CHAPTER XXI. Quelle diable de fantaisie t'es tu allé mettre dans la cervelle? Tu le veux, amour; il faut être fou comme beaucoup d'autres.- Le Malade Imaginaire. MATHERTON, renowned through both hemispheres for the manufacture of glass ware, stands, unless this history errs, on the line of the Northern Central Railroad, the distance from its post office to the post office at Boston being just thirty-three miles. Four miles from the village is the tract of land which Leslie's forefather, far back in New England antiquity, bought of the Indians. The original purchase covered several square miles, since dwindled to some two hundred acres. Here, in a sequestered and very beautiful spot, stands the mansion which Leslie's grandfather built some eighty-five years ago. In its day it was reputed of matchless elegance, and, with Leslie's repairs and improvements, it might still pass as a very handsome old country residence. Sagamore Pond, or Lake Sagamore, as the last Mrs. Leslie, who had lived in England, insisted on calling it, washes the foot of the garden; and along the northern verge of the estate, Battle Brook steals down to the pond, under the thick shade of the hemlock trees. Here King Philip's warriors once lay in ambush, through a hot sum mer's day; here many pious Puritans were butchered, and carried off into doleful captivity. many At the house at Battle Brook, Leslie, during spring, summer, and autumn, had always spent every leisure moment that he could snatch from his affairs. Since his connection with Vinal, these intervals had become both long and frequent. And, since grief has a privilege, and since, moreover, a somewhat alarming cough had lately begun to trouble him, he now committed all to Vinal's hands, and, on the day after his daughter's return, repaired with her to his favorite homestead, there to remain till the autumn frosts should warn them back to town. Forthwith Matherton became the focus to which all the thoughts of Morton concentred. Thither, pretext or no pretext, he resolved to go. He went, accordingly, and made his quarters at the grand hotel of Matherton. Fortunately, Battle Brook was then the best trout stream in Massachusetts; and this would give, he flattered himself, some faint color to his proceeding. He arrived in the afternoon, and, mounting a horse, rode to the inn at the edge of Sagamore Pond, a mile or more from Leslie's house. He had scarcely reached it, when a brief sharp thunder shower came up, and passed away as quickly. As the sun was setting, he rowed out in a small boat upon the pond. Here, skirting the brink of a sequestered cove, which the beech and tupelo trees overhung, and where every thing was still but the evening singing of a robin, and the mysterious whisper of the rain-drops, falling from innumerable leaves, with countless tiny circles on the breathless water, - here, where his boat glided as if buoyed on a liquid air, while, over the pebbly bottom, the perch and dace fled away from under the shadowing prow, he lingered dreamily for a while, and then, bending to his oars, bore out into the middle of the pond. The west was gorgeous with the sunset, while, far in front, glimmering among the trees, he could see the shrine of his idolatry, the roof that sheltered Edith Leslie. A light breeze crisped the water, the ripples murmured with a lulling sound under his boat, and, lying at ease, he gave himself up to his reveries. His passion-kindled fancies ranged earth, sea, and sky; wandered into the past, lost themselves in the future; evoked the shadows of dead history; mixed in one phantom conclave the hairy war gods of the north, the bright shapes of Grecian fable, the enormities of Egyptian mythology; and, looking into the burning depths above him, he mused of human hopes, human aspirations, human destiny. That oddly compounded malady which had fastened on him had brought with it the intense yet tranquil awakening of every faculty with which it will sometimes visit those of the ruder sex whom it attacks with virulence. The magic of earth and sky; the black pines rearing their shaggy tops against the blazing west; the shores mingling in many-tinted shadow; the fiery sky, where three little clouds hovered like flaming spirits; the fiery water, where he and his boat floated as in a crimson sea; the whole glowing scene, glowing deeper yet in the fervid light of passion,-penetrated him like an enchantment. He scarcely knew himself; and in his supreme of intoxication, the familiar world around him was sublimed into a vision of Eden. CHAPTER XXII. If it were now to die, It was a day of cloudless sunshine when Morton set forth for the house at Battle Brook; but his mind was far from sharing the brightness of the world without. The hope that flowed so full and calmly the night before had ebbed and left him dry. He was shaken with doubts, misgivings, perturbations. He walked his horse up the avenue, till he came within view of the house, a large, square mansion, with a veranda on three sides, a quiet-looking place enough, but in Morton's eyes priceless as Aladdin's palace, and sacred as Our Lady's house at Loretto. A monthly honeysuckle twined about one of the columns of the porch; the hall door stood open, and the air played freely through from front to rear. He gave his horse to the charge of an old Scotchman who was mowing the lawn, rang at the door, asked for Miss Leslie, and was shown into the vacant parlor. With its straw carpeting and light.summer furniture, it was bright and cheerful as every thing else about it. Engravings from Turner and Landseer, framed in black walnut, hung against the walls; and on a small table in a corner stood a bird cage, with the door left purposely open. The inmate was hopping about the room, without attempting to escape, though the windows also were open. "No wonder it will not leave her," thought the visitor. He seated himself by the window, and looked out on the fields and the groves beyond. Far down in the meadow, the yellow-tufted rye was undulating in the warm summer wind, wave chasing wave in graceful succession. The birds would not sing,- the afternoon was too hot, but the buzz, and hum, and chirrup of a myriad of insects rose from their lurking-places in the grass, while now and then the cicala raised its piercing voice from a neighboring apple tree. Suddenly Morton's heart began to beat; a light step on the staircase reached his ear, and the rustling of a dress. Miss Leslie came in with her usual natural and quiet ease of manner, while he rose to receive her with his heart in his throat. And now, when he needed them most, his wits seemed to fail him. He tried to converse, and produced nothing but barren commonplace. Again and again the conversation flagged; and the hum and chirrup of the insect world without filled the pauses between. He glanced at his companion. "Be a man, you idiot," he apostrophized himself. He looked at her again, as she bent over the embroidery with which her fingers were employed. "I must speak out, or die," he thought. He rested his arm on the table. He leaned towards her. |