University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

Shakspeare.

The placid and luxurious autumn faded slowly
away. The minister became more and more fraternal
with his people, and every Sabbath his benedictions
fell more and more lovingly and tenderly
as he glanced down on a congregation that was
becoming one of friends as well as of pupils; and
as he stayed for smiles and kind inquiries and the
expression of affectionate hopes, the bonds of sympathy
and fellowship grew all the while more
strong, and beautiful in their strength.

As the widowed sister wept by the gray stone,
that stood scarcely higher than the whitening grass,
a kind arm was about her, and a soothing voice
told her of the fairer and wider mansions in our
Father's house, till her heart's half-complaining

softened to gratitude, that she had yet a brother's
companionship and affection.

And all these Sabbaths came Hagar, muffled in
black, and wearing the same sad look of resignation—silently
came and went—no bounding in her
step, nor exultation in her smile. Had she crushed
out the human yearning for human love, and within
the cell of perpetual penance, locked herself in
barren seclusion?

At length mid winter came, with cold and terrible
storms, and cheerles solitudes—winter, grand,
gloomy, and stern, with never a smile, never a tear,
no hedgerow flowers with hues beyond all art, no
dancing streams with sweeter music than the flute's,
—winter, made to compel men into affections that
have in them dearer joys than all the fairest gifts
ever brought to castles of indolence by voluptuous
summer—winter, that clothing as with draperies of
death the external world, leads to such cultivation
of the heart, and such development of the interior
life, as gives, in the long years and ages, its sweet
proportion of beauty to our human nature.

It was night. All day the snow had fallen, and
fallen, till the smooth level had hid the graves
about the old church, while above them the limbs
of the trees were weighed heavily down; but at
sunset the blustering winds came sweeping from
their far caverns, and white drifts were heaped, and

the laden boughs shaken bare. As the shadows
deepened, there came out no moon nor star. Nothing
was heard but the moaning of the wind.
Even the owl, close-muffled from the storm, made
no complaint—it was so terrible and desolate a
night. The cock drew his proud head against his
ruffling feathers, and forgot to cry the hour; and
the watch-dog changed his accustomed bay to a
lonesome howl, he was so cold. And so were the
lambs, dimpling the hill-side snow, and bleating
piteously to the winds.

From the cottage of Hagar shone a little pallid
light. Was she alone, and listening to the storm?
The tempest in her bosom was more fierce than the
storm without. With an iron hand she put down
her heart that thrilled to the whisper of love.

“I thought,” she said, speaking very calmly, “I
had enough to endure before; but you, my friend,
have laid upon me the heaviest of all crosses.
Patiently as I may, I must submit to the burden.”

“Then you love me, Hagar; and yet seal my
doom in darkness. Listen for but a moment. You
saw, perhaps, from your window, that a grave was
made to-day in the churchyard—that there were
few to bury the dead, and no mourners. I was
among those who saw the falling of the clods
and the snow on the coffin. I saw the old man
die, and performed the funeral service. He had

never wife nor child, but in his lonesome cabin
lived and ended his life alone; and when I saw the
steady hand of a stranger remove the coarse notched
cloth from the face, that we might see the last
of his mortality, I shuddered and stood back: not
afraid of death, but of such a death. On the livid
and frightful features there was no smile, such as
must have kindled, even in death, beneath the eyes
of love. In the thin white hairs, above the wrinkled
forehead, no soft hand of infancy or maidenhood
had ever bathed itself. The eyes had grown blind,
and the blue lids dropped over them, without
having seen the sunshine that perfected the world;
and the mouth had fallen from roseate fullness, to a
sunken and purple gap, unpressed by affection's
kiss, and it seemed hungry yet.

You can save me, Hagar. When the leaves were
dying I told you I would come now—that we
should meet to part never, or forever. Have you
decided? I wait, till your hands crown me with
leaves dropping perpetual dew, or hang a weight
about my neck to drag me down through all time.”

“God knows how my heart is bleeding,” answered
Hagar. “I am powerless to help you.—
Nothing can save me from the infamy of which you
speak. Long ago I set sharp thorns in my pillow,

and your head could not rest there. I love you—
you know I love you. But I have loved another,
and we are divided.”

Arnold moved impatiently, and spoke almost
coldly, “You have loved—I care not when, nor
whom, so you love not another now. The young
plants are fair enough, but the full harvest is not
gathered in the May. In youth, love is little more
than the sparkle, that may be quickly dried up, or
brushed aside; but in manhood and womanhood,
there is depth in passion, which cannot be previously
conceived of. The young bole uplifts itself
when the storm is past, but the mature tree, if it
fall, must perish.”

“I know it all—I feel it all,” answered Hagar.
“Yet I half exult that a new weight is laid upon
me. I was becoming inured to the old. It were a
small thing to lay down my life in your arms; but
to give up my life's life, to push back the sunrise,
and hug to my bosom the dark—this is what I must
do. If you love me, go, I beseech you, go back
into the sunshine, and—”

The hand she upraised was put softly down, and
kisses prisoned the speaking lips in silence.

That pressure unlocked from its ice the crimson,
and for a moment the hearts of the lovers beat
responsive, and a moment only, for the next Hagar
stood erect and composed. As one might forcibly

shut the fluttering wing of a bird, she had stilled
her heart, and her voice was low and terribly calm,
as she said, “We must part, and forever.”

“Forever! Hagar, forever? At least, tell me
why.” And all the agony of expiring hope was in
the appeal.

She stood silent a moment, and then answered,
“If there be any farther humiliation, any deeper
suffering than I have known, I will meet it. Sit
down, and hear me speak.”

“Not till you have heard me. And, as I annihilate
this distance you placed but now between us,”
he said, embracing her, “I annihilate all obstacles
to our union at once, and forever.”

“It is a beautiful dream,” she answered, “and I
would that it might last.”

“It may last, Hagar; it shall last while we live,
while our souls live.”

“If it could,” she repeated—“but no, it cannot
be. I saw from the first that I could love you,
and I did not avoid the temptation, but Sabbath
after Sabbath fed upon your smile and your
words, and day after day, and night after night
walked in visions by your side, nursing into full
life the love which I meant to battle with and to
baffle. This was to be my crowning triumph.
And would you tempt me,” she continued, reproachfully,
“to sell away the pure fountain of

eternity for the troubled waters of time? But why
need we repeat this sort of conversation? Is not
true love the victor always?”

The time of parting came, and the forever was
changed to never.

“One request, dear love, before I go. Never
dig up the buried past any more, and voluntarily
surrender yourself to torment. You need, my poor
Hagar, the shelter of a great and unfaltering love;
and with something to protect, to lean upon me, I
shall grow stronger as well as you.”

The promise was sadly yielded, and then and
there in her bewildering happiness, Hagar sealed
on the forehead of her lover the betrothal that
might have secured the happiness of both, as far as
felicity may be secured in love.

“One star has broken through a cloud,” Arnold
said, pointing upward. “See how clear and steady
it shines! I accept the omen.”

“There is but one star,” answered Hagar, very
sadly, “and that is among clouds. Alas! there is
no below. joy below. Clouds are ready to sweep
across the stars, and the few flowers grow along a
hard and toilsome way. Is it worth our while to
pause on this little atom of time, and gaze at the
one till it or obscured, or gather the other to wither
in our hands?”

“Life, as you say, is an atom; and time a very

little thing, when measured against eternity. When
we lift up our eyes, and see above us a universe of
worlds, held at their places in the illimitable space,
and moving with accuracy to the will of Omniscience,
our own little planet dwarfs indeed, and all
the lives that men have lived since the creation
shrink within a point on the dial, and we are overwhelmed
with astonishment that God should be
mindful of us. But when we remember that our
lives are sparks from the eternal essence, and themselves
destined to exist forever, this humanity of
ours seems worthy of its declared dignity and
destiny.”

“Our life is great only as a state of probation;
great only as the accidents and burdens and ills
connected with it, bear upon the future. Viewed
in this light, life indeed assumes another aspect.
Let us part now.”

“Not so, Hagar; I feel as if, should I go from
your presence now, the daylight just breaking
would never open any more. I seem on the edge
of a bright world, and I fear to turn away, lest
blank darkness swallow it up. Tell me again that
you love me.”

“I love you, with all the devotion of my nature
I love you,” she replied, but the words seemed to
contain rather a prophecy of sorrow, than an assurance
of hope.

And so, under the wild night, while the wind
tossed hither and thither the snow, and the one
star trembled among the clouds, the lovers parted.

All over the neighborhood there was great rejoicing.
“The minister is going to be married,”
said one to another; and every one seemed to
regard the event as one in some sense needful
to his own happiness.

With strange invocations of rhyme, the moon
was charmed, that her faint light might reveal in
visions the color of the eyes and hair which should
belong to the yet unknown lover.

Many were the gay meetings of rural beaux and
belles, and love-makings, begun in jest, ended in
the “sober certainty of waking bliss.”

Ah me, what merry nights they were, when, in
the great sled, half sunken in straw, and wrapped
in coverlets, the “old folks” ploughed through
drifted snow, and faced the rough wind, to visit
some neighbor a dozen miles away, perhaps. What
merry nights for the young and careless, and especially
when the approaching nuptials led so easily
the discourse into the sweetest of all channels.

Bright from the homestead windows streamed
the light of the log-heap fires, and often the midnight
cock crowed twiced and thrice before the
circle around the hearth was broken.

The old had so many memories to renew, and

the young so many hopes to unfold, while here the
round iron tea-kettle sang of muffins and honey,
materializing and humanizing the most serious fancies,
and saddest recollections of perilous adventures,
warning ghosts, and unhappy death-beds;
and there the shaggy hickory bark sent up a thousand
sparkles, as the laughing girls walked backward
to bake on the fire-shovel the cake mixed
without salt, which must be eaten without a word
to break the spell, as shining and soulful eyes
spoke unutterable things.

How could they hear the striking of the old
clock, sounded it never so loudly, for the joyous
tumult in their hearts; or how see the dial plate,
lifted close to the ceiling though it were, and
shining in the ruddy glow of the hot coals—how
see this, for the smiling faces between?

And so the hours were narrowed into moments,
and the sober work-horses came prankishly trot-ting
and snorting to the door, breaking in upon
the midst of hilarity, and making the children
wonder why their parents had come so early.

New dresses must be made, and new and stylish
fashions introduced, which the careful mother
thought hazardous to be worn in mid-winter. But
the daughter looked so pretty with her plump arms
and shoulders bare, and in her head-dress of roses,
they could not refuse that it should be worn—“just

once,” and half believed, as they said, that pride
would keep the child warm enough.

And the bridal morning came. The garlands
were fresh all about the church, and the happy
pairs filled the pews and aisles, eagerly expectant.
At last there was a movement at the door, and a
step on the threshold. The clergyman was there,
and alone.