"Poor, dear Miss Ercildoune!" half sobbed, half scolded Sallie, as she sat at her work, blooming and, fresh, the day after her return. "What a tangled thread it is, to be sure," jerking at her knotty needleful. "Well, I know what I'll do,—I'll treat her as if she was a queen born and crowned, just so long as I have anything to do with her,—so I will." And she did.
CHAPTER VIII
"For hearts of truest mettle
Absence doth join, and time doth settle."
ANONYMOUS
It were a vain endeavor to attempt the telling of what filled the heart and soul of Surrey, as he marched away that day from New York, and through the days and weeks and months that followed. Fired by a sublime enthusiasm for his country; thirsting to drink of any cup her hand might present, that thus he might display his absolute devotion to her cause; burning with indignation at the wrongs she had suffered; thrilled with an adoring love for the idea she embodied; eager to make manifest this love at whatever cost of pain and sorrow and suffering to himself,—through all this the man never once was steeped in forgetfulness in the soldier; the divine passion of patriotism never once dulled the ache, or satisfied the desire, or answered the prayer, or filled the longing heart, that through the day marches and the night watches cried, and would not be appeased, for his darling.
"Surely," he thought as he went down Broadway, as he reflected, as he considered the matter a thousand times thereafter,—"surely I was a fool not to have spoken to her then; not to have seen her, have devised, have forced some way to reach her, not to have met her face to face, and told her all the love with which she had filled my heart and possessed my soul. And then to have been such a coward when I did write to her, to have so said a say which was nothing"; and he groaned impatiently as he thought of the scene in his room and the letter which was its final result.
How he had written once, and again, and yet again, letters short and long, letters short and burning, or lengthy and filled almost to the final line with delicate fancies and airy sentiment, ere he ventured to tell that of which all this was but the prelude; how, at the conclusion of each attempt, he had watched these luminous effusions blaze and burn as he regularly committed them to the flames; how he found it difficult to decide which he enjoyed the most,—writing them out, or seeing them burn; how at last he had put upon paper some such words as these:—
"After these delightful weeks and months of intercourse, I am to go away from you, then, without a single word of parting, or a solitary sentence of adieu. Need I tell you how this pains me? I have in vain besieged the house that has held you; in vain made a thousand inquiries, a thousand efforts to discover your retreat and to reach your side, that I might once more see your face and take your hand ere I went from the sight and touch of both, perchance forever. This I find may not be. The hour strikes, and in a little space I shall march away from the city to which my heart clings with infinite fondness, since it is filled with associations of you. I have again and again striven to write that which will be worthy the eyes that are to read, and striven in vain. 'Tis a fine art to which I do not pretend. Then, in homely phrase, good by. Give me thy spiritual hand, and keep me, if thou wilt, in thy gentle remembrance. Adieu! a kind adieu, my friend; may the brighter stars smile on thee, and the better angels guard thy footsteps wherever thou mayst wander, keep thy heart and spirit bright, and let thy thoughts turn kindly back to me, I pray very, very often. And so, once more, farewell."
Remembering all this, thinking what he would do and say were the doing and saying yet possible in an untried future, the time sped by. He waited and waited in vain. He looked, yet was gratified by no sight for which his eyes longed. He hoped, till hope gave place to despondency and almost despair: not a word came to him, not a line of answer or remembrance. This long silence was all the more intolerable, since the time that intervened did but the more vividly stamp upon his memory the delights of the past, and color with softer and more exquisite tints the recollection of vanished hours,—hours spent in galloping gayly by her side in the early morning, or idly and deliciously lounged away in picture-galleries or concert-rooms, or in a conversation carried on in some curious and subtle shape between two hearts and spirits with the help of very few uttered words; hours in which he had whirled her through many a fairy maze and turn of captivating dance-music, or in some less heated and crowded room, or cool conservatory, listened to the voice of the siren who walked by his side, "while the sweet wind did gently kiss the flowers and make no noise," and the strains of "flute, violin, bassoon," and the sounds of the "dancers dancing in tune," coming to them on the still air of night, seemed like the sounds from another and a far-off world,—listened, listened, listened, while his silver-tongued enchantress builded castles in the air, or beguiled his thought, enthralled his heart, his soul and fancy, through many a golden hour.
Thinking of all this, his heart well found expression for its feelings in the half-pleasing, half-sorrowful lines which almost unconsciously repeated themselves again and again in his brain:—