Among the crowd who had arranged themselves in rows, to witness the departure of the court officials and the prisoner, were the two now inseparable friends, Mrs. Elwood and Fluella; who, on turning from the spectacle, had strolled, arm-in-arm, to a green, shaded grass-plot at the farther end of the tavern building, and were now, with pensive but interested looks, bending over the garden fence, and inspecting a small parterre of budding flowers, which female taste had, even in a place so lately redeemed from the forest as this, found means to introduce. They were lingering here, while others were departing, for the arrival of expected friends, though evidently not conscious of their very near approach. But even then, as they stood listlessly gazing over upon the mute objects of their interest, those friends were coming across the bridge, in the singularly contrasted forms of an aged man, walking without any staff, and with a firm elastic tread, and quite a youngerly one, walking with a cane, and with careful steps and a restrained gait, betokening some lingering soreness of body or limb. On reaching the nearest part of the tavern-yard, the young man gazed eagerly round among the still numerous crowd, when, his eye falling on those of whom he seemed to be in search, he turned to his companion and said:
“There they are, Chief. I will go forward and take them by surprise.”
The next moment he was standing closely behind the unconscious objects of his attention; when, with a smiling lip but silent tongue, he gently laid a hand on a shoulder of each.
“Claud!” burst from the lips of the surprised and reddening maiden, the first to turn to the welcome intruder.
“Claud! Claud!” exclaimed the agitated matron, as she also turned, in grateful surprise, to greet, for the first time since his return, her heart’s idol. “My son! my son!” she continued, with gathering emotion, “are you indeed restored alive to my arms, and, but for you, my now doubly desolate home? Thank Heaven! O thank Heaven! for the happy, happy restoration!”
“That is right, dear mother!” at length responded the visibly touched young man, gently disengaging himself from the long maternal embrace; “that is all right. But,” he added, turning to the maiden, whose sympathetic tears were coursing down her fair cheeks, “if you would thank any earthly being for the preservation of my life, it should be this good and lovely girl at your side.”
“I know it,” said the mother, after a thoughtful pause, “I know it; and, Claud, I would that she were indeed my daughter.”
There was an embarrassing pause. But the embarrassment was not perceived and felt by these two young persons alone. Another, unknown to them, had silently witnessed the whole interview from an open, loosely-curtained window of the chamber above; and perceived, and felt, and appreciated, all that had transpired, in word and look, no less keenly than the young couple, whose beating hearts, only, were measuring the moments of their silent perplexity. That other was Gaut Gurley’s lovely and luckless but strong-hearted daughter. Having instinctively read her father’s guilt, she had come to his trial with a sinking heart; shut herself up alone in this small chamber; so arranged the screening curtains that she could sit by the open window unseen, and kept her post through that long night of her silent woe, hearing all that was said by the crowd below, and, through their comments, becoming apprised of all that was going on in the court-room, in the order it transpired. She had known of Fluella’s arrival,—her perilous passage over the river,—of the report she then made to the hunter of her discoveries,—of her bringing back the wounded Claud in safety,—of the dastardly attempt of the prisoner to take that heroic girl’s life,—of his sentence, and, finally, of his departure for prison, amidst the execrations of a justly indignant people. She had known all this, and felt it, to the inmost core of her rent heart, with the twofold anguish of a broken-hearted lover and a fate-smitten daughter. She had wrestled terribly with her own heart, and she had conquered. She had determined her destiny; and now, on witnessing the last part of the tender scene enacting under her window, she suddenly formed the high resolve of crowning her self-immolation by a public sacrifice.
Accordingly she hastily rose from her seat, and, without thought or care of toilet, descended rapidly to the yard, and, with hurrying step and looks indicative of settled purpose, moved directly towards the deeply surprised actors in the little scene, of which she had thus been made the involuntary witness.
“No ceremony!” she said, in tones of unnatural calmness, with a forbidding gesture to Claud, who, while Fluella was instinctively shrinking to the side of the more unmoved but still evidently disturbed Mrs. Elwood, had advanced a step for a respectful greeting. “No ceremony—it is needless; and no fears, fair girl, and anxious mother—they are without cause. I come not to mar, but to make, happiness. Claud Elwood, my heart once opened and turned to you, as the sunflower to its god; and our paths of love met, and, for a while, ran on pleasantly together as one. But, even then, something whispered me they would soon again diverge, and lead off to separate destinies. The boded divergence, as I feared, began with the fatal family feud of last winter, and has now resulted, as I still more feared, in plunging us, respectively, in degradation and sorrow, and also in placing our destinies as wide as the poles asunder. Claud, Claud Elwood,—can you love this beautiful girl at your side? You speak not. I know that you can. I relinquish, then, whatever I may have possessed of your heart, to her, if she wills. And why should she not? Why reject one whose life she would peril her own to save? She will not. Be you two, then, one; and may all the earthly happiness I once dreamed of, with none of the bitter alloy it has been my lot to experience, be henceforth yours. You will know me no more. With to-morrow’s sun, I travel to a distant cloister, where the world, with its tantalizing loves and dazzling ambitions, will be nothing more to me forever. Farewell, Claud! farewell, gentle, heroic maiden! farewell, afflicted, happy mother! If the prayers of Avis Gurley have virtue, their first incense shall rise for the healing of all the heart-wounds one of her family has inflicted.”