Vassall Morton Part 55

CHAPTER LXXII.

Adventure and endurance and emprise Exalted his mind's faculties, and strung His body's sinews.--_Bryant_.

On a rock, at the end of the promontory which forms the harbor of Beyrout, stood Va.s.sall Morton; and at his side his friend Buckland, whom he had met in New York just after his return from Austria. They had encountered again in the East Indies, and had made together a long and varied journey, not without hards.h.i.+p and danger, among the tribes of Upper India and Central Asia. Buckland was greatly changed. His look and bearing betokened recovered health and spirit; while his companion, in the fulness of masculine vigor, was swarthy as an Arab with the long burning of the Eastern sun.

"Our travels are over, Buckland. We have nothing to do, now, but to get on board s.h.i.+p, and lie still for a few weeks, and we shall be at home again. I hardly know why it is that I wish so much to shorten the s.p.a.ce, unless from a cat-like propensity to haunt old places."

"And to see your friends again."

"Yes, that is something--a good deal. I have friends enough, unless they have died since I last heard from them. But for household G.o.ds, I have none; or, rather, my ancestral Lares have no better abode than an old clapboarded parsonage in an up-country Yankee village. You are much more fortunate in that respect. You go home again, besides, a new man, rejuvenated in mind and body."

"Thanks to you for that. I was a wreck till you set me afloat and refitted me."

"I gave you a shove off sh.o.r.e; but the refitting came afterwards, and was no doing of mine. I should hardly know you for the same man."

"That infatuation seems to me like a dream, as I remember you prophesied on the evening when we sat together on the Battery."

"Half of a woman's weakness springs from the sensitiveness of her bodily organization; and three fourths of your infatuation may be laid to the same account. One may say that, without any tendency to flounder into materialism. You are a man again now; and even if you had not heard of your sorceress's death, you might go back, I think, without the least fear of her spells."

"I hope so; but I wish that, like you, I had some engrossing object to return to."

"I wish that, like you, I had a family, and a fixed home to return to.

My travels are finished, though. I have roamed the world enough. My objects are accomplished, as well as I could ever accomplish them. I have not wandered for nothing; and now I shall bend myself to make my journeyings bear what fruit I can. By the sun, and by my watch, it is time for the consul to have returned. Did not his servant say that he would come ash.o.r.e from the frigate at about six?"

"Yes."

"If he does not, I will get a boat and go to find him. He must have letters for one or the other of us."

"I will ride to the town, and see if he has come."

"Very well; I will wait for you here."

Their horses were near at hand, in the keeping of an Arab servant.

Buckland mounted his own, and rode off.

Morton seated himself on a jutting edge of the rock overhanging the bay, and gave himself up to his thoughts.

"Two years of wandering! Two years more, and I should grow like the man in Anastasius, never happy at rest, never content in motion. I have had my fill of adventure. I must learn repose before it is too late. Why is it that I look so longingly towards America? Except half a dozen near friends, I have no ties there that are worth the name.

America is the paradise of the laboring cla.s.s, the purgatory of those of educated tastes. What career is open to me there, that I could not better follow elsewhere? I have chosen my path. I have an object which fills and engrosses me, and would fill the lifetime of twenty men abler than I. America is not my best field of labor; but where else should I plant myself? I could not live in England. I am of English race, but of an altered type; too like, and too unlike, to find harmony there. The continent is more cosmopolitan; but it would be a dreary life. I should grow homesick, thinking of the old woods and rocks. I will go home, buckle to my work, and end my days where I began them.

"My life has been, in its small way, a varied one; very hard, at times, but perhaps none too much so. Blows are good for most men, and suffering, to the farthest limit of their endurance, what they most need. It is a child's part to complain under any fate; and what color of complaint have I, or any man sound in mind and body, and with the world free before him? And yet I turn girl-hearted when I think of that summer evening by the lake at Matherton. What is my fate to Edith Leslie's? How will a few years of suffering, with one deadening memory in their wake, compare with her life-long endurance? A woman's nature, it is said, will mould itself into conformity with her husband's. I will rather believe that Vinal's presence, instead of drawing her to itself, has repelled her upward into a higher atmosphere, and made her life as lofty as it must be sad. I wish to go back, and yet I shrink from this voyage. I have some cause, remembering my last welcome home.

Heaven knows what I may learn of her this time. It was her marriage then; perhaps it will be her death now. And which of the two will have been the worse either for me to hear or for her to undergo? Perhaps these letters may bring some word of her; though that is not likely, for none of my friends, but one, know that I should have any special interest in hearing it. If they write of her, it will be some news of disaster."

These dismal forebodings weighed upon him, and his desire to have them resolved soon grew so importunate, that mounting his horse, he followed Buckland's track towards the town. Threading the busy streets, he stopped before a door adorned with the effigy of a spread eagle wearing a striped s.h.i.+eld about his neck, and clutching thunderbolts and olive boughs in his claws. He threw the rein to his servant, mounted the consular stair, and at the head met Buckland emerging.

"Is the consul come?"

"Yes; and letters for you. I am sorry for you, if you mean to answer them all."

And he gave Morton a formidable packet. Morton cut the string.

"These are all six or eight months old. They are postmarked from Calcutta."

"Yes, they came after we had gone up the country, and were sent back to this place to meet you. Wait a moment; here are more. These two have just come from England."

Morton took them; recognized on one the handwriting of Meredith; on the other, that of his friend Mrs. Ashland. His heart leaped to his throat; he tore open the seal, and glanced down the page.

Buckland saw his agitation.

"No bad news, I trust."

"I had an enemy, and he is dead. You shall know more of it to-morrow."

And hastening from the house, he mounted again, and through the midst of mules, donkeys, dromedaries, men, children, and old women, rode at an unlawful speed towards his lodging.

Here, with a beating heart, he explored his profuse correspondence from beginning to end. By the Calcutta packet, he learned how his native town had been thrown into commotion by the exposure and flight of Vinal, and how his friends were eager and impatient to hear his explanation of the affair. The more recent letters bore tidings still more startling. The bark Swallow had touched at Gibraltar, and a letter from her captain to her owners, forwarded by the Oriental steamer on her return voyage, told how his pa.s.senger, John White, had been lost overboard during a gale, two of the crew having seen the accident; how, arriving at Gibraltar, his trunks had been opened in the consul's presence, to learn his address; and how, along with a large amount of money in gold, letters and papers had been found, showing that he was not John White, but Horace Vinal, of Boston.

On the next morning, Morton despatched a letter to Meredith. In it, he told his friend the whole course of his story; and these were the closing words:--

"One thing you may well believe--that, before you will have had this letter many days, I shall follow it. There will be no rest for me till I touch American soil. An old pa.s.sion, only half stifled under a load of hopelessness, springs into fresh life again, and burns, less brightly, perhaps, but I can almost believe, more deeply and fervently than ever. I was consoling myself yesterday with trying to think that blows were my mind's best medicine; but I feel now, that after being broken with the plough and harrow, it will yield the better for the summer suns.h.i.+ne. Yet I am afraid to flatter myself with too bright a prospect. Miss Leslie loved me, and the planets in their course are not more constant and unswerving; but I cannot tell what may have been the effect of so much suffering, or what determination, fatal to my hope, it may not have impelled her to embrace. She will soon know my mind. I have written to her, and begged her to send her reply to New York, where, if my reckoning does not fail, I shall arrive about the middle of June. By it I shall be able to judge to what fortune I am to look forward.

"You have so lately pa.s.sed your own anxieties, that you will easily appreciate mine. I can wish for them nothing more than that they may find as happy an issue; and I will take it as an earnest of the intentions of destiny towards me that it has just brought together my two best friends."

CHAPTER LXXIII.

Joy never feasts so high As when his first course is of misery.--_Suckling_.

Again the Jersey heights rose on the eye of Morton, and the woods and villas of Staten Island. Again the broad breast of New York harbor opened before him, sparkling in the June sun; the rugged front of the Castle, and the tapering spire of Trinity. He bethought him of his last return, and its unforgotten blackness threw its shadow across his mind. He turned, doubting and tremulous, towards the future; but here his horizon brightened as with the sunrise, shooting to the zenith its shafts of tranquil light.

Meanwhile, the telegraph had darted to Boston a notice that the approaching steamer had been signalled off the coast. Meredith took the night train to meet his friend; but, arriving, he learned that Morton was already on sh.o.r.e. Driving from one hotel to another, he found, at length, the latter's resting-place.

"Shall I take up your name, sir?"

"No, show me his room; I will go myself."

He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again, and a voice replied suddenly, like that of a man roused from a revery.

He entered; and at the next moment, Morton grasped his hand.