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"But this deluge isn't over," was the reply. "It seems a tremendous
reaction from the drought, and where it will end it is hard to tell,
unless this steady downpouring slackens soon."

Leonard's fears were not realized, however. The unusual and tropical
manifestations of the storm at last ceased, and by night the rain fell
softly and gently, as if Nature were penitent over her wild passion. The
results of it, however, were left in all directions. Many roads were
impassable; scores of bridges were gone. The passengers from the evening
boats were landed on a wharf partially submerged, and some were taken in
boats to a point whence they could reach their carriages.

In the elements' disquiet Burt had found an excuse for his own, and he
had remained out much of the day. He had not called on Miss Hargrove
again, but had ridden far enough to learn that the bridges in that
direction were safe. All the family had remonstrated with him for his
exposure, and Amy asked him, laughingly, if he had been "sitting on
bridges to keep them from floating away."

"You are growing ironical," he answered for he was not in an amiable
mood, and he retired early.




CHAPTER XLVIII

IDLEWILD


In the morning Nature appeared to have forgotten both her passion and her
penitence, and smiled serenely over the havoc she had made, as if it were
of no consequence.

Amy said, "Let us take the strong rockaway, call for Miss Hargrove, and
visit some of the streams"; and she noted that Burt's assent was too
undemonstrative to be natural. Maggie decided to go also, and take the
children, while Leonard proposed to devote the day to repairing the
damage to the farm, his brothers promising to aid him in the afternoon.

When at last the party left their carriage at one of the entrances of
Idlewild, the romantic glen made so famous by the poet Willis, a stranger
might have thought that he had never seen a group more in accord with the
open, genial sunshine. This would be true of Maggie and the children.
They thought of that they saw, and uttered all their thoughts. The
solution of one of life's deep problems had come to Maggie, but not to
the others, and such is the nature of this problem that its solution can
usually be reached only by long and hidden processes. Not one of the four
young people was capable of a deliberately unfair policy; all, with the
exception of Amy, were conscious whither Nature was leading them, and she
had thoughts also of which she would not speak. There was no lack of
truth in the party, and yet circumstances had brought about a larger
degree of reticence than of frankness. To borrow an illustration from
Nature, who, after all, was to blame for what was developing in each
heart, a rapid growth of root was taking place, and the flower and fruit
would inevitably manifest themselves in time. Miss Hargrove naturally had
the best command over herself. She had taken her course, and would abide
by it, no matter what she might suffer. Burt had mentally set his teeth,
and resolved that he would be not only true to Amy, but also his old gay
self. His pride was now in the ascendant. Amy, however, was not to be
deceived, and her intuition made it clear that he was no longer her old
happy, contented comrade. But she was too proud to show that her pride
was wounded, and appeared to be her former self. Webb, as usual, was
quiet, observant, and not altogether hopeless. And so this merry party,
innocent, notwithstanding all their hidden thoughts about each other,
went down into the glen, and saw the torrent flashing where the sunlight
struck it through the overhanging foliage. Half-way down the ravine there
was a rocky, wooded plateau from which they had a view of the flood for
some distance, as it came plunging toward them with a force and volume
that appeared to threaten the solid foundations of the place on which
they stood. With a roar of baffled fury it sheered off to the left,
rushed down another deep descent, and disappeared from view. The scene
formed a strange blending of peace and beauty with wild, fierce movement
and uproar. From the foliage above and around them came a soft,
slumberous sound, evoked by the balmy wind that fanned their cheeks. The
ground and the surface of the torrent were flecked with waving, dancing
light and shade, as the sunlight filtered through innumerable leaves, on
some of which a faint tinge of red and gold was beginning to appear.
Beneath and through all thundered a dark, resistless tide, fit emblem of
lawless passion that, unchanged, unrestrained by gentle influences,
pursues its downward course reckless of consequences. Although the volume
of water passing beneath their feet was still immense, it was evident
that it had been very much greater. "I stood here yesterday afternoon,"
said Burt, "and then the sight was truly grand."

"Why, it was raining hard in the afternoon!" exclaimed Miss Hargrove.

"Burt seemed even more perturbed than the weather yesterday," Amy
remarked, laughing. "He was out nearly all the time. We were alarmed
about him, fearing lest he should be washed away, dissolved, or
something."

"Do I seem utterly quenched this morning?" he asked, in a light vein, but
flushing deeply.

"Oh, no, not in the least, and yet it's strange, after so much cold water
has fallen on you."

"One is not quenched by such trifles," he replied, a little coldly.

They were about to turn away, when a figure sprang out upon a rock, far
up the stream, in the least accessible part of the glen. They all
recognized Mr. Alvord, as he stood with folded arms and looked down on
the flood that rushed by on either side of him. He had not seen them, and
no greeting was possible above the sound of the waters. Webb thought as
he carried little Ned up the steep path, "Perhaps, in the mad current, he
sees the counterpart of some period in his past."

The bridge across the mouth of Idlewild Brook was gone, and they next
went to the landing. The main wharf was covered with large stones and
gravel, the debris of the flood that had poured over it from the adjacent
stream, whose natural outlet had been wholly inadequate. Then they drove
to the wild and beautiful Mountainville road, that follows the Moodna
Creek for a long distance. They could not proceed very far, however, for
they soon came to a place where a tiny brook had passed under a wooden
bridge. Now there was a great yawning chasm. Not only the bridge, but
tons of earth were gone. The Moodna Creek, that had almost ceased to flow
in the drought, had become a tawny river, and rushed by them with a
sullen roar, flanging over the tide was an old dead tree, on which was
perched a fish-hawk. Even while they were looking at him, and Burt was
wishing for his rifle, the bird swooped downward, plunged into the stream
with a splash, and rose with a fish in his talons. It was an admirable
exhibition of fearlessness and power, and Burt admitted that such a
sportsman deserved to live.




CHAPTER XLIX

ECHOES OF A PAST STORM


Miss Hargrove returned to dine with them, and as they were lingering over
the dessert and coffee Webb remarked, "By the way, I think the poet
Willis has given an account of a similar, or even greater, deluge in this
region." He soon returned from the library, and read the following
extracts: "'I do not see in the Tribune or other daily papers any mention
of an event which occupies a whole column on the outside page of the
highest mountain above West Point. An avalanche of earth and stone, which
has seamed from summit to base the tall bluff that abuts upon the Hudson,
forming a column of news visible for twenty miles, has reported a deluge
we have had--a report a mile long, and much broader than Broadway.'"

"Certainly," said Mr. Clifford, "that's the flood of which I spoke
yesterday. It was very local, but was much worse than the one we have
just had. It occurred in August of '53. I remember now that Mr. Willis
wrote a good deal about the affair in his letters from Idlewild. What
else does he say?"

Webb, selecting here and there, continued to read: "'We have had a deluge
in the valley immediately around us--a deluge which is shown by the
overthrown farm buildings, the mills, dams, and bridges swept away, the
well-built roads cut into chasms, the destruction of horses and cattle,
and the imminent peril to life. It occurred on the evening of August 1,
and a walk to-day down the valley which forms the thoroughfare to
Cornwall Landing (or, rather, a scramble over its gulfs in the road, its
upset barns and sheds, its broken vehicles, drift lumber, rocks, and
rubbish) would impress a stranger like a walk after the deluge of Noah.

"'The flood came upon us with scarce half an hour's notice. My venerable
neighbor, of eighty years of age, who had passed his life here, and knows
well the workings of the clouds among the mountains, had dined with us,
but hastened his departure to get home before what looked like a shower,
crossing with his feeble steps the stream whose strongest bridge, an hour
after, was swept away. Another of our elderly neighbors had a much
narrower escape. The sudden rush of water alarmed him for the safety of
an old building he used for his stable, which stood upon the bank of the
small stream usually scarce noticeable as it crosses the street at the
landing. He had removed his horse, and returned to unloose a favorite
dog, but before he could accomplish it the building fell. The single jump
with which he endeavored to clear himself of the toppling rafters threw
him into the torrent, and he was swept headlong toward the gulf which it
had already torn in the wharf on the Hudson. His son and two others
plunged in, and succeeded in snatching him from destruction. Another
citizen was riding homeward, when the solid and strongly embanked road
was swept away before and behind him, and he had barely time to unhitch
his horse and escape, leaving his carriage islanded between the chasms. A
man who was driving with his wife and child along our own wall on the
river-shore had a yet more fearful escape: his horse suddenly forced to
swim, and his wagon set afloat, and carried so violently against a tree
by the swollen current of Idlewild Brook that he and his precious load
were thrown into the water, and with difficulty reached the bank beyond.
A party of children who were out huckleberrying on the mountain were
separated from home by the swollen brook, and one of them was nearly
drowned in vainly attempting to cross it. Their parents and friends were
out all night in search of them. An aged farmer and his wife, who had
been to Newburgh, and were returning with their two-horse wagon well
laden with goods, attempted to drive over a bridge as it unsettled with
the current, and were precipitated headlong. The old man caught a sapling
as he went down with the flood, the old woman holding on to his
coat-skirts, and so they struggled until their cries brought assistance.'
Other and similar incidents are given. One large building was completely
disembowelled, and the stream coursed violently between the two halves of
its ruins. 'I was stopped,' he writes in another place, 'as I scrambled
along the gorge, by a curious picture for the common highway. The brick
front of the basement of a dwelling-house had been torn off, and the
mistress of the house was on her hands and knees, with her head thrust in
from a rear window, apparently getting her first look down into the
desolated kitchen from which she had fled in the night. A man stood in
the middle of the floor, up to his knees in water, looking round in
dismay, though he had begun to pick up some of the overset chairs and
utensils. The fireplace, with its interrupted supper arrangements, the
dresser, with its plates and pans, its cups and saucers, the closets and
cupboards, with their various stores and provisions, were all laid open
to the road like a sliced watermelon.'"

"Well," ejaculated Leonard, "we haven't so much cause to complain, after
hearing of an affair like that. I do remember many of my impressions at
the time, now that the event is recalled so vividly, but have forgotten
how so sudden a flood was accounted for."

"Willis speaks of it on another page," continued Webb, as 'the
aggregation of extensive masses of clouds into what is sometimes called a
"waterspout," by the meeting of winds upon the converging edge of our
bowl of highlands. The storm for a whole country was thus concentrated.'
I think there must have been yesterday a far heavier fall of water on the
mountains a little to the southeast than we had here. Perhaps the truer
explanation in both instances would be that the winds brought heavy
clouds together or against the mountains in such a way as to induce an
enormous precipitation of vapor into rain. Mr. Willis indicates by the
following passage the suddenness of the flood he describes: 'My first
intimation that there was anything uncommon in the brook was the sight of
a gentleman in a boat towing a cow across the meadow under our library
window--a green glade seldom or never flooded. The roar from the foaming
precipices in the glen had been heard by us all, but was thought to be
thunder.' Then he tells how he and his daughter put on their rubber suits
and hastened into the glen. 'The chasm,' he writes, 'in which the brook,
in any freshet I had heretofore seen, was still only a deep-down stream,
now seemed too small for the torrent. Those giddy precipices on which the
sky seems to lean as you stand below were the foam-lashed sides of a full
and mighty river. The spray broke through the tops of the full-grown
willows and lindens. As the waves plunged against the cliffs they parted,
and disclosed the trunks and torn branches of the large trees they had
overwhelmed and were bearing away, and the earth-colored flood, in the
wider places, was a struggling mass of planks, timber, rocks, and
roots--tokens of a tumultuous ruin above, to which the thunder-shower
pouring around us gave but a feeble clew. A heavy-limbed willow, which
overhung a rock on which I had often sat to watch the freshets of spring,
rose up while we looked at it, and with a surging heave, as if lifted by
an earthquake, toppled back, and was swept rushingly away.'"

"How I would have liked to see it!" exclaimed Miss Hargrove.

"I can see it," said Amy, leaning back, and closing her eyes. "I can see
it all too vividly. I don't like nature in such moods." Then she took up
the volume, and began turning the leaves, and said: "I've never seen this
book before. Why, it's all about this region, and written before I was
born. Oh dear, here is another chapter of horrors!" and she read: "Close
to our gate, at the door of one of our nearest and most valued
neighbors--a lovely girl was yesterday struck dead by lightning. A friend
who stood with her at the moment was a greater sufferer, in being
prostrated by the same flash, and paralyzed from the waist downward--her
life spared at the cost of tortures inexpressible.'"

Webb reached out his hand to take the book from her, but she sprang
aloof, and with dilating eyes read further: "'Misa Gilmour had been
chatting with a handsome boy admirer, but left him to take aside a
confidential friend that she might read her a letter. It was from her
mother, a widow with this only daughter. They passed out of the gate,
crossed the road to be out of hearing, and stood under the telegraph
wire, when the letter was opened. Her lips were scarce parted to read
when the flash came--an arrow of intense light-' Oh, horrible! horrible!
How can you blame me for fear in a thunderstorm?"

"Amy," said Webb, now quietly taking the book, "your dread at such times
is constitutional. If there were need, you could face danger as well as
any of us. You would have all a woman's fortitude, and that surpasses
ours. Take the world over, the danger from lightning is exceedingly
slight, and it's not the danger that makes you tremble, but your nervous
organization."

"You interpret me kindly," she said, "but I don't see why nature is so
full of horrible things. If Gertrude had been bitten by the snake, she
might have fared even worse than the poor girl of whom I have read."

Miss Hargrove could not forbear a swift, grateful glance at Burt.

"I do not think nature is _full_ of horrible things," Webb resumed.
"Remember how many showers have cooled the air and made the earth
beautiful and fruitful in this region. In no other instance that I know
anything about has life been destroyed in our vicinity. There is indeed a
side to nature that is full of mystery--the old dark mystery of evil; but
I should rather say it is full of all that is beautiful and helpful. At
least this seems true of our region. I have never seen so much beauty in
all my life as during the past year, simply because I am forming the
habit of looking for it."

"Why, Webb," exclaimed Amy, laughing, "I thought your mind was
concentrating on crops and subjects as deep as the ocean."

"It would take all the salt of the ocean to save that remark," he
replied; but he beat a rather hasty retreat.

"Well, Amy," said Mr. Clifford, "you may now dismiss your fears. I
imagine that in our tropical storm summer has passed; and with it
thunder-showers and sudden floods. We may now look forward to two months
of almost ideal weather, with now and then a day that will make a book
and a wood fire all the more alluring."

The old gentleman's words proved true. The days passed like bright
smiles, in which, however, lurked the pensiveness of autumn. Slowly
failing maples glowed first with the hectic flush of disease, but
gradually warmer hues stole into the face of Nature, for it is the dying
of the leaves that causes the changes of color in the foliage.




CHAPTER L

IMPULSES OF THE HEART


The fall season brought increased and varied labors on the farm and in the
garden. As soon as the ground was dry after the tremendous storm, and its
ravages had been repaired as far as possible, the plows were busy preparing
for winter grain, turnips were thinned out, winter cabbages and
cauliflowers cultivated, and the succulent and now rapidly growing celery
earthed up. The fields of corn were watched, and as fast as the kernels
within the husks--now becoming golden-hued--were glazed, the stalks were
cut and tied in compact shocks. The sooner maize is cut, after it has
sufficiently matured, the better, for the leaves make more nutritious
fodder if cured or dried while still full of sap. From some fields the
shocks were wholly removed, that the land might be plowed and seeded with
grain and grass. Buckwheat, used merely as a green and scavenger crop, was
plowed under as it came into blossom, and that which was sown to mature was
cut in the early morning, while the dew was still upon it, for in the heat
of the day the grain shells easily, and is lost. After drying for a few
days in compact little heaps it was ready for the threshing-machine. Then
the black, angular kernels--promises of many winter breakfasts--were spread
to dry on the barn floor, for if thrown into heaps or bins at this early
stage, they heat badly.

The Cliffords had long since learned that the large late peaches, that
mature after the Southern crop is out of the market, are the most
profitable, and almost every day Abram took to the landing a load of
baskets full of downy beauties. An orange grove, with Its deep green
foliage and golden fruit, is beautiful indeed, but an orchard laden with
Crawford's Late, in their best development, can well sustain comparison.
Sharing the honors and attention given to the peaches were the Bartlett
and other early pears. These latter fruits were treated in much the same
way as the former. The trees were picked over every few days, and the
largest and ripest specimens taken, their maturity being indicated by the
readiness of the stem to part from the spray when the pear is lifted. The
greener and imperfect fruit was left to develop, and the trees, relieved
of much of their burden, were able to concentrate their forces on what
was left. The earlier red grapes, including the Delaware, Brighton, and
Agawam, not only furnished the table abundantly, but also a large surplus
for market. Indeed, there was high and dainty feasting at the Cliffords'
every day--fruit everywhere, hanging temptingly within reach, with its
delicate bloom untouched, untarnished.

The storm and the seasonable rains that followed soon restored its
fulness and beauty to Nature's withered face. The drought had brought to
vegetation partial rest and extension of root growth, and now, with the
abundance of moisture, there was almost a spring-like revival. The grass
sprang up afresh, meadows and fields grew green, and annual weeds, from
seeds that had matured in August, appeared by the million.

"I am glad to see them," Webb remarked. "Before they can mature any seed
the frost will put an end to their career of mischief, and there will be
so many seeds less to grow next spring."

"There'll be plenty left," Leonard replied.

The Cliffords, by their provident system of culture, had prepared for
droughts as mariners do for storms, and hence they bad not suffered so
greatly as others; but busy as they were kept by the autumnal bounty of
Nature, and the rewards of their own industry, they found time for
recreation, and thoughts far removed from the material questions of
profit and loss. The drama of life went on, and feeling, conviction, and
love matured like the ripening fruits, although not so openly. As soon as
his duties permitted, Burt took a rather abrupt departure for a hunting
expedition in the northern woods, and a day or two later Amy received a
note from Miss Hargrove, saying that she had accepted an invitation to
join a yachting party.

"Oh, Webb!" she exclaimed, "I wish you were not so awfully busy all the
time. Here I am, thrown wholly on your tender mercies, and I am neither a
crop nor a scientific subject."

He gave her little reason for complaint. The increasing coolness and
exhilarating vitality of the air made not only labor agreeable, but
out-door sports delightful, and he found time for an occasional gallop,
drive, or ramble along roads and lanes lined with golden-rod and purple
asters; and these recreations had no other drawback than the uncertainty
and anxiety within his heart. The season left nothing to be desired, but
the outer world, even in its perfection, is only an accompaniment of
human life, which is often in sad discord with it.

Nature, however, is a harmony of many and varied strains, and the unhappy
are always conscious of a deep minor key even on the brightest days. To
Alf and Johnnie the fall brought unalloyed joy and promise; to those who
were older, something akin to melancholy, which deepened with the autumn
of their life; while to Mr. Alvord every breeze was a sigh, every rising
wind a mournful requiem, and every trace of change a reminder that his
spring and summer had passed forever, leaving only a harvest of bitter
memories. Far different was the dreamy pensiveness with which Mr. and
Mrs. Clifford looked back upon their vanished youth and maturity. At the
same time they felt within themselves the beginnings of an immortal
youth. Although it was late autumn with them, not memory, but hope, was
in the ascendant.

During damp or chilly days, and on the evenings of late September, the
fire burned cheerily on the hearth of their Franklin stove. The old
gentleman had a curious fancy in regard to his fire-wood. He did not want
the straight, shapely sticks from their mountain land, but gnarled and
crooked billets, cut from trees about the place that had required pruning
and removal.

"I have associations with such fuel" he said, "and can usually recall the
trees--many of which I planted--from which it came; and as I watch it
burn and turn into coals, I see pictures of what happened many years
ago."

One evening he threw on the fire a worm-eaten billet, the sound part of
which was as red as mahogany; then drew Amy to him and said, "I once sat
with your father under the apple-tree of which that piece of wood was a
part, and I can see him now as he then looked."

She sat down beside him, and said, softly, "Please tell me how he
looked."

In simple words the old man portrayed the autumn day, the fruit as golden
as the sunshine, a strong, hopeful man, who had passed away in a
far-distant land, but who was still a living presence to both. Amy looked
at the picture in the flickering blaze until her eyes were blinded with
tears. But such drops fall on the heart like rain and dew, producing
richer and more beautiful life.

The pomp and glory of October were ushered in by days of such surpassing
balminess and brightness that it was felt to be a sin to remain indoors.
The grapes had attained their deepest purple, and the apples in the
orchard vied with the brilliant and varied hues of the fast-turning
foliage. The nights were soft, warm, and resonant with the unchecked
piping of insects. From every tree and shrub the katydids contradicted
one another with increasing emphasis, as if conscious that the time was
at hand when the last word must be spoken. The stars glimmered near
through a delicate haze, and in the western sky the pale crescent of the
moon was so inclined that the old Indian might have hung upon it his
powder-horn.