With hasty strides he followed the Recluse, who was already half way to the little secluded inlet from which he had landed. As they approached the water, Bacon could perceive two slender masts dancing in the moonbeams, as the dark hull of a fishing smack pitched and tossed with the swelling billows. Stepping into a log canoe, (such as surround all water bound plantations in slave countries,) they were speedily on board the diminutive craft, where two lounging fishermen waited their approach. The wind was blowing fresh from off the sea across the neck of land they had just left, and they scudded before it at a rate, if not quite equal to the impatience of the more youthful voyager, at least with as much rapidity as could reasonably have been expected. The Recluse seemed as usual inclined for thoughtful silence, and as his companion leaned against the mast of the rocking vessel, he saw the workings of a mighty mind—wrecked, as he supposed, upon some unseen obstacle, as it was impetuously borne along by the resistless tide of youthful hopes and aspirations. He could not believe that the Recluse had ever been deliberately base or cruel, as he himself had more than hinted. "At least," said he, as he communed with himself, "he has paid ten-fold penance for a single error."
The Recluse at length perceived that his companion was observing him, and arose from his half recumbent position, and stood beside him, his arms folded for an instant, and his attenuated countenance, as it reflected back the sickly rays of a hazy moon, settled in profound melancholy. He took the hand of the youth, and shook it some time in agitation before he could give utterance to his thoughts, but at length he said in a voice which betrayed the violence of his feelings,
"Nathaniel, canst thou forgive me for that cruel mistake at the chapel? Oh, couldst thou know what I suffered then, and since, both on thy account and my own, thou wouldst accept it as ample atonement for the unintended wrong. I saw, on that dreadful night, her who was the queen of my manhood's fondest dreams—who had basked with me in the sunshine of youth and hope—who had given me her young affections in return for my own, when life was in its bud, and who afterward blossomed into the rich fruition of maternal love and beauty in these arms—her who was torn from me by a base deception of her kindred, and married to another. I saw her face to face, for the first time in more than twenty years, when she was about to give the offspring of her second marriage as a wife to the offspring of her first, as I supposed. Oh, what human conception can realize the torrent that broke over my soul at that fearful moment? The shadowy remembrances which had been softening and fading in the lapse of years burst at once into life and being. Time and place were forgotten—the passions of youth rushed into the contest, and I stood as the frail mortal body shall stand at the final day, when its own spirit knocks for entrance. The buried ghosts of my own passions rose from their grave, the frail cloak of stoicism which had been woven round me, was blasted into shreds and patches, and I stood and quailed before a woman's eye like Belshazzar at his feast. Thou hast felt thy heart swelling and plunging against its bony prison, but thou hast never had it gorged and choked with the dammed up waters of bitterness, gathered through long and dreary years. Thou hast felt the words stick in thy throat, and refuse to leap into life, but thou wert never struck dumb with a judgment from Heaven, like a thunderbolt scorching and searing into the very citadel of thought and vitality! Thou hast writhed when stung by the scorpion tongue of calumny, but thou hast never been outlawed and abandoned of all human kind—condemned by thy own conscience—and given up of God!"
His eye shot forth vivid fires, and his arms, as they were flung abroad in violent gesticulation, cast giant shadows upon the moonlit waves of the Chesapeake.
"You do both yourself and your friends grievous wrong," said Bacon, after a painful pause.
"I have indeed wronged myself—most wretchedly wronged myself, but not now; the wrong which I did to others has recoiled ten-fold upon my own head. I know full well thy meaning—thou wouldst say that kindly feelings are not wholly dead within this seared heart! But thou hast made but little progress in analyzing our moral structure, if thou dost not know that crime committed by one whose nature would lead to good, is the true source of that misery which surpasseth speech.
"An intuitive villain, if there be such, or one become wholly corrupt, plunges from transgression to transgression, until his final ruin, without enduring any of that wretchedness which comes of a stain upon a tenderer conscience. Such a man has no conscience; it is seared or obliterated; but he of benevolent heart and virtuous impulses, wounds his guardian angel by the deed. The taint corrupts and sours the sweets of life into gall and bitterness. If that stain be but a single deed, and that, dark, damning and indelible, the perpetrator becomes as an angel of light in the companionship of hell. He may be likened to one who loses the power of sight, with all the other senses perfect. He hears what others see, but to him the grand medium of perception is dark and dismal, and the rhapsodies of others are his own damnation. There is but one hue to his atmosphere; it is the fearful red which only the blood of man can dye. In his case the language of scripture is fulfilled before its time. The moon is turned to blood, and the morning beam dispelleth not the horrid hue."
Bacon thought any direction of his companion's thoughts preferable to his present mood, and therefore said "But she whom you supposed my mother—"
"I know it all, my son," interrupted the Recluse; "I saw the marble features upon their last journey. For twenty years I have not envied mortal being, but I confess to thee, that there was something in the cessation from thought, suffering and action—and the sleep-like serenity of death for which I longed. Nevertheless, there is an awful mystery in that which seemeth so simple in itself. Mere lifeless clay, moulded by the hands of man into the same stamp, speaks not to man in the same language; it may indeed refresh the memory, but it stirreth not up the divinity within us. Who is he that looketh upon the features of the dead and looketh not up to the giver and recipient of life? I saw her mortal remains laid out in the midst of a camp, and the busy world faded away into indistinctness, while the God of the universe spoke in the person of the beautiful corse before me and said, 'Thus far shalt thou go and no farther.'"
As they steered their course uninterruptedly towards the source of the Powhatan, which they had entered as the sunbeams broke through the morning mists, Bacon threw himself down, and slept soundly, until he was aroused by the Recluse to inquire what direction their agents should give the vessel when they arrived within sight of the city.