The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 10, August, 1858

"Well, I felt now that it was all over. The next day I secured my passage in the steamer in which my friends were to sail. I took pains that Margaret should hear of that, too. Then came the preparations for travel,–arranging affairs, writing letters, providing myself with a compact and comfortable outfit. Europe was in prospect,–Paris, Switzerland, Italy, lands to which my dreams had long since gone before me, and to which I now turned my eyes with reawakening aspirations. A new glory arose upon my life, in the light of which Margaret became a fading star. It was so much easier than I had thought, to give her up, to part from her! I found that I could forget her, in the excitement of a fresh and novel experience; while she–could she forget me? When lovers part, happy is he who goes! alas for the one that is left behind!

"One day, when I was busy with the books which I was to take with me, a small package was handed in. I need not tell you that I experienced a thrill, when I saw Margaret's handwriting upon the wrapper. I tore it open,–and what think you I found? My glove! Nothing else. I smiled bitterly, to see how neatly she had mended it; then I sighed; then I said, 'It is finished!' and tossed the glove disdainfully into my trunk.

"On the day before that fixed for the sailing of the steamer, I made farewell calls upon many of my friends,–among others, upon Margaret. But, through the perversity of pride and will, I did not go alone,–I took with me Joseph, a mutual acquaintance, who was to be my compagnon de voyage. I felt some misgivings, to see how Margaret had changed; she was so softened, and so pale!

"The interview was a painful one, and I cut it short. As we were going out, she gently detained me, and said,–

"'Did you receive–your glove?'

"'Oh, yes,' I said, and thanked her for mending it.

"'And is this all–all you have to say?' she asked.

"'I have nothing more to say–except good-bye.'

"She held my hand. 'Nothing else?'

"'No,–it is useless to talk of the past, Margaret; and the future–may you be happy!–Good-bye!'

"I thought she would speak; I could not believe she would let me go; but she did! I bore up well, until night. Then came a revulsion. I walked three times past the house, wofully tempted, my love and my will at cruel warfare; but I did not go in. At midnight I saw the light in her room extinguished; I knew she had retired, but whether to sleep, or weep, or pray–how could I tell? I went home. I did not close my eyes that night. I was glad to see the morning come, after such a night!

"The steamer was to sail at ten. The bustle of embarkation; strange scenes and strange faces; parting from friends; the ringing of the bell; last adieus,–some, who were to go with us, hurrying aboard, others, who were to stay behind, as hastily going ashore; the withdrawal of the plank,–sad sight to many eyes! casting off the lines, the steamer swinging heavily around, the rushing, irregular motion of the great, slow paddles; the waving of handkerchiefs from the decks, and the responsive signals from the crowd lining the wharf; off at last,–the faces of friends, the crowd, the piers, and, lastly, the city itself, fading from sight; the dash of spray, the freshening breeze, the novel sight of our little world detaching itself and floating away; the feeling that America was past, and Europe was next;–all this filled my mind with animation and excitement, which shut out thoughts of Margaret. Could I have looked with clairvoyant vision, and beheld her then, locked in her chamber, should I have been so happy? Oh, what fools vanity and pride make of us! Even then, with my heart high-strung with hope and courage, had I known the truth, I should have abandoned my friends, the voyage, and Europe, and returned in the pilot's boat, to find something more precious than all the continents and countries of the globe, in the love of that heart which I was carelessly flinging away."

Here Westwood took breath. The sun was now almost set. The prairie was still and cool; the heavy dews were beginning to fall; the shadows of the green and flowered undulations filled the hollows, like a rising tide; the headland, seen at first so far and small, was growing gradually large and near; and the horses moved at a quicker pace. Westwood lighted his cigar, drew a few whiffs, and proceeded.

"We had a voyage of eleven days. But to me an immense amount of experience was crowded into that brief period. The fine exhilaration of the start,–the breeze gradually increasing to a gale; then horrible sea-sickness, home-sickness, love-sickness; after which, the weather which sailors love, games, gayety, and flirtation. There is no such social freedom to be enjoyed anywhere as on board an ocean steamer. The breaking-up of old associations, the opening of a fresh existence, the necessity of new relationships,–this fuses the crust of conventionality, quickens the springs of life, and renders character sympathetic and fluent. The past is easily put away; we become plastic to new influences; we are delighted at the discovery of unexpected affinities, and astonished to find in ourselves so much wit, eloquence, and fine susceptibility, which we did not before dream we possessed.

"This freedom is especially provocative of flirtation. We see each fair brow touched with a halo whose colors are the reflection of our own beautiful dreams. Loveliness is ten-fold more lovely, bathed in this atmosphere of romance; and manhood is invested with ideal graces. The love within us rushes, with swift, sweet heart-beats, to meet the love responsive in some other. Don't think I am now artfully preparing your mind to excuse what I am about to confess. Take these things into consideration, if you will; then think as you please of the weakness and wild impulse with which I fell in love with–

"We will call her Flora. The most superb, captivating creature that ever ensnared the hearts of the sons of Adam. A fine olive complexion; magnificent dark auburn hair; eyes full of fire and softness; lips that could pout or smile with incomparable fascination; a figure of surprising symmetry, just voluptuous enough. But, after all, her great power lay in her freedom from all affectation and conventionality,–in her spontaneity, her free, sparkling, and vivacious manners. She was the most daring and dazzling of women, without ever appearing immodest or repulsive. She walked with such proud, secure steps over the commonly accepted barriers of social intercourse, that even those who blamed her and pretended to be shocked were compelled to admire. She was the belle, the Juno, of the saloon, the supreme ornament of the upper deck. Just twenty,–not without wit and culture,–full of poetry and enthusiasm. Do you blame me?"

"Not a whit," I said; "but for Margaret"–

"Ah, Margaret!" said Westwood, with a sigh. "But, you see, I had given her up. And when one love is lost, there sink such awful chasms into the soul, that, though they cannot be filled, we must at least bridge them over with a new affection. The number of marriages built in this way, upon false foundations of hollowness and despair, is incomputable. We talk of jilted lovers and disappointed girls marrying 'out of spite.' No doubt, such petty feeling hurries forward many premature matches. But it is the heart, left shaken, unsupported, wretchedly sinking, which reaches out its feelers for sympathy, catches at the first penetrable point, and clings like a helpless vine to the sunny-sided wall of the nearest consolation. If you wish to marry a girl and can't, and are weak enough to desire her still, this is what you should do: get some capable man to jilt her. Then seize your chance. All the affections which have gone out to him, unmet, ready to droop, quivering with the painful, hungry instinct to grasp some object, may possibly lay hold of you. Let the world sneer; but God pity such natures, which lack the faith and fortitude to live and die true to their best love!

"Out of my own mouth do I condemn myself? Very well, I condemn myself; peccavi! I If I had ever loved Margaret, then I did not love Flora. The same heart cannot find its counterpart indifferently in two such opposites. What charmed me in one was her purity, softness, and depth of soul. What fascinated me in the other was her bloom, beauty, and passion. Which was the true sympathy?

"I did not stop to ask that question when it was most important that it should be seriously considered. I rushed into the crowd of competitors for Flora's smiles, and distanced them all. I was pleased and proud that she took no pains to conceal her preference for me. We played chess; we read poetry out of the same book; we ate at the same table; we sat and watched the sea together, for hours, in those clear, bright days; we promenaded the deck at sunset, her hand upon my arm, her lips forever turning up tenderly towards me, her eyes pouring their passion into me. Then those glorious nights, when the ocean was a vast, wild, fluctuating stream, flashing and sparkling about the ship, spanned with a quivering bridge of splendor on one side, and rolling off into awful darkness and mystery, on the other; when the moon seemed swinging among the shrouds like a ball of white fire; when the few ships went by like silent ghosts; and Flora and I, in a long trance of happiness, kept the deck, heedless of the throng of promenaders, forgetful of the past, reckless of the future, aware only of our own romance, and the richness of the present hour.

"Joseph, my travelling-companion, looked on, and wrote letters. He showed me one of these, addressed to a friend of Margaret's. In it he extolled Flora's beauty, piquancy, and supremacy; related how she made all the women jealous and all the men mad; and hinted at my triumph. I knew that that letter would meet Margaret's eyes, and was vain enough to be pleased.

"At last, one morning, at daybreak, I went on deck, and saw the shores of England. Only a few days before, we had left America behind us, brown and leafless, just emerging from the long gloom of winter; and now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, sloops, lighters, pilot-boats, bounding over the waves, meeting, tacking, plunging, swaying gracefully under the full-swelling canvas, presented a picture of wonderful animation; and the mingling hues of sunshine and mist hung over all. I paced the deck, solemnly joyful, swift thoughts pulsing through me of a dim far-off Margaret, of a near radiant Flora, of hope and happiness superior to fate. It was one of those times when the excited soul transfigures the world, and we marvel how we could ever succumb to a transient sorrow while the whole universe blooms, and an infinite future waits to open for us its doors of wonder and joy.

"In this state of mind I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad, and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her better than mirth.

"'So,' she sighed, 'all our little romances come to an end!'

"'Not so,' I said; 'or if one romance ends, it is to give place to another, still truer and sweeter. Our lives may be all a succession of romances, if we will make them so. I think now I will never doubt the future; for I find, that, when I have given up my dearest hopes, my best-beloved friends, and accepted the gloomy belief that all life besides is barren,–then comes some new experience, filling my empty cup with a still more delicious wine.'

"'Don't vex me with your philosophy!' said Flora. 'I don't know anything about it. All I know is this present,–this sky, this earth, this sea, and the joy between, which I can't give up quite so easily as you can, with your beautiful theory, that something better awaits you.'

"'I have told you,' I replied,–for I had been quite frank with her,–'how I left America,–what a blank life was to me then; and did I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest happiness which I have ever yet known? Ought not this to give me faith in the divinity that shapes our ends?'

"'And so,' she answered, 'when I have lost you, I shall have the satisfaction of thinking that you are enjoying some still more exquisite consolation for the slight pangs you may have felt at parting from me! Your philosophy will make it easy for you to say, "Good-bye! it was a pretty romance; I go to find prettier ones still"; and then forget me altogether!'

"'And you,' I said, 'will that be easy for you?'

"'Yes,' she cried, with spirit,–'anything is easy to a proud, impetuous woman, who finds that the brief romance of a ten-days' acquaintance has already become tiresome to the second party. I am glad I have enjoyed what I have; that is so much gain, of which you cannot rob me; and now I can say good-bye as coolly as you, or I can die of shame, or I can at once walk over this single rail into the water, and quench this little candle, and so an end!'

"She sprang upon a bench, and, I swear to you, I thought she was going down! I was so exalted by this passionate demonstration, that I should certainly have gone over with her, and felt perfectly content to die in her arms,–at least, until I began to realize what a very disagreeable bath we had chosen to drown in.

"I drew her away; I walked up and down with that superb creature panting and palpitating almost upon my heart; I poured into her ear I know not what extravagant vows; and before the slow-handed sailors had fastened their cable to the buoy in the channel, we had knotted a more subtile and difficult noose, not to be so easily undone!

"Now see what strange, variable fools we are! Months of tender intercourse had failed to bring about anything like a positive engagement between Margaret and myself; and here behold me irrevocably pledged to Flora, after a brief ten-days' acquaintance!

"Six mortal hours were exhausted in making the steamer fast,–in sending off her Majesty's mails, of which the cockney speaks with a tone of reverence altogether disgusting to us free-minded Yankees,–and in entertaining the custom-house inspectors, who paid a long and tedious visit to the saloon and our luggage. Then we were suffered to land, and enter the noisy, solid streets of Liverpool, amid the donkeys and beggars and quaint scenes which strike the American so oddly upon a first visit. All this delay, the weariness and impatience, the contrast between the morning and the hard, grim reality of mid-day, brought me down from my elevation. I felt alarmed to think of what had passed. I seemed to have been doing some wild, unadvised act in a fit of intoxication. Margaret came up before me, sad, silent, reproachful; and as I gazed upon Flora's bedimmed face, I wondered how I had been so charmed.

"We took the first train for London, where we arrived at midnight. Two weeks in that vast Babel,–then, ho! for Paris! Twelve hours by rail and steamer carried us out of John Bull's dominions into the brilliant metropolis of his French neighbor. Joseph accompanied us, and wrote letters home, filled with gossip which I knew, or hoped, would make Margaret writhe. I had not found it so easy to forget her as I had supposed it would be. Flora's power over me was sovereign; but when I was weary of the dazzle and whirl of the life she led me,–when I looked into the depths of my heart, and saw what the thin film of passion and pleasure concealed,–in those serious moments which would come, and my soul put stern questions to me,–then, Sir,–then–Margaret had her revenge.

"A month, crowded and glittering with novelty and incident, preceded our departure for Switzerland. I accompanied Flora's party; Joseph remained behind. We left Paris about the middle of June, and returned in September. I have no words to speak of that era in my life. I saw, enjoyed, suffered, learned so much! Flora was always glad, magnificent, irresistible. But, as I knew her longer, my moments of misgiving became more frequent and profound. If I had aspired to nothing higher than a life of sensuous delights, she would have been all I could wish. But–

"We were to spend the winter in Italy. Meanwhile, we had another month in Paris. Here I had found Joseph again, who troubled me a good deal with certain rumors he had received concerning Margaret. According to these, she had been in feeble health ever since we left, and her increasing delicacy was beginning to alarm her friends. 'But,' added another of Joseph's correspondents, 'don't let Westwood flatter himself that he is the cause, for she is cured of him; and there is talk of an engagement between her and a handsome young clergyman, who is both eloquent and fascinating.'

"This bit of gossip made me very bitter and angry. 'Forget me so soon?' I said; 'and receive the attentions of another man?' You see how consistent I was, to condemn her for the very fault I had myself been so eager to commit!

"Well, the round of rides, excursions, soirées, visits to the operas and theatres, walks on the Boulevards, and in the galleries of the Louvre, ended at last. The evening before we were to set out for the South of France, I was at my lodgings, unpacking and repacking the luggage which I had left in Joseph's care during my absence among the Alps; I was melancholy, dissatisfied with the dissipations which had exhausted my time and energies, and thinking of Margaret. I had not preserved a single memento of her; and now I wished I had one,–if only a withered leaf, or a line of her writing. In this mood, I chanced to cast my eye upon a stray glove, in the bottom of my trunk. I snatched at it eagerly, and, in the impulse of the moment,–before I reflected that I was wronging Flora,–pressed it to my lips. Yes, I found the place where it had been mended, the spot Margaret's fingers had touched, and gave it a kiss for every stitch. Then, incensed at myself, I flung it from me, and hurried from the room. I walked towards the Place de la Concorde, where the brilliant lamps burned like a constellation. I strolled through the Elysian Fields, and watched the lights of the carriages swarming like fire-flies up the long avenue; stopped by the concert gardens, and listened to the glorified girls singing under rosy and golden pavilions the last songs of the season; wandered about the fountains,–by the gardens of the Tuileries, where the trees stood so shadowy and still, and the statues gleamed so pale,–along the quays of the Seine, where the waves rolled so dark below,–trying to settle my thoughts, to master myself, to put Margaret from me.

"Weary at length, I returned to my chamber, seated myself composedly, and looked down at the glove which lay where I had thrown it, upon the polished floor. Mechanically I stooped and took up a bit of folded paper. It was written upon,–I unrolled it, and read. It was as if I had opened the record of doom! Had the apparition of Margaret herself risen suddenly before me, I could not have been more astounded. It was a note from her,–and such a note!–full of love, suffering, and humility,–poured out of a heart so deep and tender and true, that the shallowness of my own seemed utterly contemptible, in comparison with it. I cannot tell you what was written, but it was more than even my most cruel and exacting pride could have asked. It was what would once have made me wild with joy,–now it almost maddened me with despair. I, who had often talked fine philosophy to others, had not a grain of that article left to physic my own malady. But one course seemed plain before me, and that was, to go quietly and drown myself in the Seine, which I had seen flowing so swift and dark under the bridges, an hour ago, when I stood and mused upon the tragical corpses its solemn flood had swallowed.

"I am a little given to superstition, and the mystery of the note excited me. I have no doubt but there was some subtile connection between it and the near presence of Margaret's spirit, of which I had that night been conscious. But the note had reached me by no supernatural method, as I was at first half inclined to believe. It was, probably, the touch, the atmosphere, the ineffably fine influence which surrounded it, which had penetrated my unconscious perceptions, and brought her near. The paper, the glove, were full of Margaret,–full of something besides what we vaguely call mental associations,–full of emanations of the very love and suffering which she had breathed into the writing.

"How the note came there upon the floor was a riddle which I was too much bewildered to explain by any natural means. Joseph, who burst in upon me, in my extremity of pain and difficulty, solved it at once. It had fallen out of the glove, where it had lain folded, silent, unnoticed, during all this intervening period of folly and vexation of soul. Margaret had done her duty, in time; I had only myself to blame for the tangle in which I now found myself. I was thinking of Flora, upon the deck of the steamship, when, in a moment of chagrin, she had been so near throwing herself over; wondering to what fate her passion and impetuosity would hurry her now, if she knew; cursing myself for my weakness and perfidy; while Joseph kept asking me what I intended to do.

"'Do? do?' I said, furiously,–'I shall kill you, that is what I shall do, if you drive me mad with questions which neither angels nor fiends can answer!'

"'I know what you will do,' said Joseph; 'you will go home and marry Margaret.'

"You can have no conception of the effect of these words,–Go home and marry Margaret. I shook as I have seen men shake with the ague. All that might have been,–what might be still,–the happiness cast away, and perhaps yet within my reach,–the temptation of the Devil, who appealed to my cowardice, to fly from Flora, break my vows, risk my honor and her life, for Margaret,–all this rushed through me tumultuously. At length I said,–

"'No, Joseph; I shall do no such thing. I can never be worthy of Margaret; it will be only by fasting and prayer that I can make myself worthy of Flora.'

"'Will you start for Italy in the morning?' he asked, pitilessly.

"'For Italy in the morning?' I groaned. Meet Flora, travel with her, play the hypocrite, with smiles on my lips and hell in my heart,–or thunderstrike her at once with the truth;–what was I to do? To some men the question would, perhaps, have presented few difficulties. But for me, Sir, who am not quite devoid of conscience, whatever you may think,–let me tell you, I'd rather hang by sharp hooks over a roasting fire than be again suspended as I was betwixt two such alternatives, and feel the torture of both!

"Having driven Joseph away, I locked myself into my room, and suffered the torments of the damned in as quiet a manner as possible, until morning. Then Joseph returned, and looked at me with dismay.

"'For Heaven's sake!' he said, 'you ought not to let this thing kill you,–and it will, if you keep on.'