University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER FIFTH.
THE NEW LOVE OF REGINALD.

“Paul, I will tell you the history. You have guessed the truth. She
is indeed a beautiful girl—”

“She—” and Paul smiled that sad smile, which always filled Reginald
with involuntary awe.

“Do you remember the view from the high tower of Lyndulfe? Standing
on its summit, you behold the hills and valleys for at least thirty miles,
with farm-houses dotting the prospect, and grim castles frowning from the
distant woods. Do you remember the ruined castle—”

“It stood upon the west of your father's castle—not ten miles away.
A splendid pile of ruins, rising, with its tottering walls, against the dark
background, like some ghost of past ages.”

“It is a castle of ruins no longer. Soon after you left Lyndulfe, a
stranger came to Wyttonhurst—that is the name of the castle, you remember—and
soon the old pile of ruins became strong and beautiful again.
There were various rumors concerning this stranger. Some said that he
had heaped incredible hoards of gold in the East Indies, others spoke of
the American Continent. But that he was rich, very rich, no one could
deny, for he rebuilt the castle, and soon it was known, that he had been
knighted by the king. He was called Sir Ralph Wyttonhurst of Wyttonhurst.”

“And this stranger—”

“Was blessed with one of the most beautiful daughters that ever human
eye beheld. Not one of those blonde women, whose cheeks, like the
dawn, are swept by golden hair, and whose beauty is acknowledged as a
type of our English women, but a queenly girl, with an olive cheek, eyes
intensely black and brilliant, and a step full of majesty and pride. You
may be sure that her hair was dark, that her lip, with its warm vermilion,
contrasted vividly with the clear brown of her cheek—”

“At his words,” muttered Paul, as his eye grew vacant, “that memory
comes once more upon me!—And you loved her?” he said aloud.

“I need not tell you how we met, or describe to you the history of our
love, in all those minute details, which are interesting only to two persons,
the lover and the beloved. But we did meet—well I remember the night,
when, amid the dark woods of Wyttonhurst, we plighted our faith to each
other.”

“Did your father know of this?”

“He discovered our love, and on pain of his eternal displeasure, forbade
me ever to meet my betrothed wife. It was an improper alliance, he said,
and exclaimed in scorn—`The heir of Lyndulfe unite with the child of a
nameless wanderer!”'

“Did you obey?”

“I certainly did not. My father then forced upon me a commission in
his Majesty's dragoons—look—”

Reginald opened the breast of his hunting-shirt, and the light shone
upon a scarlet uniform.

“Take care! You may be seen—you are now on Continental ground.”

“Ha, ha, you need have no fear. Yesterday, I left his Majesty's army,
—they are encamped somewhere in that chaos of peach trees and sand,

known as New Jersey. I disguised myself, as you see, entered Philadelphia—”

“Your object? Ah, ha, Reginald, have you also your dark hour?”

“Madeline!” muttered Reginald, with a changed voice; and then conquering
his emotion, he continued in his usual tone—“It was in regard to
some matter of deep interest to my father that I came yesterday in disguise
to Philadelphia, when, to my surprise and joy, I heard that Sir
Ralph Wyttonhurst is now living on his country-seat, near the Wissahikon.
His daughter—”

“You have seen her?” interrupted Paul.

“Not yet. I am on my way to meet her at this moment. They tell
me that the mansion of her father stands among the pines, on the Wissahikon,
a mile or two from this spot, near the Schuylkill.”

“Strange!” murmured Paul, as he saw his own face, mirrored in the
waves, suddenly flush into something like rapture—“Dark-eyed, hair black
as midnight, a step like a queen, eyes beaming with the tender prophecies
of youth and hope! So like that beautiful dream, which flashed over the
slumber of my life, and woke me into suffering and manhood. Even now
I see her, as she stood before the door of that fatal chamber, the light
streaming over the beautiful face, as she suffered her dark hair to wander
wildly over her shoulders—”

“Of whom do you speak?” cried Reginald, in amazement—“Do you
also love?”

“Love?”—again that bitter smile—“Why should I devote beauty and
innocence to the terrible vengeance of my destiny? You said that the
mansion of Wyttonhurst stood in a grove of pines, near the Schuylkill?”

“So the country folks tell me.”

“It must be near her home—the Wizard's daughter! Does she yet
live? Shall I ever more hear the music of her voice, or be roused into
madness by her touch? After I have been home—home! Home! Yes,
after I have been home, I will ascend the hill, on whose summit stands
the house of Isaac the Wizard. Passing through the grove of pines, I
will look upon the window of that chamber where we met, and behold
her face—hers—bathed in the glory of sunset. Or perchance there is a
grave among the pines, a grave overspread with wild flowers, and sacred
with her ashes.”

“But tell me, Paul, the history of your life since you left Lyndulfe—”

“Let me compress ages of thought and suffering in a word. I left this
valley, where my life had been spent, an enthusiast, a dreamer. I knew
nothing of mankind save from my books,—the hour before I hurried from
Wissahikon, and met you in the street of Philadelphia, I had known for
the first time, how dark, how fathomless were the abysses of my own soul.
Now, Reginald, I have seen the world. I have seen the world. Does
not that sentence speak the entire history?”

“You have been in Italy?”

“In France—in Italy—in Germany—in Spain—in Russia. Everywhere
the same story is telling every hour, a story told in the groans of
those who are born to suffer and die, in the laughter of those who are born
to trample and to kill! Amid the majestic ruins of that dream-land called
Italy, amid the corn-fields of France, amid the vine-clad hills of Germany,
amid the dreary wastes of Russia, I have beheld in various forms, the
same terrible fact—a Peasant crushed to the earth, loaded with chains,
baptizing that earth with his blood and tears, and a Lord standing with his
foot upon the Peasant's neck, mocking his anguish with laughter, and
turning his blood, his tears, into gold. That is, after all, the picture which
the whole world offers to the eye of God—a Slave and a Lord. Both
brothers, born alike of the same dust, going alike to the same grave-worm,
redeemed alike by the anguish of Calvary, and yet, one tramples the
other, loads him with chains and scorn, and turns his blood and tears
into gold.”

“Yet there must be classes in the world, Paul. There must be lords
and peasants. There must be kings and subjects. There must be rich
and poor.”

“There was another sight which I saw, Reginald—a sight that affected
me deeply. Even as the Peasant, crushed to the earth by those chains—
called Custom, Power, and other fine-sounding names—felt the foot of the
Lord upon his neck, and shed upon the earth the baptism of the Poor—
blood and tears, only blood and tears—even then, Reginald, as the
laughter of the Lord mocked that chained Peasant's anguish, while the
alembics of Priestcraft and Kingcraft—fine names! transmuted the blood
and tears into gold—even then I saw the Peasant's dusky face lighted by
a sudden fire. I saw him spring from the dust, and trample his chains
under his bleeding feet. Then, Reginald, I witnessed a new baptism.
There was no longer a Peasant before me, but a Demon—a Demon raving
on his wrongs, and bathing his scarred limbs in blood, the blood of the
rich, the noble, the blood of the gifted and the beautiful.—I asked the
meaning of this sight, and a voice answered, `It is the new Baptism, which
God hath in store for the poor.”'—

Paul stood erect, his hands outstretched toward the western sky, his
features stamped with a sombre enthusiam.

“Do you not perceive, Paul, that sentiments like these will apply very
dangerously to the present contest between the Revolted Colonies and
the King?”

“The King!” echoed Paul, in a tone that echoed strangely through the
stillness of the forest—“Always the King! Speak to the man of titles
and wealth, of the poor dying by millions, dying in famine, in battle, in
plague, and you are answered by a word, `The King!' Let the poor die
a thousand deaths in one, let them suffer such slow anguish as would

bring the blush to a devil's cheek, but, be very careful of the King. Be
very tender with the Rich. Let no rough wind blow too rudely upon the
round cheek of the Priest. Reginald, Reginald, it is enough to drive one
mad to see these Kings, hedged round by law, by custom; made holy by
Religion, defended by ranks of nobles, priests and rich men; while the
Poor are turned out by millions into the dark night of hopeless toil, and
left to blunder in wounds and in blindness to the grave. King! Did I
think that the earth, one hundred years from this hour, would be cursed
by one monster, who, calling himself King, Priest, or Rich Man, only
lives to trample his brothers into the grave, I would kneel here, and beseech
that God, who looks not unheedingly upon the fall of a sparrow, to
arouse at once the Demon in the breast of the slave, and let the New Baptism
at once begin.”

As if in witness of the sincerity of his thought, he raised his right hand
to heaven.

“There is force in your words; but have a care! Let the mob once
hear and believe sentiments like these, and there is an end of all order, all
government. In the place of Law, we will have anarchy, and for King
George at the head of the British Nation, we will only have Rebel Washington
at the head of a mob.”

“Washington!” echoed Paul—starting as though some memory found
a voice in the utterance of that word.

“One day, resting on a rock which yawned over an abyss amid the
Alps, I heard that name. It was from the lips of a wanderer, who, cast
like myself, a pilgrim on the face of the earth, had amid his journeyings
traversed this land of the New World. His face was haggard; his attire,
covered with dust, scarce concealed the sharp outlines of his withered
frame. That haggard face was suddenly flushed, that withered frame as
suddenly dilated, as with the throbbings of a new life, while he uttered a
name which, in his wanderings, he had gathered to his heart. He spoke
of battles, of dreary marches at dead of night, of a band of ragged peasants
pursued by the armed soldiers of a King. Of farm-houses fired at dead
of night by ruffian soldiery, and of old men butchered on the threshold
stone. Of virgins torn from their slumber by the hand of brutal outrage,
and dishonored—outraged—amid the shouts of armed spectators. Of a
band of mechanics and farmers, who, aroused into energy by these accumulated
wrongs, assembled one day, in a City of the New World, and in
the face of mankind, and by the name of God, solemnly declared against
the King and his hired murderers. Of one man, who kept a rebel band
together in the face of unimaginable perils—in face of starvation, nakedness
and treason—who, with a mob of half-naked and starving peasants,
confronted the splendid armies of a King, and drove them like frightened
sheep before the hounds, from a Christmas revel, at a town called

Trenton. The name of that man was Washington. The story touched
me deeply. I could not help but love that man!”

“Paul—Paul, can I indeed believe my ears? You preach treason and
sanctify revolt with words like these? I cannot hear any more of this—
I am an officer of the King!”

He laid his hand upon the scarlet uniform, which was visible through
the folds of his hunting-shirt.

“But you are something else, my dear Reginald. An officer of the
King—a Lord—heir to a Dukedom—something more even than these. A
Man! You have blood in your veins—does it bound more freely when
you reflect that, hired by a King, to do the work of murder, it is now your
duty, your solemn duty to—cut my throat?”

His face was convulsed with mocking laughter.

“Ah—Paul—it is not my friend that speaks. I do not know my brother's
voice. That tone, that smile do not belong to you—”

“Washington!” cried Paul, gazing into the waters with an absent glance.
“It is a new name in the history of the world. I do not remember it in
the blood-red volume of British heraldry.”

“It is the name of a Rebel,” exclaimed Reginald, with a frown; “there
is a price upon his head—”

“Shall he indeed prove worthy of his task, and shine forth from the
clouds of Revolution, the Father of his Country? Or, shall he sink into
the degraded herd of Kings, and gasp his last breath amid the curses of an
enslaved People, leaving only these words as a record of his life—

“`I founded a Dynasty and died.”'

“Tut—tut—Paul; we've had enough of this nonsense. Before December,
the British army will occupy Philadelphia, and—ha, ha, it may be—
the head of Mister Washington will adorn the gate of London!”

And the handsome Lord graced his words with a pleasant smile.

“There was a man, Reginald, who rose from the Mob, and made England
great; for, from the brute form of vassaldom, he struck into rugged
life, the image of a People. He was named Cromwell. He died, leaving
the greatness of England, achieved by his own hand, as his only monument.
His body was soon after rooted from its grave, his limbs torn into
fragments—nailed to gibbets—hurled into the offal of the streets. This
was some time ago. Can you tell me, Reginald, which name looks nobler
now in history, the King Charles the Second, or the Brewer Cromwell?

“He was a Traitor—a Regicide.”

This time Reginald frowned.

“Yes, it is true. He helped to kill a King, who had given, not long
before, his best friend to the scaffold.—Ah, it is enough to force a smile
upon lips of stone! To talk of treason against a King. There is no such
thing. There can be no treason committed against a King, for Kings are
only Kings because they have been traitors to God and man.

“Washington! Is he indeed the man for the age, or must the People
look for another? Ah—I remember—the name in the Urn—”

Paul was silent. The Last Night rushed upon his memory again.

“Paul, you surely do not imagine, that the idle Declaration, promulgated
by the—ha, ha—the Continental Congress, will ever influence the destinies
of Europe?”

“A Thought never dies, Reginald. The Thought of the Gospel was
uttered by certain Galilean fisherman, in the face of all the kings in the
world. This was seventeen hundred years ago. And now that Thought
is embodied once more—it is uttered once again in this Declaration. Do
you think that Thought has lived seventeen hundred years—lived in the
face of kings and their brutal laws—to die at last without an echo? A
thought that lives, is only a deed struggling into birth. Can you, or can
any man foretel the deeds which that Thought will create, within the next
hundred years?

“Even now, that Thought moves in the heart of Europe, like a living
heart in the breast of a corpse.”

“You talk, it seems—ha, ha—Paul, you must pardon the smile. But
you talk of a Revolution in Europe. Forgive me if I am dull of comprehension.”