----A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records,--promises as sweet--
A creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
_Wordsworth._
And now we have arrived at the era, to which we have looked forward with
eager anticipation, the return of Helen and Alice, the period when the
severed links of the household chain were again united, when the folded
bud of childhood began to unclose its spotless leaves, and expand in the
solar rays of love and passion.
We have said but little lately of the young doctor, not that we have
forgotten him, but he had so little fellowship with the characters of
our last chapter, that we forbore to introduce him in the same group. He
did feel a strong interest in Louis, but the young collegian was so
fascinated by his new friend, that he unconsciously slighted him whom he
had once looked upon as a mentor and an elder brother. Mittie, the
handsome, brilliant, haughty, but now impassioned girl, was as little to
his taste as Mittie, the cold, selfish and repulsive child. Clinton, the
accomplished courtier, the dashing equestrian, the graceful
spendthrift--the apparently resistless Clinton had no attraction for
him. He sometimes wondered if his little, simple-hearted pupil Helen
would be carried away by the same magnetic influence, and longed to see
her character exposed to a test so powerful and dangerous.
Mr. Gleason went for the children, as he continued to call them, and
when the time for his arrival drew near, there was more than the usual
excitement on such occasions. Mittie could never think of her sister's
coming without a fluctuating cheek and a throbbing heart. Mrs. Gleason
wondered at this sensibility, unknowing its latent source, and rejoiced
that all her affections seemed blooming in the fervid atmosphere that
now surrounded her. Perhaps even she might yet be loved. But it was to
Helen the heart of the step-mother went forth, whom she remembered as so
gentle, so timid, so grateful and endearing. Would she return the same
sweet child of nature, unspoiled by contact with other grosser elements?
Clinton felt an eager curiosity to see the sister of Mittie, for whom
she cherished such precocious jealousy, yet who, according to her own
description, was neither beautiful nor lovely. Louis was all impatience,
not only to see his favorite Helen, but the lovely blind girl, who had
made such an impression on his young imagination. It is true her image
had faded in the sultry, worldly atmosphere to which he had been
exposed; but as he thought of the blue, sightless orbs, so beautiful yet
soulless, the desire to loosen the fillet of darkness which the hand of
God had bound around her brow, and to pour upon her awakening vision the
noontide glories of creation, rekindled in his bosom.
For many days Mrs. Gleason had filled the vases with fresh flowers, for
she remembered how Helen delighted in their beauty, and Alice in their
fragrance. There was a room prepared for Helen and Alice, while the
latter remained her guest, and Mittie resolved that if possible, she
would exclude her permanently from the chamber which Mrs. Gleason had so
carefully furnished for both. She could not bear the idea of such close
companionship with any one. She wanted to indulge in solitude her wild,
passionate dreams, her secret, deep, incommunicable thoughts.
At length the travelers arrived; weary, dusty and exhausted from
sleepless nights, and hurried, rapid days. No magnificent sun-burst
glorified their coming. It was a dull, grayish, dingy day, such as often
comes, the herald of approaching autumn. Mittie could not help
rejoicing, for she knew the power of first impressions. She knew it by
the raptures which Clinton always expressed when he alluded to her
first appearance on the rustic bridge, as the youthful goddess of the
blooming season. She knew it by her own experience, when she first
beheld Clinton in all the witchery of his noble horsemanship.
Helen was unfortunately made very sick by traveling, _sea-sick_, and
when she reached home she was exactly in that state of passive endurance
which would have caused her to lie under the carriage wheels
unresistingly had she been placed perchance in that position. The
weather was close and sultry, and the dust gathered on the folds of her
riding-dross added to the warmth and discomfort of her appearance. Her
father carried her in his arms into the house, her head reclining
languidly on his shoulder, her cheeks white as her muslin collar. Mittie
caught a glimpse of Clinton's countenance as he stood in the
back-ground, and read with exultation an expression of blank
disappointment. After gazing fixedly at Helen, he turned towards Mittie,
and his glance said as plainly as words could speak--
"You beautiful and radiant creature, can you fear the influence of such
a little, spiritless, sickly dowdy as this?"
Relieved of the most intolerable apprehensions, her greeting of Helen
was affectionate beyond the most sanguine hopes of the latter. She took
off her bonnet with assiduous kindness, (though Helen would have
preferred wearing it to her room, to displaying her disordered hair and
dusty raiment,) leaving to Mrs. Gleason the task of ministering to the
lovely blind girl.
"Where's brother? I do not hear his step," said Alice, looking round as
earnestly as if she expected to see his advancing figure.
"He has just been called away," said Louis, "or he would be here to
greet you. My poor little Helen, you do indeed look dreadfully used up.
You were never made for a traveler. Why Alice's roses are scarcely
wilted."
"Nothing but fatigue and a little sea-sickness," cried her father, "a
good night's sleep is all she needs. You will see a very different
looking girl to-morrow, I assure you."
"Better, far better as she is," thought Mittie, as she assisted the
young travelers up stairs.
Ill and weary as she was, Helen could not help noticing the astonishing
improvement in Mittie's appearance, the life, the glow, the sunlight of
her countenance. She gazed upon her with admiration and delight.
"How handsome you have grown, Mittie," said she, "and I doubt not as
good as you are handsome. And you look so much happier than you used to
do. Oh! I do hope we shall love each other as sisters ought to do. It is
so sweet to have a sister to love."
The exchange of her warm, traveling dress for a loose, light undress,
gave inexpressible relief to Helen, who, reclining on her _own
delightful bed_, began to feel a soft, living glow stealing over the
pallor of her cheek.
"Shall I comb and brush your hair for you?" asked Mittie, sitting down
by the side of the bed, and gathering together the tangled tresses of
hazel brown, that looked dim in contrast with her own shining raven
hair.
"Thank you," said Helen, pressing her hand gratefully in both hers. "You
are so kind. Only smooth Alice's first. If her brother comes, she will
want to see him immediately--and you don't know what a pleasure it is to
arrange her golden ringlets."
"Don't _you_ want to see the young doctor, too, Helen?"
"To be sure I do," replied Helen, with a brightening color, "more than
any one else in the world, I believe. But do they call him the young
doctor, yet?"
"Yes--and will till he is as old as Methuselah, I expect," replied
Mittie, laughing.
"Brother is not more than five or six and twenty, now," cried Alice,
with emphasis.
"Or seven," added Mittie. "Oh! he is sufficiently youthful, I dare say,
but it is amusing to see how that name is fastened upon him. It is
seldom we hear Doctor Hazleton mentioned. He does not look a day older
than when he prescribed for you, Helen, in your yellow flannel
night-gown. He had a look of precocious wisdom then, which becomes him
better now."
Mittie began to think Helen very stupid, to say nothing of the dazzling
Clinton, to whom she had taken particular pains to introduce her, when
she suddenly asked her, "How long that very handsome young gentleman
was going to remain?"
"You think him handsome, then," cried Mittie, making a veil of the
flaxen ringlets of Alice, so that Helen could not see the high color
that suffused her face.
"I think he is the handsomest person I ever saw," replied Helen, just as
if she were speaking of a beautiful picture or statue; "and yet there is
something, I cannot tell what, that I do not exactly like about him."
"You are fastidious," said Mittie, coldly, and the sudden gleam of her
eye reminding her of the Mittie of other days, Helen closed her weary
lips.
Tho next morning, she sprang from her bed light and early as the
sky-lark. All traces of languor, indisposition and fatigue had vanished
in the deep, tranquil, refreshing slumbers of the night. She awoke with
the joyous consciousness of being at home beneath her father's roof. She
was not a boarder, subject to a thousand restraints, necessary but
irksome. She was not compelled any more to fashion her movements to the
ringing of a bell, nor walk according to the square and compass. She was
free. She could wander in the garden without asking permission. She
could _run_ too, without incurring the imputation of rudeness and
impropriety. The gyves and manacles of authority had fallen from her
bounding limbs, and the joyous and emancipated school-girl sang in the
gladness and glee of her heart.
Alice still slept--the door of Mittie's chamber was closed, and every
thing was silent in the household, when she flew down stairs, rather
than walked, and went forth into the dewy morn. The sun was not yet
risen, but there was a deepening splendor of saffron and crimson above
the horizon, fit tapestry for the pavilion of a God. The air was so
fresh and balmy, it felt so young and inspiring, Helen could hardly
imagine herself more than five years old. Every thing carried her back
to the earliest recollections of childhood. There were the swallows
flying in and out of their little gothic windows under the beetling
barn-eaves; and there were the martins, morning gossips from time
immemorial, chattering at the doors of their white pagodas, with their
bright red roofs and black thresholds. The old England robin, with its
plumage of gorgeous scarlet, dashed with jet, swung in its airy nest,
suspended from the topmost boughs of the tall elms, and the blue and
yellow birds fluttered with warbling throats among the lilac's now
flowerless but verdant boughs. Helen hardly knew which way to turn, she
was so full of ecstacy. One moment she wished she had the wings of the
bird, the next, the petals of the flower, and then again she felt that
the soul within her, capable of loving and admiring all these, was worth
a thousand times more. The letters carved on the silver bark of the
beech arrested her steps. They were new. She had never seen them before,
and when she saw the blended ciphers, a perception of the truth dawned
upon her understanding. Perhaps there never was a young maiden of
sixteen years, who had more singleness and simplicity of heart than
Helen. From her shy and timid habits, she had never formed those close
intimacies that so often bind accidentally together the artless and the
artful. She was aware of the existence of love, but knew nothing of its
varying phases. Its language had never been breathed into her ear, and
she never dreamed of inspiring it. Could it be that it was love, which
had given such a glow and lustre to Mittie's face, which had softened
the harshness of her manners, and made her apparently accessible to
sisterly tenderness?
While she stood, contemplating the wedded initials, in a reverie so deep
as to forget where she was, she felt something fall gently on her head,
and a shower of fragrance bathed her senses. Turning suddenly round, the
first rays of the rising sun glittered on her face, and gilt the
flower-crown that rested on her brow. Clinton stood directly behind her,
and his countenance wore a very different expression from what it did
the preceding evening. And certainly it was difficult to recognize the
pale, drooping, spiritless traveler of the previous night, in the
bright, beaming, blushing, shy, wildly-sweet looking fairy of the
morning hour.
Helen was not angry, but she was unaffectedly frightened at finding
herself in such close proximity with this very oppressively handsome
young man; and without pausing to reflect on the silliness and
childishness of the act, she flew away as rapidly as a startled bird. It
seemed as if all the reminiscences of her childhood pressed home upon
her in the space of a few moments. Just as she had been arrested years
before, when fleeing from the snake that invaded her strawberry-bed, so
she found herself impeded by a restraining arm; and looking up she
beheld her friend, the young doctor, his face radiant with a thousand
glad welcomes.
"Oh! I am _so glad_ to see you once again," exclaimed Helen, yielding
involuntarily to the embrace, which being one moment withheld, only made
her heart throb with double joy.
"My sister, my Helen, my own dear pupil," said Arthur Hazleton, and the
rich glow of the morning was not deeper nor brighter than the color that
mantled his cheek. "How well and blooming you look! They told me you
were ill and could not be disturbed last night. I did not hope to see
you so brilliant in health and spirits. And who crowned you so gayly,
the fair queen of the morning?"
"I don't know," she cried, taking the chaplet from her head and shaking
the dew-drops from its leaves, "and yet I suspect it was Mr. Clinton,
who came behind me while I was standing by yonder beech tree."
Arthur's serious, dark eye rested on the young girl with a searching,
anxious expression, as Clinton approached and paid the compliments of
the morning with more than his wonted gracefulness of manner. He
apologized for the freedom he had taken so sportively and naturally,
that Helen felt it would be ridiculous in her to assume a resentment she
did not feel, and yielding to her passionate admiration for flowers, she
wreathed them again round her sun-bright locks.
It was thus the trio approached the house. Mittie saw them from the
window, and the keenest pang she had ever known penetrated her heart.
She saw the beech tree shorn of its morning garland, that garland which
was blooming triumphantly on her sister's brow. She saw Clinton walking
by her side, calling up her smiles and blushes according to his own
magnetic will.
She accused Helen of deceit and guile. Her languor and illness the
preceding evening was all assumed to heighten the blooming contrast of
the present moment. Her morning ramble and meeting with Clinton were
all premeditated, her seeming artlessness the darkest and deepest
hypocrisy.
For a few weeks Mittie had revelled in the joy of an awakened nature.
She had reigned alone, with no counter influence to thwart the sudden
and luxuriant growth of passion. She, alone, young, beautiful and
attractive, had been the magnet to youth, beauty and attraction. She had
been the centre of an island world of her own, which she had tried to
keep as inaccessible to others as the granite coast in the Arabian
Nights.
Poor Mittie! The flower of passion has ever a dark spot on its petals, a
dark, purple spot, not always perceptible in the first unfolding and
glory of its bloom; but sooner or later it spreads and scorches, and
shrivels up the heart of the blossom.
She tried to control her excited feelings. She was proud, and had a
conviction that she would degrade herself by the exhibition of jealousy
and envy. She tried to call up a bloom to her pale cheek, and a smile to
her quivering lip, but she was no adept in the art of dissimulation, and
when she entered the sitting room, Helen was the first to notice her
altered countenance. It was fortunate for all present that Alice had
seated herself at the piano, at the solicitation of Louis, and commenced
a brilliant overture.
Alice had always loved music, but now that she had learned it as an art,
in all its perfectness, it had become the one passion of her life. She
lived in the world of sound, and forgot the midnight that surrounded
her. It was impossible to look upon her without feeling the truth, that
if God closes with Bastile bars one avenue of the senses, He opens
another with widening gates "on golden hinges moving." Alice trembled
with ecstacy at her own exquisite melody, like the nightingale whose
soft plumage quivers on its breast as it sings. She would raise her
sightless eyes to Heaven, following the upward strain with feelings of
the most intense devotion. She called music the wind of the soul, the
breath of God--and said if it had a color it must be _azure_.
One by one they all gathered round the blind songstress. Arthur stood
behind her, and Helen saw tears glistening in his eyes. She did not
wonder at his emotion, for accustomed as she was to hear her, she never
could hear Alice sing without feeling a desire to weep.
"I feel so many wants," she said, "that I never had before."
While Alice was singing, Helen stole softly behind Mittie, and gently
put the flowers on her hair.
"I have stolen your roses," she whispered, "but I do not mean to keep
them."
Mittie's first impulse was to toss them upon the floor, but something in
the eye of Clinton arrested her. She dared not do it. And looking
steadfastly downward, outblushed the roses on her brow.
The cloud appeared to have passed away, and the family party that
surrounded the breakfast table was a gay and happy one.
"I told you," said Mr. Gleason, placing Helen beside him, and smiling
affectionately on her gladsome countenance, "that we should have a very
different looking girl this morning from our poor, little sick traveler.
All Helen wants is the air of home to revive her. Who would want to see
a more rustic looking lassie than she is now?"
"I should like to see how Helen would look now in a yellow flannel
robe," said Louis, mischievously, "and whether she will make as great a
sensation on her entrance into society as she did when she burst into
this room in such an impromptu manner?"
The remembrance of the _yellow flannel robe_, and the eventful evening
to which Louis alluded, was associated with the mother whom she had
never ceased to mourn, and Helen bent her head to hide the tears which
gathered into her eyes.
"You are not angry, gentle sister?" said Louis, seeking her downcast
face.
"Helen was never angry in her life," cried her father, "it is her only
fault that she has not anger enough in her nature for self-preservation."
"Is that true, Helen?" asked the young doctor. "Has your father read
your nature aright?"
"No," answered Helen, looking up with an ingenuous smile. "I have felt
very angry with you, and judged you very harshly several times. Yet I
was most angry with myself for doing what you wished in spite of my
vexation and rebellion."
"Yet you believed me right all the time?"
"I believe so. At least you always said so."
Helen conversed with Arthur Hazleton with the same freedom and
childishness as when an inmate of his mother's family. She was so
completely a child, she could not think of herself as an object of
importance in the social circle. She was inexpressibly grateful for
kindness, and Arthur Hazleton's kindness had been so constant and so
deep, she felt as if her gratitude should be commensurate with the gifts
received. It was the moral interest he had manifested in her--the
influence he exercised over her mind and heart which she most prized. He
was a kind of second conscience to her, and it did not seem possible for
her to do any thing which he openly disapproved.
What Mittie could not understand was the playful, unembarrassed manner
with which she met the graceful attentions of Clinton, after his
fascinations had dispersed her natural shyness and reserve. She neither
sought nor avoided him, flattered nor slighted him. She appeared neither
dazzled nor charmed. Mittie thought this must be the most consummate
art, when it was only the perfection of nature. Because the glass was so
clear, so translucent, she imagined she was the victim of an optical
illusion.
There was another thing in Helen, which Mittie believed the most studied
policy, and that was the affection and respect she manifested for her
step-mother. Nothing could be sweeter or more endearing than the
"mother!" which fell from her lips, whenever she addressed her--that
name which, had never yet passed her own. Mittie had never sought the
love of her step-mother. She had rejected it with scorn, and yet she
envied Helen the caressing warmth and maternal tenderness which was the
natural reward of her own loving nature.
"Poor Miss Thusa!" exclaimed Helen, near the close of the day, "I must
go and see her before the sun sets; I know, I am sure she will be glad
to see me."
"Supposing we go in a party," said Clinton. "I should like to pay my
respects to the original old lady again."
"I should think the rough reception she gave you, would preclude the
desire for a second visit," said Mittie.
"Oh! I like to conquer difficulties," he exclaimed. "The greater the
obstacles, the greater the triumph."
Perhaps he meant nothing more than met the ear, but Mittie's omnipotent
self-love felt wounded. She had been too easy a conquest, whose value
was already beginning to lessen.
"Miss Thusa and Helen are such especial friends," she added, without
seeming to have heard his remark, "that I should think their first
meeting had better be private. I suspect Miss Thusa has manufactured a
new set of ghost stories for Helen's peculiar benefit."
"Are you a believer in ghosts?" asked Clinton of Helen. "If so, I envy
you."
"Envy me!"
"Yes! There is such a pleasure in credulity. I sigh now over the
vanished illusions of my boyhood."
"I once believed in ghosts," replied Helen, "and even now, in solitude
and darkness, the memories of childhood come back to me so powerfully,
they are appalling. Miss Thusa might tell me a thousand stories now,
without inspiring belief, while those told me in childhood can never be
forgotten, or their impressions effaced."
"Yet you like Miss Thusa, and seem to remember her with affection."
"She was so kind to me that I could not help loving her--and she seemed
so lonely, with so few to love her, it seemed cruel to shut up the heart
against her."
"One may be incredulous without being cruel, I should think," said
Mittie, with asperity. She felt the reproach, and could not believe it
accidental. Poor Mittie! how much she suffered.
Helen, who was really desirous of seeing Miss Thusa, and did not wish
for the companionship of Clinton, stole away from the rest and took the
path she well remembered, through the woods. The excessive hilarity of
the morning had faded from her spirits. There was something
indescribable about Mittie that annoyed and pained her. The gleam of
kindness with which she had greeted her had all gone out, and left
dullness and darkness in its stead. She could not get near her heart. At
every avenue it seemed closed against her, and resisted the golden key
of affection as effectually as the wrench of violence.
"She must love me," thought Helen, pursuing her way towards Miss
Thusa's, and picking up here and there a yellow leaf that came
fluttering down at her feet. "I cannot live in coldness and estrangement
with one I ought to love so dearly. It must be some fault of mine; I
must discover what it is, and if it he my right eye, I would willingly
pluck it out to secure her affection. Alice is going home, and how worse
than lonely will I be!"
Helen caught a glimpse of the stream where, when a child, she used to
wade in the wimpling waters, and gather the diamond mica that sparkled
on the sand. She thought of the time when the young doctor had washed
the strawberry stains from her face, and wiped it with his nice linen
handkerchief, and her heart glowed at the remembrance of his kindness.
Mingled with this glow there was the flush of shame, for she could not
help starting at every sudden rustling sound, thinking the coiling snake
was lurking in ambush.
There was an air of desolation about Miss Thusa's cabin, which she had
never noticed before. The stepping-stones of the door looked so much
like grave-stones, so damp and mossy, it seemed sacrilege to tread upon
them. Helen hardly did touch them, she skipped so lightly over the
threshold, and stood before Miss Thusa smiling and out of breath.
There she sat at her wheel, solemn and ancestral, and gray as ever, her
foot upon the treadle, her hand upon the distaff, looking so much like a
fixture of the place, it seemed strange not to see the moss growing
green and damp on her stone-colored garments.
"Miss Thusa!" exclaimed Helen, and the aged spinster started at the
sound of that sweet, childish voice. Helen's arms were around her neck
in a moment, and without knowing why, she burst into an unexpected fit
of weeping.
"I am so foolish," said Helen, after she had dashed away her tears, and
squeezed herself into a little seat between Miss Thusa and her wheel,
"but I am so glad to get home, so glad to see you all once more."
Miss Thusa's iron nerves seemed quite unstrung by the unexpected delight
of greeting her favorite child. She had not heard of her return, and
could scarcely realize her presence. She kept wiping her glasses,
without seeming conscious that the moisture was in her own eyes, gazed
on Helen's upturned face with indescribable tenderness, smoothed back
her golden brown hair, and then stooping down, kissed, with an air of
benediction, her fair young brow.
"You have not forgotten me, then! You are still nothing but a child,
nothing but little Helen. And yet you are grown--and you look healthier
and rounder, and a shade more womanly. You are not as handsome as
Mittie, and yet where one stops to look at her, ten will turn to gaze on
you."
"Oh, no! Mittie is grown so beautiful no one could think of any one else
when she is near."
"The young man with the long black hair thinks her beautiful? Does he
not?"
"I believe so. Who could help it?"
"Does she love you better than she used to?" asked Miss Thusa.
"I will try to deserve her love," replied Helen, evasively; "but, Miss
Thusa, I am coming every day to take spinning lessons of you. I really
want to learn to spin. Perhaps father may fail one of these days, and I
be thrown on my own resources, and then I could earn my living as you do
now. Will you bequeath me your wheel, Miss Thusa?"
The bright smile with which she looked up to Miss Thusa, died away in a
kind of awe, as she met the solemn earnestness of her glance.
"Yes, yes, child, I have long intended it as a legacy of love to you.
There is a history hanging to it, which I will tell you by and by. For
more than forty years that wheel and I have been companions and friends,
and it is so much a part of myself, that if any one should cut into the
old carved wood, I verily believe the blood-drops would drip from my
heart. Things will grow together, powerfully, Helen, after a long, long
time. And so you want to learn to spin, child. Well! suppose you sit
down and try. These little white fingers will soon be cut by the flax,
though, I can tell you."
"May I, Miss Thusa, may I?" cried Helen, seating herself with childish
delight at the venerable instrument, and giving it a whirl that might
have made the flax smoke. Miss Thusa looked on with a benevolent and
patronizing air, while Helen pressed her foot upon the treadle,
wondering why it would jerk so, when it went round with Miss Thusa so
smoothly, and pulled out the flax at arm's length, wondering why it
would run into knots and bunches, when it glided so smooth and even
through Miss Thusa's practiced fingers. Helen was so busy, and so
excited by the new employment, she did not perceive a shadow cross the
window, nor was she aware of the approach of any one, till an unusually
gay laugh made her turn her head.
"I thought Miss Thusa looked wonderfully rejuvenated," said Arthur
Hazleton, leaning against the window-frame on the outside of the
building, "but methinks she is the more graceful spinner, after all."
"This is only my first lesson," cried Helen, jumping up, for the band
had slipped from the groove, and hung in a hopeless tangle--"and I fear
Miss Thusa will never be willing to give me another."
"Ten thousand, child, if you will take them," cried Miss Thusa,
good-naturedly, repairing the mischief her pupil had done.
"Do you know the sun is down?" asked Arthur, "and that your path lies
through the woods?"
Helen started, and for the first time became aware that the shadows of
twilight were deepening on the landscape. She did not think Arthur
Hazleton would accompany her home. He would test her courage as he had
done before, and taking a hurried leave of Miss Thusa, promising to stay
and hear many a legend next time, she jumped over the stile before
Arthur could overtake her and assist her steps.
"Would you prefer walking alone?" said Arthur, "or will you accept of my
escort?"
"I did not think you intended coming with me," said Helen, "or I would
have waited."
"You thought me as rude and barbarous as ever."
"Perhaps you think me as foolish and timid as ever."
"You have become courageous and fearless then--I congratulate you--I
told you that you would one day be a heroine."
"That day will never come," said Helen, blushing. "My fears are
hydras--as fast as one is destroyed another is born. Shadows will always
be peopled with phantoms, and darkness is to me the shadow of the
grave."
"I am sorry to hear you say so, Helen," said the young doctor, taking
her hand, and leading her along the shadowy path, "and yet you feel safe
with me. You fear not when I am with you."
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Helen, involuntarily drawing nearer to him--"I never
fear in your presence. Midnight would seem noonday, and all phantoms
flee away."
"And yet, Helen," he cried, "you have a friend always near, stronger to
protect than legions of angels can be. Do you realize this truth?"
"I trust, I believe I do," answered Helen, looking upward into the dome
of darkening blue that seemed resting upon the tall, dark pillars of the
woods. "I sometimes think if I were really exposed to a great danger, I
could brave it without shrinking--or if danger impended over one I
loved, I should forget all selfish apprehensions. Try not to judge me
too severely--and I will do my best to correct the faults of my
childhood."
They walked on in silence a few moments, for there was something hushing
in the soft murmurs of the branches, something like the distant roaring
of the ocean surge.
"I must take Alice home to-morrow," said he, at length; "her mother
longs to behold her. I wish you were going with her. I fear you will not
be happy here."
"I cannot leave my father," said Helen, sadly, "and if I can only keep
out of the way of other people's happiness, I will try to be content."
"May I speak to you freely, Helen, as I did several years ago? May I
counsel you as a friend--guide you as a brother still?"
"It is all that I wished--more than I dared to ask. I only fear that I
shall give you too much trouble."
There was a gray, old rock by the way-side, that looked exactly as if it
belonged to Miss Thusa's establishment. Arthur Hazleton seated Helen
there, and threw himself on the moss at her feet.
"I am going away to-morrow," said he, "and I feel as if I had much to
say. I leave you exposed to temptation; and to put you on your guard, I
must say perhaps what you will think unauthorized. You know so little of
the world--are so guileless and unsuspecting--I cannot bear to alarm
your simplicity; and yet, Helen, you cannot always remain a child."
"Oh, I wish I could," she exclaimed; "I cannot bear the thought of being
otherwise. As long as I am a child, I shall be caressed, cherished, and
forgiven for all my faults. I never shall be able to act on my own
responsibility--never."
"But, Helen, you have attained the stature of womanhood. You are looked
upon as a candidate for admiration--as the rival of your beautiful
sister. You will be flattered and courted, not as a child, but as a
woman. The young man who has become, as it were, domesticated in your
family, has extraordinary personal attractions, and every member of the
household appears to have yielded to his influence. Were I as sure of
his moral worth as of his outward graces, I would not say what I have
done. But, with one doubt on my mind, as your early friend, as the
self-elected guardian of your happiness, I cannot forbear to caution, to
admonish, perhaps to displease, by my too watchful, too officious
friendship."
Arthur paused. His voice had become agitated and his manner excited.
"You cannot believe me capable of the meanness of envy," he added. "Were
Bryant Clinton less handsome, less fascinating, his sincerity and truth
might be a question of less moment."
"How could you envy any one," cried Helen, earnestly, unconscious how
much her words and manner expressed. "Displeased! Oh! I thank you so
much. But indeed I do not admire Mr. Bryant Clinton at all. He is
entirely too handsome and dazzling. I do not like that long, curling,
shining hair of his. The first time I saw him, it reminded me of the
undulations of that terrible snake in the strawberry patch, and I cannot
get over the association. Then he does not admire me at all, only as the
sister of Mittie."
"He has paid Mittie very great and peculiar attention, and people look
upon them as betrothed lovers. Were you to become an object of jealousy
to her, you would be very, very unhappy. The pleasure of gratified
vanity would be faint to the stings exasperated and wounded love could
inflict."
"For all the universe could offer I would not be my sister's rival,"
cried Helen, rising impetuously, and looking round her with a wild
startled expression. "I will go and tell her so at once. I will ask her
to confide in me and trust me. I will go away if she wishes it. If my
father is willing, I will live with Miss Thusa in the wild woods."
"Wait awhile," said Arthur, smiling at her vehemence, "wait Helen,
patiently, firmly. When temptations arise, it is time to resist. I fear
I have done wrong in giving premature warning, but the impulse was
irresistible, in the silence of these twilight woods."
Helen looked up through the soft shadows to thank him again for his
counsels, and promise that they should be the guide of her life, but the
words died on her lips. There was something so darkly penetrating in the
expression of his countenance, so earnest, yet troubled, so opposite to
its usual serene gravity, that it infected her. Her heart beat
violently, and for the first time in her life she felt embarrassed in
his presence.
That night Helen pressed a wakeful pillow. She felt many years older
than when she rose in the morning, for the experience of the day had
been so oppressive. She could not realize that she had thought and felt
and learned so much in twelve short hours.