The Laughing Mill and Other Stories Part 24

"Speak to him again, Psyche," murmured the lofty presence, "you may yet prevail."

"Eros," she said, throwing all the tenderness of her loving soul into the word, "this is more than our friend--he is our brother. Love and Death should glorify each other. If they are enemies, Death becomes cruel and Love degraded. Yield me up now that you may possess me for ever. Oh, quick, my love--quick!"

The struggling man uttered a cry, heartrending, full of anguish. He was faint and giddy, and the world seemed to reel beneath his feet. He stretched out his arms. "I love you, Psyche," he uttered. "Do not leave me behind; let me go with you!"

He felt her hand again within his own. "You are my own Eros," she whispered in his ear. "I shall not altogether leave you; you will see me in dreams, and you will know that the Paradise I go to is near this earthly home of ours. At last--perhaps not for a long time--but at last we shall meet there. And now ... take me to our marriage-altar, and let us say farewell there."

They came to the little samite-covered table, Psyche supported between the other two. The lovers knelt down together, and the form of the mysterious guest bended beneficently above them. Then Psyche slowly drooped sideways, and Eros caught her in his arms. Yet no--she was not there!

Still kneeling, he looked upwards through the window into the clear winter night, and saw where two cloud-shapes seemed to flit hand in hand across the starlit purple of the heavens. A strange peace entered his lately tortured soul. The doubt in his love's immortality was gone, and the struggle was ended.

"Take her, friend!" he cried, in a voice trembling with a deeper than earthly happiness. "So great is my love, that not in this world, nor with this mortal body, can I give it fit and full expression."

He was left alone in the old parlour, with the dead embers of the fire upon the hearthstone. Christmas bells were ushering in what was to have been his wedding-day; but, like their sweet notes, his mortal hopes had been caught up to heaven, but were not lost there. It is many years since then, yet every returning Christmas has found the same light of peace in his face that first dawned there so long ago. No brooding sullenness or failing faith has changed it into gloom.

But who was the mysterious guest, and why did he bear the likeness of him whom, above all others, Eros and Psyche had loved? That is a question which answers itself in all our lives. For when the time comes--as come it must--that this majestic Presence is met face to face, shall we not trust that the countenance which will, perhaps, seem awful, may at least not be as that of a stranger whom we know not, and whose heart is indifferent towards us? Would it not be pleasant, at that hour, to recognise in him who must herald our entrance into a new society, the well-known features of one whom our previous life had made our most secure and faithful friend?

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.