The Hilltop School stood on a blessed site. Lifted high above the
village, it held the crest of the last gentle wave of the mountains
that filled the south with crowding billows, ragged and tumultuous.
Northward, the great plain lay at our feet, smiling in the sun; meadows
and groves, yellow fields of harvest and green orchards, white roads and
clustering towns, with here and there a little city on the bank of
the mighty river which curved in a vast line of beauty toward the blue
Catskill Range, fifty miles away. Lines of filmy smoke, like vanishing
footprints in the air, marked the passage of railway trains across
the landscape--their swift flight reduced by distance to a leisurely
transition. The bright surface of the stream was furrowed by a hundred
vessels; tiny rowboats creeping from shore to shore; knots of black
barges following the lead of puffing tugs; sloops with languid motion
tacking against the tide; white steamboats, like huge toy-houses,
crowded with pygmy inhabitants, moving smoothly on their way to the
great city, and disappearing suddenly as they turned into the narrows
between Storm-King and the Fishkill Mountains. Down there was life,
incessant, varied, restless, intricate, many-coloured--down there was
history, the highway of ancient voyagers since the days of Hendrik
Hudson, the hunting-ground of Indian tribes, the scenes of massacre and
battle, the last camp of the Army of the Revolution, the Head-quarters
of Washington--down there were the homes of legend and poetry, the
dreamlike hills of Rip van Winkle’s sleep, the cliffs and caves haunted
by the Culprit Fay, the solitudes traversed by the Spy--all outspread
before us, and visible as in a Claude Lorraine glass, in the tranquil
lucidity of distance. And here, on the hilltop, was our own life;
secluded, yet never separated from the other life; looking down upon
it, yet woven of the same stuff; peaceful in circumstance, yet ever busy
with its own tasks, and holding in its quiet heart all the elements of
joy and sorrow and tragic consequence.
The Master was a man of most unworldly wisdom. In his youth a great
traveller, he had brought home many observations, a few views, and at
least one theory. To him the school was the most important of human
institutions--more vital even than the home, because it held the first
real experience of social contact, of free intercourse with other minds
and lives coming from different households and embodying different
strains of blood. “My school,” said he, “is the world in miniature. If I
can teach these boys to study and play together freely and with fairness
to one another, I shall make men fit to live and work together in
society. What they learn matters less than how they learn it. The great
thing is the bringing out of individual character so that it will find
its place in social harmony.”
Yet never man knew less of character in the concrete than Master Ward.
To him each person represented a type--the scientific, the practical,
the poetic. From each one he expected, and in each one he found, to
a certain degree, the fruit of the marked quality, the obvious, the
characteristic. But of the deeper character, made up of a hundred
traits, coloured and conditioned most vitally by something secret and
in itself apparently of slight importance, he was placidly unconscious.
Classes he knew. Individuals escaped him. Yet he was a most
companionable man, a social solitary, a friendly hermit.
His daughter Dorothy seemed to me even more fair and appealing by
daylight than when I first saw her in the dusk. There was a pure
brightness in her brown eyes, a gentle dignity in her look and bearing,
a soft cadence of expectant joy in her voice. She was womanly in every
tone and motion, yet by no means weak or uncertain. Mistress of herself
and of the house, she ruled her kingdom without an effort. Busied with
many little cares, she bore them lightly. Her spirit overflowed into the
lives around her with delicate sympathy and merry cheer. But it was
in music that her nature found its widest outlet. In the lengthening
evenings of late August she would play from Schumann, or Chopin, or
Grieg, interpreting the vague feelings of gladness or grief which lie
too deep for words. Ballads she loved, quaint old English and Scotch
airs, folk-songs of Germany, “Come-all-ye’s” of Ireland, Canadian
chansons. She sang--not like an angel, but like a woman.
Of the two under-masters in the school, Edward Keene was the elder.
The younger, John Graham, was his opposite in every respect. Sturdy,
fair-haired, plain in the face, he was essentially an every-day man,
devoted to out-of-door sports, a hard worker, a good player, and a sound
sleeper. He came back to the school, from a fishing-excursion, a
few days after my arrival. I liked the way in which he told of his
adventures, with a little frank boasting, enough to season but not to
spoil the story. I liked the way in which he took hold of his work,
helping to get the school in readiness for the return of the boys in
the middle of September. I liked, more than all, his attitude to Dorothy
Ward. He loved her, clearly enough. When she was in the room the
other people were only accidents to him. Yet there was nothing of the
disappointed suitor in his bearing. He was cheerful, natural, accepting
the situation, giving her the best he had to give, and gladly taking
from her the frank reliance, the ready comradeship which she bestowed
upon him. If he envied Keene--and how could he help it--at least he
never showed a touch of jealousy or rivalry. The engagement was a fact
which he took into account as something not to be changed or questioned.
Keene was so much more brilliant, interesting, attractive. He answered
so much more fully to the poetic side of Dorothy’s nature. How could she
help preferring him?
Thus the three actors in the drama stood, when I became an inmate of
Hilltop, and accepted the master’s invitation to undertake some of the
minor classes in English, and stay on at the school indefinitely. It was
my wish to see the little play--a pleasant comedy, I hoped--move forward
to a happy ending. And yet--what was it that disturbed me now and then
with forebodings? Something, doubtless, in the character of Keene, for
he was the dominant personality. The key of the situation lay with
him. He was the centre of interest. Yet he was the one who seemed not
perfectly in harmony, not quite at home, as if something beckoned and
urged him away.
“I am glad you are to stay,” said he, “yet I wonder at it. You will find
the life narrow, after all your travels. Ulysses at Ithaca--you will
surely be restless to see the world again.”
“If you find the life broad enough, I ought not to be cramped in it.”
“Ah, but I have compensations.”
“One you certainly have,” said I, thinking of Dorothy, “and that one is
enough to make a man happy anywhere.”
“Yes, yes,” he answered, quickly, “but that is not what I mean. It is
not there that I look for a wider life. Love--do you think that love
broadens a man’s outlook? To me it seems to make him narrower--happier,
perhaps, within his own little circle--but distinctly narrower.
Knowledge is the only thing that broadens life, sets it free from the
tyranny of the parish, fills it with the sense of power. And love is the
opposite of knowledge. Love is a kind of an illusion--a happy illusion,
that is what love is. Don’t you see that?”
“See it?” I cried. “I don’t know what you mean. Do you mean that you
don’t really care for Dorothy Ward? Do you mean that what you have won
in her is an illusion? If so, you are as wrong as a man can be.”
“No, no,” he answered, eagerly, “you know I don’t mean that. I could not
live without her. But love is not the only reality. There is something
else, something broader, something----”
“Come away,” I said, “come away, man! You are talking nonsense, treason.
You are not true to yourself. You’ve been working too hard at your
books. There’s a maggot in your brain. Come out for a long walk.”
That indeed was what he liked best. He was a magnificent walker, easy,
steady, unwearying. He knew every road and lane in the valleys, every
footpath and trail among the mountains. But he cared little for walking
in company; one companion was the most that he could abide. And, strange
to say, it was not Dorothy whom he chose for his most frequent comrade.
With her he would saunter down the Black Brook path, or climb slowly to
the first ridge of Storm-King. But with me he pushed out to the farthest
pinnacle that overhangs the river, and down through the Lonely Heart
gorge, and over the pass of the White Horse, and up to the peak of Cro’
Nest, and across the rugged summit of Black Rock. At every wider outlook
a strange exhilaration seemed to come upon him. His spirit glowed like
a live coal in the wind. He overflowed with brilliant talk and curious
stories of the villages and scattered houses that we could see from our
eyries.
But it was not with me that he made his longest expeditions. They were
solitary. Early on Saturday he would leave the rest of us, with some
slight excuse, and start away on the mountain-road, to be gone all day.
Sometimes he would not return till long after dark. Then I could see the
anxious look deepen on Dorothy’s face, and she would slip away down the
road to meet him. But he always came back in good spirits, talkable and
charming. It was the next day that the reaction came. The black fit
took him. He was silent, moody, bitter. Holding himself aloof, yet never
giving utterance to any irritation, he seemed half-unconsciously to
resent the claims of love and friendship, as if they irked him. There
was a look in his eyes as if he measured us, weighed us, analysed us all
as strangers.
Yes, even Dorothy. I have seen her go to meet him with a flower in
her hand that she had plucked for him, and turn away with her lips
trembling, too proud to say a word, dropping the flower on the grass.
John Graham saw it, too. He waited till she was gone; then he picked up
the flower and kept it.
There was nothing to take offence at, nothing on which one could lay a
finger; only these singular alternations of mood which made Keene now
the most delightful of friends, now an intimate stranger in the circle.
The change was inexplicable. But certainly it seemed to have some
connection, as cause or consequence, with his long, lonely walks.
Once, when he was absent, we spoke of his remarkable fluctuations of
spirit.
The master labelled him. “He is an idealist, a dreamer. They are always
uncertain.”
I blamed him. “He gives way too much to his moods. He lacks
self-control. He is in danger of spoiling a fine nature.”
I looked at Dorothy. She defended him. “Why should he be always the
same? He is too great for that. His thoughts make him restless, and
sometimes he is tired. Surely you wouldn’t have him act what he don’t
feel. Why do you want him to do that?”
“I don’t know,” said Graham, with a short laugh. “None of us know. But
what we all want just now is music. Dorothy, will you sing a little for
us?”
So she sang “The Coulin,” and “The Days o’ the Kerry Dancin’,” and “The
Hawthorn Tree,” and “The Green Woods of Truigha,” and “Flowers o’ the
Forest,” and “A la claire Fontaine,” until the twilight was filled with
peace.
The boys came back to the school. The wheels of routine began to turn
again, slowly and with a little friction at first, then smoothly and
swiftly as if they had never stopped. Summer reddened into autumn;
autumn bronzed into fall. The maples and poplars were bare. The oaks
alone kept their rusted crimson glory, and the cloaks of spruce and
hemlock on the shoulders of the hills grew dark with wintry foliage.
Keene’s transitions of mood became more frequent and more extreme. The
gulf of isolation that divided him from us when the black days came
seemed wider and more unfathomable. Dorothy and John Graham were
thrown more constantly together. Keene appeared to encourage their
companionship. He watched them curiously, sometimes, not as if he
were jealous, but rather as if he were interested in some delicate
experiment. At other times he would be singularly indifferent to
everything, remote, abstracted, forgetful.
Dorothy’s birthday, which fell in mid-October, was kept as a holiday.
In the morning everyone had some little birthday gift for her,
except Keene. He had forgotten the birthday entirely. The shadow of
disappointment that quenched the brightness of her face was pitiful.
Even he could not be blind to it. He flushed as if surprised, and
hesitated a moment, evidently in conflict with himself. Then a look of
shame and regret came into his eyes. He made some excuse for not going
with us to the picnic, at the Black Brook Falls, with which the day was
celebrated. In the afternoon, as we all sat around the camp-fire, he
came swinging through the woods with his long, swift stride, and going
at once to Dorothy laid a little brooch of pearl and opal in her hand.
“Will you forgive me?” he said. “I hope this is not too late. But I lost
the train back from Newburg and walked home. I pray that you may never
know any tears but pearls, and that there may be nothing changeable
about you but the opal.”
“Oh, Edward!” she cried, “how beautiful! Thank you a thousand times. But
I wish you had been with us all day. We have missed you so much!”
For the rest of that day simplicity and clearness and joy came back to
us. Keene was at his best, a leader of friendly merriment, a master of
good-fellowship, a prince of delicate chivalry. Dorothy’s loveliness
unfolded like a flower in the sun.
But the Indian summer of peace was brief. It was hardly a week before
Keene’s old moods returned, darker and stranger than ever. The girl’s
unconcealable bewilderment, her sense of wounded loyalty and baffled
anxiety, her still look of hurt and wondering tenderness, increased
from day to day. John Graham’s temper seemed to change, suddenly and
completely. From the best-humoured and most careless fellow in the
world, he became silent, thoughtful, irritable toward everyone except
Dorothy. With Keene he was curt and impatient, avoiding him as much as
possible, and when they were together, evidently struggling to keep down
a deep dislike and rising anger. They had had sharp words when they were
alone, I was sure, but Keene’s coolness seemed to grow with Graham’s
heat. There was no open quarrel.
One Saturday evening, Graham came to me. “You have seen what is going on
here?” he said.
“Something, at least,” I answered, “and I am very sorry for it. But I
don’t quite understand it.”
“Well, I do; and I’m going to put an end to it. I’m going to have it out
with Ned Keene. He is breaking her heart.”
“But are you the right one to take the matter up?”
“Who else is there to do it?”
“Her father.”
“He sees nothing, comprehends nothing. ‘Practical type--poetic
type--misunderstandings sure to arise--come together after a while each
supply the other’s deficiencies.’ Cursed folly! And the girl so unhappy
that she can’t tell anyone. It shall not go on, I say. Keene is out on
the road now, taking one of his infernal walks. I’m going to meet him.”
“I’m afraid it will make trouble. Let me go with you.”
“The trouble is made. Come if you like. I’m going now.”
The night lay heavy upon the forest. Where the road dipped through the
valley we could hardly see a rod ahead of us. But higher up where the
way curved around the breast of the mountain, the woods were thin on the
left, and on the right a sheer precipice fell away to the gorge of the
brook. In the dim starlight we saw Keene striding toward us. Graham
stepped out to meet him.
“Where have you been, Ned Keene?” he cried. The cry was a challenge.
Keene lifted his head and stood still. Then he laughed and took a step
forward.
“Taking a long walk, Jack Graham,” he answered. “It was glorious. You
should have been with me. But why this sudden question?”
“Because your long walk is a pretence. You are playing false. There
is some woman that you go to see at West Point, at Highland Falls, who
knows where?”
Keene laughed again.
“Certainly you don’t know, my dear fellow; and neither do I. Since when
has walking become a vice in your estimation? You seem to be in a fierce
mood. What’s the matter?”
“I will tell you what’s the matter. You have been acting like a brute to
the girl you profess to love.”
“Plain words! But between friends frankness is best. Did she ask you to
tell me?”
“No! You know too well she would die before she would speak. You are
killing her, that is what you are doing with your devilish moods and
mysteries. You must stop. Do you hear? You must give her up.”
“I hear well enough, and it sounds like a word for her and two for
yourself. Is that it?”
“Damn you,” cried the younger man, “let the words go! we’ll settle it
this way”----and he sprang at the other’s throat.
Keene, cool and well-braced, met him with a heavy blow in the chest. He
recoiled, and I rushed between them, holding Graham back, and pleading
for self-control. As we stood thus, panting and confused, on the edge of
the cliff, a singing voice floated up to us from the shadows across the
valley. It was Herrick’s song again:
A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
Is in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I’ll give to thee.
“Come, gentlemen,” I cried, “this is folly, sheer madness. You can never
deal with the matter in this way. Think of the girl who is singing down
yonder. What would happen to her, what would she suffer, from scandal,
from her own feelings, if either of you should be killed, or even
seriously hurt by the other? There must be no quarrel between you.”
“Certainly,” said Keene, whose poise, if shaken at all, had returned,
“certainly, you are right. It is not of my seeking, nor shall I be the
one to keep it up. I am willing to let it pass. It is but a small matter
at most.”