THE TORNADO.
When Alice came out of her room dressed for the marriage ceremony she
looked quaintly lovely. Old Pallas sobbed as she looked at her, and her
father wiped the dimness again and again from his eyes; for it was as
if the fair young bride of long ago had come to life.
Philip had made it an especial request that she should dress in a
costume similar to that she wore when he first loved her; and her
father had told her to provide no wedding-robe, as he wished her to
wear one of his own choosing. She had been attired in the bridal robe
and vail, the high-heeled satin slippers, the long white gloves which
had lain so many years in the mysterious trunk. Philip's gift, a
bandeau of pearls, shone above a brow not less pure--set in the golden
masses of her hair.
Virginia laid aside her mourning for that day, appearing in a fleecy
muslin robe, as bride-maid, and none the less queenly on account of
the simplicity of her dress. Her face had gained an expression of
gentleness which added very much to her superb attractions, and which
was not unnoticed by her companion in the ceremonies.
The words had been said which made the betrothed pair man and wife.
A more romantic wedding seldom has occurred than was this, in which
wealth and elegance were so intimately combined with the rude
simplicity of frontier life. To see those beautiful and richly-dressed
ladies flitting in and out the modest house buried in the shadows of
the western woods; the luxurious viands of the cook's producing served
upon the plainest of delf, to have the delicate and the rough so
contrasted, made a pretty and effective picture against the sunshine
of that September day. The spirit of the scene was felt and enjoyed
by all, even the venerable clergyman--rich voices and gay laughter
blent with the murmur of the river--fond, admiring eyes followed every
motion of the bride. The bride! where was the bride?
She had been standing on the lawn, just in front of the door with Mrs.
Raymond, who was saying--
"'Happy is the bride the sun shines on,'"
just the previous moment; Mrs. Raymond had run down to the river-bank,
and was throwing pebbles in the water.
Mr. Wilde, ever apprehensive, ever vigilant, had just missed her, and
was turning to inquire of the bridegroom, when a shriek, wild, sharp,
agonizing, paralyzed for an instant every faculty of the listeners.
"Great God, it is that madman!" burst from the father's lips.
Philip and he sprang out-of-doors together, just in time to see her
borne into the forest, flung like an infant over the shoulder of her
abductor, who was making great leaps along the path with the speed and
strength of a panther. The two men appointed as guards were running
after him. Mr. Wilde sprang for his rifle--the bridegroom waited for
nothing.
"Don't shoot!" he shouted to the men; "you will kill the girl!"
Philip reached and distanced the men; the raftsman, strong and tall,
and accustomed to the woods, passed him even, madly as he exerted
himself.
"If I only dared to fire," he breathed, between his clenched teeth. "If
he would give me just one second's fair and square aim--but my child,
she is his shield!"
Two or three times the two foremost pursuers came in sight, almost
within arm's reach of the terrified girl, crying, "Philip! father!" in
such piercing tones of entreaty.
"Can not you save me, Philip?" once he was so near, he heard the
question distinctly--but the furious creature who grasped her, gave
a tremendous whoop and bound, leaping over logs and fallen trees,
brooks, and every obstacle with such speed, that his own feet seemed
to be loaded with lead, and he to be oppressed with that powerlessness
which binds us during terrible dreams. He flew, and yet to his agony of
impatience, he seemed to be standing still.
"Philip--father--Philip!"
How faint, how far away. At length they heard her no more; they
had lost the clue--they knew not which way to pursue. The forest
grew wilder and denser; it was dim at mid-day under those tall,
thick-standing pines; and now the afternoon was wearing toward sunset.
"Philip," said the raftsman in a hoarse voice, "we must separate--each
man of the party must take a different track. Here is my rifle; I will
get another from the men. Use it if you dare--use it, _at all risks_,
if that devil seeks to harm her. His strength must give up some time."
"Don't despair, father," said the new-made husband, but his own heart
was cold in his bosom, and he felt so desperate that he could have
turned the rifle upon himself.
Not knowing but that he was going farther from instead of nearer to
the objects of his search, with every step, he had to pause frequently
to listen for some sound to guide him. Wandering on in this wild,
unsatisfactory way, his brain growing on fire with horror, suddenly he
heard a sharp voice chanting--
"'I'll hide the maid in a cypress-tree,
When the footstep of death is near.'"
The next moment he came face to face with Ben Perkins--but no Alice was
in his arms now, nor was she anywhere in sight.
"Fiend! devil! what have you done with my wife?"
His eyes shone like coals out of a face as white as ashes, as he
confronted his enemy with a look that would have made any sane man
tremble; but the wretch before him only stared him vacantly in the face
with a mournful smile, continuing to sing--
"'And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
Her paddle I soon shall hear.'"
"Where is she--answer me, devil?"
The hand of Philip clutched the lunatic's throat, and with the strength
of an anguish as superhuman as the transient power of the other had
been, he shook him fiercely as he repeated the question. The madman
wilted under his grasp, but as soon as the hold was relaxed, he slid
from under it, and sprang away.
"'They made her a grave too cold and damp,'"
he chanted, darting from tree to tree, as Philip, hopeless of making
him tell what he had done with Alice, tried to shoot him down.
"He has murdered her," he thought; and getting a momentary chance, he
fired, but without effect; Ben climbed a tree, springing from branch to
branch like a squirrel, until he reached the top, and like a squirrel,
chattering nonsense to himself. "If I had another shot I would put
an end to his miserable existence," muttered Philip, turning away to
trace, if possible, the track of the man, and find where he had dropped
Alice.
Soon he came out upon a small, open, elevated space--the river was
upon one side, the woods all around. Something strange was in the
air--nature seemed to be listening--not a breath rippled the water or
made a leaf quiver--he felt hot and suffocated. Despite of all his
mental misery, he, too, paused and listened like the elements--his ear
caught a far-away murmur. The day had been very warm for that season of
the year; it grew, now, oppressive. A low bank of dark clouds lay along
the south and west, hanging over the prairie on the opposite side of
the stream--it was such a bank of clouds as would seem to threaten rain
before midnight; but even while he gazed, a great black column wheeled
up from the mass and whirled along the sky with frightful rapidity.
The distant murmur grew to a roar, and the roar deepened and increased
until it was like the surf-swell of a thousand oceans. Stunned by the
tumult, fascinated by the sublime terror of the spectacle, he followed
with his gaze the course of the destructive traveler, which flew
forward, sweeping down upon the country closer and more close. The air
was black--night fell upon every thing--he saw the tornado--holding in
its bosom dust, stones, branches of trees, roofs of houses, a dark,
whirling mass of objects, which it had caught up as it ran--reach the
river, and with an instinct of self-preservation, threw himself flat
upon the ground, behind a rock which jutted up near him. He could tell
when it smote the forest, for the tremendous roar was pierced through
with the snapping, crackling sound of immense trees, broken off like
pipe-stems and hurled in a universal crash to the earth.
A short time he crouched where he was, held down in fact, pressed,
flattened, hurt by the trampling winds; but nothing else struck him,
and presently he struggled to his feet.
What a spectacle met him, as he looked toward the forest from which he
had so lately emerged! A vast and overwhelming ruin, in the midst of
which it seemed impossible that any life, animal or vegetable, should
have escaped. A desolation, such as poets have pictured as clinging
to the "last man," came over the soul of Philip Moore. Where were his
friends? where that gay party he had invited from their distant homes
to meet this fate? where was Alice, his wife of an hour? His manhood
yielded to the blow; he cowered and sobbed like a child.
The darkness passed over for a brief time, only to come again with the
setting sun, which had sent some lurid gleams of light, like torches
to fire the ruin, through the storm, before sinking from sight. A
drenching rain fell in torrents, the wind blew chilly and rough.
"I will search for her--I will find her, and die beside her mangled
remains," murmured Philip, arising and turning toward the forest.
The incessant flashes of lightning were his only lamps as he struggled
through the intricate mazes of fallen trees. It was a task which
despair, not hope, prompted, to toil through rain and wind and
darkness, over and under and through splintered trunks and tangled
foliage, looking, by the lightning's evanescent glare, for some glimpse
of the white bridal robe of his beloved. The hours prolonged themselves
into days and weeks to his suffering imagination, and still it was not
morning. As if not content with the destruction already wrought, the
elements continued to hurl their anger upon the prostrate wilderness;
ever and anon the sharp tongue of the lightning would lick up some
solitary tree which the wind had left in its hurry; hail cut the fallen
foliage, and the rain fell heavily. It was a strange bridal night.
Not knowing what moment he might stumble upon the crushed body of some
one of his friends, Philip wandered through the storm. He felt more
and more as if he were going mad--reason trembled and shuddered at his
misfortunes. Two or three times he resolved to dash his brains out
against a tree, to prevent himself the misery of going mad and yet
living on in those dismal solitudes, till hunger conquered what grief
refused to vanquish. Then the lightning would glimmer over some white
object, perchance the bark freshly scaled from some shattered trunk,
and he would hurry toward it, calling--"Alice!" as once she had called,
"Philip," through a less wretched night.
It seemed to him that if no other morning began to come before long,
the morning of eternity must open its gates upon the world; the
strength of the tempest was spent; only fitful gushes of wind swept
past; here and there a star looked down hurriedly through the drifting
clouds; the solemn roll of the thunder resounded afar, like the drums
of an enemy beating a retreat.
Exhausted, he sank at the foot of one of those Indian mounds common in
western forests. A gleam of the vanishing lightning flickered over the
scene. Hardly had it faded into darkness before a voice close to his
side whispered his name; a warm hand felt through the night, touching
his; a form glowing with life, soft, and tender, albeit its garments
were cold and drenched, sank into his outstretched arms.
"Yes, Philip, it is I--safe, unhurt. And you--are you uninjured?"
He could not answer; his throat was choked with the sweetest tears
which ever welled from a man's heart; he could only press her close,
close, in the silence of speechless delight.
In that hour of reunion they knew not if they had a friend left; but
the thought only drew them more near in heart than ever they had or
could have been before. Weary and storm-beaten, but filled with a
solemn joy, they clasped each other close and sank upon the wet sod, to
sleep the sleep of exhaustion, until the morning should dawn upon them
to light their search for their friends.