Sea and Shore | Page 2

see its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of
memory. There is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness
like this as that which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining
eye takes in its last look of a familiar scene as it might do the
ever-to-be-averted face of friendship.
The refrain of Poe's even then celebrated poem was ringing through my
brain on that sultry August day, I remember, like a tolling bell, as I
looked my last on the gloomy abode of the La Vignes; but I only said
aloud, in answer to the sympathizing glances of one who sat before
me--the gentle and quiet Marion--who had suddenly determined to
accompany me to Savannah, nerved with unwonted impulse:
"Madame de Staël was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the
saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to
her ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but
to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my
soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I look on
Beauseincourt!"
"You cannot tell, Miss Harz, what time may do; you may still return to
visit us in our retirement, you and Captain Wentworth," urged Marion,
gently, leaning forward, as she spoke, to take my hand in hers.
"'Time the tomb-builder'" fell from my lips ere they were aware. "That
is a grand thought--one that I saw lately in a Western poem, the
New-Year's address of a young editor of Kentucky called Prentice. Is it
not splendid, Marion?"

"Very awful, rather," she responded, with a faint shudder. "Time the
'comforter,' let us say, instead, Miss Miriam--Time the 'veil-spreader.'"
"Why, Marion, you are quite poetic to-day, quite Greek! That is a sweet
and tender saying of yours, and I shall garner it. I stand reproved, my
child. All honor to Time, the _merciful_, whether he builds palaces or
tombs! but none the less do I reverence my young poet for that
stupendous utterance of his soul. I shall watch the flight of that eaglet
of the West with interest from this hour! May he aspire!"
"Not if he is a Jackson Democrat?" broke in the usually gentle Alice
Durand, fired with a ready defiance of all heterodox policy, common, if
not peculiar, to that region.
"Oh, but he is not; he is a good Whig instead--a Clay man, as we call
such."
"Not a Calhoun man, though, I suppose, so I would not give a snap of
my fingers for him or his poetry! It is very natural, for you, Miss Harz,"
in a somewhat deprecating tone, "to praise your partisans. I would not
have you neutral if I could, it is so contemptible."
A little of the good doctor's spirit there, under all that exterior of
meekness and modesty, I saw at a glance, and liked her none the less
for it, if truth were told. And now we were nearing the gate, with its
gray-stone pillars, on one of which, that from which the marble ball had
rolled, to hide in the grass beneath, perchance, until the end of all, I had
seen the joyous figure of Walter La Vigne so lightly poised on the
occasion of my last exodus from Beauseincourt. A moment's pause, and
the difficult, disused bolts that had once exasperated the patience of
Colonel La Vigne were drawn asunder, and the clanking gates clashed
behind us as we emerged from the shadowed domain into the glare and
dust of the high-road.
Here Major Favraud, accompanied by Duganne, awaited us, seated in
state in his lofty, stylish swung gig (with his tiny tiger behind), drawn
tandem-wise by his high-stepping and peerless blooded bays, Castor
and Pollux. Brothers, like the twins of Leda, they had been bred in the
blue-grass region of Kentucky and the vicinity of Ashland, and were
worthy of their ancient pedigree, their perfect training and classic
names, the last bestowed when he first became their owner, by Major
Favraud, who, with a touch of the whip or a turn of the hand, controlled
them to subjection, fiery coursers although they were!

Dr. Durand, too, with his spacious and flame-lined gig, accompanied
by his son, a lad of sixteen, awaited our arrival, and served to swell the
cavalcade that wound slowly down the dusty road, with its sandy
surface and red-clay substratum. A few young gentlemen on horseback
completed our _cortége_.
Major Favraud sat holding his ribbons gracefully in one gauntleted
hand, while he uncovered his head with the other, bowing suavely in
his knightly fashion, as he said:
"Come drive with me, Miss Harz, for a while, and let the young folks
take it together."
"Oh, no, Major Favraud; you must excuse me, indeed! I