University of Virginia Library

26. XXVI.

General Vaughan came down the river from
Kingston, smelling of arson. Sir Henry Clinton
destroyed the Highland forts and retired to New
York. The Continental outposts forthwith reoccupied
Peekskill.

With them came Peter Skerrett, and there
were bristles on his upper lip a week or so old.

He hastened at once toward the Bilsby farm,
where the Brothertofts had found shelter. He
turned aside on the way to see the ruins of the
Manor-House.

It was still brilliant October. If the trees that
first put on crimsons and purples now were sere
and bare, later comers kept up the pageant.
Indeed, the great oaks had only just consented
to the change of season. It took sharp frosts to
scourge green summer out of them.

The woods seemed as splendid to Peter Skerrett
as when he looked over them on the day
of his adventure here. Nothing was altered,
except in one forlorn spot.

There, instead of the fine old dignified Manor-House,

appeared only a dew-sodden heap of cinders
and ashes, — the tragic monument of a
tragedy.

“It did well to perish,” thought Skerrett.
“It had sheltered crime. Its moral atmosphere
was tainted. The pure had fled from it. Happiness
never could dwell there.”

Peter stood leaning against a great oak-tree,
and studying the scene. The autumn leaves
around him dallied and drifted, and fell into the
lap of earth. He lingered, he hesitated, and let
his looks dally with the vagrant leaves, as they
circled and floated in the quiet air, choosing the
spots where they would lay them down and die.

Just now he was in such eager haste; and
now he hesitated, he lingered, he shrank from an
interview he had ardently anticipated.

The fair girl he had aided to save from a miserable
fate, — her face, seen for a moment dimly
by starlight, ever haunted him. These heavy
sorrows, coming upon her young life, filled him
with infinite pity. As he thought of her, the
undeveloped true lover in him began to develop.

And now, standing in this place where he had
first seen her in a moment of peril, where he
had felt the grateful pressure of her hand, he
perceived how large and vigorous his passion had
grown from these small beginnings.

He feared the meeting he had yearned for.
It was to assure him whether this was really love
he felt, or but another passing fancy like the
others past.

And if it were the great, deep love he hoped, —
if, when he saw her face, and touched her hand,
and heard her voice again, his soul recognized
hers as the one companion soul, — this filled him
with another dread.

For if to know himself a lover, and half foresee
that, after long and thorough proof of worthiness,
he might be beloved, were the earliest thrill of
an immortal joy; so this meeting, if it named
him lover, and yet convinced him by sure tokens
that his love would never be returned, was the
first keen pang of a sorrow immeasurable.

No wonder that he waited, and traced the circuits
of the falling leaves, and simulated to his
mind a hundred motives for delay.

It was so still in the warm, sunshiny afternoon
that he could hear the crumbling cinders fall in
the ruins, and all about him the ceaseless rustle
of the showering foliage.

But presently a noise more articulate sounded
on the dry carpet of the path behind him. A
light footstep was coming slowly toward this
desolated spot. It seemed to Skerrett that he
divined whose step would bring her hither to
read again the lesson of the ruins.

He walked forward a little, that his sudden
appearance against the oak might not startle
the new-comer. He would not turn. It was
new to the brave and ardent fellow to perceive
timidity in his heart, and to evade an encounter
with any danger.

The footstep quickened, — a woman's surely.
In a moment he heard a sweet voice call his
name.

A shy and timorous call, a gentle, trembling
tone, — it came through the sunshine and made
all the air music.

Her voice! It was the voice he had longed
and dreaded to hear. But now he feared no
more. He believed that his immortal joy was
begun, and these tremors of his soul, in answer
to the trembles of her call, could never be the
earliest warnings of an agony.

He saw her face again, fairer than he had
dreamed, in the happy sunlight. He felt again
the thankful pressure of her hand. He listened
to her earnest words of gratitude.

They spoke a little — he gravely, she tearfully
— of the tragedy of her mother's life. This
shadow deepened the tenderness of the lover.
And she, perceiving this, drew closer to him,
giving tokens, faint but sure, as he fancied, of
the slow ripening happiness to grow henceforth.

Then she guided him to see his friend, her
father.

The level sunbeams of evening went before
them in the path. They disappeared amid the
wood. Golden sunshine flowed after them. The
trees showered all the air full of golden leaves
of good omen.

It seems the fair beginning of a faithful love.

Will it end in doubt, sorrow, shame, and forgiveness;
or in trust, joy, constancy, and peace?