"Still o'er those scenes my memory wakes,
And fondly broods with miser care;
Time but the impression deeper makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear."
Thinking of all this, he took comfort in spite of his trouble. "Perhaps," he said to himself, "he was mistaken. Perhaps"—O happy thought!—it was but make-believe displeasure which had so tortured him. Perhaps—yes, he would believe it—she had never received his letter; they had been careless, they had failed to give it her or to send it aright. He would write her once again, in language which would relieve his heart, and which she must comprehend. He loved her; perhaps, ah, perhaps she loved him a little in return: he would believe so till he was undeceived, and be infinitely happy in the belief.
Is it not wondrous how even the tiniest grain of love will permeate the saddest and sorest recesses of the heart, and instantly cause it to pulsate with thoughts and emotions the sweetest and dearest in life? O Love, thou sweet, thou young and rose lipped cherubim, how does thy smile illuminate the universe! how does thy slightest touch electrify the soul! how gently and tenderly dost thou lead us up to heaven!
With Surrey, to decide was to act. The second letter, full of sweetest yet intensest love,—his heart laid bare to her,—was written; was sent, enclosed in one to his aunt. Tom was away in another section, fighting manfully for the dear old flag, or the precious missive would have been intrusted to his care. He sent it thus that it might reach her sooner. Now that he had a fresh hope, he could not wait to write for her address, and forward it himself to her hands; he must adopt the speediest method of putting it in her possession.
In a little space came answer from Mrs. Russell, enclosing the letter he had sent: a kindly epistle it was. He was a sort of idol with this same aunt, so she had put many things on paper that were steeped in gentleness and affection ere she said at the end, "I re-enclose your letter. I have seen Miss Ercildoune. She restores it to you; she implores you never to write her again,—to forget her. I add my entreaties to hers. She begs of me to beseech you not to try her by any further appeals, as she will but return them unopened." That was all.
What could it mean? He loved her so absolutely, he had such exalted faith in her kindness, her gentleness, her fairness and superiority,—in her,—that he could not believe she would so thrust back his love, purely and chivalrously offered, with something that seemed like ignominy, unless she had a sufficient reason—or one she deemed such—for treating so cruelly him and the offering he laid at her feet.
But she had spoken. It was for him, then, when she bade silence, to keep it; when she refused his gift, to refrain from thrusting it upon her attention and heart. But ah, the silence and the refraining! Ah, the time—the weary, sore, intolerable time—that followed! Summer, and autumn, and winter, and the seasons repeated once again, he tramped across the soil of Virginia, already wet with rebel and patriot blood; he felt the shame and agony of Bull Run; he was in the night struggle at Ball's Bluff, where those wondrous Harvard boys found it "sweet to die for their country," and discovered, for them, "death to be but one step onward in life." He lay in camp, chafing with impatience and indignation as the long months wore away, and the thousands of graves about Washington, filled by disease and inaction, made "all quiet along the Potomac." He went down to Yorktown; was in the sweat and fury of the seven days' fight; away in the far South, where fever and pestilence stood guard to seize those who were spared by the bullet and bayonet; and on many a field well lost or won. Through it all marching or fighting, sick, wounded thrice and again; praised, admired, heroic, promoted,—from private soldier to general,—through two years and more of such fiery experience, no part of the tender love was burned away, tarnished, or dimmed.
Sometimes, indeed, he even smiled at himself for the constant thought, and felt that he must certainly be demented on this one point at least, since it colored every impression of his life, and, in some shape, thrust itself upon him at the most unseemly and foreign times.
One evening, when the mail for the division came in, looking over the pile of letters, his eye was caught by one addressed to James Given. The name was familiar,—that of his father's old foreman, whom he knew to be somewhere in the army; doubtless the same man. Unquestionably, he thought, that was the reason he was so attracted to it; but why he should take up the delicate little missive, scan it again and again, hold it in his hand with the same touch with which he would have pressed a rare flower, and lay it down as reluctantly as he would have yielded a known and visible treasure,—that was the mystery. He had never seen Francesca's writing, but he stood possessed, almost assured, of the belief that this letter was penned by her hand; and at last parted with it slowly and unwillingly, as though it were the dear hand of which he mused; then took himself to task for this boyish weakness and folly. Nevertheless, he went in pursuit of Jim, not to question him,—he was too thorough a gentleman for that,—but led on partly by his desire to see a familiar face, partly by this folly, as he called it with a sort of amused disdain.
Folly, however, it was not, save in such measure as the subtle telegraphings between spirit and spirit can be thus called. Unjustly so called they are, constantly; it being the habit of most people to denounce as heresy or ridicule as madness things too high for their sight or too deep for their comprehension. As these people would say, "oddly enough," or "by an extraordinary coincidence," this very letter was from Miss Ercildoune,—a letter which she wrote as she purposed, and as she well knew how to write, in behalf of Sallie. It was ostensibly on quite another theme; asking some information in regard to a comrade, but so cunningly devised and executed as to tell him in few words, and unsuspiciously, some news of Sallie,—news which she knew would delight his heart, and overthrow the little barrier which had stood between them, making both miserable, but which he would not, and she could not, clamber over or destroy. It did its work effectually, and made two hearts thoroughly happy,—this letter which had so strangely bewitched Surrey; which, in his heart, spite of the ridicule of his reason, he was so sure was hers; and which, indeed, was hers, though he knew not that till long afterward.