At Last Part 4

"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.

"Allow me to offer you a few of the finest cigars I have enjoyed for many years," said Mr. Aylett, entering in season to check Frederic's movement to encircle Mabel's drooping form with his arm. "You smoke, I believe? You may have an opportunity of indulging in this solace in an empty stage. At least, there is little probability that you will be denied the luxury by the presence of lady pa.s.sengers. I procured those in Havana, last winter. In case you should like them well enough to order some for yourself, I will give you the address of the merchant from whom I purchased them."

He wrote a line upon a card, as he might sign a beggar's pet.i.tion--with a supercilious parade of benevolence--and pa.s.sed it to the other, who accepted it with a phrase of acknowledgment neither hearty nor grateful.

Then the master of the house paced the floor with a slow, regular step, his hands behind him; his countenance placidly ruminative, his thoughts apparently engaged with anything rather than the pain upon the corner-sofa, whose leave-taking he had mercilessly marred. Frederic dumb and furious; Mabel equally dumb and amazed to alarm, knowing as she did that her brother's actions were never purposeless, sat still, their hands clasped stealthily amid the folds of Mabel's dress; their eyes saying the dear and pa.s.sionate things forbidden to their tongues.

Neither would feign indifference, or attempt a lame dialogue upon other topics than those that filled their minds. Mr. Aylett was not one to pay outward heed to hints when he chose to ignore them. He kept up his walk until the carriage was driven around to the front door, informed the parting guest that it awaited his commands, likewise that he would need all the time that remained to him if he hoped to catch the stage; without leaving the room, called to a servant to bring down Mr.

Chilton's baggage, and did not lose sight of his sister's lover until the last farewell was said, and Frederic bestowed inside the vehicle.

There was nothing offensively officious or malicious in all this.

Having declared as an incontrovertible dogma, that a ward could form no engagement without the formal sanction of her legal guardian, he saw fit to put the seal upon the decision at this, their adieu, in a manner they were not likely to forget. An hour's harangue would not have imbued them with the sense of his authority, his determination to exercise it, and their impotency to resist it, as did this practical lesson.

Mrs. Sutton could scarcely restrain her tearful remonstrances against what was, to her perception, an act of arbitrary and wanton cruelty, and other spectators had their views upon the subject.

"Very inconsiderate in Aylett! I wonder how he would like the same game to be played upon himself!" commented Alfred, aside, to his Dulcinea.

Her lip curled in disdainful amus.e.m.e.nt.

"As if he had ever done an inconsiderate thing since he put off long clothes! There is method in all this, if we were clever enough to fathom it."

Within herself, she determined that she would solve the enigma before she was a week older.

Frederic cast one hasty, eager look at the portico, as the carriage turned out of the yard. Mabel stood in the foreground, her figure framed by the climbing roses drooping over the front steps. She was very pale, and, forgetful for the moment of the observation of the bystanders, leaned slightly forward, her eyes strained upon the carriage-window--one hand laid upon her heart, the other resting against the pillar nearest her, as for support. She waved her handkerchief, in response to his smile and lifted hat, and simultaneously with this interchange of adieux her brother took her by the arm.

"You are getting wet there, Mabel! Come into the house! It is well I have come back to look after you!"

CHAPTER IV. -- "FOUNDED UPON A ROCK."

If Mrs. Sutton had raised horrified eyes and despairing hands upon learning the date of her nephew's proposed marriage, it was because she miscalculated his executive abilities, and the energy she had never until now seen fairly put forth. Within three days after his return, the homestead was alive with masons, carpenters, painters, and upholsterers, engaged by the prompt bridegroom on his pa.s.sage through Richmond; and so explicit were his orders as to the minutest detail of the work appointed to each, that he could safely leave the scene of action at the time appointed for the flying trip northward, to which he had referred in his dialogue with Mabel on the afternoon of his arrival.

The party of visitors had emigrated to other regions, a couple of days after Frederic Chilton's departure, with the exception of Rosa Tazewell, who accepted Mabel's invitation to prolong her sojourn, the more willingly since she "flattered herself she could be of use in the general upheaving of the ancient foundations, and establishment of the new. If there was one thing she enjoyed above another, it was a tremendous bustle--a lively revolution."

She made her boast of personal utility good by installing herself forthwith as Mrs. Sutton's aid-de-camp, and rendering herself so far indispensable in the work of reconstruction that Mr. Aylett deigned to ask her not to desert her post in his absence.

"Yours is the genius of renovation, Miss Rosa," the potentate was pleased to say in his handsomest style. "Do not, I beg of you, forsake my aunt and sister in their need. Let me feel that I leave one head as the motive-power of the mult.i.tudinous hands."

She agreed, in the same strain, to oblige him--a decision greeted with satisfaction by the pair in whose behalf he besought her friendly offices. The versatile invention and deft fingers of the little brunette were welcome to the heavily-taxed housekeeper, as were her gay good-humor and words of cheer and affection to the younger of her companions. The two girls became more confidential in six days than eighteen years of neighborly intercourse had sufficed to make them.

Mabel's innate delicacy and excellent common sense would, in ordinary circ.u.mstances, have barred effusiveness upon the theme nearest her heart, but love at nineteen is rarely discreet, even when the persuasives to communicativeness are less powerful than were the sorcery of Rosa's sympathy and the confessions that paved the way to answering and trustful communicativeness on her friend's part.

They were having what she called "a good, long, comforting, as well as comfortable chat" over their sewing in Mabel's chamber on the afternoon of the eighth day of Winston's absence. The weather was lovely, with the mellow brightness and balmy airs that make Virginian autumns a joy and glory until November is half spent, and the atmosphere held, at sunset, the warmth and much of the radiance which had set the day--a perfect gem--in the heart of the golden month. Into the eastern windows gazed the full moon, a crimson globe upon the hazy horizon, while Venus lay, large and tremulous, among the dying fires of the west.

"'Lovers love the western star,'" quoted Rosa, merrily, taking Mabel's work from her and throwing it upon the bed. "Come and enjoy the holy hour with me."

They leaned together upon the window-sill, their young faces tinted by the changeful hues of the sky, both thoughtful and mute, until Rosa broke the silence by a heavy sigh.

"O Mabel, you should be a happy, happy girl; blessed among women. You can love--freely and joyously--and have pride and faith in the one beloved."

"As you will some day," rejoined the other, drawing nearer to her, "when you, in your turn, shall know the unspeakable sweetness of unquestioning faith--of utter dependence upon him to whom you have given your heart."

"Utter dependence!" echoed Rosa. "That would mean utter wreck of heart, hope--everything--should the anchor give way. It is a hazardous experiment, ma belle!"