October Vagabonds Part 9

We could only ask our road, and the prosaic possibilities of lunch in the neighbourhood, and go on our way. Nor could I press that rose among the pages of my book--but, as I write, I wonder if it is still making sweet that desolate spot, and still studying irrelevant geography in the silence of the hills.

However, we did learn something about our young human rose at a farmhouse a mile or so farther on. While a motherly housewife prepared us some lunch, all a-bustle with expectancy of an imminent inroad of harvesters due to thresh the corn, and liable to eat all before them, a sprightly young daughter, who attended the same school, and whom we had told about our call at the schoolhouse, entertained us with girlish gossip of the neighbourhood. So we learned that our fancies had not been so far wrong, but that our beautiful young face had indeed come from as far as France, the orphaned child of a French sailor and an English mother, come over the seas for a home with a farmer uncle near by. Strange are the destinies of beautiful faces. All the way from France to Pine Creek! Poor little world-wandered rose!

And while we ate our lunch, the mother had a sad, beautiful story of a dead son and a mother's tears to tell us, too sacred to tell again. How many beautiful faces there are hidden about the world, and how many beautiful sad stories hidden in the broken hearts of mothers!

CHAPTER XXII

CONCERNING THE POPULAR TASTE IN SCENERY AND SOME HAPPY PEOPLE

We had somewhat scorned the idea of Watkins, as being one of Nature's show-places. In fact, Watkins Glen is, so to say, so nationally beautiful as latterly to have received a pension from the Government of the United States, which now undertakes the conservation of its fantastic chasms and waterfalls. Some one--I am inclined to think it was myself--once said that he never wished to go to Switzerland, because he feared that the Alps would be greasy with being climbed. I think it is clear what he meant. To one who loves Nature for himself, has his own discovering eyes for her multiform and many-mooded beauty, it is distasteful to have some excursionist effect of spectacular scenery labelled and thrust upon him with a showman's raptures; and, in revulsion from the hypocritical admiration of the vulgar, he turns to the less obvious and less melodramatic beauty of the natural world. The common eye can see Nature's beauty only in such melodramatic and sentimental forms--dizzy chasms, foaming waterfalls, snow-capped mountains and flagrant sunsets, just as it can realize Nature's wildness of heart only in a menagerie. That a squirrel or a meadow-lark, or even a guinea-pig, is just as wild as the wild beasts in a travelling circus is outside the comprehension of the vulgar, who really hunger after mere marvels, whatever they may be, and actually have no eyes for beauty at all.

Thus really sublime and grandiose effects of Nature are apt to lose their edge for us by over-popularization, as many of her scenes and moods have come to seem plat.i.tude from being over-painted. Niagara has suffered far more from the sentimental tourist and the landscape artist than from all the power-houses, and one has to make a strenuous effort of detachment from its excursionist a.s.sociations to appreciate its sublimity.

Thus Colin and I discussed, in a somewhat bored way, whether we should trouble to visit the famous Watkins Glen, as we sat over supper in a Watkins hotel, one of the few really comfortable and cordial hotels we met in our wanderings, and we smiled to think what the natives would have made of our conversation. Two professional lovers of beauty calmly discussing whether it was worth while walking half a mile to see one of the natural, and national, wonders of America! Why, last season more than half a million visitors kodaked it, and wrote their names on the face of the rocks! However, a great natural effect holds its own against no little vulgarization, and Watkins Glen soon made us forget the trippers and the concrete footpaths and iron railings of the United States government, in the fantasies of its weirdly channelled gorge and mysterious busy water.

Watkins itself, despite its name, is sufficiently favoured by Nature to make an easy annual living, situated as it is at the south end of the beautiful Seneca Lake, and at the head of a n.o.bly picturesque valley some twenty miles long, with a pretty river spreading out into flas.h.i.+ng reed-grown flats, sheer cliffs and minor waterfalls, here and there a vineyard on the hillside, or the vivid green of celery trenches in the dark loam of the hollows, all the way to--Elmira! The river and the trolley run side by side the whole charming way, and, as you near Elmira, you come upon latticed barns that waft you the fragrance of drying tobacco-leaves, suspended longitudinally for the wind to play through. On the morning of our leaving Watkins, we had been roused a little earlier than usual by mirthful sounds in the street beneath our hotel windows. Light-hearted voices joking each other floated up to us, and some one out of the gladness of his heart was executing a spirited shake-down on the sidewalk--at six o'clock of a misty October morning.

Looking out, we caught an endearing glimpse of the life of the most lovable of all professions. It was a theatrical company that had played a one-night stand at the local opera-house the evening before, and was now once more upon its wandering way. They had certainly been up till past midnight, but here they were, at six o'clock of the morning, merry as larks, gay as children, waiting for the Elmira trolley. Presently the car came clanging up, and alongside drew up a big float, containing baggage and rolls of scenery--all of which, to our astonishment, by some miracle of loading known only to baggagemen, was in a few moments stowed away into the waiting car. When the last property was s.h.i.+pped, the conductor rang his bell, by way of warning, and the whole group, like a flight of happy birds, climbed chattering into the car. "All aboard," called the conductor, once more ringing his bell, and off they went, leaving a trail of laughter in the morning air.

"'Beloved Vagabonds!'" said Colin, as we turned away, lonely, from our windows, with, I hardly know why, a suspicion of tears in our eyes.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SUSQUEHANNA

Here for a while a shadow seemed to fall over our trip. No doubt it was the shadow of the great town we were approaching. Not that we have anything against Elmira, though possibly its embattled reformatory, frowning from the hillside, contributed its gloomy a.s.sociations to our spirits. It was against towns in general that our gorge rose. Did our vagabond ethics necessitate our conscientiously tramping every foot of these "gritty paving-stones," we asked each other, as we entered upon a region of depressing suburbs, and we called a halt on the spot to discuss the point. The discussion was not long, and it was brought to a cheerful, demoralized end by the approach of the trolley, into which, regardless of right or wrong, we climbed with alacrity, not to alight till not only Elmira was left behind, but more weary suburbs, too, on the other side. That night, as old travellers phrase it, we lay at Waverly, on the frontier of Pennsylvania, a sad, dirty little town, grotesquely belying its romantic name, and only surpa.s.sed in squalor by the cla.s.sically named Athens--beware, reader, of American towns named out of cla.s.sical dictionaries! Here, however, our wanderings in the brick-and-mortar wilderness were to end, for by a long, romantic, old, covered bridge we crossed the Chemung River, and there once more, on the other side, was Nature, lovelier than ever, awaiting us. Not Dante, when he emerged from Hades and again beheld the stars, drew deeper breaths of escape than we, thus escaping from--Athens!

And soon we were to meet the Susquehanna--beautiful, broad-bosomed name, that has always haunted my imagination like the name of some beautiful savage princess--_La belle sauvage_. Susquehanna! What a southern opulence in the soft, seductive syllables! Yes, soon we were to meet the Susquehanna. Nor had we long to wait, and little did we suspect what our meeting with that beautiful river was to mean.

The Chemung, on whose east bank we were now walking, seemed a n.o.ble enough river, very broad and all the more picturesque for being shallow with the Summer drought; and its s.h.i.+ning reaches and wooded banks lifted up our hearts. She, like ourselves, was on her way to join the Susquehanna, a mile or two below, and we said to ourselves, that, beautiful as the land had been through which we had already pa.s.sed, we were now entering on a Nature of more heroic mould, mightier contours, and larger aspects. We were henceforth to walk in the company of great rivers: the Susquehanna, like some epic G.o.ddess, was to lead us to the Lehigh; the Blue Mountains were to bring us to the Delaware; and the uplands of Sullivan County were to bring us to--the lordly gates of the Hudson.

Our chests expanded as imagination luxuriated in the pictures it made.

Our walk was only just beginning.

CHAPTER XXIV

AND UNEXPECTEDLY THE LAST

We had seen the two great rivers sweep into each other's arms in a broad glory of sunlit water, meeting at the bosky end of a wooded promontory, and yes! there was the Susquehanna glittering far beneath--the beautiful name I had so often seen and wondered about, painted on the sides of giant freight-cars! Yes, there was actually the great legendary river. It was a very warm, almost sultry noonday, more like midsummer than mid-October, and the river was almost blinding in its flas.h.i.+ng beauty.

Loosening our knapsacks, we called a halt and, leaning over the railing guarding the precipitous bank, luxuriated in the visionary scene. So high was the bank, and so broad the river, that we seemed lifted up into s.p.a.ce, and the river, dreamily flowing beneath a gauze veil of heat-mist, seemed miles below us and drowsily unreal. Its course insh.o.r.e was dotted with boulders, in the shadows of which we could see long ghostly fishes lazily gliding, and a mud-turtle, with a trail of little ones, slowly moving from rock to rock.

Suddenly Colin put his hand to his head, and swayed toward me, as though he were about to faint.

"I don't know what's the matter, old man," he said, "but I think I had better sit down a minute." And he sank by the roadside.

Unlike himself, he had been complaining of fatigue, and had seemed out of sorts for a day or two, but we had thought nothing of it; and, after resting a few minutes, he announced himself ready for the road again, but he looked very pale and walked with evident weariness. As a roadside cottage came in sight, "I wonder if they could give us a cup of tea," he said; "that would fix me up, I'm sure." So we knocked, and the door was opened by a pathetic shadow of an old woman, very poor and thin and weary-looking, who, although, as we presently learned, she was at the moment suffering from the recent loss of one eye, made us welcome and busied herself about tea, with an unselfish kindness that touched our hearts, and made us reflect on the angelic goodness of human nature--sometimes.

She looked anxiously, mother-like, at Colin, and persuaded him to lie down and rest awhile in her little parlour, and, while he rested, she and I talked and she told me how she had come by her blind eye--an odd, harmless-sounding cause. She had been looking up into one of her apple-trees, one day, a few weeks ago, and an apple had fallen and struck her in the eye. Such innocent means does Nature sometimes use for her cruel accidents of disease and death! Just an apple falling from a tree,--and you are blind! A fly stings you, on a Summer day, and you die.

Colin, rested and refreshed, we once more started on our way, but, bravely as he strode on, there was no disguising it--my blithe, happy-hearted companion was ill. Of course we both a.s.sured the other that it could be nothing, but privately our hearts sank with a vague fear we did not speak. At length, after a weary four miles, we reached Towanda.

"I'm afraid," said poor Colin, "I can walk no more to-day. Perhaps a good night's rest will make me all right." We found an inn, and while Colin threw himself, wearied, on his bed, I went out, not telling him, and sought a doctor.

"And you've been walking with this temperature?" said the learned man, when he had seated himself at Colin's bedside and felt his wrist. "Have you been drinking much water as you went along? ... H'm--it's been a very dry Summer, you know."

And the words of our friend in the buggy came back to us with sickening emphasis. O those innocent-looking fairy wells and magic mirrors by the road-side! And I thought, too, of the poor old blinded woman and the falling apple. Was Nature really like that?

And then the wise man's verdict fell on our ears like a doom.

"Take my advice, and don't walk any more, but catch the night train for New York."

Poor Colin! But there was no appeal.

The end of our trip had come, suddenly, unreasonably, stupidly, like this.

"So we've got to be shot into New York like a package through a tube, after all!" said Colin. "No lordly gates of the Hudson for us! What a fool I feel, to be the one to spoil our trip like this!"

And the tears glistened in our eyes, as we pressed each other's hand in that dreary inn bedroom, with the shadow of we knew not what for Colin over us--for our comrades.h.i.+p had been very good, day by day, together on the open road.

Our train did not go till midnight, so we had a long melancholy evening before us; but the doctor had given Colin some mysterious potion containing rest, and presently, as I sat by his side in the gray twilight, he fell into a deep sleep--a sleep, alas! of fire and wandering talk. It was pitiful to hear him, poor fellow--living over again in dreams the road we had travelled, or making pictures of the road he still dreamed ahead of us. Never before had I realized how entirely his soul was the soul of a painter--all pictures and colour.

"O my G.o.d!" he would suddenly exclaim, "did you ever see such blue in your life!" and then again, evidently referring to some particularly attractive effect in the phantasmagoria of his fever, "it's no use--you must let me stop and have a shot to get that, before it goes."

One place that seemed particularly to haunt him was--Mauch Chunk. He had been there before, and, as we had walked along, had often talked enthusiastically of it. "Wait till we get to Mauch Chunk," he said; "then the real fun will begin." And now, over and over again, he kept making pictures of Mauch Chunk, till I could have cried.

"Dramatic black rocks," he would murmur, "water rus.h.i.+ng from the hills in every direction--clean-cut, vivid scenery--like theatres--the road runs by the side of a steel-blue river at the bottom of a chasm, and there is hardly room for it--the houses cling to the hillside like swallows' nests--here and there patches of fresh green gra.s.s gleam among the rocks, and, high up in the air on some dizzy ledge, there is a wild apple-tree in blossom--it is all black rocks and springs and moss and tumbling water--"

Then again his soul was evidently walking in the Blue Mountains, and several times he repeated a phrase of mine that had taken his fancy: "And now for the s.p.a.cious corridors of the Highlands, and the lordly gates of the Hudson."

Then he would suddenly half awaken and turn to me, realizing the truth, and say:

"O our beautiful journey--to end like this!" and fall asleep again.

And once more I fell to thinking of fairy springs by the roadside, and apples falling innocently from the bough, and how the beautiful journey we call life might some day suddenly end like this, with half the beautiful road untravelled--the rest sleep and perchance dreams.

But Colin did not die. He is once more painting out in the sun, and next year we plan to stand again on that very spot by the Susquehanna, and watch the shadows of great fishes gliding through the dreamy water, and the mud-turtle with her trail of little ones moving from rock to rock--and then we shall strike out on the road again, just where we left off that October afternoon; but the reader need not be afraid--we shall not write a book about it.