The Lost Hunter Part 35

Armstrong, upon the departure of Holden, sat moodily pondering what had been told him. Were his emotions those of pleasure or of pain? At first, the former. The natural goodness of his disposition made him instinctively rejoice in the happiness of his friend. For a few moments, he forgot himself, and, as long as the forgetfulness lasted, was happy in the partic.i.p.ation of the other's hopes. But this frame of mind was only momentary. We have seen how an answer of Holden was sufficient to restore his gloom. Thoughts chased each other in wild confusion, over which he had no control, which he reproached himself for admitting--which he would have excluded, if he could. The connection between him and the Solitary was one of mutual misfortune.

Sorrow was the ligament that united them. For years had he known Holden, but it was only within a short time, namely, since an awakened conscience (so he judged, himself) had revealed to him his own hideousness, that he had been attracted to the Solitary. Should Holden recover his son, should his heart expand once more to admit worldly joys, would it not be closed to him? As he once felt indifference towards Holden, so would not Holden, by a change of circ.u.mstances, by the awakening of new desires and new hopes, by the occupancy of emotions the more delightful because fresh and for so long unexperienced, stand to him in other and colder relations? These reflections were not clear, distinct, sharply defined. They drove through his mind, ragged and torn, like storm-clouds chased by the tempest.

There were two beings struggling with one another in him--the one striving to encourage the n.o.ble feelings of his nature, and drive away whatever was inconsistent with truth and reason--the other whispering doubt, and selfishness, and despair. He rose and paced, with rapid steps, the room.

"Has it come to this?" he said to himself, as if wondering at his condition. "Am I become incapable of partic.i.p.ating in the happiness of others? Am I a festering ma.s.s of selfishness? O! once it was not so.

I will resist these thoughts which come from the bottomless pit. They shall not master me. They are the temptations of the Evil One. But can I resist them? Have I not grieved away the spirit? Is there place for repentance? Am I not like Esau, who sought it in vain with many tears?

If he was refused the grace of G.o.d, why not I? Why not I, that I may go to my own place? Already I feel and know my destiny. I feel it in the terrible looking for of judgment. I feel it in that I do not love my neighbor. If I did, would I not sympathize in his happiness? Would this wretched self for ever interpose? I never knew myself before. I now know the unutterable vileness of my heart. I would hide it from Thee, my G.o.d. I would hide it from Thy holy angels--from myself."

That day, Mr. Armstrong stirred not from the house, as long as the sun remained above the horizon. The golden suns.h.i.+ne deepened his mental gloom. Nor to his eyes was it golden. It was a coppery, unnatural light. It looked poisonous. It seemed as if the young leaves of spring ought to wither in its glare.

He heard the laugh of a man in the street, and started as if he had been stung. It sounded like the mockery of a fiend. Was the laugh directed at him? He started, and ran to the window, with a feeling of anger, to see who it was that was triumphing over his misery.

He looked up and down the street, but could see no one. The disappointment still further irritated him. Was he to be refused the poor satisfaction of knowing who had wounded him? Was the a.s.sa.s.sin to be permitted to stab him in the back? Was he not to be allowed to defend himself? He returned and resumed his seat, trembling all over.

Faith's canary bird was singing, at the top of its voice. Armstrong turned and looked at it. The little thing, with fluttering wings and elevated head, and moving a foot, as if beating time, poured out a torrent of melody. The sounds, its actions, grated on his feelings. He rose and removed it into another room.

He folded his arms, his head fell upon his chest, and he shut his eyes to exclude the light. "I am out of harmony with all creation,"

he said. "I am fit for a place where no bird ever sings. This is the evidence of my doom. Only the blessed can be in harmony with G.o.d's works. Heaven is harmony--the music of his laws. Evil is discord--myself am discord."

Faith had still some influence over him, though even at her entrance he started "like a guilty thing surprised." Her presence was a charm to abate the violence of the hurricane. He could not resist the gentle tones of her voice, and at the spell his calmed spirit trembled into comparative repose. Armstrong acknowledged it to himself as an augury of good.

I cannot be wholly evil, he thought, if the approach of a pure angel gives me pleasure. The touch of Ithuriel's spear reveals deformity where it exists; in me it discloses beauty.

With her he could talk over the ordinary affairs of the day with calmness, though it is singular, considering the perfect confidence between them, that he never adverted to the communication of Holden, notwithstanding he knew it would possess the highest interest for her.

It betrays, perhaps, the weakened and diseased condition of a mind, wincing like an inflamed limb at the apprehension of a touch.

As the father listened and looked at his child, he felt transported into a region whither the demons could not come. They could not endure her purity; they could not abide her brightness. Her influence was a barrier mightier than the wall that encircled Paradise, and over which no evil thing could leap. He therefore kept her by him as much as possible. He manifested uneasiness when she was away. His consolation and hope was Faith. As the Roman prisoner drank life from the pure fountains to which he had given life, so Armstrong drew strength from the angelic spirit his own had kindled.

Yet was his daughter unconscious of the whole influence she exerted, nor had she even a distant apprehension of the chaos of his mind.

How would she have been startled could she have beheld the seething cauldron! But into that, only the Eye that surveys all things could look.

Thus several days pa.s.sed by. An ordinary observer would have noticed no change in Armstrong, except that his appet.i.te diminished, and he seemed restless. Doctor Elmer and Faith both remarked these symptoms, but they did not alarm the former, though they grieved the latter.

Accustomed to repose unlimited confidence in the medical skill of the physician, and too modest to have an opinion adverse to that of another older than herself, and in a department wherewith he was familiar, and she had no knowledge except what was colored by filial fears and affection, and, perhaps, distorted by them out of its reasonable proportions, Faith went on from day to day, hoping that a favorable change would take place, and that she should have the happiness of seeing her dear father restored to his former cheerfulness.

It is painful to follow the sad moods of a n.o.ble mind, conscious of its aberrations, and yet unable to control them. We have not the power of a.n.a.lysis capable of tracing it through all its windings, and exhibiting it naked to the view, and if we had, might shrink from the task, as from one inflicting unnecessary pain, both on the writer and the reader. It is our object only so far to sketch the state of Armstrong's mind, as to make his conduct intelligible.

His restlessness has been alluded to. He found himself unable to sleep as formerly. Long after retiring to rest he would lie wide awake, vainly courting the gentle influence that seemed to shun him the more it was wooed. The rays of the morning sun would sometimes stream into the window before sleep had visited his eyelids, and he would rise haggard, and weary, and desponding. And if he did sink into slumber, it was not always into forgetfulness, but into a confused mist of dreams, more hara.s.sing than even his waking thoughts. The difficulty of obtaining sleep had lately induced a habit of reading late into the night, and not unfrequently even into the morning hours. Long after his daughter had sought her chamber, and when she supposed he was in bed, he was seated in his solitary room, trying to fasten his attention on a book, and to produce the condition favorable to repose.

The darkness of his mind sought congenial gloom. If he opened the sacred volume, he turned not to the gracious promises of reconciliation and pardon, and the softened theology of the New Testament, or to those visions of a future state of beat.i.tude, which occasionally light up the sombre pages of the Old, as if the gates of Paradise were for a moment opened, to let out a radiance on a darkness that would else be too disheartening and distracting; but to the wailings of the prophets and denunciations of punishment. These he fastened on with a fatal tenacity, and by a perverted ingenuity, in some way or other connected with himself, and made applicable to his own circ.u.mstances. Naught could pa.s.s through his imagination or memory, but, by some diabolical alchemy, was stripped of its sanative and healthful properties, and converted into harm.

"Young's Night Thoughts" was a book that possessed peculiar attractions. For hours would he hang over its distressful pages, and many were the leaves blotted by his tears. Yet those tears relieved him not. Still, from time to time, would he recur to the book, as if tempted by a fascination he could not resist, striving to find, if possible, in the wretchedness of another, a lower deep than his own.

Especially in the solemn hours of the night, when the silence was so profound, he could fancy he heard the flickering of the candles, he read the book. Then hanging upon image after image of those deploring strains, and appropriating all their melancholy, intensified through the lens of his own dark imagination, he would sink from one depth of wretchedness to another, till he seemed lost away, where no ray of light could ever penetrate, or plummet sound.

He had been reading one night late, until as if unable to endure the images of woe it conjured up, he pushed the book away from him. The night was dark and stormy, and the rain pouring in torrents. He walked to the window and looked out. He could see nothing, except as the landscape was revealed for an instant by a flash of lightning. He could hear nothing, except the peals of thunder rolling through the valleys. He took a candle, and walked cautiously to the door of Faith's chamber, to see if she were asleep. The door was ajar, for the purpose of ventilation, and, shading the light with his hand, Armstrong could see the face of his sleeping daughter without waking her. She lay in the profound slumber of health and youth, undisturbed by the noise of the thunder, as one conscious of a protecting Providence. Her left hand was under her cheek, the black hair combed back, and collected under the snowy cap. Her breathing was scarcely perceptible, but soft and quiet as an infant's. An expression of happiness rested on her features, and the color was a little kindled in her cheek, looking brighter in contrast with the linen sheet.

"She sleeps," he thought, "as if there were no sin and misery in the world. And why should she not? What has she to do with them? Were my spiritual eyes opened, I should see the protecting angels in s.h.i.+ning garments around her bed, unless my approach has driven them away.

Heaven takes care of its own. So I could sleep once. Will the time come when she, too, shall be so guilty she cannot sleep? Almighty G.o.d forbid! Better she were in her grave. They are fortunate who die young. They are taken from the evil to come. The heart ceases to beat before it becomes so hard it cannot repent. Were she to die to-night her salvation would be a.s.sured. What infinite gain! The murderer could inflict no injury, but would confer a benefit."

Why did he start? Why did he shudder all over? Why did he hastily turn round, and shut the door, and hasten to his own room, locking it after him? Why was it he took something from his pocket, and, opening the window, threw it violently into the dark? But a moment Armstrong remained in his room. Blowing out the candles, and noiselessly descending the stairs, he as quietly opened and shut the front door, and stood in the open air.

The storm was at its height. The rain poured with such violence that in the flashes of lightning he could see the large drops leap from the ground. But he felt not that he was wet to the skin. He minded not that he had left the house without a hat, and that the water was running in streams from his head to the earth. With a rapid pace, approaching running, he fled through the streets, until he reached the grave-yard. Without a ray to guide him, through a darkness that might be felt, he found his way to a grave, it was his wife's. He threw himself prostrate on his face, and lay motionless.

When Armstrong raised himself from the ground the storm had ceased, the clouds had left the sky, and the stars were s.h.i.+ning brilliantly.

He gazed around, then looked up into the blue vault. What were those innumerable s.h.i.+ning points? Were they worlds, as the learned have said? Were they inhabited by beings like himself, doomed to sin and suffer? Did they suffer, more or less? Could the errors of a few years be expiated by sufferings of ages, as countless as the grains of sand on the seash.o.r.e? He struck the palm of his hand violently on his forehead; he threw out his arm, as if in defiance, toward heaven, and groaned aloud. It seemed as though from every heaped-up grave that groan was echoed, and called to him like an invitation to join the hosts of darkness. He started, and looked again at the gruel sky. But no voice of comfort was breathed thence. The silver stars were now sparks of an universal conflagration. With a gesture of despair, he left the city of the dead.

Silence and darkness still shrouded the house of Mr. Armstrong on his return. He closed the door quietly after him, and, cautiously as he had descended, ascended the stairs, which, in spite of all his precaution, creaked under his feet. The sounds sent a thrill of alarm through him as though he feared discovery. It was as if he were returning from some guilty enterprise. Without striking a light, he threw off his soaked garments, and got into bed. Strange, perhaps, to say, he soon fell into a sleep, deeper and more refres.h.i.+ng than any he had for a long time enjoyed. It may be that the excitement of his system was worked off by rapid motion, and exposure to the night air and rain, or that nature, unable longer to endure it, sunk beneath the tension. It was not until a late hour he arose, when he found breakfast awaiting him. After the usual greetings, Faith said:

"Here is your penknife, father, which Felix found lying on the path this morning. You must have lost it from your pocket."

Mr. Armstrong took the knife, without reply, and, when un.o.bserved, dropped it into the fire.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Cities humming with a restless crowd Sordid as active, ignorant as loud, Whose highest praise is that they live in vain, The dupes of pleasure, or the slaves of gain.

COWPER.

We have a little antic.i.p.ated the order of events for the purpose of presenting more clearly the details of the story, it being after the departure of the Solitary and Pownal that some of them occurred. The favorable wind for which the packet Calypso had waited for two or three days at last came, and with a flowing sheet the good sloop sped over the waters of the Severn.

The means of communication between Hillsdale and the commercial capital were very different in those days from the present. Instead of the fine steamboats and railroad cars, which now connect the two places, the mode of travelling was by sailing vessels and stage coaches. The latter were the surer--but not the more popular. In the wintry months, when the navigation of the river was unimpeded by ice, the condition of the roads was such that, in spite of the dreariness of water transit, at that season, the packets were able to maintain a fair rivals.h.i.+p with the coaches, while, in the summer, the latter stood but little chance in the compet.i.tion, but were almost entirely deserted. To this result the comfortable cabins of the coasters, designed for pa.s.sengers (s.p.a.cious and satisfactory for those times, however the refined effeminacy of the present generation might sneer at them), and the good fare they furnished, not a little contributed.

The Calypso was one of the finest of the line of packets to which she belonged, and provided with every convenience that could be desired.

She was a sloop of some ninety or one hundred tons, with a tall mast, that, to the timid eye of a landsman, seemed fitter for a vessel of twice her size, and when her enormous mainsail was raised and usual sail set, she looked more like one of those birds whose wings bear such a disproportion to the body, that in the contemplation we forget to what they are attached, than like a safe and sea-worthy craft. But the s.h.i.+pwright who laid her keel and shaped her ribs, knew what he was about, and the Calypso was as staunch and stiff as she was handsome.

Her cabin extended full one-half the length of the vessel, and by means of a raised quarter deck, was conveniently high between joints, so that even the tallest man ran no risk of striking his head. True, it was not embellished with gilding, and mahogany, and satinwood, but the paint was virgin white, the state-rooms commodious, the berths wide, and the bedding and linen scrupulously clean. Captain Standish prided himself upon the comfort and propriety of his craft, and the good reputation he enjoyed and deserved. The length of the pa.s.sage varied according to the state of the winds and tides. It might, under the most favorable circ.u.mstances, be made in less than twenty-four hours, and it might last a week. It was at a period of the world's existence, before steam and electricity had imparted a feverish impatience to the community, and men did not hurry as if they had not time enough to live.

But let it not be thought, that it is as one who peevishly resents the improvements made in mechanical and other departments of knowledge, we dwell upon these particulars. We are quite awake to the fact that the world turns round, and although the consequence is an alternation of light and darkness, are satisfied with the change. With the philosopher Pangloss we would rather believe, "_dans ce meilleur des mondes possible_," than to entertain any less cheerful opinion. No.

It is rather to perpetuate the remembrance of what has been, or to qualify more truthfully and modestly the expression, to save it for a moment longer from oblivion. It is with a melancholy pleasure that one who has reached that stage of the journey of life, from which henceforth his progress can only be one of continued descent towards the valley whereon broods the cloud not untouched with rays of divine light, reverts to whatever, even though they may seem trifles, characterized the beginning of his career. Ah! it was the breaking of the morning. For a time the sky glowed with a deepening glory, to fade at last into the "light of common day." We never can, we never would forget that lovely dawning.

Holden, nothing doubting, was confident that the voyage would terminate for him in the restoration to his arms, of the son whom he had mourned as one dead. Nor did he seem to have a doubt of the worthiness of the long lost treasure. A hope, brilliant and beautiful, that glorified whatever it touched, had taken absolute possession of him. It would admit no fear, no uncertainty, no despondency. The new feeling penetrated all departments of his mind, and mixed itself up with and colored even his religious speculations. He began to connect, in some way, the realization of his awakened hopes with the millennium, of which it was to be a forerunner. This appeared especially on the second day of the voyage, which lasted three days.

It was a warm, bright afternoon in the latter part of the month of May, just before the setting of the sun, and Holden and Pownal had walked to the bow of the vessel, as if to be nearer the golden luminary when he should sink from sight. A gentle breeze filled the sails of the Calypso, the soft murmur from under whose cut.w.a.ter seemed to testify to the delight with which she moved on her liquid way. For some time Holden had stood with folded arms, watching the sun, as by slow degrees he sunk into the waves. Pownal, himself, was thrillingly alive to the magnificence of earth, and sky, and ocean, and all fair forms and hues of nature, and noticing the exalted and rapt expression of his elder friend's face, and sympathizing in the influence that produced it, was in no mood to break the silence.

"Type of the Infinite," at last Pownal heard him say, "how have I loved to watch thy coming and departure! Chariot of fire, whose burning wheels support the throne of judgment, thy course is onward until the fullness of the time is come. Of man's impatience thou reckest not. With thee a thousand years are as a day."

He ceased speaking, and a total silence for some time succeeded. His eyes continued fixed upon the spot where the sun had disappeared, but they saw nothing. An interior struggle was going on which engrossed the faculties, and left no opportunity for the observation of external objects. Repeatedly he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes and forehead, pressing the palm forcibly, as if to concentrate the attention, and at length he addressed Pownal.

"The scoffers have long sat in the gate, and lolled out the tongue and cried aha! but of a surety the time draweth nigh. Because He delayeth, where, say they, is the promise of His coming? But doth a sparrow fall to the ground without His knowledge, and are not ye of more value than many sparrows, oh, ye of little faith? Shall not the sorrows of fathers move the heart of the universal Father?"

It is scarcely to be expected that the young man entirely understood the rhapsody of Holden, though familiar with his moods. He saw, however, it had some connection with the one idea that had mastered all others, leaving them, notwithstanding, at perfect liberty, except so far as they interfered with itself. For it cannot have escaped observation, that on all subjects but one Holden exercised an ordinary degree of judgment, a circ.u.mstance by no means singular in the case of persons affected with monomania. Pownal, therefore, did as he was accustomed, avoiding all contradiction, and falling in with the other's thoughts.

"That," said Pownal, "it seems to me, is the worthiest name that can be given to the Supreme Being."

"It is the worthiest and the dearest. Thou, young man, canst know nothing of the emotions of a father's heart. Couldst thou look into its abysses of tenderness a new world would be revealed to thee, of which now thou only dreamest. Not a drop of blood that wandereth through its channels, but would coin itself into a joy for the beloved. But what is human love to His, the Creator of love? A breath, a bubble, a sigh. One great heart comprehendeth in its embrace all hearts. Look around thee," he added, throwing up his arms, "and behold the evidence: yon blue vault filled with bright worlds, bright because they are happy; this vast ocean teeming with strange life; the green earth whence, as from an altar, the perfume of grateful flowers and chants of praising birds do ceaselessly arise. Young man, be thankful and adore."

Holden stopped, as if he expected a reply, and Pownal therefore said:

"I am not, I fear, sufficiently thankful for the favors of Providence."