Harry Jones and Tom Murdock got down from the cars,
Near a still country village, and lit their cigars.
They had left the hot town for a stroll and a chat,
And wandered on looking at this and at that,—
Plumed grass with pink clover that waltzed in the breeze,
Ruby currants in gardens, and pears on the trees,—
Till a green church-yard showed them its sun-checkered gloom,
And in they both went and sat down on a tomb.
The dead name was mossy; the letters were dim;
But they spelled out "James Woodson," and mused upon him,
Till Harry said, poring, "I wish I could know
What manner of man used the bones down below."
Answered Tom,—as he took his cigar from his lip
And tapped off the ashes that crusted the tip,
His quaint face somewhat shaded with awe and with mystery,—
"You shall hear, if you will, the main points in his story."—
"You don't mean you knew him? You could not! See here!
Why, this, since he died, is the thirtieth year!"—
"I never saw him, nor the place where he lay,
Nor heard of nor thought of the man, till to-day;
But I'll tell you his story, and leave it to you
If 'tis not ten to one that my story is true.
"The man whose old mould underneath us is hid
Meant a great deal more good and less harm than he did.
He knelt in yon church 'mid the worshipping throng,
And vowed to do right, but went out to do wrong;
For, going up of a Sunday to look at the gate
Of Saints' Alley, he stuck there and found it was strait,
And slid back of a Monday to walk in the way
That is popular, populous, smooth-paved, and gay.
The flesh it was strong, but the spirit was faint.
He first was too young, then too old, for a saint.
He wished well by his neighbors, did well by himself,
And hoped for salvation, and struggled for pelf;
And easy Tomorrow still promised to pay
The still swelling debts of his bankrupt Today,
Till, bestriding the deep sudden chasm that is fixed
The sunshiny world and the shadowy betwixt,
His Today with a pale wond'ring face stood alone,
And over the border Tomorrow had flown.
So after went he, his accounts as he could
To settle and make his loose reckonings good,
And left us his tomb and his skeleton under,—
Two boons to his race,—to sit down on and ponder.
Heaven help him! Yet heaven, I fear, he hath lost.
Here lies his poor dust; but where cries his poor ghost?
We know not. Perhaps we shall see by-and-by,
When out of our coffins we get, you and I."
AGNES OF SORRENTO.
CHAPTER X.
THE INTERVIEW.
The dreams of Agnes, on the night after her conversation with the monk and her singular momentary interview with the cavalier, were a strange mixture of images, indicating the peculiarities of her education and habits of daily thought.
She dreamed that she was sitting alone in the moonlight, and heard some one rustling in the distant foliage of the orange-groves, and from them came a young man dressed in white of a dazzling clearness like sunlight; large pearly wings fell from his shoulders and seemed to shimmer with a phosphoric radiance; his forehead was broad and grave, and above it floated a thin, tremulous tongue of flame; his eyes had that deep, mysterious gravity which is so well expressed in all the Florentine paintings of celestial beings: and yet, singularly enough, this white-robed, glorified form seemed to have the features and lineaments of the mysterious cavalier of the evening before,—the same deep, mournful, dark eyes, only that in them the light of earthly pride had given place to the calm, strong gravity of an assured peace,—the same broad forehead,—the same delicately chiselled features, but elevated and etherealized, glowing with a kind of interior ecstasy. He seemed to move from the shadow of the orange-trees with a backward floating of his lustrous garments, as if borne on a cloud just along the surface of the ground; and in his hand he held the lily-spray, all radiant with a silvery, living light, just as the monk had suggested to her a divine flower might be. Agnes seemed to herself to hold her breath and marvel with a secret awe, and, as often happens in dreams, she wondered to herself,—"Was this stranger, then, indeed, not even mortal, not even a king's brother, but an angel?—How strange," she said to herself, "that I should never have seen it in his eyes!" Nearer and nearer the vision drew, and touched her forehead with the lily, which seemed dewy and icy cool; and with the contact it seemed to her that a delicious tranquillity, a calm ecstasy, possessed her soul, and the words were impressed in her mind, as if spoken in her ear, "The Lord hath sealed thee for his own!"—and then, with the wild fantasy of dreams, she saw the cavalier in his wonted form and garments, just as he had kneeled to her the night before, and he said, "Oh, Agnes! Agnes! little lamb of Christ, love me and lead me!"—and in her sleep it seemed to her that her heart stirred and throbbed with a strange, new movement in answer to those sad, pleading eyes, and thereafter her dream became more troubled.
The sea was beginning now to brighten with the reflection of the coming dawn in the sky, and the flickering fire of Vesuvius was waxing sickly and pale; and while all the high points of rocks were turning of a rosy purple, in the weird depths of the gorge were yet the unbroken shadows and stillness of night. But at the earliest peep of dawn the monk had risen, and now, as he paced up and down the little garden, his morning hymn mingled with Agnes's dreams,—words strong with all the nerve of the old Latin, which, when they were written, had scarcely ceased to be the spoken tongue of Italy.
Splendor paternae gloriae,
De luce lucem proferens,
Lux lucis et fons luminis
Dies diem illuminans!
"Votis vocemus et Patrem,
Patrem potentis gratiae,
Patrem perennis gloriae:
Culpam releget lubricam!