Vassall Morton Part 20

Quelle diable de fantaisie t'es tu alle mettre dans la cervelle? Tu le veux, amour; il faut etre fou comme beaucoup d'autres.--_Le Malade Imaginaire_.

Matherton, renowned through both hemispheres for the manufacture of gla.s.s ware, stands, unless this history errs, on the line of the Northern Central Railroad, the distance from its post office to the post office at Boston being just thirty-three miles. Four miles from the village is the tract of land which Leslie's forefather, far back in New England antiquity, bought of the Indians. The original purchase covered several square miles, since dwindled to some two hundred acres. Here, in a sequestered and very beautiful spot, stands the mansion which Leslie's grandfather built some eighty-five years ago.

In its day it was reputed of matchless elegance, and, with Leslie's repairs and improvements, it might still pa.s.s as a very handsome old country residence. Sagamore Pond, or Lake Sagamore, as the last Mrs.

Leslie, who had lived in England, insisted on calling it, washes the foot of the garden; and along the northern verge of the estate, Battle Brook steals down to the pond, under the thick shade of the hemlock trees. Here King Philip's warriors once lay in ambush, through a hot summer's day; here many pious Puritans were butchered, and many carried off into doleful captivity.

At the house at Battle Brook, Leslie, during spring, summer, and autumn, had always spent every leisure moment that he could s.n.a.t.c.h from his affairs. Since his connection with Vinal, these intervals had become both long and frequent. And, since grief has a privilege, and since, moreover, a somewhat alarming cough had lately begun to trouble him, he now committed all to Vinal's hands, and, on the day after his daughter's return, repaired with her to his favorite homestead, there to remain till the autumn frosts should warn them back to town.

Forthwith Matherton became the focus to which all the thoughts of Morton concentred.

Thither, pretext or no pretext, he resolved to go. He went, accordingly, and made his quarters at the grand hotel of Matherton.

Fortunately, Battle Brook was then the best trout stream in Ma.s.sachusetts; and this would give, he flattered himself, some faint color to his proceeding. He arrived in the afternoon, and, mounting a horse, rode to the inn at the edge of Sagamore Pond, a mile or more from Leslie's house.

He had scarcely reached it, when a brief sharp thunder shower came up, and pa.s.sed away as quickly. As the sun was setting, he rowed out in a small boat upon the pond. Here, skirting the brink of a sequestered cove, which the beech and tupelo trees overhung, and where every thing was still but the evening singing of a robin, and the mysterious whisper of the rain-drops, falling from innumerable leaves, with countless tiny circles on the breathless water,--here, where his boat glided as if buoyed on a liquid air, while, over the pebbly bottom, the perch and dace fled away from under the shadowing prow,--he lingered dreamily for a while, and then, bending to his oars, bore out into the middle of the pond. The west was gorgeous with the sunset, while, far in front, glimmering among the trees, he could see the shrine of his idolatry, the roof that sheltered Edith Leslie.

A light breeze crisped the water, the ripples murmured with a lulling sound under his boat, and, lying at ease, he gave himself up to his reveries.

His pa.s.sion-kindled fancies ranged earth, sea, and sky; wandered into the past, lost themselves in the future; evoked the shadows of dead history; mixed in one phantom conclave the hairy war G.o.ds of the north, the bright shapes of Grecian fable, the enormities of Egyptian mythology; and, looking into the burning depths above him, he mused of human hopes, human aspirations, human destiny. That oddly compounded malady which had fastened on him had brought with it the intense yet tranquil awakening of every faculty with which it will sometimes visit those of the ruder s.e.x whom it attacks with virulence.

The magic of earth and sky; the black pines rearing their s.h.a.ggy tops against the blazing west; the sh.o.r.es mingling in many-tinted shadow; the fiery sky, where three little clouds hovered like flaming spirits; the fiery water, where he and his boat floated as in a crimson sea; the whole glowing scene, glowing deeper yet in the fervid light of pa.s.sion,--penetrated him like an enchantment. He scarcely knew himself; and in his supreme of intoxication, the familiar world around him was sublimed into a vision of Eden.

CHAPTER XXII.

If it were now to die, 'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear, My soul hath her content so absolute, That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.--_Oth.e.l.lo_.

It was a day of cloudless suns.h.i.+ne when Morton set forth for the house at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts, misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through from front to rear.

He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light summer furniture, it was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls; and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without attempting to escape, though the windows also were open.

"No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor.

He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful succession. The birds would not sing,--the afternoon was too hot,--but the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their lurking-places in the gra.s.s, while now and then the cicala raised its piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree.

Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most, his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled the pauses between.

He glanced at his companion.

"Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself.

He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her fingers were employed.

"I must speak out, or die," he thought.

He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. Heaven knows what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound of a man's footstep in the hall made him subside into his chair, and do his best to look nonchalant. Leslie entered, cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and greeted him with somewhat cool courtesy.

"I have just met Miss Weston and her sister," said Leslie to his daughter; "I think they will be here in a few minutes."

Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his lip with vexation.

Leslie took a turn or two about the room, looked out at the window, remarked that it was a hot afternoon, said that the hay crop had been the heaviest ever known, in consequence, he opined, of the joint effects of heat, moisture, and guano; and was descanting on the ravages committed by the borers on a certain peach tree, when Miss Weston and her sister appeared.

"It's all up with me. She does not care for me a straw," thought Morton, as he saw the easy cordiality with which Miss Leslie received her guests. He was introduced. Miss Weston complimented him on the affair of the railroad. His reply was cold and constrained. Leslie soon left the room. Morton felt himself _de trop_, yet could not muster strength of mind to go. Conversation flagged. Every body became constrained. Miss Weston suspected the truth, and glanced at her sister that they should take their leave, when, at this juncture, a servant came to announce tea.

The ebbs and flows of the human mind are beyond the reach of astronomy. As they went into the next room, Morton became conscious of a faint and indefinite something in the face of his mistress, which, he could not tell why, cast a gleam of light into his darkness, and lifted him out of the slough of despond in which he had been floundering for the last half hour. A flush of hope dawned on him. His constraint pa.s.sed away, and Miss Weston's opinion of him was wonderfully revolutionized. At length, much to his delight, one of the visitors remarked to the other, that they had better go home before it grew too dark. But here a new alarm seized him. Might he not be expected to offer them his escort? Terrified at this idea, and oblivious of all gallantry, he made his escape into the garden, impelled--so he left them to infer--by a delicate wish to free them from the restraint of his presence. Here he walked to and fro behind the hedge, in no small agitation, but with all his faculties on the alert.

In a quarter of an hour, he heard voices at the hall door; and approaching behind a cl.u.s.ter of high laurels, saw Edith Leslie accompanying her two friends down the avenue. After walking with them a few rods, she bade them good evening, and turned back towards the house. Morton went forward to meet her.

"There is a beautiful sunset over the water, beyond the garden. Will you walk that way?"

They turned down one of the garden paths.

"What did you think of me this afternoon?" asked Morton--"did you think me ill, or bewitched, or turned idiot?"

"Neither. I thought you a little taciturn, at first."

"I am fortunate if that was your worst opinion. I believe I was under a spell. Did you never dream--all people, I believe, have something in common in their dreams--of being in some great peril, without power to move hand or foot to escape?--of being under some desperate necessity of speaking, without power to open your lips?--or of seeing before you some splendid prize, without power to make even an effort to grasp it?

Something like that was my case." Here he came to an abrupt stop, walked on a pace or two, then turned to his companion with a vehemence which startled her--"Miss Leslie, you heard your friend praise me for humanity--courage--what not? It was all a mistake--all a delusion. I thought you were in the train. I was wild with agony; and when the people were crowding after me, I thought that all had been for nothing, because I had not saved you. I can hardly tell what I did; it was mere blind instinct. I could have ridden into the fire, and perhaps not have felt the burning. There _is_ a spell upon me. I am changed--life is changed--every thing is changed. I scarcely know myself. It mans me, and it makes me a child again. The world puts on a new face; just as this sunset lights the earth with purple and vermilion, and turns it to a fairy land. Forgive me; I don't know what I am saying. I am in fear that all this brightness will change of a sudden into winter and night, and cold, rocky commonplace. You know what I would say. I have no words fit to say it. You are my judge, to lift me up, or cast me down."

Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion in much greater agitation than he would have felt if he had just thrown the dice for life or death. She stood for a moment with her eyes fixed on the earth, as if waiting for him to go on, then slowly raised them to his face.

"You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe that I could ever forget it."

Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been liberal to him in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his emotion supplied the defect. Nor were his words thrown away; for with all its outward calm, the nature that responded to them was earnest and ardent as his own.

It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun their evening cries, when they returned to the house. Candles were lighted, and Leslie was sitting with two persons from the neighborhood, an agent of the Matherton factories and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks.

He looked very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing.

The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself to join in the conversation, and favored the company with his views--not very lucid on this occasion--upon the topic under discussion. He soon, however, contrived to whisper to Miss Leslie, "I shall go in five minutes--will you meet me in the hall?" She left the room in a few moments; and Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much alarm lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he found his mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their interview was short, but Morton never forgot it. After bidding her good night some eight or ten times, he compelled himself to leave the house, mounted his horse, waved his hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached the entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards the window.

His heart was full to overflowing, and tears, not of sorrow, ran down his cheeks. "Good Heaven!" laughed Morton, as he brushed them away, "this has not happened to me before these twelve years." He waved a farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the avenue into the high road.

It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he pa.s.sed along, he heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and near, while the meadows, the orchards, and the borders of the woods sparkled with fireflies. With loosened rein, he suffered his horse to canter lightly forward, and gave himself up to the enchantment of his dreams. A thousand times in his after life did he recall the visions of that evening's ride.

About a mile before reaching the town, the road pa.s.sed, for a few rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding through the darkest of the shadow, a strange cry startled him--a shriek so wild and awful that the blood curdled in his veins, and his horse leaped aside with fright. There was a rustling among the branches over his head, a flapping and fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some great bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods.

Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great horned owl, rarely found in that part of the country, though he had once or twice before heard its midnight yells in the lonely forests of Maine.

The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with startling portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint of his reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and breathed a prayer for the welfare of his mistress.

CHAPTER XXIII.

L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine, Tiennent comme un forcat son esprit a la chaine.--_Boileau_.

n.o.body knew Vinal but Vinal himself. _Know thyself_ was his favorite maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered himself, with a rigorous and unsparing logic, applying the dissecting knife and microscope to the secrets of his mind, probing, testing, studying, pitilessly ripping up all that would fain hide itself. The aim of all this scrutiny was, thoroughly to comprehend the machine, in order to direct and perfect it to its highest efficiency.