University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

Ever since Fanny had told her brother of the conversation
she had held with Sarah with regard to her
uncle's wish that she should marry Bronson, Sidney
had been a constant visiter at Elwood's. Previously,
he had occasionally visited Sarah, for he had always
entertained a high esteem for her; but latterly, his
feelings had assumed a tenderer cast—that emotion
which is said to be akin to love proved its relationship
in his bosom, for, imperceptibly to himself, the
latter passion was stealing over him. Sidney's was a
spirit of high and manly impulses. They were written
plainly in his expansive forehead, and in his full, hazel
eye. Inheriting a large fortune from his uncle, and
expecting one nearly as large from his father, he had
received the best education, but had not been brought
up to any profession. His father had wished him to
travel, but Sidney had the domestic virtues too much

at heart to permit him to wander far from the parental
hearth. The gaiety of the city had but little attraction
for him; he preferred the freer and franker intercourse
of the country. Yet, whenever he sought the
society of the former, he never failed to impress those
who met him with the gentleness and ease of his
bearing. He was not, however, a man to make a
display in general society; he cared not enough for
its applause; yet no one could be more popular
than he was with all who knew him. There was no
false pride or presumption in his character; he was
happy in seeing others happy; those who did not
know him, might take him at first blush to be an easy
man, who wanted decision of character; but a short
observation, when he was tested, would soon show
them their error.

Sidney had been passingly attracted by several fair
ones, but before his heart had been the least touched
something had disenchanted him, not from any waywardness
on his part; but having a quick perception of
the ludicrous, and more knowledge of the world than he
had credit for, he had discovered, without even mentioning
it to his sister, the artifice of more than one
manœuvring mother and fashionable daughter, who
estimated a lover as a merchant does a customer.
Sidney was entirely without vanity; but this, in more
than one instance, he could not but see. In truth, the
secret admiration which he had always felt for Sarah,
without, in fact, knowing it himself, had made him indifferent
to much visiting among the fair. When he
came to hear the general rumour of the neighbourhood,
that Bronson was proffering his suit to Sarah,
with the consent of her uncle, he felt somewhat surprised;
but he soon discovered that Sarah disliked her
suitor, and he thought no more of it but as an idle report.
But when Fanny told him what Sarah had said to her
of Bronson, his kindest sympathies were awakened for

her, and they soon, as we have said, without his
knowledge, kindled deeper feelings. Sidney was
not accustomed to self-observation, and he generally
gave himself up to his impulses. His attentions,
therefore, to Miss Grattan, under these circumstances,
were likely deeply to interest her. He had, as yet,
never spoken to her of love; for in his own bosom he
had not recognised its existence; but his attentions to her
became daily more and more subdued and gentle.
His eye had learned to follow her's, and after he had
met it, the next moment would find him by her side.
He got books and music for her; when in roaming
through the woods he chanced to meet one of Mr. Elwood's
slaves returning home, he was sure to pluck a
flower, if but a wild one, or a sprig of ivy, and send
it to her. She scarcely ever heard of him, or from
him, that something from himself—a word, or a look,
or a flower, or a piece of music, did not show her that
she had occupied his thoughts: and when they were
together, a thousand little circumstances, the more
effective, as he thought not of them, produced the fluttering
consciousness in her heart. Then the witchery
of his quiet, but devoted manner; the natural cloquence
of his conversation, and the unstudied grace
and beauty of his person, so different from the loathed
Bronson, for she could not but loathe him—her very
sensibilities, which forbade her to hate, checked the
disgust; all these corresponded to make her heart irretrievably
Sidney's.

For the last three weeks Bronson had been absent
from Springdale. He had gone suddenly to a distant
state on urgent business. Almost daily, during that
time, Sarah had seen Sidney without the disgusting
presence of Bronson, and she looked to his return, as
we contemplate a fearful evil awaiting us.

After Pinckney had gone to the city, that he might
be under the care of the physician, Sidney, having

his time entirely to himself, visited Sarah much oftener,
as did his sister. He roved with her over the farm,
and loved to accompany her to the cabin of old
Agnes. The mellow influence of the autumn, instead
of saddening, gave cheerfulness to her spirit; or perhaps
the autumn had nothing to do with it: the absence
of Bronson and the presence of Sidney made
her happy. Sarah was a girl of genius, of deep and
poetic susceptibilities; and often in her conversation
and strolls with Sidney, she would lose her shyness
and reserve, and betray the deep and impassioned
fervor of her character. It was in such a mood as
this, the very evening after Aunt Agnes had told the
story of Jane Lovell to herself and Fanny, that she
and Sidney chanced to wander to the spot, where,
seating themselves beneath the old tree, she repeated
to him the tale in tones of eloquence and pathos that
surprised him. In fact, her feelings were so excited
that her utmost efforts could not control them, and
they found rent in a flood of tears.

“My dear Sarah,” said Sidney, taking her hand;
it was the first time he had used the word dear to her,
and as he spoke he put back with the other hand her
hair from her forehead; for, in giving way to her
emotion, a lock had fallen over it; “my dear Sarah,
you should not visit this spot if it produces such an
effect on you. Aunt Agnes must have told you the
tale as eloquently as you have repeated it to me.”

Sarah looked up into his face with ineffable sweetness,
and said:

“There's a luxury in wo, we are told, Mr. Fitzhurst;
sorrow breaks from us like the rain from the
cloud, which gathers till it bursts—the bursting of
one makes the sky clearer, and the other the heart.”

As Sarah spoke Sidney played with the tangles of
her hair, and, leaning over her, impressed a kiss upon
her forehead. With a blush, that mantled brow and

bosom, she arose from Sidney's side without yielding
her hand; he placed her arm in his, and thus together
they entered the cabin of Nurse Agnes.

This was all the declaration Sidney had as yet
made. But Sarah loved, and with a devotion and
constancy which knew no intermission: Sidney's
shadow had rested upon her heart longer than she was
aware. Perhaps much of the timidity and bashfulness
which she had felt in visiting Holly proceeded
from the fear that he would contrast her unfavourably
with the splendid belles of the city whom he
knew. The source of this feeling was in her secret
admiration of Sidney; but it lay unobserved by herself
or by others, deep in her own heart, like the hidden
currents of the fountain, flowing dark and deep, and
solitary and sunless, away from the smile of hope
and light of heaven, which at last breaks out in some
lonely, lovely spot, unobserved by all but one silent
watcher. O! how in the bright day it sparkles, how
many flowers like young affection spring up around
it, how many birds like young hope lap their wings
and lave in its pure gushing waters, and circle over
it in the warm air, and go caroling up to heaven with
their woods not wild, and return to nestle in the trees
that shade it—when, under its holy influence, Nature
becomes a brighter worshipper of him who made it
flow.

Sarah loved: the very association with the unpoetic
beings of her uncle's household had made stronger
her tendencies to the passion, as the virgin ore ripens
deep down in the mine. In her loneliness, her
romantic imagination had formed a thousand dreams
of the holiness and happiness of throwing a woman's
faith and affection upon one worthy of her love.
From the presence of Bronson she revolted at times
with a revulsion that words cannot express; and it
was only in dreaming of the happiness of others

whose affections found something that they could cling
to, that she forgot for a moment her own melancholy
situation. Alas! the contrast, when truth
forced it upon her, came with the more bitter blight.
From it she could only turn again to romance, to
poetry, to music, to flowers; and from the sense of
ill around her, tax hope to the uttermost. Her intercourse
with Agnes nursed such thoughts; and in
listening to the old woman's tales, she would fain win
her heart to the belief, that her life might be like
some one of the maidens' whose history her old
nurse delighted to tell—a history dark and ominous—
of broken-heartedness in its commencement and impervious
to love, but which ended at last in a realization
of all that makes romance beautiful. Often
would poor Sarah dwelt upon her darker stories, with
the forboding that such was to be her fate, and as often
she would shut them from her mind, and bid Agnes
tell some happier tale.

Now, in the birth of love in a bosom so well calculated
to be its home, it was beautiful to observe
the dreamy and persuading spirit that possessed her.
Everything around her took the colour of her hope.
The falling of the autumn leaf had no sadness—it will
be green again in the spring. The cloud-capt hills
that lie so dark beneath the driving mists of the
morning, will be gilded with the very earliest beams
of the sun, and the birds will ere long haunt them

with a thousand merry notes. The songsters may
fly, but to no returnless distance. The gathering
leaves and the drifting wood may obscure the sparkling
waters—but they rest not forever there; they are
like the petty ills of life to one who is sure to be
happy—the onward wave will bear them hence, and
they shall return no more; and flowers shall spring
up on the banks by which they passed, and woods
and wilds, and hills and fields, shall rejoice together,
like merry hearts at a festival.

How emphatic the words of the Moor to the gentle
Desdemona:

And are there not actions that speak as loud as
words? Are there not thoughts that the tongue cannot
fashion forth like the heart's speechmaker—the
eye? Does not the tone tell more than the tongue?
How often a careless word comes from an overflowing
heart! a word which, but for the betrayal in its
utterance, and the glare that accompanies it, would
be as idle as the mocking-bird's notes.

When heart speaks to heart in the silence of two
lovers musing side by side, who can give language
to their tenderness? Had speech the power, they
would not be silent.

How many of Sidney's actions had told this to
Sarah in his language? and though the mere words
had not been uttered, yet through the sunny day, and
by the starry night, she believed that they were meant.
And the breeze came to her pale cheek with a kiss
from the rose, and the starry light of heaven imparted
its lustre to her eye, and the arrowy flash of thickcoming
fancies gave their swiftness to her blood; the
bird in air its gracefulness to her motions; and the fairy
in the dewy morning her lightness to her step—and the
merriest thing in mythology, and the holiest thing in
revelation, their brightness and purity to her heart.
If love could make of the clown Cymon a dignified
and noble being, it can realize and personify, in a lovely
woman, the angel of our brightest dreams.

And Sarah! how she would sit in loneliness at
home,—but now no longer lonely,—and meditate the
dreamy hours away. She would pause with the
needle half-drawn through the cambric, and watch
the butterfly disporting by on gilded wing, and wish
that the dark days of winter might be delayed—not
for her sake—nature could not, would not darken her
joy—but for the giddy insects. Her heart ran over
with worship of all created things. The worm to
her mind had lost its insignificance—the reptile its
venom—the brute its brutality. Poor Sarah! even
Bronson was a much better man than she had thought
him—the devil is not so black as he is painted.