PART SECOND
LOVE
DIALOGUE I.
SCENE. A little glen in the woods near Fort Edward. A young British Officer appears, attended by a soldier in the American uniform; the latter with a small sealed pacquet in his hand.
Off. Hist!
Sol. Well, so I did; but—
Off. Hist, I say!
Sol. A squirrel it is, Sir; there he sits.
Off. By keeping this path you avoid the picket on the hill. It will bring you out where these woods skirt the vale, and scarcely a hundred rods from the house itself.
[Calling without.]
Sol. Captain Andre—Sir.
Off. It were well that the pacquet should fall into no other hands. With a little caution there is no danger. It will be twilight ere you get out of these woods—
Sol. I beg your pardon, Sir; but here is that young Indian guide of mine, after all, above there, beckoning me.
Off. Stay—you will come back to the camp ere midnight?
Sol. Unless some of these quick-eyed rebels see through my disguise.
Off. Do not forget the lodge as you return. A little hut of logs just in the edge of the woods, but Siganaw knows it well.
[Exit the Soldier.
(The call in the thicket above is repeated, and another young officer enters the glen.)
2nd Off. Hillo, Maitland! These woods yield fairies,—come this way.
1st Off. For God's sake, Andre! (motioning silence.) Are you mad?
Andre. Well, who are they?
Mait. Who? Have you forgotten that we are on the enemy's ground? Soldiers from the fort, no doubt. They have crossed that opening twice since we stood here.
Andre. Well, let them cross twice more. I would run the risk of a year's captivity, at least, for one such glimpse. Nay, come, she will be gone.
Mait. Stay,—not yet. There, again!
Andre. Such a villainous scratching as I got in that pass just now. It must have cost the rogues an infinite deal of pains though. A regular, handsome sword-cut is nothing to a dozen of these same ragged scratches, that a man can't swear about. After all, Captain Maitland, these cunning Yankees understand the game. They will keep out of our way, slyly enough, until we are starved, and scratched, and fretted down to their proportions, meanwhile they league the very trees against us.
Mait. As to that, we have made some leagues ourselves, I think, quite as hard to be defended, Sir.
Andre. It may be so. Should we not be at the river by this?
Mait. Sunset was the time appointed. We are as safe here, till then.
Andre. 'Tis a little temple of beauty you have lighted on, in truth. These pretty singers overhead, seem to have no guess at our hostile errand. Methinks their peaceful warble makes too soft a welcome for such warlike comers. Hark! [Whistling.] That's American. One might win bloodless laurels here. Will you stand a moment just as you are, Maitland;—'tis the very thing. There's a little space in my unfinished picture, and with that a la Kemble mien, you were a fitting mate for this young Dian here, (taking a pencil sketch from his portfolio,)—the beauty-breathing, ay, beauty-breathing, it's no poetry;—for the lonesome little glen smiled to its darkest nook with her presence.
Mait. What are you talking of, Andre? Fairies and goddesses!—What next?
Andre. I am glad you grow a little curious at last. Why I say, and your own eyes may make it good if you will, that just down in this glen below here, not a hundred rods hence, there sits, or stands, or did some fifteen minutes since, some creature of these woods, I suppose it is; what else could it be? Well, well, I'll call no names, since they offend you, Sir; but this I'll say, a young cheek and smiling lip it had, whate'er it was, and round and snowy arm, and dimpled hand, that lay ungloved on her sylvan robe, and eyes—I tell you plainly, they lighted all the glen.
Mait. Ha? A lady?—there? Are you in earnest?
Andre. A lady, well you would call her so perchance. Such ladies used to spring from the fairy nut-shells, in the old time, when the kings' son lacked a bride; and if this were Windsor forest that stretches about us here, I might fancy, perchance, some royal one had wandered out, to cool the day's glow in her cheek, and nurse her love-dream; but here, in this untrodden wilderness, unless your ladies here spring up like flowers, or drop down on invisible pinions from above, how, in the name of reason, came she here?
Mait. On the invisible pinions of thine own lady-loving fancy; none otherwise, trust me.
Andre. Come, come,—see for yourself. On my word I was a little startled though, as my eye first lighted on her, suddenly, in that lonesome spot. There she sat, so bright and still, like some creature of the leaves and waters, such as the old Greeks fabled, that my first thought was to worship her; my next—of you, but I could not leave the spot until I had sketched this; I stood unseen, within a yard of her; for I could see her soft breath stirring the while. See, the scene itself was a picture,—the dark glen, the lonesome little lodge, on the very margin of the fairy lake—here she sat, motionless as marble; this bunch of roses had dropped from her listless hand, and you would have thought some tragedy of ancient sorrow, were passing before her, in the invisible element, with such a fixed and lofty sadness she gazed into it. But of course, of course, it is nothing to your eye; for me, it will serve to bring the whole out at my leisure. Indeed, the air, I think, I have caught a little as it is.
Mait. A little—you may say it. She is there, is she?—sorrowful; well, what is't to me?
Andre. What do you say?—There?—Yes, I left her there at least. Come, come. I'll show you one will teach you to unlearn this fixed contempt of gentle woman. Come.
Mait. Let go, if you please, Sir. She who gave me my first lesson in that art, is scarcely the one to bid me now unlearn it, and I want no new teaching as yet, thank Heaven. Will you come? We have loitered here long enough, I think.
Andre. What, under the blue scope—what the devil ails you, Maitland?
Mait. Nothing, nothing. This much I'll say to you, —that lady is my wife.
Andre. Nonsense!
Mait. There lacked—three days, I think it was, three whole days, to the time when the law would have given her that name; but for all that, was she mine, and is; Heaven and earth cannot undo it.
Andre. Are you in earnest? Why, are we not here in the very heart of a most savage wilderness, where never foot of man trod before,—unless you call these wild red creatures men?
Mait. You talk wildly; that path, followed a few rods further, would have brought you out within sight of her mother's door.
Andre. Ha! you have been in this wilderness then, ere now?
Mait. Have you forgotten the fortune I wasted once on a summer's seat, some few miles up, on the lake above? These Yankees did me the grace to burn it, just as the war broke out.
Andre. Ay, ay, that was here. I had forgotten the whereabouts. Those blackened ruins we passed last evening, perchance;—and the lady—my wood-nymph, what of her?
Mait. Captain Andre, I beg your pardon, Sir. That sketch of yours reminded me, by chance perhaps, of one with whom some painful passages of my life are linked; and I said, in my haste, what were better left unsaid. Do me the favor not to remind me that I have done so.
Andre. So—so! And I am to know nothing more of this smiling apparition; nay, not so much as to speak her name? Consider, Maitland, I am your friend it is true; but, prithee, consider the human in me. Give her a local habitation, or at least a name.
Mait. I have told you already that the lady you speak of resides not far hence. On the border of these woods you may see her home. I may point it out to you securely, some few days hence;—to-night, unless you would find yourself in the midst of the American army, this must content you.
Andre. A wild risk for a creature like that! Have these Americans no safer place to bestow their daughters than the fastnesses of this wilderness?
Mait. It would seem so. Yet it is her home. Wild as it looks here, from the top of that hill, where our men came out on the picket just now so suddenly, you will see as fair a picture of cultured life as e'er your eyes looked on. No English horizon frames a lovelier one.
Andre. Here? No!
Mait. Between that hill and the fort, there stretches a wide and beautiful plain, covered with orchards and meadows to the wood's edge; and here and there a gentle swell, crowned with trees, some patch of the old wilderness. The infant Hudson winds through it, circling in its deepest bend one little fairy isle, with woods enough for a single bower, and a beauty that fills and characterizes, to its remotest line, the varied landscape it centres; and far away in the east, this same azure mountain-chain we have traced so long, with its changeful light and shade, finishes the scene.
Andre. You should have been a painter, Maitland.
Mait. The first time I beheld it—one summer evening it was, from the woods on the hill's brow;—we were a hunting party, I had lost my way, and ere I knew it there I stood;—its waters lay glittering in the sunset light, and the window-panes of its quiet dwellings were flashing like gold,—the old brown houses looked out through the trees like so many lighted palaces; and even the little hut of logs, nestling on the wood's edge, borrowed beauty from the hour. I was miles from home; but the setting sun could not warn me away from such a paradise, for so it seemed, set in that howling wilderness, and—
Andre. Prithee, go on. I listen.
Mait. I know not how it was, but as I wandered slowly down the shady road, for the first time in years of worldliness, the dream that had haunted my boyhood revived again. Do you know what I mean, Andre?—that dim yearning for lovelier beings and fairer places, whose ideals lie in the heaven-fitted mind, but not in the wilderness it wakes in; that mystery of our nature, that overlooked as it is, and trampled with unmeaning things so soon, hides, after all, the whole secret of this life's dark enigma.
Andre. But see,—our time is well-nigh gone,—this is philosophy—I would have heard a love tale.
Mait. It was then, that near me, suddenly I heard the voice that made this dull, real world, thenceforth a richer place for me than the gorgeous dream-land of childhood was of old.
Andre. Ay, ay—go on.
Mait. Andre, did you ever meet an eye, in which the intelligence of our nature idealized, as it were, the very poetry of human thought seemed to look forth?
Andre. One such.
Mait.—That reflected your whole being; nay, revealed from its mysterious depths, new consciousness, that yet seemed like a faint memory, the traces of some old and pleasant dream?
Andre. Methinks the heavenly revelation itself doth that.
Mait. Such an eye I saw then shining on me. A clump of stately pines grew on the sloping road-side, and, looking into its dark embrasure, I beheld a group of merry children around a spring that gurgled out of the hillside there, and among them, there sat a young girl clad in white, her hat on the bank beside her, tying a wreath of wild flowers. That was all—that was all, Andre.
Andre. Well, she was beautiful, I suppose? Nay, if it was the damsel I met just now I need not ask.
Mait. Beautiful? Ay, they called her so. Beauty I had seen before; but from that hour the sun shone with another light, and the very dust and stones of this dull earth were precious to me. Beautiful? Nay, it was she. I knew her in an instant, the spirit of my being; she whose existence made the lovely whole, of which mine alone had been the worthless and despised fragment. There are a thousand women on the earth the artist might call as lovely,—show me another that I can worship.
Andre. Worship! This is Captain Everard Maitland. If I should shut my eyes now—
Mait. Well, go on; but I tell you, ne'ertheless, there have been times, even in this very spot,—we often wandered here when the day was dying as it is now,—here in her soft, breathing loveliness, she has stood beside me, when I have,—worshipped?—nay, feared her, in her holy beauty, as we two should an angel who should come through that glade to us now.
Andre. True it is, something of the Divinity there is in beauty, that, in its intenser forms, repels with all its winningness, until the lowliness of love looks through it. Well—you worshipped her.
Mait. Nay, you have told the rest. I would have worshipped; but one day there came a look from those beautiful eyes, when I met them suddenly, with a gaze that sought the mystery of their beauty,—a single look, and in an instant the drooping lash had buried it forever; but I knew, ere it fell, that the world of her young being was all mine already. Another life had been forever added unto mine; a whole creation; yet, like Eden's fairest, it but made another perfect; a new and purer self; and in it grew the heaven, and the fairy-land of my old dreams, lovelier than ever. You have loved yourself, Andre, else I should weary you.
Andre. Not a bit the more do I understand you though. You talk most lover-like; that's very clear, yet I must say I never saw the part worse played. Why, here's your ladye-love, this self-same idol of whom you rave, at this moment perchance, breathing within these woods,—years too—two mortal years it must be, since you have seen her face; and yet—you stand here yet, with folded arms;—a goodly lover, on my word!
Mait. Softly, Sir! you grace me with a title to which I can lay no claim. Lover I was, may be. I am no lover now, not I—not I; you are right; I would not walk to that knoll's edge to see the lady, Sir.
Andre. Well, I must wait your leisure, I see.
Mait. And yet, the last time that we stood together here, her arm lay on mine, my promised wife. A few days more, and by my name, all that loveliness had gone. There needed only that to make that tie holy in all eyes, the holiest which the universe held for us; but needed there that, or any thing to make it such in ours. Why, love lay in her eye, that evening, like religion, solemn and calm.—We should have smiled then at the thought of any thing in height or depth, ending, what through each instant seemed to breathe eternity from its own essence;—we were one, one,—that trite word makes no meaning in your ear.—to me, life's roses burst from it; music, sunshine, Araby, should image what it means; what it meant rather, for it is over.
Andre. What was it, Maitland?
Mail. Oh,—well,—she did not love me; that was all. So far my story has told the seeming only, but ere long the trial came, and then I found it was seeming, in good sooth. The Rebellion had then long been maturing, as you know; but just then came the crisis. It was the one theme everywhere. Of course I took my king's part against these rebels, and at once I was outraged, wronged beyond all human bearing. Her mad brother, her's, her's what a world of preciousness, Andre, that little word once enshrined for me; and still it seems like some broken vase, fragrant with what it held.
Andre. And ever with that name, a rosy flash Paints, for an instant, all my world. Nay, 'tis a little love-poem of my own; go on, Maitland.
Mait. This brother I say, quarrelled with me, though I had borne from him unresentingly, what from another would have seemed insult. We quarrelled at last, and the house was closed against me, or would have been had I sought access; for I walked sternly by its pleasant door that afternoon, though I remember now how the very roses that o'erhung the porch, the benched and shaded porch, that lovely lingering place, seemed to beckon me in. It was a breathless summer day, and the vine curled in the open window,—even now those lowly rooms make a brighter image of heaven to me than the jewelled walls that of old grew in the pageant of our sabbath dreams.
Andre. And thus you abandoned your love? A quarrel with her brother?
Mait. I never wronged her with the shadow of a doubt. Directly, that same day, I wrote to her to fix our meeting elsewhere, that we might renew our broken plans in some fitter shape for the altered times. She sent me a few lines of grave refusal, Sir; and the next letter was returned unopened.
Andre. 'Twas that brother! Pshaw! 'twas that brother, Maitland. I'll lay my life the lady saw no word of it.
Mait. I might have thought so too, perchance; but that same day,—the morning had brought the news from Boston,—I met her by chance, by the spring in the little grove where we first met; and—Good Heavens! she talked of brothers! Brothers, mother, sisters!—What was their right to mine? All that the round world holds, or the universe, what could it be to her?—that is, if she had loved me ever; which, past all doubt, she never did.
Andre. Maitland! Heavens, how this passion blinds you! And you expected a gentle, timid girl like that to abandon all she loved. Nay, to make her home in the very camp, where death and ruin unto all she loved, was the watchword?
Mait. I beg your pardon, Sir. I looked for no such thing. I offered to renounce my hopes of honor here for her; a whole life's plans, for her sake I counted nothing. I offered her a home in England too, the very real of her girlhood's wish; my blighted fortunes since, or a home in yonder camp,—never, never. But if I had, ay, if I had,—that is not love, call it what you will, it is not love, to which such barriers were any thing.
Andre. Oh well, a word's a word. That's as one likes. Only with your definition, give me leave to say, marvellous little love, Captain Maitland, marvellous little you will find in this poor world of ours.
Mait. I'll grant ye.
Andre. If there is any thing like it outside of a poet's skull, ne'er credit me.
Mait. Strange it should take such shape in the creating thought and in the yearning heart, when all reality hath not its archetype.
Andre. Hist!
Mait. A careful step,—one of our party I fancy.
Andre. 'Tis time we were at the rendezvous. If we have to recross the river as we came, on the stumps of that old bridge, we had best keep a little day-light with us, I think.
[Exeunt.
DIALOGUE II.
SCENE. A chamber in the Parsonage. Helen leaning from the open window.
(Annie enters.)
Annie. Helen Grey, where on earth have you been? Wood flowers!
Helen. Come and look at this sunset.
Annie. Surely you have not, you cannot have been in those woods, Helen: and yet, where else could this periwinkle grow, and these wild roses?—Delicious!
Helen. Hear that flute. It comes from among those trees by the river side.
Annie. It is the shower that has freshened every thing, and made the birds so musical. You should stand in the door below, as I did just now, to see the fort and the moistened woods stands out from that black sky, with all this brightness blazing on them.
Helen. 'Tis lovely—all.
Annie. There goes the last golden rim over the blackening woods; already even a shade of tender mourning steals over all things, the very children's voices under this tree,—how soft they grow.
Helen. Will the day come when we shall see him sink, for the last time, behind those hills?
Annie. Nay, Helen, why do you mar this lovely hour with a thought like that?
Helen. And in another life, shall we see light, when his, for us, shines no more?—What sound is that?
Annie. That faint cry from the woods?
Helen. No,—more distant,—far off as the horizon, like some mighty murmur, faintly borne, it came.
Annie. I wish that we had gone to-day. I do not like this waiting until Thursday;—just one of that elder brother's foolish whims it was. I cannot think how your consent was won to it. Did you meet any one in your walk just now?
Helen. No—Yes, yes, I did. The little people where I went, I met by hundreds, Annie. Through the dark aisles, and the high arches, all decked in blue, and gold, and crimson, they sung me a most merry welcome. And such as these—see—You cannot think how like long-forgotten friends they looked, smiling up from their dark homes, upon me.
Annie. You have had chance enough to forget them, indeed,—it is two years, Helen, since you have been in those woods before. What could have tempted you there to-day?
Helen. Was there danger then?—was there danger indeed?—I was by the wood-side ere I knew it, and then,—it was but one last look I thought to take—nay, what is it, Annie? George met me as I was coming home, and I remember something in his eye startled me at first; but if there was danger, I should have known of it before.
Annie. How could we dream of your going there this evening, when we knew you had never set your foot in those woods since the day Everard Maitland left Fort Edward?
Helen. Annie!
Annie. For me, I would as soon have looked to see Maitland himself coming from those woods, as you.
Helen. Annie! Annie Grey! You must not, my sister—do not speak that name to me, never again, never.
Annie. Why, Helen, I am sorry to have grieved you thus; but I thought—Look! look! There go those officers again,—there, in the lane between the orchards, Scarcely half an hour ago they went by to the fort in just such haste. There is something going on there, I am sure.
(Helen rises from the window, and walks the room.)
Annie. In truth there was a rumor this afternoon,—you are so timid and fanciful, our mother chose you should not hear it while it was rumor only; but 'tis said that a party of the enemy have been seen in those woods to-day, and, among them, the Indians we have counted so friendly. Do you hear me, Helen?
Helen. That he should live still! Yes, it is all real still! That heaven of my thought, that grows so like a pageant to me, is still real somewhere. Those eyes—they are darkly shining now; this very moment that passes me, drinks their beauty;—that voice,—that tone,—that very tone—on some careless ear, even now it wastes its luxury of blessing. Continents of hail and darkness, the polar seas—all earth's distance, could never have parted me from him; but now I live in the same world with him, and the everlasting walls blacken between us. Those looks may shine on the dull earth and senseless stones, but not on me; on uncaring eyes, but not on mine; though for one moment of their lavished wealth, I could cheaply give a life without them; never again, never, never, never shall their love come to me.
Annie. Who would have thought she could cherish in secret a grief like this? Dear sister, we all believed you had forgotten that sad affair long ago,—we thought that you were happy now.
Helen. Happy?—I am, you were right; but I have been to-day down to the very glen where we took that last lovely walk together, and all the beautiful past came back to me like life.—I am happy; you must count me so still.
Annie. With what I have just now heard, how can I?
Helen. It is this war that has parted us; and so, this is but my part in these noble and suffering times, and that great thought reaches overall my anguish. But for this war I might have been—hath this world such flowers, and do they call it a wilderness?—I might have been, even now, you know it, Annie, his wife, his wife, his. But our hearts are cunningly made, many-stringed; and often much good music is left in them when we count them broken. That which makes the bitterness of this lot, the inconceivable, unutterable bitterness of it, even that I can bear now, calmly, and count it God's kindness too.
Annie. I do not understand you, sister.
Helen. What if this young royalist, Annie, when he quarrelled with my brother, and took arms against my country, what if he had kept faith to me?
Annie. Well.
Helen. Well? Oh no, it would not have been well. Why, my home would have been with that pursuing army now, my fate bound up with that hollow cause,—these very hands might have fastened the sword of oppression; nay, the sword whose edge was turned against you, against you all, and against the cause, that with tears, night and morning, you were praying for, and with your heart's best blood stood ready to seal every hour. No, it is best as it is; or if my wish grows deeper still, if in my heart I envy, with murmuring thought, the blessed brides, on whose wedding dawns the laughing sun of peace, then with a wish I cast away the glory of these suffering times.—It is best as it is. I am content.
Annie. I wish I could understand you, Helen. You say, "if he had kept faith to you;"—carried you off, you mean! Do you mean, sister Helen, that of your own will you would ever have gone with him, with Everard Maitland,—that traitor?
Helen. Gone with him? Would I not? Would I not? Dear child, we talk of what, as yet, you know nothing of. Gone with him? Some things are holy, Annie, only until the holier come.
Annie. (looking toward the door.) Stay, stay. What is it, George?
(George Grey comes in.)
George. I was seeking our mother. What should it be, but ill news? This tide is against us, and if it be not well-nigh full, we may e'en fold our arms for the rest. There, read that. (Throwing her a letter.)
Every face you see looks as if a thunder-cloud were passing it. I heard one man say, just now, as I came in, that the war would be over in a fortnight's time. There'll be some blood spilt ere then, I reckon though.
Helen. What paper is that that reddens her cheek so suddenly?
Annie. The McGregor's!—think of it, Helen,—gone over to the British side, and St. John of the Glens, and—who brought you this letter, George? 'Tis false! I do not believe it, not a word of it. Why, here are twenty names, people that we know, the most honorable, too,—forsaking us now, at such a crisis!
George. Self-defence, self-defence, sister; their lands and their houses must be saved from devastation. What sort of barracks think you, would that fine country-seat of McGregor's make?—and St. John's—he is a farmer you know, and his fields are covered with beautiful grain, that a week will ripen, and so, he is for turning his sword into a sickle;—besides, there are worse things than pillage threatened here. Look, (unfolding a hand-bill.) Just at this time comes this villainous proclamation from Skeensborough, scattered about among our soldiers nobody knows how, half of them on the eve of desertion before, and the other half—what ails you, Helen?
Helen. There he stands!
Annie. Is she crazed? Why do you clasp your hands so wildly? for Heaven's sake, Helen!—her cheek is white as death.—Helen!
Helen. Is he gone, Annie?
Annie. As I live, I do not know what you are talking of. Nay, look; there is no one here, none that you need fear, most certainly.
Helen. I saw him, his eye was on me; there he stood, looking through that window, smiling and beckoning me.
George. Saw him? Who, in Heaven's name? This is fancy-work.
Helen. I saw him as I see you now. He stood on that roof,—an Indian,—I saw the crimson bars on his face, and the blanket, and the long wild hair on his shoulders; and—and, I saw the gleaming knife in his girdle,—Oh God! I did.
George. Ay, ay, 'twas that scoundrel that dogged us in our way home, I'll lay my life it was.
Helen. In our way home? An Indian, I said.
George. Well, well, and I say an Indian, a rascal Indian, was watching and following us all the way home just now.
Helen. George!
George. Then you did not see him after all. In truth, I did not mean you should, for we could not have hurried more, but all the time we sat in that shanty, while it rained, about as far off as that chair from me, stood this same fellow among the bushes, watching us, or rather you. And you saw him here t He might have crept along by that orchard wall. What are you laughing at, Annie?—I will go and see what sort of a guard we have.
Annie. If you knew as much of Helen's Indians as I do, you would hardly be in such a hurry, George, I mean about this one that was here just now, for there are Indians in yonder forest I suppose; but since we were so high, I never walked in the woods with her once, but that we encountered one, or heard his steps among the bushes at least; and if it chanced to be as late as this, there would be half a dozen of them way laying us in the road,—but sometimes they turned out squirrels, and sometimes logs of wood, and sometimes mere air, air of about this color. We want a little light, that is all. There is no weapon like that for these fancy-people. I can slay a dozen of them with a candle's beams.
(George goes out.)
Helen. Do not laugh at me to-night, Annie.
Annie. But what should the Indians want of you, pry'thee; tell me that, Helen?
Helen. God knows. Wait till the sun sets to-morrow, and I will laugh with you if you are merry then.
Annie. Why to-morrow?—because it is our last day here? Tuesday—Wednesday—yes; the next day we shall be on the road to Albany.
[Exit.
Helen. I am awake now. Watched me in the glen?—followed me home? Those woods are full of them.—But what has turned their wild eyes on me?
It is but one day longer;—we have counted many, in peril and fear, and this, is the last;—even now how softly the fearful time wastes. One day!—Oh God, thou only knowest what its shining walls encircle. (She leans on the window, musing silently.) Two years ago I stood here, and prayed to die.-On that same tree my eye rested then. With what visions of hope I played under it once, building bowers for fairies I verily thought would come, and dreaming, with yearning heart, of glorious and beautiful things this world hath not. But, that wretched day, through blinding tears, I saw the sunlight on its glossy leaves, and I said, 'let me see that light no more.' Surely the bitterness is deep when that which hath colored all our unfolded being, is a weariness. For what more hath life for me I thought, its lesson is learned and its power is spent,—it can please, and it can trouble me no more; and why should I stay here in vain and wearily?
It was sad enough, indeed, to see the laughing spring returning again, when the everlasting winter had set in within, to link with each change of the varied year, sweet with a life's memories, such mournfulness; laying by, one by one, all hope's blessed spells, withered and broken forever,—the moonlight, the songs of birds, the blossom showers of April, the green and gold of autumn's sunset,—it was sad, but it was not in vain.—Not in vain, Oh God, didst thou deny that weeping prayer.
(A merry voice is heard without, and a child's face peeps through the window that overlooks the orchard.)
Child. Look! look! sister Helen! see what I have found on the roof of the piazza here,—all covered with wampum and scarlet, and here are feathers too—two feathers in it, blue and yellow—eagle's feathers they are, I guess.
Helen (approaching the window.) Let me see, Willy. What, did you find it here?
Willy. Just under the window here. Frank and I were swinging on the gate; and—there is something hard in it, Helen,—feel.
Helen. Yes, it is very curious; but—
Willy. There comes Netty with the candle; now we can see to untie this knot.
Helen. Willy, dear Willy, you must give it to me, you must indeed, and—I will paint you a bird to-morrow.
Willy. A blue-bird, will you? A real one?
Helen. Yes, yes;—run down little climber; see how dark it grows, and Frank is waiting, see.
Willy. Well. But mind you, it must be a blue bird then. A real one. With the red on his breast, and all.
[Exit.
(She walks to the table, unfastening the envelope.)
Helen. What sent that thrill of forgotten life through me then?—that wild, delicious thrill? This is strange, indeed. A sealed pacquet within! and here—
(She glances at the superscription, and the pacquet drops from her hand.)
No—no. I have seen that hand-writing in my dreams before, but it dissolved always. What's joy better than grief, if it pierce thus? Can never a one of all the soul's deep melodies on this poor instrument be played out, then —trembling and jarring thus, even at the breath of its most lovely passion.—And yet, it is some cruel thing, I know.
(The pacquet opened, discovers Helen's miniature, a book, a ring, and other tokens.)
Cruel indeed! That little rose!—He might have spared me this. A dull reader I were, in truth, if this needed comment,—but I knew it before. He might have spared me this.
(She leans over the recovered relics with a burst of passionate weeping.)
Yet, who knows—(lifting her head with a sudden smile,) some trace, some little curl of his pencil I may find among these leaves yet, to tell me, as of old,—
(A letter drops from the book, she tears it eagerly open.)
(Reading.) These cold words I understand, but—letters!—He wrote me none! Was there ever a word between us, from the hour when he left me, his fancied bride, to that last meeting, when, at a word, and ere I knew what I had said, he turned on me that cold and careless eye, and left me, haughtily and forever? And now—(reading)—misapprehension, has it been! Is the sun on high again?—in this black and starless night—the noonday sun? He loves me still.—Oh! this joy weighs like grief.
Shall I see him again? Joy! joy! Beautiful sunshine joy! Who knows the soul's rich depths till joy hath lighted them?—from the dim and sorrowful haunts of memory will he come again into the living present! Shall I see those eyes, looking on me? Shall I hear my name in that lost music sound once more?—His?—Am I his again? New mantled with that shining love, like some glorious and beautiful stranger I seem to myself, Helen—the bright and joy-wreathed thing his voice makes that name mean—My life will be all full of that blest music. I shall be Helen, evermore his—his.
No,—it would make liars of old sages,—and all books would read wrong. A life of such wild blessedness? It would be fearful like living in some magic land, where the honest laws of nature were not. A life?—a moment were enough. Ages of common life would shine in it. (Reading again.) "Elliston's hut?"—"If I choose that the return should be mutual,—and the memorials of a despised regard can at best be but an indifferent possession;—a pacquet reinclosed directly in this same envelope, and left at the hut of the missionary, cannot fail to reach him safely."
"Safely."—Might he not come there safely then? And might I not go thither safely too, in to-morrow's light?
O God, let not Passion lead me now. The centre beaming truth, not passion's narrow ray, must light me here!—But am I not his?
Once more, one horizon circles, for a day, our long-parted destinies; another, and another wave of these wild times will drift them asunder again, forever; and I count myself his wife. His wife?—nay, his bride, his two years' bride, to-night, his wife, to-morrow. He must meet me there, (writing) at noon, I will say.—I did not think that little hut of logs should have been my marriage-hall;—he must meet me there, and to-morrow is my bridal day.