University of Virginia Library

KATE CREDIFORD.

I found myself looking with some interest at the back of a
lady's head. The theatre was crowded, and I had come in late,
and the object of my curiosity, whoever she might be, was listening
very attentively to the play. She did not move. I had time
to build a life-time romance about her before I had seen a feature
of her face. But her ears were small and of an exquisite oval,
and she had that rarest beauty of woman—the hair arched and
joined to the white neck with the same finish as on the temples.
Nature often slights this part of her masterpiece.

The curtain dropped, and I stretched eagerly forward to catch
a glimpse of her profile. But no! she sat next one of the slender
pilasters, and, with her head leaned against it, remained immovable.

I left the box, and with some difficulty made my way into the
crowded pit. Elbowing, apologizing, persevering, I at last
gained a point where I knew I could see my incognita at the
most advantage. I turned—pshaw!—how was it possible I had
not recognized her?

Kate Crediford!

There was no getting out again, for a while at least, without
giving offence to the crowd I had jostled so unceremoniously. I
sat down—vexed—and commenced a desperate study of the
figure of Shakspeare on the drop-curtain.

Of course I had been a lover of Miss Crediford's, or I could
not have turned with indifference from the handsomest woman in
the theatre. She was very beautiful—there was no disputing.
But we love women a little for what we do know of them, and a
great deal more for what we do not. I had love-read Kate Crediford
to the last leaf. We parted as easily as a reader and a
book. Flirtation is a circulating library, in which we seldom ask
twice for the same volume, and I gave up Kate to the next
reader, feeling no property even in the marks I had made in her
perusal. A little quarrel sufficed as an excuse for the closing of
the book, and both of us studiously avoided a reconciliation.

As I sat in the pit, I remembered suddenly a mole on her left
cheek, and I turned toward her with the simple curiosity to know
whether it was visible at that distance. Kate looked sad. She
still leaned immovable against the slight column, and her dark
eyes, it struck me, were moist. Her mouth, with this peculiar
expression upon her countenance, was certainly inexpressibly
sweet—the turned-down corners ending in dimples, which in that
particular place, I have always observed, are like wells of unfathomable
melancholy. Poor Kate! what was the matter with
her?

As I turned back to my dull study of the curtain, a little pettish
with myself for the interest with which I had looked at an
old flame, I detected half a sigh under my white waistcoat; but,
instantly persuading myself that it was a disposition to cough—

coughed—and began to hum “suoni la tromba.” The curtain
rose and the play went on.

It was odd that I never had seen Kate in that humor before.
I did not think she could be sad. Kate Crediford sad! Why,
she was the most volatile, light-hearted, care-for-nothing coquette
that ever held up her fingers to be kissed. I wonder, has any
one really annoyed you, my poor Kate! thought I. Could I, by
chance, be of any service to you—for, after all, I owe you something!
I looked at her again.

Strange that I had ever looked at that face without emotion!
The vigils of an ever-wakeful, ever-passionate, yet ever-tearful
and melancholy spirit, seemed set, and kept under those heavy
and motionless eyelids. And she, as I saw her now, was the very
model and semblance of the character that I had all my life been
vainly seeking! This was the creature I had sighed for, when
turning away from the too mirthful tenderness of Kate Crediford!
There was something new, or something for the moment mis-written,
in that familiar countenance.

I made my way out of the pit with some difficulty, and returned
to sit near her. After a few minutes, a gentleman in the next
box rose, and left the seat vacant on the other side of the pilaster
against which she leaned. I went around while the orchestra
were playing a loud march, and, without being observed by the
thoughtful beauty, seated myself in the vacant place.

Why did my eyes flush and moisten, as I looked upon the small
white hand lying on the cushioned barrier between us! I
knew every vein of it, like the strings of my own heart. I had
held it spread out in my own, and followed its delicate blue traceries
with a rose-stem, for hours and hours, while imploring, and
reproaching, and reasoning over love's lights and shadows. I

knew the feel of every one of those exquisite fingers—those
rolled up rose-leaves, with nails like pieces cut from the lip of a
shell! Oh, the promises I had kissed into oaths on that little
chef-d'œuvre of nature's tinted alabaster! the psalms and sermons
I had sat out, holding it, in her father's pew! the many a
moon I had tired out of the sky, making of it a bridge for our
hearts passing backward and forward! And how could that little
wretch of a hand, that knew me better than its own other hand
(for we had been more together), lie there, so unconscious of my
presence? How could she—Kate Crediford—sit next to me as
she was doing, with only a stuffed partition between us, and her
head leaning on one side of a pilaster, and mine on the other,
and never start, nor recognize, nor be at all aware of my neighborhood?
She was not playing a part, it was easy to see. Oh,
I knew those little relaxed fingers too well! Sadness, indolent
and luxurious sadness, was expressed in her countenance, and her
abstraction was unfeigned and contemplative. Could she have
so utterly forgotten me—magnetically that is to say?—Could the
atmosphere about her, that would once have trembled betrayingly
at my approach, like the fanning of an angel's invisible
wing, have lost the sense of my presence

I tried to magnetize her hand. I fixed my eyes on that little
open palm, and with all the intensity I could summon, kissed it
mentally in its rosy centre. I reproached the ungrateful little
thing for its dulness and forgetfulness, and brought to bear upon
it a focus of old memories of pressures and caresses, to which a
stone would scarce have the heart to be insensible

But I belie myself in writing this with a smile. I watched those
unmoving fingers with a heart-ache. I could not see the face,
nor read the thought, of the woman who had once loved me, and

who sat near me, now, so unconsciously—but, if a memory had
stirred, if a pulse had quickened its beat, those finely-strung
fingers, I well knew, would have trembled responsively. Had she
forgotten me altogether? Is that possible? Can a woman close
the leaves of her heart over a once-loved and deeply-written
name, like the waves over a vessel's track—like the air over the
division of a bird's flight?

I had intended to speak presently to Miss Crediford, but every
moment the restraint became greater. I felt no more privileged
to speak to her than the stranger who had left the seat I occupied.
I drew back, for fear of encroaching on her room, or disturbing
the folds of her shawl. I dared not speak to her. And,
while I was arguing the matter to myself, the party who were
with her, apparently tired of the play, arose and left the theatre,
Kate following last, but unspoken to, and unconscious altogether
of having been near any one whom she knew.

I went home and wrote to her all night, for there was no sleeping
till I had given vent to this new fever at my heart. And, in
the morning I took the leading thoughts from my heap of incoherent
scribblings, and embodied them more coolly in a letter:—

“You will think, when you look at the signature, that this is
to be the old story. And you will be as much mistaken as you
are in believing that I was ever your lover, till a few hours ago.
I have declared love to you, it is true. I have been happy with
you, and wretched without you; I have thought of you, dreamed
of you, haunted you, sworn to you, and devoted to you all and
more than you exacted, of time and outward service and adoration;
but I love you now for the first time in my life. Shall I

be so happy as to make you comprehend this startling contradiction?

“There are many chambers in the heart, Kate; and the spirits
of some of us dwell, most fondly and secretly, in the chamber of
tears—avowedly, however, in the outer and ever-open chamber
of mirth. Over the sacred threshold, guarded by sadness, much
that we select and smile upon, and follow with adulation in the
common walks of life, never passes. We admire the gay. They
make our melancholy sweeter by contrast, when we retire within
ourselves. We pursue them. We take them to our hearts—to
the outer vestibules of our hearts—and, if they are gay only, they
are content with the unconsecrated tribute which we pay them
there. But the chamber within is, meantime, lonely. It aches
with its desolation. The echo of the mirthful admiration, without,
jars upon its mournful silence. It longs for love, but love toned
with its own sadness—love that can penetrate deeper than smiles
ever came—love that, having once entered, can be locked in with
its key of melancholy, and brooded over with the long dream of a
life-time. But that deep-hidden and unseen chamber of the
heart may be long untenanted. And, meantime, the spirit becomes
weary of mirth, and impatiently quenches the fire even
upon its outer altar, and, in the complete loneliness of a heart
that has no inmate or idol, gay or tearful, lives mechanically on.

“Do you guess at my meaning, Kate?—Do you remember the
merriment of our first meeting? Do you remember in what a frolie
of thoughtlessness you first permitted me to raise to my lips those
restless fingers? Do you remember the mock condescension, the
merry haughtiness, the rallying and feigned incredulity, with
which you first received my successive steps of vowing and love-making—the
arch look when it was begun, the laugh when it was

over, the untiring follies we kept up, after vows plighted, and the
future planned and sworn to? That you were in earnest, as
much as you were capable of being, I fully believe. You would
not else have been so prodigal of the sweet bestowings of a
maiden's tenderness. But how often have I left you, with the
feeling, that, in the hours I had passed with you, my spirit had
been alone! How often have I wondered if there were depths in
my heart, which love can never reach!—how often mourned that,
in the procession of love, there was no place allotted for its
sweetest and dearest followers—tears and silence! Oh, Kate!
sweet as was that sun-gleam of early passion, I did not love you!
I tired of your smiles, waiting in vain for your sadness. I left
you, and thought of you no more?

“And now—(and you will be surprised to know that I have
been so near to you unperceived)—I have drank an intoxication
from one glance into your eyes, which throws open to you every
door of my heart, subdues to your control every nerve and feeling
of my existence. Last night, I sat an hour, tracing again the
transparent and well-remembered veins upon your hand, and oh!
how the language written in those branching and mystic lines had
changed in meaning and power.—You were sad. I saw you from
a distance, and, with amazement at an expression upon your face
which I had never before seen. I came and sat near you. It
was the look I had longed for when I knew you, and when tired of
your mirth. It was the look I had searched the world for, combined
with such beauty as yours. It was a look of tender and
passionate melancholy, which revealed to me an unsuspected
chamber in your heart—a chamber of tears. Ah, why were you
never sad before? Why have we lost—why have I lost the
eternity's worth of sweet hours, when you loved me with that concealed

treasure in your bosom?—Alas! that angels must walk the
world, unrecognised, till too late! Alas, that I have held in my
arms, and pressed to my lips, and loosed again with trifling and
weariness, the creature whom it was my life's errand, the
thirst and passionate longing of my nature, to find and worship!

“Oh, Heaven! with what new value do I now number over
your adorable graces of person! How spiritualized is every
familiar feature, once so deplorably misappreciated!—How compulsive
of respectful adoration is that flexible waist, that step of
aerial lightness, that swan-like motion, which I once dared to
praise, triflingly and half-mockingly, like the tints of a flower or
the chance beauty of a bird! And those bright lips! How did
I ever look on them, and not know, that, within their rosy portal,
slept, voiceless for a while, the controlling spell of my destiny—
the tearful spirit followed and called in my dreams, with perpetual
longing? Strange value given to features and outward loveliness
by qualities within? Strange witchery of sadness in a
woman! Oh, there is, in mirth and folly, dear Kate, no air for
love's breathing—still less of food for constancy, or of holiness to
consecrate and heighten beauty of person.

“What can I say else, except implore to be permitted to approach
you—to offer my life to you—to begin, thus late, after
being known so long, the worship which till death is your due?
Pardon me if I have written abruptly and wildly. I shall await
your answer in an agony of expectation. I do not willingly
breathe till I see you—till I weep at your feet over my blindness
and forgetfulness. Adieu! but let it not be for long, I pray
you!”

I despatched this letter, and it would be difficult to embody in

language the agony I suffered in waiting for a reply. I walked
my room, that endless morning, with a death-pang in every step—
so fearful was I—so prophetically fearful—that I had forfeited for
ever the heart I had once flung from me.

It was noon when a letter arrived. It was in a hand-writing
new to me. But it was on the subject which possessed my existence,
and it was of final import. It follows:—

But I never called on Mrs. Samuel Smithers