If it were now to die,
'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear,
My soul hath her content so absolute,
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.--_Othello_.
It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth for the house
at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of
the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night
before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts,
misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he
came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda
on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes
priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at
Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the
porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through
from front to rear.
He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the
lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the
vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light summer furniture, it
was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from
Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls;
and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left
purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without
attempting to escape, though the windows also were open.
"No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor.
He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the
groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was
undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful
succession. The birds would not sing,--the afternoon was too hot,--but
the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their
lurking-places in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised its
piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree.
Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase
reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with
her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive
her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most,
his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced
nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation
flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled
the pauses between.
He glanced at his companion.
"Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself.
He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her
fingers were employed.
"I must speak out, or die," he thought.
He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. Heaven knows
what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound of a man's footstep in
the hall made him subside into his chair, and do his best to look
nonchalant. Leslie entered, cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and
greeted him with somewhat cool courtesy.
"I have just met Miss Weston and her sister," said Leslie to his
daughter; "I think they will be here in a few minutes."
Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his lip with
vexation.
Leslie took a turn or two about the room, looked out at the window,
remarked that it was a hot afternoon, said that the hay crop had been
the heaviest ever known, in consequence, he opined, of the joint
effects of heat, moisture, and guano; and was descanting on the
ravages committed by the borers on a certain peach tree, when Miss
Weston and her sister appeared.
"It's all up with me. She does not care for me a straw," thought
Morton, as he saw the easy cordiality with which Miss Leslie received
her guests. He was introduced. Miss Weston complimented him on the
affair of the railroad. His reply was cold and constrained. Leslie
soon left the room. Morton felt himself _de trop_, yet could not
muster strength of mind to go. Conversation flagged. Every body became
constrained. Miss Weston suspected the truth, and glanced at her
sister that they should take their leave, when, at this juncture, a
servant came to announce tea.
The ebbs and flows of the human mind are beyond the reach of
astronomy. As they went into the next room, Morton became conscious of
a faint and indefinite something in the face of his mistress, which,
he could not tell why, cast a gleam of light into his darkness, and
lifted him out of the slough of despond in which he had been
floundering for the last half hour. A flush of hope dawned on him. His
constraint passed away, and Miss Weston's opinion of him was
wonderfully revolutionized. At length, much to his delight, one of the
visitors remarked to the other, that they had better go home before it
grew too dark. But here a new alarm seized him. Might he not be
expected to offer them his escort? Terrified at this idea, and
oblivious of all gallantry, he made his escape into the garden,
impelled--so he left them to infer--by a delicate wish to free them
from the restraint of his presence. Here he walked to and fro behind
the hedge, in no small agitation, but with all his faculties on the
alert.
In a quarter of an hour, he heard voices at the hall door; and
approaching behind a cluster of high laurels, saw Edith Leslie
accompanying her two friends down the avenue. After walking with them
a few rods, she bade them good evening, and turned back towards the
house. Morton went forward to meet her.
"There is a beautiful sunset over the water, beyond the garden. Will
you walk that way?"
They turned down one of the garden paths.
"What did you think of me this afternoon?" asked Morton--"did you
think me ill, or bewitched, or turned idiot?"
"Neither. I thought you a little taciturn, at first."
"I am fortunate if that was your worst opinion. I believe I was under
a spell. Did you never dream--all people, I believe, have something in
common in their dreams--of being in some great peril, without power to
move hand or foot to escape?--of being under some desperate necessity
of speaking, without power to open your lips?--or of seeing before you
some splendid prize, without power to make even an effort to grasp it?
Something like that was my case." Here he came to an abrupt stop,
walked on a pace or two, then turned to his companion with a vehemence
which startled her--"Miss Leslie, you heard your friend praise me for
humanity--courage--what not? It was all a mistake--all a delusion. I
thought you were in the train. I was wild with agony; and when the
people were crowding after me, I thought that all had been for
nothing, because I had not saved you. I can hardly tell what I did; it
was mere blind instinct. I could have ridden into the fire, and
perhaps not have felt the burning. There _is_ a spell upon me. I am
changed--life is changed--every thing is changed. I scarcely know
myself. It mans me, and it makes me a child again. The world puts on a
new face; just as this sunset lights the earth with purple and
vermilion, and turns it to a fairy land. Forgive me; I don't know what
I am saying. I am in fear that all this brightness will change of a
sudden into winter and night, and cold, rocky commonplace. You know
what I would say. I have no words fit to say it. You are my judge, to
lift me up, or cast me down."
Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion in much
greater agitation than he would have felt if he had just thrown the
dice for life or death. She stood for a moment with her eyes fixed on
the earth, as if waiting for him to go on, then slowly raised them to
his face.
"You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe that I could
ever forget it."
Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been liberal to him
in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his emotion supplied the
defect. Nor were his words thrown away; for with all its outward calm,
the nature that responded to them was earnest and ardent as his own.
It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun their evening
cries, when they returned to the house. Candles were lighted, and
Leslie was sitting with two persons from the neighborhood, an agent of
the Matherton factories and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks.
He looked very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing.
The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself to join
in the conversation, and favored the company with his views--not very
lucid on this occasion--upon the topic under discussion. He soon,
however, contrived to whisper to Miss Leslie, "I shall go in five
minutes--will you meet me in the hall?" She left the room in a few
moments; and Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much
alarm lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as
to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he found his
mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their interview was short,
but Morton never forgot it. After bidding her good night some eight or
ten times, he compelled himself to leave the house, mounted his horse,
waved his hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side
window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached the
entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards the window.
His heart was full to overflowing, and tears, not of sorrow, ran down
his cheeks. "Good Heaven!" laughed Morton, as he brushed them away,
"this has not happened to me before these twelve years." He waved a
farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the avenue into
the high road.
It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he passed along, he
heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and near, while the
meadows, the orchards, and the borders of the woods sparkled with
fireflies. With loosened rein, he suffered his horse to canter lightly
forward, and gave himself up to the enchantment of his dreams. A
thousand times in his after life did he recall the visions of that
evening's ride.
About a mile before reaching the town, the road passed, for a few
rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding through the darkest
of the shadow, a strange cry startled him--a shriek so wild and awful
that the blood curdled in his veins, and his horse leaped aside with
fright. There was a rustling among the branches over his head, a
flapping and fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some
great bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods.
Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great horned owl,
rarely found in that part of the country, though he had once or twice
before heard its midnight yells in the lonely forests of Maine.
The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with startling
portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint of his
reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and breathed a prayer for
the welfare of his mistress.