After the Storm

The brief meeting with Mrs. Everet had stirred the memory of old

times in the heart of Mr. Emerson. With a vividness unknown for

years, Ivy Cliff and the sweetness of many life-passages there came

back to him, and set heart-pulses that he had deemed stilled for

ever beating in tumultuous waves. When the business of the day was

over he sat down in the silence of his chamber and turned his eyes

inward. He pushed aside intervening year after year, until the

long-ago past was, to his consciousness, almost as real as the

living present. What he saw moved him deeply. He grew restless, then

showed disturbance of manner. There was an effort to turn away from

the haunting fascination of this long-buried, but now exhumed

period; but the dust and scoria were removed, and it lifted, like

another Pompeii, its desolate walls and silent chambers in the clear

noon-rays of the present.

After a long but fruitless effort to bury the past again, to let the

years close over it as the waves close over a treasure-laden ship,

Mr. Emerson gave himself up to its thronging memories and let them

bear him whither they would.

In this state of mind he unlocked one of the drawers in a secretary

and took therefrom a small box or casket. Placing this on a table,

he sat down and looked at it for some minutes, as if in doubt

whether it were best for him to go further in this direction.

Whether satisfied or not, he presently laid his fingers upon the lid

of the casket and slowly opened it. It contained only a morocco

case. He touched this as if it were something precious and sacred.

For some moments after it was removed he sat holding it in his hand

and looking at the dark, blank surface, as a long-expected letter is

sometimes held before the seal is broken and the contents devoured

with impatient eagerness. At last his finger pressed the spring on

which it had been resting, and he looked upon a young, sweet face,

whose eyes gazed back into his with a living tenderness. In a little

while his hand so trembled, and his eyes grew so dim, that the face

was veiled from his sight. Closing the miniature, but still

retaining it in his hand, he leaned back in his chair and remained

motionless, with shut eyes, for a long time; then he looked at the

fair young face again, conning over every feature and expression,

until sad memories came in and veiled it again with tears.

"Folly! weakness!" he said at last, pushing the picture from him and

making a feeble effort to get back his manly self-possession. "The

past is gone for ever. The page on which its sad history is written

was closed long ago, and the book is sealed. Why unclasp the volume

and search for that dark record again?"