THE DREAM.
THE Session is not over, although it is the first week in August. It cannot last many days longer. There will be no House to-night, and William has taken a long ride into the country. He takes the road by which his pretty wife and little girl are returning. That gentle lady, with their one little daughter, has passed the day before with a friend, some eight-and-twenty miles out of town.
William surprises the beloved travellers at the little wayside posting-house where they change their horses. Here he kisses his treasures, and they have their quiet little chat, and she thanks him with all her heart.
And then she says, as they get into the carriage, smiling in William’s face, for he has mounted his horse, and he smiles down upon her, answering: —
“You know your promise? You are to go your own pace and your own way home, and you are not to ride by the carriage, where you’ll be covered with dust; and we’ll meet there, and talk ever so much.”
“My good little darling is always thinking of other people,” he answered, fondly.
“And you must — you’ll promise?”
“I will — I do,” he laughed.
“Well then, you must ride on before.”
“Imperious little woman, I obey!”
And he smiled and nodded, and rode on.
There was nothing in particular to trouble William Haworth; but why was there, that day, the melancholy of a foreboding at his heart? As he reached the old Forest of Epping he had slacked his space. Sunset was approaching. The gold and red were in the western clouds, and the amber-and-green tints of evening in the sky, across which, with a drowsy cawing — the only sounds upon the air — the crows were sailing homeward to their cover.
Just in that transitory light, “a fairer sadder scene” he could not have fancied. He dismounted, and led his horse along the edge of the road, hoping that the carriage might overtake him, as it soon did. And so a ten minutes’ ramble was agreed on; William leading his horse, his pretty wife engrossed with the laughing care of the child, that was toddling and running and tumbling on the grass, as it gravely prattled to itself, or laughed, with arms extended, and hands half-open.
There is a melancholy in the distant future as well as in the retrospect, and, looking at our children, the long vista opens, and “the summers that we shall not see” are in our thoughts.
William held his horse by the rein, on a little eminence among the old trees. Some gipsy tents showed in the foreground, at the edge of the thicker forest, and, saddened by association, the sight stole him slowly away into dreamland. And as he stood there in his reverie, among the faint sounds, over the soft lights of sunset, a sweet voice floated from the distant wood.
What is that? Like a voice from the land of spirits, the old song trembles on the evening air: —
“The hawthorn-tree
Is dear to me,
The elver-stone likewise;
The lonely air
That lingers there,
And thought that never dies.
“In evening glow
The may will blow,
The stone a shadow cast;
And stone and tree
A bield will be,
As in the summers past.
“And words as dear
Will others hear
Beneath the hawthorn-tree,
In leafy May,
At fall of day,
Where I no more shall be.”
The long note died into silence, and came no more. With a strange sense of unreality, and a wild tremor of his heart, the Squire of Haworth walked down the gentle slope, over the ferns and daisies, toward the tents. At the door of one of them he saw his wife talking with a gipsy-woman. He followed, and leaving his horse’s bridle in the hand of a man who was smoking his pipe, leaning against a cart whose shafts were in the air, he stooped, and entered the soft shadow of the wattled tent Very neat, singular, even pretty, were its arrangements, and a gleam of the evening sun, touching it, lighted a portion of the interior with a softened glow. As in a dream, William took his little child’s hand in his, and stood, and “hearing heard not and seeing saw not,” for it seemed all a vision.
“Send Euphan here,” said the gipsy matron, stooping, and speaking through the tent-door.
“And now I’ll tell your fortune, please, ma’am,” said this grave polite matron, with the large dark eyes of her race. His wife smiled over her shoulder as she submitted her hand to the soothsayer, and in a minute more the low measured talk began, and in another minute Euphan was in the tent. A chill passed over William, as if he would have fainted. He saw her plainly as she saw him. Ten years had passed, and yet she was as beautiful, he thought, as ever, except for the sadness in her face — that was a change.
He felt that she knew him, but she showed no sign — not the least — of recognition. This perfect self-command and presence of mind, in a people by nature so fiery and impetuous, is a strange evidence of the dangers through which the race has passed. She came, and said some words he did not hear, and took his hand, and in her low sweet voice told his fortune thus: —
“You have married a very good lady, that is highborn and beautiful, and loves you well. You are very honorable, and you will be always true to her, and love er to the end of your life. You have one little child, and it will be beautiful, and good to you. And you have had sorrow, and you have passed it by, and it is over now. And you are kind to the poor, and would like to make them happy; and there’s many a one that likes you, and wishes you well. And though you are so kind, you are very brave, and would fight for them you like, and spare none, nor your own blood. And there’s some that were ungrateful, and some you thought ungrateful that never were so, but loved you well; for the good you do is not lost, though you may forget it. And there once was one that you thought ungrateful, and that person is single still, and will die single; and she thinks still of that one that Was best to her of all the world, and so will to the end of her years, though she’ll never see you more, nor you her.”
And gently she let go his hand, and she laid hers caressingly on the head of the child, and looked on the golden locks, that resembled her father’s in his earlier youth, and in the true deep-blue eyes, that also were like his — and die smiled. He saw the even little teeth, as in the old times at Haworth.
“And will ye keep this, darling, from the gipsy girl?” And very gently she placed a curious little old-fashioned locket, that she took from her breast, tied with a red ribbon, in the child’s hand.
And the little girl turns up her large blue gentle eyes wonderingly, and with some awe, looking into the wild and tender smile of the gipsy.
And Euphan caught her up softly, and folded the child in her arms, and kissed it over and over again, smiling; and as she sat it down, a voice called to William, and a gentle hand touched him, and he turned to his smiling wife.
“Yes, darling,” he said, laying his hand upon her arm, as people do who want a moment’s pause; and when he turned again, Euphan was gone, and he never heard her voice again, and never saw her more.
The last beams of the setting sun lighted them on their returning path, and William Haworth rode slowly home, and in the twilight, communing with his own thoughts, wept bitterly.
THE END