CHAPTER THE LAST. THE CONCLUSION OF THIS TALE.
FROM that day Gertrude's spirit resumed its wonted cheerfulness, and forthe ensuing week she never reverted to her approaching fate; she seemedonce more to have grown unconscious of its limit. Perhaps she sought,anxious for Trevylyan to the last, not to throw additional gloom overtheir earthly separation; or, perhaps, once steadily regarding thecertainty of her doom, its terrors vanished. The chords of thought,vibrating to the subtlest emotions, may be changed by a single incident,or in a single hour; a sound of sacred music, a green and quietburial-place, may convert the form of death into the aspect of an angel.And therefore wisely, and with a beautiful lore, did the Greeks stripthe grave of its unreal gloom; wisely did they body forth the greatprinciple of Rest by solemn and lovely images, unconscious of thenorthern madness that made a Spectre of REPOSE!
But while Gertrude's _spirit_ resumed its healthful tone, her _frame_rapidly declined, and a few days now could do the ravage of months alittle while before.
One evening, amidst the desolate ruins of Heidelberg, Trevylyan, who hadgone forth alone to indulge the thoughts which he strove to stifle inGertrude's presence, suddenly encountered Vane. That calm and almostcallous pupil of the adversities of the world was standing alone, andgazing upon the shattered casements and riven tower, through which thesun now cast its slant and parting ray.
Trevylyan, who had never loved this cold and unsusceptible man, savefor the sake of Gertrude, felt now almost a hatred creep over him, as hethought in such a time, and with death fastening upon the flower of hishouse, he could yet be calm, and smile, and muse, and moralize, and playthe common part of the world. He strode slowly up to him, and standingfull before him, said with a hollow voice and writhing smile, "You amuseyourself pleasantly, sir: this is a fine scene; and to meditate overgriefs a thousand years hushed to rest is better than watching over asick girl and eating away your heart with fear!"
Vane looked at him quietly, but intently, and made no reply.
"Vane!" continued Trevylyan, with the same preternatural attempt atcalm, "Vane, in a few days all will be over, and you and I, the things,the plotters, the false men of the world, will be left alone,--left bythe sole being that graces our dull life, that makes by her love eitherof us worthy of a thought!"
Vane started, and turned away his face. "You are cruel," said he, with afaltering voice.
"What, man!" shouted Trevylyan, seizing him abruptly by the arm, "can_you_ feel? Is your cold heart touched? Come then," added he, with awild laugh, "come, let us be friends!"
Vane drew himself aside, with a certain dignity, that impressedTrevylyan even at that hour. "Some years hence," said he, "you willbe called cold as I am; sorrow will teach you the wisdom ofindifference--it is a bitter school, sir,--a bitter school! But thinkyou that I do indeed see unmoved my last hope shivered,--the last tiethat binds me to my kind? No, no! I feel it as a man may feel; I cloakit as a man grown gray in misfortune should do! My child is more tome than your betrothed to you; for you are young and wealthy, and lifesmiles before you; but I--no more--sir, no more!"
"Forgive me," said Trevylyan, humbly, "I have wronged you; butGertrude is an excuse for any crime of love; and now listen to my lastprayer,--give her to me, even on the verge of the grave. Death cannotseize her in the arms, in the vigils of a love like mine."
Vane shuddered. "It were to wed the dead," said he. "No!"
Trevylyan drew back, and without another word, hurried away; he returnedto the town; he sought, with methodical calmness, the owner of the pieceof ground in which Gertrude had wished to be buried. He purchased it,and that very night he sought the priest of a neighbouring church,and directed it should be consecrated according to the due rite andceremonial.
The priest, an aged and pious man, was struck by the request, and theair of him who made it.
"Shall it be done forthwith, sir?" said he, hesitating.
"Forthwith," answered Trevylyan, with a calm smile,--"a bridegroom, youknow, is naturally impatient."
For the next three days, Gertrude was so ill as to be confined to herbed. All that time Trevylyan sat outside her door, without speaking,scarcely lifting his eyes from the ground. The attendants passed to andfro,--he heeded them not; perhaps as even the foreign menials turnedaside and wiped their eyes, and prayed God to comfort him, he requiredcompassion less at that time than any other. There is a stupefactionin woe, and the heart sleeps without a pang when exhausted by itsafflictions.
But on the fourth day Gertrude rose, and was carried down (how changed,yet how lovely ever!) to their common apartment. During those three daysthe priest had been with her often, and her spirit, full of religionfrom her childhood, had been unspeakably soothed by his comfort. Shetook food from the hand of Trevylyan; she smiled upon him as sweetly asof old. She conversed with him, though with a faint voice, and at brokenintervals. But she felt no pain; life ebbed away gradually, and withouta pang. "My father," she said to Vane, whose features still bore theirusual calm, whatever might have passed within, "I know that you willgrieve when I am gone more than the world might guess; for I alone knowwhat you were years ago, ere friends left you and fortune frowned,and ere my poor mother died. But do not--do not believe that hope andcomfort leave you with me. Till the heaven pass away from the earththere shall be comfort and hope for all."
They did not lodge in the town, but had fixed their abode on itsoutskirts, and within sight of the Neckar; and from the window they sawa light sail gliding gayly by till it passed, and solitude once morerested upon the waters.
"The sail passes from our eyes," said Gertrude, pointing to it, "butstill it glides on as happily though we see it no more; and I feel--yes,Father, I feel--I know that it is so with _us_. We glide down the riverof time from the eyes of men, but we cease not the less to _be_!"
And now, as the twilight descended, she expressed a wish, before sheretired to rest, to be left alone with Trevylyan. He was not thensitting by her side, for he would not trust himself to do so, but withhis face averted, at a little distance from her. She called him by hisname; he answered not, nor turned. Weak as she was, she raised herselffrom the sofa, and crept gently along the floor till she came to him,and sank in his arms.
"Ah, unkind!" she said, "unkind for once! Will you turn away from me?Come, let us look once more on the river: see! the night darkens overit. Our pleasant voyage, the type of our love, is finished; our sail maybe unfurled no more. Never again can your voice soothe the lassitude ofsickness with the legend and the song; the course is run, the vessel isbroken up, night closes over its fragments; but now, in this hour, loveme, be kind to me as ever. Still let me be your own Gertrude, still letme close my eyes this night, as before, with the sweet consciousnessthat I am loved."
"Loved! O Gertrude! speak not to me thus!"
"Come, that is yourself again!" and she clung with weak arms caressinglyto his breast. "And now," she said more solemnly, "let us forget that weare mortal; let us remember only that life is a part, not the whole,of our career; let us feel in this soft hour, and while yet we areunsevered, the presence of The Eternal that is within us, so that itshall not be as death, but as a short absence; and when once the pang ofparting is over, you must think only that we are shortly to meet again.What! you turn from me still? See, I do not weep or grieve, I haveconquered the pang of our absence; will you be outdone by me? Do youremember, Albert, that you once told me how the wisest of the sages ofold, in prison, and before death, consoled his friends with the proofof the immortality of the soul? Is it not a consolation; does it notsuffice; or will you deem it wise from the lips of wisdom, but vain fromthe lips of love?"
"Hush, hush!" said Trevylyan, wildly; "or I shall think you an angelalready."
But let us close this commune, and leave unrevealed the _last_ sacredwords that ever passed between them upon earth.
When Vane and the physician stole back softly into the room, Trevylyanmotioned to them to be still. "She sleeps," he whispered; "hush!" Andin truth, wear
ied out by her own emotions, and lulled by the beliefthat she had soothed one with whom her heart dwelt now, as ever, she hadfallen into sleep, or it may be, insensibility, on his breast. Thereas she lay, so fair, so frail, so delicate, the twilight deepened intoshade, and the first star, like the hope of the future, broke forth uponthe darkness of the earth.
Nothing could equal the stillness without, save that which laybreathlessly within. For not one of the group stirred or spoke, andTrevylyan, bending over her, never took his eyes from her face, watchingthe parted lips, and fancying that he imbibed the breath. Alas, thebreath was stilled! from sleep to death she had glided without asigh,--happy, most happy in that death! cradled in the arms of unchangedlove, and brightened in her last thought by the consciousness ofinnocence and the assurances of Heaven!
.......
Trevylyan, after a long sojourn on the Continent, returned to England.He plunged into active life, and became what is termed in this ageof little names a distinguished and noted man. But what was mainlyremarkable in his future conduct was his impatience of rest. Heeagerly courted all occupations, even of the most varied and motleykind,--business, letters, ambition, pleasure. He suffered no pause inhis career; and leisure to him was as care to others. He lived inthe world, as the worldly do, discharging its duties, fostering itsaffections, and fulfilling its career. But there was a deep and wintrychange within him,--_the sunlight of his life was gone_; the lovelinessof romance had left the earth. The stem was proof as heretofore to theblast, but the green leaves were severed from it forever, and the birdhad forsaken its boughs. Once he had idolized the beauty that is born ofsong, the glory and the ardour that invest such thoughts as are not ofour common clay; but the well of enthusiasm was dried up, and the goldenbowl was broken at the fountain. With Gertrude the poetry of existencewas gone. As she herself had described her loss, a music had ceased tobreathe along the face of things; and though the bark might sail on asswiftly, and the stream swell with as proud a wave, a something thathad vibrated on the heart was still, and the magic of the voyage was nomore.
And Gertrude sleeps on the spot where she wished her last couch to bemade; and far--oh, far dearer, is that small spot on the distant banksof the gliding Neckar to Trevylyan's heart than all the broad landsand fertile fields of his ancestral domain. The turf too preserves itsemerald greenness; and it would seem to me that the field flowers springup by the sides of the simple tomb even more profusely than of old.A curve in the bank breaks the tide of the Neckar; and therefore itsstream pauses, as if to linger reluctantly, by that solitary grave, andto mourn among the rustling sedges ere it passes on. And I have thought,when I last looked upon that quiet place, when I saw the turf so fresh,and the flowers so bright of hue, that aerial hands might _indeed_tend the sod; that it was by no _imaginary_ spells that I summonedthe fairies to my tale; that in truth, and with vigils constant thoughunseen, they yet kept from all polluting footsteps, and from the harsherinfluence of the seasons, the grave of one who so loved their race;and who, in her gentle and spotless virtue claimed kindred with thebeautiful Ideal of the world. Is there one of us who has not known somebeing for whom it seemed not too wild a fantasy to indulge such dreams?
THE END.
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