A PLEASANT CONVERSATION.
Like the patter of rain in a damp heavy day,
Or the voice of a brook when its waters are low,
That murmurs and murmurs and murmurs away--
Was the sound of her words in their meaningless flow.
After a while, finding that Mrs. Farnham was still talking at the
children, and dealing him a sharp sentence or two over their
shoulders, for preferring the scenery to her conversation, the Judge
quietly drew in his head, and gathering up a quantity of the flowers,
arranged a pretty bouquet for each of the little girls, who received
them with shy satisfaction.
Then with more effort at arrangement, he completed a third bouquet,
and laid it on Mrs. Farnham's lap with affected diffidence, that went
directly to that very weak portion of the lady's system, which she
dignified with the name of heart.
Enoch Sharp smiled at the effect of his adroit attention, while the
lady, appeased into a state of gentle self-complacency, rewarded him
with beaming smiles and a fresh avalanche of those soft frothy words,
which she solemnly believed were conversation. From time to time she
refreshed herself with the perfume of his mountain flowers, descanted
on their beauties with sentimental warmth, and murmured snatches of
poetry over them, very soft, very sentimental, and particularly
annoying to a man filled in all the depths of his soul with an honest
love of nature.
"I wish my ward could have seen the old place before he went to
college," observed the Judge, adroitly seizing upon a pause in this
cataract of words, and making a desperate effort to change the
subject. "He will find Harvard rather dull, I fear, at first."
The Judge was unfortunate. His choice of subject reminded Mrs. Farnham
of an old grievance, and that day she was ambitious to establish
herself a character for martyrdom.
"Yes," she answered, "I'm sure he will, but Fred would go. I knew
they'd make a Unitarian of him or something of that sort, and the way
I pleaded would have touched a heart of stone, I'm sure.
"'It was in your father's family,' said I, 'to lean towards what they
called liberal views, but I, your mother, Fred, I am firm on the other
side, orthodox, settled like a rock in that particular--though it has
been said that in other things, the affections for instance--I'm more
like a dove.'"
Here Mrs. Farnham settled the folds of her travelling dress with both
hands, as if the dove had taken a fancy to smooth its plumage.
"Well, as I was saying to Fred, sir, 'go to Yale, don't think of
Harvard, but go to Yale. There you will get a granite foundation for
your religion--everything solid and sound there--go to Yale, my son.'
"It was in this way I reasoned, sir, but Fred has a good deal of his
father in him, stubborn, Judge--stubborn as a--a mule, if you will
excuse me mentioning that animal to a gentleman who keeps such horses
as you do."
The Judge bowed. The love of a fine horse was one of his
characteristics; he rather enjoyed the compliment.
His bow set Mrs. Farnham off again with double power.
"'You won't go to Yale,' said I, 'and you will go to Harvard. Let us
strike a medium, Fred, a happy medium is the most pleasant thing in
the world--go to Harvard one year, the next to Yale, then, sir, I
thought of your church--' and, said I, 'finish off at old Columbia,
it'll be a compliment to your guardian.'"
"Thank you," said the Judge, with a demure smile; "thank you for
remembering my church so kindly; but what did my ward say to this?"
"Why, sir, would you believe it, he answered in the most disrespectful
manner, that he went to college to got an education, and Harvard was
good enough for that.
"'But,' said I, 'take my medium and you will try Harvard, and Yale,
and old Columbia, too; only think what an introduction it would be
into all sorts of the best religious society.'
"Well, sir, what do you think he did but laugh in the most irreverent
manner, and ask me if I couldn't point out a Universalist institution
that he could finish up at. I declare, Judge, it almost broke my
heart."
"Well, well, let us hope it will all turn out right," answered the
Judge, consolingly--"look, madam, look, what a lovely hollow that is!"
They were now descending the mountain passes. Broken hills and lovely
green valleys rose and sunk along their rapid progress. Never on earth
was scenery more varied and lovely. Little emerald hollows shaded with
hemlock, overhanging brooklets that came stealing like broken diamond
threads down the mountain sides to hide beneath their shadows, were
constantly appearing and disappearing along the road.
It was impossible for little Mary to sit still when these heavenly
glimpses presented themselves. Her cheeks burned, her eyes kindled;
her very limbs trembled with suppressed impatience; but she dared not
lean forward, and could only obtain tantalizing glances of the
sparkling brooks, and the soft, green mosses that clung around the
mountain cliffs where they shot over the road.
They passed through several villages, winding in and out through
mountain passes, where the hills were so interlapped that it seemed
impossible to guess how the carriage would extricate itself from the
green labyrinth.
Nothing could be more delicate and vivid than the foliage that clothed
the hill-sides, for the primeval growth of hemlocks had been cut away
from the hills, and a second crop of luxuriant young trees, beech,
oak, and maple, mottled with rich clusters of mountain ash, and the
deep green of white pines, covered the whole country.
All at once the coachman drew up his horses on a curve of the highway.
The carriage was completely buried in a valley along which wound the
river, whose sweet noise they had long heard among the trees.
"Now children, look out," said the Judge, laughing pleasantly; "look
out and tell me how we are to get through the hills."
Both the little girls sprang forward and looked abroad breathlessly,
like birds at the open door of a cage in which they had been
imprisoned. The Judge watched them with smiling satisfaction as they
cast puzzled glances from side to side, meeting nothing but shoulders
and angles and ridges of the mountains heaving over each other in huge
green waves that seemed to be endless, and to crowd close to each
other, though many a lovely valley lay between, little dreamed of by
the wondering children.
"Well, then, tell me how you expect to get out, little ones?" repeated
the Judge.
"Sure enough, how?" repeated Isabel, drawing back, and looking from
the Judge to Mrs. Farnham.
But Mary was still gazing abroad. Her eyes wandered from hill to hill,
and grew more and more luminous as each new beauty broke upon her. At
last she drew back with a deep breath, and the loveliest of human
smiles upon her face.
"Indeed, sir, indeed I shouldn't care if we never did get out, the
river would be company enough."
"Yes, company enough," replied the Judge, smiling. "But would it feed
us when we are hungry?"
"It don't seem as if I ever should be hungry here," replied the child.
"But I am hungry now," replied Enoch Sharp; "and so is Mrs. Farnham,
I dare say!"
"No," replied that lady, who prided herself on a delicate appetite, "I
never am hungry; dew and flowers, my friends used to say, were
intended to support sensitive nerves like mine."
"Very likely," thought Enoch Sharp; "I am certain no human being could
support them," but he drowned this ungallant thought in a loud call
for Ralph to drive on.
The horses made a leap forward, swept round a huge rock that concealed
the highway where it curved suddenly with a bend of the river, and
before them lay one of the most beautiful mountain villages you ever
beheld. The horses knew their old home. Away they went sweeping up the
broad winding sheet between double columns of young maple trees,
through which the white houses gleamed tranquilly and dream-like on
the eyes of those city children.