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.