"The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which n.o.body minded, all having come defended with rubbers and waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered.
They climbed up rocky slopes, on which the short gray moss grew, cushiony. They followed the line of maples and alders and evergreens that sentineled and hid away the shouting stream, spreading their skirts and intertwining their arms to shelter it, like the privacy of some royal child at play, and to keep back from the pilgrims the beautiful surprise. Upon a rough table-ledge, they came to it at last; the place where they could lean in between the trees, and overlook and underlook the shining tumult,--the shifting, yet enduring apparition of delight.
It came in two leaps, down a winding channel, through which it seemed to turn and spring, like some light, graceful, impetuous living creature. You _felt_ it reach the first rock-landing; you were conscious of the impetus which forced it on to take the second spring which brought it down beneath your feet. And it kept coming--coming. It was an eternal moment; a swift, vanishing, yet never over-and-done movement of grace and splendor. That is the magic of a waterfall. Something exquisite by very suggestion of evanescence, caught _in transitu_, and held for the eye and mind to dwell on.
They were never tired of looking. The chance would not come,--that ought to be a pause,--for them to turn and go away.
"But there are more," Sylvie said at length, admonishing them. "And the Second Cataract is grander than this."
"You number them going down," said Mr. Kirkbright.
"Yes. People always number things as they come to them, don"t they?
Our first is somebody"s else last, I suppose, always."
"What a little spirit that is!" said Christopher Kirkbright to Miss Euphrasia, dropping back to help his sister down a rocky plunge.
"A little spirit waked up by touch of misfortune," said Miss Euphrasia. "She would have gone through life blindfolded by purple and fine linen, if things had been left as they were with her."
Desire and Sylvie walked on together.
"Leave them alone," said Miss Kirkbright to her brother. And she stopped, and began to gather handfuls of the late ferns.
Now she had the chance given her, Desire said it straight out, as she said everything.
"I came up here after you, Miss Argenter. Did you know it?"
"No. After me? How?" asked Sylvie.
"To see if you and your mother would come and make your home with us this winter,--pretty much as you do with Mrs. Jeffords. I can say _us_, because Hazel Ripwinkley, my cousin, is with me nearly all the time; but for the rest of it, I am all the family there really is, now that Rachel Froke has gone away; unless you came to call my dear old Frendely "family," as I do; seeing that next to Rachel, she is root and spring of it. You could help me; you could help her; and I think you would like my work. I should be glad of you; and your mother could have Rachel Froke"s gray parlor. It is a one-sided proposition, because, you see, I know all about you already, from Miss Euphrasia. You will have to take me at hazard, and find out by trying."
"Do you think the old proverb isn"t as true of good words as of mischief,--that a dog who will fetch a bone will carry a bone?" said Sylvie, laughing with the same impulse by which clear drops stood suddenly in her eyes, and a quick rosiness came into her face. "Do you suppose Miss Euphrasia hasn"t told me of you?"
"I never thought I was one of the people to be told about," said Desire, simply. "Do you think you could come? Miss Euphrasia believed it would be what you wanted. There is plenty of room, and plenty of work. I want you to know that I mean to keep you honestly busy, because then you will understand that things come out honestly even."
"Even! Dear Miss Ledwith!"
"Then you"ll try it?"
"I don"t know how to thank Miss Euphrasia or you."
"There are no thanks in the bargain," said Desire, smiling. "I want you; if you want me, it is a Q.E.D. If we _do_ dispute about anything, we"ll leave it out to Miss Euphrasia. She knows how to make everything right. She shall be our broker. It is a good thing to have one, in some kinds of trade."
They had come around the curve in the road now, that brought them alongside the shady gorge at the foot of Cone Hill. Here was the little group of brick-makers" houses; empty, weather-beaten, their door-yards overgrown with brakes and mulleins. Beyond, up the ledge, to which a rough drive-way, long disused, led off, was the quaint, rambling edifice that with its feet of stone and brick went "walking up" the mountain.
"You must go in and see it," Sylvie said. "But first,--this is the way to the cascade."
Another bar-place let them in again to another narrow, wild, bush-grown path around the edge of the cliff, the lower spur of the great hill; and down over shelving rocks, a long, gradual descent, to the foot of the fall.
The water foamed and rippled to their feet, as they walked along its varying edge-line on the smooth, sloping stone that stretched back against the perpendicular rampart of the cliff. The fall itself was hidden in the turn around which, above, they had followed the tangled pathway.
At the farthest projection of the platform they were now treading, they came upon it; beneath it, rather, they looked back and up at its showery silver sheet, falling in sweet, continual thunder into the dark, hollow, rock-encircled pool, thence to tumble away headlong, from point to point, lower and lower yet, by a thousand little breaks and plunges, till it came out into a broad meadow stretch miles and miles away.
"What a hurry it is in, to get down where it is wanted," said Desire.
She had seated herself beside the curling edge of the swift stream, where it seemed to trace and keep by its own will its boundary upon the nearly level rock, and was gazing up where the white radiance poured itself as if direct from out the blue above.
Mr. Kirkbright stood behind her.
"Most things come to us at last so quietly," he said. "It is good to feel and see what a rush it starts with,--out of that heart of heaven."
Desire had not said that; but it was just what she had been feeling.
Eager to get to us; coming in a hurry. Was that G.o.d"s impulse toward us?
"Making haste to help and satisfy the world," Mr. Kirkbright said again.
"A river of clear water of life, coming down out of the throne,"
said Miss Euphrasia. "What a sign it is!"
Mr. Kirkbright walked along the margin of the ledge, farther and farther down. He tried with his stick some stones that lay across the current at a narrow point where beneath the opposite cliff it bent and turned away, losing itself from their sight as they stood here. Then he sprang across; crept, stooping, along the narrow foothold under the projecting rock, until he could follow with his eye the course of the rapid water, falling continually to its lower level as it sped on and on, all its volume gathered in one deep, rocky, unchangeable bed.
"What a waiting power!" he exclaimed, springing safely back, and coming up toward them. "What a stream for mills! And it turns nothing but the farmers" grists, till it gets to Tillington."
Desire was a very little disappointed at this utilitarianism. She had been so glad and satisfied with the reading of its type; the type of its far-back impulse.
"If there had been mills here, we should not have seen that," she said; forgetting to explain what.
But Christopher Kirkbright knew.
"What was it that we did see?" he asked, coming beside her.
"The gracious hurry," she answered, with a half-vexed surprise in her eyes.
"And what is the next thing to seeing that? Isn"t it to partake? To be in a gracious hurry also, if we can?"
A smile came up now in Desire"s face, and effaced gently the vexation and the surprise.
"Do you know what a legible face you have?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, seating himself near her on a step of rock.
Desire was a little disturbed again by this movement. The others had begun to walk on, up the ledge, toward the old brick house; gathering as they went, ferns that had escaped the frost, others that had delicately whitened in it, and gorgeous maple-leaves, swept from topmost, inaccessible branches,--where the most glorious color always hangs,--by last night"s rain and wind.
It was so foolish of her to have sat there until he came and did this. Now she could not get right up and go away. This feeling, coming simultaneously with his question about her legible face, was doubly uncomfortable. But she had to answer. She did it briefly.
"Yes. It is a great bother. I don"t like coa.r.s.e print."
"Nor I. But my eyes are good; and the fine print is clear. I should like very much to tell you of something that I have to do, Miss Ledwith. I should like your thoughts upon it. For, you see, I have hardly yet got acquainted with my ground. From what my sister tells me, I think your work leads naturally up to mine. I should like to find out whether it is quite ready for the join."
"I haven"t much work," said Desire. "Luclarion Grapp has; and Miss Kirkbright, and Mr. Vireo. I only help,--with some money that belongs to it."
"And I have more money that belongs to it," said Mr. Kirkbright.