Chapter IX: The MILL on the Yantic—the Depths Below

“Oh, how beautiful it is! It is like fairy-land. Look! look! that old saw-mill perched on the banks. Was ever any thing so picturesque?”

Notwithstanding the sound of the sleigh-bells, Laura’s voice rang out sweet and clear on the frosty air. She half started to her feet among the furs, and, seizing the reins, swerved the horse on one side, with a suddenness that ended in a discordant crash of the bells, and left the horse prancing and stamping in the deep snow, while the breath congealed around his nostrils, and a cloud of steam rose from his panting sides.

Arnold clenched his teeth to force back the imprecation that sprang against them. But the young lady saw nothing of this, she still held tight to the reins, and leaning over the side of the sleigh, gazed delightedly on the Falls.

Arnold forced her hand gently from the reins, and grasped it hard, while his eyes dwelt on her face.

How brightly the blood leaped to her cheeks! How those eyes sparkled! With what a gush of happiness those red lips parted amid their glow of happy smiles!

“Shall we go on?” he said, drawing her to his side with a triumphant curve of the lip.

She drew a quick breath, as he relinquished her hand, but still looked out upon the Falls.

“No, no. I must look at them nearer. Let us get out and find a view from the saw-mill.”

“But it is dangerous. The wind comes howling through the rocks in a tempest. That old mill is the coldest and most disagreeable place I know of this side of Greenland.”

“Oh, yes, but I am so warm. Nothing chills me except a cold heart. There, fling one of the robes over the horse and let us go. He will be glad enough, I dare say, for you have driven him like the wind.”

Mademoiselle de Montreuil sprang out of the sleigh as she spoke, laughing as her feet sunk into the snow, and there she stood, while Arnold flung a robe over the now-shivering horse, burning, heart and soul, with suppressed rage, and prepared to follow her.

“Not that way! Not to the mill!” he said, following her as she ran along the road. “We can find a far better view from that clump of hemlocks that hangs over the ledge up yonder; the thick green of the trees will shelter you from the wind.”

“But how are we to get there? The snow is so deep, and I can see no sign of a path,” cried Laura, stamping her pretty feet up and down on the beaten road.

“The crust is firm,—you will glide over it like a fairy. I may break through now and then, but what of that? Just keep within this belt of trees, and take a sweep of that log cabin.”

“But that seems a very roundabout way, Mr. Arnold.”

“True; but, in the end, we shall find it the best one. So trust me as a guide this once.”

There was a meaning in his voice that could not be gathered from his words,—that subtle meaning which penetrates to the heart like the perfume of flowers, but is as intangible. She turned, with a blush, and, mounting the bank, followed him across the snow-crust.

They left the road some distance below the cabin, and made their way along a belt of trees that sheltered it. There was no window on that side of the dwelling, a circumstance which Laura did not observe, but which Arnold had taken into his calculations when he selected that route to the Falls.

“That must be a pretty little home in warm weather,” said Laura, looking towards the house. “The rose-bush so full of red berries would cover half the cabin with flowers in the spring time. The net-work of brown stalks is a Virginia creeper, I suppose. Then that great elm drooping over the whole! What a superb tree it is! Really, I haven’t seen so much taste since we left France. Pray, who lives in that cabin, Mr. Arnold?”

“The man who owns the saw-mill, I believe,” answered Arnold, sharply.

“And has he so much taste? for really this is a rustic paradise.”

“He is a hard-working, honest man, I suppose.”

“Ah, but he has a wife, of course, and, it may be a daughter. All this looks like a woman’s work. How I should like to get a peep inside that cabin! It must be charming. Can’t we make some excuse, Mr. Arnold?”

“I should not be willing to invent one. Our New England people are a little shy of strangers.”

“Ah, well, then it seems I am to give up my little romance. How beautifully the snow lies among the hemlock branches. After all, winter is full of pleasant things.”

Thus she rattled on, forgetting one object the moment another presented itself, and striving to cheat the indignant feeling which was all the while burning in her heart against the man who, at times, seemed to be trifling with her. Thus, every gentle word, every look of passionate devotion,—for he was not sparing of looks,—created a revolt in her imperative nature. The doubt which he left her in was at once a delight and a torment.

At last they came out upon a ledge of rocks that overhung the foot of the Falls. A large white pine swayed and sighed above them, answering back the sweet voices of the water, as ghosts may be supposed to reply when called upon by earthly prayers. The Falls were in full sight, wild as they came from the Creator’s hands, dashing over rocks, singing through chasms, and plunging downward with a force that made the trees on either bank tremble as if nature were stricken with fear, while contemplating its own wild works.

Before the late snow there had been a thaw in the Highlands, and the Yantic was full to overflowing. Thus the rush of its waters took a force and volume almost terrific,—a force that even the sharp frost could not chain, though it fringed each rock with jewels, and scattered beauty everywhere around.

In the summer time the Yantic cataract was beautiful; from the leafy luxuriance of its trees, the profusion of wild blossoms that drank life from its spray, and the rich fleeces of emerald moss that clothed its rocks. But, now that the elms, and oaks, and ash trees were naked from root to branch,—when the flowers were all dead, and the moss crusted with snow, or jeweled with ice, the power of winter had run riot in the affluence of its beauty.

Around the Falls every shrub and slender tree was drooping and alive with a fruitage of ice. Alder, spice-bushes, and long, brown ferns, seemed budding and blossoming with diamonds instead of leaves. Wild grape-vines, heavy with stalactites that shone like prisms whenever a gleam of sunshine reached them, chained the cliffs together with ropes of crystal. All the broken rocks and sharp ledges through which the cataract hurled itself, were crested with fleeces of snow and drifts of hail, which the winds tossed from point to point, and scattered into new forms with every gust. Down these rocks, draping and crowning them, hung masses of delicate ice-work, forming ten thousand exquisite designs, which no art ever reached, and no pen can describe.

Through all this bright tumult the Yantic leaped, in great waves of foam and crystal, shooting up whirlwinds of spray with every plunge, which froze as it fell a wild storm of brilliants, rattling over the crusted snow, shooting through the evergreens, and clinging to each naked shrub, till a burst of sunshine shone up from the bed of the fall in faint rainbows and turned them into drops of flame.

This was the scene upon which Arnold and his companion came with a sudden surprise. It is seldom that the elements combine to give a picture so rare. The human being who sees one in a lifetime, may be sure that he has caught one glimpse of beauty which the hereafter can hardly surpass.

Both Arnold and his companion were struck dumb, and stood there with the pine-trees drooping under ten thousand snow-wreaths high above them, the hemlocks trembling under their bright load, and the wild voice of the waters, answered hoarsely by the saw-mill just in sight.

At first Laura grew pale; then the glow came back from her heart, and a singular beauty flashed over her face. The scene around her was full of inspiration, and out from the depths of her being came an enthusiasm so deep that, for the instant, her soul rose grandly away from its earthliness.

She turned her eyes on Arnold, unconsciously claiming sympathy with these feelings. He was looking toward the saw-mill, with a hard, almost bitter expression of the eye that chilled her in an instant.

“Have you seen this so often?” she said, with a feeling of disappointment. “To me the sense of beauty here becomes almost painful. Use could never change this, I am sure.”

“I,” said Arnold, starting, “I was thinking how harshly that eternal saw grates through all the sweet noises of the water. If some flood would sweep the mill away, it might be doing good service.”

“Ah! don’t say that!” answered Laura. “It is a fine object from this point. One gets an idea of life and industry from it; otherwise this whole scene would seem unnaturally wild.”

“It is a rude, unsightly thing, and I hate it,” said Arnold, bitterly.

“The sound is not sweet, certainly, but it suggests many noble thoughts. All this vast water-power was intended for something more grand than beauty; yet, how perfectly the ideal is satisfied here, while the real toils for human good down yonder.”

Arnold laughed, a low, sweet laugh, but still it did not melt harmoniously into the anthems thrown out by the cataract, and singing under the translucent ice-traceries. Laura felt the discord, for all her refined feelings were exceedingly acute for the time, while his heart was full of bitterness.

“I did not know that you were a philosopher, sweet lady,” he said, at last.

There was a sneer in his voice that irritated her. She turned her back to the waterfall, disquieted and half angry.

“Have we no feeling, no thought, in common?” she murmured, in a sad undertone, “even in a spot so much like heaven as this.”

His ear gathered up these whispers as they fell.

“Yes,” he answered, in tones almost as low, “_one_ feeling, _one_ thought, else what would life be worth.”

She turned quickly, with the roses all aglow in her face. But he checked himself on the instant, adding, “Friendship has many thoughts, and feelings in common.”

She turned abruptly, and was about to leave the ledge on which they were standing. He checked her with a gentle touch of the hand.

“Why detain me?” she said, almost with tears in her eyes, “I am tired of all these rushing sounds.”

“But I have not told you about this rock crowned by the great pine-tree that looms over us: it has a history which touches the imagination. It was from this rock the Mohegan Indians leaped into the boiling flood at our feet, rather than fall into the power of the victorious Narragansetts, when the Indian wars raged in this neighborhood. A brave race were the savages who once held these forests. That, after all, is life; to be the leader of daring men, in forest, or field, I would give up every thing else.”

“What! every thing?” said Laura, flushing warmly.

“Yes, every thing, and almost everybody,” replied Arnold, kindling with the fierce animal courage, that was the redeeming point of his character. “To subdue opinions—to fight—to conquer—to enjoy triumph to the utmost—that is real existence.”

“I can understand this if great results are to follow strife—to struggle for outraged rights—for freedom, when it is withheld—to protect the weak and defend the good; this makes warfare glorious—but bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed is terrible.”

Laura spoke with power; her eye kindled and her lips curved grandly. There was sympathy between them at the moment, for both were courageous to a fault—she in her moral enthusiasm, he in physical daring.

“Any thing,” said Arnold, bitterly, “any thing but measuring tape at a counter, or salt on the deck of a vessel; such occupations outrage one’s manhood.”

“Does any thing outrage manhood which is not wrong?” said Laura, gently, but with a gleam of pride in her face, for Arnold looked a hero while he was speaking, and every woman loves a spirit of daring in the man she looks up to, even if wrongfully directed.

“That depends on the person—I have no talent for the drudgery of work or trade, but where is the chance for any thing else now-a-days? The Indians are all driven back, and there is no field of valor left to an American. If the country would rise up against our masters over sea, there might be hope; but we are too busy raising corn and importing slaves for that.”

“But the time may come, must, in the course of events,” said Laura; “this great land cannot always remain a colony to England.”

“Oh! if you should prove a prophetess, as well as the most charming woman on earth, worship would be too little for you.”

Laura laughed, drew her hand from his, and said, “It was time to look after the horse and sleigh, the story of the Mohegans had made them both too romantic.”

By this coquettish movement the imprudent declaration, which seemed constantly on Arnold’s lip, was driven back again, and they began to retrace their step toward the road. As he came in sight of the sleigh, Arnold uttered a quick exclamation, and with a hurried request that Laura would wait for him, dashed down the road.

The horse had got tired of waiting in the cold, planted up to his knees in snow; he had been fastened to a slender sapling, which grew among the brushwood by the highway; the very frailty of his bondage, perhaps, tempted him; at any rate, after stamping the snow about with angry vehemence, and having shaken the buffalo robe completely off, he began to pull at the slender tree with a violence that splintered it in the middle, and left one half dangling to the halter.

Thus free, away went the spirited animal, sweeping the cutter after him into the road, down which he dashed, homeward bound, with a tumult of bells that made the cold air ring again.

Leonard heard the noise as he was setting his saw for its sixth journey down the great pine log it was converting into boards, and calling to Amy that he would be back in a minute if she would watch the mill, away he went, full run, after the horse.

Laura watched the chase a moment, laughing cheerily at the strife of speed between the horse and its master, then she began to feel the cutting wind, and looked around for shelter. The saw-mill stood temptingly near; she had been crazy to visit it from the first—a splendid view of the fall could be obtained from one end, which looked up the stream. The moment was opportune, one glimpse at the cataract from a distance would satisfy her entirely.

She turned with the first thought, seized hold of a young spruce-tree, slid down the crusted bank with a merry laugh, and leaping across some loose rocks, landed in the saw-mill—landed face to face with Amy Leonard, who turned white as death, and shrunk back at the approach of this brilliant stranger. She knew the face—knew the flow of that white ostrich feather at once, and her whole being shrunk and quivered, with a feeling so much more keen than she had ever known before, that it was accompanied with a terrible dread.

“Pardon, _ma belle_—that is, I beg to be excused for this rude entrance, young lady. I did not know that any one was here.”

Amy lifted her eyes to the bright face with a sort of terror. Her lips parted to speak, but no words came; then she turned, anxious to escape anywhere, or in any way.

Laura mistook this emotion, which held the poor girl a slave beneath her eyes, and said, with an air of graceful deprecation,

“Ah! I understand; you dislike my broken English, when I, vain thing, fancy it so perfect; or, perhaps, I frightened you by that wild leap. It was the spruce-tree springing back, that sent me off like an arrow. _Ah, ma chère petite_, don’t be afraid of me, I’m so harmless, like a bird in the woods; and you see I must stay somewhere till Monsieur, I mean Mr. Arnold, brings back his horse.”

“I’m not afraid—not in the least,” said Amy, with a gentle lift of the head, which sprang from the pride within her.

“But you tremble so, _pauvre enfant_.”

“It is with the cold, then.”

“Ah, yes, the wind does rage down this hollow like a tiger,—and the falls, how plainly we can hear them roar! Can I see them from that opening in the boards?”

Amy bent her head: the mention of Arnold’s name had taken away her speech once more.

Laura was vexed by this coldness, and with an impatient sweep of her person moved on. A single step brought her in contact with the saw, which was steadily eating its way through the pine log. She darted aside, gave a frightened leap, and landed on a loose plank, where she made a wild effort to recover herself; but with the next movement one end of the plank sprang upward, tearing a chasm in the floor, through which she was hurled with a shriek that rose sharp and loud above the rush of the cataract and the rasp of the saw.

A blow upon the heart had petrified Amy: a cry for help gave back all her powers. Her first effort was to stop the saw and the rush of water. She had seen her father do it a hundred times, but would her strength avail? Another cry, faint and smothered, gave her a power almost superhuman. It was wonderful to see the great saw obeying the force of those small hands, give up its bite on the wood and sink into helplessness.

With almost supernatural strength she had chained the waters, but now the shrieks rose sharp and fast from the abyss beneath. She fell upon her knees by the chasm through which the stranger had fallen, and, clinging to the rough boards, looked down, searching the deep for some trace of the human life sinking and pleading there. The water rose high and dark under the mill, pouring with destructive force through the sluiceway, and crushing the blocks of ice between the huge logs that floated there.

Amy saw the strange girl clinging desperately to the end of a great sodden log, which swayed in the current, and sunk under her weight with terrible threats of death. Even in the dark, and through the blinding water, those wild eyes looked out pleading for life.

Amy stood up, uttered one cry for help, and, grasping the firm edge of a plank, flung herself down the abyss. With a lithe effort of the limbs she sprang to a cross-beam, wreathed one arm around it, and dropped to a log against that to which Laura clung. It knocked and jarred fearfully, threatening every instant to roll over in the water; but to this uncertain support the young girl swung herself. The sodden bark gave way beneath her feet and fell in black patches to the water. Besides this, ice had gathered over the log, and treacherously betrayed every effort to support herself. She flung herself upon her face, clinging to the log with one arm, and throwing the other blindly out, calling for Laura to seize upon it without fear. No answer came; nothing but a gurgle of the waters, and then a rushing plunge of the log to which the wretched girl had clung. Still Amy writhed her limbs about the log, and stretched farther and farther over the waters, striking out wildly, and shaking the blinding drops from her eyes. Something floated against her hand, she clutched it with a sob of joy. It was the ostrich-plume and the white bonnet, a wet mass that shrunk to nothing in her grasp. Then her hand became entangled in another substance, that weltered up from the blackness like seaweed in a tempest; she knew that it was human hair,—that the girl had sunk and was rising to the surface. A moment and she would be gone forever.

Amy half lifted herself from her support, wound her hands in the floating hair, and cried out for the young creature to sense upon her, and climb up the log: it was large, and might hold them both till help came.

Laura evidently heard, for a white arm started up from the water and wound itself around Amy’s neck, clinging there with such mad frenzy that the noble girl was half dragged into the flood, where the other struggled for life. Higher and higher that white wild face was lifted from the water, till it rose close to the other, so close that Amy felt the icy rain from those tresses dripping over her in streams.

But blinded, weak and chilled as she was, the brave girl felt her strength giving way. Inch by inch she was dragged into the water, spite of her courage, spite of the desperation with which she clung to a support that began to dip and turn under its increased burden.

Laura made an agonized effort to save herself, the log gave a plunge, and rose with half its bark stripped off. Both girls were struggling in the deep, groping out for the loose bark, catching at the logs, and uttering choked screams that rose horribly through the gusts of wind wailing around the old mill. They sunk once and rose again, clinging together, both wild faces blinded by the long tresses of the French girl, freezing in each other’s arms.

Again the current seized upon them, but a rush of footsteps shook the boards overhead, and down through the opening leaped a human form, which tore the French girl out from the water, and left Amy struggling alone.

She felt it, even in the agonies of death. The chill of that desertion struck to her heart colder than the ice that beat against it. Clinging to the splintered end of a log against which she had drifted, consciousness grew keen within her. She knew that, somehow, Arnold, her husband, was climbing upward through the weltering timbers, bearing her rival away to safety, while she was left behind, freezing to death. He wished her to die,—for that he had left her. She must sink there and be swept under the logs, through the whirling driftwood,—away into eternal darkness, while they mounted to life and light. Be it so. Her freezing fingers lost their hold on the wood: her very soul grew cold. She felt a great rushing of waters over her head, and then, above all, a hoarse shout, “My child! my child! Amy! Amy!”

Down through the broken floor,—down to the ice-clad logs into the black waters,—Joshua Leonard plunged, dove, rose again, and made another swoop under the timbers, huddled together by the current, searching madly for his child,—the brave young creature that had been swept away before his eyes.

He was gone a long, long time;—an eternity if any loving heart had looked on, a minute in the silence of that lonely place. At length he came up between two huge logs, beating the water with one arm, and holding her to his breast with the other. He was a powerful man, and seizing on the slippery logs turned them into slaves, and, crowding them close together, strode over the uncertain bridge so quickly that there was no time for danger, till he reached some projecting timbers, and climbing up them came out in the upper mill.

No one was there; Arnold had carried Laura into the cabin, and Mrs. Leonard, all unconscious of her child’s danger, was striving to unfasten the heavy garments that still clung around her. While she was stooping kindly over the helpless girl the cabin-door flew open, and Leonard came in, with Amy held tightly to his broad chest.