"I shall never marry again—never! Miss Miriam, I know now, and shall know evermore, in all its fullness, and weariness, and bitterness, the meaning of that terrible word—alone! Eternal solitude. The Robinson Crusoe of society. A sort of social Daniel Boone. Thus you must ever consider me. And yet, just think of it, Miss Harz!"
"Oh, but you will not always feel so; there may come a time of reaction." I hesitated. It was not my purpose to encourage change.
"No, never! never!" he interrupted, passionately; "don't even suggest it—don't! and check me sternly if ever I forget my grief again in frivolity of any sort in your presence. You are a noble, sweet woman, with breadth enough of character to make allowances for the shortcomings of a poor, miserable man like me—trying to cheat himself back into gayety and the interests of life. I have sisters, but they are not like you. I wish to Heaven they were! There is not a woman in the world on whom I have any claims—on whose shoulder I can lean my head and take a hearty cry. And what are men at such a season? Mocking fiends, usually, the best of them! I shall go abroad, Miss Harz. I am no anchorite. You will hear of me as a gay man of the world, perhaps; but, as to being happy, that can never be again! The bubble of life has burst, and my existence falls flat to the earth. Victor Favraud, that airy nothing, is scarcely a 'local habitation and a name' now!"
"Let him make a name, then," I urged. "With military talents like yours, Major Favraud, the road to distinction will soon be open to you. Our approaching difficulties with France—"
"Oh, that will all be patched up, or has been, by this time. Van Buren is a crafty but peace-loving fox! Something of an epicurean, too, in his high estate. What grim old Jackson left half healed, he will complete the cure of. Ah, Miss Harz, I had hoped to flesh my sword in a nobler cause!"
I knew what he meant. That dream of nullification was still uppermost in his soul—dispersed, as it was, in the eyes of all reasonable men. I shook my head. "Thank God! all that is over," I said, gravely, fervently; "and my prayer to Him is that he may vouchsafe to preserve us for evermore an unbroken people!"
"May He help Israel when the time comes," he murmured low, "for come it will, Miss Harz, as surely as there is a sun in the heavens! 'and may I be there to see!' as John Gilpin said, or some one of him—which was it?"
And, whipping up his lagging steeds as we gained the open road, we emerged swiftly from the shadows of the forest—between nodding cornfields, already helmed and plumed for the harvest, and plantations green with thrifty cotton-plants, with their half-formed bolls, promising such bounteous yield, and meadows covered with the tufted Bermuda grass, with its golden-green verdure, we sped our way toward Lenoir's Landing.
This peninsula was formed by the junction of two rivers, between which intervened a narrow point of land, with a background of steep hills, covered with a growth of black-jack and yellow-pine to the summit. Here was a ferry with its Charon-like boat, of the primitive sort—flat barge, poled-over by negroes, and capable of containing at one time many bales of cotton, a stagecoach or wagon with four horses, besides passengers ad libitum.
This ferry constituted the chief source of revenue of Madame Grambeau, an old French lady, remarkable in many ways. She kept the stage-house hard by, with its neat picketed inclosure, its overhanging live-oak trees and small trim parterre, gay at this season with various annual flowers, scarce worth the cultivation, one would think, in that land of gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins, variegated balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations, doubtless, to make them dear and valuable to the foreign heart, to which they seem essential, wherever a plot of ground be in possession.