'Brother,' she murmured, in a dreamy, half-abstracted manner, 'there has been something solemn and strange in our intercourse, a mysterious something, which my mind has vainly striven to grasp and comprehend. I had thought the secret rested with you, and through you would be revealed to me; but the time for such revelation is passed; God has willed it otherwise. Brother,' her voice sank to a solemn cadence; I hear the low tones now, as I heard them then: 'I am the better and purer for your affection; you have led me, by what process I know not, from the sensuous and the earthly, to the spiritual and the holy, and there is no epithet applied to mortals, reverently endearing enough to be coupled with your name. I would that my words were as eloquent as my feelings, that you might know what immeasurable gratitude I vainly strive to compress in the brief words: I thank you.'
She wept, and I laid my hand on the bowed head in mute and speechless blessing.
'O Father!' I cried, in my voiceless anguish, 'Omnipotent and good! is there nothing that can open her eyes even now, and give me the being thine own holy laws have made my own?' No! no! The wild hope that prompted the useless prayer died within my heart as I breathed it. Jealous of the brief interest that could draw his betrothed's attention from himself but for a moment, he, the boy lover, now entered, and there were no longer gentle looks nor solemn words. He loved her best in her moods of artless gayety, and she hurriedly brushed her tears away, and hastened to be merry. Brief as had been the glimpse she had given me of her inner nature, the knowledge proved my comforter in this my time of trial, and I thanked God for it humbly and gratefully.
I then had really led her from the earthly to the spiritual and holy. Her heart had unawares entertained an angel visitant; mine had unconsciously performed an angel's ministry; I, next to God and his messengers, had power to satisfy the deepest wants of her nature. Oh, solitary drop of consolation! The love cherished by her, and her heart's mistaken choice, was only of this earth; there was no element of spirituality to render it immortal. It was doomed to die with the passion that gave it birth, and from the grave there should be no resurrection.
Blessed be God forever!... Lo! The rustic church is trimmed with evergreen, and lighted for the marriage service. Curious lookers on are there; and with that perverse desire to test the might of their endurance, common with those who suffer, I too, am there, though I know that her image, as she stands at the altar, where I shall see her for the last time, through the days and nights of anguish sure to follow this, will be ever present with me! Yet, with my face half hidden by the evergreens, I stand and wait her coming. They enter, bride and bridegroom; she leaning trustfully upon his arm. O Jennie! my Jennie; thou who shouldst have been my bride! Great waves of tearless anguish rolled over my soul at the sight! Jennie, the priest who ministers at the altar before which thou standest, is idly repeating words whose holy meaning he does not comprehend: is separating, not uniting those whom God has joined together. O Jennie! companion of my spirit! is there no far-off, distant echo awakened in thy soul by the bitter waves of anguish surging over mine? Not now, in this thine hour of earthly love and triumph; not now. Even in spirit, 'lover and friend,' hast thou been put far from me. The low, measured tones of the minister fall on my ear; and I count the brief moments that give her to the keeping of another for all her mortal life, as the watcher counts the last moments of the dying and the loved. They kneel in prayer before the mockery of those last words is spoken, and I kneel too, crying to the Almighty: 'Wrest even now my treasure from him, or still the anguished throbbings of my heart forever! Let me die!' O Thou tempted in all points even as we, yet without sin, it was meet in this my hour of extremest suffering, that Thou shouldst send the promised comforter, not to bestow the earthly good I prayed for, but to raise me above earth and all of earthly good. Opening my inner vision to behold, far as the eye of the finite may behold, what is comprehended in the omniscient glance of the Infinite—removing the clouds brooding so darkly over my spirit, and filling it with holy joy, by imparting radiant glimpses of the soul's calmer and higher life in the land beyond—'the life that rights the wrongs, and reveals the mysteries of this,'—the words that were once my hope and the inspiration of my toil, came now, when that hope was dead, to soothe and comfort me—the spirit of prophecy, that cheered my spirit with the hopeful promise of good in the time to come, and stirring my soul to its depths, sounding through it like a song of solemn triumph.
What though thou beholdest her the bride of another, her own heart blinded so that she cannot see aright! She is thine through all the countless years of thy immortality! His but for a brief and fleeting season! He holds his treasure in a trembling, uncertain grasp. Change may separate her heart from his; death may wrest it from him; the grave cover her form forever from his sight; but neither Time, nor Change, nor Death—nothing in the present world, or in that which is to come, shall be able to separate thee from the soul that was formed for thine! She is his by man's frail and perishing enactments; thine by the great law of attraction, by the immutable decrees of God. Seeing now, with the eye of the spirit, the frail uncertain nature of the happiness which he fondly dreamed was founded on a rock, sorrow and envy left me, and I could pity him as one deluded; and with a strange triumphant feeling, I pressed forward and imprinted the first kiss on the pure brow of my heart's chosen as the bride of another. Was she dimly, vaguely conscious for a moment of the nature of the attraction that bound our souls together, as she clung tearfully to me for an instant, murmuring a loving farewell? It has given me comfort through all the long years that have passed since then, to think so. She leaned from the carriage, her sweet eyes meeting mine in a sad adieu. I looked my last then on the face of the mortal Jennie. But in a land of perpetual summer, lighted by the smile of God, robed in garments of everlasting light, faithful and true, there awaits me Jennie the immortal! She knows it all now. Those bright seraphic eyes lighted with heaven-born love, have turned from celestial light to mark my gloomy wanderings. When she died, there was added to the band of ministering spirits the one whose silent influence was most powerful for good, most potent to aid me in overcoming evil. I have been better and purer since then. She possesses some mystic power to make me feel her presence, and to draw me toward her.
Slowly, very slowly, the feeling of solitude and isolation departed from me, and I am not lonely now; bright unseen visitants soothe my solitude; their noiseless steps break not its solemn stillness; soft hands clasp mine; where'er I move, the spirit of loving companionship is with me. Ah! to the eyes and ears of the aged, whose material perceptions are closing forever on the sights and sounds of earth, there come, borne across the dark-waved river on whose brink they stand, sounds from the other side; and ever and anon the mist that broods there lifts and parts itself, revealing radiant but imperfect glimpses of the promised land beyond.
Ere long the shadow will pass from these dimmed eyes forever, and I shall look on what she looks in heaven.
I have lived the allotted time of man's probation. The days of the years of my pilgrimage are drawing to a close. It cannot be long now! A few months, it may be years, of patient endurance—
And then—Then!