"Then at last I began to come back to my former life, which seemed already so far back, and to think of a little, common school day, and what you were all doing. They have had the forenoon recitations, I thought; they have had dinner, and now,--where can that girl be? I exclaimed, as I looked up and saw that the sun had left one side of the ravine in the shade, and that I must hasten to find my way out.
But the farther I went, the more I became involved, and at last I became aware, all at once, that I was lost. It was as if some one had made the announcement to me, and I received it at first with calmness, or as if it was felt suddenly by something within me, and had not yet come to my understanding; but I knew it was coming, and though I was perfectly calm, a great deal more so than I am now in telling it, I walked quickly to a place where I could sit down, and when I reached it, trembled so that I had to lean against a rock for support. I did not then comprehend my situation, or hardly think of it. I only felt frightened about myself, and thought if I could only get my breath, or if my heart would beat, or stop beating, whichever it was, and the tremor would pa.s.s off, I could look the danger calmly in the face. At last I recovered so far as to feel all that had burst upon me at once come back, step by step, till the truth of my situation stood before me, solid and bare as those cruel rocks. It was late in the afternoon when you could see, in the sunbeams over the shaded ravine, every insect; not a breath of air stirring the leaves, and the great cliffs overhanging, as if just ready to fall. The silence was stifling, and I tried to scream; but the sound of my voice was so faint and childish, among those great rocks, that I threw myself on the ground in an agony of terror, and if I had ever wished for a good cry, I had it then. If it had been on the open mountain side, or any where else but shut in there among those rocks!--but I really felt they were closing in upon me, and would crush me. I cried till I was too weak for fear, and then I found myself thinking of the blade of gra.s.s in the crevice of the rock, and I seemed to be that gra.s.s blade, and lifting at one end that whole weight of rock, never to get out of the place till I succeeded; and then I thought of the tender flower stem, which I had read of, lifting the heavy clod, and I tried to be quiet, (if I struggled or moved I knew I should be crushed,) and to pervade that whole ma.s.s with the gentle pressure, till I could lift it from off me. This sense seemed a new breath of air in my lungs, to keep the mountain from pressing me flat beneath it; and now I seemed to myself breathing my own life into the inert ma.s.s, till imperceptibly it became lighter and lighter, and at last I was free.
"When I waked up the stars were shining over me, and I seemed to be set into the dewy ground, I had lain there so long. I positively thought for a moment I had been actually crushed, instead of only dreaming it, and that my body lay dead beneath me; for I could neither stir hand nor foot, and every thing seemed so cold and distinct about me. I saw a moment after that this was because I was chilled through by the night air and dew; but the sensation was so pleasant--to feel free like a spirit--that I remained just as I waked. How I did think of every thing that night! There I was, lost; but I had lost all fear of that, so long as I was sure of being there myself. This seemed a new starting-point, which it was strange I had never thought of.
Suppose I should be where I had been in the morning; I should know almost as little where I was as now; for without that girl"s help I could never find my way back to the school; and if I were there I should still be lost, unless I knew my position in respect to every part of the world; and if I knew all that, still the earth would be a ship without a compa.s.s, unless I knew its place in reference to all the stars. The only place that I felt certain about, after all, was where I was, for I kept coming back to that; and then it seemed to me I was a ball of yarn, that had unrolled as it went, and now all I had to do was to wind it up to where it started from. Would not this lead, I thought, at last to the point from which all things have their place? Then I remembered the long, sharp teeth of that little squirrel, and how every animal has an organ which enables him to earn his own living in his own way, and it seemed unreasonable to think that man had not one to enable him to follow that clew. I had thought, at one time, of praying for a direct interposition of Providence, which I had heard was the shortest way of leading one out of trouble, for it seemed so much more direct, the clear s.p.a.ce above, with nothing between me and the stars, than to be losing myself farther and farther among those black woods and rocks. But then, I thought, what is prayer but feeling our way along that thread? and is not my _sense_ of this the faculty by which I may follow it up? That thought was like a new sense of touch, and I felt the thread within my hand, and was certain that every thing has within itself the way out.
"While these thoughts were pa.s.sing through my mind, they seemed gradually to become audible, and when they pa.s.sed away, the same tone went on; and as I listened, I could hear, in the stillness of the night, the dripping and flowing of some little stream, far back in the mountain. As soon as it was light, I followed the sound, and then the brook, till it led me down the mountain to the open fields; and where do you think, girls, I came out? Why, up there on the cleared part of the mountain, directly in front of the school house."
"I saw you when you came in at the gate," exclaimed f.a.n.n.y; "and what a sight you were! But that is always the way; we always come back to where we began. It is the reason, I believe, why we never have better stories nowadays."
"You must allow there is some difference between coming back to the beginning, and merely being there because we have never been away. As for the story, I told you at the outset that you had nothing to expect. But come, Leonora; I have given you time for your point of view, as you call it; or perhaps, as I have come to a full stop, I can furnish you with one."
"You could not give me a better, for I have been thinking all along that your story would almost do for mine."
"Do look, girls, at what Nora has been drawing," exclaimed Kate. "Here we all are just like life, only so much better. How charming it is, when we are all going on so, without thinking of any thing but what we are doing, to find we have been making a scene for some one else! It is just like sitting talking in a boat, and looking up suddenly, and finding ourselves afloat on the lake."
"And you know I always enjoy more sitting on the sh.o.r.e, and seeing you, than being in the boat myself," said Leonora. "It seems odd, perhaps, that such a scene of life as that is should remind me of Linda when she waked up and thought she was lying dead beside herself. But did you ever, Linda, feel more alive than at that moment?"
"I believe I had never thought of myself at all before. You know I said that all the time I was so troubled because I did not know where I was, I never once thought of being any where."
"That, to be sure, is the most important, for it would be hardly worth while to go round the world to find where our house was situated, and to come back and find it occupied by some one else. That is often the case with those who travel from home, and I believe we must come back every night to be sure of not losing it."
"How every thing brings in every thing else!" said Kate. "I believe you will never begin."
"I soon learned that," answered Leonora, "and that brings me to the beginning of my story, if you will have it that I am to tell one, though I would rather tell it in my own way, by drawing the ill.u.s.trations to Linda"s, which, as I said, would almost answer for mine; but why should it not, as we were each to tell something in our experience resembling Clara"s?"
"Poor Clara! I had almost forgotten her," said f.a.n.n.y.
"None are poor but those who think themselves rich. How proud I felt of my first poor little drawings! How well I remember them! The house, and the fence before it, and the lattice in the garret window, and then the great elm and the brook, and by degrees the distant hill behind, for I kept adding to my pictures as I advanced, having to go back farther and farther for a point of view, till at last the hill on the outskirts of the village, overlooking the whole, was my favorite spot for sketching, if I may dignify my stiff little achievements by such a term. Still it was the house that was the centre of the picture; but, as Kate says, one thing leads to every thing, and I found there was no end to the things I must introduce; and yet they did not seem to belong to the house, but to be fastened to it in some way. I could not get them off, and remember, when some one was saying that a painter of his acquaintance could not get his pictures off his hands, feeling a certain pride in knowing that I was contending with one of the regular difficulties of the art. But at last I succeeded, in some degree, in getting my picture right, and did not altogether disbelieve what every one said at home, that it was beautiful. As I was led, however, farther and farther back, by the necessity for a wider view, the house began to have rather a subordinate look; but still it was my home, and nothing seemed a picture without it. As yet I had had no instruction, as you would easily believe if you should see my productions of that period, until one day, as I was bending over my drawing board, (I was very particular about my drawing paper then, and always had the best,) and had just got in the house, a shade fell across my picture, and looking up, I saw a young man with camp stool and portfolio slung across his shoulder, looking down at my work. I drew a little back, that he might see it better, rather pleased that he should see that I also was in that line. He glanced at the landscape, then looked again at my sketch with a smile. He had not said a word, and yet the opinion of all my family, aunts, cousins, and all, admiring my picture on a thanksgiving day after dinner, would not have weighed a straw with me against that smile. Yet he asked me to go on with it, which I did lest he should go away, looking up now and then, and seeing him regarding my work with the half-curious interest with which one would watch an ant-hill, till at last I threw down my pencil, and asked him if he would not oblige me with a sketch of his own.
"He gave one look at the landscape. What a look!--it was a new revelation to me in art,--like an eagle taking in the whole view at one sweep. He seemed to hold every hill and valley fixed with his eye as in a vice, and to weigh the place and proportion of every thing as in a balance, on the firm line of his mouth. All at one glance too; for, without unstrapping his camp stool, he placed his portfolio on his knee, kneeling on the other, and hardly looking up twice, handed me in a few minutes a complete sketch. I say a complete sketch, for I had not known till then that a sketch may be as complete as a finished picture. But I forget that my story also must be a sketch, and I will not spoil it by details which cannot be interesting to you.
"As soon as I saw his sketch, I found, to my astonishment, that he had left out the house altogether; and even the village he had put away at one side as of no importance. On mentioning the oversight, he took out his eye-gla.s.s and looked at the house, asking me what particular importance I attached to it. I timidly replied that I lived there.
""Ah," he exclaimed, and apologized for his omission, saying he would not forget so important a feature in the landscape. "Come" said he, "you shall be my guide over these hills, to which I am a stranger.
Let us forget the house for a while, and look up a new view of the village, which does not come in very well here." How strange it seemed to me that he should speak of the village where I had been born, as a thing to be introduced here or there at his convenience. Already his words seemed to set it afloat; but when, after a long detour, leaving it quite out of sight, we came suddenly upon the edge of the mountain, where the whole valley lay like a toy village almost directly under our feet, it was like a fairy enchantment. There was the actual village, every house and garden in its place, so near that it could be seen distinctly, and yet so far down that it had a foreign look. Then he took out a spy-gla.s.s, and adjusting it, handed it to me. "Now for the house," said he; and after carrying the tube over half the village, I exclaimed for joy. There I was directly at the gate; it was at the back of the house, and the forenoon work was going on as usual. My father was standing at the door giving some silent direction to the man, who seemed to answer him without saying a word, and Jane was going about like a historical personage, hanging out clothes.
"It was exactly as if I had been looking at a place I had been reading about in some old book; and yet the persons were so familiar to me, more so than ever. I handed the spy-gla.s.s to the stranger that he might share my delight, but he did not care to look. "That is the way," said he, "all places look to me. To the artist the familiar is strange, and the strange familiar."
"I only thought the remark was strange, and wondered if it would ever be familiar to me.
"Then he went on to describe the village as if he were looking at it, with me, through the gla.s.s. "Do you see the old woman at the window, looking down the street? And the man asleep on the church steps? And the single figure crossing the green?" Just as if they were all regular figures in a picture, and not people who happened to be there at that moment, as they really were.
""Now for something new!" he said, putting the gla.s.s in his pocket and leading me over the mountain. But nothing seemed new to him. He appeared to look at every view we came to as if he saw it for the first time after a long absence, and remembered every tree and stone in it. When I told him so, he sat down, and opening his portfolio in a place unlike any I had ever seen before, and not, I thought, particularly interesting, he began to sketch, and to tell me at the same time, so that I should not be tired, the old story which we have all read, (the first, I believe, we ever read,) but which I let him tell, it was so new as he told it, about the little child that was carried away by the gypsies, and years after, when they came back to his native country, strolled off till he came to the house where he was born; and the sense by degrees came over him that he had been there before, and it all became clearer and clearer, until at last the gate and the doorstep were no dream; and as he went over the whole story, he would give a touch here and a touch there, that seemed to waken a recollection in me, as if I were the little child he was telling about, coming nearer and nearer, till, with a few strokes, he finished the picture; and there, to be sure, was our very house, and I _was_ the little child he had been telling about. It was all perfectly clear to me, though it is a mystery even now how he could have made it so. When I looked again, I saw it was not exactly our house; and yet it looked even more like it than if it had been, and there was nothing in it that I could have altered without spoiling the picture.
"Then he would walk on, and sit down again and take another view with a different house, but with the same home-like look, and yet exactly suiting the landscape. And at last he would draw places without any houses at all, and yet as if a human being was looking at them, to whom they were in some way a home, just as he drew my bonnet and portfolio on the edge of a hill, so that any one would have known I was somewhere about.
"As we went back, at the close of the day, every object he pointed out seemed to light up with a life of its own, and every step we took was like finding a bird"s nest in the gra.s.s. He parted with me in the road, saying that he had left his horse somewhere on the hill where he had found me in the morning, and that he should remember the day with pleasure.
"As for me, I thought, as I walked slowly homeward towards the fading sunset, that I never should remember any thing else. When I have read since of the great days of Creation, which are believed to have been years of our time, I have thought of that day, and it has not seemed necessary that the old time should have been different from ours. It seemed an age since I had left the village in the morning, and every thing looked as it does when we go home at the end of term."
"We seem so much older, too, then," said f.a.n.n.y, "and as if we had seen so much, and should meet ourselves at the gate, little things as we were when we left."
"I thought of myself, and my little sketches of the morning, as if I had been a tame pigeon pecking about before the door, with its little, short feet; and now I had seen the eagle which I had heard of, and his great wings had opened for me all the wide s.p.a.ce behind the rim of the hills which enclosed the village. And yet it looked all the more like home for being encompa.s.sed with that great region. Every thing looked so old, with a new meaning, and as I approached the house, it looked as it had when I saw it through the spy-gla.s.s, and the gate, as I opened it in the stillness of the twilight, seemed to say, with its creak, "The familiar made strange;" for these words were to me like a sentence in old German text in an English book.
"As I was dressing for tea, I heard the sound of a horse"s hoofs, and a moment after a knock at the door. Could I ever know the meaning of those other words of his, "The strange made familiar," as I did when I heard it in the sound of the stranger"s voice?
"He had called with my portfolio, which he had carried for me, and I had forgotten to take from him. I heard my father inviting him in, and when I went down, there was my eagle sitting at the tea table, bending forward, courteously, to take a cup from my sister, like any other visitor.
""You see I am keeping my promise," he said, "not to forget the house which I treated with such neglect in the morning."
"I was too bewildered with the joy of my surprise to make any reply; and taking my seat, which happened to be next his, I could only sit in silence, and try to comprehend my happiness. It was as if I understood perfectly the answer to some riddle, without knowing what the riddle was. The china on the table, and the people, had always given me the feeling of being fixed to it, like a doll"s tea set, where the table and dishes are all in one piece; and it made no difference how learned or profound my father"s visitors might be; when they spoke it gave me the unpleasant sensation of taking up your cup and having the saucer come with it.
"Then, too, we were all so near at home, that we never gave each other room; and if we did, it was by going away entirely.
"But here was a person who set every one off at a respectful distance, himself among the rest, and yet preserved their relation to himself and each other by encouraging their peculiarities, outside of that limit, and set us all agoing by placing us at the right point of view, with, in some mysterious way, the common sense of the whole party as spectator; so that we were like figures in a landscape, which, while we were looking at them, I knew, without knowing why, to be ourselves.
"Even grandmother, who always comes dead upon a stranger, and there is no shaking her off, could not get within the charmed circle, but had to keep in her orbit; and really she appeared like quite an entertaining old lady, and all the more so for her peculiar style of conversation, which is apt to be the family consternation at table.
Our little group that evening reminded me of a system of stars revolving around each other, with a general motion of the whole in reference to some point without, which I had a sense of, though I did not understand it; but I felt sure that our stranger did; and this, I think, was what attracted me towards him, for I felt the need of something out of the sphere of everlasting praises for wretched little drawings, which I knew were only good so far as their defects showed there was something better. Now, he stood on the outside of all the things that he drew, and I knew he could see them as they were."
"I am sure I am on the outside of all you are saying," interrupted Kate. "Which of us was it who hoped to get rid of moralizing by calling upon Nora for a story?"
"Pictures themselves, as Anna said, may perhaps have no moral; at least, they are not so prosy in telling it as I am; but those who have no moral, no idea, are not usually the persons who paint them. But I see I have been going out of my province; for a picture, whatever else it may be, should be intelligible, and the painter"s account of himself ought to be no less so. So I will not tell you how I learned from one person, who had a place to stand upon, how nothing can be seen as it is by one who has none. I have at least learned to prefer standing on my feet to having even so excellent a teacher as Mr. Moran for palanquin bearer."
"No doubt he would be glad if we all would relieve him, in the same way, of a burden which he carries with such resignation," said Anna. "But he certainly will be much indebted to you for the valuable information you can give him in regard to your fixed point, although I believe the only point he thinks of when here, is that on the clock, which marks the end of his hour."
"I am not so presumptuous as to think a school girl"s ideas could be of any value to an artist like him, though, if we may believe men, they all draw from us their best inspirations. Perhaps, after all, it is the destiny of us girls, in some unconscious way, with the finer instinct which men attribute to us, to spend our lives in winding up Linda"s ball of yarn for them to throw out again."
"Thank Heaven the ball is wound up so far!" said Kate. "Now, Ella, do break off the thread, and give it to the fairies to play with."
"O, yes, Ella, do! After all this sc.r.a.ping and tuning, let us have the dance at last," said Effie.
"Positively I have not a word of it ready," answered Ella. "I thought of something when I spoke, but it was like turning a kaleidoscope; with every turn it became something else. And then I began to listen to Linda, and to Leonora, and my story became so confused with theirs, that you would not know it for a fairy story, if I should tell it to you; but if you will let me off until I disentangle it, Anna, I know, will take my place, for she never wants a moment"s notice. If you should wake her up in the middle of the night, and ask her for a story, she would immediately begin with "Once upon a time," and go on telling it after we were all asleep. Come, Anna, take the kaleidoscope, and I will give you the princess, the castle, the grim father, and the disappointed suitors for beads to put in it. So give it a turn, and let us see what it will be."
"There was once a princess, who was the most beautiful who had ever been seen--"
"O, of course!" interrupted Kate. "Who ever heard of a princess, in a story, who was not?"
"Did you ever hear, my dear, of one who was so beautiful that of all her maids of honor (each of whom was so beautiful herself, that a whole village would go crazy about her if she but drove through it) not one, however they might dispute for the preference among themselves, ever thought of raising the least pretension to beauty in her presence? There never was but one such, and that was my princess.
"Although her father, who was the wealthiest and haughtiest prince of all that region, lived in a castle so grand and stately, and although in sight of the highway, separated from it by grounds so severely elegant and august, that except for the beautiful princess no one would have ventured to approach it, yet it was open to all, and many a bold youth, who had heard of her fame, preserved his courage all along the avenue, until he reached the stately front door, nor remembered, until it was opened by the awful footman, that he did not know whom to ask for.
"For it seems the people, through the influence, probably, of the maids of honor, had begun to copy the manners of the court, and every pretty girl in the country had begun to fancy herself a princess; and one day when her father was walking through the town, he was so annoyed at hearing every third child called by his daughter"s name, that he went home, and shut her up in the castle, and declared she should never again be called by any name, until some one should come who would give her his own. You may be sure there were not wanting youths who would have been happy to present her with such a gift; and it was not long before she numbered among her suitors the princes of all the provinces in the kingdom, each of whom had appeared at the castle gate with full a.s.surance that his name would be one which the princess would be only too happy to accept. But their names were not so powerful at court as at home. The maids of honor, each of whom was a princess in her own country, did not fail, like mischievous things as they were, to take advantage of the confusion arising from there being no name for the princess, to go down when any one was announced, in one of her dresses,--of which you may imagine the number when I tell you she never wore the same twice,--and impose herself on the unsuspecting visitor, as the princess whom he wished to see. What fun, to be sure, all the rest must have had, listening at the half-open door of the next room, to hear the protestations, one after another, of these poor, deluded lovers, each to a different lady! They did not once think what troubles might arise among so many suitors, each of whom considered himself as the chosen one, if they should happen to meet where the princess was the subject of conversation.
However, this very circ.u.mstance, which occurred, turned out for the benefit of the princess, if not of the suitors; for a young n.o.bleman in their company, hearing them disagree so widely in their descriptions of her beauty, very naturally concluded that each had seen a different one, and that neither, perhaps, had seen the princess herself. So he called the next day to see for himself, and soon found, charming as the young lady was who came down to see him, that she was a.s.suming the air of a higher personage than herself; for one who knows what he seeks is not so easily put off by appearances. So he took leave, and coming next day in disguise, beheld another lady; and so every day, until he had seen them all, and satisfied himself that he had not seen their mistress. With all their grace and beauty there was an air about them as of reflected light, and he fancied he detected now and then a listening kind of look, as if the main life of the house was going on somewhere else. Yet he did not wonder at the pa.s.sion of the suitors, for each of these maids of honor was so lovely, that the lifetime of almost any man would not have been too much to devote to her. But he looked at them as one looks at the moon when waiting for the daybreak, and was not long in sending a message by the footman, that brought down the princess herself, who entered the room in all her loveliness, leaning upon the arm of her father. A single glance sufficed to tell the youth that she was indeed the princess that his heart had foretold, but also that he never could win her without the consent of the stern old monarch upon whom she leaned. Nor did he feel dismayed, for he also valued that ancestral pride, nor without reason; for in the veins of the poor young n.o.bleman also ran the blood of a royal line, although the sword that hung at his side was all that was left him of its former glory; and the old king might have seen it flashing in his eye with a trace of the old splendor, as he boldly asked the hand of his daughter. But though the father frowned, the daughter smiled, for the glance of the youth had sparkled in her heart, as if it were already the marriage ring upon her finger.
""Come hither," said the sire; and the youth followed him to the balcony which overlooked the country about the castle. "On every side," said he, "farther than the eagle"s flight can measure in a day, behold my domain. Think"st thou I will permit this inheritance of my fathers to go into the hands of a man of yesterday? Let him win it, then I may know that he can keep it. Go down again, and look up over the castle gate, and see the escutcheon of this house. No heraldic device is that, but the veritable coat of arms which the founder of this house placed there as the seal of his work. Know also the traditionary challenge to whoever aspires to the hand of the daughter of the house. Only as an equal can he win her from her father"s hand, who will condescend to meet in arms none but those who can take down and wear that armor." Then with an inclination of the head that seemed to freeze the air about him, he dismissed the youth, who feared him not, but saw in him only the ma.s.sive foundations of that stately castle, from the upper window of which the fairest princess in the world waved him a farewell of hope.
"When he was outside the gate he looked up, and there was the coat of arms, not, as one would suppose from the careless glance usually given on entering the door of a palace, an ornamental escutcheon,--though of enormous size, as befitted the proportions of the edifice,--but the veritable arms themselves, which must have come down from a race of giants. Even if he could have worn them, it would have been impossible to take them down, as they were built into the wall of the house, and indeed seemed so essential a part of the structure, that it was, as it were, the face of the whole front, and could not be taken away but with the whole body. No wonder he felt for a moment disheartened, as he stood before the frowning portal; and perhaps he would have turned away in despair, had not his eye caught at that moment the merry faces of the maids of honor peering out, one over the other, at the side windows, and been drawn thus to a golden gleam at the great oriel window above, which was no other than the radiant face and arm of his princess; and although she disappeared the next minute, yet that light seemed for a moment to lift, from within, the whole dark castle, and to fall upon the device on the shield of the escutcheon, which was so effaced by time, that he had not observed it before. With a smile that would have become the stern face of the lord of the castle himself, he gayly turned, and walked down the long avenue, not for years to return, touching now and then the hilt of his sword, as one would pat the neck of his war-horse, which was pawing for him to mount; and well did that sword deserve his trust, for though it was his all, a king"s ransom would not have purchased it. It had been the sword of his greatest ancestor, and possessed the charm of giving to the arm of its wearer the strength of every one it overcame.