"Who can he be?" said Walter Prevost, when they had reached the little
sitting-room. "Sir William called him 'my lord.'"
Edith smiled at her brother's curiosity. Oh, how much older women
always are than men!
"Lords are small things here, Walter," she said, gazing forth from the
window at the stately old trees within sight of the house, which for
her, as for all expanding minds, had their homily. Age--hackneyed
age--reads few lessons. It ponders those long received, subtilizes,
refines, combines. Youth has a lesson in every external thing; but,
alas! soon forgets the greater part of all.
"I do not think that lords are small things anywhere," answered her
brother, who had not imbibed any of the republican spirit which was
even then silently creeping over the American people. "Lords are made
by kings for great deeds, or great virtues."
"Then they are lords of their own making," retorted Edith; "kings only
seal the patent nature has bestowed. That great red oak, Walter, was
growing before the family of any man now living was ennobled by the
hand of royalty."
"Pooh, nonsense, Edith!" ejaculated her brother; "you are indulging in
one of your day-dreams. What has that oak to do with nobility?"
"I hardly know," replied his sister; "yet something linked them
together in my mind. It seemed as if the oak asked me, 'What is
_their_ antiquity to _mine?_' and yet the antiquity of their families
is their greatest claim to our reverence."
"No, no!" cried Walter Prevost, eagerly; "their antiquity is nothing,
for we are all of as ancient a family as they are. But it is that they
can show a line from generation to generation, displaying some high
qualities, ennobled by some great acts. Granted that here or there a
sluggard, a coward, or a fool, may have intervened, or that the acts
which have won praise in other days may not be reverenced now; yet I
have often heard my father say, that, in looking back through records
of noble houses, we shall find a sum of deeds and qualities suited to,
and honoured by, succeeding ages, which, tried by the standard of the
times of the men, shows that hereditary nobility is not merely an
honour won by a worthy father for unworthy children, but a bond to
great endeavours, signed by a noble ancestor, on behalf of all his
descendants. Edith, you are not saying what you think."
"Perhaps not," answered Edith, with a quiet smile; "but let us have
some lights, Walter, for I am well-nigh in darkness."
They were not ordinary children. I do not intend to represent them as
such. But he who says that what is not ordinary is not natural, may,
probably, be an ass. How they had become what they were is another
question; but that is easily explained. First--Nature had not made
them of her common clay; for, notwithstanding all bold assertions of
that great and fatal falsehood, that all men are born equal, such is
not the case. No two men are ever born equal. No two leaves are alike
upon a tree, and there is a still greater dissimilarity--a still
greater inequality--between the gifts and endowments of different men.
God makes them unequal. God raises the one, and depresses the other,
ay, from the very birth, in the scale of his creation; and man, by one
mode or another, in every state of society, and in every land,
recognizes the difference, and assigns the rank. Nature, then, had not
made those two young people of her common clay. Their father was no
common man; their mother had been one in whom mind and heart, thought
and feeling, had been so nicely balanced, that emotion always found a
guide in judgment. But this was not all. The one child up to the age
of thirteen, the other until twelve, had been trained and instructed
with the utmost care. Every advantage of education had been lavished
upon them, and every natural talent they possessed had been developed,
cultivated, directed. They had been taught from mere childhood to
think, as well as to know; to use, as well as to receive, information.
Then had come a break--the sad, jarring break in the sweet chain of
the golden hours of youth--a mother's death. Till then their father
had borne much from the world and from society unflinching. But then
his stay and his support were gone. Visions became realities for him.
What wonder if, when the light of his home had gone out, his mental
sight became somewhat dim, the objects around him indistinct? He
gathered together all he had, and migrated to a distant land, where
small means might be considered great, and where long-nourished
theories of life might be tried by the test of experience.
To his children, the change was but a new phase of education--one not
often tried, but not without its uses. If their new house was not
completely a solitude, it was very nearly so. Morally and physically
they were thrown nearly upon their own resources. But previous
training had made those resources many. Mentally, at least, they
brought a great capital into the wilderness, and they found means to
employ it. Everything around them, in its newness and its freshness,
had a lesson and a moral. The trees, the flowers, the streams, the
birds, the insects, the new efforts, the new labours, the very wants
and deficiencies of their present state--all taught them something.
Had they been born amidst such things; had they been brought up in
such habits; had their previous training been at all of the same kind;
or, even had the change been as great as it might have been; had they
been left totally destitute of comforts, conveniences, attendance,
books, companionships, objects of art and taste, to live the life of
the savage,--the result might have been--must have been--very
different. But there was enough left of the past to link it
beneficially to the present. They brought all the materials with them
from their old world for opening out the rich mines of the new. It is
not to be wondered at, then, if they were no ordinary children; and
if, at fifteen and sixteen, they reasoned and thought of things, and
in modes, not often dealt with by the young. I say, not often;
because, even under other circumstances, and with no such apparent
causes, we see occasional instances of beings like themselves.
They were, then, no ordinary children, but yet quite natural.
The influences which surrounded them had acted differently, of course,
on the boy and on the girl. He had learned to act as well as think:
she to meditate as well as act. He had acquired the strength, the
foot, the ear, the eye of the Indian. She, too, had gained much
in activity and hardihood; but in the dim glades, and on the
flower-covered banks, by the side of the rushing stream, or hanging
over the roaring cataract, she had learned to give way to long and
silent reveries, dealing both with the things of her own heart and the
things of the wide world; comparing the present with the past, the
solitude with society, meditating upon life and its many phases, and
yielding herself, while the silent majesty of the scene seemed to sink
into her soul, to what her brother was wont to call her "day-dreams."
I have said that she dealt with the _things of her own heart_. Let me
not be misunderstood: the things of that heart were very simple. They
had never been complicated with even a thought of love. Her own fate,
her own history, her soul in its relation to God and to His creation,
the sweet and bright emotions produced within her by all things
beautiful in art or nature, the thrill excited by a lovely scene or a
dulcet melody, the trance-like pleasure of watching the clear stream
waving the many-coloured pebbles of its bed, these, and such as these,
were the things of the heart I spoke of; and on them she would dwell
and ponder, asking herself what they were, whence they came, how they
arose, whither they tended. It was the music, the poetry, of her own
nature, in all its strains, which she sought to search into; but the
sweetest, though sometimes the saddest, of the harmonies in woman's
heart was yet wanting.
She had read of love, it is true; she had heard it spoken of, but,
with a timidity not rare in the most sensitive minds, she had excluded
it even from her day-dreams. She knew that there was such a thing as
passion: she might be conscious that it was latent in her own nature;
but she tried not to seek it out. To her it was an abstraction. Psyche
had not held the lamp to Eros.
So much it was needful to say of the two young Prevosts before we went
onward with our tale; and now, as far as they were concerned, the
events of that day were near their close. Lights were brought, and
Walter and his sister sat down to muse over books--I can hardly say
read--till their father re-appeared; for the evening prayer and the
parting kiss had never been omitted in their solitude ere they lay
down to rest.
The conference in the hall, however, was long, and more than an hour
elapsed before the three gentlemen entered the room. Then a few
minutes were passed in quiet conversation, and then, all standing
round the table, Mr. Prevost raised his voice, saying,
"Protect us, O Father Almighty! in the hours of darkness and
unconsciousness. Give us Thy blessing of sleep, to refresh our minds
and bodies; and, if it be Thy will, let us wake again to serve and
praise Thee through another day more perfectly than in the days past,
for Christ's sake."
The Lord's Prayer succeeded; and then they separated to their rest.