"Bell! Bell!"
"I cannot come to you. I fear to walk over the rocks again! But it is beautiful here, and I am not afraid!"
"Ah, Bell!" he spoke sadly, "that's what I dreamt. I thought that there was a gulf between us, and when I called, 'Bell! Bell!' you answered, 'I cannot come to you, brother; but you can come to me!' O, Bell – sister Bell! as you love me, come back. I tremble when you look so like an angel. Come to me, sister."
Mortimer ran out on the slender bridge of stone and led Bell back by the hand. After a little while they heard Nanny calling them to come home.
The children occupied a small chamber over the front door. A scented vine clomb all about the window, and taught the ruddy sun at morning to throw a subdued light into the room; and it broke the orange stream of sunset. At night the dreamers from their bed could see the stars hanging like fruit among its cloudy leaves.
When Bell and Mortimer came up from the sea-beach, the moonlight, breaking through this leafy lattice, made the chamber as that of Abon Ben Adhem – "like a lily in bloom." Nanny brought a lamp, and kissed them good-night.
"O, we don't want a lamp all this moon!" cried Bell.
The boy sat half undressed at the window. "Bell loves moonlight like a fairy," he said.
Bell's robe fell to her knees in snowy folds, and she stood like a petite Venus rising from the froth. Then brother and sister braided their voices in a simple prayer to Our Father in Heaven. They prayed for kind old Nanny, and for one on the wide sea.
"When will father come home?" asked Bell, for the hundredth time that day.
"It will not be long now. When the boughs of the cherry trees are an inch deep with ice, and the logs crackle in the fire-place – then he will come. Let us go to sleep, and dream of him."
And thus, hand in hand, the two went in to Dream-land —
The world of Sleep,
The beautiful old World!
The dreamy Palestine of pilgrim Thought!
The Lotus Garden, where the soul may lie
Lost in elysium, while the music moan
Of some unearthly river, faintly caught,
Seems like the whispering of Angels, blown
Upon æolian harp-strings! And we change
Into a seeming something that is not!
II
Ah, yes! with joy the April rain Thrills nature's breast; but mine with pain Sigheth: "He will not come again!"
II.
THE DEAD HOPE
Time's Changes – Fall-down Castles – Little Bell Waiting – When will Father Come Home? – Little Bell Weary – What the Sea said – Never more.
Longfellow beautifully asks in Hyperion, "What is Time, but the shadow of the hour-hand on a dial-plate?"
The flowers of the earth and the hearts of men are dial-plates. The shadows coming and going on them are the hour-hands; when a flower fades, or a heart ceases to beat, it is only a weight run down. The whole universe is but one immense time-piece, throbbing with innumerable wheels, heavy with weights, and wearing itself away! Desire is a restless pendulum, one end linked to the heart, and the other pointing downward!
A year had added another link to that chain which stretches through eternity. A year! Battles lost and won: nations in mourning for their dead: ships gone down at sea; and new paths worn to graveyards!
O, for the castles that blow down in a year!
But time fell gently on the inmates of the Old House. The trees and vines were a little larger; and winter had somewhat browned the gables. Bell was paler and more beautiful, and Mortimer was still the same dreamer.
There was a question which haunted the Old House. It was heard in the garden, at "the round window," and on the stair.
"When will father come home?"
The months flew away, like carrier doves, with memories beneath their wings.
"When will father come home?"
And the question was asked again and again, till the little lips and heart of Bell grew weary. Then she folded her hands, and said:
"He will never come!"
Her blue eyes became more dreamy, and her slight form – so very slight – glided about the house. She would listen to the sea. Once she said, "Never more!" and the sea repeated it with a human voice. In the still night she asked, —
"When will father come home?"
"Never more," said the sea – and she heard it through the open window – "Never more!"
She waited, and the months went by.
Was the child Bell the only one in this world waiting?
Who has not some hope at sea? Who has not waited, and watched, and grown weary?
Who has not a question in his heart, to which a low spirit-voice replies:
"Never more!"
III
I saw our little Gertrude die: She left off breathing, and no more I smoothed the pillow beneath her head. She was more beautiful than before, Like violets faded were her eyes; By this we knew that she was dead! Through the open window looked the skies Into the chamber where she lay, And the wind was like the sound of wings, As if Angels came to bear her away.
III.
SOUL-LAND
Autumn and Winter – By the Fireside – Where little Bell is going – Nanny sings about Cloe – Bell reads a Poem – The flight of an Angel – The Funeral – The good Parson – The two Grave-stones.
It was autumn. The wind, with its chilly fingers, picked off the sere leaves, and made mounds of them in the garden walks. The boom of the sea was heavier, and the pale moon fell oftener on stormy waves than in the summer months. Change and decay had come over the face of Earth even as they come over the features of one dead. In woods and hollow places vines lay rotting, and venturesome buds that dared to bloom on the hem of winter; and the winds made wail over the graves of last year's flowers.
Then Winter came – Winter, with its beard of snow – Winter, with its frosty breath and icy fingers, turning everything to pearl. The wind whistled odd tunes down the chimney; the plum-tree brushed against the house, and the hail played a merry tattoo on the window-glass. How the logs blazed in the sitting room!
Bell did not leave her room now.
Her fairy foot-steps were never heard tripping, nor her voice vibrating through the entry in some sweet song. She scarcely ever looked out at the window – all was dreary there; besides, she fancied that the wind "looked at her." It was in her armchair by the antique fire-place that she was most comfortable. She never wearied of watching the pictured tiles; and one, representing the infant Christ in the manger, was her favorite. There she sat from sunny morn until shadowy twilight, with her delicate hands crossed on her lap, while Mortimer read to her. Sometimes she would fix her large, thoughtful eyes on the fantastic grouping of the embers at her feet, and then she did