University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

This departure of the pastor and his lady was productive
of some little awkwardness in those who remained.
For a few moments, a deathlike stillness
succeeded. Well aware that her affections for Harrison
were known to her present companion, a feeling
not altogether unpleasant, of maiden bashfulness,
led the eyes of Bess to the floor, and silenced her
speech. A harsher mood for a time produced a like
situation on the part of Grayson, but it lasted not long.
With a sullen sort of resolution, gathering into some
of that energetic passion as he proceeded which so
much marked his character, he broke the silence at
length with a word—a single word—uttered desperately,
as it were, and with a half choking enunciation:—

“Miss Matthews—”

She looked up at the sound, and as she beheld the
dark expression of his eye, the concentrated glance,
the compressed lip—as if he dared not trust himself to
utter that which he felt at the same time must be
uttered—she half started, and the “Sir” with which
she acknowledged his address was articulated timorously.

“Be not alarmed, Miss Matthews; be not alarmed.
I see what I would not see.—I see that I am an object
rather of fear, rather of dislike—detestation it may
be—than of any other of those various feelings I would
freely give my life to inspire in your heart.”

“You wrong me, Master Grayson, indeed you do.
I have no such feeling like those you speak of. I do
not dislike or detest you, and I should be very sorry to
have you think so. Do not think so, I pray you.”

“But you fear me—you fear me, Miss Matthews,
and the feeling is much the same. Yet why should
you fear me—what have I done, what said?”

“You startle me, Master Grayson—not that I fear
you, for I have no cause to fear when I have no
desire to harm. But, truth, sir—when you look so
wildly and speak so strangely, I feel unhappy and
apprehensive, and yet I do not fear you.”

He looked upon her as she spoke with something
of a smile—a derisive smile.

“Yet, if you knew all, Miss Matthews—if you had
seen and heard all—ay, even of the occurrences of the
last two hours, you would both fear and hate me.”

“I do not fear to hear, Master Grayson, and therefore
I beg that you will speak out. You cannot,
surely, design to terrify me? Let me but think so, sir,
but for a moment, and you will as certainly fail.”

“You are strong, but not strong enough to hear,
without terror, the story I could tell you. I said you
feared, and perhaps hated me—more—perhaps you
despise me. I despise myself, sincerely, deeply, for
some of my doings, of which you—my mad passion for
you, rather—has been the cause.”

“Speak no more of this, Master Grayson—freely
did I forgive you that error—I would also forget it,
sir.”

“That forgiveness was of no avail—my heart has
grown more black, more malignant than ever; and, no
need for wonder! Let your thoughts go back and examine,
along with mine, its history; for, though in this
search, I feel the accursed probe irritating anew at

every touch the yet bleeding wound, I am not unwilling
that my own hand should direct it. Hear me.
We were children together, Bess Matthews.—In our
infancy, in another land, we played happily together.
When we came to this, unconscious almost of our
remove, for at first we were not separated,—when the
land was new, and our fathers felled the old trees and
made a cabin common, for three happy years, to them
both, we played together under the same shelter. Day
by day found us inseparate, and, at that time, mutual
dependants. Each day gave us new consciousness,
and every new consciousness taught us a most unselfish
division of our gains. I feel that such was your spirit,
Bess Matthews—do me the justice to say, you believe
such was my spirit also.”

“It was—I believe it, Hugh—Master Grayson, I
mean.”

“Oh, be not so frigid—say Hugh—Hugh as of old
you used to say it,” exclaimed the youth, passionately,
as she made the correction.

“Such was your spirit then, Hugh, I willingly say it.
You were a most unselfish playmate. I have always
done you justice in my thought. I am glad still to
do so.”

“Then our school-mate life—that came—three
months to me in the year, with old Squire Downie,
while you had all the year.—I envied you that, Bess,
though I joyed still in your advantages. What was my
solace the rest of the year, when, without a feeling for
my labour, I ran the furrows, and following my father's
footsteps, dropped the grain into them?—what was my
solace then? Let me answer, as perhaps you know
not. The thought of the night, when, unwearied by
all exertion, I should fly over to your cottage, and
chat with you the few hours between nightfall and
bedtime. I loved you then.—That was love, though
neither of us knew it. It was not the search after the
playmate, but after the playmate's heart, that carried
me there; for my brother, with whom you played not
less than with myself,—he sunk wearied to his bed,

though older and stronger than myself. I was unfatigued,
for I loved; and thus it is that the body,
taking its temper from the affections, is strong or weak,
bold or timid, as they warm into emotion, or freeze
with indifference. But day after day, and night after
night, I came; unrelaxing, unchanging, to watch your
glance, to see the play of your lips—to be the adoring
boy, afraid sometimes even to breathe, certainly to
speak, through fear of breaking the spell, or possibly
of offending the divinity to whom I owed so much,
and sent up feelings in prayer so devoutly.”

“Speak not thus extravagantly, Master Grayson, or
I must leave you.”

“Hugh—call me Hugh, will you not? It bears me
back—back to the boyhood I would I had never risen
from.”

“Hugh, then, I will call you, and with a true pleasure.
Ay, more, Hugh, I will be to you again the sister you
found me then; but you must not run on so idly.”

“Idly, indeed, Bess Matthews, when for a dearer
and a sweeter name I must accept that of sister. But
let me speak ere I madden. Time came with all his
changes. The neighbourhood thickened, we were no
longer few in number, and consequently no longer dependant
upon one another. The worst change followed
then, Bess Matthews—the change in you.”

“How, Hugh—you saw no change in me. I have
surely been the same always.”

“No, no—many changes I saw in you. Every hour
had its change, and most of them were improving
changes. With every change you grew more beautiful;
and the auburn of your hair in changing to a deep and
glossy brown, and the soft pale of your girlish cheek
in putting on a leaf of the most delicate rose, and the
bright glance of your eye in assuming a soft and qualifying
moisture in its expression,—were all so many
exquisite changes of lovely to lovelier, and none of
them unnoticed by me. My eyes were sentinels that
slept not when watching yours. I saw every change,
however unimportant—however unseen by others! Not

a glance—not a feature—not a tone—not an expression
did I leave unstudied; and every portraiture, indelibly
fixed upon my memory, underwent comparison
in my lingering reflection before slumbering at night.
Need I tell you, that watching your person thus, your
mind underwent a not less scrupulous examination.
I weighed every sentence of your lips—every thought
of your sense—every feeling of your heart. I could
detect the unuttered emotion in your eyes; and the
quiver of your lip, light as that of the rose when the
earliest droppings of the night dew steals into its
bosom, was perceptible to that keen glance of love
which I kept for ever upon you. How gradual then
was the change which I noted day by day. He came
at length, and with a prescience which forms no small
portion of the spirit of a true affection, I cursed him
when I saw him. You saw him too, and then the change
grew rapid—dreadfully rapid, to my eyes. He won
you, as you had won me. There was an instinct in it.
You no longer cared whether I came to you or not—”

“Nay, Hugh—there you are wrong again—I was
always glad—always most happy to see you.”

“You think so, Bess;—I am willing to believe you
think so—but it is you who are wrong. I know that
you cared not whether I came or not, for on the subject
your thought never rested for a moment, or but for
a moment. I soon discovered that you were also important
in his sight, and I hated him the more from the
discovery—I hated him the more for loving you. Till
this day, however, I had not imagined the extent to
which you had both gone—I had not feared, I had not
felt all my desolation. I had only dreamed of and
dreaded it. But when, in a paroxysm of madness, I
looked upon you and saw—saw your mutual lips—”

“No more, Master Grayson,”—she interposed with
dignity.

“I will not—forgive me;—but you know how it maddened
me, and how I erred, and how you rebuked me.
How dreadful was that rebuke!—but it did not restrain
the error—it impelled me to a new one—”

“What new one, Hugh?”

“Hear me! This man Harrison—that I should
speak his name!—that I should speak it praisefully
too!—he came to our cottage—showed our danger
from the Yemassees to my mother, and would have
persuaded her to fly this morning—but I interfered
and prevented the removal. He saw my brother,
however, and as Walter is almost his worshipper, he
was more successful with him. Leaving you in a
mood little short of madness this afternoon, I hurried
home, but there I could not rest, and vexed with a
thousand dreadful thoughts, I wandered from the house
away into the woods. After a while came the tread
of a horse rapidly driving up the river-trace, and near
the spot where I wandered. The rider was Harrison.
He alighted at a little distance from me, tied his horse
to a shrub, and threw himself just before me upon the
grass. A small tree stood between us, and my
approach was unnoticed. I heard him murmuring, and
with the same base spirit which prompted me to look
down on your meeting to-day, I listened to his language.
His words were words of tenderness and
love—of triumphant love, and associated with your
name—he spoke of you—God curse him! as his own.”

The word “Gabriel” fell unconsciously from the lips
of the maiden as she heard this part of the narrative.
For a moment Grayson paused, and his brow grew
black, while his teeth were compressed closely; but
as she looked up, as if impatient for the rest of his
narrative, he went on:—

“Then I maddened. Then I grew fiendish. I
know not whence the impulse, but it must have been
from hell. I sprang upon him, and with the energies
of a tiger and with more than his ferocity, I pinioned
him to the ground, my knee upon his breast—one hand
upon his throat, and with my knife in the other—”

“Stay!—God—man—say that you slew him not!
You struck not—oh! you kept back your hand—he
lives!” Convulsed with terror, she clasped the arm of

the speaker, while her face grew haggard with affright,
and her eyes seemed starting from their sockets.

“I slew him not!” he replied solemnly.

“God bless you—God bless you!” was all that she
could utter, as she sunk back fainting upon the floor
of the apartment.