University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

I pass over the events of a week—a period in
which I suffered no annoyance, not even seeing
for a moment the person of Bud Halsey. No
doubt he was busy at his usual operations. His
absence gave me no concern. Never was man
happier than myself. Never did time pass so
pleasantly. I began to love my venerable host,
as well as his daughter. He certainly showed
himself a most excellent man. Thoughtful, tasteful,
philosophical, his nightly conversations were
a rich treat that sometimes made me forget that
Helen was by my side. Then, he had a most exquisite
skill in music. His flute, after I retired at
night, seemed the voice of some complaining angel.
It was so mellow, so wild, so sweet and
spiritually sad. Sometimes, at evening, when
Ellen would be absent, he would give me glimpses
of his life, and the causes of his present situation.
So far as I could gather from him, his worst crime
was bankruptcy. He owed money which he
could not pay. His person was threatened, and,
with a morbidly keen sense of freedom, that
shrunk from the idea of a goal as from degradation,
he fled to the uncultivated forests—still in possession
of the heathen—seeking safety. His child,
meanwhile, remained with an aged relative. His
brother followed him, but with less innocent conscience.

His hands were stained with blood. He
had incurred, without hope or excuse, the doom
of outlawry—outlawry or death! But, on this
subject, Bush Halsey said but little. That he
should remain where he was, and in contact with
a brother, whose deeds he certainly ventured to
disapprove, is only to be accounted for by assuming
for him a certain degree of phlegmatic irresoluteness
of character. His temperament possessed
nothing of the energy which distinguished
that of his brother. He was mild, playful and
persuasive; the other harsh, impetuous and commanding.
I need not add that, save by his presence,
he had no participation in the doings of the
banditti in the midst of whom he dwelt. If the
father improved upon acquaintance, how much
more did the daughter. She was, indeed a wondrous
treasure of the wilderness—not simply
beautiful, but sagacious beyond her years and
sex,—disguising, under the harmlessness of the
dove, the wisdom of the serpent—under the simplicity
of the child, the forethought and mature
mind—on all subjects not conventional—of the
high souled, intellectual woman. In merely
worldly matters, she was a child. She had no
concealments. The thought spoke out in her
eloquent eye, ere her lips could utter it—the feeling
glowed, with a speech of its own, upon her
cheeks, ere yet her mind could embody its character
in thought. How soon did she show me
that I had won her heart, and how confidingly,
then, did she walk with me, speak with me,—let her
fancy have its utterance, though every syllable
and look betrayed her soul's dependence on my
own. We rambled and we read together—she
sang and I listened—as if we were both of the
same household. We made every foot of our
island limits our own. She knew the restraints
set upon my footsteps, and when, in the delight
of my heart, and the buoyant impulses of my
spirit, I would have launched into the canoe, or
borne her across the tree that spanned the creek,
and conducted to the opposite territory, she caught
my hand and restrained me.

“Do you think I fear, Helen?”

“But for my sake, Henry.”

For her sake, it seemed to me, as if I could
have done or forborne anything.

Thus we lived, and loved—need I say how
happily, with how few qualifications. Yet qualifications
there were. How was this to end? The
question forced upon me a sort of self-examination,
which, as it never resulted in my own acquittal,
I never allowed it to be a protracted one.
My conscience smote me for the game I was
playing with this dear young creature. I really
had no purposes. It seemed as if I could have
lived with her, and her only, all my life; but the
idea of living all my life in that swamp retreat
was unendurable. And to carry home with me
as my bride, the daughter of an outlaw,—or, at
all events, the niece of one,—was not to be
thought of. I had lived too long in the world of
convention not to have acquired certain laws and

lessons which were fatal to the philosophies of
any being so purely unsophisticated as Helen
Halsey. Her heart was mine, but not her philosophies.
Yet, truth to speak, I meditated no evil.
I did not meditate this matter at all. Life was
simply passing away in a delightful dream, and I
was too much the boy to be willing to disturb its
pleasant progress before the necessary time. But
there were other qualifications to my enjoyment
besides my own reflections. I discovered that my
steps were closely watched. On the occasion when
I first made this discovery, I had been standing
with Helen on the bluff of a creek, admiring the
proportions of as lovely a cockle-shell of a canoe
as ever danced over an Indian water. I had been
trying to tempt her to enter with me. She had
resisted and dissuaded me, and while we were
discussing the project, my eye had suddenly
caught the glimpse of a living object directly before
me, on the opposite side of the creek. In
that quarter the copse was exceedingly dense.
Canes and water-grasses grew down to the very
lips of the stream, and in the rear was a thick
hedge of evergreens, shrubs and brambles, slightly
sprinkled by heavy timber. A second look
betrayed to me a pair of eyes keenly fixed upon
our movements. In a moment they had disappeared.
I quickly conceived the necessity of
saying nothing on the subject of my discovery,
and showing nothing in my deportment which
could make it apparent to the spy himself. But
the circumstance left me less at ease than formerly.
Another day, within the same week, turning
suddenly a little lane, with Helen, we passed three
men, who observed us very closely. One of these
men, particularly, struck me as one whom I had
seen before, and the manner in which he eyed me,
disquieted me, as tending to show that he too was
striving in the work of recognition. But he passed
on, and, with so many objects to divert and
interest my thoughts, it was not likely that this
should linger very long in my memory. I am very
sure it would not have done so, but for other events
of like nature, which kept the recollection fresh.

Meanwhile, where was Bud Halsey—that
formidable and fierce bandit? I had seen nothing
of him since that parting which had been
so nearly a meeting. I was not sorry at his
absence, and Helen shared my feelings.

“I'm so glad,” said she, one day, as we loitered
through as close a copse as ever favored the
wishes of two foolish hearts;—“I'm so glad Uncle
Bud is gone. Some how, Henry, I tremble when
I think of him, on your account. You have
defied him, and he don't like you.”

“Nay, he can scarce be offended with me because
I showed a proper manliness. Besides,
what care we? So long as I do not pass the
boundaries, there can be no chance of our quarreling,
and I'm sure, Helen, unless you go with me,
I do not care how long I remain in them. I
could remain here for ever.”

“Ah! you say so, but—”

“Truth, Helen. Have I not told you—how
often—how much I love you? But you, Helen,
have not spoken once. Will you not tell me,
dearest, that you love me, too?”

“Oh! no! I do not feel as if I could say the
word.”

“But you feel it, Helen?”

“Oh! yes,—I feel as you could wish me;”
and she turned and threw herself into my arms,
burying her face upon my breast, and weeping
unrestrainedly. Reader, were you a boy once?
—have you a heart?—did you ever love? If
yea to these,—you understand what I cannot
describe—that moment of happiness! Until then
I had regarded that verse in which Coleridge
speaks of a similar event, as an exaggeration. In
my silly conceits of convention—living among
artificial men and women—I had thought it
wholly out of reason, and all natural laws, that
an innocent girl should be so audacious. But that
scene convinced me—I could neither doubt the
love, the truth, or the innocence of that dear
child of the wilderness, and sweet and sacred to
me now are those nature-prompted lines of the
Bard of Genevieve:—

And thus we stood, thus we clung to each other,
forgetting earth, almost forgetting heaven,—if
such forgetfulness were possible, at a moment
when we were in the enjoyment of that bliss,
most like heavenly, the dearest known to earth—
the full, precious acknowledgment, in the heart
that we seek, of that passion which is flaming
triumphant in our own!