University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIV.

The horse-and-gig were at the door, it was a beautiful
day—such a day as women talk of in their youth, when the
great woods are all in flower, very much as if their hearts
were in flower too; and I was getting ready to say farewell
to the man without a name.

I say though, said he, as he sat with his back toward me
and his arm around the waist of Mary, who stood leaning
over him with her eyes upon a book, in which he appeared
to be writing. I say though—parting the rich hair upon her
forehead as he spoke, pulling her up to him, setting a kiss
there; not as if she were a wife—his wife, I should say—but
more as if she were a child of his—

Did you speak to me? said I.

Yes—how do you like my wife? Showing me a sketch
of her he had just made in the book.

Your wife!—how do I like your wife?

Oh my God! as lady Morgan would say, oh my God! that
ever you should live to hear any body ask you such a question
about such a bit of pure poetry!

Edward—Edward—for pity sake!

I 'll tell you what 't is though young man, she 's a noble
creature, and you 'll find her so.

I have found her so.

You have!—umph!

Yes I have.

I 'll bequeath her to you, if you like—

Sir!

Edward!

What say you to that?

Sir!

What say you to it, Mary! pho pho, if any thing should
happen to me dear, it would be a pleasure for me to know
that you would be provided for. Why, what a fool you
are—we can't both die together you know!

True—true—not now; but the time was when we could
have died together—both—

Mary Pe—

Hush—hush—putting her hand over his mouth.

Narrow escape for you, sixpence—with a laugh.

Don't pray call me sixpence.

Very well—narrow escape for you nevertheless—you—
you—you monkey, you.

No no Edward, no no!

Well well, we can't both die together you see. That's
unpossible; and what's unpossible can't be, and never, never
comes to pass. One or the other—you or I—must
precede.

Very true, and therefore I pray that I may go first.

Why dear, 't is the survivor dies, you know—

I know it, I know it—

And so you wish me to be the survivor, do you?

Oh Edward! Edward! how can you talk so!

Yes. I 'll bequeath her to you Holmes, if you 'll swear to
be to her all that I should have been.

You 'll break my heart—or drive me crazy Edward, if
you—

If I what? pho pho, what are you crying for? is n't he
like me?

Like you, Edward!

Did'nt I hear you say so?

When—where?—

Last night.

Last night!

In your sleep—

Oh, in my sleep—

Oh! in your sleep; you are easy now are you? you have
said as much when you were not asleep, I guess—what say
you, Mr. Yankee?

Ask her—

Have you my dear—tell me.

Yes—I have.

There 's a dear—kissing her devoutly—I am satisfied
now. The wretch!

Farewell! said I—farewell—I could 'nt bear it any longer—
I hope to see both of you again, but if I never should, I pray
you—and that will be enough to make you both happy, I
pray you to treat each other as you now do—farewell!

No no—

Yes—farewell.

Remember your promise.

I do—I will; there 's my card, Sir—

And there is mine, said he—offering a handful—take your
choice—

I laughed in spite of the solemnity of my feelings—No no,
said I—I 'll have nothing more to do with your cards, but I
hope to see you again, I have much to say to you.

And I to you. You shall see me again—after a pause—
should you not like to see my wife again?

I should—

Very well; what say you Mary? should you like to see
the na-tyve again?

Yes—

It shall be so. Na-tyve this way. Mary dear—this way.

Give us your hand Sir—and you too Mary, give me yours.

Now Sir, I have an idea that you are wonderfully like me—

I bowed.

Pho pho, it can't be helped you know, and we must
bear it as well as we can. Observe what I say—if any thing
should happen to me, I bequeath her to you—what are you
staring at, both of you? I am quite serious—

You are mad, I believe—

There there, you may go now; I shall see you in town before
a week is over, I dare say. Mary!

Well—

What if you give him a kiss—

Oh for shame, for shame Edward; your levity is insupportable.

Fudge—don't you like him?

Yes, I do like him.

Very much?

Why—a—a—yes.

Love him a little too, I dare say?

Love him!

As a brother you know—

Yes—

Very well. As a brother you would kiss him—prove to
me that you do feel toward him as toward a brother.

Prove it—I will—I will—

Enough. She kissed me, but how, or whether on my
forehead or my lips or my cheek, I never knew—I only know
that I trembled all over when I felt her breath in my neck,
that whenever I think of her now, I have a thrill at my heart
which it is not in my power to describe, and that I did not
come fully to myself, till I had got within half a mile of the
shore on my way to Southampton, and was drifting along
at the rate of about a mile an hour, with Nettley-Abbey—two
or three arches and a bit of wall overgrown with the heaped

up foliage that you never see any where but in the live English
landscape—just under the bows of our boat, and a view
before me half clouded with the sea-smoke, so like the view of
Baltimore as you approach it by water, that for a few minutes
I could hardly escape from the idea that I was still in
America. At last however, as we drew near, and I discovered
that what I had mistaken for a detached part of the
town—like Fell's Point at Baltimore—was in reality the town
of Southampton itself, and that what I had mistaken for the
body of the town afar off, was in reality but a few scattered
villas gleaming through the river mist, I woke all at once
from the deep revery in which I had been—for nobody
knows how long, very much like the poor fellow, of whom
we hear in the Arabian Nights, who contrived to escape from
a world of misery, by taking his head out of a tub of water,
into which he had been pursuaded to dip it, for the joke of
the thing, about half a century before as he thought.

Strange—but so it was. At any other time I should have
dropped asleep, as we floated along by the green graceful
unsteady shore—with its overhanging woods and quivering
atmosphere, through which the pomp and beauty of the landscape
were like the pomp and beauty that we see in our sleep;
with a little sunshine playing loosely over the tree-tops and
among the waters; with a peep here and there at a sweet
blue sky on the other side of the larger trees, and with
just wind enough to stir a leaf or two whenever we were getting
drowsy or beginning to regard the whole as a mere
picture; but now, instead of dropping asleep, I started broad
awake, wondering to find that I was neither at the cottage
with a beautiful woman before me ready to throw herself upon
my neck, nor wandering about in the covered paths and
huge dim shadows of Carrisbrook-Castle,1 where I had spent

a good half the day before I knew it was peopled, or that in
clambering over the topmost wall and up the chief tower, I
had been scaling a fortress without leave, and was liable to
prosecution, as I saw by a board that faced me when the
feat was over.

Surely, said I, as we drew near the town—surely the site
for Baltimore must have been pitched upon by somebody
who had reason to love Southampton, just as Portsmouth,
Portland, Yarmouth, Falmouth, and forty other places in
America were probably so named by people who had left
the Portsmouth, Portland, Yarmouth, Falmouth, and forty
other places of their beloved Old-England—to perpetuate the
recollection of their boyhood, to create a home like the home
they had left, and to keep alive in their posterity a feeling of
regard for the birth-places, after which their birth-places were
named. Surely the brave ship that I see there is on her way
up from Philadelphia! That steamer too—she is on her way
to Norfolk; and the fleet afar off and the signal-guns that I
hear, what are they but signs from the high-sea, that Baltimore
is about to be invaded again! As I live—there is
North Point—and there the very place where they shot poor
Ross—for which blessed be God, by the by, for nothing else
saved poor Baltimore.

At last—but how or when, I declare I do not know to
this day—I arrived at my own door in the metropolis of the
British empire, hurried up to the old room, which with its
heavy chairs, and heavy couch, and heavy table, and every
thing to match, I hope never to forget; pulled forth my hoard
of paper, kicked off my boots with a flourish, and prepared
to be happy and altogether at home once more. But no—
no—I was neither at home nor happy. My books were no
longer what they had been to me—the spell was no more—
the thread was broken—a story which I had been occupied

with till my heart ran over with pride and joy, had no longer
the power of fixing my attention. The very work which a
month or two before was enough to occupy me all the day
long, day after day, and more than half the night week after
week—was no longer a pleasure to me. The dream was
over. It was a thrice-told tale, without wisdom, without power,
and without beauty. I could not bear even to read over what,
when it came fresh from my heart, like live water from a
newly-found spring, had been to my hope a—a—I really
would finish the period if I knew how. But I do not—and
I have only to say that I was unable to read, unable to write,
unable to draw—for a very good reason by the by, over
and above that which appears—and quite unable to stay at
home or to sit still, the days were so long—after the week I
had passed at the cottage; the furniture of my room so heavy
when I thought of the furniture I saw at the cottage; and the
air of London so dreadful, when I thought of the sea-breeze,
and heaved up my head in the fog of Pall-Mall under a notion
that it smacked of the fog that used to come rolling in
before a tide at the Isle-of-Wight—I say nothing of the London
sky just now, having lived in London but a very few
years, though I am told that people are to be found who do
not scruple to speak of it, as a thing to be seen every month
of the year.

I began to go abroad more than I had for an age, to hunt
up old acquaintances—people for whom I never cared, and
never should have cared but for the dread I now had of
being alone; to go every where, to all the exhibitions parades
reviews and theatres; to lounge about the windows of
the print-shops, to ride to fence to box, to walk for a wager,
to busy myself in a thousand ways which a month or two before
I should have thought beneath me; to go to bed earlier
and earlier, and to get up later and later every day; glad

when the night came, though I knew that I should not sleep;
and glad when the morrow came, though I had not closed my
eyes—for another day was gone, or another night, and I was
so much nearer the time which I knew must arrive either in
this world or the next, of seeing her, who, although she was
another man's wife, and although I had no wish that I would
have concealed if I could from the Searcher of Hearts, began
to be loved by me as no sister I do believe, was ever yet
loved by a brother. In a word—for the first time in all my life,
I knew not how to pass the day, nor what to do with myself
when the day was over; I had no heart for work—no heart
for pleasure. I would go to the theatre and drop asleep—
I would go to a masquerade and forget myself so far as to
unmask before all the company; I would go to church and
stay and stay till I was told that I could stay no longer. If I
went into a coffee-house and took a seat by the table, I forgot
what I had come for—and if I began to read a paper, it
would drop out of my hands, and flutter toward the chimney,
before I recollected where I was—or I would keep it until
somebody asked for it; and if I ordered a dinner it was by
fits and starts, piecemeal, as I happened to be importuned by
the waiter, who had to remind me every five minutes that
something I had called for was getting cold. Nay, what is
yet more strange, I was happy in the idea that perhaps—perhaps—I
might live to occupy a second place in the heart of
a proud beautiful woman. Lord! that I should ever be satisfied
with a second place anywhere!—a second place in the
heart of one that I loved. Yea—loved! and though such
love may be regarded with grief or dismay by the multitude
who never know what such love is—and who do not scruple
to forgive more under the name of friendship than I would
beg for under the name of love; and though it be the fashon
to cry out—such is the power of a word—such the power
of untruth—if the married speak of loving where they are not
bound by law to love; yet I say, and I appeal to my Maker
for the truth of what I say, that if I were married to such a
woman as I would marry if I had the power, I should glory
in having her so loved by other men, were they good—or
were they bad men---as the woman I speak of was now loved
by me. If they were good men, it would make them happier—and
if they were bad men it might make them better—and
such love as mine would never—could never injure
the object of its love; it would but make her more dear to
me and give to virtue a tenfold power. I might call this
friendship—another would I dare say; I might allege that
my feeling toward her was that of a brother toward a sister—
another would I am sure; and I know well that he would
have forgiven, or pitied, or praised, where I—for speaking the
truth---should be spoken of with horror. But as I happen to
know what friendship for a female is, and as I happen to have
a dear good sister whom I love I hope, as much as a brother
need love a sister---I dare not say—I will not say what another
would in such a case, that my love here was nothing but
friendship or a brotherly regard. I know better—it was a
warmer deeper holier than either—yea holier! as I mean to
show before I have done.

Well well—a month had passed over in the state of trial
which I have attempted to describe, and I had begun to give
up the idea of seeing Edwards again. Yet more. I had begun
to feel quieter and happier and more at home with my
books. I could bear my own society again—the days did
not appear so long, nor the nights. And really—really—I
had begun to say to myself, that if I should have an opportunity
of renewing my acquaintance with the people of the
cottage, it would not be very advisable to do so. What should
we gain by it—either of us? No—no—said I to myself, no

no, it cannot and it will not come to good; I 'll keep away—
I 'll avoid them—I 'll go to work, and leave not an hour of the
day to be wasted in revery. It may be irksome at first—it
will be so—I foresee that I cannot give up the pleasure I have
indulged in so long, that of throwing aside my book or my
pen just before dinner, or just before bed-time, or between
day-light and dark, and shutting my eyes and thinking over
all that occurred to me while I was with—I will not say
whom—at the cottage. I began to be afraid of myself and
afraid of her. But just then—just as I had begun to slide
back into my old habits, and to say, if not to think that I ought
never to see that woman again while I breathed, and that
now was the time—now—now!---to come to a resolution worthy
of a hero; a superb equipage rolled by me one day, as I
was hurrying through Regent-Street, and as I drew back to
avoid the whirl of the mud, some one called out to me in a
voice that I knew. It was too late for me to escape—the
carriage had drawn up, the steps were down—my heart was
in my throat, and Edwards himself before me—but so unlike
what he had been a few weeks before, so altered, so free in his
bearing, so cheerful, that if he had not spoken to me as he
did, I should have passed him, I believe without knowing
him.

1 A celebrated castle on the Isle-of-Wight where Charles I.—the martyr!—was
confined.