第3章 A Mountain Woman(2)

Where I come from,we have to ride if we want to go anywhere;but here there seems to be no particular place to --to reach.""Are you so utilitarian?"I asked,laugh-ingly."Must you always have some reason for everything you do?I do so many things just for the mere pleasure of doing them,I'm afraid you will have a very poor opinion of me.""That is not what I mean,"she said,flushing,and turning her large gray eyes on me."You must not think I have a reason for everything I do."She was very earnest,and it was evident that she was unacquainted with the art of making conversation."But what I mean,"she went on,"is that there is no place --no end --to reach."She looked back over her shoulder toward the west,where the trees marked the sky line,and an expression of loss and dissatisfaction came over her face."You see,"she said,apolo-getically,"I'm used to different things --to the mountains.I have never been where Icould not see them before in my life.""Ah,I see!I suppose it is odd to look up and find them not there.""It's like being lost,this not having any-thing around you.At least,I mean,"she continued slowly,as if her thought could not easily put itself in words,--"I mean it seems as if a part of the world had been taken down.It makes you feel lonesome,as if you were living after the world had begun to die.""You'll get used to it in a few days.It seems very beautiful to me here.And then you will have so much life to divert you.""Life?But there is always that every-where.""I mean men and women.""Oh!Still,I am not used to them.Ithink I might be not --not very happy with them.They might think me queer.Ithink I would like to show your sister the mountains.""She has seen them often.""Oh,she told me.But I don't mean those pretty green hills such as we saw com-ing here.They are not like my mountains.

I like mountains that go beyond the clouds,with terrible shadows in the hollows,and belts of snow lying in the gorges where the sun cannot reach,and the snow is blue in the sunshine,or shining till you think it is silver,and the mist so wonderful all about it,changing each moment and drifting up and down,that you cannot tell what name to give the colors.These mountains of yours here in the East are so quiet;mine are shouting all the time,with the pines and the rivers.The echoes are so loud in the valley that sometimes,when the wind is rising,we can hardly hear a man talk unless he raises his voice.There are four cataracts near where I live,and they all have different voices,just as people do;and one of them is happy --a little white cataract --and it falls where the sun shines earliest,and till night it is shining.But the others only get the sun now and then,and they are more noisy and cruel.One of them is always in the shadow,and the water looks black.That is partly because the rocks all underneath it are black.It falls down twenty great ledges in a gorge with black sides,and a white mist dances all over it at every leap.

I tell father the mist is the ghost of the waters.No man ever goes there;it is too cold.The chill strikes through one,and makes your heart feel as if you were dying.

But all down the side of the mountain,toward the south and the west,the sun shines on the granite and draws long points of light out of it.Father tells me soldiers marching look that way when the sun strikes on their bayonets.Those are the kind of mountains I mean,Mr.Grant."She was looking at me with her face trans-figured,as if it,like the mountains she told me of,had been lying in shadow,and wait-ing for the dazzling dawn.

"I had a terrible dream once,"she went on;"the most terrible dream ever I had.

I dreamt that the mountains had all been taken down,and that I stood on a plain to which there was no end.The sky was burn-ing up,and the grass scorched brown from the heat,and it was twisting as if it were in pain.And animals,but no other person save myself,only wild things,were crouch-ing and looking up at that sky.They could not run because there was no place to which to go.""You were having a vision of the last man,"I said."I wonder myself sometimes whether this old globe of ours is going to collapse suddenly and take us with her,or whether we will disappear through slow disastrous ages of fighting and crushing,with hunger and blight to help us to the end.And then,at the last,perhaps,some luckless fellow,stronger than the rest,will stand amid the ribs of the rotting earth and go mad."The woman's eyes were fixed on me,large and luminous."Yes,"she said;"he would go mad from the lonesomeness of it.

He would be afraid to be left alone like that with God.No one would want to be taken into God's secrets.""And our last man,"I went on,"would have to stand there on that swaying wreck till even the sound of the crumbling earth ceased.And he would try to find a voice and would fail,because silence would have come again.And then the light would go out --"The shudder that crept over her made me stop,ashamed of myself.

"You talk like father,"she said,with a long-drawn breath.Then she looked up suddenly at the sun shining through a rift in those reckless gray clouds,and put out one hand as if to get it full of the headlong rollicking breeze."But the earth is not dying,"she cried."It is well and strong,and it likes to go round and round among all the other worlds.It likes the sun and moon;they are all good friends;and it likes the people who live on it.Maybe it is they instead of the fire within who keep it warm;or maybe it is warm just from always going,as we are when we run.We are young,you and I,Mr.Grant,and Leroy,and your beautiful sister,and the world is young too!"Then she laughed a strong splendid laugh,which had never had the joy taken out of it with drawing-room re-strictions;and I laughed too,and felt that we had become very good companions indeed,and found myself warming to the joy of companionship as I had not since Iwas a boy at school.