Part 4 (1/2)
”Thy name was once the magic spell By which my thoughts were bound; And burning dreams of light and love Were wakened by the sound.
My heart beat quick when stranger-tongues, With idle praise or blame, Awoke its deepest thrill of joy To tremble at thy name.
”Long years, long years have pa.s.sed away, And altered is thy brow; And we who met so fondly once Must meet as strangers now.
The friends of yore come 'round me still, But talk no more of thee, 'Twere idle e'en to wish it now, For what art thou to me?”
”Yet still thy name--thy blessed name!
My lonely bosom fills, Like an echo that hath lost itself Among the distant hills, That still, with melancholy note, Keeps faintly lingering on, When the joyous sound that woke it first Is gone--forever gone!”
”A neat conceit that last verse, and the music is a fair imitation of a dying bugle-echo!” said Winston Aylett to himself, resuming the writing he had suspended for a minute. ”That girl should take to the stage. If one did not know better, her eyes and singing together would delude him into the idea that she had a heart. Honest Alfred evidently believes that she has, and that the patient labor of love will win it for himself. Bah!”
Frederic and Mabel retired noiselessly from their post of observation, as ”honest Alfred” made a motion to take in his the hand lying p.r.o.ne and pa.s.sive upon the finger-board. They exchanged a smile, significant and tender, in withdrawing.
”We understand the signs of the times,” whispered Frederic, at the upper turn of their promenade. ”Heaven bless all true lovers under the sun!”
”Don't!” said Rosa, vehemently, s.n.a.t.c.hing away her hand from her suitor's hold. ”Leave me alone! If you touch me again I shall scream!
I think you were made up without nerves, either in the heart or in the brain--if you have any!”
Before the aghast Alfred rallied from the recoil occasioned by her gesture and words, her feet were pattering over the oaken hall and staircase in rapid retreat to her chamber.
”You are really happy, then?” queried Mabel. ”Quite content?”
”Did I not tell you awhile ago that I was not satisfied?” returned Chilton. ”Two months since I should, in antic.i.p.ation of this hour, have declared that it would be fraught with unalloyed rapture. I was happier yesterday than I am to-day. It is not merely that we must part to-morrow, or that your brother's precautionary measures and disapproval of what has pa.s.sed between us have acted like a shower-bath to the fervor of my newly born hopes. I am willing that my life should be subjected to the utmost rigor of his researches, and another month, at farthest, will reunite us. Nor do I believe in presentiments. I am more inclined to attribute the uneasiness that has hovered over me all the day to physical causes. We will call it a mild splenetic case, induced by the sultry weather, and the very slow on coming of the storm presaged by your dewless roses.”
He laughed naturally and pleasantly. Having confessed to what he regarded as a ridiculous succ.u.mbing of his buoyant spirit to atmospheric influences, he shook off the nightmare as if it had never sat upon him.
Mabel was grave still.
”There is something weirdly oppressive in the night,” she said, in a low, awed tone. ”But the burden you describe has weighed me down since morning. While Rosa was singing, I felt suddenly removed from you by a horrid gulf. What if all this should be the preparation to us for some impending danger?”
”Sweet! these are unwholesome vapors of the imagination. Nothing can be a disaster that leaves us to one another,” was the text of Frederic's fond soothing; and by the time Mrs. Sutton descended from her chamber of meditation, to remind Imogene that the seeds of ague and fever lurked in the river-fogs, the couple from the piazza came into the lighted parlor, all smiles and animation, wondering, jocosely, what had become of the recent occupants of the apartment.
Neither reappeared until breakfast-time next morning. Rosa was like freshly-poured champagne, in sweet and sparkle. Alfred, rueful and limp, as if the dripping clouds that verified Mabel's prediction had soaked him all night. He was dry and comfortable--to carry out the figure--within twenty minutes after his beloved fluttered, like a tame canary, into the chair next his own--in five more, was more truly her slave, living in, and upon her smiles--adoring her very caprices as he had never admired another woman's virtues--than he had been prior to the brief, but tempestuous scene over night. She was the life of the party a.s.sembled in the dining-room. Imogene had caught cold, walking bareheaded in the evening air, and Tom condoled with her upon her influenza and sore-throat too sincerely to do justice to the rest of his friends and his breakfast. Mr. Aylett was never talkative, and his unvarying, soulless politeness to all produced the conserving effect upon chill and low spirits that the atmosphere of a refrigerator does upon whatever is placed within it. Mrs. Sutton's motherly heart was yearning pityingly over the lovers who were soon to be sundered, while Mabel's essay at cheerful equanimity imposed upon n.o.body's credulity.
Frederic comported himself like a man--the more courageously because the host's cold eye was upon him, and he surmised that sighs and sentimentality would meet very scant indulgence in that quarter.
Moreover, he was not so unreasonable as to descry insupportable hards.h.i.+ps in this parting. By agreement with Mr. Aylett and his sister, he was, if all went prosperously, to revisit Ridgeley at the end of six weeks, when his design was to entreat his betrothed to name the wedding day. The prospect might well support him under the present trial. He bore Rosa's badinage gallantly, tossing back sprightly and telling rejoinders that called forth the smiling applause of the auditors, and commanded her respectful recognition of him as a foeman worthy of her steel.
”Nine o'clock,” said Winston, at length, consulting his watch, and pus.h.i.+ng back his chair. ”The carriage will be at the door in fifteen minutes, Mr. Chilton. The road is heavy this morning, and the stage pa.s.ses the village at ten.”
”I shall be ready,” responded Frederic. ”I am sorry your carriage and coachman must be exposed to the rain.”
”That is nothing. They are used to it. I never alter my plan of travel on account of the weather, how ever severe the storm. This warm rain can hurt n.o.body.”
”It is pouring hard,” remarked Mrs. b.u.t.ton, solicitously. ”And that stage is wretchedly uncomfortable in the best weather. I wish you could be persuaded to stay with us until it clears off, Mr. Chilton, and”--making a bold push--”I am sure my nephew concurs in my desire.”
”Mr. Chilton should require no verbal a.s.surance of my hospitable feelings toward him and my other guests,” said Mr. Aylett, frigidly--smooth as ice-cream. ”If I forbear to press him to prolong his stay, it is in reflection of the golden law laid down for the direction of hosts--'Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.'”
”You are both very kind, but I must go,” Frederic replied, concisely and civilly, following Mabel into the parlor, whither the other visitors were fabled to have repaired. As he had guessed, his betrothed was the only person there; the quartette having dispersed with kindly tact, for which he gave them due credit.
”Don't think hardly of me, dear,” he began, seating himself beside her on the sofa.