Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864. Various
me that I must keep my heart free and in vacant loneliness, because that, after many years, you were to come and lift me from my obscurity?'
'Then, upon your own showing, you acknowledge that there was once another upon whom your eyes loved to look?' he cried, half gladdened that he had found even this poor excuse to transfer the charge of blame from himself. 'And how can I tell but that you have met with him since?'
'I have met him since,' she quietly answered, driven to desperation by the cruel insinuation.
In his heart attaching but little importance to such childish affections as she might once have cherished, and having had no other purpose in his suggestion than that of shielding himself from further inquiry by inflicting some trifling wound upon her, Sergius had spoken hesitatingly, and with a shamefaced consciousness of meanness and self-contempt. But when he listened to her frank admission—fraught, as it seemed to him, with more meaning than the mere naked words would, of themselves, imply, an angry flush of new-born jealousy overspread his features.
'Ha! You have met him since?' he exclaimed. 'And when, and where? And who, then, is this fortunate one?'
Ænone hesitated. Now, still more bitterly than ever before, she felt the sad consciousness of being unable to pour out to her husband her more secret thoughts and feelings. If she could have told, with perfect assurance of being believed, that in so lately meeting the man whom she had once imagined she loved, she had looked upon him with no other feeling than the dread of recognition, joined to a friendly and sisterly desire to procure his release from captivity and his restoration to his own home, she would have done so. But she felt too well that the once-aroused jealousy of her lord might now prevent him from reposing full and generous trust and confidence in her—that he would be far more likely to interpret all her most innocent actions wrongly, and to surround her with degrading espionage—and that, in the end, the innocent captive would probably be subjected to the bitterest persecutions which spite and hatred could invent.
'I have met him,' she said at length, 'but only by chance, and without being recognized or spoken to by him. Nor do I know whether I shall ever chance to meet him again. Is this a crime? Oh, my lord, what have I done that you should thus strive to set your face against me? Do you not, in your secret soul, know and believe that there is no other smile than yours for which I live, and that, without the love with which you once gladdened me, there can be no rest or peace for me on earth? Tell me, then, that all this is but a cruel pleasantry to prove my heart, and that there has nothing come between us—or else let me know the worst, in order that I may die.'
Sliding down, until her knees touched the floor, and then winding one arm slowly about his neck, she hid her face in his breast, and, bursting into tears, sobbed aloud. It was not merely the reactionary breaking down of a nervous system strung to the highest point of undue excitement. It was the half consciousness of a terrible fear lest the day might come in which, goaded by injustice and neglect, she might learn no longer to love the man before her—the wail of a stricken soul pleading that the one to whom her heart had bound her might not fail in his duty to her, but, by a resumption of his former kindness and affection, might retain her steadfastly in the path of love.
Touched by the spectacle of her strong agony—aroused for the moment to the true realization of all the bitterness and baseness of his unkindness toward her—moved, perhaps, by memories of that time when between them there was pleasant and endearing confidence, and when it was not she who was obliged to plead for love—Sergius drew his arm more closely about her, and, bending over, pressed his lips upon her forehead. If at that moment the opportunity had not failed, who can tell what open and generous confessions might not have been uttered, unrestrained forgiveness sealed, and future miseries prevented? But at the very moment when the words seemed trembling upon his lips, the door softly opened, and Leta entered.
THE DOVE
Upon the 'pallid bust of Pallas' sat
The Raven from the 'night's Plutonian shore;'
His burning glance withered my wasting life,
His ceaseless cry still tortured as before:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'
The weary moments dragged their crimson sands
Slow through the life-blood of my sinking heart.
I counted not their flow; I only knew
Time and Eternity were of one hue;
That immortality were endless pain
To one who the long lost could ne'er regain—
There was no hope that Death would Love restore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'
Early one morn I left my sleepless couch,
Seeking in change of place a change of pain.
I leaned my head against the casement, where
The rose she planted wreathed its clustering flowers.
How could it bloom when she was in the grave?
The birds were carolling on every spray,
And every leaf glittered with perfumed dew;
Nature was full of joy, but, wretched man!
Does God indeed bless only birds and flowers?
As thus I stood—the glowing morn without,
Within, the Raven with its blighting cry,
All light the world, all gloom the hopeless heart—
I prayed in agony, if not in faith;
Yet still my saddened heart refused to soar,
And even summer winds the burden bore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'
With these wild accents ringing through my heart,
There was no hope in prayer! Sadly I rose,
Gazing on Nature with an envious eye,
When, lo! a snowy Dove, weaving her rings
In ever-lessening circles, near me came;
With whirring sound of fluttering wings, she passed
Into the cursed and stifling, haunted room,
Where sat the Raven with his voice of doom—
His ceaseless cry from the Plutonian shore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'
The waving of the whirring, snowy wings,
Cooled the hot air, diffusing mystic calm.
Again I shuddered as I marked the glare
Which shot from the fell Raven's fiendish eye,
The while he measured where his pall-like swoop
Might seize the Dove as Death had seized Lenore:
'Lenore!' he shrieked, 'ah, never—nevermore!'
Hovered the Dove around an antique cross,
Which long had stood afront the pallid bust
Of haughty Pallas o'er my chamber door:
Neglected it had been through all the storm
Of maddening doubts born from the demon cry
Reëchoing from the night's Plutonian shore:
'Lenore! Lenore! ah! never—nevermore!'
I loved all heathen, antique, classic lore,
And thus the cross had paled before the brow
Of Pallas, radiant type of Reason's power.
But human reason fails in hours of woe,
And wisdom's goddess ne'er reopes the grave.
What knows chill Pallas of corruption's doom?
Upon her massive, rounded, glittering brow
The Bird of Doubt had chos'n