False still! This harvest shall bloom again in perpetual and ever-increasing loveliness. It shall leap in the grace of the lithe-limbed steed, it shall foam in the milk of gentle-hearted cows, it shall shine in the splendor of light-winged birds, it shall sleep in the baby's dimple, toss in the child's fair curls, and blush in the maiden's-cheek. Nay, by some inward way, it shall spring again in the green pastures of the soul, blossoming in great thoughts, in kindly words, in Christian deeds, till the soil that cherished it shall seem to seeing eyes all consecrate, and the Earth that flowers such growths shall be Eden, the Garden of God.
DOCTOR JOHNS.
XXXI.
Madame Arles was a mild and quiet little woman, with a singular absence of that vivacity which most people are disposed to attribute to all of French blood. Her age—so far as one could judge from outward indications—might have been anywhere from twenty-eight to forty. There were no wrinkles in that smooth, calm forehead of hers; and if there were lines of gray amid her hair, this indication of age was so contradicted by the youthfulness of her eye, that a keen observer would have been disposed to attribute it rather to some weight of past grief that had left its silvery imprint than to the mere dull burden of her years.
There are those who stolidly measure a twelve-month always by its count, and age by such token as a gray head; but who has not had experience of months so piled with life that two or three or four of them count more upon the scale of mortality than a score of other and sunny ones? Who cannot reckon such? Who, looking back, cannot summon to his thought some passage of a week in which he seemed to stride toward the end with a crazy swiftness, and under which he felt that every outward indication of age was deepening its traces with a wondrous surety? Ay, we slip, we are forged upon the anvil of Time,—God, who deals the blows, only knows how fast!
Yet in Madame Arles we have no notable character to bring forward; if past griefs have belonged to her, they have become long since a part of her character; they are in no way obtrusive. There was, indeed, a singular cast in one of her eyes, which in moments of excitement—such few as came over her—impressed the observer very strangely; as if, while she looked straight upon you and calmly with one eye, the other were bent upon some scene far remote and out of range, some past episode it might be of her own life, by over-dwelling upon which she had brought her organs of sight into this tortured condition. Nine out of ten observers, however, would never have remarked the peculiarity we have mentioned, and would only have commented upon Madame Arles—if they had commented at all—as a quiet person, in whom youth and age seemed just now to struggle for the mastery, and in whom no trace of French birth and rearing was apparent, save her speech, and a certain wonderful aptitude in the arrangement of her dress. The poor lady, moreover, who showed traces of a vanished beauty, was a sad invalid, and for this reason, perhaps, had readily accepted the relief afforded by this summer vacation with two of her city pupils. A violent palpitation of the heart, from time to time, after sudden or undue exertion or excitement, shook the poor woman's frail hold upon life. Possibly from this cause—as is the case with many who are compelled to listen to those premonitory raps of the grim visitor at the very seat of life—Madame Arles was a person of strong religious proclivities. Death is knocking at all hearts, indeed, pretty regularly, and his pace toward triumph is as formally certain as a pulse beat; but it is, after all, those disorderly summons of his,—when in a kind of splenetic rage he grips at our heart-strings, and then lets go,—which keep specially active the religious sentiment. Madame Arles had been educated in the Romish faith, and accepted all its tenets with the same unquestioning placidity with which she enjoyed the sunshine. Without any particular knowledge of the way in which this faith diverged from other Christian forms, she leaned upon it (as so many fainting spirits do and will) because the most available and accessible prop to that religious yearning in her which craved support. So instinctive and unreasoning a faith was not, however, such as to provoke any proselytizing zeal or noisy demonstration. Had it been otherwise, indeed, it could hardly have disturbed her position with the Bowriggs or interrupted relations with her city patrons.
In Ashfield the case was far different.
Adèle, accompanied by her friend Rose,—who, notwithstanding the quiet remonstrances of the Doctor, had won her mother's permission for such equipment in French as she could gain from a summer's teaching,—went with early greeting to the Bowriggs. The curiosity of Adèle was intense to listen to the music of her native speech once more; and when Madame Arles slipped quietly into the room, Adèle darted toward her with warm, girlish impulse, and the poor woman, excited beyond bounds by this heartiness of greeting, and murmuring some tender words of endearment, had presently folded her to her bosom.