PART V.
The convent-bell struck midnight, and there was a foot-fall in the cloister. I was startled by it out of an entire forgetfulness of all around me, for I was lying on my bed in the monastery cell, with my hands clasped over my eyes, as I had thrown myself down on coming in; and, with a strange contrariety, my mind, broken rudely from its hope, had flown to my far away home, oblivious of the benumbed links that lay between. A knock at my door completed the return to my despair, for with a look at the walls of my little chamber, in the bright beam of moonlight that streamed in at the narrow window, I was, by recognition, again at Vallambrosa, and Stephania, with an accepted lover's voice in her ear, was again near me, her moistened eyes steeped with Palgray's in the same beam of the all-visiting and unbetraying moon.
Father Ludovic entered. The gentle tone of his benedicite, told me that he had come on an errand of sympathy. There was little need of preliminary between two who read the inner countenance as habitually as did both of us; and as briefly as the knowledge and present feeling of each could be re-expressed in words, we confirmed the spirit-mingling that had brought him there, and were presently as one. He had read truly the drama of love, enacting in the party of visiters to his convent, but his judgment of the possible termination of it was different from mine.
Palgray's dormitory was at the extremity of the cloister, and we presently heard him pass.
"She is alone, now," said Father Ludovic, "I will send you to her."
My mind had strained to Stephania's presence with the first footsteps that told me of their separation; and it needed but a wave of his hand to unlink the spirit-wings from my weary frame. I was present with her.
I struggled for a moment, but in vain, to see her face. Its expression was as visible as my hand in the sun, but no feature. The mind I had read was close to me, in a presence of consciousness; and, in points, here and there, brighter, bolder, and further-reaching than I had altogether believed. She was unutterably pure—a spirit without a spot—and I remained near her with a feeling as if my forehead were pressed down to the palms of my hands, in homage mixed with sorrow, for I should have more recognized this in my waking study of her nature.
A moment more—a trembling effort, as if to read what were written to record my companionship for eternity—and a vague image of myself came out in shadow—clearer now, and still clearer, enlarging to the fullness of her mind. She thought wholly and only of that image I then saw, yet with a faint coloring playing to and from it, as influences came in from the outer world. Her eyes were turned in upon it in lost contemplation. But suddenly a new thought broke upon me. I saw my image, but it was not I, as I looked to myself. The type of my countenance was there; but, oh, transformed to an ideal, such as I now, for the first time, saw possible—ennobled in every defective line—purified of its taint from worldliness—inspired with high aspirations—cleared of what it had become cankered with, in its transmission through countless generations since first sent into the world, and restored to a likeness of the angel of whose illuminated lineaments it was first a copy. So thought Stephania of me. Thus did she believe I truly was. Oh! blessed, and yet humiliating, trust of woman! Oh! comparison of true and ideal, at which spirits must look out of heaven, and of which they must long, with aching pity, to make us thus rebukingly aware!
I felt myself withdrawing from Stephania's presence. There were tears between us, which I could not see. I strove to remain, but a stronger power than my will was at work within me. I felt my heart swell with a gasp, as if death were bearing out of it the principle of life; and my head dropped on the pillow of my bed.
"Good night, my son," said the low voice of Father Ludovic, "I have willed that you should remember what you have seen. Be worthy of her love, for there are few like her."
He closed the door, and as the glide of his sandals died away in the echoing cloisters, I leaned forth to spread my expanding heart in the upward and boundless light of the moon—for I seemed to wish never again to lose in the wasteful forgetfulness of sleep, the consciousness that I was loved by Stephania.
I was journeying the next day, alone, toward Venice. I had left written adieux for the party at Vallambrosa, pleading to my friends an unwillingness to bear the pain of a formal separation. Betwixt midnight and morning, however, I had written a parting letter for Stephania, which I had committed to the kind envoying of Father Ludovic, and thus it ran:—
"When you read this, Stephania, I shall be alone with the thought of you, traveling a reluctant road, but still with a burthen in my heart which will bring me to you again, and which even now envelopes my pang of separation in a veil of happiness. I have been blessed by Heaven's mercy with the power to know that you love me. Were you not what you are, I could not venture to startle you thus with a truth which, perhaps, you have hardly confessed in waking reality to yourself; but you are one of those who are coy of no truth that could be found to have lain without alarm in your own bosom, and, with those beloved hands pressed together with the earnestness of the clasp of prayer, you will say, 'yes! I love him!'
"I leave you, now, not to put our love to trial, and still less in the ordinary meaning of the phrase, to prepare to wed you. The first is little needed, angels in heaven well know. The second is a thought which will be in time, when I have done the work on which I am newly bent by the inspiration of love—the making myself what you think me to be. Oh, Stephania! to feel encouraged, as God has given me strength to feel, that I may yet be this—that I may yet bring you a soul brought up to the standard you have raised, and achieve it by effort in self-denial, and by the works of honor and goodness that are as possible to a man in obscurity and poverty as to his brother in wealth and distinction—this is to me new life, boundless enlargement of sphere, food for a love of which, alas! I was not before worthy.
"I have told you unreservedly what my station in life is—what my hopes are, and what career I had marked out for struggle. I shall go on with the career, though the prizes I then mentally saw have since faded in value almost as much as my purpose is strengthened. Fame and wealth, my pure, Stephania, are to you as they now can only be to me, larger trusts of service and duty; and if I hope they will come while other aims are sought, it is because they will confer happiness on parents and friends who mistakenly suppose them necessary to the winner of your heart. I hope to bring them to you. I know that I shall come as welcome without them.
"While I write—while my courage and hope throb loud in the pulses of my bosom—I can think even happily of separation. To leave you, the better to return, is bearable—even pleasurable—to the heart's noonday mood. But I have been steeped for a summer, now, in a presence of visible and breathing loveliness, (that you cannot forbid me to speak of, since language is too poor to out-color truth,) and there will come moments of depression—twilights of deepening and undivided loneliness—hours of illness, perhaps—and times of discouragement and adverse cloudings over of Providence—when I shall need to be remembered with sympathy, and to know that I am so remembered. I do not ask you to write to me. It would entail difficulties upon you, and put between us an interchange of uncertainties and possible misunderstandings. But I can communicate with you by a surer medium, if you will grant a request. The habits of your family are such that you can, for the first hour after midnight, be always alone. Waking or sleeping, there will then be a thought of me occupying your heart, and—call it a fancy if you will—I can come and read it on the viewless wings of the soul.
"I commend your inexpressible earthly beauty, dear Stephania, and your still brighter loveliness of soul, to God's angel, who has never left you. Farewell! You will see me when I am worthy of you—if it be necessary that it should be first in heaven, made so by forgiveness there.
Cell of St. Eusebius, Vallambrosa—day-breaking."
[A BUTTERFLY IN THE CITY.]
BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.
Dear transient spirit of the fields,
Thou com'st, without distrust,
To fan the sunshine of our streets
Among the noise and dust.
Thou leadest in thy wavering flight
My footsteps unaware,
Until I seem to walk the vales
And breathe thy native air.
And thou hast fed upon the flowers,
And drained their honied springs,
Till every tender hue they wore
Is blooming on thy wings.
I bless the fresh and flowery light
Thou bringest to the town,
But tremble lest the hot turmoil
Have power to weigh thee down;
For thou art like the poet's song,
Arrayed in holiest dyes,
Though it hath drained the honied wells
Of flowers of Paradise;
Though it hath brought celestial hues
To light the ways of life,
The dust shall weigh its pinions down
Amid the noisy strife.
And yet, perchance, some kindred soul
Shall see its glory shine,
And feel its wings within his heart
As bright as I do thine.