University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

The ending and beginning I had seen—the
whole of this catastrophe. We buried the poor
maiden in a grove near her dwelling in which her
feet had often rambled with him whose grave
should have been beside her. There was nothing
more for me to do—there was no reason why I
should linger in Marengo; and I resolved once more
to leave it. As yet, my error remained uncorrected
in regard to Mary Easterby. I still deemed her the
affianced wife of John Hurdis; and—sometimes wondering
why he came not with her to the dwelling
of Katharine Walker, and sometimes doubting their
alliance from little signs and circumstances, which
now and then occurred to my observation,—I was
still impressed with the conviction that there was
no more hope for me. I escorted her home after
the burial of Katharine, and sad and sweet was our

conference by the way. We rode together, side by
side on horseback, and we soon left the animals to
their own motion which was gratefully sluggish to
me. I will not say whether I thought it so to her,
but, at least, she gave no symptoms of impatience,
nor made any effort to accelerate the movements of
her steed. It will not, perhaps, be assuming too
much, to suppose that, in some large respects, our
thoughts and feelings ran together in satisfied companionship.
We were both deeply affected and
subdued by the cruel events to which we had been
witnesses. There was a dreadful warning to hope,
and love, and youth, in the sad history which has
been written, and which we were forced to read in
every stage of its performance. Never could morality
teach more terribly to youth its own uncertainties,
and the mutations hanging around that deity
whose altar of love it is most apt to seek in worship.
How evanescent to our eyes seemed then all
our images of delight. The sunlight, which was
bright and beautiful around us—making a “bridal
of earth and sky,”—we looked upon with doubt and
apprehension as a delusion which must only woo to
vanish. We spoke together of these things; and
what, it may be asked, was the conclusion of all
this sombrous reflection? Did it make either of us
forswear the world and hope? Did it make either
of us more doubtful and desponding than before?
No! Its effects were softening and subduing, not
overthrowing—not destructive of any of those altars,
to which love brings wreaths that wither, and
offers vows that are rejected or forgotten. We lost
not one hope or dream of youth. We gave freedom
to none of our anticipations. Even the lessons taught
us by the death of those who, loving in life so fondly,
in death were not divided, were lessons of love.
The odour of the sacrifice made amends for the consumption
by fire of the rich offerings which were
upon the altar; and love lost none of his loveliness
either in her eyes or mine, because, in this instance,
as in a thousand others, it had failed to rescue its votaries
from the grasp of a more certain, if not a
greater power. The lesson which was taught us by
the fate of Katharine Walker, made us esteem still
more highly the sacred influence, which could consecrate
so sweet and pure a spirit to immortality,
and lead it, without struggle or reluctance, into the
brazen jaws of death. What a triumph to youth,
to fancy, to reflection, was the thought which portrayed
a power so wonderful—so valuable to those
who more than love already.

“I will see you before I leave Marengo, Mary,”
was my promise on leaving her that evening.

“What! you mean to leave us, again, Richard?”
was her involuntary and very earnest demand.—
“Oh, do not, Richard—wherefore would you go?

Why would you encounter such cruel risks as befell
poor William? Stay with us—leave us not again.”

With an utterance and movement, equally involuntary,
I took her hand and replied,

“And would you have me stay, Mary? Wherefore?
What reward can you give—what is there
now in your power to give that could bribe me to
compliance?”

I paused just at the time when I should have spoken
freely. To what I had said, she could make
no answer; yet she had her answer ready to what I
might have said. But I said nothing, and she made
no reply. Yet, could I have seen it!—had I not been
still the blind and besotted slave and victim to my
own jaundicing and jealous apprehensions, the blush
upon her cheek, the tremor upon her lip, the downcast
and shaded eye, the faltering accent—all these
would have conveyed an answer, which might have
made me happy then. And yet these persuasive
signs did not utterly escape my sight. I felt them,
and wondered at them—and was almost tempted, in
the new warmth of heart which they brought me,
to declare my affections, but for the thought that it
would be unseemly to do so, at a moment when we
had just left the chamber of death, and beheld the
last gleam of life pass from the eyes of loveliness
and youth. Fool that I was, as if love did not plant
his roses even on the grave of his worshipper, and

find his most flourishing soil in the heart of the
beloved one.

That night my mother drew me aside, and asked
me with some significance, what had passed between
Mary and myself.

“Nothing.”

“What! have you not spoken?”

“Of what?”

“Of your love!—”

“No! Why should you think it, mother? What
reason? Is she not engaged to John—is that matter
broken off?”

“I think it is—he has not been to see her for a
week.”

“Indeed!”

“And have you not seen, my son, how sad she
looks—she has looked so ever since you went
away.”

“That may be only because he has not been to
see her, mother; or it may be because of the affliction
which she has been compelled to witness.”

“Well, Richard, I won't say that it is not, and
yet, my son, I'm somehow inclined to think that
you could have her for the asking.”

“Do you think so, mother, and yet—even if it
were so, mother, I would not ask. The woman who
has once accepted the hand of John Hurdis, though
she afterwards rejects him, is not the woman for me.”

“But, Richard, I'm not so sure now that she ever
did accept him. There was that poor woman, Mrs.
Pickett, only a few days ago came here, and she
took particular pains to let me know that Mary and
John were never half so near together, to use her
own words, as Mary and yourself.”

“How could she know any thing about it,” was
my reply.

“Well, I don't know; but I can tell you, she's a
very knowing woman—”

“She would scarcely be the confidant of Mary,
nevertheless.”

“But you will see Mary, Richard—you will try.”

“If I thought, mother, that she and John had
never been engaged—if I knew that. But I will
see her.”

The promise satisfied both my mother and myself
for the time; and I now gave myself up to
reflection in solitude, as a new task had been
forced upon me, by the circumstances of the few
past days. I had suffered more in mind from
beholding the misery and madness of Katharine
Walker, than it would be manly to avow; and there
was one portion of this tragedy which more than
any other, impressed itself upon me. I was haunted
by the continual presence of the lovely maniac,
as she appeared at the moment when she denounced
me as deserting my friend, exposing, and leaving

him to peril, and finally suffering his murder to go
unavenged. The more I thought upon this last passage
of her angry speech, the more impressively
did it take the shape of a moral requisition. I strove
seriously to examine it as a question of duty, whether
I was bound to go upon this errand of retribution
or not, and the answers of my mind were invariably
and inevitably the same. Shall the murderer
go unpunished—shall so heinous a crime remain
unavenged? Are there no claims of friendship—of
manhood upon you? The blood of the innocent
calls upon you. The indignities which you yourself
have undergone—these call upon you. But a
louder call upon you than all, is the demand of society.
She calls upon you to ferret out these lurkers
upon the highway—to bring them to justice that
the innocent traveller may not be shot down from
the thicket, in the sunshine, in the warm morning of
youth, and hope, and confidence. True—the laws of
man do not summon you forth on this mission; but
is there no stronger voice in your heart inciting
you to the sacred work? The brave man waits not
for his country's summons to take the field against
the foreign enemy—shall he need her call when
his friend is slain almost by his side; and when
sworn foes to friendship, and truth, and love, and all
the social virtues, lurk in bands around their several
homes to prey upon them as they unconsciously
come forth? Can you doubt that it is your duty to
seek and exterminate these wretches? You say that
is the duty of others no less than of yourself; but
does the neglect of others to perform their duties,
render yours unnecessary or release you? On the
contrary, does it not make it more incumbent upon
you to do more than would be your duty under
other circumstances, and to supply, as much as lies
in your power, their deficiencies? Such was the
reasoning of my own mind on this subject; and it
forced conviction upon me. In the woods where I
had meditated the matter, I made my vow to the
avenging deities.

“I will seek the murderers, so help me heaven!
I will suffer not one of them to escape, if it be
within the scope of my capacity and arm, to bring
them to justice.” And, even upon the ground where
I had made this resolution, I kneeled and prayed
for the requisite strength and encouragement from
heaven in the execution of my desperate vow.

This resolution induced another, and endued me
with a courage which before I had not felt. Conceiving
myself a destined man, I overleapt, at a moment,
all the little boundaries of false delicacy, morbid
sensibility, and mere custom, which before, had,
perhaps, somewhat taken from my natural hue of
resolution—and the next day I rode over to the house
of Mary Easterby. A complete change by this

time had taken place in my feelings in one respect.
I was no longer apprehensive of what I said in
speaking to Mary. I now proceeded as if in compliance
with a prescribed law; and asking her to
walk with me, I led her directly to the favorite
walk which, in our childhood, our own feet chiefly
had beaten out in the forests. I conducted her
almost in silence to the huge fallen tree which had
formed the boundary of our previous rambles, and
seated her upon it, and myself beside her, as I had
done a thousand times before.

“And now Mary,” I said, taking her hand, “I
have a serious question to ask you, and beg that you
will answer it with the same unhesitating directness
with which I ask it. Your answer will nearly
affect my future happiness.”

I paused, but she was silent—evidently through
emotion—and I continued thus:

“You know me too well to suppose that I would
say or do any thing to offend you, and certainly
you will believe me when I assure you that it is no
idle curiosity which prompts me to ask the question
which I will now propose.”

A slight pressure of her fingers upon my wrist—
her hand being clasped the while in mine—was my
sufficient and encouraging answer, and I then boldly
asked if she was or had been engaged to John Hurdis.
Her answer, as the reader must anticipate, was

unequivocally in the negative. In the next moment
she was in my arms—she was mine. Then followed
explanations which did away, as by a breath, with a
hundred little circumstances of my own jaundiced
judgment, and of my brother's evil instigation,
which for months I had looked upon as insuperable
barriers. For the part which John Hurdis had in
raising them, I was at that moment quite too happy
not to forgive him. I now proceeded to tell Mary
of my contemplated journey, but not of its objects.
This I kept from the knowledge of all around me,
for its successful prosecution, I had already well
conceived, could only result from the secrecy with
which I pursued it. Nor did I suffer her to know
the direction of country in which I proposed to travel;
this caution was due to my general plan, and
called for, at the same time, by her natural apprehensions,
which would have been greatly alarmed to
know that I was about to go into a region where
my friend had been so inhumanly murdered. I need
not say that she urged every argument to keep me
in Marengo. She pleaded her own attachment,
which, having once avowed, she now delighted in;
and urged every consideration which might be supposed
available among the thoughts of a young maiden
unwilling to let her lover go. But my resolve had
been too seriously and solemnly taken. “I had an
oath in heaven,” and no ties, even such, so dear
ones, as those which I had just formed, could make
me desire escape from it if I could. She was compelled
to yield the contest since I assured her that
my resolution was no less imperative than my engagements;
but I promised to return soon, and our
marriage was finally arranged for that period.
What an hour of bliss was that, in those deep
groves, under that prevailing silence. What an elysium
had suddenly grown up around me. How potent
was the magician which could make us forget
the graves upon which we stood, and the blood still
flowing around us, dreaming only of those raptures
which, in the fortunes of two other fond creatures
like ourselves, had so suddenly been defeated. In
that hour I thought not of the dangers I was about
to undergo, and she—the dear girl hanging on my
bosom, and shedding tears of pleasure—she seemed
to forget that earth ever contained a tomb.

Next morning, after we had taken breakfast, I
strolled down the avenue to the entrance, and was
suddenly accosted by a man whom I had never
seen before. He rode up with an air of confidence
and asked me if I was Mr. Hurdis, Mr. John Hurdis.
I replied in the negative, but offered to show
him the way to the house where he would find the
person whom we sought. We met John coming
forth.

“That is your man, sir,” said I, to the stranger.

He thanked me, and instantly advanced to my brother.
I could not help being a spectator, for I was
compelled to pass them in order to enter the house;
and my attention was doubly fixed by the singular
manner in which the stranger offered John Hurdis
his hand. The manner of the thing seemed also to
provoke the astonishment of John, himself, who
looked at me with surprise amounting to consternation.
I was almost disposed to laugh out at the
idiot stare with which he transferred his gaze from
me to the stranger, and to me again, for the expression
seemed absolutely ludicrous; but I was on terms
of too much civility with my brother to exhibit any
such unnecessary familiarity; and, passing into the
house, I left the two together. Their business
seemed of a private nature, for they went into the
neighbouring woods to finish it; and John Hurdis
did not return from the interview, until I had set
forth a second time on my travels. The meaning
of this conference, and the cause of that singular
approach of the stranger which awakened so much
seeming astonishment in the face of John Hurdis,
will be sufficiently explained hereafter. Little did
I then imagine the nature of that business which I
had undertaken, and of the mysterious developments
of crime to which my inquiries would lead me.