University of Virginia Library

22. CHAPTER XXII.

It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth
for the house at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from
sharing the brightness of the world without. The hope that
flowed so full and calmly the night before had ebbed and
left him dry. He was shaken with doubts, misgivings, perturbations.
He walked his horse up the avenue, till he came
within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a
veranda on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in
Morton's eyes priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as
Our Lady's house at Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle
twined about one of the columns of the porch; the hall door
stood open, and the air played freely through from front
to rear.

He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who
was mowing the lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie,
and was shown into the vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting
and light summer furniture, it was bright and cheerful
as every thing else about it. Engravings from Turner and

Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls;
and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the
door left purposely open. The inmate was hopping about
the room, without attempting to escape, though the windows
also were open.

“No wonder it will not leave her,” thought the visitor.

He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the
fields and the groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the
yellow-tufted rye was undulating in the warm summer wind,
wave chasing wave in graceful succession. The birds would
not sing, — the afternoon was too hot, — but the buzz, and
hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their lurking-places
in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised
its piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree.

Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on
the staircase reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress.
Miss Leslie came in with her usual natural and quiet ease of
manner, while he rose to receive her with his heart in his
throat. And now, when he needed them most, his wits
seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced
nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation
flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect
world without filled the pauses between.

He glanced at his companion.

“Be a man, you idiot,” he apostrophized himself.

He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery
with which her fingers were employed.

“I must speak out, or die,” he thought.

He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her.

Heaven knows what nonsense was on his lips, when the sound
of a man's footstep in the hall made him subside into his
chair, and do his best to look nonchalant. Leslie entered,
cast an uneasy glance at the visitor, and greeted him with
somewhat cool courtesy.

“I have just met Miss Weston and her sister,” said Leslie
to his daughter; “I think they will be here in a few minutes.”

Morton looked at a Landseer on the wall, and gnawed his
lip with vexation.

Leslie took a turn or two about the room, looked out at
the window, remarked that it was a hot afternoon, said that
the hay crop had been the heaviest ever known, in consequence,
he opined, of the joint effects of heat, moisture, and
guano; and was descanting on the ravages committed by the
borers on a certain peach tree, when Miss Weston and her
sister appeared.

“It's all up with me. She does not care for me a straw,”
thought Morton, as he saw the easy cordiality with which
Miss Leslie received her guests. He was introduced. Miss
Weston complimented him on the affair of the railroad. His
reply was cold and constrained. Leslie soon left the room.
Morton felt himself de trop, yet could not muster strength of
mind to go. Conversation flagged. Every body became
constrained. Miss Weston suspected the truth, and glanced
at her sister that they should take their leave, when, at this
juncture, a servant came to announce tea.

The ebbs and flows of the human mind are beyond the
reach of astronomy. As they went into the next room, Morton
became conscious of a faint and indefinite something in

the face of his mistress, which, he could not tell why, cast a
gleam of light into his darkness, and lifted him out of the
slough of despond in which he had been floundering for the
last half hour. A flush of hope dawned on him. His constraint
passed away, and Miss Weston's opinion of him was
wonderfully revolutionized. At length, much to his delight,
one of the visitors remarked to the other, that they had better
go home before it grew too dark. But here a new alarm
seized him. Might he not be expected to offer them his escort?
Terrified at this idea, and oblivious of all gallantry, he
made his escape into the garden, impelled — so he left them
to infer — by a delicate wish to free them from the restraint
of his presence. Here he walked to and fro behind the
hedge, in no small agitation, but with all his faculties on the
alert.

In a quarter of an hour, he heard voices at the hall door;
and approaching behind a cluster of high laurels, saw Edith
Leslie accompanying her two friends down the avenue. After
walking with them a few rods, she bade them good evening,
and turned back towards the house. Morton went forward
to meet her.

“There is a beautiful sunset over the water, beyond the
garden. Will you walk that way?”

They turned down one of the garden paths.

“What did you think of me this afternoon?” asked Morton
— “did you think me ill, or bewitched, or turned idiot?”

“Neither. I thought you a little taciturn, at first.”

“I am fortunate if that was your worst opinion. I believe
I was under a spell. Did you never dream — all people, I

believe, have something in common in their dreams — of being
in some great peril, without power to move hand or foot to
escape? — of being under some desperate necessity of speaking,
without power to open your lips? — or of seeing before you
some splendid prize, without power to make even an effort to
grasp it? Something like that was my case.” Here he came
to an abrupt stop, walked on a pace or two, then turned to
his companion with a vehemence which startled her — “Miss
Leslie, you heard your friend praise me for humanity —
courage — what not? It was all a mistake — all a delusion.
I thought you were in the train. I was wild with agony;
and when the people were crowding after me, I thought that
all had been for nothing, because I had not saved you. I
can hardly tell what I did; it was mere blind instinct. I
could have ridden into the fire, and perhaps not have felt the
burning. There is a spell upon me. I am changed — life is
changed — every thing is changed. I scarcely know myself.
It mans me, and it makes me a child again. The world puts
on a new face; just as this sunset lights the earth with purple
and vermilion, and turns it to a fairy land. Forgive me;
I don't know what I am saying. I am in fear that all this
brightness will change of a sudden into winter and night,
and cold, rocky commonplace. You know what I would say.
I have no words fit to say it. You are my judge, to lift me
up, or cast me down.”

Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion
in much greater agitation than he would have felt if he
had just thrown the dice for life or death. She stood for a
moment with her eyes fixed on the earth, as if waiting for
him to go on, then slowly raised them to his face.

“You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe
that I could ever forget it.”

Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been
liberal to him in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his
emotion supplied the defect. Nor were his words thrown
away; for with all its outward calm, the nature that responded
to them was earnest and ardent as his own.

It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun
their evening cries, when they returned to the house. Candles
were lighted, and Leslie was sitting with two persons
from the neighborhood, an agent of the Matherton factories
and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks. He looked
very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing.
The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself
to join in the conversation, and favored the company with his
views — not very lucid on this occasion — upon the tobic
under discussion. He soon, however, contrived to whisper
to Miss Leslie, “I shall go in five minutes — will you meet
me in the hall?” She left the room in a few moments; and
Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much alarm
lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as
to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he
found his mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their
interview was short, but Morton never forgot it. After bidding
her good night some eight or ten times, he compelled
himself to leave the house, mounted his horse, waved his
hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side
window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached
the entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards

the window. His heart was full to overflowing, and tears,
not of sorrow, ran down his cheeks. “Good Heaven!”
laughed Morton, as he brushed them away, “this has not
happened to me before these twelve years.” He waved a
farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the
avenue into the high road.

It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he passed
along, he heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and
near, while the meadows, the orchards, and the borders of
the woods sparkled with fireflies. With loosened rein, he
suffered his horse to canter lightly forward, and gave himself
up to the enchantment of his dreams. A thousand times in
his after life did he recall the visions of that evening's ride.

About a mile before reaching the town, the road passed,
for a few rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding
through the darkest of the shadow, a strange cry startled
him — a shriek so wild and awful that the blood curdled in
his veins, and his horse leaped aside with fright. There was
a rustling among the branches over his head, a flapping and
fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some great
bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods.
Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great
horned owl, rarely found in that part of the country, though
he had once or twice before heard its midnight yells in the
lonely forests of Maine.

The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with
startling portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint
of his reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and
breathed a prayer for the welfare of his mistress.