“This is delicious,” said the Major, lifting his hat from his heated brow. “It is Greenland at our very doors. The water looks so tempting that I must have a drink,” he continued, dismounting. “Will you permit me, Miss Aylesford, to be your cup-bearer?”
“I haven’t the heart to refuse,” said Kate, fanning herself, with her broad-leafed hat, “for the water is the best in the whole region. Besides, to be frank, I’m half dead with thirst. But will your horse stand?” “Like a lamb, generally, but as he is also thirsty, and might drink, I’ll fasten him thus,” and with these words the Major threw the bridle over the limb of a tree.
“Yonder you’ll find a leaf large enough for an impromptu cup,” said Kate, observing that he was looking about as if for one. “I used to come here frequently, before I went abroad, and always knew where to find materials for a woodland goblet.” And she directed him with a wave of her hat, still fanning herself.
The Major was not long in profiting by the hint, and skillfully arranging the leaf, filled it with water, and bore it to his lovely companion in triumph.
“Handsomely done,” said Kate. “Yon must once have been the wood-nymphs’ Ganymede, if the doctrine of transmigration of souls be true. Ah!” she continued, with a sigh, “what a world of poetry went out with the Greeks, who peopled every object in the landscape with life, so that a wood, or a tree, was an actual dryad or hamadryad. How I drank in those pages of Tasso, when I was still quite a child, where the Christian knight hews down the tree, which, a beautiful nymph, bleeds at every stroke. I cried over the poor lady, imprisoned in the cruel bark, as if my heart would break.”
“It’s the most alluring feature of the old Pantheism, that beautiful fiction of tutelary spirits of the woods and streams,” said Major Gordon, as he took the emptied cup; and filling it, in the spirit of the thought he poured the water out again, saying, “A pious Greek would have propitiated, in this way, the deities of the place by a libation.”
“They don’t seem to be in an especially good humor now, at any rate,” said Kate, who happened to glance up at the sky at that moment. “As well as I can see, through the leaves overhead, a thunder storm is coming up. We have been so long in the cool forest aisle, that we have noticed neither the increasing darkness, nor the fall in the temperature. The day has been sultry enough for a tempest, and, if we don’t make haste, we may get drenched through.
Major Gordon was in the saddle before she had ceased speaking. Cantering a short space ahead, where the verdant vault parted partially above, he confirmed Kate’s opinion. In a moment she was at his side.
“Hadn’t we better return?” he said, surprised to see her following him.
“We should be too late to escape the storm,” she replied. “Mr. Herman’s farm is the nearest place of shelter I remember; it is only a mile off; but we can reach it before the rain comes on, if we lose no time. Follow me.”