University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

We reached Baltimore and Washington in safety
without any other adventure. At Alexandria Balcombe
hired a carriage, in which he conveyed his
wife to the house of her friends in Fauquier. I
passed on to Fredericksburg, and thence to my
mother's residence in King and Queen, where
Balcombe promised to join me the day after my
arrival.

I shall not endeavour to paint my feelings during
this solitary journey. Solitary it was; for though
in the public stage, my mind, missing the excitement
of Balcombe's conversation, sunk into a sort
of collapse, which made me alike incapable of conversing
with strangers, and sustaining my own
spirits under the crushing weight of my forebodings.
I had now been absent from home more

than three months. Not knowing where to direct,
my friends had never written to me, and I knew
nothing of what had passed in the mean time. But
I had ground for fearful apprehensions. Ann had
forbidden me to think of her except as a sister.
Howard, after a long course of well directed and
not unacceptable attention, had given notice that
he was about to return for the purpose of pressing
his suit, which had been neither accepted nor rejected;
and with all the advantages of birth and
fortune, a handsome person, fine manners, and a
high character for talent and honour, had been
doubtless urging it during my absence. My heart
sickened at these thoughts; and as I approached
the place where I was to learn definitely whether
my fears were well founded, I was half tempted
to turn my back on my friends, to find my way
again to the wilderness from which I had just
emerged, and lose in a life of adventure a sense
of the insufferable wretchedness that oppressed
me.

Between twenty and thirty miles south of Fredericksburg,
I left the stage, and hiring a horse,
turned down eastwardly into King and Queen.
Here, in the house which had once been my father's,
lived my poor mother, in virtue of an arrangement
with the creditors, which authorized her to retain
possession until the end of the year. Here were
my sisters, and here, unless she had already become
the mistress of Howard's affluent fortune,
was my meek and gentle Ann. In the neighbourhood

was Oakwood, one only of the princely habitations
of which Howard was master; and here
my phrensied imagination saw Ann presiding over
the hospitalities of a season of nuptial festivities.
If a solitary seaman, shipwrecked on a desolate
and barren coast, could envy the feelings with
which I now approached the scenes of my youth,
there must be a misery in exile which I have never
conceived.

I was now but a few miles from home, when I
met a negro whom I had known from my boyhood
as the body servant of one of the neighbours. He
stopped his horse as soon as he came up to me,
and looking me in the face exclaimed,

“Why, Lord bless my soul! Mass William, is
that you? I mighty glad to see you, sir; and they
been looking and waiting for you at home ever so
long.”

“How are they all, Jack?” said I, in a tone that
sounded fearfully in my own ears. It was the
voice of anticipated desolation and wretchedness,
which seemed ominous of the fulfilment of my
fears.

“All mighty well, sir,” said Jack, “and been
looking for you every day. Master sent me there
yesterday, sir, and I seed 'em all; Mrs. Napier,
and the young ladies, and Mr. Howard and all.”

When I recollect the feeling that came over me
as I heard these last words, I only wonder that I
did not fall to the earth and die. They who have
experienced the same will understand me. They

who have not, never will, until they feel their own
hearts withering under such an intimation as the
name of Howard, thus used, conveyed to my mind.
I could not repeat it.

“Mr. Howard!” said I, faintly.

“Yes, sir; Mr. Howard. Don't you know,”
said Jack, with a knowing grin, “Miss Margaret
Howard's brother, sir. The gentleman they say
is going to marry Miss Ann. He there, sir, and
Miss Margaret too; but lady's me! Mass William,
travelling don't agree with you. You look
mighty badly, sir. You been sick, sir?”

“No, Jack, no,” said I, recovering myself, relieved
as I was by words which, had they been
spoken first instead of last, would have hardly been
less appalling than those which had blanched my
cheek. “The gentleman they say is going to marry
Miss Ann.” Had any man uttered these words
five minutes before, I should have felt inclined to
kill him. As it was, I was ready to hug the good-hearted
greasy blackamoor to my heart.

I passed on, elate with hope. Such hope as could
be found in the realization of the worst fears I
had ever permitted to enter into my mind, until
the moment before I met the negro. Yet it was
hope, at least for a few moments; but presently
subsided again, not into despair, but despondency.

At length I reached the end of my journey. I
approached the house unnoticed. I saw no one.
I secured my horse, and slowly and sadly walked
to the open door. As I entered, “all things reeled

around me.” All was still. I heard no voice; I
heard no step. The nearest door was that of the
drawingroom. I entered. On a sofa sat Ann,
and by her side was Howard. He held her hand,
and bent over her with an air of earnest tenderness.
Her head hung down, and her eyes seemed
fixed in the same direction. She did not look up;
perhaps she did not hear me. He did. He raised
his head with an exclamation of pleased surprise;
he uttered my name, and with extended hand he
advanced towards me. I gave him mine, and in
doing so took my eyes from Ann. Before I could
turn them again she was in my arms. A wild
scream of delight was all I heard. All I felt was
that I once more held her to my bosom, and that
her very heart was poured into it in a torrent of
tears. I was conscious of nothing else till she disengaged
herself, and, recovering her recollection,
drew back, and with a timid glance at Howard,
sank into a chair, while alternate blushes and paleness
chased each other over her quivering features.
At this moment Jane entered. I could not
help perceiving that her joy at seeing me did not
so entirely occupy her mind as to prevent a glance
which seemed to cast rebuke upon Ann. Indeed
her manner to me was constrained; but I presently
forgot it in the long embrace of maternal
tenderness, and in the artless endearments of my
younger sister Laura. I now looked around for
Howard; but with the delicacy of a perfect gentleman,
as he was, he had left the room. I turned
my eyes again on Ann. She sat with her's fixed
on her handkerchief, at the edge of which she was
pulling. Her blushes had passed away, except
one long line of brightness, extending like the track
of a meteor across her cheek to her ear, which still
glowed with the fervour of her feelings. I gazed
on her. She looked up. Her eye met mine, and
glanced timidly to Jane. I followed it, and met
the same cold look of inexorable decorum, which
had rebuked what she called the glaring impropriety
of my declaration of love to Ann.

A half hour passed speedily in the rapid interchange
of those inquiries which always attend the
meetings of long-absent friends. At the end of
this time, Howard reappeared, leading his sister,
bonneted and cloaked. He had ordered his carriage,
and came in to take leave, saying he would
see us again when the fervour of our mutual greetings
should have subsided. His sister welcomed
me with cordial dignity, while a slight blush mantled
her cheek. Again involuntarily I looked to
Jane. Her eye was bent on Miss Howard, with
an expression of searching eagerness, which suddenly
quailed, and she looked down embarrassed
and vexed. I turned, and saw the cause in some
slight indignation which displayed itself in Miss
Howard's countenance as she withdrew her glance
from my sister. A few inquiries followed after
my health and adventures, and the young people
took leave.

In this scene I found ample food for conjecture

and meditation. It now seemed to me that my
intercourse with Balcombe, and the habitual excitement
of whatever faculty of observation I possessed,
during the scenes of the last two months,
had endued me with a perspicacity to which I had
before been a stranger. No doubt such things had
passed in my presence before; but I had marked
them not. But I had marked enough to remember
that on no former occasion had any tenderness or
caress of mine tinged with the slightest flush the
marble whiteness of Ann's cheek. Never before
in my presence, and while I spoke, had her eyes
sought the ground. No. They had always dwelt
in calm tranquillity upon my face, with an expression
differing from that of my sisters only because
she was much more gentle, more tender than they.
But I had no time to prosecute such trains of
thought; yet I was cheered and revived under
their influence. My despondency was so far dissipated
as to enable me to converse freely, and I
lost no time in giving my friends a hasty outline of
my adventures. When I came to speak of Balcombe,
my mother recollected the name as that of
one she had heard of but never seen; of whom she
had not thought for many years, but of whom she
was sure she had heard my grandfather speak in
the highest terms. While I told of his prompt
and efficient kindness, his high endowments, and
the generous devotion with which he had periled
life and honour in my service, the gratitude of my
mother and Laura knew no bounds. Jane, too,
expressed the same sentiment in the strongest
terms; but her look was often abstracted, as that
of one calculating consequences, and estimating
the influence of every occurrence on some preconceived
scheme. Ann by degrees withdrew her
eyes from the figures on the carpet, and a tear
stole from them as I told of the tender interest
he had expressed in her who had been his pet and
plaything. I taught them to expect to see him the
next day, and proposed to fill up the interval with
a more detailed narrative of the events which I
now hastily sketched.

I was anxious to prepare Ann to meet him as a
friend worthy of all her confidence. I trusted to
him to detect the secret of her heart. I depended
on his address to make her acquainted with it. In
her present defenceless condition, having no male
friend, no protector but myself, nothing could excuse
me for again addressing her on the subject of
my love, until I should feel a reasonable assurance
that my addresses would not be unacceptable. But
I knew that he would need no hint from me, and I
felt assured that he would manage his inquisition
into the state of her heart so as not to shock, to
alarm, or offend. When we separated for the
night, I perceived that she again manifested some
feeling which I had never observed before, as she
held up her lip for the brother's kiss, with which
from childhood we had always parted at that hour.