CHAPTER LXVIII.

THE WATERFALL.

"I did not know that the world was so beautiful. This spot is indeed like paradise to me now. There is joy in the very breath of the mornings. When I open my window and let in the gushing song of the mocking-birds, and the sweet breath of the flowers, sighs of exquisite delight break to my lips. Things that wearied me two weeks ago are taking new beauty in my eyes. It seems to me that I love everything in the world except this one old man.

"We have been riding every day miles and miles over the country. There is not a broad prospect or a pleasant nook within a ten-hours' ride, that we have not visited in company. Mr. Dennison encouraged these excursions. He is anxious that I should learn to ride freely, and seems grateful that Lawrence is willing to teach me. The weather has been more than pleasant, and these two weeks have gone by like a dream. How brief the time has been, yet how long it seems, one lives so much in a few hours.

"My heart is full, so full that I cannot write anything that it feels. In fact, there is nothing tangible enough for words. Dreams, dreams all, but such delirious dreams. Last night I lay awake till a rosy flash broke through the curtains telling me that it was morning. All night long I lay with the curtains brooding over me like a cloud, and the silver moonlight shimmering through the windows half illuminating the room and the bed upon which I rested, which was all whiteness like a snow-drift. There I lay hour after hour, with both hands folded on my breast, whispering over the words that he had said to me. They were nothing when separated from his looks, or disentangled from the exquisite tenderness of his voice, but oh, how much, when so richly combined, for never in one human being, I am sure, were looks and voice so eloquent.

"I could hear the deep breathing of my husband in the next room, and this made me restless. But for him those words, meaningless in themselves perhaps, would have taken life and force. Ah, why is youth and ambition so rash. Had I only waited before these golden fetters were riveted upon me!

"A vase of moss-roses stood upon the little table near my bed. He had gathered them for me just as the sun was setting, while the first dew bathed them. I took some of these flowers together in my hands, and kissed away their perfume, with a delightful consciousness that he had given it to me. Out of all the wilderness of flowers, now fresh from the dew, these were the gems, for he had brought them to me.

"When daylight came, I arose and went down to the veranda, not weary from sleeplessness, but with a gentle languor upon me which was better than rest. For the first time since Lawrence had been with us, I opened the book he had written, and read passages from it at random. How beautiful they were! and I not discover this before. The truth is, their very excellence carried with it exaltation.

"I read them with a new sense and a keener relish. Their very intensity had, at the first reading, disturbed me almost painfully, now each sentence brought thrills of appreciation. In all respects it was a new book to me.

"I felt that this second reading was dangerous, but the thoughts fascinated me, and I read on, while orioles and mocking-birds held a carnival of music in the thickets around me, and a bright sun drove all the rose-tints from the sky. All at once I looked up, a shadow had fallen across the page I was reading; I closed the book at once, blushing like a guilty creature.

"'Confess,' said Lawrence, with a gleam of laughing triumph in his eyes, 'that you have in some degree changed your opinion.'

"'I have no opinion to change,' was my answer; 'for until now I never really understood your book.'

"'And you understand it now?'

"'Yes.'

"'And feel it?'

"'Too much.'

"I felt the blood rush into my face with very shame at this hasty admission. When I ventured to look up, a faint wave of color was dying out from his face, leaving it grave and pale. Was he condemning me already? That moment Mr. Dennison came through the front door, looking cool and tranquil in his dress of pure linen, which was scarcely whiter than his hair.

"'Come,' he said, in jovial good humor, 'throw by your books, and let us have breakfast.'

"I was glad to see him,--grateful that he had released me from the thraldom of those eyes.

"We rode out that day. A waterfall some eight miles off was almost the only point of interest that I had not visited, and there our ride terminated. A colored groom always rode after us, but his presence was no check upon conversation, and sometimes he loitered behind so far that we lost sight of him altogether. In fact, our whole excursion was one long _tete-a-tete_.

"Lawrence had been grave and preoccupied all the way, but when we quitted our horses and went down to the fall, his spirits rose, and he looked around upon the scene with animation. The cataract, for it was little more, leaped through a chasm between two precipices, formed by a vast rock, which some convulsion of nature had split asunder. Down this chasm the crystal waters plunged nearly a hundred feet, like a stream of shooting diamonds, covering the sides of each precipice with fleeces of emerald-green moss. From these mosses sprung ferns that waved like ten thousand plumes in the current of air that blew coolly down the ravine, keeping every thing in graceful motion. Young trees added their luxuriance to the scene, crowning the summit of the rocks like a diadem, and a host of clustering vines fell over the edge of the precipice, streaming downwards like banners on a battlement, and sometimes sweeping out with the current.

"We entered the ravine first, and stood within the very spray of the cataract; for the stream widened out directly after it left the chasm, and went rioting off among boulders and broken rocks, across which a plank bridge had been flung, which commanded a full view of the fall. We stood a while enjoying the view, and then moved up a footpath that ran along the right-hand precipice, from which we could look down the ravine, and attain an entirely different view from the one we had left. The path was broken and abrupt, but this was scarcely an objection to us. There was something exhilarating in the exercise, and I rather liked the vigorous climbing after so long a ride on horseback; even with the obstruction of a long skirt flung over one arm, it was scarcely fatiguing. We had nearly reached the top of the precipice, I had taken Mr. Lawrence's arm, for he insisted that I must be out of breath, and I was protesting against his assertion, when a large dog rushed out of the undergrowth, which grew thickly on that side of the path, as if frightened at something, and made a plunge directly against me.

"My arm was torn from its support, I staggered--reeled on the verge of the precipice, flung out my arms, and plunged down--down--down into chaos. I had neither struck the earth nor water, something hard and firm girded my body. My face was smothered in green, damp leaves, and my hair already dripped with falling spray.

"I heard the roar and rush of waters all around me, and through it a fierce cry as of some one in agony. I attempted to move, but the branches that supported me swayed downward, and with a desperate spring I caught at the stem of a wild vine, which clung to and spread over the face of the precipice, twisting itself in with the young tree, which but for that would have broken under my weight. Looking upward through the blinding mist, I saw a white face bending over the precipice, and heard a voice hoarse with terror calling upon me to hold firmly and keep still.

"I did hold firmly, but the trembling of my frame shook the tree and clinging shrubs with a dangerous vibration, and it seemed to me that their roots were slowly tearing out from the soil which held them in the cleft of the rock. This shook me with an awful terror; I tried to close my eyes and be still, but that was impossible. I saw the blue sky bending so calm and quiet above me. I saw the quivering greenness that clothed the rocky face of the precipice, and ten thousand tiny white flowers trembling through it so close that my face almost touched them. The fall, like a sheet of melted glass, rolled and plunged so near, that it seemed ready to leap upon me. My appalled eyes turned shuddering from a vast whirlpool of foam that rioted thirty feet beneath me, shooting forward, curving over, and plunging down great watery hollows, then leaping suddenly upward, as if maddened that their prey had not fallen at once into the white caldron of their wrath.

"In vain my eyes closed upon all this threatening horror. Then all was darkness, and the roar of the fall became terrific. The spray swept over me like a storm of shooting diamonds, wetting my habit through and through till it dragged me downward with heavier weight and fresh peril. I could feel the drops falling like rain from my hair, and my poor hands grew cold as they clung to the vine. A cry broke from my lips. Surely the tree was uprooting beneath me. I could feel it giving way inch by inch. A handful of loose earth broke away and rolled over me, rattling down to the white gulf below. Shriek after shriek--oh, my God! they were smothered and lost in that roar of waters, and could warn no one of this new peril. I seized upon the wild vine higher up, and strove to press less heavily on that breaking tree; my foot found a crevice in the rock, and, forcing itself through the wet moss, in some degree sufficed to lessen the weight that was dragging me down to death. But still my support was slowly giving way, I could hear the small roots snap, and feel the earth break from around them. My hands were numb and cold, my brain began to reel, and ten thousand broken rainbows seemed shooting up from the falls, and tangling themselves around me, dragging me down--down--down.

"A human voice brought me back; a wild, cheerful shout forbade me to give way, and broke the delirium, which in a moment more would have loosened my hold, and sent me whirling through that white gulf of waters into eternity. 'Hold fast one moment! For God's sake, be firm!' It was his voice. A thrill of hope drove back the delirium that had seized upon me. I pressed my foot more firmly into the crevice, and forced myself against the rock, clinging with both hands to the vine. A trail of blackness fell over the face of the precipice, and I heard the clank of iron striking against the rock. Directly the air above was darkened, and, with a thrill of horror, I saw Lawrence fling himself over the face of the precipice, and glide slowly down to my side. He crowded his foot close to mine, thus attaining a foothold, but otherwise supported himself by the line of leathern straps that had aided his descent. With one hand clinging firmly to this support, he placed the stirrups from my saddle under my feet, told me how to seize upon the straps to which they were attached when he should call out, and seizing the double straps above my head, swung himself upward, and left me alone, shaken with double terror. Then I knew that a life dearer than mine was in peril, and my soul went up with him, uttering a cry of thankfulness when his voice reached me, calling out, cheerfully, from the edge of the precipice,--

"'Stand firm; do not move till you feel the straps tighten around you!'

"I obeyed, holding desperately to the vine with one hand, while the other was ready for action. I felt the stirrups tighten under my feet,--the leather straps were taut and motionless,--I grasped one with my left hand, but still clung to the vine, afraid to swing out over that awful abyss. It was a moment of sickening horror.

"'Be bold--fear nothing--trust yourself to me!'

"Instantly my hand left its hold on the vine, my feet were lifted from their frail support, and with the stirrups beneath them, swung out from the rock. Oh, how fearfully those lines strained and quivered! how those white waters leaped and roared under me! I drew no breath; my heart stood still; a shock of awful terror seized upon me; the minute in which I swung out into mid-air seems to me even now as a long, long day. Oh, it was terrible!

"The faces of the angels, when they meet you after death, must give such promise of new life, as his gave to me when my frightened eyes first saw him bending over that precipice. The trust of the angels must be like mine when I felt his arms around me, and knew that he had lifted me out of chaos. Never, on this side of heaven, shall I have another sensation like that.

"How long I remained in those arms it is impossible for me to say. When I came to life, he was sitting upon the turf, where they had laid me, with my head resting on his knee. Some brandy from a flask, which the groom always carried with him, had been forced through my lips, where I felt the taste still burning. That had checked the shudders of cold which were creeping over me, and for a while I lay speechless, feeble as a child, but oh, how happy! He had saved me. It was his strength which had rescued me from that whirlpool of waters, from the horrible death, for which I was so unprepared.

"These were the first thoughts that came to my brain, as I lay there so deathly and motionless. The light fell rosily on my eyelids, but I had no strength or wish to unclose them; nay, I checked the very breath as it rose to my lips, fearing that it would betray the life rekindling in my bosom, and thus break the dream which was so like Elysium.

"He bent his face to mine and called me by name. His voice shook with apprehension; I could feel that he trembled.

"I could not help it: a smile crept to my lips and warmed them into redness. He held my hand, and was chafing it between his smooth white palms.

"'She is recovering,' he exclaimed, joyfully.

"'So she am, marser,' answered Tom, the groom; 'beginning to look mighty natral. Lor' knows dis darky thought she was done gone sure 'nuff.'

"I moved then. Tom's voice had broken up my dream.

"'Are you better? Speak, dear lady, and tell me that you are not seriously hurt.'

"Opening my eyes wide, I looked into his, and closed them again, feeling the warm, fresh life rushing to my face with a glow.

"'Ah, your looks tell me that no serious evil will come from this,' he said. 'Let us thank God.'

"'I do thank God, but you most of all,' I whispered; 'without that, life would--'

"What was I about to say. My voice was weak, I do not think he heard me. I listened for some response, but none came, and when my eyes turned upon him, the look with which he met them was grave and thoughtful.

"Tom was busy about the saddles at some distance. With that prompt action which is in itself success, Lawrence had taken the girths and stirrups from the saddles, the martingales and bridles, all of which he had buckled and knotted together into the cable that saved my life. While Tom was repairing all damages, I grew strong enough to sit up, but my habit was so wet and heavy that it seemed impossible for me to walk. A slight lunch had been prepared for us which Tom had brought with him. Lawrence found a bottle of champagne in the basket, and poured out a brimming cup which he entreated me to drink while the sparkles were rising. I drank eagerly, again and again, till the slight chills that had begun to creep over me were broken up, and a glow of strength enabled me to rise.

"'Now,' said Lawrence, 'that you have some color in those cheeks, and the deathly look is gone, let us mount and away. It will be a miracle if you are not ill from this shock.'

"I arose and prepared to go, but faltered, and found the weight of my skirt oppressive. Lawrence threw one arm around my waist, and almost carried me to the horse. For one moment he folded me close in his arms before lifting me to the saddle, and whispered,--

"'Forgive me, that I led you into this danger.'

"I could not answer. The man who had saved my life, at a terrible risk to his own, asked me to forgive him. Did he guess that it was worship, not forgiveness, that I felt.

"We rode home at a gallop. Exercise drove the chills from my frame, and a strange excitement took possession of me. When I reached home, my cheeks were on fire. It was not fever, but a sensation stranger and wilder than I had ever felt before. Instead of returning home, I would have given the world to turn my horse and flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, where no one but the man who had saved me could ever know of my existence.

"Still, the horse was bearing me forward at the top of his speed, and no one attempted to check him or turn him aside. In the madness of my folly, I almost hoped to see Lawrence seize the bridle, and swerve his course away from the home I was beginning to hate."