A Summer's Outing Part 14

We descended toward the river bank to a pretty little spring which Rita had before oftentimes visited. We partook of the lunch Mrs.

Allen had put up for us, or as Rita said, "for her gold paying lodger, who was a traveled savant."

She made the welkin ring with her merry laugh, as she took the wrapping paper from a dusty bottle of claret.

"Oh! my generous aunty! see, here is genuine Chateau Lafitte! I knew she had it, but I have seen a bottle of it but once on her table, and that was when President Polk dined with us, a good while ago. Poor aunty! You have surely bewitched her, Mr. Felden."

The lunch was delicious, and we did it ample justice. "See, Mr.

Felden, here is real spring chicken broiled to a "T." Poor aunt; strangely inconsistent aunty. A lavish miser! a generous lover of self! A born epicure."

We wandered among little gorges: she was happy, for she was a joyous young girl, set free in nature's haunts. I was happy because by my side was my own--my Heaven given mate, the rib taken from my long ago progenitor, and now given back to me. Grown somewhat tired, we sat upon the gra.s.s covered root of an upturned tree. I said something, I remember not what, my companion started; I noticed and adverted to it.

"Mr. Felden, do you know you frequently startle me. I seem to hear in your voice a tone I have heard before, or have listened to in my dreams." I felt the hour had come.

"Miss Rita. I owe to you a confession. I am not what I am." I spoke with all the pathos practice among wild and dangerous people had made me master of.

"Listen to me, Rita, pardon my familiarity: but you will forgive me when I have finished."

I rapidly gave her the story of my life, and dwelt upon the meeting with her sister at the flower show, and the hold it took upon me. Again she started, and was about to speak, when with a motion, I stilled her tongue. I spoke of my long wanderings, and then of my seeing her at the Burnett and thinking her the lady of the flower show.

I told her of my visit to Boston. The color left her face, and she faltered out--"I knew it--I see it now, you are Mr. Ford," and crimsoned from neck to the roots of her glossy hair.

"Yes, Rita, I am John ----. I am Jack Ford; and now Jack Felden tells you that he loves you--he worships you and would make you his wife and would be happy,--would make you his wife, his Queen--and would, too, make you happy."

I paused and grasped her hand--she did not withdraw it. For a moment she was silent, and then raising her dark confiding eyes to mine, she said in low tones:

"Thank G.o.d, Jack, I have not dreamed and prayed in vain. I will be your wife--I will cling to you through life, and will rest by your side in death."

I drew her unresisting form to my heart, I kissed her lips in one long kiss, and saw, within the gates ajar, the paradise awaiting me.

We arose, and hand in hand, silent, but with heart speaking to heart, walked slowly homeward. We scarcely spoke. Speech was unnecessary. There was a silent communion of souls, still, yet eloquent. We were one. We were as Adam, when first created, male and female; our simple reunion was bliss.

We are to start together next week for Boston, to be married in the presence of Minnie. Mrs. Allen is glad to be freed from the expense of Rita's outfit. She regrets that "a great traveler, who ought to be wiser, can tie himself down to a chit of a girl." I go to Chicago to-morrow to close up my affairs, and to bring Jim and his wife here. This climate will suit them better than that of Chicago. We will halt in Cincinnati long enough to see you, old fellow, and when married we will go abroad for a year.

Congratulate me, dear Jamison, for I am the happiest of men.

Yours, never again to perpetuate a folly.

JACK."

I, too, was happy, for I loved Felden as I had loved no one since my wife and little ones went to Heaven.

Imagine my astonishment, my terror, when some weeks later, I received a short letter mailed at St. Louis.

"Dear Jamison, my true and honest friend:

Forget me forever! Do not try to look me up; never inquire for me; never again mention my name. Henceforth I am dead to the world.

Your friend, JACK."

I did not try to understand these terrible lines. I honored my friend and felt sure he had good reasons for his request. I complied with his demands, except one, I could not forget.

CHAPTER V.

Years pa.s.sed by, but brought no tidings from Jack Felden. I made no inquiries for him; his last request came to me as from the grave and was sacred. Had we met on the street, I would have pa.s.sed him unheeded, unless the first advance had come from him.

I said no tidings came from him; that is, no direct or positive tidings.

On the first of May following his letter, a case of Chateau Lafitte, a jasmine turkish pipe and six sealed cans of _Ladikiyeh_ tobacco came to my room. Tacked to the box was an envelope containing this message: "On the first day of May and November of every year, drink to the health of a lost friend who loved you. May the cares of life lift from your heart as lightly as the smoke curls from your chibouque."

Regularly after that, on November 1st and May 1st, a case of finest claret and a half dozen cans of Turkish tobacco sent from a great wine house in New York, was placed in my room by an express messenger, and never after that did I fail to drink in silence to my friend. Whoever sent the wine and tobacco evidently kept note of my life, for my residence was changed three times, once to a distant city; the messenger found me wherever I was domiciled.

Not long after Felden's disappearance, the troubles which had been brewing between the North and the South broke out into open war. Our house was among the first to close its business as it was wholly dependent on Southern trade. We paid up every dollar we owed and both heads of the firm retired to the country. Service was offered me under another firm, but as I had become a part of the machinery of the old house, I felt such a change would prove uncongenial.

I volunteered in answer to Mr. Lincoln's first call for troops and was sent into camp in Kentucky. In a month I was sick and ordered discharged by the surgeon. A complaint, hitherto unknown to me, forbade active and hard work, but the consolation was offered me that with light, healthful exercise, generous food and abstinence from any nervous strain, I might live to old age. I was given a clerkship in the commissary department, and in '62 was transferred to Washington city. When the war was over I was retained in my position. Close confinement affected my health.

One of my pleasantest memories was of a summer spent in fishing and boating in the neighborhood of Mackinaw. Something impelled me to renew my old friendship with the well-remembered scenes. After a brief stay on the island I became a denizen of a lumber camp located a few miles from the rock which brought me to your acquaintance. Alone in a light row-boat which I had purchased at Buffalo on my way up the lakes, a large part of each day was spent on the water.

One bright day I anch.o.r.ed my boat near the "Rock" I mentioned to you, on the boat coming from the Soo, and wandered in the woods stretching behind it. The forest was of small trees, with here and there an old timer spared by the loggers. Every thing about me was wild, and excepting stumps and upper members of trees from which saw-logs had been removed, there was nothing to indicate fellowship with men.

Emerging from a small ravine I came upon an opening in the wood on the edge of which was a cl.u.s.ter of three tents, one apparently for the occupancy of a luxurious owner; a plainer one for servant or servants and a third for a kitchen with a stove pipe projecting through its apex. In front of the princ.i.p.al tent was a sort of porch or shed covered with light boards to keep out the rain, and over-topped with boughs giving it a sylvan character.

I walked toward the tent when a huge old mastiff, fat and unwieldily, sprang toward me with a bark and growl which brought me to a sudden halt. The beast rushed toward me angrily, but all at once paused and smelt about me with his bristles erect. These, however soon smoothed down and the dog whined as if I was not unknown to him. A gentleman and lady stepped from the large tent. Imagine my intense surprise when I recognized before me the stately form of Jack Felden. I repressed all evidences of recognition and with a bow and low apology was about to turn away, when Jack in his old cheery tone, cried out:

"Don't go, Paul, chance has brought you to me; why old Akbar recognized you and wishes you to stop; come back!" His words were kindly and his tone almost loving. I ran to him and for a moment our arms were about each others shoulders and our eyes were moistened by tears. The lady came forward, saying:

"It is Mr. Jamison, Jack, is it not? But I need not ask, for no man, but you Mr. Jamison, would be thus met by my husband."

We were soon seated before that tent in that sweet intercourse which arises only between genuine friends. It was difficult to realize that years had elapsed since I had last seen Jack. He was the same open hearted, genial and dignified man. Shortly afterward, the dog got up lazily, and trotting toward the little ravine, met a gray bearded negro--the Jim Madison who so disturbed me on the Licking river. His pleasure at seeing me seated with Felden and his wife, seemed unbounded. When I repeated to him what I had told his master of my location in the logging camp, he said, in a tone that showed the thing was a matter of course:

"Well! Mars Jack, I'll jes' take de boat an' go to de camp an' fotch Mr. Jamison's things over."

Jack laughed, "Yes, Jim, your hospitality has only run ahead of mine.

Jamison must come and make his home with us in 'Big Rock Camp.'"

Before night I was in possession of Jim's tent and he had fixed his cot in a corner of the kitchen. We spent the next few days fishing, walking and talking. The late afternoons and evenings were delightful.

Jack sang gloriously to the guitar, and his wife could discourse charming music from that most inharmonious of instruments, the banjo.

She had a rich contralto voice and sang with what is higher than all art--exquisite tenderness and deep feeling.

Jack was usually as gay as I had ever known him, but occasionally his face had a tinge of intense sadness, which he evidently struggled to suppress. This expression was never shown in his wife's sight. With her he was a rolicking, joyous man, and every act and word showed him a loving, an idolatrous husband. But when her back was turned he occasionally regarded her with a look of such pain that my heart went out toward him and ached for him.

About a week after my arrival Jack and I were fishing at some distance from the camp, our low conversation had flagged, when he suddenly said: "Mr. Jamison, you must have thought me a brute all of these years."

I quickly responded, "No, Jack! I never doubted you had good reasons for your silence, and nothing would have tempted me here had I dreamed I would meet you."

"I am so glad you came! I have wanted to see you more than you can think." His voice was exquisitely modulated while saying this.

"I wish now to tell you every thing. Rita wishes me to do so. Your great discretion will teach you how far you must hereafter be reticent in her presence. The one great object of my life is to save her pain--to make her happy."