Now I could weep. When she saw me weeping, she sang: Better to sit at the waters' birth,
Than a sea of waves to win;
To live in the love that floweth forth,
Than the love that cometh in.
Be thy heart a well of love, my child,
Flowing, and free, and sure;
For a cistern of love, though undefiled,
Keeps not the spirit pure.
I rose from the earth, loving the white lady as I had never loved her
before.
Then I walked up to the door of Dismay, and opened it, and went out. And
lo! I came forth upon a crowded street, where men and women went to
and fro in multitudes. I knew it well; and, turning to one hand, walked
sadly along the pavement. Suddenly I saw approaching me, a little way
off, a form well known to me (WELL-KNOWN!--alas, how weak the word!) in
the years when I thought my boyhood was left behind, and shortly before
I entered the realm of Fairy Land. Wrong and Sorrow had gone together,
hand-in-hand as it is well they do.
Unchangeably dear was that face. It lay in my heart as a child lies in
its own white bed; but I could not meet her.
"Anything but that," I said, and, turning aside, sprang up the steps
to a door, on which I fancied I saw the mystic sign. I entered--not the
mysterious cottage, but her home. I rushed wildly on, and stood by the
door of her room.
"She is out," I said, "I will see the old room once more."
I opened the door gently, and stood in a great solemn church. A
deep-toned bell, whose sounds throbbed and echoed and swam through the
empty building, struck the hour of midnight. The moon shone through
the windows of the clerestory, and enough of the ghostly radiance was
diffused through the church to let me see, walking with a stately, yet
somewhat trailing and stumbling step, down the opposite aisle, for I
stood in one of the transepts, a figure dressed in a white robe, whether
for the night, or for that longer night which lies too deep for the day,
I could not tell. Was it she? and was this her chamber? I crossed the
church, and followed. The figure stopped, seemed to ascend as it were
a high bed, and lay down. I reached the place where it lay, glimmering
white. The bed was a tomb. The light was too ghostly to see clearly, but
I passed my hand over the face and the hands and the feet, which were
all bare. They were cold--they were marble, but I knew them. It grew
dark. I turned to retrace my steps, but found, ere long, that I had
wandered into what seemed a little chapel. I groped about, seeking the
door. Everything I touched belonged to the dead. My hands fell on the
cold effigy of a knight who lay with his legs crossed and his sword
broken beside him. He lay in his noble rest, and I lived on in ignoble
strife. I felt for the left hand and a certain finger; I found there the
ring I knew: he was one of my own ancestors. I was in the chapel over
the burial-vault of my race. I called aloud: "If any of the dead are
moving here, let them take pity upon me, for I, alas! am still alive;
and let some dead woman comfort me, for I am a stranger in the land of
the dead, and see no light." A warm kiss alighted on my lips through
the dark. And I said, "The dead kiss well; I will not be afraid." And a
great hand was reached out of the dark, and grasped mine for a moment,
mightily and tenderly. I said to myself: "The veil between, though very
dark, is very thin."