Chapter XXVI.
General Vaughan came down the river from Kingston, smelling of arson. Sir Henry Clinton destroyed the Highland forts and retired to New York. The Continental outposts forthwith reoccupied Peekskill.
With them came Peter Skerrett, and there were bristles on his upper lip a week or so old.
He hastened at once toward the Bilsby farm, where the Brothertofts had found shelter. He turned aside on the way to see the ruins of the Manor-House.
It was still brilliant October. If the trees that first put on crimsons and purples now were sere and bare, later comers kept up the pageant. Indeed, the great oaks had only just consented to the change of season. It took sharp frosts to scourge green summer out of them.
The woods seemed as splendid to Peter Skerrett as when he looked over them on the day of his adventure here. Nothing was altered, except in one forlorn spot.
There, instead of the fine old dignified Manor-House, appeared only a dew-sodden heap of cinders and ashes, — the tragic monument of a tragedy.
“It did well to perish,” thought Skerrett. “It had sheltered crime. Its moral atmosphere was tainted. The pure had fled from it. Happiness never could dwell there.”
Peter stood leaning against a great oak-tree, and studying the scene. The autumn leaves around him dallied and drifted, and fell into the lap of earth. He lingered, he hesitated, and let his looks dally with the vagrant leaves, as they circled and floated in the quiet air, choosing the spots where they would lay them down and die.
Just now he was in such eager haste; and now he hesitated, he lingered, he shrank from an interview he had ardently anticipated.
The fair girl he had aided to save from a miserable fate, — her face, seen for a moment dimly by starlight, ever haunted him. These heavy sorrows, coming upon her young life, filled him with infinite pity. As he thought of her, the undeveloped true lover in him began to develop.
And now, standing in this place where he had first seen her in a moment of peril, where he had felt the grateful pressure of her hand, he perceived how large and vigorous his passion had grown from these small beginnings.
He feared the meeting he had yearned for. It was to assure him whether this was really love he felt, or but another passing fancy like the others past.
And if it were the great, deep love he hoped, — if, when he saw her face, and touched her hand, and heard her voice again, his soul recognized hers as the one companion soul, — this filled him with another dread.
For if to know himself a lover, and half foresee that, after long and thorough proof of worthiness, he might be beloved, were the earliest thrill of an immortal joy; so this meeting, if it named him lover, and yet convinced him by sure tokens that his love would never be returned, was the first keen pang of a sorrow immeasurable.
No wonder that he waited, and traced the circuits of the falling leaves, and simulated to his mind a hundred motives for delay.
It was so still in the warm, sunshiny afternoon that he could hear the crumbling cinders fall in the ruins, and all about him the ceaseless rustle of the showering foliage.
But presently a noise more articulate sounded on the dry carpet of the path behind him. A light footstep was coming slowly toward this desolated spot. It seemed to Skerrett that he divined whose step would bring her hither to read again the lesson of the ruins.
He walked forward a little, that his sudden appearance against the oak might not startle the new-comer. He would not turn. It was new to the brave and ardent fellow to perceive timidity in his heart, and to evade an encounter with any danger.
The footstep quickened, — a woman’s surely. In a moment he heard a sweet voice call his name.
A shy and timorous call, a gentle, trembling tone, — it came through the sunshine and made all the air music.
Her voice! It was the voice he had longed and dreaded to hear. But now he feared no more. He believed that his immortal joy was begun, and these tremors of his soul, in answer to the trembles of her call, could never be the earliest warnings of an agony.
He saw her face again, fairer than he had dreamed, in the happy sunlight. He felt again the thankful pressure of her hand. He listened to her earnest words of gratitude.
They spoke a little — he gravely, she tearfully — of the tragedy of her mother’s life. This shadow deepened the tenderness of the lover. And she, perceiving this, drew closer to him, giving tokens, faint but sure, as he fancied, of the slow ripening happiness to grow henceforth.
Then she guided him to see his friend, her father.
The level sunbeams of evening went before them in the path. They disappeared amid the wood. Golden sunshine flowed after them. The trees showered all the air full of golden leaves of good omen.
It seems the fair beginning of a faithful love.
Will it end in doubt, sorrow, shame, and forgiveness; or in trust, joy, constancy, and peace?
THE END.