"Oh, ma, I forgot," she said, introducing. "Mr. Townsend, of Cincinnati, whose acquaintance I made yesterday when he saved the poor little boy from drowning, at the Pool."
Her eyes were fixed very closely upon the face of Townsend as she said these words, and so were those of Captain Hector Coles. If either saw, or thought that they saw, amomentary red flush pass over the dark countenance, coming as quickly and fading as rapidly as one of the flashes of the Northern Lights,—did they see any corroboration of the suspicions of the evening before, or was that flush merely the natural expression of a sensitive man whose good deeds were mentioned in his presence?
Mrs. Burton Hayley nodded, as she could not avoid doing under such circumstances, but there was very little cordiality in the nod; and there was something quite as lofty and uncongenial in the manner of the words with which she accompanied it:
"I remember hearing my daughter speak of Mr. Townsend's having been made the means, under Providence, of preventing an accident."
The ostentatious Bible yet lay upon its carved stand, oh, Mrs. Burton Hayley, did it not!
No farther conversation followed at that moment, though there may have been one, and mayhap two, in that mixed boat-load of fifteen or twenty, who would have been glad to pursue it under more favorable auspices. Certain it is that the lawyer kept his gaze upon the proudly sweet face of Margaret Hayley, quite as steadily as propriety would by any means allow, and that her face answered back something more of interest, under the shade of her wide leghorn jockey, than either of her immediate companions might have been pleased to see. She was interested in her new acquaintance, beyond a question: was she something more? Answer the question—oh, heart of woman!—could it be possible that the by-gone love, once so truly a part of her very being, had already so faded, in one short month, that a feeling warmer than friendship could centre around a mere stranger of two days' beholding? Was that "ideal," once believed to have been found, then lost again, presenting itself in another and still more enticing shape, to make constancy a myth and womanly truth a by-word? Small data, as yet, from which tojudge; but stranger things than this have chanced in the rolling years, 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—perhaps a quarter of a mile in width and a mile in length, shut in on the side of approach by the woods, and beyond on all sides by the eternal hills. Never was silver jewel dotting the green bosom of nature more beautiful—never one 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 gentle ripple stirred the glassy surface here and there as a breath touched it like the skimming wing of a wild bird. The meridian sun lay lovingly on the side and crest of the mountain rising eastward from the edge of the water, touching its bald, scarred brow with ruddy gold; and if the first on the cliffs nodded at times, they nodded sleepily with the very expression of repose. Spirit of calm, delicious quiet!—was there ever a spot more truly sacred to thee, than Echo Lake at such moments, when a few gentle, loving hearts, close bound to each other and shut in from the world, are beating with 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 such a 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 sea of dreams.
They had swept over, in rapt silence for the last few moments, until they lay beneath the very brow of the eastern mountain. Then that silence was broken by the boatman rising from his seat and blowing a long, steady blast on his six-foot tin horn, in size and shape like those used on the Western canals, but sadly dinted by careless use and frequent falling. The company were reminded, then, that they were floating on Echo Lake and no stream of the land of faerie. The long, low note died on the car, and an appreciable instant of silence followed. Then it came back fromthe brow of the mountain above, a little louder than before, and yet a little mellowed by distance. Another instant, and the same sound reverberated from the opposite hill, the back of Eagle Cliff. Were there still more echoes to be added to the two that had already made the place notable? Yes, a third came back from the range that sloped away from the head of the Lake, northward—a little fainter, and broken now; and then the more distant hills 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 eye could trace the blue peaks rising behind each other through the gaps beyond, the ear could catch a corresponding reverberation, fainter—fainter—fainter,—till it died away in a drowsy murmur and silence followed. Then the horn passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, some of the gallants perhaps forming kisses of the touch of red lips which had preceded theirs; and some blew round, full strains that awakened admiration, and some made but a melancholy whistle which excited merry laughter. Among the many experiments tried upon that horn, there must have been some horrid discords startling the Dryads in the wooded shades up the mountain, where the gazers sometimes seemed to see the echo leaping from cliff to cliff and from bough to bough. But they soon came willingly back to the practised notes of the boatman; and some of the party shut their eyes and dreamed, as his quick, sharp peals rang merrily up among the hills,—of noble lord and gentle lady, hunting in the days of old, and of the bugle blasts of outlaws sounding through gloomy Ardennes or merry Sherwood. Anon he would end his strain with a long, low falling note, and they heard some old cathedral hymn wailing through solemn arches and bending the spirit to reverence and prayer. But through all that succession of sounds the hard, dry, practical, exigeant Present was rolled away and the romantic, easy Past stood in its stead; so easily does the mind, like the body, cast off itsburthen, whenever permitted, and lie down, if only for a moment, upon the lap of indolence!
Scarcely a word had been spoken, in the boat, for some minutes, under the influence 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 Echo Lake could keep that busy member still beyond the customary period. Comparisons of other echoes, in our own and other lands, were made, and as the boatman rowed on to complete the circuit of the Lake, the conversation became nearly general.
"Echo Lake looks very smiling and quiet to-day," said one of the company—the same old habitue of the mountains who had commenced the conversation the day before with Halstead Rowan, at the Pool. "But I have seen it look very differently, sometimes when a gale came roaring and singing up through the Notch, and the saucy little thing got a black frown upon its face, reflected from the leaden sky and the wind-tossed trees up yonder. Echo is blown away, at such times, as any one would be who dared the perils of this sea of limited dimensions; and you would be surprised to know how hard the windcanblow just here, and what little, tumbling, dangerous waves of rage the dwarf can kick up, trying to make an ocean of itself."
"The most singular view thatIever had of it," said another, "I caught half 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 I stood! But I knew that it must be Echo Lake, for somebody was blowing a horn; and I believe there has never been an hour of daylight, since creation, 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 by moonlight, 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 never come down to see it by moonlight. What is it like?"
"Like something that I cannot very well describe," was the answer. "You had better all come down and see it for yourselves, before you leave the Notch."
"Still, you can give us some idea," pursued the old gentleman.
Horace Townsend hesitated and was silent for a moment, when Margaret Hayley said, her eyes just then fixed full upon his: "Ithinkyou can, Mr. Townsend, if I am not mistaken in the voice that I heard speaking for the Old 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 had been overheard, then, in his half-mad rhapsody to Rowan and himself. Andshehad heard him, of all women!—shehad spoken with such frankness, not to say boldness, and that frankness appreciation at least, if not admiration! 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," said Townsend, 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 it must have been midnight when I strolled down towards the Lake. I was in hopes that I should find no one here, for I wished to see it alone as well as by moonlight; and I had my wish. I saw no one and heard no one, on my way to the Lake or while here; and I do not suppose that any foot but my own pressed the damp green velvet that bordered the edge, or that any eye except my own and the All-seeing one that looks down over all the world at all midnights, saw the placid sheet lyingin its solemn repose, with the shadows of the great cliff yonder reflected on its bosom, and here and there a little ripple as a puff of wind sighed through the branches, kissed the silver surface and passed over."
The eyes of the speaker were full of humid light as he spoke, and at least one of the company marked the influence which seemed to be upon him—a mood of high imagination, sometimes seen in the ardent lovers of nature when revelling in their chosen study, and though less dangerous not less decided than the madness which habitually fell upon Saul. There was something fascinating in it, to all who saw and heard, even to those who held an intuitive dislike to the seer: what must the fascination have been to Margaret Hayley, who remembered one so unlike in personal appearance and yet so like in voice and apparently in habits of mind, loving nature so intently and describing it with the same fervor, while his love forhermade 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 where our friend here keeps his horn and cannon,—all lay in a melancholy quiet which struck me like death—as if those who frequented them had gone away at some nightfall years ago, like the workmen who left their trowels in the mortar of unfinished Pompeii on the morning of its destruction,—never to return again and yet ever to be waited for, while the earth kept its course in the heavens. I was alone, and I suppose that imagination ran riot with me and made me partially a maniac. The hush was so awful that I dared not break it, even by a loud breath. I saw the Indians there, under yon sweeping trees to the left, whose branches bend down and almost kiss the water—saw an Indian canoe lying there, faces within it smeared with war-paint and the pointed arrow ready to twang from the bow-string. I expected to hear the war-whoop every instant—expected it, perhaps not in my human mind but in that other and morepowerful mind for which we are none of us quite responsible. Then I saw—yes, I was sure that I saw the dusky shadow of a robber flitting along from pine to pine, far up on the side of the cliff there, silent and dangerous as death, and ready to drop down on the first living thing that passed beneath him. Then I saw fiery eyes through the branches, and thought that the panther and the catamount that lurked in these tangled woods two hundred years ago, divided possession once more with the Indians and were prowling about for some late banquet. I do not think that it was fear that I felt, for I would not have gone away if I could, any more than I could have gone away if I would; but it 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 it seemed impossible to throw aside the idea that even the tread of a civilized foot must be a sacrilege that only life could atone. Then there was a sudden plunge from the bushes into the water, a few yards up the bank, and a ripple following some large dark object swimming away towards the other shore. This was more real, and the feeling of awe began to pass away, for I knew that the swimmer must be a water-rat or otter that had been paying a midnight visit like myself and was now going homeward by the cool and refreshing marine route. That was the first noise I had heard, but others followed, for an owl began to hoot over yonder in the bushes and a young eagle—I suppose it must have been a young eagle—indulged in a scream from the top of the Cliff, where I believe he has a habit of nesting. Then the supernatural and the imaginative rolled away after they had held me an hour or two, and I was simply alone at two o'clock or a little later, beside Echo Lake, only half a mile from the bed that had been all that time waiting for me. I took the warning of the night-owl and the eagle, who no doubt intended to order me off as an intruder, and strolled back to the house. That is all, and perhaps quite enough of such rambling nonsense as it is!"
"Rambling nonsense?" Whatever the other members ofthe company may have thought, evidently Margaret Hayley did not so regard it as she leaned anxiously forward, the presence of others apparently forgotten, her eyes fascinated in a sort of strange wonder by something in the face of the speaker, while her mind seemed not less singularly under the control of the utterance itself.
Five minutes afterwards the parody on a steamboat touched the little wharf again and the company disembarked. Five minutes after that secondary period they separated from the close communion into which they had been transiently thrown during the preceding half-hour, many of them never to meet again in the same familiarity of intercourse, and perhaps some of them, though as yet inmates of the same abode, never to see each other's faces again in life! Such are the meetings and the partings of summer travel and watering-place existence, to which the nameless rhymer no less truly than touchingly referred when he spoke of those friendships quickly made and as quickly broken:
"——In hostels free to all commandsSave penury's and pity's;—"In common rooms, where all have rightTo tread with little heed or warning,And where the guests of overnightAre gone at early morning;—"By tables where we sit at meat—Sit, with our food almost untastedBecause we find some vacant seatFrom 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 leaveusquite as much bereftAs dearer ties and fonder."
"——In hostels free to all commandsSave penury's and pity's;—
"In common rooms, where all have rightTo tread with little heed or warning,And where the guests of overnightAre gone at early morning;—
"By tables where we sit at meat—Sit, with our food almost untastedBecause we find some vacant seatFrom 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 leaveusquite as much bereftAs dearer ties and fonder."
Cloud and Storm at the Profile—Sights and Sensations of a Rainy-day Ride to the Crawford—Horace Townsend and Halstead Rowan once more together—Unexpected Arrivals—A Cavalcade of Miserables—An Ascent of Mount Washington, with Equestrianism and War-whoops Extraordinary.
Cloud and Storm at the Profile—Sights and Sensations of a Rainy-day Ride to the Crawford—Horace Townsend and Halstead Rowan once more together—Unexpected Arrivals—A Cavalcade of Miserables—An Ascent of Mount Washington, with Equestrianism and War-whoops Extraordinary.
Calms at sea are not more proverbially treacherous than pleasant mornings in the mountains; and long before that day closed which had opened so auspiciously, the heavy clouds came driving up through the Notch with the south-east wind. By nightfall a storm was inaugurated. Thenceforward, for two days, excursions to the Cannon, to Bald Mountain, to Mount Lafayette, or to any other of the points of scenery so plentiful in the Franconia Notch, and in which excursions all the visitors, however slightly acquainted, are more or less closely thrown into speaking intercourse with each other,—were things to be thought of but not attempted. The stages came in with smoking horses and moisture dripping alike from the hat of the driver and the boot of the coach; but few passengers arrived or departed. The bears walked sullenly their little round, or retired periodically to winter quarters in their narrow kennels. The valleys were filled with driving mist, varied by heavy down-pouring rain, and the mountains hid themselves sullenly from view, so that sometimes not even the brow of Eagle Cliff, hanging immediately over the house, could be distinguished through the dense clouds that swept down to the very roofs. Fires became prevalent, and those so fortunate as to possess rooms where the birchen wood could be set ablaze, remained closely sequestered there, dozing, or playing cards or backgammon, or once more turning over the leaves of books from which all the novelty had long before been extracted. Desultory groupsmet at meals, even the eaters coming down sluggishly. Some of the men patronized the billiard-room or the bowling-alley, but they rarely found lady partners or spectators, as in sunnier days. Even the hops in the parlor at evening were thinly attended, the weather seeming to have affected alike the nerves and muscles provocative of dancing, and the strings of the harp, violin and piano. Those who happened to possess copies of "Bleak House," and who remembered the marvellous phenomena of rainy weather existing at a certain time in and about the domain of Sir Leicester Dedlock, read the description over again and thought that nothing could be more beautifully applicable to the experience of storm-stayed sight-seers at a caravanserai among the mountains.
During those two days of storm and sluggishness, Horace Townsend, merely an excursion acquaintance of the Hayleys and Captain Hector Coles, and not such an intimate as would be likely to be invited to backgammon or chat in one of their private rooms,—never once met Margaret Hayley more nearly than within bowing distance when passing in or out of the dining-room or the parlor. One or both may have desired to continue the acquaintance without quite so much of distant familiarity; but if so, one or both knew the antagonistic influences surrounding them and did not think proper to raise an arm for buffeting the waves of separation.
There were not less than a dozen persons remaining at the Profile, who had the ascent of Mount Washington yet to make at an early day, and who intended to make it in the good old traditional way of horseback from the Crawford instead of acknowledging modern utility and bowing to the destruction of all romance by going up in carriages from the Glen. Some of these, beginning to be pressed for time, saw the steady rain and mist with impatience and found very little comfort in the assurances of the hotel-keepers, guides and stage-drivers, that the clouds were not likely to break away under a week, at least.
Monday brought this feeling to a culmination, and thatmorning, spite of all predictions, the impatient dozen ordered a stage and determined to drive over to the Crawford; bespeaking clear weather on the morrow, or on the next day at farthest, for their especial accommodation. Horace Townsend, whether wearied by circumstances which placed him "so near and yet so far" in his acquaintance with Margaret Hayley, or really touched with the prevailing madness for forcing Mount Washington to smile when that great mountain wished to be sullen,—Horace Townsend joined the malcontents and formed one of the closely-packed stage-load that on Monday morning rolled off from the Profile on their way to the Crawford.
The voyagers were pursued by no small number of jokes and jeers from the piazza, as they drove away, on the folly of plunging out into a storm to accomplish an impossibility. But if any one of the number felt for a moment sore in mind and faint-hearted, they were soon consoled. Most of them (mixed male and female, though the former predominating) were true Nature-lovers who had recognized that however Fame and Fortune sometimes play cruel tricks upon their most ardent votaries, the kind Mother seldom failed to unveil her bosom at the coming of one of her true children. They had faith in the future, and that faith was at once repaid in the glory of the present.
For those who have only made the twenty-five miles of stage-ride between the two places, in fair weather, can have no idea of the peculiar charms of that day of capricious rain and floating mist. Closely shut in the lumbering coach, and well enveloped in shawls and dread-noughts and blankets, but with the windows open to allow looking back on the Franconia range they were leaving,—they enjoyed at intervals, during all the earlier portions of the ride, such splendid glimpses of cloud-land as never fall to the lot of mere fair-weather travellers.
At times the shroud of mist which had enveloped them would roll away, as they ascended the high land rising from Franconia towards Bethlehem; and then they would have thepeaks of the Franconia range flecked and dotted with swales and waves and crests of transparent white that seemed alternately to be thousands of colossal sheep lying in the mountain pastures,—and again great masses of the purest and softest eider-down which had floated there and rested, from millions of birds filling the whole air above. Mount Lafayette at one moment, as some of the voyagers of that lucky morning will well remember, seemed to be capped and crowned with a wreath of untrodden snow, miles in extent and hundreds of feet in depth—such as no mountain ever wore upon its brow as a coronet, from the first morning of creation.
Exclamations of pleasure filled the coach, and jest and appreciative remark blended in pleasant proximity. "I shall always remember the air of this morning," said one, "as an atmosphere of bridal veils," and more than he treasured up the comparison as one worth remembering. "See here, Cora!" said another, to the only child in the coach, who nestled half asleep on the shoulder of her mother, pointing her attention meanwhile to a little pyramidal hill separate from the mountain range and at that point relieved against it: "See here, Cora! There is a little baby mountain!" "So there is!" answered Cora, with a world of drollery in her young eyes, "I wonder how long before it will grow to be as big as the rest of them!" Whereupon Cora was voted to have the best of the argument, and manhood once more worshipped childhood.
Away past Bethlehem and along the Ammonoosuc, an exaggeration, in its rocks, upon all the other mountain streams, with its few inches of water finding way among a perfect bed of boulders, and making the mere word "navigation" suggest so droll an image in that connection as to draw a loud laugh from the whole coach-load. Then past a couple of fishermen, heedless of the rain, rod in hand and creel at side, standing on the boulders in the middle of the river and practising the mysteries of the Waltonian art, report alleged with more "flies" assisting than those which they carried in their pocket-books! Then on, with the mist again closed down heavily,past the White Mountain House, that once, before the days of glory of the Glen, supplied the only so-called "carriage-road" to the top of Washington.
A mile or two more, and there was a space clear from trees on the left. As the coach swept up to it the mists seemed to shrink low for a moment. A heavy, dark line loomed on the sky, with almost the true sweep of a wide Gothic arch, a little sharpened at the top. "How graceful!" was the exclamation of one. "How high!—look!—why that is higher than any of the others that we have seen!" exclaimed a second. "Mount Washington," calmly said a habitue who caught a glimpse through the curtain from the back corner of the coach; and every voice joined in the cry.
The habitue was right—cloud and mist had rolled away for an instant, just at the opportune moment, and they had caught that magnificent first near view of the monarch, throned amid his clouds, glorious in the grace of form and the awe of majesty—seeming to bridge the very space between earth and heaven! Some of those favored gazers will dream of that first glance, years hence, when they have been straining the mental vision upward, in waking hours, to that unattainable and dim which rises above the mists of common life. Some of them will throne the great mountain in their hearts, and stretch out pleading arms to it in remembrance, in the dark days of shame and sorrow,—as if the treading of their feet upon its rocky pinnacle would be indeed an escape from the world—as if they might become sharers, indeed, in the majesty of its great solitude. Some of the travellers felt the solemnity of the hour and the scene, that day; and there was not even a sneer or a word of misappreciation for the adventurous genius who quoted, heedless of all that made it inappropriate:
"Mount Blanc is the monarch of mountains:They crowned him long ago,On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,With a diadem of snow!"
"Mount Blanc is the monarch of mountains:They crowned him long ago,On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,With a diadem of snow!"
There was a brief ride remaining, then, till they rolled in over a level road, through thick overhanging woods, to the Crawford House in the White Mountain Notch. The mist had closed almost hopelessly down for the time, and they could only see occasional glimmers through it of the rough sides of old Mount Webster, dark-browed and massive as its namesake. It was only in the brighter air of morning that they were to take in the whole location and see in front, to the right, Mount Willard, wooded on the side exposed to view, but bald and rugged farther down the Notch, like the Cannon at Franconia; with Mount Jackson to the left in front, beyond it the still higher peaks of Mount Webster, and rising at the left in the immediate foreground the long wooded slopes of Mount Clinton, over which the foot of every pilgrim to Mount Washington from the Crawford must make its first ascent.
The dull weather had driven almost all the visitors within doors, at the Crawford as at the Profile; but as the splashed coach rolled up there was at least one recognition—that of Halstead Rowan by Horace Townsend, the former, without any apparent reference to the humidity of the atmosphere, lying at lazy length on three chairs on the piazza and occupied with a cigar and a cheap novel. He had "shed" (that word seems to express the fact better than any other) his over-sized glove from his wounded hand, and seemed entirely to have recovered the use of that important member.
New acquaintances become old and ripen into friendships, very soon when all other surroundings are totally strange; and the two men, each so odd in his way, greeted each other as if they had been friends for a decade instead of intimates of less than a week. There may have been some bond in common, in the guess which each could make of the thoughts and entanglements of the other, calculated to force that friendship forward, even if it would have progressed more slowly under other circumstances.
The first inquiry of Townsend, as they shook each other warmly by the hand, was:
"Been up Mount Washington yet?"
"Notthis time!" answered the other, significantly. "The fog has been nearly thick enough to swim in, ever since I have been here, and I do not know, if I had been as good a swimmer as you, Townsend, whether I should not have tried going up by water, as our friend Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame went up the Alps; but by land the thing has been impossible."
"Many waiting to go up?—or do they nearly all go around to the Glen, this season?" was the next inquiry.
"No, there are a good many sensible people left," was the reply, in the same tone of vivacious rattle. "Think of going up Mount Washington in a carriage! It is worse than making a mill-race out of Niagara, or approaching Jerusalem, as they will do one of these days, I suppose, amid the rumble and whistle of a railroad-train."
"Don't undervalue your own employment!" said Townsend.
"Oh, I do not," was the reply. "Railroad trains, as well as mills, are very good things in their places; but I suppose that a prejudice will always exist in favor of the fiery chariot instead of the balloon, as a means of making ascents into the celestial regions."
Horace Townsend laughed. "But you have not yet told me how many are waiting, or when you are really going up."
"Oh, there must be nearly or quite twenty of them, moping around the house, running out to look at the sky every ten minutes, and asking the clerk and the guides questions that they are about as fit to answer as a prairie-chicken to solve a problem in geometry! As to when we are going up—doyouknow?"
"Iam going up to-morrow, whether any one else goes up or not," said the lawyer. "And by the way, I have bespoken a clear day for that especial occasion."
"Have you? Thank you! Then I suppose we canallgo up!" replied the Illinoisan, as if the information had been the most serious in the world. "By the way—how are they all, over yonder!"
There was something very like a blush on the face of the questioner, and there was something varying very little from that phenomenon on the brown cheek of the other as he answered:
"I have not seen much of either," (what did he mean by "either," a word peculiarly applying, in common parlance, totwo?) "but I believe that they are well."
"Still at the Profile?"
"Yes, and likely to remain there, for any thing that I know to the contrary."
"Any news of any kind? Any more accidents or startling events?"
"None—yes, there is one startling event. The Brooks Cunninghames came away the same day that you left. Have you got the old woman here?"
"Here? heaven forefend! No!" was the response. Then he added: "Why, by Jupiter, Townsend, you must be a wizard or in some kind of collusion with Meriam! See!—I'll be hanged if there is not the top of a mountain! Itisclearing away! Hurrah for Mount Washington!"
He darted in at once from the piazza to the office, and Townsend, who had not yet even registered his name as an arrival, followed him. Most of the other passengers from the Profile were by that time registered and scattered away to their rooms for sartorial renovation.
A separate book was kept at the office, as usual at such places, over the head of each page of which was printed: "Horses for Mount Washington," and in which, every day, those who wished to secure horses and guides for the succeeding or the first favorable day, registered their names, with the number of animals required and how many of them were to be ridden by ladies. A good many queer autographs might be observed in that book and some of its predecessors,for there was almost always some mischievous clerk behind the counter, amusing himself by telling immense stories to some of the other initiated, just as the un-initiated were coming up to register their names,—about the perils of the ride and how near he or some other person had come to falling over precipices of indefinite thousands of feet. This description of jocular practice very often shook the nerves of young travellers at the moment of booking, even when the frightened person was too far committed or too shame-faced to abandon his project; and there is no doubt that the original collection of chirography thus secured would prove only less interesting, on exhibition, than the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, or——the Emancipation Proclamation!
Several names had already been booked at hap-hazard on the day in question; and others of the storm-stayed, aware of the prospect of a "clearing-up," were by that time flocking around the book to secure their places. To the collection already made were very soon added the signatures of Townsend and Rowan, who intended, as neither would have a lady in charge, to make a great part if not all the trip together, while the two friends of Rowan, who were also to be of the ascending party, would "pair off" in the same manner.
This done, and supper-time approaching, Rowan, who had been lounging about in a sort of wet-weather box-coat undress which would have driven an ultra-fashionable to desperation, ran off to his room to make himself somewhat more presentable; while Horace Townsend, after patronizing the barber-shop for five minutes and providing himself with that inevitable cigar, stepped out once more upon the piazza to glance at the weather and satisfy himself how kind Mother Nature really intended to be on the morrow. He had but just emerged from the door when a close light carriage with two pairs of foaming horses—horses and carriage well covered with mud,—whirled around the corner of the Crawford and drew up at the door. The driver sprung from his seat andthe carriage door was opened. Out of it stepped first Frank Vanderlyn, then Mrs. Vanderlyn and her daughter, who, as it afterwards appeared, had left the Profile after dinner and driven through post in that manner, under the impression that the next morning might after all be a fine one, and anxious (two of the three, at least) to join any party which would be likely to make the ascent.
"Whew!" said the lawyer to himself, between two puffs of his cigar, as he recognized the new-comers without their seeming to be aware of his presence. "Here is more of the Rowan romance and there may be more ten-pins necessary. I wonder whether that haughty woman and her son have any idea of the presence here of their friend from Chicago, and whether they have driven at that slapping pace through the mud, especially to be in his way! I wonder, too, whether Rowan's room is on the front, so that he has seen their arrival. I have half a notion to go up and apprize him of it; and then I have a whole notion to let him find it out for himself, and finish my cigar before supper comes in to spoil it."
Whatever might have been the amount of knowledge of the movements of Rowan possessed by the Vanderlyns, and whether in making a new entry on the books the old names were or were not always looked over,—certain it is that half an hour afterwards the lawyer found two more names booked for the ascent—those of "Mr. Francis Vanderlyn" and "Miss Clara Vanderlyn," the mother evidently not intending to expose herself to a fatigue which had lost its novelty, but to await their going and return at the Crawford.
It was very evident, to Townsend, eventually, that Rowan did not know any thing of the new arrival until he came down to supper. The Vanderlyns had taken their places at the table, very nearly opposite the lawyer, and returned with a nod of pleasant recognition the bow which he felt compelled to give them under the circumstances. Halstead Rowan, as he came in, took a seat on the same side of the table with the new-comers, and it was only as he gave thecustomary glance down after he had seated himself, that he seemed to recognize the sudden addition to the social circle. When he did recognize it, the lawyer (that man seems to be eternally watching the other, does he not?) caught one instant's blank surprise on his face, and he even put up his hand to rub his eyes, as if he fancied himself dreaming; but the surprise seemed to fade in a moment, and he pursued his supper with that fine appetite which is usually vouchsafed to such physical men. He left the table before the Vanderlyns had finished, and apparently without their having observed him. Townsend rose immediately and followed him, with a smile upon his face of which he was himself unconscious. He saw the Illinoisan go into the office and do precisely what he [the lawyer] would have laid a heavy stake that he would do—step to the counter and look over the list of "Horses for Mount Washington." Then a queer expression, nearer to malicious pleasure than any thing the other had before seen upon his face, flitted over it as he recognized the names. It might have been merely satisfaction—it might have been defiance blended with it in equal proportions; but at least it seemed to be capable of translation into words like these, which the very lips moved as if they would utter:
"So, Baltimore people, you are running yourselves into my way again, after I had gone off and left you alone, like a good fellow! You had better be poorer and less proud, or I richer; or you had better keep the distance which I put between us!"
A few moments after he approached Townsend with a laugh of deprecation and invited him to another game of ten-pins, which seemed to be quite as necessary to him when in a good humor as when in a rage. The invitation was accepted, and the important contest began once more. It would have been a very unequal one, for Rowan had fully recovered the use of his right hand, but that the alleys themselves had something to say in the matter. Worse apologies for alleys than those of the Crawford no man ever saw; andsuch a thing as a "ten-strike" had never been recorded on the black-boards, as made on those long lines of uneven and floor-laid planks. Both the combatants had quite enough to do in getting down a "frame" with three balls; and for some time not a word outside of the game escaped either.
Suddenly, and when he had rolled two of the three balls at the defiant pins, Rowan stopped short with one of the lignum-vitæ globes, of about the size of a human head, in his hand—twirling it the while as if it had been a paper balloon,—and said, in a short, curt tone:
"They have come!"
"Yes," answered Townsend, not pretending for a moment to be doubtful about the meaning of the personal pronoun. "Yes, I saw them at supper."
"Going up with us to-morrow, I believe!" added the Illinoisan.
"Ah, indeed, are they?" was the jesuitical inquiry of the lawyer.
"Yes, and they will have good company, won't they!" was the response.
Then he bowled away at the ten-pins, more energetically than ever, and with something in his manner and the nervous jerk of his arm, that once more recalled Townsend's idea of his feeling, while in the act, like shooting some one down a mountain precipice like a pebble-stone, or sweeping away a fate like a cobweb with one of those polished globes of iron wood.
Only a couple of games, and then they went in to bed with a mutual reminder that the motto in the morning would be "to horse and away!" and that above all things they must be watchful against that phase of indolence vulgarly known as "oversleeping." The house was nearly silent, all the prospective riders having retired for the night, and soon slumber fell upon that hive of human bees wandering in search of the honey of unlaboring pleasure, gathered under the roof of Gibb and Hartshorne at the Crawford.
Fell, but not too deeply, for that which is to be brief has a right to be intense; and the hours of repose were relentlessly numbered. Neither Townsend nor Rowan need have been anxious about waking in the morning; for such a blast and roar of horrible sound as swept through the corridor at about seven,a. m., from the big Chinese gong in the hands of an enthusiastic negro who probably felt that he had no other opportunity of making his requisite "noise in the world," would have been sufficient to awaken any thing short of the dead! For once, every one obeyed the summons while anathematizing the mode, and the breakfast-table was soon surrounded.
Here, those who labored under some kind of indefinite impression that the summit of Mount Washington was somewhere beyond the Desert of Arabia—that nothing eatable or drinkable could ever be discovered on its top—and that the more they ate the better able they would be to endure the fatigue of the ascent,—made vigorous attacks on the steaks, eggs and chickens, and drank coffee, milk and cold water without limit. Those better advised (and the fact is here set down as a bit of practical experience worth heeding),—those who knew the painful effect of attempting to climb a mountain when gorged to repletion (the traveller, not the mountain—the mountain is always full of "gorges")—those, we say, confined themselves to an egg or two and a small slice of rare steak, and drank lightly.
When the party one by one dropped out from breakfast, the scene in front of the house was at once picturesque and singular—worth remembering by those who shared in it or who have shared in one similar,—and worth the feeble attempt at verbal daguerreotype which may do something to preserve it against that day when the Crawford decays and Mount Washington is either levelled off or ascended by means of a locomotive or a dumb-waiter.
More than twenty names—somewhat more than half of them belonging to ladies—were on the book for the ascent; and a corresponding number of horses were scattered overthe broad open space in front of the door. All were saddled and bridled; but among them moved half-a-dozen guides in rough coats, thick boots and slouched hats, inspecting and tightening the girths, looking to the cruppers and bridles, and paying especial attention to the animals provided for the female portion of the cavalcade, for whose safety they ever hold themselves and are ever held by the hotel-proprietors, peculiarly responsible.
By way of back-ground to this singular scene, under a clump of trees to the right walked two full-grown black bears (no mountain resort can be thoroughly complete without its bears!)—chained and surly, ever keeping their weary round and grunting out their disapprobation at being confined to such narrow quarters without an occasional naughty youngster for lunch.
But what a spectacle was presented when the mount was ready and the riders had all emerged from the door of the Crawford! Were these the belles and beaux of previous days, captivating and being captivated by perfection of raiment as well as charm of face and grace of figure? If so, never had such a metamorphosis taken place since long before Ovid. Every man wore some description of slouched hat, brought in his baggage or hired in the hotel wardrobe,—bad, very bad, atrocious, or still worse, and each tied down over the ears with a thick string or a handkerchief. Coarse and old trowsers were turned up over heavy boots; and the roughest and coarsest of box-coats that could be provided were surmounted in the majority of instances by striped Guernsey shirts still rougher. All the dilapidated gloves and coarse tippets that could be mustered, with a few shawls and blankets, completed the equipment of a set of men who certainty looked too badly even for brigands and seemed the enforced victims of some hideous masquerade.
But if the men looked badly, what shall be said of that which should have been the fairer portion of the cavalcade? Salvator Rosa never dreamed of such objects, and Hogarthwould have gone stark mad in the attempt to depict them. Ringlets were buried under mob-caps and old woollen-hoods, and smothered in bad straw hats and superannuated felt jockeys, tied down in the same ungraceful manner as those of the men. Hoops had suddenly ceased to be fashionable, even in advance of the sudden Quaker collapse in the cities; and every shape, bulky or lank, showed in its own undisguised proportions—here a form of beauty, there a draped lamp-post, and yonder a bedizened bolster. In short, the very worst riding-dresses possible to achieve seemed to have been carefully gathered from all the old-clothes shops in the universe; and if the men were the ugliest brigands of the dark souled Italian painter, the women were the drollest witches that ever capered through the brain of the master-dramatist.
And yet there were sparkling eyes showing occasionally from under those hideous bonnets, that perhaps looked the brighter for the contrast; and it is not sure that one or two of the sweet auburn curls of Clara Vanderlyn, which had strayed away from their confinement and lay like red gold on the neck of her shabby black riding-dress, could ever have shown to more bewitching advantage.
Every one laughed at the appearance of the other, as the mount was taking place, and as Hartshorne, of the Crawford, who seemed to have measured the capabilities of every horse and calculated the weight and skill of every rider, called off the names from the roll-book, and gave place to each in turn.
Of the material of the mount, it is only necessary to specify three or four of the horses, which have to do with the subsequent details of that eventful excursion. Miss Vanderlyn had a neat little black pony, apparently very careful in step, and an "old-stager" at ascending the mountains. Her brother Frank rode a tall bay, of high spirit and better action than any other horse on the ground. Rowan had asked Hartshorne (some of the others heard him, with a sensationof genuine horror) to give him the worst-tempered horse in the stable; and as he was known to be an old habitue of the mountains, he had been accommodated according to request. So far as could be discovered by his action, his horse, a bay of fifteen and a half or sixteen hands, with blood, foot and bottom, would kick, bite, strike, run away, shy to one side, and do every thing else wicked and unsafe that should taboo a horse from being ridden at all,—except stumble, from which latter fault he was remarkably clear. Townsend was accommodated with a gray mare of moderate size and a dash of Arab blood, that had been unused for nearly a month from having nearly broken the neck of one of the proprietors, on his personal allegation that he was at least a fair rider, and that the breaking of his own neck would be the least damage that could be inflicted on any member of the party.
Thick morning mists still hid the tops of Mount Webster and Mount Willard, visible from the house, and hung amid the heavy woods of Mount Clinton, although the storm had really passed away with the night,—as at nine o'clock, all mounted, the guides took their places, one at the head of the cavalcade and the others scattered at intervals through it, and the whole line moved off up the mountain. It should be mentioned here, however, that Townsend (the observer again) saw during the mount the only recognition which took place between the two principal persons of his outside drama—Halstead Rowan and Clara Vanderlyn. Frank was mounting his horse, after having assisted his sister to her saddle, when Rowan brushed by her on his vicious bay, very near her and to the left. He saw their eyes meet, and saw Rowan bend so low that his head almost touched the neck of his horse. Clara Vanderlyn replied by a gesture quite as mute and quite as unlikely to be observed by any one not especially watchful. She nodded her head quickly but decidedly, and threw the roughly-gloved fingers of her left hand to her lips. That was all, and of course unobserved by Frank Vanderlyn, who may or may not have been awarethat the man whom he had insulted was a member of the ascending party; but it was quite enough, beyond a doubt, to set the blood boiling in the veins of the Illinoisan with all the fury of the water surging up in flame and smoke in the Iceland Geysers.
Rowan and Townsend had places assigned them near the middle of the line, but as the cavalcade began to move, the human demon of unrest was missing from his place. He was to be seen at the end of the piazza at that moment, talking to Hartshorne, and no doubt making a few additional inquiries as to the character of the amiable animal he bestrode. The lawyer called out to him to "Come on!" but he answered with a wave of the hand and a shout:
"Go ahead! don't wait for me! I will be with you directly!"
Through the thick woods of Mount Clinton they swept up, over a bridle-path so rough as to have made the most laborious if not the most dangerous walking—over great boulders of stone lying in the very path, and apparently impossible to get over or around—over patches of corduroy road utterly defying description, except to the men who isolated Fort Donelson and planted the Swamp Angels in the marshes of Charleston—over and through gutters and gulches of slippery stone and more slippery mud—but ever ascending at a painful acclivity. The horses breathed heavily; and their riders, in the thick and foggy air, did little better. They caught occasional glimpses through the trees, down the sudden slopes at the left, of the thick mist rolling below, but could see nothing else to remind them of the height they were attaining; and as the dense fog swept in their faces, and the trees dripped moisture on them when they swept beneath their branches, and the path grew more and more desolate and difficult, they grew silent, the whole cavalcade, apparently by common consent. There are aspects in which Nature looks and feels too solemn for the light word and the flippant jest; and the man who cannotbe awed beyond his ordinary mood when standing under the edge of the sheet of Niagara, or beside the sea when it is lashed into resistless fury, or in gale and mist on the bleak, bare, desolate mountains of the North, should never insult the grand and the terrible by going into their presence!
And yet all persons, who have true reverence in their hearts, are not always awed beyond themselves, even in the most impressive of situations: as witness, to some degree, the incidents following.
They had surmounted the first acclivity, perhaps a mile from the Crawford, and were commencing a slight descent which made every rider look to the horse's feet and ride with a slight tremor,—when the stillness was suddenly broken in a manner which almost curdled the blood of the timid and needed a second reassurance for even the boldest.
"Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!" came from the path below, with that hideous power and distinctness of lungs that have chilled so many hearts and whitened so many faces since the white man first intruded on the hunting-grounds of the American Indian. A shrill, dissonant, horrible yell, combining the blind ferocity of the beast with the deadlier rage of man, such as made the poor mother clasp her babe closer to the breast when it rang around the block-houses of Massachusetts and New York in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—such as less than three years ago proved that it was undying in the savage throat, by pealing over the mangled bodies and burned dwellings of the Minnesota massacres.
"Good heavens!—what is that?" cried half a dozen of the ladies in a breath.
"An Indian war-whoop, certainly!" said one of the gentlemen, his face white as wax at the sudden shock.
"It is war time, and they tell me that the rebels yell terribly!" said one of the ladies. "Can it be—" but then the absurdity of the idea struck her and she paused.
"Albert Pike was a New England man: perhaps he is herewith his Arkansas savages!" said another, whether in jest or earnest no one could well discover.
It was surprising how in that one instant the cavalcade had shortened its length—the foremost stopping and the rearmost closing up. Manisa gregarious animal, especially when a little surprised or frightened!
Perhaps Horace Townsend had been as badly startled as any of the others, at the first instant; but he possessed some data which the others lacked for discovering the source of the warlike yell.
"Do not be alarmed, ladies!" he said, after an instant. "I think there is only one Indian uttering that horrible sound, and you may depend upon it that he is white and no rebel. Yes—see!—here he comes!"
They had been, as already indicated, descending a quarter of a mile of most difficult and dangerous path, in which every rider experienced more or less of tremor, and over which the horses were picking their careful way as if they realized that human necks were in peril. At the instant when the attention of the company was thus directed backwards, Halstead Rowan had reached the top of the rise, behind, and was just giving vent to a second and supplemental yell which rang through the woods as if a dozen throats had taken part in it, and which must have been heard half way down the Notch.
"Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!"
The rider was commencing the descent, too, but not precisely like the rest, picking his way, on a careful half-trot, half-walk; on the contrary his horse had his ears laid back and was going over the broken stones at such a gallop as he might have held on an ordinary highway! The reins seemed to be lying loose on his neck, and—could those horrified people believe their eyes?—so surely as they were threading the tangled woods of Mount Clinton, with thankful hearts for every rood passed over without broken necks, so surely Halstead Rowan, a novel description of Mazeppa unknown even to Frank Drew or Adah Isaacs, sat his horse in what mightbe called "reverse order," his back towards them and his face to the animal's tail!
"Good heavens!" "The man is mad!" "Oh, do stop the horse!" "It is running away with him!" "He will be killed!"—such were the exclamations that broke from the party as Rowan's equestrianism was recognized—most of them from the female portion of the cavalcade. What would it not have been worth to see sweet Clara Vanderlyn's face at the moment when she first realized who was the reckless rider, and to know whether she cared for his welfare at all and whether anxiety or confidence predominated in her thought!
But the rider did not pause, or seem very much in peril. His horse kept his feet quite as well as any of the others; and Townsend remembering the Comanches and the Arapahoes, was forced to believe that the wild equestrian must have the alleged Indian power of communicating his own will to his horse, and that he could ride almost anywhere and in any manner, in safety.
Rowan drew the reins (which hehadin his hands, after all) as he came up with the cavalcade, and said:
"I hope I did not startle any of you ladies with my Indian whoop. Upon my honor I did not mean to do so, if I did; for I hate practical jokes that cause pain, quite as much as any of the other fellows, the—gentlemen. But the woods tempted me, and I have not enjoyed such an opportunity for the use of the lungs, this many a day."
"I believe some of us were a little frightened for a moment, but no harm done," said Horace Townsend. "But let me ask you—is not your riding just a little bit careless?"
"Well, yes, just the very least bit in the world, perhaps, forsomepeople!" answered the wild fellow; and Townsend fancied that he caught him trying, at the moment, to catch a glimpse, unseen by Frank Vanderlyn, under the hood of Clara, who was not very far from him. If he did make the attempt, he failed, for the young girl dared not or would not expose her face. "But come, Townsend," Rowan added,"will you not push on with me a little further ahead and let these slow coaches come up at their leisure?"
"Atyourrate of progress? No," laughed Townsend. "I am not a very bad rider, I believe, but I have never practised in a circus or on a prairie. Go ahead, if you are in a hurry; that is, provided you know which end is going foremost!"
"Found another place where you will not follow me, eh, old boy!" rattled the Illinoisan, with a reference which the other easily understood. "Well, I will see you by-and-bye, then. Go along, Bay Beelzebub!" and the next moment, darting by the centre line and taking precedence even of the leading guide, in a path that was literally nothing but a three-cornered trough, he was to be seen ascending the next rise, his horse trotting along riderless, and himself springing from crag to crag beside the path, his hand upon the animal's back and the reins lying loose on its neck. He had alighted, of course, without checking the speed of the horse in any degree.
But a few minutes later, and when the cavalcade had reached the top of Mount Clinton and was coming out from the gloom of the heavy woods into the partial sunshine,—they saw the odd equestrian riding over a portion of road that was only moderately bad, standing erect on his horse's back, supported by the reins and his own powers of balancing,—and heard his deep, cheery voice ringing out in a song that seemed as complete a medley as his own character. It may be permissible to put upon record one of the stanzas, which some of those nearest him caught and remembered: