The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 07, May, 1858. Various
seemed now for a time as if the phantasm that haunted Roger Pierce were banished at last. His moody reserve disappeared; he addressed himself with quiet, constant effort to console his mother,—to aid his father,—to fill, so far as he could, the vacant place; and his heart longed with an incessant thirst for the bright Spirit that hovered in his dream over Sunny;—he seemed almost to have begun a natural and healthy life.
But year after year passed away, and the light of Sunny's influence faded with her fading memory. Green turf grew over her short grave, and the long slant shadow of its headstone no longer lay on a foot-worn track. Roger's pilgrimages to that spot were over; his heart had ceased to remember. The Shadow had reassumed its power, and reigned.
Still through its obscurity he kept one gleam of light,—an admiration undiminished for those who seemed to have no such attendance; but daily the number of these grew less.
At length, after the studies of his youth were over, and he had returned to his old home for life, there came over the settled and brooding darkness of his soul a warm ray of dawn. In some way, as naturally as one meets a fresh wind full of vernal odor and life, yet never marks the moment of its first caress, so naturally, so unmarkedly, he renewed a childish acquaintance with Violet Channing, a dweller in the same quiet valley with himself, though for long years the fine threads of circumstance had parted them.
Not a stone, and the frail green moss that clings to it, are more essentially different than were Roger Pierce and Violet Channing. Without a trace of the Shadow in herself, Violet disbelieved its existence in others. She had heard a rumor of Roger's phantom, but thought it some strange delusion, or want of perception, in those who told her,—being rather softened toward him with pity that he should be so little understood.
In the first days of their acquaintance, it seemed as if the light of the girl's face would have dispelled forever the darkness of her companion's Shadow, it was so mild and quiet a shining,—not the mere outer lustre of beauty, but the deep informing expression of that Spirit which had companioned Sunny heavenward.
With Violet, soothed by the timid sweetness of her manner, aroused by her sudden flashes of mirth and vivid enthusiasm, Roger seemed to forget his hateful companion, or remembered it only to be consoled by her tender eyes that beamed with pity and affection.
Month after month this intimacy went on, brightening daily in Roger's mind the ideal picture of his new friend, but creating in her only a deeper sympathy and a more devout compassion for his wretched and oppressed life. But as years instead of months went by, the sole influence no longer rested with the girl, drawing Roger Pierce upward, as she longed and strove to do, into her own sunshine. Their mutual relation had only lightened his darkness in part, while it had drawn over her the faint twilight of a Shadow like his own. But as the chief characteristic of this unearthly Thing was that it grew by notice, as some strange Eastern plants live on air, it throve but slowly near to Violet Channing, whose thoughts were bent on curing the heart-evil of Roger Pierce, and were so absorbed in that patient care that they had little chance to turn upon herself; though, when patience almost failed, and, weary with fruitless labor and unanswered yearning, her heart sunk, she was conscious of a vague influence that made the sunbeams fall coldly, and the songs of Summer mournful.
Hour after hour she lavished all the treasure she knew, and much that she knew not consciously, to beguile the darkness from Roger's brow; or recalled again and again her own deeds and words, to review them with strict judgment, lest they might have set provocation in his path; till at length her loving thoughts grew restless and painful, her face paled, her frame wasted away, and over her deep melancholy eyes the Shadow hung like a black tempest reflected in some clear lake.
Roger was not blind to this change; he did not see who had cast the first veil of darkness over the pure light that had shone so freely for him; and while he silently regretted what he deemed the desecration of the spotless image he had loved, nothing whispered that it was his own Shadow brooding above the true heart that had toiled so faithfully and long for his enlightening.
The most painful result of all to Violet was the new coldness of Roger's manner to her. Shadowed as he was, he did not perceive this change in himself; but Violet, in the silence of night, or in the solitary hours she spent in wood and field beside her growing Shadow, felt it with unmingled pain. Vainly did the Spirit of Light within her counsel her to persevere, looking only at the end she would achieve; subtler and more penetrative to her untuned ear were the words of the fiend at her side.
One day she had brooded long and drearily on the carelessness and coldness of her dear, her disregardful friend, and in her worn and weary soul revolved whatever sweetness of the past had now fled, and what pangs of love repulsed and devotion scorned lay before her in the miserable future; and as she held her throbbing head upon her hands, wasted with fiery pulses, it seemed to her as if the Shadow, inclining to her ear, whispered, almost audibly,—
"Think what you have given this man!—your hope and peace; the breath of your life and the beatings of your heart. All your soul is lavished on him, and see how he repays you!"
The weak and disheartened girl shivered; the time was past when she could have despised the voice of this dread companion, when the Shadow dared not have spoken thus; and with bitter tears swelling into her eyes she and the Shadow walked forth together to a haunt on the mountain-side where she had been used to meet Roger.
It was a bare rock, just below the summit of a peak crowned with a few old cedars, from whose laborious growth of dull, dark foliage long streamers of gray moss waved in the wind. There were scattered crags about their roots, against whose lichen-covered sides the autumn sun shone fruitlessly; and from the leafless forests in the deep valley beneath rose a whispering sound, as if they shuddered, and were stirred by some foreboding horror.
Violet made her way to this height as eagerly as her lessened strength and panting heart allowed; but as she lifted her eyes from the narrow path she had tracked upward, they rested on the last face she wished to meet, the gloomy visage of Roger Pierce. The girl hesitated, and would have drawn back, but Roger bade her come near.
"There is no need of your going, Violet," said he; and she crouched quietly on the rock at his feet, silently, but with fixed eyes, regarding the double nature before her, the Man and his Shadow.
Still upward from the valley crept that low shiver of dread; the pale sun shed its listless light on the gray rocks and dusky cedars; the silent unexpectant earth seemed to have paused; all things were wrapt in vague awe and dim apprehension; some inexpressible fatality seemed to oppress life and breath.
A sudden impulse of escape, desperate in its strength, possessed Violet; perhaps to name that Thing that clung so closely to Roger might shake its power,—and with a trembling, vibrating voice she spoke:—
"Roger,—you are thinking of the Shadow?"
He did not move, nor at once speak; no new expression stirred his dark face; at length he answered, in a voice that seemed to come from some lips far away, in an unechoing distance:—
"The Shadow?—Yes. I see it in all faces. It lies on the valley yonder; in the air; on every mortal brow and lip it gathers deeper yet. Violet, you, too, share the Shadow!"
Slowly, as if his words froze her, Violet rose and turned toward him; a light shone from her eyes that melted their dark depths into the radiance of high noon; and she spoke with a thrilled, yet unfaltering tone:—
"Yes, I share it, it is true. I feel and see the gloom; but if the Shadow haunts me, Roger Pierce, ask your own heart who cast it there! When we were first friends, I knew nothing of that darkness. I tried with all purity and compassion to draw you upward into light; and for reward, you have wrapped your own blackness round me, and hate your own doing. My work is over,—is in vain! It remains only that I free myself from this Shadow, and leave you to the mercy of a Power with whom no such Presence can cope,—in whom no darkness nor shadow may abide."
She turned to leave him with these words, but cast back a look of such love and tender pity, that she seemed to Roger the very Spirit that had borne Sunny away.
Bewildered and pained to the heart, he groped his way homeward, and night lapsed into morning, and returned and went again more than once, ere sleep returned