Spy Rock

________________________________________________
Title:     Spy Rock
Author: Henry Van Dyke [Titles by Van Dyke]

Spy Rock

I

It must have been near Sutherland's Pond that I lost the way.
For there the deserted road which I had been following through
the Highlands ran out upon a meadow all abloom with purple
loose-strife and golden Saint-John's wort. The declining sun
cast a glory over the lonely field, and far in the corner,
nigh to the woods, there was a touch of the celestial colour:
blue of the sky seen between white clouds: blue of the sea
shimmering through faint drifts of silver mist. The hope of
finding that hue of distance and mystery embodied in a living
form, the old hope of discovering the Blue Flower rose again
in my heart. But it was only for a moment, for when I came
nearer I saw that the colour which had caught my eye came from
a multitude of closed gentians--the blossoms which never open
into perfection--growing so closely together that their
blended promise had seemed like a single flower.

So I harked back again, slanting across the meadow, to
find the road. But it had vanished. Wandering among the
alders and clumps of gray birches, here and there I found a
track that looked like it; but as I tried each one, it grew
more faint and uncertain and at last came to nothing in a
thicket or a marsh. While I was thus beating about the bush
the sun dropped below the western rim of hills. It was
necessary to make the most of the lingering light, if I did
not wish to be benighted in the woods. The little village of
Canterbury, which was the goal of my day's march, must lie
about to the north just beyond the edge of the mountain, and
in that direction I turned, pushing forward as rapidly as
possible through the undergrowth.

Presently I came into a region where the trees were larger
and the travelling was easier. It was not a primeval forest,
but a second growth of chestnuts and poplars and maples.
Through the woods there ran at intervals long lines of broken
rock, covered with moss--the ruins, evidently, of ancient
stone fences. The land must have been, in former days, a
farm, inhabited, cultivated, the home of human
hopes and desires and labours, but now relapsed into solitude
and wilderness. What could the life have been among these
rugged and inhospitable Highlands, on this niggard and
reluctant soil? Where was the house that once sheltered the
tillers of this rude corner of the earth?

Here, perhaps, in the little clearing into which I now
emerged. A couple of decrepit apple-trees grew on the edge of
it, and dropped their scanty and gnarled fruit to feast the
squirrels. A little farther on, a straggling clump of ancient
lilacs, a bewildered old bush of sweetbrier, the dark-green
leaves of a cluster of tiger-lilies, long past blooming,
marked the grave of the garden. And here, above this square
hollow in the earth, with the remains of a crumbling chimney
standing sentinel beside it, here the house must have stood.
What joys, what sorrows once centred around this cold and
desolate hearth-stone? What children went forth like birds
from this dismantled nest into the wide world? What guests
found refuge----

"Take care! stand back! There is a rattlesnake in the old
cellar."

The voice, even more than the words, startled me. I drew
away suddenly, and saw, behind the ruins of the chimney, a man
of an aspect so striking that to this day his face and figure
are as vivid in my memory as if it were but yesterday that I
had met him.

He was dressed in black, the coat of a somewhat formal
cut, a long cravat loosely knotted in his rolling collar. His
head was bare, and the coal-black hair, thick and waving, was
in some disorder. His face, smooth and pale, with high
forehead, straight nose, and thin, sensitive lips--was it old
or young? Handsome it certainly was, the face of a man of
mark, a man of power. Yet there was something strange and
wild about it. His dark eyes, with the fine wrinkles about
them, had a look of unspeakable remoteness, and at the same
time an intensity that seemed to pierce me through and
through. It was as if he saw me in a dream, yet measured me,
weighed me with a scrutiny as exact as it was at bottom
indifferent.

But his lips were smiling, and there was no fault to be
found, at least, with his manner. He had risen from the broad
stone where he had evidently been sitting with his back against
the chimney, and came forward to greet me.

"You will pardon the abruptness of my greeting? I thought
you might not care to make acquaintance with the present
tenant of this old house--at least not without an
introduction."

"Certainly not," I answered, "you have done me a real
kindness, which is better than the outward form of courtesy.
But how is it that you stay at such close quarters with this
unpleasant tenant? Have you no fear of him?"

"Not the least in the world," he answered, laughing. "I
know the snakes too well, better than they know themselves.
It is not likely that even an old serpent with thirteen
rattles, like this one, could harm me. I know his ways.
Before he could strike I should be out of reach."

"Well," said I, "it is a grim thought, at all events, that
this house, once a cheerful home, no doubt, should have fallen
at last to be the dwelling of such a vile creature."

"Fallen!" he exclaimed. Then he repeated the word with a
questioning accent--"fallen? Are you sure of that? The snake,
in his way, may be quite as honest as the people who lived here
before him, and not much more harmful. The farmer was a miser
who robbed his mother, quarrelled with his brother, and starved
his wife. What she lacked in food, she made up in drink, when
she could. One of the children, a girl, was a cripple, lamed by
her mother in a fit of rage. The two boys were ne'er-do-weels
who ran away from home as soon as they were old enough. One of
them is serving a life-sentence in the State prison for
manslaughter. When the house burned down some thirty years ago,
the woman escaped. The man's body was found with the head
crushed in--perhaps by a falling timber. The family of our
friend the rattlesnake could hardly surpass that record, I think.

But why should we blame them--any of them? They were only acting
out their natures. To one who can see and understand, it is all
perfectly simple, and interesting--immensely interesting."

It is impossible to describe the quiet eagerness, the cool
glow of fervour with which he narrated this little history. It
was the manner of the triumphant pathologist who lays bare some
hidden seat of disease. It surprised and repelled me a little;
yet it attracted me, too, for I could see how evidently he
counted on my comprehension and sympathy.

"Well," said I, "it is a pitiful history. Rural life is
not all peace and innocence. But how came you to know the
story?"

"I? Oh, I make it my business to know a little of
everything, and as much as possible of human life, not
excepting the petty chronicles of the rustics around me. It
is my chief pleasure. I earn my living by teaching boys. I
find my satisfaction in studying men. But you are on a
journey, sir, and night is falling. I must not detain you.
Or perhaps you will allow me to forward you a little by
serving as a guide. Which way were you going when you turned
aside to look at this dismantled shrine?"

"To Canterbury," I answered, "to find a night's, or a
month's, lodging at the inn. My journey is a ramble, it has
neither terminus nor time-table."

"Then let me commend to you something vastly better than
the tender mercies of the Canterbury Inn. Come with me to the
school on Hilltop, where I am a teacher. It is a thousand
feet above the village--purer air, finer view, and pleasanter
company. There is plenty of room in the house, for it is
vacation-time. Master Isaac Ward is always glad to entertain
guests."

There was something so sudden and unconventional about the
invitation that I was reluctant to accept it; but he gave it
naturally and pressed it with earnest courtesy, assuring me
that it was in accordance with Master Ward's custom, that he
would be much disappointed to lose the chance of talking with
an interesting traveller, that he would far rather let me pay
him for my lodging than have me go by, and so on--so that at
last I consented.

Three minutes' walking from the deserted clearing brought
us into a travelled road. It circled the breast of the
mountain, and as we stepped along it in the dusk I learned
something of my companion. His name was Edward Keene; he
taught Latin and Greek in the Hilltop School; he had studied for
the ministry, but had given it up, I gathered, on account of a
certain loss of interest, or rather a diversion of interest in
another direction. He spoke of himself with an impersonal
candour.

"Preachers must be always trying to persuade men," he
said. "But what I care about is to know men. I don't care
what they do. Certainly I have no wish to interfere with them
in their doings, for I doubt whether anyone can really change
them. Each tree bears its own fruit, you see, and by their
fruits you know them."

"What do you say to grafting? That changes the fruit,
surely?"

"Yes, but a grafted tree is not really one tree. It is
two trees growing together. There is a double life in it, and
the second life, the added life, dominates the other. The
stock becomes a kind of animate soil for the graft to grow
in."

Presently the road dipped into a little valley and rose
again, breasting the slope of a wooded hill which thrust
itself out from the steeper flank of the mountain-range. Down
the hill-side a song floated to meet us--that most noble lyric of
old Robert Herrick:

Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be;
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.


It was a girl's voice, fresh and clear, with a note of
tenderness in it that thrilled me. Keene's pace quickened.
And soon the singer came in sight, stepping lightly down the
road, a shape of slender whiteness on the background of
gathering night. She was beautiful even in that dim light,
with brown eyes and hair, and a face that seemed to breathe
purity and trust. Yet there was a trace of anxiety in it, or
so I fancied, that gave it an appealing charm.

"You have come at last, Edward," she cried, running
forward and putting her hand in his. "It is late. You have
been out all day; I began to be afraid."

"Not too late," he answered; "there was no need for fear,
Dorothy. I am not alone, you see." And keeping her hand, he
introduced me to the daughter of Master Ward.

It was easy to guess the relation between these two young
people who walked beside me in the dusk. It needed no words
to say that they were lovers. Yet it would have needed many
words to define the sense, that came to me gradually, of
something singular in the tie that bound them together. On
his part there was a certain tone of half-playful
condescension toward her such as one might use to a lovely
child, which seemed to match but ill with her unconscious
attitude of watchful care, of tender solicitude for
him--almost like the manner of an elder sister. Lovers they
surely were, and acknowledged lovers, for their frankness of
demeanour sought no concealment; but I felt that there must be

A little rift within the lute,

though neither of them might know it. Each one's thought of
the other was different from the other's thought of self.
There could not be a complete understanding, a perfect accord.
What was the secret, of which each knew half, but not the other
half?

Thus, with steps that kept time, but with thoughts how
wide apart, we came to the door of the school. A warm flood
of light poured out to greet us. The Master, an elderly,
placid, comfortable man, gave me just the welcome that had
been promised in his name. The supper was waiting, and the
evening passed in such happy cheer that the bewilderments and
misgivings of the twilight melted away, and at bedtime I
dropped into the nest of sleep as one who has found a shelter
among friends.



II


The Hilltop School stood on a blessed site. Lifted high above
the village, it held the crest of the last gentle wave of the
mountains that filled the south with crowding billows, ragged
and tumultuous. Northward, the great plain lay at our feet,
smiling in the sun; meadows and groves, yellow fields of
harvest and green orchards, white roads and clustering towns,
with here and there a little city on the bank of the mighty
river which curved in a vast line of beauty toward the blue
Catskill Range, fifty miles away. Lines of filmy smoke, like
vanishing footprints in the air, marked the passage of railway
trains across the landscape--their swift flight reduced by
distance to a leisurely transition. The bright surface of the
stream was furrowed by a hundred vessels; tiny rowboats creeping
from shore to shore; knots of black barges following the lead of
puffing tugs; sloops with languid motion tacking against the
tide; white steamboats, like huge toy-houses, crowded with
pygmy inhabitants, moving smoothly on their way to the great
city, and disappearing suddenly as they turned into the
narrows between Storm-King and the Fishkill Mountains. Down
there was life, incessant, varied, restless, intricate,
many-coloured--down there was history, the highway of ancient
voyagers since the days of Hendrik Hudson, the hunting-ground
of Indian tribes, the scenes of massacre and battle, the last
camp of the Army of the Revolution, the Head-quarters of
Washington--down there were the homes of legend and
poetry, the dreamlike hills of Rip van Winkle's sleep, the
cliffs and caves haunted by the Culprit Fay, the solitudes
traversed by the Spy--all outspread before us, and visible as
in a Claude Lorraine glass, in the tranquil lucidity of
distance. And here, on the hilltop, was our own life; secluded,
yet never separated from the other life; looking down
upon it, yet woven of the same stuff; peaceful in
circumstance, yet ever busy with its own tasks, and holding in
its quiet heart all the elements of joy and sorrow and tragic
consequence.

The Master was a man of most unworldly wisdom. In his
youth a great traveller, he had brought home many
observations, a few views, and at least one theory. To him
the school was the most important of human institutions--more
vital even than the home, because it held the first real
experience of social contact, of free intercourse with other
minds and lives coming from different households and embodying
different strains of blood. "My school," said he, "is the
world in miniature. If I can teach these boys to study and
play together freely and with fairness to one another, I shall
make men fit to live and work together in society. What they
learn matters less than how they learn it. The great thing is
the bringing out of individual character so that it will find its
place in social harmony."

Yet never man knew less of character in the concrete than
Master Ward. To him each person represented a type--the
scientific, the practical, the poetic. From each one he
expected, and in each one he found, to a certain degree, the
fruit of the marked quality, the obvious, the characteristic.
But of the deeper character, made up of a hundred traits,
coloured and conditioned most vitally by something secret and
in itself apparently of slight importance, he was placidly
unconscious. Classes he knew. Individuals escaped him. Yet
he was a most companionable man, a social solitary, a friendly
hermit.

His daughter Dorothy seemed to me even more fair and
appealing by daylight than when I first saw her in the dusk.
There was a pure brightness in her brown eyes, a gentle
dignity in her look and bearing, a soft cadence of expectant joy
in her voice. She was womanly in every tone and motion, yet by
no means weak or uncertain. Mistress of herself and of the
house, she ruled her kingdom without an effort. Busied with many
little cares, she bore them lightly. Her spirit overflowed into
the lives around her with delicate sympathy and merry cheer. But
it was in music that her nature found its widest outlet. In the
lengthening evenings of late August she would play from Schumann,
or Chopin, or Grieg, interpreting the vague feelings of
gladness or grief which lie too deep for words. Ballads she
loved, quaint old English and Scotch airs, folk-songs of
Germany, "Come-all-ye's" of Ireland, Canadian chansons. She
sang--not like an angel, but like a woman.

Of the two under-masters in the school, Edward Keene was
the elder. The younger, John Graham, was his opposite in
every respect. Sturdy, fair-haired, plain in the face, he was
essentially an every-day man, devoted to out-of-door sports,
a hard worker, a good player, and a sound sleeper. He came
back to the school, from a fishing-excursion, a few days after my
arrival. I liked the way in which he told of his adventures,
with a little frank boasting, enough to season but not to spoil
the story. I liked the way in which he took hold of his work,
helping to get the school in readiness for the return of the boys
in the middle of September. I liked, more than all, his attitude
to Dorothy Ward. He loved her, clearly enough. When she was in
the room the other people were only accidents to him. Yet there
was nothing of the disappointed suitor in his bearing. He was
cheerful, natural, accepting the situation, giving her the
best he had to give, and gladly taking from her the frank
reliance, the ready comradeship which she bestowed upon him.
If he envied Keene--and how could he help it--at least he
never showed a touch of jealousy or rivalry. The engagement
was a fact which he took into account as something not to be
changed or questioned. Keene was so much more brilliant,
interesting, attractive. He answered so much more fully to
the poetic side of Dorothy's nature. How could she help
preferring him?

Thus the three actors in the drama stood, when
I became an inmate of Hilltop, and accepted the master's
invitation to undertake some of the minor classes in English,
and stay on at the school indefinitely. It was my wish to see
the little play--a pleasant comedy, I hoped--move forward to
a happy ending. And yet--what was it that disturbed me now
and then with forebodings? Something, doubtless, in the
character of Keene, for he was the dominant personality. The
key of the situation lay with him. He was the centre of
interest. Yet he was the one who seemed not perfectly in
harmony, not quite at home, as if something beckoned and urged
him away.

"I am glad you are to stay," said he, "yet I wonder at it.
You will find the life narrow, after all your travels.
Ulysses at Ithaca--you will surely be restless to see the
world again."

"If you find the life broad enough, I ought not to be
cramped in it."

"Ah, but I have compensations."

"One you certainly have," said I, thinking of Dorothy,
"and that one is enough to make a man happy anywhere."

"Yes, yes," he answered, quickly, "but that is not what I
mean. It is not there that I look for a wider life. Love--do
you think that love broadens a man's outlook? To me it seems
to make him narrower--happier, perhaps, within his own little
circle--but distinctly narrower. Knowledge is the only thing
that broadens life, sets it free from the tyranny of the
parish, fills it with the sense of power. And love is the
opposite of knowledge. Love is a kind of an illusion--a happy
illusion, that is what love is. Don't you see that?"

"See it?" I cried. "I don't know what you mean. Do you
mean that you don't really care for Dorothy Ward? Do you mean
that what you have won in her is an illusion? If so, you are
as wrong as a man can be."

"No, no," he answered, eagerly, "you know I don't mean
that. I could not live without her. But love is not the only
reality. There is something else, something broader,
something----"

"Come away," I said, "come away, man! You are talking
nonsense, treason. You are not true to yourself. You've been
working too hard at your books. There's a maggot in your brain.
Come out for a long walk."

That indeed was what he liked best. He was a magnificent
walker, easy, steady, unwearying. He knew every road and lane
in the valleys, every footpath and trail among the mountains.
But he cared little for walking in company; one companion was
the most that he could abide. And, strange to say, it was not
Dorothy whom he chose for his most frequent comrade. With her
he would saunter down the Black Brook path, or climb slowly to
the first ridge of Storm-King. But with me he pushed out to
the farthest pinnacle that overhangs the river, and down
through the Lonely Heart gorge, and over the pass of the White
Horse, and up to the peak of Cro' Nest, and across the rugged
summit of Black Rock. At every wider outlook a strange
exhilaration seemed to come upon him. His spirit glowed like
a live coal in the wind. He overflowed with brilliant talk
and curious stories of the villages and scattered houses that
we could see from our eyries.

But it was not with me that he made his longest expeditions.
They were solitary. Early on Saturday he would leave the rest of
us, with some slight excuse, and start away on the mountain-road,
to be gone all day. Sometimes he would not return till long
after dark. Then I could see the anxious look deepen on
Dorothy's face, and she would slip away down the road to meet
him. But he always came back in good spirits, talkable and
charming. It was the next day that the reaction came. The black
fit took him. He was silent, moody, bitter. Holding himself
aloof, yet never giving utterance to any irritation, he seemed
half-unconsciously to resent the claims of love and friendship,
as if they irked him. There was a look in his eyes as if he
measured us, weighed us, analysed us all as strangers.

Yes, even Dorothy. I have seen her go to meet him with a
flower in her hand that she had plucked for him, and turn away
with her lips trembling, too proud to say a word, dropping the
flower on the grass. John Graham saw it, too. He waited till
she was gone; then he picked up the flower and kept it.

There was nothing to take offence at, nothing on which one
could lay a finger; only these singular alternations of mood
which made Keene now the most delightful of friends, now an
intimate stranger in the circle. The change was inexplicable.
But certainly it seemed to have some connection, as cause or
consequence, with his long, lonely walks.

Once, when he was absent, we spoke of his remarkable
fluctuations of spirit.

The master labelled him. "He is an idealist, a dreamer.
They are always uncertain."

I blamed him. "He gives way too much to his moods. He
lacks self-control. He is in danger of spoiling a fine
nature."

I looked at Dorothy. She defended him. "Why should he be
always the same? He is too great for that. His thoughts make
him restless, and sometimes he is tired. Surely you wouldn't
have him act what he don't feel. Why do you want him to do
that?"

"I don't know," said Graham, with a short laugh. "None of
us know. But what we all want just now is music. Dorothy, will
you sing a little for us?"

So she sang "The Coulin," and "The Days o' the Kerry
Dancin'," and "The Hawthorn Tree," and "The Green Woods of
Truigha," and "Flowers o' the Forest," and "A la claire
Fontaine," until the twilight was filled with peace.

The boys came back to the school. The wheels of routine
began to turn again, slowly and with a little friction at
first, then smoothly and swiftly as if they had never stopped.
Summer reddened into autumn; autumn bronzed into fall. The
maples and poplars were bare. The oaks alone kept their
rusted crimson glory, and the cloaks of spruce and hemlock on
the shoulders of the hills grew dark with wintry foliage.
Keene's transitions of mood became more frequent and more
extreme. The gulf of isolation that divided him from us when
the black days came seemed wider and more unfathomable.
Dorothy and John Graham were thrown more constantly together.
Keene appeared to encourage their companionship. He watched
them curiously, sometimes, not as if he were jealous, but rather
as if he were interested in some delicate experiment. At other
times he would be singularly indifferent to everything, remote,
abstracted, forgetful.

Dorothy's birthday, which fell in mid-October, was kept as
a holiday. In the morning everyone had some little birthday
gift for her, except Keene. He had forgotten the birthday
entirely. The shadow of disappointment that quenched the
brightness of her face was pitiful. Even he could not be
blind to it. He flushed as if surprised, and hesitated a
moment, evidently in conflict with himself. Then a look of
shame and regret came into his eyes. He made some excuse for
not going with us to the picnic, at the Black Brook Falls,
with which the day was celebrated. In the afternoon, as we
all sat around the camp-fire, he came swinging through the
woods with his long, swift stride, and going at once to
Dorothy laid a little brooch of pearl and opal in her hand.

"Will you forgive me?" he said. "I hope this is not too
late. But I lost the train back from Newburg and walked home.
I pray that you may never know any tears but pearls, and that
there may be nothing changeable about you but the opal."

"Oh, Edward!" she cried, "how beautiful! Thank you a
thousand times. But I wish you had been with us all day. We
have missed you so much!"

For the rest of that day simplicity and clearness and joy
came back to us. Keene was at his best, a leader of friendly
merriment, a master of good-fellowship, a prince of delicate
chivalry. Dorothy's loveliness unfolded like a flower in the
sun.

But the Indian summer of peace was brief. It was hardly
a week before Keene's old moods returned, darker and stranger
than ever. The girl's unconcealable bewilderment, her sense
of wounded loyalty and baffled anxiety, her still look of hurt
and wondering tenderness, increased from day to day. John
Graham's temper seemed to change, suddenly and completely.
From the best-humoured and most careless fellow in the world,
he became silent, thoughtful, irritable toward everyone except
Dorothy. With Keene he was curt and impatient, avoiding him
as much as possible, and when they were together, evidently
struggling to keep down a deep dislike and rising anger. They
had had sharp words when they were alone, I was sure, but
Keene's coolness seemed to grow with Graham's heat. There was
no open quarrel.

One Saturday evening, Graham came to me. "You have seen
what is going on here?" he said.

"Something, at least," I answered, "and I am very sorry
for it. But I don't quite understand it."

"Well, I do; and I'm going to put an end to it. I'm going
to have it out with Ned Keene. He is breaking her heart."

"But are you the right one to take the matter up?"

"Who else is there to do it?"

"Her father."

"He sees nothing, comprehends nothing. 'Practical
type--poetic type--misunderstandings sure to arise--come
together after a while each supply the other's deficiencies.'
Cursed folly! And the girl so unhappy that she can't tell
anyone. It shall not go on, I say. Keene is out on the road
now, taking one of his infernal walks. I'm going to meet him."

"I'm afraid it will make trouble. Let me go with you."

"The trouble is made. Come if you like. I'm going now."

The night lay heavy upon the forest. Where the road
dipped through the valley we could hardly see a rod ahead of
us. But higher up where the way curved around the breast of
the mountain, the woods were thin on the left, and on the
right a sheer precipice fell away to the gorge of the brook.
In the dim starlight we saw Keene striding toward us. Graham
stepped out to meet him.

"Where have you been, Ned Keene?" he cried. The cry was
a challenge. Keene lifted his head and stood still. Then he
laughed and took a step forward.

"Taking a long walk, Jack Graham,," he answered. "It was
glorious. You should have been with me. But why this sudden
question?"

"Because your long walk is a pretence. You are playing false.
There is some woman that you go to see at West Point, at Highland
Falls, who knows where?"

Keene laughed again.

"Certainly you don't know, my dear fellow; and neither do
I. Since when has walking become a vice in your estimation?
You seem to be in a fierce mood. What's the matter?"

"I will tell you what's the matter. You have been acting
like a brute to the girl you profess to love."

"Plain words! But between friends frankness is best. Did
she ask you to tell me?"

"No! You know too well she would die before she would
speak. You are killing her, that is what you are doing with
your devilish moods and mysteries. You must stop. Do you
hear? You must give her up."

"I hear well enough, and it sounds like a word for her and
two for yourself. Is that it?"

"Damn you," cried the younger man, "let the words go!
we'll settle it this way"----and he sprang at the other's
throat.

Keene, cool and well-braced, met him with a heavy blow in
the chest. He recoiled, and I rushed between them, holding
Graham back, and pleading for self-control. As we stood thus,
panting and confused, on the edge of the cliff, a singing
voice floated up to us from the shadows across the valley. It
was Herrick's song again:

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
Is in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.


"Come, gentlemen," I cried, "this is folly, sheer madness.
You can never deal with the matter in this way. Think of the
girl who is singing down yonder. What would happen to her,
what would she suffer, from scandal, from her own feelings, if
either of you should be killed, or even seriously hurt by the
other? There must be no quarrel between you."

"Certainly," said Keene, whose poise, if shaken at all,
had returned, "certainly, you are right. It is not of my
seeking, nor shall I be the one to keep it up. I am willing to
let it pass. It is but a small matter at most."

I turned to Graham--"And you?"

He hesitated a little, and then said, doggedly "On one
condition."

"And that is?"

"Keene must explain. He must answer my question."

"Do you accept?" I asked Keene.

"Yes and no!" he replied. "No! to answering Graham's
question. He is not the person to ask it. I wonder that he
does not see the impropriety, the absurdity of his meddling at
all in this affair. Besides, he could not understand my
answer even if he believed it. But to the explanation, I say,
Yes! I will give it, not to Graham, but to you. I make you
this proposition. To-morrow is Sunday. We shall be excused
from service if we tell the master that we have important
business to settle together. You shall come with me on one of
my long walks. I will tell you all about them. Then you can
be the judge whether there is any harm in them."

"Does that satisfy you?" I said to Graham.

"Yes," he answered, "that seems fair enough. I am content
to leave it in that way for the present. And to make it still
more fair, I want to take back what I said awhile ago, and to
ask Keene's pardon for it."

"Not at all," said Keene, quickly, "it was said in haste,
I bear no grudge. You simply did not understand, that is
all."

So we turned to go down the hill, and as we turned,
Dorothy met us, coming out of the shadows.

"What are you men doing here?" she asked. "I heard your
voices from below. What were you talking about?"

"We were talking," said Keene, "my dear Dorothy, we were
talking--about walking--yes, that was it--about walking, and
about views. The conversation was quite warm, almost a
debate. Now, you know all the view-points in this region.
Which do you call the best, the most satisfying, the finest
prospect? But I know what you will say: the view from the
little knoll in front of Hilltop. For there, when you are tired
of looking far away, you can turn around and see the old school,
and the linden-trees, and the garden."

"Yes," she answered gravely, "that is really the view that
I love best. I would give up all the others rather than lose
that."



III


There was a softness in the November air that brought back
memories of summer, and a few belated daisies were blooming in
the old clearing, as Keene and I passed by the ruins of the
farm-house again, early on Sunday morning. He had been
talking ever since we started, pouring out his praise of
knowledge, wide, clear, universal knowledge, as the best of
life's joys, the greatest of life's achievements. The
practical life was a blind, dull routine. Most men were
toiling at tasks which they did not like, by rules which they
did not understand. They never looked beyond the edge of
their work. The philosophical life was a spider's web--filmy
threads of theory spun out of the inner consciousness--it touched
the world only at certain chosen points of attachment. There was
nothing firm, nothing substantial in it. You could look through
it like a veil and see the real world lying beyond. But the
theorist could see only the web which he had spun. Knowing did
not come by speculating, theorising. Knowing came by seeing.
Vision was the only real knowledge. To see the world, the whole
world, as it is, to look behind the scenes, to read human life
like a book, that was the glorious thing--most satisfying,
divine.

Thus he had talked as we climbed the hill. Now, as we
came by the place where we had first met, a new eagerness
sounded in his voice.

"Ever since that day I have inclined to tell you something
more about myself. I felt sure you would understand. I am
planning to write a book--a book of knowledge, in the true
sense--a great book about human life. Not a history, not a
theory, but a real view of life, its hidden motives, its
secret relations. How different they are from what men dream
and imagine and play that they are! How much darker, how much
smaller, and therefore how much more interesting and wonderful.
No one has yet written--perhaps because no one has yet
conceived--such a book as I have in mind. I might call it a
'Bionopsis.'"

"But surely," said I, "you have chosen a strange place to
write it--the Hilltop School--this quiet and secluded region!
The stream of humanity is very slow and slender here--it
trickles. You must get out into the busy world. You must be
in the full current and feel its force. You must take part in
the active life of mankind in order really to know it."

"A mistake!" he cried. "Action is the thing that blinds
men. You remember Matthew Arnold's line:

In action's dizzying eddy whurled.

To know the world you must stand apart from it and above it;
you must look down on it."

"Well, then," said I, "you will have to find some secret
spring of inspiration, some point of vantage from which you
can get your outlook and your insight."

He stopped short and looked me full in the face.

"And that," cried he, "is precisely what I have found!"

Then he turned and pushed along the narrow trail so
swiftly that I had hard work to follow him. After a few
minutes we came to a little stream, flowing through a grove of
hemlocks. Keene seated himself on the fallen log that served
for a bridge and beckoned me to a place beside him.

"I promised to give you an explanation to-day--to take you
on one of my long walks. Well, there is only one of them. It
is always the same. You shall see where it leads, what it
means. You shall share my secret--all the wonder and glory of
it! Of course I know my conduct, has seemed strange to you.
Sometimes it has seemed strange even to me. I have been
doubtful, troubled, almost distracted. I have been risking a
great deal, in danger of losing what I value, what most men
count the best thing in the world. But it could not be
helped. The risk was worth while. A great discovery, the
opportunity of a lifetime, yes, of an age, perhaps of many
ages, came to me. I simply could not throw it away. I must
use it, make the best of it, at any danger, at any cost. You
shall judge for yourself whether I was right or wrong. But you
must judge fairly, without haste, without prejudice. I ask you
to make me one promise. You will suspend judgment, you will say
nothing, you will keep my secret, until you have been with me
three times at the place where I am now taking you."

By this time it was clear to me that I had to do with a
case lying far outside of the common routine of life;
something subtle, abnormal, hard to measure, in which a clear
and careful estimate would be necessary. If Keene was
labouring under some strange delusion, some disorder of mind,
how could I estimate its nature or extent, without time and
study, perhaps without expert advice? To wait a little would
be prudent, for his sake as well as for the sake of others.
If there was some extraordinary, reality behind his mysterious
hints, it would need patience and skill to test it. I gave
him the promise for which he asked.

At once, as if relieved, he sprang up, and crying, "Come
on, follow me!" began to make his way up the bed of the brook.
It was one of the wildest walks that I have ever taken. He
turned aside for no obstacles; swamps, masses of interlacing
alders, close-woven thickets of stiff young spruces,
chevaux-de-frise of dead trees where wind-falls had mowed down
the forest, walls of lichen-crusted rock, landslides where heaps
of broken stone were tumbled in ruinous confusion--through
everything he pushed forward. I could see, here and there, the
track of his former journeys: broken branches of witch-hazel and
moose-wood, ferns trampled down, a faint trail across some
deeper bed of moss. At mid-day we rested for a half-hour to
eat lunch. But Keene would eat nothing, except a little
pellet of some dark green substance that he took from a flat
silver box in his pocket. He swallowed it hastily, and
stooping his face to the spring by which he had halted, drank
long and eagerly.

"An Indian trick," said he, shaking the drops of water
from his face. "On a walk, food is a hindrance, a delay. But
this tiny taste of bitter gum is a tonic; it spurs the courage
and doubles the strength--if you are used to it. Otherwise I
should not recommend you to try it. Faugh! the flavour is vile."

He rinsed his mouth again with water, and stood up,
calling me to come on. The way, now tangled among the
nameless peaks and ranges, bore steadily southward, rising all
the time, in spite of many brief downward curves where a steep
gorge must be crossed. Presently we came into a hard-wood
forest, open and easy to travel. Breasting a long slope, we
reached the summit of a broad, smoothly rounding ridge covered
with a dense growth of stunted spruce. The trees rose above
our heads, about twice the height of a man, and so thick that
we could not see beyond them. But, from glimpses here and
there, and from the purity and lightness of the air, I judged
that we were on far higher ground than any we had yet
traversed, the central comb, perhaps, of the mountain-system.

A few yards ahead of us, through the crowded trunks of the
dwarf forest, I saw a gray mass, like the wall of a fortress,
across our path. It was a vast rock, rising from the crest of
the ridge, lifting its top above the sea of foliage. At its
base there were heaps of shattered stones, and deep crevices
almost like caves. One side of the rock was broken by a slanting
gully.

"Be careful," cried my companion, "there is a rattlers'
den somewhere about here. The snakes are in their winter
quarters now, almost dormant, but they can still strike if you
tread on them. Step here! Give me your hand--use that point
of rock--hold fast by this bush; it is firmly rooted--so!
Here we are on Spy Rock! You have heard of it? I thought so.
Other people have heard of it, and imagine that they have
found it--five miles east of us--on a lower ridge. Others
think it is a peak just back of Cro' Nest. All wrong! There
is but one real Spy Rock--here! This earth holds no more
perfect view-point. It is one of the rare places from which
a man may see the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of
them. Look!"

The prospect was indeed magnificent; it was strange what
a vast enlargement of vision resulted from the slight
elevation above the surrounding peaks. It was like being
lifted up so that we could look over the walls. The horizon
expanded as if by magic. The vast circumference of vision swept
around us with a radius of a hundred miles. Mountain and meadow,
forest and field, river and lake, hill and dale, village and
farmland, far-off city and shimmering water--all lay open to our
sight, and over all the westering sun wove a transparent robe of
gem-like hues. Every feature of the landscape seemed alive,
quivering, pulsating with conscious beauty. You could almost
see the world breathe.

"Wonderful!" I cried. "Most wonderful! You have found a
mount of vision."

"Ah," he answered, "you don't half see the wonder yet, you
don't begin to appreciate it. Your eyes are new to it. You
have not learned the power of far sight, the secret of Spy
Rock. You are still shut in by the horizon."

"Do you mean to say that you can look beyond it?"

"Beyond yours--yes. And beyond any that you would dream
possible--See! Your sight reaches to that dim cloud of smoke
in the south? And beneath it you can make out, perhaps, a
vague blotch of shadow, or a tiny flash of brightness where the
sun strikes it? New York! But I can see the great buildings,
the domes, the spires, the crowded wharves, the tides of people
whirling through the streets--and beyond that, the sea, with the
ships coming and going! I can follow them on their courses--and
beyond that--Oh! when I am on Spy Rock I can see more than
other men can imagine."

For a moment, strange to say, I almost fancied could
follow him. The magnetism of his spirit imposed upon me,
carried me away with him. Then sober reason told me that he
was talking of impossibilities.

"Keene," said I, "you are dreaming. The view and the air
have intoxicated you. This is a phantasy, a delusion!"

"It pleases you to call it so," he said, "but I only tell
you my real experience. Why it should be impossible I do not
understand. There is no reason why the power of sight should
not be cultivated, enlarged, expanded indefinitely."

"And the straight rays of light?" I asked. "And the curvature
of the earth which makes a horizon inevitable?"

"Who knows what a ray of light is?" said he. "Who can
prove that it may not be curved, under certain conditions, or
refracted in some places in a way that is not possible
elsewhere? I tell you there is something extraordinary about
this Spy Rock. It is a seat of power--Nature's observatory.
More things are visible here than anywhere else--more than I
have told you yet. But come, we have little time left. For
half an hour, each of us shall enjoy what he can see. Then
home again to the narrower outlook, the restricted life."

The downward journey was swifter than the ascent, but no
less fatiguing. By the time we reached the school, an hour
after dark, I was very tired. But Keene was in one of his
moods of exhilaration. He glowed like a piece of phosphorus
that has been drenched with light.

Graham took the first opportunity of speaking with me alone.

"Well?" said he.

"Well!" I answered. "You were wrong. There is no treason in
Keene's walks, no guilt in his moods. But there is something
very strange. I cannot form a judgment yet as to what we should
do. We must wait a few days. It will do no harm to be patient.
Indeed, I have promised not to judge, not to speak of it, until a
certain time. Are you satisfied?"

"This is a curious story," said he, "and I am puzzled by
it. But I trust you, I agree to wait, though I am far from
satisfied."

Our second expedition was appointed for the following
Saturday. Keene was hungry for it, and I was almost as eager,
desiring to penetrate as quickly as possible into the heart of
the affair. Already a conviction in regard to it was pressing
upon me, and I resolved to let him talk, this time, as freely
as he would, without interruption or denial.

When we clambered up on Spy Rock, he was more subdued and
reserved than he had been the first time. For a while he
talked little, but scanned view with wide, shining eyes. Then
he began to tell me stories of the places that we could
see--strange stories of domestic calamity, and social conflict,
and eccentric passion, and hidden crime.

"Do you remember Hawthorne's story of 'The Minister's
Black Veil?' It is the best comment on human life that ever
was written. Everyone has something to hide. The surface of
life is a mask. The substance of life is a secret. All
humanity wears the black veil. But it is not impenetrable.
No, it is transparent, if you find the right point of view.
Here, on Spy Rock, I have found it. I have learned how to
look through the veil. I can see, not by the light-rays only,
but by the rays which are colourless, imperceptible,
irresistible the rays of the unknown quantity, which penetrate
everywhere. I can see how men down in the great city are
weaving their nets of selfishness and falsehood, and calling
them industrial enterprises or political combinations. I can
see how the wheels of society are moved by the hidden springs
of avarice and greed and rivalry. I can see how children
drink in the fables of religion, without understanding them,
and how prudent men repeat them without believing them. I can
see how the illusions of love appear and vanish, and how men and
women swear that their dreams are eternal, even while they fade.
I can see how poor people blind themselves and deceive each
other, calling selfishness devotion, and bondage contentment.
Down at Hilltop yonder I can see how Dorothy Ward and John
Graham, without knowing it,without meaning it--"

"Stop, man!" I cried. "Stop, before you say what can
never be unsaid. You know it is not true. These are
nightmare visions that ride you. Not from Spy Rock nor from
anywhere else can you see anything at Hilltop that is not
honest and pure and loyal. Come down, now, and let us go
home. You will see better there than here."

"I think not," said he, "but I will come. Yes, of course,
I am bound to come. But let me have a few minutes here alone.
Go you down along the path a little way slowly. I will follow
you in a quarter of an hour. And remember we are to be here
together once more!"

Once more! Yes, and then what must be done?


How was this strange case to be dealt with so as to save all
the actors, as far as possible, from needless suffering? That
Keene's mind was disordered at least three of us suspected
already. But to me alone was the nature and seat of the
disorder known. How make the others understand it? They
might easily conceive it to be something different from the
fact, some actual lesion of the brain, an incurable insanity.
But this it was not. As yet, at least, he was no patient for
a mad-house: it would be unjust, probably it would be
impossible to have him committed. But on the other hand they
might take it too lightly, as the result of overwork, or
perhaps of the use of some narcotic. To me it was certain
that the trouble went far deeper than this. It lay in the
man's moral nature, in the error of his central will. It was
the working out, in abnormal form, but with essential truth,
of his chosen and cherished ideal of life. Spy Rock was
something more than the seat of his delusion. it was the
expression of his temperament. The solitary trail that led
thither was the symbol of his search for happiness--alone,
forgetful of life's lowlier ties, looking down upon the world in
the cold abstraction of scornful knowledge. How was such a man
to be brought back to the real life whose first condition is the
acceptance of a limited outlook, the willingness to live by
trust as much as by sight, the power of finding joy and peace
in the things that we feel are the best, even though we cannot
prove them nor explain them? How could he ever bring anything
but discord and sorrow to those who were bound to him?

This was what perplexed and oppressed me. I needed all
the time until the next Saturday to think the question
through, to decide what should be done. But the matter was
taken out of my hands. After our latest expedition Keene's
dark mood returned upon him with sombre intensity. Dull,
restless, indifferent, half-contemptuous, he seemed to
withdraw into himself, observing those around him with
half-veiled glances, as if he had nothing better to do and yet
found it a tiresome pastime. He was like a man waiting
wearily at a railway station for his train. Nothing pleased
him. He responded to nothing.

Graham controlled his indignation by a constant effort.
A dozen times he was on the point of speaking out. But he
restrained himself and played fair. Dorothy's suffering could
not be hidden. Her loyalty was strained to the breaking
point. She was too tender and true for anger, but she was
wounded almost beyond endurance.

Keene's restlessness increased. The intervening Thursday
was Thanksgiving Day; most of the boys had gone home; the
school had holiday. Early in the morning he came to me.

"Let us take our walk to-day. We have no work to do.
Come! In this clear, frosty air, Spy Rock will be glorious!"

"No," I answered, "this is no day for such an expedition.
This is the home day. Stay here and be happy with us all.
You owe this to love and friendship. You owe it to Dorothy
Ward."

"Owe it?" said he. "Speaking of debts, I think each man
is his own preferred creditor. But of course you can do as
you like about to-day. Tomorrow or Saturday will answer just
as well for our third walk together."

About noon he came down from his room and went to the
piano, where Dorothy was sitting. They talked together in low
tones. Then she stood up, with pale face and wide-open eyes.
She laid her hand on his arm.

"Do not go, Edward. For the last time I beg you to stay
with us to-day."

He lifted her hand and held it for an instant. Then he
bowed, and let it fall.

"You will excuse me, Dorothy, I am sure. I feel the need
of exercise. Absolutely I must go; good-by--until the
evening."

The hours of that day passed heavily for all of us. There
was a sense of disaster in the air. Something irretrievable
had fallen from our circle. But no one dared to name it.
Night closed in upon the house with a changing sky. All the
stars were hidden. The wind whimpered and then shouted. The
rain swept down in spiteful volleys, deepening at last into a
fierce, steady discharge. Nine o'clock, ten o'clock passed,
and Keene did not return. By midnight we were certain that
some accident had befallen him.

It was impossible to go up into the mountains in that
pitch-darkness of furious tempest. But we could send down to
the village for men to organise a search-party and to bring
the doctor. At daybreak we set out--some of the men going
with the Master along Black Brook, others in different
directions to make sure of a complete search--Graham and the
doctor and I following the secret trail that I knew only too
well. Dorothy insisted that she must go. She would bear no
denial, declaring that it would be worse for her alone at
home, than if we took her with us.

It was incredible how the path seemed to lengthen. Graham
watched the girl's every step, helping her over the difficult
places, pushing aside the tangled branches, his eyes resting
upon her as frankly, as tenderly as a mother looks at her
child. In single file we marched through the gray morning,
clearing cold after the storm, and the silence was seldom
broken, for we had little heart to talk.

At last we came to the high, lonely ridge, the dwarf
forest, the huge, couchant bulk of Spy Rock. There, on the back
of it, with his right arm hanging over the edge, was the outline
of Edward Keene's form. It was as if some monster had seized him
and flung him over its shoulder to carry away.

We called to him but there was no answer. The doctor
climbed up with me, and we hurried to the spot where he was
lying. His face was turned to the sky, his eyes blindly
staring; there was no pulse, no breath; he was already cold in
death. His right hand and arm, the side of his neck and face
were horribly swollen and livid. The doctor stooped down and
examined the hand carefully. "See!" he cried, pointing to a
great bruise on his wrist, with two tiny punctures in the
middle of it from which a few drops of blood had oozed, "a
rattlesnake has struck him. He must have fairly put his hand
upon it, perhaps in the dark, when he was climbing. And,
look, what is this?"

He picked up a flat silver box, that lay open on the rock.
There were two olive-green pellets of a resinous paste in it.
He lifted it to his face, and drew a long breath.

"Yes," he said, "it is Gunjab, the most powerful form of
Hashish, the narcotic hemp of India. Poor fellow, it saved
him from frightful agony. He died in a dream."

"You are right," I said, "in a dream, and for a dream."

We covered his face and climbed down the rock. Dorothy
and Graham were waiting below. He had put his coat around
her. She was shivering a little. There were tear-marks on
her face.

"Well," I said, "you must know it. We have lost him."

"Ah!" said the girl, "I lost him long ago."

-THE END-
Henry Van Dyke's short story: Spy Rock

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN