CHAPTER VII.
THE REVELATION.
I shrink from the embittered close
Of my own melancholy tale;
'Tis long since I have waked my woes—
And nerve and voice together fail.—WILLIS.
How may this little tablet feign
The features of a face,
Which o'erinforms with loveliness,
Its proper share of space.—PINCKNEY.
"IT was right kind of you, stranger, to put yourself out so much to help find our Lizzie," remarked Mrs. Wright, after the first excitement of the morning was over.
Dr. Carollyn had just returned from a visit to the wagon, where lay the man with the broken leg, who was doing as well as possible. The camping-ground where they had been so long detained was, fortunately, pretty well supplied with grass and water, so that the cattle were rather enjoying their holiday. The men had been kept busy repairing the damages done by the tornado, and now were in unusually good spirits, both on account of the safe return of the lost ones, as also in the prospect that another day's successful march would bring them into the belt of comparatively fertile prairie at the foot of the mountains. The dreaded part of the journey was over; to-morrow there would be wood and grass and water in plenty—in three days at furthermost they would be at the scene of their anticipation—their El Dorado; to realize something of their feverish dreams or to be overwhelmed with bitter disappointment—which?—there was plenty reason to fear the latter; but the human heart is more elastic than any other earthly substance—it will hope, it must hope—it does hope always; and these men talked as if seas of gold were rolling at their feet.
"We shall never forget it, sir, so long as we live," added Mr. Wright, looking affectionately over at the maiden, who was sitting on a buffalo-skin under a canopy made of a wagon-cover stretched upon some poles.
She looked wearied out with exposure and excitement, but her smile was one of the most brilliant content; and she had not refused little Mary a place in her lap, fatigued as she was. The child had missed her so much as to fairly pine, and was now close in the shelter of her arms, sleeping, and laughing in her sleep. The two boys hung about, looking at their cousin as at some new and wonderful creature, their pleasure being testified by bashful smiles and giggles.
"Perhaps I have been more selfish in the matter than any of you dream," replied the gentleman, with a peculiar look at the young girl. "Elizabeth, you are not strong enough to hold that little one; let me give it to its mother. And now, I'm going to sit here, and tell you something strange."
He sat down on the robe beside her, and lifted one of her small, brown hands in his; there was something in his manner which arrested the attention of all. Mrs. Wright leaned forward, her husband took his tobacco-pipe from his mouth, leaning his elbows on his knees; Buckskin Joe, who was on the alert for this little episode, strolled alongside, standing, with a great quid in one cheek, and whittling away with his hunting-knife at a green switch; while Golden Arrow, who was also lounging on the grass, and near enough to hear every uttered word, straightened himself up, with eyes that began to flash as he saw the way in which Elizabeth's hand was taken possession of. His first thought was that this proud, reserved gentleman was about to make a declaration of love to the young girl, and the maddening jealousy which fired his veins taught him the full strength of the feeling she had awakened. The words which followed, however, gave a new direction to his fears.
"What do you say, friends—do you see any resemblance between this maiden and myself?" and the speaker drew the soft, oval face up beside his older and sallower countenance.
"La me! if they don't look enough alike to be father and child! don't they, Tim?" exclaimed Mrs. Wright.
"They sartainly do look alike, wife."
"Since we look so much like parent and daughter, and since this maiden has neither father nor mother, why not give her up to me, and let me have her for my child? This life you are bringing her up to is too hard and rough for her."
"So 'tis—so 'tis, stranger!" said Timothy, "but it's the best we can do for her—and we couldn't spare Lizzie. No! no!"
"You have others to provide for—I have no one. I am rich; I could give her all she wishes and ought to have."
"Wal, in the first place, stranger, if you're in earnest, you'd have to give purty satisfactory proofs of who and what you was, before you get our Lizzie. As for the rest, we love her too much to want to be selfish—and she can speak for herself."
"What do you say, Elizabeth? Will you be my daughter?"
She made no reply; she was looking at him with a startled, wistful gaze—something was stirring in her blood and brain which moved her mysteriously—her subtle sense was half conscious of the affinity between this stranger and herself.
"You never knew your father, Elizabeth?"
"Never."
"Or your mother?"—how his voice trembled.
"She has been dead many years—since I was three years old—but I remember her," and the tears rushed into voice and eyes.
The cautious prudence with which Dr. Carollyn meant to approach the avowal was swept away by a sudden torrent of emotion—tears blinded him, his lips quivered, he endeavored in vain to speak, to compose himself—until finally he caught the surprised girl to his breast, held her closely, exclaiming:
"Oh, my lost Annie! you are her child, yes, you are her child and mine. You are indeed my own flesh and blood—I am your father, my darling!"
"Wal, if that don't beat all," was Mrs. Wright's comment amid the silence of the rest of the group. "I always told you, husband, this very thing would turn up some time."
"How do I know he's speakin' truth?" growled Timothy.
"Did you know Elizabeth's mother?" asked Mr. Carollyn.
"I reckon we did, when she lived with us full four years—she was with us before this child was born, and stayed with us till she went to a better place—to the heaven where she belonged," and the woman put her apron up to her eyes.
"I will show you the likeness of my wife," said Dr. Carollyn, putting Elizabeth gently aside, and drawing a miniature case from an inner vest-pocket over his heart.
Wright and his wife sprung forward to look at it.
"It's her!" they both cried, lingering as if they could not look enough—another was also hanging tranced above it, the maiden gazing at the picture of her mother, whose girlish face was scarcely older than her own—gazing, breathless and tearless, upon the delicate, lovely vision whose blue eyes looked out of ripples of golden hair like an angel's out of a cloud.
"It is my mother," she said, "I have never forgotten her."
"And I am your father—oh, say that your heart no longer denies me the title."
The young girl looked into his face, full of the most yearning love and anguish; her own soul was deeply stirred. The dreams with which her melancholy childhood had been haunted, had ever pictured to her something different from the commonplace, narrow, poverty-enthralled life about her. Her vague memories of a mother, beautiful and refined, together with long musings over the few jewels and fine articles of clothing she had left, had helped her to build up a world as different from the coarse scenes of her daily experience as Paradise from common earth. It was in this world of dreams she moved when those dark eyes floated with those far-away, lustrous looks which made those about her feel that she was different from them, and leave her undisturbed to her reveries. Kind and gentle as she had ever been to her friends, winning their warmest love, she was conscious of affections and aspirations which their companionship never called forth.
"Speak—let me hear you call me father!"
The deep, musical tones, whose singular power seldom failed to move those whom he addressed with earnestness, and now quivering with untold pathos, pierced to her heart; her bosom fluttered like a frightened bird's—her eyes turned to each one of the group, those true, affectionate friends of hers, and lastly, lingered an instant on those of Nat Wolfe, who had risen and was standing motionless, regarding her with a keen look—then her hand slipped into Dr. Carollyn's, she kissed his cheek and called him—
"Father."
When she thought of him again, Nat had disappeared; he had turned abruptly from the scene, and was walking off the pain and anger which tormented him, out of sight of the camp. He was more wordly-wise than Elizabeth; when he saw her yield to the claim of this courtly father, he knew that all her old associations were to be shaken off like a worn-out garment. For hours he strode back and forth along the outskirts of the camp, like a sentinel doing duty most conscientiously, his mind in such a tumult as had not shaken it for years.
"It is my fate," he muttered. "The soft blessings of a woman's love are never to warm this rough experience of mine. I was mad—a fool, to dream that it could be! I will not suffer the whole accursed thing over again," he continued. "It is enough to have had life blighted once, as mine was blighted. Why have I allowed this flower to spring again on the withered stalk? I should have known some frost would blacken it. The Fates should have made me more heartless or her less pure and lovely. What man could have cherished that innocent girl through days and nights, seeing her so confiding, so entirely a child in heart yet a woman in beauty, and not have felt the hard suspicion and dislike within him melt away? I wish I had never met her? I wish that confounded dark-skinned Doctor had chanced in some other company. I'm a fool to believe in woman! Two days ago she told me with her dying eyes, that she loved me—to-morrow she will tell me that she has changed her mind. The prospect of a little worldly splendor and flattery will turn any woman's head—or heart!"
Poor Nat! it was no wonder he spoke bitterly—that he stamped and stalked about in a manner quite different from his usual careless dignity. Far back in the past of his early manhood, when his fresh, boyish soul trusted all, and adored every woman as something to be revered and idolized, he had loved a girl of his own age. He was not a hunter of bison and Indians in those days—he was a handsome, proud, well-educated youth, the son of an esteemed clergyman, who, though poor, as is the wont of village ministers, managed to send his oldest son to college, and was glad, as even a minister has a right to be, to see him so bright, so graceful, so brilliant in intellect—the peer of any of the young men with whom he associated.
The Rev. Mr. Wolfe had never been so unwise as to plan that his son should follow his own profession; for that Nathaniel was never made for the quiet, severely-disciplined life of his father was self-evident. Reckless, gay, full of wit and courage, it was yet impossible for the surliest deacon in his father's church to find fault with any action of his life. His morals were pure, his impulses good and generous—the deficiency in his character was that those impulses were not under the control of his judgment, and that his feelings were allowed too rash a rule.
He was just the young man to make the most devoted and winning lover. The maidens were all pleased with his attentions; and, of course, before he was fairly out of college, he was desperately enamored of the belle and beauty of the village, the 'Judge's' daughter. She liked him, too; she could not resist his handsome face and delicious devotion; she allowed herself to be engaged to him—and then, of course, he had to think of marriage, and the future. He had nothing, and she would be quite an heiress; he was too proud to live off her family, who wouldn't have permitted it, if he had been willing; he decided to study law, an offer having been made him by a friend of his father's in the city of New York—bade his darling betrothed a two years' passionate farewell, and set out, full of hope and ambition, to begin the struggle for the anticipated reward. Before his probation was much more than half over, he received news of the marriage of his affianced, to a wealthy widower, a squire of a neighboring town, who had seen and admired her beauty.
His friends thought that the rudeness of the shock would produce a reaction which would enable him to despise and forget her, while the disappointment would strengthen his character and subdue his too-romantic ideal. But they did not know how peculiarly the blow would fall upon his proud, dreamy, sensitive feelings. Having been offered the transaction of some rather unpleasant but profitable business in the far West, by the lawyer in whose office he was, and who did not wish to attend to the matter himself, he accepted the offer, with the secret resolution to never return to the mockery and falsehood of civilized society.
Upon reaching the wild settlements for which he was destined, the rude freedom of life in these places was a balm to his wounded and outraged spirit. Naturally fond of adventure, and brave as reckless, his present contempt for life added to his courage. He made friends with the sturdy trappers and guides; he learned their modes of living, joined eagerly in their pursuits, and soon outdid them in their own peculiar accomplishments. An incident which occurred quite early in his western experience, where a whole family of helpless women and children were savagely murdered by a prowling band of Indians, turned his dislike upon them. These barbarous bands were then the terror of the white settlers—the only too well-founded dread of them lying like a dark and stealthy shadow at every isolated cabin-door, making children shriek in their sleep, and the faces of mothers to grow pale as they rocked the rude cradles wherein their innocent infants slumbered.
Those who have had an opportunity of observing how speedily men change when going to some new country where the firm restraints of law and public opinion are taken away—a change which affects morals and actions, manners and dispositions as quickly as it does their dress and conversation—will not be surprised that ten years of border-life had changed the ardent youth into the 'Nat Wolfe' of hunter fame, whose name was the admiration of his associates and the terror of all cowardly savages.
Yet, beneath all the roughness of his hunter's frock and neglected locks, he was always the superior man in every company. There was a reserve and dignity about him which added to the respect paid to his remarkable skill and courage; his deeds were always honest and manly, his language free from real coarseness, his person neat, with a little touch of elegance even about his wild costume. While he was social and friendly on all the topics of their common life and adventure, he never betrayed his past history or his private feelings to any one. The grace of his manners, the beauty of his countenance, the superiority of his intellect, gave him great influence with men who, sincerely as they admired these traits in him, would yet have despised him had he not proved himself fully their equal in coolness, daring, and the expert wisdom required by his pursuits. Thus Nat Wolfe had become the pride and model of the hunters and guides of a vast region of prairie and forest; while the Indians, as we have said, gave him the name of "Golden Arrow," both on account of the brightness of his hair, and the preternatural swiftness and sureness they believed his darts, spears, knives and rifles to possess.
Curiously enough, right in the pathway of this hunter-skeptic, this man who had fled from the refinements of life because he believed them to gild only deceit and selfishness, the Fates had thrown this young girl, Elizabeth, a being so innocent of all worldly guile, so ignorant of life, so untempted, artless and pure, yet so lovely in spirit and form as to be fit for any sphere. They had thrown her in his pathway, left her in his protection as if purposely, that he might be made to know what truth and beauty there still could be in some women's characters; they had shaken the fixed resolves of years, melted away his stoicism like ice in tropic sunlight—until he was warmed, thrilled, entranced—made over again in all the delicious trust and poetry of his boyhood—ready to give this maiden a love as sweet and hopeful as the first enthusiastic dream—Fate, or circumstance, had done this—what for? To drive him back again into a desolation more dreary than before! Ere he could fashion his hopes into words, ere he could ask the maiden to share with him the life of mingled luxury and wildness which he had painted as best fitted for both their natures, this specious tempter must come, in the shape of a haughty and wealthy father, to snatch away his Eve and feed her on the apples of knowledge. It was no wonder his thoughts were bitter as he tramped to and fro beneath the large, bright stars of the prairie-sky, which here seemed to come almost close enough to earth to be reached by his weary longing.
In the mean time, Dr. Carollyn was deeply engaged with the Wrights, listening, the most of the time with his face bowed and hidden in his hands, to the particulars of his wife's residence with this family. They were no relatives of hers; although they had taught Elizabeth to regard them as such, for the sake of making the orphan feel at home, as if she had a claim on them.
"They were a new-married couple themselves," Mrs. Wright said, and "had just sot up for themselves in a little house her father had built for them on a part of his own farm, in O— county, York State. They hadn't been to housekeeping but a few days when the lady came along, and wanted to board with them for the summer. She had no family then, nothin' much to do, and was right glad to take such a nice boarder, who paid them enough and well for all they did for her. Their place was small, but it was pleasant—looked out over an orchard and wheat-fields, off to Lake Ontary, lying as blue as the sky ag'in it. The lady had a neat chamber to herself, where she could look at the lake night and day, if she wanted to, which she mostly did. They knew of course there was something queer about her comin' there alone; she give her name as Mrs. St. John—but they didn't like to ask her questions; and they couldn't have been made to believe any thing bad about her. Some of the neighbors did talk and make remarks; but she and Tim set more store by the lady than they did by their own relatives; nobody that knew her, but would see, to oncet, she was a perfect angel—(ah, jealous man, how bitterly that unmeant dart stung thee!)—she was always so sad and quiet, but so gentle, and didn't make any fuss about any thing. When it became plain she was going to be a mother before long, she took me to her room oncet, when Tim was gone, and showed me her marriage-certificate, only she covered up her husband's name; and she told me there had been a difficulty; but if she should die and her baby should live, she would leave a letter for me to open, so I could give the child to its father, that he should do by it as he ought.
"Wal, she was very sick, but she didn't die; she got 'round again, but was never well—she took the consumption—sort of faded away like. She stayed with us all the time. We hadn't no children of our own yet, and we sot our hearts on our little girl—the prettiest, sweetest, cunningest little thing that ever was! She saw how we loved little Lizzie, and she finally told me, a few weeks 'fore she died, that we might keep the child, and do by it as our own—that she believed the poor little creature would be heart-broken to be sent off to cold and cruel strangers—'we loved her,' she said, and we cried and said we did, and would do far more for that baby than as if it was our own. So she put away the ring, and what little things she had, and a couple o' hundred dollars in gold, in a box to be kept till the child was growed up, with a letter to her, to be read when she was eighteen; she saved out money to buy herself a shroud and coffin; and so she went at last, as quiet as a lamb."
"And left no word for me at the very last," cried her listener.
"Maybe she would have said somethin' at the last, but she went before anybody knew it. She was about her room the day before she died; that night we heard her speak, and got right up and went into her chamber, but she was dead when we reached her. Since then we've kept our promise as well as we could, haven't we, Lizzie?—which is poor enough at the best, for Timothy has been unlucky, and we've seen hard times, and so poor Lizzie has had rough times."
"Yes, we've had bad luck," said Mr. Wright, "we mostly have had all kind of misfortunes; but the Lord has blessed that little girl to us, for all."
That firmness of will, that selfishness of purpose, which is apt to accompany the intense pride and jealousy of a disposition like Dr. Carollyn's, was already working out the problem in his mind of how he was to separate his child from these associations in which she had grown up. This very evening, while moved to agony and remorse keen as that he felt the first day of his desolation, and amid the very gratitude the recital of these kind-hearted people awakened, he was conscious of regret that the ties between them and his should be so strong, and of a resolve that they must be severed. Yet he was far too generous and noble to wish to wrong the feelings of any; he did not intend to hint at any abrupt or long-continued separation; he wished to reward, as far as money could, the care and expense his child had been to these adopted relatives, to lighten the burden of their poverty, while into the heart of his daughter he thought to win his way gradually, and when he once had her to himself, he feared not but that the awakening of dormant tastes, the bewitching influences of ease and refinement, would complete the work of alienation. The proud love of his passionate nature, so long doomed to suspense and solitude, fixed now upon his child, as it had once fixed on the orphan Annie St. John, with the wish to absorb and possess its object utterly. Could he then brook a rival at the very onset?—that rival a lover, and a man of the stamp of Nat Wolfe? He had other dreams for this beautiful girl—"sole daughter of his house and heart"—and the hunter, walking his impatient beat a mile away, knew it as well as himself—knew it better, for Dr. Carollyn had not yet realized the actualities of the case. If he took Elizabeth away with him to his eastern home, that, of course, would be the end of any incipient fancy which might be growing in her mind for her dashing preserver.
Every glance of Dr. Carollyn's at the ungainly calico frock which his daughter wore, every illiterate expression of her friends, grated upon his feelings. It was to him the most powerful evidence of the deadly nature of the blow he had struck into the heart of his sensitive, confiding wife, that she had sternly resolved to leave her little one with such people, rather than send her to him—"cruel and cold strangers," she had said, but she had meant him, or, at least when she felt that her own protection could no longer be exercised over their babe, she would have consigned it to him. He dared not linger upon the history of that past time—but now, if his wife could look from the heaven where she was sheltered from the cruelties of earth, she should see that the tenderness in which he should wrap their child from every breath of any chilling care or sorrow, would satisfy her yet.
As for Elizabeth, she was absorbed in conjecturing what the difficulty could have been which alienated such a mother from such a father in the very honeymoon of their wedded youth—of this she was thinking far more than of the change in her own prospects.