JEALOUSY
I care not for her, I. —Shakespeare.
It is a quarrel most unnatural,
To be revenged on him that loveth thee. —Shakespeare.
The instant Major Gordon was out of sight of Sweetwater, and had plunged
into the forest that lay between it and his quarters, he gave vent to
the angry emotions that had raged, like a suppressed volcano, in his
bosom.
His first ebullition was directed against Aylesford. The insolent tone
of the cousin, in recalling, galled him to the quick; and his hand
instinctively sought the hilt of his sword, when he remembered that
supercilious and confident look. A savage, almost murderous feeling took
possession of him. He muttered between his teeth. “If I had him alone,
here in the forest, with a clearing of but a dozen yards or so, he
should answer for his conduct with his life.”
The angry lover felt that he could not return to the Forks as yet, where
prying eyes might read his mortification, so he turned into a
cross-road, which led into the heart of the wilderness, and, giving the
rein to Selim, galloped till the panting beast was covered once more
with foam. In this rapid motion the turbulence of his soul gradually
found a partial vent. The first blind impulse of outraged love passed
away, and he began to scrutinize the facts with comparative calmness.
He went over, mentally, the whole of the last fortnight. He recalled
every word, gesture and look of Kate. Something almost like a groan
burst from him, as he admitted to himself, after this review, that she
had never given him cause to indulge the wild hopes he had entertained
that morning. She had invariably been affable. But a woman in love, he
had heard, was shy and timorous. She had boldly controverted his
opinions, when they differed from her own. But if she had secretly loved
him, she would have implicitly adopted them. Major Gordon reasoned in
this way, not from experience, for he had never before been in love, and
had enjoyed comparatively little female society, but from what he had
read of the passion, in its effect on the sex, in the romances of the
day: Clarissa Harlowe, Amelia, Tom Jones, and Sir Charles Grandison. It
is no demerit, we hope, even in these days, for an honest man to be
practically ignorant about such matters, when there is no way in which
he can be informed, except by trifling with the happiness of trusting
innocence.
Nor was this all. Kate’s social position, her large fortune, and the
hereditary loyalty of her family, now rose before him, the barriers they
really were to a union with a rebel officer, who had no income but that
derived from his sword. Instead of repeating the charge of coquetry
against Kate, he owned to himself that she had been frank throughout;
for a new light was thrown upon him, in reference to their conversations
respecting rank and descent. She had evidently intended, he saw, to put
him upon his guard. “Into what a bit of folly has not my vanity led
me,” he cried.
The day was drawing to its close before he returned to the Forks. As he
emerged from the denser forest, he discovered that the obscuration in
the sky, which he had noticed for some time, and which he had thought
was smoke from the conflagration, was in reality a thunder-storm coming
up. He quickened his pace at this, and reached his quarters just in time
to escape a drenching.
For half the night he walked his chamber, his mood of mind alternating,
as that of lovers will under similar circumstances. Now the first angry
impulse against Kate would return. Now he would exonerate her from all
intentional coquetry. Now he would recall her glance in the forest, when
both considered death inevitable, and decide that there was some
mystery, which, if understood, would explain satisfactorily her
subsequent conduct.
In this mood he retired to bed. The rain still continued. It had been
falling in torrents the whole evening, the huge drops rattling on the
roof like shot. The water splashed like a small cataract, as it ran off
from the eaves. The great buttonwoods about the house creaked in the
gale; and the river, which ran close by, surged along with a wild,
mournful sound, at times rising to a sullen roar, as if threatening a
freshet. Amid such noises our hero fell asleep.
When he woke, the storm had ceased, the sun was shining brightly, and
the birds sang as merrily as on a morning in spring. It was Sunday. The
usual busy hum of the Forks was hushed, and everything breathed a
Sabbath silence, made more eloquent by contrast with the tumult and rage
of the preceding night. Not a leaf stirred; a thousand diamonds sparkled
in the grass; the air was full of balm; and all was still, save the
sound of a hymn that rose from a neighboring cottage, whose family was
at morning worship. The sweet influences of the hour, combined with his
late sleep, made Major Gordon heartily ashamed of his angry mood of
yesterday. “What if Mr. Aylesford is preferred to me,” he said.
“Is that a reason why I should seek his blood? It is nobler to forgive
than to resent.”
In this mood he prepared to attend church. It was the first Sunday that
services had been held since his arrival at the Forks; for, at that
time, Sweetwater had no regular minister, but was compelled to rely on
chance itinerants. The Methodist connexion, always a missionary church,
but never more so than at that period, was then just beginning the great
work, which has made it since such a bulwark of morality and religion in
this republic. A new preacher, who had never visited the district, was
to conduct the services.
The Major reached the edifice early. But the excitement of a strange
minister and of the conflagration of yesterday had already collected an
unusual crowd, at least for the period; for half the male population was
absent in consequence of the war. Having tied his horse, as the rest had
done, to the bough of a tree, our hero joined the principal group. He
heard, as he had expected, that the storm had extinguished the fire,
which otherwise, it was declared, might have swept the whole region,
“down to Waldo itself,” as one of the men said.
While they were talking, Uncle Lawrence came up. It gratified Major
Gordon to see the respect, almost reverence, in which the veteran was
held. The conversation still continued to turn on the fire.
“I’ve often wondered,” said Uncle Lawrence, with quick sagacity,
divining a scientific truth which has since been demonstrated, “if
there wasn’t a connection between these great fires and the rains
which nigh a’most always follow ‘em. I’ve observed, neighbors,
nine times out of ten, that a fire in the woods brought a deluge of rain
close on its heels.”
“That’s a fact, anyhow,” said one of his hearers, with a puzzled
look, “though I never thought of it afore.”
“The Lord is always merciful,” continued Uncle Lawrence. “If he
didn’t send these rains, I don’t know what would become of us, for
mortal man couldn’t put out such a fire. It’s skeered the deer clear
off their old haunts, for I met one at the crossing of the branch in the
main road, as I came to meetin’.”
After awhile, Major Gordon left the group conversing and turned aside
into the grave-yard, on the right of the church. It was a spot that
might have been selected for an elegy as fittingly as that of
Stoke-Pogis. There were few headstones in that humble cemetery; no
pompous heraldic emblems; nothing of the usual vanities of life, that
seem, in similar places, such a mockery of death. Good and true men,
who, in their lowly walk, had lived more nobly than Pharaohs who now
slumber beneath pyramids, or conquerors who repose under marble
mausoleums, slept there unheralded, and forgotten by all, except by the
descendants who still reverenced their virtues, and by that Omniscience
in whose eyes the sainted poor are “beyond all price.” As the Major
stood, thoughtfully regarding the graves, he heard a step behind him,
and turning was accosted by Uncle Lawrence.
“A sweet, quiet spot, sir,” said the old man. “Just such a place
as seems fit to lay this mortal body in, to await the resurrection. Some
day, I shall sleep here myself. Yonder,” he continued, pointing to the
right hand, close to the fence, and about half way down the little
cemetery, “is the corner I should choose of all others. I have thought
of it so often that I have got a sort of home feeling for the spot. I
never could understand,” he added, “how folks can have grave-yards
in cities; it seems kind of natural like, however, to be buried where
the birds can sing, and the grass grows above you.”
“You view the grave with no horror, I see,” said his companion.
“It is a noble state of feeling, and eminently Christian, for the old
Pagans had nothing like it.”
“I bless God,” said the patriarch, “that I have no fear of death.
It is but casting off this old garment of the flesh, and, when a little
while has past, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, I shall
be raised again.” And, leaning on his staff, he looked above,
reminding his hearer, for the moment, of Elijah, when the prophet saw
the chariot of fire.
If Major Gordon had retained any of his yesterday’s anger, its last
traces vanished now. His mind was attuned by the calm yet elevated
conversation of his companion to the services of the day, and the solemn
thoughts they merited. In this mood he followed the veteran into the
church.