University of Virginia Library

55. CHAPTER LV.

“Good morning, Ned,” said Morton to his friend Meredith.
He had come to Boston the day before, and had already seen
Meredith more than once.

“Going already? Sit down, man. Why are you in such
a hurry?”

“I shall look in again before night.”

“You are not well. I never thought you could look so
worn and haggard.”

“Try the prison of Ehrenberg for four or five years, and
see how you will look when you get out. It's nothing,
though. A little rest will make all right again.”

“You are not very likely to get it. You are a lion now,
and people will not leave you alone.”

“They shall. I am not in the humor for balls and dinner
parties.”

He went to the house of Mrs. Ashland, whom he had
accompanied homeward from New York.

“Have you the letter for me?”

The letter was that which had come from Europe with the
story of his death. On hearing Mrs. Ashland's account, he
had at once conjectured that this was but another stroke of
Vinal's diplomacy; but he had been careful not to intimate
to his friend the least suspicion against the latter.

The commission of obtaining from Edith the letter in question
was far from an agreeable one; but Mrs. Ashland had
accomplished it, and now placed the paper in Morton's hands.

The signature was not that of Speyer; but at the first
glance, Morton was sure that the small, neat handwriting was
the same with that of the treacherous notes of introduction
given him by Vinal at Paris. As he studied the letter, reading
and re-reading it, his companion, who remembered him
chiefly as a frank, good-humored young man, was startled at
the stern and almost fierce expression which once or twice
came over his features, and seemed to be banished by an
effort. A vague suspicion of some mystery rose in her mind,
but Morton hastened to divert her.

“I hope that Edith will not refuse a visit from me.”

Here, again, Mrs. Ashland promised to mediate for him,
and in the afternoon he received a note from her, saying that
Vinal's wife would see him on the next morning.

At the hour named, he rang at the door, forced his lips
to inquire for “Mrs. Vinal,” gave his name to the servant,
and was shown into the drawing room.

It was nearly five years since he had last seen that well-remembered
room. Nothing was changed. It remained
precisely as he had known it when he stood prosperously on
the farther verge of that dreary chasm of time; and as each

familiar object met his eye, such a flood of bitter recollection
came upon him, that for a moment he bent his head upon his
breast.

He raised it, and started as he did so. Reflected in the
mirror at the end of the room, as if the art of some new Cornelius
had evoked it, stood, pale as marble, the form that had
so long attended his sleeping and waking dreams. Morton
turned quickly, and saw Edith standing motionless in the
doorway.

He advanced towards her, and took her hand in both his
own. She raised her eyes to his face in silence. He tried to
speak, but tried in vain. At length he found utterance.

“I know it all. Ellen Ashland has told me every thing.
I do not blame you; — no one can blame you.”

“Thank God that you think so.”

“Yes, thank God; for when I thought that you had
forgotten me —”

“Then you did think so?”

“For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy
were left on earth; as if it had been sapped and
undermined in its very citadel.”

“Do not believe that I forgot you for a single hour; or
that I can ever forget you. You and I have been joined at
least in an equal sorrow and suspense. We have walked
through depths together, and drank the same gall and
bitterness.”

“That one month — four miserable weeks — should have
worked all this! One month sooner, and this black picture
of our lives would have been bright again as the sunshine.

I could believe that some infernal power had taken the reins
of our fate.”

“Do not say so, nor think so. You have fronted death;
you have braved despair; and now bear this blow victoriously
as you have borne the rest.”

“The crowning blow is the heaviest of all.”

“Look into my heart, — if you could look into it, — and
see on which of us it has fallen with the more sickening and
withering force.”

Morton looked into her face. It was like a deep lake
becalmed, into which strong springs are boiling up from rocks
at the bottom. The surface is still; but looking more closely,
one may discern faint gliding undulations and trembling lines,
which betray the turmoil below. Morton saw them, and felt
their purport.

“I would to God,” he said, “I could bear your burden
for you.”

Edith buried her face, and burst into a flood of weeping.

Grief, mixed with more ardent emotion, wrought with such
violence in Morton's breast, that he scarcely restrained his
impulse to throw himself at her feet. In a few moments, she
raised her head.

“Do not think from this, that I am not resigned to what
has fallen on us. It is best. Incomprehensible as it is, it is
best for us both.”

A passionate denial rose to Morton's lips; but he did not
utter it.

“I overrated my strength. I am weaker than I hoped to
have found myself. You wish to bear my burden! You

have had enough to bear of your own, Vassall; but with
you, endurance is not the whole. You still have youth,
health, vigor. To one of your instincts, the world has noble
tasks enough. With a heart steeled by dangers, refined by
sufferings, tempered in fires of anguish, what path need you
fear to tread? Forget the past; — no, do not forget it; only
forget all in it that may damp your courage or weaken your
hand. When I knew you first, you were full of zeal in a
worthy and generous enterprise. Cling to it still. Let me
see the tree which I knew in its blossoming bear a full fruit
at maturity. Let me see the ardent and earnest spirit which
I knew in the beginning, not quelled or flagging by the way,
but holding on its course to the end. The pure chivalry of
your heart which constrained me to love you, the instinct
which turned towards honor and nobleness as a tree turns
its branches to the sun, — do not part from it; keep it
unstained for my sake, and let it brighten and strengthen all
your life.”

“If preachers could speak with your tongue,” exclaimed
Morton, “the world would forget itself and grow virtuous.
The love that I have lost on earth I will set among the stars.
It shall be my beacon till the day I die.”

“We are too delicate and timorous to bear a part in the
active struggles of life; but it is a woman's office to raise
and purify the thoughts of those who do. You, whose strong
natures are formed for warfare, cannot be so sensitive as we
are to every spot that dims the brightness of your armor. It
is easy for me, before one whom I have loved as I have loved
you, to hold this tone, and be borne up for a time above the

thought of grief and renouncement. But it is a different
task to still, through all a lifetime, the longings of a woman's
heart, and the impatient surgings of a woman's temperament.
This is the task assigned me, and I accept it. Life — action
— are before you. Patience is my medicine; the slow talisman
which must open in the end my door of promise.”

Morton pressed her hand to his lips.

“`There is some soul of goodness in things evil.' A sorrow
under which, feebly borne, the mind would wither to the
earth, borne well will lift it above the clouds. Do not believe
that I have deceived any one. He knows on what terms he
takes me. I feel respect, esteem, confidence, warm friendship
for him.”

“May you never be undeceived,” thought Morton to
himself.

“But for any more ardent love, — that, I told him, was
buried in the grave with you.”

She was silent for a moment, and then went on.

“It will not be wise, or right, for us to see each other
often. In time, you will meet some one with whom you can
forget the pain of this separation.”

Morton shook his head.

“Yes — at least I trust you will. But we can never
forget what we have been to each other. Our reality is
melted into a dream, but we must not allow it to remain a
dream. Let it be to us a fountain of high thoughts, whose
streams may water all our lives.”

“You are an alchemist, Edith,” said Morton; “you have
found the secret to change lead and iron into pure gold.

And yet you make me feel, more than ever, if that can be,
what a crown I have lost.”

When Morton left the house, after a half hour's interview,
the agitation with which he had entered it had sunk into
quiet; for an influence had fallen upon him as soothing and
elevating as if he had been listening to the paschal music in
the chapel of the choir at St. Peter's. And as an aeronaut,
tossed among tempestuous clouds, is borne of a sudden above
the turmoil, and floats serene in a calmer sky, so the troubled
mind of Morton felt itself buoyed up for a space above the
tumult of passionate and bitter thought.