Paul Douglass had grown up to be a tall and handsome youth, of a very noble, frank, attractive countenance and manners. To say that he loved Miriam is only to say that he loved himself. She mingled with every thought, and feeling, and purpose of his heart.
And when, at last, the time came that Paul had to leave home for Baltimore, to remain absent all winter, for the purpose of attending the course of lectures at the medical college, Miriam learned the pain of parting, and understood how impossible happiness would be for her, with Paul away, on naval or military duty, more than half their lives, and for periods of two, three, or five years; and after that she never said another word in favor of his wearing Uncle Sam's livery, although she had often expressed a wish that he should enter the army.
Miriam's affection for Paul was so profound and quiet, that she did not know its depth or strength. As she had not believed that parting from him would be painful until the event had taught her, so even now she did not know how intertwined with every chord and fibre of her heart and how identical with her life, was her love for Paul. She was occupied by a more enthusiastic devotion to her "brother," as she called her guardian.
The mysterious sorrow, the incurable melancholy of a man like Thurston Willcoxen, could not but invest him with peculiar interest and even strange fascination for one of Miriam's enthusiastic, earnest temperament. She loved him with more than a daughter's love; she loved him with all the impassioned earnestness of her nature; her heart yearned as it would break with its wild, intense longing to do him some good, to cure his sorrow, to make him happy. There were moments when but for the sweet shyness that is ever the attendant and conservator of such pure feeling, this wild desire was strong enough to cast her at his feet, to embrace his knees, and with tears beseech him to let her into that dark, sorrowful bosom, to see if she could make any light and joy there. She feared that he had sinned, that his incurable sorrow was the gnawing tooth of that worm that never dieth, preying on his heart; but she doubted, too, for what could he have done to plunge his soul in such a hell of remorse? He commit a crime? Impossible! the thought was treason; a sin to be repented of and expiated. His fame was fairest of the fair, his name most honored among the, honorable. If not remorse, what then was the nature of his life-long sorrow? Many, many times she revolved this question in her mind. And as she matured in thought and affection, the question grew more earnest and importunate. Oh, that he would unburden his heart to her; oh! that she might share and alleviate his griefs. If "all earnest desires are prayers," then prayer was Miriam's "vital breath and native air" indeed; her soul earnestly desired, prayed, to be able to give her sorrowing brother peace.
CHAPTER XXXI.
DREAMS AND VISIONS.
Winter waned. Mrs. Waugh had attended the commodore to the South, for the benefit of his health, and they had not yet returned.
Mrs. Morris and Alice were absent on a long visit to a relative in Washington City, and were not expected back for a month. Paul remained in Baltimore, attending the medical lectures.
The house at Dell-Delight was very sad and lonely. The family consisted of only Thurston, Fanny and Miriam.
A change had also passed over poor Fanny's malady. She was no longer the quaint, fantastical creature, half-lunatic, half-seeress, singing snatches of wild songs through the house—now here, now there—now everywhere, awaking smiles and merriment in spite of pity, and keeping every one alive about her. Her bodily health had failed, her animal spirits departed; she never sang nor smiled, but sat all day in her eyrie chamber, lost in deep and concentrated study, her face having the care-worn look of one striving to recall the past, to gather up and reunite the broken links of thought, memory and understanding.