"Stop in on your way to the dining-car," called Minga.
CHAPTER VII
THE ORGAN BUILDER'S HOUSE
The Hudson River has not only the opulence that Washington Irving portrayed, not only the swelling of soft hills and majesty of toppling mountains and slopes that spell fecundity of farmland but it has, along palisade and headland, another opulence. Under those mountains that throw down thunder-storms, and along the rocky walls climbed by winding roads magnificent homes testify to the imperialism that has not yet been cleansed from the heart of man. The instinct for choosing imposing sites for impressive homes would be difficult to trace to its beginning. Robber barons built their castles inaccessibly for very good reasons; the prelates' palaces were on the hills that all might see and be reminded of Mother Church. The Roman Roads, unlike the furtive sunken roads of the cavemen, were built high because of fearlessness and pride. But the American who builds his home, or one of his homes, on the Hudson does not do so just because he longs to feast his eyes on sumptuous natural terrace and broad natural waterway; he does so because in his instinctive choice of surroundings, he selects an expressive background for his own dignity and his own importance.
All night long the great steamers of the Hudson River glide majestically up and down, the long white fingers of their search-lights pointing to this and that lordly residence. The Oil King, the Copper King, the Pill King, and the Shoe King, whose white palaces and miles of stocked and fruited domain are gated and avenued away from the public, are silently indicated to such humble travelers as care to look. One can hardly travel the Hudson River nowadays and worship the great Creator, for the great Creator is a little overshadowed by the aforesaid King of Commerce, the great Producer. But in spite of the sleepiness and lethargic atmosphere that the Dutch traditions have strangely imparted to the strings of villages, there are in certain moods superb freedoms and freshnesses along the Hudson. There are still spiritual emphasis and quests along red sandstone shores, where the green hemlocks gather. The sunrises in the Westchester Hills are like black tents with banners streaming. The waters of the Tappan Zee are then a great glittering field of cloth of gold, and at sunset when the houses on the Irvington Hills are all ablaze with sunstruck window glass, the bold, black breasts of Palisades and Hook Mountain front the river like African slaves guarding some inner mystery of valley, some clean, unspoiled fastness of forest and field and stream.
To a man who sat at his table in a bleak old wooden house high up on the western range, these night and morning scenes spelled only two things, the Human Will, as yet absorbed only in the passions of an aggressive aggrandizement, and the proud subservience of nature to the little schemes of men. Nature, lying down like a great beast of destiny, to let the little shapes and enterprises swarm and crowd over her! "Only," thought Watts Shipman, "only when the great beast starts to rise and take new positions, look out then, little shapes. Either you will be raised on some great mountain of Nature's mysterious changes or you will slip into some new uncharted sea or who knows, you may spill altogether out of the world!"
It was this wistful attitude toward nature, the great mystery, the great Book of Worship and Wonder that had taken Watts Shipman from his clubs and cliques and corporations, away from success and "putting it over" and their accompanying shiftiness and meanness, and had taken him for the season of a summer into the country, to think.
Yes, just that—"to think," was what he replied to complaining letters and telegrams—"Watts, what are you doing, stuck up there on the rim of nowhere?" His confrères laughed at the curt answer "Thinking." For a lawyer so able, so successful, there could be no comment of "queer" or "crazy"; Watts' partners shrugged their shoulders and went on with the business which, as he had denied them telephone access, they had sometimes to refer to him by long night letters. "Drat your thinking," writes the senior partner, "don't I think?" To which came the teasing telegram by code, "You don't think, you calculate."