The Bride Of Fort Edward: Founded On An Incident Of The Revolution Part 4

_Off_. Do not forget the lodge as you return. A little hut of logs just in the edge of the woods, but Siganaw knows it well.

[_Exit the Soldier_.

(_The call in the thicket above is repeated, and another young officer enters the glen_.)

_2nd Off_. Hillo, Maitland! These woods yield fairies,--come this way.

_1st Off_. For G.o.d's sake, Andre! (_motioning silence_.) Are you mad?

_Andre_. Well, who are they?

_Mait_. _Who_? Have you forgotten that we are on the enemy's ground?

Soldiers from the fort, no doubt. They have crossed that opening twice since we stood here.

_Andre_. Well, let them cross twice more. I would run the risk of a year's captivity, at least, for one such glimpse. Nay, come, she will be gone.

_Mait_. Stay,--not yet. There, again!

_Andre_. Such a villainous scratching as I got in that pa.s.s just now. It must have cost the rogues an infinite deal of pains though. A regular, handsome sword-cut is nothing to a dozen of these same ragged scratches, that a man can't swear about. After all, Captain Maitland, these cunning Yankees understand the game. They will keep out of our way, slyly enough, until we are starved, and scratched, and fretted down to their proportions, meanwhile they league the very trees against us.

_Mait_. As to that, we have made some leagues ourselves, I think, quite as hard to be defended, Sir.

_Andre_. It may be so. Should we not be at the river by this?

_Mait_. Sunset was the time appointed. We are as safe here, till then.

_Andre_. 'Tis a little temple of beauty you have lighted on, in truth.

These pretty singers overhead, seem to have no guess at our hostile errand. Methinks their peaceful warble makes too soft a welcome for such warlike comers. Hark! [_Whistling_.] That's American. One might win bloodless laurels here. Will you stand a moment just as you are, Maitland;--'tis the very thing. There's a little s.p.a.ce in my unfinished picture, and with that _a la Kemble_ mien, you were a fitting mate for this young Dian here, (_taking a pencil sketch from his portfolio_,)--the beauty-breathing, ay, beauty-breathing, it's no poetry;--for the lonesome little glen smiled to its darkest nook with her presence.

_Mait_. What are you talking of, Andre? Fairies and G.o.ddesses!--What next?

_Andre_. I am glad you grow a little curious at last. Why I say, and your own eyes may make it good if you will, that just down in this glen below here, not a hundred rods hence, there sits, or stands, or did some fifteen minutes since, some creature of these woods, I suppose it is; what else could it be? Well, well, I'll call no names, since they offend you, Sir; but this I'll say, a young cheek and smiling lip it had, whate'er it was, and round and snowy arm, and dimpled hand, that lay ungloved on her sylvan robe, and eyes--I tell you plainly, they lighted all the glen.

_Mait_. Ha? A lady?--there? Are you in earnest?

_Andre_. A lady, well you would call her so perchance. Such ladies used to spring from the fairy nut-sh.e.l.ls, in the old time, when the kings'

son lacked a bride; and if this were Windsor forest that stretches about us here, I might fancy, perchance, some royal one had wandered out, to cool the day's glow in her cheek, and nurse her love-dream; but here, in this untrodden wilderness, unless your ladies here spring up like flowers, or drop down on invisible pinions from above, how, in the name of reason, came she here?

_Mait_. On the invisible pinions of thine own lady-loving fancy; none otherwise, trust me.

_Andre_. Come, come,--see for yourself. On my word I was a little startled though, as my eye first lighted on her, suddenly, in that lonesome spot. There she sat, so bright and still, like some creature of the leaves and waters, such as the old Greeks fabled, that my first thought was to wors.h.i.+p her; my next--of you, but I could not leave the spot until I had sketched this; I stood unseen, within a yard of her; for I could see her soft breath stirring the while. See, the scene itself was a picture,--the dark glen, the lonesome little lodge, on the very margin of the fairy lake--here she sat, motionless as marble; this bunch of roses had dropped from her listless hand, and you would have thought some tragedy of ancient sorrow, were pa.s.sing before her, in the invisible element, with such a fixed and lofty sadness she gazed into it. But of course, of course, it is nothing to _your_ eye; for me, it will serve to bring the whole out at my leisure. Indeed, the air, I think, I have caught a little as it is.

_Mait_. A little--you may say it. She is there, is she?--sorrowful; well, what is't to me?

_Andre_. What do you say?--There?--Yes, I left her there at least. Come, come. I'll show you one will teach you to unlearn this fixed contempt of gentle woman. Come.

_Mait_. Let go, if you please, Sir. She who gave me my first lesson in that art, is scarcely the one to bid me now unlearn it, and I want no new teaching as yet, thank Heaven. Will you come? We have loitered here long enough, I think.

_Andre_. What, under the blue scope--what the devil ails you, Maitland?

_Mait_. Nothing, nothing. This much I'll say to you,--_that lady is my wife_.

_Andre_. Nonsense!

_Mait_. There lacked--three days, I think it was, three whole days, to the time when the law would have given her that name; but for all that, was she mine, and is; Heaven and earth cannot undo it.

_Andre_. Are you in earnest? Why, are we not here in the very heart of a most savage wilderness, where never foot of man trod before,--unless you call these wild red creatures men?

_Mait_. You talk wildly; that path, followed a few rods further, would have brought you out within sight of her mother's door.

_Andre_. Ha! you have been in this wilderness then, ere now?

_Mait_. Have you forgotten the fortune I wasted once on a summer's seat, some few miles up, on the lake above? These Yankees did me the grace to burn it, just as the war broke out.

_Andre_. Ay, ay, that was _here_. I had forgotten the whereabouts. Those blackened ruins we pa.s.sed last evening, perchance;--and the lady--my wood-nymph, what of her?

_Mait_. Captain Andre, I beg your pardon, Sir. That sketch of yours reminded me, by chance perhaps, of one with whom some painful pa.s.sages of my life are linked; and I said, in my haste, what were better left unsaid. Do me the favor not to remind me that I have done so.

_Andre_. So--so! And I am to know nothing more of this smiling apparition; nay, not so much as to speak her name? Consider, Maitland, I am your friend it is true; but, prithee, consider the human in me. Give her a local habitation, or at least a name.

_Mait_. I have told you already that the lady you speak of resides not far hence. On the border of these woods you may see her home. I may point it out to you securely, some few days hence;--to-night, unless you would find yourself in the midst of the American army, this must content you.

_Andre_. A wild risk for a creature like that! Have these Americans no safer place to bestow their daughters than the fastnesses of this wilderness?

_Mait_. It would seem so. Yet it is her home. Wild as it looks here, from the top of that hill, where our men came out on the picket just now so suddenly, you will see as fair a picture of cultured life as e'er your eyes looked on. No English horizon frames a lovelier one.

_Andre_. _Here_? No!

_Mait_. Between that hill and the fort, there stretches a wide and beautiful plain, covered with orchards and meadows to the wood's edge; and here and there a gentle swell, crowned with trees, some patch of the old wilderness. The infant Hudson winds through it, circling in its deepest bend one little fairy isle, with woods enough for a single bower, and a beauty that fills and characterizes, to its remotest line, the varied landscape it centres; and far away in the east, this same azure mountain-chain we have traced so long, with its changeful light and shade, finishes the scene.

_Andre_. You should have been a painter, Maitland.

_Mait_. The first time I beheld it--one summer evening it was, from the woods on the hill's brow;--we were a hunting party, I had lost my way, and ere I knew it there I stood;--its waters lay glittering in the sunset light, and the window-panes of its quiet dwellings were flas.h.i.+ng like gold,--the old brown houses looked out through the trees like so many lighted palaces; and even the little hut of logs, nestling on the wood's edge, borrowed beauty from the hour. I was miles from home; but the setting sun could not warn me away from such a paradise, for so it seemed, set in that howling wilderness, and----

_Andre_. Prithee, go on. I listen.

_Mait_. I know not how it was, but as I wandered slowly down the shady road, for the first time in years of worldliness, the dream that had haunted my boyhood revived again. Do you know what I mean, Andre?--that dim yearning for lovelier beings and fairer places, whose ideals lie in the heaven-fitted mind, but not in the wilderness it wakes in; that mystery of our nature, that overlooked as it is, and trampled with unmeaning things so soon, hides, after all, the whole secret of this life's dark enigma.

_Andre_. But see,--our time is well-nigh gone,--this is philosophy--I would have heard a love tale.

_Mait_. It was then, that near me, suddenly I heard the voice that made this dull, real world, thenceforth a richer place for me than the gorgeous dream-land of childhood was of old.

_Andre_. Ay, ay--go on.

_Mait_. Andre, did you ever meet an eye, in which the intelligence of our nature idealized, as it were, the very poetry of human thought seemed to look forth?

_Andre_. One such.

_Mait_.--That reflected your whole being; nay, revealed from its mysterious depths, new consciousness, that yet seemed like a faint memory, the traces of some old and pleasant dream?