CHAPTER III.
The road left the flat farming country now, and turned northward, up the beautiful river valley. There was plenty to enjoy outside; and it was growing more and more lovely with almost every mile. They left the great towns gradually behind; each succeeding one seemed more simply rural. Young girls were gathered on the platforms at the little stations where they stopped sometimes; it was the grand excitement of the place,—the coming of the train,—and to these village lasses was what the piazzas or the springs are to gay dwellers at Saratoga.
By dinner-time they steamed up to the stately back staircase of the "Pemigewasset." In the little parlor where they smoothed their hair and rested a moment before going to the dining-hall, they met again the lady of the grass-grown bonnet. She took this off, making herself comfortable, in her primitive fashion, for dinner; and then Leslie noticed how little it was from any poverty of nature that the fair and abundant hair, at least, had not been made use of to take down the severe primness of her outward style. It did take it down in spite of all, the moment the gray straw was removed. The great round coil behind was all real and solid, though it was wound about with no thought save of security, and fastened with a buffalo-horn comb. Hair was a matter of course; the thing was, to keep it out of the way; that was what the fashion of this head expressed, and nothing more. Where it was tucked over the small ears,—and native refinement or the other thing shows very plainly in the ears,—it lay full, and shaped into a soft curve. She was only plain, not ugly, after all; and they are very different things,—there being a beauty of plainness in men and women, as there is in a rich fabric, sometimes.
While Leslie was noticing these things, Elinor Hadden stood by a window with her back to the others. She did not complain at first; one doesn't like to allow, at once, that the toothache, or a mischance like this that had happened to her, is an established fact,—one is in for it the moment one does that. But she had got a cinder in her eye; and though she had winked, and stared, and rolled her eyelid under, and tried all the approved and instinctive means, it seemed persistent; and she was forced at last, just as her party was going in to dinner, to acknowledge that this traveler's misery had befallen her, and to make up her mind to the pain and wretchedness and ugliness of it for hours, if not even for days. Her face was quite disfigured already; the afflicted eye was bloodshot, and the whole cheek was red with tears and rubbing; she could only follow blindly along, her handkerchief up, and, half groping into the seat offered her, begin comfortlessly to help herself to some soup with her left hand. There was leaning across to inquire and pity; there were half a dozen things suggested, to which she could only reply, forlornly and impatiently, "I've tried it." None of them could eat much, or with any satisfaction; this atom in the wrong place set everything wrong all at once with four people who, till now, had been so cheery.
The spinster lady was seated at some little distance down, on the opposite side. She began to send quick, interested glances over at them; to make little half-starts toward them, as if she would speak; and at last, leaving her own dinner unfinished, she suddenly pushed back her chair, got up, and came round. She touched Elinor Hadden on the shoulder, without the least ado of ceremony. "Come out here with me," she said. "I can set you right in half a minute;" and, confident of being followed, moved off briskly out of the long hall.
Elinor gave a one-sided, questioning glance at her sisters before she complied, reminding Leslie comically of the poor, one-eyed man in the cars; and presently, with a little hesitation, Mrs. Linceford and Jeannie compromised the matter by rising themselves and accompanying Elinor from the room. Leslie, of course, went also.
The lady had her gray bonnet on when they got back to the little parlor; there is no time to lose in mere waiting for anything at a railway dining-place; and she had her bag—a veritable, old-fashioned, home-made carpet thing—open on a chair before her, and in her hand a long, knit purse with steel beads and rings. Out of this she took a twisted bit of paper, and from the paper a minute something which she popped between her lips as she replaced the other things. Then she just beckoned, hastily, to Elinor.
"It's only an eyestone; did you ever have one in? Well, you needn't be afraid of it; I've had 'em in hundreds of times. You wouldn't know 't was there, and it'll just ease all the worry; and by and by it'll drop out of itself, cinder and all. They're terribly teasing things, cinders; and somebody's always sure to get one. I always keep three eyestones in my purse. You needn't mind my not having it back; I've got a little glass bottle full at home, and it's wonderful the sight of comfort they've been to folks."
Elinor shrunk; Mrs. Linceford showed a little high-bred demur about accepting the offered aid of their unknown traveling companion; but the good woman comprehended nothing of this, and went on insisting.
"You'd better let me put it in right off; it's only just to drop it under the eyelid, and it'll work round till it finds the speck. But you can take it and put it in yourself, when you've made up your mind, if you'd rather." With which she darted her head quickly from side to side, looking about the room, and, spying a scrap of paper on a table, had the eyestone twisted in it in an instant, and pressed it into Elinor's hand. "You'll be glad enough of it, yet," said she, and then took up her bag, and moved quickly off among the other passengers descending to the train.
"What a funny woman, to be always carrying eyestones about, and putting them in people's eyes!" said Jeannie.
"It was quite kind of her, I'm sure," said Mrs. Linceford, with a mingling in her tone of acknowledgment and of polite tolerance for a great liberty. When elegant people break their necks or their limbs, common ones may approach and assist; as, when a house takes fire, persons get in who never did before; and perhaps a suffering eye may come into the catalogue of misfortunes sufficient to equalize differences for the time being. But it is queer for a woman to make free to go without her own dinner to offer help to a stranger in pain. Not many people, in any sense of the word, go about provided with eyestones against the chance cinders that may worry others. Something in this touched Leslie Goldthwaite with a curious sense of a beauty in living that was not external.
If it had not been for Elinor's mishap and inability to enjoy, it would have been pure delight from the very beginning, this afternoon's ride. They had their seats upon the "mountain side," where the view of the thronging hills was like an ever-moving panorama; as, winding their way farther and farther up into the heart of the wild and beautiful region, the horizon seemed continually to fill with always vaster shapes, that lifted themselves, or emerged, over and from behind each other, like mustering clans of giants, bestirred and curious, because of the invasion among their fastnesses of this sprite of steam.
"Where you can come down, I can go up," it seemed to fizz, in its strong, exulting whisper, to the river; passing it always, yet never getting by; tracking, step by step, the great stream backward toward its small beginnings.
"See, there are real blue peaks!" cried Leslie joyously, pointing away to the north and east where the outlines lay faint and lovely in the far distance.
"Oh, I wish I could see! I'm losing it all!" said Elinor, plaintively and blindfold.
"Why don't you try the eyestone?" said Jeannie.
But Elinor shrunk, even yet, from deliberately putting that great thing in her eye, agonized already by the presence of a mote.
There came a touch on her shoulder, as before. The good woman of the gray bonnet had come forward from her seat farther down the car.
"I'm going to stop presently," she said, "at East Haverhill; and I should feel more satisfied in my mind if you'd just let me see you easy before I go. Besides, if you don't do something quick, the cinder will get so bedded in, and make such an inflammation, that a dozen eyestones wouldn't draw it out."
At this terror, poor Elinor yielded, in a negative sort of way. She ceased to make resistance when her unknown friend, taking the little twist of paper from the hand still fast closed over it with the half-conscious grasp of pain, dexterously unrolled it, and produced the wonderful chalky morsel.
"Now, 'let's see, says the blind man;'" and she drew down hand and handkerchief with determined yet gentle touch. "Wet it in your own mouth,"—and the eyestone was between Elinor's lips before she could refuse or be aware. Then one thumb and finger was held to take it again, while the other made a sudden pinch at the lower eyelid, and, drawing it at the outer corner before it could so much as quiver away again, the little white stone was slid safely under.
"Now 'wink as much as you please,' as the man said that took an awful-looking daguerreotype of me once. Good-by. Here's where I get out. And there they all are to meet me." And then, the cars stopping, she made her way, with her carpet-bag and parasol and a great newspaper bundle, gathered up hurriedly from goodness knows where, along the passage, and out upon the platform.
"Why, it's the strangest thing! I don't feel it in the least! Do you suppose it ever will come out again, Augusta?" cried Elinor, in a tone greatly altered from any in which she had spoken for two hours.
"Of course it will," cried "Gray-bonnet" from beneath the window. "Don't be under the least mite of concern about anything but looking out for it when it does, to keep it against next time."
Leslie saw the plain, kindly woman surrounded in a minute by half a dozen eager young welcomers and claimants, and a whole history came out in the unreserved exclamations of the few instants for which the train delayed.
"Oh, it's such a blessing you've come! I don't know as Emma Jane would have been married at all if you hadn't!"
"We warn't sure you'd get the letter."
"Or as Aunt Nisby would spare you."
"'Life wanted to come over on his crutches. He's just got his new ones, and he gets about first-rate. But we wouldn't let him beat himself out for to-morrow."
"How is 'Life?"
"Hearty as would anyway be consistent—with one-leggedness. He'd never 'a' got back, we all know, if you hadn't gone after him." It was a young man's voice that spoke these last sentences, and it grew tender at the end.
"You're to trim the cake," began one of the young girls again, crowding up. "She says nobody else can. Nobody else ever can. And"—with a little more mystery—"there's the veil to fix. She says you're used to wedd'n's and know about veils; and you was down to Lawrence at Lorany's. And she wants things in real style. She's dreadful pudjicky, Emma Jane is; she won't have anything without it's exactly right."
The plain face was full of beaming sympathy and readiness. The stiff-looking spinster woman, with the "grass in the eaves of her bonnet,"—grass grown, also, over many an old hope in her own life, may be,—was here in the midst of young joy and busy interest, making them all her own; had come on purpose, looked for and hailed as the one without whom nothing could ever be done,—more tenderly yet, as one but for whom some brave life and brother love would have gone down. In the midst of it all she had had ear and answer, to the very last, for the stranger she had comforted on her way. What difference did it make whether she wore an old bonnet with green grass in it, or a round hat with a gay feather? whether she were fifteen or forty-five, but for the good she had had time to do? whether Lorany's wedding down at Lawrence had been really a stylish festival or no? There was a beauty here which verily shone out through all; and such a life should have no time to be tempted.
The engine panted, and the train sped on. She never met her fellow-traveler again, but these things Leslie Goldthwaite had learned from her,—these things she laid by silently in her heart. And the woman in the gray bonnet never knew the half that she had done.
After taking one through wildernesses of beauty, after whirling one past nooks where one could gladly linger whole summers, it is strange at what commonplace and graceless termini these railroads contrive to land one. Lovely Wells River, where the road makes its sharp angle, and runs back again until it strikes out eastward through the valley of the Ammonoosuc; where the waters leap to each other, and the hills bend round in majestic greeting; where our young party cried out, in an ignorance at once blessed and pathetic, "Oh, if Littleton should only be like this, or if we could stop here!"—yet where one cannot stop, because here there is no regular stage connection, and nothing else to be found, very probably, that travelers might want, save the outdoor glory,—Wells River and Woodsville were left behind, lying in the evening stillness of June,—in the grand and beautiful disregard of things greater than the world is rushing by to seek,—and for an hour more they threaded through fair valley sweeps and reaches, past solitary hillside clearings and detached farms and the most primitive of mountain hamlets, where the limit and sparseness of neighborhood drew forth from a gentleman sitting behind them—come, doubtless, from some suburban home, where numberless household wants kept horse and wagon perpetually on the way for city or village—the suggestive query, "I wonder what they do here when they're out of saleratus?"
They brought them up, as against a dead wall of dreariness and disappointment, at the Littleton station. It had been managed as it always is: the train had turned most ingeniously into a corner whence there was scarcely an outlook upon anything of all the magnificence that must yet be lying close about them; and here was only a tolerably well-populated country town, filled up to just the point that excludes the picturesque and does not attain to the highly civilized. And into the heart of this they were to be borne, and to be shut up there this summer night, with the full moon flooding mountain and river, and the woods whispering up their peace to heaven.
It was bad enough, but worse came. The hotel coach was waiting, and they hastened to secure their seats, giving their checks to the driver, who disappeared with a handful of these and others, leaving his horses with the reins tied to the dash-board, and a boy ten years old upon the box.
There were heads out anxiously at either side, between concern for safety of body and of property. Mrs. Linceford looked uneasily toward the confused group upon the platform, from among whom luggage began to be drawn out in a fashion regardless of covers and corners. The large russet trunk with the black "H,"—the two linen-cased ones with "Hadden" in full;—the two square bonnet-boxes,—these, one by one, were dragged and whirled toward the vehicle and jerked upon the rack; but the "ark," as they called Mrs. Linceford's huge light French box, and the one precious receptacle that held all Leslie's pretty outfit, where were these?
"Those are not all, driver! There is a high black French trunk, and a russet leather one."
"Got all you give me checks for,—seb'm pieces;" and he pointed to two strange articles of luggage waiting their turn to be lifted up,—a long, old-fashioned gray hair trunk, with letters in brass nails upon the lid, and as antiquated a carpet-bag, strapped and padlocked across the mouth, suggestive in size and fashion of the United States mail.
"Never saw them before in my life! There's some dreadful mistake! What can have become of ours?"
"Can't say, ma'am, I'm sure. Don't often happen. But them was your checks."
Mrs. Linceford leaned back for an instant in a breathless despair. "I must get out and see."
"If you please, ma'am. But 't ain't no use. The things is all cleared off." Then, stooping to examine the trunk, and turning over the bag, "Queer, too. These things is chalked all right for Littleton. Must ha' been a mistake with the checks, and somebody changed their minds on the way,—Plymouth, most likely,—and stopped with the wrong baggage. Wouldn't worry, ma'am; it's as bad for one as for t' other, anyhow, and they'll be along to-morrow, no kind o' doubt. Strays allers turns up on this here road. No danger about that. I'll see to havin' these 'ere stowed away in the baggage-room." And shouldering the bag, he seized the trunk by the handle and hauled it along over the rough embankment and up the steps, flaying one side as he went.
"But, dear me! what am I to do?" said Mrs. Linceford piteously. "Everything in it that I want to-night,—my dressing-box and my wrappers and my air-cushion; they'll be sure not to have any bolsters on the beds, and only one feather in each corner of the pillows!"
But this was only the first surprise of annoyance. She recollected herself on the instant, and leaned back again, saying nothing more. She had no idea of amusing her unknown stage companions at any length with her fine-lady miseries. Only, just before they reached the hotel, she added low to Jeannie, out of the unbroken train of her own private lamentation, "And my rose-glycerine! After all this dust and heat! I feel parched to a mummy, and I shall be an object to behold!"
Leslie sat upon her right hand. She leaned closer, and said quickly, glad of the little power to comfort, "I have some rose-glycerine here in my bag."
Mrs. Linceford looked round at her; her face was really bright. As if she had not lost her one trunk also! "You are a phoenix of a traveling companion, you young thing!" the lady thought, and felt suddenly ashamed of her own unwonted discomfiture.
Half an hour afterward Leslie Goldthwaite flitted across the passage between the two rooms they had secured for their party, with a bottle in her hand and a pair of pillows over her arm. "Ours is a double-bedded room, too, Mrs. Linceford, and neither Elinor nor I care for more than one pillow. And here is the rose-glycerine."
These essential comforts, and the instinct of good-breeding, brought the grace and the smile back fully to Mrs. Linceford's face. More than that, she felt a gratefulness, and the contagion and emulation of cheerful patience under a common misfortune. She bent over and kissed Leslie as she took the bottle from her hand. "You're a dear little sunbeam," she said. "We'll send an imperative message down the line, and have all our own traps again to-morrow."
The collar that Elinor Hadden had lent Leslie was not very becoming, the sleeves had enormous wristbands, and were made for double sleeve-buttons, while her own were single; moreover, the brown silk net, which she had supposed thoroughly trustworthy, had given way all at once into a great hole under the waterfall, and the soft hair would fret itself through and threaten to stray untidily.
She had two such pretty nets in reserve in her missing trunk, and she did hate so to be in any way coming to pieces! Yet there was somehow a feeling that repaid it all, and even quieted the real anxiety as to the final "turning up" of their fugitive property,—not a mere self-complacence, hardly a self-complacence at all, but a half-surprised gladness, that had something thankful in it. If she might not be all leaves, perhaps, after all! If she really could, even in some slight thing, care most for the life and spirit underneath, to keep this sweet and pleasant, and the fruit of it a daily good, and not a bitterness; if she could begin by holding herself undisturbed, though obliged to wear a collar that stood up behind and turned over in front with those lappet corners she had always thought so ugly,—yes, even though the waterfall should leak out and ripple over stubbornly,—though these things must go on for twenty-four hours at least, and these twenty-four hours be spent unwillingly in a dull country tavern, where the windows looked out from one side into a village street, and from the other into stable and clothes yards! There would be something for her to do: to keep bright and help to keep the others bright. There was a hope in it; the life was more than raiment; it was better worth while than to have only got on the nice round collar and dainty cuffs that fitted and suited her, or even the little bead net that came over in a Marie Stuart point so prettily between the small crimped puffs of her hair.
A little matter, nothing to be self-applauding about,—only a straw; but—if it showed the possible way of the wind, the motive power that might be courted to set through her life, taking her out of the trade-currents of vanity? Might she have it in her, after all? Might she even be able to come, if need be, to the strength of mind for wearing an old gray straw bonnet, and bearing to be forty years old, and helping to adorn the young and beautiful for looks that never—just so—should be bent again on her?
Leslie Goldthwaite had read of martyr and hero sufferance all her life, as she had looked upon her poor one-eyed fellow-traveler to-day; the pang of sympathy had always been: "These things have been borne, are being borne, in the world; how much of the least of them could I endure,—I, looking for even the little things of life to be made smooth?" It depended, she began faintly and afar off to see, upon where the true life lay; how far behind the mere outer covering vitality withdrew itself.
CHAPTER IV.
Up—up—up,—from glory to glory!
This was what it seemed to Leslie Goldthwaite, riding, that golden June morning, over the road that threaded along, always climbing, the chain of hills that could be climbed, into the nearer and nearer presence of those mountain majesties, penetrating farther and father into the grand solitudes sentineled forever by their inaccessible pride.
Mrs. Linceford had grown impatient; she had declared it impossible, when the splendid sunshine of that next day challenged them forth out of their dull sojourn, to remain there twenty-four hours longer, waiting for anything. Trunks or none, she would go on, and wait at Jefferson, at least, where there was something to console one. All possible precaution was taken; all possible promises were made; the luggage should be sent on next day,—perhaps that very night; wagons were going and returning often now; there would be no further trouble, they might rest assured. The hotel-keeper had a "capital team,"—his very best,—at their instant service, if they chose to go on this morning; it could be at the door in twenty minutes. So it was chartered, and ordered round,—an open mountain wagon, with four horses; their remaining luggage was secured upon it, and they themselves took their seats gayly.
"Who cares for trunks or boxes now?" Leslie cried out in joyousness, catching the first, preparatory glimpse of grandeur, when their road, that wound for a time through the low, wet valley-lands, began to ascend a rugged hillside, whence opened vistas that hinted something of the glory that was to come. All the morning long, there wheeled about them, and smiled out in the sunshine, or changed to grave, grand reticence under the cloud-shadows, those shapes of might and beauty that filled up earth and heaven.
Leslie grew silent, with the hours of over-full delight. Thoughts thronged in upon her. All that had been deepest and strongest in the little of life that she had lived wakened and lifted again in such transcendent presence. Only the high places of spirit can answer to these high places of God in his creation.
Now and then, Jeannie and Elinor fell into their chatter, about their summer plans, and pleasures, and dress; about New York, and the new house Mrs. Linceford had taken in West Twenty-ninth Street, where they were to visit her next winter, and participate for the first time, under her matronizing, in city gayeties. Leslie wondered how they could; she only answered when appealed to; she felt as if people were jogging her elbow, and whispering distractions, in the midst of some noble eloquence.
The woods had a word for her; a question, and their own sweet answer of help. The fair June leafage was out in its young glory of vivid green; it reminded her of her talk with Cousin Delight.
"We do love leaves for their own sake; trees, and vines, and the very green grass, even." So she said to herself, asking still for the perfect parable that should solve and teach all.
It came, with the breath of wild grape vines, hidden somewhere in the wayside thickets. "Under the leaf lies our tiny green blossom," it said; "and its perfume is out on the air. Folded in the grass-blade is a feathery bloom, of seed or grain; and by and by the fields will be all waving with it. Be sure that the blossom is under the leaf."
Elinor Hadden's sweet child-face, always gentle and good-humored, though visited little yet with the deep touch of earnest thought,—smiling upon life as life smiled upon her,—looked lovelier to Leslie as this whisper made itself heard in her heart; and it was with a sweeter patience and a more believing kindliness that she answered, and tried to enter into, her next merry words.
There was something different about Jeannie. She was older; there was a kind of hard determination sometimes with her, in turning from suggestions of graver things; the child-unconsciousness was no longer there; something restless, now and then defiant, had taken its place; she had caught a sound of the deeper voices, but her soul would not yet turn to listen. She felt the blossom of life yearning under the leaf; but she bent the green beauty heedfully above it, and made believe it was not there.
Looking into herself and about her with asking eyes, Leslie had learned something already by which she apprehended these things of others. Heretofore, her two friends had seemed to her alike,—able, both of them, to take life innocently and carelessly as it came; she began now to feel a difference.
Her eyes were bent away off toward the Franconia hills, when Mrs. Linceford leaned round to look in them, and spoke, in the tone her voice had begun to take toward her. She felt one of her strong likings—her immense fancies, as she called them, which were really warm sympathies of the best of her with the best she found in the world—for Leslie Goldthwaite.
"It seems to me you are a stray sunbeam this morning," she said, in her winning way. "What kind of thoughts are going out so far? What is it all about?"
A verse of the Psalms was ringing itself in Leslie's mind; had been there, under all the other vague musings and chance suggestions for many minutes of her silence. But she would not have spoken it—she could not—for all the world. She gave the lady one of the chance suggestions instead. "I have been looking down into that lovely hollow; it seems like a children's party, with all the grave, grown folks looking on."
"Childhood and grown-up-hood; not a bad simile."
It was not, indeed. It was a wild basin, within a group of the lesser hills close by; full of little feathery birches, that twinkled and played in the light breeze and gorgeous sunshine slanting in upon them between the slopes that lay in shadow above,—slopes clothed with ranks of dark pines and cedars and hemlocks, looking down seriously, yet with a sort of protecting tenderness, upon the shimmer and frolic they seemed to have climbed up out of. Those which stood in the half way shadow were gravest. Hoar old stems upon the very tops were touched with the self-same glory that lavished itself below. This also was no less a true similitude.
"Know ye not this parable?" the Master said. "How then shall ye know all parables?" Verily, they lie about us by the wayside, and the whole earth is vocal with the wisdom of the Lord.
I cannot go with our party step by step; I have a summer to spend with them. They came to Jefferson at noon, and sat themselves down in the solemn high court and council of the mountain kings. First, they must have rooms. In the very face of majesty they must settle their traps.
"You are lucky in coming in for one vacancy, made to-day," the proprietor said, throwing open a door that showed them a commodious second-floor corner-room, looking each way with broad windows upon the circle of glory, from Adams to Lafayette. A wide balcony ran along the southern side against the window which gave that aspect. There were two beds here, and two at least of the party must be content to occupy. Mrs. Linceford, of course; and it was settled that Jeannie should share it with her.
Upstairs, again, was choice of two rooms,—one flight, or two. But the first looked out westward, where was comparatively little of what they had come for. Higher up, they could have the same outlook that the others had; a slanting ceiling opened with dormer window full upon the grandeur of Washington, and a second faced southward to where beautiful blue, dreamy Lafayette lay soft against the tender heaven.
"Oh, let us have this!" said Leslie eagerly. "We don't mind stairs." And so it was settled.
"Only two days here?" they began to say, when they gathered in Mrs. Linceford's room at nearly tea-time, after a rest and freshening of their toilets.
"We might stay longer," Mrs. Linceford answered. "But the rooms are taken for us at Outledge, and one can't settle and unpack, when it's only a lingering from day to day. All there is here one sees from the windows. A great deal, to be sure; but it's all there at the first glance. We'll see how we feel on Friday."
"The Thoresbys are here, Augusta. I saw Ginevra on the balcony just now. They seem to have a large party with them. And I'm sure I heard them talk of a hop to-night. If your trunks would only come!"
"They could not in time. They can only come in the train that reaches Littleton at six."
"But you'll go in, won't you? 'T isn't likely they dress much here,—though Ginevra Thoresby always dresses. Elinor and I could just put on our blue grenadines, and you've got plenty of things in your other boxes. One of your shawls is all you want, and we can lend Leslie something."
"I've only my thick traveling boots," said Leslie; "and I shouldn't feel fit without a thorough dressing. It won't matter the first night, will it?"
"Leslie Goldthwaite, you're getting slow! Augusta!"
"As true as I live, there is old Marmaduke Wharne!"
"Let Augusta alone for not noticing a question till she chooses to answer it," said Jeannie Hadden, laughing. "And who, pray, is Marmaduke Wharne? With a name like that, if you didn't say 'old,' I should make up my mind to a real hero, right out of a book."
"He's an original. And—yes—he is a hero,—out of a book, too, in his way. I met him at Catskill last summer. He stayed there the whole season, till they shut the house up and drove him down the mountain. Other people came and went, took a look, and ran away; but he was a fixture. He says he always does so,—goes off somewhere and 'finds an Ararat,' and there drifts up and sticks fast. In the winter he's in New York; but that's a needle in a haystack. I never heard of him till I found him at Catskill. He's an English-man, and they say had more to his name once. It was Wharnecliffe, or Wharneleigh, or something, and there's a baronetcy in the family. I don't doubt, myself, that it's his, and that a part of his oddity has been to drop it. He was a poor preacher, years ago; and then, of a sudden, he went out to England, and came back with plenty of money, and since then he's been an apostle and missionary among the poor. That's his winter work; the summers, as I said, he spends in the hills. Most people are half afraid of him; for he's one you'll get the blunt truth from, if you never got it before. But come, there's the gong,—ugh! how they batter it! and we must get through tea and out upon the balcony, to see the sunset and the 'purple light.' There's no time now, girls, for blue grenadines; and it's always vulgar to come out in a hurry with dress in a strange place." And Mrs. Linceford gave a last touch to her hair, straightened the things on her dressing-table, shut down the lid of a box, and led the way from the room.
Out upon the balcony they watched the long, golden going down of the sun, and the creeping shadows, and the purple half-light, and the after-smile upon the crests. And then the heaven gathered itself in its night stillness, and the mountains were grand in the soft gloom, until the full moon came up over Washington.
There had been a few words of recognition with the Thoresby party, and then our little group had betaken itself to the eastern end of the piazza. After a while, one by one, the others strayed away, and they were left almost alone. There was a gathering and a sound of voices about the drawing-room, and presently came the tones of the piano, struck merrily. They jarred, somehow, too; for the ringing, thrilling notes of a horn, blown below, had just gone down the diminishing echoes from cliff to cliff, and died into a listening silence, away over, one could not tell where, beyond the mysterious ramparts.
"It's getting cold," said Jeannie impatiently. "I think we've stayed here long enough. Augusta, don't you mean to get a proper shawl, and put some sort of lace thing on your head, and come in with us for a look, at least, at the hop? Come, Nell; come, Leslie; you might as well be at home as in a place like this, if you're only going to mope."
"It seems to me," said Leslie, more to herself than to Jeannie, looking over upon the curves and ridges and ravines of Mount Washington, showing vast and solemn under the climbing moon, "as if we had got into a cathedral!"
"And the 'great nerve' was being touched! Well,—that don't make me shiver. Besides, I didn't come here to shiver. I've come to have a right good time; and to look at the mountains—as much as is reasonable."
It was a pretty good definition of what Jeannie Hadden thought she had come into the world for. There was subtle indication in it, also, that the shadow of some doubt had not failed to touch her either, and that this with her was less a careless instinct than a resolved conclusion.
Elinor, in her happy good-humor, was ready for either thing: to stay in the night splendor longer, or to go in. It ended in their going in. Outside, the moon wheeled on in her long southerly circuit, the stars trembled in their infinite depths, and the mountains abided in awful might. Within was a piano tinkle of gay music, and demi-toilette, and demi-festival,—the poor, abridged reproduction of city revelry in the inadequate parlor of an unpretending mountain-house, on a three-ply carpet.
Marmaduke Wharne came and looked in at the doorway. Mrs. Linceford rose from her seat upon the sofa close by, and gave him courteous greeting. "The season has begun early, and you seem likely to have a pleasant summer here," she said, with the half-considered meaning of a common fashion of speech.
"No, madam!" answered Marmaduke Wharne, out of his real thought, with a blunt emphasis.
"You think not?" said Mrs. Linceford suavely, in a quiet amusement. "It looks rather like it to-night."
"This?—It's no use for people to bring their bodies to the mountains, if they can't bring souls in them!" And Marmaduke Wharne turned on his heel, and, without further courtesy, strode away.
"What an old Grimgriffinhoof!" cried Jeannie under her breath; and Elinor laughed her little musical laugh of fun.
Mrs. Linceford drew up her shawl, and sat down again, the remnant of a well-bred smile upon her face. Leslie Goldthwaite rather wished old Marmaduke Wharne would come back again and say more. But this first glimpse of him was all they got to-night.
CHAPTER V.
Leslie said the last line of Whittier's glorious mountain sonnet, low, to herself, standing on the balcony again that next morning, in the cold, clear breeze; the magnificent lines of the great earth-masses rearing themselves before her sharply against a cloudless morning sky, defining and revealing themselves anew.
"Freedom's northern wind will take all the wave out of your hair, and give you a red nose!" said Jeannie, coming round from her room, and upon Leslie unaware.
Well, Jeannie was a pretty thing to look at, in her delicate blue cambric morning dress, gracefully braided with white, with the fresh rose of recent sleep in her young cheeks, and the gladness of young life in her dark eyes. One might look away from the mountains to look at her; for, after all, the human beauty is the highest. Only, it must express high things, or at last one turns aside.
"And there comes Marmaduke; he's worse than the north wind. I can't stay to be 'blown clear' by him." And Jeannie, in high, merry good-humor, flitted off. It is easy to be merry and good-humored when one's new dress fits exquisitely, and one's hair hasn't been fractious in the doing up.
Leslie had never, apparently to herself, cared less, somehow, for self and little vanities; it seemed as if it were going to be quite easy for her, now and henceforth, to care most for the nobler things of life. The great mountain enthusiasm had seized her for the first time and swept away before it all meaner thought; and, besides, her trunk had been left behind, and she had nothing to put herself into but her plain brown traveling dress.
She let the wind play with the puffs of her hair, and send some little light locks astray about her forehead. She wrapped her shawl around her, and went and sat where she had sat the night before, at the eastern end of the balcony, her face toward the morning hills, as it had been toward the evening radiance and purple shade. Marmaduke Wharne was moving up and down, stopping a little short of her when he turned, keeping his own solitude as she kept hers. Faces and figures glanced out at the hall-door for an instant each, and the keen salute of the north wind sent them invariably in again. Nobody wanted to go with a red nose or tossed hair to the breakfast-table; and breakfast was almost ready. But presently Mrs. Linceford came, and, seeing Mr. Wharne, who always interested and amused her, she ventured forth, bidding him good-morning.
"Good-morning, madam. It is a good morning."
"A little sharp, isn't it?" she said, shrugging her shoulders together, irresolute about further lingering. "Ah, Leslie? Let me introduce you to the Reverend Mr. Wharne. My young friend and traveling companion, Miss Leslie Goldthwaite, Mr. Wharne. Have you two driven everybody else off, or is it the nipping air?"
"I think it is either that they have not said their prayers this morning, or that they don't know their daily bread when they see it. They think it is only saleratus cakes and maple molasses."
"As cross this morning as last night?" the lady questioned playfully.
"Not cross at all, Mrs. Linceford. Only jarred upon continually by these people we have here just now. It was different two years ago. But Jefferson is getting to be too well known. The mountain places are being spoiled, one after another."
"People will come. You can't help that."
"Yes, they will come, and frivel about the gates, without ever once entering in. 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity.'"
Leslie Goldthwaite's face quickened and glowed; they were the psalm lines that had haunted her thought yesterday, among the opening visions of the hill-country. Marmaduke Wharne bent his keen eyes upon her, from under their gray brows, noting her narrowly. She wist not that she was noted, or that her face shone.
"One soul here, at least!" was what the stern old man said to himself in that moment.
He was cynical and intolerant here among the mountains, where he felt the holy places desecrated, and the gift of God unheeded. In the haunts of city misery and vice,—misery and vice shut in upon itself, with no broad outlook to the heavens,—he was tender, with the love of Christ himself.
"'My house shall be called the house of prayer, but these have made it a den of thieves.' It is true not alone of the temples built with hands."
"Is that fair? How do you know, Mr. Wharne?" The sudden, impetuous questions come from Leslie Goldthwaite.
"I see—what I see."
"The whole?" said Leslie, more restrainedly. She remembered her respect for age and office. Yet she felt sorely tempted, shy, proud girl as she was, to take up cudgels for her friends, at least. Mr. Wharne liked her the better for that.
"They turn away from this, with five words,—the toll of custom,—or half a look, when the wind is north; and they go in to what you saw last night."
"After all, isn't it just enjoyment, either way? Mayn't one be as selfish as the other? People were kind, and bright, and pleasant with each other last night. Is that a bad thing?"
"No, little girl, it is not." And Marmaduke Wharne came nearer to Leslie, and looked at her with a gentle look that was wonderfully beautiful upon his stern gray face. "Only, I would have a kindness that should go deep,—coming from a depth. There are two things for live men and women to do: to receive, from God; and to give out, to their fellows. One cannot be done without the other. No fruit, without the drinking of the sunshine. No true tasting of the sunshine that is not gathering itself toward the ripening of fruit."
Here it was again; more teaching to the self-same point,—as we always do get it, with a seeming strangeness, whether it be for mind only, or for soul. You never heard of a new name, or fact in history, that did not come out again presently in some fresh or further mention or allusion. It is the tender training of Him before whom our life is of so great value.
At this moment, the gong sounded again; saleratus cakes and maple molasses were ready, and they all went in.
Leslie saw Imogen Thoresby change seats with her mother, because the draught from the door was less in her place; and take the pale top cake from the plate, leaving a brown one for the mother. Everybody likes brown cakes best; and it was very unbecoming to sit opposite a great, unshaded window, to say nothing of the draught. Surely a little blossom peeped out here from under the leaf. Leslie thought Imogen Thoresby might be forgiven for having done her curls so elaborately, and put on such an elegant wrapper; even for having ventured only a half-look out at the balcony door, when she found the wind was north. The parable was already teaching her both ways.
I do not mean to preach upon every page. I have begun by trying to tell you how a great influencing thought was given into Leslie Goldthwaite's life, and began to unravel for her perplexing questions that had troubled her,—questions that come, I think, to many a young girl just entering upon the world, as they came to her; how, in the simple history of her summer among the mountains, a great deal solved itself and grew clear. I would like to succeed in making you divine this, as you follow out the simple history itself.
"Just in time!" cried Jeannie Hadden, running up into Leslie's room at mid-afternoon that day. "There's a stage over from Littleton, and your trunk is being brought up this minute."
"And the hair-trunk and the mail-bag came on, too, after all, and the queerest people with them!" added Elinor, entering behind her.
They both stood back and were silent, as a man came heavily along the passage with the trunk upon his shoulder. He set it down and unfastened the straps, and in a minute more was gone, and Leslie had the lid open. All there, just as it had been in her own room at home three days ago. Her face brightened, seeing her little treasures again. She had borne it well; she had been able to enjoy without them; but she was very glad that they were come.
"It's nice that dinner is at lunch-time here, and that nobody dresses until now. Make haste, and get on something pretty. Augusta won't let us get out organdies, but we're determined on the blue grenadines. It's awfully hot,—hot enough for anything. Do your hair over the high rats, just for once."
"I always get into such a fuss with them, and I can't bear to waste the time. How will this do?" Leslie unpinned from its cambric cover a gray iron barége, with a narrow puffing round the hem of the full skirt and the little pointed bertha cape. With it lay bright cherry ribbons for the neck and hair.
"Lovely! Make haste and come down to our room." And having to dress herself, Jeannie ran off again, and Elinor shut the door.
It was nice to have on everything fresh; to have got her feet into rosetted slippers instead of heavy balmoral boots; to feel the lightness and grace of her own movement as she went downstairs and along the halls in floating folds of delicate barége, after wearing the close, uncomfortable traveling-dress, with the sense of dust and fatigue that clung about it; to have a little flutter of bright ribbon in her hair, that she knew was, as Elinor said, "the prettiest part of her." It was pleasant to see Mrs. Linceford looked pleased, as she opened her door to her, and to have her say, "You always do get on exactly the right thing!" There was a fresh feeling of pleasure even in looking over at Washington, sun-lighted and shadowed in his miles of heights and depths, as she sat by the cool east window, feeling quite her dainty self again. Dress is but the outside thing, as beauty is but "skin deep;" but there is a deal of inevitable skin-sensation, pleasurable or uncomfortable, and Leslie had a good right to be thoroughly comfortable now.
The blinds to the balcony window were closed; that led to a funny little episode presently,—an odd commentary on the soul-and-body question, as it had come up to them in graver fashion.
Outside, to two chairs just under the window, came a couple newly arrived,—the identical proprietors of the exchanged luggage. It was an elderly countryman, and his home-bred, matter-of-fact wife. They, too, had had their privations and anxieties, and the outset of their evidently unusual travels had been marred in its pleasure. In plain truth, the good woman was manifestly soured by her experience.
Right square before the blinds she turned her back, unconscious of the audience within, lifted her elbows, like clothes-poles, to raise her draperies, and settled herself with a dissatisfied flounce, that expressed beforehand what she was about to put in words. "For my part," she announced deliberately, "I think the White Mountains is a clear—hummux!"
"Good large hummocks, anyway," returned her companion.
"You know what I mean. 'T ain't worth comin' for. Losin' baggage, an' everything. We'd enough sight better ha' stayed at Plymouth. An' if it hadn't 'a' ben for your dunderheadedness, givin' up the checks an' never stoppin' to see what was comin' of 'em, trunks or hencoops, we might. There's somethin' to see, there. That little bridge leadin' over to the swings and seats across the river was real pretty and pleasant. And the cars comin' in an' startin' off, right at the back door, made it lively. I alwers did like to see passin.'"
The attitudes inside the blinds were something, at this moment. Mrs. Linceford, in a spasm of suppressed laughter herself, held her handkerchief to her lips with one hand, and motioned peremptory silence to the girls with the other. Jeannie was noiselessly clapping her hands, and dancing from one toe to the other with delight. Leslie and Elinor squeezed each other's fingers lightly, and leaned forward together, their faces brimming over with fun; and the former whispered with emphatic pantomime to Mrs. Linceford, "If Mr. Wharne were only here!"
"You've ben worried," said the man. "And you've ben comin' up to 'em gradooal. You don't take 'em in. If one of these 'ere hills was set out in our fields to home, you'd think it was something more than a hummock, I guess."
"Well, why ain't they, then? It's the best way to put things where you can see 'em to an advantage. They're all in the way of each other here, and don't show for nothing to speak of. Worried! I guess I hev ben! I shan't git over it till I've got home an' ben settled down a week. It's a mercy I've ever laid eyes agin on that bran'-new black alpacky!"
"Well, p'r'aps the folks felt wuss that lost them stylish-lookin' trunks. I'll bet they had something more in 'em than black alpackys."
"That don't comfort me none. I've had my tribulation."
"Well, come, don't be grouty, Hannah. We've got through the wust of it, and if you ain't satisfied, why, we'll go back to Plymouth again. I can stand it awhile, I guess, if 't is four dollars a day."
He had evidently sat still a good while for him, honest man; and he got up with this, and began to pace up and down, looking at the "hummocks," which signified greater meanings to him than to his wife.
Mrs. Linceford came over and put the window down. It was absolutely necessary to laugh now, however much of further entertainment might be cut off.
Hannah jumped up, electrified, as the sash went down behind her.
"John! John! There's folks in there!"
"S'pose likely," said John, with quiet relish of amends. "What's good for me 'ill do for them!"