The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]

by Richard Le Gallienne

"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?"

So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her faith, and her love made her a Sadducee.

And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give.

If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance about the world.

And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of imagination.

And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and was already about the business of the dreaming spring.

And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However morbid his fancies might become, desiderium could never take any but beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb or charnel.

She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This was Jenny!"

No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high moments, then can one say, "There, listen! that was Jenny."

Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side.