Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for a broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily. Priscilla’s gayety, moreover, was of a nature that showed me how delicate an instrument she was, and what fragile harp-strings were her nerves. As they made sweet music at the airiest touch, it would require but a stronger one to burst them all asunder. Absurd as it might be, I tried to reason with her, and persuade her not to be so joyous, thinking that, if she would draw less lavishly upon her fund of happiness, it would last the longer. I remember doing so, one summer evening, when we tired laborers sat looking on, like Goldsmith’s old folks under the village thorn-tree, while the young people were at their sports.
“What is the use or sense of being so very gay?” I said to Priscilla, while she was taking breath, after a great frolic. “I love to see a sufficient cause for everything, and I can see none for this. Pray tell me, now, what kind of a world you imagine this to be, which you are so merry in.”
“I never think about it at all,” answered Priscilla, laughing. “But this I am sure of, that it is a world where everybody is kind to me, and where I love everybody. My heart keeps dancing within me, and all the foolish things which you see me do are only the motions of my heart. How can I be dismal, if my heart will not let me?”
“Have you nothing dismal to remember?” I suggested. “If not, then, indeed, you are very fortunate!”
“Ah!” said Priscilla slowly.
And then came that unintelligible gesture, when she seemed to be listening to a distant voice.
“For my part,” I continued, beneficently seeking to overshadow her with my own sombre humor, “my past life has been a tiresome one enough; yet I would rather look backward ten times than forward once. For, little as we know of our life to come, we may be very sure, for one thing, that the good we aim at will not be attained. People never do get just the good they seek. If it come at all, it is something else, which they never dreamed of, and did not particularly want. Then, again, we may rest certain that our friends of today will not be our friends of a few years hence; but, if we keep one of them, it will be at the expense of the others; and most probably we shall keep none. To be sure, there are more to be had; but who cares about making a new set of friends, even should they be better than those around us?”
“Not I!” said Priscilla. “I will live and die with these!”
“Well; but let the future go,” resumed I. “As for the present moment, if we could look into the hearts where we wish to be most valued, what should you expect to see? One’s own likeness, in the innermost, holiest niche? Ah! I don’t know! It may not be there at all. It may be a dusty image, thrust aside into a corner, and by and by to be flung out of doors, where any foot may trample upon it. If not today, then tomorrow! And so, Priscilla, I do not see much wisdom in being so very merry in this kind of a world.”
It had taken me nearly seven years of worldly life to hive up the bitter honey which I here offered to Priscilla. And she rejected it!
“I don’t believe one word of what you say!” she replied, laughing anew. “You made me sad, for a minute, by talking about the past; but the past never comes back again. Do we dream the same dream twice? There is nothing else that I am afraid of.”
So away she ran, and fell down on the green grass, as it was often her luck to do, but got up again, without any harm.
“Priscilla, Priscilla!” cried Hollingsworth, who was sitting on the doorstep; “you had better not run anymore tonight. You will weary yourself too much. And do not sit down out of doors, for there is a heavy dew beginning to fall.”
At his first word, she went and sat down under the porch, at Hollingsworth’s feet, entirely contented and happy. What charm was there in his rude massiveness that so attracted and soothed this shadow-like girl? It appeared to me, who have always been curious in such matters, that Priscilla’s vague and seemingly causeless flow of felicitous feeling was that with which love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them. It transports them to the seventh heaven; and if you ask what brought them thither, they neither can tell nor care to learn, but cherish an ecstatic faith that there they shall abide forever.
Zenobia was in the doorway, not far from Hollingsworth. She gazed at Priscilla in a very singular way. Indeed, it was a sight worth gazing at, and a beautiful sight, too, as the fair girl sat at the feet of that dark, powerful figure. Her air, while perfectly modest,
