Chapter XXXVI: In Letters of Fire (1)

THE storm which had threatened to break last night still held off, but the spirit of the weather had changed. It was no longer bright and clear, but sunless, airless, heated, silent--the stillness which seems to presage as much sorrow to man as it heralds tumult to Nature. Leam, however--interpenetrated by her love, which gave what it felt and saw what it brought--always remembered this early day as the ideal of peace and softness, where was no prophecy of coming evil, no shadow of the avenging hand stretched out to punish and destroy--only peace and softness, love, joy and rest.

The gray background of the heavy sky, which to others was heavy and gloomy, was to her the loveliest expression of repose, and the absence of sunlight was as grateful as a veil drawn against the glare. If not beautiful in itself, it added beauty to other things: witness the passionate splendor given by it to the flowers, which seemed by contrast to gain a force and vitality of color, a richness and significance, they never had before. She specially remembered in days to come a bed of scarlet poppies that glowed like so many cups of flame against the dark masses of evergreens behind them; and the scarlet geraniums, the bold bosses of the blood-red peonies, the fiery spathes of salvia and gladiolus the low-lying verbenas like rubies cast on the green leaves and brown earth, the red gold, flame-color streaked with lines of blood, of the nasturtiums festooning the bordering wires of the centre beds, all seemed to come out like spires of flame or rosettes dyed in blood, till the garden was filled with only those two colors--the one of fire and the other of blood.

But though Leam remembered this in after-days as the weird prophecy of what was to come, at the time those burning beds of flowers simply pleased her with their brilliant coloring; and she sat in her accustomed place on the garden-chair, under the cut-leaved hornbeam, and looked at the garden stretching before her with the fresh, surprised kind of admiration of one who had never seen it before--as if it told her something different to-day from what it had in times past; as indeed it did.

Presently Edgar came down from the Hill. He had not told his people yet of the double bond which he designed to make between the two houses. He thought it was only fitting to wait until Sebastian had returned and he had gained the paternal consent in the orthodox way. And the false air of secrecy which this temporary reticence gave his engagement gave it also a false air of romance which exactly suited his temperament in the matter of love. Perhaps for the woman destined to be his wife he would have preferred to dispense with this characteristic of his dealings with those other women, her predecessors, not destined to be his wives. All the same, it was delightful, as things were, to come down to Ford House on this sultry day and sit under the shadow of the hornbeam, with Leam looking her loveliest by his side, and butterfly-like Fina running in and out in the joyous way of a lively child fond of movement and not afflicted with shyness; delightful to feel that he was enacting a little poem unknown to all the world beside--that he was the magician who had first wakened this young soul into life and taught it the sweet suffering of love; and delightful to know that he was king and supreme, the only man concerned, with not even a father to share, just yet, his domain.

Edgar, at all times charming, because at all times good-humored and not inconveniently in earnest, when specially pleased with himself was one of the most delightful companions to be found. He had seen much, and he talked pleasantly on what he had seen, whipping up the surface of things dexterously and not forcing his hearers to digest the substance. Hence he was never a bore, nor did he disturb the placid shallows of ignorance by an unwelcome influx of information. He had just so much of the histrionic element, born of vanity and self-consciousness, as is compatible with the impassive quietude prescribed by good-breeding, whereby his manner had a color that was an excellent substitute for sincerity, and his speech a pictorial glow that did duty for enthusiasm when he thought fit to simulate enthusiasm. He had, too, that sensitive tact which seems to feel weak places as if by instinct; and when he was at his best his good-nature led him to avoid giving pain and to affect a sympathetic air, which was no more true than his earnestness. But it took with the uncritical and the affectionate, and Major Harrowby was quoted by many as an eminently kind and tender-hearted man.

To women he had that manner of subtle deference and flattering admiration characteristic of men who make love to all women--even to children in the bud and to matrons more than full-blown--and who are consequently idolized by the sex all round. And when this natural adorer of many laid himself out to make special love to one he was, as we know, irresistible. He was irresistible to-day. He was really in love with Leam; and if his love had not the intensity, the tenacity of hers, yet it was true of its kind, and for him very true.

But he was not so much in love as to be unconscious of the most graceful way of making it; consequently, he knew exactly what he was doing and how he looked and what he said, while Leam, sitting there by his side, drinking in his words as if they were heavenly utterances, forgot all about herself, and lived only in her speechless, her unfathomable adoration of the man she loved. Her life at this moment was one pulse of voiceless happiness: it was one strain of sensation, emotion, passion, love; but it was not conscious thought nor yet perception of outward things by her senses.

If yesterday at Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its twin sister, and the better favored of the two. There was a certain flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was growing embarrassed because emotion was growing too strong, that seemed to Leam the sweetest experience which life could give her were she to live for ever; and the sunless stillness of the day suited her nature even better than the gayer glory of yesterday. To-day, too, it was still more peace in her inner being and still less unrest. The more accustomed she was becoming to the strange fact of loving and being loved by a man not a Spaniard, and one whom mamma would neither have chosen nor approved of, the more she was at ease both in heart and manner, and the more exquisite and profound her blessedness. And who does not know what happiness can do for a girl of strong emotions, naturally reserved, by circumstances friendless, by habit joyless, and how the soul of such a one seems to throw off its husk like the enchanted victim of a fairy-tale when the true being that has been hidden is released by love? It is a transformation as entire as any wrought by magic word or wand; and it was the transformation wrought with Leam to-day. She was Leam Dundas truly in all the essential qualities of identity, but Leam Dundas with another soul, an added faculty, an awakened consciousness--Leam set free from the darkness of the bondage in which she had hitherto lived.

"You look like another being: you have looked like this ever since you told me you loved me," said Edgar, drawing himself a little back and gazing at her with the critical tenderness of a man's pride and love. "You are like Psyche wakened out of her sleep, and for the first time using your wings and living in the upper air."

The metaphor was a little confused, but that did not signify. The whole image was essentially Greek to Leam, and she only knew that it sounded well and did somehow apply to her--that she had just awakened out of sleep, and was for the first time using her wings and living in the upper air.

"I have not really lived till now," she answered. "And now things seem different."

"In what way?" asked Edgar, smiling.

He knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her reveal herself.

She smiled too. "More beautiful," she said, a little vaguely.

"As what? I like to be precise, and I want to know exactly what my darling thinks and means."

He said this with his most bewitching smile and in his tenderest voice. It was so pleasant to him to receive these first shy, confused confessions.

"The flowers and the sky," said Leam, raising her eyes and looking through the garden and on to the gray and narrowed horizon. "I remember when flowers were weeds and one day was like another. I did not know if the sun shone or not. But this year seems now to have been always summer and sunshine. The very weeds are more lovely than the flowers used to be."

"Flowers and sunshine since you knew me, my darling?"

"Yes," she answered shyly.

Edgar glanced at the heavy clouds hanging over head, but he did not say that he found this gray day singularly gloomy and oppressive, and that even love could not set a fairy sun in the sky. He took up the second clause of her loving speech: "And I am your flower? What a precious little compliment! I hope I shall be your amaranth, my Leam--your everlasting flower--if a rough soldier may have such a pretty comparison made in his favor. Do you think I shall be everlasting to you?"

"When God dies my love will die, and not before," said Leam, with her grave fervor, her voice of concentrated passion.

Her voice and manner thrilled Edgar. Her words, too, in their very boldness were more exciting than the most refined commonplaces of other women. It was this union of more than ordinary womanly reticence with almost savage passion and directness that had always been Leam's charm to Edgar; nevertheless, he hesitated for a few minutes, thinking whether he should correct her manner of speech or not, and while loving chasten her. Finally, he decided that he would not. She was only his lover as yet: when she should be his wife it would then be time enough to teach her the subdued conventionalism of English feeling as interpreted by the English tongue used commonly by gentlemen and ladies. Meanwhile, he must give her her head, as he inwardly phrased it, so as not frighten her in the beginning and thus make the end more difficult.

"You love me too much," he said in a low voice, half oppressed, half excited by her words, for men are difficult to content. The love of women given in excess of their demand embarrasses and maybe chills them; and Edgar had a sudden misgiving, discomposing if quite natural, which appeared, as it were, to check him like a horse in mid-career and throw him back on himself disagreeably. He asked himself doubtfully, Should he be able to answer this intense love so as to make the balance even between them? He loved her dearly, passionately--better than he had ever loved any woman of the many before--but he did not love her like this: he knew that well enough.

"I cannot love you too much," said Leam. "You are my life, and you are so great."

"And you will never tire of me?"

She looked into his face, her beautiful eyes worshiping him. "Do we tire of the sun?" she answered.

"Where did you get all your pretty fancies from, my darling?" he cried. "You have developed into a poet as well as a Psyche."

"Have I? If I have developed into anything, it is because I love you," she answered, with her sweet pathetic smile.

"But, my Leam, sweetheart--"

"Ah," she interrupted him with a look of passionate delight, "how I like to hear you call me that! Mamma used to call me her heart. No one else has since--I would not let any one if they had wanted--till now you."

"And you _are_ my heart," he answered fervently--"the heart of my heart, my very life!"

"Am I?" she smiled. "And you are mine."

"But, sweetheart, tell me if, when you know me better, you do not find me all you think me now, what then? Will you hate me for very disappointment?"

He asked the question, but as if he believed in himself and the impossibility of her hatred or disappointment while he asked it.

She looked at him with naïve incredulity and surprise. It would have been a challenge to be kissed from any other woman, but Leam, with her fire and passion and personal reticence all in one, had no thought of offering such a challenge, still less of submitting to its consequences.

"Find you all I think?" she repeated slowly. "When I know the saints in heaven, will not they be all I think? Was not Columbus?"

"But I am neither a saint nor a hero," said Edgar, drawing a sprig of lemon-plant which he held in his hand lightly across her face.

"You are both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case.

"And you are an angel," he returned.

"No," said Leam quietly, "I am only the woman who loves you."

"Ah, but you must not depreciate yourself for my sake," he said. "My choice, my love, my wife, must be perfect for my own honor. You must respect me in respecting yourself, and if you were to say yes indeed you were an angel, that would only be what is due to me. Don't you see?" pleasantly.

"Yes," she answered. "And only an angel would be good enough for you."

"My sweetest, your flattery is too delicious. It will make me vain and all sorts of bad things," said Edgar with a happy smile, finding this innocent worship one of the most charming tributes ever brought to the shrine of his lordly manhood by woman.

"It is not flattery: you deserve more," said Leam. Then lapsing into her old manner of checked utterance, she added, "I cannot talk, but you should be told."

Edgar thought he had been told pretty often by women the virtues which they had seen in him. Whether they saw what was or what they imagined was not to the point. If love creates, so does vanity, and of the two the latter has the more permanence.

After this there was a long pause. It was as if one chapter had been finished, one cup emptied. Then said Edgar suddenly, "And you will be happy at the Hill?" lightly touching her face again with the lemon-plant.

"With you anywhere," she answered.

"And my mother? Do you remember when you said one day you would not like to be my mother's daughter? Ah, little puss, you did not know what you were saying; and now tell me, do you object to be my mother's daughter?"

Leam looked grave. "I had not thought of that," she said, a certain shadow of distress crossing her face.

"Does the idea displease you?" he asked, in his turn grave.

"No," she answered after a short silence. "But I only thought of you. Shall I be Mrs. Harrowby's daughter?"

"Of course. How should you not?" he laughed.

"And Miss Josephine's too--two mothers?--mother and daughter both my mothers? I cannot understand," said poor Leam, a little hopelessly.

"Never mind the intricacies now. You are to be my wife: that is all we need remember. Is it not?" bending toward her tenderly.

"Yes," echoed Leam with a sigh of relief. "That is all we need remember."

So the day passed in these broken episodes, these delightful little scenes of the fooling and flattery of love, till the evening came, when Edgar was obliged to go up to the seven-o'clock dinner at the Hill. He might sit with Leam, as he had done, for nearly six hours in the garden, without more comment than that which servants naturally make among themselves, but if he remained through the evening he would publish more than he cared to publish at the present moment. So he had arranged to go back to the family dinner at seven, and thus keep his mother and sisters hoodwinked for a few hours longer.

As the time of parting drew nearer and nearer Leam became strangely sad and silent. Little caressing as she was by nature or habit, of her own accord she had laid her small dry feverish hand in Edgar's, and had gathered herself so much nearer to him that her slight shoulder touched his broad and powerful arm. It was a very faint caress for an engaged girl to offer, but it was an immense concession for Leam to make; and Edgar understood it in its meaning more than its extent. With the former he was delighted enough: the latter would scarcely have contented a man with loose moist lips and the royal habit of taking and having all for which he had a fancy. Nothing that Leam had said or done through the day had told him so plainly as did this quiet and by no means fervent familiarity how much she loved him, and how the power of that love was breaking up her natural reserve.

"It is as if I should never see you again," she said sadly when, looking at his watch, he had exclaimed, "Time's up, my darling! I must be off in five minutes from this. But I shall see you to-morrow," he answered tenderly. "I shall come down in the morning, as I have done to-day, and perhaps you will ride with me. We will go over some of the old ground, where we used to go when I loved you and you did not think you would ever love me. Ah, fairy that you are, how you have bewitched me!"

"That will be good," said Learn, who did not resent it in him that she was compared to a thing that did not exist, but adding with a piteous look, "it is taking my life from me when you go."

"You lovely little darling! I don't like to see you look unhappy, but I do delight to see how much you love me," said Edgar. "But you will not have to part with me for very long now. I shall see you every day till the time comes when we shall never be separated--never, never."

"Ah, that time!" she sighed. "It is far off."

He smiled, as his manner was, behind his beard, so that she did not see it. "It shall not be far off," he said gravely. "And now," looking again at his watch and then at the sky, "I must go."

The storm that had been threatening through the day was now gathering to a head, and even as Edgar spoke the first flash came, the first distant peal of thunder sounded, the first heavy raindrops fell. There was evidently going to be a fearful tempest, and Edgar must leave now at once if he would not be in the thick of it before he reached home.

"Yes," said Leam, noting the change in the sky, and unselfish always, "you must go."

They rose and turned toward the house. Hand in hand they walked slowly across the lawn and entered the drawing-room by the way of the window, by the way by which she had entered twice before--once when she had disclaimed madame, and once when she had welcomed Josephine.

Tears were in her eyes: her heart had failed her.

"It is like losing you for ever," she said again.

"No, not for ever--only till to-morrow," he answered.

"To-morrow! to-morrow!" she replied. "There will be no to-morrow."

"Yes, yes: in a very few hours we shall have come to that blessed day," he said cheerfully. "Kiss me, darling, that I may carry away your sweetest memory till I see you again. You will kiss me, Leam, of your own free will to-night, will you not?" He said this a little tremulously, his arms round her.

"Yes," she answered, "I will kiss you to-night."

She turned her face to him and put her hands round his neck frankly: then with an uncontrollable impulse she flung herself against his breast and, clasping her arms tight, bent his head down to her level and kissed him on the forehead with the passionate sorrow, the reluctant despair of an eternal farewell. It was something that irresistibly suggested death.

Edgar was distressed at her manner, distressed to have to leave her; but he must. Life is made up of petty duties, paltry obligations. Great events come but rarely and are seldom uninterrupted. A shower of rain and the dinner-hour are parts of the mosaic and help in the catastrophe which looks as if it had been the offspring of the moment. And just now the supreme exigencies to be attended to were the dinner-hour at the Hill and the rain that was beginning to fall.

Saddened, surprised, yet gratified too by her emotion, Edgar answered it in his own way. He kissed her again and again, smoothed her hair, passed his hand over her soft fresh cheeks, held her to him tightly clasped; and Leam did not refuse his caresses. She seemed to have suddenly abandoned all the characteristics of her former self: the mask had fallen finally, and her soul, released from its long imprisonment, was receiving its gift, not of tongues, but of fire--not of healing, but of suffering.

"My darling," he half whispered, "I shall see you to-morrow. Come, do not be so cast down: it is not reasonable, my heart. And tears in those sweet eyes? My Leam, dry them: they are too beautiful for tears. Look up, my darling. Give me one happy little smile, and remember to-morrow and for all our lives after."

But Learn could not smile. Her face was set to its old mask of tragedy and sorrow. Something, she knew not what, had passed out of her life, and something had come into it--something that Edgar for the moment could neither restore nor yet banish. He pressed her to him for the last time, kissed her passive face again and again, caught the scent of the lemon-plant in her hair where he had placed it, and left her. As he passed through the gate the storm burst in all its fury, and Leam went up into her own room in a voiceless, tearless grief that made the whole earth a desert and all life desolation.

She did know herself this evening, nor understand what it was that ailed her. She had only consciously loved for two days, and this was the anguish to which she had been brought. No, not even when mamma died had she suffered as she was suffering now. She felt as if she had lost him even as she had lost her. She did not believe in to-morrow: it would never come. She would never be with him again as she had been to-day. No self-reasoning, feebly aimed at, could calm her or convince her of the folly of her fears. He had gone, she was left, and they were parted for ever.

She sat by the window desolate, deserted, more alone than she had ever been before, because she had lost more than she had ever either held or lost before. The storm that was raging in the sky grew gradually stronger and came still nearer, but she scarcely noticed it: it was only as the symphony sounding in sad harmony with her unspoken wail. Flash followed flash, swifter, nearer, more vivid; the thunder crashed and roared as if it would have beaten the house to the ground and rent the very earth whereon it stood; the rain fell in torrents that broke the flowers like hail and ran in turbulent rivulets along the paths. Never had there been such a furious tempest as this at North Aston since the days of tradition. It made the people in the village below quail and cry out that the day of judgment had come upon them: it made Leam at last forget her sorrow and quail in her solitude as if her day of judgment too had come upon her.

Then there came one awful flash that seemed to set the whole room on fire; and as Leam started up, thinking that the place was indeed in flames, her eyes fell on the Tables of the Ten Commandments given her by madame; and there, in letters of blood that seemed to cry out against her like a voice, she saw by the light of that accusing flash those words of terrible significance to her:

THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

ROSE-MORALS.

I.--RED.

Would that my songs might be
What roses make by day and night---
Distillments of my clod of misery
Into delight.

Soul! could'st thou bare thy breast
As yon red rose, and dare the day,
All clean, and large, and calm with velvet rest?
Say yea--say yea!

Ah, dear my Rose! good-bye!
The wind is up; so drift away.
That songs from me as leaves from thee may fly,
I strive, I pray.

II.--WHITE.

Soul! get thee to the heart
Of yonder tuberose: hide thee there--
There breathe the meditations of thine art
Suffused with prayer.

Of spirit grave but light,
How fervent fragrances uprise
Pure-born from these most rich and yet most white
Virginities!

Mulched with unsavory death,
Grow, Soul! unto such white estate,
Strong art and virginal prayer shall be thy breath,
Thy work, thy fate.

SIDNEY LANIER.

AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS STORY.

It is pleasant, on a warm, sunny afternoon in the spring-time (or, indeed, at any season of the year, but I love the spring-time best), to take the broad, well-shaded avenue on the east bank of the Schuylkill at Fairmount Park, and, passing the pretty little club boat-houses already green with their thick overhanging vines, to saunter slowly along the narrow roadway on the water's edge to the great Girard Avenue Bridge, and so on through the cool dark tunnel, coming out on the steep railed path that winds up and away from the river to bury itself for a while in rich deep woodlands, only to bring you presently to the water-side again, where stands the fine old Mount Pleasant mansion, the country-seat of Benedict Arnold nearly a hundred years ago, and bestowed by him as a marriage-gift upon his new-made bride in April, 1779. A sweet, cool air blows up to you from the river, purple and white violets, buttercups and Quaker ladies are set thickly about your feet, the newly-arrived orioles are piping their pert little tunes nigh at hand, and you can spend a meditative hour or two sitting in the shifting specks of yellow sunshine filtered through the tender young leaves overhead, undisturbed by the shades of departed revelers that may be wandering behind the close shutters of the silent old house you have come so far to see. There is a curious and distinct flavor of antiquity about the place; for the woodwork around the doors and windows, which has so bravely withstood the corroding tooth of Time and the wearing rain-drip from the great tree-branches creaking above the roof, is of a quaint but excellent pattern, of which we see too little in these days of hideous sawed scrollery and gimcrack ornament--the masonry of such an honest solidity as may well cause the dweller in modern brick and sandy mortar to sigh enviously for the "good old times." Although the house appears to be extremely large, it contains very few rooms, and none of these are so spacious as might be reasonably expected from the outside. The staircases are singularly ill-contrived, the landings upon the upper floors occupying a space quite sufficient for goodly-sized chambers. The ceilings and a chimney-panel or two are set out bravely with the usual stucco imitation of wood-carving we almost invariably find (and sigh over) in old American houses--a piteous attempt on the part of our honest ancestors to reproduce in some sort the rare wood-sculpture of their own old English manor-houses: it is a satisfaction, too, to note what little progress we have contrived to make in this unworthy branch of decorative art in the lapse of a century.

In two of the rooms are queer corner fireplaces, where, doubtless, many pairs of dainty high-heeled slippers and great military jack-boots have been toasted at the huge hickory fires, long since extinguished. In one of the upper chambers is an odd sort of closet, the shelves of which are furnished with low railings, presumably a protection for the handsome and valuable china that women have always loved to store up--a check upon the ravages of careless housemaids. It is quite worth while to climb the breakneck garret-stairs, which must have bruised many a shin in their day, and the short flight leading to the roof, in order to get the glorious view of the Park stretching away down to the city of Philadelphia, and of the beautiful Schuylkill River winding in and out among the trees and flashing so silvery white in the afternoon sunshine.

In the cellarage, where we disturb many busy spiders and stealthy centipedes, is a large, solidly-floored apartment, where possibly the house-servants were used to congregate in the old slave days. There is no chimney-place in this room, nor, indeed, is there any convenience whatever for cooking purposes in the main building, which omission inclines me to the opinion that one of the detached wings was used for the kitchen offices, there being large fireplaces in both of them, very suitable for the getting up of good dinners.[3] The grounds about the house have been much altered of late years--the gardens long since destroyed. A smug, close-shaven turf replaces the old-fashioned flower-beds and shrubbery, amid which I love to fancy sweet Peggy Arnold trailing her French brocades and flowered chintzes, her rosy ear attuned to the high-flown compliments of the men of fashion whom her beauty and her husband's lavish hospitality drew about her--her husband the traitor who a few months afterward was flying, a detected felon, from justice, leaving his fair young wife, with her babe in her arms, to face the awful wrath of Washington.

[Footnote 3: A proposition has been recently made to the Fairmount Park Commissioners by Colonel Frank W. Etting, a Philadelphia lawyer of well-known taste and culture, to fit up the Mount Pleasant mansion in the fashion of Colonial times, he having at his command a sufficient quantity of furniture, pictures, china, etc. for the proper representation of a house of the best sort in those days. It is to be hoped that this generous offer may meet with the attention it deserves, as such a memorial could scarcely fail to prove a great attraction to our Centennial visitors. Mount Pleasant is fortunately associated with the memories of better men than Benedict Arnold. The brave Major Macpherson built the house for his own occupancy before the Revolutionary war, and General Baron Von Steuben passed a part of his honorable retirement there, dating his letters humorously from "Belisarius Hall, on the Schuylkill."]

Doubtless, many a stately minuet and frolicsome country-dance has been trod in those now dark and empty rooms by the Philadelphia belles and beaux of 1780, when, the rich furniture all set back against the walls, the general's blacks were had up from the negro quarters with blaring horns and shrill fiddles to play for the quality. Alas! the horns and fiddles sound no more, the merry, grinning players are but a pinch of dust like their betters, their haughty master but a scorned memory where once he reigned so royally, while the modish guests who frisked it so gayly in satin and velvet have long, long ago shaken the powder out of their locks, tied up their jaws and packed themselves away in their scant winding-sheets, resigned to the mournful company of the worm.

Brief tenure held the fair châtelaine of this castle: a year and a half after the date inscribed upon her title-deeds the republic claimed the traitor's possessions, and pretty Peggy was driven forth by the Executive Council to find a home with strangers, but fourteen days being granted her in which to prepare for her doleful journey. Our excellent forefathers were made of stern stuff to suit the humor of those trying times, and doubtless they did but their duty in ridding their country of the "traitor's brood;" but for my part I can scarcely think, even at this late day, without a pang of indignant pity, of this innocent and forlorn young creature hounded forth from her father's peaceful home in Philadelphia, with her child in her arms--driven almost to the protection of the man whose crime she abhorred, and from whom in her first frenzied grief she was even willing to be for ever separated. There have not been wanting certain persons, headed by that noble patriot and veracious gentleman, Colonel Aaron Burr, who from time to time have busied themselves in putting stray hints together with the intent to make Arnold's wife an accomplice, if not the direct instigator, of his infamous design; but there is not in existence, so far as I have been able to learn, a particle of evidence sufficient to justify the casting of ever so small a stone at the memory of this most unfortunate lady, whose name is so pitilessly linked with that of the traitor.

She must have been extremely beautiful. I have had the good fortune to see her portrait, painted about 1795 at Bath, England, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and now in the possession of her grand-niece, a lady to whom I am indebted for much that I have been able to gather of the character of Mrs. Arnold. The picture is taken in crayons, and the colors are wonderfully fresh and lovely after eighty years and a voyage across the sea, the delicate flesh-tints being especially well preserved. Besides real beauty of feature, there is an enchanting softness in the character of the face that seems to belong only to temperaments the most feminine and refined. A pale pink gown falls back from her gracious neck and shoulders, liberally and innocently displayed according to the fashion of the time, and is tied about her waist with a broad sky-blue ribbon: her hair, lightly dashed with powder and rolled away from her face, strays in rich curls about her throat. A child of two or three years leans upon her knee, and pulls at one of her ringlets with a roguish smile upon his chubby face.

The century that has nearly elapsed since Arnold's defection has not served to lighten in any degree the load of obloquy that rests upon his name. In the whole world no man has been found willing to undertake his defence; yet a believer in the dark old Calvinist doctrine might urge in the traitor's favor the thousand invisible influences which from the very birth of the wretched man seem to have goaded him on in the downward path that led to his final disgrace and ruin. His home-training, if such it might be called, was of the very worst. His mother an ignorant, uncultured woman, his father a defaulter in middle life, in his age a sot, the boy was left to follow the promptings of his own will, naturally strong and turbulent. His youth was stormy and insubordinate, his young manhood not without the reproach of dishonorable mercantile dealings, and even the splendor of his military achievements in the service of his country could scarcely blind the judgment of his warmest admirers to the suspicious stains upon his moral character. That the last link in the chain of influences might not be wanting, Arnold, while in command of Philadelphia in 1778, fell deeply in love with and married the youngest daughter of Mr. Edward Shippen (afterward chief-justice), a distinguished lawyer of well-known Tory proclivities, although he was entirely acquitted of any share in the treasonable design of his son-in-law. It does not appear that there was any very serious objection made in the Shippen household to the rebel general's suit for the hand of the lovely Peggy. Arnold was at this time about thirty-eight years of age, in the vigorous prime of a life whose declining years were destined to be passed in a sort of contemptuous tolerance among those with whom he had been at bargain and sale for the liberties of his country. Covered with well-earned glory from his brilliant feats of bravery at the battles of Bemis Heights and Stillwater, and slightly lame from a severe wound in the leg received at Quebec, he was at last accorded his full rank in the army, and entered upon the military command of Philadelphia with every conceivable circumstance in his favor. The stories of his courage and daring which had preceded him, aided by his handsome person and fine military bearing, combined to ensure his success in society, and he was at once given the entrée to the best city families, from one of which he soon singled out the lady who became his wife. Her father writes to Colonel Burd in January, 1779, that "General Arnold, a fine gentleman, lays close siege to Peggy," and goes on to hint that a wedding may soon be expected. If the traitor's tongue was only half as persuasive as his pen, small wonder that the damsel capitulated.[4] "Dear Peggy," sighs the ardent lover upon paper, "suffer that heavenly bosom (which cannot know itself the cause of pain without a sympathetic pang) to expand with a sensation more soft, more tender than friendship.... I have presumed to write to your papa, and have requested his sanction to my addresses. Consult your own happiness, and, if incompatible, forget there is so unhappy a wretch. May I perish before I would give you one moment's inquietude to procure the greatest possible felicity to myself! Whatever my fate may be, my most ardent wish is for your happiness, and my latest breath will be to implore the blessing of Heaven on the idol and only wish of my soul." And yet the writer of these fine sentiments presently sells her peace and happiness and his own honor for a sum of money almost too pitifully small to be named! They were married in April, 1779. By this union with the daughter of a loyalist, however professing neutrality, Arnold must have been thrown much into the society of the enemies of his country's cause--men whose principles were entirely at variance with his own--and doubtless his defection may be indirectly laid to the subtle influence of Tory companionship: certainly, his reckless intimacy with well-known if not openly-avowed foes of American independence caused his military superiors to look askance at his movements, and more than justified the caution of a Congress jealous of the least shadow that menaced the struggling cause of liberty.

[Footnote 4: See _Letters and Papers relating to the Provincial History of Pennsylvania_, by Mr. Thomas Balch.]

The newly-wedded pair set up their household in the old Penn mansion (long since torn down) on a scale of magnificence in no way warranted by Arnold's means. Their great coach-and-four was seen thundering back and forth through the streets of the quiet little town, and a motley throng of guests, Whig and Tory, were entertained at a table where nothing was thought too choice and costly for their delectation. Matters were carried with such extravagance that debt soon pressed upon the thoughtless pair, and prudent people began to inquire curiously into Arnold's administration of public affairs. Whispers soon grew into loud complaints, and a court-martial was presently convened to investigate certain charges brought against him by the Executive Council, comprising peculation, misappropriation of public funds, etc. During the tedious deliberation of this body of his fellow-officers, and in the almost certain event of the day going against him, Arnold laid his plan for the grand coup, which, if successful, would at once gratify his deep longing for revenge and place him, as he fondly hoped, at the very summit of his ambition--the equal of the proudest noble, the lauded servant of a grateful prince. It seems almost incredible that he should have persevered in his design after the very lenient decision of his judges, who acquitted him of all save the most trifling of the charges against him, and decreed that he should merely receive a reprimand from the commander-in-chief. Every one knows the encouraging and beautiful advice with which this slight censure was tempered, and must recognize the fine manly spirit that prompted it: it should have sunk deeply into the culprit's heart and made of him the grateful friend of Washington for ever. It did indeed sink deeply, but it was into a traitor's heart, and it rankled there.

It is very possible that here, in this lovely retreat on the banks of the Schuylkill, in the long summer days of 1780, was matured the slowly-ripening plot, which but for its timely discovery must have seriously imperiled, if not altogether lost to us, the glorious inheritance we have held these hundred years. One can fancy the martial figure of the brave, bad man pacing back and forth beneath these very trees perhaps, absorbed in bitter reflections on his real and fancied wrongs--the rapid promotion of men younger than himself both in years and services, whilst his own bold deeds had met with but tardy acknowledgment from a cold and cautious Congress; the long array of debts which arose like spectres to harass him even in this peaceful Eden; and, worst of all, the humiliating remembrance of Washington's rebuke. It cannot be denied that the temptation to free himself from the toils in which his own dishonest course had entangled him must have beset the unhappy man with almost resistless power. With his hopelessly impaired character, and weighed down by debts he had no means of discharging--for he could scarcely hope for an early settlement of his accounts from a Congress already impoverished by an expensive war--to remain in the army was, to a man of Arnold's proud, selfish nature, almost out of the question. By going over to the enemy he could at once shake off associations which were now become intolerable to him, gain perpetual immunity from his liabilities, and secure for himself a life of distinction and luxury. He grasped at the delusive vision and was lost for ever.

In August of this year he received the coveted appointment to the command of West Point, and Philadelphia saw him no more. He took up his residence in Beverley Robinson's lately-vacated house on the east bank of the Hudson and nearly opposite the entrenchments at West Point. The story of the discovered plot and Major André's detention is too well known to be more than glanced at here: everything was in readiness for the surrender of the post into the hands of Sir Henry Clinton when the unfortunate young adjutant was taken, and the papers criminating Arnold found upon his person. No one, I am sure, can read unmoved Dr. Thacher's eye-witness account of the execution of this officer, lost through Arnold's cowardly blundering. The gravity of his offence against a flag of truce need not prevent our admiration of his soldierly conduct after his arrest, the perfect truthfulness to which he adhered during his examination, and the noble resignation with which he met his dreadful fate. Arnold had here a fine opportunity to retrieve in some degree the bitter mischief of which he had been the occasion. Had he but come forth and suffered in André's place, the blackness of his crime would have almost disappeared in the brilliancy of his atonement; but he chose a living death instead, and his hapless victim went to his doom accompanied by the pity of every honest American heart. His manly figure affords a fine contrast to that of the traitor skulking down the lane (still shown as "Arnold's Path") at the back of the Robinson House in his flight to the British frigate moored out in the stream fifteen miles below the fort. A few hasty words had put his innocent wife in possession of the horrid story, and she had fallen, as if struck by his hand, in a swoon to the floor, where he left her unconscious of his frantic farewell. In her sad interview with Washington next day she manifested such frenzied grief and horror at her husband's guilt, such tender concern for the future of her helpless babe, that the stern commander was melted to the heart's core, and left her entirely convinced of her innocence. He gave orders that her comfort should be fully attended to, and offered her an escort to protect her from insult on the journey to her father's house in Philadelphia. Further, he sent her word in a day or two that, however sorely he must regret the escape of a traitor, he was glad to be able to assure her of her husband's safety with the British. Then came the mournful pilgrimage to the loving home in Philadelphia. She set out at the time when poor André was making his preparations for the still longer journey whence he was nevermore to return--the brilliant young officer with whom she had danced at the great fête, the "Mischianza," given by the British army to Sir William Howe only two years before in Philadelphia--the gay man of fashion who had written versicles in her honor, and whose graceful pen-portrait of the fair girl is still in the possession of the Shippen family--her thickly-powdered hair drawn up into a tower above her forehead and bedecked with ribbons and strings of pearls in the fashion then newly imported out of France, the last modish freak of Marie Antoinette before she laid her own stately head under the axe of the guillotine.

One can easily picture the terror and anguish she bore with her to her old home; the uncertainty regarding her own fate and that of her child; the haunting thought of young André's approaching doom, and, more piteous than all else, the ever--recurring temptation that sorely beset her to see no more the author of her undoing, the still beloved father of her babe. It is difficult to imagine a more awful situation, and one can almost forgive her first hasty sentence against the man who had wrought her such ill. She forgot for a while that she had taken upon her those sacred vows "for better, for worse:" the worst indeed had come, and for my part I own I am glad that she chose the nobler part. He was a traitor, but she, alas! was the traitor's wife. She accompanied him to England, where her dignity and sweetness helped to sustain her husband in the doubtful position he held in society. Her letters to her family bear witness to his unfailing love for her and anxious care of her welfare, but breathe a spirit of resignation incompatible with perfect happiness. Once only did she return to America. After peace was proclaimed she visited her beloved old home, but meeting with much unkindness from her former friends, soon left for England again. She died in 1804, surviving Arnold but three years.

A lady of this city, the granddaughter of our first republican governor, told me that two of Arnold's grandsons came to America some years ago, and to their great surprise found themselves unable to make any figure in Philadelphia society, where they were quietly but persistently ignored, so strong was the public prejudice against their name.

Arnold died in London in the winter of 1801. We shrink away almost appalled from the awful picture of that death-bed--the neglected, despised old man, with the gloom closing in about him and left to face it almost alone. The great people to whom he had sold his honor had long ago paid him his price, and, washing their hands of him, had passed over to the other side of the way with averted faces; the stout old king who had protected him from insult as long as he could was already in the clutch of the fatal malady which was soon to consign his intellect to eternal night; and it is said that but one creature stood beside the dying traitor in that supreme hour--the fond woman who had so lightened the burden of shame he had borne for twenty long years of splendor and misery, and whose own deliverance was so nigh at hand.

A singular story is told of Arnold's last moments, which if true (and pray God it may be!) should be linked with the memory of his crime for ever. It is said that he ordered to be brought from the garret of his house the old Continental uniform and sword he had worn for the last time on the memorable day of his escape from West Point. With trembling hands he unfolded the coat, and, drawing it painfully over his shoulders, sat lost in long and deep reflection: then, rousing himself with a sigh, he drew the sword from its scabbard, and clenching one hand upon the rich hilt, passed the other absently along the blade; then with a wild look of regret in his fast-glazing eyes he let the weapon drop from his grasp, his head sank upon his breast and he remained motionless until he died, drawing each breath longer and longer until all were spent. I love to think that he died with the Continental coat upon his shoulders, nor was it again dishonored by the contact: it even seems to have lent a ray of its own untarnished lustre to brighten the last dark, remorseful hours of a ruined life.

K.T.T.

THE WATCH: AN OLD MAN'S STORY.

BY IVAN TOURGUENEFF.

I.

I will tell you my story about the watch. A singular story! The whole thing at the very beginning of the century, in the year 1801. I was just sixteen. I lived at Riasan with my father, aunt and cousin, in a little wooden house not far from the banks of the Oka. I don't remember my mother: she died when she had been only three years married, and my father had no child but me. My father's name was Porphyr Petrovitch: he was a quiet man with feeble health, who occupied himself with managing law-business, and--in other ways. In old times they used to call such people sowers of discord: he called himself an attorney. His sister, my aunt, kept the house. She was an old maid of fifty: my father had already left his fortieth year behind him. She was a very pious woman. In fact, to tell the truth, she was a great hypocrite, gossiping and meddlesome, and she did not have a kind heart like my father. We were not poor, but we had no more than we really needed. My father had also a brother, named Gregory, but he had been accused of seditious actions and Jacobinical sentiments (so it ran in the _ukase_), and he had been sent to Siberia in 1797.

Gregory's son David, my cousin, was left on my father's hands, and he lived with us. He was only a year older than I, but I gave way to him and obeyed him as if he had been a most important personage. He was a bright boy of a good deal of character, sturdy and broad-shouldered, with a square, freckled face, red hair, small gray eyes, thick lips, a short nose and short fingers, and of a strength far beyond his years. My aunt could not endure him, and my father was afraid of him, or perhaps had a consciousness of guilt before him. There had been a rumor that if my father had not told too much and left his brother in the lurch, David's father would not have been sent to Siberia. We were both in the same class in the gymnasium, and we both made good progress--I somewhat better than David. My memory was stronger than his, but boys, as every one knows, do not appreciate that advantage: they are not proud of it; and in spite of it I always looked up to David.

II.