The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863
Page 15
CHAPTER XIII.
MISS CLARA VANDERLYN AND HER PET BEARS--A MISADVENTURE AND A FRIENDLY HAND IN TIME--THE QUESTION OF COURAGE--HALSTEAD ROWAN AND MRS. BROOKS CUNNINGHAME ON GEOGRAPHY--THE DEAD WASHINGTON, THE FLUME AND THE POOL--WITH THE PERSONAL RELATIONS WEAVING AT THAT JUNCTURE.
Breakfast was over at the Profile, on the next morning; the stages hadrolled away for Littleton, the Crawford and Plymouth; and preparations werein progress for a ride of two or three wagon-loads down the glen to theFlume,--when "H. T.," cigar in mouth, passed out from the bar-room to thepiazza and thence across the plateau in front, towards the billiard-roomand ten-pin-alley, standing a hundred yards away to the right, and at thevery bottom of the slope of the mountain. He had seen, in the dusk andafterwards in the moonlight of the night before, that a couple of the roughpets of the mountain region were sojourning at the Notch, in the shape ofhalf-grown black bears, chained to stakes some twenty feet apart, with adog-kennel for their joint retreat, perhaps a hundred feet from the houseand immediately in front of it, where their antics could be discerned andenjoyed from the piazza and the front windows. He had seen, too, going outearlier that morning, that they did not appear yet old enough to bedangerously vicious, and that they seemed very playful for that descriptionof beast. Everybody was feeding them, from early morning to dusk, withnuts, raisins and crackers surreptitiously taken from the table for thatpurpose; and the youngsters no doubt consumed in feeding the young Bruins,quite as much food as they themselves managed to devour.
Just then not less than a dozen persons were surrounding the householdfavorites, feeding them, putting them through their clumsy evolutions whichprincipally consisted in sitting erect or climbing a short post to get anut placed on the top,--or developing the usual human propensity forteazing. Most of them were ladies, and among the others, as he went by at ashort distance, he recognized Miss Clara Vanderlyn, his fellow-passenger ofthe day before,--her face rosy with the excitement of a just-accomplishedmorning walk, her bonnet on arm, and her whole countenance radiant withamusement as she plied the dusky pets with her pocket full of nuts andraisins. She seemed to have acquired a wonderful ascendancy over the beastsin a very brief acquaintance; for while all the others shrank from comingabsolutely within reach, she not only fed them without fear but rubbedtheir black coats and patted their gristly noses as if they had been petkittens. Two or three men were lounging near, evidently admiring the newlady accession to Profile society, but none claiming an acquaintance.
"H. T.," who either had a propensity for ten-pins that morning,overbalancing the admiration of Miss Vanderlyn which he had shown the daybefore, or a still stronger attraction for company whom he knew to be atthe alley--"H. T." was just passing on when Margaret Hayley, accompanied bythe inevitable Captain Hector Coles, came out of the door of thebilliard-room and advanced towards the bear-stakes. It must remain amystery whether this appearance from the door did or did not make a changein his own necessity for exercise: suffice it to say that he stopped,turned partially around and joined the group who were making levee to theBruins.
At that moment, when Clara Vanderlyn had succeeded in luring one of thebears to the top of his "stool of repentance" (the short post), and wasbending close above him, feeding and fondling what few other female handsdared touch,--a new actor came upon the scene, in the shape of MasterBrooks Brooks Cunninghame, accompanying his "Mommy." He had _not_ died thenight before as might have been expected from his surfeit, but the freckledappearance of his face was materially improved by a ground hue of greenishwhite which his short sickness had imparted. His careful mamma had dressedhim for that gala-day in a complete plaid suit of blue and white, with acap of the same material and a black feather; and he looked scarcely lessornamental than useful. Evidently, sick as he had really been, he was allalive and awake that morning and might be safely calculated upon for addingto the general comfort by prowess of mouth and fingers. And the companywere not obliged to wait very long for proof that the scion of the house ofCunninghame was aware of the duties of his position and quite equal tothem. He left the maternal hand, spite of the clutching of the latter, atthe moment of arriving at the bear-stakes, and spying what he rightlyjudged to be a good opportunity, stepped rapidly round behind the bear,caught him by the stumpy tail, and gave him a sharp twitch which nearlythrew him from the top of the post.
In an instant the playful nature of the bear was gone, and with one suddengrowl he raised his heavy paw with its sharp claws and struck full at theface of Miss Vanderlyn, not two feet from him. Every one present saw theblow, but no one seemed to have enough presence of mind or courage toshield her from a stroke which, falling full in her unprotected face, mustcertainly have disfigured her for life.
No one--it has been said: no one of those known to be present, most of whomwere women or children; and neither "H. T." nor Captain Hector Coles hadyet come near enough to be of any possible service. Yet the blow did notreach Clara Vanderlyn. A hand and arm were suddenly dashed between the pawand the threatened face, with such force that while the sharp claws torethe skin and flesh in ribbons from the back of the hand and split thecoat-sleeve as if it had been paper,--the bear was knocked backward off hisperch and rolled over in a ball on the ground at the side of the kennel.When any of the company sufficiently recovered from their astonishment toglance at the face of the lucky yet unlucky preserver, they saw that it wasthat of the bluff arrival of the evening before, Halstead Rowan.
With the exception of three persons, all present rushed up at once, underthe impression that Rowan's hand must be seriously injured. One of theseexceptions was "H. T.," who made a movement to dart forward, even from hisdistance, when he saw the blow impending, but who the instant that it hadfallen turned and walked back towards the ten-pin alley. The second wasMargaret Hayley, who had recognized the personality of both theconversationists of the previous evening, and who naturally stopped inblank surprise to see one of two persons whom she supposed to be intimatefriends, turn away the moment that the other was wounded. The third wasCaptain Hector Coles, who really had no power to do otherwise than obey thecheck laid upon him by the lady's hand.
All who saw knew that the injury must be severe, but it might have been thescratch of a pin for any effect which it seemed to produce on theIllinoisan. The blood was streaming profusely from the wound, but almostbefore any one saw it the other hand was inserted in a side-pocket, and awhite handkerchief drawn thence and wrapped around the injured member.
"Are you much hurt, sir?"
"What a narrow escape, miss!"
"Indeed, I thought his paw would injure your face terribly!"
"Somebody ought to kill that boy!"
These and a score of similar expressions burst from the dozen or two ofspectators. Miss Vanderlyn had caught the young man by the sleeve of thecoat, with perceptible nervousness in her grip, and said, with all thatsweet smile faded from her face, and her voice trembling with anxiety:
"Indeed--indeed, sir, I am very grateful to you. I should have been badlyhurt, I fear, but for your kind aid. Pray let us do something to preventyour suffering so much from your generosity. I am afraid that you are verymuch injured!"
"Oh, not in the least, madame--miss, perhaps I should say. Nothing but ascratch; and if the company at the Profile do not object to a big glove,none of us will be aware of the accident in a few minutes."
"Trust me, sir!" said the young lady, in the same anxious tone, "_I_ shallbe aware of your kindness so long as I live."
"Pray do not mention it again!" said Rowan. "Indeed I am only too happythat the little affair occurred." He was telling the truth, beyond aquestion, however far he might have been from telling what they equallyrequire in the courts of law--the _whole_ truth; and again for one instantthere might have been seen sweeping over his face the same changingexpression that had played hide-and-seek there on his first arrival theevening before:--admiration--regard--reverence--hope--joy; and then thedull shadow of recollection and hopelessness.
"I am aware, sir, that this is a singular introduction, and on my part apainful one, as it has been the means of causing you an injury; but mymother and my brother will be glad to know you and to thank you better thanI can do."
"Miss Vanderlyn," said Rowan, taking the card and glancing at the name justas earnestly as if he had never paid any attention whatever to the registerat the office, "you do me too much honor. I have no card in my pocket.Would you be kind enough to give me another of yours?"
She at once handed him another card and a pencil, and he dashed down, in abold, rapid, and mercantile hand, though he used the sinister member forthe operation, the name and address which the little black trunk had beforerevealed to those who chose to read.
"Thank you, Mr. Rowan. Good-morning! Pray take care of your hand, or Ishall never forgive myself!" she said, nodding to her new acquaintance, andturning towards the house. Rowan bowed low, said good-morning, and strolledaway towards the ten-pin alley, apparently not more concerned by the hurtthan if he had merely pricked his finger. He was one of those booked forthe ride to the Flume, but he seemed to need severer exercise, and themoment after he might have been seen with his hand still wrapped in thebloody white handkerchief, bowling away at the pins with the other, andhumming the Grand March in "Norma" as if he thought that a favorable strainof music to accompany the levelling of obstacles or enemies.
Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, hearing the threat directed at her promising boy,had mustered common-sense enough to hurry him away from the scene ofaction. Captain Coles and Miss Hayley had meanwhile come up, and "H. T.,"turning once more before he reached the alley, reached the spot at the samemoment. For the first time, in broad daylight, Margaret Hayley met thestrange man face to face, and her cheek whitened--why, even she perhapscould not tell--at that expression or resemblance which she traced there.If there was any answering expression of agitation or surprise on the faceof the man with the initials, she failed to read it, and her eyes in amoment sank from a survey which seemed so profitless. They were at thattime very near each other, and Captain Coles and "H. T." not more than sixfeet apart. Their eyes met, and that indefinable something passed betweenthem before another word was spoken, which includes antagonism, if notdeadly hostility. There was no reason to believe that they had ever metbefore the preceding evening; there was no reason to believe that theycould ever have an interest in conflict; and yet those two men were foes,and would remain so until one or the other should be thoroughly conquered.
"A go-ahead fellow, I should not be afraid to stake my life!" said one ofthe gentlemen who had just come up, alluding to the hero of the hour andseeming to address any one who might choose to answer.
"Ya-a-as!" slowly and doubtingly said Captain Hector Coles, caressing hisbeard and throwing almost insufferable arrogance into a manner whichnaturally had quite enough of it. "Ya-a-as, go-ahead enough, apparently,but not a bit of a gentleman. Rough as the bear he just knocked over, andlooks as if he might have come from among something of the same breed!"
"No, not a gentleman, probably!" said "H. T.," with a sneer in his tonequite as little disguised as the other's arrogance. "But he is something agood deal better, in my opinion, and something a good deal rarer--a _man_,every inch of him!"
"At any rate," said another, who had not yet spoken, "I would give ahundred dollars to have blundered into an introduction to that splendidgirl as he has done, even if it cost me a hand worse scratched than his."
"He has _had_ worse scratches! Did you notice the scar on his cheek, comingaway down here to the neck?" said one of the ladies who had witnessed thewhole affair, addressing Margaret Hayley.
"No--has he a scar?"
"A terrible one. I think he must have been a soldier, at some time orother."
"I believe that he has the noblest gift ever conferred by God uponman,--that of courage!" answered Margaret. "If he was a slave or a savage Icould love and respect him for that, as I should despise him if he was aking without it!"
From the depth of what a terrible wound in her own heart was the young girlspeaking, and what a concentrated force of bitter earnest rankled in suchwords falling from her beautiful lips! Captain Hector Coles heard, but madeno answer, as why should he, for was he not one of the country's defendersand a brave man by profession? "H. T." heard her, and his upper lip, underthe shadow of his dark moustache, set down tightly upon the lower, whileover his handsome dusky face passed an expression which might have beenpain and might have been the crushing out of some last scruple ofconscience that stood between him and a half-intended line of action.
"Passengers for the Flume" had been the call some minutes before; and bythe conclusion of this scene, at nine o'clock or thereabout, the wagons forthat daily ride of inveterate Franconians were drawn up at the door. Theywere two in number, the list of riders for that fine morning beingunusually heavy. Not coaches, that necessarily shut away a part of theview, but long low wagons on jacks, each with four or five cross seats, aheavy brake and four mettled horses--for fine weather and through theshaded glen roads, the safest and pleasantest of all the mountainconveyances. Five minutes sufficed to fill both those conveyances, withsome thirty persons, among the number all those in whom this narrationawakes any interest. How they were divided off or how seated is a matter ofno consequence, except in a certain particular. Halstead Rowan managed tosecure a seat in the same wagon with Clara Vanderlyn, though at the otherend of the vehicle,--and in so doing found himself by the side of Mrs.Brooks Cunninghame and only one remove from that hopeful, Master BrooksBrooks. Not enjoying quite the same facilities as some of the others forstudying that lady the night before, he had still been attracted to her atbreakfast and found time to "cypher up" her calibre and social position toa most amusing nicety. Whether wildness was the normal condition of hischaracter, as seemed possible, or whether his slight rencontre with theyoung bear, and the flattering conversation with a pretty girl whichfollowed, had dizzied his brain a little, as was both possible andnatural,--he was in high spirits and the very demon of mischief had takenpossession of him. He had apparently determined to devote himself somewhatto the comfort of that Arch-priestess of Shoddy during the morning ride,and a pleasant time that elevated personage was likely to have of it!
Just after leaving the breakfast table, Rowan had chanced to overhear a fewwords of conversation between Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame and one of the ladyhabitues of the house on whom she was aiming to make a tremendousimpression; and those few words had fully revealed one of the leadingpoints of the parvenu's tactics. Some one had told her, apparently, or shehad read the statement in so-called "polite publications"--that no onecould be fashionable, now-a-days, without having been "abroad"--_i. e._,without having made at least one tour in Europe. Now that Mrs. BrooksCunninghame _had_ been abroad, at least so far as beyond the Atlantic, atthat very early period before she left the paternal cabin, pig andpotatoes,--seemed the most probable of allegations; but in the matter ofactual travel, or of those substitutes for travel which may be found in athorough acquaintance with geography and a close study of guide-books andthe best travellers, the poor woman had been as guiltless, a few weeksbefore, as the most stay-at-home and illiterate of her early acquaintances.But she could read, which was something, and had no conscience worthspeaking of, which was something more. Perhaps some one had told her thetraditional story of Tom Sheridan and his father, and the wonder which thelatter expressed that the former "could not say that he had been down intoa coal-pit without really going there." The worthy lady, as Rowan soondisc
overed by a few desultory words, had no corresponding objection,provided she could _seem_ to have been anywhere; and there was little doubtthat she had procured a guide-book or two and "read up," as HonorableMembers very often do before making speeches on subjects of which they knownothing whatever,--and as snobs sometimes do in books on "PerfectGentility" and the "Whole Art of Dining Out," before going into societywhich seems a little too weighty for their previous training. How well shehad succeeded, may best be illustrated by a little of her conversation withthe Illinoisan, who took care to introduce the subject of her "travels"(with what he had overheard, as a hint) very soon after the wagons rolledaway from the Profile, and without waiting for any formal introduction.
He broke the ice with the remark, equally tempting and flattering to hisnext neighbor:
"You must enjoy this fine scenery very much, madam, as you have chances ofcomparison that some of us lack. You have travelled in Europe, I believe?"
"Yes--yes, sir," answered the lady, a little doubtful which of the two wasthe proper answer to so profound a sentence. If she was at all nervousabout plunging into such untried waters with a total stranger, hisdisclamatory hint of his own experiences reassured her; and besides, one ofthe ladies was on the seat immediately behind, to whom she had beenboasting that very morning, and it would never do to abandon the groundonce taken.
"Ah, how proud you must feel, madam, of having seen so many of the wondersof nature!" the wretch went on. "I have never yet been able to cross theocean, myself, and the conversation of foreign travellers is naturally bothpleasant and instructive to me."
"Much obliged to you, I am sure," the lady returned. Some of thepassengers in the wagon, who had previously observed the hero of themorning, and thought him any thing else rather than a fool, looked twice athim, at this juncture, to discover what he could mean by addressingcomplimentary conversation to that compound of ignorance and vulgarity. Itmust be owned that Clara Vanderlyn, who sat on one of the back seats whilethe interlocutors were in front, believing the man in earnest, felt for themoment a sensation of disgust towards him and wished her card back in herreticule. But if she and some of the others were temporarily deceived, thedeception was not of long continuance.
The statement by Rowan that he had never been across the Atlantic, was theone thing necessary to reassure Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame; and that pointsettled, she felt sure of her ground.
"How long since you were abroad, madam, may I ask?" he continued.
"Five years," answered the lady, who no doubt felt that both her durationof standing in society and the accuracy of her memory would appear thebetter for a little lapse of time.
"Five years, indeed? so long?" asked the scamp, with every appearance ofinterest. "And did you have your dear little boy with you all the time?"
"No, my physician did not think it prudent for me to take him along of me,and I left him to home with the nurse," was the reply. The fact was,really, that at the early period named her "physician" had been a drunkenIndian-herb doctor, the only description of medical man likely to visit theshanty which she yet occupied,--and that she had been (perhaps better andmore honorably occupied than at any time after!) doing her own work withoutthe hope or thought of ever employing a servant.
"Dear little fellow!" said the Illinoisan, caressing the scrubbing-brushhead of the repulsive youngster. "What a pity that he could not have gonewith you! By the way, madam, you went by steamer, of course. Did you takesteamer for Paris, or--or--St. Petersburgh?"
By this time most of the passengers began to perceive what was coming, andthere were symptoms of a titter in the back seats, but nothing that warnedor disturbed the victim.
"Oh, Paris, of course!" was the answer. "Dear, delightful Paris, where theshops was so handsome and the women wore such elegant bunnits!" (Seeguide-books.)
"You landed at Paris direct from the steamer, I suppose?" asked thetormentor, at which question the titter really began, but still too quietlyto put the lady on her guard.
"Oh, yes, of course!" was the answer. "The tide was high, and we went rightup." The poor woman had probably been aground, some time, on the HudsonOverslaugh or the Shrewsbury Flats, and supposed that nothing but low tidecould prevent going up to Paris by steamship.
"Let me see--what is the name of that river that takes you up to Paris?"the scamp went on, with his face contorted into a wonderful appearance ofearnest thought. "The--the--the--which is it, now, the Danube or theAmazon?"
"I am not very sure," answered the lady at hap-hazard, "I almost forget,but I think it is the Amazon--yes, I know it must be the Amazon."
At about that period there was a laugh in the back part of the long wagon,and Clara Vanderlyn was as red in the face as if she had been committingsome serious fault. She would unquestionably have liked to pinch thatnaughty fellow's ears, if not to box them. But the laugh did not disturbMrs. Brooks Cunninghame, for the young people were frolicking all the whileand a hundred laughs might break out without one of them being directed at_her_. Halstead Rowan had kept his own face perfectly serene so far, but heevidently began to feel twitchings around the mouth which might give himtrouble directly, and, for fear of the worst, he fired his concluding shotswith great rapidity.
"You were in London, of course?" he asked.
"Yes, a good while; we took a house there, and seen the Queen, and theCrystal Palace--"
"Let me see--the Queen lives in the Crystal Palace, doesn't she?"
"Of course she does!" answered the traveller, who remembered just so muchas that queens and palaces belonged together, and no more.
More laughing at the back of the wagon, a little choking, and some stuffingof cambric handkerchiefs into mouths pretty or the reverse. No irreparableexplosion as yet, though that catastrophe could not possibly be longdeferred.
"Yes--you were in London: did you go up the Pyramids?"
"No, we went to 'em, but not up 'em."
"But you went up the Alps, of course?--everybody goes up the Alps."
"Of course we did!" and the lady really bridled. "Think we would go so faras that and spend so much money, and not go up that there?"
The explosion was impending--there was already a rumbling in the distance,which should have been heeded.
"How did you go up--in _what_ kind of a vessel did you say, madam?"
It is to be presumed that by this time the lady was considerably confusedeven in the smattering of information from the guide-book, with which shehad commenced; and she could not have had any moral doubt remaining thatthe Alps was a river; for she answered, without one symptom ofconsciousness in her countenance:
"We went up in a steamboat, and a nasty little thing it was!"
The threatened explosion had arrived. That wagon-load of people laughed,shrieked and roared, bent double and chuckled themselves red in the face,to a degree which was very discreditable to their sense of propriety andvery bewildering to the mountain echoes. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame lookedaround to see what was the matter, and at that moment it seemed that a dimperception must have crept through her head that she had something to dowith the merriment, for she reddened, bridled and grew strangely silent.Halstead Rowan, as she looked around,--not by any means joining in thelaugh, had suddenly discovered that his legs were cramped from riding,sprung over the side of the wagon and disappeared behind a bend of theroad, to make the rest of the short distance to the Flume House on foot.
A mile further, after this novel lesson in geography had been taken, andthe wagons drew up at the door of the Flume House, once a greatcaravanserai that rivalled any other in the mountains, then a mereunoccupied pendant of the all-absorbing Profile which has literallyswallowed it. It stands at the lower end of the Franconia Notch proper, andthe mountains fall away below it southward, so much that the feeling ofoppressive isolation at the Profile is here lost entirely. But there is onecharm connected with the Flume House, that can never be forgotten by thosewho have once stood there and looked eastward; and the merry occupants ofthe before-deserted piazza,
that day, were not likely to be allowed to rideaway without having that charm called to their attention, to be rememberedever after as one of those marvels with which Nature confounds Art anddefies calculation.
Full before them, as they looked, loomed up the peak of Mount Liberty, socalled, as is supposed, because the curve of the crown northward has someindefinite resemblance to the Phrygian liberty-cap of the Frenchrevolution. But a sadder and more solemn resemblance was there, needing tobe pointed out at first, but asserting itself as a strange realitythenceforward, in presence or in absence. It was with a thrill of awe thatthe riders, as so many had done before them and as some of them had donelong before, recognized the form of the Dead Washington, stretched out onthe summit of the eternal mountains that seemed almost mighty and enduringenough for their awful burthen. There seemed a little obscurity in themouth and lips, as if the shrouding pall partially covered them; but thecontour of the massive nose was perfect, as the rugged peak stood relievedagainst the eastern sky, and above it the godlike forehead swept upsouthward and fell away again in the very curve of the hair drawn backwardas it would be when lying in the calm repose of death. Northward the longround of Mount Liberty marked the full breast, sinking at the recumbent hipand rising again at the bend of the massive knee; while still farther awayand in the exact line of symmetry, one of the peaks of the Haystack groupshot up and fell suddenly on the other side, as the drapery would do overthe stiffened feet. Then the resemblance was complete, unmistakable, almostfearful; and those who looked with reverent eyes realized that the EternalHand, thousands of years ago and in a mood that would write prophecy on thevery face of the earth instead of recording it on tables of stone, hadthroned on the tops of the northern mountains an enduring likeness of thatman yet unborn, whose glory was to gild every peak and fill every valleywith the brightest and purest light of heroism.
Long, and with reverent silence only broken by an occasional exclamation ofwonder, the company gazed upon that strange spectacle, more sadlysuggestive than any other of the wonders of the American continent. Thevoice of merriment, which had been ringing so loudly but a few momentsbefore, was hushed, and tears lay nearer to the surface than laughter. Itcould not be otherwise than that the spectacle, impressive always, shouldblend itself with the sorrow of a thousand hearts and the peril of a land,and that something of almost superstitious omen should seem to lie in therecognition. There were no words to syllable the great thoughts of thathour. How could there be? What tongue could have spoken what the heart sosadly reverberated to an inner sense that was subtler and better thanhearing? "H. T.," whose tongue, as Margaret Hayley and her companions heardit, had so solemnly apostrophized the iron face of the Old Man of theMountain in the moonlight of the night before, stood silent and with foldedarms on the end of the piazza, his strange, dark face full of a feelingthat seemed sad enough for death and yet determined enough for a life ofalmost terrible daring. He was alone. He seemed to have made, evendistantly, but one acquaintance since alighting at the Profile; and thatone acquaintance, Halstead Rowan, had not yet paid all the penalty of hismischief in a walk to the Flume. He had no motive to speak: perhaps underno circumstances could he have done so before that company and with theknowledge that the eyes of Margaret Hayley might be bent upon him from theother end of that group of gazers. But the man who had read the patrioticsecret of the Mountain Sphynx felt the weight of that hour--who could doubtit? And if his lips had spoken, would not the words they uttered have beensomething like these, that have bubbled to other lips and yet been deniedutterance, on the same spot and since the overcasting of our national skyby that dark cloud of war and that darker cloud of divided feeling, only tobe rolled away in God's good time:
"Yes, look upon the Dead Washington, all of you, and prepare to bear theimage away and keep it sacred in your heart of hearts. Dead and shrouded helies, whose words might perchance have had power, at this fearful day inour history, to still the turbulent waves of passion and make us brothersonce more. Dead and shrouded, when the day of doom may be near, and whenhis sword, flashing at the head of the armies of the republic, might haveblinded treason and struck terror to the heart of the rebellion. Dead andshrouded, to wake not at the trump of war or the call of national peril.Yet look down upon us from the granite mountains that bore thine image athousand years ago and will bear it until the very form and feature ofnature decay--look down upon us from the heavens that are higher and moreenduring even than the eternal hills, and bless us with some ray of thatcourage which dared the iron rain of Princeton--of that patient endurancewhich braved the wintry snow of Valley Forge--of that honesty which bent aworld in awe and admiration--of that self-sacrificing humility whichthought it but duty to refuse a crown! Not in irreverence we speak, shadowof the great dead! Thou didst live, and we sprang into existence as anation. Thou art gone, and we wander in the night and darkness of hatred,of strife, of murder--perhaps even totter to a fall from which there is noarising. If thou hast power in the eternal world, Washington who livest, sofaintly shadowed by the Washington that is dead--save us whom the might ofno other nation can cast down--save us from ourselves!"
Hush! the fancy so reverently assumed cannot be cast off in a moment.Hush!--was not that low rumbling in the north which men call thunder, thevoice of the Giant of Mount Liberty turning suddenly in his grave-clothesto answer the appeal? God!--if it might be so!--"Oh, for an hour of HickoryJackson!" cried the agonized nation when the first paralysis fell upon ourmen in power: oh, for one moment of George Washington now!
The Celt looks for the awakening of Brian Boroihme from his long sleep inthe Wicklow mountains, falsely called his death, after the red field ofClontarf, and for the deliverance of Ireland from the Saxon oppressor,which is to follow; the German is still waiting for the sounding of thathorn which is to start Frederick the Redbeard from his repose in theKypphauser, where the faithless laid him to rest, believing that he wasdead, after his charmed bath in the Cilician Cydnus; even the old soldierswho guard the mighty dust of Napoleon beneath the dome of the Invalides,speak of the "Midnight Review" in other words than those of FriederichFreiligrath and hold a dim impression that the life of Austerlitz and thePyramids must linger even after St. Helena: why may not the patriot heartof America believe that the man who of all others best represented the fullglory of a nation, is immortal in body as in spirit, and that the Father ofhis Country will some day dash out from the sarcophagus that holds himprisoner at Mount Vernon,--to shame recreancy, to hurl incapacity frompower, and to save, in its dark hour, the fabric that his great soul lovedand his great hand builded?
No!--that awful presence lies unmoved on its bier on the peaks of themountains, the blue sky the canopy of its catafalque, the waving trees theplumes of the warriors who guard it, and the hoarse storm wind its requiem.And while it so sleeps, the future of the republic, which seems to us indarkness, lies really in a Hand that knows no death and never changes inits unfaltering purpose!
But the saddest as well as the sweetest things in life have an end, and thehalt of the company at the Flume House, that morning, supplied no exceptionto the rule. Just as the wagons were once more loaded, Halstead Rowan camestriding up, his cigar smoked out, and his face the most unconsciousimaginable, and took the seat which he had not long before vacated. Mrs.Brooks Cunninghame was very busy, at that period, looking after some of thedetails of arrangement of Master Brooks Brooks' dress, which had becomeslightly disarranged; and perhaps she did not see him. Let us suppose so,for she certainly did not notice her late student in geography. She was alittle red in the face, which let us also suppose to have been the effectof the weather and not of mortification. And so all once more in place,away dashed the wagons to that marvellous gap in the mountains which givesname to the house. The road seemed very rough and broken, the rises anddescents grew sharper, and the forest scenery wilder. Galloping his fourhorses up a steep ascent to the left, each driver vigorously applied thebrake as the wagons literally slid down the very sharpest bit of roaddescent to be foun
d at the Franconia (except perhaps on some portions ofthe Bald Mountain)--a descent so sudden, and overhanging a ravine sofrightful, that some of the handsome eyes looked larger than ever for themoment, all the riders involuntarily threw themselves back in the laboringand creaking wagons, and pretty little screams that had no affectation inthem emancipated themselves from rosy lips and took excursions out into thesummer air. Then thundering over a rickety wooden bridge, almost at thebottom of the ravine, and up another slight ascent, the wagons stoppedunder a clump of wide-spreading trees at a rough platform, and disembarkedtheir passengers, leaving all to follow their will in examining that wonderof nature in one of her frolic moods.
And what was the Flume like, to those who that day saw it for the firsttime? An irregular crack or fissure in the side of the mountain, half amile long, and from ten to fifty feet in depth, such as the wedge of someenraged Titan might have made when he had determined to split the earthasunder, and used the thunder as a beetle. Whether he was frightened by thebig oval boulder which fell into the fissure half way up, and has eversince hung suspended there, touching only at the points, and apparentlyready to fall at any moment--who shall say? At all events, if he intendedto disrupt the earth he desisted for the time; and let us be duly thankful!
Walking laboriously over the broad flat stone platform at the mouth of thegorge, with the thin sheet of bright water straggling over it, thenascending the rough stairs of board that lay irregularly on either side,and anon climbing carefully over the mossed and slippery rocks that offeredsuch precarious foot-hold, the party ascended the Flume and stood at lastbetween walls of less than six feet separation, the rock rising fifty orsixty feet on either side, and almost as square as if cut by the chisel ofan artificer, impassable slimy boulders piled in confusion far ahead, therough little stream tumbling away through the wilderness of stones beneath,and a chill dampness like that of the grave striking in to the verylife-blood of those who had been imprudent enough to tempt the mountainswithout the protection of thick garments and warm flannels. Once, a littlewhite Blossom of the company, just unfolding to the June luxuriance ofwomanhood, and whose name has no interest in this narration, was temptedby a mischievous relative and protector to try walking a rounded andslippery log that bridged the chasm, a few feet above the rough rocks andwater below; but her nerves failed and her head grew dizzy when she washalf way across, her lip quivered and then fluttered out a little cry ofalarm, and her mischievous tempter retraced his own steps just in time tocatch her and keep her from an ice-cold bath and limbs bruised on the roughstones lying in the stream underneath.
There was another log spanning the Flume, a little higher up the chasm, andat a very different altitude from terra firma--hanging, in fact, like astout black fence-rail, not less than eighty or an hundred feet in the air.Encircled by the eternal dampness rising out of the Flume, it could not beotherwise than slimy and slippery; and only a moment before the namelessBlossom tempted the log below, some of the company had looked up andremarked with a shudder that a firm foot and cool head would be necessaryfor the man who should tread over that frail bridge with its crumblingbark. As if the two had some mysterious connection, the moment _after_Blossom's misadventure, some one heard voices in that direction and lookedup again. Two figures stood upon the brink, and not so far away but that atleast _some_ of the group below recognized them as "H. T." and HalsteadRowan, who had left the rest as they abandoned the wagons and commencedascending the gorge.
Among those who looked up was Margaret Hayley, and her eyes were amongthose that recognized the two figures. What those people were to her, orwhy she said "Look!" in a quick and even agitated voice, probably the younggirl could have told quite as little as either writer or reader; but suchwas the fact, and the motion of her eyes at the moment, accompanied by theword, drew the regards of both Captain Hector Coles and Mrs. Burton Hayley,who stood beside her at the bottom of the Flume. They, too, with theothers, heard the words and saw the action that immediately followed.
Halstead Rowan had one foot thrust forward on the log, his other on thefirm ground behind. "H. T." stood on the rock beside him, making no motionto cross. There was evidently a banter between them, and though they wereprobably not aware of the fact, their words were readily distinguishablebeneath.
"None of _my_ business, I suppose; but it is folly!" they heard spoken bythe voice of "H. T."
"I suppose that every thing is folly which goes out of the hum-drum trackof every-day life!" they heard Rowan reply. "But I like folly, and so heregoes! Will you follow me?"
"Without wanting to go over?--no!" was the answer.
The words had scarcely left his lips when Rowan sprang forward on the log,stepping lightly, but balancing himself with some care, towards the otherside. Insensibly all who saw him held their breath. If he should be correctenough in his balance, who could say that the log might not be a rottenshell, ready to fall under the heavy weight of the stout athlete? In fact,he had scarcely reached the middle when the tottering fabric seemed to giveway and come toppling down into the chasm below. Not in reality; for had itdone so, the career of the Illinoisan, with whom we have by no meansfinished, would have been ended for all time. The startling appearance wascreated by the dislodging of a large shell of the rotten bark by his foot,more than half costing him his balance, and bringing out from the groupbeneath a chorus of cries that might well have disturbed what remained ofequilibrium. One cry sounded sharper and higher than all the rest: therewere those present who knew from whose lips it came: enough for us to saythat it did not come from those of Margaret Hayley, whose eyes were stillturned upward with a feeling in them very different from fear. Before thecry had fairly died away, the peril, whatever it might have been, was past,and Halstead Rowan stood on the other side of the chasm, bowing to thegroup who had been observing him, as he learned from the cries, at thebottom. They saw "H. T." turn and walk away at the same moment; and then,drawing a long breath, Margaret Hayley said, much more to herself than toher immediate companions:
"What a thing beyond all admiration is that courage!"
"Which our other friend does not seem to be troubled with in any greatdegree!" said Captain Hector Coles, finishing out the sentence with a toneperceptibly sneering. Margaret looked round at him with a look which mighthave been one of inquiry, then turned away her face again and said:
"No, I suppose not! Not more than half the world can be demigods: theothers must be common people, or worse!"
Whether Captain Hector Coles liked the tone of the reply, or not, isuncertain. At all events he scowled a little and said nothing more, whileMrs. Burton Hayley stole a look into the face of her daughter which had nohypocrisy in it and was full of wonder and trouble.
Five minutes afterwards the company were all again at the mouth of theFlume, and there Halstead Rowan, a second time the hero of the day, joinedthem. "H. T." did not make his appearance: he had struck across, theIllinoisan said, without waiting for him, over the almost impassable fallentimber and through the spruce thickets, by the cross-path to the Pool. Afew minutes more sufficed to re-seat the group in their wagons and todeposit them once more at the door of the Flume House, whence they tooktheir way on foot, straggling in every picturesque variety of locomotiontowards that equally-curious pendant of the Flume which is often missed bythose who visit the better-known wonder.
The Pool lay all alone, until this somewhat numerous company came todisturb its solitude. A singular object indeed--an exaggeration of all theother mountain amphitheatre fountains, nearly round, a score or more ofyards in diameter, with the toe of the horse-shoe scooped out of a solidrock thirty or forty feet in height, smoothed and rounded as if cut byhuman hands, a bright, clear stream dashing down at that point, the rocksfurther away from the toe rising broken and jagged to the height of perhapsan hundred feet, and the mode of approach of the passengers a jagged lineof ricketty steps, terribly perpendicular, sloping down from that highestpoint and presenting no temptations to the decrepit or the nervous. At thebo
ttom of this singular basin the water, bright and clear in the few placeswhere it ran shallow over the bleached stones, but under the shadow of theledge so deep as to seem black as midnight.
"Nobody here!--it doesn't seem like old times!" said an elderly gentlemanwho had visited the Pool many times in other days,--as the ladies were withsome difficulty assisted down the steps. "No boatman, and not even a boat!Where is Charon, I wonder?"
"Oh, yes, where _is_ Merrill?" asked another. "The man with the leaky scowand the white muslin awning, who always charged a York shilling forferrying people over to the Elysian Fields lying among the rocks and logsyonder."
"I remember, once," said the old gentleman, "that while his lieutenantpaddled us around under the spray of the fall yonder, and over to the stepswhich used to hang from the rocks there on the opposite side, Merrill readus an autograph letter from Queen Victoria, dated in the kitchen atBuckingham Palace while the august lady said that she was rollingapple-dumplings,--and also gave us a lecture on geography, in which heproved that this spot was the very centre of the earth, from which alllatitude and longitude ought to be calculated."
"Well, he was right in some degree," said Halstead Rowan, who stood near,and who fixed his regards at the same moment on Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame,still looking after the welfare of that interesting child. There was noteven the suspicion of a smile upon his face as he went on, and therecertainly was not upon the face of the lady for whose benefit the discoursewas evidently intended. "I do not know about the latitude and longitude,but this Pool is certainly the centre of the earth and exactly opposite toChina, so that a plummet, with _a line long enough_, dropped here, would becertain to come out somewhere on the shores of the Hoangho or the Kiangku."
"Nonsense!" said one grave lady (not Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame) who did notappreciate the joke.
"Not a bit of it, madame!" said the scamp, who thereupon turned his batteryat once in her direction. "There is no doubt whatever of the truth of thestatement, for I have been here myself when the defunct pig-tailed Chinamencame popping up, who had committed suicide by drowning themselves on theother side of the world, on account of the cruelty of a copper-coloreddivinity with almond eyes and feet the size and shape of the last dumplingin the pot, or a trifling deficiency in the rat-crop or the dog-census."
"Impudence!" muttered _that_ lady, who seemed to regard the "whopper" as apersonal insult; but the majority of the company appeared to view theaffair in a very different light and to be rather pleased than otherwisewith the go-ahead fellow who could walk over verbal and physical bridgeswith the same charming recklessness. It may be anticipating to say thatthere was one among them, whose face had paled when he trod the log overthe Flume, and who could not even laugh at the light words which sheotherwise enjoyed,--so much deep and new and strange feeling lay at thebottom of the interest. And it may _not_ be anticipating, in the minds ofany who have perused the late foregoing pages with due attention, to saythat that silent, thoughtful, observing one was Clara Vanderlyn, betweenwhom and the Illinoisan there yawned a gulf of circumstance and position sowide and deep that no one but a madman (or what is madder still--a mad_woman_) could possibly have dreamed of stepping over it.