CHAPTER VIII.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 208, 25 June 1887, Page 3

CHAPTER VIII.

THE OLD FERRY-MAN'S STORY. A weary lot was thine, fair maid, A weary lot was thine ; To pluck the thorn thy brow to braid, And press the rue for wine, Fair maid ! And press the rue for wine ! Sir Walter Soott.

" Listen to me, my little True," said the old ferry-man, solemnly. " I told you, did I not, that every great crißis in my long life had, by some unaccountable coincidence, occurred on the fifteenth day of July, and at intervals of fifteen years ?" "Yes dear, grand." " I told you, also, that last night, being the fifteenth of July, and just fifteen years from the last important event in my life, was another critical epoch, and that, by inference drawn from all precedents, as well as by the foreboding of my own prophetic soul, I expected another crisis." " You did indeed, grandpa." " My child, the crisis came, even darker, more terrible, more agonising than I could have foreshadowed." •' Oh, grandpa ! Now Heaven forbid that any evil snould have coin* 3 o you, or

should threaten you in your old age," said Gertrude, in a tono of the deepest sympathy. " Amen, my child, for your sake even more than my own. But that you may j understand what has happened, my clear, I mueb refer to my own early life," "Yes, tell mo about yourself, clear grandpa, I have so longed to know all about you," sho murmured, as she took his hand in her own and caressed it tenderly— "people tell so many tales of you, grand ; but all are good— none eviV " And what do they say of the old man, my little True ? Ido nob myself know, for ! tho subject of a neighborhood gossip is often last to hear it. But I can guess they call me a lunatic, among other things, my dear," said Gabriel Haddon, with a smile. Gertrude was pleased to see even so grave a smile on his sad lips, and she hastened to reply : " No, no; I never heard of anyone saying that of you, clear grand. Some people call you a saint, and some a prophet, and some a seer. Many speak vaguely of a great misfortune that you suffered in your young days and a great saci'ifice that you made, and others describe how, in one short week, by the black magic of sorrow, the young ferryman's golden hair had turned to silver. Oh, clear, dear grandpa, could this have boon true ?'* " Kofc very far from true, my child." " Tell mo all about it, dear grandpa, Open your heart to mo for once. Not in idle curiosity I ask you, dearest, but iv affection and sympathy, ''murmured Gertrude, raising her tender daik eyes to the old man's face. " I know it, my little True. I know your faithful heart as I know my o^n. Child, 1 have lived all my life in this cottage, working in the garden and plying ferry-boats. You may judge that my career has not been a very eventful one ; indeed.it has been a very monotonous one, with the exception of three striking episodes." " Ah, but those episodes !"' murmured Gertrude. " Yes, those episodes S" continued the ferry-man. " Well, my child, to begin with my natal day, 1 was burn on the fifteenth of July, sixty yeais ago " " Yes, of course, I knew that, clear,"' said the maiden, quietly. "I was the sole surviving child of a family of seven boys and girls. I giew to be a very studious lad, fonder ot books than of the garden or the fery-boats, and my father, pleased at the turn my mind was taking, sent me to the village-school at Wildeville, and bought me all the books 1 wanted. This accounts, Geitrude, for my being a little better read than borne of my wealthier neighbours," added the old man, with a slight smile. "Grandpa, everybody about here thinks you are very learned." "I know enough to feel sure that I am very ignorant, my child. But to resume. On the fifteenth of July, and my fifteenth birthday, the first great sorrow of my life fell on me. My father, a hale, vigorous man, of fifty-five, was drowned while ci'os^ng the ferry in a storm, between midnight and morning, thus leaving my mother to the care of his only son. " On that dark day, my dear Gertrude, I really seemed to ha\e passed abruptly from boyhood to manhood, with no interval of youth between. On that day I laid aside my student's habits, and took up the burden of life for good. On that eventful day, also, I found a pure white lily," added tho old man, breathing tlic last woids in low, tender, sorrowful tones. " A white lily?'' echoed Gertrude, softly. " Lily Vale, the granddaughter of General Slaughter, and the heiress of Hill Top Hall and Forest Lodere. She had lost both her parents in her earliest infancy, and was then the ward as well as the heiress of her grandfather. She was just six years old when I first saw her, and the loveliest vision of beauty that ever blessed the eyes of man. She came down to the ferry that day, like a little princess, attended by her retinue - her governess, her maid and her footman — to have a row on the river before the sun should grow too hot. For the morning after the storm was very calm and pleasant." ' ' Was she so very beautiful, dear grand ? What was she like ?" " The loveliest blonde, with the fairest complexion, the clearest blue eyes, and the lightest, brightest hair you ever saw ; it was silver in tho sunshine and golden in the shade. This radiant hair was a halo of flory around her face and form. This eavenly vision of a child, clothed in white raiment, and adorned with wild flowers she had gathered on her way, came that day into the dark house of death, bringing light and life with her. She did not see the gloom at first ; she ran to me so joyously, saying : " ' Are you the ferry-man ? Grand-pa says, will you please get the boat and take us for a row on the river this morning ? It is my birthday, and I am to have a party this evening and have all the little girls and bqys. Will you come, too, and dance ? "As she asked this with pretty little lady-like grace, she looked at me and smiled ; but when she saw my grieved face and tearful eyes— for I had been weeping like any woman over my dead father- her tone changed, and she said : " ' Oh, what is the matter ? DonH cry \ Oh, don't cry V And she put her little fair hands up and drew my face down to hers, and laid her soft cheek against mine. •* I had always loved children, and the tenderness of this lovely little one touched my heart, and opened again the fountain of my boyish tears, and I wept freely, but, somehow, not so bitterly as before. The child was greatly distressed. She gave herself up to the task of comforting me. She smoothed my hair and patted my face with her tiny fair hands. She pressed her rosebud lips to mine. She drew my head down upon her sweet, little, pitying bosom. There wa3 no fear, no bash! ulness, no selfconsciousness. Instead, all pity, tenderness, and an angel's freedom in self-for-getfulness. " Meanwhile, from the very beginning of this little interview her attendants had followed her into this room, and had been silently beckoned by my afflicted mother and conducted into the chamber which is now my own, but where then lay tne remains of my poor drowned father. She showed them the body, and told them of the fatal accident as a sufficient reasou why her son could not go out in the pleasureboat that day. " When they returned to this room the governess told her little charge that they must all go back home. " My docile little angel made no opposition, uttered no complaint, but kissed me ' again, and begged me not to cry any more ! and she would come to see me very often and bring me all her books to read, and her white kitten, and her canary bird, if they could do me any good. So she left me, still Wondering at the cause of my distress, for I could not then bring myself to tell that bright little creature anything about death, especially as I understood death at that period of my life. " Two days after this we laid the body of my father in tho old Red Sandstone churchyard, where you have seen his grave. "I succeeded to the little property and to the management of the ferry. My mother was legally and nominally my nardian; but I w&swy'&W-Wid practically

hers, for I ran the business as well as my father had clone in his best clays. " My little angel kont her word with me, She camo down every fine clay to have a row with me on the river. She was accompanied by her govorness, and sometimes by her maid, and always attended by her footman. I cannot tell you how strangely and deeply she bectmc attached to me or how religiously I adored her, even from her childhood. " She grew in goodness and beauty as she grew in stature- and strength. She became at once the idol and the slave of her grandfather, who cherished and guarded her with a jealous, watchful lovo and pride that made him both her worshipper and her tyrant. He would not part with her even to s,eud her to a boarding-school, and as there was no day-school suitable to her within reach, ho procured teachers to come and live in the house. At one time, I know, there was, besides her accomplished governess, a professor of ancient and modem languages and a professor of vocal and instrumental music, to whom he paid large salaries for the monopoly of their piofessional service. "If Lily was the idol of that selfish and furious old man, what was she to m ? What icas she ? Ah, what was she not ? I cannot tell jou -no words could tell you. If L should exhaust all terms of endearment, I should fail to express the faintest idea of all that she was to me - the delight of my eyes, the star of my fate, the angel of my life. .She was all these, and infinitely more than these. She wa« the eternal life of my eternal life in the Lord. She ira^, and is all this to me. " You will womler, my child, how that haughty, domineering old man should ever have permitted Ms cherished idol to come down and take hti c&llj * ecrcation in my ferry-boat. My deui, , was because his piide was so towering, and so superhuman, that he looked down upon all men beneath him in the lank as scarcely human. He regarded the young ferryman, when he deigned, think of him at all, as a useful brute, who could row her ferry-boat, but as no whit bettor or higher or nearer to her than the pony that drew her phaeton. Thus there never came a day when General Slaughter discovered that his granddaughter was growing up to be a young lady, and that it was time to put a stop to her childish intimacy with the young ferry-man. He would have thought as soon of putting a .stop to her acquaintance with the other beast of bin don — her saddle-horse ! "Neither did my mother, with all her woman's wit, ever discover the oneness of the love and life between us. She, too, wa=? affected by the traditions of the neighbomhood, the prejudices of rank. She looked up to Gencial Slaughter's heiress as so immeasurably elevated above me that no £>entiment warmer than gracious condescension, on her part, and grateful respect on mine, could over draw us nearer to each othe'\ "My Lily's attendants were blinded by the same delusion. We were too infinitely far apai t in all respects of rank, training, education, wealth, for prudence to take cognisance of our intimacy. "Don't you see, my dear, that all the parties concerned, except our two selves, considered only oxternal circumstances, and left our own souls out of the question ? A fatal mistake they afterwards considered it ; but it really could have made no difference, except in thi.s short caithly life, if they had separated us from the first ; for we were, and we are, one for ever. "I cannot tell you at what period we learned that Arc lived for each other. Ido not know when our mutual affection began, if indeed it ever had a beginning in this lower sphere, when the child and the youth met for the first time as if they had been life-long friends. Our love developed, haimoniously and beautifully. We understood each other so thoroughly, we sympathised with each other so perfectly, that there never seemed a moment when it was necessary for either to speak to the other of love. "Years passed; the child developed into a young woman ; her governess married and went to another home ; her professional masters soon after left the neighbourhood ; even her maid ceased to follow her in her walks as when she was a little girl. All her habits were changed but one her daily visits to the Fcny. She rode down every day, attended by Herschel, her whitehaired groom. " The old man, who could not bear the water, would wait on the shore, in charge of the horses, while wo rode alone together for many an hour on the river. Indeed.our rows were only subject to be shortened by one circumstance. If the ferry-horn blew on either side of the river it was my bounden duty to obey its summons ; so on such occasions I always rowed my Lily back to the ferry-house, and proceeded to wait on my customer. " I was of good, marriageable age, and my mother was in the decline of life, and having no other children, she was anxious that 1 should select a young girl from my own rank in society, and make her my wife. She wanted female companionship at homo, and female help in the management of her household affairs. When this came to my Lily's cars it grieved her spirit for several days, until one morning, while we were out rowing together, she said to me : " Gabriel, will you not tell your mother V " ' Tell her what, Lily V I asked, in some surprise. "'About ourselves. Do you not., think she ought to know ?' '• ' Lily, Ido not understand you, dear !' " * Your mother told me on Monday that as I had as much influence over you as a queen over a subject, she wished that I would persuade you to marry and settle. She said that you could marry any girl of your own rank in the neighbourhood. She said that she had often told you so herself. Now, ought we not to tell her ?' " ' Dearest, dearest Lily, what ought we to tell her V 11 « Why, about ourselves. Tell her that we belong to each other and neither of us would ever think of marrying anybody else. It would be so great a sin and would so ruin our live 3.' " I could have fallen at her feet and wor- ! shipped her for the sweetness, the purity, the self-foigetfulness and the devotion revealed in her words j but I answered very calmly : i " ' May I tell her that, dearest Lily V " ' Yes, if you please. Do you ndt think she ought to know it ? Tell her you are waiting for me until I shall be twenty-one, and my own mistress, when you will marry mo. Tell her you cannot marry until that time, because until then I belong to my grandfather, and you cannot take me without his leave, which we are both sure he would never give.' " ' My own White Lily, I will tell her all.' " Gertrude, this was the first occasion upon which either of us ever spoke of marriage, and then we spoko of it as of something that had been understood and settled between us years before. Ido not think another word was exchanged botweon us on that or any other subject, as long as we remained on the river. Indeed, it often happened that we sat together for hours in satisfied silence, scai'coly exchanging a word. I took her back at sunset, and she went homo as l^ual, attended by her aged J3MMO— (£3

1 ' That; evening, after tea, when my mother and myself wero alone together, and as she, as usual, commenced to speak to me of the expediency of my immediate marriage, I took the opportunity of telling her about my long tacit engagement to Lily Vale. "My poor mother ! she thought had taken leave of my senses. At first she could not speak for consternation. Then she told me 1 was raving mad to think of such an imposfcil.lv.' thing ; that if General Slaughter had the faintest suspicion of my crazy presumption he would shoot me down like a mad dog whenever and wherever ho a\ ould find me. She implored me to promise her I never to see or speak to Lily Vale again. " I could not promise that ; but 1 did tell her that Lily and I intended to wait until Lily .should be twenty-one years old, and her own mistress, before we should talk further of marriage. " 'That is four years off yet,' said my mother, exultingly. 'In that time you and your young lady will have recovered your right senses and the old man will have died,' she added. "My dear mother was mistaken. Four years passed, and neither I nor my young lady had recovered our right senses, for the .simple reason that we had never lost them ; no)' had the old man died. "I had,however, improved the interval by improving myself. I had, as I told you, a passionate love of learning, and spent all my spare money in the pin chase of books and my spai'e moments in their perusal ; but from the hour in which I had nist met) my little ana el 1 was inspired to a greater diligence in self-education ; and from the day on which she promised, as soon a& she should become of a#e. to be my wife, C was possessed with a Durning zeal to make myself in all respects worthy to be her husband. I spared no expense or labour to effect this object. I could not enter college, but I studied most diligently at home. "So three happy years and moie than half of the fourth pab&ed away in pcifect peace. "Time went on till the first week in April, in the fourth spring, when an Ea-ter party assembled at Hill Top Hall. This party consisted of about a dozen ladies and gentlemen, and they had come to stay borne weeks. " It seems that it was the admiring and respectful attention paii by the gentlomen. of the company to the young lady of the house that first arou&ed Ueneial Slaughter to the cont>ciou&2iess that his grand-child had giown up to be a young woman, of full marriageable age, whose eligible establishment in life vns quite desirable. "Among the gue&ts of the house was a ceitain Captain Dulany, a cavaliy ofiicer of handsome person and culthafced mind. He ■was also, by the death of his elder brother the feole heir to one of the largest estates in the valley. In age, personal graced, wealth, rank and, birth, he was considered an equal and most eligible match for the lo\ely heiress of Hill Top Hall, however unacceptable as a husband he might be to Lily Vale. "He would willingly have wooed the young maiden, but she had sensitiveness enough to perceive his> intentions ft om the very fii-so, and delicate tact sufficient, without wounding his self-love, to pre\ ent his too near nppioach to her. In this manner she sought to save him from the mortification of a refusal. He was, however, too much in earnest to be baflled in this w ay. He sought an interview with General Slaughter, and formally proposed for the hand of the heiress. " The general, ilatteied by this apparent deference to his authoiity, graciously favouied the suitor, and directed his gianddaughter to accept Captain Dulany a^ her betrothed husband. "Then Lily, from a sense of honour, no less than fiom the urgent necessity, spoke outfieely. She told her grandfather that she could not marry Captain Dulanj*, because she could never love him as a husband, even if her heart and hand had not long been pledged to some one clt>e. "The cunning despot acted with consummate self-control and diplomacy. He concealed his astonishment and indignation, under a mask of mildness and moderation, and asked her to tell him who that; somebody else might be, and whether he was not young Coombes, or Forbes, or Perry, naming several other youths of her acquaintance in the neighbourhood. But when .she shook her head and smiled, and told him her betrothed was not one of these, but was the young ferry-man, Gabriel Haddon, his ill-suppressed indigna-| tion burst forth in violence ; his fury knew no bounds. The abuse my delicate Lily had to bear from that ruthless tyrant beggars all description. He treated her with a brutality that would have been cruel even to the post rebellious of criminals in our State prisons ; and that \\\b little less than the massacre of the sen.-itive maiden exposed to it. Oh !my blue-eyed child ! All this passed long, long ago, and you have been comforted these many years. Yet, when T recall your martyrdom now, my heart breaks and bleeds afresh. "He beat her, Gertrude ! The savage monster beat that delicate child ! Dragged her by the hair of her head to the door of her own chamber, and threw her in with such violence that she fell heavilly down on the floor. There he locked her in and left her, stunned and insensible and without help ; and he went down stairs cursing and swearing that ' That should teach her how to disgrace her family by keeping company with low-lived ferry-men !" The servants who heard him storming through the house that morning quickly got out of his way, and huddled together to ask each other, in hurried whisper?, what their young lady could have done to throw their old master into such a furious passion. "Meanwhile, through all that terrible day and night, my Lily,a close prisoner, lay where she had been hurled, broken, bruised, unconscious, and uncared for, on the floor of her own bed-chamber." [To be Continued.]