VERTY MUSES.
Let us now leave the good old town of Winchester, and go into the
hills, where the brilliant autumn morning reigns, splendid and
vigorous.
In the hills! Happy is the man who knows what those words mean; for
only the mountain-born can understand them. Happy, then, let us say,
are the mountain-born! We will not underrate the glories of the
lowland and the Atlantic shore, or close our eyes to the wealth of the
sea. The man is blind who does not catch the subtle charm of the wild
waves glittering in the sun, or brooded over by the sullen storm; but
"nigh gravel blind" is that other, whose eyes are not open to the
grand beauty of the mountains. Let us not rhapsodize, or with this
little bit of yellow ore, venture to speak of the great piles of
grandeur from whose heart it was dug up. There is that about the
mountains, with their roaring diapason of the noble pines, their
rugged summits and far dying tints, purple, and gold, and azure, which
no painter could express, had the genius of Titian and Watteau, and
the atmosphere of Poussin, to speak over its creations. No! let them
speak for themselves as all great things must--happy is he, who, by
right of birth, can understand their noble voices!
But there is the other and lesser mountain life--the life of the
hills. Autumn loves these especially, and happy, too, are they who
know the charm of the breezy hills! The hills where autumn pours her
ruddy sunshine upon lordly pines--rather call them palms!--shooting
their slender swaying trunks into the golden sea of morning, and, far
up above, waving their emerald plumes in the laughing wind;--where
the sward is fresh and dewy in the shivering delicious hunter's
morning!--where the arrow-wood and dogwood cluster crimson berries,
and the maple, alder tree and tulip, burn away--setting the dewy copse
on fire with splendor! Yes, autumn loves the hills, and pours her
brawling brooks, swarming with leaves, through thousands of hollows,
any one of which might make a master-piece on canvas. Some day we
shall have them--who knows?--and even the great mountain-ranges shall
be mastered by the coming man.
We do not know the name of the "hollow" through which Verty came
on the bright morning of the day following the events we have just
related. But autumn had never dowered any spot more grandly. All the
trees were bright and dewy in the sunrise--birds were singing--and the
thousand variegated colors of the fall swept on from end to end of it,
swallowing the little stream, and breaking against the sky like a gay
fringe.
Verty knew all this, and though he did not look at it, he saw it, and
his lips moved.
Cloud pricked up his ears, and the hound gazed at his master
inquiringly. But Verty was musing; his large, dreamy eyes were fixed
with unalterable attention upon vacancy, and his drooping shoulders,
whereon lay the tangled mass of his chestnut hair, swayed regularly as
he moved. It only mingled with his musings--the bright scene--and grew
a part of them; he scarcely saw it.
"Yes," he murmured, "yes, I think I am a Delaware!--a white? to dream
it! am I mad? The wild night-wind must have whispered to me while I
slept, and gone away laughing at me. I, the savage, the simple savage,
to think this was so! And yet--yes, yes--I did think so! Redbud said
it was thus--Redbud!"
And the young man for a time was silent.
"I wonder what Redbud thinks of me?" he murmured again, with his old
dreamy smile. "Can she find anything to like in me? What am I? Poor,
poor Verty--you are very weak, and the stream here is laughing at you.
You are a poor forest boy--there can be nothing in you for Redbud to
like. Oh! if she could! But we are friends, I know--about the other,
why think? what is it? Love!--what is love? It must be something
strange--or why do I feel as if to be friends was not enough? Love!"
And Verty's head drooped.
"Love, love!" he murmured. "Oh, yes! I know what it means! They laugh
at it--but they ought not to. It is heaven in the heart--sunshine in
the breast. Oh, I feel that what I mean by love is purer than the
whole wide world besides! Yes, yes--because I would die for her! I
would give my life to save her any suffering--her hand on my forehead
would be dearer and sweeter than the cool spring in the hills after a
weary, day-long hunt, when I come to it with hot cheeks and burnt-up
throat! Oh, yes! I may be an Indian, and be different--but this is all
to me--this feeling, as if I must go to her, and kneel down and tell
her that my life is gone from me when I am not near her--that I walk
and live like a man dreaming, when she does not smile on me and speak
to me!"
Verty's head drooped, and his cheeks reddened with the ingenuous blush
of boyhood. Then he raised his head, and murmured, with a smile, which
made his face beautiful--so full of light and joy was it.
"Yes--I think I am in love with Redbud--and she does not think it
wrong, I am sure--oh, I don't think she will think it wrong in me, and
turn against me, only because I love her!"
Having arrived at this conclusion, Verty went along smiling, and
admiring the splendid tints of the foliage--drinking in the fresh,
breezy air of morning, and occasionally listening for the cries of
game--of deer, and turkey, pheasants, and the rest. He heard with his
quick ear many of these sounds: the still croak of the turkey, the
drumming of the pheasant; more than once saw disappear on a distant
hill, like a flying shadow, the fallow deer, which he had so often
chased and shot. But on that morning he could not leave his path to
follow the wild deer, or slay the lesser game, of which the copses
were full. Mastered by a greater passion even than hunting, Verty drew
near Apple Orchard--making signs with his head to the deer to go on
their way, and wholly oblivious of pheasants.
He reached Apple Orchard just as the sun soared redly up above the
distant forest; and the old homestead waked up with it. Morning always
smiled on Apple Orchard, and the brilliant flush seemed, there, more
brilliant still; while all the happy breezes flying over it seemed to
regret their destiny which led them far away to other clouds.
Verty always stopped for a moment on his way to and from Winchester,
to bid the inmates good morning; and these hours had come to be the
bright sunny spots in days otherwise full of no little languor. For
when was Daymon merry and light-hearted, separated from his love? It
is still the bright moment of meeting which swallows up all other
thoughts--around which the musing heart clusters all its joy and
hope--which is looked forward to and dreamed over, with longing,
dreamy, yet excited happiness. And this is the reason why the most
fatal blow which the young heart can suffer is a sudden warning that
there must be no more meetings. No more! when it dreams of and
clings to that thought of meeting, as the life and vital blood
of to-morrow!--when the heart is liquid--the eyes moist with
tenderness--the warp of thought woven of golden thread--at such a
moment for the blow of the wave to fall, and drown the precious argosy
with all its freight of love, and hope, and memory--this is the
supreme agony of youth, the last and most refined of tortures.
Verty lived in the thought of meeting Redbud--his days were full of
her; but the hours he passed at Apple Orchard were the brightest. The
noonday culminated at dawn and sunset!
As he approached the pleasant homestead now, his eyes lighted up, and
his face beamed with smiles. Redbud was standing in the porch waiting
for him.
She was clad with her usual simplicity, and smiled gently as he
approached. Verty threw the bundle upon Cloud's mane, and came to her.
They scarcely interchanged a word, but the hand of the girl was
imprisoned in his own; and the tenderness which had been slowly
gathering for months into love, pure, and deep, and strong, flushed
his ingenuous face, and made his eyes swim in tears.
It was well that Verty was interrupted as he essayed to speak; for we
cannot tell what he would have said. He did not speak; for just as he
opened his lips, a gruff voice behind him uttered the words:
"Well, sir! where is your business?"