_BEAUTY AND THE BEAST._
Unfortunately the poor girl had no suspicion of the mischance that had
overtaken her guide. She heard voices, and believed that he had fallen
in with some friends. Thus she waited, expecting momently that he would
return to her. She saw a single gleam of light that vanished in the
darkness. Then the voices grew fainter and fainter, and at length died
in the distance. And she was once more utterly alone.
Fearful doubt and uncertainty agitated her. In a moment of despair,
yielding to the terrors of her situation, she wrung her hands and called
on Carl imploringly not to abandon her, but to come back--"O, dear, dear
Carl, come back!"
Suddenly she checked herself. Why was she sitting there, wasting the
time in tears and reproaches?
"Poor Carl never meant to desert me in this way, I know. If I ever see
him again, he will make me sorry that I have blamed him. No doubt he has
done his best. But, whatever has become of him, I am sure he cannot find
his way back to me now. I'll follow him; perhaps I may find him, or
Penn, or some of their friends."
She arose accordingly, and groped her way in the direction in which she
had seen the light and heard the voices. And soon another and very
different light gladdened her eyes--a faint glow, far off, as of a fire
kindled among the forest trees. It was the camp of the patriots, she
thought.
She came to the brook, which, invisible, mysterious, murmuring, rolled
along in the midnight blackness, and seemed too formidable for her to
ford. She felt the cold rush of the hurrying water, the slippery slime
of the mossy and treacherous stones, and withdrew her appalled hands. To
find a shallow place to cross, she followed up the bank; and as the
light was still before her, higher on the mountain, she kept on, groping
among trees, climbing over logs and rocks, falling often, but always
resolutely rising again, until, to her dismay, the glow began to
disappear. She had, without knowing it, followed the stream up into the
deep gorge through which it poured; and now the precipitous wood-crowned
wall, rising beside her, overhanging her, shut out the last glimpse of
the fire.
She was by this time exceedingly fatigued. It seemed useless to advance
farther; she felt certain that she was only getting deeper and deeper
into the entangling difficulties of that unknown, horrible place.
Neither had she the courage or strength to retrace her steps. Nothing
then remained for her but to pass the remainder of the night where she
was, and wait patiently for the morning.
Little knowing that the light she had seen was the glare of the kindled
forest, she endeavored to convince herself that she had nothing to fear.
At all events, she knew that trembling and tears could avail her
nothing. She had not ventured to call very loudly for help, fearing lest
her voice might bring foe instead of friend. And now it occurred to her
that perhaps Carl had been taken by the soldiers: yes, it must be so:
she explained it all to herself, and wondered why she had not thought of
it before. It would therefore be folly in her now to scream for aid.
Comfortless, yet calm, she explored the ground for a resting-place. She
cleared the twigs away from the roots of a tree, and laid herself down
there on the moss and old leaves. Everything seemed dank with the
never-failing dews of the deep and sheltered gorge; but she did not mind
the dampness of her couch. A strong wind was rising, and the great trees
above her swayed and moaned. She was vexed by mosquitoes that bit as if
they then for the first time tasted blood, and never expected to taste
it again; but she was too weary to care much for them either. She rested
her arm on the mossy root; she rested her head on her arm; she drew her
handkerchief over her face; she shut out from her soul all the miseries
and dangers of her situation, and quietly said her prayers.
There is nothing that calms the perturbations of the mind like that
inward looking for the light of God's peace which descends upon us when
in silence and sweet trust we pray to him. A delicious sense of repose
ensued, and her thoughts floated off in dreams.
She dreamed she was flying with her father from the fury of armed men.
She led him into a wilderness; and it was night; and great rocks rose up
suddenly before them in the gloom, and awful chasms yawned. Then she was
wandering alone; she had lost her father, and was seeking him up and
down. Then it seemed that Penn was by her side; and when she asked for
her father he smilingly pointed upward at a wondrously beautiful light
that shone from the summit of a hill. She sought to go up thither, but
grew weary, and sat down to rest in a deep grove, with an ice-cold
mountain stream dashing at her feet. Then the light on the hill became a
lake of fire, and it poured its waves into the stream, and the stream
flowed past her a roaring river of flame. Lightnings crackled in the air
above her. Thunderbolts fell. The heat was intolerable. The river had
overflowed, and set the world on fire. And she could not fly, for terror
chained her limbs. She struggled, screamed, awoke. She started up. Her
dream was a reality.
Either the fire set by the soldiers had spread, driven by the wind over
the dry leaves, into the grove below her, or else they had fired the
grove itself on their retreat. Her eyes opened upon a vision of
appalling brightness. For a moment she stood utterly dazzled and
bewildered, not knowing where she was. Memory and reason were paralyzed:
she could not remember, she could not think: amazement and terror
possessed her.
Instinctively shielding her eyes, she looked down. The ground where she
had lain, the log, the sticks, the moss, and her handkerchief fallen
upon it, were illumined with a glare brighter than noonday. At sight of
the handkerchief came recollection. Her terrible adventure, the glow she
had seen in the woods, her bed on the earth,--she remembered everything.
And now the actual perils of her position became apparent to her
returning faculties.
Where all was blackness when she lay down, now all was preternatural
light. Every bush and jutting rock of the wild overhanging cliffs stood
out in fearful distinctness. The saplings and trees on their summits,
fifty feet above her head, seemed huddling together, and leaning forward
terror-stricken, in an atmosphere of whirling flame and smoke. Climb
those cliffs she could not, though she were to die.
She must then flee farther up into the deep and narrow gorge, or
endeavor to escape by the way she had come. But the way she had come was
fire.
The conflagration already enveloped the mouth of the gorge, shutting her
in. The trunks of near trees stood like the bars of a stupendous cage,
through which she looked at the raging demons beyond. Burning limbs
fell, shooting through the air with trails of flame. Every tree was a
pillar of fire. Here a bough, still untouched, hung, dark and impassive,
against the lurid, surging chaos. Then the whirlwind of heated air
struck it, and you could see it writhe and twist, until its darkness
burst into flame. There stood what was late a lordly maple, but
now,--trunk, and limb, and branch,--a tree of living coal. And down
under this gulf of fire flowed the brook, into which showers of sparks
fell hissing, while over all, fearfully illumined clouds of smoke and
cinders and leaves went rolling up into the sky.
Virginia approached near enough to be impressed with the dreadful
certainty that there was no outlet whatever, for any mortal foot, in
that direction. Tortured by the heat, and pursued by lighted twigs, that
fell like fiery darts around her, she fled back into the gorge.
The conflagration was still spreading rapidly. The timber along both
sides of the gorge, at its opening, began to burn upwards towards the
summits of the cliffs. Soon the very spot where she had slept, and where
she now paused once more in her terrible perplexity and fear, would be
an abyss of flame.
Again she took to flight, hasting along the edge of the stream, up into
the heart of the gorge. Over roots of trees, over old decaying trunks,
over barricades of dead limbs brought down by freshets and left lodged,
she climbed, she sprang, she ran. All too brightly her way was lighted
now. A ghastly yellow radiance was on every object. The waters sparkled
and gleamed as they poured over the dark brown stones. Every slender,
delicate fern, every poor little startled wild flower nestled in cool,
dim nooks, was glaringly revealed. Little the frightened girl heeded
these darlings of the forest now.
All the way she looked eagerly for some slant or cleft in the mountain
walls where she might hope to ascend. Here, over the accumulated soil of
centuries, fastened by interwoven roots to the base of the cliff, she
might have climbed a dozen feet or more. Yonder, by the aid of shrubs
and boughs, she might have drawn herself up a few feet farther. But,
wherever her eye ranged along the ledges above, she beheld them
dizzy-steep and unscalable. And so she kept on until even the way before
her was closed up.
On the brink of a rock-rimmed, flashing basin she stopped. Down into
this, from a shelf twenty feet in height, fell the brook in a bright,
fire-tinted cascade. Fear-inspired as she was, she could not but pause
and wonder at the strange beauty of the scene,--the plashy pool before
her, the flame-color on the veil of silver foam dropped from the brow of
the ledge, and--for a wild background to the picture--the wooded,
fire-lit, shadowy gorge, opening on a higher level above.
During the moment that she stood there, a great bird, like an owl, that
had probably been driven from his hollow tree or fissure in the rocks by
the conflagration, flapped past her face, almost touching her with his
wings, and dashed blindly against the waterfall. He was swept down into
the pool. After some violent fluttering and floundering in the water, he
extricated himself, perched on a stone at its edge, shook out his wet
feathers, and stared at her with large cat-like eyes, without fear. She
was near enough to reach him with her hand; but either he was so dazzled
and stunned that he took no notice of her, or else the greater terror
had rendered him tame to human approach. She believed the latter was the
case, and saw something exceedingly awful in the incident. When even the
wild winged creatures of the forest were stricken down with fear, what
cause had she to apprehend danger to herself!
On reaching the waterfall she had felt for a moment that all was
over--that certain death awaited her. Then, out of her very despair,
came a gleam of hope. She might creep under the cascade, or behind it,
and that would protect her. But when she looked up, and saw, around and
above her, the forest trees with the frightful and ever-increasing glow
upon them, and knew that they too soon must kindle, and thought of
firebrands rained down upon her, and falling columns of fire filling the
gorge with burning rubbish,--then her soul sickened: what protection
would a little sheet of water prove against such furnace heat?
No: she must escape, or perish. Beside the cascade there was a broken
angle of the rocks, by which, if she could reach it, she might at least,
she thought, climb to the upper part of the gorge. But the nearest
foothold she could discover was ten feet above the basin, in sheer
ascent. The ledge was dank and slippery with the dashing spray. Gain the
top of it, however, she must. She ran up the embankment under the cliff.
Here a sapling gave her support; she clung to a crevice or projection
there; a drooping bough saved her from falling when the soft earth slid
from beneath her feet farther on. So she climbed along the side of the
precipice, until the broken corner of the cliff was hardly two yards off
before her. Yes, a secure foothold was there, and above it rose
irregular pointed stairs, leading steeply to the top of the cascade. O,
to reach that shattered ledge! A space of perpendicular wall intervened.
No shrub, no drooping bough, was there. Here was only a slight
projection, just enough to rest the edge of a foot upon. She placed her
foot upon it. She found a crevice above, and thrust her fingers into it
as if there was no such thing as pain. She clung, she took a step--she
was half a yard nearer the angle. But what next could she do? She was
hanging in the air above the basin, into which the slightest slip would
precipitate her. To change hands--relieve the one advanced and insert
the fingers of the other in its place,--was a perilous undertaking. But
she did it. Then she reached forward again with hand and foot, found
another spot to cling to, and took another step. She was thankful for
the great light that lighted the rocks before her. Close by now was the
fractured angle of the cliff: one more step, and she could set her foot
upon the nethermost stair. Her strength was almost gone; her hands,
though insensible to pain, were conscious of slipping. To fall would be
to lose all she had gained, and all the strength she had exhausted in
the effort. Her feet now--or rather one of them--had a tolerably secure
hold on the rib of the ledge. She made one last effort with her hands,
and, just as she was falling, gave a spring. She knew that all was
staked upon that one dizzy instant of time. But for that knowledge she
could never have accomplished what she did. She fell forwards towards
the angle, caught a point of the rock with her hands, and clung there
until she had safely placed her feet.
This done, it was absolutely necessary to stop a moment to rest. She
looked downwards and behind her, to see what she had done. The sight
made her dizzy--it seemed such a miracle that she could ever have scaled
that wall!
Nearer and louder roared the conflagration, and she had little time to
delay. Her labor was not ended, neither was the danger past. She cast a
hurried glance upwards over the ridge she was to climb, and advanced
cautiously, step by step. Her soul kept saying within her, "I will not
fall; I will not fall;" but she dared not look backwards again, lest
even then she should grow giddy and miss her hold.
As she ascended, the ridge inclined nearer and nearer to the side of the
cascade, until she found the stones slimy and dripping. This was an
unforeseen peril. Still she resolutely advanced, taking the utmost
precaution at each step against slipping. At length she was at the top
of the waterfall. She could look up into the upper gorge, and see the
water come rushing down. There was space beside the brook for her to
continue her flight; and the sides of the gorge above were far less
steep and rugged than below. She was thrilled with hope. She had but one
steep, high stair to surmount. She was getting her knee upon it, when a
crashing sound in the underbrush arrested her attention. The crashing
was followed by a commotion in the water, and she saw a huge black
object plunge into the stream, and come sweeping down towards her.
On it came, straight at the rock on which she clung, and from which a
motion, a touch, might suffice to hurl her back into the lower gorge.
She saw what it was; and for a moment she was frozen with terror. She
was directly in its path: it would not stop for her. The sight of the
blazing woods below, however, brought it to a sudden halt. And there,
close by the brink of the waterfall, facing her, not a yard distant, in
the full glare of the fire, it rose slowly on its hind feet to look--a
monster of the forest, an immense black bear.
And now, but for the nightmare of horror that was upon her, Virginia
might have perceived that the forest _above_ the cascade was likewise
wrapped in flames. The bear had been driven by the terror of them down
the stream; and here, between the two fires, on the verge of the
waterfall, the slight young girl and the great shaggy wild beast had
met. She would have shrieked, but she had no voice. The bear also was
silent; with his huge hairy bulk reared up before her, his paws pendant,
and his jaws half open in a sort of stupid amazement, he stood and
gazed, uttering never a growl.