The Bride of Fort Edward | Page 8

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-shells, 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 worship 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 passing 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 passed 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 passages 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