The Return of the Chiff-Chaff - Page 2

a
wind-fluttered alder leaf--surely this is enough to fill and to satisfy
any heart, leaving no room for a grief so vain and barren, which
nothing in nature suggested! That it should find me out here in this
wilderness of all places--the place to which a man might come to divest
himself of himself--that second self which he has unconsciously
acquired--to be like the trees and animals, outside of the sad
atmosphere of human life and its eternal tragedy! A vain effort and a
vain thought, since that from which I sought to escape came from nature
itself, from every visible thing; every leaf and flower and blade was
eloquent of it, and the very sunshine, that gave life and brilliance to
all things, was turned to darkness by it.

Overcome and powerless, I continued sitting there with half-closed eyes
until those sad images of lost friends, which had risen with so strange
a suddenness in my mind, appeared something more than mere memories and
mentally-seen faces and forms, seen for a moment, then vanishing. They
were with me, standing by me, almost as in life; and I looked from one
to another, looking longest at the one who was the last to go; who was
with me but yesterday, as it seemed, and stood still in our walk and
turned to bid me listen to that same double note, that little spring
melody which had returned to us; and who led me, waist-deep in the
flowering meadow grasses to look for this same beautiful white flower
which I had found here, and called it our "English edelweiss." How
beautiful it all was! We thought and felt as one. That bond uniting us,
unlike all other bonds, was unbreakable and everlasting. If one had
said that life was uncertain it would have seemed a meaningless phrase.
Spring's immortality was in us; ever-living earth was better than any
home in the stars which eye hath not seen nor heart conceived. Nature
was all in all; we worshipped her and her wordless messages in our
hearts were sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

To me, alone on that April day, alone on the earth as it seemed for a
while, the sweet was indeed changed to bitter, and the loss of those
who were one with me in feeling, appeared to my mind as a monstrous
betrayal, a thing unnatural, almost incredible. Could I any longer love
and worship this dreadful power that made us and filled our hearts with
gladness--could I say of it, "Though it slay me yet will I trust it?"

By-and-by the tempest subsided, but the clouds returned after the rain,
and I sat on in a deep melancholy, my mind in a state of suspense. Then
little by little the old influence began to re-assert itself, and it
was as if one was standing there by me, one who was always calm, who
saw all things clearly, who regarded me with