A DREAM, AND THE INTERPRETATION THEREOF.
They stood by her bedside—the father and mother of the maiden—and watched her slumbers. For she had returned weary from Seville, after a long absence from this her Lisbon home. They had not gazed on that fair innocent face for many a month past; and they, too, smiled, and pressed each the other's hand as they marked a radiant smile playing round the mouth of the sleeper. It was a smile brimful of happiness—the welling-up of a heart at perfect peace. And it brought gladness to the hearts of the parents, who-would fain have kissed the cheek of their gentle girl, but refrained, lest it should break the spell—lest even a father's and a mother's kiss should dull the blessedness of the dreamer. So sleep on, Luise! and smile ever as thou sleepest—though it be the sleep of death.
These people were poor in worldly goods, but rich in the things of home and heart. Luise, the first-born, had been staying with a Spanish relative, who had taken charge of her education, and had now come back to her native Lisbon "for good." Three younger children there were—blithe, affectionate prattlers—whose glee at the recovery of Luise had been so exuberant, so boisterous, that they were now sent to play in the neighboring vineyards, that they might not disturb their tired sister's repose.
Long played that smile upon her face; and never were the two gazers tired of gazing, and of smiling as they gazed. Luise, they thought, had seemed a little sad as well as weary when she alighted at the dear familiar door. But this smile was so full of joy unspeakable, so fraught with beatific meaning, so reflective of beatific vision, that it laughed their fears away, and spoke volumes where the seeming sorrow had not spoken even words.
The shrill song of a mule-driver passing by the window aroused the sleeper. The smile vanished, and as she started up and looked hastily and inquiringly around, a shade of mingled disappointment and bewilderment gathered darkly on her brow.
"You must turn and go to sleep again, my child," whispered the mother. "I wish Pedro were not so proud of his voice, and then you might still be dreaming of pleasant things."
"I was dreaming, then?" said Luise, somewhat sadly. "I thought it was real, and it made me so happy! Ah, if I could dream it again, and again—three times running, you know—till it became true!"
"What was it, Luise?" asked her father. "We must know what merry thought made you so joyful. It will be a dream worth knowing, and, therefore, worth telling."
"Not at present," interrupted his wife. "Let her get some more rest; and then, when she is thoroughly refreshed after such a tedious journey, she will make us all happy with realities as well as dreams."
"And are dreams never realities?" asked the girl, with a sigh.
"Child! child! if we're going to be philosophical, and all that, we shall never get you to sleep again. Don't talk any more, my Luise; but close your eyes, and see if you can't realize a dream; that will be the best answer to your question."
"I can't go to sleep again," she answered. "See, I'm quite awake, and it's no use trying. And with the sun so high too! No; you shall send me to bed an hour or two earlier to-night, and to-morrow morning will find me as brisk as a bee. I've so much to hear, and so much to tell, that to sleep again before dusk is out of the question."
So she arose; and they went all three and sat down in the little garden. Luise eyed eagerly every flower and every fruit-tree, and had something to say about every change since she had been there last. But ever and anon she would look earnestly into the faces of her parents—and never without something like a tear in her large lustrous eyes.
Of course, they questioned her upon this. And she, who had never concealed a thought or a wish from them, told them in her own frank, artless way, why she looked sorrowful when she first saw them, after a prolonged separation, and how it was that, in her sleep, thoughts had visited her which were messengers of peace and gladness—whose message it had saddened her to find, on waking, but airy and unreal.
At Seville she had been as happy as kindness and care could make one so far from and so fond of home. But a childish fancy, she said, had troubled her—childish she knew, and a thing to be ashamed of, but haunting her none the less—visiting her sleeping and waking hours; a feeling it was of dejection at the idea of her parents growing old, and of change and chance breaking up the wonted calm of her little household circle. That the march of Time should be so irresistible, that his flight could not be stayed or slackened by pope or kaiser, that his decrees should be so immutable, his destiny so inexorable, and that the youngest must soon cease to be young, and the middle-aged become old—or die! this was the thought that preyed on her very soul. She could not endure the conviction that her own father must one day walk with a less elastic step, and smile on her with eyes ever loving indeed, but more and more dimmed with age—and that her own mother must one day move to and fro with tottering gait, and speak with the tremulous accents of those old people who, it seemed to Luise, could never have been children at all. It was a weak, fantastic thought, this; but she could not master it, nor escape its presence.
And when she met them on the threshold of the beloved home—ah, the absentee's rapid glance saw a wrinkle on her father's cheek that was new to her, and it saw a clustering of gray hairs on her mother's brow, where all had been raven black when Luise departed for Seville. Poor Luise! The sorrows of her young heart were enlarged. Time had not been absent with the pensive absentee.
True, he had stolen no charm from her little playmates. Carlos was a brighter boy than ever; and as for that merry Zingara-like Isabel, and the yet merrier Manuel—they were not a whit changed, unless for the better, in look, and manner, and love. Still the too-sensitive Luise was hurt at the thought that they could not always be children—that Time was bent on effacing her earliest and dearest impressions, removing from her home that ideal of family relationship to which all her affections clung with passionate entreaty. Whatever the future might; have to reveal of enjoyment and endearment, the past could never be lived over again; the past could never be identified with things present and things to come; and it was to the past that her heart was betrothed—a past that had gone the way of all living, and left her as it were widowed and not to be comforted.
"And now I will tell you my dream," said poor foolish Luise; "and you will see why I looked happy in sleeping, and sorry in waking. I thought I was sitting here in the garden—crying over what I have been telling you—and suddenly an angel stood before me, and bade me weep not. Strange as was his form, and sunny in its exceeding brightness, I was not frightened; for his words were very, very gentle, and his look too full of kindness to give me one thrill of alarm. And he said that what I had longed for so much should be granted; that my father and mother should not grow old, nor Carlos cease to be the boy he now is, nor Isabel grow up into a sedate woman, nor Manuel lose the gay childishness for which we all pet him, nor I feel myself forsaking the old familiar past, and launching into dim troublous seas of perpetual change. He promised that we should one and all be freed from the great law of time; and that as we are this day parents and children, so we should continue forever—while vicissitude and decay must still have sway in the great world at large. Can you wonder that I smiled? Or that it pained me when I awoke, and found that the bright angel and the sweet promise were only—a dream?"...
There was no lack of conversation that evening in that Lisbon cottage. All loved Luise; and she, in the midst of so many artless tokens of affection and of triumph at her return, forgot all the morbid fancies that had given rise to her dream, and was as light-hearted, and as light-footed, as in days of yore. All gave themselves up to the reality of present gladness; every voice trembled with the music of joy; every eye looked and reflected love. There was no happier homestead that evening in Lisbon, nor in the world.
But ere many hours, Lisbon itself was tossing and heaving with the throes of dissolution. The sea arose tumultuously against the tottering city; the ground breathed fire, and quaked, and burst asunder; the houses reeled and fell, and thousands of inhabitants perished in the fall. Among them, at one dire swoop, the tenants of that happy cottage home. Together did these mortals put on immortality.
And thus was the dream fulfilled.