At this moment I turned my gaze towards the distant cloud-turrets gleaming above, walls on which chariots and horsemen of fire seemed passing and repassing, and I was conscious of but one deep, earnest thought,—"my mother!"
One prayer, sole and agonizing, trembled on my lips:—
"Take her not from me, O my God! I will drink the cup of poverty and humiliation to the dregs if thou wilt, without a murmur, but spare, O spare my mother!"
God did spare her for a little while. The dark hands on the dial-plate of destiny once moved back at the mighty breath of prayer.
CHAPTER VII.
"Gabriella,—is it you? How glad I am to see you!"
That clear, distinct, ringing voice!—I knew it well, though a year had passed since I had heard its sound. The three years which made me, as I said before, a wiser child, had matured my champion, the boy of fifteen, into a youth of eighteen, a collegian of great promise and signal endowments. I felt very sorry when he left the academy, for he had been my steadfast friend and defender, and a great assistant in my scholastic tasks. But after he entered a college, I felt as if there were a great gulf between us, never more to be passed over. I had very superb ideas of collegians. I had seen them during their holidays, which they frequently came into the country to spend, dashing through the streets like the wild huntsmen, on horses that struck fire as they flew along. I had seen them lounging in the streets, with long, wild hair, and corsair visages and Byronian collars, and imagined them a most formidable race of beings. I did not know that these were the scape-goats of their class, suspended for rebellion, or expelled for greater offences,—that having lost their character as students, they were resolved to distinguish themselves as dandies, the lowest ambition a son of Adam's race can feel. It is true, I did not dream that Richard Clyde could be transformed into their image, but I thought some marvellous change must take place, which would henceforth render him as much a stranger to me as though we had never met.
Now, when I heard the clear, glad accents of his voice, so natural, so unchanged, I looked up with a glance of delighted recognition into the young student's manly face. My first sensation was pleasure, the pleasure which congenial youth inspires, my next shame, for the homeliness of my occupation. I was standing by a beautiful bubbling spring, at the foot of a little hill near my mother's cottage. The welling spring, the rock over which it gushed, the trees which bent their branches over the fountain to guard it from the sunbeams, the sweet music the falling waters,—all these were romantic and picturesque. I might imagine myself "a nymph, a naiad, or a grace." Or, had I carried a pitcher in my hand, I might have thought myself another Rebecca, and poised on my shoulder the not ungraceful burden. But I was dipping water from the spring, in a tin pail, of a broad, clumsy, unclassic form,—too heavy for the shoulder, and extremely difficult to carry in the hand, in consequence of the small, wiry handle. In my confusion I dropped the pail, which went gaily floating to the opposite side of the spring, entirely out of my reach. The strong, bubbling current bore it upward, and it danced and sparkled and turned its sides of mimic silver, first one way and then the other, as if rejoicing in its liberty.
Richard laughed, his old merry laugh, and jumping on the rock over which the waters were leaping, caught the pail, and waved it as a trophy over his head. Then stooping down he filled it to the brim, gave one spring to the spot where I stood, whirled the bucket upside down and set it down on the grass without spilling a drop.