University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
THE TWO TREES.

Clare and Mr. Effingham, as we have said, had gone into
the garden.

He had quietly taken her hand in his with a calm and
mild look in his shadowy eyes, placed the hand on his arm
and led her into the old garden, where they both had played
in childhood, and talked merrily in the old days, whose
every flower bed, and row of trim box, and towering tree,
was old and familiar and dear. And she had followed him
with some slight agitation, but a soft look of maiden diffidence,

which made her more beautiful than he had ever seen
her look before.

It was one of those evenings which seem to unite all the
freshness of the spring, all the gorgeous wealth of summer,
all the melancholy softness of the misty autumn, and the
golden Indian summer, into one perfect whole. The perfumed
breezes, laden with the odors of a million early flowers,
came softly from the far south; the oriole hung on the
poplar spray, and sung his soul away for joy; the leaves,
and buds, and flowers, had all the tender velvety softness
of the early spring; and over all the great sun poured the
fresh crimson light of morning.

Mr. Effingham walked on for some time in silence.
Then, pausing in a grassy nook, he pointed, with a mild
glance at the young girl, to two trees which grew side by
side.

“How long ago it seems!” he said, with a pensive
accent, which was quite calm and unaffected.

“Yes,” said Clare, in a low voice, “we were children.”

“And now we are grown-up people,” said Mr. Effingham.
“We have almost wholly forgotten those old happy
days when we planted those trees,—when, taking your hand
in mine, I said, “Clarry, we will come here every day we
live, and see how we are growing. Do you not remember?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“I at least have not kept that resolution; have you?”

“I have come very often,” she said, in the same low
tone.

He looked at her for a moment: and not a trait of the
soft, tender face, the mild, dewy eyes, the innocent, artless
lips, escaped him. She stood before him the loving ideal of
his dreams; the memory he had summoned in that evening
musing; the child-enchantress of his youth, who ever stood
before his mind's eye, holding out her arms to him, her brow
wreathed round with flowers, her eyes and lips murmuring,
“Come!” He felt what he was losing, a contraction of his
pale brow proved it, and the hand he laid upon his heart.
But these exhibitions of emotion soon passed away, and his
face regained the calm sadness which habitually characterized
it.

“When I asked,” he said mildly, “if you had kept that

child resolution to come and look at these trees every day, I
did not mean a reproach. Ah no! That is assuredly not
possible from me to you. I came to speak to you quite
calmly, as those who have been happy children together may
speak to each other; and to open my heart to you. This is
due to myself. It will make me happier, and I cannot lose
the occasion to make my lot somewhat brighter.”

He paused for a moment, and continued in the same low,
mild voice.

“What I have to say is a confession, Clare—there is no
harm in my calling you by that name now—a brief confession,
which will explain much in my career, which I doubt not
has made you look unhappy when my name ever was mentioned
in your presence. And let me speak first of those
days which we passed here. Now, it seems, long centuries
ago. I loved you dearly as a child: you were my saint, my
ideal—nay! Why blush, Clare? You must have known
it from my eyes; yes, my heart spoke to you much more
plainly than my lips could speak. I say again you were my
ideal, all my world was full of you. I dreamed, and sang,
and thought of you alone. The old romances took a glory
from your smile, and I understood for the first time what the
`love of ladies' meant, and how the old chevaliers willingly
perilled life for their idols. You gilded my existence with a
new, undreamed of light; the future expanded before me
like a boundless horizon where all the glory of the sun, all
the perfume of the breezes, all the fairy melodies of whispering
pines and flowers were mingled into one harmonious and
perfect ideal of warmth, and joy, and beauty. I saw only
you in the wide universe—you were the star that guided me
upon my way—you kept me pure—and your eyes seemed
ever on me; still and calm and innocent eyes that blessed
me. I recall you now so perfectly, that my frozen heart
beats again and again. I am a child. I recall all those
happy days; you were a merry, bright-eyed child, full of
tenderness and joy! and the breath from that far past comes
to me again—faint, like the odor of those spring flowers
yonder in the grass, but strong as fate. I see you as I saw
you then—an incarnation of pure grace, and tender joy, a
fairy from the far land of dreams—my love—my blessing.

“Well, well: you will tire of all this prosing: let me

pass on. I loved you. I asked nothing better than to live
and die with you; for I thought I could not breathe without
you. I grew older, and I loved you still with the same pure
feeling, and the child's heart was grafted into the wild boy's
breast; and in all his wild pranks and dissipations you were
in his heart, softening and blessing him, and making him
more pure. I changed for the worse, somewhat—you, if you
changed at all, for the better; your childlike innocence was
all the more striking in the girl; your face assumed the
tender seriousness of incipient womanhood. I could not love
you more than when we were child-lovers; but I loved you
with more strength and calmness. I thought that feeling
would remain unchanged through all shocks and changes.
Well!”

He paused again, and looked at the two trees thoughtfully:
his brow was slightly overshadowed.

“Well,” he continued, mildly still, “I went to Europe,
that changed my life, and made me lose sight of my innocent
star. No longer near you, I was a worse, a less pure man.
I plunged into every species of dissipation; I felt developed
in me that fiery character which I inherit from my race.
Aroused, you know, we pass all bounds. Draw the curtain
over that mad time, when, nominally at Oxford, I lived in
London; that may be omitted.

“I returned to Virginia, here, with the heart of a wornout
gamester. Nothing interested me. I was, as far as my
capacity to enjoy simple things, completely exhausted. Every
thing wearied me; life was a lame and tedious comedy which
I played without caring for the hisses or the applause. I passed
my days in idle lounging; I slept long, and passed my whole
time in a terrible mental indolence, the most dreadful of all.
I had lost sight of you—you were no longer in my eyes;
but I now feel and know you were in my heart.

“I came and brought to you my weary air and exhausted
feelings. You did not draw back on finding the man so
different from the boy; you held out your hands to me with
the old, frank, childish kindness and affection, and my heart
was touched. The past came back to me, and I was not so
gloomy. That was the crisis of my life—the turning point;
every thing was balanced; a hair in either scale would have
turned it.

“Fate decreed that your innocent face should not shine
on me; a rude hand struck the balance, and all was over.
That strange young girl came to Virginia, and I became infatuated.
You know the unhappy history of that delirium;
the family blood again. I do not hold down my head and
blush, and say forgive me—no! I say that my actions
were those of a madman; that I was infatuated; that I now
regard that whole drama as some wild dream. I say further,
that I have cruelly suffered, that I have bitterly expiated my
offence; that the pang that tore my bosom more cruelly than
all, was the thought of you; for I have lost you. Well!
After that mad, wild dream, I went to Europe again, and had
my despair and suffering in due season, and then came home
again as you see me, almost apathetic. I have done with
feeling, I shall never love again.”

He stopped; his bosom heaved: he went on.

“My tedious talk, no doubt, has wearied you; but it was
my duty, Clare, to come and tell you by the trees which we
planted in our happy childhood, why I had not remained
faithful to that vow we made. I have shown you how cruelly
I was tortured by a mad infatuation; how my headstrong
passions drove me to commit actions which I regard now
with horror; how through all my unfortunate career, that
golden childhood I have spoken of, was shrined in my heart
of hearts. There was no impropriety in my telling you this,
for I know all. He is my friend, and has a noble heart.
Well! well! I will try not to suffer too greatly; and here
under the shade of these trees we planted, amid the scenes
of all our childhood joys, I ask God to bless you, Clare, and
thank you for the small share of purity I have left, and say
to you, `I will love and cherish your memory always, as that
of the tenderest soul, the warmest, purest heart that ever
was in human bosom.' No! do not speak—enough; here
comes little Kate, who resembles you, for she is good and
pure. I have spoken with difficulty; it is not easy to be
calm when all one's hopes are gone for ever; it is better that
you should not speak.”

And placing her hand upon his arm, he led the trembling,
blushing, weeping girl away, and to the house. He was outwardly
calm, and all the way back to the Hall he remained
quiet and silent. It was the silence of despair; that scene
had overcome him, and his heart was faint.