62. CHAPTER LXII.
VERTY MUSES.
Let us now leave the good old town of Winchester, and go
into the hills, where the brilliant autumn morning reigns, splendid
and vigorous.
In the hills! Happy is the man who knows what those words
mean; for only the mountain-born can understand them. Happy,
then, let us say, are the mountain-born! We will not underrate
the glories of the lowland and the Atlantic shore, or close our
eyes to the wealth of the sea. The man is blind who does not
catch the subtle charm of the wild waves glittering in the sun, or
brooded over by the sullen storm; but “nigh gravel blind” is
that other, whose eyes are not open to the grand beauty of the
mountains. Let us not rhapsodize, or with this little bit of yellow
ore, venture to speak of the great piles of grandeur from
whose heart it was dug up. There is that about the mountains,
with their roaring diapason of the noble pines, their rugged summits
and far dying tints, purple. and gold. and azure, which no
painter could express, had the genius of Titian and Watteau, and
the atmosphere of Poussin, to speak over its creations. No! let
them speak for themselves as all great things must—happy is
he, who, by right of birth, can understand their noble voices!
But there is the other and lesser mountain life—the life of the
hills. Autumn loves these especially, and happy, too, are they
who know the charm of the breezy hills! The hills where autumn
pours her ruddy sunshine upon lordly pines—rather call
them palms!—shooting their slender swaying trunks into the
golden sea of morning, and, far up above, waving their emerald
plumes in the laughing wind;—where the sward is fresh and
dewy in the shivering delicious hunter's morning!—where the
arrow-wood and dog-wood cluster crimson berries, and the maple,
alder tree and tulip, burn away—setting the dewy copse on
fire with splendor! Yes, autumn loves the hills, and pours her
brawling brooks, swarming with leaves, through thousands of hollows,
any one of which might make a master-piece on canvas.
Some day we shall have them—who knows?—and even the
great mountain-ranges shall be mastered by the coming man.
We do not know the name of the “hollow” through which
Verty came on the bright morning of the day following the events
we have just related. But autumn had never dowered any spot
more grandly. All the trees were bright and dewy in the sunrise—birds
were singing—and the thousand variegated colors of
the fall swept on from end to end of it, swallowing the little
stream, and breaking against the sky like a gay fringe.
Verty knew all this, and though he did not look at it, he saw
it, and his lips moved.
Cloud pricked up his ears, and the hound gazed at his master
inquiringly. But Verty was musing; his large, dreamy eyes
were fixed with unalterable attention upon vacancy, and his
drooping shoulders, whereon lay the tangled mass of his chestnut
hair, swayed regularly as he moved. It only mingled with
his musings—the bright scene—and grew a part of them; he
scarcely saw it.
“Yes,” he murmured, “yes, I think I am a Delaware!—a
white? to dream it! am I mad? The wild night-wind must
have whispered to me while I slept, and gone away laughing at
me. I, the savage, the simple savage, to think this was so!
And yet—yes, yes—I did think so! Redbud said it was thus—
Redbud!”
And the young man for a time was silent.
“I wonder what Redbud thinks of me?” he murmured again,
with his old dreamy smile. “Can she find anything to like in
me? What am I? Poor, poor Verty—you are very weak, and
the stream here is laughing at you. You are a poor forest boy—
there can be nothing in you for Redbud to like. Oh! if she
could! But we are friends, I know—about the other, why
think? what is it? Love!—what is love? It must be something
strange—or why do I feel as if to be friends was not
enough? Love!”
And Verty's head drooped.
“Love, love!” he murmured. “Oh, yes! I know what it
means! They laugh at it—but they ought not to. It is heaven
in the heart—sunshine in the breast. Oh, I feel that what I mean
by love is purer than the whole wide world besides! Yes, yes—
because I would die for her! I would give my life to save her
any suffering—her hand on my forehead would be dearer and
sweeter than the cool spring in the hills after a weary, day-long
hunt, when I come to it with hot cheeks and burnt-up throat!
Oh, yes! I may be an Indian, and be different—but this is all to
me—this feeling, as if I must go to her, and kneel down and tell
her that my life is gone from me when I am not near her—that
I walk and live like a man dreaming, when she does not smile
on me and speak to me!”
Verty's head drooped, and his cheeks reddened with the
ingenuous blush of boyhood. Then he raised his head, and murmured,
with a smile, which made his face beautiful—so full of
light and joy was it.
“Yes—I think I am in love with Redbud—and she does not
think it wrong, I am sure—oh, I don't think she will think it
wrong in me, and turn against me, only because I love her!”
Having arrived at this conclusion, Verty went along smiling,
and admiring the splendid tints of the foliage—drinking in the
fresh, breezy air of morning, and occasionally listening for the
cries of game—of deer, and turkey, pheasants, and the rest. He
heard with his quick ear many of these sounds: the still croak
of the turkey, the drumming of the pheasant; more than once
saw disappear on a distant hill, like a flying shadow, the fallow
deer, which he had so often chased and shot. But on that
morning he could not leave his path to follow the wild deer, or
slay the lesser game, of which the copses were full. Mastered
by a greater passion even than hunting, Verty drew near Apple
Orchard—making signs with his head to the deer to go on their
way, and wholly oblivious of pheasants.
He reached Apple Orchard just as the sun soared redly up
above the distant forest; and the old homestead waked up with
it. Morning always smiled on Apple Orchard, and the brilliant
flush seemed, there, more brilliant still; while all the happy
breezes flying over it seemed to regret their destiny which led
them far away to other clouds.
Verty always stopped for a moment on his way to and from
Winchester, to bid the inmates good morning; and these hours
had come to be the bright sunny spots in days otherwise full of
no little languor. For when was Daymon merry and lighthearted,
separated from his love? It is still the bright moment
of meeting which swallows up all other thoughts—around which
the musing heart clusters all its joy and hope—which is looked
forward to and dreamed over, with longing, dreamy, yet excited
happiness. And this is the reason why the most fatal blow
which the young heart can suffer is a sudden warning that there
must be no more meetings. No more! when it dreams of and
clings to that thought of meetings, as the life and vital blood of
to-morrow!—when the heart is liquid—the eyes moist with
tenderness—the warp of thought woven of golden thread—at
such a moment for the blow of the wave to fall, and drown the
precious argosy with all its freight of love, and hope, and memory
—this is the supreme agony of youth, the last and most refined
of tortures.
Verty lived in the thought of meeting Redbud—his days were
full of her; but the hours he passed at Apple Orchard were
the brightest. The noonday culminated at dawn and sunset!
As he approached the pleasant homestead now, his eyes lighted
up, and his face beamed with smiles. Redbud was standing in
the porch waiting for him.
She was clad with her usual simplicity, and smiled gently as
he approached. Verty threw the bundle upon Cloud's mane,
and came to her.
They scarcely interchanged a word, but the hand of the girl
was imprisoned in his own; and the tenderness which had been
slowly gathering for months into love, pure, and deep, and
strong, flushed his ingenuous face, and made his eyes swim in
tears.
It was well that Verty was interrupted as he essayed to speak;
for we cannot tell what he would have said. He did not speak;
for just as he opened his lips, a gruff voice behind him uttered
the words:
“Well, sir! where is your business?”
