by Edward Kenealy, LL.B.
Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.10 #4 (1846).
Chapter I.
Once more I take up my pen, alas! how often have I attempted in melancholy mood to commit to paper the sad story. My blood runs cold with grief, and the tears rush into mine eyes. Sweet Edith!
I tremble all over. Methinks thy spirit hovers near me. A circlet of stars crowns thy beloved forehead, but oh! how far less bright they are than thou. Thy cheek is pale and pensive—thy flowing ringlets fall in raven masses down on thy marble shoulders. And oh! the sad and melancholy sweetness of thine eyes! They are the eyes of an angel, dear Edith, they are thine. I gaze upon them, and methinks it is on heaven that I gaze.
I have seen those fair eyes beam with pleasure, and kindle with hope, and sparkle with love; I have seen them, too, grow softly, sweetly, beautifully sad. And now their light is quenched for ever, or lives only in my heart. And thou—
She was sitting among the roses when first I saw her. It was in the summer-time of flowers, and sunshine, and serene thoughts. She was but a mere child; I do not suppose she was more than thirteen or fourteen. How full of life and loveliness she seemed. She wore a simple white robe—a single rose was in her hair. And so she sat and whiled away the time, now with her books, and now with a garland of new and fragrant flowers, looking like the morning star.
Her soul (if souls we have, poor mortals! ugh!) shone out as clearly through her soft features as the light through a crystal lamp. And what a creation of gentleness, and beauty, and truth, and innocence, and virtue, must that soul have been, for her life was an enchanting picture of each and all of these. I can imagine Heaven contemplating with pride so fair a creation from its hands. Yet, why should it destroy the beauty that it moulds?
Some years ago I went to an exhibition of the Royal Academy in London; around me were the master-pieces of English art and genius, but only one picture riveted my attention. Never before had I seen any thing that moved me so; my heart trembled within me; I felt as if my soul were flying out through my breast to fix itself upon that sad portrait. The resemblance which it bore to thee was singular, the full and snowy breast; the exquisite beauty of the eyes; the mournful expression, which lent to the lovely features a charm most strange and wondrous; the hands so small and perfectly moulded, clasped over the breast with a mute expression of resignation; the tear just trickling down the cheeks; the hair wildly, elegantly negligent; the same modest robe of white in which thou wert of yore wont to array thy gentle limbs. But the sweet voice only was wanting to make the vision complete. Yet the portrait was not thine—the artist had never seen thee—he must have drawn thee from some vision of the angels idealised in his own heart and soul. Every day found me still fixed before this mute picture. The glories around me--I saw them, or heeded them not. One canvas only was to me my world of thought, fancy, and recollection; I dreamed of it by night, I feasted my eyes on it ever and ever the live-long day. To linger before it, buried in deep reflection, heedless of the crowd or the rude, inquisitive stare, or the suppressed laugh or sneer—this was all I did; I sought no other occupation or pleasure during the summer months. Memories of the old time, and of the old story never to be erased from my mind, and of thy most melancholy destiny, and of him who was thy adoring lover. All these came back to me and made me wretched once again. Yet it was a wretchedness which I would not have changed for apathy or indifference. For thou wert in my thoughts, and didst lend a ray of joy to my sorrows.
Edith was an only daughter. Her father had been an officer in the army; he was a wild and dissipated character. He lived altogether away from his wife and child; he resided in Carlisle under a feigned name, and did not trouble himself about his family. They never heard tidings of him, or if they did the tidings were such as had better have been unheard, for they were little to his credit; he had fought bravely on the continent; had distinguished himself at Waterloo, where his gallantry was the subject of the most flattering notice. He had battled also in some of the British colonies, and returned home only to sell his commission and do a hundred wild things. How he lived no one could tell, and nobody cared to inquire.
Edith lived with her mother.
Mrs. Carleton was a perfectly innocent creature. She was quite simple and good-natured. She had not an atom of guile or knowledge of the world, but lived from day to day in a little world made up of happiness, for it was born in her own imaginations, and could not therefore be otherwise than good, and pure, and bright. She was quite a gentle creature, as I have said. If she knew that vice and wickedness were in the world, she never suspected their approach to her own presence. She loved to spend her hours reading some of the old poets, or telling to sweet Edith some quaint old fairy tale of enchantment, Edith sat at her knees and listened.
Little Edith in her early years was a sad truant from her books. She loved to bask in the sunshine like a little fawn ; she delighted to gather flowers and hang them round her neck, or entwine them in her hair, or wreathe them into a garland for mamma. And, oh what joy glittered in the mother's eyes as she saw little Edith running towards her from the flower-garden with a newly-culled peony of lilies, or violets, or white-roses, which she Hung into her lap and then hid her blushing face in her bosom or sought a kiss. But gathering flowers or dancing in the sunshine, though an extremely delightful mode of passing away one's time, is not profitable, and mamma Carleton insisted that Edith should read her books and learn her lesson. Ah, what happy times these were!
"Dear Edith," she would say, "you know how dearly I love you, but you must learn your book. Have I not promised to give you a new Bible when you are able to read? and then will you teach me all that is good in the good book, and you shall read it for me with your gentle voice. And now, my dear, when you have learned your lesson I will tell you the prettiest fairy tale in the world."
This was an all-powerful inducement. Edith would sit by the fire and exert her little brain to commit the task to memory. With the reward in view this was easily accomplished, and then they would both sit in the sunbeams—simple mother and simple child—the two happiest things in the world, the one repeating, the other anxiously drinking in, some strange old tale of fairy and magician; of blue-birds that spoke, and queens that did naughtier things than were ever done by peasant girls; of little glass slippers and golden palaces; of wild journeys through lonely forests; of gentle spirits of the air and wicked spirits of the earth and water.
Thus the time flew on year after year. They were innocent and happy. Why do we not remain always children?
Edith went to school. John Darwin and his wife kept a joint school for young people of either sex. The husband instructed the boys and the wife taught the girls;—only once every day, at a certain hour, the girls were brought into Darwin's school to learn writing and arithmetic, Edith was fourteen years old when she went to this school. Mrs, Carleton had taught her a good deal; she had also learned something from a schoolmistress with whom she was placed from her tenth year. But the interval between this and her fourteenth year is unconnected with my story, so I introduce her to you at Darwin's school.
Chapter II.
Edgar Hyde, he too is gone. I knew him well. We were old schoolfellows. We read and rambled together. We strolled through the same solitary woodland walks; we swam together, and mused in the fields and forests over the same books, Byron, and Shelley, and Plutarch. O long summer days. O days of happiness,—gone, never to return.
He was a strange, perhaps a wayward young man. Books were his passion, poetry his divinity. He had the most thoroughly poetical intellect of any one I ever saw. He looked at the whole world with a fine and noble enthusiasm. He dreamed great dreams; he luxuriated in
visions of the beautiful, and the grand, and the useful. Plutarch was his favourite author. Heclon, of all the ancients, he said, was the most useful and the most inspiring. He preferred him even to Homer, and I think he laboured hard to mould his heart in the noble Plutarchian model. To the Greek dramatists, and to their wonderful portraits of all the giant passions, as well as of those that are most akin to virtue, he was exceedingly partial, and he would sit for hours on a river's bank with Æschylus or Euripides—revelling in the terrible grandeur of the first, sympathising with the most humane fancies of the second. At other times he would linger the whole day gazing up at the freckled skies, watching with strange delight the fantastic forms which the clouds would assume, and i imagining in each an enchanted castle, an attacking army, a flight of spirits, a faëry vision of distant and golden islands, surrounded by azure wastes of waters. The scenes which at these moments passed through his mind were scenes of heaven—they carried him away far from earth, and rendered him the happiest of mortals for the period. How often have I observed him at night watching the stars like some fond idolator, looking as if he thought that from the contemplation of those divine far off spheres, he could draw into his own soul a portion of their ethereal nature; or as if he fancied he could read in their eternal twinklings some mystic ante-picture of his coming life. He loved to commune with each. He would look with the eye of a lover on the queen-like splendours of Venus, and the golden brilliancy of Jupiter; but it was to fiery Saturn I observed that he was most partial, I know not why it was, but he was always melancholy when the mists hid from his view a sight of those beautiful stars.
Edgar was superstitious. All noble natures are more or less so. But it was the superstition of the beautiful and the poetic. Here is a fragment of one of his letters. It will give you a glimpse of what I mean, and of the writer's soul too.
* * * * *
"Probably you will laugh at this fancy. You, so full of life and worldly wisdom regard not these things. But poetising is the true paradise, and surely superstition (if you will have it so) is nearly akin to poesy. Show me a more exquisite legend or fancy in the world than that of the Catholic church, which inculeates the belief that a bright guardian angel is assigned by Heaven to attend the footsteps of man from his cradle to his grave. If this belief were imprinted early and firmly on the mind, how few vices we should commit—nay, I doubt if we should commit one. How we should delight to commune in fancy with an ethereal companion, and let him always behold only the paradise part of our souls. Human nature would not then become the slave of those miserable passions which enervate and degrade it, but would seek to elevate itself to a likeness, a sympathy, a companionship with the spirit assigned to be its guardian. The spirit of truth would then reign upon the earth, for who could deceive when his heart told him that a seraph was at his side? I do not believe that any one ever told a falsehood in the presence of the man or woman he really loved, and is not falsehood the great root of all crime. The German metaphysicians call vice or evil a denial of what is good, and is not this denial falsehood? While I write this is there not something sublime in the fancy that an angel is reading it? while you, dear friend are reading it, pause, and think that one from heaven is beside you with his radiant eyes. The belief is originally pagan, dear friend, let us engraft it on Christianity. It is none the worse for its origin. We need not be ashamed of the poetic creed of Plato and Euripides. The demon of Socrates was but another word for his guardian angel. And does not Minander tell us that 'Every one at his birth has a good genius given him which attends him during the whole course of his life, as a guide and director.' Excuse me for quoting the Greek:
"Is it not a grand thought? Teach it to her you love. Let it accompany her in all her hours and thoughts; and will she not grow diyine? She who loves me must assuredly believe it."
* * * * *
His mind thus feeding constantly on noble thoughts—dwelling on all that is most divine, which the older men have bequeathed to us, naturally became like theirs, and all his words and acts were worthy of the most exalted models.
We were, as I said, reared up together—schooled at the same school. I am acquainted with all his inmost thoughts, and aspirations, and desires. The secret of his life has been unfolded to me, me as he appointed me his executor before he killed himself, all his papers passed into my possession, and from them I shall select such as will elucidate my story. I claim only the humble merit of connecting the various letters and manuscripts which I received; I shall leave him and her to speak for themselves. Their letters—so fondly preserved—on which are the traces of such heartfelt tears, reveal their hearts, and are the most eloquent and affecting I ever read. I think them more natural than Werter, and surely they are more touching than the didactic love-letters of the New Heloise.
Perhaps there never lived two who were more exquisitely suited for each other. Edgar was only three days older than Edith; their souls seemed to have come at the same moment from their celestial sources; their minds were like according strings in music; the most perfect unison in the world.
It was at Darwin's school they first became acquainted. Edgar, in his fourteenth year, had gone through the whole round of classical literature. He had distanced all his competitors at the school in which we had both learned, and unwearied application having produced a temporary indisposition, he left the school, and was sent into the country to recruit his strength. But idleness he found to be an insupportable torture. For the classics he felt no immediate predilection, and he resolved to turn his attention to some other branch of literature. Darwin's reputation as a scientific scholar was considerable; I believe, indeed, he deserved the character he had acquired. This was a species of knowledge of which Edgar was ignorant; he devoted himself, therefore, in this quiet, unpretending village-school to a study of the mathematics. It was on the 15th of June, 18—, he first went. How often did he mention the day and hour. In the forenoon of that day he first saw Edith Carleton, and his fate was fixed. Edith was now in her sixteenth year.
Chapter III.
By what mysterious influence is it that souls become magnets to each other? Why does one look, the slightest glance bestowed on, or given to, a stranger, produce a revolution in, one's whole life and feelings? From that moment we feel that our souls are no longer in our power. Love has entered into them, and there he dwells for ever. The being of whose existence, not a moment before, we were ignorant, has become on a sudden the arbiter of your fate. A thrill has shot through the whole frame—an inexplicable feeling of recognition, ending in passionate love. Is then the Platonic theory true? Are our souls in this life widowed each one from its corresponding half, and is it thus agitated when its twin part is suddenly presented to it? For if our mere bodily organs can see and take pleasure in seeing other bodily organs, why is it unreasonable to suppose that souls, too, have eyes, and spiritually behold and recognise each other in the same manner as bodies? Or if there be no recognition—no perfect recollection in that moment conveyed from soul to soul of former communion in some former state of existence, how shall we account for the mysterious feeling that thus agitates two strangers, and blends them for ever after into one? Each to each has become indispensable. Is this a dream?—a sickly fancy?—a momentary delusion?—a transient spell of romance or passion? Not so; but the all-absorbing feeling that lives with you for ever—that makes you brave every danger to soul and body, until your destiny is fulfilled, and your souls are united.
* * * In the moment that he saw her, he felt that fate, destiny, providence (what you will) had made her his forever. Their eyes met—from that instant they were no longer two but one—one soul in two bodies; each to each a dimidium animæ, as Horace, copying the word from Plato, has it. What were his books now to Edgar? He threw them aside. His thoughts were concentrated on one object alone. As is a bright and radiant night, when all the stellar choir are abroad, turn your eyes whithersoever you will, you will behold only stars—even so, whithersoever the thoughts of Edgar wandered, there still before them shone the starry image of Edith Carleton. His heart panted like a hunted bird when she came near—he felt it die away within him when she departed. The very tread of her footstep on the floor—the slightest movement that she made—the smallest word she spoke—all these became to him things of magic and wonder and importance. He was no longer the same being as before. A new heaven of thoughts and wishes and visions to which he was hitherto a stranger seemed to have taken possession of his heart. In each and all she predominated. From the deep ocean of his reflections she rose constantly before him like the Venus Anadyomene—but, oh! in his imagination, lovelier far than any vision of Aphrodite ever could have been. He closed his eyes, and lo! she was still before him. With what rapture he stole glance and glance at her dear form; and when school broke up, and all departed homeward, he lingered still behind to watch at a distance the retreating image of her he loved, even to her mother's house. He returned home, dazzled and drunk with the immortal passion. He could not rest—his motions were as uneasy as his thoughts. When it was evening he left his home, and strayed through the green woods until he caught a distant glimpse of Edith's cottage. The declining sunbeam played on it; to Edgar's eyes no palace in the world could have appeared half so beautiful. And there for hours he stood, in silent rapture and reverie—happy even to behold the house that treasured all he loved on earth, and more than blest, when, as she ascended to her chamber for the night, he saw her shadow reflected on the curtain that hung down between him and her.
I know not what to say of dreams; whether they are true or false—real or fanciful—the suggestions of good spirits or of bad. But that which I now relate is true. It appeared to Edgar the first night he saw Edith Carleton. He jotted it down the next morning in his note-book, and I find it under the head of Somnia. This was one of his wayward notions—committing his dreams to paper. He fancied that he should by so doing be able to foretell his future fate. The collection now before me is curiously wild; a fantastic tracery of fantastic thoughts. Publish it without this explanation, and the writer will be called a madman; prefix to it a statement of the circumstances in which it was compiled, and it will appear like a gorgeous vision of majestic ruins of palaces in the desert—something vast, and shadowy, and splendid. But Edgar was no common man—this volume alone, if there were no other evidence, would demonstrate the fact. I shall probably refer to it again. For the present I transcribe as follows:
"June 16, 18—.
"A curious dream! What shall I make of it? what does it suggest? what forebode? But let me commit it to paper.
"Methought I lay stretched alone beneath a glorious blazonry of illuminated cloud and star—my eyes and thoughts both upturned to the bright heaven which lay calm above me, with the beauty of a sleeping queen. I contemplated them, methought, with the delight of a fond lover gazing ardently into the eyes of his mistress, as she looks down upon him while he reclines on her bosom. Was it then a dream? If so, it was, indeed, full of brilliancy. I had long directed my chief attention to the red and fiery orb of Saturn, when suddenly a clear light sparkled from the place which the star occupied in the blue vault above me, and descended slowly, as if upon my very brows. It was a young man of exquisite beauty, with a face like angels, and eyes whose superhuman lustre dazzled and blinded me. A light shad round him; his shoulders and feet were winged. He descended in silence, and smiling on me—he laid his finger on my heart; it burned like fire within me, and I felt myself suddenly raised by an invisible hand, up through the skies, towards the glowing orb of Saturn. Suddenly, and when I was within reach of the mighty luminary, it seemed to me to grow black as night, and frown down upon me hke an angry demon—the force that propelled me was instantly withdrawn, and though I grasped eagerly at the starry world just within my clutch, I was hurled headlong into chaos; and with the fright I woke! Heaven forefend that such be not the fate reserved for my high aspirings! But if it should—what matters—the soul still lives."
Chapter IV.
"And will you always love me, my own dearest love?"
"Always."
"Will you be fonder of me than all the world?"
"Oh! yes."
"And you will never love any body else?"
"Oh—no—my dear friend."
Such were the questions and answers of Edgar Hyde and Edith Carleton, only one short fortnight after they first met.
They were sitting in a pretty rustic bower of woodbine and wild roses. The stars of evening just began to glitter in the blue sky—like the star of love and hope within their breasts.
How they became acquainted I cannot tell. Edgar lent Edith's mother some books, and thus I believe the acquaintance began. It ripened rapidly into love. How they contrived to meet, I know not—but lovers do these things.
"Passionate first love—it stands alone—like Adam's recollection of his fall."
Yes, Byron! you were right. There is nothing like it. Even I—lonely old man that I am—feel young again when thinking—thinking—thinking still in solitary hours of the rosy past.
It is a blessed thing that we cannot pry into the future! How full of misery should our existence be, if we could foretell. Those who have led the happiest lives will agree with me; those who have been miserable will assuredly not dissent.
Could those two young spirits read the future in the moment that I have described them at the opening of this chapter, what woe it would have inflicted on both. A black cloud, charged with death, hung over them.
They sat in silence—true lovers always do. Silence is the eloquence of love. A slight pressure of the hand—or lip—an ecstatic gaze into the sweet eyes of those we love—a waking dream of happiness, with no thought or word to disturb the calm felicity —silence—still silence—or a low whisper of delight—this is a picture of true love. All the beautiful speeches and fine things which lovers say to one another in the romances, are to be met with in romances only. They never happen in real life. Silence is love's eloquence. But though the tongue be mute, what eloquence is like that of the eyes and looks?
They met thus for two or three months—whole ages in the life of a lover. O beautiful summer nights! They saw each other too by day. And they thought of each other always.
I believe it was Edgar first proposed that they should write each to each, and display to one another their whole hearts and souls. Rousseau speaks of some Frenchman who went away from his mistress for the pleasure of corresponding with her by letter. The Frenchman was a fool. I think that Edgar's plan was wiser. He was with Edith as often as he possibly could; in absence he was with her too, for he was writing to her his whole soul, Thus he combined romance and reality. O unreflecting Frenchman! Reader, if thou art a lover, try this plan; don't mind Rousseau and his Gallic niceties.
These letters are now before me, carefully preserved in a casket; the last gift bequeathed to me by my friend, the day he shot himself. I need not say how affectionately I prize them. Then among them are some withered flowers—worn probably by sweet Edith, and fondly treasured by her lover? Methinks I can in fancy see this faded rose enwreathed within her silken hair; next is a posy of withered violets that once bloomed on her breast. There are fragrant lemon leaves—alas! the hand that culled them, and the lip that kissed—both are gone. There is a tress of fine hair, soft and shining, carefully folded in a silken band; books of poetry—fragments of verses—wild thoughts. Behold my treasures!
But I must lay before you some of these letters. You shall better judge from them, than from any words of mine, of the gentle spirit of Edith Carleton, and the noble heart of him who died for love of her.