LOVE IN A LOG CABIN.
The door in which the lovers stood was darkened by the hemlock; so
Seymour drew the young girl into the cabin close to a little window that
looked out upon the rustic bridge. It was a lovely object to gaze upon,
splendid ferns fringed all the margin of the brook and rooted themselves
in the stone-work of the bridge, pluming its mosses with tufts of green;
ladies’ ear-jewels, wild asters and scarlet cardinal flowers tangled
themselves in garlands of gold, blue and red over the water and round
the ends of the bridge, massing their rich foliage up the embankment
till some of the ear-jewels trembled, like bells of gold, under the
cabin window.
“Ah, how beautiful the earth is!” said Seymour, bending to look into her
eyes. “Great Heavens! it almost frightens one to feel so happy. Is it so
with you, darling?”
“I am very, very happy,” she answered, with a sigh that seemed to bring
up fragrance from the depths of her heart. “It rejoices me to know that
you think this so beautiful—for it is mine, all mine!”
The young man did not take in her meaning, but drew her close to his
bosom and answered, with passionate tenderness:
“And you, Cora, when shall I say that you are mine—all mine?”
His tenderness, the impatient trembling of his voice, made her bold, and
she answered him with kisses, for his lips had sought them even as his
words claimed her.
“I love you—oh! how dearly I love you!” she murmured, forgetting for
that one moment her wealth—her crime—everything but the passionate
tenderness which swayed her whole being.
“Then why should we wait? Come with me, darling—who on earth can love
you as I will? I possess money now, we need have no fear of poverty—full
twenty thousand dollars—”
She interrupted him with a ringing laugh, and throwing her head back,
looked triumphantly in his face.
“And I, Seymour, I have fifty times as much—more than that—more than you
and I can spend, let us be ever so extravagant. Throw your paltry gold
into the river, or give it to your servant; with me you shall have
everything, for I am rich—you can hardly imagine how rich.”
The young man dropped his arm from her waist and looked wildly into her
flashing eyes. He was deadly white, even to the lips. Her news seemed to
have frightened him.
A shade of terror came into her face, and she seized him by the arm.
“What is the matter?—how pale you are! Why, Seymour, you are trembling
from head to foot!”
He broke away from her, folded his arms against the logs of the
window-frame, and bowing his face upon them, burst into tears.
“Oh! my God, my God!” he broke forth, “if I had but known this before—if
I had but known it!”
The girl was astonished. She had thought to complete the triumph of his
happiness with her news, and there he stood trembling like a
culprit—weeping like a child.
“Seymour! Seymour, tell me the reason of this! I thought my news would
make you so happy,” she cried, partaking of his terror, for a painful
suspicion had seized upon her.
“Did he know? Did he suspect?”
Her hands shook like wounded birds as she lifted his head from the logs,
and the face she bent upon him was ashen with dread.
“Are you an angry? Does it make you so wretched because I am rich?” she
said, shrinking from the mournful eyes he turned upon her. “Speak to me,
Seymour! What have I done to wound you so?”
“Nothing,” he said, wearily; “nothing—you are everything that is
beautiful, good and generous, while I—oh, Cora! Cora! I am not worthy of
you! A beggar, and worse than a beggar, how dare I mate with a creature
so beautiful, so bright?”
She drew close to him, for the moment generous and womanly.
“If I owned the whole world, Seymour, and had the beauty of an angel,
all should be yours; I only ask that you love me.”
“Love you, girl! This is the very madness of love. If you only knew to
what it has driven me!”
“If you love me so, it is enough. There, now the color is coming back to
your lips. I felt mine growing cold, as if your kisses had frozen there.
Come, come, smile again. You frightened me terribly.”
“Did I?” he answered, with a forced smile. “I did not intend it—but you
took me by surprise.”
“Is it such a terrible calamity to be worth oceans of money?” she
answered, a little proudly. “Does this wealth make you love me less?
This poor little twenty thousand dollars you would have divided with me,
whom you thought penniless.”
“This poor little twenty thousand dollars!” he repeated, bitterly.
“Girl! girl! do you know what it cost me?”
Again she was terrified by his pallor and his vehemence, and answered,
trembling:
“No matter what it cost you, I will repay it. There is nothing that love
and power like mine shall not redeem.”
“Ah! if it could—if it could!” he answered, sorrowfully. “Why did you
tell me that falsehood? Was it to test me? Did you doubt that I loved
you? Why not say then, I am rich and will divide these riches with you?”
“Because my father was living and the wealth was his, not mine,” she
answered promptly. “That was worse than poverty, for I knew he never
would consent to our union.”
“But why not say that you were his daughter and heiress? Why pass
yourself off on the man who loved you as a dependent niece?”
“Forgive me! forgive me! I was wrong not to know you better; but the
deception sprang from a wish to be loved for myself alone.”
“Ah, Cora, had you but told me then!” he said, with a piteous smile.
“But let it pass. What a brute I am to frighten the color from your face
in this way. Come closer to me, love. Do not look so terrified—nothing
is wrong between us in reality. There! there! don’t tremble so, I am not
angry with any one but myself. We were talking about—about the time when
we need never separate again—oh! that blessed time for which any
sacrifice is not too great. When shall it be, love? In a week?
to-morrow?”
“So soon—oh, no! how impetuous you are! Days—weeks—why it must be months
before I can even lighten my mourning.”
“Your mourning! What is there in a few yards of black crape more or less
that should separate us? Must you necessarily mourn the dead less
because we love each other?”
“No, no; but there exist reasons which force me to be careful of
appearances. My cousin, the girl I represented myself to be when you
first knew me, threatens to contest my right to the property.”
“But how can she?”
“How can crazy people do any wild thing? The poor creature is insane,
but only on this one point. She is so rational and even cunning, in
other matters that astute lawyers may be won to take up her cause.”
“But why should this affect our marriage, Cora?”
“You are a foreigner and cannot understand the senseless etiquette which
makes deep mourning and solitude imperative in this country after the
loss of a relative. Were I to abandon this mourning for a wedding-dress,
the world would hold it as strong evidence in favor of my cousin. No
daughter could so forget the respect due a deceased parent, it would
insist.”
“And you would have me wait the tedious result of a law-suit—cast me
back from my happiness because people might cavil about time and place.
Cora Lander, this delay will prove an eternal separation!”
“No, no it cannot—it shall not! Only wait patiently a few months!” cried
the girl, with a burst of alarm. “My heart has nothing to say in this,
it pleads for you—for myself—that alone knows how I love you.”
“Yet, for the sake of this money, you kill me with delay.”
“But I wound myself in doing it. Be patient, do be patient!”
“Patient, girl! when any hour may take you from me,” cried the young
man, with a despairing gesture.
“No power on earth can do that, Seymour. I would perish rather than give
you up. Trust me! trust me!”
“But can I trust Fate? You have no pity, Cora Lander!”
“You are excited—wild. There is no such serious matter in a little
delay,” she answered, soothingly.
“There is! there is! You cannot understand. How should you?”
“What is there, Seymour, that I do not understand? Have you secrets?”
Cora turned white as marble, and the glitter of steel came into her eyes
as they searched the pale face turned away from her.
“Has some other woman claims upon you?” she added, in a low, husky
voice, that made the white lips quiver as it passed through.
“No, on my honor, on my soul, no!”
This exclamation was full of passionate truth. The young man turned his
face full upon her now. Slowly the color came back to her cheek and
lips, and her heart flung off the pain that had seized upon it with a
throb of relief such as she had never felt before. It seemed as if she
had wrenched herself free from the grasp of a demon, that pang of
jealousy had been so sharp and bitter.
“Cora,” said the young man, with emotion, “since the day I saw you, the
image of no other woman has entered my heart—scarcely reached my
thoughts. I have loved you devotedly, entirely—do not trifle with me
now!”
“I do not trifle with you.”
“But you prefer the opinion of a crowd of men and women, whom you do not
even know, to my wishes or my happiness.”
“But I must live among these people, Seymour. They compose the world in
which men and women must work out their ambition.”
“My only ambition is your love, Cora,” said Seymour, with great
tenderness.
“And mine is for you,” she answered, kindling with enthusiasm. “When we
are married, Seymour, I would have the whole world look on and know that
it is my hand that endows you with wealth—my love which chooses you from
among all other men. There can be nothing costly or rare with which we
will not surround ourselves. Love, to be complete, should envelop itself
in purple, bathe itself in the perfume of flowers and be lulled to sleep
by sweet music.”
The young man smiled to see her eyes kindle and her cheeks burn. This
material picture fired his imagination, but failed to satisfy that
deeper feeling which in reality lifted him above the woman he so
worshipped.
“Love like mine craves none of these things,” he said, almost
reproachfully. “With you, Cora, I could be happy in a log cabin less
pretentious than this little rustic nest—away from the world, away—”
Cora interrupted him, a little scornfully, with a laugh that thrilled
him half with pain, half with pleasure.
“And I would lavish everything beautiful and precious in the world on
you,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.
“But you will not give up any of these things for me.”
“I would give up everything for you, if that were needful.”
“Then brave the opinion of these people you call the world.”
“Had we not better evade it?” said Cora, drawing her face nearer to his
and almost whispering in his ear.
“Evade it; how?”
“Why need any one know till all these vexatious questions about the
property are settled?”
A sudden joy flashed into the young man’s face.
“And would you, would you?” he questioned, girding her waist
unconsciously with his arm.
“Will you wait patiently for the time of disclosure to come? Will you
keep it secret?”
“I will be anything you wish.”
“And not urge me to declare our marriage till it is perfectly safe?”
“Why should I—you will be mine?”
“Then be it next week—nay, to-morrow, if you like.”
Her cheeks were one flush of roses, her eyes became flooded with misty
softness, over which the white lids drooped, for she was ashamed of her
own eagerness. Though perverted and wicked, she was yet a woman, and
trembled a little at the great venture she was making. Seymour did not
speak at first and his arms released its fond hold on her waist. She
looked suddenly in his face and blushed red when she saw a sort of
wonder in his eyes rather than the great joy she had expected. Quick as
thought she understood this delicate revulsion.
“Then next week, to-morrow, if you like, we will talk the matter over
more dispassionately,” she said, drawing gently away from him. “We have
many things to reflect on. Even now it would be better to wait.”
A flash of eager fire in the young man’s face proved the sudden reaction
caused by her words. The pride of his manhood, faulty as it was,
recoiled from an offer even of the happiness he craved when it came so
readily from those crimson lips. But her retreat, which seemed to spring
from delicacy, was made with such dexterous craft that it swept this
feeling away, and he became an eager suppliant again.
“Not a week—not a day—not an hour—if I can help it, shall this great
happiness escape me,” he exclaimed, with passionate warmth. “I feel as
if each moment might snatch you from me, and tremble as it passes. Let
us go at once; there must be a clergyman somewhere in the neighborhood.”
Cora gave one of her clear, ringing laughs, and patted her hand with a
light caress upon the curls on one side of his head.
“What an impetuous, rash creature it is who has made me love him so,”
she said. “Why we might as well summon a regiment to see us married. No,
that country clergyman will never do. Let us think—let us consult. This
thing must be secret as the grave.”
“The grave, Cora? That is an ugly word to couple with our love.”
“Well, then, secret as the fruit that lies hidden in the heart of a
blossom. Will that do?”
“Anything that is sweet and lovely will do. Well, we are to be secret. I
consent to that, if it brings no delay.”
“We must go to the city. My un—, my father had a house there, which he
occupied in the winter of late years; a gem of a residence, I am told.
That shall be our home.”
“Admirable! But soon—let it be soon.”
“To-morrow I will go to the city alone and make all necessary
preparation. Next week—”
“Well, what shall come next week!”
“The clergyman, as you are determined to have it so.”
Her eyelids drooped as she spoke, and fringes, of a rich golden brown,
curled over the passion of love that slept in her eyes. This was not all
unreal; she was womanly for the moment. He thought her the very
incarnation of pure loveliness, and trembled with a joy that was almost
pain as he gazed upon her.
“Then I am determined to have it so. In one week I will bring the
clergyman who is to make you my wife to the place you speak of. But your
aunt?”
“She must know nothing. Her heart would be with us, but she is weak and
irresolute. The shock of her daughter’s insanity has unnerved her. In
all things I am independent.”
“But you will let me go with you to the city?”
“No. You can follow me and I will manage to see you at the hotel just
once during the week.”
“This week—this one week, and then you are my wife. Oh, Cora! this
happiness seems too great. I am not worthy of it; yet if deep, pure,
overpowering love could make a man worthy, I might claim something from
that.”
The young man—earnest and true, most surely, for the moment—held her by
the waist as he spoke and looked tenderly into her free. She met his
gaze smiling, and with a warm red, which was not blushes, on her cheek.
“My wife,” he whispered; “my wife! That is a dear word. Great Heavens,
how dear it must be to a good man!”
A sensitive woman would have been troubled by these regretful
exclamations, and felt in her heart that there was something wrong under
them. But with so many passionate and ardent feelings mingled with the
selfishness of her nature, Cora was neither a sensitive nor really
refined woman. She scarcely heeded the expressions of self-reproach that
escaped him from time to time, and if she did, imputed them to the
humility of a man whom she was lifting from poverty to an equality with
herself one of the most beautiful and wealthy women of the land.
“Now, good-bye, it is growing dark inside the cabin, and they will miss
me at home.”
“Not yet, darling; not yet. The stars are trembling down through the
leaves with a tender light. See how the purple shadows are deepening
along the hollows of the brook. Directly the moon must begin to shine,
and that will give a holier beauty to your face. Does not this remind
you of that sunset among the hills when I first saw you wandering along,
left behind by your friends, and searching for the path which you never
would have found. With what a gentle radiance the moon arose that night!
Ah, I was free and happy then!”
“And now your voice is sad, tears tremble in your voice. Why is this,
Seymour?”
He bent his face to hers in the purple dusk of the twilight.
“Have you never heard of happiness so great that it trenches on pain?”
he said, evasively. “But, look, the moon is rising; you can see its
dancing silver on the water. Ah, my beloved, now your face returns to me
as it did then, dear and delicate, like a soul imprisoned in marble. I
remember well a sadness fell upon me when I left you, so deep and
strange that it seemed like the shadow of some dark fate. It is creeping
over me now.”
Cora broke impatiently from his arm; she had no sympathy with the
sadness of his thoughts, and strove to win him from them by trivial
questions.
“I remember,” she said. “There was a gentleman with you then, and you
would not tell me his name; it is very cruel, for, from the distance, he
seemed both elegant and handsome. Who was it, tell me now?”
Even in the moonlight, Cora was surprised to see how white and stonelike
Seymour turned. He was silent half a minute, then roused himself
abruptly and answered her in a voice that seemed sharp with pain:
“I will answer that question, but on condition that you ask no more
regarding that man now or ever. He was my friend and he is dead.”
The moment he had spoken, Seymour bent down, pressed a cold kiss upon
her lips that clung there like ice, and left the cabin. Cora found him
outside the door, leaning heavily against the logs.
“Come,” he said, in a troubled voice, “we are getting sad, and that will
never do. Which way is your house, along this path?”
“But it is dangerous—you may be seen. I must return home alone,” Cora
protested.
“I will retreat when we get to the edge of the wood, from thence I can
watch you,” he answered, supporting her along the path.
Cora allowed the escort in silence. She was depressed by his
unaccountable sadness and disappointment in the termination of an
interview from which she had promised herself unmixed joy.
They reached the edge of the woods, and then he took her in his arms
again.
“And will you always love me?” he said, with pathetic earnestness. “Can
nothing turn your heart from me?”
“I will always love you, Seymour. Nothing on this earth can ever turn my
heart from you,” she answered, almost in tears.
“In sorrow—sickness—poverty?”
“These things are nothing that I should shrink from them,” was her
reply.
“In disgrace?”
He asked that question in a whisper that crept through her with a chill.
“That can never reach you while I am your wife,” she said, proudly.
“But if it should?”
“Then I, your wife, would sweep it away from you, or—”
“Or what?”
“Share it with you. But why ask such questions? Is it to try me? That is
ungenerous. Have I not promised to many you unquestioned, scarcely
knowing or caring if you had prince or peasant for a father?”
“What if he were low-born?”
“Low-born—that is, a man who worked for his living? Well, what do I care
for that? In this country work is the foundation of greatness, statesmen
tell us. If you have nothing more serious than low birth and poverty to
frighten me with, pray compose yourself.”
“But if it were crime?”
She started, for that word lay buried deep in her own heart, and the
husky slowness with which it was uttered seemed searching it out.
“Sometimes a great motive, an overpowering ambition, almost ennobles
crime itself,” she said. “If the object were sufficient, even that could
not conquer such love as ours.”
He snatched her suddenly to his heart, kissed her two or three times
upon the eyelids and lips and let her go. Cora found herself out in the
moonlight and alone before she recovered from the surprise left upon her
by this action.
Seymour drew back into the shadows, from which he watched her as she
crossed a meadow separated by an invisible fence from the lawn. When she
disappeared among the shrubbery, he turned, walked hastily back along
the narrow footpath, and entering the log cabin, threw himself prostrate
on the floor, with his face buried in his folded arms. There he burst
into a passion of tears that filled the little building with such sounds
of grief as had never visited it before. At last the violence of his
emotion exhausted itself. Then the sweet hum and flow of the brook stole
in through the open door and swept away his sobs into their own music,
soothing him, unconsciously, till the wet lashes closed over his eyes
and the moonlight streamed in upon his sleeping face, giving it the rare
beauty of some sculptured ideal. Had you looked upon him then you could
have thought nothing that was not bright and good of the young man;
grief and that gentle sleep had purified his nature for the time, and no
dark passion left its shadow upon that face.
Hour after hour the young man slept with the scent of ferns and ripening
leaves sweeping over him hushed into sweet rest by the chime of waters,
the rustle of forest boughs and the far-off flow of the Hudson, which
came up from the distance like a voice from eternity sweeping through
the night. All at once the cry of a whip-poor-will from the hemlock,
whose branches swept the cabin roof, aroused him. He started up, felt
the sublime stillness of the night like one in a dream, and at last
began to realize where he was and what had happened.
Fortunately the young man had but to follow the footpath which brought
him to the tavern stoop into which his own room opened. He had purposely
left the inner door locked, and that which he had unfastened remained
partly open. So he made his way to bed in the dark, satisfied that his
absence had been undiscovered.