Mr. Arlington is a gem of the first water. He reveals every day some new
trait of interest or agreeableness. I saw immediately that he was a man
of fine taste; I have since learned to respect him as a man of enlarged
intellect and earnest feeling; and now I am just beginning to discover
that he is master of all those _agrémens_ which constitute the charm of
general society, and that he might become the "glass of fashion," if he
had not a mind elevated too far above such a petty ambition. This last
observation has been called forth by mere trifles, yet trifles so
prettily shown, with such ease and grace, as to justify the conclusion.
He is apt at illustration and application, and has a fine memory, stored
brimfull of entertaining anecdotes, snatches of poetry, and those
thousand nothings which tell for so much in society, and which it is so
pleasant to find combined with much else that is valuable. A few
evenings since, he kept Annie and me in the library, with his agreeable
chat, till so late an hour, that Col. Donaldson, who is the least bit of
a martinet in his own family, gave some very intelligible hints to us
the next morning, at breakfast, on the value of early hours. With a
readiness and grace which I never saw surpassed, Mr. Arlington turned to
us with the exquisite apology of the poet for a like fault,
"I stay'd too late; forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours.
Unnoted falls the foot of time,
Which only treads on flowers."
This evening again, as he placed a candle-screen before Annie, who,
having a headache, found the light oppressive, he said with a graceful
mixture of play and earnest, impossible to describe,
"Ah, lady! if that taper's blaze
Requires a screen to blunt its rays,
What screen, not form'd by art divine,
Shall shield us from those orbs of thine?
"But oh! let nothing intervene
Our hearts and those bright suns between;
'Tis bliss, like the bewilder'd fly
To flutter round, though sure to die."
As the others were engaged in very earnest conversation at the time, and
I was reading, he probably expected to be heard only by her to whom he
addressed himself; but a little romance, such as that of Annie and Mr.
Arlington, acted before me, interests me far more than any book, and I
brought a bright blush to Annie's cheek and a conscious smile to his
lip, by asking, "Where did you find those very apposite lines? I do not
remember to have seen them."
"Probably not, as they have never been published. They were addressed by
Anthony Bleecker, of New-York, to a belle of his day, and the lady for
whose sake, it is whispered, he lived and died a bachelor."
Our colloquy was here interrupted by Robert Dudley, who wanted to know
if we were to have no story this evening. Robert was a great lover of
stories. "Ask Mr. Arlington, Robert," said I, "I have given three
stories to his one already."
"Aunt Nancy," said Mr. Arlington, who had already begun to give me the
affectionate cognomen by which I was always addressed at Donaldson
Manor, "Aunt Nancy has stories without number, written and ready for
demand, but my portfolio furnishes only rude pencilings, or at best a
crayon sketch."
"Will you show them to us, Mr. Arlington?" asked the persevering Robert,
who stood beside him, portfolio in hand. "May I draw one out, as Aunt
Annie did the other evening; and will you tell us about it?"
Mr. Arlington, with good-humored playfulness, consented, and Robert drew
from the portfolio one of his drawings, representing a fisherman's
family.
"That man," said I, as I looked at the honest face of the rude,
weather-beaten fisherman, "looks as though he had passed through
adventurous scenes, and might have many a history to tell."
"He did not tell his histories to me," said Mr. Arlington. "I know
nothing more of them than that paper reveals. It seemed to me that the
woman and child were visiting, for the first time, the ocean, whose
booming sound was to the fisherman as the voice of home. He was probably
introducing them to its wonders--revealing to them the mysteries which
awaken the superstition of the vulgar and the poetry of the cultivated
imagination. He has given her, you may observe, a sea-shell, and she is
listening for the first time to its low, strange music."
"And is that all?" asked Robert, when Mr. Arlington ceased speaking.
"All I know, Robert," he answered, with a smile at the boy's
earnestness.
"But did you never go fishing yourself, Mr. Arlington?"
"Not often, Robert; I like more active sports better--hunting--"
"Ah! do tell us about your hunting, Mr. Arlington; you must have had
some adventures in hunting in those great Western forests I have heard
you speak of."
"The greatest adventure I ever had, Robert," said Mr. Arlington, "was in
an _Eastern_ forest, and when I was the _hunted_, not the _hunter_."
"Indians, Mr. Arlington--were they Indians that hunted you?"
"No, Robert; my hunters were wolves."
"Oh! pray tell us about it, Mr. Arlington, will you not?"
"Certainly, with the ladies' permission."
The ladies' permission was soon obtained, and our little party listened
with the deepest interest to the thrilling recital which I have called
THE WOLF CHASE.[2]
During the winter of 1844, being engaged in the northern part of Maine,
I had much leisure to devote to the wild sports of a new country. To
none of these was I more passionately addicted than to skating. The deep
and sequestered lakes of this State, frozen by the intense cold of a
northern winter, present a wide field to the lovers of this pastime.
Often would I bind on my skates, and glide away up the glittering river,
and wind each mazy streamlet that flowed beneath its fetters on towards
the parent ocean, forgetting all the while time and distance in the
luxurious sense of the gliding motion--thinking of nothing in the easy
flight, but rather dreaming, as I looked through the transparent ice at
the long weeds and cresses that nodded in the current beneath, and
seemed wrestling with the waves to let them go; or I would follow on the
track of some fox or otter, and run my skate along the mark he had left
with his dragging tail until the trail would enter the woods. Sometimes
these excursions were made by moonlight, and it was on one of these
occasions that I had a rencontre, which even now, with kind faces around
me, I cannot recall without a nervous looking-over-my-shoulder feeling.
I had left my friend's house one evening just before dusk, with the
intention of skating a short distance up the noble Kennebec, which
glided directly before the door. The night was beautifully clear. A
peerless moon rode through an occasional fleecy cloud, and stars
twinkled from the sky and from every frost-covered tree in millions.
Your mind would wonder at the light that came glinting from ice, and
snow-wreath, and incrusted branches, as the eye followed for miles the
broad gleam of the Kennebec, that like a jewelled zone swept between the
mighty forests on its banks. And yet all was still. The cold seemed to
have frozen tree, and air, and water, and every living thing that moved.
Even the ringing of my skates on the ice echoed back from the Moccason
Hill with a startling clearness, and the crackle of the ice as I passed
over it in my course seemed to follow the tide of the river with
lightning speed.
I had gone up the river nearly two miles when, coming to a little stream
which empties into the larger, I turned in to explore its course. Fir
and hemlock of a century's growth met overhead, and formed an archway
radiant with frost-work. All was dark within, but I was young and
fearless, and as I peered into an unbroken forest that reared itself on
the borders of the stream, I laughed with very joyousness: my wild
hurrah rang through the silent woods, and I stood listening to the echo
that reverberated again and again, until all was hushed. I thought how
often the Indian hunter had concealed himself behind these very
trees--how often his arrow had pierced the deer by this very stream, and
his wild halloo had here rung for his victory. And then, turning from
fancy to reality, I watched a couple of white owls, that sat in their
hooded state, with ruffled pantalettes and long ear-tabs, debating in
silent conclave the affairs of their frozen realm, and was wondering if
they, "for all their feathers, were a-cold," when suddenly a sound
arose--it seemed to me to come from beneath the ice; it sounded low and
tremulous at first, until it ended in one wild yell. I was appalled.
Never before had such a noise met my ears. I thought it more than
mortal--so fierce, and amidst such an unbroken solitude, it seemed as
though a fiend had blown a blast from an infernal trumpet. Presently I
heard the twigs on shore snap, as though from the tread of some brute
animal, and the blood rushed back to my forehead with a bound that made
my skin burn, and I felt relieved that I had to contend with things
earthly, and not of spiritual nature--my energies returned, and I looked
around me for some means of escape. The moon shone through the opening
at the mouth of the creek by which I had entered the forest, and
considering this the best channel of escape, I darted towards it like an
arrow. 'Twas scarcely a hundred yards distant, and the swallow could
hardly excel my desperate flight; yet, as I turned my head to the shore,
I could see two dark objects dashing through the underbrush at a pace
nearly double in speed to my own. By this rapidity, and the short yells
which they occasionally gave, I knew at once that these were the much
dreaded gray wolf.
I had never met with these animals, but from the description given of
them I had very little pleasure in making their acquaintance. Their
untameable fierceness, and the untiring strength which seems part of
their nature, render them objects of dread to every benighted traveller.
"With their long gallop, which can tire
The deer-hound's haste, the hunter's fire,"
they pursue their prey--never straying from the track of their
victim--and as the wearied hunter thinks he has at last outstripped
them, he finds that they but waited for the evening to seize their prey,
and falls a prize to the tireless pursuers.
The bushes that skirted the shore flew past with the velocity of
lightning as I dashed on in my flight to pass the narrow opening. The
outlet was nearly gained; one second more and I should be comparatively
safe, when the fierce brutes appeared on the bank directly above me,
which here rose to the height of ten feet. There was no time for
thought, so I bent my head and dashed madly forward. The wolves sprang,
but miscalculating my speed, sprang behind, while their intended prey
glided out upon the river.
Nature turned me towards home. The light flakes of snow spun from the
iron of my skates, and I was some distance from my pursuers, when their
fierce howl told me I was still their fugitive. I did not look back, I
did not feel afraid, or sorry, or glad; one thought of home, of the
bright faces awaiting my return, of their tears if they never should see
me, and then every energy of body and mind was exerted for escape. I was
perfectly at home on the ice. Many were the days that I had spent on my
good skates, never thinking that at one time they would be my only means
of safety. Every half minute an alternate yelp from my ferocious
followers made me only too certain that they were in close pursuit.
Nearer and nearer they came; I heard their feet pattering on the ice
nearer still, until I could feel their breath and hear their snuffing
scent. Every nerve and muscle in my frame were stretched to the utmost
tension.
The trees along the shore seemed to dance in the uncertain light, and my
brain turned with my own breathless speed, yet still they seemed to hiss
forth their breath with a sound truly horrible, when an involuntary
motion on my part turned me out of my course. The wolves close behind,
unable to stop, and as unable to turn on the smooth ice, slipped and
fell, still going on far ahead; their tongues were lolling out, their
white tusks glaring from their bloody mouths, their dark, shaggy breasts
were fleeced with foam, and as they passed me their eyes glared, and
they howled with fury. The thought flashed on my mind, that by this
means I could avoid them, viz., by turning aside whenever they came too
near; for they, by the formation of their feet, are unable to run on ice
except on a straight line.
I immediately acted upon this plan. The wolves, having regained their
feet, sprang directly towards me. The race was renewed for twenty yards
up the stream; they were already close on my back, when I glided round
and dashed directly past my pursuers. A wild yell greeted my evolution,
and the wolves, slipping upon their haunches, sailed onward, presenting
a perfect picture of helplessness and baffled rage. Thus I gained nearly
a hundred yards at each turning. This was repeated two or three times,
every moment the animals getting more excited and baffled.
At one time, by delaying my turning too long, my sanguinary antagonists
came so near, that they threw the white foam over my dress as they
sprang to seize me, and their teeth clashed together, like the spring of
a fox-trap. Had my skates failed for one instant, had I tripped on a
stick, or caught my foot in a fissure in the ice, the story I am now
telling would never have been told. I thought all the chances over; I
knew where they would first take hold of me if I fell; I thought how
long it would be before I died, and then there would be a search for the
body that would already have its tomb;--for oh! how fast man's mind
traces out all the dread colors of Death's picture, only those who have
been near the grim original can tell.
But soon I came opposite the house, and my hounds--I knew their deep
voices--roused by the noise, bayed furiously from the kennels. I heard
their chains rattle; how I wished they would break them! and then I
should have protectors that would be peers to the fiercest denizens of
the forest. The wolves, taking the hint conveyed by the dogs, stopped in
their mad career, and after a moment's consideration, turned and fled. I
watched them until their dusky forms disappeared over a neighboring
hill. Then, taking off my skates, wended my way to the house, with
feelings which may be better imagined than described.
But even yet, I never see a broad sheet of ice in the moonshine, without
thinking of that snuffling breath and those fearful things that followed
me so closely down the frozen Kennebec.