SUNRISE
ON the following morning there was a reaction of good spirits in all
the party.
The men went out early on the lake, and the ladies were enthusiastic
over the trout they ate for breakfast in consequence. Harmless jests
passed between the mothers; Helen Maynard lost somewhat of her reserve,
and as for Betsy, her narrow face beamed upon everything and everybody
indiscriminately as the party journeyed onward to the Canyon Hotel.
After luncheon they all drove to Inspiration Point, and looked upon the
Grand Canyon, the sight of whose beauty is an epoch-making experience
in the life of the most blasé.
The Grand Canyon in Arizona is larger, grander than perhaps any of
the world’s physical wonders; but it is too colossal to be grasped.
Its very distances are so vast that a bluish veil seems hung before
its battlements and minarets, while its river, a mile below, might as
well be cotton wool lying stationary in the depths. One sees without
believing, and gasps without grasping. There is as much of awe as of
joy in beholding the Arizona wonder.
But in the Yellowstone lies a revelation of beauty which bathes the
soul in a dream of loveliness, so surpassing, so overwhelming, that
it is inconceivable that one could receive more into the ecstatic
consciousness. Majesty it has and impressive vastness; but not more
than can rejoice the eye and thrill the heart.
When finally the party were returning to the hotel for dinner, Irving
turned a grave face upon Betsy’s glowing countenance.
“You don’t seem to have anything on your mind,” he said.
“Not a thing,” she rejoined promptly.
“I wish I could wash my hands of the affair as easily,” he said
crushingly.
“Mr. Irving,” a smile rippled over Betsy’s thin lips, “I haven’t had a
chance to tell you that I talked with Mr. Derwent last night.”
“You did, eh?” The young man’s face changed to alert attention.
“He feels just the way we do. It’s goin’ to be all right.”
“_Jubilate!_” ejaculated Irving. “How?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you now. You go right on trustin’ me—or rather you’d
better begin!”
“You’re a good soul, Clever Betsy! When does she stop?”
“As soon as it’s right.”
Irving uttered an exclamation of impatience.
“Don’t show your ignorance o’ business methods,” said Betsy smiling.
“You go on with your fishin’. Everything’s goin’ to be all right, and
I’ll tell you about it later.”
Thus reassured, Irving obeyed. He went on fishing; he tramped to
Artist’s Point with Miss Maynard, Nixie, and Mr. Derwent, and at night
went to his rest without having cross-examined Betsy further.
He knew every shade of expression in her good, immobile face, and
satisfaction was too clearly writ upon it for him to doubt that all
was well. Let her have her little mystery, if she derived enjoyment
from it. Of course all Irving cared for was to know that Rosalie was
properly looked after,—the details were really immaterial.
Toward the following morning he found himself on the shore of the
Firehole River, again waiting for the Riverside Geyser to play. As the
water began to spout, he suddenly noticed that Rosalie Vincent was in a
canoe in the middle of the river, just in the path of the irresistible
liquid catapult. He flung off his coat preparatory to jumping into the
water, and at the same time shouted her name repeatedly.
A mixture of sheepishness and relief greeted his sudden view of the
ceiling of his bedroom. His own voice rang in his ears. He glanced at
the window. Streaks of light were showing in the sky. An idea occurred
to him.
“I shall never have such another chance,” he thought. In fifteen
minutes more he was dressed and stealing like a burglar down the
corridor and out the door of the hotel.
The sky was brightening fast, and he started on a jog-trot in the
direction of the canyon.
The stillness, the loveliness of that morning,—the only sounds those
of Nature undisturbed and uninterrupted! What fine exhilaration was
in the air! Had no reward followed that run over the mountain road,
Irving Bruce would have remembered it all his days as unique in rare
enjoyment; but when at last he passed out from the shadows and stood
upon a vantage-point commanding the superb gorge, what words can
describe the grandeur of the pageant, as the rising sun brightened the
flaming walls of the canyon, and whitened the tempestuous water which
paused on an awful brink before thundering into the deeps below,—a
compact mass of shimmering silver foam!
A strange ecstasy forced moisture into the watcher’s eyes; but
suddenly as his glance swept down the cliff his heart seemed to stop
beating. On a jutting rock below him a woman was standing. She wore a
white gown and was bareheaded. While he looked she seemed to become
terror-stricken, and retreating, her back to the falls, clung to the
hoary rock like a frightened dove.
As in his dream Irving shouted, “Rosalie! Rosalie!” but the mad roar of
water fortunately drowned his voice as he plunged down the path that
led to the jutting rock.
If the girl should faint or fall, there was nothing to prevent her
slipping over the edge and rolling into the awful chasm, and it seemed
to the man an eternity before he scrambled to a foothold beside her and
seized the white gown. She lifted dilated eyes to his face, then gave a
smile of heavenly relief and sank into the arms that clasped her.
He scowled down while he held her close.
“Are you crazy?” he demanded.
“Oh!” was all she could breathe.
“Don’t you faint!” he exclaimed again, as ferociously as before.
“No—I won’t,” she murmured. She was very white as she pushed herself
from him.
He clasped her hand tightly.
“Don’t look down. Put your foot there.” He indicated a spot with his
own foot and stepped ahead of her.
Thus, little by little, he led her upon the steep trail, and they
climbed to the upper ground.
“That was a crazy thing to do!” repeated the man when they stood in
safety.
“The water—drew me,” she answered faintly.
She was more than ever like a nymph, her eyes appealing in her white
face under the gold of her hair.
“Aren’t you cold? Where are your wraps?” viewing her white dress.
She looked about helplessly. “I had a sweater. I must have dropped it
somewhere. No, oh no, Mr. Bruce;” for Irving was taking off his coat.
“Nonsense! Of course I shall. How many layers do you suppose I need?
See my sweater-vest?” He put her arms in his coat-sleeves and buttoned
it close to her throat. “I’m glowing. I ran all the way.”
“How wonderful that you came!” She said it very quietly, apparently
still under the spell of her moment of panic.
He kept his eyes upon her. “I dreamed about you. I dreamed that you
were in danger.”
She looked at him curiously. “Is that why you came?”
“Perhaps. Who can tell?” His face had cleared, and he looked into hers,
so still and lovely above the rough coat. “I am very angry with you,
Rosalie.”
“Oh no, you can’t be. It looked very easy. See.”
From where they stood, the jutting rock below did look ample and
tempting.
“But I’m sorry I frightened you,” she added, and looked up at him with
an enchanting smile.
The new day had begun. The solemn pines towered above them. On a crag
below clung an eagle’s nest, and the parent birds circled and soared
above the emerald-green river, returning to the young with food.
“It seems,” said the man slowly, “as if we were alone in this
stupendously beautiful world.”
“My head went round and round,” she returned dreamily. “I wonder how
long I could have held there.”
He shuddered. “Did life suddenly seem well worth living?” he asked.
“Yes indeed,” she returned. “It seemed that, yesterday. A wonderful
thing has happened to me. I’m not a heaver any more.”
“Tell me all about it. When did you come? What does it mean to find you
here at dawn as if you had rained from the skies?”
“Mr. Derwent doesn’t want me to stay in the Park. He thinks there is
other work I can do. He cared a great deal for my father, and for
his sake he will take care of me and guide me, he says, if I will be
obedient.” The speaker lifted her eyes again to those which studied
her. “It’s easy to be obedient to pleasant orders, isn’t it? He wants
to send me right back to Boston.”
She paused, and Irving nodded with satisfaction.
“I quite understand,” she went on quietly, “why he wishes me to go a
little ahead of your party.” Irving frowned.
“It’s all right. I have felt very much humiliated—” she went on.
“Absurd, ridiculous,” interjected Irving hotly; but she finished her
sentence as if he had not spoken.
“Betsy says I am a vine, and wish too much to cling, and haven’t
backbone enough; but Mr. Derwent’s interest puts backbone into me. I
feel that surely there is a place for me somewhere—”
“Where,” interrupted her companion, “where in Boston are you going?”
“He will take care of it all, he says. Isn’t it wonderful? I don’t
wonder that he loved my father.” The girl’s eyes shone. “He says that
they were very close at one time, and that old friends can never be
replaced. It makes me think of what Holmes said:—
“‘There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our
morning days,
No greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise:
Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold;
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold!’”
The girlish voice was like music above the smothered roar of many
waters. As Irving listened and looked, he understood the warmth of
Mrs. Bruce’s brief enthusiasm.
There was a pause, and the two feasted their eyes upon the glories
before them.
“It is absurd that you shouldn’t go back to Boston with us,” said
Irving at last.
“I’d much rather not, Mr. Bruce. I fear if Mr. Derwent had insisted on
that, I should have rebelled. You are kind to take an interest—”
“An interest!” burst forth Irving, and arrested himself. He smiled.
“Didn’t I pick you off that cliff a few minutes ago?”
She looked at him with an expression which nearly banished his
self-control.
“We don’t hear much about man-angels,” she said, “but you looked like
one to me at that moment—one of Botticelli’s—you know how ready they
always look to scowl?”
She laughed softly.
“I was furious with you,” said Irving. “So remember I have part
interest in you after this. Mr. Derwent is all very well, but—
“‘There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our
morning days.’
These are our morning days, Rosalie.”
“Yes, and the morning hours of them,” she agreed. “Since I knew I
was to leave to-day I felt I could not waste the time in sleeping. I
wanted—oh! how I wanted—how I have dreamed of seeing the sun rise in
this canyon! Perhaps,” she looked at him wistfully, “perhaps it would
have been my last sunrise but for you.”
Irving’s heart beat faster, and his jaw set. He could feel again the
yielding form that had clung to him.
“No one would have known,” she went on in a dreamy tone. “Even Mr.
Derwent would have thought I had disappeared purposely and would have
marveled at my ingratitude; but—” her voice changed and she looked up
into Irving’s eyes, smiling,—“they might all have talked about me and
said critical things, yet Betsy would have believed in me,—believed and
suffered. Dear Betsy!”
“How about me? How about the friend of your morning days?” asked Irving.
“Oh, you only began to be that this morning. You would never have given
the matter a thought; and even Helen Maynard knows me too slightly to
have defended me.”
“Miss Maynard has found a gold-mine in the Yellowstone. Did Mr. Derwent
tell you?”
“No, indeed. What do you mean?”
“She turns out to be an heiress, and only discovered it here.”
“How beautiful!” Rosalie’s eyes looked away pensively. “Any fortunate
discovery becomes glorified by being made here. How happy she must be!
It is so fine to have time to work at what you love to do!”
“Yes,” answered Irving. “That is the Eldorado for each of us.
“‘And only the Master shall praise us,
And only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money,
And no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working;
And each in his separate star
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It
For the God of Things as They Are!’”
Rosalie’s eyes were bright as she met his.
“And I think Mr. Derwent means to let me work in my star. It’s such a
little star, but I feel it in me to succeed, and if the day should come
when I vindicate myself to—to people that are disappointed in me now
and don’t understand, I shall be happy, _happy_.”
“Happiness is largely a matter of—of friendship, as you said a few
minutes ago,” said Irving. “I want you to remember that you may always
call upon me; that I am at your service. I swear you shall never be
disappointed.”
Rosalie returned his earnest regard with serious eyes.
“You saved my life,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” he returned. “You would have stooped in a minute
and crept to a place of safety on the trail.”
“Then why were you so savage with me?” she asked. “It would have been
necessary for me to stand up on that rock, and to take a short step
across to terra firma. It seems as if I never could have done it.”
“Oh, yes. The giddiness would have passed in a minute, and you would
have done it. Self-preservation is the first law of life.”
Rosalie shook her head slowly. “Then you have a bad temper. You were
frightfully cross.”
“That was merely discipline. You should never go to a place like that
unless I am with you.”
“You!”
The girl’s tone of extreme wonder brought the color to her companion’s
face. He replied, however, with _sang-froid_. “Yes. I’ll take you down
there now if you’d like to try it again.”
She shook her head slowly.
“No.”
He laughed. “Discreet second thought, eh?”
“No, I’m not afraid, with you,” she replied quietly. “But I don’t care
to go again.” A pause, then she continued: “I must go back to the
hotel. I leave to-day.”
“And we to-morrow. It is a shame. I wish you’d let me—”
“No, Mr. Bruce, not for anything,” she returned earnestly. “Let Mr.
Derwent take care of it, and—if we meet again here, will you kindly not
talk to me?”
“Just as you say. I will go back to the hotel with you now; but this is
our good-by. Give me both your hands, Rosalie.”
She obeyed. Their eyes met. She colored richly, looking like an
embodiment of the morning as she stood against the sombre green of the
stately pines. Freedom was before her: freedom to live, and to work,
with the knowledge that she was no longer alone in the world. That was
cause enough for the happiness that shone in her eyes; but that was not
filling her thoughts to overflowing while Irving clasped her rough
little hands close. It was the remembrance of the pounding terror of
his heart in the moment when they had clung together on the dizzy rock.
“Don’t forget, Rosalie. I am your ally.”
She stood silent, her starry gaze not dropping before his.
“Friendship is going to mean a great deal to us,” he went on. “I feel
it. Remember; for—
“‘Friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.’”