Chapter I: SAID that harsh and hot as was the present, there were joyous gleams

of light playing over the future. How else could it be, when that fair being whom I met first upon the wastes of ocean, and whose name, even, is hallowed by the dying words of Isabel, is living in the same world with me? Amid all the perplexities that haunt me, as I wander from the present to the future, the thought of her image, of her smile, of her last kind adieu, throws a dash of sunlight upon my path.

And yet why? Is it not very idle? Years have passed since I have seen her; I do not even know where she may be. What is she to me?

My heart whispers—very much! but I do not listen to that in my prouder moods. She is a woman, a beautiful woman indeed, whom I have known once—pleasantly known: she is living, but she will die, or she will marry; I shall hear of it by and by, and sigh, perhaps—nothing more. Life is earnest around me; there is no time to delve in the past for bright things to shed radiance on the future.

I will forget the sweet girl who was with me upon the ocean, and think she is dead. This manly soul is strong, if we would but think so; it can make a puppet of griefs, and take down and set up at will the symbols of its hope.

—But no, I can not; the more I think thus, the less I really think thus. A single smile of that frail girl, when I recall it, mocks all my proud purposes, as if, without her, my purposes were nothing.

—Pshaw! I say—it is idle! and I bury my thought in books, and in long hours of toil; but as the hours lengthen, and my head sinks with fatigue, and the shadows of evening play around me, there comes again that sweet vision, saying with tender mockery—is it idle? And I am helpless, and am led away hopefully and joyfully toward the golden gates which open on the Future.

But this is only in those silent hours when the man is alone and away from his working thoughts. At midday, or in the rush of the world, he puts hard armor on that reflects all the light of such joyous fancies. He is cold and careless, and ready for suffering, and for fight.

One day I am traveling; I am absorbed in some present cares—thinking out some plan which is to make easier or more successful the voyage of life. I glance upon the passing scenery, and upon new faces, with that careless indifference which grows upon a man with years, and, above all, with travel. There is no wife to enlist your sympathies—no children to sport with; my friends are few and scattered, and are working out fairly what is before them to do. Lilly is living here, and Ben is living there; their letters are cheerful, contented letters; and they wish me well. Griefs even have grown light with wearing, and I am just in that careless humor—as if I said—jog on, old world—jog on! And the end will come along soon, and we shall get—poor devils that we are—just what we deserve!

But on a sudden my eyes rest on a figure that I think I know. Now the indifference flies like mist, and my heart throbs, and the old visions come up. I watch her, as if there were nothing else to be seen. The form is hers; the grace is hers; the simple dress—so neat, so tasteful—that is hers, too. She half turns her head—it is the face that I saw under the velvet cap in the park of Devon.

I do not rush forward; I sit as if I were in a trance. I watch her every action—the kind attentions to her mother who sits beside her—her naïve exclamations as we pass some point of surpassing beauty. It seems as if a new world were opening to me; yet I can not tell why. I keep my place, and think, and gaze. I tear the paper I hold in my hand into shreds. I play with my watch chain, and twist the seal until it is near breaking. I take out my watch, look at it, and put it back—yet I can not tell the hour.

—It is she—I murmur—I know it is Carry!

But when they rise to leave, my lethargy is broken; yet it is with a trembling hesitation—a faltering, as it were, between the present life and the future—that I approach. She knows me on the instant, and greets me kindly—as Bella wrote—very kindly, yet she shows a slight embarrassment, a sweet embarrassment, that I treasure in my heart more closely even than the greeting. I change my course and travel with them; now we talk of the old scenes, and two hours seem to have made with me the difference of half a lifetime.

It is five years since I parted with her, never hoping to meet again. She was then a frail girl; she is now just rounding into womanhood. Her eyes are as dark and deep as ever; the lashes that fringe them seem to me even longer than they were. Her color is as rich, her forehead as fair, her smile as sweet as they were before—only a little tinge of sadness floats upon her eye, like the haze upon a summer landscape. I grow bold to look upon her, and timid with looking. We talk of Bella; she speaks in a soft, low voice, and the shade of sadness on her face gathers—as when a summer mist obscures the sun. I talk in monosyllables; I can command no other. And there is a look of sympathy in her eye when I speak thus that binds my soul to her as no smiles could do. What can draw the heart into the fulness of love so quick as sympathy?

But this passes; we must part, she for her home, and I for that broad home that has been mine so long—the world. It seems broader to me than ever, and colder than ever, and less to be wished for than ever. A new book of hope is sprung wide open in my life: a hope of home!

We are to meet at some time not far off in the city where I am living. I look forward to that time as at school I used to look for vacation; it is a _point d’appui_ for hope, for thought, and for countless journeyings into the opening future. Never did I keep the dates better, never count the days more carefully, whether for bonds to be paid or for dividends to fall due.

I welcome the time, and it passes like a dream. I am near her, often as I dare; the hours are very short with her, and very long away. She receives me kindly—always very kindly; she could not be otherwise than kind. But is it anything more? This is a greedy nature of ours, and when sweet kindness flows upon us we want more. I know she is kind; and yet, in place of being grateful, I am only covetous of an excess of kindness.

She does not mistake my feelings, surely; ah, no—trust a woman for that! But what have I or what am I to ask a return? She is pure and gentle as an angel, and I—alas—only a poor soldier in our world-fight against the devil! Sometimes, in moods of vanity, I call up what I fondly reckon my excellencies or deserts—a sorry, pitiful array that makes me shame-faced when I meet her. And in an instant I banish them all. And I think that if I were called upon in some high court of justice to say why I should claim her indulgence or her love, I would say nothing of my sturdy effort to beat down the roughness of toil—nothing of such manliness as wears a calm front amid the frowns of the world—nothing of little triumphs in the every-day fight of life, but only I would enter the simple plea—this heart is hers!

She leaves; and I have said nothing of what was seething within me; how I curse my folly! She is gone, and never perhaps will return. I recall in despair her last kind glance. The world seems blank to me. She does not know; perhaps she does not care if I love her. Well, I will bear it. But I can not bear it. Business is broken; books are blurred; something remains undone that fate declares must be done. Not a place can I find but her sweet smile gives to it either a tinge of gladness or a black shade of desolation.

I sit down at my table with pleasant books; the fire is burning cheerfully; my dog looks up earnestly when I speak to him; but it will never do! Her image sweeps away all these comforts in a flood. I fling down my book; I turn my back upon my dog; the fire hisses and sparkles in mockery of me.

Suddenly a thought flashes on my brain—I will write to her—I say. And a smile floats over my face—a smile of hope, ending in doubt. I catch up my pen—my trusty pen, and the clean sheet lies before me. The paper could not be better, nor the pen. I have written hundreds of letters; it is easy to write letters. But now, it is not easy.

I begin, and cross it out. I begin again, and get on a little farther—then cross it out. I try again, but can write nothing. I fling down my pen in despair, and burn the sheet, and go to my library for some old sour treatise of Shaftesbury or Lyttleton, and say—talking to myself all the while—let her go! She is beautiful, but I am strong; the world is short; we—I and my dog, and my books, and my pen, will battle it through bravely, and leave enough for a tombstone.

But even as I say it the tears start—it is all false saying! And I throw Shaftesbury across the room, and take up my pen again. It glides on and on as my hope glows, and I tell her of our first meeting, and of our hours in the ocean twilight, and of our unsteady stepping on the heaving deck, and of that parting in the noise of London, and of my joy at seeing her in the pleasant country, and of my grief afterward. And then I mention Bella—her friend and mine—and the tears flow; and then I speak of our last meeting, and of my doubts, and of this very evening—and how I could not write, and abandoned it—and then felt something within me that made me write and tell her—all!—“That my heart was not my own, but was wholly hers; and that if she would be mine—I would cherish her and love her always!”

Then I feel a kind of happiness—a strange, tumultuous happiness, into which doubt is creeping from time to time, bringing with it a cold shudder. I seal the letter, and carry it—a great weight—for the mail. It seemed as if there could be no other letter that day, and as if all the coaches and horses and cars and boats were specially detailed to bear that single sheet. It is a great letter for me; my destiny lies in it.

I do not sleep well that night—it is a tossing sleep; one time joy—sweet and holy joy, comes to my dreams, and an angel is by me; another time the angel fades—the brightness fades, and I wake, struggling with fear. For many nights it is so, until the day comes on which I am looking for a reply.

The postman has little suspicion that the letter which he gives me—although it contains no promissory notes, nor money, nor deeds, nor articles of trade—is yet to have a greater influence upon my life and upon my future, than all the letters he has ever brought to me before. But I do not show him this; nor do I let him see the clutch with which I grasp it. I bear it as if it were a great and fearful burden to my room. I lock the door, and, having broken the seal with a quivering hand—read:

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THE LETTER

“Paul—for I think I may call you so now—I know not how to answer
you. Your letter gave me great joy; but it gave me pain, too. I
can not—will not doubt what you say; I believe that you love me
better than I deserve to be loved, and I know that I am not
worthy of all your kind praises. But it is not this that pains
me; for I know that you have a generous heart, and would
forgive, as you always have forgiven, any weakness of mine. I am
proud, too, very proud, to have won your love; but it pains
me—more, perhaps, than you will believe—to think that I can not
write back to you as I would wish to write—alas, never.”

Here I dash the letter upon the floor, and with my hand upon my forehead sit gazing upon the glowing coals, and breathing quick and loud. The dream, then, is broken!

Presently I read again:

—“You know that my father died before we had ever met. He had an
old friend, who had come from England, and who in early life had
done him some great service which made him seem like a brother.
This old gentleman was my god-father, and called me daughter.
When my father died he drew me to his side and said: ‘Carry, I
shall leave you, but my old friend will be your father,’ and he
put my hand in his and said: ‘I give you my daughter.’

“This old gentleman had a son, older than myself; but we were
much together, and grew up as brother and sister. I was proud of
him, for he was tall and strong, and every one called him
handsome. He was as kind, too, as a brother could be, and his
father was like my own father. Every one said, and believed,
that we would one day be married, and my mother and my new
father spoke of it openly. So did Laurence, for that is my
friend’s name.

“I do not need to tell you any more, Paul; for when I was still
a girl we had promised that we would one day be man and wife.
Laurence has been much in England, and I believe he is there
now. The old gentleman treats me still as a daughter, and talks
of the time when I shall come and live with him. The letters of
Laurence are very kind, and though he does not talk so much of
our marriage as he did, it is only, I think, because he regards
it as so certain.

“I have wished to tell you all this before, but I have feared to
tell you; I am afraid I have been too selfish to tell you. And
now, what can I say? Laurence seems most to me like a
brother—and you, Paul—but I must not go on. For if I marry
Laurence, as fate seems to have decided, I will try and love him
better than all the world.

“But will you not be a brother, and love me, as you once loved
Bella—you say my eyes are like hers, and that my forehead is
like hers—will you not believe that my heart is like hers, too?

“Paul, if you shed tears over this letter—I have shed them as
well as you. I can write no more now.

“Adieu.”

I sit long, looking upon the blaze, and when I rouse myself it is to say wicked things against destiny. Again all the future seems very blank. I can not love Carry as I loved Bella; she can not be a sister to me; she must be more or nothing! Again I seem to float singly on the tide of life, and see all around me in cheerful groups. Everywhere the sun shines, except upon my own cold forehead. There seems no mercy in heaven, and no goodness for me upon earth.

I write, after some days, an answer to the letter. But it is a bitter answer, in which I forget myself, in the whirl of my misfortunes—to the utterance of reproaches.

Her reply, which comes speedily, is sweet and gentle. She is hurt by my reproaches, deeply hurt. But with a touching kindness, of which I am not worthy, she credits all my petulance to my wounded feeling; she soothes me, but in soothing only wounds the more. I try to believe her when she speaks of her unworthiness—but I can not.

Business, and the pursuits of ambition or of interest, pass on like dull, grating machinery. Tasks are met, and performed with strength indeed, but with no cheer. Courage is high, as I meet the shocks and trials of the world; but it is a brute, careless courage, that glories in opposition. I laugh at any dangers, or any insidious pitfalls; what are they to me? What do I possess, which it will be hard to lose? My dog keeps by me; my toils are present; my food is ready; my limbs are strong; what need for more?

The months slip by; and the cloud that floated over my evening sun passes.

Laurence wandering abroad, and writing to Caroline, as to a sister—writes more than his father could have wished. He has met new faces, very sweet faces; and one which shows through the ink of his later letters, very gorgeously. The old gentleman does not like to lose thus his little Carry! and he writes back rebuke. But Laurence, with the letters of Caroline before him for data, throws himself upon his sister’s kindness and charity. It astonishes not a little the old gentleman, to find his daughter pleading in such strange way for the son. “And what will you do then, my Carry?”—the old man says.

—“Wear weeds, if you wish, sir; and love you and Laurence more than ever!”

And he takes her to his bosom, and says—“Carry—Carry, you are too good for that wild fellow Laurence!”

Now, the letters are different! Now they are full of hope—dawning all over the future sky. Business, and care, and toil glide, as if a spirit animated them all; it is no longer cold machine work, but intelligent and hopeful activity. The sky hangs upon you lovingly, and the birds make music that startles you with its fineness. Men wear cheerful faces; the storms have a kind pity, gleaming through all their wrath.

The days approach, when you can call her yours. For she has said it, and her mother has said it; and the kind old gentleman, who says he will still be her father, has said it, too; and they have all welcomed you—won by her story—with a cordiality that has made your cup full to running over. Only one thought comes up to obscure your joy—is it real? or if real, are you worthy to enjoy? Will you cherish and love always, as you have promised, that angel who accepts your word and rests her happiness on your faith? Are there not harsh qualities in your nature which you fear may sometime make her regret that she gave herself to your love and charity? And those friends who watch over her, as the apple of their eye, can you always meet their tenderness and approval, for your guardianship of their treasure? Is it not a treasure that makes you fearful, as well as joyful.

But you forget this in her smile; her kindness, her goodness, her modesty, will not let you remember it. She _forbids_ such thoughts; and you yield such obedience as you never yielded even to the commands of a mother. And if your business and your labor slip by, partially neglected—what matters it? What is interest or what is reputation compared with that fullness of your heart, which is now ripe with joy?

The day for your marriage comes; and you live as if you were in a dream. You think well, and hope well, for all the world. A flood of charity seems to radiate from all around you. And as you sit beside her in the twilight, on the evening before the day when you will call her yours, and talk of the coming hopes, and of the soft shadows of the past, and whisper of Bella’s love, and of that sweet sister’s death, and of Laurence, a new brother, coming home joyful with his bride—and lay your cheek to hers—life seems as if it were all day, and as if there could be no night!

The marriage passes; and she is yours—yours forever.

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NEW TRAVEL

AGAIN I am upon the sea; but not alone. She whom I first met upon the wastes of ocean is there beside me. Again I steady her tottering step upon the deck; once it was a drifting, careless pleasure; now the pleasure is holy.

Once the fear I felt, as the storms gathered, and night came, and the ship tossed madly, and great waves gathering swift and high, came down like slipping mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering vessel, was a selfish fear. But it is so no longer. Indeed, I hardly know fear; for how can the tempests harm _her_? Is she not too good to suffer any of the wrath of heaven?

And in nights of calm—holy nights, we lean over the ship’s side, looking down, as once before, into the dark depths, and murmur again snatches of ocean song, and talk of those we love; and we peer among the stars, which seem neighborly, and as if they were the homes of friends. And as the great ocean swells come rocking under us, and carry us up and down along the valleys and the hills of water, they seem like deep pulsations of the great heart of nature, heaving us forward toward the goal of life, and to the gates of heaven.

We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon, and sweep toward us, like false friends, with the sun glittering on their sails; and then shift their course, and bear away—with their bright sails, turned to spots of shadow. We watch the long-winged birds skimming the waves hour after hour—like pleasant thoughts—now dashing before our bows, and then sweeping behind, until they are lost in the hollows of the water.

Again life lies open, as it did once before; but the regrets, disappointments, and fruitless resolves do not come to trouble me now. It is the future, which has become as level as the sea; and _she_ is beside me—the sharer in that future—to look out with me upon the joyous sparkle of water, and to count with me the dazzling ripples that lie between us and the shore. A thousand pleasant plans come up, and are abandoned, like the waves we leave behind us; a thousand other joyous plans dawn upon our fancy, like the waves that glitter before us. We talk of Laurence and his bride, whom we are to meet; we talk of her mother, who is even now watching the winds that waft her child over the ocean; we talk of the kindly old man, her god-father, who gave her a father’s blessing; we talk low, and in the twilight hours, of Isabel—who sleeps.

At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night, over the western waters which we have passed, we see before us the low blue line of the shores of Cornwall and Devon. In the night shadowy ships glide past us with gleaming lanterns; and in the morning we see the yellow cliffs of the Isle of Wight; and standing out from the land is the dingy sail of our pilot. London with its fog, roar, and crowds, has not the same charms that it once had; that roar and crowd is good to make a man forget his griefs—forget himself, and stupefy him with amazement. We are in no need of such forgetfulness.

We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that glides by Hampton Court; and we toil up Richmond Hill, to look together upon that scene of water and meadow—of leafy copses and glistening villas, of brown cottages and clustered hamlets—of solitary oaks and loitering herds—all spread like a veil of beauty upon the bosom of the Thames. But we can not linger here, nor even under the glorious old boles of Windsor Forest; but we hurry on to that sweet county of Devon, made green with its white skeins of water.

Again we loiter under the oaks, where we have loitered before; and the sleek deer gaze on us with their liquid eyes as they gazed before. The squirrels sport among the boughs as fearless as ever; and some wandering puss pricks her long ears at our steps and bounds off along the hedgerows to her burrow. Again I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap, with the white plume; and I meet, as I met her before, under the princely trees that skirt the northern avenue. I recall the evening when I sauntered out at the park gates, and gained a blessing from the porter’s wife, and dreamed that strange dream—now, the dream seems more real than my life. “God bless you!” said the woman again.

—“Ay, old lady, God has blessed me!”—and I fling her a guinea, not as a gift, but as a debt.

The bland farmer lives yet; he scarce knows me, until I tell him of my bout around his oat field at the tail of his long stilted plow. I find the old pew in the parish church. Other holly sprigs are hung now; and I do not doze, for Carry is beside me. The curate drawls the service; but it is pleasant to listen; and I make the responses with an emphasis that tells more, I fear, for my joy than for my religion. The old groom at the mansion in the park has not forgotten the hard riding of other days, and tells long stories (to which I love to listen) of the old visit of Mistress Carry, when she followed the hounds with the best of the English lasses.

—“Yer honor may well be proud; for not a prettier face, or a kinder heart, has been in Devon since Mistress Carry left us.”

But pleasant as are the old woods, full of memories, and pleasant as are the twilight evenings upon the terrace—we must pass over to the mountains of Switzerland. There we are to meet Laurence.

Carry has never seen the magnificence of the Juras; and as we journey over the hills between Dole and the border line, looking upon the rolling heights shrouded with pine trees, and down thousands of feet, at the very roadside, upon the cottage roofs and emerald valleys, where the dun herds are feeding quietly, she is lost in admiration. At length we come to that point above the little town of Gex, from which you see spread out before you the meadows that skirt Geneva, the placid surface of Lake Leman, and the rough, shaggy mountains of Savoy—and far behind them, breaking the horizon with snowy cap, and with dark pinnacles—Mont Blanc, and the Needles of Chamouni.

I point out to her in the valley below the little town of Ferney, where stands the deserted château of Voltaire; and beyond, upon the shores of the lake, the old home of De Staël; and across, with its white walls reflected upon the bosom of the water, the house where Byron wrote _The Prisoner of Chillon_. Among the grouping roofs of Geneva we trace the dark cathedral and the tall hotels shining on the edge of the lake. And I tell of the time when I tramped down through yonder valley, with my future all visionary and broken, and drank the splendor of the scene, only as a quick relief to the monotony of my solitary life.

—“And now, Carry, with your hand locked in mine, and your heart mine—yonder lake sleeping in the sun, and the snowy mountains with their rosy hue seem like the smile of nature, bidding us be glad!”

Laurence is at Geneva; he welcomes Carry, as he would welcome a sister. He is a noble fellow, and tells me much of his sweet Italian wife; and presents me to the smiling, blushing—Enrica! She has learned English now; she has found, she says, a better teacher, than ever I was. Yet she welcomes me warmly, as a sister might; and we talk of those old evenings by the blazing fire, and of the one-eyed _maestro_, as children long separated might talk of their school tasks and of their teachers. She can not tell me enough of her praises of Laurence, and of his noble heart. “You were good,” she says, “but Laurence is better.”

Carry admires her soft brown hair, and her deep liquid eye, and wonders how I could ever have left Rome?

—Do you indeed wonder—Carry?

And together we go down into Savoy, to that marvelous valley, which lies under the shoulder of Mont Blanc; and we wander over the _Mer De Glace_, and pick alpine roses from the edge of the frowning glacier. We toil at nightfall up to the monastery of the Great St. Bernard, where the new forming ice crackles in the narrow foot-way, and the cold moon glistens over wastes of snow, and upon the windows of the dark Hospice. Again, we are among the granite heights, whose ledges are filled with ice, upon the Grimsel. The pond is dark and cold; the paths are slippery; the great glacier of the Aar sends down icy breezes, and the echoes ring from rock to rock, as if the ice-god answered. And yet we neither suffer nor fear.

In the sweet valley of Meyringen, we part from Laurence: he goes northward, by Grindenwald, and Thun—thence to journey westward, and to make for the Roman girl a home beyond the ocean. Enrica bids me go on to Rome: she knows that Carry will love its soft warm air, its ruins, its pictures and temples, better than these cold valleys of Switzerland. And she gives me kind messages for her mother, and for Cesare; and should we be in Rome at the Easter season, she bids us remember her, when we listen to the _Miserere_, and when we see the great _Chiesa_ on fire, and when we saunter upon the Pincian hill—and remember, that it is her home.

We follow them with our eyes, as they go up the steep height over which falls the white foam of the clattering Reichenbach; and they wave their hands toward us and disappear upon the little plateau which stretches toward the crystal Rosenlaui and the tall, still Engel-Horner.

May the mountain angels guard them.

As we journey on toward that wonderful pass of Splugen I recall, by the way, upon the heights and in the valleys, the spots where I lingered years before—here, I plucked a flower; there, I drank from that cold, yellow, glacier water; and here, upon some rock overlooking a stretch of broken mountains, hoary with their eternal frosts, I sat musing upon that very Future, which is with me now. But never, even when the ice-genii were most prodigal of their fancies to the wanderer, did I look for more joy, or a better angel.

Afterward, when all our trembling upon the Alpine paths has gone by, we are rolling along under the chestnuts and lindens that skirt the banks of Como. We recall that sweet story of Manzoni, and I point out, as well as I may, the loitering place of the _bravi_, and the track of poor Don Abbondio. We follow in the path of the discomfited Rienzi, to where the dainty spire, and pinnacles of the Duomo of Milan, glisten against the violet sky.

Carry longs to see Venice; its water-streets, and palaces have long floated in her visions. In the bustling activity of our own country, and in the quiet fields of England, that strange, half-deserted capital lying in the Adriatic, has taken the strongest hold upon her fancy.

So we leave Padua and Verona behind us, and find ourselves, upon a soft spring noon, upon the end of the iron road which stretches across the lagoon toward Venice. With the hissing of steam in the ear it is hard to think of the wonderful city we are approaching. But as we escape from the carriage, and set our feet down into one of those strange, hearse-like, ancient boats, with its sharp iron prow, and listen to the melodious rolling tongue of the Venetian gondolier; as we see rising over the watery plain before us, all glittering in the sun, tall square towers with pyramidal tops, and clustered domes, and minarets; and sparkling roofs lifting from marble walls—all so like the old paintings—and as we glide nearer and nearer to the floating wonder, under the silent working oar of our now silent gondolier—as we ride up swiftly under the deep, broad shadows of palaces and see plainly the play of the sea water in the crevices of the masonry—and turn into narrow rivers shaded darkly by overhanging walls, hearing no sound, but of voices, or the swaying of the water against the houses—we feel the presence of the place. And the mistic fingers of the Past, grappling our spirits, lead them away—willing and rejoicing captives, through the long vista of the ages that are gone.

Carry is in a trance—rapt by the witchery of the scene, into dream. This is her Venice, nor have all the visions that played upon her fancy been equal to the enchanting presence of this hour of approach.

Afterward it becomes a living thing—stealing upon the affections, and upon the imagination by a thousand coy advances. We wander under the warm Italian sunlight to the steps from which rolled the white head of poor Marino Faliero. The gentle Carry can now thrust her ungloved hand into the terrible lion’s mouth. We enter the salon of the fearful Ten, and peep through the half-opened door into the cabinet of the more fearful Three. We go through the deep dungeons of Carmagnola and of Carrara; and we instruct the willing gondolier to push his dark boat under the Bridge of Sighs; and with Rogers’ poem in our hand, glide up to the prison door and read of—

——that fearful closet at the foot
Lurking for prey, which, when a victim came,
Grew less and less; contracting to a span
An iron door, urged onward by a screw,
Forcing out life!

I sail, listening to nothing but the dip of the gondolier’s oar, or to _her_ gentle words, fast under the palace door, which closed that fearful morning on the guilt and shame of Bianca Capello. Or, with souls lit up by the scene, into a buoyancy that can scarce distinguish between what is real and what is merely written—we chase the anxious step of the forsaken Corinna; or seek among the veteran palaces the casement of the old Brabantio—the chamber of Desdemona—the house of Jessica, and trace among the strange Jew money-changers, who yet haunt the Rialto, the likeness of the bearded Shylock. We wander into stately churches, brushing over grass, or tell-tale flowers that grow in the court, and find them damp and cheerless; the incense rises murkily and rests in a thick cloud over the altars, and over the paintings; the music, if so be that the organ notes are swelling under the roof, is mournfully plaintive.

Of an afternoon we sail over to the Lido, to gladden our eyes with a sight of land and green things, and we pass none upon the way, save silent oarsmen, with barges piled high with the produce of their gardens—pushing their way down toward the floating city. And upon the narrow island, we find Jewish graves, half covered by drifted sand; and from among them, watch the sunset glimmering over a desolate level of water. As we glide back, lights lift over the lagoon, and double along the Guideca and the Grand Canal. The little neighbor isles will have their company of lights dancing in the water; and from among them will rise up against the mellow evening sky of Italy gaunt, unlighted houses.

After the nightfall, which brings no harmful dew with it, I stroll, with her hand within my arm—as once upon the sea, and in the English park, and in the home-land—over that great square which lies before the palace of St. Marks. The white moon is riding in the middle heaven, like a globe of silver; the gondoliers stride over the echoing stones; and their long black shadows, stretching over the pavement, or shaking upon the moving water, seem like great funereal plumes, waving over the bier of Venice.

Carrying thence whole treasures of thought and fancy, to feed upon in the after years, we wander to Rome.

I find the old one-eyed _maestro_, and am met with cordial welcome by the mother of the pretty Enrica. The count has gone to the marshes of Ancona. Lame Pietro still shuffles around the boards at the Leprè, and the flower sellers at the corner bind me a more brilliant bouquet than ever for a new beauty at Rome. As we ramble under the broken arches of the great aqueduct stretching toward Frascati, I tell Carry the story of my trip in the Appenines, and we search for the pretty Carlotta. But she is married, they tell us, to a Neapolitan guardsman. In the spring twilight we wander upon those heights which lie between Frascati and Albano, and looking westward, see that glorious view of the Campagna, which can never be forgotten. But beyond the Campagna, and beyond the huge hulk of St. Peter’s, heaving into the sky from the middle waste, we see, or fancy we see, a glimpse of the sea, which stretches out and on to the land we love, better than Rome. And in fancy we build up that home, which shall belong to us on the return—a home that has slumbered long in the future, and which, now that the future has come, lies fairly before me.

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HOME

YEARS seem to have passed. They have mellowed life into ripeness. The start, and change, and hot ambition of youth seem to have gone by. A calm and joyful quietude has succeeded. That future which still lies before me seems like a roseate twilight, sinking into a peaceful and silent night.

My home is a cottage, near that where Isabel once lived. The same valley is around me; the same brook rustles and loiters under the gnarled roots of the overhanging trees. The cottage is no mock cottage, but a substantial, wide-spreading cottage, with clustering gables and ample shade, such a cottage as they build upon the slopes of Devon. Vines clamber over it, and the stones show mossy through the interlacing climbers. There are low porches, with cozy armchairs, and generous oriels, fragrant with mignonette, and the blue blossoming violets.

The chimney stacks rise high and show clear against the heavy pine trees, that ward off the blasts of winter. The dovecote is a habited dovecote, and the purple-necked pigeons swoop around the roofs in great companies. The hawthorn is budding into its June fragrance along all the lines of fence, and the paths are trim and clean. The shrubs—our neglected azaleas and rhododendrons chiefest among them—stand in picturesque groups upon the close-shaven lawn.

The gateway in the thicket below is between two mossy old posts of stone; and there is a tall hemlock flanked by a sturdy pine for sentinel. Within the cottage the library is wainscoted with native oak, and my trusty gun hangs upon a branching pair of antlers. My rod and nets are disposed above the generous bookshelves; and a stout eagle, once a tenant of the native woods, sits perched over the central alcove. An old-fashioned mantel is above the brown stone jambs of the country fireplace, and along it are distributed records of travel, little bronze temples from Rome, the _pietro duro_ of Florence, the porcelain busts of Dresden, the rich iron of Berlin, and a cup fashioned from a stag’s horn, from the Black Forest by the Rhine.

Massive chairs stand here and there, in tempting attitude; strewed over an oaken table in the middle are the uncut papers and volumes of the day, and upon a lion’s skin, stretched before the hearth, is lying another Tray.

But this is not all. There are children in the cottage. There is Jamie—we think him handsome—for he has the dark hair of his mother—and the same black eye, with its long, heavy fringe. There is Carry—little Carry I must call her now—with a face full of glee and rosy with health; then there is a little rogue some two years old, whom we call Paul—a very bad boy—as we tell him.

The mother is as beautiful as ever, and far more dear to me, for gratitude has been adding, year by year, to love. There have been times when a harsh word of mine, uttered in the fatigues of business, has touched her, and I have seen that soft eye fill with tears, and I have upbraided myself for causing her one pang. But such things she does not remember, or remembers only to cover with her gentle forgiveness.

Laurence and Enrica are living near us. And the old gentleman, who was Carry’s god-father, sits with me, on sunny days upon the porch, and takes little Paul upon his knee, and wonders if two such daughters as Enrica and Carry are to be found in the world. At twilight we ride over to see Laurence; Jamie mounts with the coachman, little Carry puts on her wide-rimmed Leghorn for the evening visit, and the old gentleman’s plea for Paul can not be denied. The mother, too, is with us, and old Tray comes whisking along, now frolicking before the horses’ heads, and then bounding off after the flight of some belated bird.

Away from that cottage home I seem away from life. Within it, that broad and shadowy future, which lay before me in boyhood and in youth, is garnered—like a fine mist, gathered into drops of crystal.

And when away—those long letters, dating from the cottage home, are what tie me to life. That cherished wife, far dearer to me now than when she wrote that first letter, which seemed a dark veil between me and the future—writes me now as tenderly as then. She narrates in her delicate way all the incidents of the home life; she tells me of their rides, and of their games, and of the new planted trees—of all their sunny days, and of their frolics on the lawn; she tells me how Jamie is studying, and of little Carry’s beauty growing every day, and of roguish Paul—so like his father. And she sends such a kiss from each of them, and bids me such adieu and such “God’s blessing” that it seems as if an angel guarded me.

But this is not all; for Jamie has written a postscript:

——“Dear father,” he says, “mother wishes me to tell you how I am
studying. What would you think, father, to have me talk in
French to you, when you come back? I wish you would come back,
though; the hawthorns are coming out, and the apricot under my
window is all full of blossoms. If you should bring me a
present, as you almost always do, I would like a fishing rod.
Your affectionate son,

JAMIE.”

And little Carry has her fine, rambling characters running into a second postscript:

“Why don’t you come, papa; you stay too long; I have ridden the
pony twice; once he most threw me off. This is all from

CARRY.”

And Paul has taken the pen, too, and in his extraordinary effort to make a big P, has made a very big blot. And Jamie writes under it—“This is Paul’s work, pa; but he says it’s a love blot, only he loves you ten hundred times more.”

And after your return Jamie will insist that you should go with him to the brook, and sit down with him upon a tuft of the brake, to fling off a line into the eddies, though only the nibbling roach are sporting below. You have instructed the workmen to spare the clumps of bank-willows, that the wood-duck may have a covert in winter, and that the Bob-o’-Lincolns may have a quiet nesting place in the spring.

Sometimes your wife—too kind to deny such favor—will stroll with you along the meadow banks, and you pick meadow daisies in memory of the old time. Little Carry weaves them into rude chaplets, to dress the forehead of Paul, and they dance along the greensward, and switch off the daffodils, and blow away the dandelion seeds, to see if their wishes are to come true. Jamie holds a buttercup under Carry’s chin, to find if she loves gold; and Paul, the rogue, teases them by sticking a thistle into sister’s curls.

The pony has hard work to do under Carry’s swift riding—but he is fed by her own hand, with the cold breakfast rolls. The nuts are gathered in time, and stored for long winter evenings, when the fire is burning bright and cheerily—a true, hickory blaze—which sends its waving gleams over eager, smiling faces, and over well-stored book shelves, and portraits of dear, lost ones. While from time to time, that wife, who is the soul of the scene, will break upon the children’s prattle, with the silver melody of her voice, running softly and sweetly through the couplets of Crabbe’s stories, or the witchery of the Flodden tale.

Then the boys will guess conundrums, and play at fox and geese; and Tray, cherished in his age, and old Milo petted in his dotage, lie side by side upon the lion’s skin before the blazing hearth. Little Tomtit the goldfinch sits sleeping on his perch, or cocks his eye at a sudden crackling of the fire for a familiar squint upon our family group.

But there is no future without its straggling clouds. Even now a shadow is trailing along the landscape.

It is a soft and mild day of summer. The leaves are at their fullest. A southern breeze has been blowing up the valley all the morning, and the light, smoky haze hangs in the distant mountain gaps, like a veil on beauty. Jamie has been busy with his lessons, and afterward playing with Milo upon the lawn. Little Carry has come in from a long ride—her face blooming, and her eyes all smiles and joy. The mother has busied herself with those flowers she loves so well. Little Paul, they say, has been playing in the meadow, and old Tray has gone with him.

But at dinner time Paul has not come back.

“Paul ought not to ramble off so far,” I say.

The mother says nothing, but there is a look of anxiety upon her face that disturbs me. Jamie wonders where Paul can be, and he saves for him whatever he knows Paul will like—a heaping plateful. But the dinner hour passes and Paul does not come. Old Tray lies in the sunshine by the porch.

Now the mother is indeed anxious. And I, though I conceal this from her, find my fears strangely active. Something like instinct guides me to the meadow; I wander down the brook-side, calling—Paul—Paul! But there is no answer.

All the afternoon we search, and the neighbors search; but it is a fruitless toil. There is no joy that evening; the meal passes in silence; only little Carry, with tears in her eyes, asks—if Paul will soon come back? All the night we search and call—the mother even braving the night air, and running here and there, until the morning finds us sad and despairing.

That day—the next—cleared up the mystery, but cleared it up with darkness. Poor little Paul!—he has sunk under the murderous eddies of the brook! His boyish prattle, his rosy smiles, his artless talk, are lost to us forever!

I will not tell how nor when we found him, nor will I tell of our desolate home, and of _her_ grief—the first crushing grief of her life.

* * * * *

The cottage is still. The servants glide noiseless, as if they might startle the poor little sleeper. The house seems cold—very cold. Yet it is summer weather; and the south breeze plays softly along the meadow and softly over the murderous eddies of the brook.

* * * * *

Then comes the hush of burial. The kind mourners are there; it is easy for them to mourn! The good clergyman prays by the bier: “Oh, Thou, who didst take upon Thyself human woe, and drank deep of every pang in life, let Thy spirit come and heal this grief, and guide toward that better Land, where justice and love shall reign, and hearts laden with anguish shall rest for evermore!”

Weeks roll on, and a smile of resignation lights up the saddened features of the mother. Those dark mourning robes speak to the heart deeper and more tenderly than ever the bridal costume. She lightens the weight of your grief by her sweet words of resignation: “Paul,” she says, “God has taken our boy!”

Other weeks roll on. Joys are still left—great and ripe joys. The cottage smiling in the autumn sunshine is there; the birds are in the forest boughs; Jamie and little Carry are there; and she, who is more than them all, is cheerful and content. Heaven has taught us that the brightest future has its clouds—that this life is a motley of lights and shadows. And as we look upon the world around us, and upon the thousand forms of human misery, there is a gladness in our deep thanksgiving.

A year goes by, but it leaves no added shadow on our hearthstone. The vines clamber and flourish; the oaks are winning age and grandeur; little Carry is blooming into the pretty coyness of girlhood, and Jamie, with his dark hair and flashing eyes, is the pride of his mother.

There is no alloy to pleasure, but the remembrance of poor little Paul. And even that, chastened as it is with years, is rather a grateful memorial that our life is not all here than a grief that weighs upon our hearts.

Sometimes, leaving little Carrie and Jamie to their play, we wander at twilight to the willow tree beneath which our drowned boy sleeps calmly for the great Awaking. It is a Sunday, in the week-day of our life, to linger by the little grave—to hang flowers upon the head-stone, and to breathe a prayer that our little Paul may sleep well in the arms of Him who loveth children.

And her heart, and my heart, knit together by sorrow, as they had been knit by joy—a silver thread mingled with the gold—follow the dead one to the land that is before us, until at last we come to reckon the boy as living in the new home which, when this is old, shall be ours also. And my spirit, speaking to his spirit, in the evening watches, seems to say joyfully—so joyfully that the tears half choke the utterance—“Paul, my boy, we will be _there_!”

And the mother, turning her face to mine, so that I see the moisture in her eye, and catch its heavenly look, whispers softly—so softly that an angel might have said it—“Yes, dear, we will be THERE!”

* * * * *

The night had now come, and my day under the oaks was ended. But a crimson belt yet lingered over the horizon, though the stars were out.

A line of shaggy mist lay along the surface of the brook. I took my gun from beside the tree, and my shot-pouch from its limb, and, whistling for Carlo—as if it had been Tray—I strolled over the bridge, and down the lane, to the old house under the elms.

I dreamed pleasant dreams that night—for I dreamed that my reverie was real.

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Transcriber’s note:

○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.

○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.