abundance of leisure, which she bestowed upon books at an age when most
girls are sent to school. The doctor had a good taste of an
old-fashioned kind in literature, and he had a library pretty well
stocked with the elderly English authors, poets and essayists and
novelists, and here and there an historian, and these Kitty read
childlike, liking them at the time in a certain way, and storing up in
her mind things that she did not understand for the present, but whose
beauty and value dawned upon her from time to time, as she grew older.
But of far more use and pleasure to her than these now somewhat mouldy
classics were the more modern books of her cousin Charles,--that pride
and hope of his father's heart, who had died the year before she came to
Eriecreek. He was named after her own father, and it was as if her Uncle
Jack found both his son and his brother in her again. When her taste for
reading began to show itself in force, the old man one day unlocked a
certain bookcase in a little upper room, and gave her the key, saying,
with a broken pride and that queer Virginian pomp which still clung to
him, "This was my son's, who would one day have been a great writer; now
it is yours." After that the doctor would pick up the books out of this
collection which Kitty was reading and had left lying about the rooms,
and look into them a little way. Sometimes he fell asleep over them;
sometimes when he opened on a page pencilled with marginal notes, he
would put the volume gently down and go very quickly out of the room.
"Kitty, I reckon you'd better not leave poor Charley's books around
where Uncle Jack can get at them," one of the girls, Virginia or Rachel,
would say; "I don't believe he cares much for those writers, and the
sight of the books just tries him." So Kitty kept the books, and herself
for the most part with them, in the upper chamber which had been Charles
Ellison's room, and where, amongst the witnesses of the dead boy's
ambitious dreams, she grew dreamer herself and seemed to inherit with
his earthly place his own fine and gentle spirit.
The doctor, as his daughter suggested, did not care much for the modern
authors in whom his son had delighted. Like many another simple and
pure-hearted man, he thought that since Pope there had been no great
poet but Byron, and he could make nothing out of Tennyson and Browning,
or the other contemporary English poets. Amongst the Americans he had a
great respect for Whittier, but he preferred Lowell to the rest because
he had written The Biglow Papers, and he never would allow that the last
series was half so good as the first. These and the other principal
poets of our nation and language Kitty inherited from her cousin, as
well as a full stock of the contemporary novelists and romancers, whom
she liked better than the poets on the whole. She had also the advantage
of the magazines and reviews which used to come to him, and the house
over-flowed with newspapers of every kind, from the Eriecreek Courier to
the New York Tribune. What with the coming and going of the eccentric
visitors, and this continual reading, and her rides about the country
with her Uncle Jack, Kitty's education, such as it was, went on very
actively and with the effect, at least, to give her a great liveliness
of mind and several decided opinions. Where it might have warped her out
of natural simplicity, and made her conceited, the keen and wholesome
airs which breathed continually in the Ellison household came in to
restore her. There was such kindness in this discipline, that she never
could remember when it wounded her; it was part of the gayety of those
times when she would sit down with the girls, and they took up some work
together, and rattled on in a free, wild, racy talk, with an edge of
satire for whoever came near, a fantastic excess in its drollery, and
just a touch of native melancholy tingeing it. The last queer guest,
some neighborhood gossip, some youthful folly or pretentiousness of
Kitty's, some trait of their own, some absurdity of the boys if they
happened to be at home, and came lounging in, were the themes out of
which they contrived such jollity as never was, save when in Uncle
Jack's presence they fell upon some characteristic action or theory of
his and turned it into endless ridicule.
But of such people, of such life, Mr. Arbuton could have made nothing if
he had known them. In many things he was an excellent person, and
greatly to be respected for certain qualities. He was very sincere; his
mind had a singular purity and rectitude; he was a scrupulously just
person so far as he knew. He had traits that would have fitted him very
well for the career he had once contemplated, and he had even made some
preliminary studies for the ministry. But the very generosity of his
creed perplexed him, his mislikers said; contending that he could never
have got on with the mob of the redeemed. "Arbuton," said a fat young
fellow, the supposed wit of the class, "thinks there _are_ persons of
low extraction in heaven; but he doesn't like the idea." And Mr. Arbuton
did not like the speaker very well, either, nor any of his poorer
fellow-students, whose gloveless and unfashionable poverty, and meagre
board and lodgings, and general hungry dependence upon pious bequests
and neighborhood kindnesses, offended his instincts. "So he's given it
up, has he?" moralized the same wit, upon his retirement. "If Arbuton
could have been a divinely commissioned apostle to the best society, and
been obliged to save none but well-connected, old-established, and
cultivated souls, he might have gone into the ministry." This was a
coarse construction of the truth, but it was not altogether a
perversion. It was long ago that he had abandoned the thought of the
ministry, and he had since travelled, and read law, and become a man of
society and of clubs; but he still kept the traits that had seemed to
make his vocation clear. On the other hand he kept the prejudices that
were imagined to have disqualified him. He was an exclusive by training
and by instinct. He gave ordinary humanity credit for a certain measure
of sensibility, and it is possible that if he had known more kinds of
men, he would have recognized merits and excellences which did not now
exist for him; but I do not think he would have liked them. His doubt of
these Western people was the most natural, if not the most justifiable
thing in the world, and for Kitty, if he could have known all about her,
I do not see how he could have believed in her at all. As it was, he
went in search of her party, when he had smoked his cigar, and found
them on the forward promenade. She had left him in quite a lenient mood,
although, as she perceived with amusement, he had done nothing to merit
it, except give her cousin a sprained ankle. At the moment of his
reappearance, Mrs. Ellison had been telling Kitty that she thought it
was beginning to swell a little, and so it could not be anything
internal; and Kitty had understood that she meant her ankle as well as
if she had said so, and had sorrowed and rejoiced over her, and the
colonel had been inculpated for the whole affair. This made Mr.
Arbuton's excuses rather needless, though they were most graciously
received.
III.
ON THE WAY BACK TO QUEBEC.
By this time the boat was moving down the river, and every one was alive
to the scenery. The procession of the pine-clad, rounded heights on
either shore began shortly after Ha-Ha Bay had disappeared behind a
curve, and it hardly ceased, save at one point, before the boat
re-entered the St. Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almost
uninhabited. The hills rise from the water's edge, and if ever a narrow
vale divides them, it is but to open drearier solitudes to the eye. In
such a valley would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few poor
huts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible from the boat, wound
up from the river through the valley, and led to wildernesses all the
forlorner for the devastation of their forests. Now and then an island,
rugged as the shores, broke the long reaches of the grim river with its
massive rock and dark evergreen, and seemed in the distance to forbid
escape from those dreary waters, over which no bird flew, and in which
it was incredible any fish swam.
Mrs. Ellison, with her foot comfortably and not ungracefully supported
on a stool, was in so little pain as to be looking from time to time at
one of the guide-books which the colonel had lavished upon his party,
and which she was disposed to hold to very strict account for any
excesses of description.
"It says here that the water of the Saguenay is as black as ink. Do
_you_ think it is, Richard?"
"It looks so."
"Well, but if you took some up in your hand?"
"Perhaps it wouldn't be as black as the best Maynard and Noyes, but it
would be black enough for all practical purposes."
"Maybe," suggested Kitty, "the guide-book means the kind that is light
blue at first, but 'becomes a deep black on exposure to the air,' as the
label says."
"What do you think, Mr. Arbuton?" asked Mrs. Ellison with unabated
anxiety.
"Well, really, I don't know," said Mr. Arbuton, who thought it a very
trivial kind of talk, "I can't say, indeed. I haven't taken any of it up
in my hand."
"That's true," said Mrs. Ellison gravely, with an accent of reproval for
the others who had not thought of so simple a solution of the problem,
"very true."
The colonel looked into her face with an air of well-feigned alarm. "You
don't think the sprain has gone to your head, Fanny?" he asked, and
walked away, leaving Mr. Arbuton to the ladies. Mrs. Ellison did not
care for this or any other gibe, if she but served her own purposes; and
now, having made everybody laugh and given the conversation a lively
turn, she was as perfectly content as if she had not been herself an
offering to the cause of cheerfulness. She was, indeed, equal to any
sacrifice in the enterprise she had undertaken, and would not only have
given Kitty all her worldly goods, but would have quite effaced herself
to further her own designs upon Mr. Arbuton. She turned again to her
guide-book, and left the young people to continue the talk in unbroken
gayety. They at once became serious, as most people do after a hearty
laugh, which, if you think, seems always to have something strange and
sad in it. But besides, Kitty was oppressed by the coldness that seemed
perpetually to hover in Mr. Arbuton's atmosphere, while she was
interested by his fastidious good looks and his blameless manners and
his air of a world different from any she had hitherto known. He was one
of those men whose perfection makes you feel guilty of misdemeanor
whenever they meet you, and whose greeting turns your honest good-day
coarse and common; even Kitty's fearless ignorance and more than Western
disregard of dignities were not proof against him. She had found it easy
to talk with Mrs. March as she did with her cousin at home: she liked to
be frank and gay in her parley, to jest and to laugh and to make
harmless fun, and to sentimentalize in a half-earnest way; she liked to
be with Mr. Arbuton, but now she did not see how she could take her
natural tone with him. She wondered at her daring lightness at the
breakfast-table; she waited for him to say something, and he said, with
a glance at the gray heaven that always overhangs the Saguenay, that it
was beginning to rain, and unfurled the slender silk umbrella which
harmonized so perfectly with the London effect of his dress, and held it
over her. Mrs. Ellison sat within the shelter of the projecting roof,
and diligently perused her book with her eyes, and listened to their
talk.
"The great drawback to this sort of thing in America," continued Mr.
Arbuton, "is that there is no human interest about the scenery, fine as
it is."
"Why, I don't know," said Kitty, "there was that little settlement round
the saw-mill. Can't you imagine any human interest in the lives of the
people there? It seems to me that one might make almost anything out of
them. Suppose, for example, that the owner of that mill was a
disappointed man who had come here to bury the wreck of his life
in--sawdust?"
"O, yes! That sort of thing; certainly. But I didn't mean that, I meant
something historical. There is no past, no atmosphere, no traditions,
you know."
"O, but the Saguenay _has_ a tradition," said Kitty. "You know that a
party of the first explorers left their comrades at Tadoussac, and came
up the Saguenay three hundred years ago, and never were seen or heard of
again. I think it's so in keeping with the looks of the river. The
Saguenay would never tell a secret."
"Um!" uttered Mr. Arbuton, as if he were not quite sure that it was the
Saguenay's place to have a legend of this sort, and disposed to snub the
legend because the Saguenay had it. After a little silence, he began to
speak of famous rivers abroad.
"I suppose," Kitty said, "the Rhine has traditions enough, hasn't it?"
"Yes," he answered, "but I think the Rhine rather overdoes it. You can't
help feeling, you know, that it's somewhat melodramatic and--common.
Have you ever seen the Rhine?"
"O, no! This is almost the first I've seen of anything. Perhaps," she
added, demurely, yet with a tremor at finding herself about to make
light of Mr. Arbuton, "if I had had too much of tradition on the Rhine I
should want more of it on the Saguenay."
"Why, you must allow there's a golden mean in everything, Miss Ellison,"
said her companion with a lenient laugh, not feeling it disagreeable to
be made light of by her.
"Yes; and I'm afraid we're going to find Cape Trinity and Cape Eternity
altogether too big when we come to them. Don't you think eighteen
hundred feet excessively high for a feature of river scenery?"
Mr. Arbuton really did have an objection to the exaggerations of nature
on this continent, and secretly thought them in bad taste, but he had
never formulated his feeling. He was not sure but it was ridiculous, now
that it was suggested, and yet the possibility was too novel to be
entertained without suspicion.
However, when after a while the rumor of their approach to the great
objects of the Saguenay journey had spread among the passengers, and
they began to assemble at points favorable for the enjoyment of the
spectacle, he was glad to have secured the place he held with Miss
Ellison, and a sympathetic thrill of excitement passed through his loath
superiority. The rain ceased as they drew nearer, and the gray clouds
that had hung so low upon the hills sullenly lifted from them and let
their growing height he seen. The captain bade his sight-seers look at
the vast Roman profile that showed itself upon the rock, and then he
pointed out the wonderful Gothic arch, the reputed doorway of an
unexplored cavern, under which an upright shaft of stone had stood for
ages statue-like, till not many winters ago the frost heaved it from its
base, and it plunged headlong down through the ice into the unfathomed
depths below. The unvarying gloom of the pines was lit now by the
pensive glimmer of birch-trees, and this gray tone gave an indescribable
sentiment of pathos and of age to the scenery. Suddenly the boat rounded
the corner of the three steps, each five hundred feet high, in which
Cape Eternity climbs from the river, and crept in under the naked side
of the awful cliff. It is sheer rock, springing from the black water,
and stretching upward with a weary, effort-like aspect, in long impulses
of stone marked by deep seams from space to space, till, fifteen hundred
feet in air, its vast brow beetles forward, and frowns with a scattering
fringe of pines. There are stains of weather and of oozing springs upon
the front of the cliff, but it is height alone that seems to seize the
eye, and one remembers afterwards these details, which are indeed so few
as not properly to enter into the effect. The rock fully justifies its
attributive height to the eye, which follows the upward rush of the
mighty acclivity, steep after steep, till it wins the cloud-capt summit,
when the measureless mass seems to swing and sway overhead, and the
nerves tremble with the same terror that besets him who looks downward
from the verge of a lofty precipice. It is wholly grim and stern; no
touch of beauty relieves the austere majesty of that presence. At the
foot of Cape Eternity the water is of unknown depth, and it spreads, a
black expanse, in the rounding hollow of shores of unimaginable wildness
and desolation, and issues again in its river's course around the base
of Cape Trinity. This is yet loftier than the sister cliff, but it
slopes gently backward from the stream, and from foot to crest it is
heavily clothed with a forest of pines. The woods that hitherto have
shagged the hills with a stunted and meagre growth, showing long
stretches scarred by fire, now assume a stately size, and assemble
themselves compactly upon the side of the mountain, setting their
serried stems one rank above another, till the summit is crowned with
the mass of their dark green plumes, dense and soft and beautiful; so
that the spirit perturbed by the spectacle of the other cliff is calmed
and assuaged by the serene grandeur of this.
There have been, to be sure, some human agencies at work even under the
shadow of Cape Eternity to restore the spirit to self-possession, and
perhaps none turns from it wholly dismayed. Kitty, at any rate, took
heart from some works of art which the cliff wall displayed near the
water's edge. One of these was a lively fresco portrait of
Lieutenant-General Sherman, with the insignia of his rank, and the other
was an even more striking effigy of General O'Neil, of the Armies of the
Irish Republic, wearing a threatening aspect, and designed in a bold
conceit of his presence there as conqueror of Canada in the year 1875.
Mr. Arbuton was inclined to resent these intrusions upon the sublimity
of nature, and he could not conceive, without disadvantage to them, how
Miss Ellison and the colonel should accept them so cheerfully as part of
the pleasure of the whole. As he listened blankly to their exchange of
jests he found himself awfully beset by a temptation which one of the
boat's crew placed before the passengers. This was a bucket full of
pebbles of inviting size; and the man said, "Now, see which can hit the
cliff. It's farther than any of you can throw, though it looks so near."
The passengers cast themselves upon the store of missiles, Colonel
Ellison most actively among them. None struck the cliff, and suddenly
Mr. Arbuton felt a blind, stupid, irresistible longing to try his
chance. The spirit of his college days, of his boating and ball-playing
youth, came upon him. He picked up a pebble, while Kitty opened her eyes
in a stare of dumb surprise. Then he wheeled and threw it, and as it
struck against the cliff with a shock that seemed to have broken all the
windows on the Back Bay, he exulted in a sense of freedom the havoc
caused him. It was as if for an instant he had rent away the ties of
custom, thrown off the bonds of social allegiance, broken down and
trampled upon the conventions which his whole life long he had held so
dear and respectable. In that moment of frenzy he feared himself capable
of shaking hands with the shabby Englishman in the Glengarry cap, or of
asking the whole admiring company of passengers down to the bar. A cry
of applause had broken from them at his achievement, and he had for the
first time tasted the sweets of popular favor. Of course a revulsion
must come, and it must be of a corresponding violence; and the next
moment Mr. Arbuton hated them all, and most of all Colonel Ellison, who
had been loudest in his praise. Him he thought for that moment
everything that was aggressively and intrusively vulgar. But he could
not utter these friendly impressions, nor is it so easy to withdraw from
any concession, and he found it impossible to repair his broken
defences. Destiny had been against him from the beginning, and now why
should he not strike hands with it for the brief half-day that he was to
continue in these people's society? In the morning he would part from
them forever, and in the mean time why should he not try to please and
be pleased? There might, to be sure, have been many reasons why he
should not do this; but however the balance stood he now yielded himself
passively to his fate. He was polite to Mrs. Ellison, he was attentive
to Kitty, and as far as he could he entered into the fantastic spirit of
her talk with the colonel. He was not a dull man; he had quite an apt
wit of his own, and a neat way of saying things; but humor always seemed
to him something not perfectly well bred; of course he helped to praise
it in some old-established diner-out, or some woman of good fashion,
whose _mots_ it was customary to repeat, and he even tolerated it in
books; but he was at a loss with these people, who looked at life in so
bizarre a temper, yet without airiness or pretension, nay, with a
whimsical readiness to acknowledge kindred in every droll or laughable
thing.
The boat stopped at Tadoussac on her return, and among the spectators
who came down to the landing was a certain very pretty,
conscious-looking, silly, bridal-faced young woman,--imaginably the
belle of the season at that forlorn watering-place,--who before coming
on board stood awhile attended by a following of those elderly imperial
and colonial British who heavily flutter round the fair at such resorts.
She had an air of utterly satisfied vanity, in which there was no harm
in the world, and when she saw that she had fixed the eyes of the
shoreward-gazing passengers, it appeared as if she fell into a happy
trepidation too blissful to be passively borne; she moistened her pretty
red lips with her tongue, she twitched her mantle, she settled the bow
at her lovely throat, she bridled and tossed her graceful head.
"What should you do next, Kitty?" asked the colonel, who had been
sympathetically intent upon all this.
"O, I think I should pat my foot," answered Kitty; and in fact the
charming simpleton on shore, having perfected her attitude, was tapping
the ground nervously with the toe of her adorable slipper.
After the boat started, a Canadian lady of ripe age, yet of a vivacity
not to be reconciled with the notion of the married state, capered
briskly about among her somewhat stolid and indifferent friends, saying,
"They're going to fire it as soon as we round the point"; and presently
a dull boom, as of a small piece of ordnance discharged in the
neighborhood of the hotel, struck through the gathering fog, and this
elderly sylph clapped her hands and exulted: "They've fired it, they've
fired it! and now the captain will blow the whistle in answer." But the
captain did nothing of the kind, and the lady, after some more girlish
effervescence, upbraided him for an old owl and an old muff, and so sank
into such a flat and spiritless calm that she was sorrowful to see.
"Too bad, Mr. Arbuton, isn't it?" said the colonel; and Mr. Arbuton
listened in vague doubt while Kitty built up with her cousin a touching
romance for the poor lady, supposed to have spent the one brilliant and
successful summer of her life at Tadoussac, where her admirers had
agreed to bemoan her loss in this explosion of gunpowder. They asked him
if he did not wish the captain _had_ whistled; and "Oh!" shuddered
Kitty, "doesn't it all make you feel just as if you had been doing it
yourself?"--a question which he hardly knew how to answer, never having,
to his knowledge, done a ridiculous thing in his life, much less been
guilty of such behavior as that of the disappointed lady.