The Black Eagle; or, Ticonderoga
Page 3
CHAPTER III.
"Who can he be?" said Walter Prevost, when they had reached the littlesitting-room. "Sir William called him 'my lord.'"
Edith smiled at her brother's curiosity. Oh, how much older womenalways are than men!
"Lords are small things here, Walter," she said, gazing forth from thewindow at the stately old trees within sight of the house, which forher, as for all expanding minds, had their homily. Age--hackneyedage--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 herbrother, who had not imbibed any of the republican spirit which waseven then silently creeping over the American people. "Lords are madeby kings for great deeds, or great virtues."
"Then they are lords of their own making," retorted Edith; "kings onlyseal the patent nature has bestowed. That great red oak, Walter, wasgrowing before the family of any man now living was ennobled by thehand of royalty."
"Pooh, nonsense, Edith!" ejaculated her brother; "you are indulging inone of your day-dreams. What has that oak to do with nobility?"
"I hardly know," replied his sister; "yet something linked themtogether in my mind. It seemed as if the oak asked me, 'What is_their_ antiquity to _mine?_' and yet the antiquity of their familiesis 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 theycan show a line from generation to generation, displaying some highqualities, ennobled by some great acts. Granted that here or there asluggard, a coward, or a fool, may have intervened, or that the actswhich have won praise in other days may not be reverenced now; yet Ihave often heard my father say, that, in looking back through recordsof noble houses, we shall find a sum of deeds and qualities suited to,and honoured by, succeeding ages, which, tried by the standard of thetimes of the men, shows that hereditary nobility is not merely anhonour won by a worthy father for unworthy children, but a bond togreat endeavours, signed by a noble ancestor, on behalf of all hisdescendants. Edith, you are not saying what you think."
"Perhaps not," answered Edith, with a quiet smile; "but let us havesome lights, Walter, for I am well-nigh in darkness."
They were not ordinary children. I do not intend to represent them assuch. 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 anotherquestion; but that is easily explained. First--Nature had not madethem of her common clay; for, notwithstanding all bold assertions ofthat great and fatal falsehood, that all men are born equal, such isnot the case. No two men are ever born equal. No two leaves are alikeupon a tree, and there is a still greater dissimilarity--a stillgreater 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 onemode or another, in every state of society, and in every land,recognizes the difference, and assigns the rank. Nature, then, had notmade those two young people of her common clay. Their father was nocommon man; their mother had been one in whom mind and heart, thoughtand feeling, had been so nicely balanced, that emotion always found aguide in judgment. But this was not all. The one child up to the ageof thirteen, the other until twelve, had been trained and instructedwith the utmost care. Every advantage of education had been lavishedupon them, and every natural talent they possessed had been developed,cultivated, directed. They had been taught from mere childhood tothink, 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 ofthe golden hours of youth--a mother's death. Till then their fatherhad borne much from the world and from society unflinching. But thenhis stay and his support were gone. Visions became realities for him.What wonder if, when the light of his home had gone out, his mentalsight became somewhat dim, the objects around him indistinct? Hegathered together all he had, and migrated to a distant land, wheresmall means might be considered great, and where long-nourishedtheories of life might be tried by the test of experience.
To his children, the change was but a new phase of education--one notoften tried, but not without its uses. If their new house was notcompletely a solitude, it was very nearly so. Morally and physicallythey were thrown nearly upon their own resources. But previoustraining had made those resources many. Mentally, at least, theybrought a great capital into the wilderness, and they found means toemploy it. Everything around them, in its newness and its freshness,had a lesson and a moral. The trees, the flowers, the streams, thebirds, the insects, the new efforts, the new labours, the very wantsand deficiencies of their present state--all taught them something.Had they been born amidst such things; had they been brought up insuch 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 theybeen left totally destitute of comforts, conveniences, attendance,books, companionships, objects of art and taste, to live the life ofthe savage,--the result might have been--must have been--verydifferent. But there was enough left of the past to link itbeneficially to the present. They brought all the materials with themfrom their old world for opening out the rich mines of the new. It isnot to be wondered at, then, if they were no ordinary children; andif, at fifteen and sixteen, they reasoned and thought of things, andin modes, not often dealt with by the young. I say, not often;because, even under other circumstances, and with no such apparentcauses, 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, thefoot, the ear, the eye of the Indian. She, too, had gained muchin activity and hardihood; but in the dim glades, and on theflower-covered banks, by the side of the rushing stream, or hangingover the roaring cataract, she had learned to give way to long andsilent reveries, dealing both with the things of her own heart and thethings of the wide world; comparing the present with the past, thesolitude with society, meditating upon life and its many phases, andyielding herself, while the silent majesty of the scene seemed to sinkinto 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 menot be misunderstood: the things of that heart were very simple. Theyhad 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 thingsbeautiful in art or nature, the thrill excited by a lovely scene or adulcet melody, the trance-like pleasure of watching the clear streamwaving 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 dwelland ponder, asking herself what they were, whence they came, how theyarose, whither they tended. It was the music, the poetry, of her ownnature, in all its strains, which she sought to search into; but thesweetest, though sometimes the saddest, of the harmonies in woman'sheart 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 excludedit even from her day-dreams. She knew that there was such a thing aspassion: 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. Psychehad not held the lamp to Eros.
So much it was needful to say of the two young Prevosts before we wentonward with our tale; and now, as far as they were concerned, theevents of that day were near their close. Lights were brought, andWalter and his sister sat down to muse over books--I can hardly sayread--till their father re-appeared; for the evening prayer and theparting kiss had never been omitted in their solitude ere they laydown to rest.
"Protect us, O Father Almighty! in the hours of darkness andunconsciousness. Give us Thy blessing of sleep, to refresh our mindsand bodies; and, if it be Thy will, let us wake again to serve andpraise 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.