Mosses from an old manse
“Reuben, Reuben,” said he, faintly; and Reuben returned and knelt down
by the dying man.
“Raise me, and let me lean against the rock,” was his last request. “My
face will be turned towards home, and I shall see you a moment longer
as you pass among the trees.”
Reuben, having made the desired alteration in his companion’s posture,
again began his solitary pilgrimage. He walked more hastily at first
than was consistent with his strength; for a sort of guilty feeling,
which sometimes torments men in their most justifiable acts, caused him
to seek concealment from Malvin’s eyes; but after he had trodden far
upon the rustling forest leaves he crept back, impelled by a wild and
painful curiosity, and, sheltered by the earthy roots of an uptorn
tree, gazed earnestly at the desolate man. The morning sun was
unclouded, and the trees and shrubs imbibed the sweet air of the month
of May; yet there seemed a gloom on Nature’s face, as if she
sympathized with mortal pain and sorrow. Roger Malvin’s hands were
uplifted in a fervent prayer, some of the words of which stole through
the stillness of the woods and entered Reuben’s heart, torturing it
with an unutterable pang. They were the broken accents of a petition
for his own happiness and that of Dorcas; and, as the youth listened,
conscience, or something in its similitude, pleaded strongly with him
to return and lie down again by the rock. He felt how hard was the doom
of the kind and generous being whom he had deserted in his extremity.
Death would come like the slow approach of a corpse, stealing gradually
towards him through the forest, and showing its ghastly and motionless
features from behind a nearer and yet a nearer tree. But such must have
been Reuben’s own fate had he tarried another sunset; and who shall
impute blame to him if he shrink from so useless a sacrifice? As he
gave a parting look, a breeze waved the little banner upon the sapling
oak and reminded Reuben of his vow.
Many circumstances combined to retard the wounded traveller in his way
to the frontiers. On the second day the clouds, gathering densely over
the sky, precluded the possibility of regulating his course by the
position of the sun; and he knew not but that every effort of his
almost exhausted strength was removing him farther from the home he
sought. His scanty sustenance was supplied by the berries and other
spontaneous products of the forest. Herds of deer, it is true,
sometimes bounded past him, and partridges frequently whirred up before
his footsteps; but his ammunition had been expended in the fight, and
he had no means of slaying them. His wounds, irritated by the constant
exertion in which lay the only hope of life, wore away his strength and
at intervals confused his reason. But, even in the wanderings of
intellect, Reuben’s young heart clung strongly to existence; and it was
only through absolute incapacity of motion that he at last sank down
beneath a tree, compelled there to await death.
In this situation he was discovered by a party who, upon the first
intelligence of the fight, had been despatched to the relief of the
survivors. They conveyed him to the nearest settlement, which chanced
to be that of his own residence.
Dorcas, in the simplicity of the olden time, watched by the bedside of
her wounded lover, and administered all those comforts that are in the
sole gift of woman’s heart and hand. During several days Reuben’s
recollection strayed drowsily among the perils and hardships through
which he had passed, and he was incapable of returning definite answers
to the inquiries with which many were eager to harass him. No authentic
particulars of the battle had yet been circulated; nor could mothers,
wives, and children tell whether their loved ones were detained by
captivity or by the stronger chain of death. Dorcas nourished her
apprehensions in silence till one afternoon when Reuben awoke from an
unquiet sleep, and seemed to recognize her more perfectly than at any
previous time. She saw that his intellect had become composed, and she
could no longer restrain her filial anxiety.
“My father, Reuben?” she began; but the change in her lover’s
countenance made her pause.
The youth shrank as if with a bitter pain, and the blood gushed vividly
into his wan and hollow cheeks. His first impulse was to cover his
face; but, apparently with a desperate effort, he half raised himself
and spoke vehemently, defending himself against an imaginary
accusation.
“Your father was sore wounded in the battle, Dorcas; and he bade me not
burden myself with him, but only to lead him to the lakeside, that he
might quench his thirst and die. But I would not desert the old man in
his extremity, and, though bleeding myself, I supported him; I gave him
half my strength, and led him away with me. For three days we journeyed
on together, and your father was sustained beyond my hopes, but,
awaking at sunrise on the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted;
he was unable to proceed; his life had ebbed away fast; and—”
“He died!” exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.
Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of life
had hurried him away before her father’s fate was decided. He spoke
not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and exhaustion, sank
back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept when her fears were
thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been long anticipated, was on
that account the less violent.
“You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?” was the
question by which her filial piety manifested itself.
“My hands were weak; but I did what I could,” replied the youth in a
smothered tone. “There stands a noble tombstone above his head; and I
would to Heaven I slept as soundly as he!”
Dorcas, perceiving the wildness of his latter words, inquired no
further at the time; but her heart found ease in the thought that Roger
Malvin had not lacked such funeral rites as it was possible to bestow.
The tale of Reuben’s courage and fidelity lost nothing when she
communicated it to her friends; and the poor youth, tottering from his
sick chamber to breathe the sunny air, experienced from every tongue
the miserable and humiliating torture of unmerited praise. All
acknowledged that he might worthily demand the hand of the fair maiden
to whose father he had been “faithful unto death;” and, as my tale is
not of love, it shall suffice to say that in the space of a few months
Reuben became the husband of Dorcas Malvin. During the marriage
ceremony the bride was covered with blushes, but the bridegroom’s face
was pale.
There was now in the breast of Reuben Bourne an incommunicable
thought—something which he was to conceal most heedfully from her whom
he most loved and trusted. He regretted, deeply and bitterly, the moral
cowardice that had restrained his words when he was about to disclose
the truth to Dorcas; but pride, the fear of losing her affection, the
dread of universal scorn, forbade him to rectify this falsehood. He
felt that for leaving Roger Malvin he deserved no censure. His
presence, the gratuitous sacrifice of his own life, would have added
only another and a needless agony to the last moments of the dying man;
but concealment had imparted to a justifiable act much of the secret
effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him that he had done
right, experienced in no small degree the mental horrors which punish
the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. By a certain association of
ideas, he at times almost imagined himself a murderer. For years, also,
a thought would occasionally recur, which, though he perceived all its
folly and extravagance, he had not power to banish from his mind. It
was a haunting and torturing fancy that his father-in-law was yet
sitting at the foot of the rock, on the withered forest leaves, alive,
and awaiting his pledged assistance. These mental deceptions, however,
came and went, nor did he ever mistake them for realities: but in the
calmest and clearest moods of his mind he was conscious that he had a
deep vow unredeemed, and that an unburied corpse was calling to him out
of the wilderness. Yet such was the consequence of his prevarication
that he could not obey the call. It was now too late to require the
assistance of Roger Malvin’s friends in performing his long-deferred
sepulture; and superstitious fears, of which none were more susceptible
than the people of the outward settlements, forbade Reuben to go alone.
Neither did he know where in the pathless and illimitable forest to
seek that smooth and lettered rock at the base of which the body lay:
his remembrance of every portion of his travel thence was indistinct,
and the latter part had left no impression upon his mind. There was,
however, a continual impulse, a voice audible only to himself,
commanding him to go forth and redeem his vow; and he had a strange
impression that, were he to make the trial, he would be led straight to
Malvin’s bones. But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was
disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his
spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart; and he was
transformed into a sad and downcast yet irritable man.
In the course of a few years after their marriage changes began to be
visible in the external prosperity of Reuben and Dorcas. The only
riches of the former had been his stout heart and strong arm; but the
latter, her father’s sole heiress, had made her husband master of a
farm, under older cultivation, larger, and better stocked than most of
the frontier establishments. Reuben Bourne, however, was a neglectful
husbandman; and, while the lands of the other settlers became annually
more fruitful, his deteriorated in the same proportion. The
discouragements to agriculture were greatly lessened by the cessation
of Indian war, during which men held the plough in one hand and the
musket in the other, and were fortunate if the products of their
dangerous labor were not destroyed, either in the field or in the barn,
by the savage enemy. But Reuben did not profit by the altered condition
of the country; nor can it be denied that his intervals of industrious
attention to his affairs were but scantily rewarded with success. The
irritability by which he had recently become distinguished was another
cause of his declining prosperity, as it occasioned frequent quarrels
in his unavoidable intercourse with the neighboring settlers. The
results of these were innumerable lawsuits; for the people of New
England, in the earliest stages and wildest circumstances of the
country, adopted, whenever attainable, the legal mode of deciding their
differences. To be brief, the world did not go well with Reuben Bourne;
and, though not till many years after his marriage, he was finally a
ruined man, with but one remaining expedient against the evil fate that
had pursued him. He was to throw sunlight into some deep recess of the
forest, and seek subsistence from the virgin bosom of the wilderness.
The only child of Reuben and Dorcas was a son, now arrived at the age
of fifteen years, beautiful in youth, and giving promise of a glorious
manhood. He was peculiarly qualified for, and already began to excel
in, the wild accomplishments of frontier life. His foot was fleet, his
aim true, his apprehension quick, his heart glad and high; and all who
anticipated the return of Indian war spoke of Cyrus Bourne as a future
leader in the land. The boy was loved by his father with a deep and
silent strength, as if whatever was good and happy in his own nature
had been transferred to his child, carrying his affections with it.
Even Dorcas, though loving and beloved, was far less dear to him; for
Reuben’s secret thoughts and insulated emotions had gradually made him