"HE is growing too fast," said the doctor to my mother; "and heis getting a great deal too clever for a boy at his age. Removehim from school, ma'am, for six months; let him run about in theopen air at home; and if you find him with a book in his hand,take it away directly. There is my prescription."

Those words decided my fate in life.

In obedience to the doctor's advice, I was left an idleboy--without brothers, sisters, or companions of my own age--toroam about the grounds of our lonely country-house. The bailiff'sdaughter, like me, was an only child; and, like me, she had noplayfellows. We met in our wanderings on the solitary shores ofthe lake. Beginning by being inseparable companions, we ripenedand developed into true lovers. Our preliminary courtshipconcluded, we next proposed (before I returned to school) toburst into complete maturity by becoming man and wife.

I am not writing in jest. Absurd as it may appear to "sensiblepeople," we two children were lovers, if ever there were loversyet.

We had no pleasures apart from the one all-sufficient pleasurewhich we found in each other's society. We objected to the night,because it parted us. We entreated our parents, on either side,to let us sleep in the same room. I was angry with my mother, andMary was disappointed in her father, when they laughed at us, andwondered what we should want next. Looking onward, from thosedays to the days of my manhood, I can vividly recall such hoursof happiness as have fallen to my share. But I remember nodelights of that later time comparable to the exquisite andenduring pleasure that filled my young being when I walked withMary in the woods; when I sailed with Mary in my boat on thelake; when I met Mary, after the cruel separation of the night,and flew into her open arms as if we had been parted for monthsand months together.

What was the attraction that drew us so closely one to the other,at an age when the sexual sympathies lay dormant in her and inme?

We neither knew nor sought to know. We obeyed the impulse to loveone another, as a bird obeys the impulse to fly.

Let it not be supposed that we possessed any natural gifts, oradvantages which singled us out as differing in a marked way fromother children at our time of life. We possessed nothing of thesort. I had been called a clever boy at school; but there werethousands of other boys, at thousands of other schools, whoheaded their classes and won their prizes, like me. Personallyspeaking, I was in no way remarkable--except for being, in theordinary phrase, "tall for my age." On her side, Mary displayedno striking attractions. She was a fragile child, with mild grayeyes and a pale complexion; singularly undemonstrative,singularly shy and silent, except when she was alone with me.Such beauty as she had, in those early days, lay in a certainartless purity and tenderness of expression, and in the charmingreddish-brown color of her hair, varying quaintly and prettily indifferent lights. To all outward appearance two perfectlycommonplace children, we were mysteriously united by some kindredassociation of the spirit in her and the spirit in me, which notonly defied discovery by our young selves, but which lay too deepfor investigation by far older and far wiser heads than ours.

You will naturally wonder whether anything was done by our eldersto check our precocious attachment, while it was still aninnocent love union between a boy and a girl.

Nothing was done by my father, for the simple reason that he wasaway from home.

He was a man of a restless and speculative turn of mind.Inheriting his estate burdened with debt, his grand ambition wasto increase his small available income by his own exertions; toset up an establishment in London; and to climb to politicaldistinction by the ladder of Parliament. An old friend, who hademigrated to America, had proposed to him a speculation inagriculture, in one of the Western States, which was to make boththeir fortunes. My father's eccentric fancy was struck by theidea. For more than a year past he had been away from us in theUnited States; and all we knew of him (instructed by his letters)was, that he might be shortly expected to return to us in theenviable character of one of the richest men in England.

As for my poor mother--the sweetest and softest-hearted ofwomen--to see me happy was all that she desired.

The quaint little love romance of the two children amused andinterested her. She jested with Mary's father about the comingunion between the two families, without one serious thought ofthe future--without even a foreboding of what might happen whenmy father returned. "Sufficient for the day is the evil (or thegood) thereof," had been my mother's motto all her life. Sheagreed with the easy philosophy of the bailiff, already recordedin these pages: "They're only children. There's no call, poorthings, to part them yet a while."

There was one member of the family, however, who took a sensibleand serious view of the matter.

My father's brother paid us a visit in our solitude; discoveredwhat was going on between Mary and me; and was, at first,naturally enough, inclined to laugh at us. Closer investigationaltered his way of thinking. He became convinced that my motherwas acting like a fool; that the bailiff (a faithful servant, ifever there was one yet) was cunningly advancing his own interestsby means of his daughter; and that I was a young idiot, who haddeveloped his native reserves of imbecility at an unusually earlyperiod of life. Speaking to my mother under the influence ofthese strong impressions, my uncle offered to take me back withhim to London, and keep me there until I had been brought to mysenses by association with his own children, and by carefulsuperintendence under his own roof.

My mother hesitated about accepting this proposal; she had theadvantage over my uncle of understanding my disposition. Whileshe was still doubting, while my uncle was still impatientlywaiting for her decision, I settled the question for my elders byrunning away.

I left a letter to represent me in my absence; declaring that nomortal power should part me from Mary, and promising to returnand ask my mother's pardon as soon as my uncle had left thehouse. The strictest search was made for me without discovering atrace of my place of refuge. My uncle departed for London,predicting that I should live to be a disgrace to the family, andannouncing that he should transmit his opinion of me to my fatherin America by the next mail.

The secret of the hiding-place in which I contrived to defydiscovery is soon told. I was hidden (without the bailiff'sknowledge) in the bedroom of the bailiff's mother. And did thebailiff's mother know it? you will ask. To which I answer: thebailiff's mother did it. And, what is more, gloried in doingit--not, observe, as an act of hostility to my relatives, butsimply as a duty that lay on her conscience.

What sort of old woman, in the name of all that is wonderful, wasthis? Let her appear, and speak for herself--the wild and weirdgrandmother of gentle little Mary; the Sibyl of modern times,known, far and wide, in our part of Suffolk, as Dame Dermody.

I see her again, as I write, sitting in her son's pretty cottageparlor, hard by the window, so that the light fell over hershoulder while she knitted or read. A little, lean, wiry oldwoman was Dame Dermody--with fierce black eyes, surmounted bybushy white eyebrows, by a high wrinkled forehead, and by thickwhite hair gathered neatly under her old-fashioned "mob-cap."Report whispered (and whispered truly) that she had been a ladyby birth and breeding, and that she had deliberately closed herprospects in life by marrying a man greatly her inferior insocial rank. Whatever her family might think of her marriage, sheherself never regretted it. In her estimation her husband'smemory was a sacred memory; his spirit was a guardian spirit,watching over her, waking or sleeping, morning or night.

Holding this faith, she was in no respect influenced by thosegrossly material ideas of modern growth which associate thepresence of spiritual beings with clumsy conjuring tricks andmonkey antics performed on tables and chairs. Dame Dermody'snobler superstition formed an integral part of her religiousconvictions--convictions which had long since found their chosenresting-place in the mystic doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg. Theonly books which she read were the works of the Swedish Seer. Shemixed up Swedenborg's teachings on angels and departed spirits,on love to one's neighbor and purity of life, with wild fancies,and kindred beliefs of her own; and preached the visionaryreligious doctrines thus derived, not only in the bailiff'shousehold, but also on proselytizing expeditions to thehouseholds of her humble neighbors, far and near.

Under her son's roof--after the death of his wife--she reigned asupreme power; priding herself alike on her close attention toher domestic duties, and on her privileged communications withangels and spirits. She would hold long colloquys with the spiritof her dead husband before anybody who happened to bepresent--colloquys which struck the simple spectators mute withterror. To her mystic view, the love union between Mary and mewas something too sacred and too beautiful to be tried by themean and matter-of-fact tests set up by society. She wrote for uslittle formulas of prayer and praise, which we were to use whenwe met and when we parted, day by day. She solemnly warned herson to look upon us as two young consecrated creatures, walkingunconsciously on a heavenly path of their own, whose beginningwas on earth, but whose bright end was among the angels in abetter state of being. Imagine my appearing before such a womanas this, and telling her with tears of despair that I wasdetermined to die, rather than let my uncle part me from littleMary, and you will no longer be astonished at the hospitalitywhich threw open to me the sanctuary of Dame Dermody's own room.

When the safe time came for leaving my hiding-place, I committeda serious mistake. In thanking the old woman at parting, I saidto her (with a boy's sense of honor), "I won't tell upon you,Dame. My mother shan't know that you hid me in your bedroom."

The Sibyl laid her dry, fleshless hand on my shoulder, and forcedme roughly back into the chair from which I had just risen.

"Boy!" she said, looking through and through me with her fierceblack eyes. "Do you dare suppose that I ever did anything that Iwas ashamed of? Do you think I am ashamed of what I have donenow? Wait there. Your mother may mistake me too. I shall write toyour mother."

She put on her great round spectacles with tortoise-shell rimsand sat down to her letter. Whenever her thoughts flagged,whenever she was at a loss for an expression, she looked over hershoulder, as if some visible creature were stationed behind her,watching what she wrote; consulted the spirit of her husband,exactly as she might have consulted a living man; smiled softlyto herself, and went on with her writing.

"There!" she said, handing me the completed letter with animperial gesture of indulgence. "_His_ mind and _my_ mind arewritten there. Go, boy. I pardon you. Give my letter to yourmother."

So she always spoke, with the same formal and measured dignity ofmanner and language.

I gave the letter to my mother. We read it, and marveled over ittogether. Thus, counseled by the ever-present spirit of herhusband, Dame Dermody wrote:

"MADAM--I have taken what you may be inclined to think a greatliberty. I have assisted your son George in se tting his uncle'sauthority at defiance. I have encouraged your son George in hisresolution to be true, in time and in eternity, to my grandchild,Mary Dermody.

"It is due to you and to me that I should tell you with whatmotive I have acted in doing these things.

"I hold the belief that all love that is true is foreordained andconsecrated in heaven. Spirits destined to be united in thebetter world are divinely commissioned to discover each other andto begin their union in this world. The only happy marriages arethose in which the two destined spirits have succeeded in meetingone another in this sphere of life.

"When the kindred spirits have once met, no human power canreally part them. Sooner or later, they must, by divine law, findeach other again and become united spirits once more. Worldlywisdom may force them into widely different ways of life; worldlywisdom may delude them, or may make them delude themselves, intocontracting an earthly and a fallible union. It matters nothing.The time will certainly come when that union will manifest itselfas earthly and fallible; and the two disunited spirits, findingeach other again, will become united here for the world beyondthis--united, I tell you, in defiance of all human laws and ofall human notions of right and wrong.

"This is my belief. I have proved it by my own life. Maid, wife,and widow, I have held to it, and I have found it good.

"I was born, madam, in the rank of society to which you belong. Ireceived the mean, material teaching which fulfills the worldlynotion of education. Thanks be to God, my kindred spirit met _my_spirit while I was still young. I knew true love and true unionbefore I was twenty years of age. I married, madam, in the rankfrom which Christ chose his apostles--I married a laboring-man.No human language can tell my happiness while we lived unitedhere. His death has not parted us. He helps me to write thisletter. In my last hours I shall see him standing among theangels, waiting for me on the banks of the shining river.

"You will now understand the view I take of the tie which unitesthe young spirits of our children at the bright outset of theirlives.

"Believe me, the thing which your husband's brother has proposedto you to do is a sacrilege and a profanation. I own to youfreely that I look on what I have done toward thwarting yourrelative in this matter as an act of virtue. You cannot expect_me_ to think it a serious obstacle to a union predestined inheaven, that your son is the squire's heir, and that mygrandchild is only the bailiff's daughter. Dismiss from yourmind, I implore you, the unworthy and unchristian prejudices ofrank. Are we not all equal before God? Are we not all equal (evenin this world) before disease and death? Not your son's happinessonly, but your own peace of mind, is concerned in taking heed tomy words. I warn you, madam, you cannot hinder the destined unionof these two child-spirits, in after-years, as man and wife. Partthem now--and YOU will be responsible for the sacrifices,degradations and distresses through which your George and my Marymay be condemned to pass on their way back to each other in laterlife.

"Now my mind is unburdened. Now I have said all.

"If I have spoken too freely, or have in any other wayunwittingly offended, I ask your pardon, and remain, madam, yourfaithful servant and well-wisher,HELEN DERMODY."

So the letter ended.

To me it is something more than a mere curiosity of epistolarycomposition. I see in it the prophecy--strangely fulfilled inlater years--of events in Mary's life, and in mine, which futurepages are now to tell.

My mother decided on leaving the letter unanswered. Like many ofher poorer neighbors, she was a little afraid of Dame Dermody;and she was, besides, habitually averse to all discussions whichturned on the mysteries of spiritual life. I was reproved,admonished, and forgiven; and there was the end of it.

For some happy weeks Mary and I returned, without hinderance orinterruption, to our old intimate companionship The end wascoming, however, when we least expected it. My mother wasstartled, one morning, by a letter from my father, which informedher that he had been unexpectedly obliged to sail for England ata moment's notice; that he had arrived in London, and that he wasdetained there by business which would admit of no delay. We wereto wait for him at home, in daily expectation of seeing him themoment he was free.

This news filled my mother's mind with foreboding doubts of thestability of her husband's grand speculation in America. Thesudden departure from the United States, and the mysterious delayin London, were ominous, to her eyes, of misfortune to come. I amnow writing of those dark days in the past, when the railway andthe electric telegraph were still visions in the minds ofinventors. Rapid communication with my father (even if he wouldhave consented to take us into his confidence) was impossible. Wehad no choice but to wait and hope.

The weary days passed; and still my father's brief lettersdescribed him as detained by his business. The morning came whenMary and I went out with Dermody, the bailiff, to see the lastwild fowl of the season lured into the decoy; and still thewelcome home waited for the master, and waited in vain.