CHAPTER III
“All that thou see'st is Natures handiwork;
Those rocks that upward throw their mossy brawl
Like castled pinnacles of elder times;
These venerable stems, that slowly rock
Their towering branches in the wintry gale;
That field of frost, which glitters in the sun,
Mocking the whiteness of a marble breast!
Yet man can mar such works with his rude taste,
Like some sad spoiler of a virgin’s fame.” —Duo.
Some little while elapsed ere Marmaduke Temple was sufficiently
recovered from his agitation to scan the person of his new companion.
He now observed that he was a youth of some two or three and twenty
years of age, and rather above the middle height. Further observation
was prevented by the rough overcoat which was belted close to his form
by a worsted sash, much like the one worn by the old hunter. The eyes
of the Judge, after resting a moment on the figure of the stranger,
were raised to a scrutiny of his countenance. There had been a look
of care visible in the features of the youth, when he first entered
the sleigh, that had not only attracted the notice of Elizabeth, but
which she had been much puzzled to interpret. His anxiety seemed the
strongest when he was en joining his old companion to secrecy; and
even when he had decided, and was rather passively suffering himself
to be conveyed to the village, the expression of his eyes by no means
indicated any great degree of self-satisfaction at the step. But the
lines of an uncommonly prepossessing countenance were gradually
becoming composed; and he now sat silent, and apparently musing. The
Judge gazed at him for some time with earnestness, and then smiling,
as if at his own forgetfulness, he said:
“I believe, my young friend, that terror has driven you from my
recollection; your face is very familiar, and yet, for the honor of a
score of bucks’ tails in my cap, I could not tell your name.”
“I came into the country but three weeks since,” returned the youth
coldly, “and I understand you have been absent twice that time.”
“It will be five to-morrow. Yet your face is one that I have seen;
though it would not be strange, such has been my affright, should I
see thee in thy winding-sheet walking by my bedside to-night. What
say’st thou, Bess? Am I compos mentis or not? Fit to charge a grand
jury, or, what is just now of more pressing necessity, able to do the
honors of Christmas eve in the hall of Templeton?”
“More able to do either, my dear father.” said a playful voice from
under the ample inclosures of the hood, “ than to kill deer with a
smooth-bore.” A short pause followed, and the same voice, but in a
different accent, continued. “We shall have good reasons for our
thanksgiving to night, on more accounts than one,”
The horses soon reached a point where they seemed to know by instinct
that the journey was nearly ended, and, bearing on the bits as they
tossed their heads, they rapidly drew the sleigh over the level land
which lay on the top of the mountain, and soon came to the point where
the road descended suddenly, but circuitously, into the valley.
The Judge was roused from his reflections, when he saw the four
columns of smoke which floated above his own chimneys. As house,
village, and valley burst on his sight, he exclaimed cheerfully to his
daughter:
“See, Bess, there is thy resting-place for life! And thine too, young
man, if thou wilt consent to dwell with us.”
The eyes of his auditors involuntarily met; and, if the color that
gathered over the face of Elizabeth was contradicted by the cold
expression of her eye, the ambiguous smile that again played about the
lips of the stranger seemed equally to deny the probability of his
consenting to form one of this family group. The scene was one,
however, which might easily warm a heart less given to philanthropy
than that of Marmaduke Temple.
The side of the mountain on which our travellers were journeying,
though not absolutely perpendicular, was so steep as to render great
care necessary in descending the rude and narrow path which, in that
early day, wound along the precipices. The negro reined in his
impatient steeds, and time was given Elizabeth to dwell on a scene
which was so rapidly altering under the hands of man, that it only
resembled in its outlines the picture she had so often studied with
delight in childhood. Immediately beneath them lay a seeming plain,
glittering without in equality, and buried in mountains. The latter
were precipitous, especially on the side of the plain, and chiefly in
forest. Here and there the hills fell away in long, low points, and
broke the sameness of the outline, or setting to the long and wide
field of snow, which, without house, tree, fence, or any other
fixture, resembled so much spot less cloud settled to the earth. A
few dark and moving spots were, however, visible on the even surface,
which the eye of Elizabeth knew to be so many sleighs going their
several ways to or from the village. On the western border of the
plain, the mountains, though equally high, were less precipitous, and
as they receded opened into irregular valleys and glens, or were
formed into terraces and hollows that admitted of cultivation.
Although the evergreens still held dominion over many of the hills
that rose on this side of the valley, yet the undulating outlines of
the distant mountains, covered with forests of beech and maple, gave a
relief to the eye, and the promise of a kinder soil. Occasionally
spots of white were discoverable amidst the forests of the opposite
hills, which announced, by the smoke that curled over the tops of the
trees, the habitations of man and the commencement of agriculture.
These spots were sometimes, by the aid of united labor, enlarged into
what were called settlements, but more frequently were small and
insulated; though so rapid were the changes, and so persevering the
labors of those who had cast their fortunes on the success of the
enterprise, that it was not difficult for the imagination of Elizabeth
to conceive they were enlarging under her eye while she was gazing, in
mute wonder, at the alterations that a few short years had made in the
aspect of the country. The points on the western side of this
remarkable plain, on which no plant had taken root, were both larger
and more numerous than those on its eastern, and one in particular
thrust itself forward in such a manner as to form beautifully curved
bays of snow on either side. On its extreme end an oak stretched
forward, as if to overshadow with its branches a spot which its roots
were forbidden to enter. It had released itself from the thraldom
that a growth of centuries had imposed on the branches of the
surrounding forest trees, and threw its gnarled and fantastic arms
abroad, in the wildness of liberty. A dark spot of a few acres in
extent at the southern extremity of this beautiful flat, and
immediately under the feet of our travellers, alone showed by its
rippling surface, and the vapors which exhaled from it, that what at
first might seem a plain was one of the mountain lakes, locked in the
frosts of winter. A narrow current rushed impetuously from its bosom
at the open place we have mentioned, and was to be traced for miles,
as it wound its way toward the south through the real valley, by its
borders of hemlock and pine, and by the vapor which arose from its
warmer surface into the chill atmosphere of the hills. The banks of
this lovely basin, at its outlet, or southern end, were steep, but not
high; and in that direction the land continued, far as the eye could
reach, a narrow but graceful valley, along which the settlers had
scattered their humble habitations, with a profusion that bespoke the
quality of the soil and the comparative facilities of intercourse,
Immediately on the bank of the lake and at its foot, stood the village
of Templeton. It consisted of some fifty buildings, including those
of every description, chiefly built of wood, and which, in their
architecture, bore no great marks of taste, but which also, by the
unfinished appearance of most of the dwellings, indicated the hasty
manner of their construction, To the eye, they presented a variety of
colors. A few were white in both front and rear, but more bore that
expensive color on their fronts only, while their economical but
ambitious owners had covered the remaining sides of the edifices with
a dingy red. One or two were slowly assuming the russet of age; while
the uncovered beams that were to be seen through the broken windows of
their second stories showed that either the taste or the vanity of
their proprietors had led them to undertake a task which they were
unable to accomplish. The whole were grouped in a manner that aped
the streets of a city, and were evidently so arranged by the
directions of one who looked to the wants of posterity rather than to
the convenience of the present incumbents. Some three or four of the
better sort of buildings, in addition to the uniformity of their
color, were fitted with green blinds, which, at that season at least,
were rather strangely contrasted to the chill aspect of the lake, the
mountains, the forests, and the wide fields of snow. Before the doors
of these pretending dwellings were placed a few saplings, either
without branches or possessing only the feeble shoots of one or two
summers’ growth, that looked not unlike tall grenadiers on post near
the threshold of princes. In truth, the occupants of these favored
habitations were the nobles of Templeton, as Marmaduke was its king.
They were the dwellings of two young men who were cunning in the law;
an equal number of that class who chaffered to the wants of the
community under the title of storekeepers; and a disciple of
Aesculapius, who, for a novelty, brought more subjects into the world
than he sent out of it. In the midst of this incongruous group of
dwellings rose the mansion of the Judge, towering above all its
neighbors. It stood in the centre of an inclosure of several acres,
which was covered with fruit-trees. Some of the latter had been left
by the Indians, and began already to assume the moss and inclination
of age, therein forming a very marked contrast to the infant
plantations that peered over most of the picketed fences of the
village. In addition to this show of cultivation were two rows of
young Lombardy poplars, a tree but lately introduced into America,
formally lining either side of a pathway which led from a gate that
opened on the principal street to the front door of the building. The
house itself had been built entirely under the superintendence of a
certain Mr. Richard Jones, whom we have already mentioned, and who,
from his cleverness in small matters, and an entire willingness to
exert his talents, added to the circumstance of their being sisters’
children, ordinarily superintended all the minor concerns of Marmaduke
Temple. Richard was fond of saying that this child of invention
consisted of nothing more nor less than what should form the
groundwork of every clergyman’s discourse, viz., a firstly and a
lastly. He had commenced his labors, in the first year of their
residence, by erecting a tall, gaunt edifice of wood, with its gable
toward the highway. In this shelter for it was little more, the
family resided three years. By the end of that period, Richard had
completed his design. He had availed himself, in this heavy
undertaking, of the experience of a certain wandering eastern
mechanic, who, by exhibiting a few soiled plates of English
architecture, and talking learnedly of friezes, entablatures, and
particularly of the composite order, had obtained a very undue
influence over Richard’s taste in everything that pertained to that
branch of the fine arts. Not that Mr. Jones did not affect to
consider Hiram Doolittle a perfect empiric in his profession, being in
the constant habit of listening to his treatises on architecture with
a kind of indulgent smile; yet, either from an inability to oppose
them by anything plausible from his own stores of learning or from
secret admiration, Richard generally submitted to the arguments of his
co-adjutor. Together, they had not only erected a dwelling for
Marmaduke, but they had given a fashion to the architecture of the
whole county. The composite order, Mr. Doolittle would contend, was
an order composed of many others, and was intended to be the most
useful of all, for it admitted into its construction such alterations
as convenience or circumstances might require. To this proposition
Richard usually assented; and when rival geniuses who monopolize not
only all the reputation but most of the money of a neighborhood, are
of a mind, it is not uncommon to see them lead the fashion, even in
graver matters. In the present instance, as we have already hinted,
the castle, as Judge Templeton’s dwelling was termed in common
parlance, came to be the model, in some one or other of its numerous
excellences, for every aspiring edifice within twenty miles of it.
The house itself, or the “ lastly,” was of stone: large, square, and
far from uncomfortable. These were four requisites, on which
Marmaduke had insisted with a little more than his ordinary
pertinacity. But everything else was peaceably assigned to Richard
and his associate. These worthies found the material a little too
solid for the tools of their workmen, which, in General, were employed
on a substance no harder than the white pine of the adjacent
mountains, a wood so proverbially soft that it is commonly chosen by
the hunters for pillows. But for this awkward dilemma, it is probable
that the ambitious tastes of our two architects would have left us
much more to do in the way of description. Driven from the faces of
the house by the obduracy of the material, they took refuge in the
porch and on the roof. The former, it was decided, should be severely
classical, and the latter a rare specimen of the merits of the
Composite order.
A roof, Richard contended, was a part of the edifice that the ancients
always endeavored to conceal, it being an excrescence in architecture
that was only to be tolerated on account of its usefulness. Besides,
as he wittily added, a chief merit in a dwelling was to present a
front on whichever side it might happen to be seen; for, as it was
exposed to all eyes in all weathers, there should be no weak flank for
envy or unneighborly criticism to assail. It was therefore decided
that the roof should be flat, and with four faces. To this
arrangement, Marmaduke objected the heavy snows that lay for months,
frequently covering the earth to a depth of three or four feet.
Happily the facilities of the composite order presented themselves to
effect a compromise, and the rafters were lengthened, so as to give a
descent that should carry off the frozen element. But, unluckily,
some mistake was made in the admeasurement of these material parts of
the fabric; and, as one of the greatest recommendations of Hiram was
his ability to work by the “square rule,” no opportunity was found of
discovering the effect until the massive timbers were raised on the
four walls of the building. Then, indeed, it was soon seen that, in
defiance of all rule, the roof was by far the most conspicuous part of
the whole edifice. Richard and his associate consoled themselves with
the relief that the covering would aid in concealing this unnatural
elevation; but every shingle that was laid only multiplied objects to
look at. Richard essayed to remedy the evil with paint, and four
different colors were laid on by his own hands. The first was a sky-
blue, in the vain expectation that the eye might be cheated into the
belief it was the heavens themselves that hung so imposingly over
Marmaduke’s dwelling; the second was what he called a “cloud-color,”
being nothing more nor less than an imitation of smoke; the third was
what Richard termed an invisible green, an experiment that did not
succeed against a background of sky. Abandoning the attempt to
conceal, our architects drew upon their invention for means to
ornament the offensive shingles.
After much deliberation and two or three essays by moonlight, Richard
ended the affair by boldly covering the whole beneath a color that he
christened “sunshine,” a cheap way, as he assured his cousin the
Judge, of always keeping fair weather over his head. The platform, as
well as the caves of the house, were surmounted by gaudily painted
railings, and the genius of Hiram was exerted in the fabrication of
divers urns and mouldings, that were scattered profusely around this
part of their labors. Richard had originally a cunning expedient, by
which the chimneys were intended to be so low, and so situated, as to
resemble ornaments on the balustrades; but comfort required that the
chimneys should rise with the roof, in order that the smoke might bc
carried off, and they thus became four extremely conspicuous objects
in the view.
As this roof was much the most important architectural undertaking in
which Mr. Jones was ever engaged, his failure produced a correspondent
degree of mortification At first, he whispered among his acquaintances
that it proceeded from ignorance of the square rule on the part of
Hiram; but, as his eye became gradually accustomed to the object, he
grew better satisfied with his labors, and instead of apologizing for
the defects, he commenced praising thc beauties of the mansion-house;
he soon found hearers, and, as wealth and comfort are at all times
attractive, it was, as has been said, made a model for imitation on a
small scale. In less than two years from its erection, he had the
pleasure of standing on the elevated platform, and of looking down on
three humble imitators of its beauty. Thus it is ever with fashion,
which even renders the faults of the great subjects of admiration.
Marmaduke bore this deformity in his dwelling with great good-nature,
and soon contrived, by his own improvements, to give an air of
respectability and comfort to his place of residence. Still, there
was much of in congruity, even immediately about the mansion-house.
Although poplars had been brought from Europe to ornament the grounds,
and willows and other trees were gradually springing up nigh the
dwelling, yet many a pile of snow betrayed the presence of the stump
of a pine; and even, in one or two instances, unsightly remnants of
trees that had been partly destroyed by fire were seen rearing their
black, glistening columns twenty or thirty feet above the pure white
of the snow, These, which in the language of the country are termed
stubs, abounded in the open fields adjacent to the village, and were
accompanied, occasionally, by the ruin of a pine or a hemlock that had
been stripped of its bark, and which waved in melancholy grandeur its
naked limbs to the blast, a skeleton of its former glory. But these
and many other unpleasant additions to the view were unseen by the
delighted Elizabeth, who, as the horses moved down the side of the
mountain, saw only in gross the cluster of houses that lay like a map
at her feet; the fifty smokes that were curling from the valley to the
clouds; the frozen lake as it lay imbedded in mountains of evergreen,
with the long shadows of the pines on its white surface, lengthening
in the setting sun; the dark ribbon of water that gushed from the
outlet and was winding its way toward the distant Chesapeake—the
altered, though still remembered, scenes of her child hood.
Five years had wrought greater changes than a century would produce in
countries where time and labor have given permanency to the works of
man. To our young hunter and the Judge the scene had less novelty;
though none ever emerge from the dark forests of that mountain, and
witness the glorious scenery of that beauteous valley, as it bursts
unexpectedly upon them, without a feeling of delight. The former cast
one admiring glance from north to south, and sank his face again
beneath the folds of his coat; while the latter contemplated, with
philanthropic pleasure, the prospect of affluence and comfort that was
expanding around him; the result of his own enterprise, and much of it
the fruits of his own industry.
The cheerful sound of sleigh-bells, however, attracted the attention
of the whole party, as they came jingling up the sides of the
mountain, at a rate that announced a powerful team and a hard driver.
The bushes which lined the highway interrupted the view, and the two
sleighs were close upon each other before either was seen.
