University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.

With a head full of such fantastic notions, it is
hardly surprising that the distant prospect of an old-fashioned
wedding—all the aunts and uncles and fifteenth
cousins duly invited—a great evening party,
and then a stiff setting-up for company—had not many
charms for our heroine, and that Everard, almost
equally romantic, and éperdument amoureux, should
have learned to think with his pretty wilful cousin in
this as in all other particulars.

He did not at all relish Cora's living so much in these
home-made worlds of hers. He sometimes questioned
her pretty closely as to particulars, and, I regret to
say, was often more jealous than he cared to own, of
certain cavaliers who played conspicuous parts in
Cora's dramas. She declared they all meant Everard,
but he thought some of them but poor likenesses.

He found her one day crying her pretty eyes red,

over one of Barry Cornwall's Dramatic Scenes, sweet
and touching enough for any body to cry over. It ran
thus:—
And he took it quite hard of her to weep over a handsome
boy, who was not a bit like him. Cora declared
he was, and they made quite a pretty quarrel of it.

It must come out at last—I have put it off as long as
I decently could, and I am sorry to be obliged to tell
it—but this silly young couple in their dreamy folly,
concluded that since all the papas and mammas were
quite willing they should marry, it could be no great
harm if they took the how and the when into their own
hands, and carved out for themselves a home in the
wilderness, far from law-offices and evening parties,
plum-cake and white satin. Accordingly, on pretence
of dining with an aunt in town, the imprudent pair
were irrevocably joined by a certain reverend gentleman,
who used to be very accommodating in that way
and the very next evening set out clandestinely for
—, some hundreds of miles west of Albany.

Cora left, all in due form, a note of apology on her
dressing-table; placed whatever money and valuables
she possessed, in security about her person,—I believe

she did not take any particular heroine for a model in
these arrangements, but all;—and then prepared to
leave her father's house.

Unfortunately nobody was watching. There was no
possible excuse for jumping out of the window, but she
waited till all were in bed, and then unlocked a door
with much care, and let herself out. She felt a sort of
pang as she looked back at the house, but the flurry of
her spirits scarcely allowed her to be as sentimental as
the occasion demanded.

Everard, whose purse had just been replenished by
his father's bountiful half-yearly allowance, joined her
before she had reached the high-road. He was a shade
less thoughtless than his volatile companion, who had
been ever a spoiled child, and his heart felt portentously
heavy ere they had lost sight of their happy
homes.

It was a beautiful moonlight night, somewhere near
the middle of July, and a slight shower in the afternoon
had rendered the walking delightful. Cora was enchanted:
the hour, the scene, the excitement of her
romance-ridden brain, conspired to raise her spirits to
an extravagant pitch, and to make her forget all that
ought to have deterred her from the mad step she was
now taking. She only regretted that the whole journey
could not be performed on foot; and it was with
some difficulty that Everard convinced her of the impracticability
of this, her first and darling scheme. It
was to have been what my friend Mrs. — calls a
“predestinarian tower.” To be indebted to wheels
and boilers for transportation, detracted terribly from
the romance of the thing; but she was comforted by

the thought that it was only by travelling as rapidly as
possible, that they could hope to elude the search which
she doubted not would be immediately commenced, by
the astonished friends they had left behind.

Cora confessed herself a little weary when they
reached the little Dutch tavern where they were to
find the carriage which was to bear them to a landing
on the river. By some mistake, the carriage had not
yet arrived, and the hour which elapsed before it
came, was one of feverish anxiety to both. A dreary
unfurnished room, lighted by one forlorn little candle,
was rather too much for Cora's philosophy. She began
to feel terribly sleepy, and, if the truth must be told,
wished herself safely in bed at home.

But she would not have lisped such a thing for the
world; and to Everard's repeated inquiry, “My dearest
Cora, what has become of all your charming spirits?
Do you repent already?”—almost hoping she
would say, yes,—she still replied,

“No, indeed! Do you think I have so little resolution!”

And she silenced the loud whispers of her better
feelings, aided as they were by this temporary depression
of spirits, by the consideration that it was now too
late to recede; since, although she had found it easy to
quit her father's house unnoticed, to re-enter it in
the same manner would now be impossible, and to return
in the morning was not to be thought of.

The rapid motion of the carriage, and the refreshing
air of approaching morning, revived her flagging energies;
and they had not proceeded many miles before
her fancy had drawn for her one of its brightest pictures,

and this soon after subsided into a most fantastically
charming dream. In short, she fell asleep, and
slept till day-break. At sunrise they found themselves
at the landing, and, in the course of half an hour, on
board the steamer.

The morning was express. No lovelier sunshine
ever encouraged a naughty girl in her naughtiness. A
cold rain would have sent her back probably, wilted
and humble enough, but this enchanting morning was
but too propitious. Cora felt her little heart dilate
with pleasure as the boat shot through the foaming
waters, and the bugles a wakened the mountain echoes.
She kept her green silk veil closely drawn, until she
had ascertained that all on board were strangers to
her; and Everard, who could not adopt the same
means of masking his Apollo front, was much relieved
at making the same discovery.

A few hours brought them to Albany, and here Everard
would gladly have remained a few days; but
there was now an anxious restlessness in Cora's heart,
which sought relief in rapid motion; and she entreated
him to proceed immediately. So he disposed of his
watch—for who needs a time-piece in the woods, where
there is nothing to do but watch the shadows all day?
—and, with much reluctance, of a ring of Cora's; a
rich diamond, a splendid birth-day gift from the grandmother
who had done Cora the favour to spoil her by
every possible indulgence. The jeweller, who, fortunately
for the headlong pair, proved very honest as
times go, agreed to receive these articles only in pledge,
on being allowed what he called moderate interest for
one year, the time he engaged to retain them.

To our wise lovers the sum now in their possession
seemed inexhaustible. All difficulties seemed at an
end, and they set out with all sails filled by this happy
raising of the wind. 'T is, after all, a humiliating
truth that

To wander over the woody hills all the morning with
—the poet or the novelist whom the reader loves best;
to watch the sailing clouds till the sultry noon is
past, then linger by the shadowy lake till its bosom
begins to purple with day's dying tints, while it fills
the soul with dreamy happiness, only makes the unsympathizing
body prodigiously hungry; and then to
go home, wondering what on earth we can have for
dinner, strikes me as a specimen of pungent bathos.
But to return.

Cora's desire to perform certain parts of the westward
journey on foot, Everard himself bearing the two
small valises which now enveloped all their earthly
havings;—“some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone;”—this
wish had yielded to that feverish haste,
that secret desire to fly from her own pursuing thoughts,
to which I have before alluded. So they travelled like
common people.

At Utica, Everard purchased a few books; for Cora
had not been able to crowd into her travelling basket
more than two mignon volumes of her darling Metastasio;
and to live in a wilderness without books, was
not to be thought of. Robinson Crusoe would have
been the most rational purchase, but I dare say he did
not buy that. Perhaps Atala, perhaps Gertrude of

Wyoming, perhaps—but these are only conjectures.
For my own part, I should have recommended Buchan's
Domestic Medicine, the Frugal Housewife, the Whole
Duty of Man, and the Almanac for 18—. But, counselled
only by their own fantasies, these sober friends
were, I doubt, omitted, in favour of some novels and
poetry-books, idle gear at best.

With this reinforcement of “the stuff that dreams
are made of,” they proceeded; and, after some two or
three days' travel, found themselves in a small village,
in the south-western part of New-York. Here Cora
was content to rest awhile; and Everard employed
the time in sundry excursions for the purpose of reconnoitring
the face of the country; wishing to ascertain
whether it was rocky, and glenny, and streamy enough
to suit Cora, whose soul disdained any thing like a level
or a clearing.

Ere long he found a spot, so wild and mountainous
and woody, as to be considered entirely impracticable
by any common-sense settler; so that it seemed just
the very place for a forest-home for a pair who had set
out to live on other people's thoughts. Cora was so
charmed with Everard's description of it, and—whispered
be it—so tired of living at the—Hotel, that
she would not hear of going first to look and judge for
herself, but insisted on removing at once, and finding a
place to live in afterwards.