University of Virginia Library

VIII.

“Good by, girls! I am homeward bound. To-night
I shall nod back Chocorua's welcome. Girls,
They talk of strikes,—they say that half the looms
Must stop, or wages be reduced. A muss
Of some kind will be stirring. So get leave
To come, and, till it settles, rest with me.
Come! I'm in earnest.”
Minta Summerfield
Stood in her cottage-bonnet and bright shawl
Outside the door, just as the bell rang in
The girls from half-hour breakfasting. They gave
Hurried replies, half-promises. The coach
Rolled out of sight. The summer seemed to go
With Minta's breezy laughter from their side;
Might they not follow?
Eleanor demurred,
Because of Isabel left behind. “But Ruth,
Ruth will be with her; each will care for each;
And Isabel loves Ruth, and Ruth is kind.”
So Esther, in her cheerful way, went on
Planning the journey; and before aware,
They found themselves inhaling the fresh breath
Of the hill-country, from the stage-coach top.
O that first burst of beauty from the shore
Of Winnepesaukee, where the mountains lay
Floating, a chain of ever-varying pearls
In shifting light and shadow! It was like
The Book of Revelation, Esther said;
The vision of a new heaven and new earth;
Gleams of the Bride's celestial jewelry,
From the white City of God. But Eleanor
Sat still, as one entranced, her dove-like eyes
Filled with unutterable light.
They stayed
An evening and a morning by the Lake,
Among the tangled sweet-briers of the steep,
Where, sitting upon fern-wreathed rocks, they saw
The low sun redden against Ossipee,
The white moon's shadow drift like a canoe
Among innumerable islands green;
And all the water's glory, fading, blend
At last into one wavering spectacle,
Commingling islands, billows, hills, and sky.
Then, after next day's noon-glare, they went up
For nearer greeting of the hills; and saw,
Through veils of rain, green summits come and go;
And saw a lucent rainbow, laid against
A mountain's purple slope, clear and intense
With unadulterate color; and at last
The landscape was all mountains. The whole range
Rose near and dark, its grand horizon-lines
Cut on the northern sky from east to west,
Like the long swell of an oncoming wave
Stiffened to granite ere it broke. Vast clouds
Moving to eastward in slow cavalcade
Now hid and now revealed one lofty peak
Whose white head, worn and haggard with the storms
Of æons, held its mighty symmetry
Amid surrounding chaos.
The two girls,
Who best knew mountains glimpsed among the leaves
Of the Old Testament, seemed to behold
The glooms of Sinai! Esther told her thought
To Eleanor, who whispered back, “The Lord
Is in His holy temple; let us keep
Silence before Him.” So they fared along
To a broad, well-tilled upland, whence the hills
More smiling looked, amid brown pasture-lands
And pleasant farm-enclosures, neighborly
As sentinels who keep no dangerous watch.
The coach stopped. From a roadside cottage-porch,
Wreathed with convolvulus, out flew a form
Familiar. “Welcome!” Minta Summerfield
Called, with a clap of hands. “Come in! come in!
You are not used to rough-and-tumble roads.
Poor wayfarers! I hope your bones are sound!”
The days that followed, in and out of doors,
With best home-cheer, and still fresh pages turned
Of wonder and of beauty, everywhere
The sun could lay his finger,—light of light
On the receding and advancing hills,
The sweet air like a flagon of new wine
Freshening their senses, wakening fantasies
That heretofore slept dreamless, making life
Seem nobler, better, dearer than itself,—
Those days were treasure which no flimsy wealth
Of words could represent. To some new world
They seemed translated.
Here was Minta's home
With her tall farmer-brother, Clement, who,
Had won a wife as sweet as he deserved,
A steady-natured and wise-hearted one,
Who toiled with him, not holding work the end
Of their joint life, but kept a margin clear
For studious thought, for books, for all that helped
The mother and the woman to be true;
So broadening, as she could, their rustic lot.
Sisters in love as well as law, the two,
Mercy and Minta, homely labors shared,
And simple joys, and cheerfulness of health.
And pleasant was the long ride home from school
Over the windings of the Tamworth hills,
After each week of absence, when they came,
Clement and Mercy, with two sunburnt boys,—
Cupids in bronze, till winter showed fair brows
And rosy apple-cheeks by fireside light,
Like Raphael's cherubs,—when the happy four
Came in the old farm-wagon, the white horse
Jogging on slowly for the landscape's sake,
Or the good company he bore, and took
Minta's gay presence back with them, to bloom
Into their Sabbath-Siloam of peace.
The schoolhouse door was closed now, and the girls
Drove the white Wizard anywhere they would,
The faithful beast by Esther named, because
He bore them always through enchanted ground;
So seemed the mountains to her fancy, bred
Beside the gray-blue level of the sea,
And grassy borders of the Merrimack.
One day they reached an inn upon a knoll
At noontide, hungering and tired, and there
For the good Wizard's welfare and their own,
They rested. In the low-ceiled dining-room,
Among the lingerers of the summer, sat
A lovely gray-haired woman, whose mild eyes
Looked welcome, and who led them with kind words,
After their meal, out under sheltering elms,
Where they could see strange peaks, invisible
From the home-cottage, ten good miles away.
In that sweet woman-stranger's heart sprang up
For Eleanor a secret tenderness.
Her she besought to stay, so pale she looked,
So long the journey home. And Esther, too,
Blaming herself for Eleanor's fatigue,
Added her urging. Eleanor yielded then,
And let the Wizard bear her friends away,
Looking and listening till his distant hoofs
Fell light as raindrops; then, half homesick, moaned.
But she was met by thoughtfulness too kind
To be resisted. Miriam Willoughby,
A single woman with a mother's heart
Such as too many a child cries after, mocked
By the empty mother-name, knew just what word
To whisper, what soft silence to enfold
About the maid, and she was comforted.
And when, at dawn, slow vapors climbed the hills
Before the pleasant hostelry, and left
Crags of dark green contrasted with pure blue,
These new-made friends beheld the mountains play
Like dolphins in their sun-bath, with the clouds
That clung to them, or slipped off unaware
Into a sea of azure, drenching them
With half-concealing sheen. And presently
The elder woman called, “Look! Eleanor, look!”
And where her finger pointed, where the mists
Had fallen again, and left the whole world gray
As if with coming rain, far, far beyond
The wave-like outline of the mountain-range,
A sun-touched summit glistened, a great pearl
Held in a cup-like hollow of near hills
Dark with contrasted glory.
“O, too fair!
Too delicate to gaze or breathe upon!
Is it not heaven itself?” And Eleanor's eyes
Grew luminous as she looked.
A veil came down
Upon the vision. Miriam Willoughby
Took Eleanor's hand, and said, “'T was but a hill
Like these around us, but a little higher,—
Although crowned monarch of New England peaks.
And may not heaven itself be common life
In uttermost perfection? Such a glimpse
Comes now and then to us from human souls,
Lit with divine ideas and purposes.
Is not man as the angels, only made
A little lower? And who knows what shall be
Revealed in him, shone on by other suns?”
The mist became a rainfall, and that day
No Esther came, so the two women sat
And wound their friendship firm with genial talk
Each of the other's welfare, and of things
Wherein they found their aspirations blend.
For though this Miriam Willoughby had place
In high society, nor toiled nor spun
More than the lilies, with her lily hands
Still as unwrinkled as her face, while snows
Of threescore years had whitened on her head,
Her heart and brain held a whole lifetime full
Of sympathy and generous help, nor once
Allowed the thought that fortune, gifts, or birth,
Privileged arrogance, or permitted scorn
Of any toiler in the human hive.
The years had dwelt with her most peacefully,
Each one a guest more welcome than the last;
And why the ripening of her days should be
Clouded with vain regrets for blossom-time,
As with some women, she had seen no cause,
With autumn in her heart surpassing spring
In subtle fragrance and perennial bloom.
Yet motherhood, a fountain sealed within,
Sometimes made lonesome music, and she longed
For those who needed her caress, her close
And separate overwatch of yearning care.
All orphanage awoke her love; but now
This Eleanor, who toiled for daily bread,
In her pale beauty, fragile unto pain,
Seemed to glide in and fill the emptiest nook
Of her warm heart, that echoed, “Mine! my child!”
A feeling near akin to jealousy
She recognized when Esther came at last,
So waited for by Eleanor; but, ashamed
Before itself, her heart gave room to both;
And days and days she kept them at her side,
Growing to them most dear. The roadside inn
Was homelike, and the three friends went and came,
Together or alone, free as the breeze
That rippled Bearcamp Water.
As she watched
The two girls wandering down the meadow-road,
One golden morning, Miriam Willoughby
Sat at her window, and, in pauses, wrote
To one who shared her passion for the hills:—
“Dear Nephew Ralph, it often seems to me
As if we should change places. 'T is not fair
That you should toil in the metropolis
At stifling office-work, at my affairs
More than your own, I fear, while I enjoy
Perpetual leisure, drinking peace and health
Out of the mountain chalices. For you
'T is hard, who Nature as a mother love,
As you do me, your old, romantic aunt,
Whose heart remains a girl's in loving you,
Her squire and champion. We'll let business go,
While I write of these hills, at your desire,—
The friendly hills, that, while I am away
From all I love, must take the place of friends.
“This mountain-group, before my window ranged,
Is noble company to have in sight,
To sit down with at any hour of day,—
To meet their faces looking toward the east
At the sunrising, wrapped in soft noon-mist,
Or outlined keen upon the auroral night,
Or sinking into sunset deeps of heaven,
Unutterably glorious. Yet sometimes,
As one may weary of too great a throng
Of noble guests, and call them each apart
For closer conference, I move my seat
Little by little, so that only one
Is for the time in sight.
“Green Ossipee,
With Bearcamp River singing at its base,
A vast, long-terraced wall of fir and pine,
Shuts in our southern meadows. Where that ends,
Just where the sun sets in October days,
Mount Israel stands and guards his villages,
And hides the secret of a windy pass
To Thornton, and the Haystacks of the Notch.
“Then the eye rests upon Black Mountain's top
Of sombre velvet, highest of these hills,
That gathers the rich purple and deep gold
Of fine late light into his vesture's folds,
Yet, in his rounded symmetry, appears
Less grand than Whiteface, his next-neighbor peak,
Looking, sharp-cut and gray, out of the north,
With outreach of bare shoulder; in his side
A gash deep-hollowed, where the sun at noon
Pours clearest oil and wine.
“Some sonneteer,
Travelling this way, has hung a little web
Of misty melody about his brow.
Travelling this way, he must have wandered on
Over steep roads of Sandwich, when he wrote
Of Whiteface as a monarch whom the clouds
Gather toward, wingéd daughters of the sky,—
For of this vale Chocorua is king.

CLOUDS ON WHITEFACE.

CHOCORUA.