Let us go down into that beautiful country together and make a home
for ourselves on some blue hill above the shining river.”
As
he spoke, the hand she had forgotten in his was suddenly withdrawn, and he felt
that a cloud was passing over the radiance of her soul.
“A home,” she repeated, slowly, “a home for you and me to live in
for all eternity?”
“Why
not, love? Am I not the soul that yours has sought?”
“Y-yes—yes,
I know—but, don’t you see, home would not be like home to me, unless—”
“Unless?” he wonderingly repeated.
She
did not answer, but she thought to herself, with an impulse of whimsical
inconsistency, “Unless you slammed the door and wore creaking boots.”
But
he had recovered his hold upon her hand, and by imperceptible degrees was
leading her toward the shining steps which descended to the valley.
“Come,
O my soul’s soul,” he passionately implored; “why delay a moment? Surely you
feel, as I do, that eternity itself is too short to hold such bliss as ours. It
seems to me that I can see our home already. Have I not always seem it in my
dreams? It is white, love, is it not, with polished
columns, and a sculptured cornice against the blue? Groves of laurel and
oleander and thickets of roses surround it; but from the terrace where we walk
at sunset, the eye looks out over woodlands and cool meadows where, deep-bowered
under ancient boughs, a stream goes delicately toward the river. Indoors our
favorite pictures hang upon the walls and the rooms are lined with books.
Think, dear, at last we shall have time to read them all. With which shall we
begin? Come, help me to choose. Shall it be ‘Faust’ or the ‘Vita Nuova,’ the
‘Tempest’ or ‘Les Caprices de Marianne,’ or the thirty-first canto of the ‘Paradise,’ or ‘Epipsychidion’ or ‘Lycidas’? Tell me,
dear, which one?”
As
he spoke he saw the answer trembling joyously upon her lips; but it died in the
ensuing silence, and she stood motionless, resisting the persuasion of his
hand.
“What
is it?” he entreated.
“Wait
a moment,” she said, with a strange hesitation in her voice. “Tell me first,
are you quite sure of yourself? Is there no one on earth whom you sometimes
remember?”
“Not
since I have seen you,” he replied; for, being a man, he had indeed forgotten.
Still
she stood motionless, and he saw that the shadow deepened on her soul.
“Surely,
love,” he rebuked her, “it was not that which troubled you? For my part I have
walked through Lethe. The past has melted like a cloud before the moon. I never
lived until I saw you.”
She
made no answer to his pleadings, but at length, rousing herself with a visible
effort, she turned away from him and moved toward the Spirit of Life, who still
stood near the threshold.
“I
want to ask you a question,” she said, in a troubled voice.
“Ask,”
said the Spirit.
“A
little while ago,” she began, slowly, “you told me that every soul which has
not found a kindred soul on earth is destined to find one here.”
“And
have you not found one?” asked the Spirit.
“Yes;
but will it be so with my husband’s soul also?”
“No,”
answered the Spirit of Life, “for your husband imagined that he had found his
soul’s mate on earth in you; and for such delusions eternity itself contains no
cure.”
She
gave a little cry. Was it of disappointment or triumph?
“Then—then
what will happen to him when he comes here?”
“That I cannot tell you. Some field of activity and
happiness he will doubtless find, in due measure to his capacity for being
active and happy.”
She
interrupted, almost angrily: “He will never be happy without me.”
“Do
not be too sure of that,” said the Spirit.
She
took no notice of this, and the Spirit continued: “He will not understand you
here any better than he did on earth.”
“No
matter,” she said; “I shall be the only sufferer, for he always thought that he
understood me.”
“His
boots will creak just as much as ever—”
“No matter.”
“And
he will slam the door—”
“Very likely.”
“And
continue to read railway novels—”
She
interposed, impatiently: “Many men do worse than that.”
“But
you said just now,” said the Spirit, “that you did not love him.”
“True,”
she answered, simply; “but don’t you understand that I shouldn’t feel at home
without him? It is all very well for a week or two—but for eternity! After all,
I never minded the creaking of his boots, except when my head ached, and I
don’t suppose it will ache here; and
he was always so sorry when he had slammed the door, only he never could remember not to. Besides, no one
else would know how to look after him, he is so helpless. His inkstand would
never be filled, and he would always be out of stamps and visiting-cards. He
would never remember to have his umbrella re-covered, or to ask the price of
anything before he bought it. Why, he wouldn’t even know what novels to read. I
always had to choose the kind he liked, with a murder or a forgery and a
successful detective.”
She
turned abruptly to her kindred soul, who stood listening with a mien of wonder
and dismay.
“Don’t
you see,” she said, “that I can’t possibly go with you?”
“But
what do you intend to do?” asked the Spirit of Life.
“What
do I intend to do?” she returned, indignantly. “Why, I mean to wait for my
husband, of course. If he had come here first he would have waited for me for years and years; and it would break
his heart not to find me here when he comes.” She pointed with a contemptuous
gesture to the magic vision of hill and vale sloping away to the translucent
mountains. “He wouldn’t give a fig for all that,” she said, “if he didn’t find
me here.”
“But
consider,” warned the Spirit, “that you are now choosing for eternity. It is a
solemn moment.”
“Choosing!”
she said, with a half-sad smile. “Do you still keep up here that old fiction
about choosing? I should have thought that you
knew better than that. How can I help myself? He will expect to find me here
when he comes, and he would never believe you if you told him that I had gone
away with someone else—never, never.”
“So
be it,” said the Spirit. “Here, as on earth, each one must decide for himself.”
She
turned to her kindred soul and looked at him gently, almost wistfully. “I am
sorry,” she said. “I should have liked to talk with you again; but you will
understand, I know, and I dare say you will find someone else a great deal
cleverer—”
And
without pausing to hear his answer she waved him a swift farewell and turned
back toward the threshold.
“Will
my husband come soon?” she asked the Spirit of Life.
“That
you are not destined to know,” the Spirit replied.
“No
matter,” she said, cheerfully; “I have all eternity to wait in.”
And
still seated alone on the threshold, she listens for the creaking of his boots.
(Scribner’s 14, December 1893)
The Lamp of Psyche.
Delia
Corbett was too happy; her happiness frightened her. Not on theological
grounds, however; she was sure that people had a right to be happy; but she was
equally sure that it was a right seldom recognized by destiny. And her
happiness almost touched the confines of pain—it bordered on that sharp ecstasy
which she had known, through one sleepless night after another, when what had
now become a reality had haunted her as an unattainable longing.
Delia
Corbett was not in the habit of using what the French call gros mots in the
rendering of her own emotions; she took herself, as a rule, rather flippantly,
with a dash of contemptuous pity. But she felt that she had now entered upon a
phase of existence wherein it became her to pay herself an almost reverential
regard. Love had set his golden crown upon her forehead, and the awe of the
office allotted to her subdued her doubting heart. To her had been given the
one portion denied to all other women on earth, the immense, the
unapproachable privilege of becoming Laurence Corbett’s wife.
Here
she burst out laughing at the sound of her own thoughts, and rising from her
seat walked across the drawing-room and looked at herself
in the mirror above the mantel-piece. She was past thirty and had never been
very pretty; but she knew herself to be capable of loving her husband better
and pleasing him longer than any other woman in the world.
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