While thus conversing, they heard a gentle and timid knock at the door—the latch was lifted. "This" said the rough voice of a commissaire of the town—"this, monsieur, is the house of Madame Le Tisseur, and—voila mademoiselle!" A tall figure, with a shade over his eyes, and wrapped in a long military cloak, stood in the room. A thrill shot across Lucille's heart. He stretched out his arms; "Lucille," said that melancholy voice, which had made the music of her first youth—"where art thou, Lucille; alas! she does not recognize St. Amand."
Thus was it, indeed. By a singular fatality, the burning suns and the sharp dust of the plains of Egypt had smitten the young soldier, in the flush of his career, with a second—and this time, with an irremediable—blindness! He had returned to France to find his hearth lonely; Julie was no more—a sudden fever had cut her off in the midst of youth; and he had sought his way to Lucille's house, to see if one hope yet remained to him in the world!
And when, days afterward, humbly and sadly he re-urged a former suit, did Lucille shut her heart to its prayer? Did her pride remember its wound—did she revert to his desertion—did she say to the whisper of her yearning love—"thou hast been before forsaken?" That voice and those darkened eyes pleaded to her with a pathos not to be resisted; "I am once more necessary to him," was all her thought—"if I reject him, who will tend him?" In that thought was the motive of her conduct; in that thought gushed back upon her soul all the springs of checked, but unconquered, unconquerable love! In that thought she stood beside him at the altar, and pledged, with a yet holier devotion than she might have felt of yore, the vow of her imperishable truth.
And Lucille found, in the future, a reward which the common world could never comprehend. With his blindness returned all the feelings she had first awakened in St. Amand's solitary heart; again he yearned for her step—again he missed even a moment's absence from his side—again her voice chased the shadow from his brow—and in her presence was a sense of shelter and of sunshine. He no longer sighed for the blessing he had lost; he reconciled himself to fate, and entered into that serenity of mood which mostly characterizes the blind. Perhaps, after we have seen the actual world, and experienced its hollow pleasures, we can resign ourselves the better to its exclusion; and as the cloister which repels the ardor of our hope is sweet to our remembrance, so the darkness loses its terror when experience has wearied us with the glare and travail of the day. It was something, too, as they advanced in life, to feel the chains that bound him to Lucille strengthening daily, and to cherish in his overflowing heart the sweetness of increasing gratitude; it was something that he could not see years wrinkle that open brow, or dim the tenderness of that touching smile; it was something that to him she was beyond the reach of time, and preserved to the verge of a grave (which received them both within a few days of each other,) in all the bloom of her unwithering affection—in all the freshness of a heart that never could grow old!
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
SONG—By the Author of Vyvyan.
| On the brow of the mountain The grey mists darkle— On the wave of the fountain Star images sparkle— Wild lights o'er the meadow Are fitfully gleaming— In the hill's dark shadow A spirit is dreaming. The birds and the flowers With closed eyes are sleeping, All hushed are the bowers Where glow-worms are creeping— There's quiet in heaven, There's peace to the billow— A blessing seems given To all—save my pillow. Alas! do I wonder I too cannot sleep, Like the calm waves yonder, And dream all as deep?— There's beauty beside me, A love-heaving breast— Ah! my very joys chide me, And rob me of rest. |
For the Southern Literary Messenger.