and real life. He had been happy in reaching India before
his uncle's death, in applying his own clear understanding to the
intricate entanglements of the affairs before him, in rescuing his
uncle's commercial good name, and in securing thus for himself a
foothold on the ladder of life, although that step had not occurred to
him till thrust there by the pressure of circumstances. For the rest, I
am not sure that Mr. Raleigh did not find his path suiting him well
enough. There was no longer any charm in home; he was forbidden to think
of it. That strange summer, that had flashed into his life like the
gleam of a carnival-torch into quiet rooms, must be forgotten; the forms
that had peopled it, in his determination, should become shadows.
Valiant vows! Yet there must have come moments, in that long lapse of
days and years, when the whole season gathered up its garments and swept
imperiously through his memory: nights, when, under the shadow of the
Himmaleh, the old passion rose at spring-tide and flooded his heart and
drowned out forgetfulness, and a longing asserted itself, that, if
checked as instantly by honor as despair, was none the less insufferable
and full of pain,--warm, wide, Southern nights, when all the stars,
great and golden, leaned out of heaven to meet him, and all ripe
perfumes, wafted by their own principle of motion, floated in the rich
dusk and laden air about him, and the phantom of snow on topmost heights
sought vainly to lend him its calm. Days also must have showered their
fervid sunshine on him, as he journeyed through plains of rice, where
all the broad reaches whitening to harvest filled him with intense and
bitterest loneliness. What region of spice did not recall the noons when
they two had trampled the sweet-fern on wide, high New England pastures,
and breathed its intoxicating fragrance? and what forest of the tropics,
what palms, what blooms, what gorgeous affluence of color and of growth,
equalled the wood on the lake-shores, with its stately hemlocks, its
joyous birches, its pale-blue, shadow-blanched violets? Nor was this
regret, that had at last become a part of the man's identity, entirely a
selfish one. He had no authority whatever for his belief, yet believe he
did, that, firmly and tenderly as he loved, he was loved, and of the two
fates his was not the harder. But a man, a man, too, in the stir of the
world, has not the time for brooding over the untoward events of his
destiny that