Queechy Volume I Part 7

I know each lane, and every alley green, Dingle or bushy dell of this wild wood, And every bosky bourne from side to side; My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood.

MILTON.

Fleda and her grandfather had but just risen from a tolerably early breakfast the next morning, when the two young sportsmen entered the room.

"Ha!" said Mr. Ringgan, "I declare! you're stirring betimes.

Come five or six miles this morning a'ready. Well ? that's the stuff to make sportsmen of. Off for the woodc.o.c.k, hey? And I was to go with you and show you the ground? I declare I don't know how in the world I can do it this morning, I'm so very stiff ? ten times as bad as I was yesterday. I had a window open in my room last night, I expect that must have been the cause. I don't see how I could have overlooked it; but I never gave it a thought, till this morning I found myself so lame I could hardly get out of bed. I am very sorry, upon my word!"

"I am very sorry we must lose your company, Sir," said the young Englishman, "and for such a cause; but as to the rest, I dare say your directions will guide us sufficiently."

"I don't know about that," said the old gentleman. " It is pretty hard to steer by a chart that is only laid down in the imagination. I set out once to go in New York from one side of the city over into the other, and the first thing I knew I found myself travelling along half a mile out of town. I had to get in a stage and ride back, and take a fresh start. Out at the West they say, when you are in the woods you can tell which is north by the moss growing on that side of the trees; but if you're lost, you'll be pretty apt to find the moss grows on _all_ sides of the trees. I couldn't make out any waymarks at all, in such a labyrinth of brick corners. Well, let us see ? if I tell you now it is so easy to mistake one hill for another ? Fleda, child, you put on your sun-bonnet, and take these gentlemen back to the twenty-acre lot, and from there you can tell 'em how to go, so I guess they wont mistake it."

"By no means!" said Mr. Carleton; "we cannot give her so much trouble; it would be buying our pleasure at much too dear a rate."

"Tut, tut," said the old gentleman; "she thinks nothing of trouble, and the walk 'll do her good. She'd like to be out all day, I believe, if she had any one to go along with; but I'm rather a stupid companion for such a spry little pair of feet. Fleda, look here; when they get to the lot, they can find their own way after that. You know where the place is ?

where your cousin Seth shot so many woodc.o.c.k last year, over in Mr. Hurlbut's land; when you get to the big lot you must tell these gentlemen to go straight over the hill, not Squire Thornton's hill, but mine, at the back of the lot. They must go straight over it, till they come to cleared land on the other side; then they must keep along by the edge of the wood, to the right, till they come to the brook; they must _cross the brook_, and follow up the opposite bank, and they'll know the ground when they come to it; or they don't deserve to. Do you understand? Now run and get your hat, for they ought to be off."

Fleda went, but neither her step nor her look showed any great willingness to the business.

"I am sure, Mr. Ringgan," said Mr. Carleton, "your little granddaughter has some reason for not wis.h.i.+ng to take such a long walk this morning. Pray allow us to go without her."

"Pho, pho," said the old gentleman, "she wants to go."

"I guess she's skeered o' the guns," said Cynthy, happy to get a chance to edge in a word before such company; "it's that ails her."

"Well, well; she must get used to it," said Mr. Ringgan. "Here she is!"

Fleda had it in her mind to whisper to him a word of hope about Mr. Jolly; but she recollected that it was at best an uncertain hope, and that if her grandfather's thoughts were off the subject it was better to leave them so. She only kissed him for good-by, and went out with the two gentlemen.

As they took up their guns, Mr. Carleton caught the timid shunning glance her eye gave at them.

"Do you dislike the company of these noisy friends of ours, Miss Fleda?" said he.

Fleda hesitated, and finally said, "she didn't much like to be very near them when they were fired."

"Put that fear away then," said he, " for they shall keep a respectful silence so long as they have the honour to be in your company. If the woodc.o.c.k come about us as tame as quails our guns shall not be provoked to say anything till your departure gives them leave."

Fleda smiled her thanks, and set forward, privately much confirmed in her opinion that Mr. Carleton had handsome eyes.

At a little distance from the house Fleda left the meadow for an old apple-orchard at the left, lying on a steep side hill.

Up this hill-side they toiled; and then found themselves on a ridge of tableland, stretching back for some distance along the edge of a little valley or bottom of perfectly flat smooth pasture-ground. The valley was very narrow, only divided into fields by fences running from side to side. The table-land might be a hundred feet or more above the level of the bottom, with a steep face towards it. A little way back from the edge the woods began; between them and the brow of the hill the ground was smooth and green, planted as if by art with flouris.h.i.+ng young silver pines, and once in a while a hemlock, some standing in all their luxuriance alone, and some in groups. With now and then a smooth grey rock, or large boulderstone, which had somehow inexplicably stopped on the brow of the hill instead of rolling down into what at some former time no doubt was a bed of water, ? all this open strip of the table-land might have stood with very little coaxing for a piece of a gentleman's pleasure-ground. On the opposite side of the little valley was a low rocky height, covered with wood, now in the splendour of varied red and green and purple and brown and gold; between, at their feet, lay the soft quiet green meadow; and off to the left, beyond the far end of the valley, was the glory of the autumn woods again, softened in the distance. A true October sky seemed to pervade all, mildly blue, transparently pure, with that clearness of atmosphere that no other month gives us; a sky that would have conferred a patent of n.o.bility on any landscape. The scene was certainly contracted and nowise remarkable in any of its features, but Nature had shaken out all her colours over the land, and drawn a veil from the sky, and breathed through the woods and over the hill-side the very breath of health, enjoyment, and vigour.

When they were about over-against the middle of the valley, Mr. Carleton suddenly made a pause and stood for some minutes silently looking. His two companions came to a halt on either side of him, one not a little pleased, the other a little impatient.

"Beautiful!" Mr. Carleton said, at length.

"Yes," said Fleda, gravely, "I think it's a pretty place. I like it up here."

"We sha'n't catch many woodc.o.c.k among these pines," said young Rossitur.

"I wonder," said Mr. Carleton, presently, "how any one should have called these 'melancholy days.' "

"Who has?" said Rossitur.

"A countryman of yours," said his friend, glancing at him. "If he had been a countryman of mine there would have been less marvel. But here is none of the sadness of decay ? none of the withering ? if the tokens of old age are seen at all it is in the majestic honours that crown a glorious life ? the graces of a matured and ripened character. This has nothing in common, Rossitur, with those dull moralists who are always dinning decay and death into one's ears; this speaks of Life.

Instead of freezing all one's hopes and energies, it quickens the pulse with the desire to _do_. ? 'The saddest of the year' ?

Bryant was wrong."

"Bryant? ? oh!" ? said young Rossitur; "I didn't know who you were speaking of."

"I believe, now I think of it, he was writing of a somewhat later time of the year, ? I don't know how all this will look in November."

"I think it is very pleasant in November," said little Fleda, sedately.

"Don't you know Bryant's 'Death of the Flowers,' Rossitur?"

said his friend, smiling. "What have you been doing all your life?"

"Not studying the fine arts at West Point, Mr. Carleton."

"Then sit down here, and let me mend that place in your education. Sit down! and I'll give you something better than woodc.o.c.k. You keep a game-bag for thoughts, don't you?"

Mr. Rossitur wished Mr. Carleton didn't. But he sat down, however, and listened with an unedified face; while his friend, more to please himself, it must be confessed, than for any other reason, and perhaps with half a notion to try Fleda, repeated the beautiful words. He presently saw they were not lost upon one of his hearers; she listened intently.

"It is very pretty," said Rossitur, when he had done. "I believe I have seen it before somewhere."

"There is no 'smoky light' to-day," said Fleda.

"No," said Mr. Carleton, smiling to himself. "Nothing but that could improve the beauty of all this, Miss Fleda."

"_I_ like it better as it is," said Fleda.

"I am surprised at that," said young Rossitur. "I thought you lived on smoke."

There was nothing in the words, but the tone was not exactly polite. Fleda granted him neither smile nor look.

"I am glad you like it up here," she went on, gravely doing the honours of the place. "I came this way because we shouldn't have so many fences to climb."

"You are the best little guide possible, and I have no doubt would always lead one the right way," said Mr. Carleton.

Again the same gentle, kind, _appreciating_ look. Fleda unconsciously drew a step nearer. There was a certain undefined confidence established between them.

"There's a little brook down there in spring," said she, pointing to a small, gra.s.s-grown water-course in the meadow, hardly discernible from the height, ? "but there's no water in it now. It runs quite full for a while after the snow breaks up; but it dries away by June or July."

"What are those trees so beautifully tinged with red and orange, down there by the fence in the meadow?"

"I am not woodsman enough to inform you," replied Rossitur.

"Those are maples," said Fleda ? "sugar maples. The one all orange is a hickory."