Superfluous to say, they are Jessie and Helen Armstrong. And needless to tell why the one is gay, the other grave. Since we last saw them in the hotel of Natchitoches, no change has taken place in their hearts or their hopes. The younger of the two, Jessie, is still an expectant bride, certain soon to be a wife; and with this certainty rejoices in the future. Helen, with no such expectation, no wish for it, feeling as one widowed, grieves over the past. The former sees her lover by her side living and loving, constantly, caressingly; the latter can but think of hers as something afar off—a dream—a dread vision—a cold corpse—herself the cause of it!
Colonel Armstrong’s eldest daughter is indeed sad—a prey to repining. Her heart, after receiving so many shocks, has almost succumbed to that the supremest, most painful suffering that can afflict humanity—the malady of melancholia. The word conveys but a faint idea of the suffering itself. Only they who have known it—fortunately but few—can comprehend the terror, the wan, wasting misery, endured by those whose nerves have given way under some terrible stroke of misfortune. ’Tis the story of a broken heart.
Byron has told us “the heart may break and brokenly live on.” In this her hour of unhappiness, Helen Armstrong would not and could not believe him. It may seem strange that Jessie is still only a bride to be. But no. She remembers the promise made to her father—to share with him a home in Texas, however humble it might be. All the same, now that she knows it will be splendid; knowing, too, it is to be shared by another—her Louis. He is still but her fiancée; but his troth is plighted, his truthfulness beyond suspicion. They are all but man and wife; which they will be soon as the new home is reached.
The goal of their journey is to be the culminating point of Jessie’s joy—the climax of her life’s happiness.
Chapter Forty Three.
The hand of God.
Scarce any stream of South-Western Texas but runs between bluffs. There is a valley or “bottom-land,” only a little elevated above the water’s surface, and often submerged during inundations,—beyond this the bluffs. The valley may be a mile or more in width, in some places ten, at others contracted, till the opposing cliffs are scarce a pistol-shot apart. And of these there are frequently two or three tiers, or terraces, receding backward from the river, the crest of the last and outmost being but the edge of an upland plain, which is often sterile and treeless. Any timber upon it is stunted, and of those species to which a dry soil is congenial. Mezquite, juniper, and “black-jack” oaks grow in groves or spinneys; while standing apart may be observed the arborescent jucca—the “dragon-tree” of the Western world, towering above an underwood unlike any other, composed of cactaceae in all the varieties of cereus, cactus, and echinocactus. Altogether unlike is the bottom-land bordering upon the river. There the vegetation is lush and luxuriant, showing a growth of large forest timber—the trees set thickly, and matted with many parasites, that look like cables coiling around and keeping them together. These timbered tracts are not continuous, but show stretches of open between,—here little glades filled with flowers, there grand meadows overgrown with grass—so tall that the horseman riding through it has his shoulders swept by the spikes, which shed their pollen upon his coat.
Just such a bottom-land is that of the San Saba, near the river’s mouth; where, after meandering many a score of miles from its source in the Llano Estacado, it espouses the Colorado—gliding softly, like a shy bride, into the embrace of the larger and stronger-flowing stream.