As Finnock preferred Miss Stelway to the wine, we left the table with the ladies, and going up on deck I excused myself for my siesta.
As I turned over to the cool side of my pillow, and slid back the shutter to get the river breeze, I murmured as I dozed off:
“If little Sappho won’t get in earnest I’ll make love to her, just for the fun of it.”
Late in the afternoon we all met again on deck, and, to my surprise, Mr. Marshman was by Mrs. Marshman’s side, full of smiles and urbanity. I could not help thinking of Themistocles’ chain of government.
Miss Finnock was unusually sentimental, and her style of conversation was a continual flow of heroic verse, with all the necessary inversions and syncope. She said that the river flashed its wavelet eyes beneath the sunset’s golden veil, that the mountains donned their purpled robes, their bald, bare summits, glory crowned: that the houses nestled ‘long the shore like white ducks resting from their sport; the steamboats puffed like wearied beasts, the sail boats glided, graceful swans; and I have no doubt she would have gone on to personalities about her lonely heart and mine, had not her brother called her to Miss Stelway.
As they had to spend a day in Albany, we parted there with many promises to renew our acquaintance at the Springs. The next day found me with good rooms at the Union Hotel, Saratoga. As I did not know a single person there, I found it, of course, very dull, and spent the day sauntering around to look at the various objects of interest. That night there was a ball at the Union, but there was such a press in the ball room that I might as well have been in the Mammoth Cave without a light, for all I could see.
I retired early, leaving directions to the servant to call me soon in the morning.
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
The sun had not been up long when I reached the spring, and found the little boys already busy with their long-handled dippers. I gulped down a glass of the water, which is a bad mixture of soda and Epsom salts, and was strolling over the grounds, thinking how pleasant ‘twould be to have even little Miss Finnock along with me, when the rattling of the circular railway caught my ear and I walked towards it. A gentleman and lady were riding in the car, who riveted my attention at once. The gentleman was strikingly handsome. A snow white Panama hat, whose flexible brim, bending up before the current of air, showed a high, white forehead, and black eyes so piercing in their glance that I involuntarily shrank back as they whirled past me. A very heavy moustache, parted in the middle, fell on each side of his lip like a stream of ink; a graceful, massive frame, yet a small hand turning the crank of the car and a small foot with high instep rested on the edge. This much I saw as they rattled by, and strange to say, so full of admiration was I for the man that it was not till they were coming around again that I noticed the lady, who was much the handsomer of the two. She was clad in a blue morning robe, whose ample folds floated gracefully out from the side of the car. One tiny gloved hand rested playfully on the flying crank, while the other held in her lap the broad straw hat she had taken off. Her eyes were as black as her companion’s, but were soft and gentle in their expression; her hair, superbly massive in its loose folds, was as black as a raven’s wing, and fell in wavy profusion far below her waist. These were the general outlines of her features, for I could not see her face distinctly, so swift was the speed of the car. But even that glimpse had thrilled me, and an indefinable something in the face seemed to speak familiarly to my heart, and awaken wild, vague visions of something forgotten—perhaps the memories of previous existence, as Plato calls them.