CHAPTER XII.
LANDING AT THE PROFILE HOUSE--HALSTEAD ROWAN AND GYMNASTICS--HOW THAT PERSON SAW CLARA VANDERLYN AND BECAME A RIVAL OF "H. T."--THE FULL MOON IN THE NOTCH--TRODDEN TOES, A NAME, A VOICE, AND A RENCONTRE--MARGARET HAYLEY AND CAPT. HECTOR COLES--THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN BY MOONLIGHT, AND A MYSTERY.
Spite of the sometimes rapid speed, the toil up the mountain had been longand tedious; and dusk was very nearly falling and the chill of the comingevening was sufficient to induce the drawing close of mantles and wrappersthat only two hours before had been reckoned an incumbrance,--when thecoaches with their loads broke out from the overhanging woods on a steepdown-grade, the passengers caught a glimpse of Echo Lake lying like a sheetof molten silver under the evening calm, and the whole cortege swept downat a gallop and with cracking of whips, to the broad, level plateau lyingbefore the Profile House in the Franconia Notch.
Two of the coaches had been in advance of that to which the attention ofthe reader has been particularly directed, and still other coaches had justcome in from Plymouth, the Glen and the Crawford; so that when they drew upto alight the long piazza of the Profile was filled with sojournerssatisfying their curiosity or looking out for fresh arrivals; and coachmen,servants and every employee of the establishment, were busy hauling downfrom the racks and boots where they had been stowed, immense piles oftrunks, valises and every description of baggage that had not beenentrusted to the van yet lumbering behind. Landlord Taft and superintendentJennings were alert and busy; old comers were curious as to the number andnature of new arrivals; new comers were glancing momentarily at theglorious scenery and anxiously inquiring every thing of everybody who knewno more of the things inquired about than did the askers themselves. Allwas charming bustle--delightful confusion: one of those peculiar scenesconnected with summer travel and watering-place life, which furnish thevery best of opportunities for study to the quiet observer.
The coach door had been opened and all the inside passengers handed out,before the merry party from the roof made any attempt at getting down. Pealafter peal of hearty laughter went up from that outside division of thevehicle; and evidently the party there assembled had reached the Profilebefore achieving the end of the jests and story-telling in which they hadbeen engaged. They had already attracted some attention from the piazza,and one boarding-school miss had been appealed to by her eye-glassed swainin attendance, to "heah those awful vulgah fellahs!"--when the laughterceased, and one of the roof-passengers made a sudden spring from thatelevation, over the heads of half a dozen of those standing on the ground,and came safely to his feet with a jerk which would have laid up a lessperfect physical man for a week and completely shaken out the false teethfrom the mouth of any victim of a dentist.
The rapid man was followed by his companions, Frank Vanderlyn includedamong the number; but they all seemed to choose the more popular mode ofgetting down, by the aid of steps and braces.
"Pretty well done, Rowan!" exclaimed one of the others as he himselfreached the ground. "Broke any thing?"
"No, nothing--except," and at that moment his eye caught the forms andfaces of Miss Clara Vanderlyn and her mother, who were standing at theedge of the piazza, waiting while Frank descended and made some arrangementfor the disposition of their baggage. "H. T.," of the coach-load, wasstanding within a few feet of them, his little satchel still strapped overhis shoulder and his eyes scarcely wandering at all from the woman whomthey had scanned so long and well during the journey by rail. But he hadglanced around, with the others, at the noise made by the singular descent;and his eye met that of the man who had been called Rowan, as the lattermade the discovery of mother and daughter. It was but a lightning flashthat Rowan gave or the stranger detected, but few glances of any human eyehave ever expressed more within the same period. He evidently saw the younggirl for the first time, at that moment; and quite as evidently he drank inat that one glimpse the full charm of her beauty and goodness. That was notall: in the one glance, too, he apparently measured her wealth and socialposition--saw and reckoned up the proud woman standing beside her--thentook, it is probable, an introspective view of himself and his ownsurroundings, and found time to realize the utter hopelessness of thatimpulse which for the tithe of a moment he must have felt stirring withinhim.
Perhaps half-a-dozen seconds had elapsed before he concluded the answer hehad begun. "No, nothing--except--my heart!" He had begun to speak in alight, gay, off-hand manner: he concluded in a low, sad voice, full alikeof music and melancholy.
"H. T." had been observing him very closely during that brief space oftime, as had nearly all the other spectators, their notice attracted by hisreckless mode of alighting. He was apparently about thirty years of age, alittle less than six feet high--perhaps five feet eleven; with a formundeniably stout, but rounded like a reed and as elastic as whalebone. Hishands were soft and womanish in their contour, though they were ratherlarge, nut-brown in color, and had evidently felt, as had his face, themeridian sun. His feet were almost singularly small for so large aman--highly arched and springy. His face and head, as he the moment afterremoved his hat, were capable of attracting attention in any company. Theface was a little broad and heavily moulded; the cheek-bones prominent andthe nose slightly aquiline; the eyes dark, dreamy and lazy; the brow fair,and above it clustering dark, short, soft hair, curled, but so delicate intexture that it waved like silk floss with the veriest breath. The mouthwould have been, the observer might have thought, heavy and a littlesensual, had it not been hidden away by the thick and curling darkmoustache which he wore without other beard. Only one other feature need benamed--a chin rather broad and square and showing a very slight depressionof the bone in the centre--such as has marked a singular description of menfor many an hundred years. It needed a second glance to see that a broad,heavy scar, thoroughly healed, commenced at the left cheek-bone andtraversed below the ear until lost in the thick hair at the base of theneck. Such was the picture this man presented--a contradictory one in somerespects, but evidencing great strength, power and agility, and yet morethan a suspicion of intellectuality and refinement. A close and habitualobserver of men does not often err in "placing" one whom he may happen tomeet, even at first sight,--after a few seconds of careful examination; butthe keenest might have been puzzled to decide what was that man's stationin life, his profession, or even his character. Any one must have been inthe main favorably impressed: beyond that point little could possibly havebeen imagined by the most daring.
A small black trunk came off the top of the coach at about the time that"H. T.," who seemed to be bargaining for a rival at that early period, hadconcluded his inspection; and there was not much difficulty in connectingthe name and address painted in white on the end with the appellation bywhich the stranger had the moment before been designated. That name andaddress read: "Halstead Rowan, Chicago, Illinois."
Two men appeared to be travelling in company with Rowan; one a man ofsomething beyond his own age--the other five or six years younger; bothrespectable but by no means affluent in appearance. All were well dressedand gentlemanly in aspect; but neither Rowan nor either of his companionsgave the impression of what might be designated as the "first circles ofsociety," even in the great grain-metropolis of the West.
"H. T.," the observer, had fixed his eyes so closely on the male party inthat singular meeting, that he probably lost the answering expression ofthe lady's face and did not know whether or not she had returned thatglance of wondering interest. Something like disappointment at that lostopportunity may have been the cause of his biting his lip a littlenervously as he took his way, with the rest of the new-comers, into thehall and reception-room, waiting opportunity for the booking of names andthe assignment of chambers. Some of those in waiting no doubt found thetedium materially diminished by finding themselves, in the reception-room,at that close of a blazing day of July, standing or sitting with adecidedly grateful feeling before a quarter-of-a-cord of birchen wood,blazing away in th
e open fire-place with that peculiar warmth and heartygeniality so little known to this coal-burning age, but so well rememberedby those who knew the old baronial halls of republican America in a timelong passed away.
Not many minutes after the rencontre that has been described, the crowd hadvanished from the piazza of the Profile House, the coaches had driven away,the baggage was being rapidly removed within doors, and the tired andhungry new-comers were booked for rooms and clearing away the soil and dustof travel, preparatory to supper. Soon the crockery and cutlery jingled inthe long dining-room, and the flaky tea-biscuits steamed for those whohurried down to catch them in their full perfection.
It was a desultory supper and a somewhat hurried one, for the moonrise wascoming--that rise of the full moon which so many had promised themselves,and for which, indeed, not a few of the arrivals of that evening had timedtheir visit to the mountains. Then, hunger has but little curiosity, andsurveys and recognitions were both waited for until the broader light andgreater leisure of the morning; and probably of the dozens of old residents(a week is "old residence" at a watering-place, be it remembered, and afortnight confers all the privileges of the habitue)--probably of thedozens of old residents and new-comers who had acquaintances among theopposite class, not two found time or thought for seeking out familiarfaces during that period when the sharpened appetite was so notably in theascendant.
"The moonlight is coming: come out, all of you who care more for scenerythan stuffing!" said a high, shrill voice, after a time had elapsed whichwould scarcely have begun the meal under ordinary circumstances. It was anelderly man with white hair and white side-whiskers, an old habitue of thehouse and therefore a privileged character, who spoke, pulling out hiswatch and at once rising from his seat. He was followed by more than halfthose at table, and would have been followed especially by Mrs. BrooksCunninghame, who had somewhere learned that fashion and a rage formoonlight had a mysterious connection,--but for the insatiable hunger ofMr. Brooks Cunninghame himself, who was engaged in mortal combat with aformidable piece of steak and a whole pile of biscuits, and who outragedMrs. Brooks Cunninghame by declaring, sotto voce, that "he'd besomething-or-othered if he'd lave his supper until he was done, for anymoonlight or other something-or-othered thing in the wurruld!"--and theobstreperousness of Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame, who was up to hiseyes in three kinds of preserves and bade fair to stick permanently fast tothe table through the agency of those glutinous compounds.
Out on the piazza and the broad plateau in front of it, the visitors at theProfile gathered, to see what is not often vouchsafed to the most devotedof nature-lovers--the rising of the full moon in the mountains. Those whoare familiar with the Franconia Notch well know how the mountains aroundthe Profile always seem to draw closer after sunset, and how the frowningcliffs seem to form insurmountable barriers between them and the outerworld, making it doubtful to the bewildered thought whether there is indeedany egress from that cool paradise of summer--whether or not they can rideaway at will and look again upon green fields and flashing streams and thefaces of those they love. And they well know that moonrise there, overthose encircling cliffs, is not the moonrise of the lower country, with theorb throwing its broad beams of light at once wide over the world, but anactual peeping down from heaven of a fair and genial spirit that deigns forthe time to pour welcome radiance into an abode of solitude and darkness.The spectacle, then, is one to be sought and remembered; and as stormshabitually beat around those mountain tops and fog and mist quite dividethe time with fair weather in the valleys, the tourist is mad oremotionless who allows the cloudless full moon to come up without catchingits smile on cheek and brow.
The intense blue of the eastern sky was already gone when the anxiousgroups clustered in front of the great white caravanserai, and the starsbegan to glimmer paler in that direction. There was not a fleck of cloud,not a shadow of mist, to prevent the rounded orb, when it came up, floodingthe whole gorge with the purest of liquid silver. The winds were still asif they waited with finger on lip for the pageant; and the shrill scream ofa young eagle that broke out for an instant from one of the eyries underthe brow of Eagle Cliff and then died trembling away down the valley,seemed like profanation. Conversation was hushed, among all that varyingand even discordant crowd, as if there might be power in a profane word tocheck the wheeling of the courses of nature. The orient began to be flushedwith that trembling light, and glints of it touched the dark pines on thebrow of the cliff, a mile away. Then that light beyond the cliffs deepenedand the dark pines grew still darker as fully relieved against it. Then atlast, as they watched with hushed breath, a rim of silver seemed suddenlyto have been set as an arch on the very brow of the mountain, and slowlythe full orb rolled into view. As it heaved up, a broad, full circle ofglittering and apparently dripping silver, it threw out the trees on thebrow of the mountain into such bold relief as if a lightning flash hadliterally been burning behind them. There was one giant old pine, no doubtan hundred feet in height, so far away on the bold crest of Eagle Cliffthat it seemed to be only a toy tree of three inches; and this was thrownagainst the very centre of the moon, every gnarled limb and pendant branchas plain to the eye as if it hung within a stone's throw, a dead pigmy ofthe same family shooting up its ragged point not far distant, and a tangledwilderness of broken trees and scraggy branches filling the remainder ofthe circle. Then, the moment after, the moon heaved slowly up beyond thetrees, they fell back into darkness, and the broad glow streamed full intothe faces of the gazers and flooded the whole valley with light. The greatspectacle of the month had been exhibited to hundreds of admiring eyes, andthe full moon of July shed its broad glory like a blessing upon theFranconia.
It was at the moment when the pageant was just concluding and exclamationsof pleasure breaking from a hundred lips, that "H. T." (who has not as yetfurnished us data for any fuller revelation of his name), standing at somedistance out on the plateau from the piazza, and stepping suddenly backwardto observe a particular effect of the light among the trees on the cliff,trod upon the foot of a lady immediately behind him and nearly overthrewher. He turned immediately, with a word of apology, at the same time that agentleman near her, who seemed to be in her immediate company, sprang toprevent her possible fall, venting meanwhile on the presumed awkwardnessof the aggressor a word of ill-disguised petulance:--
"You should be a little more careful, sir, I think, how you step uponladies' feet and risk hurting them seriously."
"I beg a thousand pardons!" was the reply. "Certainly I did not know thatthere was a lady immediately behind me, and--"
The lady gave a sudden start, caught a quick glance at the speaker, andthen recovered her equanimity so suddenly that perhaps not two of all thecompany observed the momentary agitation; while the gentleman interruptedthe attempted apology, not too politely, with--
"Is your foot much injured, Miss Hayley?"
The answer made by the lady was in the negative, and in a tone that, thoughit trembled a little, proved her less petulant than her companion. But itis possible that "H. T.," as he has been known, did not pay that answer anyattention whatever. As he turned he must certainly have seen the lady moreor less distinctly in the moonlight, and yet had manifested no surprise atwhat he saw; but when the name was mentioned he gave a start that must havebeen noticeable by any acute observer. Had he really not noticed her beforehis attention was called by the mention of the name? or was the face onewhich he did not recognize while the name bore a talisman that commandedall his interest? Certain it is that he saw the lady now, distinctly; andequally certain is it that the face was the same which has met the gaze ofthe reader, a month before, on the piazza of the house at WestPhiladelphia.
Margaret Hayley, in very truth, dressed so darkly that at the first glanceher attire might almost have been taken for black, and with not even oneornament to sparkle in the moonbeams, while that peculiarity of her raimentwas made more notable by a light summer scarf or "cloud," of white berlin,thrown over her head t
o guard it from the night air, in a fashion somewhatoriental. Her proud, statuesque figure rose erect as ever; and the samestately perfection of womanhood looked out from her dark eyes and beamedupon her pure, high brow, that had shone there before the falling of thatblow which had so truly been the turning point of her life. The cheek mayhave been a shade thinner than a month before; and there may have been ashadow under the eyes, too marked for her heyday of youth and health; butif so the moonlight was not enough of a tell-tale to make the revelation.
The gentleman who had so promptly attended to the comfort of MargaretHayley, and who did not seem averse to picking up a quarrel on her behalf,was dark haired and dark bearded, round-faced and rather fine-looking thanotherwise, a little above the middle height, and wearing the uniform of aCaptain on staff service. So much the eye of "H. T." took in at once, andhe seemed to keep his attention somewhat anxiously on the two as the momentafter they turned away and walked back towards the piazza, as if he wouldgladly have caught some additional word conveying a knowledge of theofficer's personality. Nothing more was said, however, that could affordsuch a clue if one he really desired; and but a little time had elapsedwhen another subject of excitement arose, calculated to interest many ofthe hundreds who had already become partially drunk with the glory of themoonlight.
"The moon is high enough, now: let us see how the Old Man of the Mountainlooks when his face is silvered!" said some one in the crowd; and the happysuggestion was at once acted upon. There were quite enough old habituespresent to supply guides and chaperons for the new-comers; and in a momentfifty or more of the visitors went trooping away down the white sandy roadthrough the glen and under the sweeping branches among which the moonbeamspeeped and played so coquettishly.
Two or three windings of the road, two or three slight ascents and descentsin elevation; some one said: "Here is the best view;" and the wholecompany paused in their scattering march. A sudden break, opening upon adark quiet little lake or tarn, was to be seen through the trees to theright; and a quarter of a mile away, hanging sheer over the gulf of morethan two thousand feet sweeping down towards the foot of the Cannon--there,with the massive iron face staring full into the moonlight that touchednose and cheek and brow with so strange and doubtful a light that theunpractised eye could not trace the outlines, while the accustomed couldsee them almost as plainly as in the sunlight--there loomed the awfulcountenance of the Old Man of the Mountain. Some there were in thatcompany, familiar with every changing phase of that most marvellous freakof nature, who thought that grand as it had before seemed to them when thesun was high in the heavens and the dark outline relieved against thebright western sky, it was yet grander then, in the still, doubtful, solemnmoonlight.
Among those who had gone down to the edge of the little Old Man's Mirrorfor this view, were two of the sterner sex who happened to be withoutladies under charge and to be separated from any other company. Directly,walking near each other, they fell together and exchanged casual remarks onthe beauty of the night and the peculiarities of different points ofscenery. They were the two who had first seen each other at the moment ofalighting at the Profile little more than an hour before--"H. T." of theinitials and the lady's smashed foot, and Halstead Rowan of the gymnasticspring from the coach-top. The first glance had told to each that there wassomething of mark in the other; and under the peculiar circumstances ofthat night they drifted together, without introduction except such as eachcould furnish for himself, but not likely to separate again without a muchmore intimate acquaintance,--just as many other waifs and fragments,floating down the great stream of life, have been thrown into what seemedaccidental collision by a chance eddy, and yet never separated again untileach had exercised upon the other an influence materially controlling thewhole after course of destiny.
Eventually the two, both rapid walkers, had gone faster than the rest andbecome the leaders of the impromptu procession to the shrine of the OldMan, so that when the halt was called they were standing together and apartfrom the others, forty or fifty feet further down the glen and where theyhad perhaps a yet better view of the profile than any of the company. Bothwere dear lovers of nature, if the word "reverent" could not indeed beadded to the appreciation of both; and standing together there, even insilence, the intuitive knowledge of the inner life of each seemed to bringthem more closely together than introductions and a better knowledge ofantecedents could possibly have done. Then the crowd tired of gazing andmoved back towards the house, leaving the two standing together andprobably supposing themselves alone. They were not alone, in fact; forunder the shadow of the trees to the left, half way between the spot wherethe new friends were standing and that which had been occupied by the bodyof the visitors, were three persons continuing the same lingering gaze.These were the officer and two ladies who each found the support of anarm--Margaret Hayley and her mother, the latter of whom, it would thusseem, was also at the Profile under the escort of the military gentleman.Unobserved themselves, they had the two men in full moonlight below andcould see them almost as well as in the broader light of day.
"Who are they, Captain Coles? Anybody we know?" asked the elder lady,speaking so low that the sound did not creep down to the two gazers.
"Both new-comers, I think," answered the military gentleman. "Yes, theyboth came in to-night; and one of them, Margaret, is the booby who steppedon your foot a little while ago, and whom I shall yet take occasion to kickbefore he leaves the mountains if he does not learn to keep out of people'sway."
"I beg you will not allow yourself to get into difficulty on account ofthat trifling accident, and for me!" answered Margaret Hayley, whilesomething very like a shudder, not at all warranted by the words, and thatthe Captain was not keen enough to perceive, swept through her form andeven trembled the arm that rested within his.
"Difficulty? oh, no difficulty, to me, you know; and for you, Margaret,more willingly than any other person in the world, of course!" and CaptainHector Coles, confident that he had expressed himself rather felicitously,thought it a good time to bow around to Miss Hayley, and did so.
"You are quite right, Captain Hector Coles," said Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Lowpeople, who do not even know how to walk without running over others,should be kept at their proper distance; and of course gentlemen andsoldiers like yourself find it not only a duty but a privilege to afford tous ladies that protection."
This time Captain Hector Coles, immensely flattered, bowed round on theother side, to the elder lady.
"Hark!" said Margaret Hayley, in a louder voice than either had beforeused, and a voice that had a perceptible tremor in it like that of fright.
"What did you hear?" asked the Captain.
"Listen--I want to hear what that man was saying."
"H. T." was speaking, just below.
"No, I have never been here before," he said. "Strangely enough, some ofthe greatest curiosities of the continent are neglected by just such foolsas myself, until too old or too busy or too careworn to enjoy them."
"You speak like a jolly old grandfather, and yet you are scarcely as old asmyself," answered the rich, sonorous voice of Halstead Rowan. "Well, thatis _your_ business. The White Mountains are no novelty to me, or any othermountains, I believe, North of the Isthmus."
"Is there any thing finer than this, at this moment, among them all?"
"No, and I doubt if there is any thing finer on earth!" was theenthusiastic reply. "And by the way, even _I_ have not happened to see thefull moon on the face of the Old Man, before. It is a magnificent sight--anew sensation."
"How long has it stood so, I wonder? Since creation?" said the voice of "H.T.," "or did the Flood hurl those masses of stone into so unaccountable anaccidental position?"
"Haven't the most remote idea!" answered Rowan, gayly. "I have oftenthought of it, though, when looking at the marvel in the sunlight. But Ihave never been able to get any farther back than the idea how the windsmust have howled and the rains beaten around that immobile face, age afterage, while whole
generations of the men after whom the face is apparentlycopied as a mockery, have been catching cold and dying from a mere puff ofair on the head or a pair of wet feet."
"The eternal--the immovable!" said "H. T.," his voice so solemn andimpressive that it was evident his words were only a faint representationof the inner feeling.
"I know one thing that it has been, without a doubt," said Rowan. "When thewhole country was filled with Indians of a somewhat nobler character thanthe miserable wretches that alternately beg and murder on the Westernplains, there is not much question that they must have worshipped it as theface of the Great Manitou, looking down upon them in anger or in love, asthe storm-cloud swept around it or the summer sun tinted it with an ironsmile."
Halstead Rowan was speaking unconscious poetry, as many another man of hisdisposition has done, while those who sought to make it a trade have beenhammering their dull brains and spoiling much good paper in the merestringing of rhymes bearing the same relation to poetry that an onion doesto the bulb of a tulip! Whether his companion caught the tone from him andmerely elaborated it into another utterance, or whether he possessed thefire within himself and this rencontre was only the means of bringing outthe spark, is something not now to be decided. But he spoke words that notonly made the other turn and gaze upon him for a moment with astonishment,but moved the three unseen auditors with feelings which neither could verywell analyze. His dark face, tinted by the moonlight as the stony brow ofthe mountain was itself touched and hallowed, seemed rapt as those of theseers of old are sometimes said to have been; and his voice was strangelysweet and melodious:
"To me, just now," he said, "that iron face is assuming a new shape."
"The deuce it is!" answered Rowan. "Where?"
"'In my mind's eye, Horatio!'" quoted the speaker, and the other seemed tounderstand something of his mood. "Do you know that face may be nothingmore than sixty feet of strangely-shaped stone, to others; but to me, atthis moment, it is the Spirit of the North looking sadly down over ourfields of conflict and saying words that I almost hear. Listen, and see ifyou do not hear them, too!"
How strangely earnestness sometimes impresses us, even when little elsethan madness is the motive power! Halstead Rowan, by no means a man to beeasily moulded to the fancies of any other, found himself insensiblyturning his ear towards the Sphynx, as if it was indeed speaking throughthe still night air!
"'I am the Soul of the Nation,'" the singular voice went on, speaking as iffor the lips of stone. "'Storms have raved around my forehead and thundershave shaken my base, but nothing has moved me! Scarred I may have been bythe lightning and discolored by the beating rain, but the hand of mancannot touch me, and even the elements can disturb me not. I have seen tenthousand storms, and not one but was followed by the bright sunshine,because Nature was ever true to itself. Be but true to yourselves, loyalmen of the great American Union, and the nation you love shall yet bethroned above the reach of treason as I am throned above the touch ofman--unapproachable in its power as I am fearful in my eternal isolation!'"
Halstead Rowan had ceased looking at the Sphynx and gazed only at itsoracle, long before the strange rhapsody concluded; and Margaret Hayley,supported upon the arm of Captain Hector Coles, had more than onceshuddered, and at last leaned so heavily upon that arm as to indicate thatshe must be suddenly ill. To the startled inquiry of the Captain as to thecause of her trembling, she replied in words that indicated her feeling tohave been excited by the strangely-patriotic words, and by a request to betaken back at once to the Profile. That request was immediately heeded, andthe three passed on up the road, where all the other company had some timepreceded them.
But one expression more fell from the lips of the strange man, as the threemoved away, and Margaret Hayley heard it.
"Why, you must be a poet!" said the Illinoisan, when his companion hadconcluded the rhapsody.
"No, I am only a lawyer, and you must not take all that we say for gospel,or even for poetry!" was the reply. "Come, let us go back to the house andimagine that we have had enough of moonlight."
The two followed up the road at once and overtook the three but a momentafter. As they passed, "H. T." recognized first the shoulder-straps of theofficer, and then the figure of the lady upon his left arm. Turning to seeher face more closely, his own was for a moment under the full glare of themoon, and Margaret Hayley had a fair opportunity to observe every feature.Shaded as were her own eyes, their direction could not be distinguished;but they really scanned the face before them with even painful earnestness,a low, intense sigh of disappointment and unhappiness escaping her when theinspection had ended. She walked back with Captain Coles and her mother tothe door of the Profile, and left them in conversation on the moonlitpiazza, escaping up-stairs to her own room and not leaving it again duringthe evening. What may have been her thoughts and feelings can only bedivined from one expression which fell from her lips as she closed the doorof her chamber and dropped unnerved upon a chair at the table:
"Who can that man be? His voice, and yet not his voice! A shadow of hisface, and yet no more like his face than like mine! Am I haunted, or hasthis trouble turned my brain and am I going mad? Another such evening wouldkill me, I think!"
There was the sound of horn and harp and violin ringing through the longcorridors of the Profile that evening; and many of those who had shared inthe glory of the moonrise and the solemn levee of the Old Man of theMountain were joining in the dance that went on in that parlor whichappeared large enough for the drill evolutions of an entire regiment. Butfew of the new-comers joined the revel for that evening; most of them,fatigued at once with travel and excitement, crept away to early beds inorder to refresh themselves against the morning; and nothing remained, ofany interest to the progress of this narration, except Captain Hector Coleswalking up and down the long piazza for more than an hour after MargaretHayley had retired, his boot-heels ringing upon the planks with a somewhatostentatious affectation of the military step, Mrs. Burton Hayley meanwhileleaning upon his arm, and the two holding in tones so low that no passer-bycould catch them, a conversation which seemed to be peculiarly earnest andconfidential.
Yet there was still one occurrence of that night which cannot be passedover without serious injury to the character of this record for strictveracity. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, during a large part of the night, was inserious trouble which required the full exercise of her maternalvigilance--while Miss Marianna, deserted by her father who hadsurreptitiously smoked a short pipe in the edge of the woods and thencegone to bed and to sleep, wandered disconsolately round the parlor,dressed in more costly frippery than would have sufficed to establish twomantua-makers, unintroduced to any one, stared at with the naked eye andthrough eye-glasses, her freckles complimented in an undertone that shecould not avoid hearing, the name of her dress-maker facetiously inquiredafter, and the poor girl, made miserable by being dragged by her sillyparents to precisely the spot of all the world where she least belonged,suffering such torments as should only be inflicted upon the mostunrepentant criminal.
But the peculiar trouble of Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame has not as yet beenexplained, and it must be so disposed of in a few words. Ill health, on theplea of which she had started on her "summer tour," had really attacked herinteresting family, or at least one highly-important member of it. MasterBrooks Brooks Cunninghame, naturally a little sharp set after his long rideand accustomed to regard any supper with "goodies" on the table assomething to be clung to until the buttons of his small waistband couldendure no farther pressure--Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame, as hasalready been mentioned, had remained at the table a little beyond thebounds of strict prudence. In other words, he had devoured beef-steak andfruits, fish and milk, biscuits and pickles, tea, pickled oysters andsweetmeats, until even his digestive pack-horse was overloaded. Very soonafter supper he had petitioned to be taken to bed, and then unpleasant ifnot serious symptoms had been no long time in supervening. During a largepart of the night there were a couple of cham
bermaids running to and fromthat part of the building, with hot water, brandy, laudanum, foot-baths andother appliances for suffering small humanity; while Master Brooks Brookskept doubling himself up in all imaginable attitudes and crying: "Oh,mommy!" in a manner calculated to wring the heart of that motherlyperson,--to make Mr. Brooks Cunninghame, who wished to sleep, growl outsome reasonably-coarse oaths between his clenched teeth,--and to inducewonder on the part of people who had occasion to pass the front of thebuilding or come out on the piazza, whether they did or did not keep asmall menagerie of young bears, wolves and wild-cats in full blast on thesecond floor.
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 14
