Chapter XIX: The Devotion of Love

Oh! sweeter far than wealth, than fame, than all,
Is first and passionate love; it stands alone.
_—Byron._

There was a much larger, but not so select, a company invited by the genial, social Judge Jacky than that assembled by the proud and reserved General Garnet. And by “early candle light”—the country hour for assembling for a ball—the whole house—parlors, chambers, family rooms, and saloon—were crowded to overflowing. The dining room only was kept shut up, for there the two long tables were to be set for supper. The saloon, or “big room,” as it is plainly called in old-fashioned country houses, was blazing with light and splendor, and pealing with music, and alive with young men and maidens in ball dresses, laughing, talking, wooing, flirting, dancing. It was something like General Garnet’s ball on a larger and somewhat coarser scale, it must be confessed, but then it was such a joyous, jubilant, exultant scene! The young folks laughed, and talked, and danced, and jested with so much gladness and freedom! And Judge Jacky moved about laughing, talking, joking, gallanting all the ugly old maids, making love to all the low-spirited old widows, flattering and complimenting all the plain girls, encouraging all shamefaced young gentlemen, and electrifying into jocund life all the “flat, stale, and unprofitable” folks in the joyous company.

But it is not with the gay and thoughtless of that merry throng that we have to do, but with our great-hearted Magnus and our dear Elsie. You know at this moment, just as well as I do, that they both had too much on their minds to think of dancing. They had each come to the ball chiefly to meet the other and have a talk. General Garnet would willingly have kept Elsie away, but he did not think it polite to offend Judge Wylie by doing so. But one thing he had taken care to do—to send for Lionel Hardcastle to escort her there. And Lionel had ridden in the carriage alone with Elsie from Mount Calm to Point Pleasant, and had had every opportunity of pursuing a courtship that he had commenced almost from the first evening of his return. Elsie cut him short in the midst of one of his finest speeches by telling him that he was making love to his cousin’s wife—or to one who would be so on Thursday week! Yes, Elsie compelled herself to say exactly that to Lionel, to crush his hopes at once. On reaching the house at Point Pleasant, Elsie said aloud to Magnus, who came out to meet them:

“Dr. Hardcastle, help me to thank your cousin for the kind manner in which he has supplied your place in attending me here,” and, bowing courteously to Lionel, she took the arm of Magnus and entered the saloon.

They were now seated at the farthest extremity of the vast saloon, within the bay window. Elsie was looking very beautiful this evening. She was dressed in a gossamer white crape, over white satin. Her snowy arms and neck were bare, and encircled by diamond bracelets and necklace. She was always beautiful, but now her usually happy, joyous face was softened and deepened into an expression of serious thought and feeling ineffably charming.

They had been conversing. Elsie had told him all that had passed between herself and her father. And Magnus had recounted a similar scene that had taken place between himself and General Garnet. He had, as Elsie had, asserted his determination to abide by their betrothal. He repeated the same thing to Elsie now. It was this—this saving of her heart’s fondest hopes amid the crash of fortune—that made Elsie feel and look so very blessed.

They were still conversing. He raised her hand—she had an exquisitely beautiful hand, elegantly shaped, and white as snow, and now diamond rings sparkled upon it; appropriate ornaments for it, as one may see. Well, he raised that small, white, jeweled hand, and looking tenderly, half-remorsefully upon it, said—and his voice was full-toned and melodious with love and sorrow:

“This tiny, snow-white hand, sparkling with diamonds—this fresh, pure, delicate thing!—a jewel itself!—how can it be put to the uses to which my wife’s hand must be put, Elsie?”

She looked at him with passionate devotion, saying:

“Take the jewels off and cast them from thee, Magnus—do!”

“And this slender wrist—you have such a beautiful arm, Elsie! What a round, full, graceful curve from the elbow to the forearm, and how elegantly it tapers off to the slender wrist! Ah! this arm, so pure and fresh, so well decked with this sparkling diamond bracelet—like icicles upon snow! How will it support labor?”

“The bracelet offends you, too? It was my father’s birthday gift; but I like it no longer—it offends you. Take it off and cast it from you. Press your thumb and finger around my arm instead. Press it tightly, so that you will leave a ring there. It will be a red bracelet—or even a black one; so that when I can no longer see you, I may close my eyes, and, feeling the impress of your fingers, cheat my heart with the fancy that you still grasp my wrist with a sweet violence. It will be another dearer bracelet that I will wear in remembrance of you. Oh, don’t you know I understand now the enthusiasm of the saints?”

“Dearest Elsie, let us go forth from here. The light, the glare, the crowd, the noise here is insufferable. Let us go forth in the fresh air under the light of the holy stars. Come, love! My heart hungers, faints, to press you to itself. Come, love!” And opening a leaf of the bay window, he led her forth. It was a mild, clear, beautiful starlight night for the season, yet the air was chill, and Elsie was lightly clad. He looked at her and glanced around. The lighted window of a sitting room in the angle of the building showed that apartment to be vacant. He led her there. It was one of those small, conical wainscoted parlors so common in old houses. A fine fire was burning in the chimney, and a little old-fashioned green settee drawn up on one side of the fireplace. The room had an air of delightful snugness, comfort, and repose. He led her to this sofa and seated himself beside her, opened his arms, and whispered: “Come to my bosom, my own soul’s love!” and folded her closely there. “Elsie, my pure, fresh, delicate, elegant Elsie, can you go with me indeed to share my lot of poverty and struggle? Oh, Elsie! if you do, will you never repent? Oh, Elsie! do you know what poverty is? Born and brought up in luxury and wealth, do you know what poverty is? Oh, Elsie, my little idealist, there is no poetry in poverty. Oh, Elsie, my little epicurienne, every sense is shocked and tortured in poverty. You see unsightly things, you hear discordant sounds, you come in contact with roughness, you partake of coarse food; oh, Elsie! ideality is wounded and saddened, sense is shocked, and love itself, perhaps, revolted!”

“Never! oh, never!” she said fervently.

“Oh, Elsie! my bright, beautiful Elsie! my delicate, elegant Elsie! I am worse than an executioner to marry you. I feel it, and yet I shall do it. God knows that I will have you, and let the future take care of itself!” he said, pressing her strongly to his bosom.

“Yes, have me, have me; let me be always with you. It will be bliss ineffable. I should die if you were to leave me. My heart would consume itself in its own fires. I do not care for wealth, or rank, or distinction, or for ease or luxury. I only care for the wealth and luxury of your affection, and your constant society. I do not fear to have ‘ideality wounded and saddened.’ No, for the soul creates its own poetry. I do not fear to have every sense shocked. I do not fear to live amid unsightly objects and discordant sounds, and rough contacts; oh, no, for the soul creates its own heaven of beauty and harmony. I do not fear to have love revolted. Oh! no, no, no! I only fear a separation from you. My whole being trembling, tends toward you—so strong, as it would lose itself in you. Shut out the world, shut out light and sound, only let me feel your arms around me, pressing my bosom to your heart as now. All my life is compressed within my heart, and it is bursting to meet yours. I am blind, deaf, dead to all but you. I have scarcely self enough to say ‘I have no self.’ I love myself in you. Oh, my greater self! my larger life!”

So the softly flushed and moist cheeks, the heavy, liquid eyes, and the palpitating bosom said, but no word escaped the parted and glowing lips. Nor could a word have escaped between the kisses that were pressed upon them. Then he released her, and they sat upon the old-fashioned sofa by the glowing hickory fire in the old wainscoted parlor, and, hand in hand, talked. Oh, how they talked! Sometimes with profound earnestness, sometimes with light and bantering gayety.

“Yet you have had many admirers, Elsie,” said Magnus.

“Have I?” she asked.

“Oh, Elsie, you know that you have.”

“I try not to know it.”

“Why, dearest?”

“Because I wish I was an Eastern bride for you. Oh, yes! I wish that I had been reared in conventual seclusion, that no man’s eye had seen me until my husband came to claim me; that, then, I could have gone apart from the world and seen only him. That would have been exquisite; that would have been blissful; for I do not want admiration; I want only your heart’s approval! There would be such intense and concentrated joy in knowing only you. My joy would be diluted if my heart were divided among many.”

“But your numerous admirers, dearest?”

“Oh, my numerous admirers! I did not finesse when I asked you if I really had any; for, in truth, my ‘admirers’ never came near enough to me to breathe their admiration.”

“Why was that? How was that? Tell me.”

“Look in my eyes, love, and read your answer there. Peruse my heart, love. It lies open to you as a book.”

“Nay, tell me. I love to hear you talk. It delights me to listen to you. Tell me now. It is some sweet secret that will give me heaven to know. Come, love, be generous. Breathe the secret out upon my bosom,” he whispered softly, and drew her again to his heart. “Come, love——”

“Yes, I will. I will repress this feeling of reluctance, and tell you all my thoughts. Yes, for surely I feel you have a right to have an answer to any question you ask me, my higher self. Listen, then. Bend low, for I shall whisper very low, lest the air around should hear me. When you first drew me on to love you, when leaf by leaf my heart unfolded and developed under the life-giving warmth of your eyes, of your touch, just as a rose buds and blossoms under the rays of its sovereign, the sun—my heart, I mean, or something rising within it—taught me many mysteries that neither prophet, priest, nor sage could have taught me. Among other things, it revealed to me the knowledge of all that would please and all that would displease you in myself, and impelled me to follow the first and eschew the last. It made me wish to isolate myself for you. It killed the very first germ of vanity in my heart, and made me wish that none should come near enough to me to know whether I were beautiful or otherwise, far less so near as to tell me of it. It made me shrink from all those little gallantries from gentlemen which make up so large a portion of a belle’s life. I was so afraid of being found unworthy of you when you should take me. I should not have felt good enough for you if my hand, that awaited your hand, had been squeezed and kissed, and my waist, that awaited the dear girdle of this arm—fold it closer around me now—had been pressed, and I, your expectant bride, had been twined and whirled about in the giddy waltz. But none of these things have happened to me. I come to you almost an Oriental bride for exclusiveness, and that makes me so happy. I should have else been unhappy, should else have been unworthy of you.”

All this was murmured slowly, softly, dreamily, as though the truth stole out of a slumbering heart, while she lay upon his bosom, and the last words were breathed forth in an almost inaudible sigh. But he answered with passionate vehemence, clasping her to his heart:

“Unworthy of me! You! so beautiful! so good! so intellectual!—save when your highest intellect is whelmed in feeling!—yet, no—your highest intelligence—your spirit—is never so whelmed! You, the heiress of the haughtiest family in Maryland—and I—who am I?”

“My greater self! my life-giver!—by these titles only I know you. Does my rank and fortune offend you? Pluck me away from them; for I am yours. Bury me with yourself, in some lone forest cabin, in the wilderness, whither your footsteps tend; and there my hunter’s wife will forget the world, while preparing the cabin for his return at eve. And she will not think the hours of his absence long, for they will be filled with fervent thoughts of him. Oh, that hunter’s lodge in the wild! I see it even in my dreams!”

And this was not romance; but the passionate fanaticism of first, of early love.

“Oh, Elsie! how you talk!” he exclaimed, gazing on her eloquent face with wonder, reverence, and passion.

She blushed deeply, and bowed her crimson brow upon his bosom, murmuring:

“Do I? I am sorry. I suppose maidens do not talk so; do they?”

“I do not know how maidens do or should talk, any more than you do,” answered Magnus, and then a singular expression passed over his countenance. He bent his gaze upon her, with a look of profound thought and searching inquiry, as though to read the depths of that heart she had so freely laid open to his perusal. And he said, very seriously: “I do not know how maidens talk, for I have spoken with but one maiden before of love.” He paused and gazed down deeply into her eyes, as if to read her most hidden thought and feeling—possibly he expected to see some trace of jealousy there—he saw only the calm, profound repose of love, deep joy, and infinite trust. He resumed: “I never talked with but one maiden of love before; she was my first love.” Again he looked down, and saw upon her beautiful face the same ineffable peace. He continued: “I loved her passionately. I lost her. It nearly maddened me.” For the last time he gazed down upon her, as she lay quietly over his arm, with her face turned up to his, but her whole countenance radiated with a sort of calm, rapt ecstasy, as though she were then in the possession of all the bliss possible on earth. He gazed for a moment, full of astonishment, and then quietly asked: “Is it possible that this gives you no uneasiness, my love?”

“Does what?”

“The thought of my first love.”

“No, dearest. Why should it?”

“‘Why should it?’ What a question. Why should it not?”

“I don’t know, I am sure. When I do, I’ll tell you.”

“Yet,” said Magnus thoughtfully, “though the idea of my having had a first love gives you no pain, you felicitated yourself and me very much upon the fact of your having had no other lover.”

“Oh, that was a very different thing. Don’t you feel that it was?”

“Yes; I feel it. But tell me now—think—why is it that the thought of my first love does not distress you?”

“Indeed, I do not know at all. I only know by the sure inspiration of my soul, and feel in every nerve of my body, that you love me; and I am so ineffably blessed.”

“My darling Elsie!” he said, joyously kissing the lids down upon her two sweet eyes. “My darling Elsie, you are not selfish or jealous for yourself at all. I only wished to probe your heart a little. You were so jealous for me that I thought perhaps you might be so for yourself. You are not, my darling Elsie; my light of life! You are the only woman I ever loved! Yet, dearest, I told you no fiction. You, yourself, were ‘the maiden to whom I spoke before of love.’ But it was soon after you returned from school. You, yourself, were the maiden whom I lost,—for a little while, during our short misunderstanding,—and whose loss nearly maddened me. Oh, come! enter the heart of hearts, and live there forever!” He clasped her closer, and they subsided into silence, or conversed only with their eyes.

Long, long they remained in that still trance of joy, but at last Elsie withdrew herself, laughing, from his arms, sat down beside him, and they began to talk of their future home. He told her it would be indeed a cabin in the backwoods of Maryland; but not a hunter’s cabin, as she fancifully supposed. Oh, no! but a country doctor’s dwelling, in a new settlement. And that he would not return at eve in the hunter’s picturesque costume, with a gun and a nine-antlered deer across his shoulders, but upon the back of a stout mule, with a country doctor’s saddle-bags behind him. How would she like that?

“Oh, very well, dearest Magnus! for then you will be saving life instead of taking it. Oh, yes, I do like—I do love—your profession, Magnus. Since you must have one, I like it better than any other you could have chosen. I think physicians do more disinterested good than any other set of men on earth. I will not even except the preachers. Oh, yes! I do love your profession, dear Magnus, and love you better, if possible, for being a poor country doctor. God love and bless you! When you shall have come home tired, from your long round—oh, you shall have sweet repose, love—indeed you shall! God bids me to assure you that you shall. Whatever our cabin home may be, I can make it a little haven of repose—a little heaven of bliss for you. Oh, indeed I do not fear; my whole full soul assures me that we shall be happy and victorious over fate. Let me kiss your eyes—you kissed mine just now, so sweetly. God bless those grand eyes! Oh, Magnus, can a cabin or a garb of homespun hide the light, the greatness that is in you? Oh, Magnus, I saw a king and several princes of the blood when I was presented at court by General Armstrong; but their foreheads were low and receding, their presence had the strut without the dignity of majesty. Oh, Magnus, their kingly crown could not have given either that magnificent forehead of yours. Oh, Magnus, there is something greater in you than any surrounding you can have. Do not any more dread that I shall be either pained or revolted at anything in the circumstances of our condition. The rough walls of a log cabin will not shock or sadden me.”

“No, darling, for the rough walls of our log cabin, like the rough bark of an oak tree, has something really picturesque about it; but”—said he, in a half-sorrowful, half-comic way—“the pots and kettles, the mops and brooms!”

“What! the humble little household gods and goddesses that set up no pretension to worship, or even to honorable mention, and yet confer so much benefit? No, indeed. I have a kindly feeling for all such. Mine, if they can’t be beautiful, shall be neat and pretty. Oh, don’t you remember when we were children, and used to run in out of the snow to old Aunt Polly’s kitchen, and how she’d press us in to help her every time she could? Oh, I know a great deal about cooking, and I always had a turn for housekeeping.”

He arose, took her hand, and raised her up, and looked at her from head to foot, as she stood—that delicate, beautiful girl, in her elegant ball dress of gossamer crape over white satin, diamonds sparkling on her arms and neck, as he had said, like icicles upon snow. He surveyed her, from her white rose-wreathed auburn hair to the tip of the white satin slipper. He clasped her hand, and looked at it.

“I know,” she said, “what you are thinking of again—‘Elsie must doff this dress, and this style of dress, for some years to come’; but do not fear, within ten years, and by the time that the beauty of your love has matured, Elsie will weave a more elegant dress than this, when her husband’s talents shall have ‘achieved greatness.’ And this little hand that you look at so fondly, so sadly—‘this pure, fresh, delicate thing, a jewel itself,’ as you called it just now—under this soft, white cushion of flesh are nerves and sinews of steel. I am very strong, dear Magnus, very strong every way. And I can work; this hand shall toil and retain its beauty, because you prize it, too.”

He clasped her again to his breast, and drew her white arms up around his neck. And then that notion of isolation came upon her again like a fond superstition, and she whispered:

“I do not want neighbors or friends where we live, love. I want only you. I want no one that can take me off from you. It is late. Shall I go?”

“Yes, dear love,” she answered, untwining her arms from about his neck.