The bride of Fort Edward founded on an incident of the Revolution |
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 | The bride of Fort Edward |  |
DIALOGUE I.
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
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
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
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;
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
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 hill-side
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
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
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?
Mait.
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
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.
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
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
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.
| The bride of Fort Edward | |