University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

All day the train whirled along, and Morton's troubled
thoughts found no rest.

“Matherton!” cried the conductor, opening the door of the
car, as the engine stopped in a large station house, at five
o'clock in the afternoon. Several passengers got out; two
or three came in; the bell rang, and with puffing and clanking,
the train was on its way again. A newsboy passed down
the car with a bundle of newspapers and twopenny novels.
Morton bought one of the latter as an anodyne; but even
“Orlando Melville, or the Victim of the Press Gang,” failed
to produce the desired soporific effect, and his thoughts soon
recurred to their former channel. Suddenly a violent concussion,
a crashing, thumping, and grating sound, the outcries
of a hundred passengers, — the women screaming, and some
of the men not silent, — with a furious rocking and tossing of
the car, ejected every thought but one of his personal safety.
All sprang to their feet, he among the rest. The first distinct
impression which his mind received was that of the man

in front of him making a flying leap out of the open window
of the car, carrying the sash with him — a dexterous piece of
gymnastics, only to be accounted for by the fact that the performer
was a distinguished artist of the Grand National Olympic
Circus. His boots twinkled at the window, and he was
gone, alighting on his feet like a cat, but Morton was too
much frightened to laugh. In a few moments the car came
to a rest, without being overturned, though the front was
partly broken in, and the whole swung off the rails to an angle
of forty-five degrees. On looking out at the window, the
first object that met Morton's eye was the baggage car, thrown
on its side, with the door uppermost. As he looked, the door
opened, and a head emerged — like a triton from the deep,
or Banquo's ghost from a trap door — white with wrath and
fright, and swearing with wonderful volubility. Then appeared
another, rising by the side of the first, equally pallid,
but much less profane. The heads belonged to two men,
who had been seated in the compartment of the baggage car
allotted to the mails, and when it was flung off the track, had
been rattled together like dice in a box, suffering various
bruises, but no serious harm. The breaking of the defective
cast iron axle of the tender had caused the whole disaster,
which would doubtless have produced fatal consequences had
not the train been moving at a very slow rate. As it happened,
a few contusions were its worst results, and one of the
morning papers,
solemnly averred that none but Providence was responsible
for it.

There was abundant noise and vociferation. The passengers
left the train, some lending their bungling aid to repair
the mischief, while others withdrew to an inn which chanced
to be in the neighborhood. After looking for a time at the
downfallen tender and the uprooted rails, Morton, from some
idle impulse, entered the car which he had lately left. It
was empty; and, passing through it, he looked into that immediately
behind, which had remained safely upon the rails.
This also was empty, with the exception of a single person, a
young female figure, seated at one of the windows. She was
closely veiled, yet there was in her air that indefinable something
which told Morton at a glance that she was a lady.
He stepped to the ground, conjecturing whether or no she
had a companion.

Five minutes after, glancing at the window, he saw the
solitary traveller seated in the same position as before, and
became convinced that she was unattended. The women in
the train had left it at the outset. The busy and clamorous
throng of men alone remained; and Morton easily conceived
that her situation must be an embarrassing one. He therefore
reëntered the car and approached her.

“I am afraid we shall be detained here for two or three
hours, and perhaps till late at night. There is a public house
a little way off, to which the ladies in the train have gone.
If you will allow me, I will show you the way.”

So he spoke; or, rather, so he would have spoken; but he
had scarcely begun when the veiled head was joyfully raised,
and the veil was thrown aside, disclosing to his astonished
eyes the features of Edith Leslie. She explained that she

was on her way from her father's country seat at Matherton;
and that he was to meet her at the station on the arrival of
the train. When the accident took place, she had been led
to suppose, from the conversation of two men near her, that
the train would not be very long detained, and had preferred
remaining in the car to mingling with the tumultuous throng
outside.

“It is too fine an afternoon,” said Morton, as they left the
spot, “to be mured in that tavern. This lane has an inviting
look. Have you a mind to explore it?”

They walked accordingly in the direction he proposed; and,
as they did so, Morton cast many a stolen glance at the face
of his companion. The mind of the young philosopher was
that day in a peculiarly susceptible state. It seemed as if
Fanny Euston had kindled within him a flame which could
not fix itself upon her, yet must needs find fuel somewhere;
and as his eye met that of Edith Leslie, he began to feel that
she held a deeper place in his thoughts than he had ever before
suspected.

By the side of the lane stood an ancient abode, whose rotten
shingles supported a rich crop of green mosses; and in
the yard an old man, who looked like a relic of Bunker Hill
fight, was diligently chopping firewood.

“What does this lane lead to?” asked Morton, looking
over the fence.

The woodchopper leaned on his axe, wiped his brows
with the tatters of a red handkerchief, and seemed revolving
the expediency of communicating the desired information.

“Well,” he returned, after mature reflection, “if you go
fur enough, it'll take you down to the Diamond Pool.”

“The Diamond Pool,” said Miss Leslie; “that has a promising
sound.”

The lane soon began to lead them down the side of a rugged
hill, between barberry bushes and stunted savins, with
neglected stone walls, where the striped ground squirrels
chirruped as they dodged into the crevices. In a few moments
they had a glimpse of the water, shining between the
branches of the trees below.

“Upon my word,” said Morton, as they stood on the margin,
“the Diamond Pool is not to be despised. We have
chosen our walk well, and found a tempting place of rest at
the end of it.”

“A grassy bank, — a clear spring, with cardinal flowers
along the edge — a cluster of maple trees —”

“And a flat rock at the foot of one of them, for you to rest
upon. We are well provided for.”

“Except that a seat for you seems to have been forgotten.”

“No, if I wish to rest, this mound of grass will serve my
turn. I am used to bivouacs.”

The sun had just vanished behind the rocky hill on the farther
side of the water; a sea of liquid fire, clouds blazoned in
gold and crimson, betokened his recent presence. The lake lay
like a great mirror framed in green. Another sunset glowed
in its depths; rocks, hills, and trees grew downward; and
the kingfisher, as he flitted over it, made a dash at the surface,
as if to peck at the adversary bird, which seemed shooting
upward to meet him.

“One might imagine,” said Miss Leslie, “that we were a
hundred miles away from railroads, factories, and all abominations
of the kind.”

“They will follow soon,” said Morton; “they are not far
off. There is no sanctuary from American enterprise.”

“I know it is omnipotent at spoiling a landscape; but I
hope that this one may escape, — at least if there is no mill
privilege in the neighborhood.”

“There is — an excellent one — at the outlet of the pond,
beyond the three elms yonder. I prophesy that in five years
there will be a brick factory on that meadow, with a row of
one story houses for the operatives.”

“It will be a scandal and a profanation. It is too beautiful
for such base uses. But at least that old cedar tree,
rooted in a cleft of the precipice, has found a safe sanctuary.
There it was growing in King Philip's time; in its younger
days it saw Indian wigwams standing on this bank; and
there its offspring will grow after it, safe from Yankee
axes.”

“One cannot be sure of that. A time will come yet, when
those rocks will be blasted to build a town hall, or open another
railroad track.”

“But they cannot build railroads and factories in the
clouds. Our New England sunsets will still remain to remind
one that there is an ideal side of life — something in it
besides locomotives and cotton gins.”

“There it is that you are wiser than we are. You are
mistresses of a domain of which men, for the most part,
know little or nothing.”

“Pray what domain may that be?”

“One that is all mystery to me — a world of thoughts and
sentiments which to most men is a cloudland, an undiscovered
country, of which they may possibly recognize the existence,
but of whose geography they know nothing.”

“Why should they be more ignorant of it than women?”

“Because they are commonly given over to practicalities,
mixed hopelessly with rivalries and ambitions. Even in their
highest pursuits, they propose to themselves some definite
point to be gained, some object to be achieved; but women
are left to the world of their own minds — there they can
expatiate at will.”

“That is a dangerous privilege.”

“They have leisure to muse on the joys and troubles of
life, and explore depths which we bridge over.”

“Either your mind has very much changed, or I have
very much mistaken it. Pardon me, but I fancied that
you were like Iago, `nothing if not critical;' or at least
that you sympathized with his slanderous opinions of womankind.”

“Heaven forbid! What treasonable thought did you suppose
me to harbor against the better part of humanity?”

“At all events, I never supposed you to believe that the
better part of humanity passed their leisure time in metaphysical
reveries and abstruse meditations.”

“You were speaking, just now, of ideals. May not I have
mine?”

“So your ideal woman is a transcendental philosopher,
seated in the midst of your undiscovered cloudland.”

“Deliver me from such a one! My ideal is full of thought
and of feeling; but no one yet ever dreamed of branding her
as a philosopher. But why did you think me so very
critical? I am hardly old enough yet to make an Iago or a
Rochefoucault.”

“And yet you used always to have some saying of Rochefoucault
at your tongue's end.”

“I detest him, nevertheless, for a French Mephistopheles,
— and all his tribe with him.”

“When I said as much, you always told me that his sayings
had a great deal of truth in them.”

“And have they not a great deal of truth?”

“I cannot pretend to know mankind well enough to answer;
but I sincerely hope, not much. Life would be worse
than a blank if men and women were what he represents
them to be.”

“I think not; for if one cannot learn to be enthusiastic in
regard to the actualities of human nature, he can console
himself by a boundless faith in its possibilities. And now
and then, thank God, — Rochefoucault to the contrary notwithstanding,
— one finds the possibility realized.”

His companion made no reply; and Morton stood for a
moment with his eyes bent upon her face, which, to his
enamoured fancy, seemed to reflect the calm beauty of the
landscape on which she was gazing. He thought of Fanny
Euston; he recalled his last evening's conversation with her,
and felt blindly impelled to give some form of expression
to the feeling which began to master him.

“Miss Leslie, were you ever in a storm at sea?”

“Yes, in a slight one; but the ship was strong; there was
very little danger.”

“Then you were never flung about, as I have been, in an
indifferent egg shell of a craft, out of sight of land, at the
mercy of winds and waves.”

“I did not know that you had been at sea. Ah, yes,
you were at school in France, when you were a boy — were
you not?”

“Yes; but this happened since I have become a man, and
not long ago. I think I shall never forget it. The sun was
bright at one moment, and all was black as a hurricane the
next. The wind came from every point of the compass — always
shifting, never resting. I had not an instant's peace. It
was all watching — all anxiety — and yet there was a kind of
pleasure in it. If I had had wings, I doubt if I should have
found heart to use them. It was a strange gale. It blew
hot and cold by fits; I thought I should lose my reckoning
altogether, and be blown away, body and soul.”

“Really, I cannot imagine where your tempest is going to
carry you.”

“Nor could I; when, of a sudden, I found myself safe
on shore. My good star led me to a place beautiful as the
May sunshine could make it; a scene where art and nature
were blended so harmoniously, that they seemed to have
grown together from the same birth; full of repose, and tranquil,
graceful power; such a scene, in short, as made me
wish that Nature would embody herself in a visible form,
that I might swear homage to her forever.”

Had an interpreter been needed, Morton's look and voice

must have betrayed, at least, some part of his meaning. The
color deepened slightly on his companion's cheek, but she
replied, without any further sign of consciousness, —

“I never knew that you were quite so ardent a votary of
nature. You had better put your emotions into verse, and
sell them to the magazines, after the true poetic custom. In
a little time, I don't doubt, Dr. Griswold would find a place
for you in his constellation of poets.”

“Ah,” said Morton, “it is cruel of you to fling cold water
on my rhapsodies. But my flight is over. And now I will
try my best to gain the esteem in your eyes of a man of
sense and a sound mind.”

“And now those night-hawks over head are beginning to
tell us that we had better go back to the railroad. I suppose
you will place it among the other frailties of women; but I
cannot help being a little afraid that if we stay longer, that
crippled train will run away and leave us behind.”

“Then good night to the Diamond Pool,” said Morton, as
they left the place. “I shall not forget it; I owe it double
thanks. It has shown me a pretty landscape, and made me a
wiser man.”

“I can hardly see how that may be.”

“It has taught me not to speak too earnestly with my
friend, lest she should banter me; and by no means to be
drawn into any absurdity, lest she should laugh at me outright.”

“Do you mean that you thought that I laughed at you?”

“Did you not?”

“If I gave you cause to think that I did, I can only say,
frankly and heartily, that I am very sorry for it.”

“Now I am emboldened to be absurd again, and speak
more parables. I have found a locked-up treasure — a sealed
fountain. I long to open it, but cannot.”

“Your figures are too deep for me. I can make nothing
of them.”

“Then I will sink to plain prose. I have a friend whose
heart is full of warm feeling and earnest thought; but, out
of reserve, or Heaven knows what, she will express it to
nobody but one or two intimate companions. She tantalizes
the rest with a bantering word; and sometimes, when she is
most in earnest, she seems to be most in jest. But why do
you smile?”

“Ask your friend Mr. Sharpe. He is your friend — is
he not?”

“I suppose so, though he is old enough to be my father.
But why should I ask him?”

“Because he once described to me a person very much
like the one you have just described.”

“Who was the person?”

“Mr. Sharpe said that, though he was in general quite
frank and undisguised, yet, if he were particularly in earnest
on any subject, he was apt to speak lightly of it, or perhaps
ridicule it, to hide his real feeling.”

“Pray, who was this person? What was his name?”

“Mr. Vassall Morton.”

“Did Sharpe say that of me? It is not a month since I
was walking with him, — his evening constitutional, — and
he said the very same thing of you. Now, as I hope to live

an honest man, I was never half so much flattered in my life,
as by being slandered in such company.”

Here he was interrupted abruptly, for, turning a corner,
they came full upon the inn, or hotel, as its sign proclaimed
it to be. Discontented male passengers were lounging about
the bar room; disconsolate female passengers sat, in bonnets
and shawls, in the parlor; and an unspeakable air of uneasiness
and discomfort pervaded the whole place.

“Our walk is over,” sighed Morton; “I wish it had a
more propitious ending. And now let me be your courier, or
do your commands in any other capacity in which I can
serve you.”

At eleven o'clock that night the train rolled into the station
house at Boston, some four hours behind its time.

“My father will certainly be here,” said Miss Leslie; but
her father was nowhere to be seen. Morton conducted her
to a carriage. Her trunks and his own had already been
placed upon it, when, by the lantern of one of the porters,
Morton descried the agitated colonel threading the crowd in
anxious search of his daughter. He had been waiting nervously
since seven o'clock, and, when the train came in, had
looked for her in every place but the right one. Morton
hastened to relieve his fears.

“What do you mean to do with yourself to-night?”
Leslie asked, as the carriage drove towards his house.

“Drive to my house in the country.”

“Your people will not expect you, and will be in bed
before you can get there. You had much better come home
with me.”

Morton was but too glad to accept the invitation.

Having bade good night to his host and his host's daughter,
he passed some hours in dreamy cogitation; then tried
to sleep; but sleep long kept aloof, the consciousness of being
under the same roof with Edith Leslie brought with it so
strange a sensation. But as delicate health, that grand
auxiliary of sentiment, was quite unknown to him, nature
prevailed in the end, and at seven the next morning, a servant's
knock wakened him from a deep sleep, a vision of
Mount Katahdin, and an imaginary moose hunt.