Love is a rose growing upon a thorny bramble. There is jealousy in the
very first blush of a passion. No sooner has a fair face made its
impress on the heart than hopes and fears spring up in alternation.
Every action, every word, every look is noted and examined with a
jealous scrutiny; and the heart of the lover, changing like the
chameleon, takes its hues from the latest sentiment that may have
dropped from the loved one's lips. And then the various looks, words,
and actions, the favourable with the unfavourable, are recalled, and by
a mental process classified and marshalled against each other, and
compared and balanced with as much exactitude as the _pros_ and
_contras_ of a miser's bank-book; and in this process we have a new
alternation of hopes and fears.
Ah, love! we could write a long history of thy rise and progress; but it
is doubtful whether any of our readers would be a jot the wiser for it.
Most of them ere this have read that history in their own hearts.
I felt and knew that I was in love. It had come like a thought, as it
comes upon all men whose souls are attuned to vibrate under the mystical
impressions of the beautiful. And well I knew _she_ was beautiful. I
saw its unfailing index in those oval developments--the index, too, of
the intellectual; for experience had taught me that _intellect takes a
shape_; and that those peculiarities of form that we admire, without
knowing why, are but the material illustrations of the diviner
principles of mind.
The eye, too, with its almond outline, and wild, half-Indian, half Arab
expression--the dark tracery over the lip, so rarely seen in the
lineaments of her sex--even these were attractions. There was something
picturesque, something strange, something almost fierce, in her aspect;
and yet it was this indefinable something, this very fierceness, that
had challenged my love. For I must confess mine is not one of those
curious natures that I have read of, whose love is based only upon the
goodness of the object. That _is not love_.
My heart recognised in her _the heroine of extremes_. One of those
natures gifted with all the tenderness that belongs to the angel idea--
woman; yet soaring above her sex in the paralysing moments of peril and
despair. Her feelings, in relation to her sister's cruelty to the
gold-fish, proved the existence of the former principle; her actions, in
attempting my own rescue when battling with the monster, were evidence
of the latter. One of those natures that may err from the desperate
intensity of one passion, that knows no limit to its self-sacrifice
short of destruction and death. One of those beings that may fall--but
_only once_.
"What would I not give--what would I not do--to be the hero of such a
heart?"
These were my reflections as I quitted the house.
I had noted every word, every look, every action, that could lend me a
hope; and my memory conjured up, and my judgment canvassed, each little
circumstance in its turn.
How strange her conduct at bidding adieu! How unlike her sister! Less
friendly and sincere; and yet from this very circumstance I drew my
happiest omen.
Strange--is it not? My experience has taught me that love and hate for
the _same_ object can exist in the _same_ heart, and at the _same_ time.
If this be a paradox, I am a child of error.
I believed it then; and her apparent coldness, which would have rendered
many another hopeless, produced with me an opposite effect.
Then came the cloud--the thought of Don Santiago--and a painful feeling
shot through my heart.
"Don Santiago, a naval officer, young, handsome. Bah! hers is not a
heart to be won by a face."
Such were my reflections and half-uttered expressions as I slowly led my
soldiers through the tangled path.
Don Santiago's age and his appearance were the creations of a jealous
fancy. I had bidden adieu to my new acquaintances knowing nothing of
Don Santiago beyond the fact that he was an officer on board the Spanish
ship of war, and a relation of Don Cosme.
"Oh, yes! Don Santiago is on board! Ha! there was an evident interest.
Her look as she said it; her manner--furies! But he is a relation, a
cousin--_a cousin--I hate cousins_!"
I must have pronounced the last words aloud, as Lincoln, who walked in
my rear, stepped hastily up, and asked:
"What did yer say, Cap'n?"
"Oh! nothing, Sergeant," stammered I, in some confusion.
Notwithstanding my assurance, I overheard Lincoln whisper to his nearest
comrade:
"What ther old Harry hes got into the cap?"
He referred to the fact that I had unconsciously hooked myself half a
dozen times on the thorny claws of the pita-plant, and my overalls began
to exhibit a most tattered condition.
Our route lay through a dense chaparral--now crossing a sandy spur,
covered with mezquite and acacia; then sinking into the bed of some
silent creek, shaded with old cork-trees, whose gnarled and venerable
trunks were laced together by a thousand parasites. Two miles from the
rancho we reached the banks of a considerable stream, which we
conjectured was a branch of the Jamapa River.
On both sides a fringe of dark forest-trees flung out long branches
extending half-way across the stream. The water flowed darkly
underneath.
Huge lilies stood out from the banks--their broad, wax-like leaves
trailing upon the glassy ripple.
Here and there were pools fringed with drooping willows and belts of
green _tule_. Other aquatic plants rose from the water to the height of
twenty feet; among which we distinguished the beautiful "iris", with its
tall, spear-like stem, ending in a brown cylinder, like the pompon of a
grenadier's cap.
As we approached the banks the pelican, scared from his lonely haunt,
rose upon heavy wing, and with a shrill scream flapped away through the
dark aisles of the forest. The cayman plunged sullenly into the sedgy
water; and the "Sajou" monkey, suspended by his prehensile tail from
some overhanging bough, oscillated to and fro, and filled the air with
his hideous, half-human cries.
Halting for a moment to refill the canteens, we crossed over and
ascended the opposite bank. A hundred paces farther on the guide, who
had gone ahead, cried out from an eminence, "_Mira la caballada_!"
(Yonder's the drove!)