Chapter 52

"Love is enough."

And so, as the days go by, the short and silent days, it comes to pass that a sort of peace falls upon my soul; born of a slow yet deep assurance that with Barbara it is well.

One can do with probabilities in prosperity, when to most of us careless ones it seems no great matter whether there be a God or no? When all the world's wheels seem to roll smoothly, as if of themselves, and one can speculate with a confused curiosity as to the nature of the great far cause that moves them; but in grief--in the destitute bareness, the famished hunger of soul, when "one is not," how one craves for _certainties_! How one yearns for the solid heaven of one's childhood; the harping angels, the never-failing flowers; the pearl gates and jeweled walls of God's great shining town!

They may be gone; I know not, but at least _one_ certainty remains--guaranteed to us by no outside voice, but by the low yet plain tones that each may listen to in his own heart. That, with him who is pure and just and meek, who hates a lie worse than the sharpness of death, and loves others dearer than himself, it shall be well.

Do you ask where? or when? or how? We cannot say. We know not; only we know that it shall be well.

Never, never shall I reach Barbara's clear child-faith; Barbara, to whom God was as real and certain as I; never shall I attain to the steady confidence of Roger. I can but grope dimly with outstretched hands; sometimes in the outer blackness of a moonless, starless night; sometimes, with strained eyes catching a glimpse of a glimmer in the east. I can but _feel_ after God, as a plant in a dark place feels after the light.

And so the days go by, and as they do, as the first smart of my despair softens itself into a slow and reverent acquiescence in the Maker's will, my thoughts stray carefully, and heedfully back over my past life: they overleap the gulf of Barbara's death and linger long and wonderingly among the previous months.

With a dazed astonishment I recall that even then I looked upon myself as one most unprosperous, most sorrowful-hearted.

What in Heaven's name ailed me? What did I lack? My jealousy of Roger, such a living, stinging, biting thing _then_; how dead it is now!

Barbara always said I was wrong; always!

As his eyes, in the patient mournfulness of their reproachful appeal, answer again in memory the shrewish violence of my accusation on the night of the ball--the last embers of my jealousy die. He does not love me as he did; of that I am still persuaded. There is now, perhaps, there always will be, a film, a shade between us.

By my peevish tears, by my mean and sidelong reproaches, by my sulky looks, I have necessarily diminished, if not quite squandered the stock of hearty, wholesome, honest love that on that April day he so diffidently laid at my feet. I have already marred and blighted a year and three-quarters of his life. I recollect how much older than me he is, how much time I have already wasted; a pang of remorse, sharp as my knife, runs through my heart; a great and mighty yearning to go back to him at once, to begin over again _at once, this very minute_, to begin over again--overflows and floods my whole being. Late in the day as it is--doubly unseemly and ungracious as the confession will seem now--I will tell him of that lie with which I first sullied the cleanness of our union. With my face hidden on his broad breast, so that I may not see his eyes, I will tell him--yes, I will tell him. "I will arise, and go to him, and say, 'I have sinned against Heaven and before thee.'"

So I go. I am nearing Tempest: as I reach the church-yard gate, I stop the carriage, and get out.

Barbara was always the one that, after any absence from home, I used first to run in search of. I will go and seek her now.

It is drawing toward dusk as I pass, in my long black gown, up the church-path, between the still and low-lying dead, to the quiet spot where, with the tree-boughs waving over her, with the ivy hanging the loose luxuriance of its garlands on the church-yard wall above her head, our Barbara is taking her rest.

As I near the grave, I see that I am not its only visitor. Some one, a man, is already there, leaning pensively on the railings that surround it, with his eyes fixed on the dark and winterly earth, and on the newly-planted, flagging flowers. It is Roger. As he hears my approaching steps, the swish of my draperies, he turns; and, by the serene and lifted gravity of his eyes, I see that he has been away in heaven with Barbara. He does not speak as I come near; only he opens his arms joyfully, and yet a little diffidently, too, and I fly to then.

"Roger!" I cry, passionately, with a greedy yearning for human love here--at this very spot, where so much of the love of my life lies in death's austere silence at my feet--"love me a little--_ever so little_! I know I am not very lovable, but you once liked me, did not you?--not nearly so much as I thought, I know, but still _a little_!"

"_A little!_"

"I am going to begin all over again!" I go on, eagerly, speaking very quickly, with my arms clasped about his neck, "quite all over again; indeed I am! I shall be so different that you will not know me for the same person, and if--if--" (beginning to falter and stumble)--"if you still go on liking _her_ best, and thinking her prettier and pleasanter to talk to--well, you cannot help it, it will not be your fault--and I--I--will try not to mind!"

He has taken my hands from about his neck, and is holding them warmly, steadfastly clasped in his own.

"Child! child!" he cries, "shall I _never_ undeceive you? are you still harping on that old worn-out string?"

"_Is_ it worn out?" I ask, anxiously, staring up with my wet eyes through the deep twilight into his. "Yes, yes!" (going on quickly and impulsively), "if you say so, I will believe it--without another word I will believe it, but--" (with a sudden fall from my high tone, and lapse into curiosity)--"you know you must have liked her a good deal once--you know you were engaged to her."

"_Engaged to her?_"

"Well, _were not_ you?"

"I never was engaged to any one in my life," he answers with solemn asseveration; "odd as it may seem, I never in my life had asked any woman to marry me until I asked you. I had known Zéphine from a child; her father was the best and kindest friend ever any man had. When he was dying, he was uneasy in his mind about her, as she was not left well off, and I promised to do what I could for her--one does not lightly break such a promise, does one? I was fond of her--I would do her any good turn I could, for old sake's sake, but _marry_ her--be _engaged_ to her!--"

He pauses expressively.

"Thank God! thank God!" cry I, sobbing hysterically; "it has all come right, then--Roger!--Roger!"--(burying my tear-stained face in his breast)--"I will tell you _now_--perhaps I shall never feel so brave again!--do not look at me--let me hide my face; I want to get it over in a hurry! Do you remember--" (sinking my voice to an indistinct and struggling whisper)--"that night that you asked me about--about _Brindley Wood_?"

"Yes, I remember."

Already, his tone has changed. His arms seem to be slackening their close hold of me.

"Do not loose me!" cry I, passionately; "hold me tight, or I can _never_ tell you--how could you expect me? Well, that night--you know as well as I do--I _lied_."

"You _did_?"

How hard and quick he is breathing! I am glad I cannot see his face.

"I _was_ there! I _did_ cry! she _did_ see me--"

I stop abruptly, choked by tears, by shame, by apprehension.

"Go on!" (spoken with panting shortness).

"He met me there!" I say, tremulously. "I do not know whether he did it on purpose or not, and said dreadful things! must I tell you them?" (shuddering)--"pah! it makes me sick--he said" (speaking with a reluctant hurry)--"that he loved me, and that I loved him, and that I _hated_ you, and it took me so by surprise--it was all so horrible, and so different from what I had planned, that I cried--of course I ought not, but I did--I _roared_!"

There does not seem to me any thing ludicrous in this mode of expression, neither apparently does there to him.

"Well?"

"I do not think there is any thing more!" say I, slowly and timidly raising my eyes, to judge of the effect of my confession, "only that I was so _deadly, deadly_ ashamed; I thought it was such a shameful thing to happen to any one that I made up my mind I would never tell anybody, and I did not."

"And is that _all_?" he cries, with an intense and breathless anxiety in eyes and voice, "are you sure that that is _all_?"

"All!" repeat I, opening my eyes very wide in astonishment; "do not you think it is _enough_?"

"Are you sure," he cries, taking my face in his hands, and narrowly, searchingly regarding it--"Child! child!--to-day let us have nothing--_nothing_ but truth--are you sure that you did not a little regret that it must be so--that you did not feel it a little hard to be forever tied to my gray hairs--my eight-and-forty years?"

"Hush!" cry I, snatching away my hands, and putting them over my ears. "I will not listen to you!--what do I care for your forty-eight years?--If you were a hundred--two hundred--what is it to me?--what do I care--I love you! I love you! I love you--O my darling, how stupid you have been not to see it all along!"

And so it comes to pass that by Barbara's grave we kiss again with tears. And now we are happy--stilly, inly happy, though I, perhaps, am never quite so boisterously gay as before the grave yawned for my Barbara; and we walk along hand-in-hand down the slopes and up the hills of life, with our eyes fixed, as far as the weakness of our human sight will let us, on the one dread, yet good God, whom through the veil of his great deeds we dimly discern. Only I wish that Roger were not nine-and-twenty years older than I!

THE END.

Other Works Published by D. APPLETON &. CO.

"GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!"

D. APPLETON & CO. _Have recently published_, GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!

By RHODA BROUGHTON,

AUTHOR OF "RED AS A ROSE IS SHE," "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," ETC.

"Good-bye, Sweetheart!" is certainly one of the brightest and most entertaining novels that has appeared for many years. The heroine of the story, Lenore, is really an original character, drawn only as a woman could draw her, who had looked deeply into the mysterious recesses of the feminine heart. She is a creation totally beyond the scope of a man's pen, unless it were the pen of Shakespeare. Her beauty, her wilfulness, her caprice, her love, and her sorrow, are depicted with marvellous skill, and invested with an interest of which the reader never becomes weary. Miss Broughton, in this work, has made an immense advance on her other stories, clever as those are. Her sketches of scenery and of interiors, though brief, are eminently graphic, and the dialogue is always sparkling and witty. The incidents, though sometimes startling and unexpected, are very natural, and the characters and story, from the beginning to the end, strongly enchain the attention of the reader. The work has been warmly commended by the press during its publication, as a serial, in APPLETONS' JOURNAL, and, in its book-form, bids fair to be decidedly THE novel of the season.

_D. A. & Co. have now ready, New Editions of_

COMETH UP AS A FLOWER NOT WISELY, BUT TOO WELL RED AS A ROSE IS SHE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

* * * * *

BRESSANT.

A NOVEL.

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

_From the London Examiner._

"We will not say that Mr. Julian Hawthorne has received a double portion or his father's spirit, but 'Bressant' proves that he has inherited the distinctive tone and fibre of a gift which was altogether exceptional, and moved the author of the 'Scarlet Letter' beyond the reach of imitators.

"Bressant, Sophie, and Cornelia, appear to us invested with a sort of enchantment which we should find it difficult to account for by any reference to any special passage in their story."

_From the London Athenæum._

"Mr. Hawthorne's book forms a remarkable contrast, in point of power and interest, to the dreary mass of so-called romances through which the reviewer works his way. It is not our purpose to forestall the reader, by any detailed account of the story; suffice it to say that, if we can accept the preliminary difficulty of the problem, its solution, in all its steps, is most admirably worked out."

_From the Pall Mall Gazette._

"So far as a man may be judged by his first work, Mr. Julian Hawthorne is endowed with a large share of his father's peculiar genius. We trace in 'Bressant' the same intense yearning after a high and spiritual life, the same passionate love of nature, the same subtlety and delicacy of remark, and also a little of the same tendency to indulge in the use of a half-weird, half-fantastic imagery."

_From the New York Times._

"'Bressant' is, then, a work that demonstrates the fitness of its author to bear the name of Hawthorne. More in praise need not be said; but, if the promise of the book shall not utterly fade and vanish, Julian Hawthorne, in the maturity of his power, will rank side by side with him who has hitherto been peerless, but whom we must hereafter call the 'Elder Hawthorne.'"

_From the Boston Post._

"There is beauty as well as power in this novel, the two so pleasantly blended, that the sudden and incomplete conclusion, although ending the romance with an abruptness that is itself artistic, comes only too soon for the reader."

_From the Boston Globe._

"It is by far the most original novel of the season that has been published at home or abroad, and will take high rank among the best American novels ever written."

_From the Boston Gazette._

"There is a strength in the book which takes it in a marked degree out or the range of ordinary works of fiction. It is substantially an original story. There are freshness and vigor in every part."

_From the Home Journal._

"'Bressant' is a remarkable romance, full of those subtle touches of fancy, and that insight into the human heart, which distinguish genius from the mere clever and entertaining writers of whom we have perhaps too many."

* * * * *

NOW READY, A NEW EDITION OF

_THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE._

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MIRIAM MONFORT."

_From Gail Hamilton, author of "Gala Days," etc._

"'The Household of Bouverie' is one of those nuisances of books that pluck out all your teeth, and then dare you to bite them. Your interest is awakened in the first chapter, and you are whirled through in a lightning-express train that leaves you no opportunity to look at the little details of wood, and lawn, and river. You notice two or three little peculiarities of style--one or two 'bits' of painting--and then you pull on your seven-leagued boots, and away you go."

_From John G. Saxe, the Poet._

"It is a strange romance, and will bother the critics not a little. The interest of the book is undeniable, and is wonderfully sustained to the end of the story. I think it exhibits far more power than any lady-novel of recent date, and it certainly has the rare merit of entire originality."

_From Marion Harland, author of "Alone," "Hidden Path," etc._

"As to Mrs. Warfield's wonderful book, I have read it twice--the second time more carefully than the first--and I use the term 'wonderful' because it best expresses the feeling uppermost in my mind, both while reading and thinking it over. As a piece of imaginative writing, I have seen nothing to equal it since the days of Edgar A. Poe, and I doubt whether he could have sustained himself and reader through a book of half the size of the 'Household of Bouverie.' I was literally hurried through it by my intense sympathy, my devouring curiosity--it was more than interest. I read everywhere--between the courses of the hotel-table, on the boat, in the cars--until I had swallowed the last line. This is no common occurrence with a veteran romance-reader like myself."

_From George Ripley's Review of "The Household of Bouverie," in Harper's Magazine, November, 1860._

"Everywhere betraying a daring boldness of conception, singular fertility of illustration, and a combined beauty and vigor of expression, which it would be difficult to match in any recent works of fiction. In these days, when the most milk-and-watery platitudes are so often welcomed as sibylline inspirations, it is somewhat refreshing to meet with a female novel-writer who displays the unmistakable fire of genius, however terrific its brightness."

* * * * *

Mrs. Warfield's New Novel.

MIRIAM MONFORT.

by the author of "THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE."

The _N. Y. Evening Post_ says of "Miriam Monfort:" "Mrs. Warfield's new novel has freshness, and is so far removed from mediocrity as to entitle it to respectful comment. Her fiction calls for study. Her perception is deep and artistic, as respects both the dramatic side of life and the beautiful. It is not strictly nature, in the general sense, that forms the basis of her descriptions. She finds something deeper and more mystic than nature in the sense in which the term is usually used by critics, in the answer of the soul to life--in the strange, weird, and lonesome music (though now and then broken by discords) of the still small voices with which human nature replies to the questions that sorely vex her. She has the analytic capacity in the field of psychology, which enables her to trace phenomena in a story without arguing about them, and to exhibit the dramatic side of them without stopping to explain the reasons for it. In a word, her hand is as sure as that of a master, and if there were more such novels as this simple semi-biographical story of Miriam Monfort, it would not be necessary so often to put the question, 'Is the art of fiction extinct?'"

The _Cincinnati Daily Gazette_ says: "'Miriam Monfort,' which now lies before us, is less sensational in incident than its predecessor, though it does not lack stirring events--an experience on a burning ship, for example. Its interest lies in the intensity which marks all the characters good and bad. The plot turns on the treachery of a pretended lover, and the author seems to have experienced every emotion of love and hate, jealousy and fear, that has inspired the creations of her pen. There is a contagion in her earnestness, and we doubt not that numerous readers will follow the fortunes of the beautiful but much-persecuted Miriam with breathless interest."

The _All Day City Item_ says: "It is a work of extraordinary merit. The story is charmingly told by the heroine. It is admirable and original in plot, varied in incident, and intensely absorbing in interest; besides, throughout the volume, there is an exquisite combination of sensibility, pride, and loveliness, which will hold the work in high estimation. We make a quotation from the book that suits the critic exactly. 'It is splendid; it is a dream, more vivid than life itself; it is like drinking champagne, smelling tuberoses, inhaling laughing-gas, going to the opera, all at one time.' We recommend this to our young lady friends as a most thoughtfully and delightfully written novel."

* * * * *

APPLETONS' (so-called) PLUM-PUDDING EDITION OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS.

LIST OF THE WORKS.

Oliver Twist 172 pp. American Notes 104 " Dombey and Son 356 " Martin Chuzzlewit 341 " Our Mutual Friend 340 " Christmas Stories 183 " Tale of Two Cities 144 " Hard Times, and Additional Christmas Stories 202 " Nicholas Nickleby 388 " Bleak House 352 " Little Dorrit 343 " Pickwick Papers 326 " David Copperfield 351 " Barnaby Rudge 257 " Old Curiosity Shop 221 " Great Expectations 183 " Sketches 194 " Uncommercial Traveller, Pictures of Italy, etc. 300 "

Any person ordering the entire set, and remitting $5, will receive a Portrait of Dickens, suitable for framing. The entire set will be sent by mail or express, at our option, postage or freight prepaid, to any part of the United States.

_Single copies of any of the above sent to any address in the United States on the receipt of the price affixed._

* * * * *

GRACE AGUILAR'S WORKS.

HOME INFLUENCE. A Tale for Mothers and Daughters. THE MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE. A Sequel to Home Influence. WOMAN'S FRIENDSHIP. A Story of Domestic Life. THE VALE OF CEDARS; or, the Martyr. THE DAYS OF BRUCE. A Story from Scottish History. 2 vols. HOME SCENES AND HEART STUDIES. Tales. THE WOMEN OF ISRAEL. Characters and Sketches from the Holy Scriptures. Two vols.

CRITICISMS ON GRACE AGUILAR'S WORKS.

_HOME INFLUENCE._--"Grace Aguilar wrote and spoke as one inspired; she condensed and spiritualized, and all her thoughts and feelings were steeped in the essence of celestial love and truth. To those who really knew Grace Aguilar, all eulogium falls short of her deserts, and she has left a blank in her particular walk of literature, which we never expect to see filled up."--_Pilgrimages to English Shrines, by Mrs. Hall._

_MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE._--"'The Mother's Recompense' forms a fitting close to its predecessor. 'Home Influence.' The results of maternal care are fully developed, its rich rewards are set forth, and its lesson and its moral are powerfully enforced."--_Morning Post._

_WOMAN'S FRIENDSHIP._--"We congratulate Miss Aguilar on the spirit, motive, and composition of this story. Her alms are eminently moral, and her cause comes recommended by the most beautiful associations. These, connected with the skill here evinced in their development, insure the success of her labors."--_Illustrated News._

_VALE OF CEDARS._--"The authoress of this most fascinating volume has selected for her field one of the most remarkable eras in modern history--the reigns of Ferdinand and Isabella. The tale turns on the extraordinary extent to which concealed Judaism had gained footing at that period in Spain. It is marked by much power of description, and by a woman's delicacy of touch, and it will add to its writer's well-earned reputation."--_Eclectic Rev._

_DAYS OF BRUCE._--"The tale is well told, the interest warmly sustained throughout, and the delineation of female character is marked by a delicate sense of moral beauty. It is a work that may be confided to the hands of a daughter by her parent."--_Court Journal._

_HOME SCENES._--"Grace Aguilar knew the female heart better than any writer of our day, and in every fiction from her pen we trace the same masterly analysis and development of the motives and feelings of woman's nature."--_Critic._

_WOMEN OF ISRAEL._--"A work that is sufficient of itself to create and crown a reputation."--_Mrs. S. C. Hall._

* * * * *

Sir HENRY HOLLAND'S RECOLLECTIONS.

RECOLLECTIONS OF PAST LIFE _By Sir HENRY HOLLAND, Bart._, 1 vol., 12mo, Cloth. 350 pp.

_From The London Lancet._

"The 'Life or Sir Henry Holland' is one to be recollected, and he has not erred in giving an outline of it to the public. In the very nature of things it is such a life as cannot often be repeated. Even if there were many men in the profession capable of living to the age of eighty-four, and then writing their life with fair hope of further travels, it is not reasonable to expect that there could ever be more than a very few lives so full of incidents worthy of being recorded autographically as the marvellous life which we are fresh from perusing. The combination of personal qualities and favorable opportunities in Sir Henry Holland's case is as rare as it is happy. But that is one reason for recording the history of it. Sir Henry's life cannot be very closely imitated, but it may be closely studied. We have found the study of it, as recorded in the book just published, one of the most delightful pieces of recreation which we have enjoyed for many days.... Among his patients were pachas, princes, and premiers. Prince Albert, Napoleon III., Talleyrand, Pozzo di Borgo, Gulzot, Palmella, Bulow, and Drouyn de Lhuys, Jefferson Davis, Lord Sidmouth, Lord Stowell, Lord Melbourne, Lord Palmerston, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Lansdowne. Lord Lyndhurst, to say nothing of men of other note, were among his patients."

_From the London Spectator._

"We constantly find ourselves recalling the Poet Laureate's modernized Ulysses, the great wanderer, insatiate of new experiences, as we read the story of the octogenarian traveller and his many friends in many lands:

'I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart, Much have I seen and known. Cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least and honored of them all.'

You see in this book all this and more than this--knowledge of the world, and insatiable thirst for more knowledge of it, great clearness of aim and exact appreciation of the mind's own wants, precise knowledge of the self-sacrifices needed to gratify those wants and a readiness for those sacrifices, a distinct adoption of an economy of life, and steady adherence to it from beginning to end--all of them characteristics which are but rare in this somewhat confused and hand-to-mouth world, and which certainly when combined make a unique study of character, however indirectly it may be presented to us and however little attention may be drawn to the interior of the picture."

_From The New York Times._

"His memory was--is, we may say, for he is still alive and in possession of all his faculties--stored with recollections of the most eminent men and women of this century. He has known the intimate friends of Dr. Johnson. He travelled in Albania when Ali Pacha ruled, and has since then explored almost every part of the world, except the far East. He has made eight visits to this country, and at the age of eighty-two (in 1869) he was here again--the guest of Mr. Evarts, and, while in this city, of Mr. Thurlow Weed. Since then he has made a voyage to Jamaica and the West India Islands, and a second visit to Iceland. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott, Lockhart, Dugald Stewart, Mme. de Staël, Byron, Moore, Campbell, Rogers, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Talleyrand, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Hallam, Mackintosh, Malthus, Erskine, Humboldt, Schlegel, Canova, Sir Humphry Davy, Joanna Baillie, Lord and Lady Holland, and many other distinguished persons whose names would occupy a column. In this country he has known, among other celebrated men, Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, Seward, etc. He was born the same year in which the United States Constitution was ratified. A life extending over such a period, and passed in the most active manner, in the midst of the best society which the world has to offer, must necessarily be full of singular interest; and Sir Henry Holland has fortunately not waited until his memory lost its freshness before recalling some of the incidents in it."