Filled with the exciting fancies engendered by the affair of the
last night, I commenced my journey. The day was a fine one; the
sun cheery and bright without being oppressive; and soon, gliding
through the broad avenues, lined with noblest trees, which conducted
us from the city to the forests, we had the pleasant carol of birds,
and the lively chirp of hopping insects.
I was always a lover of the woods; green shady dells, and winding
walks amidst crowding foliage. I cared little for mere flowers. A
garden was never a desire in my mind. I could be pleased to see and
to smell, but I had no passion for its objects. But the trees--the
big, venerable oaks, like patriarchs and priests; the lofty
and swaggering pines in their green helmets, like warriors of the
feudal ages--these were forms that I could worship. I may say, I
loved trees with a real passion. Flowers, and the taste for flowers
seemed to me always petty; but my instincts led me to behold a
sneaking and most impressive grandeur, in these old lords of the
forest, that had been the first, rising from the mighty mother
to attest the wondrous strength of her resources, and the teeming
glories of her womb.
Now, however, they did not fill my soul with earnest reachings,
as had ever been the case before. They soothed me somewhat, but
the eyes of my mind were turned within. They looked only at the
prostration of that miserable heart which was torturing itself with
vague, wild doubts--guessing and conjecturing with an agonizing
pain, and without the least hope of profit. I could not drive from
my thoughts, the vexing circumstances of the last night in the
city; and, for the first day of our journey, the hours moved with
oppressive slowness. Objects which I had formerly loved to contemplate
and always found sweet and refreshing, now gave me little pleasure
and exacted little of my attention; and I reached our stopping-place
for the night with a sense of weariness and stupor which no mere
fatigue of body, I well knew, could ever have occasioned.
But this could not last. The elasticity of my nature, joined with
the absence of that one person whom I had now learned to regard as
my evil genius, soon enabled me to shake off the oppressive doubts
and sadness which fettered and enfeebled me. Once more I began to
behold the forests with all the eyes of former delight and affection,
and I was conscious, after the progress of a day or two, of periods
in which I entirely lost sight of William Edgerton and all my
suspicions in the sweet warmth of a fresh and pleasing contemplation.
Something of this--nay, perhaps, the most of it, was due to my wife
herself. There was a change in her air and manner which sensibly
affected my heart. I had treated her coldly at first, but she had
not perceived it; at least she had not suffered it to influence
her conduct; and I was equally pleased and surprised to behold in
her language, looks, and deportment, a degree of life and buoyant
animation, which reminded me of the very champagne exuberance and
spirit of her youth. Her eyes flashed with a sense of freedom. Her
voice sounded with the silvery clearness of one, who, long pent up
in the limits of a dungeon, uses the first moment of escape into
the forests to delight himself with song. She seemed to have just
thrown off a miserable burden;--and, as for any grief--any sign of
regret at leaving home and tics from which she would not willingly
part--there was not the slightest appearance of any such feeling
in her mind, look, or manner. Kindly, considerately, and sweetly,
and with a cheery smile in her eyes, and a springing vigor in the
accents of her voice, she strove to enliven the way and to expel
the gloom which she soon perceived had fastened itself upon my soul.
Her own cares, if she had any, seemed to be very slight, and were
utterly lost in mine. She spoke of our new abiding-place with a
hearty confidence; that it would be at once a home of prosperity
and peace; and, altogether convinced me for the time that the
sacrifice must be comparatively very small, which she had made on
leaving her birth-place. I very soon wondered that I should have
fancied that William Edgerton was ever more to her than the friend
of her husband.