After the Storm

And how was it with Hartley Emerson? Had he again tried the

experiment which once so signally failed? No; he had not ventured

upon the sea whose depths held the richest vessel he had freighted

in life. Visions of loveliness had floated before him, and he had

been lured by them, a few times, out of his beaten path. But he

carried in his memory a picture that, when his eyes turned inward,

held their gaze so fixedly that all other images grew dim or

unlovely. And so, with a sigh, he would turn again to the old way

and move on as before.

But the past was irrevocable. "And shall I," he began to say to

himself, "for this one great error of my youth--this blind

mistake--pass a desolate and fruitless life?"

Oftener and oftener the question was repeated in his thoughts, until

it found answer in an emphatic No! Then he looked around with a new

interest, and went more into society. Soon one fair face came more

frequently before the eyes of his mind than any other face. He saw

it as he sat in his law-office, saw it on the page of his book as he

read in the evening, lying over the printed words and hiding from

his thoughts their meaning; saw it in dreams. The face haunted him.

How long was this since that fatal night of discord and separation?

Ten years. So long? Yes, so long. Ten weary years had made their

record upon his book of life and upon hers. Ten weary years! The

discipline of this time had not worked on either any moral

deterioration. Both were yet sound to the core, and both were

building up characters based on the broad foundations of virtue.

Steadily that face grew into a more living distinctness, haunting

his daily thoughts and nightly visions. Then new life-pulses began

to throb in his heart; new emotions to tremble over its long calm

surface; new warmth to flow, spring-like, into the indurated soil.

This face, which had begun thus to dwell with him, was the face of a

maiden, beautiful to look upon. He had met her often during a year,

and from the beginning of their acquaintance she had interested him.

If he erred not, the interest was mutual. prom all points of view he

now commenced studying her character. Having made one mistake, he

was fearful and guarded. Better go on a lonely man to the end of

life than again have his love-freighted bark buried in mid-ocean.

At last, Emerson was satisfied. He had found the sweet being whose

life could blend in eternal oneness with his own; and it only

remained for him to say to her in words what she had read as plainly

as written language in his eyes. So far as she was concerned, no

impediment existed. We will not say that she was ripe enough in soul

to wed with this man, who had passed through experiences of a kind

that always develop the character broadly and deeply. No, for such

was not the case. She was too young and inexperienced to understand

him; too narrow in her range of thought; too much a child. But

something in her beautiful, innocent, sweet young face had won his

heart; and in the weakness of passion, not in the manly strength of

a deep love, he had bowed down to a shrine at which he could never

worship and be satisfied.