She must go with us and show us the way.
"No," was the cool reply. She never went into the tower; she never went any farther than this.
Glancing at the dilapidated state of the stairs leading to the successive stones of the tower, we were almost tempted to believe that her instinct of self-preservation had reached its climax here,—that we might break our necks, if we liked,—she preferred not to run the risk. Resolved to satisfy our suspicions, we pressed the point, and, after many inquiries and waiting a considerable time upon the motions of the child and her new plaything, we got the brief and somewhat scornful explanation,—
"What if some other party should come while I was away?"
"We part here, then?"
She nodded in assent, received the fee for her services without acknowledgment, and saw us depart on our breakneck expedition with an indifference equalled only by the nonchalance with which she had admitted us on our arrival. The moment our backs were turned, she resumed her play.
After exploring the successive stories of the tower in safety, we descended by way of the anteroom, but the bird and its pursuer had both of them flown. We passed through a door she had previously pointed out, and gained the garden as surreptitiously as did Dorothy Vernon, of old, when, according to the tradition, she escaped through this same doorway on the night of her sister's nuptials, and eloped with her lover, Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Manners, who had long been haunting the neighboring forest as an outlaw. We strolled through the ancient garden, all ivied and moss-grown, admired the stone balustrade, which, time-stained and mouldy, is still the student's favorite bit of architecture, and at last made our way back to the farm-house,—I am sure I do not remember how, for we were as deficient in a guide as on our first attempt at entrance. Whether another party arrived while we were in the tower, and were engrossing her attention,—whether she was engaged in the more agreeable office of coquetting with the young artist, or was still chasing the swallow from room to room of the manor-house, I do not know. We saw her no more. She had barely condescended to let us in, and now left us to find our way out as we could.
She cared nothing at all for us. All the interest we had manifested in her (and it was considerable) had failed to awaken any emotion. We were a stereotyped feature of the old hall; and the old hall, though she had sprung from its root, and her life had been nourished by its strength, was no part of herself,—was her antipathy. Still I never think of the mansion, with all the romantic associations which cluster around it, but the image of this child comes to break my reverie, as she did on the day when it was first indulged.
So we go to visit some royal oak, and bring away, as a memento, the daisy which blooms at its foot; so we stand, as the reward of toil and fatigue, upon an Alpine glacier, and the trophy and pledge of our visit are the forget-me-not that grew on its margin. Thus youth and beauty ever press on the footsteps of old age, and youth and beauty bear away the palm.
My faith in legendary lore is confirmed, when I call to mind the Gothic fortress, with its strong defences against the enemy, its rude suggestions of centuries of hospitality, its tower-lattices, whence generation after generation of high-born maids waved signals to knightly lovers, its stairways, worn slippery with the tread of heavy-mailed warriors, its chapel-vault, where chivalrous lord and noble dame have turned to dust. But there is a faith more precious than the faith in old song and legend; and the golden-haired child, who flourishes so fresh and fair amidst all this ruin and decay, stands forth to my mind as an emblem of that power which renovates earth and defies time. Had she been a pattern child, had her instructors (whoever they were) succeeded in moulding her into a mere machine, she might not so vividly have roused my interest; but there was something in her saucy independence, her wayward freaks, her coquettish airs, her fiery chase after the swallow, which—breaking in, as they did, upon the docility with which she otherwise went through her round of duty—revivified the desolation of the old hall with a sudden outburst of humanity. Everywhere else the fountain of life seemed to have died out, but here it gushed forth a living stream.