Vashti Part 58

Dr. Grey, I do not desire to sneer at your Christian trust, and G.o.d knows I would give all my earthly possessions and hopes for a religion that would insure me your calm resignation and contentment; but the resurrection of my faith would only resemble that beautiful floral _Palingenesis_ (a.s.serted by Gaffarel and Kircher), which was but 'the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its own ashes,' and speedily dropping back into dust. Leave me in the enjoyment of the only pleasure earth can afford me, the contemplation of the beautiful."

"Unless you blend with it the true and good, your love of beauty will degenerate into the merely sensuous aesthetics, which, at the present day, renders its votaries fastidious, etiolated voluptuaries. The deification of humanity, so successfully inaugurated by Feuerbach and Strauss, is now no longer confined to realms of abstract speculation; but cultivated sensualism has sunk so low that popular poets chant the praises of Phryne and Cleopatra, and painters and sculptors seek to immortalize types that degrade the taste of all lovers of Art. The true mission of Art, whether through the medium of books, statues, or pictures, is to purify and exalt; but the curse of our age is, that the fashionable pantheistic raving about Nature, and the apotheosizing of physical loveliness,--is rapidly sinking into a worship of the vilest elements of humanity and materialism. Pagan aesthetics were purer and n.o.bler than the system, which, under that name, finds favor with our generation."

She listened, not a.s.sentingly, but without any manifestation of impatience, and while he talked, her eyes rested dreamily upon the yellow beach, where,--

"Trampling up the sloping sand, In lines outreaching far and wide, The white-maned billows swept to land."

Whether she pondered his words, or was too entirely absorbed by her own thoughts to heed their import, he had no means of ascertaining.

"Mrs. Gerome, what have you painted recently?"

"Nothing, since my illness; and perhaps I shall never touch my brush again. Sometimes I have thought I would paint a picture of Handel standing up to listen to that sad song from his own 'Samson,'--'_Total eclipse, no sun, no moon_!' But I doubt whether I could put on canvas that grand, mournful, blind face, turned eagerly towards the stage, while tears ran swiftly from his sightless eyes. Again, I have vague visions of a dead Schopenhauer, seated in the corner of the sofa, with his pet poodle, Putz, howling at his master's ghastly white features,--with his Indian Oupnekhat lying on his rigid knee, and his gilded statuette of Gotama Buddha grinning at him from the mantelpiece, welcoming him to Nirwana. There stands my easel, empty and shrouded; and here, from day to day, I sit idle, not lacking ideas, but the will to clothe them. Unlike poor Maurice de Guerin, who said that his 'head was parching; that, like a tree which had lived its life, he felt as though every pa.s.sing wind were blowing through dead branches in his top,' I feel that my brain is as vigorous and restless as ever, while my will alone is paralyzed, and my heart withered and cold within me."

"Your brush and palette will never yield you any permanent happiness, nor promote a spirit of contentment, until you select a different cla.s.s of subjects. Your themes are all too sombre, too dismal, and the sole _motif_ that runs through your music and painting seems to be _in memoriam_. Open the windows of your gloomy soul, and let G.o.d's sunshine stream into its cold recesses, and warm and gild and gladden it. Throw aside your morbid proclivities for the melancholy and abnormal, and paint peaceful _genre_ pictures,--a group of sunburnt, laughing harvesters, or merry children, or tulip-beds with b.u.t.terflies swinging over them. You need more warmth in your heart, and more light in your pictures."

"Eminently correct,--most incontestably true; but how do you propose to remedy the imperfect _chiaro-oscuro_ of my character? Show me the market where that light of peace and joy is bartered, and I will const.i.tute you my broker, with unlimited orders. No, no. I see the fact as plainly as you do, but I know better than you how irremediable it is. My soul is a doleful _morgue_, and my pictures are dim photographs of its corpse-tenants. Shut in forever from the sunshine, I dip my brush in the shadows that surround me, for, like Empedocles,--

... 'I alone Am dead to life and joy; therefore I read In all things my own deadness.'"

"If you would free yourself from the coils of an intense and selfish egoism that fetter you to the petty cares and trials of your individual existence,--if you would endeavor to forget for a season the woes of Mrs. Gerome, and expend a little more sympathy on the sorrows of others,--if you would resolve to lose sight of the caprices that render you so unpopular, and make some human being happy by your aid and kind words,--in fine, if, instead of selecting as your model some cynical, half-insane woman like Lady Hester Stanhope, you chose for imitation the example of n.o.ble Christian usefulness and self-abnegation, a.n.a.logous to that of Florence Nightingale, or Mrs.

Fry, you would soon find that your conscience--"

"Enough! You weary me. Dr. Grey, I thoroughly understand your motives, and honor their purity, but I beg that you will give yourself no further anxiety on my account. You cannot, from your religious standpoint, avoid regarding me as worse than a heathen, and have const.i.tuted yourself a missionary to reclaim and consecrate me. I am not quite a cannibal, ready to devour you, by way of recompense for your charitable efforts in my behalf, but I must a.s.sure you your interest and sympathy are sadly wasted. Do you remember that celebrated 'vase of Soissons,' which was plundered by rude soldiery in Rheims, and which Clovis so eagerly coveted at the distribution of the spoils? A soldier broke it before the king's hungry eyes, and forced him to take the worthless mocking fragments. Even so flint-faced fate shattered my happiness, and tauntingly offers me the ruins; but I will none of it!"

"Trust G.o.d's overruling mercy, and those fragments, fused in the furnace of affliction, may be remoulded and restored to you in pristine perfection."

"Impossible! Moreover, I trust nothing but the brevity of human life, which one day cannot fail to release me from an existence that has proved an almost intolerable burden. You know Vogt says, 'The natural laws are rude, unbending powers,' and I comfort myself by hoping that they can neither be bribed nor browbeaten out of the discharge of their duty, which points to death as 'the surest calculation that can be made,--as the unavoidable keystone of every individual life.' A grim consolation, you think? True; but all I shall ever receive. Dr.

Grey, in your estimation I am sinfully inert and self-indulgent; and you conscientiously commend my idle hands to the benevolent work of knitting socks for indigent ditchers, and making jackets for pauper children. Now, although it is considered neither orthodox nor modest to furnish left-hand with a trumpet for sounding the praises of almsgiving right-hand, still I must be allowed to a.s.sert that I appropriate an ample share of my fortune for charitable purposes.

Perhaps you will tell me that I do not give in a proper spirit of loving sympathy,--that I hurl my donations at my conscience, as 'a sop to Cerberus.' I have never injured any one, and if I have no tender love in my heart to expend on others, it is the fault of that world which taught me how hollow and deceitful it is. G.o.d knows I have never intentionally wounded any living thing; and if negatively good, at least my career has no stain of positive evil upon it. I am one of those concerning whom Richter said, 'There are souls for whom life has no summer. These should enjoy the advantages of the inhabitants of Spitzbergen, where, through the winter's day, the stars shine clear as through the winter's night.' I have neither summer nor polar stars, but I wait for that long night wherein I shall sleep peacefully."

"Mrs. Gerome, defiant pride bars your heart from the white-handed peace that even now seeks entrance. Some great sorrow or sin has darkened your past, and, instead of ejecting its memory, you hug it to your soul; you make it a mental Juggernaut, crushing the hopes and aims that might otherwise brighten the path along which you drag this murderous idol. Cast it away forever, and let Peace and Hope clasp hands over its empty throne."

From that peculiar far-off expression of the human eye that generally indicates abstraction of mind, he feared that she had not heard his earnest appeal; but after some seconds, she smiled drearily, and repeated with singular and touching pathos, lines which proved that his words were not lost upon her,--

"'Ah, could the memory cast her spots, as do The snake's brood theirs in spring! and be once more Wholly renewed, to dwell in the time that's new,-- With no reiterance of those pangs of yore.

Peace, peace! Ah, forgotten things Stumble back strangely! and the ghost of June Stands by December's fire, cold, cold! and puts The last spark out.'"

The mournful sweetness and calmness of her low voice made Dr. Grey's heart throb fiercely, and he leaned a little farther forward to study her countenance. She had rested her elbow on the carved side of the sofa, and now her cheek nestled for support in one hand, while the other toyed unconsciously with the velvet edges of the _Liber Studiorum_. Her dress was of some soft, shining fabric, neither satin nor silk, and its pale blue l.u.s.tre shed a chill, pure light over the wan, delicate face, that was white as a bending lily.

The faint yet almost mesmeric fragrance of orange flowers and violets floated in the folds of her garments, and seemed lurking in the waves of gray hair that glistened in the bright steady glow of the red grate; and moved by one of those unaccountable impulses that sometimes decide a man's destiny, Dr. Grey took the exquisitely beautiful hand from the book and enclosed it in both of his.

"Mrs. Gerome, you seem strangely unsuspicious of the real nature of the interest with which you have inspired me; and I owe it to you, as well as to myself, to avow the feelings that prompt me to seek your society so frequently. For some months after I met you, my professional visits afforded me only rare and tantalizing glimpses of you, but from the day of Elsie's death, I have been conscious that my happiness is indissolubly linked with yours,--that my heart, which never before acknowledged allegiance to any woman, is--"

"For G.o.d's sake, stop! I cannot listen to you."

She had wrung her hand violently from his clinging fingers, and, springing to her feet, stood waving him from her, while an expression of horror came swiftly into her eyes and over her whole countenance.

Dr. Grey rose also, and though a sudden pallor spread from his lips to his temples, his calm voice did not falter.

"Is it because you can never return my love, that you so vehemently refuse to hear its avowal? Is it because your own heart--"

"It is because your love is an insult, and must not be uttered!"

She shivered as if rudely buffeted by some freezing blast, and the steely glitter leaped up, like the flash of a poniard, in her large, dilating eyes.

Shocked and perplexed, he looked for a moment at her writhing features, and put out his hand.

"Can it be possible that you so utterly misapprehend me? You surely can not doubt the earnestness of an affection which impels me to offer my hand and heart to you,--the first woman I have ever loved. Will you refuse--"

"Stand back! Do not touch me! Ah,--G.o.d help me! Take your hand from mine. Are you blind? If you were an archangel I could not listen to you, for--for--oh, Dr. Grey!"

She covered her face with her hands, and staggered towards a chair.

A horrible, sickening suspicion made his brain whirl and his heart stand still. He followed her, and said, pleadingly,--

"Do not keep me in painful suspense. Why is my declaration of devoted affection so revolting to you? Why can you not at least permit me to express the love--"

"Because that love dishonors me! Dr. Grey, I--am--a--wife!"

The words fell slowly from her white lips, as if her heart's blood were dripping with them, and a deep, purplish spot burned on each cheek, to attest her utter humiliation.

Dr. Grey gazed at her, with a bewildered, incredulous expression.

"You mean that your heart is buried in your husband's grave?"

"Oh, if that were true, you and I might be spared this shame and agony."

A low wail escaped her, and she hid her face in her arms.

"Mrs. Gerome, is not your husband dead?"

"Dead to me,--but not yet in his grave. The man I married is still alive."

She heard a half-stifled groan, and buried her face deeper in her arms to avoid the sight of the suffering she had caused.

For some time the stillness of death reigned around them, and when at last the wretched woman raised her eyes, she saw Dr. Grey standing beside her, with one hand on the back of her chair, the other clasped over his eyes. Reverently she turned and pressed her lips to his cold fingers, and he felt her hot tears falling upon them, as she said, falteringly,--

"Forgive me the pain that I have innocently inflicted on you. G.o.d is my witness, I did not imagine you cared for me. I supposed you pitied me, and were only interested in saving my miserable soul. The servants told me you were very soon to be married to a young girl who lived with your sister; and I never dreamed that your n.o.ble, generous heart felt any interest in me, save that of genuine Christian compa.s.sion for my loneliness and desolation. If I had suspected your feelings, I would have gone away immediately, or told you all. Oh, that I had never come here!--that I had never left my safe retreat, near Funchal!

Then I would not have stabbed the heart of the only man whom I respect, revere, and trust."

Some moments elapsed ere he could fully command himself, and when he spoke he had entirely regained composure.

"Do not reproach yourself. The fault has been mine, rather than yours. Knowing that some mystery enveloped your early life, I should not have allowed my affections to centre so completely in one concerning whose antecedents I knew absolutely nothing. I have been almost culpably rash and blind,--but I could not look into your beautiful, sad eyes, and doubt that you were worthy of the love that sprang up unbidden in my heart. I knew that you were irreligious, but I believed I could win you back to Christ; and when I tell you that, after living thirty-eight years, you are the only woman I ever met whom I wished to call my wife, you can in some degree realize my confidence in the innate purity of your character. G.o.d only knows how severely I am punished by my rashness, how profoundly I deplore the strange infatuation that so utterly blinded me. At least, I am grateful that my brief madness has not involved you in sin and additional suffering."

The burning spots faded from her cheeks as she listened to his low, solemn words, and when he ended, she clasped her hands pa.s.sionately, and exclaimed,--

"Do not judge me, until you know all. I am not as unworthy as you fear. Do not withdraw your confidence from me."

He shook his head, and answered, sadly,--