Chapter 19

"One day I ventured to Falling Waters, a reservoir which is precipitated from a cliff, called Campbell's Ridge, into a gorge of the Shawnee Mountains. The deafening roar of the cataract would be almost deathly to me; but, strengthened by the promise of Heraine, I determined to add this achievement to the long list of inflictions endured for her sake.

"I made the ascent on foot, and could see, from the base of the ridge, the skein of foam shining through the pines in its everlasting flight down the rocks. I became accustomed to the sound as I gradually approached, and mused, with gladness, of an early return to England. Heraine would acknowledge my vindication. Suffering more anguish from a sunbeam or a song than others from the knout or the rack, I had yet run the gauntlet of the intensest horrors, cheered by the certainty of her regard. She would confess her error. We should shut out the world again from our shadowy home at Glengoyle, and go down together, hand in hand, to a deeper stillness. As I mused thus I heard the haunting footfalls again, going up the mountain before me. To my delight, their attendant demon was inaudible, and I pursued them rapturously. The rush of waters grew louder. They had moaned before; they shrieked and screamed now, as if in the agony of their suicidal leap. But, clear and musical, above the hell of sound rang the tinkling feet which had led me around the globe.

"I called aloud. I quickened my pace. I could see only in glimpses through my tears; but along the steep sinuosities of the path something fluttered and vanished, and fluttered again--I recognized Heraine.

"I knew now the fidelity of her affection. She had followed my invalid wanderings, to be near me in want and prostration. I could have knelt in the aisle of the dim woods, with God's choir of waters pealing before me, to weep my gratitude. But as the figure of Heraine disappeared above, those other abhorred footfalls rang keenly below. Deep, rapid, and elastic, they were sonorously defined above the clash of the cataract. I fled, with my hands upon my ears.

"On and on! winding among boles, creeping beneath branches, climbing ledges, vaulting over fissures and chasms, I reached the open plain at last, and halted unnerved upon the brink of the abyss.

"The glory of the prospect filled me with exquisite pain. A mist, arched by a delicate rainbow, rose from the tumbling flood, and the sunny valley was visible, at intervals, beyond it, inclosed by blue mountains and intersected by the pale, ribbon-like Susquehanna. It was my fate to endure, not to enjoy; but at this moment the cataract was forgotten in a deeper torment; the boughs opened, the sky split with the shock of feet, and a man bounded from the wood.

"He was tall, handsome, and athletic, and his ruddy cheeks were flushed with exercise. He made a trumpet of his hands, and hallooed, long and clear,

"'Hera--a--a--ine!'

"Then he whistled through his fist till the rocks and water rang.

"'Where the deuce is the dear girl?' he said, and his eyes fell upon me.

"A terrible hatred rose in my heart against this man. It was the first great passion I had nurtured, and had received no other provocation than the empty sounds of his footfalls. But antipathies are not accidental merely; they are organic; and my quick sense took alarm even from his tread. One's character may be defined in his gait, but I knew from the tramp of this person that his nature was averse to mine. Why had he followed my affianced across the seas? Why had his crashing drowned the music of her steps? Why had he uttered her name with an endearment? Why had he been retained at her side, and I sent alone and wretched before? My wrists knotted nervously as these accusations took shape, and my blood became gall.

"'I beg pardon,' he said curtly; 'but are you the young man we are looking for?'

"I asked through my teeth whom he designated in the term '_we_.'

"'Heraine, of course,' he replied; 'give me your hand! We have followed our little invalid--that's what we call you--over many a league, and may make his acquaintance at last. Ralph Clendenning, at your service!'

"I shrank menacingly from him, and counted the dull throbs of my heart.

"'What! timid!' he said; 'and with so old a friend? I never met you, indeed, but then I have talked of you so often that you have grown to be quite a brother.'

"I saw that he was frank and winning, and hated him the more.

"'Upon my word,' he added, 'there was none whom I had resolved in my mind to love so well, for the sake of Heraine.'

"A cry escaped me, so bitter that it seemed a howl, and I clenched my hands.

"He still followed me along the very edge of the cliff, extending his hand. A horrible impulse rushed upon me, and a thought darker than jealousy caught it up. I hurled myself against him. He staggered on the brink of the abyss, and went down with a sharp, half-stifled scream!

"My eyes followed the dead weight, as it rolled from ledge to ledge, accelerated each instant by the force of the cataract. A world, tossed out of gravity and crashing among the planets, could not have been more awfully distinct. Down--down--down--a formless mass of fibre and bone, the mist seemed to buoy it up when it reached the deepmost cascade, and as it disappeared through the tops of the pines I heard the coming of footfalls.

"Mine was a soul in torment, listening to music in heaven. I stood, stiff and numb in horror, staring into the gulf. The roar of the cataract was smothered to a babble. The rainbow vibrated tremulously to the dropping harmonies. I saw the familiar shadow as it gided to my feet. A soft hand thrilled me with its touch, and the old voice said,

"'Dear Luke, I am Heraine, come back.'

"I could not stir. My eyes were forged to the abyss.

"'Why do you glare so wildly?' she said. 'Come! you have been brave, and must not fail now. Have you no kind greeting for Heraine?'

"Down in the abyss, swaying and rocking upon the pine bough, with the frank smile as when I murdered him, I saw my victim in fancy.

"'Speak, Luke,' she repeated. 'I have a dear friend here; he has made the long pilgrimage with me, fondly anticipating this meeting. You will know him to-day, and I am sure you will love him.'

"Still surging upon mist and spray and bough, with the halo of the rainbow shimmering above it, the noble face turned upward forgivingly.

"'We have planned for your happiness, dear friend. Compared to the retreat we have fashioned for you, Glengoyle is a Babel. But you are ill, Luke; What terrible allurement lies in the waterfall? Come away from the brink! Ralph! Ralph!'

"She called in clear tones. The woods and waters answered back.

"'He is there,' I stammered; 'down--deep--dead--do you see him?--how he smiles and surges on the tufts of the pines! I--thrust him over--in rage--even as he gave me his hand--I slew him!'

"'Merciful God!' she whispered in horror; 'he was my husband!'

"The rainbow dissolved; the waterfall deluged the valley; the mountains were covered with waves; the skies grew pitchy dark; I saw nothing more.

* * * * *

"My sensations upon waking were those of a diver who has risen from the tranquil depths to the surface. Hubbub recommenced; horror returned. My hair was shaven close to my skull; my head ached dismally; I moved my hand with an effort, and my eyelids were so weak that I could not unseal them for a time.

"I was lying in my old chamber at Glengoyle, and Heraine was sitting at my bedside. Her garments were sable, her brown hair thin, her face placid, as of yore, but marked by deep-seated grief, and the magnetism of will and courage was gone from it. To the eye she was the same; to the mind, a weak and broken thing. Crime had changed both our natures; she had been tutor and governess before, and I the passive, submissive creature; but sin had made me bold, and sorrow worn her to a woman.

"'Luke,' she said, in the same lullaby tone, 'do you know me? do you recognize the place? are you still weak?'

"'Heraine,' said I, sternly, 'do not the wrongs we have done each other forbid this intimacy?'

"'Oh, Luke!' she replied, 'let us not uncover the past. I have buried your sin with its victim, and watched you through weary months, and prayed God to pardon you.'

"'Can God pardon your sin to me, Heraine?'

"'I trust so, Luke,' she said feebly, 'if ever in my life I treasured you a hard thought or did you any injury.'

"'Is it no injury,' I said, 'to have lured me by a false promise from my quiet home? I have endured the torture of cities, seas, suns, and storms. Your pledge was my spur and talisman through all. But you had cheated me with a lie. You were another's already. For you I have stained my hands with blood and shut heaven against my soul!'

"'As I have an account to Settle, Luke,' she pleaded, 'I meant your happiness only. To have told you that I was wedded would have pained you. I thought to familiarize you with scenes and sounds, by making my regard an incentive to adventure. It was your mother's plan. I yielded to the deception, and believed it good."

"'It was a wicked falsehood,' I said; 'you knew the weakness of my nature--that my sensitiveness was a disease--that to cross me was to kill. You have made both of us wretched forever.'

"My cruelty was murdering her; her face grew deathly in its pallor, and she pressed her hands upon her heart.

"'Let the dead man lie between us,' I proceeded; 'it is not seemly for you to be my friend; and to me you are an ever-present accusation. We must not see each other!'

"'Oh, Luke!' she cried, falling upon her knees imploringly; 'I am a bruised thing, a-weary of the world. This silence and darkness are endeared to me. Do not send me away!'

"'You agitate me,' I said; 'let us do our penance, each in loneliness. There was a time when our sorrows were mutual; it is past; we have only to say farewell.'

"I covered my face with my hands; she touched my brow with her lips, and when the door had closed upon her sobbing I heard her footfalls making mournful music on the stairs. They rang upon the lawn, then pattered down the drive; they passed desolately out of the gate, they were lost on the highway, and then the world became blank again.

* * * * *

"'Luke,' said my mother timidly, 'Mrs. Clendenning--Heraine--is--dead.'

"'I know it,' said I quietly.

"She seemed surprised, and interrogated me with her eyes.

"'She died at twilight yesterday,' I stated; 'as the first candles were lit in the lodge and the earliest star appeared--I heard her footsteps.'

"'At that time she passed away,' sobbed my mother. 'Oh, Luke! you were cruel to the poor girl. Her parting prayer was made for you. To the last you stood between Heraine and heaven.'

"'At that time, mother, I was sitting at my window. Tears and thrills haunted me during the afternoon, and I was frightened in the silence and darkness. And I heard Heraine's footsteps come up the road, pass the lodge, ascend the stairs, and cross my threshold. They were like echoes rather than sounds--hollow and ghostly; and mingled with them were the deeper footfalls of my other spectre, her husband.'

"I could not inhabit my chamber now. These awful sounds drove me into the open world, where I hoped to lose them in the tread of multitudes. I wandered to the old church on the day of the funeral, and looked upon the bier with dry and burning eyes. The pastor read of the holy Jerusalem, and said that her pure feet were walking the golden streets. But in the hushes of the sobbing I heard them close beside me, and while children were strewing her grave with flowers they followed me over the stile and through the village till I gained the fields and took to my heels in fright.

"I sought the resort of crowds, and lived amid turbulences. In busy hours I baffled my pursuers; but in the dark midnights, when only the miserable walked, I suffered the agonies of remorse and penance. The ever-flowing stream of life on London Bridge became my solace. My apartments are here, and I sit continually at an open window, leaning far forward, to catch the thunder of the tramp. I know the footfalls as of old. I see the suicide pace to and fro, to nerve herself for the deed. I hear her sleek betrayer, and detect their wretched offspring as he first essays to filch a handkerchief or a purse.

"Oh, the footfalls! the footfalls! Each tread marks a good or a wicked thought. A fiend or an angel starts beneath every heel. They write an eternal record as they go. Their voices float forever to witness against or for us. We people space as we cleave it. The ground that is dumb as we spurn it has a memory and a revenge. I am more sensitive than my kind; and my penance to these monitors of my sin is but a realization of the terror which all must feel at the accusation of their footfalls."

UPPER MARLB'RO'.

Through a narrow, ravelled valley, wearing down the farmer's soil, The Patuxent flows inconstant, with a hue of clay and oil, From the terraces of mill-dams and the temperate slopes of wheat, To the bottoms of tobacco, watched by many a planter's seat.

There the blackened drying-houses show the hanging shocks of green, Smoking through the lifted shutters, sunning in the nicotine; And around old steamboat-landings loiter mules and over-seers, With the hogsheads of tobacco rolled together on the piers.

Inland from the river stranded in a cove between the hills, Lies old Marlb'ro' Court and village, acclimated to her chills; And the white mists nightly rising from the swamps that trench her round, Seem the sheeted ghosts of memories buried in that ancient ground.

Here in days when still Prince George's of the province was the queen, Great old judges ruled the gentry, gathering to the court-house green; When the Ogles and the Tayloes matched their Arab steeds to race, Judge Duval adjourned the sessions, Luther Martin quit his case.

Here young Roger Taney lingered, while the horn and hounds were loud, To behold the pompous Pinkney scattering learning to the crowd; And old men great Wirt remembered, while their minds he strove to win, As a little German urchin drumming at his father's inn.

When the ocean barks could moor them in the shadow of the town Ere the channels filled and mouldered with the rich soil wafted down-- Here the Irish trader, Carroll, brought the bride of Darnell Hall, And their Jesuit son was Bishop of the New World over all.

Here the troopers of Prince George's, with their horse-tail helmets, won Praise from valiant Eager Howard and from General Wilkinson; And (the village doctor seeking from the British to restore) Key, the poet, wrote his anthem in the light of Baltimore.

One by one the homes colonial disappear in Time's decrees. Though the apple orchards linger and the lanes of cherry-trees; E'en the Woodyard[3] mansion kindles when the chimney-beam consumes, And the tolerant Northern farmer ploughs around old Romish tombs.

By the high white gravelled turnpike trails the sunken, copse-grown route, Where the troops of Ross and Cockburn marched to victory, and about, Halting twice at Upper Marlb'ro', where 'tis still tradition's brag, That 'twas Barney got the victory though the British got the swag.

But the Capital, rebuilded, counts 'mid towns rebellious this-- Standing in the old slave region 'twixt it and Annapolis; And the cannons their embrasures on the Anacostia forts Open tow'rd old ruined Marlb'ro' and the dead Patuxent ports.

[Footnote 3: "The Woodyard," the finest brick mansion on the western peninsula of Maryland, the seat of the Wests, twelve miles from Washington, burned down a few years ago by the unaccountable ignition of the great beam of wood over the big chimney-place, which had stood there for nearly 200 years. Either seasoned by the fire or fired by spooks, it caught in the night, and a heap of imported bricks stood next morning in place of The Woodyard.]

Still from Washington some traveller, tempted by the easy grades, Through the Long Old Fields continues cantering in the evening shades, Till he hears the frogs and crickets serenading something lost, In the aguey mists of Marlb'ro' banked before him like a frost.

Then the lights begin to twinkle, and he hears the negroes' feet Dancing in the old storehouses on the sandy business street, And abandoned lawyers' lodges underneath the long trees lurk, Like the vaults around a graveyard where the court-house is the kirk.

He will see the sallow old men drinking juleps, grave and bleared-- But no more their household servants at the court-house auctioneered; And the county clerk will prove it by the records on his shelves, That the fathers of the province were no better than ourselves.

PREACHERS' SONS IN 1849.

When I admit that these reminiscences are real, it will at once be inferred that I am a preacher's son. The general reputation of my class has been bad since the day of Eli; but I affirm and maintain that reason does not bear out this verdict, however obstinate experience may be. For why should the best parents have the worst children? and that our itinerant sires were godly and self-sacrificing men the most prodigal of their boys must confess. No flippant or errant example rises before me when I take my father's portrait in my hand and recall the humility and heroism of his life. A stern and angular face, out of whose saliences look two ruddy windows, lit by a steadfast cheerfulness, is thinly thatched by hairs of iron-gray, and around the long loose throat a bunch of frosted beard sparkles as if the painter's pencil had fastened there in reverence. I do not need to study the bent, broad shoulders and thin sinewy limbs to measure the hardness and steepness of his path; he climbed it like a bridegroom, humming quaint snatches of hymns to lull his human waywardnesses, and all the fever and errantry of our own vain career shrink abashed before his high devotion.

That I have turned out a rover is not odd; for the travelling preacher's son is cradled upon the highway. Three months after my birth we "moved" a hundred miles; by my sixteenth year we had made eleven migrations.

We children little sympathize with our weak and sickly mother on these occasions, but look forward to a change of abode as something very novel and desirable. We count the days between Christmas and April, after which the annual "Conference" assembles in the distant city, and we see our father, in his best black suit, quit the parsonage door with an anxious face, cut to the heart by his wife's farewell, "May they give you a good place, Thomas!"

Then come letters--one, two, three: "The bishops are friendly;" "The Presiding Elder has promised to do the best for us that he can;" "The influential Doctor Bim has praised our missionary sermon, and Brother Click, the Secretary, has applauded our Charge's large subscription to the _Advocate_;" "Our character has passed even the severe approval of the great theologian, Steep;" "Take courage, my dear, and hope for the best!"

The membership, meanwhile, are dropping in by couples to say kindly words to our mother, whom they pity, and it is rumored that they are collecting a purse to help us on our way. At last our father returns, striving to hide his solicitude in a smile, for no fate to which they could consign himself would scathe that grisly servant of his Master; but for his family, who do not altogether share the spirit of his mission, he has a little fear. He kisses us all in order, from the least to the biggest, commencing and ending with our mother, and playfully prevaricates as to our "appointment," the name of which we noisily demand, until his wife says timidly,

"Where do they send us, Thomas?"

He tries to smile and trifle, but the possibility of her discontent gives him so great pain that we children perceive it.

"How would you like to go to Greensburg?"

"Not _Greensburg_!" she says, with a sudden paleness.

"Isn't it a good circuit?" he says smilingly; "they paid the last preacher three hundred dollars, and his marriage fees were a hundred more. They say he saved fifty dollars a year!"

"Oh, Thomas, I thought I had fortitude, but this--"

"Is only to test your faith," he cries. "A poor preacher's wife should be willing to go anywhere--even to Greensburg; but that is not our appointment, dear; we move to Swan Neck."

Then the fun begins in earnest. The church people come to look at our contribution bedquilts, and help us pack up the blue earthenware. The legs of the prodigious box, yclept a milk chest, are summarily amputated and laid away in it, with the parental library, which, we are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect the large gilt-edged cups and saucers, which say upon their edges, "To our pastor," and "To our pastor's wife." The thin rag carpets are folded away; the potatoes in the bin are sold to Brother Bibb, the grocer, and to a very few of the select sisters we present a can of our preserved quinces, with directions how to prepare them. Poor Em., the black domestic, drops so many tears upon the parlor stove as she carries it out to the wagon that the fresh blackening she has so industriously given it goes for nothing; for Em. is to be discharged, and the fact troubles her, though a preacher's servant has little to eat and plenty to do.

At last the old parsonage is quite bare and deserted, though our successors, box and baggage, have moved in upon us, much to the annoyance of the females, who see with jealousy that the new arrival gets the lion's share of attention, and that Brother Tipp, whose class-book we took from him, and who has backbitten us ever since, is courteous as a dancing-master with our rival. We shall talk for six years to come--that is, our mother--of Bangs's, the new-comer's, impudence in feeding his horse on our oats, and shall never speak of him as Brother Bangs, but simply call him _Bangs_, emphasized. We are not even sure that he will not turn his poultry loose before ours has been secured, and we boys, with great zeal, run down the roosters and ducks, giving them, if the truth must be told, longer chase than is necessary. The aged muscovy, we are sorry to say, lames himself in the retreat, and the only goose on the premises hides among Powell's, the neighbor's, so that we cannot tell which from which. However, the property is tied up at last in the several wagons; Sister Phoenix's lunch has been eaten, and our father, the itinerant, in his shirt-sleeves, stands up, with pain and perspiration on his brow, to bid his flock good-by.

"Now, brethren," he says, with a quiver at his throat, "my time is passing; I have finished the work appointed for me to do. Renew the kindnesses you have done me and my little ones upon the good steward who is to replace me. My heart weeps to cut the bonds which have held us so long together; but in this world I am a pilgrim and a stranger. Let us all pray!"

As his shrill, broken voice goes up in a mingled wail and hosanna, we children peep by stealth into the working faces of the bystanders, and our own grow tearful, till our little sister cries aloud, and our mother falls into some fond matron's arms.