University of Virginia Library

23. XXIII.
REQUIESCAT.

THANK God! it is not within the power
of one man's errors to blight the promise
of a life like that of Hope. It is but a feeble
destiny that is wrecked by passion, when it
should be ennobled. Aunt Jane and Kate
watched Hope closely during her years of
probation, for although she fancied herself to
be keeping her own counsel, yet her career lay
in broad light for them. She was like yonder
sailboat, which floats conspicuous by night
amid the path of moonbeams, and which yet
seems to its own voyagers to be remote and
unseen upon a waste of waves.

Why should I linger over the details of her
life, after the width of ocean lay between her
and Malbone, and a manhood of self-denying
usefulness had begun to show that even he
could learn something by life's retributions?
We know what she was, and it is of secondary
importance where she went or what she did.
Kindle the light of the light-house, and it has

nothing to do, except to shine. There is for
it no wrong direction. There is no need to
ask, “How? Over which especial track of
distant water must my light go forth, to find
the wandering vessel to be guided in?” It
simply shines. Somewhere there is a ship
that needs it, or if not, the light does its duty.
So did Hope.

We must leave her here. Yet I cannot
bear to think of her as passing through earthly
life without tasting its deepest bliss, without
the last pure ecstasy of human love, without
the kisses of her own children on her lips,
their waxen fingers on her bosom.

And yet again, is this life so long? May it
not be better to wait until its little day is done,
and the summer night of old age has yielded
to a new morning, before attaining that acme
of joy? Are there enough successive grades
of bliss for all eternity, if so much be consummated
here? Must all novels end with an
earthly marriage, and nothing be left for
heaven?

Perhaps, for such as Hope, this life is given
to show what happiness might be, and they
await some other sphere for its fulfilment.
The greater part of the human race live out

their mortal years without attaining more than
a far-off glimpse of the very highest joy.
Were this life all, its very happiness were
sadness. If, as I doubt not, there be another
sphere, then that which is unfulfilled in this
must yet find completion, nothing omitted, nothing
denied. And though a thousand oracles
should pronounce this thought an idle dream,
neither Hope nor I would believe them.

It was a radiant morning of last February
when I walked across the low hills to the
scene of the wreck. Leaving the road before
reaching the Fort, I struck across the wild
moss-country, full of boulders and footpaths
and stunted cedars and sullen ponds. I
crossed the height of land, where the ruined
lookout stands like the remains of a Druidical
temple, and then went down toward the ocean.
Banks and ridges of snow lay here and there
among the fields, and the white lines of distant
capes seemed but drifts running seaward. The
ocean was gloriously alive, — the blackest blue,
with white caps on every wave; the shore was
all snowy, and the gulls were flying back and
forth in crowds; you could not tell whether
they were the white waves coming ashore,
or bits of snow going to sea. A single fragment

of ship-timber, black with time and
weeds, and crusty with barnacles, heaved to
and fro in the edge of the surf, and two fishermen's
children, a boy and girl, tilted upon it
as it moved, clung with the semblance of terror
to each other, and played at shipwreck.

The rocks were dark with moisture, steaming
in the sun. Great sheets of ice, white
masks of departing winter, clung to every
projecting cliff, or slid with crash and shiver
into the surge. Icicles dropped their slow
and reverberating tears upon the rock where
Emilia once lay breathless; and it seemed as
if their cold, chaste drops were sent to cleanse
from her memory each scarlet stain, and leave
it virginal and pure.