Nature's Serial Story Part 38

After a round of applause had subsided, Burt, whose eyes had been more demonstrative than his hands, said, "That's by Morris. We can see from Fort Putnam his old home under Mount Taurus."

"I know. He is the poet who entreated the woodman to 'spare that tree.'"

"Which the woodman will never do," Webb remarked, "unless compelled by law; nor even then, I fear."

"Oh, Webb!" cried Amy, "with what a thump you drop into prose!"

"I also advise an immediate descent of the mountain if we are to have any time at Fort Putnam," he added. "I'll walk on."

They were soon winding down the S's by which the road overcame the steep declivity. On reaching a plateau, before the final descent, they came across a wretched hovel, gray and storm-beaten, with scarcely strength to stand. Rags took the place of broken gla.s.s in the windows. A pig was rooting near the doorstep, on which stood a slatternly woman, regarding the party with dull curiosity.

"Talk about the elevating influence of mountain scenery," said Miss Hargrove; "there's a commentary on the theory."

"The theory's correct," persisted Burt. "Their height above tide-water and the amount of bad whiskey they consume keep our mountaineers elevated most of the time."

"Does Lumley live in a place like that?" Miss Hargrove asked.

"He did--in a worse one, if possible," Webb replied for Amy, who hesitated. "But you should see how it is changed. He now has a good vegetable garden fenced in, a rustic porch covered with American ivy, and--would you believe it?--an actual flower-bed. Within the hut there are two pictures on the wall, and the baby creeps on a carpeted floor.

Lumley says Amy is making a man of him."

"You forget to mention how much you have helped me," Amy added.

"Come, let us break up this mutual admiration society," said Burt. "I'm ready for lunch already, and Fort Putnam is miles away."

The road from the foot of the mountain descends gradually through wild, beautiful scenery to West Point. Cro' Nest rises abruptly on the left, and there is a wooded valley on the right, with mountains beyond. The trees overhung the road with a canopy of gold, emerald, and crimson foliage, and the sunlight came to the excursionists as through stained-gla.s.s windows. Taking a side street at the back of the military post, they soon reached a point over which frowned the ruins of the fort, and here they left their horses. After a brief climb to the northward they entered on an old road, gra.s.s-grown and leaf-carpeted, and soon pa.s.sed through the gaping sally-port, on either side of which cone-like cedars stood as sentinels. Within the fort Nature had been busy for a century softening and obliterating the work of man. Cedar trees--some of which were dying from age--grew everywhere, even on the crumbling ramparts. Except where ledges of the native rock cropped out, the ground was covered with a thick sward. Near the centre of the inclosure is the rocky basin. In it bubbles the spring at which the more temperate of the ancient garrison may have softened the asperities of their New England rum.

The most extensive ruins are seen by turning sharply to the left from the sally-port. Here, yawning like caverns, their entrances partially choked by the debris, are six casemates, or vaults. They were built of brick, covered with stone, and are eighteen feet deep and twelve wide, with an arched roof twelve feet high. On the level rampart above them were long, withered gra.s.s, the wild dwarf-rose, and waving golden-rod. The outer walls, ma.s.sy and crumbling, or half torn away by vandal hands, were built in angles, according to the engineering science of the Revolution, except on the west, where the high ramparts surmount a mural perpendicular precipice fifty feet in height. Inland, across the valley, the mountains were seen, rising like rounded billows in every direction, while from the north, east, and south the windings of the Hudson were visible for fifteen miles.

All but Amy had visited the spot before, and Burt explored the place with her while the rest prepared for lunch. She had asked Gertrude to accompany them, but the latter had sought refuge with Maggie, and at her side she proposed to remain. She scarcely dared trust herself with Burt, and as the day advanced he certainly permitted his eyes to express an interest that promised ill for his inexorable purpose of constancy.

It had become clear to Miss Hargrove that he was restrained by something that had occurred between him and Amy, and both her pride and her sense of truth to her friend decided her to withdraw as far as possible from his society, and to return to the city.

She and Burt vied with each other in gayety at lunch. When it was over they all grouped themselves in the shade of a clump of cedars, and looked away upon the wide prospect, Webb pointing out objects of past and present interest. Alf and Fred speedily grew restless and started off with the gun, Johnnie's head sank into her mother's lap, Miss Hargrove and Burt grew quiet and preoccupied, their eyes looking off into vacancy.

Webb was saying, "By one who had imagination how much more could be seen from this point than meets the eye! There, on the plain below us, would rise the magnificent rustic colonnade two hundred and twenty feet long and eighty feet wide, beneath which Was.h.i.+ngton gave the great banquet in honor of the birth of the Dauphin of France, and on the evening of the same day these hills blazed with musketry and rolled back the thunder of cannon with which the festivities of the evening were begun. Think of the 'Father of his Country' being there in flesh and blood, just as we are here! In the language of an old military journal, 'He carried down a dance of twenty couple on the green gra.s.s, with a graceful and dignified air, having Mrs. Knox for his partner.' In almost a direct line across the river you can see the Beverly Robinson house, from which Arnold carried on his correspondence with Andre. You can look into the window of the room to which, after hearing of the capture of Andre, he hastened from the breakfast-table. To this upper room he immediately summoned his wife, who had been the beautiful Margaret s.h.i.+ppen, you remember, and told her of his awful peril, then rushed away, leaving the poor, terror-stricken woman unconscious on the floor. Would you not like to look through the gla.s.s at the house where the tragedy occurred, Miss Hargrove?"

At the sound of her name the young girl started visibly, and Webb saw that there were tears in her eyes; but she complied without a word, and he so directed the gla.s.s that it covered the historic mansion.

"How full of sensibility she is!" thought innocent Webb, taking her quickly suppressed emotion as a tribute to his moving reminiscences.

"Oh, Webb, have done with your lugubrious ancient history!" cried Burt, springing up.

"It's time we were getting ready for a homeward move," said Maggie. "I'll go and pack the things."

"And I'll help you," added Miss Hargrove, hastily following her.

"Let me look at the house, too," said Amy, taking the gla.s.s; then added, after a moment: "Poor Margaret Arnold! It was indeed a tragedy, as you said, Webb--a sadder one than these old military preparations can suggest. In all his career of war and treachery Arnold never inflicted a more cruel wound."

"How much feeling Miss Hargrove showed!" Webb remarked, musingly.

"Yes," said Amy, quietly, "she was evidently feeling deeply." Her thought was, "I don't believe she heard a word that Webb said." Then, seeing that Burt was helping Maggie and Miss Hargrove, she added, "Please point out to me some other interesting places."

Webb, well pleased, talked on to a listener who did not give him her whole attention. She could not forget Gertrude's paleness, and her alternations from extreme gayety to a look of such deep sadness as to awaken not a little sympathetic curiosity. Amy loved her friend truly, and it did not seem strange to her that Miss Hargrove was deeply interested in Burt, since they had been much thrown together, and since she probably owed her life to him. Amy's resentment toward Burt had pa.s.sed away. She had found that her pride, merely, and not her heart, was wounded by his new pa.s.sion, and she already began to feel that she never could have any such regard for him as her friend was possibly cheris.h.i.+ng.

Therefore it was, perhaps, not unnatural that her tranquil regard should prove unsatisfying to Burt in contrast with the pa.s.sion of which Miss Hargrove was capable. She had seen his vain efforts to remain loyal, and had smiled at them, proposing to let matters take their course, and to give little aid in extricating him from his dilemma. But, if she had interpreted her friend's face aright, she could no longer stand aloof, an amused and slightly satirical spectator. If Burt deserved some punishment, Gertrude did not, and she was inclined to guess the cause of the latter's haste to return to the city.

It may thus be seen that Amy was fast losing her unsophisticated girlhood. While Burt's pa.s.sionate words had awakened no corresponding feeling, they had taught her that she was no longer a child, since she could inspire such words. Her intimacy with Miss Hargrove, and the latter's early confidences, had enlarged her ideas on some subjects. As the bud of a flower pa.s.ses slowly through long and apparently slow stages of immaturity and at last suddenly opens to the light, so she had reached that age when a little experience suggests a great deal, and the influences around her tended to develop certain thoughts very rapidly.

She saw that her friend had not been brought up in English seclusion.

Admirers by the score had flocked around her, and, as she had often said, she proposed to marry for love. "I have the name of being cold," she once told Amy, "but I know I can love as can few others, and I shall know it well when I do love, too." The truth was daily growing clearer to Amy that under our vivid American skies the grand pa.s.sion is not a fiction of romance or a quiet arrangement between the parties concerned.

Miss Hargrove had not misjudged herself. Her tropical nature, when once kindled, burned with no feeble, wavering flame. She had pa.s.sed the point of criticism of Burt. She loved him, and to her fond eyes he seemed more worthy of her love than any man she had ever before known. But she had not pa.s.sed beyond her sense of truth and duty, and the feeling came to her that she must go away at once and engage in that most pathetic of all struggles that fall to woman's lot. As the conviction grew clear on this bright October day, she felt that her heart was bleeding internally.

Tears would come into her eyes at the dreary prospect. Her former brilliant society life now looked as does an opera-house in the morning, when the gilding and tinsel that flashed and sparkled the evening before are seen to be dull and tarnished. Burt had appeared to especial advantage in his mountain home. He excelled in all manly sports. His tall, fine figure and unconscious, easy manner were as full of grace as deficient in conventionality, and she thought with disgust of many of her former admirers, who were nothing if not stylish after the arbitrary mode of the hour. At the same time he had proved that he could be at home in a drawing-room on the simple ground of good-breeding, and not because he had been run through fas.h.i.+on's latest mold. The grand scenery around her suggested the manhood that kindled her imagination--a manhood strong, fearless, and not degenerated from that st.u.r.dy age which had made these scenes historic.

By the time they were ready to start homeward the southern side of Cro'

Nest was in deep blue shadow. They bowled along rapidly till they came to the steep ascent, and then the boys and the young men sprang out. "Would you like to walk, Gertrude?" Amy asked, for she was bent on throwing her friend and Burt together during the witching twilight that was coming on apace.

"I fear I am too tired, unless the load is heavy," she replied.

"Oh, no, indeed," said Webb. "It does not take long to reach the top of the mountain on this side, and then it's chiefly down hill the rest of the way."

Amy, who had been sitting with Webb and Johnnie as before, said to Miss Hargrove, "Won't you step across the seats and keep me company?"

She complied, but not willingly. She was so utterly unhappy that she wished to be left to herself as far as possible. In her realization of a loss that seemed immeasurable, she was a little resentful toward Amy, feeling that she had been more frank and confidential than her friend. If Amy had claims on Burt, why had she not spoken of them? why had she permitted her for whom she professed such strong friends.h.i.+p to drift almost wholly unwarned upon so sad a fate? and why was she now clearly trying to bring together Burt and the one to whom even he felt that he had no right to speak in more than a friendly manner? While she was making such immense sacrifices to be true, she felt that Amy was maintaining an unfair reticence, if not actually beguiling herself and Burt into a display of weakness for which they would be condemned--or, at least, he would be, and love identifies itself with its object. These thoughts, having once been admitted, grew upon her mind rapidly, for it is hard to suffer through another and maintain a gentle charity.

Therefore she was silent when she took her seat by Amy, and when the latter gave her a look that was like a caress, she did not return it.

"You are tired, Gertrude," Amy began gently. "Indeed, you look ill. You must stay with me to-night, and I'll watch over you like Sairy Gamp."

So far from responding to Amy's playful and friendly words, Miss Hargrove said, hastily,

"Oh, no, I had better go right on home. I don't feel very well, and shall be better at home; and I must begin to get ready to-morrow for my return to the city."

Amy would not be repulsed, but, putting her arm around her friend, she looked into her eyes, and asked:

"Why are you so eager to return to New York? Are you tiring of your country friends? You certainly told me that you expected to stay till November."

"Fred must go back to school to-morrow," said Gertrude, in a constrained voice, "and I do not think it is well to leave him alone in the city house."

"You are withdrawing your confidence from me," said Amy, sadly.

"Have you ever truly given me yours?" was the low, impetuous response.

"No. If you had, I should not be the unhappy girl I am-to-night. Well, since you wish to know the whole truth you shall. You said you could trust me implicitly, and I promised to deserve your trust. If you had said to me that Burt was bound to you when I told you that I was heart-whole and fancy-free, I should have been on my guard. Is it natural that I should be indifferent to the man who risked his life to save mine?

Why have you left me so long in his society without a hint of warning?

But I shall keep my word. I shall not try to s.n.a.t.c.h happiness from another."

Johnnie's tuneful little voice was piping a song, and the rumble of the wheels over a stony road prevented Maggie, on the last seat, from hearing anything.

The clasp of Amy's arm tightened. "Now you _shall_ stay with me to-night," she said. "I cannot explain here and now. See, Burt has turned, and is coming toward us. I pledge you my word he can never be to me more than a brother. I do not love him except as a brother, and never have, and you can s.n.a.t.c.h no happiness from me, except by treating me with distrust and going away."

"Oh, Amy," began Miss Hargrove, in tones and with a look that gave evidence of the chaotic bewilderment of her mind.

"Hus.h.!.+ We are not very lonely, thank you, Mr. Burt. You look, as far as I can see you through the dusk, as if you were commiserating us as poor forlorn creatures, but we have some resources within ourselves."