Julian Hawthorne

“ You couldn’t do wrong if you tried. There is no wrong—I swear there isn’t. Listen, now in your ear: I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you! Satisfied now?”
Low as the words were whispered, they were heard beyond the stars, and stamped themselves upon the eternal records. But their only palpable witness was the mill wheel. A log of wood, carried over the fall, came forcibly in contact with the low-impending rim. It swung the heavy structure partly round upon its axle. And straightway, upon the hollow night, echoed a faint yet appalling sound as of jeering laughter. ”

“ Oh, my love, say it shall be so!”
“You are crazy—both of you!” cried Eros, wrestling with the fear that beset him, and striving to speak in an assured and masterful tone. “What has Mortimer to do with you, Psyche? You are mine, and whoever pretends to take you from me is my enemy!”
“Eros—Eros!” exclaimed the girl, with passionate earnestness, “it is you who are crazy, my poor darling. Mortimer is dead; and the letter which he wrote—the letter that I alone read and touched—had in it the contagion of the pestilence. ”

“ David, does God know about us?”
“Not enough to trouble Him much, I expect,” said the young man, with a short laugh. “If anything knows about us, it’s the old wheel there, waiting like a black devil to carry us off. Come, we must creep back to the house.”
They rose, Swanhilda stood before him, her sweet sad face glimmering shadowy pale through the darkness. “Say, ‘I love you, Swanhilda, and I will never leave you!’” she whispered. ”

“ The bridge had not been entirely of stone; but a stout plank had probably spanned the flood, secured at either end by rough masonry. It must have been a ticklish passage without a handrail, for a false step, followed by a plunge over the cataract, would have been almost certain death. If Master Peter had tumbled in here instead of at the other pool miles lower down, not Poyntz, nor Agatha, nor I, nor all the luck in the world could have got him out alive.
The hollow of the gorge was much overgrown with bushes and brambles, and along the margin of the noisy stream the grass was high and rank. ”

“ If your idea of marriage is high enough, you will not hesitate to come with me to my Paradise. How is it with you, Eros?”
“Not yet,” replied Eros, laughing and shaking his head. “It’s too far off, and the journey is too cold. If you are really determined to leave us, you must go without me. Surely you can’t expect me to be ready to start at such short notice? No, no! I mean to stay by this comfortable fireside for a long time yet, and so shall Psyche.”
“Death has summoned men on shorter notice than this,” said the other. “Think again before you decide.” ”

“ They break upon the Devil’s Ribs—that low black reef about half a mile out—and the sound is borne to our ears some seconds after the white-foam line has marked itself against the blue and vanished. There is a fine throb of sun-loving insects in the air, which we may hear if we listen for it; but more immediately audible is the guttural drawing of old Jack Poyntz’s meerschaum pipe, and the delicate clicking of his sweet daughter Agatha’s polished knitting-needles. ”

“ After she was gone, David stood at the window, biting his lips and muttering to himself. Suddenly he heard Gloam’s step behind him, and looked round in surprise.
“What was that noise?” Gloam asked.
“Why, nothing new, sir. The same old story. Something wrong with the wheel again, I suppose.”
“I remember no such sound before,” said Gloam, excitedly. “It is hideous, like the shriek of an evil spirit. Let it never come again; it frightens Swanhilda, and comes between us like a prophecy of woe. ”

“ Not that I think mere earthly union is always the highest good for those who love. You know the old proverb; and there are lovers whose hearts never quite realise one another’s worth until separation has taught it them. Do you love your old friend, who used to go nutting, boating, snow-balling, and story-telling with you, any the less because you haven’t seen him for nine years? And would not you, Eros, love Psyche a thousand times better were some chance to part you from her awhile? ”

“ I have lived with him, and our hearts are grown together. He is better and nobler than he seems.”
“It is not for me to decide,” was the answer. “But do you speak to him, Psyche. If he loves you, he will lay your words to heart.”
Psyche rose from her chair, and, stepping somewhat feebly, crossed to where Eros sat, and stood before him, her hands clasped. The room had become more dusky, so that the three figures appeared rather like shadows than beings of flesh and blood. For a moment or two there was silence, and only Psyche’s beseeching attitude seemed to speak. ”

“ But then, not many know me for what I really am.”
“I think I know you,” said Psyche, after a pause; “and I cannot imagine myself so happy that your coming would not make me happier.”
“You need not fear to know me, Psyche,” returned the guest, with grave gentleness; “and really I am not so unsympathetic as I must often seem. But I have a task in the world which brings me less credit in the performance than in the after result. Mankind, you know, Eros, are not always wise and far-sighted enough to recognise at the moment what is most for their good in the long run.” ”

“ How is that Chancery case of yours getting on?”
“A ghost? You speak lightly enough, and I suppose your idea of a ghost is some conventional bogey such as children are scared with. We laugh at such things—heaven knows why! An evil, sin-breathing spirit, coming from hell to take vengeance, for some dead and buried wrong, upon living men and women—what is there laughable in that?”
“Really, Calbot,” I said, with a smile—a rather uneasy smile, be it admitted—“I never laughed at a ghost, for the simple reason that I never saw one to laugh at.” ”

“ But now, all of a sudden, I found he’d disappeared, and all I could see was the pale froth of the surf that came leaping up the beach, with a sound from the black wave behind it like the going off of a big gun. Howsoever, I presently stumbled round the corner of a big boulder—ye may see it yonder, sir, in a line with the face of the lighthouse and the top of the pine stump—and there he was on his knees beside something wrapped up and still; and when I looked, ’twas seemingly a young girl, about twelve to thirteen years old, with no life in her. ”

“ And shall I be your own wife there, Eros, as I am to be here?”
“I really don’t see the use, my dear little Psyche, of bothering our heads with such gratuitous puzzles as that. There’s quite enough to attend to in this life, without trying to guess what may happen to us in the next. For my part, it’s enough to know that we love each other in the body, and are to be husband and wife here in this farmhouse. There’ll be time enough to speculate about other states when we are in them.” ”

“ By a simultaneous impulse the two young lovers threw one arm round each other, and extended the other to the advancing form. They could not cry out in welcome. Was it their great joy that silenced them? for joy will sometimes bind the faculties like awe. It was very dark, and neither had remembered to bring a light. Almost before they were aware of it their strange friend was standing close in front of them. How icy cold was the wind!
In moments of high feeling and excitement we do and say things as in a dream, and afterwards hardly remember how we acted. So was it now with Eros and Psyche. ”

“ Come to me, Psyche!”
He reached towards her through the dusk, but she seemed to falter backwards from him, and when he would have followed, the tall form of the mysterious guest rose between, and beneath that mighty and majestic gaze the eyes of Eros wavered, though the rebellion in him was unconquered still.
“You must yield her to me,” said those deep, reverberating tones; “yet it is not I that parts you. True lovers can be parted only through want of faith. Upon yourself alone, therefore, does it depend whether she leaves you for a time or for ever.” ”

“ Whoever has lived thoughtfully feels that there has been something in his experience beyond what appears in “Tom Jones,” “Adam Bede,” and “Vanity Fair.” They are earth without sky. I do not refer to that goody-goody Sunday-school sky which weeps and smirks over the mimic worlds of so many worthy novelists, male and female; but to that unfathomed mystery opening all around us—the sky of Shakespeare and Dante, of Goethe and Georges Sand. A reader with a healthy sense of justice feels that an occasional excursion mystery-ward is no more than he has a right to demand. ”

“ Come back, fair goddess! come back and wrest thy wheel from amidst those clinging vines and brambles—the arms wherewith reluctant nature strives to hold it back! Bring it forth once [51] again upon the dusty road, and turn it as you go, lest our sluggish hearts forget to beat, and we cease to draw the very breath of life, and our souls, torpid and uninspired, grovel earthwards, nor dream of climbing higher than themselves! Bring forth thy wheel, and turn it for ever even as the world turns; for thy fickleness is the life of our lives! ”

“ For them the great earth turned more smoothly on her axis, and moved in a fairer orbit; the setting sun sank splendidly amidst his clouds for their sake; for their delight yonder rosy-cheeked boy ploughed his whistling way through the snow, and the sleigh-bells jingled so merrily from the distant road. If only Mortimer were there, their happiness would be complete. And now he must arrive every moment, so Eros kept saying, looking out of the window with confident expectation; but Psyche scarcely replied. ”

“ Yes, my good old people; for though your home is Eldorado, mine is Paradise! Never was so beautiful a country—so tender and serene a climate; such gentle-hearted and Christian barbarians! It is a real Paradise, large enough and lovely enough to tempt all good souls to migrate thither; and I come forth into the world to find colonists, and bring them back with me. You will come, Psyche? and then I shall make sure that Eros will follow you, sooner or later! ”

“ It’s killing her, Drayton. As for me.... You know me pretty well, and you know what my life has been thus far. I’ve not been a good man, of course—quite the contrary; I’ve done any quantity of bad things, but I don’t know that I’ve committed any such hideous sin as ought to bring a punishment like this upon me—not to speak of her! I’m not a parricide, nor an adulterer; I never sold my salvation to the devil—did I, Drayton?”
“No, no, of course not, my dear Calbot. You have a fever, that’s all. Don’t get excited. Just lie down on the sofa for half an hour, and quiet yourself a little.” ”

“ The gorge was so dark that the mill-stream gurgled past invisibly, save where [68] occasionally a rising eddy caught the dim starlight. The tall wheel, motionless now, and only discernible as a blacker imprint on the darkness, lurked like a secret enemy in ambush. The man’s arm was clasped round the woman’s waist; her head rested on his shoulder, and her soft fingers were playing with the pearl-shell necklace that encircled her neck. ”

“ Once, when suddenly alarmed, I saw her grasp it quickly in her hand, as if either seeking protection from it, or instinctively yielding it protection; and another time, during a storm, when a vessel was labouring in the offing, and seemed in danger of being carried upon the Devil’s Ribs, I came upon her just as she kissed the great pearl in the clasp, as a Catholic would have kissed the crucifix to avert misfortune.
“Water-witch! water-witch! be thy spells wholesome?” I said in Danish, for a knowledge of the ancestral tongue has always been kept alive in the family. ”

“ Why, what are you afraid of?”
“You know I am happy in loving you, David,” was the tremulous answer; “but must lovers always hide their love, and pretend before others that they do not feel it? When I first dreamed of love, it seemed to me like the blue sky and the sunshine, and the songs of birds; but our love is secret and silent, like the night.”
“Pooh! nonsense, and so much the better! Our love is nobody’s business but our own, my lass. ”

“ It was as if some beneficent angel had stooped from heaven to visit them, and, lest his celestial splendour should overwhelm them, had assumed the guise and tone of that human being in whom they felt the most affectionate trust. Through his manner and aspect, and the low resounding melody of his utterance, she seemed to catch glimpses of a power and wisdom almost superhuman; but blended with a deep kindliness and charity, and a sublimity of nature that were more human than humanity itself. ”