It yet wanted half an hour to noon, and Mount Washington towered full before them as they came out on the top of Franklin, by the little Lake of the Clouds which lay so saucily smiling to the sun and coquetting with the mists. The peak, a huge mass of broken and naked stone, half a mile up on every side and so sheer in pitch that foot-hold seemed hopeless, would have looked totally discouraging but for the white line of path which, winding around it on the north-west, showed that it must before have been achieved.
Up—up—over broken and slipping stones of every size and description, from the dimensions of a brick-bat to those of a dining-table—stones gray and mossed, without one spoonful of earth to prove that the riders had not surmounted the whole habitable globe and lost themselves in some unnatural wilderness of rock! And feeling joined with sight to enhance the desolate fancy, for though so nearly high noon the wind blew at that dizzy height with the violence of a gale, and the Guernsey wrappers and the clumsy gloves had long before proved that the rough and homely may be more useful than the beautiful.
Two or three hundred yards from the Tip-Top House, the rough stone walls of which were glooming above—the party were dismounted, the horses picketed by the guides, and over the broken stones and yawning fissures the dismounted riders struggled up, strong arms aiding weaker limbs, and much care necessary to prevent heedless steps that might have caused injuries slow of recovery. Up—up, over the little but difficult remaining distance—till all stood by the High Altar on the top of Mount Washington.
Above the clouds, swales of which they saw sweeping by, half way down the mountain—above the earth, its cares and its sorrows, it seemed to them for the moment that they stood; and only those who have made such a pilgrimage can realize the glory of that hour. The mountains of Vermont North-westward, those of Canada North-eastward, those of Massachusetts to the South and the Franconia range full to the West; lakes lying like splashes of molten silver at their feet and rivers fluttering like blue silken ribbons far away; towns nestled in the gorges and hamlets glimmering up from the depths of the ravines; long miles of valleys filled with sunlight, as if the very god of day had stooped down and left them full of the warmth of his loving kiss; peak upon peak rising behind and beyond each other, and each tinted with some new and richer hue, from gold to purple and from sunny green to dark and sombre brown; beyond all, and on the extreme verge of the sight-line to the East, one long low glint of light that told of the far Atlantic breaking in shimmering waves on the rocky coast of Maine; the world so far beneath as to be a myth and an unreality, distance annihilated, and the clear, pure air drank in by the grateful lungs appearing to be a foretaste of that some day to be breathed on the summit of the Eternal Hills,—these were the sights and these the sensations amid which the dark cheek of Horace Townsend seemed touched with a light that did not beam upon it in the valleys below, with his eyes grown humid and utterance choked by intense feeling; while all the heart of glorious womanhood in Clara Vanderlyn fluttered up in the truest worship of that God who had formed the earth so beautiful; and even Halstead Rowan once more forgot pride, poverty, insult, and the physical exuberance which made either endurable, to fold his strong arms in silence, lift the innate reverence of his thoughts to the Eternal and the Inevitable, and vow to submit with childlike faith to all of triumph or humiliation that might be ordained in the future.
CHAPTER XVII.
Horace Townsend with a Lady in Charge—An adventure over the "Gulf of Mexico"—Clara Vanderlyn in deadly peril—A Moment of Horror—Halstead Rowan and a display of the Comanche riding—Townsend's eclipse—The return to the Crawford—Margaret Hayley again, and a Conversation overheard.
It was perhaps two o'clock before the meetings and partings were over between the large party whom we have seen ascending from the Crawford, and the yet greater number who had come up from the Glen House by the belittling novelty of the mountain, the "carriage road,"—before the dinner at the Tip-Top House was discussed, hearty and plentiful enough, if not remarkably varied,—before the guides of the cavalcade had done "chaffing" the carriage drivers from the Glen, whom they seemed to regard very much as "old salts" do "fresh-water sailors,"—before every member of the party had viewed the magnificent scenery from every conceivable point, drank their fill of a beauty that might not be duplicated for years or excelled in a lifetime, and filled pockets and reticules equally full of all the maps and books that could be bought and all the geological specimens that could be picked up, as memorials of the visit. By that hour the warning of the guides was heard, reminding all that there was no more time remaining than would suffice to carry themselves and their tired horses back to the Crawford by nightfall. At once, then, the descent began—supposed, in advance, to be so uneventful and merely a pleasant diminished repetition of the experiences of the ascent.
As they climbed down the broken rocks of the peak to their patiently-waiting horses (they would probably have waited patiently until they dropped with hunger, if by that means the rider and his saddle could have been avoided; for your mountain horse does not find unalloyed pleasure in his occupation!)—when near the "corral," as it may be called, Frank Vanderlyn left his sister for a moment and stepped over to Horace Townsend, who was descending alone, Halstead Rowan (as usual) at some distance ahead and already preparing to mount and away.