 | The amber gods, and other stories |  |
The Amber Gods.
STORY FIRST.
Flower o' the Peach.
WE'VE some splendid old point-lace in our family,
yellow and fragrant, loose-meshed. It
is n't every one has point at all; and of those
who have, it is n't every one can afford to
wear it. I can. Why? O, because it's in character.
Besides, I admire point any way, — it's so becoming.
And then, you see, this amber! Now what is in finer
unison, this old point-lace, all tags and tangle and fibrous
and bewildering, and this amber, to which Heaven knows
how many centuries, maybe, with all their changes,
brought perpetual particles of increase? I like yellow
things, you see.
To begin at the beginning. My name, you 're aware,
is Giorgione Willoughby. Queer name for a girl! Yes;
but before papa sowed his wild-oats, he was one afternoon
in Fiesole, looking over Florence nestled below, when
some whim took him to go into a church there, a quiet
place, full of twilight and one great picture, nobody
within but a girl and her little slave, — the one watching
her mistress, the other saying dreadfully devout prayers
on an amber rosary, and of course she didn't see him, or
on earth he came for, it was so dark and poky, and he
began to feel uncomfortably, — when all of a sudden a
great ray of sunset dashed through the window, and
drowned the place in the splendor of the illumined painting.
Papa adores rich colors; and he might have been
satiated here, except that such things make you want
more. It was a Venus; — no, though, it could n't have
been a Venus in a church, could it? Well, then, a Magdalen,
I guess, or a Madonna, or something. I fancy the
man painted for himself, and christened for others. So,
when I was born, some years afterward, papa, gratefully
remembering this dazzling little vignette of his youth, was
absurd enough to christen me Giorgione. That 's how I
came by my identity; but the folks all call me Yone, — a
baby name.
I 'm a blonde, you know, — none of your silver-washed
things. I would n't give a fico for a girl with flaxen hair;
she might as well be a wax doll, and have her eyes moved
by a wire; besides, they 've no souls. I imagine they
were remnants at our creation, and somehow scrambled
together, and managed to get up a little life among themselves;
but it 's good for nothing, and everybody sees
through the pretence. They 're glass chips, and brittle
shavings, slender pinkish scrids, — no name for them;
but just you say blonde, soft and slow and rolling, — it
brings up a brilliant, golden vitality, all manner of white
and torrid magnificences, and you see me! I 've watched
little bugs — gold rose-chafers — lie steeping in the sun,
till every atom of them must have been searched with the
warm radiance, and have felt that, when they reached
that point, I was just like them, golden all through, — not
dyed, but created. Sunbeams like to follow me, I think.
with the rich tinge, don't I look like the spirit of it just
stepped out for inspection? I seem to myself like the
complete incarnation of light, full, bounteous, overflowing,
and I wonder at and adore anything so beautiful; and
the reflection grows finer and deeper while I gaze, till I
dare not do so any longer. So, without more words,
I 'm a golden blonde. You see me now: not too tall, —
five feet four; not slight, or I could n't have such perfect
roundings, such flexible moulding. Here 's nothing of the
spiny Diana and Pallas, but Clytie or Isis speaks in such
delicious curves. It don't look like flesh and blood, does
it? Can you possibly imagine it will ever change? Oh!
Now see the face, — not small, either; lips with no
particular outline, but melting, and seeming as if they
would stain yours, should you touch them. No matter
about the rest, except the eyes. Do you meet such eyes
often? You would n't open yours so, if you did. Note
their color now, before the ray goes. Yellow hazel?
Not a bit of it! Some folks say topaz, but they 're fools.
Nor sherry. There 's a dark sardine base, but over it
real seas of light, clear light; there is n't any positive
color; and once when I was angry, I caught a glimpse
of them in a mirror, and they were quite white, perfectly
colorless, only luminous. I looked like a fiend, and, you
may be sure, recovered my temper directly, — easiest
thing in the world, when you 've motive enough. You
see the pupil is small, and that gives more expansion and
force to the irids; but sometimes in an evening, when
I 'm too gay, and a true damask settles in the cheek, the
pupil grows larger and crowds out the light, and under
these thick brown lashes, these yellow-hazel eyes of
yours, they are dusky and purple and deep with flashes,
them black. Be sure, I 've never got such eyes for
nothing, any more than this hair. That is Lucrezia Borgian,
spun gold, and ought to take the world in its toils.
I always wear these thick, riotous curls round my temples
and face; but the great braids behind — O, I 'll uncoil
them, before my toilet is over.
Probably you felt all this before, but did n't know the
secret of it. Now, the traits being brought out, you perceive
nothing wanting; the thing is perfect, and you 've
a reason for it. Of course, with such an organization,
I 'm not nervous. Nervous! I should as soon fancy a
dish of cream nervous. I am too rich for anything of the
kind, permeated utterly with a rare golden calm. Girls
always suggest little similitudes to me: there 's that brunette
beauty, — don't you taste mulled wine when you see
her? and thinking of yourself, did you ever feel green
tea? and find me in a crust of wild honey, the expressed
essence of woods and flowers, with its sweet satiety? —
no, that 's too cloying. I 'm a deal more like Mendelssohn's
music, — what I know of it, for I can't distinguish
tunes, — you would n't suspect it, — but full harmonies
delight me as they do a wild beast; and so I 'm like a
certain adagio in B flat that papa likes.
There, now! you 're perfectly shocked to hear me go
on so about myself; but you ought n't to be. It is n't
lawful for any one else, because praise is intrusion; but
if the rose please to open her heart to the moth, what
then? You know, too, I did n't make myself; it 's no
virtue to be so fair. Louise could n't speak so of herself:
first place, because it would n't be true; next place, she
could n't, if it were; and lastly, she made her beauty by
growing a soul in her eyes, I suppose, — what you call
be good. So it 's not vanity. It 's on a far grander scale;
a splendid selfishness, — authorized, too; and papa and
mamma brought me up to worship beauty, — and there 's
the fifth commandment, you know.
Dear me! you think I 'm never coming to the point.
Well, here 's this rosary; — hand me the perfume-case
first, please. Don't you love heavy fragrances, faint with
sweetness, ravishing juices of odor, heliotropes, violets,
water-lilies, — powerful attars and extracts that snatch
your soul off your lips? Could n't you live on rich
scents, if they tried to starve you? I could, or die on
them: I don't know which would be best. There!
there 's the amber rosary! You need n't speak; look
at it!
Bah! is that all you 've got to say? Why, observe
the thing; turn it over; hold it up to the window; count
the beads, — long, oval, like some seaweed bulbs, each an
amulet. See the tint; it 's very old; like clots of sunshine,
— are n't they? Now bring it near; see the carving,
here corrugated, there faceted, now sculptured into
hideous, tiny, heathen gods. You did n't notice that
before! How difficult it must have been, when amber is
so friable! Here 's one with a chessboard on his back,
and all his kings and queens and pawns slung round him.
Here 's another with a torch, a flaming torch, its fire pouring
out inverted. They are grotesque enough; — but
this, this is matchless: such a miniature woman, one hand
grasping the round rock behind, while she looks down
into some gulf, perhaps, beneath, and will let herself fall.
O, you should see her with a magnifying-glass! You
want to think of calm, satisfying death, a mere exhalation,
a voluntary slipping into another element? There it
all here but one; I 've lost one, the knot of all, the love
of the thing. Well! was n't it queer for a Catholic girl
to have at prayer? Don't you wonder where she got it?
Ah! but don't you wonder where I got it? I 'll tell you.
Papa came in, one day, and with great mystery commenced
unrolling, and unrolling, and throwing tissue papers
on the floor, and scraps of colored wool; and Lu and
I ran to him, — Lu stooping on her knees to look up, I
bending over his hands to look down. It was so mysterious!
I began to suspect it was diamonds for me, but
knew I never could wear them, and was dreadfully afraid
that I was going to be tempted, when slowly, bead by
bead, came out this amber necklace. Lu fairly screamed;
as for me, I just drew breath after breath, without a word.
Of course they were for me; — I reached my hands for
them.
“Oh, wait!” said papa. “Yone or Lu?”
“Now how absurd, papa!” I exclaimed. “Such things
for Lu!”
“Why not?” asked Lu, — rather faintly, for she knew
I always carried my point.
“The idea of you in amber, Lu! It 's too foreign; no
sympathy between you!”
“Stop, stop!” said papa. “You sha'n't crowd little Lu
out of them. What do you want them for, Lu?”
“To wear,” quavered Lu, — “like the balls the Roman
ladies carried for coolness.”
“Well, then, you ought to have them. What do you
want them for, Yone?”
“Oh, if Lu 's going to have them, I don't want them.”
“But give a reason, child.”
“Why, to wear, too, — to look at, — to have and to
bright idea struck me, — “to say my prayers on, like the
Florence rosary.” I knew that would finish the thing.
“Like the Florence rosary?” said papa, in a sleepy
voice. “Why, this is the Florence rosary.”
Of course, when we knew that, we were both more
crazy to obtain it.
“Oh, sir,” just fluttered Lu, “where did you get it?”
“I got it; the question is, Who 's to have it?”
“I must and will, potential and imperative,” I exclaimed,
quite on fire. “The nonsense of the thing!
Girls with lucid eyes, like shadowy shallows in quick
brooks, can wear crystallizations. As for me, I can wear
only concretions and growths; emeralds and all their
cousins would be shockingly inharmonious on me; but
you know, Lu, how I use Indian spices, and scarlet and
white berries, and flowers, and little hearts and notions of
beautiful copal that Rose carved for you, — and I can
wear sandal-wood and ebony and pearls, and now this
amber. But you, Lu, you can wear every kind of precious
stone, and you may have Aunt Willoughby's rubies
that she promised me; they are all in tone with you;
but I must have this.”
“I don't think you 're right,” said Louise, rather soberly.
“You strip yourself of great advantages. But
about the rubies, I don't want anything so flaming, so
you may keep them; and I don't care at all about this.
I think, sir, on the whole, they belong to Yone for her
name.”
“So they do,” said papa. “But not to be bought off!
That 's my little Lu!”
And somehow Lu, who had been holding the rosary,
was sitting on papa's knee, as he half knelt on the floor,
a little kid box, and there lay, inside, a star with a thread
of gold for the forehead, circlets for wrist and throat, two
drops, and a ring. O such beauties! You 've never seen
them.
“The other one shall have these. Are n't you sorry,
Yone?” he said.
“Oh no indeed! I 'd much rather have mine, though
these are splendid. What are they?”
“Aqua-marina,” sighed Lu, in an agony of admiration.
“Dear, dear! how did you know?”
Lu blushed, I saw, — but I was too much absorbed with
the jewels to remark it.
“Oh, they are just like that ring on your hand! You
don't want two rings alike,” I said. “Where did you get
that ring, Lu?”
But Lu had no senses for anything beyond the casket.
If you know aqua-marina, you know something that 's
before every other stone in the world. Why, it is as clear
as light, white, limpid, dawn light; sparkles slightly and
seldom; looks like pure drops of water, sea-water, scooped
up and falling down again; just a thought of its parent
beryl-green hovers round the edges; and it grows more
lucent and sweet to the centre, and there you lose yourself
in some dream of vast seas, a glory of unimagined
oceans; and you say that it was crystallized to any slow
flute-like tune, each speck of it floating into file with a
musical grace, and carrying its sound with it. There!
it 's very fanciful, but I 'm always feeling the tune in
aqua-marina, and trying to find it, — but I should n't
know it was a tune, if I did, I suppose. How magnificent
it would be, if every atom of creation sprang up and said
its one word of abracadabra, the secret of its existence,
but what a pow-wow! Then, too, in aqua-marina proper,
the setting is kept out of sight, and you have the unalloyed
stone with its sea-rims and its clearness and steady
sweetness. It was n't the thing for Louise to wear; it
belongs rather to highly nervous, excitable persons; and
Lu is as calm as I, only so different! There is something
more pure and simple about it than about anything
else; others may flash and twinkle, but this just glows
with an unvarying power, is planetary and strong. It
wears the moods of the sea, too: once in a while a warm
amethystine mist suffuses it like a blush; sometimes a
white morning fog breathes over it: you long to get into
the heart of it. That 's the charm of gems, after all!
You feel that they are fashioned through dissimilar processes
from yourself, — that there 's a mystery about them,
mastering which would be like mastering a new life, like
having the freedom of other stars. I give them more
personality than I would a great white spirit. I like
amber that way, because I know how it was made, drinking
the primeval weather, resinously beading each grain
of its rare wood, and dripping with a plash to filter
through and around the fallen cones below. In some
former state I must have been a fly embalmed in amber.
“O Lu!” I said, “this amber 's just the thing for me,
such a great noon creature! And as for you, you shall
wear mamma's Mechlin and that aqua-marina; and you 'll
look like a mer-queen just issuing from the wine-dark
deeps and glittering with shining water-spheres.”
I never let Lu wear the point at all; she 'd be ridiculous
in it, — so flimsy and open and unreserved; that 's
for me; Mechlin, with its whiter, closer, chaster web, suits
her to a T.
I must tell you, first, how this rosary came about. You
know we 've a million of ancestors, and one of them, my
great-grandfather, was a sea-captain, and actually did
bring home cargoes of slaves! But once he fetched to his
wife a little islander, an Asian imp, six years old, and
wilder than the wind. She spoke no word of English,
and was full of short shouts and screeches, like a thing
of the woods. My great-grandmother could n't do a bit
with her; she turned the house topsy-turvy, cut the noses
out of the old portraits, and chewed the jewels out of the
settings, killed the little home animals, spoiled the dinners,
pranced in the garden with Madam Willoughby's
farthingale, and royal stiff brocades rustling yards behind,
— this atom of a shrimp, — or balanced herself with her
heels in the air over the curb of the well, scraped up the
dead leaves under one corner of the house and fired them,
— a favorite occupation, — and if you left her stirring a
mess in the kitchen, you met her, perhaps, perched in the
china-closet and mumbling all manner of demoniacal
prayers, twisting and writhing and screaming over a
string of amber gods that she had brought with her and
always wore. When winter came and the first snow, she
was furious, perfectly mad. One might as well have had
a ball of fire in the house, or chain-lightning; every nice
old custom had been invaded, the ancient quiet broken
into a Bedlam of outlandish sounds, and as Captain Willoughby
was returning, his wife packed the sprite off with
him, — to cut, rip, and tear in New Holland, if she liked,
but not in New England, — and rejoiced herself that she
would find that little brown skin cuddled up in her best
down beds and among her lavendered sheets no more.
She had learned but two words all that time, — Willoughby,
and the name of the town.
You may conjecture what heavenly peace came in
when the Asian went out, but there is no one to tell what
havoc was wrought on board ship; in fact, if there could
have been such a thing as a witch, I should believe that
imp sunk them, for a stray Levantine brig picked her —
still agile as a monkey — from a wreck off the Cape de
Verdes and carried her into Leghorn, where she took —
will you mind, if I say? — leg-bail, and escaped from
durance. What happened on her wanderings I 'm sure is
of no consequence, till one night she turned up outside a
Fiesolan villa, scorched with malaria fevers and shaken
to pieces with tertian and quartan and all the rest of the
agues. So, after having shaken almost to death, she decided
upon getting well; all the effervescence was gone;
she chose to remain with her beads in that family, a mysterious
tame servant, faithful, jealous, indefatigable. But
she never grew; at ninety she was of the height of a
yard-stick, — and nothing could have been finer than to
have a dwarf in those old palaces, you know.
In my great-grandmother's home, however, the tradition
of the Asian sprite with her string of amber gods was
handed down like a legend, and, no one knowing what
had been, they framed many a wild picture of the Thing
enchanting all her spirits from their beads about her, and
calling and singing and whistling up the winds with them
till storm rolled round the ship, and fierce fog and foam
and drowning fell upon her capturers. But they all
believed, that, snatched from the wreck into islands of
Eastern archipelagoes, the vindictive child and her quieted
gods might yet be found. Of course my father knew this,
and when that night in the church he saw the girl saying
such devout prayers on an amber rosary, with a demure
black slave so tiny and so old behind her, it flashed back
had not revealed the great painting, so that he forgot all
about it, and when at last he turned, they were gone.
But my father had come back to America, had sat down
quietly in his elder brother's house, among the hills where
I am to live, and was thought to be a sedate young man
and a good match, till a freak took him that he must go
back and find that girl in Italy. How to do it, with no
clew but an amber rosary? But do it he did, — stationing
himself against a pillar in that identical church and
watching the worshippers, and not having long to wait
before in she came, with little Asian behind. Papa is n't
in the least romantic; he is one of those great fertilizing
temperaments, golden hair and beard, and hazel eyes, if
you will. He 's a splendid old fellow! It 's absurd to
delight in one's father, — so bread-and-buttery, — but I
can't help it. He 's far stronger than I; none of the
little weak Italian traits that streak me, like water in
thick, sirupy wine. No, — he is n't in the least romantic,
but he says he was fated to this step, and could no
more have resisted than his heart could have refused to
beat. When he spoke to the devotee, little Asian made
sundry belligerent demonstrations; but he confronted her
with the two words she had learned here, Willoughby
and the town's name. The dwarf became livid, seemed
always after haunted by a dreadful fear of him, pursued
him with a rancorous hate, but could not hinder his marriage.
— The Willoughbys are a cruel race. — Her only
revenge was to take away the amber beads, which had
long before been blessed by the Pope for her young mistress,
refusing herself to accompany my mother, and declaring
that neither should her charms ever cross the
water, — that all their blessing would be changed to
salt-sea spray again dash round them. But when, in process
of Nature, the Asian died, — having become classic
through her longevity, taking length of days for length of
stature, — then the rosary belonged to mamma's sister,
who by and by sent it, with a parcel of other things, to
papa for me. So I should have had it at all events, you
see; — papa is such a tease! The other things were
mamma's wedding-veil, that point there, which once was
her mother's, and some pearls.
I was born upon the sea, in a calm, far out of sight of
land, under sweltering suns; so, you know, I 'm a cosmopolite,
and have a right to all my fantasies. Not that they
are fantasies, at all; on the contrary, they are parts of
my nature, and I could n't be what I am without them, or
have one and not have all. Some girls go picking and
scraping odds and ends of ideas together, and by the time
they are thirty get quite a bundle of whims and crotchets
on their backs; but they are all at sixes and sevens, uneven
and knotty like fagots, and won't lie compactly, don't
belong to them, and anybody might surprise them out of
them. But for me, you see, mine are harmonious; in my
veins; I was born with them. Not that I was always
what I am now. Oh, bless your heart! plums and nectarines
and luscious things that ripen and develop all their
rare juices, were green once, and so was I. Awkward,
tumble-about, near-sighted, till I was twenty, a real raw-head-and-bloody-bones
to all society; then mamma, who
was never well in our diving-bell atmosphere, was ordered
to the West Indies, and papa said it was what I
needed, and I went, too, —and oh, how sea-sick! Were
you ever? You forget all about who you are, and have a
vague notion of being Universal Disease. I have heard
the islands my sight was as clear as my skin; all that tropical
luxuriance snatched me to itself at once, recognized
me for kith and kin; and mamma died, and I lived. We
had accidents between wind and water, enough to have
made me considerate for others, Lu said; but I don't see
that I 'm any less careful not to have my bones spilt in
the flood than ever I was. Slang? No, — poetry. But
if your nature had such a wild, free tendency as mine, and
then were boxed up with proprieties and civilities from
year's end to year's end, maybe you, too, would escape
now and then in a bit of slang.
We always had a little boy to play with, Lu and I, or
rather Lu, — because, though he never took any dislike
to me, he was absurdly indifferent, while he followed Lu
about with a painful devotion. I did n't know;
and as I grew up and grew awkwarder, I was the plague
of their little lives. If Lu had been my sister instead of
my orphan cousin, as mamma was perpetually holding up
to me, I should have bothered them twenty times more;
but when I got larger and began to be really distasteful
to his fine artistic perception, mamma had the sense to
keep me out of his way; and he was busy at his lessons,
and did n't come so much. But Lu just fitted him then,
from the time he daubed little adoring blotches of her face
on every barn-door and paling, till when his scrap-book
was full of her in all fancies and conceits, and he was old
enough to go away and study Art. Then he came home
occasionally, and always saw us; but I generally contrived,
on such occasions, to do some frightful thing that shocked
every nerve he had, and he avoided me instinctively, as he
would an electric torpedo; but — do you believe? — I
never had an idea of such a fact till, when sailing from
how it must have been. Shortly after I went
away, he visited Europe. I had been at home a year,
and now we heard he had returned; so for two years he
had n't seen me. He had written a great deal to Lu, —
brotherly letters they were, — he is so peculiar, — determining
not to give her the least intimation of what he
felt, if he did feel anything, till he was able to say all.
And now he had earned for himself a certain fame, a
promise of greater; his works sold; and if he pleased, he
could marry. I merely presume this might have been
his thought; he never told me. A certain fame! But
that 's nothing to what he will have. How can he paint
gray, faint, half-alive things now? He must abound in
color, — be rich, exhaustless: wild sea-sketches, — sunrise,
— sunset, — mountain mists rolling in turbid crimson
masses, breaking in a milky spray of vapor round lofty
peaks, and letting out lonely glimpses of a melancholy
moon, — South American splendors, — pomps of fruit and
blossom, — all this affluence of his future life must flash
from his pencils now. Not that he will paint again directly.
Do you suppose it possible that I should be given
him merely for a phase of wealth and light and color, and
then taken, — taken, in some dreadful way, to teach him
the necessary and inevitable result of such extravagant
luxuriance? It makes me shiver.
It was that very noon when papa brought in the
amber, that he came for the first time since his return
from Europe. He had n't met Lu before. I ran, because
I was in my morning wrapper. Don't you see it
there, that cream-colored, undyed silk, with the dear
palms and ferns swimming all over it? And half my hair
was just flung into a little black net that Lu had made
papa. I scampered; but he saw only Lu, and grasped her
hands. Then, of course, I stopped on the baluster to
look. They did n't say anything, only seemed to be
reading up for the two years in each other's eyes; but
Lu dropped her kid box, and as he stooped to pick it up,
he held it, and then took out the ring, looked at her and
smiled, and put it on his finger. The one she had
always worn was no more a mystery. He has such
little hands! they don't seem made for anything but
slender crayons and water-colors, as if oils would weigh
them down with the pigment; but there is a nervy
strength about them that could almost bend an ash.
Papa's breezy voice blew through the room next
minute, welcoming him; and then he told Lu to put up
her jewels, and order luncheon, at which, of course, the
other wanted to see the jewels nearer; and I could n't
stand that, but slipped down and walked right in, lifting
my amber, and saying, “Oh, but this is what you must
look at!”
He turned, somewhat slowly, with such a lovely indifference,
and let his eyes idly drop on me. He did n't
look at the amber at all; he did n't look at me; I seemed
to fill his gaze without any action from him, for he stood
quiet and passive; my voice, too, seemed to wrap him
in a dream, — only an instant though; then I had
reached him.
“You 've not forgotten Yone,” said papa, “who went
persimmon and came apricot?”
“I 've not forgotten Yone,” answered he, as if half
asleep. “But who is this?”
“Who is this?” echoed papa. “Why, this is my
great West Indian magnolia, my Cleopatra in light
colors, my —”
“Hush, you silly man!”
“This is she,” putting his hands on my shoulders, —
“Miss Giorgione Willoughby.”
By this time he had found his manners.
“Miss Giorgione Willoughby,” he said, with a cool
bow, “I never knew you.”
“Very well, sir,” I retorted. “Now you and my
father have settled the question, know my amber!” and
lifting it again, it got caught in that curl.
I have good right to love my hair. What was there to
do, when it snarled in deeper every minute, but for him
to help me? and then, at the friction of our hands, the
beads gave out slightly their pungent smell that breathes
all through the Arabian Nights, you know; and the perfumed
curls were brushing softly over his fingers, and I a
little vexed and flushed as the blind blew back and let in
the sunshine and a roistering wind; — why, it was all a
pretty scene, to be felt then and remembered afterward.
Lu, I believe, saw at that instant how it would be, and
moved away to do as papa had asked; but no thought of
it came to me.
“Well, if you can't clear the tangle,” I said, “you can
see the beads.”
But while with delight he examined their curious fretting,
he yet saw me.
I am used to admiration now, certainly; it is my food;
without it I should die of inanition; but do you suppose I
care any more for those who give it to me than a Chinese
idol does for whoever swings incense before it? Are you
devoted to your butcher and milkman? We desire only
the unpossessed or unattainable, “something afar from the
sphere of our sorrow.” But, though unconsciously, I may
have been piqued by this manner of his. It was new;
and resolved — merely for the sake of conquering, I fancied,
too — to change all that. By and by the beads
dropped out of the curl, as if they had been possessed of
mischief and had held there of themselves. He caught
them.
“Here, Circe,” he said.
That was the time I was so angry; for, at the second,
he meant all it comprehended. He saw, I suppose, for
he added at once, —
“Or what was the name of the Witch of Atlas,
All savage natures did imparadise'?”
I wonder what made me think him mocking me. Frequently
since then he has called me by that word.
“I don't know much about geography,” I said. “Besides,
these did n't come from there. Little Asian — the
imp of my name, you remember — owned them.”
“Ah?” with the utmost apathy; and turning to my
father, “I saw the painting that enslaved you, sir,” he
said.
“Yes, yes,” said papa, gleefully. “And then why
did n't you make me a copy?”
“Why?” Here he glanced round the room, as if he
were n't thinking at all of the matter in hand. “The coloring
is more than one can describe, though faded. But
I don't think you would like it so much now. Moreover,
sir, I cannot make copies.”
I stepped towards them, quite forgetful of my pride.
“Can't?” I exclaimed. “Oh, how splendid! Because
then no other man comes between you and Nature; your
ideal hangs before you, and special glimpses open and
shut on you, glimpses which copyists never obtain.”
“I don't think you are right,” he said, coldly, his hands
loosely crossed behind him, leaning on the corner of the
mantel, and looking unconcernedly out of the window.
Was n't it provoking? I remembered myself, — and remembered,
too, that I never had made a real exertion to
procure anything, and it was n't worth while to begin then;
besides not being my forte, — things must come to me.
Just then Lu re-entered, and one of the servants brought
a tray, and we had lunch. Then our visitor rose to go.
“No, no,” said papa. “Stay the day out with the girls.
It 's May-day, and there are to be fireworks on the other
bank to-night.”
“Fireworks for May-day?”
“Yes, to be sure. Wait and see.”
“It would be so pleasant!” pleaded Lu.
“And a band, I forgot to mention. I have an engagement
myself, so you 'll excuse me; but the girls will do
the honors, and I shall meet you at dinner.”
So it was arranged. Papa went out. I curled up on
a lounge, — for Lu would n't have liked to be left, if I
had liked to leave her, — and soon, when he sat down
by her quite across the room, I half shut my eyes and
pretended to sleep. He began to turn over her work-basket,
taking up her thimble, snipping at the thread
with her scissors: I see now he was n't thinking about
it, and was trying to recover what he considered a proper
state of feeling, but I fancied he was very gentle and
tender, though I could n't hear what they said, and I
never took the trouble to listen in my life. In about
five minutes I was tired of this playing 'possum, and
took my observations.
What is your idea of a Louise? Mine is, — dark
eyes, dark hair, decided features, pale, brown pale, with
striking, but pure and clear, and growing always better.
For him, — he 's not one of those cliff-like men against
whom you are blown as a feather. I don't fancy that
kind; I can stand of myself, rule myself. He is n't small,
though; no, he 's tall enough, but all his frame is delicate,
held to earth by nothing but the cords of a strong
will, — very little body, very much soul. He, too, is
pale, and has dark eyes, with violet darks in them. You
don't call him beautiful in the least, but you don't know
him. I call him beauty itself, and I know him thoroughly.
A stranger might have thought, when I spoke
of those copals Rose carved, that Rose was some girl.
But though he has a feminine sensibility, like Correggio
or Schubert, nobody could call him womanish. “Les
races se féminisent.” Don't you remember Matthew
Roydon's Astrophill?
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face.”
I see him; “one sweet grace fed still with one sweet
mind”; a countenance of another sphere: that 's Vaughan
Rose. It provokes me that I can't paint him myself,
without other folk's words; but you see there 's no natural
image of him in me, and so I can't throw it strongly on
any canvas. As for his manners, you 've seen them; —
now tell me, was there ever anything so winning when
he pleases, and always a most gracious courtesy in his
air, even when saying an insufferably uncivil thing? He
has an art, a science, of putting the unpleasant out of his
sight, ignoring or looking over it, which sometimes gives
him an absent way; and that is because he so delights in
then, and to be shut in on his own inner loveliness; and
many a woman thinks he is perfectly devoted, when,
very like, he is swinging over some lonely Spanish
sierra beneath the stars, or buried in noonday Brazilian
forests, half stifled with the fancied breath of every gorgeous
blossom of the zone. Till this time, it had been
the perfection of form rather than tint that had enthralled
him; he had come home with severe ideas, too severe;
he needed me, you see.
But while looking at him and Lu, on that day, I
did n't perceive half of this, only felt annoyed at their
behavior, and let them feel that I was noticing them.
There 's nothing worse than that; it 's a very upasbreath;
it puts on the brakes; and of course a chill and
a restraint overcame them till Mr. Dudley was announced.
“Dear! dear!” I exclaimed, getting upon my feet.
“What ever shall we do, Lu? I 'm not dressed for
him.” And while I stood, Mr. Dudley came in.
Mr. Dudley did n't seem to mind whether I was
dressed in cobweb or sheet-iron; for he directed his
looks and conversation so much to Lu, that Rose came
and sat on a stool before me and began to talk.
“Miss Willoughby —”
“Yone, please.”
“But you are not Yone.”
“Well, just as you choose. You were going to say —?”
“Merely to ask how you liked the Islands.”
“Oh, well enough.”
“No more?” he said. “They would n't have broken
your spell so, if that had been all. Do you know, I actually
believe in enchantments now?”
I was indignant, but amused in spite of myself.
“Well,” he continued, “why don't you say it? How
impertinent am I? You won't? Why don't you laugh,
then?”
“Dear me!” I replied. “You are so much on the
`subtle-souled-psychologist' line, that there 's no need of
my speaking at all.”
“I can carry on all the dialogue? Then let me say how
you liked the Islands.”
“I shall do no such thing. I liked the West Indies
because there is life there; because the air is a firmament
of balm, and you grow in it like a flower in the sun; because
the fierce heat and panting winds wake and kindle
all latent color and fertilize every germ of delight that
might sleep here forever. That 's why I liked them; and
you knew it just as well before as now.”
“Yes; but I wanted to see if you knew it. So you
think there is life there in that dead Atlantis.”
“Life of the elements, rain, hail, fire, and snow.”
“Snow thrice bolted by the northern blast, I fancy, by
which time it becomes rather misty. Exaggerated snow.”
“Everything there is an exaggeration. Coming here
from England is like stepping out of a fog into an almost
exhausted receiver; but you 've no idea what light is, till
you 've been in those inland hills. You think a blue sky
the perfection of bliss? When you see a white sky, a
dome of colorless crystal, with purple swells of mountain
heaving round you, and a wilderness in golden greens
royally languid below, while stretches of a scarlet blaze,
enough to ruin a weak constitution, flaunt from the rank
vines that lace every thicket, — and the whole world, and
you with it, seems breaking to blossom, — why, then you
know what light is and can do. The very wind there by
wiry music through the loose sprays as if they were tense
harpstrings. Nothing startles; all is like a grand composition
utterly wrought out. What a blessing it is that the
blacks have been imported there, — their swarthiness is in
such consonance!”
“No; the native race was in better consonance. You
are so enthusiastic, it is pity you ever came away.”
“Not at all. I did n't know anything about it till I
came back.”
“But a mere animal or vegetable life is not much.
What was ever done in the tropics?”
“Almost all the world's history, — was n't it?”
“No, indeed; only the first, most trifling, and barbarian
movements.”
“At all events, you are full of blessedness in those
climates, and that is the end and aim of all action; and if
Nature will do it for you, there is no need of your interference.
It is much better to be than to do; — one is
strife, the other is possession.”
“You mean being as the complete attainment? There
is only one Being, then. All the rest of us are —”
“O dear me! that sounds like metaphysics! Don't!”
“So you see, you are not full of blessedness there.”
“You ought to have been born in Abelard's time, —
you 've such a disputatious spirit. That 's I don't know
how many times you have contradicted me to-day.”
“Pardon.”
“I wonder if you are so easy with all women.”
“I don't know many.”
“I shall watch to see if you contradict Lu this way.”
“I don't need. How absorbed she is! Mr. Dudley is
interesting'?”
“I don't know. No. But then, Lu is a good girl,
and he 's her minister, — a Delphic oracle. She thinks
the sun and moon set somewhere round Mr. Dudley.
Oh! I mean to show him my amber!”
And I tossed it into Lu's lap, saying, —
“Show it to Mr. Dudley, Lu, — and ask him if it is n't
divine!”
Of course, he was shocked, and would n't go into ecstasies
at all; tripped on the adjective.
“There are gods enough in it to be divine,” said Rose,
taking it from Lu's hand and bringing it back to me.
“All those very Gnostic deities who assisted at Creation.
You are not afraid that the imprisoned things work their
spells upon you? The oracle declares it suits your cousin
best,” he added, in a lower tone.
“All the oaf knows!” I responded. “I wish you 'd
admire it, Mr. Dudley. Mr. Rose don't like amber, —
handles it like nettles.”
“No,” said Rose, “I don't like amber.”
“He prefers aqua-marina,” I continued. “Lu, produce
yours!” For she had not heard him.
“Yes,” said Mr. Dudley, spacing his syllables and rubbing
his finger over his lip while he gazed, “every one
must prefer aqua-marina.”
“Nonsense! It 's no better than glass. I 'd as soon
wear a set of window-panes. There 's no expression in
it. It is n't alive, like real gems.”
Mr. Dudley stared. Rose laughed.
“What a vindication of amber!” he said.
He was standing now, leaning against the mantel, just
as he was before lunch. Lu looked at him and smiled.
“Yone is exultant, because we both wanted the beads,”
she said. “I like amber as much as she.”
“Nothing near so much, Lu!”
“Why did n't you have them, then?” asked Rose,
quickly.
“Oh, they belonged to Yone; and uncle gave me these,
which I like better. Amber is warm, and smells of the
earth; but this is cool and dewy, and —”
“Smells of heaven?” asked I, significantly.
Mr. Dudley began to fidget, for he saw no chance of
finishing his exposition.
“As I was saying, Miss Louisa,” he began, in a different
key.
I took my beads and wound them round my wrist.
“You have n't as much eye for color as a poppy-bee,”
I exclaimed, in a corresponding key, and looking up at
Rose.
“Unjust. I was thinking then how entirely they suited
you.”
“Thank you. Vastly complimentary from one who
`don't like amber'!”
Nevertheless, you think so.”
“Yes and no. Why don't you like it?”
“You must n't ask me for my reasons. It is not merely
disagreeable, but hateful.”
“And you 've been beside me like a Christian all this
time, and I had it!”
“The perfume is acrid; I associate it with the lower
jaw of St. Basil the Great, styled a present of immense
value, you remember, — being hard, heavy, shining like
gold, the teeth yet in it, and with a smell more delightful
than amber,” — making a mock shudder at the word.
“Oh, it is prejudice, then.”
“Not in the least. It is antipathy. Besides, the thing
is unnatural; there is no existent cause for it. A bit
I know, as often as anywhere.”
“Which means Nazareth. We must teach you, sir,
that there are some things at home as rare as those
abroad.”
“I am taught,” he said, very low, and without looking
up.
“Just tell me what is amber?”
“Fossil gum.”
“Can you say those words and not like it? Don't it
bring to you a magnificent picture of the pristine world,
— great seas and other skies, — a world of accentuated
crises, that sloughed off age after age, and rose fresher
from each plunge? Don't you see, or long to see, that
mysterious magic tree out of whose pores oozed this fine
solidified sunshine? What leaf did it have? what blossom?
what great wind shivered its branches? Was it a
giant on a lonely coast, or thick low growth blistered in
ravines and dells? That 's the witchery of amber, —
that it has no cause, — that all the world grew to produce
it, maybe, — died and gave no other sign, — that its
tree, which must have been beautiful, dropped all its
fruits, — and how bursting with juice must they have
been —”
“Unfortunately, coniferous.”
“Be quiet. Stripped itself of all its lush luxuriance,
and left for a vestige only this little fester of its gashes.”
“No, again,” he once more interrupted. “I have seen
remnants of the wood and bark in a museum.”
“Or has it hidden and compressed all its secret
here?” I continued, obliviously. “What if in some piece
of amber an accidental seed were sealed; we found, and
planted, and brought back the lost æons? What a glorious
so precious!”
“In a picture, yes. Necessary for this. But, my
dear Miss Willoughby, you convince me that the Amber
Witch founded your family,” he said, having listened
with an amused face. “Loveliest amber that ever the
sorrowing sea-birds have wept,” he hummed. “There!
is n't that kind of stuff enough to make a man detest it?”
“Yes.”
“And you are quite as bad in another way.”
“Oh!”
“Just because, when we hold it in our hands, we hold
also that furious epoch where rioted all monsters and
poisons, — where death fecundated and life destroyed, —
where superabundance demanded such existences, no
souls, but fiercest animal fire; — just for that I hate it.”
“Why, then, is it fitted for me?”
He laughed again, but replied: “The hues harmonize;
the substances; you both are accidents; it suits
your beauty.”
So, then, it seemed I had beauty, after all.
“You mean that it harmonizes with me, because I am
a symbol of its period. If there had been women, then,
they would have been like me, — a great creature without
a soul, a —”
“Pray, don't finish the sentence. I can imagine that
there is something rich and voluptuous and sating about
amber, its color, and its lustre, and its scent; but for
others, not for me. Yes, you have beauty, after all,”
turning suddenly, and withering me with his eye, —
“beauty, after all, as you did n't say just now. Why
don't you put some of it into —. Mr. Willoughby is in
the garden. I must go before he comes in, or he 'll
say, No.”
He stopped a minute, and now, without looking, —
indeed, he looked everywhere but at me, while we
talked, — made a bow as if just seating me from a waltz,
and, with his eyes and his smile on Louise all the way
down the room, went out. Did you ever know such
insolence?
Papa made Mr. Dudley stay and dine, and of course we
were almost bored to death, when in came Rose again,
stealing behind Lu's chair, and showering her in the twilight
with a rain of May-flowers.
“Now you 'll have to gather them again,” he said.
“Oh, how exquisite! how delicious! how I thank you!”
she exclaimed, without disturbing one, however.
“You won't touch them again? Then I must,” he
added.
“No, no, Mr. Rose!” I cried. “I 'll pick them up,
and take toll.”
“Don't touch them!” said Lu, “they 're so sweet!”
“Yes,” he murmured lower, “they share with you. I
always said so, you remember.”
“O yes! and every May-day but the last you have
brought them to me.”
“Have you the trailing-arbutus there?” asked Mr.
Dudley.
“No,” returned Rose.
“I thought I detected strawberries,” submitted the other,
— “a pleasant odor which recalls childhood to memory.”
For some noses all sweet scents are lumped in one big
strawberry; clovers, or hyacinths, or every laden air indifferently,
they still sniff — strawberries. Commonplace!
“It 's a sign of high birth to track strawberry-beds
where no fruit is, Mr. Dudley,” said I.
“Very true, Miss Willoughby. I was born pretty high
up in the Green Mountains.”
“And so keep your memory green?”
“Strawberries in June,” said Rose, good-naturedly.
“But fruit out of season is trouble out of reason, the
Dream-Book says. It 's May now, and these are its
blossoms.”
“Everybody makes such a fuss about ground-laurel!”
said I. “I don't see why, I 'm sure. They 're never
perfect. The leaf is hideous, — a stupid duenna! You
get great green leaves, and the flowers all white; you get
deep rosy flowers, and the leaves are all brown and bitten.
They 're neither one thing nor another. They 're
just like heliotropes, — no bloom at all, only scent. I 've
torn up myriads, to the ten stamens in their feathered
case, to find where that smell comes from, — that is perfectly
delicious, — and I never could. They are a cheat.”
“Have you finished your tirade?” asked Rose, indifferently.
“I don't believe you mean so,” murmured Lu. “They
have a color of their own, almost human, infantine; and
when you mass them, the tone is more soft and mellow
than a flute. Everybody loves May-flowers.”
“Just about. I despise flutes. I like bassoons.”
“They are prophets of apple-blossoms.”
“Which brings them at once into the culinary.”
“They are not very showy,” said Mr. Dudley; “but
when we remember the Fathers —”
“There 's nothing like them,” said Rose, gently, as he
knelt by Lu, slowly putting them into order; “nothing
but pure, clear things; they 're the fruit of snow-flakes, the
they come from their warm coverts and look into this
cold, breezy sky so unshrinkingly, and from what a soil
they gather such a wealth of simple beauty, one feels
ashamed.”
“Climax worthy of the useless things!” said I.
“The moment in which first we are thoroughly
ashamed, Miss Willoughby, is the sovereign one of our
life. Useless things? They are worth king and bishop.
Every year, weariness and depression melt away when
atop of the seasons' crucible boil these little bubbles.
Is n't everybody better for lavishing love? And no one
merely likes these; whoever cares at all, loves entirely.
We always take and give resemblances or sympathies
from any close connection, and so these are in their way
a type of their lovers. What virtue is in them to distil
the shadow of the great pines, that wave layer after layer
with a grave rhythm over them, into this delicate tint, I
wonder. They have so decided an individuality, — different
there from hot-house belles; — fashion strips us of
our characteristics —”
“You need n't turn to me for illustration of exotics,”
said I.
He threw me a cluster, half-hidden in its green towers,
and went on, laying one by one and bringing out little
effects.
“The sweetest modesty clings to them, which Alphonse
Karr denies to the violet, so that they are almost out of
place in a drawing-room; one ought to give them there
the shelter of their large, kind leaves.”
“Hemlock 's the only wear,” said Louise.
“Or last year's scarlet blackberry triads. Vines together,”
he suggested.
“But sometimes they forget their nun-like habit,” she
added, “put on a frolicsome mood, and clamber out and
flush all the deep ruts of the carriage-road in Follymill
Woods, you remember.”
“Penance next year,” said I.
“No, no; you are not to bring your old world into
my new,” objected Rose; “they 're fair little Puritans,
who do no penance. Perhaps they ran out so to greet
the winter-worn mariners of Plymouth, and have been
pursued by the love of their descendants ever since,
they getting charier. Just remember how they grow.
Why, you 'd never suspect a flower there, till, happening
to turn up a leaf, you 're in the midst of harvest. You
may tramp acres in vain, and within a stone's throw
they 've been awaiting you. There 's something very
charming, too, about them in this, — that when the buds
are set, and at last a single blossom starts the trail, you
plucking at one end of the vine, your heart's delight
may touch the other a hundred miles away. Spring's
telegraph. So they bind our coast with this network
of flower and root.”
“By no means,” I asserted. “They grow in spots.”
“Pshaw! I won't believe it. They 're everywhere
just the same, only underground preparing their little
witnesses, whom they send out where most needed.
You don't suppose they find much joy in the fellowship
of brown pine pins and sad gray mosses, do you?
Some folks say they don't grow away from the shore;
but I 've found them, I 'm sorry to say, up in New Hampshire.”
“Why sorry?” asked Lu.
“Oh, I like it best that they need our sea. They 're
eminently choice for this hour, too, when you scarcely
wish to become a flower, — but their fragrance is an
atmosphere all about you. How genuinely spicy it is!
It 's the very quintessence of those regions all whose
sweetness exudes in sun-saturated balsams, — the very
breath of pine woods and salt sea winds. How could
it live away from the sea?”
“Why, sir,” said Mr. Dudley, “you speak as if it were
a creature!”
“A hard woody stem, a green robust leaf, a delicate
odorous flower, Mr. Dudley, what is it all but an expression
of New England character?”
“Doxology!” said I.
“Now, Miss Louise, as you have made me atone for
my freedom, the task being done, let me present them
in form.”
“I 'm sure she need n't praise them,” said I.
She did n't.
“I declared people make a great fuss over them,” I
continued. “And you prove it. You put me in mind
of a sound to be heard where one gets them, — a strange
sound, like low, distant thunder, and it 's nothing but the
drum of a little partridge! a great song out of nothing.
— Bless me! what 's that?”
“Oh, the fireworks!” said Lu. And we all thronged
to the windows.
“It 's very good of your uncle to have them,” said Rose.
“What a crowd from the town! Think of the pyrotechnics
among comets and aerolites some fellows may have! It 's
quite right, too, to make our festivals with light; it 's
the highest and last of all things; we never can carry our
imaginations beyond light —”
“Our imaginations ought to carry us,” said Lu.
“Come,” I said, “you can play what pranks you please
with the little May; but light is my province, my absorption;
let it alone.”
It grew quite dark, interrupted now and then by the
glare of rockets; but at last a stream of central fire went
out in a slow rain of countless violets, reflected with pale
blue flashes in the river below, and then the gloom was
unbroken. I saw them, in that long dim gleam, standing
together at a window. Louise, her figure almost swaying
as if to some inaudible music, but her face turned to him
with such a steady quiet. Ah me! what a tremulous
joy, what passion, and what search, lit those eyes! But
you know that passion means suffering, and, tracing it in
the original through its roots, you come to pathos, and
still farther, to lamentation, I 've heard. But he was not
looking down at her, only out and away, paler than ever
in the blue light, sad and resolved. I ordered candles.
“Sing to me, Louise,” said Rose, at length. “It is two
years since I heard you.”
“Sing `What 's a' the steer, kimmer,'” I said. But instead,
she gave the little ballad, “And bring my love again,
for he lies among the Moors.”
Rose went and leaned over the piano-forte while she
sang, bending, and commanding her eyes. He seemed to
wish to put himself where he was before he ever left her,
to awaken everything lovely in her, to bring her before
him as utterly developed as she might be, — not only to
afford her, but to force upon her, every chance to master
him. He seemed to wish to love, I thought.
“Thank you,” he said, as she ceased. “Did you choose
it purposely, Louise?”
Lu sang very nicely, and, though I dare say she would
rather not then, when Mr. Dudley asked for the “Vale of
gave them just as kindly. Altogether, quite a damp programme.
Then papa came in, bright and blithe, whirled
me round in a pas de deux, and we all very gay and hilarious
slipped into the second of May.
Dear me! how time goes! I must hurry. — After that,
I did n't see so much of Rose; but he met Lu everywhere,
came in when I was out, and, if I returned, he went, perfectly
regardless of my existence, it seemed. They rode,
too, all round the country; and she sat to him, though he
never filled out the sketch. For weeks he was devoted;
but I fancied, when I saw them, that there lingered in his
manner the same thing as on the first evening while she
sang to him. Lu was so gay and sweet and happy that I
hardly knew her; she was always very gentle, but such a
decided body, — that 's the Willoughby, her mother. Yet
during these weeks Rose had not spoken, not formally;
delicate and friendly kindness was all Lu could have
found, had she sought. One night, I remember, he came
in and wanted us to go out and row with him on the river.
Lu would n't go without me.
“Will you come?” said he, coolly, as if I were merely
necessary as a thwart or thole-pin might have been, turning
and letting his eyes fall on me an instant, then snatching
them off with a sparkle and flush, and such a lordly
carelessness of manner otherwise.
“Certainly not,” I replied.
So they remained, and Lu began to open a bundle of
Border Ballads, which he had brought her. The very
first one was “Whistle an' I 'll come to you, my lad.” I
laughed. She glanced up quickly, then held it in her
hands a moment, repeated the name, and asked if he
liked it.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “There could n't be a Scotch song
without that rhythm better than melody, which, after all,
is Beethoven's secret.”
“Perhaps,” said Louise. “But I shall not sing
this.”
“Oh, do!” he said, turning with surprise. “You don't
know what an aerial, whistling little thing it is!”
“No.”
“Why, Louise! There is nobody could sing it but
you.”
“Of good discourse, an excellent musician, and her
hair shall be of what color it please God,” quoted I, and
in came Mr. Dudley, as he usually did when not wanted;
though I 've no reason to find fault with him, notwithstanding
his blank treatment of me. He never took any
notice, because he was in love with Lu. Rose never took
any notice of me, either. But with a difference!
Lu was singularly condescending to Mr. Dudley that
evening; and Rose, sitting aside, looked so very much
disturbed — whether pleasantly or otherwise did n't occur
to me — that I could n't help enjoying his discomfiture,
and watching him through it.
Now, though I told you I was n't nervous, I never
should know I had this luxurious calm, if there were
nothing to measure it by; and once in a great while a
perfect whirlpool seizes me, — my blood is all in turmoil,
— I bubble with silent laughter, or cry with all my
heart. I had been in such a strange state a good while;
and now, as I surveyed Rose, it gradually grew fiercer,
till I actually sprang to my feet, and exclaimed, “There!
it is insupportable! I 've been in the magnetic storm long
enough! it is time something took it from me!” and ran
out-doors.
Rose sauntered after, by and by, as if unwillingly drawn
by a loadstone, and found the heavens wrapped in a rosy
flame of Northern Lights. He looked as though he
belonged to them, so pale and elf-like was his face then,
like one bewitched.
“Papa's fireworks fade before mine,” I said. “Now
we can live in the woods, as Lu has been wishing; for a
dry southerly wind follows this, with a blue smoke filming
all the distant fields. Won't it be delicious?”
“Or rain,” he replied; “I think it will rain to-morrow,
— warm, full rains.” And he seemed as if such a
chance would dissolve him entirely.
As for me, those shifting, silent sheets of splendor abstracted
all that was alien, and left me in my normal state.
“There they come!” I said, as Lu and Mr. Dudley,
and some others who had entered in my absence, — gnats
dancing in the beam, — stepped down towards us. “How
charming for us all to sit out here!”
“How annoying, you mean,” he replied, simply for
contradiction.
“It has n't been warm enough before,” I added.
“And Louise may take cold now,” he said, as if wishing
to exhibit his care for her. “Whom is she speaking
with? Blarsaye? And who comes after?”
“Parti. A delightful person, — been abroad, too.
You and he can have a crack about Louvres and Vaticans
now, and leave Lu and Mr. Dudley to me.”
Rose suddenly inspected me and then Parti, as if he
preferred the crack to be with cudgels; but in a second
the little blaze vanished, and he only stripped a weigelia
branch of every blossom.
I wonder what made Lu behave so that night; she
scarcely spoke to Rose, appeared entirely unconcerned
all grace to the others and sweetness to Mr. Dudley.
And Rose, oblivious of snubs, paraded his devotion,
seemed determined to show his love for Lu, — as if any
one cared a straw, — and took the pains to be positively
rude to me. He was possessed of an odd restlessness; a
little defiance bristled his movements, an air of contrariness;
and whenever he became quiet, he seemed again
like one enchanted and folded up in a dream, to break
whose spell he was about to abandon efforts. He told
me Life had destroyed my enchantment; — I wonder
what will destroy his. — Lu refused to sit in the garden-chair
he offered, — just suffered the wreath of pink bells
he gave her to hang in her hand, and by and by fall, —
and when the north grew ruddier and swept the zenith
with lances of light, and when it faded, and a dim cloud
hazed all the stars, preserved the same equanimity,
kept on the evil tenor of her way, and bade every one
an impartial farewell at separating. She is preciously
well-bred.
We had n't remained in the garden all that time,
though, — but, strolling through the gate and over the
field, had reached a small grove that fringes the gully
worn by Wild Fall and crossed by the railway. As we
emerged from that, talking gayly, and our voices almost
drowned by the dash of the little waterfall and the echo
from the opposite rock, I sprang across the curving
track, thinking them behind, and at the same instant a
thunderous roar burst all about, a torrent of hot air
whizzed and eddied over me, I fell dizzied and stunned,
and the night express-train shot by like a burning arrow.
Of course I was dreadfully hurt by my fall and fright, —
I feel the shock now, — the blow, the stroke, — but they
like so many petrifactions: Rose, just as he had caught
Louise back on firmer ground when she was about to
follow me, his arm wound swiftly round her waist, yet
his head thrust forward eagerly, his pale face and glowing
eyes bent, not on her, but me. Still he never stirred,
and poor Mr. Dudley first came to my assistance. We
all drew breath at our escape, and, a little slowly, on my
account, turned homeward.
“You are not bruised, Miss Willoughby?” asked
Blarsaye, wakened.
“Dear Yone!” Lu said, leaving Mr. Dudley's arm,
“you 're so very pale! It 's not pain, is it?”
“I am not conscious of any. Why should I be injured,
any more than you?”
“Do you know,” said Rose, sotto voce, turning and
bending merely his head to me, “I thought I heard you
scream, and that you were dead.”
“And what then?”
“Nothing, but that you were lying dead and torn, and
I should see you,” he said, — and said as if he liked to
say it, experiencing a kind of savage delight at his
ability to say it.
“A pity to have disappointed you!” I answered.
“I saw it coming before you leaped,” he added, as a
malignant finality, and drawing nearer. “You were
both on the brink. I called, but probably neither you
nor Lu heard me. So I snatched her back.”
Now I had been next him then.
“Jove's balance,” I said, taking Parti's arm.
He turned instantly to Lu, and kept by her during
the remainder of the walk, Mr. Dudley being at the
other side. I was puzzled a little by Lu, as I have
so much. Papa met us in the field, and there the affair
must be detailed to him, and then he would have us celebrate
our safety in Champagne.
“Good by, Louise,” said Rose, beside her at the gate,
and offering his hand, somewhat later. “I 'm going
away to-morrow, if it 's fine.”
“Going?” with involuntary surprise.
“To camp out in Maine.”
“Oh, — I hope you will enjoy it.”
“Would you stay long, Louise?”
“If the sketching-grounds are good.”
“When I come back, you 'll sing my songs? Shake
hands.”
She just laid a cold touch on his.
“Louise, are you offended with me?”
She looked up with so much simplicity. “Offended,
Rose, with you?”
“Not offended, but frozen,” I could have said. Lu is
like that little sensitive-plant, shrinking into herself with
stiff unconsciousness at a certain touch. But I don't
think he noticed the sad tone in her voice, as she said
good night; I did n't, till, the others being gone, I saw
her turn after his disappearing figure, with a look that
would have been despairing, but for its supplication.
The only thing Lu ever said to me about this was, —
“Don't you think Rose a little altered, Yone, since he
came home?”
“Altered?”
“I have noticed it ever since you showed him your
beads, that day.”
“Oh! it 's the amber,” I said. “They are amulets, and
have bound him in a thrall. You must wear them, and
dissolve the charm. He 's in a dream.”
“What is it to be in a dream?” she asked.
“To lose thought of past or future.”
She repeated my words, — “Yes, he 's in a dream,”
she said musingly.
Rose did n't come near us for a fortnight; but he had
not camped at all, as he said. It was the first stone
thrown into Lu's life, and I never saw any one keep the
ripples under so; but her suspicions were aroused. Finally
he came in again, all as before, and I thought things
might have been different, if in that fortnight Mr. Dudley
had not been so assiduous; and now, to the latter's happiness,
there were several ragged children and infirm old
women in whom, Lu having taken them in charge, he
chose to be especially interested. Lu always was housekeeper,
both because it had fallen to her while mamma
and I were away, and because she had an administrative
faculty equal to General Jackson's; and Rose, who had
frequently gone about with her, inspecting jellies and cordials
and adding up her accounts, now unexpectedly
found Mr. Dudley so near his former place that he disdained
to resume it himself; — not entirely, because the
man of course could n't be as familiar as an old playmate;
but just enough to put Rose aside. He never would
compete with any one; and Lu did not know how to
repulse the other.
If the amulets had ravished Rose from himself, they
did it at a distance, for I had not worn them since that
day. — You need n't look. Thales imagined amber had a
spirit; and Pliny says it is a counter-charm for sorceries.
There are a great many mysterious things in the world.
Are n't there any hidden relations between us and certain
substances? Will you tell me something impossible? —
songs, and all was going finely again, when we gave our
midsummer party.
Everybody was there, of course, and we had enrapturing
music. Louise wore — no matter — something of twilight
purple, and begged for the amber, since it was too
much for my toilette, — a double India muslin, whose
snowy sheen scintillated with festoons of gorgeous green
beetles' wings flaming like fiery emeralds. A family
dress, my dear, and worn by my aunt before me, — only
that individual must have been frightened out of her wits
by it. A cruel, savage dress, very like, but ineffably
gorgeous. So I wore her aqua-marina, though the other
would have been better; and when I sailed in, with all
the airy folds in a hoar-frost mistiness fluttering round me
and the glitter of Lu's jewels, —
“Why!” said Rose, “you look like the moon in a halo.”
But Lu disliked a hostess out-dressing her guests.
It was dull enough till quite late, and then I stepped
out with Mr. Parti, and walked up and down a garden-path.
Others were outside as well, and the last time I
passed a little arbor I caught a yellow gleam of amber.
Lu, of course. Who was with her? A gentleman, bending
low to catch her words, holding her hand in an irresistible
pressure. Not Rose, for he was flitting in beyond.
Mr. Dudley. And I saw then that Lu's kindness was too
great to allow her to repel him angrily; her gentle conscience
let her wound no one. Had Rose seen the pantomime?
Without doubt. He had been seeking her, and
he found her, he thought, in Mr. Dudley's arms. After
a while we went in, and, finding all smooth enough, I
slipped through the balcony-window and hung over the
balustrade, glad to be alone a moment. The wind, blowing
music came richly muffled through the heavy curtains,
and I wished to breathe balm and calm. The moon,
round and full, was just rising, making the gloom below
more sweet. A full moon is poison to some; they shut
it out at every crevice, and do not suffer a ray to cross
them; it has a chemical or magnetic effect; it sickens
them. But I am never more free and royal than when
the subtile celerity of its magic combinations, whatever
they are, is at work. Never had I known the mere joy
of being, so intimately as to-night. The river slept soft
and mystic below the woods, the sky was full of light, the
air ripe with summer. Out of the yellow honeysuckles
that climbed around, clouds of delicious fragrance stole
and swathed me; long wafts of faint harmony gently
thrilled me. Dewy and dark and uncertain was all beyond.
I, possessed with a joyousness so deep through its
contented languor as to counterfeit serenity, forgot all my
wealth of nature, my pomp of beauty, abandoned myself
to the hour.
A strain of melancholy dance-music pierced the air and
fell. I half turned my head, and my eyes met Rose. He
had been there before me, perhaps. His face white and
shining in the light, shining with a strange sweet smile
of relief, of satisfaction, of delight, his lips quivering with
unspoken words, his eyes dusky with depth after depth
of passion. How long did my eyes swim on his? I cannot
tell. He never stirred; still leaned there against the
pillar, still looked down on me like a marble god. The
sudden tears dazzled my gaze, fell down my hot cheek,
and still I knelt fascinated by that smile. In that moment
I felt that he was more beautiful than the night, than
the music, than I. Then I knew that all this time, all
him.
Some one was waiting to make his adieux; I heard my
father seeking me; I parted the curtains and went in.
One after one those tedious people left, the lights grew
dim, and still he stayed without. I ran to the window,
and, lifting the curtain, I bent forward, crying, —
“Mr. Rose! do you spend the night on the balcony?”
Then he moved, stepped down, murmured something
to my father, bowed loftily to Louise, passed me without
a sign, and went out. In a moment, Lu's voice, a quick
sharp exclamation, touched him; he turned, came back.
She, wondering at him, had stood toying with the amber,
and at last crushing the miracle of the whole, a bell-wort
wrought most delicately with all the dusty pollen grained
upon its anthers, crushing it between her fingers, breaking
the thread, and scattering the beads upon the carpet.
He stooped with her to gather them again, he took from
her hand and restored to her afterward the shattered fragments
of the bell-wort, he helped her disentangle the
aromatic string from her falling braids, — for I kept
apart, — he breathed the penetrating incense of each separate
amulet, and I saw that from that hour, when every
atom of his sensation was tense and vibrating, she would
be associated with the loathed amber in his undefined consciousness,
would be surrounded with an atmosphere of
its perfume, that Lu was truly sealed from him in it,
sealed into herself. Then again, saying no word, he went
out.
Louise stood like one lost, — took aimlessly a few
steps, — retraced them, — approached a table, — touched
something, — left it.
“I am so sorry about your beads!” she said, apologetically,
putting the broken pieces into my hand.
“Goodness! Is that what you are fluttering about so
for?”
“They can't be mended,” she continued, “but I will
thread them again.”
“I don't care about them, I'm sick of amber,” I answered
consolingly. “You may have them, if you will.”
“No. I must pay too great a price for them,” she replied.
“Nonsense! when they break again, I 'll pay you
back,” I said, without in the least knowing what she
meant. “I did n't suppose you were too proud for a
`thank you'!”
She came and put both her arms round my neck, laid
her cheek beside mine a minute, kissed me, and went
up stairs. Lu always rather worshipped me.
Dressing my hair that night, Carmine, my maid, begged
for the remnants of the bell-wort to “make a scent-bag
with, Miss.”
Next day, no Rose; it rained. But at night he came
and took possession of the room, with a strange, airy
gayety never seen in him before. It was so chilly, that I
had heaped the wood-boughs, used in the yesterday's
decorations, on the hearth, and lighted a fragrant crackling
flame that danced up wildly at my touch, — for I
have the faculty of fire. I sat at one side, Lu at the
other, papa was holding a skein of silk for her to wind,
the amber beads were twinkling in the firelight, — and
when she slipped them slowly on the thread, bead after
bead warmed through and through by the real blaze, they
crowded the room afresh with their pungent spiciness.
Papa had called Rose to take his place at the other end
she fastened the ends, cut the thread, Rose likening her
to Atropos, and put them back into her basket. Still
playing with the scissors, following down the lines of her
hand, a little snap was heard.
“Oh!” said Louise, “I have broken my ring!”
“Can't it be repaired?” I asked.
“No,” she returned briefly, but pleasantly, and threw
the pieces into the fire.
“The hand must not be ringless,” said Rose; and
slipping off the ring of hers that he wore, he dropped it
on the amber, then got up and threw an armful of fresh
boughs upon the blaze.
So that was all done. Then Rose was gayer than
before. He is one of those people to whom you must
allow moods, — when their sun shines, dance, — and when
their vapors rise, sit in the shadow. Every variation of
the atmosphere affects him, though by no means uniformly;
and so sensitive is he, that, when connected with
you by any intimate rapport, even if but momentary, he
almost divines your thoughts. He is full of perpetual
surprises. I am sure he was a nightingale before he was
Rose. An iridescence like sea-foam sparkled in him that
evneing, he laughed as lightly as the little tinkling mass-bells
at every moment, and seemed to diffuse a rosy glow
wherever he went in the room. Yet gayety was not his
peculiar specialty, and at length he sat before the fire,
and, taking Lu's scissors, commenced cutting bits of paper
in profiles. Somehow they all looked strangely like and
unlike Mr. Dudley. I pointed one out to Lu, and if he
had needed confirmation, her changing color gave it. He
only glanced at her askance, and then broke into the merriest
description of his life in Rome, of which he declared
gleefully as a child, and illustrating people and localities
with scissors and paper as he went on, a couple of careless
snips putting a whole scene before us.
The floor was well strewn with such chips, — fountains,
statues, baths, and all the persons of his little drama, —
when papa came in. He held an open letter, and, sitting
down, read it over again. Rose fell into silence, clipping
the scissors daintily in and out the white sheet through
twinkling intricacies. As the design dropped out, I
caught it, — a long wreath of honeysuckle-blossoms. Ah,
I knew where the honeysuckles grew! Lu was humming
a little tune. Rose joined, and hummed the last
bars, then bade us good-night.
“Yone,” said papa, “your Aunt Willoughby is very
ill, — will not recover. She is my elder brother's widow;
you are her heir. You must go and stay with her.”
Now it was very likely that just at this time I was
going away to nurse Aunt Willoughby! Moreover, illness
is my very antipodes, — its nearness is invasion, —
we are utterly antipathetic, — it disgusts and repels me.
What sympathy can there be between my florid health,
my rank redundant life, and any wasting disease of
death? What more hostile than focal concentration and
obscure decomposition? You see, we cannot breathe the
same atmosphere. I banish the thought of such a thing
from my feeling, from my memory. So I said, —
“It 's impossible. I 'm not going an inch to Aunt Willoughby's.
Why, papa, it 's more than a hundred miles,
and in this weather!”
“Oh, the wind has changed.”
“Then it will be too warm for such a journey.”
“A new idea, Yone! Too warm for the mountains?”
“Yes, papa. I 'm not going a step.”
“Why, Yone, you astonish me! Your sick aunt!”
“That 's the very thing. If she were well, I might, —
perhaps. Sick! What can I do for her? I never go into
a sick-room. I hate it. I don't know how to do a thing
there. Don't say another word, papa. I can't go.”
“It is out of the question to let it pass so, my dear.
Here you are nursing all the invalids in town, yet —”
“Indeed, I 'm not, papa. I don't know and don't care
whether they 're dead or alive.”
“Well, then, it 's Lu.”
“Oh, yes, she 's hospital agent for half the country.”
“Then it is time that you also got a little experience.”
“Don't, papa! I don't want it. I never saw anybody
die, and I never mean to.”
“Can't I do as well, uncle?” asked Lu.
“You, darling? Yes; but it is n't your duty.”
“I thought, perhaps,” she said, “you would rather Yone
went.”
“So I would.”
“Dear papa, don't vex me! Ask anything else!”
“It is so unpleasant to Yone,” Lu murmured, “that
maybe I had better go. And if you 've no objection, sir,
I 'll take the early train to-morrow.”
Was n't she an angel?
Lu was away a month. Rose came in, expressing his
surprise. I said, “Othello's occupation 's gone?”
“And left him room for pleasure now,” he retorted.
“Which means seclusion from the world, in the society
of lakes and chromes.”
“Miss Willoughby,” said he, turning and looking directly
past me, “may I paint you?”
“Me? Oh, you can't.”
“No; but may I try?”
“I cannot go to you.”
“I will come to you.”
“Do you suppose it will be like?”
“Not at all, of course. It is to be, then?”
“Oh, I 've no more right than any other piece of Nature
to refuse an artist a study in color.”
He faced about, half pouting, as if he would go out,
then returned and fixed the time.
So he painted. He generally put me into a broad beam
that slanted from the top of the veiled window, and day
after day he worked. Ah, what glorious days they were!
how gay! how full of life! I almost feared to let him
image me on canvas, do you know? I had a fancy it
would lay my soul so bare to his inspection. What secrets
might be searched, what depths fathomed, at such
times, if men knew! I feared lest he should see me as I
am, in those great masses of warm light lying before him,
as I feared he saw when he said amber harmonized with
me, — all being things not polarized, not organized, without
centre, so to speak. But it escaped him, and he
wrought on. Did he succeed? Bless you! he might as
well have painted the sun; and who could do that? No;
but shades and combinations that he had hardly touched
or known, before, he had to lavish now; he learned
more than some years might have taught him; he, who
worshipped beauty, saw how thoroughly I possessed it;
he has told me that through me he learned the sacredness
of color. “Since he loves beauty so, why does he not love
me?” I asked myself; and perhaps the feverish hope and
suspense only lit up that beauty and fed it with fresh fires.
Ah, the July days! Did you ever wander over barren,
Turk's-cap lilies, flaring as if they had drawn all the heat
and brilliance from the land into their tissues? Such
were they. And if I were to grow old and gray, they
would light down all my life, and I could be willing to lead
a dull, grave age, looking back and remembering them,
warming myself forever in their constant youth. If I had
nothing to hope, they would become my whole existence.
Think, then, what it will be to have all days like those!
He never satisfied himself, as he might have done, had
he known me better, — and he never shall know me! —
and used to look at me for the secret of his failure, till I
laughed; then the look grew wistful, grew enamored.
By and by we left the pictures. We went into the
woods, warm dry woods; we stayed there from morning
till night. In the burning noons, we hung suspended
between two heavens, in our boat on glassy forest-pools,
where now and then a shoal of white lilies rose and
crowded out the under-sky. Sunsets burst like bubbles
over us. When the hidden thrushes were breaking one's
heart with music, and the sweet fern sent up a tropical
fragrance beneath our crushing steps, we came home to
rooms full of guests and my father's genial warmth.
What a month it was!
One day papa went up into New Hampshire; Aunt
Willoughby was dead; and one day Lu came home.
She was very pale and thin. Her eyes were hollow
and purple.
“There is some mistake, Lu,” I said. “It is you
who are dead, instead of Aunt Willoughby.”
“Do I look so wretchedly?” she asked, glancing at
the mirror.
“Dreadfully! Is it all watching and grief?”
“Watching and grief,” said Lu.
How melancholy her smile was! She would have
crazed me in a little while, if I had minded her.
“Did you care so much for fretful, crabbed Aunt
Willoughby?”
“She was very kind to me,” Lu replied.
There was an odd air with her that day. She did n't
go at once and get off her travelling-dress, but trifled
about in a kind of expectancy, a little fever going and
coming in her cheeks, and turning at any noise.
Will you believe it? — though I knew Lu had refused
to marry him, — who met her at the half-way junction,
saw about her luggage, and drove home with her, but
Mr. Dudley, and was with us, a half-hour afterward,
when Rose came in? Lu did n't turn at his step, but
the little fever in her face prevented his seeing her as I
had done. He shook hands with her and asked after her
health, and shook hands with Mr. Dudley (who had n't
been near us during her absence), and seemed to wish
she should feel that he recognized without pain a connection
between herself and that personage. But when
he came back to me, I was perplexed again at that
bewitched look in his face, — as if Lu's presence made
him feel that he was in a dream, I the enchantress of
that dream. It did not last long, though. And soon
she saw Mr. Dudley out, and went up-stairs.
When Lu came down to the table, she had my beads
in her hand again.
“I went into your room and got them, dear Yone,”
she said, “because I have found something to replace
the broken bell-wort,” and she showed us a little amber
bee, black and golden. “Not so lovely as the bell-wort,”
she resumed, “and I must pierce it for the thread;
find it?”
But when at a flame she heated a long slender needle
to pierce it, the little winged wonder shivered between
her fingers, and under the hot steel filled the room with
the honeyed smell of its dusted substance.
“Never mind,” said I again. “It 's a shame, though, —
it was so much prettier than the bell-wort! We might
have known it was too brittle. It 's just as well, Lu.”
The room smelt like a chancel at vespers. Rose
sauntered to the window, and so down the garden, and
then home.
“Yes. It cannot be helped,” she said, with a smile.
“But I really counted upon seeing it on the string.
I 'm not lucky at amber. You know little Asian said it
would bring bane to the bearer.”
“Dear! dear! I had quite forgotten!” I exclaimed.
“O Lu, keep it, or give it away, or something! I don't
want it any longer.”
“You 're very vehement,” she said, laughing now. “I
am not afraid of your gods. Shall I wear them?”
So the rest of the summer Lu twined them round
her throat, — amulets of sorcery, orbs of separation; but
one night she brought them back to me. That was last
night. There they lie.
The next day, in the high golden noon, Rose came. I
was on the lounge in the alcove parlor, my hair half
streaming out of Lu's net; but he did n't mind. The light
was toned and mellow, the air soft and cool. He came
and sat on the opposite side, so that he faced the wall
table with its dish of white, stiflingly sweet lilies, while
I looked down the drawing-room. He had brought a
book, and by and by opened at the part commencing,
perfect, perfect scene. From the moment when he said,
This length of hair and lustrous front — they turn
Like an entire flower upward,” —
“Look at the woman here with the new soul,” —
Be art, — and, further, to evoke a soul
From form, be nothing? This new soul is mine!” —
he raised his head, — not to look at me, but across me,
at the lilies, to satiate himself with their odorous snowiness.
When he again pronounced words, his voice was
husky and vibrant; but what music dwelt in it and
seemed to prolong rather than break the silver silence,
as he echoed,
“Some unsuspected isle in the far seas”!
meet one as rich and full beside them! The tone grew
ever lower; he looked up slowly, fastening his glance on
mine.
Are in my arms as now — as now — as now!”
eyes, — his breath blew over my cheek; I was drawn, —
I bent; the full passion of his soul broke to being,
wrapped me with a blinding light, a glowing kiss on lingering
lips, a clasp strong and tender as heaven. All
my hair fell down like a shining cloud and veiled us, the
I drew back from that long, silent kiss, I gathered up
each gold thread of the straying tresses, blushing, defiant.
He also, he drew back. But I knew all then. I had no
need to wait longer; I had achieved. Rose loved me.
Rose had loved me from that first day. — You scarcely
hear what I say, I talk so low and fast? Well, no matter,
dear, you would n't care. — For a moment that gaze
continued, then the lids fell, the face grew utterly white.
He rose, flung the book, crushed and torn, upon the floor,
went out, speaking no word to me, nor greeting Louise
in the next room. Could he have seen her? No. I,
only, had that. For, as I drew from his arm, a meteoric
crimson, shooting across the pale face bent over work
there, flashed upon me, and then a few great tears, like
sudden thunder-drops, falling slowly and wetting the
heavy fingers. The long mirror opposite her reflected
the interior of the alcove parlor. No, — he could not
have seen, he must have felt her.
I wonder whether I should have cared, if I had never
met him any more, — happy in this new consciousness.
But in the afternoon he returned, bright and eager.
“Are you so very busy, dear Yone,” he said, without
noticing Lu, “that you cannot drive with me to-day?”
Busy! In five minutes I whirled down the avenue
beside him. I had not been Yone to him before. How
quiet we were! he driving on, bent forward, seeing out
and away; I leaning back, my eyes closed, and, whenever
a remembrance of that instant at noon thrilled me, a stinging
blush staining my cheek. I, who had believed myself
incapable of love, till that night on the balcony, felt its
floods welling from my spirit, — who had believed myself
so completely cold, was warm to my heart's core. Again
quickly.
“Yone, my Yone!” he said. “Is it true? No dream
within dream? Do you love me?”
Wistful, longing, tender eyes.
“Do I love you? I would die for you!”
Ah, me! If the July days were such, how perfect were
the August and September nights! their young moon's
lingering twilight, their full broad bays of silver, their interlunar
season! The winds were warm about us, the
whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love. We
almost lived upon the river, he and I alone, — floating
seaward, swimming slowly up with late tides, reaching
home drenched with dew, parting in passionate silence.
Once he said to me, —
“Is it because it is so much larger, more strange and
beautiful, than any other love could be, that I feel guilty,
Yone, — feel as if I sinned in loving you so, my great
white flower?”
I ought to tell you how splendid papa was, never seemed
to consider that Rose had only his art, said I had enough
from Aunt Willoughby for both, we should live up there
among the mountains, and set off at once to make arrangements.
Lu has a wonderful tact, too, — seeing at once
where her path lay. She is always so well oriented!
How full of peace and bliss these two months have been!
Last night Lu came in here. She brought back my amber
gods, saying she had not intended to keep them, and
yet loitering.
“Yone,” she said at last, “I want you to tell me if you
love him.”
Now, as if that were any affair of hers! I looked what
I thought.
“Don't be angry,” she pleased. “You and I have
been sisters, have we not? and always shall be. I love
you very much, dear, — more than you may believe; I
only want to know if you will make him happy.”
“That 's according,” said I, with a yawn.
She still stood before me. Her eyes said, “I have a
right, — I have a right to know.”
“You want me to say how much I love Vaughan
Rose?” I asked, finally. “Well, listen, Lu, — so much,
that, when he forgets me, — and he will, Lu, one day, —
I shall die.”
“Prevent his forgetting you, Yone!” she returned.
“Make your soul white and clear, like his.”
“No! no!” I answered. “He loves me as I am. I
will never change.”
Then somehow tears began to come. I did n't want to
cry; I had to crowd them back behind my fingers and
shut lids.
“Oh, Lu!” I said, “I cannot think what it would be to
live, and he not a part of me! not for either of us to be
in the world without the other!”
Then Lu's tears fell with mine, as she drew her fingers
over my hair. She said she was happy, too; and to-day
has been down and gathered every one, so that, when you
see her, her white array will be wreathed with purple
heart's-ease. But I did n't tell Lu quite the truth, you
must know. I don't think I should die, except to my
former self, if Rose ceased to love me. I should change.
Oh, I should hate him! Hate is as intense as love.
Bless me! What time can it be? There are papa and
Rose walking in the garden. I turned out my maid to
there 's my hair! silken coil after coil, full of broken
lights, rippling below the knees, fine and fragrant. Who
could have such hair but I? I am the last of the Willoughbys,
a decayed race, and from such strong decay
what blossom less gorgeous should spring?
October now. All the world swings at the top of its
beauty; and those hills where we shall live, what robes
of color fold them! Tawny filemot gilding the valleys,
each seam and rut a scroll or arabesque, and all the year
pouring out her heart's blood to flush the maples, the
great empurpled granites warm with the sunshine they
have drunk all summer! So I am to be married to-day,
at noon. I like it best so; it is my hour. There is my
veil, that regal Venice point. Fling it round you. No,
you would look like a ghost in one, — Lu like a corpse.
Dear me! That 's the second time I 've rung for Carmine.
I dare say the hussy is trying on my gown. You think
it strange I don't delay? Why, child, why tempt Providence?
Once mine, always mine. He might wake up.
No, no, I could n't have meant that! It is not possible
that I have merely led him into a region of richer dyes,
lapped him in this vision of color, kindled his heart to such
a flame, that it may light him towards further effort. Can
you believe that he will slip from me and return to one in
better harmony with him? Is any one? Will he ever
find himself with that love lost, this love exhausted, only
his art left him? Never! I am his crown. See me!
how singularly, gloriously beautiful! For him only! all
for him! I love him! I cannot, I will not lose him! I
defy all! My heart's proud pulse assures me! I defy
Fate! Hush — One, — two, — twelve o'clock. Carmine!
STORY LAST.
Astra Castra, Numen Lumen.
The click of her needles and the soft singing of the
night-lamp are the only sounds breaking the stillness, the
awful stillness, of this room. How the wind blows without!
it must be whirling white gusty drifts through the
split hills. If I were as free! Whistling round the gray
gable, tearing the bleak boughs, crying faint hoarse moans
down the chimneys! A wild, sad gale! There is a lull, a
long breathless lull, before it soughs up again. Oh, it is
like a pain! Pain! Why do I think the word? Must
I suffer any more? Am I crazed with opiates? or am I
dying? They are in that drawer, — laudanum, morphine,
hyoscyamus, and all the drowsy sirups, — little drops, but
soaring like a fog and wrapping the whole world in a dull
ache with no salient sting to catch a groan on. They are
so small, they might be lost in this long, dark room; why
not the pain too, the point of pain, I? A long, dark
room; I at one end, she at the other; the curtains drawn
away from me that I may breathe. Ah, I have been
stifled so long! They look down on me, all those old
dead and gone faces, those portraits on the wall, — look
all from their frames at me, the last term of the race, the
vanishing summit of their design. A fierce weapon thrust
into the world for evil has that race been, — from the great
gray Willoughby, threatening with his iron eyes there, to
me, the sharp apex of its suffering. A fierce, glittering
blade! Why I alone singled for this curse? Rank blossom,
rank decay, they answer, but falsely. I lie here,
through no fault of mine, blasted by disease, the dread
and see in me the centre of their lives, of all their little
splendor, of their sins and follies; what slept in them
wakes in me. Oh, let me sleep too!
How long could I live and lose nothing? I saw my
face in the hand-glass this morning, — more lovely than
health fashioned it; — transparent skin, bounding blood
with its fire burning behind the eye, on cheek, on lip, —
a beauty that every pang has aggravated, heightened,
sharpened, to a superb intensity, flushing, rapid, unearthly,
— a brilliancy to be dreamed of. Like a great autumn
leaf I fall, for I am dying, — dying! Yes, death finds me
more beautiful than life made me; but have I lost nothing?
Great Heaven, I have lost all!
A fancy comes to me, that to-day was my birthday.
I have forgotten to mark time; but if it was, I am thirty-two
years old. I remember birthdays of a child, — loving,
cordial days. No one remembers to-day. Why
should they? But I ache for a little love. Thirty-two,
— that is young to die! I am too fair, too rich, for
death! — not his fit spoil! Is there no one to save me?
no help? can I not escape? Ah, what a vain eagerness!
what an idle hope! Fall back again, heart! Escape?
I do not desire to. Come, come, kind rest! I
am tired.
That cap-string has loosened now, and all this golden
cataract of hair has rushed out over the piled pillows. It
oppresses and terrifies me. If I could speak, it seems to
me that I would ask Louise to come and bind it up.
Won't she turn and see?...
Have I been asleep? What is this in my hands? The
amber gods? Oh, yes! I asked to see them again; I like
their smell, I think. It is ten years I have had them.
I rubbed a little yellow smoke out of them, — a cloud that
hung between him and the world, so that he saw only
me, — at least — What am I dreaming of? All manner
of illusions haunt me. Who said anything about ten
years? I have been married ten years. Happy, then,
ten years? Oh, no! One day he woke. — How close the
room is! I want some air. Why don't they do something
—
Once, in the pride of a fool, I fear having made some
confidence, some recital of my joy to ears that never had
any. Did I say I would not lose him? Did I say I could
live just on the memory of that summer? I lash myself
that I must remember it! that I ever loved him! When
he stirred, when the mist left him, when he found a mere
passion had blinded him, when he spread his easel, when
he abandoned love, — was I wretched? I, too, abandoned
love! — more, — I hated! All who hate are wretched.
But he was bound to me! Yes, he might move restlessly,
— it only clanked his chains. Did he wound me? I was
cruel. He never spoke. He became artist, — ceased to
be man, — was more indifferent than the cloud. He could
paint me then, — and, revealed and bare, all our histories
written in me, he hung me up beside my ancestors.
There I hang. Come from thy frame, thou substance,
and let this troubled phantom go! Come! for he gave
my life to thee. In thee he shut and sealed it all, and left
me as the empty husk. — Did she — that other — join us
then? No! I sent for her. I meant to teach him that he
was yet a man, — to open before him a gulf of anguish;
but I slipped down it. Then I dogged them; they never
spoke alone; I intercepted the eye's language; I withered
their wintry smiles to frowns; I stifled their sighs;
our lips; we three lived in a real world of silence, agonized
mutes. She went. Summer by summer my father
brought her to us. Always memory was kindled afresh,
always sorrow kept smouldering. Once she came; I lay
here; she has not left me since. He, — he also comes;
he has soothed pain with that loveless eye, carried me in
untender arms, watched calmly beside my delirious nights.
He who loved beauty has learned disgust. Why should
I care? I, from the slave of bald form, enlarged him to
the master of gorgeous color; his blaze is my ashes. He
studies me. I owe him nothing....
Is it near morning? Have I dozed again? Night is
long. The great hall-clock is striking, — throb after throb
on the darkness. I remember, when I was a child,
watching its lengthened pendulum swing as if time were
its own and it measured the thread slowly, loath to part,
— remember streaking its great ebony case with a little
finger, misting it with a warm breath. Throb after throb,
— is it going to peal forever? Stop, solemn clangor!
hearts stop. Midnight.
The nurses have gone down; she sits there alone.
Her bent side-face is full of pity. Now and then her
head turns; the great brown eyes lift heavily, and lie on
me, — heavily, — as if the sight of me pained her. Ah,
in me perishes her youth! death enters her world! Besides,
she loves me. I do not want her love, — I would
fling it off; but I am faint, — I am impotent, — I am so
cold! Not that she lives, and I die, — not that she has
peace, and I tumult, — not for her voice's music, — not for
her eye's lustre, — not for any charm of her womanly
presence, — neither for her clear, fair soul, — nor that
when the storm and winter pass and I am stiff and frozen,
I hate her; but because my going gives her what I lost,
— because, I stepped aside, the light falls on her, —
because from my despair springs her happiness. Poor
fool! let her be happy, if she can! Her mother was
a Willoughby! And what is a flower that blows on a
grave?...
Why do I remember so distinctly one night alone of
all my life, — one night, when we dance in the low room
of a seaside cottage, — dance to Lu's singing? He leads
me to her when the dance is through, brushing with his
head the festooned nets that swing from the rafters, — and
in at the open casement is blown a butterfly, a dead butterfly,
from off the sea. She holds it compassionately, till
I pin it on my dress, — the wings, twin magnificences,
freckled and barred and powdered with gold, fluttering at
my breath. Some one speaks with me; she strays to the
window, he follows, and they are silent. He looks far
away over the gray loneliness stretching beyond. At
length he murmurs: “A brief madness makes my long
misery. Louise, if the earth were dazzled aside from her
constant pole-star to worship some bewildering comet,
would she be more forlorn than I?”
“Dear Rose! your art remains,” I hear her say.
He bends lower, that his breath may scorch her brow.
“Was I wrong? Am I right?” he whispers, hurriedly.
“You loved me once; you love me now, Louise, if I
were free?”
“But you are not free.”
She does not recoil, yet her very atmosphere repels
him, while looking up with those woful eyes blanching her
cheek by their gathering darkness. “And, Rose —”
she sighs, then ceases abruptly, while a quiver of sudden
pains the whole face.
He erects himself, then reaches his hand for the rose
in her belt, glances at me, — the dead thing in my bosom
rising and falling with my turbulent heart, — holds the
rose to his lips, leaves her. How keen are my ears!
how flushed my cheek! how eager and fierce my eyes!
He approaches; I snatch the rose and tear its petals in
an angry shower, and then a dim east-wind pours in and
scatters my dream like flakes of foam. All dreams go;
youth and hope desert me; the dark claims me. O
room, surrender me! O sickness and sorrow, loose your
weary hold!
It maddens me to know that the sun will shine again,
the tender grass grow green, the veery sing, the crocus
come. She will walk in the light and re-gather youth,
and I moulder, a forgotten heap. Oh, why not all things
crash to ruin with me? —
Pain, pain, pain! Where is my father? Why is he
away, when they know I die? He used to hold me
once; he ought to hear me when I call. He would rest
me, and stroke the grief aside, — he is so strong. Where
is he?
These amulets stumbling round again? Amber, amber
gods, you did mischief in your day! If I clutched you
hard, as Lu did once, all your spells would be broken.
— It is colder than it was. I think I will go to sleep. —
What was that? How loud and resonant! It stuns
me. It is too sonorous. Does sound flash? Ah! the
hour. Another? How long the silver toll swims on the
silent air! It is one o'clock, — a passing bell, a knell.
If I were at home by the river, the tide would be turning
down, down, and out to the broad, broad sea. Is it worth
while to have lived?
Have I spoken? She looks at me, rises, and touches
that bell-rope that always brings him. How softly he
opens the door! Waiting, perhaps. Well. Ten years
have not altered him much. The face is brighter, finer,
— shines with the eternal youth of genius. They pause
a moment; I suppose they are coming to me; but their
eyes are on each other.
Why must the long, silent look with which he met
her the day I got my amber strike back on me now so
vindictively? I remember three looks: that, and this,
and one other, — one fervid noon, a look that drank my
soul, that culminated my existence. Oh, I remember!
I lost it a little while ago. I have it now. You are
coming? Can't you hear me? See! these costly liqueurs,
these precious perfumes beside me here, if I can reach
them, I will drench the coverlet in them; it shall be
white and sweet as a little child's. I wish they were the
great rich lilies of that day; it is too late for the baby
May-flowers. You do not like amber? There the
thread breaks again! the little cruel gods go tumbling
down the floor! Come, lay my head on your breast!
kiss my life off my lips! I am your Yone! I forgot a
little while, — but I love you, Rose! Rose!
Why! I thought arms held me. How clear the space
is! The wind from outdoors, rising again, must have
rushed in. There is the quarter striking. How free I
am! No one here? No, swarm of souls about me?
Oh, those two faces looked from a great mist, a moment
since; I scarcely see them now. Drop, mask! I will
not pick you up! Out, out into the gale! back to my
elements!
So I passed out of the room, down the staircase.
crouched and whined. I paused before the great ebony
clock; again the fountain broke, and it chimed the half-hour;
it was half past one; another quarter, and the
next time its ponderous silver hammers woke the house,
it would be two. Half past one? Why, then, did not
the hands move? Why cling fixed on a point five
minutes before the first quarter struck? To and fro,
soundless and purposeless, swung the long pendulum.
And, ah! what was this thing I had become? I had
done with time. Not for me the hands moved on their
recurrent circle any more.
I must have died at ten minutes past one.
| The amber gods, and other stories | |