Chapter VII: Part II: Chevrons (3)

'You should have been with us last night! A soft, rushing south wind filled all the air with whispers, and drew up a veil of lace round the horizon, very high up in the east. Stars were few; the new moon dropped tender, faint beams down into the gray mist and grayer water that broke in ripples of white fire against the dark in the west, and mingled with the mystery in the east. I want to go again. Mr. Moore, I can manage a boat; will you go with me?'

With every minute he saw his hard-earned victory slipping away. With every minute his reeling sense lost foothold in the strange, new fascination of her excited presence. Will rallied to a last effort; he muttered some broken excuse, that she must have thought an assent, for she dropped a soft, white, clinging shawl over her shoulders, slipped the tie of the jaunty hat beneath her chin, and he could only follow her as she slid through the flicker of shade and sunshine down to the beach, where the summer sea washed lazily.

Low in the west and northwest lay piled ominous clouds; white, angry thunder heads began showing themselves.

'A grand sunset for to-night, and a shower perhaps. We shall be back before it breaks.'

A small boat--a frail thing of white and gilding--floated at anchor. Lois shook out the sail in her character of manager, seated herself at the helm, and they drifted out. No word was spoken; the light in her eyes grew brighter and brighter; the scarlet curves of her mouth more and more intense. Sitting with face turned away from the west, she did not see, as he did, the rising blackness. The wind freshened, skimming in fitful gusts over the waves, and the little craft flung off the spray like rain. Away off in the shadow of the cloud the water was black as death, a faint line of white defining its edge. Was she infatuated? As for him, he grew very calm, with a kind of desperation. Better to die so, with her face the last sight on earth--his last consciousness her clinging arms, sinking down to the dark, still caverns beneath--than to live out the life that lay before him. He leaned forward and looked over into the green depths of the sea. Sunshine still struck down in rippling lines, a golden network. Soft emerald shadows hung far down, breaking up into surface rifts of cool dimness as the waves swung over them.

Her hat had fallen back; her whole face was alive with a proud, exultant delight in the exhilarating motion. Higher and higher rose the veil of cloud, and the blackness in the water was creeping toward them. Sea birds wheeled low about them, with their peculiar quavering cry, and a low swell made itself felt. Miss Berkeley turned her head; a sudden look of affright blanched her face to deadliest whiteness. A hand's breadth of clear sky lay beneath the sun, and down after them, with the speed of a racer, came that great black wave. Before it the blue ripples shivered brightly; behind it the angry water tossed and seethed. In its bosom, lurid, phosphorescent lights seemed to flit to and fro. Its crest was ragged and white with dashes of foam. She took in the whole in a second's glance, and made a movement to bring the boat's head up to the wind. As the white face turned toward him, a quick instinct of self-preservation seized him, and he sprang up to lower the sail. Something caught the halliards. His left arm was of little service; his right hung useless at his side. She reached forward--one hand on the tiller--to help him. The rim of the storm slipped up over the sun--a sudden flaw struck them--the rudder flew sharp round, wrenched out of her slight hold--the top-heavy sail caught the full force of the blow, surged downward with a heavy lurch, and the gale was on them. A great blow, and swift darkness, then fierce currents rushing coldly past him; strange, wild sounds filling his ears; and when his vision cleared itself, he saw Lois, unimpeded by her light drapery, striking out for the sunken ledge, half a dozen yards away, over which the spray was flying furiously. He ground his teeth with impatience as his nerveless arm fell helpless; but he reached her side at last. A narrow shelf, with barely sufficient standing room for two. Great, dark waves, with strange lights flashing through them, whirled blinding deluges high above their heads, as he held her close. With the instinct of the weaker toward the stronger, she grasped and clung to him; and the fierce exultation that thrilled through his veins with actual contact, made him strong as a giant. And then, close on the gale, came the rain, beating down the waves with its heavy pour. In the thunder and tramp of the storm no human voice could have made itself audible, if speech had been needed.

The storm passed as suddenly as it had risen. Through a rift in the clouds a dash of blood-red light burst over the troubled waters, and with it a sudden quiet fell about them. They were to have their 'grand sunset' finally.

'We are too far from the mainland to reach it without help; no boats are likely to pass this way after this storm; the tide is at its lowest now; it rises high over this ledge.'

In his quiet voice a half-savage triumph made itself heard. This near-coming fate, that he believed inevitable, put away completely all claims of that world that lay behind him--shut out everything but their own individuality. Time had narrowed to a point; all landmarks were swept away.

Miss Berkeley's face had lost none of its whiteness; but the pallor was not of fear. The great eyes burned star-like, and the mouth was like iron. She looked up as his even tones fell on her ear. Something in his gaze fixed hers; through fearless, unveiled eyes, the soul looked straight out to his. What he saw there dazzled and blinded him. He caught her up to his heart suddenly and fiercely. His lips crushed hers in a long, clinging kiss, that seemed to drink up her very life. For them, the brightness that for others is dissipated over long years of the future, was concentrated into the single intense moment of the present--this one moment, that seemed to burst into bud and blossom, the fruition of a lifetime. The sky lifted away and poured down fuller floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through the future would run the memory of a caress in which--she was not a woman who measured her gifts--she had dissolved all the hope and promise of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl. Only into the eternities could he carry the _now_ pure and loyal. It had nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had he attained to it.

The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!'

She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A _rested_, loving smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again.

'My darling!'

'Mine!' and then time drifted on, unbroken by the speech which would have jarred the new, perfect harmony. Neither _thought_--the life currents that had met so wildly and suddenly, left space in their full, disturbed flow, for just the one consciousness of delirious, satisfying love. While the fiery sunset paled, he held the little drenched figure close, her warm breath flowing across his cheek.

Out of the gathering dimness shoreward, came a hail. It struck him with an icy chill that death could never have brought. She raised her head, listening. The longing and temptation to hold her to his breast, and sink down through the green, curling waves, came back stronger than ever. Only so could he hope to keep her. That inexorable future of time reaching out to grasp him back again, would put them apart so hopelessly. His voice was hoarse--broken up with the heart wrench.

'Marguerite, will you die here with me, or go back again to the life that will separate us?'

She did not understand him. Why should she? Did she not love him, and he her? and what _could_ come between them? For her a future burst suddenly into hope with that faint call. In it lay untried, unfathomable sources of happiness.

Another breathless kiss--this time crowded with the agony of a parting for him--and then, as the hail came again, nearer and more distinct, the white shawl, that still clung about her, floated in the air as a signal.

They lifted her into the rescuing boat shortly, white and breathless, and wrapped her in heavy shawls. Not senseless, lying against his breast, the dark eyes opened once to meet his, and the pallid face nestled a little closer to its resting place. He could not tell if the time were long or short, before Nelly's voice broke on his ear.

'Only a comedy, instead of the tragedy which mother is arranging up at the house!'

The half-hysterical quaver broke into the woman's refuge of tears, and sobs with that; and Moore gave up his burden to stronger arms.

'Up at the house,' Mrs. Morris, busied with her blazing fires and multitudinous appliances for any stage of disaster, met them with the quiet tears that mothers learn to shed, and the reverent 'Thank God!' that comes oftenest from mothers' lips.

And the bustle being over, he looked reality and duty straight in the face. The man was in no sense a coward--_flinch_ was not in him. He came out on the upper balcony two hours later, with the face of a man over whom ten years more of life had gone heavily. A dozen steps away sat Marguerite--the white heart of a softened glow of light. She came out at his call quiet and stately, but with a kind of shy happiness touching eye and cheek with light and flame. At sight of her, all the mad passion in his heart leaped up--a groan came in place of the words he had promised himself. He strode away with heavy, hard footfalls. Not strange, since he was trampling Satan and his own heart under his feet. He came back again, quickly, eagerly, as a man forcing himself forward to a mortal sacrifice, who feels that resolution may fail. The words that came finally were half a groan, half an imprecation, hissed through clenched teeth.

'Three years ago, a Louisiana lady promised to be my wife. She is not dead; the engagement is not broken.'

There were no words beyond the plain statement of facts that he had any right to use--harsh and brutal though they seemed. Seen in the earth-light that had broken on him with that rescuing hail, he had acted the coward and villain. If she thought him so, he had no right to demur.

There was no need of other words. The eyes, after their first terrified glance, had fixed themselves out on the night, and then the lids fell, and the wondering, stunned look changed slowly into one of perfect comprehension. Not a muscle moved. The present, leaping forward, laid before her the future, scorched and seared, beyond possibility of bloom again. She looked into it with just the same attitude--even to the tapering fingers laid lightly on the railing--as five minutes before she had dreamed over a land of promise. He, looking down on her white face--whiter in the silver powder of the moonlight--saw a look of utter, hopeless quiet settle there--such quiet as one sees in an unclosed coffin, such marble, impassive calm, neither reproachful nor grieving, as covers deadly wounds--settle never again to rise till Death shall sweep it off. Some lives are stamped at once and forever; and faces gather in an hour the look that haunts them for a lifetime.

Then he knew that no one ever bears the consequences of a sin alone. On this woman, for whom he would have gone to death, he had drawn down the curse. He was powerless to help her; all that he could give--the promise of lifelong love and tenderness--was itself a deadly wrong--would blast his life in giving, hers in receiving. In the minutes that he stood there, gazing into her face, all the waves and billows of bitterest realization of helplessness went over his heart.

She turned to go away. 'Marguerite!' The man's despairing soul, his bitter struggles and failures, atoned for in this last agony, made itself utterance in that one cry. She turned back, without looking up; even his eager gaze could not force up the heavy lids. Then, with that sweet, miraculous woman's grace of patience and pity, she put out her hand, and as he bowed his head over it, touched her lips to his cheek with quick, light contact, and glided away.

Earliest morning shimmered lances of gray, ghostly light on the horizon, and across the sea to the waiting shore. They struck grayest and ghostliest on a high balcony, where a woman's figure crouched, swathed in damp, trailing drapery, with silky, falling hair about a still face, and steadfast eyes that had burned just as steadfastly through the long hours gone by. Great, calm stars, circling slowly, had slipped out of sight into the waves; the restless, grieving ocean had swayed all night with heavy beat against the beach; mysterious whisperings had stirred the broad summer leaves, heavy with dew and moonlight; faint night noises had drifted up to her, leaving the silence unrippled by an echo; till the old moon dropped a wasted, blood-red crescent out of sight, and the world, exhausted with the passion of the yearning night, shrouded itself in the gloom and quiet that comes before the dawn.

To the watcher, who, with strained, unconscious attention, had taken in every change of the night, the promise of the day came almost as a personal wrong. That the glare of the sunshine should fall on her pain--that the necessity for meeting mere acquaintances with the same face as yesterday should exist, now that her life lay so scorched and sere before her, filled her with rebellious impatience.

But when, with the growing light, the first sounds of household waking came to her, she rose wearily, and went, with tired, heavy steps to her own room. And Nelly, coming in half an hour later, with an indefinite sense of uneasiness, found an older face than last evening's on the pillow, with harder lines about the mouth, and with a wearier droop of the eyelids. The voice, too, that answered her good morning, had a kind of echoing dreariness in it. But such traces are not patent to many eyes or ears, and Nelly did not realize them.

There are a few women, mostly of this dark, slender type, who bear these wrenching heart agonies as some animals bear extremest suffering of body--not a sound or struggle testifies to pain--receiving blow after blow without hope or thought of appeal--going off by and by to die, or to suffer back to life alone. Not much merit in it, perhaps--a passive, hopeless endurance of an inevitable torture; but such tortures warp or shape a lifetime. Rarely ever eyes that have watched out such a night see the sun rise with its old promise.

Clement Moore, coming slowly back to life after a fortnight of delirium, found the woods ablaze with October, and Miss Berkeley gone. Another fortnight, and he was with his regiment. Captain George--off on some scouting expedition--was not in camp to meet him. But stretched out on the dry turf a night or two after, through the clash of the band on the hillside above broke Captain George's sonorous voice, and straightway followed such a catalogue of questions as dwellers in camps have always ready to propound to the latest comer from the northward. Concluding finally with--

'And you didn't fall in love with 'the princess'?' Poor Captain George! The prodigious effort _ought_ to have kept the heart throb out of his voice, though it didn't. Moore's quick ear caught it (sympathy has a wonderfully quickening effect on the perceptions sometimes), and he took refuge in a truth that in no way touched the past few months--feeling like a coward and traitor meanwhile, and yet utterly helpless to save either himself or his friend from coming evil. Another item added to retributive justice.

'I thought you knew'--flashing the diamond on his hand in the moonlight--'somewhere beyond the lines yonder a lady wears the companion to this--or did, last spring.'

And George's spirits rose immensely thereupon.

The old, miserable monotony of camp life began again. It wore on him, this machine-like existence, this blind, unquestioning obedience, days and nights of purposeless waiting, brightened by neither hope nor memory. He had hated it before; now he loathed it with the whole strength of his unrestful soul. But it did him good. Brought face to face with his life, he met the chances of his future like the man he was, and at last, out of the blackness end desolation, came the comfort of conquering small, every-day temptations, more of a comfort than we are willing to admit at first thought.

This bare, unbroken life cuts straight down to the marrow of a man. Stripped of all conventionalities, individuals come out broadly. The true metal shows itself grandly in this strange, impartial throwing together of social elements--this commingling on one level of all ranks and conditions of men in the same broad glare of every-day trial, unmodified by any of society's false lights. The factitious barriers of rank once broken over, all early associations, whether of workshop or college, go for nought, or, rather, for what they are worth. The _man_ gravitates to his proper place, whether he makes himself known with the polished sentences of the school, or in terse, sinewy, workman's talk. And through the months Moore learned to respect humanity as it showed itself, made gentler to every one, driven out from himself, perhaps, by the bitterness and darkness that centred in his own heart. It was a new phase of life for him, but he bated his haughty Southern exclusiveness to meet it. Before, he had kept himself aloof as far as the surroundings allowed from those about him--now, his never-failing good nature, his flow of song and story, his untiring physical endurance, all upborne by a certain proud delicacy and reticence, made him a general favorite. But he hailed as a relief the long, exhausting marches that came after a while. Bodily weariness stood in the place of head or heart exercise, and men falling asleep on the spot where they halted for the night, after a day in the clinging Virginia mud, had little time for the noisy outbreaks that filled the evenings in days of inaction. So he did his private's duty bravely, with cheery patience, relieving many a slender boy's arms of his gun, helping many another with words of cheer as he slumped on at his side, always with some device for making their dreary night-stops more endurable. Thanksgiving came and went. George went home on furlough. Moore refused one, and ate the day's extra allowance of tough beef and insipid rice with much fought-against memories of his New England festivals. The winter went on. Christmas days came. The man's brown face was getting positively thinner with homesick recollections of the Southern carnival. This brilliant, ready spirit, who never grew sour nor selfish under any circumstances, actually spent two good hours, the afternoon before Christmas day, in a brown study, and with a suspicious, tightened feeling in his throat, and mistiness in his eyes. Coming in at nightfall from his picket duty, tired and hungry, Jim Murphy, stretching his long length before the fire, rose on his elbow to find half a dozen epistles he had brought down to camp that day.

'Yer letthers, Musther Moore.' Jim, even with his sudden accession of independence as an American citizen, paid unconscious deference to the world-old subtile difference between gentleman and 'rough,' and used the title involuntarily.

He opened them sitting by the same fire, munching his hard tack as he read. Murphy, watching him, saw his lips quiver and work over one bearing half a dozen postmarks--a letter from his mother, conveyed across the lines by some sleight-of-hand of influence or pay, and mailed and remailed from place to place, till weeks had grown into months since it was written. Noncommittal as it had need to be--filled with home items to the last page--there his heart stood still, to bound again furiously back, and his breath came sharp and hot. He rose blinded and staggering. Jim Murphy, seeing how white and rigid his face had grown, came toward him, putting out his hand with a dumb impulse of sympathy, not understanding how the shock of a great hope, springing full grown into existence, sometimes puts on the semblance of as great a loss.

Private Moore's application for a furlough being duly made, that night was duly granted.

'Just in time--the last one for your regiment!' said the good-natured official, registering the necessary items.

In another hour he was whirling away, and in early evening two days later he stepped out into the clear moonlight and crisp air of a Northern city.

A New England sleighing season was at its height. The streets were crowded with swift-flying graceful vehicles, the air ringing with bell music and chimes of voices. Out through the brilliant confusion he went to the quiet square where the great trees laid a dark tracery of shadow upon the snow beneath. No thought of the accidents of absence or company, or any of the chances of everyday life, had occurred to him before. A carriage stood at the door. He almost stamped with impatience till the door opened and he was admitted. The change to the warm, luxurious gloom of the parlors quieted him a little, but he paced up and down with long strides while he waited. The strong stillness that he had resolutely maintained was broken down now with a feverish restlessness.

She came at length--it seemed to him forever first--with the rustle and shimmer of trailing lengths of silk down the long room. A fleecy mist covered neck and arms, and some miracle of a carriage wrapping lay white and soft about her face. She did not recognize him in the obscurity; his message of 'a friend' had not betrayed him. But his voice, with its new, proud hopefulness, its under vein triumphant and eager, struck her into a blinding, giddy whirl, in which voice and words were lost. It passed in a moment, and he was saying, 'And I am free now--honorably free--and have come where my heart has been, ever since that month on the seaside. Most gracious and sovereign lady,'--he broke into sudden, almost mirthful speech, dropping on one knee with a semblance of humility proved no mockery by the diamond light in the brown eyes and the reverent throb that came straight from his voice.

She bent over him as he knelt, and drew her cool, soft hands across his forehead and down his face, and her even, silvery syllables cut like death:

'Mr. Moore, last night I promised to marry your friend, Captain Morris.'

For the space of a minute stillness like the grave filled the room, and then all the intense strain of heart and nerve gave way, as the bitter tide of disappointment broke in and rolled over his future; and without word or sound he dropped forward at her feet.

She knelt down beside him with a low, bitter cry. It reached his dulled sense; he rose feebly.

'Forgive me; I have not been myself of late, I think; and this--this was so sudden,' and he walked away with dull, nerveless tread.

On the table, near her, lay her handkerchief. It breathed of heliotrope. Her words came back to him: 'Only in coffins, about still, dead faces.' He stopped in his walk and looked down on her. Forever he should remember all that ghostly sheen of silvery white about a rigid face with unutterably sad fixed mouth and drooping lids. He thrust the fleecy handful into his breast.

'I may keep this?' and took permission from her silence.

'Good-by;' the words came through ashy lips, a half sob. She knelt as impassive as marble, as cold and white. He waited a moment for the word or look that did not come, turned away, the hall door fell heavily shut, and he was gone.

Fifteen minutes after, Miss Berkeley was whirling to the house where she was to officiate as bridesmaid, and where she was haughtier, and colder, and ten times more attractive than ever.

Private Moore, waiting for the midnight return train, found life a grim prospect.

Three weeks after, a summons came from the captain's tent. George had just returned from his own furlough, and this was their first meeting. Even while their hands clasped, his new, happy secret told itself.

'Congratulate me, Clement Moore! You remember Lois Berkeley? She has promised to be Lois Berkeley Morris one day!' and, with happy lover's egotism, did not notice the gray shade about his hearer's lips.

Various items of news followed.

'A truce boat goes over to-morrow,' remembering the fact suddenly; 'there will be opportunity to send a few letters; so, if you wish to write to that lady 'beyond the lines'--

The voice that replied was thin and harsh:

'Miss Rose declined alliance with a 'Yankee hireling,' and was married last October.'

Honest George wrung his friend's hand anew, and heaped mental anathemas on his own stupidity for not seeing how haggard and worn the dark face had grown--anathemas which were just enough, perhaps, only he hardly saw the reason in quite the right light. But he spared all allusions to his own prospects thereafter, and finding that Moore rather avoided than sought him, measured and forgave the supposed cause by his own heart.

At length came a time when a new life and impulse roused into action even that slowly moved great body, the officers of the Potomac Army, and that much-abused and sorely tried insignificant item, the army itself. On every camp ground reigned the confusion of a flitting. All the roads were filled with regiments hurrying southward, faces growing more and more hazard with fatigue and privation, weak and slender forms falling from the ranks, cowards and traitors skulking to the rear, till at length on the banks of the river stood an army, hungry, footsore, marchworn, but plucky, and ready for any service that might be required of them, even if that service were but to 'march up the hill and then march down again'--what was left of them.

An atom in the moving mass of blue, Clement Moore shared the pontoon crossing, was silent through the storms of cheers that greeted each regiment as they splashed over and up the bank, and, drawn up in line of battle at last, surveyed the field without a pulsation of emotion. Other men about him chafed at the restraint; he stood motionless, with eyes a thousand miles away. And when the advance sounded, and the line started with a cheer, no sound passed his lips. A half-unconscious prayer went up that he might fall there, and have it over with this life battle, that had gone so sorely against him. He moved as in a dream. The whirl and roar of battle swept around and by him; he charged with the fiercest, saw the blue lines reel and break only to close up and charge again, took his life in his hand a dozen times, and stood at length with the few who held that first line of rifle pits, gazing in each other's faces in the momentary lull, and wondering at their own existence. Then came a shock, shivers of red-hot pain ran through every nerve, and then--blissful, cool unconsciousness. Captain George, galloping by, with the red glare of battle on his face, saw the fall, and halted. A half dozen ready hands swung the body to his saddle. For a little the tide of battle eddied away, and in the comparative quiet, George tore down the hill to a spring bubbling out under the cedars.

The darkness that wrapped the wounded man dissolved gradually. The thunder and crash of guns, the mad cheers, the confusion of the bands withdrew farther and farther, and drifted away from his failing senses. He was back in his Southern home; the arm under his head was his mother's; and he murmured some boyish request. Jasmine and clematis oppressed him with their oversweetness; overhead the shining leaves of the magnolia swung with slow grace. So long since he had seen a magnolia, not since that evening--a life time ago, it seemed; the sight and fragrance fell on him as her cool touch did that last time. The heart throbs choked him then; he was choking again. 'Water, mother--a drink!' and something wet his lips and trickled down his throat, not cool and sweet as the rippling water he longed for, and he turned away with sickly fretfulness; but a new strength thrilled through his limbs. He opened his eyes; a face, battle-stained, but tear-wet like a woman's, bent over him.

'O Clement, dear old fellow, do you know me?'

He smiled faintly, with stiffening lips. 'Yes, I know. I've prayed for it, George. I couldn't live to see her your wife. Good-by, dear boy. Tell mother--' He wandered again. 'Kiss me, mother--now Lois, my Marguerite. Into thy hands, O Lord--' A momentary struggle for breath, and then Morris laid back the grand head, and knelt, looking down on the beautiful face, over which the patient strength of perfect calm had settled forever.

'So that was it, after all,' he said, bitterly. 'Fool not to see; and he was worth a generation of such as I.'

He turned away, tightened his saddle girths, cast a look on the pandemonium before him, looked back with one foot already in the stirrup.

'I sha'n't see him again in this hell, even if I come out of it myself.' And going back, with gentle fingers he removed the few trinkets on the body. In an inner pocket of the blouse he found a small packet. He opened it on the spot. A lady's handkerchief, silky fine, white as ever. No need of the delicate tracery in the corners to tell him whose. The perfume that haunted it still called back too vividly that evening when he had wondered at and loved her more for the strange, perfect calm that chilled a little his outburst of happiness. He folded it back carefully, touched his lips as a woman might have done to the cold forehead, and mounted, plunging up the hill to the fight that had recommenced over the trench. Later in the day, the ball that fate moulded for Captain George found him. He gave one low, pitiful cry as it crashed through his bridle arm, and then a merciful darkness closed about him.

Two months after, white and thin, with one empty sleeve fastened across his chest, he stood where another had stood waiting for the same woman. Through the window drifted in the early spring fragrance; a handful of early spring flowers lay on the table. A soft rustle and slow step through the hall, and he rose as Lois came in. She glanced at the empty sleeve with grave, wide eyes, and sat down near him. He would not have known the face before him, it had so altered; the hair pushed back from hollow, blue-veined temples, the sharpened, angular outlines, and an old, suffering look about the mouth and sunken eyes.

Few words were spoken--nothing beyond the most commonplace greetings. Then she said:

'I should have come to you, but I have been ill myself; near death, I believe,' she added, wearily.

She gave the explanation with no throb of feeling. She would have apologized for a careless dress with more spirit once.

He rose and laid a packet before her.

'A lady's handkerchief--yours, I think. I was with him when he died, though his body was not found afterward. I was hurt myself, you know, and could not attend to it,' he said, deprecatingly.

She did not touch it, looking from it up to him with eyes filled with just such a grieved, questioning look as might come into the eyes of some animal dying in torture. He could not endure it. He put out his white, wasted left hand.

'My poor child!' She shivered, caught her breath with a sob, and, burying her face in the pillows of a couch, gave way to her first tears in an agony of weeping. And he sat apart, not daring to touch her, nor to speak--wishing, with unavailing bitterness, that it had been he who was left lying stark and still beneath the cedars.

The storm passed. She lay quiet now, all but the sobs that shook her whole slight frame. He said, at last, very gently:

'If I had known--you should have told me. He was my best friend.' His voice trembled a little. 'I know how I must seem to you. His murderer, perhaps; surely the murderer of your happiness.' A deeper quaver in the sorrowful tones. 'It is too late now, I know; but if it would help you ever so little to be released from your promise--'

There was no reply.

'You are free. I am going now.' He bent over her for a breath, making a heart picture of the tired face, the closed eyes, and grieved mouth. Only to take her up for a moment, with power to comfort her--he would have given his life for that--and turned away with a great, yearning pain snatching at his breath. In the hall he paused a moment, trying to think. A light step, a frail hand on his arm, a wistful face lifted to his.

'Forgive me; I have been very unkind. You are so good and noble. I will be your wife, if you will be any happier.'

He looked down at her pityingly. 'You are very tired. Shall you say that when you are rested again? Remember, you are free.'

'If not yours, then never any one's.'

His arm fell about her, his lips touched her forehead quietly; he led her back to her couch, and arranged her pillow, smiling a little at his one awkward hand.

'I shall not see you again before I go back, unless you send for me.'

She put out her hand and touched the bowed face quickly and lightly; and with that touch thrilling in his veins he went away.

Through Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Charleston siege, Captain George, no longer captain, now twice promoted for cool bravery, has borne a charmed life--a grave, calm man, remembering always a still face, 'pathetic with dying.'

Out from the future is turned toward him another face, no less pathetic in its unrest of living. The soldiers in the Capital hospitals, dragging through the weary weeks of convalescence, know that face well. For hours of every day she goes about busied with such voluntary service as she is permitted to do. She sees tired faces brighten at her coming--is welcomed by rough and gentle voices. Always patient, ready, thoughtful, she is 'spending' herself--waiting for the end.

THE SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: ITS CHARACTER AND RELATION TO OTHER LANGUAGES.

_ARTICLE TWO._

CORRESPONDING FIRST DISCRIMINATIONS IN THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE.

The purpose of these papers, as announced and partially carried forward in the preceding one, is to explain the nature of the NEW SCIENTIFIC UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE, a component part of the new Science of UNIVERSOLOGY, and to exhibit its relation to the Lingual Structures hitherto extant. For this purpose we entered upon the necessary preliminary consideration of the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. We found that the latest developments of Comparative Philology upon this subject, as embodied in Prof. Mueller's recent work, 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' brought us no farther along to the goal of our investigation than Compound Roots--one-, two-, three-, four-, five--(or more) letter Roots--some four or five hundred of which are the insoluble residuum which the Philologists furnish as the Ultimate Elements of Language. It was pointed out that these Roots are not, however, the _Ultimate_ Elements of Language, any more than Compound Substances are the Prime Constituents of Matter; and that, as Chemistry, as a Science, could begin its career, only after a knowledge of the veritable Ultimate Elements of the Physical Constitution of the Globe was obtained, so a _True Science of Language_ must be based upon an understanding of the value and meaning of the True Prime or Ultimate Elements of Speech--the _Vowels_ and _Consonants_.

It is with the exposition of the nature of these Fundamental Constituents of Language, and of their Correspondential Relationship or _Analogy_ with the Fundamental Constituents of Thought, the Ultimate Rational Conceptions of the Mind, that the New UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE begins its developments. Through its agency we may hope to find, therefore, a satisfactory solution to the problem of the Origin of Speech, which Comparative Philology abandons at the critical point, and so to be able to pass to the consideration of the more specific objects of our present inquiry.

* * * * *

UNIVERSOLOGY establishes the fact that there is Analogy or Repetition of Plan throughout the various Departments of the Universe. It demonstrates, in other words, that the same Principles which generate, and the same Laws which regulate, the Phenomena of the Universe as a whole, fulfil the same functions in connection with the Phenomena of every one of its parts. The Mathematical, Psychological, or any other specific Domain is, therefore, an expression or embodiment of the same System of Principles and Laws, with reference to both Generals and Details, which is otherwise exhibited in Mechanics, Physics, Chemistry, and elsewhere universally; just as the same Architectural Plan may be variously employed in constructions of different size, material, color, modes of ornamentation, etc.; and may be modified to suit the requirements of each individual construction. To every Elementary Form of _Thought_ there is, consequently, a corresponding and related Law of _Number_, of _Form_, of _Color_, of _Chemical_ Constitution, and of _Oral Sound_ or _Speech_. Every Basic Idea, to state it otherwise, pertaining to the Universe at large or to any of its Divisions, has its counterpart or double in every other Division. Or, to express it yet another way: the manifold, diverse, and unlike Appearances or Phenomena which the Universe presents to our understanding, are not _radically_ and _essentially_ different; but are the same Typal Ideas or Thoughts of God or of Nature, arrayed in various garbs, and, hence, assuming varying presentations. The Numerical _Unit_, the Geometrical _Point_, the Written _Dot_, the _Globule_, the Chemical _Atom_, the Physical _Molecule_, the Physiological _Granule_, the _Yod_ or _Iota_, the least Element of Sound, are, for example, _Identical Types_, differently modified or clothed upon in accordance with the medium through which they are to be _phenomenally_ presented. It is with this _Echo_ or Repetitory Relationship, existing between all the Domains of the Universe, but more particularly as exhibited between the two Domains of _Ideas_ and _Language_, that we are at present concerned.

It is sufficiently obvious that Analogy should be sought for first, in the _Generals_ of any department under examination, and, subsequently, through them, in the _Particulars_. In respect to the two Domains now under special consideration, this relation is between the Fundamental Elements of Thought, including those called by the Philosophers the Categories of the Understanding, and the Fundamental Elements of Language. In pointing out the Correspondence subsisting between the Elements of these two Domains, I shall use, partly by way of condensation, and partly by copious extracts, the Elaborate Expositions contained in the yet unpublished text books of Universology. And, as what follows relating to this subject will consist, almost wholly, of this material, I do not deem it essential to encumber the page with numerous and unnecessary quotation marks. It is advisable to caution the Reader, however, that as my present purpose is explanation and illustration only, and not formal demonstration, what is about to be given will be mostly in the nature of mere statement, unaccompanied by any other evidence of its truthfulness than may be found in the self-supporting reasonableness of the statements themselves.

* * * * *

It was the basic and axiomatic proposition of Hegel's Philosophy, that the first discrimination of Thought and Being in any sphere is into two factors, a _Something_ and a _Nothing_;--that which constitutes the _main_ or _predominant_ element of the Conception or Creation, and that which we endeavor to exclude from contemplation or activity, but which, nevertheless, by virtue of the impossibility of _perfect_ or _absolute_ abstraction, inevitably becomes a _minor_ or _subordinate_ element in the Idea or the Act which may be engaging the attention. _Something_ and _Nothing_ are also averred to be _equal_ factors in the Constitution of Thoughts or Things, because both are alike indispensable to the cognition of either; because, in other words, it is only by the presence of the _Nothing_ as a _background_ or _contrasting_ element, that the _Something_ has an independent or cognizable existence. If there were no blank space, for instance, there could be no Moon, relatively, or so far as our ability to perceive it is concerned. For the Moon is, in this illustration, a _Something_ which is visible to us, and of which we have a knowledge, only by reason of the fact that it is surrounded by and contrasted with that which is _not_ Moon, and which, in reference to the particular aspect under consideration is, therefore, a _Nothing_; though it in turn may be a _Something_ or main object of attention in some other view or conception, where some other factor shall be the Nothing.

That this Relationship of Antithesis and Rank existed, as between the Constituents of some Thoughts or Things, was known from the earliest times, and gave rise to the terms _Positive_ and _Negative_, expressive of it. But Hegel was the first--of modern Philosophers, at least--to point out its necessarily _Universal_ and fundamental character, and to assume it as the starting-point in the development of all Philosophy and Science.

So far as concerns the investigation of the Universe from the _Philosophical_ point of view (which is the less precise and definite aspect), Hegel is right in affirming that the first discrimination of all Thought and Being is that between _Something_ and _Nothing_. But he is wrong in regarding the starting-point or first differentiation of _Science_, as being identical with that of _Philosophy_. Science considers, primarily and predominantly, the more exact and rigorous relations of Phenomena; and the existence of an _exact_ and _definite_ point of departure in Thought and Being, more fundamental, from the Scientific or rigorously precise point of view, than that of Hegel, is the initiatory proposition of UNIVERSOLOGY.

A full explanation of the nature of this Starting-point is not, however, in place here. And as the discrimination into _Something_ and _Nothing_ serves all the purposes of our present inquiry, a single word respecting the character of the Universological Point of Departure in question is all that it is now necessary to say concerning it.

This Starting-point of Thought and Action has reference to the Ideas of _Oneness_ (Primitive Unity) and _Twoness_ (Plurality). These conceptions give rise to _two_ Primordial Principles, which form the basis of the development of UNIVERSOLOGY, and which are fundamental in every Department of the Universe and in the Universe as a whole, namely: _The Principle of Unism_ (from the Latin _unus_, _one_), the _Spirit_ of the Number _One_, the Principle of _Undifferentiated_, _Unanalyzed_, _Agglomerative_ Unity; and _The Principle of_ DUISM (from the Latin _duo_, _two_), the _Spirit_ of the Number _Two_, the Principle of _Differentiation_, _Analysis_, _Separation_, _Apartness_, or _Plurality_, typically embodied in _Two_, the first division of the Primitive Unity, and especially representative of the Principle of Disunity, the essence of all division or plurality. _One_, in the Domain of _Number_, and UNISM, in the Department of Primordial Principles, correspond, it must be added, with _The Absolute_ (the Undifferentiated and Unconditioned), as one of the Aspects of Being; while _Two_, in the Domain of _Number_, and _Duism_, among Primordial Principles, are allied with _The Relative_ (the Differentiated and Conditioned), of which latter Domain _Something_ and _Nothing_ are the two Prime Factors. The distinction between _One_ and _Two_, or their analogous Aspects of Being, _Absolute_ and _Relative_, is, therefore, prior to that between _Something_ and _Nothing_, because _Something_ and _Nothing_ are two terms of _The Relative_ (_Two_), which has first to be itself discriminated from _The Absolute_ (_One_) before it can be sub-divided into these two factors.

While the nature of this discrimination into _Something_ and _Nothing_ may be sufficiently intelligible to the student of Metaphysics, it may not be so to the Reader unaccustomed to Philosophical Speculation. For the purpose, therefore, of rendering it somewhat clearer, I will point out the manner in which it exhibits itself in respect to the Constitution of the External World and elsewise.

The Totality of all material objects and substances is the _Positive_ Material Universe. This is contained in _Space_, which is the _Negative_ Material Universe. Compoundly the two, _Matter_ and _Space_, are the whole Material Universe, as to the Parts or Constituent Factors of which it consists.

Theoretically, and in one, and by no means an unimportant sense, the _Zero_-Element or _Nothing_-side of the Universe or of a given Department of Being, is one whole half, or an equal hemisphere of the Totality of Being. Thus, for example, _Zero_ (0) in the usage of the Arabic Numbers, while it is represented in an obscure way merely by a single figure below the nine digits, yet stands over, in a sense, against all the digits, and all their possible combinations, as equal to them all in importance. For it is by means of this _Zero_ (0) that the One (1) for instance, becomes 10, 100, 1000, etc.; and that all the _Positive_ Numbers acquire their relative values, according to the places or positions in space which they occupy.

In another sense, however, the Negative Ground of Being, in the Universe at large, or in any given Domain, quickly sinks out of view, and Positive Being becomes the whole of what is commonly regarded. It is in this sense that, ordinarily, in speaking of The Digits of Number, the _Zero_ is left out of the count.

In the same manner, when speaking or thinking of the Material Universe, while the notion of _Space_ is ever present, and is, in the absolute sense, an equal half of the whole conception, still it is Matter, the total congeries of objects and substances in Space, of which we mainly think; the Space, as such, being understood and implied, but subordinated as a mere _negative_ adjunct of the _positive_ idea.

In strictness, _Matter_ and _Space_ are so mutually dependent on each other, that either without the other is an impossible conception. The notion of Space permeates that of Matter; passing through it, so to speak, as well as surrounding it; so that it needs no proof that Matter cannot be conceived of as existing without Space. But, on the other hand, Space is only the negation of Matter; the shadow, as it were, cast by Matter; and, so, dependent on Matter for the very origin of the idea in the mind.

If _Space_, therefore, be the analogue of _Nothing_; _Matter_, wholly apart from Space, is only a _theoretical_ Something, really and actually as much a Nothing as Space itself, when abstractly considered in its equally impossible separation from Matter. But Matter, completely separated from Space, is the exact external analogue of the _Something_ opposed to the _Nothing_ of abstract Metaphysical Thinking. Here, then, is a lucid exposition, by virtue of these analogies, of the famous Metaphysical Axiom of Hegel, which, at its announcement, threw all Europe into amazement:

_Something_ = (_equal to_) _Nothing_.

It is the logic of this statement that all _Reality_ or Relative Being is a product of two factors, each of which is a _Nothing_. The strangeness of this proposition will disappear when it is recognized that these two Nothings are mere aspects or sides of presentation of the Product, which is itself the only Reality. In respect to the _Real Being_, those two sides are _Nothings_. But, as appearances or ideal views of the Reality under the process of analytical abstraction in the mind, they are so far _Somethings_ as to receive names and to be treated of and considered as _if_ they were _Realities_. _Reality_ in the _Absolute_ aspect, the aspect of _Undifferentiated Unity_, (Unismal), contains these two factors interblended and undiscriminated. In the _Relative_ aspect, that of _Duality_, (Duismal), it is the compound of these two factors separated and distinguished. Finally, in the _Integral_ aspect of _Compound Unity_ (Trinismal), it consists of the _Unismal_ and the _Duismal_ aspects contrasted--the only _real_ state, or possible condition of actual existence. _And this is the Type of all Reality or Real Existence in every department of Being in the Universe._

But practically and ordinarily, these strictly analytical views of the question of existence are abandoned. Reality, compounded, as we have seen that it is when viewed in this way, of a Positive and a Negative Factor, is assumed as itself a Simple Element and set over against the grand residuum of Negation in the Universe of Being. This is what Kant, less analytical than Hegel, has done, when, in distributing the Categories of Thought, he has contrasted REALITY with NEGATION.

This is, as if, in respect to the External Material World, we were to divide Matter--the Planets, for example, first assigning to them the portions of Space which they bodily and respectively fill as if it were a part of themselves--from the remaining ocean or grand residuum of Space which surrounds them and in which they float. This residuum of Space would then be spoken of as _Space_, and the Planetary Bodies, _along with and including the spaces which they fill_, would be spoken of as _Matter_. This is a kind of division, less analytical, but more convenient, obvious, and practical, than the other which would attempt to separate the whole of Space from the Matter within Space. It is in this more practical manner that we _ordinarily_ think of the division of the Heavens into the Domains of _Matter_ and _Space_.

Between _Reality_, then, including a subordinate portion of Space--the content and volume of the Planet--and the grand ocean of Space, outlying and surrounding the Planet, there is _Limitation_, the outline of the Planet, the _Limit_ or dividing surface between the space within it and the space without.

It is this Congeries of the Aspects of Being which Kant denominates QUALITY, as a name of a Group of the Categories of the Understanding; and which he divides into

1. REALITY.
2. NEGATION.
3. LIMITATION.

He then treats REALITY as synonymous with the _Affirmative_ (Positive), and NEGATION as synonymous with the _Negative_; although, as we have seen, this Affirmative is not strictly equivalent to the _Something_ of Hegel, nor this Negative to his _Nothing_. For _Reality_ we may, in a general sense, put _Substance_, and for _Limitation_ we may put _Form_, Omitting Negation which repeats the _Nothing_, as Reality repeats the _Something_, it may now be said that the next Grand Division of the Elements of Universal Being (after that into Something and Nothing) is into

1. SUBSTANCE. )
= 3. EXISTENCE.
2. FORM. )

That is to say: _The Relative_ (The Domain of Cognizable Being) is first made known to us through the _differentiation_ and _discrimination_ of the two Factors _Something_ and _Nothing_ which lie _undifferentiated_ and _indistinguishable_ in _The Absolute_ (The Primitive Ground of Being). _The Relative_ then subdivides into 1. _Substance_ (Reality), and, 2. _Form_ (Limitation), which reunite to constitute that actualized Being which we denominate _Existence_. Or, tabulated, thus:

THE ABSOLUTE (THE PRIMITIVE
GROUND OF BEING)
CONTAINS UNDIFFERENTIATED AND INDISTINGUISHABLE
THE TWO FACTORS
SOMETHING and NOTHING
WHICH CONSTITUTE THE FIRST TERMS
AND DISCRIMINATIONS OF
THE RELATIVE (THE DOMAIN OF
COGNIZABLE BEING);
WHICH ITSELF DIVIDES INTO
SUBSTANCE (REALITY) and FORM
(LIMITATION),
THE PRIME CONSTITUENTS OF
EXISTENCE.

To comprehend the vast importance of these discriminations, it is necessary to understand that precisely those Principles of Distribution which are applicable to the Universe at large are found to be applicable to every minor sphere or domain of the Universe; in the same manner as the same Geometrical Laws which prevail in the largest circle prevail equally in the smallest. It is the prevalence of _Identical Principles_ in _diverse spheres_ which is the source of that Universal Analogy throughout _all_ spheres that lies at the basis of UNIVERSOLOGY, and gives the possibility of such a Science. The nature of this Analogy, as well as the value of the discriminations themselves, will be more clearly seen by glancing at corresponding discriminations in other spheres.