“Malaria,” suggested Wemyss.
“There always seems something unreal, impossible about malaria here,” said Arthur. “Malaria is languid, tropical, unsuited to our bleak Northern, Puritan, hard-worked hillsides and meadow bottoms. Consumption, not malaria, is the typical disease.”
“It is only lately creeping into New England,” said Wemyss, dryly. Just then a merry burst of laughter was heard from the front; Arthur looked behind him, but there seemed to be no one speaking. The laugh had been from Miss Duval; she turned around at the same moment, her black eyes sparkling from her rosy face. “Isn’t it delightful?” said she to Arthur. There seemed to be no other reason for her laughing than this; and Arthur laughed in accord with her. It was delightful.
Now they were up in the highlands again, bowling along a hard straight road between the rows of trees. Continually the merry horn was sounded to warn the slow teams ahead to turn aside, or wake the sleepy milkmen, or pedlars in their carts. The sun, across the river, had already set behind the purple mountains; but eastward, to the right, the hills were light.
They entered into a high wood, filled already with gray shadows; along the edge of the road still lay the last year’s leaves, thick-matted, making the sound of the wheels soft. What light there was came from the violet sky above the tree-tops; and against it Kitty Farnum’s profile shone pale and clear-cut. Arthur was humming a German song to himself, and looking at her and wondering about her: what she was, what was her secret of life.
So the night came on them, in the wood. It was evening when they came out of it and rolled along, low by the river-shore; opposite, the great black mass of the Storm King, and beyond it, farther to the north, the mountains sank into a long low line, and above the dark ridge the sky was saffron, and in it hung and trembled one large liquid star, reflected larger and softly in the calm river. And they all looked at these things and were silent.
CHAPTER XX.
THE CHARIOT OF THE CARELESS GODS.
THE coach drew up at the little wharf at Garrison’s, and the party got into the ferry-boat and were carried across the river. The great hotel at West Point had been opened; the waiters were spick and span; the wooden floors were varnished, and slippery like glass. In the hall were two or three pretty girls, overdressed in white tulle dresses, low-necked, with their cavaliers who served for the nonce and their noisy younger brothers. This bright company crowded to the porch, curious, when the carriages drove up; and Arthur heard one of the pretty girls say to another, “It’s the coaching party—from New York.”
They went out and wandered on the cliffs above the river; the beautiful moon-washed mountains stood about them, and below them slept the Hudson with its salt flood, deeper, nobler than any Rhine. But there were no castles here, nor Lorelei; and the sunken gold had long since been robbed from its depths and was circulating in the hands of men.