HORACE TOWNSEND WITH A LADY IN CHARGE--AN ADVENTURE OVER THE
"GULF OF MEXICO"--CLARA VANDERLYN IN DEADLY PERIL--A MOMENT
OF HORROR--HALSTEAD ROWAN AND A DISPLAY OF THE COMANCHE
RIDING--TOWNSEND'S ECLIPSE--THE RETURN TO THE
CRAWFORD--MARGARET HAYLEY AGAIN, AND A CONVERSATION
OVERHEARD.
It was perhaps two o'clock before the meetings and partings were over
between the large party whom we have seen ascending from the Crawford, and
the yet greater number who had come up from the Glen House by the
belittling novelty of the mountain, the "carriage road,"--before the dinner
at the Tip-Top House was discussed, hearty and plentiful enough, if not
remarkably varied,--before the guides of the cavalcade had done "chaffing"
the carriage drivers from the Glen, whom they seemed to regard very much as
"old salts" do "fresh-water sailors,"--before every member of the party had
viewed the magnificent scenery from every conceivable point, drank their
fill of a beauty that might not be duplicated for years or excelled in a
lifetime, and filled pockets and reticules equally full of all the maps and
books that could be bought and all the geological specimens that could be
picked up, as memorials of the visit. By that hour the warning of the
guides was heard, reminding all that there was no more time remaining than
would suffice to carry themselves and their tired horses back to the
Crawford by nightfall. At once, then, the descent began--supposed, in
advance, to be so uneventful and merely a pleasant diminished repetition of
the experiences of the ascent.
As they climbed down the broken rocks of the peak to their
patiently-waiting horses (they would probably have waited patiently until
they dropped with hunger, if by that means the rider and his saddle could
have been avoided; for your mountain horse does _not_ find unalloyed
pleasure in his occupation!)--when near the "corral," as it may be called,
Frank Vanderlyn left his sister for a moment and stepped over to Horace
Townsend, who was descending alone, Halstead Rowan (as usual) at some
distance ahead and already preparing to mount and away.
"Would you have any objections, sir," the young man asked, "as I believe
that you have no lady in charge, to ride in company with my sister on the
way down?"
"Certainly not!" replied Townsend, though a little surprised at the
salutation and request from one of the haughty Vanderlyns to whom he had
not even been introduced. "I shall be proud of the charge, if your sister
and yourself feel like placing so much confidence in an entire stranger."
"Oh, _we_ know a gentleman when we see him!" replied the young man, not a
little arrogantly, as it appeared to the lawyer, and with a sinister glance
at the Illinoisan which indicated that it would have been some time before
_he_ was entrusted with the same responsibility.
"I am flattered!" said Townsend, with the bow which the speech demanded and
yet did not deserve. "Do you remain on the top yourself?"
"No," answered the young man. "But the fact is that my horse kicks. He
kicked my sister's pony twice in coming up; and I am afraid of some trouble
in going down, if she rides behind me. It will be better for me to drop
into the rear of all, where the ill-tempered devil cannot do injury to any
one."
A few words of quasi-introduction and explanation between Vanderlyn, Clara
and the lawyer followed; and Horace Townsend, who had come up the mountain
without any lady and only in the casual companionship of a man who
continually rode away and left him alone, found himself ready to go down it
with the fairest member of the company in charge! Had nothing else
intervened since the ride up from Littleton to the Profile and that long,
steady glance of admiration which had then been bestowed upon the sweet
face and auburn hair,--what a dangerous proximity this might have proved!
But the human heart, expansive as it may be, has not quite the capacity of
a stage-coach or a passenger-car; and to prevent falling in desperate love
with one fascinating woman thrown in one's way, there is perhaps no guard
so potent as being in real or fancied desperate love with another!
Halstead Rowan and the lady whom Townsend had reason to believe the object
of his hope and his despair, had not been flung together and apart from
others, for one moment during the day--Mr. Frank Vanderlyn had taken
especially good care in that respect; though the lawyer had little cause to
doubt that if both could have had their choice of companionship, they would
have stood side by side and without others too near, by the High Altar
which crowned the summit of the mountain, and spoken words difficult to
unsay again during the lifetime of either. But if he had not been alone
with Clara Vanderlyn, there is equally little doubt that he had looked at
her much oftener than at the most admired point of scenery on the route.
And as Frank Vanderlyn strolled away to his horse, and Townsend, with the
lady obviously under his charge, was preparing to mount, he saw Rowan, with
one foot in the stirrup and the other on the ground, looking over at him
and his companion, with the most comical expression of wonder on his face
that could well have been compressed into the same extent of physiognomy.
The heart of the new knight-errant, which must have been a soft one or he
would never have labored under that weakness, smote him at the thought of
his apparent desertion; and with a word of apology he stepped away from the
lady and approached the dismounted amateur Comanche.
"You don't mean to say that you are going to----" said the latter, and he
nodded his head comically and yet a little pitifully towards Clara
Vanderlyn.
"Ride down with Miss Vanderlyn? Yes!" answered the lawyer.
"And who the deuce asked you to do it, I should like to know?"
"Her brother."
"Phew-w-w!" A prolonged whistle, very characteristic and significant.
Townsend, in a word, explained the affair.
"All right!" said the Illinoisan. "But, look here, old fellow! You haven't
arranged this affair yourself, eh? No meetings on a single track, you
know!"
"Not a bit of it!" laughed Townsend at the professional illustration.
"Confidence for confidence! Have you not seen more closely than _that_?"
"Yes, I thought I had!" answered Rowan. "Well, all right! Go ahead! But by
Jupiter, if you do not take the best care of that girl, and she gets into
any kind of a scrape by riding with a man who _can't_ ride, there will be
somebody challenged to something else than ten-pins!"
Townsend laughed and turned away. The time had been, he thought, when
incapacity to ride would scarcely have been set down as among his
short-comings. But every thing, even equestrianism, was to be reckoned by
comparison!
A moment after, all the party were in the saddle; and then commenced a
descent still more laborious than the ascent, at least to the tired horses
that groaned almost humanly as they slid down the sudden declivities, and
to the more timid of the riders. Horace Townsend rode immediately before
Miss Vanderlyn, a little forward of the centre of the Indian file (the only
possible mode of riding in those narrow bridle-paths)--Rowan half-a-dozen
further behind, then two or three others, and Frank Vanderlyn, with his
dangerous bay, bringing up the rear.
The lawyer found his fair companion all that her face had indicated, in the
desultory conversation which sprung up between them as they made their way
downward from the summit, descending the peak of the monarch and riding
back over the broad top of Monroe towards Franklin. Clara Vanderlyn
conversed genially and easily, and had evidently (in spite of some
restrictions already suggested,) enjoyed the day with the full warmth of an
ardent nature. She seemed an excellent horsewoman, easy and self-possessed
in the saddle, and Townsend observed that she found leisure from the care
of picking her way, to look back several times over her shoulder. For a
long time he may have been undecided whether her regard was directed at her
brother, at the extreme end of the line, or at some one in the middle
distance. The one glance of anxiety would have been very natural: the
other, compounded of interest only, may have been likewise natural
enough--who can say?
They were crossing Monroe to Franklin, over the narrow back-bone of land
that has been mentioned in the ascent, and at the very point where Oakes'
Gulf, now on the left, and the scarcely less terrible Gulf of Mexico on the
right, narrowed the whole causeway to not much more than a dozen of
feet,--when Townsend heard a sudden and sharp cry behind him. At that point
the descent of the path was very precipitous, and over stones so rugged
that the horses kept their feet with great difficulty; and in his anxiety
to insure safe footing he had for the moment lost sight of his fair
companion--a poor recommendation of his ability as an escort, perhaps, but
not less true than reprehensible! At the cry he turned instantly, though he
could not so suddenly check the course of his horse down the path without
danger of throwing him from his feet; and as he looked around, through the
olive brown of his cheek a deadly whiteness crept to the skin, and his
blood stood still as it had probably never before done since the tide of
life first surged through his veins.
It has been the lot of many men to look upon a horror accomplished or so
nearly accomplished that any reversal of the decree of fate seemed to be
beyond hope. Such is the gaze upon the strewn dead of the battle-field,
before the life has quite gone out from a few who are already worse than
dead, and when the groans and the cries for "water!" to cool the lips
parched in the last fever, have not yet entirely ceased. Such is the
hopeless glance at the windrow of dead strewing the shore when a ship is
going to pieces in the surf, in plain sight and yet beyond the aid of human
hands, and when every moment is adding another to the drowned and ghastly
subjects for the rough-coated Coroner. Such is the stony regard at the
crushed victims of a railroad catastrophe, or the charred and blackened
remains of those who were but a little while ago living passengers on the
steamboat that is just burning at the water's edge. Such, even, is the
shuddering glance at the brave and unconscious firemen who stand beneath a
heavy wall, when that wall is surging forward and coming down in a crushing
mass upon their very heads, with no power except a miracle of Omnipotence
to prevent their being flattened into mere pan-cakes of flesh, and blood,
and bone. All these, and a thousand others, are horrors accomplished or
beyond hope of being averted; and they are enough to sicken the heart and
brain of humanity brought into sudden familiarity with them. But perhaps
they are not the worst--perhaps that yet unaccomplished but probable horror
is still more terrible, because uncertainty blends with it and there is yet
enough of hope to leaven despair. The life not yet fully forfeited, but
going--going; the form not yet crushed out of the human semblance, but to
be so in a moment unless that one chance intervenes; the face--especially
if the face be that of woman, a thousand times more beautiful in the relief
of that hideous mask of death which the gazer sees glooming behind
it,--this is perhaps the hardest thing of all to see and not go mad.
None of these conditions may have been quite fulfilled in the glance cast
backward by Horace Townsend at that moment; but let us see how far the
situation varied from the most terrible of requirements.
Going over that back-bone in the morning, the lawyer, who chanced to be for
the moment alone, had swung himself from his horse, leaving the animal
standing in the trough, peered through the bushes to the right, down into
Oakes' Gulf, and walked to the edge of the broad stone that formed the
projection over the Gulf of Mexico. He had found that stone smooth and
rounded, a little slippery from the almost perpetual rains and mists
beating upon it, not more than eight to ten feet wide from the path to the
verge, and with a perceptible slope downwards in the latter direction. He
had thought, then, that it needed a clear head and a sure foot (both of
which he possessed) to stand in that position or even to tread the stone at
any distance from the path. And so thinking, he had swung himself back into
the saddle and ridden on,--the incident, then, not worth relating--now, a
thing of the most fearful consequence.
For as he glanced back, at that sudden cry, he saw Clara Vanderlyn sitting
her horse on the very top of that smooth plateau of stone overlooking the
two thousand feet of the Gulf of Mexico, at what could not have been more
than four or five feet from the awful verge, and certainly on the downward
slope of what was an insecure footing even for the plastic foot of
man--much more for the clumsy iron-shod hoof!
What could have induced her trained pony to spring out from the path a few
feet behind and rush into that perilous elevation, must ever remain (in the
absence of an equine lexicon) quite as much of a mystery as it seemed at
that moment. Perhaps it was in going down some such declivity of path as
that before him, that he had been kicked by the vicious bay of Frank
Vanderlyn while making the ascent, and that he had concluded to wait on
this convenient shelf until all the rest had gone by, before he consented
to make the passage with his fair burthen. Perhaps the movement was merely
one of those unaccountable freaks of sullen madness in which horses as well
as men sometimes have the habit of indulging. At all events, such was the
situation; and the recollection of it, as thus recalled to those who were
present, will be quite enough, as we are well aware, to set the heart
beating most painfully. What, then, must have been the feeling of all who
saw, and especially of that man who had promised to _protect_ the fair
being thus placed in peril! What thoughts of the playful threat of Halstead
Rowan must have rushed through his brain--that "if she got into any kind of
a scrape by riding with a man who _couldn't_ ride," such and such fatal
results would follow! Not a duel with the Illinoisan--oh, no!--but a black,
terrible, life-long duel with his own self-reproaches and remorse for
heedlessness and want of judgment--this would be the doom more fearful than
a thousand personal chastisements, if danger became destruction. One clumsy
movement of the horse's feet, one slip on the stone, and she would as
certainly go over that dizzy precipice and fall so crushed and mangled a
mass into the gulf below that her fragments could scarcely be distinguished
from those of the pony she rode--as certainly as she had grace and love and
beauty crowning her life and adding to the possible horror of her death. He
did not know, then, how many of the cavalcade saw the situation, or how the
blood of most who saw stood still like his own, with dread and
apprehension.
The inconceivable rapidity of human thought has been so often made a matter
of comment, that words could but be wasted in illustrating it. It shames
the lightning and makes sluggard light itself. All these thoughts in the
mind of Horace Townsend scarcely consumed that time necessary to draw rein
and turn himself round in the saddle in a quick attempt to alight, rush up
the side of the rock and seize her horse by the bridle or swing her from
her seat. He had no irresolution--no moment of hesitation--he only thought
and suffered in that single instant preceding action.
"For God's sake do not move! I will be there in one instant!" he said in a
low, hoarse, intense voice that reached her like a trumpet's clang.
"Oh yes--quick! quick!" he heard her reply, in a convulsive, frightened
voice. "Oh, quick!--you don't know where I am!"
Poor girl!--he _did_ know where she was, too well.
She was braver than most women, or she would probably have jerked the
bridle or frightened her horse by frantic cries, and sent him slipping with
herself down the ravine; for the situation was a most fearful one, and
there are few women who could have braved it without a tremor. A _man_, let
it be remembered, if cruel enough, might have alighted and left the horse
to its fate; but to a woman, encumbered by her long clothes, the attempt
must have been almost certain destruction for both.
Perhaps not sixty seconds had elapsed after the first cry, when the lawyer
succeeded in checking his horse without throwing him headlong, swung his
foot out of the stirrup, and attempted to spring to the ground. But just
then there was a sudden rush over the rock; a wierd and unnatural sweeping
by, something like that of the Demon Hunt in "Der Freischutz;" a cry of
terror and fright that seemed to come from the whole line in the rear and
fill the air with ghastly sound; a closing of the eyes on the part of the
incapable guardian, in the full belief that the noises he heard were those
of the accomplishment of the great horror; then sounds nearer him, and a
jar that almost prostrated himself and the horse against which he yet
leaned; then a wild cry of exultation and delight which seemed--God help
his senses!--was he going mad?--to be mingled with the clapping of hands
like that which follows a moment of intense interest at the theatre!
Then silence, and the lawyer opened his eyes as suddenly as he had closed
them. And what did he see? On the rock, nothing; in the path, ahead of him,
Clara Vanderlyn still sitting her horse, though in a half fainting state,
and Halstead Rowan, also on horseback, ahead of her, and with his hand
holding her bridle!
Of course Horace Townsend, at that moment of doubt whether he stood upon
his head or his heels--whether he had gone stark mad or retained a fair
measure of sanity--whether the earth yet revolved in its usual orbit or had
gone wandering off into cometary space, beyond all physical laws--of
course at that moment he could not know precisely what had occurred to
produce that sudden and singular change; and he could only learn, the
moment after, from those who had been on the higher ground behind at the
moment of the peril. According to their explanations, at the moment when
they all saw the danger with a shudder and a holding of the very breath,
Rowan had been heard to utter a single exclamation: "Well, I swear!" (a
rough phrase, and one that he should by no means have used; but let his
Western life and training entitle him to some consideration)--dashed spurs
into the side of his horse--crowded by the five or six who preceded him, in
a path considered impassable for more than one horse at a time--and then,
with a wild Indian cry that he apparently could not restrain, spurred up
the side of the rock, between Clara Vanderlyn and the verge of the
precipice, certainly where the off feet of his horse could not have been
thirty inches from the slippery edge, and literally jerked her horse and
herself off into the path by the impetus of his own animal outside and the
sudden grip which he closed upon her bridle as he went by, himself coming
down into the path ahead, and neither unseated! Miss Vanderlyn's pony had
struck the lawyer's horse as he came down in his enforced flying leap; and
thus were explained all the sights, sounds, and physical events of that
apparently supernatural moment.
The scene which followed, only a few moments after, when the leading
members of the cavalcade (Clara Vanderlyn in the midst of it, supported by
Rowan, who managed to keep near her)--the scene which followed, we say,
when they reached a little plateau where the company had room to gather,
will not be more easily effaced from the memory of those who were present
than the terrible danger which had just preceded it. The overstrung nerves
of the poor girl gave way at that point, and she dropped from her horse in
a swoon, just as Halstead Rowan (singular coincidence!) had slipped from
the saddle and was ready to catch her as she fell! What more natural than
that in falling and being caught, she should have thrown her arms round the
stout neck of the Illinoisan? And what more inevitable than that he should
have been a considerable time in getting ready to lay her down upon the
horse-blankets that had been suddenly pulled off and spread for her,--and
that finally, the clinging grasp still continuing, he should have dropped
himself on one corner of the blanket and furnished the requisite support to
her head and shoulders?
Frank Vanderlyn and those who had been farthest behind with him came up at
that moment; and Horace Townsend, if no one else, detected the sullen frown
that gathered on his brow as he saw his sister lying in the arms of the man
whom he had so grossly insulted. But if he frowned he said nothing, very
prudently; for it is indeed not sure that it would have been safe, just
then, for an emperor, there present, to speak an ill word to the hero of
the day.
Be all this as it may, the usual authorial affidavit may be taken that
Halstead Rowan retained Clara Vanderlyn, brother or no brother in the way,
in his arms until some one succeeded in obtaining water from a clear
deposit of rain among the rocks; that no one--not even one of the
ladies--attempted to dispossess him of his newly-acquired human territory;
that when the water had been brought, and she first gave token of the full
return of consciousness, she did so by clasping her arms around Rowan's
neck (of course involuntarily) and murmuring words that sounded to Townsend
and some others near, like: "You saved me! How good and noble you are!" and
that even under that temptation he did not kiss her, as he would probably
have sacrificed both arms and a leg or two, but not his manliness, to do.
It was a quarter of an hour after, when Miss Vanderlyn, sufficiently and
only sufficiently recovered to ride, was placed once more in the saddle and
the cavalcade took its way more slowly down the mountains. The scenery,
under the western sun, was even more lovely than that of the morning, the
mists had all rolled away from every point of the compass, and there were
some views Franconia-wards that they had entirely missed in the ascent. But
there was scarcely one of the company who had not been so stirred to the
very depths of human sympathy, by the event of the preceding half-hour,
that inanimate nature, however wondrously beautiful, was half forgotten. So
quickly, in those summer meetings and partings, do we grow attached to
those with whom we are temporarily associated, especially amid the
surroundings of the sublime and beautiful,--that had that fair girl lost
her life so strangely and sadly, not one of all who saw the accident but
would have borne in mind through life, in addition to the inevitable horror
of the recollection, a memory like that of losing a dear and valued friend.
And yet many of them had never even spoken to her, and perhaps only one in
the whole cavalcade (her brother) had known of her existence one week
before!
Even as it was, there were not a few of that line of spectators from whose
eyes the vision of what might have been, failed to fade out with the moment
that witnessed it. Some of them dreamed, for nights after, (or at least
until another occurrence then impending dwarfed the recollection) not only
of seeing the young girl sitting helpless on that perilous rock, but of
beholding her arms raised to heaven in agony and the feet of her horse
pawing the air, as both disappeared from sight over the precipice. Some may
still dream of the event, in lonely night-hours following days of trouble
and anxiety.
In the new arrangements for descending the mountains, made after the
recovery of Clara Vanderlyn, Horace Townsend was not quite discarded, but
he could not avoid feeling that very little dependence was placed upon his
escort. It was of course as a mere jest, but to the sensitive mind of the
lawyer there seemed to be a dash of malicious earnest at the bottom,--that
Rowan took the first occasion as he passed near him, immediately after the
young girl had been removed from his arms, to give him a forcible punch in
the ribs, with the accompanying remark:
"Bah! I told you that you couldn't ride; but I had no idea that you could
not do any better at taking care of a woman, than that!"
Townsend quite forgave him that remark, jest or earnest, for he saw the new
sparkle in his eye, remembered how likely he was to have had his mind a
little disordered by all that sweet wealth of auburn hair lying for so many
minutes on his breast, and formed his own opinions as to the result. If
those opinions were favorable, well; if they were unfavorable, he was
taking a world of trouble that did not belong to him; for there is always a
"sweet little cherub" sitting "up aloft" to keep watch over the fortunes of
such rattle-pates and dare-devils as Halstead Rowan--to supervise their
getting into scrapes and out of them!
But there was nothing of jest, he thought, in the air with which Clara
Vanderlyn, when re-mounting her horse, replying to an earnest expression of
regret that one moment of inattention on his part should have allowed her
to be placed in serious peril,--very kindly denied that he had been guilty
of any neglect whatever, threw the whole blame upon her horse, thanked him
for the promptness with which he was coming to her relief when forestalled,
but then said, looking at Rowan with a glance which came near setting that
enthusiastic equestrian entirely wild:
"It seems that I am a very difficult person to take care of; and if you
have no objection to my having two esquires, and will allow Mr. Rowan to
ride with me as well as yourself, and if _he_ is willing to do so, I think
that I shall feel" (she did not say "safer", but) "a little more like
keeping up my spirits."
Frank Vanderlyn had looked somewhat sullenly on and scarcely said a word,
since his coming up. But at this speech of his sister's he must have felt
that the dignity of the Vanderlyn family was again in serious peril, for he
put his mouth close to her ear and spoke some words that were heard by no
other than herself. They could not have been very satisfactory or
convincing, for Horace Townsend, and others as well, heard her say in
reply:
"Brother, your horse is dangerous--you said so yourself; so just be good
enough to ride as you did before, and my friends here will take care of
me."
Whereupon the young man went back to his horse, looking a little
discomfited and by no means in the best of humors. Such little accidents
_will_ occur, sometimes, to mar the best-laid schemes of careful mothers or
anxious brothers, for preserving the ultra-respectability of a family; and
whether the origin of the intervention is in heaven or its opposite, there
is nothing to be done in such cases but to look wronged and unhappy, as did
Frank Vanderlyn, or smile over the accomplished mischief and pretend that
the event is rather agreeable than otherwise, as persons of more experience
than Frank have often had occasion to do at different periods during the
current century.
The result of all this was that Horace Townsend really rode down with Clara
Vanderlyn in the mere capacity of an esquire, while Halstead Rowan assumed
the spurs and the authority of the knight. The latter rode in advance of
her, as near her bridle-rein as the roughness of the path would allow; and
no one need to question the fact that _he_ kept his eyes on the young girl
quite steadily enough to secure her safety! What difficulty was there in
his doing so, when he had already proved that he could ride backward nearly
as well as forward and that the footing of his horse was the least thought
in his mind? They seemed to be conversing, too, a large proportion of the
time; and there is no doubt that Halstead Rowan, carried away by the events
of the day, uttered words that he might have long delayed or never spoken
under other circumstances,--and that Clara Vanderlyn wore that sweet flush
upon her face and kept that timid but happy trembling of the dewy
under-lip, much more constantly than she had ever before done in her young
life. Horace Townsend, who rode behind the lady, did not hear any of those
peculiar words which passed between her and her companion; and had _we_
heard them they would certainly not be made public in this connection.
The lawyer, as has been said, rode behind; and, as has _not_ been said, he
did so in no enviable state of feeling. He had done nothing--been accused
of nothing--in any manner calculated to degrade him; but one casual event
had thrown a shadow across his path, not easily recognized without some
recollection of characteristics before developed. The reader has had
abundant reason to believe that this man, profiting by some intelligence
obtained in a manner not open to the outer world, of the peculiar madness
of Margaret Hayley after that abstraction, courage,--had more or less
firmly determined to win her through the exhibition of certain qualities
which he believed that he possessed in a peculiar degree. One opportunity
had been given him (that at the Pool), and he had succeeded in interesting
her to an extent not a little flattering and hopeful; but envious fate
could not allow a week to pass without throwing him again into
disadvantageous comparison with a man who had no occasion whatever of
making any exhibition of such qualities!
That Margaret Hayley would yet remain for some days and perhaps weeks in
the mountains, and that she would probably visit the Crawford before her
departure, he had at least every reason to believe; and he had quite as
much cause for confidence that the story of the adventure over the Gulf of
Mexico, roundly exaggerated to place himself in a false position and to
deify the Illinoisan, would reach her ears, whether at the Profile or the
Crawford, through stage-drivers or migratory passengers, within the next
forty-eight hours. This (for reasons partially hinted at and others which
will develop themselves in due time) was precisely that state of affairs
which he would have given more to avoid than any other that could have been
named; and this it was that made a dark red flush of mortification rise at
times to his dusky cheek and give an expression any thing but pleasant to
his eyes, as he rode silently behind the two who were now so indubitably
linked as lovers, once more over the top of Prospect and down the rugged
declivities of Clinton. Those who have ever been placed in circumstances
approaching to these in character, can best decide whether the lawyer was
sulking for nothing or indulging in gloomy anticipations with quite
sufficient reason.
It was nearly sunset and the light had some time disappeared from the
valleys lying in the shade of the western peaks, when the last stony trough
and the last corduroy road of Mount Clinton was finally repassed, and the
whole cavalcade, each member of it perhaps moved by the one idea of showing
that neither horse nor rider was wearied out--broke once more into a trot
as they caught the first glimpse of the Crawford through the trees, dashed
merrily out from the edge of the woods, and came up in straggling but
picturesque order to the door of the great caravanserai. The difficult ride
of eighteen miles had been accomplished; the golden day (with its one
drawback of momentary peril) was over; and more than half a score who had
before only thought of the ascent of Mount Washington as a future
possibility, suddenly found that they could look back upon it as a
remembrance.
As they rode up to the front of the Crawford, the whole end of the piazza
was full of new-comers and late sojourners, watching the return of those
who had preceded or followed them--an idle, listless sort of gathering,
showing more curiosity than welcome, such as the traveller by rail or
steamboat sees crowding every platform at the expected time of the arrival
of a train and every pier at the hour for the coming in of a boat. Cries
of: "All safe, eh?" "Glad to see you back again!" "Hope you had a pleasant
day!" and "Well, how did you like Mount Washington?" broke from twenty lips
in a moment, mingled with replies and non-replies that came simultaneously:
"Oh, you ought to have gone up with us!" "My horse carried me like a
bird!" (the last remark, presumably, from a fat man of two hundred and
sixty, whom not even an elephant could have borne in that suggestively
buoyant manner), "Never _was_ such a day for going up, in the world!"
"Safe, eh? Yes, why not?" (that from a person, no doubt, who had really
been prodigiously scared at some period of the ride), and the one
inevitable pendant: "Oh, you have no idea what an adventure we have
had!--one of the ladies came near being killed--tell you all about it
by-and-bye," etc., etc.
Horace Townsend, who had been riding the last mile very much like a man in
a dream and really with the formal charge of Clara Vanderlyn entirely
abandoned to her chosen protector--Horace Townsend heard all this, as if he
heard through miles of distance or at a long period of time after the
utterance. For his eyes were busy and they absorbed all his sensations. He
had recognized, at the first moment of riding up, among the crowd of
persons on the piazza, the dark, proud eyes and beautiful face and stately
form of Margaret Hayley, leaning on the arm of that man whom he had not by
any means learned to love since his advent in the mountains--Captain Hector
Coles, V. A. D. C. They had waited clear weather before starting from the
Profile, and come through that day while his party had been absent up the
mountains: he realized all at a thought, and realized that whatever he was
himself to endure of trial lay much nearer than he had before believed.
Disguised and indeed disfigured as the lawyer was, in common with all the
other members of the cavalcade, to such a degree that only observation and
study could penetrate the masquerade,--it was not at all strange that the
lady failed to meet his eye with an answering glance of recognition; and he
felt rather grateful than the reverse, for the moment, that his disguise
was so effectual. While Clara Vanderlyn, a third time within one week the
passive heroine of the mountains, was being lifted from her saddle by half
a dozen officious hands, and while the rest of the party were gabbling as
they alighted,--he slipped quietly from his horse behind one corner of the
piazza, threw his rein to one of the stable-boys, and disappeared through
the hall, up-stairs to his chamber.
He did not again make his appearance until supper was on the tables and the
battle of knives-and-forks going on with that vigor born of mountain air.
Most of the visitors at the house, the voyagers of the day included, were
already seated; and among them was Clara Vanderlyn, apparently no whit the
worse for her day's adventure, her brother at one and her mother at the
other side. A little further down the table, on the same side, sat Halstead
Rowan, occupying the same seat of the evening before. He had evidently
dropped back from his familiar standing with the lady, the moment they came
within the atmosphere of Mrs. Vanderlyn and the great republic of voices at
the Crawford; but quite as evidently he had not yet fallen away from his
last-won position as a hero, for his face was continually flushing, as he
ate, with the modesty of a girl's, when the whispers and nods and pointings
of interest and admiration were made so plain that they reached his eye and
ear. The adventure of the day was undeniably the topic of the evening, and
Halstead Rowan was the hero; and it may be imagined how much this knowledge
and the inevitable corollary that some one else was _not_ the hero, added
to the comfort of the late-comer at table.
Margaret Hayley, Mrs. Burton Hayley and Captain Hector Coles were also at
supper, but they had nearly finished when Townsend took his seat. They rose
the moment after, and as they did so the lawyer, now once more so arrayed
as to display his own proper person, caught the eye of Margaret. She nodded
and smiled, yes, smiled!--in answer to his bow across the table; and he
could almost have taken his professional oath that a quick sparkle came to
her eye when she saw him, then died away as quickly as if compelled back by
a strong will. Mrs. Burton Hayley did not seem to see him at all; but
Captain Coles signified that _he_ did so, by a glance of such new-born
contempt blended with old hatred, as he should never have wasted upon any
one except a national enemy whom he had just defeated in arms. The party
swept down the room, and very soon after the others whom we have noted also
rose and disappeared, leaving Horace Townsend discussing his supper with
what appetite he might. It may be consoling to some curious persons to know
that that appetite was by no means contemptible, and that he did not falter
in physique if restless unquiet and anxiety made a prey of his mind.
Half an hour after, he was smoking his cigar on the piazza, none whom he
knew within view; and he strolled out into the edge of the wood to the
right of the house, to enjoy (if enjoyment it could be called) solitude,
gloom and darkness. The path he followed led him eventually round in a
circle and brought him back to the edge again, only a few yards from the
house and near the spot where the two huge bears were moving about, dense
black spots in the twilight. There was a rude bench beneath the trees not
far from what might have been called their "orbit" (especially as they are
sometimes "stars" at the menageries); and on that bench he discovered three
figures. He was but a little distance away when he first saw them and that
they were two ladies and a gentleman; and he was still nearer before he
became aware that they were the Hayleys, mother and daughter, with their
inevitable attendant and cavalier.
They were in conversation, not toning it so low as if they had any
particular anxiety against its being overheard; and yet Horace Townsend,
much as he might have wished to know every word that came from the lips of
at least one of the three, might have passed on without listening
intentionally to one utterance, if he had not chanced to hear that they
were discussing the event of the day. That fact literally chained him to
the root of the tree near which he was standing--he was _so_ anxious to
know what version of the affair had already been circulated and given
credence among the three or four hundred visitors at the Crawford, and
especially among the particular three of that number.
It has before been said, we fancy, by that widely-known writer,
"Anonymous," that listeners do not always hear any notable good of
themselves. And Horace Townsend, in stopping to play the eaves-dropper, at
least partially illustrated the saying. He heard a version of the Gulf of
Mexico affair, from the lips of Captain Coles, calculated to make him, if
he had any sensitiveness of nature and a spark of the fighting propensity,
kill himself or the narrator.
"I think I have heard enough of it," Margaret Hayley was saying, as
Townsend came within hearing. "I really do not know that Miss Vanderlyn,
though a pleasant girl enough, is of so much consequence that the whole
house should go crazy over one of her little mishaps in riding."
"A little mishap!" echoed the Captain. "Phew!--if I am not very much
mistaken it was a _big_ mishap--just a hair's-breadth between saving her
life and losing it!"
"Is it possible?" said Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Why dear me, Captain
Coles!--that is very interesting, especially if her being saved was
providential. Did you hear the particulars, then?"
"Shall we go in, mother?" asked Margaret.
"No, my dear, not yet!" answered Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Captain Coles is just
going to tell us what really happened to the young lady who was so
mercifully spared. Go on, Captain, please."
"Well, the story is a short one, though thrilling enough, egad!--to put
into a romance!" said the Captain. "Young Waldron, that we met at the
Profile, was one of the party, and he told me about it while you were
dressing for supper. It appears that Miss Vanderlyn went up with her
brother, and that something happened to his horse--it got lamed, or
something,--so that he could not ride down with her. He was fool enough,
then, to put her under the charge of that friend of yours, Margaret--"
"Captain Coles, will you be kind enough to confine yourself to your story,
if you must tell it, and leave _my_ name out of the question?" was the
interruption of the young lady--no unpleasant one to the listener,--at that
point of the narration.
"Humph! I do not see that you need be so sensitive about it!" sneered back
the Captain. "Well, then, not that friend of yours, but that man, who has
not less than a dozen names and who lives in Philadelphia and Cincinnati
and several other cities."
"Yes, the man whose handkerchief you took out of his pocket the other
night, in the ten-pin alley, to see whether his initials were correct!"
again interrupted Margaret in a tone of voice not less decided than that of
the other was taunting and arrogant.
It was much too dark, under the shade of the trees, at that moment, to see
the face of Captain Hector Coles, or he might have been discovered, even
under his moustache, biting his lip so sharply that the blood came. An eye
keen enough to have seen this, too, would have been able to see that Horace
Townsend trembled like an aspen leaf, that great beads of sweat started out
on his brown forehead, while he muttered a fierce word of anger and
indignation that died away on the night air without reaching any human ear.
Captain Hector Coles choked an instant and then went on:
"He entrusted her to the care of that adventurer, who managed, before they
had ridden a mile, to lose his way and his presence of mind at the same
time--got her and her pony on the top of a slippery rock where there were
ten thousand chances to one that she would fall a thousand feet over the
precipice--and then sat on his horse, white as a sheet and too badly scared
to attempt rescuing her, yelling like a booby for help, until that coarse
fellow from somewhere out West came up and grasped her just as she was
going over."
What would not Horace Townsend have given for a grip of the throat of
Captain Hector Coles at that moment? And what would he not have given to
hear Margaret Hayley say: "I do not believe the story! The man who leaped
into the Pool the other day, is not the booby and poltroon you would make
him, just because you are jealous of him, Captain Hector Coles!" What, we
say, would the listener not have given to hear _that_? Alas!--he had no
reason to expect any such word, and no such word was spoken. Margaret
Hayley merely rose from her seat, saying:
"Now, if you have finished that rigmarole, in which nobody, I think, is in
the least interested, we will go to the house, for I am taking cold."
The others rose, and the three moved towards the house. Horace Townsend did
not move towards the house, but in another direction, his heart on fire and
his brain in a whirl. But as they went off he heard the Captain say,
apparently in response to some remark of Mrs. Burton Hayley's which was not
caught at that distance:
"Of course I believe him to be a coward as well as a disreputable
character. Any man who would flinch from _any_ exposure, especially like
that on a mere edge of a cliff, to save life, is the basest kind of a
coward. Such men ought to stand a little while among bullets, as _we_ have
to do, and they would soon show themselves for what they are worth."
Horace Townsend saw nothing more of either that night, or of any of the
others with whom this narration has to do. There was no music, other than
that of the piano, in the parlor of the Crawford, and early beds were in
requisition. Many, who had not ascended the mountains, had ridden hard and
long in other directions; and for the people of the Mount Washington
cavalcade themselves--they were very tired, very much exhausted and very
sleepy, and romance and flirtation were obliged to succumb to aching bones
and the invitations of soft pillows. Halstead Rowan, even, did not roll a
single game of ten-pins before he retired to his lonely
chamber--physico-thermometrical proof of the general worn-out condition!