Chapter V

ARNOLD’S VISIT TO LEONARD’S CABIN—THE SAW-MILL AT NIGHT—THE HEART-WOUND.

In the woods upon the hill that rose some distance beyond Mr. Arnold’s house, stood two log houses that we have before mentioned. One of them was built quite near the road cut through the forest; and in front of it, on the bank of the river, the rough saw-mill sent up its grating music day after day, chiming in with the roar of the waters as they leaped down over a precipice that formed a natural fall above.

But on thanksgiving, all was silent save the voice of the waves sending up their perpetual hymn in the depths of the grand old woods. Within the log house there had been the usual preparations for the holiday which no moral Connecticut family, however poor, could by any possibility neglect. Not that Joshua Leonard was any worse off in the world than many of his neighbors, although he still lived in the log cabin with two rooms which he had built when he first married; but the good man counted his savings with the utmost care. He wished for no “new-fangled fixings,”—not he. “Framed houses and boughten furniture” were objects of his supreme contempt; and though his wife had for years droned out her little complaints at the superior style in which many of their neighbors lived, she was too inert to combat her husband’s close habits successfully. They had but one child,—a daughter just grown into early womanhood,—and as pretty a wild-wood blossom as could have been found in the whole neighborhood.

All that day, Amy Leonard had been in a state of unwonted excitement. While dressing for “meeting” that morning, it seemed as if the blue short-gown would never be arranged to her satisfaction; and she was so long in putting on her cloak, that the farmer threatened to drive off the ox-sled without her. During the minister’s long discourse she was strangely inattentive, sitting with her eyes fixed upon the floor, or stealing glances towards the pew where Mr. Arnold’s family were seated.

After they returned home she was even more quiet than usual, and several times during the dinner her father chided her for her silence. At such moments she would rouse herself into cheerfulness; but the instant she felt herself unnoticed, an anxious look crept over her face really pitiful to behold.

When the merry jingle of sleigh-bells attracted her attention, and she saw that gay, young party go dashing by, she stood watching them till they were out of sight; she then crept down by the kitchen fire, and sat for a long time looking into it with dreary thoughtfulness.

As evening came on, she started at every sound, like one in expectation of a summons. Every time a treebough creaked, she sat breathlessly listening, as if for a familiar step. Mr. Leonard was reading the Bible, and his wife dozing in her chair, so that, as usual, she was unheeded.

It was eight o’clock,—quite bedtime in those primitive days,—and the old gentleman began to make preparations for the night.

Suddenly, there came in truth a knock at the door, which made Amy start to her feet, then crouch down again completely overcome with excitement, and sit still with her eyes upon the door.

“Who on airth is that?” exclaimed the old lady, startled out of her nap.

“I guess Amy knows,” replied the farmer. “Come in,” he added, in a louder voice. “’Taint worth while to stand for ceremony.”

The door opened in obedience to his invitation, and young Arnold entered the room.

“Hello!” exclaimed Mr. Leonard. “I thought I saw you to meetin. How _do_ you do? Why, mother, can’t you wake up and see who has come?”

“Why, sakes alive, ef it ain’t Mr. Arnold’s Ben,” said the old lady, rousing herself effectually from her nap as the young man shook her hand. “Joshua said he was sure he saw you to meetin; but I can’t see an inch from my nose. Folks a-staying with you, too, I heerd,—do tell! Who be they now?—city friends o’ yourn, I reckon! Amy, can’t you get a chair for a body when they drop in?”

All these remarks were delivered without a pause for breath, and while Arnold had turned to greet the young girl. Amy was deadly pale when he took her hand. Her lips worked tremulously, and her eyes were raised to his face with a language more expressive than any words could have been.

She sank back into her chair, and Arnold seated himself with his face towards the old couple, purposely or by accident, screening her completely from their view.

“So you’ve come hum agin,” pursued the old lady, who was rarely silent, and whose conversation was always delivered in a sleepy manner that admitted of no variation, and without the slightest regard for periods. “‘Spose you’ve got mighty stuck-up notions there in the city. Time Amy went to visit her cousin,—’twasn’t only her second cousin, anyhow, maybe third, for that matter, but we’ve allers called her cousin, she ’twas, Sally Wetherby—she came back with so many flamin’ new idees that I railly thought the critter’d drive me out of my mind. It’s jest the same with young folks everywhere: it’s only by living that we larn. And so you’ve got a sight of company to your house! Guess your mother don’t thank you fur bringin’ her more work,—that’s what she got her house fixed up fur, I reckon! Wal, I tell Joshua, it’s queer how other folks can have things as they ort to be, and we keep on in the same old way,—not that I’m givin’ to grumble, but a body likes to feel as good as other folks. But ’tain’t no kind o’ use to talk to Joshua,—never was, and never will be; and there’s Amy as like him as two peas, unless ’tis that her chin is like my folkses, but I never was no hand at seein’ likenesses, though a good many is——”

“Wal, there, mother,” interrupted her husband, “do hold on a minit! She’s jest like a clock: wind her up and she’ll go till she runs down,—the same old two-and-six-pence.”

“That’s allers the way I’m treated in my own house,” said the old lady, not plaintively, not even fretfully, but droning away as before. “I ain’t nobody here, never was. Sich a difference in men folks! There’s Mr. Arnold treats his wife like a born queen; but I’m no ’count’ Joshua never held that I was, though a good many folks is different; but I ain’t one to grumble as everybody knows; but I dew say Miss Arnold is the fortunatest woman,—and there’s Hannah, fresh as an apple-blossom. But just look at our Amy. What ails _her_ I don’t know. Goin’ to visit her cousin so much,—she ’twas, Sally Wetherby, as I told you, though you know’d it afore: many a time she’s slapped you when you was a little feller, and she as high-tempered a critter as you’d find anywhere,—and goin’ to see her hain’t done Amy no good. She’s a notion of readin’, too; and that I never will believe in, anyhow!”

“Come, mother,” said Mr. Leonard, “you and I’ll go to bed. I guess the young folks don’t need us. There’s more pine-knots in the corner, Arnold. Come along, Jemimy.”

He lit a “dip” candle, fairly forced the old lady into the other apartment, which was used as their bedroom, and the youthful couple were left alone.

The girl was trembling all over from the agitation which she had struggled so hard to repress during the past half hour.

“Amy,” whispered Arnold, in a low voice, that went to the inmost depths of her heart, “Amy!”

He bent forward and drew her towards his chair. She half-knelt before him, and hid her face upon his shoulder with a flow of tears that could no longer be restrained.

“Crying!” he said, “how is this, Amy? Look up—there, there, what a nervous little thing!” He lifted her face and pressed his lips upon her forehead. “Don’t cry any more, or I shall think that you are not glad to see me.”

“The day has been so long—I thought you did not mean to come,” she murmured, wiping the tears from her eyes, and forcing back the sob which rose to her lips. “I have waited three whole months for this meeting and to-day has seemed longer than the whole time before.”

“I could not come until this evening; you must remember it is a year since I had seen my mother, and she will scarcely let me out of her sight now.”

“She did let you go to-day, it seems!” exclaimed Amy, excitedly. “Oh, I saw you driving by without even a look towards the house; at church it was the same thing not a glance for me.”

“Hush! hush!” he said. “Your father will hear you.”

“Sometimes I don’t care,” she returned, with an energy foreign to her character. “I would like to die! There have been days when it seemed that I should go mad if I could not get out of these dreary woods and find you again.”

“Come out and walk,” whispered Arnold “They are asleep in the other room, and we shall disturb them.”

Amy threw a heavy cloak drearily about her, and followed Arnold cautious footsteps out-of-doors. She went passively, as she would have obeyed him had he bidden her go forth from that forest-home never to return.

It was a glorious night,—the moon at its full, and not a cloud in the sky. There was no wind, but the air was very cold, and the low shivering of the pine-trees above them sounded like distant voices talking of pain. The rush of the river was strangely distinct, and to Amy’s fancy it sounded like a weird warning that she could not understand, but which made her tremble with a vague sense of approaching ill.

He drew her arm into his, and led her down the bank to the old saw-mill.

“We are sheltered from the wind here,” he said, as they sat down upon the carriage on which the logs were placed.

“How strangely your voice sounds to-night, Arnold!”

“You are fanciful and nervous, Amy. I believe you read too many story-books. I shall not send you any more.”

“Who are those strangers at your house?” she asked, abruptly.

“Old friends of mine. I brought them here because the gentleman wishes to buy land, and my father has some to dispose of.”

“And the lady?”

“She naturally accompanied her brother.”

“Oh yes, I understand! I know very well who it is,—Miss Laura de Montreuil. I saw her driving by one day when I was in New Haven.”

“She lives in New York.”

“That makes no difference. She was pointed out to me as a great heiress.”

“Are you sure of that?” Arnold asked, carelessly, but it was in truth a question which greatly interested him.

“Very sure! Oh, I see it all. She has money, and you, with all the world, will be at her feet! Oh, Arnold, Arnold,” she added, with sudden passion, “is this keeping your word? Is this what you promised when you induced me to deceive my parents,—to take upon myself a load of deception that wears my life away?”

“Would you be freed from it?” he asked, almost brutally.

“Oh, anything, to feel the light-hearted girl I was once.”

“There is no reason why you should not.”

“You mock me,” she said, with sad reproach. “Perhaps I deserve it! But oh, Arnold, you do not know what I have suffered since we parted! The secret wedding,—that return to my old home to feel myself so changed,—unable to speak freely with any! It has been dreadful!”

“Why, Amy, are you resolved to keep up that silly farce, when we are alone too? Come, come: a jest is a jest.”

“Jest!—a jest! What do you mean?”

“You have no real claim on me: you know what I mean well enough, child; and know, too, that I will admit of none.”

She rose to her feet, and looked full in his face with a wild passion that was like insanity.

“God help me! I have been mad indeed!” She pressed her hands to her forehead like one trying to remember. “You,” she cried, dashing aside her hands and confronting him firmly, “you have some end in view. We were married. When I went to New Haven you used to meet me everywhere: on my way to the school where my cousin sent me,—in the evening at her house. You told me that you loved me, and you did—oh, you did! You begged me to consent to that secret wedding that you might be sure I indeed belonged to you.”

“It was no marriage, Amy.”

“It was! It was! I am your wife.”

There was an agony of entreaty in her voice that was heart-rending; but Arnold’s resolution was taken, and an effigy of stone could not have been colder or more immovable.

“I tell you no, Amy. You have no claim on me,—none in the world.”

She neither wept nor moaned. She stood before him, gazing in his face, without the power to turn away her eyes. His audacious composure fascinated her.

“And you do not love me?” she said, in a hollow voice. “You came here to tell me that?”

“I do love you, Amy: indeed I do!”

“But you had some reason for coming with that falsehood on your lips! Tell me at once that you do not love me. It is better. I shall struggle till you do that.”

“I do, Amy! Circumstances may part us; but, believe me, you are very dear to me still,—very dear.”

“Are you going away forever?” she gasped; “going——” Her voice broke, she seemed choking.

“I cannot tell. No man can tell what is to come.”

“Are you going to leave me? Will you never claim me of my father?”

“You are not the person to question me so.”

“I am! In the sight of heaven, I am! Are you going away? Answer me.”

“Very soon. And it may be years before I return”

She uttered no word, but her strength suddenly gave way, and she slid to his feet and fell motionless upon the icy boards.

He raised her in his arms and bore her toward the house.

“It is better so,” he muttered. “To-morrow I shall be away. Better so.”

He made no effort to revive her, but carried her to the house, entered it gently, and placed her upon a chair near the fire. He stood a moment, looking down upon that sweet, pale face. It was quiet now. The large eyes, bright with pain a moment before, were closed under their cold lids, and she looked painfully death-like.

He stooped down as if to kiss her; but the attempt seemed sacrilegious even to him; and, leaving only a gust of sinful breath on her forehead, he turned away,—heavy hearted it may be, but resolute still.

How long Amy Leonard remained insensible she never knew. When consciousness came back she was alone in that darkened room. The fire had burned down, and the quivering embers only sent up transient gleams. The sighing of the pine-trees and the rush of the waters were the only noises that reached her ear. And those were sounds of dreary desolation.

“Arnold!” she moaned. “Arnold!”

Only the low night-wind made reply; and Amy roused herself to the consciousness that he had left her,—and forever. She started from her seat, as if she would have gone in search of him; but her very limbs seemed paralyzed by the numbing weight upon her heart, and she fell back in the chair, utterly powerless.

She did not move again for hours. The moon swept up the sky, till its full light played in at the little casement and illuminated the room.

Still there she sat, gazing fixedly at the dying embers, shivering at intervals, but making no effort to rise. The wretched young creature scarcely comprehended what had befallen her; but, stunned and shaken in every nerve, it seemed as if she would never, never awake from that dull ache of the heart.