The Bride Of Fort Edward: Founded On An Incident Of The Revolution Part 5

_Andre_. Methinks the heavenly revelation itself doth that.

_Mait_. Such an eye I saw then s.h.i.+ning on me. A clump of stately pines grew on the sloping road-side, and, looking into its dark embrasure, I beheld a group of merry children around a spring that gurgled out of the hillside there, and among them, there sat a young girl clad in white, her hat on the bank beside her, tying a wreath of wild flowers. That was all--that was all, Andre.

_Andre_. Well, she was beautiful, I suppose? Nay, if it was the damsel I met just now I need not ask.

_Mait_. Beautiful? Ay, they called her so. _Beauty_ I had seen before; but from that hour the sun shone with another light, and the very dust and stones of this dull earth were precious to me. _Beautiful?_ Nay, it was _she_. I knew her in an instant, the spirit of my being; she whose existence made the lovely whole, of which mine alone had been the worthless and despised fragment. There are a thousand women on the earth the artist might call as lovely,--show me another that I can wors.h.i.+p.

_Andre_. Wors.h.i.+p! This is Captain Everard Maitland. If I should shut my eyes now----

_Mait_. Well, go on; but I tell you, ne'ertheless, there have been times, even in this very spot,--we often wandered here when the day was dying as it is now,--here in her soft, breathing loveliness, she has stood beside me, when I have,--_wors.h.i.+pped?_--nay, feared her, in her holy beauty, as we two should an angel who should come through that glade to us now.

_Andre_. True it is, something of the Divinity there is in beauty, that, in its intenser forms, repels with all its winningness, until the lowliness of love looks through it. Well--you wors.h.i.+pped her.

_Mait_. Nay, you have told the rest. I would have wors.h.i.+pped; but one day there came a look from those beautiful eyes, when I met them suddenly, with a gaze that sought the mystery of their beauty,--a single look, and in an instant the drooping lash had buried it forever; but I knew, ere it fell, that the world of her young being was all mine already. Another life had been forever added unto mine; a whole creation; yet, like Eden's fairest, it but made another perfect; a new and purer _self_; and in it grew the heaven, and the fairy-land of my old dreams, lovelier than ever. You have loved yourself, Andre, else I should weary you.

_Andre_. Not a bit the more do I understand you though. You talk most lover-like; that's very clear, yet I must say I never saw the part worse played. Why, here's your ladye-love, this self-same idol of whom you rave, at this moment perchance, breathing within these woods,--years too--two mortal years it must be, since you have seen her face; and yet--you stand here yet, with folded arms;--a goodly lover, on my word!

_Mait_. Softly, Sir! you grace me with a t.i.tle to which I can lay no claim. Lover I _was_, may be. I am no lover now, not I--not I; you are right; I would not walk to that knoll's edge to see the lady, Sir.

_Andre_. Well, I must wait your leisure, I see.

_Mait_. And yet, the last time that we stood together here, her arm lay on mine, my promised wife. A few days more, and by _my_ name, all that loveliness had gone. There needed only that to make that tie holy in all eyes, the holiest which the universe held for us; but needed there that, or any thing to make it such in ours. Why, love lay in her eye, that evening, like religion, solemn and calm.--We should have smiled then at the thought of any thing in height or depth, ending, what through each instant seemed to breathe eternity from its own essence;--we were one, _one,_--that trite word makes no meaning in your ear.--to me, life's roses burst from it; music, suns.h.i.+ne, Araby, should image what it means; what it meant rather, for it is over.

_Andre_. What was it, Maitland?

_Mail_. Oh,--well,--she did not love me; that was all. So far my story has told the seeming only, but ere long the trial came, and then I found it _was_ seeming, in good sooth. The Rebellion had then long been maturing, as you know; but just then came the crisis. It was the one theme everywhere. Of course I took my king's part against these rebels, and at once I was outraged, wronged beyond all human bearing. Her mad brother, her's, _her's_ what a world of preciousness, Andre, that little word once enshrined for me; and still it seems like some broken vase, fragrant with what it held.

_Andre_. And ever with that name, a rosy flash Paints, for an instant, all my world. Nay, 'tis a little love-poem of my own; go on, Maitland.

_Mait_. This brother I say, quarrelled with me, though I had borne from him unresentingly, what from another would have seemed insult. We quarrelled at last, and the house was closed against me, or would have been had I sought access; for I walked sternly by its pleasant door that afternoon, though I remember now how the very roses that o'erhung the porch, the benched and shaded porch, that lovely lingering place, seemed to beckon me in. It was a breathless summer day, and the vine curled in the open window,--even now those lowly rooms make a brighter image of heaven to me than the jewelled walls that of old grew in the pageant of our sabbath dreams.

_Andre_. And thus you abandoned your love? A quarrel with her brother?

_Mait_. I never wronged her with the shadow of a doubt. Directly, that same day, I wrote to her to fix our meeting elsewhere, that we might renew our broken plans in some fitter shape for the altered times. She sent me a few lines of grave refusal, Sir; and the next letter was returned unopened.

_Andre_. 'Twas that brother! Pshaw! 'twas that brother, Maitland. I'll lay my life the lady saw no word of it.

_Mait_. I might have thought so too, perchance; but that same day,--the morning had brought the news from Boston,--I met her by chance, by the spring in the little grove where we first met; and--Good Heavens! she talked of brothers! Brothers, mother, sisters!--What was their right to mine? All that the round world holds, or the universe, what could it be to her?--that is, if she had loved me ever; which, past all doubt, she never did.

_Andre_. Maitland! Heavens, how this pa.s.sion blinds you! And you expected a gentle, timid girl like that to abandon all she loved. Nay, to make her home in the very camp, where death and ruin unto all she loved, was the watchword?

_Mait_. I beg your pardon, Sir. I looked for no such thing. I offered to renounce my hopes of honor here for her; a whole life's plans, for her sake I counted nothing. I offered her a home in England too, the very real of her girlhood's wish; my blighted fortunes since, or a home in yonder camp,--never, never. But if I had, ay, if I had,--that is not _love_, call it what you will, it is not love, to which such barriers were any thing.

_Andre_. Oh well, a word's a word. That's as one likes. Only with your definition, give me leave to say, marvellous little love, Captain Maitland, marvellous little you will find in this poor world of ours.

_Mait_. I'll grant ye.

_Andre_. If there is any thing like it outside of a poet's skull, ne'er credit me.

_Mait_. Strange it should take such shape in the creating thought and in the yearning heart, when all reality hath not its archetype.

_Andre_. Hist!

_Mait_. A careful step,--one of our party I fancy.

_Andre_. 'Tis time we were at the rendezvous. If we have to recross the river as we came, on the stumps of that old bridge, we had best keep a little day-light with us, I think.

[_Exeunt_.

DIALOGUE II.

SCENE. _A chamber in the Parsonage. Helen leaning from the open window_.

(_Annie enters_.)

_Annie_. Helen Grey, where on earth have you been? _Wood flowers!_

_Helen_. Come and look at this sunset.

_Annie_. Surely you have not, you cannot have been in those woods, Helen: and yet, where else could this periwinkle grow, and these wild roses?--Delicious!

_Helen_. Hear that flute. It comes from among those trees by the river side.

_Annie_. It is the shower that has freshened every thing, and made the birds so musical. You should stand in the door below, as I did just now, to see the fort and the moistened woods stands out from that black sky, with all this brightness blazing on them.

_Helen_. 'Tis lovely--all.

_Annie_. There goes the last golden rim over the blackening woods; already even a shade of tender mourning steals over all things, the very children's voices under this tree,--how soft they grow.

_Helen_. Will the day come when we shall see him sink, for the last time, behind those hills?

_Annie_. Nay, Helen, why do you mar this lovely hour with a thought like that?

_Helen_. And in another life, shall we see light, when his, for us, s.h.i.+nes no more?--What sound is that?

_Annie_. That faint cry from the woods?

_Helen_. No,--more distant,--far off as the horizon, like some mighty murmur, faintly borne, it came.

_Annie_. I wish that we had gone to-day. I do not like this waiting until Thursday;--just one of that elder brother's foolish whims it was.

I cannot think how your consent was won to it. Did you meet any one in your walk just now?