"It seems a sin," replied Phoebe, trembling, "to think of joy at such a time!"
"Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me, the hour before you came!" exclaimed the artist.
"A dark, cold, miserable hour!
The presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything; he made the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of guilt, and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt.
The sense of it took away my youth.
I never hoped to feel young again!
The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mold into gloomy shapes!
But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy came in with you!
The black moment became at once a blissful one.
It must not pass without the spoken word.
I love you!"
"How can you love a simple girl like me?" asked Phoebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak.
"You have many, many thoughts, with which I should try in vain to sympathise.
And I—I, too—I have tendencies with which you would sympathise as little.
That is less matter. But I have not scope enough to make you happy."
"You are my only possibility of happiness!" answered Holgrave.
"I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!"
"And then—I am afraid!" continued Phoebe, shrinking towards Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected her.
"You will lead me out of my own quiet path.
You will make me strive to follow you, where it is pathless.
I cannot do so. It is not my nature.
I shall sink down and perish!"
"Ah, Phoebe!" exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile that was burthened with thought.
"It will be far otherwise than as you forebode. The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.
The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
I have a presentiment that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences—perhaps, even in due time, to build a house for another generation—in a word, to conform myself to laws, and the peaceful practice of society.
Your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine."
"I would not have it so!" said Phoebe, earnestly.
"Do you love me?" asked Holgrave.
"If we love one another, the moment has room for nothing more. Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied.
Do you love me, Phoebe?"
"You look into my heart," said she, letting her eyes drop.
"You know I love you!" And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle was wrought, without which every human existence is a blank. The bliss, which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy, shone around this youth and maiden. They were conscious of nothing sad nor old. They transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the two first dwellers in it.
The dead man, so close beside them, was forgotten. At such a crisis there is no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere. But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!
"Hark!" whispered Phoebe.
"Somebody is at the street door!"
"Now let us meet the world!" said Holgrave. "No doubt the rumor of Judge Pyncheon's visit to this house, and the flight of Hepzibah and Clifford, is about to lead to the investigation of the premises. We have no way but to meet it.
Let us open the door at once."
But to their surprise, before they could reach the street door—even before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had passed—they heard footsteps in the further passage.
The door, therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked—which Holgrave, indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to enter—must have been opened from without.
The sound of footsteps was not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of strangers naturally would be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwelcome. It was feeble, as of persons either weak or weary; there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the listeners.
"Can it be?" whispered Holgrave.
"It is they!" answered Phoebe.
"Thank God—thank God!"
And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe's whispered ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah's voice more distinctly.
"Thank God, my brother, we are at home!"
"Well!—Yes!—thank God!" responded Clifford.
"A dreary home, Hepzibah!
But you have done well to bring me hither!
Stay!