CHAPTER XV.
HOW HALSTEAD ROWAN ARRANGED THAT EXPECTED DUEL--TEN-PINS VERSUS BLOODSHED--SOME ANXIETY ABOUT IDENTITY--THE "H. T." INITIALS, AGAIN--A FAREWELL TO THE BROOKS CUNNINGHAMES--AN HOUR ON ECHO LAKE, WITH A RHAPSODY AND A STRANGELY-INTERESTED LISTENER.
This chapter must be unavoidably as fragmentary, not to say desultory, assome that have preceded it at considerable distance, the course of eventsin it seeming to partake in some degree of the broken, heaped andheterogeneous quality of the mountain rocks amidst which they occurred.
It has been seen that Halstead Rowan, quitting the room in which he had metwith so severe a mortification, touched Horace Townsend on the arm and madehim a signal to follow, and that the latter obeyed the call. Of course thisobedience was a matter of courtesy that could not well be refused, and yetit was accorded with a feeling so painful that it would scarcely have beenasked had the torture been foreseen. Rowan, as the lawyer knew, had beeninsulted before a company of mark and numbers, in so deadly a manner thatmore than usual forbearance would be necessary to forgive the outrage; andthe insulted man belonged, as the lawyer also knew, to a class of Westernmen not much more prone than those of the South and Southwest, to smotherdown a wrong under good-feeling or expediency. He had refrained fromstriking the insulter on the spot; but that forbearance might have beenmerely the effect of a recollection that ladies were present, and the onelady of all among them; and Horace Townsend no more doubted, during themoment that elapsed while the two young men stepped into the reception-roomand secured their hats from the table, that he was being called upon in thesacred name of friendship to act in an affair that would probably cost thelife of one or both the antagonists, than he questioned the fact of his ownexistence. It is doubtful whether he did not believe, before the affair wasconcluded, that so strange a task had never been set for his friend, by anyman incensed to the necessity of mortal combat, since the day when duellingproper had its origin in two naked savages going out behind their huts withknives and a third to look on, for the love of a dusky she-heathen withoblique eyes--down through all the ages, when Sir Grostete set lance inrest and met Sir Maindefer in full career, over a little question ofprecedence at the table of King Grandpillard; when Champfleury and St.Esprit, beaux of the Regency of Orleans, with keen rapiers sliced up eachother like cucumbers, between two bows and a dozen of grimaces, becauseone did not appreciate the perfume used by the other; until Fighting Joe ofArkansas and Long Alick of St. Louis culminated the whole art of singlecombat by a little encounter with rifles, followed by a closer embrace withbowies, at one of the Mississippi landings, instigated by the unequaldivision of the smiles of Belle Logan, of Western Row, Cincinnati. Allwhich means, if the reader has not entirely lost the context, that thecourse pursued by Halstead Rowan, as a combatant, was eventually found tobe something out of the common order.
"You saw that, of course--I know that you did!" said rather than inquiredRowan, when they had reached the piazza and were out of hearing of any ofthe promenading groups.
"I did," answered Townsend, with some hesitation and a wish that he coulddeny the fact and thus escape the duties certain to be forced upon him."Yes, I saw it all, and it was most disgraceful. But I hope--"
That intended lecture was lost to the world, as so many others have been;for Rowan interrupted him:
"Are you poor?"
"No, I cannot say that I am, in money!" was the surprised reply.
"Were you ever?"
"No--I must answer in the negative a second time. I have never been whatthe world calls poor, since I can remember."
"Then you do not know how it feels," said the Illinoisan. "I am poor--Ihave never been rich, and I do not know that I have ever really wished tobe so until a few moments ago. I wanted to buy a puppy, so that I could tiea stone to his neck and drown him; but I felt that I had not money enough."
Townsend, still surprised and in a good deal of doubt whither theconversation was tending, murmured something about the fact that howeverdecided the insult of the brother had been, evidently the sister did notshare in the feeling.
"She? oh no, heaven bless her brown eyes!" he replied, rapidly andearnestly, while the other could see, in the light of the now fairly risenmoon, that there was a strange sparkle in his own dark orbs. "As for therest--well, heaven need not be particular about blessing them--that is all!But this gabble is not what I drew you out here for. I want you to do me agreat favor, at once, and I ask _you_, because I seem to be betteracquainted with you, after a very short time, than with any other personjust now at the Notch."
"Now it is coming--just what I dreaded!" said Townsend to himself; but heanswered very differently, in a feeble attempt to stave off the trouble.
"Than _any_ other person?"
"Hold your tongue!--you know what I mean!" was the reply. "Answer myquestion, yes or no--are you the man upon whom I can depend, to do me animmediate personal service that may involve some sacrifice of bodilycomfort and perhaps of feeling?"
"I hope so--yes!" answered Townsend. "But before you take any steps in thismatter--"
"Conditions already?" asked Rowan. "I thought it was to be an unconditionalyes or no!"
"Well, it is!" said Townsend, apparently satisfied that expostulation wouldafter all be useless.
"Enough said!" replied Rowan, catching him by the arm. "Come along with meto the alley, then, and roll me not less than five games of ten-pins."
"But the business you wished me to do?" asked Townsend. "If it is to bedone at all--"
"Why, confound the man!--what ails you? _That_ is the business!"
"To roll you five games of ten-pins?"
"Exactly! Why, what else should it be? Oh, I see!" and Rowan chuckled out alow laugh from his great throat. "I understand your tragic face, now. Youthought that I wanted you as a friend, to--"
"To challenge Frank Vanderlyn--precisely what I thought," said the lawyer,"and I consented to act because I thought that I might be better able thansome other person to prevent any serious result."
"To shoot _her brother_, merely because he is a fool?--Oh, no,Townsend--you could not think _that_! Duelling is murder nearly always, andfolly always when it is not a crime; and if I should ever be driven intoanother duel, be sure that it would not be with an inexperienced boy whoprobably does not know half so much about a pistol as at pen-knife or atooth-pick."
"You are a true man, as well as a sensible one, and I honor you!" said therelieved lawyer, grasping him by the hand, and his face at the same timewearing a look, which, though unseen by the other, seemed actually toexpress personal gratitude.
"I do not know about the 'true man,' though I have tried to be so,"answered Rowan, as they neared the door of the ten-pin alley. "But Isuppose that perhaps I am the oddest mortal on the globe, and that mayanswer the same purpose. And now you are dying to know why I wish to rollten-pin balls at this particular moment? Simply because I need some way ofworking off this excitement that might lead me to commit a violent act ifit did not find that very harmless physical vent. I have tried theexperiment before, and I know what ten-pins are with a man of fierytemperament. Here, boy, set 'em up!"
The alley was alone, except as to the sleepy boy; but the loud call of theIllinoisan soon put the machinery of the place into operation and themomentous games commenced. No matter how they progressed or how they endedin regard to winning or losing: it is only with some of the conversationwhich took place while the match was under way, that we have at present todo.
"You are a lawyer and belong to Cincinnati, you said," observed Rowan, ashe paused a moment to wipe his brow after thundering down half a dozen ofthe ponderous globes.
"Yes, I said so," answered Townsend; but he did not enlarge upon theanswer, as he was obviously expected to do; and one or two other questions,having the same scope, being parried at every point beyond the mere name,occupation and place of residence, the Illinoisan began to suspect thatthere must be some motive for reticence, which he was at least bound
torespect while he held the catechumen impressed in his own service. Withreference to himself, a theme upon which the conversation seemed to turnvery easily, (many of the stout, bluff, frank, go-ahead Rowans whom onemeets in society have the same characteristic, fault or the reverse),--hemanifested no corresponding nervousness; and one moment strangely silent asif under the influence of some thought which kept him too busy for speech,the next he would rattle on almost as glibly as the polished balls rolleddown the pine floor.
"You called yourself odd a little while ago, and I fancy that if you _are_odd you have the excuse of very wide experience for a man of your age,"said Townsend, a little later in the quintette of games, and certainlydisplaying a bit of the prying nature of the lawyer, if not the subtlety ofthe Jesuit, in the suggestion. "To tell you the truth, I cannot quite placeyou in profession. A while ago I thought you possibly a steamboat-captain,but you have just upset that hypothesis by proving that you are nearly allthe while on land; and yet you seem to be perpetually flying about from onetown to another. What the deuce _are_ you?"
"Oh, you cannot place me, eh?" laughed Rowan, who was getting fairlysoothed and mellowed by his creditable substitute for duelling. "Well, I ama conductor on the ---- Railroad, which you know has its terminus inChicago, and I am off on a couple of months leave of absence from theCompany. As to experience, I suppose that I may have had a little of it. Ihave been a civil-engineer, employed at laying out some of the worst roadsin the West, and of course laying them out the worst. Have crossed theplains to California twice, and back again, including a look at Brigham andhis wives at Salt Lake City, very nearly getting my throat cut, I fancy, inthat latter operation. Did a little at gold-mining, for a short time, butsoon quitted it out of deference to a constitutional backache whenstooping. Have been here at the East a good many times, and once lived inNew York, (a great deal worse place than Salt Lake City, and with morepolygamy!) for a twelvemonth, telegraphing. Once ran down to Santa Fe witha train, and came very near to being speared by the Comanches. Thenconcluded to stay among those amiable savages for a while, to learn toride, and spent six months in the study. No man knows how to ride ahorse--by the way--except an Arab (I take the word of the travellers forthat, as I have never been across), a Comanche or an Arapahoe, or some onethey have taught. There, have I told you enough?"
"Humph!--yes," answered the lawyer, eying the strange compound withunavoidable admiration and no little wonder. "Yes, except one thing."
"And that is about this scar?"
"I confess that my curiosity lay in that direction!" laughed Townsend. "Ithink that scar has not been long healed--that you have been taking a turnin the present war."
"Yes, a short one," said the Illinoisan, "and that scar is one mark of it.I was a private in the ranks of the Ninth Illinois for a few months lastyear, and got pretty badly slashed with a Mississippi bowie-knife, withGrant, two or three days before they took Fort Donelson. _They_ tookit--_I_ did not--I suppose that I did not amount to much at about thatperiod, with a little hack in the jugular that came pretty near letting outlife and blood together!"
Before this conversation had concluded, and long before the specified fivegames were accomplished, half a dozen persons from the hotel, male andfemale, came strolling in. Among them was Captain Hector Coles, withMargaret Hayley upon his arm. They stood at the head of the alley, lookingat the game; and Townsend, as he was about to make one of his mostdifficult rolls, recognized the lady and her slight nod and wassufficiently agitated by the presence of that peculiar spectator, to misshis aim entirely and roll the ball off into the gutter--a fact which didnot escape the quick eye of the Captain.
Directly, as the game still went on, some conversation occurred between thelady and her attendant, which, if overheard, might have produced a stillmore decided trembling in the nerves of the ten-pin player.
"I _know_ that I have seen that face before, more than once, and not inCincinnati," the Captain said. "I believe that he is a Philadelphian, andthat his name is no more Horace Townsend than mine is Jenkins."
"What motive could any one possibly have for coming to a place like this indisguise and with a feigned name?" asked Margaret Hayley.
"Humph!" said the Captain, in a tone by no means good-humored, though itwas low, as the previous words had been, "there are plenty of men who findit necessary to disguise names and faces now-a-days, for the very best ofreasons."
"Traitors?" asked the lady.
"Yes, traitors!" answered the Captain.
"And _that_ reason he has not, I know!" said Margaret. "The man who utteredthe words that _I_ heard last night, is no traitor, and I do not think thatI should believe the very angels of heaven if they should come down to makethe assertion!"
"You seem strangely interested in the man!" said the Captain, his voiceundeniably querulous.
"And I have a right to be so if I choose, I suppose!" answered the lady, ina voice that if it was not querulous was at least signally decided.
"Oh, certainly! certainly!" was the reply, coming out between set teeth.
Silence fell for a moment thereafter, except as the crashing balls mademusic among the pins. Then it was interrupted by Rowan calling out to thelawyer, who seemed to stand abstracted and forgetful of the game.
"Townsend!"
No motion on the part of the person addressed, or any sign that he heardthe utterance.
"Townsend! I say, Townsend!"
Still no motion, or any recognition whatever of the name; and it was notuntil the Illinoisan, who had just been making three ten-strikes insuccession with his left hand, and who was naturally anxious to call theattention of his opponent to the exploit, touched him on the shoulder andliterally shouted the word into his ear, that he paid any attentionwhatever.
"Me? Oh!"
"Did you notice that?" asked the keen-witted Captain, returning to thecharge, as a repulsed soldier should always do. "His name is _not_Townsend, and he has not been long in the habit of being called by it; forit was forgetfulness that made him wait for it to be repeated three times!"
There was triumph in the tone of the Captain, now; and there was everything but triumph in that of Margaret Hayley as she leaned heavily on hisarm and said:
"Pray do not say any thing more about it! That man is nothing to me. Let usgo back to the house."
"Wait one moment! I am going to do something to satisfy myself. Do you seethat handkerchief? Sometimes initials tell a story that trunks andhotel-books do not."
The lawyer had thrown off his coat upon the chair behind him--a blueflannel coat, half military, which both remembered to have seen him wearafter changing clothes from the accident at the pool. From thebreast-pocket a white handkerchief hung temptingly almost half way out, andit was towards that that the hand of the officer dived downward. The ownerof the coat was some distance away, following up one of his flying balls,and was not likely to see the examination made of his personal property, ifit was done with quick hand and eye.
"Hector Coles, you would not do _that_!"
But she spoke too late. With the stereotyped lie on his lips that has beenmade the excuse for so many wrongs and scoundrelisms during all thisunfortunate struggle, "All is fair in war-time!" the Captain whipped outthe handkerchief, turned it quickly from corner to corner, glancing it tothe light as he did so, and then as quickly returned it to the pocket, longbefore the owner had returned from watching the effect of his shot.Margaret Hayley had not intended to join in the reprehensible act, but sheinvoluntarily did so, and she as well as the officer saw the initials "H.T." elaborately embroidered in red silk in one of the corners. It is nottoo much to say that a pang of joy went through her heart at thatrefutation of the Captain's mean suspicions and that evidence to her ownmind that the man in whom she had become so suddenly and unaccountablyinterested was playing no game of deceit and treachery. "H. T." were theinitials, Horace Townsend was the name that he had given her, and therecould be no doubt whatever of the truth of his statement.
Captain Hect
or Coles did not seem by any means so well satisfied with theresult of his researches. Something very like a scowl answered the look ofindignation upon Margaret Hayley's face, as he said:
"Humph! well, he has been keen enough, it seems, to mismark hishandkerchief too!"
"And you are ungenerous enough, Captain Hector Coles, first to do animproper action and then to find fault with your own discomfiture!" was thereply, as the lady once more took the proffered arm of the officer and leftthe alley, the combatants still pursuing the concluding game of that mostmemorable match of left hand against scanty practice. Whither one of themwent, an hour or two later, may possibly be discovered at no distant periodof this narration.
* * * * *
There were stormy times, that night, in the chamber of connubial blissoccupied by Mr. and Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame; and poor Caudle, belabored ashe was in the imaginative mind of Douglas Jerrold, never suffered as muchin one hour as on that occasion did the ex-contractor, ex-Alderman andex-purveyor of mettled steeds for the United States cavalry service. Shoddywas in an ill-humor, and Shoddy had a right to be in an ill-humor. Everything had gone wrong, specially and collectively, from the moment of theirentering those fatal mountains. Mishap the first: Mrs. Brooks Cunninghamehad fainted and been called "Bridget," before company. Mishap the second:Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame had overeaten himself and come near toleaving the whole family in mourning as loud as his own wails. Mishap thethird: Master Brooks Brooks had badgered the bears, in plain sight of all,caused a serious accident, and been visited, both loudly and silently, withobjurgations not pleasant to remember. Mishap the fourth: Mrs. BrooksCunninghame had been herself badgered, worse than the bears, by anirreverent scamp who threw discredit at once upon her foreign travels andher geography. Mishap the fifth: Master Brooks Brooks had tumbled into thePool, been nearly drowned, and come out a limp rag requiring some washingand several hours wringing before recovering its original consistency.Mishap the sixth: Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, in the agitation of that seriousaccident, had called the dear boy by a name, that of "Patsey," which wouldbe likely to stick to him, in taunting mouths, during his whole stay at theProfile. Mishap the seventh: Mr. Brooks Cunninghame had fallen in, thatday, with the before-mentioned certain stage-drivers, who consented todrink brandy, wine and punch at his expense, enticing him thereafter intolow stories of the days when he drove a horse and cart about town, andleaving him eventually in a state of fuddle amusing to their hard headsand harder hearts but by no means conducive to his standing in fashionablewatering-place society. Mishap the eighth: Miss Marianna Brooks Cunninghamehad passed two evenings in the parlor and one day among the guests in theirrides and walks, bedizened in successive fineries of the most enticingorder; and not one person had desired the honor of her acquaintance out ofdoors, asked her to dance in the parlor, or paid her any more attentionthan might have been bestowed upon a very ungraceful lay-figure carriedaround for the showing off of modes and millinery.
All this in thirty hours; and all this was certainly enough to disturb moreequable pulses than those which beat under the coarse red skin of Mrs.Brooks Cunninghame.
And when, that night while the moon was high in heaven and nearly all theguests had left parlor and piazza to silence after such an eventfulday--while poor Marianna in her chamber wept over the cruel neglect whichhad made mockery of all her rosy anticipations, and Master Brooks Brooksmoaned out at her side his petulant complaints born of ill-breeding, frightand weakness,--when Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame opened upon her not-yet-soberedhusband the battery of her tongue, and accused him of being the author ofall the mishaps before named, those with which he had nothing to do quiteas much as those in which he had been really instrumental,--then and there,for the moment, the Nemesis of the outraged republic was duly asserting thepower delegated to her by the gods, and Shoddy, in the person of one of itshumblest representatives, was undergoing a slight foretaste of that eternaltorture to be hereafter enforced.
Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, on that occasion, declared her intention of notremaining another day among "such low people," and she further intimated toMr. Brooks Cunninghame that if he did not learn to behave himself in amanner more becoming to his high position (or at least the high position ofhis wife and children!) she would "take him home at once and never bringhim out agin into respectable society while her head was warrum."
At the end of which exordium the berated husband not unnaturally remarked,in a brogue nearly as broad as it had ever been:
"And fwhat the divil did ye come trapesin here for at all at all? Ye'd bedoin' well enough at home, if ye'd only sthay there, Bridget--I mane Julia.Ye'r no more fit to be kapin company wid dhe quality, nor meself; and I'mas much out of place here as a pig 'ud be goin' to mass! Sure Mary Ann 'ilniver be gettin' a husband among these people wid dhe turned-up noses, andpoor little Pat'll be dhrouned and kilt and murthered intirely! You'dbetther be gettin' out of this as soon as ye can, and I'd be savin' mehard-earned money!"
"The money you have cheated for, ye mane, Pat Cunningham," said Mrs.Brooks, who when alone with the object of her devoted affection and in atemper the reverse of amiable, could unveil some of the household skeletonsof language and history quite as readily as he. "Pretty things them wasthat ye sold for horses to the government! and there's a good dale of themoney ye made when ye was Alderman, that they'd send ye to the State Prisonfor if they knowed all about it!"
"Thrue for ye, Bridget!--and who but yer oogly self put the worst o' thimthings into me head, dinnin' at me o' nights when ye ought to beenaslape?--answer me that, will ye? And now ye'r sthruttin' like a peacockwid dhe money I made to plase ye, and divil the bit can ye kape a civiltongue between yer lanthern jaws. Take that and be hanged" [or some otherword] "to ye, Bridget Cunningham!"
"Pat Cunningham, ye'r a coarse, miserable brute--a low Irishman, and moneycan't make any thing else out of ye! Away from this we go to-morrowmorning, mind that, before ye'r drunk again with yer low stage-drivers andthim fellers."
A snore was the only reply. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame had secured the lastword, according to her usual habit; but she had only done so at theexpense of not having her rejoinder heard by the ears for which it wasintended.
The lady kept her word, in the one important particular. Those who sharedin the early breakfast of the next morning, before the starting of thestages, had the pleasure of seeing the whole family at table all bedizenedfor the road--Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame red-faced, stately and snappish; MissMarianna subdued and unhappy, with red rings around her eyes, as if she hadbeen crying all night; Mr. Brooks Cunninghame with his coarse face yetcoarser than usual and his eyes suggestive of a late fuddle, piling awaybeef-steaks, eggs and biscuits into the human mill, as if he had somedoubts of ever reaching another place where they could be procured to thesame advantage; and Master Brooks Brooks, the freckles showing worse thanever on his pale and sickly-looking face, whining between every twomouthfuls, and vociferating: "Mommy, mommy, I've got a pain!" and, "Mommy,mommy, I tell you I want some more o' them are taters and gravy!"
They were pleasant company at the meal, very!--as they had been at allprevious times when beaming on the horizon of other travellers, and aspeople out of place always prove to be to those who surround them! But themeal came to an end, the trunks that held the remaining finery of the twoladies were safely stowed, the stage-drivers bellowed: "All aboard!" andthe three more precious members of the Brooks Cunninghame family werestowed within the coach without personally causing more than ten minutes ofhindrance, while Mr. Brooks Cunninghame himself, with a bad cigar in mouthand a surreptitiously-obtained bottle of raw whiskey in the pocket of hisduster, occupied a seat on the top and felt, for the time, almost as happyas he had once done when surmounting his loaded dirt-cart.
So Shoddy, or that particular manifestation of it, at least, rolled awayfrom the Profile House. Whither, is no matter of consequence, for theincidental connection of the Brooks Cunninghames with this veracioushistory is concluded wit
h the exit of that morning. But let no one supposethat the travelling world was thereafter rid of them, or of others to whomthey only supply a type and index, during the remainder of the summer. Fordid not some of us meet them at Niagara later in the season, resident atthe Clifton as the most aristocratic (because on monarchical ground) of allthe houses, Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame a little more querulous and redder inthe face than when at the Notch; Mr. Brooks Cunninghame a little trembly,as if whiskey and idleness were beginning to tell upon his system; MissMarianna still un-cavaliered and hopelessly unexpectant in the wreck of hersilks, laces, and jewelry; and Master Brooks Brooks pulling the curtainsand drumming on the keys of the piano with his unwashed fingers, pendinghis greater opportunity to frighten a pair of horses into plunging over thebank, or to relieve the future of a dreary prospect by himself falling offTable Hock?
* * * * *
There was another departure from the Profile House the same morning.Whether the event of the night before had done anything to bring about thatconsummation, or whether previous arrangements and the pressure of timedictated such a movement--Halstead Rowan and the two friends in his companywere among the passengers by one of the coaches that went through to theCrawford, bearing such as contemplated an immediate ascent of MountWashington from that direction. It may be the pleasant duty of writer andreader to overtake them at the Crawford, at a very early period. Nothingmore can now be said of the situation in which the Vanderlyn imbroglio andthe Townsend friendship were left, than that the departing man saw nothingof the lawyer after they parted on the evening previous, and that his earlystage rolled away long before the luxurious Vanderlyns were likely to haveopened their eyes at the summons of the first gong rolling through thecorridors to awaken them for the regular breakfast.
* * * * *
It was nearly noon of that morning of the departures--a cloudless, gloriousmorning, the sun just warming the chill of the Notch to a pleasant May air,and not a fleck of mist to dim the view of the peaks on the very extremeverge of the line of vision, when Horace Townsend strolled down the halfmile of road northward from the Profile, to Echo Lake, intent upon enteringon those mysteries which specially belong to that haunted little sheet ofwater--the mysteries of the boat, the horn, and the cannon. He was alone,as he had been from the first moment of his coming to the Notch, except asthe newly-formed intimacy between Halstead Rowan and himself hadtemporarily drawn them together. He seemed to have formed no other newacquaintance, but that was to be, perhaps, formal and distant; and therewas no certainty that the incident would not add to rather than take awayfrom any feeling of positive loneliness which had before oppressed him.
As he turned down the by-road shooting sharply away to the right, with theLake glimmering silver in the sunlight through the trees, there was a greatcrash of sound, a deafening reverberation from the rocks of Eagle Cliff,hanging immediately over the Lake, a fainter following, and then anotherand another, dying away among the far-off hills in the infinite variety ofthe highland echo. There were already visitors at the Lake; and thefactotum who blended the triple characters of keeper, guide, and boatman,had been discharging the little old cannon on the wharf, as a crowningproof to some party with whom he was just finishing, of the capacity of_his_ lake for dwarfing all the travelled ones' recollections of Killarneyand the Echo Rocks of Superior.
Such was indeed the fact, and as the lawyer emerged upon the Lakeimmediately at the wharf, he met the party who had "done" the Lakestrolling away, while the boatman was re-arming himself with his long horn,and beginning to turn his attention to certain new-comers, a part of whomhad already taken their seats in the big paddle-wheeled boat of which thesteam was to be supplied by cranks and hand-labor, for a trip around thepond with the dignified name, and a new development of the capacities ofecho. He had indeed dropped the stipendiary sum in currency into the handof the factotum, and was about stepping into the boat to join the partyalready miscellaneous, before he discovered that any acquaintance wasnumbered among them. When he did so, for one instant he hesitated as ifabout to defer his trip, then muttered below his breath the few words:"No!--I must take my chances--now as well as ever!" stepped in from thelittle wharf and took one of the few empty seats remaining near the sternof the boat. He sat looking backward, and he was consequently brought faceto face with the three occupants of the stern seat, who were necessarilylooking forward. Perhaps his fate _was_ upon that stern seat, for its threeoccupants were Mrs. Burton Hayley, her daughter, and Captain Hector Coles.
Margaret Hayley paled a little, then flushed the least in the world andfinally smiled a proud but pleasant smile and returned a nod and a"good-morning," in response to Townsend's comprehensive bow and salutation,which were intended to take in all three. Captain Hector Coles sat boltupright, as if he had been riding his horse on parade, and moved no inchfrom his perpendicular as he returned the greeting in so formal a voicethat it constituted no recognition whatever; and Mrs. Burton Hayley, towhom the lawyer had not been introduced, had some excuse for thesupercilious but puzzled stare with which she honored him. The young girlsaw the glance, and remembered the position.
"Oh, ma, I forgot," she said, introducing. "Mr. Townsend, of Cincinnati,whose acquaintance I made yesterday when he saved the poor little boy fromdrowning, at the Pool."
Her eyes were fixed very closely upon the face of Townsend as she saidthese words, and so were those of Captain Hector Coles. If either saw, orthought that they saw, a momentary red flush pass over the darkcountenance, coming as quickly and fading as rapidly as one of the flashesof the Northern Lights,--did they see any corroboration of the suspicionsof the evening before, or was that flush merely the natural expression of asensitive man whose good deeds were mentioned in his presence?
Mrs. Burton Hayley nodded, as she could not avoid doing under suchcircumstances, but there was very little cordiality in the nod; and therewas something quite as lofty and uncongenial in the manner of the wordswith which she accompanied it:
"I remember hearing my daughter speak of Mr. Townsend's having been madethe means, under Providence, of preventing an accident."
The ostentatious Bible yet lay upon its carved stand, oh, Mrs. BurtonHayley, did it not!
No farther conversation followed at that moment, though there may have beenone, and mayhap two, in that mixed boat-load of fifteen or twenty, whowould have been glad to pursue it under more favorable auspices. Certain itis that the lawyer kept his gaze upon the proudly sweet face of MargaretHayley, quite as steadily as propriety would by any means allow, and thather face answered back something more of interest, under the shade of herwide leghorn jockey, than either of her immediate companions might havebeen pleased to see. She was interested in her new acquaintance, beyond aquestion: was she something more? Answer the question--oh, heart ofwoman!--could it be possible that the by-gone love, once so truly a part ofher very being, had already so faded, in one short month, that a feelingwarmer than friendship could centre around a mere stranger of two days'beholding? Was that "ideal," once believed to have been found, then lostagain, presenting itself in another and still more enticing shape, to makeconstancy a myth and womanly truth a by-word? Small data, as yet, fromwhich to judge; but stranger things than this have chanced in the rollingyears, and the faith of humanity still survived them!
Out on the Lake by this time the burlesque upon a steamboat had floated,and the sheet of water lay under as well as around the passengers--perhapsa quarter of a mile in width and a mile in length, shut in on the side ofapproach by the woods, and beyond on all sides by the eternal hills. Neverwas silver jewel dotting the green bosom of nature more beautiful--neverone more sweetly nestled away near the very heart of its mountain nurse.The proverbial winds of the Notch for once were still, and only a gentleripple stirred the glassy surface here and there as a breath touched itlike the skimming wing of a wild bird. The meridian sun lay lovingly on theside and crest of the mountain rising eastward from the edge of the wa
ter,touching its bald, scarred brow with ruddy gold; and if the first on thecliffs nodded at times, they nodded sleepily with the very expression ofrepose. Spirit of calm, delicious quiet!--was there ever a spot more trulysacred to thee, than Echo Lake at such moments, when a few gentle, lovinghearts, close bound to each other and shut in from the world, are beatingwith slow pulses as the life and centre of the great mystery of nature?Other boat-loads than that of this July noon, have grown quiet beneath sucha feeling, as the boatman ceased his paddling, the boat drifted lazily on,lips grew silent, eyes closed, and human thought floated away on a very seaof dreams.
They had swept over, in rapt silence for the last few moments, until theylay beneath the very brow of the eastern mountain. Then that silence wasbroken by the boatman rising from his seat and blowing a long, steady blaston his six-foot tin horn, in size and shape like those used on the Westerncanals, but sadly dinted by careless use and frequent falling. The companywere reminded, then, that they were floating on Echo Lake and no stream ofthe land of faerie. The long, low note died on the car, and an appreciableinstant of silence followed. Then it came back from the brow of themountain above, a little louder than before, and yet a little mellowed bydistance. Another instant, and the same sound reverberated from theopposite hill, the back of Eagle Cliff. Were there still more echoes to beadded to the two that had already made the place notable? Yes, a third cameback from the range that sloped away from the head of the Lake,northward--a little fainter, and broken now; and then the more distanthills caught the sound, as if each had a right, which it jealously claimed,to some portion of that greeting from the human breath; and far as the eyecould trace the blue peaks rising behind each other through the gapsbeyond, the ear could catch a corresponding reverberation,fainter--fainter--fainter,--till it died away in a drowsy murmur andsilence followed. Then the horn passed from hand to hand and from mouth tomouth, some of the gallants perhaps forming kisses of the touch of red lipswhich had preceded theirs; and some blew round, full strains that awakenedadmiration, and some made but a melancholy whistle which excited merrylaughter. Among the many experiments tried upon that horn, there must havebeen some horrid discords startling the Dryads in the wooded shades up themountain, where the gazers sometimes seemed to see the echo leaping fromcliff to cliff and from bough to bough. But they soon came willingly backto the practised notes of the boatman; and some of the party shut theireyes and dreamed, as his quick, sharp peals rang merrily up among thehills,--of noble lord and gentle lady, hunting in the days of old, and ofthe bugle blasts of outlaws sounding through gloomy Ardennes or merrySherwood. Anon he would end his strain with a long, low falling note, andthey heard some old cathedral hymn wailing through solemn arches andbending the spirit to reverence and prayer. But through all that successionof sounds the hard, dry, practical, exigeant Present was rolled away andthe romantic, easy Past stood in its stead; so easily does the mind, likethe body, cast off its burthen, whenever permitted, and lie down, if onlyfor a moment, upon the lap of indolence!
Scarcely a word had been spoken, in the boat, for some minutes, under theinfluence of that spell of the hour. But the normal condition of humanity,when awake, is to keep the tongue in motion; and not even the spell of EchoLake could keep that busy member still beyond the customary period.Comparisons of other echoes, in our own and other lands, were made, and asthe boatman rowed on to complete the circuit of the Lake, the conversationbecame nearly general.
"Echo Lake looks very smiling and quiet to-day," said one of thecompany--the same old habitue of the mountains who had commenced theconversation the day before with Halstead Rowan, at the Pool. "But I haveseen it look very differently, sometimes when a gale came roaring andsinging up through the Notch, and the saucy little thing got a black frownupon its face, reflected from the leaden sky and the wind-tossed trees upyonder. Echo is blown away, at such times, as any one would be who daredthe perils of this sea of limited dimensions; and you would be surprised toknow how hard the wind _can_ blow just here, and what little, tumbling,dangerous waves of rage the dwarf can kick up, trying to make an ocean ofitself."
"The most singular view that _I_ ever had of it," said another, "I caughthalf way up the Cannon Mountain one afternoon. It looked like a wash-bowl,and I had a fancy that I could toss a piece of soap into it from where Istood! But I knew that it must be Echo Lake, for somebody was blowing ahorn; and I believe there has never been an hour of daylight, sincecreation, when a horn has not been blowing somewhere in the neighborhood."
"There is one more point of view in which to see it," said Horace Townsend,who had not before joined at any length in the conversation. "I mean bymoonlight, for any one who is part night-hawk."
"Ah, have you seen it so?" asked the last speaker, with interest.
"Yes--last night," answered the lawyer.
"As often as I have been here," said the first old habitue, "I have nevercome down to see it by moonlight. What is it like?"
"Like something that I cannot very well describe," was the answer. "You hadbetter all come down and see it for yourselves, before you leave theNotch."
"Still, you can give us some idea," pursued the old gentleman.
Horace Townsend hesitated and was silent for a moment, when Margaret Hayleysaid, her eyes just then fixed full upon his: "I _think_ you can, Mr.Townsend, if I am not mistaken in the voice that I heard speaking for theOld Man of the Mountain, by the same moonlight, not many evenings ago."
The dusky cheek of the lawyer was full of red blood in an instant. He hadbeen overheard, then, in his half-mad rhapsody to Rowan and himself. And_she_ had heard him, of all women!--_she_ had spoken with such frankness,not to say boldness, and that frankness appreciation at least, if notadmiration! He might have uttered something more about "taking his chances"then, and had full warrant for the self-gratulation!
"I do not suppose that I can tell you either what I saw or felt," saidTownsend, when that momentary flush had died away a little from his face."I will try, however. I had been rolling ten-pins till past eleven, and itmust have been midnight when I strolled down towards the Lake. I was inhopes that I should find no one here, for I wished to see it alone as wellas by moonlight; and I had my wish. I saw no one and heard no one, on myway to the Lake or while here; and I do not suppose that any foot but myown pressed the damp green velvet that bordered the edge, or that any eyeexcept my own and the All-seeing one that looks down over all the world atall midnights, saw the placid sheet lying in its solemn repose, with theshadows of the great cliff yonder reflected on its bosom, and here andthere a little ripple as a puff of wind sighed through the branches, kissedthe silver surface and passed over."
The eyes of the speaker were full of humid light as he spoke, and at leastone of the company marked the influence which seemed to be upon him--a moodof high imagination, sometimes seen in the ardent lovers of nature whenrevelling in their chosen study, and though less dangerous not less decidedthan the madness which habitually fell upon Saul. There was somethingfascinating in it, to all who saw and heard, even to those who held anintuitive dislike to the seer: what must the fascination have been toMargaret Hayley, who remembered one so unlike in personal appearance andyet so like in voice and apparently in habits of mind, loving nature sointently and describing it with the same fervor, while his love for _her_made a sacred undertone to all and completed the charm of look and word!
The lawyer needed no further urging, but went on:
"The little dock there, with the boats moored beside it, and the hut whereour friend here keeps his horn and cannon,--all lay in a melancholy quietwhich struck me like death--as if those who frequented them had gone awayat some nightfall years ago, like the workmen who left their trowels in themortar of unfinished Pompeii on the morning of its destruction,--never toreturn again and yet ever to be waited for, while the earth kept its coursein the heavens. I was alone, and I suppose that imagination ran riot withme and made me partially a maniac. The hush was so awful that I dared notbreak it, even by a loud breath. I sa
w the Indians there, under yonsweeping trees to the left, whose branches bend down and almost kiss thewater--saw an Indian canoe lying there, faces within it smeared withwar-paint and the pointed arrow ready to twang from the bow-string. Iexpected to hear the war-whoop every instant--expected it, perhaps not inmy human mind but in that other and more powerful mind for which we arenone of us quite responsible. Then I saw--yes, I was sure that I saw thedusky shadow of a robber flitting along from pine to pine, far up on theside of the cliff there, silent and dangerous as death, and ready to dropdown on the first living thing that passed beneath him. Then I saw fieryeyes through the branches, and thought that the panther and the catamountthat lurked in these tangled woods two hundred years ago, dividedpossession once more with the Indians and were prowling about for some latebanquet. I do not think that it was fear that I felt, for I would not havegone away if I could, any more than I could have gone away if I would; butit appeared to be the very silent haunt of nature in her hour of rest,wherewith nothing but the wild and the savage had any business; and itseemed impossible to throw aside the idea that even the tread of acivilized foot must be a sacrilege that only life could atone. Then therewas a sudden plunge from the bushes into the water, a few yards up thebank, and a ripple following some large dark object swimming away towardsthe other shore. This was more real, and the feeling of awe began to passaway, for I knew that the swimmer must be a water-rat or otter that hadbeen paying a midnight visit like myself and was now going homeward by thecool and refreshing marine route. That was the first noise I had heard, butothers followed, for an owl began to hoot over yonder in the bushes and ayoung eagle--I suppose it must have been a young eagle--indulged in ascream from the top of the Cliff, where I believe he has a habit ofnesting. Then the supernatural and the imaginative rolled away after theyhad held me an hour or two, and I was simply alone at two o'clock or alittle later, beside Echo Lake, only half a mile from the bed that had beenall that time waiting for me. I took the warning of the night-owl and theeagle, who no doubt intended to order me off as an intruder, and strolledback to the house. That is all, and perhaps quite enough of such ramblingnonsense as it is!"
"Rambling nonsense?" Whatever the other members of the company may havethought, evidently Margaret Hayley did not so regard it as she leanedanxiously forward, the presence of others apparently forgotten, her eyesfascinated in a sort of strange wonder by something in the face of thespeaker, while her mind seemed not less singularly under the control of theutterance itself.
Five minutes afterwards the parody on a steamboat touched the little wharfagain and the company disembarked. Five minutes after that secondary periodthey separated from the close communion into which they had beentransiently thrown during the preceding half-hour, many of them never tomeet again in the same familiarity of intercourse, and perhaps some ofthem, though as yet inmates of the same abode, never to see each other'sfaces again in life! Such are the meetings and the partings of summertravel and watering-place existence, to which the nameless rhymer no lesstruly than touchingly referred when he spoke of those friendships quicklymade and as quickly broken:
"----In hostels free to all commands Save penury's and pity's;--
"In common rooms, where all have right To tread with little heed or warning, And where the guests of overnight Are gone at early morning;--
"By tables where we sit at meat-- Sit, with our food almost untasted Because we find some vacant seat From which a friend has hasted;--
"In parlors where at eve we sit, Among the music and the dancing, And miss some lip of genial wit, Some bright eye kindly glancing.
"--------the haunted chambers left, That almost choke us as we ponder, And leave _us_ quite as much bereft As dearer ties and fonder."
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 17
