"A terrible one. I think he must have been a soldier, at some time or other."
"I believe that he has the noblest gift ever conferred by God upon man,—that of courage!" answered Margaret. "If he was a slave or a savage I could love and respect him for that, as I should despise him if he was a king without it!"
From the depth of what a terrible wound in her own heart was the young girl speaking, and what a concentrated force of bitter earnest rankled in such words falling from her beautiful lips! Captain Hector Coles heard, but made no answer, as why should he, for was he not one of the country's defenders and a brave man by profession? "H. T." heard her, and his upper lip, under the shadow of his dark moustache, set down tightly upon the lower, while over his handsome dusky face passed an expression which might have been pain and might have been the crushing out of some last scruple of conscience that stood between him and a half-intended line of action.
"Passengers for the Flume" had been the call some minutes before; and by the conclusion of this scene, at nine o'clock or thereabout, the wagons for that daily ride of inveterate Franconians were drawn up at the door. They were two in number, the list of riders for that fine morning being unusually heavy. Not coaches, that necessarily shut away a part of the view, but long low wagons on jacks, each with four or five cross seats, a heavy brake and four mettled horses—for fine weather and through the shaded glen roads, the safest and pleasantest of all the mountain conveyances. Five minutes sufficed to fill both those conveyances, with some thirty persons, among the number all those in whom this narration awakes any interest. How they were divided off or how seated is a matter of no consequence, except in a certain particular. Halstead Rowan managed to secure a seat in the same wagon with Clara Vanderlyn, though at the other end of the vehicle,—and in so doing found himself by the side of Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame and only one remove from that hopeful, Master Brooks Brooks. Not enjoying quite the same facilities as some of the others for studying that lady the night before, he had still been attracted to her at breakfast and found time to "cypher up" her calibre and social position to a most amusing nicety. Whether wildness was the normal condition of his character, as seemed possible, or whether his slight rencontre with the young bear, and the flattering conversation with a pretty girl which followed, had dizzied his brain a little, as was both possible and natural,—he was in high spirits and the very demon of mischief had taken possession of him. He had apparently determined to devote himself somewhat to the comfort of that Arch-priestess of Shoddy during the morning ride, and a pleasant time that elevated personage was likely to have of it!
Just after leaving the breakfast table, Rowan had chanced to overhear a few words of conversation between Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame and one of the lady habitues of the house on whom she was aiming to make a tremendous impression; and those few words had fully revealed one of the leading points of the parvenu's tactics. Some one had told her, apparently, or she had read the statement in so-called "polite publications"—that no one could be fashionable, now-a-days, without having been "abroad"—i. e., without having made at least one tour in Europe. Now that Mrs. Brooks Cunninghame had been abroad, at least so far as beyond the Atlantic, at that very early period before she left the paternal cabin, pig and potatoes,—seemed the most probable of allegations; but in the matter of actual travel, or of those substitutes for travel which may be found in a thorough acquaintance with geography and a close study of guide-books and the best travellers, the poor woman had been as guiltless, a few weeks before, as the most stay-at-home and illiterate of her early acquaintances. But she could read, which was something, and had no conscience worth speaking of, which was something more. Perhaps some one had told her the traditional story of Tom Sheridan and his father, and the wonder which the latter expressed that the former "could not say that he had been down into a coal-pit without really going there." The worthy lady, as Rowan soon discovered by a few desultory words, had no corresponding objection, provided she could seem to have been anywhere; and there was little doubt that she had procured a guide-book or two and "read up," as Honorable Members very often do before making speeches on subjects of which they know nothing whatever,—and as snobs sometimes do in books on "Perfect Gentility" and the "Whole Art of Dining Out," before going into society which seems a little too weighty for their previous training. How well she had succeeded, may best be illustrated by a little of her conversation with the Illinoisan, who took care to introduce the subject of her "travels" (with what he had overheard, as a hint) very soon after the wagons rolled away from the Profile, and without waiting for any formal introduction.
He broke the ice with the remark, equally tempting and flattering to his next neighbor:
"You must enjoy this fine scenery very much, madam, as you have chances of comparison that some of us lack. You have travelled in Europe, I believe?"
"Yes—yes, sir," answered the lady, a little doubtful which of the two was the proper answer to so profound a sentence. If she was at all nervous about plunging into such untried waters with a total stranger, his disclamatory hint of his own experiences reassured her; and besides, one of the ladies was on the seat immediately behind, to whom she had been boasting that very morning, and it would never do to abandon the ground once taken.
"Ah, how proud you must feel, madam, of having seen so many of the wonders of nature!" the wretch went on. "I have never yet been able to cross the ocean, myself, and the conversation of foreign travellers is naturally both pleasant and instructive to me."