Romeo and Juliet.
The agitation of the morning at Stillyside had subsided as the day wore, but the mind of Amanda Macdonald (for such was the name of the younger and fairer denizen of that sequestered abode) remained pensive and preoccupied; and when at her usual hour she had ascended to her chamber, instead of retiring to rest, she took up a tale of the troubadours, and read; nor did she lay down the volume till the sudden flickering of the candle in the socket and the simultaneous tolling from the distant belfry of the church of the village of Saint Laurent warned her that it was midnight. Then, feeling oppressed, alike with the heaviness of the atmosphere of her room, and a strange weight at her heart, analogous to the lassitude that is sometimes felt in the beginning of sickness, she arose, drew aside the curtains, and throwing open the folding window, stepped on to the verandah. A clear Canadian night, appearing a new and chaster version of the day, greeted her. The moon, at night's meridian, hung high in the fulness of its autumnal splendor, tranquil in the solitude of the sky, a solitude unbroken, save by a few small stars that were twinkling in the azure, and a fleet of low, dappled clouds that were coasting the horizon. Awhile her eyes dwelt abstractedly on the sight, then, falling, they wandered listlessly over the broad and shining expanse of landscape before her; where Nature, unrobed, seemed as in a bath; for in front, the grass, steeped in descending dews, glittered as a lake. Woods confined the view in one direction, and the gleamy wave of the Ottawa, amidst filmy obscurity, bounded it, yet further off, in another. Unseen but felt, like the unperceived Genius of the landscape, towered close behind her the sombre-sided mountain; and, touched by the solemn scene, she advanced, and, leaning upon the balustrade, heaved a deep sigh; then lapsed into a reverie so profound, that she failed to hear the tramp of a horse now rapidly approaching, and to note the change to sudden silence, caused by its stopping at the postern. But there, transfixed with wonder and admiration, and looking like a bronze equestrian statue at the gate, now, mounted, sat gazing the lately flying horseman of the road, the champion of the morning on those grounds, and contemplated the figure on the verandah; then, dismounting, tied his steed, and vaulting over the fence, swiftly approached across the lawn; till, as if suddenly aware of being on holy ground, he paused, and stood with reverential aspect and clasped hands, eagerly bending towards her as if in adoration. Thus engaged, as stands in ecstasy some newly arrived pilgrim before a shrine, he stood enrapt; whilst she remained as moveless as a carved angel leaning over a cathedral aisle, and, with her eyes fixed on vacancy, at length mournfully exclaimed: “Sad, sad, so sad!—yet why am I so sad? No denser grows the mystery around my birth; and if knight errants yet live, rescuing maids, or he is a wandering god, and here is Arcadia, why should that make me grieve? It is true that he is handsome—and yet what of that?—most men are handsome in the eyes of maids. But he appears the paragon of men. Is he indeed not all a man should be? Where were the blemish, the exception; who shall challenge nature, saying, in his form, that here she has given too little, there too much?—Ah, me! I am not happy, yet I should be so.”
“Can I have heard aright, or do I dream?” gasped out the stranger.
“A knight, a god;” she continued, yet musing; “oh, he came hither like a knight of old, or as an angry angel sent to scatter fiends;—or, rather, like the lightning he arrived, out of the storm cloud of I know not where. Where is he now? whence was he? who is he? what? Alas, I know nothing of where, nor who, nor what, nor whence he is; all that I know is, I am strangely sad; and that such perfection was not made for me.”
“Is this not Stillyside?” enquired the listener, “or do I wander in some spirit-land; lost, lost;—oh, so luxuriously lost! She, too, seems lost—lost in a reverie, and all forlorn. I'll speak to her;—and yet I fear to speak, I fear to breathe, lest the undulating air should burst this, and prove it to be but a bubble. Yet she breathes, she spoke, and oh, such words! Words, be at my command; I will address her, for this is not fancy: could fancy shew a moving soul of sorrow? See how the passion plays upon that face, as she thus stands with sad-eyed earnestness, maintaining converse with the hollow sky. Looked ever aught so fair yet so forlorn? Methinks there is a tear upon her cheek. Why comes it from the Eden of her eye? I must speak to her;” and with mixed fear and fervour he exclaimed: “May Heaven keep you from grave cause of sorrow, lady! Forgive me, oh, forgive me, lady, or vision, for, by these dazzled eyes, and, as I fear, by your offended form, I Scarcely can divine whether you are of earth or air; pardon me if I have appeared here by night, as unpremeditatedly as I came by day. Bid me begone, —and yet permit me to remain, for, by my life, and the deep admiration with which you have inspired me, I cannot leave you till I learn your grief, and with it, peradventure, my own doom. Whom did you speak of even now, fair form?”
“Who asks of me that question; who is it that thus listens when I thought myself alone?” she demanded haughtily, looking downwards from the verandah. “Sir, just now I spoke, and said—I know not what. What you have overheard me say I fear was foolish; do not, then, regard it. I know you now. You are the stranger who, this morning, drove those violent intruders from these grounds. Ah, who would have thought you would return by night, and thus, sir, play the eaves-dropper! Oh, for shame! Nay, you are not the one I took you for. Sir, it is mean to overlisten; mean, very mean; nay, it is base, unmanly, to listen to a maid, when she commits her vagaries to the moon.”
“Scourge me, for I deserve it, with your tongue;” rejoined the stranger—“but, lady, you were not alone, though I were absent; no; you cannot be alone. Such excellence must draw hither elves and midnight troops of fairies; by day, by night, each moment must array around you the good wishes of the world. No, not alone; the very sky is filled with watchers and the ground covered with invisible feet, that have come here to do you homage; then why not I found here to pay you mine? Are you still angry?”
“You have offended me,” she answered;—“and yet perhaps I am too severe with you. I fear I am ungrateful. 'Mean,' did I say? It was mean in me to say so, and most forgetful of the favor conferred here by you this morning. No, I vow it was not mean—at least in you. And yet it was mean, it was very mean in you, sir, thus to overstep the golden mean of manners. Scourge you? Ah, I fear you well deserve it;—and yet if I could, I would put to scourging that word, 'mean,' that has just escaped from out of my petulent lips, as sometimes a froward, disobedient child runs into danger; breaking away from out of the nurse's arms. But you should not have played the bold intruder, and joined in these vain vigils;—nay, begone, or I must, myself, withdraw. I do entreat you, stay no longer; come some other time,—but go to-night; make no excuse for staying, or you may yet compel me to be angry with you. Indeed, I fear that I am too forgiving. Go, I pardon you,—but go at once, or I may yet repent to have condoned what it, in truth, were hard to justify.”
“Heaven pardons heavier sins,” observed the stranger.
“Yes, when its pardon is sought for;” was rejoined; “but I pardon you without your craving it; and, remember, Heaven's pardon is not granted to us simply for the asking; neither do we receive it because our hearts are penitent; but for the sake of Him who died for us upon the cross; hence you are now forgiven by me, not for your prayers' sake, nor for your regret, but rather because beforehand, the night's offence has been cancelled by the morning's favor. For the rest, retire, sir: what you have heard, you have heard. You have heard my words, yet give no heed to them. If I to-night have walked forth in my sleep, and dreamed on this verandah;—why, then, it was but a dream. Let it be thus esteemed, and so we part. Good night.”