Nathalie was on the verge of saying, “Oh, no; I think Jean would rather stay with me,” when she caught a sudden expression in the boy’s eyes that caused her to say, “Jean, would you like to go to the top with this gentleman? Mr. Banker and the boys are up there, you know.”
There was no doubt as to the child wanting to see and to do as the other children, or his evident trust in the young soldier, and a minute later the young man, with Jean’s hand held firmly in his, was guiding the child’s steps up the foot-bridge.
Some time later, as the car glided along the road on its homeward journey, a short distance from the Flume House, Mr. Banker showed the party a singular rock-formation, caused by the undulations of the topmost ridge of Liberty Mountain. The outlines were those of a huge recumbent figure, wrapped in a cloak or shroud, and bore such a close resemblance, especially the contour of the forehead and nose, to those of General Washington, as after his death he lay in state, on view to the public, that it had been called “Washington in State.” Many people, he asserted, claimed that the great American’s body should lie at rest on this mountain ridge, named for what the great man had striven so hard to maintain, liberty, and thus be his everlasting mausoleum.
A six-mile ride and they descended from the car, to walk to the shores of Profile Lake, a few feet from the road. But it was not to look at the sunlit sheen of silver water, embedded like a gem in a green and purple forest setting, but to gaze with awesome wonder at a huge stone face. It was the Old Man of the Mountain that gazed forth with a stony stare from a steep and craggy setting, twelve hundred feet high above the lake, on the battlemented spires of Profile, or Cannon Mountain.
It was another weird formation created by Father Time, that Mr. Banker claimed looked as if it had been stuck on the huge mountain-cliff, like the head of some criminal of medieval days, when spiked on the stone gateway of some kingly stronghold for some dastardly deed.
“But this face is not that of a felon, for note the calm majesty, the beautiful benignity of its expression. To me,” commented the gentleman, “it is an unchangeable token and an everlasting confirmation that there is a Creator, and bears witness to the account in Genesis where it says that God created man in His own image, ‘in the image of God created he him.’”
Mr. Banker explained that the face was composed of three masses of rock, one forming the forehead and helmet, another the nose and upper lip, and the third the chin, and that the whole length of the rock-face was eighty feet from the top to the bottom. When viewed at a close range it lost its contour, and seemed but a few huge rocks tumbled one upon another, with no regularity of form or feature.
After the boys had studied the gigantic “face in air,” as Sheila called it, and deciphered many oddities upon it, evoked by her imagination, Nathalie told them the story of “The Great Stone Face.”
They were all greatly interested in Hawthorne’s tale, and readily grasped its meaning, that, after all, it was goodness and greatness gained by studying the great and good in others, the giving of our best to our fellows as Sons of Liberty, Nathalie tried to explain, that helped one to become godlike.
Mr. Banker then told the legend called Christus Judex, which told of an artist, who had resolved to paint a picture of Christ sitting in judgment, and how he wandered up and down the world from one place to another, seeking in art galleries, palaces, or churches, a face that would serve him as a model for his great masterpiece. But alas, it was not to be found, not even among the paintings of the old masters, and finally, lured by some wayfarer’s tale, he crossed the sea, and in this great stone face found the countenance that embodied the features and the expression that satisfied his ideal.