SCENE I.
Alfred Noble had grown up to manhood among the rocks and hills of a New England village. A year spent in Mobile, employed in the duties of a clerk, had not accustomed him to the dull routine of commercial life. He longed for the sound of brooks and the fresh air of the hills. It was, therefore, with great pleasure that he received from his employer a message to be conveyed to a gentleman who lived in the pleasantest suburb of the city. It was one of those bright autumnal days when the earth seems to rejoice consciously in the light that gives her beauty.
Leaving behind him the business quarter of the town, he passed through pleasant streets bordered with trees, and almost immediately found himself amid scenes clothed with all the freshness of the country. Handsome mansions here and there dotted the landscape, with pretty little parks, enclosing orange-trees and magnolias, surrounded with hedges of holly, in whose foliage numerous little foraging birds were busy in the sunshine. The young man looked at these dwellings with an exile's longing at his heart. He imagined groups of parents and children, brothers and sisters, under those sheltering roofs, all strangers to him, an orphan, alone in the world. The pensiveness of his mood gradually gave place to more cheerful thoughts. Visions of prosperous business and a happy home rose before him, as he walked briskly toward the hills south of the city. The intervals between the houses increased in length, and he soon found himself in a little forest of pines. Emerging from this, he came suddenly in sight of an elegant white villa, with colonnaded portico and spacious verandas. He approached it by a path through a grove, the termination of which had grown into the semblance of a Gothic arch, by the interlacing of two trees, one with glossy evergreen leaves, the other yellow with the tints of autumn. Vines had clambered to the top, and hung in light festoons from the branches. The foliage, fluttering in a gentle breeze, caused successive ripples of sun-flecks, which chased each other over trunks and boughs, and joined in wayward dance with the shadows on the ground.
Arrested by this unusual combination of light and shade, color and form, the young man stood still for a moment to gaze upon it. He was thinking to himself that nothing could add to the perfection of its beauty, when suddenly there came dancing under the arch a figure that seemed like the fairy of those woods, a spirit of the mosses and the vines. She was a child, apparently five or six years old, with large brown eyes, and a profusion of dark hair. Her gypsy hat, ornamented with scarlet ribbons and a garland of red holly-berries, had fallen back on her shoulders, and her cheeks were flushed with exercise. A pretty little white dog was with her, leaping up eagerly for a cluster of holly-berries which she playfully shook above his head. She whirled swiftly round and round the frisking animal, her long red ribbons flying on the breeze, and then she paused, all aglow, swaying herself back and forth, like a flower on its stem. A flock of doves, as if attracted toward her, came swooping down from the sky, revolving in graceful curves above her head, their white breasts glistening in the sunshine. The aërial movements of the child were so full of life and joy, she was so in harmony with the golden day, the waving vines, and the circling doves, that the whole scene seemed like an allegro movement in music, and she a charming little melody floating through it all.
Alfred stood like one enchanted. He feared to speak or move, lest the fairy should vanish from mortal presence. So the child and the dog, equally unconscious of a witness, continued their graceful gambols for several minutes. An older man might have inwardly moralized on the folly of the animal, aping humanity in thus earnestly striving after what would yield no nourishment when obtained. But Alfred was too young and too happy to moralize. The present moment was all-sufficient for him, and stood still there in its fulness, unconnected with past or future. This might have lasted long, had not the child been attracted by the dove-shadows, and, looking up to watch the flight of the birds, her eyes encountered the young man. A whole heart full of sunshine was in the smile with which he greeted her. But, with a startled look, she turned quickly and ran away; and the dog, still full of frolic, went bounding by her side. As Alfred tried to pursue them, a bough knocked off his hat. Without stopping to regain it, he sprang over a holly-hedge, and came in view of the veranda of a house, just in time to see the fairy and her dog disappear behind a trellis covered with the evergreen foliage of the Cherokee rose. Conscious of the impropriety of pursuing her farther, he paused to take breath. As he passed his hand through his hair, tossed into masses by running against the wind, he heard a voice from the veranda exclaim,—
"Whither so fast, Loo Loo? Come here, Loo Loo!"
Glancing upward, he saw a patrician-looking gentleman, in a handsome morning-gown, of Oriental fashion, and slippers richly embroidered. He was reclining on a lounge, with wreaths of smoke floating before him; but seeing the stranger, he rose, and taking the amber-tubed cigar from his mouth, he said, half laughing,—
"You seem to be in hot haste, Sir. Pray, what have you been hunting?"
Alfred also laughed, as he replied,—
"I have been chasing a charming little girl, who would not be caught.
Perhaps she was your daughter, Sir?"
"She is my daughter," rejoined the gentleman. "A pretty little witch, is she not? Will you walk in, Sir?"
Alfred thanked him, and said that he was in search of a Mr. Duncan, whose residence was in that neighborhood.
"I am Mr. Duncan," replied the patrician. "Jack, go and fetch the gentleman's hat, and bring cigars."
A negro obeyed his orders, and, after smoking awhile on the veranda, the two gentlemen walked round the grounds.
Once when they approached the house, they heard the pattering of little feet, and Mr. Duncan called out, with tones of fondness,—
"Come here, Loo Loo! Come, darling, and see the gentleman who has been running after you!"
But the shy little fairy ran all the faster, and Alfred saw nothing but the long red ribbons of her gypsy hat, as they floated behind her on the wind.
Declining a polite invitation to dine, he walked back to the city. The impression on his mind had been so vivid, that, as he walked, there rose ever before him a vision of that graceful arch with waving vines, the undulating flight of the silver-breasted doves, and the airy motions of that beautiful child. How would his interest in the scene have deepened, could some sibyl have foretold to him how closely the Fates had interwoven the destinies of himself and that lovely little one!
When he entered the counting-room, he found his employer in close conversation with Mr. Grossman, a wealthy cotton-broker. This man was but little more than thirty years of age, but the predominance of animal propensities was stamped upon his countenance with more distinctness than is usual with sensualists of twice his age. The oil of a thousand hams seemed oozing through his pimpled cheeks; his small gray eyes were set in his head like the eyes of a pig; his mouth had the expression of a satyr; and his nose seemed perpetually sniffing the savory prophecy of food. When the clerk had delivered his message, he slapped him familiarly on the shoulder, and said,—
"So you've been out to Duncan's, have you? Pretty nest there at Pine Grove, and they say he's got a rare bird in it; but he keeps her so close, that I could never catch sight of her. Perhaps you got a peep, eh?"
"I saw a very beautiful child of Mr. Duncan's," replied Alfred, "but I did not see his wife."
"That's very likely," rejoined Grossman; "because he never had any wife."
"He said the little girl was his daughter, and I naturally inferred that he had a wife," replied Alfred.
"That don't follow of course, my gosling," said the cotton-broker. "You're green, young man! You're green! I swear, I'd give a good deal to get sight of Duncan's wench. She must be devilish handsome, or he wouldn't keep her so close."
Alfred Noble had always felt an instinctive antipathy to this man, who was often letting fall some remark that jarred harshly with his romantic ideas of women,—something that seemed to insult the memories of a beloved mother and sister gone to the spirit-world. But he had never liked him less than at this moment; for the sly wink of his eye, and the expressive leer that accompanied his coarse words, were very disagreeable things to be associated with that charming vision of the circling doves and the innocent child.