Volume I Part 83 (1/2)
”I am sure your wisdom would not advise me to tell you that, Sir. You will find nothing there, Mr. Olmney.”
They went gaily on, careering about in all directions, and bearing down upon every promising stump or dead pine-tree they saw in the distance. Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine knots, and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in excellent spirits, and as happy as the birds that filled the woods, and whose cheery ”chick-a-dee-dee-dee” was heard whenever they paused to rest, and let the hatchet be still.
”How one sees everything in the colour of one's own spectacles!” said Fleda.
”May I ask what colour yours are to-day?” said Mr. Olmney.
”Rose, I think,” said Hugh.
”No,” said Fleda, ”they are better than that ? they are no worse colour than the snow's own ? they show me everything just as it is. It could not be lovelier.”
”Then we may conclude, may we not,” said Mr. Olmney, ”that you are not sorry to find yourself in Queechy again?”
”I am not sorry to find myself in the woods again. That is not pitch, Mr. Olmney.”
”It has the same colour ? and weight.”
”No, it is only wet ? see this, and smell of it ? do you see the difference? Isn't it pleasant?”
”Everything is pleasant to-day,” said he, smiling.
”I shall report you a cure. Come, I want to go a little higher and show you a view. Leave that, Hugh ? we have got enough.”
But Hugh chose to finish an obstinate stump, and his companions went on without him. It was not very far up the mountain, and they came to a fine look-out point ? the same where Fleda and Mr. Carleton had paused long before on their quest after nuts. The wide spread of country was a white waste now; the delicate beauties of the snow were lost in the far view; and the distant Catskill showed wintrily against the fair blue sky. The air was gentle enough to invite them to stand still, after the exercise they had taken; and as they both looked in silence, Mr. Olmney observed that his companion's face settled into a gravity rather at variance with the expression it had worn.
”I should hardly think,” said he, softly, ”that you were looking through white spectacles, if you had not told us so.”
”Oh ? a shade may come over what one is looking at, you know,”
said Fleda. But seeing that he still watched her inquiringly, she added ?
”I do not think a very wide landscape is ever gay in its effect upon the mind ? do you?”
”Perhaps ? I do not know,” said he, his eyes turning to it again, as if to try what the effect was.
”My thoughts had gone back,” said Fleda, ”to a time a good while ago, when I was a child, and stood here in summer weather ? and I was thinking that the change in the landscape is something like that which years make in the mind.”
”But you have not, for a long time at least, known any very acute sorrow?”
”No,” said Fleda, ”but that is not necessary. There is a gentle kind of discipline which does its work, I think, more surely.”
”Thank G.o.d for _gentle_ discipline!” said Mr. Olmney; ”if you do not know what those griefs are that break down mind and body together.”
”I am not unthankful, I hope, for anything,” said Fleda, gently; ”but I have been apt to think that, after a crus.h.i.+ng sorrow, the mind may rise up again, but that a long-continued though much lesser pressure in time breaks the spring.”
He looked at her again with a mixture of incredulous and tender interest, but her face did not belie her words, strange as they sounded from so young and in general so bright-seeming a creature.
”There shall no evil happen to the just,” he said, presently, and with great sympathy.
Fleda flashed a look of grat.i.tude at him ? it was no more, for she felt her eyes watering, and turned them away.