Murmuring the words, in an ecstasy of passionate fervor, her voice trembling, and the tears streaming from her eyes, she pressed the flower with both hands to her lips, and swooning slowly back upon the cushions, she lay motionless, a shape of glorious pallid beauty, sculptured upon the odorous dusk, as the moon was going down.
As the moon was going down, its pale ray streaming aslant the drooping misty veils that fell in parted festoons from a golden ring above the pure and cloud-like couch of Muriel, threw a tender glory on her Madonna face, sweet in its waven fall of shadowy tresses. She rested, half-reclined upon her side against the broad bank of her pillows, in the soft suffusion of gloomy bloom which insphered her couch from the darkness of the chamber. Her beautiful white arms flowing from an open sleeve, which left them bare nearly to the shoulders, lay along her form upon the silvery grey of the coverlet, and her eyes shone like dim, rich gems. Alone and sleepless, in the still seclusion of her chamber, the phantoms of her many-peopled life thronged her spirit, and the drama of the day lived anew. All the persons she had known from her childhood upward—faces, too, that she had seen and forgotten—came floating in a strange air of dreams upon her vague and pensive musing. All that had passed since morning—the places where she had been, the people she had met, their shapes, their colors, their manners and gestures; what had been said, what had been done—came in spectral retrospection, singularly minute and circumstantial; and now and then, some face, some glimpse of a passing form, some room or fragment of sunlit street, half surprised her by softly appearing to the inner visual sense, with the jut and hues and vivid reality of actual life. Amidst the profuse and teeming phantasmagoria of her thought, came often the strong face of her uncle—with the surly scowl she had last seen upon it, melting into an ominous smile she had never seen, which strangely altered it to the sinister face of the negro-holder. And with this—sometimes preceding it, sometimes following it, and mysteriously connected with it, almost as fantastically as in a dream—came the agonized and imploring dark face of Roux, which somehow seemed changed, and not his so entirely, but that it suggested a likeness to some other face which she could not recall. Following these—recurring again and again, a hundred times, and linked with the inexplicable incident of the evening—came Wentworth, pale, and bitterly laughing, passing, with half-turned, scornful head, through one door; and Emily, melting from haughty scarlet into pallor and tears, and sweeping away, with her face bowed in her hands, through the other. Because it has been played upon—because it has been played upon. The words came with every return of these two figures—came wearily and strangely; darkly significant, yet wholly meaningless, and leaving her in quiet wonder as to what lurked beneath them. In all this spectral picturing, the form of Harrington was absent; and, though several times, conscious of the vivid life of her mind that night, she strove to bring him before her, she could not succeed. But again and again the thought of his love for Emily and of hers for him, came to her, never impressing her so singularly as now. The strange reticence of his demeanor to Emily, courteous, frank, kind and loving, it is true, but yet so unlike the abandonment she might have looked for in a lover; the curious attentions of Emily to him, her lustrous looks into his face, her fond, close leaning on his arm, her form bending so near him, her restless desire to isolate herself with him even when she and Wentworth were present, her low tones and whisperings, and smiles, tokens of love, and yet somehow vaguely unloverlike; all came to her vividly, and like an ordinary page in a book which yet contained a lurking riddle that distracted the mind from the ostensible reading. Then their strange reserve. Emily had never intimated aught of her love to her, save in the conversation which she herself had instituted to charm down her lover-like jealousy, and the admission then was rather tacit than direct. And Harrington, too—he had never breathed a word, or given the remotest hint of his love to her—not even to her, his adored and trusted friend. Why this secrecy? What imaginable reason had they for this close conspiracy of reserve? She could not guess. She could not even invent a plausible supposition to account for it. In the candid and vivid temper of her mind that night, she felt that the mystery of their relation and conduct would be fathomed by her, could she but keep it before her thoughts; but in vain, for as she held it, it would drop away, and be lost in the phantasmagoric population which crowded and faded upon her, and then appear again, and again be lost; and so crowding and fading, and coming again, in quiet and spectral complication, with a vague sense of mystery, and monition and shadowy warning, all mingling indefinitely together, and leaving no result in her mind, her phantom host of useless reminiscence poured ceaselessly around her, as the moon was going down.
As the moon was going down its sad ray, filtering between a tunnelled lane of roofs and walls across the garden gate of Harrington, touched his drooping forehead, as he sat near his open window, breathing the refreshing coolness of the night air. His night-lamp left the lower part of the room in dusky shadow, but threw a steady radiance on the open volume from which he had risen when he could no longer abstract his mind to the rich pages. He was thinking of his own future—how he should arrange his life for the human service. The dream of love was dissolved; henceforth it could never agitate his heart; now he was wholly and only mankind’s. She had receded from him into the farthest distance of memory. He thought of her as of one whom he had known and loved many, many years ago. Now she was gone, and he was alone, and for him there was only the clouded present and the unknown future.
Rising from his seat, he paced the room. A strange and solemn heaviness weighed upon him, and he yearned for the morrow. With the sense of the night, the deep hush of the air, the shadowy quiet of the room, the brooding sentience of the ghostly hour, was mingled a vague, dark, unimaginable portent which hung like lead upon his soul. Pausing in his silent walk, he leaned his head upon his hand, alone in the vast, haunted solitude of his being, and longing to be at rest. Musing on and on, a fleeting gleam of peace, like a ray shining through clouds over a waste of midnight desolation, stole upon his hour of lonely weakness, as across his mind floated the image of Muriel sleeping—her lily face composed to rest in its nimbus of bright hair, and sweet with happy dreams. So had he seen her in her light slumber that day. It came into his mind as he mused—how she had leaped up from her graceful rest, with what ethereal summer lightning of a smile on her awakened face, with what delicious laughter and what gay replies. Her words—‘you are the fairy prince that awakened me, and now I am to follow you through all the world.’
He looked up with a throbbing brain. The dream of love was dissolved; henceforth it could never agitate his heart: now he was wholly and only mankind’s—Oh, mockery of mockeries!
In the dead stillness there was the sense of mighty pulses madly beating, and the air was flame. All his being rose like the torrent surge and thunder of a heaven-drowning sea, and for one fierce instant the world of life quivered through and through with agony. He gazed before him with tense and burning eyes. A faint radiance cast from the funnel of his lamp, lit the kingly-fronted statue of Verulam on its pedestal. The light lay lucid on the vast and sovereign brow, melting into fainter light below, and the face was as the face of a god rapt in the white peace of Eternity. It grew upon the convulsing storm of his passion with a diffusive calm. Slowly, as he brooded upon the august countenance, tranquil in massive majesty, its sweet serenity, its passionless and regal peace sank upon him: a sad and gentle inflowing tide of feeling lifted him above his agitations, till at length, with clasped hands and bowed head, and all the tempest of his spirit dying down in streaming tears, he rose into communion with the man whose life on earth began new ages.
No words breathed from his lips, no thoughts came to his mind, but in the ideal presence of the soul he loved, raptures of solemn comfort arose within him, and he became composed. A load seemed to lift from his spirit, and turning away, relieved and exalted, he sank into his former seat, and sat in tranquil musing as the moon was going down.