第11章

"But fly, ye fleeting hours, I beg ye fly, "And bring the time when Anna seeks her friend; "Haste--Oh haste, or Edward sure must die."Arrive--and quickly Edward's sorrows end."I know you will think with me, that these lines are beautiful, and merely a faint image of his manly heart.In the course of our ride, during which he did nothing but converse on your beauty and merit, he gave me a detailed narrative of his life.It was long, but I can do no less than favour you with an abridgment of it.Edward Stanley was early left an orphan: no father's guardian eye directed his footsteps; no mother's fostering care cherished his infancy.His estate was princely, and his family noble, being a wronged branch of an English potentate.During his early youth he had to contend against the machinations of a malignant uncle, who would have robbed him of his large possessions, and left him in black despair, to have eaten the bread of penury.His courage and understanding, however, conquered this difficulty, and at the age of fourteen he was quietly admitted to an university.Here he continued peacefully to wander amid the academic bowers, until the blast of war rung in his ears, and called him to the field of honour.Edward was ever foremost in the hour of danger.It was his fate to meet the enemy often, and as often did "he pluck honour from the pale- fac'd moon." He fought at Chippewa--bled at the side of the gallant Lawrence-and nearly laid down his life on the ensanguined plains of Marengo.But it would be a fruitless task to include all the scenes of his danger and his glory.Thanks to the kind fates which shield the lives of the brave, he yet lives to adore my Julia.That you may be as happy as you deserve, and happier than your heart- stricken friend, is the constant prayer of your ANNA.""P.S.Write me soon, and make my very best respects to your excellent aunt.It was laughable enough that Charles Weston should be afraid of a flash of lightning.I mentioned it to Antonio, who cried, while manly indignation clouded his brow, 'chill penury repressed his noble rage, and froze the genial current of the soul.' However, say nothing to Charles about it, I charge you."{Highlands = the Hudson Highlands, a mountainous region in Putnamand Dutchess Counties, through which the Hudson River passes in a deep and picturesque gorge; Eolus = God of the winds; Boreas = God of the North wind; Seneca = one of the Finger Lakes in central New York State; Grecian king = both the Senecas of antiquity, the rhetorician (54 BC-39 AD) and his son the philosopher/statesman (4 BC-65 AD), were, of course, Romans--in any case, Lake Seneca is named after the Seneca nation of the Iroquois Indians; Park-Place = already in 1816 a fashionable street in lower Manhattan; Chippewa = an American army defeated the British at Chippewa, in Canada near Niagara Falls, on July 5, 1814; Lawrence = Captain James ("Don't give up the ship!") Lawrence (1781- 1813) of theU.S.Frigate Chesapeake was killed on June 1, 1813, as his ship was captured by H.M.S.Shannon outside Boston harbor; Marengo = battle won by Napoleon against the Austrians on June 14, 1800--"Antonio's" military career was truly an amazing one!; pluck honor....= slightly misquoted from Shakespeare, "King Henry IV, Part I," Act I, Scene 3, line 202; chill penury....= slightly misquoted from Thomas Gray, "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" verse 13}

Julia fairly gasped for breath as she read this epistle: her very soul was entranced by the song.Whatever of seeming contradiction there might be in the letter of her friend, her active mind soon reconciled.She was now really beloved, and in a manner most grateful to her heart--by the sole power of sympathy and congenial feelings.Whatever might be the adoration of Edward Stanley, it was more than equalled by the admiration of this amiable girl.Her very soul seemed to her to be devoted to his worship; she thought of him constantly, and pictured out his various distresses and dangers; she wept at his sufferings, and rejoiced in his prosperity--and all this in the short space of one hour.Julia was yet in the midst of this tumult of feeling, when another letter was placed in her hands, and on opening it she read as follows:

"Dear Julia,

"I should have remembered my promise, and come out and spent a week with you, had not one of Mary's little boys been quite sick; of course I went to her until he recovered.But if you will ask aunt Margaret to send for me, I will come tomorrow with great pleasure, for I am sure you mustfind it solitary, now Miss Miller has left you.Tell aunt to send by the servant a list of such books as she wants from Goodrich's, and I will get them for her, or indeed any thing else that I can do for her or you.Give my love to aunt, and tell her that, knowing her eyes are beginning to fail, I have worked her a cap, which I shall bring with me.Mamma desires her love to you both, and believe me to be affectionately your cousin, KATHERINE EMMERSON."This was well enough; but as it was merely a letter of business, one perusal, and that a somewhat hasty one, was sufficient.Julia loved its writer more than she suspected herself, but there was nothing in her manner or character that seemed calculated to excite strong emotion.In short, all her excellences were so evident that nothing was left dependent on innate evidence; and our heroine seldom dwelt with pleasure on any character that did not give a scope to her imagination.In whatever light she viewed the conduct or disposition of her cousin, she was met by obstinate facts that admitted of no cavil nor of any exaggeration.