CHAPTER VI.
After the visit to the monument, Chevillere daily inquired concerning the health of the interesting invalid; and as regularly was indisposition pleaded for her non-appearance. Late in the evening of the third day, he was slowly pacing the pavement in front of the hotel; now and then throwing a wistful glance at the lighted window of the lady, when all at once he suddenly wheeled round, and grasping in the dark, was surprised to find that a person whom he had supposed to be impertinently dogging his steps, had eluded his grasp. He grimly smiled at his own exasperation for an imaginary cause, hastily adjusted his cloak, and turned down the street leading most directly to the bay.
When he arrived at the quiet and deserted wharf, and the rapid flow of his impetuous blood was retarded by the cool invigorating breeze which swept over the face of the water, he saw an old yawl lying on the dock, with its broad bottom turned to the bay. Negligently leaning his person at full length against its weather-beaten bottom, and drawing down his hat close over his brows, he surrendered himself to one of those habitual reveries which the southern well knows how to enjoy. Had his mind and feelings been attuned to such things at the time, the scene itself would have furnished no uninteresting subject, with its hundred little lights, gleaming in the intense fog and darkness, and the numberless vessels that lay upon the bosom of the waters, with their dark outlines dimly visible, like slumbering monsters of their own element. He heeded them not; yet were his feelings insensibly impressed with the surrounding objects, and deeply tinctured with the profound gloom of the time and scene. The direct current of his thoughts pointed, however, in the direction of the invalid. Her extreme youth, beauty, and apparent innocence,—her deep distress and profound melancholy, naturally produced a corresponding depression in his own otherwise elastic spirits. He was perfectly unconscious of the time he had spent in this way, when accidentally turning his head to one side, he was struck with the appearance of something intercepting the line of vision in that direction. He was just about to approach the cause of his surprise, when a deep voice, issuing from the very spot, added not a little to his superstitious mood, by the exact manner in which it chimed in with the present subject of his meditations.
"A beautiful young woman in affliction is a very dangerous subject of meditation, under some circumstances."
"An honest heart fears no danger from any earthly source," was the reply.
"Honesty is no guard against external danger in this world, whether moral or physical," said the figure.
"Discernment may lend a hand to honesty in such a case."
"Ha! ha! ha!" hideously retorted the intruder; "Discernment, said you? Man's discernment is a mighty thing; by it he reads the past, the present, and the future; what can withstand his mighty vision? He can descry danger at a distance, and bring happiness within his grasp; he can tell the objects of his own creation, and his Creator's first beginning; he can read the starry alphabet in yonder heavens, and fathom the great deep; he can laugh at the instinct of grovelling creation, and thunder the dogmas of reason in the teeth of revelation itself! Discernment, indeed! ha! ha! ha! why, man is not half so well off as the brutes. What is their instinct but God's ever present and supporting hand; but man—he has neither perfect reason nor instinct! He has the conscience of an angel, and the impulses of a devil; and reason sits between them, for an umpire, with a fool's cap upon her head! Impulse bribes reason, and reason laughs at conscience. Impulse leads downward, like the power of gravity; and conscience struggles upward like the nightmare: but reason and discernment will traffic and bargain with impulse for one moment, and blind or cheat conscience the next! Turn mankind loose with all their reason without providence, and they will butt each other's foolish brains out! Bribed conscience makes hypocrites,—frightened conscience makes fanatics,—but reason-drilled conscience makes incarnate devils!"
"But," said Chevillere, involuntarily interested by this wild rhapsody, "a tender, conscience-instructed reason, and christianized impulses, make an honest and a discerning man, too."