Tales of the Chesapeake Part 30

"'Luke,' said my mother, 'you need a companion.'

"The thought was a new one, and so thrilled me.

"'No, mother,' I replied; 'strong, healthy beings could not exist thus cloistered.'

"'For less than money,' she responded, 'they have done more.'

"'We should not agree,' I said; 'I would be peevish and he would despise me.'

"'Your companion must be a woman, my son.'

"A succession of short chills pa.s.sed through every nerve, and a moment's faintness possessed me.

"'It must not be,' I pleaded; 'a restless, chatting, plotting woman would be worse than all.'

"My mother marked my rising agitation and glided away.

"'Whatever can relieve you, dear Luke,' she said, 'your father shall obtain.'

"I now fancied that they believed me mad, and that a keeper was to be introduced to me, under the guise of a companion. I formed many mental portraits of this fierce person, and they kept me awake through the long watches. I even meditated escape, and unclosed my cas.e.m.e.nt with that design, but the sunlight, the bird songs, and the zephyrs rushed into my window and staggered me like so many sentinels. One day I slept fitfully, and dreamed that I was poor and orphaned, with the alternatives of death or work before me. I had wandered to a village and thrown myself beneath some elms, with a horrible despair sealing my eyelids. Suddenly the gra.s.s was stirred by some human footfalls, and two soft voices were speaking close beside me.

"'It is strange,' said the first voice; 'he is pale and delicate, but with no evidences of heavier afflictions.'

"'You do not know him,' murmured the other; 'wait and see!'

"A face bent down to mine, and the lips of a woman touched my cheek. I started in my sleep, caught my breath gaspingly, and quivered like an aspen.

"'This is indeed terrible,' said the soft voice compa.s.sionately; 'but do not despair. It cannot be nature. It must be habit, or bashfulness, or the effect of some childish and forgotten fright. Cheer up, and hope!"

"'Be kind to him, Heraine,' resumed the other; 'you are my last resort, and becoming his companion you become my child. Do not vex, do not excite him. Be yourself--always calm, gentle, and affectionate--and the kindness which you show my boy may G.o.d return to you in mercy and blessing!'

"I unclosed my eyes; the scene was resolved to my quiet library.

Something glided through the door, but a form from the other side flung a shadow across my face. A premonition of the keeper thrilled me a moment, but I turned slowly at length and looked into the intruder's face.

"A woman, or rather a girl with a woman's face, serene and placid, as if never ruffled by care or pa.s.sion, sat between me and the window, and the gloomy light softened her calm countenance. As I looked up her lashes fell, and her blue eyes were bent fixedly upon the floor. She seemed like one of my sedate portraits, which had come down from its case. She waited, apparently, for some sign of recognition, or until my surprise should have pa.s.sed away, and did not move while I ran her over with keen curiosity. She was, probably, of my own age, though her self-possession might have stamped her as much older; but the bloom of her cheek and her bosom just ripening were indices of a girl's year's.

She raised her eyes at length and bade me good afternoon in a voice which reminded me of the faintest lullaby. The quiet tone was seconded by an a.s.suring glance, and directly we were conversing without restraint, as if friends of years rather than acquaintances of an hour.

"Heraine was the impersonation of composure. The neutral tint of dress corresponded with the smooth tresses of her brown hair. Her touch was magnetic, and petulancy vanished at her smile as at a charm. Her intelligence was, doubtless, the secret of her power. She divined my moods without inquiry, and cheered them without effort. She led me out of the unhealthy atmosphere engendered by my sensitiveness, and I sometimes forgot my disability for hours. She was as good as she was capable, and as amiable as she was resolute. We fraternized immediately, and I felt all the newness of a regenerated life. My temperament was fitful as of yore, but the gloomy spectres vanished; and my attention being weaned from the slighter occurrences of nature, I was no longer racked by their tremors and jars. The soft face of Heraine seemed to hush all chaos, and when she smiled I thought that the very earth had ceased to roll. When her large liquid eyes were fully opened upon me, I seemed to be looking into the hungry blue of the sky, and carried aloft by the look beyond the influence of matter. For the moment my nerves grew numb, the compa.s.s of my senses narrowed to her wondrous face, and the fetters which bound me to it were forged of gold.

"The months went by like the stars, which wheel eternally, but seem motionless as we watch them. Sometimes we read aloud, but our voices were low and lulling, as if quieter than silence. Then we talked of my calm paintings, shadowing deeper lonelinesses in them. But it was my highest rapture to sit in stillness for hours while Heraine, cus.h.i.+oned at my feet, made cunning embroideries, like some facile poet whose fingers were dropping rhymes.

"I remarked that our conversations were progressive. My companion led me gradually into forbidden themes, as if to strengthen and embolden me. We went forth, in fancy, from our shadowy chamber, through deep groves, into twilights, beneath soft skies, even into the glare of the sun, and, at last, among the storms and the seas. I may have quivered, but I was not shocked; for the wrack and roar of the universe were drowned in the quietness of her voice. Then we walked abroad a little way, and, though pained, I endured; for she did not abuse these successes. She had travelled in far countries, and often read me friendly letters which attested how well the world esteemed her.

Sometimes her acquaintances came to the house, but never to my room; and once or twice she was absent a whole day, when my nervousness returned. There was one correspondent whose missives were never read to me--a fine, bold hand, which at length became familiar. Their receipt pleased her, I thought, and once I ventured to say,

"'Heraine, you have a pleasant letter there.'

"She only blushed very much, and all her quietness was gone for a moment.

"As the months expanded into years, a new feeling engendered from our intimacy. I did not comprehend it at first. It crept upon me like the unfolding of a new sense, or the gradual realizing of the earliest profound thought. An unexpected event gave it recognition.

"The boldly-indorsed letters came twice a month at first, afterward four times, and finally twice, thrice, and even five times a week.

Heraine was quick and flushed. She pa.s.sed but two or three hours daily in my apartment, and subst.i.tuted for the embroidery a dress of such bright hues that it dazzled my eyes. One day she took her accustomed seat, with a face subdued to sadness and an irresolute manner.

"'Luke,' she said, after a long pause, 'we have pa.s.sed many days pleasantly together?'

"She did not wait for me to speak, though I thrilled and turned deadly white.

"'And because so pleasantly, I contemplate my farewell with regret.'

"'Your farewell, Heraine?'

"'Yes,' she said firmly; 'to-day--this afternoon--this hour--I bid adieu to Glengoyle!'

"I fell forward in my seat, forcing down my heart, which sobbed and swelled, and the whole world rang, flared, and burst into violence. If the seas had opened their fountains and the crust of the globe crushed up, there would have been no greater chaos. But in my faintness and agony I caught the blue eye which had soothed and melted me so often, and, clasping my hands, I fell at her knees and said,

"'Heraine, I love you!'

"It was her time to tremble now, and I interpreted the pallor of her cheek as a signal of hope.

"'I know that I love you,' I said; 'if the earth and the stars were to be blotted out, and you remain, I should not miss them. You are my universe. Without you there is no creation, and the elements are at war. If you leave me, you have left only a bright s.p.a.ce in a wretched eternity. No voice but yours can say "peace" to me. Be merciful and remain!'

"She was moved with my appeal, and tears came to her eyes.

"'I did not know that it had come to this,' she said. Then her composure returned, and she raised me with a smile.

"'If you would win any woman,' she said meaningly, 'you must first be a man. You are not a man, Luke. You are a child! You have shut the sunlight from you, and the trill of a thrush pierces you like an arrow. Would you cage your wife in the gloominess of this sepulchre?

Would you hush her songs, and tremble beneath her caresses, and die in the delights of her love? Go! Open the window of this vault! Mingle with the crowds of cities! Ascend into the mountains! Cross the seas!

Become worthy of my affection, and then entreat me again!'

"She had shown me the abject thing I was. Her conditions were harder than death; but the hope she had spoken was like a glimpse of Heaven, and I answered,

"'Heraine, I will do it!'

"In a month I set out for my travels. An easy coach conveyed me to London, and the third day I lay sick in Paris. Sore of body and brain, strained in nerve and stunned in sense, I persisted in my resolve, and was whirled, more dead than alive, across the Continent to Berlin. In the period of three months I had traversed all the leading kingdoms and pushed my purpose to the sandy banks of the Nile. Every moment in this journey was an infinity of torture; but in the bitterest pangs I remembered the divine consummation, and kept on. My infirmities were increased rather than diminished. In the deepest thunder I could hear the delving of the beetle; and though the whole vault blazed with electric light, I could see the twinkle of the glow-worm. But among the mult.i.tude of noises which haunted me, the most persistent were the footfalls of men. There were pauses in the lives of all other beings.

The weasel and the hyena rested sometimes, and I could avoid their haunts, but men were forever alert and ubiquitous. I heard them in abysses, upon peaks, and in wildernesses. They trod upon my nerves; they crushed sleep from my soul. I closed my ears in vain; I fled without refuge; I prayed without avail. The patter of little children, the footfall of the maiden, the elastic pace of the youth, the racking limp of the cripple, the veteran hobbling upon his wooden stump, the confused tread of crowds, the steady tramp of soldiers--these tortured me by daylight, and I kept penance at midnight with the going of outcasts and vagrants.

"I learned to cla.s.sify these footfalls. My sensations of them were so keen that my memory retained them. I recognized individuals, not by their faces but by their feet. A solitary tourist met me among the ruins of Luxor; I knew his tread, though months had elapsed, among the thousands on London Bridge. A gypsy family, whom I pa.s.sed on the Spanish sierras, went under my window in Paris, and I missed the feet of the lad who had been hanged. Ten thieves were marched to the pillory in Kiev; I counted the paces of the four who escaped, from a closed diligence on the Simplon. I lost not one among the millions of footfalls. But there were two which I distinguished every where. When I pursued, they retreated; when I fled, they followed me. They were like two echoes in different keys; and one of them I loved, the other I hated. The first was soft, tinkling, harmonious, like a memory rather than a sound; the other was firm, vigorous, and vehement, and it kept time with the soft footstep, as if to drown it to my ears.

When I was f.a.gged and wretched, the light footfall approached me; but when, inspirited, I rose to behold its owner, it died away in the thunder of its companion tread.

"At last I embarked for America, and when the land disappeared I said to myself, 'At sea, at least, no footfalls can follow.' But one night, when the clangor of the screw drove me upon deck, I heard, far astern, through the deep fog, the sound of two haunting feet. Next morning a swifter steamer overtook us. The waves revelled between, and the winds were high, but above the bellow of our engines and the elements, those thrilling footfalls rang out. I caught a glimpse of a familiar something, as the rival craft went by, and reeled and fell upon the deck.

"I found New York the noisiest city in the world, and felt that a week's tenure would drive me mad. A fire occurred in Broadway the night of my arrival, and the din of the mobs which ran to its relief was greater than all the combined clamors of Europe. So I resorted to a beautiful village called Wyoming, in the heart of the Susquehanna mountains, and pa.s.sed the month of September in comparative quiet. If any place in the world is shut in from brawls and storms, it is this historic valley. Its reminiscences were sad and painful to me, but its scenes were like soft dreams.

"During a part of my tenure in the village I missed my shadowy attendants; but when, one day, I ascended to Prospect Rock, I heard amid the hum of farms and mines and mills, those same audible repet.i.tions floating up the sides of the mountain. The valley grew dim upon my sight, and I hastened nervously to my cottage. Thenceforward I seldom lost them. When I penetrated the wild glen of the Lackawanna, or climbed the Umbrella Tree, or ventured into the Wolf's Den, or sat upon Queen Esther's Rock, or sailed upon Harvey's Lake, they followed me, the one lulling, the other maddening--invisible but omnipresent types of the good and the evil which forever hover in the air.

"One day I ventured to Falling Waters, a reservoir which is precipitated from a cliff, called Campbell's Ridge, into a gorge of the Shawnee Mountains. The deafening roar of the cataract would be almost deathly to me; but, strengthened by the promise of Heraine, I determined to add this achievement to the long list of inflictions endured for her sake.

"I made the ascent on foot, and could see, from the base of the ridge, the skein of foam s.h.i.+ning through the pines in its everlasting flight down the rocks. I became accustomed to the sound as I gradually approached, and mused, with gladness, of an early return to England.

Heraine would acknowledge my vindication. Suffering more anguish from a sunbeam or a song than others from the knout or the rack, I had yet run the gauntlet of the intensest horrors, cheered by the certainty of her regard. She would confess her error. We should shut out the world again from our shadowy home at Glengoyle, and go down together, hand in hand, to a deeper stillness. As I mused thus I heard the haunting footfalls again, going up the mountain before me. To my delight, their attendant demon was inaudible, and I pursued them rapturously. The rush of waters grew louder. They had moaned before; they shrieked and screamed now, as if in the agony of their suicidal leap. But, clear and musical, above the h.e.l.l of sound rang the tinkling feet which had led me around the globe.