18. 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 superstitious 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 associations 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.”
“Nobody, I think, who has seen that eastern shore 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, association 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 God, 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 mass of superstitions.”
“Not more gross and vulgar than the spirit rapping superstition,
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 noble 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 goddess 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 passed 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?
