 | My third book |  |
The Mist over the Valley.
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
Ah well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!
WHITTIER.
MY wife was dead. I had never loved her—I may
as well speak frankly—never loved her; and yet,
for her sake, I cast away the one priceless pearl of my
life. I think every human existence has its moment
of fate—its moment when the golden apple of the Hesperides
hangs ready upon the bough—how is it that
so few of us are wise enough to pluck it? The decision
of a single hour may open for us the gate of the
enchanted gardens, where are flowers, and sunshine,
and air purer than any breezes of earth; or it may
condemn us, Tantalus-like, to reach evermore after
some far-off, unattainable good—make us slaves of the
lamp forever and forever. And yet we seek no counsel.
We stretch forth our hands and grasp blindly at
the future, forgetting that we have only ourselves to
blame when we draw them back pierced sorely with
thorns.
My life, like all others, had its hour of destiny; and
it is of that hour, its perils, its temptations, its sin, that
I am about to tell you.
I had known Bertha Payson from my infancy. She
was only a year younger than I. I can remember her
face, far away back among the misty visions of my
boyhood. It looked then, as it does now, pure and
pale, yet proud. Her eyes were calm as a full lake
underneath the summer moon, deep as the sea—a
and dark. She wore it plainly banded away from her
large, thoughtful forehead. The pure yet healthful
white of her complexion contrasted only with her eyes,
her hair, her clearly-defined, arching brows, and one
line of red marking the thin, flexible lips. It was relieved
by no other trace of color, even in the cheeks.
I have not painted for you a beauty, and yet I think
now that Bertha Payson had the noblest female face
my eyes ever rested on.
Her figure was tall, and lithe, and slender; her voice
clear, low, and musical. From my earliest boyhood
she had seemed to me like some guardian saint, pure
enough for worship, but, for a long time I had thought,
not warm enough for love.
She was twenty before I began to understand her
better. I had just graduated at Harvard, and I came
home—perhaps a little less dogmatic and conceited
than the majority of newly-fledged A.B.'s—full of lofty
aspirations, generous purposes, and romantic dreams.
I was prepared to fall in love, but I never thought of
loving quiet Bertha Payson, my next neighbor's daughter.
The ideal lady of my fancy was far prettier—a
dainty creature, with the golden hair and starry eyes
of Tennyson's dream—an
Flitting, fairy Lilian.”
And yet, in the mean time, I looked forward with
pleasure to Bertha's companionship. To talk with
her always brought out “the most of heaven I had in
me.” There was nothing in art or nature so glorious
that it did not take new glory when the glances of her
eyes kindled over it. My mind never scaled any
far-reaching soul had not conquered before me, and so
the best purposes of my life grew better and stronger
in the serene atmosphere of her approval.
Thus it came about that we were daily together.
Long before I thought of looking at that pale, proud
face with a lover's passion, I think I had given her
reason to believe that I loved her. What other interpretation
could a woman like her, so pure, so single-hearted,
so true, have put upon the eagerness with
which I continually sought her society? I passed the
largest portion of every day in her presence. She was
an early riser, and often, even before the summer sunrise,
I went through the narrow path and little gate
which divided our garden from hers, to persuade her
to join me in a ramble in the delicious morning twilight.
There was one scene of which we never tired. I
have never seen it any where but in Ryefield. In the
valley of the Quinebaug the mist rises so blue and
dense that, from the hills overtopping it at a mile's
distance, it looks like some strange inland sea, whereon,
perchance, Curtis's Flying Dutchman might take
his long and wonderful cruise, or a phantom Maid of
the Mist, sailing at dawn out of some silent cove, might
cut the phantom sea with her phantom keel, and go
back with the sunrise into silence and shadows. On
one of those o'ertopping hills Bertha and I watched
the slow coming of many a summer morning. It was
in one of these enchanted hours that I first learned
that a woman's heart, strong and passionate as it was
pure, slumbered beneath the calm reticence of her external
life.
We had been watching, as usual, the sea of mist,
and speculating idly about the phantom bark and its
strange crew. Then we stood silent for a moment,
Bertha looking out over the mist, and I looking at her
dilating eyes, growing so large, so solemn, so full of
thought. At last she turned with a sudden motion—
“Who would think, Frank, to see this prospect now,
that underneath this seeming sea lay smiling the greenest
and loveliest valley in Connecticut? I was thinking
how like it was to some human existences—men
and women whose outward life is a veil denser and
more impenetrable than the mist over the valley,
screening the throbbing, passionate, yet silent heart
from human vision. And yet there comes a time
when the veiled heart will assert itself. See, the sun
is rising now; the mist looks like a soundless sea no
longer; it is beginning to curl away in golden wreaths;
soon we shall see the fair valley, with its three white
houses, its waving trees, and its little becks of bright
waters. Some time, even thus, from all proud hearts
the mist will roll goldenly away, and we shall see as
we are seen, and know as we are known—if not here,
there.”
She paused, and I looked at her inspired face. I
did not wish to break the silence which followed her
words. I started and led the way down the steep hill.
After a little I looked round to see if the morning sunrise
still lingered in her eyes. I caught my foot, in
some incautious step, against the roots of a tree from
which the spring rains had washed away the earth. I
was thrown headlong and violently to the ground. I
was stunned for a moment. My first sensation of returning
cool hand upon my forehead. She had run
swiftly to a neighboring spring, and, with quick presence
of mind, had saturated her handkerchief and
mine, and now she was bathing my brow with the
water. I did not open my eyes at first, it was so
pleasant to lie there and receive her gentle ministrations.
At length I felt her place her ear close to my
lips. By a resolute effort I held my breath. I wished
to try her. She thought I was dead. She did not
shriek or moan; only, as if against her will, a single
cry, low and sorrowful, escaped her—
“Oh, Frank, darling! darling!”
I slowly opened my eyes and met hers. There was
a look in them I have never seen in any other woman's.
Then I knew that Bertha Payson could love;
that she did love me with a love that not one woman
in a thousand could even understand. I saw that underneath
the marble her heart, her passionate woman's
heart, was flame; but it was flame as pure as the heaven-kindled
fires on the altar of the God of the Hebrews.
I knew that she loved me, and, in the same
moment, I knew that with all the might of my heart
I loved her—that she alone was the one woman to
whom mind and soul could do homage and say, “I
have found my queen.” But I did not speak of love
then. I know she must have read my glance as I had
read hers; but she only said, very quietly,
“Thank God that you are alive. I must leave you
now to see about getting some one to take you home.”
“No, I can walk, if you will help me.”
I made the effort, but I could not rise. The least
attempt to move caused me such exquisite pain that I
“I am very sorry, Bertha. I shall have to let you
go. I see it is impossible for me to walk.”
She drew a shawl from her shoulders and arranged
it so as to make the position in which my head was
lying a little easier. Then she tripped away, and, lying
there, I watched, half dreamily, her light figure go
out of sight down the hill-side. The time of her absence
seemed to me very short. Except when I attempted
to move I felt little pain, and never had my
soul been so flooded with happiness. I was too weak
to speculate about the future. I only rejoiced in the
present.
Soon Bertha returned with the village doctor and
two or three sturdy assistants. Arranging a hastily-constructed
litter, they started to bear me down the
hill. At the first jolt the motion caused me intense
pain. With a longing for sympathy, I stretched out my
hand. Bertha understood me, and laid her own in it;
and so, with her walking beside me, I was borne home.
No bones had been broken by my fall. My injuries
were all internal, though not dangerous; but my convalescence
was long and tedious. In all this time Bertha
was like an angel of light. She shared with my
mother the labor of nursing me. She read to me, sang
to me; or, when I liked it better, sat by me in silence.
It was six weeks before I was again able to walk out;
but in all this time we had never spoken of love. My
passion was too reverent for light or hasty utterance.
I resolved to wait until I could stand with her again
upon the hill-top where I had read my heart's answer
in her eyes.
When at length I could go out, my first visit was
made to Dr. Greene. He had been so kind and attentive,
he seemed to take so much pride in his success,
that I could not refuse his invitation to take my first
walk to his house, and drink a cup of tea with his wife
and a friend she had staying with her. It is with this
friend only that my story has to do.
God knows I did not willingly put myself in the
way of temptation. How could I tell that, sitting that
summer afternoon in Dr. Greene's quiet parlor, I should
find a Circe?
“Miss Ireton,” said the doctor's deep, sonorous voice
as I entered the room, and before me rose a young,
slight figure, robed in white, with roses on her bosom,
roses on her cheek, roses in the golden hair that lay
in long ringlets upon her dainty shoulders, and clustered
around her head. Her eyes were bright and full
of smiles; dimples played at hide-and-seek among her
cheeks' roses; her lips were full and red, and her complexion
clear, with a quick, changing color, infinitely
charming. Sometimes—even now, out of the darkness
of death and the grave—that face rises up to me, and
I see her stand before me once more, in all her witching
loveliness, as she stood that summer afternoon. If
you had seen her then you would have thought that
she was immortal—that death and change could never
come to that form of grace, those eyes of light.
Miss Nellie Ireton was a practiced flirt. It was not
in the nature of things that any man could love her
as reverently as I loved Bertha. She could not have
comprehended Bertha's self-denial, her heroism, her entire
freedom from all vanity, all desire for triumph.
And yet her dominion over the senses was absolute. I
the airy grace of her movements, the sparkling
changes of her face, the smiles which hovered so archly
about her lips. Days passed, and no fly was ever more
hopelessly entangled in a spider's net than I in the
meshes of her golden hair. At first I could see that
Bertha was simply incredulous and astonished. Then
a wild trouble began to darken the clear gray of her
eyes. All this time I loved her. A single tone of
her voice had more power over my highest nature
than all the enchantments of the other, and yet I could
not break away from the fatal spell which bound me.
My senses were intoxicated—steeped in delirium by
the Circe. Can you comprehend the enigma? Its
solution involves the history of many a man's marriage
besides my own.
Just at the right time Miss Ireton brought a new
competitor into the field. In a young law-student then
visiting in the place I found a rival. Nellie was a
good tactician. She played us off against each other
most adroitly, until we were both inspired with all a
gamester's eagerness to win. Bertha had now withdrawn
herself from my society almost wholly. Indeed,
I seldom visited her; but when I did I only saw
her in the presence of her mother. Every evening I
passed at Dr. Greene's. At last, in one fatal hour, I
found Miss Ireton alone. I proposed and was accepted.
So far had my madness lasted; but when I heard her
faltering “Yes,” when her head sank with fully as
much triumph as tenderness upon my shoulder, when
I would have pressed the kiss of betrothal upon her
lips, a cold shudder ran through all my veins. I closed
my eyes for a moment in the struggle to regain my
as she stood that morning. I saw her pale, rapt face,
her eyes dilated with thought, fixed on the mist over
the valley. I heard her inspired voice—
“Some time, even thus, from all proud hearts the
mist will roll goldenly away, and we shall see as we
are seen, and know as we are known.”
Alas! in vain had the mist rolled away from that
proud heart of Bertha Payson, showing me its hidden
treasures. I had rejected the golden fruit of the Hesperides,
lured by the fair-seeming apple of Sodom, and
now I must wait vainly at the closed gates of Eden.
We have but one birth and one death, and the charmed
hour of fate comes but once to life.
My betrothed was speaking; I roused myself to listen.
“I liked you the very first time I saw you, Mr. Osborne,
and I meant to make you like me. You see I
thought it would be more difficult, for Dr. Greene told
me you were half in love with that pale, proud Bertha
Payson, and I meant to see if I couldn't make you
fancy me in spite of all.”
“You succeeded only too well, little charmer.”
There was a mournful truth in my answer, which
her light heart did not penetrate. I do think Nellie
loved me, or, as she said, liked me, as well as she was
capable of liking. Her freely-expressed preference
was fully sincere. I should have a true wife, as the
world reckons truth; and yet, in God's sight, I should
be unmarried still. We two could never be made one.
I made haste to announce my engagement. I hurried
the preparations for my nuptials. I felt that my
only safety would lie in leaving Ryefield as soon as
was over, and the young law-student had subsided into
the quiet friend of my affianced, I could not conceal
from myself that I had set the seal to my own mad
folly, and condemned myself to an eternal yet unavailing
despair. I carefully avoided any opportunity
of seeing Bertha. I would not have dared to trust
myself in her presence.
It was the day before my bridal. So far had I traversed
my path of thorns. I rose early and went out
of doors. One more walk I would have to the hill
where the knowledge of Bertha's love had come to
me—down whose slopes I had been borne with her
hand in mine. It was September, but it had been a
cool, damp summer, and the verdure along the hill-side
was still fresh as in June. I climbed it rapidly.
When I was within a few rods of the summit I looked
up. A tall, slight figure was clearly defined against
the sky. Should I go on? Dared I meet Bertha
then and there? I answered these questions to myself
by climbing on silently and quickly. I could not
help it.
In five minutes I stood at Bertha's side. She had
not heard my approach. Proud woman as she was,
she had not been too proud to weep. The tears glittered
heavily on her long lashes. She made no vain
attempt to conceal them. She met my glance steadfastly.
“Bertha,” I said, in a choking voice, “I did not
think to find you here.”
“Or I you,” she answered. “See, the mist lies as
heavily over the valley as when we stood here last.
How little the scene is changed!”
“And how much every thing else is!” I interrupted
her, wildly. “Bertha, it may be madness, but I
must speak. I love you better than my own soul. I
always did love you, but never with such passion,
such despair, as now. Is it too late? Must it be too
late?”
She looked at me a moment in wonder, in sorrow.
Her dark, searching eyes questioned me. Then her
lip curled.
“Would you be twice a traitor, Frank Osborne?”
“No,” I answered, impetuously. “I would but return
to my only true allegiance. Nellie's pride would
be wounded, but her heart would not suffer much.
And you, oh! Bertha, you did love me—you do love
me. Do not wreck your own life and mine.”
“Frank,” she said, quietly, yet earnestly, “this is
worse than folly—it is sin. To-morrow you will be
the husband of another. What right have you to
speak to me of love? True, I did love you once, but
that dream is past. If you were free to-day I could
not trust my happiness to your keeping. Forget me,
or think of me only as a kind, well-wishing friend.”
“Is there no hope, Bertha?”
“None.”
But I could not so give her up. The hour had
come I had dreamed of through my long convalescence.
I stood with Bertha again upon the hill-top
where I had meant to tell her my love. I must plead
with her a little longer. Scarcely knowing what I
said, I assailed her with wild prayers. I poured out
my very soul at her feet. But she only looked at me
with her dark, wistful eyes, and returned the same
firm, reproachful No. At last I was silent. I saw it
great price. I must be contented hereafter with the
glitter of my paste brilliant.
“Well,” I said, humbly and sorrowfully enough,
“I do not deserve you. You are right, Bertha. But
give me your hand once more, as you did that morning.
Friends claim that much.”
She laid her fingers in mine. They did not tremble,
but they were very cold. She said, with a deep,
pathetic earnestness,
“God bless you, Frank Osborne! I, who know
you so well, believe that you are sincere in the words
you have spoken to me this morning. But you must
think such thoughts no longer. Happiness only
comes to us in the right. Your duty now is to Miss
Ireton. Fulfill it, I conjure you. You have a woman's
happiness in your keeping. You must answer to
God for it. I conjure you to make her future bright.
Trust nothing to her light-heartedness. I tell you no
woman's heart is light enough to bear up under any
want of love from the man for whom she has given up
all things. Do your duty, and you will find comfort
even yet. Good-by.”
She turned away, and once more, as on that other
morning, I watched her light figure tripping down the
hill. Her step was firm. Her heart must have been
strong. She did not once look back. I watched her
till I could see her no longer, and then I turned and
looked moodily over the valley. Already the mist
had parted, and before the sun's fiery eye the valley
lay unshrouded, undisguised, as our souls must stand
some day before His eye at whose word the first sun
rose and the last sun will set. I thought of the solemn
to do. I could lay my burden of sin and punishment
on no other shoulders. It was not Nellie Ireton's
fault that I had turned away from Bertha and asked
her to be my wife. I owed her my life now. She
should have it. I knelt upon the hill-side. I bared
my forehead to the cool breeze of the September
morning. I cried out to Heaven for strength. I think
my prayer was heard.
The next day I was married. We left Ryefield at
once, and for three years I did not return there.
I do believe—thank God for this gleam of comfort
—that I made Nellie happy. In her own way she
was very fond of me. She loved society, mirth, and
fashion. She had them all. I placed no restraint
upon her pleasures, though I seldom accompanied her.
Often she has returned from some gay party late at
night, and found me sitting alone in my study. She
would bound into my lap at such times with her old,
childlike abandon; tell me what a fine time she had
had; who had talked to her, and who complimented
her, and then ask, with a comical air of self-satisfaction,
if I was not proud of such a handsome little wife.
“You know I am handsome, you provoking, teasing,
clever old fellow—now don't you?” was usually
the conclusion to her harangue; and I would always
give her the confirmation she coveted. Thank God,
she never knew how lonely my soul was in those
days—how my heart pined for companionship—how
my spirit panted for a kindred spirit to share its
doubts, its triumphs, its seekings after the Infinite!
Thank God that the lark in the meadow was not gladder
or merrier than she!
She had been my wife more than two years when
she went out, one bitterly cold night, with her fair
neck and arms uncovered, and only an opera cloak
thrown over them, as she drove to a gay party. I had
remonstrated, but she had pleaded to be allowed to
have her own way, and I never could bring myself to
cross her in any thing—I, who could never look at
her without a remorseful consciousness that the heart
which should have been hers only, shrined in secret
the image of another. I strove, by the most lavish indulgence
even to her whims, to make what compensation
I could for the heart devotion I could never give
her, and so this night, as usual, she had her will. She
did, indeed, look lovely with her azure satin dress falling
in such graceful folds about her—the golden curls
just veiling, but not concealing, the snow of her neck,
and her arms gleaming through misty lace. Most men
would have been proud of her; but I had known one
woman whose simple superiority to all outside decorations
so far transcended all the aids of dress and fashion
that I could not triumph in the mere beauty of the
external.
For once the consequences of my indulgence were
disastrous. That night Nellie took a severe cold. In
a few days it settled upon her lungs, and then medical
skill was of no avail. She grew rapidly worse, and
they made her grave beneath the cold, gray sky of
March. Through her illness I had been a patient
nurse. She died with her head on my bosom. With
almost her last breath she told me that I had made
her very happy. When I stood over her grave I
mourned for her sincerely. I would have given much
to call her back to life; nay, I would have been willing—life
her place under the mould, so that she could have
walked forth again in her youth and beauty. And
yet, as weeks passed on, God, who judgeth not as man
judgeth, will forgive me if a secret thrill of joy did
sometimes make my heart-strings quiver when I
thought of the love of my youth and remembered that
I was free.
After a time I went home to Ryefield. I sought
Bertha's society. At first it seemed to me that she
tried to avoid me; but I persevered. I know she must
have felt to the core of her heart the sincerity of my
love. Would she ever again return it?
At last, one night, I asked her to go with me the
next morning to the hill overlooking the valley, where
we had stood together so many times in other days.
She consented.
We went up the hill almost in silence, and when we
reached its summit we still stood silently for a time.
At length I turned to her.
“Bertha, there was a time when, as the morning
mist rolled away from over the valley, the mist rolled
away from your heart, and I saw its hidden treasure,
your love for me. I have sinned since then; but oh!
Bertha, I have suffered. I loved you first, last, always.
With all the might of my soul I love you now. Will
you take me, and weave the broken threads of my life
into brightness at last?”
She looked at me steadfastly and sorrowfully.
“Frank,” she said, with a gentle, pitying aspect, “I
came up here with you because I knew you wanted to
ask me that question. I could see that you were cherishing
hopes about me that I ought not to let you
friend, your warm, tender friend; but the day for any
thing more is past. There was a time when I would
have gone with you to the world's end; but you yourself
made my love a sin. I could not cherish it for
the husband of another. I conquered it, and on earth
it can have no resurrection. By the wild agony of
its death-throes I know that it is dead—dead utterly.
You can never again kindle the life in its cold corpse.
If you wronged me once, I forgive you. If you are
unhappy, I pity you. On earth I can never have a
dearer friend than you, but the flame on my heart's
altar is burned to white ashes. I can never be your
wife.”
I looked in her clear, friendly eyes. An angel's
pity softened their glance, but they were not once cast
down. I could see in them no shadow of hope. I
turned away from their wistful look. I uttered no
more prayers. I only clasped her hand in mine, and
some tears I was not ashamed to shed fell over it.
Then I let her go. Once more she went down the hill
alone, and I was left upon its brow to struggle with
the anguish of my despair. Oh, Bertha, Bertha!
Look out, my friend. From this eastern window,
even now, you can see the mist rolling goldenly away
from the valley of the Quinebaug. Just so, I have
sometimes thought, I shall one day see it roll away
from the valleys of the Upper Country, and, perchance,
the love that was dead, when I would have awakened
it on earth, will have its own resurrection in heaven.
God knows!
| My third book | |