"These woods are very beautiful," said Haward at last, with his gaze upon
her, "but if the land were less level it were more to my taste. Now, if
this plain were a little valley couched among the hills, if to the
westward rose dark blue mountains like a rampart, if the runlet yonder
were broad and clear, if this beech were a sugar-tree"-He broke off, content to see her eyes dilate, her bosom rise and fall, her
hand go trembling for support to the column of the beech.
"Oh, the mountains!" she cried. "When the mist lifted, when the cloud
rested, when the sky was red behind them! Oh, the clear stream, and the
sugar-tree, and the cabin! Who are you? How did you know about these
things? Were you--were you there?"
She turned upon him, with her soul in her eyes. As for him, lying at
length upon the ground, he locked his hands beneath his head and began to
sing, though scarce above his breath. He sang the song of Amiens:-"Under the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me."
When he had come to the end of the stanza he half rose, and turned toward
the mute and breathless figure leaning against the beech-tree. For her the
years had rolled back: one moment she stood upon the doorstep of the
cabin, and the air was filled with the trampling of horses, with quick
laughter, whistling, singing, and the call of a trumpet; the next she ran,
in night-time and in terror, between rows of rustling corn, felt again the
clasp of her pursuer, heard at her ear the comfort of his voice. A film
came between her eyes and the man at whom she stared, and her heart grew
cold.
"Audrey," said Haward, "come here, child."
The blood returned to her heart, her vision cleared, and her arm fell from
its clasp upon the tree. The bark opened not; the hamadryad had lost the
spell. When at his repeated command she crossed to him, she went as the
trusting, dumbly loving, dumbly grateful child whose life he had saved,
and whose comforter, protector, and guardian he had been. When he took her
hands in his she was glad to feel them there again, and she had no blushes
ready when he kissed her upon the forehead. It was sweet to her who
hungered for affection, who long ago had set his image up, loving him
purely as a sovereign spirit or as a dear and great elder brother, to hear
him call her again "little maid;" tell her that she had not changed save
in height; ask her if she remembered this or that adventure, what time
they had strayed in the woods together. Remember! When at last, beneath
his admirable management, the wonder and the shyness melted away, and she
found her tongue, memories came in a torrent. The hilltop, the deep woods
and the giant trees, the house he had built for her out of stones and
moss, the grapes they had gathered, the fish they had caught, the
thunderstorm when he had snatched her out of the path of a stricken and
falling pine, an alarm of Indians, an alarm of wolves, finally the first
faint sounds of the returning expedition, the distant trumpet note, the
nearer approach, the bursting again into the valley of the Governor and
his party, the journey from that loved spot to Williamsburgh,--all sights
and sounds, thoughts and emotions, of that time, fast held through lonely
years, came at her call, and passed again in procession before them.
Haward, first amazed, then touched, reached at length the conclusion that
the years of her residence beneath the minister's roof could not have been
happy; that she must always have put from her with shuddering and horror
the memory of the night which orphaned her; but that she had passionately
nursed, cherished, and loved all that she had of sweet and dear, and that
this all was the memory of her childhood in the valley, and of that brief
season when he had been her savior, protector, friend, and playmate. He
learned also--for she was too simple and too glad either to withhold the
information or to know that she had given it--that in her girlish and
innocent imaginings she had made of him a fairy knight, clothing him in a
panoply of power, mercy, and tenderness, and setting him on high, so high
that his very heel was above the heads of the mortals within her ken.