39. XXXIX.
ELM COTTAGE AND ITS INMATES.
I had afterward a faint recollection of being lifted in the
arms of some one, and then of travelliag somewhere in a carriage,
and being carried into a house through a porch covered with
flowers. I thought it was all a dream when I saw bending
over me, with flushed cheeks, a figure which resembled that of
May Beverley.
It was that young lady in person. Not to weary you with
long explanations, my dear reader, I was at Elm Cottage, near
White Plains, a small vine-embowered mansion belonging to Mrs.
Fitzhugh, an excellent old lady, and a sister of Mrs. Beverley,
of The Oaks. The entire family from The Oaks had come down
to be near Charley, in case he was wounded in the battle about
to be fought; the Colonel had speedily discovered him, and the
youth had been promptly moved. As the carriage was leaving
the field, Charley saw me lying beneath the tree to which I had
been carried, cried out that I had been his friend, and no urging
was necessary to induce the old Colonel to take charge of me. So
I was to be nursed by the gentle hands of women, and not by
“detailed men” in a hospital.
I am not going to bore the reader with my experiences of the
effect of a gunshot wound. Everybody, including the surgeon
who attended me, thought I would certainly die, but I did not.
I had a burning fever, and, I have no doubt, got at one time to
the very brink of the grave—but there the clutch of the Death
Angel relaxed. My wound began to heal.
There were some incidents connected with this fever, however,
which were far from unpleasant. I could not for the life of me
determine, at the moment, whether I dreamed them or they
actually occurred.
The figure of May Beverley haunted me, and I thought that she
was almost constantly sitting by my bed, holding my thin hand,
and looking at me with tears in her eyes. When she disappeared,
her place was taken by Violet Grafton; and her silken
ringlets in turn faded away to be replaced by the tender face of
my young sister Annie and the mild eyes of my father.
When I grew stronger, and the fever left me, I knew that all
these figures were real. Violet Grafton had been conducted to
Mrs. Fitzhugh's by Mordaunt, on the night when they left Beauregard's
head-quarters, and my father had hastened with Annie
from Eagle's-Nest.
It was surrounded by all these kind faces that I slowly began
to recover. Charley was nearly well already, went about with
his arm in a very handsome sling, and distributed his jokes,
anecdotes, and warlike reminiscences on every side, especially
in the direction of Miss Annie Surry, between whom and the
youth seemed to exist the very best understanding.
It really did appear at one time that relations equally pleasing
were going to be established between two other persons. May
Beverley was much changed, and I longed, but was afraid, to ask
whether she had broken her repulsive contract. You have seen
her, my dear reader, during those days at The Oaks. She
was now a very different person. Surely something had occurred
to make her future less threatening! In her eyes, her
smile, every movement of her person, there was an exquisite
gayety which I had never seen before. Her glance at times was
full of such sweetness, that it very nearly intoxicated the poor
invalid who met it. He watched every motion of the slender and
graceful figure—her voice was like music to him: his state of
mind was imbecile in the very highest degree! If her smile disappeared,
it was to give way to tears at some pathetic story or
some incident of heroism. Then her bosom heaved, her cheeks
filled with blushes, and a pensive languor seemed to weigh down
the beautiful head. When, drying her eyes, she turned and
looked at me with a smile, those great violet orbs made my
pulses leap. I was a thousand times more enthralled than before.
It is the “old story of a man and a woman” which I am relating,
you see, reader. Has the fable never been narrated
of you? My little drama was played, however, under somewhat
peculiar circumstances.
Did you ever lie upon a sofa, my dear reader, while recovering
from a gunshot wound, and pass the hours listening to a musical
voice reading to you—the voice of the woman you loved, but
who, unfortunately, was engaged to another individual? The
sensation is peculiar. You feel in a delightful state of uncertainty
as to your status in the eyes of the fair damsel. That voice is
exquisitely musical, but it is probably going soon to say “I will,”
where that reply is called for in the Form for the Solemnization
of Matrimony, and
you are not going to be the individual to make
the other responses. Those eyes are charming, and look at you
at times in a manner which makes your heart beat; but they
may have a richer light still to bestow upon that hateful personage
known in pathetic love-songs as “Another.” Those lips,
so red and soft, which thrill you, at certain moments, with their
sweet and tender smile, you think, with a groan of rage and
jealousy, to what uses they may be put, and mutter, if you are
poetically inclined:
“Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned,
On lips that are for others.”
That obstinate “Another” thus thrusts himself in, you see,
on all occasions. You are called upon to decide upon your
course with the promptness of a general in face of the enemy.
Will you brace yourself against a “hopeless attachment,” and
“tear her image from your heart” (see numerous romances), or
will you accept the goods provided by the kind immortals,
close your eyes to the past and future, and, seeing nothing but
the face beside you, let your bark drift on wherever the waves
may bear it?
—I drifted.
So, amid the songs of birds and the perfume of a thousand
flowers, with May Beverley reading “old romances” to me, I
passed the happy hours of my convalescence. But the cloud
was coming—the storm approached. Suddenly one day, all the
sunny light disappeared from May Beverley's face; her girlish
happiness and abandon vanished: the beautiful brow of the young
lady was overclouded, and the fair Hebe “stiffened into stone.”
There had come to the vine-embowered cottage of Mrs. Fitzhugh
a superbly clad officer, in a new uniform all shining with
gold braid—and this officer was Captain Frederick Baskerville,
Volunteer Aide-de-Camp to some general of Beauregard's army.
In regard to Captain Baskerville, Volunteer A. D. C., the reader
knows that I am not a fair witness. But others said that he
never would go into action. The taunts, even before him, of
the young ladies of the country, whose brothers were in the
army, had induced him to seek his easy position, it was said;
but he was always sick or on furlough. Jealousy! envy!
illiberality! I hear my readers exclaim. Doubtless—for who
ever could see any merit in a rival? It was curious, however,
that nobody that knew this man could bear him.
The person who liked him least of all, apparently, was May
Beverley. She treated him with unmistakable coldness—but I
wish to guard the reader from supposing that she was much
more cordial in her demeanor toward another person. From
that unlucky moment when Captain Baskerville made his appearance,
all the young lady's sunny smiles disappeared; the
thaw stopped; she froze again.
No sickness lasts forever, and you finally recover, even from
a bullet through the lungs. Soon after the appearance of Baskerville
at Elm Cottage, the Beverleys returned to The Oaks,
and very soon thereafter I set out with my father and sister in
the rickety old family carriage for Eagle's-Nest.
I have said nothing of Violet Grafton, and yet she had been
like a ministering angel to me in my illness. She had become a
decided favorite with Mrs. Fitzhugh, a woman of great warmth
of heart and strength of character, who liked or disliked you
vigorously, and “spoke her mind” on all occasions; and this
excellent lady now declared that Violet should not leave her.
“She is a perfect darling,” said the old lady, busily knitting,
“and never shall want a home as long as I have one.” So the
beautiful girl seemed moored in a serene port at last, secure from
storms. There was but one other member of the household,
Miss Henrietta Fitzhugh, niece of the old lady, and a perfect
witch of gayety and abandon. Scarcely sixteen, she already began
to “make eyes” at the male sex, and had the contagious
playfulness of a kitten. I cannot speak further of Miss Henrietta
at this time; she will probably reappear on the scene. I bid
all these kind friends farewell, enter the old carriage, and, traversing
Fauquier and Stafford, we cross the Rappahannock and
are safely landed at Eagle's-Nest.
