Twice-told tales
“Where in this world,” exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, “shall
we build our temple of happiness?”
“Where in this world, indeed?” repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint
and weary—the more so by the heaviness of her heart—the Lily drooped
her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, “Where in
this world shall we build our temple?”
“Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?” said their
companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile
that dwelt on them. “Yet there is a place even in this world where ye
may build it.”
While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly thrown
their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had chanced
to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted to their
present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a certain
regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and a group
of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive shadows across
and far beyond, although some softened glory of the sunshine found its
way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers would dwell
together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where they were to
worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the ground, they
smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale lily was growing
at their feet.
“We will build our temple here,” said they, simultaneously, and with an
indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily
turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it
hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make
those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with his
sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre hat
overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their
purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a token
that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate the
site of their temple of happiness.
In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the
fairy-structure of the temple arose on the summit of the knoll amid the
solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright sunshine.
It was built of white marble, with slender and graceful pillars
supporting a vaulted dome, and beneath the centre of this dome, upon a
pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble on which books and music
might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of the
neighborhood that the edifice was planned after an ancient mausoleum
and was intended for a tomb, and that the central slab of dark-veined
marble was to be inscribed with the names of buried ones. They doubted,
too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a creature of
this earth, being so very delicate and growing every day more fragile,
so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch her up and
waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth of the
temple, and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now made that spot his
continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff and giving
as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a tomb. In
due time it was finished and a day appointed for a simple rite of
dedication.
On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his
mistress, he looked back toward the portal of her dwelling and felt a
strange thrill of fear, for he imagined that as the setting sunbeams
faded from her figure she was exhaling away, and that something of her
ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of light.
With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal, and
Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the
time, and so it proved; for the sweet earthly form by which the Lily
had been manifested to the world was found lifeless the next morning in
the temple with her head resting on her arms, which were folded upon
the slab of dark-veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had long
since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower; so that a loving
hand had now transplanted it to blossom brightly in the garden of
Paradise.
But alas for the temple of happiness! In his unutterable grief Adam
Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this temple of
many delightful hopes into a tomb and bury his dead mistress there.
And, lo! a wonder! Digging a grave beneath the temple’s marble floor,
the sexton found no virgin earth such as was meet to receive the
maiden’s dust, but an ancient sepulchre in which were treasured up the
bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
ancestors was the Lily to be laid; and when the funeral procession
brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne
standing beneath the dome of the temple with his cloak of pall and face
of darkest gloom, and wherever that figure might take its stand the
spot would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they lowered
the coffin down.
“And so,” said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which
his insanity was wont to gleam forth, “you have found no better
foundation for your happiness than on a grave?”
But as the shadow of Affliction spoke a vision of hope and joy had its
birth in Adam’s mind even from the old man’s taunting words, for then
he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself
had acted, and the mystery of life and death was opened to him.
“Joy! joy!” he cried, throwing his arms toward heaven. “On a grave be
the site of our temple, and now our happiness is for eternity.”
With those words a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky and
glimmered down into the sepulchre, while at the same moment the shape
of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom,
symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there now that
the darkest riddle of humanity was read.
FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE
It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health
and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the
world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not
infrequent ones, the forest and the ocean summon me—one with the roar
of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs—forth from the
haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath
the shadow of even one primeval tree, much less be lost among the
multitude of hoary trunks and hidden from the earth and sky by the
mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach more like
a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban farmhouse.
When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a necessity within
me, I am drawn to the seashore which extends its line of rude rocks and
seldom-trodden sands for leagues around our bay. Setting forth at my
last ramble on a September morning, I bound myself with a hermit’s vow
to interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to share no social
pleasure, but to derive all that day’s enjoyment from shore and sea and
sky, from my soul’s communion with these, and from fantasies and
recollections or anticipated realities. Surely here is enough to feed a
human spirit for a single day.—Farewell, then, busy world! Till your
evening lights shall shine along the street—till they gleam upon my
sea-flushed face as I tread homeward—free me from your ties and let me
be a peaceful outlaw.
Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and, clambering down a
crag, I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does
the spirit leap forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the
full extent of the broad blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to
the sea! I descend over its margin and dip my hand into the wave that
meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is Ocean’s voice
of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let us
pace together—the reader’s fancy arm in arm with mine—this noble beach,
which extends a mile or more from that craggy promontory to yonder
rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea; in the rear, a precipitous
bank the grassy verge of which is breaking away year after year, and
flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below. The beach
itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with hardly any
pebbles intermixed. Near the water’s edge there is a wet margin which
glistens brightly in the sunshine and reflects objects like a mirror,
and as we tread along the glistening border a dry spot flashes around
each footstep, but grows moist again as we lift our feet. In some spots
the sand receives a complete impression of the sole, square toe and
all; elsewhere it is of such marble firmness that we must stamp heavily
to leave a print even of the iron-shod heel. Along the whole of this
extensive beach gambols the surf-wave. Now it makes a feint of dashing
onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek murmur and does but kiss
the strand; now, after many such abortive efforts, it rears itself up
in an unbroken line, heightening as it advances, without a speck of
foam on its green crest. With how fierce a roar it flings itself
forward and rushes far up the beach!
As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was
startled, as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human
life was within the magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the remote
distance of the beach, appearing like sea-nymphs, or some airier things
such as might tread upon the feathery spray, was a group of girls.
Hardly had I beheld them, when they passed into the shadow of the rocks
and vanished. To comfort myself—for truly I would fain have gazed a
while longer—I made acquaintance with a flock of beach-birds. These
little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by about a stone’s-throw
along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food upon its margin. Yet,
with a philosophy which mankind would do well to imitate, they drew a
continual pleasure from their toil for a subsistence. The sea was each
little bird’s great playmate. They chased it downward as it swept back,
and again ran up swiftly before the impending wave, which sometimes
overtook them and bore them off their feet. But they floated as lightly
as one of their own feathers on the breaking crest. In their airy
flutterings they seemed to rest on the evanescent spray. Their
images—long-legged little figures with gray backs and snowy bosoms—were
seen as distinctly as the realities in the mirror of the glistening
strand. As I advanced they flew a score or two of yards, and, again
alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf-wave; and thus
they bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant fantasies,
till at its extremity they took wing over the ocean and were gone.
After forming a friendship with these small surf-spirits, it is really
worth a sigh to find no memorial of them save their multitudinous
little tracks in the sand.
When we have paced the length of the beach, it is pleasant and not
unprofitable to retrace our steps and recall the whole mood and
occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks, being all
discernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness through
every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the
surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loth to
relinquish. Here we found a seaweed with an immense brown leaf, and
trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk. Here we seized a
live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of that queer