The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

"Come o'er the stream, Charlie, dear Charlie,brave Charlie!"Come o'er the stream, Charlie, and dinewi' McLean!"

Mr. Raleigh looked at the matter a few moments; he did not think it best to remain long in the city; he would be glad to know if sight of the old scenes could renew a throb. He answered his letters, replenished his wardrobe, and took, that same day, the last train for the North. At noon of the second day thereafter he found Mr. McLean's coach, with that worthy gentleman in person, awaiting him, and he stepped out, when it paused at the foot of his former garden, with a strange sense of the world as an old story, a twice-told tale, a maze of error.

Mrs. McLean came running down to meet him,–a face less round and rosy than once, as the need of pink cap-ribbons testified, but smiling and bright as youth.

"The same little Kate," said Mr. Raleigh, after the first greeting, putting his hands on her shoulders and smiling down at her benevolently.

"Not quite the same Roger, though," said she, shaking her head. "I expected this stain on your skin; but, dear me! your eyes look as if you had not a friend in the world."

"How can they look so, when you give me such a welcome?"

"Dear old Roger, you are just the same," said she, bestowing a little caress upon his sleeve. "And if you remember the summer before you went away, you will not find that pleasant company so very much changed either."

"I do not expect to find them at all."

"Oh, then they will find you; because they are all here,–at least the principals; some with different names, and some, like myself, with duplicates,"–as a shier Kate came down toward them, dragging a brother and sister by the hand, and shaking chestnut curls over rosy blushes.

After making acquaintance with the new cousins, Mr. Raleigh turned again to Mrs. McLean.

"And who are there here?" he asked.

"There is Mrs. Purcell,–you remember Helen Heath? Poor Mrs. Purcell, whom you knew, died, and her slippers fitted Helen. She chaperons Mary, who is single and speechless yet; and Captain, now Colonel, Purcell makes a very good silent partner. He is hunting in the West, on furlough; she is here alone. There is Mrs. Heath,–you never have forgotten her?"

"Not I."

"There is"–

"And how came you all in the country so early in the season,–anybody with your devotion to company?"

"To be made April fools, John says."

"Why, the willows are not yet so yellow as they will be."

"I know it. But we had the most fatiguing winter; and Mrs. Laudersdale and I agreed, that, the moment the snow was off the ground up here, we would fly away and be at rest."

"Mrs. Laudersdale? Can she come here?"

"Goodness! Why not? The last few summers we have always spent together."

"She is with you now, then?"

"Oh, yes. She is the least changed of all. I didn't mean to tell, but keep her as a surprise. Of course, you will be a surprise to everybody.–There, run along, children; we'll follow.–Yes, won't it be delightful, Roger? We can all play at youth again."

"Like skeletons in some Dance of Death!" he exclaimed. "We shall be hideous in each other's sight."

"McLean, I am a bride," said his wife, not heeding the late misanthropy; "Helen is a girl; the ghost of the prior Mrs. Purcell shall be rediviva; and Katy there"–

"Wait a bit, Kate," said her cousin.

"Before you have shuffled off mortality for the whole party, sit down under this hedge,–here is an opportune bench,–and give me accounts from the day of my departure."

"Dear me, Roger, as if that were possible! The ocean in a tea-cup? Let me see,–you had a flirtation with Helen that summer, didn't you? Well, she spent the next winter at the Fort with the Purcells. It was odd to miss both her and Mrs. Laudersdale from society at once. Mrs. Laudersdale was ill; I don't know exactly what the trouble was. You know she had been in such an unusual state of exhilaration all that summer; and as soon as she left New Hampshire and began the old city-life, she became oppressed with a speechless melancholy, I believe, so that the doctors foreboded insanity. She expressed great disinclination to follow their advice, and her husband finally banished them all. It was a great care to him; he altered much. McLean surmised that she didn't like to see him, while she was in this state; for, though he used to surround her with every luxury, and was always hunting out new appliances, and raising the heavens for a trifle, he kept himself carefully out of her sight during the greater part of the winter. I don't know whether she became insufferably lonely, or whether the melancholy wore off, or she conquered it, and decided that it was not right to go crazy for nothing, or what happened. But one cold March evening he set out for his home, dreary, as usual, he thought; and he found the fire blazing and reddening the ceiling and curtains, the room all aglow with rich shadows, and his wife awaiting him, in full toilet, just as superb as you will see her tonight, just as sweet and cold and impassible and impenetrable. At least," continued Mrs. McLean, taking breath, "I have manufactured this little romance out of odds and ends that McLean has now and then reported from his conversation. I dare say there isn't a bit of it true, for Mr. Laudersdale isn't a man to publish his affairs; but I believe it. One thing is certain: Mrs. Laudersdale withdrew from society one autumn and returned one spring, and has queened it ever since."

"Is Mr. Laudersdale with you?"

"No. But he will come with their daughter shortly."

"And with what do you all occupy yourselves, pray?"

"Oh, with trifles and tea, as you would suppose us to do. Mrs. Purcell gossips and lounges, as if she were playing with the world for spectator. Mrs. Laudersdale lounges, and attacks things with her finger-ends, as if she were longing to remould them. Mrs. McLean gossips and scolds, as if it depended on her to keep the world in order."

"Are you going to keep me under the hedge all night?"

"This is pretty well! Hush! Who is that?"

As Mrs. McLean spoke, a figure issued from the tall larches on the left, and crossed the grass in front of them,–a woman, something less tall than a gypsy queen might be, the round outlines of her form rich and regular, with a certain firm luxuriance, still wrapped in a morning-robe of palm-spread cashmere. In her hand she carried various vines and lichens that had maintained their orange-tawny stains under the winter's snow, and the black hair that was folded closely over forehead and temple was crowned with bent sprays of the scarlet maple-blossom. As vivid a hue dyed her cheek through warm walking, and with a smile of unconscious content she passed quickly up the slope and disappeared within the doorway. She impressed the senses of the beholder like some ripe and luscious fruit, a growth of sunshine and summer.

"Well," said Mrs. McLean, drawing breath again, "who is it?"

"Really, I cannot tell," replied Mr. Raleigh.

"Nor guess?"

"And that I dare not."

"Must I tell you?"

"Was it Mrs. Laudersdale?"

"And shouldn't you have known her?"

"Scarcely."

"Mercy! Then how did you know me? She is unaltered."

"If that is Mrs. Purcell, at the window, she does not recognize me, you see; neither did –. Both she and yourself are nearly the same; one could not fail to know either of you; but of the Mrs. Laudersdale of thirteen years ago there remains hardly a vestige."

If Mrs. McLean, at this testimony, indulged in that little inward satisfaction which the most generous woman may feel, when told that her color wears better than the color of her dearest friend, it must have been quickly quenched by the succeeding sentence.

"Yes, she is certainly more beautiful than I ever dreamed of a woman's being. If she continues, I do not know what perfect thing she will become. She is too exquisite for common use. I wonder her husband is not jealous of every mote in the air, of rain and wind, of every day that passes over her head,–since each must now bear some charm from her in its flight."

Mr. Raleigh was talking to Mrs. McLean as one frequently reposes confidence in a person when quite sure that he will not understand a word you say.

An hour afterward, Mrs. Purcell joined Mrs. McLean.

"So that is Mr. Raleigh, is it?" she said. "He looks as if he had made the acquaintance of Siva the Destroyer. There's nothing left of him. Is he taller, or thinner, or graver, or darker, or what? My dear Kate, your cousin, that promised to be such a hero, has become a mere man-of-business. Did you ever burn firecrackers? You have probably found some that just fizzed out, then." And Mrs. Purcell took an attitude.

"Roger is a much finer man than he was, I think,–so far as I could judge in the short time we have seen each other," replied Mrs. McLean, with spirit.

"Do you know," continued Mrs. Purcell, "what makes the Laudersdale so gay? No? She has a letter from her lord, and he brings you that little Rite next week. I must send for the Colonel to see such patterns of conjugal felicity as you and she. Ah, there is the tea-bell!"

Mr. Raleigh was standing with one hand on the back of his chair, when Mrs. Laudersdale entered. The cheek had resumed its usual pallor, and she was in her customary colors of black and gold. She carried a curiously cut crystal glass, which she placed on the sideboard, and then moved toward her chair. Her eye rested casually for a moment on Mr. Raleigh, as she crossed the threshold, and then returned with a species of calm curiosity.

"Mrs. Laudersdale has forgotten me?" he asked, with a bow. His voice, not susceptible of change in its tone of Southern sweetness, identified him.

"Not at all," she replied, moving toward him, and offering him her hand quietly. "I am happy at meeting Mr. Raleigh again." And she took her seat.

There was something in her grasp that relieved him. It was neither studiedly cold, nor absurdly brief, nor traitorously tremulous. It was simply and forgetfully indifferent. Mr. Raleigh surveyed her with interest during the light table-talk. He had been possessed with a restless wish to see her once more, to ascertain if she had yet any fraction of her old power over him; he had all the more determinedly banished himself from the city,–to find her in the country. Now he sought for some trace of what had formerly aroused his heart. He rose from table convinced that the woman whom he once loved with the whole fervor of youth and strength and buoyant life was no more, that she did not exist, and that Mr. Raleigh might experience a new passion, but his old one was as dead as the ashes that cover the Five Cities of the Plain. He wondered how it might be with her. For a moment he cursed his inconstancy; then he feared lest she were of larger heart and firmer resolve than he,–lest her love had been less light than his; he could scarcely feel himself secure of freedom,–he must watch. And then stole in a deeper sense of loneliness than exile and foreign tongues had taught him,–the knowledge of being single and solitary in the world, not only for life, but for eternity.

The evening was passed in the recitation of affairs by himself and his cousins alone together, and until a week completed its tale of dawns and sunsets there was the same diurnal recurrence of question and answer. One day, as the afternoon was paling, Rite came.

Mr. Raleigh had fallen asleep on the vine-hidden seat outside the bay-window, and was awakened, certainly not by Mrs. Laudersdale's velvets trailing over the drawing-room carpet. She was just entering, slow-paced, though in haste. She held out both of her beautiful arms. A little form of airy lightness, a very snow-wreath, blew into them.

"O ma maman! Est ce que c'est toi," it cried. "O comme tu es douce! Si belle, si molle, si chère!" And the fair head was lying beneath the dark one, the face hidden in the bent and stately neck.

Mr. Raleigh left his seat, unseen, and betook himself to another abode. As he passed the drawing-room door, on his return, he saw the mother lying on a lounge, with the slight form nestled beside her, playing with it as some tame leopardess might play with her silky whelp. It was almost the only portion of the maternal nature developed within her.

It seemed as if the tea-hour were a fated one. Mr. Raleigh had been out on the water and was late. As he entered, Rite sprang up, half-overturning her chair, and ran to clasp his hand.

"I did not know that you and Mr. Raleigh were acquainted," said Mrs. McLean.

"Oh, Madam, Mr. Raleigh and I had the pleasure of being shipwrecked together," was the reply; and except that Mrs. Laudersdale required another napkin where her cup had spilled, all went on smoothly.

Mrs. Laudersdale took Marguerite entirely to herself for a while. She seemed, at first, to be like some one suddenly possessed of a new sense, and who did not know in the least what to do with it; but custom and familiarity destroyed this sentiment. She did not appear to entertain a doubt of her child's natural affection, but she had care to fortify it by the exertion of every charm she possessed. From the presence of dangerous rivals in the house, an element of determination blended with her manner, and she moved with a certain conscious power, as if wonderful energies were but half-latent with her, as if there were kingdoms to conquer and crowns to win, and she the destined instrument You would have selected her, at this time of her lavish devotion to Marguerite, as the one woman of complete capability, of practical effective force, and have declared that there was nothing beyond her strength. The relation between herself and her child was certainly as peculiar as anything else about them; the disparity of age seemed so slight that they appeared like sisters, full of mutual trust, the younger leaning on the elder for support in the most trivial affairs. They walked through the woods together, learned again its glades and coverts, searched its early treasure of blossoms; they went out on the lake and spent long April afternoons together, floating about cove and inlet of island-shores; they returned with innocent gayety to that house which once the mother, in her moment of passion, had fancied to be a possible heaven of delight, and which, since, she had found to be a very indifferent limbo. For, after all, we derive as much happiness from human beings as from Nature, and it was a tie of placid affection that bound her to the McLeans, not of sympathetic union, and her husband was careful never to oppress her with too much of his society. Whether this woman, who had lived a life of such wordless emotion, who had never bestowed a confidence, suddenly blossomed like a rose and took the little new-comer into the gold-dust and fragrance of her heart, or whether there was always between them the thin impalpable division that estranged the past from the present, there was nothing to tell; it seemed, nevertheless, as if they could have no closer bond, had they read each other's thoughts from birth.

That this assumption of Marguerite could not continue exclusive Mr. Raleigh found, when now and then joined in his walks by an airy figure flitting forward at his side: now and then; since Mrs. Laudersdale, without knowing how to prevent, had manifested an uneasiness at every such rencontre;–and that it could not endure forever, another gentleman, without so much reason, congratulated himself,–Mr. Frederic Heath, the confidential clerk of Day, Knight, and Company,–a rather supercilious specimen, quite faultlessly got up, who had accompanied her from New York at her father's request, and who already betrayed every symptom of the suitor. Meanwhile, Mrs. McLean's little women clamorously demanded and obtained a share of her attention,–although Capua and Ursule, with their dark skins, brilliant dyes, and equivocal dialects, were creatures of a more absorbing interest.

One afternoon, Marguerite came into the drawing-room by one door, as Mr. Raleigh entered by another; her mother was sitting near the window, and other members of the family were in the vicinity, having clustered preparatory to the tea-bell.

Marguerite had twisted tassels of the willow-catkins in her hair, drooping things, in character with her wavy grace, and that sprinkled her with their fragrant yellow powder, the very breath of spring; and in one hand she had imprisoned a premature lace-winged fly, a fairy little savage, in its sheaths of cobweb and emerald, and with its jewel eyes.

"Dear!" said Mrs. Purcell, gathering her array more closely about her. "How do you dare touch such a venomous sprite?"

"As if you had an insect at the North with a sting!" replied Marguerite, suffering it, a little maliciously, to escape in the lady's face, and following the flight with a laugh of childlike glee.

"Here are your snowflakes on stems, mamma," she continued, dropping anemones over her mother's hands, one by one;–"that is what Mr. Raleigh calls them. When may I see the snow? You shall wrap me in eider, that I may be like all the boughs and branches. How buoyant the earth must be, when every twig becomes a feather!" And she moved toward Mr. Raleigh, singing, "Oh, would I had wings like a dove!"

"And here are those which, if not daffodils, yet

"'Come before the swallow dares, and takeThe winds of March with beauty,'"

he said, giving her a basket of hepaticas and winter-green.

Marguerite danced away with the purple trophy, and, emptying a carafe into a dish of moss that stood near, took them to Mrs. Laudersdale, and, sitting on the footstool, began to rearrange them. It was curious to see, that, while Mrs. Laudersdale lifted each blossom and let the stem lie across her hand, she suffered it to fall into the place designated for it by Marguerite's fingers, that sparkled in the mosaic till double wreaths of gold-threaded purple rose from the bed of vivid moss and melted into a fringe of the starry spires of winter-green.

"Is it not sweet?" said she then, bending over it.

"They have no scent," said her mother.

"Oh, yes, indeed! the very finest, the most delicate, a kind of aërial perfume; they must of course alchemize the air into which they waste their fibres with some sweetness."

"A smell of earth fresh from 'wholesome drench of April rains,'" said Mr. Raleigh, taking the dish of white porcelain between his brown, slender hands. "An immature scent, just such an innocent breath as should precede the epigea, that spicy, exhaustive wealth of savor, that complete maturity of odor, marriage of daphne and linnaea. The charm of these first bidders for the year's favor is neither in the ethereal texture, the depth or delicacy of tint, nor the large-lobed, blood-stained, ancient leaves. This imponderable soul gives them such a helpless air of babyhood."

"Is fragrance the flower's soul?" asked Marguerite. "Then anemones are not divinely gifted. And yet you said, the other day, that to paint my portrait would be to paint an anemone."

"A satisfactory specimen in the family-gallery," said Mrs. Purcell.

"A flaw in the indictment!" replied Mr. Raleigh. "I am not one of those who paint the lily."

"Though you've certainly added a perfume to the violet," remarked Mr. Frederic Heath, with that sweetly lingering accent familiarly called the drawl, as he looked at the hepaticas.

"I don't think it very complimentary, at any rate," continued Marguerite. "They are not lovely after bloom,–only the little pink-streaked, budded bells, that hang so demurely. Oui, dà! I have exchanged great queen magnolias for rues; what will you give me for pomegranates and oleanders?"

"Are the old oleanders in the garden yet?" asked Mrs. Laudersdale.

"Not the very same. The hurricane destroyed those, years ago; these are others, grand and rosy as sunrise sometimes."

"It was my Aunt Susanne who planted those, I have heard."

"And it was your daughter Rite who planted these."

"She buried a little box of old keepsakes at its foot, after her brother had examined them,–a ring or two, a coin from which she broke and kept one half"–

"Oh, yes! we found the little box, found it when Mr. Heath was in Martinique, all rusted and moulded and falling apart, and he wears that half of the coin on his watch-chain. See!"

Mrs. Laudersdale glanced up indifferently, but Mrs. Purcell sprang from her elegant lounging and bent to look at her brother's chain.

"How odd that I never noticed it, Fred!" she exclaimed. "And how odd that I should wear the same!" And, shaking her châtelaine, she detached a similar affair.

They were placed side by side in Mr. Raleigh's hand; they matched entirely, and, so united, they formed a singular French coin of value and antiquity, the missing figures on one segment supplied by the other, the embossed profile continued and lost on each, the scroll begun by this and ended by that; they were plainly severed portions of the same piece.

"And this was buried by your Aunt Susanne Le Blanc?" asked Mrs. Purcell, turning to Mrs. Laudersdale again, with a flush on her cheek.

"So I presume."

"Strange! And this was given to mamma by her mother, whose maiden name was Susan White. There's some diablerie about it."

"Oh, that is a part of the ceremony of money-hiding," said Mr. Raleigh. "Kidd always buried a little imp with his pots of gold, you know, to work deceitful charms on the finder."

"Did he?" said Marguerite, earnestly.

They all laughed thereat, and went in to tea.

[To be continued.]

EPITHALAMIA

ITHE WEDDINGO Love! the flowers are blowing in park and field,With love their bursting hearts are all revealed.So come to me, and all thy fragrance yield!O Love! the sun is sinking in the west,And sequent stars all sentinel his rest.So sleep, while angels watch, upon my breast!O Love! the flooded moon is at its height,And trances sea and land with tranquil light.So shine, and gild with beauty all my night!O Love! the ocean floods the crooked shore,Till sighing beaches give their moaning o'er.So, Love, o'erflow me, till I sigh no more!IITHE GOLDEN WEDDINGO wife! the fragrant Mayflower now appears,Fresh as the Pilgrims saw it through their tears.So blows our love through all these changing years.O wife! the sun is rising in the east,Nor tires to shine, while ages have increased.So shines our love, and fills my happy breastO wife! on yonder beach the ocean sings,As when it bore the Mayflower's drooping wings.So in my heart our early love-song rings.O wife! the moon and stars slide down the westTo make in fresher skies their happy quest.So, Love, once more we'll wed among the blest!

ARTHUR HALLAM

We were standing in the old English church at Clevedon on a summer afternoon. And here, said my companion, pausing in the chancel, sleeps Arthur Hallam, the friend of Alfred Tennyson, and the subject of "In Memoriam."

"'Tis well, 'tis something, we may standWhere he in English earth is laid."

His burial-place is on a hill overhanging the Bristol Channel, a spot selected by his father as a fit resting-place for his beloved boy. And so

"They laid him by the pleasant shore,And in the hearing of the wave."

Dying at twenty-two, the hope and pride of all who knew him, "remarkable for the early splendor of his genius," the career of this young man concentres the interest of more than his native country. Tennyson has laid upon his early grave a poem which will never let his ashes be forgotten, or his memory fade like that of common clay. What Southey so felicitously says of Kirke White applies most eloquently to young Hallam:–"Just at that age when the painter would have wished to fix his likeness and the lover of poetry would delight to contemplate him, in the fair morning of his virtues, the full spring-blossom of his hopes,– just at that age hath death set the seal of eternity upon him, and the beautiful hath been made permanent."

Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place, London, on the 1st of February, 1811. The eldest son of Henry Hallam, the eminent historian and critic, his earliest years had every advantage which culture and moral excellence could bring to his education. His father has feelingly commemorated his boyish virtues and talents by recording his "peculiar clearness of perception, his facility of acquiring knowledge, and, above all, an undeviating sweetness of disposition, and adherence to his sense of what was right and becoming." From that tearful record, not publicly circulated, our recital is partly gathered. Companions of his childhood have often told us well-remembered incidents of his life, and this is the too brief story of his earthly career.