CHAPTER XV.

WAR AND PEACE.

After the incidents of the evening, it was not a little discomposing to behold, as they did, upon entering the parlor, Mrs. Atkins, Miss Atkins and Julia, together with Fernando Witherlee. The Atkins family had been there for a couple of hours, making a family call. Muriel was a favorite with them, as with everybody, and they saluted her affectionately; she responding with her usual affability. Harrington, too, was politely favored; though Mrs. Atkins (who had been a poor country girl once) and her daughters, also, had their misgivings as to his being of sufficient respectability to deserve the civilities due only to Good Society. But, despite this consideration, no woman could resist the sweet manhood of young Harrington; and so he received from these ladies as much politeness as though he moved, with mutton-chop whiskers and modish clothes, in fashionable circles—which was unfair.

While Muriel was privately explaining matters to her mother, Harrington joined in the conversation, in which all participated, save Wentworth, who was unusually quiet, and sat a little apart, with a cold and reserved air, the result of his feelings for Emily. The conversation, which had been on topics more or less commonplace, and had hovered frequently about, and several times fairly settled on, the charms and graces of Mr. Lafitte, dipped again to that enrapturing theme, by the will of Mrs. Atkins. Miss Atkins, by the way, though still a devotee of the chivalrous son of the sunny South, had suffered some slight abatement of her rapture; having learned, by chance, that Mr. Lafitte was already married.

“Oh, Mr. Harrington,” continued Mrs. Atkins, after much eulogium of the Southern gentleman who had done us the honor of dining with us to-day, “if you could only meet Mr. Lafitte, you would have such different ideas of the Southern gentlemen.”

“Indeed, madam,” replied Harrington, courteously, “I should be sorry to have my ideas of Southern gentlemen changed, for I credit them with many fine and high qualities. Don’t think that I imagine Northerners and Southerners in the absolute colors of good and evil—black and white; all the white on our side, and all the black on theirs.”

“Oh, no, of course not,” responded Mrs. Atkins in her fal-lal manner; “but I thought you were so anti-slavery, Mr. Harrington.”

“I certainly am anti-slavery, madam,” good-naturedly said Harrington, “and if I were living in Hancock’s time, I should be on the same principles anti-George the Third. But I hope I should not any the less pay due regard to the Tory gentlemen of that era. As far as their Toryism went, I should of course be their foe, and in like manner I am hostile to the gentlemen of this day who are tyrants.”

“But, Mr. Harrington,” said Julia, pertly, “you don’t like Mr. Webster, and I know you don’t, do you? Now do tell me, Mr. Harrington, why you don’t like Mr. Webster.”

Witherlee smiled furtively at Miss Julia’s immature gabble, and lifted his eyebrows in a faint sneer.

“Because, Miss Julia,” replied Harrington simply, with a gentle impressiveness of voice and manner which brought a new sensation to the poor child’s mind, and made her color, “because Mr. Webster helped to pass a law which has made a great many poor people very unhappy. You yourself wouldn’t like a man who made innocent people suffer, would you?”

“Oh, no, of course not,” stammered Julia, while Witherlee smiled maliciously, enjoying her confusion.

“Dear me! but they’re only negroes, Mr. Harrington,” feebly remarked Mrs. Atkins, in a deprecating tone.

“But, Mrs. Atkins, negroes have feelings,” said Emily.

“Oh, well, dear,” responded Mrs. Atkins, “but their feelings are not the same as ours, you know. That is, they haven’t fine feelings.”

“You remember the case that was lately reported in the newspapers, Mrs. Atkins,” said Harrington. “The rumor came that the kidnappers were in town with a warrant for a colored man, and his wife fell down dead with alarm when she heard it. I think you must allow that poor woman had feelings, and it is hard to deny that Mr. Webster was responsible for her murder. I saw those poor colored people in Southac street to-day, in wild distress and alarm at the report that a slave-hunter was in town, and no one who sees such things, and realizes them, can like Mr. Webster.”

“O Mr. Harrington, indeed I can’t agree with you,” returned Mrs. Atkins with feeble excitement. “These things are unpleasant, I admit, but Mr. Webster is a great statesman, you know—oh, there never was such a statesman as Mr. Webster! He’s perfectly splendid, and I’m sure if he was to have all the negroes in the country killed—the horrid creatures!—I’m sure I would like him just as much as ever. Indeed I would, and so would Mr. Atkins. O if you’d only heard Mr. Webster at Faneuil Hall last Saturday, I know you’d have been converted. He didn’t say a word about politics, and he was so majestic, and so venerable and so—so pleasant—oh, it was beautiful!”

And Mrs. Atkins fanned herself in a feeble fluster of admiration for Mr. Webster, whose speech, by the way, had been very decrepit, rambling, and dull, with only a touch here and there of the true Websterian massive power and energy.

“Well, Mrs. Atkins,” said Witherlee in his cool, polite, provoking way, “for my part, I don’t understand how you can admire Mr. Webster’s private life, I’m sure.”

This change in the venue, as the lawyers say, and this impudent assumption that Mrs. Atkins had been admiring Mr. Webster’s private life, were both highly characteristic of the good Fernando. His remark was not prompted by even the pale esthetic anti-slavery, which he sometimes indulged in, but by the simple desire to say something which he knew would aggravate the lady. And Mrs. Atkins was aggravated, for she colored and fanned herself nervously.

“I don’t know what you refer to, Mr. Witherlee,” she remarked, pettishly.

“Why, you know what Mr. Webster’s habits are, Mrs. Atkins,” said Fernando, lifting his eyebrows with an air of painful regret, in which there was also a bilious sneer. “You are aware of his excessive fondness for old Otard. And then his relations to women”—

“I don’t care,” interrupted Mrs. Atkins, bridling with faint excitement. “I don’t care at all, and I think that God gave Mr. Webster some faults to remind us that he is mortal.”

This was smart for Mrs. Atkins, and Witherlee, somewhat nonplused, turned pale with spite, and lifted his eyebrows, and shrugged his shoulders with a manner that was equivalent to saying—Oh, if you talk in that way, Mrs. Atkins, there’s no use in wasting words upon you. His manner would have been ineffably maddening to most men, but women are less easily transported beyond control, and Mrs. Atkins, conscious that she had the advantage of Mr. Witherlee in her reply, fanned herself equably and took no notice of his insulting gesture.

“For my part,” said Harrington, gravely offended by Witherlee’s remarks, “I deprecate any reflections upon Mr. Webster’s private life. It seems to me that our concern is with his public acts, and not with his personal habits.”

“Oh, you’re a gentleman, Mr. Harrington,” said Mrs. Atkins, in a tone that implied that Mr. Witherlee was not.

Witherlee looked at Mrs. Atkins with parted lips, and still, opaque eyes, white with spleen, but perfectly cool.

“Now, fellow-citizens, what’s the row?” blithely said Muriel, approaching the circle with her mother.

“Oh, cousin Muriel!” exclaimed Julia, “how can you talk in that way. It’s so low!”

“So it is, dear,” archly replied Muriel, “shockingly low, and you must be warned by my example.”

Julia looked a little foolish, and smiled.

“We were discussing, Mr. Webster,” said Fernando, tranquilly.

“Oh, Mr. Webster,” said Muriel; “I used to admire him very much when I was a girl.”

“It’s a pity you don’t now, Muriel,” said Mrs. Atkins, “for he deserves to be admired, I’m sure.”

“Yes, aunt, but I never recovered from a shock he gave me in my ‘sallet days, when I was green in judgment,’” replied Muriel.

“A shock? Dear me! I can’t imagine Mr. Webster shocking anybody,” drawled Caroline, with weak surprise.

“Nevertheless,” said Muriel, “Mr. Webster shocked me, like a torpedo fish, and I’ll tell you how. There was a grand party, at which he was present. Mother and I were there, and I, who was a girl of fourteen, had no eyes for anybody but Mr. Webster. My great desire was to hear him say something, for I thought anything he said would be remarkable, and worth putting in an album, so I followed him whenever he went through the crowded drawing-rooms, with my ears wide open, eagerly listening for the golden sentence. But Mr. Webster was in a very silent humor, and wandered about without speaking to anybody. By and by he went up-stairs to the supper room, and I followed him, in reverent admiration and expectancy. He approached the supper-table, bowed solemnly to some ladies near by, took a fork, and began to eat from a dish of pickled oysters. After he had eaten three or four, he paused, with an oyster on his fork, turned his great head slowly and majestically to the ladies, and opened his lips. The golden sentence was coming, and I listened breathlessly. Now what do you think he said?”

“Well, what?” inquired Harrington, after a hushed pause.

“Said he, in his deep, grum, orotund, bass voice, like the low rolling of distant summer thunder, ‘What nice little oysters these are!’”

Every one burst into hearty laughter, as Muriel mimicked the tones of the Websterian ejaculation.

“That was my reward for so long waiting,” she continued, when the laughter had subsided. “That was my golden sentence, which, of course, never went from the tablets of memory to the album. It was an immense shock to know that great statesmen said such things as common people say.”

“And you heard nothing else?” said Wentworth, vastly amused at the anecdote.

“Not another word. He devoured the oyster, and wandered down-stairs again, leaving with me the ponderous sprat which the flavor of the mollusc had conjured from the ocean depths of his mighty mind.”

They began to laugh again, when a ring at the door-bell was heard.

“That’s papa!” cried Julia.

Papa it was—come for his family. He came in presently, robust and decisive, purseproud, as usual, and smiling, made his salutations with a certain rude courtesy, and took a chair.

“Well, young ladies,” he burst out presently, “so you went to hear Phillips harangue this evening.”

“Yes, uncle,” returned Muriel, sportively, “we had you to keep us in countenance you know.”

“Indeed! Well, I’m sorry if my example incited you. Lafitte, our Southern visitor, thought it would be amusing to hear some of the fanatical blather, and so I took him along, and, just by chance, he got a dose of Phillips.”

“I hope the dose did him good, Lemuel, and you also,” said Mrs. Eastman, with some spirit.

“Oh, I don’t deny Phillips’s power, Serena,” replied the merchant, carelessly. “It’s all very fine, and if he were in the Whig party, he’d be a man of mark. It’s a pity, as I always say, to see such wonderful ability wasted.”

“How did Mr. Lafitte enjoy it, sir?” asked Emily, blandly.

“Oh, he—well, I was rather amused at the way he took it,” responded Mr. Atkins, laughing. “It quite upset him, and in his hot, Southern way, he said Phillips ought to be shot. In fact, I thought Lafitte was rather thin-skinned about it, though, to be sure, Phillips’s words are enough to try a saint. Anyhow, Lafitte felt ’em rankle.”

“He must certainly, to have had so murderous a spirit aroused in him,” remarked Mrs. Eastman.

“Murderous? Upon my word, Serena,” replied the merchant, bluffly, “I think his spirit was not unworthy of a man of high tone, and I shouldn’t blame him at all if he had pistolled your orator on the spot.”

“Like the assassin who bludgeoned Otis in Revolutionary times,” remarked Witherlee, blandly aggravating.

“Oh, you young men are all tainted with fanaticism,” returned Mr. Atkins, reddening. “When you’re older you’ll know better. I’m always sorry to see young men of talent, like Mr. Harrington here, misled by Phillips’s eloquent abstractions. But live and learn, live and learn.”

“I hope, Mr. Atkins, I shall not live to learn distrust in the statesmanship that reprobates slavery,” said Harrington, urbanely.

“Statesmanship!” contemptuously exclaimed the merchant. “Do you call such incendiary measures as Phillips and Parker advise, statesmanship? Sedition and treason! I declare, Mr. Harrington—and I say this coolly, in sober earnest—that if any one were to shoot down Phillips and Parker in the street, and I were summoned as a Grand Juror to pass upon the act, I would refuse to indict him on the ground that it was justifiable homicide. Yes, sir, justifiable homicide. I have said it a hundred times, and I now say it again. What do you think of that, Mr. Harrington?”

Harrington met the insulting exultation of the merchant’s gaze, with a look quiet and firm.

“Since you ask me what I think of it, Mr. Atkins,” he replied, tranquilly, “you must permit me to say that I think it atrocious.”

“And so do I,” said Mrs. Eastman, crimson with indignation. “And you ought to blush, Lemuel, to say that you would give legality to a ferocious murder.”

“Ought I?” replied the merchant, coolly. “Well, I don’t, Serena. In such a case, killing’s no murder. Murder, indeed! Ha! men like those to dare to wage war on the institutions of their country!”

“What institutions do they wage war upon, Mr. Atkins?” asked Wentworth, civilly.

“Well, sir, slavery for one,” excitedly returned the merchant. “An institution expressly sanctioned by the Constitution, and on the protection of which the safety of this Union depends, Mr. Wentworth. An institution, sir, which no statesman would think of assailing for a moment. Where can you point to one statesman, worthy of the name, from Webster back to Burke, or as far back as you like to go, that has ever assailed a great politico-economical institution like slavery? You’re a scholar, I’m told, Mr. Harrington; now just answer me that question.”

“Mr. Atkins, I am surprised beyond measure that you should ask me such a question,” calmly replied Harrington. “The real difficulty would be to name any statesman of the first eminence that has ever defended slavery. You mention Burke and Webster. Why, sir, the whole record of Mr. Webster’s life up to 1850, is against slavery. It is only eight years ago since he stood up in Faneuil Hall, and said—I quote his very words, for I have been lately reading them—‘What,’ said he, ‘when all the civilized world is opposed to slavery; when morality denounces it; when Christianity denounces it; when everything respected, everything good, bears one united witness against it, is it for America—America, the land of Washington, the model republic of the world—is it for America to come to its assistance, and to insist that the maintenance of slavery is necessary to the support of her institutions!’ Those are Daniel Webster’s very words, sir, and yet you ask when he ever assailed slavery!”

“Good! good!” cried Mrs. Eastman, amidst a general murmur of satisfaction from all but the Atkinses. Mr. Atkins sat dumb, wincing under the crushing blow of the quotation. Their new-born zeal for slavery and kidnapping gave the Boston merchants of that period terribly short memories.

“Faneuil Hall, crowded with Whig merchants, answered those words with six-and-twenty cheers. Have you forgotten them, Mr. Atkins?” said Harrington. “Now the cheers are all for slavery. Now, in defiance of your own statesman’s declaration, you assert slavery to be necessary to the maintenance of your Union. And now, because Phillips and Parker wage war upon slavery, as Webster did then, you would justify their murder.”

Still dumb, with his strong lip nervously twitching, the merchant sat, whelmed in utter confusion.

“You mentioned Burke, Mr. Atkins,” continued Harrington, “and since you have mentioned him, let me ask if you have forgotten his speech to the electors of Bristol? Listen to the words of the greatest statesman since Bacon—for they, too, are fresh in my memory. ‘I have no idea,’ said Edmund Burke—‘I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I believe that any good constitutions of government or of freedom can find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest faction.’ Those are the words of Burke, sir. If you doubt, Mrs. Eastman will get the volume from the library, and you shall read them for yourself.”

“No consequence, Mr. Harrington, no consequence,” returned the merchant, abruptly rising. “We will not discuss the matter further, sir. Come, Mrs. Atkins, it is time for us to go home.”

“O dear me,” drawled Mrs. Atkins, leaving her seat, “you gentlemen are so fond of these horrid politics. Come, children, come.”

They all rose, with a flutter and rustle of movement. Presently, while the Atkins ladies, cloaked and bonneted, were moving toward the door, Harrington approached Mr. Atkins, who had gone into the entry for his hat and returned, and now stood, cold, harsh and moody, apart from the rest of the company.

“I trust, Mr. Atkins,” said the young man, with grave courtesy, “that you are not offended by my plain speaking on these matters, or at least that you will not understand me to intend any disrespect to you personally.”

The merchant glared at him with a sullen and insolent smile.

“Mr. Harrington,” he hissed hoarsely, bending his face close to the young man’s, “such sentiments as yours find favor with my sister and niece. It is politic in you to adopt them, and so curry favor with the one that you may mend your poverty by a rich marriage with the other.”

And with these brutal words, the merchant threw back his head, glaring at the young man with open mouth, and a frightful smile on his blanched visage, which was at that moment the visage of a demon. Harrington met that glare with a look of such majestic severity, such a stern glory of anger lighting his calm eyes and brow, that the merchant’s face fell, and he slunk a pace away. The company had left the parlor, and were talking in the hall, as Mr. Atkins had made his reply, but Mrs. Eastman, who was standing nearest the parlor door, had heard it all, and before Harrington could make any rejoinder, if any he intended, she came quickly in, shutting the door behind her, her silver tresses trembling and her beautiful face flushed with haughty and indignant emotion.

“Permit me to tell you, Lemuel Atkins,” said she, confronting her brother, and speaking in a proud and steady voice, “that the sentiments which you have not the wit to controvert, nor the manhood to entertain, were held by Mr. Harrington before we had the honor of his friendship, and let me further say to you that while the choice of my daughter’s heart, be he rich or poor, shall be my choice also, I should esteem it the best hour of my life which gave me assurance that she would wed a man worthier of her than any man I know, and dear to me as my own son! Take that home with you, sir, and do us the honor to believe that in this house we value gentlemen for what they are, and not for what they own.”

He shrank from the serene and haughty magnetism of her manner, and cowering under her rebuke, slunk away to the door without a word, and went into the hall. Harrington stood like one thunder-struck, the slow thrill her words gave him running through his veins, while she swept across the room to close the door the merchant had left ajar, and turning again, came quickly toward him, her beautiful face pale and wet with calmly-flowing tears.

“Tell me, John,” she said, seizing his hands, and speaking in low, rapid tones, tremulous with emotion—“this pitiful insult moved me to anger, and in my anger I have spoken the true thought of my heart—tell me that so dear a hope is not so vain. Oh, confide in me as in your own mother, for no mother could love you more tenderly than I do.”

In the spiritual passion of the moment, all cold prudence, all reticence, melted, and fell away. He clasped her in his arms, and with sweet and sorrowful emotion, kissed her fair brow and silver hair.

“I love her, my mother,” he murmured, sadly smiling—“I love her, but the love I once thought mine, is not for me.”

“You love her—you love Muriel, and she does not love you! I do not believe it—I cannot. John, at my age women are not easily deceived—they do not mistake the tokens of love. Take care that you are sure of what you say”—

“I am sure, mother, I am sure,” he interrupted, in a low voice. “Her accepted lover told me of his happiness to-day. Do not ask me his name. They themselves will tell you. Hush!”

The hall-door was heard closing, and the voices talking gaily in the hall. She looked at him wonderingly for an instant, then quickly pressed her lips to his drooping forehead, and glided from his arms to the back-door of the parlor, out of which she passed up to her chamber, as the others came in.

Witherlee had departed as the escort of Miss Julia, his natural impudence perfectly ignoring the rebuff he had received from her mother.

“Where’s Mrs. Eastman?” said Emily.

“She went out as you came in,” replied Harrington.

“John,” said Muriel, coming up to him, and playfully shaking her finger. “You quite discomfited poor Uncle Lemuel, and he went off as cross as a bear.”

“What a memory Harrington has!” laughed Wentworth. “To think that he gave him Burke and Webster plump! That was a double-barrelled shot, by Jupiter!”

“Oh, it was capital,” chimed in Emily.

“Faith,” said Harrington, “it was simply lucky. I happened to have been reading the speeches lately, and so had the passages by heart. But I wonder at Mr. Atkins making such an absurd assertion.”

“Oh, he remembers nothing previous to 1850,” said Muriel. “These people are perfectly wild with their Webster and Fugitive Slave Law mania, and they repeat certain phrases until their organs of intelligence are ossified, as Goethe says. Come, Emily, let us have some music.”

“Yes, do, Emily,” said Wentworth, half absently, and forgetting for a moment, as was frequent with him, the state of affairs between him and Miss Ames.

Emily looked at him with cool serenity, as if she thought his request impertinent. Wentworth, recalled to himself, was maddened by the look and all it brought him, and turning to conceal his anger, wandered away to the piano, humming an air.

“Come, Emily, we must go home, for it’s getting late,” said Harrington; “so sing us that sweet song of Körner’s—the ‘Good Night’ song—to sooth us to dreams.”

Emily smiled with superb languor, and half-reluctant, for she was not in a songful mood, swept over to the piano, looking steadily as she advanced at Wentworth, who was leaning carelessly against the instrument, and regarding her with stern eyes.

“I believe,” said she, listlessly, as she sunk upon the music-stool, and with a parting glance of cold hauteur dropped her eyes from the steady gaze of Wentworth, “I believe that the piano is out of tune.”

“Do you know why, Miss Ames?” asked Wentworth suddenly, in a voice at once so quiet and so marked that both Muriel and Harrington looked at him.

“Because,” he said with bitter and terrible significance, a scowl darkening his features—“because it has been played upon!”

Muriel and Harrington started with a low exclamation, and glanced first at Wentworth, and then at Emily, with mute amazement. A smile arose on Wentworth’s face, and mingled with his scowl, as he slowly walked away. Emily rose from her seat, and gazed after him, her form dilated to its full height, her bosom heaving, and her face and neck suffused with an indignant scarlet glow. Turning, Wentworth looked haughtily at her for a moment, and then, utterly reckless, with heart and brain on fire, laughed a bitter and scornful laugh, and moved toward the parlor door. Emily’s lip quivered, her color faded to pallor, and bursting into a passionate flood of tears, she covered her face with her hands, and swept by the other door from the room.

Muriel and Harrington had stood transfixed with astonishment up to this moment, but as they saw both Emily and Wentworth leave the parlor, they recovered with a start.

“Stay, Wentworth,” cried Harrington, rushing to the door, and “Emily, Emily,” cried Muriel, flying after her friend.

But Harrington reached the hall, just as the front door slammed at the heels of Wentworth, and tearing it open, he beheld him running up the street like a madman, while Muriel, bounding up-stairs after Emily, saw her vanish into her chamber, and heard the lock of her door click behind her.

Both returned to the parlor at the same moment, and advancing toward each other, pale, agitated, and almost petrified with wonder at the lightning-like suddenness and inexplicable character of this incident, gazed into each other’s faces. The affair was like a flash on a dark landscape, giving a vague glimpse of some mysterious form there, and vanishing before its nature was revealed.

“Good Heavens, John! what does this mean?” exclaimed Muriel, breaking the lonely stillness of the lighted parlor.

“I do not know,” he murmured, vacantly gazing at her. “Is Richard mad?”

She put her hands to her bosom to repress its throbbings, and sank into a large chair near her. Both were silent for some minutes, each trying to think, with a whirling brain, what this could possibly mean.

“What a singular day this has been!” murmured Harrington at length, as behind this last incident the tableau of its many-passioned hours rose in his mind.

“Singular, indeed!” replied Muriel, in a low voice, “and how singularly and sadly it ends!”

“Not so,” he replied with sweet gravity. “Let it end in our good night, which is always happy with affection and peace. We will dismiss this scene, Muriel. To-morrow we can think more clearly, and we will know its meaning. Meanwhile, good night.”

She rose from her seat, and they came toward each other with outstretched hands. It was strange, but for the first time in all their long acquaintance, their hands passed each other, his arms encircled her, and hers rested on his, with her hands upon his shoulders. A trance seemed to glide upon them. The lighted room was very still; the sad wind sighed in the hush around the dwelling; and gazing into each other’s faces, with a vague thrill remotely stirring in the peace of their spirits, they stood motionless, as in a dream.

Thus for a little while, which seemed long, lasted their communion. Earthly cares and hopes forgotten, earthly strifes removed and dim, and the sorrow of their hopeless love so chastened and sanctified in the nobleness of mutual sacrifice that it knew no touch of pain.

A long, mysterious sigh of the night-wind breathed around the dwelling, and stole into the peace of their minds. Harrington smiled, and his heart rose in benediction as he silently laid his hands upon the fair and sacred head of his beloved.

“The night deepens on, Muriel, and we must part,” he gently murmured.

“Yes, we must part,” she answered, in a low tone, “and our parting to-night seems like a type of the greater parting.”

“To me the same,” he murmured, in a rapt voice. “Never before has it seemed so like parting forever. I might feel thus when passing through the dusks of death, with the dream of all earth’s sweet and vanished hours fading in visions of the life to come.”

There was a long pause, in which the cadence of his words seemed to linger like the ghost of music on the air.

“But we shall meet there,” she said. “We who have passed so many holy and poetic hours here—we shall meet there. The earthly ‘good-night’ is but the prelude to ‘good-morning.’ So shall the last farewell of earth prelude the heavenly greeting.”

“Yes, we shall meet there,” he murmured. “Have we not met there already—friends, true and loving, dwellers in Heaven’s happy star! Who shall gainsay the alchemist who wrote that ‘Heaven hath in it this scene of earth.’ The true life is there, and our existence here is but a fleeting hour of absence from our heavenly home. Yes, we shall meet there, reclothed with the divine memory, and keeping the memory of all we wrought and were on earth, that earth might fulfill the large purposes of God—meet there, old friends, true and loving, changed, and yet the same.”

Again there was a pause of trancing silence, filled with the floating ghost of visionary music, keeping the sweet tradition of his words, and telling to the soul what music tells. Again around the lonely dwelling swelled the wind’s mysterious eolian sigh, rising in inarticulate wild prophecies, and wailing sombrely away.

“Good night, good night,” he softly murmured, with a movement of departure.

“Good night,” she answered, in a low and fervent voice, “friend, true and loving, good night.”

A sense of heavenly tenderness rose trembling in their souls, and with meeting lips they were clasped in each other’s arms. Oh, solemn ecstasy of prayer and peace! Oh, mystic passion of a veiled true love!

Was it a dream? She was alone. Standing in the solitary room, her brow bent upon her hand, the dim sweetness of the vision in her mind, she floated away in vague, delicious reverie. Soft light fled pulsing through her spirit; a sacred and passionless perfume floated in her brain; a celestial tenderness tranced her soul. He loved another; his love for her was the love of friend for friend—no more; but she was happier, holier, nobler to have inspired such love, and stronger than ever to resign him now, and to live her life alone. So thinking, like one lost in a blissful dream, she glided away to her pillow.

Was it a dream? How strangely sweet and vague! He was wandering noiselessly down the shadowy street in the wan moonlight, with the cold air blowing on his cheek, as void of coldness as though he had been a phantom, and not a man. When had he left her—how? but his thoughts recalled only the peaceful passion of that moment, and between the lighted room and the moonlit street, there was a blank chasm. Dear moment, never to come again, dear magic flower that bloomed in the sad garden of his love, never to be renewed, yet sweetening life and life’s submissive sacrifice forever. Dear friend, true friend and sweet, whose clasp, whose sacred kiss—the first, the last—gave tokens of no earthly love, but rich memorials and previsions of the love that makes the hills of heaven more fair! So ran the voiceless music of his thought, while memory kept the phantom form of the beloved one in visioned light and odor. To-morrow he would meet her, and the day after, and on for many a day through months and years to come, but never again on the height of the ideal and intimate communion where their spirits had met and said farewell. Years hence, and she a happy wife and mother, how softly this hour would glide from the innermost holiest cloister of memory, and lend a more pensive and tender grace to her beauty, and shed a finer and more ethereal essence on her happiness! Consecrating her forever, its consecration would rest on his own life, pledging him more firmly to lofty and generous effort, and sanctifying all low toils and struggles as with the presence of an angel.

Softly, and without noise, he entered his dark and silent house. A moment, and he had lit his shaded lamp, and conscious of the sleepless vigil in his mind, he opened the volume which held for him the rich lore of Verulam, his unfailing pleasure, and the comfort of his saddest hours, and sat down to read the night away. Within all was still. Without, the wind swept drearily through the wan and shadowy street around the silent dwelling, the lilac odors had died, and the pale moonlight shone with the blue glimmer of swords.