"Sweet Marjory commands me."
"Ah, Hector, Hector, how little you know of the heart of woman! Know you not that in a forsaken woman the heart has an irony even when it is breaking? Ask her if you should wed her rival, and the breaking heart-string will respond Yes, even as the cord of the harp will twang when it is severed. Well do I know Sweet Marjory, and what she must have felt when she uttered this command. The canker has begun, and she will die. The worm does not seek always the withered leaf. You've heard the song that Patricia used to sing—
"'The dainty worm, it loves the tomb,
And gnaws, and gnaws its nightly food;
But a daintier worm selects the bloom,
And a daintier still affects the bud.'"
"Oh, God forgive me!" ejaculated the miserable youth, as, holding his hand on his brow, he rushed out of the room and sought his bed-chamber. Was there ever such a night before the day, of all days auspicious to mortals, of the culminating joy of human life! Could he not find refuge in sleep, where the miserable so often seek to escape from the vibrations of the leaping, palpitating nerve, inflamed by the fever of life? A half-hour's dreamy consciousness, an hour's vision of returning images, rest and unrest, haunting scenes woven by some secret power, so varied, so ephialtic, so monstrous, yet all, somehow or another, however unlike the reality, still vindicating a connection. Why should Sweet Marjory be in the deep recesses of the pine wood, resting by his foaming steed, with his mother sitting and breathing hope's accents in her ear, and ever and again calling on him in sobbing vocables to return from his pursuit of another? He would return. The charm of her sweet voice is felt to be irresistible; yet it is resisted. And though he looks back only to see her by the flaught of the lightning that plays among the trees, his steps are forward, where Devil Isobel charms him with a song, in comparison of which the magic of the sirens is but the rustle of the reed as it swerves in the blast. He struggles, and seizes the stems of the pines to hold him from his progress and keep him steady; and he writhes as he finds he cannot obey the maternal appeal to a son's love. All is still again, and there is rest, only to be alternated by the recurring visions always assuming new forms, changing and disappearing, flaring up again, and then the deep breast-riding oppression, and those hollow moans, which never can be imitated by the waking sense, as if Nature preserved this domain of the spirit as an evidence, in the night of the soul, that there is another world where the limbo of agony is not less certain than the heaven which is simulated by sweet dreams.
But, lucidus die—nocte inutilis. As the day dawned, and the morning sun, fresh from the east, threw in between the chinks of the shutters the virgin beams, Ogilvy felt the truth of the old saying, that every day vindicates its two conditions of good and evil. There was again a change in the versatile mind of the romantic youth; and Honour, pinkt out in those gaudy decorations woven by the busy spirits that move so cunningly the springs of man's thoughts in a conventional world, appeared before him. If Isobel was still the Devil Isobel, Honour was a smiling angel, even more beautiful than Sweet Marjory. Yet he was not happy—only firm, as he confessed by that lying power of the mind, to the strength of bonds he had himself imposed, and yet repented of—setting necessity as a will-power amidst the wreck and ruin of his affections. The hour advanced, and he must superinduce the happy bridegroom on the dead statue. Unsteady and fitful even in the common actions of life—lifting the wrong thing, and suddenly throwing it down in the wrong place, again to snatch the right thing at the wrong time—he was not so this morning. Every step and manipulation was like the movement of a machine. Composedness was a luxury to him. Ornament after ornament, at a time when a bridegroom's decorations were the expression of a rude refinement, found its place with a steady, nay, affectedly formal hand; yea, a more cool bridegroom had never been seen in the world's history, since that eventful morning when the hero of Bæotia put on his lion's skin, and took up his wooden club, to marry the fifty daughters of the king, though among these, if the wise man is right, there must have been forty-nine devils. As the solemn work went on, he looked again and again into the mirror, where he saw none of the wrinkles of care, no brow-knitting of fractiousness, no sternness of resolute determination,—all quiet, smooth, even mild. Ay, such a mime is man when he is a mome, that he even smiled as he felt his pulse,—how cool was his blood, how regular the vibrations! And so the mummery went on: the flowered-red vest, the braided coat of sky-blue, the cravat, the ruffles, the wrist-bands scolloped and stiff, the indispensable ruff, concealed behind by the long locks of auburn, so beautiful in Isobel's eyes, that flowed over his broad shoulders.
The work was finished; Ogilvy was dressed—his body in all the colours of the arc of hope—his mind in the dark midnight weeds of a concealed misery, concealed even from himself. He sought the chamber of his mother, and, taking her hand, kissed it fervently; but could not trust himself to even a broken syllable of speech, and his silence was sympathetic. She looked into the face of her son, and then threw her eye solemnly over the array of his dress. The tear stood apparent, yet her face seemed to have borrowed his composedness, as if she felt that the old doom still followed the house of Ogilvy, and was inevitable, when the evil genius of the Bowers was in the ascendant. There was no reproof now, save that which lies in the dumb expression of sorrow—even that reproof which, melting the obstruction of man's egotism, finds its way to the heart, when even scorn would be only a hardening coruscation. Yet even this he could bear for the sake of that conventionality which is a tyrant. Turning away his head, he again kissed the soft hand, and hurried away.
As he issued from the gate and mounted his steed, now refreshed from the rough stress of the previous evening, the sun shone high and flaring, and the face of the country, with its rising hills and heather-bloom, and patches of waving corn, responded—as became it surely on a bridal morning—to the clang of the bell in Bell's Tower,—so like in all but the workings of the heart to the Sabbath morning when the union is to be between the spirit of man and the Lamb without guile. Yet art, self-confident and pragmatic, was not to be cajoled by the solicitations of, to it, a lying nature, however beautiful; and Ogilvy found it convenient, if not manly and heroic, to knit his eyebrows against the sun. So does the Indian hurl his wooden spear against the lightning, because he is a greater being than the Author of the thunder. So he rode on to where the bells rung—for was not he specially called?—the gloom on his countenance, with which his forced determination kept pace, increasing as he proceeded. Nor had he ever ridden thus before. Even his steed might have known, as he opened his nostrils, that there was something more than common in the wind's eye, accustomed as he was to the speed of enthusiasm, or the walk of exhaustion. He was now a solemn stalking-horse, bearing a rigid, buckram-mailed showman, whose only sound or movement resided in the plates of his armour, or his lath sword or gilded spontoon.
As Ogilvy had thus enrolled himself among the chivalry of honour, and was consequently, in his own estimation, as we have hinted, a personage of romance, so was it only consistent with the indispensable gloom of his dignity and sternness that he should ride alone: nor was it seeming that he should accost the guests whom he saw on either side, obeying the call of the bell, and riding along to the bridal and the feast. Yet the scene might have enlivened somewhat a very gloomy knight, as, looking around, he saw the lairds rounding the bases of the hills, and heard, as others came into sight, the sound of bagpipes, however little these might be associated with chivalric notions and aspirations. But then it was not easy to act this solitary part; for what more natural than that those passing to his own celebration should salute him? Nor could he avoid those salutations.
"Joy to thee, Ogilvy," said one, as he rode up; "the nightshade is sweeter than the rose;" and departed.
"A happy day," said another, "when the wolf becomes more innocent than the lamb."