instant I banish them all. And I think that if I were called upon in some high court of justice to say why I should claim her indulgence or her love, I would say nothing of my sturdy effort to beat down the roughness of toil—nothing of such manliness as wears a calm front amid the frowns of the world—nothing of little triumphs in the every-day fight of life, but only I would enter the simple plea—this heart is hers!
She leaves; and I have said nothing of what was seething within me; how I curse my folly! She is gone, and never perhaps will return. I recall in despair her last kind glance. The world seems blank to me. She does not know; perhaps she does not care if I love her. Well, I will bear it. But I can not bear it. Business is broken; books are blurred; something remains undone that fate declares must be done. Not a place can I find but her sweet smile gives to it either a tinge of gladness or a black shade of desolation.
I sit down at my table with pleasant books; the fire is burning cheerfully; my dog looks up earnestly when I speak to him; but it will never do! Her image sweeps away all these comforts in a flood. I fling down my book; I turn my back upon my dog; the fire hisses and sparkles in mockery of me.
Suddenly a thought flashes on my brain—I will write to her—I say. And a smile floats over my face—a smile of hope, ending in doubt. I catch up my pen—my trusty pen, and the clean sheet lies before me. The paper could not be better, nor the pen. I have written hundreds of letters; it is easy to write letters. But now, it is not easy.
I begin, and cross it out. I begin again, and get on a little farther—then cross it out. I try again, but can write nothing. I fling down my pen in despair, and burn the sheet, and go to my library for some old sour treatise of Shaftesbury or Lyttleton, and say—talking to myself all the while—let her go! She is beautiful, but I am strong; the world is short; we—I and my dog, and my books, and my pen, will battle it through bravely, and leave enough for a tombstone.
But even as I say it the tears start—it is all false saying! And I throw Shaftesbury across the room, and take up my pen again. It glides on and on as my hope glows, and I tell her of our first meeting, and of our hours in the ocean twilight, and of our unsteady stepping on the heaving deck, and of that parting in the noise of London, and of my joy at seeing her in the pleasant country, and of my grief afterward. And then I mention Bella—her friend and mine—and the tears flow; and then I speak of our last meeting, and of my doubts, and of this very evening—and how I could not write, and abandoned it—and then felt something within me that made me write and tell her—all!—“That my heart was not my own, but was wholly hers; and that if she would be mine—I would cherish her and love her always!”
Then I feel a kind of happiness—a strange, tumultuous happiness, into which doubt is creeping from time to time, bringing with it a cold shudder. I seal the letter, and carry it—a great weight—for the mail. It seemed as if there could be no other letter that day, and as if all the coaches and horses and cars and boats were specially detailed to bear that single sheet. It is a great letter for me; my destiny lies in it.
I do not sleep well that night—it is a tossing sleep; one time joy—sweet and holy joy, comes to my dreams, and an angel is by me; another time the angel fades—the brightness fades, and I wake, struggling with fear. For many nights it is so, until the day comes on which I am looking for a reply.
The postman has little suspicion that the letter which he gives me—although it contains no promissory notes, nor money, nor deeds, nor articles of trade—is yet to have a greater influence upon my life and upon my future, than all the letters he has ever brought to me before. But I do not show him this; nor do I let him see the clutch with which I grasp it. I bear it as if it were a great and fearful burden to my room. I lock the door, and, having broken the seal with a quivering hand—read: