University of Virginia Library

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE OMEN IN THE AIR.

High above the crests of the hemlocks hung
the June sky, deep, clear, and soft; the heat
of noon-day brought out the balsamic odors
of fir and spruce; just within reach of eye
and ear the full-bosomed Sachawissa sang
her song of life and love, as she hastened to
her marriage with the sea; all sights and
sounds spoke harmoniously of free and joyous
existence, and of fullest content in being; and
man, God's last and greatest work, might well
be joyous when all beneath him was so glad.

So thought Marston Brent, standing with
bowed head beneath the arches of the wood,
and feeling a new life stirring in the heart
that so long had lain cold and dead within
him.

“When all else feels God's beneficent kindness,
why should we two be miserable?” said
he aloud. “In some way, we shall yet be
brought together, and without falsehood to
each other or to ourselves. Then comes happiness,
which shall compensate a hundred-fold for
all these weary months, or even years. I feel
it in the air to-day that I am to receive good
news of my darling—none the less mine that
her mistaken will divides us for the present.
In all the manifold and unexpected developments
of life, one is approaching which shall
bring us again together—”

“Mr. Brent!”

“What, Comfort, is that you? Here am I.”

Down the long arches of the wood came
running a light girlish figure, a bright and
blooming face, two eager eyes searching for
him, and a voice breathless with delight and
haste.

“O Mr. Brent! Richard has come home, and
he got you a newspaper, and I knew you would
be so glad, for you were wishing this morning
you had told him to try and get one, and none
of us supposed he would. So I ran right out
to find you, and bring it.”

“Thanks, my little Comfort. You are always
ready to run when you think you can do
me a service,” said Brent kindly, and Ruth,
looking frankly up into his face, said with a
smile:

“Of course I am glad to do a little for you
who do so much for me.”

“Nonsense, child, and nonsense again.
Aren't you my Comfort?” said Brent, half
jestingly, half tenderly, and seating himself
upon a felled hemlock trunk beside the path,
he opened his week-old newspaper with the
hungry haste of a man who has been too long
divided from the world, whose affairs are still
his own.

Ruth—if this blithe, rosy, smiling maiden,

[ILLUSTRATION]

"He was sitting on the hemlock log."

[Description: 454EAF. Page 092. In-line image of a man who sits dejectedly on a log in the midst of a forest.] whose every motion spoke health and light-hearted
content, could indeed be the Ruth
whom we last saw a pallid and tremulous
fugitive from a horrible accusation—Ruth
went singing through the wood, stopping now
to pluck a berry or a flower, now to mimic
the strains of linnet or blackbird in the tree-tops,
now to drink in the beauty of the day and
scene. At last, when she thought he might
be ready to speak to her, she returned to
Brent. He still was sitting as she had left
him upon the hemlock-log, the paper hanging
idly from one hand, the other supporting his
chin, while his eyes were fixed upon the
ground with such a look of white despair as
Ruth had never seen in her life before.

Half terrified, half eager to console her
friend, the girl drew near and stood beside
him. He neither moved nor spoke.

“Mr. Brent!” said she softly.

No answer, for, indeed, he had not heard
her; and the child, growing bold in her alarm,
seated herself beside him, and laid a hand
upon his arm.

“Please tell me what has happened,” said
she tremulously. Brent started, and raised
such wild, fierce eyes to hers that she shrunk
from his side, and then crept yet closer to it.

“Something has happened! Oh! tell me
what it is, dear, dear Mr. Brent,” moaned she.

“Something! Well, yes; it might be called
something here in the woods, although in the
world, I suppose, it would be called nothing,”
replied Brent huskily; and then he snatched
the paper from the ground, laid his finger
upon a paragraph, and thrust it before Ruth's
tearful eyes.

“Read that!”

She meekly obeyed. It was this:

Ruth read this paragraph attentively, and
laid the paper down with a puzzled face.

“Did you know Mr. or Mrs. Chappelleford?”
asked she.

“Did I know her? Child! I had no more
doubt that she and I should stand together
hand in hand before God's throne, if not before
His earthly altar, than I had that we
both breathed. I never once dreamed that
she could do this thing. O Beatrice! How
little one life seems in comparison with the
eternity I had hoped to pass with you, and
now, now— O my God! I cannot think!”

And starting to his feet, Brent raised to
Heaven a face so wild, so ghastly, so despairing,
that the tender girl watching him hid her
own in terror, while he, glaring about him for
a moment as doubtful where to turn for refuge,
dashed away into the wood, and was presently
lost to sight and hearing.

Ruth watched him so long as she could follow
his course, and then taking the crumpled
paper from the ground, she folded it carefully,
and hid it in her pocket.

“He will come back after a while, and I
will wait for him,” said she softly, and sat patiently
until he slowly approached through
the forest, his bent figure, painful steps, and
haggard face showing the work that years
should not have done.

He came straight toward the place where

she sat, and yet had so forgotten her presence
there, that he started back in recognizing
it.

“I was looking— I left a paper here,”
said he in a low voice.

Ruth handed it to him, glancing sadly, yet
not inquiringly, into his face as she did so.

“I thought you would come to look for it
here, and I waited to give it to you,” said she.

“Thank you. Oh! yes; I remember you
were here.”

And Brent was turning away when a new
idea crossed his mind, and he returned.

“Comfort!”

“Yes, sir.”

“You like to help me, to make me happy,
do you not?”

“You know that I do, sir. I like it better
than any thing.”

“That is the reason I call you Comfort.
Well, dear little girl, remember that you
never can do half so much to help me in any
other way as you can by keeping this secret—
what you know of it.”

“I will keep it, sir, and I should have kept
it, if you had not spoken.”

“I do not doubt you would, Comfort, I do
not doubt it, if you saw that it was a secret,
but I did not know that you understood. I
cannot tell you any thing more than you saw
for yourself; but I dare say you guess the
whole. It is not a thing of which I shall ever
speak after this moment, and it is a thing I
shall never forget. But we will appear to
forget it, both of us, and perhaps you will—it
is nothing to you, but to me—”

And he wandered down the path muttering
to himself—the broken tone, the uneven
gait, the crushed look of the whole proud
figure, more like those of some luckless fugitive
from a torture-chamber than the free,
noble bearing of Marston Brent.

Ruth rose, and slowly followed until she
saw him close beside the shanty, and then she
turned back a few paces into the wood.

“O Beatrice Wansted, Beatrice Chappelleford,
how I hate and detest you?” cried she,
clenching her slender hands, and shaking
them in the air.

“What are you, or any woman in the world,
compared with such a man as this! And he
said it was nothing to me, and that I should
soon forget it, and he told me not to betray
his secret! How little he knows me, after all!
But I hope that hateful woman will have to
suffer yet, two pains for every one she has given
him to-day! I hope she will, and if I could
give them to her, I would.”

And then Ruth, her mind slightly relieved
of its burning anger and grief, returned slowly
to the house, where Zilpah had long since prepared
a reprimand for her.