University of Virginia Library

The Story of a Man of Business.

TENNYSON.

I DID not wait to hear the messenger conclude his
sentence. Before the last word had died on his
lips I was in the saddle, and, putting the spurs to my
horse, I dashed away. Only one thought was in my
heart, and yet I could not help, even in that mad gallop
over the hills, drinking in, through my senses, my
fill of beauty. White and still lay the moonlight over
the fields on either side. I could see my shadow
stretch, Centaur-like, upon the green sward. Not a
breath of air was stirring: it was one of those rare
nights such as sometimes the late fall gives us—pearls
snatched from the necklace of the summer. Pure, and
white, and silent was the matchless hour; and yet I
was riding on through its stillness toward the home
where the woman lay dying who was to die for me.

Involuntarily I slacked my rein as I approached it.
This was my old habit when Lilias had stood at the
gate to meet me, and I had paused a little to look
upon her exceeding beauty, and heighten, by a moment's
delay, the rapture of her welcome. It was all
a delusion, I know, but I almost thought she stood
there now. Under the lilacs by the gate I saw, or
seemed to see, the gleam of a white robe; to catch the
outlines of a slight, girlish figure; the light of a waiting,
expectant face. But it was not she. Lilias Hunt

would stand there never again. In that upper chamber,
on whose windows the mocking moonlight shone,
I knew well that she lay dying. Never again, in all
time, would those light feet spring to meet me. Never
again should I hear the glad echoes of that voice,
sweeter and merrier than all the birds of the forest, as
she tripped beside me along the steep paths of the
woodland. How could I go in and look upon her
now? I stayed my feet at the very gateway.

Again that curious sense took possession of me by
means of which the mind, utterly absorbed in one
great danger or sorrow, yet takes note of the minutest
particulars of surrounding objects. I saw how peaceful
was the scene; how the old brown farm-house,
battered and stained by the winds and rains of a whole
century of years, looked now, in the white moonlight,
like a sentient thing, weary and gone to sleep. A
faint, sweet scent came from the almost leafless boughs
of the sweet-brier at the door. Along the path leading
up to it from the gate were autumn blossoms—
astors and dahlias; I could even distinguish their
colors.

It might have been five minutes, or five seconds, in
which I saw all this—I can not tell. Suddenly a
voice seemed to say to me,

“Go in there now, you who have killed Lilias!
Go in and look upon her before she dies. Wipe the
death-sweat from her forehead, and ask her to forgive
you, now she is going where the rich and the poor
shall all be alike.”

I turned, but no one was near. There was nothing
round me but the stillness of that beautiful night;
only, far off, from among a clump of fir-trees in a distant

corner of the yard, came again the last words of
the sentence, sighed out like the low refrain of some
tune—sorrowful, yet triumphant:

“Where the rich and the poor shall all be alike.”

My heart gave one strong, tumultuous throb of anguish.
I pushed open the outer door, which was already
ajar, and went in. Her mother met me at the
foot of the stairs—not weeping, but with a pale, speechless
sorrow upon her worn face, more pitiful than any
tears.

“I know the way, Mrs. Hunt; let me go to her
alone.”

She did not speak—she made a motion for me to
proceed. Quick as thought I sped up the stairs, and
stood within the room where Lilias lay. It was lighted
only by the moon-rays. I could see how like herself
it looked—pure and neat, and very, very quiet.
She was all alone. I went up to her and would have
spoken, but something in her face stopped me. A
smile sat upon it of ineffable peace. Her dark hair
fell heavily over the pillows. Her lips were closed,
and one hand lay outstretched upon the coverlet.
Tremblingly I touched it. Oh heaven! how cold it
was. Those fingers that had been wont to thrill at
my lightest touch lay like ice in my clasp. O God!
was I then too late? In all the anguish of that wild
night-ride this worst fear had never once come to me.

No need now to rain repentant tears—to press throbbing
kisses upon that marble brow; and yet the tears
fell, and the kisses—fond enough almost to have awakened
from the long sleep of death her who had so loved
me—were dropped upon her forehead; and yet she
stirred not. Crushed and broken was my lily, drooping

in this world's cold soil; and the great Gardener
had only lifted her up to bloom forever in the fields
of the upper country. It availed me nothing now to
know that she was gone where the world's cold breath
could never again chill her. I would have given more
than my life but to have seen those pale lips unclose
for one moment—but to have heard her voice say just
once, “Harry, I forgive you.”

I loved Lilias Hunt. Standing this moonlight night
—just such a night as that one was, twenty years ago
—standing in memory by that death-bed, I tell you I
loved her as I never loved another—as man seldom
loves woman. And yet my cruelty broke her heart.
God forgive me! I can never forgive myself.

She and I were children together. Both our parents
were poor. We had walked to school through
the flowery lanes, and shared together all our childish
sports. When she grew up to innocent and beautiful
maidenhood, the love of our childhood had strengthened
with our years. I saw in her the ideal woman
who was to crown my life. A creature purer or more
beautiful never walked forth under the light of heaven
than Lilias Hunt, in her glad, innocent youth. I
never asked her to marry me. Bad as I am, I never
could have broken my plighted troth. My parents
had contrived, by severe toil and strict economy, to
assist me in obtaining a very good education, and at
twenty I left home to study law with a distinguished
attorney in a neighboring county. My parting with
Lilias was playful, and yet, in my heart, was the hardest
struggle I had ever undergone. I had resolved
not to tell her my love, and yet it seemed almost impossible
to leave her without. I told her she must

give me a lock of her hair—a keepsake for the memory
of the old school-days. After a little entreaty she
consented, and then she said, in a laughing tone, assumed—as
I knew it was—to conceal deeper feeling,

“And now, Sir Absolute, you shall lose one of your
own brown curls, just by way of retaliation. What a
wound your vanity will get, to be sure, for I shall take
the very prettiest one, and you'll miss it in your morning
devotions before the mirror!”

I submitted laughingly to her illustration of the lex
talionis, and I went away with her tress of hair lying
close to my heart. I have been looking at it to-day.
It is dark, and soft, and shining as ever, though the
white brow round which it used to wave has been still
and pulseless for twenty years under the daisies of the
church-yard.

When I left Mayfield that morning, despite my sorrow,
a lover's hopes lay warm and strong at my heart.
I was young, vigorous, and possessed a fair share of
talent. I was sure to succeed, so Hope whispered. I
would win a name and a position, and then I would
come back to my dove-eyed Lilias. All my struggles
should be ennobled by her memory—should have her
for their reward.

It was no wonder that I made rapid strides. I think
Judge Wentworth was pleased with me. He used to
tell me that my future was certain, if I could but hold
out as I had begun. I have told you that I was poor.
I had neither time nor money to spare for frequent
visits to Mayfield. I had resolved to remain six
months in Windham before going home even for a
day. In the mean time I did not allow myself the
luxury of writing to Lilias. It would not be right, I

thought, until I could ask her to share my life. She
had never said that she loved me; but I had seen her
cheek flush and her soft eye kindle at my coming, and
I knew that I could trust her. I was contented to
wait.

Three months of my absence had passed away, when,
one morning, Judge Wentworth said to me,

“You have heard of my niece, Clara Barton? Mrs.
Wentworth and I have long considered her as an
adopted daughter. She has filled the place of our
own children, whom God saw fit to take away. She
has been absent on a visit ever since you came here;
but this morning we expect her back, and I want you
to join us at tea to-night, and make her acquaintance.
There is very little society here at all suited to her
taste, but you and she will have many things in common.”

I had heard, through other sources, of Judge Wentworth's
orphan niece—of her pride, her wealth, her
beauty. I could hardly expect to be received into her
society on a footing of equality, but I was very curious
to see her. All I had heard of her, however, had
not prepared me for the vision which greeted me when
I entered the judge's parlor.

Among all the women I have ever met I have never
seen Clara Barton's peer. Lilias was quite as beautiful;
but between them was a difference not unlike
that which exists between a wild rose, hanging fair,
and fragrant, and wet with dew upon its parent stem,
and some regal blossom of the tropics, lifting its proud
head in lonely grandeur under the fiery beams of
southern suns, and filling the air with a fragrance subtle,
intoxicating, dangerous. I stood still for a moment

at the door, forgetful of courtesy and propriety,
and looked at her.

She was a woman not much more than twenty, but
her form was full, mature, regal. She was above the
medium height, and yet not exactly tall. She wore a
plain white dress, with no ornaments save a band of
curiously-wrought African gold on each rounded arm,
a bunch of crimson roses upon her bosom, and another
drooping low in her jet-black hair. Her forehead was
low and smooth, with the hair waving away from it,
and gathered, Grecian fashion, in heavy coils at the
back of her neck. Her complexion was a clear, dark
olive, with a rich crimson tint that came and went in
the cheeks. Her mouth was small and proud. Her
face indicated a strong and positive will, and her great
black eyes were full of slumbering fire and power.
Nothing, I repeat, could have been more unlike Lilias.
In cultivating the acquaintance of this haughty beauty
I apprehended no danger to my heart.

She did interest me exceedingly. Her conversation
was brilliant; her thoughts were fresh and original,
and she reserved most of them for me, seldom exerting
herself to talk much with others—a tacit compliment
to which no man's vanity is ever insensible.

The history of the events that followed, in one blind,
dizzy whirl, my first introduction to Clara Barton, is
so incomprehensible, even to myself, that I despair of
ever making it clear to another.

I had not known Miss Barton long before I discovered—how,
I can not to this day tell, for she never descended
for one moment from the pedestal of her own
dignity—that she loved me, and was resolved to be
my wife. I was flattered by her preference, as, I think,

any man would have been; but for a long while every
beat of my heart was faithful to Lilias. I was
daily invited to the judge's on one pretext or another.
Sometimes it was a book I was to bring; a song I was
to practice with Clara; a rare flower I was to examine;
and sometimes I went because it had become my
habit to go, and I was lonely away. After a time I
began to listen to the voice of ambition. I was proud
and poor. Next to love, ambition was the regnant
passion of my nature; for a time it overpowered even
love itself. I had known what poverty was. From
my childhood it had stung me, crushing out warmth
and light from my life. If I married Lilias we must
both suffer its stings together. Our children must
grow up to struggle with it as I had done. No leisure
for the æsthetic part of life; no means to surround
one's self with works of art, choice books, rare pictures.
And in return for these privations what should
I have? A low, soft voice, like Lilias Hunt's own,
spoke in my heart, and answered, “Love;” but the
tones of ambition hushed it into silence. Tauntingly
they said to me,

“You have seen love and poverty in the home of
your childhood. Did love make poverty less grim?
Did it keep your mother's eye bright and her cheek
young? Did it shed a silken lustre over her faded
calico gown? Marry your pale, fair Lilias, if you will,
and see her eyes grow dim with care, her hands grow
coarse, her slender figure bowed and thin; and then
look into those eyes, and try to recall the bright young
Lilias of your love till your tears come at the very
contrast. Or, marry Clara Barton; be Judge Wentworth's
partner and adopted son; be the husband of

a wife, rich not only, but cultivated, graceful, accomplished
— loving you, too, with all the might of her
tropical heart. Leave Lilias in maiden peace. You
do not know that she loves you—you have never asked
her—and by-and-by some other will woo and win
her, one rich enough to set worthily the gem of her
bright young beauty—to make her happier than you
ever could.”

Alas! even then the thought that any other should
ever make the happiness of Lilias Hunt smote my
heart with a sudden, deathly pang. To stifle it I went
out of the house—it was an afternoon in the late summer
— and walked hurriedly toward Judge Wentworth's.
I had no purpose in this visit beyond the
wish to divert my mind from unwelcome thoughts;
and yet it must have been fate or Providence which
led my steps there at that hour. I pushed open the
door without knocking, as was my habit since I had
become such a familiar visitor, and went into the parlor.
Clara Barton was its only occupant. She raised
her head from the arm of the sofa as I went toward
her. She had been weeping. A bright red spot
burned on either cheek, and round, shining tears still
glittered upon her heavy lashes. Her eyes flashed,
and her voice was full of pride and passion.

“I did not want to see you, Mr. Lincoln. You had
no right—you of all others—to come stealing upon me
thus—to surprise me in my weakness.”

Was it I, or some demon voice within me, which
answered her? In that hour my soul fell from its
high estate. I sat down beside her, and put my arm
around her. I said,

“Give me the right—me of all others—Clara, to

share all your sorrows—to shield you from grief, as
far as in me lies, through the whole of our two lives.”

I had crossed the Rubicon. There was no longer
any room for repentance, though I might seek it with
tears and anguish.

Her answer was a burst of weeping. That proud
head sank upon my shoulder—that little hand, flashing
with jewels, was laid in mine—and, almost before
I knew it, I was betrothed to Clara Barton. And yet
never had my love for Lilias surged in my heart more
wildly than in this very moment, when I had raised
up between us an invincible barrier forever! I saw
her then as I had seen her last, standing in the shadow
of the lilacs at the farm-house gate, her tender eyes
sad and misty with the sorrow of parting; her sweet,
pale face uplifted to the summer sky. But she was
my Lilias no longer, even in hope. Forever must roll
between us the inexorable tide of a destiny of my
own creating. Ah! I wonder if Clara Barton felt the
passionate beats of the heart against which her head
was resting, and thought they were for her?

Well, in three months more I was a married man.
I never knew exactly how this happened. I certainly
had not expected it myself. I think it all originated
with Clara, whose influence with the judge was
unbounded. At all events, he sounded me on the
subject, and gave the plan his warmest approbation.
He did not believe in long engagements, he said;
Clara's fortune would be enough for us both; I might
as well be married, and continue my studies afterward.
And so, one warm November day, I walked
up the church aisle with a stately figure, robed in
bridal satin, upon my arm, and went out again—a

husband. I wonder if there was a single hour of
real happiness in the winter which followed? I had
striven to cast the memory of Lilias Hunt out of my
heart, and sometimes, with my wife's head lying upon
my breast, looking into her eyes, toying with her hair,
I cheated myself into believing that I was happy. My
ambition was satisfied; my taste for wealth and splendor
was fully gratified; I was no longer the poor student,
with his uncertain way to work out alone. Rich
and influential friends were around me; power and
fortune were in my grasp; and for these things I had
given up love and Lilias.

I think Clara loved me truly, but it was with a
passion like her nature, self-willed and imperious.
She had little in her character of self-abnegation or
silent fortitude.

I did not carry her to Mayfield until the next spring.
My parents did not rejoice in my good fortune as earnestly
as I had expected. In especial, I could see
something of disappointment in my mother. I think
she had suspected my love for Lilias Hunt, and she
would have far rather seen me married to a gentle
woman, in my own rank in life, than the possessor of
Clara Barton's fortune. Still, she received my wife
lovingly, for my sake; but I could see that my humble
home was a dull place for Clara, and I determined
to cut our visit short.

The day before we left I was driving through the
town in my own luxurious carriage, with my wife beside
me. Going slowly along a well-known road, I
met Lilias Hunt and her father, face to face. They,
too, were riding in their humble, old-fashioned wagon,
and as they slowly drew near, I could see them distinctly.

Oh heaven! that white, white face! Was
that my Lilias? As she saw me she crimsoned to her
very temples, and then turned pale as death. Slowly
I saw her head sink and sink, till she lay, like one
dead, across her trembling old father's knees. I would
have given all the world but to have snatched that
fair head to my bosom—to have covered that pale
brow with my kisses; but I was a slave, as is every
man or woman who sells heart and hand for wealth
and a name. I drove on, and left Lilias Hunt lying
there in her father's arms, without one word.

“Poor thing, I should think she had the consumption!”
said my wife, carelessly, as we passed along.
“Do you know her, Harry?”

I do not think the finest alchemy of even the most
jealous love could have detected any change in my
voice as I answered,

“I used to; her name is Hunt.”

The next day we left Mayfield. Oh, how glad I was
to go back to business—to drown, or strive to drown,
in the great turbulent battle of life, one weak woman's
voice, whose tones must haunt me forever; to bury
myself in study, closing doors and windows, and shut
out the gleam of one pale, still face. And yet there
were hours when memory was omnipotent—when I
looked on my wife's beauty, or listened to her words,
as one in a dream—and my heart kept its sorrowful
tryst beside the lilac-trees with Lilias Hunt. All that
summer I never heard from her, except that once this
brief sentence, in the postscript to one of my mother's
letters, filled my heart with a vague sense of dread:

“Lilias Hunt is very feeble, and they doubt if she
will ever recover.”

It was the late autumn before I again visited Mayfield.
This time my wife did not accompany me. The
old farm-house was never much to her taste, and I was
willing enough to leave her behind.

Almost my first inquiry was for Lilias Hunt. I was
told that for some time she had been considered in a
decline, but, my mother added, she thought her malady
was of the heart rather than the flesh. I had been
home only three days when the messenger came who
told me she was dying. She had heard of my presence
in the village—she wanted to see me.

I have told you of my mad night-ride over the hills,
and how, when I stood by her bedside, it was too late.
I could only kneel beside her, and rain my repentant
tears on eyes that would not open—pour out my agonized
prayers for forgiveness to ears that would never
again listen. And yet sometimes I think that she
heard me, even then, my dead Lilias; that from heaven
she has forgiven me, and is waiting for my coming.
God knows!

When they robed her for the burial, her mother
found, lying upon her innocent heart, a locket, such as
her small means could purchase, containing the curl
she had severed from my head the last time I ever
heard her voice. They left it there.

Twenty years have passed since then. Honor and
fame have come to me. My stately, fashionable wife
has walked or sat by my side. Merry children have
sported round my knee, and grown up to manhood
and womanhood; but Lilias has slept on through the
years very quietly, with willows waving above her
grave, and my hair lying still upon her virgin breast.
Ah! I have sometimes thought they buried my heart
with it.