St. Elmo Part 56

and in the hour when I daringly grasped the prerogative of G.o.d, His curse smote me! Mr. Hammond, friend of my happy youth, guide of my innocent boyhood! if you could know all the depths of my abas.e.m.e.nt, you would pity me indeed! My miserable heart is like the crater of some extinct volcano: the flames of sin have burned out, and left it rugged, rent, blackened. I do not think that--"

"St. Elmo, do not upbraid yourself so bitterly--"

"Sir, your words are kind and n.o.ble and full of Christian charity; they are well meant, and I thank you; but they cannot comfort me. My desolation, my utter wretchedness isolate me from the sympathy of my race, whom I have despised and trampled so relentlessly. Yesterday I read a pa.s.sage which depicts so accurately my dreary isolation, that I have been unable to expel it; I find it creeping even now to my lips:

"'O misery and mourning! I have felt--Yes, I have felt like some deserted world That G.o.d hath done with, and had cast aside To rock and stagger through the gulfs of s.p.a.ce, He never looking on it any more; Unfilled, no use, no pleasure, not desired, Nor lighted on by angels in their flight From heaven to happier planets; and the race That once hath dwelt on it withdrawn or dead. Could such a world have hope that some blest day G.o.d would remember her, and fas.h.i.+on her Anew?'"

"Yes, my dear St. Elmo, so surely as G.o.d reigns above us, He will refas.h.i.+on it, and make the light of His pardoning love and the refres.h.i.+ng dew of his grace fall upon it! And the waste places shall bloom as Sharon, and the purpling vineyards shame Engedi, and the lilies of peace shall lift up their stately heads, and the 'voice of the turtle shall be heard in the land!' Have faith, grapple yourself by prayer to the feet of G.o.d, and he will gird, and lift up, and guide you."

Mr. Murray shook his head mournfully, and the moonlight s.h.i.+ning on his face showed it colorless, haggard, hopeless.

The pastor rose, put on his hat, and took St. Elmo's arm.

"Come home with me. This spot is fraught with painful a.s.sociations that open afresh all your wounds."

They walked on together until they reached the parsonage gate, and as the minister raised the latch, his companion gently disengaged the arm clasped to the old man's side.

"Not to-night. After a few days I will try to come."

"St. Elmo, to-morrow is Sunday, and--"

He paused, and did not speak the request that looked out from his eyes.

It cost Mr. Murray a severe struggle, and he did not answer immediately. When he spoke his voice was unsteady.

"Yes, I know what you wish. Once I swore I would tear the church down, scatter its dust to the winds, leave not a stone to mark the site! But I will come and hear you preach for the first time since that sunny Sabbath, twenty years dead, when your text was, 'Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days.'

Sodden, and bitter, and worthless from the long tossing in the great deep of sin, it drifts back at last to your feet; and instead of stooping tenderly to gather up the useless fragments, I wonder that you do not spurn the stranded ruin from you. Yes, I will come."

"Thank G.o.d! Oh! what a weight you have lifted from my heart! St.

Elmo, my son!"

There was a long, lingering clasp of hands, and the pastor went into his home with tears of joy on his furrowed face, while his smiling lips whispered to his grateful soul:

"In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."

Mr. Murray watched the stooping form until it disappeared, and then went slowly back to the silent burying ground, and sat down on the steps of the church.

Hour after hour pa.s.sed and still he sat there, almost as motionless as one of the monuments, while his eyes dwelt as if spellbound, on the dark, dull stain where Annie Hammond had rested, in days long, long past; and Remorse, more powerful than Erictho, evoked from the charnel house the sweet girlish features and fairy figure of the early dead.

His pale face was propped on his hand, and there in the silent watches of the moon-lighted midnight, he held communion with G.o.d and his own darkened spirit.

"What hast thou wrought for Right and Truth, For G.o.d and man, From the golden hours of bright-eyed youth, To life's mid-span?"

His almost Satanic pride was laid low as the dead in their mouldering shrouds, and all the giant strength of his perverted nature was gathered up and hurled in a new direction. The Dead Sea Past moaned and swelled, and bitter waves surged and broke over his heart, but he silently buffeted them; and the moon rode in mid- heaven when he rose, went around the church, and knelt and prayed, with his forehead pressed to the marble that covered Murray Hammond's last resting-place.

"Oh! that the mist which veileth my To Come Would so dissolve and yield unto mine eyes A worthy path! I'd count not wearisome Long toil nor enterprise, But strain to reach it; ay, with wrestlings stout Is there such a path already made to fit The measure of my foot? It shall atone For much, if I at length may light on it And know it for mine own."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"On! how grand and beautiful it is! Whenever I look at it, I feel exactly as I did on Easter-Sunday when I went to the cathedral to hear the music. It is a solemn feeling", as if I were in a holy place. Miss Earl, what makes me feel so?"

Felix stood in an art gallery, and leaning on his crutches looked up at Church's "Heart of the Andes."

"You are impressed by the solemnity and the holy repose of nature; for here you look upon a pictured cathedral, built not by mortal hands, but by the architect of the universe. Felix, does it not recall to your mind something of which we often speak?"

The boy was silent for a few seconds, and then his thin, sallow face brightened.

"Yes, indeed! You mean that splendid description which you read to me from 'Modern Painters'? How fond you are of that pa.s.sage, and how very often you think of it! Let me see whether I can remember it."

Slowly but accurately he repeated the eloquent tribute to "Mountain Glory," from the fourth volume of "Modern Painters."

"Felix, you know that a celebrated English poet, Keats, has said, 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever'; and as I can never hope to express my ideas in half such beautiful language as Mr. Ruskin uses, it is an economy of trouble to quote his words. Some of his expressions are like certain songs which, the more frequently we sing them, the more valuable and eloquent they become; and as we rarely learn a fine piece of music to be played once or twice and then thrown aside, why should we not be allowed the same privilege with verbal melodies? Last week you asked me to explain to you what is meant by 'aerial perspective,' and if you will study the atmosphere in this great picture, Mr. Church, will explain it much more clearly to you than I was able to do."

"Yes, Miss Earl, I see it now. The eye could travel up and up, and on and on, and never get out of the sky; and it seems to me those birds yonder would fly entirely away, out of sight, through that air in the picture. But, Miss Earl, do you really believe that the Chimborazo in South America is as grand as Mr. Church's? I do not, because I have noticed that pictures are much handsomer than the real things they stand for. Mamma carried me last spring to see some paintings of scenes on the Hudson River, and when we went travelling in the summer, I saw the very spot where the artist stood when he sketched the hills and the bend of the river, and it was not half so pretty as the picture. And yet I know G.o.d is the greatest painter.

Is it the far-off look that everything wears when painted.

"Yes, the 'far-off look,' as you call it, is one cause of the effect you wish to understand; and it has been rather more elegantly expressed by Campbell, in the line:

''Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.'

I have seen this fact exemplified in a very singular manner, at a house in Georgia, where I was once visiting. From the front door I had a very fine prospect or view of lofty hills, and a dense forest, and a pretty little town where the steeples of the churches glittered in the suns.h.i.+ne, and I stood for some time admiring the landscape; but presently, when I turned to speak to the lady of the house, I saw, in the gla.s.s sidelights of the door, a miniature reflection of the very same scene that was much more beautiful. I was puzzled, and could not comprehend how the mere fact of diminis.h.i.+ng the size of the various objects, by increasing the distance, could enhance their loveliness; and I asked myself whether all far-off things were handsomer than those close at hand? In my perplexity I went as usual to Mr. Ruskin, wondering whether he had ever noticed the same thing; and of course he had, and has a n.o.ble pa.s.sage about it in one of his books on architecture. I will see if my memory appreciates it as it deserves: 'Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? Nay, not so.

Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides and the rounded l.u.s.tre of their magnificent rolling.

They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for this place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapors.' (And here, Felix, your question about Chimborazo is answered.) 'Look at the crest of the Alps, from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads.

The child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the depths of heaven and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it set for holy dominion by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off sky; approach it, and the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow; the stormbrands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment!' Felix, in rambling about the fields, you will frequently be reminded of this. I have noticed that the meadow in the distance is always greener and more velvety, and seems more thickly studded with flowers, than the one I am crossing; or the hillside far away has a golden gleam on its rocky slopes, and the shadow spots are softer and cooler and more purple than those I am climbing and panting over; and I have hurried on, and after a little, turning to look back, lo! all the glory I saw beckoning me on has flown, and settled over the meadow and the hillside that I have pa.s.sed, and the halo is behind! Perfect beauty in scenery is like the mirage that you read about yesterday; it fades and flits out of your grasp, as you travel toward it. When we go home I will read you something which Emerson has said concerning this same lovely ignis fatuus; for I can remember only a few words: 'What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand, or plant his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever.' Felix, I suppose it is because we see all the imperfections and inequalities of objects close at hand, put the fairy film of air like a silvery mist hides these when it a distance; and we are charmed with the heightened beauties, which alone are visible."

Edna's eyes went back to the painting, and rested there; and little Hattie, who had been gazing up at her governess in curious perplexity, pulled her brother's sleeve and said:

"Bro' Felix, do you understand all that? I guess I don't; for I know when I am hungry (and seems to me I always am); why, when I am hungry the closer I get to my dinner the nicer it looks! And then there was that hateful, spiteful old Miss Abby Tompkins, that mamma would have to teach you! Ugh! I have watched her many a time coming up the street, (you know she never would ride in stages for fear of pickpockets,) and she always looked just as ugly as far off as I could see her as when she came close to me--"

A hearty laugh cut short Hattie's observation; and, coming forward, Sir Roger Percival put his hand on her head, saying:

"How often children tumble down 'the step from the sublime to the ridiculous,' and drag staid, dignified folks after them? Miss Earl, I have been watching your little party for some time, listening to your incipient art-lecture. You Americans are queer people; and when I go home I shall tell Mr. Ruskin that I heard a little boy criticizing 'The Heart of the Andes,' and quoting from 'Modern Painters.' Felix, as I wish to be accurate, will you tell me your age?"

The poor sensitive cripple imagined that he was being ridiculed, and he only reddened and frowned and bit his thin lips.

Edna laid her hand on his shoulder, and answered for him.

"Just thirteen years old; and though Mr. Ruskin is a distinguished exception to the rule that 'prophets are not without honor, save in their own country,' I think he has no reader who loves and admires his writings more than Felix Andrews."

Here the boy raised his eyes and asked:

"Why is it that prophets have no honor among their own people? Is it because they too have to be seen from a great distance in order to seem grand? I heard mamma say the other day that if some book written in America had only come from England everybody would be raving about it."

"Some other time, Felix, we will talk of that problem. Hattie, you look sleepy."