Mosses from an old manse
Georgiana’s look. “Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot
fail.”
“Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer,” observed his wife, “I might
wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality
itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession to
those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at
which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I
stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die.”
“You are fit for heaven without tasting death!” replied her husband
“But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its
effect upon this plant.”
On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little
time, when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the
unsightly blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
“There needed no proof,” said Georgiana, quietly. “Give me the goblet I
joyfully stake all upon your word.”
“Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid
admiration. “There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy
sensible frame, too, shall soon be all perfect.”
She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
“It is grateful,” said she with a placid smile. “Methinks it is like
water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of
unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst
that had parched me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My
earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the
heart of a rose at sunset.”
She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required
almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere
she was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect
with the emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence
was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of
the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a
hardly perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the details
which, as the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume.
Intense thought had set its stamp upon every previous page of that
volume, but the thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and
not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse
he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very
act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily
and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch. Nor
was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been
strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana’s cheek, now
grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but
the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of
its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was
more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky,
and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.
“By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!” said Aylmer to himself, in almost
irrepressible ecstasy. “I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success!
And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood
across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!”
He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural day
to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
Aminadab’s expression of delight.
“Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!” cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of
frenzy, “you have served me well! Matter and spirit—earth and
heaven—have both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses!
You have earned the right to laugh.”
These exclamations broke Georgiana’s sleep. She slowly unclosed her
eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their
happiness. But then her eyes sought Aylmer’s face with a trouble and
anxiety that he could by no means account for.
“My poor Aylmer!” murmured she.
“Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!” exclaimed he. “My
peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!”
“My poor Aylmer,” she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, “you
have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so
high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could
offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!”
Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union
with a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark—that
sole token of human imperfection—faded from her cheek, the parting
breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her
soul, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight.
Then a hoarse, chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the
gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the
immortal essence which, in this dim sphere of half development, demands
the completeness of a higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a
profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness which
would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the
celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed
to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in
eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
A SELECT PARTY
The man of fancy made an entertainment at one of his castles in the
air, and invited a select number of distinguished personages to favor
him with their presence. The mansion, though less splendid than many
that have been situated in the same region, was nevertheless of a
magnificence such as is seldom witnessed by those acquainted only with
terrestrial architecture. Its strong foundations and massive walls were
quarried out of a ledge of heavy and sombre clouds which had hung
brooding over the earth, apparently as dense and ponderous as its own
granite, throughout a whole autumnal day. Perceiving that the general
effect was gloomy,—so that the airy castle looked like a feudal
fortress, or a monastery of the Middle Ages, or a state prison of our
own times, rather than the home of pleasure and repose which he
intended it to be,—the owner, regardless of expense, resolved to gild
the exterior from top to bottom. Fortunately, there was just then a
flood of evening sunshine in the air. This being gathered up and poured
abundantly upon the roof and walls, imbued them with a kind of solemn
cheerfulness; while the cupolas and pinnacles were made to glitter with
the purest gold, and all the hundred windows gleamed with a glad light,
as if the edifice itself were rejoicing in its heart.
And now, if the people of the lower world chanced to be looking upward
out of the turmoil of their petty perplexities, they probably mistook
the castle in the air for a heap of sunset clouds, to which the magic
of light and shade had imparted the aspect of a fantastically
constructed mansion. To such beholders it was unreal, because they
lacked the imaginative faith. Had they been worthy to pass within its
portal, they would have recognized the truth, that the dominions which
the spirit conquers for itself among unrealities become a thousand
times more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet, saying,
“This is solid and substantial; this may be called a fact.”
At the appointed hour, the host stood in his great saloon to receive
the company. It was a vast and noble room, the vaulted ceiling of which
was supported by double rows of gigantic pillars that had been hewn
entire out of masses of variegated clouds. So brilliantly were they
polished, and so exquisitely wrought by the sculptor’s skill, as to
resemble the finest specimens of emerald, porphyry, opal, and
chrysolite, thus producing a delicate richness of effect which their
immense size rendered not incompatible with grandeur. To each of these
pillars a meteor was suspended. Thousands of these ethereal lustres are
continually wandering about the firmament, burning out to waste, yet
capable of imparting a useful radiance to any person who has the art of
converting them to domestic purposes. As managed in the saloon, they
are far more economical than ordinary lamplight. Such, however, was the
intensity of their blaze that it had been found expedient to cover each
meteor with a globe of evening mist, thereby muffling the too potent
glow and soothing it into a mild and comfortable splendor. It was like
the brilliancy of a powerful yet chastened imagination,—a light which
seemed to hide whatever was unworthy to be noticed and give effect to
every beautiful and noble attribute. The guests, therefore, as they
advanced up the centre of the saloon, appeared to better advantage than
ever before in their lives.
The first that entered, with old-fashioned punctuality, was a venerable
figure in the costume of bygone days, with his white hair flowing down
over his shoulders and a reverend beard upon his breast. He leaned upon
a staff, the tremulous stroke of which, as he set it carefully upon the
floor, re-echoed through the saloon at every footstep. Recognizing at
once this celebrated personage, whom it had cost him a vast deal of
trouble and research to discover, the host advanced nearly three
fourths of the distance down between the pillars to meet and welcome
him.
“Venerable sir,” said the Man of Fancy, bending to the floor, “the
honor of this visit would never be forgotten were my term of existence
to be as happily prolonged as your own.”
The old gentleman received the compliment with gracious condescension.
He then thrust up his spectacles over his forehead and appeared to take
a critical survey of the saloon.
“Never within my recollection,” observed he, “have I entered a more
spacious and noble hall. But are you sure that it is built of solid
materials and that the structure will be permanent?”
“O, never fear, my venerable friend,” replied the host. “In reference
to a lifetime like your own, it is true my castle may well be called a
temporary edifice. But it will endure long enough to answer all the
purposes for which it was erected.”
But we forget that the reader has not yet been made acquainted with the
guest. It was no other than that universally accredited character so
constantly referred to in all seasons of intense cold or heat; he that,
remembers the hot Sunday and the cold Friday; the witness of a past age
whose negative reminiscences find their way into every newspaper, yet
whose antiquated and dusky abode is so overshadowed by accumulated
years and crowded back by modern edifices that none but the Man of
Fancy could have discovered it; it was, in short, that twin brother of
Time, and great-grandsire of mankind, and hand-and-glove associate of
all forgotten men and things,—the Oldest Inhabitant. The host would
willingly have drawn him into conversation, but succeeded only in
eliciting a few remarks as to the oppressive atmosphere of this present