Far retired in the woody recesses to the south of Jummoo, thither come
by a winding labyrinth of ways were the fugitives. Bertram, languid and
pale, lay on a couch of moss and leaves built by his friend. His gaze
rested on Atma with compassion, for he knew that his wound was of the
spirit, and he feared that without a balm the sore must be mortal. The
soul dies sometimes before we say of the man "he is dead," and at that
strange death we shudder lest it should know no awakening.
Atma sat near by, dumb and unheeding. His fingers toyed idly with a
Pearl, on which he gazed as if seeing other forms than those about him.
For many hours he was silent, rising at times to proffer food and water
to the wounded man, but oblivious of his own needs, and only
half-conscious that he was not alone. Daylight faded and stars came out
before he spoke, addressing none and looking away into silence:-"O swift-winged Time,
Bearing to what unknown estate,
What silent clime,
The burden of our hopes and fears,
The story of our smiles and tears,
And hapless fate?
Those vanished days,
Their golden light can none restore;
Those sovereign rays
That set o'er western seas to-night,
This tranquil moon that shines so bright,
Have paled before
Returning in their time, but, oh!
The golden light of long ago
Returns no more.
This little Pearl,
Of water born, shall year by year
Imprison in its tiny sphere
Those fleeting tints whose mystic strife
And shadowy whirl
Of colour seem a form of life;
Nor ever shall their sea-born home
Dissolve in foam;
But this frail build of love and trust
Will sink to dust."
The magnitude of his calamity had dulled the sharpness of each stroke,
and thus it was not of loss of love, faith and fortune that he spoke,
but of the frailty of life. This is our habit. A ship too richly
freighted goes down, and straightway the owner laments, not his own
deprivation, but that "all flesh is grass." "Vanity of vanities," he
cries, "all is vanity," and we but guess at his hurt. A mysterious
consciousness is wiser than his reason, and connects the broken current
of his life with a mighty movement which he knows afar, but cannot tell
whether it be of Time or Eternity. He who designed all, "did not He make
one?"
Our days are empty, how should they be otherwise in a world whose very
vanity is infinite?
"Imperial Sorrow loves her sway, or I had sooner broken your vigil, my
brother," said Bertram. "I perceive that the falsity of life appals your
spirit. It is true that the faint lustre of that tiny orb will long
survive these poor frames of ours; it is a fitting emblem of the
deathless tenant within."