 | CHAPTER II. Westward ho! |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
Rainsford did not enter his appearance at
the woodland festival; he had gone over to his
house, under pretence of making preparations
for his removal. Virginia, though she kept up
her spirits tolerably since their last interview,
felt a heavy weight on her heart, and fell into
that state of mind which inclines to lonely meditations.
One evening she wandered alone down
to the river-side, not to enjoy the opening
charms of spring and the rural beauties of the
scene, but to brood over past times and future
probabilities. The season and the prospect
which spread itself out before her were both
equally alluring. On the opposite shore of the
river the high and haughty precipices of dark-coloured
rocks threw their deep reflections upon
the bosom of the clear waters that here, in consequence
of their expansion, rested quietly in
their capacious basin. The upper line of these
everlasting walls, viewed from where she stood,
reared itself high in the air, and nothing was
seen beyond or above them but the pure blue
sky of evening. As the sun gradually sank to
the horizon, it appeared a blood-red ball of flame;
and when half hidden behind the massy barrier
of the stream, assumed the appearance of a
great signal fire, such as in ancient times gave
the land of cakes, the land of Burns and
of Walter Scott, to send forth their hardy denizens
to the dangers they loved to encounter.
The shore on that side where reposed the village
of Dangerfieldville was a low rich bottom,
as it is yclept in western phrase. A fellow with
some geology in his brain would call it alluvial;
but we confess we delight to speak to the
comprehension of ordinary readers, whom it is
our pleasure to please. It was such a little
paradise as whilom the shepherds haunted in
the pastorals once so admired, but now eschewed
as fantastic pictures of a state of society which
never had an existence. So much the worse,
so much the worse; for to us it seems that the
very beau ideal of human happiness would consist
in this imaginary union (if such a one were
possible) of all the simplicity of rural innocence,
all the mild excitements of rural scenes, rural
amusements, and rural occupations, with gentle
manners and intellectual refinement. It says
nothing in favour of the state of manners or
morals, when the human mind can only be excited
to feeling or enthusiasm by high-coloured
pictures of passion and guilt, or high-seasoned
temptations to folly and crime.
The general character of the scene we have
attempted to describe was that of silence and
repose. But ever and anon a boat would glide
down the stream, and the silence be interrupted
for a few moments by the laugh or song of the
boatmen, or the echoes roused by the most
touching of all music, in the proper scene and
season,—the windings of the mellow wooden
the lonely rivers of the south and west, will,
peradventure, never forget. No hunter's horn,
no inspiring bugle, no oaten reed of shepherd
piping among the fauns and dryads in Grecian
or Sicilian vale, ever sent forth such
mellow, melting sounds, as we have heard in
days of yore, rolling in fleecy volumes from the
simple wooden trumpet of a river Orpheus,
black as the petticoat of night, when not a star
watches in the dingy firmament.
Virginia's eyes were on the scene, but her
thoughts were far away. It is scarcely necessary
to say whither they were wandering, or
whether they were pleasant or painful. Such
as they were, they were suddenly interrupted
by the sound of footsteps, and the appearance
of a person she at once recognised as the identical
being who was at that moment in the entire
occupation of her mind. She started, and
was offended.
“Mr. Rainsford,” said she, “after what has
passed, I did not think—I did not wish ever
to see you again.” And she was proceeding
towards home with a hurried step.
“Virginia—Miss Dangerfield, forgive me for
wishing to see you once more. I am going
away to-morrow. I shall never return, and I
—I don't know whether I shall be more happy
or miserable for the indulgence, but I wished
to bid you farewell; and to part in peace with
one with whom I have lived till lately in
peace.”
“Well, sir, in peace let us part; though I
must be allowed to say, your intruding into our
my father; and, and—but of myself, I will
say nothing. I ask, if you think all this was
not, in the circumstances under which you
came here, dishonourable and infamous?”
“Yes, yes, it was so,—I confess, I know it
was so. I had no right, wretched being that I
am, I had no right to endeavour to make an
interest in the affections, or create an attachment
in the heart of any human being; living,
as I do, in the horrible anticipation, nay, the
horrible certainty of one day giving nothing but
pain to those who take an interest in my fate.”
“You should have thought of this before,
Mr. Rainsford.”
“I should—nay, I did. But think, Virginia,
when a man has no friends, no relatives, not a
soul that takes an interest in his fate; when
he has buried all he loves, all that love him;
when he loathes the sight, and shuns the society
of his early companions, and roves a
wretched wreck of body and mind, in the vast
solitude of the world, without rudder, or compass,
or haven of repose. Think, Virginia,
what must be the self-denial of that man who,
under such circumstances, could resist the kindness
of benevolent strangers. And yet, you
may remember I sought not your father's hospitality.”
“I know it—I know it. But, when you
knew that you had no claim, you ought not to
have accepted it,” replied Virginia, whom the
sad picture Rainsford had drawn of himself
softened almost into forgiveness. “But it is useless
to say more, or to prolong this interview.
and mine, I forgive them. You saved my life;
I cannot forget that. And may the great Being
you have offended so deeply, receive the gift of
life you bestowed on me as an atonement for
that of which you deprived another.
Rainsford looked aghast.
“Deprived another! What do you—what
can you mean, Virginia?”
“Your conscience will tell you what I cannot
utter.”
“Conscience! upon my soul I do not comprehend
you!” Yet Rainsford trembled all the
while with a secret consciousness.
“Must I speak? must I remind you of your
own confession?” cried she, impatiently.
“No, Virginia, there is no necessity for that, it
is never out of my mind for a moment, asleep or
awake. It haunts my very dreams, and makes
my nights ten thousand times more miserable
than my days! But still I cannot comprehend
what you said just now.”
“Hypocrite!—then if I must, I must. Answer
me,” turning full upon him, “answer me, Mr.
Rainsford; have you not confessed yourself a
murderer!” And she shuddered with loathing,
as she uttered that appalling word.
“Murderer! ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed
aloud. “No, no, thank Heaven, not yet, not
yet. Whatever I may be, in good time—”
“Wretched man!”
“Yes, I am wretched, but I am not a murderer.
Ha, ha, ha! what a high opinion you
have of me. Add thief and pickpocket, seducer—madman
to it, Virginia, to make up the
Virginia shuddered, with mingled emotions
of disgust and horror, as he continued in a
more composed manner.
“Miss Dangerfield, what you have just said
convinces me of the propriety of my making
certain explanations which you declined to hear
once, but which I demand as an act of justice
you should listen to now. Come, come, you
must, you shall hear me. You shall hear what
never was and never will be disclosed by me
again to any human being voluntarily. Come,
sit down on this old gray rock, and listen to
what I shall say. It is worth the hearing, I
promise you.”
Virginia could no longer resist; she sat down,
trembling with emotion, and, leaning against a
huge tree that grew out of the side of the rock,
awaited what followed.
“Well, sir, go on, and let me hear it all.”
“Virginia, there is madness in my blood and
race!”
“Madness! Oh, God! Madness?”
“Be not alarmed; there is no danger yet
awhile at least. I will not harm you, dear,
kind, benevolent soul, though you did suspect
me of murder.”
“Did you not acknowledge it?”
“No, on my soul! But I now see into the
source of your mistake, and will remove it if
you will listen calmly to my story.
“I am the last of my family, and so much
the better, for when I am gone its name and
memory will be for ever buried in the rubbish
I have undertaken a task which I fear will accelerate
the catastrophe which haunts my imagination
every moment of my life.”
“Only assure me solemnly of your innocence,
and I will spare you the rest.”
“No, all shall be disclosed, now that I have
wrought myself to the task. I said I was the
last of my family; but that is the lot of thousands,—a
vulgar calamity not worth thinking or
talking of. All men die; all generations, names,
families, nations, the peopled millions of the
universe, all pass away; but to die as mine have
done, as I shall die,—there's the rub, Virginia,
there's the rub! My family was respectable
and rich, so rich that fortune seemed determined
to make all the amends she could for the
curse denounced upon them by fate—ay, fate,
Virginia! do you not believe in fate? It is but
another, a profane name for Providence. Ha!
ha! It is astonishing what a difference the
world makes in the same things called by different
names! But we were rich and well educated;
we had every outward means of enjoyment;
and yet, for almost fifty years never has
there existed a more wretched, hopeless race on
the face of the earth. The story goes—it may
be true, or it may be false—but the story goes
—and it has had an influence over our family
that while one of them remains alive will never
cease. It was said that our grandfather, who
was a loyalist in the revolutionary war, in some
battle, no matter where, encountered an old
gray-headed neighbour, a whig, who surrendered
him his sword, and cried out for quarter.
excitement which is so often felt in the heat of
battle, and, without listening to his entreaties,
cut him across the head till he sank to the
ground. `I know you, squire,' cried he, as he
fell. Some years after, when he was settled on
his estate, which he received with his wife, and
had a family around him, it chanced that an old
beggar came up the avenue, and asked charity
in an incoherent manner, which indicated derangement
of mind. He was somewhat insolent,
and my grandfather roughly ordered him
away.
“`You are a kind-hearted gentleman,' said
the old man; `what might your name be?'
“`It's of no consequence to you; go away,
old man.'
“`Yes, but it is. I like to know the names
of my benefactors, that I may pray for them.'
“My grandfather ordered him away; but before
he left the court-yard he learned from a
servant his name, and returned, and stood right
before him; he lifted up his old ragged hat, and
displayed a head seamed with scars, ill concealed
by a few white hairs.
“`Do you see this old head, major? and how
it is marked, as if the plough had been over it?
You don't remember me; but I do you. Do
you know whose sword it was that made these
gashes?”
“My grandfather was about going away,
when he cried out,—
“`Stop, major; it's impolite to turn your
back on an old acquaintance. Don't you remember
a gray-headed soldier who asked you
rotten cabbage? My name is Rockwell—Amos
Rockwell; we were neighbours once, before
you removed to these parts.'
“My grandfather remembered the man and
the circumstance, and immediately offered him
all the reparation in his power, a home for the
rest of his life. But his mind began to wander,
and he no longer understood what was said to
him.
“`A tory, a tory is a highway robber, and I'll
prove it,' and he fell into incoherent nonsense.
Before he departed, however, he came close up
to my grandfather, and said,
“`Do you know, major, I'm a fortune-teller?
I get my bread by it now. I'll tell yours for a
shilling; I would not be in your place for all
you are worth and ten times more. I'm pretty
mad sometimes, they say, but you'll be ten times
worse before you die; you'll be a mad family
among you, and I could find in my heart to
pity you, if it wasn't that you cut open my
head when I asked for quarter, and let in so
much air that it has been like a bladder ever
since. Good-by, I shall be this way again one
of these days to see if you're mad, and if you
are we'll have a merry time of it.'
“He left my grandfather somewhat struck
with this strange medley of sense and nonsense,
for he was a man of nervous temperament, and
subject to fits of low spirits. It passed away,
however, or only occurred at long intervals,
when accident or association would bring the
incident of the old beggar to his mind. About
on encountering my grandfather, exclaimed,
“`What, not mad yet? well, you've got only
two years more to run, and then we'll have our
frolic out.'
“This second visit had a sensible effect, as I
have heard, on my grandfather, who had in the
interim lost one of his two children. But when
he again returned the third time, my grandfather
was seriously shocked.
“`You've one more year of grace,' said he,
`and then, if I live, you and I will set out on
our travels together to see the world, and knock
our noddles together, for yours will be as empty
as mine soon, or I can't see into a millstone.'
“It was foredoomed that the thing should
happen, and the beggar was only the instrument
of fate in giving the warning. It was a sort of
retributive justice that he should be permitted
to become the messenger of Providence, as well
as the agent in assisting to bring about what
was to come to pass at all events. My grandfather
brooded over these warnings until he
could think of nothing else, and his nervous
predisposition received new force by the sudden
death of his wife, which calamity left him with
no other solace than a little weakly son about
four years old. The neighbourhood was solitary;
no one lived within less than two or three
miles; the nearest building was an old half-ruined
church, which had the reputation of
being haunted, and whose moss-grown tombstones
stood as thick as the trees of the forest.
By day it was sufficiently cheerful; but the
drowsy hum of insects, the croaking of frogs,
and the occasional night music of the owl and
whip-poor-will, presented a sort of void for the
imagination to people with spectres of its own
creation.
“My grandfather gradually grew visionary
and melancholy. He became a devotee; he
became a fanatic; he—he ran mad, and raised
his hand against that life to which he himself
had given being! He was confined in a cell,
and dashed—”
Here the young man paused, panting, wiping
his forehead, down which the big drops rolled
their way, and exhibiting the intensity of mental
suffering. Virginia could not speak; wonder,
doubt, superstition for the first time overwhelmed
her imagination, and she shuddered
at the anticipation of unknown inscrutable
horrors. After a few moments he went on.
“My father grew up an intelligent, well-principled,
virtuous man; married; was blessed—
ah! luckily for him he did not live to see two
sons, aye, three, grow up to be the curse of his
existence. My father,—but why should I dwell
on such soul-sickening scenes and recollections?
his story in its catastrophe is that of my grandfather,
and let it rest in oblivion. Now, Virginia,
now comes the whirlwind and the earthquake;
now the curse begins to approach me
nearer and nearer, until I feel the grasp of fate
about my throat. We, I and my two elder
brothers, often thought and often shuddered
over the fate of our father and grandfather, the
latter of which some foolish or malignant people
for ourselves, although it was observed
by some of our friends that we were all inclined
more or less to melancholy and superstition,
as they called it; but I know better now,
and have another name for it, PRESENTIMENT.
“We lived together, and loved each other,
until my elder brother began to, to—spare me,
spare me the detail, Virginia; it is time for me
to conclude, or I shall go mad before my time.
It is sufficient, it must be sufficient to say, that
my dear brothers, one after the other, precisely
at the same age, under the same circumstances,
and under the same influence of a gloomy anticipation
of the fate which every succeeding
victim more surely marked was sooner or later
to become his own, followed the footsteps of my
grandfather and father, and died, and made no
sign of having once belonged to the race of
miserable inheritors of a curse which goes by
the name of a glorious privilege. I, I alone
remain; there is none other; no grandfather,
father, or brothers to run distracted, but me;
the vial of wrath has no other head but mine
to pour out upon. The hour approaches; the
next birthday, and then, then you must take
care of me, Virginia. I shall be dangerous,
especially to those I love, as I do thee, dear
woman of my heart. At this moment I dare
to tell thee so, for I feel like one that, having
disclosed the inmost secret of his soul, cares not
who knows all the rest. Yes, I, I the wretched
inheritor of curses that have never fallen to the
ground; I that can bring you nothing but a
benediction of horrors; I that ought to be
wilder cells and dungeons of my kind; I dare
to tell thee so, Virginia.
“When my last brother kill—died, I could
not stay any longer in a place where I was
looked upon by the people as a victim marked
out by destiny; as a sort of mysterious object
of the wrath of Heaven. I sold my estate, and
bent my way to some spot where I and my
story should never have been heard of, and
where I might be looked upon as a fellow-creature
by my fellow-creatures. A distant hope
likewise animated me at times, that possibly
change of scene, change of air, change of life,
together with the absence of every thing that
could give to my mind the fatal direction of all
my family, might relieve me for a while from
the besetting fiend. At a distance, and when
doubtful whither to go, I heard of this village,
and of the character of your father. I came
hither; I found a welcome, friends, all, and
more than I ever expected to find in this world;
and for a little while I hoped to be at least as
happy as others of my fellow-creatures. But
I feel it is all in vain; I have a presentiment
which never yet deceived me, but is as sure as
fate itself, and which assures me that my hours
are numbered. Hah, hah, hah! isn't this a
romantic tale for a fair lady's ear; a touching
appeal from a thriving wooer to his lady love?
am not I irresistible, Virginia? hah, hah,
hah!”
“Don't laugh; don't laugh, for God's sake!”
cried the young maiden.
“What, you'd rather hear me howl, and
chatter nonsense? Well, perhaps it would be
more in character.”
Virginia soothed him by degrees into something
like composure.
“The anticipation of misery, after all, is better
than the consciousness of guilt. I am thankful
that it is no worse.”
“But how could you believe for a moment
the absurd tale of murder?” asked he, reproachfully.
“Did not you yourself contribute to deceive
me?”
“Perhaps I did. I could not know what was
passing in your mind, nor you in mine. If
you knew how I shrink from the idea that any
human being should suspect the cause of my
melancholy, and that my apprehensions are for
ever fixed to that one single point, you would
easily conceive why I took it for granted you
alluded to no other. In the same manner I
was deceived by Paddock's suspicions, and
bribed him, not to conceal a crime, but a misfortune.”
“And I, misled by the turn given by Mrs.
Judith to your violent emotions and ambiguous
exclamations, mistook your confession of one
thing for that of another. You will pardon
me, I hope?” said she, with a melancholy
smile.
“If you will pardon me for daring to attempt
to establish an interest in the hearts of a worthy
family, who, if they cherish any regard for me,
must one day mourn over my fate. But let
me again remind you what it is to be an outcast,
wander through the peopled solitudes of the
world, a guest only at the tables of strangers;
to go and come, without a soul caring whither
or when; and to receive no sympathy from a
human being. Such was my case when I came
here, and was received with a kind hospitality
that went to my heart. I could not for the soul
of me resist it at first, or resign it afterwards.
Will you forgive me for cheating you into
friendship for one who is destined to repay it
with bitter recollections, perhaps with something
worse?” and he shuddered with some
gloomy anticipation that passed over his mind,
as he added, “I shall leave you to-morrow.
You must never witness it.”
“Witness what?” asked Virginia, anxiously.
“You must never see me gradually stripped
of my mind's regalia, the attributes of godlike
man, one by one. To see me hate those I
loved; to see me sit brooding over one single
miserable anticipation, which will grow and
grow from hour to hour, and day to day,
until it becomes a gigantic spectre so horrible
that reason turns away from it shuddering,
and takes refuge in madness. To see me wandering
about like a wild beast, the enemy of all
and feared by all, until at last, like the wolf or
the tiger, I am caught, and chained, and shut
from the light of heaven. I will spare you
this, Virginia, and depart to some place where
no one knows or cares who or what I am;
where, when the crisis arrives, I may howl without
piercing the ear, and die without wounding
the hearts of my friends.”
The deep melancholy of his voice, as he drew
this appalling picture, touched the heart of Virginia,
and drew tears from her eyes. Though
her feelings towards Rainsford had been restrained
from giving way to the violence of
love, they had long passed the boundaries of
mere ordinary friendship. She certainly preferred
him far above any man she had ever
seen, which indeed was no great compliment,
she had seen so few. But the capricious
changes in his conduct and temper, joined to
the melancholy gloom which so often overspread
his countenance, while it excited her
interest, created doubts and suspicions, which
prevented that unbounded confidence necessary
to the very existence of love in the heart of a
sensible and virtuous woman.
The disclosure just made, had invested him
with a strange inexplicable interest, where
pity was coupled with a kind of vague indefinite
fear. Sometimes as her fancy realized the
picture he had drawn of himself in anticipation,
she would shrink from him with trembling
apprehension; while at others when he presented
the fair reality of an amiable handsome
youth, with a mind stored with all the richness
of past and present times; a voice of touching
melody; an eye which in his happier moments
was yet more eloquent than his tongue, and a
heart that not only seemed pure and good, but
was all hers; then she felt that soft and yielding
influence which prompts the pure virgin to
wish to join her fate with some chosen one, and
share his joys or sorrows in the journey through
this world.
A silence of some minutes was at length interrupted
by the wild quaver of a screech-owl,
from the dark precipice on the opposite shore of
the river. It broke on the dead silence of the
evening with a tone so shrill, so cold, and cheerless,
that it is not to be wondered at that superstition
has connected it with its other regalia of
horrors. The favourite haunts of this invisible
bird are deep woods, mouldering ruins, and
churchyards. He lives among the dead, and
his sunshine is the obscurity of utter darkness.
He sees when others of the cheerful denizens
of the air are blind; he sallies out of his sepulchre
in some old hollow tree, to screech and
scream his funeral warnings under the windows
of the startled peasant, when all the rest of the
feathered race are enjoying their innocent
repose among the whispering leaves of the
forest.
The scream was so shrill, and broke so abruptly
on the deathlike repose of nature, that it
made Virginia, who was accustomed to the
sound, start from the revery into which she had
fallen.
“Let us go home,” said she.
“A few moments. That is my music, Virginia;
it is a prophetic song. Don't you think
that screech-owls see into futurity?”
“Certainly not, for then they would be wiser
than rational beings.”
“Rational beings! what is reason but a proud
temple built on the sands, to be overthrown by
the first blast that whistles by? I can understand
that owl as well as if he spoke English.
He is telling me—hark!”
Another long shrill quaver came over the still
waters.
“Hark! dost thou know what he is saying,
Virginia? He tells me to make the most of
the present moments; to enjoy thy dear society
in all its full fruition of delight; to listen to the
music of thy voice, to hear thee breathe so
softly on the night; to exchange with thee the
rich treasures of thy mind, for the miserable
counterfeit coin of mine, for the last, last time,
for to-morrow, nay, this night we are to part for
ever. There is truth in owls, you may depend
upon it.”
“Let us go home,” again said Virginia,
rising.
“A little longer, Virginia, for the prophet
over yonder says it is the last time. Come,
look with me once more at this lovely work of
Nature's cunning hand. It has a moral; it is
prophetic, too, like the owl. The pure sky up
yonder is a mirror in which we may see if we
view aright the reflection of our future days.
Every human being has a star there, which
sparkles forth his history and his fate. My
planet is the moon; she does not shine now, as
if to indicate my light of joy and hope will be
extinguished this night. But the river, the
river, that is your true prophet. See how its
waves roll quietly away! not one drop will
ever return; and so with me. They find their
way into the ocean of waters, and are lost for
ever; I shall return to the ocean of the world,
and the kindest wish that I can ever breathe
for thee, Virginia, is, that my name, my fate,
my very memory may be lost in oblivion.”
Virginia paused, and was silent a few moments;
she then said, with faltering hesitation,
“Why should you go to-morrow, or indeed
go at all?”
“Have you not driven me away, Virginia?”
“That was then I believed you guilty, and
hated you.”
“And now you pity me!” said Rainsford,
with bitterness. “You look upon me as a rare
monster, something out of the ordinary sphere
of mankind; and wonder at me as the boys
do at a mad beggar in the streets.”
“No, on my soul I don't, Mr. Rainsford.”
“Give me the proof, then,” cried he, vehemently;
“I love you, Virginia; I have told
you so before. If any human being can chase
away the fiend that haunts my reason and my
fancy day and night, it is you. To know that
you are interested in my happiness; to know
that I have a watchful cherub praying for and
shielding me from fate itself by her purity and
virtue, will, if it is not irrevocably decreed
otherwise, redeem me from the fate of all
my family. Now, Virginia, to try thee! darest
thou promise, darest thou pledge the purity of
thine immortal soul to me; me, standing on the
brink of a yawning gulf, and dizzy with looking
down upon it; darest thou promise me—
'Sdeath! what a selfish scoundrel I am! no, no,
it is decreed; I must go.”
“Mr. Rainsford,” said Virginia, with a sad,
yet firm solemnity mingled with tenderness;
“Mr. Rainsford, I think I know what you are
going to say; say on, and be assured that what
a woman sensible of her duty to her parents
to you, and of the claim you have on her gratitude,
ought to do, can do, that will I do with
all my heart.”
“Well then, Virginia, if it should please the
great Giver of life and reason to spare me the
bitter draught which all my race have drank
and died of—if I should pass the fated period,
and, having passed, I shall not fear it afterwards—will
you, dearest Virginia, can you consent
to share my fortune with me, to become
the chosen blessing to repay me for all I have
suffered in this world? Answer me, frankly
and finally.”
“With the approbation of my parents I will,”
replied she, after a pause, and hesitatingly.
“Ha! your father and mother! true, true,
they must know it; they must know all, and
shrink from me as all others who knew my
history, save you, have done, Virginia. I cannot
bear to be made a spectacle, an object of
horrible commiseration, of mingled scorn and
pity; to have every word, and look, and action
scanned with jealous scrutiny, and distorted
into an indication of approaching alienation of
mind. No, no, dearest Virginia, be you the only
depository of my secret; do not be kind by
halves; give all or nothing.”
Virginia hesitated; but, moved at length by
his forlorn and hapless state, she promised not
to betray the confidence of that evening.
“A thousand thanks, dearest, most beneficent
Virginia. I shall now have something to live
for, and, instead of for ever brooding over the
dark vista of the future, which hitherto has presented
look forward to the hope that, under the guidance
of an angel, and shielded by her wings, I
may yet live to taste that happiness which has
been an alien to my heart ever since the dreadful
conviction was implanted in it, that I should
go the way of all that I loved or that ever loved
me.”
“May the gracious Providence ordain it so.”
“Virginia,” resumed he, with a solemn earnestness,
“Virginia, permit me here to seal the
compact on the sacred purity of thy balmy lips,
the first and the last time, unless the new vision
that has just dawned upon me should be realized.
For here I solemnly swear, in presence
of all those silent witnesses that sparkle yonder,
never to take, never to ask of you any one of
those sweet condescensions which virtuous delicacy
may blamelessly bestow on true affection,
until I can claim, and you can grant with a
perfect confidence, that last and greatest blessing
of possessing you. My spotless, pure Virginia
shall never run the risk of having her future
life poisoned by the recollection of the
endearments of one who some day may be
clanking his chains in a dungeon. Come, thou
dear one; the first, and perhaps the last.”
The maiden yielded a modest compliance,
and one kiss, one embrace was given and received
in silence; one kiss and one embrace
sealed the communion of weal and wo. They
returned together, and Virginia was at once
reminded of the rashness of the promise of
secrecy she had just made by the inquiring
Colonel Dangerfield. She longed to throw
herself on the maternal bosom, and disclose all
that had passed.
| CHAPTER II. Westward ho! | |