“O that those lips had language! Life has pass’dWith me but roughly since I heard thee last.”
“O that those lips had language! Life has pass’dWith me but roughly since I heard thee last.”
“O that those lips had language! Life has pass’dWith me but roughly since I heard thee last.”
“O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.”
And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream, his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the glimmering light through which he saw them.
How many drawing-books have you filled,——I said,——since you began to take lessons?——This was the first,——sheanswered,——since she was here; and it was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had covered with drawings.
I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies, principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth. Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb drawing of an arm! I don’t remember it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I think, or after a cast from Nature.——Oh!——
——Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,——I said, taking up the drawing-book with a lock on it.——Yes,——she said.——I should like to see her style of working on a small scale.——There was nothing in it worth showing,——she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven’t the least doubt. I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else. The young fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I think he has once or twice sent her what the landlady’s daughter calls bó-kays of flowers,——somebody has, at any rate.——I saw a book she had, which must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary title-page, which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the author,——a face from memory, apparently,——one of those faces that small children loathe without knowing why,and which give them that inward disgust for heaven so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear that these are “good men,” and that heaven is full of such.——The gentleman with thediamond——the Koh-i-noor, so called by us——was not encouraged, I think, by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He pulls his purple mustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees him as it should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would have been in love with her before this time, sometimes looks from his corner across the long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish you were up here by me, or I were down there by you,——which would, perhaps, be a more natural arrangement than the present one. But nothing comes of all this,——and nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding out the girl’s fancies by looking into her locked drawing-book.
Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an attempt also to work into the Little Gentleman’s chamber. For this purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready to go up stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.——No answer.——Knock again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen boots. The bolts and the lock of the innerdoor were unfastened,——with unnecessary noise, I thought,——and he came into the passage. He pulled the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as “Mr. Copley” used to paint his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a quaint-looking key in his hand. Our conversation was short, but long enough to convince me that the Little Gentleman did not want my company in his chamber, and did not mean to have it.
I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,——a school-girl’s secrets and a whimsical man’s habits. I mean to give up such nonsense and mind my own business.——Hark! What the deuse is that odd noise in his chamber?
——If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,——
That all her features were resignedTo this sole image in her mind.
That all her features were resignedTo this sole image in her mind.
That all her features were resignedTo this sole image in her mind.
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.
But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he says anything about the soul and the soul’s atmosphere, religion.
Women are twice as religious as men;——all the world knows that. Whether they are anybetter, in the eyesof Absolute Justice, might be questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,——from their teachings, from their example,——above all, from their pure affections.
Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood. Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,——which every sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children, to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.
The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements as to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle of spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she did was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else the disapproving conscience, when she had done “right” or “wrong”? No “shoulder-striker” hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why, I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is no better than a plaster image.——How old was I at the time?——I suppose about 5823 years old,——that is, counting from Archbishop Usher’s date of the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulatedintelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and most of the world’s teachers.——Old books, as you well know, are books of the world’s youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with which it was mingled.
And so Iris——having thrown off that first lasso, which not only fetters, butchokesthose whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by the windpipe——had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of the neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us in our early years.
The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to choose. Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to this or that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably opened, she would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be divided her affections.
The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the lookof a Roman Catholic chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant arrangements. Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs responsive to each other, and there was much bowing, with very loud responding, and a long service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as Judas used to hold in the old pictures, was carried round to receive contributions. Everything was done not only “decently and in order,” but, perhaps one might say, with a certain air of magnifying their office on the part of the dignified clergymen, often two or three in number. The music and the free welcome were grateful to Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of the chapel. For this was a church with open doors, with seats for all classes and all colors alike,——a church of zealous worshippers after their faith, of charitable and serviceable men and women, one that took care of its children and never forgot its poor, and whose people were much more occupied in looking out for their own souls than in attacking the faith of their neighbors. In its mode of worship there was a union of two qualities,——the taste and refinement, which the educated require just as much in their churches as elsewhere, and the air of stateliness, almost of pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, and is often not without its effect upon those who think they hold outward forms as of little value. Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint Polycarp, the younggirl found a devout and loving and singularly cheerful religious spirit. The artistic sense, which betrayed itself in the dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with her taste. The mingled murmur of the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of its dulltic-tac, articulated itself as “Good Lord, deliver us!”——the sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side to side,——the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back and forward,——why should she not love these gracious outward signs of those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of Saint Polycarp?
The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship, had introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such of our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking over the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking that two such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together in safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their prayer-book. By and by the silken bag was handed round.——I don’t believe she will;——so awkward, you know;——besides, she only came by invitation. There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,——and sure enough, her little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless her! she hasn’t much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it, and that is all Heaven asks.——That was thefirst time I noticed these young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming propriety,——in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with them, whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good behavior. A day or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had left his seat, which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that of Iris, so that they have been as far removed from each other as they could be at the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down the table. Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid not to see it! How could it be otherwise?——Did you speak, Madam? I beg your pardon. (To my lady-reader.)
I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not with the throng of men and women and staring children.
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they will. The femalegendarmesare off guard occasionally. The sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may come together accidentally (accidentally, I said, Madam, and I had not the slightest intention of italicizing the word) and discuss the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latchof a door,——in the shadow of porticos, and especially on those outside balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call “stoops,” the most charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are in full blow,——as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention it.
On such a balcony or “stoop,” one evening, I walked with Iris. We were on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,——my left arm, of course. That leaves one’s right arm free to defend the lovely creature, if the rival——odious wretch!——attempt to ravish her from your side. Likewise if one’s heart should happen to beat a little, its mute language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the arm you hold begins to tremble,——a circumstance like to occur, if you happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the “stoop” to yourselves.
We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-i-noor, as we called him, was in a corner with our landlady’s daughter. The young fellow John was smoking out in the yard. Thegendarmewas afraid of the evening air, and kept inside. The young Marylander came to the door, looked out and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and saw the girl’s head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were not wanted.
She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.——Let me take it,——I said.
She gave it to me to carry.
This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,——said I.
She laughed, and said,——No,——not all of you.
I was there, of course?
Why, no,——she had never taken so much pains with me.
Then she would let me see the inside of it?
She would think of it.
Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to me.——This unlocks my naughty book,——she said,——you shall see it. I am not afraid of you.
I don’t know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.
IRIS, HER BOOK.I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!For Iris had no mother to infold her,Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.She had not learned the mystery of awakingThose chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not whereforeHad the world nothing she might live to care for?No second self to say her evening prayer for?She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streamingShowed not unlovely to her simple seeming.Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.What if a lonely and unsistered creatureLoved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,And double-hued the shining tresses braided,And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glancesMay fall her little book of dreams and fancies.Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
IRIS, HER BOOK.I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!For Iris had no mother to infold her,Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.She had not learned the mystery of awakingThose chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not whereforeHad the world nothing she might live to care for?No second self to say her evening prayer for?She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streamingShowed not unlovely to her simple seeming.Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.What if a lonely and unsistered creatureLoved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,And double-hued the shining tresses braided,And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glancesMay fall her little book of dreams and fancies.Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
IRIS, HER BOOK.
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awakingThose chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,
Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?
And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not whereforeHad the world nothing she might live to care for?No second self to say her evening prayer for?
If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore
Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer for?
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streamingShowed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.What if a lonely and unsistered creatureLoved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
What if a lonely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,And double-hued the shining tresses braided,And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,
And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glancesMay fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glances
May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As I turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of a young girl’s nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trustedmewith such artless confessions,——self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging a sacred confidence?
To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought. She did not know how fearfully she haddisclosed herself; she was too profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having nobody to tell her story to,——having, as she said in her verses, no musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,——nothing, in short, but the language of pen and pencil,——all the veinings of her nature were impressed on these pages, as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank sheets which enclose it. It was the same thing which I remember seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years we had one day at our boarding-house. This child was a deaf-mute. But its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I have never seen in any other human countenance.
I found the soul of Iris in the book that lay open before me. Sometimes it was a poem that held it, sometimes a drawing,——angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a china bowl. On the next page a dead bird,——some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have had a letter sealed,——a round spot where the paper is slightly corrugated, and, if there is writingthere, the letters are somewhat faint and blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with emblematic traceries. It was strange to me at first to see how often she introduced those homelier wild-flowers which we callweeds,——for it seemed there was none of them too humble for her to love, and none too little cared for by Nature to be without its beauty for her artist eye and pencil. By the side of the garden-flowers,——of Spring’s curled darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds, dear to sketching maidens, of flower-de-luces and morning-glories,——nay, oftener than these, and more tenderly caressed by the colored brush that rendered them,——were those common growths which fling themselves to be crushed under our feet and our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty.
Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,——just as we see them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out; the red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,——“the white man’s foot,” as the Indians called it,——the wiry, jointed stems of that iron creeping plant which we call “knot-grass,” and which loves its life so dearly that it is next toimpossible to murder it with a hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;——all these plants, and many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.——On one of the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor’s chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for. Above, a long monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side an Alpineneedle, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had a strange look,——one would say the cliff was bleeding;——perhaps she did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with his wings spread over some unseen object.——And on the very next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page of Fuller’s “Holy War,” in which I recognized without difficulty every boarder at our table in all the glory of the most resplendent caricature,——three only excepted,——the Little Gentleman, myself, and one other.
I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the girl’s little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.——There is a left arm again, though;——no,——that is from the “Fighting Gladiator,”——the“Jeune Héros combattant” of the Louvre;——there is the broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate casts of the “Gladiator’s” arm look immense; but in its place the limb looks light, almost slender,——such is the perfection of that miraculous marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until I looked on that statue.]——Here is something very odd, to be sure. An Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give them all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying under a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,——spray of the dry ocean sailed by the “ship of the desert.” A herd of buffaloes, uncouth, shaggy-maned, heavy in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The buffalo is thelionof the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse, with his huge, rough collar, echoing, as it were, the natural form of the other beast. And here are twisted serpents; and stately swans, with answering curves in their bowed necks, as if they had snake’s blood under their white feathers; and grave, high-shouldered herons, standing on one foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold stare of monumental effigies.——A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in it without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look at. You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe she is trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to look at in the light of one of Nature’s eccentric curves, belonging to her system of beauty, as the hyperbola and parabola belongto the conic sections, though we cannot see them as symmetrical and entire figures, like the circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help referring this paradise of twisted spines to some idea floating in her head connected with her friend whom Nature has warped in the moulding.——That is nothing to another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself in his little crooked body at times,——if it does not really get freed or half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You know what I mean,——transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day when the boarders moved from the table nearly all at once. But she sat as before, her cheek resting on her hand, her amber eyes wide open and still. I went to her,——she was breathing as usual, and her heart was beating naturally enough,——but she did not answer. I bent her arm; it was as plastic as softened wax, and kept the place I gave it.——This will never do, though,——and I sprinkled a few drops of water on her forehead. She started and looked round.——I have been in a dream,——she said;——I feel as if all my strength were in this arm;——give me your hand!——She took my right hand in her left, which looked soft and white enough, but——Good Heaven! I believe she will crack my bones! All the nervous power in her body must have flashed through those muscles; as when a crazy lady snaps her iron window-bars,——she who could hardly glove herself when in her common health. Iris turned pale, and the tears came to her eyes;——she sawshe had given pain. Then she trembled, and might have fallen but for me;——the poor little soul had been in one of those trances that belong to the spiritual pathology of higher natures, mostly those of women.
To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got his nightmare vision, described by another as “cemeteries of departed greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and mutilated inscriptions.” Such a black dungeon faced the page that held the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was coiled,——what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not make out.
I told you the young girl’s soul was in this book. As I turned over the last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar to me; there were features that did not seem new.——Can it be so? Was there ever such innocence in a creature so full of life?She tells her heart’s secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need of being questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in scores from the young-lady-factories, with parchments warranting them accomplished and virtuous,——in case anybody should question the fact. I began to understand her;——and what is so charming as to read the secret of a realfemme incomprise?——for such there are, though they are not the ones who think themselves uncomprehended women.
I found these stanzas in the book, among many others. I give them as characterizing the tone of her sadder moments:
UNDER THE VIOLETS.Her hands are cold; her face is white;No more her pulses come and go;Her eyes are shut to life and light;——Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,And lay her where the violets blow.But not beneath a graven stone,To plead for tears with alien eyes;A slender cross of wood aloneShall say, that here a maiden liesIn peace beneath the peaceful skies.And gray old trees of hugest limbShall wheel their circling shadows roundTo make the scorching sunlight dimThat drinks the greenness from the ground,And drop their dead leaves on her mound.When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,And through their leaves the robins call,And, ripening in the autumn sun,The acorns and the chestnuts fall,Doubt not that she will heed them all.For her the morning choir shall singIts matins from the branches high,And every minstrel-voice of spring,That trills beneath the April sky,Shall greet her with its earliest cry.When, turning round their dial-track,Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,Her little mourners, clad in black,The crickets, sliding through the grass,Shall pipe for her an evening mass.At last the rootlets of the treesShall find the prison where she lies,And bear the buried dust they seizeIn leaves and blossoms to the skies.So may the soul that warmed it rise!If any, born of kindlier blood,Should ask, What maiden lies below?Say only this: A tender bud,That tried to blossom in the snow,Lies withered where the violets blow.
UNDER THE VIOLETS.Her hands are cold; her face is white;No more her pulses come and go;Her eyes are shut to life and light;——Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,And lay her where the violets blow.But not beneath a graven stone,To plead for tears with alien eyes;A slender cross of wood aloneShall say, that here a maiden liesIn peace beneath the peaceful skies.And gray old trees of hugest limbShall wheel their circling shadows roundTo make the scorching sunlight dimThat drinks the greenness from the ground,And drop their dead leaves on her mound.When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,And through their leaves the robins call,And, ripening in the autumn sun,The acorns and the chestnuts fall,Doubt not that she will heed them all.For her the morning choir shall singIts matins from the branches high,And every minstrel-voice of spring,That trills beneath the April sky,Shall greet her with its earliest cry.When, turning round their dial-track,Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,Her little mourners, clad in black,The crickets, sliding through the grass,Shall pipe for her an evening mass.At last the rootlets of the treesShall find the prison where she lies,And bear the buried dust they seizeIn leaves and blossoms to the skies.So may the soul that warmed it rise!If any, born of kindlier blood,Should ask, What maiden lies below?Say only this: A tender bud,That tried to blossom in the snow,Lies withered where the violets blow.
UNDER THE VIOLETS.
Her hands are cold; her face is white;No more her pulses come and go;Her eyes are shut to life and light;——Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,And lay her where the violets blow.
Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;——
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,To plead for tears with alien eyes;A slender cross of wood aloneShall say, that here a maiden liesIn peace beneath the peaceful skies.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
And gray old trees of hugest limbShall wheel their circling shadows roundTo make the scorching sunlight dimThat drinks the greenness from the ground,And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,And through their leaves the robins call,And, ripening in the autumn sun,The acorns and the chestnuts fall,Doubt not that she will heed them all.
When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.
For her the morning choir shall singIts matins from the branches high,And every minstrel-voice of spring,That trills beneath the April sky,Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel-voice of spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
When, turning round their dial-track,Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,Her little mourners, clad in black,The crickets, sliding through the grass,Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
At last the rootlets of the treesShall find the prison where she lies,And bear the buried dust they seizeIn leaves and blossoms to the skies.So may the soul that warmed it rise!
At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!
If any, born of kindlier blood,Should ask, What maiden lies below?Say only this: A tender bud,That tried to blossom in the snow,Lies withered where the violets blow.
If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.
——I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its headmeekly while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like a lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes it hard to train.
Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed look upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the degree to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It is an awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily for our friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.
Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to therightside, as if there were the centre of his uneasiness.
When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean someactual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time for a single shriek,——as when the shot broke through the brave Captain Nolan’s breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with a loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.
I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who were entitled to be warned. The landlady’s face fell when I mentioned my fears.
Poor man!——she said.——And will leave the best room empty! Hasn’t he got any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought of his failin’ so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected. Liver-complaint one of ’em?
I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer to him than anybody.
I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face, except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.——Could I be certain that there was any mortal complaint?——Why, no, I could not be certain; but it looked alarming to me.——He shall have some of my life,——she said.
I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of a kind of magnetic power she could give out;——at any rate, I cannot help thinking shewillsher strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, very probably.
One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved, as if she were speaking; but I could notat first hear a word. Her hair looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild light. She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.
That night, at about eleven o’clock, I was sent for to see the Little Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went before me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found myself ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious apartment I had so longed to enter....
The house was deadly still, and the night-wind, blowing through an open window, struck me as from a field of ice, at the moment I passed back again into the creaking corridor. As I turned into the common passage, a white figure, holding a lamp, stood full before me. I thought at first it was one of those images made to stand in niches and hold a light in their hands. But the illusion was momentary, and my eyes speedily recovered from the shock of the bright flame and snowy drapery to see that the figure was a breathing one. It was Iris, in one of her statue-trances. She had come down, whether sleeping or waking, I knew not at first, led by an instinct that told her she was wanted,——or, possibly, having overheard and interpreted the sound of our movements,——or, it may be, having learned from the servant that there was trouble which might ask for a woman’s hand. I sometimes think women have a sixth sense, which tells them that others, whom they cannot see or hear, are in suffering. How surely we find them at the bedside of the dying! Howstrongly does Nature plead for them, that we should draw our first breath in their arms, as we sigh away our last upon their faithful breasts!
With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, dressed as the starlight knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she had twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone before me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of wax-taper, and in the other a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had been a figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of propriety then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out of. She had been “warned in a dream,” doubtless suggested by her waking knowledge and the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was nothing more natural than that she should have risen and girdled her waist, and lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with “Ex dono pupillorum” on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the bedside,——a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing whither her feet were leading her, and with wide, blank eyes seeing nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.——Well, I must wake her from her slumber or trance.——I called her name, but she did not heed my voice.
The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of LordLovel’s, in memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always from that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of youth and the splendor of beauty, “My lips have touched those roses and made their sweetness mine forever”? You think my cheek was flushed, perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this midnight flash of opportunity. On the contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale, and I know that I trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the fiercest,——it is the violence of the chill that gives the measure of the fever! The fighting-boy of our school always turned white when he went out to a pitched battle with the bully of some neighboring village; but we knew what his bloodless cheeks meant,——the blood was all in his stout heart,——he was a slight boy, and there was not enough to redden his face and fill his heart both at once.
Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of an impropriety, and if he were, whether he would get caught in his indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria or Eugénie would do as much by him, if she happened to pass him when he was asleep. And have we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the young John Milton tingled under the lips ofsome high-born Italian beauty, who, I believe, did not think to leave her card by the side of the slumbering youth, but has bequeathed the memory of her pretty deed to all coming time? The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal longer.
There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had made up my mind what I was going to do about it.
When I remember how charmingly she looked, I don’t blame myself at all for being tempted; but if I had been fool enough to yield to the impulse, I should certainly have been ashamed to tell of it. She did not know what to make of it, finding herself there alone, in such guise, and me staring at her. She looked down at her white robe and bare feet, and colored,——then at the goblet she held in her hand,——then at the taper; and at last her thoughts seemed to clear up.
I know it all,——she said.——He is going to die, and I must go and sit by him. Nobody will care for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to care for.
I assured her that nothing was needed for him that night but rest, and persuaded her that the excitement of her presence could only do harm. Let him sleep, and he would very probably awake better in the morning. There was nothing to be said, for I spoke with authority; and the young girl glided away with noiseless step and sought her own chamber.
——On my second visit, I found Iris sitting by the Little Gentleman’s pillow. To my disappointment, the room was darkened. He did not like the light, and would have the shutters kept nearly closed. It was good enough for me;——what business had I to be indulging my curiosity, when I had nothing to do but to exercise such skill as I possessed for the benefit of my patient? There was not much to be said or done in such a case; but I spoke as encouragingly as I could, as I think we are always bound to do. He did not seem to pay any very anxious attention, but the poor girl listened as if her own life and more than her own life were depending on the words I uttered. She followed me out of the room, when I had got through my visit.
How long?——she said.
Uncertain. Any time; to-day,——next week,——next month,——I answered.——One of those cases where the issue is not doubtful, but may be sudden or slow.
The women of the house were kind, as women always are in trouble. But Iris pretended that nobody could spare the time as well as she, and kept her place, hour after hour, until the landlady insisted that she’d be killin’ herself, if she begun at that rate, ’n’ haf to give up, if she didn’t want to be clean beat out in less ’n a week.
At the table we were graver than common. The high chair was set back against the wall, and a gap left between that of the young girl and her nearest neighbor’s on the right. But the next morning, to our great surprise,that good-looking young Marylander had very quietly moved his own chair to the vacant place. I thought he was creeping down that way, but I was not prepared for a leap spanning such a tremendous parenthesis of boarders as this change of position included. There was no denying that the youth and maiden were a handsome pair as they sat side by side. But whatever the young girl may have thought of her new neighbor, she never seemed for a moment to forget the poor little friend who had been taken from her side. There are women, and even girls, with whom it is of no use to talk. One might as well reason with a bee as to the form of his cell, or with an oriole as to the construction of his swinging nest, as try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures, that she had chosen as her share in the household where accident had thrown her. She had that genius of ministration which is the special province of certain women, marked even among their helpful sisters by a soft, low voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering smile, and a ready self-surrender to the objects of their care, which such trifles as their own food, sleep, or habits of any kind never presume to interfere with.
Day after day, and too often through the long watches of the night, she kept her place by the pillow.——Thatgirl will kill herself over me, Sir,——said the poor Little Gentleman to me, one day,——she will kill herself, Sir, if you don’t call in all the resources of your art to get me off as soon as may be. I shall wear her out, Sir, with sitting in this close chamber and watching when she ought to be sleeping, if you leave me to the care of Nature without dosing me.
This was rather strange pleasantry, under the circumstances. But there are certain persons whose existence is so out of parallel with the larger laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to them as death and death as life.
The apron-strings of an American mother are made of india-rubber. Her boy belongs where he is wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for all our young men, when he said that his home was wherever the stars and stripes blew over his head.
And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made that audacious movement,——jumping over the seats of I don’t know how many boarders to put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman’s absence had left vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found habitually at the side of any one given young lady,——when he lingers where she stays, and hastens when she leaves,——when his eyes follow her as she moves, and rest upon her when she is still,——when he begins to grow a little timid, he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was so gay, whenever accident finds them alone,——when he thinks very oftenof the given young lady, and names her very seldom,——
What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet science in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of qualifications?
——But we don’t know anything about this young man, except that he is good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a generous style of nature,——all very promising, but by no means proving that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out when we opened that sealed book of hers.
Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma——then, if you will believe it, a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure——came and toldhermamma that your papa had——had——asked——No, no, no! she couldn’t say it; but her mother——O, the depth of maternal sagacity!——guessed it all without another word!——When your mother, I say, came and told her mother she wasengaged, and your grandmother told your grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of the young gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence? I will not be so hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of the intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should compare a young girl’sman-as-she-thinks-himwith a forty-summered matron’sman-as-she-finds-him, I have my doubts as to whether the second would be a fac-simile of the first in most cases.
I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to prepare you before telling it. I think thereis a kindly feeling growing up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which has drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the young girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she is all given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily thoughts and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of friendship open like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden stolen kiss, and lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before you.
And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage.
The divinity-student was exercised in his mind about the Little Gentleman, and, in the kindness of his heart,——for he was a good young man,——and in the strength of his convictions,——for he took it for granted that he and his crowd were right, and other folks and their crowd were wrong,——he determined to bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith before he died, if he could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he should be pleased to visit him and have some conversation with him; and received for answer that he would be welcome.
The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, and had a somewhat remarkable interview with him, which I shall briefly relate, without attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.
After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said, in a kind way, that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt concerned for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making preparations for the great change awaiting him.
I thank you, Sir,——said the Little Gentleman;——permit me to ask you, what makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do anything to help me, Sir?
I address you only as a fellow-man,——said the divinity-student,——and therefore a fellow-sinner.
I amnota man, Sir!——said the Little Gentleman.——I was born into this world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to which I do not belong. Look at this!——he said, and held up his withered arm.——See there!——and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.——Lay your hand here!——and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced heart.——I have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first came to my consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight to show. The first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would not come near me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy. I grew into the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have loved shrank from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothingin common with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a worn-out race, and I shall go down alone into the dust, out of this world of men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one or the love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat. If another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I have had a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it. I don’t believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not left me wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where I was born;——the heart of the world beats under the three hills of Boston, Sir! I love this great land, with so many tall men in it, and so many good, noble women.——His eyes turned to the silent figure by his pillow.——I have learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me, but I cannot honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my suffering. I bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations in my single person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that was not a punishment for another’s fault. I may have had many wrong thoughts, but I cannot have done many wrong deeds,——for my cage has been a narrow one, and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the bars and seen the great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part in their doings. I have known what it was to dream of the great passions; but since my mother kissed me before she died, no woman’s lips have pressed my cheek,——nor ever will.
——The young girl’s eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost without a thought, but with a warmhuman instinct that rushed up into her face with her heart’s blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was the sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.
The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw him shed.
The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his head and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded from his memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his fellow-creature’s fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue. He could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The kiss of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that angels watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to summon before the tribunal of his private judgment.
Shall I pray with you?——he said, after a pause.——A little before he would have said, Shall I prayforyou?——The Christian religion, as taught by its Founder, is full ofsentiment. So we must not blame the divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.
Pray!——said the Little Gentleman.
The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, thatGod would look on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers upon this their child. O, turn away from him the penalties of his own transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy judgment; in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all thy truth, let thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him, even as it came through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside, begging!
Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone of tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a proselyte of him.
This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened. Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which I have been speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his self-elected spiritual adviser,——the emotion which overcame him, when the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed her lips to his cheek,——the thoughts that mastered him while the divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-studenthad uttered his last petition, commending him to the Father through his Son’s intercession, he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was changed.——There is a language of the human countenance which we all understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows and putting out its fires.——Such was the aspect of the face upon which the divinity-student looked, after the brief silence which followed his prayer. The change had been rapid, though not that abrupt one which is liable to happen at any moment in these cases.——The sick man looked towards him.——Farewell,——he said——I thank you. Leave me alone with her.
When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,——the same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed to a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so attracted my curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might contain.
Open it,——he said,——and light the lamp.——The young girl walked to the cabinet and unlocked the door.A deep recess appeared, lined with black velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver lamp hung over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the bedside. The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying Saviour.——Give me your hand,——he said; and Iris placed her right hand in his left. So they remained, until presently his eyes lost their meaning, though they still remained vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he held the young girl’s hand firmly, as if it were leading him through some deep-shadowed valley and it was all he could cling to. But presently an involuntary muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying grasp held the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture. She pressed her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held her tighter and tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers would be crushed in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the Inquisition she was suffering, and she could not stir from her place. Then, in her great anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying figure, and, looking upon its pierced hands and feet and side and lacerated forehead, she felt that she also must suffer uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest pain she did not forget the duties of her tender office, but dried the dying man’s moist forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of agony were glistening on her own. How long this lasted she never could tell.Timeandthirstare two things you and I talk about; but the victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their engines knew better what they meant than you or I!——What is that great bucket of waterfor? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she was placed on the rack.——For you to drink,——said the torturer to the little woman.——She could not think that it would take such a flood to quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The torturer knew better than she.
After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock measures,——without any warning,——there came a swift change of his features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden breath passes over their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed, and Iris, released at once from her care for the sufferer and from his unconscious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry,——the only utterance of her long agony.
——Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although he left the bulk of his property, by will, to a public institution, he added a codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces of property as tokens of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became the possessor of the wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had been purchased for him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was comforted with a small legacy. The following extract relates to Iris: “——in consideration of her manifold acts of kindness, but only in token of grateful remembrance, and by no means as a reward for services which cannot be compensated, a certain messuage, with all the land thereto appertaining, situate in —— Street, at the North End, so called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being the house in which I was born, but now inhabited by several families, and known as‘the Rookery.’” Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and the red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death’s-head ring was buried with him.
Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched “sentimental” movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization, friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child, and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the Teacher of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of sentiment, loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that sinner, weeping over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing, and perhaps kissing, the little children,——so that the Gospels are still cried over almost as often as the last work of fiction!
But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same who had been called by her admiring pastor “The Model of all the Virtues.” Once a week she had written a letter, in arather formal hand, but full of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had come to carry her away, thinking that she had learned all she was likely to learn under her present course of teaching. The Model, however, was to stay awhile,——a week, or more,——before they should leave together.
Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful, grateful, as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet something was wrong. She had one of her trances, and became statue-like, as before, only the day after the Model’s arrival. She was wan and silent, tasted nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced effort, and often looked vaguely away from those who were looking at her, her eyes just glazed with the shining moisture of a tear that must not be allowed to gather and fall. Was it grief at parting from the place where her strange friendship had grown up with the Little Gentleman? Yet she seemed to have become reconciled to his loss, and rather to have a deep feeling of gratitude that she had been permitted to care for him in his last weary days.
The Sunday after the Model’s arrival, that lady had an attack of headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone. Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church of the Galileans. They said but little going,——“collecting their thoughts” for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John, “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue,but in deed and in truth.” When Iris and her friend came out of church, they were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.
At last the young man said,——You and I are not little children, Iris!
She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but spoke never a word.
In deed and in truth, Iris,——
What shall a poor girl say or do, when a strong man falters in his speech before her, and can do nothing better than hold out his hand to finish his broken sentence?
The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in his,——the little soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and suffered so patiently.
The blood came back to the young man’s cheeks, as he lifted it to his lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with them, and said,——“It is mine!”
Iris did not contradict him.