CHAPTER VII.
Let us see what can be made out of a walk. It began with a bad number, though one that is generally assumed to be lucky. But, on the present occasion, no one felt himself the third; and Walter, and Edith, and Lord H----, conversed as freely as if only two had been present. First came a discussion between Edith and her brother as to what path they should take; and then they referred it to their companion, and he, with a smile, reminded them that he knew none but that by which he had come thither; and so Edith had her own way, and led towards the west.
By dint of labour and taste, aided, in some degree, by accident, not less than fifty acres of ground had been cleared around the house of Mr. Prevost--not partially cleared, with large black stumps of trees sticking up in the fields, and assuming every sort of strange form, all hideous; but perfectly and entirely, leaving the ground (some part of which had, indeed, been free of forest when Mr. Prevost first settled there) smooth and trim as that of the fair farms of England. The fences, too, were all in good order, and the buildings neat and picturesque.
Beyond the cultivated ground, as you descended the gentle hill, lay the deep forest, at the distance of about three hundred yards; and at its edge Edith paused, and made her companion turn to see how beautiful the cottage looked upon its eminence, shaded by gorgeous maple-trees, in their gold and crimson garb of autumn, with a tall rock or two, grey and mossy, rising up amidst them.
Lord H---- gazed at the house, and saw that it was picturesque and beautiful--very different, indeed, from any other dwelling he had beheld on the western side of the Atlantic; but his eyes expressed an absent thoughtfulness, and Edith thought he did not admire it half enough.
Close by the spot where she had stopped appeared the entrance of a broad road, cut, probably, by the Dutch settlers many years before. It could not be called good, for it was furrowed and indented with many a rut and hollow, and roughened by obtrusive stones and rock; but there were no stumps of trees upon it, no fallen trunks lying across, which, for a forest road in America, at that time, was rare perfection. For about a quarter of a mile it was bordered on each side by tangled thicket, with gigantic pine-trees rising out of an impenetrable mass of underwood, in which berries of many a hue supplied the place of flowers. But flowers seem hardly wanting to an American autumn; for almost every leaf becomes a flower, and the whole forest glows with all the hues of yellow, red, and green, from the soft primrose-colour of the fading white-wood and sycamore, through every tint of orange, scarlet, and crimson on the maple, and of yellow and green on the larch, the pine, and the hemlock.
"How strange are man's prejudices and prepossessions!" ejaculated Lord H----, as they paused to gaze at a spot where a large extent of woodland lay open to the eye below them. "We are incredulous of everything we have not seen, or to the conception of which we have not been led by very near approaches. Had any one shown me, before I reached these shores, a picture of an autumn scene in America, though it had been perfect as a portrait, hue for hue, or even inferior in its striking colouring to the reality, I should have laughed at it as a most extravagant exaggeration. Did not the first autumn you passed here make you think yourself in fairy-land?"
"No; I was prepared for it," replied Edith; "my father had described the autumn scenery to me often before we came."
"Then was he ever in America before he came to settle?" asked her companion.
"Yes, once," answered Edith. She spoke in a very grave tone, and then ceased suddenly.
But her brother took the subject up with a boy's frankness, saying--"Did you never hear that my grandfather and my father's sister both died in Virginia? He was in command there, and my father came over just before my birth."
"It is a long story, and a sad one, my lord," interposed Edith, with a sigh; "but look now as we mount the hill, how the scene changes. Every step upon the hill-side gives us a different sort of tree, and the brush disappears from amidst the trunks. This grove is my favourite evening seat, where I can read and think under the broad shady boughs, with nothing but beautiful sights around me."
They had reached a spot where, upon the summit of an eminence, numbers of large oaks crested the forest. Wide apart, and taller than the English oak, though not so large in stem, the trees suffered the eye to wander over the grassy ground, somewhat broken by rock, which sloped down between hundreds of large bolls to the tops of the lower forest trees, and thence to a scene of almost matchless beauty beyond. Still slanting downwards with a gentle sweep, the woodlands were seen approaching the banks of a small lake, about two miles distant, while, beyond the sheet of water, which lay glittering like gold in the clear morning sunshine, rose up high purple hills, with the shadows of grand clouds floating over them. Around the lake, on every side, were rocky promontories and slanting points of lower land jutting out into the water; and, where they stood above, they could see all the fair features of the scene itself, and the images of the clouds and sky redoubled by the golden mirror. To give another charm to the spot, and make ear and eye combine in enjoyment, the voices of distant waters came upon the breeze, not with a roar exactly, but with rather more than a murmur, showing that some large river was pouring over a steep not far away.
"Hark!" ejaculated Lord H----. "Is there a waterfall near?"
"Too far to go to it to-day," answered Edith. "We must economize our scenes, lest we should exhaust them all before you go, and you should think more than ever that our country wants variety."
"I cannot think so with that prospect before my eyes," replied the young nobleman. "Look how it has changed already! The mountain is all in shade, and so is the lake; but those low, wavy, wood-covered hills, which lie between the two, are starting out in the prominence of sunshine. A truly beautiful scene is full of variety in itself. Every day changes its aspect, every hour, every season. The light of morning, and evening, and mid-day, alters it entirely; and the spring and the summer, the autumn and the winter, robe it in different hues. I have often thought that a fair landscape is like a fine mind, in which every varying event of life brings forth new beauties."
"Alas, that the mind is not always like the landscape!" exclaimed Edith. "God willed it so, I doubt not, for there is harmony in all His works; but man's will and God's will are not always one."
"Perhaps, after all," said her companion, thoughtfully, "the best way to keep them in harmony is for man, as much as may be, to recur to Nature, which is but an expression of God's will."
"Oh yes!" cried Walter Prevost, eagerly; "I am sure the more we give ourselves up to the factitious and insincere contrivances of what we call society, the more we alienate ourselves from truth and God."
The young nobleman gazed at him with a smile almost melancholy.
"Very young," he thought, "to come to such sad conclusions. But do you not, my friend Walter," added he aloud, "think there might be such a thing as extracting from society all that is good and fine in it, and leaving the chaff and dross for others? The simile of the bee and the poisonous flower holds good with man. Let us take what is sweet and beneficial in all we find growing in the world's garden, and reject all that is worthless, poisonous, and foul. But truly this is an enchanting scene. It wants, methinks, only the figure of an Indian in the foreground. And there comes one, I fancy, to fill up the picture.--Stay, stay, we shall want no rifles. It is but a woman coming through the trees."
"It is Otaitsa--it is the Blossom!" cried Edith and Walter in a breath, as they looked forward to a spot where, across the yellow sunshine as it streamed through the trees, a female figure, clad in the gaily-embroidered and brightly-coloured gakaah or petticoat of the Indian women, was seen advancing with a rapid yet somewhat doubtful step.
Without pause or hesitation, Edith sprang forward to meet the new comer, and, in a moment after, the beautiful arms of the Indian girl who had sat with Walter in the morning were round the fair form