HUMMOCKS.
"Blown crystal clear by Freedom's northern wind."
Leslie said the last line of Whittier's glorious mountain sonnet, low,
to herself, standing on the balcony again that next morning, in the
cold, clear breeze; the magnificent lines of the great earth-masses
rearing themselves before her sharply against a cloudless morning sky,
defining and revealing themselves anew.
"Freedom's northern wind will take all the wave out of your hair, and
give you a red nose!" said Jeannie, coming round from her room, and upon
Leslie unaware.
Well, Jeannie _was_ a pretty thing to look at, in her delicate blue
cambric morning dress, gracefully braided with white, with the fresh
rose of recent sleep in her young cheeks, and the gladness of young life
in her dark eyes. One might look away from the mountains to look at her;
for, after all, the human beauty is the highest. Only, it must express
high things, or at last one turns aside.
"And there comes Marmaduke; he's worse than the north wind. I can't
stay to be 'blown clear' by him." And Jeannie, in high, merry
good-humor, flitted off. It is easy to be merry and good-humored when
one's new dress fits exquisitely, and one's hair hasn't been fractious
in the doing up.
Leslie had never, apparently to herself, cared less, somehow, for self
and little vanities; it seemed as if it were going to be quite easy for
her, now and henceforth, to care most for the nobler things of life. The
great mountain enthusiasm had seized her for the first time and swept
away before it all meaner thought; and, besides, her trunk had been left
behind, and she had nothing to put herself into but her plain brown
traveling dress.
She let the wind play with the puffs of her hair, and send some little
light locks astray about her forehead. She wrapped her shawl around her,
and went and sat where she had sat the night before, at the eastern end
of the balcony, her face toward the morning hills, as it had been toward
the evening radiance and purple shade. Marmaduke Wharne was moving up
and down, stopping a little short of her when he turned, keeping his own
solitude as she kept hers. Faces and figures glanced out at the
hall-door for an instant each, and the keen salute of the north wind
sent them invariably in again. Nobody wanted to go with a red nose or
tossed hair to the breakfast-table; and breakfast was almost ready. But
presently Mrs. Linceford came, and, seeing Mr. Wharne, who always
interested and amused her, she ventured forth, bidding him good-morning.
"Good-morning, madam. It _is_ a good morning."
"A little sharp, isn't it?" she said, shrugging her shoulders together,
irresolute about further lingering. "Ah, Leslie? Let me introduce you to
the Reverend Mr. Wharne. My young friend and traveling companion, Miss
Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne. Have you two driven everybody else off,
or is it the nipping air?"
"I think it is either that they have not said their prayers this
morning, or that they don't know their daily bread when they see it.
They think it is only saleratus cakes and maple molasses."
"As cross this morning as last night?" the lady questioned playfully.
"Not cross at all, Mrs. Linceford. Only jarred upon continually by these
people we have here just now. It was different two years ago. But
Jefferson is getting to be too well known. The mountain places are being
spoiled, one after another."
"People will come. You can't help that."
"Yes, they will come, and frivel about the gates, without ever once
entering in. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall
stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who
hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity.'"
Leslie Goldthwaite's face quickened and glowed; they were the psalm
lines that had haunted her thought yesterday, among the opening visions
of the hill-country. Marmaduke Wharne bent his keen eyes upon her, from
under their gray brows, noting her narrowly. She wist not that she was
noted, or that her face shone.
"One soul here, at least!" was what the stern old man said to himself in
that moment.
He was cynical and intolerant here among the mountains, where he felt
the holy places desecrated, and the gift of God unheeded. In the haunts
of city misery and vice,--misery and vice shut in upon itself, with no
broad outlook to the heavens,--he was tender, with the love of Christ
himself.
"'My house shall be called the house of prayer, but these have made it a
den of thieves.' It is true not alone of the temples built with hands."
"Is that fair? How do you _know_, Mr. Wharne?" The sudden, impetuous
questions come from Leslie Goldthwaite.
"I see--what I see."
"The whole?" said Leslie, more restrainedly. She remembered her respect
for age and office. Yet she felt sorely tempted, shy, proud girl as she
was, to take up cudgels for her friends, at least. Mr. Wharne liked her
the better for that.
"They turn away from this, with five words,--the toll of custom,--or
half a look, when the wind is north; and they go in to what you saw last
night."
"After all, isn't it just _enjoyment_, either way? Mayn't one be as
selfish as the other? People were kind, and bright, and pleasant with
each other last night. Is that a bad thing?"
"No, little girl, it is not." And Marmaduke Wharne came nearer to
Leslie, and looked at her with a gentle look that was wonderfully
beautiful upon his stern gray face. "Only, I would have a kindness that
should go deep,--coming from a depth. There are two things for live men
and women to do: to receive, from God; and to give out, to their
fellows. One cannot be done without the other. No fruit, without the
drinking of the sunshine. No true tasting of the sunshine that is not
gathering itself toward the ripening of fruit."
Here it was again; more teaching to the self-same point,--as we always
do get it, with a seeming strangeness, whether it be for mind only, or
for soul. You never heard of a new name, or fact in history, that did
not come out again presently in some fresh or further mention or
allusion. It is the tender training of Him before whom our life is of
so great value.
At this moment, the gong sounded again; saleratus cakes and maple
molasses were ready, and they all went in.
Leslie saw Imogen Thoresby change seats with her mother, because the
draught from the door was less in her place; and take the pale top cake
from the plate, leaving a brown one for the mother. Everybody likes
brown cakes best; and it was very unbecoming to sit opposite a great,
unshaded window, to say nothing of the draught. Surely a little blossom
peeped out here from under the leaf. Leslie thought Imogen Thoresby
might be forgiven for having done her curls so elaborately, and put on
such an elegant wrapper; even for having ventured only a half-look out
at the balcony door, when she found the wind was north. The parable was
already teaching her both ways.
I do not mean to preach upon every page. I have begun by trying to tell
you how a great influencing thought was given into Leslie Goldthwaite's
life, and began to unravel for her perplexing questions that had
troubled her,--questions that come, I think, to many a young girl just
entering upon the world, as they came to her; how, in the simple history
of her summer among the mountains, a great deal solved itself and grew
clear. I would like to succeed in making you divine this, as you follow
out the simple history itself.
"Just in time!" cried Jeannie Hadden, running up into Leslie's room at
mid-afternoon that day. "There's a stage over from Littleton, and your
trunk is being brought up this minute."
"And the hair-trunk and the mail-bag came on, too, after all, and the
queerest people with them!" added Elinor, entering behind her.
They both stood back and were silent, as a man came heavily along the
passage with the trunk upon his shoulder. He set it down and unfastened
the straps, and in a minute more was gone, and Leslie had the lid open.
All there, just as it had been in her own room at home three days ago.
Her face brightened, seeing her little treasures again. She had borne it
well; she had been able to enjoy without them; but she was very glad
that they were come.
"It's nice that dinner is at lunch-time here, and that nobody dresses
until now. Make haste, and get on something pretty. Augusta won't let us
get out organdies, but we're determined on the blue grenadines. It's
awfully hot,--hot enough for anything. Do your hair over the high rats,
just for once."
"I always get into such a fuss with them, and I can't bear to waste the
time. How will this do?" Leslie unpinned from its cambric cover a gray
iron barége, with a narrow puffing round the hem of the full skirt and
the little pointed bertha cape. With it lay bright cherry ribbons for
the neck and hair.
"Lovely! Make haste and come down to our room." And having to dress
herself, Jeannie ran off again, and Elinor shut the door.
It was nice to have on everything fresh; to have got her feet into
rosetted slippers instead of heavy balmoral boots; to feel the lightness
and grace of her own movement as she went downstairs and along the halls
in floating folds of delicate barége, after wearing the close,
uncomfortable traveling-dress, with the sense of dust and fatigue that
clung about it; to have a little flutter of bright ribbon in her hair,
that she knew was, as Elinor said, "the prettiest part of her." It was
pleasant to see Mrs. Linceford looked pleased, as she opened her door to
her, and to have her say, "You always do get on exactly the right
thing!" There was a fresh feeling of pleasure even in looking over at
Washington, sun-lighted and shadowed in his miles of heights and depths,
as she sat by the cool east window, feeling quite her dainty self again.
Dress is but the outside thing, as beauty is but "skin deep;" but there
is a deal of inevitable skin-sensation, pleasurable or uncomfortable,
and Leslie had a good right to be thoroughly comfortable now.
The blinds to the balcony window were closed; that led to a funny little
episode presently,--an odd commentary on the soul-and-body question, as
it had come up to them in graver fashion.
Outside, to two chairs just under the window, came a couple newly
arrived,--the identical proprietors of the exchanged luggage. It was an
elderly countryman, and his home-bred, matter-of-fact wife. They, too,
had had their privations and anxieties, and the outset of their
evidently unusual travels had been marred in its pleasure. In plain
truth, the good woman was manifestly soured by her experience.
Right square before the blinds she turned her back, unconscious of the
audience within, lifted her elbows, like clothes-poles, to raise her
draperies, and settled herself with a dissatisfied flounce, that
expressed beforehand what she was about to put in words. "For _my_
part," she announced deliberately, "I think the White Mountains is a
clear--_hummux!_"
"Good large hummocks, anyway," returned her companion.
"You know what I mean. 'T ain't worth comin' for. Losin' baggage, an'
everything. We'd enough sight better ha' stayed at Plymouth. An' if it
hadn't 'a' ben for your dunderheadedness, givin' up the checks an' never
stoppin' to see what was comin' of 'em, trunks or hencoops, we might.
There's somethin' to see, there. That little bridge leadin' over to the
swings and seats across the river was real pretty and pleasant. And the
cars comin' in an' startin' off, right at the back door, made it lively.
I alwers _did_ like to see passin.'"
The attitudes inside the blinds were something, at this moment. Mrs.
Linceford, in a spasm of suppressed laughter herself, held her
handkerchief to her lips with one hand, and motioned peremptory silence
to the girls with the other. Jeannie was noiselessly clapping her hands,
and dancing from one toe to the other with delight. Leslie and Elinor
squeezed each other's fingers lightly, and leaned forward together,
their faces brimming over with fun; and the former whispered with
emphatic pantomime to Mrs. Linceford, "_If_ Mr. Wharne were only here!"
"You've ben worried," said the man. "And you've ben comin' up to 'em
gradooal. You don't take 'em in. If one of these 'ere hills was set out
in our fields to home, you'd think it was something more than a hummock,
I guess."
"Well, why ain't they, then? It's the best way to put things where you
can see 'em to an advantage. They're all in the way of each other here,
and don't show for nothing to speak of. Worried! I guess I hev ben! I
shan't git over it till I've got home an' ben settled down a week. It's
a mercy I've ever laid eyes agin on that bran'-new black alpacky!"
"Well, p'r'aps the folks felt wuss that lost them stylish-lookin'
trunks. I'll bet they had something more in 'em than black alpackys."
"That don't comfort me none. I've had _my_ tribulation."
"Well, come, don't be grouty, Hannah. We've got through the wust of it,
and if you ain't satisfied, why, we'll go back to Plymouth again. I can
stand it awhile, I guess, if 't _is_ four dollars a day."
He had evidently sat still a good while for him, honest man; and he got
up with this, and began to pace up and down, looking at the "hummocks,"
which signified greater meanings to him than to his wife.
Mrs. Linceford came over and put the window down. It was absolutely
necessary to laugh now, however much of further entertainment might be
cut off.
Hannah jumped up, electrified, as the sash went down behind her.
"John! John! There's folks in there!"
"S'pose likely," said John, with quiet relish of amends. "What's good
for me 'ill do for them!"