7. CHAPTER SEVENTH.
THE BROKEN BUT NOT DIVIDED COIN.
“But come, Reginald—the sun is declining toward the western horizon—
I must go home.”
Paul uttered the italicized words with an accent of profound sadness.
“My way lies in this direction:” he pointed to the north-west—“Beyond
those woods I shall soon learn the secret of my fate. Father—
Catharine—”
“And mine in this,”—Reginald pointed to the south-west—“within an
hour I hope to behold my lady-love.”
The color came to his cheek, and there was a joyous smile on the
face of the handsome soldier.
“Imagine the face of my dear father, when he hears that his dutiful son
and the Baronet's daughter, separated from each other in the woods of
Yorkshire, have met in the wilderness of Wissahikon. Ha! ha! his face
will present a picture in which indignation and laughter struggle for the
mastery.”
He raised his rifle, and placed the cap upon his chestnut curls.
“You will not marry this lady without your father's consent?”
“I'faith, you are altogether too sober, brother Paul! Wandering amid
these delicious solitudes together, we will leave `marriage'—`settlements,'
et cetera, to the old folks. It is an awkward word, that `marriage.' I never
yet could think of it while watching my own image in the eyes of a beautiful
girl.”
“But, Reginald, you would not think of committing a wrong—” There
was a profound sadness in the countenance of Paul.
“While sitting beside a lovely woman, I would not like to think of any
thing but her—even if I could. Do not talk of `thinking' in such a case,
friend Paul. What matters all our thoughts—are we not driven onward
by a power that we cannot see, and certainly do not comprehend? Observe
that flower, floating on the bosom of the stream—look how smoothly it
glides onward. Can you foretel the fate of that flower, Paul? Whether
it will lodge on the right bank or the left, or be drowned in the waterfall
below? Or whether it will be `fished out' of the stream by some truant
school-boy, armed with a stick, with a yard of thread and a pin-hook at the
end?”
The quiet dell echoed with the somewhat boisterous laughter of the
young soldier.
Paul turned upon him with a stare of wonder.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Reginald—“You with all your thought cannot
change the course of that flower. Nor can the flower itself alter its course
one tittle. Paul, our life is precisely like the flower—we drop from another
world, perchance from some branch of an immortal tree—the stream
that bears us is called Fate, Destiny, Providence. If it leaves us on the
right bank, we wither; if on the left, we die; or if it carries us over the
falls, we are lost. Even should we escape the right bank and the left,
and ride safely through the whirlpool, here comes some truant Chance, and
`fishes us up' with something full as ridiculous as a stick, a yard of thread
and a pin-hook.”
Paul looked upon the glowing face of Reginald—marked his athletic
form—his lip curling in a smile—his cheek flushed with vigorous physical
beauty—and uttered a sigh.
It was a moment ere he answered him.
“It is one thing, Reginald, to plunge madly into wrong, and call it Fate,
and it is another thing to feel ourselves every hour whirled by an invisible
hand toward some horrible crime—whirled onward, despite all your struggles,
your prayers, your tears. That indeed is Destiny—Fate—”
“But she is so very beautiful, Paul—lips that pout with passion; eyes
that fire your blood; wavy hair, that makes your fingers mad to clasp it; a
step that at once glides over and spurns the earth; cheeks whose clear
brown is ripened by a rose-bud flush.—Ah! Paul, Youth and Love mixed
in one cup make such a bewitching draught, that one cannot help but
drink it!”
“Reginald,” said a voice, that seemed wrung from the very heart—
“You could not, on any pretence, do wrong to this girl, who has trusted
in you?”
As he spoke, Paul stood with folded arms, his melancholy face invested
with a wild spiritual grandeur. Reginald, glowing before him, with flushed
cheeks, shadowed by chesnut curls, presented a striking ideal of physical
beauty.
“Do wrong to her—ha, ha! I don't think of it! You tell me that you
have seen the world, and yet talk so gravely about an affair of this kind?
I love her, Paul, would die for her, but—”
The sentence was broken by an ejaculation from the lips of Paul.
Had it been completed, the entire thread of this history would have been
changed.
“But”—I cannot wait for marriage, he would have said, when the
exclamation broke the sentence.
“She is beautiful?” cried Paul—“Her name?”
A strange name, Paul—altogether picturesque and romantic. `Leola!”'
“`Leola!'—It is like music heard at dead of night, over the waters of a
still lake. I never called her by name—” he added, with a sigh.
“When will we meet again?” exclaimed Reginald, as he stood with
rifle on his shoulder, ready to depart.
“In the depth of the woods, near the point where the Wissahikon
empties in the Schuylkill, there stood, some time ago, a colossal tree, its
trunk like a column of some pagan temple, its wide-branching limbs leafless
and withered. It stood desolate and alone, amid the glad summer trees,
a sad image of Aged Despair, glaring in the face of Youthful Hope. It
stood near a rock, imprinted with the mark of a human foot beside a cloven
hoof—and stood where the setting sun always shed its last and kindliest
glow. We will meet there at sunset, Reginald. You will tell me of
your love—”
“And you will tell me how you went home, and was welcomed by your
father's blessing and your sister's kiss.”
Paul turned his face away; Reginald saw his form agitated, but could
not look upon the expression of his countenance.
“Father—Sister—” these words were audible amid the muttered ejaculations
which came from the lips of Paul.
“At sunset, under the blasted pine,” he said, raising his face, and abruptly
turned away, his mantle floating from his shoulder, and his plume rising
between the eye of Reginald and the sun.
But as suddenly turning again, he placed his hand within his breast,
and drew forth a broken coin, attached to a chain of delicately worked steel.
“You remember this, Reginald?”
At once, Reginald dashed his rifle to the ground, and placing his hand
within his hunting-shirt and red uniform, drew forth a similar fragment,
attached also to a chain of fine steel.
“I have always worn it since that hour!”
These fragments were the separate halves of a silver shilling, stamped
with the image of George the Second, and bearing date 1732. The half
which Paul held in the light, bore the figures 17; while on Reginald's
fragment the figures 32 were distinctly seen.
“You remember the night, Reginald, when we broke this coin, in the
woods of Lyndulfe, and swore to be as brothers to each other, until
death?”
“I have never forgotten it, Paul—”
“In case one of us should, at any time, be placed in a position of extremity,
he should send to the other his fragment of coin—”
“And the one who received this coin, should hasten to his brother's aid,
in face of all dangers, regardless of all other ties or obligations. I remember
it, Paul!”
“Join hands with me, Reginald, and let us in the sight of God renew
our pledge of Brotherhood.”
“`We will be true to each other, and on no extremity nor danger desert
each other, but cherish for ever the solemn symbol of the broken, but not
divided coin,—broken, but not divided, for its separate pieces are moved
by two hearts joined in one, by the holy tie of Brotherhood.”'
“Brother Paul!”
“Brother Reginald?”
Their hands were clasped; their eyes, centred on each other's faces,
were moistened with tears. In this dark world there are many horrible
realities, but it seems to me, that the friendship—the Brotherhood—of two
true-hearted men, is among those things which make the angels less sorrowful
for the crimes of earth, and even wake the cold malice of a devil's
soul into something akin to love.
“At sunset, under the blasted pine!” cried Paul, as he turned away.
Reginald gazed after him, as he threaded his way among the rocks on
the western bank of the stream. He saw him winding near the waterside,
his form half-hidden by the thickly clustered bushes, while the sunlight
shone only upon his hair, surmounted by the dark cap and the slender
plume.
“There goes as noble a heart as ever throbbed, and some sorrow that I
cannot comprehend, crushes him to the earth!”
At this moment Paul appeared in sight again, standing upon a rock,
some distance up the stream, which received the warm sunshine on its
breast. His face, thrown in strong profile, stood out from the shadows of
the distant woods, and glowed in vivid light. His arms were outspread;
he seemed absorbed in some thought of voiceless prayer.
`He is praying that he may behold his father's white hairs, and be
welcomed by a sister's kiss,” muttered Reginald—“Ah! He descends
from the rock,—he stands upon the fallen tree, which reaches from shore
to shore—with his eyes turned unceasingly to the north-west, he crosses
the stream. * * * He is lost in the shadows of the woods, and I am alone.”
The sun was sinking in the west, and the shadows came thicker over
the dell. There are nooks beside the Wissahikon, where noonday is as
twilight, and evening wears the darkness of midnight. This dell, opening
suddenly upon the stream, as from a cleft in the forest, with a wall of
leaves on either hand, was full of cheerful light at the midday hour, but
no sooner did the day begin to decline, than it was rendered sad and
gloomy by a twilight shadow. True, there was a joy in its very sadness,
a holy calm in its very gloom, but as Reginald glanced around him, he felt
the quiet, the shadow of the place, impress every sense with a feeling
of awe.
“I am alone,” he murmured, gazing now at a wandering burst of sun
shine, now upon the waveless stream, brooding under a veil of shadow—
“Alone!”
That word startled the silence with a strange echo. Alone with his
own soul, alone with the memory that pointed terribly to the Past, with
the hope that trembled amid its gladness, as it looked to the future.
There was a chaos of thoughts crowding over the brain of the gallant
soldier.
As if in the attempt to banish thought, he began to hum a merry air,
which he had heard at some boisterous festival of the camp; but it came
faintly from his lips, and suddenly died away without an echo.
He beheld the dove that had been killed by his shot; it lay near his
feet, with its head resting between the folded wings, and the red stain upon
its bosom. The young man raised it, pressed its plumage gently, and
murmured a single word—
“Madeline!”
Then the Last Night rushed upon his memory in vivid and distinct
details. He saw the white form kneeling in the lonely chamber, he heard
the voice pleading for mercy, in the name of God—he bared the young
breast, and fell back affrighted and cold before a fatal Revelation. Thus
all the scenes of that fearful night came crowding upon him at once, until
he was affrighted and cold again.
“Would to God I had never entered the confines of this valley! Well
do I remember the phantom that warned me back—it is before me now—
I cannot banish its words from my ears. How carelessly I came to the
farm-house on that night—the cup was drugged—the outrage planned—
but, like a madman chased by the frenzies of his own brain, I fled from the
house and from the Wissahikon in the daybreak hour. Madeline! Madeline!”
It was his Dark Hour.
His changing color and wandering eye, and brow damp with moisture,
all betrayed the force of his emotion.
“I have not seen the Merchant who was entrusted by my father with
this secret, since I left Philadelphia. Has he obtained any clue to the
mystery? Does Madeline live? I dare not question the people of the
valley—they might recognise me, and suspect me of the murder. Better
that suspicion, ay, much better the guilt of murder itself, than—”
His voice died away in a murmur; his face, so fascinating in its manly
beauty, was terribly agitated.
“Leola!” he exclaimed, and the cloud passed from his brow.
