| 'When the flame of love is kindled first, 'Tis the fire-fly's light at even,'— |
the flash of an insect, which one can admire, without fearing its power to create a conflagration. A vague impression that Catherine's want of affection for the licensed lover would prevent the completion of the marriage contract, gave a sort of encouragement and hope to his selfishness, which he interpreted into the more generous sympathy of one who lamented her hard fate, and desired only to shield and protect her. In this delusive thought, in this romantic willingness to watch over the safety of another, he lingered around the vortex of fate, until the ripple became a current, and the current an impetuous tide, from which there was no escape, except by exerting his remaining strength to the utmost. At the very period when the exertion should have been made, he bore to his solitary chamber the idol lately completed by his own hands, and as he gazed upon it, felt that the moment of salvation had passed by.
"Yes, it is now too late," he muttered, apostrophising the miniature; "I have fooled myself a second time into the whirlpool; and who, Catherine, will play thy part with me again, and again save me? It is too late; it is too late to retreat, and now therefore I must go on—yet with what hope go on? With none. She heeds me not, she dreams not of my folly, she cares not. Friendship is the grave of love; and in her friendship my love is entombed, before it has breathed twice in existence. I will speak to her, and be derided!—I will confess myself, and be driven from her presence! And this is honourable of me too! to take advantage of her unsuspicious frankness, her anxious desire to gratify her father, and steal a portrait from her! I saw she doubted the propriety of sitting; and yet I, by base dissimulation and affected indifference, cajoled her to consent. Well, if I can copy, I can destroy; and if this fool—this slave—this Falconer wed her, why, then good-by to the knavery and the folly together! I will tarry, at least, until I see the privileged woer; and then, if she like him not, if she recoil—nay, if she shed but a tear of repugnance, may heaven forsake me if I do not——Well, what? Kill him!——There has been enough of that among us already."
Thus murmuring to himself, and expressing invectives against his folly, with the usual arguments for continuing to indulge it, he sat down before a table, and despite his convictions of the impropriety, if not the meanness of the act, began to copy the miniature. He laboured assiduously until he had completed the outline, and then exclaimed, with a species of reproachful triumph,
"Now, foolish father of the best and loveliest! though you rob me of my labour, yet have I secured its counterpart. Send me a thousand leagues away, and within this dim outline shall my hand reproduce the image of your sacrifice.—But here come the fools again! Now for a smooth face, a merry voice, and a frolic with my jolterhead admirers."
The vow which the painter had made, when the doctor and his two friends passed by the widow's cottage, and smiled at his choice of lodgings, that he would make them fonder of the Traveller's Rest than their own village quarters, he had in part fulfilled. Whatever was his secret and growing care, it was yet confined to his own bosom; and he was altogether of too joyous a temperament, had he even desired to nourish his melancholy, to bear a sad spirit in company. He was one of those who suffer most, and suffer longest, by grieving only at intervals, and enjoying themselves heartily among friends. The idea of a continuous grief, of any duration, at least, is preposterous. The body can live upon the rack only a few hours, or days; and the spirit's powers of endurance are not much greater.
His gay and agreeable manners had strongly recommended him to the trio; and the two lawyers, having nothing better to do, were wont to mount their horses, and accompany the doctor on his professional visitations, which he continued for some time after the patient had taken refuge within the Traveller's Rest; and even after he insisted upon being cured, they wasted their tediousness upon him at least twice or thrice a week, in the way of friendly calls; and he was wont to entertain them as well as he could. Of the doctor he had made a conquest by asking for his bill, and paying it in good English guineas, a handful of which coin gave doctor Merribody more sensible delight than could the bushel of paper with which he expected to fill his saddle-bags; the amount charged against the unlucky amateur being some few thousands of dollars,—Continental currency.
One of the doctor's friends, whom he usually addressed by the familiar title of Jingleum, but whose real name was Jackson, or Johnson, or some such unhappy dissyllable, was the poet of the village, and a bard of renown for at least ten miles round. Him the painter won by praising his verses, and what was still more captivating, by singing them, and what was yet more enslaving, by requesting permission to cull all the stanzas of a cantabile nature from the long blue-covered log-books, in which Mr. Jingleum had carefully recorded his labours. Seeing what a congenial soul he had found in the painter, Jingleum freely supplied his wants, and wrote divers madrigals at his suggestion, with which Herman charmed the ears of Miss Loring. The poet soon became his intense admirer and perpetual visiter; they grew fast friends, and soon came to regard each other, the one as the divinest poet, the other as the most finished singer, under the moon. It would have been an interesting sight, could one have invaded the sanctity of the painter's apartment, on such occasions, to see them together, industriously fixing a tune to each affecting ditty,—a labour that was sometimes none of the lightest; and sometimes, when the genius of the bard, as it often did, chose to disdain the base bonds of metre and rhythm, and none of the thousand melodies in their service could be forced or wheedled into nuptials with his independent verse, they were fain to betake themselves to their own resources, and finish the business with such a quodlibet as they could manufacture between them. It was a divine enjoyment to the poet, when they had at last succeeded with any refractory song, to hear his lines breathed out from the mellow lips of his friend; for then his poetry seemed as celestial as his pleasure. His bliss, however, was not complete, until he lighted by accident, one day, in the village, upon a battered guitar,—an instrument of such venerable antiquity, that there was not a soul therein who was able to pronounce for what unheard-of purpose such an extraordinary engine had been framed, until Herman Hunter, swearing it could discourse most eloquent music, and was not a banjo, managed, by dint of much exertion, to fit it up with fiddle-strings and the savings of some demolished harpsichord, and set its dumb tongues twangling: it was not until he heard his rhymes trolled forth to the clatter of this romantic instrument, that the joy of the poet mounted to the heaven of ecstasy. He would sit distilling with delight, while the lips of his friend warbled over the seraphic lines, and while his fingers hopped over the amaranthine strings; and then, sometimes, with a sudden feeling of inspiration, he would snatch the lyre, as he poetically called it, into his own hands, doubtless expecting an overflow of ineffable harmony from the mere fulness of his spirit, until warned by the dreadful dissonance of his touches, and the remonstrances of his admirer, he found, however extraordinary it seemed, that the drum and the jewsharp were the only instruments the playing of which came by nature.
This peculiar friendship betwixt the bard and the singer it is perhaps necessary here to mention, in order that it should be understood to whom should be given the credit of those canzonets sung by the painter, which seem to have any peculiar reference to his own condition. He did not carry his affection so far as to bestow any of his private confidence on the bard; nor did the latter ever suspect that any call, however urgent, for a ballad especially sad and amatory, was to be understood as indicating a passion deeper than that of the mere songster. There was little suspiciousness in the poet's frame, and no scandal-mongers in the neighbourhood. It was indeed the golden age of that part of the world; although the country was somewhat overflowed with paper-money.
It was one result of this generous spirit, doubtless, that caused the story of the resuscitation of a Hawk of Hawk-Hollow to be so soon forgotten. The account of the outrage upon Colonel Falconer, as having been perpetrated by Oran Gilbert, did indeed at first create a considerable sensation; and many excitable individuals, hearing of the chase after the fugitive Nehemiah, mounted their horses, and resumed the trail, the next day, with the resolution of sifting the mystery to the bottom. But the trail ended where Lieutenant Brooks had left it; the raw-boned white horse had passed through divers hands, and was, in course of time, supposed to have been recovered by the rightful owner; but the rider had vanished as if swallowed up by the earth, or melted into the air, and was never more heard of. The story died away, or was remembered only as a jest, which finally expired in the vapour of its own silliness. The reasonable men laughed at their late fears, and forgot them.