BRAND PLUCKED FROM THE BURNING.
"Circles and circles of brightening light breaking over me; a faint, but delicious sense of comfort; a swift vanishing of the distorted phantoms which have left me here for dead—a kind and dear awakening.
"What tender face is this that is bending over me? What soft bosom is this upon which my head is lying?
"Have I bridged at last the chasm of mortality, and is this my fate in the immortal world?
"I smile, if this be so, at the idle fears of those who prophesied for me a hell. This is Heaven! What seraph is this who is bearing me upon her bosom after my fight with the throes of death? How soft and cool her hand, which bands my brow! Her wings are folded close, and she will not fly away; her breath wafts my weary eyelids like the zephyr born at the gates of Paradise.
"It was worth that long battle with the writhing furies, who would have chained me to Charon's boat, midway in the awful river, to be stranded here within these clinging arms.
"O spirit pure and tender! is this Christ-like care for me at your King's command? Am I done with earth and sin, and entered into rest upon your hallowed heart?
"Yes, the dark obscurity of earth no longer blinds me; I am reading the face of one who has gazed upon the Incarnate, and caught from Him beatitude past utterance.
"How pure and above all earthly beauty are these holy lineaments! the essence of eternal love seems to shed from these eyes upon my languid soul; her rich tresses seem enwreathed with beams from the Fount of Joy; I am dazzled with the vision."
The worn, white face of the sick man sinks more heavily upon the gentle bosom which supports it; but there is a fixed smile upon the blue lips of wonder and of triumph; there are tears stealing from the eyes which have been darkly fixed upward. The trembling soul who has been looking into the realm of Heaven, turns back at the yearning pressure of those arms, and new circles of brightening light and consciousness break over him, and St. Udo Brand looks up.
A damp, cool perfume breathes around him of flowers; he seems to be surrounded by those sweet comforters; flowers upon his breast, against his fevered face, upon his pillow; and soft arms are truly around him, and his head is lying upon the yielding breast of a woman.
"How is it that I am here?"
"Did my darling try to speak?"
"How strange! she is then some one to whom I am dear. I am indeed in Heaven, and this heavenly seraph is to be my guide and teacher. What made me suppose for an instant that I was back to earth?
"It is so much better than I deserve, pure spirit—so much better."
"Did you say you felt better?"
"This vision is a woman? her heart seems bounding with joy; she bends closer with a sob of rapture; these holy eyes are dropping tears!
"'There are no tears in Heaven.' Is it possible that I come back to earth and find some one weeping tears of joy for me!
"Tell me who you are?"
"You have whispered something again. Oh! love, you are so faint and weak that I can scarcely see your lips move. But I think you know me."
"No, no. I left no such angel as you on earth when I died."
"Do you say so? Wait until I bring my ear close."
"No. Tell me."
"Don't you know your nurse, who has been with you for two weeks? the nurse that you have clung to, and moaned for when your glazed eyes could not see me? Don't you remember how you made me hold you—just so—when the fever-phantoms were chasing you? Surely we are old friends by this time?"
"My Perdita?"
"Why, darling, do you know me, then? Now I shall dare to hope. Oh, thank Heaven!"
"How strange that she should look so joyful at any good befalling me! Am I St. Udo Brand, who was at odds with all the world? or have I been changed into a man with a human heart, to be prized by a noble woman? Is this a revised and improved edition of St. Udo? Have I got out of that bitter, reckless being, and, after ages of toiling in a black, demon-crowded abyss for my sins have I re-entered the world to be simple, and beloved, and happy? O Thou who saved me from annihilation, will that this be true!
"Lady, will you not tell me your name?"
"You called me 'Perdita' when I thought the pest was drifting you from my arms farther—farther, and yet the closer into my heart—call me Perdita still. Oh, my darling, to think that after all I have won you from the gates of death!"
"How long have we loved each other, Perdita? Why do these deep gray eyes hide themselves from me? Why does that flush creep to brow and gentle cheek? What a dear face! what a holy face! I hope that it will beam upon me until I die! What is it that she says?"
"I found you smitten with the plague, and, taking care of you, because there was no one else who had such a right, as the Marplot of your life, you came to think me some one whom you loved, and to call me Perdita. It was one of your fancies."
"I hope it will develop into a reality. I shall pinion your wings, bright seraph, to keep you by me."
"Hush! hush! You are wandering away again."
"Keep by me, my love—Perdita! oh, keep by me!"
"As if I would ever leave you, while I could make one moment lighter for you."
"Ah, well! Remember you have promised that."
He sinks softly down among his pillows with a sigh of ineffable peace; his Perdita wipes the tears of joy from his face, and rearranges the light coverings.
A soft wind is blowing through the half-closed windows, from over the quiet water clasped within the arms of the coral reef, and the dreamy strains of a military band creep from a gallant war-ship out in the bay; and in the beautiful twilight the graceful boats are shooting in and out from cedar groves to the white huts standing on the edge of the reefs like Grecian temples, and the lovely scene is calm as the smile on the face of the sick man.
The mosquito-net is drawn close around the invalid's bed, and his nurse sits within the fold, and watches him until he sinks to sleep. And then she bends her head until it touches his lissom hand, and, weeping much in her deep thankfulness, she too sinks to slumber—well earned and long denied.
The same hour next evening St. Udo Brand comes to himself again from the mystic depths of fever, and sorrow, and importunate desire, to see the same tender vision watching over him, and to breathe the same sweet perfume of fresh-culled flowers, and to feel the same restful joy which broke the darkness of his weary trance before.
And then he is so glad to find this dream staying by him when so many others have slipped away, that he stretches out his hands, and beckons with a cry of welcome.
"My Perdita, I feared I had lost you! Where did you go?"
"I have never left your side."
"I could not find you, and I have been wandering, wandering everywhere. How was it you got away from my hand?"
She, bending her ear to catch these feeble accents, glows with a look of wonder and joy; all the lines of weariness pass away from her face; for the moment she is quite beautiful.
"Dear one, was it really me you were trying to hold in your sleep?" she asks, softly. "I saw your brow gather, and your lips move, and an anxious expression come over you in every little slumber: but when I held your groping hand you clasped mine tightly, and became happy in your dreams. Was it Perdita whom you wished so much to keep by you?"
"Yes, yes; that was it. You express my thoughts so smoothly for me that I wish you would try again. Something has got away from me after all. Let me hold you while I try to remember."
She gives him her hand, and she gives him also her faithful bosom. Gladly she lifts him in her frail arms, and clasps him close, close, and she presses her lips upon his sunken eyelids with kisses as soft and healing as the flowers of Paradise.
"It is coming back, I kept it so long, in spite of the whirling goblins and demons who tried to snatch it from me, but when I came to you just now I found that it was gone. Did you take it from me, and give it back to me now when you laid my head upon your bosom?"
"What was it, my darling?"
"Your promise, Perdita."
"What promise, dear love?"
"That you would never leave me. Don't you remember saying that?"
"What would you care for me when you were strong and well?" falters the nurse, with quivering lips.
The sick man tries to set his poor paralyzed brain in thinking order at this contingency, but the effort is far beyond him, and he relapses with an anxious sigh.
"I do not want to drift away and be pushed back into the cruel world I have left," he murmurs, earnestly, "and it lies with you to keep me in this pure place. I lost you ages ago, you know—ages ago, when I was pure and loving as yourself; and see what I am now for want of you, Perdita?"
"You will soon enough be glad to part from me again," answers the nurse, turning aside her swimming eyes.
"Must you go, Perdita, after your promise?"
"I must go when I have ceased to make one moment lighter for you. I promised that I would stay until then."
"Promise it again—you will stay until you cease to be desired by me."
"Until I cease to be required by you," she amends, straining him to her yearning and foreboding heart.
"I shall always require you," said the sick man, with exultation; "I could not take one step in this pure atmosphere without you. Oh, you don't know how I shall hold to you, my lost Perdita."
So wandering on—dreaming on, he fancies she is his lost good, which was dropped out of life long ago; that she personates the faith, the hope, the innocence of his early years, ere sin set the searing mark of death upon his heart, and bitter wrongs stole from him his primal purity, and fused in the alembic of his burning hatred, all noble tendencies into bitter infidelity.
And wandering on—dreaming on, day by day, drifting on from riotous fancy to feeble reason, he comes to know that there is a puzzle in the kindness of this woman, who morning, noon, and night cares for him as woman never cared for him before; and, grasping the puzzle at last, he looks at it with comprehending eyes.
He will ask this tender, holy-faced watcher by his bedside why this heavenly care for him. Perchance she is repaying some former service of his, done in the days of health; for St. Udo Brand has done his deeds of generous kindness to the widows and orphans of his brave Vermont boys, and forgotten the acts by scores.
"Lady, why have you been so kind to me?"
"Not kind—only just."
"The service which you thus repay must have been a great one. You have risked your life nursing me through this infectious plague; what have I ever done to you that could merit such repayment?"
She has been fearing these questions for some days, and she has been clinging all the more fondly and passionately to the sweet dream which she has never once in all her passion of unselfish devotion dreamed could last. Again and again she has put aside the cruel end; for, oh! she cannot give him up yet—her king!
By the couch of deadly peril and pain, when his manhood is low beneath the scowl of death—when the divinity of his intellect is swallowed up in frenzy—in his weakness and despondency—the most royal days of Margaret's life have come to her, gold-tinged, and crowned with joy—the days of her love.
"You are not strong enough for this," she answers, wistfully. "Wait until you are a great deal stronger before you ask questions."
"But"—a bewildered line is knotting the sick man's brow like the faint ripple on the glassy waters of a stream—"I have seen you before in such different circumstances, and I would like to know where."
"I am Perdita, you know," with an anxious smile. "You met me in your delirium often enough, don't you remember?"
"Yes, yes—was that it? When did you find me?"
"Three weeks ago. You were in the first stages of yellow fever. You would have died if God had not providentially sent me here in time."
"So strange that you should risk your life for me—a tender lady."
"It was a pleasure to me, sir. I was not afraid of the risk."
"The very physicians fled from the smitten wretches by scores, for fear of sharing their fate. We had but few doctors in the city for a fortnight who were brave enough to stay, and we had to take turns and do what we could for each other. The very negroes could not be bought with money to stay with us, but fled, panic-stricken, and left us to die unattended. Nineteen bodies were carried out of this house in one day, and the last I can remember before I crawled into this room away from the groans to die, were the ghastly bodies of poor Major Hilton and the commandant of the forces lying waiting for removal. I held out longest, but had to succumb at last. It is so strange to wake up from death, and to find a lovely lady at my bedside, breathing my poisoned breath, and wooing me from my companions' fate with such devotion."
"A lovely lady!" How she glows over with surprised blushes and smiles! How she stoops again to catch the feeble accents and to read the upraised orbs.
"Lovely! Yes, yes; more than lovely—better than beautiful. When I looked up from my dream of death I thought yours the face of an angel. I think so still."
"Hush! hush! If you talk so wildly, dear, I shall think you are wandering again."
"I am not wandering, my Perdita. If ever I do, your beloved hand has but to touch mine and I will come back. Sometimes I have thought of late——"
"Go on, darling. You have thought of late——"
"That you were getting weary of your invalid, and regretting your promise."
"How could you ever think that of me?"
"There. I love to see those gray eyes deepen and flash through generous tears. I will take that back, for I see it is not true."
"Have I ever been forgetful of you?"
"No, no, no. If ever woman had the heart of an angel of mercy, you have one, my Perdita. It was not that you missed one atom of your wonderful care for me, but lately you have been reserved. You have denied me your hand so often to help me back to myself, or your bosom when my head ached; and the sweet words of endearment rarely come from you, except when once or twice you have thought I was sleeping."
"You are getting so well and strong that you do not require such excessive tenderness. It was only while you were helpless as a child that I felt for you as if you were one."
"You are but a child yourself, my poor, fragile darling; and yet, child as you are, I do require your motherly care, your motherly words of love. I have had them once, and they were so heavenly sweet that I cannot do without them."
"I will be your mother, then, until you can do without me. I shall take care of my child until he is able to take care of himself."
"Little mother, why do you weep?"
"Hush! hush! we have talked long enough; go to sleep."
"In yours arms, then Perdita."
She gathers him to her heart. Recklessly she strains him close while yet she may, heedless of the lonely days when heart and soul will hunger gnawingly for this blessed moment.
And so time fares on with this Brand which has been plucked from the burning.
Little by little he takes back to him life and strength; little by little he spells out this strange, sweet, new life, and analyzes it, and basks in the lambent sunshine. Not little by little grows his love for the Perdita of his fever dreams; she has taken the tide at its lowest ebb, and it has swept her into his deep, strong heart, which nevermore can shut her out.
He watches her beaming eyes with wistful constancy; he clings to her garments; he kisses her light hands, which touch him in gentle ministrations. The hard man is conquered, and by a woman.
But when he grows fearful that, after all, she may be wearying of this toil and care for him; when, with anxious eyes, he looks into the future, and pictures life without this gentle comforter, he almost wishes that health would turn her back on him forever, so that he might ever have Perdita; and he worries himself into continual fevers, which prove a great drawback to his convalescence.
She, also, has her secret load of anxiety. A crisis is approaching which she may not longer stave off. She must make herself known anon, and finish her duty with regard to him, and go away; and oh! heaven knows how she is to turn her back upon this great passion of her life, and him!
In her perfection of humility, she never hopes for reward for these great services of hers; she counts them but a feeble recompense for the evil she—his Marplot and ruin—has wrought him, which no recompense can atone for. She has not had the vanity to probe into his heart and weigh his gratitude toward her, or to count upon it for a moment. His daily evidences of love are to her but the wayward fancy of an invalid, which time and strength will sweep away, as surely as the ripple would blot her reflection from yonder smooth lagoon.
And at last the burden grows so heavy on the heart of each, that he, the least patient, breaks silence, and recklessly put his hand to the wheel which may revolve and crush him.
"You have always put me off when I was at all inquisitive about you," he says to her, one day; "but since I am getting well so rapidly, I think it time that I should assume a little of the responsibility of my own affairs. I have an appallingly heavy debt of gratitude to pay a kind lady, whose only name to me is Perdita, and I wish to be more particularly acquainted with my deliveress."
"If you would only wait until you were strong enough to travel," answers Margaret, becoming very pale, "it would be for the best."
"Why, where are we to travel, my Perdita?"
"You must prepare your mind for a journey, sir—a journey which will be for your good and happiness."
"With you?"
"Without me."
The desolate tones come quietly enough, but the invalid gives a great start, and clutches at his thin hands, and turns away his face.
Lying so still and so long that she almost thinks him sleeping, she bends timidly over him, and meets his dark eyes full of mournful tears.
"I feared it would come to this," he says, turning almost passionately to her; "and yet I have foolishly and selfishly clung to the hope that you would never seek to leave me. Have I been meddling much with your family duties by this long monopoly of you?"
"I have no family duties to attend to."
"No family ties to break, should I wish, if it were possible, for you to stay with me always?"
"Oh, sir, you would not speak so if you—if I could be honest and brave with you."
"My child—oh! my child; I cannot bear to see those tears. If you knew how dear you are to me, you would think well before you cast anything between us."
She buries her face in her hands; for a sacred space her heart throbs in its joy, and she feels that it were well worth the coming years of hunger to taste the sweet bliss as she tastes it now; and then she meekly looks her situation in the face.
"There are no family ties keeping me from you," she murmurs, as firmly as she may; "but it would not be honorable for me to accept any gratitude from you, or to accede to any such request as you have made, because—I did not come here and find you out with any craven hope of reward. I have barely done my duty toward you, and have had no thought of buying your love."
"I do not understand. I love you, Heaven knows, most fervently, Perdita; but whether you have bought it or not, I cannot say. It is yours, and cannot be recalled."
"And I cannot take it under such circumstances as those in which I won it. When you understand fully your affairs, you will then see how mercenary I would be to accept your love now."
"Mercenary? My poor child? I offer you this poor, wasted hand, and a broken constitution, and penniless prospects wherewith to be happy; and it is a part of my native selfishness to imagine that my great love could compensate for all drawbacks, but there is not the smallest room for suspecting you of mercenary motives—not the smallest."
"I have heard it said"—this with piteous hesitation—"that Colonel Brand was to be reinstated in his rights—that a great estate in England was going to be offered to him."
The invalid half raises himself on his elbow, and laughs heartily.
"Dismiss that rumor from your mind," he says, in a relieved tone; "for, if that is all the basis you have upon which to found mercenary expectations, it is as slight as the mirage in air. I would not go back to England to meddle with that property if I begged my bread for want of it. I will toady round no woman's shoes."
"But if she didn't wish it?" trembled Margaret; "if she insisted on giving it up to you, and rejecting all claim to it?"
"Not she."
"But if she did?"
"I hope she never may, darling. If she did, and if I were ever base enough to accept it, I should have in honor to propose to her by way of gratitude, and because my grandmother's will said so; and I would rather be an organ-grinder, with a monkey tied to my girdle, than be the heir of Castle Brand with Margaret Walsingham for my wife."
"Perhaps you misjudge her. Perhaps she was as unwilling to be the obstacle between you and your property as you were that she should be so."
"You are generous, my little mother, to defend one of the greediest kestrels who ever struck claw into carrion; but you are not just. I have no doubt that if she ever brought herself to try such an experiment as offering her booty to me, it would be with the assurance that I would refuse it, or with the hope that common decency would urge me to marry her."
"She would never marry you," is the quiet and sad rejoinder.
"Well, we sha'n't give her the chance. Let us turn from a very groveling subject (to my mind), and get over your next objection to me. We have sent the mercenary one a-flying—now for the next."
"That is the only one. Let us leave the subject altogether. You will know more fully what I meant to-morrow."
She leaves him hastily—never without a sweet backward glance before—and he is left alone for hours.
When she returns it is evening, and the long shadows lie athwart the room, and she flits across the ladders of gloom to him as if innumerable bars were holding them apart.
But when they are all passed, and she is close by his side, he scans his Perdita's countenance with a conviction growing within him that bars are yet between them which she cannot pass, and he seizes her hand in sudden foreboding.
"What is this, dear child? Why are you so pale and troubled? Have you been weeping?"
"Oh, nothing of consequence. Have you been comfortable?"
"Everything is of consequence which brings these marks of sorrow to my Perdita's face. Who has been vexing you, child?"
"No one—no one, sir."
"Who has been grieving you, then?"
"I—it is no one's fault. I have only been a little foolish—that is all."
She averts her pallid face, and will not be questioned more, but leads him utterly from personal subjects.
She has been dear and kind before, but never precisely with the yearning, smothered passion of this last evening; she almost seems to cling to him, as if invisible hands were driving her away, and her pathetic face grows tremulous at every word of tenderness from him.
And St. Udo has an indistinct memory of burning tears flashing somewhere while he sleeps, and of soft lips touching his in one meek kiss, and of tender words of blessing and of prayer; and then a shadow falls upon him gray and sad, for the door had shut him in, and the girl is gone.