_The Pestilence. The Curtain wholly lifted._
It was now the middle of October.
“Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light, and the
landscape
Lay as if new created, in all the freshness of childhood:
All sounds were in harmony blended.
Voices of children at play—the crowing of cocks in the farm-yard,
Whirr of wings in the drowsy air, and the cooing of pigeons,
All were subdued and low as the murmurs of love.”
When suddenly the Angel of Death folded his dark wings, and sat brooding
over the peaceful, pleasant village of Grassmere.
A terrible and malignant fever swept through the town, spreading from
house to house, like the fire which consumes alike the dry grass and the
bright, fresh flowers of the prairies. Old and young, husband, wife and
child, were alike brought low. There were not left in all the village
those able to attend upon the sick. From the churches solemnly tolled
the funeral bells, as one by one, youth and age, blooming childhood and
lovely infancy, were borne to the grave-yard—no longer solitary—for
the foot of the mourner pressed heavily over its grass-grown paths.
Still the contagion raged, until the selfishness of poor human nature
triumphed over the promptings of kindness and charity. People grew
jealous of each other; neighbor shunned neighbor;
“Silence reigned in the streets—
Rose no smoke from the roofs—gleamed no lights from the windows.”
save the dim midnight lamp which from almost every house betokened the
plague within.
None had shut themselves up closer from fear of infection than Deacon
Humphreys. His gates grew rusty, and the grass sprang up in the paths
about his dwelling. And yet the Destroyer found him out, and like a
hound long scenting its prey, sprang upon the household with terrible
violence.
First the pure and gentle Naomi sank beneath the stroke, and ere the
setting of the same day’s sun, Mrs. Humphreys herself was brought nigh
the grave.
Like one demented, pale with agony and terror, the deacon rushed forth
into the deserted streets to seek for aid. His dear ones—his wife and
child were perhaps dying; where, where should he look for relief—where
find some kind hand to administer to their necessities.
At every house he learned a tale of wo equal to his own. Some wept while
they told of dear ones now languishing upon the bed of pain, or bade him
look upon the marble brow of their dead. Others grown callous, and
worn-out with sorrow and fatigue, refused all aid, while some, through
excess of fear, hurriedly closed their doors against him.
Thus he reached the end of the village, and then the small, neat cottage
of Mrs. Norton met his view, nestling down amid the overshadowing
branches of two venerable elm. From the day he had almost thrust her
from his gate, with cold looks and unflinching extortion, Mrs. Norton
and the deacon had not met, and now the time had come when he was about
to ask from her a favor upon which perhaps his whole earthly happiness
might rest—a favor from her, whom in _his_ strength and _her_
dependence he had scorned. Would she grant it? He hesitated; would she
not rather, rejoicing in her power now, revenge the slights he felt he
had so often and so undeservedly cast upon her. But he remembered the
sweet, calm look which beamed from her eyes, and his courage grew with
the thought.
Putting away the luxuriant creeper which wound itself from the still
green turf to the roof of the cottage, hanging in graceful festoons, and
tinged with the brilliant dyes of autumn, seemed like wreaths of
magnificent flowers thus suspended, the deacon knocked hesitatingly at
the door.
It opened, and Mrs. Norton stood before him, pale with watching—for,
like an angel of mercy had she passed from house to house, since the
first breaking out of the scourge. In faltering accents he told his
errand; and, O, how like a dagger did it pierce his heart, when, with a
countenance beaming with pity and kindness, and speaking words of
comfort, the widow put on her bonnet and followed him with fleet
footsteps to his stricken home.
All night, like a ministering angel, did she pass from one sick couch to
the other, tenderly soothing the ravings of fever, moistening their
parched lips with cool, refreshing drinks, fanning their fevered brows,
and smoothing the couch made uneasy by their restless motions.
Unable to bear the scene, the deacon betook him in his hour of sorrow to
his closet, where all through the dreary watches of the night he prayed
this cup of affliction might pass from him. His heart was subdued. He
saw that like the proud Pharisee he had exalted himself, thanking God
_he was not as other men_.
At early dawn came Grace also to inquire after her suffering Naomi, and
finding her so very ill, earnestly besought her mother that she might be
allowed to share the task of nursing her. Mrs. Norton had no fears for
herself, yet when she looked at her only and beautiful child, she
trembled; but her eyes fell upon the bed where poor Naomi lay moaning in
all the delirium of high fever, and her heart reproached her for her
momentary selfishness. Removing the bonnet of Grace, she tenderly kissed
her pure brow, and then kneeling down, with folded hands she prayed,
“Thy will, O Lord, not mine be done! Take her in thy holy keeping, and
do with her as thou seest best!”
From that day Grace left not the bedside of her friend.
On the third day Mrs. Humphreys died. Her last sigh was breathed out on
the bosom of the woman whom she had taught her daughter to shun. For
many days it seemed as if Death would claim another victim; yet God
mercifully spared Naomi to her bereaved father; very slowly she
recovered, but neither Mrs. Norton nor Grace left her until she was able
to quit her bed.
With the death of Mrs. Humphreys, the pestilence staid its ravages,
while, as a winding-sheet, the snows of winter now enshrouded the
fresh-turned clods in the late busy grave-yard.
The eyes of Deacon Humphreys were opened. He became an altered man. He
saw how mistaken had been his views, and that it is not the _profession_
of any sect or creed which makes the true Christian, and that if all are
alike _sincere in love to God_, all may be alike received.
I have said this was no love tale, therefore, by merely stating that in
the course of a twelvemonth Hubert Fairlie and Grace were united, I
close my simple story.
* * * * *
WATOUSKA.
A LEGEND OF THE ONEIDAS.
BY KATE ST. CLAIR.
Away, in a forest’s gloom,
Where the shadowy branches wave
O’er a rude and moss-grown tomb,
Is an Indian maiden’s grave:
None knoweth that music-haunted spot—
Save a far-off one, who forgets it not.
He dreams of that silent shore—
’Tis a holy spot to him,
A solemn stillness broodeth o’er
Those forest-aisles so dim;
Bird-music, and wave-melody,
Blend with the murmurings of the bee.
He knows when the wild-rose showers
Its blossoms o’er her breast;
When the summer-winds, ’mid flowers,
Whisper above her rest:
And he deems he hears, on his far-off shore,
The music of the cataract’s roar
From that Island of the Blest!
She passed from earth away—
The young, the beautiful,
In the long dreamy day
When golden shadows fell
O’er wave and vine, and moons had sped,
Yet _there_, while that brief season fled,
He’d kept Love’s vigil well.
He comes, that warrior-chief,
Once more, in the pale moon’s wane,
When the dews weep o’er each leaf,
To that haunted spot again—
But morn with its glorious beauty woke
Him not—the warrior’s heart had broke.
* * * * *
INDIAN LEGEND OF THE STAR AND LILY.
BY KAH-GE-GA-GAH-BOWH.
In the wigwam of the Indian during the evenings of spring, that season
when nature, loosed from the bondage of winter, awakes to new life, and
begins to deck itself with beauties, the old sage gathers around him the
young men of the tribe, and relates the stories of days long since
departed.
I have seen these youths sit in breathless silence, listening to the old
man’s narrative. Now and then the tear-drops would course down their
cheeks, and fall to the ground, witnesses of the interest they felt in
the words of their teacher.
To induce the sire to narrate a tradition, the Indian boys would
contrive some ingenious plan by which to get some tobacco, which, when
offered with a request for a story, would be sure of a favorable answer.
Frequently it happens that from sunset to its rise these clubs are
entertained, and they do not separate till daylight calls them to the
chase.
One of the most interesting traditionary stories I ever heard related,
was told by an elderly Indian, one evening in spring. The winter was
just leaving, the snow and ice were fast disappearing, and the streams
were swollen with the unusual quantity of water from the mountains.
“There was once a time,” said he, “when this world was filled with happy
people, when all nations were as one, and the crimson tide of war had
not begun to roll. Plenty of game were in the forests and on the plains.
None were in want, for a full supply was at hand. Sickness was unknown.
The beasts of the field were tame, and came and went at the bidding of
man. One unending spring gave no place for winter, for its cold blasts
or its chills. Every tree and bush yielded fruit. Flowers carpeted the
earth; the air was filled with their fragrance, and redolent with the
songs of myriad warblers that flew from branch to branch, fearing none,
for there were none to harm them. There were birds then of more
beautiful plumage than now.
“It was then, when earth was a paradise, and man worthy to be its
possessor, that Indians were the lone inhabitants of the American
wilderness. They numbered millions, and living as nature designed them
to live, enjoyed its many blessings. Instead of amusement in close rooms
the sports of the fields were theirs.
“At night they met on the wide, green fields. They watched the stars;
they loved to gaze at them, for they believed them to be the residences
of the good who had been taken home by the Great Spirit. One night they
saw one star that shone brighter than all others. Its location was far
away in the south, near a mountain peak. For many nights it was seen,
till at length it was doubted by many that this star was as far off in
the southern skies as it seemed to be. This doubt led to an examination,
which proved the star to be only a short distance, and near the tops of
some trees. A number of warriors were deputed to go and see what it was.
They went and returned, saying that it appeared strange and somewhat
like a bird. A council of the wise men was called to inquire into and,
if possible, ascertain the meaning of the phenomenon.
“They feared that it was an omen of some disaster. Some thought it a
precursor of good, others of evil. Some supposed it to be the star
spoken of by their forefathers, as a forerunner of a dreadful war.
“One moon had nearly gone by, and yet the mystery remained unsolved.
“One night a young warrior had a dream, in which a beautiful maiden came
and stood at his side, and thus addressed him:
“‘Young brave! charmed with the land of thy forefathers, its flowers,
its birds, its rivers, its beautiful lakes and its mountains clothed
with green, I have left my sister in yonder world to dwell among you.
“‘Young brave! ask your wise and your great men where I can live and see
the happy race continually; ask them what form I shall assume, in order
to be loved and cherished among the people.’
“Thus discoursed the bright stranger. The young man awoke. On stepping
out of his lodge, he saw the star yet blazing in its accustomed place.
“At early dawn the chief’s crier was sent round the camp to call every
warrior to the Council Lodge. When they had met, the young warrior
related his dream. They concluded that the star they had seen in the
south had fallen in love with mankind and that it was desirous to dwell
with them.
“The next night five tall, noble-looking adventurous braves were sent to
welcome the stranger to earth.
“They went and presenting to it a pipe of peace, filled with
sweet-scented herbs, were rejoiced to find that it took it from them. As
they returned to the village, the star, with expanded wings followed,
and hovered over their homes till the dawn of day.
“Again it came to the young man in a dream and desired to know where it
should live, and what form it should take. Places were named. On the
tops of giant trees or in flowers. At length it was told to choose a
place itself—and it did so. At first it dwelt in the wild rose of the
mountains, but there it was so buried it could not be seen. It went to
the prairie, but it feared the hoof of the buffaloe. It next went to the
rocky cliff, but it was there so high that the children, whom it loved
most, could not see it.
“‘I know where I shall live,’ said the bright fugitive, ‘where I can see
the gliding canoe of the race I most admire. Children, yes, they shall
be my playmates, and I will kiss their brows when they slumber at the
side of the cool lakes. The nations shall love me wherever I am.’
“These words having been uttered, she alighted on the waters where she
saw herself reflected.
“The next morning thousands of white flowers were seen on the surface of
all the lakes and the Indians gave them this name;
_Wah-be-gwon-nee_—(White Lily.)
“Now,” continued the old man, “this star lived in the southern skies.
Its brethren can be seen far off in the cold north, hunting the great
bear, while its sisters watch her in the east and west.
“Children, when you see the lily on the waters, take it in your hands
and hold it to the skies, that it may be happy on earth, as its two
sisters (the morning and evening stars) are happy in heaven.”
While tears fell fast from the eyes of all, the old man lay him down and
was soon silent in sleep.
Since then I have often plucked the white lily and garlanded around my
head; have dipped it in its watery bed, but never have I seen it without
remembering the _Legend of the Descending Star_.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE GOLDEN AGE.]
* * * * *
THE IMPROVISATRICE.
BY MRS. MARY G. HORSFORD.
Go bear the voiceless harp away!
Its latest note is spoken,
And like the heart that beats within,
Its last frail chord is broken.
This soul of mine was never made
For glad or peaceful life,
But cast in rude, imperfect mould,
For bitterness and strife.
I never was a careless child,
For in my early years
The founts within were gathering,
Of anguish and of tears:
And when I looked upon the stars
In all their golden sheen,
The presage of a broken heart—
It always came between.
And then the Voice of Song awoke
Within my wayward soul,
And bade the wearing tide of thought
Forever o’er it roll.
And dreams of words that should go forth
To bless and elevate,
Ambition’s charmed and serpent lure,
The passion to create;
Were mingled in my spirit’s depths,
Till with displacing power
Came Love with gorgeous diadem,
The phantom of an hour!
And soon the mockeries of Hope
Fled smiling from my breast,
And left a dark and fearful curse,
The cravings of unrest.
And Life became a weary load,
And Nature’s face a pall,
And each red drop that passed my heart
Was turned to seething gall.
From day to day the lyre within
Waxed passionate and frail;
It trembled at the zephyr’s breath,
How could it brook the gale?
Now Death has o’er my pillow bent,
I’ve seen his glancing eye,
And watched the silvery gleaming of
His pinion passing by.
Go bring me back my harp again!
I feel a strength for prayer,
And o’er the shattered chords within
Creeps an unearthly air.
Go bring me back my harp again,
I may not now restore
The sounding strings I loved so well,
Or tune it as before;
But I would lay my hand upon
The trembling chords and riven;
I feel mine own are healing fast
Beneath the eye of Heaven.
* * * * *
THE EIGHTEENTH SONNET OF PETRARCA.
BY FAYETTE ROBINSON.
Had I but waited patient in the cell
Where great Apollo erst became divine,
One bard might call himself a Florentine,
Like those who once in other lands did dwell.
But here the holy ichor doth not swell,
And fate hath willed another lot be mine.
’Tis meet that I relinquish high design
And drink the waters of life’s turbid well.
Sear are the olive branches now, the stream
Near which they grew and looked toward the sky
Hath sunken deep beneath the rock again.
Fate or my fault hath aye dispelled the dream
That made me fix my early hopes so high,
Unless God will their height I should attain.
* * * * *
JASPER ST. AUBYN;
OR THE COURSE OF PASSION.
BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.
(_Continued from page 15._)
CHAPTER II.
_The Wakening._
He saw her, at a nearer view,
A spirit, yet a woman too.
WORDSWORTH.
When Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, dim with the struggle of
returning consciousness and life, they met a pair of eyes fixed with an
expression of the most earnest anxiety on his own—a pair of eyes, the
loveliest into which he ever had yet gazed, large, dark, unfathomably
deep, and soft withal and tender, as the day-dream of a love-sick poet.
He could not mark their color; he scarce knew whether they were mortal
eyes, whether they were realities at all, so sickly did his brain reel,
and so confused and wandering were his fancies.
Then a sweet low voice fell upon his ear, in tones the gentlest, yet the
gladdest, that ever he had heard, exclaiming—
“Oh! father, father, he lives—he is saved!”
But he heard, saw, no more; for again he relapsed into unconsciousness,
and felt nothing further, until he became sensible of a balmy coolness
on his brow, a pleasant flavor on his parched lips, and a kindly glow
creeping as it were through all his limbs, and gradually expanding into
life.
Again his eyes were unclosed, and again they met the earnest, hopeful
gaze of those other eyes, which he now might perceive belonging to a
face so exquisite, and a form so lovely, as to be worthy of those great
glorious wells of lustrous tenderness.
It was a young girl who bent over him, perhaps a few months older than
himself, so beautiful that had she appeared suddenly, even in her simple
garb, which seemed to announce her but one degree above the peasants of
the neighborhood, in the midst of the noblest and most aristocratical
assembly, she would have become on the instant the cynosure of all eyes,
and the magnet of all hearts.
Of that age when the heart, yet unsunned by passion, and unused to
strong emotion, thrills sensibly to every feeling awakened for the first
time within it, and bounds at every appeal to its sympathies; when the
ingenuous countenance, unhardened by the sad knowledge of the world, and
untaught to conceal one emotion, reflects like a perfect mirror every
gleam of sunshine that illuminates, every passing cloud that
over-shadows its pure and spotless surface, the maiden sought not to
hide her delight, as she witnessed the hue of life return to his pale
cheeks, and the spark of intelligence relume his handsome features.
A bright mirthful glance, which told how radiant they might be in
moments of unmingled bliss, laughed for an instant in those deep blue
eyes, and a soft, sunny smile played over her warm lips; but the next
minute, she dropped the young man’s hand, which she had been chafing
between both her own, buried her face in her palms, and wept those sweet
and happy tears which flow only from innocent hearts, at the call of
gratitude and sympathy.
“Bless God, young sir,” said a deep, solemn voice at the other side of
the bed on which he was lying, “that your life is spared. May it be unto
good ends! Yours was a daring venture, and for a trivial object against
which to stake an immortal soul. But, thanks to Him! you are preserved,
snatched as it were from the gates of death; and, though you feel faint
now, I doubt not, and your soul trembles as if on the verge of another
world, you will be well anon, and in a little while as strong as ever in
that youthful strength on which you have so prided you. Drink this, and
sleep awhile, and you shall wake refreshed, and as a new man, from the
dreamless slumber which the draught shall give you. And you, silly
child,” he continued, turning toward the lovely girl, who had sunk
forward on the bed, so that her fair tresses rested on the same pillow
which supported Jasper’s head, with the big tears trickling silently
between her slender fingers, “dry up your tears; for the youth shall
live, and not die.”
The boy’s eyes had turned immediately to the sound of the speaker’s
accents, and in his weak state remained fixed on his face so long as the
sound continued, although his senses followed the meaning but
imperfectly.
It was a tall, venerable looking old man who spoke, with long locks, as
white as snow, falling down over the straight cut collar of his plain
black doublet, and an expression of the highest intellect, combined with
something which was not melancholy, much less sadness, but which told
volumes of hardships borne, and sorrows endured, the fruits of which
were piety, and gentleness, and that wisdom which cometh not of this
world.
He smiled thoughtfully, as he saw that his words were hardly
comprehended, and his mild glance wandered from the pale face of the
handsome boy to the fair head of the young girl bending over him, like a
white lily overcharged with rain.
“Poor things,” he whispered softly, as if speaking to himself, “to both
it is the first experience of the mixed pain and pleasure of this
world’s daily trials. God save them scathless to the end!”
Then, recovering himself, as if by a little effort, from his brief fit
of musing, he held forth a large glass goblet, which was in his right
hand, full of some bright ruby-colored liquid, to the lips of Jasper,
saying—
“Drink, youth, it will give thee strength. Drink, and fear nothing.”
The young man grasped the bright bowl with both hands, but even then he
had lacked strength to guide it to his lips, had not his host still
supported it.
The flavor was agreeable, and the coolness of the draught was so
delicious to the feverish palate and parched tongue of Jasper, that he
drained it to the very bottom, and then, as if exhausted by the effort,
relaxed his hold, and sunk back on his pillow in a state of conscious
languor, exquisitely soft and entrancing.
More and more that voluptuous dream-like trance overcame him, and though
his eyes were still open he saw not the things that were around him, but
a multitude of radiant and lovely visions, which came and went, and
returned again, in mystic evolutions.
With a last effort of his failing senses, half conscious of the interest
which she took in him, yet wholly ignorant who or what was that gentle
_she_, he stretched out his hand and mastered one of hers with gentle
violence, and holding it imprisoned in his burning fingers, closed his
swimming eyes, and sunk into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The old man, who had watched every symptom that appeared in succession
on his expressive face, saw that the potion had taken the desired
effect, and drawing a short sigh, which seemed to indicate a sense of
relief from apprehension, looked toward the maiden, and addressed her in
a low voice, not so much from fear of wakening the sleeper, as that the
voice of affection is ever low and gentle.
“He sleeps, Theresa, and will sleep until the sun has sunk far toward
the west, and then he will waken restored to all his youthful power and
spirits. Come, my child, we may leave him to his slumbers, he shall no
longer need a watcher. I will go to my study, and would have you turn to
your household duties. Scenes such as this which you have passed will
call up soft and pitiful fancies in the mind, but it behooves us not
overmuch to yield to them. This life has too much of stern and dark
reality, that we should give the reins to truant imagination. Come,
Theresa.”
The young girl raised her head from the pillows, and shook away the long
fair curls from her smooth forehead. Her tears had ceased to flow, and
there was a smile on her lip, as she replied, pointing to her hand which
he held fast grasped, in his unconscious slumber.
“See, father, I am a prisoner. I fear me I cannot withdraw my hand
without arousing him.”
“Do not so, then, Theresa; to arouse him now, ere the effects of the
potion have passed away, would be dangerous, might be fatal. Perchance,
however, he will release you when he sleeps quite soundly. If he do so,
I pray you, come to me. Meantime, I leave you to your own good thoughts,
my own little girl.”
And with the words, he leaned across the narrow bed, over the form of
the sleeping youth, and kissed her fair white brow.
“Bless thee, my gentle child. May God in his goodness bless and be about
thee.”
“Amen! dear father,” said the little girl, as he ended; and in her turn
she pressed her soft and balmy lips to his withered cheek.
A tear, rare visitant, rose all unbidden to the parent’s eye as he
turned to leave her, but ere he reached the door her low tones arrested
him, and he came back to her.
“Will you not put my books within reach of me, dear father?” she said.
“I cannot work, since the poor youth has made my left hand his sure
captive, but I would not be altogether idle, and I can read while I
watch him. Pardon my troubling you, who should wait on you, not be
waited on.”
“And do you not wait on me ever, and most neat-handedly, dear child?”
returned her father, moving toward a small round table, on which were
scattered a few books, and many implements of feminine industry. “Which
of these will you have, Theresa?”
“All of them, if you please, dear father. The table is not heavy, for I
can carry it about where I will myself, and if you will lift it to me, I
can help myself, and cull the gems of each in turn. I am a poor student,
I fear, and love better, like a little bee, to flit from flower to
flower, drinking from every chalice its particular honey, than to sit
down, like the sloth, and surfeit me on one tree, how green soever.”
“There is but little industry, I am afraid, Theresa, if there be little
sloth in your mode of reading. Such desultory studies are wont to leave
small traces on the memory. I doubt me much if you long keep these gems
you speak of, which you cull so lightly.”
“Oh! but you are mistaken, father dear, for all you are so wise,” she
replied, laughing softly. “Every thing grand or noble, of which I read,
every thing high or holy, finds a sort of echo in my little heart, and
lies there forever. Your grave, heavy, moral teachings speak to my
reason, it is true, but when I read of brave deeds done, of noble
self-sacrifices made, of great sufferings endured, in high causes, those
things teach my heart, those things speak to my soul, father. Then I
reason no longer, but feel—feel how much virtue there is, after all,
and generosity, and nobleness, and charity, and love, in poor frail
human nature. Then I learn, not to judge mildly of myself, nor harshly
of my brothers. Then I feel happy, father, yet in my happiness I wish to
weep. For I think noble sentiments and generous emotions sooner bring
tears to the eye than mere pity, or mere sorrow.”
And, even as she spoke, her own bright orbs were suffused with drops,
like dew in the violet’s cups, and she shook her head with its profusion
of long fair ringlets archly, as if she would have made light of her own
sentiment, and gazed up into his face with a tearful smile.
“You are a good child, Theresa, and good children are very dear to the
Lord,” said the old man. “But of a truth I would I could see you more
practically minded; less given to these singular romantic dreamings. I
say not that they are hurtful, or unwise, or untrue, but in a mere
child, as you are, Theresa, they are strange and out of place, if not
unnatural. I would I could see you more merry, my little girl, and more
given to the company of your equals in age, even if I were to be loser
thereby of something of your gentle company. But you love not, I think,
the young girls of the village.”
“Oh! yes, I love them—I love them dearly, father. I would do any thing
for any one of them; I would give up any thing I have got to make them
happy. Oh yes, I love Anna Harlande, and Rose Merrivale, and Mary
Mitford, dearly, but—but—”
“But you love not their company, you would say, would you not, my
child?”
“That is not what I was about to say; but I know not how it is, their
merriment is so loud, and their glee so very joyous, that it seems to me
that I cannot sympathize with them in their joy, as I can in their
sorrow; and they view things with eyes so different from mine, and laugh
at thoughts that go nigh to make me weep, and see or feel so little of
the loveliness of Nature, and care so little for what I care most of
all, soft, sad poetry, or heart-stirring romance, or inspired music,
that when I am among them, I _do_ almost long to be away from them all,
in the calm of this pleasant chamber, or in the fragrance of my bower
beside the stream. And I do feel my spirit jangled and perplexed by
their light-hearted, thoughtless mirth, as one feels at hearing a false
note struck in the midst of a sweet symphony. What is this? what means
this, my father?”
“It is a gift, Theresa,” replied the old man, half mournfully. “It means
that you are endowed rarely, by God himself, with powers the most
unusual, the most wondrous, the most beautiful, most high and godlike of
any which are allowed to mortals. I have seen this long, long ago—I
have mused over it; hoped, prayed, that it might not be so; nay, striven
to repress the germs of it in your young spirit, yet never have I spoken
of it until now; for I knew not that you were conscious, and would not
be he that should awaken you to the consciousness of the grand but
perilous possession which you hold, delegated to you direct from
Omnipotence.”
He paused, and she gazed at him with lips apart, and eyes wide in
wonder. The color died away in a sort of mysterious awe from her warm
cheek. The blood rushed tumultuously to her heart. She listened
breathless and amazed. Never had she heard him speak thus, never
imagined that he felt thus, before—yet now that she did hear, she felt
as though she were but listening again to that which she had heard many
times before; and though she understood not his words altogether, they
had struck a kindred chord in her inmost soul, and while its vibration
was almost too much for her powers of endurance, it yet told her that
his words were true.
She could not for her life have bid him go on, but for worlds she would
not have failed to hear him out.
He watched the changed expression of her features, and half struck with
a feeling of self-reproach that he should have created doubts, perhaps
fears, in that ingenuous soul, smiled on her kindly, and asked in a
confident tone—
“You have felt this already, have you not, my child?”
“Not as you put it to me, father; no, I have never dreamed or hoped that
I had any such particular gift of God, such glorious and preëminent
possession as this of which you speak. I may, indeed, have fancied at
times that there was something within me, in which I differed from
others around me—something which made me feel more joy, deeper, and
fuller, and more soul-fraught joy, than they feel; and sorrow, softer,
and moved more easily, if not more piercing or more permanent—which
made me love the world, and its inhabitants, and above all its Maker,
with a far different love from theirs—something which evermore seems
struggling within me, as if it would forth and find tongue, but cannot.
But now, that you have spoken, I know that it indeed must be as you say,
and that this unknown something is a gift, is a possession from on high.
What is this thing, my father?”
“My child, this thing is genius,” replied the old man solemnly.
The bright blood rushed back to her cheeks in a flood of crimson glory;
a strange, clear light, which never had enkindled them before, sprang
from her soft dark eyes; she leaned forward eagerly—
“Genius!” she cried. “Genius, and I! Father, you dream, dear father.”
“Would that I did; but I do not, Theresa.”
“And wherefore, if it be so, indeed, that I am so gifted, wherefore
would you alter it, my father?”
“I would not alter it,” he replied, “my little girl. Far be it from my
thoughts, weak worm that I am, to alter, even if I could alter, the
least of the gifts of the great Giver. And this, whether it be for good,
or unto evil, is one of the greatest and most glorious. I would not
alter it, Theresa. But I would guide, would direct, would moderate it. I
would accustom you to know and comprehend the vast power of which you,
all unconsciously, are the possessor. For, as I said, it is a fearful
and a perilous power. God forbid that I should pronounce the most
marvelous and godlike of the gifts which he vouchsafes to man, a curse
and not a blessing; God forbid that, even while I see how oft it is
turned into bitterness and blight by the coldness of the world, and the
check of its heaven-soaring aspirations, I should doubt that it has
within itself a sovereign balm against its own diseases, a rapture
mightier than any of its woes, an inborn and eternal consciousness which
bears it up, as on immortal pinions, above the cares of the world and
the poor consciousness of self. Nevertheless it is a perilous gift, and
too often, to your sex, a fatal one. Yet I would not alarm you, my own
child, for you have gentleness of soul, which may well temper the
coruscations of a spirit which waxes oftentimes too strong to be
womanly, and piety which shall, I trust, preserve you, should any
aspiration of your heart wax over vigorous and daring to be contented
with the limitations of humanity. In the meantime, my child, fear
nothing, follow the dictates of your own pure heart, and pray for His
aid, who neither giveth aught, nor taketh away, without reason. Hark!”
he interrupted himself, starting slightly, “there is a sound of horses’
hoofs without; your brother has returned, and it may be Sir Miles is
with him. We will speak more of this hereafter.”
And with the word he turned and left the room.
When he was gone she raised her eyes to heaven, and with a strange rapt
expression on her fair features rose to her feet, exclaiming—
“Genius! Genius! Great God, Great God, I thank thee.”
Then, in the fervor of the moment, which led her naturally to clasp her
hands together, she made a movement to withdraw her fingers from
Jasper’s deathlike grasp, unconscious, for the time, of every thing
around her.
But, as she did so, a tightened pressure of his hand, and some
inarticulate sounds which proceeded from his lips, recalled her with a
start to herself.
She dropped into her seat, as if conscience-stricken, gazed fixedly in
his face, then stooped and pressed her lips on his inanimate brow;
started again, looked about the room with a half guilty glance, bowed
her head on his pillow, and wept bitterly.
CHAPTER III.
_The Recognition._
They had been friends in youth.
BYRON.
The evening had advanced far into night before the effects of the potion
he had swallowed passed away, and left the mind of Jasper clear, and his
pulse regular and steady. When he awoke from his long stupor, and turned
his eyes around him, it seemed as if he had dreamed of what he saw
before him; for the inanimate objects of the room, nay, the very faces
which met his eye, had something in them that was not altogether
unfamiliar, yet for his life he could not have recalled when, or if ever
he had seen them before.
The old dark-wainscoted walls of the irregular, many-recessed apartment,
adorned with a few watercolor drawings, and specimens of needle-work,
the huge black and gold Indian cabinet in one corner, the tall
clock-stand of some foreign wood in another, the slab above the yawning
hearth covered with tropical shells and rare foreign curiosities, the
quaint and grotesque chairs and tables, with strangely contorted legs
and arms, and wild satyr-like faces grinning from their bosses, the very
bed on which he lay, with its carved head-board, and groined canopy of
oak, and dark green damask curtains, were all things which he felt he
must have seen, though where and how he knew not.
So was the face of the slight fair-haired girl who sat a little way
removed from his bed’s head, by a small round work-table, on which stood
a waxen taper, bending over some one of those light tasks of embroidery
or knitting which women love, and are wont to dignify by the name of
work.
On her he fixed his eyes long and wistfully, gazing at her, as he would
have done at a fair picture, without any desire to address her, or to do
aught that should induce her to move from the graceful attitude in which
she sat, giving no sign of life save in the twinkling of her long,
downcast eyelashes, in the calm rise and fall of her gentle bosom, and
the quick motion of her busy fingers.
Jasper St. Aubyn was still weak, but he was unconscious of any pain or
ailment, though he now began gradually to remember all that had passed
before he lost his consciousness in the deep pool above the fords of
Widecomb.
So weak was he, indeed, that it was almost too great an effort for him
to consider where he was, or how he had been saved, much more to move
his body, or ask any question of that fair watcher. He felt indeed that
he should be perfectly contented to lie there all his life, in that
painless tranquil mood, gazing upon that fair picture.
But while he lay there, with his large eyes wide open and fixed upon
her, as if by their influence he would have charmed her soul out of its
graceful habitation, a word or two spoken in a louder voice than had yet
struck his ear, for persons had been speaking in the room all the time,
although he had not observed them, attracted his notice to the other
side of his bed.
It was not so much the words, for he scarce heard, and did not heed
their import, as the tone of voice which struck him; for though
well-known and most familiar, he could in no wise connect it with the
other things around him.
With the desire to ascertain what this might mean, there came into his
mind, he knew not wherefore, a wish to do so unobserved; and he
proceeded forthwith to turn himself over on his pillow so noiselessly as
to excite no attention in the watchers, whoever they might be.
He had not made two efforts, however, to do this, before he became aware
of what, while he lay still, he did not suspect, that several of his
limbs had received severe contusions, and could not as yet be moved with
impunity.
He was a singular youth, however, and an almost Spartan endurance of
physical pain, with a strange persistence in whatever he undertook, had
been from very early boyhood two of his strongest characteristics.
In spite, therefore, of his weakness, in spite of the pain every motion
gave him, he persevered, and turning himself inch by inch, at length
gained a position which enabled him clearly to discern the speakers.
They were two in number, the one facing him, the other having his back
turned so completely that all he could see was a head covered with
long-curled locks of snow-white hair, a dark velvet cloak, and the
velvet scabbard of a long rapier protruding far beyond the legs of the
oak chair on which he sat. The lower limbs of this person were almost
lost in darkness as they lay carelessly crossed under the table, so that
he divined rather than saw that they were cased in heavy riding-boots,
on the heels of which a faint golden glimmer gave token of the wearer’s
rank, by the knightly spurs he wore.
The lamp which stood upon the table by which they were conversing was
set between the two, so that it was quite invisible to Jasper, and its
light, which to his eyes barely touched the edges of the figure he had
first observed, fell full upon the pale high brow and serene lineaments
of the other person, who was in fact no other than the old man who had
spoken to the youth in the intervals of his trance, and administered the
potion from the effects of which he was but now recovering.
Of this, however, Jasper had no recollection, although he wondered, as
he had done concerning the girl, where he had before seen that fine
countenance and benevolent expression, and how once seen he ever should
have forgotten it.
There was yet a third person in the group, though he took no part in the
conversation, and appeared to be, like Jasper, rather an interested and
observant witness of what was going on, than an actor in the scene.
He was a tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed man, in the first years of
manhood, not perhaps above five or six years Jasper’s senior; but his
bronzed and sunburnt cheeks curiously contrasted with the fairness of
his forehead, where it had not been exposed to the sun, and an
indescribable blending of boldness, it might have almost been called
audacity, with calm self-confidence and cold composure, which made up
the expression of his face, seemed to indicate that he had seen much of
the world, and learned many of its secrets, perhaps by the stern
lessoning of the great teachers, suffering and sorrow.
The figure of this young man was but imperfectly visible, as he stood
behind the high-backed chair, on which the old man, whom from the
similarity in their features, if not in their expression, Jasper took to
be his father, was seated. But his face, his muscular neck, his
well-developed chest and broad shoulders, displayed by a close-fitting
jerkin of some dark stuff, were all in strong light; and as the features
and expression of the countenance gave token of a powerful character and
energetic will, so did the frame give promise of ability to carry out
the workings of the mind.
The dialogue, which had been interrupted by a silence of some seconds
following on the words that had attracted Jasper’s notice, was now
continued by the old man who sat facing him.
“That question,” he said, in a firm yet somewhat mournful tone, “is not
an easy one to answer. The difficulty of subduing prejudices on my own
part, the fear of wounding pride on yours—these might have had their
share in influencing my conduct. Beside, you must remember that years
have elapsed—the very years which most form the character of men—since
we parted; that they have elapsed under circumstances the most widely
different for you and for me; that we are not, in short, in any thing
the same men we then were—that the gnarled, weather-beaten, earth-fast
oak of centuries differs not so much from the green pliant sapling of
half a dozen summers, as the old man, with his heart chilled and
hardened into living steel by contact with the world, from the youth
full of generous impulses and lofty aspirations, loving all men, and
doubting naught either in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. You
must remember, moreover, that although, as you have truly said, we were
friends in youth, our swords, our purses, and our hearts in common, we
had even then many points of serious difference; and lastly, and most of
all, you must remember that if we had been friends, we were not friends
when we last parted—”
“What! what!” exclaimed a voice, which Jasper instantly recognized for
his father’s, though for years he had not heard him speak in tones of
the like animation. “What, William Allan, do you mean to say that you
imagined that any enmity could have dwelt in my mind, for so slight a
cause—”
“Slight a cause!” interrupted the other. “Do you call that _slight_
which made my heart drop blood, and my brain boil with agony for
years—which changed my course of life, altered my fortunes, character,
heart, soul, forever; which made me, in a word, what I now am? Do you
call that a _slight_ cause, Miles St. Aubyn? Show me, then, what you
call a grave one.”
“I had forgotten, William, I had forgotten,” replied Sir Miles, gently,
and perhaps self-reproachfully. “I mean, I had forgotten that the
rivaling in a strife which to the winner seems a little thing, may to
the loser be death, or worse than death! Forgive me, William Allan, I
had forgotten in my selfish thoughtlessness, and galled you unawares.
But let us say no more of this—let the past be forgotten—let wrongs
done, if wrongs were done, be buried in her grave, who was the most
innocent cause of them; and let us now remember only that we were
friends in youth, and that after long years of separation, we are thus
wonderfully brought together in old age; let me hope to be friends
henceforth unto the grave.”
“Amen, I say to that. Miles St. Aubyn, amen!”
And the two old men clasped their withered hands across the table, and
Jasper might see the big drops trickling slowly down the face of him who
was called William Allan, while from the agitation of his father’s frame
he judged that he was not free from the like agitation.
There was a little pause, during which, as he fancied the young man
looked somewhat frowningly on the scene of reconciliation; but the
frown, if frown it were, passed speedily away, and left the bold, dark
face as calm and impassive as the surface of a deep unruffled water.
A moment or two afterward, Sir Miles raised his head, which he had bowed
a little, perhaps to conceal the feelings which might have agitated it,
and again clasping the hand of the other, said eagerly,
“It is you, William, who have saved my boy, my Jasper; and this is not
the first time that a scion of your house has preserved one of mine from
death, or yet worse, ruin!”
William Allan started, as if a sharp weapon had pierced him,
“And how,” he cried, “Miles St. Aubyn, how was the debt repaid? I tell
you it is written in the books that cannot err, that our houses were
ordained for mutual destruction!”
“What, man,” exclaimed Sir Miles, half jestingly, “do you still cling to
the black art? Do you still read the dark book of fate? Methought that
fancy would have taken wing with other youthful follies.”
The old man shook his head sadly, but made no reply.
“And what has it taught _thee_, William, unless it be that this life is
short, and this world’s treasures worthless; and _that_ I have learned
from a better book, a book of wider margin. What, I say, has it taught
thee, William Allan?”
“All things,” replied the old man, sorrowfully. “Even unto this
meeting—every action, every event of my own life, past or to come,
happy or miserable, virtuous or evil, it has taught me.”
“But has it taught thee, William, whereby to win the good and eschew the
evil; whereby to hold fast to the virtuous, and say unto the evil, ‘get
behind me?’ Has it taught thee, I say not to be wiser, but to be happier
or better?”
“What is, is! What shall be, shall be! What is written, shall be done!
We may flap, or flutter, or even fight, like fish or birds, or, if you
will, like lions in the toil; but we are netted, and may not escape,
from the beginning! The man may learn the workings of the God, but how
shall he control them?”
“And this is thy philosophy—this all that thine art teaches?”
“It is. No more.”
“A sad philosophy—a vain art,” replied the other. “I’ll none of them.”
“I tell thee, Miles St. Aubyn, that years ago, years ere I had heard of
Widecomb or its water, I saw yon deep, red-whirling pool; I saw that
drowning youth; I saw the ready rescue, and the gentle nursing; and
now,” he cried, stretching his hands out widely, and gazing into
vacancy, “I see a wilder and a sadder sight—a deeper pool, a stronger
cataract, a fierce storm thundering on the hills, and torrents
thundering down every gorge and gully to swell the flooded rivers. A
young man and a maiden—yet no! no! not a maiden! mounted on gallant
horses, are struggling in the whelming eddies. Great God! avert—hold!
hold! He lifts his arm, he smites her with his loaded whip—smites her
between the eyes that smile upon him; she falls, she is down, down in
the whirling waters—rider and horse swept over the mad cataract; but
who—who?—ha!” and with a wild shriek he started to his feet, and fell
back into the arms of the young man, who from the beginning of the
paroxysm evidently had expected its catastrophe, and who, with the
assistance of the girl, supported him, now quite inanimate and
powerless, from the room, merely saying to Sir Miles, “Be not alarmed, I
will return forthwith.”
“My father!” exclaimed Jasper, in a faint voice, as the door closed upon
them.
The old man turned hastily to the well-known accents, and hurried to the
bed-side. “My boy, my own boy, Jasper. Now, may God’s name be praised
forever!”
And falling into a chair by his pillow, the same chair on which that
sweet girl had sat a few hours before, he bent over him, and asked him a
thousand questions, waiting for no reply, but bathing his face with his
tears, and covering his brow with kisses.
When he had at length satisfied the old man that he was well and free
from pain, except a few slight bruises, he asked his father eagerly
where he was, and who was that strange old man.
“You are in the cottage, my dear boy,” replied the old knight, “above
Widecomb pool, tended by those who, by the grace of God and his
exceeding mercy, saved you from the consequences of the frantic act
which so nearly left me childless. Oh! Jasper, Jasper, ’twas a fearful
risk, and had well-nigh been fatal.”
“It was but one misstep, father,” replied the youth, who, as he rapidly
recovered his strength, recovered also his bold speech and daring
courage. “Had there been but foot-hold at the tunnel’s end, I had landed
my fish bravely; and, on my honor, I believe had I such another on my
line’s end, I should risk it again. Why, father, he was at least a
thirty pounder.”
“Never do so—never do so again, Jasper. Remember that to risk life
heedlessly, and for no purpose save an empty gratification, a mere
momentary pleasure, is a great crime toward God, and a gross act of
selfishness toward men, as much so as to peril or to lose it in a high
cause, or for a noble object, is great and good, and self-devoted.
Think! had you perished here, all for a paltry fish, which you might
purchase for a silver crown, you had left to me years—nay, a life of
misery.”
“Nay, father, I never thought of that,” answered the young man, not
unmoved by the remonstrance of his father, “but it was not the value of
the fish. I should have given him away ten to one, had I taken him. It
was that I do not like to be beaten.”
“A good feeling, Jasper; and one that leads to many good things, and
without which nothing great can be attained; but to do good, like all
other feelings, it must be moderated and controled by reason. But you
must learn to think ever before acting, Jasper.”
“I will—I will, indeed, sir; but you have not told me who is this
strange old man?”
“An old friend of mine, Jasper—an old friend whom I have not seen for
years, and who is now doubly a friend, since he has saved your life.”
At this moment the door opened, and the young man entered bearing a
candle.
“He is at ease now,” he said. “It is a painful and a searching malady to
which at seasons he is subject. We know well how to treat him; when he
awakes tomorrow, he will remember nothing of what passed to-day, though
at the next attack he will remember every circumstance of this. I pray
you, therefore, Sir Miles, take no note in the morning, nor appear to
observe it, if he be somewhat silent and reserved. Ha! young sir,” he
continued, seeing that Jasper was awake, and taking him kindly by the
hand, “I am glad to see that you have recovered.”
“And I am glad to have an opportunity to thank you, that you have saved
my life, which I know you must have done right gallantly, seeing the
peril of the deed.”
“About as gallantly as you did, when you came so near losing it,” he
answered. “But come, Sir Miles, night wears apace, and if you will allow
me to show you to your humble chamber, the best our lowly house can
offer, I will wish you good repose, and return to watch over my young
friend here.”
“My age must excuse me, that I accept your offer, whose place it should
be to watch over him myself.”
“I need no watcher, sir,” replied Jasper, boldly. “I am quite well now,
and shall sleep, I warrant you, unto cock-crow without awakening.”
“Good-night, then, boy!” cried Sir Miles, stooping over him and again
kissing his brow, “and God send thee better in health and wiser in
condition.”
“Good-night, sir; and God send me stronger and braver, and more like my
father,” said the youth, with a light laugh.
“I will return anon, young friend—for friends, I hope, we shall be,”
said the other, as he left the room lighting Sir Miles respectfully
across the threshold.
“I hope we shall—and I thank you. But I shall be fast asleep ere then.”
And so he was; but not the less for that did the stalwart young man
watch over him, sitting erect in one of the high-backed chairs, until
the first pale light of dawn came stealing in through the latticed
casement, and the shrill cry of the early cock announced the morning of
another day.
CHAPTER IV.
_The Lovesuit._
He either fears too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who would not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.
MONTROSE.
The earliest cock had barely crowed his first salutation to the
awakening day, and the first warblers had not yet begun to make their
morning music in the thick shrubberies around the cottage, when aroused
betimes by his anxiety for Jasper, Sir Miles made his appearance,
already full dressed, at the door of the room in which his son was
sleeping.
For he was still asleep, with that hardy young man still watching over
him, apparently unmoved by the loss of his own rest, and wholly
indifferent to what are usually deemed the indispensable requirements of
nature.
“You are afoot betimes, sir,” said the youth, rising from his seat as
the old cavalier entered the room; “pity that you should have arisen so
early, for I could have watched him twice as long, had it been needful,
but in truth it was not so. Your son has scarce moved, Sir Miles, since
you left the chamber last night. You see how pleasantly and soundly he
is sleeping.”
“It was not _that_, young sir,” replied the old man, cordially. “It was
not that I doubted your good will, or your good watching either; but he
is my son, my only son, and how should I but be anxious. But as you say,
he sleeps pleasantly and well. God be thanked therefore. He will be none
the worse for this.”
“Better, perhaps, Sir Miles,” replied the other, with a slight smile.
“Wiser, at least, I doubt not he will be; for in good truth, it was a
very boyish, and a very foolish risk to run.”
The old man, for the first time, looked at the speaker steadfastly, and
was struck by the singular expression of his countenance—that strange
mixture of impassive self-confident composure, and half-scornful
audacity, which I have mentioned as being his most striking
characteristics. On the preceding evening, Sir Miles had been so much
engrossed by the anxiety he felt about his son, and subsequently by the
feelings called forth in his inmost heart by the discovery of an old
comrade in the person of William Allan, that in fact he had paid little
attention to either of the other personages present.
He had observed, indeed, that there were a fair young girl and a
powerfully framed youth present; he had even addressed a few words
casually to both of them, but they had left no impression on his mind,
and he had not even considered who or what they were likely to be.
Now, however, when he was composed and relieved of fear for his son’s
life, he was struck, as I have said, by the expression and features of
the young man, and began to consider who he could be; for there was no
such similarity, whether of feature, expression, voice, air or gesture,
between him and William Allan, as is wont to exist between son and sire.
After a moment’s pause, however, the old cavalier replied, not
altogether pleased apparently by the tone of the last remark.
“It was a very bold and _manly_ risk, it appears to me,” he said, “and
if rash, can hardly be called boyish; and you, I should think,” he
added, “would be the last to blame bold actions. You look like any thing
but one who should recommend cold counsels, or be slack either to dare
or do. I fancy you have seen stirring times somewhere, and been among
daring deeds yourself.”
“So many times, Sir Miles,” replied the young man, modestly, “that I
have learned how absurd it is to _seek_ such occasions without cause.
There be necessary risks enough in life, and man has calls enough, and
those unavoidable, on his courage, without going out of his way to seek
them, or throwing any energy or boldness unprofitably to the winds. At
least so I have found it in the little I have seen of human life and
action.”
“Ha! you speak well,” said Sir Miles, looking even more thoughtfully
than before at the marked and somewhat weatherbeaten features of the
young man. “And where have you met with perils so rife, and learned so
truly the need of disciplining natural energies and valor.”
“On the high seas, Sir Miles, of which I have been a follower from a
boy.”
“Indeed! are you such a voyager! and where, I pray you, have you
served?”
“I cannot say that I have exactly _served_. But I have visited both the
Indias, East and West; and have seen some smart fighting—where they say
peace never comes—beyond the Line, I mean, with the Dons, both in
Darien and Peru.”
“Ha! but you have indeed seen the world, for one so young as you; and
yet I think you have not sailed in the king’s ships, nor held rank in
the service.”
“No, Sir Miles, I am but a poor free-trader; and yet sometimes I think
that we have carried the English flag farther, and made the English name
both better known, and more widely feared, than the cruisers of any king
who has sat on our throne, since the good old days of Queen Bess.”
“His present majesty did good service against the Dutch, young man. And
what say you to Blake? Who ever did more gloriously at sea, than rough
old Blake?”
“Ay, sir, but that was in Noll’s days, and we may not call him a _king_
of England, though of a certainty he was her wise and valiant ruler. And
for his present majesty, God bless him! that Opdam business was when he
was the Duke of York; and he has forgotten all his glory, I think, now
that he has become king, and lets the Frenchman and the Don do as they
please with our colonists and traders, and the Dutchman, too, for that
matter.”
The old man paused, and shook his head gravely for a moment, but then
resumed with a smile,
“So, so, my young friend, you are one of those bold spirits who claim to
judge for yourselves, and make peace or war, as you think well, without
waiting the slow action of senates or kings, who hold that hemispheres,
not treaties, are the measure of hostility or amity.”
“Not so, exactly, noble sir. But where we find peace or war, there we
take them; and if the Dons wont be quiet on the other side the Line, and
our good king wont keep them quiet, why we must either take them as we
find them, or give up the great field to them altogether.”
“Which you hold to be unEnglish and unmanly?”
“Even so, sir.”
“Well, I, for one, will not gainsay you. But do not you fear, sometimes
that while you are thus stretching a commission—that is the term, I
believe, among you liberal gentlemen—you may chance to get your own
neck stretched some sultry morning in the Floridas or in Darien.”
“One of the very risks I spoke of but now, Sir Miles,” replied the young
man, laughing. “My life were not worth five minutes’ purchase if the
Governor of St. Augustine, or of Panama either, for that matter, could
once lay hold on me.”
“I marvel,” said the old cavalier, again shaking his head solemnly, “I
marvel much—” and then interrupting himself suddenly in the middle of
his sentence, he lapsed into a fit of meditative silence.
“At what, if I may be so bold—at what do you so much marvel?”
“That William Allan should consent,” replied the cavalier, “that son of
his should embark in so wild and stormy a career, in a career which, I
should have judged, with his strict principles and somewhat puritanical
feeling, he would deem the reverse of gracious or godfearing.”
“He knows not what career I follow,” answered the young man, bluntly.
“But you are in error altogether, sir. I am no son of William Allan.”
“No son of William Allan! Ha! now that I think of it, your features are
not his, nor your voice either.”
“Nor my body, nor my soul!” replied the other, hastily and hotly, “no
more than the free falcon’s are those of the caged linnet! Sometimes I
even marvel how it can be that any drop of mutual or common blood should
run in our veins; and yet it is so—and I—I—yet no—I do _not_ repent
it!”
“And wherefore should you? there is no worthier or better man, I do
believe, than William Allan living; and, in his younger days at least, I
know there was no braver.”
“No braver?—indeed! indeed!” exclaimed the young man, eagerly—“was he,
indeed, brave?”
“Ay, was he, youth! brave both to do and to suffer. Brave, both with the
quick and dauntless courage to act, and with the rarer and more elevated
courage to resolve and hold fast to resolution. But who are you, who,
living with him, know both so little and so much of William Allan? If
you be not his son, who are you?”
“His sister’s son, Sir Miles—his only sister’s son, to whom, since that
sister’s death, he has been—God forgive me for that I said but
now—more than a father; for surely I have tried him more than ever son
tried a father, and he has borne with me still with a most absolute
indulgence and unwearied love.”
“What—what!” exclaimed Sir Miles, much moved and even agitated by what
he heard, “are you the child of that innocent and beautiful Alicia
Allan, whom—whom—” The old man faltered and stopped short, for he was
in fact on the point of bursting into tears.
But the youth finished the sentence which he had left unconcluded, in a
stern, slow voice, and with a lowering brow.
“Whom your friend, Durzil Olifaunt, betrayed by a mock marriage, and
afterward deserted with her infants. Yes, Sir Miles, I am one of those
infants, the son of Alicia Allan’s shame! And my uncle did not slay
him—therefore it is I asked you, was he brave.”
“And yet he _was_ slain—and for that very deed!” replied the old man,
gloomily, with his eyes fixed upon the ground.
“He _was_ slain,” repeated the young sailor, whose curiosity and
interest were now greatly excited. “But how can you tell wherefore? No
one has ever known who slew him—how, then, can you name the cause of
his slaying?”
“There is ONE who knows all things!”
“But HE imparts not his knowledge,” answered the other, not
irreverently. “And unless _you_ slew him, I see not how you can know
this. Yet, hold, hold!” he continued impetuously, as he saw that Sir
Miles was about to speak, “if you did slay him, tell it not; for if he
did betray my mother, if he did abandon me to disgrace and ruin—still,
still he was my father.”
“I slew him not, young man,” replied the cavalier, gravely, “but he was
slain for the cause that I have named, and I saw him die—repentant.”
“Repentant!” exclaimed the youth, grasping the withered hand of the old
knight, in the intensity of his emotions, “did he repent the wrong he
had done my mother?”
“As surely as he died.”
“May God forgive him, then,” said the seaman, clasping his hands
together and bursting into tears, “as I forgive him.”
“Amen! amen!” cried the knight, “for he was mine ancient friend, the
comrade of my boyhood, before he did that thing; and I, too, have
something to forgive to him.”
“You, Sir Miles, you!—what can you have to forgive?”
“Tell me first, tell me—how are you named?”
“Durzil,” answered the youth, “Durzil, _Nothing_!” he added, very
bitterly, “my country, and my country’s law give me no other name, but
only Durzil—its enemies have named me _Bras-de-fer_!”
“Then mark me, Durzil; as he of whom you are sprung, of whom you are
named, was my first friend, so was your mother my first love; and she
returned my love, till he, my sometime confidant, did steal her from me,
and made his paramour, whom I had made my wife.”
“Great God!” exclaimed the young man, struck with consternation; “then
it must, it must have been so—it was you who slew my—my father!”
“Young man, I never lied.”
“Pardon me, Sir Miles. Pardon me, I am half distraught. And you loved my
mother, and—and—he repented. Why was not I told of this before? And
yet,” he added, again pausing, as if some fresh suspicion struck him,
“and yet how is this? I heard you speak yester even to my uncle, of
wrongs done—done by yourself to _him_, and of a woman’s death—that
woman, therefore, was not, could not have been _my_ mother. Who, then,
was _she_?”
“_His_ mother,” replied Sir Miles St. Aubyn, calmly, but sadly, pointing
to the bed on which Jasper lay sleeping tranquilly and all unconsciously
of the strange revelations which were going on around him. “If my friend
robbed me of William Allan’s sister, so I won from William Allan, in
after days, her who owned his affection; but with this difference, that
she I won never returned your uncle’s love from the beginning, and that
I never betrayed his confidence. If I were the winner, it was in fair
and loyal strife, and though it has been, as I learned for the first
time last night, a sore burthen on your uncle’s heart, it has been none
on my conscience; my withers are unwrung.”
“I believe it, sir; from my soul, I believe it,” cried the young man,
enthusiastically, “for, on my life, I think you are all honor and
nobility. But tell me, tell me now, if you love, if you pity me—as you
should do for my mother’s sake—who slew my father?”
“I have sworn,” answered the cavalier, “I have sworn never to reveal
that to mortal man; and if I had not sworn, to _you_ I could not reveal
it; for, if I judge aright, you would hold yourself bound to—”
“Avenge it!” exclaimed the youth, fiercely, interrupting him; “ay, were
it at my soul’s purchase—since he repented.”
“He _did_ repent, Durzil; nay, more, he died, desiring only that he
could repair the wrong he had done you, regretting only that he could
not give you his name and his inheritance, as he did give _you_ his
dying blessing, and your mother his last thought, his last word in this
world.”
“Did _she_ know this?”
“Durzil, I cannot answer you; for within a few days after your father’s
death, I left England for the Low Countries, and returned not until many
a year had passed into the bygone eternity. When I did return, the
sorrows of Alicia Allan were at an end forever; and though I then made
all inquiries in all quarters, I could learn nothing of your uncle or
yourself, nor ever have heard of you any more until last night, when we
were all so singularly brought together.”
“I _ought_ to have known this; I would, I would to God that I _had_
known it. My life had been less wild, then, less turbulent, less stormy.
My spirit had not then burned with so rash a recklessness. It was the
sense of wrong, of bitter and unmerited wrong done in past times, of
cold and undeserved scorn heaped on me in the present, as the
bastard—the child of infamy and shame! that goaded me into so hot
action. But it is done now, it is done, and cannot be amended. The world
it is which has made me what I am—let the world look to it—let the
world enjoy the work of its hands.”
“There is nothing, Durzil,” said the old man, solemnly, “nothing but
death that cannot be amended. _Undone_ things may not be, but all may be
amended, by God’s good grace to aid us.”
“Hast thou not seen a sapling in the forest, which, overcrowded by trees
of stronger growth, or warped from its true direction by some unnoted
accident, hath grown up vigorous indeed and strong, but deformed and
distorted in its yearly progress, until arrived at its full maturity,
not all the art or all the strength of man or man’s machinery can force
it from its bias, or make it straight and comely? So is it with the mind
of man, Sir Miles. While it is young and plastic, you shall direct it as
you will—once ripened, hardened in its growth, whether that growth be
tortuous or true, as soon shall you remodel the stature of the
earth-fast oak, as change its intellectual bias. But I am wearying you,
I fancy, and wasting words in unavailing disquisition. I hear my uncle’s
step without, moreover; permit me, I will join him.”
“Hold yet a moment,” replied the old man, kindly, “and let me say this
to you now, while we are alone, which I may perchance lack opportunity
to say hereafter. Your mother’s son, Durzil Olifaunt—for so I shall
ever call you, and so by _his_ last words you are entitled to be
called—can never weary me. Your welfare will concern me ever—what
interests you will interest me always, and next to my own son I shall
hold you nearest and dearest to this old heart at all times. Now leave
me if you will—yet hold! tell me before you go, what I am fain to learn
concerning your good uncle—the knowledge shall perchance save painful
explanation, perchance grave misunderstanding.”
“All that I know is at your service,” answered the young man, in a
calmer and milder tone than he had used heretofore—for he was, in
truth, much moved and softened by the evident feeling of the old
cavalier; “but let me thank you first for your kindly offers, which,
should occasion offer, believe me, I will test as frankly as you have
made them nobly.”
To his latter words Miles St. Aubyn made no answer, except a grave
inclination of his head, for his mind was preoccupied now by thoughts of
very different import—was fixed, indeed, on days long passed, and on
old painful memories.
“This girl,” he said at length, “this fair young girl whom I saw here
last night, is she—is she your sister? I think you had a sister—yet
this fair child hath not Alicia’s hair, nor her eyes—who is she?”
“God was most good in that,” answered the seaman, with much feeling, “he
took my sister to himself, even before my mother pined away. A man’s lot
is hard enough who is the son of shame—a woman’s is intolerable
anguish. Theresa is my uncle’s child—his only child. His love for her
is almost idolatry, and were it altogether so, she deserves it all. Lo!
there she passes by the casement—was ever fairer face or lovelier
figure? and yet her soul, her innocent and artless soul, has beauties
that as far surpass those personal charms, as _they_ exceed all other
earthly loveliness.”
“You love her,” said the cavalier, looking quickly upward, for he had
been musing with downcast eyes, while Durzil spoke, and had not even
raised his lids to gaze upon Theresa as she passed through the garden.
“You love this innocent and gentle child.”
The young man’s cheek burned crimson, ashamed that he should have
revealed himself so completely to one who was almost a stranger. But he
was not one to deny or disguise a single feeling of his heart, whether
for good or for evil, and he replied, after a moment’s pause, with an
unfaltering and steady voice, “I _do_ love her, more than my own soul!”
“And she,” asked the old knight, “does she know, does she return your
affection?”
Again the sailor hesitated, “Women, they say,” he replied, at length,
“know always by a natural instinct when they are beloved, and therefore
I believe she _knows_ it. For the rest, she is always most affectionate,
most gentle, nay, even tender. Further than this, I may not judge.”
“Father,” exclaimed a faint voice from the bed, at this moment. “Is that
you, father?” and Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, languid yet from the
heavy slumber into which the opiate had cast him, and raised himself up
a little on his pillow, though with a slow and painful motion.
“My son,” cried the old man, hurrying to the side of the bed, “my own
boy, Jasper, how fare you now? You have slept well.”
“So well,” answered the bold boy, “that I feel strong enough, and clear
enough in the head, to be up and about; but that whenever I would move a
limb, there comes an accursed twinge to put me in mind that limestone
rock is harder than bone and muscle.”
Meanwhile, as soon as the old cavalier’s attention was diverted by the
awakening of his own son from his trance-like slumber, Durzil
Bras-de-fer, as he called himself, and as I shall therefore call him,
left the room quietly, and a few minutes afterward might have been seen,
had not the eyes of those within the chamber been otherwise directed, to
pass the casement, following the same path which had been taken by
Theresa Allan a little while before.
[_To be continued._
* * * * *
ELIM.
BY VIRGINIA.
And they came to Elim, where were twelve wells of water, and
threescore and ten palm-trees, and they encamped there by the
waters.
EXODUS XV. 27.
Noon on the burning desert!
Unutterable noon!
On the wandering band, from Goshen’s land,
Shod in the wondrous shoon!
Blasting the man of might,
Blighting the infant flower,
And quenching the light to the mother’s sight
As it droops in the fearful hour!
Look out o’er the blinding heaven!
Look out o’er the searèd ground!
Is naught in view save the torturing blue
And the maddening sand around?
Behold a speck afar!
It seemeth a cloud like a hand,
And it beck’neth us on through the raging sun
Away to the Promised Land!
Is it the Angel of Death,
Sent forth as a mocking guide?
Is it the trace of the warrior race
As they scour the trackless wide?
No! by the Cloudy Pillar!
No! by our Fiery Friend!
From the bush of flame the great I AM
Hath bidden us onward wend!
On to the Seventy Palm Trees!
On to the water’s brink!
Where the wayfaring rest on the green earth’s breast,
And the fainting pilgrims drink!
Drink! and forget their misery,
And remember their toil no more;
Rest! while the breeze sways the stately trees
Those dark, cool waters o’er!
Drink! parched and panting Israel!
In those draughts of mercy deep
There mingles no tide of the Marah wide
Where thy innermost soul shall steep!
Rest! worn and weary Israel!
In the dream of thy sleeping eyes
There dwelleth no thought of the ruin wrought
By coming centuries!
Oh, Elim! loveliest Elim!
Gem of the desert old!
Green be thy mighty shadows,
Pure be thy waters cold!
How often, ’mid life’s vast desert,
My heart within me swells,
As I sigh for thy Seventy Palm Trees,
And for thy Twelve Deep Wells!
* * * * *
FAITH’S WARNING.
BY HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.
The vital elements of all things gifted
With promise or with truth,
By God’s own hand benignantly are lifted
Into perennial youth.
O then, with gentle reverence, surrender
The wish to interfere,
Behold the miracle, devout and tender,
But enter not its sphere!
Childhood, with meek intelligence, appealing,
When guardians annoy,
As gush the sympathies its life revealing,
Asks freedom to enjoy.
Genius, by graceful waywardness, achieving
Its claim the boon to share,
A narrow doom in Fancy’s world retrieving,
Expands untrammeled there.
The throes of nations plead that right be tested—
The Present grapple fairly with the Past,
For Liberty’s pure zeal if unmolested,
Will triumph at the last!
Profane not Love in its divine seclusion,
If true, its hope is sure,
Born in weak hearts it is a chance illusion,
That vainly would endure.
For all things destined to survive, engender
Their own progressive life,
And Truth, forsaken by her last defender,
Yet conquers in the strife.
In its dim crypt of mould the seed implanted
Will germinate and spring,
Poised in her azure realm the lark undaunted
Exultingly will sing!
The prayer of wisdom in these later ages
Is for unchartered right
To turn, at will, her own elected pages,
With unimpeded sight.
To their own law abandon all things real,
Nor, with incessant care,
Strive to conform to thy perverse ideal
What God created fair.
* * * * *
LAMENT OF THE GOLD-DIGGER.
BY E. CURTISS HINE, U. S. N.
’Tis the grief for their fate gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.
CAMPBELL.
’Tis evening, and I stand alone
On San Francisco’s desert shore,
The wandering night-winds sadly moan,
And shrieking sea-birds round me soar.
The weary sun hath sunk to sleep
Beyond the great Pacific’s wave,
While here I stand and idly weep
That I have been to gold a slave!
O, curses on the maddening cry
That echoed through my own green land,
And sent me forth, unwept to die,
Upon this lonely desert strand!
With spirits fresh the hills I trod,
And in the eager strife for gain
Forgot my country and my GOD,
And fevered fancies flushed my brain!
It came at last, the bitter thought,
That I was linked with toiling slaves,
Whose very life-blood had been bought
By selfish and designing knaves.
But all too late conviction came,
And with a down-cast, tearful eye.
I thought with anguish and with shame
I’d chased an echo here—to die!
O, vain was all our strife for wealth,
We ploughed the bed of many a stream,
All idly, and with ruined health,
Heaped curses on our fevered dream,
That drove us from our homes away,
Athwart the ocean’s furrowed breast,
To find with terror and dismay
That we were houseless Famine’s guests!
My heart grows sick—my eye grows dim,
As o’er the watery waste I gaze,
And powerless droops each nerveless limb,
And manhood’s pride and strength decays.
Adieu, my childhood’s home, for fate
Hath dimmed the brightness of my sky,
I’ve “dug” my grave, and found too late
I’ve chased an echo here—to die!
* * * * *
SKETCHES OF LIFE IN OUR VILLAGE.
NO. I.—WHAT THERE WAS TO LIKE IN HATTIE ATHERTON.
BY GIFTIE.
“You seem to have a great deal to say lately about this Miss Hattie
Atherton,” said my brother, looking up from his book as I entered the
parlor, after escorting to the door a friend who had been making me a
morning call.
“Well,” said I, “I hope you have no objection.”
“Objection—no indeed. But what is there in Miss Hattie, that you all
like so much? Your friends have been perfectly absorbed in admiration of
her for the last three days.”
“If you knew her you would not wonder that we are all glad to have her
at home again. She has been absent four years at a boarding-school, and
as she is reported to be wonderfully accomplished her return makes quite
a sensation in our quiet circle. That is the reason you have heard her
name so frequently mentioned.”
“A regular paragon of boarding-school accomplishments, I suppose,” said
Fred, with his most scornful sneer. “She doesn’t know a cow from a
sheep—works worsted dogs—paints in colors _excessively
watery_—considers her father and mother quite countrified and
vulgar—and knows enough of the languages to Frenchify her name into
Harri_ette_, or into the more unmeaning diminutive of H-a-t-t-i-e.”
“You are really savage,” replied I, laughing, “but, my good sir, you are
quite mistaken in your enumeration, for though she had adopted the
diminutive of her somewhat stately name, she is innocent of working
worsted dogs, and she rejoices in the knowledge that of the two animals,
the cow is the largest. Really, Fred, she is a very lovely girl,
perfectly unaffected, and exulting like a freed bird to visit again her
old haunts,
“‘In the grove and by the river.’”
“Ah, she is one of that sort, is she? Raves of nature and falls on her
knees to a pigweed. For my part, I could never imagine why a boy wasn’t
just as natural as an alder bush.”
“You are really impertinent, Fred, to talk so about my friends,” said I,
a little vexed.
“Beg your pardon, sis; but you may depend upon it, all boarding-school
girls belong to one of two classes—the smart and affected, or the soft
and sentimental. You, my dear Mary, are the only one I ever knew to pass
the ordeal without being spoiled.”
“Which escape, I presume, you impute entirely to liberal share of advice
bestowed by my wise brother. I am quite provoked with you, for your
unsparing sarcasms on women.”
“Ah, if they were only all like you,” replied Fred, rising to come to
me, and then falling back on the sofa with a growl at the pain the
attempt had caused his sprained ankle. Gentle reader, that sprain, which
had confined him four days to the sofa, was the sole reason why my
good-natured, sensible brother was so “uncommon” cross.
There was a pause, during which Fred cut his nails and I sewed most
industriously. “I think,” said he at length—but what he thought was
lost forever to the world, for at that moment the door opened and Hattie
entered.
“Speak of angels and one sees their wings,” said I, as I rose to welcome
her. “You have come just in time to verify the proverb, for we have been
speaking of you.” Fred gave me a beseeching glance. He did not know of a
plan I had formed, which was quite inconsistent with any attempt to
prejudice Miss Atherton against him.
“I hope angels don’t tear their wings as badly as I have torn my shawl.
I have come to you for aid, and you see I carry a flag of distress,”
replied Hattie, holding out her shawl that had one corner nearly torn
off.
“How did you get such a rent in it?” exclaimed I.
“I have been paying a visit to your friend, Murray, and caught it on a
nail in his door,” said she laughing.
“What in the world were you doing at Murray’s?”
“I went down to see his child. When I looked out of my window this
morning, I was horrified to see that hop pole, whose graceful clusters
we were admiring yesterday, lying on the ground, and shorn of its
glories. On inquiring the cause of this outrage, I found that Murray
went to our house last evening for some hops to make a tea for a sick
child, and mother told him to get some from this pole. In doing so, he
managed, with Irish dexterity, to throw it down directly across the bed
of Dahlias.”
“Your beautiful Dahlias—what a pity!”
“I was very sorry, but fortunately they are not all destroyed. I thought
the poor man must have been in desperate haste to do such a thing, and
so I went to see if the child were dangerously sick.”
“Those Murrays are protegés of mine, but I didn’t know that any of them
were sick.”
“The child seems to be threatened with a fever, but I made them give it
a warm bath, and put baths of hops on its head and feet, and before I
left, it was quite relieved. I staid to superintend the operations, lest
they should not do it properly, for I fancy they are not accustomed to
the use of water. To be sure, dirt is the native element of that
class—but aren’t they uncommonly dirty?”
“I think they are,” replied I. “Last winter I asked Mrs. Murray why she
didn’t wash the children before she put on some new clothes I had
provided for them, and she opened her eyes in astonishment. ‘Sure
ma’am,’ said she, ‘sure and the dirt keeps ’em warm when they’ve nothin’
else to kiver ’em.’
“I suppose she thinks the same reason applies in summer by the rule of
contraries, for they were none of them very clean, and I thought they
were rather alarmed at the sight of a tubfull of water. Murray asked if
I “wasn’t afeard the child ’ud cotch cold,” but he says he thinks “hops
is werry good things,” and she imitated the deep guttural tones of our
gardener with a perfection that was perfectly startling.
“You are quite a doctress,” said Fred, when he had done laughing—“can’t
you prescribe for me?”
“I should think patience and resignation—an ounce each, thoroughly
compounded—would be the most necessary remedy for a sprain,” replied
Harriet—and the conversation turned on other subjects.
We examined the shawl, and pronounced it unmendable and I offered to
lend her my mantilla. “I will accept it,” said she, “if you will
yourself accompany it and assist me in making some purchases this
morning. Sally Murphy, who has lived with us so long, is about being
married, and father intends furnishing her house for her. It is a small
tenement with only four rooms, but it will be all her own, and she would
not be more delighted with a palace.”
I was soon ready, and we walked to the cabinet-makers, who was delighted
to furnish what we wanted, and then to that “omnium gatherum,” yclept,
“the dry goods store,” where we found every thing necessary for our
purpose, from the lace for the bride’s dress to the carpet that was to
adorn her “keeping-room.” “These are my part of the wedding presents,”
said Hattie. “I earned the money—you know how?”
I have said that I had a plan in view, in which my brother and Hattie
were to be the principal actors, and you will readily perceive that
though not much given to meddling with the affairs of other people, I
was sufficiently feminine in my tastes to be something of a matchmaker.
Notwithstanding his fine intellectual powers and considerable knowledge
derived from men and books, Fred had always been exceedingly deficient
in the ability to say and do those graceful nothings that are the usual
stepping-stones to an acquaintance between ladies and gentlemen, and
this, added to a certain bashfulness that frequently attends a proud,
sensitive nature, had kept him from finding any intimate friends among
the ladies he had met in his college life, and in his subsequent
wanderings over the world. Unfortunately, too, for my matrimonial
schemes in his behalf, he was provokingly contented with the prospect of
being an old bachelor; and since his establishment in our village, had
confined his visits to a few married ladies who were vastly superior in
cultivation of mind to any of the unmarried ones of our acquaintance.
Thus with a handsome person, and more than ordinary powers of pleasing,
had he chosen to exert them, my brother had passed to the shady side of
thirty, without having his large, warm heart stirred by a deeper emotion
than the quiet love excited by the home circle. I was determined this
state of things should not endure much longer, and to Harriet I looked
for aid in breaking the spell of indifference that was consigning him to
the lonely and selfish existence of a confirmed old bachelor.
Some weeks after the morning on which my story opens, Fred invited me to
walk with him to one of his favorite places of resort—a grove that was
situated about a mile from the village. The purple light of sunset was
thrown like a glory over the surrounding hills, and fell upon the bosom
of the river which, foaming in successive rapids through most of its
course, here spread out in a broad, deep current, as it swept with
graceful curve between its steep wooded banks. Following the path that
led down the bank, we came out from the shadow of the trees into a point
of land that, jutting out into the river, was covered with a soft
greensward. A willow grew on its extremest verge, and on a flat rock
under its overhanging branches Hattie Atherton was seated, with her
sketch-book on her knee. Her hat lay beside her on the grass, and the
wind sweeping back the long, shining curls that usually hung over her
face, revealed her broad, intellectual brow, and the perfect contour of
her features, while her slight, delicate figure was relieved against the
dark trunk of the tree. So absorbed was she in her occupation that she
did not know of our approach till we were beside her, and I had taken
her book to show Fred her accurate drawing of the view before us. She
started up with a slight blush, and turning to my brother said, with a
low silvery laugh,
“You ridicule romantic school girls, Mr. Stanley; and as I presume you
think I look very much like one at this moment, I must tell you how I
happened to be here. Father told me to-day that the course of the M——
railroad has been altered, and it will pass directly along this bank, so
that our beautiful grove will be spoiled.”
Great was our indignation at the idea of this invasion, and when we had
exhausted almost every expression in the language, Fred declared he
would get up a remonstrance and defeat their sacrilegious purposes.
“It will be of no use,” said Hattie. “It is the march of improvement,
and we must submit.”
“Worse than the march of the Goths and Vandals,” exclaimed Fred,
wrathfully; “the idea of sacrificing these grand old trees to the whims
of a few railroad contractors—it is too bad, for the other route will
be more convenient for everybody else.”
“I felt sorry enough, as you may imagine,” replied Hattie. “I have spent
so many happy hours here that I determined to sketch the view from this
point before the measuring-rod or the steam-engine should disturb its
quiet beauty.”
“And your pencil has immortalized it; how perfectly you have copied the
flickering light that falls on the smooth, dark waters, through those
overhanging trees. Really, Miss Atherton, I shall be exceedingly obliged
to you for a copy of this picture.”
“You shall have one,” said Hattie, frankly. “I intended making a picture
from this, and giving the drawing to Mary, for I know she loves this
scene as much as I do. I have so many pleasant associations connected
with it, that I feel as if I were to part with an old friend.”
“I can realize your feelings,” replied Fred, “for I, too, have loved to
listen on this spot to the many voices of nature. How often have I sat
beneath these trees to watch the daylight fade from the hills, and the
twilight throw its shadows over the landscape, seeming to descend lower
and lower till they rested on the bosom of the river, and I could see
nothing but the white foam gleaming through the dark, where it falls
over the rocks away yonder. Then the low, thrilling, whispering of the
wind among the pines, and the melancholy scream of the night-hawk—I
declare they have made me quite poetical, as you see,” he added,
smiling, and slightly embarrassed at having been thus betrayed out of
his usual composure, which embarrassment was not at all relieved by
meeting Hattie’s large dark eyes fixed on him with an expression of
wonder and gratification. Perhaps it was this _mauvais honte_—perhaps
it was the argumentative spirit which had occasioned us to give him in
the family the soubriquet of “the opposing member”—that gave so
singular a turn to this sentimental conversation, when at this moment,
in turning over the leaves of her book, Fred found a slip of paper
covered with verses of Harriet’s composition.
“So you write poetry, too!” said he, looking up at her with a smile.
“Oh, give it to me—I wouldn’t have you read it for the world,”
exclaimed she, springing forward with such evident distress that he
reluctantly relinquished the manuscript.
“You needn’t be afraid of his criticism, for he writes poetry
sometimes,” said I.
“_Do_ you?” said Hattie, incredulously.
“Certainly,” answered my brother; “everybody does now-a-days. In the
class from which I graduated at college, there were forty-five, of which
forty wrote poetry.”
“Wrote _verses_, you mean,” said Hattie, demurringly.
“There is very little difference. The Horatian maxim, ‘_Poeta nascitur
non fit_,’ which has so long been thought to countenance a distinction,
simply means that men and women who write poetry, like other men and
women, are ‘born.’”
“I suppose, then,” replied Hattie, humoring the idea, “that the doctrine
that poets were obliged to gallop up the sides of a steep mountain in
Greece, on a vicious nondescript called Pegasus, is to be considered
wholly metaphorical.”
“Just so,” said Fred. “Pegasus is now a mere omnibus horse, and timid
people need no longer be afraid of entering the coach lest they should
get a kick from the rampant animal, or be thrown into the depths of
Helicon.”
“The doctrine of inspiration is also exploded,” said I, laughing. “Burns
used to compose some of his nice little sonnets while engaged in the
groveling occupation of ploughing, and if any thing more elaborate than
usual was wanting, he took a glass of Scotch whisky.”
“Byron, too,” continued Fred, “wrote under the influence of gin; and it
is said of Wordsworth, considered by the Lake school the greatest of
modern poets, that he had an assistant feeding him with bread and butter
while he was writing the ‘Excursion.’ Whoever, then, can drink whisky
and gin, or as coming within the circle of the ‘pledge,’ can eat bread
and butter, need fear no lack of inspiration.”
“How ridiculous!” exclaimed Hattie. “What would these great immortals
think, could they hear your nonsense.”
“Immortals! there is another false idea that should be given up by all
sensible men. Every thing else that is made is made for some object, and
its excellence is determined by its fitness for that object—why
shouldn’t it be so with poetry. Cheese, for instance, in Connecticut, is
made with especial reference to the time of its consumption, and one
kind is labeled ‘to be eaten immediately,’ another, ‘in one year,’ ‘two
years,’ and so on. So with poetry. Some of it is better to be kept some
years and go down to posterity like ‘Paradise Lost’ and Shakspeare, that
were not much esteemed at first, you know; other kinds, more fit for
present consumption, may be read by moonlight, cried over, and applied
to other purposes of poetry.”
“You remind me,” said I, “of a definition I heard the other day, which
said, ‘poetry is only pleasant, metrical, musical, writing which amuses
and astonishes one’s friends, makes one’s enemies bite their lips for
envy, and may be counted on the fingers.’”
“That’s very good,” replied my brother, “but the easiest way to make
poetry is to take prose and turn it. I was quite surprised, at an
instance of this, I found yesterday, in reading Napier’s History of the
Peninsula War. He had been describing the battle of Corunna, and in
speaking of the death of Sir John More, he says, very nearly in these
words: ‘it was thought best to retreat without waiting for the break of
day. The body of Sir John was hurriedly deposited in the earth, near the
rampart, without music or even a farewell shot being fired over his
grave.’ Mr. Wolfe has immortalized himself, as it is called, by turning
this account into verse; and just notice how closely he has followed the
prose original:
“‘Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O’er the grave where our hero was buried.’”
“_It is_ strikingly like,” said Hattie, “not even the usual descriptive
adjectives, and very little amplification. That shows how easily pieces
of poetry of great celebrity may have been written. Perhaps you and I
may one day be famous. I have often thought how a pensive man, looking
at the water in this river during a mild fall of snow, might say very
naturally, in thinking of the transitoriness of the pleasures of this
world,
‘Like snow falls in a river,
A moment white, then melts forever,’
and yet be unconscious that he had uttered a beautiful comparison.”
“So, too,” said Fred, “any one who has ever cooked a certain kind of
shell-fish before sunrise, could not help saying, as the light broke
upon him,
“‘Like lobsters boiled—the moon
From black to red begins to turn.’”
“Come,” said Hattie, when our laugh had subsided, “it is getting dark,
and as I promised to be at home in time to see Sally dressed for her
bridal, I fear if we don’t go now, she will remind me of the pouting
dame who sits at home,
“‘Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.’”
After we had left Hattie at her own door, and were proceeding homeward,
Fred broke out in his most earnest tone. “That Miss Atherton is a very
nice girl; what an intellectual face she has—have you seen any of her
poetry—does she write much?”
“Oh, yes—you have read some of it, which she has published anonymously,
(but this is a great secret, remember,) and her motive in doing so is as
honorable to her heart as the verses are to her poetical powers. You
know Mr. Atherton lavishes his wealth upon his children without bounds,
and Hattie says it does not seem very benevolent for her to give away
her father’s money, so she devotes the proceeds of her literary labors
to purposes of charity. She is very kind to the poor; I wish you could
see how their faces brighten at her approach.”
“Well done! that is what I like in a woman. She is really a very
sensible girl,” replied my brother.
“Even if she does write her name H-a-t-t-i-e,” said I, with a sly
glance. Fred pinched my arm, but said nothing.
Time passed on, and I was satisfied that my brother had found out “what
there was to like in Hattie Atherton;” but a proud man deeply in love is
the most timid of mortals, and he sped but slowly in his wooing. His
favorite books were offered for her perusal; and long evenings were
spent in arguments upon questions of metaphysics and philosophy, and
though Hattie had sufficient strength of intellect to sustain her share
of the conversation creditably, she was too much impressed with awe of
Fred’s menial abilities to feel perfectly at ease while he was thus
drawing forth the powers of her mind; and, mistaking her dignity and
slight reserve of manner for indifference or aversion, he dared not
betray the strong affection with which she inspired him.
One evening, late in the summer, as I was sitting alone in the twilight,
Fred entered hastily, and throwing himself into a chair, exclaimed, “I
have just heard very bad news—do you know—have you seen Harriet
to-day?”
“No—what has happened? Tell me, for mercy’s sake,” said I, half
frightened out of my wits at the sight of his pale face.
“Mr. Atherton has failed.”
“Oh, is that all,” replied I, with a feeling of relief on knowing that
nothing dreadful had befallen my friend.
“All!” retorted Fred. “I should think that was enough. It will nearly
kill the old man, he has such an overwhelming horror of debt.”