CHAPTER XVI.
CLOUD AND STORM AT THE PROFILE--SIGHTS AND SENSATIONS OF A RAINY-DAY RIDE TO THE CRAWFORD--HORACE TOWNSEND AND HALSTEAD ROWAN ONCE MORE TOGETHER--UNEXPECTED ARRIVALS--A CAVALCADE OF MISERABLES--AN ASCENT OF MOUNT WASHINGTON, WITH EQUESTRIANISM AND WAR-WHOOPS EXTRAORDINARY.
Calms at sea are not more proverbially treacherous than pleasant morningsin the mountains; and long before that day closed which had opened soauspiciously, the heavy clouds came driving up through the Notch with thesouth-east wind. By nightfall a storm was inaugurated. Thenceforward, fortwo days, excursions to the Cannon, to Bald Mountain, to Mount Lafayette,or to any other of the points of scenery so plentiful in the FranconiaNotch, and in which excursions all the visitors, however slightlyacquainted, are more or less closely thrown into speaking intercourse witheach other,--were things to be thought of but not attempted. The stagescame in with smoking horses and moisture dripping alike from the hat of thedriver and the boot of the coach; but few passengers arrived or departed.The bears walked sullenly their little round, or retired periodically towinter quarters in their narrow kennels. The valleys were filled withdriving mist, varied by heavy down-pouring rain, and the mountains hidthemselves sullenly from view, so that sometimes not even the brow of EagleCliff, hanging immediately over the house, could be distinguished throughthe dense clouds that swept down to the very roofs. Fires became prevalent,and those so fortunate as to possess rooms where the birchen wood could beset ablaze, remained closely sequestered there, dozing, or playing cards orbackgammon, or once more turning over the leaves of books from which allthe novelty had long before been extracted. Desultory groups met at meals,even the eaters coming down sluggishly. Some of the men patronized thebilliard-room or the bowling-alley, but they rarely found lady partners orspectators, as in sunnier days. Even the hops in the parlor at evening werethinly attended, the weather seeming to have affected alike the nerves andmuscles provocative of dancing, and the strings of the harp, violin andpiano. Those who happened to possess copies of "Bleak House," and whoremembered the marvellous phenomena of rainy weather existing at a certaintime in and about the domain of Sir Leicester Dedlock, read the descriptionover again and thought that nothing could be more beautifully applicable tothe experience of storm-stayed sight-seers at a caravanserai among themountains.
During those two days of storm and sluggishness, Horace Townsend, merely anexcursion acquaintance of the Hayleys and Captain Hector Coles, and notsuch an intimate as would be likely to be invited to backgammon or chat inone of their private rooms,--never once met Margaret Hayley more nearlythan within bowing distance when passing in or out of the dining-room orthe parlor. One or both may have desired to continue the acquaintancewithout quite so much of distant familiarity; but if so, one or both knewthe antagonistic influences surrounding them and did not think proper toraise an arm for buffeting the waves of separation.
There were not less than a dozen persons remaining at the Profile, who hadthe ascent of Mount Washington yet to make at an early day, and whointended to make it in the good old traditional way of horseback from theCrawford instead of acknowledging modern utility and bowing to thedestruction of all romance by going up in carriages from the Glen. Some ofthese, beginning to be pressed for time, saw the steady rain and mist withimpatience and found very little comfort in the assurances of thehotel-keepers, guides and stage-drivers, that the clouds were not likely tobreak away under a week, at least.
Monday brought this feeling to a culmination, and that morning, spite ofall predictions, the impatient dozen ordered a stage and determined todrive over to the Crawford; bespeaking clear weather on the morrow, or onthe next day at farthest, for their especial accommodation. HoraceTownsend, whether wearied by circumstances which placed him "so near andyet so far" in his acquaintance with Margaret Hayley, or really touchedwith the prevailing madness for forcing Mount Washington to smile when thatgreat mountain wished to be sullen,--Horace Townsend joined the malcontentsand formed one of the closely-packed stage-load that on Monday morningrolled off from the Profile on their way to the Crawford.
The voyagers were pursued by no small number of jokes and jeers from thepiazza, as they drove away, on the folly of plunging out into a storm toaccomplish an impossibility. But if any one of the number felt for a momentsore in mind and faint-hearted, they were soon consoled. Most of them(mixed male and female, though the former predominating) were trueNature-lovers who had recognized that however Fame and Fortune sometimesplay cruel tricks upon their most ardent votaries, the kind Mother seldomfailed to unveil her bosom at the coming of one of her true children. Theyhad faith in the future, and that faith was at once repaid in the glory ofthe present.
For those who have only made the twenty-five miles of stage-ride betweenthe two places, in fair weather, can have no idea of the peculiar charms ofthat day of capricious rain and floating mist. Closely shut in thelumbering coach, and well enveloped in shawls and dread-noughts andblankets, but with the windows open to allow looking back on the Franconiarange they were leaving,--they enjoyed at intervals, during all the earlierportions of the ride, such splendid glimpses of cloud-land as never fall tothe lot of mere fair-weather travellers.
At times the shroud of mist which had enveloped them would roll away, asthey ascended the high land rising from Franconia towards Bethlehem; andthen they would have the peaks of the Franconia range flecked and dottedwith swales and waves and crests of transparent white that seemedalternately to be thousands of colossal sheep lying in the mountainpastures,--and again great masses of the purest and softest eider-downwhich had floated there and rested, from millions of birds filling thewhole air above. Mount Lafayette at one moment, as some of the voyagers ofthat lucky morning will well remember, seemed to be capped and crowned witha wreath of untrodden snow, miles in extent and hundreds of feet indepth--such as no mountain ever wore upon its brow as a coronet, from thefirst morning of creation.
Exclamations of pleasure filled the coach, and jest and appreciative remarkblended in pleasant proximity. "I shall always remember the air of thismorning," said one, "as an atmosphere of bridal veils," and more than hetreasured up the comparison as one worth remembering. "See here, Cora!"said another, to the only child in the coach, who nestled half asleep onthe shoulder of her mother, pointing her attention meanwhile to a littlepyramidal hill separate from the mountain range and at that point relievedagainst it: "See here, Cora! There is a little baby mountain!" "So thereis!" answered Cora, with a world of drollery in her young eyes, "I wonderhow long before it will grow to be as big as the rest of them!" WhereuponCora was voted to have the best of the argument, and manhood once moreworshipped childhood.
Away past Bethlehem and along the Ammonoosuc, an exaggeration, in itsrocks, upon all the other mountain streams, with its few inches of waterfinding way among a perfect bed of boulders, and making the mere word"navigation" suggest so droll an image in that connection as to draw a loudlaugh from the whole coach-load. Then past a couple of fishermen, heedlessof the rain, rod in hand and creel at side, standing on the boulders in themiddle of the river and practising the mysteries of the Waltonian art,report alleged with more "flies" assisting than those which they carried intheir pocket-books! Then on, with the mist again closed down heavily, pastthe White Mountain House, that once, before the days of glory of the Glen,supplied the only so-called "carriage-road" to the top of Washington.
A mile or two more, and there was a space clear from trees on the left. Asthe coach swept up to it the mists seemed to shrink low for a moment. Aheavy, dark line loomed on the sky, with almost the true sweep of a wideGothic arch, a little sharpened at the top. "How graceful!" was theexclamation of one. "How high!--look!--why that is higher than any of theothers that we have seen!" exclaimed a second. "Mount Washington," calmlysaid a habitue who caught a glimpse through the curtain from the backcorner of the coach; and every voice joined in the cry.
The habitue was right--cloud and mist had rolled away for an instant, justat
the opportune moment, and they had caught that magnificent first nearview of the monarch, throned amid his clouds, glorious in the grace of formand the awe of majesty--seeming to bridge the very space between earth andheaven! Some of those favored gazers will dream of that first glance, yearshence, when they have been straining the mental vision upward, in wakinghours, to that unattainable and dim which rises above the mists of commonlife. Some of them will throne the great mountain in their hearts, andstretch out pleading arms to it in remembrance, in the dark days of shameand sorrow,--as if the treading of their feet upon its rocky pinnacle wouldbe indeed an escape from the world--as if they might become sharers,indeed, in the majesty of its great solitude. Some of the travellers feltthe solemnity of the hour and the scene, that day; and there was not even asneer or a word of misappreciation for the adventurous genius who quoted,heedless of all that made it inappropriate:
"Mount Blanc is the monarch of mountains: They crowned him long ago, On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds, With a diadem of snow!"
There was a brief ride remaining, then, till they rolled in over a levelroad, through thick overhanging woods, to the Crawford House in the WhiteMountain Notch. The mist had closed almost hopelessly down for the time,and they could only see occasional glimmers through it of the rough sidesof old Mount Webster, dark-browed and massive as its namesake. It was onlyin the brighter air of morning that they were to take in the whole locationand see in front, to the right, Mount Willard, wooded on the side exposedto view, but bald and rugged farther down the Notch, like the Cannon atFranconia; with Mount Jackson to the left in front, beyond it the stillhigher peaks of Mount Webster, and rising at the left in the immediateforeground the long wooded slopes of Mount Clinton, over which the foot ofevery pilgrim to Mount Washington from the Crawford must make its firstascent.
The dull weather had driven almost all the visitors within doors, at theCrawford as at the Profile; but as the splashed coach rolled up there wasat least one recognition--that of Halstead Rowan by Horace Townsend, theformer, without any apparent reference to the humidity of the atmosphere,lying at lazy length on three chairs on the piazza and occupied with acigar and a cheap novel. He had "shed" (that word seems to express the factbetter than any other) his over-sized glove from his wounded hand, andseemed entirely to have recovered the use of that important member.
New acquaintances become old and ripen into friendships, very soon when allother surroundings are totally strange; and the two men, each so odd in hisway, greeted each other as if they had been friends for a decade instead ofintimates of less than a week. There may have been some bond in common, inthe guess which each could make of the thoughts and entanglements of theother, calculated to force that friendship forward, even if it would haveprogressed more slowly under other circumstances.
The first inquiry of Townsend, as they shook each other warmly by the hand,was:
"Been up Mount Washington yet?"
"Not _this time_!" answered the other, significantly. "The fog has beennearly thick enough to swim in, ever since I have been here, and I do notknow, if I had been as good a swimmer as you, Townsend, whether I shouldnot have tried going up by water, as our friend Mrs. Brooks Cunninghamewent up the Alps; but by land the thing has been impossible."
"Many waiting to go up?--or do they nearly all go around to the Glen, thisseason?" was the next inquiry.
"No, there are a good many sensible people left," was the reply, in thesame tone of vivacious rattle. "Think of going up Mount Washington in acarriage! It is worse than making a mill-race out of Niagara, orapproaching Jerusalem, as they will do one of these days, I suppose, amidthe rumble and whistle of a railroad-train."
"Don't undervalue your own employment!" said Townsend.
"Oh, I do not," was the reply. "Railroad trains, as well as mills, are verygood things in their places; but I suppose that a prejudice will alwaysexist in favor of the fiery chariot instead of the balloon, as a means ofmaking ascents into the celestial regions."
Horace Townsend laughed. "But you have not yet told me how many arewaiting, or when you are really going up."
"Oh, there must be nearly or quite twenty of them, moping around the house,running out to look at the sky every ten minutes, and asking the clerk andthe guides questions that they are about as fit to answer as aprairie-chicken to solve a problem in geometry! As to when we are goingup--do _you_ know?"
"_I_ am going up to-morrow, whether any one else goes up or not," said thelawyer. "And by the way, I have bespoken a clear day for that especialoccasion."
"Have you? Thank you! Then I suppose we can _all_ go up!" replied theIllinoisan, as if the information had been the most serious in the world."By the way--how are they all, over yonder!"
There was something very like a blush on the face of the questioner, andthere was something varying very little from that phenomenon on the browncheek of the other as he answered:
"I have not seen much of either," (what did he mean by "either," a wordpeculiarly applying, in common parlance, to _two_?) "but I believe thatthey are well."
"Still at the Profile?"
"Yes, and likely to remain there, for any thing that I know to thecontrary."
"Any news of any kind? Any more accidents or startling events?"
"None--yes, there is one startling event. The Brooks Cunninghames came awaythe same day that you left. Have you got the old woman here?"
"Here? heaven forefend! No!" was the response. Then he added: "Why, byJupiter, Townsend, you must be a wizard or in some kind of collusion withMeriam! See!--I'll be hanged if there is not the top of a mountain! It _is_clearing away! Hurrah for Mount Washington!"
He darted in at once from the piazza to the office, and Townsend, who hadnot yet even registered his name as an arrival, followed him. Most of theother passengers from the Profile were by that time registered andscattered away to their rooms for sartorial renovation.
A separate book was kept at the office, as usual at such places, over thehead of each page of which was printed: "Horses for Mount Washington," andin which, every day, those who wished to secure horses and guides for thesucceeding or the first favorable day, registered their names, with thenumber of animals required and how many of them were to be ridden byladies. A good many queer autographs might be observed in that book andsome of its predecessors, for there was almost always some mischievousclerk behind the counter, amusing himself by telling immense stories tosome of the other initiated, just as the un-initiated were coming up toregister their names,--about the perils of the ride and how near he or someother person had come to falling over precipices of indefinite thousands offeet. This description of jocular practice very often shook the nerves ofyoung travellers at the moment of booking, even when the frightened personwas too far committed or too shame-faced to abandon his project; and thereis no doubt that the original collection of chirography thus secured wouldprove only less interesting, on exhibition, than the original draft of theDeclaration of Independence, or----the Emancipation Proclamation!
Several names had already been booked at hap-hazard on the day in question;and others of the storm-stayed, aware of the prospect of a "clearing-up,"were by that time flocking around the book to secure their places. To thecollection already made were very soon added the signatures of Townsend andRowan, who intended, as neither would have a lady in charge, to make agreat part if not all the trip together, while the two friends of Rowan,who were also to be of the ascending party, would "pair off" in the samemanner.
This done, and supper-time approaching, Rowan, who had been lounging aboutin a sort of wet-weather box-coat undress which would have driven anultra-fashionable to desperation, ran off to his room to make himselfsomewhat more presentable; while Horace Townsend, after patronizing thebarber-shop for five minutes and providing himself with that inevitablecigar, stepped out once more upon the piazza to glance at the weather andsatisfy himself how kind Mother Nature really intended to be on the morrow.He had but just emerged from the door wh
en a close light carriage with twopairs of foaming horses--horses and carriage well covered withmud,--whirled around the corner of the Crawford and drew up at the door.The driver sprung from his seat and the carriage door was opened. Out ofit stepped first Frank Vanderlyn, then Mrs. Vanderlyn and her daughter,who, as it afterwards appeared, had left the Profile after dinner anddriven through post in that manner, under the impression that the nextmorning might after all be a fine one, and anxious (two of the three, atleast) to join any party which would be likely to make the ascent.
"Whew!" said the lawyer to himself, between two puffs of his cigar, as herecognized the new-comers without their seeming to be aware of hispresence. "Here is more of the Rowan romance and there may be more ten-pinsnecessary. I wonder whether that haughty woman and her son have any idea ofthe presence here of their friend from Chicago, and whether they havedriven at that slapping pace through the mud, especially to be in his way!I wonder, too, whether Rowan's room is on the front, so that he has seentheir arrival. I have half a notion to go up and apprize him of it; andthen I have a whole notion to let him find it out for himself, and finishmy cigar before supper comes in to spoil it."
Whatever might have been the amount of knowledge of the movements of Rowanpossessed by the Vanderlyns, and whether in making a new entry on the booksthe old names were or were not always looked over,--certain it is that halfan hour afterwards the lawyer found two more names booked for theascent--those of "Mr. Francis Vanderlyn" and "Miss Clara Vanderlyn," themother evidently not intending to expose herself to a fatigue which hadlost its novelty, but to await their going and return at the Crawford.
It was very evident, to Townsend, eventually, that Rowan did not know anything of the new arrival until he came down to supper. The Vanderlyns hadtaken their places at the table, very nearly opposite the lawyer, andreturned with a nod of pleasant recognition the bow which he felt compelledto give them under the circumstances. Halstead Rowan, as he came in, took aseat on the same side of the table with the new-comers, and it was only ashe gave the customary glance down after he had seated himself, that heseemed to recognize the sudden addition to the social circle. When he didrecognize it, the lawyer (that man seems to be eternally watching theother, does he not?) caught one instant's blank surprise on his face, andhe even put up his hand to rub his eyes, as if he fancied himself dreaming;but the surprise seemed to fade in a moment, and he pursued his supper withthat fine appetite which is usually vouchsafed to such physical men. Heleft the table before the Vanderlyns had finished, and apparently withouttheir having observed him. Townsend rose immediately and followed him, witha smile upon his face of which he was himself unconscious. He saw theIllinoisan go into the office and do precisely what he [the lawyer] wouldhave laid a heavy stake that he would do--step to the counter and look overthe list of "Horses for Mount Washington." Then a queer expression, nearerto malicious pleasure than any thing the other had before seen upon hisface, flitted over it as he recognized the names. It might have been merelysatisfaction--it might have been defiance blended with it in equalproportions; but at least it seemed to be capable of translation into wordslike these, which the very lips moved as if they would utter:
"So, Baltimore people, you are running yourselves into my way again, afterI had gone off and left you alone, like a good fellow! You had better bepoorer and less proud, or I richer; or you had better keep the distancewhich I put between us!"
A few moments after he approached Townsend with a laugh of deprecation andinvited him to another game of ten-pins, which seemed to be quite asnecessary to him when in a good humor as when in a rage. The invitation wasaccepted, and the important contest began once more. It would have been avery unequal one, for Rowan had fully recovered the use of his right hand,but that the alleys themselves had something to say in the matter. Worseapologies for alleys than those of the Crawford no man ever saw; and sucha thing as a "ten-strike" had never been recorded on the black-boards, asmade on those long lines of uneven and floor-laid planks. Both thecombatants had quite enough to do in getting down a "frame" with threeballs; and for some time not a word outside of the game escaped either.
Suddenly, and when he had rolled two of the three balls at the defiantpins, Rowan stopped short with one of the lignum-vitae globes, of about thesize of a human head, in his hand--twirling it the while as if it had beena paper balloon,--and said, in a short, curt tone:
"They have come!"
"Yes," answered Townsend, not pretending for a moment to be doubtful aboutthe meaning of the personal pronoun. "Yes, I saw them at supper."
"Going up with us to-morrow, I believe!" added the Illinoisan.
"Ah, indeed, are they?" was the jesuitical inquiry of the lawyer.
"Yes, and they will have good company, won't they!" was the response.
Then he bowled away at the ten-pins, more energetically than ever, and withsomething in his manner and the nervous jerk of his arm, that once morerecalled Townsend's idea of his feeling, while in the act, like shootingsome one down a mountain precipice like a pebble-stone, or sweeping away afate like a cobweb with one of those polished globes of iron wood.
Only a couple of games, and then they went in to bed with a mutual reminderthat the motto in the morning would be "to horse and away!" and that aboveall things they must be watchful against that phase of indolence vulgarlyknown as "oversleeping." The house was nearly silent, all the prospectiveriders having retired for the night, and soon slumber fell upon that hiveof human bees wandering in search of the honey of unlaboring pleasure,gathered under the roof of Gibb and Hartshorne at the Crawford.
Fell, but not too deeply, for that which is to be brief has a right to beintense; and the hours of repose were relentlessly numbered. NeitherTownsend nor Rowan need have been anxious about waking in the morning; forsuch a blast and roar of horrible sound as swept through the corridor atabout seven, A. M., from the big Chinese gong in the hands of anenthusiastic negro who probably felt that he had no other opportunity ofmaking his requisite "noise in the world," would have been sufficient toawaken any thing short of the dead! For once, every one obeyed the summonswhile anathematizing the mode, and the breakfast-table was soon surrounded.
Here, those who labored under some kind of indefinite impression that thesummit of Mount Washington was somewhere beyond the Desert of Arabia--thatnothing eatable or drinkable could ever be discovered on its top--and thatthe more they ate the better able they would be to endure the fatigue ofthe ascent,--made vigorous attacks on the steaks, eggs and chickens, anddrank coffee, milk and cold water without limit. Those better advised (andthe fact is here set down as a bit of practical experience worthheeding),--those who knew the painful effect of attempting to climb amountain when gorged to repletion (the traveller, not the mountain--themountain is always full of "gorges")--those, we say, confined themselves toan egg or two and a small slice of rare steak, and drank lightly.
When the party one by one dropped out from breakfast, the scene in front ofthe house was at once picturesque and singular--worth remembering by thosewho shared in it or who have shared in one similar,--and worth the feebleattempt at verbal daguerreotype which may do something to preserve itagainst that day when the Crawford decays and Mount Washington is eitherlevelled off or ascended by means of a locomotive or a dumb-waiter.
More than twenty names--somewhat more than half of them belonging toladies--were on the book for the ascent; and a corresponding number ofhorses were scattered over the broad open space in front of the door. Allwere saddled and bridled; but among them moved half-a-dozen guides in roughcoats, thick boots and slouched hats, inspecting and tightening the girths,looking to the cruppers and bridles, and paying especial attention to theanimals provided for the female portion of the cavalcade, for whose safetythey ever hold themselves and are ever held by the hotel-proprietors,peculiarly responsible.
By way of back-ground to this singular scene, under a clump of trees to theright walked two full-grown black bears (no mountain resort can bethoroughly comple
te without its bears!)--chained and surly, ever keepingtheir weary round and grunting out their disapprobation at being confinedto such narrow quarters without an occasional naughty youngster for lunch.
But what a spectacle was presented when the mount was ready and the ridershad all emerged from the door of the Crawford! Were these the belles andbeaux of previous days, captivating and being captivated by perfection ofraiment as well as charm of face and grace of figure? If so, never had sucha metamorphosis taken place since long before Ovid. Every man wore somedescription of slouched hat, brought in his baggage or hired in the hotelwardrobe,--bad, very bad, atrocious, or still worse, and each tied downover the ears with a thick string or a handkerchief. Coarse and oldtrowsers were turned up over heavy boots; and the roughest and coarsest ofbox-coats that could be provided were surmounted in the majority ofinstances by striped Guernsey shirts still rougher. All the dilapidatedgloves and coarse tippets that could be mustered, with a few shawls andblankets, completed the equipment of a set of men who certainty looked toobadly even for brigands and seemed the enforced victims of some hideousmasquerade.
But if the men looked badly, what shall be said of that which should havebeen the fairer portion of the cavalcade? Salvator Rosa never dreamed ofsuch objects, and Hogarth would have gone stark mad in the attempt todepict them. Ringlets were buried under mob-caps and old woollen-hoods, andsmothered in bad straw hats and superannuated felt jockeys, tied down inthe same ungraceful manner as those of the men. Hoops had suddenly ceasedto be fashionable, even in advance of the sudden Quaker collapse in thecities; and every shape, bulky or lank, showed in its own undisguisedproportions--here a form of beauty, there a draped lamp-post, and yonder abedizened bolster. In short, the very worst riding-dresses possible toachieve seemed to have been carefully gathered from all the old-clothesshops in the universe; and if the men were the ugliest brigands of the darksouled Italian painter, the women were the drollest witches that evercapered through the brain of the master-dramatist.
And yet there were sparkling eyes showing occasionally from under thosehideous bonnets, that perhaps looked the brighter for the contrast; and itis not sure that one or two of the sweet auburn curls of Clara Vanderlyn,which had strayed away from their confinement and lay like red gold on theneck of her shabby black riding-dress, could ever have shown to morebewitching advantage.
Every one laughed at the appearance of the other, as the mount was takingplace, and as Hartshorne, of the Crawford, who seemed to have measured thecapabilities of every horse and calculated the weight and skill of everyrider, called off the names from the roll-book, and gave place to each inturn.
Of the material of the mount, it is only necessary to specify three or fourof the horses, which have to do with the subsequent details of thateventful excursion. Miss Vanderlyn had a neat little black pony, apparentlyvery careful in step, and an "old-stager" at ascending the mountains. Herbrother Frank rode a tall bay, of high spirit and better action than anyother horse on the ground. Rowan had asked Hartshorne (some of the othersheard him, with a sensation of genuine horror) to give him theworst-tempered horse in the stable; and as he was known to be an oldhabitue of the mountains, he had been accommodated according to request. Sofar as could be discovered by his action, his horse, a bay of fifteen and ahalf or sixteen hands, with blood, foot and bottom, would kick, bite,strike, run away, shy to one side, and do every thing else wicked andunsafe that should taboo a horse from being ridden at all,--except stumble,from which latter fault he was remarkably clear. Townsend was accommodatedwith a gray mare of moderate size and a dash of Arab blood, that had beenunused for nearly a month from having nearly broken the neck of one of theproprietors, on his personal allegation that he was at least a fair rider,and that the breaking of his own neck would be the least damage that couldbe inflicted on any member of the party.
Thick morning mists still hid the tops of Mount Webster and Mount Willard,visible from the house, and hung amid the heavy woods of Mount Clinton,although the storm had really passed away with the night,--as at nineo'clock, all mounted, the guides took their places, one at the head of thecavalcade and the others scattered at intervals through it, and the wholeline moved off up the mountain. It should be mentioned here, however, thatTownsend (the observer again) saw during the mount the only recognitionwhich took place between the two principal persons of his outsidedrama--Halstead Rowan and Clara Vanderlyn. Frank was mounting his horse,after having assisted his sister to her saddle, when Rowan brushed by heron his vicious bay, very near her and to the left. He saw their eyes meet,and saw Rowan bend so low that his head almost touched the neck of hishorse. Clara Vanderlyn replied by a gesture quite as mute and quite asunlikely to be observed by any one not especially watchful. She nodded herhead quickly but decidedly, and threw the roughly-gloved fingers of herleft hand to her lips. That was all, and of course unobserved by FrankVanderlyn, who may or may not have been aware that the man whom he hadinsulted was a member of the ascending party; but it was quite enough,beyond a doubt, to set the blood boiling in the veins of the Illinoisanwith all the fury of the water surging up in flame and smoke in the IcelandGeysers.
Rowan and Townsend had places assigned them near the middle of the line,but as the cavalcade began to move, the human demon of unrest was missingfrom his place. He was to be seen at the end of the piazza at that moment,talking to Hartshorne, and no doubt making a few additional inquiries as tothe character of the amiable animal he bestrode. The lawyer called out tohim to "Come on!" but he answered with a wave of the hand and a shout:
"Go ahead! don't wait for me! I will be with you directly!"
Through the thick woods of Mount Clinton they swept up, over a bridle-pathso rough as to have made the most laborious if not the most dangerouswalking--over great boulders of stone lying in the very path, andapparently impossible to get over or around--over patches of corduroy roadutterly defying description, except to the men who isolated Fort Donelsonand planted the Swamp Angels in the marshes of Charleston--over and throughgutters and gulches of slippery stone and more slippery mud--but everascending at a painful acclivity. The horses breathed heavily; and theirriders, in the thick and foggy air, did little better. They caughtoccasional glimpses through the trees, down the sudden slopes at the left,of the thick mist rolling below, but could see nothing else to remind themof the height they were attaining; and as the dense fog swept in theirfaces, and the trees dripped moisture on them when they swept beneath theirbranches, and the path grew more and more desolate and difficult, they grewsilent, the whole cavalcade, apparently by common consent. There areaspects in which Nature looks and feels too solemn for the light word andthe flippant jest; and the man who cannot be awed beyond his ordinary moodwhen standing under the edge of the sheet of Niagara, or beside the seawhen it is lashed into resistless fury, or in gale and mist on the bleak,bare, desolate mountains of the North, should never insult the grand andthe terrible by going into their presence!
And yet all persons, who have true reverence in their hearts, are notalways awed beyond themselves, even in the most impressive of situations:as witness, to some degree, the incidents following.
They had surmounted the first acclivity, perhaps a mile from the Crawford,and were commencing a slight descent which made every rider look to thehorse's feet and ride with a slight tremor,--when the stillness wassuddenly broken in a manner which almost curdled the blood of the timid andneeded a second reassurance for even the boldest.
"Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!" came from the path below, with thathideous power and distinctness of lungs that have chilled so many heartsand whitened so many faces since the white man first intruded on thehunting-grounds of the American Indian. A shrill, dissonant, horrible yell,combining the blind ferocity of the beast with the deadlier rage of man,such as made the poor mother clasp her babe closer to the breast when itrang around the block-houses of Massachusetts and New York in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries--such as less than three years agoproved that it was undying in the s
avage throat, by pealing over themangled bodies and burned dwellings of the Minnesota massacres.
"Good heavens!--what is that?" cried half a dozen of the ladies in abreath.
"An Indian war-whoop, certainly!" said one of the gentlemen, his face whiteas wax at the sudden shock.
"It is war time, and they tell me that the rebels yell terribly!" said oneof the ladies. "Can it be--" but then the absurdity of the idea struck herand she paused.
"Albert Pike was a New England man: perhaps he is here with his Arkansassavages!" said another, whether in jest or earnest no one could welldiscover.
It was surprising how in that one instant the cavalcade had shortened itslength--the foremost stopping and the rearmost closing up. Man _is_ agregarious animal, especially when a little surprised or frightened!
Perhaps Horace Townsend had been as badly startled as any of the others, atthe first instant; but he possessed some data which the others lacked fordiscovering the source of the warlike yell.
"Do not be alarmed, ladies!" he said, after an instant. "I think there isonly one Indian uttering that horrible sound, and you may depend upon itthat he is white and no rebel. Yes--see!--here he comes!"
They had been, as already indicated, descending a quarter of a mile of mostdifficult and dangerous path, in which every rider experienced more or lessof tremor, and over which the horses were picking their careful way as ifthey realized that human necks were in peril. At the instant when theattention of the company was thus directed backwards, Halstead Rowan hadreached the top of the rise, behind, and was just giving vent to a secondand supplemental yell which rang through the woods as if a dozen throatshad taken part in it, and which must have been heard half way down theNotch.
"Pop-pop-pop-pa-hoo! Hoo-hoo-oo-oo!"
The rider was commencing the descent, too, but not precisely like the rest,picking his way, on a careful half-trot, half-walk; on the contrary hishorse had his ears laid back and was going over the broken stones at such agallop as he might have held on an ordinary highway! The reins seemed to belying loose on his neck, and--could those horrified people believe theireyes?--so surely as they were threading the tangled woods of Mount Clinton,with thankful hearts for every rood passed over without broken necks, sosurely Halstead Rowan, a novel description of Mazeppa unknown even to FrankDrew or Adah Isaacs, sat his horse in what might be called "reverseorder," his back towards them and his face to the animal's tail!
"Good heavens!" "The man is mad!" "Oh, do stop the horse!" "It is runningaway with him!" "He will be killed!"--such were the exclamations that brokefrom the party as Rowan's equestrianism was recognized--most of them fromthe female portion of the cavalcade. What would it not have been worth tosee sweet Clara Vanderlyn's face at the moment when she first realized whowas the reckless rider, and to know whether she cared for his welfare atall and whether anxiety or confidence predominated in her thought!
But the rider did not pause, or seem very much in peril. His horse kept hisfeet quite as well as any of the others; and Townsend remembering theComanches and the Arapahoes, was forced to believe that the wild equestrianmust have the alleged Indian power of communicating his own will to hishorse, and that he could ride almost anywhere and in any manner, in safety.
Rowan drew the reins (which he _had_ in his hands, after all) as he came upwith the cavalcade, and said:
"I hope I did not startle any of you ladies with my Indian whoop. Upon myhonor I did not mean to do so, if I did; for I hate practical jokes thatcause pain, quite as much as any of the other fellows, the--gentlemen. Butthe woods tempted me, and I have not enjoyed such an opportunity for theuse of the lungs, this many a day."
"I believe some of us were a little frightened for a moment, but no harmdone," said Horace Townsend. "But let me ask you--is not your riding just alittle bit careless?"
"Well, yes, just the very least bit in the world, perhaps, for _some_people!" answered the wild fellow; and Townsend fancied that he caught himtrying, at the moment, to catch a glimpse, unseen by Frank Vanderlyn, underthe hood of Clara, who was not very far from him. If he did make theattempt, he failed, for the young girl dared not or would not expose herface. "But come, Townsend," Rowan added, "will you not push on with me alittle further ahead and let these slow coaches come up at their leisure?"
"At _your_ rate of progress? No," laughed Townsend. "I am not a very badrider, I believe, but I have never practised in a circus or on a prairie.Go ahead, if you are in a hurry; that is, provided you know which end isgoing foremost!"
"Found another place where you will not follow me, eh, old boy!" rattledthe Illinoisan, with a reference which the other easily understood. "Well,I will see you by-and-bye, then. Go along, Bay Beelzebub!" and the nextmoment, darting by the centre line and taking precedence even of theleading guide, in a path that was literally nothing but a three-corneredtrough, he was to be seen ascending the next rise, his horse trotting alongriderless, and himself springing from crag to crag beside the path, hishand upon the animal's back and the reins lying loose on its neck. He hadalighted, of course, without checking the speed of the horse in any degree.
But a few minutes later, and when the cavalcade had reached the top ofMount Clinton and was coming out from the gloom of the heavy woods into thepartial sunshine,--they saw the odd equestrian riding over a portion ofroad that was only moderately bad, standing erect on his horse's back,supported by the reins and his own powers of balancing,--and heard hisdeep, cheery voice ringing out in a song that seemed as complete a medleyas his own character. It may be permissible to put upon record one of thestanzas, which some of those nearest him caught and remembered:
"The heart bowed down by weight of wo-- When comin' thro' the rye? If I had a donkey wot wouldn't go-- Good-bye, my love, good-bye! I see them on their winding way: Old clothes, old clothes to sell! So let's be happy while we may-- Lost Isabel!"
Still later, the riders were all thrown into momentary horror by comingupon him, as they rounded the head of a gorge near the top of MountProspect,--his horse on a walk, and himself hanging over one side,apparently by the heels. The impression prevailed that he must have beenknocked senseless by a limb, in some of his pranks, and got his feetfatally entangled in the stirrups,--the result of which impression was thata sudden scream, in a woman's voice, burst out from some portion of theline, but so instantaneously suppressed that no one could trace it. Itturned out that in this last operation, so far from being killed, he wasonly practising the Indian mode of hanging beside his horse, supported byone hand at the neck and one foot over the saddle, after the manner of thewild tribes of the Plains when throwing the horse as a shield betweenthemselves and the shot of a pursuer!
After a time, however, the reckless fellow seemed to have grown tired ofhis humor; for, as the long line crossed over the peak of Prospect toMonroe, and the north wind and the sun had so driven away the clouds thatthe riders began to realize the glorious prospect opening upon them onevery hand,--he took his place in the line, next to his deserted comradeTownsend, sat his horse like a Christian, and joined in the bursts ofadmiration vented on all sides, with an enthusiasm which showed that thescenery had never palled upon him by familiarity.
And what views indeed were those that burst upon them as they crossed fromFranklin to Monroe, and that sea of which the stiffened waves weremountains stretched out for an hundred miles in every direction! Some therewere, in that line, who had stood on the prouder and more storied peaks ofEurope, and yet remembered nothing to diminish the glory of that hour. Howthe deep gorges slept full of warm sunlight, and how the dark shadowsflitted over them, and flickered, and thinned, and faded, as one by one thelight clouds were driven southward by the wind! With what a shudder,passing over the narrow ridge or back-bone connecting Monroe and Franklin,they looked down into "Oakes' Gulf" on the right and the "Gulf of Mexico"on the left, only separated by a yard of bushy rock from a descent of threethousand feet on one side, and by less than three yards of slippery stonefrom more
than two thousand feet on the other!
The path is a sort of narrow trough, rough enough, but quite as safe, andto those who keep it there is not the least possible danger. Indeed therider, half hidden in the trough, scarcely knows the fearful narrowness ofthe bridge over which he is passing; and thousands cross this pass andrecross it, and bring away no idea of the sensation that may be gained by alittle imprudent hanging over the verge on either side! None of the ridersin that cavalcade went back to their beds at the Crawford without a muchmore intimate knowledge of the capabilities of that situation; but of thisin due time.
It is impossible for any one who has never made a similar ascent, or whohas only ascended with a much smaller number, to conceive the appearancemade by that score of equestrians at various points when crossing the openbut uneven peaks in the last approach to Washington. Varied in stature, sexand costume, and all sufficiently outre to astonish if not tohorrify,--what views the leading riders of the line could catch at times,looking back at the motley line! Some half buried in the trough of the pathor midway in a gulch, so that only the head would be visible; othersperched on the very top of a huge boulder, ascending or descending; someclinging close to mane or neck as the horse scrambled up an ascent of fortydegrees; others lying well back on the saddle when descending a declivityof the same suddenness. What dreams of the Alps and the Apennines there arein such ascents--dreams of the toilers over St. Gothard and the muleteersof the Pyrenees--dreams of memory pleasant to those who have such pastexperiences to look back upon, and substitutes no less pleasant to manywho long for glances at other lands but must die with only that far-offglimpse of the fulness of travel which Moses caught from the hills of theMoabites over that inheritance of his race upon which he was never toenter.
It yet wanted half an hour to noon, and Mount Washington towered fullbefore them as they came out on the top of Franklin, by the little Lake ofthe Clouds which lay so saucily smiling to the sun and coquetting with themists. The peak, a huge mass of broken and naked stone, half a mile up onevery side and so sheer in pitch that foot-hold seemed hopeless, would havelooked totally discouraging but for the white line of path which, windingaround it on the north-west, showed that it must before have been achieved.
Up--up--over broken and slipping stones of every size and description, fromthe dimensions of a brick-bat to those of a dining-table--stones gray andmossed, without one spoonful of earth to prove that the riders had notsurmounted the whole habitable globe and lost themselves in some unnaturalwilderness of rock! And feeling joined with sight to enhance the desolatefancy, for though so nearly high noon the wind blew at that dizzy heightwith the violence of a gale, and the Guernsey wrappers and the clumsygloves had long before proved that the rough and homely may be more usefulthan the beautiful.
Two or three hundred yards from the Tip-Top House, the rough stone walls ofwhich were glooming above--the party were dismounted, the horses picketedby the guides, and over the broken stones and yawning fissures thedismounted riders struggled up, strong arms aiding weaker limbs, and muchcare necessary to prevent heedless steps that might have caused injuriesslow of recovery. Up--up, over the little but difficult remainingdistance--till all stood by the High Altar on the top of Mount Washington.
Above the clouds, swales of which they saw sweeping by, half way down themountain--above the earth, its cares and its sorrows, it seemed to them forthe moment that they stood; and only those who have made such a pilgrimagecan realize the glory of that hour. The mountains of VermontNorth-westward, those of Canada North-eastward, those of Massachusetts tothe South and the Franconia range full to the West; lakes lying likesplashes of molten silver at their feet and rivers fluttering like bluesilken ribbons far away; towns nestled in the gorges and hamlets glimmeringup from the depths of the ravines; long miles of valleys filled withsunlight, as if the very god of day had stooped down and left them full ofthe warmth of his loving kiss; peak upon peak rising behind and beyond eachother, and each tinted with some new and richer hue, from gold to purpleand from sunny green to dark and sombre brown; beyond all, and on theextreme verge of the sight-line to the East, one long low glint of lightthat told of the far Atlantic breaking in shimmering waves on the rockycoast of Maine; the world so far beneath as to be a myth and an unreality,distance annihilated, and the clear, pure air drank in by the gratefullungs appearing to be a foretaste of that some day to be breathed on thesummit of the Eternal Hills,--these were the sights and these thesensations amid which the dark cheek of Horace Townsend seemed touched witha light that did not beam upon it in the valleys below, with his eyes grownhumid and utterance choked by intense feeling; while all the heart ofglorious womanhood in Clara Vanderlyn fluttered up in the truest worship ofthat God who had formed the earth so beautiful; and even Halstead Rowanonce more forgot pride, poverty, insult, and the physical exuberance whichmade either endurable, to fold his strong arms in silence, lift the innatereverence of his thoughts to the Eternal and the Inevitable, and vow tosubmit with childlike faith to all of triumph or humiliation that might beordained in the future.
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 18