The Black River was crossed by a wagon bridge at a point between the Moose River and the falls. The road continued on to Lyonsdale. This same Black River gave an impression of performing a bold, high-handed deed. It split its territory sharply in halves. From its left bank rose wave upon wave of smooth hills mounting to a high plateau, while, as sharply from its right bank spread a huge, somber, primeval hemlock forest, mounting in turn upon its hills beyond the range of vision. Out of this forest rushed the Moose River, its waters icy and dark. Into this forest ran no road for long. The Black River appeared to have done this big, high-handed act; but the recurrence of the name Lyons, and the presence of a baronial seat at Lyonsdale, just within the edge of the forest, might have offered a diverging explanation to one intent upon what lies beyond appearances. However, such was the lay of the land.
The train bearing Grandpa and Louis, after the preliminary whistle and bell clanging of ceremony, slowed up at the station. Grandpa, clean shaven, erect, aglow, descended with dignity; Louis, somewhat begrimed because of his fixed belief that the place for his head lay outside the car window, jumped after him, already excited by the Black River. He wanted to investigate everything at once or immediately; oh—yes—he must kiss Tante Jennie.
They were greeted at the station by Walter Whittlesey, a sizeable man, swarthy, grave, full bearded—black sprinkled with gray, wearing the wide felt hat of a landowner who knew horses. He had given instructions, and had so notified Grandpa, that all baggage and luggage would be cared for, extraneously, by menials. He was a calm, courteous man, whose bearing suggested a lineage of colonels on horseback, blue grass, bourbon, blooded stock, beauteous women, and blacks.
The three walked leisurely up the road, to the white house with green blinds where Tante Jennie, otherwise Mrs. Jenny List Whittlesey, awaited them with the reserve of a gentlewoman whom long practice had enabled to speak with delicate precision in a voice scarcely audible, and to inhale her smiles.
As the trio mounted the steps leading to the veranda, Louis in his rough and ready way casually noticed, not far from the doorway, a young lady reclining in an easy chair, quietly rocking, deeply absorbed in a book. Scarcely had he entered the open door but she had affirmed: “I’m going like that boy.”
Within the “spare room” of the house, Grandpa folded his daughter in fervent arms, kissed her with the profound affection of an ageing father, and wept. Auntie did not weep; she amiably returned her father’s greeting, and said something in very pure French that seemed to satisfy. Louis went through the performance, awkwardly, and as hastily as possible. Auntie gave him the dry kiss of superculture and assured him in very pure English of her gratification at his arrival within her home.
Louis at the earliest moment escaped to the veranda. He had forgotten all about the young lady, and was startled and abashed to find her still there, gently rocking, absorbed in her book. Before he could retreat she arose in greeting with a smile known otherwhere only in Paradise; she said in glee: “My name is Minnie! I am eighteen, and a ‘young lady’ now. Oh Louis! I have waited for you so impatiently, and here you are at last. I am sure we shall like each other; don’t you think we will? I’m in society in Utica and I’m going to tell you lots of things. See, I wear long skirts and do up my hair, but I can’t climb trees any more; isn’t that a shame? But I’ll run races with you and we’ll have lots of fun; and I’ll tell you all about the books I’ve read and all about society. Here I’ve been for a month reading French books and speaking French with Aunt Jenny and have grown weary of myself; now you and I are to be chums! Don’t you think you’ll like me?”
And Louis, taken thus unawares, and thus caressed with words, dared at last to look into gray Scotch eyes that seemed endowed with an endless fund of merriment, of badinage, of joy, of appeal, of kindness, and saturated with an inscrutable depth beyond all of these. He gazed steadily at a tender face, narrow, tapering, slender, and very pale, delicately freckled; at nostrils trembling; at a wide thin-lipped supersensitive mouth; at large ears; at thin, vagrant, dark, sandy hair; at a sprightly medium figure, all alive. She was clad in dark blue silk. He found in her not beauty but irresistible pervading charm. As he was thus absorbed Minnie said: “Sit down beside me, Louis dear, and watch me die. Sit very still and watch.” Whereupon, leaning back in her easy chair, she closed her eyes, deepened her pallor, closed her nostrils, made a thin line of her mouth, elongated her face, and lay deathly still, as though in veritable rigor mortis, until Louis’s nerves were on edge. Then, still dead and rigid, the fine line indicating her closed lips slowly widened across her face, the thin lips parting slightly as of themselves, cadaverously, the teeth also, a little later; after a seemingly endless wait, from this baleful rictus there came out moans, wails, gurgles, the ears began to crawl as of themselves. Then of a sudden
