Harrington: A Story of True Love

by William Douglas O'Connor

He awoke instantly, not with a start, but by simply unclosing his eyes. The dream was vivid, but not frightful, and waking without alarm, his first and only thought was that it was a memory of an old avatar in which he had lived on earth in a different organization than he had now, and had been killed young. For a moment this feeling came clearly to him, and then sensible of where he was, and of the sweet face breathing balm so near his own, his eyelids closed with an irresistible drowsiness, and he slept on.

His sleep was undisturbed for about half an hour when another strange dream slid upon his mind. He was sitting up awake in a bed alone by himself, and though the bed was in a room, it was yet, by some singular ubiquity, which still was not incongruous or wonderful, on the sidewalk of some unfamiliar street. Sitting upright in it in his night-clothes in a broad, grey daylight, and looking over his shoulder, he saw far, far away an illimitable waste of snow, out of which thousands upon thousands of piteous and imploring negro faces looked toward him. He had the feeling that these were the faces of the thirty thousand fugitives who at that period had fled to Canada. While he gazed at them, he beheld coming down the street on the pavement, a long procession of the Boston merchants, all familiar to him, respectable and cosy citizens whom he often saw about town, or on ’Change. They all wore their usual garb and aspect, but as they passed by his bed they all changed, yet without seeming to change, into medieval Jews, with long avaricious faces and drooping beards and stooping shoulders, and eyes bent obliquely upon the ground before them. Every hand clutched a money-bag, and every form wore the conical hat and the long Jewish gaberdine of Shylock. So they passed him, and when they had passed they were Boston merchants again, while the rest coming on changed, yet did not seem to change, into money-greedy Jews as they went by, and resumed their previous forms, though without seeming to resume them, when they had reached a certain vague limit. All this did not in the least surprise him, or seem extraordinary, or unusual, but wearying at last of the interminable and monotonous procession, he sighed and awoke.

Her dreaming face was still near him, and the cool balm of her breath touched his sense with sweet and sad ecstasy. There was a moment of unutterable weary sorrow, in which the bitter symbolism of his vision lingered with him, and then, with a feeling of melancholy comfort, his heavy eyelids drooped, and he slept again.

He had a consciousness that he had slept long, and with this in his mind, his sleeping soul awoke in a third dream. He had left his body and was in the air of the chamber. Spiritually light and poised, with the delicious sense of being able to float upward at will, he was looking down upon the couch, with the quiet room around him. He saw his body lying folded in her arms, the face sleeping close to her own. He saw how that face looked to others, and felt a dim wonder at its strangeness to his own eyes. His gaze dwelt with calm and holy tenderness, undisturbed by any regret, upon the beautiful and noble face of his beloved, sleeping in its shadowy tresses, its curved lips slightly parted, and all its clear and graceful lines composed in slumber. A thrill of silent blessing and farewell stole softly through his being, and with the feeling that he must go, he slowly floated backward through the wall, which made no more resistance than air. A trance fell upon him as he passed through, and seemed to last, though he had no sense of time, till he found himself alone in a rich and holy garden. The strange flowers were thick and deep, and wonderful in mystic beauty, and though of many rare and lovely colors, the still and tender living glory that brooded on all, gave them something of the rich pallor of flowers seen in some imaginary pearl and purple moonlight stiller and fairer than melts from any moon of ours. Or rather, they seemed pale with their own ecstasy of heavenly odor, for they filled the soft, self-luminous air with a fragrance which dissolved through all his being in ethereal and tranquil rapture. Filled with celestial bliss, he wandered on through the purpureal glory of the garden, under the holy shadow of strange trees, and amidst the myriad blowing clusters of the flowers, while the songs of birds sounded in liquid melody around him, and yet did not break the divine silence of the solemn Paradise. And wandering on, he turned a curve of the path, and came upon the gracious presence of the man he loved. He knew the majestic front, the vast brow, the sweet and piercing eye of Verulam, and like a younger brother yearning with affection, he drew nigh and laid his head upon his breast. The arms gently enfolded him; the regal face bent over his with a tender and benignant smile; and thrilling with the slow sweetness of an unutterable ecstasy, he seemed to sink into the swoon of the soul, and the vision was gone.

Her arms had fallen away from him in her slumber, and noiselessly rising as he awoke, he sat on the edge of the couch, and leaned his damp brow on his hand, his brain light and clear, his frame drenched in the renewing dew of sleep, and throbbing with the remembered bliss of his dream, and one still solemn thought distinct in his mind. He was to die! The meaning of that dream was death! A slow thrill ran through his veins as he thought of it. Yes, that was its meaning. He was to die!

He sat still for some minutes, with that thought in his mind. Gradually the sweetness of the dream failed from him, merged in a ghostly sense of the quietude around him. He looked up with a feeling of awe. The dim lamplight faintly lit the pure and shadowy chamber. All was vague, motionless, indefinite. Nothing seemed distinct or living, but that strange and awful conviction, too strong for any doubt, that he was to die.

Turning slowly, he gazed upon the face of Muriel. The last lingering relic of the sweetness of his dream failed from him as he looked upon her. His young wife. How could he bear to leave her! Four days of heavenly joy with her—heavenly even in the sorrow that had lain upon the last; four little days—the divine dawn of a long life of happiness—only four, and this was to be the end! The golden gates of a beautiful existence, affluent of use and influence and fame, just opened to him with her, and now to close forever. To lay down all the deliciousness, the joys, the hopes, the ambitions of life, for the happiness of two poor negro brothers. For their poor trampled rights to abandon life—oh, above all, to resign her! To die, and leave her on earth alone, her bursting day-spring of happy and noble love quenched in the black and blotting cloud of death. To die—to die and leave her.

Icy cold, yet with a burning brain, and slow thrills creeping through the horror of his veins, he turned away, and sat still. Hark! In the silence came the distant sound from a steeple striking the hour. He counted the slow strokes. Eleven. He looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock. In one hour more he was to go.

He looked around the quiet room. Life never seemed to him so sweet as then. In contrast to the stillness and seclusion, the peaceful comfort and warm luxury of the restful chamber, came the vision of the bare and open night upon the bleak waste of waters, and he in the lonely boat with those rude men, thinking of the gentle being he had left behind him. A sense as of one who shivers out under the winter stars, and turns to the warm firelight and the cheerful faces of friends in the cosy glow of home, came to him, and with it came temptation like a voice. Turn from this purpose—turn to love and life! You have been staunch and true in human kindness to its uttermost demand, but your life belongs to her, and not to another. Well to save this man from his doom, but not to fling away your life for a single service, when ampler service needs you. Think of her suffering, think of her mother’s grief for your loss, think, too, of the friends you are leading into peril. Perhaps your warning includes them—think of those who will mourn them, and for their sakes turn from this hopeless purpose. Turn, for this is warning and not fate—or go, still in safety, and plead with those men for the fugitive’s release—threaten them, menace them with civil penalties, and perchance they will yield him. But if they do not, all is done that you are called to do, and life is more than you are called to give; so turn away from them, and tell your friends you cannot risk their safety, and come back here to long years of happiness with her.

Sitting in icy silence, the temptings rose within his brain, clear as if a still and gentle voice had breathed them, and mingled with a siren sense of honeyed music that seemed to circle round and round him like an airy coil. Suddenly he sprang up with a spasm of heroic grief and agony, and stood quivering with his eyes covered by his hands. Her eyelids unclosed, and lying still, she looked at him. The next instant, she leaped from the couch and clasped him in her arms.