"Now the Athenian dreamer builded better than he knew. That phantom which perpetually attends and perpetually evades us,—the inevitable guest whose silence maddens and whose sweetness consoles,—whose filmy radiance eclipses all beauty,—whose voiceless eloquence subdues all sound,—ever beckoning, ever inspiring, patient, pleading, and unchanging,—this is the Ideal which Plato called the dearer self, because, when its craving sympathies find reflex and response in a living form, its rapturous welcome ignores the old imperfect being, and the union only is recognized as Self indeed, complete and undivided. And that fulness of human love becomes a faint type and interpreter of the Infinite, as through it we glide into grander harmonies and enlarged relations with the Universe, urged on forever by insatiable desires and far-reaching aspirations which testify our celestial origin and intimate our immortal destiny.
"'Lo! arm in arm, through every upward grade,
From the rude Mongol to the starry Greek,
everywhere we seek
Union and bond, till in one sea sublime
Of love be merged all measure and all time!"
"I never disclosed in words my love to Blanche. Through the lucid transparency of Presence, I believed that she knew all and comprehended all, without the aid of those blundering symbols. We never even spoke of the future; for all time, past and to come, seemed to converge and centre and repose in that radiant present. In the enchantment of my new life, I feared lest a breath should disturb the spell, and send me back to darkness and solitude.
"Of course, this could not last forever. There came a time when I found that my affairs would compel me to leave New Orleans for a year, or perhaps a little longer. With the discovery my dream was broken. The golden web which had been woven around me shrank beneath the iron hand of necessity, and fell in fragments at my feet. I knew that it was useless to speak to Blanch of marriage, for her father, a stern and exacting man in his domestic relations, had often declared that he would never give his daughter to a husband who had no fortune. If I sought his permission to address her now, my fate was fixed. There was no alternative, therefore, but to wait until my return, when I hoped to have secured, in sufficient measure, the material passport to his favor. Our parting was necessarily sudden, and, strange as it may seem, some fatal repression sealed my lips, and withheld me from uttering the few words which would have made the future wholly ours, and sculptured my dream of love in monumental permanance. Ah! with what narrow and trembling planks do we bridge the abyss of misery and despair! But be patient while I linger for a moment here. The evening before my departure, I went to take leave of her. There were other guests in the drawing-room, the atmosphere was heated and oppressive, and after a little time I proposed to her to retreat with me, for a few moments, to the fragrant coolness of the garden. We walked slowly along through clustering flowers and under arching orange-trees, which infolded us tenderly within their shining arms, as in tremulous silence we waited for words that should say enough and yet not too much. The glories of all summer evenings seemed concentred in this one. The moon now silvered leaf and blossom, and then suddenly fled behind a shadowing cloud, while the stars shone out with gladness brief and bright as the promises of my heart. Skilful artists in the music-room thrilled the air with some of those exquisite compositions of Mendelssohn which dissolve the soul in sweetness or ravish it with delight, until it seems as if all past emotions of joy were melted in one rapid and comprehensive reëxperience, and all future inheritance gleamed in promise before our enraptured vision, and we are hurried on with electric speed to hitherto unsealed heights of feeling, whence we catch faint glimpses of the unutterable mysteries of our being, and foreshadowings of a far-off, glorified existence. The eloquence of earth and sky and air breathed more than language could have uttered, and, as my eyes met the eyes of Blanche, the question of my heart was asked and answered, once for all. I recognized the treasured ideal of my restless, vagrant heart, and I seemed to hear it murmuring gently, as if to a long-lost mate, 'Where hast thou stayed so long?' I felt that henceforth there was for us no real parting. Our material forms might be severed, but our spirits were one and inseparate.
"'On the fountains of our life a seal was set
To keep their waters clear and bright
Forever.'
"And thus, with scarce a word beside, I said the 'God be with you!' and went out into the world alone, yet henceforth not alone.
"Two years passed away. They had been years of success in my worldly affairs, and were blessed by memories and hopes which grew brighter with each day. I had not heard of Blanche, save indirectly through a friend in New Orleans, but I never doubted that the past was as sacred, the future as secure, in her eyes as in my own. I was now ready to return, and to repeat in words the vows which my heart had sworn long before. I fixed the time, and wrote to my friend to herald my coming. Before that letter reached him, there came tidings which, like a storm of desolation, swept me to the dust. Blanche was in France, and married,—how or when or to whom, I knew not, cared not. The relentless fact was sufficient. The very foundations of the earth seemed to tremble and slide from beneath me. The sounds of day tortured, the silence of night maddened me. I sought forgetfulness in travel, in wild adventure, in reckless dissipation. With that strange fatality which often leads us to seek happiness or repose where we have least chance of finding it, I, too, married. But I committed no perjury. I offered friendship, and it sufficed. Love I never professed to give, and the wife whom I merely esteemed had not the mental or the magnetic ascendancy which might have triumphed for a time over the image shrined in my inmost heart. I sought every avenue through which I might fly from that and from myself. I tried mental occupation, and explored literature and science, with feverish ardor and some reward. I think it is Coleridge who recommends to those who are suffering from extreme sorrow the study of a new language. But to a mind of deep feeling diversion is not relief. If we fly from memory, we are pursued and overtaken like fugitive slaves, and punished with redoubled tortures. The only sure remedy for grief is self-evolved. We must accept sorrow as a guest, not shun it as a foe, and, receiving it into close companionship, let the mournful face haunt our daily paths, even though it shut out all friends and dim the light of earth and heaven. And when we have learned the lesson which it came to teach, the fearful phantom brightens into beauty, and reveals an 'angel unawares,' who gently leads us to heights of purer atmosphere and more extended vision, and strengthens us for the battle which demands unfaltering heart and hope.
"Do you remember the remark of the child Goethe, when his young reason was perplexed by attempting to reconcile the terrible earthquake at Lisbon with the idea of infinite goodness? 'God knows very well that an immortal soul cannot suffer from mortal accident.' With similar faith there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the lovely spirit which had become a part of my life seemed to have fled to the inner temple of my soul, breaking the solitude with glimmering ray and faint melodious murmur. And when I could bear to look and listen, it grew brighter and more palpable, until at last it attended me omnipresently, consoling, cheering, and stimulating to nobler thought and action.
"Nor was it a ghost summoned by memory, or the airy creation of fancy. One evening an incident occurred which will test your credulity, or make you doubt my sanity. I sat alone, and reading,—nothing more exciting, however, than a daily newspaper. My health was perfect, my mind unperturbed. Suddenly my eye was arrested by a cloud passing slowly back and forth several times before me, not projected upon the wall, but floating in the atmosphere. I looked around for the cause, but the doors and windows were closed, and nothing stirred in the apartment. Then I saw a point of light, small as a star at first, but gradually enlarging into a luminous cloud which filled the centre of the room. I shivered with strange coldness, and every nerve tingled as if touched by a galvanic battery. From the tremulous waves of the cloud arose, like figures in a dissolving view, the form and features of my lost love,—not radiant as when I last looked upon them, but pale and anguish-stricken, with clasped hands and tearful eyes; and upon my ears fell, like arrows of fire, the words, You have been the cause of all this; oh, why did you not'—The question was unfinished, and from my riveted gaze, half terror, half delight, the vision faded, and I was alone.
"Of course you will pronounce this mere nervous excitement, but, I pray you, await the sequel. Those burning words told the story of that mistake which had draped in despair our earthly lives. They were no reflection from my own mind. In the self-concentration of my disappointment, I had never dreamed that I alone was in fault,—that I should have anchored my hope on somewhat more defined than the voiceless intelligence of sympathy. But the very reproach of the mysterious visitor brought with it a conviction, positive and indubitable, that the spiritual portion of our being possesses the power to act upon the material perception of another, without aid from material elements. From time to time I have known, beyond the possibility of deception, that the kindred spirit was still my companion, my own inalienable possession, in spite of all factitious ties, of all physical intervention.