第70章

IRIS, HER BOOK

I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee, By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee, Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!

For Iris had no mother to infold her, Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder, Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.

She had not learned the mystery of awaking Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching, Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.

Yet lived, wrought, suffered.Lo, the pictured token!

Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken, Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?

She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies, Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances, And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.

Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing, Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring, Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.

Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?

What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?

Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.

And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven, Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven, Save me! oh, save me! Shall I die forgiven?

And then--Ah, God! But nay, it little matters Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters, The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!

If she had--Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore Had the world nothing she might live to care for?

No second self to say her evening prayer for?

She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming, Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.

Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.

What if a lonely and unsistered creature Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded, And double-hued the shining tresses braided, And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?

--This her poor book is full of saddest follies, Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies, With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.

In the strange crossing of uncertain chances, Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.

Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee, Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee, Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.

Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping, Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.

No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.

These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume.

As I turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment.Is it quite fair to take advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of a young girl's nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted me with such artless confessions,--self-revelations, which might be whispered by trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging a sacred confidence?

To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought.

She did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too profoundly innocent.Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness.Having nobody to tell her story to,--having, as she said in her verses, no musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,--nothing, in short, but the language of pen and pencil,--all the veinings of her nature were impressed on these pages as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the blank sheets which inclose it.

It was the same thing which I remember seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years we had one day at our boarding-house.The child was a deaf mute.But its soul had the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which through natural organs realizes itself in words.Only it had to talk with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I have never seen in any other human countenance.

I wonder if something of spiritual transparency is not typified in the golden-blonde organization.There are a great many little creatures,--many small fishes, for instance,--which are literally transparent, with the exception of some of the internal organs.The heart can be seen beating as if in a case of clouded crystal.The central nervous column with its sheath runs as a dark stripe through the whole length of the diaphanous muscles of the body.Other little creatures are so darkened with pigment that we can see only their surface.Conspirators and poisoners are painted with black, beady-eyes and swarthy hue; Judas, in Leonardo's picture, is the model of them all.

However this may be, I should say there never had been a book like this of Iris,--so full of the heart's silent language, so transparent that the heart itself could be seen beating through it.

I should say there never could have been such a book, but for one recollection, which is not peculiar to myself, but is shared by a certain number of my former townsmen.If you think I over-color this matter of the young girl's book, hear this, which there are others, as I just said, besides myself, will tell you is strictly true.

THE BOOK OF THE THREE MAIDEN SISTERS.