"The heart bowed down by weight of wo—When comin' thro' the rye?If I had a donkey wot wouldn't go—Good-bye, my love, good-bye!I see them on their winding way:Old clothes, old clothes to sell!So let's be happy while we may—Lost Isabel!"
"The heart bowed down by weight of wo—When comin' thro' the rye?If I had a donkey wot wouldn't go—Good-bye, my love, good-bye!I see them on their winding way:Old clothes, old clothes to sell!So let's be happy while we may—Lost Isabel!"
Still later, the riders were all thrown into momentary horror by coming upon him, as they rounded the head of a gorge near the top of Mount Prospect,—his horse on a walk, and himself hanging over one side, apparently by the heels. The impression prevailed that he must have been knocked senseless by a limb, in some of his pranks, and got his feet fatally entangled in the stirrups,—the result of which impression was that a sudden scream, in a woman's voice, burst out from some portion of the line, but so instantaneously suppressed that no one could trace it. It turned out that in this last operation, so far from being killed, he was only practising the Indian mode of hanging beside his horse, supported by one hand at the neck and one foot over the saddle, after the manner of the wild tribes of the Plains when throwing the horse as a shield between themselves and the shot of a pursuer!
After a time, however, the reckless fellow seemed to have grown tired of his humor; for, as the long line crossed over the peak of Prospect to Monroe, and the north wind and the sun had so driven away the clouds that the riders began to realize the glorious prospect opening upon them on every hand,—he took his place in the line, next to his deserted comrade Townsend, sat his horse like a Christian, and joined in the bursts of admiration vented on all sides, with an enthusiasm which showed that the scenery had never palled upon him by familiarity.
And what views indeed were those that burst upon them as they crossed from Franklin to Monroe, and that sea of which the stiffened waves were mountains stretched out for an hundred miles in every direction! Some there were, in that line, who had stood on the prouder and more storied peaks of Europe, and yet remembered nothing to diminish the glory of that hour. How the deep gorges slept full of warm sunlight, and how the dark shadows flitted over them, and flickered, and thinned, and faded, as one by one the light clouds were driven southward by the wind! With what ashudder, passing over the narrow ridge or back-bone connecting Monroe and Franklin, they looked down into "Oakes' Gulf" on the right and the "Gulf of Mexico" on the left, only separated by a yard of bushy rock from a descent of three thousand feet on one side, and by less than three yards of slippery stone from more than two thousand feet on the other!
The path is a sort of narrow trough, rough enough, but quite as safe, and to those who keep it there is not the least possible danger. Indeed the rider, half hidden in the trough, scarcely knows the fearful narrowness of the bridge over which he is passing; and thousands cross this pass and recross it, and bring away no idea of the sensation that may be gained by a little imprudent hanging over the verge on either side! None of the riders in that cavalcade went back to their beds at the Crawford without a much more intimate knowledge of the capabilities of that situation; but of this in due time.
It is impossible for any one who has never made a similar ascent, or who has only ascended with a much smaller number, to conceive the appearance made by that score of equestrians at various points when crossing the open but uneven peaks in the last approach to Washington. Varied in stature, sex and costume, and all sufficiently outre to astonish if not to horrify,—what views the leading riders of the line could catch at times, looking back at the motley line! Some half buried in the trough of the path or midway in a gulch, so that only the head would be visible; others perched on the very top of a huge boulder, ascending or descending; some clinging close to mane or neck as the horse scrambled up an ascent of forty degrees; others lying well back on the saddle when descending a declivity of the same suddenness. What dreams of the Alps and the Apennines there are in such ascents—dreams of the toilers over St. Gothard and the muleteers of the Pyrenees—dreams of memory pleasant to those who have such past experiences to look back upon, and substitutes no less pleasantto many who long for glances at other lands but must die with only that far-off glimpse of the fulness of travel which Moses caught from the hills of the Moabites over that inheritance of his race upon which he was never to enter.
It yet wanted half an hour to noon, and Mount Washington towered full before them as they came out on the top of Franklin, by the little Lake of the Clouds which lay so saucily smiling to the sun and coquetting with the mists. The peak, a huge mass of broken and naked stone, half a mile up on every side and so sheer in pitch that foot-hold seemed hopeless, would have looked totally discouraging but for the white line of path which, winding around it on the north-west, showed that it must before have been achieved.
Up—up—over broken and slipping stones of every size and description, from the dimensions of a brick-bat to those of a dining-table—stones gray and mossed, without one spoonful of earth to prove that the riders had not surmounted the whole habitable globe and lost themselves in some unnatural wilderness of rock! And feeling joined with sight to enhance the desolate fancy, for though so nearly high noon the wind blew at that dizzy height with the violence of a gale, and the Guernsey wrappers and the clumsy gloves had long before proved that the rough and homely may be more useful than the beautiful.
Two or three hundred yards from the Tip-Top House, the rough stone walls of which were glooming above—the party were dismounted, the horses picketed by the guides, and over the broken stones and yawning fissures the dismounted riders struggled up, strong arms aiding weaker limbs, and much care necessary to prevent heedless steps that might have caused injuries slow of recovery. Up—up, over the little but difficult remaining distance—till all stood by the High Altar on the top of Mount Washington.
Above the clouds, swales of which they saw sweeping by, half way down the mountain—above the earth, its cares and its sorrows, it seemed to them for the moment that they stood;and only those who have made such a pilgrimage can realize the glory of that hour. The mountains of Vermont North-westward, those of Canada North-eastward, those of Massachusetts to the South and the Franconia range full to the West; lakes lying like splashes of molten silver at their feet and rivers fluttering like blue silken ribbons far away; towns nestled in the gorges and hamlets glimmering up from the depths of the ravines; long miles of valleys filled with sunlight, as if the very god of day had stooped down and left them full of the warmth of his loving kiss; peak upon peak rising behind and beyond each other, and each tinted with some new and richer hue, from gold to purple and from sunny green to dark and sombre brown; beyond all, and on the extreme verge of the sight-line to the East, one long low glint of light that told of the far Atlantic breaking in shimmering waves on the rocky coast of Maine; the world so far beneath as to be a myth and an unreality, distance annihilated, and the clear, pure air drank in by the grateful lungs appearing to be a foretaste of that some day to be breathed on the summit of the Eternal Hills,—these were the sights and these the sensations amid which the dark cheek of Horace Townsend seemed touched with a light that did not beam upon it in the valleys below, with his eyes grown humid and utterance choked by intense feeling; while all the heart of glorious womanhood in Clara Vanderlyn fluttered up in the truest worship of that God who had formed the earth so beautiful; and even Halstead Rowan once more forgot pride, poverty, insult, and the physical exuberance which made either endurable, to fold his strong arms in silence, lift the innate reverence of his thoughts to the Eternal and the Inevitable, and vow to submit with childlike faith to all of triumph or humiliation that might be ordained in the future.
Horace Townsend with a Lady in Charge—An adventure over the "Gulf of Mexico"—Clara Vanderlyn in deadly peril—A Moment of Horror—Halstead Rowan and a display of the Comanche riding—Townsend's eclipse—The return to the Crawford—Margaret Hayley again, and a Conversation overheard.
Horace Townsend with a Lady in Charge—An adventure over the "Gulf of Mexico"—Clara Vanderlyn in deadly peril—A Moment of Horror—Halstead Rowan and a display of the Comanche riding—Townsend's eclipse—The return to the Crawford—Margaret Hayley again, and a Conversation overheard.
It was perhaps two o'clock before the meetings and partings were over between the large party whom we have seen ascending from the Crawford, and the yet greater number who had come up from the Glen House by the belittling novelty of the mountain, the "carriage road,"—before the dinner at the Tip-Top House was discussed, hearty and plentiful enough, if not remarkably varied,—before the guides of the cavalcade had done "chaffing" the carriage drivers from the Glen, whom they seemed to regard very much as "old salts" do "fresh-water sailors,"—before every member of the party had viewed the magnificent scenery from every conceivable point, drank their fill of a beauty that might not be duplicated for years or excelled in a lifetime, and filled pockets and reticules equally full of all the maps and books that could be bought and all the geological specimens that could be picked up, as memorials of the visit. By that hour the warning of the guides was heard, reminding all that there was no more time remaining than would suffice to carry themselves and their tired horses back to the Crawford by nightfall. At once, then, the descent began—supposed, in advance, to be so uneventful and merely a pleasant diminished repetition of the experiences of the ascent.
As they climbed down the broken rocks of the peak to their patiently-waiting horses (they would probably have waited patiently until they dropped with hunger, if by that means the rider and his saddle could have been avoided; for yourmountain horse doesnotfind unalloyed pleasure in his occupation!)—when near the "corral," as it may be called, Frank Vanderlyn left his sister for a moment and stepped over to Horace Townsend, who was descending alone, Halstead Rowan (as usual) at some distance ahead and already preparing to mount and away.
"Would you have any objections, sir," the young man asked, "as I believe that you have no lady in charge, to ride in company with my sister on the way down?"
"Certainly not!" replied Townsend, though a little surprised at the salutation and request from one of the haughty Vanderlyns to whom he had not even been introduced. "I shall be proud of the charge, if your sister and yourself feel like placing so much confidence in an entire stranger."
"Oh,weknow a gentleman when we see him!" replied the young man, not a little arrogantly, as it appeared to the lawyer, and with a sinister glance at the Illinoisan which indicated that it would have been some time beforehewas entrusted with the same responsibility.
"I am flattered!" said Townsend, with the bow which the speech demanded and yet did not deserve. "Do you remain on the top yourself?"
"No," answered the young man. "But the fact is that my horse kicks. He kicked my sister's pony twice in coming up; and I am afraid of some trouble in going down, if she rides behind me. It will be better for me to drop into the rear of all, where the ill-tempered devil cannot do injury to any one."
A few words of quasi-introduction and explanation between Vanderlyn, Clara and the lawyer followed; and Horace Townsend, who had come up the mountain without any lady and only in the casual companionship of a man who continually rode away and left him alone, found himself ready to go down it with the fairest member of the company in charge! Had nothing else intervened since the ride up from Littleton to the Profile and that long, steady glance of admiration whichhad then been bestowed upon the sweet face and auburn hair,—what a dangerous proximity this might have proved! But the human heart, expansive as it may be, has not quite the capacity of a stage-coach or a passenger-car; and to prevent falling in desperate love with one fascinating woman thrown in one's way, there is perhaps no guard so potent as being in real or fancied desperate love with another!
Halstead Rowan and the lady whom Townsend had reason to believe the object of his hope and his despair, had not been flung together and apart from others, for one moment during the day—Mr. Frank Vanderlyn had taken especially good care in that respect; though the lawyer had little cause to doubt that if both could have had their choice of companionship, they would have stood side by side and without others too near, by the High Altar which crowned the summit of the mountain, and spoken words difficult to unsay again during the lifetime of either. But if he had not been alone with Clara Vanderlyn, there is equally little doubt that he had looked at her much oftener than at the most admired point of scenery on the route. And as Frank Vanderlyn strolled away to his horse, and Townsend, with the lady obviously under his charge, was preparing to mount, he saw Rowan, with one foot in the stirrup and the other on the ground, looking over at him and his companion, with the most comical expression of wonder on his face that could well have been compressed into the same extent of physiognomy. The heart of the new knight-errant, which must have been a soft one or he would never have labored under that weakness, smote him at the thought of his apparent desertion; and with a word of apology he stepped away from the lady and approached the dismounted amateur Comanche.
"You don't mean to say that you are going to——" said the latter, and he nodded his head comically and yet a little pitifully towards Clara Vanderlyn.
"Ride down with Miss Vanderlyn? Yes!" answered the lawyer.
"And who the deuce asked you to do it, I should like to know?"
"Her brother."
"Phew-w-w!" A prolonged whistle, very characteristic and significant.
Townsend, in a word, explained the affair.
"All right!" said the Illinoisan. "But, look here, old fellow! You haven't arranged this affair yourself, eh? No meetings on a single track, you know!"
"Not a bit of it!" laughed Townsend at the professional illustration. "Confidence for confidence! Have you not seen more closely thanthat?"
"Yes, I thought I had!" answered Rowan. "Well, all right! Go ahead! But by Jupiter, if you do not take the best care of that girl, and she gets into any kind of a scrape by riding with a man whocan'tride, there will be somebody challenged to something else than ten-pins!"
Townsend laughed and turned away. The time had been, he thought, when incapacity to ride would scarcely have been set down as among his short-comings. But every thing, even equestrianism, was to be reckoned by comparison!
A moment after, all the party were in the saddle; and then commenced a descent still more laborious than the ascent, at least to the tired horses that groaned almost humanly as they slid down the sudden declivities, and to the more timid of the riders. Horace Townsend rode immediately before Miss Vanderlyn, a little forward of the centre of the Indian file (the only possible mode of riding in those narrow bridle-paths)—Rowan half-a-dozen further behind, then two or three others, and Frank Vanderlyn, with his dangerous bay, bringing up the rear.
The lawyer found his fair companion all that her face had indicated, in the desultory conversation which sprung up between them as they made their way downward from the summit, descending the peak of the monarch and riding back over the broad top of Monroe towards Franklin. Clara Vanderlynconversed genially and easily, and had evidently (in spite of some restrictions already suggested,) enjoyed the day with the full warmth of an ardent nature. She seemed an excellent horsewoman, easy and self-possessed in the saddle, and Townsend observed that she found leisure from the care of picking her way, to look back several times over her shoulder. For a long time he may have been undecided whether her regard was directed at her brother, at the extreme end of the line, or at some one in the middle distance. The one glance of anxiety would have been very natural: the other, compounded of interest only, may have been likewise natural enough—who can say?
They were crossing Monroe to Franklin, over the narrow back-bone of land that has been mentioned in the ascent, and at the very point where Oakes' Gulf, now on the left, and the scarcely less terrible Gulf of Mexico on the right, narrowed the whole causeway to not much more than a dozen of feet,—when Townsend heard a sudden and sharp cry behind him. At that point the descent of the path was very precipitous, and over stones so rugged that the horses kept their feet with great difficulty; and in his anxiety to insure safe footing he had for the moment lost sight of his fair companion—a poor recommendation of his ability as an escort, perhaps, but not less true than reprehensible! At the cry he turned instantly, though he could not so suddenly check the course of his horse down the path without danger of throwing him from his feet; and as he looked around, through the olive brown of his cheek a deadly whiteness crept to the skin, and his blood stood still as it had probably never before done since the tide of life first surged through his veins.
It has been the lot of many men to look upon a horror accomplished or so nearly accomplished that any reversal of the decree of fate seemed to be beyond hope. Such is the gaze upon the strewn dead of the battle-field, before the life has quite gone out from a few who are already worse than dead, and when the groans and the cries for "water!" to cool the lipsparched in the last fever, have not yet entirely ceased. Such is the hopeless glance at the windrow of dead strewing the shore when a ship is going to pieces in the surf, in plain sight and yet beyond the aid of human hands, and when every moment is adding another to the drowned and ghastly subjects for the rough-coated Coroner. Such is the stony regard at the crushed victims of a railroad catastrophe, or the charred and blackened remains of those who were but a little while ago living passengers on the steamboat that is just burning at the water's edge. Such, even, is the shuddering glance at the brave and unconscious firemen who stand beneath a heavy wall, when that wall is surging forward and coming down in a crushing mass upon their very heads, with no power except a miracle of Omnipotence to prevent their being flattened into mere pan-cakes of flesh, and blood, and bone. All these, and a thousand others, are horrors accomplished or beyond hope of being averted; and they are enough to sicken the heart and brain of humanity brought into sudden familiarity with them. But perhaps they are not the worst—perhaps that yet unaccomplished but probable horror is still more terrible, because uncertainty blends with it and there is yet enough of hope to leaven despair. The life not yet fully forfeited, but going—going; the form not yet crushed out of the human semblance, but to be so in a moment unless that one chance intervenes; the face—especially if the face be that of woman, a thousand times more beautiful in the relief of that hideous mask of death which the gazer sees glooming behind it,—this is perhaps the hardest thing of all to see and not go mad.
None of these conditions may have been quite fulfilled in the glance cast backward by Horace Townsend at that moment; but let us see how far the situation varied from the most terrible of requirements.
Going over that back-bone in the morning, the lawyer, who chanced to be for the moment alone, had swung himself from his horse, leaving the animal standing in the trough, peered through the bushes to the right, down into Oakes' Gulf, andwalked to the edge of the broad stone that formed the projection over the Gulf of Mexico. He had found that stone smooth and rounded, a little slippery from the almost perpetual rains and mists beating upon it, not more than eight to ten feet wide from the path to the verge, and with a perceptible slope downwards in the latter direction. He had thought, then, that it needed a clear head and a sure foot (both of which he possessed) to stand in that position or even to tread the stone at any distance from the path. And so thinking, he had swung himself back into the saddle and ridden on,—the incident, then, not worth relating—now, a thing of the most fearful consequence.
For as he glanced back, at that sudden cry, he saw Clara Vanderlyn sitting her horse on the very top of that smooth plateau of stone overlooking the two thousand feet of the Gulf of Mexico, at what could not have been more than four or five feet from the awful verge, and certainly on the downward slope of what was an insecure footing even for the plastic foot of man—much more for the clumsy iron-shod hoof!
What could have induced her trained pony to spring out from the path a few feet behind and rush into that perilous elevation, must ever remain (in the absence of an equine lexicon) quite as much of a mystery as it seemed at that moment. Perhaps it was in going down some such declivity of path as that before him, that he had been kicked by the vicious bay of Frank Vanderlyn while making the ascent, and that he had concluded to wait on this convenient shelf until all the rest had gone by, before he consented to make the passage with his fair burthen. Perhaps the movement was merely one of those unaccountable freaks of sullen madness in which horses as well as men sometimes have the habit of indulging. At all events, such was the situation; and the recollection of it, as thus recalled to those who were present, will be quite enough, as we are well aware, to set the heart beating most painfully. What, then, must have been the feeling of all whosaw, and especially of that man who had promised toprotectthe fair being thus placed in peril! What thoughts of the playful threat of Halstead Rowan must have rushed through his brain—that "if she got into any kind of a scrape by riding with a man whocouldn'tride," such and such fatal results would follow! Not a duel with the Illinoisan—oh, no!—but a black, terrible, life-long duel with his own self-reproaches and remorse for heedlessness and want of judgment—this would be the doom more fearful than a thousand personal chastisements, if danger became destruction. One clumsy movement of the horse's feet, one slip on the stone, and she would as certainly go over that dizzy precipice and fall so crushed and mangled a mass into the gulf below that her fragments could scarcely be distinguished from those of the pony she rode—as certainly as she had grace and love and beauty crowning her life and adding to the possible horror of her death. He did not know, then, how many of the cavalcade saw the situation, or how the blood of most who saw stood still like his own, with dread and apprehension.
The inconceivable rapidity of human thought has been so often made a matter of comment, that words could but be wasted in illustrating it. It shames the lightning and makes sluggard light itself. All these thoughts in the mind of Horace Townsend scarcely consumed that time necessary to draw rein and turn himself round in the saddle in a quick attempt to alight, rush up the side of the rock and seize her horse by the bridle or swing her from her seat. He had no irresolution—no moment of hesitation—he only thought and suffered in that single instant preceding action.
"For God's sake do not move! I will be there in one instant!" he said in a low, hoarse, intense voice that reached her like a trumpet's clang.
"Oh yes—quick! quick!" he heard her reply, in a convulsive, frightened voice. "Oh, quick!—you don't know where I am!"
Poor girl!—hedidknow where she was, too well.
She was braver than most women, or she would probably have jerked the bridle or frightened her horse by frantic cries, and sent him slipping with herself down the ravine; for the situation was a most fearful one, and there are few women who could have braved it without a tremor. Aman, let it be remembered, if cruel enough, might have alighted and left the horse to its fate; but to a woman, encumbered by her long clothes, the attempt must have been almost certain destruction for both.
Perhaps not sixty seconds had elapsed after the first cry, when the lawyer succeeded in checking his horse without throwing him headlong, swung his foot out of the stirrup, and attempted to spring to the ground. But just then there was a sudden rush over the rock; a wierd and unnatural sweeping by, something like that of the Demon Hunt in "Der Freischutz;" a cry of terror and fright that seemed to come from the whole line in the rear and fill the air with ghastly sound; a closing of the eyes on the part of the incapable guardian, in the full belief that the noises he heard were those of the accomplishment of the great horror; then sounds nearer him, and a jar that almost prostrated himself and the horse against which he yet leaned; then a wild cry of exultation and delight which seemed—God help his senses!—was he going mad?—to be mingled with the clapping of hands like that which follows a moment of intense interest at the theatre!
Then silence, and the lawyer opened his eyes as suddenly as he had closed them. And what did he see? On the rock, nothing; in the path, ahead of him, Clara Vanderlyn still sitting her horse, though in a half fainting state, and Halstead Rowan, also on horseback, ahead of her, and with his hand holding her bridle!
Of course Horace Townsend, at that moment of doubt whether he stood upon his head or his heels—whether he had gone stark mad or retained a fair measure of sanity—whether the earth yet revolved in its usual orbit or had gonewandering off into cometary space, beyond all physical laws—of course at that moment he could not know precisely what had occurred to produce that sudden and singular change; and he could only learn, the moment after, from those who had been on the higher ground behind at the moment of the peril. According to their explanations, at the moment when they all saw the danger with a shudder and a holding of the very breath, Rowan had been heard to utter a single exclamation: "Well, I swear!" (a rough phrase, and one that he should by no means have used; but let his Western life and training entitle him to some consideration)—dashed spurs into the side of his horse—crowded by the five or six who preceded him, in a path considered impassable for more than one horse at a time—and then, with a wild Indian cry that he apparently could not restrain, spurred up the side of the rock, between Clara Vanderlyn and the verge of the precipice, certainly where the off feet of his horse could not have been thirty inches from the slippery edge, and literally jerked her horse and herself off into the path by the impetus of his own animal outside and the sudden grip which he closed upon her bridle as he went by, himself coming down into the path ahead, and neither unseated! Miss Vanderlyn's pony had struck the lawyer's horse as he came down in his enforced flying leap; and thus were explained all the sights, sounds, and physical events of that apparently supernatural moment.
The scene which followed, only a few moments after, when the leading members of the cavalcade (Clara Vanderlyn in the midst of it, supported by Rowan, who managed to keep near her)—the scene which followed, we say, when they reached a little plateau where the company had room to gather, will not be more easily effaced from the memory of those who were present than the terrible danger which had just preceded it. The overstrung nerves of the poor girl gave way at that point, and she dropped from her horse in a swoon, just as Halstead Rowan (singular coincidence!) hadslipped from the saddle and was ready to catch her as she fell! What more natural than that in falling and being caught, she should have thrown her arms round the stout neck of the Illinoisan? And what more inevitable than that he should have been a considerable time in getting ready to lay her down upon the horse-blankets that had been suddenly pulled off and spread for her,—and that finally, the clinging grasp still continuing, he should have dropped himself on one corner of the blanket and furnished the requisite support to her head and shoulders?
Frank Vanderlyn and those who had been farthest behind with him came up at that moment; and Horace Townsend, if no one else, detected the sullen frown that gathered on his brow as he saw his sister lying in the arms of the man whom he had so grossly insulted. But if he frowned he said nothing, very prudently; for it is indeed not sure that it would have been safe, just then, for an emperor, there present, to speak an ill word to the hero of the day.
Be all this as it may, the usual authorial affidavit may be taken that Halstead Rowan retained Clara Vanderlyn, brother or no brother in the way, in his arms until some one succeeded in obtaining water from a clear deposit of rain among the rocks; that no one—not even one of the ladies—attempted to dispossess him of his newly-acquired human territory; that when the water had been brought, and she first gave token of the full return of consciousness, she did so by clasping her arms around Rowan's neck (of course involuntarily) and murmuring words that sounded to Townsend and some others near, like: "You saved me! How good and noble you are!" and that even under that temptation he did not kiss her, as he would probably have sacrificed both arms and a leg or two, but not his manliness, to do.
It was a quarter of an hour after, when Miss Vanderlyn, sufficiently and only sufficiently recovered to ride, was placed once more in the saddle and the cavalcade took its way more slowly down the mountains. The scenery, under the westernsun, was even more lovely than that of the morning, the mists had all rolled away from every point of the compass, and there were some views Franconia-wards that they had entirely missed in the ascent. But there was scarcely one of the company who had not been so stirred to the very depths of human sympathy, by the event of the preceding half-hour, that inanimate nature, however wondrously beautiful, was half forgotten. So quickly, in those summer meetings and partings, do we grow attached to those with whom we are temporarily associated, especially amid the surroundings of the sublime and beautiful,—that had that fair girl lost her life so strangely and sadly, not one of all who saw the accident but would have borne in mind through life, in addition to the inevitable horror of the recollection, a memory like that of losing a dear and valued friend. And yet many of them had never even spoken to her, and perhaps only one in the whole cavalcade (her brother) had known of her existence one week before!
Even as it was, there were not a few of that line of spectators from whose eyes the vision of what might have been, failed to fade out with the moment that witnessed it. Some of them dreamed, for nights after, (or at least until another occurrence then impending dwarfed the recollection) not only of seeing the young girl sitting helpless on that perilous rock, but of beholding her arms raised to heaven in agony and the feet of her horse pawing the air, as both disappeared from sight over the precipice. Some may still dream of the event, in lonely night-hours following days of trouble and anxiety.
In the new arrangements for descending the mountains, made after the recovery of Clara Vanderlyn, Horace Townsend was not quite discarded, but he could not avoid feeling that very little dependence was placed upon his escort. It was of course as a mere jest, but to the sensitive mind of the lawyer there seemed to be a dash of malicious earnest at the bottom,—that Rowan took the first occasion as he passed near him, immediately after the young girl had beenremoved from his arms, to give him a forcible punch in the ribs, with the accompanying remark:
"Bah! I told you that you couldn't ride; but I had no idea that you could not do any better at taking care of a woman, than that!"
Townsend quite forgave him that remark, jest or earnest, for he saw the new sparkle in his eye, remembered how likely he was to have had his mind a little disordered by all that sweet wealth of auburn hair lying for so many minutes on his breast, and formed his own opinions as to the result. If those opinions were favorable, well; if they were unfavorable, he was taking a world of trouble that did not belong to him; for there is always a "sweet little cherub" sitting "up aloft" to keep watch over the fortunes of such rattle-pates and dare-devils as Halstead Rowan—to supervise their getting into scrapes and out of them!
But there was nothing of jest, he thought, in the air with which Clara Vanderlyn, when re-mounting her horse, replying to an earnest expression of regret that one moment of inattention on his part should have allowed her to be placed in serious peril,—very kindly denied that he had been guilty of any neglect whatever, threw the whole blame upon her horse, thanked him for the promptness with which he was coming to her relief when forestalled, but then said, looking at Rowan with a glance which came near setting that enthusiastic equestrian entirely wild:
"It seems that I am a very difficult person to take care of; and if you have no objection to my having two esquires, and will allow Mr. Rowan to ride with me as well as yourself, and ifheis willing to do so, I think that I shall feel" (she did not say "safer", but) "a little more like keeping up my spirits."
Frank Vanderlyn had looked somewhat sullenly on and scarcely said a word, since his coming up. But at this speech of his sister's he must have felt that the dignity of the Vanderlyn family was again in serious peril, for he put his mouthclose to her ear and spoke some words that were heard by no other than herself. They could not have been very satisfactory or convincing, for Horace Townsend, and others as well, heard her say in reply:
"Brother, your horse is dangerous—you said so yourself; so just be good enough to ride as you did before, and my friends here will take care of me."
Whereupon the young man went back to his horse, looking a little discomfited and by no means in the best of humors. Such little accidentswilloccur, sometimes, to mar the best-laid schemes of careful mothers or anxious brothers, for preserving the ultra-respectability of a family; and whether the origin of the intervention is in heaven or its opposite, there is nothing to be done in such cases but to look wronged and unhappy, as did Frank Vanderlyn, or smile over the accomplished mischief and pretend that the event is rather agreeable than otherwise, as persons of more experience than Frank have often had occasion to do at different periods during the current century.
The result of all this was that Horace Townsend really rode down with Clara Vanderlyn in the mere capacity of an esquire, while Halstead Rowan assumed the spurs and the authority of the knight. The latter rode in advance of her, as near her bridle-rein as the roughness of the path would allow; and no one need to question the fact thathekept his eyes on the young girl quite steadily enough to secure her safety! What difficulty was there in his doing so, when he had already proved that he could ride backward nearly as well as forward and that the footing of his horse was the least thought in his mind? They seemed to be conversing, too, a large proportion of the time; and there is no doubt that Halstead Rowan, carried away by the events of the day, uttered words that he might have long delayed or never spoken under other circumstances,—and that Clara Vanderlyn wore that sweet flush upon her face and kept that timid but happy trembling of the dewy under-lip, much more constantly than she had ever beforedone in her young life. Horace Townsend, who rode behind the lady, did not hear any of those peculiar words which passed between her and her companion; and hadweheard them they would certainly not be made public in this connection.
The lawyer, as has been said, rode behind; and, as hasnotbeen said, he did so in no enviable state of feeling. He had done nothing—been accused of nothing—in any manner calculated to degrade him; but one casual event had thrown a shadow across his path, not easily recognized without some recollection of characteristics before developed. The reader has had abundant reason to believe that this man, profiting by some intelligence obtained in a manner not open to the outer world, of the peculiar madness of Margaret Hayley after that abstraction, courage,—had more or less firmly determined to win her through the exhibition of certain qualities which he believed that he possessed in a peculiar degree. One opportunity had been given him (that at the Pool), and he had succeeded in interesting her to an extent not a little flattering and hopeful; but envious fate could not allow a week to pass without throwing him again into disadvantageous comparison with a man who had no occasion whatever of making any exhibition of such qualities!
That Margaret Hayley would yet remain for some days and perhaps weeks in the mountains, and that she would probably visit the Crawford before her departure, he had at least every reason to believe; and he had quite as much cause for confidence that the story of the adventure over the Gulf of Mexico, roundly exaggerated to place himself in a false position and to deify the Illinoisan, would reach her ears, whether at the Profile or the Crawford, through stage-drivers or migratory passengers, within the next forty-eight hours. This (for reasons partially hinted at and others which will develop themselves in due time) was precisely that state of affairs which he would have given more to avoid than any other that could have been named; and this it was that madea dark red flush of mortification rise at times to his dusky cheek and give an expression any thing but pleasant to his eyes, as he rode silently behind the two who were now so indubitably linked as lovers, once more over the top of Prospect and down the rugged declivities of Clinton. Those who have ever been placed in circumstances approaching to these in character, can best decide whether the lawyer was sulking for nothing or indulging in gloomy anticipations with quite sufficient reason.
It was nearly sunset and the light had some time disappeared from the valleys lying in the shade of the western peaks, when the last stony trough and the last corduroy road of Mount Clinton was finally repassed, and the whole cavalcade, each member of it perhaps moved by the one idea of showing that neither horse nor rider was wearied out—broke once more into a trot as they caught the first glimpse of the Crawford through the trees, dashed merrily out from the edge of the woods, and came up in straggling but picturesque order to the door of the great caravanserai. The difficult ride of eighteen miles had been accomplished; the golden day (with its one drawback of momentary peril) was over; and more than half a score who had before only thought of the ascent of Mount Washington as a future possibility, suddenly found that they could look back upon it as a remembrance.
As they rode up to the front of the Crawford, the whole end of the piazza was full of new-comers and late sojourners, watching the return of those who had preceded or followed them—an idle, listless sort of gathering, showing more curiosity than welcome, such as the traveller by rail or steamboat sees crowding every platform at the expected time of the arrival of a train and every pier at the hour for the coming in of a boat. Cries of: "All safe, eh?" "Glad to see you back again!" "Hope you had a pleasant day!" and "Well, how did you like Mount Washington?" broke from twenty lips in a moment, mingled with replies and non-replies that came simultaneously: "Oh, you ought to have gone up withus!" "My horse carried me like a bird!" (the last remark, presumably, from a fat man of two hundred and sixty, whom not even an elephant could have borne in that suggestively buoyant manner), "Neverwassuch a day for going up, in the world!" "Safe, eh? Yes, why not?" (that from a person, no doubt, who had really been prodigiously scared at some period of the ride), and the one inevitable pendant: "Oh, you have no idea what an adventure we have had!—one of the ladies came near being killed—tell you all about it by-and-bye," etc., etc.
Horace Townsend, who had been riding the last mile very much like a man in a dream and really with the formal charge of Clara Vanderlyn entirely abandoned to her chosen protector—Horace Townsend heard all this, as if he heard through miles of distance or at a long period of time after the utterance. For his eyes were busy and they absorbed all his sensations. He had recognized, at the first moment of riding up, among the crowd of persons on the piazza, the dark, proud eyes and beautiful face and stately form of Margaret Hayley, leaning on the arm of that man whom he had not by any means learned to love since his advent in the mountains—Captain Hector Coles, V. A. D. C. They had waited clear weather before starting from the Profile, and come through that day while his party had been absent up the mountains: he realized all at a thought, and realized that whatever he was himself to endure of trial lay much nearer than he had before believed. Disguised and indeed disfigured as the lawyer was, in common with all the other members of the cavalcade, to such a degree that only observation and study could penetrate the masquerade,—it was not at all strange that the lady failed to meet his eye with an answering glance of recognition; and he felt rather grateful than the reverse, for the moment, that his disguise was so effectual. While Clara Vanderlyn, a third time within one week the passive heroine of the mountains, was being lifted from her saddle by half a dozen officious hands, and while the rest of the party weregabbling as they alighted,—he slipped quietly from his horse behind one corner of the piazza, threw his rein to one of the stable-boys, and disappeared through the hall, up-stairs to his chamber.
He did not again make his appearance until supper was on the tables and the battle of knives-and-forks going on with that vigor born of mountain air. Most of the visitors at the house, the voyagers of the day included, were already seated; and among them was Clara Vanderlyn, apparently no whit the worse for her day's adventure, her brother at one and her mother at the other side. A little further down the table, on the same side, sat Halstead Rowan, occupying the same seat of the evening before. He had evidently dropped back from his familiar standing with the lady, the moment they came within the atmosphere of Mrs. Vanderlyn and the great republic of voices at the Crawford; but quite as evidently he had not yet fallen away from his last-won position as a hero, for his face was continually flushing, as he ate, with the modesty of a girl's, when the whispers and nods and pointings of interest and admiration were made so plain that they reached his eye and ear. The adventure of the day was undeniably the topic of the evening, and Halstead Rowan was the hero; and it may be imagined how much this knowledge and the inevitable corollary that some one else wasnotthe hero, added to the comfort of the late-comer at table.
Margaret Hayley, Mrs. Burton Hayley and Captain Hector Coles were also at supper, but they had nearly finished when Townsend took his seat. They rose the moment after, and as they did so the lawyer, now once more so arrayed as to display his own proper person, caught the eye of Margaret. She nodded and smiled, yes, smiled!—in answer to his bow across the table; and he could almost have taken his professional oath that a quick sparkle came to her eye when she saw him, then died away as quickly as if compelled back by a strong will. Mrs. Burton Hayley did not seem to see him at all; but Captain Coles signified thathedid so, by a glanceof such new-born contempt blended with old hatred, as he should never have wasted upon any one except a national enemy whom he had just defeated in arms. The party swept down the room, and very soon after the others whom we have noted also rose and disappeared, leaving Horace Townsend discussing his supper with what appetite he might. It may be consoling to some curious persons to know that that appetite was by no means contemptible, and that he did not falter in physique if restless unquiet and anxiety made a prey of his mind.
Half an hour after, he was smoking his cigar on the piazza, none whom he knew within view; and he strolled out into the edge of the wood to the right of the house, to enjoy (if enjoyment it could be called) solitude, gloom and darkness. The path he followed led him eventually round in a circle and brought him back to the edge again, only a few yards from the house and near the spot where the two huge bears were moving about, dense black spots in the twilight. There was a rude bench beneath the trees not far from what might have been called their "orbit" (especially as they are sometimes "stars" at the menageries); and on that bench he discovered three figures. He was but a little distance away when he first saw them and that they were two ladies and a gentleman; and he was still nearer before he became aware that they were the Hayleys, mother and daughter, with their inevitable attendant and cavalier.
They were in conversation, not toning it so low as if they had any particular anxiety against its being overheard; and yet Horace Townsend, much as he might have wished to know every word that came from the lips of at least one of the three, might have passed on without listening intentionally to one utterance, if he had not chanced to hear that they were discussing the event of the day. That fact literally chained him to the root of the tree near which he was standing—he wassoanxious to know what version of the affair had already been circulated and given credence among thethree or four hundred visitors at the Crawford, and especially among the particular three of that number.
It has before been said, we fancy, by that widely-known writer, "Anonymous," that listeners do not always hear any notable good of themselves. And Horace Townsend, in stopping to play the eaves-dropper, at least partially illustrated the saying. He heard a version of the Gulf of Mexico affair, from the lips of Captain Coles, calculated to make him, if he had any sensitiveness of nature and a spark of the fighting propensity, kill himself or the narrator.
"I think I have heard enough of it," Margaret Hayley was saying, as Townsend came within hearing. "I really do not know that Miss Vanderlyn, though a pleasant girl enough, is of so much consequence that the whole house should go crazy over one of her little mishaps in riding."
"A little mishap!" echoed the Captain. "Phew!—if I am not very much mistaken it was abigmishap—just a hair's-breadth between saving her life and losing it!"
"Is it possible?" said Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Why dear me, Captain Coles!—that is very interesting, especially if her being saved was providential. Did you hear the particulars, then?"
"Shall we go in, mother?" asked Margaret.
"No, my dear, not yet!" answered Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Captain Coles is just going to tell us what really happened to the young lady who was so mercifully spared. Go on, Captain, please."
"Well, the story is a short one, though thrilling enough, egad!—to put into a romance!" said the Captain. "Young Waldron, that we met at the Profile, was one of the party, and he told me about it while you were dressing for supper. It appears that Miss Vanderlyn went up with her brother, and that something happened to his horse—it got lamed, or something,—so that he could not ride down with her. He was fool enough, then, to put her under the charge of that friend of yours, Margaret—"
"Captain Coles, will you be kind enough to confine yourself to your story, if you must tell it, and leavemyname out of the question?" was the interruption of the young lady—no unpleasant one to the listener,—at that point of the narration.
"Humph! I do not see that you need be so sensitive about it!" sneered back the Captain. "Well, then, not that friend of yours, but that man, who has not less than a dozen names and who lives in Philadelphia and Cincinnati and several other cities."
"Yes, the man whose handkerchief you took out of his pocket the other night, in the ten-pin alley, to see whether his initials were correct!" again interrupted Margaret in a tone of voice not less decided than that of the other was taunting and arrogant.
It was much too dark, under the shade of the trees, at that moment, to see the face of Captain Hector Coles, or he might have been discovered, even under his moustache, biting his lip so sharply that the blood came. An eye keen enough to have seen this, too, would have been able to see that Horace Townsend trembled like an aspen leaf, that great beads of sweat started out on his brown forehead, while he muttered a fierce word of anger and indignation that died away on the night air without reaching any human ear.
Captain Hector Coles choked an instant and then went on:
"He entrusted her to the care of that adventurer, who managed, before they had ridden a mile, to lose his way and his presence of mind at the same time—got her and her pony on the top of a slippery rock where there were ten thousand chances to one that she would fall a thousand feet over the precipice—and then sat on his horse, white as a sheet and too badly scared to attempt rescuing her, yelling like a booby for help, until that coarse fellow from somewhere out West came up and grasped her just as she was going over."
What would not Horace Townsend have given for a grip of the throat of Captain Hector Coles at that moment? Andwhat would he not have given to hear Margaret Hayley say: "I do not believe the story! The man who leaped into the Pool the other day, is not the booby and poltroon you would make him, just because you are jealous of him, Captain Hector Coles!" What, we say, would the listener not have given to hearthat? Alas!—he had no reason to expect any such word, and no such word was spoken. Margaret Hayley merely rose from her seat, saying:
"Now, if you have finished that rigmarole, in which nobody, I think, is in the least interested, we will go to the house, for I am taking cold."
The others rose, and the three moved towards the house. Horace Townsend did not move towards the house, but in another direction, his heart on fire and his brain in a whirl. But as they went off he heard the Captain say, apparently in response to some remark of Mrs. Burton Hayley's which was not caught at that distance:
"Of course I believe him to be a coward as well as a disreputable character. Any man who would flinch fromanyexposure, especially like that on a mere edge of a cliff, to save life, is the basest kind of a coward. Such men ought to stand a little while among bullets, aswehave to do, and they would soon show themselves for what they are worth."
Horace Townsend saw nothing more of either that night, or of any of the others with whom this narration has to do. There was no music, other than that of the piano, in the parlor of the Crawford, and early beds were in requisition. Many, who had not ascended the mountains, had ridden hard and long in other directions; and for the people of the Mount Washington cavalcade themselves—they were very tired, very much exhausted and very sleepy, and romance and flirtation were obliged to succumb to aching bones and the invitations of soft pillows. Halstead Rowan, even, did not roll a single game of ten-pins before he retired to his lonely chamber—physico-thermometrical proof of the general worn-out condition!