CHAPTER IV.

MURIEL AND EMILY.

Temple street slopes steeply down Beacon Hill, an aristocratic street of the aristocratic quarter.

In Temple street lived Muriel with her mother. Mrs. Eastman was a widow. Her husband, a young scholar, primarily a lawyer, had died three years after their marriage, when Muriel was but two years old. The effect of his death on his wife was peculiar. Fitly named Serena, so gentle and lovely was her nature, his death had not made her unhappy, but it had breathed a deeper quiet into her gentleness, and her life had been, since then, as calm as evening. She had been a poet—some of those exquisite little anonymous lyrics, of which America produces so many, and which float about through the press, scattering delight but winning no fame, were hers. But his death had stilled her muse forever. It seemed to have cloistered her spirit from the world. Never very fond of company, his decease had made her in love with solitude, and she spent much of her time in her own chamber, alone.

She was wealthy, having inherited from her husband a considerable property. Muriel, too, was rich in her own right; Mr. Eastman’s brother, who had a great affection for her, having died a bachelor four or five years before, and left her a handsome fortune.

It was a large, sumptuously furnished house they lived in. Into its library, the fresh spring light, which lay so palely in the long, musty, powder-scented fencing-school, streamed that morning through crystal and purple panes, and filled the perfumed air with a gold and violet glory. The library was rich and dark in color, with walnut bookcases, deep-toned walls, and violet-velvet furniture. Its prevailing sombrous hue seemed to confine and intensify the cheerful radiance which filled it, like some ethereal lustrous liquid in a cup of ebony, touching the dim gilding of the picture-frames, the delicate ornaments here and there, and resting on a distinctive feature of the apartment, a large parlor organ, of dark oak and gold.

But the library’s chief ornament that morning was Muriel—as lovely a blonde as ever grew to the gathered grace and vigor of twenty summers, and with that pervading glimmer of natural elegance and fine courtly breeding in her loveliness, which we express in the word debonair. She was standing very still, rapt in deep musing, with an open volume of Dante held in her left palm, and her white, nervous right hand resting on the page. A lilac dress of some soft tissue, stirred only above the light pulsations of her bosom, flowed in graceful folds, as she stood with one arched foot advanced and partly visible at its margin, and revealed the enchanting harmony of her tall and stately figure. The dress came quite up to the neck, flowering over there in a charming ruffle of lace, above which bloomed her exquisite countenance, virginal and gracious as the morning, as dewy-sweet, as fresh, as spiritually pure. The complexion, fair and clear as a pond-lily, was radiant with perfect health. Color, faint as the dawn, tinted the oval cheeks, and the sweet, curved mouth wore the hue of the wild-brier rose. The large grey eyes were softened with a golden sheen. Amber hair, with a tint of gold in it, parted over the serene and open brow, and rising from the head, as we see it in the Greek statues, rippled down in wavy tresses around the delicate ears, to gather behind in soft, thick loops of antique beauty. Noble and debonair from head to foot, and all imparadised in charm, so on that morning stood Muriel.

Who would have dreamed that the reverie in which she was absorbed was too solemn to have grown upon her spirit from the mighty Tuscan page before her? Who could have imagined, gazing upon her calm loveliness, that a great and awful, though silent, struggle had shaken her heart? Yet it was so. The event which can most convulse a woman’s life had come to her. She loved Harrington, and it had dawned upon her that he loved her friend Emily.

She had met it bravely. With that revelation her heart had risen to the level of heroic story, and in the spiritual strife which makes life tremble to its centre, she was the victor. She knew that the world lay lonely and disenchanted before her, but she was calm. She knew that life’s fairest hope was unaccomplished, life’s loveliest dream dissolved, but she was strong. She saw afar the dark battalia of the coming years of sadness, and her heart rose to meet them with the pulses of Marathon. It was love’s crowning hour with her—the hour of sacrifice, renunciation, the high soul’s rapture of martyrdom—the hour of bravery and sad, generous joy.

But now the immediate strife in her spirit was over, and in the deeps of her reverie, she saw, strangely distinct as in a dream, the phantom face of Harrington smiling palely upon her from an illimitable distance. It had never before been so vivid in her vision, nor had it ever come to her with such a sense of being mystically far-removed. As she dreamed upon it, its visionary remoteness seemed less a symbol of the distance of unanswering love than of love immortal withdrawn by death to smile upon her from the depths of Eternity. But it was Love, not Death, that had divided them: he had receded from her to love her friend. She was resigned that it should be so—happy still, though lonelier, that it was so. Hers was the true love which gives and needs, but asks not; and aspiring only to the happiness and good of the beloved one, willingly, for that, resigns all that makes life most precious and finds a sad joy in the sacrifice. It was her loss, but another’s gain. There was joy still in the belief that he was happy in his love for her friend—in the faith that she was worthy of that love—in the trust that the lofty purposes for which spirits work on earth in wedded lives would be achieved by them.

Calm, tender, solemn and regal flowed her reverie, haunted ever by the phantom face that was never to be near her again—never to smile henceforth in her dreams save at this visionary distance, which seemed to her prescient spirit ever less and less the distance of unanswered love, ever more and more the distance of love responding from the serene depths of Eternity.

“Muriel!”

A hushed, wondering voice spoke her name. A figure stood before her at a little distance. Voice and figure were alike remote and dim to her tranced mind.

“Muriel! Good heavens! Muriel!”

It was Emily. She saw her standing before her, astonished—she herself tranquil, clearly cognizant, and utterly unsurprised. A superb brunette, attired in rich brown silk, with a brilliant scarlet scarf on her shoulders, admirably contrasted with her dark hair, and the sunny gold and rose of her complexion.

“Why, Muriel, you frightened me! I spoke, and yet you did not hear. What a strange, still shine there is in your eyes! One would think you were a somnambulist.”

The happy and noble face smiled at her as she spoke, and two bright tears flowed upon it. A moment, and the book fell to the floor, and embracing Emily, she kissed her crimson mouth, and fondly gazed into her countenance. At the pressure of the soft bosom against her own, at the touch of the fragrant and dewy lips, Emily’s spirit rose in fervent affection, and in that moment her heart clasped Muriel like her arms.

“I was a dreamer, and not a somnambulist, dear Emily,” said Muriel. “I was lost in a reverie, deeper than I have ever known, and it gave me the peace of a holy thought.”

“What was the thought, dear Muriel?” asked Emily.

“One that you can appreciate, dear lover,” was the tender and gay reply. “The thought that life is truliest life in the greatness and sweetness of love.”

A refluent jealousy vainly strove at that moment to enter the heart of Emily. The charm of her friend’s gracious countenance, and of her mellow silver voice, was strong upon her. But the rich color came to her golden face and over her broad, low brow to the roots of her hair, and her lustrous brown eyes wandered into vacancy.

“Yes, Muriel,” she answered, after a moment’s hesitation, “I agree with you. Life is truliest life in loving and being loved.”

“No, that is not agreeing with me,” said Muriel, with a frank smile. “Life is sufficiently life in loving. To love is enough.—But come, dear Emily, your chocolate voice shall not be used in discussion, but in confession. We must talk this morning, for I fancy you have some little grudge against me, and it is time for us to understand each other, like good friends.”

Emily colored again, and the tears were very near her eyes. She loved Muriel, yet could not help being jealous of her, believing, as she did, that she was her rival for the love of Wentworth. But she laughed lightly, dissembling her emotion, and asked:

“Why is my voice a chocolate voice, Muriel? That is an odd epithet.”

“A very good one, dear,” replied Muriel, laughing, and picking up the Dante from the floor. “Your voice is a contralto. Sounds, you know, have their analogical colors, as Madame de Staël knew when she said the sound of the trumpet was crimson. Now the analogue of contralto is brown. Chocolate, too, is brown. Hence your voice is chocolate.”

“Well done, Muriel! Come, now, that is really ingenious.”

Muriel laughed her clear and mellow silver laugh, and looked playfully at Emily.

“Thank you for the compliment, _mignonne_. I shall make it over to the gentleman from whom I stole the idea.”

“Stole? It’s not yours, then?”

“O yes! It’s mine, because I stole it.”

“And who from? Harrington?”

“Guess again, dear! But _n’importe_—no matter. Come and sit here with me.”

Muriel moved smilingly away to a couch of violet-velvet, and sinking upon the cushioned seat, waved her hand to her friend. Emily stood unheeding, in an attitude of sumptuous repose, with her rounded arms folded, a faint smile on her face, and her lustrous and lambent eyes half-veiled by their long lashes. The damask color was bright on her cheeks and on her parted lips, and with every slow breath, her bosom slowly lifted and fell, stirring the rich and heavy attar-of-rose odor which brooded slumberously about her form.

“Thou gorgeous queen-rose of Ispahan, why dreamest thou?” said Muriel’s voice of silver mockery. “Didst thou not hear me call? Come, I say!”

The beautiful brunette did not obey, but raised her proud patrician head from its drooping curve, and vaguely sighed. Muriel rose, lightly glided over to her, clasped her waist with both arms, and standing a little on one side and bending forward—a fresh and full-grown lily—a fair, gay woman, with the grace and glimmer of a bewitching child in her womanhood—looked with a naive and radiant, half-mocking, half-serious smile, into the face of her she had called the gorgeous queen-rose of Ispahan. Presently she began to lead her to the couch. Emily held back, but Muriel’s clasp tightened, and yielding to the firm, fairy strength with which, though strong, she was unable to cope, Emily suffered herself to be conducted to the seat.

“Ah, stayaway,” blithely said Muriel, sitting beside her, and playfully shaking a finger at her in sportive reproach, “who is the stronger now? You are fairly captured, and I hold you my prisoner until peace is concluded.”

Emily, amused by this pleasantry, showed the pearls of her red mouth in a brilliant laugh over her indolently folded arms.

“And if you could only fence,” continued Muriel, in the same tone as before, “I would conquer a peace at the point of my rapier. Can’t I persuade you to learn, for that especial purpose?”

“Indeed you can’t,” said Emily. “It’s not in the line of my accomplishments, though you have included it in yours. Bless me! Muriel, what will you be learning next? Dancing on the tight-rope, I suppose, or standing on one toe on the back of a galloping horse, like a circus girl.”

“That would be fine, dear, wouldn’t it!” returned Muriel. “Decidedly, I never thought of the tight-rope or the circus horse before. It is really an idea! But let us cry truce to this nonsense, for indeed I have something to say to you.”

Moving a little nearer to Emily as she spoke, her frolic manner vanished, and her face grew sweetly serious.

“When you found me so entranced this morning,” she said, after a long pause, “I was thinking of you, dear Emily—in part of you. You know how much I love you. We grew up together from girlhood, and among all your friends there is none whose happiness is more closely entwined in yours than mine.”

Emily’s heart beat fast, and the moisture gathered in her down-dropped eyes. She did not look up, but she felt that the clear eyes of Muriel were fixed on her face.

“We have had many happy hours together, Emily,” murmured the low, sweet voice; “and when you came here two weeks ago, on this visit, it seemed that the happiest hours of all, both for you and me, were beginning. Happiest for me because I thought that what makes life sweetest to us all had come to you—here—in this house.”

There was another pause, in which Emily bowed her head, with an inexpressible sense of passionate sorrow.

“And it has come to you, Emily,” continued Muriel. “You did not tell me—you kept your heart’s secret closely—but I saw it—I felt it—though I so strangely mistook its object. I did not think my intuition could so mislead me, but it did. For I thought your feeling was for Richard and his for you.”

Emily smiled serenely, but under the serene smile her wild grief raged.

“How could you think so, Muriel?” she lightly asked.

“I judged so from his manner toward you, and yours toward him,” replied Muriel.

Emily laughed gaily.

“I cannot imagine,” she answered, “how you could think his attentions meant anything more than the ordinary reckless gallantries it is his nature to lavish on young women. And as for myself, I should indeed be weak to love such a person as he.”

She said it with the most bland and tranquil indifference of voice and manner—grief and scorn and the wild resentment of slighted love all hidden and raging in her heart.

“Emily!” The silver voice was raised in mild reproach, and she felt the nervous hands suddenly clasp her arm. “How can you speak so of Richard! Indeed, you do him great injustice. I know him better than to think that of him. Emily, you amaze me! Why, how can you imagine him such a person!”

Emily smiled blandly. She may well defend him, was her thought, for she loves him. Calmly lifting her lustrous eyes, she saw Muriel’s wondering face all suffused with generous color. Yes, she thought, it is her love for him.

“Why Muriel,” she remarked quietly, “everybody knows he is a handsome young flirt. It is his general reputation. His words, his looks, his manner toward women are proof enough of it, I’m sure. Nobody thinks more highly of him than Fernando, but even Fernando, spite of his friendship, says it is the great fault of his character.”

Muriel laughed suddenly, then looked very grave.

“I’m afraid, Emily,” she said quickly, “that it is Fernando who has put this strange and ridiculous idea into your head.”

“Not at all,” quietly responded Emily. “Fernando only corroborates my own judgment. But if you cannot trust the opinion of a man’s intimate friends and associates, what can you trust?”

“I would not trust Fernando’s opinion of anybody,” said Muriel.

“Why?” asked Emily, coolly.

“Why, dear? Because our good Fernando is nothing if not critical,” piquantly answered Muriel.

“Do you think him false?” said Emily.

“Hum!” Muriel looked doubtful—then laughed. “To tell the truth, _mignonne_, I think he is, on a small scale, the Iago of private life.”

“You are witty, Muriel, but you are not just,” was Emily’s cold reply.

Muriel was silent for a moment.

“Never mind,” she resumed. “We will not discuss Fernando. You will yet think better of Richard, I am confident, but as you are not in love with him, it’s no matter.”

As I am not in love with him! thought Emily. She could hardly keep from shuddering with the flood of conflicting passion that shot through her. The wild impulse to tell Muriel that she had cast her life upon him, burst into her mind. What? Tell her that she loved him, and that he had slighted her love; that he had won her heart from her; that once, in one electric moment, his arms had enfolded her, his lips had pressed hers, and then, his whim gratified, he had left unspoken the words her soul panted to hear, and coldly alienated himself from her! Tell all this to her, whom he was now wooing, and who loved him! Passionate pride arose, and held the impulse down.

“Yes, I own that I was mistaken,” pursued Muriel, “strangely mistaken, in dreaming that you and Richard were lovers. Still, there was love. It is my joy to think that you love another dear friend of mine, and that he loves you. And my joy is all the greater to feel that you are above our social prejudices—that you are great enough to love one whose wealth is in his manhood. You and Harrington”—

Emily turned quickly, her face calm, but all aglow with rich scarlet, and lighted with an indefinable smile. Muriel, pale with love and sacrifice, her clear voice trembling, and her eyes humid, stopped as she met that singular look, and changed color.

“Forgive me, dear Emily,” she said quickly. “I would not speak of it—I would not touch a subject cloistered even from me—but for one reason, which I will tell you presently. But first let me say that I was again surprised when I read in your mutual attentions for the last few days—yours and Harrington’s—the tokens of your love. For I had thought Harrington’s heart was not free—that he loved another. Now let me”—

“Who?” interrupted Emily. “Who did you think he loved? Tell me. I am curious to know.”

“Nay, dear,” replied Muriel. “It would be unnecessary to tell that. Since I was wrong, is it not better to let it go unmentioned? Surely it is.”

Perhaps Emily might have guessed who it was, had she looked then at Muriel’s face. But her eyes were downcast, and she was vainly striving to imagine who Muriel could mean. Then the remembrance of how constant and reckless had been her recent attentions to Harrington, and, though paid only to abate Wentworth’s supposed triumph by convincing him that she cared nothing for him, how good a ground they afforded to Muriel for her present belief, came into her mind, and she almost groaned. But what would have been her grief had she dreamed of the effects of her conduct on Muriel?

“Now, dear Emily,” resumed Muriel, “let me come at once to the only sad thing in all this—in a word, to the reason which compels me to speak thus frankly to you for the sake of our friendship, which I cannot bear to see disturbed even for an hour. You know I have known John for a long time, and that he is my best, my most cherished friend. I cannot tell you how much he has been and is to me—with how many noble hours he is associated. Since I have thought you loved him, I have been conscious—painfully conscious—that your manner has not been what it once was to me—that you have felt our communion—his and mine—as something that interfered with your relation to him.”

Muriel paused, earnestly gazing in the face of her friend, to be certain that she was not offending her. The hot color suffused Emily’s face, but she was calm and even smiled. Yes, I am jealous of her, was her thought, but it is because she loves Wentworth and he her. And she thinks I love Harrington! Then came the impulse to undeceive Muriel in this regard. Pride arose on one side, taunting her to confess that she had paid court to a man she did not love. Shame arose on the other side, urging her to conceal the thoughtless folly of having lured that man to love her. Both together held the impulse down.

“Dear Emily,” pursued Muriel, in tender and pleading tones, “do not let this be so. Do not think of me as your rival because I am your lover’s friend. There cannot be in our relation—his and mine—anything to weaken his faith to you. Oh, believe that, and let there be no discord between you and me! There, I have said all. I might have waited till he or you told me that you were lovers. But I could not bear to see you tortured with the feeling that there was rivalry between us, or to see our friendship in any way impaired. Forgive me for my haste—for my brusque plain-speaking; and love me truly as I love you.”

Leaning over to her, as she ended, Muriel, the bright tears welling from her eyes, embraced her tenderly. Emily, smiling wanly, her brain whirling with affection, with self-scorn and passionate despair, clasped the loving form to her breast, and held it there. In a few moments Muriel disengaged herself, her happy and noble face radiant, but wet with tears, smiled at Emily, and smiling, rose and glided from the room.