MILDRED PUT TO A SEVERE TRIAL:—HER FIRMNESS.
"My mind troubles me," said Lindsay: "Mildred, hear me—and mark what I say. Our fortunes are coming to a period of deep interest: it is therefore no time to deal in evasive speeches, or to dally with coy and girlish feelings. I wish, my daughter, to be understood."
"Father, have I offended you?" inquired Mildred, struck with the painful and almost repulsive earnestness of Lindsay's manner.
"Arthur Butler has been at the Dove Cote," he said, sternly, "and you have concealed it from me. That was not like my child."
"Father!" exclaimed Mildred, bursting into tears.
"Nay—these tears shall not move me from my resolution. As a parent I had a right, Mildred, to expect obedience from you; but you saw him in the very despite of my commands: here, on the confines of the Dove Cote, you saw him."
"I did—I did."
"And you were silent, and kept your secret from your father's bosom."
"You forbade me to speak of him," replied Mildred, in a low and sobbing voice, "and banished me from your presence when I but brought his name upon my lips."
"He is a villain, daughter; a base wretch that would murder my peace, and steal my treasure from my heart."
Mildred covered her eyes with her hands, and trembled in silent agony.
"I have received letters," continued Lindsay, "that disclose to me a vile plot against my life. This same Butler—this furious and fanatic rebel—has been lurking in the neighborhood of my house, to watch my family motions, to pry into the character of my guests, to possess himself of my sacred confidences, to note the incoming and the out-going of my most attached friends, and thereupon to build an accusation of treason before this unholy and most accursed power that has usurped dominion in the land. I am to be denounced to these malignant masters, and to suffer such penalties as their passions may adjudge. And all this through the agency of a man who is cherished and applauded by my own daughter!"
"My dear father, who has thus abused your mind, and led your thoughts into a current so foreign from that calm judgment with which you have been accustomed to look upon the things of life?"
"Can you deny, Mildred, that this Butler followed Tyrrel to the Dove Cote; lay concealed here, close at hand; sought by discourse through some of his coadjutors with Tyrrel's servant, to learn the object of Tyrrel's visit; and offered gross outrage to the man when he failed to persuade him to betray his master? Can you deny this? Can you deny that he fled precipitately from his hiding-place when he could no longer conceal his purpose?—and, knowing these things, can you doubt he is a villain?"
"He is no villain, father," said Mildred, indignantly. "These are the wretched forgeries of that unworthy man who has won your confidence—a man who is no less an enemy to your happiness than he is a selfish contriver against mine. The story is not true: it is one of Tyrrel's basest falsehoods."
"And Butler was not here; you would persuade me so, Mildred?"
"He was in the neighborhood for a single night; he journeyed southwards in the course of his duty," answered Mildred, mildly.
"And had no confederates with him?"
"He was attended by a guide—only one—and hurried onwards without delay."
"And you met him on that single night—by accident, I suppose?"
"Do you doubt my truth, father?"
"Mildred, Mildred! you will break my heart. Why was he here at all—why did you meet him?"
"He came, father—" said Mildred, struggling to speak through a sudden burst of tears.
"Silence! I will hear no apology!" exclaimed Lindsay. Then relenting in an instant, he took his daughter's hand, as he said: "My child, thou art innocent in thy nature, and knowest not the evil imaginings of this world. He wickedly lied, if he told you that he came casually hither, or that his stay was circumscribed to one short night. I have proofs, full and satisfactory, that, for several days, he lay concealed in this vicinity; and, moreover, that his scheme was frustrated only by an unexpected discovery, made through the indiscretion of a drunken bully, who came linked with him in his foul embassy. It was a shameless lie, invented to impose upon your credulity, if he gave you room to believe otherwise."
"Arthur Butler scorns a falsehood, father, with the deepest scorn that belongs to a noble mind, and would resent the charge with the spirit of a valiant and virtuous man. If Mr. Tyrrel has such accusations to make, it would be fitter they should be made face to face with the man he would slander, than in my father's ear. But it is the nature of the serpent to sting in the grass, not openly to encounter his victim."
"The first duty of a trusty friend is to give warning of the approach of an enemy—and that has Tyrrel done. For this act of service does he deserve your rebuke? Could you expect aught else of an honorable gentleman? Shame on you, daughter!"
"Father, I know the tale to be wickedly, atrociously false. Arthur Butler is not your enemy. Sooner would he lay down his life than even indulge a thought of harm to you. His coming hither was not unknown to me—his delay, but one brief night; business of great moment called him hastily towards the army of the south."
"You speak like a girl, Mildred. I have, against this tale, the avowal of a loyal and brave soldier. Aye, and let me tell you—favorably as you may deem of this false and traitorous rebel—his wily arts have been foiled, and quick vengeance is now upon his path—his doom is fixed."
"For heaven's sake, father, dear father, tell me what this means. Have you heard of Arthur?" cried Mildred, in the most impassioned accents of distress, at the same time throwing her head upon Lindsay's breast. "Oh, God! have you heard aught of harm to him?"
"Girl! foolish, mad, self-willed girl!" exclaimed Lindsay, disengaging himself from his daughter, and rising from his seat and angrily striding a few paces upon the terrace. "Dare you show this contumacy to me! No, I did not mean that—have you the heart, Mildred, to indulge these passionate fervors for the man I hate more than I can hate any other living thing! He, a wretch, upon whose head I invoke nightly curses! A loathsome, abhorred image to my mind! Hear me, Mildred, and hear me, though your heart break while I utter it—May the felon's death whelm him and his name in eternal disgrace!—may his present captivity be beset with all the horrors of friendlessness, unpitied—"
"His captivity, father! And has he then fallen into the hands of the enemy? Quick! tell me all!—I shall die—my life is wrapped up in his!" ejaculated Mildred, in agony, as she sprang towards her father and seized his arm, and then sank at his feet.
"For God's sake, my child!" said Lindsay, becoming alarmed at the violence of the paroxysm he had excited, and now lifting his daughter from the ground. "Mildred!—speak, girl! This emotion will drive me mad. Oh, fate, fate!—how unerringly dost thou fulfil the sad predictions of my spirit! How darkly does the curse hang upon my household! Mildred, dear daughter, pardon my rash speech. I would not harm thee, child—no, not for worlds!"
"Father, you have cruelly tortured my soul," said Mildred, reviving from the half lifeless state into which she had fallen, and which for some moments had denied her speech. "Tell me all; on my knees, father, I implore you."
"It was a hasty word, daughter," replied Lindsay, ill concealing the perturbation of his feelings; "I meant not what I said."
"Nay, dear father," said Mildred, "I am prepared to hear the worst; you spoke of Arthur's captivity."
"It was only a rumor," replied Lindsay, struck with apprehension at his daughter's earnestness, and now seeking to allay the feeling his hint had aroused in her mind; "it may be exaggerated by Tyrrel, whose letter, hastily written, mentions the fact, that Butler had been made a prisoner by some bands of Tories, amongst whom he had rashly ventured. The clemency of his king may yet win him back to his allegiance. A salutary confinement, at least, will deprive him of the power of mischief. His lands will be confiscated—and the close of the war, now fast approaching, will find him a houseless adventurer, baffled in his treason, and unpitied by all good men. This should persuade you, Mildred, to renounce your unnatural attachment, and to think no more of one whose cause heaven has never sanctioned, and whose condition in life should forbid all pretension to your regard—one, above all, repulsive even to loathing to the thoughts of your father."
"I loved him, father, in his happiest and brightest day," said Mildred, firmly; "I cannot desert him in his adversity. Oh, speak to me no more! Let me go to my chamber; I am ill and cannot bear this torrent of your displeasure."
"I will not detain you, Mildred. In sorrow and suffering, but still with a father's affection as warmly shining on you as when, in earliest infancy, I fondled thee upon my knee, I part with thee now. One kiss, girl. There, let that make peace between us. For your sake and my own, I pledge my word never to distress you with this subject again. Destiny must have its way, and I must bide the inevitable doom."
With a heavy heart and an exhausted frame, Mildred slowly and tearfully withdrew.
Lindsay remained some time fixed upon the spot where his daughter had left him. He was like a man stupefied and astounded by a blow. His conference had ended in a manner that he had not prepared himself to expect. The imputed treachery of Butler, derived from Tyrrel's letters, had not struck alarm into the heart of Mildred, as he had supposed it could not fail to do. The wicked fabrication had only recoiled upon the inventor; and Mildred, with the resolute, confident, and unfaltering attachment of her nature, clung with a nobler devotion to her lover. To Lindsay, in whose mind no distrust of the honesty of Tyrrel could find shelter; whose prejudices and peculiar temperament came in aid of the gross and disgraceful imputation which the letters inferred, the constancy and generous fervor of his daughter towards the cause of Butler seemed to be a mad and fatal infatuation.
Ever since his first interview with Mildred on the subject of her attachment, his mind had been morbidly engrossed with the reflections to which it had given rise. There was such a steadiness of purpose apparent in her behavior, such an unchangeable resolve avowed, as seemed to him, in the circumstances of her condition, to defy and stand apart from the ordinary and natural impulses by which human conduct is regulated. He grew daily more abstracted and moody in his contemplations; and as study and thought gave a still graver complexion to his feelings, his mind fled back upon his presentiments; and that intense, scholar-like superstition, which I have heretofore described as one of the tendencies of his nature, began more actively to conjure up its phantasmagoria before his mental vision. A predominating trait of this superstition was an increasing conviction that, in Mildred's connexion with Arthur Butler, there was associated some signal doom to himself, that was to affect the fortunes of his race. It was a vague, misty, obscure consciousness of impending fate, the loss of reason or the loss of life that was to ensue upon that alliance if it should ever take place.
It was such a presentiment that now, in the solitary path of Lindsay's life, began to be magnified into a ripening certainty of ill. The needle of his mind trembled upon its pivot, and began to decline towards a fearful point; that point was—frenzy. His studies favored this apprehension—they led him into the world of visions. The circumstances of his position favored it. He was perplexed by the intrigues of politicians, against whom he had no defence in temper nor worldly skill: he was deluded by false views of events: he was embarrassed and dissatisfied with himself: above all, he was wrought upon, bewildered, and glamoured (to use a most expressive Scotch phrase) by the remembrance of a sickly dream.
Thus hunted and badgered by circumstances, he fled with avidity to the disclosures made in Tyrrel's letters, to try, as a last effort, their effect upon Mildred, hoping that the tale there told might divert her from a purpose which now fed all his melancholy.
The reader has just seen how the experiment had failed.
Lindsay retired to his study, and, through the remainder of the day, sought refuge from his meditations in the converse of his books. These mute companions, for once, failed to bring him their customary balm. His feelings had been turned, by the events of the morning, into a current that bore them impetuously along towards a dark and troubled ocean of thought; and when the shades of evening had fallen around him, he was seen pacing the terrace with a slow and measured step.
"It is plain, she passionately loves Butler," he said, "in despite of all the visible influences around her. Her education, habits, affections, duty—all set in an opposing tide against this passion, and yet does it master them all. That I should be bound to mine enemy by a chain, whose strongest link is forged by my own daughter. She—Mildred!—No, no—that link was not forged by her: it hath not its shape from human workmanship. Oh, that like those inspired enthusiasts who, in times of old,—yea, and in a later day—have been able to open the Book of Destiny, and to read the passages of man's future life, I might get one glimpse of that forbidden page!—To what a charitable use might I apply the knowledge. Wise men have studied the journeyings of the stars, and have—as they deemed—discovered the secret spell by which yon shining orbs sway and compel the animal existences of this earth; even as the moon governs the flow of the ocean, or the fever of the human brain. Who shall say what is the invisible tissue—what the innumerable cords—that tie this planet and all its material natures to the millions of worlds with which it is affined? What is that mysterious thing which men call attraction, that steadies these spheres in their tangled pathways through the great void?—that urges their swift and fearful career into the track of their voyage, without the deviation of the breadth of a single hair—rolling on the same from eternity to eternity? How awfully does the thought annihilate our feeble and presumptuous philosophy! Is it, then, to excite the scorn of the wise, if we assert that some kindred power may shape out and direct the wanderings of man?—that an unseen hand may lay the threads by which this tottering creature is to travel through the labyrinth of this world; aye, and after it is done, to point out to him his course along the dark and chill valley, which the dead walk through companionless and silent? Have not men heard strange whispers in the breeze—the voice of warning? Have they not felt the fanning of the wing that bore the secret messenger through the air? Have they not seen some floating fold of the robe as it passed by? O God!—have they not seen the dead arise? What are these but the communings, the points of contact, between the earthy and spiritual worlds—the essences or intelligences that sometimes flit across the confine of our gross sphere, and speak to the children of clay? And wherefore do they speak, but that the initiated may regard the sign, and walk in safety? Or, perchance, some mischief-hatching fiend,—for such, too, are permitted to be busy to mar the good that God has made—may speak in malice to allure us from our better purpose. Aye, as aptly this, as the other. Miserable child of doubt, how art thou beset! Let the vain pedant prate of his philosophy, let the soldier boast his valor, the learned scholar his scepticism, and the worldling laugh his scorn, yet do they each and all yield homage to this belief. There comes a time of honest self-confession, of secret meditation to all, and then the boding spirit rises to his proper mastery: then does instinct smother argument: then do the darkness of the midnight hour, the howling wind, the rush of the torrent, the lonesomeness of the forest and the field, shake the strong nerves; and the feeble, pigmy man, trembles at his own imaginings."
In such a strain did Lindsay nurse his doubting superstition; and by these degrees was it that his mind soothed itself down into a calmer tone of resignation. In proportion as this fanciful and distempered philosophy inclined his reflection towards the belief of preternatural influences, it suggested excuses for Mildred's seeming contumacy, and inculcated a more indulgent sentiment of forbearance in his future intercourse with her.
Towards the confirmation of this temper an ordinary incident, which, at any other time, would have passed without comment, now contributed. A storm had arisen: the day, towards its close, had grown sultry, and had engendered one of those sudden gusts which belong to the summer in this region. It came, without premonition, in a violent tornado, that rushed through the air with the roar of a great cataract. Lindsay had scarcely time to retreat to the cover of the porch, before the heavy-charged cloud poured forth its fury in floods of rain. The incessant lightnings glittered on the descending drops, and illuminated the distant landscape with more than the brilliancy of day. The most remote peaks of the mountain were sheeted with the glare; and the torrents that leaped down the nearer hill-sides sparkled with a dazzling radiance. Peal after peal of abrupt and crashing thunder roared through the heavens, and echoed with terrific reverberations along the valleys. Lindsay gazed upon this scene, from his secure cover, with mute interest, inwardly aroused and delighted with the grand and sublime conflict of the elements, in a spot of such wild and compatible magnificence: the solemn and awful emotions excited by these phenomena were exaggerated by the peculiar mood of his mind, and now absorbed all his attention. After a brief interval, the rain ceased to fall as suddenly as it had begun; the thunder was silent, and only a few distant flashes of wide-spread light broke fitfully above the horizon. The stars soon again shone forth through a transparent and placid heaven, and the moon sailed in beauty along a cloudless sea. The frog chirped again from the trees, and the far-off owl hooted in the wood, resuming his melancholy song, that had been so briefly intermitted. The foaming river below, swollen by the recent rain, flung upwards a more lively gush from its rocky bed: the cock was heard to crow, as if a new day had burst upon his harem; and the house-dogs barked in sport as they gambolled over the wet grass.
Lindsay looked forth and spoke.
"How beautiful is the change! But a moment since, and the angry elements were convulsed with the shock of war; and now, how calm! My ancient oaks have weathered the gale, and not a branch has been torn from their hoary limbs: not the most delicate of Mildred's flowers; not the tenderest shrub has been scathed by the threatening fires of heaven! The Dove Cote and its inmates have seen the storm sweep by without a vestige of harm. Kind heaven, grant that this may be a portent of our fortune; and that, when this tempest of human passion has been spent, the Dove Cote and its inhabitants may come forth as tranquil, as safe, as happy, as now—more—yes, more happy than now! Our ways are in thy hands; and I would teach myself to submit to thy providence with patient hope. So, let it be! I am resigned."
As Lindsay still occupied his position in the porch, Stephen Foster appeared before him dripping with the rain of the late storm.
"A letter, sir," said Stephen. "I have just rode from the post-office, and was almost oversot in the gust: it catched me upon the road; and it was as much as I could do to cross the river. It is a mighty fretful piece of water after one of these here dashes."
Lindsay took the packet.
"Get your supper, good Stephen," he said. "Order lights for me in the library! Thank you—thank you!"
When Lindsay opened the letter, he found it to contain tidings of the victory at Camden, written by Tyrrel. After he had perused the contents, it was with a triumphant smile that he exclaimed, "And it is come so soon! Thank God, the omen has proved true! a calmer and a brighter hour at last opens upon us."
He left the study to communicate the news to his children, and spent the next hour with Mildred and Henry in the parlor. His feelings had risen to a happier key; and it was with some approach to cheerfulness, but little answered in the looks or feelings of his children, that he retired to his chamber at a late hour, where sleep soon came, with its sweet oblivion, to repair his exhausted spirits, and to restore him to the quiet of an easy mind.