"My own, my generous Edith--it was ever thus--you are always the n.o.ble and the true. Go, then--you are right--you must go alone. Relieve me from this sorrow if you can. I need not say to you, persuade her, if in your power; for much I doubt whether her prospects are altogether so good as she has represented them to me. So fine a creature must not be sacrificed."

Edith lost no time in proceeding to the dwelling and into the chamber of Lucy Munro. She regarded none of the objections of the old lady, the aunt of her she sought, who would have denied her entrance. Edith's was a spirit of the firmest mould--tenacious of its purpose, and influenced by no consideration which would have jostled with the intended good. She approached the sufferer, who lay half-conscious only on her couch. Lucy could not be mistaken as to the person of her visiter. The n.o.ble features, full of generous beauty and a warm spirit, breathing affection for all human things, and doubly expanded with benevolent sweetness when gazing down upon one needing and deserving of so much--all told her that the beloved and the betrothed of Ralph Colleton was before her. She looked but once; then, sighing deeply, turned her head upon the pillow, so as to shut out a presence so dangerously beautiful.

But Edith was a woman whose thoughts--having deeply examined the minute structure of her own heart--could now readily understand that of another which so nearly resembled it. She perceived the true course for adoption; and, bending gently over the despairing girl, she possessed herself of one of her hands, while her lips, with the most playful sweetness of manner, were fastened upon those of the sufferer. The speech of such an action was instantaneous in its effect.

"Oh, why are you here--why did you come?" was the murmured inquiry of the drooping maiden.

"To know you--to love you--to win you to love me, Lucy. I would be worthy of your love, dear girl, if only to be grateful. I know how worthy you are of all of mine. I have heard all."

"No! no! not all--not all, or you never would be here."

"It is for that very reason that I am here. I have discovered more than Ralph Colleton could report, and love you all the better, Lucy, as you can feel with me how worthy he is of the love of both."

A deep sigh escaped the lips of the lovely sufferer, and her face was again averted from the glance of her visiter. The latter pa.s.sed her arm under her neck, and, sitting on the bedside, drew Lucy's head to her bosom.

"Yes, Lucy, the woman has keener instincts than the man, and feels even where he fails to see. Do not wonder, therefore, that Edith Colleton knows more than her lover ever dreamed of. And now I come to entreat you to love _me_ for _his_ sake. You shall be my sister, Lucy, and in time you may come to love me for my own sake. My pleasant labor, Lucy, shall be to win your love--to force you to love me, whether you will or no. We can not alter things; can not change the courses of the stars; can not force nature to our purposes in the stubborn heart or the wilful fancy: and the wise method is to accommodate ourselves to the inevitable, and see if we can not extract an odor from the breeze no matter whence it blows. Now, I am an only child, Lucy. I have neither brother nor sister, and want a friend, and need a companion, one whom I can love--"

"You will have--have--your husband."

"Yes, Lucy, and as a husband! But I am not content. I must have _you_, also, Lucy."

"Oh, no, no! I can not--can not!"

"You _must_! I can not and will not go without you. Hear me. You have mortified poor Ralph very much. He swore to your uncle, in his dying moments--an awful moment--that you should be his sister--that you should enjoy his protection. His own desires--mine--my father's--all concur to make us resolute that Ralph shall keep his oath! And he must! and you must consent to an arrangement upon which we have set our hearts."

"To live with _him_--to see _him_ daily!" murmured the suffering girl.

"Ay, Lucy," answered the other boldly; "and to love him, and honor him, and sympathize with him in his needs, as a true, devoted woman and sister, so long as he shall prove worthy in your eyes and mine. I know that I am asking of you, Lucy, what I would ask of no ordinary woman. If I held you to be an ordinary woman, to whom we simply owe a debt of grat.i.tude, I should never dream to offer such an argument. But it is because you _do_ love him, that I wish you to abide with us; your love hallowed by its own fires, and purifying itself, as it will, by the exercise of your mind upon it."

The cheeks of Lucy flushed suddenly, but she said nothing. Edith stooped to her, and kissed her fondly; Then she spoke again, so tenderly, so gently, with such judicious pleading--appealing equally to the exquisite instincts of the loving woman and the thoughtful mind--that the suffering girl was touched.

But she struggled long. She was unwilling to be won. She was vexed that she was so weak: she was so weary of all struggle, and she needed sympathy and love so much!

How many various influences had Edith to combat! how many were there working in her favor! What a conflict was it all in the poor heart of the sorrowful and loving Lucy!

Edith was a skilful physician for the heart--skilful beyond her years.

Love was the great want of Lucy.

Edith soon persuaded her that she knew how to supply it. She was so solicitous, so watchful, so tender, so--

Suddenly the eyes of Lucy gushed with a volume of tears, and she buried her face in Edith's bosom; and she wept--how pa.s.sionately!--the sobbings of an infant succeeding to the more wild emotions of the soul, and placing her, like a docile and exhausted child, at the entire control of her companion, even as if she had been a mother.

"Do with me as you will, Edith, my sister."

There was really no argument, there were no reasons given, which could persuade any mind, having first resolved on the one purpose, to abandon it for the other. How many reasons had Lucy for being firm in the first resolution she had made!

But the ends of wisdom do not depend upon the reasons which enforce conviction. Nay, conviction itself, where the heart is concerned, is rarely to be moved by any efforts, however n.o.ble, of the simply reasoning faculty.

Shall we call them _arts_--the processes by which Edith Colleton had persuaded Lucy Munro to her purposes? No! it was the sweet nature, the gentle virtues, the loving tenderness, the warm sympathies, the delicate tact--these, superior to art and reason, were made evident to the suffering girl, in the long interview in which they were together; and her soul melted under their influence, and the stubborn will was subdued, and again she murmured lovingly--

"Do with me as you will, my sister."

CHAPTER XLII.

"LAST SCENE OF ALL."

There was no little stir in the village of Chestatee on the morning following that on which the scene narrated in the preceding chapter had taken place. It so happened that several of the worthy villagers had determined to remove upon that day; and Colonel Colleton and his family, consisting of his daughter, Lucy Munro, and his future son-in-law, having now no further reason for delay, had also chosen it as their day of departure for Carolina. Nor did the already named const.i.tute the sum total of the cavalcade setting out for that region. Carolina was about to receive an accession in the person of the sagacious pedler, who, in a previous conversation with both Colonel Colleton and Ralph, had made arrangements for future and large adventures in the way of trade--having determined, with the advice and a.s.sistance of his newly-acquired friends, to establish one of those wonders of various combinations, called a country store, among the good people of Sumter district. Under their direction, and hopeful of the Colleton patronage and influence, Bunce never troubled himself to dream of unprofitable speculations; but immediately drawing up letters for his brother and some other of his kinsmen engaged in the manufacture, in Connecticut, of one kind of _notion_ or other, he detailed his new designs, and furnished liberal orders for the articles required and deemed necessary for the wants of the free-handed backwoodsmen of the South. Lest our readers should lack any information on the subject of these wants, we shall narrate a brief dialogue between the younger Colleton and our worthy merchant, which took place but a few hours before their departure:--

"Well, Bunce, are you ready? We shall be off now in a couple of hours or so, and you must not keep us waiting. Pack up at once, man, and make yourself ready."

"I guess you're in a little bit of a small hurry, Master Colleton, 'cause, you see, you've some reason to be so. You hain't had so easy a spell on it, no how, and I don't wonder as how you're no little airnest to get off. Well, you won't have to wait for me. I've jest got through mending my little go-cart--though, to be sure, it don't look, no how, like the thing it was. The rigilators made awful sad work of the box and body, and, what with patching and piecing, there's no two eends on it alike."

"Well, you're ready, however, and we shall have no difficulty at the last hour?"

"None to speak on. Jared Bunce aint the chap for burning daylight; and whenever you're ready to say, 'Go,' he's gone. But, I say, Master Ralph, there's one little matter I'd like to look at."

"What's that? Be quick, now, for I've much to see to."

"Only a minute. Here, you see, is a letter I've jest writ to my brother, Ichabod Bunce, down to Meriden. He's a 'cute chap, and quite a Yankee, now, I tell you; and as I knows all his ways, I've got to keep a sharp look-out to see he don't come over me. Ah, Master Ralph, it's a hard thing to say one's own flesh and blood aint the thing, but the truth's the truth to be sure, and, though it does hurt in the telling, that's no reason it shouldn't be told."

"Certainly not!"

"Well, as I say, Ichabod Bunce is as close and 'cute in his dealings as any man in all Connecticut, and that's no little to say, I'm sartin.

He's got the trick, if anybody's got it, of knowing how to make your pocket his, and squaring all things coming in by double multiplication.

If he puts a shilling down, it's sure to stick to another; and if he picks one up, it never comes by itself--there's always sure to be two on 'em."

"A choice faculty for a tradesman."

"You've said it."

"Just the man for business, I take it."

"Jest so; you're right there, Master Colleton--there's no mistake about that. Well, as I tell'd you now, though he's my own brother, I have to keep a raal sharp look out over him in all our dealings. If he says two and two makes four, I sets to calkilate, for when he says so, I'm sure there's something wrong in the calkilation; and tho' to be sure I do know, when the thing stands by itself, that two and two does make four; yet, somehow, whenever he says it, I begin to think it not altogether so sartain. Ah, he's a main hand for trade, and there's no knowing when he'll come over you."

"But, Bunce, without making morals a party to this question, as you are in copartnership with your brother, you should rather rejoice that he possesses so happy a faculty; it certainly should not be a matter of regret with you."

"Why, how--you wouldn't have me to be a mean-spirited fellow, who would live all for money, and not care how it comes. I can't, sir--'tain't my way, I a.s.sure you. I do feel that I wasn't born to live nowhere except in the South; and so I thought when I wrote Ichabod Bunce my last letter. I told him every man on his own hook, now--for, you see, I couldn't stand his close-fisted contrivances no longer. He wanted me to work round the ring like himself, but I was quite too up-and-down for that, and so I squared off from him soon as I could. We never did agree when we were together, you see--'cause naterally, being brothers and partners, he couldn't shave me as he shaved other folks, and so, 'cause he couldn't by nature and partnership come 'cute over me, he was always grumbling, and for every yard of prints, he'd make out to send two yards of grunt and growls, and that was too much, you know, even for a pedler to stand; so we cut loose, and now as the people say on the river--every man paddle his own canoe."

"And you are now alone in the way of trade, and this store which you are about to establish is entirely on your own account?"

"Guess it is; and so, you see, I must pull with single oar up stream, and shan't quarrel with no friend that helps me now and then to send the boat ahead."

"Rely upon us, Bunce. You have done too much in my behalf to permit any of our family to forget your services. We shall do all that we can toward giving you a fair start in the stream, and it will not be often that you shall require a helping-hand in paddling your canoe."