CHAPTER XXVI.THE FAIRY AT THE POOL.
One day I had wandered through the garden and out among the brave old chestnuts quite alone, for now that the family were absent, Turner allowed me to wander almost at will anywhere between the old mansion and our more humble, but not less lovely home.
This time I took one of the great chestnut avenues hitherto unexplored, which led me, by a curving sweep, to the lodge, which I just remembered having passed in my progress from the meadows, on the memorable night when Turner found me upon the door-steps. Then it had seemed like a cliff, adown which great festoons of ivy were sweeping to the ground. Now I saw the thick foliage turned and forced back here and there, to admit light into the doors and windows of a rustic cottage, which had a stir of life within, though I saw no person.
I passed this lodge with a stealthy tread, for a sense of disobedience troubled me, I knew, without having been directly told, that both Turner and Maria would disapprove my passing beyond the limits of the park; but childish curiosity, with some vague remembrance of the place, were too strong for my senseof right, and I passed on quite charmed with the broad slope of meadow land that lay before me, all golden, crimson and white with mid-summer blossoms. A village with a church tower in the distance rose upon my view like a glimpse of fairy land. I felt then that the world, as Turner asserted, was full of people, and longed to know more about them.
I walked along the carriage track which wound toward the village through thick hedges just out of blossom, holding my breath as I recognized here a moss-covered stone, there a hillock, upon which I had set down to rest on that wearisome night. The grass was green and fresh where the tent had been, to which my first remembrance went back, but I recollected the place well. As I stood gazing on it, the soft gurgle of waters fell upon my ear as it had then, and induced, half by a feeling that seemed like terror, half by curiosity, I moved toward the hollow, wondering if I should find that impish little figure waiting for me again.
I reached the slope, looked half timidly down, and remained breathless and lost in delight.
Upon the rock which I have mentioned covered with lichen and mossy grasses, sat a little girl, about my own age, I should think, busy with a quantity of meadow blossoms that filled the crown of a straw bonnet that stood by her side. All around her lay the gathered blossoms; her tiny feet were buried in them; they gleamed through the skirt of her muslin dress, and brightened the rock all around. She coquetted with them like a bird—bending her head on one side as she held a cluster of violets in the sun, flinging it back with a graceful curve of the neck, when they dropped into shadow, and eyeing them coyly all the time, as a robin regards the cherry he intends to appropriate at leisure.
What eyes the creature had! large and of a purplish blue, like the violets she held, and so full of smiling brightness. Never before or since have I seen a creature so beautiful, so full of graceful bloom. Her profuse hair was in disorder, falling in golden waves and curls all over her white shoulders, fromwhich the transparent sleeve was drawn with knots of blue ribbon, leaving the prettiest dimples in the world exposed. Her mouth was soft, red, and smiling like ripe cherries in the sunshine, and that rosy smile, so innocent in its tenderness, so radiant with glee! Talk of women not feeling the glow of each other’s beauty; why, there is no feeling on earth so unselfish, so full of lofty, tender admiration as the love which one high-souled woman feels for the sister woman to whom her soul goes forth in sympathy. This appreciation, these attachments are not frequent in society, but when they do exist, the loves of the angels are almost realized. Sometimes the same feeling extends to children, but not often.
I looked down upon this child, thus busy with her graceful flowers, and my heart filled with the sunshine of her presence. As she trifled with her garlands, the smile broke into music on her red lips, and a few soft chirping notes, wild and untaught as a bird’s, blended richly with the flowing waters.
At last she lifted a half-twined garland high over her head, that the sunshine might kindle up its blossoms, and as her eyes were turned upward they fell upon me. The garland hung motionless in her hand; the song died on her lips, leaving them like an opening rose-bud; and her blue eyes filled with a look of pleasant wonder. Thus, for the moment, we gazed upon each other, we who were to be a destiny each to the other.
“Come,” she said at last, pushing her straw hat toward me so eagerly that a quantity of flowers rolled over the brim, through which the broad strings rippled in azure waves—“come, there is enough for us both, let us pelt the brook and hear the water laugh as it runs away with them. Here, jump to the rock, I will make room. Now for it!”
She gathered up her skirt, crushing the blossoms with her little dimpled arms, pushed back the bonnet, and left a space upon the stone for me to occupy.
I sprang down the bank breathing quickly, and with my whole frame in a joyful glow, I placed myself among theblossoms, wove my arms about the charming infant’s, and kissed her shoulders till she laughed aloud, as a bird breaks into music at the first sight of a kindred songster.
“Come,” said the child, her voice still rich with glee—“come, let us go to work; which will you have, violets, primroses, or some of these pretty white stars that I found by the brook?”
“All, all,” I answered, with animation, “give them to me, and mind what a pretty crown I shall make for your hair.”
She turned her great wondering eyes on me as I wove the blossoms together—the violets with golden primroses, intermingling them with leaves and spears of long grass, a white star gleaming out here and there in silvery relief.
When she saw my garland, so different from her own, in which the flowers were grouped without method, the child seemed lost in admiration. After gazing on it a moment, and then upon me, she took her own half-formed wreath and cast it upon the brooklet with a charming little pout of the lips, that was lovely almost as her smiles had been.
I went on with my coronal, enjoying the task as an author does his poem, or a painter his picture. The buds harmonized under my fingers; their symmetrical grace filled my soul with the delight which springs from a natural love of the beautiful. Even at that age I had all the feelings of an artist, all that love of praise which holds a place in those feelings.
“Ah,” said I, weaving my wreath among her golden curls, “if you could see how beautiful you are together, you and the flowers.”
“I can see,” cried the child, springing up and scattering a shower of blossoms from the folds of her frock which fell into the water, disturbing it till it looked like a shattered mirror. “No, not now, naughty thing that I am, to make the poor brook so angry with my flowers—but wait a minute, and you shall see!”
“No, no, not there!” cried I, seizing her in breathless fear, for I remembered the hideous thing that had frightened mefrom the depths of those very waters; “don’t look in the water; let us go away. It may be lurking here yet.”
“What?” questioned the child, anxiously.
“Something that I saw here once, a wild, wicked creature, with such eyes and hair”——
“What, in the water?” she asked, her blue eyes growing wider and larger.
“Yes, here in the pool, just by this rock.”
We both stood up clinging to one another. In our upright position the pool lay clear and tranquil beneath us, and impelled by that sort of fascination which in moments of affright often turns the gaze upon that which it dreads to see, our eyes fell at the same moment upon two objects reflected back as from a mirror—my little friend, so like one of those cherubs which Raphael half buries amid the transparent clouds in his pictures—and that other little friend, with whom I had become acquainted in the mirror at home.
“Ah, how came she here? Is she your friend also?” I said, pointing toward the dark brilliant child that pointed back to me, with a questioning smile as I spoke.
“Who, that?” asked my companion, waving her hand—a gesture that was sent back, as it seemed, with new grace from the water.
“Why, don’t you know it again?”
“Yes, but do you? Does it ever speak to you, or only stand looking like that?”
She gazed at me with her wondering eyes, and then at the images beneath us.
“Why, don’t you know me, there with the wreath on?—and you? it is so droll that any one should not know herself.”
I caught my breath.
“What?” I exclaimed, “does that child look like me? is it me?”
“Why, yes, who else, please?” cried my companion gaily, “see, it is your hair, so black, and your pretty frock too; and the eyes, they look like stars in the water.”
I looked upon the two figures, the fair, blooming little beauty—the dark, earnest, haughty but sparkling face that bent over her. After a moment, I said slowly, as if speaking of a picture, “yes, it is me, and I am beautiful!”
“Indeed you are,” exclaimed the child, with a gaiety that disturbed me, for this conviction of my own loveliness gave a serious, almost sad impression to my thoughts; “papa calls me his blossom, you shall be his star. Shall she not, my own darling papa?”
I looked up and saw a gentleman standing upon the bank looking calmly, and with a gentle smile upon us as we stood. He was dressed in black, somewhat worn, and had a subdued meekness in his deportment, which won my childish heart in an instant.
“Well, Cora, are you ready to return home?” he said, with a quiet smile.
“Oh, yes, papa,” she cried, unwinding her arms from mine, and leaping from the rock. “Good-bye, come to-morrow,” she cried, clambering up the bank, and pausing at the top to shower back kisses with both hands; “do you hear? Come to-morrow, my star”——
The gentleman took her hand and led her away. I watched them till they disappeared, and then sunk upon the rock crying disconsolately. It seemed as if my life had again just begun, and was swept away into darkness.