Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860




The blow had come previously. Mr. Raleigh bowed almost to the ground,
without a word, then looked up and offered his hand. Mr. Laudersdale
comprehended the whole matter at a heartbeat, and took it. Then they
moved on toward other friends, whom, while waiting for knowledge of his
wife's return from her walk, Mr. Laudersdale had not seen. Mr. Raleigh
went in search of Capua, and ere long reappeared.

It grew quite dark; the candles were lighted. Rite slipped in, and,
after having flown about like a thistle-down for a while, mounted a
chair and put her arms about her mother's shoulders. Then Mr. Raleigh,
sitting silently on a sofa, attracted her, and shortly afterward she had
curled herself beside him and fallen asleep with her head upon his
knee; otherwise he did not touch her. Mrs. Laudersdale stood by an open
casement; the servant who had carried her note came up the lawn and
spoke to her from without. There was no one in the house, and he had
left it on the library-table. The pressure of those tender little arms
was yet warm about the mother's neck; she glanced sidelong at the
sleeping child. "He shall never see that note!" she murmured, and
slipped through the casement.

Accustomed to all rash and intrepid adventure during this summer, it
was nothing for her to unmoor a boat, enter it, and lift the oars, not
pausing to observe that it was the Arrow. Just then, however, a little
wind ruffled down and shook the sail, a wind not quite favorable, but in
which she could tack across and back; she drew in the oars, put to the
proof all her new boat-craft, and recklessly dashed through the dark
element that curled and seethed about her. She had to make but two tacks
in that hour's impetuous progress, before the house rose, as it had
frequently done before, glooming at but a few rods' distance, and
loading with odorous breath the air that tossed its vines ere stealing
across the lake. She trembled now, and remembered that she alone of all
the party had always unconsciously evaded entering Mr. Raleigh's house,
had never seen the house nearer than now, and never been its guest. It
was entering some dark, unknown place; it was to intrude on a sacred
region. But the breeze hurried her along while she thought, and the next
moment the keel was buried in the sand. There was no time to lose; she
left the boat, ascended a flight of stone steps close at hand, and
was in the garden. Low, ripe greenery was waving over her here, deep
alluring shadows opening around, full fresh fragrance fanning idly to
and fro and stealing her soul away. Beyond, the lake gleamed darkly, the
water lapped gently, the wind sighed and fell like a fluttering breath.
She would have lingered forever,--she dared not linger a moment. She
brushed the dew from the heavy blossoms as she swept on, then the
drenching branches swayed and closed behind her; she found a door ajar,
and hastily entered the first room which appeared.

There were stray starbeams in this apartment; her eyes were accustomed
to the gloom; she could dimly discern the great book-cases lining the
wall,--an antique chair,--the glittering key-board of a grand-piano that
stood apart, yet thrilling perhaps with recent harmonies,--a colossal
head of Antinoues, that self-involved dreamer, stone-entranced in a calm
of passion. She had been feverishly agitated; but as this white silence
dawned upon her, so strong, yet voluptuous, never sad, making in its
masque of marble one intense moment eternal, some of the same power
spread soothingly over her. She paused a moment to gather the thronging
thoughts. How still the room was! she had not known that music was at
his command before. How sweet the air that blew in at the window! what
late flowers bore such pungent balm? That portrait leaning half-startled
from the frame, was it his mother? These books, were they the very ones
that had fed his youth? How everything was yet warm from his touch! how
his presence yet lingered! how much of his life had passed into the dim
beauty of the place! How each fresh waft from the blooms without came
drowned in fine perfume, laden with delicious languor! What heaven was
there! and, ah! what heaven was yet possible there!

Something that had flitted from the table in the draught, and had
hovered here and there along the floor, now lay at her foot; she caught
it absently; it was her letter. To snatch it from its envelope, and so
tear it the more easily to atoms, was her first thought; but as suddenly
she paused. Was it hers? Though written and sealed by her hand, had she
any longer possession therein? Had she more authority over it than over
any other letter that might be in the room? Absurd refinement of honor!
She broke the seal. Yet stay! Was there no justice due to him? That
letter which had been read long before the intended time, whose delivery
any accident might have frustrated, whose writer might have recalled it,
--did it demand no magnanimity of reply on her part? Had he now no claim
to the truth from her? As she knew what he never would have told her an
hour later, had she a right to recede from the position she had taken in
response, simply because she could and he could not? Should she ignobly
refuse him his right?

Whether this were a sophism of sin or the logic of highest virtue, she,
who would have blotted out her writing with her heart's blood, did not
wait to weigh.

"To him, also, I owe a duty!" she exclaimed, dropped the letter where
she had found it, and fled,--fled, hurrying through all the bewildering
garden-walks, down from the fragrance, the serenity, the bowery
seclusion, from all this conspiring loveliness that tempted her to dally
and commanded her to stay,--fled from this dream of passion, this region
of joy,--fled forever, as she thought, out into the wide, chill, lonely
night.

Pushing off the boat and springing in, once more the water curled
beneath the parting prow, and she shot with her flashing sail and
hissing wake heedlessly, like a phantom, past another boat that was
making more slowly in to shore.

"This way, Helen," murmurs a subdued voice. "There are some steps, Mr.
Laudersdale. Here we are; but it's dark as Erebus. Give me your hand;
I'm half afraid; after that spectre that walked the water just now,
these shadows are not altogether agreeable. There's the door,--careful
housekeeper, this Mr. Raleigh! I wonder what McLean would say. Don't
believe he'd like it."

"What made you come, then?" asks Helen, as they step within.

"Oh, just for the frolic; it was getting stupid, too. I suppose we've
ruined our dresses. But there! we must hurry and get back. I didn't
think it would take so long. He can't manage a boat so well as Roger,"
adds Mrs. McLean, in a whisper.

"Goodness!" exclaims Helen. "I can't see an inch of the way. We shall
certainly deal devastation."

"I've been exploring a mantel-shelf; here's a candle, but how to light
it? Haven't you a match, Mr. Laudersdale?"

That gentleman produces one from a little pocket-safe; it proves a
failure,--and so a second, and a third.

"This is the last, Mrs. McLean. Have your candle ready."

The little jet of flame flashes up.

"Quick, Helen! a scrap of paper, quick!"

"I don't know where to find any. Here's a billet on the floor; the
seal's broken; Mr. Raleigh don't read his letters, you know; shall I
take it?"

"Anything, yes! My fingers are burning! Quick, it's the last match!
There!"

Helen waves a tiny flambeau, the candle is lighted, the flame whirled
down upon the hearth and trodden out.

"I wonder what it was, though," adds Mrs. McLean, stooping over it.
"Some of our correspondence. No matter, then. Now for that Indian mail.
Here,--no,--this must be it. 'Mr. Roger Raleigh,'--'Roger Raleigh,
Esq.,'--that's not it. 'Day, Knight, & Co., for Roger Raleigh.' Why, Mr.
Laudersdale, that's your firm. Aren't you the Co. there? Ah, here it is,
--'Mrs. Catherine McLean, care of Mr. Roger Raleigh.' Doesn't that look
handsomely, Helen?" contemplating it with newly married satisfaction.

"Now you have it, come!" urges Helen.

"No, indeed! I must find that Turkish tobacco, to reward Mr. Laudersdale
for his heroic exertions in our behalf."

Mr. Laudersdale, somewhat fastidious and given to rigid etiquette, looks
as if the exertions would be best rewarded by haste. Mrs. McLean takes
the candle in hand and proceeds on a tour of the apartment.

"There! isn't this the article? John says it's pitiful stuff, not to be
compared with Virginia leaf. Look at this meerschaum, Mr. Laudersdale;
there's an ensample. Prettily colored, is it not?"

"Now are you coming?" asks Helen.

"Would you? We've never been here without my worshipful cousin before; I
should like to investigate his domestic arrangements. Needle and thread.
Now what do you suppose he is doing with needle and thread? Oh,
it's that little lacework that Mrs.----Sketches! I wonder whom he's
sketching. You, Helen? Me? Upside down, of course. No, it's----Yes, we
may as well go. Come!"

And in the same breath Mrs. McLean blows out the candle and precedes
them. Mr. Laudersdale scorns to secure the sketch; and holding back
the boughs for Miss Heath, and assisting her down the steps, quietly
follows.

Meantime, Mrs. Laudersdale has reached her point of departure again, has
stolen up out of the white fog now gathering over the lake, slipped into
her former place, and found all nearly as before. The candles had been
taken away, so that light came merely from the hall and doorways.
Some of the guests were in the brilliant dining-room, some in the
back-parlor. Mr. Raleigh, while Fate was thus busying herself about him,
still sat motionless, one hand upon the sofa's side, one on the back,
little Rite still sleeping on his knee. Capua came and exchanged a
few words with his master; then the colored nurse stepped through the
groups, sought the child, and carried her away, head and arms hanging
heavy with slumber. Still Mr. Raleigh did not move. Mrs. Laudersdale
stood in the window, vivid and glowing. There were no others in the
room.

"Where is Mrs. McLean?" asked Mary Purcell at the door, after the
charade in which she had been engaged was concluded.

"Gone across the lake with Nell and Mr. Laudersdale for a letter,"
replied Master Fred Heath, who had returned that afternoon from the
counting-room, with his employer, and now sauntered by.

Mrs. Laudersdale started; she had not escaped too early; but then----Her
heart was beating in her throat.

"What letter?" asked Mrs. Heath, with amiable curiosity, as she joined
them.

"Do you know what letter, Mr. Raleigh?"

"One from India, Madame," was his response.

"Strange! Helen gone without permission! What was in the letter, I
wonder. Do you know what was in the letter, Mr. Raleigh?"

"Congratulations, and a recommendation of Mrs. McLean's cousin to her
good graces," he said.

"Oh, it was not Helen's, then?"

"No."

"My young gentleman's not in good humor to-night," whispered Mrs. Heath
to Miss Purcell, with a significant nod, and moving off.

"How did you know what was in Mrs. McLean's letter, Sir?" asked Mary
Purcell.

"I conjectured. In Mrs. Heath's place, I should have known."

"There they come!--you can always tell Mrs. McLean's laugh. You've lost
all the charades, Helen!"

They came in, very gay, and seemed at once to arouse an airier and finer
spirit among the humming clusters. Mr. Laudersdale did not join his
wife, but sat on the piazza talking with Mr. McLean. People were looking
at an herbal, others coquetting, others quiet. Some one mentioned music.
Directly afterward, Mr. Raleigh rose and approached the piano. Every
one turned. Taking his seat, he threw out a handful of rich chords; the
instrument seemed to diffuse a purple cloud; then, buoyed over perfect
accompaniment, the voice rose in that one love-song of the world. What
depth of tenderness is there from which the "Adelaide" does not sound?
What secret of tragedy, too? Singing, he throbbed through it a vitality
as if the melody surcharged with beauty grew from his soul, and were his
breath of life, indeed. The thrilling strain came to penetrate and
fill one heart; the passionate despair surged round her; the silence
following was like the hand that closes the eyes of the dead.

Mr. Raleigh did not rise, nor look up, as he finished.

"How melancholy!" said Helen Heath, breaking the hush.

"All music should be melancholy," said he.

"How absurd, Roger!" said his cousin. "There is much music that is only
intensely beautiful."

"Intense beauty at its height always drops in pathos, or rather the soul
does in following it,--since that is infinite, the soul finite."

"Nonsense! There's that song, Number Three in Book One"----

"I don't remember it."

"Well, there's no pathos there! It's just one trill of laughter and
merriment, a sunbeam and effect. Play it, Helen."

Helen went, and, extending her hands before Mr. Raleigh, played a couple
of bars; he continued where she left it, as one might a dream, and,
strangely enough, the little, gushing sparkle of joy became a phantom of
itself, dissolving away in tears.

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. McLean, "you can make mouths in a glass,
if you please; but I, for one, detest melancholy! Don't you, Mrs.
Laudersdale?"

Mrs. Laudersdale had shrunk into the shadow of the curtain. Perhaps she
did not hear the question; for her reply, that did not come at once, was
the fragment of a Provencal romance, sung,--and sung in a voice neither
sweet nor rich, but of a certain personal force as potent as either, and
a stifled strength of tone that made one tremble.

"We're all alone, we're all alone!
The moon and stars are dead and gone,
The night's at deep, the winds asleep,
And thou and I are all alone!

"What care have we, though life there be?
Tumult and life are not for me!
Silence and sleep about us creep:
Tumult and life are not for thee!

"How late it is since such as this
Had topped the height of breathing bliss!
And now we keep an iron sleep,--
In that grave thou, and I in this!"

Her voice yet shivered through the room, he struck a chord of dead
conclusion, the curtain stirred, she emerged from the gloom and was
gone.

Mr. Raleigh rose and bade his cousin good-night. Mrs. McLean, however,
took his arm and sauntered with him down the lawn.

"I thought Capua came with you," she remarked.

"He returned in a spare wherry, some time since," he replied; and
thereon they made a few paces in silence.

"Roger," said the little lady, taking breath preparatory to wasting it,
"I thought Helen was a coquette. I've changed my mind. The fault is
yours."

He turned and looked down at her with some surprise.

"You know we haven't much more time, and certainly"----

"Kate!"

"Yes,--don't scold!--and if you are going to propose, I really think you
ought to, or else"----

"You think I ought to marry Miss Heath?"

"Why--I--well----Oh, dear! I wish I had held my peace!"

"That might have been advisable."

"Don't be offended now, Roger!"

"Is there any reason to suppose her--to suppose me"----

"Yes, there!" replied Mrs. McLean, desperately.

He was silent a moment.

"Good God, Kate!" said he, then, clasping his hands behind his head,
and looking up the deep transparence of the unanswering night. "What a
blessing it is that life don't last forever!"

"But it does, Roger," she uttered under her breath,--terrified at his
abrupt earnestness, and unwitting what storm she had aroused.

"The formula changes," he replied, with his old air, and retracing their
steps.

The guests were all gone. Helen Heath was eating an ice; he bent over
her chair and said,--

"Good-night, Miss Helen!"

"Oh, good-night, Mr. Raleigh! You are going? Well, we're all going soon.
What a glorious summer it has been! Aren't you sorry we must part?"

"Why must we part?" he asked in a lower tone. "Where is the necessity of
our parting? Why won't you stay forever, Helen?"

She turned and surveyed him quickly, while a red--whether of joy or
anger he could not tell--flashed up her cheek.

"Do you mean"----

"Miss Heath, I mean, will you marry me?"

"Mr. Raleigh, no!"

With a bow he passed on.

Mr. Raleigh trimmed the Arrow's sail, for the breeze had sunk again, and
swept slowly out with one oar suspended. A waning moon was rising behind
the trees, it fell upon the little quay that had been built that summer,
and seemed with its hollow beams still to continue the structure upon
the water. The Arrow floated in the shadow just beyond. Mr. Raleigh's
eyes were on the quay; he paused, nerveless, both oars trailing, a cold
damp starting on his forehead. Some one approached as if looking out
upon the dim sheet,--some one who, deceived by the false light, did not
know the end to be so near, and walked forward firmly and confidently.
Indeed, the quay had been erected in Mr. Laudersdale's absence. The
water was deep there, the bottom rocky.

"Shout and warn him of his peril!" urged a voice in Mr. Raleigh's heart.

"Let him drown!" urged another voice.

If he would have called, the sound died a murmur in his throat. His eyes
were on the advancing figure; it seemed as if that object were to be
forever branded on the retina. Still as he gazed, he was aware of
another form, one sitting on the quay, unseen in shadow like himself,
and seeing what he saw, and motionless as he. Would Mrs. Laudersdale
dip her hands in murder? It all passed in a second of time; at the next
breath he summoned every generous power in his body, sprang with the
leap of a wild creature, and confronted the recoiling man. Ere his foot
touched the quay, the second form had glided from the darkness, and
seized her husband's arm.

"A thousand pardons, Sir," said Mr. Raleigh, then. "I thought you were
in danger. Mrs. Laudersdale, good-night!"

It was an easy matter to regain the boat, to gather up his oars, and
shoot away. Till they faded from sight, he saw her still beside him;
and so they stood till the last echo of the dipping oars was muffled in
distance and lost.

Summer-nights are brief; breakfast was late on the next morning,--or
rather, Mrs. Laudersdale was late, as usual, to partake it.

"Shall I tell you some news?" asked Helen Heath.

She lifted her heavy eyes absently.

"Mrs. McLean has made her husband a millionnaire. There was an Indian
mail yesterday. Mr. Raleigh read his letters last night, after going
home. His uncle is dying,--old, unfortunate, forlorn. Mr. Raleigh has
abandoned everything, and must hew his own way in the world from this
day forward. He left this morning for India."

When you saw Mrs. Laudersdale for the first time, at a period thirteen
years later, would you have imagined her possessed of this little drama?
You fancy now that in this flash all the wealth of her soul burned out
and left her a mere volition and motive power? You are mistaken, as I
said.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *


GONE.


A silent, odor-laden air,
From heavy branches dropping balm;
A crowd of daisies, milky fair,
That sunward turn their faces calm,
So rapt, a bird alone may dare
To stir their rapture with its psalm.

So falls the perfect day of June,
To moonlit eve from dewy dawn;
With light winds rustling through the noon,
And conscious roses half-withdrawn
In blushing buds, that wake too soon,
And flaunt their hearts on every lawn.

The wide content of summer's bloom,
The peaceful glory of its prime,--
Yet over all a brooding gloom,
A desolation born of time,
As distant storm-caps tower and loom
And shroud the sun with heights sublime.

For they are vanished from the trees,
And vanished from the thronging flowers,
Whose tender tones thrilled every breeze,
And sped with mirth the flying hours;
No form nor shape my sad eye sees,
No faithful spirit haunts these bowers.

Alone, alone, in sun or dew!
One fled to heaven, of earth afraid;
And one to earth, with eyes untrue
And lips of faltering passion, strayed:
Nor shall the strenuous years renew
On any bough these leaves that fade.

Long summer-days shall come and go,--
No summer brings the dead again;
I listen for that voice's flow,
And ache at heart, with deepening pain;
And one fair face no more I know,
Still living sweet, but sweet in vain.




EXPRESSION.


The law of expression is the law of degrees,--of much, more, and most.

Nature exists to the mind not as an absolute realization, but as a
condition, as something constantly becoming. It is neither entirely this
nor that. It is suggestive and prospective; a body in motion, and not an
object at rest. It draws the soul out and excites thought, because it
is embosomed in a heaven of possibilities, and interests without
satisfying. The landscape has a pleasure to us, because in the mind it
is canopied by the ideal, as it is here canopied by the sky.

The material universe seems a suspense, something arrested on the point
of transition from nonentity to absolute being,--wholly neither, but on
the confines of both, which is the condition of its being perceptible to
us. We are able to feel and use heat, because it is not entirely heat;
and we see light only when it is mixed and diluted with its opposite.
The condition of motion is that there be something at rest; else how
could there be any motion? The river flows, because its banks do not. We
use force, because it is only in part that which it would be. What could
we do with unmixed power? Absolute space is not cognizable to the mind;
we apprehend space only when limited and imprisoned in geometrical
figures. Absolute life we can have no conception of; the absolute must
come down and incarnate itself in the conditioned, and cease to be
absolute, before it comes within the plane of our knowledge. The
unconscious is not knowable; as soon as it is thought, it becomes
conscious.

And this is God's art of expression. We can behold nothing pure; and all
that we see is compounded and mixed. Nature stands related to us at a
certain angle, and a little remove either way--back toward its grosser
side, or up toward its ideal tendency--would place it beyond our ken. It
is like the rainbow, which is a partial and an incomplete development,--
pure white light split up and its colors detached and dislocated, and
which is seen only from a certain stand-point.

We remark, therefore, that all things are made of one stuff, and on the
principle that a difference in degree produces a difference in kind.
From the clod and the rock up to the imponderable, to light and
electricity, the difference is only more or less of selection and
filtration. Every grade is a new refinement, the same law lifted to a
higher plane. The air is earth with some of the coarser elements purged
away. From the zooephyte up to man, more or less of spirit gives birth to
the intervening types of life. All motion is but degrees of gravitating
force; and the thousand colors with which the day paints the earth are
only more or less of light. All form aspires toward the circle, and
realizes it more or less perfectly. By more or less of heat the seasons
accomplish their wonderful transformations on the earth and in the air.
In the moral world, the eras and revolutions that check history are only
degrees in the development of a few simple principles; and the variety
of character that diversifies the world of men and manners springs from
a greater or less predominance of certain individual traits.

This law of degrees, pushed a little farther, amounts to detachment and
separation, and gives birth to contrast and comparison. This is one
aspect in which the law manifests itself in the individual. The chairs
and the pictures must come out from the wall before we can see them. The
tree must detach itself from the landscape, either by form or color,
before it becomes cognizable to us. There must be irregularity and
contrast. Our bodily senses relate us to things on this principle; they
require something brought out and disencumbered from the mass. The eye
cannot see where there is no shade, nor the hand feel where there is
no inequality of surface, nor the palate taste where there is no
predominance of flavor, nor the ear hear where there is no silence.
Montaigne has the following pertinent passage, which also comes
under this law:--"Whoever shall suppose a pack-thread equally strong
throughout, it is utterly impossible it should break; for where will you
have the breaking to begin? And that it should break altogether is not
in Nature."

The palpableness and availableness of an object are in proportion as it
is separated from its environments. We use water as a motive power by
detaching a part from the whole and placing ourselves in the way of its
tendency to unite again. All force and all motion are originated on
this principle. It is by gravity that we walk and move and overcome
resistance, and, in short, perform all mechanical action; yet the
condition is that we destroy the settled equilibrium of things for the
moment, and avail ourselves of the impulse that restores it again. The
woodman chops by controlling and breaking the force which he the next
moment yields to.

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