University of Virginia Library

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE DEAD ALIVE.

— Winter's Tale.

This life with all its ridiculous contrasts! Farce and tragedy;
melodrame and pantomime; Melpomene and Punchinello!

Here, in one dwelling, you see the chamber of death — the pall
and the bier. Before the entrance stands the hearse, that melancholy
coach of state. From the chamber ascends the wail of one
who will not be comforted. Rachel weeping for her first-born;
David, in the mixed agonies of remorse and wo, lamenting the
son torn from him as the punishment of his crime. The cloud,
black with penal thunders, hangs over the dwelling; and from the
midst of it issues a mighty hand, shaking out fiery bolts!

Next door, they have a dinner and a guest to-day, and all the
young ladies are agog with expectation. The coming visiter is a
millionaire; and each one studies, in the pages of the siren, how
best to fascinate and fix!

Or, there is a ball to-night, and the fiddles are already in requisition;
or, Darby and Joan, no longer placid, are at odds touching
the roast; or, the alderman dreams, after a monstrous surfeit, that
he is engaged in the labors of Sisyphus. What you will — the
contrast is sufficiently ludicrous.

These atrocious truisms! we can not escape them, though we try.

Now, while the amiable Mrs. Perkins Anderson, and the lovely
simpleton, Spanish wife, and the Honorable Keppel Craven, are
each eager in the chase of their several butterflies, rollicking at
“High Jinks” in the parlor, you see the cassique of Accabee,
with heavy head resting in his palms; heavier heart, with nothing
upon which to rest; moody with a grief for which there is no
comforter; his whole life and hope resolved into a settled compact
with wo and desolation; disappointment that dries up the sources
of hope; defeat that hangs like a millstone around the neck of
the spent swimmer!

He strikes out wildly, like the blind wrestler, in the air; and
the blows, though they fall upon vacancy, exhaust his vigor. He
works, madly enough, when thought becomes too terrible for endurance.
But the spectre clings to his side like a shadow. He
builds; would improve; has tastes that still plead for gratification;
energies that will not suffer themselves to be denied: but
these no longer minister to his satisfaction; no longer offer refuge
to thought; no longer resupply the fountains of pride, and hope,
and pleasure, to his soul.

It is amazing to see how he works, physically as well as with
thought; amazing to see what his own head and hands have done,
in very few days, in that new baronial domain which he has
planted for other generations in the wilderness. His workmen,
used to labor, are confounded. He keeps their muscles on the
stretch, but with no such tension as his own must endure. And
they know nothing of that agony of brain and soul which is goading
his limbs to their incessant exercise. He does not groan or
murmur — declares no suffering in speech! He is not only building
houses, and laying off routes and fences — doing after a merely
necessary plan and fashion — he does more: he plans terraces of
beauty; is opening artificial fishponds; he will have Art confront
Nature in her own empire, and challenge the supremacy. There
are gardeners from Holland — which, about that time, was furnishing
the general models for landscape-gardening for Europe — but
he too will design, at least to such a degree as to modify the formalities
of the Dutch taste, and, in bringing Nature to a better
knowledge of Art, not suffering the latter to subvert any of those
charms of the former which we should only injure in the effort to
improve.

And in all these labors, though in everything he exhibits marked
intelligence and taste, he performs mechanically. His heart is no
longer in his work. His eyes wander from it — wander off perpetually
in contemplation of that gloomy thundercloud that overhangs
his house and heart. He is looking momently to see it
part — to see this hand of Judgment shaking free the bolt which is
to strike down work and workman in one common ruin!

Ah! this is very terrible — this picture of the strong man using
his strength after a wonted habit, but with no longer love for his
work; still fighting bravely with the adverse hosts of Fate, though
he well knows that he fights under a doom — that, however long
delayed, the bolt must fall, and the ruin be complete!

It is already complete. He has lost all — all that he holds precious.
He can lose no more. His grand hope of heart and life
has proved a grand defeat; and the defeat is irreparable!

What remains? The battle is over — so he himself thinks:
but it is for him now to bury his dead; to cleanse the field of its
bloody trophies; to hide the horrid proofs from sight; and, this
done — whither for him? Whither shall he fly? Why fly? He
can not escape his own memories — his own consciousness of what
has been his hope — what has been the agony in its being — and
that it is no more a hope! He can neither fly from Memory nor
fly to Hope. The dead Past, with all its horrors, is bound irrevocably
to his still living soul!

He broods, even while at work; and if he leaves his work, in
the very exhaustion of his physical nature, it is again to brood.

But not over his own griefs and disappointments. No, no!
Do the brave man no injustice. His cares are not selfish. He
broods over another's fate. Unseen, he watches the victim — ah!
mockery to speak it — the victim of his own very love! His
strong passion and her weak will have, together, bound her to the
rock, and fastened the vulture on her dovelike bosom!

He broods with the vainest question, evermore recurring, what
may be done, that she be saved? How save her? — not simply
from death and pain, but from that torture which momently threatens
her with madness! He has again had the physician to her aid;
but art has failed in such a case. He has brought with him neither
hope nor comforter; and the brave but anguished man looks on
her with eyes of stony fixedness, yet of lightning-like avidity, as

if he strove to penetrate the shut avenues of her woman-soul, to
see where lay the particular hurt to which Love, denied itself,
might yet bring balm, if not healing.

And never was scrutiny more circumspect, as well as keen.
She was suffered to see nothing of his eager watch — to suspect
nothing of his intense interest and scrutiny; though, perhaps, it
does not much matter what she sees, or what she may suspect. In
the state of mental extasie which prevails with her, she hardly
seems to be conscious of external things, or any objects of the
mere outer sense. She, too, is looking through a fate-cloud; not
for the bolt, but for the receiving angel — the soothing, saving,
lifting — who is to bear her to the joy of heaven, or its peace!

If she showed any solicitude — and this was the keenest pang
that he was required to endure — it was how to escape his eyes,
his presence, his companionship, the consciousness of his existence,
the recollection of his rights in herself! She taught him
this in every movement. He had become, in the acuteness of his
own griefs, as sensitive to every mood of her soul as to the keen
agonies that strove within his own. He shivered, with a sort of
horror, at the mournful conviction, which he could not repel, that
his simple presence had grown to be a terror to her imagination.

And, though dying, absolutely dying — though this fact was
scarcely conceived by any but himself — Olive yet walked about
life, apparently unhurt. She could sing — she was now for ever
singing, however unconsciously, to herself — and oh, with what a
touching, tearful sweetness, bringing involuntary moisture to other
eyes! She sang over, one by one, all the sweet love-songs of her
girlhood — her childhood even — whenever she felt herself alone.
And sometimes she did not seem to heed the presence of others,
but sang on, apparently never beholding them, and looking, speaking,
singing, just as if she were alone. She sang the gayest ditties,
which, as you saw the singer, melted you to sorrow; and
sometimes the merest lullabies, which made you smile through
your tears, though you wept afterward. And, even as she sang,
she walked the house like a spectre; sought commerce with none;
walked incessantly, with the strangest restlessness; wandered into
the neighboring woods, all alone; strangely satisfied with — nay,
feeding upon — their solitude and silence!

The workmen beheld her pass, and shook their heads. She

saw them not — that strange woman — yet hurried by them with
a fitful chant or murmured ballad. They knew not that she was
dying; yet they felt, by instinct, that she had been struck, heartdeep,
by some invisible arrow. They saw it in her dazed and
wandering eyes, that seemed looking out, gazing, yet seeing nothing;
in the wonderfully white transparency of her skin, the delicacy
of which was marvellous in any mortal creature. She ate
little, but she had ceased to moan. She did not sigh. Her
mother heard nothing but her singing, and the burden of that
seemed to say simply:—

“Let me be alone — let me be alone! Do you not see that I
am at peace? Do n't you hear that I can sing? I am happy
now!”

And the mother began to fancy now that she was doing well —
that she would soon be better — that the song implied health and
increasing strength; and she began to renew her prattle of world-wise
maxims and dull commonplaces, you may be sure. And
then the poor child smiled; but such smiling! There was no satire
in the smile; but it was of such ghastly simplicity and vagueness,
that the other was usually silenced by it. There was something
in it which terrified her; and she would stop in her speech,
bewildered. It was enough for her victim that she would thus
stop. The commonplaces of her mother, and her worldly counsels,
had grown to an eldritch and ominous sort of voicing in the
ears of the child. She dreaded them; they somehow usually
checked her song; and it was only when the mother ceased to
speak, that she resumed her chanting — chanting it was, a sort of
blended sobbing and murmur — and then the silly mother would
say to herself:—

“As long as she can sing, she will do. She is evidently growing
better and stronger; she will be better soon. Hearts do n't
break so easily. And what is there in her case to make the heart
break? No! she will recover soon. I am glad always when I
hear her sing.”

The silly old woman! It was the death-song of the swan!

And the cassique watched her all the while — saw everything
— understood all. He knew, spite of the song and the smile, that
his wife was dying!

His instincts were all alive with this consciousness. But he,

the strong man — who felt himself so strong — who had hitherto
been strong enough for everything — he groaned in spirit as he
now felt himself powerless. He said to himself:—

“She will die! Nothing can save her!”

And the next thought was:—

“And I have brought her to this! However innocent of evil,
or selfish purpose, I have brought her to this. And I can not
save; I can not repair. The bolt is inevitable!”

And, so thinking, he watched and toiled: watched in agony and
gloom; toiled in the sunshine without feeling it; toiled to create
a home of art, and taste, and beauty; while he yet well knew
that she for whom chiefly he had dreamed and designed the whole,
would see, feel, taste, enjoy, none of the delights of life or home
— would appreciate none of these loving cares, which appealed
to no other sympathies than hers.

Ah! dear brethren, ye who struggle on gallantly in this mortal
conflict, so trying to — so meant to try — our human heroism, this
is the saddest of all our soul-disappointments. To love, and toil,
and think, and struggle, all equally in vain: the beloved one will
not see or feel how great has been our care to prove the merit
and the beauty in our love!

You have made your Eden — the best that you could make —
fitting for the best angel that you know. You are in possession;
you would put her in possession. Yet, somehow, the serpent of
Fate has crept in, and keeps out the dove of Peace, if not of Innocence.
It is the old experience. The shaft of Ahrimanes has
pierced the egg of Ormusd!

And, while the eyes of the cassique were thus mournfully at
watch over the progress of that cruel Fate which was thus busy
in the destruction of all his architectural felicities, he wot not of
those other, those kindred eyes, which were quite as keen though
not so well informed as his own, in a like watch over the same
precincts. There were other eyes that studied and watched as
intensely, though with less freedom, over the fate of that beloved
object, who seemed so indifferent to every care — eyes full of a
like anxiety, perhaps of even superior agony, to his. How like,
yet how unlike, but not less intense with passion than his own!

And those were the eyes of a brother — the brother he had
once loved, but so greatly yet unwittingly wronged; whose heart

of hearts he had so lately understood, but whose wounds, he still
fancied, had all been healed by Death. That, alone, was the consoling
thought of Edward Berkeley, when he reflected upon the
defeat of heart and hope in the case of his brother Harry. A sad
sort of consolation, but not to be rejected in such a case, and
where the living wo was of so keen a character.

How little did he dream of that brother's watch, unless from
the clouds! As a spirit, he thought, Harry Berkeley will know
that, wittingly, his brother had never done him wrong. Supposing
him still to be an inhabitant of earth, and thus watching,
what would be his emotions! How could he explain — how repair?
He would do both, were this possible; for never, in truth,
did brother love more fondly than our cassique.

The deep love, the heart-instincts of Olive, had made her more
conscious, if not wiser. Her fancies, now wholly spiritual, had
conjured Harry Berkeley from his imagined grave beneath the
seas. She felt that he lived. He had brought an atmosphere
with him, into which, though in dreams of the midnight only, her
soul could penetrate. Her thought, though a madness to all others,
was with her a conviction. She felt that Harry Berkeley
was beside her! In her mind's eye he was ever present. She
heard his voice in the silence of the night. Her soul grew more
seeing as she approached the time when it should cast off all its
impediments of clay. Ah! this divine soul, what an all-seeing
thing it is, if we only suffer it to use its wing!

She was right, even in her sense of the experience that kept her
conscious. The living Harry Berkeley, even now, in yonder primitive
forest, keeps watch for her — a loving watch; looks terribly out
on the cassique — mournfully enough, as so terrible: even as the
three melancholy sisters, who are appointed to carry fate in their
foreheads, and to send the shaft at every glance, look over all!

You see them, perhaps, in the deep shadow upon the cassique's
brow; in the wild glare that sometimes gleams out from the eyes
of Harry Berkeley; in the beautiful death, which flickers, like a
star, lily-like and pale, in every feature of the sweetly-spiritualized
face of Olive.

Which shall perish first? They all glide along the precipice,
and below them the gulf is ready! Which shall first succumb
beneath the stroke? They are all, possibly, in equal peril; for

there are deadly passions, busy in the hearts of these strong men,
which, with but a change of the moon, a caprice of the winds, or
perchance the stars, shall help to do the work of Fate!

Our rover, toiling hourly like the cassique, his brother, with like
earnestness of character and energy — toiling, too, more in the behalf
of others than his own — suffers from a like sense of isolation and
wo; but there is no pang of remorse in his passion; and he has
one solace, which gives him succor — in the sense of indignation!

He has been wronged. He errs, it is true, in the belief that
the wrong is done him by his brother. But this makes no difference
in the character of the strength which he derives from the
conviction. It is certain that he has been wronged; but, whether
by him, by her, or by the mother, matters not. There is an equal
solace in the double fact that he can reproach himself with no
wrong in the history, and that his own wrongs are certain. They
demand a victim!

We must not conceal from ourselves the truth that the demon
has entered his soul along with the iron; that the gaunt, famishing
passion for vengeance, is muttering within his bosom, goading
him on in search after the victim, and with an eagerness which he
himself does not conjecture.

But, as now we see him, with ready weapon by his side, the
hilt of which he sometimes clutches convulsively, we know that
his blood will work upon his brain, to terrible results of action,
the moment that the occasion shall occur which shall bid him
strike.

He has been busied, with all that calm, methodical will and
judgment, which men of action and character attain through habit.
He has gone to the hollow tree, where the sheaf of Indian arrows,
betokening the gradual progress of an evil purpose to the bloody
event, has been hidden away. He has counted the remaining
shafts with deliberate care, and knows that the hour of savage
outbreak rapidly approaches. He has duly made his preparations
for it. He has warned Gowdey, at the block-house, to keep his
rangers in readiness; he has given his last instructions to Belcher,
who is still in town, as to the course which he is to pursue at a
certain hour; and he now calmly reviews the necessities of the
whole event, having prepared for it, as well as he might, with his
own unassisted resources of mind and money. His warnings

have fallen, with little effect, upon the ears of Governor Quarry.
And he is in no situation to warn his brother. He will save his
household, if he can, without taxing its own resources. He can
not do otherwise. Though lost to himself for ever — nay, dying,
though he knows not that — Olive Berkeley must be saved —
Olive Berkeley and her child!

But we have no need here to review his relations, or anticipate
his further purposes. Enough that, with his vigilant mind, nothing
has been forgotten: and he thinks of ship and crew; the conspirators
who would run up the “Jolly Roger;” the simple Spanish
wife, who is playing at “High Jinks” with the Honorable
Keppel Craven; all the parties dear to his regards or to his revenges
— with the stern resolve and the calm judgment with which
one, seated on a mount of power, looks down upon the plains, and
regulates, without an emotion, the fortunes of the blind multitudes
who toil or sport below!

So Harry Calvert, otherwise Berkeley, watched the manor of
Kiawah. Great had been the progress of the cassique, since our
rover had first begun his watch. Houses had been run up;
grounds laid out; pickets and fences erected; order had taken
place of confusion; Civilization was asserting itself over Nature;
comfort had succeeded to the crude and wild; and, though still
rough and rude, the scene already began to exhibit many of the
attractions of beauty.

Harry Calvert watched the progress with mingled emotions of
sweet and bitter, and with increasing interest. When his brother
came upon the scene, or the mother of Olive, then he writhed
with a restless feeling of indignation and revolting; then he felt
like strife and curses!

But there was an atmosphere over all that tended, in some degree,
to soothe this bitterness. The very spectacle of Art laboring
to subdue the wild and uncouth in Nature, was itself a spell upon
the savage mood. And when manhood was striving in his sight;
and the energetic woodman was busy everywhere, laying the axe
to the root of the mightiest forms; Labor, like a giant, grappling
with the gnarled oak, and the tough, resinous pine, and the towering,
gray cypress — admiration naturally got the better of smaller,
selfish emotions: and the spectator, not forgetting his own cares,
was yet compelled to admit the ennobling influence of a moral

power in the objects of his survey; and this consciousness ever
appeals gratefully to the like sense of power in our own souls,
subduing in some degree their own consciousness of self.

As yet, he had looked in vain for the one presence whom over
all he sought. Once, he had got a glimpse of Olive, as he fancied;
and she seemed bending her way from the dwelling to the
very covert in which he harbored: but it was almost dusk, and,
just then, several of the workmen, with the cassique at their head,
approached the skirts of the wood, and proceeded to lay off the
grounds in that quarter, previous to the overthrow of certain objectionable
trees. At this sight, the figure of Olive — if, indeed,
't were hers — disappeared again within the shadows of the house.

He frequently caught a sight of her younger sister, Grace, whom
he well remembered; a lovely child of twelve years, tall and fair,
and promising to become almost as great a beauty as Olive. And
when he saw Grace, she was usually accompanied by the young
Indian hunter, whom she tasked to teach her the use of bow and
arrow, and how to set snares for squirrels, and traps for birds;
and who promised — neglected as she seemed to be by the whole
household, in consequence of the superior cares from which all
other parties suffered — to become almost as wild as the red-boy
of the wilderness. He had snared for her a yearling doe, and
was teaching her how best to tame it. It was surprising how
completely he himself had already brought the wild creature to
docility. It licked from his hand, but could not yet be persuaded
to lick from hers; and it thrust its nose into the boy's face, but
shrank back when the girl would have kissed and hugged it.

And thus were these two children exercised in the grounds,
while Harry Berkeley kept his watch over them on this very occasion.
The scene helped, in some degree, to soothe his more
savage humors.

He had thus watched through a part of the day, with but few
intervals. That melancholy watch! from day to day, profitlessly
pursued; to the increase of his unhappy moods; to the wasting
of his frame, for he was growing wan and thin; and to the satisfaction,
thus far, of no single hope or fancy!

The day was waning. The evening sun was purpling tenderly
the great waving pine-tops, and shooting slanting streaks of rosy
light over the openings in the forest; and the heart of the strong

man sickened sadly as he felt the rapid approach of another night
of exhausting meditation and disappointment. At a distance, on
the opposite quarter of the opening, he sees the workmen busy
with beams and timbers. His brother is not visible. The girl
and the Indian boy have also strayed away to a field which is
waving in rye — one of the few grains, aside from maize, the culture
of which had yet been attempted at the barony. The murmurs
of life and toil, removed from the immediate precinct, had
almost ceased to sound in the ears of our rover. The squirrels
were leaping about him, suddenly appearing to feed at sunset,
and no longer disturbed by the workmen. And he, too, depressed
by the scene — by its silence, by his own weariness of watch, by
the disappointment which had hitherto attended it — was about to
turn away, take his horse, and canter off to the ship, which he
needed that night to visit; when he suddenly felt his whole frame
thrill with a strange and mixed emotion, as a sound, half song,
half murmur, touched his senses.

Looking up, he beheld Olive moving slowly through the grove
toward him. Her hands were clasped and lifted up, and swayed
aloft in air; while her eyes were raised also, her head resting
slightly on one side, as if she were gazing through the tree-tops.
And thus, with glances that sought nothing below, she came toward
him, her lips still parting, unconsciously, in song and murmur.

She was clad in white, a loose, simple dress, as unstudied as
that of the Grecian damsel, going to the spring for water, in the
days of Iphigenia and Andromache. And how wondrously beautiful
she looked in that simple, white costume! Her pale, transparent
skin; the ecstatic elevation of her dark-blue eyes; the exquisite
purity and delicacy of air, carriage, manner, all betokening
a perfect grace; and so spiritualized — so utterly free from
earthly taint — that, without seeking to define thought or consciousness
to ask, “What is this that approaches me?”— Harry
Berkeley felt awed, subdued, hallowed; every human emotion
schooled, in sudden subjection, and even shame, as if, indeed, a
spirit stood before him.

He moved not. He was spell-bound by the long-desired but
unexpected sight!

She came on, meanwhile, unseeing; her eyes still looking upward;
her lips still murmuring, in song; no, not song — something

like the dreamy chant of revery, when the lips part and we
know not, and there is a speech that rather reveals an emotion
than a thought, or sentiment, or wish, or care.

It did not occur to him — nay, he had not the power — to stand
aside, and let her pass. He stood, frozen as it were, beneath a
wondrous presence; and her course was arrested only when she
was actually in contact with his outstretched arms, which he lifted
involuntarily as she drew nigh.

Then, her lips ceased to murmur. Then, her eyes were let
down; and, as she saw him, she cried out, and threw herself upon
his bosom, with a faint, short sobbing, intermingled with the broken
words —

“It is no dream — no dream. I know 't is he! — my Harry!
my Harry!”

He wrapped her instinctively in his close embrace — close —
close — even as the dying man grasps convulsively, and with agonizing
tenacity, the dear form which he feels he is about to lose
for ever. He had but a single word —

“Olive!”

And this was spoken in such low, murmured tones, that it is
doubtful if she heard him. But her lips answered to him still:—

“I knew 't was you! I knew that you would come!”

“Death should not keep me from you, Olive.”

“No, no! I knew that, Harry! I believed you when you told
me so before. But I did not feel you then, as now. And you
left me so soon! You would go! Why did you go? I have
been looking for you the last three nights; and oh, how I have
kissed the pillow where your head had lain!”

He was bewildered at these words. He would have gazed
into her face for explanation, but that was buried in his bosom.
She never once looked up; and, as she continued to murmur, with
a sort of sobbing joy, brokenly and with such sweet pathos, he
felt that her mind wandered — that she labored under some strange
illusions; while her evident frailness of form, as she clung to him —
the thin, wan fingers, as she grasped his neck — too plainly declared
her physical decline.

“Did you think that I would desert you, Olive?”

“Desert me? You! — never! Oh, no! I knew better. But
you were dead! Ah! that was the dreadful thing. Drowned in

the deep sea — in the great ocean! The big, black billows tumbling
over you, until you sunk, sunk, sunk — down, down, down
— so that I might never see you more!”

“And you believed this, Olive?”

“Oh, yes! I knew, at first, it was all true. But, afterward,
Harry, I could not feel you dead! And when I heard you calling
to me from the waters, and when you came and took me in
your arms by night, then I knew that they had told me false! I
knew it was no dream. I had you again; had you in my arms —
close to me, and your warm kisses were upon my lips — and they
had no taste of death. But, O Harry, you did stay away so long!”

“I am come now, Olive — I am come at last; and we shall
never part again!”

“No, no! never part again! Beware of that, Harry. Do n't
leave me again, Harry; for you know not what they say to me
when you are gone. And sometimes they make me believe it all,
it is so like the truth. But I have you now, and you will never
again leave me, Harry? No more partings! We shall have
everything safe now, and happy! No horrid drowning — no
death — no storms — no seas; only the sweet willows at dear old
Feltham.”

“My poor, poor Olive!” was the exclamation, groaned rather
than spoken, by Harry Berkeley —

“My poor, poor Olive, you have suffered sadly, but I am come!
I am here, Olive; and I am a man! You are mine — I yours;
and let me see the man, or woman, who shall torture you again!
O God, would I had come sooner!”

By this time, Harry Berkeley was wiser in respect to the condition
of Olive Berkeley. He saw that she was doomed: he
knew not that she was dying! Yet he somehow felt that a great
thundercloud overhung her life and his own. He bared his bosom
to the bolt; he defied it. There was a proud, imperious, if
not triumphant spirit, that seized him — strange to say, almost as
the natural consequence of his discovery of her real condition.
It was a sacred madness. She was doomed; and he — reckless
as despairing! He lifted her from his bosom — held her off —
gazed with a long, passionate vehemence in her eyes, and cried —

“Yes, by the God who sees, you are mine — mine only, Olive
Masterton!”

“Berkeley — Berkeley. You forget, Harry.”

“Olive Berkeley, you are mine only! From this moment you
are mine for ever! They have lied to you. But they shall lie
to you no longer. The woods of Feltham — the sweet old willows!
Come — come, Olive! It is Harry that says, `Come!'”

“Dear Harry!”

He shared her frenzy. The one look which he had taken of
her wan face seemed to madden him. Again he clasped her to
his bosom, and she sank upon it unresistingly.

“Ay, ay! to the Feltham willows, Olive. We shall be happy
now.”

“O Harry, yes — so happy!”

“Come — come!”

And he bore her away, not heeding that she lifted no limb — that
she hung heavily upon him — by this time, seemingly, as wholly
unconscious of his grasp as he was of the burden which he bore.
He seemed to be governed by a wild and desperate impulse. It
was as if, suddenly put in possession of his treasure, and dreading
that it should be torn away from him, he was resolved to bear
her away — to lose no moment of precious time in doing so; and,
thus feeling, if not thinking, he put forth all the gigantic strength
of his frame, and, lifting her wholly from the ground, strode at
once for the deeper thickets where his horse had been tethered.

He did not think; he had no deliberate purpose. The impulse
was one of a wild and headlong frenzy, the creature of long-pentup
passions, now working with ungovernable sway, and rejecting
wholly the mastery of reason.

“Yes, you are mine now, Olive — mine for ever! Let me see
who shall cross our path! They have wronged us long enough;
we shall baffle them now. We will go free, to a new life, to hope
and happiness, my love. You do not doubt me, Olive? — do not
fear me? Are you not mine, mine only, my beloved?”

“Oh, yes, dear Harry — you know! you ought to know! We
shall go back to the Feltham willows, dear Harry, and then there
shall be no more death — no more drowning. Ah! they can not
cheat me now.”

And, even as she spoke, she moaned feebly. The painful sound
seemed to move him with a fearful rage. He said, bitterly:—

“They shall atone for this! He shall atone! My poor Olive,

how they have crushed you among them! The dove among
hawks and vultures! But let me find them. You are safe now.
I will carry you far. You shall have peace, my beloved — peace
at last — and love!”

“Yes, peace — love!” she murmured; and then, as he hurried
on through the grove, he felt her head, which had been lifted as
she spoke, fall heavily upon his shoulder, and her moaning and
speech ceased together.

“She faints. God! if she should die now!”

And he gnashed his teeth, and increased his speed. She was
apparently insensible. He feared this; but it only made him
hasten onward with his burden, as if he could find no help for her
anywhere short of the refuge, with himself only, to which his impulse
would have borne her. Never were wits and impulse more
unreasoning.

“If I can get her on horseback!” he muttered, between his
teeth. This was the one idea. “It is but a moment's weakness.
She will recover with the motion, and in a single hour!—”

And his pace was accelerated. He was already at the end of
the grove, and she still insensible, when suddenly the faint crying
of a child was heard, on the verge of the thicket, and near the
very point which he was approaching.

The maternal instincts became immediately conscious. In the
same moment, at the first sound of that cry, Olive started into instant
life and animation — started to her feet — shook herself free
from the grasp of our rover — pushed him from her — exclaiming,
as she did so —

“My child, my child! It is my child!” Then, giving him a
look of reproach —

“O Harry, how could you do me thus?”

For the first time she stood up, boldly confronting him, her
eyes now looking fearlessly into his. His arms no longer sustained
her; his hands had dropped by his side; and as his glance
rested fairly upon her, he saw in a moment what a cruel mockery
it had been, of hope and heart, to think of any mere mortal passion
in connection with such a creature. She was no longer a
thing of earth. All the spiritual aspect of death shone out in her
eyes — in the wan, transparent visage — so sadly wan, so entirely
sublimed by sorrow — by a Fate which lifted her above earthly

sentiments, if not above mortal griefs, and trampled all mortal
passion under foot. And when she so mournfully exclaimed, with
such a full return of reason and consciousness —

“How could you do me thus, Harry?” —

He was stricken with self-reproach, humbled and ashamed. He
might just as properly have borne her to the bier for the bed of
bridal, as to think any more of a merely mortal love, in the case
of one already consecrated by the stroke of Fate. The kiss of a
mortal passion upon lips thus hallowed for Death, would be profanation.

His excuse to his own conscience was, in his momentary blindness.
He had been goaded by a temporary insanity; hurried
away, without thought, by long-suppressed passion, which forbade
for awhile the control of reason. But, now, the first ferocity of
passion had gone over: reason was restored by a tenderer feeling,
a more generous instinct. The revulsion left him for the instant
paralyzed. Great drops gathered in his eyes; his lips quivered;
he was speechless, save in the sadness, the contrition, the remorse
and agony, in his countenance, as their mutual eyes met and dwelt
upon each other.

“Forgive me, Olive — forgive! It was madness!”

So, at length, he spoke, in broken murmurs.

And she, too, spoke again — very slowly, and in the most subdued
tones — her eyes still resting steadily upon his face.

“And it is — it is you, Harry!”

To this he could only answer by a moan, clasping his head
with his hands, as if to control the bursting violence with which
his brain was throbbing in all its chambers.

“And you do live! O my God, I thank thee for this — this,
at least! You are — I know it now — you are still in life — still
a strong man! You will live!”

“Alas! Olive, I do live. The more the pity!”

“Say not so, Harry, You must live; and be not sad—”

“Another plaintive cry of the child, now evidently approaching,
half drowned the feeble accents of her voice, and stifled the
half-spoken sentence. She would have turned about to the cry,
as she heard it; but her limbs failed her. The momentary strength
was gone; she staggered, and would have fallen, but that he caught
her in his arms.

“Carry me to my child, Harry!” was all she could utter.

She sank heavily in his embrace, with these broken words.
She had ceased to be conscious, in the momentary recurring of
her consciousness. His arm alone sustained her. As he felt this,
he exclaimed aloud, in his agony:—

“Olive! Olive! O God, she is dying! — she is dead!”

At this moment, and while he still clasped her to his bosom, in
the spasmodic embrace of one who feels that a long-lost treasure
has been suddenly restored to him, and fears again to lose it, a
voice at his elbow abruptly aroused him to the consciousness of
another party to the scene. The voice was subdued, measured,
though quivering with emotion; but there was also a compressive
sternness in its tones. Harry knew, with the first intonation, from
whose lips the accents came. It was the voice of his brother —
of Edward Berkeley, the husband of Olive — the cassique of
Kiawah!

He turned abruptly, firmly, with set teeth, and confronted the
speaker.

The cassique met his gaze with strange apparent calmness.
There was no hostility in his looks. Nay, could Harry have exercised
sufficient calm of mood to note the expression in his eyes,
he would have seen that they were full of sorrow, and not of strife.

But he had heard the tones; and now, as he turned, he saw
that the cassique carried a drawn rapier in his hand.

Harry, supporting Olive with one arm, instantly extricated his
own rapier from its sheath. In this action, Olive began to recover
her consciousness. Her eyes opened slowly, and, staring for a
moment wildly upon her husband, she started suddenly to her
feet — started forward, and, though staggering, stood up, alone
and unsupported, between the brothers, who had each, as by a
mutual instinct, recoiled a pace. She beheld the drawn sword in
the hands of each. She extended her own hands between them.

“Oh, shame!” she cried; “oh, shame! Weapons drawn, in the
eyes of a dying woman!”

And both swords were dropped to the ground. And the cheeks
of the two strong men were flushed; and they felt, in whatever
degree either of them had meditated violence, all the terrible rebuke
continued in that single pregnant speech from the wan, spiritual,
shadowy form before them.

It was a scene for the bold dramatic painter. Both men were
nobly-formed creations, framed in the very prodigality of Nature
— tall, erect, with well-developed limbs and muscles; graceful
and commanding; full of courage; and, without even meditating
the conflict, naturally taking their positions for it with the attitudes
of the most accomplished gladiators of the days of chivalry.
Nor was the costume of either wanting in the requisitions of grace.
While Edward Berkeley and his brother, our rover, both adhered
to the small-clothes of the day, which showed fully the perfection
of the lower limbs, the upper garments had been chosen rather
with regard to the ease and freedom of the hunter-life than to the
demands of a formal European court. The cassique wore a loose
sort of blouse, which, wide open in front, hung loosely from his
shoulders, in his present attitude, like the light cloak of the Spanish
cavalier. Harry, on the other hand, was garbed in the manly
and picturesque costume of the forest-ranger — the hunting-shirt
of light-blue homespun, with its falling capes and fringes — a garment
which, for grace of drapery, and the freedom of movement
which it allows, merits preference over all others, as properest for
the American costume.

And between the two, thus posed, thus habited and confronted,
stood the slight, frail, shadowy woman, whose wan visage, transparent
skin, and eyes of dazzling, spiritual brightness, seemed to
declare her the denizen of a superior world, suddenly descended
between the combatants, to arrest their conflict.

We have seen the effect of her first words. She had power for
a few more only.

“O Harry! O Sir Edward! Let me die; but do not you —
brothers — brothers!—”

And she again sank, and again into the arms of our rover.

“Give her to me, Harry Berkeley,” said the cassique, as he
took her from the unresisting arms of the other. “Give her to
me; but await me here!”

One might almost suppose, from the tones, that the speaker
were emotionless. But he had trained himself to this; he had
been schooled to suffer, too long, to yield even at such a moment.
His voice was that of a will which embodied authority. He had
shown no surprise when, in the person of the stranger, he had
recognised his long-lost brother; he had shown no jealous conflict

in his soul at the relation in which he had seen him with his wife;
yet the inference is natural that he had witnessed much if not all
of the scene between them, though he might not have heard the
language: and unless we suppose, from the circumstance that he
approached with rapier drawn, that he meditated violence, there
was nothing in his demeanor to argue any such purpose on his
part. We may add, from what we know, that, when he first drew
nigh, he knew not that the audacious stranger was a brother.
Long persuaded of his death, he had no reason to suppose Harry
Berkeley to be still a living man.

With the same heroic calmness and diffidence of manner which
he had shown throughout the scene, did he take his wife into his
arms. And Harry Berkeley, now fully master of himself, exhibited
a like firmness of nerve and steadiness of countenance. He
yielded her, with one fond, despairing glance, to the arms of his
brother. Olive was utterly insensible. She knew nothing of
what followed; and, with the tenderness of one whose heart was
full of loving care, and who had no cause of complaint, the cassique
lifted his wife upon his bosom, and as he bore her away
repeated the injunction —

“Wait till I return.”

This was all: there was nothing to show in what mood, or with
what purpose, he should return. And with his own doubts still
upon him, Harry replied —

“Be sure I will await you, Edward Berkeley.”

And as the cassique bore away his precious burden toward the
dwelling, Harry picked up his rapier, and, without sheathing it,
walked slowly off for a few paces, to the sheltering branches of a
great oak, under which he threw himself down.

“Yes, Edward, I will await you! It is proper that you should
meet me here, where I have parted, perhaps for ever, from her!
I will await you, and—”

The soliloquy was arrested abruptly. In his present conflict
of mood, there could be no logical conclusion for it. We, too, will
await the parties.