University of Virginia Library

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.

“My mind troubles me,” said Lindsay: “Mildred, hear me—and
mark what I say. Our fortunes are coming to a period of deep
interest: it is therefore no time to deal in evasive speeches, or to
dally with coy and girlish feelings. I wish, my daughter, to be
understood.”

“Father, have I offended you?” inquired Mildred, struck with
the painful and almost repulsive earnestness of Lindsay's manner.

“Arthur Butler has been at the Dove Cote,” he said, sternly,
“and you have concealed it from me. That was not like my
child.”

“Father!” exclaimed Mildred, bursting into tears.

“Nay—these tears shall not move me from my resolution. As
a parent I had a right, Mildred, to expect obedience from you;
but you saw him in the very despite of my commands: here, on
the confines of the Dove Cote, you saw him.”

“I did—I did.”

“And you were silent, and kept your secret from your father's
bosom.”

“You forbade me to speak of him,” replied Mildred, in a low
and sobbing voice, “and banished me from your presence when I
but brought his name upon my lips.”

“He is a villain, daughter; a base wretch that would murder
my peace, and steal my treasure from my heart.”

Mildred covered her eyes with her hands, and trembled in silent
agony.

“I have received letters,” continued Lindsay, “that disclose to
me a vile plot against my life. This same Butler—this furious and
fanatic rebel—has been lurking in the neighborhood of my house,
to watch my family motions, to pry into the character of my guests,

to possess himself of my sacred confidences, to note the incoming and
the out-going of my most attached friends, and thereupon to build
an accusation of treason before this unholy and most accursed power
that has usurped dominion in the land. I am to be denounced to
these malignant masters, and to suffer such penalties as their passions
may adjudge. And all this through the agency of a man
who is cherished and applauded by my own daughter!”

“My dear father, who has thus abused your mind, and led your
thoughts into a current so foreign from that calm judgment with
which you have been accustomed to look upon the things of life?”

“Can you deny, Mildred, that this Butler followed Tyrrel to the
Dove Cote; lay concealed here, close at hand; sought by discourse
through some of his coadjutors with Tyrrel's servant, to learn the
object of Tyrrel's visit; and offered gross outrage to the man when
he failed to persuade him to betray his master? Can you deny
this? Can you deny that he fled precipitately from his hiding-place
when he could no longer conceal his purpose?—and, knowing
these things, can you doubt he is a villain?”

“He is no villain, father,” said Mildred, indignantly. “These
are the wretched forgeries of that unworthy man who has won your
confidence—a man who is no less an enemy to your happiness than
he is a selfish contriver against mine. The story is not true: it is
one of Tyrrel's basest falsehoods.”

“And Butler was not here; you would persuade me so, Mildred?”

“He was in the neighborhood for a single night; he journeyed
southwards in the course of his duty,” answered Mildred, mildly.

“And had no confederates with him?”

“He was attended by a guide—only one—and hurried onwards
without delay.”

“And you met him on that single night—by accident, I suppose?”

“Do you doubt my truth, father?”

“Mildred, Mildred! you will break my heart. Why was he
here at all—why did you meet him?”

“He came, father—” said Mildred, struggling to speak through
a sudden burst of tears.

“Silence! I will hear no apology!” exclaimed Lindsay. Then

relenting in an instant, he took his daughter's hand, as he said:
“My child, thou art innocent in thy nature, and knowest not the
evil imaginings of this world. He wickedly lied, if he told you
that he came casually hither, or that his stay was circumscribed
to one short night. I have proofs, full and satisfactory, that, for
several days, he lay concealed in this vicinity; and, moreover, that
his scheme was frustrated only by an unexpected discovery, made
through the indiscretion of a drunken bully, who came linked with
him in his foul embassy. It was a shameless lie, invented to
impose upon your credulity, if he gave you room to believe otherwise.”

“Arthur Butler scorns a falsehood, father, with the deepest scorn
that belongs to a noble mind, and would resent the charge with
the spirit of a valiant and virtuous man. If Mr. Tyrrel have such
accusations to make, it would be fitter they should be made face
to face with the man he would slander, than in my father's ear.
But it is the nature of the serpent to sting in the grass, not openly
to encounter his victim.”

“The first duty of a trusty friend is to give warning of the
approach of an enemy—and that has Tyrrel done. For this act of
service does he deserve your rebuke? Could you expect aught
else of an honorable gentleman? Shame on you, daughter!”

“Father, I know the tale to be wickedly, atrociously false.
Arthur Butler is not your enemy. Sooner would he lay down his
life than even indulge a thought of harm to you. His coming
hither was not unknown to me—his delay, but one brief night;
business of great moment called him hastily towards the army of
the south.”

“You speak like a girl, Mildred. I have, against this tale, the
avowal of a loyal and brave soldier. Aye, and let me tell you—
favorably as you may deem of this false and traitorous rebel—his
wily arts have been foiled, and quick vengeance is now upon his
path—his doom is fixed.”

“For heaven's sake, father, dear father, tell me what this means.
Have you heard of Arthur?” cried Mildred, in the most impassioned
accents of distress, at the same time throwing her head upon
Lindsay's breast. “Oh, God! have you heard aught of harm to
him?”

“Girl! foolish, mad, self-willed girl!” exclaimed Lindsay,
disengaging himself from his daughter, and rising from his seat
and angrily striding a few paces upon the terrace. “Dare you
show this contumacy to me! No, I did not mean that—have you
the heart, Mildred, to indulge these passionate fervors for the man
I hate more than I can hate any other living thing! He, a wretch,
upon whose head I invoke nightly curses! A loathsome, abhorred
image to my mind! Hear me, Mildred, and hear me, though
your heart break while I utter it—May the felon's death whelm
him and his name in eternal disgrace!—may his present captivity
be beset with all the horrors of friendliness, unpitied—”

“His captivity, father! And has he then fallen into the hands
of the enemy? Quick! tell me all!—I shall die—my life is
wrapped up in his!” ejaculated Mildred, in agony, as she sprang
towards her father and seized his arm, and then sank at his feet.

“For God's sake, my child!” said Lindsay, becoming alarmed
at the violence of the paroxysm he had excited, and now lifting his
daughter from the ground. “Mildred!—speak, girl! This emotion
will drive me mad. Oh, fate, fate!—how unerringly dost
thou fulfil the sad predictions of my spirit! How darkly does the
curse hang upon my household! Mildred, dear daughter, pardon
my rash speech. I would not harm thee, child—no, not for worlds!”

“Father, you have cruelly tortured my soul,” said Mildred,
reviving from the half lifeless state into which she had fallen, and
which for some moments had denied her speech. “Tell me all;
on my knees, father, I implore you.”

“It was a hasty word, daughter,” replied Lindsay, ill concealing
the perturbation of his feelings; “I meant not what I said.”

“Nay, dear father,” said Mildred, “I am prepared to hear the
worst; you spoke of Arthur's captivity.”

“It was only a rumor,” replied Lindsay, struck with apprehension
at his daughter's earnestness, and now seeking to allay the feeling
his hint had aroused in her mind; “it may be exaggerated by
Tyrrel, whose letter, hastily written, mentions the fact, that Butler
had been made a prisoner by some bands of Tories, amongst whom
he had rashly ventured. The elemency of his king may yet win
him back to his allegiance. A salutary confinement, at least, will
deprive him of the power of mischief. His lands will be confiscated—and

the close of the war, now fast approaching, will find him
a houseless adventurer, baffled in his treason, and unpitied by all
good men. This should persuade you, Mildred, to renounce your
unnatural attachment, and to think no more of one whose cause
heaven has never sanctioned, and whose condition in life should
forbid all pretension to your regard—one, above all, repulsive even
to loathing to the thoughts of your father.”

“I loved him, father, in his happiest and brightest day,” said
Mildred, firmly; “I cannot desert him in his adversity. Oh, speak
to me no more! Let me go to my chamber; I am ill and cannot
bear this torrent of your displeasure.”

“I will not detain you, Mildred. In sorrow and suffering, but
still with a father's affection as warmly shining on you as when, in
earliest infancy, I fondled thee upon my knee, I part with thee
now. One kiss, girl. There, let that make peace between us. For
your sake and my own, I pledge my word never to distress you
with this subject again. Destiny must have its way, and I must
bide the inevitable doom.”

With a heavy heart and an exhausted frame, Mildred slowly
and tearfully withdrew.

Lindsay remained some time fixed upon the spot where his
daughter had left him. He was like a man stupefied and astounded
by a blow. His conference had ended in a manner that he had
not prepared himself to expect. The imputed treachery of Butler,
derived from Tyrrel's letters, had not struck alarm into the heart of
Mildred, as he had supposed it could not fail to do. The wicked
fabrication had only recoiled upon the inventor; and Mildred,
with the resolute, confident, and unfaltering attachment of her nature,
clung with a nobler devotion to her lover. To Lindsay, in
whose mind no distrust of the honesty of Tyrrel could find shelter;
whose prejudices and peculiar temperament came in aid of the
gross and disgraceful imputation which the letters inferred, the
constancy and generous fervor of his daughter towards the cause
of Butler seemed to be a mad and fatal infatuation.

Ever since his first interview with Mildred on the subject of her
attachment, his mind had been morbidly engrossed with the reflections
to which it had given rise. There was such a steadiness of
purpose apparent in her behavior, such an unchangeable resolve

avowed, as seemed to him, in the circumstances of her condition, to
defy and stand apart from the ordinary and natural impulses by
which human conduct is regulated. He grew daily more abstracted
and moody in his contemplations; and as study and thought gave
a still graver complexion to his feelings, his mind fled back upon
his presentiments; and that intense, scholar-like superstition, which
I have heretofore described as one of the tendencies of his nature,
began more actively to conjure up its phantasmagoria before his
mental vision. A predominating trait of this superstition was an
increasing conviction that, in Mildred's connexion with Arthur
Butler, there was associated some signal doom to himself, that was
to affect the fortunes of his race. It was a vague, misty, obscure
consciousness of impending fate, the loss of reason or the loss of
life that was to ensue upon that alliance if it should ever take
place.

It was such a presentiment that now, in the solitary path of
Lindsay's life, began to be magnified into a ripening certainty of
ill. The needle of his mind trembled upon its pivot, and began to
decline towards a fearful point; that point was—frenzy. His
studies favored this apprehension—they led him into the world of
visions. The circumstances of his position favored it. He was
perplexed by the intrigues of politicians, against whom he had no
defence in temper nor wordly skill: he was deluded by false views
of events: he was embarrassed and dissatisfied with himself: above
all, he was wrought upon, bewildered, and glamoured (to use a
most expressive Scotch phrase) by the remembrance of a sickly
dream.

Thus hunted and badgered by circumstances, he fled with avidity
to the disclosures made in Tyrrel's letters, to try, as a last effort,
their effect upon Mildred, hoping that the tale there told might
divert her from a purpose which now fed all his melancholy.

The reader has just seen how the experiment had failed.

Lindsay retired to his study, and, through the remainder of the
day, sought refuge from his meditations in the converse of his
books. These mute companions, for once, failed to bring him their
customary balm. His feelings had been turned, by the events of
the morning, into a current that bore them impetuously along
towards a dark and troubled ocean of thought; and when the

shades of evening had fallen around him, he was seen pacing the
terrace with a slow and measured step.

“It is plain she passionately loves Butler,” he said, “in despite
of all the visible influences around her. Her education, habits,
affections, duty—all set in an opposing tide against this passion,
and yet does it master them all. That I should be bound to mine
enemy by a chain, whose strongest link is forged by my own
daughter. She—Mildred!—No, no—that link was not forged by
her: it hath not its shape from human workmanship. Oh, that
like those inspired enthusiasts who, in times of old,—yea, and in a
later day—have been able to open the Book of Destiny, and to
read the passages of man's future life, I might get one glimpse of
that forbidden page!—To what a charitable use might I apply the
knowledge. Wise men have studied the journeyings of the stars,
and have—as they deemed—discovered the secret spell by which
yon shining orbs sway and compel the animal existences of this
earth; even as the moon governs the flow of the ocean, or the
fever of the human brain. Who shall say what is the invisible
tissue—what the innumerable cords—that tie this planet and all
its material natures to the millions of worlds with which it is
affined? What is that mysterious thing which men call attraction,
that steadies these spheres in their tangled pathways through the
great void?—that urges their swift and fearful career into the track
of their voyage, without the deviation of the breadth of a single
hair—rolling on the same from eternity to eternity? How awfully
does the thought annihilate our feeble and presumptuous philosophy!
Is it, then, to excite the scorn of the wise, if we assert that
some kindred power may shape out and direct the wanderings of
man?—that an unseen hand may lay the threads by which this
tottering creature is to travel through the labyrinth of this world;
aye, and after it is done, to point out to him his course along the
dark and chill valley, which the dead walk through companionless
and silent? Have not men heard strange whispers in the breeze—
the voice of warning? Have they not felt the fanning of the wing
that bore the secret messenger through the air? Have they not
seen some floating fold of the robe as it passed by? O God!—
have they not seen the dead arise? What are these but the communings,

the points of contact, between the earthy and spiritual
worlds—the essences or intelligences that sometimes flit across the
confine of our gross sphere, and speak to the children of clay?
And wherefore do they speak, but that the initiated may regard
the sign, and walk in safety? Or, perchance, some mischief-hatching
fiend,—for such, too, are permitted to be busy to mar the good
that God has made—may speak in malice to allure us from our
better purpose. Aye, as aptly this, as the other. Miserable child
of doubt, how art thou beset! Let the vain pedant prate of his
philosophy, let the soldier boast his valor, the learned scholar his
scepticism, and the worldling laugh his scorn, yet do they each and
all yield homage to this belief. There comes a time of honest
self-confession, of secret meditation to all, and then the boding spirit
rises to his proper mastery: then does instinct smother argument:
then do the darkness of the midnight hour, the howling wind, the
rush of the torrent, the lonesomeness of the forest and the field,
shake the strong nerves; and the feeble, pigmy man, trembles at
his own imaginings.”

In such a strain did Lindsay nurse his doubting superstition;
and by these degrees was it that his mind soothed itself down
into a calmer tone of resignation. In proportion as this fanciful
and distempered philosophy inclined his reflection towards the
belief of preternatural influences, it suggested excuses for Mildred's
seeming contumacy, and inculcated a more indulgent sentiment of
forbearance in his future intercourse with her.

Towards the confirmation of this temper an ordinary incident,
which, at any other time, would have passed without comment,
now contributed. A storm had arisen: the day, towards its
close, had grown sultry, and had engendered one of those sudden
gusts which belong to the summer in this region. It came, without
premonition, in a violent tornado, that rushed through the air
with the roar of a great cataract. Lindsay had scarcely time to
retreat to the cover of the porch, before the heavy-charged cloud
poured forth its fury in floods of rain. The incessant lightnings
glittered on the descending drops, and illuminated the distant
landscape with more than the brilliancy of day. The most
remote peaks of the mountain were sheeted with the glare; and
the torrents that leaped down the nearer hill-sides sparkled with a

dazzling radiance. Peal after peal of abrupt and crashing thunder
roared through the heavens, and echoed with terrific reverberations
along the valleys. Lindsay gazed upon this scene, from his
secure cover, with mute interest, inwardly aroused and delighted
with the grand and sublime conflict of the elements, in a spot of
such wild and compatible magnificence: the solemn and awful emotions
excited by these phenomena were exaggerated by the peculiar
mood of his mind, and now absorbed all his attention. After a brief
interval, the rain ceased to fall as suddenly as it had begun; the
thunder was silent, and only a few distant flashes of wide-spread
light broke fitfully above the horizon. The stars soon again shone
forth through a transparent and placid heaven, and the moon sailed
in beauty along a cloudless sea. The frog chirped again from the
trees, and the far-off owl hooted in the wood, resuming his melancholy
song, that had been so briefly intermitted. The foaming
river below, swollen by the recent rain, flung upwards a more lively
gush from its rocky bed: the cock was heard to crow, as if a new
day had burst upon his harem; and the house-dogs barked in
sport as they gambolled over the wet grass.

Lindsay looked forth and spoke.

“How beautiful is the change! But a moment since, and the
angry elements were convulsed with the shock of war; and now,
how calm! My ancient oaks have weathered the gale, and not a
branch has been torn from their hoary limbs: not the most delicate
of Mildred's flowers; not the tenderest shrub has been scathed by
the threatening fires of heaven! The Dove Cote and its inmates
have seen the storm sweep by without a vestige of harm. Kind
heaven, grant that this may be a portent of our fortune; and that,
when this tempest of human passion has been spent, the Dove
Cote and its inhabitants may come forth as tranquil, as safe, as
happy, as now—more—yes, more happy than now! Our ways
are in thy hands; and I would teach myself to submit to thy providence
with patient hope. So, let it be! I am resigned.”

As Lindsay still occupied his position in the porch, Stephen
Foster appeared before him dripping with the rain of the late
storm.

“A letter, sir,” said Stephen. “I have just rode from the post-office,

and was almost oversot in the gust: it catched me upon the
road; and it was as much as I could do to cross the river. It's a
mighty fretful piece of water after one of these here dashes.”

Lindsay took the packet.

“Get your supper, good Stephen,” he said. “Order lights for
me in the library! Thank you—thank you!”

When Lindsay opened the letter, he found it to contain tidings
of the victory at Camden, written by Tyrrel. After he had
perused the contents, it was with a triumphant smile that he
exclaimed, “And it is come so soon! Thank God, the omen has
proved true! a calmer and a brighter hour at last opens upon us.”

He left the study to communicate the news to his children, and
spent the next hour with Mildred and Henry in the parlor. His
feelings had risen to a happier key; and it was with some approach
to cheerfulness, but little answered in the looks or feelings of his
children, that he retired to his chamber at a late hour, where sleep
soon came, with its sweet oblivion, to repair his exhausted spirits,
and to restore him to the quiet of an easy mind.