13. CHAPTER XIII.
MEMORY OF THE PAST.
How silent a large hospitable establishment in the country, seems on Sunday,
just after being deserted by a large and gay party? how deserted the
halls and chambers? in what profound repose sleep the dogs? and the very
insects fly more more lazily and hum more monotonously. The fowls seek
the roost, and the geese stand upon one leg, and bury their heads under their
wings, while the cattle in the fields gather in clusters under the shade of some
umbrageous tree. So overpowering is this general feeling of repose, that
children often imagine that there is a Sabbath in nature—a holyday for the
heavens and the earth, as well as for man. Such seemed the day to that
heart-sick young creature, Ellen Evylin, as she sat in a deep recess at a window
of the parlor, the curtains falling down, and totally secluding her, even
from the interruption of a chance servant. She held in her hand Milton's
Paradise lost, and appropriate as the subject was to her own peculiar feelings,
and deeply attuned as they were to harmonize, with the solemn strains of
the poet, her hand lay still in her lap with the open book, and her eyes followed
the dreamy expanse of waters, stretching out, and farther out, until they
filled with tears from mere exhaustion. Why did she thus look ever towards
the far off ocean? Why did her eyes attempt to penetrate beyond that long
white surf, that came tumbling up as an avant courier from the mighty deep
beyond, and rolled into the bay, as if glad to reach a haven once more. She
pursued the very track of the vessel, which years before, had borne from his
native shores, a youth with whose hopes and destinies, her own had been
linked in bonds, as durable as life itself. She lived upon the past alone, the
present and the future were almost blotted from the tablets of her mind. Is it
strange then, that she became what she now was, a pensive dreamer, who loved
to steal from society of the men, and open up there these her only treasures?
Is it strange that even her appearance should partake of this coloring
of the past, and indifference to the present, and that she should forever seek
the shades of her own sweet little conservatory at home, where she held converse
with the silent and sometimes melancholy flowers—those little miniature
pictures of a young girl's life—those especially that come “like angel's
visits, few and far between”—that bloom but once in a life-time: or is it any
wonder that she should prefer the solitary house in which she now was, to all
the bustle and confusion, which had distracted her for the last few hours?
But was she indeed all alone with her own sad thoughts as she supposed? did
she not hear a step and deep breathing in the room? Slowly she drew aside
one corner of the curtain, beneath whose ample folds she might have been
rolled twenty times; why did her heart throb so tumultuously, and her vision
grow dim? It was because there was a man in that room, a strange man—
using most strange gestures to a dumb picture. It was the new tutor, standing
before the picture of General Elliott. What could he know of that unfortunate
officer? Why should he be gesticulating to a picture he never saw
before a few hours back, and the original of which he never saw at all? It
was very strange. More than once she attempted to move towards him and
ask an explanation of his conduct, but as often her courage failed her, until
the man had disappeared as silently as he came, and she was left alone with
her own thoughts and the silent house, and the more solitary ocean beyond.
The tutor gone—the excitement of the moment once calmed—and her nervous
irritability stilled, the mystery did not appear so great after all. The
young man was generally supposed to have been some way connected with
the unfortunate troubles abroad, and thus to have laid the foundation of his
own. Was it any great stretch of imagination to suppose him to have known
something of one so famous as the original of that picture. This sufficed
for a time, but alas, how painfully and fearfully excitable are the children of
sorrow. To such, a spark of the fire exploding, sounds like a cannon—the
sudden slamming too of a door, is the herald of a convulsion of nature; a
black cloud in the horizon, the adumbration of the gathering tornado, and a
tale or a suggestion of horror, meets with too ready a response, and even the
imagination is ever instant with its sombre shadows, to clothe up the skeleton's
of the past in goblin outlines comformable to its wretched experience. The
ear is ready to start, the eye to dilate with fright, and the wonder working
kaleidescope of the mind, revolves in perpetual revolution, turning up in rapid
succession a gloomy catalogue of spectral images.
Poor Ellen, her imagination was roaming at large over the too certain past,
and the too uncertain future. Again and again the strange behavior of the
tutor rose up before her, and she would rear up a tale, in connexion with him,
improbable to a perfectly calm mind, until she would almost laugh at the trick
which her imagination was playing her. One sane and sound suggestion,
however, she retained from the dreamy and fitful reveries of the morning,
it was the probability that this individual could throw some light upon that
one subject, ever nearest to her heart, the last hours of poor Frank Lee, and
to ascertain that he was indeed numbered with the dead. She resolved at
once to seek him. She wandered through the house in eager pursuit of the
same individual who, but half an hour before had thrown her into such painful
excitement; she regretted now, that she had not sought him upon the
instant, for no where was he to be found. She rang the bell, and called up a
servant, who informed her, that he had walked out into the fields about the
time he must have left the room.
Why appeared the divine poet so tame, so dull that morning, of all others
so fitting to discourse of Paradise, and the reader, of all others, to imagine its
loss so vividly? When the imagination is at its highest tension, no living or
dead author may bridle the unruly power, and tame it to the beaten track.
The judgment may be schooled, the heart purified by suffering and affliction,
but the wings of the mind, like the wind, goeth where it listeth. The book
was again thrown down, and a long reverie wound up that dreamy morning.
She was first roused from her mood by the clatter of the horses hoofs and
the carriage wheels of the party returning from church; she made a precipitate
retreat to her own room, where she was scarcely seated before Kate came
flying in, exclaiming, “Oh, Ellen, you don't know what you have missed by
staying away from Church, such a sermon from Dr. Blair! it was worth riding
twenty miles to hear. He preached from the Sermon on the Mount, and
is going to continue the series through the whole chapter.”
“I am sorry I could not go, Kate, but I was really scarcely able, and still
less in fitting mood; there is a preparation for going to church in other things
besides dress, and I believe it better to stay away, than go with one mind's
wandering, like the fool's eyes, to the ends of the earth.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Mr. Henry Lee was there; and Dorothea has been
apostrophising him as a personification of the true spirit of the text. I m sure
I shall never hear of the Pharisee in the parable again, without thinking of
him. She says she means to call him henceforth the Pharisee. I need not
add that he joined our party, and you may expect to meet him at dinner—I
had like to have forgotten it, that was the object of my call, so now you may
be prepared to meet him.”
“If he is here, I would prefer not going down to dinner.”
“But he may here these three weeks, and you cannot avoid him all that
time.”
“If he stays three weeks I am very sure he will do so without my company,
for I will go home.”
“No, no, my Ellen, we are not going to part with you so soon, after such
difficulty in getting you here. I will dismiss the gentleman myself, with a
bee in his bonnet, rather than you should do that.”
“That would never do, Kate, what would your father say to such treatment
of a gentleman whom he is so anxious to propitiate?”
“Then Dorothea and I will ridicule him off the field. Leave him to be
dealt with by us, or surrender him entirely into sister's hands; she will drive
him off, depend upon it, and escape under the plea of non-age. It is your
gentle ways, Ellen, that keeps the proud man forever dangling at your apron
string.”
The maid entering to prepare her young mistress's toilet for dinner, the parties
separated.
