ONE WINTER NIGHT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1842, 26 April 1884, Page 5 (Supplement)

ONE WINTER NIGHT.

BY G. E. SIMS.

The poet sat alone in his study one winter night. The fire burned brightly on the tiled hearth, and flung its ruddy glare upon the big brass dogs. The crimson curtains, olosely drawn, deadened the sound of the wind without that howled among the leafless trees. The light of a lamp fell softly on the floor, just touching gently the well-beloved books that filled the quaint, old-fashioned shelves, but leaving undisturbed the shadowy land above where the poet loved to gaze. The shadowy land he peopled with the children of his dreams. There where no light fell dwelt the spirits who sang to him and comforted him, who spoke to him of a beautiful kingdom in the realms of fancy, and who whispered to his soul the noble thoughts which ho will clothe in melodious language and sing again to the outer world. But to-night, as he sits by the glowing embers, and gazes up where the soft shadows fall, he sees in the semi-darkness no angel forms and he hears no spirit voices. The shadow-land is peopled only with memories of the past. Ho sees himself there, a young, lighthearted singer, full of the glow and enthusiasm of youth, radiant with the happiness of a holy love. And she is there too. He kneels beside her, her hand is clasped in his, he pours forth his passionate love, and she bends down and kisses him, and whispers that she loves him too. The shadows grow darker as the poet gazes, the fair face of the girl disappears, and he can see only his own. It is a demon's face that glares upon him now. The eyes are fierce with jealousy and rage, the lips that sang soft songs of love now rave and blaspheme, and pour forth the burning words of scorn and passionate grief. j Never again will the fair face lie against ' 1 his ; never more will the tender eyes fling their rays of love into his soul, and set his ! pulses astir to the sweet music as of yore. J He has cast her from him, spurned her, and will see her no mare. All is to be broken off i for ever between them. She swears that she loves him still, that he is mad and jealous, but that she will bear with him, and endure even curses and blows for his sake, that she will be his slave and his wife ; she tells him that she worships him for his genius and loves him for himself. She throws her arms about him with a wild, despairing cry, but he flings her from him, and flies, to see her face no more. The years have rolled on since then, and they have never met. The unknown singer's name is on every tongue now. Fame has come to him, and men hang on each utterance of his lips. Gold is his, and luxury and all that heart could crave, save one thing only — Love. It is all dead sea fruit ; the fame that he pined for once is a bauble that he cares no longer for. It is a crown of heavy gold upon a brow that aches. He would give name, fame, and wealth tonight for one small glance of those loving eyes. He is friendless and alone. He shuns the world and dwells ever with his melancholy thoughts. He lives alone with the ghostly inhabitants of his shadow-land. He would give the world now to undo the past. He knows the value of that which he flung away. He can see her to-night in the big armchair opposite to him. Her girlish face beams on him with the mellow grace of matronhood. His lonely study is peopled with bright young faces, and little arms are flung about his neck, and baby kisses fall upon his cheek. She reaches her hand across and clasps his. Plis chill thin fingers glow with the pressure. His dull, sluggish blood is quickened, and flows through his veins once more as the blood of a man should flow. He rise 3 from his chair and paces the room. The sound of his footfall on the carpet startles him from his dream. He is awake once more to the ghostly silence of the place, to the unutterable loneliness of his lot. Let him accept his fate. Let him gird at the world, and revile all things human and divine. That which has marred his life has envenomed his soul and poisoned the source of his inspiration. Let him sing the songs of the Devil. He has an angel's voice, and the people will listen with rapture, and fling gold to the singer, and crown him with bays. He has cast the vision from him. He has turned from the shadow-land and will not peer into it again. He turns up the lamp and stirs the fire, and so drives the shadows away. He will go forth and wander for a while, in the open country that lies around him. The fierce wind will bite his cheek, the hard white snow will crush and crack beneath his feet, and in the spectacle of the desolation around him his soul will find comfort. He draws baok the curtains and throws open the shutters to gaze out into the night. He flings up the window, and the wild northeast wind rushes in and tears madly about. It hurls the papers in the air. A sudden gust puts out the light of the lamp, and then, seizing the slender frame, dashes it to the ground with a crasli. The room is lit now only with the dull red glow of the embers of the fire. The fury of the storm is attuned to the spirit of the man who gazes upon it. The fierce blast cools his brow, and the icy fingers of the night wind toy with the tangled masses of his hair. He revels in the wild scene, and shouts aloud defiance to the elements. The blasphemous words of the scoffer float afar. The wind takes up the echo of his song and carries it away, sullying the purity of snow-clad fields as it passes over them with its unholy burden. Higher and higher rises the song of the poet, and his face, stung and bitten by the wind, grows red, and his pulse is quickened by the roar and riot of the element without. Suddenly a voice answers his. As the eono of his wild song dies away, the sound of a long low wail is borne past him on the breeze. He vaults lightly out of the window into the garden, and follows the course of the sound. He shouts, and again the wail answers him. The moon is up, and he can see every object in the snow-clad country around him. Again he shouts, and again the answering wail floats baok. It comes from the lane that skirts his garden. He goes out at the gate and looks up and down. He sees only a long line of powdered hedge and a straight white stretch of snow, marvellously beautiful in the wan light of the moon. Have his senses deoeived him ? It is but some fantastic trick of the mischievous wind. He listens for a sound, and do sound cornea. He shouts, but this time there is no

He is far away from any human habitation. He has isolated himself from his [ fellew-men, and chosen his home for its loneliness. The old housekeeper who lives with him has gone into the village, and will not be back iox an hour. It is half a mile to the nearest farmhouse. What shall he do ? The woman lies a dead weight in his arms. She is closely veiled, and he cannot see if she i 3 young or old. He does not stop to think who or what she is. He fears that she is ! dying, and if she is to be saved she must be got into the warmth at once. He staggers up the garden path with her and finds the door locked. The housekeeper has the key with her. He forgot that he had vaulted out the window. He makes for it at once, and slips his burden gently over the sill into the room. Then he leaps after her, and drags her up towards the fire. He lays her full length by it while he looks about for a light. He remembers that the wind has blown the lamp over and smashed it. The fire is so low now that it casts no light, and he has to grope about on his hands and knees for the remains of the shattered lamp. He finds it at last, and brings it towards the fire. It is only the globe that is broken, the stand and the wick are there. Without thinking he thrusts it into the embers to obtain a light. There is a terrific explosion ; he feels a sharp pain between the eyes, and reeling back falls senseless to the ground. ***** Days and nights of eternal darkness, halfformed visions floating across a wandering mind, a strange sense ot something buzzing in the ears, of ill-defined sounds that come close and then float away, and gradually there comes a dawning knowledge that he is lying in a darkened room, with his eyes covered and bandages about his head. Slowly a dim sense of the past returns to the sufferer. He knows that he is lying somewhere in the dark, that for mnny days he must have been senseless. He knows that he is in pain, and that he must have been dangerously ill. Still he asks no questions. He cannot speak. He does not feel that he has the power to break the long silence. He feels drowsy still, though his senses have half returned, but the power of hia will has not come yet. His brain is busy, but it does not control hia actions. He mumbles and mutters to himself, and when he hears the footstep of the old housekeeper he thinks he will say Bornething, but the words die unuttered on his lips. It is a long lethargy from which he seema powerless to arouse himself, But as the days go oi) the feeling wears off. He begins to think o!? the past and to speculate on the future. He doets more than answer the doctor in monosyllables. .He aaks him when he shall be able to have the bandages off — when he shall be able to see. "You are better, my friend," says the doctor ; " you are beginning to talk coherently again; your senses have been wandering. We shall soon make a cure of you now.' He pursues his question. The doctor bids him wait a little. He must not talk much yet. He will tell him when he will be well — in a day or two. "He is much better," says the doctor aloud as he leaves the room, to someone outside the door. " You may let him know now if you like." A lady comes softly into the room, and sits down beside the sick man's couch, motioning the housekeeper to take no notice of her. She sits quite still and watches him. Presently he stretches out his hand, and accidentally touches her dress. She springs up like a startled fawn and hurries from the room. *• " Who was that?" asks the sufferer. "It was the lady you saved, sir; she's stayed here and nursed you." " Ah, I remember ! Of course. I saved her that night— the night of the acoident." " Yes, and when I came home she told me how she'd came to herself, and found you senseless and bleeding, and she stayed by you while I went off for the doctor. Ah, it's a mercy you weren't killed. You were frighti fully cut." " But the lady 1 Did she tell you how she came to be lying in the snow ?" " No, she hasn't told me that. I've been glad for her stay," adds the old woman, half apologetically, " for I never could have nursed j you as she has done," | He remembers all the circumstances now, and wants to know more. He sends the housekeeper with a message to the lady. He would like to see her. She sends word back that she has the doctor's orders that he is not to talk any more that day. To-morrow she will come. That evening he has a strange fancy. He wants to be taken down into the study and sit by the fire as he sat on the night the accident happened. Thehousekeeper helps him down. Through the thick bandages he can see nothing, but seated in the old armchair he feels the warm glow of the fire, and he knows that the lamplight is falling on the old bookshelves and the shadows are up above. Into the shadows once more in fancy he peers, and sees again the woman's face that he saw that night. Once more imagination brings the old scene before him, and once more he thinks of what might have been. He leans back and pictures to himself the ! happy home and the cosy fireside, with the one and only woman that he ever loved seated opposite to him on such a night as this. He thinks if this had been what a different life would have been his, and over the shattered hope he heaves a sigh. The sigh is echoed. He hears it distinctly. He calls the housekeeper by name. No answer. Yet he distinctly hears a sigh. Someone must be in the room unknown to him. ' He wonders whether he can see if he raises the bandage. Great heavens 1 perhaps he is blind. He has never thought of that. He will know the worst at once. He seizes the bandages and thrusts them up from his eyes. The light hah' blinds him ; for a minute all is bleared and misty. Then through the haze the old familiar objects dawn upon him. No, he is not blind, but he is dreaming. It must be a dream. There, opposite to him, in the amiohair, sits the woman of his vision — the woman he loved in the long ago. He rushes towards her and falls at her feet. " Marion 1" he cries, " speak to me 1 Say that you are real ; that you will not mock I my touch and melt and vanish, as you do in the shadow land up yonder ! Marion, speak tome?" She speaks no word, but lays her head gently on hia shoulder and sobs. He forgets all the past, and asks no question of her now. Only he clasps her closely, and begs her not to leave him. " Marion," | he wails, " if you knew how I have suffered for my mad folly you would pity me. Let us bury the dead past and live only for the future I Oh, Marion, my d&fhng, be my wife! Heaven sent you here — I know not how. You will never leave me again, will you?" \ "Never.? The word is whispered in his ear, and sounds like gentle music stealing into his soul and hushing his troubka like tired children to sleep. g^Spf&LMarion disengages herself from his jsOTujngldraws the bandage down over his |HBHb4 "Darling," she whispers, " if you: |^^^^Bo£( tobr;soqn yon may be 'blincfli

Promise me never to raise it again until after we are married.) It is a strange request to make, but Marion has her reasons. " Let me look at the glass once, and then I'll keep it down again." She gives a little cry of terror, and turns it off with a laugh. " You vain darling ! " she says ; " not on any account. Keep the bandage unmoved. The doctor says you may loose your eyesight if you don't." Later on she explained to him how for years she had borne her lot without a murmur. How heartbroken she had lived on, cherishing the hope that he would come and say it was all a mistake, and they might yet be happy ; and how she had gloried in his rising fame, and loved him as passionately and devotedly as ever. Then sbe told him how on the night he found her a strange fancy had come upon her to wander down into the country and look at the house where he lived, and how she had thought perhaps she might even see him from a distance. She had been looking across the lane at the lighted window where she knew he sat, when he had flung the window up, and, fearing he would see her, she had darted across the frosty road, slipped, dislocated her ancle, and fainted with the pain. The noise of the explosion had aroused her, and she had found him bleeding and senseless; and thea she told him how with the old housekeeper she had sat night after night and day after day by his side and nursed him, and how in his delirium he had raved of her, and she knew that he loved her still. * * * * It was a quiet wedding one early morning at the little village church. Leaning on the doctor's arm, the blind man, as he laughingly called himself, was led to the alter. Marion's mother was the only invited guest. When they got home again and were alone, Marion went over to her husband and took his hand gently. "My darling," she said, " I want you to prepare yourself for a great shock. I can help you to bear it now, so you may know it." Gently she took the bandage from his eyea and bade him look in the glass. He started back with a cry of horror. The metal of the lamp had cut the upper part of his face and the paraffin had blurred his features. The disfigurement was terrible. " Marion," he cried, " why did you not let me know this before ? " " Because, my darling, if I had you would not have let me marry you. It is too late now for you to repent," she added laughing ; " the deed is done." She flung her arms round his neok and kissed his cheek, and hid the poor disfigured face upon her hosom. " You ara my own at last," she murmured, " and only .death can part us. Sing jonx songs, 0 poet, now, and let wondering worl<? listen to your voice. All things will be lovelier in your eyes henceforth now the black shadow has fallen from your life, and the lamp of love flings its roseate rays along the pathway that we tread together." He silenced her with a kiss, and pointed upward to the ceiling. " The shadow land is vacant," he said " and the shadows have departed. Henceforth, when I want inspiration, where am I to look?" She raised her face to his, radiant with happiness, and he read the answer in her eyes.