Shoulder-Straps: A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862

by Henry Morford

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  TOM LESLIE AT NIAGARA--A DASH AT SCENERY THERE--A RENCONTRE--DEXTERRALSTON ONCE MORE--UNION MAN OR REBEL?--TOM LESLIE DISCOUNTED.

  It will be remembered that Tom Leslie, leaving Josephine Harris with asigh of regret at Utica (those jolly fellows do sigh sometimes, afterall!) went on to Niagara on the afternoon of the Fifth of July. WalterLane Harding had promised to join him at the Cataract, early in thefollowing week, if he could so arrange his business as to leave the cityon Sunday or Monday; but just now Leslie was alone--worse alone than heever remembered to have been at any former period of his life. Lost onenight in a pass of the Apennines, with some doubts whether he shouldever be able to find his way to supper and civilization, he had beenlonely enough for comfort; and pacing his solitary night round as asentinel under the frowning guns of Sebastopol, he had felt thatanother friendly human face would be pleasant to see and a friendlyhuman voice something not be despised; but neither of those situationscould for a moment compare with the loneliness of that summer afternoonand evening, while he was bowling along through the Genesee Valley.

  The absence of the whole world is a grief, when we do not wish to bealone, but that is a grief in the _general_. The coming of any oneperson will break the spell and fill the void. But the absence of the_one_, immediately after earth and air have seemed to be full of thesacred presence, is grief in the _particular_. Only one can fill thatvoid, and the coming of that one is for the time impossible. The companyof thousands of others is then an aggravation and an insult, making theloneliness worse by contrast with the apparent companionship of allothers.

  Tom Leslie (this fact may have been sufficiently indicated before)--TomLeslie was deeply, irrevocably, hopelessly in love, and he had not eventaken the ordinary pains to deceive himself on the subject. He had foundhis destiny and submitted to it, after a long period of immunity. He hadevery reason to know that his regard was returned; and he had no reasonto doubt, though not an explicit word had been spoken to warrant thebelief--that when he asked the corresponding question of JosephineHarris, as he certainly meant to do at a very early day, her answerwould be a frank and satisfactory--yes! So much for content and thefuture. But Tom, like many another child, had no propensity for waiting,and liked his sugar-plums _now_ as well as to-morrow. He would haveliked to give up business, ignore propriety, and have the company of theodd combination of female graces and weaknesses who had won him, all thewhile for the present, and afterwards by way of variety. So he felt atthat moment, at least; and it was with more than one, or two, or a dozenyawns and "Heighos!" and several short naps that happened along on histravel like cities of refuge, that he managed to wear through the lasthours of his journey.

  But Tom Leslie, the cosmopolitan and journalist, would have beenunworthy the experience through which he had passed, had he lacked thepower to endure what he disliked. He could never have digestedhorse-beef among the Kalmucks, or stomached the rancid sour-krout of OldHaarlem, without this indispensable qualification. So, though on thenight of his arrival at the Cataract he allowed the thunder of the fallto call him in vain to a view by the broken moonlight, and though hetumbled into bed within ten minutes after his late and light supper andwent sullenly to sleep as if there had not been a woman in the worldworth thinking of,--yet he was in quite another mood the next morning.

  Niagara was unusually full for so early a period in the season, theleading houses being already crowded, though principally by transientvisitors. The Fourth of July, then just passed, had been kept withunusual vigor and display, in the way of powder, fireworks and generalpatriotism at the International, the Cataract and all the other morepopular houses--partially, no doubt, because the evil eyes from acrossthe river began to be noticeable, and because the red-cross flag hadbeen more conspicuously displayed at the Clifton House and on theflag-staff at the Museum at Table Rock, than in ordinary seasons.

  But whatever changes might have occurred in personal and nationalfeeling, Tom Leslie felt, as he strolled across the bridge and over GoatIsland, on the morning after his arrival, that there had been no changewhich the human eye could perceive, in the great cataract or itssurroundings, since he had looked upon it for the last time before hisdeparture for Europe, when that narrow river supplied the northernboundary of what seemed to be a united and happy nation. Humanity ischanging, inconsistent and unreliable: Nature is calm, grand, and vergeson the eternal. He saw that the great American Rapid still camethundering down, "like a herd of white buffaloes with wild eyes andsea-green manes," as a graphic writer has described it; that the grandold trees with their gloomy immensity of shade and the thousands ofunknown and long-forgotten names carved upon their bark, still stood assentinels along the beaten pathways over the Island; that the thunder ofthe Fall still kept the whole solid mass of the Island in one creepingand trembling shudder, as if a slight earthquake was just passing, witha dull, heavy boom like that of a continuous distant cannonade, comingup in the pauses of the wind.

  He saw, too, as he paid his inevitable quarter at the toll-house on thecauseway, that the course of "honest industry" (_i.e._, that blatanthumbug which eternally taxes the pockets for superfluities) had not beenchecked; for the usual amount of birchen-canoes, bead-caps andfeather-fans with sprawled birds in the centre, were on sale underpeculiarly aboriginal auspices. And that the whole race of Jehus had notrelieved society by going to be killed-off in the war, he becamepainfully aware by the number of villainous-looking wretches armed withdilapidated whips, who beset him on the bridge and offered to convey himanywhere for something less than the mere pleasure of his company. TomLeslie had been somewhat too familiar in other lands as well as his own,with such human vermin as those with the whips, and such fungitemptations to extravagance as those that hung from the tawny hands andbeckoned from shelves and glass cases,--to pay them much attention orreceive much annoyance from them; and so he passed on across the Island,to look once more upon the great English Fall and the Canada shorebeyond.

  Emerging from the woods upon the high bank overlooking the Englishrapids, the whole unequalled scene burst once more on his view, as hehad patriotically tried to remember it when looking at Terni andSchaffhausen. He had carried the sight and almost the roar with him, inmemory, ready to dwarf with them all that the European world couldpresent; and so sacred seemed the thought of that wonder of nature whichcould form such a talisman, that the broad hat was insensibly liftedfrom his brow as he caught the first new glimpse, and he stood beforethe Fall fairly uncovered as he might have done on the crest of theJudean hills, overlooking the first-seen Jerusalem.

  The dark and rugged Canadian shore was full in view on the other side ofthe river, with the Clifton House and the Museum glimmering brightly inthe morning sunlight, and the red-cross flag waving sluggishly from bothas if in defiance of the great nation that lay so near and yet couldnot possess the little patch of land over which it floated. TheHorse-Shoe Tower stood as of old, still unconquered by the fierce rapidsstriving to undermine it; and around base and balcony swarmed visitorswho seemed like pigmies not so much on account of the distance asbecause they were dwarfed and belittled in the presence of the immenseand the immeasurable. All these things lay broadly in sight of thejournalist on that glorious Sunday morning, and perhaps at another timehe might have seen and attempted to describe them; but not _then_. Hefor the moment failed to see what was before him, and he saw somethingelse not revealed to every eye.

  Tom Leslie was either the master or the slave of a powerful imagination.Some who knew him said the one, and some the other. But all agreed as tothe possession of the faculty; and it was not always that his soberestand most conscientious relations (in type) were received without a shadeof suspicion on that account. It may have been that the loneliness ofthe night before had not quite worn away, and that it left him sadderand more impressible than usual; and it may have been that the oneelement before wanting in his nature, that of earnest and undividedhuman love, had changed him when it was supplied. At all events, therew
as a something in that wondrous scene, that came to him that morning ashe had never before known it--something that came to him fromdream-land, and made the sight of his eyes only the exercise of asecondary faculty. He saw, with this peculiar sight, all the features ofthe scene that we have noted, and another and one strikingly unusual, ina shipwreck in the rapids.

  Two days before, on the Fourth, and in honor of the day, a knot of gayfellows had procured an old schooner, hoisted white streamers at thetops of her stripped masts, and sent her down the river into the rapidsfrom Chippewa Creek, expecting to enjoy the rare pleasure of seeing herleap over the Falls and emerge in little fragments and splinters oftimber in the river below. Thousands had gathered on the Canadian shore,and on Goat Island, to witness a prank never matched in audacity sincethe British "guerrillas" from the other side, in the time of theCanadian rebellion, seized the steamer "Caroline" at Schlosser, set heron fire, and sent her down the Falls--an act which almost lit the torchof war so effectually between the two countries, that all the waterswhich overwhelmed the "Caroline" would not have been enough to quenchit.

  But with reference to the old schooner, sent down from Chippewa Creek onthe Fourth of July. She had only shown that human calculations are notinfallible, even when they presage disaster. The thousands assembled towitness the destruction, had been doomed to disappointment. The currenthad swept the boat well over on the Canadian side, and there someunknown eddy had seized and driven her between two sunken rocks, whereshe lay as safe from any danger of the Falls as if she had been tenmiles below them, instead of half a mile above. She lay, bow up theriver, inclined lengthwise, as if she had been caught when shooting downthe Lachine Rapids, and the white streamers on her bare masts flutteringout to the winds as signals of distress that would have been--ah! sohopeless and useless with human life on board and in peril.

  At the first moment of beholding the old wreck, Tom Leslie found her aprominent feature in the spectacle, and his reflections took a shapewhich may have been taken by those of many sojourners at the Falls, whosaw her during the season:

  "There she lies to-day, and there she may lie for many a long month,gradually weakening and breaking apart from the action of the rapidssurging around her, until some night when the wind comes fiercely downthe river, and heavy storms have increased the volume of water as wellas loosened the last bolt that yet holds her securely together,--then,when there is none to witness the death-throe of wood and iron, she willheave and labor and at last break apart. The two fragments will gosweeping down, whirled over like playthings--touching the points of therocks and giving out groans and shrieks like those which precededissolution; then for one moment there will be a dark mass poised on theedge of the Fall, and the next there will be one more deafening crashadded even to the thunder of the waters. A few broken splinters will gosweeping away down the dark river, and all will be over."

  But what was it that Tom Leslie saw, more than is revealed to thenatural eyes, looking on that scene when he had contemplated it for afew moments? This and only this--but quite enough to make the memory ofthat moment immortal. He saw it _applied to the human heart and humanlife_. The water pouring over the Horse-shoe Fall ceased for the momentto be the falling water of this real world, and became some weird streamfalling thunderously and in white glory through the land of dreams. Thedark misty gulf into which it poured below was not the physical abyssover which the natural man must stand with a shudder, but the unfathomedpit of woe and sorrow into which, in nightmare dreams, man has been everfalling yet never destroyed, since the first visions of early childhood.The tower ceased to be a palpable mass of wood and stone, and becamehuman hope and energy, with the clear blue sky of God's providenceabove, beaten by storms and undermined by fierce currents every momentthreatening it with destruction, but standing yet through all. And theold wrecked schooner above had ceased to be a mere material wreck ofplank and timber and iron--it was one of those unreal but sadder wrecksof a human life and a human soul, stranded for the moment on the rock ofsome great calamity, and eventually to be swept away and engulfed by theinevitable.

  There had been a slight veil of haze shrouding the sun for the previoushalf hour; but as Tom Leslie partially awakened from his dream andlistlessly descended the stairs cut in the bank, towards the bridgeleading to the Tower, the mist rolled away, the sun broke forth in theglory of high-noon, and out of the darkness below sprang an arch oflight that almost made the journalist, who was too old and tooworld-hardened for such exhibitions, clap his hands and cry: "Therainbow! the rainbow!" Of old he had seen the rainbow spanning theeastern heaven when looking out at early evening from the home of hischildhood, and when the thunder-storms of summer were dying away overthe Atlantic; but here it was, a thing of arms' reach, and at his feet!At one moment it merely glimmered up through the mist from the bed ofthe river, a little broken space of the arch, and the colors dim andindistinct; anon the sky grew brighter and the column of mist rosehigher; and now it formed more than the half circle, the top a littleabove the level of the Fall,--and the blue, and gold, and green, andorange, and purple, painted so brightly on the retina of the eye thatthey seemed to be a part of the very air the observer was inhaling. Hownear he stood, impressible Tom, at that moment, to the eternalmystery!--how near to the workshop in which seem to be flashed out frometernal forges the beauties of the sunshine and the storm! Climbing downfrom the bridge to the end of the rock, leaning tremblingly over andlooking down into the misty gulf below with that Jacob's Ladder of faithset therein--it is not strange that the journalist for one moment wishedfor a line and plummet to drop into that reservoir of golden glory andbring up some memento of what seemed so near to the celestial;--just asone wishes, sometimes when the midnight heaven is darkest and the starsare burning most purely there, to be able to stretch forth a hand amongthe stellar lights and bring it back bathed with that radiance which isso fearfully beautiful.

  Leslie had no intention of ascending the tower that day--other dayswould be his at Niagara, and something must be saved for each. Besides,he had breakfasted lightly and an unromantic call for lunch was beingmade on faculties quite as delicate as his mental perceptions. He hadaccordingly just turned again and ascended the stairs to the bank infront of the Pavilion, when the fates (ever kind to him in this regard,as to every other true lover of nature) vouchsafed him one moment'sglimpse of a spectacle often wished for and seen but seldom. Turning forone last glimpse as he walked away, at that instant his eye was restingon the sharpest point of the curve of the Horse-shoe Fall, where thevolume of water is evidently deepest, and where from that depth it makesone broad unbroken sweep of amber green as it plunges over, without onefleck of foam to mar it. He was just scanning for an instant that calmdepth, and saying that _there_ was after all the majesty ofNiagara--there, where the great green flood approaches the awfulprecipice, impelled by a resistless force from above, but unruffled anduntroubled by the approaching fate--bends gracefully and proudly at theverge, as some dusky Antoinette might do her proud neck when the axe ofthe executioner was impending--then, still without a ripple or a tremortakes the last long plunge as Curtius may have done when the gulf wasopen in the Forum and he rode down the Aventine and spurred out intothin air to fulfil the omens of the augurs and save the perilled life ofRome,--he was just feeling and saying this, when a dark speck appearedat the very edge of the green. It was a log, perhaps fifteen or twentyfeet in length, over the Fall!--a mere log, nothing in another place,but everything in the place it for that moment occupied. For one instanthe saw it hang trembling on the verge, then for another its darkoutlines were thrown into clear relief against the bright green waterwith the sunshine glimmering through; and then down, down it was hurled,rushing like an arrow's flight into the feathery foam of the brokenwater below, and at last (so far as human eye could ever know) into theblinding mist at the bottom of the cataract. What a reed upon the brookhad been that log, that might have required the strength of a dozen mento lift it from the ground!--what is the might with which the ele
mentsmake playthings of what seem to mortal strength dense andimmoveable--even as the great Power that is equally above nature andabove man, "holdeth the mountains in the hollow of his hand, and takethup the isles as a very little thing!"

  "By George!" said Leslie. "What a lucky dog I am! I have known athousand people who wished for just such a view, and I have had it allalone, after all!" He was not in the habit of holding conversationsaloud with himself; but he had been so impressed as to speak aloudinvoluntarily, in this instance.

  "No, not quite alone, if you please, Mr. Leslie!" said a deep voicebehind him, and at the same instant a hand was laid upon his shoulder.He turned, and met the powerful form and singular face of DexterRalston, the Virginian.

  It was not unnatural that Leslie should be surprised; and it would beidle to say that he was not even startled at this most unexpectedmeeting, remembering what he did of the last three occasions on which hehad met this man--in each instance, as he had reason to suppose, hisobservation being unknown to the other. He might have been pardoned ifhe even shuddered, remembering the connection which he believed Ralstonto bear towards the "red woman"; and he was too ardent a Union man, aswe have seen, not instantly to remember the ambiguous circumstancesunder which he had twice seen him, and the chase after him and hiscompanions which had cost him so long a ride only a few days before. Itmay be said, in this place, that he had heard nothing fromSuperintendent Kennedy, before leaving the city, of the watch placedupon the house and its result,--and that after the second adventure ofthe house on Prince Street, and the opening of the new channel intowhich his thoughts and feelings had been led by the meeting with JoeHarris, he had not thought proper to follow up the mystery, andconsequently had no knowledge that any of the parties had left New York.

  All those thoughts, and the counter one that the man before him hadreally done him no harm but had once rendered him an importantservice--passed through the mind of Leslie so quickly that the othermust have been a close observer to know that they were passing at all.As a result, by the time that they became fairly confronted and DexterRalston held out his hand, that of Tom Leslie met him with all apparentfrankness.

  "Mr. Ralston," he said, owning a part of the truth, "really yousurprised me."

  "So I suppose," said the other; "and yet I have been standing here,leaning against one of the posts of the Pavilion, for several minutes;and I am certainly not so small of stature as to be easily overlooked."

  "No," laughed Leslie. And then he added. "But yonder is somethinglarger. The Falls dwarf everything, and I suppose _hide_ everything."

  "Very probably," said Ralston. "Were you walking back towards thebridge? Shall I walk with you? That is--I mean to ask--are you alone?"

  "Oh yes, all alone!" said Leslie. "I am at the Cataract. And you--areyou staying here?"

  "I _have_ been staying at the Clifton," answered the other, as theystrolled back across the Island. "But just now I am at the Monteagle. Itis long since we met," he added. "You have been in Europe, have you not?I think you told me you were going, when I saw you last."

  "Yes," said Leslie, "I have been in Europe again, and only came backlast spring." But he added a mental enquiry that was by no means shapedinto words: "_Did_ I say to him that I was going to Europe? or does hekeep watch of me and know my every movement, through the mysteriousagency of the woman of the Rue la Reynie Ogniard?"

  "You are a newspaper man still?" asked Ralston, after a momentarysilence, as they walked on.

  "Yes," said Leslie, "I am still at that drudgery, in my own way, andshall probably never be freed from it. But you see that I do not stickso closely to the desk as to injure my health very much! And you--excusemy asking the question," and he tried, walking at his side though hewas, to mark closely whether the question produced any effect on theface of the other--"but the truth is, Ralston, that I scarcely expectedto meet you in the North at the present moment. I thought you soincarnate a Southerner, as well as a slaveholder, that you would havebeen likely to join in the rebellion!"

  "No, did you?" asked Ralston; and if his face changed, certainly Leslie,close observer as he thought himself, could not detect the difference."Well, I must say that you put the matter plainly. You _should_ havethought better of an old friend, and remembered that if I was a_Virginian_ I was also and still more an _American_."

  How openly and with what apparent honesty the man spoke! And howimpossible it seemed that he _could_ be uttering other words than thoseof entire truth? But Tom Leslie remembered the night under the arches ofthe Capitol, the stars-and-bars and the mystic circlet of the house onPrince Street, and the mysterious words that procured admission to thehouse up-town; and he had seen and heard enough of double faces not tobe _too_ sure of his ground on any man's word.

  "Well, I am glad to know it," he said, in reply to Ralston's disclaimer."We have not too many true Union men, who have _forgotten the particularpart of the Union in which they were born, for the sake of the countryand the whole country_. I am glad to know that you are one of them." Helaid peculiar stress on the more important words of the last sentence,and bent his eyes still more searchingly on the countenance of thesingular man before him.

  "How long do you remain?" asked Ralston, as they neared the end of thebridge.

  "A few days only," answered Leslie--"perhaps a week or two. I came up tocatch the moon on the Falls."

  "You should have come in time, then, and seen the eclipse," said theVirginian.

  "Aha!" said Tom Leslie to himself. "One point of information gained, ifno more! He is a little in the _habit_ of being at Niagara, for he washere at the full moon in June and he has since been absent! One touchinside your armor, old fellow, if no more! You were here to see theeclipse, then?" he asked aloud of Ralston. "I tried to come myself, butcould not manage it. What was it like, if you saw it over the Falls?"

  "I was staying at the Clifton House, then," said Ralston, "and I camedown to Table Rock, alone, just after midnight, and sat there from thebeginning to the end of the obscuration. You should have seen"--and herehis undeniable though repressed poetical temperament began to showitself in his cheek and eye--"you should have seen the dull, dismalshadow gradually creeping over the rapids as the disk grew smaller,every flashing wave seeming to be touched with a ghastly reflection thatsaid: 'Daylight and moonlight are both gone forever--the last darknessis creeping on--the end of all things is at hand.' The spray below thecataract seemed dun and lead-colored, as if it might have been thesulphurous smoke rolling up from a battle-field. All was splendidlydismal, let me tell you!--such a spectacle as few men see and no man whosees ever forgets!"

  "And what was the appearance of the moon when fully obscured?" askedLeslie, almost breathless with interest at the strangely graphic wordsof the Virginian, and no longer wondering, after those words, that thereshould have been a connection between the mysterious "red woman" and onewho seemed so nearly of her mental kin.

  "It was _no_ moon," answered Ralston, and his dark eyes seemed to loseall their fierceness and grow inexpressibly sad and solemn as he spoke."It was _no_ moon! It was a mere unreal shadow and mockery--the deadghost of a moon that had been, perished long ago, and embodying all thegriefs and all the sorrows that had weighed down the heart of man sincethe Creation. The waters of Niagara lay beneath it, as if under a pallthat had settled over a dead world!"

  "I should have liked to see it--I would have travelled a thousand milesto see it, had I thought so far!" said Leslie, with the earnestness of alover of Nature under all her aspects.

  "Would you?" said Ralston. "Well, it was something to see _once_: Ishould scarcely like to trust the brain of the man who saw it muchoftener. I must leave you, but I hope I shall meet you again. Here boy!"beckoning to one of the lounging hack-drivers at the hotel-end of thebridge, "Drive me to the Monteagle. Good-bye!" and away he whirled,leaving Leslie to look after him until out of sight, and to say tohimself as he walked up the esplanade over the rapids:

  "I thought that _I_ was an oddity and a contradiction, bu
t that fellowcan _discount_ me! I don't know half as much about him now, as I did thefirst moment I saw him!"