Eventide

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Major Howard sprang from his seat.

"Sir!" said he, darting an enraged glance on the strange man, "are you a
fool? Do you not see the hair of the man you would accuse is black as
midnight, while you affirm that of the one who fired my mansion to have
been of a flaxen hue?"

The hermit seemed not in the least disconcerted by this speech. Raising
the long cane on which his arms had been resting, he lifted the black
cloud of curls from the head of Col. Malcome and dashed it upon the
floor.

"Herbert Mervale!" shrieked the invalided Mrs. Howard.

On hearing this voice the muffled man, who had thrown off his
broad-brimmed hat, turned suddenly round.

"And Ralph Greyson!" she added.

Then throwing her arms around the wasted form of Edith Malcome, she
exclaimed: "My daughter! my daughter! is it thus I find you?" and sank
insensible on the sofa beside her.

Hannah Doliver sprang toward Rufus, covering him with kisses and calling
him her "dear, dear son."

The young man threw her roughly to the floor, and, alarmed by the sudden
scene of tumult and confusion, rushed into the street.

Florence clung close to the side of her father, who seemed struck dumb
with horror and amaze.

At length the sheriff approached him. "Do you wish further proofs
against the man we accuse?" he demanded.

"Take the villain away!" roared Major Howard, bursting suddenly into a
terrific ebullition of anger, "and burn him at the stake. Hanging is too
easy death for such a monster of wickedness!"

The assembly, terrified by the angry, tumultuous scene, began to
disperse.

"Pause for a brief moment, my friends," said the major, growing somewhat
calmer; "I have a few words of explanation 'tis meet you should hear.
That man," pointing to Col. Malcome, who stood in the strong grasp of
his keepers, glaring around him with the ferocity of a baffled tiger,
"is the wretch who married my sister to steal her fortune, and leave her
in poverty and distress with a young babe at her breast, to debauch
himself with her serving-woman, by whom he had also a child. There lies
the woman he has wronged," said he, his face growing fiercer, as he
pointed to the form of the supposed Mrs. Howard, cast lifelessly on the
sofa beside Edith Malcome, "at the feet of her daughter, and there
stands the vile creature," pointing a wrathful finger toward Hannah
Doliver, "who was his leman. But her bastard boy has fled the embrace of
his polluted mother. My sister returned to me, after suffering inhuman
barbarities from this monster, but he withheld her child. Her heart was
broken by misfortune, and her only wish was to pass the remainder of her
life in quiet and seclusion. My wife died when this dear girl was an
infant," said he, taking the hand of Florence in his, who stood with her
eyes fixed immovably on her father's face; "and I besought my sister to
stand in the place of a mother to my little daughter."

Florence directed a quick, troubled glance toward the form which still
lay motionless on the sofa beside Edith, but did not move.

"I have no more to say," resumed the major more calmly; "the artful
wickedness which has threatened my ruin is exposed. Officers of justice,
do your duty! Take Herbert Mervale from my presence!"

The strong men grasped the form of the prisoner and marched him from the
room. The baffled villain made no resistance. He closed his eyes to
avoid beholding the loathing, abhorrent glances which were showered on
him from all sides.

As the hermit was slowly following the receding group, Major Howard
stepped to his side, and, laying his hand lightly on his arm, said:

"Will you not remain till the guests have retired?"

"No," answered the recluse, shaking his head sadly, "I have done my duty
and had better depart."

"You have saved me from destruction," said Major Howard, in a tone
trembling with grateful emotion, as he seized the thin, emaciated hand
of the hermit, and pressed it warmly to his bosom; "how shall I reward
you?"

"I seek no reward from your generosity," returned the solitary, escaping
from the grasp which detained him; "the consciousness of having done
right is sufficient recompense."

Thus speaking, he turned away. Major Howard returned to the parlors. The
guests were departing, and the several members of the family had
disappeared.

He hurried to the apartment occupied by his sister, and there beheld her
and Edith lying side by side, apparently in tranquil sleep, with
Florence and Sylva, Edith's maid, watching at the bed-side.

Hannah Doliver was nowhere to be seen.

Florence advanced to meet her father, and, twining her arm
affectionately round his neck, turned a tender glance on the pale faces
of the sleepers, and said:

"O, father! father! let us kneel by this low couch and thank God for
this merciful deliverance!"

CHAPTER XLV.

---------------------"All this is well;
For this will pass away, and be succeeded
By an auspicious hope, which shall look up
With calm assurance to that blessed place
Which all who seek may win, whatever be
Their earthly errors, so they be atoned;
And the commencement of atonement is
The sense of its necessity."

Baby No. 2, had appeared at the home of Mrs. Salsify Mumbles, and the
delighted grandmother held the tiny little creature this way and that
way, gazing on its features with the most doting fondness, and nearly
smothering it with affectionate kisses.

And baby No. 2 did not squeal like its lusty-lunged predecessor. O, no!
it had the softest little feminine quackle, for all the world like a
downy young gosling; and Mrs. Salsify said she would have it called
Goslina, it quackled so sweetly. So Goslina Shaw was the euphonious
sobriquet of baby No. 2, and the joyful grandame returned it to the bed
beside the pale face of its mother, where 'twas quackling off to sleep,
when Mr. Salsify came in from the store, his features glowing, as if he
had some startling intelligence to convey.

"My sakes! what is it, Mr. Mumbles?" asked the fond wife quickly marking
her husband's excited manner.

"I guess folks will have something to talk about besides my getting
gagged at the Woman's Convention," said Mr. Salsify, rather maliciously,
drawing a chair before the grate and placing his feet on the fender.

"Why, what has happened?" inquired his wife, eagerly.

"Enough has happened," returned he, "if all Martha Pinkerton has just
been telling me is true."

"Where did you see her?" asked Mrs. Salsify.

"She came into the store to-night to buy a chunk of cheese; so I asked
her what was the news? when she told me of the awfulest tragedy that
occurred at Col. Malcome's the night they undertook to get Florence
Howard married to the colonel's son."

"O, mercy, who was killed?" exclaimed Mrs. S., with uplifted hands.

"Nobody as I know of," returned Mr. Mumbles, whose ideas of a tragedy
were different from those of his good wife; "but then the whole company
might have been, for they had a murderer amongst them."

"Mercy to me, how awful!" said Mrs. Salsify. "What was his name and how
did he get there?"

"His name was Col. Malcome, and he got there by his own wickedness."

"You don't mean to tell me that handsome Col. Malcome is a murderer!"
exclaimed Mrs. Salsify, with terror depicted on her features.

"Yes I do, and worse than that; he burned Major Howard's house, and
tried to get his pretty daughter married to her own brother."

"How can Rufus Malcome be a brother to Florence Howard?" asked Mrs.
Mumbles, in amaze. "You are talking nonsense to me, I fear."

"O, no," returned her husband. "I tell you this Colonel Malcome has
turned out the strangest. He is Major Howard's mother, and Dilly
Danforth's aunt, and that old hermit's sister, and the Lord knows who
and what else; but they have carried him off to jail, so there'll be no
chance for him to burn any more houses."

Here Mr. Mumbles drew a long breath and rested a while.

"I am glad I didn't marry him," said a feeble voice from the bed.

"So am I, my daughter," said the father quickly; "and you may thank me
for having saved you from a fate so deplorable. Your mother was mightily
taken with this colonel when he came fawning round us, and she was
pretty cross when I told her it would not do to let him marry you. I
knew that great black head was full of wickedness, and so it has
proved."

Mrs. Salsify sat rather uneasily while her husband vaunted his superior
knowledge of human nature, but the gentle Goslina began to quackle from
the bed, and she soon forgot all else in care for the dear little
creature.

While this conversation was passing at the home of the Mumbles, the
Hermit of the Cedars sat before the glowing fire which brightened the
rough walls of Dilly Danforth's humble abode. He had acknowledged
himself as her long-absent brother, and great was her joy at beholding
him again, though she grieved to know how one deep sorrow had blasted
his early promise and made him a wretched, solitary recluse.

"I fear," said she, at length, "you must still feel bitterly toward me
for the low connection I was so unfortunate as to form, which biased the
mind of your fair lady's brother against your suit."

"No, my sister," returned the hermit, in a tone of tender sadness; "I
deeply regret the harshness and wrong I visited upon you in the wild
fury of that early disappointment, for I have learned no act of yours
influenced Major Howard against my suit. It was the wily artfulness of
my rival, who breathed specious tales of my unworthiness in the ear of
the brother, and caused her, the fair, unsuspecting girl, to turn from
me and give her hand to Mervale."

The hermit's voice trembled as he pronounced these latter words, and he
bowed his head in silence. The sister pitied the sorrow which she knew
not how to soothe.

At length Willie entered, his face all bright with smiles.

"What makes you look so glad?" asked his mother, gazing with fond
admiration on the tall, handsome boy; for she still regarded him as a
child, though he was nearly grown to man's estate.

"I have got something for Uncle Ralph," said he, looking cunningly in
the hermit's face.

"What is it, William?" inquired he, with a solemn smile.

The youth drew a letter from his pocket and placed it in his uncle's
hand.

"It is from Edgar," said he, eagerly breaking the seal.

All were silent while he was occupied in the perusal.

"Edgar has received the disclosures in regard to the pretended Col.
Malcome with unaffected astonishment," remarked the hermit, as he
refolded the letter and placed it in his bosom. "He appears delighted to
learn that Willie Danforth, of whom he has heard me speak so
regardfully, is his cousin, and sends much love to him and also to his
new-found aunt."

Mrs. Danforth looked gratified at these words, as did also Willie.

"I am sure I want to see him very much," said the latter. "When is he
coming home, uncle?"

"In summer, when the woods are green, he says," returned the hermit; "he
is now taking sketches in the vicinity of Richmond, Va."

"Was his father an artist?" asked Mrs. D.

"Yes," answered the recluse. "I well remember where sister Fanny first
met him, and how quick a wild, deep love grew out of the romantic
adventure. It was a few months after we left this country--I to forget
in travel my cankering sorrows, she to companion my wanderings. How it
affects me now to think that we left you in suffering poverty without
even a kind good-by! Our shares in the estate of our deceased parents
furnished us with funds for travel, while yours had been squandered by a
dissolute man. But we should have given you of ours to alleviate your
wants and distresses. Fanny often told me so; but my worst passions were
roused by the misfortune I conceived you had helped to bring upon me,
and I would not hear her pleadings in your behalf. What a hard-hearted
wretch I have been!"

The hermit paused and covered his face.

Willie looked from his uncle to his mother, and at length approached
him. "Do not fall into one of your gloomy reveries," said he; "tell us
more of Edgar's mother."

"Ay, yes," said the hermit, rousing himself; "I was speaking of her
first meeting with her future husband. It was among the ruins of the
Eternal City. She had wandered forth by herself one day, and,
intoxicated by the scenes that met her eye on every hand, roamed so far
that when the shades of night began to fall, she discovered herself in
the midst of gloomy, crumbling walls and tottering columns, without
knowing whither to direct her steps. While she stood indeterminate, a
gentleman approached, and kindly inquired if she had lost her way. She
answered in the affirmative, and he offered to escort her home. I
remember how glowing bright was her face that night, as she came
bounding up the steps of our habitation, and presented the 'young artist
she had found beneath the walls of Rome,' as she termed her companion,
and laughingly recounted her adventure. I believe our family are
predisposed to strong feelings, for I never witnessed a love more
engrossing than was hers for the young Lindenwood; nor was his devotion
to her less remarkable. They were married, and I left them to pursue my
wanderings alone.

"When, after a lapse of several years, I returned, it was to stand over
their death-beds, and receive their boy under my protection. His father
was rich, and a large fortune was left to his only child. A few more
years I roamed, and then with the young Edgar sought my native shores.

"You know the rest. It is a long yarn I have spun you," said he, rising,
"and I marvel you are not both asleep."

"Are you going back to the forest to-night?" asked Mrs. Danforth, as he
wrapped the long coat about his thin form, and placed the broad-brimmed
hat over his gray locks.

"Yes, Delia," answered he. "I sleep best with the roar of the cedars in
my ears."

"I will go with you," said Willie, springing for his cap.

The twain set forth together, while the lonely woman sought her couch
and thought mournfully of long-past days and years.

CHAPTER XLVI.

"She is a bustling, stalwart dame, and one
That well might fright a timid, modest man.
Look how she swings her arms, and treads the floor
With direful strides!"

It was a bright, sunny spring morning, and Wimbledon was beautiful in
budding foliage, singing blue-birds and placid little river, with the
sunbeams silvering its ripply surface.

The windows of Mr. Pimble's kitchen were raised and therein Peggy Nonce
moved vigorously to and fro, with rolled-up sleeves and glowing face,
stirring a great fire which roared and crackled in the jaws of a huge
oven, and then back to the pantry, where she wielded the sceptre of an
immense rolling-pin triumphantly over whole trays of revolting
pie-crust, marched forth long files of submissive pies, and lodged them
in the red-hot prison.

While the stalwart house-keeper was thus occupied, Mr. Pimble, with a
yellow silk handkerchief tied over his straggling locks, and his pale,
palm-figured wrapper drawn closely around him, scraped the stubbed claw
of a worn-out corn broom over the kitchen floor, clapping his heelless
slippers after him as he moved slowly along. Peggy never heeded him at
all, but rushed to and fro, as if there had been no presence in the
kitchen save her own, often dragging the dirt away, on her trailing
skirts, just as the indefatigable sweeper had collected it in a pile.

All at once, pert little Susey Pimble opened the parlor door and
swinging herself outward, said, "I want the dining-room castors and
tea-cups, and mamma says I am to have them and you are to come and give
them to me."

The father rested his arms on the broom handle, and turning his face
toward his hopeful daughter, who was a "scion of the old stock," said,
"I will come soon as I have swept the floor."

"I cannot wait," returned Susey, sharply, "I must have them this
moment."

The father laid down his broom passively, and saying, "What an impatient
little miss you are!" clappered off to the dining-room, and brought
forth the desired articles on a waiter.

Miss Susey, all atilt with delight, danced forward and caught it from
her father's hands; but its weight proved too much for her little arms,
and down it went to the floor with a fearful crash! Susey sprang back
with a frightened aspect at the mischief she had done, and Peggy Nonce,
dropping her rolling-pin, rushed out of the pantry and beheld the
fragments of broken china scattered over the floor. Her face crimsoned
with anger.

"What a destructive little minx!" she exclaimed, glaring on the
offending Susey. "How dared you meddle with those dishes?"

"Mamma said I might have them to play house with," answered Susey, with
flashing eyes.

"Who ever heard of such a thing as giving a child a china tea set to
play with?" said Peggy, holding up her bare, brawny arms in amazement.

"My mother has heard of such a thing; and she knows more than fifteen
women like you, old aunt Peggy Nonce," returned Miss Susey, with the air
of a tragedy queen.

The unusual sounds aroused Mrs. Pimble, who appeared at the parlor door
with a goose-quill behind her ear, and a written scroll in her hand.
When her eyes fell on the spectacle in the centre of the kitchen, she
stamped violently, and exclaimed, in a tempestuous tone, "What does this
mean?" Mr. Pimble slunk away into a corner, while Peggy pursed up her
lips with a defiant expression, and Susey grew suddenly very meek and
blushing-faced.

Mrs. Pimble's eyes followed her husband. "You crawling, contemptible
thing," she exclaimed, "have you grown so stupid and insensate that you
cannot comprehend a simple question? Again I demand of you, what does
this mean?" and she pointed her finger sternly to the broken fragments
which strewed the floor.

"Susey said you told her she might have the castors and tea things, and
that I was to give them to her," said Mr. Pimble, without lifting his
eyes from the hearth he was contemplating.

"Very well, I did tell Susey she might have the articles mentioned to
amuse herself with, and it was fitting she should have them, or I had
not given my consent. But why do I find them dashed to the floor and
rendered useless? Answer me that, you slip-shod sloven?"

With an awful air, Mrs. Pimble folded her arms and looked down upon her
husband, who cringed away before her ireful presence, and said, "Susey
dropped the waiter."

"Dropped the waiter!" repeated Mrs. Pimble, her anger freshening to a
gale. "And could you not prevent her from dropping it? or had you no
more sense than to load an avalanche of china on the arms of a little
child?"

"She took the waiter from me," said Pimble, in a dogged tone, his eyes
still studying the tiles in the hearth.

Mrs. Pimble darted upon him one glance of the most withering contempt,
and taking Susey by the hand led her from the room, without deigning to
utter another word.

Soon as she disappeared Peggy set about clearing up the broken crockery,
and Mr. Pimble crawled off into the recess of a window where the sun
might shine on his shivering frame, and at length fell asleep. He had
hardly concluded his first dream of fragmentary tea-cups, ere a violent
pulling at his draggling coat-tails, which hung over the sill, caused
him to wake with a start, when he beheld Peggy Nonce at his side,
saying, "Dilly Danforth was come to see him." With a hopeless yawn he
crawled out of his sunny nook, and, turning his dull, sleepy eyes toward
the disturber of his quiet, demanded, in a surly tone, "what she wanted
with him."

"I have come to pay my quarter's rent," said Mrs. Danforth, placing a
bank note in his grimy hand. He closed his skinny fingers on it with an
eager clutch, and looked in the woman's face with a vague expression of
wonder.

"I am glad to get a shilling from you at last," said he, fondling the
note; "but this will not quite pay up the last quarter's rent. There's
about half a dollar more my due. You can come and do the spring
cleaning, and then I'll call matters square between us."

"I thought ten dollars was the sum specified, for three months' rent,"
remarked Mrs. Danforth.

"It was," returned he, "but you know you had the pig's feet and ears at
the fall butchering, and Mrs. Pimble gave you a petticoat in the winter.
These things would amount to more than fifty cents, if I put their real
value upon them; but as you have cashed this payment, I will, as I said
before, call all square with a few days' light work from you."

Mrs. Danforth drew another note from her pocket, and, placing it in his
hand, asked him to satisfy himself of his claims upon her, as she could
not favor him with her services as he desired, having work of her own to
do. Mr. Pimble looked still more astonished when he felt the second note
between his fingers. He put it in his pocket and returned her a silver
piece. She took it, and, turning to depart, said, "I shall not want your
house any longer, Mr. Pimble. I am going to move away to-day."

"Where are you going?" he asked, opening his sleepy eyes very wide.

"I have hired a room in Deacon Allen's cottage," answered she. "It is
near the seminary, where William attends school."

Mr. Pimble continued to stare on the woman, with distended eyeballs.

"You have been a very peaceable tenant," he said at length; "I would
rent my house cheaper, if you would remain another year."

"I have made my arrangements to move, and would prefer to do so,"
returned Mrs. Danforth, bidding him good-morning.

He looked very much disconcerted after she was gone, and muttered, he
"did not see what had set Dilly Danforth up so, all at once."

CHAPTER XLVII.

"'Tis silent all!--but on my ear
The well-remembered echoes thrill;
I hear a voice I should not hear,
A voice that now might well be still.
Yet oft my doubting soul 't will shake;
Even slumber owns its gentle tone,
Till consciousness will vainly wake,
To listen though the dream be flown."

"O, it is ever the wildest storms that lull to the sweetest calms!"
wrote Florence Howard, on a new-turned leaf of her well-treasured
journal. "My heart is singing grateful anthems to the all-wise Father,
who stretched forth his friendly arm to save me from the 'snare of the
spoiler.' As I sit here to-night, with a young May moon gleaming down
through the far depths of liquid ether, like a sweet, angel face of pity
and love, how dimly o'er my memory come the stormy scenes of sin and
passion which conspired to render terrible the winter that has passed
away! My soul, long torn and rent by grief and wild-contending emotions,
grows tranquil in the calm and quiet which have succeeded the furious
storm, and settles to peaceful rest.

"It is enough for me to know my father's wrongs are righted and I am
still his own, and only his. The clown, from whose polluting arms kind
Providence rescued me, has never shown his hateful form among us since
the day that witnessed the disclosure of his father's baseness. His vile
mother has also disappeared, in search of her son. Great Heaven! to
think I was so near becoming the wife of that woman's child of sin; and,
but for that strange, wild hermit, who lifted the black curls that
veiled the monster who sought our destruction, O, where had we all been
now? And was it not a striking instance of Jehovah's righteous
retributions, that the man who was once the betrothed of my aunt, should
be the instrument selected by Heaven to disclose the villany and
wickedness of the wretch who seduced her affections by artful
falsehoods, and made her his wife, but to steal her fortune and blast
her life? Poor, dear aunt Mary! I mourn not nor pine to find she is not
my mother, for surely the fragile Edith, so rudely shocked by the
disclosures of her father's crimes, would have drooped and died, had she
not found a mother's fond affection to comfort and sustain her in the
trial hour. It is a beautiful sight, this reuenion of parent and child.
How trustingly they cling to each other, and how their wan aspects
brighten in the warmth of their mutual affection! But I think there's a
love in the mother's heart yet stronger than that she feels for her
child. I watch her emotional excitement when the name of the hermit is
mentioned, and I think that early devotion has survived all
disappointments and afflictions. What a romantic thing it would be for
them to meet in the evening of life and renew the promises of their
youth! But it may not be, for the conviction steals coldly o'er me that
my dear aunt has been too deeply tried to long survive her sorrows. Even
the joy of discovering a daughter may not save her from the tomb which
opens to receive her weary form in its oblivious arms. Father looks on
the thin, wasted form, following Edith closely as her shadow, with a
fond, earnest gaze fixed on the gentle girl, and turns to hide a tear.
O, would the blow might be a while averted! All is so bright and sunny
around us now. I even try to nurse the belief that I _could_ not be
happier, but my heart will rebel against the specious falsehood. Still,
still it wears the fetters love so enduringly fastened. Still I remember
that double dawn which rose on me as I stood on the cloud-veiled summit
of old, hoary-headed Mount Washington.

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