coalesced into tongues of actual flame. Suddenly the race frightened her.
'Isn't it dangerous?' she cried as the deck grew hot under her thin soles.
Nicholas shrugged, never taking his eyes from the pursuing boat whose bow was now flush with their stern. 'There's danger everywhere, I suppose.'
She shrank into her seat clutching its arms and telling herself that she must not be a silly coward. Certainly everyone else was enjoying himself hugely. The passengers surged from bow to stern cheering or groaning as now one boat gained and then the other; they made hoarse wagers on the outcome, shouting across the hundred yards of water to the Express, whose own passengers and crew answered back in kind.
And then it was all over. The Swallow slid first up to her Pough-keepsie dock; there was deafening applause on the decks around them, while catcalls and oaths came from the vanquished boat.
Miranda felt foolish, and glancing apologetically at Nicholas she saw that though he had taken no part in the enthusiasm of the passengers, he yet wore an expression of exhilaration and triumph. An expression which vanished at once as his face returned to its usual reserve.
She had a moment of puzzled uneasiness, for though she did not in the least understand him, she knew that his reaction to the race was not like that of the other passengers; she felt that the contest had had for him an inner meaning, and that in some way its outcome represented the vindication of his will.
The Swallow proceeded decorously up-river from Poughkeepsie, but Miranda continued to suffer uneasiness out of all proportion to the cause. This uneasiness had in it a quality of foreboding and of prescience, as though the boisterous and senseless contest between two boats held for her a future significance. And yet the summer afternoon was tranquilly blue, and the narrowing river flowed peacefully past their vessel as the wooded shores came nearer. By the time that the western shore reared itself up into the purple masses of the Catskills, she had regained her eager expectancy and cried: 'Oh Cousin Nicholas, how high they are! I'd no notion mountains were so big!'
Nicholas thought of the Alps, in which he had spent the summer of 1835 while making the Grand Tour before his marriage, and he smiled, but forebore to disillusion her. Instead he pointed out the Mountain House, whose thirteen white columns were visible even at that distance.
'That's Rip Van Winkle's country back of the Mountain House,' said Nicholas. 'They say that on hot summer days one can still hear the little men playing at ninepins.'
Miranda looked blank.
'Don't you know Diedrich Knickerbocker and "The Sketch Book"?'
She shook her head.
'Tales by Washington Irving, a fine writer and a friend of mine,' Nicholas explained. 'No doubt you'll meet him some day.'
Nicholas settled back in his chair. This touched on one of his dominant interests. He was well grounded in the classics, of course, though it had never occurred to his father to send him to college; that type of education open to almost anyone, even tradesmen and farmers' sons, was not fitting to an aristocrat. There had therefore been a succession of tutors, German and English, to prepare the boy for the cultural climax of the Grand Tour.
He had spent two years traveling elegantly through England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany before returning to Dragonwyck to find that his father had died and he was now Lord of the Manor.
Nicholas, then, knew the classics, but in the last five years he had developed a lively interest in contemporary American writing. In this he differed from most of the young men of his class, who aped the European and persisted in regarding the United States as crude and negligible.
Nicholas, true to his birth and an upbringing far less democratic than that of an English nobleman, delighted in the role of patron. He had patterned himself half-consciously on a Lorenzo de Medici or a Prince Esterhazy.
He enjoyed
'Isn't it dangerous?' she cried as the deck grew hot under her thin soles.
Nicholas shrugged, never taking his eyes from the pursuing boat whose bow was now flush with their stern. 'There's danger everywhere, I suppose.'
She shrank into her seat clutching its arms and telling herself that she must not be a silly coward. Certainly everyone else was enjoying himself hugely. The passengers surged from bow to stern cheering or groaning as now one boat gained and then the other; they made hoarse wagers on the outcome, shouting across the hundred yards of water to the Express, whose own passengers and crew answered back in kind.
And then it was all over. The Swallow slid first up to her Pough-keepsie dock; there was deafening applause on the decks around them, while catcalls and oaths came from the vanquished boat.
Miranda felt foolish, and glancing apologetically at Nicholas she saw that though he had taken no part in the enthusiasm of the passengers, he yet wore an expression of exhilaration and triumph. An expression which vanished at once as his face returned to its usual reserve.
She had a moment of puzzled uneasiness, for though she did not in the least understand him, she knew that his reaction to the race was not like that of the other passengers; she felt that the contest had had for him an inner meaning, and that in some way its outcome represented the vindication of his will.
The Swallow proceeded decorously up-river from Poughkeepsie, but Miranda continued to suffer uneasiness out of all proportion to the cause. This uneasiness had in it a quality of foreboding and of prescience, as though the boisterous and senseless contest between two boats held for her a future significance. And yet the summer afternoon was tranquilly blue, and the narrowing river flowed peacefully past their vessel as the wooded shores came nearer. By the time that the western shore reared itself up into the purple masses of the Catskills, she had regained her eager expectancy and cried: 'Oh Cousin Nicholas, how high they are! I'd no notion mountains were so big!'
Nicholas thought of the Alps, in which he had spent the summer of 1835 while making the Grand Tour before his marriage, and he smiled, but forebore to disillusion her. Instead he pointed out the Mountain House, whose thirteen white columns were visible even at that distance.
'That's Rip Van Winkle's country back of the Mountain House,' said Nicholas. 'They say that on hot summer days one can still hear the little men playing at ninepins.'
Miranda looked blank.
'Don't you know Diedrich Knickerbocker and "The Sketch Book"?'
She shook her head.
'Tales by Washington Irving, a fine writer and a friend of mine,' Nicholas explained. 'No doubt you'll meet him some day.'
Nicholas settled back in his chair. This touched on one of his dominant interests. He was well grounded in the classics, of course, though it had never occurred to his father to send him to college; that type of education open to almost anyone, even tradesmen and farmers' sons, was not fitting to an aristocrat. There had therefore been a succession of tutors, German and English, to prepare the boy for the cultural climax of the Grand Tour.
He had spent two years traveling elegantly through England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany before returning to Dragonwyck to find that his father had died and he was now Lord of the Manor.
Nicholas, then, knew the classics, but in the last five years he had developed a lively interest in contemporary American writing. In this he differed from most of the young men of his class, who aped the European and persisted in regarding the United States as crude and negligible.
Nicholas, true to his birth and an upbringing far less democratic than that of an English nobleman, delighted in the role of patron. He had patterned himself half-consciously on a Lorenzo de Medici or a Prince Esterhazy.
He enjoyed
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