Without heed1 as to the direction, I started at a furious pace up the road which I found myself upon--Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As it was, I had presently to stop and retrace2 my steps to where he sat on a wayside stump3, dead beat.
"Don't you wait for me, Mass' Douw, if you're bound to get there quick," he said, gasping4 for breath. "Don't mind me. I'll follow along the best I can."
The phrase "get there"--it was almost the only English which poor Tulp had put into the polyglot5 sentence he really uttered--arrested my attention. "Get where?" I had been headed for the mountains--for the black water which dashed foaming6 down their defiles7, and eddied8 in sinister9 depths at their bases. I could see the faint blue peaks on the horizon from where I stood, by the side of the tired slave. The sight sobered me. To this day I cannot truly say whether I had known where I was going, and if there had not been in my burning brain the latent impulse to throw myself into the Sacondaga. But I could still find the spot--altered beyond recollection as the face of the country is--where Tulp's fatigue10 compelled me to stop, and where I stood gazing out of new eyes, as it were, upon the pale Adirondack outlines.
As I looked, the aspect of the day had changed The soft, somnolent11 haze12 had vanished from the air. Dark clouds were lifting themselves in the east and north beyond the mountains, and a chill breeze was blowing from them upon my brow. I took off my hat, and held up my face to get all its cooling touch. Tulp, between heavy breaths, still begged that his infirmity might not be allowed to delay me.
"Why, boy," I laughed bitterly at him, "I have no place to go to. Nobody is waiting for me--nobody wants me."
The black looked hopeless bewilderment at me, and offered no comment. Long afterward13 I learned that he at the moment reached the reluctant conclusion that I had taken too much drink in the Hall.
"Or no!" I went on, a thought coming to the surface in the hurly-burly of my mind. "We are going to Albany. That's where we're going."
Tulp's sooty face took on a more dubious14 look, if that were possible. He humbly15 suggested that I had chosen a roundabout route; perhaps I was going by the way of the Healing Springs. But it must be a long, lonesome road, and the rain was coming on.
Sure enough the sky was darkening: a storm was in the air, and already the distant mountain-tops were hidden from view by the rain-mist.
Without more words I put on my hat, and we turned back toward the settlements. The disposition16 to walk swiftly, which before had been a controlling thing, was gone. My pace was slow enough now, descending17 the hill, for even Tulp, who followed close upon my heels. But my head was not much clearer. It was not from inability to think: to the contrary, the vividness and swift succession of my thoughts, as they raced through my brain, almost frightened me.
I had fancied myself miserable19 that very morning, because Mr. Stewart had spoken carelessly to me, and she had been only ordinarily pleasant. Ah, fool! My estate that morning had been that of a king, of a god, in contrast to this present wretchedness. Then I still had a home--still nourished in my heart a hope--and these were happiness! I laughed aloud at my folly20 in having deemed them less.
She had put her hand in his--given herself to him! She had with her eyes open promised to marry this Englishman--fop! dullard! roisterer! insolent21 cub22!--so the rough words tumbled to my tongue. In a hundred ways I pictured her--called up her beauty, her delicacy23, her innocence24, her grace, the refined softness of her bearing, the sweet purity of her smile, the high dignity of her thoughts--and then ground my teeth as I placed against them the solitary25 image my mind consented to limn26 of him--brawling dandy with fashionable smirk27 and false blue eyes, flushed with wine, and proud of no better achievement than throwing a smith in a drunken wrestling-bout. It was a sin--a desecration28! Where were their eyes, that they did not read this fellow's worthlessness, and bid him stand back when he sought to lay his coarse hands upon her?
Yet who were these that should have saved her? Ah! were they not all of his class, or of his pretence29 to class?
Some of them had been my life-long friends. To Mr. Stewart--and I could not feel bitterly toward him even now--I owed home, education, rearing, everything; Sir William had been the earliest and kindest of my other friends, eager and glad always to assist, instruct, encourage me; John Butler had given me my first gun, and had petted me in his rough way from boyhood. Yet now, at a touch of that hateful, impalpable thing "class," these all vanished away from my support, and were to me as if they had never been. I saw them over on the other side, across the abyss from me, grouped smiling about this new-comer, praising his brute31 ability to drink and race and wrestle32, complimenting him upon his position among the gentry--save the mark!--of Tryon County, and proud that they had by never so little aided him to secure for a wife this poor trembling, timid, fascinated girl. Doubtless they felt that a great honor had been done her; it might be that even she dreamed this, too, as she heard their congratulations.
And these men, honest, fair-minded gentlemen as they were in other affairs, would toss me aside like a broken pipe if I ventured to challenge their sympathy as against this empty-headed, satined, and powdered stranger. They had known and watched me all my life. My smallest action, my most trivial habit, was familiar to them. They had seen me grow before their eyes--dutiful, obedient, diligent33, honest, sober, truthful34. In their hearts they knew that I deserved all these epithets35. They themselves time out of mind had applied36 them to me. I stood now, at my early age, and on my own account, on the threshold of a career of honorable trade, surely as worthy37 now as it was when Sir William began at it far more humbly. Yet with all these creditable things known to them, I could not stand for a moment in their estimation against this characterless new-comer!
Why? He was a "gentleman," and I was not.
Not that he was better born--a thousand times no! But I had drawn38 from the self-sacrificing, modest, devoted39 man of God, my father, and the resolute40, tireless, hard working, sternly honest housewife, my mother, the fatal notion that it was not beneath the dignity of a Mauverensen or a Van Hoorn to be of use in the world. My ancestors had fought for their little country, nobly and through whole generations, to free it from the accursed rule of that nest of aristocrats41, Spain; but they had not been ashamed also to work, in either the Old World or the New. This other, this Englishman--I found myself calling him that as the most comprehensive expletive I could use--the son of a professional butcher and of an intriguing42 woman, was my superior here, in truth, where I had lived all my life and he had but shown his nose, because he preferred idleness to employment!
It was a mistake, then, was it, to be temperate43 and industrious44? It was more honorable to ride at races, to play high stakes, and drain three bottles at dinner, than to study and to do one's duty? To be a gentleman was a matter of silk breeches and perukes and late hours? Out upon the blundering playwright45 who made Bassanio win with the leaden casket! Portia was a woman, and would have wrapped her picture--nay, herself--in tinsel gilt46, the gaudier47 the better!
But why strive to trace further my wrathful meditations48? There is nothing pleasant or profitable in the contemplation of anger, even when reason runs abreast49 of it. And I especially have no pride in this three hours' wild fury. There were moments in it, I fear, when my rage was well-nigh murderous in its fierceness.
The storm came--a cold, thin, driving rain, with faint mutterings of thunder far behind. I did not care to quicken my pace or fasten my coat. The inclemency50 fitted and echoed my mood.
On the road we came suddenly upon the Hall party, returning in haste from the interrupted picnic. The baronet's carriage, with the hood30 drawn, rumbled51 past without a sign of recognition from driver or inmates52. A half-dozen horsemen cantered behind, their chins buried in their collars, and their hats pulled down over their eyes. One of the last of these--it was Bryan Lefferty--reined up long enough to inform me that Mr. Stewart and Daisy had long before started by the forest path for their home, and that young Cross had made short work of his other guests in order to accompany them.
"We're not after complaining, though," said the jovial53 Irishman; "it's human nature to desert ordinary mortals like us when youth and beauty beckon54 the other way."
I made some indifferent answer, and he rode away after his companions. We resumed our tramp over the muddy track, with the rain and wind gloomily pelting55 upon our backs.
When we turned off into the woods, to descend18 the steep side-hill to the waterfall, it was no easy matter to keep our footing. The narrow trail was slippery with wet leaves and moss56. Looking over the dizzy edge, you could see the tops of tall trees far below. The depths were an indistinct mass of dripping foliage57, dark green and russet. We made our way gingerly and with extreme care, with the distant clamor of the falls in our ears, and the peril58 of tumbling headlong keeping all our senses painfully alert.
At a turn in the path, I came sharply upon Philip Cross.
He was returning from the Cedars59: he carried a broken bough60 to use as a walking-stick in the difficult ascent61, and was panting with the exertion62; yet the lightness of his heart impelled63 him to hum broken snatches of a song as he climbed. The wet verdure under foot had so deadened sound that neither suspected the presence of the other till we suddenly stood, on this slightly widened, overhanging platform, face to face!
He seemed to observe an unusual something on my face, but it did not interest him enough to affect his customary cool, off-hand civility toward me.
"Oh, Morrison, is that you?" he said, nonchalantly. "You're drenched64, I see, like the rest of us. Odd that so fine a day should end like this "--and made as if to pass me on the inner side.
I blocked his way and said, with an involuntary shake in my voice which I could only hope he failed to note:
"You have miscalled me twice to-day. I will teach you my true name, if you like--here! now!"
He looked at me curiously65 for an instant--then with a frown. "You are drunk," he cried, angrily. "Out of my way!"
"No, you are again wrong," I said, keeping my voice down, and looking him square in the eye. "I'm not of the drunken set in the Valley. No man was ever soberer. But I am going to spell my name out for you, in such manner that you will be in no danger of forgetting it to your dying day."
The young Englishman threw a swift glance about him, to measure his surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony66 happened to be one of mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his homeward journey.
If the words may be coupled, I watched him with an enraged67 admiration68. There was no sign of fear manifest in his face or bearing. With all his knowledge of wrestling, he could not but have felt that, against my superior size and weight, and long familiarity with woodland footing, there were not many chances of his escaping with his life: if I went over, he certainly would go too--and he might go alone. Yet he unfastened his coats with a fine air of unconcern, and turned back his ruffles69 carefully. I could not maintain the same calm in throwing off my hat and coat, and was vexed70 with myself for it.
We faced each other thus in our waistcoats in the drizzling71 rain for a final moment, exchanging a crossfire72 sweep of glances which took in not only antagonist73, but every varying foot of the treacherous74 ground we stood upon, and God knows what else beside--when I was conscious of a swift movement past me from behind.
I had so completely forgotten Tulp's presence that for the second that followed I scarcely realized what was happening. Probably the faithful slave had no other thought, as he glided75 in front of me, than to thus place himself between me and what he believed to be certain death.
To the Englishman the sudden movement may easily have seemed an attack.
There was an instant's waving to and fro of a light and a dark body close before my startled eyes. Then, with a scream which froze the very marrow76 in my bones, the negro boy, arms whirling wide in air, shot over the side of the cliff!
Friends of mine in later years, when they heard this story from my lips over a pipe and bowl, used to express surprise that I did not that very moment throw myself upon Cross, and fiercely bring the quarrel to an end, one way or the other. I remember that when General Arnold came up the Valley, five years after, and I recounted to him this incident, which recent events had recalled, he did not conceal77 his opinion that I had chosen the timid part. "By God!" he cried, striking the camp-table till the candlesticks rattled78, "I would have killed him or he would have killed me, before the nigger struck bottom!" Very likely he would have done as he said. I have never seen a man with a swifter temper and resolution than poor, brave, choleric79, handsome Arnold had; and into a hideously80 hopeless morass81 of infamy82 they landed him, too! No doubt it will seem to my readers, as well, that in nature I ought upon the instant to have grappled the Englishman.
The fact was, however, that this unforeseen event took every atom of fight out of both of us as completely as if we had been struck by lightning.
With a cry of horror I knelt and hung over the shelving edge as far as possible, striving to discover some trace of my boy through the misty83 masses of foliage below. I could see nothing--could hear nothing but the far-off dashing of the waters, which had now in my ears an unspeakably sinister sound. It was only when I rose to my feet again that I caught sight of Tulp, slowly making his way up the other side of the ravine, limping and holding one hand to his head. He had evidently been hurt, but it was a great deal to know that he was alive. I turned to my antagonist--it seemed that a long time had passed since I last looked at him.
The same idea that the struggle was postponed84 had come to him, evidently, for he had put on his coats again, and had folded his arms. He too had been alarmed for the fate of the boy, but he affected85 now not to see him.
I drew back to the rock now, and Cross passed me in silence, with his chin defiantly86 in the air. He turned when he had gained the path above, and stood for a moment frowning down at me.
"I am going to marry Miss Stewart," he called out. "The sooner you find a new master, and take yourself off, the better. I don't want to see you again."
"When you do see me again," I made answer, "be sure that I will break every bone in your body."
With this not very heroic interchange of compliments we parted. I continued the descent, and crossed the creek87 to where the unfortunate Tulp was waiting for me.
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1
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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retrace
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| v.折回；追溯，探源 | |
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stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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gasping
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| adj. 气喘的, 痉挛的 动词gasp的现在分词 | |
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polyglot
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| adj.通晓数种语言的；n.通晓多种语言的人 | |
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foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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defiles
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| v.玷污( defile的第三人称单数 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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eddied
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| 起漩涡，旋转( eddy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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10
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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somnolent
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| adj.想睡的，催眠的；adv.瞌睡地；昏昏欲睡地；使人瞌睡地 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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13
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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humbly
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| adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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limn
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| v.描画；描述 | |
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smirk
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| n.得意地笑；v.傻笑；假笑着说 | |
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desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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diligent
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| adj.勤勉的，勤奋的 | |
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truthful
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| adj.真实的，说实话的，诚实的 | |
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epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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41
aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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42
intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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43
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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45
playwright
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| n.剧作家，编写剧本的人 | |
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46
gilt
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| adj.镀金的；n.金边证券 | |
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47
gaudier
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| adj.花哨的，俗气的( gaudy的比较级 ) | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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inclemency
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| n.险恶，严酷 | |
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51
rumbled
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| 发出隆隆声，发出辘辘声( rumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 轰鸣着缓慢行进； 发现…的真相； 看穿（阴谋） | |
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52
inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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53
jovial
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| adj.快乐的，好交际的 | |
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54
beckon
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| v.(以点头或打手势)向...示意，召唤 | |
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55
pelting
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| 微不足道的，无价值的，盛怒的 | |
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moss
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| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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58
peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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59
cedars
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| 雪松，西洋杉( cedar的名词复数 ) | |
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bough
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| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
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61
ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
drenched
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| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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65
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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66
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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67
enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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69
ruffles
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| 褶裥花边( ruffle的名词复数 ) | |
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vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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71
drizzling
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| 下蒙蒙细雨，下毛毛雨( drizzle的现在分词 ) | |
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72
crossfire
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| n.被卷进争端 | |
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73
antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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77
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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78
rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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choleric
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| adj.易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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80
hideously
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| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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81
morass
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| n.沼泽，困境 | |
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82
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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83
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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84
postponed
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| vt.& vi.延期，缓办，（使）延迟vt.把…放在次要地位；[语]把…放在后面（或句尾）vi.（疟疾等）延缓发作（或复发） | |
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85
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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86
defiantly
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| adv.挑战地，大胆对抗地 | |
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87
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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