It was a desultory supper and a somewhat hurried one, for the moonrise was coming—that rise of the full moon which so many had promised themselves, and for which, indeed, not a few of the arrivals of that evening had timed their visit to the mountains. Then, hunger has but little curiosity, and surveys and recognitions were both waited for until the broader light and greater leisure of the morning; and probably of the dozens of old residents (a week is "old residence" at a watering-place, be it remembered, and a fortnight confers all the privileges of the habitue)—probably of the dozens of old residents and new-comers who had acquaintances among the opposite class, not two found time or thought for seeking out familiar faces during that period when the sharpened appetite was so notably in the ascendant.
"The moonlight is coming: come out, all of you who care more for scenery than stuffing!" said a high, shrill voice, after a time had elapsed which would scarcely have begun the meal under ordinary circumstances. It was an elderly man with white hair and white side-whiskers, an old habitue of the house and therefore a privileged character, who spoke, pulling out his watch and at once rising from his seat. He was followed by more than half those at table, and would have been followed especially by Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame, who had somewhere learned that fashion and a rage for moonlight had a mysterious connection,—but for the insatiable hunger of Mr. Brooks Cunninghame himself, who was engaged in mortal combat with a formidable piece of steak and a whole pile of biscuits, and who outraged Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame by declaring, sotto voce, that "he'd be something-or-othered if he'd lave his supper until he was done, for any moonlight or other something-or-othered thing in the wurruld!"—and the obstreperousness of Master Brooks Brooks Cunninghame, who was up to his eyes in three kinds of preserves and bade fair to stick permanently fast to the table through the agency of those glutinous compounds.
Out on the piazza and the broad plateau in front of it, the visitors at the Profile gathered, to see what is not often vouchsafed to the most devoted of nature-lovers—the rising of the full moon in the mountains. Those who are familiar with the Franconia Notch well know how the mountains around the Profile always seem to draw closer after sunset, and how the frowning cliffs seem to form insurmountable barriers between them and the outer world, making it doubtful to the bewildered thought whether there is indeed any egress from that cool paradise of summer—whether or not they can ride away at will and look again upon green fields and flashing streams and the faces of those they love. And they well know that moonrise there, over those encircling cliffs, is not the moonrise of the lower country, with the orb throwing its broad beams of light at once wide over the world, but an actual peeping down from heaven of a fair and genial spirit that deigns for the time to pour welcome radiance into an abode of solitude and darkness. The spectacle, then, is one to be sought and remembered; and as storms habitually beat around those mountain tops and fog and mist quite divide the time with fair weather in the valleys, the tourist is mad or emotionless who allows the cloudless full moon to come up without catching its smile on cheek and brow.
The intense blue of the eastern sky was already gone when the anxious groups clustered in front of the great white caravanserai, and the stars began to glimmer paler in that direction. There was not a fleck of cloud, not a shadow of mist, to prevent the rounded orb, when it came up, flooding the whole gorge with the purest of liquid silver. The winds were still as if they waited with finger on lip for the pageant; and the shrill scream of a young eagle that broke out for an instant from one of the eyries under the brow of Eagle Cliff and then died trembling away down the valley, seemed like profanation. Conversation was hushed, among all that varying and even discordant crowd, as if there might be power in a profane word to check the wheeling of the courses of nature. The orient began to be flushed with that trembling light, and glints of it touched the dark pines on the brow of the cliff, a mile away. Then that light beyond the cliffs deepened and the dark pines grew still darker as fully relieved against it. Then at last, as they watched with hushed breath, a rim of silver seemed suddenly to have been set as an arch on the very brow of the mountain, and slowly the full orb rolled into view. As it heaved up, a broad, full circle of glittering and apparently dripping silver, it threw out the trees on the brow of the mountain into such bold relief as if a lightning flash had literally been burning behind them. There was one giant old pine, no doubt an hundred feet in height, so far away on the bold crest of Eagle Cliff that it seemed to be only a toy tree of three inches; and this was thrown against the very centre of the moon, every gnarled limb and pendant branch as plain to the eye as if it hung within a stone's throw, a dead pigmy of the same family shooting up its ragged point not far distant, and a tangled wilderness of broken trees and scraggy branches filling the remainder of the circle. Then, the moment after, the moon heaved slowly up beyond the trees, they fell back into darkness, and the broad glow streamed full into the faces of the gazers and flooded the whole valley with light. The great spectacle of the month had been exhibited to hundreds of admiring eyes, and the full moon of July shed its broad glory like a blessing upon the Franconia.
It was at the moment when the pageant was just concluding and exclamations of pleasure breaking from a hundred lips, that "H. T." (who has not as yet furnished us data for any fuller revelation of his name), standing at some distance out on the plateau from the piazza, and stepping suddenly backward to observe a particular effect of the light among the trees on the cliff, trod upon the foot of a lady immediately behind him and nearly overthrew her. He turned immediately, with a word of apology, at the same time that a gentleman near her, who seemed to be in her immediate company, sprang to prevent her possible fall, venting meanwhile on the presumed awkwardness of the aggressor a word of ill-disguised petulance:—
"You should be a little more careful, sir, I think, how you step upon ladies' feet and risk hurting them seriously."
"I beg a thousand pardons!" was the reply. "Certainly I did not know that there was a lady immediately behind me, and—"
The lady gave a sudden start, caught a quick glance at the speaker, and then recovered her equanimity so suddenly that perhaps not two of all the company observed the momentary agitation; while the gentleman interrupted the attempted apology, not too politely, with—
"Is your foot much injured, Miss Hayley?"
The answer made by the lady was in the negative, and in a tone that, though it trembled a little, proved her less petulant than her companion. But it is possible that "H. T.," as he has been known, did not pay that answer any attention whatever. As he turned he must certainly have seen the lady more or less distinctly in the moonlight, and yet had manifested no surprise at what he saw; but when the name was mentioned he gave a start that must have been noticeable by any acute observer. Had he really not noticed her before his attention was called by the mention of the name? or was the face one which he did not recognize while the name bore a talisman that commanded all his interest? Certain it is that he saw the lady now, distinctly; and equally certain is it that the face was the same which has met the gaze of the reader, a month before, on the piazza of the house at West Philadelphia.