"look, mabel! there's mr. morgan going to call on miss rood," said lucy softly.
"oh, do look, george!" said mabel eagerly. "that old gentleman has been paying court to an old maid over in that little house for forty years. and to think," she added in a lower tone, intended for his private ear, "what a fuss you make about waiting six months!"
"humph! you please to forget that it's easier to wait for some things than for others. six months of my kind of waiting, i take it, require more patience than forty years of his—or any other man's," he added, with increased emphasis.
"be quiet, sir!" replied mabel, answering his look of unruly admiration with one of half pique. "i 'm not a sugar-plum, that's not enjoyed till it's in the mouth. if you have n't got me now, you 'll never have me. if being engaged isn't enough, you don't deserve to be married." and then, seeing the blank expression with which he looked down at her, she added with a prescient resigned-ness, "i 'm afraid, dear, you 'll be so disappointed when we 're married, if you find this so tedious."
lucy had discreetly wandered away, and of how they made it up there were no witnesses. but it seems likely that they did so, for shortly after they wandered away together down the darkening street.
like most of the plainfield houses, that at which mr. morgan turned in stood well back from the street. at a side window, still further sheltered from view by a gyringa-bush at the house corner, sat a little woman with a small, pale face, the still attractive features perceptibly sharpened by years, of which the half-gray hair bore further testimony. the eyes, just now fixed absently upon the dusking landscape, were light gray and a little faded, while around the lips there were crow's-feet, especially when they were pressed together, as now, in an unsatisfied, almost pathetic look, evidently habitual to her face when in repose. there was withal something in her features that so reminded you of mr. morgan that any one conversant with the facts of his life-romance would have at once inferred—though by just what logic he might not be able to explain—that this must be miss eood. it is well known that long-wedded couples often gain at length a certain resemblance in feature and manner; and although these two were not married, yet their intimacy of a lifetime was perhaps the reason why her face bore when in repose something of that seer-like expression which communion with the bodiless shapes of memory had given to his.
the latching of the gate broke up her depressing reverie, and banished the pinched and pining look from her features. among the neighbors miss rood was sometimes called a sour old maid, but the face she kept for mr. morgan would never have suggested that idea to the most ill-natured critic.
he stopped at the window, near which the walk passed to the doorway, and stood leaning on the sill,—a tall, slender figure, stooping a little, with smooth, scholarly face, and thin iron-gray hair. his only noticeable feature was a pair of eyes whose expression and glow indicated an imaginative temperament. it was pleasant to observe the relieved restlessness in the look and manner of the two friends, as if at the mere being in each other's presence, though neither seemed in any haste to exchange even the words of formal greeting.
at length she said, in a tone of quiet satisfaction, "i knew you would come, for i was sure this deathly autumn's flavor would make you restless. is n't it strange how it affects the nerves of memory, and makes one sad with thinking of all the sweet, dear days that are dead?"
"yes, yes," he answered eagerly; "i can think of nothing else. do they not seem wonderfully clear and near to-night? to-night, of all nights in the year, if the figures and scenes of memory can be re雖bodied in visible forms, they ought to become so to the eyes that strain and yearn for them."
"what a fanciful idea, robert!"
"i don't know that it is; i don't feel sure. nobody understands the mystery of this past, or what are the conditions of existence in that world. these memories, these forms and faces, that are so near, so almost warm and visible that we find ourselves smiling on the vacant air where they seem to be, are they not real and living?"
"you don't mean you believe in ghosts?"
"i am not talking of ghosts of the dead, but of ghosts of the past,— memories of scenes or persons, whether the persons are dead or not— of our own selves as well as others. why," he continued, his voice softening into a passionate, yearning tenderness, "the figure i would give most to see just once more is yourself as a girl, as i remember you in the sweet grace and beauty of your maidenhood. ah, well! ah, well!"
"don't!" she cried involuntarily, while her features contracted in sudden pain.
in the years during which his passion for her had been cooling into a staid friendship, his imagination had been recurring with constantly increasing fondness and a dreamy passion to the memory of her girlhood. and the cruelest part of it was that he so unconsciously and unquestioningly assumed that she could not have identity enough with that girlish ideal to make his frequent glowing references to it even embarrassing. generally, however, she heard and made no sign, but the suddenness of his outburst just now had taken her off her guard.
he glanced up with some surprise at her exclamation, but was too much interested in his subject to take much notice of it. "you know," he said, "there are great differences in the distinctness with which we can bring up our memories. very well! the only question is, what is the limit to that distinctness, or is there any? since we know there are such wide degrees in distinctness, the burden of proof rests on those who would prove that those degrees stop short of any particular point. don't you see, then, that it might be possible to see them?" and to enforce his meaning he laid his hand lightly on hers as it rested on the window-seat.
she withdrew it instantly from the contact, and a slight flush tinged her sallow cheeks. the only outward trace of her memory of their youthful relations was the almost prudish chariness of her person by which she indicated a sense of the line to be drawn between the former lover and the present friend.
"something in your look just now," he said, regarding her musingly, as one who seeks to trace the lineaments of a dead face in a living one, "reminds me of you as you used to sit in this very window as a girl, and i stood just here, and we picked out stars together. there! now it's gone;" and he turned away regretfully.
she looked at his averted face with a blank piteousness which revealed all her secret. she would not have had him see it for worlds, but it was a relief just for a moment to rest her features in the sad cast which the muscles had grown tired in repressing. the autumn scent rose stronger as the air grew damp, and he stood breathing it in, and apparently feeling its influence like some delphian afflatus.
"is there anything, mary,—is there anything so beautiful as that light of eternity that rests on the figures of memory? who that has once felt it can care for the common daylight of the present any more, or take pleasure in its prosaic groups?"
"you'll certainly catch cold standing in that wet grass; do come in and let me shut the blinds," she said, for she had found cheerful lamplight the best corrective for his vagaries.
so he came in and sat in his special arm-chair, and they chatted about miscellaneous village topics for an hour. the standpoint from which they canvassed plainfield people and things was a peculiarly outside one. their circle of two was like a separate planet from which they observed the world. their tone was like, and yet quite unlike, that in which a long-married couple discuss their acquaintances; for, while their intellectual intimacy was perfect, their air expressed a constant mutual deference and solicitude of approbation not to be confounded with the terrible familiarity of matrimony; and at the same time they constituted a self-sufficient circle, apart from the society around them, as man and wife cannot. man and wife are so far merged as to feel themselves a unit over against society. they are too much identified to find in each other that sense of support and countenance which requires a feeling of the exteriority of our friend's life to our own. if these two should marry, they would shortly find themselves impelled to seek refuge in conventional relations with that society of which now they were calmly independent.
at length mr. morgan rose and threw open the blinds. the radiance of the full harvest-moon so flooded the room that miss eood was fain to blow out the poor lamp for compassion. "let us take a walk," he said.
the streets were empty and still, and they walked in silence, spelled by the perfect beauty of the evening. the dense shadows of the elms lent a peculiarly rich effect to the occasional bars and patches of moonlight on the street floor; the white houses gleamed among their orchards; and here and there, between the dark tree-stems, there were glimpses of the shining surface of the broad outlying meadows, which looked like a surrounding sea.
miss rood was startled to see how the witchery of the scene possessed her companion. his face took on a set, half-smiling expression, and he dropped her arm as if they had arrived at the place of entertainment to which he had been escorting her. he no longer walked with measured pace, but glided along with a certain stealthiness, peering on this side and that down moony vistas and into shadow-bowers, as if half-expecting, if he might step lightly enough, to catch a glimpse of some sort of dream-people basking there.
nor could miss rood herself resist the impression the moony landscape gave of teeming with subtle forms of life, escaping the grosser senses of human beings, but perceptible by their finer parts. each cosy nook of light and shadow was yet warm from some presence that had just left it. the landscape fairly stirred with ethereal forms of being beneath the fertilizing moon-rays, as the earth-mould wakes into physical life under the sun's heat. the yellow moonlight looked warm as spirits might count warmth. the air was electric with the thrill of circumambient existence. there was the sense of pressure, of a throng. it would have been impossible to feel lonely. the pulsating sounds of the insect world seemed the rhythm to which the voluptuous beauty of the night had spontaneously set itself. the common air of day had been transmuted into the atmosphere of reverie and dreamland. in that magic medium the distinction between imagination and reality fast dissolved. even miss bood was conscious of a delightful excitement, a vague expectancy. mr. morgan, she saw, was moved quite beyond even his exaggerated habit of imaginative excitement. his wet, shining, wide-opened eyes and ecstatic expression indicated complete abandonment to the illusions of the scene.
they had seated themselves, as the concentration of the brain upon imaginative activity made the nerves of motion sluggish, upon a rude bench formed by wedging a plank between two elms that stood close together. they were within the shadow of the trees, but close up to their feet rippled a lake of moonlight. the landscape shimmering before them had been the theatre of their fifty years of life. their history was written in its trees and lawns and paths. the very air of the place had acquired for them a dense, warm, sentient feeling, to which that of all other places was thin and raw. it had become tinctured by their own spiritual emanations, by the thoughts, looks, words and moods of which it had so long received the impression. it had become such vitalized air, surcharged with sense and thought, as might be taken to make souls for men out of.
over yonder, upon the playground, yet lingered the faint violet fragrance of their childhood. beneath that elm a kiss had once touched the air with a fire that still warmed their cheeks in passing. yonder the look of a face was cut on the viewless air as on marble. surely, death does but touch the living, for the dead ever keep their power over us; it is only we who lose ours over them. each vista of leafy arch and distant meadow framed in some scene of their youth-time, painted in the imperishable hues of memory that borrow from time an ever richer and more glowing tint. it was no wonder that to these two old people, sitting on the bench between the elms, the atmosphere before them, saturated with associations, dense with memories, should seem fairly quivering into material forms, like a distant mist turning to rain.
at length miss rood heard her companion say, in a whisper of tremulous exultation, "do you know, mary, i think i shall see them very soon."
"see whom?" she asked, frightened at his strange tone.
"why, see us, of course, as i was telling you," he whispered,—"you and me as we were young,—see them as i see you now. don't you remember it was just along here that we used to walk on spring evenings? we walk here no more, but they do evermore, beautiful, beautiful children. i come here often to lie in wait for them. i can feel them now; i can almost, almost see them." his whisper became scarcely audible and the words dropped slowly. "i know the sight is coming, for every day they grow more vivid. it can't be long before i quite see them. it may come at any moment."
miss rood was thoroughly frightened at the intensity of his excitement, and terribly perplexed as to what she should do.
"it may come at any time; i can almost see them now," he murmured. "a—h! look!" with parted lips and unspeakably intense eyes, as if his life were flowing out at them, he was staring across the moonlit paths before them to the point where the path debouched from the shadow.
following his eyes, she saw what for a moment made her head swim with the thought that she too was going mad. just issuing from the shadows, as if in answer to his words, were a young man and a girl, his arm upon her waist, his eyes upon her face. at the first glance miss rood was impressed with a resemblance to her own features in those of the girl, which her excitement exaggerated to a perfect reproduction of them. for an instant the conviction possessed her that by some impossible, indescribable, inconceivable miracle she was looking upon the resurrected figures of her girlish self and her lover.
at first mr. morgan had half started from his seat, and was between rising and sitting. then he rose with a slow, involuntary movement, while his face worked terribly between bewilderment and abandonment to illusion. he tottered forward a few steps to the edge of the moonlight, and stood peering at the approaching couple with a hand raised to shade his eyes and a dazed, unearthly smile on his face. the girl saw him first, for she had been gazing demurely before her, while her lover looked only at her. at sight of the gray-haired man suddenly confronting them with a look of bedlam, she shrieked and started back in terror. miss rood, recalled to her senses, sprang forward, and catching mr. morgan's arm endeavored with gentle force to draw him away.
but it was too late for that. the young man, at first almost as much startled as his companion at the uncanny apparition, naturally experienced a revulsion of indignation at such an extraordinary interruption to his t阾e-?-t阾e, and stepped up to mr. morgan as if about to inflict summary chastisement. but perceiving that he had to do with an elderly man, he contented himself with demanding in a decidedly aggressive tone what the devil he meant by such a performance.
