The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Charles Dudley Warner


The evening was dark, and the navigation in the tortuous channels
sometimes difficult, and might have been dangerous but for the
lighthouses. The steamer crept along in the shadows of the low islands,
making frequent landings, and never long out of sight of the
illuminations of hotels and cottages. Possibly by reason of these
illuminations this passage has more variety by night than by day. There
was certainly a fascination about this alternating brilliancy and gloom.
On nearly every island there was at least a cottage, and on the larger
islands were great hotels, camp-meeting establishments, and houses and
tents for the entertainment of thousands of people. Late as it was in
the season, most of the temporary villages and solitary lodges were
illuminated; colored lamps were set about the grounds, Chinese lanterns
hung in the evergreens, and on half a dozen lines radiating from the
belfry of the hotel to the ground, while all the windows blazed and
scintillated. Occasionally as the steamer passed these places of
irrepressible gayety rockets were let off, Bengal-lights were burned, and
once a cannon attempted to speak the joy of the sojourners. It was like
a continued Fourth of July, and King's heart burned within him with
national pride. Even Mrs. Farquhar had to admit that it was a fairy
spectacle. During the months of July and August this broad river, with
its fantastic islands, is at night simply a highway of glory. The
worldlings and the camp-meeting gatherings vie with each other in the
display of colored lights and fireworks. And such places as the Thousand
Islands Park, Wellesley and Wesley parks, and so on, twinkling with lamps
and rosy with pyrotechnics, like sections of the sky dropped upon the
earth, create in the mind of the steamer pilgrim an indescribable earthly
and heavenly excitement. He does not look upon these displays as
advertisements of rival resorts, but as generous contributions to the
hilarity of the world.

It is, indeed, a marvelous spectacle, this view for thirty or forty
miles, and the simple traveler begins to realize what American enterprise
is when it lays itself out for pleasure. These miles and miles of
cottages, hotels, parks, and camp-meetings are the creation of only a few
years, and probably can scarcely be paralleled elsewhere in the world for
rapidity of growth. But the strongest impression the traveler has is of
the public spirit of these summer sojourners, speculators, and religious
enthusiasts. No man lives to himself alone, or builds his cottage for
his selfish gratification. He makes fantastic carpentry, and paints and
decorates and illuminates and shows fireworks, for the genuine sake of
display. One marvels that a person should come here for rest and
pleasure in a spirit of such devotion to the public weal, and devote
himself night after night for months to illuminating his house and
lighting up his island, and tearing open the sky with rockets and shaking
the air with powder explosions, in order that the river may be
continually en fete.

At half-past eight the steamer rounded into view of the hotels and
cottages at Alexandria Bay, and the enchanting scene drew all the
passengers to the deck.

The Thousand Islands Hotel, and the Crossman House, where our party found
excellent accommodations, were blazing and sparkling like the spectacular
palaces in an opera scene. Rows of colored lamps were set thickly along
the shore, and disposed everywhere among the rocks on which the Crossman
House stands; lights glistened from all the islands, from a thousand
row-boats, and in all the windows. It was very like Venice, seen from
the lagoon, when the Italians make a gala-night.

If Alexandria Bay was less enchanting as a spectacle by daylight, it was
still exceedingly lovely and picturesque; islands and bays and winding
waterways could not be better combined for beauty, and the structures
that taste or ambition has raised on the islands or rocky points are well
enough in keeping with the general holiday aspect. One of the prettiest
of these cottages is the Bonnicastle of the late Dr. Holland, whose
spirit more or less pervades this region. It is charmingly situated on a
projecting point of gray rocks veined with color, enlivened by touches of
scarlet bushes and brilliant flowers planted in little spots of soil,
contrasting with the evergreen shrubs. It commands a varied and
delicious prospect, and has an air of repose and peace.

I am sorry to say that while Forbes and Miss Lamont floated, so to speak,
in all this beauty, like the light-hearted revelers they were, King was
scarcely in a mood to enjoy it. It seemed to him fictitious and a little
forced. There was no message for him at the Crossman House. His
restlessness and absentmindedness could not escape the observation of
Mrs. Farquhar, and as the poor fellow sadly needed a confidante, she was
soon in possession of his story.

"I hate slang," she said, when he had painted the situation black enough
to suit Mrs. Bartlett Glow even, "and I will not give my sex away, but I
know something of feminine doubtings and subterfuges, and I give you my
judgment that Irene is just fretting herself to death, and praying that
you may have the spirit to ride rough-shod over her scruples. Yes, it is
just as true in this prosaic time as it ever was, that women like to be
carried off by violence. In their secret hearts, whatever they may say,
they like to see a knight batter down the tower and put all the garrison
except themselves to the sword. I know that I ought to be on Mrs. Glow's
side. It is the sensible side, the prudent side; but I do admire
recklessness in love. Probably you'll be uncomfortable, perhaps unhappy
--you are certain to be if you marry to please society and not yourself
--but better a thousand times one wild rush of real passion, of
self-forgetting love, than an age of stupid, conventional affection
approved by your aunt. Oh, these calculating young people!" Mrs.
Farquhar's voice trembled and her eyes flashed. "I tell you, my friend,
life is not worth living in a conventional stagnation. You see in
society how nature revenges itself when its instincts are repressed."

Mrs. Farquhar turned away, and King saw that her eyes were full of tears.
She stood a moment looking away over the sparkling water to the soft
islands on the hazy horizon. Was she thinking of her own marriage? Death
had years ago dissolved it, and were these tears, not those of mourning,
but for the great experience possible in life, so seldom realized, missed
forever? Before King could frame, in the tumult of his own thoughts, any
reply, she turned towards him again, with her usual smile, half of
badinage and half of tenderness, and said:

"Come, this is enough of tragedy for one day; let us go on the Island
Wanderer, with the other excursionists, among the isles of the blest."

The little steamer had already its load, and presently was under way,
puffing and coughing, on its usual afternoon trip among the islands. The
passengers were silent, and appeared to take the matter seriously--a
sort of linen-duster congregation, of the class who figure in the homely
dialect poems of the Northern bards, Mrs. Farquhar said. They were
chiefly interested in knowing the names of the successful people who had
built these fantastic dwellings, and who lived on illuminations. Their
curiosity was easily gratified, for in most cases the owners had painted
their names, and sometimes their places of residence, in staring white
letters on conspicuous rocks. There was also exhibited, for the benefit
of invalids, by means of the same white paint, here and there the name of
a medicine that is a household word in this patent-right generation. So
the little steamer sailed, comforted by these remedies, through the
strait of Safe Nervine, round the bluff of Safe Tonic, into the open bay
of Safe Liver Cure. It was a healing voyage, and one in which enterprise
was so allied with beauty that no utilitarian philosopher could raise a
question as to the market value of the latter.

The voyage continued as far as Gananoque, in Canada, where the passengers
went ashore, and wandered about in a disconsolate way to see nothing.
King said, however, that he was more interested in the place than in any
other he had seen, because there was nothing interesting in it; it was
absolutely without character, or a single peculiarity either of Canada or
of the United States. Indeed, this north shore seemed to all the party
rather bleak even in summertime, and the quality of the sunshine thin.

It was, of course, a delightful sail, abounding in charming views, up
"lost channels," through vistas of gleaming water overdrooped by tender
foliage, and now and then great stretches of sea, and always islands,
islands.

"Too many islands too much alike," at length exclaimed Mrs. Farquhar,
"and too many tasteless cottages and temporary camping structures."

The performance is, indeed, better than the prospectus. For there are
not merely the poetical Thousand Islands; by actual count there are
sixteen hundred and ninety-two. The artist and Miss Lamont were trying
to sing a fine song they discovered in the Traveler's Guide, inspired
perhaps by that sentimental ditty, "The Isles of Greece, the Isles of
Greece," beginning,

"O Thousand Isles! O Thousand Isles!"

It seemed to King that a poem might be constructed more in accordance
with the facts and with the scientific spirit of the age. Something like
this:

"O Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two Isles!
O Islands 1692!
Where the fisher spreads his wiles,
And the muskallonge goes through!
Forever the cottager gilds the same
With nightly pyrotechnic flame;
And it's O the Isles!
The 1692!"

Aside from the pyrotechnics, the chief occupations of this place are
boating and fishing. Boats abound--row-boats, sail-boats, and
steam-launches for excursion parties. The river consequently presents an
animated appearance in the season, and the prettiest effects are produced
by the white sails dipping about among the green islands. The favorite
boat is a canoe with a small sail stepped forward, which is steered
without centre-board or rudder, merely by a change of position in the
boat of the man who holds the sheet. While the fishermen are here, it
would seem that the long, snaky pickerel is the chief game pursued and
caught. But this is not the case when the fishermen return home, for
then it appears that they have been dealing mainly with muskallonge, and
with bass by the way. No other part of the country originates so many
excellent fish stories as the Sixteen Hundred and Ninety-two Islands, and
King had heard so many of them that he suspected there must be fish in
these waters. That afternoon, when they returned from Gananoque he
accosted an old fisherman who sat in his boat at the wharf awaiting a
customer.

"I suppose there is fishing here in the season?"

The man glanced up, but deigned no reply to such impertinence.

"Could you take us where we would be likely to get any muskallonge?"

"Likely?" asked the man. "What do you suppose I am here for?"

"I beg your pardon. I'm a stranger here. I'd like to try my hand at a
muskallonge. About how do they run here as to size?"

"Well," said the fisherman, relenting a little, "that depends upon who
takes you out. If you want a little sport, I can take you to it. They
are running pretty well this season, or were a week ago."

"Is it too late?"

"Well, they are scarcer than they were, unless you know where to go. I
call forty pounds light for a muskallonge; fifty to seventy is about my
figure. If you ain't used to this kind of fishing, and go with me, you'd
better tie yourself in the boat. They are a powerful fish. You see that
little island yonder? A muskallonge dragged me in this boat four times
round that island one day, and just as I thought I was tiring him out he
jumped clean over the island, and I had to cut the line."

King thought he had heard something like this before, and he engaged the
man for the next day. That evening was the last of the grand
illuminations for the season, and our party went out in the Crossman
steam-launch to see it. Although some of the cottages were vacated, and
the display was not so extensive as in August, it was still marvelously
beautiful, and the night voyage around the illuminated islands was
something long to be remembered.

There were endless devices of colored lamps and lanterns, figures of
crosses, crowns, the Seal of Solomon, and the most strange effects
produced on foliage and in the water by red and green and purple fires.
It was a night of enchantment, and the hotel and its grounds on the dark
background of the night were like the stately pleasure-house in "Kubla
Khan."

But the season was drawing to an end. The hotels, which could not find
room for the throngs on Saturday night, say, were nearly empty on Monday,
so easy are pleasure-seekers frightened away by a touch of cold,
forgetting that in such a resort the most enjoyable part of the year
comes with the mellow autumn days. That night at ten o'clock the band
was scraping away in the deserted parlor, with not another person in
attendance, without a single listener. Miss Lamont happened to peep
through the window-blinds from the piazza and discover this residuum of
gayety. The band itself was half asleep, but by sheer force of habit it
kept on, the fiddlers drawing the perfunctory bows, and the melancholy
clarionet men breathing their expressive sighs. It was a dismal sight.
The next morning the band had vanished.

The morning was lowering, and a steady rain soon set in for the day. No
fishing, no boating; nothing but drop, drop, and the reminiscence of past
pleasure. Mist enveloped the islands and shut out the view. Even the
spirits of Mrs. Farquhar were not proof against this, and she tried to
amuse herself by reconstructing the season out of the specimens of guests
who remained, who were for the most part young ladies who had duty
written on their faces, and were addicted to spectacles.

"It could not have been," she thought, "ultrafashionable or madly gay. I
think the good people come here; those who are willing to illuminate."

"Oh, there is a fast enough life at some of the hotels in the summer,"
said the artist.

"Very likely. Still, if I were recruiting for schoolmarms, I should come
here. I like it thoroughly, and mean to be here earlier next year. The
scenery is enchanting, and I quite enjoy being with 'Proverbial
Philosophy' people."

Late in the gloomy afternoon King went down to the office, and the clerk
handed him a letter. He took it eagerly, but his countenance fell when
he saw that it bore a New York postmark, and had been forwarded from
Richfield. It was not from Irene. He put it in his pocket and went
moodily to his room. He was in no mood to read a homily from his uncle.

Ten minutes after, he burst into Forbes's room with the open letter in
his hand.

"See here, old fellow, I'm off to the Profile House. Can you get ready?"

"Get ready? Why, you can't go anywhere tonight."

"Yes I can. The proprietor says he will send us across to Redwood to
catch the night train for Ogdensburg."

"But how about the Lachine Rapids? You have been talking about those
rapids for two months. I thought that was what we came here for."

"Do you want to run right into the smallpox at Montreal?"

"Oh, I don't mind. I never take anything of that sort."

"But don't you see that it isn't safe for the Lamonts and Mrs. Farquhar
to go there?"

"I suppose not; I never thought of that. You have dragged me all over
the continent, and I didn't suppose there was any way of escaping the
rapids. But what is the row now? Has Irene telegraphed you that she has
got over her chill?"

"Read that letter."

Forbes took the sheet and read:

"NEW YORK, September 2, 1885.

"MY DEAR STANHOPE,--We came back to town yesterday, and I find a
considerable arrears of business demanding my attention. A suit has been
brought against the Lavalle Iron Company, of which I have been the
attorney for some years, for the possession of an important part of its
territory, and I must send somebody to Georgia before the end of this
month to look up witnesses and get ready for the defense. If you are
through your junketing by that time, it will be an admirable opportunity
for you to learn the practical details of the business . . . . Perhaps
it may quicken your ardor in the matter if I communicate to you another
fact. Penelope wrote me from Richfield, in a sort of panic, that she
feared you had compromised your whole future by a rash engagement with a
young lady from Cyrusville, Ohio--a Miss Benson-and she asked me to use
my influence with you. I replied to her that I thought that, in the
language of the street, you had compromised your future, if that were
true, for about a hundred cents on the dollar. I have had business
relations with Mr. Benson for twenty years. He is the principal owner in
the Lavalle Iron Mine, and he is one of the most sensible, sound, and
upright men of my acquaintance. He comes of a good old New England
stock, and if his daughter has the qualities of her father and I hear
that she has been exceedingly well educated besides she is not a bad
match even for a Knickerbocker.

"Hoping that you will be able to report at the office before the end of
the month,

"I am affectionately yours,
"SCHUYLER BREVOORT."

"Well, that's all right," said the artist, after a pause. "I suppose the
world might go on if you spend another night in this hotel. But if you
must go, I'll bring on the women and the baggage when navigation opens in
the morning."




XVI

WHITE MOUNTAINS, LENNOX

The White Mountains are as high as ever, as fine in sharp outline against
the sky, as savage, as tawny; no other mountains in the world of their
height so well keep, on acquaintance, the respect of mankind. There is a
quality of refinement in their granite robustness; their desolate, bare
heights and sky-scraping ridges are rosy in the dawn and violet at
sunset, and their profound green gulfs are still mysterious. Powerful as
man is, and pushing, he cannot wholly vulgarize them. He can reduce the
valleys and the show "freaks" of nature to his own moral level, but the
vast bulks and the summits remain for the most part haughty and pure.

Yet undeniably something of the romance of adventure in a visit to the
White Hills is wanting, now that the railways penetrate every valley, and
all the physical obstacles of the journey are removed. One can never
again feel the thrill that he experienced when, after a weary all-day
jolting in the stage-coach, or plodding hour after hour on foot, he
suddenly came in view of a majestic granite peak. Never again by the new
rail can he have the sensation that he enjoyed in the ascent of Mount
Washington by the old bridlepath from Crawford's, when, climbing out of
the woods and advancing upon that marvelous backbone of rock, the whole
world opened upon his awed vision, and the pyramid of the summit stood up
in majesty against the sky. Nothing, indeed, is valuable that is easily
obtained. This modern experiment of putting us through the world--the
world of literature, experience, and travel--at excursion rates is of
doubtful expediency.

I cannot but think that the White Mountains are cheapened a little by the
facilities of travel and the multiplication of excellent places of
entertainment. If scenery were a sentient thing, it might feel indignant
at being vulgarly stared at, overrun and trampled on, by a horde of
tourists who chiefly value luxurious hotels and easy conveyance. It
would be mortified to hear the talk of the excursionists, which is more
about the quality of the tables and the beds, and the rapidity with which
the "whole thing can be done," than about the beauty and the sublimity of
nature. The mountain, however, was made for man, and not man for the
mountain; and if the majority of travelers only get out of these hills
what they are capable of receiving, it may be some satisfaction to the
hills that they still reserve their glories for the eyes that can
appreciate them. Perhaps nature is not sensitive about being run after
for its freaks and eccentricities. If it were, we could account for the
catastrophe, a few years ago, in the Franconia Notch flume. Everybody
went there to see a bowlder which hung suspended over the stream in the
narrow canon. This curiosity attracted annually thousands of people, who
apparently cared more for this toy than for anything else in the region.
And one day, as if tired of this misdirected adoration, nature organized
a dam on the side of Mount Lafayette, filled it with water, and then
suddenly let loose a flood which tore open the canon, carried the bowlder
away, and spread ruin far and wide. It said as plainly as possible, you
must look at me, and not at my trivial accidents. But man is an
ingenious creature, and nature is no match for him. He now goes, in
increasing number, to see where the bowlder once hung, and spends his
time in hunting for it in the acres of wreck and debris. And in order to
satisfy reasonable human curiosity, the proprietors of the flume have
been obliged to select a bowlder and label it as the one that was
formerly the shrine of pilgrimage.

In his college days King had more than once tramped all over this region,
knapsack on back, lodging at chance farmhouses and second-class hotels,
living on viands that would kill any but a robust climber, and enjoying
the life with a keen zest only felt by those who are abroad at all hours,
and enabled to surprise Nature in all her varied moods. It is the chance
encounters that are most satisfactory; Nature is apt to be whimsical to
him who approaches her of set purpose at fixed hours. He remembered also
the jolting stage-coaches, the scramble for places, the exhilaration of
the drive, the excitement of the arrival at the hotels, the sociability
engendered by this juxtaposition and jostle of travel. It was therefore
with a sense of personal injury that, when he reached Bethlehem junction,
he found a railway to the Profile House, and another to Bethlehem. In
the interval of waiting for his train he visited Bethlehem Street, with
its mile of caravansaries, big boarding-houses, shops, and city veneer,
and although he was delighted, as an American, with the "improvements"
and with the air of refinement, he felt that if he wanted retirement and
rural life, he might as well be with the hordes in the depths of the
Adirondack wilderness. But in his impatience to reach his destination he
was not sorry to avail himself of the railway to the Profile House. And
he admired the ingenuity which had carried this road through nine miles
of shabby firs and balsams, in a way absolutely devoid of interest, in
order to heighten the effect of the surprise at the end in the sudden
arrival at the Franconia Notch. From whichever way this vast white hotel
establishment is approached, it is always a surprise. Midway between
Echo Lake and Profile Lake, standing in the very jaws of the Notch,
overhung on the one side by Cannon Mountain and on the other by a bold
spur of Lafayette, it makes a contrast between the elegance and order of
civilization and the untouched ruggedness and sublimity of nature
scarcely anywhere else to be seen.

The hotel was still full, and when King entered the great lobby and
office in the evening a very animated scene met his eye. A big fire of
logs was blazing in the ample chimney-place; groups were seated about at
ease, chatting, reading, smoking; couples promenaded up and down; and
from the distant parlor, through the long passage, came the sound of the
band. It was easy to see at a glance that the place had a distinct
character, freedom from conventionality, and an air of reposeful
enjoyment. A large proportion of the assembly being residents for the
summer, there was so much of the family content that the transient
tourists could little disturb it by the introduction of their element of
worry and haste.

King found here many acquaintances, for fashion follows a certain
routine, and there is a hidden law by which the White Mountains break the
transition from the sea-coast to Lenox. He was therefore not surprised
to be greeted by Mrs. Cortlandt, who had arrived the day before with her
usual train.

"At the end of the season," she said, "and alone?"

"I expect to meet friends here."

"So did I; but they have gone, or some of them have."

"But mine are coming tomorrow. Who has gone?"

"Mrs. Pendragon and the Bensons. But I didn't suppose I could tell you
any news about the Bensons."

"I have been out of the way of the newspapers lately. Did you happen to
hear where they have gone?"

"Somewhere around the mountains. You need not look so indifferent; they
are coming back here again. They are doing what I must do; and I wish
you would tell me what to see. I have studied the guide-books till my
mind is a blank. Where shall I go?"

"That depends. If you simply want to enjoy yourselves, stay at this
hotel--there is no better place--sit on the piazza, look at the
mountains, and watch the world as it comes round. If you want the best
panoramic view of the mountains, the Washington and Lafayette ranges
together, go up to the Waumbec House. If you are after the best single
limited view in the mountains, drive up to the top of Mount Willard, near
the Crawford House--a delightful place to stay in a region full of
associations, Willey House, avalanche, and all that. If you would like
to take a walk you will remember forever, go by the carriage road from
the top of Mount Washington to the Glen House, and look into the great
gulfs, and study the tawny sides of the mountains. I don't know anything
more impressive hereabouts than that. Close to, those granite ranges
have the color of the hide of the rhinoceros; when you look up to them
from the Glen House, shouldering up into the sky, and rising to the
cloud-clapped summit of Washington, it is like a purple highway into the
infinite heaven. No, you must not miss either Crawford's or the Glen
House; and as to Mount Washington, that is a duty."