AMATO’S COURTSHIP
The summer was passing along and the hot days began their painful visitations to the self-indulgent residents of Carrara. They fled from the heat with varying speed, and, strangely, few fled to Europe. The fashion of emptying New York, for the benefit of Europe, had changed into a domiciliary fever for summer homes in the remote and enticing counties of New England. The young, to see the world, as the saying is, made their pilgrimage abroad, but even with them the delights of the noble homes perched upon the Yankee hills, or embosomed in their green vales, proved effectively more attractive, and kept them in America. Many of the descendants of those who in previous centuries had exiled themselves to European cities, had deserted their foreign houses, and encamped again upon the domestic soil, bringing with them accumulations of art and a somewhat unamericanized habit of thought, expression and manners.
Living in the United States had indeed, in the year of grace, 2000, reached among the rich much of that exquisite comfort, which had distinguished it in Europe, enhanced by the many luxurious pleasures, and expensive delicacies created by American ingenuity, wealth, and fastidiousness.
The Lorimers were almost the last to leave the city. They had a fine estate on the hills overlooking the sweet valley of Stowe, at the foot of Mount Mansfield in Vermont, a place occupied a hundred years before by the Tabers of New York. The wandering and comfortable house hung on the edge of Cobb’s Hill, a broad large spacious villa on the brow, looking directly against Mansfield, and over the wonderfully varied and beautiful intervale of farms and woodland, hardly in any way changed from its present aspect. The atmospheric charm was scarcely less delightful than the rich abundant picture of physical features, with the Hogback ranges to the east, and the sculptured colossus of Mansfield in front, to the west.
Helen had expected some further word from the Mayor, and his utter silence wounded, and abused her. She was left with no explanation of his sudden change of will, no word of that reversal which she, in her heart, believed was accompanied in him with pain and suffering. It seemed to her so strange and indefinable, that she was willing to attribute it to some psychological eccentricity, to a kind of mental diversion, that she perhaps could not begin to understand, but which she, by guessing a little wildly, saw, with certain nervous and imaginative temperaments—and she knew the Mayor belonged to these—might be an extravagant accompaniment (and outside of their control) of their emotional make-up.
And yet——those words of love which sounded so sweet to her, which seemed so sincere and fetched from an inward need, past doubt or misgivings, how was it possible that they could be gainsaid? To so quick an intelligence as Helen Lorimer’s the thought had not failed to come, that her uncle might have interfered; that he might have wounded her lover by some repulse,—and yet, though she saw this possibility, by an interior conflicting pride, and desert too, she would not mention it to Theodore Lorimer. Nor did that plotting guardian say anything to her. He noticed the absence of the Mayor, the abstraction and nervous reticence of his niece, and he safely concluded that the best way out of this dilemma was for him, until directly appealed to, to let things smooth their way as they would, and the end would justify the means. For it was now clear to him that the young protegée of the Cardinal more nearly met his wishes and expectations for his niece, and he felt also, in his floundering and stubborn way that Amato appeared at exactly the right moment to administer consolation.
He felt that there was a necessity for that, and, without much intuition in the matter—rejecting indeed any appeals to think about it,—Amato’s various gifts, his cultured sympathy, his adroit and incessant courtesies, his even gravity, not unmixed also with mirth, and above all his splendid physical perfection, would, he felt, increasingly banish the Mayor from Helen’s mind, all the more as that obliging individual kept out of sight.
And though his dull perceptions cruelly deceived him at many points, yet as nature is so made in us all, there was a practical and real efficacy in the companionship of the young man for Miss Lorimer; and, for the aspirations of the young man himself, her inward craving for help—which at such crises grows very strong with vivacious and intellectual natures——were favorable. And so it came about that while the Mayor remained hid and silent, suffering his great hurt and sickened in heart, the judicious spirits ruling over human affairs advanced Amato’s suit.
And in the Mayor’s behalf there had been adjustments. A curious succession of turbulence had startled the state. There had been strikes and mass meetings of denunciation, on the part of tax-payers, and the risings of a new party and an unexpected recrudescence of Socialism involving a great number of discontented or unemployed people, while beneath this again was the slowly seething leaven of the anarchistic revolt, nurtured and spread by The Beehive.
The Mayor’s precocious mind grappled with these problems, his spirits were brightened by just such conflicts, and he felt the renovating ardor of combat. He saw—as Mr. Briggs already had seen, but with a different spirit—the insurmountable tendencies of the times approaching a broad cleavage in society between the well-to-do, the generally contented, and a mass of workers, to whom indeed the world did not deny the usual concomitants of satisfied existence, but who, brought in sight of an overwhelming luxury and undreamed of self-indulgence, experienced the pangs of envy, had begun to question the reasonableness of the present social _status_. And joined with these were a large body of men, holding the franchise, who were inoperative and unproductive, largely weak and sensual, whose natures craved immense satisfactions, to whom wealth had but one purpose, just such satisfaction and who would welcome any change that might bring within their uses the boundless aptitudes of money.
The aristocratic leaders saw the same thing, and some among them, as Helen Lorimer, attempted to stem its progress by assimilating the vast army of workmen, artisans, small shop keepers, merchants, peddlers and street sellers into a group of admiring and enlightened dependents upon the richer classes. It was meant that they should realize the practical importance of the rich element in society and becoming attached to it by ties of gratitude surround it with a measurable force of protection, in case of its political attack.
With Miss Lorimer this movement was divested of selfish motives entirely, and she worked under the inspiration of a true idealistic altruism, conjoined with certain theoretical conceptions of a graded and classified social state. Other aristocratic leaders actively entered the service of the state, and proposed to use to its uttermost the advantages of the franchise, assuming the adherence of the conservative middle classes. This latter constituted the third class—a class to which the Mayor belonged or at least from which he had sprung—and which, by its instincts and the promptings of its cool common sense and unimaginative acceptance of the substantial limitations of life resented interference with its satisfied pursuit of money, and its pleasant enjoyment of customary and legitimate pleasures.
The Mayor had not lost his poise of judgment on account of his disappointment, and the gnawing sense of humiliation, at the hands of Mr. Lorimer, but, while he estimated the real value of a rich society justly, and felt that the aesthetic and cultured aspects of the city won an immense support from the rich classes, conscious of their educational relations to the rest of society—as indeed the aristocratic nuclei of the twenty-first century were themselves—yet he relied upon the stubborn fixity of the _bourgeoise_ for the stability of the state. To this latter element he addressed his attentions, and he employed all the strategy and skill of a practised politician, as well as an astute lawyer, and an eloquent advocate, to strengthen his administration among them. He very narrowly watched the proceedings of the legislature, and analyzed pitilessly all their measures, exposing those which had the socialistic taint, and often went to the extreme precaution of justifying his action in public addresses. This was unusual but it proved immensely popular.
In the meanwhile all eyes were fixed upon the coming trial—set for the beginning of November—of the incendiaries. It was generally understood that there had been new evidence discovered, that would liberate the accused and convicted men; intimations prevailed that the Mayor himself had assisted in procuring this evidence, and that he had been convinced of its existence by the famous philanthropist, humanitarian, and scholar, Miss Helen Lorimer, herself a representative aristocrat. Of course, this action displeased many of the richer class, especially those who were themselves implicated in the treacherous plot to destroy Longtinsky, by creating for him an opportunity for mischief.
The conservatives among the middle class were about equally divided as to its merits, and sagacity, but the socialists were immensely pleased, and the more candid did not conceal their approval of the Mayor. For the instant the Mayor attracted the attention of the whole city in a very supreme way, and to a heart and mind responding eagerly to the incentives of ambition, this popularity and intellectual domination gave him satisfaction. For the moment, and happily, these distractions served the purpose of repressing the poetic, emotional, and dreaming proclivities of the Mayor, though again too often he felt their intolerable cravings, and his smarting heart kept him sleepless and despairing.
The repulse of the Mayor by Mr. Lorimer had defeated another scheme, the murderous intrigue of Longtinsky and Poniatowsky. Longtinsky had calculated that Miss Lorimer at the closing in of the foundations of the new Settlement House, the plans of which had been published, enclosing the novel idea of the Museum, would attempt some public ceremony, and distinguish the occasion with an address. It was then that he hoped to precipitate a riot, and in the melee actually attempt her life, while at the same time a concerted rising might add to the confusion, and—it was his deliberate conviction—lead to an overthrow of the government.
This Clodian madness had been temporarily delayed by the indisposition of Helen Lorimer herself, who ordered the continuance of the building, but desisted from the especial corner-stone services which had been at first contemplated. She longed to escape the city, and the recurrent pictures of the gentle valley of Stowe, the morning and evening face of Mansfield with its strong lineaments like a sermon in philosophy and—unlike most sermons—made poetic by cloud and sunshine, mist, rain and starlight, these, rising in her memory, filled her with an insatiable longing; everything was hastened, and at the beginning of August the Lorimers had set out for Stowe.
Young Amato had been well received at the Lorimers. It could not have been otherwise; his introduction was influential, his own talent prepossessing, his manner charming, and the essential earnestness and a kind of dignified naïveté in the man, delightful. Helen acknowledged his admirable address, and his style of liberal Catholicism pleased her. A Catholic’s religion is an actual part of his or her life; it is not placed outside of the daily transactions of business or pleasure; in the devout it holds a lucid sway over the motions of the heart and mind, and its admonitions neither discourage happiness nor check speculation. Amato and Helen discussed together very often the project of the Pope’s coming to America, and for the instant this plan, looming larger and larger to her mind, suggesting—it may be foolishly and vainly—immense moral consequences, became a veritable comfort. She wrought it in her plans of social betterment, into her designs for the religious awakening of the state, into her dream of an established formulary for society, and with true Catholic ambition—often incontinent and fatalistic—a reorganized Catholic realm in the New World, free and triumphant, bringing to earth new treasures of devotion and character, swam temptingly before her mind.
And with all these blissful imaginings Amato was associated. Nor was the association insincere. The same enthusiasm kindled in Amato’s heart, and, with him, it mingled with his love. And both desires added to one another their especial quality, which improved each. Amato’s love became idealized, his religion gathered from the earth the intensity and colorings of passion.
It was the last evening before the Lorimers, Helen and her mother—Theodore Lorimer had already left the city—went away, that Helen and Amato sat upon the tower’s roof, where the Mayor scarcely three weeks past, had received her surrender. Helen Lorimer was pale and silent. She remembered the very accents, and the voice and words returned, as if syllabled by haunting spirits. How dismal this desertion seemed. She stood up and moved about the little circle along the edge of the parapet, and looked over upon the lights beneath. The fire-flies sprang hither and thither in the trees and gloom, shouts came up from the Kingsbridge road, and out over the Hudson, somewhere beyond the dark wall of the Palisades, a shot was heard. She swayed perceptibly, leaning on the stone railing and Amato caught her tenderly.
In an instant the weakness passed, and she thanked him. His love sprang to his lips. In the half darkness, for the young moon, trembling in a vaporous sky, afforded only a transient light, she appeared to him more beautiful than ever, and his own burning heart beat impetuously. It seemed an enormity of carelessness not now to say one little word! Hitherto he had been utterly impassive, in speech at least, and his restraint had done him service in the estimation of the proud girl. She had found him helpful, necessary, and companionable. And he wondered—was this faintness in Helen Lorimer, some feminine tell-tale yielding? He drew back almost giddy with the sharp joy of the intoxicating thought. Ah! he knew so little about women; that clouded past, its isolation, amid books and students with a perverted intention! It thrilled him with wonder that he had escaped it; he knew now, past peradventure, that if he had surrendered to the Cardinal’s design, and this woman had crossed his path, the war within him would have slain him. Did she wish him to speak?
“Are you ill Miss Lorimer? Perhaps a little wine—?”
“Oh no,” she answered, “it is the heat of the day. It is high time we were away!”
“Where is Stowe?” he queried, as they sat down upon the stone bench, while over their heads whisking strips of light, from some searchlight in the harbor, flitted right and left, and made her more visible to him. Her hands were clasped to her throat and tears were in her eyes.
“Oh I beg you Miss Lorimer, tell me if I can help you. To see you unhappy hurts me so deeply,” he whispered.
“Ah Stowe,” she looked away, and her hands fell, and she turned to him with a smile that made her tears more touching to the young student; “Stowe is the loveliest spot! How much you will enjoy it; at least I hope so for your own good reputation as an admirer of beauty. From our porch a wide bowl of farmland and fields sweeps to the foot of the western mountain—a singular rocky summit that seems a reclined head staring immovably into the sky,—and when the sunset colors flame and burn above it and the bowl of fields and farmhouses, begins to grow purple and russet, in the fading day, and behind in the east, almost as if above our house a reflected sunset repeats the west with tenderer and chaster tints—then it is glorious. Not that exactly either—then the place makes you strong and happy,” and the poor woman bowed her head upon the stone and wept.
The worried embarrassed youth knelt at her side; he could have seized her, held her face to his own with gentle and unyielding hands, and kissed away the drops of her misery, that made his heart ache, and yet brought to him—so his thought ran—assurance of her fondness for him. The handsome man had no foolish vanity, no spoiled self-esteem, and yet he was not unconscious of some merit in a woman’s eye, not altogether unwise as to his power to entertain and help. His visits to the mansion had been encouraged, he had talked with Miss Lorimer upon so many things, which mutually interested them, had become so familiar, even in the short three weeks, or slightly more, of their acquaintance, with some of her fondest hopes, that he felt himself somehow established as her admirer, and he had met no one else—as he recalled—that might dispute that title.
Even as he knelt there, not touching her, indeed with no thought of such a profanation, how odd it was that there suddenly ran in his head Malvolio’s stupid conceit, and the words of the confessed fool:
“Why every thing adheres together, that no drachm of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe circumstance—What can be said? Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.”
Amato sprang to his feet. He felt disgraced with this fulsome self flattery; could it be possible that he followed this new master Love with so ignoble a confidence?
“Pardon me Miss Lorimer,” he said, “if you will let me bring you something; perhaps—”
“No thank you—a little nerves, that’s all. You do not know American women well Mr. Amato. Our cruel climate makes us less stalwart and invariable than your European ladies.”
“It amuses me Miss Lorimer;” Amato cheerfully replied, “that you assume I know anything about European ladies, and the disadvantageous comparison you make, seems to me unfair. Are not ladies much the same everywhere?—I mean as regards sensibility?”
“How very unflattering!” Miss Lorimer was smiling again, and she rose too; “You should not make the mistake to regard us as all cast in the same mould. Would you care to be confounded with all your fellow men by an indistinguishable sameness?”
“Don’t be so hard with me. The question was whether American ladies are more susceptible—more sensitive, I mean—than European ladies. I have rather been led to think that while American women are more sympathetic, they are quite as self-possessed.”
“Well we won’t quarrel now about ladies and that life-long difficulty of telling just how much we are superior to our European sisters. You know we intend to keep you at Stowe, and I shall put to the test your strength and patience. I must be out and walk; and your assistance will be much insisted on.
“I shall be surprised if you are not disappointed with our small mountain. Don’t look for a Matterhorn and glaciers. Our pretty country side is hardly dramatic, and the people are not costumed guides, nor are there any titled tourists.”
“Why Miss Lorimer,” answered Amato laughing heartily himself, “one would think that you take me for a foreigner. Have I not been all my life in this country? Is it not mine? Please remember that I was born here. Europe is more strange and unknown to me than it is to you.”
“Well there is the continental air about you somehow. After all it is the blood rather than the atmosphere that makes race. When we say blood what do you mean really?”
“Everything that goes to the making of this body and with it the mind. It cannot be the red corpuscles alone. Blood means temperament and temperament means after all just so much nerve and muscle and flesh and bone, and because all flesh and bone is the same the differences come in the putting of it all together, as you make different patterns with the same thread.”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Lorimer, “it’s something like a difference in air. The chemist tells us the air all over the globe, top and bottom airs, yields to his analysis the same proportion of oxygen and nitrogen, and yet how to our finer sense they vary, and how one air kills, and another revives us,
_like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets Stealing and giving odour_.”
“Heredity stamps differences in us, and occupation or custom strengthens them,” said Amato.
“Science, if this is science,” answered Helen, “explains very little. You know Amato,” the young man started with this gentle familiarity, “I scorn science. In a bad sense it is the great deodorizer; it expels the perfume of every thing. In its grand role of making things plain, it makes them common. It labels, and classifies, and sticking names on all creation converts this mysterious and lovely world into a huge encyclopædic catalogue. Oh, it is an old quarrel with me;” she bent her head once more, for the thought of her serious arguments with the Mayor returned and grieved her.
“It is pretty certain,” said Amato, “that science utterly fails to explain anything fundamentally. Its Laws, so much boasted of, are superficial rules which never go the smallest fraction’s depth into the meaning and nature of things. We are less frightened than once, but we are not the least bit less amazed.”
“That suits me, that suits me,” cried Miss Lorimer, “Ah Mr. Amato for you and me, is it not permitted through our Faith to feel
_that the spirit Clothed in its changeless purity, may know How soonest to accomplish the great end For which it has its being, and may taste That peace which in the end all life will share?_”
“Well! the vision grows in these later days, and I believe that Science must be thanked for much. Lucretius said that as boys fear many things in the dark so men in broad daylight have been afraid of the future, and their lives, but that reason will dispel these foolish fears as the sun or the lamp the darkness that scared the boys. It is so.
“We must be duly thankful for the emancipation of this day from mere stupidity.”
Miss Lorimer watched young Amato with an increased interest. She certainly felt that she was admitting his friendship to a more valued place in her esteem.
“Oh yes—stupidity is always hateful, when it blots and disfigures thinking. But science in another way is stupid too. Its style of knowing it all, its preposterous agnosticism, the patronizing air of its professors, its denuded common senseness, the literal manner of its assertions, and the blank stare it offers to all poetic meanings—its absorption in names and guesses!
“And indeed what of it? If we think we know the way the world was made are we any better off? We rejoice in some interesting propositions and some men derive a few worldly honors for their sagacity. It employs time and research and indefatigable brains, but suppose it weakens our quality of aspiration, of religious hopes, of contented living, of wondering joy in the mysteries of things, are we the gainers?”
“I believe that science as a whole saturates our present life quite favorably” said Amato, leaning with arms crossed against the parapet and looking towards the southern city. “It advances along so many lines of sane living, and marvellous conveniences! It is not only that we have perhaps a new way of thinking—which you and I may deplore—but with these new ways comes in a flood of inventions which make living safer, longer, more delightful, and give us, for instance, that miraculous light that to-night seems almost a message from Heaven.
“The old latin and grecian philosophers guessed and wondered, and we are told learning was much a littering of thought with systems of whys and wherefores. But nothing certain. To-day if we are as far off as ever from knowing the _Altogether_, perfectly, we are infinitely nearer seeing the complexity of things, and the adjustments, the checks, the rearrangements, the vast economy, the deliberate purpose, the balance of creation, and so, without guessing, we have an absolute gain in knowledge, and, like visitors to some beautiful garden are IN it, and no longer OUTSIDE of it.”
“But all this increase of knowing does not change your Faith?” queried Helen with animation.
“No,” said Amato “it does not. The habit of belief has been fixed in me. But somehow I think that the area of faith grows less and less. Lake a vanishing surface in a flood it is inundated on all sides. The rock of resistance is our Church, and to that as to a very citadel of safety, those, to whom religion is life, must flee.”
“_They must_,” rejoined Miss Lorimer. “And Amato” again the young man resisted the impulse to seize the speaker’s hand, and confess his soul to her, there in the quiet night; it almost seemed to him as if she paused, waiting for him to take the offered chance—she continued; “if this vanishing is a fact, is it not the part of wisdom, is it not a supreme duty, to concentrate the army of believers here in this country, where Catholicism wears the cleanest face, is the most pure and radiant, lives up, I think, to the highest standards, and nourishes a brighter flame of devotion?”
“I know what you refer to Miss—Lorimer,” said Amato “the bringing of the Pope to this country. Well are we not both agreed about this? The Cardinal told me but the other day that the plan broadens, and grows, that the fathers of the Church are turning their eyes to this country, and believe that in the slow subjection of the Church in Europe, its losing hold upon influential thought, that the Pope should come to America.
“The Cardinal says it would mean a new chapter in the Church’s history—he calls it the Church’s DEMOCRATIZATION, for the Pope in America would simply be a ruling Bishop, though yet the reigning semblance of Christ on earth. Instead of a throned monarch he would here become a citizen, and, while screened within the decent guards of privacy, he would put on the expression of our common equality before the Law. In this country, says the Cardinal, must come the final apotheosis of the Church, from these shores it must rise into the opening firmament of the WORLD TO COME.”
“As if” continued Helen, seizing his thought and finishing it, “the Beatific Vision should culminate on these shores, before
_The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve._”
Helen Lorimer’s face glowed with a strange beauty. Amato could see in the half light—he was so near to her—that her eyes half filled with tears, and the long dreaming gaze taught him the religious depth of her nature, and, as she rose, and offered him her hand, and she came close to him her loveliness shone in his eyes like some transfiguration. She said; “Yes we all shall work for this. What a triumvirate of plotters we shall make. Ah!—Well to-morrow even at about this same hour, you shall see the HEAD at Mansfield watching the skies, waiting like some bound and wearied Prometheus for the day-star of perfect Truth to set him,—and _all_ free.”
“Miss Lorimer,” it was Amato speaking, and as he spoke he slowly dropped her hand, “There are fetters besides Ignorance, and they are bonds which I would not exchange for Liberty.”
Helen Lorimer had passed to the top of the stairs, leading from the tower, and she turned to him, and on her face there rested he thought a smile, as if she understood and wished him well. And now it came to his mind, with an alacrity he wondered at, that through all the time he had enjoyed her acquaintance she had been so grave, at times a great vividness of speech, a rapid interest in things, almost as if seeking a distraction—but always grave, perhaps sad—and now—this keen smile as if joy came to her! It made his own heart leap, and the blushes of delight flamed his cheeks. He felt his pulses quicken, and something choking his throat stopped his voice. He almost ran to the top of the stairway,—but she had vanished. He heard her calling from below:
“Come! Come! We must start early to-morrow. Good-night, good-night!”
The next day Julieta, Helen, and Amato, took the White Mountain Express for Vermont. The party attracted some attention at the splendid Grand Central Depot, for Miss Lorimer was known, her mother was yet a most beautiful lady, and the handsome beaming face of Amato set tongues wagging, and did not fail to draw the eyes of ingenuous maidens.
The trip was a new one for Amato, and he noted with studious interest the changing rushing picture, which indeed Helen had commanded him to observe, saying: “See! if we are not almost as good-looking as you in Europe,” a reproach to which the young man vigorously protested. But he obeyed devoutly, and let nothing escape him.
From New Haven the country grew increasingly interesting; the wide fluviatile valley of the Connecticut River, with here and there separated and towering meridional ridges of Triassic sandstone, was very striking, while the testimony of enormous erosion and decay was seen in the clay pits, all the way to Hartford, and beyond to Springfield, and further. From Springfield they shot, on an arrow’s wing, past Holyoke, and Mt. Tom, with its lonely surmounting hotel (still maintained), past Northfield, with Moody’s ancient camp, and then to Bellows Falls, which makes such a bright picture!
From Brattleboro, Windsor, to White River Junction, the charm of the Connecticut was always with them; hundreds of the loveliest scenes were encountered, and the varying phases of the river kept his attention brimming over with pleasure. Charming homes appeared from time to time, opposite pleasing or noble stretches of the river, and Tobacco was a noticeable product, growing with great luxuriance in the river farms.
From White River Junction they travelled to Waterbury. This ride through a long turning and returning valley, quite closely hedged with hills, lanes, and old beaches, was also delightful. The day grew gray and rainy, and much of the beauty of this ride through the lonely cold vales, with the compact little villages was lost, but the wild and frugal life of the people, the keen set look of the country, and the ever present strolling or rapid river were well seen. It was the same as to-day, for that prevalent desertion of the country for the city still prevailed at the beginning of the twenty-first century, indeed the cities grew with startling ease, and the country put on a new forestation, which renewed its ancient woods, and brought back, with strange quickness, its wild animals. One thing alone counteracted this tendency, and that was the increasing pride of the rich in the country. They scoured it over for beautiful sites, and revelled in giving to the broad acres they bought, a ravishing pastoral charm. It was not unnaturally allied to that aristocratic effort of establishment which we have referred to, and which Helen Lorimer so much delighted in. She said herself; “if the rich, the cultured, those who know the arts of living, will root themselves in our country-sides, and spread beauty and elegance of rural grace about, benefitting little communities with the application of their wealth, ennobling natural views and places with expressive architecture, weaving everywhere, like scarfs up hill and down dale, good roads, that will throughout make living safer, easier, and more delightful—if they will do this, they would justify their existence, and they would surely become better Americans. They would truly love their country.”
The movement had grown and distended itself, actuated by a new sudden contagion of enthusiasm and the growth of emulation. It had made whole sections of New England, and parts of the rural New York counties marvels of loveliness. It ransomed from commonplaceness many spots which needed only the touch of an artificial embellishment to become pretty. It created the most fascinating surprises, where ingeniously designed villas on hill top and spur, in valley and by lake side, gave to the landscape a borrowed European air while at a thousand points the nestling colonial homes, like the most delicate visions, sprang to view with positive enchantment.
The most fortunate rivalry had arisen between states, and the rich entered upon the most profitable sort—for the public’s benefit—of competition. They strove to make their states attractive, to give them an unusual beauty, and in this friendly and delightful contest added new incentives to all the occupants of the state to support them. Schools of Artifice—as they were called—came into being, each having for its aim the development of a spirit of aesthetic ambition, and the peculiar use of the features of the state, so as to produce the best picturesque effects. So there had grown up a stronger demand for beauty, and it began an almost despotic sway in the living of men. It influenced the most humble and chastened the most vulgar. In the cities it assumed such grandiose forms as the monumental splendor of Carrara in New York.
It had touched the South, where it was indeed most needed, and the old time slovenliness and dreary hopelessness of board and brick, flatness and indifference, succumbed to a sprightlier fancy. The South had become rich also, and this allowed its owners to resume the old time princeliness of the Virginia colonial style, and so through the devious changing beauty of the Appalachians, from the Potomac to Tallulah, art swept its redeeming hand, and blent its best effects with nature’s unharmed loveliness.
Mr. Theodore Lorimer had everything in readiness, and being something of a manager, besides an almost acrimonious critic of conveniences, the house and grounds of the Lorimers at Stowe were in perfect shape, and the place wore its most fascinating guise.
Mr. Lorimer had suffered, though a selfish arrogant and narrow man, some qualms of self-reproach over his treatment of the Mayor, and his own obstinate concealment of their interview. He really feared his niece, and any explanation to her of his conduct would he knew precipitate a difficult situation. He avoided that. He realized Amato’s helpful influence, and while his dull and sluggish spirit lamented, in a torpid way, Miss Lorimer’s evident suffering, he believed too much in the remedial and—as he thought—easy application of the young man’s gifts.
But his gnawing sense of self-dissatisfaction—an unusual feeling with Mr. Lorimer—sought relief in his own stricter efforts to please and divert her. So he had taken great pains to have all things at the Stowe villa in apple-pie order, and long before the family had expected to leave New York, he had come up to the place, and made the elaborate preparation in flower beds, trimmed outlooks, and cleaned and painted rooms, with a few added pictures, a few new rugs, some jardinieres, a set of new curtains, a dainty new setting of a little veranda tea room, polished floors, some exquisite china for the bed rooms, and a pergola with seats, where the sitters could see the wide vale, dimpled with farm houses, and the peaked ridge of Mount Mansfield. All these things betokened the man’s tenderness for his niece, and the injurious sense of his own perfidy towards her.
He had exerted himself to be agreeable to Amato, and he showed his personal pleasure in the young man’s visits. His encouragement had been pleasantly assisted by Julieta’s address and winning welcome. Amato had been careful not to overstep the bounds of an admiring attention. He had been reticent and simply friendly, but in a hundred ways his love expressed itself less obviously and, because Miss Lorimer herself had shown the restraint of some pre-occupation, he allowed himself only the formal privileges of a friend. His conduct was adroit and delicate in its union of respect and the warmer qualities of devotion. All this had its sensible effect upon Miss Lorimer, yet she remembered the Mayor with an almost unshaken attachment. The first harsh wound had healed, and her pride—perhaps not so truculent and preservative as with less gentle and less distinguished characters—had come to the rescue, as it always does with women who possess it, as a gift from the armory of nature’s prudent kindnesses. In this expectant and refined relation of hope and preparation, of withdrawal and insistence, of sympathy and regret, the matter stood when the Lorimers came to Stowe.
At length an auspicious day late in August dawned, after a throng of thunder showers had swept over the country side, when the ascent of Mount Mansfield could be made, and the clear lucent atmosphere enjoyed, for a perfect view from its rugged summit.
The party which left the villa consisted of Julieta, Helen Lorimer, Theodore Lorimer and Amato. Mr. Lorimer and Amato had at first stipulated to go on horseback, but were overruled, and the party left Stowe in a large carry-all in which Mr. Lorimer stowed away some viands and liquids which he said “would do well enough to help out the resources of the Summit House.”
The carriage bowled along the hard road, over the barricaded bridge above the little stream that crosses the valley, and on across the smiling vale, while Mr. Lorimer detailed the past history of the place, and pointed out the expanding lineaments of the mountain. Stowe, he told them, a hundred and more years ago had been a great resort with a handsome hotel, burned down somewhere about 1895, how it had been deserted and sidetracked by more ambitious places, how a Mrs. Taber had come to the valley enchanted with its beauty, and how her talented son, whose life had been actually prolonged in these salubrious airs, had designed the house the Lorimers then occupied,—so that the house was something more than a hundred years old,—how that the returning sense of the delicious beauty of the spot had brought back to it its old time prestige, and that now to the left and right of them were farms owned by rich proprietors whose houses he pointed out with much assiduity, as they could be discerned rising among groves of trees, or were momentarily seen through openings in the woods.
At last they began, under the very shadow of the range, the long ascent and steadily rose, with many glimpses backwards over the country, the village of Stowe—like a toy hamlet on the horizon—and the far eastern range of Worcester. Finally after many turns they came directly under the lee of the high rocky cliff, which is the nose of the great face of rock, which fancy has formed from the regular upraised pinnacles along this steep and elevated ridge. A last long pull and they were at the doors of the Summit House.
Some of the day yet remained and after a slight refreshment Helen and Amato—the work involved seemed too strenuous for Mr. Lorimer, and Julieta absolutely refused—started up the Nose in a stiff gale that made mutual assistance imperative. Helen likened it to climbing the Pyramids, for the schistose rock was hewed out in terraced steps. From the whistling peak of the Nose they could see the mimic configuration that, in the distance, as seen from the valley looked so much like a countenance. First to the south, the Forehead, and then this beetling perpendicular mass of rock forming the Nose, then the long Upper Lip northward, the Lower Lip—both made by projections of rock somewhat superficially broken up into irregular heaps of fragments—and finally the high upthrown Chin, and the receding throat with an Adam’s Apple, made by a conical elevation.
The day was shutting down, a flying scud of mist speeding over the Chin, and the outlook was discouraging for the morrow. The excited visitors did indeed return to the level of the Summit House, and then, in a rising gale, struggle on to the towering eminence of the Chin, but the clouds closed down, and the dragging tails of mist flung their moist wreaths around them, and effectually drew the curtains of concealment all about them, and so they hurried back over the tilting and pebble strewn upland path.
The next day opened ominously, and Helen, who was awake early to catch the first glimpse of the sun rising over the Worcester hills, was disappointed. She met Amato wandering over the mountain top. They both stopped a little while to talk, commenting on the strangeness of the silence.
“Just silence itself imparts a feeling of grandeur to places,” said Amato, “The banishment of all sound affects one strangely, as if we were no longer in the world.”
“I think it is not the silence alone that does so, but that lift from the world that the mountain gives,” answered Helen.
“How unusual the voice sounds too here, as if its lightest tone was megaphoned into a shout.”
“There is a great echo up here further north, where the sounds are redoubled. It is weird enough when a cornet is played softly and the slowly emitted notes chase each other, with others rising to the call, as if a troop of invisible spirits sprang tiptoe from their hidings, and flung themselves upon the man-made note to destroy it, or else, one might think that they were freed voices, liberated by the human call, to rush on forever and forever round the world.”
“You remember Wordsworth’s beautiful lines?” queried Amato.
“_And they would shout Across the watery vale, and shout again, Responsive to his call—with quivering peals, And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild Of mirth and jocund din._”
“Hardly so, though that is indeed most enchanting. Something more idyllic and classic came to my mind about them. As if these echoes were silenced voices waiting in the crannies and crevices of the rocks for their resurrection, an aerial life to be given them by the human call they were fitted to answer. How harshly science robs us of all such fantasies!”
“And yet science delivers to us too a delightful image,” said Amato “for it permits us to imagine the invisible waves of sound dashed upon these hard rocks to be returned in reduplicated billows just as we watch the refluent crest thrown back from the headland on the sea.”
Helen had risen from the stone boulder, from which she scanned the circling fog wreaths around, and as she turned towards the Summit House a splinter of light seemed to fall at her feet;
“The sun” she cried, “it will break away! We shall have our ramble!” They returned to the House for the breakfast, which the consideration of their host and the watchfulness of Mr. Lorimer had made inviting. The table was set with early asters picked up lower on the mountain side, and scrambling stems of the Bitter-Sweet with the orange cups and red coral arils twined about the centre of the table. The temper of the place was happy and exhilarating, and the company partook of the infectious gayety which seemed to be a part of the pure and sparkling air. For the morning, after the preliminary period of distrust and uncertainty, had cleared, the mist rolled up into clouds, the blue sky appeared, and the direct sunshine struck sharply down, and from the windows the whole ridge, from the Nose to the Chin, appeared in its unbroken extent.
Mr. Theodore Lorimer and Julieta were both in a happy vein, and the isolation of the summit, inwrought with the singular power of mountain tops to elicit a healthy hunger, made the morning meal delightful.
“I almost feel as if we ought to hire this Summit House, indemnify the landlord for losses through our monopoly, and make a stay here,” said Mr. Lorimer, “it seems so interesting and unusual, and it is so far away from worry.”
“It feels almost as if we were off the earth in a balloon,” said Julieta.
“Perhaps loose on a whirling Meteor, would suit the case better,” said Amato laughing.
“Yes,” responded Helen with animation. “We are. Just a bit of a world all to ourselves, and near enough to the old one to still see it.”
“A satellite so close to the earth as that Helen will surely return, we shall not be able to keep off long,” said Mr. Lorimer, looking curiously at Amato and his niece, as they sat together on one side of the table.
“But if we do,” continued Amato with a smile on his bright and handsome face, “the thump we make when we come back will furnish the newspapers with some terrible headlines, not to speak of the astonishment Miss Lorimer’s admirers among the reporters will experience to find her on the whisking asteroid.”
“If we should strike New York the Mayor would have no more problems to consider,” said Julieta, and the speech was unfortunate. Even Theodore Lorimer sent a glance of mute protest and rebuke to his sister-in-law. Julieta meant it most innocently; she was one who had realized Helen’s love for the Mayor, and she had noticed with astonishment his absence and Helen’s pre-occupation. But she rather favored Mr. Lorimer’s view, and she had thought the affair—as the phrase goes—was a mistake. Then she was attracted by Amato who had won all by his frankness, and ardor, and gentle reserve, and then—well she had been forgetful.
Amato noticed the sudden shudder that ran over Miss Lorimer, her pained eyes as she raised them to her mother, and in an instant he too discovered the truth. It was an unwelcome discovery, and it may have caused him some anxiety, but he was full of pity, and, with a gay air, the melody of his voice penetrating her ears, and with his eyes turned upon her with admiration, Helen heard him say:
“No, our little ball of rocks and stones and trees with its little population will keep its own course,
_Far into silent regions blue and pale_
and we shall all become very happy in each other’s company, and finally by some pleasant accident land lightly on some lovely sphere, inhabited by wondrous creatures who will give us their services and show us the beauties of their planet, and make us forget the cruel world, by their fairness and goodness and powers. Would you like that Miss Lorimer?”
The image did please Helen, as if, in some such way, she might enter Heaven, and she smiled, but the next moment she looked grave again, and said:
“No—there can be no escape—just now; no running away from our duties. There is so much to be done! Can you think Amato, of any greater recreancy than leaving the Museum?”
“Or our incomes,” muttered Mr. Lorimer.
Julieta felt that she had been inadvertent; it pained her deeply, and she turned their attention to the streaming sunlight: “Show Mr. Amato the Smugglers’ Notch Helen. The day is really beautiful. We might arrange for a luncheon near the Lips where those caves are, while you explore the Chin. The views to-day will be glorious! The Lake and the Adirondacks will be superb!”
“Yes, let us do that. All day in the air, and the splendid pictures—!” exclaimed Helen.
So it was fixed that Helen and Amato should go on ahead to the Chin, while Julieta and Mr. Lorimer would follow more leisurely and prepare with the Host’s assistance a luncheon at the elevations called the Lips, just above two natural caverns that pierced the mountain side lower down. In a few moments Helen and Amato had started on their way over the stony foot-path, broken by rough projections of rock, and showing everywhere small patches of white pebbles dislodged or broken from the thickly crowded veins of quartz, which seamed the micaceous schist. The companions could not restrain their delight, as on the right hand and on the left, their eyes traced the lowlands to the distant mountains, the purpling Adirondacks in the west, the hazy White Mountains in the far east, with the Hogback range just beyond the vale of Stowe. And Lake Champlain!—how incomparable it appeared, rifted with islands. The light flooding this vast domain was broken by shifting shadows of clouds, and the effects of the sheer deep escarpments of rock were bold and strong. The abruptness of the verticality on either side of their tortuous path brought the eyes of the climbers quickly to the lowlands, giving a delightful visual sensation as if suspended above the caparisoned farmlands, the woods, the sinuous waters; and ever and anon lifting their gaze to the Adirondacks they saw the serrated peaks disappearing in a golden rush of sun-haze.
Amato was busy in his mind with the suggestion of the breakfast table, and he wondered as he helped the beautiful woman at his side over the rougher passage of the path, whether it was wise of him to think of speaking his heart to her. He felt the intangible obstacle, and his confidence sank a little as he recalled the mental strength of his rival—a sort of quality that would appeal well to Miss Lorimer. But then many things had encouraged him, and the apparent absence of the Mayor hinted at some disagreement which had come about before he entered the scene, and which had perhaps severed all intercourse between the Mayor and Helen Lorimer. That some rankling hurt remained behind was natural, but his own devotion might justly now, as at an appointed time, rise to allay that pain.
Miss Lorimer was debonair and happy, her spirits rose with the broadening and divine day. She accepted Amato’s assistance with laughing reproaches at his humiliating doubts over her own strength. These had been especially offered, and thankfully used, when, for an instant, they diverted their way down the rocks at the Lips to look into the crevice that was called a cave, and Amato felt his own heart beat faster as he pressed her hands or his face, by the accidents of the scramble, came near her own. They hurried on over the lichen crusted stones, slipping gaily, and feeling the intoxication of the alpine air.
It was bliss to Amato, it certainly was pleasure to Helen Lorimer. They had reached the extreme end of the Chin, and gazed down a precipitous descent to a lower level, where rested a small lake, while beyond rose again another eminence—the Adam’s Apple of this titanic visage. Below them a forest covered amphitheatrical bowl denoted the Smugglers’ Notch, where trees covered the whole lower land, in unbroken expanses—spruce, birch, beech, and oak—and now were tossing their arms in leafy confusion as some nether current of air rushed through them. It almost seemed as if they raised their multitudinous arms in salutation to the high perched humans who wonderingly watched their violent agitation.
When a cloud swept across the sun, and the pinnacled cumuli were beginning to float upward from the horizons, then the sylvan solitude beneath them became dark, and with its foreground of the chased mountain side, and the rough uninhabited rocks, put on an ominous and romantic air. It suggested night prowling expeditions, and hidden dens of the old smugglers. Amato asked about them, and why the name was used for the place. And Helen told him about the early days of the Embargo under Jefferson, when commerce with foreign countries—France and England—was prohibited, in retaliation for the depredations made by both countries upon American ships; and then how business languished, and the desperate citizens crossed the borders along the Canada line, fetching there their products, and how they used the Great Lakes and the long waterway and the wooded shores of Lake Champlain, with its many islands for retreat and harborage.
It was a new and pleasant story for her listener, to whom the woods, they then looked down upon, became silvered in the moonlight, and threaded by dark figures of the border smugglers in their nocturnal trades.
Helen told him that the products of the Champlain region were lumber, pork, brandy, and potash. These found a ready market at Albany and the thriving towns of Fort Edward and Whitehall. But when the Embargo came, the merchants turned to Canada; out of the lumber they made rafts, on the rafts they crowded their liquor, potash, and pork, hoisted the sails, and with the drifting wind floated down over the whole lake, across the line to Canada. Windmill Bay was a favorite place of shipment; sometimes twenty-five rafts went out, taking advantage of the darkness and the south wind. Wagons traversed the old roads to Canada, and these were sometimes closed by the militia; the rafts were stopped or seized, but the trade kept on. A revenue cutter came up the Onion river, southward toward Burlington, and fired on the smugglers but in the encounters the militia were usually unsuccessful. If a raft was captured, the captors were almost sure to be surprised and the raft cut out a few nights later. One night forty men, armed and painted as Indians, surrounded some troops near the boundary, and frightened them into a profound sleep, while a raft with thirty sails and measuring ten acres in surface, floated slowly by into Canadian waters.
“In this notch below us,” said Helen, “the traders hid their stores, and gathered in the nights to begin their smuggling march to Canada, with wheels tied up in rags, and muskets on their shoulders, or else they slipped away from here to the Champlain shores to embark upon the tardy rafts.”
The thought of this early time, with its wildness and aboriginal tinct, pleased Amato. He mused a little over it, and then, almost unbidden by any preparatory thought, he uttered the deep motive that ruled him.
“Perhaps Miss Lorimer,” he began “I can choose no better place than this to tell you”—Helen Lorimer was looking at him with a startled half puzzled stare—“that I love you from the bottom of my heart. I loved you the first day I ever saw you. I need not conceal it, for I am not going to be a nuisance. Let me be your friend at least—but—I shall not long be content with that alone—it would be impossible if my case is hopeless—I will fight my battle somewhere else. Does this grieve you?”
Helen was looking strangely away from him and something drawn and sad filled her face; the eyes were downcast, and she had pressed back her hair from her cheeks, whither it had blown, and in this disarray with a steamer cap in her other hand she became to Amato more bewitching and irresistible. He could not stop.
“Oh please Miss Lorimer, let me stay—let me hope. Such speeches as this you have heard before, but perhaps they have not been conjoined with so much patience—for I will wait, and wait—wait to prove to you how uttermost is my love—wait till you know yourself that my love can be unselfish, strange as that sounds. Think well of me and keep me here.”
“Ah—I do think well of you Rudolph”—Amato leaned towards her, he felt like falling at her feet; most grotesquely he thought that if she had asked him to jump down the ragged splintered cliff at their side he would have, then and there, done it, _for her sake_. His name from her lips sounded like music; he would prize that name henceforth, because SHE had spoken it.
“—but” she was speaking, “you must not speak of this again—not now—not till I say you may. I will try you. I have had my—pains:” she caught her flushed cheeks in her two hands, as if she would crush back to its hiding the tell-tale blood, “—but you are indeed my friend—you can help me. Yes, Rudolph,” again that sweet familiarity that seemed to close round the young man like a sensible embrace, “I do think well of you—”
And then a queer thing happened. It was one of those sympathetic responses in Nature that appear almost as if an intelligent compositor—or better a composer—set upon the physical face of things the seal of a spiritual and poetic beauty. A twittering cloud of birds surrounded them; they were the chaste little black-poll warblers, beating up from the forest, and, with an impulse of friendliness fearlessly settling on the angular rocks, so that they spread a confused surface of movement about them, and then—even as the two friends forgot their surprise—they rose without sound into the sky like a puff of smoke and went southward.
“The winter comes,” said Helen; she rose and began the slight descent from the cairn-like pinnacle whose escarpment on the north ended in the little tarn. In an instant Amato was at her side, helping her, and when he released her hand upon the flat path homewards he raised it and kissed it, and it was not withdrawn.
The lunch at the Lips was a great success. Amato was in ecstasies. Mr. Lorimer and his sister observed that Helen had brightened, and Helen herself launched out into brave railleries over the foolish exuberance of the feast. It was a handsome and incongruous array. A table cloth pulled over a flat rock made the table, and here garnished with pickles and olives, curries and salted nuts, was spread delicate cuts of cold beef and chicken, with interspersed salads, and potted lobster, with fresh rolls and crisp biscuit, iced tea and lemonade, and then, as a climax of the culinary bravado, the waiters disappeared into the rocks and emerged with an ice-cream freezer and a basket of champagne.
“Oh!” exclaimed Helen, “this is outrageous, monstrous, Uncle! It is pure desecration. Convention against nature! The Oreads will become our besetting Furies. Dew, roots, herbs, and wild honey should form our repast—and all this omnivorous hunger at the very mouth of the sleeping Giant!”
“Let us hope,” said Mr. Lorimer, “that the dear fellow will not wake. He might prefer us to this gastronomic medley. As for honey, here Helen, is some of the best—straight from Condits—and I think the dew, roots, and herbs can be dispensed with; you will certainly forget all about them when you have tasted this dry Mouquin.”
“And I,” spoke up Amato with mock gravity, “will take care of the Oreads; if they venture to disturb us I will exorcise them with a fine latin anathema that the Fathers recommended for Devils.”
It was a festival moment, and the savagery of the isolated ridge blended with the comic contradiction of a Fifth Avenue banquet amused and entertained them all. To Amato it was quite clear that good food—the best—acquired a new charm when the farthest removed from its origins. But their hopes for a continuance of the bright day were doomed to disappointment; the sky became filmed with clouds, that darkened into rain, and beating a retreat the merry company followed by the little retinue of caterers, scampered back to the refuge at the hotel.
Amato did wonders in entertainment. There was an old piano hammered out of all semblance to a musical instrument by the ambitious banging of innumerable strollers, lady performers and sledge fingered bucolics, “who played by ear,” in the parlor of the hotel; and from this Amato extorted enough becoming sound for the accompaniment of his really excellent singing. So the day passed. To Amato it had been one of victory, and when the night shut them in, and after a few games, all had retired, Amato alone sprang out upon the porch and walked up and down in the intervals of the showers, smoking, and thinking, and planning. Life had never seemed so desirable, so promising, and after midnight a stray fox, engaged in a reconnaissance of the chicken fold, stopped a moment outside in the wet boulders, to notice the perambulating spark that ceaselessly moved to and fro against the dripping-clapboards of the Summit House. To Amato his mission of love had become deepened with a new meaning; he cherished it more than ever, since he knew it might mean a _Mission of Mercy_ too.