University of Virginia Library

6. VI.
“SOME LOVER'S CLEAR DAY.”

“HOPE!” said Philip Malbone, as they
sailed together in a little boat the
next morning, “I have come back to you from
months of bewildered dreaming. I have been
wandering, — no matter where. I need you.
You cannot tell how much I need you.”

“I can estimate it,” she answered, gently,
“by my need of you.”

“Not at all,” said Philip, gazing in her
trustful face. “Any one whom you loved
would adore you, could he be by your side.
You need nothing. It is I who need you.”

“Why?” she asked, simply.

“Because,” he said, “I am capable of behaving
very much like a fool. Hope, I am
not worthy of you; why do you love me?
why do you trust me?”

“I do not know how I learned to love you,”
said Hope. “It is a blessing that was given
to me. But I learned to trust you in your
mother's sick-room.”

“Ay,” said Philip, sadly, “there, at least, I
did my full duty.”

“As few would have done it,” said Hope,
firmly, — “very few. Such prolonged self-sacrifice
must strengthen a man for life.”

“Not always,” said Philip, uneasily. “Too
much of that sort of thing may hurt one, I
fancy, as well as too little. He may come to
imagine that the balance of virtue is in his
favor, and that he may grant himself a little
indulgence to make up for lost time. That
sort of recoil is a little dangerous, as I sometimes
feel, do you know?”

“And you show it,” said Hope, ardently,
“by fresh sacrifices! How much trouble you
have taken about Emilia! Some time, when
you are willing, you shall tell me all about it.
You always seemed to me a magician, but
I did not think that even you could restore
her to sense and wisdom so soon.”

Malbone was just then very busy putting
the boat about; but when he had it on the
other tack, he said, “How do you like her?”

“Philip,” said Hope, her eyes filling with
tears, “I wonder if you have the slightest conception
how my heart is fixed on that child.
She has always been a sort of dream to me,

and the difficulty of getting any letters from
her has only added to the excitement. Now
that she is here, my whole heart yearns
toward her. Yet, when I look into her eyes,
a sort of blank hopelessness comes over me.
They seem like the eyes of some untamable
creature whose language I shall never learn.
Philip, you are older and wiser than I, and
have shown already that you understand her.
Tell me what I can do to make her love me?”

“Tell me how any one could help it?” said
Malbone, looking fondly on the sweet, pleading
face before him.

“I am beginning to fear that it can be
helped,” she said. Her thoughts were still
with Emilia.

“Perhaps it can,” said Phil, “if you sit so
far away from people. Here we are alone on
the bay. Come and sit by me, Hope.”

She had been sitting amidships, but she
came aft at once, and nestled by him as he sat
holding the tiller. She put her face against
his knee, like a tired child, and shut her eyes;
her hair was lifted by the summer breeze; a
scent of roses came from her; the mere contact
of anything so fresh and pure was a delight.
He put his arm around her, and all the

first ardor of passion came back to him again;
he remembered how he had longed to win
this Diana, and how thoroughly she was won.

“It is you who do me good,” said she. “O
Philip, sail as slowly as you can.” But he
only sailed farther, instead of more slowly,
gliding in and out among the rocky islands
in the light north wind, which, for a wonder,
lasted all that day, — dappling the bare hills
of the Isle of Shadows with a shifting beauty.
The tide was in and brimming, the fishing-boats
were busy, white gulls soared and clattered
round them, and heavy cormorants
flapped away as they neared the rocks. Beneath
the boat the soft multitudinous jelly-fishes
waved their fringed pendants, or glittered
with tremulous gold along their pink,
translucent sides. Long lines and streaks of
paler blue lay smoothly along the enamelled
surface, the low, amethystine hills lay couched
beyond them, and little clouds stretched themselves
in lazy length above the beautiful expanse.
They reached the ruined fort at last,
and Philip, surrendering Hope to others, was
himself besieged by a joyous group.

As you stand upon the crumbling parapet
of old Fort Louis, you feel yourself poised

in middle air; the sea-birds soar and swoop
around you, the white surf lashes the rocks far
below, the white vessels come and go, the water
is around you on all sides but one, and spreads
in pale blue beauty up the lovely bay, or, in
deeper tints, southward towards the horizon
line. I know of no ruin in American which
nature has so resumed; it seems a part of the
living rock; you cannot imagine it away.

It is a single round, low tower, shaped like
the tomb of Cæcilia Metella. But its stately
position makes it rank with the vast sisterhood
of wave-washed strongholds; it might be King
Arthur's Cornish Tyntagel; it might be “the
teocallis tower” of Tuloom. As you gaze
down from its height, all things that float
upon the ocean seem equalized. Look at the
crowded life on yonder frigate, coming in full-sailed
before the steady sea-breeze. To furl
that heavy canvas, a hundred men cluster
like bees upon the yards, yet to us upon
this height it is all but a plaything for the
eyes, and we turn with equal interest from
that thronged floating citadel to some lonely
boy in his skiff.

Yonder there sail to the ocean, beating
wearily to windward, a few slow vessels. Inward

come jubilant white schooners, wing-and-wing.
There are fishing-smacks towing their
boats behind them like a family of children;
and there are slender yachts that bear only
their own light burden. Once from this height
I saw the whole yacht squadron round Point
Judith, and glide in like a flock of land-bound
sea-birds; and above them, yet more snowy
and with softer curves, pressed onward the
white squadrons of the sky.

Within, the tower is full of débris, now disintegrated
into one solid mass, and covered
with vegetation. You can lie on the blossoming
clover, where the bees hum and the crickets
chirp around you, and can look through
the arch which frames its own fair picture.
In the foreground lies the steep slope overgrown
with bayberry and gay with thistle
blooms; then the little winding cove with its
bordering cliffs; and the rough pastures with
their grazing sheep beyond. Or, ascending
the parapet, you can look across the bay to the
men making hay picturesquely on far-off lawns,
or to the cannon on the outer works of Fort
Adams, looking like vast black insects that
have crawled forth to die.

Here our young people spent the day; some

sketched, some played croquet, some bathed
in rocky inlets where the kingfisher screamed
above them, some rowed to little craggy isles
for wild roses, some fished, and then were
taught by the boatmen to cook their fish in
novel island ways. The morning grew more
and more cloudless, and then in the afternoon
a fog came and went again, marching by with
its white armies, soon met and annihilated by
a rainbow.

The conversation that day was very gay and
incoherent, — little fragments of all manner of
things; science, sentiment, everything: “Like
a distracted dictionary,” Kate said. At last
this lively maiden got Philip away from the
rest, and began to cross-question him.

“Tell me,” she said, “about Emilia's Swiss
lover. She shuddered when she spoke of him.
Was he so very bad?”

“Not at all,” was the answer. “You had
false impressions of him. He was a handsome,
manly fellow, a little over-sentimental. He had
travelled, and had been a merchant's clerk
in Paris and London. Then he came back,
and became a boatman on the lake, some said,
for love of her.”

“Did she love him?”

“Passionately, as she thought.”

“Did he love her much?”

“I suppose so.”

“Then why did she stop loving him?”

“She does not hate him?”

“No,” said Kate, “that is what surprises me.
Lovers hate, or those who have been lovers.
She is only indifferent. Philip, she had wound
silk upon a torn piece of his carte-de-visite,
and did not know it till I showed it to her.
Even then she did not care.”

“Such is woman!” said Philip.

“Nonsense,” said Kate. “She had seen
somebody whom she loved better, and she still
loves that somebody. Who was it? She had
not been introduced into society. Were there
any superior men among her teachers? She
is just the girl to fall in love with her teacher,
at least in Europe, where they are the only
men one sees.”

“There were some very superior men among
them,” said Philip. “Professor Schirmer has
a European reputation; he wears blue spectacles
and a maroon wig.”

“Do not talk so,” said Kate. “I tell you,
Emilia is not changeable, like you, sir. She is
passionate and constant. She would have

married that man or died for him. You may
think that your sage counsels restrained her,
but they did not; it was that she loved some
one else. Tell me honestly. Do you not
know that there is somebody in Europe whom
she loves to distraction?”

“I do not know it,” said Philip.

“Of course you do not know it,” returned
the questioner. “Do you not think it?”

“I have no reason to believe it.”

“That has nothing to do with it,” said Kate.
“Things that we believe without any reason
have a great deal more weight with us. Do
you not believe it?”

“No,” said Philip, point-blank.

“It is very strange,” mused Kate. “Of
course you do not know much about it. She
may have misled you, but I am sure that
neither you nor any one else could have cured
her of a passion, especially an unreasonable
one, without putting another in its place. If
you did it without that, you are a magician, as
Hope once called you. Philip, I am afraid of
you.”

“There we sympathize,” said Phil. “I am
sometimes afraid of myself, but I discover within
half an hour what a very commonplace and
harmless person I am.”

Meantime Emilia found herself beside her
sister, who was sketching. After watching
Hope for a time in silence, she began to question
her.

“Tell me what you have been doing in all
these years,” she said.

“O, I have been at school,” said Hope.
“First I went through the High School; then
I stayed out of school a year, and studied
Greek and German with my uncle, and music
with my aunt, who plays uncommonly well.
Then I persuaded them to let me go to the
Normal School for two years, and learn to be
a teacher.”

“A teacher!” said Emilia, with surprise. “Is
it necessary that you should be a teacher?”

“Very necessary,” replied Hope. “I must
have something to do, you know, after I leave
school.”

“To do?” said the other. “Cannot you go
to parties?”

“Not all the time,” said her sister.

“Well,” said Emilia, “in the mean time you
can go to drive, or make calls, or stay at home
and make pretty little things to wear, as other
girls do.”

“I can find time for that too; little sister,

when I need them. But I love children, you
know, and I like to teach interesting studies.
I have splendid health, and I enjoy it all. I
like it as you love dancing, my child, only I like
dancing too, so I have a greater variety of enjoyments.”

“But shall you not sometimes find it very
hard?” said Emilia.

“That is why I shall like it,” was the answer.

“What a girl you are!” exclaimed the
younger sister. “You know everything and
can do everything.”

“A very short everything,” interposed Hope.

“Kate says,” continued Emilia, “that you
speak French as well as I do, and I dare say
you dance a great deal better; and those are
the only things I know.”

“If we both had French partners, dear,” replied
the elder maiden, “they would soon find
the difference in both respects. My dancing
came by nature, I believe, and I learned French
as a child, by talking with my old uncle, who
was half a Parisian. I believe I have a good
accent, but I have so little practice that I have
no command of the language compared to
yours. In a week or two we can both try our
skill, as there is to be a ball for the officers of

the French corvette yonder,” and Hope pointed
to the heavy spars, the dark canvas, and
the high quarter-deck which made the “Jean
Hoche” seem as if she had floated out of the
days of Nelson.

The calm day waned, the sun drooped to his
setting amid a few golden bars and pencilled
lines of light. Ere they were ready for departure,
the tide had ebbed, and, in getting the
boats to a practicable landing-place, Malbone
was delayed behind the others. As he at
length brought his boat to the rock, Hope sat
upon the ruined fort, far above him, and sang.
Her noble contralto voice echoed among the
cliffs down to the smooth water; the sun went
down behind her, and still she sat stately and
noble, her white dress looking more and more
spirit-like against the golden sky; and still the
song rang on, —

All sacredness and sweetness, all that was pure
and brave and truthful, seemed to rest in her.
And when the song ceased at his summons,
and she came down to meet him, — glowing,
beautiful, appealing, tender, — then all meaner
spells vanished, if such had ever haunted him,
and he was hers alone.

Later that evening, after the household had
separated, Hope went into the empty drawing-room
for a light. Philip, after a moment's
hesitation, followed her, and paused in the
doorway. She stood, a white-robed figure,
holding the lighted candle; behind her rose
the arched alcove, whose quaint cherubs
looked down on her; she seemed to have
stepped forth, the awakened image of a saint.
Looking up, she saw his eager glance; then
she colored, trembled, and put the candle
down. He came to her, took her hand and
kissed it, then put his hand upon her brow and
gazed into her face, then kissed her lips. She
quietly yielded, but her color came and went,
and her lips moved as if to speak. For a moment
he saw her only, thought only of her.

Then, even while he gazed into her eyes, a
flood of other memories surged over him, and
his own eyes grew dim. His head swam, the
lips he had just kissed appeared to fade away,
and something of darker, richer beauty seemed
to burn through those fair features; he looked
through those gentle eyes into orbs more radiant,

and it was as if a countenance of eager
passion obliterated that fair head, and spoke
with substituted lips, “Behold your love.”
There was a thrill of infinite ecstasy in the
work his imagination did; he gave it rein, then
suddenly drew it in and looked at Hope. Her
touch brought pain for an instant, as she laid
her hand upon him, but he bore it. Then
some influence of calmness came; there swept
by him a flood of earlier, serener memories;
he sat down in the window-seat beside her,
and when she put her face beside his, and her
soft hair touched his cheek, and he inhaled
the rose-odor that always clung round her,
every atom of his manhood stood up to drive
away the intruding presence, and he again
belonged to her alone.

When he went to his chamber that night,
he drew from his pocket a little note in a girlish
hand, which he lighted in the candle, and
put upon the open hearth to burn. With what
a cruel, tinkling rustle the pages flamed and
twisted and opened, as if the fire read them,
and collapsed again as if in agonizing effort
to hold their secret even in death! The
closely folded paper refused to burn, it went
out again and again; while each time Philip

Malbone examined it ere relighting, with a
sort of vague curiosity, to see how much passion
had already vanished out of existence,
and how much yet survived. For each of
these inspections he had to brush aside the
calcined portion of the letter, once so warm
and beautiful with love, but changed to something
that seemed to him a semblance of his
own heart just then, — black, trivial, and
empty.

Then he took from a little folded paper a
long tress of dark silken hair, and, without
trusting himself to kiss it, held it firmly in the
candle. It crisped and sparkled, and sent out
a pungent odor, then turned and writhed between
his fingers, like a living thing in pain.
What part of us has earthly immortality but
our hair? It dies not with death. When all
else of human beauty has decayed beyond
corruption into the more agonizing irrecoverableness
of dust, the hair is still fresh and
beautiful, defying annihilation, and restoring
to the powerless heart the full association
of the living image. These shrinking hairs,
they feared not death, but they seemed to fear
Malbone. Nothing but the hand of man
could destroy what he was destroying; but his
hand shrank not, and it was done.