AFFAIRS IN THE CRAWFORD FAMILY IN NEW YORK--THE TWO BROTHERS--MARION
HOBART THE ENIGMA--NIAGARA BY WAY OF THE CENTRAL PARK.
It has been already said that John Crawford, wounded, and with the poor
little Virginian orphan-girl in his company, reached New York on the
evening of the Fourth of July--the same evening, it will be remembered,
on which Tom Leslie and Josephine Harris left the city, the one for
Niagara and the other for her matrimonial operations at West Falls. It
is just possible that their not arriving earlier was a lucky event, as
Joe Harris, had she once set eyes on the delicate and singular-looking
Virginian girl, would have been almost certainly attracted towards her,
and in that event her pet hobby for the time might have been
neglected--her departure for the North might have been delayed for a day
or two--and Mary Crawford might have been left to meet her fate in
helplessness and ignorance.
And yet all this is an array of "mights" that have no real propriety,
for events occur but once in the world, and they only occur in one mode.
Human will is free, and human responsibility is never to be ignored; and
still no human hand changes in any degree the inevitable. "Oh, if I
had!" and "Oh, if I had not!" are very common exclamations, and those
who have committed terrible errors or met with severe misfortunes will
continue to make them until the whole course of human existence is run;
and yet they are none the less _follies_. The events of yesterday were
part of that general plan on which the world was first formed and on
which it may have been conducted through all the hundreds of centuries
which puzzle Agassiz and frighten the theologists. The downfall of an
empire and the picking up of a basket of chips by a ragged child in a
ship-yard, may each have equally formed part of it, and each been
equally impossible to avert. Human will seemed to move each event, and
human responsibility certainly attached to each; but the event itself,
unknown until accomplished, moved in its appointed course and could no
more be jarred from it than one of the planets from its orbit.
But all this by the way. Joe Harris had her own odd work to do, hundreds
of miles away, and there was no hindrance in the way of her
accomplishing it, from any new ties suddenly added to bind her to the
city.
Of course that strange and unexpected arrival from the seat of war (for
John Crawford had not even taken the precaution to telegraph from
Fortress Monroe or Washington) created a sensation in the Crawford
household. A mixed sensation--for while both the brothers were heartily
glad to meet, each had a cause for sorrow on meeting the other. Richard
was naturally sorry to see John, who had passed through so many fights
without harm, wounded at last and disabled for an indefinite period; and
John was correspondingly sorry to see Richard, whom he had left in such
high health and spirits, a broken-down and house-ridden invalid. Not
long before he had another cause for anxiety; for in the first half hour
of private conference which ensued, on the very evening of their
arrival, in response to a question from John, as to the health of the
family at West Falls and the progress of his expected marriage with
Mary, Richard revealed the unaccountable state of coldness which had
sprung up, Mary's neglect to answer his late letters, and the fact that
Egbert remained all the visiting-link between the city and country
branches of the family.
"Egbert, eh?" asked John, whose service at looking out for skulking
enemies when on picket-duty, might have made him more watchful and
suspicious than he would have been under other circumstances. "Egbert,
eh? Well, all I can say is that I don't like the link!"
Richard Crawford started, as he lay reclining upon the sofa. He was
decidedly better than he had been a week before, and kept his little
room less closely, though he was fearfully weak and the racking pain had
not entirely left his system. "You never liked Egbert," he said.
"No," said John, "I never liked him, a bit more than Dean Swift liked
Doctor Fell, though perhaps I could not tell _why_, any better than the
Dean."
"No, I suppose not," said Richard, musingly. And here the conversation
dropped, on that point. Whatever may have been Richard Crawford's
suspicions of his cousin, forced on him by circumstances and by the
young girl who had so strangely volunteered to disenchant him--he had no
intention of communicating them even to his brother.
If there was a mixed feeling in the meeting of the brothers, there was
one quite as complicated in that of Isabel Crawford and Marion
Hobart--two total strangers so unexpectedly flung together. Bell
Crawford was better fitted to receive and care for the orphan girl, than
she would have been a month before, when the mysterious turning-point of
her existence had not been reached; and there had been no time since she
had become the mistress of her brother's mansion, when she would not
have used every exertion to make one comfortable and happy who had been
so strangely recommended to her sympathy. What she would before have
lacked, was discipline and thoughtfulness. These she had attained to
some degree, in a manner which she could not much more comprehend than
those who surrounded her. But it was impossible that she could be able
at once to supply the double want of sister and mother to one who had
been so differently nurtured and educated as Marion Hobart; and the very
desire to be even kinder than she would have cared to be to one who had
more claims upon her, necessarily placed her in embarrassment which was
very likely to produce the opposite effect. The young Virginian girl
could not do otherwise than receive those attentions with gratitude, and
yet her very desire not to be obtrusive and not to seem to demand more
attention than was necessary, placed her in an equally anomalous
position. The two girls consequently became much less intimately
acquainted within the first few days, than they might have done if
thrown together under different auspices.
Marion Hobart was, as her conversation and conduct on the night of her
grandfather's death so plainly indicated, a most singular person, and
one who might have been studied for years without being fully
understood. She talked but little, and yet her silence seemed to be more
the result of having nothing to say and no sympathy with the ordinary
topics of conversation, than from dislike or inability to converse. When
she did speak, the same childlike curtness and immobility were
observable, that had been shown by the couch of her dying relative. She
seemed to be repeating set words, that did not affect her heart or make
any change in the expression of her face; even though she may have been
deeply moved in reality. She received kindnesses with thankfulness, and
yet that thankfulness was generally too set and formal in its phrase to
create the impression of gushing warm from the heart, and to give that
exquisite pleasure that a simple "Thank you!" will often convey when it
seems to leap out unbidden.
Of course in the double disaster of the fire and the death, the poor
girl found herself almost entirely unprovided with clothes. Isabel, with
thoughtful care, the next day after her arrival, spoke of making
arrangements for procuring the services of a dressmaker at once.
"Yes, thank you, I have no clothes. I shall want some," answered the
young girl.
"Excuse my touching upon your grief," said Bell, "but I suppose that you
will wish black? You will wear mourning?"
"No, if you please," was the reply. "My family never wear mourning. My
grandmother never did. I have been told so. I do not remember my
grandmother. I do not know why we never wear mourning. But if you
please, I wish to do as grandmother did."
Here was the same peculiarity again, that had been shown at the bedside
of the dying grandfather--the grandmother spoken of, but no mention of a
_mother_. Bell Crawford noticed the fact, as her brother had not done;
but she could no more have asked that strange girl for an explanation,
and risked the possible opening of some family wound, than she could
have gone to the stake.
Nothing more was said upon the subject of the mourning; and Bell
Crawford made the necessary arrangements for procuring her clothing that
suggested no remembrance of her recent loss.
John Crawford had not forgotten the words of the old man, as to money in
his granddaughter's name, lying in one of the city banks. He suggested
the matter to her, aware that she would be anxious to rid herself from
any feeling of absolute dependence,--and she answered him at once. She
knew the name of the bank, and nearly the amount that should be standing
to her credit, which was, as her grandfather had said, quite enough to
make her comfortable for an ordinary life, ranging closely upon fifty
thousand dollars. He procured her some checks, and she filled up one in
a hand of crow-quill lightness, which looked indescribably like herself,
but with a readiness which showed that she must have been before
familiar with banking business. He presented the check, and it was
honored without enquiry, this fact proving that her signature was known;
and thus all anxiety on the pecuniary question was set at rest.
The young girl had said, in that dreadful hour by the death-couch, when
speaking of her grandfather's fervent Union sentiments, "I do not know
anything about politics, myself!" The truth that she had no knowledge or
no feeling on the subject of the struggle between the two sections, was
made manifest before she had been twenty-four hours an inmate of Richard
Crawford's house. John continued to fight, mentally, though wounded and
absent from the army. Richard was an ardent loyalist, as we have seen.
The brothers naturally ran into warm denunciations of rebellion, and
confident prophecies of the success of the Union cause, in spite of all
past disasters. Bell and Marion were both present when they launched
into the first of these; but before the conversation had lasted many
minutes, the young Virginian girl rose and left the room with a word of
apology. Both the brothers noticed the act and her manner. It did not
indicate anger or dissatisfaction--simply a total want of interest.
The next morning something still more conclusive on this subject
occurred. Richard Crawford had been much in the habit, during his
illness, of being read to by his sister, Joe Harris, or any other friend
who would take the trouble to amuse him in that manner. As he began to
recover, he did not lose the relish for that description of lazy luxury.
On the morning in question, John had gone out, Bell was busy, and Marion
and her host happened to be alone in the room, when the morning papers
were brought in.
"Miss Hobart, will you be so kind as to read the news to me?" suggested
the invalid.
"If you wish, Mr. Crawford," she said at once. "I do not read very well
aloud. But I will do my best." She picked up one of the papers and
commenced reading. European news--news from Central and South
America--railroad accidents--dramatic notices--everything except the
news from Washington and the war, which happened to be all that he cared
to hear at all! He looked at her in some surprise, but watched her
closely and saw that she did not do this by chance, but that she
carefully avoided the columns containing the news from the army.
Directly Bell entered the room, and _she_ began, at his request, to read
the war news. Then Marion left the room, with an apology, as she had
done the day before.
When John returned, his brother related the incident to him. In return
John informed him of her words on the first night of their meeting, and
the two agreed that she had an unaccountable antipathy to everything
connected with the war, and that nothing more should be said to her on
the subject.
"What if she should be a little secesh?" asked Richard, very much at
random.
"She?" said John. "The granddaughter of that man? Not a bit of it! She
is a little of an oddity, and a very _pretty_ little oddity--don't you
think so, Richard?" and so the conversation dropped.
The young girl had evidently had a fine musical education. She played
very sweetly, though only upon request. Once she sang an English ballad,
upon still more urgent request, but she seemed to do so with such
unwillingness that she was not pressed again. Her voice, as shown on
that occasion, was mournfully sweet and pure, and highly cultivated. She
spoke French with singular facility and unusual correctness for an
American. Bell and the brothers hoped that when the novelty of her
position had worn away, she would more fully enter into their tastes and
habits, and become less impracticable, if not happier.
A very neat little chamber on the second floor, which adjoined Bell's
and had been standing empty except when occupied by chance visitors, was
arranged for the young girl as soon as she entered the household, and
she took possession of it with apparent satisfaction. And what a little
"box" she made of it at once. The very next day she went into the
street, without any consultation with Bell, and made purchases of not
less than a hundred dollars worth of pictures and articles of _vertu_,
to ornament it. It was not difficult to see, at once, that though she
might be indolently content without the surroundings of luxury, yet it
was only _with_ them, and with them in somewhat aristocratic profusion,
that she could be spiritedly happy. When she had added her purchases to
the comforts and even luxuries already in her chamber, she ran into
Bell's room with something approaching to excitement upon her face, and
called her in to see the arrangement. Bell literally clapped her hands
in delight, the young Virginian girl had shown such exquisite taste and
made the little room look so much like a cross between the sleeping
chamber of a very young princess, a museum, and an art gallery. She had
imagination enough to fancy how the scene would appear, with the room so
ornamented, the light turned low and filtering through the white
porcelain shade of the burner, and that singularly beautiful little head
lying in sleep on the white pillow, the calm, childlike features in
repose, and the blonde hair a little dishevelled and insensibly fading
away into the white upon which it rested.
There were some articles of _vertu_, a very small statue of Washington
among them, lying on the bureau and not yet arranged. Bell Crawford went
up to the bureau and examined them, while Marion was arranging a
different loop to the curtains of her bed, which would enable her to
look out, before she rose, on a handsome little steel engraving of the
white-plumed Henry the Fourth at the battle of Ivry, which she had just
placed in position on the wall. Among the articles on the bureau lay a
locket, in gold with a band of blue enamel crossing it diagonally. It
was unclasped, and almost without a thought whether she was doing right
or wrong, Bell (as woman, and even _man_, will often do in such cases)
took it up in her hand, threw open the case and looked at the face of
the miniature within. This was simply the head from an admirable _carte
de visite_, artistic enough to have been made by Gurney or Fredericks,
and showing that it must have been taken within a very few months,--cut
out in a circle and placed within the glass. The face was that of a man
who might have been thirty years of age, dark complexioned but
_strongly_ handsome, indicating size and sinew in figure, with the
cheek-bones a little high, fiery dark eyes under heavy brows, heavy
black hair worn long and curling, and a very heavy and yet graceful dark
moustache. In the picture he had a broad white collar turned down under
the velvet of his dark coat, giving him a peculiar look which may have
been Southern or South-western and was certainly not of the North and
the "great citie." Bell Crawford had only a moment to notice the
picture, and though she supposed it to be the portrait of some near
relative of the young girl, she could not help thinking how completely
and exactly her opposite it was in every particular--black hair for
blonde, strength for fragility, and the fire of those dark eyes for the
calm, childlike innocence of Marion Hobart's.
Only a moment sufficed to make these observations: the next instant the
young girl saw the picture in her hand and sprung down from the chair
upon which she had been standing, with an agitation entirely different
from anything which she had before exhibited. Her pale face was for the
instant deeply flushed--Bell Crawford was sure of it--and there was
something more passionate than usual in the sad eyes. Her lips trembled,
and her hostess grew both pained and alarmed in the belief that she was
about to utter harsh and angry words. But if the eyes of Bell had not
been mistaken, and there had really been such an agitation raging in the
breast of the young girl, certainly a most remarkable change had come
over her before she had taken the two or three steps forward and reached
the bureau where Miss Crawford was standing. She was herself again,
completely; and her words, when they came, were such as might have been
expected of her from previous observation.
"Please do not look at that!" she said, reaching out her hand to take
it. Then she instantly added: "But you _have_ seen it. It was my own
fault. I should not have left it lying open in that manner. I did not
wish you to see it, or any one."
"I am really sorry," said Bell. "I took it up without thinking, and I
hope that you will not think that I wished to pry into any secret of
yours." She was a little ashamed at her slight breach of etiquette, and
a good deal pained; and her strange guest seemed to be at once aware of
both feelings. Before Bell knew what she was about to do, Marion had
thrust the locket into her bosom, then laid (not _thrown_) her arms
around her neck, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Please do not be hurt or angry with me," she said, her voice very low
and her whole manner childlike. "It was not wrong for you to look at the
picture. It was wrong in me to pain you. It is the picture of a very
dear friend--of my family." There was the least instant of hesitation
before adding the last three words. "If you do not wish very much, I
will not tell you his name, for--for reasons that you would not
understand." Another slight instant of hesitation in the middle of the
sentence.
"Oh, by no means--do not tell me the name. You would pain me if you did
so," answered Bell. "Now let us forget all about it, and only think of
the wilderness of pretty things that you have been buying, to make this
room the very neatest in the house."
"Do you think so?" said Marion. "I am very glad if you like them. I am
very glad when I please any one, and very unhappy when I do not. I do
not quite know how to arrange them all. Will you help me?" and in a
moment more the episode of the picture seemed to be quite forgotten in
the bestowal of the remainder of Marion's "art-treasures."
Saturday afternoon saw a marked event in the history of the Crawford
family, in the crossing by Richard of the threshold of the outer door,
for the first time in so many weeks. He was weak, faint and feeble, but
the racking pains of his disease seemed hourly to leave him more
completely. He had no more thought of leaving the house, however, than
of flying, until the tempter appeared in the shape of his brother. John
had been reading over the morning paper, a little late; and after the
news had been thoroughly exhausted, he had happened upon the programme
of the music at the Central Park.
"Hallo!" he said. "Here, Dick! Dodworth's Band at the Central Park this
afternoon. I have heard plenty of what they _called_ music, all the
while that I have been gone; but not Dodworth. Let's go up and hear it!
Besides, I want to see how much more they have wasted on the Park."
"I!" answered Richard Crawford, astounded. "You are not very kind,
brother John, to speak of _my_ going out, when you know that I have not
left the house for months."
"No," said John, "indeed I did not think of that! But now that I do
think of it, all the more reason why you should go."
"Why, I could not sit up to ride a block!" said Richard.
"Don't believe a word of it!" said John, gayly. "You never know what you
can do, until you try. You are better--you _say_ that you are
better--and the more you stay within the house, the more you may. In my
opinion, to get well rapidly, you should be out of the house more than
half the time, regaining the strength you have lost."
Just then there was a ring at the bell, and Dr. Thompson, the old family
physician who had attended both the brothers since boyhood, came in to
look at Richard and after the dressing of John's wounded arm. John had
made a personal call upon him that morning, and the genial, gray-haired,
but young-hearted old doctor had been very glad to see him returned,
with no worse wound than that in his arm.
"See here, Doctor," said John, the moment he entered, "I have been
giving Richard good advice, and I wish you to bear me out in it."
"Advising me to kill myself, he means!" said Richard.
"Humph! let's hear what it is all about, and see how much you are both
wrong!" answered the doctor, who had made that advance in philosophy
which recognizes that neither side in an argument is at all likely to
represent the whole truth.
"I have been telling him that he should go out, and bantering him to
ride with me to the Central Park," said John.
"And I have been telling him that I had not strength enough to ride a
single block, much less to the Central Park," said Richard.
"Let me see," said the doctor, taking the invalid's hand in his,
examining his pulse, and subjecting him to a general scrutiny. "The
proposal is a bold one, but I fancy that it is sensible, after all.
Yes, when you _can_ go out, you can go out to advantage, and I believe
that time has come. You had probably better accept your brother's
proposal."
The result of all which was, that the carriage was ordered between three
and four o'clock, and that in spite of the insufferable heat of the day
the two invalids (so very differently disabled) were driven to the
Central Park, were driven around it, heard Dodworth's Band perform half
a dozen operatic selections as only that cornet-band can perform them,
saw the loungers on the grass, the promenaders on the walks, the boats
on the pond which is called a lake, and all the picturesque features of
that Saturday-afternoon gathering which within the past two years has
become a pleasant feature of summer in the metropolis.
Richard Crawford did not experience the fatigue he had expected. On the
contrary he felt new life and vigor flowing in with every breath of the
yet early summer; and when they drove back to the house an hour before
sunset, he had the sensations of a school-boy whose play-hour is over
and who is just going back to school and his books. He was not only
better, but he was nearly well. He felt and realized the fact for the
first time. The wide, glorious, open world, with its flowers, its
waters, its sunshine, and its smiling human faces worth them all, had
once more called the man who had so lately believed himself shut away
from life and enjoyment forever; and he was answering the call.
Not that Richard Crawford was happy, even while the music was sounding
over the lake and nature was wooing him with her midsummer smile. He had
loved--he yet loved--truly and devotedly; and without his realizing what
evil influence could have fallen like a blight upon all his hopes, those
hopes were destroyed. He was not broken-hearted, as he had believed
himself to be while laboring under more serious bodily illness: he was
only _sad_; but that sadness, he believed, would remain during life. Ah,
well!--if life and health were still to be his, he must nerve himself to
meet whatever of sorrow or disappointment might come, and bear what he
could not conquer. So thought he as they rode homeward, when John for a
time ceased that constant stream of chat for which a wounded arm did
not in the least disable him. He little knew how a lumbering stage was
at the same hour setting down a dusty little woman in a gray
travelling-dress, at a country village hundreds of miles away, whose
acts and words were to produce so marked an effect on his own destiny.
These details of very ordinary events in the Crawford family, which
followed the re-union of the two brothers, may seem very uninteresting
and common-place; and yet they are necessary for the possible
understanding of what so soon followed. For the letting in of sunshine
on a dark place may not only warm and illumine that place for a time but
make the continuance of sunshine a necessity. And going out into the
sunshine may have the same effect. The school-boy, once let out for his
"play-spell," may have great objection to spending so many hours,
thereafter, over his books in the dusky school-room; and Nature, after a
time, may develop the fact that he needed the reviving and strengthening
education of the outer world, much more imperatively than the additional
education of the brain which he would have acquired within the sound of
the teacher's voice. Nature's hygiene is very little understood, but it
is at the same time very simple and very powerful. The _sun_ contains
the great mystery of health and hardihood, and the man who carefully
shuts himself away from its rays is arranging for the same kind of
existence which the unfortunate plant is forced to experience, growing
under the shelter of a rotten log, succulent, tender and perishable. The
fire-worship of the Ghebers was founded upon common-sense; and no doubt
the first kneeling adoration of the sun-worshippers both of Persia and
Peru, was paid by some poor fellow who had been sick, attenuated and
miserable, who had finally crawled out into the sunshine after long
confinement, and who believed that there must be some supernatural
influence in the life radiating from the great orb and bounding through
every half-chilled vein. The inventor of parasols and sun-shades should
have been executed immediately on the announcement of his invention, for
he has been the means of shutting away the faces of more than half the
world, and especially the fairer portion, from their best inanimate
friend, the sun, of making sallow complexions and lack-lustre eyes, and
of causing a demand for cosmetics that would never have been known had
the sun-god been allowed to steal kisses from the cheek of beauty and
leave there the ruddy glow of health as a compensation for the
privilege.
To induce a belief on the part of Richard Crawford that he was well
enough and strong enough to leave the house to which he had been so long
confined, had been found a little difficult. The ice once broken, the
next adventure into the summer sunshine would need far less inducement.
So it proved. And so it happened that within four days from the time
when he believed that he was committing suicide by adventuring to the
Central Park, he permitted himself to be persuaded, under the sanction
of the doctor, into taking a step which was certain to test his powers
of endurance pretty thoroughly--nothing less than _going to Niagara
Falls_.
Of course this movement originated with John Crawford the Zouave, whose
original restlessness had not been a whit quieted by the ever-moving
adventure of a year in the army. The city was growing unendurably hot,
he said, so that he every day expected to find the paving-stones
splitting to pieces with the heat, and the fish boiling in the North
River. It was ten degrees worse, he averred, than he had experienced in
Virginia either season; and such a thing as a hot day had never been
known at Niagara, even by the oldest inhabitant. (Perhaps the young man
altered his opinion on that point, visiting it especially during the
early days of July, 1862!) Dick would grow worse again--he knew he
would--and lose the little strength he had gained, sweltering in such an
unventilated pig-stye as the city. Come!--there were to be no more words
about it!--they should all go to Niagara!
Richard Crawford was at first alarmed--then puzzled--then a little
delighted. Bell, who did not often fall into the peculiarly girlish
weakness of clapping her hands, did so on this occasion. She had missed
Niagara for the previous two years; and this season, owing to the
serious illness of her brother, she had expected to be debarred the
privilege of exhibiting her unimpeachable summer wardrobe (which she
had not _quite_ forgotten) at any of the watering-places. Richard's
rapid improvement and this restless suggestion of John, seemed like a
god-send. _She_ voted for Niagara, if Richard felt that he could endure
the fatigue of the journey. His citadel surrounded on two sides in that
manner, and the genial old doctor faithless, there was little else left
than a surrender, and Richard Crawford surrendered.
Stop!--there was something of which neither had thought for a moment!
They had a guest, whose wishes should be consulted the more religiously
because she would make no parade of them. Would Marion Hobart, who
mourned in heart if not in the sombre hue of her garments, for her last
relative so lately dead--would _she_ be pleased to go into the gay world
of a fashionable watering-place? Not _content_, but _pleased_? If she
would not, the project must be abandoned, whatever the temptations to go
forward. Bell, who had the moment before been about commencing her
action as a committee of one to overhaul Richard's laid-away wardbrobe
and discover what additions would be necessary, had the sphere of her
operations suddenly changed by being sent up-stairs to sound the
inclinations of the young Virginian girl on the subject.
She found Marion Hobart half _en deshabille_, lying upon the bed in her
own little chamber, busily reading and comparing the letter-press with
the coats-of-arms, in a copy of the English Peerage which she had found
in Dick's little library, and to which she had exhibited a scandalously
aristocratic taste by paying more attention than to all the other books
in the house.
"Have you ever been at Niagara, Marion?" asked Bell Crawford, leaning
over her with a sisterly caress.
"No," answered the young girl, looking away from her book, but without
any indication of rising or any sign of that anxious agitation which
inevitably brightens the faces of most American girls who have not seen
the world's-wonder, when that magic word is uttered in their presence.
"Father and some friends were at Saratoga once, when I was a very little
girl. But father was drowned at sea. Grandfather never came North."
"Would you like to see Niagara?" was Bell's second question.
"I do not know," answered the young Virginian girl, with strange
coolness and candor. "I think I should like to see it as well as
anything else. I have not seen many waterfalls. I once saw the Falls of
the Black Fork of Cheat; and I saw the Natural Bridge. They are both in
Virginia. I do not know whether I should like Niagara or not."
"Would you like to go there. Suppose brother and myself were going to
Niagara and should ask you to go with us--would you be pleased to go?"
"I would as lief go as stay here or go anywhere else," said the singular
girl.
"I thought you might possibly have objections to going, because there is
so much company at Niagara, and because you have so lately lost your
grandfather--that is why I asked," explained Bell.
"I do not mind the company. They are nothing to me. I do not mourn for
my poor grandfather _aloud_. But you are very kind to think of me,"
answered the little enigma. And with that very unenthusiastic
endorsement of the Niagara project, Bell Crawford was compelled to
descend the stairs and make report of the event of her embassy. But the
result was held to be rather satisfactory than otherwise, and the
hastily-devised arrangements for Niagara went forward.
To pass rapidly over that movement, the manner of which does not in any
degree affect the progress of this narration, let it be said that on
Wednesday, the 9th of July, the two brothers, the sister and their
guest, with the proper array of the "great North River travelling-trunks"
and other baggage, took the steamer Daniel Drew for a sail by daylight
up the Hudson, as the mode of making half the journey least fatiguing to
the recovering invalid. That the three New Yorkers, to whom the scenery
of that noble river was thoroughly familiar, clapped hands and shouted
their joy once more, nearly all day, at the flashing blue of the river,
the rafts of steamboats, sloops and tows that continually came sweeping
down it, the rugged frowning of the Palisades, the narrow-passes and
rugged peaks of the Highlands, and the long, blue, uneven line of the
Cattskills, with the white glimmering of the Mountain House,--while the
young Virginian girl, introduced to that scenery for the first time in her
life, seemed to maintain her calmness and comparative insensibility. That
they rested for the night at Albany, out of respect to the comfort of the
invalid--John Crawford submitting under protest, and declaring Albany,
after Washington, the most unendurable "one-horse town" in the universe.
That they took the cars of the Central Road in the morning, Richard being
so pillowed among cloaks and blankets and shawls, that he had quite the
comfort of lying in an ordinary bed; and that on Thursday night, the Tenth
of July, when the full moon had risen so high in heaven as to make the
coming midnight a very mockery of day, they rolled into the village of
Niagara Falls, and found a resting-place at the still wide-awake and
ever-lively Cataract.