Chapter 17

This was the unbought testimony of Miss Lamont, who, with her uncle, had been there long enough to acquire the common anxiety of sojourners that the newcomers should be pleased, and who superfluously explained the attractions of the place to the artist, as if in his eyes, that rested on her, more than one attraction was needed. It was very pleasant to see the good comradeship that existed between these two, and the frank expression of their delight in meeting again. Here was a friendship without any reserve, or any rueful misunderstandings, or necessity for explanations. Irene's eyes followed them with a wistful look as they went off together round the piazza and through the parlors, the girl playing the part of the hostess, and inducting him into the mild gayeties of the place.

The height of the season was over, she said; there had been tableaux and charades, and broom-drills, and readings and charity concerts. Now the season was on the sentimental wane; every night the rooms were full of whist-players, and the days were occupied in quiet strolling over the hills, and excursions to Cooperstown and Cherry Valley and “points of view,” and visits to the fields to see the hop-pickers at work. If there were a little larking about the piazzas in the evening, and a group here and there pretending to be merry over tall glasses with ice and straws in them, and lingering good-nights at the stairways, why should the aged and rheumatic make a note of it? Did they not also once prefer the dance to hobbling to the spring, and the taste of ginger to sulphur?

Of course the raison d'etre of being here is the sulphur spring. There is no doubt of its efficacy. I suppose it is as unpleasant as any in the country. Everybody smells it, and a great many drink it. The artist said that after using it a week the blind walk, the lame see, and the dumb swear. It renews youth, and although the analyzer does not say that it is a “love philter,” the statistics kept by the colored autocrat who ladles out the fluid show that there are made as many engagements at Richfield as at any other summer fair in the country.

There is not much to chronicle in the peaceful flow of domestic life, and, truth to say, the charm of Richfield is largely in its restfulness. Those who go there year after year converse a great deal about their liking for it, and think the time well spent in persuading new arrivals to take certain walks and drives. It was impressed upon King that he must upon no account omit a visit to Rum Hill, from the summit of which is had a noble prospect, including the Adirondack Mountains. He tried this with a walking party, was driven back when near the summit by a thunder, storm, which offered a series of grand pictures in the sky and on the hills, and took refuge in a farmhouse which was occupied by a band of hop-pickers. These adventurers are mostly young girls and young men from the cities and factory villages, to whom this is the only holiday of the year. Many of the pickers, however, are veterans. At this season one meets them on all the roads, driving from farm to farm in lumber wagons, carrying into the dull rural life their slang, and “Captain Jinks” songs, and shocking free manners. At the great hop fields they lodge all together in big barracks, and they make lively for the time whatever farmhouse they occupy. They are a “rough lot,” and need very much the attention of the poet and the novelist, who might (if they shut their eyes) make this season as romantic as vintage-time on the Rhine, or “moonshining” on the Southern mountains. The hop field itself, with its tall poles draped in graceful vines which reach from pole to pole, and hang their yellowing fruit in pretty festoons and arbors, is much more picturesque than the vine-clad hills.

Mrs. Bartlett Glow found many acquaintances here from New York and Philadelphia and Newport, and, to do her justice, she introduced Irene to them and presently involved her in so many pleasure parties and excursions that she and King were scarcely ever alone together. When opportunity offered for a stroll a deux, the girl's manner was so constrained that King was compelled to ask the reason of it. He got very little satisfaction, and the puzzle of her conduct was increased by her confession that she loved him just the same, and always should.

“But something has come between us,” he said. “I think I have the right to be treated with perfect frankness.”

“So you have,” she replied. “There is nothing--nothing at least that changes my feeling towards you.”

“But you think that mine is changed for you?”

“No, not that, either, never that;” and her voice showed excitement as she turned away her head. “But don't you know, Stanhope, you have not known me very long, and perhaps you have been a little hasty, and--how shall I say it?--if you had more time to reflect, when you go back to your associates and your active life, it might somehow look differently to you, and your prospects--”

“Why, Irene, I have no prospects without you. I love you; you are my life. I don't understand. I am just yours, and nothing you can do will ever make it any different for me; but if you want to be free--”

“No, no,” cried the girl, trying in vain to restrain her agitation and her tears, “not that. I don't want to be free. But you will not understand. Circumstances are so cruel, and if, Stanhope, you ever should regret when it is too late! It would kill me. I want you to be happy. And, Stanhope, promise me that, whatever happens, you will not think ill of me.”

Of course he promised, he declared that nothing could happen, he vowed, and he protested against this ridiculous phantom in her mind. To a man, used to straightforward cuts in love as in any other object of his desire, this feminine exaggeration of conscientiousness is wholly incomprehensible. How under heavens a woman could get a kink of duty in her mind which involved the sacrifice of herself and her lover was past his fathoming.

The morning after this conversation, the most of which the reader has been spared, there was an excursion to Cooperstown. The early start of the tally-ho coaches for this trip is one of the chief sensations of the quiet village. The bustle to collect the laggards, the importance of the conductors and drivers, the scramble up the ladders, the ruses to get congenial seat-neighbors, the fine spirits of everybody evoked by the fresh morning air, and the elevation on top of the coaches, give the start an air of jolly adventure. Away they go, the big red-and-yellow arks, swinging over the hills and along the well-watered valleys, past the twin lakes to Otsego, over which hangs the romance of Cooper's tales, where a steamer waits. This is one of the most charming of the little lakes that dot the interior of New York; without bold shores or anything sensational in its scenery, it is a poetic element in a refined and lovely landscape. There are a few fishing-lodges and summer cottages on its banks (one of them distinguished as “Sinners' Rest”), and a hotel or two famous for dinners; but the traveler would be repaid if there were nothing except the lovely village of Cooperstown embowered in maples at the foot. The town rises gently from the lake, and is very picturesque with its church spires and trees and handsome mansions; and nothing could be prettier than the foreground, the gardens, the allees of willows, the long boat wharves with hundreds of rowboats and sail-boats, and the exit of the Susquehanna River, which here swirls away under drooping foliage, and begins its long journey to the sea. The whole village has an air of leisure and refinement. For our tourists the place was pervaded by the spirit of the necromancer who has woven about it a spell of romance; but to the ordinary inhabitants the long residence of the novelist here was not half so important as that of the very distinguished citizen who had made a great fortune out of some patent, built here a fine house, and adorned his native town. It is not so very many years since Cooper died, and yet the boatmen and loungers about the lake had only the faintest impression of the man-there was a writer by that name, one of them said, and some of his family lived near the house of the great man already referred to. The magician who created Cooperstown sleeps in the old English-looking church-yard of the Episcopal church, in the midst of the graves of his relations, and there is a well-worn path to his head-stone. Whatever the common people of the town may think, it is that grave that draws most pilgrims to the village. Where the hillside cemetery now is, on the bank of the lake, was his farm, which he visited always once and sometimes twice a day. He commonly wrote only from ten to twelve in the morning, giving the rest of the time to his farm and the society of his family. During the period of his libel suits, when the newspapers represented him as morose and sullen in his retirement, he was, on the contrary, in the highest spirits and the most genial mood. “Deer-slayer” was written while this contest was at its height. Driving one day from his farm with his daughter, he stopped and looked long over his favorite prospect on the lake, and said, “I must write one more story, dear, about our little lake.” At that moment the “Deerslayer” was born. He was silent the rest of the way home, and went immediately to his library and began the story.

The party returned in a moralizing vein. How vague already in the village which his genius has made known over the civilized world is the fame of Cooper! To our tourists the place was saturated with his presence, but the new generation cares more for its smart prosperity than for all his romance. Many of the passengers on the boat had stopped at a lakeside tavern to dine, preferring a good dinner to the associations which drew our sentimentalists to the spots that were hallowed by the necromancer's imagination. And why not? One cannot live in the past forever. The people on the boat who dwelt in Cooperstown were not talking about Cooper, perhaps had not thought of him for a year. The ladies, seated in the bow of the boat, were comparing notes about their rheumatism and the measles of their children; one of them had been to the funeral of a young girl who was to have been married in the autumn, poor thing, and she told her companion who were at the funeral, and how they were dressed, and how little feeling Nancy seemed to show, and how shiftless it was not to have more flowers, and how the bridegroom bore up-well, perhaps it's an escape, she was so weakly.

The day lent a certain pensiveness to all this; the season was visibly waning; the soft maples showed color, the orchards were heavy with fruit, the mountain-ash hung out its red signals, the hop-vines were yellowing, and in all the fence corners the golden-rod flamed and made the meanest high-road a way of glory. On Irene fell a spell of sadness that affected her lover. Even Mrs. Bartlett-Glow seemed touched by some regret for the fleeting of the gay season, and the top of the coach would have been melancholy enough but for the high spirits of Marion and the artist, whose gayety expanded in the abundance of the harvest season. Happy natures, unrestrained by the subtle melancholy of a decaying year!

The summer was really going. On Sunday the weather broke in a violent storm of wind and rain, and at sunset, when it abated, there were portentous gleams on the hills, and threatening clouds lurking about the sky. It was time to go. Few people have the courage to abide the breaking of the serenity of summer, and remain in the country for the more glorious autumn days that are to follow. The Glows must hurry back to Newport. The Bensons would not be persuaded out of their fixed plan to “take in,” as Mr. Benson expressed it, the White Mountains. The others were going to Niagara and the Thousand Islands; and when King told Irene that he would much rather change his route and accompany her, he saw by the girl's manner that it was best not to press the subject. He dreaded to push an explanation, and, foolish as lovers are, he was wise for once in trusting to time. But he had a miserable evening. He let himself be irritated by the lightheartedness of Forbes. He objected to the latter's whistling as he went about his room packing up his traps. He hated a fellow that was always in high spirits. “Why, what has come over you, old man?” queried the artist, stopping to take a critical look at his comrade. “Do you want to get out of it? It's my impression that you haven't taken sulphur water enough.”

On Monday morning there was a general clearing out. The platform at the station was crowded. The palace-cars for New York, for Niagara, for Albany, for the West, were overflowing. There was a pile of trunks as big as a city dwelling-house. Baby-carriages cumbered the way; dogs were under foot, yelping and rending the tender hearts of their owners; the porters staggered about under their loads, and shouted till they were hoarse; farewells were said; rendezvous made--alas! how many half-fledged hopes came to an end on that platform! The artist thought he had never seen so many pretty girls together in his life before, and each one had in her belt a bunch of goldenrod. Summer was over, sure enough.

At Utica the train was broken up, and its cars despatched in various directions. King remembered that it was at Utica that the younger Cato sacrificed himself. In the presence of all the world Irene bade him good-by. “It will not be for long,” said King, with an attempt at gayety. “Nothing is for long,” she said with the same manner. And then added in a low tone, as she slipped a note into his hand, “Do not think ill of me.”

King opened the note as soon as he found his seat in the car, and this was what he read as the train rushed westward towards the Great Fall:

“MY DEAR FRIEND,--How can I ever say it? It is best that we separate. I have thought and thought; I have struggled with myself. I think that I know it is best for you. I have been happy--ah me! Dear, we must look at the world as it is. We cannot change it--if we break our hearts, we cannot. Don't blame your cousin. It is nothing that she has done. She has been as sweet and kind to me as possible, but I have seen through her what I feared, just how it is. Don't reproach me. It is hard now. I know it. But I believe that you will come to see it as I do. If it was any sacrifice that I could make, that would be easy. But to think that I had sacrificed you, and that you should some day become aware of it! You are free. I am not silly. It is the future I am thinking of. You must take your place in the world where your lot is cast. Don't think I have a foolish pride. Perhaps it is pride that tells me not to put myself in a false position; perhaps it is something else. Never think it is want of heart in.

“Good-by.

“IRENE”

As King finished this he looked out of the window.

The landscape was black.

XIV. NIAGARA

In the car for Niagara was an Englishman of the receptive, guileless, thin type, inquisitive and overflowing with approval of everything American--a type which has now become one of the common features of travel in this country. He had light hair, sandy side-whiskers, a face that looked as if it had been scrubbed with soap and sandpaper, and he wore a sickly yellow traveling-suit. He was accompanied by his wife, a stout, resolute matron, in heavy boots, a sensible stuff gown, with a lot of cotton lace fudged about her neck, and a broad brimmed hat with a vegetable garden on top. The little man was always in pursuit of information, in his guide-book or from his fellow-passengers, and whenever he obtained any he invariably repeated it to his wife, who said “Fancy!” and “Now, really!” in a rising inflection that expressed surprise and expectation.

The conceited American, who commonly draws himself into a shell when he travels, and affects indifference, and seems to be losing all natural curiosity, receptivity, and the power of observation, is pretty certain to undervalue the intelligence of this class of English travelers, and get amusement out of their peculiarities instead of learning from them how to make everyday of life interesting. Even King, who, besides his national crust of exclusiveness, was today wrapped in the gloom of Irene's letter, was gradually drawn to these simple, unpretending people. He took for granted their ignorance of America--ignorance of America being one of the branches taught in the English schools--and he soon discovered that they were citizens of the world. They not only knew the Continent very well, but they had spent a winter in Egypt, lived a year in India, and seen something of China and much of Japan. Although they had been scarcely a fortnight in the United States, King doubted if there were ten women in the State of New York, not professional teachers, who knew as much of the flora of the country as this plain-featured, rich-voiced woman. They called King's attention to a great many features of the landscape he had never noticed before, and asked him a great many questions about farming and stock and wages that he could not answer. It appeared that Mr. Stanley Stubbs, Stoke-Cruden--for that was the name and address of the present discoverers of America--had a herd of short-horns, and that Mrs. Stubbs was even more familiar with the herd-book than her husband. But before the fact had enabled King to settle the position of his new acquaintance satisfactorily to himself, Mrs. Stubbs upset his estimate by quoting Tennyson.

“Your great English poet is very much read here,” King said, by way of being agreeable.

“So we have heard,” replied Mrs. Stubbs. “Mr. Stubbs reads Tennyson beautifully. He has thought of giving some readings while we are here. We have been told that the Americans are very fond of readings.”

“Yes,” said King, “they are devoted to them, especially readings by Englishmen in their native tongue. There is a great rage now for everything English; at Newport hardly anything else is spoken.”

Mrs. Stubbs looked for a moment as if this might be an American joke; but there was no smile upon King's face, and she only said, “Fancy! You must make a note of Newport, dear. That is one of the places we must see. Of course Mr. Stubbs has never read in public, you know. But I suppose that would make no difference, the Americans are so kind and so appreciative.”

“Not the least difference,” replied King. “They are used to it.”

“It is a wonderful country,” said Mr. Stubbs.

“Most interesting,” chimed in Mrs. Stubbs; “and so odd!

“You know, Mr. King, we find some of the Americans so clever. We have been surprised, really. It makes us feel quite at home. At the hotels and everywhere, most obliging.”

“Do you make a long stay?”

“Oh, no. We just want to study the people and the government, and see the principal places. We were told that Albany is the capital, instead of New York; it's so odd, you know. And Washington is another capital. And there is Boston. It must be very confusing.” King began to suspect that he must be talking with the editor of the Saturday Review. Mr. Stubbs continued: “They told us in New York that we ought to go to Paterson on the Island of Jersey, I believe. I suppose it is as interesting as Niagara. We shall visit it on our return. But we came over more to see Niagara than anything else. And from there we shall run over to Chicago and the Yosemite. Now we are here, we could not think of going back without a look at the Yosemite.”

King said that thus far he had existed without seeing the Yosemite, but he believed that next to Chicago it was the most attractive place in the country.

It was dark when they came into the station at Niagara--dark and silent. Our American tourists, who were accustomed to the clamor of the hackmen here, and expected to be assaulted by a horde of wild Comanches in plain clothes, and torn limb from baggage, if not limb from limb, were unable to account for this silence, and the absence of the common highwaymen, until they remembered that the State had bought the Falls, and the agents of the government had suppressed many of the old nuisances. It was possible now to hear the roar of the cataract.

This unaccustomed human stillness was ominous to King. He would have welcomed a Niagara of importunity and imprecations; he was bursting with impatience to express himself; it seemed as if he would die if he were silent an hour longer under that letter. Of course the usual American relief of irritability and impatience suggested itself. He would telegraph; only electricity was quick enough and fiery enough for his mood. But what should he telegraph? The telegraph was not invented for love-making, and is not adapted to it. It is ridiculous to make love by wire. How was it possible to frame a message that should be commercial on its face, and yet convey the deepest agony and devotion of the sender's heart? King stood at the little telegraph window, looking at the despatcher who was to send it, and thought of this. Depressed and intent as he was, the whimsicality of the situation struck him. What could he say? It illustrates our sheeplike habit of expressing ourselves in the familiar phrase or popular slang of the day that at the instant the only thing King could think of to send was this: “Hold the fort, for I am coming.” The incongruity of this made him smile, and he did not write it. Finally he composed this message, which seemed to him to have a businesslike and innocent aspect: “Too late. Impossible for me to change. Have invested everything. Expect letter.” Mechanically he counted the words when he had written this. On the fair presumption that the company would send “everything” as one word, there were still two more than the conventional ten, and, from force of habit, he struck out the words “for me.” But he had no sooner done this than he felt a sense of shame. It was contemptible for a man in love to count his words, and it was intolerable to be haggling with himself at such a crisis over the expense of a despatch. He got cold over the thought that Irene might also count them, and see that the cost of this message of passion had been calculated. And with recklessness he added: “We reach the Profile House next week, and I am sure I can convince you I am right.”

King found Niagara pitched to the key of his lacerated and tumultuous feelings. There were few people at the Cataract House, and either the bridal season had not set in, or in America a bride has been evolved who does not show any consciousness of her new position. In his present mood the place seemed deserted, the figures of the few visitors gliding about as in a dream, as if they too had been subdued by the recent commission which had silenced the drivers, and stopped the mills, and made the park free, and was tearing down the presumptuous structures along the bank. In this silence, which emphasized the quaking of the earth and air, there was a sense of unknown, impending disaster. It was not to be borne indoors, and the two friends went out into the night.