The Rude Awakening from My Dream.
I look back now upon the week which followed this home-coming as a season
of much dejection and unhappiness. Perhaps at the time it was not all
unmixed tribulation. There was a great deal to do, naturally, and
occupation to a healthful and vigorous young man is of itself a sovereign
barrier against undue gloom. Yet I think of it now as all sadness.
Mr. Stewart had really grown aged and feeble. For the first time, too,
there was a petulant vein in his attitude toward me. Heretofore he had
treated my failure to grow up into his precise ideal of a gentleman with
affectionate philosophy, being at pains to conceal from me whatever
disappointment he felt, and, indeed, I think, honestly trying to persuade
himself that it was all for the best.
But these five months had created a certain change in the social
conditions of the Valley. For years the gulf had been insensibly widening,
here under our noses, between the workers and the idlers; during my
absence there had come, as it were, a landslide, and the chasm was now
manifest to us all. Something of this was true all over the Colonies: no
doubt what I noticed was but a phase of the general movement, part social,
part religious, part political, now carrying us along with a perceptible
glide toward the crisis of revolution. But here in the Valley, more than
elsewhere, this broadening fissure of division ran through farms, through
houses, ay, even through the group gathered in front of the family
fire-place--separating servants from employers, sons from fathers,
husbands from wives. And, alas! when I realized now for the first time the
existence of this abyss, it was to discover that my dearest friend, the
man to whom I most owed duty and esteem and love, stood on one side of it
and I on the other.
This was made clear to me by his comments--and even more by his
manner--when I told him next day of the great offer which Mr. Cross had
made. Not unnaturally I expected that he would be gratified by this proof
of the confidence I had inspired, even if he did not favor my acceptance
of the proffered post. Instead, the whole matter seemed to vex him. When I
ventured to press him for a decision, he spoke unjustly and impatiently to
me, for the first time.
"Oh, ay! that will serve as well as anything else, I suppose," he said.
"If you are resolute and stubborn to insist upon leaving me, and tossing
aside the career it has been my pleasure to plan for you, by all means go
to Albany with the other Dutchmen, and barter and cheapen to your heart's
content. You know it's no choice of mine, but please yourself!"
This was so gratuitously unfair and unlike him, and so utterly at variance
with the reception I had expected for my tidings, that I stood astounded,
looking at him. He went on:
"What the need is for your going off and mixing yourself up with these
people, I fail for the life of me to see. I suppose it is in the blood.
Any other young man but a Dutchman, reared and educated as you have been,
given the society and friendship of gentlefolk from boyhood, and placed,
by Heaven! as you are here, with a home and an estate to inherit, and
people about you to respect and love--I say nothing of obeying them--would
have appreciated his fortune, and asked no more. But no! You must,
forsooth, pine and languish to be off tricking drunken Indians out of
their peltry, and charging some other Dutchman a shilling for fourpence
worth of goods!"
What could I say? What could I do but go away sorrowfully, and with a
heavy heart take up farm affairs where I had left them? It was very hard
to realize that these rough words, still rasping my ears, had issued from
Mr. Stewart's lips. I said to myself that he must have had causes for
irritation of which I knew nothing, and that he must unconsciously have
visited upon me the peevishness which the actions of others had
engendered. All the same, it was not easy to bear.
Daily contact with Daisy showed changes, too, in her which disturbed me.
Little shades of formalism had crept here and there into her manner, even
toward me. She was more distant, I fancied, and mistress-like, toward my
poor old aunt. She rose later, and spent more of her leisure time
up-stairs in her rooms alone. Her dress was notably more careful and
elegant, now, and she habitually wore her hair twisted upon the crown of
her head, instead of in a simple braid as of old.
If she was not the Daisy I had so learned to love in my months of absence,
it seemed that my heart went out in even greater measure to this new
Daisy. She was more beautiful than ever, and she was very gentle and soft
with me. A sense of tender pity vaguely colored my devotion, for the dear
girl seemed to my watchful solicitude to be secretly unhappy. Once or
twice I strove to so shape our conversation that she would be impelled to
confide in me--to throw herself upon my old brotherly fondness, if she
suspected no deeper passion. But she either saw through my clumsy devices,
or else in her innocence evaded them; for she hugged the sorrow closer to
her heart, and was only pensively pleasant with me.
I may explain now, in advance of my story, what I came to learn long
afterward; namely, that the poor little maiden was truly in sore distress
at this time--torn by the conflict between her inclination and her
judgment, between her heart and her head. She was, in fact, hesitating
between the glamour which the young Englishman and Lady Berenicia, with
their polished ways, their glistening surfaces, and their attractive,
idlers' views of existence, had thrown over her, and her own innate,
womanly repugnance to the shallowness and indulgence, not to say license,
beneath it all. It was this battle the progress of which I unwittingly
watched. Had I but known what emotions were fighting for mastery behind
those sweetly grave hazel eyes--had I but realized how slight a pressure
might have tipped the scales my way--how much would have been different!
But I, slow Frisian that I was, comprehended nothing of it all, and so was
by turns futilely compassionate--and sulky.
For again, at intervals, she would be as gay and bright as a June rose,
tripping up and down through the house with a song on her lips, and the
old laugh rippling like sunbeams about her. Then she would deftly perch
herself on the arm of Mr. Stewart's chair, and dazzle us both with the
joyous merriment of her talk, and the sparkle in her eyes--or sing for us
of an evening, up-stairs, playing the while upon the lute (which young
Cross had given her) instead of the discarded piano. Then she would wear a
bunch of flowers--I never suspecting whence they came--upon her breast,
and an extra ribbon in her hair. And then I would be wretched, and
gloomily say to myself that I preferred her unhappy, and next morning,
when the cloud had gathered afresh upon her face, would long again to see
her cheerful once more.
And so the week went by miserably, and I did not tell my love.
One morning, after breakfast, Mr. Stewart asked Daisy to what conclusion
she had come about our accepting Philip Cross's invitation to join a
luncheon-party on his estate that day. I had heard this gathering
mentioned several times before, as a forthcoming event of great promise,
and I did not quite understand either the reluctance with which Daisy
seemed to regard the thought of going, or the old gentleman's mingled
insistence and deference to her wishes in the matter.
To be sure, I had almost given up in weary heart-sickness the attempt to
understand his new moods. Since his harsh words to me, I had had nothing
but amiable civility from him--now and then coming very near to his
old-time fond cordiality--but it was none the less grievously apparent to
me that our relations would never again be on the same footing. I could no
longer anticipate his wishes, I found, or foresee what he would think or
say upon matters as they came up. We two were wholly out of chord, be the
fault whose it might. And so, I say, I was rather puzzled than surprised
to see how much stress was laid between them upon the question whether or
not Daisy would go that day to Cairncross, as the place was to be called.
Finally, without definitely having said "yes," she appeared dressed for
the walk, and put on a mock air of surprise at not finding us also ready.
She blushed, I remember, as she did so. There was no disposition on my
part to make one of the party, but when I pleaded that I had not been
invited, and that there was occupation for me at home, Mr. Stewart seemed
so much annoyed that I hastened to join them.
It was a perfect autumn day, with the sweet scent of burning leaves in the
air, and the foliage above the forest path putting on its first pale
changes toward scarlet and gold. Here and there, when the tortuous way
approached half-clearings, we caught glimpses of the round sun, opaquely
red through the smoky haze.
Our road was the old familiar trail northward over which Mr. Stewart and
I, in the happy days, had so often walked to reach our favorite haunt the
gulf. The path was wider and more worn now--almost a thoroughfare, in
fact. It came to the creek at the very head of the chasm, skirting the
mysterious circle of sacred stones, then crossing the swift water on a new
bridge of logs, then climbing the farther side of the ravine by a steep
zigzag course which hung dangerously close to the precipitous wall of dark
rocks. I remarked at the time, as we made our way up, that there ought to
be a chain, or outer guard of some sort, for safety. Mr. Stewart said he
would speak to Philip about it, and added the information that this side
of the gulf was Philip's property.
"It is rough enough land," he went on to say, "and would never be worth
clearing. He has some plan of keeping it in all its wildness, and building
a little summer-house down below by the bridge, within full sound of the
waterfall. No doubt we shall arrange to share the enterprise together. You
know I have bought on the other side straight to the creek."
Once the road at the top was gained, Cairncross was but a pleasant walking
measure, over paths well smoothed and made. Of the mansion in process of
erection, which, like Johnson Hall, was to be of wood, not much except the
skeleton framework met the eye, but this promised a massive and imposing
edifice. A host of masons, carpenters, and laborers, sufficient to have
quite depopulated Johnstown during the daylight hours, were hammering,
hewing, or clinking the chimney-bricks with their trowels, within and
about the structure.
At a sufficient distance from this tumult of construction, and on a level,
high plot of lawn, was a pretty marquee tent. Here the guests were
assembled, and thither we bent our steps.
Young Cross came forth eagerly to greet us--or, rather, my
companions--with outstretched hands and a glowing face. He was bareheaded,
and very beautifully, though not garishly clad. In the reddish, dimmed
sunlight, with his yellow hair and his fresh, beaming face, he certainly
was handsome.
He bowed ceremoniously to Mr. Stewart, and then took him warmly by the
hand. Then with a frank gesture, as if to gayly confess that the real
delight was at hand, he bent low before Daisy and touched her fingers
with his lips.
"You make me your slave, your very happy slave, dear lady, by coming," he
murmured, loud enough for me to hear. She blushed, and smiled with
pleasure at him.
To me our young host was civil enough. He called me "Morrison," it is
true, without any "Mr.," but he shook hands with me, and said affably that
he was glad to see me back safe and sound. Thereafter he paid no attention
whatsoever to me, but hung by Daisy's side in the cheerful circle
outside the tent.
Sir William was there, and Lady Berenicia, of course, and a dozen others.
By all I was welcomed home with cordiality--by all save the Lady, who was
distant, not to say supercilious in her manner, and Sir John Johnson, who
took the trouble only to nod at me.
Inquiring after Mr. Jonathan Cross, I learned that my late companion was
confined to the Hall, if not to his room, by a sprained ankle. There being
nothing to attract me at the gathering, save, indeed, the girl who was
monopolized by my host, and the spectacle of this affording me more
discomfort than satisfaction, the condition of my friend at the Hall
occurred to me as a pretext for absenting myself. I mentioned it to Mr.
Stewart, who had been this hour or so in great spirits, and who now was
chuckling with the Lady and one or two others over some tale she
was telling.
"Quite right," he said, without turning his head; and so, beckoning to
Tulp to follow me, I started.
It was a brisk hour's walk to the Hall, and I strode along at a pace which
forced my companion now and again into a trot. I took rather a savage
comfort in this, as one likes to bite hard on an aching tooth; for I had a
profound friendship for this poor black boy, and to put a hardship upon
him was to suffer myself even more than he did. Tulp had come up misshapen
and undersized from his long siege with the small-pox, and with very
rickety and unstable legs. I could scarcely have sold him for a hundred
dollars, and would not have parted with him for ten thousand, if for no
other reason than his deep and dog-like devotion to me. Hence, when I
made this poor fellow run and pant, I must have been possessed of an
unusually resolute desire to be disagreeable to myself. And in truth
I was.
* * * * *
Mr. Jonathan Cross made me very welcome. His accident had befallen on the
very day following his return, and he had seen nobody save the inmates of
the Hall since that time. We had many things to talk about--among others,
of my going to Albany to take the agency. I told him that this had not
been quite decided as yet, but avoided giving reasons. I could not well
tell this born-and-bred merchant that my guardian thought I ought to feel
above trade. His calm eyes permitted themselves a solitary twinkle as I
stumbled over the subject, but he said nothing.
He did express some interest, however, when I told him whence I had come,
and what company I had quitted to visit him.
"So Mistress Daisy is there with the rest, is she?" he said, with more
vigor in his voice than I had ever heard there before. "So, so! The apple
has fallen with less shaking than I thought for."
I do not think that I made any remark in reply. If I did, it must have
been inconsequential in the extreme, for my impression is of a long,
heart-aching silence, during which I stared at my companion, and
saw nothing.
At last I know that he said to me--I recall the very tone to this day:
"You ought to be told, I think. Yes, you ought to know. Philip Cross
asked her to be his wife a fortnight ago. She gave no decided answer. From
what Philip and Lady Berenicia have said to each other here, since, I know
it was understood that if she went to him to-day it meant 'yes.'"
This time I know I kept silence for a long time.
I found myself finally holding the hand he had extended to me, and saying,
in a voice which sounded like a stranger's:
"I will go to Albany whenever you like."
I left the Hall somehow, kicking the drunken Enoch Wade fiercely out of my
path, I remember, and walking straight ahead as if blindfolded.