“Methinks it has a tinge of blood,” faintly answered the Lily; and, being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover’s arm, whispering, “Let us flee from this dreadful vale.”
“Come, then,” said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; “we shall soon find a happier spot.”
They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which millions—which every child of earth—has tried in turn.
And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked lovely in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant, sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its mother’s fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses in each other’s arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their sad demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and their posterity.
“Where in this world,” exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, “shall we build our temple of happiness?”
“Where in this world, indeed?” repeated Lilias Fay; and, being faint and weary—the more so by the heaviness of her heart—the Lily drooped her head and sat down on the summit of a knoll, repeating, “Where in this world shall we build our temple?”
“Ah! have you already asked yourselves that question?” said their companion, his shaded features growing even gloomier with the smile that dwelt on them. “Yet there is a place even in this world where ye may build it.”
While the old man spoke Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly thrown their eyes around, and perceived that the spot where they had chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm which was well enough adapted to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground with a certain regularity of shape that had perhaps been bestowed by art, and a group of trees which almost surrounded it threw their pensive shadows across and far beyond, although some softened glory of the sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion wherein the lovers would dwell together appeared on one side, and the ivied church where they were to worship on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale lily was growing at their feet.
“We will build our temple here,” said they, simultaneously, and with an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot.
Yet while they uttered this exclamation the young man and the Lily turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage and his sombre hat overshadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their purpose, and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers as a token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate the site of their temple of happiness.