The Last of the Foresters Part 89

CHAPTER LXII.

VERTY MUSES.

Let us now leave the good old town of Winchester, and go into the hills, where the brilliant autumn morning reigns, splendid and vigorous.

In the hills! Happy is the man who knows what those words mean; for only the mountain-born can understand them. Happy, then, let us say, are the mountain-born! We will not underrate the glories of the lowland and the Atlantic sh.o.r.e, or close our eyes to the wealth of the sea. The man is blind who does not catch the subtle charm of the wild waves glittering in the sun, or brooded over by the sullen storm; but "nigh gravel blind" is that other, whose eyes are not open to the grand beauty of the mountains. Let us not rhapsodize, or with this little bit of yellow ore, venture to speak of the great piles of grandeur from whose heart it was dug up. There is that about the mountains, with their roaring diapason of the n.o.ble pines, their rugged summits and far dying tints, purple, and gold, and azure, which no painter could express, had the genius of t.i.tian and Watteau, and the atmosphere of Poussin, to speak over its creations. No! let them speak for themselves as all great things must--happy is he, who, by right of birth, can understand their n.o.ble voices!

But there is the other and lesser mountain life--the life of the hills. Autumn loves these especially, and happy, too, are they who know the charm of the breezy hills! The hills where autumn pours her ruddy sunshine upon lordly pines--rather call them palms!--shooting their slender swaying trunks into the golden sea of morning, and, far up above, waving their emerald plumes in the laughing wind;--where the sward is fresh and dewy in the shivering delicious hunter's morning!--where the arrow-wood and dogwood cl.u.s.ter crimson berries, and the maple, alder tree and tulip, burn away--setting the dewy copse on fire with splendor! Yes, autumn loves the hills, and pours her brawling brooks, swarming with leaves, through thousands of hollows, any one of which might make a master-piece on canvas. Some day we shall have them--who knows?--and even the great mountain-ranges shall be mastered by the coming man.

We do not know the name of the "hollow" through which Verty came on the bright morning of the day following the events we have just related. But autumn had never dowered any spot more grandly. All the trees were bright and dewy in the sunrise--birds were singing--and the thousand variegated colors of the fall swept on from end to end of it, swallowing the little stream, and breaking against the sky like a gay fringe.

Verty knew all this, and though he did not look at it, he saw it, and his lips moved.

Cloud p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, and the hound gazed at his master inquiringly. But Verty was musing; his large, dreamy eyes were fixed with unalterable attention upon vacancy, and his drooping shoulders, whereon lay the tangled ma.s.s of his chestnut hair, swayed regularly as he moved. It only mingled with his musings--the bright scene--and grew a part of them; he scarcely saw it.

"Yes," he murmured, "yes, I think I am a Delaware!--a white? to dream it! am I mad? The wild night-wind must have whispered to me while I slept, and gone away laughing at me. I, the savage, the simple savage, to think this was so! And yet--yes, yes--I did think so! Redbud said it was thus--Redbud!"

And the young man for a time was silent.

"I wonder what Redbud thinks of me?" he murmured again, with his old dreamy smile. "Can she find anything to like in me? What am I? Poor, poor Verty--you are very weak, and the stream here is laughing at you.

You are a poor forest boy--there can be nothing in you for Redbud to like. Oh! if she could! But we are friends, I know--about the other, why think? what is it? Love!--what is love? It must be something strange--or why do I feel as if to be friends was not enough? Love!"

And Verty's head drooped.

"Love, love!" he murmured. "Oh, yes! I know what it means! They laugh at it--but they ought not to. It is heaven in the heart--sunshine in the breast. Oh, I feel that what I mean by love is purer than the whole wide world besides! Yes, yes--because I would die for her! I would give my life to save her any suffering--her hand on my forehead would be dearer and sweeter than the cool spring in the hills after a weary, day-long hunt, when I come to it with hot cheeks and burnt-up throat! Oh, yes! I may be an Indian, and be different--but this is all to me--this feeling, as if I must go to her, and kneel down and tell her that my life is gone from me when I am not near her--that I walk and live like a man dreaming, when she does not smile on me and speak to me!"

Verty's head drooped, and his cheeks reddened with the ingenuous blush of boyhood. Then he raised his head, and murmured, with a smile, which made his face beautiful--so full of light and joy was it.

"Yes--I think I am in love with Redbud--and she does not think it wrong, I am sure--oh, I don't think she will think it wrong in me, and turn against me, only because I love her!"

Having arrived at this conclusion, Verty went along smiling, and admiring the splendid tints of the foliage--drinking in the fresh, breezy air of morning, and occasionally listening for the cries of game--of deer, and turkey, pheasants, and the rest. He heard with his quick ear many of these sounds: the still croak of the turkey, the drumming of the pheasant; more than once saw disappear on a distant hill, like a flying shadow, the fallow deer, which he had so often chased and shot. But on that morning he could not leave his path to follow the wild deer, or slay the lesser game, of which the copses were full. Mastered by a greater pa.s.sion even than hunting, Verty drew near Apple Orchard--making signs with his head to the deer to go on their way, and wholly oblivious of pheasants.

He reached Apple Orchard just as the sun soared redly up above the distant forest; and the old homestead waked up with it. Morning always smiled on Apple Orchard, and the brilliant flush seemed, there, more brilliant still; while all the happy breezes flying over it seemed to regret their destiny which led them far away to other clouds.

Verty always stopped for a moment on his way to and from Winchester, to bid the inmates good morning; and these hours had come to be the bright sunny spots in days otherwise full of no little languor. For when was Daymon merry and light-hearted, separated from his love? It is still the bright moment of meeting which swallows up all other thoughts--around which the musing heart cl.u.s.ters all its joy and hope--which is looked forward to and dreamed over, with longing, dreamy, yet excited happiness. And this is the reason why the most fatal blow which the young heart can suffer is a sudden warning that there must be no more meetings. No more! when it dreams of and clings to that thought of meeting, as the life and vital blood of to-morrow!--when the heart is liquid--the eyes moist with tenderness--the warp of thought woven of golden thread--at such a moment for the blow of the wave to fall, and drown the precious argosy with all its freight of love, and hope, and memory--this is the supreme agony of youth, the last and most refined of tortures.

Verty lived in the thought of meeting Redbud--his days were full of her; but the hours he pa.s.sed at Apple Orchard were the brightest. The noonday culminated at dawn and sunset!

As he approached the pleasant homestead now, his eyes lighted up, and his face beamed with smiles. Redbud was standing in the porch waiting for him.

She was clad with her usual simplicity, and smiled gently as he approached. Verty threw the bundle upon Cloud's mane, and came to her.

They scarcely interchanged a word, but the hand of the girl was imprisoned in his own; and the tenderness which had been slowly gathering for months into love, pure, and deep, and strong, flushed his ingenuous face, and made his eyes swim in tears.

It was well that Verty was interrupted as he essayed to speak; for we cannot tell what he would have said. He did not speak; for just as he opened his lips, a gruff voice behind him uttered the words:

"Well, sir! where is your business?"

CHAPTER LXIII.

HOW VERTY AND MISS LAVINIA RAN A-TILT AT EACH OTHER, AND WHO WAS OVERTHROWN.

The young man turned round: the gruff voice belonged to Judge Rushton.

That gentleman had left his horse at the outer gate, and approached the house on foot. Absorbed by his own thoughts, Verty had not seen him--as indeed neither had Redbud--and the gruff voice gave the young man the first intimation of his presence.

"Well," repeated the lawyer, leaning on his knotty stick, and scowling at the two young people from beneath his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows, "what are you standing there staring at me for? Am I a wild beast, a rhinoceros, or a monster of any description, that you can't speak? I asked you why you were not in town at your work?"

Verty pointed to the horizon.

"The day has only begun," he said.

"Well, sir--"

"And I stopped for only one minute, Mr. Rushton," added Verty."

"One minute! Do you know, sir, that life is made up of minutes?"

"Yes, sir," said Verty.

"Well, if you know that, why do you trifle away your minutes? Don't reply to me, young man," continued the s.h.a.ggy bear, "I have no desire to argue with you--I hate and despise arguing, and will not indulge you. But remember this, Life is the struggle of a man to pay the debt he owes to Duty. If he forgets his work, or neglects it, for paltry gratifications of the senses or the feelings, he is disgraced--he is a coward in the ranks--a deserter from the regiment--he is an absconding debtor, sir, and will be proceeded against as such--remember that, sir! A pretty thing for you here, when you have your duty to your mother to perform, to be thus dallying and cooing with this baby--ough!"

And the lawyer scowled at Redbud with terrible emphasis.

Redbud knew Mr. Rushton well,--and smiled. She was rather grateful to him for having interrupted an interview which her woman-instinct told had commenced critically; and though Redbud could not, perhaps, have told any one what she feared, still this instinct spoke powerfully to her.

It was with a smile, therefore, that Redbud held out her hand to Mr.

Rushton, and said:

"Please don't scold Verty--he won't stay long, and he just stopped to ask how we all were."

"Humph!" replied the lawyer, his scowling brow relaxing somewhat as he felt the soft, warm little hand in his own,--"humph! that's the way it always is. He only stopped to say good morning to 'all;'--I suspect his curiosity was chiefly on the subject of a single member of the family."

And a grim smile corrugated--so to speak--the rugged countenance.

Redbud blushed slightly, and said:

"Verty likes us all very much, and--"

"Not a doubt of it!" said the lawyer, "and no doubt 'we all' like Verty! Come, you foolish children, don't be bothering me with your nonsense. And you, Mr. Verty--you need'nt be so foolish as to consider everything I say so harsh as you seem to. You'll go next and tell somebody that old Rushton is an ill-natured huncks, without conscience or proper feeling; that he grumbled with you for stopping a moment to greet your friends. If you say any such thing," added Mr. Rushton, scowling at the young man, "you will be guilty of as base a slander--yes, sir! as base a slander, sir!--as imagination could invent!"

And with a growl, the speaker turned from Verty, and said, roughly, to Redbud: