and Catherine to go with us."
"You are an angel!" answered Esther. "Did Catherine tell you how I
wanted to run away! You knew it would be so? I will go any where; the
further the better; but how can I drag you and poor Uncle John away from
town at this season? Can't I go off alone with Catherine?"
"Nonsense!" said her aunt briefly. "I shall be glad to get away from New
York. I am tired of it. Get your trunks packed! Put in your sketching
materials, and we will pick you up at eight o'clock. George shall come
on to-morrow and pass Sunday with us."
Esther thanked her aunt with effusion. "I am going to show you how well
I can behave. Uncle John shall not know that any thing is the matter
with me unless you tell him. I won't be contemptible, even if I have got
red eyes."
Not five minutes were needed to decide on the new departure. Esther and
Catherine found relief and amusement in the bustle of preparation. If
Esther was still a little feverish and excited, she was able to throw it
off in work. She was no longer an object of pity; it was her uncle and
aunt who deserved deepest compassion. What worse shock was possible for
an elderly, middle-aged New York lawyer than to return to his house at
six o'clock and find that he is to have barely time for his dinner and
cigar before being thrust out into the cold and hideous darkness of a
February night, in order to travel some four hundred miles through a
snow-bound country? It is true that he had received some little warning
to arrange his affairs for an absence over Saturday, but at best the
blow was a severe one, and he bore it with a silent fortitude which
wrung his wife's heart. She was a masterful mistress, but she was good
to those who obeyed, and she even showed the weakness of begging him not
to go, although in her soul she knew that he must.
"After all, John, you needn't go with us. I can take the girls alone."
"As I understand it, you have engaged my professional services," he
replied. "On the whole I prefer prevention to cure. I would rather help
Esther to run away, than get her a divorce."
"When I am dead, you shall stay quietly at home and be perfectly happy,"
she answered, with the venerable device which wives, from earliest
history, have used to palliate their own sins.
Nevertheless he felt almost as miserable as his wife, when, wrapped in
cloaks and rugs, they left their bright dining room and shuffled down
the steps into the outside darkness to their carriage. He expressed
opinions about lovers which would have put a quick end to the human race
had they been laws of nature. He wished the church would take them all
and consign them to its own favorite place of punishment. He had a
disagreeable trick of gibing at his wife's orthodoxy on this point, and
when she remonstrated at his profanity, he smiled contentedly and said:
"There is nothing profane about it. It is sound church doctrine, and I
envy you for being able to believe it. You can hope to see them with
your own eyes getting their reward, confound them!"
Consoling himself with this pleasing hope, they started off, and in five
minutes were at Esther's door. After taking the two girls into the
carriage, Mr. Murray became more affable and even gay. By the time the
party was established in their sleeping car, he had begun to enjoy
himself. He had too often made such journeys, and was too familiar with
every thing on the road to be long out of humor, and for once it was
amusing to have a pair of pretty girls to take with him. Commonly his
best society was some member of the Albany Legislature, and his only
conversation was about city charters and railroad legislation. The
variety had its charm. Esther was as good as her word. She made a
desperate battle to recover her gayety, and the little excitement of a
night journey helped the triumph of her pride. Determined that she would
not be an object of pity, she made the most of all her chances,
pretended to take in earnest her uncle's humorous instructions as to the
art of arranging a sleeping berth, and horrified her aunt by letting him
induce Catherine and herself to eat hot doughnuts and mince pies on the
train. It was outwardly a gay little party which rattled along the bank
of the snowy river on their way northward.
The gayety, it is true, was forced. For the first ten minutes Esther
felt excited by the sense of flight and the rapid motion which was
carrying her she knew not where,--away into the infinite and unknown.
What lay before her, beyond the darkness of the moment, she hardly
cared. Never again could she go back to the old life, but like a young
bird that has lost its mate, she must fly on through the gloom till it
end. Unluckily all her thoughts brought her back to Hazard. Even this
sense of resembling a bird that flies, it knows not where, recalled to
her the sonnet of Petrarch which she had once translated for him, and
which, since then, had been always on his lips, although she had never
dreamed that it could have such meaning to her. Long after she had
established herself in her berth, solitary and wakeful, the verses made
rhythm with the beat of the car-wheels:
"Vago augelletto che cantando vai!"
They were already far on their way, flying up the frozen stream of the
Hudson, before she was left alone with her thoughts in the noisy quiet
of the rushing train. She could not even hope to sleep. Propping herself
up against the pillows, she raised the curtain of her window and stared
into the black void outside. Nothing in nature could be more mysterious
and melancholy than this dark, polar world, beside which a winter storm
on the Atlantic was at least exciting. On the ocean the forces of nature
have it their own way; nothing comes between man and the elements; but
as Esther gazed out into the night, it was not the darkness, or the
sense of cold, or the vagrant snow-flakes driving against the window,
or the heavy clouds drifting through the sky, or even the ghastly
glimmer and reflection of the snow-fields, that, by contrast, made the
grave seem cheerful; it was rather the twinkling lights from distant and
invisible farm-houses, the vague outlines of barn-yards and fences along
doubtful roads, the sudden flash of lamps as the train hurried through
unknown stations, or the unfamiliar places where it stopped, while the
tap-tap of the train-men's hammers on the wheels beneath sounded like
spirit-rappings. These signs of life behind the veil were like the
steady lights of shore to the drowning fisherman off the reef outside.
Every common-place kerosene lamp whose rays struggled from distant,
snow-clad farms, brought a picture of peace and hope to Esther. Not one
of these invisible roofs but might shelter some realized romance, some
contented love. In so dark and dreary a world, what a mad act it was to
fly from the only happiness life offered! What a strange idea to seek
safety by refusing the only protection worth having! Love was all in
all! Esther had never before felt herself so helpless as in the face of
this outer darkness, and if her lover had now been there to claim her,
she would have dropped into his arms as unresistingly as a tired child.
As the night wore on, the darkness and desolation became intolerable,
and she shut them out, only to find herself suffocated by the
imprisonment of her sleeping-berth. Hour after hour dragged on; the
little excitement of leaving Albany was long past, and the train was
wandering through the dullness of Central New York, when at last a faint
suspicion of dim light appeared in the landscape, and Esther returned to
her window. If any thing could be drearier than the blackness of night,
it was the grayness of dawn, which had all the cold terror of death and
all the grim repulsiveness of life joined in an hour of despair. Esther
could now see the outlines of farm-houses as the train glided on;
snow-laden roofs and sheds; long stretches of field with fences buried
to their top rails in sweeping snow-drifts; in the houses, lights showed
that toil had begun again; smoke rose from the chimneys; figures moved
in the farm-yards; a sleigh could be seen on a decided road; the world
became real, prosaic, practical, mechanical, not worth struggling
about; a mere colorless, passionless, pleasureless grayness. As the
mystery vanished, the pain passed and the brain grew heavy. Esther's
eyelids drooped, and she sank at last into a sleep so sound that there
was hardly need for Catherine to stand sentry before her berth and frown
the car into silence. The sun was high above the horizon; the sky was
bright and blue; the snowy landscape flashed with the sparkle of
diamonds, when Esther woke, and it was with a cry of pleasure that she
felt her spirits answer the sun.
Meanwhile her flight was no secret. As the train that carried her off
drew out of the great station into the darkness for its long journey of
three thousand miles, two notes were delivered to gentlemen only a few
squares away. Strong at his club received one from Mrs. Murray: "We all
start for Clifton at nine o'clock. Come to-morrow and bring a companion
if you can. We need to be amused." The Reverend Stephen Hazard received
the other note, which was still more brief, but long enough to strike
him with panic; for it contained two words: "Good-by! Esther."
No sooner did Strong receive his missive than he set himself in active
motion. Wharton, who commonly dined at the club, was so near that Strong
had only to pass the note over to him. Whether Wharton was still
suffering from the shock of his wife's appearance, or disappearance, or
whether he was on the look-out for some chance to see again his friend
Catherine, or whether he found it pleasanter to take a holiday than to
attack his long arrears of work, the idea of running up to Niagara for
Sunday happened to strike him as pleasant, and he promised to join
Strong at the Erie Station in the morning. Strong knew him too well to
count on his keeping the engagement, but could do no more, and they both
left the club to make their preparations. Strong had another duty.
Before stirring further, he must talk with Hazard. The affair was
rapidly taking a shape that might embarrass them both.
Going directly to Hazard's house, he burst into the library, where he
found his friend trying to work in spite of the heavy load on his mind.
Throwing him Mrs. Murray's note, Strong waited without a word while
Hazard read it more eagerly than though it had been a summons to a
bishopric. The mysterious good-by, which had arrived but a few minutes
before, had upset his nerves, and at first the note which Strong brought
reassured him, for he thought that Mrs. Murray was earning out his own
wishes and drawing Esther nearer to him.
"Then we have succeeded!" he cried.
"Not much!" said Strong dryly. "It is a genuine flight and escape in all
the forms. You are out-generaled and your line of attack is left all in
the air."
"I shall follow!" said Hazard, doggedly.
"No good! They are in earnest," replied Strong.
"So am I!" answered the clergyman sharply, while Strong threw himself
into a chair, good-natured as ever, and said:
"Come along then! Will you go up with Wharton and me by the early train
to-morrow?"
"Yes!" replied Hazard quickly. Then he paused; there were limits to his
power and he began to feel them. "No!" he went on. "I can't get away
to-morrow. I must wait till Sunday night."
"Better wait altogether," said Strong. "You take the chances against
you."
"I told her I should follow her, and I shall," repeated Hazard stiffly.
He felt hurt, as though Esther had rebelled against his authority, and
he was not well pleased that Strong should volunteer advice.
"Give me my orders then!" said Strong. "Can I do any thing for you?"
"I shall be there on Monday afternoon. Telegraph me if they should
decide to leave the place earlier. Try and keep them quiet till I get
there!"
"Shall I tell them you are coming?"
"Not for your life!" answered Hazard impatiently. "Do all you can to
soothe and quiet her. Hint that in my place you would come. Try to make
her hope it, but not fear it."
"I will do all that to the letter," said Strong. "I feel partly
responsible for getting you and Esther into this scrape, and am ready to
go a long way to pull you through; but this done I stop. If Esther is in
earnest, I must stand by her. Is that square?"
Hazard frowned severely and hesitated. "The real struggle is just
coming," said he. "If you keep out of the way, I shall win. So far I
have never failed with her. My influence over her to-day is greater than
ever, or she would not try to run away from it. If you interfere I shall
think it unkind and unfriendly."
To this Strong answered pleasantly enough, but as though his mind were
quite made up: "I don't mean to interfere if I can help it, but I can't
persecute Esther, if it is going to make her unhappy. As it is, I am
likely to catch a scoring from my aunt for bringing you down on them,
and undoing her work. I wish I were clear of the whole matter and Esther
were a pillar of the church."
With this declaration of contingent neutrality, Strong went his way, and
as he walked musingly back to his rooms, he muttered to himself that he
had done quite as much for Hazard as the case would warrant: "What a
trump the girl is, and what a good fight she is making! I believe I am
getting to be in love with her myself, and if he gives it up--hum--yes,
if he gives it up,--then of course Esther will go abroad and forget it."
Hazard's solitary thoughts were not quite so pointless. The danger of
disappointment and defeat roused in him the instinct of martyrdom. He
was sure that all mankind would suffer if he failed to get the
particular wife he wanted. "It is not a selfish struggle," he thought.
"It is a human soul I am trying to save, and I will do it in the teeth
of all the powers of darkness. If I can but set right this
systematically misguided conscience, the task is done. It is the affair
of a moment when once the light comes;--A flash! A miracle! If I cannot
wield this fire from Heaven, I am unfit to touch it. Let it burn me up!"
Early the next morning, not a little to their own surprise, Strong and
Wharton found themselves dashing over the Erie Road towards Buffalo.
They had a long day before them and luckily Wharton was in his best
spirits. As for Strong he was always in good spirits. Within the memory
of man, well or ill, on sea or shore, in peril or safety, Strong had
never been seen unhappy or depressed. He had the faculty of interesting
himself without an effort in the doings of his neighbors, and Wharton
always had on hand some scheme which was to make an epoch in the
history of art. Just now it was a question of a new academy of music
which was to be the completest product of architecture, and to combine
all the senses in delight. The Grand Opera at Paris was to be tame
beside it. Here he was to be tied down by no such restraints as the
church imposed on him; he was to have beauty for its own sake and to
create the thought of a coming world. His decorations should make a
revolution in the universe. Strong entered enthusiastically into his
plans, but both agreed that preliminary studies were necessary both for
architects and artists. The old world must be ransacked to the depths of
Japan and Persia. Before their dinner-hour was reached, they had laid
out a scheme of travel and study which would fill a life-time, while the
Home of Music in New York was still untouched. After dinner and a cigar,
they fought a prodigious battle over the influence of the Aryan races on
the philosophy of art, and then, dusk coming on, they went to sleep, and
finished an agreeable journey at about midnight.
When at last they drove up to the hotel door in the frosty night, and
stamped their feet, chilled by the sleigh-ride from the station, the
cataract's near roar and dim outline under the stars did not prevent
them from warmly greeting Mr. Murray who sallied out to welcome them and
to announce that their supper was waiting. The three women had long
since gone to bed, but Mr. Murray staid up to have a chat with the boys.
He was in high spirits. He owned that he had enjoyed his trip and was in
no hurry to go home. While his nephew and Wharton attacked their supper,
he sipped his Scotch whisky, and with the aid of a cigar, enlivened the
feast.
"We got over here before three o'clock," said he, "and of course I took
them out to drive at once. Esther sat in front with me and we let the
horses go. Your aunt thinks I am unsafe with horses and I took some
pains to prove that she was right. The girls liked it. They wouldn't
have minded being tipped into a snow-bank, but I thought it would be
rough on your aunt, so I brought them home safe, gave them a first-rate
dinner and sent them off to bed hours ago, sleepy as gods. To-morrow you
must take them in hand. I have made to-day what the newspapers call my
most brilliant forensic effort, and I'll not risk my reputation again."
"Keep out of our way then!" said Strong. "Wharton and I mean to spill
those two girls over the cliff unless Canadian horses know geology."
Esther slept soundly that night while the roar of the waters lulled her
slumbers. The sun woke her the next morning to a sense of new life. Her
room looked down on the cataract, and she had already taken a fancy to
this tremendous, rushing, roaring companion, which thundered and smoked
under her window, as though she had tamed a tornado to play in her
court-yard. To brush her hair while such a confidant looked on and asked
questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she
looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue
Ægean. The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage
and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of
silence, but Esther's huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the
same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a
sign of human failings, and yet so frank and sympathetic that she had no
choice but to like it. "Even if it had nothing to tell me, its manners
are divine," said Esther to herself as she leaned against the window
sash and looked out. "And its dress!" she ran on. "What a complexion, to
stand dazzling white and diamonds in the full sunlight!" Yet it was not
the manners or the dress of her new friend that most won Esther's heart.
Her excitement and the strain of the last month had left her subject to
her nerves and imagination. She was startled by a snow-flake, was
reckless and timid by turns, and her fancy ran riot in dreams of love
and pain. She fell in love with the cataract and turned to it as a
confidant, not because of its beauty or power, but because it seemed to
tell her a story which she longed to understand. "I think I do
understand it," she said to herself as she looked out. "If he could only
hear it as I do," and of course "he" was Mr. Hazard; "how he would feel
it!" She felt tears roll down her face as she listened to the voice of
the waters and knew that they were telling her a different secret from
any that Hazard could ever hear. "He will think it is the church
talking!" Sad as she was, she smiled as she thought that it was Sunday
morning, and a ludicrous contrast flashed on her mind between the
decorations of St. John's, with its parterre of nineteenth century
bonnets, and the huge church which was thundering its gospel under her
eyes.
To have Niagara for a rival is no joke. Hazard spoke with no such
authority; and Esther's next idea was one of wonder how, after listening
here, any preacher could have the confidence to preach again. "What do
they know about it?" she asked herself. "Which of them can tell a story
like this, or a millionth part of it?" To dilute it in words and
translate bits of it for school-girls, or to patronize it by defense or
praise, was somewhat as though Esther herself should paint a row of her
saints on the cliff under Table Rock. Even to fret about her own love
affairs in such company was an impertinence. When eternity, infinity and
omnipotence seem to be laughing and dancing in one's face, it is well to
treat such visitors civilly, for they come rarely in such a humor.
So much did these thoughts interest and amuse her that she took infinite
pains with her toilet in order to honor her colossal host whose own
toilet was sparkling with all the jewels of nature, like an Indian
prince whose robes are crusted with diamonds and pearls. When she came
down to the breakfast-room, Strong, who was alone there, looked up with
a start.
"Why, Esther!" he broke out, "take care, or one of these days you will
be handsome!"
Catherine too was pretty as a fawn, and was so honestly pleased to meet
Wharton again that he expanded into geniality. As for broken hearts, no
self-respecting young woman shows such an ornament at any well regulated
breakfast-table; they are kept in dark drawers and closets like other
broken furniture. Esther had made the deadliest resolution to let no
trace of her unhappiness appear before her uncle, and Mr. Murray, who
saw no deeper than other men into the heart-problem, was delighted with
the gayety of the table, and proud of his own success as a physician for
heart complaints. Mrs. Murray, who knew more about her own sex, kept her
eye on the two girls with more anxiety than she cared to confess. If any
new disaster should happen, the prospect would be desperate, and it was
useless to deny that she had taken risks heavy enough to stagger a
professional gambler. The breakfast table looked gay and happy enough,
and so did the rapids which sparkled and laughed in the distance.
After breakfast the two young women, with much preparation of boots,
veils and wraps, went off with Strong and Wharton for a stroll down to
the banks of the river. The two older members of the party remained
quietly in their parlor, thinking that the young people would get on
better by themselves. As the four wandered down the road, Mr. Murray
watched them, and noticed the natural way in which Esther joined Strong,
while Catherine fell to Wharton. Standing with his hands in his
trousers' pockets and his nose close to the window-pane, Mr. Murray
looked after them as they disappeared down the bank, and then, without
turning round, he made a remark as husbands do, addressed to the
universe and intended for his wife.
"I suppose that is what you are driving at."
"What?" asked Mrs. Murray.
"I don't mind George and Esther, but I grudge Catherine to that man
Wharton. He may be a good artist, but I think his merits as a husband
beneath criticism. I believe every woman would connive at a love affair
though the man had half a dozen living wives, and had been hung two or
three times for murder."
"I wish Esther were as safe as I think Catherine," said Mrs. Murray. "It
would surprise me very much if Catherine took Mr. Wharton now, but if
Mr. Hazard were to walk round the corner, I should expect to see Esther
run straight into his arms."
"Hazard!" exclaimed Mr. Murray. "I thought he was out of the running and
you meant Esther for George."
"I am not a match-maker, and I've no idea that Esther will ever marry
George," replied Mrs. Murray with the patience which wives sometimes
show to husbands whom they think obtuse.
"Then what is it you want?" asked Mr. Murray, with some signs of
rebellion, but still talking to the window-pane, with his hands in his
pockets. "You encourage a set of clever men to hang round two pretty
girls, and you profess at the same time not to want anything to come of
it. That kind of conduct strikes an ordinary mind as inconsistent."
"I want to prevent one unhappy marriage, not to make two," replied his
wife. "Girls must have an education, and the only way they can get a
good one is from clever men. As for falling in love, they will always do
that whether the men are clever or not. They must take the risk."
"And what do you mean to do with them when they _are_ educated?"
inquired he.
"I mean them to marry dull, steady men in Wall Street, without any
manners, and with their hands in their pockets," answered Mrs. Murray,
her severity for once mingled with a touch of sweetness.
"Thank you," replied her husband, at last turning round. "Then that is
to be the fruit of all this to-do?"
"I am sure it is quite fruit enough," rejoined she. "The business of
educating their husbands will take all the rest of their lives."