ii GERALDINE A SOUVENIR OF THE ST. LAWRENCE GERALDINE A SOUVENIR OF THE ST. LAWRENCE BY ALPHONSO A. HOPKINS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY hc lailicrsi&e press, Cambribge 1899 COPYRIGHT, 1881, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & Co. ; 1887, BY TlCKNOR & CO. All rights reserved. $SSI)o sfljall fym be IfemeU**. PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION. As they are about sending to press this illustrated edition of " Geraldine," its publishers forward to me a proof of the original Preface, and kindly ask, " Have you anything new, or different, or additional, that you would like to say ? " At once I recall certain critiques of the book which have ap peared, and .wonder if any word from its unknown author will serve convincing purpose ; for the critiques mentioned did not hesitate to discredit a simple statement which that original Preface made, and to affirm, despite of it, that " Geraldine " was written in imitation of " Lucile." Will they now accept a reiteration of the fact that this effort was determined upon before the publication of " Lucile," and was put into complete form before the writer had read, or heard read, or otherwise learned the character of that rhythmic romance ? I fear not. Yet the fact stands ; and I prefer leaving it thus on simple record, unsupported by personality or argument, for the many to -acknowledge, as they have done heretofore ; for the few to doubt, if they choose. vi PREFACE. " Geraldine " has won friends. The inquiries, comments, commendations, criticisms, confessions, and correspondence which it has called out would form a large and rather inter esting-volume. Were they now at hand I might be tempted to fill several pages with extracts curious. I remember well one letter, from a gentleman of some literary repute in a Southern State, which, among other things, frankly said : " How you learned certain facts in my own experience that I supposed hidden from all the world, it puzzles me to tell." Of course I did not know them, any more than he knew the unknown author whom he addressed. But scores of testi monies have come to me, showing in like manner how closely parallel these my pages run to the deep lines of many a human life. I feel warmly grateful to Messrs. Ticknor & Co. for thus adding to the feeble gifts of my pen the lavish graces of their book-making art. They have succeeded, 'far beyond all possibilities of mine alone, in producing a souvenir of the St. Lawrence, and a remembrance of the mountains, which those who best love American scenery will appreciate most. THE AUTHOR OF " GERALDINE." AMONG THE MOUNTAINS, July 27, 1887. P E E F A C E. YEARS ago I resolved to write a romance in the style of verse which follows. I chose this style as specially well adapted to a wide variety of expression, and because at that time, so far as I knew, no author had employed it at such length and for such purpose. When it was similarly made use of by an English poet, at a date much more recent than my resolve, his poem's popularity confirmed my choice as wise ; but I have refrained persistently from reading that poem, or hearing it read, or in any way learning of its char acter, spirit, and scope, lest unconsciously I might borrow of its style or thought. Having now taken leave, as far as probably I ever can, of my own " Geraldine," I shall devote the earliest leisure accorded me to becoming acquainted with Owen Meredith's " Lucile." Eist of Illustrations. [Drawn, engraved, and printed under the supervision of A. V. S. ANTHONY.] HEADPIECE TO FIRST PREFACE 5 HEADPIECE TO SECOND PREFACE . . 7 HEADPIECE TO ILLUSTRATIONS 9 TAILPIECE TO ILLUSTRATIONS 15 "It is true that he took to occasional rhymes With an art that was rather instinctive at times " . 21 TAILPIECE 24 "She looked up at him then With a smile that he read as a sort of amen" 27 " A man Standing there by the sea where the sand-reaches ran " 31 TAILPIECE . . , 34 ON THE EDGE OF THE TOWN . . . 35 x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. "'A right merry season we had at the table: I know 'twould amuse you in turn, were I able To write out the many bright things that were said'" . . . TAILPIECE THE APPROACH TO THE TOWN THE GOB OP LOVE " Where the roses are blowing " TAILPIECE " ' You forget That last evening we waited to see the sun set On the top of Mount Vision ' " " Or is still As the spring that begets yonder musical rill In its home in the wild" . " Her throbbing Heart weary and tempted, and sore with its sobbing" TAILPIECE " She smiled At his liberal purpose. She seemed like a child In her simple acceptance of pleasures to be" . " Over meadows of green with their velvety sod, To the steeps, that are harder to climb " . . . CALUMET, ST. LAWRENCE RIVER TWIN ISLAND, ST. LAWRENCE RIVER \ " He went ont, and strolled down to the wharf, where the boats Lay awaiting the morrow" " The vessel's light bow, Deftly cutting the deep, slid along on the prow Of his boat, and upset it " "And he took The white hand that she offered him warmly" LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xi LIGHTHOUSE, ALEXANDRIA BAY 80 THE CANADIAN CHANNEL 81 ENTRANCE TO LAKE OF THE ISLES 84 " A cool, grassy point that projected From one of the islands was wisely selected, In sight of the Lake of the Isles " 87 ''All at once went aboard, and prepared to depart" 91 "By and by they swung round, and across the broad sweep Of the river below, as along the soft steep Of the sky the late moon slowly climbed" 94 TAILPIECE 96 "'I suspect Mrs. Lee knew the arts Of a finished coquette, and made playthings of hearts, In some earlier time'" 99 PIAZZA, CROSSMON'S HOTEL 102 "A half shaded shore Gave them welcome ; its turf, that was mossy and sweet, Running down to the water to welcome their feet" 103 " She was silent a little, and motionless sat, Looking into the depths of the shimmering deep " 108 " The storm was at hand ; but the long Way was over at last, as he lifted the skiff Half its length on the sand, at the base of a cliff" 114 " ' You have seen the white calla Unfold all its treasure of purity ' " 116 "He rose to his feet where he knelt, Put her tenderly from him, and strode to the door As if panting for air" , 118 " ' With the aid Of a blanket or two, and a pillow, I think You could rest very well'" 121 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. DEER ISLAND ................... 126 "Rising early, he took His way down to the wharf" .............. 129 POINT MARGUERITE, ALEXANDRIA BAY .......... 131 TAILPIECE .................... 132 "The short, slow, lazy strokes of their boatman were swift To their longing desire. 'T would have pleased them to drift " . . 141 " Yet restless and troubled did Trent linger there By the casement" .................. 143 BOAT WHARF, CROSSMON'S .............. 144 " To which message she speedily gave A complaining, pathetic response " ............. 148 " She pictured it well, And in spirit dramatic " ................ 150 " And he bowed, Self-possessed and amused, to the gathering crowd, And betook his way down to the river" .......... 153 BONNIE CASTLE, ALEXANDRIA BAY ............ 154 "The beauties benignant Amid which he rowed could not suddenly quiet The feverish pulse" ................. 156 " Where the silver St. Francis, asleep in the sun, Smiled them welcome unworded " ............ 161 TAILPIECE MONTREAL ISLAND ............. 164 MONTREAL FROM THE ISLANDS ............. 165 " The next morning the height Of historic Cape Diamond first greeted his sight, And above the gray walls of the citadel hung The tricolor of Britain " . . 169 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xiii "'And yet, If I lounge on the Terrace when Fashion has set Its gay current ' " 175 WOLFE'S MONUMENT 177 "Its rugged and angular steeps Sloping gently and soft to the river that sleeps At their base " 179 TAILPIECE FOKGET-ME-NOTS 182 "Yet her heart appeared swelling to burst, And her lips were as dry as if parching with thirst " 187 TAILPIECE THISTLES 192 "The Bay of Sweet Laughter, that looks up to heaven Untroubled and glad, sunny Ha-Ha" 195 TAILPIECE 200 " When Trent came at last, From her wearisome doubting and fearing she passed To a loving acceptance of good in to-day" 204 TAILPIECE 206 "Yet calmly, he spoke, 'I suspect that you read With a vision much deeper than mine ' " 211 " While he still on the reed of his purpose would lean, She made answer to answer of his" , . 219 "'Foolish tears! As they fall Down my face, I am glad that hereafter not all Of my bitterest weeping can rob it of sweetness'" 221 TAILPIECE 222 EARLY WINTER IN B.IVERMET 224 " ' I were less A weak woman, and more like a saint, could I hold To my faith without doubting forever'" 227 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. TAILPIECE 232 " When to him, But a day or two later, this brief message came" 235 " She began her reply with the utterance strong Of a passionate nature unmastered" 239 TAILPIECE - 242 " The roll and the sweep of their reaches are grand As the ocean unbounded" 245 TAILPIECE 248 " From his wild mountaineering alone Trent returned To a town of the mines, for some letters expected " 250 "'You are near The next world, my poor fellow,' said Trent. ' Do you fear To go out of this into the other? ' " 257 '"It is noon ; but the end Of your life may appear like the close of a day. It is twilight for you ' " 261 TAILPIECE 262 " ' Believing yon 'd learn In my arms to grow happy and strong, and return All I give you ' " 265 TAILPIECE 270 "Through the white atmosphere He could see other peaks lifted far to the blue Of the sky ; while the distance took boundaries new As he slowly ascended" 276 "There were tears On his face. He fell prostrate, and swift the fleet years Passed before him as thus he lay prone " 279 "He awoke As the storm gathered might, and a thunder-gun spoke Just above him with utterance awful. He sprung To his feet" 281 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xv TAILPIECE 282 TAILPIECE 288 "He gave her a picture, as clear A reflection of her as she ever had faced At the mirror " 292 "A flame Of indignant denial burned over her cheeks " 295 TAILPIECE 300 TAILPIECE 308 "As he turned At her sudden appeal, close in rear of him burned The hot breath of the blaze. He sprang down to the floor, And as quickly flew to her" 314 TAILPIECE . 316 fig W. P. SNYDER, CHARLES COPELAND, F. MYRICK, PARKER HAYDEN, and A. V. S. ANTHONY. Initials ant) rnaments fig F. MYRICK. iEngrauingB fig A. V. S. ANTHONY, T. JOHNSON, RUSSELL AND RICHARDSON, and F. H. WELLINGTON. GERALDINE. i. HERE is something of poetry born in us each, Though in many, perhaps, it is born without speech, An existence but dumb and uncertain, that strives For expression in vain through the whole of their lives ; That is glad when the spring wears its beautiful smile, And is sad when all nature to tears would beguile; That can feel in the summer a glory divine Thrilling on through the days in their silvery shine; That can drink in delight in its radiance rare When the mellow-hued autumn breathes peace like a prayer ; That can weep with the world in its woe of to-day, And to-morrow take part in its merriest play ; That can stand on the mountain-tops often, and see Where the far-away gardens of paradise be; That can sound with its plummet of feeling the deeps Where despair in the darkness of destiny sleeps ; That can feel, and can be, yet can never express All the feeling and being its life may possess, But that yearns with a yearning no poet e'er knew In its silence of years for the speech of the few. 20 GERALDINE. He was barely a poet, this friend of my verse, Though the singers not seldom at measure are worse 5 And at rhyme; for his ear was so delicate strung That it caught the clear music, whatever was sung, And was deaf to all discord, or listened as one For- whom time of tormenting had early begun: He was less than a poet, if poetry means To bewilder the senses with fanciful scenes ; To envelop each thought with such mystery round As to leave it a marvel of meaning profound; To make semblance of passion, and tragedy act As if love were a lie, and all fiction were fact; To be chiefly unreal, yet ever to seem As if always the real came dressed in a dream. Yet men spoke of his poems with praise, though they said, "He is playing at verse," as delighted they read: "He was meant for a poet in earnest, but waits For a storm-flood of feeling to open the gates Of his soul, till the song that is hidden shall rise Over hearts that are hushed with a sudden surprise." It is true that he took to occasional rhymes With an art that was rather instinctive at times : You might call it a genius ; but what, in the test, Is a genius for doing, but doing it best? And although at poetic expression he caught Half the grace of a poet, and added the thought And the sentiment often, and many could praise With a flattery honest his lyrics and lays, He was not at his best in this work of his pen ; For his speech was a power to move upon men : And he held that the work of his life was to speak As he might for the right, be it humble and weak ; And his words were unfaltering, fearless, and strong GEEALDINE. In the ears of the world in complaint of the wrong. He was better at prose than at verse ; for he made Every sentence to cut like the stroke of a blade Never dull : he was quick to discover the sense Of all sophistries subtle ; and every pretence He would riddle and scathe with an irony born Of his genuine honor, his marvellous scorn. 21 They had faith in his future, who frequently heard His defence of the true ringing out till it stirred Every heart to keen sympathy. But, as for him, It was little he thought of the years that were dim In the distance ahead. He was living to-day With its needs and its gifts ; and no cynic could say He was laggard of life. Full abreast of the hour Did he keep, never sparing of work or of power. 22 GEEALDINE. He was spendthrift of being, without any heed For the want of the morrow, its duty or need. " Let the future take care of itself," was his thought : " If I care for the present, as every man ought, Do the work of a man with the will of a man, 'Tis enough." So he made neither purpose nor plan For the future : he held no ambitious desire To mount up on his deed to a deed that was higher. No ideal he worshipped, of work or reward. As if he were a servant, and labor his lord, He would do every task that before him was set With his might, and the wages of work would forget In the pleasure of work, never counting it vain That he wearied his body, and wasted his brain, Without recompense fit ; since instinctive he knew That the best compensation for service most true Is but had in the serving ; that wages are small, Be they measureless even, if wages are all. Yet he wondered sometimes, in a curious way, How to-morrow would differ in work from to-day ; What its spirit would be ; what its impulse and scope ; What its faith and its feeling, its heart and its hope : And so wondering often, he stood, as it seemed, At the door of a duty of which he had dreamed In some dream of great doing, a something so broad That it reached from his hand to the hand of his God, Taking in by its infinite measure and span The upholding of truth, the uplifting of man, In especial degree ; but he shrank as with fear From the possible future, unsought and too near. He was conscious that on in the years he would find More of life than might add to the peace of his mind ; GEEALDINE. 23 Yet so vaguely he felt it, so faint did it seem, That he counted his consciousness only a dream, And gave heed to it rarely. One evening he wrote In such mood to the friend of his heart, just a note, When the veil of his vision half lifted to show A few glimpses beyond : " That you love me, I know ; That I love you, my darling, you feel just as sure, And that both of our loves to the end will endure. But the end? i am here face to face with the dread That in pathways unlocked for my feet must be led; That your life and my own are to drift far apart As the true from the false. There's a cry in my heart Of regret and dismay ; for you measure the sum Of my wishes and wants, and your love has become The one thing of my craving, none other so sweet And so strong and so helpful. None other could meet Just the need of my soul as you meet it. I feel That you feel this and know it; and I should conceal Such a fancy as here I have named, but that you Have a faith that is strong, and a heart that is true, And will say I am morbid, and need but your kiss To return me the hope and the cheer that I miss. " I have told you before of the fancy I hold, That my work is to be by some duty controlled Which I may not discover till years have gone by ; And perhaps through some wilds of experience I Must pass in to my clear field of labor. My way Has been sunny and bright all along till to-day ; But I know, as I know that I live, that there are Heights and depths in my nature transcending by far All that yet I have measured. No gift is for nought, 24 GERALDINK Be it even to suffer; and sorrow unsought May bear fruit that is sweet from the bitterest seed. You will see where this logic must certainly lead : Any gift is for ultimate use. We may wait All unknowing, unheeding, capacity great To enjoy or to suffer ; dead levels of life May reach onward before us; the wearying strife Of the days may go on without increase or rest; We may seem of but commonplace being possessed, With its commonplace ends to be met: but in time To some great height of gladness we sudden may climb, Or go down to some valley of grief, where the dark Never knows the sun's rising or song of a lark Singing straight into heaven, or amid all the din Of the every-day battle some peace may begin, Like the silence of God in its regal content, Till we learn what the lesson of yesterday meant. " But forgive me, my darling, for hinting of tears In the possible future. What comes with the years We '11 accept as we may, never dreaming of pain In the present; believing God's morrows are gain, Be they cloudy or bright, let them hold what they will. We are wedded to life, if for good or for ill, Or for better or worse; and its issues must be As is best and is wisest for you and for me, If to-day we are faithful and trustful and true. And so love me, my darling, as I must love you." n. TTALL we go and hear Trent to-night, Bell, at the Hall?" Major Mellon was making his afternoon call On the witty and beautiful Isabel Lee, Whom so often in leisure he dropped in to see. They were cousins, by kin or by common consent: If the former, 'twas distant. " You 've heard about Trent ? " " He who wrote that sweet thing -in the last magazine, Which you read me one night, 'In my Passion Serene'?" " Yes, the same. We were friends, he and I, long ago, As I told you, I think. He 's a man you should know, Can talk poetry, prose, metaphysics, or sing His own songs to you even, with pathos to bring The quick tears to your cheek. He has sentiment strong, As you '11 see by and by, when you weep at his song ; But reform is his hobby : he '11 go for the Right With a capital R, in his lecture to-night ; And they say as a speaker his powers arc rare I 've not heard him in years. But, good coz, have a care ! He 's engaged to a lovely brunette, with dark hair 26 GERALDINE. And pink cheeks, like yourself: were her beauty but blonde, You might win him away with the contrast." " Beyond Any question he's safe, my dear major. The man Who can sing of a passion serene, as he can, Must have little of passion to stir. I 'm afraid That your paragon wouldn't just suit me, too staid And too deep. His philosophy matches not mine ; For love is n't as water. You sip it like wine, And grow giddy and wild with the tasting. His words, As you read them, were sweet as the singing of birds ; But 1 like not his faith." And her finely cut face Had a look that was puzzling. The very least trace Of surprise had the major's. " You do not suppose," He remarked, "that the rhyme of a verse-maker shows His true feeling ? You never would take him to task For philosophy, sentiment, worn as a mask To conceal what is under ? A woman will veil What she feels in expression each lover must fail To unriddle ; and poets are privileged, too, As to much that they say, if not all that they do. If a poet pretend to write out of his heart, It is mainly pretence ; and the very best art That he has is in making men weep while he grieves Over fiction he never one moment believes, But they swallow as fact." She looked up at him then With a smile that he read as a sort of amen. " And so be it, what then ? " he continued. " Why, this : All the woes of a poet are idle ; his bliss Never blisters the paper he pours out his life on ; His pen 's not a patent, particular siphon GERALDINE. 27 To run off the liquid of love, in his verse, From his soul. If ecstatic, he 's simply unreal : His sonnets of love are to something ideal, As the love that he sings." " You are bitter, now, major ; Sarcastic and bitter and foolish. I '11 wager You once took to sonnets yourself, when more callow. Don't let any talent you 've buried lie fallow ; Turn poet again, since the trick of deceit You have learned (if the sum of all poetry sweet Be pretence), which a poet must practise, and cover Your faith and your feeling when you are a lover." 28 GERALDINE. She laughed, just a ripple of music from lips That too often put pearly white teeth in eclipse ; And he echoed her mirth rather languidly. " Well, It is certain I never plied you, Madame Bell, With my sonnets," he parried ; " and no other glances Than yours could allure me to making advances Afoot or on Pegasus then. I '11 not say By the light of whose look and whose smile I might stray From my loyalty now. I confess I am grown Rather fickle to love and to truth, as is known To the most of iny friends." And a smile half-sarcastic Ran over his features so mobile and plastic. " But this fellow Trent, he 's as true, on my soul, As the needle, much boasted, is true to the pole ; Not but that a bright woman like you, cousin dear, With an iron heart in her, if coming too near, Might attract him and win him, and hold him a while ; But he'd turn by and by from her lessening smile To his star in the north." " To his passion serene, He would say, I suppose. That remains to be seen " " And be tested ? Perhaps. You must hear him to-night, And then let me present him. His theme may be trite ; But he '11 say what he says in so pleasing a diction, You '11 think to be fact, philosophical fiction The blankest, at least for a little. No doubt. When the ring of his words into silence dies out, You will question your faith, and will count it absurd, And be freed from it quite. But the song of a bird You believe when you hear it (though haply it sing Of some hope whose fruition no morrow may bring) GERALDINE. 29 For the music that 's in it ; and Trent has a voice That may even your sensitive hearing rejoice. You will go if I call for you early ? " " I 'm free To confess I would like this young poet to see, Since you paint him so warmly. Invite him to sup With us after the lecture. I '11 brew him a cup Of sweet compliments, if he deserve it, and learn What he thirsts for the most from the world in return For his gifts to the world, whether praises or pence ; Whether garlands of roses, or blossoms of sense ; Whether wooing or worship. Your geniuses crave Very much of their friends : you must serve them as slave, Or cajole them as equal, with flattery sweet To their taste ; you must fawningly lie at their feet, Or devotedly feed them with bonbons. The more You bestow, will they ask. They 're a terrible bore To your patience, and make a most liberal drain On your pity." " Be merciful, Bell ! It is plain That you 're jealous of genius. Such comments as those I must flatly resent." And he, laughing, arose. " For we should not be blamed, who are pets of the stars And the heirs of the gods. Any failing that mars Our strict beauty of life is a fault half divine." And with playful assumption, and graceful incline Of the head in adieu, he departed. Her look Of amusement departed as well, and she took From the table a volume of verse that a friend For her reading had lately been thoughtful to send, A collection of poems as varied in tone As in merit. But one of its pages alone, As she absently turned them, arrested her thought, 30 GEEALDINR A few stanzas of sentiment, common, but fraught With a passionate longing some time to be met In the hope of the poet. The name that was set At the end caught her eye ere attention she lent To the poem itself : it was Percival Trent ; And the title prefixed to the verse chanced to be But suggestive of meaning. It ran: BY THE SEA. I stood one day beside the sounding sea, Amid a treeless waste of barren sand; The billowy breezes soft blew over me, And wooed me sweetly with their kisses bland. A subtle something lingered in their breath, And charmed me long to glad forgetfulness : I thought no more of failure, pain, and death, No more I dreaded weakness and distress. Far, far away the glistening billows gleamed, A-splendor with the summer's silver light; And, looking seaward, blissfully I dreamed Of balmy islands somewhere out of sight. And fondly still, with kisses warm and sweet, The breezes wooed me to a calm content; While ocean, sounding softly at my feet, Its tuneful charm to the half-silence lent. So with me ever, as I weary stand, And look far out upon the waters wide, I catch some hint, in all the breezes bland, Of shady isles that somewhere yonder hide. GEEALDINE. 31 Where now I wait, a dreary waste may be, With no green thing to glad my longing eyes: Far, far before, across the sounding sea, Are hid the balmy Isles of Paradise. As she read, her quick soul caught the cry of unrest Welling up through the words, from a hungering breast, And went answering out ; for she stood, as it seemed, By a waste of wild water whose billows ne'er gleamed With the light of a sail bringing gladness and peace ; And she longed, with a longing that never might cease Till she neared their glad haven of infinite calm And content, for the Paradise Islands of Balm. Could it be that across the wide deep, and beyond All its possible shipwreck, there waited the fond Wooing breezes of faith and of love ? Would they seem To her ever as more than a vanishing dream? Would she find in their lingering kisses a quiet From doubt and distrust that forever ran riot Within her? Would hunger of heart, and the pain 32 GEEALDINE. Of unsatisfied want, and the wearisome reign Of regret, have an end ? So she questioned, and read Yet again and again the brief stanzas that led To a vision of loneliness dreary : A man Standing there by the sea where the sand-reaches ran To slip under its waves and be hidden from view ; Far before him the shimmering billows of blue Blending on with the tint of the sky; not a sail In the distance to hint of a cheer-giving hail ; Not a bird flying over, with glint of its wings To recall the sweet song that some dear singer sings ; And behind him no hills with their glories of green, And a ribbon of silver soft winding between; Only dull, level reaches of dry, barren sand Sloping up from the sea, with no sign of the hand Of a fellow in sight, not a house, nor a tree, Only solitude, silence, and dreariness ; he, With his hungering eyes, looking out on the main, With a longing of soul like the passionate pain Of a lover unloved, looking out to behold Far away in the future, whose billows have rolled Weary years at his feet, the fulfilment of life, The incoming of love, like a peace after strife Of long lasting, the ultimate gladness of time Where the gladness and peace are forever sublime. You may read all she read without seeing as much As she saw : it may be that the delicate touch Of her fancy is wanting; the mood that was hers May not move you with sensitive impulse that stirs To each breath of expression ; no absolute need May possess you, and hold you, till all that you read, GERALDINE. 33 While you thrill in its holding, gives hint of reply And revealing. The fact matters not. By and by She arose from her vision, came back to herself, And the volume laid carelessly by on a shelf. " It is idle," she thought, " to make semblance of woe In this fashion. No rhymes of a verse-maker show His true feeling : the major was right." And she smiled. "This new poet my sympathy quick has beguiled Without any deserving. It may be he missed For a moment the touch of some lips he had kissed Long ago ; or it may be he felt but a blind, Common craving for something beyond ; or his mind May have taken the most of its dolorous tone From a liver disordered ; or even my own Vital organs may suffer," - but, looking across To the opposite mirror, she noted no loss Of the color of health in her beautiful face, And she laughed at the fanciful thought. For the space Of a half-hour she sat there alone in the room, Till the shadows of twilight had gathered to gloom, In a reverie deep. The rare smile faded out, Giving place to a look as of questioning doubt ; And the eyes that had warmed many hearts with their glow Had a tenderer light, as if tear-drops could flow Without warning. Again she was living the past, With no cloud of regret o'er its loveliness cast; But just ready to bloom were her roses of youth : She had faith in herself, she believed in the truth, She could trust in her kind. To be true to the best That is in us, nor falter nor fail in the test, 3 34 GEEALDINE. Let whatever may come, this is measurement just Of the sum of our life ; to keep safely in trust All the good that we have, and to answer at length For our being and doing, the weakness or strength Of our hope and our help in the varying strife, There is nothing beside in this problem of life. Had she faltered and failed in the test we have named ? If she had, by the perfect alone be she blamed. It is easy to falter and stumble and fall ; But a pitiful God is the Father of all. III. Y OWN GERALDINE HOPE, " It is far in the night ; But I 'm wakeful and restless, and so I will write A few words for your reading before I retire. I have had a long evening, yet short. "My desire For an audience large and attentive was met ; I have never faced one more inspiriting yet. When I rose to my feet, the same tremor possessed me, The same idle terrors inthralled and oppressed me, That often I feel in the face of a crowd ; But they vanished, so soon as I, trembling, had bowed, And had uttered a word. 36 GERALDINE. "It is regal to stand And to sway every will with a wave of your hand, Or a shade of your voice. It is gladness supreme To be thrilled for a time to the final extreme Of your consciousness, through the quick thrill of your speech, And to know of a certainty strong that you reach And take hold of the hearts of your hearers ; to feel Their quick thrilling responsive ; to know they are leal To the kingship within you. " The gift that is mine, To a certain extent, is a dower divine, And I shrink from its use, I confess, now and then. It is such a grand mission, to move upon men, To determine their thought and their faith, to impel Them to action, to guide and direct them, to tell Where they miss the true path, where the pitfalls may wait, To beget stronger love for the right, stronger hate For the wrong. And, however we work, at the best It is little we do that is well ; for the rest, May we lightly be judged ! "I began to recite The events of the evening. Pray pardon the flight Of my pen in this manner. " The lecture was long, But was brief to my thinking. I found in the throng Of intelligent faces a few like your own, Of the answering sort, that one seems to have known A long time ; that respond to whatever you say In a hearty and very encouraging way ; That a speaker soon learns to pick out here and there, And to give them, perhaps, an unduly large share Of his special attention. He reads the effect Of his argument in them ; he comes to expect GERALDINE. 37 For his favorite thoughts recognition from these That the mass may not give : it would seem that he sees Not the many who hear him, but only the few Who respond. " By the side of a man whom I knew Years ago was a face of this type (not a face To be quickly forgotten when met), with a grace As of sorrow outgrown, but remembered, a glow Of unconscious expression illuming it so As almost to transfigure it often. It had A half-hungering look in repose, as if sad Were the soul underneath it. 'Tis needless to add T was a woman's, a wife's or a widow's you 'd guess Without reasoning why ; not because there is less Of the sweetness of girlhood within it, but more Of the woman's completeness of beauty. " Before I had finished my lecture, I half comprehended The secret hid under the face, and befriended The womanly need, that so eagerly cried In a speechless appeal to be soul-satisfied, In my thought. When the lecture had come to an end, And the people were slowly departing, her friend Major Mellen presented me to her. " I 've mentioned The major, perhaps ? He 's a clever-intentioned, Uncertain, erratic, and cynical man, Who will ridicule always whatever he can ; Who is recreant, either in word or in fact, To all truth ; who can never make up what he lacked As a boy, when I knew him at first, a true sense Of respect for things holy ; who sees a pretence In all earnestness, looks for deceit or a lie In all candor, and laughs, with a tear in his eye, 38 GERALDINR At all sentiment sober ; a man whom I shrink From at times, yet who often compels me to think That I like him, so shrewd are his comments, so keen Is the wit that he flashes. I never have seen Any human enigma more puzzling than he, And I 'm glad you don't know him, my dear. " Mrs. Lee Is a woman of wit and of rare repartee, With a lightness of speech that quite often belies The suggestion of sorrow that lurks in her eyes. They insisted that I should go with them to supper (She lives, let me say, in the style of the Upper Ten Thousand, who dine very late, and sit down To their tea at a time when the rest of the town Is asleep) : I accepted, in hopes that a walk In the chilly night air, and the major's bright talk For an hour afterward, would beguile me to sleep. And the major was witty and droll, if not deep, Making odd little turns of the points of my speech, And applying them oddly and keenly, till each Of us laughed to the echo. "The widow laughs well (She 's a widow, I know, though I could n't quite tell How I know it) ; has read the best authors in prose And in poetry, current and classic, and knows When to quote them and how, which is rather uncommon, I 'm tempted to say, nowadays, in a woman. " A right merry season we had at the table : I know 't would amuse you in turn, were I able To write out the many bright things that were said. But all wit loses sparkle and glow when it 's read, And I 'm not very good, I confess, at repeating The many bon-mots that I hear at a meeting GEEALDINE. 39 Like this, of a few who have sharpened their wits By long practice. "I fancy the god of mirth sits With his soul in the shadow, just ready to weep ; For so many I know, who in company keep The whole roomful a-roar, are yet closest akin To the pathos of being, and oft enter in To the innermost temple of sorrow, where tears Never gather and fall, and no grief of the years Ever voices itself to the world. The great woe Of a life (or I sometimes have reasoned it so) May not Be a great loss that it ever has known, But a very great want that has silently grown From an undefined need to the mastering strength Of a hunger unfed, and that sways one at length With an absolute will, not a grief to be told 40 GEEALDINE. To a friend with a sigh, but to have and to hold All unshared to the end. " But enough of my fancies. You '11 come to believe that a hidden romance is Beneath this new face I have met, if suggestion Of sorrow be followed up thus. Beyond question The woman has suffered, a quite common case, Very likely, though hers is an uncommon face ; And it may be her life has known nothing of lack But in losing. I 've promised to call, going back From the West, and may more of her history learn. " It is far in the night, and to sleep I must turn, For my eyelids are heavy at last. May my dreams Be of you and jour love ! Amid much that but seems What it is not, I know that my darling is true As the truth I believe and proclaim ; and to you The unrest of my heart ever turns for content : So be tender and true to " Your "PERCIVAL TRENT." IV. he called, as he promised, again and again ; And she met him with grace very charming. Few men Ever failed to be won by the winning re pose Of her manner, to strong admiration. The close Of each call came too soon. He would gladly have stayed Even longer, although it is true he delayed His departure to etiquette's limits extreme. He had met many women ; had thought one supreme O'er them all for her beauty, her sweetness, and grace : But a charm quite elusive shone out of this face That so puzzled his reading ; a winsomeness new In its every expression his interest drew ; And the touch of her hand as she bade him adieu Was magnetic. Their talk was of places and books At the first. He had been in some half-hidden nooks Of the world, and, describing their beauties, would glow With their memories rare. 'T was his fortune to know Men and women who write what the rest of us read ; And a word about books would so easily lead To some personal gossip, they finally fell Into serious thought as to what the books tell 42 GERALDINE. Of the life and the love of their authors. "I doubt If women or men ever write much without Weaving in their own story," she said. " I believe In reality rather than fiction. Deceive As some may the great public, who readily yield To fictitious profession, there must be concealed In each novel or poem that touches the heart, And takes hold of the sympathies strongest, a part Of the writer's own being and doing." "I hold To another opinion. The poet is bold In his fancy ; the novelist free in the flight Of imaginings many," he answered with quite GERALDINE. 43 An emphatic expression, yet speaking as one Who was weighing his words. "And, when you have begun To determine where poet and novelist blend With the persons they picture, there 's never an end To the questions arising ; for either may be As prolific in different pictures as he Who is painting the crowd as they come. So diverse Are the characters shown, that it couldn't be worse As a failure, I mean if the painter should try To be each of the persons he 's painted. And why Should we single out one of the many portrayed, And declare that this one of the many is made Of the poet 's own life, or the novelist's ? " "Now You have taken to argument, I must allow That my view appears weak," she returned with a laugh. " But a woman ought never to argue ; for half That she knows is beyond demonstration. She feels It to be, and so knows it to be ; and conceals Or confesses her meagre resources for knowing, As moved by her whim. Yet there may be a showing Of reason in what I have felt to be so. Out of nothing no thing has been made, as we know, That is good. Can a poet produce out of nought What is living and real ? " She paused. "But his thought Is a something," he said, " and from this he produces The beings that live and that love. In the uses Of forms he is led to make copy of men And of women he sees round about him ; but when He breathes into them soul, it is never the soul Of another, not even his own." " Then the whole 44 GERALDINE. Of his work is from fancy alone? If he write With a heartache that throbs into words, 'tis the flight Of his fancy-led thought, not a passionate cry Out of sorrow he feels ? And the many who sigh As they read him are wasteful of sympathy ? " Less Of doubt did her words than her manner express, And he felt that she studied him, striving to learn Rather more than his answers might yield, in return For her questions. " Perhaps I should hardly declare What you say to be true altogether. A share Of the woe of the world may creep into its verse Or its prose ; but I doubt if a man will rehearse Any grief of his own while a grief it remains. He may journey beyond it, may think of its pains As a thing of the past, and may write of it then With a sort of contempt for its sacredness. When It is part of to-day, he will shut it away From the gaze of the crowd. I admit that he may Seem to write of what is in the present, that urges The blood in his heart to impetuous surges : The heart may be throbbing, perchance, while he writes What your sympathy moves, your emotion excites, But from sympathy just like your own. He may feel, When he writes with a heartache he does not conceal, To the full the deep sorrow he breathes ; but be sure 'Tis a grief that is fleeting, that will not endure, That is born of his fancy, the same as your own While you read. And why not ? Is the reader alone To be moved by the syllables tender, the sobs Welling up ? I am certain the writer's heart throbs Over sorrows of fancy as if they were true . And intense as the bitterest life ever knew." GERALDINE. 45 " And how, then, may it be with his longings ? Are these But the sigh of a moment, the breath of a breeze Of desire blowing over him ? Nothing he holds Until it into beauty of being unfolds, And makes glad some great need of his heart ? " Then he smiled. " Are you striving with logical art Thus to prove me all wrong ? It is in my beliefs That the sorrow of sorrows, the grief of all griefs, Is the sorrow, the grief, of a mastering need. Yet a poet may syllable this ; and indeed I 've no doubt that the longings of poets are real As things that they long for are vague and ideal. 'T is here that they reach after beauty and light Far beyond and above all that gladdens their sight In the present ; and thus they uplift the whole race With their longing and hoping and striving." His face Growing earnest, she waited expectant. "To long For some good that we have not is noble. The song That incites to proud doing was penned with some hill Of endeavor uprising before ; and the will To win glory and crowning sprang out of desire : They only grow helpful and strong who aspire. There is only one road to the mountains of bliss, And it leads from the levels of longing." " But this Is a general view you are taking," she said, Interrupting him here with a smile. " I have read Of some longings more special : their voice, like a call From a hungering soul, on my heart seemed to fall, And to wake a response. It was want crying out 46 GERALDINE. To the plenty of life to be filled." " Beyond doubt You have heard such a cry. Every soul not ascetic Does hear it. The want of the world, so pathetic, So broad, comprehends and embraces all needs, Individual, hidden, and silent. The greeds Of the world are past naming ; the hunger and thirst By which men are so often and sorely accursed Are as legion : yet some one shall cry of his lack, And at once the sad voices come echoing back, As if truly this one had thus spoken for each, When he wants what perchance may abound within reach Of the rest, and they think it is nought." " But there may Be a want that is common to many. The sway Of one mastering need, as you term it, may be As supreme within you as it is within me : It may hold just as firmly all sensitive souls. We walk different paths ; but the very same goals Are to gladden us all by and by." " But no twain Are exactly alike in their longing. The pain Of a wearing unrest in each heart is a thing By itself, as by self to be borne. One may sing A glad paean of praise that the many outring In re-echoing notes ; but the song they are ringing Had something his own, while his gladness was singing, It lacks from the lips of another. "I stand By the oneness of each in himself. As the hand That I hold to the world is my own, though it bear A good gift of which all may claim portion and share ; So the poet may bring of his riches to such As are needy, and each may be richer by much, GEUALDINE. 47 In the taking of what was his right, as it seems, Out of common bestowal. But longings and dreams That embody the gift are the poet's alone : They are harvest, perhaps, of some seed he has sown In the past. And no life may be like his so near As to garner the same from its sowing." " I fear You are thinking too broadly to touch the one thought I have had, and to answer it now. I have sought To be sure of too much," she replied. " Let it go Till I 've pondered it further. You certainly know Of my right as a woman to have the last word. What you say may be true : if it be, I have erred In conceding to poets the commoner woes That afflict and make sad. I am bound to suppose That you know of the facts." And he saw she had tired Of their soberer talk, and so simply desired By mild badinage now to glide off from the theme. He but laughed, and made merry. " To-night, if I dream Of some hunger of heart," he remarked, as he said His adieu, " I shall know an invisible thread From the heart of another my hungering thrills ; That my want is the twin of your own ; that our wills Are akin, and our needs ? " He was reading her eyes As he, bantering, questioned her thus for replies -That her tongue might not syllable. Nothing outshone From their depths that gave answer complete. " I have known What it is to be hungry of soul," she replied, Speaking gravely again : " so have you, and, beside Us, a host of the men and the women who greet 48 GEEALDINE. The gay world with a smile. It is easy to cheat The blind mass into thinking we 're glad and content. It is hard to walk on with what fate may have sent For your company, hunger and doubt and unrest, And yet keep the heart steady that beats in your breast ; It is hard to feel lonesome for love that is kind To the uttermost, tender and trustful, and blind To your ugliness, quick to discover your need, And a spendthrift in giving itself." " May I plead For one boon?" said he eagerly: "this, be my friend, As I 'd like to be yours. Let me make some amend, If I may, for the lack that you feel now and then, And regret. I '11 be frank : there is much that some men Could bestow that I have not ; the all I can give Is but little, a friendship that pledges to live While you care for it, sympathy certain and strong, And perchance here and there the glad note of a song In your life as you find the way weary and sore. I would give nothing less : I can give nothing more." "It is much," she responded, "far more than you think. When a wayfarer thirsty is given to drink From a brook where the many may come and be filled, He is glad as if never another were thrilled By its current of blessing." She held out her hand, And the pressure he gave it returned. " Understand, We are friends while you wish it. Good-night." For what came In the track of all this they were hardly to blame. There 's a logic in life that is stubborn as fate : We must learn it, each one, though our study be late. V. HAT Geraldine Hope was indeed a coquette, Not a few were persuaded who met her, and yet Without reason sufficient. Her smile, it is true, Was bewitching, and freely bestowed. Then she knew How to charm in those delicate ways that suggest A particular feeling of interest. Pressed For some cause for their thought as concerning her, these Who esteemed her the least were at fault. By degrees As they knew her the better, they came to see under The manner so winning at times, and to wonder At womanly graces disclosed, at the will To be helpful and brave ; and they wondered until They were champions grown of her truth. She had been Greatly flattered and praised ; and to please, and to win Admiration, was easy. She studied no arts, But was just her own natural self. If the hearts Of men yielded her homage unsought, none could say That she won it to scorn, or that he was the prey Of deceit and delusion. No lover was pained By the loss of a love that he never had gained But in idle profession. 4 50 GERALDINE. The woman's soul in her Was noble and true. To be won, he must win her With truth and nobility equal, who brought Her his heart and his life, and her heart and life sought. And, beside, she must feel that he stood just above Her in being and doing, whose life and whose love Could be worthful and sweet, and in nothing below. So she waited in faith, not unwilling to go Through the years quite alone, if instead she must lean On an arm that was lower. And thus Gerald ine By her suitors abundant had failed to be won, Until Percival Trent, who had lately begun To be known of the world, came to know her, and hold Her supreme among women. His loving controlled Her as never another's had done. He was king Among men, in her sight, from the first ; and the ring That he gave her at last she would wear to the end, Never doubting. If love could forever but lend To its object the glow of perfection, how sure Would all pledges of constancy be to endure ! " Love is blind," men have said ; but they gravely mistake Who believe so. Alas that it is not! The ache That is born of regret would not vex and make sad, If true love could not see ; and a world would be glad If no loving looked through the too common disguise Of the thing winning love, and with grief-welling eyes Saw the faults that lie under. We sorrow to find That our friends are unworthy ; and love is unkind For revealing the fact, with its vision so clear, That each life has its blemishes. Love may appear As unseeing as marble, yet quiver with pain From beholding so much ; and the bitterest bane GEEALDINE. 51 Of the years will be found, as we learn what they teach, In the knowledge that love gave a glamour to each ; That the beauty we saw could not always abide, Nor the veil of our faith all deformity hide. Had she trusted too much in this man who so held All her life in his hand ? who so surely compelled Her to trust him and love him ? Not hers was the question: No doubt troubled her, nor the faintest suggestion Of doubt. He was hers ; she was his. Before God They were wedded forever. Their way might be broad In the future, or narrow : it could not prevent Them from walking together in happy content To the gate that leads out of this being. Beyond There should dawn an eternity, never less fond In its faith and its love ; and the bliss of her dream Should be endless at last where all love is supreme. So she thought. To his questioning letter she made An unquestioning answer : " Dear heart, I 'm afraid You are working too hard, and need rest. By and by You will smile at the dread you have named, as do I. There is nothing to fear in a love that is strong And content as is ours. If the time should be long Ere I see you again, I should never once doubt ; If long years should roll by us uncertain, without 52 GERALDINE. Bringing word of remembrance from you, I should know There were reason for silence, and patiently go Up and down at my duties, in trust. If a living, Abiding affection is formed, the up-giving Is perfect, of life and of faith : there can be Neither question nor fear. As for you and for me, We rely on a love that is higher by much Than our own to mould ours, and to keep it. The touch Of this love so divine adds a quality rare To our own ; makes it pure beyond any compare With the commoner loves ; makes it lasting and sweet And immortal. " I think there can be no defeat For a love that is guarded by trust. It withstands Every effort of cruel and violent hands To dethrone it ; it rules with a wonderful might, Born of weakness and yielding ; it strives for no right But the right to bestow of its largess ; it speaks With an eloquent tongue, in a silence that seeks But to hear the dear words of bestowal ; it waits For the gladness of time that its faith antedates, And is glad in its waiting ; it patiently bears Every strain of the years, all the grief and the cares They may bring ; it is faithful and true to the end : And we know such a love, I am certain, my friend. " As for duty, that 's God speaking plainly to each Of his work in the world ; and the wider the reach Of your effort, the more you are doing for men, Then the sweeter will be your reward. So what, then, Does it matter concerning a duty to come ? Every morrow grows out of to-day ; and the sum Of the future is made from the present. Whatever The morrow may bring will depend on endeavor GERALDINE. 53 Put forth by us now. If to-day we are strong In the right, need we fear that a possible wrong In the future will find us unwilling and weak ? " Let the way that we journey be rugged and bleak By and by : we may smile as we wander to-day Where the roses are blowing, and fancy the way Is forever to lead amid beauty and bloom. If we know that the sunshine will vanish in gloom, Let 's be glad till the shadows are on us. " No man And no woman of right should the coming time scan With foreboding. The present is ours ; and the rest That is God's. He will care for his own as is best ; And our watching is worthless, our dread is in vain. Are we moulded to suffer ? The possible pain Will not easier seem for expecting it. Waits Any wretchedness for us ? The hardest of fates May be sweetened by love and a song of good cheer, 54 GERALDINE. Like a psalm in the night. " There is nothing so clear To me ever, dear heart, as that strength will be lent, If we ask it, to bear what the Lord shall have sent ; And that every hard duty will find us with strength To attempt, and indeed overcome it, at length, If we cling to the Giver of strength, nor let go When the weakest we feel. For I 'm certain, I know, That the weakest may hold to God's hand with a grip That is ever unyielding, if only the lip Can say, ' Help me, Father ! ' so quickly he hears, And so soon is he touched by our need and our tears." Such a faith is a treasure of blessing : it yields The sweet waters of peace in the barrenest fields. She will need all the help that it offers to cope With the want of her morrow poor Geraldine Hope ! VI. J. AJOR MELLEN had business in River- met ; leisure, When business was done, to bethink him of pleasure. He called upon Geraldine Hope, " Just to show That I have not forgotten that sum mer, you know, When we met at the Hills," he remarked. With a trifle Of speech she replied, as if willing to stifle His thought of the past. " It is ages since then," He resumed. " I have waited for fate once again To be kind, but in vain until now." " You believe, Then, in fate ? " she abruptly inquired. " Yes, I grieve To admit that I do," was the answer, a touch Of distrust in his manner ; " that is, quite as much As I 'm prone to believe in things ever. They say I 'm a heretic born, and have wandered away From all faith in the good and the true. It 's a libel Of course." And he laughed. " I 've a beautiful Bible I read every day when the weather is fine. (You may open your eyes at this statement of mine 56 GERALDINE. In mute wonder.) The book is as broad as the sky, And as old as the world. If a poet, I'd try To repeat the sweet promises in it, to tell What it says to me often, so wondrously well That I listen enrapt ; but I have n't the gift Of expression. There's Trent " At this mention the swift- Coursing blood from her heart, leaping into her cheek, Told him more than all words that her loving might speak ; But he seemed not to heed the quick witness. " His tongue Or his pen, for the sweetest of songs ever sung, Could find words in my Bible, I 'm certain. The book Is the richest I know ; and who wishes can look At it even as I do, with longing to learn All its lessons and secrets. I turn and return To its pages each summer with pleasure intense." They were often beset with perplexing suspense Of his meaning and purpose, who listened to him ; And she heard him run on, with a consciousness dim That he might have a motive in speaking, not quite To be seen at the outset. " That week of delight In the mountains, when fate was so winningly kind As to show me your face, I was never less blind To the beauties the Bible of Nature revealed, And I revelled in loveliness. Forest and field Had a charm for me new. Every mountain-top shone With a marvellous glory. I think, had I known 'Twas the very last week of my life, I'd have cared Not at all. I am seldom ecstatic; I've fared At the best and the poorest so often, I hold By philosophy cool, as a rule; but the gold GERALDINE. 57 Of that summer week's gilding is bright even yet: I must live through a lingering age to forget All the glamour and glow of those days that went past Like a dream of content." " Was that summer the last That you saw of the Hills ? " She was puzzled to tell What to think of his words and his manner. So well She remembered his cynical smile and his sneer, Half-disguised, at all sentiment tender, and dear To the sensitive heart, she could hardly accept What he uttered as earnest. "I could not have kept My first love for the Hills, for those Hills, had I been There again. The one visit was all. It's a sin To defraud any pleasure, of sight or of deed, By repeating it. One of the rules that 1 heed Is to go only once to a place, if I go For mere pleasure alone ; and, remembering so But the freshness and zest of my pleasure most keen, There is nothing to me that is common, I mean, In the matter of scenic delight." "You forget That last evening we waited to see the sun set On the top of Mount Vision," she said in reply. " You were silent a while ; but the glow of the sky Was reflected, I thought, in the glow of your face. You had seen the same picture ; the very same grace Of superlative beauty in color and tone Had beguiled you again and again " " But it shone In a different light ; it was not the same view ; It had different tints, and a different hue Over all from the sunsets we commonly see. 58 GERALDINK And, moreover, two sunsets are never to me Just alike. They are even diverse as the features Of men in expression. The creeds of the preachers Can vary no more. But your lakes and your hills, Your meadows and mountains, your rivers and rills, Are the same to the end of the chapter: they yield Nothing fresh for renewed admiration ; revealed Is the sum of their beauty at first to your eyes : They are changeless, in short. But the sea and the skies, These are changeful as man, and, because of their change, As bewitching as woman." " Such talk would seem strange From another than you, Major Mellen, indeed. I am puzzled by logic that lightly can lead GERALDINE. 59 To conclusion like yours. You would find your delight In the face of a stranger; and even the sight Of- a friend would be wearisome, just in degree As the friend were familiar to you." " It might be As you say," he responded, " if 't were not the fact, As I 've hinted, that faces do change ; and an act, Or a thought, or a hope, or a feeling, may bring A new face in the old. But your bird there may sing A new song, though he change not a feather; and thus May our friend, though he change not the smile he gives us, Be as changeful in words as the sky is in looks, Have as varying moods as the sea, or the books Of the poets." " Perhaps," and she paused, as if shrinking From saying too much, "it may be we are thinking Diversely. I never am positive whether Your words and your thoughts run exactly together. You like to combat and discuss, and draw out The beliefs and the fancies of others. I doubt If you fully accept all you freely imply. Now, to me, every mountain takes glow from the sky That it kisses, or sombreness wears like a frown When the mists and the shadows fall heavily down; Every meadow lights up by the sun, as a face Might be glorified, seen in some radiant place ; Every lake but reflects what the sky above shows, Either sunlight or shadow; it sparkles and glows, Or is angry from touch of the winds, or is still As the spring that begets yonder musical rill In its home in the wild. I see changes in all That are beautiful. None of these ever can pall On my vision." He often had seen her as now, 60 GEEALDINK With the pink of her cheek and the white of her brow Yet the stronger in contrast, from feeling that urged The quick blood through her veins till it rippled and surged In her face. He had often beguiled her to think In expression as earnest, that thus he might drink Of her glowing delight in the lovely and true : 'T was a pleasure surprising, peculiar, and new, Thus to put her in eager defence of her thought, Till her beauty, with something mysterious fraught, Had a charm that was rare. He had wearied of much That men fancy is pleasant; but here was a touch Of delight that he could not explain. He could smile At the commoner pleasures with which men beguile The dull days. But some influence hidden, unguessed, Was upon him, and gave to each moment a zest That was fresh and unfailing, as, scanning her face, He could study her feeling and thought, and could trace Every turn of her fancy, each questioning doubt. He had keen intuition, and saw much without Any effort at seeing ; was quick to divine Every meaning that lurked in a glance or a sign ; GERALDINK 61 And made use of his sceptical questions and sneers To uncover the souls of his friends. " It appears To me certain you've read in my Bible," he said, With a laugh not too mocking, " although you have read With a thought of your own running on with the theme Of the text. You can linger and listen and dream In the woods and the fields like a poet, or, yes, Like a man of the world who forever finds less In the world to his fancy, except it be far From the din and the dinners. You certainly are Of the order of poets yourself, to behold Such a glow of the new in a shade of the old. You should marry a poet, Miss Hope, who could see With such eyes as your own if there happen to be Any man of so wealthy endowment." She blushed At the words and the look, and unconsciously crushed A wild rose she had held in her hand. Had he heard What one poet was to her ? " It never occurred To me, major," she said, " that the ultimate mission A poet may know is to bring the fruition Of life to one woman he honors with marriage. I may not be right, and I would not disparage The poets, I 'm certain, but poets, as poets, Belong, I believe, to all women. I know it's A fact that they marry ; but is n't it fact That they wed not as poets ? that women attract Not the poet, but only a man among men ? " He was puzzled, in turn, for a moment, and then, Comprehending that she was but parrying, laughed, And let fly, as he fancied, a Parthian shaft. 62 GERALDINE. " No, they don't wed as poets : connubial ties Would be idle to bind all t the passion that lies In the heart of a poet. The man may be bound ; But the poet is free, and wherever is found Any blossoming sweet he may gather it in. They are lucky these poets : they 've only to win As the men, like us all, and have freedom accorded To woo and to win, then, as poets, rewarded By beauty and love in most bountiful measure. A poet, it seems, has an infinite leisure For love, and capacity equal. There 's Trent, Whom I 've named : the good fellow was meant For a knight in heroic and chivalrous times Quite as much as a minstrel to maunder his rhymes. He 's the soul of a poet, as all will confess Who have heard him and read him ; likewise (and not less) Is the liberal heart of the poet his own. We were intimate friends years ago ; but I 've known Very little about him since then, till of late. As a boy in his teens, he 'd a singular fate For sporadic affection : before he was twenty He 'd loves half a dozen ; it 's probable plenty Have gladdened him since. It was thought he would wed A young lady in Somers ; and I have heard said He would marry some one in this town." " Did you hear Who the young lady was ? " she inquired with a queer Little tremor of voice. " Now I really forgot To inquire," he replied ; " but the fact matters not. He 's a passion much later than that, I am sure, And it may prove more difficult even to cure. I have known more than one to meet Isabel Lee To his lasting regret. She 's a marvel to me GEBALDINE. 63 (And a cousin, which means that I know her quite well) For her mastery over the men. ,1 could tell, When I introduced Trent, what would follow. She knew How to rouse his whole interest in her. She drew Him again and again, and will draw him, despite Any previous fancy, until her delight In his presence and passion is over. The hurt Will not kill him." "This woman is, then, but a flirt," She remarked, hesitating, to cover the pause When he stopped. " I may say she has given some cause To be called so," he answered, a cynical ring In his voice ; " but she may not intend anything That is certain to breed very positive harm. She believes in the right of each woman to charm As she can. She regards it the duty of each To do discipline-work on all hearts within reach. She 's a woman of women, in short, with a will To be wooed for the wooing, not won ; to instil As much love as she may in the hearts of mankind, Which is quite evangelical truly. We find That the preachers preach love, of a sort ; and the best Should be fruiting itself in humanity's breast, If occasion there be for the poorest." He talked In a tone that was usual with him, and mocked All the meaning his cynical words might have held : And she listened with curious feelings, compelled To seem anxious as only a woman who heard Such allusion to one of her sex as but stirred Her own pity indignant. Her face was aflame, And she dared not to venture on speaking his name Who was more to her even than life. 64 GEEALDINE. " It 's a shame," * * She made answer, " for women to be as you say. And you libel us all when you speak in that way, As if women were all mere coquettes. There are more Who give love than are loved ; and, if all men but bore The respect that they ought for all women, the sex Would be nobler and better. You talk but to vex Me to earnest defence of my kind : you don't mean What you utter." He smiled, the same smile she had seen On his face in the past, half a sneer, half assent To a fact he would gladly refute. " I 'm content Not to argue the question," he answered, " with one Who might point to herself, ere we well had begun, As a proof for all women. I gladly cry quits At the outset. I never could measure my wits With a woman's in argument. Even to try, In this instance, would lose me my train: so good-by." And he rose, and extended his hand. " Must you go ? " She replied ; not too eager, he fancied. " I know The young woman you heard about here, whom your friend Was to marry," she went on to say, " and will lend Her my ears for the news you have brought, should it seem To be worth any while." And like one in a dream She went up to her room, and sat down with her grief Over-brooding and weighing upon her. Belief In the story to which she had listened was first A necessity. All it implied, and the worst, She accepted, and tortured herself into pain Of the keenest. When day came again, she had lain GERALDINE. 65 On a bed of unrest a long night through ; her throbbing Heart weary and tempted, and sore with its sobbing ; For the woman within her was quick to take up Any bitterness offered, and drink till the cup Had been drained to its dregs. Then some gladness shone in : She was wicked to yield to her doubt; it was sin Thus to sorrow and grieve; if some love she had lost, There was God, he would profit her, even at cost That was dear. So she reasoned at length ; and prayed With a tender upgiving that must have delayed More than one of God's angels to listen and hear. 5 she 66 GERALDINE. And at last, through the clouds, came a radiance clear, Till she saw mid her tears the glad rainbow of trust. When believing came back, as to some hearts it must, Though it leave for a little, she felt she had done A great wrong to her love and to God ; and, as one Who has grievously sinned, she repented in tears Of her sin, till they blinded her doubts and her fears, And made way for the sunshine that came. And how sweet Is the sunlight that falls on our wandering feet, When the morning dawns clear after night of distress And we look on a land that our hope may possess ,: By and by ! Blessed morrow to gladden us all, If to-day not a shadow of sunset could fall ! VII. HEN Geraldine Hope met her lover again, She was tenderer even than common. To men Of his mould it is easy for women to yield Their caresses and trust. She had always revealed Her whole soul to him freely ; and now she expressed .With sweet emphasis, sweeter than any possessed In articulate language of love, how she rested Herself in his heart. It was not that she tested His love and his faith : she was certain of these ; She had walked from her wilderness dark on her knees. It was not that she thought to make certain her strength Over him, as of old ; it might happen at length That she seem to him weaker than late she had been In the sight of herself. It was not that she win A new fervor of love. It was simply that he Had been wronged in her thought and belief ; and so she Made amends as she could. There are wives who have doubted The faith of their husbands for less, and have shouted Their doubts to the world, as if virtue must claim Its reward on the house-tops, or ally with shame ; But this woman, as wedded by love, in the eyes 68 GERALDINE. Of the angels, she knew, as her sister that sighs Over vows, and a bridal ring empty of bliss, Could seal close into silence her pain with a kiss, And remember it only to smile at. She would not So much as make question to him; and she could not Again feel a question concerning his love, She was trustingly sure. And henceforth, far above Every statement of cynical doubt, she would bear Her belief in his honor and truth. He should share The full trust that she gave to her God. You may know How she loved, to stand fast and unfaltering so; You may guess what her love must have meant to her life, When she fought out alone such a wearying strife With distrust, and then put it all back in the past, That no shadow of conscious unfaith might be cast On their future. Had Percival Trent at this time Felt a doubt of his love in return, some sublime And unselfish intent must have moved him to hold It in check. He was tenderer, too, than of old. He looked down in her eyes with his own brimming over With truth, and was glad. "I've so long been a rover," He said to her soon, " that I hunger for home Of my own. Only vagabonds always can roam Up and down, as a decade or more I have done, Without wearying of it. There's much to be won In the broad world of being I've studied so long; But I'd rather be singing some ingleside song For your heart to be happy in hearing alone, Than to win all the praises of men I have known. I've another long season of labor ahead, That will amply provide me with means to buy bread GERALDINE. 69 For us both afterward. You'll be ready to sit And preside for us two at the breaking of it?" She could be very merry indeed, if she chose, And the spirit was on her just now. " I suppose We may have something more," she remarked with a laugh, " Than you 've mentioned ? For me, I must say, even hall Of a loaf would not answer. A little of meat And potatoes might make our provision complete." " It is meet we shall be at our own little board By and by," he rejoined, " when my slow-growing hoard 70 GERALDINR Is increased to the proper proportions. We '11 live On the peaches and cream of existence, and give Of the commoner good to who wants it." She smiled At his liberal purpose. She seemed like a child In her simple acceptance of pleasures to be, And she listened with joy that was winsome to see As he glowingly pictured the happy content Of some morrow to come. Surely Percival Trent Was a fortunate man. With his mood at its best, He was glad as are they in the Valley of Rest Who have never a sorrow, and never are sad ; He could stand on the Mountains of Beulah, as glad As if never he groped in the shadows below, And the glories of being as truly could know On their heights as if down in the depth there were none Of its midnight and gloom when the gladness was done. Yes, a fortunate man, but more fortunate here, On this day of delight, than in many a year, If forever, he might be again ; for he stood On the edge of his Edom, unknowing. The good Of the Uplands of Promise could only be gained By a wilderness way that was rugged, and stained With the blood of its wandering, wearying souls. He must go as they journey who seek for the goals That are hardest to gain, with no kindness or care For himself, only patient, and willing to bear All the pain of the days, all their famishing heat. May God help him, if ever the manna sent sweet From the generous heaven should fail in his need ! God help all who are seeking their Canaan, and lead As he can, with his merciful hand of release, By and by, to its infinite plenty and peace ! GEEALDINE. 71 When they parted at last, Geraldine and her lover, The angels of hope seemed to heed them, and hover About them with whispers of cheer. It was June ; And the air, with its murmurous music in tune With their sentiments tender, was sweet as a breeze From some island of bloom, blowing over the seas To a mariner homesick for land. 'T was a time To be wed, and not parted. The year in its prime Was a redolent glory ; the thrill of its bliss Added ecstasy rare to the thrill of their kiss As he said his farewell. There are days that are kind As a mother to men, showing pathways that wind Out and in, like a dream, by some stream of delight, Never hinting of aught that they hold to affright; Only luring us on, since the way must be trod, Over meadows of green with their velvety sod, To the steeps, that are harder to climb, far before. There are nights so enchanting, they seem to restore The original beauty of Eden ; so tender, 72 GERALDINK They woo every soul to a willing surrender Of feverish longing ; so holy, withal, That a broad benediction seems sweetly to fall On the world. And these followed with magical sheen, The rare sunsets aflame the rich mornings between, Giving Percival Trent a new relish for life, A new spirit and grace for the struggle and strife Of the years. For he went for his summer's brief rest Down a river of beauty to Isles of the Blest. VIII. AIR St. Lawrence ! What poet has sung of its grace As it sleeps in the sun, with its smile- dimpled face Beaming up to the sky that it mir rors ? What brush Has e'er pictured the charm of the marvellous hush Of its silence, or caught the warm glow of its tints As the afternoon wanes, and the even-star glints In its beautiful depths ? and what pen shall betray The sweet secrets that hide from man's vision away In its solitudes wild ? 'T is the river of dreams. You may float in your boat on the bloom-bordered streams, Where its islands like emeralds matchless are set, And forget that you live, and as quickly forget That they die in that world you have left; for the calm Of content is within you, the blessing of balm Is upon you forever. Mortality sleeps While you dream, an immortal : some mistiness creeps Like a veil of forgetfulness over your past, And it is not. Your day is eternal, to last Without darkness, or change, or the shadow of dread. Blessed isles where to-day and to-morrow are wed In such fulness of bliss ! Blessed river that smiles In such beauty and peace by the beautiful isles ! 74 GERALDINE. He had dreamed for a week at the Islands, content Without company, glad of each lonely day spent, And shunning the groups that each evening convened At the house where he stopped. But one night, as he leaned Looking out of his window, some fair sailors singing Far over the water, their sweet echoes ringing But faintly across the dim distance, he heard A clear voice in the portico under, that stirred Him to interest sudden and strong. Could it he That he listened aright? He would walk down and see. There was only one woman who had such a tone, Among all the women he ever had known ; Such a mellow outgushing of melody clear As made music of commonplace speech to the ear. When he passed to the portico broad, there was none To be seen whom he knew; for the band had begun Its accustomed performance within the great room GERALDINE. 75 Where the gay ones had gathered: outside was the gloom Of an evening whose moon was imrisen. The shout Of some fishermen smote the soft air, and died out Into silence. The song from the opposite shore Had been sung to the end. The soft dip of an oar In the water so still was the sum of all sound From without. Disappointed, he went the whole round Of the ample verandas, expectant, but met No reward for his searching, and turned with regret To the place where the dancers were waiting. A bright Scene it was that he saw. the large room all alight, Happy groups here and there gayly chatting and laughing, Here and there a coquette her blind followers chaffing, Some silent ones gravely observing or dreaming, The glitter of fashion and radiance gleaming Throughout. It was strange he had willingly stayed From such music and glow as here met him. He made His way quietly into the room, and sat down To look over the faces, some sunburned and brown From the water and wind, and a few that were tinted With color so vivid and strong that they hinted Of rouge. There were none he had seen, save at table ; And out of the tumult, the blare, and the babel The band and the people were making, he caught Not the one single tone that his listening ear sought : Yet he waited, and listened, and almost forgot What he came for, and missed. 'Twas his fortunate lot To like music so well that it counted for much That he wanted ; at times making up, with its touch As of magic, the lack and the need. By and by, When the dancers were weary and still, with a sigh He went out, and strolled down to the wharf, where the boats 76 GERALDINE. Lay awaiting the morrow. Some late singer's notes Came across to him there from the shadows beyond The broad channel, and wooed him to dreams that were fond. But just over the tree-tops the meek moon was hung, Her soft lustre illuming the stream ; and he swung A light skiff from its place, and laid grip on the oars. He could handle them well. In a moment the shores Faded out into dimness ; the mammoth hotel Was a glittering spot in the night; and he fell Into musing profound. From his boat far away To the slow-sailing moon, on the waters there lay A broad pathway of gold, for his fancy to take, GEEALDINE. 77 And go up to the region of dawn, and there make A new morning ideal. The wash of the waves On the boatsides was like the low-murmuring staves Of a Mendelssohn's Song without Words, and inclined Him to utter forgetftilness. Patient, and blind To the sins of the world, the pale stars shone above him ; The balmy night-breezes seemed shyly to love him, And kiss him with clinging, affectionate grace; And unmindful of time, and unheeding of space, He was borne down the current. Some strains of a song Floated over him, echoing faintly along On the silence ; but heard (if at all they were heard), As you hear the loud carolling call of your bird, Without heeding. His soul had companionless gone To the realm of the silent, the land of the dawn. So he mused and he dreamed; but a-sudden his dreams Were all shattered and sunk by the shivering screams Of a little steam-yacht that was running him down In the stillness and dark. " He will certainly drown ! " 78 GERALDINE. Said a voice in affright, as the vessel's light bow, Deftly cutting the deep, slid along on the prow Of his boat, and upset it. Dismay seized on all In the yacht, and a common and terrified call Woke the echoes around. " Ship ahoy ! " said the man From his bath in the night. " Lend a line, if you can, And I '11 right up my boat, and make fast for a tow." As he swam to his craft that had floated below, He recalled the one voice that had spoken at first, And was certain a friend must be near. At the worst, He could count on a cold for his droll escapade: There was nothing of danger. The yachtsmen obeyed His request, flung a line, and bore round to him quick. " Come on board ! " said the captain. " A very poor trick We have played you, whoever you are. Can't be mended As 7 see, however: so don't be offended, But give us your hand." And he lifted him up To the rail all a-dripping. "A good brimming cup Of my brandy will keep you from taking a chill. Let me bring you a drink." " No, I thank you : I will, If an overcoat be at command, accept that ; And, if some one had only the twin of my hat That I left in the water, I think I might wear it." " It had n't a brick in to sink it, I '11 swear it ! " Said one of those nearest, outreaching his hand. " Is it you, Major Mellen ? I quite understand My disaster at once. Melancholy the place GERALDINK And occurrence, indeed." " But you put a good face On it, all must admit, Mr. Trent," said the voice He bad heard. " We must all of us keenly rejoice That it ends no more sadly." " And you, Mrs. Lee ? To bring up in such circle, I'd e'en go to sea, As the Wise Men set sail, in a bowl." And he took 79 The white hand that she offered him warmly. It shook With the faintest of tremors. " Pray pardon me, each, For the fright I have caused you. I might make a speech To the party, without the least possible fear Of (for once) being dry." 80 GERALDINE. " Then pray make it right here And just now," said the major. " Don't let it go past. Such a chance should be met, for it may be the last. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, one Who appears on the scene like a genuine son Of the sea, Mr. Percival Trent. You have read Him in prose and in verse. It has often been said That his measures are liquid, the reason is plain : He inclines to the liquid himself." So the vein Of good humor was worked till they landed, and said Their good-nights, and betook them to silence and bed. IX. 1 was late the next morning when Per- ^ cival Trent Took his breakfast. At table a mes sage was sent To him, .asking that he would make one of a number To seek the Canadian channel. Sweet slumber Had rendered but idle all fears of his friends 82 GEEALDINE. With regard to his health, as with humor that lends A rare aid to digestion, he sauntered below To the landing. The party was ready to go, A gay group whom he hardly had noted last night, And for whom he cared little to-day. But the sight Of his friend Mrs. Lee gave him pleasure afresh. "Is it, then, really you whom I see in the flesh," She inquired with a smile, " and not simply your spirit, That startled us there from the river?" "I fear it Was I in the flesh who so frightened you all, As this certainly is ; though I seem to recall As a very vague dream my unpleasant relapse Of last evening. I've met with more wretched mishaps, But not often. The fault was iny own, and the scare You all kindly took part in. I'll use better care When again I go dreaming alone, Mrs. Lee." " But pray tell, Mr. Trent, how you happened to be Solitary and far, as you were, and so late. I have never supposed you a tempter of fate In such manner unsocial." " I 'm here quite alone," He made answer. " No soul whom I ever have known Have I seen for a week, till last night I met you And the major. I like to be captain and crew Now and then, and go drifting wherever the stream May incline me. The moonlight invites me to dream. And a dreamer is ever unsocial. But pray, Are you here for the season, or only a day ? " " For a month, Mr. Trent ; and I hope you will stay While we tarry. My friends would not take a denial, GERALDINE. 83 And brought me along nolens volens. My vial Of wrath at their folly is empty at last; For I think I could bear it a while to be cast On a desert indeed, with both you and the major To cheer me." " You 're talking of me, I will wager, In ways that you should not," that gentleman said, Coming up. " But no matter, I 've been for the bread And the butter, and pickles, and now we are going Aboard." The small steamer her whistle was blowing In little shrill screams that suggested his waking From reverie deep the night previous. Taking Their way to the yacht, they were off very soon For a morning's delight, and a long afternoon Mid the islands that skirt the Canadian shore. It was one of those days to stand out evermore In your memory, after you live them, divine From the Maker's own hand, with a shimmer and shine, And a marvellous glow that are rare as the mornings Of God. And all Nature had donned the adornings Of beauty, and wore them with grace like a queen. Every islet seemed glad in its garments of green ; And the far-away hills of the mainland were beaming With brightness against the blue sky. Slowly steaming A down the wide channel for two or three miles, They then, rounded their course for the Lake of the Isles. How it sleeps, with the islands embracing it round, In its beautiful, silvery silence profound ! The sweet charm of content is upon it, unbroken By sound of unrest, or the presence or token Of man. There is nothing to trouble the dreams That are born of its beauty, save haply the screams 84 GERALDINE. Of some hawk as he greedily chases his prey, Or the plash of a fish in the water. " Some day I would die in a beautiful silence like this, And go out of the world with the world's wooing kiss To withhold me," said Trent, in a low underbreath, To the friend at his side. " Don't remind me of death In the midst of such beauty and peace," she replied. " I would live on forever within it ! " GERALDINE. 85 She sighed ; But her face wore a smile as she spoke. " I 'm a heathen You '11 think, Mr. Trent ; but no fancy to me than The fancy of death is more dreadful. I can't Overcome it. It 's foolish, I 'm ready to grant ; But I shrink from all thought of just dying just giving Up breath, and so stopping forever. My living Don't count for so much, I admit, as it might, For myself and my friends ; and I value it light As you possibly could do. It isn't that I Am so anxious to live; but I don't want to die." They were sitting, it chanced, just a trifle apart, And unheard by the rest. " It is not in the art Of the preacher to make such a commonplace thing Of this dying as some would fain make it. The sting Of mortality is and must be that it perishes. Nothing can last that the heart fondly cherishes Here " and he paused. " Yes, of course. And I know , That this body of mine, and this being, must go Very soon the one way of all flesh; yet the thought Is a horror to me that our bodies are brought Into life for a little, to trouble and care for, To keep, and at times, perchance, put up a prayer for; And loving them much, it may be, from such caring, We then must accept for them only the faring Of death and the grave. We were made, I believe, For a destiny better." " Some error of Eve Played the mischief with destiny, I have been told, If to answer your comment I may be so bold," 86 GERALDINE. Said the major, approaching, who heard the last sentence. " The whim of a woman, the lasting repentance Of man, that 's the way it has been ever since. While the whims amuse you, they may cause us to wince Pretty often. I 'in ' posted,' I carry the scars." And he laughed as he spoke. " But not one of them mars Your abounding conceit, Major Mellen. Your pride In subduing the feminine heart will abide Any stabs you are likely to feel." " Such sarcasm Demands from somebody a fit cataplasm. I go, Mrs. Lee, to receive it." He bowed Very humbly, and turned on his heel. " I 've allowed Major Mellen to say such unmerited things Of my sex, that I really must silence his flings In the future, I fancy," she laughing remarked. They were silent a little ; then all disembarked For their dinner. A cool, grassy point that projected From one of the islands was wisely selected, In sight of the Lake of the Isles. There the trees Made a murmurous music as stirred by the breeze ; The half-silence was sweet with the odor of flowers ; And pretty green islets, like shyly hid bowers, Slept there in the sun, with their green garments trailing The water that kissed them, and seemed as if sailing Adown a green river to seas undiscovered By mortal. Some saint of the beautiful hovered About the rare spot, and enchanted it. Verily Dinner out-doors should be eaten quite merrily GEBALDINE. 87 Ever; for half of the pleasure you take in it Lies in the jovial mirth that you make in it. Always some flies will get into the cream of it; Fish that are frying will burn ere you dream of it ; Milk that at morning was sweet has been learning The secret of Nature that hints of a churning ; The butter that's "come "may have hastened by running; Mosquitoes, persistent with bills, keep a-dimning; The table is always a doubtful thing under Its showy pretences, and causes a wonder If crockery rests in a state of security ; Coffee goes down with a fear for its purity ; Seats are uncertain, and spiders abundant, The ladies complain : there is nothing redundant That 's quite beyond question except it be fun ; But you almost regret when the dinner is done ; For the atmosphere tones up your nerves like a tonic; The winds and the waves make a murmur harmonic; 88 GEEALDINK You sit in the shadows, and see the wide world, All its streamers of sunlight in splendor unfurled, Roll along in glad glory to-morrow to meet, And there's more in your dinner than merely to eat. When this dinner was ended, they idled a while On the banks of the beautiful evergreen isle. Mr. Percival Trent, idling dreamily, laid Himself down, like the dreamer he was, in the shade Of a tree but a step from the others. To him Was the cup of delight even full to its brim. He had laughed and made merry this hour with the rest; He would taste now the apples of gold that were pressed To his hungering lips, the sweet fancies that flitted So bright through his brain. " He has saddled and bitted His Pegasus, certain," the major declared, " And is off on a gallop. If any here dared Overhaul him at present, I fear they would find It a hard road to travel that's always inclined To the Pisgah of dreams." " I must say it were fitter To speak of yourself, seems to me, as the bitter The bitter reviler of genius at times. Did you try to reach heaven by a ladder of rhymes Years ago, Major Mellen, and fail ? " " Mrs. Lee, You are always a mild inquisition to me. A few people were born with an interrogation Curled up on the end of their tongue. Moderation In questioning might be a virtue with these. They are slow with their statements, but busy as bees With conundrums." " Some men never make a reply GERALDINK 89 To the plainest of questions," she said, "but decry Every question that misses their lips. I was seeking A reason why you should forever be speaking So lightly of rhyme and its spirit. Success In pursuit of a thing seldom gives to one less Of respect for it." " Well, you are free to impute To me failure in wooing the Muse. To refute Any false implication were idle indeed. If my Pegasus proved but a slow-going steed, And I early dismounted in common disgust, I 've a host of good company plodding the dust Of our highway afoot. And I fancy the way Of the rhymer, wherever his fancy may stray, Is like that of the wicked : I think, my dear madam, The path of the poet has known its McAdam." " McAdam made hard what each Eve has made easy Then, truly," she answered, with laugh that was breezy And light. " I incline to the common belief That the mother of poets is love, and the chief Inspiration of rhyme is the sensitive heart. Is it so, Mr. Trent ? " " You have guessed it, in part, Mrs. Lee. If the rhyme be inspired in the least, Then the heart or the fancy, by aid of a priest Of the pen, must have wedded itself to the thought. And some glow of true feeling is certainly caught In the verse of the rhymer, when once it be found With the laurel of true immortality crowned. I believe there are volumes of rhyme written out, As to which we may harbor a lenient doubt If they ever were born of a true inspiration. The art of mechanics has blind consecration 90 GEEALDINE. In person of some who would wear the green bays Of the world's generosity." " One of these days," Said the major with pride, " you may look for a poet In me. When my heart is full swept, you will know it By melody rare from its quivering strings. As the swan must be dying when sweetest he sings, You may know I have come to my absolute fate When I utter the notes that are sweetest." " The mate Of the swan is the goose, Major Mellon, that misses The music of better bred birds in its hisses So sibilant. He that irreverent mocks The rich note of a swan may produce a few squawks, And betray his true species." She took a delight, As it seemed, in sarcastic allusion. "I might Pick a quarrel with you, my good cousin, for words So sarcastic and cruel. Our mention of birds Has evoked a whole flock of the turbulent daws Over yonder, that utter their parrot-like ' caws ' Like a woman hard pressed for a sensible reason. To give you back torment in kind would be treason To gallantry, sore as I'm tempted. Alas, That a man is compelled to let ridicule pass From a woman unanswered ! To wish I were one Of the privileged sex I could often have done, Had I never remembered what one of them said, That, because as a woman she never must wed Any woman, she even could feel reconciled To her lot." " The good Montagu painted it mild, My dear major, for her. She was talking for men GERALDINE. 91 To be pleased, and to quote her thereafter. And then Lady Mary was vexed that the men should fare better In marriage than women could fare." " I 'm your debtor Again, Mrs. Lee. Don't increase the large debt By some stroke of your tongue more sarcastical yet. Let us take to the water, like ducks, with a quack ; " And he nudged a good doctor near by. " To be back At a sensible hour, we must speedily start." All at once went aboard, and prepared to depart. The main channel is narrow, that leads from the lake ; But a dozen make off from it soon, and partake Of the tint of the little green islets. So deep Is the hue of the streams, that the islands, asleep On their bosom with verdure luxuriant, seem To be part of them ever. You sail in a dream, 92 GEEALDINE. Winding in, winding out, in a labyrinth sweet With the wood-blossoms thick in their silent retreat ; And you fancy that here, in its beauty supernal, This calm afternoon is unending, eternal. At length, when emerged from the river's glad maze, They were on a broad channel, lit up by the rays 1 Of the down-going sun. Across yonder, Canadian Hills sloped away in a beauty Arcadian; Down the wide stream unobstructed, the view Reached afar to the low-bending canopy blue; On the right, close at hand, were the Paradise Isles, With their loveliness spanning the magical miles; Over all, the soft glamour of sunset, as calm And serene as the peace of a hallowing psalm. "The St. Lawrence is waiting its laureate yet, Mr. Trent. With your words to its melody set, It might come to its own by and by." There was ever In Mrs. Lee's tone a mild flattery. " Never Can measure and melody happier wed, I 'm afraid, Mrs. Lee," hesitating, he said, "Than in Moore's little lyric of days long ago, When he echoed the musical ' Row, brothers, row,' Of Canadian boatmen. Its mellowing flow I recall very often at twilight. He penned it Not far down the river, whose placid waves lend it A charm I shall never forget." " How could Moore, Having seen the St. Lawrence, return to the poor, Meagre life he had known ? If you happen to learn Why those poets who visit here ever return GERALDINK 93 To the feverish towns, will you tell me ? It seems To me certain that this is the river of dreams." "Do men die in their dreams, Mrs. Lee? If they did, Then the ruin and wreck of some lives would be hid In a merciful way from their heeding. We live As we must. 'Tis not all a receiving. We give Of ourselves to the world, in return for its gifts. Every hindrance or help that in some manner lifts Us up nearer the ideal life should be held For the good of our fellows. The hermit, impelled To a lonely and selfish career, only cheats His own being. His life is a canker, that eats Out his soul. We may dream now and then by the way, But to take on the armor, and fight as we may When our respite is over." "All poets, I thought Till I knew you, were dreamers forever, and fought But in fancy. You seem to be double : you carry An active and passive that will not quite marry In one; for you work and you dream, and do each To the uttermost. What a magnificent reach There must be and there is to your life ! Do you feel How much broader it is than the most ? " "Don't reveal My conceit, Mrs. Lee, with your questions," he parried. " I think that myself is quite happily married To all that is in me. My labor and rest Never trouble each other. My vigor and zest With my indolence ever are fully agreed: I 'm as willing to stop as I am to proceed, When a good time for stopping has come. And the scope Of all life is the same, from the fear to the hope, From the doubt of the mortal, far on, till it holds 94 GERALDINE. By the Infinite, where the immortal unfolds Into trust. There is never a being more broad Than to reach from itself to the merciful God." After that, they were thoughtful and silent a while. A rare flush on the sky held the grace of a smile, As if heaven, bending over the earth in its sleep, Saw a beauty to win it, ere pausing to weep In the dews of the night, over sadness and sorrow That darkened to-day, and must sadden to-morrow. The evening wore on with much laughter and jest From the others. The glow faded out of the west; And the stars, in their marvellous shimmer and sheen. Like a glimmer of glory, fell softly between The old day and the new. 'T was a time to be glad In some quiet of soul such as he must have had, Who, asleep on the plain, saw a ladder of light, And the angels of God bringing peace through the night. By and by they swung round, and across the broad sweep Of the river below, as along the soft steep GERALDINE. 95 Of the sky the late moon slowly climbed. " It has been A rare day, Mrs. Lee. If one never could win His lost paradise back, had he known days like this He could make for himself a few ages of bliss Out of memory." " Woman lost Eden to man ; But he finds it again in her love." "If he can," Said the major, near by, who had half overheard. " If he will, I suggest as the much truer word," Mrs. Lee quick retorted. " Oh, well, he is willing Forever, good cousin," he answered, " and thrilling Quite often with sense of a paradise new, But as often thrust out of it. Eves have been true To their early example always." "Mr. Trent, Is there nothing can make Major Mellen repent Such heretical speeches?" But Trent only smiled. " He has nothing, in fact, to repent of. Such wild And erratic assertions serve nought from his lips, But to put for a moment his thought in eclipse, As we all are aware. He 's a genius for saying What nobody doubts more than he does." " But praying The pardon of poets for trespassing thus As a poacher upon their dominion, and plus The humility even I feel to be found By a poet himself on the privileged ground Without proper consent, I would emphasize keenly The right of all men to what poets serenely 96 GERALDINE. Accept for themselves, to exaggerate feeling, Dissemble the thought they profess to revealing, Make statements as fact that are half absurd fancies, And build upon fiction their idle romances." The major talked smoothly at times, with that flavor Satirical still in his words. "There are graver And guiltier crimes, Major Mellen, than one You accuse yourself of, and then hasten to run To excuses for ever committing it. Stay In the poets' preserves quite as long as you may, I can promise that they will forgive the affront, If you bring us some game at the end of your hunt," Mrs. Lee made him answer. "Don't make game of me In such cold-blooded fashion, I beg, Mrs. Lee. We are near to the landing, let all disembark Before you shall cruelly fire the whole park Of artillery light which is hid in your speech: There are others, you know, who might be within reach." So with laughter and jest the day came to its close For them all far along in the evening. Repose Was as sweet as the day had been rare, and the vision Of dreams that it brought had a beauty Elysian. X. FTER this, there were days upon days of delight Unalloyed. Percy Trent wrote to Ger- aldine quite An unselfish account of his generous pleasure. "I find in mere being," he said, "such a measure Of happy content as I never have dreamed When away from your side. Never gladness so gleamed In the sunlight, as simply perennial seems To one lingering here on the River of Dreams, As the bright Mrs. Lee christens it. It is queer That herself and the major should chance to be here The same season with me. I am glad that they came, Though their purpose and mine are not nearly the same. They are here just to lose a few weeks out of life: I am dreaming, the better to bear in the strife A man's part by and by. It is well to recruit For the battle to be. It is well that the lute Should hang silent a while, that to-morrow its song May be clearer and truer, more certain and strong. Major Mellen is much as he was long ago, Only bitterer grown in his speech; but we know, Who have known him the longest, how much that he feigns To be earnest is said for effect. That he pains 7 98 GERALDINE. Me at times with his cynical sneers, I admit, Notwithstanding; and often I laugh at his wit, When I grieve with a hurt that is sudden and keen, For he spares not the holiest things. He has seen Some experience sad, I'm persuaded, more sad That its lasting effect on his life has been bad. He was always a doubter of everything true, As a fact, or in word. ' Give the devil his due,' After all ; and the major has many good traits. He is capital company often, and hates Every sham with a hatred that urges assault Of the fiercest. I fancy, at times, that his fault Of condemning the right has grown out of long seeing So much of the wrong and the false, and of being So keenly alive to pretence. "Mrs. Lee And myself are the best of good friends, if to be Always frank and outspoken together, to find Satisfaction in similar moods of the mind, To have sympathies somewhat in common, may make Us all that. She has known, I am certain, the ache Of a heart that is strong in its passion, unfolding Its riches with never a thought of withholding, The pain that I fancy some women must keep Throughout life, in a poverty wretched and deep That was born of their prodigal love. Is there balm For such aching of soul ? In the liberal palm Of the white hand of Peace, is there quiet and rest For such throbbings of pain in so troubled a breast ? I am syllabling questions I only have thought Hitherto. Though quite often with her, I have sought In no manner to learn what her sorrow has been What it has been, perchance what it is. I begin To be reverent even in presence of souls GERALDINE. 99 That have hidden away in their silence the scrolls Of their own revelation. No idle perusal May learn of the secrets they hold in refusal From men. " I suspect Mrs. Lee knew the arts Of a finished coquette, and made playthings of hearts, In some earlier time : there 's no hinting, however, Of conquest to-day in her social endeavor. She treats all her friends in a courteous way That is pleasant to see; but I think she could play A sad havoc with feelings the tenderest still, If to times opportune she but added the will. Do I hold her the less in respect for believing She may have been guilty of ruthless receiving, 100 GERALDINE. Aware that she could not give back in return? It is true that I might, if I yet had to learn That a woman wrongs man just to gratify her Present mood, not to scarify him. I demur But the least to her pleasing herself, if the hurt She inflict be not truly malicious. A flirt Who should send a man off into grimmest despair, Just to see him writhe on in his agony there, I would simply despise ; but a woman delighting Herself with the winning of love, and inviting Its largess for pleasure it gives her alone Why, her motive might partly, in my view, atone For the harm growing out of her deed. For of right A man owes to your sex all the wealth of delight He is able to pay. " Do you smile at my reasoning ? Well, you will pardon a moderate seasoning Of the absurd in my argument. Those Who are victims of feminine art, I suppose, Judge more harshly than I do concerning it. You, Who so easily might have made many to rue Your attractiveness, ought with compassion to look On another who possibly some time forsook The true heights of her womanhood, found the low plane Of coquetry, and made of her beauty a vain Ignis fatuus, leading some men to their grief. I have half been inclined to the foolish belief That the major has suffered from Mrs. Lee's lack Of requital in fullest degree; that far back In his younger young manhood he loved her, as men Like himself are not apt to love ever again. And why not ? They were friends long ago, it appears, In a friendship that not very seldom endears To the uttermost one or the other who feels it. GERALDINE. 101 If sensitive yet from the hurt, he conceals it Remarkably well, it is true ; yet a stoical Nature like his may be truly heroical, Smiling despite of its pain. . " But you care Very little for him or his past, I 'm aware : I '11 not speak of them further. And as to my present, I own that I find it so wondrously pleasant, I would not consign it to yesterday soon. The fair land of the Future may yield as its boon Such another rare season of beauty and bliss; But I doubt if I find it hereafter in this." So he gave himself up to his rhapsodies mild When he wrote of the river. Its beauties beguiled Him to frequent extravagant speech. That his eyes Saw no every-day beauty with aught of surprise She knew well. Was there loveliness for him so rare As alone to enchant him thus utterly ? Fair As the River of Dreams might appear in his sight, Could it thrill him to keenest ecstatic delight With its beauty alone ? Did no presence apart From inanimate things take a hold on his heart As with masterful sweetness ? If questions like these Were in Geraldine's thought, by the slowest degrees Did they syllables take, and then ask to be heard Of her love. And no query of wonder, no word Of inquiry, escaped her to him. It was well That he linger thus long at the Islands to tell Her of beauty and blessing they yielded him. So She made answer in brief, and was glad in the glow Of his gladness, without a foreboding or dread. She could trust, and would trust to the end, she had said ; 102 GERALDINE. And the end must be well, let it bring what it would, Since a Father so loving and tender and good Had its shaping and care. There are natures that keep Such a faith in such wise; but, if moved to the deep Of their possible doubting, the tempest that rages Within them grows wilder till nothing assuages But words of the Master, with tendercst thrill Speaking out through the darkness their "Peace!" and "Be still!" XI. HEY had dined at Deer Island, a dozen or more Of the seekers for pleasure. A half- shaded shore Gave them welcome; its turf, that was mossy and sweet, Running down to the water to wel come their feet; 4 4 *? -\Tef- ' fc>A.i\f u : fvv v,' ^>4~-- .- '> IWf ^^ j; ' -^fe^- Silff sil1 And its trees, that were sentinels faithful and strong Of fhe years, breathing out a monotonous song Of old summers departed, half song and half sigh, 1 104 GERALDINE. And inviting them listless and dreamy to lie In the quivering shadows when dinner was done : So they lingered in happy abandon. The sun, When they took to their boats, had sunk low in the west, And the night would be moonless; the river's fair breast Was resplendent with ripples of silver and gold As the breezes sprang up, and, with dalliance bold And with passionate kisses, beguiled its repose Into sighing unrest. They were near to the close Of a glad day together, these two we have traced In their talk and their feeling a while. " It 's a waste Of fine weather to think of returning so soon," Mrs. Lee made remark. "And this whole afternoon Has gone by like a dream. Do I live, Mr. Trent? Do I verily sip the sweet cup of content As it seems that I do ? Is regret but a thing Of the past?" " Into seasons like this not a sting Of old memories ever should enter," he said. " Let the dead of your yesterdays bury its dead ; Drink the cup of content with no lingering glances Behind. There is joy in the present. Romances Forever abide in the future. Look out On the shall-be as I do, with never a doubt Of its bringing the best of your being." He lifted The oars as he spoke, and they silently drifted Adown the still stream. " Do you never feel fear Of the future ? " she asked. "Do you never seem near To some terrible tragedy ? Are you so certain Of good you could lift the invisible curtain Of years with no tremor of heart ? " GERALDINE. 105 With surprise He looked deep in the depths of her beautiful eyes Ere he answered, " My friend, you are keen at divining Some thoughts unexpressed; for I have been inclining To fear of my morrows of late. And I stand, As I fancy at times, on debatable land, Between gladness and grief. In these days of delight I am far up the mountains of being, in sight Of that Beulah where grief is unknown; but I know There are valleys of Baca through which men must go Ere they climb to the summits of blessing. I wait With a painful expectancy, early or late, The upwellings of fountains of bitterness. When They appear, I must drink, as do all other men." " And some women," she added : " indeed, you might say And all women. The waters that flow by our way Are as Marah sometimes." "There are few, I believe, Who drink only the sweetness of life. But to grieve Over sorrow gone by is not worse than to shrink From some possible sorrow before. We must drink The full cup of to-morrow, whatever the draught; But, or bitter or sweet, it is not to be quaffed Till to-morrow presents it. Sufficient indeed To the day is the evil thereof; and the need Of us all is a present of glad satisfaction, Where nought of the past makes unhappy exaction, And nought of the future repels or dismays." " And you live in the present ? " returning his gaze, "Altogether, I mean, with no pain of the past Throbbing up, and no glamour of happiness cast 106 GEEALDINE. On the days that are coming?" He smiled a reply Before speaking. " My patient confessor, if I Should admit that I look for some gladness supreme In the future, that, doing to-day, I but dream Of endeavor the proudest to-morrow, 'twould seem Contradictory. I have admitted the truth, That I fear in the future some possible ruth Full of peril to peace ; that I shrink from my morrows In doubt. But the future is broad ; and it borrows A radiance often from glories that crown Us with gladness to-day. And I never look down The long vista of years, without seeing beyond All their possible gloom an illuming as fond As the kisses of dawn on the world. I am glad Of some day that's to be. If one morrow prove sad, I shall come to another, please God ! " "A glad faith," She responded. " But what of the past ? Does no wraith Of some buried desire ever enter your room, As you sit in the silence of solitude's gloom, And torment you with words of regret ? You have said, 'Let the dead of your yesterdays bury its dead.' Do your dead never walk ? Is there never a ghost Of dead love or dead hope to intrude when you most Would forget that you ever had hollowed a grave ? Does your past sink away, as this shell in the wave, Out of sight, out of mind ? " and she tossed a bright shell She had held, in the water. " No funeral knell Has been rung in my past," he responded with feeling, His sympathy touched by her sudden revealing Of hidden emotion. " I 've stood by no bier GEEALDINE. 107 Of my love or my hope. I can sit with you here, And can say that my past has been pleasant and good ; That my present you make, as but one other could, Satisfying, complete." And he noted the glow Of a tenderer light in her eyes, and the flow Of a deeper tint into her face. " I regret Only duty ill done. I can never forget What is gone, let it be whatsoever it may ; Not the less would I live as I should in to-day, But remembering yesterday only for smiles That it gave"- " Seeing somewhere the paradise isles Of your dream by the sea?" interrupting him. " Yes, Looking out on the billows before, I confess In the faith that beyond their unrest there is calm For us all in the infinite islands of balm." " Will you teach me your faith ? I am hungry for hope In the years. With the greatest of griefs I could cope, Could I only believe that beyond it is bliss. You have much to make glad : there is much that I miss, And but little I hold, and of this you have given The most. On the wings of your friendship I 've striven To mount where the lark of your happiness sings : I am weighted too heavy, I fear, for the wings, Since I cannot fly far, and each flight only brings Its discouragement." " Would I could lift you with me To the heights of a happy content, Mrs. Lee ! To do this, my clear friend, I would cheerfully give Half a year of the life that is left me to live." She but smiled at his words. 108 GERALDINE. " I doubt not, my dear friend, You would give, quite as freely as others would lend, All you have but the one thing you cannot." "And that?" She was silent a little, and motionless sat, Looking into the depths of the shimmering deep. " Is a love that is tender and strong, that can sweep Me up out of the gloom with its passionate grasp, And then hold me content in the quickening clasp Of its sunlight, the love of a masterful heart Full of power, most learned in the delicate art Of its loving, most tender and loving indeed When its pity could see there was bitterest need- Such a love as a man gives one woman in life." GERALDINE. 109 " And God pity him, then, if she be not his wife, Or may not be!" he said with quick fervor. "And she Who so needs such a love, in whose heart there can be Such a hunger without it?" " God pity her too, In his infinite love, as all loving souls do!" There were tears in her eyes as she questioned : each word Had a thrill that was strange as he answered. She heard, And was silent again for a moment, averting Her face from his gaze. Sudden passion asserting Itself in his breast, like a prisoner beating Against the hard bars of his prison, entreating For liberty, moved him beyond his control. He was swayed by a tempest undreamed of. His soul, Looking out of its windows of feeling, saw only Another soul, helpless and hopeless and lonely, And groping so after some path to the light And the cheer he could give as he must. In his sight She was near to the heights he had named. He could lift Her to peace and content by the plenteous gift Of his love, that was giving itself as if now It had first love's rare charity learned, to endow Needy being with riches untold. Ere he broke Into utterance wild and vehement, she spoke. " I 'm but one of a thousand who hunger and thirst For their manna in Egypt; who wander accursed In a wilderness dreary, forever unblest By the gift of that laud which they should have possessed But for doubting and fears. I shall die in my Edoin, And know not the gladness of faith that is freedom, And service of heart that is scripture the sweetest. 110 GERALDINE. My lot with the heathen Egyptian were meetest, Unled by the Moses of love toward a land I may never behold." " When I gave you my hand As your friend, Mrs. Lee, I had little to offer Of worth, as I said ; and, if now I should proffer Such love as you speak of, it might seem as meagre To you." He spoke low, with an emphasis eager And quick. " Could I lead to the plenty that lies Beyond Edom ? My soul in its solitude cries For companionship such as it never has missed Till this hour. In the silence I tremble and list For your answer." She looked in his eloquent face With a hungering look that will ever have place In his memory, tears overflowing her cheeks. " You must hear how my heart in its gratitude speaks A reply that my lips cannot utter. Its throbs Are so strong, they would shape all my words into sobs, Did I try. As the call of a bird to its mate That has lingered too long, and is home-flying late, Even winning and tender as this is the cry Of your soul unto mine ; and as glad would it fly, This poor shivering soul that is silent so long, Full as glad would it mount to the summits of song With your own by its side, as when, night-shadows gone, The glad warblers will wing themselves up to the dawn In a sunburst of music. My comrade and friend, Could you walk with me now, from this day to the end, You could be ah, how keenly I feel it and know it ! Both heaven and the way. But you cannot. The poet Within you may pity my need ; and the man, In his passion of feeling that generous ran GERALDINE. Ill To my help, may give all that he hath, even this That is treasure the greatest of all : but the bliss Of possession can never be mine. Do not ask Any reason. For you I have lifted the mask Of my heart, and you see it all quivering here, As none other has seen or will see it." " So near Have I come, as you say, my dear friend, to your side, To be put thus away ? Let whatever betide, You must linger a while in my love. You have waited Too lonely and long for the comrade belated By fate, to repel him, or bid him farewell With a half-recognition. My passion must tell Its sweet story yet over and over again In your ears. I must give you with lips and with pen, As a prodigal gives, of the wealth of my heart, Till you go from your poverty gladly apart, And I wander a pauper forever, unless You are prodigal too in return. I would bless And be blest. May I not?" So he pleaded, the strength Of his passion possessing him quite, till at length It had mastered him utterly. Could she withstand Such entreaty ? " My friend, when you gave me your hand As my friend, you gave much to a beggar for much, And your friendship had in it a hallowing touch That uplifted. My life had been swept passion-clean, As I thought. In my desert no budding of green Could give beauty again, I believed. You have shown My mistake ; but not less must I wander alone Through the wilderness ever. Some manna is mine By the way ; and this day's is the nearest divine, And the sweetest, that ever my hungering soul 112 GERALDINE. Has made feast of. If only such generous dole Could be mine through the years ! " with a passionate thrill Overflowing her speech. "As it can, if you will," He persisted. She shook her head sadly. " No more, If you love me. But see ! we are far from the shore, And a storm is approaching." And as she thus spoke, On the twilight's dim silence a thunder-peal broke, And aroused him. Quick over the north there had spread A black gathering mass, that grew dense overhead While he looked. A dull moan was borne out on the air From the pines in the distance. The day, that was fair As a vision of peace, had departed in wrath That would quickly envelop them. Straight in the path Of the storm they were floating, as stoutly he bent To his oars without answer, and rapidly sent The light craft o'er the water. " Some shelter we '11 find Over yonder, I think, if we do not much mind What it is," by and by he remarked. " It is plain That the deluge will come very soon. We must gain Any harbor that offers." He rowed with his might, While the storm, sweeping on with the speed of the night That it deepened too early, was nearing them fast, And they heard the wild shriek of its trumpeting blast. XII. MAGNIFICENT picture he saw as he rowed : On his left, in the west, there yet lingered and glowed The last rays of the sun, in a light that was yellow As gold, and suffusing the sky with their mellow Effulgence ; the clouds coming nearest were red As the crimson that flows from the battle-field's dead, And above them were opal and purple and gray ; To the north, moving forward in martial array, Were dense masses of darkness, and through them the flame Of the lightning burned swift ere the thunder-peals came With their torrent of sound. Far away, where the sky In the lap of the hills appeared closest to lie, The black mass became silvern ; for rain had begun In the valley beyond, where the lingering sun Threw its light on a lower horizon. On swept The dark masses above, while the silvern sheet kept Its way slower and gentler below, like a veil Slipping down o'er the world in compassion. The gale Would be on them before they could land, so it seemed. More intense grew the darkness overhead ; brighter gleamed The mad lightning, more frequent its flame; all the west 114 GEEALDINE. In a moment was shrouded in shadow. The crest Of each wave, as the water grew wilder apace, Led the swift-flying boat on a wearying race For the shore. Yet the strokes of the rower were strong, Though he wearied. The storm was at hand ; but the long Way was over at last, as he lifted the skiff Half its length on the sand, at the base of a cliff Not too steep for their climbing. " I '11 draw up the boat, So the waves cannot easily wash it afloat," Nearly breathless he said, as ho helped her alight. " There 's a cottage here somewhere, I 'm certain, which might Give us shelter the best, could we find it. The island GERALDINE, 115 Is small, I imagine. We '11 climb to the highland And see." So they bent their steps upward, her hand In his own. On the highest uplift of the land, In the midst of a grove rather scanty, appeared A low cabin untenanted. Even this cheered Their endeavor, and led them a welcome to seek From its shelter uncertain. The door offered weak And quick-conquered resistance. They entered as down Fell the rain in a flood. " We 're not likely to drown, Anyhow, Mrs. Lee, though the prospect is dark As when old Father Noah set sail in his ark. How the floods of our deluge unsparingly pour ! Hear the winds and the rain as they bellow and roar Through the trees ! See the lightning that blazes above us, As if the dear Lord had forgotten to love us, And came to us now in his wrath ! It is worth A day's wetting to witness him visit the earth In the might of his power." She shuddered, and drew Herself nearer in dread. A fierce thunderbolt flew Past their sight, and a crash, as if worlds in collision Had met, fairly stunned them. An instant their vision Saw nothing ; their senses had gone with the glare Of the lightning that vanished in gloom. " Let me care For you tenderly once, as I can," he appealed, As he felt her form tremble. " There must be concealed In the cabin some helps to your comfort." He made His way round in the darkness, now deep, till he laid Eager hold on a rickety chair, which he brought For her use; and, on searching still further, he caught 116 GEEALDINE. By the gleam of the lightning a glimpse of a cot And a camp-stool. " I own that these quarters are not What they might be for cheerfulness," gayly he said ; "But there could be worse fortune than this that has led Us to shelter so dismal. Imagine us yet In the tempest out yonder ! We never should get To the land with our lives." " 'T would have seemed little matter To me only yesterday. Life did not flatter Me much with its promise, although I confessed To a horror of death. There was nought I possessed Of a value worth counting. God's beggars have riches Far greater than mine. I had torn from their niches My idols of cost ; and my heart's wide Valhalla Was empty." "And now?" " You have seen the white calla Unfold all its treasure of purity soon As the morning blooms full in the sweetness of noon ? Even so has my love for you burst into bloom From its bud in the dark. It would seem as if gloom Must forever be brightened, indeed, with its light ; And to-day I have riches untold in the sight Of this love that is mine." She was speaking in low, Suppressed accents, that took indescribable glow From the feeling that moved her. He knelt by her side, As a reed in the breath of her speech. " You denied Me the right any longer," he answered, " to plead For the sweet privilege of supplying your need GERALDINE. 117 To the uttermost. All that I am is your own To do with as you may. Will you give me a stone Of denial again, when I ask for the bread Of possession complete?" She but rested her head On his shoulder in silence, her heart throbbing fast As did his. In possession too perfect to last He was hers, she was his, for the moment. He held Her supremely his own ; and his passion compelled Her glad kisses in answer to his. "But a taste Of the honey of Canaan is mine in the waste Of my wilderness barren," she whispered at length. " It has marvellous sweetness." "And marvellous strength Has this love that I give you," he said in return. " I believed I had nothing of passion to learn " " As did I ; and the ratio of this that I feel Fairly frightens me. Many a wife would conceal Such a fervor of love from her husband ; and I Can be never your wife, Heaven pity me ! " " Why ? What shall keep us apart ? You were made for my holding," He passionate said, almost fiercely infolding Her close in his arms. " You are mine by the claim Of my love, and your ample return. You became Wholly mine when confession you made of that love ; And I hold you by right and by title above All beside." " It is madness to let you forget Your own ties in this manner. Before we had met, You no longer belonged to yourself. Could I keep What another might prove to be hers, and so creep 118 GERALDINE. By and by between me and my claim ? " Not a word Of reply for a little escaped him. She heard In the stillness between the loud thunder his heart Beating heavy and quick, saw the color depart From his face as the lightning shone on it, and felt That he suffered. He rose to his feet where he knelt, Put her tenderly from him, and strode to the door As if panting for air. It was minutes before He made answer in fact ; then his voice sounded broken And tremulous. " Yes : I am glad you have spoken Of what I should first have remembered. I thank GERALDINE. 119 You for doing it, since I so wickedly drank Of the cup of forgetfulness. Ever its flow Must entice me, I fear. "A few moments ago," Coming to her again, "my dear friend, I was mad As the veriest lunatic. Passion has had Its free run for a season. It may not outlive me : It may, to my sorrow. No matter. Forgive me For offering what was not mine to deliver. Forget, if you can, what was said on the river And here. Let us be the same friends we have been In these days of delight, if we can. Let me win My good comrade once more." And she gave him her hand With a clasp that was warm. " You are noble and grand As no other man living could be," she declared. "In your madness, if madness it were, I have shared: Let me share in your penitence, too, Mr. Trent ; Though I doubt if indeed I do truly repent. It was such a sweet madness ! it thrilled heart and brain With such gladness of being ! it stilled all the vain And unsatisfied longings that trouble my breast, With such tremulant stilling to such a glad rest ! I shall love you I must though I never may tell you Again of my love ; and could loving compel you To leave all the world, and to cleave unto me, I should never indulge the compulsion, but flee From your presence at once. For again let me say, I must journey through Edom alone. If the way Be so rough that I stumble and fall, you may pray In the strength of your faith for my faltering feet, That they carry me soon to some rest that is sweet ; And if prayer can avail one whose faith, in eclipse 120 QERALVINE. By her doubt, is lost sight of, I 'm certain your lips Could efficiency lend it for me. But alas For the wilderness lonesome through which I must pass From this day to the end ! " In the darkness he knew There were tears on her face, and he tenderly drew Her again to his arms. " I can be to you much, Though I may not be all," he responded. "And such As I freely can give you must freely accept. Let what loving has sown, in the future be reaped In our friendship. To walk by your side as your friend Now and then, you must grant me from this till the end." " Between you and my life," she made answer, " there lies A great gulf that is deep as the ocean : our cries For companionship cross it. You hold me, as here, In the arms of your love, with your heart beating near, But we stand far apart on the opposite steeps, And between us there bide the impassable deeps. Do not ask me my riddle to read. Let me hide It away from you now and forever." She sighed, And he answered her but with caresses, then rose, And in silence peered out in the dark. "I suppose We must manage to stay here till morning. The rage Of the storm is subsiding ; but I can't engage To return you in safety before. We are far From the Bay, and there 's not the first gleam of a star Through the gloom. 'T would be folly to think of my finding Our way up these channels so many and winding In darkness like this. I can make you a bed GERALDINE. On the cot yonder somehow, it may be," he said By and by. Then he busied himself at his task, With some show of success. "T is n't all I could ask For your comfort," he briefly explained, as he made His way cautiously back to her side. " With the aid 121 Of a blanket or two, and a pillow, I think You could rest very well. As it is, do not shrink From accepting the best present poverty yields ; And be certain my tenderness watches, and shields You from harm." " I am weary," she answered, " and glad 122 GERALDINE. Of whatever you offer. No fair lady had Truer knight for her service in chivalry's time Than will guard me, I know. You should weave into rhyme So romantic an episode truly as this is." He pointed her words with some lingering kisses By way of good-night, and then led her across To the couch. " No : the world must submit to the loss Of our living romance altogether. I hold It a thing far too sacred for pen to unfold, Even under the veiling of fiction. And then You remember my thought, that the poets don't pen Their experience often." " Oh, yes ! I remember. You make of each poet a perfect dissembler, Pretending to what is unfelt, and denying The feeling he has any voice, only sighing In secret perhaps. If I state it too strong, Pray forgive me." He laughed. " But I own that the song May be real to him while he sings, though in fact It is fiction the veriest. Singers have lacked Less in feeling, indeed, than in fancy. Poetical Genius the finest, I fear, is heretical Most with regard to the truth, rather shaping What might be than telling what is; sooner draping A dream in the garments of beauty, and making Men think it of bone and of muscle, than taking A skeleton out of the past, and with aching Remembrance so robing it round as to show What perfection of form fell to dust long ago." " But I don't half believe in your theory, though GERALDINE. 123 You do talk BO convincingly sometimes about it. One day, I am certain, you '11 even half doubt it Yourself. For you poets are men of rare feeling: You must be, indeed; and to think of concealing It always is mockery. Even the claim That your feeling flows out in some fiction the same As in positive sorrow I cannot believe. Men may weep at some fancy of grief ; but they grieve To the uttermost only when sorrow cuts deep To the quick of their souls. And we know, when we weep At their words, what the hurt is. The mass of us feel The same hurt, it may be, but can never reveal Its keen torment because we are dumb. Why is speech So denied to the many ? Why is it that each Of us has not the gift of expression ? And why Must some hearts go through life with a hungering cry For the good that they miss, and unable to tell What their need is, their hunger, their thirst? Is it well For the world that so many are mutes ? " " I 'm unable To answer, my friend," he replied. " What a Babel Indeed it would be, though, if all were endowed With a gift as of tongues, and at once the whole crowd Should begin to communicate ! Angels defend us From fate so disturbing! May kind fortune send us A quieter morrow to die in ! " Complaint, Speaking soberly now, as in fear of some saint Of the silent departed, complaint might be all That from lips of the many incessant would fall, Were they dowered with speech. They might never give voice To their hope or their faith ; they might never rejoice In some psean of gladness to lift the heart up ; 124 GERALDINE. They might never in song press a cheer-giving cup To the lips of those fainting and worn in the strife. And the best of all song is the song that is life To the dying, it may be, and strength to the weak, And sure faith to the helpless, who only can seek For some help far beyond them." " Yet song that is mellow With tenderest feeling, that shows us a fellow- Heart throbbing with ours in our need or our pain, Has its mission, though born of complaint that was vain And unworthy. Our sufferings syllables take Of the words of the poets, and solace their ache With a half-revelation in language our own As we make it so only. No soul sings alone In its loneliness truly ; no other soul sighs In its bitter regret, without hushing the cries Of some near one unseen, but who pauses to hear, And in silence is comforted." " Doubtful, my dear Mrs. Lee. It 's a pretty conceit ; but I fear It is rather too fanciful. Song may uplift ; But complaint is depressing. The true singing gift Should be his who will sing in the world but to gladden it : Dirges, indeed, may be sweet ; but they sadden it. All I could ask for my Muse would be this : That it cheerily sing till some being shall miss, When it ceases, a hope and a help, and shall long For the singer's return, his renewal of song." " But the sweetest of singing has ever a sigh in it ; Loving seems always to linger and die in it ; All that we catch in the syllables clearest Is just a remembrance of what was the dearest And nearest to some heart in days long departed." GERALDINK 125 " You 've listened, no doubt, till the foolish tears started, When he who so tenderly sang was but grieving In fancy alone." " Is there, then, no believing The word of a poet ? " " Well, now, I suppose If the word be spelled out in good truth-telling prose, You may take it," he answered with laugh that was light. " But I beg of you stop your conundrums. Good-night ! Get such rest as you can." " Will you give me a word For my dreams that is sweetest the air ever stirred ? Say you love me, and say it in prose, that I never May doubt it." " I love you, shall love you forever," He said with low emphasis. " Thanks ! I could rest Anywhere, anyhow, by such benison blest." Then in silence he sat till the morning, his mind All a tumult of troubled emotion. Be blind To his wretched position no longer could he. There was Geraldine Hope : here was Isabel Lee. He was far from them both as the night from the day. He was far from his faith as forever are they Who forever are faithless. And so self-accusing, Unspared of his conscience, and grimly refusing To smother the stings that it gave, looking out On his future with only a harrowing doubt Of what might be in store, he awaited the breaking Of day. Mrs. Lee was asleep ; and forsaking The cabin when on the horizon a priest Of the dawn began incense to burn in the east, 126 GERALDINE. He walked down to the water his boat to prepare For departure. No traces remained anywhere Of their landing. Till sunrise had silvered the dawn He made search without finding : the frail craft was gone. XIII. HEN the rest of the party returned to the Bay, Hurried on by the tempest that threat ened them, they Were surprised and alarmed to dis cover that two Of their number were missing. But nought could they do To determine what fate had befallen the twain. To go out and make search in the storm would be vain As unsafe. "They have landed, and there must remain In such shelter as chances, wherever it be, Until morning," the major remarked. " Mrs. Lee Will regard it romantic. It may be that Trent Will consider the storm as an episode sent For his special advantage. He likes the dramatic In life, and was always a trifle erratic In love. He may die a true Romeo yet In some desperate strait for the last Juliet Of his fancy." And so Major Mellen, satirical, Spoke of his friend. " If love shows us a miracle Ever," he went on to say, "it is when It renews itself over and over again 128 GERALDINE. In the breast of a poet. So often it rises Afresh from the dead, it no longer surprises With new revelations of being. Besides, It so largely increases itself, and divides Of its multiplied measure so freely, it shows Arithmetical qualities few would suppose Could belong to a thing sentimental." The sneer Of the cynic half hid, half revealed itself, here In his words. " Percy Trent is in love with my cousin As madly as ever he 's been with a dozen Before ; but he has n't discovered the fact Altogether, I think. When he does, he will act Very much as if he had committed the sin That has never forgiveness. He never would win For the sake of the winning : he never would share Of his love where he ought not, if caution or care Could prevent it. His creed is the best ; but the fact is, His principle does n't quite wed with his practice. Don't blame him ! I can't. Every man for his creed Is responsible. Let that be right, let it read Parallel with the preaching that seems to be best ; And society answers for him for the rest. What he is, what he does, is small matter, so long As the thing he believes is not glaringly wrong. Then the heart is indeed a free agent : the head Cannot hold it in humble subjection. If led Into ways that are wicked, no part of the blame Should be thrust upon him who gives only his name To the agent, and does not control it. Whose love Is within his discretion ? Whose will is above His affection, directing and guiding it ? Better That hearts should love often than always be debtor GERALDINE. 129 To prudence for perfect restraint." So he ran To his flippant, irreverent speech, that began To be reckless at times. The next morning shone clear As the mornings that dawn in the blush of the year. Major Mellen, denying his habit, forsook The seduction of sleep. Rising early, he took His way down to the wharf, thinking haply to meet The belated pair on their return, and to greet Them with playful reproach. But his keen vision scanned All the channels in vain, to the dim-lying land On the Canada side, far away down the stream. The wide waters were tinted with morn's rosy gleam, And unflecked by a sail. The white flash of an oar In the sun was nowhere to be seen. Long before His late breakfast, the major was anxious, but laughed 130 GEEALDINE. At the fears of the rest. " He can manage his craft Like a riverman born," so the major contended. " If out in it when the quick tempest descended, He 'd safely enough make the shore. He 's expert With the rod and the line. They have come to no hurt, But are breaking their fast in poetical leisure, Perfecting a bass in a broil. There 's a pleasure For poets in cooking the fruit of their lines, As in eating it, under the odorous pines Of a solitude wild. Trent would hardly desire To be known as a monk ; but a very good frier He is, I am certain of fish. They will fare Well enough till we see them again as a pair Of meek truants returning to school." Yet he made Sudden haste to secure the small yacht, nor delayed To set out on a mission of quest, when at noon The twain missing were still unreported. As soon As the search had been fairly begun, he confessed To himself an untimely delay, and, impressed With a fear undefined, he kept watch as they sailed, Half in hope, when they came near the shore, to be hailed By the ones whom they sought. Every island they rounded, Each headland they scanned, until hope was confounded With keen apprehension in all. Not a trace Of the boat or its burden appeared. The broad space Of the river below the last islands was crossed And recrossed yet again, to make sure that the lost Were not hinted of there in some manner ; and then They went farther above. As they rounded again A small island that could not a shelter have given, The major caught sight of a skiff that had driven Itself on the rocks. GERALDINK 131 " It is Trent's ! " he declared, With excitement that each of the company shared As they neared it. " And stove to a wreck ! We have found All we shall for the present. They must have been drowned By upsetting' last night in the storm." And he grew Quickly pale as he spoke. When they landed, he flew In hot haste to the boat ; but it offered no clew To their seeking, beyond its bare presence. It lay Without oars, bottom up, badly broken. The day Was far spent when they gave up the search, and returned, Bearing with them the cast-away skiff, having learned Nothing more. No one doubted the common conclusion Expressed. They had perished. To hope was delusion. Their bodies, if found in a day or a week, The sad truth could not even more certainly speak. The gay world at the Islands made proper lament 132 GERALDINE. For the hour ; and a thrill of true sorrow was sent Through some hearts when the story was told. Before night The quick lightning had spread it abroad; and its flight Was a message of sadness to many. One read In the papers next day, with a black-letter head, Just a brief paragraph ; and it soberly said, " Mr. Percival Trent, as a speaker well known, And his friend Mrs. Isabel Lee, out alone On the River St. Lawrence last night in a squall, Were capsized, and were both of them drowned." That was all. XIV. HE one reader knelt down in the pitiless gloom That came over her soul, as if sudden a tomb Had enveloped her there, and in sylla bles broken Besought the All-Father to send her some token Of love and compassion to show her that still She could bow to his power, and suffer his will, Though it crush her, because for the best. It was long In the dark of her doubt ere she caught the faint song Of her faith once again, like a bird that sings low In the shadows before all the world is aglow With another glad morning. At first she gave up To her grief unrestrained. Of the tear-tasting cup She drank deep, till its bitterness flooded her hope, Overwhelming it. Long as a life did she grope, So it seemed, like a person struck blind in the sun, Seeing nothing. " O Lord ! if thy will must be done," She could only beseech, " in this terrible way, Take me also to thee in thy mercy, I pray. I am wicked and weak and unworthy, but hear To my pleading, O Lord, I implore ! " 134 GERALDINE. If the ear Of the Infinite ever were open to all Who in sorrow's unreason thus bitterly call For the end, or if, hearing, he answered the cry Because merciful only, full many would die With their life in the bloom of its purpose. But God Is as wise as paternal. He spares not the rod Of affliction, however he loves us. Denying The answer we seek, he is touched by our crying, And gives, in the time of his wiser replying, The answer to profit us most. Yet we plead In the midst of our want for some possible need We believe to be ours ; and we hold empty palms Up to God, while we cry for particular alms At his hand ; and the boon that we seek might be worse For us ever than poverty's bitterest curse. Very blessed indeed are the poor, when they crave What would hinder and hurt, if the All-Father gave Without stint to their asking. More blessed are those Who in praying remember the All-Father knows Of their need even better than they, and bestows With a wisdom divine. It was pitiful, first, To see Geraldine clinging to all that was worst In her grief. He was dead, her one lover, as true As the heart that so bitterly mourned him, she knew. He was dead, and thus ended her dream. She could never Again feel his tender caresses. Forever, Till death gave him back, so her sorrowing said, She must hunger for love, and be ever unfed. By and by she could hardly have told if a week Or a day had been passed in the gloom she could seek GERALDINE. 135 For disguising of comfort. Death gives us some things For our absolute holding, that might have found wings, And been wafted beyond us ; and so Death is kind. What he gives us, we keep; and if tears make us blind To the gift, and we see but a grave or a bier For a little, we come to a vision more clear Later on. Then we know that this token of Death Is immortal ; that never of this can the breath Of regret say with sighing, " change of the years ! " That we never shall go with lamentings and tears On a wearisome search for the lost. What we hide In the peace of the grave will forever abide In its promise and grace, in its beauty and truth, For the mortal is age. Immortality's youth Can know nothing of age, or of change, or decay. It has never a morrow of fear. Its to-day Of content is eternal. A glimmer of light Came to Geraldine out of the dark of her night. He was dead, her one lover; but thus he was hers Beyond shadow of doubting. No dimness that blurs Any distance could come between her and her own. They should never be separate. Weary and lone As her future might seem, he could never be far From her life and her love. No distrusting could mar Their companionship now evermore. Not a hint Of unfaith could be heard through the years. Without stint She might give of her heart to his memory fond, And forever be glad in the giving beyond Any possible shade of regret. Death had set The great seal of its silence on lips that were yet Full of utterance tender and true, and had stilled With its marvellous hush the heart-throbbings that thrilled, 136 GEEALDINE. And must thrill to the end, for herself. Could it be That this woman of women, this Isabel Lee, With her heart in her face, and her love in her hand, Might have won him away with her witchery bland ? Could it be that some passion to flame might have fanned, That he never had dreamed of, asleep in his breast ? Could it be that his love for herself, in the test Of some crucible heat in his life, might have burned Into nothingness ? Might he some lesson have learned With the wisdom of love making wiser his heart, In which previous knowledge had never a part ? If a question like these sought reply in her grief, In its possible doubt came a certain relief. If the sorrow so keen had been sent but to save From a sorrow far keener, the hurt that it gave Was the touch of a hand hurting only to shield : In the pain of its purpose there lingered concealed A sweet comfort to gladden and bless. The allies Of our happiness come to us oft in disguise, And we think they are foes. They are not as they seem, And we welcome them not to their mission supreme ; But we turn in despair from besetting so sore, And would flee, if the way were but open before. Then we wait, as we must, in the struggles that keep All our being in terror, and out of the deep Of our peril we call for the succor delayed. In some day of clear vision we see there was aid Where we knew but assailing ; and then, in surprise, With our gaze lifted up to the peaceable skies, We behold from our peril and pain a release, And are glad and content in the triumph of peace. XV. FTER searching in vain the small island around, Where no hint of the object he sought could be found, Mr. Trent to the cabin returned. Mrs. Lee Was awaiting him. " Breakfast for you and for me Must be late," he remarked but half anxiously. " We Are two castaways now, without means of support. For a little we promise to be but the sport Of such fortune as comes to us." Then he explained How their boat had been drifted away. It remained For them only to wait for some vessel in sight Or in hail, to be signalled, or told of their plight, When deliverance quickly would come ; and meanwhile They must comfort themselves in the comforting smile Of the day, that gave sunlight to follow the rain, As the morrow will always. He smothered the pain At his heart, and made merry with laugh and with jest As if never a dread of the future oppressed Or appalled him. His passion he met with resistance Begotten of struggle with self ; and a distance Indefinite, infinite, widened and grew 138 GERALDINK Like a desert between them. Instinctive she knew He had conquered himself for the time. No regret For the past or the present his scrutiny met As he gazed in her beautiful face ; but serene She looked out on the blue of the sky, and the green Of the islands, and moulded her mood to his own. So they waited and watched till the morning had grown Into mid-day, and patience with waiting had flown. They were out of the track of the steamers that plied The American channel : it happened, beside, That no boat from the Canada ports came along Until noon. When it came, on its decks were a throng Full of riotous mirth, on a pleasure-trip bent To the village some miles from the Bay ; but they lent Ready ears to the call for assistance, and sent Speedy means of relief. " I can land you at Berne," Said the captain, who hastened their story to learn, When they stood by his side. " You can dine there, and go To the Bay when you please. It 's a moderate row Of three hours, and the boatmen are plenty." And faint With their fasting, no longer inclined to complaint, They but languidly noted the beauties abounding, The merriment over the still water sounding, And heeded but little the comment they caused. When at length the slow steamer reluctantly paused At a rickety wharf, they went gladly ashore, While the vessel backed off, and its proper course bore Farther on. Man is mortal. There 's nothing so tells Of mortality, nothing so certain repels The romance of our being, the essence and spirit GERALDINE. 139 Of life, as the hunger that feeds it. Men fear it, And flee it ; and yet in their folly they nurse it With spices and tonics, till wretched they curse it, And die of dyspepsia and doctors. The greed Of the animal dominates over the need Of the heart and the brain. And all sentiment waits Upon hunger; is happy or hurt as the fates Of the stomach decree. The day's measure is dinner. Man loves like a saint; but he eats like a sinner, Forgetting his love till his appetite flies, But remembering well when capacity cries To be spared. At a quaint little inn they were greeted By fare not too fine, when at last they were seated Before it. But hunger for diet the meanest Gives sauce that is lively, and relish the keenest. They ate as if love were a manna untasted In wilderness ways ; as if hearts had but hasted Their good to forget, or the lingering pain Of their sorrowful hurt in a marvellous gain. By and by they were ready to leave. Sweetly slept The wide reaches of water, unstirred, as they stepped In the skiff Mr. Trent had obtained. Like a mirror, The river reflected the sky, that seemed nearer Than ever to brood o'er the world. As serene As a picture of peace was the beautiful scene. The mid-afternoon sun, swinging low in its place, With an autumn-like glory suffused all the space Round about them. The far-away hill-tops were crowned As with silver. " Be still ! " said the silence profound , In suggestiveness sweet to the ear of the soul : "For the troubled in heart there is always a goal Of content. Mother Nature, with tenderness blind To the faults of her children, and ever inclined 140 GERALDINE. To give gladness for sorrow, invites them to lie In her arms while the tumults of being surge by. She invites them in quiet and comfort to rest, From all weariness free, on her pitying breast ; And Jehovah, in loving and tender accord, Says, ' Be still ! and discover that I am the Lord.' ' ; There are times to be silent, sweet seasons of calm, When the soul seems to catch the soft breath of a psalm ; When the Infinite lifts up the finite, and bears It away from the lowland of troubles and cares ; When we rise to a holier being, supernal In good and in blessing, with fields ever vernal, Where bloom the dear blossoms of beauty that hide Prom our happiness lower, where vistas are wide As a world for enchanting our rapturous gaze, And we look from our height with delight and amaze. It was little they said as they floated away Through the silence serene on their course to the Bay. If the mood of the scene had not swayed them, the feeling Of each must have counselled to partial concealing ; But above their own moods was the mood of the hour, And it silenced their speech with a mystical power That they could not divine. Yet for Percival Trent, Though the time was so full of supernal content, There was under it all, half unheeded, the ache Of a heart that has made, the one bitter mistake That must ruin its peace evermore. When he rested His eyes on her face, he would gladly have breasted The billows of fate but to win it and hold it His own, to look into it ever, to fold it Henceforth in his loving embrace. But a boat's Length between them, the limitless ocean that floats GERALDINE. 141 The great treasure of continents, sundered them far By its pitiless waves ; and Hope flung not a spar For his seizing, on which he might drift till he held Her to him, unresisting, forever. Impelled By the currents swift rushing around him, he knew He must call to her through the wide reach his " adieu." He must float wheresoever the wild waters bore, Though no haven he find on a rock-bordered shore. The short, slow, lazy strokes of their boatman were swift To their longing desire. 'T would have pleased them to drift In this quiet so tranquil forever. No haste Of the world was upon them. To linger, and taste Of the lotos-blooms thus, till forgctfulness came With its blessing of peace, who could chide them, or blame ? The long day was approaching its close when they neared 142 GEEALDINE. The hotel. To a few who there sat, they appeared As if raised from the deep ; but before the news spread To the many, that these were alive whom as dead All were mourning, they both slipped away out of sight. From a sleep that was restful and soothing that night Into which he had sunk upon reaching his room, Percy Trent awoke late, and arose in the gloom To look out on the river's broad bosom. The glimmer Of moonlight, just gilding the trees with its shimmer And sheen, gave a color and glow to the dark ; And when, later, the moon had ascended the arc Till her beams fell in fulness, as soothing and tender As sleep was the glow of her affluent splendor. Yet restless and troubled did Trent linger there By the casement to gaze on a picture more fair Than the day, to be bathed in a glory more rare Than the noon's, but with bitterness thrilling his heart. Then he sat himself down, and besought the shy art Of the poet to soothe. Thus he pencilled APART. Beyond the sea, beyond the sea, In some fair land to dream of thee To-night, my darling, would I be ! No softer breezes there might blow ; No sweeter music there might flow ; No moonlight there more tender glow. My dreams might find no rarer bliss Than here they yield on nights like this, Wherein no richness do they miss. GEEALDINE. 143 Throughout the glory and the sheen, The sunset and the dawn between, No fairer picture might be seen. On all the evening's quiet rare No benediction, as of prayer, More sweet and calm might linger there. But waking, when the night was done, To dawn of day and rise of sun, To life and thought again begun, Methinks J t would comfort bring to me To know between my love and thee Were reaching leagues and leagues of sea ; To feel that distance real and wide Were keeping me from thy dear side, The sunlight of thy smiles to hide ; To know that days must come and go, And moons must wax in cycles slow, Before thy presence I could know. 144 GERALDINE. But here to-night the moonlight glows, And while the breeze so balmy blows, I seek in dreams a sweet repose. It comes with restfulness and peace ; It brings my soul a glad release, While all my doubt and tumult cease. Yet waking, with the dawn of day, My heart will see thee near, and say " Good-morning, love ! " and bid thee stay. Then, as through distance, thy reply Will come, like breathings of a sigh, Or accents of a sad good-by. " Good-morning, love ! " thou 'It answer me ; But more than leagues and leagues of sea Will separate my life and thee. XVI. HE next morning he copied his verses, and sent Them to Isabel Lee with this message: "I meant To take leave of the Islands to-day and of you : To depart from your presence without an adieu Or a word of farewell was my purpose. I 've stayed Far too long as it is. But some talk will be made On account of our recent survival : I '11 tarry A day or two longer, and help you to parry The gossiping comment I helped to create. Thus I give my excuse for delay to the fate That would force me away from your side. " When I go, It will be to a future of struggles. I know What is duty. I know I should say my farewell To this month of delight with no feeling to tell Of my treason to love so long plighted. Distrust Of my manhood may come when I see, as I must, To what pitiful weakness I early am brought. I may wonder, perhaps, if when I shall have fought The hard battle, and won, this poor sham of a life Will be worth all the effort, the struggle, and strife. Yet I know what is duty, and, knowing, shall walk 10 146 GERALDINE. In the line of it steady and brave, though it mock Me with bitter denial of strength. For we grope To the altitudes highest when being and hope Are in deepest eclipse by some fate unforeseen : So I comfort myself, with the shadows between My blind path and the sunlight shut out. " A defender Of right should not wave the white flag of surrender When wrong his position assails, though the wrong Come beguiling to peace with some snatch of a song That is pleasant to hear. And the wrong of this passion Of mine, that has come in such innocent fashion To capture and hold me a captive, must feel The quick arming of conscience within me, the leal And unyielding resistance of manhood, to meet And make combat against it. I know, I repeat, What is duty, my duty, and, knowing, abide By the knowledge. Henceforth in the past I will hide What is past ; and my present shall be what it can. For the future well, being is brief ; and the man Who gets through it the soonest in manliest way Has the happiest ending. " The major might say Something very like that, to be sure ; but his quarrel With life than my own is more ancient: the moral Of which rather pertinent fact is, that he Should be reconciled rather, and leave now to me The most bitter complaints about being. If I Am inclined to turn cynic, and utterance try That is doubtful and reckless, remember the stroke That is stabbing my soul to its quick. If I spoke As I feel, I should shock you with bitterest speech That a sane man could utter. But lips that can preach Wise philosophy e'er must be careful, and frame GERALDINE. 147 Only language discreet, though the heart be aflame Just below." To which message she speedily gave A complaining, pathetic response : "You would save Me the pain of farewell. Let it be so ; and when You depart on the morrow, as commoner men Hold my hand for a moment in theirs while they speak Their adieux, you shall clasp it as if in a week You might take it again in your own. And return When you will, soon or late, be it soon! you shall learn How my heart has been keeping its tenderest things For your welcome ; shall find with what gladness it brings The poor offering up to your altar, and waits For some look warm with loving to cheer the hard fates, And to kindle the ashes to flame. With your pledge To remain as my friend, I can stand on the edge Of this wilderness where I am walking, and seem To catch glimpses across to the land of my dream ; Can forget for a time with what bitterness all Who are shut out of Canaan must hunger and call, Mid the flesh-pots of Egypt, for good that they miss. You are not to deny me your friendship ; and this, If it tenderer be than the many could give, If it nurture itself at love's fountain, and live Thus a life that is warmer than others may see, Shall be beauty and brightness and blessing to me. " Duty takes you away for a while, so we '11 phrase it. And duty we 're given to foster and praise it ; But ugly enough it can be, and as hateful As sin. There is nothing in life quite as fateful, Or so I believe. I am sick in my soul Of its bitter exactions. The costliest toll 148 GEEALDINE. That we yield on the highway of being is paid To these, whether we will it or no. We are laid Under tribute, indeed, to a Caesar who claims All we have, all the best of our longing and aims ; And we give without hope of appeal. Do not wonder I put the case plain and with feeling ; for under This cruel oppression of duty I cry In a poverty wretched for riches gone by, And no answer. " To-day we shall meet as do those In whose soberer veins never surges and glows The warm current of passion; shall trifle with speech As if never the heart underneath could beseech For a clear revelation in word, as if lips Were commissioned, indeed, to put thought in eclipse ; Shall be careless, untroubled, and gay with the rest, Though a riotous tumult may stir either breast To pathetic, unspoken appeal. So we play At the mirth that is mockery mad, and obey GERALDINE. 149 The mad will of the world, that would bid us conceal What the will of our hearts would so gladly reveal. We shall meet as they meet who have little to gain In the meeting, no deep-stirring pleasure the pain Of their yesterday's parting to stifle ; no burning Unrest through the brief separation; no yearning For glance of an eye, or for touch of a hand, Speaking language that love may not misunderstand. Let it be so. I 'm used to all bitter restraint Upon gladness and warmth that can make the heart faint With repression and hunger. No bitterest trial Henceforth can be harder than this of denial That through the long years I have helplessly known. I should say that my heart must be hardened to stone, If it were not that now, as I think of you here, I can feel its quick throbbings. " You may not be near In the flesh : in the spirit you cannot go far From my side, though you go the world over. We are As apart as are darkness and day, though we walk Arm in arm a day's journey. So distances mock At conditions, and laugh at desire. So the flesh is Divorced from the spirit it feebly enmeshes, And twain they must be evermore." As he read Her response, to his feverish longing it said More than language the strongest could utter. It throbbed With the pain and the passion behind it that robbed Her who wrote of her peace. In its silence it spake, Even more than its speech, of the wearying ache Of her soul. It aroused all his sympathies, strong And intense as his love, to the uttermost. Wrong As it might be to stay, he was tempted to bide The results of a wrong very sweet by her side, 150 GERALDINE. And remain; for she needed him. Hunger like hers Can be fed by one bounty alone. It occurs To those wealth-giving hearts only, born to make gift Of their riches unchecked, to go out from their thrift Into want such as this. So he reasoned. He knew That his need of her, born but with yesterday, grew Every hour. Could he smother it, crush it, and kill it ? Is hunger a thing to forget, if you will it ? Will want, lean and wolfish, grow comelier there If you sit in its presence and fancy it fair ? When they met, half a hundred were hearing her tell How the storm came upon them. She pictured it well, And in spirit dramatic. How many could guess That her language, so fitting, and free to express GERALDINE. 151 The alarm of the moment, the peril and stress Of the time, was a mantle to cover the feeling Far deeper ? that words thus intense were concealing The incident's actual color and glow ? That the mood of that night never mortal might know Save herself and the man whom she greeted as one Of her commonest friends when he joined them ? " Well done, Good and faithful," the major declared in his light, Flippant way. "Though you gave us a horrible fright, We forgive you. But don't undertake the heroic Again with this cousin of mine. She 's a stoic, I grant, and would make not a word of complaint To be cast away often, if only some saint Of romance would invoke with his kind benediction Such company pleasant ; but harrowing fiction So very romantic too pungently savors Of fact." " We will spare you such odious flavors, I think, in the future," said Trent. " Mrs. Lee Is as patient as any lost Crusoe would see His companion in trouble ; and none could desire Better company, should he unwisely aspire To the life of a castaway. One such experiment Answers, however. There's not enough merriment In it to make us demand an encore. We are satisfied quite, without crying for more." " I supposed you were fond of positions dramatic, And might not object to one slightly aquatic," Said Mellen, satirical. " Poets are pardoned For tastes rather perilous. Fancies have hardened Their sensitive shrinking from facts. The romantic In dreams should not render them foolishly frantic 152 GERALDINE. If coming to active reality. Most Of the guild, I suspect, would incline to make boast, Soon or late, of a thrilling and strange episode So uncommon as yours, in an epic or ode." " Now I warn you to spare us your comments derisive, For once," Mrs. Lee with a manner decisive Declared. "You would make of an epic or ballad One element only of bitter-sweet salad For cynics to feed on, who 'd say grace with sneers, And would smile in derision at sentiment's tears. You who laugh at poetical things of romance, And so boldly charge at them a-tilt with your lance Ever drawn, are so many unwise Sancho Panzas, Because you could never pen passable stanzas Yourselves, and so win the world's plaudit for wages. The prose of our being has many dull pages : The poetry of it is none too profuse, And each incident striking, I think, has its use. What this recent adventure of ours may have meant, I am puzzled to tell; but perhaps Mr. Trent Will some picture find in it to grace, by and by, The one poem each poet ambitious should try To embalm himself in." And she laughed. " From such banter A Pegasus modest would flee at a canter," He parried. "Mine dare not remain." And he bowed, Self-possessed and amused, to the gathering crowd, And betook his way down to the river, his heart Strangely stirring within him. The marvellous art Of the woman he loved, in so meeting with grace Unconfused the demand of the time and the place, Made him wonder. No woman beside, he believed, Could have faced the surprise of the hour, and deceived GEEALDINE. 153 All who saw her and heard her so soon into thinking The episode fruitless of love. Without shrinking, She told all there was of that notable night For the curious ear; and her silence was quite Unsuspected concerning the holier things He must set himself quick to forget ; for the stings Of his conscience were cutting and keen. The beginning Of passion despotic was bitter as sinning When sin has been drunk to the dregs. Now for him There was only a fate full of wretchedness grim, And to-morrow must usher it in. He would start On the early boat, leaving at five, and depart Without word of adieu. And this calm afternoon 154 GERALDINE. He would seek for his spirit some balin-laden boon In the quiet of channels none other might find, Wherein beauty and redolent odor combined, And where dreaming, aglow like the blush of a rose, Should beguile the unrest of his soul to repose. XVII. HE pale gold of the west into crimson had burned, And then faded to purple, before he returned. He had done more than dream in the hours intervening ; Had pondered half wisely and well on the meaning Of passion so futile, so bitter, so rife With the seeds of all bitterness, meeting his life Where its path appeared gladdest ; had wondered if so Into every existence must mad currents flow, Making turbulence where should be placidest peace ; Had questioned if ever this tumult would cease That now troubled his soul ; and had reasoned that being Is only a cruel and blind unforeseeing Of problems we never may find to be soluble. Out with a friend, and inclined to be voluble, Trent would have talked in the dubious tones Of a man who has battled with fate, and who owns To his utter defeat, who is idly indignant With life and its lessons. The beauties benignant Amid which he rowed could not suddenly quiet The feverish pulse that so boldly ran riot Within him ; no balmiest opiate breezes 156 GERALDINE. Could bear him at once the glad blessing that eases Tormenting thus born of some lingering bane. Yet at evening he found himself back, with the pain At his heart rather stupefied ; found himself ready To meet a gay welcome with nerves that were steady, And voice that could syllable badinage gay As the gayest, nor once by a tremor betray Any deep hidden feeling. That night, as the few Whom he daily had met, and thus pleasantly knew In such casual way, were about to take leave Of each other, he mentioned his going. " I grieve To announce that good-night must be also good-by In my own case," he said, " though I leave with a sigh Of regret that the summer so nearly is spent." "And you go in the morning? I think, Mr. Trent, You should kindly have told us your purpose, that we GEEALDINE. 157 Might prepare for the parting," said Isabel Lee With surprise well affected, her manner as free From all touch of restraint, and as simply well bred, As if never a tenderer word had been said Between this man and her. " We shall see you again Before winter ? " she asked ; and as commoner men Took the hand she extended, politely he took it In formal farewell, and as lightly forsook it, Determined to show that he also could cover All signs that might hint of his being a lover. " Perhaps. I have promised a night in November At L , and may call at that time. I remember My friends when I can," as if most to forget Were his custom exacting. Some words of regret From the others were spoken in courteous phrase. " I may meet you in Rivermet one of these days," Said the major, with manner as easy and hearty As if the brief sentence were not made a party To eager suspicion, and wish to detect Through the words, or their carefully noted effect, Any reason for Trent's early going. Unshaken And cool as the major himself, Trent had taken His leave of them all in a moment, and stood On the ample veranda alone. " Very good As a piece of lay acting, that was, I admit ; But there's something not hinted, I'm sure, under it," Major Mellen remarked by and by to the major, There being no other man near ; " and I '11 wager A box of Havanas that Bell has been flirting 158 GERALDINE. With Trent till he flees her with wound that is hurting Him hard. She can stab with most delicate art. Can it be that the girl ever had any heart? What a marvellous actress she 'd make ! She had known Of his plan for departure, of course, but has shown An indifferent ignorance mighty well feigned ; And there 's reason, I 'm certain. The man had remained Here a fortnight beyond his original date : He 'd have tarried a full fortnight longer, if fate Had not shown him his danger. He '11 shun Rivermet And Miss Geraldine Hope till this fair Juliet Be forgotten. And somehow you can't soon forget Such a woman," he added, with grimace that spoke Of unpleasant remembrance his language awoke. " It is well that I quietly published my going," Thought Trent, as he looked on the river deep flowing Before him, the night-breeze but tenderly kissing it. " Were 1 without the least word to be missing, it Might cause remark, and then gossip would say There was reason peculiar for going away. I suspect that the major, keen-scented, quick-eyed, Some hint of the truth has already descried : His allusion to Rivermet may have been wide Of all purpose he had, except simply to see If, in parting thus early from Isabel Lee, I should hasten to Geraldine Hope. Having heard Our reputed engagement discussed, it occurred To him, doubtless, that I have been guilty of treason." He felt his face flush in the dark, as if reason Were ample for such an unpleasant impression. " My self-respect once was my surest possession, I fancied : I 'm losing my grip on it fast. Can a future of duty deep cover this past GERALDINE. 159 So it cannot stare 'up at me pallid and white, Like the face of a friend unforgiving, whom quite I have killed with keen cruelty ? Can I still live My poor future so bravely, that self can forgive The sad wrong I have done it, and lift up its head As if shame were not living, and trust were not dead ? Yonder river runs tranquil and sweet as it glides To the sea ; but the ocean's unquenchable tides Are but bitterness all. Do I stand on the brink Of a sea as resistless and bitter, where sink The sweet hopes of these earlier years ? Must I sail By the compass of duty, though borne by a gale Of fierce passions to harbor unkind ? " So he mused And he questioned till midnight. His conscience refused The short comfort of sleep until well toward the morning. He rose in good time for the steamer, and scorning The pitiful weakness that so overpowered His strength, and compelled him to fly like a coward, He walked to the landing, and hastened aboard. As he sat on the deck, the glad sunrise restored Him in part to himself. He is wanton, in truth (Who is farther away from his age than his youth), Who can see the dawn flush, the horizon fast redden, The color burn into the skies that were leaden, The stars slip away into measureless spaces, The mountains grow rosy and glad as their faces Look sunward and catch the first smile of the day, And not thrill with the glory revealed, and not say In his heart a thanksgiving. The Islands quick faded In mellowest distance. The sunlight, unshaded By fleck of a cloud, or by film of a mist, 160 GEEALDINE. Lay across the broad river, and lovingly kissed Every ripple to laughter and silence. A spell Of enchanting content on the voyager fell : From this land of the real all gladly he turned To a country of dreams where they never have learned To forget and be wise. And the day wore along. When the quivering steamer dashed into the strong, Angry sweep of the rapids, Trent roused to the scene, And became, till it passed them, a spectator keen. Did they typify being, his being ? Must he From the currents of peace irresistibly flee To such wild buffetings ? Was there nothing before Like the beauty behind, where the rush and the roar Of this channel tempestuous early should fade Into murmurous music, JGolian made By the harp of his memory ? Eager and swift The boat flew to the beckoning billows that lift Far above the sharp ledges at anchor beneath, And that over a current so treacherous wreathe Into sparkle and foam. In the swirl and the sweep Of the waves, that so madly and merrily leap, They went madly and merrily downward careering, No anger of rock or of river once fearing, A spirited race as with water is run ! Where the silver St. Francis, asleep in the sun, Smiled them welcome unworded, they drifted from sound Into silence, a silence as sweet and profound . As is midsummer calm, and from struggle to rest. So there come to our lives, when we stand the hard test Of the billows that buffet us, reaches so still That we drift in delight with the current's calm will, GERALDINE. 161 And find peace. The broad lake of the river was smooth As the sky overhead, and its beauty might soothe Any trouble of soul. Far away on the left The low spire of St. Regis in peacefulness cleft The horizon of blue ; far away to the right The blue hills of the south faintly bounded the sight ; And before them the river's magnificence swept, As the steamer straight onward her patient way kept, To the narrower channels below. Here and there A stray water-fowl, lazily beating the air, Was the only suggestion of life beyond reach Of the vessel itself : if the silence had speech, It was only an echo of yesterday's life, Or it hinted, mayhap, of some possible strife Yet to be. As the sun was fast sinking, its flame Of white heat into rosy red burning, they came 11 162 GERALDINE. To the river's superlative charm, the La Chine. It is just a mad passion of waters between Two long levels of tranquil repose. The St. Lawrence Here dashes the majesty grand of its torrents Swift down the decline ; here it hurls them in wrath High above the rough ledges that torture its path ; Here it ripples and laughs, here it seethes and it surges, As on to St. Peter's sweet quiet it urges Its dangerous way ; here it dances and sings ; Here it pours and it roars, and its wild current flings Into spray ; here, with grandeur majestic, it sweeps O'er its breakers, and smooth and unbroken it leaps From the crest of the low cataract ; here it beats Into fury along the sharp headlands, retreats From its futile attack with the thunder of hate, And renews it again ; here it flies to the fate That awaits it, with passionate force ; here it lingers As if it were clasping compassionate fingers In loving farewell ; here it hurries and flashes, And scurries and gleams, and in mad columns crashes Against the high rocks that defy it insultingly ; Here it springs over the ledges exultingly, Breaks into foam, and goes merrily drifting And lifting, and leaping and plunging, and shifting From color to color, as if there were dyes Of all marvellous tints where it flashes and flies ; Here it lifts the stout prow that encounters it, sways it With terribly masterful will that betrays it Almost to disaster and death ; here you feel A quick shiver of fear course along the boat's keel, Till she struggles with pain like a person, and shudders With live apprehension, and writhes in her rudder's Strong hold, and leaps forward at length as if greeting Her moment of mastery, heart and soul beating GERALDINE. 163 With martyrlike purpose heroic : for here She may sail with the sky bending over her clear As a crystal, the winds in Euroclydon's caves All asleep, and yet meet as wild tempest as raves When the demon of storm his black anger has hurled O'er the waters, and God has forgotten the world. As he stood on the bow of the steamer, Trent saw The smooth waters uplift, as if swept by a flaw Of some wind that he felt not. A rift it appeared At the first ; but as to it they steadily neared, It grew angry and strong as the surf of the ocean : He saw the wild channels in wilder commotion, And heard their low thunder, more sullen and loud, Like a warning to venture no farther. The crowd Gathered round him, alert and intent. At the wheel, The grim face of their pilot, with muscles of steel Quick to answer command, was immovably set, Looking into the torrent beyond. As they met The first break of the water, a breathless suspense Came upon them, a fear that no human defence Could avail against madness like this. Through the leaping And boiling and thundering waves they went sweeping And surging, a sense as of rapidly sinking Within them, a tardy and cowardly shrinking From fury still madder to come. And yet faster They swept through this turbulent hell of disaster, Where ruin and wreck seem forever at home. Through the billows of green and the breakers of foam, Sinking down with a tremor and thrill o'er the ledges Beneath, and careening far over the edges Of cataracts highest, the stout vessel tossed Like a shell in the surf, its swift course often crossed 164 GEEALDINE. By the outjutting rocks that so cruelly waited To crush it, but always as happily fated To shun its hard foes, and each moment confounded By terrors yet greater. The thunders resounded In mightier music majestic ; the leap Of the waters was wilder and fiercer ; the sweep Of their desperate will conquered being and breath As the gasp of the dying is conquered by death. Still the pilot peered out on the tempest before, Undismayed by its terrible tumult and roar, And the captain stood silent and stern at his bells, . With a look as intense as if tolling farewells. 'Twas a mad, irresistible race with the devils Of furious flood, where their turbulent revels Are maddest, a race to remember as glorious, Once you have won it, and panting, victorious, Through its wild pleasure and peril at last To the tortuous channel below you have passed, And you know by the quieter waters, serene As the sunset, you safely have run thj3 La Chine. XVIII. RENT remained for a day, but to pay the brief call Of a tourist in passing, at gray Mon treal ; Then uneasy, uncertain, he walked the boat's deck That should land him next morning at quainter Quebec. Until late in the evening he paced up and down, Looking back on the walls of the vanishing town, Looking out on the opposite islands low lying In beauty of green, on the sky that was dyeing Itself in the crimson and scarlet and gold 166 GERALDINR Of the sunset, with eyes half indifferent. Cold To the color that warmed all about him, and glowed The glad heart like a dream of the tropics, he rode Through the lingering twilight, and into the dark. The dim shores faded out. A late fisherman's bark Came in call, and stole by like a ghost, with its sails Wing-and-wing, as if wooing the slumbering gales. Some hilarious raftsman, afar out of sight, Let his lusty-lunged laughter float out on the night Till it frightened the echoes. The passengers aft Over gossip and story occasional laughed, Till Trent listened in positive pain. He was lonely, And longing, and heartsick, as they can be only Who taste the one pleasure of life but to miss it, Who pine for the face of a friend, when to kiss it Would open the windows of heaven. He went in The deserted saloon, compensation to win For his loneliness there, if he could. Sitting down To the open piano, he hastened to drown His regrets and unrest in its magical flow. To his delicate touch it responded in low, Sympathetic sonatas, that lingered and thrilled On the sensitive ear, or in melodies filled With the wordless compassion of song. So he played As the mood was upon him. Some quiet ones made Their way in from the deck, and close up to his side ; But he heeded them not or his manner belied Any heeding. Enrapt in the harmonies rare, He could easy forget every trouble and care, All the common surroundings of time and of place. Through the sweetness of song, some enrapturing grace Breathed upon him its witchery soft, till he knew Neither doubt, nor misgiving, nor dread. Thus he grew GERALDINE. 167 To be soberly glad. Thus he sang, ere he ceased, In a strain that the gladness of singing increased, Of a lesson he learned from THE LIGHT IN THE EAST. I saw the day fade into darkness ; I saw the glow shade into gloom ; And I felt a great dread in my soul as I said, "Can the night bring a bud to its bloom? Can there ever be born a bright morrow Of sorrowful dark such as this? Will the sun ever shine with its glory divine, And the beauty and blessing I miss ? " I sat in my doubt half despairing; I knew not the way I should grope: So I wondered and wept by my hope as it slept, And I feared it the death of my hope. More deep was the darkness, and denser The gloom that enveloped me there ; And my faith grew so weak, it no longer could speak The sweet syllables shaping a prayer. O Father, forbearing and tender, Have mercy on souls that are dumb ! To their silence reply through the dark, " It is I ! " As in comforting love thou dost come. The need may be deepest that cries not For lack of strong agony's word : O Father, come near with thy comfort and cheer, And give answer as if thou hadst heard ! A bird singing low in the silence Brought healing for hurting to me : For I saw, looking far by the horizon bar, GERALDINK What the sons of men ever may see, The gloom of the midnight departing; The day, from its bondage released, Stealing up through the space, with a light on its face, The glad, wonderful light in the east. " The night of my vigil shall vanish," I sang with the song of the bird ; " For the sun never set on a yesterday yet, To rise on a morrow deferred. The dawn is as sure as the darkness, The pledge is as true as the boon; For the light in the east never failed us, nor ceased To make certain the morning and noon." As he sang in a barytone mellow and trained, With a feeling and thrill that were deeper than feigned, Many lingered and listened, and finally sighed, That a song so beguiling and glad should have died Into silence so soon. He arose and went out. He had sung himself back into peace from the doubt He had wrestled with so through the days. It might be That the morrow would wound him afresh : he was free From all weary besetments to-night. He could rest In the darkness untroubled by dread, and possessed By no fear for the end. The next- morning the height Of historic Cape Diamond first greeted his sight, And above the gray walls of the citadel hung The tricolor of Britain. A battle-ship swung By its anchor, asleep in the harbor below. The bright roofs of the city took dazzle and glow From the sun but just risen. Without haze, or the fleck Of a cloud, the sky shone upon silent Quebec. GERALDINE. 169 When the steamer swung round in the channel, and swept With some bustle and stir to her landing, he stepped From the New to the Old; for the centuries waited Here once, and since then have been always belated. As up to the gate from the river you climb, You go back a long cycle or two into time ; You see round you the life, and the works, and the ways Of the world in its ruder and ruddier days, When the color of being so readily run To the surface, that battle and pillage were done For the sake of the doing; when war was a thing To be studied and learned for the fame it should bring ; When the shedding of blood was a part of Christianity, Practised and preached for the good of humanity. 170 GEEALDINE. Please don't infer that they pillage and plunder To-day in the sleepy old town ; do not wonder If Trent beheld murder and rapine and lust As in wars mediaeval, where settles the dust Of the past undisturbed on a present too quiet To start a more valiant crusade than a riot. I made, it may be, an unfortunate reference, Too comprehensive and broad, out of deference Only, in fact, to the city's antiquity. History simply concedes the iniquity To it, 'tis true, of repelling long sieges, Defending the onset of loyalty's lieges, Withstanding the shock of the enemy's hosts, And compelled to see carnage unsought. But the ghosts Of dead heroes yet walk the high battlements round it ; Red fame has a place where men sought it and found it ; Still grim and defiant re-echo the guns That in silence have slept through a century's suns ; In the cry of the sentry a dim challenge calls Out of long-buried lips from the citadel walls ; The wild music of musketry breaks on the air, Where the garner is death for the gallant who dare ; And above all the present's calm quietude reigns The fierce tumult of strife upon Abraham's Plains. Through the quaint, crooked city our friend made his way, Searching out the things quaintest by night and by day ; Walking over the battle-field hard by the town ; From the parapets airy and bold, looking down ; Looking on at the garrison's dashing parade ; Idly watching the pride and the fashion displayed On the terrace ; or bowling right merrily on, Through the Gate of St. Charles or the Gate of St. John, GERALDINE. 171 In a rocking caleche, to the country that sleeps Beyond city and suburb at peace, or where leaps Montmorenci in beautiful haste to be wed With the wooing St. Lawrence. The life that he led For a week was the life of a dreamer unstirred By the impulse of action. He languidly heard The faint callings of duty, and answered them not. In the midst of such sleepy surroundings, forgot Was the wide-awake being and doing so near In his future. The lotos-blooms redolent here He would press to his lips, and forget. But he failed In forgetting. Regret his good purpose assailed, And wherever he went he was haunted by thought Of what had been and must be. His dreams ever caught The sweet flavor of emerald islands, the sheen Of the waves as they twain had long drifted between In those days of delight, and his sweetest repose Was a blessed remembrance. Most happy are those Who have only remembrances blessed ! who turn From no memories bitter, with feelings that burn Like a fire in the breast ! They have come to the garden Of paradise so without knowing it. Pardon For sins of the past cannot blesseder be Than in granting forgetfulness certain and free Of the sin put away, that henceforth it may never Stand ghostly and grim by the present's endeavor, And mock it, and make it afraid. Though the time Was so full of a dreamy content, to the rhyme Of each day a sad music was set, like a moan Amid mellowest laughter, a low undertone, Never ceasing, half heeded, half heard, but existent, 172 GEEALDINE. And paining the ear of the soul with persistent Continuance. Walk where he would, he could hear The low pulsing of pain far away, and yet near As the conscience within. He could never forget To the full of forgetting, so long as Regret Was his daily companion, rose with him at dawn, And sat with him at eve when the twilight was gone Till he bade her a weary good-night. At the end Of a week he took up delayed duty, and penned A long letter to Geraldine Hope. If it read ' Like his former epistles, but little it said Of the ardent affection of lovers, implying What might have been written, in no wise denying By evident lack what he often had told. While he wrote it, in fact, if the love had grown cold That he felt for her once, it was only, it seemed To himself, by comparison. Passion undreamed In its mastery, coming unheralded quite, Had not hidden this older love out of his sight As a thing very worthful and sweet. Are degrees With the heart so impossible ever ? Are these Who have burned the hot flame of fierce passion's desire To its ashes, no more to be warmed by the fire Of some calm-glowing feeling ? Believe it who will. You may sit by the blaze of your passion, and thrill With quick grief as it flickers, and falters, and dies ; But some day from the embers new color may rise Into glowing, and gladden you. Grieving is brief, Or the sum of this being were simply a grief. XIX. Y DEAR GERALDINE, "Pardon unwonted delay," So his letter began, " in my writing. Don't play At the brief indignation you never must feel At my gravest shortcomings, nor try to conceal The sweet fact that long silence has new revelation Of need. I 've been dreaming, and lacked animation For more. That 's the only excuse I can render. There's something that lurks in the crystalline splendor Of summer days here that I cannot explain ; It has proved, in my case, a most excellent bane For the poison of purpose to do. I have drifted From morning to night like the veriest gifted Do-nothing of genius, my only ambition To see, and to feel, and be glad. If the mission Of sunshine were ever performed as a healing And free soporific, in balminess stealing Through heart and through brain, and so lifting the weight Of hard duty and care, it is here. How the late Mellow twilights beguile to repose ! How the calm Of each morning seems pressing some opiate balm On the eyelids ! How earth in a beautiful swoon Seems to lie through the glow of each brief afternoon ! How the far-away mountains are hallowed with rest, 174 GEEALDINE, As if truly the summits of God ! How the west Into marvellous color and majesty glows, As the sun to his morrow magnificent goes Through a gateway of gold ! " You may say, if you choose, I am florid in feeling. I never shall lose Out of memory's life the week's rest I have known Here in quiet Quebec. When I weary am grown Amid duties to come, I shall dreamily drift Out of bustle and crowd, to the holiday gift A kind fortune has granted to have and to keep, And be sweetly refreshed as if gladdened by sleep. " Having been the whole round of the places historical Here, I might now, in a style paregorical (Sleepy, you know, like the air of the town), And with guide-pages handy, proceed to put down All the facts and the figures important. But no! You shall wait yet a year, and come with me, and grow Even wiser than I am concerning the place. Do I see a glad flush stealing over your face At the prospect so pleasant ? I like the half-blush That you wear at odd times, when you say I must hush Some fond nonsense or other. You 're prettiest then. Do not show the same blush to less fortunate men, Lest they envy me more ! "As for history here In the magical glow of to-day's atmosphere There is little but being historic. And yet, If I lounge on the Terrace when Fashion has set Its gay current there soon, I shall see as much pride As disports itself now on the popular side Of Broadway, New York, in this day of our Lord Eighteen hundred and blank. If I greatly abhorred GERALDINR 175 The Dame Fashion, I'd say with some bitterness mild, She was wrinkled and gray, even history's child ; And I 'd point you, in proof, to that notable twain Who began their existence in clothes rather plain, And became quite ashamed to be seen. But I '11 grant That the pride which so gayly would flutter and flaunt The fine trappings of dress is a modernized thing, And that over the picture the promenades fling A bright hue of the present, to lessen and lighten The half-sombre tint of the past, and to heighten The picturesque whole. " Yet you feel, when you stand On the parapet yonder, as though in a land 176 GERALDINK Of dim yesterdays fled ; and you walk the quaint street As if certain some knight mediaeval to meet ; And you listen to Mass in the Jesuit piles > Of the priests, as if monks moved about in the aisles From the far Middle Ages. " Poor priest-ridden people ! If only there lifted some truth-telling steeple To point the true way they must go ! But the spire Of the Jesuit seldom points heavenward higher Than head of the prelate or priest; and the soul Of the dead or the dying must pay proper toll, Or go seeking its paradise long. In this dreary Sahara of doubt the one spot that is cheery And vernal alone is the Virgin. Dear Mother Of Christ! Because each, in believing, his brother Becomes, we may hallow her thus with our love As the mother of all ; but before and above The sweet mother Madonna forever is Christ; And whoever from worshipping him is enticed To a less adoration, while walking the way Of a faith without fruitage, must penalty pay, And not penance. Some paintings a worthy grace give To the Virgin; but Christ as an infant must live In the arms of the mother Madonna, or hang From the cross where he died with the crucifix pang On his face, as the Jesuits have it, instead Of ascending on high, from his place with the dead, And remaining a Saviour for all, with no need Of a priest to stand up, and with him intercede For the seeking and penitent. " Battle-fields teach Many lessons. The monuments on them may preach A wise gospel that calls for no shedding of gore. On the plains where the men of Montcalm fled before GERALDINE. 177 The wild charge of their foes, is the legend, 'Here died Wolfe victorious.' Life is a battle-field wide, And we fight for the right or the wrong till the end. I have wondered how many who fall, iny dear friend, Are the victors, how many go down to defeat, Never gaining the victory certain and sweet, But discouraged, disheartened, dismayed. Marble shaft Never rises above them; no spring where they quaffed The last cup of refreshing is pointed to those Who still linger, and face the fierce onset of foes That the world never sees; but they slumber unsung, And are silent forever. God pity the tongue That prays feebly for help from defeat at the last, When it ought to be singing thanksgiving, as fast It sinks down into silence ! I think it were blest Tims to die like this soldier of fortune, who pressed To his lips a clear draught from the spring, and then went Into rest, let us hope, with a warrior's content, Having won. But he won as must all, having fought Like a faithful and true knight of God. Had he sought Cheaper victory, doubtless defeat would have robbed Him of glory and fame. Never faithfulness throbbed Out of life into death without recompense just, Though it come when the heart is but ashes and dust. 12 178 GEEALDINE. " But I '11 spare you philosophy further. Please credit This much to the mood of my pen, that but led it Astray. " I have lingered here longer than most Of the sight-seers do, who 'from pillar to post' Hurry on as if fevered with haste. By and by, In the sweetest of leisure indeed, you and I Will thus tarry untroubled, unhurried, together, And paradise find in this marvellous weather. To-morrow I leave for the Saguenay, far Down the river, and up where the solitudes are. I have made Montmorenci a visit to-day For the last, and shall list to the exquisite play Of its murmurous music no more, lest I listen In dreams. Where its waters gleam ever and glisten, Like showers of pearls in the sun, I have laid Half the day full of dreamy delight. The cascade Partly faces the town; but a leisure hour's ride Down the river's left bank, yet unseen from the side, You approach it. In front, between it and the stream It is leaping to meet, is the vision supreme Of its beauty. A green, grassy point there invites you To linger and gaze, and with gazing delights you ; For yonder the play of the waters is sweet As the sunlight that silvers the foam at your feet ; Their loud thunder has lost all its resonant ring, And in murmurs ^Eolian softly they sing Through the distance between ; like white gossamer lace They droop down the precipitous deep, with the grace Of a bridal veil gleaming with gems. You could linger In rapt fascination forever, the finger Of silence laid soft on your lips, that you might Ne'er attempt the expression in words of delight Inexpressible. GEEALDINE. 179 " Yonder, with beautiful smile, The St. Lawrence sweeps onward, and kisses the Isle Of Orleans like a lover, and fondly embraces it; Turn half around from the falls, and one faces it, River of silver and island of green, A pure emerald set in a circlet of sheen, A fair picture of peace as man ever has seen. On the opposite side are the cottages low Of the poor habitans, an irregular row, Running nigh to the dim water-line ; far beyond, In the yet dimmer distance, the sky bending fond To caress them, the mountain-tops blend with the blue, And your vision has bounded the reach of the view. Turn again to the right and the west, and you gaze On the slumbering city, its roofs all ablaze 180 GERALDINE. In the sunshine, and flooding its soberer grays With a tropical glory ; its batteries, grim And defiant as hate, become mellow and dim In the distance ; its rugged and angular steeps Sloping gently and soft to the river that sleeps At their base; and above, the red cross of St. George From the citadel flung. " I have sat by the gorge Which the point overlooks, so enraptured and charmed By the scene, that my driver no doubt was alarmed For his fare, apprehensive that I would attempt To slip off as a suicide, going exempt From the fees common visitors pay. As I stayed There to-day, and the fall sweeter melodies played In farewell, I wrote thus of THE SUNNY CASCADE. Fair Montmorenci gleaming go.es Adown its dim defiles : In nooks no human vision knows, Its tricksy current laughing flows, Flash out its silver smiles. Far up amid dim mountain dells, It drinks from crystal springs : Of cooling rills and mountain wells It gayly sips, and gladly tells, As free it leaps and sings. It lingers long in quiet grots Where bending birches weep : Where bloom the blue forget-me-nots Along the warm and sunny spots, It sings itself to sleep. GERALDINE. 181 It wakes to laugh at foaming rift, And flies with merry glee Adown the swirling rapid swift, Where mossy walls in wonder lift Their whitening heads to see. It sinks to rest by pleasant shades Where meadow-reaches run, Or gleams coquettish through the glades Where long it mirrored dusky maids Who dusky warriors won. And rousing soon to rougher ways, It sports through rocky fen, Where bright the sunlight streams and plays Within the lonely woodland maze, And longs for haunts of men. Then down the wider steep it flies With eager, hastening feet, And sweet complaint for smiling skies, To leap with laughter and surprise, And glad its wooer greet. Serene the broad St. Lawrence flows, Yet winning with its smiles ; And Montmorenci gleaming goes In joy to wed its sweet repose Where bliss alone beguiles. Forever down its dizzy height The cascade sunny leaps, Its waters robed in angel white, Its song an anthem of delight From heaven's own azure deeps. 182 GERALDINE. Its pearly spray, to diamonds kissed, Plays truant with the breeze ; And on it borne as lightest mist, In flush of gold and amethyst, It seeks the sunset seas. The fleecy foam in beauty falls To hide the bare abyss; From out its dripping cavern-halls A witching Undine laughing calls To win her lover's kiss. And ever on in sportive race Fair Montmorenci runs ; Forever changing all the grace That wimples on its smiling face, Yet changeless as the sun's. " I must bid you adieu till each other we see, When my roving vacation has gone, vis-d-vis" And he signed himself brief, in a style that was meant To seem loving as ever, " Your " PERCIVAL TRENT." XX. AJOR MELLEN had business or pleas ure again, Or it may have been both, down at Rivermet, when He returned from his summer's diver sion. He made A long call upon Geraldine Hope, and he played In the crudest way with her peace. She acquitted Him, true, of deliberate wish that admitted Such torture to her: she could scarce have believed That with purpose prepense he would idly have grieved Her as now. She accepted the pain that he gave With a patient acceptance, submissive, and brave. And withal she was glad that he came ; for he brought A great blessing of comfort at first; and it caught Her up, willing and weak, in the shock of its flow, Overcoming her quite. " I can never forego Paying tribute to friendship as pleasant as yours," He remarked, " and the business is kind that insures Opportunity easy. I'm barely returned From the River St. Lawrence, all blistered and burned By the sun, as you see. We have had a month's leisuring, Filled running over with vagabond pleasuring, 184 GERALDINE. Sandwiched with some of gay fashion's formalities, Spiced with- a few of flirtation's dualities. Jolliest company, too, that I ever Was out with, and rather uncommonly clever." " You must have been fortunate, major," she said As he paused, though she felt that the color had fled From her face. " Well, I was : it 's my normal condition, You know," and he laughed, as if every ambition He knew had been gratified. " When a man chooses To waste a few weeks doing nothing, he loses His temper as well as his time, if the rest Who should aid him in laudable ways are possessed Of the devils of social discomfort. They tear Very many, Miss Hope, I am willing to swear On the word of a man who has studied them well: They are devils of which there 's no record to tell Out of whom or of what they were cast. It may be They went down with the swine to their bath in the sea, And escaped with their piggish propensities, grunting At every experience, always affronting Your pleasure and patience. There can't be a place That is better for lifting the mask from the face Of a character rude than half-roughing it where The good-humor and fun are a part of the fare. There were none in our set with whom grumbling was chronic ; No one of us bored all the rest with Byronic Quotations and sentiments ; nobody flung A wet blanket of sneers from the loom of his tongue Till he chilled the whole company ; all were discreet And gt)od-natured, forbearing and wise, as is meet For a party of idlers like ours. Even I In deportment, I fancy, was rated as high GEEALDINE. 185 As the others unless it were Trent." As he named Her beloved, it seemed he had purposely aimed A keen arrow to enter her bosom. She gasped As if panting for air, and convulsively clasped Her hands close in unheeded beseeching. "He carried The honors off easy or would had he tarried As long as the rest. Your good fellows who sing, And who play, and make speeches, and do everything As if that were their forte, have the best of us noodles Who count with the ladies about as their poodles, Poor curs, our one talent the meek one of following, Led by a string. When I see women swallowing Music like Trent's, with their hearts in their faces, As ready to yield him their love and embraces As even to listen and praise, I am vexed That with dower so meagre I ever was sexed With the males. It 's discouraging, is n't it ? " Waiting No answer, not stayed by the half-hesitating Appeal that spoke out of her face, he asserted : " If ever coquettes have outrageously flirted With men, it is men of his fortunate class. The less charming ones they are content to let pass In the main, as not worthy their wickedest wiles, And we get what I call their superfluous smiles. We are lucky, perhaps, after all, in not knowing The sharpest effects of their skill, and in going Unscathed when the cleverer fellows are showing Sore injury." White to her lips, and in tones That were trembling, and swift might have sunk into moans, She besought revelation of mystery hinted 186 GERALDINE. At thus in his words. "'The Palladium' printed A paragraph, saying your friends had been drowned." " So I 've heard. They were caught in a storm, and we found Their boat empty and broken the following day, After searching for hours. The quick journalist's way Was to telegraph promptly their death. When they came Back alive, as they did, they were rather to blame For denying a fact: so the newspaper said Nothing of it, and silently left them for dead." The hard ring of his sentence sarcastic was much Like a dash of cool water when fainting : its touch Gave her strength. Yet her heart appeared swelling to burst, And her lips were as dry as if parching with thirst ; And a great dizziness overcame her so nearly, She whispered a prayer. " Percy Trent's case was clearly A desperate one after that. So romantic Conditions must plunge a man in the Atlantic Of love beyond rescue. He fled from his fate Like the coward all men are with flirts. I should hate To be hit in the heart as he 's been ; for these poets Take hard any hurt of that kind, though I know it's Quick over with often. He '11 write better verse After this ; and his life will not be any worse For the blow she has dealt him." "You think Mrs. Lee Is unmerciful then?" " Yes. I know her to be A coquette of the wickedest, once she attempts Any conquest in earnest. She kindly exempts From her efforts all average men, for they sicken GERALDINE. Her soon ; but a man of some genius can quicken The strongest allurements within her. She gives Herself cheerfully over to winning him; lives In the pleasure she finds in her growing success; Leads him on in the quietest fashion, with less 187 Of apparent desire than indifference; wins All his worship, and stabs him." "And wickedly sins Against womanhood," warmly she answered him, throbbing Her heart through her speech. " There can never be robbing More wanton than takes of the treasure of life For the taking, then presses keen Cruelty's knife To the vitals, and leaves it." "The stab never reaches So deep as that quite, and the victim beseeches 188 GERALDINK A cure from some sister of mercy. The curate Her ministry finishes. All must endure it, The wound and the treatment, I mean." And he sneered In his cynical fashion. She trembled, and feared To reply. " As for Trent," he continued, sarcastic Yet earnest, "his love, I believe, is elastic Enough to rebound from the bitterest strain. He will weaken awhile with the shock and the pain ; But in time he will marry that sister of mercy, Who never may dream that the poems her Percy Produces hereafter take color and tone From a love that was earlier born than her own. It's the way of the world. When with kisses we wed, We have stood by the grave of some passion, and shed The hot tears of forgetting." "You speak for the men, It may be;" and she rallied indignantly then. " Men may love and forget : women love till they die." " Then they stand at the altar, I fear, with a lie On their lips many times," he responded. "The chances Don't favor fulfilment of early romances. We're creatures of fate, or of hard circumstances That govern us, come between us and the kindest Conditions of being, and lead in the blindest Of paths. Women do with their love as they must ; And the truest of faith, the sublimest of trust, Cannot yield the full fruitage of love absolutely And ever. A woman may love when she mutely Must look her farewell. If she never forgets, She pays penalty twice, in her love and regrets, For the sex that compels her to silence. She ought GERALDINE. 189 To have recompense rare for a fact that is fraught With unfairness the greatest, the fact that avers A man's freedom of speech, and then robs her of hers. But suppose she were granted like freedom of voice, It might chance that she make an unfortunate choice, And win only refusal, and go disappointed Away, as the men do, you know. It's disjointed And cruel and wrong, if the woman must cling To her love when it comes to be only a sting And a weariness to her." He spoke with a ban On his flippant expression, that frequently ran To severity reckless. If ever sincere And believing, he seemed to be now. " You appear Full of sympathy, major, for women who fail To find sweetness in loving," she said ; and her pale Cheeks were glowing with color returned. " You would make Of their love but a fancy short-lived, for the sake Of in charity sparing them pain. You contend That love blooms like an annual, ready to lend Of its fragrance to him who will water it well When its winter of grief has gone by. You compel A belief that we love as we like, and our fancies Are cherished or dropped as the fortunate chances Of being direct. But I cannot accept Such a theory. Granted that women have wept Bitter tears, and then wiped them away, and then carried A smile for their friends, even say that they married, And grew into matrons with faces like saints For the happy light in them, and made no complaints Of the past, I believe they remembered, and knew That they never could wholly forget, and were true To the law of their natures. God made us to love; 190 GEEALDINE. And we love for a purpose beyond and above The mere loving. Some discipline comes to us, up From the dregs that are found in the bitterest cup, That we never should learn, did we drink and forget." She was smiling, with tears in her eyes, that she let Slip away unawares down her beautiful cheeks, And the major observed them. " Who foolishly seeks To convince any woman," he said, "must repent And be silent, or soon be convinced. I 'm content To admit you the argument, since you appeal To economies only your faith can reveal, And my questioning doubts. Divine purposes blind Me wherever I turn. Where they seem to you kind, They appear to me cruel. One loves and is glad, And another goes out from her paradise sad. And in sorrow she ought to forget; and you say She must always remember, for this is the way That her Maker has ordered. He brings her, you think, A deep draught the most bitter, and bids her to drink ; And she never may sweet enough happily sip To remove the bad taste that is left on her lip. It is better to drink and forget, as men do Who sip kisses of comfort, devotedly woo Where 't is easy to win, and make matches at last For the happy-faced matrons who cling to their past Without evident grieving." His words had the ring Of fine irony in them. " Some bitter draughts bring Their own subsequent sweetness," she answered. " The taste May grow pleasanter to us, though never effaced : It may lose all its bitterness even, and leave GEEALDINE. 191 Little more than the kiss of a friend. We may grieve, And be glad even while we remember ; for God Will be kind, I am sure, and will spare us the rod Of a wretched remembrance when once we have learned What his wisdom would teach. He has tenderly turned Many Marahs to wells of refreshing and strength. I believe every heart can find gladness at length In the faith that all lessons of God are as good As the Master himself." " And no reasoning could Be so strong as your faith," he replied. " I should know It were idle to challenge that. Since I must go Very soon, I'll admit I am vanquished." He laughed In his easy and spirited way, and with craft And with cunning address he diverted their speech Into other relations; yet often the reach Of his cynical comment was cruel and keen, As with utterance sharp it went flashing between A half-credence and ready denial. He spared Nothing reverent now from allusion that dared To be lightly irreverent, measured and mocked The pretences of creed and profession, and talked Like the doubter he was. Many heard him, and felt A quick shrinking and pain from the blows that he dealt Without mercy wherever he went ; but the most Only laughed at his wit and the half-hidden boast In his words of a wise unbelief, and took pleasure In hearing him. Gifted with insight to measure The feelings that shyly kept silence, he sounded The shallows of conscience and motive, and bounded The average purpose with ready precision, Then singled them out for sarcastic derision, 192 GERALDINK And sneered at their shame. When at length he had ended His call, and, with delicate lightness intended To soften his previous words, he had said An adieu, the mixed feelings of Geraldine led To as mingled expression. She wept, and she smiled Amid weeping. She uttered her thanks, like a child In return for a token surprising, to Him Who had spared her beloved. With eyes growing dim, And with language that faltered, she prayed him to keep Her beloved as hers, that none other might creep In between her warm heart and his own, that their ways Might be never divided. She prayed, as he prays For his soul who is losing it, pleading, with pain, That she never might know the wild longing and vain Of a love unrequited. She whispered the name Of her lover in tenderness sweet (though it came Through her tears) in the confidence always she gave To her Lord, and besought him in mercy to save Them from drifting apart. Yet her heart by and by, In the midst of her need and her longing, could cry, " Let it be as thou wilt, loving Father ; for mine Is the weakness of love, but the wisdom is thine." XXI. the late summer's glory that softly suffused All the world, Percy Trent idly, dream ily cruised Down the River St. Lawrence. The wonderful sweep Of its waters grew wider and grander. The sleep Of the sunlight upon them, unstirred by a dream Of wild passion, was sweetly unbroken. Supreme In majestical beauty the river rolled far, Through a land where the deepest of solitudes are, On its widening course to the sea. In the mood Of its marvellous peace, that serenely did brood O'er the scene, he went sailing away to content. When the afternoon lengthened, and day was far spent, They caught sight of Cocouna, where wealthy Canadians Saunter in summer like happy Arcadians. Trim and white-visaged, it sat on the shore, Miles remote from the steamer that steadily bore For the Saguenay's mouth, far across; and it seemed Like a city set low in the sky, as it gleamed On the crystal horizon, a city of cloud, Far away from the din and the fret of the crowd, In some country of silence. 13 194 GERALDINE. At Tadousac's wharf They made landing, and tarried to look at its dwarf Of a church, and the relics of centuries dead. Pretty Tadousac out of its stillness has said Not a word for the foreigner's hearing. It hides In its modesty shy where the Saguenay's tides Pour their inkiness into the mightier flow Of St. Lawrence ; and none of its quiet can know, And the charm of its solitude strange, till they stand On the beautiful beach, where its delicate sand Ever tempts the most delicate feet to a bath, Or go straying alone by some vine-hidden path To the bluffs overlooking the river and bay. In the dark of the waters, white porpoises play, And make merrily bright the tranquillity there ; But no music of birds is borne out on the air, Arid no whirring of spindles, no clangor of steel, And no screaming of whistles, make frequent appeal To your sense of activity. Languor and rest Are as opiates here ; and the common behest To a laborer's brain and his wearying heart, To arise, and in duty and doing take part, Is a whisper unheard, where the speech of the time Is in whispers, with rest for its rhythm and its rhyme. In the deeper and mellower hush of the night, Amid shadows that shut the wide world out of sight, They went sailing northwest. The next morning at seven The Bay of Sweet Laughter, that looks up to heaven Untroubled and glad, sunny Ha-Ha, gave greeting With smiles of surprise. As the morning sped, fleeting As mornings of pleasure and peace ever seem, The sharp bow of the steamer was set down the stream, And they sailed with the tide through the silence. A shell GERALDINE. 195 Of pure pearl was the sky overhead, and it fell In its purity silvern and white to the hills On the left and the right. If the Lord ever stills A fierce tempest of feeling run high in the breast, With the might of his word to an infinite rest, It is here. If the silence of God ever falls In its tenderness down on the world from the walls Of the City of Gold, they have known it who sailed Through the Saguenay's stillness. No mariner hailed Their approach, and no fisherman shouted his word Of salute. The soft calm of the air never stirred To harsh utterance here, or the wing of a bird Flying wearily home to his nest-keeping mate. From the bold, rocky heights that were grim, desolate, 196 GERALDINE. And untenanted, bounding the river's deep black From the sunny Ha-Ha to the quaint Tadousac, Never came to their ears or their vision a sound Or a signal the solitude deep and profound To disturb. Cape Eternity, grandly uprearing Its dome to the azure, invited their nearing, And thrilled them with awe of its might so tremendous. Cape Trinity, opposite, lifted stupendous And mighty its masses of granite to greet The sublimity facing it. Majesties meet In no kinglier fashion than these, as they tower Far into the deep of the blue in their power Titanic, from out the deep blackness below ; And no gloomier depths in their sombreness flow To the sea than the deeps of these desolate capes, That in silent solemnity cover their shapes Half the altitude marvellous. Sailing beside Their huge granite upheavals, the pomp and the pride Of humanity fade to forgetting, in awe Of the Infinite Presence that never man saw But on mountains majestic and lonely. The lift Of their faces is Godward ; and sudden and swift Is the leap of our thought from each adamant crown To the Spirit eternal that loving bends down With a glad benediction forever. Too soon Came the close of that sheeny and bright afternoon As they sailed down the river of silence. The sweetest And gladdest of days is forever the fleetest : It slips into yesterday's arms, and we say A good-night to its pleasure and peace in the gray Of a twilight that will not forbear. If it take Of our heart's-ease, and cruelly leave but the ache GERALDINE. 197 Of disquietude, hunger, and longing, what need That we wonder and grieve? They are blesse'd indeed Who their faces have steadily set from the past, And who will not look back. The next morn they made fast To the wharf at Quebec, and Trent hastened by rail To the hills of New Hampshire. A summer day's sail Has its charm for the soul in disquiet: the ills Of unrest are forgot in the calm of the hills Everlasting. Who walks where their grandeur uprears Should be glad with a hallowing gladness that cheers Like a word of the Lord never lost. In the strength Of their masterful quiet and glory, at length He should stand as do they, with their face to the throne Of their Maker, in patience, and wait. As alone Though the mountains he wandered uplifted, his soul Catching glimpses beyond of the land of its goal, He was near to content. He could muse, in a mood Of serene exaltation, on passion that wooed Him astray from the pathway of duty, nor shrink From the wearisome way he must journey, nor think Bitter things of himself. In this mood he could lie On the sunniest slope, see the fleets of the $ky In their fleecy white silence float dreamily by, See the thistledown drifting at peace on the air, Hear the tinkle of bells far below him, and care For no morrow of possible pain. Yet aware Of the days that awaited, nor happily blind To their certain unrest, though now calmly resigned In a willingness patient, he stayed to behold The glad summer in garments of scarlet and gold Proudly decking herself in the early September, 198 GEEALDINE. While sweetly she tarried in dreams to remember. Ere leaving, the mountain-top highest he climbed, And with vivid and sorrowful prophecy rhymed, Out of vision unclouded, and quieted fears, And pathetic concern, of THE VALLEY OF TEARS. If I climb to the mountains of gladness, And bask in the sunshine of bliss, If unheeding all sorrow and sadness, Forgetting the good that I miss, I look out from my uplands of being Across the broad reach of the years, I grow tenderly sober at seejng The shadowy Valley of Tears. It is never quite lost to my vision, Though often beyond it I see The green slopes of the summits elysian That wait with their blessing for me; And, though often I long for the freedom That yonder eternally reigns, I remember that each has his Edom Before the glad Canaan he gains. When my heart with tumultuous throbbing Takes up the sad burdens of men, I go down amid sighing and sobbing, And walk the dim valley again: A sober, sepulchral procession We make as we journey along. With a grief for our only possession, A funeral dirge for our song. GEEALDINE. 199 i There are willows above us low bending, That weep with us over our woe ; And the mist of the mountains, descending, Bedews all the way as we go. In the dark of our dubious grieving We walk as if stars had gone out, And our souls were grown sick of believing The morrow were more than a doubt. There are hearts, with their hunger pathetic, That walk in the Valley of Tears; There are souls, in their sadness ascetic, That 'linger and grieve through the years; There are loves that come silently hither To seek for some treasure of cost, And that mourn, as a bairn for its mither, The wonderful love that is lost. There are many who wait and who wander Within the dim valley with me, And who yearn for the mountain-tops yonder, The sunlight and gladness to see ; But a stranger I look in their faces, And strangers they look into mine; And as strangers we grope for the places Where sunlight and gladness may shine. For who walks in the valley so lonely Goes there in his sorrow alone ; And who gives friendly greeting gives only For bread to the hungry a stone. They may touch us whose yesterdays tender Made loving and living supreme; But our grieving refuses surrender, And friendship was only a dream. 200 GERALDINR I am far up the mountains of being: The mists of the morning below In their beauty shut out from my seeing The valley where soon I must go; But I know, though the sun of my hoping May shine with a gladness that cheers, That I soon shall be wearily groping My way in the Valley of Tears. You may smile on the summits of gladness Who never have wept at their base ; But in time with the garment of sadness You closely will cover your face ; And unknown of the many who wander, Unknowing as they are unknown, You shall grope for the radiance yonder Across the dark valley alone. Amid pitiful sobbing and sighing Where willows and cypresses bend, You shall walk where the shadows are lying, And see not a sign of the end: You shall know, by the twilight unbroken When morn on the mountain appears, You have come, without warning or token, At length to the Valley of Tears. XXII. HEN she read the long letter of Per- cival Trent, Loving Geraldine Hope of her ten derness lent To its words, and they gladdened her. Still he was hers In possession the truest. No doubt ever stirs The fond heart to keen throbbings of pain, but is stilled By repeated assurance of love. Never thrilled Any love with the pang of distrust, but could glow With the gladness of faith come again, like the flow Of a tide that has ebbed. But a striking omission She saw by and by, that began to condition Her happiness new. Not a word had he penned Of his late episode : from beginning to end There was not an allusion, in fact, to his friend Mrs. Lee. It was plain that he could not have known Of the published report of their death that had flown With such cruelty to her; more bitterly certain It seemed that his silence had drawn a thick curtain Between her and part of his past. She resented His action at first, and then swiftly repented The feeling she had not expressed ; for he knew What was best for them both, and in kindness he drew 202 GEEALDINE. Any veil that might hide her from seeing. Till he Should the curtain uplift, she would reverent be, Nor profane it with curious touch. She could wait, In the patience of prodigal love, for the late Revelation that love would compel. If it never Were made, if by strange providence she must ever Relinquish the love that could make it, perchance In a clearer to-morrow the dark circumstance Would light up into blessing. God knew. If she came In the trust of her faith to a pitiful blame Of her love, to a fear that so worthful and sweet An incoming as this in her life were not meet For the Master's approval, or, tearful, to ask If he chose to place on her the pain-giving task Of upyielding it, could she obedient lay The dear sacrifice on the Lord's altar, and say, "I have given thee, Lord, all the sweetest and best That is mine"? if the loss of her love, as a test Of her love for the Master, came to her at length, And she struggled and doubted and wept till the strength Of her faith overpowered her heart, be not swift To assert that she lacked the great womanly gift Of deep loving; and wait till all women you learn, Ere you doubt if the heart of a woman can turn, When the weakness and longing of love make it falter, And give of its riches unspared on the altar Of God. There are heroines kneeling alone In their Holy of holies, or sitting unknown Where the multitudes worship, whose offerings, made In the silence of faith seldom doubting, have paid Dearer tribute than incense of patriarchs. Laid, With the lingering touches of womanhood tender, GERALDINE. 203 In tearful but cheerful and hallowed surrender Before the veiled face of their Lord as he waited, Such offerings precious and costly were fated To pleasure him better than blood, and to win Recognition as precious. They only begin To approximate love, who in selfishness sin By withholding its wonderful treasure and sweetness, And hindering so the perfected completeness Of full consecration. And Geraldine felt All the deepest assertion of love when she knelt And said, "Lord, if this thing that to me is so dear Has been wrong in thy sight, let me hallow it here With iny tears of upgiving, and yield it to thee To do with as thou wilt." She could generous be With the Master, not doling him meagrely out Of her poverty's wicked withholding and doubt, But as lavishly yielding her riches, and knowing The best she could give must be beggarly showing To God, the one Giver of all. Though she gave With a liberal heart, that was noble and brave, She well knew that the end was not won in her giving; That sacrifice sweetest to God is a living Obedience daily, when truly obeying Is harder than praise, and more costly than praying. She knew, if the Lord should her offering take, She must make it complete through the lingering ache Of her heart in the wearying days to be met; That the Lord could not mean her to drink and forget, If he gave her the cup. She was human ; she rose To no saint-nature, clad in angelic repose, In this crisis of faith : and how strongly she kept Her humanity weak could be seen as she wept 204 GERALDINE. For the love she might lose. In the time intervening Ere Percival Trent came again, the full meaning Of painful expectancy blossomed, and bore Bitter fruit in her life. Now, as never before, She was wearied and troubled of soul. For the rest Of content she could sobbingly pray ; but its blest Benediction should come as the Master bestowed. Though she longed for the peace like a river that flowed, She but caught an occasional draught from its brink, As her thirsty soul pined, even panted, to drink To its measureless blessing. When Trent came at last, From her wearisome doubting and fearing she passed To a loving acceptance of good in to-day. GERALDINE. 205 She made glad, in her simple and beautiful way, His return to her love. He was hers once again, The one prince of her heart mid the nobles of men. She would trust till he told her to doubt; she would show How she trusted and loved till he made her to know He must fail of requital. Perchance, if he cared For another, her love, if it maidenly dared To give new revelation of being, would lure Him away from his fancy to faithfulness sure. Could the Father forbid an endeavor so pure, And deny it success? Could the semblance of sin Be in any beguiling made only to win And to keep what she felt to be hers ? Worthy winning It was ; and the Father such dutiful sinning Would quickly forgive. Do you wonder that Trent For a time could believe the strong passion was spent He had wrestled with so? He had come from the hills, With their peace fresh upon him, their masterful wills Overmastering feverish impulse. He came Full of purposes faithful, and penitent shame Of his former unfaith, to be loyal and true; And he stood by her side, undeserving, he knew, With no wish beyond happiness present, believing, In blind, willing credence, that folly's brief grieving Was ended. She helped his belief with her sweet Declarations unsyllabled. Passion's defeat, With the aid that she brought him, so timely and tender, Yet strong, was complete, or so seemed. Its surrender He smiled at in strength over-rated. They talked In the language of lovers ; as lovers they walked Where the waters run seaward by Rivermet's side, To behold the tall maples in radiance dyed 206 GERALDINE. Like the robes of a queen; and, if peace were denied In superlative measure, these twain, who received Of its blessing more moderate, fondly believed It enough. When some good we have craved appears less Than will meet our desire, we are prone to possess The full bounty in easy imaginings, cheating Ourselves that we may not be cheated, repeating The pretty delusion, and letting it seem To be fact : so we make of our moments supreme A half-fiction, the truth very deftly disguising That great expectation may be most surprising In lack of fulfilment. Poor dolts that we are Thus to carry our covetous folly so far' XXIII. N November, Trent lectured at L . Mrs. Lee Was again the one hearer responsive to see, Of all present, in scanning the crowd at the Hall. He was moved by the current mag netic, and all The quick feeling begot by a look in her face. They who listened were stirred by the magical grace Of his speech, as he never had stirred them before. In the musical ring of his words there was more Of a sympathy deep than he knew, or than those Whom it thrilled could define or describe. At the close Of his lecture she came to him, came as the rest, Who with greeting and compliment's flattery pressed To his side ; and they met in the casual way Of a common acquaintance, with courteous play Of inquiry and answer. The major took part In their meeting, and studied them both with the art He had mastered so well ; but no secret he read Of their innermost holding. Their manner but said They were friends without interest deeper. They went From the Hall as together they gossiped; and Trent 208 GERALDINE. In her company supped, with the major. If either Was thrilled by the strongest remembrances, neither Gave sign. Conversation was easy, and ranged From the grave to the gay at its will. They exchanged Merry trifles of wit in the merriest fashion; And none could have guessed that a powerful passion Hid under such trivial speech and composure So perfect. In vain for some look of disclosure, Some word of deep meaning, the major made scrutiny Keenest. Swift passion was dead, or its mutiny Conquered by resolute will. And yet, leaving To seek his hotel, in a partial deceiving Of self as to feeling aroused, and believing Too much in his strength to make safe his belief in it, Percival Trent was unhappy. The grief in it, Subtle, deep-seated, and dimly defined As a grief, with a robbery keenly unkind, Took away from his evening's endeavor the glad Sense of triumph. He walked the still streets with a sad Recognition slow forcing itself on his soul, That the glamour of public approval is dole But the poorest for peace of the heart. The next morning, Regardless of silent yet forcible warning Against it, he called on his friend; and she met him With charming serenity graceful that set him To wondering. Could it be she whom he heard, When her feeling had swift every syllable stirred With deep fervor, confessing a love too supreme For denial, or silence, or death? Did he dream She had lain on his breast, with her heart to his own, In & bliss of possession too sensitive grown To be painless ? Was this the same woman who spoke GERALDINK 209 Of her wilderness barren and lonely, and woke His quick passion's response ? Was her winning repose Like a calm of the tropics deceptive, that glows With the heat underneath it to hurricane wild ? She received him with beautiful grace, that beguiled Him anew. The warm grasp of her lingering hand Within his, like a breath upon dark embers, fanned His swift feeling to flame ; but he struggled to hold As serene a demeanor as hers, and controlled Himself well. Without blushes, or faintest betraying Of passionate force that was meetly delaying Assertion, she talked like a woman long wed With content, far removed from the girl who has said Her first loving confessional. Part of the harm She might do to a heart was hid under the charm So elusive, that spoke of conditions beyond Idle feminine art, or superfluous fond Demonstration. His lecture she praised with a keen Apprehension of meanings and truths ; and between Her sweet flatteries gave with a friendly temerity Critical words that declared her sincerity, Making the light of her praise appear strong By the shade of her delicate frankness. As long As it pleased her, they talked of the commoner things Of experience, shunning the sensitive springs That can open the heart ; or discoursed of the newest Attemptings in prose and in verse, and the truest Successes of those who had won. She appealed To the poesy in him expression to yield With the power and art he might master, and give Out of gifts that were his a few poems to live, And win laurels undying. 14 210 GERALDINE. " I honor the gifts Of the poet," he said ; " and my pen never lifts To make rhythmic endeavor, but keenly it longs For the genius to prove it a singer of songs That may gladden the future. The cruelest dower Men have, I believe, is the semblance of power They know to be weakness. We narrowly miss A great good, and forever we fancy that this Is the sum of our cruel defrauding. I hear Now and then the sweet accents of Poesy clear, And I strive to repeat them ; but swiftly they fade Out of memory. Silence her finger has laid On my lips ; and I feel, through the pain that has come To my soul, it were happier far to be dumb." " But the singers to whom the world listens must feel The same bitterness often. They rarely reveal The full music that thrills them : they breathe a few notes, And the rest never hallow their fortunate throats For our blessing. Moreover, no true singer's art Was born in him whole statured. He learns of his heart, And he sings as he learns. He must grow to the measure Of full-singing strength in a studious leisure Improved by the lessons of pain. You can turn To the poet's best pages at will, and there learn How he grew to his manhood poetic by reading Between his own lines ; for his silence makes pleading Of sympathy. Do not you feel he has striven To teach you in song what to him has been given In cry ings for utterance ? " Looking with furtive, Quick glance in her face, he beheld the assertive Appeal that so haunted it often, swift showing Itself through her smile. With his blood quicker flowing, GEEALDINK 211 Yet calmly, he spoke, "I suspect that you read With a vision much deeper than mine ; that I need My poetic first lessons to learn now of you : For no singer is heard without sympathy true, And deep insight to see what are mysteries hidden From all but the few. I believe you were bidden To sing, and are wickedly silent. For me There is only an echo of song: there can be No outringing of marvellous notes that are mine As I catch them direct from the singer divine To whom poets all listen. And yet a refrain May be tenderly sung till it softens the pain 212 GERALDINE. In some sorrowing heart, and uplifts it. I 'd ask For no mission diviner, no holier task, Were I laureate crowned for the world, than to sing Of its sunshine, and on my strong melody bring It forth out of the dark." " By and by you will print The best songs you have sung, and will give us a hint Of the sweeter to come : I believe in your gift As diviner indeed than you think. It should lift You above the great chorus, who sing out of tune, And torment us. You '11 give us a tenderer rune Than the many could breathe, if they stood at the door Of the innermost temple, and listened, before They began to make echoes of song. It will know Sweeter cadence and mellower grace for the flow Of last summer's experience into your being. Some deeps of clear vision have come to your seeing, You needed, for charity's sake and for love's, To behold." "I remember, my friend, that the dove's Divine errand came after the storm. But, if sent When the floods of this passion so idle are spent, Will the dear dove of song, flying over the waste Of my life, come again in her comforting haste, Bringing olive-leaves ? " She with her sudden allusion Unmanned him ; and he in as sudden confusion Responded, he hardly knew how. With the look That she gave him, his strong resolution forsook Him, and fled. In its hunger pathetic he saw The great want that would scorn to derision all law Of denial, if free from its bondage of chains. And that bondage what was it? " For you there remains GERALDINK 213 Worthy work in the world, and who labors receives In due time of his wages. Your dove's olive-leaves Will bring promise of happy fulfilment to make Your life rich with glad increase. You '11 sing for the sake Of the multitudes eagerly listening, and find Your own gladness in service of song that is kind Most of all to yourself. Good Samaritan singers Are few, I believe, who divinely are bringers Of oil and of wine to the wounded and sore, And who fail of a blessing themselves as they pour The sweet blessing on others." She spoke with some feeling, Her words growing tenderer still, as appealing She looked in his face. " Could I sing you to peace, 1 would stop by the wayside forever, nor cease In my service of song till you bade me," he said In' his passionate utterance low. "But instead You must sing for the mass," she replied. "I shall listen More eager than they. In my heart I shall christen As mine all the sweetest and tenderest things You may breathe. I shall comforted say, ' Now he sings For the neediest one, for the one in the world Who can take the rich treasure of sweetness impearled In his notes, and feel gladdest and richest possessing it.' Give as you may to the multitude, blessing it Freely with giving's extravagant hand, I shall count you my singer henceforth, though you stand On the highest Parnassus, and I, sitting far In the valley below, see you shine like a star." With a mighty endeavor he mastered the tide That was sweeping him on to expression denied, 214 GERALDINK Yet invited. He rose to depart. "I shall climb To no height above yours ; and my tenderest rhyme Must forever fall short of the ministry sweet I would lend it for you. Never song so complete By a poet was sung as my longing desire Would make vocal, if only these lips knew the fire That is burning my heart. But my lips are as weak As the lips of a woman." He smiled. " If, to speak Of her love, a weak woman the weakest might dare . In the words that were fittest, you 'd own that a share Of the strength of her heart had been suddenly lent To her lips." And the look that she gave to him sent The warm blood to his breast. " And her lips need be strong To repress what in utterance could be but wrong. Do you doubt it?" " Their silence is cruel, when speech Would be cruelty worse. Let them tenderly teach The same silence to mine." And he kissed her, repenting At once the request and her ready assenting. " Good-by ! You will sing for me often," she urged. The wild passion he wrestled with rioted, surged, Through his heart. With a masterful effort he turned To the door. "When the singer's true art I have learned, You may hear me. Good-by!" He went hastily out Of her presence, and into a torment of doubt. XXIV. a day or two later a brief letter came, Without prefix of date or appendix of name; And as Percival Trent read it, flush ing and eager, The forces of passion combined to be leaguer His soul. " You have been here," the letter began : "You have come and have gone. If our hearts overran The hard limits we set for them, flowing together Like parallel rivers in storm-laden weather, Are we to be blamed ? my poet ! the touch Of your lips lingers yet upon mine ; and if much Of my feverish longing and pain they reveal, You who wooed them to speech must as gently conceal Your displeasure. I never can bid you be dumb Any more ; for it seems to me now that the sum Of my pain is your silence. I long so to hear The dear words you ought never to speak, that I fear I am foolish, unwomanly grown; and I crave For the freedom to echo those words, as a slave Must pine after the freedom forever denied. As I see you far over the gulf yawning wide 216 GEEALDINE. And unending between us, I reach out my hands And I call to you. Fate with its cruel commands Would compel me to cease; but I cannot. I cry Through the desolate distance, and say, ' By and by He will hear me and answer.' You make no reply, And my hope like a willow droops downward, and weeps. I am learning the infinite pity that sleeps In the bosom of God, I so pity myself. As I count up the goods that I have, they are pelf But the poorest compared with the treasure I covet. I see it just out of my reach; and I love it So wildly, and long with such longing to hold It supremely my own, that my heart, over-bold, Would compel the possession at once if it could. "0 my friend! you who hold by the true and the good With so steady a hand, you must come to my need With your certain uplifting. I hunger, with greed That can brook no denial, for life that is strong In the truth, and that steadily sets against wrong The unchangeable features of duty. You only Can lead me up out of this solitude lonely In which now I wait, by temptation beset. When I stronger am grown, I may cease to regret, And may go, with a face that is calm and determined, Along the hard road where they march who are ermined Of soul like yourself; but to-day not the weakest Of women, among the most timid and meekest, Is weaker than I. May Heaven pity me ! None Are so feebly outstretching their hands to the sun, While they sit in the shadows, and shiver. The whole Of my being is but a complaint. In my soul There are only wild throbbings rebellious, and great Sobs of pain, and these loud cryings-out against fate." GERALDINE. 217 He was stirred to the deep of his nature, and wrote An impulsive reply : " To your passionate note My heart beats a response that the flow of my pen Can biit coldly interpret. I kiss you again, That my heart, overrunning my lips, may betray To your own, throbbing fervidly under, what they Could not fitly reveal, though endowed with the spirit Of love pentecostal. They only who hear it, Or feel it, know all the sweet emphasis hid In love's tender, unsyllabled speech. If you bid Me to breathe out a full revelation, I never Can do it in words : I must make the endeavor In language with meaning far deeper. " My friend, I can lead you in worthiest way to an end That is worthiest, only as steady I face My hard duty apart from your side. In the grace Of your presence 'twere easy to turn from the heights I must climb, and to find in the sunny delights Of my longing the gladness I crave. I could flee From the path I must follow, and hold you to me In possession defiant of duty, defiant Of all your denial, supremely reliant On need, on your need and my own. To resist The pathetic appeal of those lips I have kissed, Till our souls came together; to hearken, and hear Them beseeching my help in a cry that is clear As the signal of love is forever, and stay In the distance ah! this is the trial that may Overmaster my manhood, my being, at length. If I ever can reach you my hands in the strength Of uplifting to serve, and not sacrifice each With its weakness, not long will you wait, and beseech 218 GERALDINE. For the aid I can render. I pity your need With a pity unbounded, that can but proceed From a love that is boundless. I hear the appeals Of your heart with a throb of my soul that reveals The deep pain I must suffer, the yearnings intense, And the buffetings cruel. My way is as dense With perplexities now as your wilderness long Has been lonely and sorrowful ; in it the song Of sweet faith has died out into silence. Too stoutly Distrust of myself is asserted, devoutly To let me from self turn away to the might That is certain. I dare not kneel down, and invite For us both the one help that alone can avail, When I know my petition must falter and fail On account of so feeble desire. For confess It I will : I would rather this moment possess The great love that you give me, and know it my own Undenying, in fullest of plenitude shown, Than to pray you may learn its withholding, or learn What is easier far, to forget. And they burn In my bosom, these words that might hint of return I would make, as I do and I must ; while my prayer For denial of speech would go out on the air With a wish that itself be denied, and my plea For the strength to forget would but mockery be Of too cherished remembrances. " No : on the reed Of my resolute purpose I lean, till to plead For a better support I may dare, feeling true To the want I shall syllable, pulsating through My petition a longing sincere. Very tender Indeed to the soul that in perfect surrender Of wish and of will comes to him, are the greetings Of God ; but he never can hush the wild beatings GERALDINE. 219 Within a poor heart that denyingly holds To its pain. All my love your strong feeling infolds ; And as vain as I know it, as wicked as vain, And as certain of sorrow, so sweet is the pain, That I welcome it. Held in its clinging embraces, We two may clasp hands, and touch hearts, though the spaces Of infinite distance are rolling between." While he still on the reed of his purpose would lean, She made answer to answer of his : " That you came When I called you, can never be set to your blame, 220 GERALDINE Since you thought your response a denial instead. To my hunger and longing you tenderly said The sweet words that were manna to me ; and they fed When I famished. What need had my poor heart to hear Your profession of love ? I believe that the ear Of cold Venus de Medici yonder would glow Into rose, would you once for the marble let flow Your warm current of masterful, passionate speech. There is only one utterance now that can reach, To revive it, this poor fainting soul that is mine, The assurance that still you do love me. Some sign I must have, in my need, of that love, or I die. You will grant it hereafter as quick, when I cry To you over the deeps ? "My beloved, I try To be patient and silent and brave. I would add Not a pang to your struggle, nor sigh to your sad But heroic endeavor. Instead, I would make A glad martyr to-day of myself for your sake, If I only could bring you content. For I love You. So simple a thing to declare, but, above All assertion, so forceful and sweet ! The mild passion Of maidens at school in as eloquent fashion Might syllables take ; but this love that I feel Is as truer than that as the ring of white steel Is more vibrant than lead. 'Tis a passion grown stronger And deeper, and richer and sweeter, the longer It slumbered : awakened, it holds me, and sways Me at will. In the glow of those glad summer days When it thrilled me at first, I half fancied 'twould seem, When we parted, as only a midsummer dream : In this sombre November the warmth of its flushes I feel, as the maiden can feel her first blushes At flattery paid ; and so warmly it gladdens me GEEALDINE. 221 Now with its color and life, that it saddens me Even to tears. " Foolish tears ! As they fall Down my face, I am glad that hereafter not all Of my bitterest weeping can rob it of sweetness Your kisses have left ; and my very unmeetness For holy caresses so tender and pure Can but make them in sanctified blessing endure. O my friend ! my beloved ! so close have I been To the worst in the world, that the shadow of sin Hovers grimly about me to frighten and grieve me. Not mine was the fault ; and, my darling, believe me, The sin was no sin of intent, if to some Like a sin it appeared. " By and by you will come To my love and my need, as it seems to you best, 222 GERALDINK With your love and your plenty. You cannot have guessed From these hints, my heart's heart, how I hunger and long For your comforting presence and cheer, or how strong Is the love I have weakly declared. With your face Looking into my own, and your loving embrace Giving courage and strength, I could better translate A brief page of love's living epistle. Sweet fate That will bring me some blessedest glimpses of you ! For I love you! And this is my only adieu." XXV. ARLY winter went by. It was fortu nate, truly, That Trent was so much in demand ; for unruly, _ Impulsive desire must have led him astray From his purpose so true, but for need to obey The imperative calls of the public. By night He would speak to the crowds ; and by day he would write For still wider persuasion in print. Had they known Who so eagerly heard him, how often a moan Of disquiet was hid by the utterance strong That so quieted them, or how frequent the wrong He was fighting within bore him down, while he wielded His blows on, the wrong from without, they 'd have yielded Their sympathy freely as yielding their praise. There were hours when he rose like a victor, and days When he sank in the dust of defeat. There were seasons When Duty made plain all her eloquent reasons For holding him firm to his wearying course ; There were times when his passion took terrible force, And so bitterly pressed him, so sharply assailed him, That faith in its feebleness faltered and failed him, 224 GERALDINE. And night swept him into its pitiless gloom. It may be he was morbid by nature. The bloom Of all beautiful things, it is certain, bore fruit In his thought ; and he wisely and kindly was mute, If but ashes of apples he frequently tasted Instead, or but seldom unhappily hasted To tell of their bitterness. Men are too free With complaining recitals. Far better 'twould be For us all, if the troubles that fret and annoy Were but hidden away in a privacy coy, And not prated about to our fellows. Far better To make them for sunshiny gladness our debtor, Than beg of their sympathy often, and take Of its costly bestowal at will, when the ache Of their life may be deeper than ours. If we urge Our own woe on their ears, and go wailing a dirge GERALDINE. 225 Over happiness fled, we shall hear enough minor From them and ourselves to forget all the finer And happier music of hearts. When he went For another day's tarry at Rivermet, Trent Was subdued in demeanor, and notably carried Himself with restraint; but he partially parried His Geraldine's questioning look. He was weaker Than wont, he explained. The hard strain on a speaker Had worn him uncommonly. Seldom he slept Until nigh to the morning. His labor had kept Him from adequate rest through the day ; he had used Of his vital resources too freely, abused The great blessing of health, and must pay for it dear In depression and dulness. She gave him the cheer Of her outflowing love, though it seemed to her heart An impassable wall had arisen to part Them still further. She knew by some keen intuition, That once he would come on his lover's glad mission Of love with a happier feeling, and say Sweeter words than she now must expect. And the day For distrusting might come to her soon ! With the dread Of its darkness upon her, she faintingly fled To her Father, and unto his pity she cried For the strength she would need. When she, troubled, replied To the honest complaining of Trent, though evasive As honest, she urged him with feeling persuasive To seek a long rest amid scenes that were new. " Put an ocean of green, or an ocean of blue, Between work and yourself," she suggested. " Go over 15 . 226 GEEALDINK The billowy prairies, or turn again rover By sea, and get hearty and happy and strong." " But the time of my absence might seem to you long ; And next summer, remember, we were to be wed." " So you planned it, I know," hesitating she said ; " But it may be God means us to wait. I have prayed That our marriage may be in some manner delayed, If for any good reason it should not take place As we fixed." And the serious look on her face Told how earnest she was. " When the winter is ended, The wealth of your life will have been so expended, You'll need a whole summer of rest to regain The great loss. Go away. If it seem to be plain When the late summer comes, that our wedding should wait But your presence, no distance can be to you great That you journey on errand so glad ; " blushing now At her words, as she uttered them shyly. "I bow To your bitter decree," he responded, not daring To trust a more serious answer. " The faring Of bold pioneers in the West has invited The vagabond in me since youth. I have slighted The call every year : now I '11 heed it, and go To the region of sunset so soon as the snow Shall have vanished. But trust me to come to you soon When you freely will give me the coveted boon Of yourself." "And I freely will do it when truly It seems to be best; yet I would not unduly Make haste. We must try to be certain, and take Every step as the Master may lovingly make The way clear. He will show us his path for our feet GERALDINK If we ask him." "Your faith is as certain and sweet As my own is uncertain and vapid too often. 'T would light up the gloomiest way, and would soften The hardest and ruggedest path. Do you never Have doubts of the Master ? of all your endeavor To touch him for healing of soul, when you press To his side in despair of aught else ? " 227 " I were less A weak woman, and more like a saint, could I hold To my faith without doubting forever. As bold As was Peter, he sank in the wave when he walked To his Lord ; and my weakness has bitterly mocked Me at times when I should have been strong. We must doubt, 228 GERALDINE. I suppose, being human ; and heartsick, without Any help of ourselves, we too often must stem The thick crowd of our doubts and our fears, ere the hem Of the Healer's soft garment we touch." " And you feel That the Master walks always near by, and will heal, If you press through the throng to his side ? Though unseen, You are sure he is there ? " "There are times when between Him and me I can see only blackness ; but still I believe I shall find him through doing his will ; And he never is lost. It is I who have strayed From the way that he journeys. I seek him, afraid, Till I hear his quick question, ' Who touched me ? ' and then I am glad." Far less tender and reverent men Would have thrilled to her thought and her tone sympathetic, And smothered in silence all questions heretic That might have been syllabled. " Faith is magnetic As love, when it speaks from a heart beating free With the healthiest life ; and your faith upon me Is electric. I feel it more keenly, indeed, Than I feel my own faith from within. When my need Is the greatest, I wonder if once I believed, Or made pretence of trust." She was troubled and grieved At his words. " You are living, it may be, too mainly In self, are depending too much and too vainly On strength of your own, to be sure of the way, Or of light in the dark. We must serve him to-day With our might, when the strongest we feel, would we know GERALDINE. 229 The Lord's help in our weakness. The farther we go Independent . of him, in an idle belief In ourselves, the more certain some brambles of grief Will be found in our pathway to prick us, the more Is it sure that our questions will trouble us sore. It is easy to doubt," a quick thrill running through Her brief words as she uttered them. " Men who, like you, Are endowed with large manhood and generous life, Have the amplest endowment for doubting. The strife Of unfaith and belief must oft carry them far From the face and the voice of the Master. They are To be envied for strength, to .be pitied for weakness. Their manliness strong and assertive the meekness Of faith overcomes ; and a faith that is proud Of the manhood that holds it will some time be bowed To the dust." " If I ever have foolishly classed My weak self with the strong, the brief season is passed," He responded half bitterly. " Few are so weak, And so conscious of weakness, as I. But I seek The great Fountain of strength without finding, and dwell Weary days in a desert where flows but a well Of deep bitterness ever, and drink till I thirst As do they who are famishing utterly. Cursed By the keenest of longings for peace and sweet quiet Of soul, I am held where the tumult and riot Are greatest, till often I sigh for the rest Of that sleep never ending." She trembled, and pressed Back the tears that her sympathy quick could have shed. " But you always are out of your desert-place led, When at last you are willing to follow the leading Of God, are you not ? Our most pitiful pleading 230 GERALDINE. Is vain, if we make it while wickedly clinging To ways that we ought to forsake. The sweet bringing Of peace to our souls is along the hard road Of some duty we would not perform." And there glowed In her face the glad light of a full consecration. " Perhaps if we knew not some great desolation Of God," he rejoined, " we should never feel sure Of his fatherhood ; and if we cannot endure To be fatherless so for a little, how could We be orphaned forever ? Believing is good That will bring an occasional glimpse of his face, To make certain he is. I am glad of the grace Of my faith, that at times can believe so completely, And yours that so seldom can doubt, as they sweetly Make better my life." " But your faith may be fervent And certain as mine, if you go as the servant Each day of a Master most loving, who cares But to bless you in service," she said. Unawares She was blending rebuke with her words of appeal ; Yet no chiding of hers could be harsh. " You must feel. In your trouble and doubt, that you have not in all things Lent willing obedience. Out of the small things Of selfish idolatry oftenest grow The great forests of doubt, into which we may go, Beyond sunlight and shadow, far into the night." " But we always come out into morning and light ? " " You and I, let us hope." And she smiled rather sadly. " Some souls there may be who >go onward so madly Intent on their own wicked wills, that they sink In abysses we miss, and are lost. When I think GERALDINE. 231 Of their pitiful madness, their longing distress In the dark, 1 could weep ; for the way that we press Is a hard enough way at the best. You and I, When it troubles us most, may find comforting nigh; But these wayfaring souls, without help or a hope, Can but wearily on in the wilderness grope Till the end." So they talked of the holiest things Of the heart. So he drank from the up-welling springs Of her beautiful faith, till his spirit grew stronger. He left her sweet patience at length, but no longer, As to it he came, full of bitter unrest. The old song of belief that had slept in his breast Woke to music again in a strain that was finer And sweeter than once for the tremulous minor That thrilled it. Complaint with new blessedness sharing, He soberly sang by the way of WAYFARING. The way is long, Lord, that leads To cooling springs and fragrant meads : I weary of its weary length; I lose all heart and hope and strength, As here I halt my tired feet And pray for rest so far, so sweet. I thank thee for a halting-place Made glad by thine own smiling face ; I thank thee that the dusty way Thy footsteps knoweth day by day ; I thank thee that some path there be From pain and care to peace and thee. 232 GEEALDINK Its rugged steeps I would not mind, If, daily climbing, I could find Secure repose at day's decline A little nearer thee and thine; If always from the mountain-peaks My faith could see the land it seeks. But when through gloomy vales I go, That no glad sunshine ever know ; When even thy dear presence seems A far-off thing of doubt and dreams, Forgive me, Lord, if then I faint, And murmur oft, and make complaint. 1 know my times are in thy hand ; I long for light to understand How thou canst for each pilgrim care, How thou canst hear each pleading prayer, How unto thee each soul is known As if it walked the world alone. And some time I may comprehend. The way is long; but at its end A clearer vision waits the sight. In thy dear garden of delight, Wayfaring done, let me abide Where never falls an eventide. XXVT. T was later by less than a fortnight, that Trent Gave a lecture one night in the vil lage of Ghent. He had firmly decided he would not again Meet his friend, Mrs. Lee ; but each purpose of men Is uncertain of issue. One only of all The great number of faces that crowded the hall Was familiar, and that one was hers. As he caught Her first answering look, a brief moment he fought With his passion for mastery ; then with the art Of his utterance quickly he moved every heart To responses of sympathy. Who can define What is eloquence ? Is it some thought half divine And all noble ? Or is it the audible sign Of some feeling within that is striving to leap Into being of speech ? Is true eloquence deep As the orator's soul, and as deep as the hearer's He touches ? Indeed, is it true that he mirrors Some innermost thought of our own, unexpressed Hitherto, and unformed, when we feel in our breast The pulsations of pleasure that syllables seek Without finding? Is eloquence strength for the weak 234 GEEALDINE. In expression, and lips for the dumb, who may speak Through the wonderful words of another? The lecture Was over at last, and the ready conjecture Of Trent became truth. Mrs. Lee was with friends In the place on a visit. "The time comprehends A surprise the most happy for me in thus hearing And meeting you now," she remarked ; and, appearing Unmoved in demeanor as he did, she asked Him to go with her friends to their home. If they masked Every passionate feeling in plain commonplace; If he sat amid strangers, and looked in her face As he looked into theirs, with the courteous grace Of attentiveness only to speech that was clever Or trite as it chanced, it may be his endeavor Was small ; for his passion was passive. He curbed It so stoutly and well, that it little disturbed His composure at present. To-morrow ? What matter Defeats yet to come, if to-day only flatter With victory ? Leaving them all in an hour, With placid serenity passing for power Over self, he went out to his solitude grim With its weakness defiant of strength. When to him, But a day or two later, this brief message came, In his breast he could feel the fierce breathings of flame : " my friend ! are we always and always like this To go on ? Is a touch of your hand, or a kiss Of your lips, to be all I can ever have granted Of you ? You could banish the ghost that has haunted Me long. You could lift me up into the sun From these shivering shadows. GERALDINE. 235 " How much you have done For me now I can never reveal. As your debtor I ever must be, unless loving you better Than even I dare to confess is a payment Acceptable. Ah ! when I sleep in the raiment Of death, will they look in my face, comprehending How long and how sorely I needed befriending That God only gives through his image? the soul Of a man's loving nature, to guide and control My weak waywardness ? love that should hold my behavior In line with its purity true, be my savior From all that could touch me to hurt or assoil, 236 GERALDINE. In a merciful tenderness pour the sweet oil Of its gladness on life's troubled waters, infold All my faults in its mantle of charity, hold Me apart in its own blessed heaven ? " I know, Could you stand by me, darling, (God grant it be so ! ) When at last I am but a white silence, you 'd hear A new message to you through the calm atmosphere Round about me. My lips might not move; but as clear As the clearest articulate speech they would tell Of the hunger that starved me to death. And so well Would you then comprehend all the longing and need I had suffered, I think you would pitying plead For the seal of that silence in mercy to break, That I might not eternally want. For your sake, My belovM, to tenderest speech I would come, Though the highest archangel might bid me be dumb; Out of pitiful rest the white silence would rise, And beguile you with kisses, and quiet the cries Of your heart for the loss of my love, and the grave Would in mercy release me to you. " But a slave To the hardest taskmaster to Life should not think How much kinder a master might Death be. I drink Of the bitterest draughts every day, then I dip My cup deep in the well of your love, and I sip Till its sweetness has gladdened me. Always athirst And an hungered I am. My one darling ! the worst Of the Magdalenes dared to come near to the Christ; And her faith, that was loving the sweetest, sufficed To redeem her from sin. If no virtue were mine But to love you, I fancy that this would incline The one Master to pity me. Wicked as one Who has never been pardoned, or ne'er has begun GERALDINE. 237 To be penitent, still I could love you no more, Were I good as the angels of God." As before, When she called to him thus in her passionate speech, He responded, as moved by it strongly. "You teach The deep meanings of words," he made answer. " You tell me Of love far beyond my belief; you compel me To marvel that such a great love can be given To me. And for what ? my friend ! I have striven To solve the hard problem, have striven to still The strong, masterful throbs of my heart;' but the will Is as weak as the reason. Why love should lay hold Of my being with mastery cruel as bold, Is as dark and as blind as the will to resist it Is feeble. To-day I should hardly enlist it, If help were at hand that could victory give To my feeble resistance. To-day I would live In this marvellous love and the blessing it brings me. " The honeycomb shelters the bee that quick stings me. I taste of the sweets of your love but to feel The sharp pain that its riches of blessing conceal. You can never be mine. We are parted as much As if never I felt the soft lingering touch Of your kisses, are parted as certain and wide As the east and the west. If you hungered and died In my absence, I could not come close to your side In the nearness of love's divine freedom to weep/ Were I sleeping to-day the unanswering sleep Of the grave, you must stand in the distance, and say But a tearless farewell. " I am going away 238 GERALDINE. When the buds begin bursting. Your duty and mine Both demand that I should. We must follow the line Of our separate fates. What your duty may be I can only imagine : my own is to me As unyielding as God. It is holding me now With its fingers of steel, and in calmness I bow Though in merely the fiction, the semblance, of loyalty, Need not be said to its rigorous royalty. Still, while I walk in the way that it urges Me on, I can feel the impetuous surges Of passion within me responding to yours ; I can longing look back on your face as it lures My return. Set it steadily forward, nor let It look backward to me with its haunting regret. Let us walk the two ways that lead farther apart, As if love were a lie, and we lived without heart. " Am I bitter and cruel ? Forgive me, and know That I write out of burning unrest. " I shall go To the West in a month, to find peace, if I can, On its plains and its mountains. The rigorous ban Of my duty forbids me to see you again Before going. I think if the strongest of men Were to stand at your side, with his purpose as true To another as purpose that God ever knew, He would falter, and love you, and linger unless You compelled him to leave. So in safety I press The last passionate kiss on your beautiful face But in fancy : I hold you to me through the space That divides us, but dare not in parting come near ; And I speak idle words could your heart only hear You would echo them back with such winning-ness, I Should wait near you to listen forever. Good-by ! " GERALDINE. 239 She began her reply with the utterance strong Of a passionate nature unmastered. "I long For your presence and cheer with a longing that leaps Every barrier now, and compels it; that keeps You beside me wherever you go. I shall cling To your hand, though you journey as far as the spring Is from winter, and climb to the uttermost heights Of the earth ; for I hold as the crown of delights In all good that is fruitage of love, the keen sense Of a bodily presence in absence the tense That takes hold of my yesterday's doing and being, And keeps it material still to my seeing To-day. You made yesterday worth such a keeping To me. When you entered my life, all its weeping 240 GEEALDINE. To smiles of thanksgiving and gladness was turned. I have learned the true meaning of life : I have learned The sublimest of charity. Out of the wild Of my desert so dreary, your love has beguiled Me to come ; but alas for the many who faint On the blistering sands, and whose feeble complaint Is not heard! And alas for the souls that are lost Ere the desert so barren and burning is crossed ! "My beloved! you -cannot take leave of me here. If our paths run apart, you are always as near As affection can bring you; so near, that I share In your nobleness, feel the uplift of the air That you breathe, am made better and truer by you. It were folly to bid you a mocking adieu When I know you must stay by my side in the spirit, If not in the flesh. And my soul needs you near it So bitterly often ! So often it cries For the aid you can render, and waits the replies Of your heart with so weary a waiting, I think It would kill me, if now you should utterly sink From my sight into echoless silence. "And yet, Though my face may look back with its haunting regret That will haunt it forever, I see but a dim And a shadow-like semblance or spectre of him Whom so madly I love. The true self that I need With such hunger of needing will swiftly recede Out of reach. And I feel so defrauded ! The whole Of my womanhood owns you its master. My soul, Being cheated of you, like a slave in distress Can but moan by the way, with no bounty to bless It, and bring it again to the face of its lord. Without you I am always and only the ward GEEALDINE. 241 Of tyrannical want, and my poverty begs For some opiate cup I may drain to the dregs, And forget the great wealth I have missed. " Am I writing Unreason? Demented, am I but inditing Vagaries absurd, as the contrary feelings Of love I express in this manner? Revealings Thus opposite ought not, perhaps, to be made The same moment. " If wild I may be, I have weighed The hard problem before us, with reason that held Me above the great hunger of love, and compelled Me to heed. You have work in the world, and I will Not make doing it harder. To-day I would still Every longing of mine, but to spare you a pang Of disquiet. The hope and the faith that you sang Ere you saw me must yet in your singing abide, Or I shall not forget that I ought to have died Before hearing and seeing you. my heart's heart! Let me feel your strong throbbing again ere we part ; Let it teach me the courage of faith and of hope, As along in the desert I desolate grope. You will pardon the prayer ? I 'm not practised at praying, And chiefly, I fear, have the habit of saying My prayers unto you. " ' God be with you ! ' I say Now to him. For your sake I can fervently pray, If I may not or dare not look God in the face For myself. And I pray that some heaven-sent grace May bedew you with patience wherever you go. We have tested life deep enough, darling, to know That victorious living is better and truer Than happiness. May you the battle endure Like a victor, and win, if not happiness, peace ! 16 242 GERALDINE. And remember, beloved, I never shall cease To aspire for you, hope for you, love you, be proud Of your many successes, as if in the crowd Of the world I alone had the right. And who ought To be prouder than I ? In my future, the thought That I once was your friend, though forgotten I be, Will seem sweet as another's remembrance to me. I would rather have had my brief portion of you Than be held in possession most perfect and true, For a lifetime, of all other men. I am weak With the passionate gladness that flows to my cheek As you kiss me farewell. I am faint with the pain That is flooding my heart as I call you in vain Through the widening distance. The mist in my eyes Becomes heavy, and stifles my pitiful cries." XXVII. HBWJlBMBB RENT was true to his purpose. He ^P^^ ~~^ went to the West Without stopping to see Mrs. Lee. To the test Of her presence he would not, he dare not, again Bring himself. And his leave-takings troubled him when He saw Geraldine last. A great tenderness thrilled Through her loving good-byes. He could easy have willed To remain with her now, and possess her without Any waiting ; for over him brooded a doubt That he could not have set into speech, an impression, That, leaving her thus, he was putting possession Beyond him forever. Her words of farewell Were so solemnly tender and sweet, that they fell Like a sad prophecy on his ears. He had penned A long letter to Isabel, making amend For refusing the cry of her heart, by replying In echoes as passionate. Firmly denying Himself the great gladness of holding her yet Once again to his breast, his quick pen would not let Him keep silent completely. It revelled in words That to listening of love were as music of birds ; 244 GERALDINR And it told as with tears of his frequent unrest, Of the longing and fears that his being possessed. You will say he was weak. Let it pass to his credit That he had discerned the same truth, and had said it With bitter reproaches of self. And, beside, Let it temper your judgment that he had denied A temptation the greatest, to go to her, give To the winds every promise and duty, and live On her riches of love. He was weak, and he knew it : His weakness had caused him too often to rue it, To leave him in doubt. He was weak : so are all Who believe in their strength ; and the many who fall Into folly and sin are the arrogant souls Who stand censor to others. We go to the goals Of our strong aspiration in weakness that trips us Again and again. The hard fortune that whips us With discipline's lashes has oftenest found Opportunity swift when we fell to the ground With our faces uplifted in scorn of the weak. If we find the great blessing of strength, we must seek For it humbly, believing our need to be sore. If the hills of the East have a charm to restore Balmy peace to the troubled of soul, the wide plains Of the West are as richly endowed. He regains The sweet quiet of being who goes to them faint With long striving for victory ; doubt and complaint Become rest and rejoicing; the rigors that goaded Him on melt away in the sunlight, so loaded With burdens of glory it glows like the blazing Of tropical heat ; and eyes weary with gazing. The roll and the sweep of their reaches are grand GERALDINE. 245 As the ocean unbounded; the billows of land Float away to horizons far lapping the sky ; And the magical breezes blow ardently by, As if bearing rich argosies over the sea To some haven of hope. If infinitude be Ever laid before mortals for dim comprehending, It hides in the plains and their reaches unending. The saunterer's mission was Trent's. He fulfilled it Religiously. Time was his own : if he killed it, And buried it out of his sight, he was winning The wager of life. And he thought it not sinning, In search of his bodily good, and the peace Of his spirit, to throw away care, and to cease From all studious habits. He lived like the men Whom he met by the way. He abandoned his pen For his rifle ; spent weeks as a hunter with those Who made hunting a business ; laid down at the close 246 GEEALDINE. Of each radiant day with his face to the stars ; And sleep opened for him the imprisoning bars Of his being, and freed him to perfect content. The glad winds of the West in their sport came and went Where unsheltered he lay ; and, as boldly they kissed him, Their marvellous vigor flowed into his system, And so he grew strong. He was seldom in reach Of the mails, and but seldom, therefore, did the speech Of his friends come to gladden or sadden him. One Wrote as little of love as if scarcely begun To believe herself loving; the other withheld Not a passionate word, and her passion compelled His replies. But he wrote to his Geraldine merely The messages born of a love that sincerely Is guarded of duty, such letters as most Of men send to their wives when their love is a ghost Of the thing it once was, and comes only in sight As a matter of habit when rarely they write. Did he love her ? He questioned thus daily. In vain Did he say to his heart that the answer was plain In the question itself. " Love may doubt," he could hear His ' heart reason. " The love that is surest may fear For its very existence. Wild passion may hide It from sight; but it will not so swiftly have died As you think. It is modest. It sits in the shade Of assertion unblushing, and trembles, afraid For its life. But hot passion is bold as the day, And it knows no rebuking, nor fears to betray Itself ever and always." He held by the love He had pledged to be true to, before and above The strong feeling that shadowed it, e'en though his lips GEEALDINE. 247 Were so dumb to expression while passion's eclipse Hovered over. Nor once did he say to its face That it could not be love ; that it came to a place Not divinely its own; that the heaven-guided guest Had more recently come to abide in his breast, And the early intruder must go. Never through The long days was he thus to his pledges untrue, If untrue in a deeper and wickeder sense He confessed himself. Either in fact or pretence He was loyal to love in the positive, though The superlative tried him for treason. The glow Of young summer grew fierce on the plains, and he took His way thence to the mountains ; there swift he forsook All the commoner haunts for those places where only The few ever come, and in solitude lonely Communed with the grandeur around him. He rode Up and down the green valleys ; he made his abode For the night where the night overtook him, and slept With no tent overhead but the azure that swept From one summit of gray to another ; he mounted Magnificent peaks, till in wonder he counted Their neighbors magnificent, lifting afar Their white crowns to the purple ; in gorges that scar The calm features of Nature like pitiless gashes Some Titan has made with his terrible slashes, He marvelled anew, till this life, growing small Mid the greatnesses round, seemed to dwindle, and fall Out of sight; and he moved but an atom in space Overhung by the Infinite's glorious grace. In the grand exaltation of spirit that came To him here, life had never a worthier aim Than to be. Nothing grander than being can seem, 248 GERALDINE. Where the mountains lift upward, majestic, supreme, And eternal. They stand like old statues of time, Looking God in the face. With the world in its prime, They are hoary of head ; and they gleam in the noons, Turn to crimson in sunsets, and gray in the moon's Mellow glory, as through the long ages asleep. As the shadows of darkness fast over them sweep When the moon is away, they grow ghostly and grim, Till their majesties fade into distances dim, And the hush of their silence is solemn as death. When the dawn is at hand, its first crimsoning breath Floats across the long reach of their summits to crown them With colors of life ; the dark shadows slip down them, And seek the defiles where they lurk through the day ; Clear and strong their dim outlines come forth from the gray Of the morning; and through the baptistical rays Of the sun all their silence is priestly with praise. XXVIII. 'HEN the midsummer heat to its uttermost burned, From his wild mountaineering alone Trent returned To a town of the mines, for some let ters expected. On reaching the place he grew strangely dejected In spirit, and felt a foreboding of ill That he could not shake off, though he bent all his will To the task. It was time for his summons from her He had promised to wed. If he went, should he err Against both, to give vows before God to be true Ere his passion was dead, and when truly he knew It must face him with mockery ? Should he not sin Against God and his soul, were he soon to begin Wedded life, while a woman he never might wed Could so burden his peace with the words that she said ? Were it not the clear wisdom for him to postpone Consummation distrusted till doubt should have flown, And till love in sweet certainty came to its own ? In this questioning mood, there was put in his hand A small package of letters, that quickly he scanned For the two he cared chiefly to read ; and he broke Mrs. Lee's first of all. It was passionful ; spoke, 250 GERALDINE. In the phrases she forcibly used, of her feeling Intense ; called upon him anew for his healing The hurt, "the sweet hurt of this sorrowful love" (That had grown in her being beyond and above All beside, making other loves seem but the sign Of weak tolerance now), with the oil arid the wine Of his love-bearing speech : it, in short, was a letter Of credit drawn on him at sight, as a debtor To love, without limit, and paid by his passion In throbs of response. With a face growing ashen, When once he had fairly begun to peruse The long letter of Geraldine, this was the news That he read of her final decision, the sum Of her reasons for failing to say he should come : GERALDINE. 251 " MY DEAR FRIEND, "Turn your face to the shadow a while. You may make believe then, that I say with a smile What the tears give me trouble to write. I am sure That God bids me speak, or I could not endure The hard duty. " I love you : let this be as- plain As I ever have made it to you, and remain A fixed thing in your memory ; though to refrain From the simple confession were wiser, perhaps. I shall love you, I think, till eternity laps Upon time. It is sweet just to say it once more While the right is still left me. "You loved me before You had come to the measure of love in degree That is highest. You loved me as much as in me Was the power to call out your deepest expression Of love. I believe it, and hold the possession Of that which was mine, and which may be mine yet, Above rubies. " But, though I may weep with regret That I could not the deeps of your nature so stir As another has done, I no longer demur Against fortune that proved me thus weak to excite Your strong feeling, and showed you the higher delight That I could not awaken. And blame cannot live In my heart against you. I have nought to forgive Of unfaith : you have been to your pledges as true As true purpose could hold you. A greater love grew In your breast, and it would not be stifled. " I knew Months ago of the struggle that wearied you, saw How you battled in secret to conquer a law Of your nature, and feared the defeat that impended. 252 GERALDINE. You 're battling to-day : but the fight will have ended When this you have read ; for I claim you no longer As mine. You may yield to the love that is stronger Than love given me, and be free to win much As may answer to yours. And God grant that it touch You to peace ! " I have struggled to say this so long ; For I could not at first give you up. May the wrong Of my selfishness find its quick pardon ! I hoped That my love might still hold you to' me : but I groped In a path growing dark, for my will was arrayed Against God's ; and my wishes were most, I 'in afraid, For my happiness rather than yours. " You will make No reply to this letter, but spare me the ache Of repeating the prayerful decision contained In it here. If you knew how my heart had complained To itself, how with ready excuses it plied me, And long all the comfort of trusting denied me, You could be but pitiful now, as you must. I have faith in your manhood and mercy : I trust In your silence to help me do right. For the way Opens clear to my sight; and you never must say To yourself or to me that you ought to fulfil The faith plighted between us. I know that the will Of the Lord is against it. I know that he tells us To separate now ; and he always compels us To hear him. " You must not feel blame because I Make a sacrifice costly to me. By and by Compensation will come to my soul for the loss To my heart. By and by, shining sweetly across The hard path that I go, I shall see the dear smile Of my Master ; and that will the way so beguile, GEEALDINK 253 I shall cease to regret. " Do not think of me, then, As unhappy forever, or urge me again, Out of pity and honor mistaken, to wed you. The love that against your own will has thus led you Apart from me quite, was permitted for some Divine purpose. I beg you, my friend, to be dumb While I study the lesson that to me is taught : When I fully have mastered it, life will have caught A deep meaning but now only dimly defined, And the Teacher will prove that his wisdom was kind. " On a day that is distant, perhaps, we may stand Face to face in a friendship with strength to command Every thought of the past into silence and sleep. Until then you will see me no more, lest I reap Greater harvest of pain than to-day I must glean. May God bless you in love and in life ! May you lean On his bosom for rest when you weary ! May being Grow broader and richer henceforth to your seeing, And fill itself nobly with duties well done ! God be with you, and keep you ! . . . " At last I have won The long conflict. Henceforth I shall think of you mainly As one who was dear, and is dead ; and, if vainly I seek thus to put you away, I shall know That the Master would teach me still further, and go Through the ways of remembrance till he leads me far Where the pools of his peace and his blessedness are. " Let me kiss you farewell, as a sister might kiss you Who felt that for years she must want you and miss you. Forgive the hot tears that will fall on your face. I am heart-worn and weak ; but the pitying grace 254 GEEALDINE. Of our Father will strengthen me. Into your eyes Let me look once again, while the saddest good-byes That I ever have wept trickle over my cheeks, And my love its last picture for memory seeks. Breathe a prayer with me now that not always between The dear picture and me shall be tears. " GERALDINE." As he read and re-read it, quick flushes of shame Brought the color anew to his cheeks, and swift blame Of himself fell upon him. He saw, as by clear Revelation, how weak he would always appear In her sight, and how wickedly love had been wronged. And he felt, that, in losing what once had belonged To him wholly, he lost a great treasure of worth Beyond any conception before. The wide earth Was between them. He knew her too well to. assail Her decision by reason or wish. To avail Against faith like her own, against purpose so strong Based upon it, he now must convince her of wrong Against him in her judgment, must show her that through All the days of his doubt he had ever been true To the highest ideal of love. Could he do it ? He shrank from the question when thus he came to it. It hurt him deep down. It revealed to him clearly How false he had been ; and for days he was nearly Distracted between all the bitter accusals Of conscience, the hungers of heart, the refusals Of shame-stricken manhood, that hourly beset him. For, turn where he would, they persistently met him, And harassed him, pricked him, defied him to scorn Of himself, till he wished he had never been born. XXIX. N departing, thus troubled, beset, from the town, Was it accident ? something occurred that should crown The unhappy condition of Trent. As he rode Through a canon, where foaming and musical flowed A wild torrent, he found, by the bridle-path lying, A man who was dead, or at best appeared dying, Alone. He lay prone on his face. In his side Was a wound from which oozed the life-current, and dyed His apparel. He looked like a miner, but more Like the men who infest mining-camps to win ore By the turn of a card, not the stroke of a pick. To dismount, and to lift the man up, was the quick And impetuous movement of Trent. As he laid The limp figure again at its length in the shade Of a pine overhanging, he gazed in its face. It was colored with death ; but there lingered a trace Of an earlier beauty within it despite Many traces of reckless abandon. Its white And its haggard uplooking at Trent so deep stirred him, He groaned, " May God help you ! I can't." The man heard him, 256 GEEALDINE. And opened his eyes. They were burning, intense, With a haunted look in them that glad innocence Never gives. For an instant they gleamed upon Trent In such glaring and murderous way, that they sent A strange fear running through him, then softened. " You 're not The sneak coward," the man weakly whispered, " who shot Me, I see." And his eyes closed again. " Lift me up. Let me drink from your flask." " Mine is only a cup Of cold water," Trent answered : " your own, it may be, Can the quicker revive you. I '11 search you, and see If it 's empty." He felt the man's pockets, and took A canteen full of brandy from one, and the look Of quick death passed away from the man as he drank it. Then placing him easily there, with a blanket To bolster him up, Trent ripped open his shirt, And with awkward attention examined his hurt. It was mortal : no question of that. " You are near The next world, my poor fellow," said Trent. " Do you fear To go out of this into the other?" A sneer Curled the colorless lips. " I was never afraid," The man answered, with speech growing stronger. " I made My mind up long ago that some time I should die In my boots. It 's a trifle too soon by and by Would have suited me better, of course but I '11 go Without flinching. A curse on the vagabond, though, Who waylaid me ! " he said, sudden energy lending Itself to his words. " And who was he ? " GERALDINE. 257 " If sending A ball through my body prove friendship, I '11 call him My friend," he made answer. " Perdition befall him For this ! " And he moaned in his pain. " He should stretch A short rope for the deed he has done you, the wretch ! Was it plunder, or hate ? " " We were partners : we quarrelled, As partners are certain to do. I had corralled Too much of the wealth, he declared ; and he swore That unless I divided again, he would bore A hole into my heart. He sneaked up at the last Unbeknown, and you found me here, dying as fast 17 258 GEEALDINE. As I could without help of the doctors." He grew Half facetious as strength from the brandy swift flew Through his veins. " Will you tell me his name ? I will see That some effort is made to arrest him." " 'T would be To poor purpose. No soul saw him do it. He 's free From all proof. Let him go to the devil the way That best pleases him." " Is there no word I can say For you after you 're gone ? " A keen agony spread O'er his face. " There are none to regret me when dead. I am friendless, a vagabond worthless and worse. All my life has been simply a blight and a curse ; But I 'm going out game ! " And he set his lips hard, As if battling with weakness. " No life is so scarred And disfigured by sin but that blessing can fall On it through the one Life that was given for all," Replied Trent. " That 's the stuff of the preachers : don't preach it To me ! There 's a hell for some men, and they '11 reach it, For all of your preaching. I 'm one of them." Pain Of the body or soul made him wince. He had lain A few seconds in silence, when Trent spoke again, " God is father of all ; and the Saviour of men Is a brother as loving, as willing, as we Can desire in our need. He says, ' Come unto me ; ' And no limit is set to the words. Will you hear him ? " GERALDINE. 259 " I 've long been a comrade of Death, and I fear him Far less than the preachers. I'm growing too weak For much talking; and yet I have something to speak. Put the flask to my lips." Trent complied, with his pity Deep moved for the man. "At the East, in the city Of L , is a woman, my wife. You may learn Where she lives and her name from my papers, and earn The reward of her gratitude should you soon bring The glad news of my death. If there be anything She supremely desires, it is early to know She is truly a widow." Said Trent, "I will go To her on my return to the East, and will bear The sad message you wish." "It's not likely she'll wear Any mourning," he sneered, going on as if Trent Had not spoken. " I left her, without her consent, Years ago. A fifth cousin of hers had been making Too free with her beauty. I left her, forsaking The home she had shamed. I enlisted, and soon They reported me dead. 'T would have been the one boon She most wanted, my death; but I lived, though I bor rowed The name of another, and though my wife sorrowed In elegant black for the loss that was gain To her only. I lived, and must live that was plain, When discharged from the army by orders my own. I came West on the quiet and wrote her. Alone Of all women and men from that time, she has known Me as living, and known that she never could wed, Though a widow in name, till again I was dead. 260 GERALDINE. I have punished her so for the way she betrayed me. Besides for my punishment just she has paid me My price every year. I have lived on the sum She was willing to give that I never might come To life there at her side." Hearing this, Trent became Even pale as the speaker. He feared for the name Of this woman so worse than one widowed. His breath Grew as short as the man's who lay facing his death. " She was proud she was handsome," the speaker resumed, " And men worshipped her. Dozens like me have assumed That she loved them devotedly. Stranger, beware ! When the news of this day to that woman you bear : She will win you to love her as always she wins When it suits her to try. "Ah! the daylight begins To fade early. I thought it was morning my friend." With great effort Trent spoke, " It is noon ; but the end Of your life may appear like the close of a day. It is twilight for you. In the dusk let us pray That a morning of pardon be yours." And beside The man dying he knelt. " O thou Saviour, who died Between sinners, that sinners might live, see the soul That is going to God unforgiven, and roll Its black burden of guilt from it swiftly. Bend down In beneficent mercy this moment, and crown A poor life with the blessing of peace. Turn the heart Of this sinner to penitence, Lord, thou who art The one Master and Father of all. Make him yield GEEALDINE. 261 To the sweet ministration of Christ. Be revealed To him now, in this darkness of noonday, as one Who forgives and is kind ; who is just, but whose Son Can redeem the most fallen to thee. Let him seek The great treasure of life at the last; and, as weak And uncertain he gropes for it now, take his hand, Divine Brother of men, and lead into the land Where the weakest can never sin more." As he faltered, And ceased his petition, the dying face altered, The dying lips moved, as if shaping a prayer ; And a smile settled on them, and fixed itself there. By the wayside, Death came in his silence, and none Could have seen his dark form in the noon of the sun ; Yet he took the life up from the clay at his feet, And he bore it away with a motion so fleet 262 GERALDINE. That the watcher knew not if it lingered, or went, But in awe the old marvel awaited. As Trent Became certain that life had gone out of the face Growing fairer before him, he rose from the place Where he knelt, and walked down to the torrent to lave His hot brow in its beauty and blessing. A grave Must be dug, and within it, perchance, he must bury Some part of his faith in his kind. How the merry, Mad music of waters grew sad to his ears ! He was buffeted now by the bitterest fears That had ever assailed him. Who was the man dead In the shadow near by ? And what woman had wed Him, dishonored her vows, and such penalty paid For her sin and his silence ? He tenderly laid His cloak over the figure at length, after taking Whatever of value was on it. With aching Expectancy, then, he sat down to make clear In the papers before him the mystery here. As the first revelation, he started to see A fair portrait look out that of Isabel Lee. XXX. AJOR MELLEN to Rivermet went, as the summer Grew long ; and Miss Hope, as she met every comer, Received him with courtesy winning and sweet When he called. " I am off for a rest ; and my feet Would not carry me farther until I had tarried To look in your face," he said warmly. She parried His compliment gracefully, though she felt sure He was thinking her changed. " But what makes you endure The hot season in town ? " he made question. " You show The depression it causes. You surely should go To the seaside." " I may by and by," she replied : " I have hardly been strong enough yet ; " and she sighed In unconscious confession of weakness. He spoke His regrets with more feeling than often he woke Into speech, and she looked at him wondering. Then She discovered his errand, and trembled. "All men Who have met you," he said, " must believe that you never 264 OERALDINK Can sicken, or change, or grow old. You are ever To look at them out of a face that is fair, From your windows of life ever young. You will wear In my sight the same smile that unceasing you wore That brief summer I saw you at first, and before I had come to my years of discretion." He smiled As if half in contempt of his past. "I was wild In those days," he went on, " and too wayward to win Your respect altogether. You held it a sin Pretty nearly, that I should declare as I did How I loved you. You chided me then, and forbid Me to see you again till I quite had outgrown The hot fancy that vexed you. You gave me a stone Of dislike when I begged for the bread that could feed me To worthier life, your great love. Could you need me To-day as I need you, I 'd give you the whole Of my being, my strength, all the body and soul That are mine. The old fancy is dead ; but maturer And stronger than that is this love that is purer I offer you now. And I beg you be pitiful ! None of the worst, out of all the wide city full, Need your true goodness as I do. I plead As I never have pleaded before." "If your need Be so great," she made answer quite slowly and faintly, While over her face came a look that was saintly, "I never can meet it. I gave all I had Long ago to another." She smiled in a sad, Sober way that was touching to see. " You have more Of love's riches than I. You can some time restore Any loss of your love, you believe ; but for me I must always love on, though my love ever be GEEALDINE. 265 But a grief and a bitterness." " Say you are free From all pledges, Miss Hope," he went on to beseech ; " Say you do not quite hate me, and then I will teach You again to be glad and forget. I would take You to me, though I knew you were ill with the ache Of your love for another, believing you 'd learn In my arms to grow happy and strong, and return All I give you." She thanked him, with eyes growing dim, For his charity broad. " I am pledged but to Him 266 GERALDINE. Who creates or permits every love. My one vow Is to follow his leading in patience, and bow To his will. He would never allow me to seek A new happiness, till he has taught me how weak Are affections of earth to bring happiness best. He is giving me now a hard lesson to test My submission to him. I must always deny What you ask ; for no need can be greater than my Certain duty. Besides, it would be but a sin Against God and ourselves for us two to begin Wedded life, with my heart buried deep in its grave, And your heart turned away from the Maker, who gave It capacities great." " Do you hate me ? " he asked With quick passion. Her weakness was burdened and tasked To its uttermost. "No. I have thought of you only As one of my friends, as of one who was lonely, And so to be pitied, because he had kept The Lord out of his life." And she silently wept As she said this. "I pity you now, and I pray Him to pity you too." " Yet you sit there, and say That you never will lead me to him, as you might. If I perish at last in the pitiful fight I have made and am making with faith, will you stand Conscience free, when you might have laid hold of my hand And uplifted me ? You can believe in a God Who is kind, though he hurt you ; you look at his rod As a discipline : I only doubt, as I must, Born a sceptic at best. But to live with your trust At my side would be next to believing, would hold me, At least, from denial complete." GERALDINE. 267 "Though you told me," She answered, " that, were I henceforth to deny Your request, I should send you to ruin, still I Should deny it. Your duty lies only on you: You must do it, or suffer. And I must be true To myself and the teachings of God ; and these tell me That love is essential to love : they compel me Forever to hold myself free from a union Where two cannot meet in the perfect communion Of hearts, neither giving the other a measure It cannot return, and both finding all pleasure In giving their all. I have nothing to give. You would fall into folly and sin, should you live, Or attempt it, on husks of a poor toleration, Unfed and unhelped by love's full consecration Responding to yours. I should lead you to death, Should I bid you to come, with no love in the breath Of my bidding. The leading of God is far better Than mine ; for he binds with the beautiful fetter Of love beyond changing, that never can fail." "I would rather have your love than his." She grew pale At his wicked irreverence. " Pardon the thought, And the speaking it," quickly he said. " But you ought To beg pardon of him," was her answer. He lifted His eyebrows amusedly. " Some are not gifted At praying," he parried. " I never should be." She was hurt by his manner, and he could but see His mistake. 268 GERALDINE. " I was mad to suppose that my need Could win favor from you, or that passion could plead Out of lips so irreverent ever as mine, And not shock you. 'Twere madness and folly of thine, Could I even persuade you, to trust to my keeping The peace of your faith. I should win you to weeping The bitterest often. And still I believe You would help me, Miss Hope. I shall go but to grieve That my fate is unkind." And a tenderer ring In his tones made her pity him more. " I can bring You no heart's-ease," she answered him softly, " to please you, Since faith that is comfort to me cannot ease you. I live on its blessing to-day, as may all Who in trouble of soul to its ministry call For relief." " Are you happy ? " he asked her. The tears On her face gave him answer. " The Father who hears My petition each day would not grant it, I think, Should I ask him for happiness yet. I must drink The whole cup that he gives me, though bitter and deep. I may never be happy again, save in sleep And in dreams as I once was, I mean ; but the peace Of obedient service may cause me to cease Any longing for happiness lower." He saw The great weariness marking her face ; and with awe Of her faith that he never had yielded before, He arose to depart. As he stood at the door, He remarked, " Will you grant me some leave-taking token, To prove that I have not incurably broken GEEALDINE. 269 Our friendly relations ? Your promise to breathe A brief prayer for me daily would always inwreathe Me in holy remembrance. I ask it as one, Who, long t doubting your faith, has almost now begun To be sick of his doubt ; and I ask it for sake Of my love, that, in leaving you now, would here make Its confession of weakness. I've tasted the sweets Of all sinning; I've mocked at the bitter defeats That have mastered me. Long in my weariness, tired Of these idle pretences, my soul has desired With a hungry desiring some help from without. As I came here to-day, in this pitiful doubt Of myself, to entreat you to give me your love, So I ask you to bear my great longing above All the sins that beset it. I know not the way, And I have not the words." "I will promise to pray That some prayer may be taught you," she said. And her eyes Overflowed as she spoke. " God is near, and our cries He can hear, though so feeble and faint that they seem Like a breath in the night. And his help is supreme In its blessing. You '11 know it sometime." And she smiled Through her tears. "In your company faith had beguiled Me, perhaps, to believing long since. I have fear For my future alone. God is nearer me here By your side than he ever will come when I go Into ways of my choosing. I know this, and know I shall need you forever. Good-by." As he went Thus abruptly, the strength of her womanhood spent To its uttermost, Geraldine sank to her knees, By a sofa, half fainting. Through cruel degrees 270 GERALDINE. She had come to a weakness so weary and worn, That it seemed she had suffered and sorrowed and borne, Until death would be welcome. Alas ! had she known How another was tempted and beaten, alone, And unhelped of the Master, since asking had flown From his need, she might even have begged to surrender The burden of being. But God is as tender And loving as wise. He in mercy will keep Too much seeing from eyes that already must weep. XXXI. N the solitudes vast, in the wide, solemn spaces Where mountains looked up with their reverent faces, As if they besought benediction on all Who were troubled of soul, lingered Trent. Of the gall Of self-scorn, self-condemnings, he drank day by day Wretched draughts. On his forehead the breezes might play From white snow-peaks that yonder gleamed always in sight ; But he knew not the touch of their cooling delight. He was worn ; but he cared for no healing. He waited Apart from his kind, in a gloom that was fated To blind him to every bright presence, and stood Face to face with dark evil, deserted of good. There are terrible deeps that a man may go down When his feet are not stayed. From the beautiful crown Of some summit of gladness he sudden may sink Into blackness of hell, with no will but to shrink From the terror, no strength to leap upward, and hold Himself there in the sunlight. The shadows that rolled Over Trent became darker and denser. The days Moved along like a dream. The white noons, the cool grays 272 GEEALDINE. Of the evenings, the dawns with their wonderful blushes On mountain and sky, and the marvellous hushes That stilled all the world, what were these in the strait Of his being? Alone he confronted the great And unknowable mysteries. Life was his own, To be lived amid pain; to give up with the groan Of an instant ; to cling to, with skies like a psalm, And the air heavy laden with peace like a balm ; To let go at his will when tempestuous sweeps Of the storm bore him down to these horrible deeps ; To be sick of and scorn ; to condemn as a gift Without blessing or worth ; to give absolute shift If he dare ! Yes, his life was his own. What of death ? The one heritage truly ; the Silence that saith To all care and all effort, " Be still ! " the one blessing The poorest of all may be sure of possessing ; The rest from all fever ; the peace from all pain ; The one antidote certain for life's bitter bane ; All humanity's right, that Divinity gave When he peopled the earth, and permitted a grave; The last mystery waiting mortality's ken, To be read by and by why not master it, then ? What was Fame, that he cared for it ? Only a speck On the ocean to sink in it ; only a fleck In the blue far above him to fade in the sun, And be lost. What was Right, that the race he should run Against Wrong and be borne to the dust, but a bare And uncertain abstraction, that puniest care Like his own could not nourish or guard ? What was Duty But just a poor idol, bereft of all beauty, That he had been worshipping blindly till now ? What was Song, that she ever could place on his brow Any laurels to gladden him ? what but a faint Crying-out after concord, a feeble complaint GERALDINK 273 Across echoless distance, all efforts at singing? To yield them all up were the best, and by flinging Himself on the Future so misty and dim, To be rid of the Present defiant and grim. " I have made up my mind," so he wrote to a friend, " To go out of the world. I would walk to the end Of my life at a step. Yes, I know you will say Of life here. But I 'm dealing with things of to-day. They have wearied me utterly. What is the gain To do battle forever ? The victories vain That must daily be won are but gilded defeats. I am sick of their wearying, vanishing sweets. There are men who will call him a coward who goes From the work that is his to the lasting repose Of the grave without call of the Master. I care For no speech of the crowd. But you know that I dare What the mass hold in terror. You know that I face The unknown of the ages the limitless space Of the Ever-and-Ever with courage that sees All its possible dread. I have drunk to the lees Of regret, and its poison has entered my soul. How it withers and burns ! How my heart and the whole Of my riotous being are simply on fire ! I am wild with the one overcoming desire To go out from this fever to limitless rest To forget if I may ! " Were you ever possessed Of the devils of love ? Yes, my friend, there are such. They lay hold as with fingers of velvet: their touch Has the blessing of paradise in it at first, But God pity the man who has by them been cursed! For they rend at the end like the demons of hell. All the hope and the beauty of being, as well 18 274 GERALDINE. As the fruit and the promise, are torn to a shred. It were better, indeed, to be known of the dead Than abide with demoniacs living and grim Mid the tombs. " Waste no words of your pity on him Who can feel as I feel, and can write as I write. He has only the scorn of himself. In his sight He is just a demoniac, rent with a rage That no Master of demons is near to assuage And allay. And yet pity me, though I forbid Any pitiful utterance ! Pity me, hid From the pity of God by a cloud of black doubt That makes night of my day ! I am beaten about By a tempest unceasing. My anchors are gone. It is gloom without end. I can pray for no dawn, Since some sin of my being has smitten me dumb Before him who might help me, who only could come Into tempest so fearful, and still it. ..." I wait But some prospecting party to end the hard fate Of this life, and begin again where ? They will take A few letters for friends, but not one that will make Any mention of purpose like this. My good-by Will not burden another than you. When I lie Here alone in the solitude, caring no more Whether love be a fiction, or death be a door Into fiction more idle, they '11 say I was killed By some vagrant. You only will know that I stilled My heart's beating myself ; and you will not contend You are wiser than they, since you serve me as friend With your silence. I know I shall like the long quiet These mountains will give me. Their peace, when my riot Of living is over, will stand me instead GEEALDINE. 275 Of the heaven that so blesses those happier dead Who have waited in patience to reach it. The Lord Must be near me henceforth ; and some meagre reward Will be mine for the pang of my dying. " Farewell ! The Beyond is so broad, that two never can tell If again they will meet when they lift its dark curtain To wander within it. This only is certain : The devils that mock me will miss me, and I Shall be free from this fever that burns me. Good-by ! " The days passed. The pain lingered. The fever burned hot In his veins. He was nigh to delirium. Not A stray miner came near where he tarried. He strolled Up and down the green valley in dreams. He grew old As if suns were the measure- of years. Then he made His resolve. He would climb the tall mountain, whose shade Had been over him daily ; would sound from its summit The deeps of blue distance beneath, with his plummet Of vision; would gaze on the glory far lying Around him, again, and find easier dying Where heaven was the nearest. The journey was long And was slow. It was helped by no snatches of song That he once might have sung. On its earlier way There were reaches of green, and cool shadiness lay Like a blessing upon it ; but later the steep Became barren and rugged : for hours he must creep Through the glare of the sun, along courses no feet Had made easy before him. The blistering heat Of the noon made him faint. He grew giddy and weak, Yet he staggered along. Far above him the peak Reared in solitude lonely. Majestic, sublime, 276 GERALDINE. It awaited his coming. Unconscious of time, Save that often it seemed an eternity here Had begun, he crept on. Through the white atmosphere He could see other peaks lifted far to the blue Of the sky; while the distance took boundaries new As he slowly ascended, and range after range In sublimity rose, till an ocean of strange Rocky billows rolled far all around him, their tips GERALDINE. 277 Only swept by the wandering, vanishing ships Of the clouds, that before a warm breeze were adrift, And their hues ever shifting and changing, as swift The hot sun, the cool shadow, went by. The dark green Of the timber-lines everywhere belted between The light gray of the summits, and, sleeping below, The soft green of those valleys where musical flow The mad streams of the mountains; the glimmering gleams Of white ledges shone out on the silvering beams Of the sun, and gave light to the soberer veins Lurking lower; and broad in the east the great plains Rolled away from his vision, vast reaches of yellow, Dry sod, with long swells like the sea, and a mellow Haze marking their splendor remote. As he rested At times, he looked over that ocean, so crested With color and grandeur, half heeding how splendid The view had become, and yet feeling befriended And helped by its breadth. Though the fever grew hotter And fiercer within him, and often the water Supply that he bore was diminished, his brain Became steadier, truer, the throbbings of pain At his heart were less wild, and the marvellous wonder Of being laid hold on his insight ; for under The massiveuess round a great thought seemed to hide From his vision, though dimly and vaguely descried By some deeper sense in him. He felt that he neared The sublimities nearest to God. It appeared To his sensitive soul, as yet higher he climbed, That he came where his nature the nearest sublimed To the nature divine. He grew out of his own Narrow bondage of life into freedom alone He can know who is filled by a new comprehension Of infinite fact. 278 GEEALDINE. The day waned. The ascension More rugged became. The thin air was so light, That he panted for breath. Still above him the white Of the peak was uplifted against the blue arch Vaulting over, but lent him no shadow. His march Had begun, he believed, through eternity. Slowly He dragged himself up through the solitude holy, As slowly the sun swung its way down the west. The cool summit airs kissed him at last, as a guest Who was welcome. They fanned his faint heart. They upbore him, As onward he went, till he saw just before him The crest that was highest of all. When the sun Had sunk quite to his level, his journey was done, And he stood on the uttermost height, a bald crown Of gray granite, moss-covered, from which, looking down Either side, he could see the dim valleys grow dimmer As deepened the shadows, could see the peaks glimmer With light far beyond them, could gaze on their faces, Uplifted around through the wide, solemn spaces, And marvel in awe. "All the strength of the hills Is His also ! " he murmured. " How weak are the wills Of His creatures ! How puny the arms we outreach In our proudest endeavor ! How idle the speech That we utter, the cries of our souls ! Life is only An atom of weakness, each atom as lonely As if God had gone from the world." There were tears On his face. He fell prostrate, and swift the fleet years Passed before him as thus he lay prone. All their error, Their failure, their loss, he beheld. With a terror At heart that he never had known, here he faced GERALDINE. 279 What he had been and was. He grew shamed and abased. In the presence relentless each moment. He thought Of old Moses on Nebo, who, hungering, caught A sweet glimpse into being the best, and then gave It all up, with no mortal to hollow his grave. And he said to himself, "I have seen the fair land Where love lives in content ; but I never can stand In its gladness, or sip of its honey and peace. This is Nebo to me. May it give me release From the bondage of passion forever ! " He lay Thus in trouble of soul while the beautiful day Faded out. The west crimsoned to scarlet. The bars Which imprisoned the sun were blood-red. A few stars 280 GERALDINE. Glinted down the blue deeps. The gray twilight let fall A soft mantle of shadows and silence on all. Then afar from the north came a wonderful sweep Of black cloud that swift mounted the darkening steep Of the summit. Far thunder growled low. The sharp flashes Of lightning grew constant, and nearer the crashes That followed them. Over the man lying there Where the mercy of sleep had soon found him, the air Became scintillant, gleamed with fine courses of flame, As if fretted with fire. The whole mountain became But a cone for electric display. He awoke As the storm gathered might, and a thunder-gun spoke Just above him with utterance awful. He sprung To his feet. Was it hell ? Had he certainly flung Himself into a future of horrors ? The gloom Of far spaces was lurid with light, and the doom Of dark Tartarus shrouded him. Blinded and dazed For the instant, his brain in a whirl, as if crazed By some terrible pressure, he stood there, and strove To make sure that he heard but the breathings of Jove. The mad lightning flew over the rocks of the summit In crinkles of flame. It shot down like a plummet Of fire through the deeps far beneath. The red flow Of its flashes lit up the black night with a glow Beyond color of speech. The whole atmosphere gleamed With the fluid electric that sparkled and streamed Round the visitor there as if mocking him, flaring Itself in his face as if vexed at the daring He showed, playing round him in circles that filled All his frame with their current. At last, as he thrilled GERALDINE. To the touches of death in believing, there came From the deep far above him a forking of flame : A great glare flooded over the dark, and he fell Limp and lifeless, with never a creature to tell The wild story and sad, if forever the breath Of his being had fled, and this silence were death. And he lay there alone, with his white, haggard face Looking up to the sky, neither longing nor grace 281 Of life marking it now ; while the pitiful rain Beat upon it, as though to wipe out all the pain It had known in the past. Thus he lay there alone, Smitten down, with no time for a thought or a groan, Smitten down when he held a mad purpose to take His own being up wickedly, rashly, and break 282 GERALDINE. It in twain in the face of his Maker, struck down By the Maker himself, on the masterful crown Of that mountain sublime, ere the deed he had done, And the life of the future unfitly begun By a terrible sin in the present. He lay Thus alone till the storm spent itself, and the gray Of the dawn in the east began flushing with day. XXXII. * OTHER NATURE is kind. The cool rain pelting there In the face of the man smitten down gave him care That was timely and saving. It rallied him so From the shock he had suffered. It chilled the hot glow Of the fire in his veins. 'T was the medicine best For this fever that burned like a flame in his breast, And it blest him. He woke as the morning grew strong To uncover the night ; he awoke with a throng Of confused recollections besieging his brain. At the first, all his effort and striving were vain To recall what had happened ; then slowly he came To himself. He remembered his journey, the aim That it had, the mad purpose that moved him, the night's Awful vision. He shut his eyes close ; but the sights He had latest beheld were before him again. As they burned through his eyelids, he shuddered ; and then, Rising up, looking out from the height, he was thrilled By a wonderful picture. The tempest had stilled. Flying mists from the summit had flown to the deeps 284 GEEALDINE. Lower down. The lone peak was an island : its steeps Were encircled in fleeciness white, a wide sea Without motion, milk-foamy, outreaching as free As the limitless ocean, a sea with no sail On its surface to hint of a haven or gale, A broad sea of white silence, where softly the hail Of some sailors unseen one might fancy he heard, Leaning over to listen. The air never stirred To a breath. Far away in the east the round sun Had rolled up from this ocean of cloud, that begun To be silver beneath it. Across the broad sweep, Looking straight from himself to the sun, on the sleep Of this marvellous sea he beheld a bright shimmering, Scintillant pathway to glory, whose glimmering Beauty grew brighter while gazed on. Below, Hidden under a gloomy, dense mass, with no glow Of glad color to cheer it, green valleys lay dim In their twilight, and waited the morning. For him The warm sun had arisen in splendor that eyes Of a mortal but seldom behold. The clear skies Of the morning held blessings for him. The white sea, Reaching round his calm anchorage, glistened, that he Might be glad with the vision. For him, him alone, The sun emptied its glory so freely, that shone Over summit and sea. Solitary, and far From his fellows, as ever might seem a faint star Lost away in the wilderness spaces, he stood There deserted of evil, alone with the good. Here and there a gray mountain-peak rugged uplifted Its crown, but another lone island, where drifted No mortal along through the silence to keep Him companionship distant. The radiant deep GERALDINE. 285 Was unpeopled ; its islands were desolate. He Was alone in the world. From that wonderful sea Of white splendor the sun had arisen to glow For himself, as if never a mortal might know Its bright blessing, beside, on the breadth of the earth ; For himself, as if for him the planet had birth In the thought of the Lord, as if for him the world Had been made, into wonderful space had been whirled, And the Maker had set him high up on its throne, And crowned him with glory as king of his own. Then he saw, with a sense that was deeper than seeing, He felt, the great truth, that the lines of his being Ran always from him to his God ; that in fleeing From life he was fleeing from God ; that forever His being, God-given, ran through all endeavor To God ; that he cared for it, guarded it, held It to uses the best and the truest; compelled It to answer for doing or promises ; knew Lot and purpose within it, as much as if through The long ages no mortal beside him could be, Or had been in the past, and as much as if he Were the one only creature of God's mighty hand, Set to serve him as subject, and do the command Of his will ; as if God and himself peopled all The broad universe. Then, as a light fell on Saul When he rode to Damascus, convincing him swift Of his sin, while it clearly revealed the great gift Of his pardon, the glory that Trent beheld here Laid before him the sin of his purpose ; and clear As the glory itself he could see how the sin Had deluded his reason. Could penitence win Him forgiveness ? Could penitence ever beguile 286 GEEALDINE. The sweet mercy of God, and make certain the smile Of compassionate pity ? He sank on his knees, A weak suppliant now : " Divine Father, who sees Every wandering soul, a poor prodigal comes To thy table, and begs for the merciful crumbs That his hunger can feed. See him now as he pleads For thy pardon ! Thy bounty can measure his needs, And thy love can bestow. Let the light of thy face Shine upon him, as here he beseeches the grace Penitential to hallow his heart. Let him feel The strong clasp of thy tender embraces, and heal The deep hurts he has suffered from sinful desire. With thy touches of cooling remove the hot fire That his passion has kindled within him, and give Him thy peace. Make him eager hereafter to live. May he hold by thy gift of creation with pride That is reverent, knowing that always the wide And the infinite distance between him and thee Is bridged over by infinite love. Let him see The great glory of being, the equal and greater Concern of a trust from the Father-Creator Directly to him. " Help him now, holy God, As again he begins the hard way to be trod Through the world. It is dark in the valleys ; but far Above mist, above gloom, the glad sun-glories are. May he see them forever before him, as one Who has stood face to face here alone with the sun, And beheld the Lord's presence. O Master divine ! Let this morning to him be a token and sign In his memory ever, that always above The dim twilight of cloud glow the smiles of thy love And thy pardon compassionate." GERALDINE. 287 Melted and broken By feeling intense that so feebly had spoken, His prayer became sobbing that moved him beyond Any utterance. Over his forehead the fond Morning breezes blew tenderly. Kneeling, he felt Their soft kisses of cooling, until as he knelt He grew calmer, and stronger of soul. Then he rose To his feet, and looked out on the scene of repose So magnificent round him. A vision supernal It was, in the light that from ages eternal Has glorified day, since the Deity spoke It to being, and earth into splendor awoke From its earliest night a glad vision of peace. The white sea, like a calm that no tempest could cease ; The lone islands outlying in silence ; a rift Here and there in the deep, through which sudden and swift Could be seen a green valley in depths far below, A glad vision. Alas that a picture with glow So ineffable, beauty and blessing so fair, Should as soon fade away as the mists of the air ! He was faint with long fasting, was hungry and weak, When with footsteps that faltered he turned from the peak To begin his descent. In the valley he knew He had food, and a horse ; but he said his adieu To the summit, in doubt if he ever could gain What so greatly he needed. If upward had lain The hard journey, he soon must have sunk by the way ; But he stumbled along down the mountain-side, gray With the mist that he entered at length, till he stood Underneath it, and saw it inwrap like a hood The far height he had left. Then below the dark chill Of its sombreness, gloomy, forbidding, he still 288 GERALDINE. Sought the valley beneath. More than once did he sink, Overcome and exhausted with effort, and think That he never should rise. More than once did he ask For the strength that he had not, to finish his task. As the valley grew nearer, more level the slope Of the mountain became ; and a lingering hope Died away in his heart of attaining the spot Where his camp had been made. The sun burned him, as hot It shone down through the vanishing clouds. He grew sick Unto death. His lips bleeding, his tongue become thick From the thirst that beset him, he scarcely could lend Any form to a prayer. He must walk to the end Of his life, as it seemed, when he would not, nor seek The one help, save in dumb aspiration. And weak As a babe at the breast, when his feeble endeavor Had spent itself utterly, hopeless as ever Was babe that had never breathed hope, he sank prone To the earth, and lay there with a pitiful moan Faintly marking his slow and irregular breath, Alone telling that still he was master of death. XXXIII. N a late autumn-day Mrs. Lee sat alone In her room. If some part of her beauty had flown Through long vigils of waiting, a cas ual glance In her face could not show it. Some tale of romance Mediaeval lay idly before her unread, Though its pages were open. Dumb sorrow, that shed Only tears of repression, looked out of her eyes. One might easily think she was hearing the cries Of a soul in despair. It was mid-afternoon, And for visits of form rather early ; but soon She was summoned below by a caller. No name Had been given the servant, a friend, who but came With a message of interest : this was the word That was brought to her. Wondering, when she had heard What the message might be, if the effort to hear it Would seem well repaid, and beginning to fear it As something portentous of ill, she descended The stairs. If her life had on calmness depended, She could not more calm have appeared when she went Through the drawing-room door, and saw Percival Trent. He looked aged and worn, as if years had gone past 19 290 GEEALDINE. Since they parted. Some change had been wrought that would last In his life, she as quickly discerned. " You 've been ill, Mr. Trent," she remarked as they met, " and are still But an invalid." "Yes: I was ill in the mountains A month," he replied ; " am in search of the fountains Of health, now, at home." " I had fears you were dead. It is two or three summers, I think, since you said Me a word. Were you reckless of life ? " A quick pain Made more haggard his face. " I 'd have counted it gain But a little before to have died ; but I prayed More than ever to live when it seemed I had laid Myself down at death's door." " Tell me of it," her face Growing eager and pitying now, and the lace On her bosom betraying the heart-beats below. "There is little to tell. It is little I know Of the story, at any rate. Wandering down To my camp in the valley, from climbing the crown Of a mountain, my strength began failing me. All I could do by and by was to stagger and fall, And then lie there unconscious. The next that I knew I was lying in camp, not my own, with a true Good Samaritan nursing me. Providence sent him That way in the wilderness surely, and lent him To save me. He says I had fever, and lay On the edge of the grave for a fortnight. One day I awoke out of sleep, and I found myself there, GERALDINE. 291 As I said, in the camp of a stranger. His care And the Lord's brought me through. When my strength had returned, He came with me to Denver." " He certainly earned The undying regard of your friends," she declared, Speaking warmly. " You cannot so early be spared From the need of the world." And the look that she gave Had a hungering in it. " I never shall crave To go out of this being again. I have seen How it links with the being of God, how between The divine and the human runs ever a thought That should glorify life." It was clear he had caught A new glimpse of the sacredness being might hold, From his words and his tone, and she wondered. " I told A man dying," he said, " a while since, I would bear A hard message to you. He was past any care That could save him, was dying alone." As he spoke Very slowly and sadly, he heard the slow stroke Of a neighboring bell, and it seemed like a knell For the dead. He went on, while his utterance fell To a low monotone, and she listened as one Who half feared, half divined, what was coming. " His sun Set at noon. It had been a sad life at the best. Before going, he told me a part; and the rest I discovered from papers of his. He had said I should learn his wife's name from these when he was dead, And should find her." The woman who listened grew pale, 292 GEEALDINE. But kept silence. "My search could not possibly fail Of success, when, directed so plainly as here, I found guidance." He gave her a picture, as clear A reflection of her as she ever had faced At the mirror; and when in her hand he had placed The mute semblance, he waited her answer. She took The small portrait, but offered no word. A dumb look Of appealing came over her face. " Richard Lee Was your husband. He died, with none near him but me, In a canon some miles from a camp. I sought aid GERALDINK 293 From there later, and buried him under the shade Of a pine, where he died. In this package you'll find The few papers he had, and his watch." " You are kind," She said faintly, accepting them ; much as if saying it Only to prelude some question, delaying it. " No : I am cruel," he answered her sadly, " To you and myself. I would only too gladly Have spared you the pain of this meeting, and saved Me the hurt it has cost. But I could not. I braved Your distress and my own, as I must, for the sake Of my promise to him, and because I must make A last call upon you." She looked up at him then, With her eyes full of tears. " You have come to me when I can read you my riddle of life, can unmask What before I have hidden ; and now will you task Me to say a good-by that is final ? I ask For your pardon and pity. Forgive me for keeping The truth from you so ! I am bitterly reaping My harvest of folly." The pain in her voice Betrayed more than the words. " There is left me no choice," He responded with feeling. " We cannot continue To meet as if friends. I am free now to win you, And you are as free to be won ; but our ways Must henceforth lie apart." She looked at him with gaze So intense that he trembled. " What was it you learned Of that man as he died, that so certainly turned 294 GEEALDINE. You away from me ? What was the lie that he sealed His lips with at the last ? " As she boldly appealed To him thus, she was calmer than he. It was hard To repeat the hard tale of a woman's life marred As hers had been, and hard to refuse all replying When questioned so keenly. " He was not belying You wholly. You were the man's wife ? " Thus he parried Her queries, or tried to. " I was. We were married When I was a child, now it seems to me, more Than a lifetime ago, I could think it, before I at all comprehended what loving or living Might mean ; for I gave him my hand when the giving Was much like the gift of a book to a friend, The mere thing of a moment. The saddest amend Has been made for my careless bestowal. Ten years He has called me his wife, a long season of tears, And of pain to my soul. Within less than a week From the wedding I loathed him, yes, loathed him ; but, meek As a woman, I yielded myself to his will. He was gross in his nature, so gross he could kill Every sensitive feeling within me, and mock At the murder in scorn. There are times when his talk I can hear even yet, till no hell of hereafter Could madden me so. There are times when his laughter All devilish crazes me now, or so nearly I wonder if reason is left me. Yes, dearly, With price beyond any computing, I've paid For the gift that I gave him. My girlhood was made A dark shadow of gloom, and my womanhood knew GERALDINE. 295 Only shadow and chill till you came. If I grew To be heartless and reckless, my friend, do you wonder? Cut off from all happy content, put asunder From all that I craved, wedded so to the worst In the world that is ever incarnate, and cursed By my bondage with sin so diverse it took in All the grosser and uglier forms, I might sin Without adding to sorrow, I often was sure ; But I did not. I held my poor womanhood pure, Save as soiled by its contact with him. Did he tell You a different story ? " " He said that you fell From your womanhood's purity, covered with shame The home-altar," he answered her frankly. A flame Of indignant denial burned over her cheeks. 296 GERALDINE. " You believed him ? " she asked. " All those pitiless weeks When you said me no word, you believed me to be A false wife ? Is it so ? " " You forget, Mrs. Lee, That my silence was nearly the silence of death." " I remember now," faintly she said ; and her breath Became quicker, her manner more passionate. " Did you Believe for one moment his story ? I bid you, By all we have been to each other, and all That we might be, to tell me ! " " One scarcely can call It believing, when doubt is as strong as belief," He made answer. " And partial believing brought grief To me keen as you suffer at knowing that you Could be partially doubted." He paused. " I was true To myself and to him," she declared, " till you taught me What loving and life might in blessing have brought me. Imprudent and reckless at times, I confess, I cared little for gossip and comment, and less For the jealousy feeding on both. As for him Who pronounced me untrue by and by 't was a grim And a sickening burlesque on purity, when He accused me of shame and dishonor. The men And the women of brothels knew well where lie spent Both his time and my money. " One day, Mr. Trent, When my baby came to me," a far-away look In her eyes as she spoke, " in brief gladness I took It up into my arms, and I said to the Lord, ' Thou hast given me here what must be my reward For the misery mine. May it minister so GEEALDINE. 297 To my need, I may better and worthier grow ! ' But it sickened. The dear little thing slipped away From my clinging embrace. It was cruel to pray It might live ; for the blood in its innocent veins Knew the sins of its father, and carried the stains Of his lecherous life in each drop. So he killed it By fatal transmission. They said the Lord willed it I hated him then ; I have doubted him since. " After that, Richard Lee went away. I can wince Even yet at the pain that I felt, though, before I had courage to force him to leave me. The more And more freely I gave him of means, but the lower He sank into defilement. I stopped his supplies, And he robbed me of jewels, and pawned them. My cries And my pleadings he jeered at. At length he accused me Of shame ; " and she shuddered. " The charge but amused me At first. But I had been too careless ; and some, Who professed to be friends, for the moment were dumb In declaring belief in my purity. None Can so hurt you as friends with their silence. The sun Cast a shadow far darker than ever on me, When my husband so hedged me about, I could see No escape. Then I offered to pay Richard Lee The full half of my annual income to go Out of sight of me ever, and stay there ; and so He enlisted next day, having drunk enough then To be brave. I could hardly be sorrowful when They reported him dead ; but my sorrow was deep When he came to life later. To-day if I weep, It will be for the loss of your love." " I believe In your truth and your purity both, and I grieve 298 GERALDINE. That we cannot be friends in the future, except At a distance. This passion of ours, that has swept Through our lives like a western tornado across The wide prairies, may leave us with feeling of loss And of cruel besetment. But both of us soon Will breathe freer and purer. A calm afternoon Of content and uplifting may come to us each For the morning of storms. I have heard the clear speech Of my Master appointing the way I must take, And I enter it patiently, gladly. The ache Of your life will be healed by and by, and the way That you walk will be pleasant, if lonely to-day." She smiled sadly, half bitterly. "Prophecy drops From your lips like a song, but unhappily stops Too far short of a plain revelation. It yields Me poor comfort to say that through sunshiny fields I may go on some morrow, if pain shall have ceased, Simply painless alone. It might give me at least Just a hint of companionship : but there is only One soul to mate mine ; and the way must be lonely That will not permit me to walk by your side." " I am weak, and unworthy all love," he replied. " I had plighted my love and my faith, ere we met, And was true to the pledge. When my sympathy set With your current of need, then swift passion conspired To make league against love. All my nature was fired With the conflict. I wrote you, I said you, no sentence Of passionate feeling, but called for repentance Of manhood and faith. Thus it was till my pledge Was returned to me broken. I stood on the edge Of dishonor, and saw myself ready to sink GEEALDINE. 299 Into pitiless shadow. And there, by the brink Of that darkness that opened, shone out a great light. I saw clearly again, and I stood in affright At the vision so clear. Strong as ever the love I had plighted and broken appeared, set above Every other profession, yet shadowed by sin, And made darker by loss. That I ever can win My great losses once more, I may hope in some morrow, But dare not to-day. "Yet to-day I may borrow Your thought, that victorious living is better Than happiness. Count me forever your debtor, If slowly the thought in my life crystallizes To character. Out of the many surprises That wait for insnaring my weakness, I then Shall come forth a glad victor, and happier men Will not know such a blessing as crowns me. " And you Let me echo your thought as the final adieu That I speak to you now, Mrs. Lee. I could never Make certain and true any patient endeavor Of yours : I could never prove company best For your soul. There is only one Strength we may test To the uttermost, knowing it never can fail : May you find it ! " He rose, and his cheeks were as pale As her own when she spoke. " And this, then, is the end ? " She besought him with pleading. " Say, rather, my friend, That this moment we make a beginning in living Victorious," firmly he answered, and giving His hand to her now. As she took it, they stood 300 GERALDINK Face to face in farewell. " You are noble and good, But as cruel as fate," she declared. " And my fate Has been crueler far than the grave. I shall wait For the kindness of that with impatient appeal, Till it comes." The sharp pain in her words he could feel Keenly stabbing his heart. " May you learn that the blessing Of death is not one to be coveted ! " pressing Her hand between his. "May you see, as I see it, That life has its uses and sweetness, albeit Its crosses and losses are great!" She grew faint From her hunger and hurt and the steady restraint Over self. As he saw it, he tenderly bore Her across to a sofa, and strode to the door. So they parted, the woman half fainting, no word Of good-by slipping through the white lips that had erred In confessing a passion unduly, no token Of bitter reproach for the words he had spoken ; The man with a sense of distrust making laggard His self-justifyings, his face growing haggard And pinched with the pity and torment of soul That possessed him, to find, if God please, the one goal At the end of the world, whither every road leads That we walk in, whatever our longing and needs. XXXIV. T was months before Trent became stal wart again ; But he took up his labor, and went among men, In much bodily weakness, and often depressed, Yet with strength of his manhood renewed. And none guessed That his life was a penitence daily ; that, giving Brave words for the true and the good, he was living A bitter repentance for sin he had pondered And planned ; that alone in despair he had wandered To lay down the burdens of being. He held His old cheeriness well before others, compelled The good-humor that won him his friends, went about As a light, not a shadow. But often some doubt Of himself sent him into the gloom that was near, Even when he stood most in the sun ; or a fear Of the mercy of God made him weak as a child, And despairing as one who is never beguiled By the blessing of Christ. At the first, in December's Chill dreariness, sitting alone by the embers He stirred to a blaze, he made offering gladly Of Mrs. Lee's letters, then musingly, sadly, 302 GERALDINK As flickered the flames into quivering flashes Of light, and then died, he wrote, ASHES TO ASHES. A grate full and glowing: now burn every letter That tells of the past. Ashes to ashes! 'Tis better, far better, Such love should not last. Words half aflame with the warmth of their passion Will need but a spark: Nothing remains but a film that is ashen, Faded, and dark. How the fire leaps in its madness so merry, And kisses the lines ! Darkness will soon all their sentiment bury Where no one divines. What is the past? A wild dream that has faded, A story soon told: All of its sunshine to sombre is shaded, Its summer grown cold. Bleak blow the winter winds down the to-morrows With shiver and moan. How the grate glows with the fever it borrows From love that is flown! Chilly the air is ; the fever is dying That fed the hot grate : Out in the night the chill night-breeze is sighing As plaintive as fate. GERALDINE. 303 Falter the flames into flickering flashes, Till dark is the room : Whisper it tenderly, " Ashes to ashes ! " Here in the gloom. Nothing remains of a marvellous treasure That one day was mine, Passion disguised as a love beyond measure, And now without sign. Nothing remains ? Ah ! perhaps it were better Were ashes the whole ; But somehow I fancy each passionate letter To me had a soul ; And in the dark days of my dreary Decembers Each soul may return, And here in the gloom of my flickering embers May sacrifice burn. No matter. Good-by to the words that were spoken In days that are fled! For passion burned out, let the ashes be token, As dust for the dead. So he put from his sight what he could of the past That might trouble him, or that a shadow might cast On his present, to prove but a shadow of hurting, Not healing. His manhood grew stronger, asserting Its purified purpose in patience, and leaning More nearly each day upon God. The deep meaning Of life became clearer and sweeter. He knew A diviner and holier thought running through All its uses than ever before. He was eager With tongue and with pen for the right. To beleaguer The wrong was henceforward his mission with zeal More intense, and with faith more uplifted and leal. 304 GERALDINE. And the time wore away. He shunned Rivermet chiefly, Or tarried there only as needful, and briefly. His hunger of heart for the love that he missed, And yet knew to be his, would at seasons insist Upon going to Geraldine straightway, and telling Its craving of need, with insistence compelling Anew the great gift of herself ; but he waited In patient endeavor the gift, that, belated, Must minister unto his need, if he ever Should know the sweet ministry more. Yet he never Felt utterly hopeless when once he had come Into healthier life. If to-day he were dumb, Some to-morrow might happily gladden him, when He could win her to hearing and trust. Until then He would do a man's work as he might, among men. There are souls who walk cheerfully with us, and lift Us to new aspirations by bountiful gift Of their courage and hope, who are braver than those Going forth into battle. Each day their repose Is but peace after striving. Each day they have fought A strong enemy hidden within, and have caught The sweet grace of their patience from victory won Over self. And each day the hard duty, best done, Is this facing a foe ever present, with hope Never yielding, and courage that always can cope With the haunting defiance, and conquer it. Add To the strife of to-day the remembrances mad Of a bitter defeat in the past, the pale ghost Of a mastery cruel, whose torment is most In the memory yet like a prelude of hell, And we pity the soul that from victory fell ; But we never can blame if again there be tears And laments for a victory lost. GEEALDINE. 305 Through the years' Busy rounds, in much hope and much fearfulness, went Up and down uncomplainingly Percival Trent. As he labored, his love for the work best returning True wages of labor, he slowly was earning The prizes of fame. Without shaping his life For the public, a place in the front of the strife Between error and truth was forever accorded him. Men with brave honor of manhood rewarded him Out of their generous confidence, yielded Him heartiest praise for the blows that he wielded Defending the right, made him willing and strong When unwilling and weak he became ; and his song Grew as sweet and as clear as his eloquent speech Became braver and stronger. Its musical reach Was as broad as the longings of men, and it thrilled With new tenderness. Through it some mastery willed The deep feeling of hearts, till they listened and stirred In their stupor or pain as if touched by a word Out of heaven. And as always the singer hears much In his song that is lost to the many, some touch Of divinely beneficent blessing he knew, As he sang, that was never sent pulsating through Any heart but his own. He had sweet compensation For singing. A tender and hallowed elation Of spirit came to him in place of depression And pain. In his heart there was gladder possession Than doubt and distrust. And if silent he kept, Walking on for a day while all melody slept In his soul with no sunshine to thrill it and wake it, Some comfort came over his journey to make it Less dark : the warm thanks of glad hearts he had cheered Were borne to him in cheering, and life was endeared 20 306 GERALDINE. To himself as for others he made it a gladder And holier thing. If his song became sadder At times than a lyric of hope, it was rare That it had not a hope hidden under, a care Reaching through it for others more hopeless, a thought, Out of hunger and heartache and loneliness caught, For some hunger of hope to make feast of. At times, Ringing clear as a chime through his musical rhymes, Came a glad Jubilate, a song full of praise For the light in the night, for the glory of days Without shadow of dark, for the glow and the glory Of being. And often through legend or story Some homily ran in disguise, close akin To the teaching of Christ, that persuasive could win Where a plainer appeal might repel. So he preached A wide gospel of good. So he happily reached The closed ear of indifference often, and made The great heart of humanity thrill as he played On its quivering strings. So he brought to clear seeing The secret of life, as in BUILDING AND BEING. The king would build, so a legend says, The finest of all fine palaces. He sent for Saint Thomas, a builder rare, And bade him to rear them a wonder fair. The king's great treasure was placed at hand, And with it the sovereign's one command, " Build well, O builder so good and great ! And add to the glory of my estate. GERALDINE. ' 307 " Build well, nor spare of my wealth to show A prouder palace than mortals know." The king took leave of his kingdom then, And wandered far from the haunts of men. Saint Thomas the king's great treasure spent In worthier way than his master meant. He clad the naked, the hungry fed, The oil of gladness around him shed. He blessed them all with the ample store, As never a king's wealth blessed before. The king came back from his journey long, But found no grace in the happy throng That greeted him now on his slow return, To teach him the lesson he ought to learn. The king came back to his well-spent gold; But no new palace could he behold. In terrible anger he swore, and said That the builder's folly should cost his head. Saint Thomas in dungeon dark was cast, Till the time for his punishment dire were passed. Then it chanced, or the good God willed it so, That the king's, own brother in death lay low. When four days dead, as the legend reads, He rose to humanity's life and needs. 808 GERALDINK From sleep of the dust he strangely woke, And thus to his brother the king he spoke : "I have been to Paradise, O my king! And have heard the heavenly angels sing. " And there I saw, by the gates of gold, A palace finer than tongue has told; "Its walls and towers were lifted high In beautiful grace to the bending sky ; "Its glories, there in that radiant place, Shone forth like a smile from the dear Lord's face. "An angel said it was builded there By the good Saint Thomas, with love and care "For our fellow-men, and that it should be Thy palace of peace through eternity." The king this vision pondered well, Till he took Saint Thomas from dungeon-cell, And said, "0 builder! he most is wise Who buildeth ever for Paradise." XXXV. GREAT audience gathered in Rivermet Hall To hear words of reform. It was late in the fall, And the night had the glory of winter, with less Than its frostiness brilliant. The leading address Was to be, as a newspaper item declared, By a man of the people, a man who had dared To be true to himself and all manhood, at peril Of popular favor; who planted the sterile And adamant wayside with seeds of the right, And could wait for the harvest ; who, until to-night, Had not spoken for Rivermet hearing in years. If fine irony lurked in the language for ears Quick to catch it, the writer might well have been pardoned. The wayside of life has forever been hardened By selfishness, strewn with the rocks of dispute And denial and error ; and whoso would fruit The good seed of the truth must be patient indeed, If on ground that is stony he scatter his seed : Yet all harvests of time worth the reaping have grown From an acreage rocky where patience had strewn. In the crowded assembly sat Geraldine, flushed 310 GERALDINE. With expectancy eager; or haply she blushed At the conscious desire that was hers. She had schooled Her poor heart into silence, she thought; she had cooled Its hot burnings, or smothered them so they no more Could arouse the old fever of pain : but, before She looked into the face of the speaker, she knew That she waited with longing and hunger that grew Beyond all satisfaction she ever might find. She must love to the end, whether loving be kind Or be cruel ; must love, and be keenly alive To her love ; and no long separation could shrive Her of loving, or bring her the absolute peace Of unlovingness. Yet she had found a release From the bitterest bondage of love. She had stood In the freedom of faith, and had seen life a good And a beautiful thing, though by sorrow beset : In a ministry sweet she had learned to forget Her own sorrowing need, and be glad : she had measure Of happiness, measure of peace, in the pleasure That grew out of daily bestowing. As Trent Came before them, the air was all smitten and rent By the storm of applause ; and her pulse quicker beat As she looked once again in his face from her seat Near the front of the hall. He was changed. He had older And manlier grown ; and a careful beholder Could see in his smile a great weariness hide, Not alone of the head, but the heart. The strong tide He had buffeted long, the bold errors without, And, within, the old struggle with passion and doubt, Had been wearing to soul and to brain. But his speech Held perennial freshness within it for each Of that waiting assemblage ; and round after round Of tumultuous cheers gave approval. GERALDINE. 311 The sound Of his voice and the sight of his face were too much For her fancied control over self; and the touch Of swift tears on her cheek brought to Geraldine shame And distress. The keen gladness that thrilled her became But reproaches and bitterness. Longing unrest Was upon her, a need and a craving unguessed Before thus she was mastered. For so to be near him Was only half pleasure, half pain. Could she hear him Once breathing her name ; could she know that he spoke it With love undivided as faith ere he broke it, Ah ! then she might go from him comforted, strong, And content in the will of the Lord. But to long For his answering love through a distance decreed By the wisdom of God, and to know that her need Never met a response ; to be conscious, not merely Of distance that held them apart, but as clearly To feel that no cry of his heart came to hers Through the spaces between, ah ! the hope that defers Maketh sick ; but the hope that is hopeless can pain To sore agony. Hiding her face, and the rain Of hot tears that ran over it, Geraldine heard Without heeding what followed, yet melted and stirred To the deeps of her soul by the current magnetic That throbbed through the place. If the words were pathetic That came from those lips she had kissed, she but knew it Unconsciously. Over their meaning, and through it, Went pulsing a thrill and a message that spoke To her only ; that through the vast concourse awoke No such answer as hers. She was dimly aware That a gathering tempest of cheers blew the air 312 GERALDINE. Into waves of approval around her again, After silence that spoke as approvingly, when, Far above the applause that went echoing round, Striking sharp on the sense as a thunder of sound Amid hushes of stillness, she heard a wild cry With swift terror outwinging it, Fire ! " Then to fly Was the impulse of all. Women shrieked, and the faces Of men became ghastly. They rose in their places, And surged for the doors. A mad panic impended, And death brooded grim over life, when ascended A clarion call of command that arrested The tumult, and forced them to hear. He who breasted Their purpose insane stood as calm he had stood But a moment before, and entreated them. " Good And brave people," he said, " the great danger to you Is in haste; for the flames are above us. Be true To strong manhood and womanhood now, would you live To be strong men and women to-morrow. I '11 give You the signal when haste is imperative. None Are in peril this moment. Pass out." He had won Them to reason; and, standing there steady and cool As a master dismissing his turbulent school, By his mightier will he restrained them. And she Whom he loved and who loved him, as calmly as he Stood and looked at the crowd, little caring to go Since he stayed. She had torn off her veil, and a glow Of excitement illumined her face, while the light Of their tears glistened still in her eyes. The mad fright Had not seized her, although she had seen at the first GEEALDINE. 313 The red flames lap the ceiling, and knew how the worst Might appall. But she felt in his presence a glad, Indefinable safety, that held her, and bade Her to wait. The crowd lessened. She lingered alone In that part of the hall. The swift flames having flown All along the bright fresco just over the stage, Leaping lower, ran hissing and snapping in rage At the man who stood under them, seeming to care For each one but himself. Seeing which, with a prayer For them all, she turned toward him, as only intent On the figures receding he seemed. "Mr. Trent! You forget your own safety," she cried. As he turned At her sudden appeal, close in rear of him burned The hot breath of the blaze. He sprang down to the floor, And as quickly flew to her. "I saw you before, And I saw that you waited," he answered her, speaking With tremulous haste. "It is time we were seeking Safe exit. Our ways lie together till death Shall divide us." Around them the feverish breath Of the flames became hotter and fiercer. Without There were shoutings and cheers ; but amid all the doubt That surrounded, one certainty came to them each, Clear and sweet as the sunlight, too holy for speech, And too happy for smiles. As he looked in her eyes, So she looked into his, out of patient and wise Revelation and hope ; and love's certain assurance Shone glad on them both with its pledge of endurance And faith. They were last to pass out from the smoke 314 GERALDINK That grew blinding and stifling, as after them broke Lurid torrents of fire. In the street they were greeted By thundering cheers that were caught and repeated On quivering lips by the masses who waited To see him appear. The great building was fated For ruin and ashes. No effort could check The omnivorous demons that fed on its wreck Amid laughter demoniac, shrieking and screaming Mad fiends of the flames. Like a horrible dreaming The picture became to these two as they stayed GERALDINE. 315 With the rest to behold it. At length, when there laid But a smouldering pile sobbing up to the night, They went slowly away. " So the passion whose might Came between us burned out into ashes," he said. "Let the dead of our yesterdays bury its dead. You are mine for to-morrow and always ; and I Shall be true to a love never dead till I die." With the tenderest speech to his own she replied, "The past narrows to nothing. To-morrow is wide As eternity. God, who is loving and just, Whispers, ' Ashes to ashes, and dust unto dust,' Over all that is gone. Let it sleep, while in trust We walk on through the future together." Above, The stars glistened in blessing. To be and to love Became deeper and truer and holier far, For the narrowing past. Every hallowing star Shed a glory beneficent on them, to tint The broad morrow with softness, and leave but a hint Of the night overflown in the mellower splendor Of day: So in reverent, final surrender Of each unto each, they uplifted the burdens Borne separate long, to grow glad with the guerdons Of victory sweeter than any they know Who are never twin-souled : so at last would they go In the strength of each other and God till the end, Seeing each within each truest lover and friend. They were wedded at Christmas. Next summer they went For a bridal trip down the St. Lawrence. Content 316 GEEALDINK Kept them company sweet. A far summer that seemed When he sailed there before ; and, if once he had dreamed Of such beauty and peace, it could hardly have been More indeed like a dream that he lingered within. He had drifted away from all memories keen; And his life, like the river, ran smooth and serene : He had come where the current set calm to the sea, And the sum of each day was to love and to be. They were long at the Islands. One night as they tarried Trent, smiling but silent, to Geraldine carried A newspaper marked: and she read in it, MARRIED. Last evening at eight, at the church of All Souls, In this city, by Bishop Delancy Canolles And the rector the Reverend Doctor Pardee, Major Archibald Mellen and Isabel Lee.