CHAPTER XIV.
A Disaster To Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame—Exit into the Bottom of the Pool—Nobody that could Swim, and Margaret Hayley in Excitement—"H. T." in his element, in two senses—Another Introduction and a new Hero—Scenes in the Profile parlor—Rowan and Clara Vanderlyn—The Insult.
"But what has become of the crazy old philosopher?" asked the same elderly gentleman who had first introduced the subject,—only a moment after Halstead Rowan had delivered himself of his speculations concerning the centre of the earth, China and suicide, given at the close of the last chapter.
"Oh," answered Rowan, "I was asking Jennings about him this morning, before we came away from the Profile. Did you ever hear of the mode in which the two Irishmen conducted their little debate, which ended in a couple of broken heads?"
"I do not know!" laughed the old gentleman.
"Well, they debated physically—they held what they called a little 'dishcussion wid sticks'! Poor old Merrill got into a debate with the Sheriff of Coos County, last spring a year, Jennings tells me, and he carried it on with an axe, nearly killing the official. The result of all which was that he was lugged off to jail at Wells River and the Pool is bereaved."
"Sorry that his boat is not here, at least," said the old gentleman. "We have just a nice party for circumnavigating the Pool; and I do not know that even the letter from Queen Victoria and the lecture would be so much of a bore, now that there is no danger of them."
"Couldn't manage to get up a boat, unless we improvised one out of a log," said the Illinoisan, "and that would be a little unstable, I fancy. And by the way, I think I never saw a place more dangerous-looking for a sudden tumble than that deep black pool, or one more difficult to get out of than it would prove without something afloat to depend upon. So we must give it up—the glory of the Pool has departed! Sic transit gloria big hole in the woods!"
At that moment, and when the attention of the whole company had been drawn to the peculiar depth and quality of the Pool by the last observations—an event took place which may or may not have been paralleled in the earlier history of that peculiar wonder of nature. Sambo, of those days when the negro only half ruled the great Western republic instead of ruling it altogether,—related a story about a 'coon hunt of his, in which an episode occurred at about the time when he had climbed out upon an extending limb that was supposed to have the 'coon at the end. "Just then," said Sambo, graphically—"just then I heard sumfin drap, and come to look, 'twas dis yer nigger!" The party of visitors at the Pool heard "sumfin drap" about as suddenly and unexpectedly; and when they had time to look around them, they discovered that one of their number was missing—not a very valuable member of the combination, but still one that was supposed to have the usual immortal soul and antipathy to sudden death.
There never was a troublesome boy of an age corresponding to that of Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame, who did not have the propensity for climbing developed in exact proportion to the incapacity for climbing at all; and Master Brooks Brooks had not done half mischief enough that morning to be content without making another effort. As the party climbed down to the Pool, some of the members had spoken of the clearness of the water and the coolness which it was said to possess even in the heat of midsummer; and one of the ladies had extracted from her reticule one of those telescopic ring drinking-cups of Britannia which are found so convenient in touring or camping-out. Captain Hector Coles had volunteered to play Ganymede to the rest of the company, and stepping down to the edge of the Pool, balanced himself with one foot on a projecting stone, stooped down and dipped up some of the sparkling coolness, which was thereupon passed around from hand to hand and from lip to lip. That done, Master Brooks Brooks had been allowed to possess himself of the cup, very much to the disgust of the owner, but inevitably—and to make various demonstrations with it, around the verge of the water. For a moment every one had lost sight of him—his careful mother included; and during that moment he had climbed round to the western side of the Pool, on the high rocks, where he stood brandishing the cup in a series of motions which varied between mischief and idiocy. Then and there an accident, not uncommon to persons who climb to high places and are not careful of their footing there, had happened to the young scion of the baronial house of Cunninghame, who, losing balance in one of his gyrations, tumbled down some twenty or thirty feet of rock and went splash! into the Pool, just where the waters seemed deepest, darkest and most unfathomable!
Exit from view Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame, with a fair prospect, to all appearance, that he would carry out the laughable theory of Halstead Rowan, and if he ever again came to light at all, do so in a drowned condition at the antipodes. Droll enough, in a certain sense, but by no means droll in another, for that he would be drowned, even in that insignificant little puddle of water, was almost beyond doubt, and there were supposed to be maternal feelings even beneath the ridiculous finery of Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame! All heard the cry of fright that he gave in falling, and the splash as he struck the water; and at least a part of the company not only saw him disappear beneath the surface, but caught glimpses of him as he went on down—down—down towards the bottom with the unerring steadiness of a stone.
They saw him sink, but they did not see him rise again—not even in the time which should have secured that result. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame uttered a scream when she saw the boy strike the water, then yelled out: "Patsey! oh, my poor Patsey!" an exclamation entirely enigmatical as referring to a person bearing no such name,—then finally fell back into the arms of one of the old gentlemen in such a way as seriously to threaten his tumbling in after the boy, and without the least necessity for shamming nervousness to ape the "quality." She had indubitably fainted.
The situation was a peculiar one. Scarcely twenty seconds had elapsed since the boy's fall, but an hour seemed to have passed. He did not rise. It was likely that he must have been killed in the fall or struck a rock below and crushed his poor little head. Still other seconds, growing to more than a minute, and he did not rise. It was beyond doubt that he would never rise again, alive. And what could be done to save him? Nothing—literally nothing, as it appeared. All the party were ladies, except five men—Captain Hector Coles, Halstead Rowan and three others, all the latter white-haired and past the day for heroic exposure. Halstead Rowan had his wounded hand wrapped in a heavy bandage which would have disabled him in the water as thoroughly as if he had lost the limb at the elbow. For either of the old men to plunge into the Pool would have been suicide. Margaret Hayley stood beside Captain Hector Coles, the only young and unwounded man, when the accident occurred; and after one moment her eyes turned upon him with a glance that he too well understood.
"I am ashamed to say it, but I cannot swim one stroke!" he replied to that glance of half appeal and half command. The glance—unreasonably enough, of course—expressed something else the instant after.
"Oh, shame!—can nothing be done to save him?" she cried with clasped hands and in a tone that manifested quite as much of the feeling of mortification as of anxiety. At that period nearly all the women present broke out into cries of terror, as if help could be brought to the helpless by the appealing voice.
"Good heavens, ladies, what is the matter?"
It was the voice of "H. T." that spoke, and the man of the initials stood on the other side of the Pool, where he had emerged from his laborious walk over fallen trees and broken rocks from the Flume. He had his hat in his hand and was wiping the perspiration from his hot brow.
Margaret Hayley, more moved beyond herself than any of the others present (the poor mother had not yet recovered consciousness) was the first to answer; though she little thought that perhaps the destiny of a whole life was involved in the few words then to be spoken.
"Oh, sir, if you can swim, for heaven's sake try to save that boy! He has fallen into the Pool, there—there—" and she pointed with her hand to the very depth of the dark water—"and he must be at the bottom!"
"He is at the bottom, without doubt, if he has fallen in!" was the answer. "I saw him filling his pockets with bright stones, up at the Flume, and he has probably enough of them about him to keep him at the bottom till doomsday." Then, for the first time, the anxious watchers knew the reason why even in the death-struggle the body had not risen—the poor little fellow had been loading himself down with those tempting, fatal stones, to make more certain the doom that was coming!
"Can you swim, sir? I asked you if you could swim!" Margaret Hayley's voice rung across the Pool, with no little impatient petulance blended with the evident anxiety; and she seemed totally to forget, as people will forget on some occasions, that she had never been introduced to the man whom she interrogated so sharply.
"I can swim!" was the answer and the only answer. With the word he threw off his coat and kicked off the convenient Congress gaiters that enveloped his feet; and in ten seconds more he had leaped high into the air and headlong into the dark waters at the spot indicated by the hand of Margaret. So sudden had been all this, that scarcely one realized, until he had disappeared, the whole peril he encountered.
"He will strike the stony bottom and kill himself!" said one of the elderly gentlemen.
"Hot as he was, he will die with the chill, if he ever comes out!" said the second, who had medical warrant for knowing the probable consequences of such an act. Whereupon all began to realize that two deaths instead of one might be the probable event; and Margaret Hayley set her teeth hard and clasped her hands in the agonized thought that perhaps her words had driven him to the rash leap, and that he must be either that thing for which she had been so long looking, a man incarnately brave,—or willing to go out of his own nature at her command, after less than a single day's acquaintance—the latter feeling one not slow to awaken other and warmer companions in the bosom of a true woman!
After those words had been spoken, dead silence reigned except as broken by a sob of deadly anxiety from one of the ladies who could not control the fear that oppressed her. And how long that silence of oppressive anxiety lasted! It might have been a moment—it might have been five years, for any capacity of measurement given to a single member of that waiting group scattered over the rocks. Only the whilome watcher by a sick bed which might be one of death, at the instant when the crisis of disease was reached and the next minute was to decide between a life of love and usefulness and the drear silence of the grave—only the man who has lifted his faint signal of distress on a drifting wreck at sea, when a sail was in sight, the last crust eaten, and night and storm coming to end all,—only one or the other of these can realize the long agony of such moments and the eternity which can be compressed into the merest fraction of time!
They had perhaps waited sixty seconds after the disappearance of the would-be rescuer beneath the dark waters of the Pool, and already every one had given him up for lost,—when a ripple agitated its surface, a white-sleeved arm came up, then a figure bearing another. It battled wearily towards the shoaler part of the Pool, touched bottom and struggled shoreward, dropped its burthen with one glance upon it, and then toppled over—both out of danger from the water, but both apparently dead alike!
In an instant all those above had rushed down to the margin, and while some caught the drowned boy and attempted to restore the life that seemed so hopelessly fled, others, and the medical man among them, devoted more than equal anxiety to the man who appeared to have paid so dearly for his heroism. He was senseless, but his pulse still beat—the doctor discovered so much; and a fairer hand than that of the doctor sought the heart and found that the motion of that mysterious red current which bears the whole of life upon its bosom was not yet stilled forever. The hand was that of Margaret Hayley, who had drawn the head of the half-drowned man upon one knee while she kneeled on the bare stone with the other, and who seemed to feel that if that man died his blood would be upon her head and upon her soul! A dangerous position, Margaret Hayley, whether he lives or dies, for the woman who but yesterday dreamed that she kept her early love still undimmed in her heart, however the object of it might be clouded in shame and banished from her presence forever! Is that new ideal found already, and found in a man so wrapped in mystery that his very name has never yet been spoken in your presence? Fie! fie! if this is the eternity of love, about which lovers themselves have raved and poets worse raved in their behalf, any time these past five hundred years!
There is no intention of mystifying this scene, or even of prolonging it. Whatever might have been the danger, that danger was past, and the shadow of death did not loom ghastly out of it. The vigorous shaking, rolling and rubbing to which the inanimate Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame was exposed, under hands which proved themselves expert in that operation if in no other, soon restored the breath to his nostrils, though it left him a limp rag to be taken up in arms and carried away by his now recovered and half-addled mother. There was a sharp cut upon his head, and the blood flowed freely, but the wound had no depth or danger. The insensibility which had fallen upon his preserver, induced much more as was believed by the sudden chill of that ice-cold water acting upon a heated system, than even by his long exertion in recovering the little fellow's body from the bottom of the pool—this soon gave way beneath the continued rubbing bestowed upon wrists and temples, and the warmth induced by the wrapping of all the shawls and mantles in the company about his shoulders and feet. He moaned once, only a few minutes after the efforts for his resuscitation had been commenced, and a moment or two later opened his eyes and saw what face bent over him most closely. Something else than the chafing and the unaccustomed robes then sent blood to cheek and brow; and with a strength which no one had believed him to possess he sprang to his feet, to sink down again the moment after into a sitting posture but unsupported.
In that position he for the first time appeared to glance round upon the company and to recognize the whole situation. Especially his eye fell upon Captain Hector Coles, who stood at a little distance, his arms folded and nothing in his appearance indicating that he had taken any part in the labors of resuscitation, while his face looked undeniably saturnine and ill-humored. Had the mere fact that the head of a half-drowned man lay for a few moments on the knees of a lady supposed to be under his peculiar protection, so much moved the gallant warrior of the Union army, or was something more decided lying at the bottom of his observance? Perhaps words already spoken during the late progress of this narration may have indicated the state of feeling in the breast of the captain: if not, future developments will have the duty of making plain all that may be yet doubtful in that regard. At all events, something in that man's face gave to the brown cheeks of "H. T." a warmer color than they had before attained, and to his frame a strength which sent him once more to his feet, throwing off the shawls and mantles which enveloped him, and standing barefoot and in his shirt-sleeves, his hair yet plastered and dripping, his garments yet clinging to his person, the most unpicturesque of figures, and yet one of the noblest possible to employ the artist's pencil—a man fresh from one of the great perils of disinterested benevolence.
Certainly Margaret Hayley saw nothing antagonistic to romance in that tall, erect figure, half-draped though it was and shivering yet with cold and weakness. It is not impossible that the dusky brown of the face glowed with something of a sacred light, to her eyes—a subject for her waiting hero-worship, after that sad feeling of an opposite character which it had so lately been her duty to manifest. Nothing else than such an estimation could well explain, in a woman of her overweening pride, movements which took place immediately after, and which bore their fruit, at no distant day, in placing her in a position of such terrible conflict with herself that no calamity occurring beneath the waters of the Pool but might have been reckoned a mercy in comparison.
Halstead Rowan, too sure of his admiration of the conduct of his new friend to be in a hurry about expressing it, had done what his wounded hand did not prevent his doing, by springing across the stream below and bringing the discarded shoes and coat from the rock where they lay. All the rest, except poor Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, yet busy with her partially resuscitated boy, crowded round the new hero of the hour to offer their thanks and congratulations; but it was Margaret Hayley who took him by the hand as he stood, unmindful of the scowl of Captain Hector Coles that gloomed upon her, and said:
"I do not know, sir, by what name to thank you—"
"I believe I am right in calling you Miss Hayley," was the answer, in a voice as yet somewhat weak and tremulous. "My own name is Horace Townsend, and my business is that of a lawyer at—at Cincinnati." So we, like those of the company who had noticed the initials without taking the trouble to possess themselves of the whole name by the arrival-book at the office, have the blanks filled at last, and may discard the use of the two mysterious letters.
"I was only half intentionally the means, Mr. Townsend," the young girl went on, "of plunging you into a situation of danger without the least right to do so; and yet I do not know that I can be sorry for the liberty I have taken, as it may have been the cause of saving a life that would otherwise have been lost, and of my witnessing an act of disinterested generosity which I can never forget, or forget to honor, while I live."
"You do me altogether too much honor," was the reply, in a somewhat steadier voice. "I have really done nothing, except to make an exhibition of myself by my weakness. There was no danger to me in the water, for I am a good swimmer and ought to be able to dive well; but I suppose that I stayed too long under, for I could not find the little fellow at once, and the chill of the water no doubt affected me, after getting warm in climbing over those logs. That is all, and I really hope you will all forget that the unpleasant affair has occurred, as I shall certainly do after I have found a suit of dry clothes."
He spoke pleasantly, but with nothing of the rattling gayety which seemed to characterize his rival of the day—the hero of the bear-stakes; and once again while he was speaking, Margaret Hayley seemed strangely moved and partially shuddered at something in the tones of the voice. As he finished, he bowed and turned away, as if quite enough had been said, and the lady also moved away a step or two and rejoined her escort. Halstead Rowan came up with the coat and shoes, and as he dropped them on the rock at the feet of Townsend grasped his hand with his own unwounded one, with a pressure so warm and manly that it told volumes of respect and regard.
"I am nowhere!" he said. "I dared you over that log; but you have gone where I should not like to follow, and done it for something, while mine was merely a prank. And by the way—" they were at that moment a little apart from the others, and Rowan spoke low—"do you know where your head lay when you came to?"
"Hush! for heaven's sake, hush!" said Townsend, quickly and with something in his face that made the other pause instantly. The conversation, at that point, was not renewed there and then.
A portion of the company had by that time commenced ascending the steps, carrying the abated boy-nuisance and accompanying his mother. Townsend managed to draw on the discarded shoes over his wet stockings, put on his coat and accompanied the rear-guard with very slight assistance, enjoying a continued walking-bath, but no doubt consoled for any discomfort by the reflection that he had been where few men had ever plunged and come out alive,—and perhaps yet more moved by some other reflections of a much more mixed character.
An hour later, the whole party had reached the Profile House once more, and Horace Townsend, as he named himself and as we must continue to name him in deference to his own statement, was the happy possessor of a dry suit, a slight headache and an eventual nap which left him fresh as if he had bathed in the Pool as a hygienic measure. Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame needed longer renovating, but he came round during the afternoon, with the fatal facility of those who are of no use in the world, and was quite ready for supper. And what a buzzing there was about the Profile all the afternoon, while those who had witnessed the affair at the Pool detailed it, with additions, to those who had remained at the house, and those who had not caught the name or address of the stranger ran to the book to satisfy themselves, and speculations as to his married or single state were indulged in, and the Cincinnati lawyer underwent, without his being thoroughly aware of the fact, all the mental manipulations and verbal remouldings incidental to any one who treads out of the common path, whether creditably or discreditably, among the half idle and more than half ennuyée habitues of a watering place.
One or two additional peeps at events of that afternoon must be taken, before passing on to those of the evening, which were to prove quite as momentous in some regards.
Peep the first. Margaret Hayley kept her chamber all the afternoon, pleading headache and fatigue, while Mrs. Burton Hayley and Captain Hector Coles "did" Echo Lake and talked very confidentially. A large part of that time the young girl lay on her bed, her eyes closed but by no means sleeping—thinking, thinking, thinking, until her brain seemed to be in a whirl and all the world unreal.
Peep the second. At a certain hour in the afternoon, unknown then to the other members of the Vanderlyn family but too well known to them afterwards, as the sequel proved, Halstead Rowan, rapidly improving if not indeed presuming upon his acquaintance of the morning, enticed Clara Vanderlyn away to the ten-pin alley and inducted her into the art and mystery of knocking down bilstead pins with a lignum vitæ ball, apparently to the satisfaction of that young lady, who should certainly have held herself above such an amusement of the athletic canaille. If the lady, with two hands, beat her instructor with one, he was no more than justly punished.
Peep the third. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, walking through one of the corridors, heard two young ladies, accompanied by a gentleman, say: "Patsey! oh, my poor Patsey!" in such dolorous tones and with what seemed so meaning a look towards her, as tended to recall an unfortunate exclamation at the Pool very forcibly to her recollection, and to put her into a frame of mind the exact reverse of felicitous. This was not improved by the discovery that Mr. Brooks Cunninghame had fallen into the company of certain stage-drivers, at the bar, and had imbibed whiskey with them to an extent which rounded his brogue but did not assure the steadiness of his perpendicular or add to the respectability of his general demeanor.
And now to the event of the evening, which seemed eminently fit to close a day so full of adventure that the movements of a dozen ordinary days might have been compressed into it. Most of this, from reasons which will eventually develop themselves, is to be seen through the eyes of one who has been before called "the observer."
When Horace Townsend came out late from supper that evening, after a meal at which the succulent steaks, the flaky tea-biscuit and the sweet little mountain strawberries had not been quite so fully enjoyed as they might have been with a little additional company at table,—harp, horn and violin were again sounding in the long parlors, as they had been the evening before, and much more attention was being paid to them than when the full moon was their momentary rival. Perhaps not less than half the beauty, grace and gallantry then assembled at the Profile, were gathered under the flashing lights, dancing, promenading, flirting, and generally floating down the pleasant stream of moderate watering-place dissipation. The Russian "Redowa" was sounding from brass and string as he entered the long parlor from the hall; and among the figures sweeping proudly by to that most voluptuous of measures, he instantly recognized two whose identity could not indeed have been very well mistaken under any circumstances. The larger and coarser figure wore on one of its hands a glove several sizes too large—one, indeed, that might have been constructed by some glove-maker of the Titan period: Halstead Rowan was whirling Clara Vanderlyn lazily around in the dance.
The strange introduction of the morning, then, had already produced its effect, and the possible romance to be built out of that rescue was coming on quite as rapidly as even a sensation novelist could have anticipated. Horace Townsend, whose eyes seemed to be wandering in search of some face or figure which did not fall under their view, but who had been gazing with undisguised admiration, for some hours the previous day, on those of this very Clara Vanderlyn—Horace Townsend thought, as he saw the manly arm of Rowan spanning the pliant white-robed waist of his partner, that seldom could the old illustration of the rugged oak and the clinging ivy be better supplied,—and that if fate and fortune had set, as they too evidently seemed to have done, an eternal bar between the two, they had predestined to remain apart one couple whom the fitness of nature would certainly have joined. His frank, hearty, manly energy, deficient in some of the finer cultures and at times approaching to roughness, and her gentle, womanly tenderness, with almost too much of delicate refinement, seemed mentally to blend in the thought of the future and of the children likely to spring from such a union, as physically stood in relief and pleasing contrast the close-curled dark hair and the shower of waving gold.
Passing still further down the room, either in that quest which has before been hinted at, or in the search for a vacant seat among the male and female wall-flowers, Townsend came upon the mother of the young lady. Mrs. Vanderlyn was standing beside a centre-table, under one of the chandeliers, an illustrated book in her hand, and apparently absorbed in the contemplation of some of the engravings after Landseer and Corbould. But books have been known, many times in the history of the world, to be used for the same purpose as fans or fire-screens, (or even spectacles, for that matter), and looked over; and the lawyer felt a sudden curiosity awakened to examine the eyes, especially as the lady was standing in such a position as to command the dancers.
He was not at all disappointed in the surmise which he seemed to have formed. The haughty matron had no eyes for her book, but really had her gaze fixed, with a close pressure of the eye-balls against the brows, on her daughter and Halstead Rowan. And no one who had only seen it under more favorable circumstances, would have believed it possible that a face of such matronly comeliness could be brought to look so harshly—even vindictively. The eyes were literally fierce; and the mouth was set with a firm, hard expression which brought the full lower lip perceptibly over the upper.
Suddenly the observer saw the features relax and the whole expression change. He turned instantly and half involuntarily, and saw that a substitution had taken place in partners. Without quitting the floor, Miss Vanderlyn had accepted the proffered hand of a young Boston exquisite who was already rumored around the Notch to be the heir of a paternal half million,—and was whirling away in another polka. Rowan was gone. A second glance showed that he had not left the room, but that he stood far back in one of the corners, alone and silent, and his eyes, heedless of the amount of observation which their glance might excite, fixed in profound admiration on the beautiful girl whom he had just quitted. Then the expression of his face seemed for the moment to change, and the same emotions might have been read there that had startled at least one of the spectators the evening before at the piazza—the same emotions of contending pride and abasement, hope and fear, but intensified now so that there could be no mistaking their import.
At that stage Horace Townsend left the room, perhaps to pursue the personal search which had so far proved unavailing. He, who had himself been originally observing the young girl with such admiration, saw, or thought that he saw, the materials for a very pretty if not a very painful romance, in which the two would form the chief dramatis personæ. Two or three conditions, he thought, were already evolved: an unmistakable mutual interest—observation and dislike on the part of the aristocratic mother—to be followed by eventual discovery on the part of the weaker and yet more aristocratic brother—an unpleasant eclaircissement—coolness born of the very warmth underlying—a parting in pleasant dissatisfaction with themselves and each other—and perhaps a shadow of blended sweet and painful memory over the whole of two after lives!
Then the lawyer passed out to the piazza and paced with measured step up and down that promenade and the plateau in front, for perhaps more than half an hour. He might have been entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the possible fortunes of Chicago and Baltimore; and he might have found matter for thought much more personal to himself. At all events the starlight and the coming moon seemed to be company which he failed to find elsewhere; and even the dusky shadows of the bears, deserted by their friends of the sunshine and walking their weary rounds like sentinels, possibly supplied something denied him by humanity. His step was that of a man restless, absorbed and ill at ease; his head had fallen forward on his breast; and once, when he was so far away from the loiterers on the piazza that no ear was likely to catch his words, he muttered something that could scarcely have found an application to the persons of the drama in the parlor. That murmur ran:
"I suppose this is the most dishonorable action in my life—planning to betray confidence and take an unfair advantage. Why did he tell me so much before he went to Europe? Pshaw!" and he put his hand to his brow and walked on for a moment in silence. "I will not go back—I will try the experiment—I will win that woman, if I can, under this very name, now that I begin to understand her weakness so well. And if I do—heavens, in what a situation shall I have placed her and myself! And will she ever forgive the deception? No matter!—let the future take care of itself."
Either the stars grew less companionable, then, at the thought that some strange deceit was being wrought beneath them, or the soliloquist felt that there yet remained something worth looking after within the parlor, for he looked up at one of the windows of the second story, said: "Ah, no light there, at last!" stepped back to the piazza and once more entered the house and the dancing-room.
The music was still sounding as merrily as ever, and as he re-entered the room a new set was forming. In the very midst of those who were preparing to join it, full under the blaze of the central chandelier, stood Clara Vanderlyn. She was for the moment motionless, and he had better opportunity than before of scanning her really radiant loveliness. She wore a simple evening-dress of white, with a single wild-flower wreathed in her bright auburn hair and a single jewel of value set like a star at the apex of the forehead, confined by a delicate and almost unseen chain of gold which encircled her head. Frank Vanderlyn, in full evening-dress, was standing a few feet off, in conversation with some young men with whom he had already formed an acquaintance, and did not seem to be preparing to join the set. A hurried glance around the room did not show that either Mrs. Vanderlyn or Halstead Rowan was present.
The band struck up a schottische, and all began to take partners. At this moment Mrs. Vanderlyn came through the door-way from the hall, sweeping in with more of that pronounced haughtiness which seemed indexed by her face and carriage, than any of the visitors at the Profile had before seen her exhibit, and creating a kind of impression upon those near whom she passed, that they were suddenly taken under proprietorship. She swept very near the lawyer as he stood at the left of the door-way, and passing down the room touched her son on the arm. And the lawyer could not, if he would (which seemed not over probable) have avoided hearing the single word that she uttered, almost in Frank's ear, and in a low, concentrated tone:
"Remember!"
Frank Vanderlyn nodded, with a supercilious smile upon his face, as though he understood the direction; and the stately mother swept down the room and partially disappeared among the crowd of quiet people below.
Clara Vanderlyn stood for the moment alone, as the band struck up. Whether she had received and declined invitations to dance, or whether no one had found the temerity to offer himself with the chance of refusal, seemed doubtful, for she certainly appeared to have no partner. But as the first couple moved forward to take their places, a tall form darkened the door-way for an instant, and Halstead Rowan was again at the fair girl's side, his face literally radiant with pride and triumph. There was no word spoken at that moment, and it would seem that there must have been some previous understanding between them, for her hand was instantly placed within his arm when he offered it, and her face reflected his own with a look of gratification that any close observer could not well avoid noticing.
Both had taken a step forward to join the set, when an interruption took place of so painful a character as at once to call the attention of every one within hearing; and Horace Townsend, standing very near, had a sudden opportunity to compare the reality with his unspoken foreboding of half an hour before. Frank Vanderlyn suddenly left the group with whom he had been conversing but a few feet away, stepped up to his sister, and before either she or Rowan could have been aware of his intention, drew her hand away from the arm of her escort, and somewhat rudely placed it within his own, with a bold glance at Rowan and the words:
"Miss Clara Vanderlyn, if you wish to dance, your family would prefer that you should select a different partner from the first low-bred nobody who happens to fall in your way—a good enough ten-pin-alley companion, perhaps, but not quite the thing in a ball-room!"
"Oh, brother!"
The face of the poor girl, so foully outraged, first flushed, then whitened, and she seemed on the point of sinking to the floor with the shame of such a public insult and exposure. She might indeed have done so, under the first shock, had not the arm of Frank supported her. The next instant it was evident that all the pride of the Vanderlyns had not been exhausted before her birth, for she jerked away her arm from its compulsory refuge, and stood erect and angry—all the woman fully aroused. Her glance of withering contempt and scorn, then directed at the ill-mannered stripling who called himself her brother, was such a terrible contrast to the sweet and almost infantile smile which rested on her face in happier moments, that it would have been no difficult matter to doubt her identity.
As for Halstead Rowan—at the moment when the cruel act was done and the insulting words were spoken, he turned instantly upon the intruder, evidently failing to recognize him in the sudden blindness of his rage. His right hand, though the injured one, clenched as it might have done under the shock of an electric battery, and Townsend saw him jerk it to the level of his shoulder as if he would have struck a blow certain to cause regret for a lifetime. But he had no occasion to interpose, for the outraged girl's "Oh, brother!" came just in time to prevent the commission of the intended violence. Instantly his hand dropped; Clara Vanderlyn's expression of angry contempt, easily read under the full glare of the chandelier, chased the fierce rage from his face if it did not root out the bitterness from his heart; he bowed low to the sister, cast a glance upon the brother which he did not seem likely soon to forget; and in another moment, passing rapidly between the few who surrounded the door-way, he touched Horace Townsend forcibly upon the arm, nodded to him with a gesture which the latter readily understood as a request to follow, and the two passed out from the parlor, the hall and the house.
It is not easy to describe the scene in the parlor which followed the denouement that has been so feebly pictured. The music sounded on, but the set remained unformed and no one seemed to heed it. The room was instantly full of conversation in regard to the strange event, more or less loud in its tone. Frank Vanderlyn, calculating upon the sympathies of a company principally composed of wealthy and fashionable people, looked around him as if for approbation of what he had done, but did not appear to receive it. It was not difficult for him to read in the faces near him that the sympathies of the whole company were with the insulted person, most of the members of it, if they had no other reason for the feeling, remembering the event of the bear-stakes in the morning and thinking that if the Illinoisan was to receive any thing from the Vanderlyn family that day, it should have been gratitude instead of insult. Made painfully aware of this state of feeling, the young man paled, bit his lips, then passed rapidly out of the room and disappeared, leaving his sister still in the attitude of outraged sensibility and mortification, which she retained, uttering no word to any one and not even casting a glance around the room, until Mrs. Vanderlyn, who had apparently constituted herself the reserve force for the attack upon her daughter's dignity which Frank had so gallantly led, swept up from below and led her unresistingly away up the stair-case to their apartments.
The set was finally formed, and a few more figures were danced in the parlor of the Profile that evening; but the painful incident just recorded had dulled the sense of enjoyment, and the company thinned out and eventually dispersed to earlier beds than they might have found under other circumstances.