In the car for Niagara was an Englishman of the receptive, guileless, thin type, inquisitive and overflowing with approval of everything American--a type which has now become one of the common features of travel in this country. He had light hair, sandy side-whiskers, a face that looked as if it had been scrubbed with soap and sandpaper, and he wore a sickly yellow traveling-suit. He was accompanied by his wife, a stout, resolute matron, in heavy boots, a sensible stuff gown, with a lot of cotton lace fudged about her neck, and a broad brimmed hat with a vegetable garden on top. The little man was always in pursuit of information, in his guide-book or from his fellow-passengers, and whenever he obtained any he invariably repeated it to his wife, who said "Fancy!" and "Now, really!" in a rising inflection that expressed surprise and expectation.
The conceited American, who commonly draws himself into a shell when he travels, and affects indifference, and seems to be losing all natural curiosity, receptivity, and the power of observation, is pretty certain to undervalue the intelligence of this class of English travelers, and get amusement out of their peculiarities instead of learning from them how to make everyday of life interesting. Even King, who, besides his national crust of exclusiveness, was today wrapped in the gloom of Irene's letter, was gradually drawn to these simple, unpretending people. He took for granted their ignorance of America--ignorance of America being one of the branches taught in the English schools--and he soon discovered that they were citizens of the world. They not only knew the Continent very well, but they had spent a winter in Egypt, lived a year in India, and seen something of China and much of Japan. Although they had been scarcely a fortnight in the United States, King doubted if there were ten women in the State of New York, not professional teachers, who knew as much of the flora of the country as this plain-featured, rich-voiced woman. They called King's attention to a great many features of the landscape he had never noticed before, and asked him a great many questions about farming and stock and wages that he could not answer. It appeared that Mr. Stanley Stubbs, Stoke-Cruden--for that was the name and address of the present discoverers of America--had a herd of short-horns, and that Mrs. Stubbs was even more familiar with the herd-book than her husband. But before the fact had enabled King to settle the position of his new acquaintance satisfactorily to himself, Mrs. Stubbs upset his estimate by quoting Tennyson.
"Your great English poet is very much read here," King said, by way of being agreeable.
"So we have heard," replied Mrs. Stubbs. "Mr. Stubbs reads Tennyson beautifully. He has thought of giving some readings while we are here. We have been told that the Americans are very fond of readings."
"Yes," said King, "they are devoted to them, especially readings by Englishmen in their native tongue. There is a great rage now for everything English; at Newport hardly anything else is spoken."
Mrs. Stubbs looked for a moment as if this might be an American joke; but there was no smile upon King's face, and she only said, "Fancy! You must make a note of Newport, dear. That is one of the places we must see. Of course Mr. Stubbs has never read in public, you know. But I suppose that would make no difference, the Americans are so kind and so appreciative."
"Not the least difference," replied King. "They are used to it."
"It is a wonderful country," said Mr. Stubbs.
"Most interesting," chimed in Mrs. Stubbs; "and so odd!
"You know, Mr. King, we find some of the Americans so clever. We have been surprised, really. It makes us feel quite at home. At the hotels and everywhere, most obliging."
"Do you make a long stay?"
"Oh, no. We just want to study the people and the government, and see the principal places. We were told that Albany is the capital, instead of New York; it's so odd, you know. And Washington is another capital. And there is Boston. It must be very confusing." King began to suspect that he must be talking with the editor of the Saturday Review. Mr. Stubbs continued: "They told us in New York that we ought to go to Paterson on the Island of Jersey, I believe. I suppose it is as interesting as Niagara. We shall visit it on our return. But we came over more to see Niagara than anything else. And from there we shall run over to Chicago and the Yosemite. Now we are here, we could not think of going back without a look at the Yosemite."
King said that thus far he had existed without seeing the Yosemite, but he believed that next to Chicago it was the most attractive place in the country.
It was dark when they came into the station at Niagara--dark and silent. Our American tourists, who were accustomed to the clamor of the hackmen here, and expected to be assaulted by a horde of wild Comanches in plain clothes, and torn limb from baggage, if not limb from limb, were unable to account for this silence, and the absence of the common highwaymen, until they remembered that the State had bought the Falls, and the agents of the government had suppressed many of the old nuisances. It was possible now to hear the roar of the cataract.
This unaccustomed human stillness was ominous to King. He would have welcomed a Niagara of importunity and imprecations; he was bursting with impatience to express himself; it seemed as if he would die if he were silent an hour longer under that letter. Of course the usual American relief of irritability and impatience suggested itself. He would telegraph; only electricity was quick enough and fiery enough for his mood. But what should he telegraph? The telegraph was not invented for love-making, and is not adapted to it. It is ridiculous to make love by wire. How was it possible to frame a message that should be commercial on its face, and yet convey the deepest agony and devotion of the sender's heart? King stood at the little telegraph window, looking at the despatcher who was to send it, and thought of this. Depressed and intent as he was, the whimsicality of the situation struck him. What could he say? It illustrates our sheeplike habit of expressing ourselves in the familiar phrase or popular slang of the day that at the instant the only thing King could think of to send was this: "Hold the fort, for I am coming." The incongruity of this made him smile, and he did not write it. Finally he composed this message, which seemed to him to have a businesslike and innocent aspect: "Too late. Impossible for me to change. Have invested everything. Expect letter." Mechanically he counted the words when he had written this. On the fair presumption that the company would send "everything" as one word, there were still two more than the conventional ten, and, from force of habit, he struck out the words "for me." But he had no sooner done this than he felt a sense of shame. It was contemptible for a man in love to count his words, and it was intolerable to be haggling with himself at such a crisis over the expense of a despatch. He got cold over the thought that Irene might also count them, and see that the cost of this message of passion had been calculated. And with recklessness he added: "We reach the Profile House next week, and I am sure I can convince you I am right."
King found Niagara pitched to the key of his lacerated and tumultuous feelings. There were few people at the Cataract House, and either the bridal season had not set in, or in America a bride has been evolved who does not show any consciousness of her new position. In his present mood the place seemed deserted, the figures of the few visitors gliding about as in a dream, as if they too had been subdued by the recent commission which had silenced the drivers, and stopped the mills, and made the park free, and was tearing down the presumptuous structures along the bank. In this silence, which emphasized the quaking of the earth and air, there was a sense of unknown, impending disaster. It was not to be borne indoors, and the two friends went out into the night.
On the edge of the rapids, above the hotel, the old bath-house was in process of demolition, its shaking piazza almost overhanging the flood. Not much could be seen from it, but it was in the midst of an elemental uproar. Some electric lamps shining through the trees made high lights on the crests of the rapids, while the others near were in shadow and dark. The black mass of Goat Island appeared under the lightning flashes in the northwest sky, and whenever these quick gleams pierced the gloom the frail bridge to the island was outlined for a moment, and then vanished as if it had been swept away, and there could only be seen sparks of light in the houses on the Canadian shore, which seemed very near. In this unknown, which was rather felt than seen, there was a sense of power and of mystery which overcame the mind; and in the black night the roar, the cruel haste of the rapids, tossing white gleams and hurrying to the fatal plunge, begat a sort of terror in the spectators. It was a power implacable, vengeful, not to be measured. They strolled down to Prospect Park. The gate was closed; it had been the scene of an awful tragedy but a few minutes before. They did not know it, but they knew that the air shuddered, and as they skirted the grounds along the way to the foot-bridge the roar grew in their stunned ears. There, projected out into the night, were the cables of steel holding the frail platform over the abyss of night and terror. Beyond was Canada. There was light enough in the sky to reveal, but not to dissipate, the appalling insecurity. What an impious thing it seemed to them, this trembling structure across the chasm! They advanced upon it. There were gleams on the mill cascades below, and on the mass of the American Fall. Below, down in the gloom, were patches of foam, slowly circling around in the eddy--no haste now, just sullen and black satisfaction in the awful tragedy of the fall. The whole was vague, fearful. Always the roar, the shuddering of the air. I think that a man placed on this bridge at night, and ignorant of the cause of the aerial agitation and the wild uproar, could almost lose his reason in the panic of the scene. They walked on; they set foot on Her Majesty's dominions; they entered the Clifton House--quite American, you know, with its new bar and office. A subdued air about everybody here also, and the same quaking, shivering, and impending sense of irresponsible force. Even "two fingers," said the artist, standing at the bar, had little effect in allaying the impression of the terror out there. When they returned the moon was coming up, rising and struggling and making its way slowly through ragged masses of colored clouds. The river could be plainly seen now, smooth, deep, treacherous; the falls on the American side showed fitfully like patches of light and foam; the Horseshoe, mostly hidden by a cold silver mist, occasionally loomed up a white and ghostly mass. They stood for a long time looking down at the foot of the American Fall, the moon now showing clearly the plunge of the heavy column--a column as stiff as if it were melted silver-hushed and frightened by the weird and appalling scene. They did not know at that moment that there where their eyes were riveted, there at the base of the fall, a man's body was churning about, plunged down and cast up, and beaten and whirled, imprisoned in the refluent eddy. But a body was there. In the morning a man's overcoat was found on the parapet at the angle of the fall. Someone then remembered that in the evening, just before the park gate closed, he had seen a man approach the angle of the wall where the overcoat was found. The man was never seen after that. Night first, and then the hungry water, swallowed him. One pictures the fearful leap into the dark, the midway repentance, perhaps, the despair of the plunge. A body cast in here is likely to tarry for days, eddying round and round, and tossed in that terrible maelstrom, before a chance current ejects it, and sends it down the fierce rapids below. King went back to the hotel in a terror of the place, which did not leave him so long as he remained. His room quivered, the roar filled all the air. Is not life real and terrible enough, he asked himself, but that brides must cast this experience also into their honeymoon?
The morning light did not efface the impressions of the night, the dominating presence of a gigantic, pitiless force, a blind pas............