CHAPTER XV.

THE MOOR.

“—October, heaven’s delicious breath, When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek sun grows brief, And the year smiles as drawing near its death.” BRYANT.

It was near the close of a day late in the month of October. The level rays of the setting sun glanced across the green waters of the bay, tinting their rippling waves with emerald and jet—across the brown waste of the heath, mottling its rugged surface with gold and bronze upon the decayed edifice of the old Hall, painting its rusty walls in strongly contrasted colors of red and black, while its tall windows flashed back in lines of shining light the dazzling beams—and upon the distant forest whose variegated foliage reflected in topaz and in ruby light the day’s declining glory. It was a still, refulgent scene, the good night smile of nature. Presently the still life of the landscape was enlivened by two equestrian figures, descending the slope of the heath from the Hall, while their shadows stretched lengthening behind them over the dry and burnished turf. The figure on the right hand side was that of a youth of some eighteen years, clad in the undress uniform of a midshipman—whom on near view we recognise as our old acquaintance, Gusty Wilde May. By his side rode a beautiful girl of about fourteen years of age, in a graceful riding habit of blue cloth. She was rather full formed, very fair, with deep blue eyes, and wavy hair of pale gold floating about a forehead of transparent whiteness, with a soft, gentle manner, and a pleading air in the curve of her rosy lips and the downward sweep of her snowy eyelids.

The youth and the maiden each rode a bay horse. They—the youth and maiden—not the bay horses—were conversing in a low tone as they ambled over the heath—

“And this is all that has occurred during my long absence of three years.”

“All, Augustus.”

“Rosalia, what do you suppose were my emotions as I sailed down the bay this morning towards Churchill Point?”

“Oh, I suppose your heart was full of happiness!”

“No—every mile added more anxiety to the weight oppressing my heart as I drew near home, reflecting on the many and dreadful changes that might have passed over those I loved in these long three years, and _now_ I am happy, for, thank God,” said he, raising his cap reverently, “nothing but agreeable changes have passed over Grove Cottage and its inmates. I find you the sweetest little turtle-dove that ever folded its wings in a nest, domesticated with my mother, and forming a large portion of her happiness. I find my dear mother at thirty-five looking young and fresh as Hebe—and about—I am very much inclined to think—_tell_ me, Rosalia, _is_ my mother going to be married to Mr. Buncombe?”

“I think so, Augustus—does that disturb you?”

“Yes, Rosalia, it disturbs me—with _joy_! Dear mother—how devoted she has been to us, Rosalia! And now that we are all grown up, and do not need her constant care, and now that it may naturally be expected that before long we will all be getting mar——be getting separate establishments of _our own_—I am glad that there is no prospect of mother’s spending her life _alone_. And then to see how long the curate has waited for her! Ever since the first winter of his boarding with her while we were his pupils—now that is what I call genuine affection—very few men would have done that!”

“Well, but, Gusty, he _boarded_ with her all the time—he had her society all the time—so what odds?”

“True—I do suppose that was the secret of his patience. And now, Hagar, this singular girl, where are we to find her?”

“She is out on the moor somewhere, with horse and hounds—she has been out all day.”

Just as they spoke the sunset rays were intercepted by another equestrian figure. The slight, elegant figure of a dark complexioned young girl clad in a dark green riding habit, cap and plume, mounted on a jet black courser, came pricking over the heath, followed by a couple of beautiful pointers. In her hand she held a light fowling-piece, and at her saddle’s pommel hung a game bag filled with birds. As her falcon eye descried the youth and maiden, she bounded forward to meet them—she was at their side—and “Hagar!” “Gusty!” were the joyful words of recognition that simultaneously broke from their lips, as their horses nearly met in a shock, and he bent from his saddle, caught her to his bosom, and gave her a hearty kiss. It was a brother’s greeting to the sister of his babyhood. And—“How you have grown, Hagar!” “How tall you are, Gusty!” were the next words of surprise and pleasure that broke from their lips as they backed their horses and gazed at each other delightedly—“What a sportsman you are, Hagar!” “When did you come, Gusty?” were the next cross-question and remark spoken in the same breath by both.

“I came scarcely an hour ago,” answered Augustus.

“And you have been to the Hall?”

“Yes, Rosalia and myself rode over to the Hall to see you—hearing that you were out, and we being impatient, could not await you there, so we rode out in search of you—but what a sportsman you are, Hagar! have you bagged anything? or only scared the birds and shot yourself?”

“Enough for your supper, Master Gusty—and I guess that it will not be unwelcome—I rather think, it is some time since you have enjoyed the luxury of a canvas-back duck!” said the girl, with a dash of pique in her tone. Then raising her eagle eye to the sky, she quickly touched Gusty, and pointing immediately over head, exclaimed, “Quick, Gusty! look! do you see that speck—like a speck of ink in the dark blue zenith?”

“Why, no! Who could see a speck in the zenith of such a dark sky as this—none but you, Hagar, whose gaze would make the sun bat his eyes!”

She raised her fowling-piece, took aim, fired, and in another instant a rush and whirr of wings swooped down through the air, and a white pigeon, the hapless laggard, or perhaps the pioneer of some flock, dropped bleeding at their feet.

“Admirable!” exclaimed Augustus.

The wild girl’s dark eyes flashed under their long lashes, and her white teeth gleamed between her smiling lips as she noticed his surprise. But Rosalia gazed in tearful sorrow at the wounded and fluttering bird—and—

“Poor, poor thing!” she said, “it was going home, thinking of no harm or danger!” and her tears fell mingling with and diluting the blood that crimsoned the white feathers of its bosom.

“Ah! it was cruel in Hagar to kill the pigeon, wasn’t it?” inquired Gusty, derisively, relapsing into boyish rudeness.

“No! I do not say it was cruel _in_ Hagar because she didn’t stop to think; but it was cruel _to_ the bird, poor, dear thing! Can’t you do anything for it, Gusty?”

Now this was asked so naively through her tears, that Gusty, rude hobble-de-hoy, burst into a loud laugh, and at its end assumed gravity and answered,—

“Yes, we can send for a surgeon!”

Rosalia alighted cautiously from her horse, and kneeling down on the turf gazed mournfully at the glazing eyes of the bird—it fluttered violently once or twice, and then grew still. She burst into tears and sobbed convulsively.

“Why, Rose!” “Why, what a baby!” exclaimed Hagar and Augustus in the same breath.

“Oh! but, poor thing, what harm had it done? It was sailing so blithely through the sky, and now it is quite dead—not even gone to Heaven, where I wish it could go. I am sorry for you, too, Hagar, for I know you feel so bad about shooting the poor bird, now that it is done.” And suffering herself to be lifted into her saddle by Gusty, who had alighted for the purpose, she ambled up to the side of Hagar and held out her hand—“I know you are sorry, Hagar! are you not?”

The face of the dark girl was sparkling with mirth.

“No, my little white dove,” she answered, “not at all; and as for your bird, though its spirit is not probably yet in Heaven, it may be on its way there!”

“What is that you say, Hagar?” queried Gusty.

Hagar reined up her horse, and stooping, lifted the dead bird; she asked—

“Where is the spirit, the life that animated this bird, Gusty?”

“Why, _dead_, of course.”

“Pooh! _this_ that I hold in my hand is dead, but the life—the life—where is that?”

“Gone, of course, gone; where else should it be?”

“‘Gone’—_where_?”

“Where?—why, where?—why, gone—_away_.”

“Thank you! perfectly satisfactory,” said Hagar, and her wild eyes flashed, and her white teeth gleamed with suppressed mirth.

“Tell me—tell me, Hagar!” said little Rosalia, “do you think, _sure enough_, that birds _do_ go to Heaven? Sometimes _I_ think so, too; they are so beautiful and good, you know! But then the Holy Bible says,—‘The beasts that perish,’ therefore, of course, they must perish.”

“Your first expressed thought may be not unscriptural, little angel—the _beasts_ perish; their _forms_ perish; but their _life_, through other transmigrations, may reach Heaven in the _human_ form!”

“Why, that is the old doctrine of transmigration of souls,” said Gusty.

“Not exactly, or rather, it is _more_ than that; for instance, I think that life continually _ascends_, never _descends_. It looks to me very stupid to suppose that a soul can _relapse_ into the form of a beast. No, life is never _lost_, but it continually _changes its locality_, always _ascending_; the various forms of life being the steps by which it reaches humanity—then Heaven. I have lived so much in the wildest solitudes of nature; I have seen so much _more_, so much _stronger_ life-spirit _below_, than on a _level_ with humanity; I have felt it struggling up, through water, stones, and clay; through lichen, herb, and tree; through insects, birds, and beasts; up to its highest visible form, humanity; and I have grown to _dream_ that life-spirit is elaborated from matter; or if not so, that in the union of spirit with matter, spirit may be first incarnated in the lowest form of matter, and passing through its various stages rise to human, to angelic nature. I believe there is one life-God, and many lives; the souls created in His image—that these souls might not each have been created at a _word_, in a _moment_—but created, or elaborated through _long ages_. I believe that each soul retains its separate existence, its separate features, its individual self, unmixed as undivided through all its incarnations; for instance the spirit of a rose in ascending the scale of being will never enter the form of an eagle, or a lion. To illustrate nearer home—here is my gentle Rosalia, whose pure spirit, ages ago, might have slept in the pale light of a seed pearl; then, in the lapse of centuries, lived in the fragrance of the wood violet; then, through many transmigrations, reached the form of the dove, then a lamb, and lastly, is incarnated in the beautiful child before us.”

“Then, if that were so, why can I not remember when I was a violet, and when I was a dove?” pertinently inquired Rosalia.

“You cannot even recollect when you were an _infant_, little one—you cannot recollect all that happened last year, or last month; how should you be able to look back through a vista of past lives that the doors of many deaths have closed behind you. Perhaps at the close of your present life the whole vista may be thrown open, and you may be able to look back to the beginning. Oh, Rosalia! I remember that in the earliest years of conscious human existence, in infancy, my mind struggled as much backward for recollection, as forward for new knowledge.” She was silent awhile, and then pursuing the train of thought, she said,—“The analogy between material and spiritual nature seems to me to be perfect in all its particulars. I never saw a human being who had not his type in the minerals, in the vegetables, in the insects, in the birds, and in the beasts.”

“What is my type in each?” asked Augustus.

Hagar laughed as she replied,

“You, Gusty, are so much modified by education—the widow’s petted child—that the stamp is nearly effaced, or at least smeared over; however, I can fancy you ascending the scale of being by these steps: mineral, bloodstone; vegetable, mustard; bird, the turkey; animal, the mastiff. There is, with all your strength, spirit, and courage, so much homeliness, domesticity about you, dear Gusty.”

“And, Sophie, dearest Sophie, tell us all her incarnations.”

“An agate—the sober-hued stone of which rosaries are made—then balm, so fragrant and refreshing in sickness, then the brown partridge, then the timid fawn, then _Sophie_.”

“Good! that’s like her—now yourself, Hagar.”

“The ruby, pepper, the falcon, the tiger. But these are fancies.”

They rode on towards the Hall.

“And oh!” said Hagar, “I tell you what character I admire—a spirit that has ascended through iron ore, oak, the elephant, into the form of some square-built, strong-minded, large-hearted, great-souled man!”

“Heaven send you such an one!” exclaimed Gusty, dismounting to assist them from their saddles at the gate of the Hall. A servant approached to take charge of the horses, and leaving them in his care, our little party entered the house. Sophie received them at the door and conducted them into the parlor.

It was just dusk, yet Mr. Withers, exhausted by illness, had retired to bed. It is years since we have seen Sophie, and she is somewhat changed—yet what her face had lost of infantile roundness and freshness, it had gained in intelligence and interest. She took her seat smilingly at the head of the tea-table and called the young people to seat themselves around her. When they were seated and served each with a cup of tea, she informed them that she had just written, at Mr. Withers’s request, to recall Raymond to the Hall, from the Theological college at the North, the preparatory school of which had been for two years under his charge.

“And is it possible that he has never been at the Hall since he left it, the summer of your marriage, Mrs. Withers?”

“Never, Gusty. He remained at college until he took his degree, and then passed immediately into his present business.”

“He was a great friend of Hagar’s the little time he remained with you?”

“Yes,” said Hagar, “_he_ loved me, _he_ never forgot or neglected me; even after he went away, in his letters to my aunt he always sent me a message until _I_ learned to write, and we have corresponded ever since.”

“And Rosalia has never seen him?”

“No,” said Hagar. “Rose did not arrive until after he had left us, and, as we have just told you, he has never been here since.”

“And Rose will not see him now,” said Sophie, “for she leaves in one week for Boston for Mrs. Tresham’s school.”

“And when,” inquired Gusty, “will Raymond be here?”

“Not sooner than two or three weeks.”

“Then Rose will _not_ see him?”

“No, and I shall be so sorry,” said Rose.

After further desultory conversation, they finished tea and arose from the table. Rosalia and Augustus remained all night, and early the next morning departed for the Grove Cottage. All the next week was occupied by Emily May in preparations for Rosalia’s departure, and, if it must out, in preparations for her own marriage with the Rev. Mr. Buncombe, the curate of the parish, the tutor of Hagar, Rosalia, and Gusty, and the boarder and suitor for many years of Emily May. It was for the purpose of getting her dear son’s consent and presence that she had waited these last three years, and it was for the sake of gratifying her pet child, Rosalia, that she now determined that the marriage should take place before her departure to the North. Captain Wilde, whose ship now lay at Norfolk, had also been summoned to attend the wedding, and arrived in due season. Of course Mr. Withers and Sophie had been solicited, and were expected to attend. Upon the evening of the marriage day, however, as Rosalia was performing for Emily the affectionate service of dressing her for the ceremony, a note was handed the latter, which on being opened and read was found to be an apology from Sophie for nonattendance. “Mr. Withers,” she said, “was very much worse, and required her constant care.” If there was another motive for her absence it was not acknowledged to her own mind, scarcely recognised by her own heart.

* * * * *

The quiet wedding was over, the routine of the quiet cottage scarcely disturbed by its occurrence, and the quiet bride and bridegroom had returned, the one to his studies, the other to her household affairs, as though nothing had happened. Captain Wilde had returned to his ship, and the pleasant intercourse between the Hall and the cottage resumed. The last night before the departure of Rosalia was at hand, and at the earnest request of Sophie, Mr. and Mrs. Buncombe had agreed to bring her over and spend it at the Hall. Augustus May was also of the party. Rosalia’s trunks had been packed and sent over early in the day, and in the afternoon the family from Grove Cottage rode over. It had been settled that Augustus May should attend Rosalia to the North. The packet that was to convey them to Baltimore lay at anchor under the shadow of the promontory.

It was late in the afternoon when the carryall containing Mr. and Mrs. Buncombe, Rosalia, and Augustus, drew up before the gate of the Hall. Sophie met and conducted the party into the dining-room, where a feast had been prepared in honor of Rosalia’s departure. Mr. Withers, pale and emaciated, and propped up in a chair, was also present. It was her last evening at the Hall for some time to come, and so they sat up late. Mr. Withers, from extreme fatigue, retired early, but it was midnight before the remaining members of the party were in bed. Morning dawned, breakfast was over, adieux were wept and kissed, and as the first ray of the rising sun gilded the waves of the bay, Augustus handed and followed Rosalia into the packet for Baltimore.