Volume I Part 32 (1/2)
The pedestrians went off in the other direction, along the brow of the hill, by a long white road that crossed a wide sweep of heathy country, brown ridges and dark hollows, distant groups of firs standing black against the moonlit sky, here and there a solitary yew that looked as if it were haunted--just such a landscape as that Scottish heath upon which Macbeth met the three weird women at set of sun, when the battle was lost and won. Vixen and Rorie led the way; the procession of school-children followed, singing hymns as they went with a vocal power that gave no token of diminution.
”Their singing is very melodious when the sharp edge is taken off by distance,” said Rorie; and he and Violet walked at a pace which soon left the children a good way behind them.
Mellowed by a quarter of a mile or so of interesting s.p.a.ce, the music lent a charm to the tranquil, perfumed night.
By-and-by they came to the gate of an enclosure which covered a large extent of ground, and through which there was a near way to Beechdale and the Abbey House. They walked along a gra.s.sy track through a plantation of young pines--a track which led them down into a green and mossy bottom, where the trees were old and beautiful, and the shadows fell darker. The tall beech-trunks shone like silver, or like wonderful frozen trees in some region of eternal ice and snow. It was a wilderness in which a stranger would incontinently lose himself; but every foot of the way was familiar to Vixen and Rorie. They had followed the hounds by these green ways, and ridden and rambled here in all seasons.
For some time they walked almost in silence, enjoying the beauty of the night, the stillness only broken by the distant chorus of children singing their pious strains--old hymn-tunes that Violet had known and loved all her life.
”Doesn't it almost seem as if our old childish days had come back?”
said Roderick by-and-by. ”Don't you feel as if you were a little girl again, Vixen, going for a ramble with me--fern-hunting or primrose-gathering?”
”No,” answered Vixen firmly. ”Nothing can ever bring the past back for me. I shall never forget that I had a father--the best and dearest--and that I have lost him.”
”Dear Violet,” Roderick began, very gently, ”life cannot be made up of mourning for the dead. We may keep their images enshrined in our hearts for ever, but we must not shut our youth from the suns.h.i.+ne. Think how few years of youth G.o.d gives us; and if we waste those upon vain sorrow----”
”No one can say that I have wasted my youth, or shut myself from the suns.h.i.+ne. I go to kettle-drums and dancing-parties. My mother and I have taken pains to let the world see how happy we can be without papa.”
”The dear old Squire!” said Rorie tenderly; ”I think he loved me.”
”I am sure he did,” answered Vixen.
”Well, you and I seem to have entered upon a new life since last we rode through these woods together. I daresay you are right, and that it is not possible to fancy oneself back in the past, even for a moment.