"Your legend is absurd enough; but I think I catch your meaning, and wish I could think you wholly in the right. It is singular that you and I have never met without our conversation becoming personal to ourselves. We are always studying each other--always trying to penetrate each other"s thoughts."
"On one side, at least, the success has been complete. As you look at me, I feel that you are reading me like a book, from t.i.tle page to finis."
"You greatly overrate my penetration. I am conscious, at this moment, of movements in your mind which I do not understand."
"And would you have me confess them to you?"
"You might repent it afterwards; and that would make a breach between us."
"You are a miraculous woman, to postpone your curiosity to a scruple like that. No, I would not have spoken of confession, if I should ever repent it. Do you know, I would rather open my mind to you than to any one else I am now acquainted with."
"But you have male friends; very old and intimate ones."
"Excellent in their way; but I would as soon confess to my horse. Find me a woman of sense, with a brain to discern, a heart to feel, pa.s.sion to feel vehemently, and principle to feel rightly, and I will show her my mind; or, if not, I will show it to no one. Now, after this preamble, you have a right to think that I should begin to confess something at once. But first, I will ask you a question."
"What is it?"
"Tell me what effect you think any long and severe suffering ought to have on a man--something, I mean, that would bring him to the brink of despair, and keep him there for months and years."
"What kind of man do you mean?"
"Suppose one given over to pleasure, ambition, or any other engrossing pursuit not too disinterested."
"It would depend on how the suffering was taken."
"Suppose him resolved to make the best of a bad bargain."
"Why, the effect ought to be good, I suppose,--so the preachers say."
"I do not wish to know what the preachers say. I wish your own opinion."
"Are you quite in earnest?"
"Quite."
"Such suffering, rightly taken, would strip life of its disguises, and show it in its naked truth. It would teach the man to know himself and to know others. It would awaken his sympathies, enlarge his mind, and greatly expand his sphere of vision; teach him to hold present pleasure and present pain in small account, and to look beyond them into a future of boundless hopes and fears."
"Now," said Morton, "you have betrayed yourself."
"How have I betrayed myself?" asked his friend, in some discomposure.
"You have shown me the secrets of your own mind. You have given me a glimpse of your own history, since we last met."
"And so, under pretence of confessing to me, you have been plotting to make me confess to you!"
"No, you shall hear my confession. I have it now, such as it is, at my tongue"s end."
"I have no faith in you."
"Perhaps you will have still less when you have heard this great secret. You remember me before I went away. I was a very exemplary young gentleman,--quiet, orderly, well behaved,--of a studious turn,--soberly and virtuously given."
"You give yourself an excellent character."
"And what should be the results of the discipline of a dungeon on such a person?"
"Discipline would be a superfluity, considering your perfections."
"So I thought myself. Nevertheless, for four years, or so, I was shut up, with nothing to look at but stone walls, under circ.u.mstances most favorable for the culture of patience, resignation, forgiveness, and all the Christian virtues; and yet the devil has never been half so busy with me as since I came out; never whispered half so many villanous suggestions into my ears, nor baited me with such scandalous temptations."
"That is very strange," said f.a.n.n.y Euston, who was looking at him intently.
"For example," pursued Morton, "a little more than a year ago, in New York, he said to me, "Renounce all your old plans, and habits, and antiquated scruples--reclaim your natural freedom--fling yourself headlong into the turmoil of the world--chase whatever fate or fortune throws in your way--enjoy the zest of lawless pleasures--launch into mad adventure--embark on schemes of ambition--care nothing for the past or the future--think only of the present--fear neither G.o.d nor man, and follow your vagrant star wherever it leads you."
Morton knew that, restrained and governed as it might be, there was quicksilver enough in his companion"s veins to enable her to understand what he had said, and prevent her being startled at it. But he was by no means prepared for the close attack she proceeded to make on him.
"Such a state of mind is foreign to your nature. You have prudence and forecast. You used to make plans for the future, and study the final results of every thing you did. There is something upon your mind. It is not imprisonment only that has caused that compression of your lips, and marked those lines on your face. You have met with some deep disaster, some overwhelming disappointment. Nothing else could have wrought such a convulsion in you."
Morton was taken by surprise; and, as he struggled to frame an answer, his features betrayed an emotion which he could not hide. f.a.n.n.y Euston hastened to relieve his embarra.s.sment, and a.s.suage, as far as she could, the tumult she had called up.
"With whatever fate you may have had to battle, your wounds are in the front,--all honorable scars. Your desperation is past;--it was only for the hour;--and for the other extreme, it is not in you to suffer that."
"What other extreme?"
"Idle dreaming;--melancholy;--weak pining at disappointment."
"No, thank G.o.d, it is not in me to lie and whine like a sick child."
"You are the firmer for what you have pa.s.sed. Manhood, the proudest of all possession to a man, is strengthened and deepened in you."
"What do you call this manhood, which you seem to hold in such high account?"
"That unflinching quality which, strong in generous thought and high purpose, bears onward towards its goal, knowing no fear but the fear of G.o.d; wise, prudent, calm, yet daring and hoping all things; not dismayed by reverses, nor elated by success; never bending nor receding; wearying out ill fortune by undespairing constancy; unconquered by pain or sorrow, or deferred hope; fiery in attack, steadfast in resistance, unshaken in the front of death; and when courage is vain, and hope seems folly, when crushing calamity presses it to the earth, and the exhausted body will no longer obey the still undaunted mind, then putting forth its hardest, saddest heroism, the unlaurelled heroism of endurance, patiently biding its time."
"And how if its time never come?"
"Then dying at its post, like the Roman sentinel at Pompeii."
Her words struck a chord in Morton"s nature, and roused his early enthusiasm, dormant for years.
"f.a.n.n.y," he said, "I thank you. You give me back my youth. An hour ago, the world was as dull to me as a November day; but you have brought June back again. You would make a coward valiant, and breathe life into a dead man."
Miss Euston seemed, for a moment, in embarra.s.sment what to reply; indeed, she showed some signs of discomposure, contrasting with her former frankness. They were still in the recess of the window. She was visible to those in the room; while he, standing opposite, was hidden by a curtain. At this moment, a gentleman, with a slight limp in his gait, approaching quickly, accosted Miss Euston, smiling with an air of the most earnest affability. She looked up to reply, but, as she did so, her eyes were arrested by a sudden change in the features of her companion, who was bending on the new comer a look so fierce and threatening, that she scarcely repressed an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of surprise.
Mr. Horace Vinal followed the direction of her gaze, and saw himself face to face with the victim of his villany. He started as if he had found a grizzly bear behind the curtain. The smile vanished from his lips, the color from his cheeks, and he hastily drew back, and mingled with the crowd.
This sudden apparition, breaking in upon the brightening mood of the moment, incensed Morton almost to fury; and his anger, absurdly enough, was a little tinged with a feeling not wholly unlike jealousy.
He made an involuntary movement to follow his enemy, but recollecting himself, smoothed his brow and calmed his ruffled spirit as he best might.
"You seem to know that man very well," he said to Miss Euston.