Songs of a haunted heart

Preface

Since the "Haunted Heart" first appeared in the Century ioY December, 1885, it has been the target of many pens, and its writer the subject of much criticism; to all of which I have made no reply.

But tlie time is now at hand for me to tell its story, that my readers may know the circumstances from which it was evolved, and judge it accordingly, and therefore justly.

From childhood I was a close student of erudite authors, a dreamer, an idealist. When I was eighteen, to this old house, with its windows embrasured deep in ivy, and the lilies growing all along its walks, came the prince of journalists, whose name had long been to me a synonym for grace, gallantry, and greatness. Clergymen and college-boys had hitherto bounded my horizon, but my new friend was of a different mould. To a brilliant mind, cultivated by extensive travel, were added the charms of magnificent manners, an imperial bearing, a princely person, and a temperament peculiarly attractive to women — impulsive, passionate, and daring.

vm PJiEFACE.

When he took leave of me that summer night, it was in a way well calculated to impress a romantic maiden, murmuring the conventional good-bye in tones fraught with tender meaning, and suddenly lifting my hand to his lips with an air of the deepest devotion.

For days that passionate kiss burned upon my hand and turned my blood to flame. I could not write, I could not read, and my once beloved flowers were aliens to me. I sat in my chamber all day with closed eyes, revelling in the recollection of that rapturous moment, living it over and over again, so much of passion and adoration had he managed to infuse into the mere touch of his lips.

Remember, I was very young and very romantic, and the world had been bounded by my books and my gardenwalls. Later came his letters — perfumed pages hinting delicately, in subtle phrases, of the intoxication of love. Ah, those letters ! Would I dare to read them over, I wonder, alone, in the dreariness of winter snows.

When the leafless trees about my dwelling were rocking in the fierce blast, he came again — this time as a lover.

Spare me the recital of what followed : his impassioned pleading ; the fervid eloquence with which he pictured the white villa among the roses on the blue Italian sea, where life would be a round of pleasure at his side ; the vehement anger with which he heard my faltered refusal ; his last dramatic appeal to me in the open doorway; the dismal clang of the garden-gate behind him, and the despair that darkened my spirit in the after-days when the snow was

PREFACE. IX

piled high at the door, and the dead ivy tapped like skeleton fingers on the frosted panes.

I was alone with my own thoughts, and what wonder if during those winter weeks I saw his graceful figure in the twilight shadows, or felt his influence round me when midnight candles burned dimly, or lay awake night after night with every nerve strained, listening, listening for the click of the gate-latch and his steps upon the snow.

The memory of that time was indelibly impressed upon me. The suns of summer could not bleach its shadow from my soul, nor the dews and rains wash it away.

So I made a confidante of the Muse and wrote the " Haunted Heart."

M.I.

Tarrytown, Nov. 28, 1888.