“That is a nice polite thing to say to me! How would you like the idea of people saying I married you to be supported—with the inference that no one in England would have me?”
“I do not care a red cent what any one says or thinks if I get you. That is the only thing in life that interests me at present.”
“Bertie might oppose it so violently that he would have another hemorrhage.”
“If he were convinced that you loved me and if you wept a few judicious tears, common gratitude would force him to consent without a hemorrhage—and if you postponed the announcement a month he couldn’t have another if he tried. Besides, he loves you devotedly—you know his opposition would soon be exhausted. I have seldom seen a brother and sister so united. He would end by feeling with you and making vivid mental pictures of your great desire for happiness—if I could only create that desire in you.”
“Oh, dear!” I said. “You must give me time. I can’t say anything definite for days and days. Please talk of something else.”
“I have no intention of worrying you. Let us land here. I have another lake to show you. If this is a cloister, rapt and holy, that is a refuge for lost souls, dank and sinister.”
Much interested, and delighted at his ready conformity to my wishes, I stepped ashore and followed him along a “runway” (deer run), for about a mile. It turned and twisted through the wood and sometimes we had to climb over fallen trees, not having the lightsome feet of the deer—who could leap a house, I should think. It was not a dense wood, and the sunlight fairly tumbled in, but so divided that it seemed palpable enough to catch by the apronful. Some of the leaves looked to be made of light, and a sea-gull—they nest in these forests—seemed swimming and drinking in an upper lake of sunshine. But, abruptly, this charming impression was behind us. The wood grew dark and I noticed that the ground was very springy and soft—as our moors are in places.
“We are on a swamp—made of the decay of trees for a hundred years—” he said—“but you are quite safe. It is at least five feet deep.”
This was sufficiently creepy—only five feet of rotted bark and leaves between ourselves and the lake—although I reflected that if it could support trees, our additional weight would not sink it—but in a moment we stood on the brink of the lake.
Polly, I never have seen so desolate a spot. Even the mountains had deserted it. The forest about it grew on land as flat as a plain, and the trees hid the peaks which were only a few miles distant. And so many of the trees were dead. Lightning had blasted them and scarcely a spruce had escaped the blight. All about the shore the lake was choked with rotting trunks, their naked branches projecting starkly above the water—which had no movement. Its tarnished surface, as ripless as a marsh, did not even reflect that deserted wood—they held themselves aloof from each other; and yet they seemed dying together. The lake has no inlet, Mr. N. had told me as we came along; it is fed by springs and the moisture of the forest. I could imagine it dropping lower and lower, as the trees about it died, until—a century hence?—a dry bed choked with rotting trees would be visited as the tomb of one of Nature’s failures. In England such a spot would be the headquarters of a dozen dark and terrible stories, and would have done threadbare duty in fiction. But old as it is it is still too young for that complicated thing called life to have centred about it. It is on one of the New World’s peaks, and not in another generation will she have time to discover it. It is like those unhappy mortals who die and rot before they have guessed that there is aught in the world to live for. Poor stranded ugly duckling. I felt more pity for it than terror and almost resented the calm insolence of its beautiful fellows—two thousand of them, I am told. I wondered if its hidden springs met and gossipped with other springs, who in turn poured their cold freshness into other lakes, and with it their tale of a comrade forgotten by Nature and despised by man. Doubtless they would deepen their amber-brown in scorn, those spoilt beauties of the mountains, worshipped of men and darlings of Nature; not a ripple of pity would agitate them, I would vow.