Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

"As I lingered before this fair shadow, I heard my name pronounced,
and, turning, beheld the not less fair original, the daughter of my
host. Now do not fear a catalogue of feminine graces, or a lengthened
romance of the heart, tedious with such platitudes as have been Elysium
to the actors, and weariness to the audience, ever since the world
began. The Enchanted Isles wear no enchantment to unanointed vision;
their skies of Paradise are fog, their angels Harpies, perchance, or
harsh-throated Sirens. Besides, we can never describe correctly those
whom we love, because we see them through the heart; and the heart's
optics have no technology. It is enough to say, that, from almost the
first time I looked upon Blanche, I felt that I had at last found the
gift rarely accorded to us here,--the fulfilment of a promise hidden
in every heart, but often waited for in vain. Hitherto my all-sufficing
self-hood had never been stirred by the mighty touch of Love. I had
been amused by trivial and superficial affections, like the gay
triflers of whom Rasselas says, 'They fancied they were in love, when
in truth they were only idle.' But that sentiment which is never twice
inspired, that new birth of

'A soul within the soul, evolving it sublimely,'

had never until now wakened my pulses and opened my eyes to the higher
and holier heritage. Perhaps you doubt that Psychal fetters may be
forged in a moment's heat; but I believe that the love which is deepest
and most sacred, and which Plato calls the memory of divine beings whom
we knew in some anterior life, that recognition of kindred natures
which precedes reason and asks no leave of the understanding, is not a
gradual and cautious attraction, like the growth of a coral reef, but
sudden and magnetic as the coalescence of two drops of mercury.

"During several following weeks we met many times, and yet, in looking
back to that dream of heaven, I cannot tell how often, nor for how
long. Time is merely the measure given to past emotions, and those
emotions flowed over me in a tidal sweep which merged all details in
one continuous memory. The lone hemisphere of my life was rounded into
completeness, and its feverish unrest changed to deep tranquillity, as
if a faint, tremulous star were transmuted into a calm, full-orbed
planet. Do you remember that story of Plato's--I recall the air-woven
subtilties of the delightful idealist, to illustrate, not to
prove--that story of the banquet where the ripe wines of the Aegean
Isles unchained the tongues of such talkers as Pausanias and Socrates
and others as witty and wise, until they fell into a discourse on the
origin of Love, and, whirling away on the sparkling eddies of fancy,
were borne to that preexistent sphere which, in Plato's opinion,
furnished the key to all the enigmas of this? There they beheld the
complete and original souls, the compound of male and female, dual and
yet one, so happy and so haughty in their perfection of beauty and of
power that Jupiter could not tolerate his godlike rivals, and therefore
cut them asunder, sending the dissevered halves tumbling down to earth,
bewildered and melancholy enough, until some good fortune might restore
to each the _alter ego_ which constituted the divine unity. 'And
thus,' says Plato, 'whenever it happens that a man meets with his other
half, the very counterpart of himself, they are both smitten with
strong love; they recognize their ancient union; they are powerfully
attracted by the consciousness that they belong to each other; and they
are unwilling to be again parted, even for a short time. And if Vulcan
were to stand over them with his fire and forge, and offer to melt them
down and run them together, and of two to make them one again, they
would both say that this was just what they desired!'

"I dare say you have read--unless your partiality for the soft Southern
tongues has chased away your Teutonic taste--that exquisite poem of
Schiller's, 'Das Geheimnitz der Reminiscenz,' the happiest possible
crystallization of the same theory. I recall a few lines from Bulwer's
fine translation:--

"'Why from its lord doth thus my soul depart?
Is it because its native home thou art?
Or were they brothers in the days of yore,
Twin-bound both souls, and in the links they bore
Sigh to be bound once more?

"'Were once our beings blent and intertwining,
And therefore still my heart for thine is pining?
Knew we the light of some extinguished sun,--
The joys remote of some bright realm undone,
Where once our souls were ONE?

"'Yes, it is so! And thou wert bound to me
In the long-vanished eld eternally!
In the dark troubled tablets which enroll
The past my Muse beheld this blessed scroll,--
'One with thy love, my soul'!"

"Now the Athenian dreamer builded better than he knew. That phantom
which perpetually attends and perpetually evades us,--the inevitable
guest whose silence maddens and whose sweetness consoles,--whose filmy
radiance eclipses all beauty,--whose voiceless eloquence subdues all
sound,--ever beckoning, ever inspiring, patient, pleading, and
unchanging,--this is the Ideal which Plato called the dearer self,
because, when its craving sympathies find reflex and response in a
living form, its rapturous welcome ignores the old imperfect being, and
the union only is recognized as Self indeed, complete and undivided.
And that fulness of human love becomes a faint type and interpreter of
the Infinite, as through it we glide into grander harmonies and
enlarged relations with the Universe, urged on forever by insatiable
desires and far-reaching aspirations which testify our celestial
origin and intimate our immortal destiny.

"'Lo! arm in arm, through every upward grade,
From the rude Mongol to the starry Greek,
everywhere we seek
Union and bond, till in one sea sublime
Of love be merged all measure and all time!"

"I never disclosed in words my love to Blanche. Through the lucid
transparency of Presence, I believed that she knew all and
comprehended all, without the aid of those blundering symbols. We never
even spoke of the future; for all time, past and to come, seemed to
converge and centre and repose in that radiant present. In the
enchantment of my new life, I feared lest a breath should disturb the
spell, and send me back to darkness and solitude.

"Of course, this could not last forever. There came a time when I found
that my affairs would compel me to leave New Orleans for a year, or
perhaps a little longer. With the discovery my dream was broken. The
golden web which had been woven around me shrank beneath the iron hand
of necessity, and fell in fragments at my feet. I knew that it was
useless to speak to Blanch of marriage, for her father, a stern and
exacting man in his domestic relations, had often declared that he
would never give his daughter to a husband who had no fortune. If I
sought his permission to address her now, my fate was fixed. There was
no alternative, therefore, but to wait until my return, when I hoped to
have secured, in sufficient measure, the material passport to his
favor. Our parting was necessarily sudden, and, strange as it may seem,
some fatal repression sealed my lips, and withheld me from uttering the
few words which would have made the future wholly ours, and sculptured
my dream of love in monumental permanance. Ah! with what narrow and
trembling planks do we bridge the abyss of misery and despair! But be
patient while I linger for a moment here. The evening before my
departure, I went to take leave of her. There were other guests in the
drawing-room, the atmosphere was heated and oppressive, and after a
little time I proposed to her to retreat with me, for a few moments, to
the fragrant coolness of the garden. We walked slowly along through
clustering flowers and under arching orange-trees, which infolded us
tenderly within their shining arms, as in tremulous silence we waited
for words that should say enough and yet not too much. The glories of
all summer evenings seemed concentred in this one. The moon now
silvered leaf and blossom, and then suddenly fled behind a shadowing
cloud, while the stars shone out with gladness brief and bright as the
promises of my heart. Skilful artists in the music-room thrilled the
air with some of those exquisite compositions of Mendelssohn which
dissolve the soul in sweetness or ravish it with delight, until it
seems as if all past emotions of joy were melted in one rapid and
comprehensive reexperience, and all future inheritance gleamed in
promise before our enraptured vision, and we are hurried on with
electric speed to hitherto unsealed heights of feeling, whence we catch
faint glimpses of the unutterable mysteries of our being, and
foreshadowings of a far-off, glorified existence. The eloquence of
earth and sky and air breathed more than language could have uttered,
and, as my eyes met the eyes of Blanche, the question of my heart was
asked and answered, once for all. I recognized the treasured ideal of
my restless, vagrant heart, and I seemed to hear it murmuring gently,
as if to a long-lost mate, _'Where hast thou stayed so long?'_ I
felt that henceforth there was for us no real parting. Our material
forms might be severed, but our spirits were one and inseparate.

"'On the fountains of our life a seal was set
To keep their waters clear and bright
Forever.'

"And thus, with scarce a word beside, I said the 'God be with you!' and
went out into the world alone, yet henceforth not alone.

"Two years passed away. They had been years of success in my worldly
affairs, and were blessed by memories and hopes which grew brighter
with each day. I had not heard of Blanche, save indirectly through a
friend in New Orleans, but I never doubted that the past was as sacred,
the future as secure, in her eyes as in my own. I was now ready to
return, and to repeat in words the vows which my heart had sworn long
before. I fixed the time, and wrote to my friend to herald my coming.
Before that letter reached him, there came tidings which, like a storm
of desolation, swept me to the dust. Blanche was in France, and
married,--how or when or to whom, I knew not, cared not. The
relentless fact was sufficient. The very foundations of the earth
seemed to tremble and slide from beneath me. The sounds of day
tortured, the silence of night maddened me. I sought forgetfulness in
travel, in wild adventure, in reckless dissipation. With that strange
fatality which often leads us to seek happiness or repose where we have
least chance of finding it, I, too, married. But I committed no
perjury. I offered friendship, and it sufficed. Love I never professed
to give, and the wife whom I merely esteemed had not the mental or the
magnetic ascendancy which might have triumphed for a time over the
image shrined in my inmost heart. I sought every avenue through which
I might fly from that and from myself. I tried mental occupation, and
explored literature and science, with feverish ardor and some reward. I
think it is Coleridge who recommends to those who are suffering from
extreme sorrow the study of a new language. But to a mind of deep
feeling diversion is not relief. If we fly from memory, we are pursued
and overtaken like fugitive slaves, and punished with redoubled
tortures. The only sure remedy for grief is self-evolved. We must
accept sorrow as a guest, not shun it as a foe, and, receiving it into
close companionship, let the mournful face haunt our daily paths, even
though it shut out all friends and dim the light of earth and heaven.
And when we have learned the lesson which it came to teach, the fearful
phantom brightens into beauty, and reveals an 'angel unawares,' who
gently leads us to heights of purer atmosphere and more extended
vision, and strengthens us for the battle which demands unfaltering
heart and hope.

"Do you remember the remark of the child Goethe, when his young reason
was perplexed by attempting to reconcile the terrible earthquake at
Lisbon with the idea of infinite goodness? 'God knows very well that an
immortal soul cannot suffer from mortal accident.' With similar faith
there came to me tranquil restoration. The deluge of passion rolled
back, and from the wreck of my Eden arose a new and more spiritual
creation. But forgetfulness was never possible. In the maddening
turbulence of my grief and the ghastly stillness of its reaction, the
lovely spirit which had become a part of my life seemed to have fled to
the inner temple of my soul, breaking the solitude with glimmering
ray and faint melodious murmur. And when I could bear to look and
listen, it grew brighter and more palpable, until at last it attended
me omnipresently, consoling, cheering, and stimulating to nobler
thought and action.

"Nor was it a ghost summoned by memory, or the airy creation of fancy.
One evening an incident occurred which will test your credulity, or
make you doubt my sanity. I sat alone, and reading,--nothing more
exciting, however, than a daily newspaper. My health was perfect, my
mind unperturbed. Suddenly my eye was arrested by a cloud passing
slowly back and forth several times before me, not projected upon the
wall, but floating in the atmosphere. I looked around for the cause,
but the doors and windows were closed, and nothing stirred in the
apartment. Then I saw a point of light, small as a star at first, but
gradually enlarging into a luminous cloud which filled the centre of
the room. I shivered with strange coldness, and every nerve tingled as
if touched by a galvanic battery. From the tremulous waves of the cloud
arose, like figures in a dissolving view, the form and features of my
lost love,--not radiant as when I last looked upon them, but pale and
anguish-stricken, with clasped hands and tearful eyes; and upon my ears
fell, like arrows of fire, the words, _You have been the cause of all
this; oh, why did you not'_--The question was unfinished, and from
my riveted gaze, half terror, half delight, the vision faded, and I was
alone.

"Of course you will pronounce this mere nervous excitement, but, I pray
you, await the sequel. Those burning words told the story of that
mistake which had draped in despair our earthly lives. They were no
reflection from my own mind. In the self-concentration of my
disappointment, I had never dreamed that I alone was in fault,--that I
should have anchored my hope on somewhat more defined than the
voiceless intelligence of sympathy. But the very reproach of the
mysterious visitor brought with it a conviction, positive and
indubitable, that the spiritual portion of our being possesses the
power to act upon the material perception of another, without aid from
material elements. From time to time I have known, beyond the
possibility of deception, that the kindred spirit was still my
companion, my own inalienable possession, in spite of all factitious
ties, of all physical intervention.

"Have you heard that among certain tribes of the North-American Indians
are men who possess an art which enables them to endure torture and
actual death without apparent suffering or even consciousness? I once
chanced to fall in with one of these tribes, then living in Louisiana,
now removed to the far West, and was permitted to witness some
fantastic rites, half warlike, half religious, in which, however,
there was nothing noticeable except this trance-like condition, which
some of the warriors seemed to command at pleasure, manifested by a
tense rigidity of the features and muscles, and a mental exaltation
which proved to be both clairvoyant and clairoyant: a state analogous
to that of hypnotism, or the artificial sleep produced by gazing
fixedly on a near, bright object, and differing only in degree from
the nervous or imaginative control which has been known to arrest and
cure disease, which chained St. Simeon Stylites to his pillar, and
sustains the Hindoo fakirs in their apparently superhuman vigils. These
children of Nature had probed with direct simplicity some of the deep
secrets which men of science often fail to discern through tortuous
devices. I was assured that this trance was merely the result of a
concentrative energy of the will, which riveted the faculties upon a
single purpose or idea, and held every nerve and sense in absolute
abeyance. We are so little accustomed to test the potency of the will
out of the ordinary plane of its operation, that we have little
conception how mighty a lever it may be made, or to what new exercise
it may be directed; and yet we are all conscious of periods in our
lives when, like a vast rock in ocean, it has suddenly loomed up firm
and defiant amid our petty purposes and fretful indecisions, waxing
grander and stronger under opposition, a something apart from, yet a
conscious portion of ourselves,--a master, though a slave,--another
revelation of the divinity within.

"I will confess that curiosity led me long ago to slight experiments in
the direction in which you say the diabolic lies, but my mind was
never concentrated on any one idea of sufficient interest to command
success, until, in some periods of mingled peril and excitement, the
memory of Blanche, and the conscious, even startling nearness of that
sweet presence, have lent to my will unwonted energy and inspiration.

"Twenty years passed slowly away. It is common to speak of the
_flight_ of time. For me, time has no wings. The days and years
are faltering and tardy-footed, laden with the experiences of the
outer and the problems of the inner world, which seem perpetually
multiplied by reflection, like figures in a room mirrored on all
sides. Meanwhile, my wife had died. I have never since sought women
beyond the formal pale of the drawing-room: not from insensibility to
loveliness, but because the memory, 'dearer far than bliss,' of one
irretrievable affection shut out all inferior approach,--like a
solitary planet, admitting no dance of satellites within its orbit.

"At last the long silence was broken. I heard that Blanche was free,
and, with mingled haste and hesitation, I prepared to seek her. The
ideal should be tested, I said to myself, by the actual, and if proved
a deceit, then was all faith a mockery, all promise and premonition a
glittering lie. As soon as winds and waves could carry me, I was in
Louisiana, and in the very dwelling and at the same hour which had
witnessed our parting. Again was it a soft summer evening. The same
faint golden rays painted the sun's farewell, and the same silver moon
looked eloquent response, as on the evening breeze floated sweet
remembered odors of jessamine and orange. Again the ideal beauty of the
lovely portrait met my gaze and seemed to melt into my heart; and
once more, softly, lightly, fell a footstep, and the Presence by which
I had never been forsaken, which I could never forsake, stood before me
in 'palpable array of sense.' It was indeed the living Blanche, calm
and stately as of old,--no longer radiant with the flush of youth, but
serene in tenderest grace and sweet reserve, and beautiful through the
lustre of the inner light of soul. She uttered a faint cry of joy, and
placing her trembling hand in mine, we stood transfixed and silent,
with riveted gaze, reading in each other's eyes feelings too sacred for
speech, too deep for smiles or tears. In that long, burning look, it
seemed as if the emotions of each were imparted to the other, not in
slow succession as through words and sentences, but daguerreotyped or
electrotyped in perfected form upon the conscious understanding. No
language could have made so clear and comprehensible the revelation of
that all-centring, unconquerable love which thrilled our inmost being,
and pervaded the atmosphere around us with subtile and tremulous
vibrations. In that moment all time was fused and forgotten. There was
for us no Past, no Future; there was only the long-waited,
all-embracing Now. I could willingly have died then and there, for I
knew that all life could bring but one such moment. My heart spoke
truly. A change passed over the countenance of Blanche,--an expression
of unutterable grief, like Eve's retrospective look at Eden. Quivering
with strange tremor, again she stood before me, with clasped hands and
tearful eyes, in the very attitude of that memorable apparition, and
again fell upon my ears the mysterious plaint and the uncompleted
question,--_'You have been the cause of all this; oh, why did you
not'_--

"Now, my friend, can your philosophy explain this startling
verification, this reflex action of the vision, or the fantasy, or
whatever else you may please to term it, whose prophetic shadow fell
upon my astonished senses long years before? In all the intervening
time, we were separated by great distance, no word or sign passed
between us, nor did we even hear of each other except indefinitely and
through chance. Is there, then, any explanation of that vision more
rational than that the spirit thus closely affined with my own was
enabled, through its innate potencies, or through some agency of which
we are ignorant, to impress upon my bodily perceptions its
uncontrollable emotions? That this manifestation was made through what
physiologists call the unconscious or involuntary action of the mind
was proved by the incredulity and surprise of Blanche when I told her
of the wonderful coincidence.

"I need not relate, even if I could do so, the outpouring of long-pent
emotions which relieved the yearning love and haunting memories of sad,
silent, lingering years. It is enough to tell you briefly of the
story which was repeated in fragments through many hours of unfamiliar
bliss. Soon after my departure from New Orleans, the father of Blanche,
with the stern authority which many parents exercise over the
matrimonial affairs of their daughters, insisted upon her forming an
alliance to which the opposition of her own heart was the only
objection. So trifling an impediment was decisively put aside by him,
and Blanche, having delayed the marriage as long as possible, until the
time fixed for my return was past, and unable to plead any open
acknowledgment on my part which could justify her refusal, had no
alternative but to obey. 'I confess,' said she, in faltering tones,
'that, after my fate was fixed, and I was parted from you, as I
believed for life, I tried to believe that the love which had given so
slight witness in words to its truth and fervor must have faded
entirely away, and that I was forgotten, and perhaps supplanted. And
therefore, in the varied pursuits and pleasures of my new sphere, and
in the indulgence and kindness which ministered to the outer, but,
alas! never to the inner life, I sought happiness, and I, too, like
yourself, strove to forget. Ah! that art of forgetting, which the
Athenian coveted as the best of boons,--when was it ever found through
effort or desire? In all scenes of beauty or of excitement, in the
allurements of society, in solitude and in sorrow, my heart still
turned to you with ceaseless longing, as if you alone could touch its
master-chord, and waken the harmonies which were struggling for
expression. By slow degrees, as I learned to dissever you from the
material world, there came a conviction of the nearness of your spirit,
sometimes so positive that I would waken from a reverie, in which I
was lost to sights and sounds around me, with a sense of having been
in your actual presence. I was aware of an effect rather than of an
immediate consciousness,--as if the magnetism of your touch had swept
over me, cooling the fever of my brain, and charming to deep
tranquillity my troubled heart. And thus I learned, through similar
experience, the same belief as yours. I have felt the continuous
nearness, the inseparable union of our spirits, as plainly as I feel
it now, with my hand clasped in yours, and reading in your eyes the
unutterable things which we can never hope to speak, because they are
foreshadowings of another existence.

"What I possess I see afar off lying,
And what I lost is real and undying."

The material presence is indeed very dear, but I believe that it is not
essential to the perpetuity of that love which is nurtured through
mutual and perfect understanding.'

"'It is not essential,' I replied, 'but it is, as you say, very, very
dear, because it is an exponent and participant of the hidden life
which it was designed to aid and to enframe. Blanche, it was you who
first wakened my soul to the glorious revelation, the heavenly
heritage of love. It was you who opened to me the world which lies
beyond the mere external, who gently allured me from the coarse and
clouding elements of sense, and infolded me in the holy purity of that
marriage of kindred natures which alone is hallowed by the laws of
God, and which no accidents of time or place can rend asunder. Apart
from the bitterness of this long separation, the lesson might not have
been learned; but now that it is ineffaceably engraven on both our
hearts, and confirmed in the assurance of this blessed reunion, may I
not hope that for the remainder of our earthly lives we may study
together in visible companionship such further lessons as may be held
in reserve for us?'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19