The morning after Marian’s arrival at the Manor was one of those bright lovely dawns, sure harbingers of sweet and sunny days, that often interrupt the melancholy progress of an English autumn, fairer and softer as the season waxes older, and more enchanting from the contrast, which they cannot fail to suggest, between their balmy mildness and the chill winds and gloomy fogs of the approaching winter. The sky was altogether cloudless, yet it had nothing of the deep azure hue which it presents in summer, resembling in its tints and its transparency a canopy, if such a thing could be, of living aqua-marine, and kindled by a flood of pure, pale yellow lustre. None of the trees were wholly leafless, though none, perhaps, unless it were a few old oaks, but had lost something of their summer foliage; and their changed colors, varying from the deepest green through all the shades of yellow down to the darkest umber, although prophetic of their coming doom, and therefore saddening, with a sort of chastened spiritual sorrow, the heart of the observer, added a solemn beauty to the scenery that well accorded with its grand and romantic character. The vast round-headed hills, seen through the filmy haze which floated over them, filling up all their dells and hollows, showed every intermediate hue from the red russet of their heathery foreground to the rich purple of their farthest peaks. The grass, which had not yet begun to lose its verdant freshness, was thickly meshed with gossamer, which, sprinkled by the pure and plenteous dews, flashed like a net of diamonds upon a ground of emerald velvet to the early sunbeams. It had been summer, late indeed in that lovely season, but still full summer with all her garniture of green, her pomp of full blown flowers—the glorious mature womanhood of the year!—when Marian left her home; not a trace of decay or change was visible on its bright brow, not a leaf of its embroideries was altered, not a bud in its garland was blighted. She had returned, and every thing, though beautiful and glowing, bore the plain stamp of dissolution. The west wind blew as softly as in June through the tall sycamores, but after every breath, while all was lulled and peaceful, the broad sere leaves came whirling down from the shaken branches, on which their hold was now so slight that but the whisper of a sigh was needed to detach them—the skies, the waters, were as pure as ever, as beautifully clear and lucid; but in their brightness there was a chill and glassy glitter as different from their warm sheen under a July sun, as is the keen unnatural radiance of a blue eye in the consumptive girl from its rich lustrous light in a mature and healthy woman. Was it the contemplation of this change that brought so sad a cloud on the brow of lovely Marian Hawkwood, so dull a gloom into her speaking eye, so dead a paleness on the ripe damask of her cheek? Sad indeed always is such contemplation—sorrowful and grave thoughts must it awake in the minds of those who think the least, to revisit a fair well-known scene which they have quitted in the festal flush of summer, when all the loveliness they dwelt on so fondly is flown or flying. It brings a chill upon the spirit like that which touches the last guest
“who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all save he departed.”
It wakes a passing anguish like that which thrills to the heart’s core of him who, after years of wandering in a foreign clime, returns to find the father whom he left still in the prime of vigorous and active manhood, bowed, bent, gray-haired and paralytic; the mother, whom he saw at their last parting glorious in summer beauty, withered and wrinkled, and bereft of every trace of former comeliness. All this it does, at times to all, to the reflective always—the solitary contemplation of the decaying year. Yet it was not this alone, it was not this at all, that blanched the cheek and dimmed the glance of Marian, as, at a very early hour of the morning, she was sauntering alone, with downcast eyes, and slow uncertain gait, beside the margin of the stream in the warm, sheltered garden; for she did not, in truth, seem to contemplate at all the face of external nature, or so much as to note the changes which had taken place during her absence; yet were those changes very great, and nowhere probably so strongly marked as on the very spot where she was wandering; for when she stood there last, to cull a nosegay ere she parted, the whole of that fair nook was glowing with the brightest colors, and redolent with the most fragrant perfumes, while hundreds of feathered songsters were filling every brake and thicket with bursts of joyous melody; and now only a few, the hardiest of the late autumnal flowers, displayed their scattered blossoms, and those, too, crisp and faded among sere leaves and withered branches; while for the mellow warblings of the thrush and blackbird nothing was heard except the feeble piping of a solitary robin, mixed with the wailing rush of the swollen streamlet. For nearly an hour she walked to and fro buried in deep and melancholy silence, and thinking, as it seemed from her air and gestures, most profoundly—occasionally she paused for a few seconds in her walk to and fro, and stood still gazing abstractedly on some spot in the withered herbage, on some pool of the brooklet, with her mind evidently far away; and once or twice she clasped her hands and wrung them passionately, and sighed very deeply. While she was yielding thus to some deep inward sorrow—for it could be no trivial passing grief that could so suddenly and so completely change so quick and gay a spirit—a gentle footstep sounded upon the gravel walk behind a cluster of thick leafy lilacs, and in a moment Annabel stepped from their screen upon the mossy greensward; her pale and pensive features were even paler and more thoughtful than was common, and her eyes showed as if she had been weeping, yet her step was as light and elastic as a young fawn’s, and a bright smile dimpled her cheek as she addressed her sister.
“Dear Marian, why so early? And why did you not call me to share your morning walk? What ails you, dearest, tell me? For I have seen you from my window walking here up and down so sorrowful and sad—”
“Oh! can you ask me—can you ask me, Annabel,” exclaimed the lovely girl in a wild, earnest burst of passion—“can you not see that my heart is breaking?”—and with the words she flung her arms about her sister’s neck, and burying her face in her bosom fell into an agony of tears.
Annabel clasped Marian to her heart and held her there for many moments, kissing away the big drops from her cheeks, and soothing her with many a kind and soft caress, before she replied to her incoherent and wild words; but when her violent sobbing had subsided,