University of Virginia Library

2. II.
OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY.

ONE summer day, buried in the deep ferns
of a high common, the warm, sweet breeze
streaming in long wafts above him, many hours
he lay fingering restlessly at the little mosses and
dainty violets, — face downward, lest glancing up
he should see the Ghost where she sat, so white
and thin that the sunshine fell through her delicate
texture upon the flowers he touched, her fingers
lying wearily also upon the violets, while her sad
eyes weighed him down with their flickering but
tireless gaze. The hum of innumerable insects
rose around him, and the long emerald lances
of strange flies hurtled beyond; now and then
a lark dropped a strain of song down from some
covert in the skies, or a nightingale in its low
nest twittered faintly through the noon a breath
of melody, and hushed itself again. Sir Rohan's

heart, which had been so long torpid, opened
anew, and became warmed and filled with the
sweet influences of nature; the richness of the
matured year, in the gorgeous pageant of its
summer, defiled across his senses; all the beauty
to which he had been insensible unsheathed itself
and flashed through his soul; the growth of a
weary while at last accomplished itself, and in
the long hours of that balmy day he believed
the artist to have been born. Years seemed to
have passed since he wandered out upon the
common, and the early morning, with its dew
and fragrance, loomed as far off as the purple
inlands do to sea-coast mariners; again he had
a purpose.

Refusing to give credence to the doubt that
the Ghost could not thus be laid, he rose and
pursued his way with uplifted head and elastic
step; nor was he conscious how steadily he gazed
before him, turning neither to right nor left, lest
the accursed object should meet his eyes, nor
how unequal the quick beatings of his heart
made the chant he hummed, and, lest any rustle
and flow of drapery beside him should fill its
intervals, that he hummed unbrokenly. Under

his doorway, he paused and turned back a glance
on the gathering twilight. A cold touch fell
upon his wrist, growing bolder till the long fingers
closed their icy grasp around it; constrained,
he met the shadowy eyes that hovered and grew
still close before his own. A bale-fire for a moment
glowed within them, fading to a dead glare
and then sinking into obscurity, while the appalling
grasp loosened, the touch ceased, and
through the darkness of the night nothing was
to be seen but the evening star hanging and
trembling just above the gray horizon. Perhaps
it was the Ghost's farewell. A new sense of
freedom suffused his being, and he laughed a
long and bitter laugh as he leaned scornfully
against the wall. Could the Ghost have left a
companionship such as that? Perhaps by absence
she renewed her power, or peradventure
she was journeying.

That night Sir Rohan slept well, and as if
bathed in rejuvenescence he met the morning
light, full of fresh strength and courage. A
tedious initiation lay before him, but he had patience
for it, since true genius is well content to
wear the harness for a while, that its strength

may be made available, — and so at first he groped
that he at last might soar.

Time was valueless to him; and whatever hours
elapsed ere he had mastered his art, he did not
count them, but in his freedom, and as he would
say, drawing in his breath exultingly, in his solitude,
he began and pursued his task. Day by
day found him before his easel. The first song
of dawn spread softest shades of unattainable
color before his thought, the vertical rays of
noon toned his visions down to subdued splendor,
and sunset found and gave him those brilliant
dyes in which few artists have dipped the
brush. Sir Rohan's reach was high indeed;
what he brought down and spread upon his canvas
he hardly dared hope would prove commensurate
with his conceptions, nor that he could
make others see what to him had such distinct
and beautiful reality.

It was merely an ideal, allegoric in its nature,
on which he at last expended the mature flow
of his skill and imagination. Through it he
designed to illustrate a truth, although he had
not sufficiently freed his mind — unbiased enough
generally — from the puerile conceits of fancy-sketches,

and thus his outline was neither original
nor spirited; and while acknowledging this,
he triumphed in the power he found to suffuse
and impregnate it with an indescribable pomp
and lustre. His whole heart was in his work.
The Ghost had apparently vanished, or if her
spell, so long his death in life, ever entered his
memory, he laughed joyously at the present and
most mockingly at the past, thoroughly despising
his old and pitiable weakness. He toiled constantly,
and no thought not inspired by his painting
possessed him. He seemed to have wrung
the hues he used from the very heart of Nature.
Sunsets, concentrating their glow, rendered more
radiant by the prismatic dews of sunrise, deepened,
softened, and mellowed by the purple tenderness
of twilight tints, could not be more
gorgeous than the ineffable magic he evoked.
Magic? Once or twice Sir Rohan almost trembled
at mysterious moments when, after producing
any great effect, he felt the silent air of
his room pulsate, as it were, around him, drawing
away and contracting again as if a vacuum had
been there created, while after every such occurrence
a pressure of which he had frequently been
conscious was removed. Often prolonging his
delight till the place was filled with shadows, he
discerned a brighter atmosphere around himself,
in whose pale, uncertain illumination he worked,
while jets of white light, like little tongues of
flame, gathered and flowed from his brush into
the picture. Something in his own performance,
unfinished though it was, appalled him; and at
such moments he wrought only more vehemently
and unshrinkingly, — never in the morning, however,
undoing what he felt to be the inspiration
of the twilight before.

And yet he was not quite free of the Ghost.
Perhaps it was not possible thus violently to pass
from one such state to another not less peculiar
and intense, or perhaps his imagination now and
then conjured up a semblance, languid and wan
indeed, of what had been a weary fact of his
existence. Still more likely it is that the sharpness
of his distress had become dulled by use,
and he felt it as a part of himself; so much so,
that, having fallen to a stagnant depression, relief
from this incubus would result in a bewildering
buoyancy. He endeavored ceaselessly to forget.

Truly precious things, in art as in nature, are

seldom spontaneous, but require growth and deliberation
beyond the germ; and thus Sir Rohan,
who carried his method into all this, had once
laid aside his implements, and was considering
the law of combinations and equivalents, when
he felt what at first was a stream of cool breath
across his closed eyelids, slowly increasing to a
cold but almost imperceptible finger-touch. If
this were the old shadow, how much of its power
was lost!

Frequently, while at his work, he had a perception
of certain harmonious properties of the
universe, and more particularly of those particles
composing the atmosphere, which seemed to emit
one vast gentle accord as they moved interfluently
among themselves. So perfect and integral must
this harmony be, Sir Rohan reasoned, that unless
when disturbed by some extraneous or adverse
influence it is imperceptible to mortal ears; and
thus, whenever heard by him, he knew that the
vibrations were audible only by means of this
dissonant and divulsive presence, as hostile, it
appeared, to the kind forces of nature as to
him. At the time when his eyes felt these cold
finger-tips, he became aware also of this outer

harmony throbbing in long rhythmical waves of
finest sound, as if drawn from silver wires by a
low, hot wind. This was unapproachable, almost
infinite; on all sides of him he heard a chord
produced perhaps millions of cycles away, but
on its bosom and overtopping it like the foam
on a long sea-swell, the atoms of air immediately
in contact with himself seemed each to drop a
golden note of full music down, till a distinct
melody, bursting with tune and modulated by
this grand spheric accompaniment, panted along
the hot summer noon.

Opening his eyes, Sir Rohan saw nothing but
the vacant room, the great vases of blossoms
drooping in the sultry heat, which he constantly
kept for the rich tints and suggestions of coloring
they afforded, the wide-open window with the
distantly russet hills through it drawing down
veils of paler mist to the valleys in their bosom,
and the cloudless sky that bent its ardent arch
and with fiery languors kissed the nearer summits
till they smoked. No wind stirred any little
branch; no actual murmur broke the spell, if
spell it was; but still the mighty music surged
on, blending with his breath, with his heart-beat,

and neither ceasing suddenly nor dying away;
perhaps it touched the key-note of sleep, for over
his perturbation a drowsiness wrapped itself, and
erelong he slept. Sleeping, Sir Rohan naturally
dreamed.

To his artistic eye, so long exercised upon
material form, the dream assumed the distinct
peopling of a series of vivid views, rather than
the vague and edgeless fantasies of usual sleep,
although during the first few moments of its
duration he saw only five fine black lines or
wires drawn across a gray profound, and bearing,
in a certain order, musical characters of fire,
each one of which, as he read its tone, grew
brighter an instant, imparting its blaze to the
next, until he read the perfect score of the melody
to which he was listening but a moment
before. Some strange words, long lost, hummed
along his memory; and as he delivered himself
further to the guidance of his dream, they also
became as audible as the music which they joined.

By what sudden change accomplished he knew
not, nor was he at all astonished thereat, when
instead of the bars of music he was aware of a
still picture of low-country life. A canal sweeping
its umberous waters slowly onward through
banks lined with the green sunshine of early
willows, and down toward a low stone bridge
whose twin arches spanned the turbid flow and
broke it, ere reaching the narrow pier, into numerous
long ripples. Beyond, the country was
one level expanse, clothed in the vivid pestilential
green of fens and marshes, and above, a calm
sky belted at the horizon with a low, brilliant
west. Leaning over the bridge, a female figure

tall and lithe, clad in some sober gray, her white
cap hanging by its ribbons down one shoulder,
and her dark unbraided hair blowing in long
tresses against the zone of sunset; in her hand
a bunch of reeds, which she trailed in the broken
ripples. So exact the lines of this Flemish picture,
that Sir Rohan saw clearly defined the
black shadow which fine separate lashes threw
over large gray eyes, and the delicate confusion
of palest olive and ruddiest peach upon the oval
cheek. The presence at a distance of another
person, a dark, slender youth with arrested attention,
Sir Rohan felt rather than saw, although
he caught the glitter of a ring of curious device
upon the latter's hand, and felt certain that the
eyes of the two had met, when through her
parted lips he heard, as if for the first time,
the tune dreamily trilling, —
And the long gray ripples, growing fainter and
darker, seemed to murmur responsively, as they
swept onward with divided currents, —
How quickly the night fell on this scene, nor
by what means the low-country canal became a
narrow rural lane winding between high stone
walls, over which luxuriant hops clambered and
hung their blossoming sprays and bunches of
greenery on the other side, Sir Rohan did not
pause to consider. Nor did he wonder at seeing
the soberly-clad girl wandering lingeringly
down its avenue, arm in arm with the shadowy
youth, till some great bars opposed their progress;
nor, as she mounted the stile beside them,
did he wonder at seeing the ring of curious device
shining, this time, on her hand, nor at the
utterly happy gleam from her loving eyes as she
turned to him standing below and holding a little
bunch of violets and rue that had lain in her
breast. An indistinct sorrow stole over Sir Rohan
as he saw the head crowned with its royal braid,
the face with its sunshine and beauty, the whole
vignette, recede and fade away to somberest mist,
leaving nothing but the bars growing more and
more distant, while gigantic notes of light started
into flashes on their surface and thundered the
old melody through his bewildered ears. There
succeeded an interval of serenest rest, ere into
Sir Rohan's dream quietly stole the same figures
again, — the same, yet different. The quiet gown,
the simple cap, were gone; the lady trailed rustling
satins over whose majestic folds the gloss
of golden intricacies of needlework sparkled and
deadened as she walked. Jewels, which might
be the heirlooms of untainted ancestry, lay on
her bare white bosom and encircled her brow,
and the ring of curious device still flashed on
her snowy hand. Her eyes, glowing with passion,
bent on the face of her companion as they
wound slowly up the outer turret stair in a
broad dash of moonlight, his arm supporting her
waist and his eyes meeting her own. Around
them lay a different landscape. Long sweeps
of moors, dun and dark, like petrified sea-swells;
mountains distantly grand and shadowy; a mighty
river lapsing down to meet its bridge of a hundred
arches, and its flickering silver masts; the
ocean clamoring his eternal sorrow from wine-dark
depths, and with white, speechless lips of
angry froth forever lapping the cliffs and crags
far up along the northward. But the dreamer
feels that the lovers see none but each other,
and as the old tune creeps up from gulfs of
silence, he sees the youth gaze for a moment
inland over those dim hills, and hum half to
himself: —

A breathless, silent rapture seemed stealing over
this part of Sir Rohan's dream, as if he himself
were an actor of its wordless drama, — an inner
intense glee, to which he had perhaps been alien
for many years. Let us believe that in the dream,
as in life, this moment of joy found its equivalent
of pain. While he paused to turn it over in his
thought, and extract the last sweet relish of its
flavor, the illusive phantasmagoria existed no
longer; and when next the tide of sleep thinned
itself, he saw a long, low-browed room, wainscoted
in oak, uncarpeted, and fitted with furniture of an
antique pattern. One only window lighted it, — a
Gothic oval, and unglazed, so that the vines and
sweet-briers, climbing without, twisted their tendrils

into the crevices, and tossed their tempting
garniture within. Midway of the room, and in
the broad beam of yellow sunshine that thus fell
through, sat the female figure of his dream. Garments
of dark purple wrapped and swept around
her, the masses of her purple black hair were
looped heavily in their hateful weight, her eyes
were larger and more hollow by reason of their
purple rims; she sat half bent forward, her white
hands, still sparkling with that single ring, clasped
across her knee, and a dead despair settling slowly
like a pall above her. If there were any other in
that room, gloomy in spite of its sunshine, Sir
Rohan's dream obstinately refused to recognize
him. It seemed a weary age that, fascinated by
the mute tragedy, he recalled and gazed upon its
action; but while he gazed, the thick palpitations
of his heart so shook and disordered him that the
air wavered and trembled around him, bright
specks danced in the shadows, a mist crept between
him and herself, the room opened and
spread its dark sides indefinitely into duskiness,
the rush of great waters was in his ears, and when
he recovered his vision he saw only long black
hair sweeping headlong down the current, a
ghastly face whose eyes, hard as pebbles in a
brook, reflected no light as they sunk beneath the
hurrying stream, a white arm clinging round a
floating branch, a hand gleaming with the ring of
curious device, obscurely, as it washed downward
through the roar and eddy of this river of the
North. How it seemed only the low canal, hundreds
of miles away, flowing on to meet its bridge,
while the voice of the ripples, setting in black
angry swirls round the single pier, seemed to
repeat the words with a harsh sudden cadence;
nor why, when with a dreadful start it all vanished,
and he knew only the Ghost, his own Ghost,
standing before him and singing from the score,
loud and clear, while her hard eyes transfixed
him.
Sir Rohan never wondered, — but with a groan
grew faint and dizzy in his sleep, and suffered this
dreamy sense to reel away from him. What a
shiver seized him then! what a noise was in his
brain! how thunderously his weary heart beat
forward on its way! with what a fierce quaking
he sprung into the centre of the room, nor felt
relief at finding it a dream! The sun had hardly
declined a degree, the noon was not less sultry, no
softer shade enveloped any object; he had whirled
through the great eddy of his youth, he had
ploughed and reaped the seed whose fruit he was
never to exhaust, and he had slept ten minutes.

Doggedly he examined his pencils, ground more
oil into his browns, and again feverishly busied
himself over what was now his solace. Glancing
upward, he noticed with a thrill of horror that
the eyes of the picture — for it was no landscape
— emitted such a geen, hard glare as had lately
pierced him. Indeed, he had painted them gray.
Without pausing to regret the care he had bestowed
on their finish, the artist raised his brush
with one stroke to obliterate them, when he reflected
that such procedure would utterly ruin
any chance of obtaining succeeding transparency
and brilliance, besides fouling the delicacy of
touch which his after work should wear. Perhaps
scraping would answer as well. But the palette-knife
and even sharper instruments were of no
avail, for he remembered what powerful siccatives
had been employed, and the impenetrable varnish
of sandarach and poppy-oil with which, in order

to preserve the primal freshness and bloom of the
tints, he had early overlaid this portion of his
work. Neither acid nor alkali weakened the
unendurable stare; and still throbbing from his
dream, perplexed and baffled, he felt as if reason
would desert him did he fail in effacing its chance.
Had the Ghost almost left him free, that he should
perpetuate her eyes upon his canvas? Exasperated,
he seized a vial of inflammable oil, intending
by its means to burn off the obnoxious surface,
thus endangering the blossom of many years'
labor, when the lazily ascending smoke of a distant
lime-kiln caught his eye and suggested a new
remedy. He hesitated a moment, half fearing to
leave those eyes alone, and then, laughing at himself,
went out quickly and closed the door.

Intent on his moody thoughts, and regardless
of the heat, he walked swiftly forward, meeting
in his way but one face, — and that a handsome
one, flashing on him from a travelling-chariot
that lumbered along the rarely frequented highway,
— till he reached his destination; when
having obtained a small quantity of lime, and
wasting no words on the burners, he betook
himself homeward. It was a half-hour's rapid

walk; on one side, across some sterile fields, the
sea running in long, low lines up a yellow
beach, and filling the air with an unbroken
drowsy drone. But the sea did not attract Sir
Rohan's regard; indeed, lest its advancing wash
should throw some rejected secret from its
bosom, he turned his eyes on the other hand,
where, across the neglected lands and luxuriant
woods of his own estate, rose the chimney-stacks
of the lonely house. No living thing, it seemed
to him, ever crossed his path; he suspected that
the grass ceased growing in his footsteps, yet
did not marvel why beneath the fervors of the
noon, the Ghost, alone unwearied, refused to
join the universal spell of rest and hush. At
last, re-entering at a postern door, he again
sought his work.

Having slaked and mixed the lime with a
strong mineral alkali, he plastered it upon the
part to be destroyed, not heeding a faint rap
on the door, and turned to other details yet
unfinished. But till success in this was assured,
he found it impossible to proceed, and threw
down his implements in anger. It would then
be many hours ere he could resume his task, and,

having generally employed the strong meridian
light, he found himself suddenly at a loss for
occupation. Accordingly, remembering the timid
rap of the old steward whose application had
met with usual success, and designing afterward
to employ himself in the greenhouse, so
called, which alone of all his former luxuries he
retained, Sir Rohan opened his door, and traversing
the hall, partially descended a broad,
winding staircase.