Vassall Morton Part 48

In process of time, however, his ancient interest in his favorite pursuit began to rekindle. He began to feel that the years of his imprisonment had not been the dead and barren blank which he had inclined to think them. His mind had ripened in its solitude, and the studies which he had before followed with the zeal of a boy, more eager than able to deal with the broad questions which they involved, he could now grasp with the matured intellect of a man.

But while Morton was thus laboring on, Edith Leslie was pa.s.sing through an ordeal incomparably more severe. Month after month dragged on, and her father still lingered, sinking again and again to the very edge of the grave, and then rallying, as if with a fresh life. Vinal, meanwhile, was in a good measure recovered from the effects of his accident. His home and hers, if it could be called a home, was now a house in town, which her father had fitted up for her in view of her marriage. She had a painful and delicate part to act--at her father's bedside, to appear as the happy and contented wife; at home, to endure the presence of the man whose treachery filled her with horror, and whose love for her, though she had never spoken a word of reproof, had changed into fear and hatred. Of his actual presence, however, she had to endure little; for he shunned her studiously; and her house was to her a solitude, where she pa.s.sed hours of a suffering more intense than Morton had ever known in the dungeons of Ehrenberg.

Meanwhile, the servants, those domestic spies, did not fail to rumor abroad the singular mode of life of the bride and bridegroom; that Vinal avoided the house; that they seldom met, even at meals; and that no word or look of sympathy or confidence seemed ever to pa.s.s between them. Such rumors found their currency among the busier gossips of the town; but Morton, secluded among his books, remained wholly ignorant of them.

CHAPTER LXII.

Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.--_Webster_.

It was nearly a year since he had landed at New York, and Morton still remained a literary hermit. Society was stale and distasteful to him.

He pa.s.sed three fourths of his day in his library, and the rest on horseback. At length, however, it happened that a cousin of his mother, one of his few relatives in the city, was to give a ball on occasion of her daughter's _debut_; and lest his refusal should be thought unkind, Morton promised to come. He drove to town in the afternoon; and walking through a somewhat obscure street, suddenly, on turning a corner, saw, some four or five rods before him, a well-remembered face. It was the face of Henry Speyer. The discovery was mutual. Speyer instantly turned down a by-lane. Morton quickened his pace, and reached the head of the lane in time to see the broad shoulders of the patriot in full retreat. He soon lost sight of him among a wilderness of back yards and squalid houses. The incident greatly disturbed and exasperated him. "A broken oath is nothing to him," he thought to himself; "he is at Vinal again, dragging at his veins like a vampire."

The evening drew on, and he entered the ball room in a gloomy and dejected frame of mind. After a few words to his relatives, he took his stand among a group who were watching the dancers; and had scarcely done so, when he saw a young lady, simply, but very richly dressed, whose fine figure and powerfully expressive beauty arrested his eye at once. The indifference and listlessness with which he had entered vanished. He soon observed that she was not an object of attention to him alone; for near him stood a certain old beau, well known about town, and a young collegian, both following her with their eyes. The music ceased, and her partner led her to a seat at the farther side of the room. Glancing at his two neighbors, Morton saw that they were in the act of moving towards her; but he, being nearer, had the advantage. Gliding through the dissolving fragments of the dance, he stood by her side.

"Miss f.a.n.n.y Euston, I see two persons coming to ask you to dance. May I hope that you will reject them for an old friend's sake, and let me be your partner?"

She raised her eyes with a perplexed look, which instantly changed to a bright gleam of recognition, and cordially took his proffered hand.

"So," said Morton, "you have not forgotten me. And yet, as I see you, I hardly dare to take up again the broken thread of our old intimacy.

I used to call you f.a.n.n.y."

"Call me f.a.n.n.y still," she said, "if only for the memory of auld lang syne."

"I hoped to have seen you before, but you have been away."

"Yes, with my relations, and yours, at Baltimore. I have heard a great deal about you. Your story is the talk of the town. You might be the lion of the season; but I have not seen you at parties."

"No, I have outlived my liking for such matters."

"I cannot wonder at it. What horrors you have suffered! what dangers you have pa.s.sed!"

"I have weathered them, though."

"You were more than four years in a dungeon."

"Yes, but I gave them the slip."

"You were led out to be shot by the soldiers."

"They thought better of it, and saved their ammunition."

"And yet I see," said Miss Euston, smiling, "that you still remain your former self. I remember telling you that, if you were sentenced to the rack, you would go to it with a gibe on your tongue, and speak of it afterwards as a pleasant diversion. But," she added, with a changed look, "you have not come off unscathed. Your face is darker and thinner than it used to be, and there are lines in it that were not there before."

"Fortune fondled me till she grew tired of me; then turned at me, tooth and nail."

"You banter with your lips, but your look belies your words. You have suffered greatly; you have suffered intensely."

Morton looked grave in spite of himself.

"Perhaps you are right. I have very little heart left for jesting."

The eyes of his companion, as they met his, a.s.sumed a peculiar softness.

"You must have suffered beyond all power of words to speak it. The world to you was fresh and full of interest. You were ambitious; full of ardor and energy; loving hardship for its own sake, and obstacles for the sake of conquering them. You were formed for action. It was your element--your breath; and without it you did not care to live.

You were high in confidence, and believed that whatever you had once resolved on must, sooner or later, come to pa.s.s."

"Why are you saying this?" demanded Morton, in great surprise.

"Out of this life you were suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed and buried in a dungeon; shut off from all intercourse with men; your energies stifled; your restless mind left to prey upon itself, or sustain a weary siege against despair. Pain or danger you could have faced like a man; but this pa.s.sive misery must to you have been a daily death."

"Who," interrupted Morton, "taught you, a woman, to penetrate the nature of a man, and describe sufferings that you never felt?"

"Your mind was like a spring of steel, springing up the more strongly the harder it was pressed down. The suffering must have been deep indeed from which you could not rebound. To have escaped, to have reached home, and to have found any thing but relief and delight----"

"Home!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Morton, bitterly, as a sharp memory of the anguish which had met him on the threshold came over him. "A prison may be borne with patience. Those are fortunate who have felt no keener stabs."

The words, equivocal as they were, were scarcely spoken, when he had repented them. f.a.n.n.y Euston was silent for a moment. "Can it be possible," she thought, "that the stories whispered about, that before he went away he was engaged to Edith Leslie, are something more than an idle rumor?"

"Why do you look at me so searchingly?" thought Morton, on his part, as, raising his eyes, he saw those of his friend fixed on him in a gaze in which a woman's curiosity was mingled with a fully equal share of a woman's kindliness and sympathy. He hastened to escape from the critical ground which he had approached.

"I can retort upon you," he said. "You have had your ordeal, too."

"What, do you see its traces? Do you find me scorched and withered?"

"I see," said Morton, "such traces as on gold that has pa.s.sed through the furnace."

"Truly, I have cause to rejoice, then; for I remember that, among other compliments, you once intimated your opinion that I was possessed with a devil."

"I am afraid that I pushed to its farthest limit my privilege of cousinship."

"And yet, when I look back to that time, I cannot help thinking that you had some reason for believing that an influence from the nether world had some share in me."

"Now pardon me, if I am rude again. Looking at you, I can see the same devil still."

"Indeed, and you will console me now, as you did then, by telling me that a dash of viciousness is necessary to make a character interesting."

"I should prune and explain my speech. By a devil, I did not mean a malicious imp of darkness, wholly bent on evil. I meant nothing more than certain impulses and emotions,--pa.s.sions, if I may call them so,--very turbulent tenants, yet of admirable use when well dealt with. These were the devil whom I used to see in you, and whom I see still."

"I shall tremble at myself."

"Then you are not so brave as you were when you leaped the fallen tree at New Baden. Your demon has ceased to have an alarming look. I think you have turned him to good account. Shall I ill.u.s.trate from the legends of the saints?"

"In any way you please; but I should never have expected you to resort to so pious a source."

"St. Bernard, crossing the Alps on some holy errand, was met by Satan, who, being anxious to prevent his journey, broke one of his carriage wheels. But St. Bernard caught him, sprinkled him with holy water, doubled him into a wheel, and put him upon the carriage in place of the broken one. The legend says that he answered the purpose admirably, and bore the saint safely to the end of his journey."