Hush! I cannot tell you of that awaking from death to life—from the assumed indifference which had nearly chilled a young heart out of existence, to the life of love. No! and I will not tell it; but don’t you say it is because I am tired of talking that I pause, or that I feel inefficient to tell it all. It is not true.
But, still later in the season, when the brown leaves were falling in every direction from the trees, when the clouds gathered often in the sky, and the frequent rains presaged cold winter storms, there stood, one of those intensely bright days yet vouchsafed October, a little lady, frail and young, leaning on the arm of a gentleman, in the beech grove, near Woodland Cottage. Cheerily fell the sunlight through the almost leafless branches, and numberless insects flitted to and fro—one of these, a tiny thing, alighted on the maiden’s hand, not the one clasped in his! They had paused in their walk to rest, and neither had for many moments spoken; but as they began, as by mutual consent, to retrace their steps, the gentleman looked up into the blue sky, exclaiming fervently, “How beautiful it is to-day!” and with a heart full of thankfulness, he murmured fondly a name—a name with which the reader is familiar. Then he looked upon her, and he seemed to find all of heaven reflected in her eyes—and more beautiful than the sky or the sunshine seemed she to him; he bent his stately form, he kissed her; and, reader, her arms wound round him in a moment, she returned his embracing. It was a marriage-covenant—nothing more or less!
Ha! then the insect flitted away, far, far up above the happy mortals, with a cry heard never before, and the grove became vocal with it; how crimson grew the girl’s pale face, as she heard that strange, bold voice, proclaiming to the winds, “Katy did!”
Over the ocean flew a message—thus it run:
“She is mine, Lucy! this brave, proud, generous little Kitty, is mine! And because she is given to me in this eleventh hour, I feel that she is a ‘gift of God,’—a gift unspeakably precious. My heart is full of ‘thanksgiving and the voice of melody,’ for we are one now—one forever—in life and in death, one. I shudder when I think how she has twice been nearly lost to me—once by her own lofty pride, and again by the Angel of Death, who seemed a terror-king when he hovered beside her. She is so pale and weak, so unlike her former self in physical beauty, that I tremble when I look upon her; yet I know, Lucy, that she will not die. We shall both live, to prove, on earth, how strong a tie of love unites us.”
Yes, they did live to prove it; and certainly a happier poet never breathed, than he whose bright and cheering songs, springing from a deep, clear fountain in the heart, went afterward, floating over the wide earth—they were the most glorious “songs of the affections.”
And so you have the long and the short of the matter. You know as well as I, all that poor Katy did! How many times on this great earth have “trifles, light as air,” set all the world a-gadding! Alas! yes, creatures as brainless and chattering, and far less innocent, than the insect disputants, have we humans too often proved ourselves. Many a great matter has a spark of fire kindled; and the “Comedy” has become a rare thing in comparison with the Tragedy of Errors.