CHAPTER XXXIV.
AMONG THE WATER LILIES.
"I left off with a half-finished sentence. Mrs. Harrington's maid broke in upon me at the moment with a message from the young master, as she calls him. In a hollow among the hills he has found a pond of water-lilies, and I must hasten to see them unfold their snowy hearts to the morning sun, after sleeping all night upon the lake.
"Will I go? Surely one of those lotus flowers never thrilled a more grateful response to the wave that sways it, than my heart gives back to his wish—will I go? Those sleeping buds will not answer the sunbeams that kiss them into another day of bloom, more gladly than I take the happiness he offers. I have been restless and sad all night, and my heart leaps to this new prospect of pleasure, as a bird flutters forth from the shadowy leaves where it has spent the dark hours.
"The lotus pond was like a fairy lake, when we reached it; the banks were festooned and garlanded with wild vines, prairie roses, and yellow jessamines, overrunning whole hedgerows of swamp magnolias, whose blended odor floated like a mist over the waters. Here and there an oak, with long, hoary moss bearding its limbs, lifted whole masses of this entangled foliage into the air, and flung it back again in a thousand garlands and blooming streamers, that rippled dreamily in the waters of the lake. As we came up, an oriole had lighted on one of these pendant branches, and poured a flood of song over us as we passed down to the boat, which lay in a pretty cove ready to receive us.
"An old negro sat in the boat, lazily waiting our approach, with his face bowed upon his brawny bosom, and the sun striking through the branches upon a head that seemed covered with crisp frost, age had so completely whitened his hair. A word from the young master roused the slumbering old man; and, with a broad grin of delight, he proceeded to arrange the crimson cushions, and trim his sails, making haste to put forth on our cruise along the shore, which was starred with opening lotus blossoms, and green with their broad-floating leaves.
"It made my heart thrill with a sort of pain, as our boat ploughed through this exquisite sheet of blossoms—for, as I have said before, it has always seemed to me like uprooting a tender thought when a flower is torn from its stem. I said something like this, as Harrington laid a handful of the open flowers in my lap. He looked at me steadily for a moment—muttered that it was a strange fancy—but plucked no more water-lilies that day. After a time, when the old man, thinking to please us, commenced to tear them up by the roots, Harrington rebuked him for his roughness, and bade him trim the boat for a sail across the lake.
"I wonder why it is, that, when we feel deepest, a disposition to silence always holds the senses in thralldom. I did not speak half a dozen words, as our boat sped like a bird across the lake; and yet my heart was full of happiness, for Harrington had his dark eyes fixed with a sort of dreamy earnestness on my face all the time. A consciousness so strange, and almost delirious, seized upon me, that I could neither look up nor speak, but bowed my head over the blossoms in my lap, whispering to them what had never been uttered in words, and never perhaps, may be.
"While we sat thus in mute happiness, with nothing but the ripple of the boat to break the exquisite joy of our silence, the oriole began to sing again, and his mate answered back the song from across the lake. I looked up, and met his eyes: a flush came to his forehead, and I felt the warm blood burning over my cheeks and forehead. His lips parted, and for one instant he took my hand, but only to drop it among the cold water-lilies again, as if some distressing thought had aroused him to painful consciousness. Why was this? how came it that he relinquished my hand so abruptly? Was he shocked with my upward glances—did he think my recognition of his thoughts unmaidenly?
"The orioles ceased to sing just then, and a sullen cloud came sweeping over us, which broke upon the pond in a sudden squall of wind. Before the old man could reef his sail, it gave way, and fluttered out, like the wounded wing of a bird, bearing our boat with it. The first plunge cast me forward at Harrington's feet; he caught me to his bosom, pressing me there with one arm, while he drew in the sail with the other.
"The wind rose high, tearing in a tornado across the pond; but, I am sure—sure as I am of the beating of my own heart, that Harrington trembled from other causes than the danger we were in. Twice he bent his lips to my face, but checked himself with murmurs which the cruel wind carried from me.