his life; and he took little note of how he came and went in the lives
of others. He had no idea of those inexplicable circles of thought
and being that touch at a single point, and jar, perhaps. One day,
while the Indian summer was still red on the hills,--he had reason to
remember this day,--while the purple haze hovered over the landscape
and mellowed to artistic delicacy the bold, bright colors of Sunrise
Rock, he chanced to drive alone in his friend's rickety buggy along
the road that passed on the opposite bank from the painted cliff and
encircled the dreary little graveyard of the mountaineers. He became
suddenly aware that there was a figure leaning against the palings;
he recognized Selina Teake as he lifted his absorbed eyes. She held
her sun-bonnet in her hand, and her yellow hair and fair face were
unshaded; how little did he or she imagine what that face was to be to
him afterward! He drew up his horse and spoke: "Well, this is the last
place I should think you would want to come to."
She did not understand his dismal little joke at the graveyard. She
silently fixed upon him those eyes, so suggestive of deep, clear waters
in which some luminous planet has sunk a starry reflection.
"Did you intend to remain permanently?"
"I war restin' awhile," she softly replied.
He had a vague consciousness that she was the first of these proud
mountaineers whom he had ever seen embarrassed or shy. She was
indubitably blushing as he looked at her, and as she falteringly looked
at him. How bright her eyes were, how red her delicate lips, what a
faint fresh wild-rose was suddenly abloom on her cheek!
"Suppose you drive with me the remainder of the way," he suggested.
This was only the courtesy of the road in this region, and with her
grave, decorous manner she stepped lightly into the vehicle, and they
bowled away together. She was very mute and motionless as she sat
beside him, her face eloquent with some untranslated emotion of mingled
wonderment and pleasure and pain. Perhaps she drew in with the balsamic
sunlit air the sweetest experience of her short life. He was silent
too, his thoughts still hanging drearily about his blighted prospects
and this fatal false step that had led him to the mountains; wondering
whether he could have done better, whether he could have done otherwise
at all, when it would end,--when, and how.
Trelawney was lounging against the rail fence in front of Teake's
house, looking, in his negligent attire, like a prince in disguise,
and talking to the mountaineers about a prospective deer-hunt. There
was a surprised resentment on his face when Cleaver drove up, but the
return of Selina with him made not a ripple among the Teakes. It would
have been impossible to demonstrate to them that they stood on a lower
social plane. Their standard of morality and respectability could not
be questioned; there had never been a man or a woman of the humble name
who had given the others cause for shame; they had lived in this house
on their own land for a hundred years; they neither stole nor choused;
they paid as they went, and asked no favors; they took no alms,--nay,
they gave of their little! As to the artificial distinctions of money
and education,--what do the ignorant mountaineers care about money and
education!
Selina stood for a moment upon the cabin porch, her yellow hair
gleaming like an aureola upon a background of crimson sumach leaves. A
pet fawn came to the door and nibbled at her little sun-burned hands.
As she turned to go in, Trelawney spoke to her. "Shall I bring you a
fawn again? or will you have some venison from the hunt to-morrow?"
She fixed her luminous eyes upon him and laughed a little. There was
no shyness in her face and manner now. Was Trelawney so accustomed a
presence in her life, Cleaver wondered.
"Ah, I see," said Fred, laughing too. "I'll bring you some venison."
He was grave enough as he and his friend drove homeward together, and
Cleaver was roused to the perception that there was a certain unwonted
coldness slipping insidiously between them. It was not until they were
seated before the fire that Trelawney again spoke. "How did it happen
that you and she were together?" Evidently he had thought of nothing
else since.
"Who?--the Lady Selina?" said Cleaver, mockingly. Trelawney's eyes
warned him to forbear. "Oh, I met her walking, and I asked her to drive
with me the rest of the way."
Nothing more was said for a time. Cleaver was thinking of the fawn
which Fred had given her, of the patent fact that he was a familiar
visitor at the Teake house. His question, and his long dwelling upon
the subject before he asked it, seemed almost to indicate jealousy.
Jealousy! Cleaver could hardly credit his own suspicion.
Trelawney broke the silence. "Education," he said abruptly, "what
does education accomplish for women in our station of life? They
learn to write a fashionable hand that nobody can decipher. They take
a limited course of reading and remember nothing. Their study of
foreign languages goes so far sometimes as to enable them to interject
commonplace French phrases into their daily conversation, and render
their prattle an affront to good taste as well an insult to the
understanding. They have converted the piano into an instrument of
torture throughout the length and breadth of the land. Sometimes they
are learned; then they are given over to 'making an impression,' and
are prone to discuss, with a fatal tendency to misapply terms, what
they call 'philosophy.' As to their experience in society, no one will
maintain that their flirtations and husband-hunting tend greatly to
foster delicacy and refinement. What would that girl," nodding toward
the log-cabin near Sunrise Rock, "think of the girls of our world who
pursue 'society' as a man pursues a profession, who shove and jostle
each other and pull caps for the great matches, and 'put up' with
the others when no better may be had? She is my ideal of a modest,
delicate young girl,--and she is the only sincere woman I ever saw.
Upon my soul, I think the primitive woman holds her own very finely in
comparison with the resultant of feminine culture."
Cleaver listened in stunned dismay. Could Trelawney have really
fallen in love with the little mountaineer? He had adapted himself
so readily to the habits of these people. He was so far from the
world; he was dropping its chains. Many men under such circumstances,
under far happier circumstances, had fallen into the fatal error of a
_mésalliance_. Positively he might marry the girl. Cleaver felt it
an imperative duty to make an effort to avert this almost grotesque
catastrophe. In its very inception, however, he was hopeless. Trelawney
had always been so intolerant of control, so tenacious of impressions
and emotions, so careless of results and the opinion of society.
These seemed only originalities of character when he was the leader
of a clique of men of his own social position. Was Cleaver a snob
because they seemed to him, now that his friend was brought low in the
world, a bull-headed perversity, a ludicrous eccentricity, an unkempt
republicanism, a raw incapacity to appreciate the right relations of
things? In the delicately adjusted balance of life is that which is
fine when a man is up, folly when a man is down?
"She is a pretty little thing," he said, slightingly, "and no doubt a
good little thing. And, Trelawney, if I were in your place I wouldn't
hang around her. Your feelings might become involved--she is so
pretty--and she might fall in love with you, and"--
"You've said enough!" exclaimed Trelawney, fiercely.
It was monstrous! Trelawney would marry her. And he was as helpless to
prevent it as if Fred intended to hang himself.
"Your railing at the women of society in that shallow fashion suggests
the idea to me that you are trying to justify yourself in some
tremendous folly. Do you contemplate marrying her?"
"That is exactly what I propose to do," said Trelawney.
"And you are mad enough to think you are really in love with her?"
"Why should I not be? If she were differently placed in point of
wealth and station would there be any incongruity? I don't want to say
anything hard of you, Cleaver, but you would be ready to congratulate
me."
"I admit," retorted Cleaver, sharply, "that if she were your equal
in station and appropriately educated I should not have a word of
objection to say."
"And after all, is it the accident of position and fortune, or the
human creature, that a man takes to his heart?"
"But her ignorance, Fred"--
"Great God! does a man fall in love with a society girl for the sake of
what she calls her 'education?' Whatever attracts him, it is not that.
They are all ignorant; this girl's ignorance is only relative."
"Ah,--you know all that is bosh, Fred."
"In point of manner you yourself must concede that she is in many
respects superior to them. She has a certain repose and gravity and
dignity difficult to find among young ladies of high degree whose
education has not proved an antidote for flippancy. I won't be hard
enough on them to compare the loveliness of her face or her fine,
unspoiled nature. You don't want her to be learned any more than you
want an azalea to be learned. An azalea in a green-house becomes
showy and flaunting and has no fragrance, while here in the woods its
exquisite sweetness fills the air for miles."
"Trelawney, you are fit for Bedlam."
"I knew you would say so. I thought so too at first. I tried to stamp
it out, and put it down, and for a long time I fought all that is best
in me."
"Does she know anything about your feelings?"
"Not one word, as yet."
"Then I hope something--anything--may happen to put a stop to it before
she does."
This hasty wish seemed cruel to him afterward, and he regretted it.
"It would break my heart," said Trelawney, with an extreme earnestness.
"I know you think I am talking wildly, but I tell you it would break my
heart."
Cleaver fell to meditating ruefully upon the future in store for his
friend in this desolate place. King Cophetua and the beggar-maid are
a triumph of ideal contrast, eminently fascinating in an ideal point
of view. But real life presents prosaic corollaries,--the Teakes, for
example, on the familiar footing of Trelawney's brothers-in-law; the
old crone with her pipe, his wife's grandmother; that ignorant girl,
his wife--oh, these sublunary considerations are too inexorable. In his
sluggish content he would never make another effort; he would always
live here; he would sink, year by year, by virtue of his adaptability
and uncouth associations nearer to the level of the mountaineers.
This culminating folly seemed destined to complete the ruin of every
prospect in a fine man's life.
Cleaver did not know what was to come, and he brooded upon these ideas.
III.
Those terrible problems of existence of which happier men at rare
intervals catch a fleeting glimpse, and are struck aghast for a moment,
pursued John Cleaver relentlessly day by day. He could not understand
this world; he could not understand the waste of himself and his friend
in this useless, purposeless way; he could not even understand the
magnificent waste of the nature about him. Sometimes he would look
with haggard eyes on the late dawns and marvel that the sun should rise
in such effulgence upon this sequestered spot; a perpetual twilight
might have sufficed for the threnody, called life, here. He would gaze
on Sunrise Rock, forever facing and reflecting the dawn, and wonder
who and what was the man that in the forgotten past had stood on these
red hills, and looked with his full heart in his eyes upon that sun,
and smote the stone to sudden speech. Were his eyes haggard too? Was
his life heavy? Were his fiery aspirations only a touch of the actual
cautery to all that was sensitive within him? Did he know how his world
was to pass away? Did he know how little he was in the world? Did he
too wring his hands, and beat his breast, and sigh for the thing that
was not?
Cleaver did the work that came to him conscientiously, although
mechanically enough. But there was little work to do. Even the career
of a humble country doctor seemed closed to him. He began to think he
saw how it would end. He would be obliged to quit the profession; in
sheer manliness he would be obliged to get to something at which he
could work. A terrible pang here. He cared nothing for money,--this
man, who was as poor as the very mountaineers. He was vowed to science
as a monk is vowed to his order.
It was an unusual occurrence, therefore, when Trelawney came in one day
and found that Cleaver had been called out professionally. He sat down
to dine alone, but before he had finished carving, his friend entered.
"Well, doctor," said Trelawney cheerily, "how is your patient?"
Cleaver was evidently out of sorts and preoccupied. "These people
are as uncivilized as the foxes that they live among," he exclaimed
irrelevantly. "A case of malignant diphtheria, a physician their
nearest neighbor, and they don't let him know till nearly the last
gasp. Then they all go frantic together, and swear they had no idea it
was serious. I could have brained that fool, Peter Teake. But it is a
hopeless thing now."
A premonition thrilled through Trelawney. "Who is ill at Teake's?"
Cleaver was stricken dumb. His professional indignation had canceled
all realization of the impending crisis. He remembered Fred's foolish
fancy an instant too late. His silence answered for him. And Trelawney,
a sudden blight upon his handsome face, rose and walked out heavily
into the splendors of the autumn sunset. Cleaver was bitter with
self-reproach. Still he felt an impotent anger that Fred should have
persuaded himself that he was in love with this girl, and laid himself
liable to this sentimental pain.
"A heart!" thought Cleaver, scornfully. "That a heart should trouble a
man in a place like this!"
And yet his own well-schooled heart was all athrob with a keen,
undreamed-of anguish when once more he had come back from the cabin in
the gorge. As he entered, Trelawney, after one swift glance, turned his
eyes away. He had learned from Cleaver's face all he feared to know. He
might have learned more, a secret too subtly bitter for his friend to
tell. King Cophetua was as naught to the beggar-maid. In her dying eyes
John Cleaver had seen the fresh and pure affection that had followed
him. In her tones he had heard it. Was she misled by that professional
tenderness of manner which speaks so soothingly and touches so
softly--as mechanical as the act of drawing off his gloves--that she
should have been moved to cry out in her huskily pathetic voice, "How
good--how good ye air!" and extend to him, amongst all her kindred who
stood about, her little sun-burned hand?
And after that she was speechless, and when the little hand was
unloosed it was cold.
She had loved him, and he had never known it until now. He felt like a
traitor as he glanced at his friend's changed face, and he was crushed
by a sense of the immense capacity of human nature for suffering. What
a great heart-drama was this, with its incongruous and humble _dramatis
personæ_: the little mountaineer, and these two poverty-stricken
stragglers from the vast army of men of action,--deserters, even,
it might seem. What chaotic sarcasm in this mysterious ordering of
events,--Trelawney, with his grand sacrificial passion; the poor little
girl, whose first fresh love had unsought followed another through
these waste places; and he, all unconscious, absorbed in himself, his
worldly considerations and the dying throes of his dear ambitions. And
now, for him, who had felt least of all, was rising a great vicarious
woe. If he had known this girl's heart-secret while she yet lived he
might have thought scornfully of it, slightingly; who can say how? But
now that she was dead it was as if he had been beloved by an angel, and
was only too obtuse, too gross, too earthly-minded to hear the rustle
of her wings. How pitiable was the thought of her misplaced affection;
how hard it was for his friend; how hard it was for him that he had
ever discovered it. Did she know that he cared nothing? Were the last
days of her short life embittered with the pangs of a consciously
unrequited love? Or did she tremble, and hope, and tremble again? Ah,
poor, poor, pretty thing!
He had no name for a certain vague, mysterious thrill which quivered
through every fibre whenever he thought of that humble, tender love
that had followed him so long, unasked and unheeded. It began to hang
about him now like a dimly-realized presence. Occasionally it occurred
to him that his nerves were disordered, his health giving way, and he
would commence a course of medicine, to forget it in his preoccupation,
and discontinue it almost as soon as begun. What happened afterward was
a natural sequence enough, although at the time it seemed wonderful
indeed.
One misty midnight, when these strong feelings were upon him, it so
chanced that he was driving from a patient's house on the summit of
the ridge, and his way lay beneath Sunrise Rock along the road which
encircled the little graveyard of the mountaineers. The moon was
bright; so bright that the wreaths of vapor, hanging motionless among
the pines, glistened like etherealized silver; so bright that the
mounds within the inclosure--Was it the mist? Was it the moonbeam? Was
it the glimmer of yellow hair? Did he see, leaning on the palings,
"restin' awhile," the graceful figure he remembered so well? He was
dreaming, surely; or were those deep, instarred eyes really fixed upon
him with that wistful gaze which he had seen only twice before?--once
here, where he had met her, and once when she died. She was approaching
him; she was so close he might have touched her hand. Was it cold, he
wondered; cold as it was when he held it last? He hardly knew,--but she
was seated beside him, as in that crimson sunset-tide, and they were
driving together at a frenzied speed through the broken shadows of the
wintry woods. He did not turn his head, and yet he saw her face, drawn
in lines of pallid light and eloquent with some untranslated emotion
of mingled wonderment and pleasure and pain. Like the wind they sped
together through the mist and the moonbeam, over the wild mountain
road, through the flashing mountain waters, down, down the steep slope
toward the red brick house, where a light still burned, and his friend
was waiting. He did not know when she slipped from his side. He did not
know when this mad pace was checked. He only regained his faculties
after he had burst into the warm home atmosphere, a ghastly horror in
his face and his frantic fright upon his lips.
Trelawney stood breathless.
"Oh, forgive me," cried Cleaver. "I have spoken sacrilege. It was only
hallucination; I know it now."
Trelawney was shaken. "Hallucination?" he faltered, with quivering lips.
"I did not reflect," said Cleaver. "I would not have jarred your
feelings. I am ill and nervous."
Trelawney was too broken to resent, to heed, or to answer. He sat
cold and shivering, unconscious of the changed eyes watching him,
unconscious of a new idea kindling there,--beginning to flicker, to
burn, to blaze,--unconscious of the motive with which his friend after
a time drew close to the table and fell to writing with furious energy,
unconscious that in this moment Cleaver's fortune was made.
And thus he wrote on day after day. So cleverly did he analyze his
own mental and nervous condition, so unsparing and insidious was this
curious introversion, that when his treatise on the "Derangement of
the Nervous Functions" was given to the world it was in no degree
remarkable that it should have attracted the favorable attention of the
medical profession; that the portion devoted to hallucinations should
have met with high praise in high quarters; that the young physician's
successful work should have brought him suddenly to the remembrance of
many people who had almost forgotten poor John Cleaver. No one knew, no
one ever knew, its romantic inspiration. No one ever knew the strange
source whence he had this keen insight; how his imperious will had held
his shaken, distraught nerves for the calm scrutiny of science; how
his senses had played him false, and that stronger, subtler critical
entity, his intellect, had marked the antics of its double self and
noted them down.
Among the men to whom his treatise brought John Cleaver to sudden
remembrance was a certain notable physician. He was growing infirm
now, his health was failing, his heavy practice was too heavy for his
weakening hands. He gave to the young fellow's work the meed of his
rare approval, cleverly gauged the cleverness behind it, and wrote to
Cleaver to come.
And so he returned to his accustomed and appropriate sphere. In his
absence his world had flattened, narrowed, dulled strangely. People
were sordid, and petty, and coarse-minded; and society--his little
clique that he called society--possessed a painfully predominating
element of snobs; men who had given him no notice before were pleased
to be noticed now, and yet the lucky partnership was covertly commented
upon as the freak of an old man in his dotage. He was suddenly
successful, he had suddenly a certain prospect of wealth, he was
suddenly bitter. He thought much in these days of his friend Trelawney
and the independent, money-scorning aristocrats of the mountains, of
the red hills of the Indian summer, and the towering splendors of
Sunrise Rock. That high air was perhaps too rare for his lungs, but he
was sensible of the density of the denser medium.
As to that vague and tender mystery, the ghost that he saw, it had been
exorcised by prosaic science. But it made his fortune, it crowned his
life, it bestowed upon him all he craved. Perhaps if she could know
the wonderful work she had wrought in his future, the mountain girl,
who had given her heart unasked, might rest more easily in her grave
than on that night when she had come from among the moonlit mounds
beneath Sunrise Rock, and once more sat beside him as he drove through
shadow and sheen. For whether it was the pallid mist, whether it was
the silver moon, whether it was the fantasy of an overwrought brain, or
whether that mysterious presence was of an essence more ethereal than
any, who can know?
In these days he carried his friend's interest close to his heart. He
opened a way in the crowd, but Trelawney held back from the hands
stretched out. He had become wedded to the place. The years since have
brought him a quiet, uneventful, not unhappy existence. After a time
he grew more cheerful, but not less gentle, and none the less beloved
of his simple neighbors. They feel vaguely sometimes that since he
first came among them he is a saddened man, and are moved to ask with
sympathetic solicitude concerning the news from his supposititious
folks "down thar in the valley whar ye hails from." The fortune in
sheep-farming still eludes his languid pursuit. The red brick house
is disorganized and dilapidated as of yore; a sense of loneliness
broods upon it, hardly less intense than the loneliness of the mighty
encompassing forest. Deep in these solitudes he often strolls for
hours, most often in the crimson and purple eventides along the road
that passes beneath Sunrise Rock and encircles the little graveyard
of the mountaineers. Here Trelawney leans on the palings while the
sun goes down, and looks, with his sore heart bleeding anew, upon one
grassy mound till the shadows and the tears together blot it from his
sight. Sometimes his heart is not sore, only sad. Sometimes it is
tender and resigned, and he turns to the sunrise emblazoned on the
rock and thinks of the rising Sun of Righteousness with healing in
his wings. For the skepticism of his college days has fallen from
him somehow, and his views have become primitive, like those of his
primitive neighbors. There is a certain calm and strength in the old
theories. With the dawn of a gentle and hopeful peace in his heart,
very like the comfort of religion, he goes his way in the misty
moon-rise.