Border beagles a tale of Mississippi |
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| 3. | CHAPTER III. |
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 | CHAPTER III. Border beagles |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
Sea—desert—what do these avail?—
Oh, take her anguish and her fears,
Into a deep recess of years.”
Wordsworth.
The arrangement thus effected needed but the
consent of the principal party to its immediate operation;
and Mr. Wilson was ushered into Vernon's
chamber by the ready aid of Dick Jamison. Our
hero, though confused by his application as much
as by certain medicines which had been administered
by Doctor Saunders, was yet not insensible
to the advantages in sundry respects which the contemplated
removal might afford him. As an invalid,
with the possible prospect before him of a protracted
illness, it promised that repose and quiet which he
felt would be grateful, if not necessary to his condition;
and when he reflected on the probability of
his being able to secure the main object of his
journey, in a quiet pacific manner, and by degrees
which would neither startle nor offend, he could not
mistake the course which he should at once adopt.
But still he hesitated, nay refused;—thanked the
old gentleman for his hospitality and consideration
—made light of his own services previously rendered,
and, though in faltering accents, declared
sick bed, and that too of a stranger, to the household
of his friendly visiter, and to the great interruption
of its domestic privacy and quiet. The nice
and jealous sensibility of Harry Vernon was busy to
produce this determination; and feelings which he
did not then seek to analyze—which he might not
at that moment have perceived—influenced his declared
resolution when all the obvious reasons of
his mind fought against it. He remembered the
lovely daughter of the defaulter; and when he reflected
that it might become necessary to expose the
crime of the father, he was unwilling to incur the
reproaches—the probable and perhaps well-founded
hostility—of one whose favourable opinion already
grew in his mind the embodied standard of a becoming
excellence. But the reluctance of our hero
warmed the manner of the old man to something
like persuasiveness—he urged many good reasons
why the patient should consent—denied the inconvenience
and annoyance—spoke of his own little
household comforts, and to sum up all in brief, assured
him that his consent alone would make easy
the minds of himself and family, since the necessity
under which they laboured of attending to some
pressing interests had compelled them to leave their
preserver on a previous occasion, with a seeming
indifference to his condition which might well expose
them to the charge of coldness and ingratitude.
The objections of Vernon gradually vanished
when he heard from the lips of the father that such
was the argument of his daughter by which he had
been moved to the offer; and it needed but the reasseveration
of Dr. Saunders that the removal was
full of promised benefit and might promote his more
speedy restoration, to induce his full consent to the
arrangement. Behold our hero then fairly admitted
he pursued as a fugitive.
Two days only had passed since Mr. Wilson and
his family had become occupants of the same household.
They had pursued their way to this secluded
and lovely spot, with direct steps, from the moment
when they left the hospitable dwelling of the rigid
Methodist. They had reached it late in the evening
of the same day, and the night was too far advanced
to enable them to behold the beauties of the
locality. But the cottage, though small, was neat,
and furnished with a larger attention to those things
which are classed under the ordinary term “comforts,”
than was commonly the case in a region so
remote from the demands of fashionable society.
Virginia Wilson beheld on all sides those little
items, in the shape of carpet, chimney ornament,
piano and guitar, which, if they do not of themselves
secure the happiness of life, at least contribute somewhat
to its good humour and content. But the circumstance
which chiefly satisfied her on the night
of their arrival, was the improved temper and
cheerfulness of her father. While on the road he
had exhibited a degree of querulousness and impatience
which she had never perceived in him before
the commencement of their present journey; and
this temper was coupled with an air of precipitance
and apprehension—a seeming distrust of all he met
—a shrinking that looked like fear from all he encountered—which
filled her own mind with apprehension,
and made her at moments doubtful whether
there was not something like mental alienation in
him,—a suggestion of her fear which alone seemed
sufficient to account for a course of conduct
and manner, such as he had never shown to her
before. These had worn away in great degree
from the first moment after they had set their feet
of the father seemed restored. He spoke soothingly
and tenderly as if desirous to compensate his children
for what they had been made to suffer in their
journey; and the fond, pliant hearts of both responded
to his cares, and grew glad in the return of those
smiles of the parent which are the sweetest sunshine
to the devoted and dutiful child.
“Virginia, Louisa, my dear children,” he exclaimed,
folding them in his arms as soon as the
first cares and excitements of their arrival were
over, and when they remained alone together in
their little parlour—“we have reached our resting-place
at last—henceforth, my dear children, this is
to be your home. Lucchesa is one of the loveliest
spots in Mississippi, and I have chosen one of the
sweetest spots that surround Lucchesa. Here, Virginia,
your rambles will be unimpeded and always
beautiful; the woods are thick and various, and
filled with the sweetest flowers; and you may now
pursue your study of botany with more perfect self-approbation,
since you will find abundant varieties
of subjects to justify your love. And you, Louisa—
what will you say to these little hills when you shall
see them? They will seem to your eyes, which
have never seen any but the dead flats of the low
country, to be little less than mountains. Your
feet will tire to ascend them at first, but after a little
while, you will grow wild as a kid in your rambles
—there will be no keeping you in.”
“But, father,” said the child, drawing closer to the
old man—“the woods are so wild and strange
they frighten me—there's a strange noise among
the big pines, and when I walk among them I hear
sounds that seem like the voices of spirits.”
“It is the wind, my child, that shakes the trees,
and murmurs when it presses against them as if
that, until you learn to like it, as I doubt not your
sister does already. What say you, Virginia?”
A melancholy, spiritual smile, which passed over
the lips and lightened in the eyes of the elder maiden
for an instant, was his sufficient answer, and the
father proceeded.
“Our cottage is not one of the best in Lucchesa,
but it was the best that I could buy. We will improve
it as we can. You will see in the daylight
that it lies on the side of a little depression that we
low country people may almost call a valley. It is
so low that you can only see it from the top of the
hills; and the houses of Lucchesa can scarcely be
seen at all from the top of ours. We have a little
garden, Louisa, and you shall tend the flowers,
while I raise the squashes and the potatoes and the
cucumbers. Our gallery (piazza) runs round three
sides of the house, the north only excepted; and
though we lie in the valley, we have a sweet and
extended prospect of hill-slopes on every side. The
woods seem naturally to open into vistas, and these
I will improve, until the cottage shall be the centre,
from which an hundred avenues of sight shall diverge,
and into which they shall gather from every
point of the compass. But enough of plans for to-night.
Louisa, your eyes grow heavy in spite of all
I can tell you. Kiss me, my child, and then find
out your chamber.”
The child, drowsy, but still striving to be attentive,
did as she was bidden. The elder sister was left
alone with her father, whose mood grew less cheerful
with the absence of the child, and whose manner
became far less easy. For a few moments a silence
that was painful to both succeeded her departure.
Mr. Wilson rose from his seat and paced the room
with emotions that were evidently oppressive. Twice,
he passed before his daughter, who, with head leaning
upon her palm, seemed oppressed with emotions
also, which, if not so exciting, were, perhaps,
scarcely less oppressive than his. At length, as if
overcoming a strong reluctance, the father stopped
beside her, drew a chair, and taking her hand in his,
addressed her as follows:
“Virginia, my dear child, you have said nothing.”
“Father, what should I say—what would you
have me say?” replied the daughter, the cloudy sadness
deepening on her lovely countenance.
“That you repine not—that you are satisfied—
that you are happy. See you not, my child, that
the same paternal love which has striven so much
to make you happy before, has spared nothing here
within the compass of the country's resources to
supply what you may have left behind?”
“But wherefore are they left behind, my father?
Wherefore have we left the home where the same
pleasures, if you call them such, were already ours?
Was there nothing in the old home to endear us to
it—was it not endeared to us by the happy life we
had lived in it—was it not endeared to us by the
very death of her—that beloved mother—who
made so much of the happiness we have lost—
whose loss made so much dearer to us the little we
had left?”
“And was it not good reason that we should fly,
my daughter, from a dwelling where we had known
that loss?”
“Alas, my father, it could not have been for that
reason that you left our home—our home which
death itself had seemed to sanctify. Years have
passed since that cruel hour of parting, and the pang
had passed away in the bitter memory of joys felt
without a pang, and the assuring hope which was so
sainted beyond suffering. Oh, no! dearest father,
my heart will not hear this reason—my mind cannot
receive it. There must be another cause, and that
cause, my father, is one which it doubly grieves me
to believe, has made whiter than ever the hair upon
your forehead.”
“Virginia, my child, why will you press me thus?”
cried the father, striding hastily along the floor with
his hands clasped above his eyes, as if to shut from
sight the mournful and inquiring expression of her
countenance.
“Because I am a child no longer,” was her reply,
as, darting from her seat, she rushed towards him,
and, catching one of his hands in both of hers, sunk
upon her knees with a passionate manner which well
accompanied the earnest and emphatic language
which she employed, and which, while clinging to
him, she continued to pour forth. “Because I am a
child no longer—I am a woman grown—I can both
think and feel. I can surely understand the sorrows
that I still must share, and if I understand, my father,
may I not help to relieve them? Were my dear mother
living, I should look to her for the truth, when
sorrow troubled and danger followed your footsteps;
but in her absence I must take her place, and I implore—nay,
I claim it as my right, my father—to
know what grief, what threatening danger has driven
us to this wilderness, where the forests are yet almost
as wild as at their birth; where we have no
society, and where we see no friends.”
“And can it be for the absence of society—nay,
can it be even for the loss of friends, when her father
and her sister are still left her—that I hear these questions—that
I witness this affliction of my daughter?”
was the answer—an answer, the burden of which
did not represent the real conviction in the father's
searching inquiries which the first portion of her
speech had conveyed.
“No!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet, “as
heaven is my help and hope, dear father, I answer
`No!' It is not the little circle which I have left,
nor the few friends for whom I had sympathy and
attachment, that gives me cause of sorrow, however
their loss may at moments occasion feelings of regret;
nor is the wilderness into which we have wandered
so uncongenial to my tastes and habits as to
provoke inquietude and annoyance. I think not of
these in the conviction that you are unhappy—that
a secret cause of dread and danger hangs about you
which makes you so often heedless of my love and
indifferent to my endearments. Nay, shake not your
head, my father—that smile does not deceive me.
You require me to be happy, to be at ease, and find
satisfaction and pleasure in the dwelling which you
have found in Lucchesa, and the comforts which
your customary care has gathered about us. I answer
you that I will, so soon as I find that you derive
pleasure and content from the same sources. Let
me see you at ease, and you shall find me so; but
while your brow is clouded—while your air and
movements denote a secret apprehension of evil, I
cannot but share the cloud upon your brow, and my
apprehensions grow only the greater because I can
neither see nor guard against the coming of the
danger which you fear. Let me know all, my
father. Give me the knowledge of this mystery—
for there is mystery—and rely upon me to soothe
your sorrows, though I may not avert their cause.
Rely upon me to share those griefs with satisfaction
which now bring me nothing but terror and
despondency.”
“You know not what you ask, my child!” cried
What if, foolishly persuaded by your entreaties, I
should reveal the cause of my sorrow—nay, to
silence you at once, what if my revelations brought
you shame along with sorrow? Ha! do you shrink
—do you tremble?—Would you still hear—Virginia,
would you still listen to a narration of guilt, which
would make your sorrow less endurable? Speak!
shall I now relate what you have been so curious to
hear?”
“Guilt!” exclaimed the daughter, with feeble accents
and a shrinking, sinking pain. “No! no! It
cannot be—there is no guilt—there can be no shame.
These are cruel words, my father; do not again speak
them, I implore you—forgive me, forgive me—but
you were so serious just now, when you spoke, that
I almost believed you. Tell me your afflictions,
but tell me not that there is guilt and shame, which,
indeed, I well know there cannot be.”
“Enough! Press me no further, Virginia,” continued
the father, recovering his calmness in some
degree, and, with some effort, smoothing the excited
expression of those features, which, almost convulsed
a moment before, had nearly convinced his daughter
of the truth of the general confession he had made.
“I trust that you will never know that guilt or shame
could be coupled with your father's memory and
image—”
“And yet, my father, this change of name.” She
spoke with tremulous accents, and a renewal of that
look of shrinking apprehensiveness which denoted
the bewildered state of her judgment, warring with
her feelings and desires; unwilling to believe aught
that could degrade or lessen the worth of one whom
she was no less bound to venerate than willing to
love, and yet the mystery of whose conduct left her
faith.
“Policy, my daughter, need have no association
with either guilt or shame,” replied the father, evasively,
and by a general remark, to which there
could be no exception as such. “When I tell you,”
he continued, “that the assumption of another name
is necessary to my present interests, you are not to
imply any thing dishonourable or unworthy in the
change. There are motives which justify—there
are reasons which make it necessary.”
“Ah, my father, but there are no reasons which
should make you deny your confidence to your
daughter,” was the prompt reply. She, at once,
seized upon the true and only point at issue between
them, which she urged with as great a degree of
earnestness as became the relationship between
them. “I believe you that there are motives which
require you to do this; but, surely, my dear father,
you can neither deny my interest in a knowledge of
these motives, nor my prudence in reserving them
from exposure as carefully as yourself. Give to my
love, dear father, that reliance which it has evermore
given to you.”
“You ask too much, Virginia; you are yet but a
child to me. There are many things which are
neither becoming nor necessary for a woman to
know—which, indeed, she could not know—could
not understand. It is enough that this is one of them
—let me hear no more of this.”
“Father!”
“Nay, my child, I mean not to be stern—I would
not be angry—but this is a point upon which you
are too earnest—too much disposed to insist—of
which you speak too frequently.”
“It is only because it is a constant thought, my
father—a painful thought—a doubt—a fear.”
“Let it be so no longer, my child. Do you not
see that I have grown cheerful since I have reached
Lucchesa? You do not see me apprehensive now
that we are in a place of safety.”
“Safety!” was the natural exclamation. “And was
the danger then so near us?”
“Nay, how can you ask, Virginia, when but three
days ago we all lay at the mercy of a gang of
robbers?”
A deep sigh escaped from the lips of the serious
maiden, but she said nothing. She saw that her
father strove to deceive her, and she forbore any farther
reference to a topic which he was so anxious to
exclude, even at the expense of truth. He saw her
conjecture and sickened as he did so; but he could
say little or nothing to remove it; and conscious of
his feebleness in this respect, and in the inadequacy
of any art or argument, short of a frank confession,
to do away with her apprehensions, he resorted to
the humbler policy of seeking to divert her mind
by reference to other objects. With a general
knowledge of the feminine nature, in certain minor
respects, such as their love for petty pleasures, he
strove to engage her mind in such matters as might
amuse rather than employ it. But in this, he soon
perceived, from the quiet indifference of her answers,
that he must fail; and, tired of his task, and dissatisfied
with himself, he forebore all farther effort, and
the lateness of the hour soon furnished a sufficient
reason for their separation for the evening.
Virginia Wilson retired to her couch, but sleep
was slow to visit her that night. Her heart was too
much filled with the mysterious circumstances which
hung around her father—her mind too much troubled
with the apprehensions which had harassed
him for several preceding weeks—to suffer the
velvet-footed deity to approach her without warning,
his accustomed dominion. The night waned slowly,
while a thousand thoughts and conjectures, chasing
each other with as much rapidity, if not with as
many startling transitions, as the images that flit
over the magic glass of the wizard, made her mind
a populous world, where all was commotion and
much was strife. She thought, with unspeakable
anguish, of the reserve of her father on those circumstances,
evidently momentous, which had troubled
him, and still troubled him, though, under their
terrors, he had sought safety in a region still wild,
and still the abode of so much that was barbarous.
What were those circumstances?—and had he indeed
found the safety which he admitted had been the
object of his aim? These were questions that did
not cease to afflict her, because she lacked all means
for their solution. She could only hope and pray—
she could only resolve to assume a cheerfulness
which she could not feel, and to drive from her mind,
by the acquisition of an early interest in the strange
world to which she had been brought, that more
grateful region to which she had been accustomed.
This was, perhaps, the least of the mental difficulties
in the way of Virginia Wilson. Hers was one
of those commanding intellects that depend little
upon the mere externals of society for their comforts
and enjoyments—that make place and fortune
subordinate considerations in an estimate of life's
resources and rewards; and require peace of mind
and confidence of heart in their own, and the purity
of those with whom their lot is cast, rather than the
praise of men or the plenty and profusion, which, to
so large a portion of mankind, constitute the “be
all” and the “end all” of existence. The wilderness
had no terrors, but many charms; and to one who has
and empty vanity of society, as of its harmony and
grace, it was no difficult matter to find a charm in
solitude which more than atoned for the fleeting
pleasures she had lost. Under the care of such a
mind as hers, and surveyed through the medium of
such sweet affections as ministered around the altars
of her unselfish heart, the wilderness could soon be
made to blossom as the rose. But the dread of that
nameless danger which followed the footsteps of
her only living parent, haunted her thoughts with a
continual presence. She estimated the powers of
this danger from the terrors which had possessed
her father's mind, and the very failure of conjecture
to answer the doubts of her constant inquiry,
was of itself a source of wo, which made her
misery the greater. Still, it had never possessed
her mind until the evening of her arrival in Lucchesa,
and until the occurrence of that conversation
with her father, a portion of which is briefly reported
above, that there could be any shame or disgrace
in connexion with the necessity which had
driven him from his home. It will be remembered
with what earnestness and pleading anguish she had
exclaimed against the brief and passing suggestion
of her father, that guilt and shame were coupled
with his sorrows. This hint—though afterwards
evaded and denied by Mr. Wilson, when he beheld
the effects upon his child, to whom he did not dare
communicate the truth—yet took possession of her
mind, when the silence and secrecy of her chamber
left her at liberty to re-examine the subject;
and when she recurred to the secret and precautionary
measures which her father had taken
for his flight from Orleans—the indirectness of his
course—the change of name—the constant apprehensions
in resolution as they made him acute in observation—her
fears, faint and shadowy at first,
grew into distinctness, and acquired new bulk and
body with every additional moment of reflection.
She could now, and for the first time, readily conceive
the motive for flight and fear, for that startling
terror which at moments enfeebled his limbs and
covered him with tremors—which made his voice
sound hollow in his throat—which made his eye
shrink to encounter even the fond and affectionate
gaze of hers; and which, in the dialogue already
briefly given, had moved him to those few but incoherent
expressions, convulsively uttered, which
could only have found their way to the lips of one
labouring under insanity or guilt. That he was not
insane she knew,—that he was guilty, the fear was
rapidly growing into a faith within her mind. But
of what was he guilty? Strange to say, the difficulty
became as great as ever when she reached
this stage of conjecture, or conviction; and, after a
vain effort, by a reconsideration of all the subjects
attending his movements from Orleans, to arrive at
such hypotheses of the particular crime for which
he fled, as would seem reasonable to her thought,
she gave up the effort in sheer exhaustion, not without
a lurking dread that, in a moment of passion, he
might have stricken some enemy to the ground, and
forfeited his own life in atonement for that of his
fellow. Not for a single instant did she fancy that
he had been faithless to his public trust—that he had
incurred the scorn of all good men through a miserable
appetite for gold. Still, though dismissing, as
well as she might, the distresses of her father's
situation from her thoughts, she found it difficult to
win the slumbers that she wooed. Her mind had
were new to the even and unbroken currents of her
ordinary existence, to sink into quiet and leave her
to repose; and the new world in which she found
herself, and the circumstances, some of them exciting
and startling enough, which had occurred
on their journey, called for brief review. Some of
these were like a dream—the flitting shadow of a
disordered image, such as gathers before the eye
of a drowsy fancy, and fills the mind with conflicting
impressions. Yet there was one image
that lay at the bottom of all others—which rose
last to her survey, and lingered long after all the
rest had departed—which was neither indistinct
nor imperfect—which stood proudly and nobly before
the eye of her imagination, and on the pure
tablets of her memory—alone, unmixed with any
other form or fancy—a controlling, commanding,
imperial presence. This was the image of Vernon.
She saw him once more as, bounding from the
wood, he rushed forward without fear to the rescue
of her father. She heard the clear, silvery
accents of his voice, sweet, though stern, as he
shouted to his companion to follow, and to the
robbers as he pursued. She beheld the grace of
all his movements, as, bending in the saddle, he
passed the carriage at full speed in chase of the
assailants, though already wounded; and a sudden
tremor was renewed at her heart, as she remembered
his faint accents when he returned, and when,
sinking down before her in the road, he lay unconscious
until they reached the dwelling of the Methodist,
a noble specimen of manly grace and
beauty. Not a single feature that her eye scanned
at that moment, but rose to her memory with the
distinctness of life; and, with a sentiment of fluttering
with that sadness which is ever the companion
of devoted love, she continued to muse upon the
events connected with his presence, until thought
subsided into sleep, and her dreams renewed, under
various aspects of pain and pleasure, the images
and events which she had been last reviewing.
| CHAPTER III. Border beagles | |