"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."
CHAPTER XVI.
Cloud and Storm at the Profile—Sights and Sensations of a Rainy-day Ride to the Crawford—Horace Townsend and Halstead Rowan once more together—Unexpected Arrivals—A Cavalcade of Miserables—An Ascent of Mount Washington, with Equestrianism and War-whoops Extraordinary.
Calms at sea are not more proverbially treacherous than pleasant mornings in the mountains; and long before that day closed which had opened so auspiciously, the heavy clouds came driving up through the Notch with the south-east wind. By nightfall a storm was inaugurated. Thenceforward, for two days, excursions to the Cannon, to Bald Mountain, to Mount Lafayette, or to any other of the points of scenery so plentiful in the Franconia Notch, and in which excursions all the visitors, however slightly acquainted, are more or less closely thrown into speaking intercourse with each other,—were things to be thought of but not attempted. The stages came in with smoking horses and moisture dripping alike from the hat of the driver and the boot of the coach; but few passengers arrived or departed. The bears walked sullenly their little round, or retired periodically to winter quarters in their narrow kennels. The valleys were filled with driving mist, varied by heavy down-pouring rain, and the mountains hid themselves sullenly from view, so that sometimes not even the brow of Eagle Cliff, hanging immediately over the house, could be distinguished through the dense clouds that swept down to the very roofs. Fires became prevalent, and those so fortunate as to possess rooms where the birchen wood could be set ablaze, remained closely sequestered there, dozing, or playing cards or backgammon, or once more turning over the leaves of books from which all the novelty had long before been extracted. Desultory groups met at meals, even the eaters coming down sluggishly. Some of the men patronized the billiard-room or the bowling-alley, but they rarely found lady partners or spectators, as in sunnier days. Even the hops in the parlor at evening were thinly attended, the weather seeming to have affected alike the nerves and muscles provocative of dancing, and the strings of the harp, violin and piano. Those who happened to possess copies of "Bleak House," and who remembered the marvellous phenomena of rainy weather existing at a certain time in and about the domain of Sir Leicester Dedlock, read the description over again and thought that nothing could be more beautifully applicable to the experience of storm-stayed sight-seers at a caravanserai among the mountains.
During those two days of storm and sluggishness, Horace Townsend, merely an excursion acquaintance of the Hayleys and Captain Hector Coles, and not such an intimate as would be likely to be invited to backgammon or chat in one of their private rooms,—never once met Margaret Hayley more nearly than within bowing distance when passing in or out of the dining-room or the parlor. One or both may have desired to continue the acquaintance without quite so much of distant familiarity; but if so, one or both knew the antagonistic influences surrounding them and did not think proper to raise an arm for buffeting the waves of separation.