SCENE. _A little glen in the woods near Fort Edward. A young British
Officer appears, attended by a soldier in the American uniform;
the latter with a small sealed pacquet in his hand_.
_Off_. Hist!
_Sol_. Well, so I did; but----
_Off_. Hist, I say!
_Sol_. A squirrel it is, Sir; there he sits.
_Off_. By keeping this path you avoid the picket on the hill. It will
bring you out where these woods skirt the vale, and scarcely a hundred
rods from the house itself.
[_Calling without_.]
_Sol_. Captain Andre--Sir.
_Off_. It were well that the pacquet should fall into no other hands.
With a little caution there is no danger. It will be twilight ere you
get out of these woods--
_Sol_. I beg your pardon, Sir; but here is that young Indian guide of
mine, after all, above there, beckoning me.
_Off_. Stay--you will come back to the camp ere midnight?
_Sol_. Unless some of these quick-eyed rebels see through my disguise.
_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 God'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 pass 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 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 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 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 flashing
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?
_Andre_. Methinks the heavenly revelation itself doth that.
_Mait_. Such an eye I saw then shining 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 worship.
_Andre_. Worship! 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,--_worshipped?_--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 worshipped her.
_Mait_. Nay, you have told the rest. I would have worshipped; 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 title 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, sunshine, 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 passion 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_.