Twice-Told Tales (54 page)

So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them,
looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot
and was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the
midst of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual
voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side
with gray precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had
not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices
and wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief
joy of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the
presence of a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble
merrily and disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow,
and throw the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.

"Here, here is the spot!" cried the two lovers, with one voice, as
they reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. "This glen
was made on purpose for our temple."

"And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears," said
Lilias Fay.

"And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime," said Adam
Forrester.

"Ye must build no temple here," murmured their dismal companion.

And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim's death-shrieks were
often heard to echo between the cliffs.

"And see!" cried old Gascoigne; "is the stream yet pure from the stain
of the murderer's hands?"

"Methinks it has a tinge of blood," faintly answered the Lily; and,
being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover's
arm, whispering, "Let us flee from this dreadful vale."

"Come, then," said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; "we shall
soon find a happier spot."

They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which
millions—which every child of earth—has tried in turn.

And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the
old lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked
lovely in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
mother's fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak,
two lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses
in each other's arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their
sad demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were
seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and
their posterity.

"Where in this world," exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, "shall
we build our temple of happiness?"

"Where in this world, indeed?" repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
and weary—the more so by the heaviness of her heart—the Lily drooped
her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, "Where in
this world shall we build our temple?"

"Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?" said their
companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
that dwelt on them. "Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
may build it."

While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly
thrown their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had
chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted
to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a
certain regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and
a group of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive
shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory of the
sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers
would dwell together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where
they were to worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the
ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale
lily was growing at their feet.

"We will build our temple here," said they, simultaneously, and with
an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.

Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with
his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre
hat overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a
token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate
the site of their temple of happiness.

In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid
the solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright
sunshine. It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful
pillars supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this
dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books
and music might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of
the neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient
mausoleum and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of
dark-veined marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones.
They doubted, too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a
creature of this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day
more fragile, so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch
her up and waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth
of the temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot
his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and
giving as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a
tomb. In due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple
rite of dedication.

On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the
time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which the Lily
had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning
in the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded
upon the slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had
long since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a
loving hand had now transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden
of Paradise.

But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam
Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of
many delightful hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there.
And, lo! a wonder! Digging a grave beneath the temple's marble floor,
the sexton found no virgin earth such as was meet to receive the
maiden's dust, but an ancient sepulchre in which were treasured up the
bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the funeral procession
brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne
standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and
face of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand
the spot would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they
lowered the coffin down.

"And so," said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which
his insanity was wont to gleam forth, "you have found no better
foundation for your happiness than on a grave?"

But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its
birth in Adam's mind even from the old man's taunting words, for then
he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and
himself had acted, and the mystery of life and death was opened to
him.

"Joy! joy!" he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. "On a grave be
the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity."

With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and
glimmered down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape
of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom,
symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that
the darkest riddle of humanity was read.

It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health
and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the
world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not
infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me—one with the roar
of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs—forth from the
haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath
the shadow of even one primeval tree, much less be lost among the
multitude of hoary trunks and hidden from the earth and sky by the
mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach more
like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban
farmhouse. When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a
necessity within me, I am drawn to the seashore which extends its line
of rude rocks and seldom-trodden sands for leagues around our bay.
Setting forth at my last ramble on a September morning, I bound myself
with a hermit's vow to interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to
share no social pleasure, but to derive all that day's enjoyment from
shore and sea and sky, from my soul's communion with these, and from
fantasies and recollections or anticipated realities. Surely here is
enough to feed a human spirit for a single day.—Farewell, then, busy
world! Till your evening lights shall shine along the street—till
they gleam upon my sea-flushed face as I tread homeward—free me from
your ties and let me be a peaceful outlaw.

Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and, clambering down a
crag, I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does
the spirit leap forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the
full extent of the broad blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to
the sea! I descend over its margin and dip my hand into the wave that
meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is Ocean's voice
of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let
us pace together—the reader's fancy arm in arm with mine—this noble
beach, which extends a mile or more from that craggy promontory to
yonder rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea; in the rear, a
precipitous bank the grassy verge of which is breaking away year after
year, and flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below.
The beach itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with
hardly any pebbles intermixed. Near the water's edge there is a wet
margin which glistens brightly in the sunshine and reflects objects
like a mirror, and as we tread along the glistening border a dry spot
flashes around each footstep, but grows moist again as we lift our
feet. In some spots the sand receives a complete impression of the
sole, square toe and all; elsewhere it is of such marble firmness that
we must stamp heavily to leave a print even of the iron-shod heel.
Along the whole of this extensive beach gambols the surf-wave. Now it
makes a feint of dashing onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek
murmur and does but kiss the strand; now, after many such abortive
efforts, it rears itself up in an unbroken line, heightening as it
advances, without a speck of foam on its green crest. With how fierce
a roar it flings itself forward and rushes far up the beach!

As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was
startled, as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human
life was within the magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the
remote distance of the beach, appearing like sea-nymphs, or some
airier things such as might tread upon the feathery spray, was a group
of girls. Hardly had I beheld them, when they passed into the shadow
of the rocks and vanished. To comfort myself—for truly I would fain
have gazed a while longer—I made acquaintance with a flock of
beach-birds. These little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by
about a stone's-throw along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food
upon its margin. Yet, with a philosophy which mankind would do well to
imitate, they drew a continual pleasure from their toil for a
subsistence. The sea was each little bird's great playmate. They
chased it downward as it swept back, and again ran up swiftly before
the impending wave, which sometimes overtook them and bore them off
their feet. But they floated as lightly as one of their own feathers
on the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings they seemed to rest
on the evanescent spray. Their images—long-legged little figures with
gray backs and snowy bosoms—were seen as distinctly as the realities
in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a
score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their
dalliance with the surf-wave; and thus they bore me company along the
beach, the types of pleasant fantasies, till at its extremity they
took wing over the ocean and were gone. After forming a friendship
with these small surf-spirits, it is really worth a sigh to find no
memorial of them save their multitudinous little tracks in the sand.