The Bride of Fort Edward | Page 8

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 space 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 goddesses!--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-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