Chapter 4

"We are compelled to live," replied he, "even by that same decree which binds us to the infinite chain. Were it not so, man would imitate the day-flies, and die at sundown, that he might escape the dark night which reveals to him the mystery of his being, whereat he trembles and sobs; and all this is also in the decree."

"But if all these things are so," said Rachel, "what do you say of happiness? Is there no joy in the world? Are not the birds happy, when in the morning the woods resound with their song, and so, too, every animal after its kind? Are not children joyful when the house rings with their mirth? and have not men and women their pleasures of a thousand kinds? nay, might not I myself have been one of the happiest of beings, if, with the fortune which is to be left to me, that locket had been engraved with the name of Rachel Grierson in place of Agnes Ainslie?"

"Yes," replied he, "happiness is in the decree as well; and," he added with a smile, "it is always cropping out around us, but no one can manufacture the article. If you wait for it, you may feel it; if you run after it, you will probably not find it, because it is not ready by those eternal laws which, at their beginning, involved its coming up at a certain moment of long after-years. Then, at the best, pleasure and pain are mere oscillations; but the first movement is downwards, for we cry when we come into the world; and the last is also downwards, for we groan when we go out of it. It is the old rhyme--

'We scream when we're born, We groan when we're dying; And all that's between Is but laughing and crying.'"

A parade of philosophy all this which at another time might have had but a small effect upon a youthful mind, but Rachel was in the meantime occupied by looking at the inscription on the fatal toy; and we all know that the feeling of the dominant idea of the moment assimilates to its own hue the light or shade of all other ideas of a cognate kind; and there is in this process also a selection and rejection whereby all melancholy ideas cluster in the gloomy atmosphere, if we may so term it, of the prevailing depression, and all joyful ones come together by the attraction of a joyful thought; and so Rachel was impressed by views which, if they had been modified by the comforting doctrines of Christianity, might have enabled her at once to bear and to hope. Even when Paul had finished, she was still gazing on the locket. A moment or two more, and she laid it down with a deep sigh, saying, almost involuntarily, "If my name had been there, I would not have repined at the loss of all my expected fortune." Then, shaking hands with this peculiar being, whom she could not but respect for his ingenuity, as well as for a kindliness and sympathy which lay at the bottom of all his abstract theories, she left him to his work, at which he would continue till drowsiness made, as he said, the idea dim and the nerve thick.

Retracing her steps down the long dark stair, not a very efficient medium for the removal of impressions so unlike the results of our natural consciousness, Rachel Grierson found herself again among the bustling crowds of the High Street. Nor could she view these busy people in the light by which she saw them before entering the little dark room of the philosopher. Though she did not know the classical word, she looked upon them as so many _automata_; and the long chain of causes came into her mind so vividly, that she found herself repeating the very words of Paul. Then there was the reference to her own individual fate; and was it not through the self-medium she saw all these people in so strange a light?--with Hope's lamp dashed down at her feet, and extinguished at the very moment when, by the communication of her father, she thought she had the means of recruiting it with a store of oil never to be exhausted till possession was accomplished. Still under these impressions, she came to the door of Mr. Ainslie's house. There were sounds of mirth and music coming from within; and so plastic is the mind when under a deep and engrossing feeling, that she found no difficulty in concentrating and modifying these sounds into joyful articulations from the very mouths of Walter Grierson and Agnes Ainslie themselves. Such are the moral echoes which respond to, because they are formed by the suspicions of, disappointed love. No longer for the moment were Paul's thoughts true. These happy beings inside were happy because they had the hearts and the wills to enjoy; but she could draw no conclusion that she herself could dispose her mind for the acceptance of the world's pleasures also when her gloom should be away among the shadows, and nature's innumerable enjoyments placed within her power. Yet, withal, she could execute her commission, and upon the door being opened, she could enter in the very face of that mirth of which she fancied herself the victim.

On being shown into a parlour, she was presently waited upon by Mr. Ainslie, who seemed to her to have come from the scene of enjoyment in the drawing-room. She could even fancy that he eyed her as in some way standing in the path of his daughter's expectations through Walter--a fancy which of course would gain strength from the somewhat excited manner in which he received the words of her commission, to the effect that he would repair the next forenoon to the house of the merchant-burgess, for the purpose of preparing his last will and testament. The notary agreed to attend, and thus, still construing appearances according to the assimilating bent of her mind, she departed for home. After going through the routine of her domestic duties, and caring for her invalid father, she retired to bed--that place of so-called rest, where mortals chew the cud of the thoughts of the day or of years. And how unlike the two processes, the physical and the mental!--in the one is brought up for a second enjoyment the green grass of nature, still fresh and palatable and nutritious; in the other, the seared leaves of memory, feeding unavailing regrets, and filling the microcosm with phantoms and dire shapes of evil, the types whereof never had an existence in the outer world. Walter Grierson was lost to her for ever, and the dire energies of fate, as described by the artist-philosopher, seemed to hang over her, claiming, in harsh tones, her will as a mere instrument in the working out of her own destiny.

Next day Mr. Ainslie called, and was for a long time closeted with Mr. Grierson; but so careless was she now of the fortune about being left to her, and which she was satisfied would not now be a means of showing her affection for Walter, that she felt little interest in an affair which otherwise might have appeared of so much importance to her. Her attention was, notwithstanding, claimed by an incident. After the interview, the notary visited Walter Grierson in his room, where the young man seemed to have been waiting for him. In ordinary circumstances it might have appeared strange that a man of business, bound to secrecy, would divulge the terms of a will to any one, but far more that he should take means for apprising a nephew that he was deprived of any share of his uncle's means. Nor could she account for this interview on any other supposition than that Mr. Ainslie knew of the intentions of Walter towards his daughter, and that he took this early opportunity of intimating that a disinherited young man, of the grade of a merchant's clerk, would not, as a son-in-law, suit the expectations of an ambitious writer. Yet out of this interview there came to, if not drawn by, her fancy a glimmer of hope, inasmuch as, if the young man were rejected by the notary in consequence of the ban of disinheritance, he would be left to the attractions of her wealth; but this supposition involved the assumption that her triumph would be over a mind that was mercenary, and not over a heart predisposed to love; nay, her generosity revolted at the thought of gratifying her long-concealed passion at the expense of the sacrificed love of another. That other, too, had a better right to the object than she herself, in so far that Agnes Ainslie's love had been returned, while hers had not. But these speculations were to be brought to the test by words and actions.

No sooner had Mr. Ainslie left than Rachel was visited in her private parlour by Walter Grierson himself. He had seldom taken that liberty before, for her secret passion had been ruled by a stern virtue. A natural shyness, remote from coyness, demanded the conciliation of respect, though ready at a moment to pass into the generosity of confidence where she was certain of a return; but his presence before her might have been accounted for by his appearance, which was that of one whose excitement was only attempted to be overborne by an effort--a result more mechanical than spiritual. His manner, not less than his countenance, composed to gravity, was belied by the tremulous light of his eye; and as he seized her hand and pressed it fervently, she could feel that his trembled more than her own. Her manner was also embarrassed, as it well might be, where so many conflicting feelings, some revived from old memories, and some produced by the singular events of the day and hour, agitated her frame.

"I am going to surprise you, cousin," he said, while he fixed his eye upon her, as if to watch the effect of his words.

Rachel forgot for a moment the philosophy of Paul--why should one be surprised when the thing that is to be is a result of a change in something else as old as Aldebaran, let alone "the sun and the seven stars?" She was indeed prepared for a surprise.

"It is just the old story of the heart," he resumed. "Our intercourse began so early, and partook so much of that of mere relations, that I never could tell when the mere social feeling gave place to another which I need not mention. You know, Rachel, what I mean."

She was silent because she was distrustful, yet her heart beat bravely in spite of her efforts; for was not this man the object of her love, and is not love moved with an eloquence which makes reason ashamed of her poor figures and modes?

"Yes," he went on, "I take it for granted that you know I am only labouring towards a confession. Yes, dear heart, for years I have considered you as the one sole object in all this world of fair visions formed to make me happy. You see I cannot get out of the ordinary mode of speech. The lover is fated to adjure, to praise, and to petition always in the same set form of words; yet is not the confession enough?"

"So far," said she; "but I have never seen any evidence of all this;" as if she wanted more in the same strain--sweet to the ear, though distrusted by the reason.

"No more you have," he continued, "yet you know that love is often suspicious of itself. I have watched with my eye your movements and attitudes when you thought I was not observing you. My ear has followed your voice through adjoining rooms when you thought I was listening to other sounds. I have admired your words, without venturing the response of admiration. Often I have wished to fold you in my arms when you dreamt nothing of my inward thoughts. In short, Rachel, I have loved you for years! Yes, I have enjoyed, or suffered, this gloating, yea, delightful misery of the heart when it feeds upon its own secret treasures, and trembles at the test which might dissolve the dream."

"And why this suppression and secrecy, Walter?" she asked. "How could you know," she continued, as she held down her head, "that I would be adverse to your wishes; nay, that I was not even in the same condition as yourself?"

"Surely you do not mean to say that?" he cried, with something like the rapture of one relieved by pleasure from pain. "I am not worthy even of the suspicion that you speak according to the bidding of your heart. Have I not watched your looks, and penetrated into your eyes, to ascertain whether I might venture to know my fate, and yet never could discover even the symptom of a return; and then was I not under a conviction that your affections were engaged elsewhere?"

"Where?" asked Rachel, with a look of surprise.

"We are apparently drifting into confessions," responded he. "I may say that I never could construe your visits to Paul, the ingenious artist, merely as dictated by admiration of his wonderful genius."

"You do not know that Paul is the son of my mother's sister," replied she. "Your uncle knows; but there may be reasons why you don't."

"Then I am relieved," was the lover's ejaculation, in a tone as if he had got quit of a great burden.

"Yes, that is the truth," continued she; "but I also confess that I have been attracted to his small dark workshop by the exquisite curiosities of art on which he is so often engaged, and which, by occupying so much of his time, keep him poor. It was only yesterday I saw on his bench a locket which seems to transcend all his prior efforts."

The young man smiled and nodded. What could he mean? Why was he not dumbfoundered?

"It is in the shape of a heart," she continued; "and upon touching a spring there fly up two tiny figures, which, with fluttering wings, seem to devour each other with kisses."

Words which forced themselves out of her in spite of her shyness, but which she could not follow up by more than a side-look at her admirer.

"And upon which," said he, still smiling, "there is engraven the inscription, 'From Walter Grierson to Agnes Ainslie.'"

"Yes," sighed Rachel, "the very words. I read them again and again, and could scarcely believe my eyes."

"And well you might not," said he; "but your simple heart has never yet informed you that love finds out strange inventions. I have been guilty of a _ruse d'amour_, for which I beg your pardon. Knowing that you were in the habit of visiting Paul's workroom, and seeing all the work of his cunning fingers, I got him to make the locket out of a piece of gold I got from my uncle, and the inscription was,"--and here he paused as if to watch her expression,--"yes, designed, to quicken your affection for me by awakening jealousy. I confess it. Agnes Ainslie was and is nothing to me; and I used her name merely because I thought that you would view her as a likely rival."

"Can all this be true?" muttered Rachel to herself, as the wish to believe was pursued by the doubt which revolted against a departure from all natural and rational actions.

Perhaps she was not versed in the ways of the world; but whether so or not, the difference in effect would have been small; for what man, beloved by a woman, ever yet pled his cause before his mistress without other than a wise man for his client?

"And if it is your wish, my dear Rachel," he continued, "the inscription shall be erased, and replaced by the name of Rachel Grierson. What say you?"

His hand was held out for that acceptance which betokened consent. It was accepted; yes, and more, His arms were next moment around her waist; the heart of the yielding girl beat rarely, the wistful face was turned up as even courting his eyes, the kiss was impressed;--why, more, Rachel Grierson was surely Walter Grierson's, and he was hers, and surely to be for ever in this world.

Rachel was now in that state of mind when the pleasantness of a contemplated object excludes any inquiry whether it is true or false, good or evil; and, in spite of Paul's fatalism, she was satisfied that it was with Walter's own free will that he had done what he had done, and said what he had said. The changed inscription on the locket, and the delivery of that pledge to her, would complete the vowing of the troth whereby she was to become his wife. Entirely ignorant of what had taken place between the nephew and the uncle, by means of which she might have been able to analyze his conduct, she had only the closeting of Mr. Ainslie and Walter to suggest to her that the young man's sudden declaration was the result of his knowledge that she was to be sole heiress. The heart that is under the influence of love, as we have hinted, is too credulous to the tongue of the lover to doubt the sincerity of his professions. So all appeared well. The motives in action were adequate to the will of the parties who used them; and as she felt that her love was in the power of herself, so she could not doubt that Walter's affection was the result of his approval of her good qualities. Paul was now no longer an oracle. She would be pleased to have an opportunity of showing him that his genius lay more in his fingers than in his head. She had now, however, something else to do. She went to her father's room. He was in one of those reveries to which, as we have said, all the thinking of the extremely aged is reduced, when the world and its figures of men and women, its strange oscillations and changes, its passions, pleasures, and pains, seem as made remote by the intervention of a long space--dim, shadowy, and ghost-like. It is one of the stages through which the long-living must pass, and, like all the other experiences of life, it is true only to one's self--it cannot be communicated by words. "Old memories are spectres that do seem to chase the soul out of the world,"--an old quotation which may be admitted without embracing the metaphysical paradox, that "subjective thought is the poison of life," or conceding the sharp sneer of the cynic--

"Know, ye who for your pleasures gape, Man's life at best is but a scrape."

But the entry of his daughter brought the old man back to the margin of real living existences. He held out his hand to her, and smiled in the face that was dear to him, as if for a moment he rejoiced in the experience of a feeling which connected him with breathing flesh and blood. The object of her visit was soon explained. Whispering in his ear, as if she were afraid of the sound of her own words, she told him that Walter had promised her a love-token, and that she wished to give him one in return, for which purpose she desired that she might be permitted to use one or two old "Spanish ounces" that lay in the old bureau.

"Yes, yes, dear child," said he. "Get a golden heart made of them. It will be an emblem of the true heart you have to give him, and a pledge to boot." Then, falling into one of his reveries, in which his mind seemed occupied by some strong feeling--"I am thus reminded," he continued, "of the old song you used to sing. There is a verse which I hope will never be applicable to you as it was to me. I wish to hear it for the last time," he added, with a languid smile, "in consideration of the ounces."

Rachel knew the verse, because she had formerly noticed that it moved some chord in his memory connected with an old love affair in which his heart had been scathed; but she hesitated, for the meaning it conveyed was dowie and ominous.

"Come, come," said he, "the fate will never be yours."

She complied, yet it was with a trembling voice. The tune is at best but a sweet wail, and there was a misgiving of the heart which imparted the thrilling effect of a gipsy's farewell--

"If I had wist ere I had kisst, That true love was so ill to win, I'd have lock'd my heart in some secret part, And bound it with a silver pin."

"Now you may take the ounces," said he with a sigh. "The verse has more meaning to me than you wot off, and surely, I hope, less to you."

And having thus gratified his whim--if that could be called a whim which was a desire to have repeated to him a sentiment once to him, as he hinted, a reality connected with the young heart when it was lusty, and his pulse strong and thick with the blood of young life--- she went to the bureau, and, taking three of the ounces, she left the room. In the gloaming, she was again on her way to Paul's workshop, where she found the artist, as usual, with his head bent over the bright desk on the bench, engaged in some of his fanciful creations. Having seated herself in the chair where she had so often sat, she commenced her story of the circumstances of the day,--how Walter Grierson had acted and spoken to her; how he had accounted for the locket and inscription; how he intended to change the latter, and substitute her name for that of Agnes Ainslie; how he had sought her love, and succeeded in his seeking; how she was satisfied that he was sincere in his professions; and how she had got the ounces from her father to make a love-token, to give in exchange for Walter's. All which Paul listened to with deep attention, now and then a faint smile passing over his delicate face, and followed by the old pensive expression which was peculiar to one so deeply imbued with the conviction that he was an organism in nature's plan, acted upon to fulfil a fate of which he could know nothing.

"And so the powers work," said he, as he looked in the hopeful face of his friend. "You are now happy, Rachel, because you believe what Walter has said to you, and you have no power over your belief. But," he continued, after a moment or two's silence, "I _may_ have power over you, but not over myself. Walter Grierson has told you a falsehood, and his motive for it is adequate to his nature. Since he gave me the order for the locket, he has learnt that you are to inherit the whole fortune of your father, on the condition that you are to marry him; and his love for Agnes has been overborne by another feeling--the desire to possess your wealth. Neither the one nor the other of these feelings could he manufacture, or even modify, any more than he could charm the winds into silence, or send Jove's bolt back to its thunder-cloud; and now, look you, his game is this: if you succeed to the money, he will marry without loving you; if not, he will marry the woman he loves--Agnes Ainslie."

"You alarm me, Paul," said she, involuntarily holding forth her arms, as if she would have stopped his speech.

"And you cannot help your alarm," said he calmly; "neither can I help _not_ being alarmed by your alarm."

"Oh, you trifle with my feelings," she cried, with a kind of wail. "What have all these strange thoughts to do with this situation in which I am placed? Even though all things are pre-ordained, neither of us can be absolved from doing our duty to God and ourselves."

"Absolved!" echoed Paul. "Why, Rachel, look you, we are forced to do it, or not to do it, precisely as the motive culminates into action, but we are not sensible of the compulsion; and so am I under the necessity to tell you that Walter Grierson is playing false with you, according to the inexorable law of his nature. It is not an hour yet since Agnes Ainslie called here with some old trinkets, and requested me to make a ring out of them; nor was I left without the means of understanding that it was to be given in exchange for the locket."

"Is it possible?" cried she. "And can it be that I am deceived, and that secret powers are working my ruin?"

"Not necessarily your ruin," said he; "no mortal knows the birth of the next moment. The womb of fate is never empty; but no man shall dare to say what is in it till the issue of every moment proves itself. Nor does all this take away hope, for hope is in the ancient decree, like all the other evolutions of time, including that hope's being deferred till the heart grows sick; and," he added, as he looked sorrowfully into her face, "that is the fate of mine, for, know you, Rachel Grierson, I have long loved you, and have now seen that the riches you are to inherit put you beyond the sphere of my ambition. I have often wished--pardon me Rachel--yes, I have often wished you might be left a beggar, that I might have the privilege of using the invention with which I am gifted to astonish the world by my handiwork, and bring wealth to her I loved."