Chapter IV: Passion

Even so quickly may one catch the plague.—_Shakspeare._

“Lionne! Lionne!”

After a night of feverish dreams, half rapture, half torture, Orville Deville awoke with this name upon his glowing lips.

He awoke with pale cheeks and heavy eyes, smouldering beneath their languid lids with suppressed fire, like burning coals under their vail of white ashes; he awoke with beating brain, and burning heart, and quivering pulses, in real fever, the combined effects of ill-healed wounds, exposure, fatigue, and passional excitement.

He threw off the heated coverlets, arose, and looked out from the windows.

No glimpse of the sky could be seen—nothing but the gray rocks and dwarfed cedars of the perpendicular mountain side, within three feet of the windows, met his view.

It was the illustration of his thought. Even such a barrier—so hard, so firm, so dark, so immovable—separated him from the heaven of his dreams.

And that barrier—what was it? worldly considerations? _He_ was the descendant of one of the oldest families in old England, and the heir of one of the richest river estates in the province of Maryland. And _she_, the beautiful wild enchantress who had so suddenly enthralled his soul, who possessed his whole being like a passion, a fever, a burning fire, was not of society, not even of the civilized world; she was a demi-barbarian, a mystery, a witch. She had no accomplishments, no education beyond the knowledge of the few books in her father’s limited library. What would his aristocratic friends have to say to such a one as she was? Worldly considerations! pshaw! walls of paper and less than paper, walls of cobweb before the impetuosity of passion.

What then was the barrier, that, like this mountain, could never be moved? Was it HONOR? Honor was the one jewel in his casket upon which he piqued himself; the one talisman of power that governed all his self-willed nature; the one attribute which he never would permit to be questioned by man or woman; the gem more precious than life, which he would have redeemed with life. Its quality had been recently well proved in the hour of extreme danger.

Ah, yes! his honor had stood the test of _personal peril_—would it stand the test of _passion_? It had been proof against _danger_—would it be proof against _temptation_? Will he arise and flee, or will he remain and tamper? For oh, he will be furnished with a good excuse to stay; the enemy of souls never leaves a man without such a pretext to do wrong.

“The woman who hesitates is lost,” says the proverb.

But the man who hesitates _prefers_ to be lost.

While Orville Deville gazed out upon the gray precipice of rocks that hid the sky from his view, and inwardly upon the frowning barrier of honor that stood between him and the heaven of his desires, a slight rustling noise near his feet arrested his attention. Looking down, he saw old Nero creeping out from under the bedstead.

“What are you about there, idiot?” inquired the young man, in a tone of vexation.

“Yer needn’t get mad nor likewise call me names, Marse Awful; I darsent sleep on de shake-down in de back shed along o’ dat big square debbil, as I’m worse afeared on ’an ebber I was of an amber-scalp; so I jes stole away las’ night an’ creeped in here arter you was asleep, an’ hid mysel’ underneaf your bed, wher’ I could sleep conformable,” replied Nero, as he came out and shook himself.

“Well, since you _are_ here, go down-stairs and bring me water and towels, and endeavor to save our kind entertainers as much trouble as possible by making yourself useful,” said his master.

“Yes, chile, jes’ as soon as ebber I puts dese chunks togedder, to liben de fire a little bit. It’s rale dampish in dis ole barn ob a place,” replied Nero, going to the chimney-place and bringing the great brands together, and blowing them until he had raised a blaze.

Then he went out, and in due time returned with hot and cold water, towels, and his master’s regimentals, that had, in the meantime, been well dried, brushed and pressed.

Orville quickly made his toilet, and, impatient for a sight of his bright enthraller, descended the stairs to the lower room, where he found his recluse host, sitting just where he had sat the night previous, and looking pale and worn, as though sleep had not visited his eyes.

He arose, however, with graceful courtesy, and welcomed his guest.

“I hope you rested well, and find yourself refreshed this morning,” he said, as he offered a chair.

“I thank, you sir,” was all that the young man could with truth and discretion reply.

“And yet,” said the host, looking at him attentively, “I do not think you _did_; you seem feverish and ill; you have exposed yourself too soon after convalescence, and fatigued yourself too much; you have to fear a relapse; you must lie by and rest for a few days.”

“I thank you, again, sir, very earnestly; but I must get into the saddle and take the road within the present hour.”

“And if you do, young man, you will make a much longer journey than you have calculated upon—even from this world to the next! I, who tell you this, am an indifferent skillful surgeon, and I see that your case is critical,” replied the recluse, taking his wrist,—“a full, bounding, but irregular and spasmodic pulse! You must stay and be nursed.”

Now, truly, the young soldier would have fled this temptation, if only this fine excuse to stay and face it had not been offered. As it was, he was satisfied to feel forced to remain.

“How were you wounded, and where?” inquired his host, with his fingers still upon the pulse and his eyes fixed upon the face of the invalid.

“It was a gunshot wound through the right side of the chest, sir; the bullet has never been found and extracted; I think it is lodged against the right shoulder-blade,” replied the young man.

“That was a great evil; but what could you expect of having only an ignorant squatter for your nurse and physician?”

“The man was very kind, sir; and, after all, shall I be better off, remaining here, taxing your great kindness, since here I shall be equally far from surgical aid?”

“Well, yes; somewhat; for though our mountains furnish no physicians, yet, as I told you, I am not, my self, a bad surgeon; if I have a little science, a life of vicissitudes and necessities has given me some skill; after breakfast you shall put yourself under my treatment and I will look at your wound.”

With the audible sigh of one who yielded to destiny, and the secret, deep delight of one forced to stay where he passionately desired to remain, Orville Deville tacitly accepted his host’s proposition.

He had scarcely settled himself in his seat again, before the door opened and Vulcan came to announce breakfast.

The recluse and his guest repaired to the kitchen, where they found the same substantial oak table drawn into the middle of the floor and laid for the morning meal. The service was of the rudest description—there was neither table-cloth nor napkins; the crockery was, of course, blue delf, and the cutlery was of the commonest iron with horn handles; yet a certain immaculate cleanliness atoned for all other deficiencies. Coffee, corn-bread, sweet butter, and broiled rabbits, formed the staples of the breakfast.

None of these things interested our hero; he was too ill at ease to feel hungry; he looked around in anxiety for her, in search of whom only he had cared to come into the kitchen. She was not to be seen.

“You are looking for Lionne; she will, no doubt, join us presently; in the meantime, draw up to the table,” said the unsuspicious host.

And even as he spoke, the door connecting the kitchen with the front room on the same side of the hall opened, and Lionne appeared, bearing in her hand a bowl of snowy honey-comb, which she placed upon the table. Then giving their guest a gay “good-morning,” she took her place at the head of the board.

And if Lionne had seemed bewitching in her hunting-dress of the day before, oh, how lovely she looked in her womanly, home dress of this morning!

It was a costume of severe simplicity—just a close-fitting, crimson boddice and skirt; her glossy, raven black hair, with all its rippling ringlets, was waved off around each blushing cheek, and gathered in a rich mass at the back of her head; that was all. There was no ornament, nor refinement of the toilet, not even a white collar or ruffle about the rounded throat; yet how well she could dispense with the aid of dress! How beautiful those masses of glossy black ringlets, rippling off from the blooming cheeks; those large, languishing, dark eyes, under their fringe of long, black lashes; those full curved, crimson, passionate lips; that ivory throat; that swelling bust; that rounded waist!

“What will you be helped to, Mr. Deville?” said the host, interrupting his delicious reverie.

“I thank you; yes, sir, if you please,” rather irrelevantly replied the young man, holding out his plate, and, in the abstraction of his mind, permitting it to be loaded with a portion of every dish on the table, until at length the host stared with surprise, and the demented guest himself came partially to his senses, blushed for his strange forgetfulness, and straightway addressed himself to the business and conversation of the table.

“Our guest will become our visitor for a few days, my dear, until his wound is well healed,” explained Mr. Delaforêt.

“We shall be very happy,” replied Lionne, with a bow and a bright smile, as, the breakfast being over, she gave the signal to rise from the table.

The gentlemen, leaving Lionne in the kitchen, adjourned to the sitting-room, where Mr. Delaforêt caused his patient to sit in the leathern chair, while he examined his wound.

“The case is not so bad as I had feared,” he remarked, when he had made some little progress in the investigation. “The bullet, if it ever lodged against the shoulder-blade, has been dislodged and worked downwards, just as likely as not by the motion of your horse in riding these several days past. It is its change of place that has caused you accession of pain and fever; but its shifting is highly favorable; it is now in a situation to be reached; it is just below the right shoulder-blade; you may feel it from the outside,” concluded the volunteer surgeon, as he guided the finger of his patient around to the spot where, sure enough, the bullet could be felt like a round pebble beneath the skin.

“My daughter,” said the host, going to the door and calling, “prepare quickly some lint and linen, and bring it here with a basin of warm water.”

Then coming back to his patient, he said:

“It will take no more scientific instrument than a simple penknife to relieve your shoulder of this uncomfortable intruder, sir.”

And opening the blade, he cut the skin and the bullet dropped into his hand! He laid it before his patient.

“Even so slight a thing may bring a man death!” said the young soldier, taking it between his finger and thumb, and looking at it with interest.

“Yes,” said the host, with a smile, “it is a dangerous denizen of one’s body! This might have caused _your_ death even yesterday, or to-day! Suppose, for instance, that, when you were so imprudently jolting forward on your journey, this bullet, when dislodged by that motion, had taken another direction, and had fallen upon some vital part, as it might easily have done?”

“What then?”

“Aye, what then! You would have been a dead man! I have known such cases. But here comes the child, Lionne, with the dressings for your wound.”

Lionne came only to the door, handed in all that was needed, and retired.

The slight, external wound whence the bullet was extracted was dressed with lint, and the invalid was put upon a simple regimen to cool the fever of the inner irritation. And then the self-elected physician promised that, if his patient would rest quietly for two days, he might walk about a little on the third; and he placed his small collection of books at the service of Orville.

For an hour or two the time hung heavily upon the hands of the young soldier.

But when Lionne came in, bringing her work,—some coarse, strong, twine-netting,—and sat down quietly near her father, all was changed!

The young invalid felt that he could sit forever, reclining in that leathern chair, and watch her from under the fringes of his half-closed eyes—drinking in, through them, draughts of passional intoxication! For the present this was sufficient; this was delicious! He knew nothing of the delirium—the madness—that must follow!

As passed this day so passed the next. And then dawned the third day, when the patient had permission, if he pleased, to walk about.

It was the first day of the golden month of October. Mr. Delaforêt was shut up in his private room, engaged in writing, as his daughter informed their guest.

Orville Deville, pleading utter ignorance of the mountain-paths, invited Lionne to become his guide for the prescribed walk.

The forest maiden yielded a prompt and cheerful assent, and they left the house for their ramble.

Behind them arose the frowning precipice; before them flowed the smiling river; beyond that stood the waving woods in all the gorgeous glory of their autumnal foliage.

“I know of no more beautiful walk than this between the precipice and the river; only, if we go far, the path becomes narrow and almost impassible; for in some places the water washes the perpendicular side of the rocks, and in others actually flows under it; so that you would have to wet your feet in crossing; but you would not mind _that_,” said the hardy mountain-maiden.

At any other time he would have minded it; for, with all his courage, our young soldier was, in some respects, rather a dainty gentleman. But, no, he could not brook to appear before this beautiful young Amazon in the character of a “carpet-knight.”

With a disdainful smile he dismissed the idea that he should care about wetting his feet, and set out to follow his bright guide.

In the course of that momentous walk they made great progress towards more intimate acquaintance.

Without intrusive inquiries, Orville Deville, in the course of conversation, then and afterwards, learned many significant facts in regard to the history, characters, and circumstances of his bright young hostess and her father.

Like glimpses of a pre-existence, seen in dreams, or like descriptions read in books, Lionne said she vaguely remembered living in another home, and being called by another name.

Rather more distinctly she remembered living a long time in what must have been a great ship, and crossing an almost endless piece of water, which must have been the Atlantic Ocean.

Then came many wanderings; and then, at last, this mountain lodge, where they had been living eight or nine years.

Her father never could bear to talk of their past lives, so she knew nothing certainly. Her father, she continued, passed much time shut up in his private chamber; he both wrote and received many letters; he had means for all their needs; he mailed and received all his letters and bought all their provisions from Winchester, a town in the valley, some thirty miles distant, to which Vulcan, who had been with them ever since she could remember, went every week.

She, Lionne, had never been to Winchester, nor anywhere else since they had come to this lodge; she had no female companions, never had any. Her father had taught her to read and to write; she had read Rippon’s History of England, Chaucer, Spencer, and Shakspeare, that was all, only she liked Shakspeare best, and knew many of the plays by heart.

Her father had taught her to ride and to shoot; he used to be her constant companion in these field and forest sports, or rather, she used to be his; but of late years, he better liked the quiet of his chamber, and she, who could not abandon these out-door amusements, was now obliged to pursue them alone.

“Alone! ah my beautiful huntress, how blest I should esteem myself in the coveted privilege of becoming your companion, your attendant, your groom, upon these excursions!”

“Should you?” exclaimed Lionne, in innocent surprise. “Oh, I am sure if _that_ could afford you the least gratification——”

“Gratification—it would afford me delight!”

“Well, sir, only wait until you are able to ride!”

“Ah, dear Lionne! what condescension! _what_ favor!”

“Favor!” she exclaimed in simple wonder, “_what_ favor? unless it is you who confer the favor; for I am sure that it is very, very good in you to offer to become my escort, and to say that it would make you happy to be so.”

“Here is a child of nature, who has never been spoiled by flattery,” thought the young man. Then aloud he said:

“Bright Lionne! is it possible no one has ever informed you what a privilege, what a favor, what a blessing it is to be permitted only to walk or ride by your side?”

She turned upon him a curious look.

“I do not understand you, sir. Of course, no one has ever told me; there was no one to tell me any such thing, even if it were true. Favor? Privilege? Blessing?—only to walk beside me? How could that be?”

“Ah, beautiful one! is it possible you do not know?”

“Oh, of course, I know that company is good; that even you, now that you are away from all your dear friends and fine acquaintances, would rather walk with me than quite alone. That is easily understood, for I myself am very glad to have you with me.”

“Are you, Lionne?”

“Yes, indeed. I reckon you would think so if you knew how lonesome I feel at times.”

“No mother, no sisters, no brothers, no companions! It is easily comprehensible,” said the young man, communing with himself; then aloud:

“So you are often lonesome, Lionne?”

“Oh, yes! feeling as if I had not a friend or companion in the wide, wide world; though that is wrong, I know, for I have my dear father and Vulcan, to say nothing of Nox.”

“Nox?”

“Yes, my horse—a good companion, though he does go upon four legs. I am ungrateful to forget my friends.”

“Then you only feel lonely when you are depressed in spirits?”

“No; but when I am elevated also. It is true, sir. I am lonely in all my moods,—lonely in low spirits and lonely in high spirits, and never more so than when from the mountain-top I look around upon the heavens and the earth, and with the heart swelling in my bosom, long for some one near to whom to say, “How glorious this is!”

“Solitary child of nature and the wilds! That explains all—even these strange confidences to a stranger,” thought Orville, as he gazed upon her.

They had now reached the rapids and a bend in the river, where it was necessary to go round a curve and jutting rock, that arose immediately from the edge of the water. The need of picking their way and jumping from stone to stone over the foamy water, held them silent for a few moments until they had passed the rapids and reached a foothold on the beach. Then again Lionne spoke:

“I am going to show you a beautiful grotto, known only to me. Father never cares to wet his feet and has never been along here, so he is quite ignorant of the existence of this grotto; and as for Vulcan—just fancy him with his elephantine hoofs, springing from rock to rock as we did over the rapids!”

“And this famous grotto is—how far off?”

“Turn about! face the mountain now and see if you can find it,” said Lionne, archly.

He smiled in response, and looked up and down and along the ridge—a great perpendicular precipice of gray rocks thickly quilled with bristling cedars.

“No, bright riddler. I give it up. In that wilderness of prickling evergreens I never could discover it.”

“Make three steps in a bee-line, directly from the spot upon which you stand, to the precipice, and lay your hand upon the rock.”

He laughingly obeyed her.

“Now have you found it?”

“No, lady bright.”

“Yet it is just before you,” she said and laughing gayly she came forward, took his place, rolled away a stone, tore away some moss and dried leaves, parted a group of low bushes, and revealed the mouth of the cavern.

“Enter!” ordered Lionne, in a voice of mock tragedy. And the young man, giving in to her humor, bowed his head and passed in.

It was no dark and gloomy cave. From numerous irregular crevices in the rocks that formed its sides and ceiling, its size and shape could be easily seen. It covered about an acre of ground. Its form was oval; the floor, nearly flat, was formed of the solid rock; the walls and ceiling, also of rock, glittered with a thousand prismatic hues, the predominating one being from brilliant metallic atoms profusely mixed in the rocks and strongly resembling golden sands.

Orville regarded this appearance with curiosity, interest, and wonder. Lionne saw this and laughed gayly, crying in the mock tragedy to which she was so addicted,

“There’s ‘_Speculation_ in those eyes that thou dost GLARE withal!’ But don’t trouble yourself; this’s not a gold mine, though when I first discovered it I felt _sure_ it was; so sure that I chipped off a piece of the rock that was full of that glittering substance and took it home; and, without saying any thing about my precious grotto, I asked my father if that was not gold. He examined it, smiled in my face, and told me that it was just mica—nothing else.”

“Are you so fond of gold, then?”

“Why, yes, for my father’s sake; for he seems to lack some great thing. And from all that I can read in books, GOLD is the one great earthly power! For myself I do not crave it; for indeed I should not know what to do with it. I have every thing I need.”

“Except a companion,” said the youth.

“Ah, yes,” sighed Lionne, casting away her straw hat and seating herself on a fragment of rock; “always, of course, except a companion. I have never been so lonesome anywhere as I have been in this very cavern; for I had not even Nox here! At times my very heart has seemed to cry out for some one to speak to. I am so glad that we met on the mountain. I wish you would stay with us always,” added the wild, untaught creature.

He had been standing there, gazing upon her beautiful form in its attitude of careless ease and grace, her hands clasped over her knees, her stately head raised, her rich black tresses partly gathered into a knot at the nape of the neck and partly escaped, and rippling, in disheveled ringlets, down each blushing cheek; her glowing, humid lips apart; her dark, languishing eyes fixed—even while she answered him—upon the heaven beyond the mouth of the cavern.

Her enticing beauty, her innocent disclosures, her unconscious ardor, the solitude, the opportunity, the temptation, all were too potent for the principles of our unstable youth. One moment’s hesitation, given to two restraining powers,—to fidelity on the one hand and bashfulness on the other,—and then, drawing his breath hard, he stealthily crept towards her, dropped at her feet, possessed himself of her hand, pressed closer to her side, sought her eyes, and breathing quickly and fiercely, whispered:

“Lionne! Lionne! Lionne! I am here, in answer to that cry of your heart, Lionne. I am he whom you need I am your own! I love you! I am at your feet! Look at me!”

With a rebounding spring, that rang sharply upon the rocks, she sprang upon her feet and stood gazing upon him in wild affright.

His words, his warm, quick, fierce breath, his gaze, his tone, his touch had been a revelation to the wild mountain maiden—had thrilled every fibre of her ardent, sensitive frame—had filled her soul with delight and terror.

He softly arose and extended his arms towards her, pleading—“Lionne! Lionne!” in tones as soft and wiling as the notes of Orpheus’s lute.

She stood in the attitude of suspended flight, covertly watching him from the corner of her eye.

“Lionne! Lionne!” he prayed, going towards her.

With the leap of a young catamount, she was out of his reach, and near the mouth of the cavern, where she paused, palpitating, prepared for flight, watching him from the corner of her eye, kindly, yet distrustingly, as though loth to leave him, yet terribly afraid of falling under his power.

He saw her hesitation, lost his reason and ran towards her.

But like an arrow from the bow, she sped through the mouth of the cavern!

And the next instant he saw her spring from stone to stone over the foaming waters of the rapids, and disappear around the jutting rock.

And while, discomfited, humiliated and angered, the young man wandered slowly back to the house, Lionne, running, springing and leaping, quickly reached home, and avoiding all encounter with the inmates of the lodge, fled to her chamber, fastened the door and stood in the middle of the floor, flushed, palpitating, radiant—exclaiming—

“Oh! I am so frightened and—and so happy!”

Orville and Lionne did not meet again that day. Well would it have been for them, and for all they loved then or ever loved, had they never seen each other more.