Hills of the Shatemuc Part 161

"Must he! Then you must go, Clam."

"Very good. Who'll set the table, Miss 'Lizabeth?"

"Emma can. Or you can, after you get back."

"And there's the fire to make, and the floor to sweep, and the knives to clean, and the bread to make --"

"Bread! --" said Miss Haye.

"Or cakes," said Clam. "One or t'other 'll be wanted. I don't care which."

"Don't Emma know how?"

"She don't know a thing, but how to put Mrs. Haye's curls over a stick -- when she ain't doin' her own."

"Then give me a basket -- I'll go to Mountain Spring myself."

"Who'll bring the meat and things home?"

"I will; -- or fish, or eggs, -- something, whatever I can get."

"It 'll tire you, Miss 'Lizabeth -- I guess, before you get back."

"You find me a basket -- while I put on my bonnet," said Clam's mistress. And the one thing was done as soon as the other.

"I 'spect I'll wake up some morning and find myself playing on the pianny-forty," said Clam, as she watched her young mistress walking off with the basket.

CHAPTER XVII.

When was old Sherwood's head more quaintly curled?

Or looked the earth more green upon the world?

Or nature's cradle more enchased and purled?

When did the air so smile, the wind so chime, As quiristers of season, and the prime?

BEN JONSON.

Miss Haye, however, had never sent her fingers over the keys with more energy, than now her feet tripped over the dry leaves and stones in the path to Mountain Spring. She took a very rough way, through the woods. There was another, much plainer, round by the wagon road; but Elizabeth chose the more solitary and prettier way, roundabout and hard to the foot though it was.

For some little distance there was a rude wagon-track, very rough, probably made for the convenience of getting wood. It stood thick with pretty large stones or heads of rock; but it was softly gra.s.s-grown between the stones and gave at least a clear way through the woods, upon which the morning light if not the morning sun beamed fairly. A light touch of white frost lay upon the gra.s.s and covered the rocks with bloom, the promise of a mild day. After a little, the roadway descended into a bit of smooth meadow, well walled in with trees, and lost itself there. In the tree-tops the morning sun was glittering; it could not get to the bottom yet; but up there among the leaves it gave a bright shimmering prophecy of what it would do; it was a sparkle of heavenly light touching the earth. Elizabeth had never seen it before; she had never in her life been in the woods at so early an hour. She stood still to look. It was impossible to help feeling the light of that glittering promise; its play upon the leaves was too joyous, too pure, too fresh. She felt her heart grow stronger and her breath come freer. What was the speech of those light- touched leaves, she might not have told; something her spirit took knowledge of while her reason did not. Or had not leisure to do; for if she did not get to Mountain Spring in good season she would not be home for breakfast. Yet she had plenty of time, but she did not wish to run short. So she went on her way.

From the valley meadow for half a mile, it was not much more or much better than a cow-path, beaten a little by the feet of the herdsman seeking his cattle or of an occasional foot- traveller to Mountain Spring. It was very rough indeed. Often Elizabeth must make quite a circuit among cat-briars and huckleberry bushes and young underwood, or keep the path at the expense of stepping up and stepping down again over a great stone or rock blocking up the whole way. Sometimes the track was only marked over the grey lichens of an immense head of granite that refused moss and vegetation of every other kind; sometimes it wound among thick alder bushes by the edge of wet ground; and at all times its course was among a wilderness of uncared-for woodland, overgrown with creepers and vines tangled with underbrush, and thickly strewn with larger and smaller fragments and boulders of granite rock. But how beautiful it was! The alders, reddish and soft-tinted, looked when the sun struck through them as if they were exotics out of witch-land; the Cornus family, from beautiful dogwood a dozen feet high stretching over Elizabeth's head, to little humble nameless plants at her feet, had edged and parted their green leaves with most dainty clear hues of madder lake; white birches and hickories glimmered in the sunlight like trees of gold, the first with stems of silver; sear leaves strewed the way; and fresh pines and hemlocks stretched out their arms amidst the changing foliage, with their evergreen promise and performance. The morning air and the morning walk no doubt had something to do with the effect of the whole; but Elizabeth thought, with all the beauty her eyes had ever seen they had never been more bewitched than they were that day.

With such a mood upon her, it was no wonder that on arriving at Mountain Spring she speedily made out her errand. She found whom and what she had come for; she filled her basket with no loss of time or pleasure; and very proud of her success set out again through the wood-path homeward.

Half way back to the bit of tree-enclosed meadow-ground, the path and the north sh.o.r.e of Shahweetah approached each other, where a little bay curve, no other than the _AEgean Sea_, swept in among the rocks. Through the stems of the trees Elizabeth could see the blue water with the brightness of the hour upon it. Its sparkle tempted her. She had plenty of time, or she resolved that she had, and she wanted to look at the fair broad view she knew the sh.o.r.e edge would give her. She hesitated, and turned, A few bounding and plunging steps amid rocks and huckleberry bushes brought her where she wished to be. She stood on the border, where no trees came in the way of the northern view. The mountains were full before her, and the wide Shatemuc rolled down between them, ruffled with little waves, every one sparkling cool in the sunlight. Elizabeth looked at the water a minute, and turned to the west. Wut-a- qut-o's head had caught more of the frosts than Shahweetah had felt yet; there were broad belts of buff and yellow along the mountain, even changing into sear where its sides felt the north wind. On all that sh.o.r.e the full sunlight lay. The opposite hills, on the east, were in dainty sunshine and shadow, every undulation, every ridge and hollow, softly marked out. With what wonderful sharp outline the mountain edges rose against the bright sky; how wonderful soft the changes of shade and colour adown their sloping sides; what brilliant little ripples of water rolled up to the pebbles at Elizabeth's feet. She stood and looked at it all, at one thing and the other, half dazzled with the beauty; until she recollected herself, and with a deep sighful expression of thoughts and wishes unknown, turned away to find her path again.

But she could not find it. Whereabouts it was, she was sure; but the _where_ was an unfindable thing. And she dared not strike forward without the track; she might get further and further from it, and never get home to breakfast at all! -- There was nothing for it but to grope about seeking for indications; and Miss Haye's eyes were untrained to wood-work.

The woodland was a mazy wilderness now indeed. Points of stone, beds of moss, cat-briar vines and huckleberry bushes, in every direction; and between which of them lay that little invisible track of a footpath? The more she looked the more she got perplexed. She could remember no waymarks. The way was all cat-briars, moss, bushes, and rocks; and rocks, bushes, moss and cat-briars were in every variety all around her. She turned her face towards the quarter from which she had come and tried to recognize some tree or waymark she could remember having pa.s.sed. One part of the wood looked just like another; but for the mountains and the river she could not have told where lay Mountain Spring.

Then a little sound of rustling leaves and crackling twigs reached her ear from behind her.

"There is a cow!" thought Elizabeth; -- "now I can find the path by her. But then! -- cows don't always --"

Her eye had been sweeping round the woody skirts of her position, in search of her expected four-footed guide, when her thoughts were suddenly brought to a point by seeing a two- footed creature approaching, and one whom she instantly knew.

"It is Winthrop Landholm! -- he is going to Mountain Spring to take an early coach, without his breakfast! -- Well, you fool, what is it to you?" was the next thought. "What does it signify whether he goes sooner or later, when it would be better for you not to see him at all, if your heart is going to start in that fashion at every time. --"

Meanwhile she was making her way as well as she could, over rocks and briars, towards the new-comer; and did not look up till she answered his greeting --

"Good morning! --"

It was very cheerfully spoken.

"Good morning," said Elizabeth, entangled in a cat-briar, from which with a desperate effort she broke free before any help could be given her.

"Those are naughty things."

"No," said Elizabeth, "they look beautiful now when they are growing tawny, as a contrast with the other creepers and the deep green cedars. And they are a beautiful green at other times."

"Make the best of them. What were you looking at, a minute ago?"

"Looking for my way. I had lost it."

"You don't know it very well, I guess."

"Yes. -- No, not very well, but I could follow it, and did, till coming home I thought I had time to look at the view; and then I couldn't find it again. I got turned about."

"You were completely turned about when I saw you."

"O I was not going that way -- I knew better than that. I was trying to discover some waymark."

"How did you get out of the way?"

"I went to look at the view -- from the water's edge there."

"Have you a mind to go back to the river edge again? I have not seen that view in a long while. _I_ shall not lose the path."

"Then you cannot be intending to go by an early coach,"

thought Elizabeth, as she picked her way back over rocks and moss to the water's edge. But Winthrop knew the ground, and brought her a few steps further to a broad standing-place of rock where the look-out was freer. There was again before her the sparkling river, the frost-touched mountain, the sharp outlines, the varying shadows, that she had looked at a few minutes back. Elizabeth looked at them again, thinking now not of them but of something different at every turn.

"The rock is too wet," said Winthrop, "or I should propose your sitting down."

"You certainly must have had your breakfast," thought Elizabeth, "and not know that I haven't had mine."

"I don't want to sit down," she said quietly. A pang of fear again came to her heart, that in another minute or two he would be off to Mountain Spring. But his next movement negatived that. It was to take her basket, which she had till then tried to carry so that it would not be noticed. She was thankful he did not know what was in it.

"Do you often take such early walks as this?"