CHAPTER XXIII.
A few weeks of balmy spring air and soft sunshine completely restored me to health.
One day when strolling in company with Mr. Bristed through a path blooming with early hyacinths and crocuses, I ventured to ask him about my school.
“It is entirely broken up, Agnes. After the fearful tragedy that transpired within its walls, your pupils scattered like dust in the wind. I arrived the next morning after the death of Richard, unconscious of what had occurred in my absence, but intending to take you home with me. I found you, as I then thought, on your death-bed. I settled with your separate teachers, and closed the school. With the French woman who claimed to be Richard’s wife, and with whom he had probably gone through the form of marriage, as with you, I made an arrangement satisfactory to her to sell the property and give her an equivalent for its value.”
“But what motive,” I asked hesitatingly, “could Richard have had for his course?”
“Motive? The same that had actuated him through life. With you, Agnes, he would have lived probably as he did with others, until his versatile heart demanded a change. Then, with your little estate in his hands and Herbert’s property in his power, he would have deserted you for some new beauty.
“But let the grave cover his mistakes and evils. I believe that a good God will not punish him too severely for propensities which he inherited.”
Once more I yielded to the charms of companionship and love. Severe trials had proved Mr. Bristed’s worth, and when he again asked me to make the remnant of his life happy by my care and love—to become his wife, and share his home, and reign queen of his heart—I consented. When the June roses blossomed, we were married. The balmy air and opening buds spoke of a new life. They typified my new life, truly. The glitter and gloss which had deceived me in youth would never beguile me more. I had learned that it was not the external man, but the internal that was worthy of love.
The shadowy form of Alice never troubled me again, I believe reparation can be made beyond the tomb, and that in some far-off world the new-born spirit of Richard atones to Alice and Herbert for the wrong he did them in this.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
_TO HER HUSBAND_.
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
You cannot see her in her glad surprise,
Kissing the tear-drops from your weeping eyes;
Moving about you through the ambient air,
Smoothing the whitening ripples of your hair.
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
You cannot see the flowers she daily twines
In garlands for you, from immortal vines;
The danger she averts you never know;
For her sweet care you only tears bestow.
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
Vainly you’ll wait until the last trump sound!
Vainly your love entombed beneath the ground!
Vainly in kirk-yard raise your mournful wail!
Your loved is living in some sunnier vale.
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
You think her gone to her eternal rest,
Like some strange bird forever left her nest!
Her sweet voice hush’d within the silent grave,
While o’er her dust the weeping willows wave.
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
And yet she lives, and loves! Oh, wondrous truth!
In golden skies she breathes immortal youth!
Look upward! where the roseate sunset beams,
Her airy form amid the brightness gleams!
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
Oh, speak not thus! her tender heart you grieve,
And ’twixt her love and yours a barrier weave!
Call her by sweetest name, your voice she’ll hear,
And through the darkness like a star appear.
Dead! dead! You call her dead!
Lift up your eyes! she is no longer dead!
In your lone path the unseen angels tread!
And when your weary night of earth shall close,
She’ll lead you where eternal summer blows.