CHAPTER IV

Bacon and his companion having left O'Reily with the horses, now commenced descending an immense hill which formed one side of a dark and dismal looking glen. The tall pine trees with which the higher grounds were covered seemed to reach half way to the clouds. A cold midnight breeze swept through the damp and dewy foliage of the trees and shrubbery. The birds of night chimed mournfully and dismally in unison with the monotonous rustling of the leaves, and the rippling of a little brook just before them. When they had stepped across the stream, and cast their eyes up the face of the opposite hill, the rays of the moon suddenly broke through a fissure of the clouds, revealing to them rather the darkness around than any distinct traces of the path which they were to pursue. Bacon stood for an instant, and gazed intently upon a little spot of partially cleared ground half way to the summit, then gently drawing his companion to the same place where he stood, and pointing upwards, he said "Do you not perceive something moving yonder? It is he! you must now proceed alone!"

"Alone, Nathaniel? Impossible!"

"You must, Virginia; he will not admit more than one person at a time within his cell. Fear not there is no earthly danger; I will be within call. Rouse your drooping courage! the worst half of your undertaking is now accomplished."

"By far the worst half is yet to come, Nathaniel; you can form no conception of the awe with which I look upon that being! You forget that I have never seen more of him than I see now, notwithstanding you say that he is so much attached to me."

"It is strange, I confess Virginia, but it is nevertheless true."

"His affection, if it exists, must be the fruit of your representations as to some imaginary proficiency in my studies."

"Not at all; he seems to know every one in Jamestown, and all the circumstances connected with their history: but come, Virginia, we are losing precious time. Move on and fear nothing."

Clasping her hands, and internally summoning up all her resolution, she advanced with a sort of desperate determination. Having arrived within some forty yards of the spot before alluded to, the outlines of a gigantic figure could easily be discerned as his footfalls were distinctly heard moving restlessly to and fro on a sort of platform or level space, left by nature or formed by art, in the side of the hill. His head towered far above the stunted undergrowth, interspersed among the rugged outlines of the scene. And as he impatiently measured the narrow limits of this outer court to his castle, he seemed not unlike a chafed and hungry monarch of the forest when making the narrow rounds of his iron bound limits. Having gone thus far, she was sensible that it was nearly as bad to recede as go forward, and that if she retreated now upon the very eve of the fulfilment of all that Bacon had promised, her past anxieties would have been endured for nothing: she braced her nerves therefore, and endeavoured to subdue the overpowering terror which the distant view of this strange and mysterious man had excited. Summoning all her resolution for one desperate effort, she threw herself forward and fell at the feet of the huge mortal, who stood apparently astounded at the abrupt appearance of his unwonted and untimely visiter. When Virginia found courage enough to raise her lately closed eyes, she was not a little astonished to see him leaning against the stone walls of his cell, no less agitated than herself. He was apparently about sixty years of age, his hair slightly silvered, and his features worn and weatherbeaten, yet eminently handsome. His person was very remarkable, being about six feet and a half in height and perfectly proportioned. His dress conformed in some degree to the military fashions of the day, having however rather the appearance of undress than full uniform. The expression of his countenance was decidedly intellectual; and about the lower part of his face there were some indications of a disposition to sensuality, but tempered and controlled in no ordinary degree by some other fierce and controlling passion. His eye was wild and unsettled at times, and again assumed the mild serenity of the profound student. Altogether, his presence was intellectual and commanding in the highest degree.

As he stood against the wall of his cell quaking like an aspen, an indifferent observer would have been at a loss to determine which was the most agitated, he or his gentle visiter. Virginia noted with more than one furtive glance his strange and unexpected embarrassment, still however, preserving her humble and supplicating posture. At length, struggling with the emotions which unmanned him, muttering all the while broken sentences which fell strangely upon her ear, and among which she could distinguish repeated allusions to herself, and to events of long passed years, recalled as it appeared by some fancied resemblance traced by his excited imagination in her form and features. He approached the kneeling maiden, and taking her hand, he raised her from the ground, and said in a tone of kindness, "My wayward fancies frighten thee, my child; be not alarmed, however – there is nothing here to harm thee. My house is poor and cheerless, but such as it is, thou art welcome to its shelter, and to any services which I can render to thee. Come, my daughter, let us in from the damps of the night."

The cell of the Recluse was formed on three sides by stone walls without windows, as O'Reily had described them, the fourth being furnished by the side of the hill, and the roof an arch of masonry overgrown with moss, grass and weeds.¹

Pressing open the rude door, he entered, followed by Virginia. Near one corner of the room stood a common deal table, on which was placed a small iron lamp, and near to it a three legged stool of the rudest construction. These were the only articles of furniture of which the apartment could boast. The floor, which consisted of the earth, as nature had made it, was overgrown with weeds and bushes. "This," said he, with a bitter smile upon his countenance, "is my hall of audience! Here I receive my guests, with one solitary exception; thou shalt be another." Having thus spoken, he took the lamp from the table, and drawing aside some dried bushes which were piled against the side formed by the hill in apparent carelessness, he exhibited to her view the mouth of a cavern, not sufficient in height by several feet to admit his person in the erect position. "This," said he as he stooped to enter, "is not a house made with hands, and it is built upon a rock of ages. The rains may descend, floods may come, winds blow and beat upon it, but it falleth not. It is proper that thou shouldst see it, and such has long been my intention. I have much to say to thee, and doubtless thou hast something to communicate to me, or thou wouldst not have made this visit. But not a whisper of what thou mayst see or hear must ever pass thy lips, save to those I shall authorize thee to make partakers of thy knowledge. This is a condition which thou must impress upon thy mind." Stepping in a bent position within the mouth of the cavern, he moved forward and downward, motioning her to follow. They descended many rude and natural steps, which were imperfectly seen by the light of the lamp borne by her singular guide, the rays being often obscured by the bulk and great height of his person in the narrow passages of the cave, so that she was more than once compelled to grope her way by sliding her hand along the cold damp and dripping walls, and by slipping her feet over the uneven ground, without raising them in the act of stepping. Having completed the descent, she found herself in a long natural vestibule to the inner apartments. Her guide had gained rapidly upon her, so that when once more upon level ground, some thirty feet below the outer surface of the earth, he was almost out of sight. She would have cried out, had she not been restrained by a counteracting feeling, which placed her in a grievous dilemma between horror at the dismal place, and fear of the singular being who had undertaken to guide her through its recesses. Commending herself however to her Maker in mental prayer, and trusting in his protection the more confidently on account of the motive for her undertaking, she hastened forward so as with great exertions to keep within sight of the rising and sinking light of the lamp, and the devious windings of the cavern. The footfalls of her Herculean guide reëchoed along the damp and gloomy tunnels with an awful and dismal effect, amidst the grave-like stillness of the place. Occasionally flickering shadows were reflected against the walls, when the light turned suddenly round a projecting rock, affording to her imagination the most startling and frightful images. While her mind was combatting these unreal terrors, she was surprised by the tone of a deep hoarse voice abruptly rumbling through the high dark arches far above her head, with that reverberating sound peculiar to these secret places of the earth. But her amazement was still greater, when lifting her eyes in the direction of the lamp she beheld the Recluse standing upon a lofty but narrow ledge of rock, the lamp flickering and sinking every now and then so as to threaten total darkness. He was pointing with his finger, and directing her to a projecting and winding pathway by which she must ascend to the platform upon which he stood. This once gained, she had a complete view of the resting place of her mysterious guide.

Immediately fronting the platform was a natural doorway, about as high as her own head, leading into the inner chamber. From the high and vaulted arches hung thousands of the fantastic creations of hoary time, and from the centre of these a cord swung into the middle of the area, to which was suspended a burning lamp, the rays of which were brilliantly reflected from a thousand shining mirrors of nature's forming. In one corner she discovered, as they entered, several pieces of firearms, and against the wall on one side hung huge swords, long enough for two-handed weapons to ordinary mortals, together with Indian war clubs, moccasins, wampum, pipes, tomahawks, spears, arrows, and other implements of savage warfare. In another corner stood a rude bedstead, evidently constructed by the hands of its nightly occupant, a small table, two or three chairs, and a few culinary articles, – some the manufacture of the savages, and others the product of civilized ingenuity. By far the largest part of one side of the room was occupied by coarsely constructed shelves, bearing many volumes of the most venerable appearance. One of these was lying open upon the table, a pair of horn spectacles upon the page to mark the place where the owner had last been engaged. The very letters in which it was printed were entire strangers to the eyes of our heroine. Some thirty yards distant, in the remotest part of the room, a little furnace diffused a narrow circle of glowing light through its otherwise gloomy precincts. These completed the establishment, so far as the eye could discover its arrangement.

When he had led Virginia into the habitable part of this area, he placed a chair, and motioned for her to be seated, drawing a stool near the table at the same time for himself, and resting his head upon the palm of his hand. "I will not affect ignorance of thy name and person, my daughter, nor yet of thy errand here. The first I should most certainly have known, if I had not surmised the last. Alas! my child, thou wilt think no doubt that I speak in riddles when I tell thee that those features have been engraven upon the heart of one who has forsworn the world for many a long and irksome year. Thou mayest well look amazed, my poor bewildered child, but it is true! I cannot explain it to thee now, however; some day perhaps thou mayest know all. Oh, if thou couldst imagine what events must take place in this little isolated world around Jamestown, before the mysteries of which I speak can rightfully be made clear to thee, thou wouldst fall upon thy knees and pray that such disastrous knowledge might never come to thy understanding!"

As his eye rested from time to time, while he spoke, upon the features of the beautiful girl, he covered his face with his hands, and seemed for an instant to give way to an agitation similar to that which unnerved him at her first appearance on the platform. Occasionally too, when not speaking himself, he became profoundly abstracted for a moment, and his eye was wild and restless, and not a little alarming to his gentle visiter, as it ever and anon fell upon herself, and seemed to gather in her face the solution of some subtle doubt of his troubled mind. But observing that his glances, wild as they were, always became humanized and softened as they rested upon her face, she seized the first opportunity to complete the object of her journey, not well knowing how it might terminate, being herself ignorant of its especial object, and indeed of the very nature of the threatened danger.