CHAPTER XV.
How Halstead Rowan arranged that expected Duel—Ten-pins versus Bloodshed—Some anxiety about identity—The "H. T." initials, again—A farewell to the Brooks Cunninghames—An hour on Echo Lake, with a rhapsody and a strangely-interested listener.
This chapter must be unavoidably as fragmentary, not to say desultory, as some that have preceded it at considerable distance, the course of events in it seeming to partake in some degree of the broken, heaped and heterogeneous quality of the mountain rocks amidst which they occurred.
It has been seen that Halstead Rowan, quitting the room in which he had met with so severe a mortification, touched Horace Townsend on the arm and made him a signal to follow, and that the latter obeyed the call. Of course this obedience was a matter of courtesy that could not well be refused, and yet it was accorded with a feeling so painful that it would scarcely have been asked had the torture been foreseen. Rowan, as the lawyer knew, had been insulted before a company of mark and numbers, in so deadly a manner that more than usual forbearance would be necessary to forgive the outrage; and the insulted man belonged, as the lawyer also knew, to a class of Western men not much more prone than those of the South and Southwest, to smother down a wrong under good-feeling or expediency. He had refrained from striking the insulter on the spot; but that forbearance might have been merely the effect of a recollection that ladies were present, and the one lady of all among them; and Horace Townsend no more doubted, during the moment that elapsed while the two young men stepped into the reception-room and secured their hats from the table, that he was being called upon in the sacred name of friendship to act in an affair that would probably cost the life of one or both the antagonists, than he questioned the fact of his own existence. It is doubtful whether he did not believe, before the affair was concluded, that so strange a task had never been set for his friend, by any man incensed to the necessity of mortal combat, since the day when duelling proper had its origin in two naked savages going out behind their huts with knives and a third to look on, for the love of a dusky she-heathen with oblique eyes—down through all the ages, when Sir Grostete set lance in rest and met Sir Maindefer in full career, over a little question of precedence at the table of King Grandpillard; when Champfleury and St. Esprit, beaux of the Regency of Orleans, with keen rapiers sliced up each other like cucumbers, between two bows and a dozen of grimaces, because one did not appreciate the perfume used by the other; until Fighting Joe of Arkansas and Long Alick of St. Louis culminated the whole art of single combat by a little encounter with rifles, followed by a closer embrace with bowies, at one of the Mississippi landings, instigated by the unequal division of the smiles of Belle Logan, of Western Row, Cincinnati. All which means, if the reader has not entirely lost the context, that the course pursued by Halstead Rowan, as a combatant, was eventually found to be something out of the common order.
"You saw that, of course—I know that you did!" said rather than inquired Rowan, when they had reached the piazza and were out of hearing of any of the promenading groups.
"I did," answered Townsend, with some hesitation and a wish that he could deny the fact and thus escape the duties certain to be forced upon him. "Yes, I saw it all, and it was most disgraceful. But I hope—"
That intended lecture was lost to the world, as so many others have been; for Rowan interrupted him:
"Are you poor?"
"No, I cannot say that I am, in money!" was the surprised reply.
"Were you ever?"
"No—I must answer in the negative a second time. I have never been what the world calls poor, since I can remember."
"Then you do not know how it feels," said the Illinoisan. "I am poor—I have never been rich, and I do not know that I have ever really wished to be so until a few moments ago. I wanted to buy a puppy, so that I could tie a stone to his neck and drown him; but I felt that I had not money enough."
Townsend, still surprised and in a good deal of doubt whither the conversation was tending, murmured something about the fact that however decided the insult of the brother had been, evidently the sister did not share in the feeling.
"She? oh no, heaven bless her brown eyes!" he replied, rapidly and earnestly, while the other could see, in the light of the now fairly risen moon, that there was a strange sparkle in his own dark orbs. "As for the rest—well, heaven need not be particular about blessing them—that is all! But this gabble is not what I drew you out here for. I want you to do me a great favor, at once, and I ask you, because I seem to be better acquainted with you, after a very short time, than with any other person just now at the Notch."
"Now it is coming—just what I dreaded!" said Townsend to himself; but he answered very differently, in a feeble attempt to stave off the trouble.
"Than any other person?"
"Hold your tongue!—you know what I mean!" was the reply. "Answer my question, yes or no—are you the man upon whom I can depend, to do me an immediate personal service that may involve some sacrifice of bodily comfort and perhaps of feeling?"
"I hope so—yes!" answered Townsend. "But before you take any steps in this matter—"
"Conditions already?" asked Rowan. "I thought it was to be an unconditional yes or no!"
"Well, it is!" said Townsend, apparently satisfied that expostulation would after all be useless.
"Enough said!" replied Rowan, catching him by the arm. "Come along with me to the alley, then, and roll me not less than five games of ten-pins."
"But the business you wished me to do?" asked Townsend. "If it is to be done at all—"
"Why, confound the man!—what ails you? That is the business!"
"To roll you five games of ten-pins?"
"Exactly! Why, what else should it be? Oh, I see!" and Rowan chuckled out a low laugh from his great throat. "I understand your tragic face, now. You thought that I wanted you as a friend, to—"
"To challenge Frank Vanderlyn—precisely what I thought," said the lawyer, "and I consented to act because I thought that I might be better able than some other person to prevent any serious result."
"To shoot her brother, merely because he is a fool?—Oh, no, Townsend—you could not think that! Duelling is murder nearly always, and folly always when it is not a crime; and if I should ever be driven into another duel, be sure that it would not be with an inexperienced boy who probably does not know half so much about a pistol as at pen-knife or a tooth-pick."
"You are a true man, as well as a sensible one, and I honor you!" said the relieved lawyer, grasping him by the hand, and his face at the same time wearing a look, which, though unseen by the other, seemed actually to express personal gratitude.
"I do not know about the 'true man,' though I have tried to be so," answered Rowan, as they neared the door of the ten-pin alley. "But I suppose that perhaps I am the oddest mortal on the globe, and that may answer the same purpose. And now you are dying to know why I wish to roll ten-pin balls at this particular moment? Simply because I need some way of working off this excitement that might lead me to commit a violent act if it did not find that very harmless physical vent. I have tried the experiment before, and I know what ten-pins are with a man of fiery temperament. Here, boy, set 'em up!"
The alley was alone, except as to the sleepy boy; but the loud call of the Illinoisan soon put the machinery of the place into operation and the momentous games commenced. No matter how they progressed or how they ended in regard to winning or losing: it is only with some of the conversation which took place while the match was under way, that we have at present to do.
"You are a lawyer and belong to Cincinnati, you said," observed Rowan, as he paused a moment to wipe his brow after thundering down half a dozen of the ponderous globes.
"Yes, I said so," answered Townsend; but he did not enlarge upon the answer, as he was obviously expected to do; and one or two other questions, having the same scope, being parried at every point beyond the mere name, occupation and place of residence, the Illinoisan began to suspect that there must be some motive for reticence, which he was at least bound to respect while he held the catechumen impressed in his own service. With reference to himself, a theme upon which the conversation seemed to turn very easily, (many of the stout, bluff, frank, go-ahead Rowans whom one meets in society have the same characteristic, fault or the reverse),—he manifested no corresponding nervousness; and one moment strangely silent as if under the influence of some thought which kept him too busy for speech, the next he would rattle on almost as glibly as the polished balls rolled down the pine floor.
"You called yourself odd a little while ago, and I fancy that if you are odd you have the excuse of very wide experience for a man of your age," said Townsend, a little later in the quintette of games, and certainly displaying a bit of the prying nature of the lawyer, if not the subtlety of the Jesuit, in the suggestion. "To tell you the truth, I cannot quite place you in profession. A while ago I thought you possibly a steamboat-captain, but you have just upset that hypothesis by proving that you are nearly all the while on land; and yet you seem to be perpetually flying about from one town to another. What the deuce are you?"
"Oh, you cannot place me, eh?" laughed Rowan, who was getting fairly soothed and mellowed by his creditable substitute for duelling. "Well, I am a conductor on the —— Railroad, which you know has its terminus in Chicago, and I am off on a couple of months leave of absence from the Company. As to experience, I suppose that I may have had a little of it. I have been a civil-engineer, employed at laying out some of the worst roads in the West, and of course laying them out the worst. Have crossed the plains to California twice, and back again, including a look at Brigham and his wives at Salt Lake City, very nearly getting my throat cut, I fancy, in that latter operation. Did a little at gold-mining, for a short time, but soon quitted it out of deference to a constitutional backache when stooping. Have been here at the East a good many times, and once lived in New York, (a great deal worse place than Salt Lake City, and with more polygamy!) for a twelvemonth, telegraphing. Once ran down to Santa Fe with a train, and came very near to being speared by the Comanches. Then concluded to stay among those amiable savages for a while, to learn to ride, and spent six months in the study. No man knows how to ride a horse—by the way—except an Arab (I take the word of the travellers for that, as I have never been across), a Comanche or an Arapahoe, or some one they have taught. There, have I told you enough?"
"Humph!—yes," answered the lawyer, eying the strange compound with unavoidable admiration and no little wonder. "Yes, except one thing."
"And that is about this scar?"
"I confess that my curiosity lay in that direction!" laughed Townsend. "I think that scar has not been long healed—that you have been taking a turn in the present war."
"Yes, a short one," said the Illinoisan, "and that scar is one mark of it. I was a private in the ranks of the Ninth Illinois for a few months last year, and got pretty badly slashed with a Mississippi bowie-knife, with Grant, two or three days before they took Fort Donelson. They took it—I did not—I suppose that I did not amount to much at about that period, with a little hack in the jugular that came pretty near letting out life and blood together!"
Before this conversation had concluded, and long before the specified five games were accomplished, half a dozen persons from the hotel, male and female, came strolling in. Among them was Captain Hector Coles, with Margaret Hayley upon his arm. They stood at the head of the alley, looking at the game; and Townsend, as he was about to make one of his most difficult rolls, recognized the lady and her slight nod and was sufficiently agitated by the presence of that peculiar spectator, to miss his aim entirely and roll the ball off into the gutter—a fact which did not escape the quick eye of the Captain.
Directly, as the game still went on, some conversation occurred between the lady and her attendant, which, if overheard, might have produced a still more decided trembling in the nerves of the ten-pin player.
"I know that I have seen that face before, more than once, and not in Cincinnati," the Captain said. "I believe that he is a Philadelphian, and that his name is no more Horace Townsend than mine is Jenkins."
"What motive could any one possibly have for coming to a place like this in disguise and with a feigned name?" asked Margaret Hayley.
"Humph!" said the Captain, in a tone by no means good-humored, though it was low, as the previous words had been, "there are plenty of men who find it necessary to disguise names and faces now-a-days, for the very best of reasons."
"Traitors?" asked the lady.
"Yes, traitors!" answered the Captain.
"And that reason he has not, I know!" said Margaret. "The man who uttered the words that I heard last night, is no traitor, and I do not think that I should believe the very angels of heaven if they should come down to make the assertion!"
"You seem strangely interested in the man!" said the Captain, his voice undeniably querulous.
"And I have a right to be so if I choose, I suppose!" answered the lady, in a voice that if it was not querulous was at least signally decided.
"Oh, certainly! certainly!" was the reply, coming out between set teeth.
Silence fell for a moment thereafter, except as the crashing balls made music among the pins. Then it was interrupted by Rowan calling out to the lawyer, who seemed to stand abstracted and forgetful of the game.
"Townsend!"
No motion on the part of the person addressed, or any sign that he heard the utterance.
"Townsend! I say, Townsend!"
Still no motion, or any recognition whatever of the name; and it was not until the Illinoisan, who had just been making three ten-strikes in succession with his left hand, and who was naturally anxious to call the attention of his opponent to the exploit, touched him on the shoulder and literally shouted the word into his ear, that he paid any attention whatever.
"Me? Oh!"
"Did you notice that?" asked the keen-witted Captain, returning to the charge, as a repulsed soldier should always do. "His name is not Townsend, and he has not been long in the habit of being called by it; for it was forgetfulness that made him wait for it to be repeated three times!"
There was triumph in the tone of the Captain, now; and there was every thing but triumph in that of Margaret Hayley as she leaned heavily on his arm and said:
"Pray do not say any thing more about it! That man is nothing to me. Let us go back to the house."
"Wait one moment! I am going to do something to satisfy myself. Do you see that handkerchief? Sometimes initials tell a story that trunks and hotel-books do not."
The lawyer had thrown off his coat upon the chair behind him—a blue flannel coat, half military, which both remembered to have seen him wear after changing clothes from the accident at the pool. From the breast-pocket a white handkerchief hung temptingly almost half way out, and it was towards that that the hand of the officer dived downward. The owner of the coat was some distance away, following up one of his flying balls, and was not likely to see the examination made of his personal property, if it was done with quick hand and eye.
"Hector Coles, you would not do that!"
But she spoke too late. With the stereotyped lie on his lips that has been made the excuse for so many wrongs and scoundrelisms during all this unfortunate struggle, "All is fair in war-time!" the Captain whipped out the handkerchief, turned it quickly from corner to corner, glancing it to the light as he did so, and then as quickly returned it to the pocket, long before the owner had returned from watching the effect of his shot. Margaret Hayley had not intended to join in the reprehensible act, but she involuntarily did so, and she as well as the officer saw the initials "H. T." elaborately embroidered in red silk in one of the corners. It is not too much to say that a pang of joy went through her heart at that refutation of the Captain's mean suspicions and that evidence to her own mind that the man in whom she had become so suddenly and unaccountably interested was playing no game of deceit and treachery. "H. T." were the initials, Horace Townsend was the name that he had given her, and there could be no doubt whatever of the truth of his statement.
Captain Hector Coles did not seem by any means so well satisfied with the result of his researches. Something very like a scowl answered the look of indignation upon Margaret Hayley's face, as he said:
"Humph! well, he has been keen enough, it seems, to mismark his handkerchief too!"
"And you are ungenerous enough, Captain Hector Coles, first to do an improper action and then to find fault with your own discomfiture!" was the reply, as the lady once more took the proffered arm of the officer and left the alley, the combatants still pursuing the concluding game of that most memorable match of left hand against scanty practice. Whither one of them went, an hour or two later, may possibly be discovered at no distant period of this narration.
There were stormy times, that night, in the chamber of connubial bliss occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame; and poor Caudle, belabored as he was in the imaginative mind of Douglas Jerrold, never suffered as much in one hour as on that occasion did the ex-contractor, ex-Alderman and ex-purveyor of mettled steeds for the United States cavalry service. Shoddy was in an ill-humor, and Shoddy had a right to be in an ill-humor. Every thing had gone wrong, specially and collectively, from the moment of their entering those fatal mountains. Mishap the first: Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame had fainted and been called "Bridget," before company. Mishap the second: Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame had overeaten himself and come near to leaving the whole family in mourning as loud as his own wails. Mishap the third: Master Brooks Brooks had badgered the bears, in plain sight of all, caused a serious accident, and been visited, both loudly and silently, with objurgations not pleasant to remember. Mishap the fourth: Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame had been herself badgered, worse than the bears, by an irreverent scamp who threw discredit at once upon her foreign travels and her geography. Mishap the fifth: Master Brooks Brooks had tumbled into the Pool, been nearly drowned, and come out a limp rag requiring some washing and several hours wringing before recovering its original consistency. Mishap the sixth: Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, in the agitation of that serious accident, had called the dear boy by a name, that of "Patsey," which would be likely to stick to him, in taunting mouths, during his whole stay at the Profile. Mishap the seventh: Mr. Brooks Cunninghame had fallen in, that day, with the before-mentioned certain stage-drivers, who consented to drink brandy, wine and punch at his expense, enticing him thereafter into low stories of the days when he drove a horse and cart about town, and leaving him eventually in a state of fuddle amusing to their hard heads and harder hearts but by no means conducive to his standing in fashionable watering-place society. Mishap the eighth: Miss Marianna Brooks Cunninghame had passed two evenings in the parlor and one day among the guests in their rides and walks, bedizened in successive fineries of the most enticing order; and not one person had desired the honor of her acquaintance out of doors, asked her to dance in the parlor, or paid her any more attention than might have been bestowed upon a very ungraceful lay-figure carried around for the showing off of modes and millinery.
All this in thirty hours; and all this was certainly enough to disturb more equable pulses than those which beat under the coarse red skin of Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame.
And when, that night while the moon was high in heaven and nearly all the guests had left parlor and piazza to silence after such an eventful day—while poor Marianna in her chamber wept over the cruel neglect which had made mockery of all her rosy anticipations, and Master Brooks Brooks moaned out at her side his petulant complaints born of ill-breeding, fright and weakness,—when Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame opened upon her not-yet-sobered husband the battery of her tongue, and accused him of being the author of all the mishaps before named, those with which he had nothing to do quite as much as those in which he had been really instrumental,—then and there, for the moment, the Nemesis of the outraged republic was duly asserting the power delegated to her by the gods, and Shoddy, in the person of one of its humblest representatives, was undergoing a slight foretaste of that eternal torture to be hereafter enforced.
Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, on that occasion, declared her intention of not remaining another day among "such low people," and she further intimated to Mr. Brooks Cunninghame that if he did not learn to behave himself in a manner more becoming to his high position (or at least the high position of his wife and children!) she would "take him home at once and never bring him out agin into respectable society while her head was warrum."
At the end of which exordium the berated husband not unnaturally remarked, in a brogue nearly as broad as it had ever been:
"And fwhat the divil did ye come trapesin here for at all at all? Ye'd be doin' well enough at home, if ye'd only sthay there, Bridget—I mane Julia. Ye'r no more fit to be kapin company wid dhe quality, nor meself; and I'm as much out of place here as a pig 'ud be goin' to mass! Sure Mary Ann 'il niver be gettin' a husband among these people wid dhe turned-up noses, and poor little Pat'll be dhrouned and kilt and murthered intirely! You'd betther be gettin' out of this as soon as ye can, and I'd be savin' me hard-earned money!"
"The money you have cheated for, ye mane, Pat Cunningham," said Mrs. Brooks, who when alone with the object of her devoted affection and in a temper the reverse of amiable, could unveil some of the household skeletons of language and history quite as readily as he. "Pretty things them was that ye sold for horses to the government! and there's a good dale of the money ye made when ye was Alderman, that they'd send ye to the State Prison for if they knowed all about it!"
"Thrue for ye, Bridget!—and who but yer oogly self put the worst o' thim things into me head, dinnin' at me o' nights when ye ought to been aslape?—answer me that, will ye? And now ye'r sthruttin' like a peacock wid dhe money I made to plase ye, and divil the bit can ye kape a civil tongue between yer lanthern jaws. Take that and be hanged" [or some other word] "to ye, Bridget Cunningham!"
"Pat Cunningham, ye'r a coarse, miserable brute—a low Irishman, and money can't make any thing else out of ye! Away from this we go to-morrow morning, mind that, before ye'r drunk again with yer low stage-drivers and thim fellers."
A snore was the only reply. Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame had secured the last word, according to her usual habit; but she had only done so at the expense of not having her rejoinder heard by the ears for which it was intended.
The lady kept her word, in the one important particular. Those who shared in the early breakfast of the next morning, before the starting of the stages, had the pleasure of seeing the whole family at table all bedizened for the road—Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame red-faced, stately and snappish; Miss Marianna subdued and unhappy, with red rings around her eyes, as if she had been crying all night; Mr. Brooks Cunninghame with his coarse face yet coarser than usual and his eyes suggestive of a late fuddle, piling away beef-steaks, eggs and biscuits into the human mill, as if he had some doubts of ever reaching another place where they could be procured to the same advantage; and Master Brooks Brooks, the freckles showing worse than ever on his pale and sickly-looking face, whining between every two mouthfuls, and vociferating: "Mommy, mommy, I've got a pain!" and, "Mommy, mommy, I tell you I want some more o' them are taters and gravy!"
They were pleasant company at the meal, very!—as they had been at all previous times when beaming on the horizon of other travellers, and as people out of place always prove to be to those who surround them! But the meal came to an end, the trunks that held the remaining finery of the two ladies were safely stowed, the stage-drivers bellowed: "All aboard!" and the three more precious members of the Brooks Cunninghame family were stowed within the coach without personally causing more than ten minutes of hindrance, while Mr. Brooks Cunninghame himself, with a bad cigar in mouth and a surreptitiously-obtained bottle of raw whiskey in the pocket of his duster, occupied a seat on the top and felt, for the time, almost as happy as he had once done when surmounting his loaded dirt-cart.
So Shoddy, or that particular manifestation of it, at least, rolled away from the Profile House. Whither, is no matter of consequence, for the incidental connection of the Brooks Cunninghames with this veracious history is concluded with the exit of that morning. But let no one suppose that the travelling world was thereafter rid of them, or of others to whom they only supply a type and index, during the remainder of the summer. For did not some of us meet them at Niagara later in the season, resident at the Clifton as the most aristocratic (because on monarchical ground) of all the houses, Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame a little more querulous and redder in the face than when at the Notch; Mr. Brooks Cunninghame a little trembly, as if whiskey and idleness were beginning to tell upon his system; Miss Marianna still un-cavaliered and hopelessly unexpectant in the wreck of her silks, laces, and jewelry; and Master Brooks Brooks pulling the curtains and drumming on the keys of the piano with his unwashed fingers, pending his greater opportunity to frighten a pair of horses into plunging over the bank, or to relieve the future of a dreary prospect by himself falling off Table Hock?
There was another departure from the Profile House the same morning. Whether the event of the night before had done anything to bring about that consummation, or whether previous arrangements and the pressure of time dictated such a movement—Halstead Rowan and the two friends in his company were among the passengers by one of the coaches that went through to the Crawford, bearing such as contemplated an immediate ascent of Mount Washington from that direction. It may be the pleasant duty of writer and reader to overtake them at the Crawford, at a very early period. Nothing more can now be said of the situation in which the Vanderlyn imbroglio and the Townsend friendship were left, than that the departing man saw nothing of the lawyer after they parted on the evening previous, and that his early stage rolled away long before the luxurious Vanderlyns were likely to have opened their eyes at the summons of the first gong rolling through the corridors to awaken them for the regular breakfast.
It was nearly noon of that morning of the departures—a cloudless, glorious morning, the sun just warming the chill of the Notch to a pleasant May air, and not a fleck of mist to dim the view of the peaks on the very extreme verge of the line of vision, when Horace Townsend strolled down the half mile of road northward from the Profile, to Echo Lake, intent upon entering on those mysteries which specially belong to that haunted little sheet of water—the mysteries of the boat, the horn, and the cannon. He was alone, as he had been from the first moment of his coming to the Notch, except as the newly-formed intimacy between Halstead Rowan and himself had temporarily drawn them together. He seemed to have formed no other new acquaintance, but that was to be, perhaps, formal and distant; and there was no certainty that the incident would not add to rather than take away from any feeling of positive loneliness which had before oppressed him.
As he turned down the by-road shooting sharply away to the right, with the Lake glimmering silver in the sunlight through the trees, there was a great crash of sound, a deafening reverberation from the rocks of Eagle Cliff, hanging immediately over the Lake, a fainter following, and then another and another, dying away among the far-off hills in the infinite variety of the highland echo. There were already visitors at the Lake; and the factotum who blended the triple characters of keeper, guide, and boatman, had been discharging the little old cannon on the wharf, as a crowning proof to some party with whom he was just finishing, of the capacity of his lake for dwarfing all the travelled ones' recollections of Killarney and the Echo Rocks of Superior.
Such was indeed the fact, and as the lawyer emerged upon the Lake immediately at the wharf, he met the party who had "done" the Lake strolling away, while the boatman was re-arming himself with his long horn, and beginning to turn his attention to certain new-comers, a part of whom had already taken their seats in the big paddle-wheeled boat of which the steam was to be supplied by cranks and hand-labor, for a trip around the pond with the dignified name, and a new development of the capacities of echo. He had indeed dropped the stipendiary sum in currency into the hand of the factotum, and was about stepping into the boat to join the party already miscellaneous, before he discovered that any acquaintance was numbered among them. When he did so, for one instant he hesitated as if about to defer his trip, then muttered below his breath the few words: "No!—I must take my chances—now as well as ever!" stepped in from the little wharf and took one of the few empty seats remaining near the stern of the boat. He sat looking backward, and he was consequently brought face to face with the three occupants of the stern seat, who were necessarily looking forward. Perhaps his fate was upon that stern seat, for its three occupants were Mrs. Burton Hayley, her daughter, and Captain Hector Coles.
Margaret Hayley paled a little, then flushed the least in the world and finally smiled a proud but pleasant smile and returned a nod and a "good-morning," in response to Townsend's comprehensive bow and salutation, which were intended to take in all three. Captain Hector Coles sat bolt upright, as if he had been riding his horse on parade, and moved no inch from his perpendicular as he returned the greeting in so formal a voice that it constituted no recognition whatever; and Mrs. Burton Hayley, to whom the lawyer had not been introduced, had some excuse for the supercilious but puzzled stare with which she honored him. The young girl saw the glance, and remembered the position.
"Oh, ma, I forgot," she said, introducing. "Mr. Townsend, of Cincinnati, whose acquaintance I made yesterday when he saved the poor little boy from drowning, at the Pool."
Her eyes were fixed very closely upon the face of Townsend as she said these words, and so were those of Captain Hector Coles. If either saw, or thought that they saw, a momentary red flush pass over the dark countenance, coming as quickly and fading as rapidly as one of the flashes of the Northern Lights,—did they see any corroboration of the suspicions of the evening before, or was that flush merely the natural expression of a sensitive man whose good deeds were mentioned in his presence?
Mrs. Burton Hayley nodded, as she could not avoid doing under such circumstances, but there was very little cordiality in the nod; and there was something quite as lofty and uncongenial in the manner of the words with which she accompanied it:
"I remember hearing my daughter speak of Mr. Townsend's having been made the means, under Providence, of preventing an accident."
The ostentatious Bible yet lay upon its carved stand, oh, Mrs. Burton Hayley, did it not!
No farther conversation followed at that moment, though there may have been one, and mayhap two, in that mixed boat-load of fifteen or twenty, who would have been glad to pursue it under more favorable auspices. Certain it is that the lawyer kept his gaze upon the proudly sweet face of Margaret Hayley, quite as steadily as propriety would by any means allow, and that her face answered back something more of interest, under the shade of her wide leghorn jockey, than either of her immediate companions might have been pleased to see. She was interested in her new acquaintance, beyond a question: was she something more? Answer the question—oh, heart of woman!—could it be possible that the by-gone love, once so truly a part of her very being, had already so faded, in one short month, that a feeling warmer than friendship could centre around a mere stranger of two days' beholding? Was that "ideal," once believed to have been found, then lost again, presenting itself in another and still more enticing shape, to make constancy a myth and womanly truth a by-word? Small data, as yet, from which to judge; but stranger things than this have chanced in the rolling years, and the faith of humanity still survived them!
Out on the Lake by this time the burlesque upon a steamboat had floated, and the sheet of water lay under as well as around the passengers—perhaps a quarter of a mile in width and a mile in length, shut in on the side of approach by the woods, and beyond on all sides by the eternal hills. Never was silver jewel dotting the green bosom of nature more beautiful—never one more sweetly nestled away near the very heart of its mountain nurse. The proverbial winds of the Notch for once were still, and only a gentle ripple stirred the glassy surface here and there as a breath touched it like the skimming wing of a wild bird. The meridian sun lay lovingly on the side and crest of the mountain rising eastward from the edge of the water, touching its bald, scarred brow with ruddy gold; and if the first on the cliffs nodded at times, they nodded sleepily with the very expression of repose. Spirit of calm, delicious quiet!—was there ever a spot more truly sacred to thee, than Echo Lake at such moments, when a few gentle, loving hearts, close bound to each other and shut in from the world, are beating with slow pulses as the life and centre of the great mystery of nature? Other boat-loads than that of this July noon, have grown quiet beneath such a feeling, as the boatman ceased his paddling, the boat drifted lazily on, lips grew silent, eyes closed, and human thought floated away on a very sea of dreams.
They had swept over, in rapt silence for the last few moments, until they lay beneath the very brow of the eastern mountain. Then that silence was broken by the boatman rising from his seat and blowing a long, steady blast on his six-foot tin horn, in size and shape like those used on the Western canals, but sadly dinted by careless use and frequent falling. The company were reminded, then, that they were floating on Echo Lake and no stream of the land of faerie. The long, low note died on the car, and an appreciable instant of silence followed. Then it came back from the brow of the mountain above, a little louder than before, and yet a little mellowed by distance. Another instant, and the same sound reverberated from the opposite hill, the back of Eagle Cliff. Were there still more echoes to be added to the two that had already made the place notable? Yes, a third came back from the range that sloped away from the head of the Lake, northward—a little fainter, and broken now; and then the more distant hills caught the sound, as if each had a right, which it jealously claimed, to some portion of that greeting from the human breath; and far as the eye could trace the blue peaks rising behind each other through the gaps beyond, the ear could catch a corresponding reverberation, fainter—fainter—fainter,—till it died away in a drowsy murmur and silence followed. Then the horn passed from hand to hand and from mouth to mouth, some of the gallants perhaps forming kisses of the touch of red lips which had preceded theirs; and some blew round, full strains that awakened admiration, and some made but a melancholy whistle which excited merry laughter. Among the many experiments tried upon that horn, there must have been some horrid discords startling the Dryads in the wooded shades up the mountain, where the gazers sometimes seemed to see the echo leaping from cliff to cliff and from bough to bough. But they soon came willingly back to the practised notes of the boatman; and some of the party shut their eyes and dreamed, as his quick, sharp peals rang merrily up among the hills,—of noble lord and gentle lady, hunting in the days of old, and of the bugle blasts of outlaws sounding through gloomy Ardennes or merry Sherwood. Anon he would end his strain with a long, low falling note, and they heard some old cathedral hymn wailing through solemn arches and bending the spirit to reverence and prayer. But through all that succession of sounds the hard, dry, practical, exigeant Present was rolled away and the romantic, easy Past stood in its stead; so easily does the mind, like the body, cast off its burthen, whenever permitted, and lie down, if only for a moment, upon the lap of indolence!
Scarcely a word had been spoken, in the boat, for some minutes, under the influence of that spell of the hour. But the normal condition of humanity, when awake, is to keep the tongue in motion; and not even the spell of Echo Lake could keep that busy member still beyond the customary period. Comparisons of other echoes, in our own and other lands, were made, and as the boatman rowed on to complete the circuit of the Lake, the conversation became nearly general.
"Echo Lake looks very smiling and quiet to-day," said one of the company—the same old habitue of the mountains who had commenced the conversation the day before with Halstead Rowan, at the Pool. "But I have seen it look very differently, sometimes when a gale came roaring and singing up through the Notch, and the saucy little thing got a black frown upon its face, reflected from the leaden sky and the wind-tossed trees up yonder. Echo is blown away, at such times, as any one would be who dared the perils of this sea of limited dimensions; and you would be surprised to know how hard the wind can blow just here, and what little, tumbling, dangerous waves of rage the dwarf can kick up, trying to make an ocean of itself."
"The most singular view that I ever had of it," said another, "I caught half way up the Cannon Mountain one afternoon. It looked like a wash-bowl, and I had a fancy that I could toss a piece of soap into it from where I stood! But I knew that it must be Echo Lake, for somebody was blowing a horn; and I believe there has never been an hour of daylight, since creation, when a horn has not been blowing somewhere in the neighborhood."
"There is one more point of view in which to see it," said Horace Townsend, who had not before joined at any length in the conversation. "I mean by moonlight, for any one who is part night-hawk."
"Ah, have you seen it so?" asked the last speaker, with interest.
"Yes—last night," answered the lawyer.
"As often as I have been here," said the first old habitue, "I have never come down to see it by moonlight. What is it like?"
"Like something that I cannot very well describe," was the answer. "You had better all come down and see it for yourselves, before you leave the Notch."
"Still, you can give us some idea," pursued the old gentleman.
Horace Townsend hesitated and was silent for a moment, when Margaret Hayley said, her eyes just then fixed full upon his: "I think you can, Mr. Townsend, if I am not mistaken in the voice that I heard speaking for the Old Man of the Mountain, by the same moonlight, not many evenings ago."
The dusky cheek of the lawyer was full of red blood in an instant. He had been overheard, then, in his half-mad rhapsody to Rowan and himself. And she had heard him, of all women!—she had spoken with such frankness, not to say boldness, and that frankness appreciation at least, if not admiration! He might have uttered something more about "taking his chances" then, and had full warrant for the self-gratulation!
"I do not suppose that I can tell you either what I saw or felt," said Townsend, when that momentary flush had died away a little from his face. "I will try, however. I had been rolling ten-pins till past eleven, and it must have been midnight when I strolled down towards the Lake. I was in hopes that I should find no one here, for I wished to see it alone as well as by moonlight; and I had my wish. I saw no one and heard no one, on my way to the Lake or while here; and I do not suppose that any foot but my own pressed the damp green velvet that bordered the edge, or that any eye except my own and the All-seeing one that looks down over all the world at all midnights, saw the placid sheet lying in its solemn repose, with the shadows of the great cliff yonder reflected on its bosom, and here and there a little ripple as a puff of wind sighed through the branches, kissed the silver surface and passed over."
The eyes of the speaker were full of humid light as he spoke, and at least one of the company marked the influence which seemed to be upon him—a mood of high imagination, sometimes seen in the ardent lovers of nature when revelling in their chosen study, and though less dangerous not less decided than the madness which habitually fell upon Saul. There was something fascinating in it, to all who saw and heard, even to those who held an intuitive dislike to the seer: what must the fascination have been to Margaret Hayley, who remembered one so unlike in personal appearance and yet so like in voice and apparently in habits of mind, loving nature so intently and describing it with the same fervor, while his love for her made a sacred undertone to all and completed the charm of look and word!
The lawyer needed no further urging, but went on:
"The little dock there, with the boats moored beside it, and the hut where our friend here keeps his horn and cannon,—all lay in a melancholy quiet which struck me like death—as if those who frequented them had gone away at some nightfall years ago, like the workmen who left their trowels in the mortar of unfinished Pompeii on the morning of its destruction,—never to return again and yet ever to be waited for, while the earth kept its course in the heavens. I was alone, and I suppose that imagination ran riot with me and made me partially a maniac. The hush was so awful that I dared not break it, even by a loud breath. I saw the Indians there, under yon sweeping trees to the left, whose branches bend down and almost kiss the water—saw an Indian canoe lying there, faces within it smeared with war-paint and the pointed arrow ready to twang from the bow-string. I expected to hear the war-whoop every instant—expected it, perhaps not in my human mind but in that other and more powerful mind for which we are none of us quite responsible. Then I saw—yes, I was sure that I saw the dusky shadow of a robber flitting along from pine to pine, far up on the side of the cliff there, silent and dangerous as death, and ready to drop down on the first living thing that passed beneath him. Then I saw fiery eyes through the branches, and thought that the panther and the catamount that lurked in these tangled woods two hundred years ago, divided possession once more with the Indians and were prowling about for some late banquet. I do not think that it was fear that I felt, for I would not have gone away if I could, any more than I could have gone away if I would; but it appeared to be the very silent haunt of nature in her hour of rest, wherewith nothing but the wild and the savage had any business; and it seemed impossible to throw aside the idea that even the tread of a civilized foot must be a sacrilege that only life could atone. Then there was a sudden plunge from the bushes into the water, a few yards up the bank, and a ripple following some large dark object swimming away towards the other shore. This was more real, and the feeling of awe began to pass away, for I knew that the swimmer must be a water-rat or otter that had been paying a midnight visit like myself and was now going homeward by the cool and refreshing marine route. That was the first noise I had heard, but others followed, for an owl began to hoot over yonder in the bushes and a young eagle—I suppose it must have been a young eagle—indulged in a scream from the top of the Cliff, where I believe he has a habit of nesting. Then the supernatural and the imaginative rolled away after they had held me an hour or two, and I was simply alone at two o'clock or a little later, beside Echo Lake, only half a mile from the bed that had been all that time waiting for me. I took the warning of the night-owl and the eagle, who no doubt intended to order me off as an intruder, and strolled back to the house. That is all, and perhaps quite enough of such rambling nonsense as it is!"
"Rambling nonsense?" Whatever the other members of the company may have thought, evidently Margaret Hayley did not so regard it as she leaned anxiously forward, the presence of others apparently forgotten, her eyes fascinated in a sort of strange wonder by something in the face of the speaker, while her mind seemed not less singularly under the control of the utterance itself.
Five minutes afterwards the parody on a steamboat touched the little wharf again and the company disembarked. Five minutes after that secondary period they separated from the close communion into which they had been transiently thrown during the preceding half-hour, many of them never to meet again in the same familiarity of intercourse, and perhaps some of them, though as yet inmates of the same abode, never to see each other's faces again in life! Such are the meetings and the partings of summer travel and watering-place existence, to which the nameless rhymer no less truly than touchingly referred when he spoke of those friendships quickly made and as quickly broken:
"——In hostels free to all commands
Save penury's and pity's;—
"In common rooms, where all have right
To tread with little heed or warning,
And where the guests of overnight
Are gone at early morning;—
"By tables where we sit at meat—
Sit, with our food almost untasted
Because we find some vacant seat
From which a friend has hasted;—
"In parlors where at eve we sit,
Among the music and the dancing,
And miss some lip of genial wit,
Some bright eye kindly glancing.
"————the haunted chambers left,
That almost choke us as we ponder,
And leave us quite as much bereft
As dearer ties and fonder."