studied and thought, became too close for him, and he hastened out; for he
was full of the unshaped sense of all that had befallen, and the
perception of the great public event of a broken-out war was intermixed
with that of what he had done personally in the great struggle that was
beginning. He longed, too, to know what was the news of the battle that
had gone rolling onward along the hitherto peaceful country road,
converting everywhere (this demon of war, we mean), with one blast of its
red sulphurous breath, the peaceful husbandman to a soldier thirsting for
blood. He turned his steps, therefore, towards the village, thinking it
probable that news must have arrived either of defeat or victory, from
messengers or fliers, to cheer or sadden the old men, the women, and the
children, who alone perhaps remained there.
But Septimius did not get to the village. As he passed along by the cottage
that has been already described, Rose Garfield was standing at the door,
peering anxiously forth to know what was the issue of the conflict,--as it
has been woman's fate to do from the beginning of the world, and is so
still. Seeing Septimius, she forgot the restraint that she had hitherto
kept herself under, and, flying at him like a bird, she cried out,
"Septimius, dear Septimius, where have you been? What news do you bring?
You look as if you had seen some strange and dreadful thing."
"Ah, is it so? Does my face tell such stories?" exclaimed the young man. "I
did not mean it should. Yes, Rose, I have seen and done such things as
change a man in a moment."
"Then you have been in this terrible fight," said Rose.
"Yes, Rose, I have had my part in it," answered Septimius.
He was on the point of relieving his overburdened mind by telling her what
had happened no farther off than on the hill above them; but, seeing her
excitement, and recollecting her own momentary interview with the young
officer, and the forced intimacy and link that had been established
between them by the kiss, he feared to agitate her further by telling her
that that gay and beautiful young man had since been slain, and deposited
in a bloody grave by his hands. And yet the recollection of that kiss
caused a thrill of vengeful joy at the thought that the perpetrator had
since expiated his offence with his life, and that it was himself that did
it, so deeply was Septimius's Indian nature of revenge and blood
incorporated with that of more peaceful forefathers, although Septimius
had grace enough to chide down that bloody spirit, feeling that it made
him, not a patriot, but a murderer.
"Ah," said Rose, shuddering, "it is awful when we must kill one another!
And who knows where it will end?"
"With me it will end here, Rose," said Septimius. "It may be lawful for any
man, even if he have devoted himself to God, or however peaceful his
pursuits, to fight to the death when the enemy's step is on the soil of
his home; but only for that perilous juncture, which passed, he should
return to his own way of peace. I have done a terrible thing for once,
dear Rose, one that might well trace a dark line through all my future
life; but henceforth I cannot think it my duty to pursue any further a
work for which my studies and my nature unfit me."
"Oh no! Oh no!" said Rose; "never! and you a minister, or soon to be one.
There must be some peacemakers left in the world, or everything will turn
to blood and confusion; for even women grow dreadfully fierce in these
times. My old grandmother laments her bedriddenness, because, she says,
she cannot go to cheer on the people against the enemy. But she remembers
the old times of the Indian wars, when the women were as much in danger of
death as the men, and so were almost as fierce as they, and killed men
sometimes with their own hands. But women, nowadays, ought to be gentler;
let the men be fierce, if they must, except you, and such as you,
Septimius."
"Ah, dear Rose," said Septimius, "I have not the kind and sweet impulses
that you speak of. I need something to soften and warm my cold, hard life;
something to make me feel how dreadful this time of warfare is. I need
you, dear Rose, who are all kindness of heart and mercy."
And here Septimius, hurried away by I know not what excitement of the
time,--the disturbed state of the country, his own ebullition of passion,
the deed he had done, the desire to press one human being close to his
life, because he had shed the blood of another, his half-formed purposes,
his shapeless impulses; in short, being affected by the whole stir of his
nature,--spoke to Rose of love, and with an energy that, indeed, there was
no resisting when once it broke bounds. And Rose, whose maiden thoughts,
to say the truth, had long dwelt upon this young man,--admiring him for a
certain dark beauty, knowing him familiarly from childhood, and yet having
the sense, that is so bewitching, of remoteness, intermixed with intimacy,
because he was so unlike herself; having a woman's respect for
scholarship, her imagination the more impressed by all in him that she
could not comprehend,--Rose yielded to his impetuous suit, and gave him
the troth that he requested. And yet it was with a sort of reluctance and
drawing back; her whole nature, her secretest heart, her deepest
womanhood, perhaps, did not consent. There was something in Septimius, in
his wild, mixed nature, the monstrousness that had grown out of his hybrid
race, the black infusions, too, which melancholic men had left there, the
devilishness that had been symbolized in the popular regard about his
family, that made her shiver, even while she came the closer to him for
that very dread. And when he gave her the kiss of betrothment her lips
grew white. If it had not been in the day of turmoil, if he had asked her
in any quiet time, when Rose's heart was in its natural mood, it may well
be that, with tears and pity for him, and half-pity for herself, Rose
would have told Septimius that she did not think she could love him well
enough to be his wife.
And how was it with Septimius? Well; there was a singular correspondence in
his feelings to those of Rose Garfield. At first, carried away by a
passion that seized him all unawares, and seemed to develop itself all in
a moment, he felt, and so spoke to Rose, so pleaded his suit, as if his
whole earthly happiness depended on her consent to be his bride. It seemed
to him that her love would be the sunshine in the gloomy dungeon of his
life. But when her bashful, downcast, tremulous consent was given, then
immediately came a strange misgiving into his mind. He felt as if he had
taken to himself something good and beautiful doubtless in itself, but
which might be the exchange for one more suited to him, that he must now
give up. The intellect, which was the prominent point in Septimius,
stirred and heaved, crying out vaguely that its own claims, perhaps, were
ignored in this contract. Septimius had perhaps no right to love at all;
if he did, it should have been a woman of another make, who could be his
intellectual companion and helper. And then, perchance,--perchance,--there
was destined for him some high, lonely path, in which, to make any
progress, to come to any end, he must walk unburdened by the affections.
Such thoughts as these depressed and chilled (as many men have found them,
or similar ones, to do) the moment of success that should have been the
most exulting in the world. And so, in the kiss which these two lovers had
exchanged there was, after all, something that repelled; and when they
parted they wondered at their strange states of mind, but would not
acknowledge that they had done a thing that ought not to have been done.
Nothing is surer, however, than that, if we suffer ourselves to be drawn
into too close proximity with people, if we over-estimate the degree of
our proper tendency towards them, or theirs towards us, a reaction is sure
to follow.
* * * * *
Septimius quitted Rose, and resumed his walk towards the village. But now
it was near sunset, and there began to be straggling passengers along the
road, some of whom came slowly, as if they had received hurts; all seemed
wearied. Among them one form appeared which Rose soon found that she
recognized. It was Robert Hagburn, with a shattered firelock in his hand,
broken at the butt, and his left arm bound with a fragment of his shirt,
and suspended in a handkerchief; and he walked weariedly, but brightened
up at sight of Rose, as if ashamed to let her see how exhausted and
dispirited he was. Perhaps he expected a smile, at least a more earnest
reception than he met; for Rose, with the restraint of what had recently
passed drawing her back, merely went gravely a few steps to meet him, and
said, "Robert, how tired and pale you look! Are you hurt?"
"It is of no consequence," replied Robert Hagburn; "a scratch on my left
arm from an officer's sword, with whose head my gunstock made instant
acquaintance. It is no matter, Rose; you do not care for it, nor do I
either."
"How can you say so, Robert?" she replied. But without more greeting he
passed her, and went into his own house, where, flinging himself into a
chair, he remained in that despondency that men generally feel after a
fight, even if a successful one.
Septimius, the next day, lost no time in writing a letter to the direction
given him by the young officer, conveying a brief account of the latter's
death and burial, and a signification that he held in readiness to give up
certain articles of property, at any future time, to his representatives,
mentioning also the amount of money contained in the purse, and his
intention, in compliance with the verbal will of the deceased, to expend
it in alleviating the wants of prisoners. Having so done, he went up on
the hill to look at the grave, and satisfy himself that the scene there
had not been a dream; a point which he was inclined to question, in spite
of the tangible evidence of the sword and watch, which still hung over the
mantel-piece. There was the little mound, however, looking so
incontrovertibly a grave, that it seemed to him as if all the world must
see it, and wonder at the fact of its being there, and spend their wits in
conjecturing who slept within; and, indeed, it seemed to give the affair a
questionable character, this secret burial, and he wondered and wondered
why the young man had been so earnest about it. Well; there was the grave;
and, moreover, on the leafy earth, where the dying youth had lain, there
were traces of blood, which no rain had yet washed away. Septimius
wondered at the easiness with which he acquiesced in this deed; in fact,
he felt in a slight degree the effects of that taste of blood, which makes
the slaying of men, like any other abuse, sometimes become a passion.
Perhaps it was his Indian trait stirring in him again; at any rate, it is
not delightful to observe how readily man becomes a blood-shedding
animal.
Looking down from the hill-top, he saw the little dwelling of Rose
Garfield, and caught a glimpse of the girl herself, passing the windows or
the door, about her household duties, and listened to hear the singing
which usually broke out of her. But Rose, for some reason or other, did
not warble as usual this morning. She trod about silently, and somehow or
other she was translated out of the ideality in which Septimius usually
enveloped her, and looked little more than a New England girl, very pretty
indeed, but not enough so perhaps to engross a man's life and higher
purposes into her own narrow circle; so, at least, Septimius thought.
Looking a little farther,--down into the green recess where stood Robert
Hagburn's house,--he saw that young man, looking very pale, with his arm
in a sling sitting listlessly on a half-chopped log of wood which was not
likely soon to be severed by Robert's axe. Like other lovers, Septimius
had not failed to be aware that Robert Hagburn was sensible to Rose
Garfield's attractions; and now, as he looked down on them both from his
elevated position, he wondered if it would not have been better for Rose's
happiness if her thoughts and virgin fancies had settled on that frank,
cheerful, able, wholesome young man, instead of on himself, who met her on
so few points; and, in relation to whom, there was perhaps a plant that
had its root in the grave, that would entwine itself around his whole
life, overshadowing it with dark, rich foliage and fruit that he alone
could feast upon.
For the sombre imagination of Septimius, though he kept it as much as
possible away from the subject, still kept hinting and whispering, still
coming back to the point, still secretly suggesting that the event of
yesterday was to have momentous consequences upon his fate.
He had not yet looked at the paper which the young man bequeathed to him;
he had laid it away unopened; not that he felt little interest in it, but,
on the contrary, because he looked for some blaze of light which had been
reserved for him alone. The young officer had been only the bearer of it
to him, and he had come hither to die by his hand, because that was the
readiest way by which he could deliver his message. How else, in the
infinite chances of human affairs, could the document have found its way
to its destined possessor? Thus mused Septimius, pacing to and fro on the
level edge of his hill-top, apart from the world, looking down
occasionally into it, and seeing its love and interest away from him;
while Rose, it might be looking upward, saw occasionally his passing
figure, and trembled at the nearness and remoteness that existed between
them; and Robert Hagburn looked too, and wondered what manner of man it
was who, having won Rose Garfield (for his instinct told him this was so),
could keep that distance between her and him, thinking remote thoughts.
Yes; there was Septimius treading a path of his own on the hill-top; his
feet began only that morning to wear it in his walking to and fro,
sheltered from the lower world, except in occasional glimpses, by the
birches and locusts that threw up their foliage from the hill-side. But
many a year thereafter he continued to tread that path, till it was worn
deep with his footsteps and trodden down hard; and it was believed by some
of his superstitious neighbors that the grass and little shrubs shrank
away from his path, and made it wider on that account; because there was
something in the broodings that urged him to and fro along the path alien
to nature and its productions. There was another opinion, too, that an
invisible fiend, one of his relatives by blood, walked side by side with
him, and so made the pathway wider than his single footsteps could have
made it. But all this was idle, and was, indeed, only the foolish babble
that hovers like a mist about men who withdraw themselves from the throng,
and involve themselves in unintelligible pursuits and interests of their
own. For the present, the small world, which alone knew of him, considered
Septimius as a studious young man, who was fitting for the ministry, and
was likely enough to do credit to the ministerial blood that he drew from
his ancestors, in spite of the wild stream that the Indian priest had
contributed; and perhaps none the worse, as a clergyman, for having an
instinctive sense of the nature of the Devil from his traditionary claims
to partake of his blood. But what strange interest there is in tracing out
the first steps by which we enter on a career that influences our life;
and this deep-worn pathway on the hill-top, passing and repassing by a
grave, seemed to symbolize it in Septimius's case.
I suppose the morbidness of Septimius's disposition was excited by the
circumstances which had put the paper into his possession. Had he received
it by post, it might not have impressed him; he might possibly have looked
over it with ridicule, and tossed it aside. But he had taken it from a
dying man, and he felt that his fate was in it; and truly it turned out to
be so. He waited for a fit opportunity to open it and read it; he put it
off as if he cared nothing about it; perhaps it was because he cared so
much. Whenever he had a happy time with Rose (and, moody as Septimius was,
such happy moments came), he felt that then was not the time to look into
the paper,--it was not to be read in a happy mood.
Once he asked Rose to walk with him on the hilltop.
"Why, what a path you have worn here, Septimius!" said the girl. "You walk
miles and miles on this one spot, and get no farther on than when you
started. That is strange walking!"
"I don't know, Rose; I sometimes think I get a little onward. But it is
sweeter--yes, much sweeter, I find--to have you walking on this path here
than to be treading it alone."
"I am glad of that," said Rose; "for sometimes, when I look up here, and
see you through the branches, with your head bent down, and your hands
clasped behind you, treading, treading, treading, always in one way, I
wonder whether I am at all in your mind. I don't think, Septimius," added
she, looking up in his face and smiling, "that ever a girl had just such a
young man for a lover."
"No young man ever had such a girl, I am sure," said Septimius; "so sweet,
so good for him, so prolific of good influences!"
"Ah, it makes me think well of myself to bring such a smile into your face!
But, Septimius, what is this little hillock here so close to our path?
Have you heaped it up here for a seat? Shall we sit down upon it for an
instant?--for it makes me more tired to walk backward and forward on one
path than to go straight forward a much longer distance."
"Well; but we will not sit down on this hillock," said Septimius, drawing
her away from it. "Farther out this way, if you please, Rose, where we
shall have a better view over the wide plain, the valley, and the long,
tame ridge of hills on the other side, shutting it in like human life. It
is a landscape that never tires, though it has nothing striking about it;
and I am glad that there are no great hills to be thrusting themselves
into my thoughts, and crowding out better things. It might be desirable,
in some states of mind, to have a glimpse of water,--to have the lake that
once must have covered this green valley,--because water reflects the sky,
and so is like religion in life, the spiritual element."
"There is the brook running through it, though we do not see it," replied
Rose; "a torpid little brook, to be sure; but, as you say, it has heaven
in its bosom, like Walden Pond, or any wider one."
As they sat together on the hill-top, they could look down into Robert
Hagburn's enclosure, and they saw him, with his arm now relieved from the
sling, walking about, in a very erect manner, with a middle-aged man by
his side, to whom he seemed to be talking and explaining some matter. Even
at that distance Septimius could see that the rustic stoop and uncouthness
had somehow fallen away from Robert, and that he seemed developed.
"What has come to Robert Hagburn?" said he. "He looks like another man than
the lout I knew a few weeks ago."
"Nothing," said Rose Garfield, "except what comes to a good many young men
nowadays. He has enlisted, and is going to the war. It is a pity for his
mother."
"A great pity," said Septimius. "Mothers are greatly to be pitied all over
the country just now, and there are some even more to be pitied than the
mothers, though many of them do not know or suspect anything about their
cause of grief at present."
"Of whom do you speak?" asked Rose.
"I mean those many good and sweet young girls," said Septimius, "who would
have been happy wives to the thousands of young men who now, like Robert
Hagburn, are going to the war. Those young men--many of them at
least--will sicken and die in camp, or be shot down, or struck through
with bayonets on battle-fields, and turn to dust and bones; while the
girls that would have loved them, and made happy firesides for them, will
pine and wither, and tread along many sour and discontented years, and at
last go out of life without knowing what life is. So you see, Rose, every
shot that takes effect kills two at least, or kills one and worse than
kills the other."
"No woman will live single on account of poor Robert Hagburn being shot,"
said Rose, with a change of tone; "for he would never be married were he
to stay at home and plough the field."
"How can you tell that, Rose?" asked Septimius.
Rose did not tell how she came to know so much about Robert Hagburn's
matrimonial purposes; but after this little talk it appeared as if
something had risen up between them,--a sort of mist, a medium, in which
their intimacy was not increased; for the flow and interchange of
sentiment was balked, and they took only one or two turns in silence along
Septimius's trodden path. I don't know exactly what it was; but there are
cases in which it is inscrutably revealed to persons that they have made a
mistake in what is of the highest concern to them; and this truth often
comes in the shape of a vague depression of the spirit, like a vapor
settling down on a landscape; a misgiving, coming and going perhaps, a
lack of perfect certainty. Whatever it was, Rose and Septimius had no more
tender and playful words that day; and Rose soon went to look after her
grandmother, and Septimius went and shut himself up in his study, after
making an arrangement to meet Rose the next day.
Septimius shut himself up, and drew forth the document which the young
officer, with that singular smile on his dying face, had bequeathed to him
as the reward of his death. It was in a covering of folded parchment,
right through which, as aforesaid, was a bullet-hole and some stains of
blood. Septimius unrolled the parchment cover, and found inside a
manuscript, closely written in a crabbed hand; so crabbed, indeed, that
Septimius could not at first read a word of it, nor even satisfy himself
in what language it was written. There seemed to be Latin words, and some
interspersed ones in Greek characters, and here and there he could
doubtfully read an English sentence; but, on the whole, it was an
unintelligible mass, conveying somehow an idea that it was the fruit of
vast labor and erudition, emanating from a mind very full of books, and
grinding and pressing down the great accumulation of grapes that it had
gathered from so many vineyards, and squeezing out rich viscid
juices,--potent wine,--with which the reader might get drunk. Some of it,
moreover, seemed, for the further mystification of the officer, to be
written in cipher; a needless precaution, it might seem, when the writer's
natural chirography was so full of puzzle and bewilderment.
Septimius looked at this strange manuscript, and it shook in his hands as
he held it before his eyes, so great was his excitement. Probably,
doubtless, it was in a great measure owing to the way in which it came to
him, with such circumstances of tragedy and mystery; as if--so secret and
so important was it--it could not be within the knowledge of two persons
at once, and therefore it was necessary that one should die in the act of
transmitting it to the hand of another, the destined possessor, inheritor,
profiter by it. By the bloody hand, as all the great possessions in this
world have been gained and inherited, he had succeeded to the legacy, the
richest that mortal man ever could receive. He pored over the inscrutable
sentences, and wondered, when he should succeed in reading one, if it
might summon up a subject-fiend, appearing with thunder and devilish
demonstrations. And by what other strange chance had the document come
into the hand of him who alone was fit to receive it? It seemed to
Septimius, in his enthusiastic egotism, as if the whole chain of events
had been arranged purposely for this end; a difference had come between
two kindred peoples; a war had broken out; a young officer, with the
traditions of an old family represented in his line, had marched, and had
met with a peaceful student, who had been incited from high and noble
motives to take his life; then came a strange, brief intimacy, in which
his victim made the slayer his heir. All these chances, as they seemed,
all these interferences of Providence, as they doubtless were, had been
necessary in order to put this manuscript into the hands of Septimius, who
now pored over it, and could not with certainty read one word!