Have I been asleep? What is this in my hands? The amber gods? Oh, yes! I asked to see them again; I like their smell, I think. It is ten years I have had them. They enchant; but the charm will not last; nothing will. I rubbed a little yellow smoke out of them,—a cloud that hung between him and the world, so that he saw only me,—at least——What am I dreaming of? All manner of illusions haunt me. Who said anything about ten years? I have been married ten years. Happy, then, ten years? Oh, no! One day he woke.—How close the room is! I want some air. Why don't they do something——
Once, in the pride of a fool, I fear having made some confidence, some recital of my joy to ears that never had any. Did I say I would not lose him? Did I say I could live just on the memory of that summer? I lash myself that I must remember it! that I ever loved him! When he stirred, when the mist left him, when he found a mere passion had blinded him, when he spread his easel, when he abandoned love,—was I wretched? I, too, abandoned love!—more,—I hated! All who hate are wretched. But he was bound to me! Yes, he might move restlessly,—it only clanked his chains. Did he wound me? I was cruel. He never spoke. He became artist,—ceased to be man,—was more indifferent than the cloud. He could paint me then,—and, revealed and bare, all our histories written in me, he hung me up beside my ancestors. There I hang. Come from thy frame, thou substance, and let this troubled phantom go! Come! for he gave my life to thee. In thee he shut and sealed it all, and left me as the empty husk. Did she come then? No! I sent for her. I meant to teach him that he was yet a man,—to open before him a gulf of anguish; but I slipped down it. Then I dogged them; they never spoke alone; I intercepted the eye's language; I withered their wintry smiles to frowns; I stifled their sighs; I checked their breath, their motion. Idle words passed our lips; we three lived in a real world of silence, agonized mutes. She went. Summer by summer my father brought her to us. Always memory was kindled afresh, always sorrow kept smouldering. Once she came; I lay here; she has not left me since. He,—he also comes; he has soothed pain with that loveless eye, carried me in untender arms, watched calmly beside my delirious nights. He who loved beauty has learned disgust. Why should I care? I, from the slave of bald form, enlarged him to the master of gorgeous color; his blaze is my ashes. He studies me. I owe him nothing.
Is it near morning? Have I dozed again? Night is long. The great hall-clock is striking,—throb after throb on the darkness. I remember, when I was a child, watching its lengthened pendulum swing as if time were its own, and it measured the thread slowly, loath to part,—remember streaking its great ebony case with a little finger, misting it with a warm breath. Throb after throb,—is it going to peal forever? Stop, solemn clangor! hearts, stop! Midnight.
The nurses have gone down; she sits there alone. Her bent side-face is full of pity. Now and then her head turns; the great brown eyes lift heavily, and lie on me,—heavily, as if the sight of me pained her. Ah, in me perishes her youth! death enters her world! Besides, she loves me. I do not want her love,—I would fling it off; but I am faint,—I am impotent,—I am so cold! Not that she lives, and I die,—not that she has peace, and I tumult,—not for her voice's music,—not for her eye's lustre,—not for any charm of her womanly presence,—neither for her clear, fair soul,—nor that, when the storm and winter pass, and I am stiff and frozen, she smiles in the sun, and leads new life,—not for all this I hate her; but because my going gives her what I lost,—because, I stepped aside, the light falls on her,—because from my despair springs her happiness. Poor fool! let her be happy, if she can! Her mother was a Willoughby! And what is a flower that blows on a grave?
Why do I remember so distinctly one night alone of all my life,—one night, when we dance in the low room of a seaside cottage,—dance to Lu's singing? He leads me to her, when the dance is through, brushing with his head the festooned nets that swing from the rafters,—and in at the open casement is blown a butterfly, a dead butterfly, from off the sea. She holds it compassionately till I pin it on my dress,—the wings, twin magnificences, freckled and barred and dusty with gold, fluttering at my breath. Some one speaks with me; she strays to the window, he follows, and they are silent. He looks far away over the gray loneliness stretching beyond. At length he murmurs: "A brief madness makes my long misery. Louise, if the earth were dazzled aside from her constant pole-star to worship some bewildering comet, would she be more forlorn than I?"
"Dear Rose! your art remains," I hear her say.
He bends lower, that his breath may scorch her brow. "Was I wrong? Am I right?" he whispers, hurriedly. "You loved me once; you love me now, Louise, if I were free?"
"But you are not free."
She does not recoil, yet her very atmosphere repels him, while looking up with those woful eyes blanching her cheek by their gathering darkness. "And, Rose,"——she sighs, then ceases abruptly, while a quiver of sudden scorn writhes spurningly down eyelid and nostril and pains the whole face.
He erects himself, then reaches his hand for the rose in her belt, glances at me,—the dead thing in my bosom rising and falling with my turbulent heart,—holds the rose to his lips, leaves her. How keen are my ears! how flushed my cheek! how eager and fierce my eyes! He approaches; I snatch the rose and tear its petals in an angry shower, and then a dim east-wind pours in and scatters my dream like flakes of foam. All dreams go; youth and hope desert me; the dark claims me. O room, surrender me! O sickness and sorrow, loose your weary hold!