University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
LOVE AND CALICO.

I awoke in love. In tropical hearts a passion
shoots up to perfection in a single night, like a
flower. The elements of my whole nature were
inflammable, and love was the torch which was
now to light them into a beacon fire to guide
and guard my whole existence, or to a devouring
flame which was to consume and destory,
— I heeded not which; but the flame
was lighted, and the fire glowed. My whole
nature, to its lowest depths, was illumined.
Feelings and hopes, which had long lain dormant
in my bosom, now crept out like torpid
insects, to warm themselves in the genial influence
of my love. My whole character seemed
to alter suddenly — to acquire impulses and qualities,
natural, indeed, but which had never shewn
themselves before.

I have no wish to linger on the details of
this period of my life. Suffice — I saw Mafy
very often, and became desperately in love.

She was pleased with the passion of a boy,
and thought herself partly in love with me.
Besides, her imagination was excited, for I told
her I was a genius, and wrote her a great
quantity of verses.

By a singular combination of circumstances,
Mafy came to make a visit at Morton's Hope.
It is not necessary to explain any more, than
that her father, who was an old friend of my
uncle's was obliged to make a visit of business
to the southern provinces, and as he was anxious
that his daughter should not be exposed to
the fatigues of rapid journeying at this inclement
season, he appointed my uncle her temporary
guardian.

When I heard this from Mafy's own lips, I
trembled for joy. I could hardly believe that
the Hope was to be turned into such a paradise.
It was true, and she came.

She came — and my doom was sealed. Could
it be otherwise? Was it not necessary that I
should give myself up, blindly, recklessly, to my
passion, — being daily, hourly, by the side of
that enchanting woman? Was it unnatural,
too, that in spite of her reason — in spite of
my extreme youth, and the childishness of my
character, she began to return a passion which
was enforced with such unchanging vehemence.

She did return it, and I was happy. She

acknowledged to me that she loved me, and at
that moment I felt myself an immortal. Swiftly
flew those hours; they flew — but their
wings were woven from the plumage of paradise.
Unheard and unheeded falls the foot of
time in the summer of our love, for his steps
are muffled with flowers. Alas! alas! — how
soon these flowers fade!! — and how soon comes
the season when his every footstep is painfully
distinct, as he strides over the crumbling leaves,
and the decayed and crackling branches! and
alas! the last season of all, when his progress
is again unheard, but because his path is covered
thick with snow.

Mafy loved me, and I was satisfied. There
was an occasional fit of abstraction, and once
or twice I found her in tears; but, in general,
she was gay and happy. I had put my whole
destiny in her hands. I had poured forth to
her the whole suppressed tides of my inmost
nature. Every hope, wish, aspiration — all the
hoarded ingots of my heart — I gave — recklessly
gave — to her keeping.

We were ever together in that blessed retirement.
She made me speak gravely, and look
definitely at the things which had been going
on around us. I have said she was a rebel,
and she made me one in a moment. She could
mould me as she wished. There was my bane.

She found she influenced me too much. A
woman cannot pardon in her lover a strength
of character inferior to her own.

“Did you make Uncas go without his dinner
to-day, uncle Joshua, that he is so ill-natured?”
cried Mafy, one evening. The old gentleman
heard or heeded not the question. He was standing
in the corner of the room. Before him was
an immense box, in which he had arranged all
sorts of wheels and cylinders, and shuttles —
had supplied it with water from a cistern —
causing an artificial river and dam, and waterfall:
in short, it was a whim to which the
recent events in the colonies had made him rather
more constant than he otherwise would
have been. And as the gout and the bad
weather had kept him from his great establishment
in the Anissippi, he had been employing
himself a month in constructing a calico factory,
with which he could amuse himself within
doors.

“A plus B divided by C, raised to the N
power, are equal to an unknown quantity represented
by X. Now, if the unknown quantity
be the Piston No. 1, and 2 minus Z, be,
—,” cried Joshua, reading from a book of
problems, and referring to his machinery.

“Lord, Joshua,” cried Forty, “I wish you
could be cured of that provoking habit of reading

aloud anything that you may be busy with.
If there are forty people in the room that know
nothing of the subject, you insist on lugging
them all in by the ears to your assistance.
Now, what do you suppose, I, or Uncas, or that
little provoking Mafy—”

“You shan't abuse Mafy,” said the old gentleman,
drawing himself up with great dignity,
“and moreover, you are not to suppose that
every one has as little taste or talent for abstract
science as yourself. The fact is, you do
not at all appreciate the immense advantage
you might have derived from a continual intercourse
with a man like myself — a man, who
has devoted himself, I may say, to the cause of
science, and—”

“There's Hiram the carpenter coming in;
so you'd better talk science with him,” answered
Forty, leaving the room on business of the
family.

The old gentleman and his confederate went
off to the calico, and were soon buried deeply
in mathematical calculations.

“Now, come with me to the piano,” said Mayflower,
“and I will sing the pretty song you
wrote for me.”

And we went, and she sang the pretty song
I wrote for her, and twenty others that I had
written for her, and twenty more that I did

not write for her; and we had been a long time
together, and had become very sentimental, and
I had got hold of her hand under the piano,
and was kissing it diligently. “Dearest Mayflower,”
said I—

“Come here both of you,” said Joshua, suddenly
marching up, and seizing Mafy by the
arm. “Come directly — there is one cogged
wheel, and one wheel without cogs, the theoretic
adaptation of which I did not explain to
you yesterday. I will do it now; and I have
had the cistern filled with water; and Hiram
the carpenter is come; and I shall set the
whole system in motion. You shall see it, both
of you. What can be more delightful?”

“Damn the carpenter and the cogged wheels,”
muttered I, in a pet, at being interrupted at
such an interesting moment by such an annoying
proposal. It is on such trifling occasions
that a man seldom entirely commands himself,
and a woman always. Woman is trained so
early to concealment of feeling, that she slips
on a decent outward demeanour as easily as a
glove.

“Hush, Uncas,” said Mafy, “you must go.
Perhaps you are not aware that uncle Joshua
is as much in love with me as you. I am
not sure which I shall decide for. How should
you like me for a step-mother?” So she smiled

upon Joshua, took his arm, and they were
soon over head and ears in the mill-pond,
while I solaced myself with a fit of sulks in a
corner.

After this business was over, and we were
left alone, I pressed my suit. The vehemence
of my boyish eloquence, my prayers, and my
passionate tears, softened her soul. She took a
slight ring from her finger, and we broke it
between us. She tied my fragment to a tress
of her hair, and hung it round my neck. She
kissed me fondly, and promised to be mine for
ever.

That raven braid — that broken ring, lie now
before my eyes. They are all that remind me
of thy plighted love, Mayflower.