Nature's Serial Story Part 35

She was not their sister, and had unconsciously evoked from each of the young men a characteristic regard. Burt must not be judged too harshly.

He had to contend with a temperament not uncommon--one that renders its possessor highly susceptible to the beauty and fascination of women. He was as far removed from the male flirt genus as sincerity is from falsehood; but his pa.s.sion for Amy had been more like a manifestation of a trait than a strong individual preference based on mutual fitness and helpfulness. Miss Hargrove was more truly his counterpart. She could supplement the weaknesses and defects of his character more successfully than Amy, and in a vague way he felt this. With all the former's vivacity there was much reserve strength and magnetism. She was unusually gifted with will power, and having once gained an influence over a person, she would have, as agents to maintain it, not only her beauty, but tact, keen insight and a very quick intelligence. Although true herself, she was by no means unsophisticated, and having once comprehended Burt's character, she would have the power, possessed by few others, to make the most of him.

Amy was nearer to nature. She would first attract unconsciously, like a rare and beautiful flower, and the loveliness and fragrance of her life would be undying. Burt had felt her charm, and responded most decisively; but the tranquil regard of her unawakened heart had little power to retain and deepen his feeling. She bloomed on at his side, sweet to him, sweet to all. In Miss Hargrove's dark eyes lurked a stronger spell, and he almost dared to believe that they had revealed to him a love of which he began to think Amy was not capable. On the generous young fellow, whose intentions were good, this fact would have very great influence, and in preserving her supremacy Miss Hargrove would also be able to employ not a little art and worldly wisdom.

The events that are most desired do not always happen, however, and poor Burt felt that he had involved himself in complications of which he saw no solution; while Amy's purpose to give him "a lesson" promised anything but relief. Her plan involved scarcely any change in her manner toward him. She would simply act as if she believed all that he had said, and take it for granted that his hopes for the future were unchanged. She proposed, however, to maintain this att.i.tude only long enough to teach him that it is not wise, to say the least, to declare undying devotion too often to different ladies.

The weather during the night and early on the following morning was puzzling. It might be that the storm was pa.s.sing, and that the ragged clouds which still darkened the sky were the rear-guard or the stragglers that were following the sluggish advance of its main body; or it might be that there was a partial break in Nature's forces, and that heavier cloud-ma.s.ses were still to come. Mr. Clifford inclined to the latter view. "Old Storm King is still shrouded," he said at the breakfast-table, "and this heavy, sultry air does not indicate clearing weather."

Events soon confirmed his opinion. Nature seemed bent on repeating the programme of the preceding day, with the purpose of showing how much more she could do on the same line of action. There was no steady wind from any quarter. Converging or conflicting currents in the upper air may have brought heavy clouds together in the highlands to the southwest, for although the rain began to fall heavily, it could not account for the unprecedented rise of the streams. In little over an hour there was a continuous roar of rushing water. Burt, restless and almost reckless, went out to watch the floods. He soon returned to say that every bridge on the place had gone, and that what had been dry and stony channels twenty-four hours before were now filled with resistless torrents.

Webb also put on his rubber suit, and they went down the main street toward the landing. This road, as it descended through a deep valley to the river, was bordered by a stream that drained for some miles the northwestern slope of the mountains. For weeks its rocky bed had been dry; now it was filled with a river yellow as the Tiber. One of the main bridges across it was gone, and half of the road in one place had been scooped out and carried away by the furious waters. People were removing their household goods out into the vertical deluge lest they and all they had should be swept into the river by the torrent that was above their doorsteps. The main steamboat wharf, at which the "Powell" had touched but a few hours before, was scarcely pa.s.sable with boats, so violent was the current that poured over it. The rise had been so sudden that people could scarcely realize it, and strange incidents had occurred. A horse attached to a wagon had been standing in front of a store. A vivid flash of lightning startled the animal, and he broke away, galloped up a side street to the spot where the bridge had been, plunged in, was swept down, and scarcely more than a minute had elapsed before he was back within a rod or two of his starting-point, crushed and dead.

Webb soon returned. He had noticed that Amy's eyes had followed him wistfully, and almost reproachfully, as he went out. Nature's mood was one to inspire awe, and something akin to dread, in even his own mind.

She appeared to have lost or to have relaxed her hold upon her forces. It seemed that the gathered stores of moisture from the dry, hot weeks of evaporation were being thrown recklessly away, regardless of consequences.

There was no apparent storm-centre, pa.s.sing steadily to one quarter of the heavens, but on all sides the lightning would leap from the clouds, while mingling with the nearer and louder peals was the heavy and continuous monotone from flashes below the horizon.

He was glad he had returned, for he found Amy pale and nervous indeed.

Johnnie had been almost crying with terror, and had tremblingly asked her mother if Noah's flood could come again.

"No," said Maggie, confidently. "If there was to be another flood, grandpa would have been told to build an ark;" and this a.s.surance had appeared so obviously true that the child's fears were quieted. Even Leonard's face was full of gloom and foreboding, when the children were not present, as he looked out on flooded fields, and from much experience estimated the possible injury to the farm and the town. Mr. and Mrs.

Clifford were quiet and serene. They had attained a peace which was not easily disturbed, and the old gentleman remarked: "I have seen a worse storm even in this vicinity. You must remember it, Leonard."

"But this deluge isn't over," was the reply. "It seems a tremendous reaction from the drought, and where it will end it is hard to tell, unless this steady downpouring slackens soon."

Leonard's fears were not realized, however. The unusual and tropical manifestations of the storm at last ceased, and by night the rain fell softly and gently, as if Nature were penitent over her wild pa.s.sion. The results of it, however, were left in all directions. Many roads were impa.s.sable; scores of bridges were gone. The pa.s.sengers from the evening boats were landed on a wharf partially submerged, and some were taken in boats to a point whence they could reach their carriages.

In the elements' disquiet Burt had found an excuse for his own, and he had remained out much of the day. He had not called on Miss Hargrove again, but had ridden far enough to learn that the bridges in that direction were safe. All the family had remonstrated with him for his exposure, and Amy asked him, laughingly, if he had been "sitting on bridges to keep them from floating away."

"You are growing ironical," he answered for he was not in an amiable mood, and he retired early.

CHAPTER XLVIII

IDLEWILD

In the morning Nature appeared to have forgotten both her pa.s.sion and her penitence, and smiled serenely over the havoc she had made, as if it were of no consequence.

Amy said, "Let us take the strong rockaway, call for Miss Hargrove, and visit some of the streams"; and she noted that Burt's a.s.sent was too undemonstrative to be natural. Maggie decided to go also, and take the children, while Leonard proposed to devote the day to repairing the damage to the farm, his brothers promising to aid him in the afternoon.

When at last the party left their carriage at one of the entrances of Idlewild, the romantic glen made so famous by the poet Willis, a stranger might have thought that he had never seen a group more in accord with the open, genial sunshine. This would be true of Maggie and the children.

They thought of that they saw, and uttered all their thoughts. The solution of one of life's deep problems had come to Maggie, but not to the others, and such is the nature of this problem that its solution can usually be reached only by long and hidden processes. Not one of the four young people was capable of a deliberately unfair policy; all, with the exception of Amy, were conscious whither Nature was leading them, and she had thoughts also of which she would not speak. There was no lack of truth in the party, and yet circ.u.mstances had brought about a larger degree of reticence than of frankness. To borrow an ill.u.s.tration from Nature, who, after all, was to blame for what was developing in each heart, a rapid growth of root was taking place, and the flower and fruit would inevitably manifest themselves in time. Miss Hargrove naturally had the best command over herself. She had taken her course, and would abide by it, no matter what she might suffer. Burt had mentally set his teeth, and resolved that he would be not only true to Amy, but also his old gay self. His pride was now in the ascendant. Amy, however, was not to be deceived, and her intuition made it clear that he was no longer her old happy, contented comrade. But she was too proud to show that her pride was wounded, and appeared to be her former self. Webb, as usual, was quiet, observant, and not altogether hopeless. And so this merry party, innocent, notwithstanding all their hidden thoughts about each other, went down into the glen, and saw the torrent flashing where the sunlight struck it through the overhanging foliage. Half-way down the ravine there was a rocky, wooded plateau from which they had a view of the flood for some distance, as it came plunging toward them with a force and volume that appeared to threaten the solid foundations of the place on which they stood. With a roar of baffled fury it sheered off to the left, rushed down another deep descent, and disappeared from view. The scene formed a strange blending of peace and beauty with wild, fierce movement and uproar. From the foliage above and around them came a soft, slumberous sound, evoked by the balmy wind that fanned their cheeks. The ground and the surface of the torrent were flecked with waving, dancing light and shade, as the sunlight filtered through innumerable leaves, on some of which a faint tinge of red and gold was beginning to appear.

Beneath and through all thundered a dark, resistless tide, fit emblem of lawless pa.s.sion that, unchanged, unrestrained by gentle influences, pursues its downward course reckless of consequences. Although the volume of water pa.s.sing beneath their feet was still immense, it was evident that it had been very much greater. "I stood here yesterday afternoon,"

said Burt, "and then the sight was truly grand."

"Why, it was raining hard in the afternoon!" exclaimed Miss Hargrove.

"Burt seemed even more perturbed than the weather yesterday," Amy remarked, laughing. "He was out nearly all the time. We were alarmed about him, fearing lest he should be washed away, dissolved, or something."

"Do I seem utterly quenched this morning?" he asked, in a light vein, but flushing deeply.

"Oh, no, not in the least, and yet it's strange, after so much cold water has fallen on you."

"One is not quenched by such trifles," he replied, a little coldly.

They were about to turn away, when a figure sprang out upon a rock, far up the stream, in the least accessible part of the glen. They all recognized Mr. Alvord, as he stood with folded arms and looked down on the flood that rushed by on either side of him. He had not seen them, and no greeting was possible above the sound of the waters. Webb thought as he carried little Ned up the steep path, "Perhaps, in the mad current, he sees the counterpart of some period in his past."

The bridge across the mouth of Idlewild Brook was gone, and they next went to the landing. The main wharf was covered with large stones and gravel, the debris of the flood that had poured over it from the adjacent stream, whose natural outlet had been wholly inadequate. Then they drove to the wild and beautiful Mountainville road, that follows the Moodna Creek for a long distance. They could not proceed very far, however, for they soon came to a place where a tiny brook had pa.s.sed under a wooden bridge. Now there was a great yawning chasm. Not only the bridge, but tons of earth were gone. The Moodna Creek, that had almost ceased to flow in the drought, had become a tawny river, and rushed by them with a sullen roar, flanging over the tide was an old dead tree, on which was perched a fish-hawk. Even while they were looking at him, and Burt was wishing for his rifle, the bird swooped downward, plunged into the stream with a splash, and rose with a fish in his talons. It was an admirable exhibition of fearlessness and power, and Burt admitted that such a sportsman deserved to live.

CHAPTER XLIX

ECHOES OF A PAST STORM

Miss Hargrove returned to dine with them, and as they were lingering over the dessert and coffee Webb remarked, "By the way, I think the poet Willis has given an account of a similar, or even greater, deluge in this region." He soon returned from the library, and read the following extracts: "'I do not see in the Tribune or other daily papers any mention of an event which occupies a whole column on the outside page of the highest mountain above West Point. An avalanche of earth and stone, which has seamed from summit to base the tall bluff that abuts upon the Hudson, forming a column of news visible for twenty miles, has reported a deluge we have had--a report a mile long, and much broader than Broadway.'"

"Certainly," said Mr. Clifford, "that's the flood of which I spoke yesterday. It was very local, but was much worse than the one we have just had. It occurred in August of '53. I remember now that Mr. Willis wrote a good deal about the affair in his letters from Idlewild. What else does he say?"

Webb, selecting here and there, continued to read: "'We have had a deluge in the valley immediately around us--a deluge which is shown by the overthrown farm buildings, the mills, dams, and bridges swept away, the well-built roads cut into chasms, the destruction of horses and cattle, and the imminent peril to life. It occurred on the evening of August 1, and a walk to-day down the valley which forms the thoroughfare to Cornwall Landing (or, rather, a scramble over its gulfs in the road, its upset barns and sheds, its broken vehicles, drift lumber, rocks, and rubbish) would impress a stranger like a walk after the deluge of Noah.

"'The flood came upon us with scarce half an hour's notice. My venerable neighbor, of eighty years of age, who had pa.s.sed his life here, and knows well the workings of the clouds among the mountains, had dined with us, but hastened his departure to get home before what looked like a shower, crossing with his feeble steps the stream whose strongest bridge, an hour after, was swept away. Another of our elderly neighbors had a much narrower escape. The sudden rush of water alarmed him for the safety of an old building he used for his stable, which stood upon the bank of the small stream usually scarce noticeable as it crosses the street at the landing. He had removed his horse, and returned to unloose a favorite dog, but before he could accomplish it the building fell. The single jump with which he endeavored to clear himself of the toppling rafters threw him into the torrent, and he was swept headlong toward the gulf which it had already torn in the wharf on the Hudson. His son and two others plunged in, and succeeded in s.n.a.t.c.hing him from destruction. Another citizen was riding homeward, when the solid and strongly embanked road was swept away before and behind him, and he had barely time to unhitch his horse and escape, leaving his carriage islanded between the chasms. A man who was driving with his wife and child along our own wall on the river-sh.o.r.e had a yet more fearful escape: his horse suddenly forced to swim, and his wagon set afloat, and carried so violently against a tree by the swollen current of Idlewild Brook that he and his precious load were thrown into the water, and with difficulty reached the bank beyond.

A party of children who were out huckleberrying on the mountain were separated from home by the swollen brook, and one of them was nearly drowned in vainly attempting to cross it. Their parents and friends were out all night in search of them. An aged farmer and his wife, who had been to Newburgh, and were returning with their two-horse wagon well laden with goods, attempted to drive over a bridge as it unsettled with the current, and were precipitated headlong. The old man caught a sapling as he went down with the flood, the old woman holding on to his coat-skirts, and so they struggled until their cries brought a.s.sistance.'

Other and similar incidents are given. One large building was completely disembowelled, and the stream coursed violently between the two halves of its ruins. 'I was stopped,' he writes in another place, 'as I scrambled along the gorge, by a curious picture for the common highway. The brick front of the bas.e.m.e.nt of a dwelling-house had been torn off, and the mistress of the house was on her hands and knees, with her head thrust in from a rear window, apparently getting her first look down into the desolated kitchen from which she had fled in the night. A man stood in the middle of the floor, up to his knees in water, looking round in dismay, though he had begun to pick up some of the overset chairs and utensils. The fireplace, with its interrupted supper arrangements, the dresser, with its plates and pans, its cups and saucers, the closets and cupboards, with their various stores and provisions, were all laid open to the road like a sliced watermelon.'"

"Well," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Leonard, "we haven't so much cause to complain, after hearing of an affair like that. I do remember many of my impressions at the time, now that the event is recalled so vividly, but have forgotten how so sudden a flood was accounted for."

"Willis speaks of it on another page," continued Webb, "as 'the aggregation of extensive ma.s.ses of clouds into what is sometimes called a "waterspout," by the meeting of winds upon the converging edge of our bowl of highlands. The storm for a whole country was thus concentrated.'

I think there must have been yesterday a far heavier fall of water on the mountains a little to the southeast than we had here. Perhaps the truer explanation in both instances would be that the winds brought heavy clouds together or against the mountains in such a way as to induce an enormous precipitation of vapor into rain. Mr. Willis indicates by the following pa.s.sage the suddenness of the flood he describes: 'My first intimation that there was anything uncommon in the brook was the sight of a gentleman in a boat towing a cow across the meadow under our library window--a green glade seldom or never flooded. The roar from the foaming precipices in the glen had been heard by us all, but was thought to be thunder.' Then he tells how he and his daughter put on their rubber suits and hastened into the glen. 'The chasm,' he writes, 'in which the brook, in any freshet I had heretofore seen, was still only a deep-down stream, now seemed too small for the torrent. Those giddy precipices on which the sky seems to lean as you stand below were the foam-lashed sides of a full and mighty river. The spray broke through the tops of the full-grown willows and lindens. As the waves plunged against the cliffs they parted, and disclosed the trunks and torn branches of the large trees they had overwhelmed and were bearing away, and the earth-colored flood, in the wider places, was a struggling ma.s.s of planks, timber, rocks, and roots--tokens of a tumultuous ruin above, to which the thunder-shower pouring around us gave but a feeble clew. A heavy-limbed willow, which overhung a rock on which I had often sat to watch the freshets of spring, rose up while we looked at it, and with a surging heave, as if lifted by an earthquake, toppled back, and was swept rushingly away.'"

"How I would have liked to see it!" exclaimed Miss Hargrove.

"I can see it," said Amy, leaning back, and closing her eyes. "I can see it all too vividly. I don't like nature in such moods." Then she took up the volume, and began turning the leaves, and said: "I've never seen this book before. Why, it's all about this region, and written before I was born. Oh dear, here is another chapter of horrors!" and she read: "Close to our gate, at the door of one of our nearest and most valued neighbors--a lovely girl was yesterday struck dead by lightning. A friend who stood with her at the moment was a greater sufferer, in being prostrated by the same flash, and paralyzed from the waist downward--her life spared at the cost of tortures inexpressible.'"

Webb reached out his hand to take the book from her, but she sprang aloof, and with dilating eyes read further: "'Misa Gilmour had been chatting with a handsome boy admirer, but left him to take aside a confidential friend that she might read her a letter. It was from her mother, a widow with this only daughter. They pa.s.sed out of the gate, crossed the road to be out of hearing, and stood under the telegraph wire, when the letter was opened. Her lips were scarce parted to read when the flash came--an arrow of intense light-' Oh, horrible! horrible!

How can you blame me for fear in a thunderstorm?"

"Amy," said Webb, now quietly taking the book, "your dread at such times is const.i.tutional. If there were need, you could face danger as well as any of us. You would have all a woman's fort.i.tude, and that surpa.s.ses ours. Take the world over, the danger from lightning is exceedingly slight, and it's not the danger that makes you tremble, but your nervous organization."

"You interpret me kindly," she said, "but I don't see why nature is so full of horrible things. If Gertrude had been bitten by the snake, she might have fared even worse than the poor girl of whom I have read."

Miss Hargrove could not forbear a swift, grateful glance at Burt.

"I do not think nature is _full_ of horrible things," Webb resumed.

"Remember how many showers have cooled the air and made the earth beautiful and fruitful in this region. In no other instance that I know anything about has life been destroyed in our vicinity. There is indeed a side to nature that is full of mystery--the old dark mystery of evil; but I should rather say it is full of all that is beautiful and helpful. At least this seems true of our region. I have never seen so much beauty in all my life as during the past year, simply because I am forming the habit of looking for it."