The Old Homestead Part 38

Isabel's eyes brightened through her tears. There was something in the cordial goodness of Judge Sharp that no grief could have resisted.

"Please, sir," said Mary, struggling faintly in the arms of her n.o.ble friend--"please, sir, I can walk very well."

"And I can carry you very well--why not? Come, now for a climb."

And away strode the great-hearted man, holding her up that she might gaze on the scenery over his shoulder.

Isabel followed close, helping herself up the steep rocks, now by catching hold of a spice-bush and shaking off all its ripe golden blossoms; now drawing down the loops of a grape-vine and swinging forward on it, encouraged in each new effort by the hearty commendations of her new friend.

At last they reached the summit of a detached ridge of rocks that rose like a fortification back of the highway. Judge Sharp sat down upon a shelf cushioned like an easy-chair with the greenest moss and placed the children at his feet.

A true lover of nature himself, he did not speak, or insist upon forcing exclamations of delight from the children who shared the glorious view with him. But he looked now and then into Mary Fuller's face, and was satisfied with all that he saw there.

He turned and glanced also into the beautiful eyes of little Isabel.

They were wandering dreamily from object to object, searching, as it were, along the misty horizon for some sign of her dead mother. It was her heart rather than her intellect that wandered over that magnificent scenery for something to dwell upon.

"Are you sure, sir?" said Mary Fuller, timidly, looking up; "are you quite sure that this is the same world that Isabel and I were in yesterday?"

"Why not? Doesn't it seem like the same?"

"No," answered Mary, kindling up and looking eagerly around; "it is a thousand times larger, so vast, so grand, so--. Pray help me out, I wish to say so much and can't. Something chokes me here when I try to say how beautiful all this seems."

Mary folded her hands over her bosom, and began to waver to and fro on the moss seat, struck with a pang of that exquisite pleasure which so closely approaches pain when we fully appreciate the beautiful.

"You like this?" said the Judge, watching her face more than the landscape, that had been familiar to him when almost a wilderness.

"I should like to stay here for ever. It seems as if every one that we have loved so much, is resting near the sky away off yonder falling close down upon the mountains."

"It is a n.o.ble view," said the Judge, standing up, and pointing to the right. "Have you ever learned anything of geography, children?"

"A little," they both answered, glancing at each other as if ashamed of confessing so much knowledge.

"Then you have heard of the Green Mountains yonder; they are like thunder-clouds under the horizon?"

The children shaded their eyes, and looked searchingly at what seemed to them a dark embankment of clouds, and then Mary turned, holding her breath almost with awe, and gathered in with one long glance the broad horizon, sweeping its circle of a hundred miles from right to left, closed by the mountain spur on which they stood.

Where distance levelled small inequalities of surface, and made great ones indistinct and cloudy, the whole aspect of the scenery took an air of high cultivation and abundant richness. Thousands and thousands of farms, cut up and colored with their ripened crops, lay before them--golden rye stubbles; hills white with buckwheat and rich with snowy blossoms; meadows, orchards, and groves of primeval timber, all brightened those luxuriant valleys and plains that open upon the Hudson. Deep into New York State, and far, far away among the mountains of New England the eye ranged, charmed and satisfied with a fullness of beauty.

Mary saw it, and all the deep feelings as fervent, but less understood in the child than in the woman, swelled and grew rich in her bosom.

Not a tint of those luxuriously colored hills ever left her memory--not a shadow upon the distant mountains ever died from her brain. It is such memories, vivid as painting, and burnt upon the mind like enamel, from childhood to maturity, that feed and invigorate the soul of genius.

Enoch Sharp had been a man of enterprise. Action had ever followed quick upon his thought. Placed by accident in certain avenues of life, he had exerted strong energies, and a will firm as it was kindly, in doing all things thoroughly that he undertook; in no circ.u.mstances would he have been an ordinary man. Had destiny placed his field of action among scientific or military men, he would have proven himself first among the foremost; as it was, much of the talent that would have distinguished him there, grew and throve upon those domestic affections which were to him the poetry of life.

Thrown into constant communion with nature in her most n.o.ble aspects, he became her devotee, and was more learned in all the beautiful things which G.o.d has created, than many a celebrated savant who studies with his brain only.

True to the unearthed poetry lying in rich veins throughout his whole nature, Enoch Sharp sat keenly regarding the effect this grand panorama of scenery produced on the two children.

He looked on Isabel in her bright, half-restless beauty, with a smile of affectionate forbearance. There was everything in her face to love, but it had to answer to the glow and enthusiasm of his own nature.

But it was far otherwise with little Mary. His own deep grey eye kindled as it perused her sharp features, lighted up, as it were, with some inward flame. His heart warmed toward the little creature, and without uttering a word he stooped down and patted her head in silent approbation.

The child had given him pleasure, for there is nothing more annoying to the true lover of nature than want of sympathy, when the heart is in a glow of fervent admiration; alive with a feeling which is so near akin to religion itself, that we sometimes doubt where the dividing line exists which separates love of G.o.d from love of the beautiful objects He has created.

Thus it was that Mary with her plain face and small person found her way to the great, warm heart of Enoch Sharp; and as he sat upon the rock a faint struggle arose in his bosom regarding her destination.

An impulse to take her into his own house and cultivate the latent talent so visible in every gesture and look, took possession of him, but his natural strong sense prevailed over this impulse. Many reasons which we will not pause to mention here, arose in contest with his heart, and he muttered thoughtfully,

"Neither men nor women become what they were intended to be by carpeting their progress with velvet; real strength is tested by difficulties. Still I must keep an eye upon the girl."

Isabel soon became weary of gazing on the landscape. Impatient of the stillness, she arose softly and moved to a ledge close by, under which a wild gooseberry bush drooped beneath a harvest of th.o.r.n.y fruit.

"That is right," said Enoch Sharp, starting up; "let me break off a handful of the branches, they will make peace with Mrs. Farnham for leaving her in the carriage so long."

Directly a heap of th.o.r.n.y branches purple with fruit lay at Isabel's feet, and Enoch Sharp was clambering up the rocks after some tufts of tall blue flowers that shed an azure tinge down one of the clefts; then a cl.u.s.ter of brake leaves mottled with brown spots tempted him on, while Mary Fuller stood eagerly watching his progress.

"Oh, see, see how beautiful--do look, Isabel, if he could only get up so high?"

She broke off with an exclamation of delight. Enoch Sharp had glanced downward at the sound of her voice, and directed by the eager look which accompanied it, made a spring higher up the rock.

A mountain ash, perfectly red with great cl.u.s.ters of berries, shot out from a little hollow between two ledges, and overhung the place where Mr. Sharp had found foothold. As if its own wealth of berries were not enough, a bitter-sweet vine had sprung up in the same hollow, and coiling itself around the tree, deluged it with a shower of golden cl.u.s.ters that mingled upon the same branch with the bright red fruit of the ash.

"Oh, was there ever on earth anything so beautiful?" cried Mary, disentangling the delicate ends of the vines flung down by her benefactor. "Oh, look, Isabel, look!"

She held up a natural wreath, to which three or four cl.u.s.ters hung like drops of burnt gold.

"Only see!"

With this exclamation she wove a handful of the blue autumn flowers in with the berries and long slender leaves.

"Let me put it around your hat, Isabel. Oh, Mr. Sharp, may I wind this around Isabel's hat; it is so pretty, I'm sure Mrs. Farnham will not mind?"

"Put it anywhere you like," cried the kind man, holding on to a branch of the bitter-sweet, and swinging himself downward till the ash bent almost double. It rushed back to its place, casting off a shower of loose berries and leaves that rattled around the girls in red and golden rain. Directly Mr. Sharp was by them once more, gathering up a handful of gooseberry branches, bitter-sweet and ash, admiring Mary's wreath at the same time.

"Come, now for a scramble down the hill," he cried. "Here, let me go first, for we may all expect a precious blessing, and I fancy my shoulders are the broadest."

The children looked at each other and the smiles left their lips. The "blessing," with which he so carelessly threatened them was enough to quench all their gay spirits, and they crept on after their benefactor with clouded faces.

"See, Mrs. Farnham, see what a world of beautiful things we have found for you up the mountain," cried Mr. Sharp, throwing two or three branches through the carriage window. "The little folks have discovered wonders among the bush--don't you think so?"

Mrs. Farnham drew back and gathered her ample skirts nervously about her.

"What on earth have the creatures brought? Bitter-sweet, gooseberries, with thorns like darning needles! Why, Mr. Sharp, what can you mean by bringing such things here to stain the cushions with?"

"Oh, never mind the cushions," answered the gentleman, lifting Isabel up with a toss, and landing her on the front seat, while Mary stood trembling by his side, with her eyes fixed ruefully on the wreath which surrounded the crown of her companion's Leghorn flat.

"Oh, what will become of us when she sees that?" thought the child in dismay.

But she was allowed no time to ask unpleasant questions, even of herself, for Enoch Sharp took her in his arms and set her carefully down opposite Mrs. Farnham, whose glance had just taken in the unlucky wreath.