CHAPTER XVII.
HORACE TOWNSEND WITH A LADY IN CHARGE--AN ADVENTURE OVER THE "GULF OF MEXICO"--CLARA VANDERLYN IN DEADLY PERIL--A MOMENT OF HORROR--HALSTEAD ROWAN AND A DISPLAY OF THE COMANCHE RIDING--TOWNSEND'S ECLIPSE--THE RETURN TO THE CRAWFORD--MARGARET HAYLEY AGAIN, AND A CONVERSATION OVERHEARD.
It was perhaps two o'clock before the meetings and partings were overbetween the large party whom we have seen ascending from the Crawford, andthe yet greater number who had come up from the Glen House by thebelittling novelty of the mountain, the "carriage road,"--before the dinnerat the Tip-Top House was discussed, hearty and plentiful enough, if notremarkably varied,--before the guides of the cavalcade had done "chaffing"the carriage drivers from the Glen, whom they seemed to regard very much as"old salts" do "fresh-water sailors,"--before every member of the party hadviewed the magnificent scenery from every conceivable point, drank theirfill of a beauty that might not be duplicated for years or excelled in alifetime, and filled pockets and reticules equally full of all the maps andbooks that could be bought and all the geological specimens that could bepicked up, as memorials of the visit. By that hour the warning of theguides was heard, reminding all that there was no more time remaining thanwould suffice to carry themselves and their tired horses back to theCrawford by nightfall. At once, then, the descent began--supposed, inadvance, to be so uneventful and merely a pleasant diminished repetition ofthe experiences of the ascent.
As they climbed down the broken rocks of the peak to theirpatiently-waiting horses (they would probably have waited patiently untilthey dropped with hunger, if by that means the rider and his saddle couldhave been avoided; for your mountain horse does _not_ find unalloyedpleasure in his occupation!)--when near the "corral," as it may be called,Frank Vanderlyn left his sister for a moment and stepped over to HoraceTownsend, who was descending alone, Halstead Rowan (as usual) at somedistance ahead and already preparing to mount and away.
"Would you have any objections, sir," the young man asked, "as I believethat you have no lady in charge, to ride in company with my sister on theway down?"
"Certainly not!" replied Townsend, though a little surprised at thesalutation and request from one of the haughty Vanderlyns to whom he hadnot even been introduced. "I shall be proud of the charge, if your sisterand yourself feel like placing so much confidence in an entire stranger."
"Oh, _we_ know a gentleman when we see him!" replied the young man, not alittle arrogantly, as it appeared to the lawyer, and with a sinister glanceat the Illinoisan which indicated that it would have been some time before_he_ was entrusted with the same responsibility.
"I am flattered!" said Townsend, with the bow which the speech demanded andyet did not deserve. "Do you remain on the top yourself?"
"No," answered the young man. "But the fact is that my horse kicks. Hekicked my sister's pony twice in coming up; and I am afraid of some troublein going down, if she rides behind me. It will be better for me to dropinto the rear of all, where the ill-tempered devil cannot do injury to anyone."
A few words of quasi-introduction and explanation between Vanderlyn, Claraand the lawyer followed; and Horace Townsend, who had come up the mountainwithout any lady and only in the casual companionship of a man whocontinually rode away and left him alone, found himself ready to go down itwith the fairest member of the company in charge! Had nothing elseintervened since the ride up from Littleton to the Profile and that long,steady glance of admiration which had then been bestowed upon the sweetface and auburn hair,--what a dangerous proximity this might have proved!But the human heart, expansive as it may be, has not quite the capacity ofa stage-coach or a passenger-car; and to prevent falling in desperate lovewith one fascinating woman thrown in one's way, there is perhaps no guardso potent as being in real or fancied desperate love with another!
Halstead Rowan and the lady whom Townsend had reason to believe the objectof his hope and his despair, had not been flung together and apart fromothers, for one moment during the day--Mr. Frank Vanderlyn had takenespecially good care in that respect; though the lawyer had little cause todoubt that if both could have had their choice of companionship, they wouldhave stood side by side and without others too near, by the High Altarwhich crowned the summit of the mountain, and spoken words difficult tounsay again during the lifetime of either. But if he had not been alonewith Clara Vanderlyn, there is equally little doubt that he had looked ather much oftener than at the most admired point of scenery on the route.And as Frank Vanderlyn strolled away to his horse, and Townsend, with thelady obviously under his charge, was preparing to mount, he saw Rowan, withone foot in the stirrup and the other on the ground, looking over at himand his companion, with the most comical expression of wonder on his facethat could well have been compressed into the same extent of physiognomy.The heart of the new knight-errant, which must have been a soft one or hewould never have labored under that weakness, smote him at the thought ofhis apparent desertion; and with a word of apology he stepped away from thelady and approached the dismounted amateur Comanche.
"You don't mean to say that you are going to----" said the latter, and henodded his head comically and yet a little pitifully towards ClaraVanderlyn.
"Ride down with Miss Vanderlyn? Yes!" answered the lawyer.
"And who the deuce asked you to do it, I should like to know?"
"Her brother."
"Phew-w-w!" A prolonged whistle, very characteristic and significant.
Townsend, in a word, explained the affair.
"All right!" said the Illinoisan. "But, look here, old fellow! You haven'tarranged this affair yourself, eh? No meetings on a single track, youknow!"
"Not a bit of it!" laughed Townsend at the professional illustration."Confidence for confidence! Have you not seen more closely than _that_?"
"Yes, I thought I had!" answered Rowan. "Well, all right! Go ahead! But byJupiter, if you do not take the best care of that girl, and she gets intoany kind of a scrape by riding with a man who _can't_ ride, there will besomebody challenged to something else than ten-pins!"
Townsend laughed and turned away. The time had been, he thought, whenincapacity to ride would scarcely have been set down as among hisshort-comings. But every thing, even equestrianism, was to be reckoned bycomparison!
A moment after, all the party were in the saddle; and then commenced adescent still more laborious than the ascent, at least to the tired horsesthat groaned almost humanly as they slid down the sudden declivities, andto the more timid of the riders. Horace Townsend rode immediately beforeMiss Vanderlyn, a little forward of the centre of the Indian file (the onlypossible mode of riding in those narrow bridle-paths)--Rowan half-a-dozenfurther behind, then two or three others, and Frank Vanderlyn, with hisdangerous bay, bringing up the rear.
The lawyer found his fair companion all that her face had indicated, in thedesultory conversation which sprung up between them as they made their waydownward from the summit, descending the peak of the monarch and ridingback over the broad top of Monroe towards Franklin. Clara Vanderlynconversed genially and easily, and had evidently (in spite of somerestrictions already suggested,) enjoyed the day with the full warmth of anardent nature. She seemed an excellent horsewoman, easy and self-possessedin the saddle, and Townsend observed that she found leisure from the careof picking her way, to look back several times over her shoulder. For along time he may have been undecided whether her regard was directed at herbrother, at the extreme end of the line, or at some one in the middledistance. The one glance of anxiety would have been very natural: theother, compounded of interest only, may have been likewise naturalenough--who can say?
They were crossing Monroe to Franklin, over the narrow back-bone of landthat has been mentioned in the ascent, and at the very point where Oakes'Gulf, now on the left, and the scarcely less terrible Gulf of Mexico on theright, narrowed the whole causeway to not much more than a dozen offeet,--when Townsend heard a sudden and sharp cry behind him. At that pointthe descent of the p
ath was very precipitous, and over stones so ruggedthat the horses kept their feet with great difficulty; and in his anxietyto insure safe footing he had for the moment lost sight of his faircompanion--a poor recommendation of his ability as an escort, perhaps, butnot less true than reprehensible! At the cry he turned instantly, though hecould not so suddenly check the course of his horse down the path withoutdanger of throwing him from his feet; and as he looked around, through theolive brown of his cheek a deadly whiteness crept to the skin, and hisblood stood still as it had probably never before done since the tide oflife first surged through his veins.
It has been the lot of many men to look upon a horror accomplished or sonearly accomplished that any reversal of the decree of fate seemed to bebeyond hope. Such is the gaze upon the strewn dead of the battle-field,before the life has quite gone out from a few who are already worse thandead, and when the groans and the cries for "water!" to cool the lipsparched in the last fever, have not yet entirely ceased. Such is thehopeless glance at the windrow of dead strewing the shore when a ship isgoing to pieces in the surf, in plain sight and yet beyond the aid of humanhands, and when every moment is adding another to the drowned and ghastlysubjects for the rough-coated Coroner. Such is the stony regard at thecrushed victims of a railroad catastrophe, or the charred and blackenedremains of those who were but a little while ago living passengers on thesteamboat that is just burning at the water's edge. Such, even, is theshuddering glance at the brave and unconscious firemen who stand beneath aheavy wall, when that wall is surging forward and coming down in a crushingmass upon their very heads, with no power except a miracle of Omnipotenceto prevent their being flattened into mere pan-cakes of flesh, and blood,and bone. All these, and a thousand others, are horrors accomplished orbeyond hope of being averted; and they are enough to sicken the heart andbrain of humanity brought into sudden familiarity with them. But perhapsthey are not the worst--perhaps that yet unaccomplished but probable horroris still more terrible, because uncertainty blends with it and there is yetenough of hope to leaven despair. The life not yet fully forfeited, butgoing--going; the form not yet crushed out of the human semblance, but tobe so in a moment unless that one chance intervenes; the face--especiallyif the face be that of woman, a thousand times more beautiful in the reliefof that hideous mask of death which the gazer sees glooming behindit,--this is perhaps the hardest thing of all to see and not go mad.
None of these conditions may have been quite fulfilled in the glance castbackward by Horace Townsend at that moment; but let us see how far thesituation varied from the most terrible of requirements.
Going over that back-bone in the morning, the lawyer, who chanced to be forthe moment alone, had swung himself from his horse, leaving the animalstanding in the trough, peered through the bushes to the right, down intoOakes' Gulf, and walked to the edge of the broad stone that formed theprojection over the Gulf of Mexico. He had found that stone smooth androunded, a little slippery from the almost perpetual rains and mistsbeating upon it, not more than eight to ten feet wide from the path to theverge, and with a perceptible slope downwards in the latter direction. Hehad thought, then, that it needed a clear head and a sure foot (both ofwhich he possessed) to stand in that position or even to tread the stone atany distance from the path. And so thinking, he had swung himself back intothe saddle and ridden on,--the incident, then, not worth relating--now, athing of the most fearful consequence.
For as he glanced back, at that sudden cry, he saw Clara Vanderlyn sittingher horse on the very top of that smooth plateau of stone overlooking thetwo thousand feet of the Gulf of Mexico, at what could not have been morethan four or five feet from the awful verge, and certainly on the downwardslope of what was an insecure footing even for the plastic foot ofman--much more for the clumsy iron-shod hoof!
What could have induced her trained pony to spring out from the path a fewfeet behind and rush into that perilous elevation, must ever remain (in theabsence of an equine lexicon) quite as much of a mystery as it seemed atthat moment. Perhaps it was in going down some such declivity of path asthat before him, that he had been kicked by the vicious bay of FrankVanderlyn while making the ascent, and that he had concluded to wait onthis convenient shelf until all the rest had gone by, before he consentedto make the passage with his fair burthen. Perhaps the movement was merelyone of those unaccountable freaks of sullen madness in which horses as wellas men sometimes have the habit of indulging. At all events, such was thesituation; and the recollection of it, as thus recalled to those who werepresent, will be quite enough, as we are well aware, to set the heartbeating most painfully. What, then, must have been the feeling of all whosaw, and especially of that man who had promised to _protect_ the fairbeing thus placed in peril! What thoughts of the playful threat of HalsteadRowan must have rushed through his brain--that "if she got into any kind ofa scrape by riding with a man who _couldn't_ ride," such and such fatalresults would follow! Not a duel with the Illinoisan--oh, no!--but a black,terrible, life-long duel with his own self-reproaches and remorse forheedlessness and want of judgment--this would be the doom more fearful thana thousand personal chastisements, if danger became destruction. One clumsymovement of the horse's feet, one slip on the stone, and she would ascertainly go over that dizzy precipice and fall so crushed and mangled amass into the gulf below that her fragments could scarcely be distinguishedfrom those of the pony she rode--as certainly as she had grace and love andbeauty crowning her life and adding to the possible horror of her death. Hedid not know, then, how many of the cavalcade saw the situation, or how theblood of most who saw stood still like his own, with dread andapprehension.
The inconceivable rapidity of human thought has been so often made a matterof comment, that words could but be wasted in illustrating it. It shamesthe lightning and makes sluggard light itself. All these thoughts in themind of Horace Townsend scarcely consumed that time necessary to draw reinand turn himself round in the saddle in a quick attempt to alight, rush upthe side of the rock and seize her horse by the bridle or swing her fromher seat. He had no irresolution--no moment of hesitation--he only thoughtand suffered in that single instant preceding action.
"For God's sake do not move! I will be there in one instant!" he said in alow, hoarse, intense voice that reached her like a trumpet's clang.
"Oh yes--quick! quick!" he heard her reply, in a convulsive, frightenedvoice. "Oh, quick!--you don't know where I am!"
Poor girl!--he _did_ know where she was, too well.
She was braver than most women, or she would probably have jerked thebridle or frightened her horse by frantic cries, and sent him slipping withherself down the ravine; for the situation was a most fearful one, andthere are few women who could have braved it without a tremor. A _man_, letit be remembered, if cruel enough, might have alighted and left the horseto its fate; but to a woman, encumbered by her long clothes, the attemptmust have been almost certain destruction for both.
Perhaps not sixty seconds had elapsed after the first cry, when the lawyersucceeded in checking his horse without throwing him headlong, swung hisfoot out of the stirrup, and attempted to spring to the ground. But justthen there was a sudden rush over the rock; a wierd and unnatural sweepingby, something like that of the Demon Hunt in "Der Freischutz;" a cry ofterror and fright that seemed to come from the whole line in the rear andfill the air with ghastly sound; a closing of the eyes on the part of theincapable guardian, in the full belief that the noises he heard were thoseof the accomplishment of the great horror; then sounds nearer him, and ajar that almost prostrated himself and the horse against which he yetleaned; then a wild cry of exultation and delight which seemed--God helphis senses!--was he going mad?--to be mingled with the clapping of handslike that which follows a moment of intense interest at the theatre!
Then silence, and the lawyer opened his eyes as suddenly as he had closedthem. And what did he see? On the rock, nothing; in the path, ahead of him,Clara Vanderlyn still sitting her horse, though in a half fainting state,and Halstea
d Rowan, also on horseback, ahead of her, and with his handholding her bridle!
Of course Horace Townsend, at that moment of doubt whether he stood uponhis head or his heels--whether he had gone stark mad or retained a fairmeasure of sanity--whether the earth yet revolved in its usual orbit or hadgone wandering off into cometary space, beyond all physical laws--ofcourse at that moment he could not know precisely what had occurred toproduce that sudden and singular change; and he could only learn, themoment after, from those who had been on the higher ground behind at themoment of the peril. According to their explanations, at the moment whenthey all saw the danger with a shudder and a holding of the very breath,Rowan had been heard to utter a single exclamation: "Well, I swear!" (arough phrase, and one that he should by no means have used; but let hisWestern life and training entitle him to some consideration)--dashed spursinto the side of his horse--crowded by the five or six who preceded him, ina path considered impassable for more than one horse at a time--and then,with a wild Indian cry that he apparently could not restrain, spurred upthe side of the rock, between Clara Vanderlyn and the verge of theprecipice, certainly where the off feet of his horse could not have beenthirty inches from the slippery edge, and literally jerked her horse andherself off into the path by the impetus of his own animal outside and thesudden grip which he closed upon her bridle as he went by, himself comingdown into the path ahead, and neither unseated! Miss Vanderlyn's pony hadstruck the lawyer's horse as he came down in his enforced flying leap; andthus were explained all the sights, sounds, and physical events of thatapparently supernatural moment.
The scene which followed, only a few moments after, when the leadingmembers of the cavalcade (Clara Vanderlyn in the midst of it, supported byRowan, who managed to keep near her)--the scene which followed, we say,when they reached a little plateau where the company had room to gather,will not be more easily effaced from the memory of those who were presentthan the terrible danger which had just preceded it. The overstrung nervesof the poor girl gave way at that point, and she dropped from her horse ina swoon, just as Halstead Rowan (singular coincidence!) had slipped fromthe saddle and was ready to catch her as she fell! What more natural thanthat in falling and being caught, she should have thrown her arms round thestout neck of the Illinoisan? And what more inevitable than that he shouldhave been a considerable time in getting ready to lay her down upon thehorse-blankets that had been suddenly pulled off and spread for her,--andthat finally, the clinging grasp still continuing, he should have droppedhimself on one corner of the blanket and furnished the requisite support toher head and shoulders?
Frank Vanderlyn and those who had been farthest behind with him came up atthat moment; and Horace Townsend, if no one else, detected the sullen frownthat gathered on his brow as he saw his sister lying in the arms of the manwhom he had so grossly insulted. But if he frowned he said nothing, veryprudently; for it is indeed not sure that it would have been safe, justthen, for an emperor, there present, to speak an ill word to the hero ofthe day.
Be all this as it may, the usual authorial affidavit may be taken thatHalstead Rowan retained Clara Vanderlyn, brother or no brother in the way,in his arms until some one succeeded in obtaining water from a cleardeposit of rain among the rocks; that no one--not even one of theladies--attempted to dispossess him of his newly-acquired human territory;that when the water had been brought, and she first gave token of the fullreturn of consciousness, she did so by clasping her arms around Rowan'sneck (of course involuntarily) and murmuring words that sounded to Townsendand some others near, like: "You saved me! How good and noble you are!" andthat even under that temptation he did not kiss her, as he would probablyhave sacrificed both arms and a leg or two, but not his manliness, to do.
It was a quarter of an hour after, when Miss Vanderlyn, sufficiently andonly sufficiently recovered to ride, was placed once more in the saddle andthe cavalcade took its way more slowly down the mountains. The scenery,under the western sun, was even more lovely than that of the morning, themists had all rolled away from every point of the compass, and there weresome views Franconia-wards that they had entirely missed in the ascent. Butthere was scarcely one of the company who had not been so stirred to thevery depths of human sympathy, by the event of the preceding half-hour,that inanimate nature, however wondrously beautiful, was half forgotten. Soquickly, in those summer meetings and partings, do we grow attached tothose with whom we are temporarily associated, especially amid thesurroundings of the sublime and beautiful,--that had that fair girl losther life so strangely and sadly, not one of all who saw the accident butwould have borne in mind through life, in addition to the inevitable horrorof the recollection, a memory like that of losing a dear and valued friend.And yet many of them had never even spoken to her, and perhaps only one inthe whole cavalcade (her brother) had known of her existence one weekbefore!
Even as it was, there were not a few of that line of spectators from whoseeyes the vision of what might have been, failed to fade out with the momentthat witnessed it. Some of them dreamed, for nights after, (or at leastuntil another occurrence then impending dwarfed the recollection) not onlyof seeing the young girl sitting helpless on that perilous rock, but ofbeholding her arms raised to heaven in agony and the feet of her horsepawing the air, as both disappeared from sight over the precipice. Some maystill dream of the event, in lonely night-hours following days of troubleand anxiety.
In the new arrangements for descending the mountains, made after therecovery of Clara Vanderlyn, Horace Townsend was not quite discarded, buthe could not avoid feeling that very little dependence was placed upon hisescort. It was of course as a mere jest, but to the sensitive mind of thelawyer there seemed to be a dash of malicious earnest at the bottom,--thatRowan took the first occasion as he passed near him, immediately after theyoung girl had been removed from his arms, to give him a forcible punch inthe ribs, with the accompanying remark:
"Bah! I told you that you couldn't ride; but I had no idea that you couldnot do any better at taking care of a woman, than that!"
Townsend quite forgave him that remark, jest or earnest, for he saw the newsparkle in his eye, remembered how likely he was to have had his mind alittle disordered by all that sweet wealth of auburn hair lying for so manyminutes on his breast, and formed his own opinions as to the result. Ifthose opinions were favorable, well; if they were unfavorable, he wastaking a world of trouble that did not belong to him; for there is always a"sweet little cherub" sitting "up aloft" to keep watch over the fortunes ofsuch rattle-pates and dare-devils as Halstead Rowan--to supervise theirgetting into scrapes and out of them!
But there was nothing of jest, he thought, in the air with which ClaraVanderlyn, when re-mounting her horse, replying to an earnest expression ofregret that one moment of inattention on his part should have allowed herto be placed in serious peril,--very kindly denied that he had been guiltyof any neglect whatever, threw the whole blame upon her horse, thanked himfor the promptness with which he was coming to her relief when forestalled,but then said, looking at Rowan with a glance which came near setting thatenthusiastic equestrian entirely wild:
"It seems that I am a very difficult person to take care of; and if youhave no objection to my having two esquires, and will allow Mr. Rowan toride with me as well as yourself, and if _he_ is willing to do so, I thinkthat I shall feel" (she did not say "safer", but) "a little more likekeeping up my spirits."
Frank Vanderlyn had looked somewhat sullenly on and scarcely said a word,since his coming up. But at this speech of his sister's he must have feltthat the dignity of the Vanderlyn family was again in serious peril, for heput his mouth close to her ear and spoke some words that were heard by noother than herself. They could not have been very satisfactory orconvincing, for Horace Townsend, and others as well, heard her say inreply:
"Brother, your horse is dangerous--you said so yourself; so just be goodenough to ride as you did before, and my friends here will take care ofme."
Whereupon the young man went back
to his horse, looking a littlediscomfited and by no means in the best of humors. Such little accidents_will_ occur, sometimes, to mar the best-laid schemes of careful mothers oranxious brothers, for preserving the ultra-respectability of a family; andwhether the origin of the intervention is in heaven or its opposite, thereis nothing to be done in such cases but to look wronged and unhappy, as didFrank Vanderlyn, or smile over the accomplished mischief and pretend thatthe event is rather agreeable than otherwise, as persons of more experiencethan Frank have often had occasion to do at different periods during thecurrent century.
The result of all this was that Horace Townsend really rode down with ClaraVanderlyn in the mere capacity of an esquire, while Halstead Rowan assumedthe spurs and the authority of the knight. The latter rode in advance ofher, as near her bridle-rein as the roughness of the path would allow; andno one need to question the fact that _he_ kept his eyes on the young girlquite steadily enough to secure her safety! What difficulty was there inhis doing so, when he had already proved that he could ride backward nearlyas well as forward and that the footing of his horse was the least thoughtin his mind? They seemed to be conversing, too, a large proportion of thetime; and there is no doubt that Halstead Rowan, carried away by the eventsof the day, uttered words that he might have long delayed or never spokenunder other circumstances,--and that Clara Vanderlyn wore that sweet flushupon her face and kept that timid but happy trembling of the dewyunder-lip, much more constantly than she had ever before done in her younglife. Horace Townsend, who rode behind the lady, did not hear any of thosepeculiar words which passed between her and her companion; and had _we_heard them they would certainly not be made public in this connection.
The lawyer, as has been said, rode behind; and, as has _not_ been said, hedid so in no enviable state of feeling. He had done nothing--been accusedof nothing--in any manner calculated to degrade him; but one casual eventhad thrown a shadow across his path, not easily recognized without somerecollection of characteristics before developed. The reader has hadabundant reason to believe that this man, profiting by some intelligenceobtained in a manner not open to the outer world, of the peculiar madnessof Margaret Hayley after that abstraction, courage,--had more or lessfirmly determined to win her through the exhibition of certain qualitieswhich he believed that he possessed in a peculiar degree. One opportunityhad been given him (that at the Pool), and he had succeeded in interestingher to an extent not a little flattering and hopeful; but envious fatecould not allow a week to pass without throwing him again intodisadvantageous comparison with a man who had no occasion whatever ofmaking any exhibition of such qualities!
That Margaret Hayley would yet remain for some days and perhaps weeks inthe mountains, and that she would probably visit the Crawford before herdeparture, he had at least every reason to believe; and he had quite asmuch cause for confidence that the story of the adventure over the Gulf ofMexico, roundly exaggerated to place himself in a false position and todeify the Illinoisan, would reach her ears, whether at the Profile or theCrawford, through stage-drivers or migratory passengers, within the nextforty-eight hours. This (for reasons partially hinted at and others whichwill develop themselves in due time) was precisely that state of affairswhich he would have given more to avoid than any other that could have beennamed; and this it was that made a dark red flush of mortification rise attimes to his dusky cheek and give an expression any thing but pleasant tohis eyes, as he rode silently behind the two who were now so indubitablylinked as lovers, once more over the top of Prospect and down the ruggeddeclivities of Clinton. Those who have ever been placed in circumstancesapproaching to these in character, can best decide whether the lawyer wassulking for nothing or indulging in gloomy anticipations with quitesufficient reason.
It was nearly sunset and the light had some time disappeared from thevalleys lying in the shade of the western peaks, when the last stony troughand the last corduroy road of Mount Clinton was finally repassed, and thewhole cavalcade, each member of it perhaps moved by the one idea of showingthat neither horse nor rider was wearied out--broke once more into a trotas they caught the first glimpse of the Crawford through the trees, dashedmerrily out from the edge of the woods, and came up in straggling butpicturesque order to the door of the great caravanserai. The difficult rideof eighteen miles had been accomplished; the golden day (with its onedrawback of momentary peril) was over; and more than half a score who hadbefore only thought of the ascent of Mount Washington as a futurepossibility, suddenly found that they could look back upon it as aremembrance.
As they rode up to the front of the Crawford, the whole end of the piazzawas full of new-comers and late sojourners, watching the return of thosewho had preceded or followed them--an idle, listless sort of gathering,showing more curiosity than welcome, such as the traveller by rail orsteamboat sees crowding every platform at the expected time of the arrivalof a train and every pier at the hour for the coming in of a boat. Criesof: "All safe, eh?" "Glad to see you back again!" "Hope you had a pleasantday!" and "Well, how did you like Mount Washington?" broke from twenty lipsin a moment, mingled with replies and non-replies that came simultaneously:"Oh, you ought to have gone up with us!" "My horse carried me like abird!" (the last remark, presumably, from a fat man of two hundred andsixty, whom not even an elephant could have borne in that suggestivelybuoyant manner), "Never _was_ such a day for going up, in the world!""Safe, eh? Yes, why not?" (that from a person, no doubt, who had reallybeen prodigiously scared at some period of the ride), and the oneinevitable pendant: "Oh, you have no idea what an adventure we havehad!--one of the ladies came near being killed--tell you all about itby-and-bye," etc., etc.
Horace Townsend, who had been riding the last mile very much like a man ina dream and really with the formal charge of Clara Vanderlyn entirelyabandoned to her chosen protector--Horace Townsend heard all this, as if heheard through miles of distance or at a long period of time after theutterance. For his eyes were busy and they absorbed all his sensations. Hehad recognized, at the first moment of riding up, among the crowd ofpersons on the piazza, the dark, proud eyes and beautiful face and statelyform of Margaret Hayley, leaning on the arm of that man whom he had not byany means learned to love since his advent in the mountains--Captain HectorColes, V. A. D. C. They had waited clear weather before starting from theProfile, and come through that day while his party had been absent up themountains: he realized all at a thought, and realized that whatever he washimself to endure of trial lay much nearer than he had before believed.Disguised and indeed disfigured as the lawyer was, in common with all theother members of the cavalcade, to such a degree that only observation andstudy could penetrate the masquerade,--it was not at all strange that thelady failed to meet his eye with an answering glance of recognition; and hefelt rather grateful than the reverse, for the moment, that his disguisewas so effectual. While Clara Vanderlyn, a third time within one week thepassive heroine of the mountains, was being lifted from her saddle by halfa dozen officious hands, and while the rest of the party were gabbling asthey alighted,--he slipped quietly from his horse behind one corner of thepiazza, threw his rein to one of the stable-boys, and disappeared throughthe hall, up-stairs to his chamber.
He did not again make his appearance until supper was on the tables and thebattle of knives-and-forks going on with that vigor born of mountain air.Most of the visitors at the house, the voyagers of the day included, werealready seated; and among them was Clara Vanderlyn, apparently no whit theworse for her day's adventure, her brother at one and her mother at theother side. A little further down the table, on the same side, sat HalsteadRowan, occupying the same seat of the evening before. He had evidentlydropped back from his familiar standing with the lady, the moment they camewithin the atmosphere of Mrs. Vanderlyn and the great republic of voices atthe Crawford; but quite as evidently he had not yet fallen away from hislast-won position as a hero, for his face was continually flushing, as heate, with the modesty of a girl's, when the whispers and nods and pointingsof interest and a
dmiration were made so plain that they reached his eye andear. The adventure of the day was undeniably the topic of the evening, andHalstead Rowan was the hero; and it may be imagined how much this knowledgeand the inevitable corollary that some one else was _not_ the hero, addedto the comfort of the late-comer at table.
Margaret Hayley, Mrs. Burton Hayley and Captain Hector Coles were also atsupper, but they had nearly finished when Townsend took his seat. They rosethe moment after, and as they did so the lawyer, now once more so arrayedas to display his own proper person, caught the eye of Margaret. She noddedand smiled, yes, smiled!--in answer to his bow across the table; and hecould almost have taken his professional oath that a quick sparkle came toher eye when she saw him, then died away as quickly as if compelled back bya strong will. Mrs. Burton Hayley did not seem to see him at all; butCaptain Coles signified that _he_ did so, by a glance of such new-borncontempt blended with old hatred, as he should never have wasted upon anyone except a national enemy whom he had just defeated in arms. The partyswept down the room, and very soon after the others whom we have noted alsorose and disappeared, leaving Horace Townsend discussing his supper withwhat appetite he might. It may be consoling to some curious persons to knowthat that appetite was by no means contemptible, and that he did not falterin physique if restless unquiet and anxiety made a prey of his mind.
Half an hour after, he was smoking his cigar on the piazza, none whom heknew within view; and he strolled out into the edge of the wood to theright of the house, to enjoy (if enjoyment it could be called) solitude,gloom and darkness. The path he followed led him eventually round in acircle and brought him back to the edge again, only a few yards from thehouse and near the spot where the two huge bears were moving about, denseblack spots in the twilight. There was a rude bench beneath the trees notfar from what might have been called their "orbit" (especially as they aresometimes "stars" at the menageries); and on that bench he discovered threefigures. He was but a little distance away when he first saw them and thatthey were two ladies and a gentleman; and he was still nearer before hebecame aware that they were the Hayleys, mother and daughter, with theirinevitable attendant and cavalier.
They were in conversation, not toning it so low as if they had anyparticular anxiety against its being overheard; and yet Horace Townsend,much as he might have wished to know every word that came from the lips ofat least one of the three, might have passed on without listeningintentionally to one utterance, if he had not chanced to hear that theywere discussing the event of the day. That fact literally chained him tothe root of the tree near which he was standing--he was _so_ anxious toknow what version of the affair had already been circulated and givencredence among the three or four hundred visitors at the Crawford, andespecially among the particular three of that number.
It has before been said, we fancy, by that widely-known writer,"Anonymous," that listeners do not always hear any notable good ofthemselves. And Horace Townsend, in stopping to play the eaves-dropper, atleast partially illustrated the saying. He heard a version of the Gulf ofMexico affair, from the lips of Captain Coles, calculated to make him, ifhe had any sensitiveness of nature and a spark of the fighting propensity,kill himself or the narrator.
"I think I have heard enough of it," Margaret Hayley was saying, asTownsend came within hearing. "I really do not know that Miss Vanderlyn,though a pleasant girl enough, is of so much consequence that the wholehouse should go crazy over one of her little mishaps in riding."
"A little mishap!" echoed the Captain. "Phew!--if I am not very muchmistaken it was a _big_ mishap--just a hair's-breadth between saving herlife and losing it!"
"Is it possible?" said Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Why dear me, CaptainColes!--that is very interesting, especially if her being saved wasprovidential. Did you hear the particulars, then?"
"Shall we go in, mother?" asked Margaret.
"No, my dear, not yet!" answered Mrs. Burton Hayley. "Captain Coles is justgoing to tell us what really happened to the young lady who was somercifully spared. Go on, Captain, please."
"Well, the story is a short one, though thrilling enough, egad!--to putinto a romance!" said the Captain. "Young Waldron, that we met at theProfile, was one of the party, and he told me about it while you weredressing for supper. It appears that Miss Vanderlyn went up with herbrother, and that something happened to his horse--it got lamed, orsomething,--so that he could not ride down with her. He was fool enough,then, to put her under the charge of that friend of yours, Margaret--"
"Captain Coles, will you be kind enough to confine yourself to your story,if you must tell it, and leave _my_ name out of the question?" was theinterruption of the young lady--no unpleasant one to the listener,--at thatpoint of the narration.
"Humph! I do not see that you need be so sensitive about it!" sneered backthe Captain. "Well, then, not that friend of yours, but that man, who hasnot less than a dozen names and who lives in Philadelphia and Cincinnatiand several other cities."
"Yes, the man whose handkerchief you took out of his pocket the othernight, in the ten-pin alley, to see whether his initials were correct!"again interrupted Margaret in a tone of voice not less decided than that ofthe other was taunting and arrogant.
It was much too dark, under the shade of the trees, at that moment, to seethe face of Captain Hector Coles, or he might have been discovered, evenunder his moustache, biting his lip so sharply that the blood came. An eyekeen enough to have seen this, too, would have been able to see that HoraceTownsend trembled like an aspen leaf, that great beads of sweat started outon his brown forehead, while he muttered a fierce word of anger andindignation that died away on the night air without reaching any human ear.
Captain Hector Coles choked an instant and then went on:
"He entrusted her to the care of that adventurer, who managed, before theyhad ridden a mile, to lose his way and his presence of mind at the sametime--got her and her pony on the top of a slippery rock where there wereten thousand chances to one that she would fall a thousand feet over theprecipice--and then sat on his horse, white as a sheet and too badly scaredto attempt rescuing her, yelling like a booby for help, until that coarsefellow from somewhere out West came up and grasped her just as she wasgoing over."
What would not Horace Townsend have given for a grip of the throat ofCaptain Hector Coles at that moment? And what would he not have given tohear Margaret Hayley say: "I do not believe the story! The man who leapedinto the Pool the other day, is not the booby and poltroon you would makehim, just because you are jealous of him, Captain Hector Coles!" What, wesay, would the listener not have given to hear _that_? Alas!--he had noreason to expect any such word, and no such word was spoken. MargaretHayley merely rose from her seat, saying:
"Now, if you have finished that rigmarole, in which nobody, I think, is inthe least interested, we will go to the house, for I am taking cold."
The others rose, and the three moved towards the house. Horace Townsend didnot move towards the house, but in another direction, his heart on fire andhis brain in a whirl. But as they went off he heard the Captain say,apparently in response to some remark of Mrs. Burton Hayley's which was notcaught at that distance:
"Of course I believe him to be a coward as well as a disreputablecharacter. Any man who would flinch from _any_ exposure, especially likethat on a mere edge of a cliff, to save life, is the basest kind of acoward. Such men ought to stand a little while among bullets, as _we_ haveto do, and they would soon show themselves for what they are worth."
Horace Townsend saw nothing more of either that night, or of any of theothers with whom this narration has to do. There was no music, other thanthat of the piano, in the parlor of the Crawford, and early beds were inrequisition. Many, who had not ascended the mountains, had ridden hard andlong in other directions; and for the people of the Mount Washingtoncavalcade themselves--they were very tired, very much exhausted and verysleepy, and romance and flirtation were obliged to succumb to aching bonesand the invitations of soft pillows. Halstead Rowan
, even, did not roll asingle game of ten-pins before he retired to his lonelychamber--physico-thermometrical proof of the general worn-out condition!
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 19