by Marion Bryce
Thus it is with us. We slide in a groove and seem happy, when suddenly a book we read, a story we hear, an experience we encounter, shakes us out of our content, and makes continuance in the old course a violation of the most demanding instincts of our nature.
In the full tide of this unrest, Paula went out for a solitary walk on the hills. Nature can soothe if she cannot satisfy. Then the day itself was one to make the soul glad and the heart rejoice. As the young girl trod the meadows, she wondered that she could be sad. Earth and air were so full of splendor. Nature seemed to be in league with the angels of light. September stood upon the earth like a goddess of might and glory. Every tint of green that variegated the mountain-side, wooed the eye with suggestions of unfathomable beauty. A bough of scarlet flame lit here and there amid the verdure, served to illuminate the woods as for the passage of a king; and not Solomon in all his glory ever wore an aspect more sumptuous than the flowers that flecked the meadow and tinged the hardy roadside with imperial purple. A wind was blowing, a keen but kindly breeze, laden with sweetness and alert to awaken Aeolian airs from the boughs of whistling beech and alder. Even the low field grasses seemed to partake in the general cheer, and nodded to each other with a bewitching and irresistible abandon. Had a poet been at her side, or any one capable of divining the hidden things of nature, what a commentary to all their united thoughts she would have found in the delicious tremble of the laughing leaves, in the restless music of the runaway brooks, in the lowly crickets with their single song, in the cloud-haunting birds with their trailing melodies, and in all the roll and rumble of earth’s commingled noises. Alluring as was the book of nature, she could not read it alone. She felt the lack of a loving hand to turn the page. “Is it that I am lonely!” she murmured.
The thought deepened her trouble. Coming down from the hillside, she entered a skirting of woods that ran along by the river. Here she had always found peace and some of her richest treasures of thought. Through this opaline archway she had walked with her fancies, like Saint Catherine with her lily. It was sacred to all that was sweet and deep and pure within her. “Lonely!” she whispered; “I will not be lonely. To some God gives years of happy companionship; to others but a day. Shall one complain because it has fallen to his portion to have the lesser share? I will remember my one day and be glad.”
“My one day!” She caught herself at the utterance and literally started at the suggestion it offered. There was but one person whom she had seen but for a day. Could she have been thinking of him?
With a flush deep as the autumn leaves she carried, she was burning on, when suddenly in the opening before her, a shadow fell, and a mellow voice exclaimed in her ear,
“Do I meet Miss Fairchild in her native woods?”
It was Clarence Ensign.
The surprise was very great and it took her a moment to steady herself. She had felt so assured that she should never see him or any other of her New York friends again. Had not Cicely written that he had gone West, soon after her own departure from New York. With a deepening of his voice Mr. Ensign repeated the question.
At once the day seemed to acquire all it had hitherto lacked. Looking up, she met his eye fixed admiringly upon her, and all that was merry, lightsome and gay within her, leaped at once to the surface. Ignoring his question with smiling abandon, she exclaimed,
“What shall be done to the man who delights in surprises and startles timid maidens without a cause?”
“He shall be held in captivity by the hand of his denouncer, until he has sued for pardon and obtained her generous forgiveness,” returned he, holding out his palm.
She barely touched it with her own. “I see that your repentance is sincere, so your pardon shall be speedy,” laughed she.
“Your discrimination is at fault, I never felt more impendent in my life. I am a hardened wretch, Miss Fairchild, a hardened wretch! But you do not ask me from what corner of the earth I have come. You take me too much for granted; like the chirrup of a squirrel, let me say, or the whistle of a bullfinch. But perhaps you think I inhabit these woods?”
“No; but a day like this is so full of miracles, why should we be astonished at one more! I suppose you came on the train, but should not be surprised to hear you started, like Pluto, from the earth. Anything seems possible in such a sunshine.”
“You are right, and I have sprung from the earth. I have been buried five mortal months in a lawsuit out west, or else I should have been here before. I hope my delay has made me none the less welcome.”
He was holding back a branch as he spoke, and his eyes were on a level with hers. She felt caught as in a net, and struggled vainly to keep down her color. “No,” said she, “welcome is a guest’s due, whether he come early or late. I should be sorry to be lacking in the duties of a hostess, though my drawing-room is somewhat more spacious than cosy,” she continued, looking around on the fields into which they had emerged, “and my facilities for bespeaking you welcome greater than my power to make you comfortable.”
“Comfort is a satisfaction of the mind, rather than of the body. I am not uncomfortable, Miss Fairchild.” Then as he stooped to relieve her of half her burden of trailing leaves and flowers, he exclaimed in a matter-of-fact tone, “Your aunt is a notable woman, Miss Fairchild, I admire her greatly.”
“What!” said she, “you have been to the cottage? You have seen Aunt Belinda?”
“Of course,” laughed he, “or how should I be here? You have been sent for, Miss Fairchild, and I am the humble bearer of your aunt’s commands. But I forget, the practical has nothing to do with such a day. I am supposed to have sprung from the ground, and to know by instinct, just in what nook you were hiding from the sunlight. Very well, I acknowledge that instinct is sometimes capable of going a great way.”
But this time her ready answer was lacking. She was wondering what her aunt would think of this sudden appearance of a stranger whose name she had never so much as mentioned.
“It is a pleasant rest to stand and look at a view like that, after a summer of musty labor,” said he, gazing up the river with a truly appreciative eye. “I do not wonder you carry the charm of the wild woods in your laugh and glance, if you have been brought up in the sight of such a view as that.”
“It has been my meat and drink from childhood,” said she, and wondered why she wanted to say no more upon her favorite theme.
“Yet you tell me you love the city?”
“Too much to ever again be happy here.”
It was a slip for which her cheek burned and her lids fell, the moment after. She had been thinking of Mr. Sylvester, and unconsciously spake as she might have done, if he had been at her side, instead of this genial-hearted young man. With a woman’s instinctive desire to retrieve herself, she hurriedly continued, “Life is so full and large and deep in a great town, if you are only happy enough to meet those who are its blood and brain and sinew. One misses the rush of the great wheel of time in a spot like this. The world moves, but we do not feel it; it is like the quiet sweep of the stars over our heads. But in the city, days, weeks and months make themselves felt. The universe jars under the feet of hurrying masses. The story of the world is being written on pavement, corridor, and dome, so that he who runs may read. One realizes he is alive; the unit is part of the multiple. To those who are tired, God gives the rest of the everlasting hills, but to those who are eager, he holds out the city with its innumerable opportunities and incentives. And I am eager,” she said. “The flower blooms on the mountain, and its perfume is sweet, but the chariot sings as it rushes, and the noise of is wheels is music in my ears.”
She paused, turned her face to the breeze, and seemed to forget she was not alone. Clarence Ensign eyed her with astonishment; he had never heard her speak like this; the earnest side of her great nature had never been turned towards him before, and he felt himself shrink into insignificance in its presence. What was he that he should pluck a star from the heavens, to buckle on his breast! Wealth an
d position were a match for beauty great as hers, and a kind heart current coin all the world over, for a gentle disposition and a loving nature; but for this—He turned away and in his abstraction switched his foot with his cane.
“Then it was in New York that I met Cicely,” exclaimed Paula.
He shook off his broodings, turned with a manful gesture, and met her sweet unfathomable eye, so brilliant with enthusiasm a moment ago, but at this instant so softly deep and tender.
“And the friendship of Miss Stuyvesant is a precious thing to you?” said he.
“Few things are more so,” was her reply, he bit his lip and his brow grew lighter. After all, great souls frequently cling to those of lesser calibre, provided they are true and unflawed. He would not be discouraged. But his tone when he spoke had acquired a reverence that did not lessen its music. “You are, then, one of the few women who believe in friendship?”
“As I believe in heaven.”
Looking at her, he took off his hat. Her eye stole to his serious countenance. “Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied,” said he.
“Are friends so rare?”
“Such friends are,” said he.
She gave him a bright, little look. “Had you been with Miss Stuyvesant, and she had expressed herself as I have done, you would have said, ‘Miss Fairchild is to be envied,’ and you would have been nearer the truth than now. Cicely’s friendship is to mine what an unbroken mirror is to a little racing brook. It reflects but one image, while mine—” She could not go on. How could she explain to the stranger that Cicely’s heart was undivided in its regard, while hers owned allegiance to more than her bosom friend.
“If I were with Miss Stuyvesant now,” he declared, too absorbed in his own ideas to notice the break in hers, “I should still say in face of this friendship, ‘Miss Stuyvesant is to be envied.’ I have no mind for more than one thought to-day,” exclaimed he, with a look that made her tremble.
There are some men who never know in what field to stay the current of their impetuosity: Clarence Ensign did. He said no more than this of all that was seething in his mind and heart. He felt that he must prove himself a man, before he exercised a man’s privilege. Besides, his temperament was mercurial, and never remained long under the bondage of a severe thought, or an impressive tone of mind. He worshipped the lofty, but it was with tabor and cymbal and high-sounding lute. A climb over the stile at the foot of the hill was enough to restore him to himself, it was therefore with merry eyes and laughing lips that they approached the house and entered Miss Belinda’s presence.
There are some persons whose prerogative it is to carry sunshine with them wherever they go. Clarence Ensign was one of these. Without an effort, without any display of incongruous hilarity, he always succeeded by the mere joyousness of his own nature, in calling forth all that was bright and enjoyable in others. When therefore they stepped into the quaint old-fashioned parlor, all prepared to receive them, Paula was not surprised to perceive it brighten, and her aunts’ faces grow cheerful and smiling. Who could meet Clarence Ensign’s laughing eye and not smile? What did astonish her, however, was the sight of an elegant basket of hot-house flowers perched on a table in the centre of the room. It made her pause, and cast looks of inquiry at the demure countenance of Miss Abby, and the quietly satisfied expression of her more thoughtful aunt.
“A remembrance from the city!” said Mr. Ensign gracefully. “I thought it might help to recall some happy hours to you.”
With a swelling of the heart which she could not understand, she leaned over the ample cluster of roses and heliotrope. She felt as though she could embrace them; they were more than flowers, they were the visible emblem of alt she had missed, and for which she had longed these many months.
“I seem to receive the whole in the part,” said she.
He may or may not have understood her, but he saw she was gratified, and that was sufficient. The afternoon flew by on wings of light. Miss Belinda, who was not accustomed to holidays, but who thoroughly appreciated them when they came, entered into the conversation with zest; while Miss Abby’s unconscious expressions of pleasure were too naïve not to add to, rather than detract from the general enjoyment. The twilight, with its good-bye, came all too soon.
“I have a request to make before I go,” said Mr. Ensign. he was standing alone with Paula in the embrasure of the window, a few moments before his departure. “When we see a flower nodding on a ledge above our heads, we long for it; I have heard you talk of friendship, and a great desire has seized me. Miss Fairchild will you be my friend?”
She gave him a startled glance that, however, soon settled into a mellow radiant look of sympathy and pleasure.
“That is asking for something which if I hesitate to accord, it is because the word, ‘friend,’ carries with it so much,” said she, with a sweet seriousness that disarmed her words of any latent sting they might otherwise have contained.
“I know it,” he replied, “and I am very bold to ask it upon so slight an acquaintance; but life is short and real treasure is so scarce. You will not deny me, Miss Fairchild?” Then seeing her look down, hastily continued, “I have acquaintances by the score—friends who style themselves thus, by the dozen, but no friend. I want one; I want you for that one. Will you be it? I shall be jealous though, I warn you,” he went on, with a cropping out of his mirthful nature; “I shall not be pleased to observe the circle widened indefinitely. I shall want my own place and no one else in my place.”
“No one else can fill the place once given to a friend. Each one has his own niche.”
“And I am to have mine?” His look was firm, his eye steadfast.
“Yes,” she breathed.
With a proud stooping of his head, he took her hand and kissed it. The action became him; he was tall and well made, and gallantry induced by feeling, sat well upon him. In spite of herself, she thought of old-time stories of the Norse chivalry; he stood so radiant and bent so low.
“I shall prize my friend at her queenly value,” said he; and without more ado, uttered his farewell and took his departure.
“Paula!”
The young girl started from a reverie which had held her for a long time enchained at that fast darkening window, and hastily looking up, perceived her Aunt Belinda standing before her, with her eye fixed upon her face, with a kind but searching glance.
“Yes, aunt.”
“You have not told me who this Mr. Ensign is. In all the letters you wrote me you did not mention his name, I think.”
“No, aunt. The fact is, I did not meet him until a. few days before I left, and then only for an evening, you might say.”
“Indeed! that one evening seems to have made its impression. Tell me something about him, Paula.”
“His own countenance speaks for him better than I can, aunt. He is good and he is kind; an honest young man, who need fear the eye of no one. He is wealthy, I am informed, and the son of highly respected parents. He was first presented to me by Miss Stuyvesant, whose friend he is, afterwards by Mr. Sylvester. His coming here was a surprise to me.”
Miss Belinda’s firm mouth, which had expanded at this dutiful response, twitched with a certain amused expression over this last announcement. Eyeing her niece with unrelenting inquiry, she pursued, “You have not been happy for the last few weeks, Paula. Our life seems narrow to you; yon long to fly away to larger fields and more expansive skies.”
With a guilty droop of her head, Paula stole her hand into that of her aunt’s.
“I do not wonder,” continued Miss Belinda, still watching the flushing cheek and slightly troubled mouth of the lovely girl before her. “I once breathed other air myself, and know well what charms lie beyond these mountains. In giving you up for awhile, I gave you up forever, I fear.”
“No, no,” whispered the young girl, “I am always yours wherever I go. Not that I am going away,” she hastily murmured.
Her aunt smiled and gently stroked her niece’s hand. “When t
he time comes, I shall bid you God speed, Paula. I am no ogress to tie my dove’s wings to her nest. Love and the home it provides are the natural lot of women. None feel it more than those who have missed both.”
“Aunt!” Paula was shocked and perplexed. A breaking wave full of doubts and possibilities, seemed to dash over her at this suggestion.
“Young men of judgment and principle do not come so many miles to see a youthful maiden, without a purpose,” continued her aunt inexorably. “You know that, do you not, Paula?”
“Yes; but the purpose may differ in different cases,” returned the young girl hurriedly. “I would not like to believe that Mr. Ensign came here with the one you give him credit for—not yet. You trouble me, aunt,” pursued she, glancing tremulously about. “It is like opening a great door flooded with sunshine, upon eyes scarcely strong enough to bear the glimmer sifting through its cracks. I feel humiliated and—”
She did not finish, perhaps her thought itself was incomplete.
“If a light comes sifting through the cracks, I am satisfied,” said her aunt in a lighter tone than common. And she kissed her niece, and went smiling out of the room, murmuring to herself,
“I have been over-fearful; everything is coming right.”
There are moments when life’s great mystery overpowers us; when the riddle of the soul flaunts itself before us unexplained, and we can do no more than stand and take the rush of the tide that comes sweeping down upon us. Paula was not the girl she was before she went to New York. Love was no longer a dreamy possibility, a hazy blending of the unknown and the fancied; its tale had been too often breathed in her ear, its reality made too often apparent to her eye. But love to which she could listen, was as new and fresh and strange, as a world into which her foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and say, “Love and home are the lot of women,” made her blood rush back on her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend’s name was so much easier to speak, or to contemplate.