Kentucky Civil War News
|
This Site:
|
OCTOBER 19, 1861.] HARPER'S WEEKLY. 671 (Previous Page) tesselated and in triangular patterns, similar to those I had remarked in the chimney-piece. The room in the pavilion was large, furnished with old worm-eaten tables and settles. " It was not only here that Sir Philip studied, but sometimes in the room above," said the steward. " How do you get to the room above? Oh, I see ; a staircase in the angle." I ascended the stairs with some caution, for they were crooked and decayed ; and on entering the room above, comprehended at once why Sir Philip had favored it. The walls were glazed all round, and on three sides commanded a magnificent prospect, for which I was wholly unprepared : the fourth side brought in full view the mausoleum, terminating the vista cut through the evergreens. In this room was a large telescope. A railed balcony extended from the windows, which reached the floors ; and on stepping into the balcony, I saw that a winding stair led from the balcony to a platform on the top of the pavilion—perhaps once used as an observatory by Forman himself. "The gentleman who was here today was very much pleased with this look-out, Sir," said the housekeeper. "Who would not be?" said I. "I suppose Sir Philip has a taste for astronomy." "I dare say, Sir," said the steward, looking grave ; "he likes most out-of-the-way things." The position of the sun now warned me that my time pressed, and I should have to ride fast to reach my new patient at the hour appointed. I therefore hastened back to my horse, and spurred on, wondering whether, in that chain of association which so subtly links our pursuits in manhood to our impressions in childhood, it was the Latin inscription on the chimney-piece that had originally biased Sir Philip Derval's literary taste toward the mystic jargon of the books I had glanced at. CHAPTER XXIX. I DID not see Margrave the following day, but the next morning, a little after sunrise, he walked into my study, as was his ordinary habit. "So you know something about Sir Philip Derval ?" said I. " What sort of a man is he ?" "Hateful !" cried Margrave; and then checking himself, burst out into his merry laugh. "Just like my exaggerations ! I am not acquainted with any thing to his prejudice. I came across his track once or twice in the East. Travelers are always apt to be jealous of each other." "You are a strange compound of cynicism and credulity. But I should have fancied that you and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits, when I found among his favorite books Van Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhaps you, too, study Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?" " Astrologers? No ! They deal with the future! I live for the day, only I wish the day never had a morrow !" "Have you not, then, that vague desire for the something beyond ; that not unhappy, but grand discontent with the limits of the immediate present, from which man takes his passion for improvement and progress, and from which some sentimental philosophers have deduced an argument in favor of his destined immortality ?" "Elm 1" said Margrave, with as vacant a stare as that of a peasant whom one addressed in Hebrew. " What farrago of words is this ? I do not comprehend you." "With your natural abilities," I asked, with interest, "do you never feel a desire for fame?" "Fame ! Certainly not. I can not even understand it !" "Well, then, would you have no pleasure in the thought that you had rendered a service to humanity ?" Margrave looked bewildered. After a moment's pause he took from the table a piece of bread that chanced to be there, opened the window, and threw the crumbs into the lane. The sparrows gathered round the crumbs. "Now," said Margrave, "the sparrows come to that dull pavement for the bread that recruits their lives in this world ; do you believe that one sparrow would be silly enough to fly to a housetop for the sake of some benefit to other sparrows, or to be chirruped about after he was dead? I care for science as the sparrow cares for bread ; it may help me to something good for my own life, and as for fame and humanity, I care for them as the sparrow cares for the general interest and posthumous approbation of sparrows !" " Margrave ! there is one thing in you that perplexes me more than all else—human puzzle as you are—in your many eccentricities and self-contradictions." " What is that one thing most perplexing?" "'This; that in your enjoyment of nature you have all the freshness of a child, but when you speak of man and his objects in the world you talk in the vein of some worn-out and hoary cynic. At such times, should I close my eyes, I should say to myself, ' What weary old man is venting his spleen against the ambition which has failed, and the love which has forsaken him?' Outwardly the very personation of youth, and reveling like a butterfly in the warmth of the sun and the tints of the herbage, how have you none of the golden passions of the young? their bright dreams of some impossible love—their sublime enthusiasm for some unattainable glory ? The sentiment you have just clothed in your parable of the sparrows is too mean and too gloomy to be genuine at your age. Misanthropy is among the dismal fallacies of graybeards. No man, till man's energies leave him, can divorce himself from the bonds of our social kind." " Our kind-your kind, possibly ! But I—" He swept his hand over his brow, and resumed, in strange, absent, and wistful accents: "I wonder what it is that is wanting here, and of which at moments I have a dim reminiscence." Again he paused, and gazing on me, said, with more appearance of friendly interest than I had ever before remarked on his countenance, "You are not looking well. Despite your great physical strength, you suffer like your own sickly patients." "True ! I suffer at this moment, but not from bodily pain." " You have some cause of mental disquietude." "Who in this world has not ?" " I never have." "Because you own you have never loved; and certainly you never seem to care for any one but yourself; and in yourself you find an unbroken sunny holiday—high spirits, youth, health, beauty, wealth. Happy boy!" At that moment my heart was heavy within me. Margrave resumed : "Among the secrets which your knowledge places at the command of your art, what would you give for one which would enable you to defy and deride a rival where you place your affections, which could lock to yourself and imperiously control the will of the being whom you desire to fascinate by an influence paramount, transcendent ?" "Love has that secret," said I, "and love alone." "A power stronger than love can suspend, can change, love itself. But if love be the object or dream of your life, love is the rosy associate of youth and beauty. Beauty soon fades, youth soon departs. What if in nature were means by which beauty and youth can be fixed into blooming duration—means that can arrest the course, nay, repair the effects, of time on the elements that make up the human frame!" " Silly boy ! Have the Rosencrucians bequeathed to you a prescription for the elixir of life ?" "If I had the prescription I should not ask your aid to discover its ingredients." "And is it on the hope of that notable discovery you have studied chemistry, electricity, and magnetism ? Again I say, Silly boy !" Margrave did not heed my reply. His face was overcast, gloomy, troubled. "That the vital principle is a gas," said he, abruptly, "I am fully convinced. Can that gas be the one which combines caloric with oxygen ?" " Phosoxygen ? Sir Humphry Davy demonstrates it not to be caloric, as Lavoisier supposed, but light in combustion with oxygen, and he suggests, not indeed that it is the vital principle itself, but the pabulum of life to organic beings."* "Does he ?" said Margrave, his face clearing up. "Possibly, possibly then, here we approach the great secret of secrets. Look you, Allen Fenwick, I promise to secure to you unfailing security from all the jealous fears that now torture your heart; if you care for that fame which to me is not worth the scent of a flower, the balm of a breeze. I will impart to you a knowledge that, in the hands of ambition, would dwarf into commonplace the boasted wonders of recognized science. I will do all this, if, in return, but for one month you will give yourself up to my guidance in whatever experiments I ask, no matter how wild they may seem to you." "My dear Margrave, I reject your bribes as I would reject the moon and the stars that a child might offer to me in exchange for a toy. But I may give the child its toy for nothing, and I may test your experiments for nothing some day when I have leisure." I did not hear Margrave's answer, for at that moment my servant entered wth letters. Lilian's hand ! Tremblingly, breathlessly, I broke the seal. Such a loving, bright, happy letter ; so sweet in its gentle chiding of my wrongful fears. It was implied rather than said that Ashleigh Sumner had proposed, been refused, had left the house. Lilian and her mother were coming back ; in a few days we should meet. In this letter were inclosed a few lines from Mrs. Ashleigh. She was more explicit as to my rival than Lilian had been. If no allusion to his attentions had been made to me before, it was from a delicate consideration for myself. Mrs. Ashleigh said that "the young man had heard from L -of our engagement—disbelieved it; " but, as Mrs. Poyntz had so shrewdly predicted, hurried at once to the avowal of his own attachment, the offer of his own hand. On Lilian's refusal his pride had been deeply mortified. He had gone away manifestly in more anger than sorrow. Lady Delafield, dear Margaret Poyntz's aunt, had been most kind in trying to soothe Lady Haughton's disappointment, which was rudely expressed—so rudely, added Mrs. Ashleigh, "that it gives us an excuse to leave sooner than had been proposed, which I am very glad of. Lady Delafield feels much for Mr. Sumner; has invited him to visit her at a place she has near Worthing: she leaves to-morrow in order to receive him; promises to reconcile him to our rejection, which, as he was my poor Gilbert's heir, and was very friendly at first, would be a great relief to my mind. Lilian is well, and so happy at the thoughts of coming back." When I lifted my eyes from these letters I was as a new man, and the earth seemed a new earth. I felt as if I had realized Margrave's idle dreams—that love could never chill, youth never fade. " You care for no secrets of mine at this moment," said Margrave, abruptly. "Secrets," I murmured "none now are worth knowing. I am loved—I am loved." "I bide my time," said Margrave; and as my
* See Sir Humphry Davy on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light. eyes met his, I saw there a look I had never seen in those eyes before—sinister, wrathful, menacing. He turned away, went out through the sash door of the study ; and as he passed toward the fields under the luxuriant chestnut-trees, I heard his musical, barbaric chant—the song by which the serpent-charmer charms the serpent—sweet, so sweet, the very birds on the boughs hushed their carol as if to listen. THE WAR IN KENTUCKY.WE continue our series of illustrations of the war in Kentucky with a picture of the ARRIVAL OF THE FORTY-NINTH OHIO AT LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, on page 668 ; and another of GENERAL SHERMAN'S HEAD-QUARTERS at Lebanon Junction, on the railroad south of Louisville, on page 667: both from sketches by our correspondent, Mr. Henry Mosier. A correspondent of the Tribune thus writes of the camp: The States of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois have sent many regiments and parts of regiments to the United States encampment south of this city, on the railroad. I have not been able to preserve any regular estimate of the number, having been absent part of time time. But I can scarcely be far wrong in saying that there are 12,000 to 15,000 men under command of General Sherman, including Home Guards. The force may exceed my estimate. The reception of the Forty-Ninth Ohio at Louisville is thus described in the Louisville Journal: A detachment of Ohio troops, under the command of Colonel Gibson, passed through the city this morning on their way to the seat of war on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. They paraded our streets, and their appearance was warmly greeted by the Union men and women of Louisville. They paid their compliments to General Anderson at the Louisville Hotel, who appeared on the balcony, and, in a few feeling and eloquent remarks, thanked them for the compliment and welcomed them to Kentucky. He told them that they had come at a time when Kentucky needed their services, and that every true Kentuckian would properly and truly appreciate their motives in coming among us. The response of Colonel Gibson was most touching. He alluded to the gallant manner in which Kentucky had come to the rescue of the frontiers of Ohio in former days, and said that Ohio designs now to show that she had not forgotten those services, but was here with her blood to protect the constitutional rights of her neighbors. Both General Anderson and Colonel Gibson were warmly applauded at the conclusion of every sentence. The detachment took up the line of march for the Nashville depot, from which point they embarked for General Sherman's head-quarters. OUR MAP OF KENTUCKY,THE southwestern portion of Kentucky and the western portion of Tennessee (of which we publish a Map on page 662) are mountainous; the middle regions are an elevated table-land, through which the rivers run in deep channels, with high precipitous banks. In Kentucky this table-land breaks abruptly at the head-waters of the Salt River and its tributary forks, which drain the plain westward. to the Ohio River. The rise from this plain to the central table-land is about 200 feet, where the Louisville and Nashville Railroad ascends Muldraugh Hill. At this point is a railroad tunnel 1200 feet in length. The railroad bridge over Rolling Fork was burned by the rebels. The Union forces, however, gained possession of the summit, and now hold this strong natural position, which is the key to the fertile and wealthy region of Northern Kentucky. The Union and Rebel camps are designated on the Map.
SKIRMISHING ACROSS THE
|
|
||
|
Site Copyright 2003-2018 Son of the South. For Questions or comments about this collection, contact: paul@sonofthesouth.net |
|
Are you Scared and Confused? Read My Snake Story, a story of hope and encouragement, to help you face your fears. |