“But more than loss about me clings.”

JEAN INGELOW

“No! no, I am mad to think it! I must have been dreaming! what could there have been in that talk to have such an effect as I have conjured up? She pitied Franklin! yes, she pities every one whom she thinks suffering or wronged. Dear little tender heart! of course it was the room, didn’t she say she was ill? it must have been awful; the heat and the closeness got into my head, that’s it. Bad air is as bad as whiskey on a man’s brain. What a fool I made of myself! not even answering her questions. What did she think of me? Well.”

Surrey in despair pushed away the book over which he had been bending all the afternoon, seeing for every word Francesca, and on every page an image of her face. “I’ll smoke myself into some sort of decent quiet, before I go up town, at least”; and taking his huge meerschaum, settling himself sedately, began his quieting operation with appalling energy. The soft rings, gray and delicate, taking curious and airy shapes, floated out and filled the room; but they were not soothing shapes, nor ministering spirits of comfort. They seemed filmy garments, and from their midst faces beautiful, yet faint and dim, looked at him, all of them like unto her face; but when he dropped his pipe and bent forward, the wreaths of smoke fell into lines that made the faces appear sad and bathed in tears, and the images faded from his sight.

As the last one, with its visionary arms outstretched towards him, receded from him, and disappeared, he thought, “That is Francesca’s spirit, bidding me an eternal adieu” and, with the foolish thought, in spite of its foolishness, he shivered and stretched out his arms in return.

“Of a verity,” he then cried, “if nature failed to make me an idiot, I am doing my best to consummate that end, and become one of free choice. What folly possesses me? I will dissipate it at once, I will see her in bodily shape, that will put an end to such fancies,” starting up, and beginning to pull on his gloves.

“No! no, that will not do,” pulling them off again. “She will think I am an uneasy ghost that pursues her. I must wait till this evening, but ah, what an age till evening!”

Fortunately, all ages, even lovers’ ages, have an end. The evening came; he was at the Fifth Avenue, his card sent up, his feet impatiently travelling to and fro upon the parlor carpet, his heart beating with happiness and expectancy. A shadow darkened the door; he flew to meet the substance, not a sweet face and graceful form, but a servant, big and commonplace, bringing him his own card and the announcement, “The ladies is both out, sir.”

“Impossible! take it up again.”

He said “impossible” because Francesca had that morning told him she would be at home in the evening.

“All right, sir; but it’s no use, for there’s nobody there, I know”; and he vanished for a second attempt, unsuccessful as the first. Surrey went to the office, still determinedly incredulous.

“Are Mrs. Lancaster and Miss Ercildoune not in?”

“No, sir; both out. Keys here,” showing them. “Left for one of the five-o’clock trains; rooms not given up; said they would be back in a few days.”

“From what depot did they leave?”

“Don’t know, sir. They didn’t go in the coach; had a carriage, or I could tell you.”

“But they left a note, perhaps, or some message?”

“Nothing at all, sir; not a word, nor a scrap. Can I serve you in any way further?”

“Thanks! not at all. Good evening.”

“Good evening, sir.”

That was all. What did it mean? to vanish without a sign! an engagement for the evening, and not a line left in explanation or excuse! It was not like her. There must be something wrong, some mystery. He tormented himself with a thousand fancies and fears over what, he confessed, was probably a mere accident; wisely determined to do so no longer, but did, spite of such excellent resolutions and intent.

This took place on the evening of Saturday, the 13th of April, 1861. The events of the next few days doubtless augmented his anxiety and unhappiness. Sunday followed, a day filled not with a Sabbath calm, but with the stillness felt in nature before some awful convulsion; the silence preceding earthquake, volcano, or blasting storm; a quiet broken from Maine to the Pacific slope when the next day shone, and men roused themselves from the sleep of a night to the duty of a day, from the sleep of generations, fast merging into death, at the trumpet-call to arms, a cry which sounded through every State and every household in the land, which, more powerful than the old songs of Percy and Douglas, “brought children from their play, and old men from their chimney-corners,” to emulate humanity in its strength and prime, and contest with it the opportunity to fight and die in a deathless cause.

A cry which said, “There are wrongs to be redressed already long enough endured, wrongs against the flag of the nation, against the integrity of the Union, against the life of the republic; wrongs against the cause of order, of law, of good government, against right, and justice, and liberty, against humanity and the world; not merely in the present, but in the great future, its countless ages and its generations yet unborn.”

To this cry there sounded one universal response, as men dropped their work at loom, or forge, or wheel, in counting-room, bank, and merchant’s store, in pulpit, office, or platform, and with one accord rushed to arms, to save these rights so frightfully and arrogantly assailed.

One voice that went to swell this chorus was Surrey’s; one hand quick to grasp rifle and cartridge-box, one soul eager to fling its body into the breach at this majestic call, was his. He felt to the full all the divine frenzy and passion of those first days of the war, days unequalled in the history of nations and of the world. All the elegant dilettanteism, the delicious idleness, the luxurious ease, fell away, and were as though they had never been. All the airy dreams of a renewed chivalrous age, of courage, of heroism, of sublime daring and self-sacrifice, took substance and shape, and were for him no longer visions of the night, but realities of the day.

Still, while flags waved, drums beat, and cannon thundered; while friends said, “Go!” the world stood ready to cheer him on, and fame and honor and greater things than these beckoned him to come; while he felt the whirl and excitement of it all, his heart cried ceaselessly, “Only let me see her once if but for a moment, before I go!” It was so little he asked of fate, yet too much to be granted.

In vain he went every day, and many times a day, in the brief space left him, to her hotel. In vain he once more questioned clerk and servants; in vain haunted the house of his aunt, with the dim hope that Clara might hear from her, or that in some undefined way he might learn of her whereabouts, and so accomplish his desire.

But the days passed, too slowly for the ardent young patriot, all too rapidly for the unhappy lover. Friday came. Early in the day multitudes of people began to collect in the street, growing in numbers and enthusiasm as the hours wore on, till, in the afternoon, the splendid thoroughfare of New York from Fourth Street down to the Cortlandt Ferry a stretch of miles was a solid mass of humanity; thousands and tens of thousands, doubled, quadrupled, and multiplied again.

Through the morning this crowd in squads and companies traversed the streets, collected on the corners, congregating chiefly about the armory of their pet regiment, the Seventh, on Lafayette Square, one great mass gazing unweariedly at its windows and walls, then moving on to be replaced by another of the like kind, which, having gone through the same performance, gave way in turn to yet others, eager to take its place.

So the fever burned; the excitement continued and augmented till, towards three o’clock in the afternoon, the mighty throng stood still, and waited. It was no ordinary multitude; the wealth, refinement, fashion, the greatness and goodness of a vast city were there, pressed close against its coarser and darker and homelier elements. Men and women stood alike in the crowd, dainty patrician and toil-stained laborer, all thrilled by a common emotion, all vivified if in unequal degree by the same sublime enthusiasm. Overhead, from every window and doorway and housetop, in every space and spot that could sustain one, on ropes, on staffs, in human hands, waved, and curled, and floated, flags that were in multitude like the swells of the sea; silk, and bunting, and painted calico, from the great banner spreading its folds with an indescribable majesty, to the tiny toy shaken in a baby hand. Under all this glad and gay and splendid show, the faces seemed, perhaps by contrast, not sad, but grave; not sorrowful, but intense, and luminously solemn.

Gradually the men of the Seventh marched out of their armory. Hands had been wrung, adieus said, last fond embraces and farewells given. The regiment formed in the open square, the crowd about it so dense as to seem stifling, the windows of its building rilled with the sweetest and finest and fairest of faces, the mothers, wives, and sweethearts of these young splendid fellows just ready to march away.

Surrey from his station gazed and gazed at the window where stood his mother, so well beloved, his relations and friends, many of them near and dear to him, some of them with clear, bright eyes that turned from the forms of brothers in the ranks to seek his, and linger upon it wistfully and tenderly; yet looking at all these, even his mother, he looked beyond, as though in the empty space a face would appear, eyes would meet his, arms be stretched towards him, lips whisper a fond adieu, as he, breaking from the ranks, would take her to his embrace, and speak, at the same time, his love and farewell. A fruitless longing.

Four o’clock struck over the great city, and the line moved out of the square, through Fourth Street, to Broadway. Then began a march, which whoso witnessed, though but a little child, will remember to his dying day, the story of which he will repeat to his children, and his children’s children, and, these dead, it will be read by eyes that shall shine centuries hence, as one of the most memorable scenes in the great struggle for freedom.

Hands were stretched forth to touch the cloth of their uniforms, and kissed when they were drawn back. Mothers held up their little children to gain inspiration for a lifetime. A roar of voices, continuous, unbroken, rent the skies; while, through the deafening cheers, men and women, with eyes blinded by tears, repeated, a million times, “God bless God bless and keep them!” And so, down the magnificent avenue, through the countless, shouting multitude, through the whirlwind of enthusiasm and adoration, under the glorious sweep of flags, the grand regiment moved from the beginning of its march to its close, till it was swept away towards the capital, around which were soon to roll such bloody waves of death.

Meanwhile, where was Miss Ercildoune? Surrey had thought her behavior strange the last morning they spent together. How much stranger, how unaccountable, indeed, would it have seemed to him, could he have seen her through the afternoon following!

“What is wrong with you? are you ill, Francesca?” her aunt had inquired as she came in, pulling off her hat with the air of one stifling, and throwing herself into a chair.

“Ill! O no!” with a quick laugh, “what could have made you think so? I am quite well, thank you; but I will go to my room for a little while and rest. I think I am tired.”

“Do, dear, for I want you to take a trip up the Hudson this afternoon. I have to see some English people who are living at a little village a score of miles out of town, and then I must go on to Albany before I take you home. It will be pleasant at Tanglewood over the Sabbath, unless you have some engagements to keep you here?”

“O Aunt Alice, how glad I am! I was going home this afternoon without you. I thought you would come when you were ready; but this will do just as well, anything to get out of town.”

“Anything to get out of town? why, Francesca, is it so hateful to you? ’Going home! and this do almost as well!’ what does the child mean? is she the least little bit mad? I’m afraid so. She evidently needs some fresh country air, and rest from excitement. Go, dear, and take your nap, and refresh yourself before five o’clock; that is the time we leave.”

As the door closed between them, she shook her head dubiously. ’"Going home this afternoon!’ what does that signify? Has she been quarrelling with that young lover of hers, or refusing him? I should not care to ask any questions till she herself speaks; but I fear me something is wrong.”

She would not have feared, but been certain, could she have looked then and there into the next room. She would have seen that the trouble was something deeper than she dreamed. Francesca was sitting, her hands supporting an aching head, her large eyes fixed mournfully and immovably upon something which she seemed to contemplate with a relentless earnestness, as though forcing herself to a distressing task. What was this something? An image, a shadow in the air, which she had not evoked from the empty atmosphere, but from the depths of her own nature and soul, the life and fate of a young girl. Herself! what cause, then, for mournful scrutiny? She, so young, so brilliant, so beautiful, upon whom fate had so kindly smiled, admired by many, tenderly and passionately loved by at least one heart, surely it was a delightful picture to contemplate, this life and its future; a picture to bring smiles to the lips, rather than tears to the eyes.

Though, in fact, there were none dimming hers, hot, dry eyes, full of fever and pain. What visions passed before them? what shadows of the life she inspected darkened them? what sunshine now and then fell upon it, reflecting itself in them, as she leaned forward to scan these bright spots, holding them in her gaze after other and gloomier ones had taken their places, as one leans forth from window or doorway to behold, long as possible, the vanishing form of some dear friend.

Looking at these, she cried out, “Fool! to have been so happy, and not to have known what the happiness meant, and that it was not for me, never for me! to have walked to the verge of an abyss, to have plunged in, thinking the path led to heaven. Heaven for me! ah, I forgot, I forgot. I let an unconscious bliss seize me, possess me, exclude memory and thought, lived in it as though it would endure forever.”

She got up and moved restlessly to and fro across the room, but presently came back to the seat she had abandoned, and to the inspection which, while it tortured her, she yet evidently compelled herself to pursue.

“Come,” she then said, “let us ask ourself some questions, constitute ourself confessor and penitent, and see what the result will prove.”

“Did you think fate would be more merciful to you than to others?”

“No, I thought nothing about fate.”

“Did you suppose that he loved you sufficiently to destroy ’an invincible barrier?’”

“I did not think of his love. I remembered no barrier. I only knew I was in heaven, and cared for naught beyond.”

“Do you see the barrier now?”

“I do I do.”

“Did he help you to behold it; to discover, or to remember it? did he, or did he not?”

“He did. Too true, he did.”

“Does he love you?”

“I how should I know? his looks, his acts I never thought O Willie, Willie!” her voice going out in a little gasping sob.

“Come, none of that. No sentiment, face the facts. Think over all that was said, every word. Have you done so?”

“I have, every word.”

“Well?”

“Ah, stop torturing me. Do not ask me any more questions. I am going away, flying like a coward. I will not tempt further suffering. And yet once more only once? could that do harm? Ah, God, my God, be merciful!” she cried, clasping her hands and lifting them above her bowed head. Then remembering, in the midst of her anguish, some words she had been reading that morning, she repeated them with a bitter emphasis, “What can wringing of the hands do, that which is ordained to alter?” As she did so she tore asunder her clasped hands, to drop them clinched by her side, the gesture of despair substituted for that of hope.

“It is not Heaven I am to besiege!” she exclaimed. “Will I never learn that? Its justice cannot overcome the injustice of man. My God!” she cried then, with a sudden, terrible energy, “our punishment should be light, our rest sure, our paradise safe, at the end, since we have to make now such awful atonement; since men compel us to endure the pangs of purgatory, the tortures of hell, here upon earth.”

After that she sat for a long while silent, evidently revolving a thousand thoughts of every shape and hue, judging from the myriads of lights and shadows that flitted over her face. At last, rousing herself, she perceived that she had no more time to spend in this sorrowful employment, that she must prepare to go away from him, as her heart said, forever. “Forever!” it repeated. “This, then, is the close of it all, the miserable end!” With that thought she shut her slender hand, and struck it down hard, the blood almost starting from the driven nails and bruised flesh, unheeding; though a little space thereafter she smiled, beholding it, and muttered, “So the drop of savage blood is telling at last!”

Presently she was gone. It was a pleasant spot to which her aunt took her, one of the pretty little villages scattered up and down the long sweep of the Hudson. Pleasant people they were too, these English friends of Mrs. Lancaster, who made her welcome, but did not intrude upon the solitude which they saw she desired.

Sabbath morning they all went to the little chapel, and left her, as she wished, alone. Being so alone, after hearing their adieus, she went up to her room and sat down to devote herself once again to sorrowful contemplation, not because she would, but because she must.

Poor girl! the bright spring sunshine streamed over her where she sat; not a cloud in the sky, not a dimming of mist or vapor on all the hills, and the broad river-sweep which, placid and beautiful, rolled along; the cattle far off on the brown fields rubbed their silky sides softly together, and gazed through the clear atmosphere with a lazy content, as though they saw the waving of green grass, and heard the rustle of wind in the thick boughs, so soon to bear their leafy burden. Stillness everywhere, the blessed calm that even nature seems to feel on a sunny Sabbath morn. Stillness scarcely broken by the voices, mellowed and softened ere they reached her ear, chanting in the village church, to some sweet and solemn music, words spoken in infinite tenderness long ago, and which, through all the centuries, come with healing balm to many a sore and saddened heart: “Come unto me,” the voices sang, “come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

“Ah, rest,” she murmured while she listened, “rest”; and with the repetition of the word the fever died out of her eyes, leaving them filled with such a look, more pitiful than any tears, as would have made a kind heart ache even to look at them; while her figure, alert and proud no longer, bent on the window ledge in such lonely and weary fashion that a strong arm would have involuntarily stretched out to shield it from any hardness or blow that might threaten, though the owner thereof were a stranger.

There was something indescribably appealing and pathetic in her whole look and air. Outside the window stood a slender little bird which had fluttered there, spent and worn, and did not try to flit away any further. Too early had it flown from its southern abode; too early abandoned the warm airs, the flowers and leafage, of a more hospitable region, to find its way to a northern home; too early ventured into a rigorous clime; and now, shivering, faint, near to death, drooped its wings and hung its weary head, waiting for the end of its brief life to come.

Francesca, looking up with woeful eyes, beheld it, and, opening the window, softly took it in. “Poor birdie!” she whispered, striving to warm it in her gentle hand and against her delicate cheek, “poor little wanderer! didst thou think to find thy mate, and build thy tiny nest, and be a happy mother through the long bright summer-time? Ah, my pet, what a sad close is this to all these pleasant dreams!”

The frail little creature could not eat even the bits of crumbs which she put into its mouth, nor taste a drop of water. All her soothing presses failed to bring warmth and life to the tiny frame that presently stretched itself out, dead, all its sweet songs sung, its brief, bright existence ended forever. “Ah, my little birdie, it is all over,” whispered Francesca, as she laid it softly down, and unconsciously lifted her hand to her own head with a self-pitying gesture that was sorrowful to behold.

“Like me,” she did not say; yet a penetrating eye looking at them the slight bird lying dead, its brilliant plumage already dimmed, the young girl gazing at it would perceive that alike these two were fitted for the warmth and sunshine, would perceive that both had been thwarted and defrauded of their fair inheritance, would perceive that one lay spent and dead in its early spring. What of the other?

“Aunt Alice,” said Francesca a few days after that, “can you go to New York this afternoon or to-morrow morning?”

“Certainly, dear. I purposed returning to-day or early in the morning to see the Seventh march away. Of course you would like to be there.”

“Yes.” She spoke slowly, and with seeming indifference. It was because she could scarcely control her voice to speak at all. “I should like to be there.”

Francesca knew, what her aunt did not, that Surrey was a member of the Seventh, and that he would march away with it to danger, perhaps to death.

So they were there, in a window overlooking the great avenue, Mrs. Lancaster, foreigner though she was, thrilled to the heart’s core by the magnificent pageant; Francesca straining her eyes up the long street, through the vast sea of faces, to fasten them upon just one face that she knew would presently appear in the throng.

“Ah, heavens!” cried Mrs. Lancaster, “what a sight! look at those young men; they are the choice and fine of the city. See, see! there is Hunter, and Winthrop, and Pursuivant, and Mortimer, and Shaw, and Russell, and, yes no it is, over there your friend, Surrey, himself. Did you know, Francesca?”

Francesca did not reply. Mrs. Lancaster turned to see her lying white and cold in her chair. Endurance had failed at last.