Vashti Part 8

"On the contrary, she declared that the woman who succeeded in captivating you would achieve a triumph more difficult and more desirable than the victory of the Nile or of Trafalgar. I was tempted to ask her if she might be considered the ambitious Nelson, but of course politeness forbade. Ulpian, she is the prettiest creature I ever looked at."

"Yes, as pretty as mere healthy flesh can be without the sublimation and radiance of an indwelling soul. There is nothing which impresses me so mournfully as the sight of a beautiful, frivolous, unscrupulous woman, who immolates all that is truly feminine in her character upon the shrine of swollen vanity; and whose career from cradle to grave is as utterly aimless and useless as that of some gaudy, flaunting ephemeron of the tropics. Such women act as extinguishers upon the feeble, flickering flame of chivalry, which modern degeneracy in manners and morals has almost smothered."

His tone and countenance evinced more contempt than Salome had known him to express on any former occasion, and, glancing at his clear, steady, grave blue eyes, she said to herself,--

"At least he will never strike his colors to Admiral Adelaide Channing, and I should dislike to occupy her place in his estimation."

"My dear boy, you must not speak in such ungrateful terms of my beautiful visitor, who certainly has some serious design on your heart, if I may judge from the very extravagant praise she lavished upon you. I daresay she is a very nice, sweet girl, and you know you told me once that if you should ever marry your wife must be a beauty, else you could not love her."

"Very true, Janet, and I have no intention of retracting or diminis.h.i.+ng my rigid requirements, but my definition of beauty includes more than mere physical perfection,--than satin skin, pearl-tinted, fine eyes, faultless teeth, abundant silky tresses, and rounded figure. It demands that the heart whose blood paints lips and cheek, shall be pure, generous, and holy; that the soul which looks out at me from l.u.s.trous eyes shall be consecrated to another deity than Fas.h.i.+on,--shall be as full of magnanimity, and strength, and peace, as a harp is of melody; my beauty means meekness, faith, sanct.i.ty, and exacts mental, moral, and material excellence. Rest a.s.sured, my dear, sage counsellor, that if ever I bring a wife to my hearthstone I will have selected her in obedience to the advice of Joubert, who admonished us, 'We should choose for a wife only the woman we would choose for a friend, were she a man.'"

"You expect too much; you will never find your perfect ideal walking in flesh."

"I will content myself with nothing less--I promise you that."

"Oh, no doubt you will believe that the woman you marry is all that you dream or wish; but some fine morning you will present me with a sister as full of foibles and vanities and frailties as any other spoiled and cunning daughter of Eve. Of course every bridegroom cla.s.ses as 'perfect' the blus.h.i.+ng, trembling young thing who peeps shyly at him from under a tulle veil and an orange wreath; but, take my word for it, there is a spice of Delilah in every pretty girl, and the credulity of Samson slumbers in all lovers. Nevertheless, Ulpian, I would sooner see you in bondage to a pair of white hands and hazel eyes,--would rather know that like all your race you were utterly humbugged--hoodwinked--by some fair-browed belle, whose low voice rippled over pouting pink lips, than have you live always alone, a confirmed old bachelor. After all, I doubt whether you have really never had a sweetheart, for every schoolboy swears allegiance to some yellow-haired divinity in ruffled muslin ap.r.o.ns."

Dr. Grey laid his hand gently on the shrivelled fingers that were busily engaged in sh.e.l.ling some seed-beans, and answered, jocosely,--

"Have I not often told you, that my dear, old, patient sister Janet, is my only lady-love?"

"And your silly old Janet is not such an arrant fool as to believe any such nonsense,--especially when she remembers that from time immemorial sailors have had sweethearts in every port, and that her spoiled pet of a brother is no exception to his race or his profession."

He laughed, and smoothed her grizzled hair.

"Since my sapient sister is so curious, I will confess that once--and only once in my life--I was in dire danger of falling most desperately in love. The frigate was coaling at Palermo, and I went ash.o.r.e. One afternoon, in sauntering through the orange and lemon groves which render its environs so inviting, I caught a glimpse of a countenance so serene, so indescribably lovely, that for an instant I was disposed to believe I had encountered the beatific spirit of St. Rosalie herself. The face was that of a woman apparently about eighteen years old, who evidently ranked among Sicilian aristocrats, and whose elegant attire enhanced her beauty. I followed, at a respectful distance, until she entered the garden of an adjacent convent and fell on her knees before a marble altar, where burned a lamp at the feet of a statue of the Virgin; and no painting in Europe stamped itself so indelibly on my memory as the picture of that beautiful votary. Her delicate hands were crossed over her heart,--her large, liquid, black eyes, raised in adoration,--her full, crimson lips parted as she repeated the '_Ave Maria_' in the most musical voice I ever heard.

Just above the purplish folds of her abundant hair drooped pomegranate boughs all aflame with scarlet blooms that fell upon her head like tongues of fire, as the wind sprang from the blue hollows of the Mediterranean and shook the grove. The sun was going swiftly down behind the stone turrets of a monastery that crowned a distant hill, and the last rays wove an aureola around my kneeling saint, who, doubtless, aware of the effect of her graceful att.i.tudinizing, seemed in no haste to conclude her devotions. As I recalled the charming tableau, those lines wherein Buchanan sought to photograph the picturesqueness of the Digentia, float up from some sympathetic cell of memory,--

'Could you look at the leaves of yonder tree,-- The wind is stirring them, as the sun is stirring me!

The woolly clouds move quiet and slow In the pale blue calm of the tranquil skies, And their shades that run on the gra.s.s below Leave purple dreams in the violet's eyes!

The vine droops over my head with bright Cl.u.s.ters of purple and green,--the rose Breaks her heart on the air; and the orange glows Like golden lamps in an emerald night.'

My Sicilian Siren finally disappeared in a gloomy arched-way leading into the convent, and I returned to the hotel to dream of her until the morning suns.h.i.+ne once more bathed Conca D'Oro in splendor,--when I inst.i.tuted a search for the name and residence of my inamorata. Six hours of enthusiastic investigation yielded me the coveted information, but imagine the profound despair in which I was plunged when I ascertained from her own smiling lips that she was a happy wife and the proud mother of two beautiful children.

As she rose to present her swarthy husband, I bowed myself out and took refuge aboard s.h.i.+p. Here ends the recital of the first and last bit of romance that ever threw its rosy tinge over the quiet life of your staid and humble brother--Ulpian Grey, M.D."

"Ah, my dear sailor boy, I am afraid thirty-five years of experience have rendered you too wary to be caught by such chaff as pretty girls sprinkle along your path! I should be glad to see your bride enter this door before I am carried out feet foremost to my final rest by Enoch's side."

"Do not despair of me, dear Jane, for I am not exactly Methuselah's rival; and comfort yourself by recollecting that Lessing was forty years old when he first loved the only woman for whom he ever entertained an affection--his devoted Eva Konig."

Dr. Grey bent over his sister's easy-chair, and, taking her thin, sallow face tenderly in his soft palms, kissed the sunken cheeks--the wrinkled forehead; and then, laying her head gently back upon its cus.h.i.+ons, entered his buggy and drove to his office.

"Salome, what makes you look so moody? There are as many furrows on your brow as lines in a spider's web, and your lips are drawn in as if you had dined on green persimmons. Child, what is the matter?"

Miss Jane lifted her spectacles from her nose, and eyed the orphan, anxiously.

"I am very sorry to hear that 'Solitude' will be filled once more with people, and bustle, and din. It is the nearest point where we can reach the beach, and I have enjoyed many quiet strolls under its grand, old, solemn trees. If haunted at all, it is by Dryads and Hamadryads, and I like the babble of their leaves infinitely better than the strife of human tongues. Miss Jane, if I were only a pagan!"

"I am not very sure that you are not," sighed the invalid.

"Nor I. I have lost my place,--I am behind my time in this world by at least twenty centuries, and ought to have lived in the jovial age of fauns and satyrs, when groves were sacred for other reasons than the high price of wood,--when G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses were abundant as blackberries, and at the beck and call of every miserable wretch who chose to propitiate them by offering a flask of wine, a bunch of turnips, a litter of puppies, or a basket of olives. Hesiod and Homer understood human nature infinitely better than Paul and Luther."

"Salome, you are growing shockingly irreverent and wicked."

"No, madam,--begging your pardon. I am only desperately honest in wis.h.i.+ng that my salvation and future felicity could be secured beyond all peradventure, by a sacrifice of oatcakes, or white doves, or black cats, instead of a drab-colored life of prayer, penance, purity, and patience. I don't deny that I would rather spend my days in watching the gorgeous pageant of the_ Panathenaea_, or chanting dithyrambics to insure a fine vintage, or even offering a _Taigheirm_, than in running neck and neck with Lucifer for the kingdom of heaven. I love kids, and fawns, and lambs, as well as Landseer; but I should not long hesitate, had I the choice, between flaying their tender flesh in sacrifice and mortifying my own as a devout life requires."

"But what would have become of your poor soul if you had lived in Pagan times?"

"What will become of it under present circ.u.mstances, I should be exceedingly glad to know. 'The heathen are a law unto themselves,' and I sometimes wish I had been born a Fejee belle, who lived, was tastefully tattooed, and died without having even dreamed of missionaries,--those officious martyrs who hope to wear a whole constellation on their foreheads as a reward for having been eaten by cannibals, to whom they expounded the unpalatable doctrine that, 'this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light.' Moreover, I confess--"

"That is quite sufficient. I have already heard more than I relish of such silly and sacrilegious chat. At least, you might have more prudence and discretion than to hold forth so disgracefully in the hearing of your little brother."

Miss Jane's cheek flushed, and her feeble voice faltered.

"He has fallen fast asleep over the bean-pods; and, even if he had not, how much of the conversation do you imagine he would comprehend? His sole knowledge of Grecian theogony consists of a brief acquaintance with a bottle of pseudo Greek fire which burnt the pocket out of his best pantaloons."

"Salome, you distress me; and, if Ulpian had not left us, you would have kept all such heathenish stuff shut up in your sinful and wayward heart."

"Dr. Grey is no Gorgon, having power to petrify my tongue. I am not afraid of him; and my respect for your feelings is much stronger than my dread of his."

"Hush, child! You are afraid of him, and well you may be. I fear that all your Sabbath-school advantages--all your Christian privileges--have been wofully wasted; and I shall ask Ulpian to talk to you."

"No, thank you, Miss Jane. You may save yourself the trouble, for he has given me over to hardness of heart and 'a reprobate mind,' and his patience is not only 'clean gone forever,' but he has carefully washed his hands of all future interest in my rudderless and drifting soul.

Let me speak this once, and henceforth I promise to hold my peace. I do not require to be 'talked to' by anybody,--I only need to be let alone. Sabbath-schools are indisputably excellent things,--and I can testify that they are ponderous ecclesiastical hammers, pounding creeds and catechisms into the mould of memory; but these nurseries of the church nourish and harbor some Satan's imps among their half-fledged saints; and while they certainly accomplish a vast amount of good, they are by no means infallible machines for the manufacture of Christians,--of which fact I stand in melancholy attestation. I have a vague impression that piety does not grow up in a night, like Jonah's gourd or Jack the Giant-killer's beanstalk; but is a pure, glittering, spiritual stalact.i.te, built by the slow accretion of dripping tears. Do you suppose that you can successfully train my soul as you have managed my body?--that you can hold my nose and pour a dose of faith down my throat, like ipecac or cod-liver oil? In matters of theology I am no ostrich, and, if you afflict me _ad nauseam_ with religious dogmas, you must not wonder that my moral digestion rebels outright. I shall not dispute the fact that in justice to your precepts and example I ought to be a Christian; but, since I am not, I may as well tell you at once and save future trouble, that I can neither be baited into the church like a hawk into a steel-trap, nor scared and driven into it like bees into a hive by the rattling of tin pans and the screaking of horns. Don't look at me so dolefully, dear Miss Jane, as if you had already seen my pa.s.sport to perdition signed and sealed. You, at least, have done your whole duty,--have set all the articles of orthodoxy, well-flavored and garnished, before me; and, if I am finally lost, my spiritual starvation can never be charged against you in the last balance-sheet. I am not ignorant of the Bible, nor altogether unacquainted with the divers creeds that spring from its pages as thick, as formidable, as ferocious, as the harvest from the dragon's teeth; and, thanking you for all you have taught me, I here undertake to pilot my own soul in this boiling, bellowing sea of life. I doubt whether some of the charts you value will be of any service in my voyage, or whether the beacons by which you steer will save me from the reefs; but, nevertheless, I take the wheel, and, if I wreck my soul,--why, then, I wreck it."

In the magic evening light, which touches all things with a rosy, transitory glamour, the fresh young face with its daintily sculptured lineaments seemed marvellously and surpa.s.singly fair; but, like _morbidezza_ marble, hopelessly fixed and chill, and might have served for some image of Eve, when, standing on the boundary of eternal beat.i.tude, she daringly put up her slender womanly fingers to pluck the fatal fruit. Her large, brilliant eyes followed the sinking sun as steadily--as unblinkingly--as an eagle's; but the gleam that rayed out was baleful, presaging storms, as infallibly as that sullen, lurid light, which glares defiantly over helpless earth when to-day's sun falls into the cloudy lap of to-morrow's tempest.

A heavy sigh struggled across Miss Jane's unsteady lips, as, removing her gla.s.ses, she wiped her eyes, and said, slowly,--

"Yes; I am a stupid, unsuspecting old dolt; but I see it all now."

"My ultimate and irremediable ruin?"

"G.o.d forbid!"

Salome approached the arm-chair, and, stooping, looked intently at the aged, wan face.

"What is it that you see? Miss Jane, when people stand, as you do, upon the borders of two worlds, the Bygone fades,--the Beyond grows distinct and luminous. Lend me your second sight, to decipher the characters scrawled like fiery serpents over the pall that envelops the future."

"I see nothing but the grim, unmistakeable fact that my little, clinging, dependent child, has, without my knowledge, put away childish things, and suddenly steps before me a wilful, irreverent, graceless woman, as eager to challenge the decrees of the Lord as was complaining Job before the breath of the whirlwind smote and awed him.

Some day, Salome, that same voice that startled the old man of Uz will make you bend and tremble and s.h.i.+ver like that acacia yonder, which the wind is toying with before it snaps asunder. When that time comes the clover will feed bees above my gray head, but I trust my soul will be near enough to the great white throne to pray G.o.d to have mercy on your wretched spirit, and bring you safely to that blessed haven whither you can never pilot yourself."

Nervous excitement gave unwonted strength to the feeble limbs; and, grasping her crutches, Miss Jane limped into her own room and closed the door after her.

For some moments the girl stood looking out over the lawn, where fading suns.h.i.+ne and deepening shadow made fitful _chiaroscuro_ along the primrose-paved aisles that stretched under the elm arches,--then, raising her fingers as if tracing lines on the soft, gold-dusted atmosphere that surrounded her, she muttered doggedly,--

"Yes; I am at sea! But, if G.o.d is just, Miss Jane and I will yet shake hands on that calm, surgeless, crystal sea, s.h.i.+ning before the throne.

So, now I take the helm and put the head of my precious charge before the wind, and only the Almighty can foresee the result. In His mercy I put my trust. So be it.