Vassall Morton Part 17

On the next day he discovered that they had actually gone, and that, as Wren had said, Niagara was to be the ultimatum of their tour. On the following morning, he himself took the western train, and made all speed for the Falls.

CHAPTER XVIII.

If folly grows romantic, I must paint it.--_Pope_.

On the American side of the Niagara, a few miles below the Falls, is a deep chasm, bearing the inauspicious christening of the Devil's Hole.

Near it there is--or perhaps was, for things have changed thereabouts--a path winding far down among rocks and forests, till it leads to the brink of the river. Here, darkened by the beetling cliffs and sombre forests, the Niagara surges on its way, like a compressed ocean, raging to break free. At the verge of this watery convulsion stood Holyoke and his wife, Miss Leslie, and Morton, whom they had chanced to meet that morning.

"It is very fine, no doubt," said the good-natured, though very shallow Mrs. Holyoke, "but I have no mind to take cold in these dark woods. If we stay much longer, I believe I shall go mad, looking at that rushing, foaming water, and throw myself in. Come, Harry, let us go back to daylight again."

"Just as you please," said the model husband, offering his arm.

"Come, Edith;--why, she really seems to like it;--Edith!--she don't hear me; no wonder, in all this noise;--Edith, we are going back to the upper world. You can stay here, if you please, with Mr. Morton."

But Miss Leslie chose to follow her friend; while Morton aided her up the rough path.

"I have observed," he said, as they came to smoother ground, "in our excursions yesterday and to-day, that Mrs. Holyoke has not much of your liking for rocks, trees, and water. I mean, that she has no great taste for nature."

"At all events, she has an eye for what is picturesque in it. She is an artist, you know, and paints in water colors extremely well."

"Yes, and whenever she sees a landscape, she thinks only how it would look on paper or canvas, and judges it accordingly. That is not a genuine love of nature. One does not value a friend for good looks, or dress, or air; and so, in the same way, is not a true fondness for nature independent, to some extent at least, of effects of form, or color, or grouping?"

"It does not imply, I think, any artistic talent, or even a good eye for artistic effect. And yet I cannot conceive of a great landscape artist being without it, any more than a great poet."

"If he were, he would be no better than a refined scene painter. We are in a commercial country; so pardon me if I use commercial language. This liking for nature is a capital investment. She is always a kind mistress, a good friend, always ready with a tranquillizing word, never inconstant, never out of humor, never sad."

"And yet sometimes she can speak sadly, too."

Edith Leslie said no more; but there came before her the remembrance of her long watchings in the room of the dying Mrs. Leslie, when, seated by the window, open in the hot summer nights, she had listened, hour after hour, mournfully, drearily, almost with superst.i.tious awe, to the chirping of the crickets, the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill, and now and then the hooting of a distant owl.

"Here in America," continued Morton, "we ought to make the most of this feeling for nature; for we have very little else."

"And yet there is less of it here than in some other countries; in England, for instance."

"We are too busy for such vanities. Besides, we are just now in an unlucky position. A wilderness is one thing; savageness and solitude have a character of their own; and so has a polished landscape with a.s.sociations of art, poetry, legend, and history."

"And we have destroyed the one, and have not yet found the other."

"And so, between two stools we fall to the ground."

"If you have a liking for a wilderness and primitive scenery, I don't think that you have much reason to complain; for you, at least, have contrived to see something of them."

"And you of the other sort; art and history wedded to nature; at Tivoli, for example,--at the Lake of Albano; where else shall I say?"

"Say, at Giardini, in Sicily."

"Why at Giardini? I never heard of it before."

"Not that the view there is finer than in some other places, though towards evening it is very beautiful. You see the ocean on one side, and the mountains on the other, covered to the top with orange, lemon, and olive trees, and Mount Etna rising above them all, with a spire of white smoke curling out of its crater, tinted with red, yellow, and purple, where the sunset strikes it. On the mountain above you there is an ancient theatre, where a Greek audience once sat on the stone benches, and after them, in their turn, a Roman. On the peak of the mountain over it is a Saracen castle, and, not far off, a Norman tower."

"So that the whole is an embodiment of poetry and history from the days of the Odyssey downwards."

"n.o.body, I think, who has seen that eastern sh.o.r.e of Sicily can have escaped without some strong impression from it. The Fourrierites, you know, pretend to believe that the earth is a living being, with a soul, only a larger one, like ours that creep on the outside of it.

One is sometimes tempted to adopt their idea, and fancy that the changing face of nature is the expression of the earth's thoughts, and its way of communicating with us."

"A landscape will sometimes have a life and a language,--that is, when one happens to be in the mood to hear it,--and yet, after all, a.s.sociation is commonly the main source of its power. The Hudson, I imagine, can match the Rhine in point of mere beauty; but a few ruined castles, with the memories about them, turn the tables dead against us."

"You have always--have you not?--had a penchant for the barbarism of the middle ages."

"Not for their barbarism, but for the germs of civilization that lay in the midst of it. Religion towards G.o.d, devotion towards women--these were the vital ideas of the middle ages."

"But how were those ideas acted on? Their religion was not much better than a ma.s.s of superst.i.tions."

"Not more gross and vulgar than the spirit rapping superst.i.tion, the last freak into which this age of reason has stumbled. And, for the other idea, the fundamental idea of chivalry, we are beginning to replace it with woman's rights, Heaven deliver us!"

"Pardon me if I doubt whether ladies in the middle ages were better treated than they are now. The theory was admirable, no doubt, but the practice, if there were any, seems at this distance a little ridiculous."

"Chivalry was like Don Quixote, who stands for it--fantastic and absurd enough on the outside, but n.o.ble at the core."

"But you would not imply seriously that you would prefer the age of chivalry to this nineteenth century."

"No, the reign of shopkeepers is better than the reign of cutthroats.

But the nineteenth century has no right to abuse the middle ages. The best feature of its civilization is handed down from them. That feeling which found a place in the rough hearts of our northern ancestry, half savages as they were, and gave to their favorite G.o.ddess attributes more high and delicate than any with which the Greeks and Romans, at the summit of their refinement, ever invested their Venus; the feeling which afterwards grew into the sentiment of chivalry, and, hand in hand with Christianity, has made our modern civilization what it is,--that is the heritage we owe to the middle ages, and for which we are bound to be grateful to them. It was a flower all the fairer for springing in the midst of darkness and barbarism; and now that we have it in a kinder soil, we can only hope that it is not fast losing its fragrance and brightness."

"Of that, I imagine, a woman is a very poor judge; but if it has lost its antique freshness, at all events we can enjoy it in peace and tranquillity, and be spared the risk of life and limb in gathering it.

Those sweetbrier blossoms that grow yonder, down the side of the precipice, are very pretty, but it would require nothing less than a paladin, or a knight errant, made crazy with the hope of a smile, to get them and bring them up."

"Now it is you that asperse the present, and I that will defend it."

And the words were hardly spoken before the young fool was over the edge of the cliff, scarcely hearing his companion's startled cry of remonstrance.

The rock sloped steeply to a few feet below the spot where the brier grew, and then sank in a sheer precipice of a hundred feet or more, so that if hand or foot had failed him, his career would have ended somewhat abruptly. To the spectatress above the danger seemed appalling; but, with the climber's practised eye and well-strung sinews, it was in fact very slight. Once, indeed, a fragment of stone loosened under his foot, and fell with a splintering crash upon the rocks below, followed by a shower of pebbles and gravel, rattling among the trees. But he soon reached his prize, secured it in his hatband, and grasping the friendly root of a spruce tree, drew himself up to the level top of the cliff.

Here he saw the fruit of his Quixotism. Edith Leslie, pale as death, seemed on the very verge of fainting. He sprang in great consternation to her aid, supported her to a rock near at hand, on which she could rest; and as her momentary dizziness pa.s.sed away, she began to distinguish his eager words of apology and self-reproach.

"You will think that I have grown backward into a child again. Think what you will; I deserve your worst thought; only do not believe that I could fancy such paltry exploits and paltry risks could be a tribute worthy of you; or that you are to be served with such boy's service as that. Here are the flowers: throw them away, or keep them as a memento of my absurdity; but let them remind you, at the same time, that wherever your wish points, there I would go, if it were into the jaws of fate."

Here, looking up, he saw the expediency of curtailing his eloquence; for not far off appeared their two companions, returning to look for them. Both Miss Leslie and he had much ado to explain, the one why her face was so pale, the other why his dress was so dusty and disordered.

The carriage was waiting for them on the road near by; and their morning's excursion being finished, they proceeded towards it, Morton leading the way in silence.

His first feeling had been one of compunction and indignation at himself; but close upon it followed another, very different--a sense of mixed suspense and delight. What augury might he not draw from the pale cheek and fainting form of his companion?