Volume 4 — Chapter XXIV.

When Mrs. Marvyn began to amend, Mary returned to the home cottage, and resumed the details of her industrious and quiet life.

Between her and her two best friends had fallen a curtain of silence. The subject that filled all her thoughts could not be named between them. The Doctor often looked at her pale cheeks and drooping form with a face of honest sorrow, and heaved deep sighs as she passed; but he did not find any power within himself by which he could approach her. When he would speak, and she turned her sad, patient eyes so gently on him, the words went back again to his heart, and there, taking a second thought, spread upward wing in prayer.

Mrs. Scudder sometimes came to her room after she was gone to bed, and found her weeping; and when gently she urged her to sleep, she would wipe her eyes so patiently and turn her head with such obedient sweetness, that her mother's heart utterly failed her. For hours Mary sat in her room with James's last letter spread out before her. How anxiously had she studied every word and phrase in it, weighing them to see if the hope of eternal life were in them! How she dwelt on those last promises! Had he kept them? Ah! to die without one word more! Would no angel tell her?—would not the loving God, who knew all, just whisper one word? He must have read the little Bible! What had he thought? What did he feel in that awful hour when he felt himself drifting on to that fearful eternity? Perhaps he had been regenerated,—perhaps there had been a sudden change;—who knows?—she had read of such things;—perhaps—Ah, in that perhaps lies a world of anguish! Love will not hear of it. Love dies for certainty. Against an uncertainty who can brace the soul? We put all our forces of faith and prayer against it, and it goes down just as a buoy sinks in the water, and the next moment it is up again. The soul fatigues itself with efforts which come and go in waves; and when with laborious care she has adjusted all things in the light of hope, back flows the tide, and sweeps all away. In such struggles life spends itself fast; an inward wound does not carry one deathward more surely than this worst wound of the soul. God has made us so mercifully that there is no certainty, however dreadful, to which life-forces do not in time adjust themselves,—but to uncertainty there is no possible adjustment. Where is he? Oh, question of questions!—question which we suppress, but which a power of infinite force still urges on the soul, who feels a part of herself torn away.

Mary sat at her window in evening hours, and watched the slanting sunbeams through the green blades of grass, and thought one year ago he stood there, with his well-knit, manly form, his bright eye, his buoyant hope, his victorious mastery of life! And where was he now? Was his heart as sick, longing for her, as hers for him? Was he looking back to earth and its joys with pangs of unutterable regret? or had a divine power interpenetrated his soul, and lighted there the flame of a celestial love which bore him far above earth? If he were among the lost, in what age of eternity could she ever be blessed? Could Christ be happy, if those who were one with Him were sinful and accursed? and could Christ's own loved ones be happy, when those with whom they have exchanged being, in whom they live and feel, are as wandering stars, for whom is reserved the mist of darkness forever? She had been taught that the agonies of the lost would be forever in sight of the saints, without abating in the least their eternal joys; nay, that they would find in it increasing motives to praise and adoration. Could it be so? Would the last act of the great Bridegroom of the Church be to strike from the heart of his purified Bride those yearnings of self-devoting love which His whole example had taught her, and in which she reflected, as in a glass, His own nature? If not, is there not some provision by which those roots of deathless love which Christ's betrothed ones strike into other hearts shall have a divine, redeeming power? Question vital as life-blood to ten thousand hearts,—fathers, mothers, wives, husbands,—to all who feel the infinite sacredness of love!

After the first interview with Mrs. Marvyn, the subject which had so agitated them was not renewed. She had risen at last from her sick-bed, as thin and shadowy as a faded moon after sunrise. Candace often shook her head mournfully, as her eyes followed her about her dally tasks. Once only, with Mary, she alluded to the conversation which had passed between them;—it was one day when they were together, spinning, in the north upper room that looked out upon the sea. It was a glorious day. A ship was coming in under full sail, with white gleaming wings. Mrs. Marvyn watched it a few moments,—the gay creature, so full of exultant life,—and then smothered down an inward groan, and Mary thought she heard her saying, "Thy will be done!"

"Mary," she said, gently, "I hope you will forget all I said to you that dreadful day. It had to be said, or I should have died. Mary, I begin to think that it is not best to stretch our minds with reasonings where we are so limited, where we can know so little. I am quite sure there must be dreadful mistakes somewhere.

"It seems to me irreverent and shocking that a child should oppose a father, or a creature its Creator. I never should have done it, only that, where direct questions are presented to the judgment, one cannot help judging. If one is required to praise a being as just and good, one must judge of his actions by some standard of right,—and we have no standard but such as our Creator has placed in us. I have been told it was my duty to attend to these subjects, and I have tried to,—and the result has been that the facts presented seem wholly irreconcilable with any notions of justice or mercy that I am able to form. If these be the facts, I can only say that my nature is made entirely opposed to them. If I followed the standard of right they present, and acted according to my small mortal powers on the same principles, I should be a very bad person. Any father, who should make such use of power over his children as they say the Deity does with regard to us, would be looked upon as a monster by our very imperfect moral sense. Yet I cannot say that the facts are not so. When I heard the Doctor's sermons on 'Sin a Necessary Means of the Greatest Good,' I could not extricate myself from the reasoning.

"I have thought, in desperate moments, of giving up the Bible itself. But what do I gain? Do I not see the same difficulty in Nature? I see everywhere a Being whose main ends seem to be beneficent, but whose good purposes are worked out at terrible expense of suffering, and apparently by the total sacrifice of myriads of sensitive creatures. I see unflinching order, general good-will, but no sympathy, no mercy. Storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, sickness, death, go on without regarding us. Everywhere I see the most hopeless, unrelieved suffering,—and for aught I see, it may be eternal. Immortality is a dreadful chance, and I would rather never have been.—The Doctor's dreadful system is, I confess, much like the laws of Nature,—about what one might reason out from them.

"There is but just one thing remaining, and that is, as Candace said, the cross of Christ. If God so loved us,—if He died for us,—greater love hath no man than this. It seems to me that love is shown here in the two highest forms possible to our comprehension. We see a Being who gives himself for us,—and more than that, harder than that, a Being who consents to the suffering of a dearer than self. Mary, I feel that I must love more, to give up one of my children to suffer, than to consent to suffer myself. There is a world of comfort to me in the words, 'He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?' These words speak to my heart. I can interpret them by my own nature, and I rest on them. If there is a fathomless mystery of sin and sorrow, there is a deeper mystery of God's love. So, Mary, I try Candace's way,—I look at Christ,—I pray to Him. If he that hath seen Him hath seen the Father, it is enough. I rest there,—I wait. What I know not now I shall know hereafter."

Mary kept all things and pondered them in her heart. She could speak to no one,—not to her mother, nor to her spiritual guide; for had she not passed to a region beyond theirs? As well might those on the hither side of mortality instruct the souls gone beyond the veil as souls outside a great affliction guide those who are struggling in it. That is a mighty baptism, and only Christ can go down with us into those waters.

Mrs. Scudder and the Doctor only marked that she was more than ever conscientious in every duty, and that she brought to life's daily realities something of the calmness and disengagedness of one whose soul has been wrenched by a mighty shock from all moorings here below. Hopes did not excite, fears did not alarm her; life had no force strong enough to awaken a thrill within; and the only subjects on which she ever spoke with any degree of ardor were religious subjects.

One who should have seen moving about the daily ministrations of the cottage a pale girl, whose steps were firm, whose eye was calm, whose hands were ever busy, would scarce imagine that through that silent heart were passing tides of thought that measured a universe; but it was even so. Through that one gap of sorrow flowed in the whole awful mystery of existence, and silently, as she spun and sewed, she thought over and over again all that she had ever been taught, and compared and revolved it by the light of a dawning inward revelation.

Sorrow is the great birth-agony of immortal powers,—sorrow is the great searcher and revealer of hearts, the great test of truth; for Plato has wisely said, sorrow will not endure sophisms,—all shams and unrealities melt in the fire of that awful furnace. Sorrow reveals forces in ourselves we never dreamed of. The soul, a bound and sleeping prisoner, hears her knock on her cell-door, and wakens. Oh, how narrow the walls! oh, how close and dark the grated window! how the long useless wings beat against the impassable barriers! Where are we? What is this prison? What is beyond? Oh for more air, more light! When will the door be opened? The soul seems to itself to widen and deepen; it trembles at its own dreadful forces; it gathers up in waves that break with wailing only to flow back into the everlasting void. The calmest and most centred natures are sometimes thrown by the shock of a great sorrow into a tumultuous amazement. All things are changed. The earth no longer seems solid, the skies no longer secure; a deep abyss seems underlying every joyous scene of life. The soul, struck with this awful inspiration, is a mournful Cassandra; she sees blood on every threshold, and shudders in the midst of mirth and festival with the weight of a terrible wisdom.

Who shall dare be glad any more, that has once seen the frail foundations on which love and joy are built? Our brighter hours, have they only been weaving a network of agonizing remembrances for this day of bereavement? The heart is pierced with every past joy, with every hope of its ignorant prosperity. Behind every scale in music, the gayest and cheeriest, the grandest, the most triumphant, lies its dark relative minor; the notes are the same, but the change of a semitone changes all to gloom;—all our gayest hours are tunes that have a modulation into these dreary keys ever possible; at any moment the key-note may be struck.

The firmest, best-prepared natures are often beside themselves with astonishment and dismay, when they are called to this dread initiation. They thought it a very happy world before,—a glorious universe. Now it is darkened with the shadow of insoluble mysteries. Why this everlasting tramp of inevitable laws on quivering life? If the wheels must roll, why must the crushed be so living and sensitive?

And yet sorrow is godlike, sorrow is grand and great, sorrow is wise and farseeing. Our own instinctive valuations, the intense sympathy which we give to the tragedy which God has inwoven into the laws of Nature, show us that it is with no slavish dread, no cowardly shrinking, that we should approach her divine mysteries. What are the natures that cannot suffer? Who values them? From the fat oyster, over which the silver tide rises and falls without one pulse upon its fleshy ear, to the hero who stands with quivering nerve parting with wife and child and home for country and God, all the way up is an ascending scale, marked by increasing power to suffer; and when we look to the Head of all being, up through principalities and powers and princedoms, with dazzling orders and celestial blazonry, to behold by what emblem the Infinite Sovereign chooses to reveal himself, we behold, in the midst of the throne, "a lamb as it had been slain."

Sorrow is divine. Sorrow is reigning on the throne of the universe, and the crown of all crowns has been one of thorns. There have been many books that treat of the mystery of sorrow, but only one that bids us glory in tribulation, and count it all joy when we fall into divers afflictions, that so we may be associated with that great fellowship of suffering of which the Incarnate God is the head, and through which He is carrying a redemptive conflict to a glorious victory over evil. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him.

Even in the very making up of our physical nature, God puts suggestions of such a result. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." There are victorious powers in our nature which are all the while working for us in our deepest pain. It is said, that, after the sufferings of the rack, there ensues a period in which the simple repose from torture produces a beatific trance; it is the reaction of Nature, asserting the benignant intentions of her Creator. So, after great mental conflicts and agonies must come a reaction, and the Divine Spirit, co-working with our spirit, seizes the favorable moment, and, interpenetrating natural laws with a celestial vitality, carries up the soul to joys beyond the ordinary possibilities of mortality.

It is said that gardeners, sometimes, when they would bring a rose to richer flowering, deprive it, for a season, of light and moisture. Silent and dark it stands, dropping one fading leaf after another, and seeming to go down patiently to death. But when every leaf is dropped, and the plant stands stripped to the uttermost, a new life is even then working in the buds, from which shall spring a tender foliage and a brighter wealth of flowers. So, often in celestial gardening, every leaf of earthly joy must drop, before a new and divine bloom visits the soul.

Gradually, as months passed away, the floods grew still; the mighty rushes of the inner tides ceased to dash. There came first a delicious calmness, and then a celestial inner clearness, in which the soul seemed to lie quiet as an untroubled ocean, reflecting heaven. Then came the fulness of mysterious communion given to the pure in heart,—that advent of the Comforter in the soul, teaching all things and bringing all things to remembrance; and Mary moved in a world transfigured by a celestial radiance. Her face, so long mournfully calm, like some chiselled statue of Patience, now wore a radiance, as when one places a light behind some alabaster screen sculptured with mysterious and holy emblems, and words of strange sweetness broke from her, as if one should hear snatches of music from a door suddenly opened in heaven. Something wise and strong and sacred gave an involuntary impression of awe in her looks and words;—it was not the childlike loveliness of early days, looking with dovelike, ignorant eyes on sin and sorrow; but the victorious sweetness of that great multitude who have come out of great tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. In her eyes there was that nameless depth that one sees with awe in the Sistine Madonna,—eyes that have measured infinite sorrow and looked through it to an infinite peace.

"My dear Madam," said the Doctor to Mrs. Scudder, "I cannot but think that there must be some uncommonly gracious exercises passing in the mind of your daughter; for I observe, that, though she is not inclined to conversation, she seems to be much in prayer; and I have, of late, felt the sense of a Divine Presence with her in a most unusual degree. Has she opened her mind to you?"

"Mary was always a silent girl," said Mrs. Scudder, "and not given to speaking of her own feelings; indeed, until she gave you an account of her spiritual state, on joining the church, I never knew what her exercises were. Hers is a most singular case. I never knew the time when she did not seem to love God more than anything else. It has disturbed me sometimes,—because I did not know but it might be mere natural sensibility, instead of gracious affection."

"Do not disturb yourself, Madam," said the Doctor. "The Spirit worketh when, where, and how He will; and, undoubtedly, there have been cases where His operations commence exceedingly early. Mr. Edwards relates a case of a young person who experienced a marked conversion when three years of age; and Jeremiah was called from the womb. (Jeremiah, i. 5.) In all cases we must test the quality of the evidence without relation to the time of its commencement. I do not generally lay much stress on our impressions, which are often uncertain and delusive; yet I have had an impression that the Lord would be pleased to make some singular manifestations of His grace through this young person. In the economy of grace there is neither male nor female; and Peter says (Acts, ii. 17) that the Spirit of the Lord shall be poured out and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Yet if we consider that the Son of God, as to his human nature, was made of a woman, it leads us to see that in matters of grace God sets a special value on woman's nature and designs to put special honor upon it. Accordingly, there have been in the Church, in all ages, holy women who have received the Spirit and been called to a ministration in the things of God,—such as Deborah, Huldah, and Anna, the prophetess. In our own days, most uncommon manifestations of divine grace have been given to holy women. It was my privilege to be in the family of President Edwards at a time when Northampton was specially visited, and his wife seemed and spoke more like a glorified spirit than a mortal woman,—and multitudes flocked to the house to hear her wonderful words. She seemed to have such a sense of the Divine love as was almost beyond the powers of nature to endure. Just to speak the words, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' would overcome her with such a manifestation that she would become cold and almost faint; and though she uttered much, yet she told us that the divinest things she saw could not be spoken. These things could not be fanaticism, for she was a person of a singular evenness of nature, and of great skill and discretion in temporal matters, and of an exceeding humility, sweetness, and quietness of disposition."

"I have observed of late," said Mrs. Scudder, "that, in our praying circles, Mary seemed much carried out of herself, and often as if she would speak, and with difficulty holding herself back. I have not urged her, because I thought it best to wait till she should feel full liberty."

"Therein you do rightly, Madam," said the Doctor; "but I am persuaded you will hear from her yet."

It came at length, the hour of utterance. And one day, in a praying circle of the women of the church, all were startled by the clear silver tones of one who sat among them and spoke with the unconscious simplicity of an angel child, calling God her Father, and speaking of an ineffable union in Christ, binding all things together in one, and making all complete in Him. She spoke of a love passing knowledge,—passing all love of lovers or of mothers,—a love forever spending, yet never spent,—a love ever pierced and bleeding, yet ever constant and triumphant, rejoicing with infinite joy to bear in its own body the sins and sorrows of a universe,—conquering, victorious love, rejoicing to endure, panting to give, and offering its whole self with an infinite joyfulness for our salvation. And when, kneeling, she poured out her soul in prayer, her words seemed so many winged angels, musical with unearthly harpings of an untold blessedness. They who heard her had the sensation of rising in the air, of feeling a celestial light and warmth, descending into their souls; and when, rising, she stood silent and with downcast drooping eyelids, there were tears in all eyes, and a hush in all movements as she passed, as if something celestial were passing out.

Miss Prissy came rushing homeward, to hold a private congratulatory talk with the Doctor and Mrs. Scudder, while Mary was tranquilly setting the tea-table and cutting bread for supper.

"To see her now, certainly," said Miss Prissy, "moving round so thoughtful, not forgetting anything, and doing everything so calm, you wouldn't 'a' thought it could be her that spoke those blessed words and made that prayer! Well, certainly, that prayer seemed to take us all right up and put us down in heaven! and when I opened my eyes, and saw the roses and asparagus-bushes on the manteltree-piece, I had to ask myself, 'Where have I been?' Oh, Miss Scudder, her afflictions have been sanctified to her!—and really, when I see her going on so, I feel she can't be long for us. They say, dying grace is for dying hours; and I'm sure this seems more like dying grace than anything that I ever yet saw."

"She is a precious gift," said the Doctor; "let us thank the Lord for his grace through her. She has evidently had a manifestation of the Beloved, and feedeth among the lilies (Canticles, vi. 3); and we will not question the Lord's further dispensations concerning her."

"Certainly," said Miss Prissy, briskly, "it's never best to borrow trouble; 'sufficient unto the day' is enough, to be sure.—And now, Miss Scudder, I thought I'd just take a look at that dove-colored silk of yours to-night, to see what would have to be done with it, because I must make every minute tell; and you know I lose half a day every week for the prayer-meeting. Though I ought not to say I lose it, either; for I was telling Miss General Wilcox I wouldn't give up that meeting for bags and bags of gold. She wanted me to come and sew for her one Wednesday, and says I, 'Miss Wilcox, I'm poor and have to live by my work, but I a'n't so poor but what I have some comforts, and I can't give up my prayer-meeting for any money,—for you see, if one gets a little lift there, it makes all the work go lighter,—but then I have to be particular to save up every scrap and end of time."

Mrs. Scudder and Miss Prissy crossed the kitchen and entered the bedroom, and soon had the dove-colored silk under consideration.

"Well, Miss Scudder," said Miss Prissy, after mature investigation, "here's a broad hem, not cut at all on the edge, as I see, and that might be turned down, and so cut off the worn spot up by the waist,—and then, if it is turned, it will look every bit and grain as well as a new silk;—I'll sit right down now and go to ripping. I put my ripping-knife into my pocket when I put on this dress to go to prayer-meeting, because, says I to myself, there'll be something to do at Miss Scudder's to-night. You just get an iron to the fire, and we'll have it all ripped and pressed out before dark."

Miss Prissy seated herself at the open window, as cheery as a fresh apple-blossom, and began busily plying her knife, looking at the garment she was ripping with an astute air, as if she were about to circumvent it into being a new dress by some surprising act of legerdemain. Mrs. Scudder walked to the looking-glass and began changing her bonnet cap for a tea-table one.

Miss Prissy, after a while, commenced in a mysterious tone.

"Miss Scudder, I know folks like me shouldn't have their eyes open too wide, but then I can't help noticing some things. Did you see the Doctor's face when we was talking to him about Mary? Why, he colored all up and the tears came into his eyes. It's my belief that that blessed man worships the ground she treads on. I don't mean worships, either,—'cause that would be wicked, and he's too good a man to make a graven image of anything,—but it's clear to see that there a'n't anybody in the world like Mary to him. I always did think so; but I used to think Mary was such a little poppet—that she'd do better for—Well, you know, I thought about some younger man;—but, laws, now I see how she rises up to be ahead of everybody, and is so kind of solemn-like. I can't but see the leadings of Providence. What a minister's wife she'd be, Miss Scudder!—why, all the ladies coming out of prayer-meeting were speaking of it. You see, they want the Doctor to get married;—it seems more comfortable-like to have ministers married; one feels more free to open their exercises of mind; and as Miss Deacon Twitchel said to me,—'If the Lord had made a woman o' purpose, as he did for Adam, he wouldn't have made her a bit different from Mary Scudder.' Why, the oldest of us would follow her lead,—'cause she goes before us without knowing it."

"I feel that the Lord has greatly blessed me in such a child," said Mrs. Scudder, "and I feel disposed to wait the leadings of Providence."

"Just exactly," said Miss Prissy, giving a shake to her silk; "and as Miss Twitchel said, in this case every providence seems to p'int. I felt dreadfully for her along six months back; but now I see how she's been brought out, I begin to see that things are for the best, perhaps, after all. I can't help feeling that Jim Marvyn is gone to heaven, poor fellow! His father is a deacon,—and such a good man!—and Jim, though he did make a great laugh wherever he went, and sometimes laughed where he hadn't ought to, was a noble-hearted fellow. Now, to be sure, as the Doctor says, 'amiable instincts a'n't true holiness'; but then they are better than unamiable ones, like Simeon Brown's. I do think, if that man is a Christian, he is a dreadful ugly one; he snapped me short up about my change, when he settled with me last Tuesday; and if I hadn't felt that it was a sinful rising, I should have told him I'd never put foot in his house again; I'm glad, for my part, he's gone out of our church. Now Jim Marvyn was like a prince to poor people; and I remember once his mother told him to settle with me, and he gave me 'most double, and wouldn't let me make change. 'Confound it all, Miss Prissy,' says he, 'I wouldn't stitch as you do from morning to night for double that money.' Now I know we can't do anything to recommend ourselves to the Lord, but then I can't help feeling some sorts of folks must be by nature more pleasing to Him than others. David was a man after God's own heart, and he was a generous, whole-souled fellow, like Jim Marvyn, though he did get carried away by his spirits sometimes and do wrong things; and so I hope the Lord saw fit to make Jim one of the elect. We don't ever know what God's grace has done for folks. I think a great many are converted when we know nothing about it, as Miss Twitchel told poor old Miss Tyrel, who was mourning about her son, a dreadful wild boy, who was killed falling from mast-head; she says, that from the mast-head to the deck was time enough for divine grace to do the work."

"I have always had a trembling hope for poor James," said Mrs. Scudder,—"not on account of any of his good deeds or amiable traits, because election is without foresight of any good works,—but I felt he was a child of the covenant, at least by the father's side, and I hope the Lord has heard his prayer. These are dark providences; the world is full of them; and all we can do is to have faith that the Lord will bring infinite good out of finite evil, and make everything better than if the evil had not happened. That's what our good Doctor is always repeating; and we must try to rejoice, in view of the happiness of the universe, without considering whether we or our friends are to be included in it or not."

"Well, dear me!" said Miss Prissy, "I hope, if that is necessary, it will please the Lord to give it to me; for I don't seem to find any powers in me to get up to it. But all's for the best, at any rate,—and that's a comfort."

Just at this moment Mary's clear voice at the door announced that tea was on the table.

"Coming, this very minute," said Miss Prissy, bustling up and pulling off her spectacles. Then, running across the room, she shut the door mysteriously, and turned to Mrs. Scudder with the air of an impending secret. Miss Prissy was subject to sudden impulses of confidence, in which she was so very cautious that not the thickest oak-plank door seemed secure enough, and her voice dropped to its lowest key. The most important and critical words were entirely omitted, or supplied by a knowing wink and a slight stamp of the foot.

In this mood she now approached Mrs. Scudder, and, holding up her hand on the door-side to prevent consequences, if, after all she should be betrayed into a loud word, she said, "I thought I'd just say, Miss Scudder, that, in case Mary should —— the Doctor,—in case, you know, there should be a —— in the house, you must just contrive it so as to give me a month's notice, so that I could give you a whole fortnight to fix her up as such a good man's —— ought to be. Now I know how spiritually-minded our blessed Doctor is; but, bless you, Ma'am, he's got eyes. I tell you, Miss Scudder, these men, the best of 'em, feel what's what, though they don't know much. I saw the Doctor look at Mary that night I dressed her for the wedding-party. I tell you he'd like to have his wife look pretty well, and he'll get up some blessed text or other about it, just as he did that night about being brought unto the king in raiment of needle-work. That is an encouraging thought to us sewing-women.

"But this thing was spoken of after the meeting. Miss Twitchel and Miss Jones were talking about it; and they all say that there would be the best setting-out got for her that was ever seen in Newport, if it should happen. Why, there's reason in it. She ought to have at least two real good India silks that will stand alone,—and you'll see she'll have 'em, too; you let me alone for that; and I was thinking, as I lay awake last night, of a new way of making up, that you will say is just the sweetest that ever you did see. And Miss Jones was saying that she hoped there wouldn't anything happen without her knowing it, because her husband's sister in Philadelphia has sent her a new receipt for cake, and she has tried it and it came out beautifully, and she says she'll send some in."

All the time that this stream was flowing, Mrs. Scudder stood with the properly reserved air of a discreet matron, who leaves all such matters to Providence, and is not supposed unduly to anticipate the future; and, in reply, she warmly pressed Miss Prissy's hand, and remarked, that no one could tell what a day might bring forth,—and other general observations on the uncertainty of mortal prospects, which form a becoming shield when people do not wish to say more exactly what they are thinking of.

[To be continued.]

Once and Now.

The Mourner lies in the solemn room Where his Dead hath lately lain; And in the drear, oppressive gloom, Death-pallid with the dying moon, There pass before his brain, In blended visions manifold, The present and the days of old. Fair falls the snow on her grave to-day, Shrouding her sleep sublime; But he sees in the sunny far-away None among maidens so fair and gay As she in her sweet spring-time: Where the song and the sport and the revel be, None among maidens so fair as she. He marks where the perfect crescent dips Above the heaven of her eyes, Her beamy hair in soft eclipse, The red enchantment of her lips, And all the grace that lies Dreaming in her neck's pure curve, With its regal lift and its swanlike swerve. In pictures which are forever joys, She cometh to him once more: Once, with her dainty foot a-poise, She drives the bird with a merry noise From her lifted battledoor, And tosses back, with impatient air, The ruffled glory of her hair;— Then gayly draping a painted doll, To please an eager child; Or pacing athwart a stately hall; Or kneeling at dewy evenfall, When clouds are crimson-piled, And all the hushed and scented air Is tremulous with the voice of prayer;— Or standing mute and rapture-bound The while her sisters sing; From voice and lute there floats around A golden confluence of sound, Spreading in fairy ring; And with a beautiful grace and glow Her head sways to the music's flow. One night of nights in lustrous June, She walks with him alone; Through silver glidings of the moon The runnels purl a dreamy tune; His arm is round her thrown: But looks and sounds far lovelier Thrill on his trancéd soul from her. And then that rounded bliss, increased To one consummate hour! The marriage-robe, the stoléd priest, The kisses when the rite hath ceased, And with her heart's rich dower She standeth by his shielding side, His wedded wife and his own bright bride! And then the sacred influence That flushed her flower to prime! Through Love's divine omnipotence She ripened to a mother once, But once, and for all time: No higher heaven on him smiled Than that young mother and her child. Then all the pleasant household scenes Through all the latter years! No murky shadow intervenes,— Her gentle aspect only leans Through the soft mist of tears; Her sweet, warm smile, her welkin glance,— There is no speech nor utterance. O angel form, O darling face, Slow fading from the shore! O brave, true heart, whose warmest place Was his alone by Love's sweet grace, Still, still, forevermore! And now he lonely lieth, broken-hearted; For all the grace and glory have departed. Snow-cold in sculptured calm she lies, Apparelled saintly white; On her sealed lips no sweet replies, And the blue splendor of her eyes Gone down in dreamless night; All empery of Death expressed In that inexorable rest! Now leave this fair and holy Thing Alone with God's dear grace! Her grave is but the entering Beneath the shadow of His wing, Her trusty hiding-place, Till, in the grand, sweet Dawn, at last, This tyranny be overpast.

A Trip to Cuba.

Can Grande's Departure.—The Dominica.—Lottery-Tickets.

I have not told you how Can Grande took leave of the Isle of Rogues, as one of our party christened the fair Queen of the Antilles. I could not tell you how he loathed the goings on at Havana, how hateful he found the Spaniards, and how villainous the American hotel-keepers. His superlatives of censure were in such constant employment that they began to have a threadbare sound before he left us; and as he has it in prospective to run the gantlet of all the inn-keepers on the continent of Europe, to say nothing of farther lands, where inn-keepers would be a relief, there is no knowing what exhaustion his powers in this sort may undergo before he reaches us again. He may break down into weak, compliant good-nature, and never be able to abuse anybody again, as long as he lives. In that case, his past life and his future, taken together, will make a very respectable average. But the climate really did not suit him, the company did not satisfy him, and there came a moment when he said, "I can bear it no longer!" and we answered, "Go in peace!"

It now becomes me to speak of Sobrina, who has long been on a temperance footing, and who forgets even to blush when the former toddy is mentioned, though she still shudders at the remembrance of sour-sop. She is the business-man of the party; and while philosophy and highest considerations occupy the others, with an occasional squabble over virtue and the rights of man, she changes lodgings, hires carts, transports baggage, and, knowing half-a-dozen words of Spanish, makes herself clearly comprehensible to everybody. We have found a Spanish steamer for Can Grande; but she rows thither in a boat and secures his passage and state-room. The noontide sun is hot upon the waters, but her zeal is hotter still. Now she has made a curious bargain with her boatmen, by which they are to convey the whole party to the steamer on the fourth day.

"What did you tell them?" we asked.

"I said, tres noches (three nights) and un dia, (one day,) and then took out my watch and showed them five o'clock on it, and pointed to the boat and to myself. They understood, perfectly."

And so, in truth, they did; for, going to the wharf on the day and at the hour appointed, we found the boatmen in waiting, with eager faces. But here a new difficulty presented itself;—the runner of our hotel, a rascal German, whose Cuban life has sharpened his wits and blunted his conscience, insisted that the hiring of boats for the lodgers was one of his (many) perquisites, and that before his sovereign prerogative all other agreements were null and void.—N.B. There was always something experimentative about this man's wickedness. He felt that he did not know how far men might be gulled, or the point where they would be likely to resist. This was a fault of youth. With increasing years and experience he will become bolder and more skilful, and bids fair, we should say, to become one of the most dexterous operators known in his peculiar line. On the present occasion, he did not heed the piteous pleadings of the disappointed boatmen, nor Sobrina's explanations, nor Can Grande's arguments. But when the whole five of us fixed upon him our mild and scornful eyes, something within him gave way. He felt a little bit of the moral pressure of Boston, and feebly broke down, saying, "You better do as you like, then," and so the point was carried.

A pleasant run brought us to the side of the steamer. It was dusk already as we ascended her steep gangway, and from that to darkness there is, at this season, but the interval of a breath. Dusk, too, were our thoughts, at parting from Can Grande, the mighty, the vehement, the great fighter. How were we to miss his deep music, here and at home! With his assistance we had made a very respectable band; now we were to be only a wandering drum and fife,—the fife particularly shrill, and the drum particularly solemn. Well, we went below, and examined the little den where Can Grande was to pass the other seven days of his tropical voyaging. The berths were arranged the wrong way,—across, not along, the vessel,—and we foresaw that his head would go up and his feet down, and vice versâ, with every movement of the steamer, and our weak brains reeled at the bare thought of what he was to suffer. He, good soul, meanwhile, was thinking of his supper, and wondering if he could get tea, coffee, and chocolate, a toasted roll, and the touch of cold ham which an invalid loves. And we beheld, and they were bringing up the side of the vessel trays of delicious pastry, and festoons of fowls, with more literal butcher's meat. And we said, "There will be no famine on board. Make the most of your supper, Can Grande; for it will be the last of earth to you, for some time to come." And now came silence, and tears, and last embraces; we slipped down the gangway into our little craft, and, looking up, saw, bending above us, between the slouched hat and the silver beard, the eyes that we can never forget, that seemed to drop back in the darkness with the solemnity of a last farewell. We went home, and the drum hung himself gloomily on his peg, and the little fife shut up for the remainder of the evening.

Has Mr. Dana described the Dominica, I wonder? Well, if he has, I cannot help it. He never can have eaten so many ices there as I have, nor passed so many patient hours amid the screeching, chattering, and devouring, which make it most like a cage of strange birds, or the monkey department in the Jardin des Plantes.—Mem. I always observed that the monkeys just mentioned seemed far more mirthful than their brethren in the London Zoölogical Gardens. They form themselves, so to speak, on a livelier model, and feel themselves more at home with their hosts.

But the Dominica. You know, probably, that it is the great café of Havana. All the day long it is full of people of all nations, sipping ices, chocolate, and so on; and all night long, also, up to the to me very questionable hour when its patrons go home and its garçons go to bed. We often found it a welcome refuge at noon, when the douche of sunlight on one's cervix bewilders the faculties, and confuses one's principles of gravitation, toleration, etc., etc. You enter from the Tophet of the street, and the intolerable glare is at once softened to a sort of golden shadow. The floor is of stone; in the midst trickles a tiny fountain with golden network; all other available space is crowded with marble tables, square or round; and they, in turn, are scarcely visible for the swarm of black-coats that gather round them. The smoke of innumerable cigars gives a Rembrandtic tinge to the depths of the picture, and the rows and groups of nodding Panama hats are like very dull flower-beds. In the company, of course, the Spanish-Cuban element largely predominates; yet here and there the sharper English breaks upon the ear.

"Yes, I went to that plantation; but they have only one thousand boxes of sugar, and we want three thousand for our operation."

A Yankee, you say. Yes, certainly; and turning, you see the tall, strong Philadelphian from our hotel, who calls for everything by its right name, and always says, "Mas! mas!" when the waiter helps him to ice. Some one near us is speaking a fuller English, with a richer "r" and deeper intonation. See there! that is our own jolly captain, Brownless of ours, the King of the "Karnak"; and going up to the British lion, we shake the noble beast heartily by the paw.

The people about us are imbibing a variety of cooling liquids. Our turn comes at last. The garçon who says, "I speke Aingliss," brings us each a delicious orange granizada, a sort of half-frozen water-ice, familiar to Italy, but unknown in America. It is ice in the first enthusiasm of freezing,—condensed, not hardened. Promoting its liquefaction with the spoon, you enjoy it through the mediation of a straw. The unskilful make strange noises and gurglings through this tenuis avena; but to those who have not forgotten the accomplishment of suction, as acquired at an early period of existence, the modus in quo is easy and agreeable.

You will hardly weary of watching the groups that come and go and sit and talk in this dreamy place. If you are a lady, every black eye directs its full, tiresome stare at your face, no matter how plain that face may be. But you have learned before this to consider those eyes as so many black dots, so many marks of wonder with no sentence attached; and so you coolly pursue your philosophizing in your corner, strong in the support of a companion, who, though deeply humanitarian and peaceful, would not hesitate to punch any number of Spanish heads that should be necessary for the maintenance of your comfort and his dignity.

The scene is occasionally varied by the appearance of a beggar-woman, got up in great decency, and with a wonderful air of pinched and faded gentility. She wears an old shawl upon her head, but it is as nicely folded as an aristocratic mantilla; her feet are cased in the linen slippers worn by the poorer classes, but there are no unsavory rags and dirt about her. "That good walk of yours, friend," I thought, "does not look like starvation." Yet, if over there were a moment when one's heart should soften towards an imposing fellow-creature, it is when one is in the midst of the orange granizada. The beggar circles slowly and mournfully round all the marble tables in turn, holding out her hand to each, as the plate is offered at a church collection. She is not importunate; but, looking in each one's face, seems to divine whether he will give or no. A Yankee, sitting with a Spaniard, offers her his cigar. The Spaniard gravely pushes the cigar away, and gives her a medio.

More pertinacious is the seller of lottery-tickets, male or female, who has more at stake, and must run the risk of your displeasure for the chance of your custom. Even in your bed you are hardly safe from the ticket-vender. You stand at your window, and he, waiting in the street, perceives you, and with nods, winks, and showing of his wares endeavors to establish a communication with you. Or you stop and wait somewhere in your volante, and in the twinkling of an eye the wretch is at your side to bear you company till you drive off again. At the Dominica he is especially persevering, and stands and waits with as much zeal as if he knew the saintly line of Milton. Like the beggar, however, he is discriminative in the choice of his victims, and persecutes the stony Yankee less than the oily Spaniard, whose inbred superstitions force him to believe in luck.

Very strange stories do they tell about the trade in lottery-tickets,—strange, at least, to us, who consider them the folly of follies. Here, as in Italy, the lotteries are under the care of the State, and their administration is as careful and important as that of any other branch of finance. They are a regular and even reputable mode of investment. The wealthy commercial houses all own tickets, sometimes keeping the same number for years, but more frequently changing after each unsuccessful experiment. A French gentleman in Havana assured me that his tickets had already cost him seven thousand dollars. "And now," said he, "I cannot withdraw, for I cannot lose what I have already paid. The number has not been up once in eight years; its turn must come soon. If I were to sell my ticket, some one would be sure to draw the great prize with it the week after." This, perhaps, is not very unlike the calculations of business risks most in vogue in our great cities. A single ticket costs an ounce (seventeen dollars); but you are constantly offered fractions, to an eighth or a sixteenth. There are ticket-brokers who accommodate the poorer classes with interests to the amount of ten cents, and so on. Thus, for them, the lottery replaces the savings-bank, with entire uncertainty of any return, and the demoralizing process of expectation thrown into the bargain. The negroes invest a good deal of money in this way, and we heard in Matanzas a curious anecdote on this head. A number of negroes, putting their means together, had commissioned a ticket-broker to purchase and hold for them a certain ticket. After long waiting and paying up, news came to Matanzas that the ticket had drawn the $100,000 prize. The owners of the negroes were in despair at this intelligence. "Now my cook will buy himself," says one; "my calesero will be free," says another; and so on. The poor slaves ran, of course, in great agitation, to get their money. But, lo! the office was shut up. The rascal broker had absconded. He had never run the risk of purchasing the ticket; but had coolly appropriated this and similar investments to his own use, preferring the bird in the hand to the whole aviary of possibilities. He was never heard of more; but should he ever turn up anywhere, I commend him as the fittest subject for Lynch-law on record.

Well, as I have told you, all these golden chances wait for you at the Dominica, and many Americans buy, and look very foolish when they acknowledge it. The Nassauese all bought largely during their short stay; and even their little children held up with exultation their fragments of tickets, all good for something, and bad for something, too.

If you visit the Dominica in the evening, you find the same crowd, only with a sprinkling of women, oftenest of your own country, in audacious bonnets, and with voices and laughter which bring the black eyes upon them for a time. If it be Sunday evening, you will see here and there groups of ladies in full ball-dress, fresh from the Paseo, the volante waiting for them outside. All is then at its gayest and busiest; but your favorite waiter, with disappointment in his eyes, will tell you that there is "no mas" of your favorite granizada, and will persuade you to take, I know not what nauseous substitute in its place; for all ices are not good at the Dominica, and some are (excuse the word) nasty. People sit and sip, prolonging their pleasures with dilatory spoon and indefatigable tongue. Group follows group; but the Spaniards are what I should call heavy sitters, and tarry long over their ice or chocolate. The waiter invariably brings to every table a chafing-dish with a burning coal, which will light a cigar long after its outer glow has subsided into ashy white. Some humans retain this kindling power;—vide Ninon and the ancient Goethe;—it is the heart of fire, not the flame of beauty, that does it. When one goes home, tired, at ten or eleven, the company shows no sign of thinning, nor does one imagine how the ground is ever cleared, so as to allow an interval of sleep between the last ice at night and the first coffee in the morning. It is the universal siesta which makes the Cubans so bright and fresh in the evening. With all this, their habits are sober, and the evening refreshment always light. No suppers are eaten here; and it is even held dangerous to take fruit as late as eight o'clock, P.M.

The Dominica has still another aspect to you, when you go there in the character of a citizen and head of family to order West India sweetmeats for home-consumption. You utter the magic word dulces, and are shown with respect into the establishment across the way, where a neat steam-engine is in full operation, tended by blacks and whites, stripped above the waist, and with no superfluous clothing below it. Here they grind the chocolate, and make the famous preserves, of which a list is shown you, with prices affixed. As you will probably lose some minutes in perplexity as to which are best for you to order, let me tell you that the guava jelly and marmalade are first among them, and there is no second. You may throw in a little pine-apple, mamey, lime, and cocoa-plum; but the guava is the thing, and, in case of a long run on the tea-table, will give the most effectual support. The limes used to be famous in our youth; but in these days they make them hard and tough. The marmalade of bitter oranges is one of the most useful of Southern preserves; but I do not remember it on the list of the Dominica. Having given your order, let me further advise you to remain, if practicable, and see it fulfilled; as you will find, otherwise, divers trifling discrepancies between the bill and the goods as delivered, which, though of course purely accidental, will all be, somehow, to the Dominica's advantage, and not to yours. If you are in moderate circumstances, order eight or ten dollars' worth; if affluent, twenty or thirty dollars' worth; if rash and extravagant, you may rise even to sixty dollars; but you will find in such an outlay food for repentance. One word in your ear: do not buy the syrups, for they are made with very bad sugar, and have no savor of the fruits they represent.

And this is all I can tell about the Dominica, which I recommend to all of you for refreshment and amusement. We have nothing like it in New York or Boston,—our salons of the same description having in them much more to eat and much less to see. As I look back upon it, the place assumes a deeply Moorish aspect. I see the fountain, the golden light, the dark faces, and intense black eyes, a little softened by the comforting distance. Oh! to sit there for one hour, and help the garçon's bad English, and be pestered by the beggar, and tormented by the ticket-vender, and support the battery of the wondering looks, which make it sin for you, a woman, to be abroad by day! Is there any purgatory which does not grow lovely as you remember it? Would not a man be hanged twice, if he could?

[To be continued.]

Zelma's Vow.

[Continued from the July Number.]

Part Second.

How it was Kept.

It was late when Zelma Burleigh returned to the Grange. As she stole softly into the hall, she startled an Italian greyhound, which was lying asleep on a mat near the door. As he sprang up, the little silver bells on his collar tinkled out his master's secret;—Sir Harry Willerton was still in the drawing-room with Bessie.

As Zelma passed up to her chamber, she said to herself bitterly,—"Thus openly and fearlessly can the rich and well-born woo and be wooed, while such as we must steal away to happiness as to crime, and plight our vows under the chill and shadow of night!" But the next moment she felt that there was about her love a piquant sense of peril and lawlessness, a wild flavor infinitely more to her taste than would be any prudent, commendable affection grown in drawing-rooms, nourished by conventionalism, and propped by social fitness; and remembering the manly beauty and brilliant parts of her lover, she felt that she would not exchange him for the proudest noble of the realm.

After a time Bessie came stealing up from the drawing-room, and lay down by her cousin's side, softly, for fear of waking her; and all night long Bessie's secret curled about her smiling mouth, and quivered through the lids of her shut eyes, and overran her red lips in murmurs of happy dreams; but Zelma's secret burned like slow fire in her deepest heart. Bessie dreamed of merry games and quiet rambles and country fêtes with the gay Sir Harry; but Zelma, when at last she slept, dreamed of wandering with her adventurous lover from province to province,—then of playing Juliet to his Romeo before a vast metropolitan audience.

Days went on, and Bessie's pure, transparent nature, a lily-bud of sweetest womanhood, seemed unconsciously revealing itself, leaf by leaf, to all the world, and blooming out its beautiful innermost life; but Zelma's secret still smouldered in her shut heart, never by any chance flaming up to her lips in words. Her month assumed a look of rigid resolution, almost of desperation; and her eyes shone with a hard, diamond-like brilliancy, fitful, but never soft or tearful. Her manner grew more and more moody and constrained, till even her matter-of-fact uncle and aunt, good easy souls, and her absorbed cousin, became curious and anxious. The little elfish black pony was in more frequent request than ever; for his mistress now went out at any hour that suited her whim, in any weather, chose the loneliest by-ways, and rode furiously. Often, at evening, she ascended a dark gorge of the western hills and plunged down on the other side, as though in hot pursuit of the setting sun; and at length there came a report from the gossiping post-mistress of a little village over there, that she came for letters, which she duly received, addressed in a dashing, manly hand. This story, coming to the ears of Roger Burleigh, quickened his dull suspicions that "something was wrong with that poor girl"; and just as he was getting positive and peremptory, and Bessie perplexed and alarmed, Zelma disappeared!

For several days there were anxious inquiries and vain searches in every direction,—storming, weeping, and sleeplessness in the Squire's usually happy household; and then came a letter, whose Scottish post-mark revealed much of the mystery. It was from Zelma, telling that she had left the Grange forever, and become the wife of "Mr. Bury, the strolling player"; and saying that she had taken this step of her own free will, knowing it to be a fatal, unpardonable sin against caste, and that it would set a great gulf between her and her respectable relatives. Yet, she asked, had not a gulf of feeling, as deep and wide, ever separated their hearts from the gypsy's daughter? and was it not better and more honest to break the weak social ties of protection and dependence which had stretched like wild vines across the chasm to hide it from the world? She then bade them all an abrupt and final farewell It was a letter brief, cold, and curt, almost to insolence; but beneath her new name, which was dashed off with somewhat of a dramatic flourish, there appeared hurriedly scrawled in pencil a woman's postscript, containing the real soul of the letter, a passionate burst of feeling, a bitter cry of long-repressed, sorrowful tenderness. It implored forgiveness for any pain she might ever have given them, for any disgrace she might ever bring upon them,—it thanked and blessed them for past kindness, and humbly prayed for them the choicest gifts and the most loving protection of Heaven. This postscript was signed "Zelle,"—the orphan's childish and pet name at the Grange, which she now put off with the peace and purity of maidenhood and domestic life.

When it was known how Zelma Burleigh had fled, and with whom, the neighboring gentry were duly shocked and scandalized. The village gossips declared that they had always foreseen some such fate for "that strange girl," and sagely prophesied that the master of Willerton Hall would abandon all thought of an alliance with a family whose escutcheon had suffered so severely. But they counted on the baronet, not on the man,—and so, for once, were mistaken.

As for honest Roger Burleigh, he was beside himself with amazement and indignation at the folly and ingratitude of his niece and the measureless presumption of "that infernal puppy of a play-actor," as he denominated Zelma's clever husband.

As he was one day talking over the sad affair with his friend Sir Harry, who best succeeded in soothing him down, he inveighed against all actors and actresses in the strongest terms of aversion and contempt, giving free expression to the violent provincial prejudice of his time against players of all degrees.

"But, my dear Sir," interrupted the young Baronet, "your niece has not become an actress,—only the wife of a promising actor."

"No,—but she will be one yet. She's stage-struck now, more than anything else; and mark my words,—that villain will have her on the boards before the year's end, and live by her ranting. Why, you see, Sir Harry, strolling is in the blood, and must out, I suppose. The girl, as you may have heard, is half gypsy. My brother, Captain Burleigh, was a sad scamp, and actually married a Spanish Zincala! He was drunk at the time, we have the consolation to believe, or he could never have so far belied his good old English blood, dissipated dog as he was. To be sure, she saved his life once, and really was a beautiful, devoted creature, by all accounts; and if Zelma had done no worse than she,—run away with any poor devil, provided only he were a gentleman,—or if she had gone off vagabondizing with one of her mother's people, it would not have been so infamous an affair as it is; she might still have been accounted an honest woman;—but, my God, Sir Harry, a strolling player!"

Mrs. Burleigh was but a dutiful echo of her husband's prejudices, and gave up her hapless niece as lost beyond redemption; but Bessie, though she grieved more than either, suffered from no sense of humiliation, and allowed no virtuous anger, no injurious doubts, to enter her blessed little heart. Yet she missed her lost companion, her strong friend, and, still vine-like in her instincts, turned wholly to the new support,—to one who submitted himself gladly to the sweet inthralment, and felt all the grander for the luscious weight and tendril-like clasp. And so Love came to pretty Bessie's heart "with healing in his wings."

Unspeakable was the dismay of Mr. Bury at finding that a very modest amount of personal property was all that his runaway wife could hope to receive from her relatives,—that she was utterly portionless, her father having more than exhausted the patrimony of a younger son. He had supposed, from Zelma's apparently honorable position in the household of her uncle, that she was, if not an heiress, at least respectably dowered. Had he been better informed, it is doubtful whether, improvident and enamored as he was, he would have ruralized and practicalized Romeo in the lane of Burleigh Grange. Zelma herself, too unworldly to suspect that self-interest had anything to do with her conquest, never alluded to her lack of dowry till it was too late. Then both manly shame and manly passion (for the actor loved her in his way, which was by no means her way, or the way of any large, loyal nature) restrained all unbecoming expression of chagrin and disappointment,—which yet sunk into his heart, and prepared the not uncongenial coil for a goodly crop of suspicion, jealousy, alienation, aversion, and all manner of domestic infelicities.

We cannot follow Zelma step by step, in her precarious and wandering life, for the six months succeeding her marriage. It was a life not altogether distasteful to her. She was not enough of a fine lady to be dismayed or humiliated by its straits and shifts of poverty, by its isolation and ostracism; while there was something in its alternations of want and profusion, in its piquant contrasts of real and mimic life, in its excitement, action, and change, which had a peculiar charm for her wild and restless spirit. But from many of the associations of the stage, from nearly all actors and actresses, and from all green-room loungers, she instinctively recoiled, and held herself haughtily aloof from the motley little world behind the scenes,—apparently by no effort, but as sphered apart by the atmosphere of refinement and superiority which enveloped her. Yet she almost constantly accompanied her husband to rehearsal and play, where, for a time, her presence was grateful both to the pride and a more amiable passion of her mercurial lord. But the sight of that shy, shadowy figure haunting the wings, of those keen, critical eyes ever following the business of the stage, at last grew irksome to him, and he would fain have persuaded her to remain quietly at their lodgings, whilst he was attending to his professional duties. But no, she would go with him,—not for pleasure, or even affection, but, as she always avowed, for artistic purposes. That she had cherished, ever since her marriage, the plan of adopting her husband's profession, she had never concealed from him. He usually laughed, in his gay, supercilious way, when she spoke of this purpose, or lightly patted her grand head and declared her to be a wilful, unpractical enthusiast,—too much a child of Nature to attempt an art of any kind,—born to live and be poetry, not to declaim it,—to inspire genius, not to embody it,—a Muse, not a Sibyl.

Once, when she was more than usually earnest in pleading for her plan,—not merely on the strength of her own deep, prophetic conviction of her fitness for a dramatic career, but on the ground of an urgent and bitter necessity for exertion on her part, to ward off actual destitution and suffering,—he exclaimed, somewhat impatiently,—"Why, Zelma, it is an impossibility, almost an absurdity, you urge! You could never make an actress. You are too hopelessly natural, erratic, and impulsive. You would follow no teaching implicitly, but, when you saw fit, would trample on conventionalities and venerable stage-traditions. You would set up the standard of revolt against the ancient canons of Art, and flout it in the faces of the critics, and—fail,—ay, fail, in spite of your great, staring eyes, the tragic weight of your brows, and the fiery swell of your nostril."

"I should certainly tread my own ways on the boards, as elsewhere," replied Zelma, quietly,—"move and act from the central force, the instinct and inspiration of Nature,—letting the passion of my part work itself out in its own gestures, postures, looks, and tones,—falling short of, or going beyond, mere stage-traditions. With all due deference for authorities, this would be my art, as it has been the art of all truly great actors. I shall certainly not adopt my husband's profession without his consent,—but I shall never cease importuning him for that consent."

Lawrence "laughed a laugh of merry scorn," and left her to her solitary studies and the patient nursing of her purpose.

It was finally, for Zelma's sake, through the unsolicited influence of Sir Harry Willerton, that "Mr. Lawrence Bury, Tragedian," attained to a high point in a provincial actor's ambition,—a London engagement.

After a disheartening period of waiting and idleness, during which he and his wife made actual face-to-face acquaintance with want, and both came near playing their parts in the high-tragedy of starvation in a garret, he made his first appearance before the audience of Covent Garden, in the part of Mercutio. He was young, shapely, handsome, and clever,—full of flash and dash, and, above all, new. He had chosen well his part,—Mercutio,—that graceful frolic of fancy, which less requires sustained intellectual power than the exaltation of animal spirits,—that brief sunburst of life, that brilliant bubble of character, which reflects, for a moment, a world of beauty and sparkle, and dies in a flash of wit, yet leaves on the mind a want, a tender regret, which follow one through all the storm and woe of the tragedy.

So it was little wonder, perhaps, that he achieved a decided success, though incomparably greater artists had failed where he triumphed, and that, in spite of the doubtful looks and faint praise of the critics, he became at once a public favorite,—the fashion, the rage. Ladies of the highest ton condescended to admire and applaud, and hailed as a benefactor the creator of a new sensation.

Very soon the young actor's aspiring soul rose above all secondary parts, dropped Mercutio and Horatio for Romeo and Hamlet, and had not the sense to see that he was getting utterly out of his element, dashing with silken sails into the tempest of tragedy, soaring on Icarian wings over its profoundest deeps and into the height and heat of its intensest passion.

Yet with the young, the unthinking, the eager, the curious, it was then as it is now and ever shall be,—confidence easily passed for genius, and presumption for power. Tributes of admiration and envy poured in upon him,—anonymous missives, tender and daring, odorous with the atmosphere of luxurious boudoirs, and coarse scrawls, scented with orange-peel and lamp-smoke, and seeming to hiss with the sibilant whisper of green-room spite; and the young actor, valuing alike the sentiments, kindly or malign, which ministered to his egoism, intoxicated with the first foamy draught of fame, grew careless, freakish, and arrogant, as all suddenly adopted pets of the public are likely to do.

At length Mr. Bury played before Royalty, and Royalty was heard to say to Nobility in attendance,—"What!—Who is he? Where did he come from? How old is he? Not quite equal to Garrick yet, but clever,—eh, my Lord?"

This gracious royal criticism, being duly reported and printed, removed the last let to aristocratic favor; fast young bloods of the highest nobility did not acorn to shake off their perfumes and air their profane vocabulary in the green-room, offering snuff and the incense of flattery together to the Tamerlane, the Romeo, or the Lord Hamlet of the night.

Happily, with the actor's fame rose his salary; and as both rose, the actor and his wife descended from their lofty attic-room—into whose one window the stars looked with, it seemed to Zelma, a startling nearness—to respectable lodgings on the second floor.

It was during this first London season that the manager of Covent Garden, himself an actor, remarked the rare capabilities of Zelma's face, voice, and figure for the stage, and in a matter-of-fact business way spoke of them to her husband. The leading actor looked annoyed, and sought to change the subject of conversation; but as the wife's dreamy eyes flashed with sudden splendor, revealing the true dramatic fire, the manager returned upon him with his artistic convictions and practical arguments, and at length wrung from him most reluctant consent that Zelma, after the necessary study, should make a trial of her powers.

Though well over the first summer-warmth of his romantic passion, Lawrence Bury had not yet grown so utterly cold toward his beautiful wife that he could see that trial approach without some slight sympathetic dread; but his miserable egoism forbade him to wish her success; in his secret heart he even hoped that an utter, irretrievable failure would wither at once and forever her pretty artistic aspirations.

Zelma chose for her début the part of Zara in "The Mourning Bride,"—not out of any love for the character, which was too stormy, vicious, and revengeful to engage her sympathies,—but because it was rapid, vehement, sharply defined, and, if realized at all, she said, would put her, by its very fierceness and wickedness, too far out of herself for failure,—sweep her through the play like a whirlwind, and give her no time to droop. It had for her heart, moreover, a peculiar charm of association, as her first play,—as that in which she had first beheld the hero of her dreams, "the god of her idolatry," before whom she yet bowed, but as with eyes cast down or veiled, not in reverence, but from a chill, unavowed fear of beholding the very common clay of which he was fashioned.

The awful night of the début arrived, as doomsday will come at last; and after having been elaborately arrayed for her part by a gossiping tire-woman, who would chatter incessantly, relating, for the encouragement of the débutante, tale after tale of stage-fright, swoons, and failure,—after having been plumed, powdered, and most reluctantly rouged, the rose of nineteen summers having suddenly paled on her cheek, Zelma was silently conducted from her dressing-room by her husband, who, as Osmyn, took his stand with her, the guards, and attendants at the left wing, awaiting the summons to the presence of King Manuel. As they were listening to the last tender bleating of Almeria, the same pretty actress whom Zelma had seen as Zara at Arden, and the gruff responses of her sire, an eager whisper ran through the group;—the King and Queen had entered the royal box! This was quite unexpected, and Zelma was aghast. Involuntarily, she stretched out her hand and grasped that of her husband;—as she did so, the rattle of the chains on her wrist betrayed her. The attendants looked round and smiled;—Lawrence frowned and turned away, with a boy's pettishness. He had been more than usually moody that day; but Zelma had believed him troubled for her sake, and even now interpreted his unkindness as nervous anxiety.

The next moment, everything, even he, was forgotten; for she stood, she hardly knew how, upon the stage, receiving and mechanically acknowledging a great burst of generous British applause.

It was a greeting less complaisant and patronizing than is usually given to débutantes. Zelma's youthful charms, heightened by her sumptuous dress, took her audience by surprise, and, while voice and action delayed, made for her friends and favor, and bribed judgment with beauty.

King Manuel receives his captives with a courteous speech,—only a few lines; but, during their reading, through what a lifetime of fear, of pain, of unimaginable horrors passed Zelma! Stage-fright, that waking nightmare of débutantes, clutched her at once, petrifying, while it tortured her. The house seemed to surge around her, the stage to rock under her feet. She fancied she heard low, elfish laughter behind the scenes, and already the hiss of the critics seemed to sing in her reeling brain. A thousand eyes pierced her through and through,—seemed to see how the frightened blood had shrunk away from its mask of rouge and hidden in her heart,—how that poor childish heart fluttered and palpitated,—how near the hot tears were to the glazed eyeballs,—how fast the black, obliterating shadows were creeping over the records of memory,—how the first instinct of fear, a blind impulse to flight, was maddening her.

She raised her eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a torch. The King, the Queen!

Just at this moment, his Majesty was in gracious converse with a lady on his right, a foreign princess, of an ancient, unpronounceable title,—a thin, colorless head and form, overloaded with immemorial family-jewels,—a mere frame of a woman, to hang brilliants upon. She was one shine and shiver of diamonds, from head to foot;—she palpitated light, like a glow-worm. Her Majesty, meanwhile, was regaling herself from a jewelled snuff-box, and talking affably over her shoulder to her favorite mistress of the robes, the fearful Schwellenberg.

But Zelma, looking through the transfiguring atmosphere of loyalty, beheld the royal group encompassed by all the ideal splendor and sacredness of majesty;—over their very commonplace heads towered the airy crowns of a hundred regal ancestors, piled round on round, and glimmering away into the clouds.

Ere she turned her fascinated eyes away from the august sight, her cue was given. She started, and struggled to speak, but her lips clung together. There was a dull roar and whirl in her brain, as of a vortex of waters. In piteous appealing she looked into the face of her husband, and caught on his lips a strange, faint smile of mingled pity and exultation. It stung her like a lash! Instantly she was herself, or rather Zara, a captive, but every inch a queen, and delivered herself calmly and proudly, though with a little tremble of her past agitation in her voice,—a thrill of womanly feeling, which felt its way at once to the hearts of her audience.

The first act, however, afforded her so little scope for acting, that she left the stage unassured of her own success. There was doubt before and behind the curtain. The critics had given no certain sign,—the general applause might have been merely an involuntary tribute to youth and beauty. Actors and actresses hung back,—even the friendly manager was guarded in his congratulations. But in the second act the débutante put an end to this dubious state of things,—at least, so far as her audience was concerned. "The Captive Queen" took captive all, save that stern row of critics,—the indomitable, the incorruptible. Their awful judgment still hung suspended over her head.

In a scene with Osmyn Zelma first revealed her tragic power. In her fitful tenderness, in the passionate reproaches which she stormed upon him, in her entreaties and imprecations, she was the poet's ideal, and more. She dashed into the crude and sketchy character bold strokes of Nature and illuminative gleams of genius, all her own.

Mr. Bury, as Osmyn, was cold and unsympathetic, avoided the eye of Zara, and was even more tender than was "set down in the book" to Almeria.

"How well he acts his part!" said to herself the generous Zelma.

"How anxiety for his wife dashes his spirit!" said the charitable audience.

At the close of this act the manager grasped Zelma's hand, and spoke of her success as certain. She thanked him with an absent air, and gazed about her wistfully. Surely her husband should have been the first to give her joy. But he did not come forward. She shrank away to her dressing-room, and waited for him vainly till she knew he was on the stage, where she next met him in the great prison-scene.

In this scene, some bitterness of feeling—the first sharp pangs of jealousy—gave, unconsciously to herself, a terrible vitality and reality to her acting. She filled the stage with the electrical atmosphere of her genius. Waxen Almeria, who was to have gone out as she entered, received a shock of it, and stood for a moment transfixed. Even Osmyn kindled out of his stony coldness, and gazed with awe and irrepressible admiration at this new revelation of that strange, profound creature he had called "wife." She, so late a shy woodland nymph, stealing to his embrace,—now an angered goddess, blazing before him, calling down upon him the lightnings of Olympus, with all the world to see him shrink and shrivel into nothingness! And all this power and passion, overtopping his utmost reach of art, outsoaring his wildest aspirations, he had wooed, fondled, and protected! At first he was overwhelmed with amazement; he could hardly have been more so, had a volcano broken out through his hearth-stone; but soon, under the fierce storm of Zara's taunts and reproaches, a sullen rage took possession of him. He could not separate the actress from the wife,—and the wife seemed in open, disloyal revolt. Every burst of applause from the audience was an insult to him; and he felt a mad desire to oppose, to defy them all, to assert a master's right over that frenzied woman, to grasp her by the arm and drag her from the stage before their eyes!

This scene closes with a memorable speech:—

" Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent The base injustice thou hast done my love! Ay, thou shalt know, spite of thy past distress, And all the evils thou so long hast mourned, Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned!"

Zelma gave these lines as no pre-Siddonian actress had ever given them,—with a certain sublimity of rage, the ire of an immortal,—and swept off the scene before a wild tumult of applause, led by the vanquished critics. It followed her, surge on surge, to her dressing-room, whither she hastily retreated through a crowd of players and green-room habitués.

That sudden tempest shook even the royal box. The King, who a short time before had been observed to nod, not shaking his "ambrosial locks" in Jove-like approval, but somnolently, started up, exclaiming, "What! what! what's that?"—and the Queen—took snuff.

In her dressing-room Zelma waited for her husband. "Surely he will come now," she said.

She had already put off the tragedy-queen; she was again the loving wife, yearning for one proud smile, one tender word, one straining embrace. The tempest outside the curtain still rolled in upon her, as she sat alone, drooping and sad, a spent thunder-cloud. The sound brought her no sense of triumph; she only looked around her drearily, like a frightened child, and called, "Lawrence!"

Instead of him came the manager. She must go before the curtain; the audience would not be denied.

Lawrence led her out,—holding her hot, trembling fingers in his cold, nerveless hand, a moody frown on his brow, and his lips writhing with a forced smile.

As Zelma bent and smiled in modest acknowledgment of renewed applause, led by royalty itself,—her aspirations so speedily fulfilled, her genius so early crowned,—even at that supreme moment, the grief of the woman would have outweighed the triumph of the artist, and saddened all those plaudits into knell-like sounds, could she have known that the miserable fiends of envy and jealousy had grasped her husband's heart and torn it out of her possession forever.

In the death-scene, where the full tide of womanly feeling, which has been driven out of Zara's heart by the volcanic shocks of fierce passions, comes pouring back with whelming force, Zelma lost none of her power, but won new laurels, bedewed with tears from "eyes unused to weep."

Zara dies by her own hand, clinging to the headless body of King Manuel, believing it to be Osmyn's. Zelma gave the concluding lines of her part brokenly, in a tone of almost childlike lamenting, with piteous murmurs and penitent caresses:—

" Cold, cold!—my veins are icicles and frost! Cover us close, or I shall chill his breast, And fright him from my arms!—See! see! he slides Still farther from me! Look! he hides his face! I cannot feel it!—quite beyond my reach!—Ah, now he's gone, and all is dark!"

With that last desolate moan of a proud and stormy spirit, sobbing itself into the death-quiet, a visible shudder crept through the house. Even the King threw himself back in his royal chair with an uncomfortable sort of "ahem!" as though choking with an emotion of common humanity; and the Queen—forgot to take snuff.

From the night of her triumphant début, the life of the actress ran in the full sunlight of public favor; but the life of the woman crept away into the shadow,—not of that quiet and repose so grateful to the true artist, but of domestic discomfort and jealous estrangement.

Nobly self-forgetful always, Zelma, in the first hour of success, feeling, in spite of herself, the pettiness and egoism of her husband's nature, with a sense of humiliation in which it seemed her very soul blushed, offered to renounce forever the career on which she had just entered. Mr. Bury, however, angrily refused to accept the sacrifice, though she pressed it upon him, at last, as a "peace-offering," on her knees, and weeping like a penitent. "It is too late," he said, bitterly. "The deed is done. You are mine no longer,—you belong to the public;—I wish you joy of your fickle master."

From that time Zelma went her own ways, calm and self-reliant outwardly, but inwardly tortured with a host of womanly griefs and regrets, a helpless sense of wrong and desolation. She flew to her beautiful art for consolation, flinging herself, with a sort of desperate abandonment, out of her own life of monotonous misery into the varied sorrows of the characters she personated. For her the cup of fame was not mantling with the wine of delight which reddens the lips and "maketh glad the heart." The costly pearl she had dissolved in it had not sweetened the draught; but it was intoxicating, and she drank it with feverish avidity.

But for Lawrence Bury, his powers flagged and failed in the unnatural rivalship; his acting grew more and more cold and mechanical. He became more than ever subject to moods and caprices, and rapidly lost favor with the public, till at last he was regarded only as the husband of the popular actress,—then, merely tolerated for her sake. He fell, or rather flung himself, into a life of reckless dissipation and profligacy, and sunk so low that he scrupled not to accept from his wife, and squander on base pleasures, money won by the genius for which he hated her. Many were the nights when Zelma returned from the playhouse to her cheerless lodgings, exhausted, dispirited, and alone, to walk her chamber till the morning, wrestling with real terrors and sorrows, the homely distresses of the heart, hard, absolute, unrelieved,—to which the tragic agonies she had been representing seemed but child's play.

At length, finding himself at the lowest ebb of theatrical favor, and hating horribly the scene of his humiliating defeat, Mr. Bury resolved to return to his old strolling life in the provinces. Making at the same moment the first announcement of his going and his hurried adieux to Zelma, who heard his last cold words in dumb dismay, with little show of emotion, but with heavy grief and dread presentiments at her heart, he departed. He was accompanied by the fair actress with whom he played first parts at Arden,—but now, green-room gossip said, not in a merely professional association. This story was brought to Zelma; but her bitter cup was full without it. With a noble blindness, the fanaticism of wifely faith, she rejected it utterly. "He is weak, misguided, mad," she said, "but not so basely false as that. He must run his wild, wretched course awhile longer,—it seems necessary for him; but he will return at last,—surely he will,—sorrowful, repentant, 'in his right mind,' himself and mine once more. He cannot weary out God's patience and my love."

After the first shock of her desertion was past, Zelma was conscious of a sense of relief from a weight of daily recurring care and humiliation, the torture of an unloving presence, chill and ungenial as arctic sunlight. Even in the cold blank of his absence there was something grateful to her bruised heart, like the balm of darkness to suffering eyes. Her art was now all in all to her,—the strong-winged passion, which lifted her out of herself and her sorrows. She was studying Juliet for the first time. She had been playing for more than a year before she could be prevailed upon to attempt a Shakspearian character, restrained by a profound modesty from exercising her crude powers upon one of those grand creations.

When, at length, she made choice of Juliet, what study was hers!—how reverent! how loving! how glad!—the perfect service of the spirit! She shut out the world of London from her sight, from her thoughts, till it seemed lost in one of its own fogs. The air, the sky, the passion, the poetry of Italy were above and around her. Again she revelled in that wondrous garden of love and poesy, with a background of graves, solemnizing joy. Now her fancy flitted, on swift, unresting wing, from beauty to beauty,—now settled, bee-like, on some rich, half-hidden thought, and hung upon it, sucking out its most sweet and secret heart of meaning. She steeped her soul in the delicious romance, the summer warmth, the moonlight, the sighs and tears of the play. She went from the closet to the stage, not brain-weary and pale with thought, but fresh, tender, and virginal,—not like one who had committed the part of Juliet, but one whom Juliet possessed in every part. She seemed to bear about her an atmosphere of poetry and love, the subtile spirit of that marvellous play. There was no air of study, not the faintest taint of the midnight oil;—like a gatherer of roses from some garden of Cashmere, or a peasant-girl from the vintage, she brought only odors from her toil,—the sweets of the fancy, a flavor of the passion she had made her own.

On her first night in this play, Zelma was startled by recognizing among the audience the once familiar faces of her uncle Roger, her cousin Bessie, and Sir Harry Willerton. They had all come up to London to draw up the papers and purchase the trousseau for the wedding, which would have taken place a year sooner, but for the death of Bessie's mother.

Squire Burleigh had been entrapped by his daughter and her lover into coming to the play,—he being in utter ignorance as to whom he was to see in the part of Juliet. When he recognized his niece in the ball-room scene, he was shocked, and even angry. He started up, impetuously, to leave the house; and it was only by the united entreaties of Bessie and Sir Harry that he was persuaded to stay. As the play went on, however, his sympathies became enlisted, in spite of his prejudices. Gradually his heart melted toward the fair offender, and irrepressible tears of admiration and pity welled up to his kindly blue eyes. He watched the progress of the drama with an almost breathless interest while she was before him, but grew listless and indifferent whenever she left the stage. The passion of Romeo, the philosophy of the Friar, the quaint garrulousness of the Nurse, the trenchant wit of Mercutio were alike without charm for him.

But though thus lost in the fortunes and sorrows of the heroine of the play, the dramatic illusion was far from complete for him. It was not Juliet,—it was Zelma, the wild, misguided, lost, but still beloved child of his poor brother; and in his bewildered brain her sad story was strangely complicated with that of the hapless girl of Verona. When she swallowed the sleeping-draught, he shrank and shuddered at the horrible pictures conjured up by her frenzied fancy; and in the last woful scene, he forgot himself, the play, the audience, everything but her, the forlorn gypsy child, the shy and lonely little girl whom long years ago he had taken on his knee, and smoothed down her tangled black hair, as he might have smoothed the plumage of an eaglet, struggling and palpitating under his hand, and glancing up sideways, with fierce and frightened eyes,—and now, when he saw her about to plunge the cruel blade into her breast, he leaped to his feet and electrified the house by calling out, in a tone of agonized entreaty,—"Don't, Zelle! for God's sake, don't! Leave this, and come home with us,—home to the Grange!"

It was a great proof of Mrs. Bury's presence of mind and command over her emotions, that she was not visibly discomposed by this strange and touching appeal, or by the laughter and applause it called forth, but finished her sad part, and was Juliet to the last.

When, obeying the stormy summons of the audience, the lovers arose from the dead, and glided ghost-like before the curtain, Zelma, really pale with the passion and woe of her part, glanced eagerly at the box in which she had beheld her friends;—it was empty. The worthy Squire, overcome with confusion at the exposure he had made of his weakness and simplicity, had hurried from the theatre, willingly accompanied by his daughter and Sir Harry.

On the following day, sweet Bessie Burleigh, with the consent, at the request even, of her father, sought out her famous cousin, bearing terms of reconciliation and proffers of renewed affection.

The actress was alone. She had just risen from her late breakfast, and was in a morning costume,—careless, but not untidy. She looked languid and jaded; the beautiful light of young love, which the night before had shone with a soft, lambent flame in every glance, seemed to have burned itself out in her hollow eyes, or to have been quenched in tears.

She flung herself on her cousin's breast with a laugh of pure joy and a child's quick impulse of lovingness; but almost immediately drew herself back, as with a sudden sense of having leaned across a chasm in the embrace. But Bessie, guessing her feeling, clung about her very tenderly, calling her pet names, smoothing her hair and kissing her wan cheek till she almost kissed back its faded roses. And infinite good she did poor Zelma.

Bessie—dear, simple heart!—was no diplomatist; she did not creep stealthily toward her object, but dashed at it at once.

"I am come, dearest Zelle, to win you home," she said. "You cannot think how lonely it is at the Grange, now that dear mamma is gone; and by-and-by it will be yet more lonely,—at least, for poor papa. He loves you still, though he was angry with you at first,—and he longs to have you come back, and to make it all up with you. Oh, I am sure, you must be weary of this life,—or rather, this mockery of life, this prolonged fever dream, this playing with passion and pain! It is killing you! Why, you look worn and anxious and sad as death by daylight, though you do bloom out strangely bright and beautiful on the stage. So, dear, come into the country, and rest and renew your life."