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The hesitating timidity with which this request was uttered, touched him more painfully than aught that had ever passed between them.
“My dear child, did you suppose that I would permit you to travel alone to New York, and thrust yourself upon the notice of strangers? I will accompany you whenever you go, and not only present you to the professor, but request him to receive you into his family as a member of his home-circle.”
A quiver shook out the hard lines around her lips, and she turned her eyes full on his.
“You are very kind, sir, but that is not necessary; and a letter of introduction will have the same effect, and save you from a disagreeable trip. Your time is too valuable to be wasted on such journeys, and I have no right to expect that solely on my account you should tear yourself away—from—those dear to you.”
“I think my time could not be more profitably employed than in promoting the happiness and welfare of my adopted sister, who was so inexpressibly dear to my noble Janet. It is neither pleasant nor proper for a young lady to travel without an escort.”
He had risen, and laid his hand lightly on the back of her chair.
“She smiled; but he could see ariseHer soul from far adown her eyes,Prepared as if for sacrifice.”
“Is it a mercy, think you, Dr. Grey, to foster a fastidiousness that can only barb the shafts of penury? What right have toiling paupers to harbor in their thoughts those dainty scruples that belong appropriately to princesses and palaces? Why tell me that this, that, or the other step is not ‘proper,’ when you know that necessity goads me? Sir, I feel now like that isolated Florentine, and echo her words,—
...‘And since help
Must come to me from those who love me not,Farewell, all helpers. I must help myself,And am alone from henceforth.’”
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“You prefer that I should not accompany you to New York?”
“Yes, sir; but I gratefully accept a letter to Professor V——.”
“Very well; it shall be in readiness when you wish it. Have you fixed any time for your departure?”
“This is Friday,—and I shall go on the six o’clock train, Monday morning.”
“Is there any service that I can render you in the interim?”
“No, thank you.”
“As you have no likeness of the children, would it be agreeable to you to have their photographs taken to-day,—and, at the same time, a picture of yourself to be left with them? If you desire it I will meet you in town, at the gallery, at any hour you may designate.”
Standing before him, she answered, almost scornfully,—
“I shall not have time. Some day—if I succeed—I will send them my photograph, taken in gorgeous robes asprima donna; provided you promise that said robes shall not constitute aSan Benito, and doom the picture to the flames. I will detain you no longer, Dr. Grey, as the sole object of the interview has been accomplished.”
“Pardon me; but I have a word to say. Your career will probably be brilliantly successful, in which event you will feel no want of admirers and friends,—and will doubtless ignore me for those who flatter you more, and really love you less. But, Salome, failure may overtake you, bringing in its train countless evils that at present you can not realize,—poverty, disease, desolation, in the midst of strangers,—and all the woes that, like hungry wolves, attack homeless, isolated women. I earnestly hope that the leprous hand of disaster and defeat may never be laid upon your future, but the most cautious human schemes are fallible—often futile—and if you should be unsuccessful in your programme, and find yourself unable to consummate your plans, I ask you now, by the memory of our friendship, by the sacred memory of the dead, to promise me that you will immediately write and acquaint me with all your needs, your wishes, your real condition.332Promise me, dear Salome, that you will turn instantly to me, as you would to Stanley, were he in my place,—that you will let me prove myself your elder brother,—your truest, best friend.”
He put his hand on her head, but she recoiled haughtily from his touch.
“Dr. Grey, I promise you,
‘I will not soil thy purple with my dust,Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass.’
I promise you that if misfortune, failure, and penury lay hold of me, you shall be the last human being who will learn it; for I will cloak myself under a name that will not betray me, and crawl into some lazaretto, and be buried in some potter’s field, among other mendicants,—unknown, ‘unwept, unhonored, and unsung.’”
If some motherless young chamois, rescued from destruction, and pampered and caressed, had suddenly turned, and savagely bitten and lacerated the hand that fondled and fed it, Dr. Grey would not have been more painfully startled; but experience had taught him the uselessness of expostulation during her moods of perversity, and he took his hat and turned away, saying, almost sternly,—
“Bear in mind that neither palace nor potter’s field can screen you from the scrutiny of your Maker, or mask and shelter your shivering soul in the solemn hour when He demands its last reckoning.”
“Which ‘reckoning,’ your eminently Christian charity assures you will prove more terrible for me than the Bloody Assizes. ‘By the memory of our friendship!’ Oh, shallow sham! Pinning my faith to thedictum, ‘The tide of friendship does not rise high on the bank of perfection,’ my fatuity led me to expect that your friendship was wide as the universe, and lasting as eternity. Wise Helvetius told me that, ‘To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion;’ergo, since my credentials of unworthiness were indisputable, I laid claim to a vast333share of your favor. But, alas! the logic of the seers is well-nigh as hollow as my hopes.”
He looked over his shoulder at her, with an expression of pity as profound as that which must have filled the eyes of the angel, who, standing in the blaze of the sword of wrath, watched Adam and Eve go mournfully forth into the blistering heats of unknown lands. Before he could reply, she laughed contemptuously, and continued,—
“Nil desperandum, Dr. Grey. Remember that, ‘Faith and persistency are life’s architects; while doubt and despair bury all under the ruins of any endeavor.’ When I have trilled a fortune into that abhorred vacuum, my pocket, I shall go down to the Tigris, and catch the mate to Tobias’ fish, and by the cremation thereof, fumigate my pestiferous soul, and smoke out the Asmodeus that has so long and comfortably dwelt there.”
“God grant you a Raphael, as guide on your journey,” was his calm, earnest reply, as he disappeared, closing the door after him.
When the sound of his buggy-wheels on the gravelled avenue told her he had gone, she threw herself on the floor, and crossing her arms on a chair, hid her face in them.
During Saturday, no opportunity presented itself for renewing the conversation, and early on Sunday morning Dr. Grey sent to her room a package marked $1,000.00—though really containing $1,500.00—and a letter addressed to Professor V——. Without examining either, she threw them into her trunk, which was already packed, and went down to breakfast.
She declined accompanying Miss Dexter and Muriel to church, alleging, as an excuse, that it was the last day she could spend with the children.
Dr. Grey approached her when the remainder of the family had left the table, where she sat abstractedly jingling her fork and spoon.
He noticed that her breakfast was untasted, and said, very gently,—
“I suppose that you wish to visit our dear Jane’s grave,334before you leave us, and, if agreeable to you, I shall be glad to have you accompany me there to-day.”
“Thank you; but if I go, it will be alone.”
He stooped to kiss Jessie, who leaned against her sister’s chair, and, when he left the room, Salome caught the child in her arms, and pressed her lips twice to the spot where his had rested.
Late in the afternoon she eluded the children’s watchful eyes, and stole away from the house, taking the road that led towards “Solitude.” In one portion of the osage hedge that surrounded the place, the lower branches had died, leaving a small opening, and here Salome gained access to the grounds. Walking cautiously under the thick and dark masses of shrubbery and trees, she reached the arched path near the clump of pyramidal deodars, whose long, drooping plumes were fluttering in the evening wind.
Thence she could command a view of the house and grounds in front, and thence she saw that concerning which she had come to satisfy herself,—believing that the evidence of her own eyes would fortify her for the approaching trial of separation. Dr. Grey’s horse and buggy stood near the side gate, and Dr. Grey was walking very slowly up and down the avenue leading to the beach, while Mrs. Gerome’s tall form leaned on his arm, and the greyhound followed sulkily.
Salome had barely time to look upon the spectacle that fired her heart and well-nigh maddened her, ere the dog lifted his head, gave one quick, savage bark, and darted in the direction of the cedars.
Dread of detection and of Dr. Grey’s pitying gaze was more potent than fear of the brute, and she ran swiftly towards the gap in the hedge, by which she had effected an entrance into the secluded grounds. Just as she reached it, the greyhound bounded up, and they met in front of the opening. He set his teeth in her clothes, tearing away a streamer of her black dress, and, as she silently struggled, he bit her arm badly, mangling the flesh, from which the blood spouted. Disengaging a shawl which she wore around her shoulders, she threw it over his head, and, as the meshes caught in his collar,335and temporarily entangled him, she sprang through the gap, and seized a heavy stick which lay within reach. He followed, snarling and pawing at the shawl that ultimately dropped at Salome’s feet; but finding himself beyond the boundary he was expected to guard, and probably satisfied with the punishment already inflicted, he retreated before a well-aimed blow that drove him back into the enclosure.
The instant he started towards the cedars Dr. Grey suspected mischief, and, placing Mrs. Gerome on a bench that surrounded an elm, he hurried in the same direction.
When he reached the spot, the dog was snuffing at a patch of bombazine that lay on the grass; and, confirmed in his sad suspicion, the doctor passed through the opening in the hedge and looked about for the figure which he dreaded, yet expected to see.
Bushy undergrowth covered the ground for some distance, and, hoping that nothing more serious than fright had resulted from the escapade, he stowed away the bombazine fragment in his coat pocket, and slowly retraced his steps.
Secreted by two friendly oaks that spread their low boughs over her, Salome had seen his anxious face peering around for the intruder, and when he abandoned the search and disappeared, she smothered a bitter laugh, and strove to stanch the blood that trickled from the gash by binding her handkerchief over it. Torn muscles and tendons ached and smarted; but the great agony that seemed devouring her heart rendered her almost oblivious of physical pain. In the dusk of coming night she crossed the gloomy forest, where a whippoorwill was drearily lamenting, and, walking over an unfrequented portion of the lawn, went up to her own room.
She bathed and bound up the wound as securely as the use of only one hand would permit, and put on a dress whose sleeves fastened closely at the wrist.
Ere long, Dr. Grey’s clear voice echoed through the hall, and the sound made her wince, like the touch of some glowing brand.
“Jessie, where is sister Salome? Tell her tea is ready.”
The orphan went down and took her seat, but did not even336glance at the master of the house, who looked anxiously at her as she entered.
During the meal Jessie asked for some sweetmeats that were placed in front of her sister, and, as the latter drew the glass dish nearer, and proceeded to help her, the child exclaimed,—
“Oh, look there! What is that dripping from your sleeve? Ugh! it is blood.”
“Nonsense, Jessie! don’t be silly. Hush! and eat your supper.”
Two drops of blood had fallen on the table-cloth, and the girl instantly set her cup and saucer over them.
She felt the slow stream trickling down to her wrist, and put her arm in her lap.
“Is anything the matter?” asked Dr. Grey, who had observed the quick movement.
“I hurt my arm a little, that is all.”
Her tone forbade a renewal of inquiry, and, as soon as possible, she withdrew to her room, to adjust the bandage.
The children were playing in the library, and Muriel was walking with her governess on the wide piazza.
While Salome was trying by the aid of fingers and teeth to draw a strip of linen tightly over her wound, a tap at the door startled her.
“I am engaged, and can see no one just now.”
“Salome, I want to speak to you, and shall wait here until I do.”
“Excuse me, Dr. Grey. I will come down in ten minutes.”
“Pardon me, but I insist upon seeing you here, and hope you will not compel me to force the door open.”
She wrapped a towel around her arm, drew down her sleeve, and opened the door.
“To what am I indebted for the honor of this interview?”
“To my interest in your welfare, which cannot be baffled. Salome, what is the matter? You looked so pale that I noticed you particularly, and saw the blood on the table-cloth. My dear child, I will not be trifled with. Tell me where you are hurt.”
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“Pray give yourself no uneasiness. I merely scraped and bruised my arm. It is a matter of no consequence.”
“Of that I beg to be considered the best judge. Show me your arm.”
“I prefer not to trouble you.”
He gently but firmly took hold of it, unwound the towel, and she saw him start and shudder at sight of the mangled flesh.
“An ugly gash! Tell me how you hurt yourself so severely.”
“It is a matter that I do not choose to discuss; but since you have seen it, I wish you would be so good as to dress and bandage the wound.”
“Oh, my little sister! Will you never learn to trust your brother?”
“Oh, Dr. Grey! will you never learn to let me alone, when I am indulging the ‘Imp of the Perverse’ in an audience, and do not wish to be interrupted?”
She mimicked his pleading tone so admirably that his face flushed.
“Come to the sitting-room. No one can disturb us there, and I will attend to your injury, which is really serious.”
She followed him, and stood without flinching one iota, while he clipped away the jagged pieces of flesh, covered the long gash with adhesive plaster, and carefully bandaged the whole.
“Salome, you must dismiss all idea of starting to-morrow, for indeed it would not be safe for you to travel alone, with your arm in this condition. It may give you much trouble and suffering.”
“Which, of course,nolens volens, I must bear as best I may; but, so surely as I live to see daylight, I shall start, even if I knew I should have to stopen routeand bury my pretty arm, and be forced to buy a cork one, wherewith to gesticulate gracefully when I die as ‘Azucena.’ There! thank you, Dr. Grey; of course you are very good,—you always are. Shall I bid you all good-by now, or wait till morning? Better338make my adieu to-night, so that I may not disturb the matutinal slumbers of the household.”
There was a dangerous, starry sparkle in her eyes, that he would not venture to defy, and, sighing heavily, he answered,—
“I shall accompany you to the depôt, and place you under the protection of the conductor.”
“I do not desire to give you that trouble, and—”
“Hush! Do not grieve me any more than you have already done, by your hasty, unkind, unfriendly speeches. I shall see you in the morning.”
He left the room abruptly, to conceal the distress which he did not desire her to discover; and having found Muriel and Miss Dexter, Salome bade them good-by, requested them not to disturb themselves next morning on her account, and called the children to her room.
For two hours they sat beside her on the lounge, crying over her impending departure, but when she had promised to take them as far as the depôt, their thoughts followed other currents, and very soon after, both slumbered soundly in their trundle-bed.
With her cheek resting on her hand, Salome sat looking at them, noting the glossiness of their curling hair, the flush on their round faces, the regular breathing of peaceful childhood’s sleep. Once she could have wept, and would have knelt and prayed over them; but now her own overmastering misery had withered all the tenderness in her heart, and, while her eyes of flesh rested on the orphans, her mental vision was filled with the figure of that gray-haired woman hanging on Dr. Grey’s arm. In a dull, cold, abstract way, she hoped that the little ones would be happy,—how could they be otherwise when fortune had committed them to Dr. Grey’s guardianship? But a numb, desperate feeling had seized her, and she cared for nothing, loved nothing, prayed for nothing.
How the hours of that night of wretchedness passed she never knew; but when the little bird in the parlor clock “cuckooed” three times, she was aroused from her reverie by339the tramp of horses’ hoofs on the gravel, and then the sharp clang of the bell echoed through the silent house.
It was not unusual for messengers to summon Dr. Grey during the night, and she was not surprised when, some moments later, she heard his voice in the hall. After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, his firm, well-known step approached and paused at her threshold.
“Salome, are you up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come into the passage.”
She opened the door, and stood with the candle in her hand.
“I regret exceedingly that I am compelled to leave here immediately, as I must hasten to see a man and child who have been horribly burned and injured by the falling in of a roof. The parties live some distance in the country, and I fear I shall not be able to get back in time to go with you to the cars. I shall drive as rapidly as possible, and hope to accompany you, but if I should be detained, here is a note which I hastily scribbled to Mr. Miller, the conductor, whom you will find a very kind and courteous gentleman. I sincerely deplore this summons, but the sufferers are old friends of my sister, and I hope you will believe that nothing but a case of life and death would prevent me from seeing you aboard the train.”
“I am sorry, sir, that you thought it necessary to apologize.”
She was not yet prepared to part from him forever,—she had been nerving herself for the final interview at the depôt; but now it came with a shock that utterly stunned her, and she reeled against the door-facing, as if recoiling from some fearful blow.
The livid pallor of her lips, and the spasm of agony that contracted her features, frightened him, and, as he sprang closer to her, the candle fell from her fingers. He caught it, ere it reached the mat, and placed it on a chair.
“My dear child, your arm pains you, and I beg you to defer your journey at least until Tuesday. I shall be anxious and340miserable about you, if you go this morning, and, for my sake, Salome, if not for your own, remain here one day longer. I have not asked many things of you, and I trust you will not refuse this last request I may ever be allowed to make.”
She attempted to speak, but there came only a quiver across her mouth, and a sickly smile that flickered over the ghastly proud face, like the lying sunshine of Indian summer on marble cenotaphs.
“Salome, you will, to oblige me, wait until Tuesday?”
She shook her head, and mastered her weakness.
“No, Dr. Grey; I must go at once. I take all the hazard.”
“Then you will find on the mantelpiece in my room, a paper containing directions for the treatment of your arm, which demands care and attention. I am sorry you are so obstinate, and, if I possessed the authority, I would forbid your departure.”
He could not endure the despairing expression of her eyes, which seemed supernaturally large and brilliant, and his own quailed, for the first time within his recollection. She knew that she was going away forever, to avoid the sight of his happiness with Mrs. Gerome; that, in comparison with that torture, all other trials, even separation, would be endurable, but the least evil was more severe than she had dreaded. Now, as she looked up at his noble face, overshadowed with anxiety and regret, and paler than she had ever seen it, the one prayer of her heart was, that, ere a wife’s lips touched his, death might claim him for its prey.
“Salome, I am deeply pained by the course you persist in following, but I will not provoke and annoy you by renewed expression of a disapprobation that has proved so ineffectual in influencing your decision. God grant that the results may sanction your confidence in your own judgment,—your distrust of mine. I promised you once that I would pray for you, and I wish to assure you, that, while I live, I shall never lay my head upon my pillow without having first committed you to the mercy and loving care of that Guardian who never ‘slumbers, nor sleeps.’ May God bless and guide you, my dear young friend, and if not again in this world, grant that we341may meet in the Everlasting City of Peace. Little sister, be sure to meet me in the Kingdom of Rest, where dear Janet waits for us both.”
His calm eyes filled with tears, and his voice grew tremulous, as he took Salome’s cold, passive hand, and kissed it.
“Good-by, Dr. Grey; if I find my way to heaven, it will be because you are there. When I am gone, let my name and memory be like that of the dead.”
She stood erect, with her fingers lying in his palm, and the ring of her voice was like the clashing of steel against steel.
He bent down, and, for the first time, pressed his lips to her forehead; then turned quickly and walked away. When he reached the head of the stairs, he looked back and saw her standing in the door, with the candle-light flaring over her face; and in after years, he could never recall, without a keen pang, that vision of a girlish form draped in mourning, and of fair, rigid features, which hope and happiness could never again soften and brighten.
Her splendid eyes followed him, as if the sole light of her life were passing away forever; and, with a heavy sigh, he hurried down the steps, realizing all the mournful burden of that Portuguese sonnet,—
“Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow. NevermoreAlone upon the threshold of my doorOf individual life, I shall commandThe uses of my soul, nor lift my handSerenely in the sunshine as before,Without the sense of that which I forbore—Thy touch upon the palm. The widest landDoom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine,With pulses that beat double. What I doAnd what I dream include thee, as the wineMust taste of its own grapes. And when I sueGod for myself, He hears that name of thine,And sees within my eyes the tears of two.”
342CHAPTER XXVI.
“I hope nothing has gone wrong, Robert? You look unusually forlorn and doleful.”
Dr. Grey stepped out of his buggy, and accosted the gardener, who was leaning idly on the gate, holding a trowel in his hand, and lazily puffing the smoke from his pipe.
“I thank you, sir; with us the world wags on pretty much the same, but when a man has been planting violets on his mother’s grave he does not feel like whistling and making merry. Besides, to tell the truth,—which I do not like to shirk,—I am getting very tired of this dismal, unlucky place. If I had known as much before I bought it as I do now, all the locomotives in America could not have dragged me here. I was a stranger, and of course nobody thought it their special duty to warn me; so I was bitten badly enough by the agent who sold me this den of misfortune. Now, when it is too late, there is no lack of busy tongues to tell me the place is haunted, and has been for, lo! these many years.”
“Nonsense, Robert! I gave you credit for too much good sense to listen to the gossip of silly old wives. Put all these ridiculous tales of ghosts and hobgoblins out of your mind, man, and do not make me laugh at you, as if you were a child who had been so frightened by stories of ‘raw-head and bloody-bones,’ that you were afraid to blow out your candle and creep into bed.”
“I am neither a fool nor a coward, and I will fight anything that I can feel has bone and muscle; but I am satisfied that if all the water in Siloam were poured over this place, it would not wash out the curse that people tell me has always rested on it since the time the pirates first located here. I can’t admit I believe in witches, but undoubtedly I do believe in Satan, who seems to have a fee-simple to the place. It is not enough that my poor mother is buried yonder, but343my wheat and oats took the rust; the mildew spoiled my grape crop; the rains ruined my melons; the worms ate up every blade of my grass; the cows have got the black-tongue; the gale blew down my pigeon-house and mashed all my squabs; and my splendid carnations and fuchsias are devoured by red spider. Nothing thrives, and I am sick at heart.”
The dogged discontent written so legibly on his countenance, did not encourage the visitor to enter into a discussion of the abstract causes of blight, gales, and black-tongue, and he merely answered,—
“The evils you have enumerated are not peculiar to any locality; and all the farmers in this neighborhood are echoing your complaints. How is Mrs. Gerome?”
“Neither better nor worse. You know what miserable weather we have had for a week. This morning she ordered the small carriage and horses brought to the door, and when I took the reins, she dismissed me and said she preferred driving herself. I told her the grays had not been used, and were badly pampered standing so long in their stalls, and that I was really afraid they would break her neck, as she was not strong enough to manage them; but she laughed, and answered that if they did, it would be the best day’s work they had ever accomplished, and she would give them a chance. Down the beach they went like a flash, and when she came home their flanks smoked like a lime-kiln. What is ever to be done with my mistress, I am sure I don’t know. She makes the house so doleful, that nobody wants to stay here, and only yesterday Katie and Phœbe, the cook, gave notice that they wished to leave when the month was out. She has no idea what she will do, or where she will go. We have wanted a hot-house, and she ordered me to get the builder’s estimate of the cost of two plans which she drew; but when I carried them to her, she pushed them aside, and said she would think of the matter, but thought she might leave this place, and therefore would not need the building. She is as notionate as a child; and no one but my poor mother could ever manage her. Hist! sir! Don’t you hear her? You may be sure there is mischief brewing when she sings like that.”
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Dr. Grey walked towards the house, and paused on the portico to listen,—
“Quis est homo, qui non fleretChristi matrem si videret,In tanto supplicio.”
The voice was not so strong as when he had heard it inAddio del Passata, but the solemn mournfulness of its cadences was better suited to theStabat Mater, and indexed much that no other method of expression would have reached. After some moments she forsook Rossini, and began theAgnus Deifrom Haydn’s Third Mass,—
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere.”
Surely she could not render this grand strain if her soul was in fierce rebellion; and, with strained ears and hushed breath, Dr. Grey listened to the closing
“Dona nobis pacem,—pacem,—pacem.”
It was a passionate, wailing prayer, and the only one that ever crossed her lips, yet his heart throbbed with pleasure, as he noted the tremor that seemed to shiver her voice into silvery fragments; and as she ended, he knew that tears were not far from her eyes.
When he entered the room, she had left the piano, and wheeled a sofa in front of the grate, where she sat gazing, vacantly into the fiery fretwork of glowing coals.
A copy of Turner’s “Liber Studiorum,” superbly bound in purple velvet, lay on her knee, and into a corner of the sofa she had tossed a square of canvas almost filled with silken Parmese violets.
“Good-evening, Mrs. Gerome; I hope I do not interrupt you.”
Dr. Grey removed the embroidery to the table, and seated himself in the sofa corner.
“Good evening. Interruption argues occupation and absorbed attention, and the term is not applicable to me. I345who live as vainly, as uselessly, as fruitlessly, as some fakir twirling his thumbs and staring at his beard, have little right to call anything an interruption. My existence here is as still, as stagnant, as some pool down yonder in the sedge which last week’s waves left among the sand hillocks, and your visits are like pebbles thrown into it, creating transient ripples and circles.”
“You have gone back to the God of your æsthetic idolatry,” said he, touching the “Liber Studiorum.”
“Yes, because ‘Beauty pitches her tents before him,’ and his pencil is more potent in conjuring visions that enchant my wearied mind, than Jemschid’s goblet or Iskander’s mirror.”
“But why stand afar off, trusting to human and fallible interpreters, when it is your privilege to draw near and dwell in the essence of the only real and divine beauty?”
“Better reverence it behind a veil, than suffer like Semele. I know my needs, and satisfy them fully. Once my heart was as bare of adoration as Egypt’s tawny sands of crystal rain-pools; but looking into the realm of nature and of art, I chose the religion of the beautiful, and said to my famished soul,
‘From every channel thro’ which Beauty runs,To fertilize the world with lovely things,I will draw freely, and be satisfied.’”
“This morbid sentimentality, this sickly gasping system of æsthetics,soi-disant‘Religion of the Beautiful,’ is the curse of the age,—is a vast, universal vampire sucking the life from humanity. Like other idolatries it may arrogate the name of ‘Religion,’ but it is simply downright pagan materialism, and its votaries of the nineteenth century should look back two thousand years, and renew thePanathenœa. The ancient Greek worship of æsthetics was a proud and pardonable system, replete with sublime images; but the idols of your emasculated creed are yellow-haired women with straight noses,—are purple clouds and moon-silvered seas,—and physical beauty constitutes their sole excellence. Lovely346landscapes and perfect faces are certainly entitled to a liberal quota of earnest admiration; but a religion that contents itself with merely material beauty, differs in nothing but nomenclature from the pagan worship of Cybele, Venus, and Astarte.”
A chill smile momentarily brightened Mrs. Gerome’s features, and turning towards her visitor, she answered slowly,—
“Be thankful, sir, that even the worship of beauty lingers in this world of sin and hate; and instead of defiling and demolishing its altars, go to work zealously and erect new ones at every cross-roads. Lessing spoke for me when he said, ‘Only a misapprehended religion can remove us from the beautiful, and it is proof that a religion is true and rightly understood when it everywhere brings us back to the Beautiful.’”
“Pardon me. I accept Lessing’s words, but cavil at your interpretation of them. His reverence for Beauty embraced not merely physical and material types, but that nobler, grander beauty which centres in pure ethics and ontology; and a religion that seeks no higher forms than those of clay,—whether Himalayas or ‘Greek Slave,’—whether emerald icebergs, flashing under polar auroras, or the myosotis that nods there on the mantelpiece,—a religion that substitutes beauty for duty, and Nature for Nature’s God, is a shameful sham, and a curse to its devotees. There is a beauty worthy of all adoration, a beauty far above Antinous, or Gula or Greek æsthetics,—a beauty that is not thedisjecta membrathat modern maudlin sentimentality has left it,—but that perfect and immortal ‘Beauty of Holiness,’ that outlives marble and silver, pigment, stylus, and pagan poems that deify dust.”
He leaned towards her, watching eagerly for some symptom of interest in the face before him, and bent his head until he inhaled the fragrance of the violets which clustered on one side of the coil of hair.
“‘Beauty of Holiness.’ Show it to me, Dr. Grey. Is it at La Trappe, or the Hospice of St. Bernard? Where are its347temples? Where are its worshippers? Who is its Hierophant?”
“Jesus Christ.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out some painful vision evoked by his words.
“Sir, do you recollect the reply of Laplace, when Napoleon asked him why there was no mention of God in his ‘Mécanique Celeste?’ ‘Sire, je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse.’ I was not sufficiently insane to base my religion of beauty upon a holiness that was buried in the tomb supplied by Joseph of Arimathea,—that was long ago hunted out of the world it might have purified. Once I believed in, and revered what I supposed was its existence, but I was speedily disenchanted of my faith, for,—
‘I have seen those that wore Heaven’s armor, worsted:I have heard Truth lie:Seen Life, beside the founts for which it thirsted,Curse God and die.’
Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust, and God knows I would give all my earthly possessions and hopes for a religion that would insure me your calm resignation and contentment; but the resurrection of my faith would only resemble that beautiful floralPalingenesis(asserted by Gaffarel and Kircher), which was but ‘the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its own ashes,’ and speedily dropping back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the only pleasure earth can afford me, the contemplation of the beautiful.”
“Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of beauty will degenerate into the merely sensuous æsthetics, which, at the present day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated voluptuaries. The deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated by Feuerbach and Strauss, is now no longer confined to realms of abstract speculation; but cultivated sensualism has sunk so low that popular poets chant the praises of Phryne and Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to immortalize types that degrade the taste of all348lovers of Art. The true mission of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or pictures, is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that the fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing of physical loveliness,—is rapidly sinking into a worship of the vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan æsthetics were purer and nobler than the system, which, under that name, finds favor with our generation.”
She listened, not assentingly, but without any manifestation of impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily upon the yellow beach, where,—
“Trampling up the sloping sand,In lines outreaching far and wide,The white-maned billows swept to land.”
Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed by her own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of ascertaining.
“Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?”
“Nothing, since my illness; and perhaps I shall never touch my brush again. Sometimes I have thought I would paint a picture of Handel standing up to listen to that sad song from his own ‘Samson,’—‘Total eclipse, no sun, no moon!’ But I doubt whether I could put on canvas that grand, mournful, blind face, turned eagerly towards the stage, while tears ran swiftly from his sightless eyes. Again, I have vague visions of a dead Schopenhauer, seated in the corner of the sofa, with his pet poodle, Putz, howling at his master’s ghastly white features,—with his Indian Oupnekhat lying on his rigid knee, and his gilded statuette of Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the mantelpiece, welcoming him to Nirwána. There stands my easel, empty and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle, not lacking ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor Maurice de Guérin, who said that his ‘head was parching; that, like a tree which had lived its life, he felt as though every passing wind were blowing through dead branches in his top,’ I feel that my349brain is as vigorous and restless as ever, while my will alone is paralyzed, and my heart withered and cold within me.”
“Your brush and palette will never yield you any permanent happiness, nor promote a spirit of contentment, until you select a different class of subjects. Your themes are all too sombre, too dismal, and the solemotifthat runs through your music and painting seems to bein memoriam. Open the windows of your gloomy soul, and let God’s sunshine stream into its cold recesses, and warm and gild and gladden it. Throw aside your morbid proclivities for the melancholy and abnormal, and paint peacefulgenrepictures,—a group of sunburnt, laughing harvesters, or merry children, or tulip-beds with butterflies swinging over them. You need more warmth in your heart, and more light in your pictures.”
“Eminently correct,—most incontestably true; but how do you propose to remedy the imperfectchiaro-oscuroof my character? Show me the market where that light of peace and joy is bartered, and I will constitute you my broker, with unlimited orders. No, no. I see the fact as plainly as you do, but I know better than you how irremediable it is. My soul is a dolefulmorgue, and my pictures are dim photographs of its corpse-tenants. Shut in forever from the sunshine, I dip my brush in the shadows that surround me, for, like Empedocles,—
...‘I alone
Am dead to life and joy; therefore I readIn all things my own deadness.’”
“If you would free yourself from the coils of an intense and selfish egoism that fetter you to the petty cares and trials of your individual existence,—if you would endeavor to forget for a season the woes of Mrs. Gerome, and expend a little more sympathy on the sorrows of others,—if you would resolve to lose sight of the caprices that render you so unpopular, and make some human being happy by your aid and kind words,—in fine, if, instead of selecting as your model some cynical, half-insane woman like Lady Hester Stanhope, you chose for imitation the example of noble Christian usefulness350and self-abnegation, analogous to that of Florence Nightingale, or Mrs. Fry, you would soon find that your conscience—”
“Enough! You weary me. Dr. Grey, I thoroughly understand your motives, and honor their purity, but I beg that you will give yourself no further anxiety on my account. You cannot, from your religious standpoint, avoid regarding me as worse than a heathen, and have constituted yourself a missionary to reclaim and consecrate me. I am not quite a cannibal, ready to devour you, by way of recompense for your charitable efforts in my behalf, but I must assure you your interest and sympathy are sadly wasted. Do you remember that celebrated ‘vase of Soissons,’ which was plundered by rude soldiery in Rheims, and which Clovis so eagerly coveted at the distribution of the spoils? A soldier broke it before the king’s hungry eyes, and forced him to take the worthless mocking fragments. Even so flint-faced fate shattered my happiness, and tauntingly offers me the ruins; but I will none of it!”
“Trust God’s overruling mercy, and those fragments, fused in the furnace of affliction, may be remoulded and restored to you in pristine perfection.”
“Impossible! Moreover, I trust nothing but the brevity of human life, which one day cannot fail to release me from an existence that has proved an almost intolerable burden. You know Vogt says, ‘The natural laws are rude, unbendingpowers,’and I comfort myself by hoping that they can neither be bribed nor browbeaten out of the discharge of their duty, which points to death as ‘the surest calculation that can be made,—as the unavoidable keystone of every individual life.’ A grim consolation, you think? True; but all I shall ever receive. Dr. Grey, in your estimation I am sinfully inert and self-indulgent; and you conscientiously commend my idle hands to the benevolent work of knitting socks for indigent ditchers, and making jackets for pauper children. Now, although it is considered neither orthodox nor modest to furnish left-hand with a trumpet for sounding the praises of almsgiving right-hand, still I must be allowed to assert351that I appropriate an ample share of my fortune for charitable purposes. Perhaps you will tell me that I do not give in a proper spirit of loving sympathy,—that I hurl my donations at my conscience, as ‘a sop to Cerberus.’ I have never injured any one, and if I have no tender love in my heart to expend on others, it is the fault of that world which taught me how hollow and deceitful it is. God knows I have never intentionally wounded any living thing; and if negatively good, at least my career has no stain of positive evil upon it. I am one of those concerning whom Richter said, ‘There are souls for whom life has no summer. These should enjoy the advantages of the inhabitants of Spitzbergen, where, through the winter’s day, the stars shine clear as through the winter’s night.’ I have neither summer nor polar stars, but I wait for that long night wherein I shall sleep peacefully.”
“Mrs. Gerome, defiant pride bars your heart from the white-handed peace that even now seeks entrance. Some great sorrow or sin has darkened your past, and, instead of ejecting its memory, you hug it to your soul; you make it a mental Juggernaut, crushing the hopes and aims that might otherwise brighten the path along which you drag this murderous idol. Cast it away forever, and let Peace and Hope clasp hands over its empty throne.”
From that peculiar far-off expression of the human eye that generally indicates abstraction of mind, he feared that she had not heard his earnest appeal; but after some seconds, she smiled drearily, and repeated with singular and touching pathos, lines which proved that his words were not lost upon her,—
“‘Ah, could the memory cast her spots, as doThe snake’s brood theirs in spring! and be once moreWholly renewed, to dwell in the time that’s new,—With no reiterance of those pangs of yore.Peace, peace! Ah, forgotten thingsStumble back strangely! and the ghost of JuneStands by December’s fire, cold, cold! and putsThe last spark out.’”