University of Virginia Library

41. CHAPTER XLI.
RICHARD GOES INTO THE COUNTRY.

Miss Rowena, while she could not doubt Richard's wrongdoing,
still felt that he had been harshly disposed of by Mrs.
Melbourne. In discussing the matter with the latter, she
even went so far as to seem to clear him altogether. She
was not sorry for any fissure of brightness in the case. She
thoroughly disliked Glendar. Keeping her own counsels,
however, she had the boldness, in company with Miss Freeling,
to come directly to Willow Croft. Could the testimony
of Junia be had? Would Richard be willing to go and see
her? “I ask this,” said she, “not in relation to any other
thing, or other person, than myself. I should really like to
know if Mrs. Whichcomb misrepresented. For my private
satisfaction, will you go?” Miss Freeling and Roxy united
in urging the measure. “It can alter nothing,” replied
Richard. But go he must.

It was midsummer, and Green Mill was active. — Captain
Creamer, to say nothing of Mr. Gouch and Silver, would
take care of that.

It was midsummer, and Richard had had his Night's
Dream; and he would be glad of daylight, — he would be
glad of rest and recreation.

So he set off with Winkle on the road he had formerly
traversed. Winkle was kind to Richard, as he was to everybody,
and did all in his power to cheer the journey. What
on his former ride had really interested and delighted Richard,
in Winkle and in the way, now had a melo-dramatic
effect, that served to divert him.

“That man,” Winkle would say, as he passed along,
“is n't dead yet. He has been dying this two year. — That
girl lost her lover. I did all I could to save him. — The
right eye of that goose has n't winked for twenty years. —
That boy has swung on that gate so long the hinges have
rusted off. — I wonder when Tim Doze finds time to eat!
He began picking his teeth in the door-way under the old
driver, and has kept at it ever since.”

Richard at length reached the house whither he had originally
conveyed Junia.

Junia was there, notwithstanding rumors of another sort.
The Old Man, her grandfather, was still alive, but weak and
infirm; and he remembered the kindness Richard had done
unto him. Their abode was a pleasant one, in a region, on
a moderate scale, of considerable diversity. Elms towered
in shallow coombs. Corn-lots swept from the sky on one
side to a gully on the other. Wheat eddied across sunny
slopes. The light-green mowing was terminated by a belt
of dark forest. In the rear of the house was a flourishing
orchard. Cattle and sheep could be seen lying in clumps
of trees in the pastures. The highway, passing a neighboring
farm-house, disappeared in wooded hills. Venerable
oaks were scattered about the premises. A white school-house,
and its “bordering” of maples, crowned a swell in
the landscape. There were many things that operated to
remind Richard of his own home and childhood, and recall
the days of his innocent and unfettered existence. The
woodbine, that veiled the front of the house, rolled its tide
of verdure over the roof, and shaded the snug parlor, was
like one he himself set out, and had recently seen, in Green
Meadow. The back porch, with its posts all alive with hop-vines,
was so like his mother's. The dairy-room had the
same white shelves and savory neatness as the one he had

passed a thousand times. The gourd-dipper, — how often
had he dipped water with it, and held it by both hands to
drink! In the garden, too, was the old sage-bed and its
border of marigolds and chrysanthemums. Farmer Cresswell
was an intelligent and industrious, and of course a
thriving man. His wife, the aunt-in-law of Junia, supported
her side of the house. They had a son, who helped his
father, — a daughter, the right hand of her mother, and
little children at school. They bought books, and took a
newspaper. It was a magnanimous and kind-hearted family.
They welcomed Richard with rural hospitality to rural
joys.

Here Junia had spent the years since she left Woodylin.
The father of Junia, an artist, having gone to Rome to complete
his education, on the return voyage was drowned. Her
mother died while the children were young, leaving to them
the legacy of a tender memory and unavailing regrets, — of
a spirit attuned to purest impulses, and a malady that ere
long appeared in Violet. They remained with their grandparents
until one died, and adversity and weakness prostrated
the other. The change in their grandfather, united
with alarming symptoms in Violet, induced the girls to
resort to the Factories.

Their aunt, the wife of Farmer Cresswell, and only surviving
child of the Old Man, meanwhile had died. Junia
was ignorant of her successor. If she had known what a
woman she was, and what a home the farm might be to her,
she would have been spared, if not her residence, at least
some of her sorrows, at Woodylin.

In her new home, she assumed charge of the school in
the neighborhood; but tendencies similar to those that prostrated
her sister disclosing themselves in her constitution,
at length forbade this species of exertion.

instant afflicted his imagination as a cloud on the joyousness
of her greeting, and a solemnity pervading the cheerful
courtesies of the house.

But sickness and sorrow are so much alike, this impression
gradually assimilated with the prevailing mood of Richard's
mind; his sensations became toned down to the color
of Junia, and he seemed in spirit to be brought very near
unto her.

The neighbors said she was threatened with a decline.
She appeared, indeed, to have been summoned by the voice
of Violet, and to be slowly following to the realm of spirits.
The Old Man presaged the result, and, with decrepit hilarity,
instructed Richard in the fatal signs, and demonstrated
the veritableness of his predictions.

Yet Junia retained all her equanimity, and a good portion
of her strength. She went with Richard into the fields, and
took a long walk with him to a spring in the mountains;
he helped her trim and relay the flowers in the garden.

Several days passed in delicious abandonment.

Richard imparted his distress to Junia, and she was
prompt to reply to it. But these communications and this
intercourse were not without a certain perplexity, the nature
of which we will endeavor to unfold.

This brings us to a sacred precinct of the human heart,
and one that we should shrink from traversing, did not the
proper development of this Tale seem imperatively to
demand it; and more especially were we not confident that
no handling of ours could detract from the essential interest
and value that invested the subject to the parties immediately
concerned.

Let us briefly state the facts, leaving the mystical and
unknown spirit of things to that interpretation which they
may justly bear. Junia loved Richard, — not with an impatient,

or imperious, or forestalling love, — but with a
deep, strong love; — a love constant, if not adhesive, — a
love that remembered, even if it was deficient in attention.

Richard's piety and charity, his delicate and constant
assiduity, his devotion to her sister Violet, and subsequent
care of herself, at that early period when this Tale opens,
won upon the heart of Junia, raised her mere enjoyment of
goodness to some desire of its possession, carried her from
the common ground of friendship and esteem to that sometimes
called hazardous verge, where such feelings slide into
love, — slide unwittingly and unpurposely into it; — into a
love that does not announce itself, but lives in the shadow
of things about it, — lives, nun-like, in its own mystery, and
novelty, and blessedness; — and, perhaps, like the nightingale,
sings all the more sweetly for its confinement and
seclusion. In all this, as we conceive, no trace of blame
attaches to Junia. Richard, at the time, had some dim
and unheeding impression of the fact. But, as an honorable
man, he encouraged nothing; as a modest man, he was
flattered by nothing; as a young man, preöccupied with
business and apprenticed to a trade, he remembered nothing.

But when it was proposed that he should see Junia, dim
impressions of the past revived, — passively and spontaneously
revived, — and perhaps worked to confuse his decision.
And really the matter troubled his approach to her.
His errand related to his engagement with another, — related
to what must indicate to Junia how hopelessly she
was separated from him; — related, in a word, to topics
that must give her pain.

Moreover, Miss Eyre knew of the state of Junia's heart.
Having early consecrated herself to Richard, Plumy Alicia
was jealous of any intervention or rivalry. She was witness

of Richard's fidelity in the sick chamber; she followed
Junia when she went to Willow Croft, and, by
methods peculiar to herself, learned the secret that otherwise
might have slumbered forever in the Orphan's breast.

Mrs. Eyre relied upon what she knew for the accomplishment
of her subsequent purposes, or rather to prevent
Richard accomplish his. She believed that Junia, deeply
attached to Richard, would not lend an influence to facilitate
his inclinations for another, and would prefer, of the
two, rather to widen, than close, the breach between him
and Melicent. She felt perfectly safe with Junia, and
hence the freedom with which she alluded to her at the
council at Whichcomb's. Miss Eyre mistook her own sex.
Richard trusted the magnanimity of a virtuous heart!

The short and decisive inquiry he had to make of Junia,
whether his conduct towards her was open to question, she
answered with a prompt No! “But why do you ask?”
said she.

“For the gratification of my friends.”

“You say you are separated from Miss Dennington?”

“Forever!” he added, with energy.

They were silent. Junia plucked the grass on which she
was sitting. Richard looked at the flickering branches of
the tree overhead.

“You did love her?”

“I did.”

“And do?”

“It is the mystery of my existence,” replied Richard,
“that I do when I may not, and the discipline which my
heavenly Father imposes, that I must when I cannot.”

“Do and may not, must and cannot,” rejoined Junia,
smiling; “ever and never; now and now, and no to-morrow;

— how strange a world this is! There are others
like you.”

This declaration startled Richard. He thought he knew
what it meant, and feared there was more meaning than he
would be able to manage.

“May not a desolate heart,” she said, “embrace a desolate
heart? Embrace mine! Hope,” she continued, “distributes
flowers in her vases, and keeps them to look at till
their brief day is over, when, like a careful housewife, she
flings them into a heap to die together!”

She laid her hand upon his shoulder; then, taking his
arm, they walked into the house.

It was a delightful home she had, and Richard was made
very happy there, and the family kept him many days. He
would hardly be sorry if it were decreed they should keep
him always there. Rarely had he seen the sun shine on
so pleasant a spot, — rarely had he seen so pleasant a spot,
when there was no sun.

“I love you,” said Junia, “therefore do not be afraid of
me; — I love you, therefore I will be your best friend; —
I love you, and I love those that love you. I have no
selfishness, no vanity, and will do what I can to make you
happy. I find my little all of bliss in telling you that I love
you. They say I shall die soon, — I will die for you. You
do not know a woman's heart, — you never can; — nor a
young girl's heart, such as mine was, and has been, and
must ever be; — nor how, as a wound in a tender sapling,
even when it heals up, remains in the tree, and becomes a
part of its heart, and gives its own shape to the fibres, and
has veins through which the life of the whole flows, — you
have been to me. And now, when you are lowest and most
degraded, and, if it must be so, most hopeless to my wish,
this love loves you the most.”

If Richard ever felt drawn towards any human being, —
if he ever felt repaid a thousand times over for all he had
done for any one, — if he ever felt thankfulness at relief,
like a sudden recoil in the jaws of a vice that held him, —
he felt this now in respect of Junia.

To a paper, like a deposition, or affidavit, vindicating
Richard from the calumny promulgated by Mrs. Whichcomb,
and behind which Miss Eyre intrenched herself, comprising,
likewise, the warmest and most forcible allusions to
his probity and sincerity, Junia affixed her signature, as did
likewise her Grandfather.

With this, Richard returned to Woodylin.

The document was conveyed to Miss Rowena, who, as to
her personal rencontre with Mrs. Melbourne, rejoiced in the
support it furnished. But more: she showed it privately to
Melicent, who derived what consolation she could from its
contents. Mrs. Melbourne, to whom it was communicated,
admitted its truthfulness, and allowed its entire weight.
But, said she, “Rowena, you must see that is not all, — it
is not a beginning. If that was all, the case were quickly
determined. I rejoice as much as you do in this. But the
greater, the stubborn, the wicked facts remain. Our evidence
is not like a chain that can be spoilt in its links; — it
is like a stone-wall; and though you remove a single rock,
the strength of the whole is not shaken.” There was
force in the remark, however it stood with the evidence; —
and Melicent felt it, and was silent. Cousin Rowena, not
quite abashed, said, “Perhaps we can make a breach through
the wall.”