It was a fierce, wild March night. One can fancy such scenes quite comfortably in cheerful, well-lighted, close-curtained rooms; but to breast the driving storm of sleet and rain outside, is quite another matter. So thought Mr. Thorpe, a respectable tradesman in the thriving, bustling town of L—— as he hurried on through the darkness, and the ever increasing violence of the gale. Visions of the cosy parlor, with its tempting tea-table so daintily arranged, and the pretty, charming wife who presides so gracefully, flit across his brain; but even their alluring promises cannot blind him as to the discomforts of the present; and with a gasp of despair he tucks the wreck of an umbrella under his arm, buttons his heavy coat closer around him, and strides on through the gloom. No one is astir tonight; no sign of life meets him in the usually well-filled streets. “Everyone is safely housed, but myself,” he mutters to the unpitying darkness. But even as he is speaking, a form, tall and slight, starts out from the shadows a few paces ahead, and pauses for a flash of time under the uncertain light of the solitary street-lamp, which lamps in our aspiring villages are placed at undeterminable distances from each other, wherever one long straggling street happens to meet another, seeming to say to the night pedestrian, “you have safely traversed the impenetrable darkness thus far, behold I invite you to a continuation of the same.”
As the figure, evidently a woman’s, stands thus for a moment clearly defined against the dark background, Mr. Thorpe is half inclined to fancy that it turns to meet his advancing steps with a gesture of entreaty; then suddenly and swiftly glides on, and is lost from sight.
I say he is inclined to fancy that she appealed to him for aid; but being an extremely practical man, he never allows himself such vagaries; so he banishes the fancy, and hurries on. At last he has reached his own home. The cheery, welcoming light streaming out from the windows, sends a cheerful, happy feeling through his entire being; and with a laugh of defiance at the mad fury of the storm, he springs up the steps to the sheltering porch, when suddenly at his very door his foot touches something soft and yielding, while at the same time, a little troubled cry is heard, mingled with the weird, uncanny voices of the wind. Half in wonder, half in fear he seizes a mysterious bundle at his feet, and presently appears before the astonished gaze of his wife, half drenched with the storm, a hopeless expression of bewilderment and perplexity upon his countenance, while in his arms he holds out for her inspection the same mysterious bundle, from which various small cries issue, from time to time, at irregular intervals. The contents of the aforesaid bundle being duly examined, they prove none other than a round-faced, 203charmingly beautiful, black eyed baby girl. There is nothing in the “make-up” of the child or its wardrobe that even the most fastidious might criticise; every article of clothing is of the finest texture, and delicately wrought. Evidently this is a waif from the very lap of luxury, and refinement; and yet an outcast and homeless.
Tenderly, lovingly, pretty Mrs. Thorpe touches and caresses the little stranger, saying half hesitatingly, “we will care for her tonight, Charles, and tomorrow we must make an effort to find her parents; or if they cannot be found, perhaps the matron of the orphans’ home would take her; she seems so unusually interesting, that I should like to be sure she is well cared for, if no one is to claim her.”
“Claim her!” impatiently interrupts Mr. Thorpe; “You talk like a woman! As if any one ever claimed what they were glad to be rid of.” “But,”—his voice softening a little as he spoke, for in spite of himself the remembrance of the unknown woman under the street-lamp, and her mute appeal to him for sympathy and help, clings to him; and for once, without arriving at his conclusion by a careful method of reasoning, very unlike his usual self, he in some strange, undefined way, closely associates in his mind the memory of this woman, and the presence of the little stranger in his home—
“But, Mary, you might as well keep the child; she seems as well disposed as such afflictions usually are, and although I don’t approve of babies, and therefore wash my hands of the whole affair, still it might be a good thing for you; the vacant place in the household, you know, will at last be filled.”
Still later, after Mrs. Thorpe had succeeded in coaxing the smiles to chase away the tears, and to play hide and seek among the convenient dimples in the baby’s cheeks and chin, she ventures the question, “What shall we call her?” for of course every baby must have a name.
“Call her March; it would be quite apropos,” suggests her husband quickly. “Yes, but,” said Mrs. Thorpe, “it seems almost like an evil omen to give her such a dreary, cheerless name.” “Nonsense, my love,” returns Mr. Thorpe, “What’s in a name?” And so it is settled, and baby March henceforth becomes an important member of the Thorpe household.
If I were giving a sermon, instead of attempting to write a story, I should here remark that Mrs. Thorpe was of the type of women that many men most desire for a wife—pretty, gentle, submissive, yielding, and for the good of the human race in general. I would urge the fair sex to fashion themselves in an entirely different mould; and, whether matron or maid, to stand firm and self-reliant in their own true womanhood; for, although these shy, helpless, clinging ways may seem to the masterful lover the very embodiment of womanly grace, yet they only tend to make the one selfish and arrogant, and the other abject and unwomanly. But as such is not my purpose, I shall leave all this unsaid, and proceed at once with the story.
Time drags wearily with the heavy-hearted, and all too quickly speeds with the gay. To Mr. Thorpe’s quiet home it has brought no sudden transformation. The head of the house has gone on in his matter-of-fact way, adding, year by year, to his well-filled coffers, until he has come to be acknowledged in business parlance, “one of the heaviest men of the town,” which is quite as true literally. Mrs. Thorpe, the matron, is as charming and pretty as the Mrs. Thorpe of earlier years; while March has grown from babyhood past childhood into dawning womanhood, the pet and idol of the home. No clue has ever been given as to her mysterious advent among them; no trace of the unknown woman who, solitary and alone, traversed the deserted streets on that wild March night. Incredulous people have long since ceased to regard this phase of the night’s experience. For how could any strange person, and a woman, go in and out among them, without the fact being noted and commented upon by some of the news-mongers. An utterly 204impracticable story! Thus the matter has been satisfactorily settled to their minds. And even Mr. Thorpe, from puzzling over the perplexing question so long, has been inclined to doubt its reality, and has even allowed himself to think that possibly it might have been a sort of optical illusion; or, more improbable still, an unreal presence from the shadowy land, supposed to be inhabited by the guardian attendants of finite creatures, and conditions. But be that as it may, he has somehow during these years fallen a victim to the strange lovableness and fascinating wiles of his adopted daughter; and has grown fonder of her than he would be willing to acknowledge.
A rare, beautiful creature she certainly has become, with a dusky, richly colored style of beauty quite unknown among the passionless, phlegmatic people of our sturdy north. A form, slight, childlike, with a peculiar undulating grace of movement, a complexion brown as the nuts of our own forests, yet crimson as the reddest rose; wavy masses of ebon hair, catching odd gleams in the sunlight, blue-black and purplish like a raven’s wing, eyes capable of wonderful transitions, now full of joy, laughter, and sunshine, now flashing scorn and defiance, or heavy with midnight gloom. A strange child, full of wild vagaries and incontrolable impulses. Mrs. Thorpe could no more understand her nature or check her fierce impetuosity, than she could with her weak hands stay the torrent of the mountain stream, or control the headlong speed of the wind, as it eddies and whirls in its mad dance. And so, unchecked and unrestrained, March has entered upon her regal, imperious womanhood.
Naturally, of course, there are many manly hearts eager to pay homage at so fair a shrine; but Mr. Thorpe with paternal pride, has set his heart on securing an eligible partner for his darling. And so it begins to be rumored around town, that Hon. Elwyn Reeves has out-distanced all competitors, and is in fact, the betrothed husband of the beautiful March. To be sure, he is her senior by many years, but he comes from a long line of aristocratic ancestors, and has added to his proud name a princely fortune, as his solid, elegant home, away upon the hill, frowning in its imposing stateliness upon its humbler, less aspiring neighbors, attests.
“A very good match indeed, considering her mysterious and somewhat doubtful parentage, a remarkable chef-d’?uvre of fortune for her;” say anxious mammas and disappointed maidens. Mr. Thorpe is pre-eminently satisfied, and if March herself shows no gratification in regard to her good fortune, it is to be attributed to her peculiar disposition, at times so reticent and reserved. Thus Mr. Thorpe quiets any scruples he may have entertained as he remembers how listlessly and wearily March replied, when he had mentioned Mr. Reeves’ proposal, and dwelt warmly upon the happiness in store for her as his wife. “It shall be as you wish, papa, you may, if you desire it, give Mr. Reeves a favorable answer when he calls.” But of course she was happy; any sensible person would be with such a future in anticipation.
All are therefore quite unprepared for the announcement that Mrs. Thorpe with ashen face, and broken, quivering voice, first communicates to her husband, that the servants quickly catch up and carry into the streets; that in an incredibly short time is upon every tongue—March has left them, as mysteriously and silently as she came among them.
“Where had she gone, and why?” These were questions with which speculative minds were for sometime busy, and anxious. Questions which were never answered to them. She had gone, leaving no trace behind. In a little note addressed to her foster-parents, she left them her dear love and a farewell. She should never, never forget their goodness and tenderness to her; she had been happy with them, but she had chosen for herself another life, and a happier, and she must needs live it. That was all. After a while other faces came, and crowded the 205memory of hers away. The house on the hill soon found a mistress, who brought to her husband as a dower in the place of March’s queenly beauty, a fortune equal in magnificence to that of its owner, and so he was content. It is one of the laws of compensation that gives one good in the place of another taken. Only Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe long remembered, loved, and waited for the lost one.
Every story must have its sequel, so has mine. I think it was five years before it came.
In a tiny cottage, embowered and hidden by luxuriant vines and thick, swaying foliage, in a quaint little town, in a clime where the warmth and glory and brightness of the midday sun is never paled and dimmed by snow-hung clouds, where the air is heavy with the perfume of a thousand flowers, and balmy with the luscious breath of tropical fruits; where over the senses, and into the soul, steal a dreamy, blissful languor, and a strange, beautiful peace, a woman in all her glorious womanhood lay dying. And yet, death does not seem very near to that young creature who reclines on a low couch by the open window, watching and dreaming with a far away look in the shadowy eyes, and a beautiful smile upon the radiant face. A man with blue eyes, full of woman’s tenderness, and hair and beard of silvery whiteness, is standing at her side. And now the woman, turning her large, dark eyes full upon him, speaks in a low, musical voice that thrills the listener with a subtile sense of pleasure and of pain. “Dearest and best of friends, I am come very near to the place where the finite and the infinite meet, and blend together, and are lost in one. The past is vanishing like a glad dream, so brief, and yet so full of joy and completeness. All the unrest, and wild, passionate longing seem very far away from me now, such a strange, restful life has come to me. I have been thinking, perhaps it may be that some lives gather their full measure of sunshine and beauty in a very little time, while others are longer upon the way. And so, I have taken my happiness in one delicious draught, and now hold life’s empty goblet in my hands. I have been waiting for this; my fate was sealed when, a twelve-month ago, they told me that my voice was irrecoverably gone; for with it I had lost my art, and that to me was simply life. Well, it is best so. It may be in that unknown beyond, whither I am hastening, I shall find mine own again, and my soul shall be satisfied. Today I have been living again my old life, a stranger and an alien, and yet tenderly cared for by warm, loving hearts. I suppose they mourned when they discovered that their wild, willful March had flown. The remembrance of the pain I caused them has been my only regret in this new life of mine—this wonderful, grand life—and I owe it all to you, my mother’s friend and mine. After I am gone, you will send to my dear foster-parents my good-bye message. I have told them all. Of my 206vain struggles to find my place among the eager, restless throng in the great, busy world, with only a wild, untrained voice and an unconquerable will to aid me. Of my finding a friend, the dearest friend of my angel mother, who patiently, lovingly bore with my capricious, impetuous nature, and with lavish prodigality helped me on toward the wished for golden goal. And then how destiny pressed close upon me, with his black pinions o’ershadowing me, and the fiat was—“Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” Possibly they may not understand it all. They will think sadly that my life has been a failure, and it may have been; still I am glad to have lived it. It has been grand, glorious, and yet I am a little weary, and am impatient for the end.
And very soon it came, and March went from the storm, and the tempest, the longing and the pain, into light ineffable, and peace eternal.