"SUNDAY NIGHT.
"MY DARLING:--I implore you not to come. Have I not loved you enough, all these years long, for you to trust me, and believe that it is only because I love you so much that I cannot, cannot see you now? Dear, did I ever before ask you to forego your wish for mine? Did I ever before withhold anything from you, my darling? Ah, love, you know--oh, how well you know, that always, in every blissful moment we have spent together, my bliss has been shadowed by a little, interrupted by a little, because my soul was forever restlessly asking, seeking, longing, for one more joy, delight, rapture, to give to you!
"Now listen, darling. You say it is almost a year since we met; true, but if it were yesterday, would you remember it any more clearly? Why, my precious one, I can see over again at this moment each little movement which you made, each look your face wore; I can hear every word; I can feel every kiss; very solemn kisses they were too, love, as if we had known.
"You say we may never meet again. True. But if that is to be so, all the more I choose to leave with you the memory of the face you saw then, rather than of the one you would see to-day. Be compa.s.sionate, darling, and spare me the pain of seeing your pain at sight of my poor changed face. I hope it is not vanity, love, which makes me feel this so strongly.
Being so clearly and calmly conscious as I am that very possibly my earthly days are near their end, it does not seem as if mere vanity could linger in my soul. And you know you have always said, dearest, that I had none. I know I have always wondered unspeakably that you could find pleasure in my face, except occasionally, when I have felt, as it were, a great sudden glow and throb of love quicken and heat it under your gaze; then, as I have looked up in your eyes, I have sometimes had a flash of consciousness of a transfiguration in the very flesh of my face, just as I have a sense of rapturous strength sometimes in the very flesh and bone of my right hand, when I strike on the piano some of Beethoven"s chords. But I know that, except in the light of your presence, I have no beauty. I had not so much to lose by illness as other women. But, dear one, that little is gone. I can read in the pitying looks of all my friends how altered I am. Even if I did not see it with my own eyes, I should read it in theirs. And I cannot--oh, I cannot read it in yours!
"If I knew any spell which could make you forget all except some one rare moment in which you said in your heart, "she never looked so lovely before!" oh, how firmly I would bind you by it! All the weary indifferent, or unhappy looks, love, I would blot out from your memory, and have the thought of me raise but one picture in your mind. I would have it as if I had died, and left of my face no record on earth except one wonderful picture by some great master, who had caught the whole beauty of the one rarest moment of my life. Darling, if you look back, you will find that moment; for it must have been in your arms; and let Love be the master who will paint the immortal picture!
"As for this thin, pale, listless body, which just now answers to the name of me, there is nothing in or about it which you know. Presently it will be carried like a half-lifeless thing on board a ship; the winds will blow roughly on it and it will not care. If G.o.d wills, darling, I will come back to you well and strong. If I cannot come well and strong, I hope never to come at all.
"Don"t call me cruel. You would feel the same. I also should combat the resolve in you, as you do in me. But in my heart I should understand. I should sympathize, and I should yield.
"G.o.d bless you, darling. I believe He will, for the infinite goodness of your life. I thank Him daily that He has given it to me to bless you a little. If I had seen you to say farewell, my beloved, I should not have kissed you many times, as has been our wont. That is for hours of joy. I should have kissed you three times--only three times--on your beautiful, strong, gentle lips, and each kiss would have been a separate sacrament, with a bond of its own. I send them to you here, love, and this is what they mean!
"Three Kisses of Farewell.
"Three, only three my darling, Separate, solemn, slow; Not like the swift and joyous ones We used to know When we kissed because we loved each other Simply to taste love"s sweet, And lavished our kisses as the summer Lavishes heat,-- But as they kiss whose hearts are wrung, When hope and fear are spent, And nothing is left to give, except A sacrament!
"First of the three, my darling, Is sacred unto pain; We have hurt each other often; We shall again, When we pine because we miss each other, And do not understand How the written words are so much colder Than eye and hand.
I kiss thee, dear, for all such pain Which we may give or take; Buried, forgiven, before it comes For our love"s sake!
"The second kiss, my darling, Is full of joy"s sweet thrill; We have blessed each other always; We always will.
We shall reach until we feel each other, Past all of time and s.p.a.ce; We shall listen till we hear each other In every place; The earth is full of messengers, Which love sends to and fro; I kiss thee, darling, for all joy Which we shall know!
"The last kiss, oh, my darling, My love--I cannot see Through my tears, as I remember What it may be.
We may die and never see each other, Die with no time to give Any sign that our hearts are faithful To die, as live.
Token of what they will not see Who see our parting breath, This one last kiss, my darling, seals The seal of death!"
It was on my sixteenth birthday that I copied these letters and poems of Esther Wynn"s. I kept them, with a few other very precious things, in a curious little inlaid box, which came from Venice, and was so old that in many places its sides were worm-eaten. It was one of my choicest treasures, and I was never separated from it.
When I was twenty years old I had been for two years a happy wife, for one year a glad mother, and had for some time remembered Esther only in the vague, pa.s.sing way in which happy souls recall old shadows of the griefs of other hearts. As my boy entered on a second summer he began to droop a little, and the physician recommended that we should take him to the sea-side; so it came to pa.s.s that on the morning of my twentieth birthday I was sitting, with my baby in my arms, on a rocky sea-sh.o.r.e, at one of the well-known summer resorts of the New Hampshire coast. Near me sat a woman whose face had interested me strangely ever since my arrival. She seemed an invalid; but there was an atmosphere of overflowing vitality about her, in spite of her feebleness, which made her very presence stimulating and cheering to every one. I had longed to speak with her, but as yet had not done so. While I sat watching her face and my baby"s, and the face of the sea, she was joined by her husband, who had just come from a walk in the fields, and had brought her a large bouquet of red clover and feathery gra.s.ses. She took it eagerly with great delight, and exclaimed:--
"I wonder what the Clover thinks?
Intimate friend of Bob-o-links!"
I could not control the sudden start with which I heard these words. Who was this that knew Esther Wynn"s verses by heart? I could hardly refrain from speaking to her at once, and betraying all. But I reflected instantly that I must be very cautious; it would be almost impossible to find out what I longed to know without revealing how my own acquaintance with the verses had come about. Days pa.s.sed before I ventured to allude to the subject; but one evening, as we were walking together, she stooped and picked a clover-blossom, and said,--
"I really think I love red clover better than any wild flower we have."
"I thought so," said I, "when I saw you take that big bunch your husband brought you the other morning. That was before I knew you: I felt almost rude, I watched you so, in spite of myself."
"But I had watched you quite as much," said she, smiling; "I thought then of giving you a part of the clover. Edward always brings me huge bouquets of it every day; he knows so well how I love it."
"I heard you quote a little couplet of verse about it then," said I, looking away from her, that she might not see my face: "I was so near you I could not help hearing what you said."
"Oh, yes," said she,
"I wonder what the Clover thinks?
Intimate friend of Bob-o-links"--
"I do not know but that old clover-song is the real reason I love clover so. My mother taught it to me when I was a little child. It is all very quaint and sweet. Would you like to hear it?"
I felt myself color scarlet, but I replied,--
"Oh, yes, pray repeat it."
When she had repeated the verses she went on speaking, to my great relief, saving me from the necessity of saying anything.
"That was written a great many years ago, by an aunt of my mother"s. My mother has a little ma.n.u.script book bound in red morocco, very faded and worn, which my grandmother kept on her bureau till she died, last year; and it has in it this little clover-song and several others, with Aunt Esther"s diary while she was abroad. She died abroad; died in Jerusalem, and was buried there. There was something mysteriously sad in her life, I think: grandmother always sighed when she spoke of her, and used to read in the little red book every day. She was only her half-sister, but she said she loved her better than she did any sister of her own. Once I asked grandmamma to tell me about her, but she said, "There is nothing to tell, child. She was never married: she died the autumn before your mother was born, and your mother looked very much like her when she was young. She is like her, too, in many ways," and that was all grandmamma would ever say.
But we always called her Aunt Esther, and know all her verses by heart, and the diary was fascinating. It seems strange to read such vivid written records of people you never saw; don"t you think so?"
"Yes, it must, very," said I.
She went on: "I always had a very special love for this old Aunt Esther, which I could hardly account for. I am to have the little red book when my mother dies; and"--she hesitated a moment--"and I named my first baby for her, Esther Wynn. The baby only lived to be a few weeks old, and I often think, as I look at her little grave-stone, of the other one, so many thousand miles away, alone in a strange land, bearing the same name."
On my way home I stopped for a few days" visit at Uncle Jo"s. Late one night, sitting in my old place at his feet in the library, I told him this sequel to the romance of the letters.
"Oh, childie, how could you help showing that you knew about her?" said he. "You must have betrayed it."
"No, I am sure I did not," I said. "I never spoke about it after that day, and she was too absorbed herself in the reminiscences to observe my excitement."
"What was your friend"s name?" said Uncle Jo.
I told him. He sprang from his chair, and walked rapidly away to the end of the library; presently he came back, and standing before me, said,--
"Nell! Nell! your friend"s mother is the woman of whom I once spoke to you! I might have known that the subtle kinship I felt between Esther Wynn and her was no chance resemblance. I never heard of the name "Wynn,"
however. But you said she was only a half-sister; that accounts for it. I might have known! I might have known!" he exclaimed, more to himself than to me, and buried his face in his hands I stole away quietly and left him; but I heard him saying under his breath, "Her aunt! I might have known!"