University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

“I HOPE nothing has gone wrong, Robert? You look
unusually forlorn and doleful.”

Dr. Grey stepped out of his buggy, and accosted
the gardener, who was leaning idly on the gate, holding a trowel
in his hand, and lazily puffing the smoke from his pipe.

“I thank you, sir; with us the world wags on pretty much
the same, but when a man has been planting violets on his
mother's grave he does not feel like whistling and making
merry. Besides, to tell the truth, — which I do not like to
shirk, — I am getting very tired of this dismal, unlucky place.

If I had known as much before I bought it as I do now, all the
locomotives in America could not have dragged me here. I was
a stranger, and of course nobody thought it their special duty to
warn me; so I was bitten badly enough by the agent who sold
me this den of misfortune. Now, when it is too late, there is no
lack of busy tongues to tell me the place is haunted, and has
been for, lo! these many years.”

“Nonsense, Robert! I gave you credit for too much good
sense to listen to the gossip of silly old wives. Put all these
ridiculous tales of ghosts and hobgoblins out of your mind, man,
and do not make me laugh at you, as if you were a child who
had been so frightened by stories of `raw-head and bloody-bones,'
that you were afraid to blow out your candle and creep into
bed.”

“I am neither a fool nor a coward, and I will fight anything
that I can feel has bone and muscle; but I am satisfied that if
all the water in Siloam were poured over this place, it would
not wash out the curse that people tell me has always rested on it
since the time the pirates first located here. I can't admit I
believe in witches, but undoubtedly I do believe in Satan, who
seems to have a fee-simple to the place. It is not enough that
my poor mother is buried yonder, but my wheat and oats took
the rust; the mildew spoiled my grape crop; the rains ruined
my melons; the worms ate up every blade of my grass; the cows
have got the black-tongue; the gale blew down my pigeon-house
and mashed all my squabs; and my splendid carnations and
fuchsias are devoured by red spider. Nothing thrives, and I am
sick at heart.”

The dogged discontent written so legibly on his countenance,
did not encourage the visitor to enter into a discussion of the
abstract causes of blight, gales, and black-tongue, and he merely
answered, —

“The evils you have enumerated are not peculiar to any
locality; and all the farmers in this neighborhood are echoing
your complaints. How is Mrs. Gerome?”

“Neither better nor worse. You know what miserable
weather we have had for a week. This morning she ordered

the small carriage and horses brought to the door, and when I
took the reins, she dismissed me and said she preferred driving
herself. I told her the grays had not been used, and were badly
pampered standing so long in their stalls, and that I was really
afraid they would break her neck, as she was not strong enough
to manage them; but she laughed, and answered that if they
did, it would be the best day's work they had ever accomplished,
and she would give them a chance. Down the beach they went
like a flash, and when she came home their flanks smoked like a
lime-kiln. What is ever to be done with my mistress, I am sure
I don't know. She makes the house so doleful, that nobody
wants to stay here, and only yesterday Katie and Phœbe, the
cook, gave notice that they wished to leave when the month was
out. She has no idea what she will do, or where she will go.
We have wanted a hot-house, and she ordered me to get the
builder's estimate of the cost of two plans which she drew; but
when I carried them to her, she pushed them aside, and said she
would think of the matter, but thought she might leave this
place, and therefore would not need the building. She is as
notionate as a child, and no one but my poor mother could ever
manage her. Hist! sir! Don't you hear her? You may be
sure there is mischief brewing when she sings like that.”

Dr. Grey walked towards the house, and paused on the portico
to listen, —

The voice was not so strong as when he had heard it in Addio
del Passata, but the solemn mournfulness of its cadences was
better suited to the Stabat Mater, and indexed much that no
other method of expression would have reached. After some
moments she forsook Rossini, and began the Agnus Dei from
Haydn's Third Mass, —

Surely she could not render this grand strain if her soul was

in fierce rebellion; and, with strained ears and hushed breath,
Dr. Grey listened to the closing

It was a passionate, wailing prayer, and the only one that ever
crossed her lips, yet his heart throbbed with pleasure, as he
noted the tremor that seemed to shiver her voice into silvery
fragments; and as she ended, he knew that tears were not far
from her eyes.

When he entered the room, she had left the piano, and wheeled
a sofa in front of the grate, where she sat gazing vacantly into
the fiery fretwork of glowing coals.

A copy of Turner's “Liber Studiorum,” superbly bound in
purple velvet, lay on her knee, and into a corner of the sofa
she had tossed a square of canvas almost filled with silken
Parmese violets.

“Good-evening, Mrs. Gerome; I hope I do not interrupt you.”

Dr. Grey removed the embroidery to the table, and seated
himself in the sofa corner.

“Good evening. Interruption argues occupation and absorbed
attention, and the term is not applicable to me. I who
live as vainly, as uselessly, as fruitlessly, as some fakir twirling
his thumbs and staring at his beard, have little right to call
anything an interruption. My existence here is as still, as stagnant,
as some pool down yonder in the sedge which last week's
waves left among the sand hillocks, and your visits are like
pebbles thrown into it, creating transient ripples and circles.”

“You have gone back to the God of your æsthetic idolatry,”
said he, touching the “Liber Studiorum.”

“Yes, because `Beauty pitches her tents before him,' and his
pencil is more potent in conjuring visions that enchant my
wearied mind, than Jemschid's goblet or Iskander's mirror.”

“But why stand afar off, trusting to human and fallible
interpreters, when it is your privilege to draw near and dwell
in the essence of the only real and divine beauty?”

“Better reverence it behind a veil, than suffer like Semele.

I know my needs, and satisfy them fully. Once my heart was as
bare of adoration as Egypt's tawny sands of crystal rain-pools;
but looking into the realm of nature and of art, I chose the
religion of the beautiful, and said to my famished soul, —

“This morbid sentimentality, this sickly gasping system of
æsthetics, soi-disant `Religion of the Beautiful,' is the curse of
the age, — is a vast, universal vampire sucking the life from
humanity. Like other idolatries it may arrogate the name of
`Religion,' but it is simply downright pagan materialism, and
its votaries of the nineteenth century should look back two
thousand years, and renew the Panathenœa. The ancient Greek
worship of æsthetics was a proud and pardonable system, replete
with sublime images; but the idols of your emasculated creed
are yellow-haired women with straight noses, — are purple clouds
and moon-silvered seas, — and physical beauty constitutes their
sole excellence. Lovely landscapes and perfect faces are certainly
entitled to a liberal quota of earnest admiration; but a
religion that contents itself with merely material beauty, differs
in nothing but nomenclature from the pagan worship of Cybele,
Venus, and Astarte.”

A chill smile momentarily brightened Mrs. Gerome's features,
and turning towards her visitor, she answered slowly, —

“Be thankful, sir, that even the worship of beauty lingers in
this world of sin and hate; and instead of defiling and demolishing
its altars, go to work zealously and erect new ones at every
cross-roads. Lessing spoke for me when he said, `Only a
misapprehended religion can remove us from the beautiful, and
it is proof that a religion is true and rightly understood when it
everywhere brings us back to the Beautiful.”

“Pardon me. I accept Lessing's words, but cavil at your
interpretation of them. His reverence for Beauty embraced not
merely physical and material types, but that nobler, grander
beauty which centres in pure ethics and ontology; and a religion

that seeks no higher forms than those of clay, — whether Himalayas
or `Greek Slave,'— whether emerald icebergs, flashing
under polar auroras, or the myosotis that nods there on the
mantel-piece, — a religion that substitutes beauty for duty, and
Nature for Nature's God, is a shameful sham, and a curse to
its devotees. There is a beauty worthy of all adoration, a
beauty far above Antinous, or Gula, or Greek æsthetics, — a
beauty that is not the disjecta membra that modern maudlin
sentimentality has left it, — but that perfect and immortal
`Beauty of Holiness,' that outlives marble and silver, pigment,
stylus, and pagan poems that deify dust.”

He leaned towards her, watching eagerly for some symptom
of interest in the face before him, and bent his head until he
inhaled the fragrance of the violets which clustered on one side
of the coil of hair.

“`Beauty of Holiness.' Show it to me, Dr. Grey. Is it at La
Trappe, or the Hospice of St. Bernard? Where are its temples?
Where are its worshippers? Who is its Hierophant?”

“Jesus Christ.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut out some
painful vision evoked by his words.

“Sir, do you recollect the reply of Laplace, when Napoleon
asked him why there was no mention of God in his `Mécanique
Celeste?' `Sire, je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse.' I
was not sufficiently insane to base my religion of beauty upon a
holiness that was buried in the tomb supplied by Joseph of
Arimathea, — that was long ago hunted out of the world it might
have purified. Once I believed in, and revered what I supposed
was its existence, but I was speedily disenchanted of my faith,
for, —

Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust,
and God knows I would give all my earthly possessions and
hopes for a religion that would insure me your calm resignation
and contentment; but the resurrection of my faith would only
resemble that beautiful floral Palingenesis (asserted by Gaffarel
and Kircher), which was but `the pale spectre of a flower
coming slowly forth from its own ashes,' and speedily dropping
back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the only pleasure
earth can afford me, the contemplation of the beautiful.”

“Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of
beauty will degenerate into the merely sensuous æsthetics, which,
at the present day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated
voluptuaries. The deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated
by Feuerbach and Strauss, is now no longer confined to
realms of abstract speculation; but cultivated sensualism has
sunk so low that popular poets chant the praises of Phryne and
Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to immortalize types
that degrade the taste of all lovers of Art. The true mission
of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or pictures,
is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that the
fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing
of physical loveliness, is rapidly sinking into a worship of the
vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan æsthetics
were purer and nobler than the system, which, under that name,
finds favor with our generation.”

She listened, not assentingly, but without any manifestation
of impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily
upon the yellow beach, where, —

Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed
by her own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of
ascertaining.

“Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?”

“Nothing, since my illness; and perhaps I shall never touch
my brush again. Sometimes I have thought I would paint a
picture of Handel standing up to listen to that sad song from

his own `Samson,' — `Total eclipse, no sun, no moon!' But I
doubt whether I could put on canvas that grand, mournful, blind
face, turned eagerly towards the stage, while tears ran swiftly
from his sightless eyes. Again, I have vague visions of a dead
Schopenhauer, seated in the corner of the sofa, with his pet
poodle, Putz, howling at his master's ghastly white features, —
with his Indian Oupnekhat lying on his rigid knee, and his
gilded statuette of Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the
mantel-piece, welcoming him to Nirwána. There stands my
easel, empty and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle,
not lacking ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor
Maurice de Guerin, who said that his `head was parching; that,
like a tree which had lived its life, he felt as though every
passing wind were blowing through dead branches in his top,' I
feel that my brain is as vigorous and restless as ever, while my
will alone is paralyzed, and my heart withered and cold within
me.”

“Your brush and palette will never yield you any permanent
happiness, nor promote a spirit of contentment, until you select a
different class of subjects. Your themes are all too sombre, too
dismal, and the sole motif that runs through your music and
painting seems to be in memoriam. Open the windows of your
gloomy soul, and let God's sunshine stream into its cold recesses,
and warm and gild and gladden it. Throw aside your morbid
proclivities for the melancholy and abnormal, and paint peaceful
genre pictures, — a group of sunburnt, laughing harvesters, or
merry children, or tulip-beds with butterflies swinging over
them. You need more warmth in your heart, and more light
in your pictures.”

“Eminently correct, — most incontestably true; but how do
you propose to remedy the imperfect chiaro-oscuro of my character?
Show me the market where that light of peace and joy
is bartered, and I will constitute you my broker, with unlimited
orders. No, no. I see the fact as plainly as you do, but I
know better than you how irremediable it is. My soul is a
doleful morgue, and my pictures are dim photographs of its

corpse-tenants. Shut in forever from the sunshine, I dip my
brush in the shadows that surround me, for, like Empedocles,
—

“If you would free yourself from the coils of an intense and
selfish egoism that fetter you to the petty cares and trials of
your individual existence, — if you would endeavor to forget
for a season the woes of Mrs. Gerome, and expend a little more
sympathy on the sorrows of others, — if you would resolve to
lose sight of the caprices that render you so unpopular, and
make some human being happy by your aid and kind words, —
in fine, if, instead of selecting as your model some cynical, half-insane
woman like Lady Hester Stanhope, you chose for imitation
the example of noble Christian usefulness and self-abnegation,
analogous to that of Florence Nightingale, or Mrs. Fry, you
would soon find that your conscience —”

“Enough! You weary me. Dr. Grey, I thoroughly understand
your motives, and honor their purity, but I beg that you
will give yourself no further anxiety on my account. You
can not, from your religious standpoint, avoid regarding me as
worse than a heathen, and have constituted yourself a missionary
to reclaim and consecrate me. I am not quite a cannibal, ready
to devour you, by way of recompense for your charitable efforts
in my behalf, but I must assure you your interest and sympathy
are sadly wasted. Do you remember that celebrated `vase of
Soissons,' which was plundered by rude soldiery in Rheims,
and which Clovis so eagerly coveted at the distribution of the
spoils? A soldier broke it before the king's hungry eyes, and
forced him to take the worthless mocking fragments. Even so
flint-faced fate shattered my happiness, and tauntingly offers me
the ruins; but I will none of it!”

“Trust God's overruling mercy, and those fragments, fused in
the furnace of affliction, may be remoulded and restored to you
in pristine perfection.”

“Impossible! Moreover, I trust nothing but the brevity of

human life, which one day can not fail to release me from an
existence that has proved an almost intolerable burden. You
know Vogt says, `The natural laws are rude, unbending powers,'
and I comfort myself by hoping that they can neither be bribed
nor browbeaten out of the discharge of their duty, which
points to death as `the surest calculation that can be made, —
as the unavoidable keystone of every individual life.' A grim
consolation, you think? True; but all I shall ever receive. Dr.
Grey, in your estimation I am sinfully inert and self-indulgent;
and you conscientiously commend my idle hands to the benevolent
work of knitting socks for indigent ditchers, and making
jackets for pauper children. Now, although it is considered
neither orthodox nor modest to furnish left-hand with a trumpet
for sounding the praises of almsgiving right-hand, still I must
be allowed to assert that I appropriate an ample share of my
fortune for charitable purposes. Perhaps you will tell me that
I do not give in a proper spirit of loving sympathy, — that I hurl
my donations at my conscience, as `a sop to Cerberus.' I have
never injured any one, and if I have no tender love in my heart
to expend on others, it is the fault of that world which taught
me how hollow and deceitful it is. God knows I have never
intentionally wounded any living thing; and if negatively good,
at least my career has no stain of positive evil upon it. I am
one of those concerning whom Richter said, `There are souls
for whom life has no summer. These should enjoy the advantages
of the inhabitants of Spitzbergen, where, through the
winter's day, the stars shine clear as through the winter's night.'
I have neither summer nor polar stars, but I wait for that long
night wherein I shall sleep peacefully.”

“Mrs. Gerome, defiant pride bars your heart from the white-handed
peace that even now seeks entrance. Some great sorrow
or sin has darkened your past, and, instead of ejecting its memory,
you hug it to your soul; you make it a mental Juggernaut,
crushing the hopes and aims that might otherwise brighten the
path along which you drag this murderous idol. Cast it away
forever, and let Peace and Hope clasp hands over its empty
throne.”

From that peculiar far-off expression of the human eye that
generally indicates abstraction of mind, he feared that she had
not heard his earnest appeal; but after some seconds, she smiled
drearily, and repeated with singular and touching pathos, lines
which proved that his words were not lost upon her, —

The mournful sweetness and calmness of her low voice made
Dr. Grey's heart throb fiercely, and he leaned a little farther
forward to study her countenance. She had rested her elbow
on the carved side of the sofa, and now her cheek nestled for
support in one hand, while th eother toyed unconsciously with
the velvet edges of the Liber Studiorum. Her dress was of
some soft, shining fabric, neither satin nor silk, and its pale blue
lustre shed a chill, pure light over the wan, delicate face, that
was white as a bending lily.

The faint yet almost mesmeric fragrance of orange flowers and
violets floated in the folds of her garments, and seemed lurking
in the waves of gray hair that glistened in the bright steady
glow of the red grate; and moved by one of those unaccountable
impulses that sometimes decide a man's destiny, Dr. Grey
took the exquisitely beautiful hand from the book and enclosed
it in both of his.

“Mrs. Gerome, you seem strangely unsuspicious of the real
nature of the interest with which you have inspired me; and I
owe it to you, as well as to myself, to avow the feelings that
prompt me to seek your society so frequently. For some months
after I met you, my professional visits afforded me only rare
and tantalizing glimpses of you, but from the day of Elsie's

death, I have been conscious that my happiness is indissolubly
linked with yours, — that my heart, which never before acknowledged
allegiance to any woman, is —”

“For God's sake, stop! I can not listen to you.”

She had wrung her hand violently from his clinging fingers,
and, springing to her feet, stood waving him from her, while
an expression of horror came swiftly into her eyes and over her
whole countenance.

Dr. Grey rose also, and though a sudden pallor spread from
his lips to his temples, his calm voice did not falter.

“Is it because you can never return my love, that you so
vehemently refuse to hear its avowal? Is it because your own
heart —”

“It is because your love is an insult, and must not be uttered!”

She shivered as if rudely buffeted by some freezing blast, and
the steely glitter leaped up, like the flash of a poniard, in her
large, dilating eyes.

Shocked and perplexed, he looked for a moment at her writhing
features, and put out his hand.

“Can it be possible that you so utterly misapprehend me?
You surely can not doubt the earnestness of an affection which
impels me to offer my hand and heart to you, — the first woman
I have ever loved. Will you refuse —”

“Stand back! Do not touch me! Ah, — God help me!
Take your hand from mine. Are you blind? If you were an
archangel I could not listen to you, for — for — oh, Dr. Grey!”

She covered her face with her hands, and staggered towards a
chair.

A horrible, sickening suspicion made his brain whirl and his
heart stand still. He followed her, and said, pleadingly, —

“Do not keep me in painful suspense. Why is my declaration
of devoted affection so revolting to you? Why can you
not at least permit me to express the love —”

“Because that love dishonors me! Dr. Grey, I — am — a —
wife!”

The words fell slowly from her white lips, as if her heart's
blood were dripping with them, and a deep, purplish spot burned
on each cheek, to attest her utter humiliation.

Dr. Grey gazed at her, with a bewildered, incredulous expression.

“You mean that your heart is buried in your husband's
grave?”

“Oh, if that were true, you and I might be spared this shame
and agony.”

A low wail escaped her, and she hid her face in her arms.

“Mrs. Gerome, is not your husband dead?”

“Dead to me, — but not yet in his grave. The man I married
is still alive.”

She heard a half-stifled groan, and buried her face deeper in
her arms to avoid the sight of the suffering she had caused.

For some time the stillness of death reigned around them, and
when at last the wretched woman raised her eyes, she saw Dr.
Grey standing beside her, with one hand on the back of her chair,
the other clasped over his eyes. Reverently she turned and
pressed her lips to his cold fingers, and he felt her hot tears
falling upon them, as she said, falteringly, —

“Forgive me the pain that I have innocently inflicted on you.
God is my witness, I did not imagine you cared for me. I supposed
you pitied me, and were only interested in saving my
miserable soul. The servants told me you were very soon to be
married to a young girl who lived with your sister; and I never
dreamed that your noble, generous heart felt any interest in me,
save that of genuine Christian compassion for my loneliness and
desolation. If I had suspected your feelings, I would have
gone away immediately, or told you all. Oh, that I had never
come here! — that I had never left my safe retreat, near Funchal!
Then I would not have stabbed the heart of the only man
whom I respect, revere, and trust.”

Some moments elapsed ere he could fully command himself,
and when he spoke he had entirely regained composure.

“Do not reproach yourself. The fault has been mine, rather
than yours. Knowing that some mystery enveloped your early

life, I should not have allowed my affections to centre so completely
in one concerning whose antecedents I knew absolutely
nothing. I have been almost culpably rash and blind, — but I
could not look into your beautiful, sad eyes, and doubt that you
were worthy of the love that sprang up unbidden in my heart.
I knew that you were irreligious, but I believed I could win
you back to Christ; and when I tell you that, after living thirty-eight
years, you are the only woman I ever met whom I wished
to call my wife, you can in some degree realize my confidence in
the innate purity of your character. God only knows how
severely I am punished for my rashness, how profoundly I deplore
the strange infatuation that so utterly blinded me. At
least, I am grateful that my brief madness has not involved you
in sin and additional suffering.”

The burning spots faded from her cheeks as she listened to
his low, solemn words, and when he ended, she clasped her
hands passionately, and exclaimed, —

“Do not judge me, until you know all. I am not as unworthy
as you fear. Do not withdraw your confidence from
me.”

He shook his head, and answered, sadly, —

“A wife, yet bereft of your husband's protection! A wife,
wandering among strangers, and a deserter from the home you
vowed to cheer! Your own admission cries out in judgment
against you.”

He walked to the table and picked up his gloves; and Mrs.
Gerome rose and advanced a few steps.

“Dr. Grey, you will come now and then to see me?”

“No; for the present I do not wish to see you.”

“Ah! how brittle are men's promises! Did you not assure
Elsie that you would never forsake her wretched child?”

“Our painful relations invalidate that promise, — cancel that
pledge. I can not visit you as formerly; still, I shall at all
times be glad to serve you; and you have only to acquaint me
with your wishes to insure their execution.”

“Remember how solitary, how desolate, I am.”

“A wife should be neither, while her husband lives.”

The cold severity of his tone wounded her inexpressibly, and
she haughtily drew herself up.

“Dr. Grey will at least allow me an opportunity of explaining
the circumstances that he seems to regard as so heinous?”

He looked at the proud but quivering mouth, — into the great,
shadowy, gray eyes, and a heavy sigh escaped him.

“Perhaps it is better that I should know your history, for it
will diminish my own unhappiness to feel assured that you are
worthy of the estimate I placed upon you one hour ago. Shall
I come to-morrow, or will you tell me now what you desire me
to know?”

“I can not sleep until I have exonerated myself in your
clear, truthful, holy eyes: I can not endure that you should
think harshly of me, even for a day. This room is suffocating!
I will meet you on the portico; and yonder, by the sea, I will
show you my life.”

She went to the escritoire, opened one of the drawers, and
took out a package. Wrapping a cloak around her, she quitted
the parlor, and found Dr. Grey leaning against one of the
columns.

He did not offer her his arm as formerly, but slowly and
silently they walked down towards the beach, where the surf
was rolling heavily in with a steady roar, and tossing sheets of
foam around the stone piers.