A Literary Courtship/Chapter 7
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IT was a glorious morning early in December when we arrived in Colorado Springs. In fact we never saw anything but glorious weather during our stay. We got there in the morning, and had a solemn consultation as to whether we had better present ourselves at Miss Lamb's door before or after luncheon. We learned that Mrs. Ellerton's house was only a few blocks distant from our hotel, and having fixed upon twelve o'clock as the latest hour for which we could possibly wait, we seated ourselves upon the hotel piazza and endeavored to appreciate Pike's Peak. It did not seem to us very high, and it did seem uncommonly ugly, in spite of its nightcap of snow. But we looked at it hard for an hour, and then we started up Cascade Avenue in search of the house which was, properly speaking, the goal of our two-thousand-mile pilgrimage. Miss Lamb not having been warned of our approach, John had written a sort of note of introduction in that exaggerated hand which he had adopted in all his correspondence for some months past.
We found the house without difficulty, but we did not find the ladies. Mrs. Ellerton was "not at home," and Miss Lamb was out riding. We left the note and our cards, and turned away very much chagrined. I think we both had confidently expected to see Miss Lamb open the door to us herself, holding a half-finished sonnet in her left hand.
"What idiots we were," said John.
"Why idiots?" I asked.
"Never to have thought of her not being at home."
"Speak for yourself," said I.
At that moment a young woman on horseback cantered past.
"That girl rides well," I exclaimed.
"That's she," said John, and he turned abruptly round to watch her, regardless of manners.
"How do you know it is she?"
"That is the way she would ride."
"She does not look like the author of those melancholy ditties," I objected.
"No, but she looks like the author of the jubilant ones."
We were walking slowly back, and John was much elated at his own penetration when the lady stopped in front of the house we had just left, sprang lightly to the ground, patted her horse's nose, hitched him to the post, and went into the house. We were not quite a block away, so that we could see every movement plainly, though the face was not discernible.
"She walks as well as she does everything else," said John.
"Have you ever heard her play the piano?" I asked, satirically.
"I have an idea that she doesn't play the piano," he replied, with perfect seriousness.
We were absurdly disappointed. Here we were in Colorado, and all we had got for our pains thus far was Pike's Peak. John swore he had never seen anything half so hideous, and I quite agreed with him.
As we came out from luncheon the bell-boy handed Brunt a note. John's face flushed up as he broke the seal.
"She invites us both to dinner in the name of her aunt, at half-past six this evening," he announced with a delighted grin.
"She's a trump," said I.
We went for a ride ourselves that afternoon, out onto the plains John said he wanted to get away from Pike's Peak. But when we turned to come back something had happened.
"By Jove!" we both cried in a breath, "look at that."
There was Pike's Peak apparently about fifty thousand feet high, with the sun just disappearing behind him, while to the southward another great mountain stood out, warm and mellow with the bloom of a damson plum upon it, and farther south yet, in the dim distance, there was a ghostly glimmering range of snow mountains that we had not seen before. To the northward all the hills were a sort of navy-blue.
One thing I had determined not to do, was to give any descriptions of scenery, mainly because I don't know how. But, upon my word, the bare facts of that sight were miles ahead of any description. The horses, too, had suddenly waked up, and bounded over the plain at a great rate. They kept abreast of each other in good shape, and the gait was so easy and so swift that we felt as though we were in a ship at sea.
Suddenly John cried: "I say, Dick, let's yell! One, two, three!" and at the word we lifted up our two voices and shouted like wild Indians. Some cows chewing gravel on a little elevation that we happened to be passing—for they have nothing else to chew at that season—lifted their horned heads against the sky and gazed at us reproachfully, and a couple of prairie-dogs scampered across the plain and popped into their holes; but our unechoed shout reached no other ears, and we cantered on, much relieved by it.
It was dark before we got back, anda young moon appeared, tilting over the black shoulder of Pike's Peak, south of the nightcap. We and the horses calmed down and came in quite cool.