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                             LITTLE CLASSICS

                                EDITED BY
                            ROSSITER JOHNSON

                               STORIES OF
                                 ROMANCE

                             [Illustration]

                           BOSTON AND NEW YORK
                        HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
                      The Riverside Press Cambridge
                                  1914

                COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
                           ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




[Illustration]




CONTENTS.


                                                                   PAGE

    IRIS                      _Oliver Wendell Holmes_                 7

    THE ROSICRUCIAN           _Dinah Maria Mulock Craik_             83

    THE SOUTH BREAKER         _Harriet Prescott Spofford_           115

    THE SNOW-STORM            _John Wilson_                         184

    THE KING OF THE PEAK      _Allan Cunningham_                    206

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




IRIS.

FROM “THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.”

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.


I.

I told you that I was perfectly sure, beforehand, we should find some
pleasing girlish or womanly shape to fill the blank at our table and
match the dark-haired youth at the upper corner.

There she sits, at the very opposite corner, just as far off as
accident could put her from this handsome fellow, by whose side she
ought, of course, to be sitting. One of the “positive” blondes, as my
friend, you may remember, used to call them. Tawny-haired, amber-eyed,
full-throated, skin as white as a blanched almond. Looks dreamy to me,
not self-conscious, though a black ribbon round her neck sets it off as
a Marie-Antoinette’s diamond-necklace could not do. So in her dress,
there is a harmony of tints that looks as if an artist had run his eye
over her and given a hint or two like the finishing touch to a picture.
I can’t help being struck with her, for she is at once rounded and fine
in feature, looks calm, as blondes are apt to, and as if she might run
wild, if she were trifled with.——It is just as I knew it would be,——and
anybody can see that our young Marylander will be dead in love with her
in a week.

Then if that little man would only turn out immensely rich and have the
good-nature to die and leave them all his money, it would be as nice as a
three-volume novel.

The Little Gentleman is in a flurry, I suspect, with the excitement
of having such a charming neighbor next him. I judge so mainly by his
silence and by a certain rapt and serious look on his face, as if he were
thinking of something that had happened, or that might happen, or that
ought to happen,——or how beautiful her young life looked, or how hardly
Nature had dealt with him, or something which struck him silent, at any
rate. I made several conversational openings for him, but he did not
fire up as he often does. I even went so far as to indulge in a fling
at the State House, which, as we all know, is in truth a very imposing
structure, covering less ground than St. Peter’s, but of similar general
effect. The little man looked up, but did not reply to my taunt. He said
to the young lady, however, that the State House was the Parthenon of our
Acropolis, which seemed to please her, for she smiled, and he reddened a
little,——so I thought. I don’t think it right to watch persons who are
the subjects of special infirmity,——but we all do it.

I see that they have crowded the chairs a little at that end of
the table, to make room for another new-comer of the lady sort. A
well-mounted, middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without
a cap,——pretty wide in the parting, though,——contours vaguely
hinted,——features very quiet,——says little as yet, but seems to keep her
eye on the young lady, as if having some responsibility for her.


II.

You remember, perhaps, in some papers published awhile ago, an odd poem
written by an old Latin tutor? He brought up at the verb _amo_, I love,
as all of us do, and by and by Nature opened her great living dictionary
for him at the word _filia_, a daughter. The poor man was greatly
perplexed in choosing a name for her. _Lucretia_ and _Virginia_ were the
first that he thought of; but then came up those pictured stories of
Titus Livius, which he could never read without crying, though he had
read them a hundred times.

Lucretia sending for her husband and her father, each to bring one friend
with him, and awaiting them in her chamber. To them her wrongs briefly.
Let them see to the wretch,——she will take care of herself. Then the
hidden knife flashes out and sinks into her heart. She slides from her
seat, and falls dying. “Her husband and her father cry aloud.”——No,——not
Lucretia.

——Virginius,——a brown old soldier, father of a nice girl. She engaged
to a very promising young man. Decemvir Appius takes a violent fancy to
her,——must have her at any rate. Hires a lawyer to present the arguments
in favor of the view that she was another man’s daughter. There used to
be lawyers in Rome that would do such things.——All right. There are two
sides to everything. _Audi alteram partem._ The legal gentleman has no
opinion,——he only states the evidence.——A doubtful case. Let the young
lady be under the protection of the Honorable Decemvir until it can be
looked up thoroughly.——Father thinks it best, on the whole, to give in.
Will explain the matter, if the young lady and her maid will step this
way. _That_ is the explanation,——a stab with a butcher’s knife, snatched
from a stall, meant for other lambs than this poor bleeding Virginia!

The old man thought over the story. Then he must have one look at the
original. So he took down the first volume and read it over. When he came
to that part where it tells how the young gentleman she was engaged to
and a friend of his took up the poor girl’s bloodless shape and carried
it through the street, and how all the women followed, wailing, and
asking if that was what their daughters were coming to,——if that was
what they were to get for being good girls,——he melted down into his
accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, through them all, of delight at
the charming Latin of the narrative. But it was impossible to call his
child Virginia. He could never look at her without thinking she had a
knife sticking in her bosom.

_Dido_ would be a good name, and a fresh one. She was a queen, and the
founder of a great city. Her story had been immortalized by the greatest
of poets,——for the old Latin tutor clove to “Virgilius Maro,” as he
called him, as closely as ever Dante did in his memorable journey. So he
took down his Virgil,——it was the smooth-leafed, open-lettered quarto
of Baskerville,——and began reading the loves and mishaps of Dido. It
wouldn’t do. A lady who had not learned discretion by experience, and
came to an evil end. He shook his head, as he sadly repeated,

    “——misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore”;

but when he came to the lines,

    “Ergo Iris croceis per cœlum roscida pennis
    Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores,”

he jumped up with a great exclamation, which the particular recording
angel who heard it pretended not to understand, or it might have gone
hard with the Latin tutor some time or other.

“_Iris_ shall be her name!”——he said. So her name was Iris.


III.

The natural end of a tutor is to perish by starvation. It is only a
question of time, just as with the burning of college libraries. These
all burn up sooner or later, provided they are not housed in brick or
stone and iron. I don’t mean that you will see in the registry of deaths
that this or that particular tutor died of well-marked, uncomplicated
starvation. They _may_, even, in extreme cases, be carried off by a
thin, watery kind of apoplexy, which sounds very well in the returns,
but means little to those who know that it is only debility settling on
the head. Generally, however, they fade and waste away under various
pretexts,——calling it dyspepsia, consumption, and so on, to put a decent
appearance upon the case and keep up the credit of the family and the
institution where they have passed through the successive stages of
inanition.

In some cases it takes a great many years to kill a tutor by the
process in question. You see, they do get food and clothes and fuel,
in appreciable quantities, such as they are. You will even notice rows
of books in their rooms, and a picture or two,——things that look as
if they had surplus money; but these superfluities are the _water of
crystallization_ to scholars, and you can never get them away till
the poor fellows effloresce into dust. Do not be deceived. The tutor
breakfasts on coffee made of beans, edulcorated with milk watered to the
verge of transparency; his mutton is tough and elastic, up to the moment
when it becomes tired out and tasteless; his coal is a sullen, sulphurous
anthracite, which rusts into ashes, rather than burns, in the shallow
grate; his flimsy broadcloth is too thin for winter and too thick for
summer. The greedy lungs of fifty hot-blooded boys suck the oxygen from
the air he breathes in his recitation-room. In short, he undergoes a
process of gentle and gradual starvation.

——The mother of little Iris was not called Electra, like hers of the old
story, neither was her grandfather Oceanus. Her blood-name, which she
gave away with her heart to the Latin tutor, was a plain old English
one, and her water-name was Hannah, beautiful as recalling the mother of
Samuel, and admirable as reading equally well from the initial letter
forwards and from the terminal letter backwards. The poor lady, seated
with her companion at the chess-board of matrimony, had but just pushed
forward her one little white pawn upon an empty square, when the Black
Knight, that cares nothing for castles or kings or queens, swooped down
upon her and swept her from the larger board of life.

The old Latin tutor put a modest blue stone at the head of his late
companion, with her name and age and _Eheu!_ upon it,——a smaller one
at her feet, with initials; and left her by herself, to be rained and
snowed on,——which is a hard thing to do for those whom we have cherished
tenderly.

About the time that the lichens, falling on the stone, like drops of
water, had spread into fair, round rosettes, the tutor had starved into a
slight cough. Then he began to draw the buckle of his black pantaloons a
little tighter, and took another reef in his never-ample waistcoat. His
temples got a little hollow, and the contrasts of color in his cheeks
more vivid than of old. After a while his walks fatigued him, and he
was tired, and breathed hard after going up a flight or two of stairs.
Then came on other marks of inward trouble and general waste, which he
spoke of to his physician as peculiar, and doubtless owing to accidental
causes; to all which the doctor listened with deference, as if it had
not been the old story that one in five or six of mankind in temperate
climates tells, or has told for him, as if it were something new. As the
doctor went out, he said to himself,——“On the rail at last. Accommodation
train. A good many stops, but will get to the station by and by.” So the
doctor wrote a recipe with the astrological sign of Jupiter before it
(just as your own physician does, inestimable reader, as you will see,
if you look at his next prescription), and departed, saying he would
look in occasionally. After this, the Latin tutor began the usual course
of “getting better,” until he got so much better that his face was very
sharp, and when he smiled, three crescent lines showed at each side
of his lips, and when he spoke, it was in a muffled whisper, and the
white of his eye glistened as pearly as the purest porcelain,——so much
better, that he hoped——by spring——he——might be able——to——attend——to his
class again.——But he was recommended not to expose himself, and so kept
his chamber, and occasionally, not having anything to do, his bed. The
unmarried sister with whom he lived took care of him; and the child, now
old enough to be manageable, and even useful in trifling offices, sat in
the chamber, or played about.

Things could not go on so forever, of course. One morning his face was
sunken and his hands were very, very cold. He was “better,” he whispered,
but sadly and faintly. After a while he grew restless and seemed a little
wandering. His mind ran on his classics, and fell back on the Latin
grammar.

“Iris!” he said,——“_filiola mea!_”——The child knew this meant _my dear
little daughter_ as well as if it had been English.——“Rainbow!”——for he
would translate her name at times,——“come to me,——_veni_”——and his lips
went on automatically, and murmured, “_vel venito!_”——The child came
and sat by his bedside and took his hand, which she could not warm, but
which shot its rays of cold all through her slender frame. But there she
sat, looking steadily at him. Presently he opened his lips feebly, and
whispered, “_Moribundus_.” She did not know what that meant, but she saw
that there was something new and sad. So she began to cry; but presently
remembering an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, got up and
brought a Bible in the Latin version, called the Vulgate. “Open it,” he
said,——“I will read,——_segnius irritant_,——don’t put the light out,——ah!
_hæret lateri_,——I am going,——_vale, vale, vale_, good by, good by,——the
Lord take care of my child!——_Domine, audi——vel audito!_” His face
whitened suddenly, and he lay still, with open eyes and mouth. He had
taken his last degree.

——Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin life with a very brilliant
rainbow over her, in a worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of
man’s attire, such as poor tutors wear,——a few good books, principally
classics,——a print or two, and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with
some pieces of furniture which had seen service,——these, and a child’s
heart full of tearful recollections and strange doubts and questions,
alternating with the cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of
childish grief; such were the treasures she inherited.——No,——I forgot.
With that kindly sentiment which all of us feel for old men’s first
children,——frost-flowers of the early winter season,——the old tutor’s
students had remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying
with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain crib
in which his _alter ego_, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang over
the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute, red,
downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,——in that
unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, and which
gives to the earliest moon-year or two of an infant’s life the character
of a _first old age_, to counterpoise that _second childhood_ which there
is one chance in a dozen it may reach by and by. The boys had remembered
the old man and young father at that tender period of his hard, dry life.
There came to him a fair, silver goblet, embossed with classical figures,
and bearing on a shield the graven words, _Ex dono pupillorum_. The
handle on its side showed what use the boys had meant it for, and a kind
letter in it, written with the best of feeling, in the worst of Latin,
pointed delicately to its destination. Out of this silver vessel, after a
long, desperate, strangling cry, which marked her first great lesson in
the realities of life, the child took the blue milk, such as poor tutors
and their children get, tempered with water, and sweetened a little, so
as to bring it nearer the standard established by the touching indulgence
and partiality of Nature,——who has mingled an extra allowance of sugar in
the blameless food of the child at its mother’s breast, as compared with
that of its infant brothers and sisters of the bovine race.

But a willow will grow in baked sand wet with rainwater. An air-plant
will grow by feeding on the winds. Nay, those huge forests that
overspread great continents have built themselves up mainly from the
air-currents with which they are always battling. The oak is but a
foliated atmospheric crystal deposited from the aerial ocean that holds
the future vegetable world in solution. The storm that tears its leaves
has paid tribute to its strength, and it breasts the tornado clad in the
spoils of a hundred hurricanes.

Poor little Iris! What had she in common with the great oak in the shadow
of which we are losing sight of her?——She lived and grew like that,——this
was all. The blue milk ran into her veins and filled them with thin,
pure blood. Her skin was fair, with a faint tinge, such as the white
rosebud shows before it opens. The doctor who had attended her father
was afraid her aunt would hardly be able to “raise” her,——“delicate
child,”——hoped she was not consumptive,——thought there was a fair chance
she would take after her father.

A very forlorn-looking person, dressed in black, with a white neckcloth,
sent her a memoir of a child who died at the age of two years and eleven
months, after having fully indorsed all the doctrines of the particular
persuasion to which he not only belonged himself, but thought it very
shameful that everybody else did not belong. What with foreboding looks
and dreary death-bed stories, it was a wonder the child made out to live
through it. It saddened her early years, of course,——it distressed her
tender soul with thoughts which, as they cannot be fully taken in, should
be sparingly used as instruments of torture to break down the natural
cheerfulness of a healthy child, or, what is infinitely worse, to cheat
a dying one out of the kind illusions with which the Father of All has
strewed its downward path.

The child would have died, no doubt, and, if properly managed, might have
added another to the long catalogue of wasting children who have been
as cruelly played upon by spiritual physiologists, often with the best
intentions, as ever the subject of a rare disease by the curious students
of science.

Fortunately for her, however, a wise instinct had guided the late Latin
tutor in the selection of the partner of his life, and the future mother
of his child. The deceased tutoress was a tranquil, smooth woman,
easily nourished, as such people are,——a quality which is inestimable in
a tutor’s wife,——and so it happened that the daughter inherited enough
vitality from the mother to live through childhood and infancy and fight
her way towards womanhood, in spite of the tendencies she derived from
her other parent.

——Two and two do not always make four, in this matter of hereditary
descent of qualities. Sometimes they make three, and sometimes five. It
seems as if the parental traits at one time showed separate, at another
blended,——that occasionally the force of two natures is represented in
the derivative one by a diagonal of greater value than either original
line of living movement,——that sometimes there is a loss of vitality
hardly to be accounted for, and again a forward impulse of variable
intensity in some new and unforeseen direction.

So it was with this child. She had glanced off from her parental
probabilities at an unexpected angle. Instead of taking to classical
learning like her father, or sliding quietly into household duties like
her mother, she broke out early in efforts that pointed in the direction
of Art. As soon as she could hold a pencil she began to sketch outlines
of objects round her with a certain air and spirit. Very extraordinary
horses, but their legs looked as if they could move. Birds unknown to
Audubon, yet flying, as it were, with a rush. Men with impossible legs,
which did yet seem to have a vital connection with their most improbable
bodies. By and by the doctor, on his beast,——an old man with a face
looking as if Time had kneaded it like dough with his knuckles, with
a rhubarb tint and flavor pervading himself and his sorrel horse and
all their appurtenances. A dreadful old man! Be sure she did not forget
those saddle-bags that held the detestable bottles out of which he used
to shake those loathsome powders which, to virgin childish palates that
find heaven in strawberries and peaches, are——Well, I suppose I had
better stop. Only she wished she was dead sometimes when she heard him
coming. On the next leaf would figure the gentleman with the black coat
and white cravat, as he looked when he came and entertained her with
stories concerning the death of various little children about her age,
to encourage her, as that wicked Mr. Arouet said about shooting Admiral
Byng. Then she would take her pencil, and with a few scratches there
would be the outline of a child, in which you might notice how one sudden
sweep gave the chubby cheek, and two dots darted at the paper looked like
real eyes.

By and by she went to school, and caricatured the schoolmaster on the
leaves of her grammars and geographies, and drew the faces of her
companions, and, from time to time, heads and figures from her fancy,
with large eyes, far apart, like those of Raffaelle’s mothers and
children, sometimes with wild floating hair, and then with wings and
heads thrown back in ecstasy. This was at about twelve years old, as the
dates of these drawings show, and, therefore, three or four years before
she came among us. Soon after this time, the ideal figures began to take
the place of portraits and caricatures, and a new feature appeared in her
drawing-books in the form of fragments of verse and short poems.


IV.

It was dull work, of course, for such a young girl to live with an old
spinster and go to a village school. Her books bore testimony to this;
for there was a look of sadness in the faces she drew, and a sense of
weariness and longing for some imaginary conditions of blessedness or
other, which began to be painful. She might have gone through this
flowering of the soul, and, casting her petals, subsided into a sober,
human berry, but for the intervention of friendly assistance and counsel.

In the town where she lived was a lady of honorable condition, somewhat
past middle age, who was possessed of pretty ample means, of cultivated
tastes, of excellent principles, of exemplary character, and of more
than common accomplishments. The gentleman in black broadcloth and white
neckerchief only echoed the common voice about her, when he called her,
after enjoying, beneath her hospitable roof, an excellent cup of tea,
with certain elegances and luxuries he was unaccustomed to, “The Model of
all the Virtues.”

She deserved this title as well as almost any woman. She did really
bristle with moral excellences. Mention any good thing she had not done;
I should like to see you try! There was no handle of weakness to take
hold of her by; she was as unseizable, except in her totality, as a
billiard-ball; and on the broad, green, terrestrial table, where she had
been knocked about, like all of us, by the cue of Fortune, she glanced
from every human contact, and “caromed” from one relation to another,
and rebounded from the stuffed cushion of temptation, with such exact and
perfect angular movements, that the Enemy’s corps of Reporters had long
given up taking notes of her conduct, as there was no chance for their
master.

What an admirable person for the patroness and directress of a slightly
self-willed child, with the lightning zigzag line of genius running like
a glittering vein through the marble whiteness of her virgin nature! One
of the lady-patroness’s peculiar virtues was calmness. She was resolute
and strenuous, but still. You could depend on her for every duty; she
was as true as steel. She was kind-hearted and serviceable in all the
relations of life. She had more sense, more knowledge, more conversation,
as well as more goodness, than all the partners you have waltzed with
this winter put together.

Yet no man was known to have loved her, or even to have offered himself
to her in marriage. It was a great wonder. I am very anxious to vindicate
my character as a philosopher and an observer of Nature by accounting for
this apparently extraordinary fact.

You may remember certain persons who have the misfortune of presenting to
the friends whom they meet a cold, damp hand. There are states of mind in
which a contact of this kind has a depressing effect on the vital powers
that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor
of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes
out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a
powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown human torpedo.

“The Model of all the Virtues” had a pair of searching eyes as clear as
Wenham ice; but they were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her
features disordered themselves slightly at times in a surface-smile, but
never broke loose from their corners and indulged in the riotous tumult
of a laugh,——which, I take it, is the mob-law of the features,——and
propriety the magistrate who reads the riot-act. She carried the brimming
cup of her inestimable virtues with a cautious, steady hand, and an eye
always on them, to see that they did not spill. Then she was an admirable
judge of character. Her mind was a perfect laboratory of tests and
reagents; every syllable you put into breath went into her intellectual
eudiometer, and all your thoughts were recorded on litmus-paper. I think
there has rarely been a more admirable woman. Of course, Miss Iris was
immensely and passionately attached to her.——Well,——these are two highly
oxygenated adverbs,——grateful,——suppose we say,——yes,——grateful, dutiful,
obedient to her wishes for the most part,——perhaps not quite up to the
concert pitch of such a perfect orchestra of the virtues.

We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it
much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than
is good for them, or use anything but dictionary words, are admirable
subjects for biographies. But we don’t always care most for those
flat-pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium.

This immaculate woman,——why couldn’t she have a fault or two? Isn’t there
any old whisper which will tarnish that wearisome aureole of saintly
perfection? Doesn’t she carry a lump of opium in her pocket? Isn’t her
cologne-bottle replenished oftener than its legitimate use would require?
It would be such a comfort!


V.

Not for the world would a young creature like Iris have let such words
escape her, or such thoughts pass through her mind. Whether at the bottom
of her soul lies any uneasy consciousness of an oppressive presence,
it is hard to say, until we know more about her. Iris sits between the
little gentleman and the “Model of all the Virtues,” as the black-coated
personage called her. I will watch them all.

I am sure that the young girl can hide nothing from me. Her skin is so
transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes
they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either. I think
she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to me like one
of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote, uninhabited
islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand of man, show no
alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his presence.

The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman
get along together. The next thing will be to keep an eye on the
duenna,——the “Model” and so forth, as the white-neckcloth called her.
The intention of that estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and
leave her. I suppose there is no help for it, and I don’t doubt this
young lady knows how to take care of herself, but I do not like to see
young girls turned loose in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that
jewel of his race, whom I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor
(you understand it is quite out of the question for me to use the family
names of our boarders, unless I want to get into trouble),——I say, the
gentleman with the _diamond_ is looking very often and very intently,
it seems to me, down toward the farther corner of the table, where sits
our amber-eyed blonde. The landlady’s daughter does not look pleased, it
seems to me, at this, nor at those other attentions which the gentleman
referred to has, as I have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young
person. The landlady made a communication to me, within a few days
after the arrival of Miss Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my
remembrance.

He (the person I have been speaking of),——she said,——seemed to be kinder
hankerin’ round after that young woman. It had hurt her daughter’s
feelin’s a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin’ company with
should be offerin’ tickets and tryin’ to send presents to them that he’d
never know’d till jest a little spell ago,——and he as good as merried, so
fur as solemn promises went, to as respectable a young lady, if she did
say so, as any there was round, whosomever they might be.

Tickets! presents!——said I.——What tickets, what presents, has he had the
impertinence to be offering to that young lady?

Tickets to the Múseum,——said the landlady.——There is them that’s glad
enough to go to the Múseum, when tickets is given ’em; but some of ’em
ha’n’t had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,——and now he must be
offerin’ ’em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is,
that’s come to make more mischief than her board’s worth. But it a’n’t
her fault,——said the landlady, relenting;——and that aunt of hers, or
whatever she is, served him right enough.

Why, what did she do?

Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o’ winder.

Dropped? dropped what?——I said.

Why, the _soap_,——said the landlady.

It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an
elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate
expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having
met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by
Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged
in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his
hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt
like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition.

After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the
relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young
lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can’t help being interested
in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough
to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady’s
daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin’ her cap
for the Little Gentleman.

Some of them young folks is very artful,——said her mother,——and
there is them that would merry Lazarus, if he’d only picked up crumbs
enough. I don’t think, though, this is one of that sort; she’s kinder
childlike,——said the landlady,——and maybe never had any dolls to play
with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma’am undertook to see to
her teachin’ and board her and clothe her.

I could not help overhearing this conversation. “Board her and clothe
her!”——speaking of such a young creature! O dear!——Yes,——she must be
fed,——just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment. Somebody
must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how much it
takes to “keep” her, and growl at her, if she has too good an appetite.
Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that she does
not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over again in
those fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured womanhood,
and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of neutral-tinted
propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments to find for
her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of ear-rings,——those golden
lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of young
beauties,——swinging in a semibarbaric splendor that carries the wild
fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don’t believe any
woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long as she
wears ear-rings.

I think Iris loves to hear the Little Gentleman talk. She smiles
sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he
speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be
only natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing. I
have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of inferior
collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing draws off
their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this young creature’s
rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is speaking.

He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he
was silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting
the talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at
least one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special
attention to personal adornment,——a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a
diamond pin in it,——not so _very_ large as the Koh-i-noor’s, but more
lustrous. I mentioned the death’s-head ring he wears on his right hand.
I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or
something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a
handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that the cast mentioned was
taken from his arm. After all, this is just what I should expect. It is
not very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of them, running away
with the whole strength, and, therefore, with the whole beauty, which we
should never have noticed, if it had been divided equally between all
four extremities. If it is so, of course he is proud of his one strong
and beautiful arm; that is human nature. I am afraid he can hardly help
betraying his favoritism, as people who have any one showy point are apt
to do,——especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back to
their last molars.

Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the calm
lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations to each
other.

That is an admirable woman, Sir,——he said to me one day, as we sat alone
at the table after breakfast,——an admirable woman, Sir,——and I hate her.

Of course, I begged an explanation.

An admirable woman, Sir, because she does good things, and even kind
things,——takes care of this——this——young lady——we have here, talks like a
sensible person, and always looks as if she was doing her duty with all
her might. I hate her because her voice sounds as if it never trembled,
and her eyes look as if she never knew what it was to cry. Besides, she
looks at me, Sir, stares at me, as if she wanted to get an image of me
for some gallery in her brain,——and we don’t love to be looked at in
this way, we that have——I hate her,——I hate her,——her eyes kill me,——it
is like being stabbed with icicles to be looked at so,——the sooner she
goes home the better. I don’t want a woman to weigh me in a balance;
there are men enough for that sort of work. The judicial character isn’t
captivating in females, Sir. A woman fascinates a man quite as often
by what she overlooks as by what she sees. Love prefers twilight to
daylight; and a man doesn’t think much of, nor care much for, a woman
outside of his household, unless he can couple the idea of love, past,
present, or future, with her. I don’t believe the Devil would give half
as much for the services of a sinner as he would for those of one of
these folks that are always doing virtuous acts in a way to make them
unpleasing.——That young girl wants a tender nature to cherish her and
give her a chance to put out her leaves,——sunshine, and not east winds.

He was silent,——and sat looking at his handsome left hand with the red
stone ring upon it.——Is he going to fall in love with Iris?


VI.

The young man John asked me to come up one day and try some “old Burbon,”
which he said was A 1. On asking him what was the number of his room,
he answered, that it was forty-’leven, sky-parlor floor, but that I
shouldn’t find it, if he didn’t go ahead to show me the way. I followed
him to his _habitat_, being very willing to see in what kind of warren he
burrowed, and thinking I might pick up something about the boarders who
had excited my curiosity.

The young man John fell into a train of reflections which ended in his
producing a Bologna sausage, a plate of “crackers,” as we Boston folks
call certain biscuits, and the bottle of whiskey described as being A 1.

Under the influence of the crackers and sausage, he grew cordial and
communicative.

It was time, I thought, to sound him as to our boarders.

What do you think of our young Iris?——I began.

Fust-rate little filly;——he said.——Pootiest and nicest little chap
I’ve seen since the schoolma’am left. Schoolma’am was a brown-haired
one,——eyes coffee-color. This one has got wine-colored eyes,——’n’ that’s
the reason they turn a fellah’s head, I suppose.

This is a splendid blonde,——I said,——the other was a brunette. Which
style do you like best?

Which do I like best, boiled mutton or roast mutton?——said the young man
John. Like ’em both,——it a’n’t the color of ’em makes the goodness. I’ve
been kind of lonely since schoolma’am went away. Used to like to look at
her. I never said anything particular to her, that I remember, but——

I don’t know whether it was the cracker and sausage, or that the young
fellow’s feet were treading on the hot ashes of some longing that had not
had time to cool, but his eye glistened as he stopped.

I suppose she wouldn’t have looked at a fellah like me,——he said,——but
I come pretty near tryin’. If she had said, Yes, though, I shouldn’t
have known what to have done with her. Can’t marry a woman nowadays till
you’re so deaf you have to cock your head like a parrot to hear what she
says, and so long-sighted you can’t see what she looks like nearer than
arm’s-length.

Here is another chance for you,——I said.——What do you want nicer than
such a young lady as Iris?

It’s no use,——he answered.——I look at them girls and feel as the fellah
did when he missed catchin’ the trout.——’To’od ’a’ cost more butter to
cook him ’n’ he’s worth,——says the fellah.——Takes a whole piece o’ goods
to cover a girl up nowadays. I’d as lief undertake to keep a span of
elephants,——and take an ostrich to board, too,——as to marry one of ’em.
What’s the use? Clerks and counter-jumpers a’n’t anything. Sparragrass
and green peas a’n’t for them,——not while they’re young and tender.
Hossback-ridin’ a’n’t for them,——except once a year,——on Fast-day. And
marryin’ a’n’t for them. Sometimes a fellah feels lonely, and would
like to have a nice young woman, to tell her how lonely he feels. And
sometimes a fellah,——here the young man John looked very confidential,
and, perhaps, as if a little ashamed of his weakness,——sometimes a fellah
would like to have one o’ them small young ones to trot on his knee and
push about in a little wagon,——a kind of a little Johnny, you know;——it’s
odd enough, but, it seems to me, nobody can afford them little articles,
except the folks that are so rich they can buy everything, and the folks
that are so poor they don’t want anything. It makes nice boys of us young
fellahs, no doubt! And it’s pleasant to see fine young girls sittin’,
like shopkeepers behind their goods, waitin’, and waitin’, and waitin’,
’n’ no customers,——and the men lingerin’ round and lookin’ at the goods,
like folks that want to be customers, but haven’t got the money!

Do you think the deformed gentleman means to make love to Iris?——I said.

What! Little Boston ask that girl to marry him! Well, now, that’s
comin’ of it a little too strong. Yes, I guess she will marry him and
carry him round in a basket, like a lame bantam! Look here!——he said,
mysteriously;——one of the boarders swears there’s a woman comes to
see him, and that he has heard her singin’ and screechin’. I should
like to know what he’s about in that den of his. He lays low ’n’ keeps
dark,——and, I tell you, there’s a good many of the boarders would like
to get into his chamber, but he don’t seem to want ’em. Biddy could
tell somethin’ about what she’s seen when she’s been to put his room
to rights. She’s a Paddy ’n’ a fool, but she knows enough to keep her
tongue still. All I know is, I saw her crossin’ herself one day when she
came out of that room. She looked pale enough, ’n’ I heard her mutterin’
somethin’ or other about the Blessed Virgin. If it hadn’t been for the
double doors to that chamber of his, I’d have had a squint inside before
this; but, somehow or other, it never seems to happen that they’re both
open at once.

What do you think he employs himself about?——said I.

The young man John winked.

I waited patiently for the thought, of which this wink was the blossom,
to come to fruit in words.

I don’t believe in witches,——said the young man John.

Nor I.

We were both silent for a few minutes.

       *       *       *       *       *

——Did you ever see the young girl’s drawing-books,——I said, presently.

All but one,——he answered;——she keeps a lock on that, and won’t show it.
Ma’am Allen (the young rogue sticks to that name, in speaking of the
gentleman with the _diamond_), Ma’am Allen tried to peek into it one day
when she left it on the sideboard. “If you please,” says she,——’n’ took
it from him, ’n’ gave him a look that made him curl up like a caterpillar
on a hot shovel. I only wished he hadn’t, and had jest given her a little
saas, for I’ve been takin’ boxin’-lessons, ’n’ I’ve got a new way of
counterin’ I want to try on to somebody.

——The end of all this was, that I came away from the young fellow’s room,
feeling that there were two principal things that I had to live for, for
the next six weeks or six months, if it should take so long. These were,
to get a sight of the young girl’s drawing-book, which I suspected had
her heart shut up in it, and to get a look into the Little Gentleman’s
room.

I don’t doubt you think it rather absurd that I should trouble myself
about these matters. You tell me, with some show of reason, that all I
shall find in the young girl’s book will be some outlines of angels with
immense eyes, traceries of flowers, rural sketches, and caricatures,
among which I shall probably have the pleasure of seeing my own features
figuring. Very likely. But I’ll tell you what _I_ think I shall find. If
this child has idealized the strange little bit of humanity over which
she seems to have spread her wings like a brooding dove,——if, in one of
those wild vagaries that passionate natures are so liable to, she has
fairly sprung upon him with her clasping nature, as the sea-flowers fold
about the first stray shell-fish that brushes their outspread tentacles,
depend upon it, I shall find the marks of it in this drawing-book of
hers,——if I can ever get a look at it,——fairly, of course, for I would
not play tricks to satisfy my curiosity.

Then, if I can get into this Little Gentleman’s room under any fair
pretext, I shall, no doubt, satisfy myself in five minutes that he is
just like other people, and that there is no particular mystery about
him.


VII.

I love to look at this “Rainbow,” as her father used sometimes to call
her, of ours. Handsome creature that she is in forms and colors, fit for
a sea-king’s bride, it is not her beauty alone that holds my eyes upon
her. Let me tell you one of my fancies, and then you will understand the
strange sort of fascination she has for me.

It is in the hearts of many men and women——let me add children——that
there is a _Great Secret_ waiting for them,——a secret of which they
get hints now and then, perhaps oftener in early than in later years.
These hints come sometimes in dreams, sometimes in sudden startling
flashes,——second wakings, as it were,——a waking out of the waking state,
which last is very apt to be a half-sleep. I have many times stopped
short and held my breath, and felt the blood leaving my cheeks, in one of
these sudden clairvoyant flashes. Of course I cannot tell what kind of a
secret this is; but I think of it as a disclosure of certain relations
of our personal being to time and space, to other intelligences, to the
procession of events, and to their First Great Cause. This secret seems
to be broken up, as it were, into fragments, so that we find here a word
and there a syllable, and then again only a letter of it; but it never is
written out for most of us as a complete sentence, in this life. I do not
think it could be; for I am disposed to consider our beliefs about such a
possible disclosure rather as a kind of premonition of an enlargement of
our faculties in some future state than as an expectation to be fulfilled
for most of us in this life. Persons, however, have fallen into
trances,——as did the Reverend William Tennent, among many others,——and
learned some things which they could not tell in our human words.

Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this infinite
secret for which our souls are waiting, the faces of women are those that
carry the most legible hieroglyphics of the great mystery. There are
women’s faces, some real, some ideal, which contain something in them
that becomes a positive element in our creed, so direct and palpable a
revelation is it of the infinite purity and love. I remember two faces
of women with wings, such as they call angels, of Fra Angelico,——and I
just now came across a print of Raphael’s Santa Apollina, with something
of the same quality,——which I was sure had their prototypes in the world
above ours. No wonder the Catholics pay their vows to the Queen of
Heaven! The unpoetical side of Protestantism is that it has no women to
be worshipped.

But mind you, it is not every beautiful face that hints the Great Secret
to us, nor is it only in beautiful faces that we find traces of it.
Sometimes it looks out from a sweet sad eye, the only beauty of a plain
countenance; sometimes there is so much meaning in the lips of a woman,
not otherwise fascinating, that we know they have a message for us, and
wait almost with awe to hear their accents. But this young girl has
at once the beauty of feature and the unspoken mystery of expression.
Can she tell me anything? Is her life a complement of mine, with the
missing element in it which I have been groping after through so many
friendships that I have tired of, and through——Hush! Is the door fast?
Talking loud is a bad trick in these curious boarding-houses.

You must have sometimes noted this fact that I am going to remind you of
and to use for a special illustration. Riding along over a rocky road,
suddenly the slow monotonous grinding of the crushing gravel changes
to a deep heavy rumble. There is a great hollow under your feet,——a
huge unsunned cavern. Deep, deep beneath you, in the core of the living
rock, it arches its awful vault, and far away it stretches its winding
galleries, their roofs dripping into streams where fishes have been
swimming and spawning in the dark until their scales are white as milk
and their eyes have withered out, obsolete and useless.

So it is in life. We jog quietly along, meeting the same faces, grinding
over the same thoughts,——the gravel of the soul’s highway,——now and then
jarred against an obstacle we cannot crush, but must ride over or round
as we best may, sometimes bringing short up against a disappointment,
but still working along with the creaking and rattling and grating and
jerking that belong to the journey of life, even in the smoothest-rolling
vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground reverberation that reveals
the unsuspected depth of some abyss of thought or passion beneath us.

I wish the girl would go. I don’t like to look at her so much, and yet I
cannot help it. Always that same expression of something that I ought to
know,——something that she was made to tell and I to hear,——lying there
ready to fall off from her lips, ready to leap out of her eyes and make
a saint of me, or a devil or a lunatic, or perhaps a prophet to tell the
truth and be hated of men, or a poet whose words shall flash upon the dry
stubble-field of worn-out thoughts and burn over an age of lies in an
hour of passion.

It suddenly occurs to me that I may have put you on the wrong track. The
Great Secret that I refer to has nothing to do with the Three Words. Set
your mind at ease about that,——there are reasons I could give you which
settle all that matter. I don’t wonder, however, that you confounded the
Great Secret with the Three Words.

I LOVE YOU _is_ all the secret that many, nay, most women have to tell.
When that is said, they are like China-crackers on the morning of the
fifth of July. And just as that little patriotic implement is made with
a slender train which leads to the magazine in its interior, so a sharp
eye can almost always see the train leading from a young girl’s eye
or lip to the “I love you” in her heart. But the Three Words are not
the Great Secret I mean. No, women’s faces are only one of the tablets
on which that is written in its partial, fragmentary symbols. It lies
deeper than Love, though very probably Love is a part of it. Some, I
think,——Wordsworth might be one of them,——spell out a portion of it from
certain beautiful natural objects, landscapes, flowers, and others. I can
mention several poems of his that have shadowy hints which seem to me to
come near the region where I think it lies. I have known two persons who
pursued it with the passion of the old alchemists,——all wrong evidently,
but infatuated, and never giving up the daily search for it until they
got tremulous and feeble, and their dreams changed to visions of things
that ran and crawled about their floor and ceilings, and so they died.
The vulgar called them drunkards.

I told you that I would let you know the mystery of the effect this young
girl’s face produces on me. It is akin to those influences a friend of
mine has described, you may remember, as coming from certain _voices_.
I cannot translate it into words,——only into feelings; and these I have
attempted to shadow by showing that her face hinted that revelation of
something we are close to knowing, which all imaginative persons are
looking for either in this world or on the very threshold of the next.

This young girl, about whom I have talked so unintelligibly, is the
unconscious centre of attraction to the whole solar system of our
breakfast-table. The Little Gentleman leans towards her, and she again
seems to be swayed as by some invisible gentle force towards him. That
slight inclination of two persons with a strong affinity towards each
other, throwing them a little out of plumb when they sit side by side,
is a physical fact I have often noticed. Then there is a tendency in all
the men’s eyes to converge on her; and I do firmly believe, that, if
all their chairs were examined, they would be found a little obliquely
placed, so as to favor the direction in which their occupants love to
look.

That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting
opposite to me, is no exception to the rule. She brought down some
mignonette one morning, which she had grown in her chamber. She gave a
sprig to her little neighbor, and one to the landlady, and sent another
by the hand of Bridget to this old gentleman.

——Sarvant, Ma’am! Much obleeged,——he said, and put it gallantly in his
buttonhole. After breakfast he must see some of her drawings. Very
fine performances,——very fine!——truly elegant productions,——truly
elegant!——Had seen Miss Linley’s needlework in London, in the year
(eighteen hundred and little or nothing, I think he said),——patronized
by the nobility and gentry, and Her Majesty,——elegant, truly elegant
productions, very fine performances; these drawings reminded him of
them;——wonderful resemblance to Nature; an extraordinary art, painting;
Mr. Copley made some very fine pictures that he remembered seeing when he
was a boy. Used to remember some lines about a portrait written by Mr.
Cowper, beginning,——

    “O that those lips had language! Life has pass’d
    With me but roughly since I heard thee last.”

And with this the old gentleman fell to thinking about a dead mother
of his that he remembered ever so much younger than he now was, and
looking, not as his mother, but as his daughter should look. The dead
young mother was looking at the old man, her child, as she used to look
at him so many, many years ago. He stood still as if in a waking dream,
his eyes fixed on the drawings till their outlines grew indistinct and
they ran into each other, and a pale, sweet face shaped itself out of the
glimmering light through which he saw them.

How many drawing-books have you filled,——I said,——since you began to take
lessons?——This was the first,——she answered,——since she was here; and it
was not full, but there were many separate sheets of large size she had
covered with drawings.

I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,
principally of the human figure. Heads of sibyls, prophets, and so forth.
Limbs from statues. Hands and feet from Nature. What a superb drawing of
an arm! I don’t remember it among the figures from Michel Angelo, which
seem to have been her patterns mainly. From Nature, I think, or after a
cast from Nature.——Oh!——

——Your smaller studies are in this, I suppose,——I said, taking up the
drawing-book with a lock on it.——Yes,——she said.——I should like to
see her style of working on a small scale.——There was nothing in it
worth showing,——she said; and presently I saw her try the lock, which
proved to be fast. We are all caricatured in it, I haven’t the least
doubt. I think, though, I could tell by her way of dealing with us what
her fancies were about us boarders. Some of them act as if they were
bewitched with her, but she does not seem to notice it much. Her thoughts
seem to be on her little neighbor more than on anybody else. The young
fellow John appears to stand second in her good graces. I think he
has once or twice sent her what the landlady’s daughter calls bó-kays
of flowers,——somebody has, at any rate.——I saw a book she had, which
must have come from the divinity-student. It had a dreary title-page,
which she had enlivened with a fancy portrait of the author,——a face
from memory, apparently,——one of those faces that small children loathe
without knowing why, and which give them that inward disgust for heaven
so many of the little wretches betray, when they hear that these are
“good men,” and that heaven is full of such.——The gentleman with the
_diamond_——the Koh-i-noor, so called by us——was not encouraged, I think,
by the reception of his packet of perfumed soap. He pulls his purple
mustache and looks appreciatingly at Iris, who never sees him as it
should seem. The young Marylander, who I thought would have been in love
with her before this time, sometimes looks from his corner across the
long diagonal of the table, as much as to say, I wish you were up here by
me, or I were down there by you,——which would, perhaps, be a more natural
arrangement than the present one. But nothing comes of all this,——and
nothing has come of my sagacious idea of finding out the girl’s fancies
by looking into her locked drawing-book.

Not to give up all the questions I was determined to solve, I made an
attempt also to work into the Little Gentleman’s chamber. For this
purpose, I kept him in conversation, one morning, until he was just ready
to go up stairs, and then, as if to continue the talk, followed him as he
toiled back to his room. He rested on the landing and faced round toward
me. There was something in his eye which said, Stop there! So we finished
our conversation on the landing. The next day, I mustered assurance
enough to knock at his door, having a pretext ready.——No answer.——Knock
again. A door, as if of a cabinet, was shut softly and locked, and
presently I heard the peculiar dead beat of his thick-soled, misshapen
boots. The bolts and the lock of the inner door were unfastened,——with
unnecessary noise, I thought,——and he came into the passage. He pulled
the inner door after him and opened the outer one at which I stood. He
had on a flowered silk dressing-gown, such as “Mr. Copley” used to paint
his old-fashioned merchant-princes in; and a quaint-looking key in his
hand. Our conversation was short, but long enough to convince me that the
Little Gentleman did not want my company in his chamber, and did not mean
to have it.

I have been making a great fuss about what is no mystery at all,——a
school-girl’s secrets and a whimsical man’s habits. I mean to give up
such nonsense and mind my own business.——Hark! What the deuse is that odd
noise in his chamber?


VIII.

——If Iris does not love this Little Gentleman, what does love look like
when one sees it? She follows him with her eyes, she leans over toward
him when he speaks, her face changes with the changes of his speech, so
that one might think it was with her as with Christabel,——

    That all her features were resigned
    To this sole image in her mind.

But she never looks at him with such intensity of devotion as when he
says anything about the soul and the soul’s atmosphere, religion.

Women are twice as religious as men;——all the world knows that. Whether
they are any _better_, in the eyes of Absolute Justice, might be
questioned; for the additional religious element supplied by sex hardly
seems to be a matter of praise or blame. But in all common aspects they
are so much above us that we get most of our religion from them,——from
their teachings, from their example,——above all, from their pure
affections.

Now this poor little Iris had been talked to strangely in her childhood.
Especially she had been told that she hated all good things,——which every
sensible parent knows well enough is not true of a great many children,
to say the least. I have sometimes questioned whether many libels on
human nature had not been a natural consequence of the celibacy of the
clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.

The child had met this and some other equally encouraging statements
as to her spiritual conditions, early in life, and fought the battle
of spiritual independence prematurely, as many children do. If all she
did was hateful to God, what was the meaning of the approving or else
the disapproving conscience, when she had done “right” or “wrong”? No
“shoulder-striker” hits out straighter than a child with its logic. Why,
I can remember lying in my bed in the nursery and settling questions
which all that I have heard since and got out of books has never been
able to raise again. If a child does not assert itself in this way in
good season, it becomes just what its parents or teachers were, and is
no better than a plaster image.——How old was I at the time?——I suppose
about 5823 years old,——that is, counting from Archbishop Usher’s date
of the Creation, and adding the life of the race, whose accumulated
intelligence is a part of my inheritance, to my own. A good deal older
than Plato, you see, and much more experienced than my Lord Bacon and
most of the world’s teachers.——Old books, as you well know, are books of
the world’s youth, and new books are fruits of its age. How many of all
these ancient folios round me are like so many old cupels! The gold has
passed out of them long ago, but their pores are full of the dross with
which it was mingled.

And so Iris——having thrown off that first lasso, which not only fetters,
but _chokes_ those whom it can hold, so that they give themselves up
trembling and breathless to the great soul-subduer, who has them by
the windpipe——had settled a brief creed for herself, in which love of
the neighbor, whom we have seen, was the first article, and love of
the Creator, whom we have not seen, grew out of this as its natural
development, being necessarily second in order of time to the first
unselfish emotions which we feel for the fellow-creatures who surround us
in our early years.

The child must have some place of worship. What would a young girl be
who never mingled her voice with the songs and prayers that rose all
around her with every returning day of rest? And Iris was free to choose.
Sometimes one and sometimes another would offer to carry her to this or
that place of worship; and when the doors were hospitably opened, she
would often go meekly in by herself. It was a curious fact, that two
churches as remote from each other in doctrine as could well be divided
her affections.

The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman
Catholic chapel. I do not wish to run the risk of giving names to the
ecclesiastical furniture which gave it such a Romish aspect; but there
were pictures, and inscriptions in antiquated characters, and there were
reading-stands, and flowers on the altar, and other elegant arrangements.
Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs responsive to each
other, and there was much bowing, with very loud responding, and a long
service and a short sermon, and a bag, such as Judas used to hold in the
old pictures, was carried round to receive contributions. Everything was
done not only “decently and in order,” but, perhaps one might say, with
a certain air of magnifying their office on the part of the dignified
clergymen, often two or three in number. The music and the free welcome
were grateful to Iris, and she forgot her prejudices at the door of
the chapel. For this was a church with open doors, with seats for all
classes and all colors alike,——a church of zealous worshippers after
their faith, of charitable and serviceable men and women, one that took
care of its children and never forgot its poor, and whose people were
much more occupied in looking out for their own souls than in attacking
the faith of their neighbors. In its mode of worship there was a union
of two qualities,——the taste and refinement, which the educated require
just as much in their churches as elsewhere, and the air of stateliness,
almost of pomp, which impresses the common worshipper, and is often
not without its effect upon those who think they hold outward forms as
of little value. Under the half-Romish aspect of the Church of Saint
Polycarp, the young girl found a devout and loving and singularly
cheerful religious spirit. The artistic sense, which betrayed itself
in the dramatic proprieties of its ritual, harmonized with her taste.
The mingled murmur of the loud responses, in those rhythmic phrases, so
simple, yet so fervent, almost as if every tenth heart-beat, instead of
its dull _tic-tac_, articulated itself as “Good Lord, deliver us!”——the
sweet alternation of the two choirs, as their holy song floated from side
to side,——the keen young voices rising like a flight of singing-birds
that passes from one grove to another, carrying its music with it back
and forward,——why should she not love these gracious outward signs of
those inner harmonies which none could deny made beautiful the lives of
many of her fellow-worshippers in the humble, yet not inelegant Chapel of
Saint Polycarp?

The young Marylander, who was born and bred to that mode of worship,
had introduced her to the chapel, for which he did the honors for such
of our boarders as were not otherwise provided for. I saw them looking
over the same prayer-book one Sunday, and I could not help thinking
that two such young and handsome persons could hardly worship together
in safety for a great while. But they seemed to mind nothing but their
prayer-book. By and by the silken bag was handed round.——I don’t believe
she will;——so awkward, you know;——besides, she only came by invitation.
There she is, with her hand in her pocket, though,——and sure enough, her
little bit of silver tinkled as it struck the coin beneath. God bless
her! she hasn’t much to give; but her eye glistens when she gives it,
and that is all Heaven asks.——That was the first time I noticed these
young people together, and I am sure they behaved with the most charming
propriety,——in fact, there was one of our silent lady-boarders with them,
whose eyes would have kept Cupid and Psyche to their good behavior. A day
or two after this I noticed that the young gentleman had left his seat,
which you may remember was at the corner diagonal to that of Iris, so
that they have been as far removed from each other as they could be at
the table. His new seat is three or four places farther down the table.
Of course I made a romance out of this, at once. So stupid not to see it!
How could it be otherwise?——Did you speak, Madam? I beg your pardon. (To
my lady-reader.)

I never saw anything like the tenderness with which this young girl
treats her little deformed neighbor. If he were in the way of going to
church, I know she would follow him. But his worship, if any, is not with
the throng of men and women and staring children.


IX.

These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they
will. The female _gendarmes_ are off guard occasionally. The sitting-room
has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may
come together accidentally (_accidentally_, I said, Madam, and I had not
the slightest intention of italicizing the word) and discuss the social
or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove
interesting. Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the
stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of a door,——in
the shadow of porticos, and especially on those outside balconies which
some of our Southern neighbors call “stoops,” the most charming places in
the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are
in full blow,——as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention
it.

On such a balcony or “stoop,” one evening, I walked with Iris. We were
on pretty good terms now, and I had coaxed her arm under mine,——my left
arm, of course. That leaves one’s right arm free to defend the lovely
creature, if the rival——odious wretch!——attempt to ravish her from your
side. Likewise if one’s heart should happen to beat a little, its mute
language will not be without its meaning, as you will perceive when the
arm you hold begins to tremble,——a circumstance like to occur, if you
happen to be a good-looking young fellow, and you two have the “stoop” to
yourselves.

We had it to ourselves that evening. The Koh-i-noor, as we called him,
was in a corner with our landlady’s daughter. The young fellow John
was smoking out in the yard. The _gendarme_ was afraid of the evening
air, and kept inside. The young Marylander came to the door, looked out
and saw us walking together, gave his hat a pull over his forehead and
stalked off. I felt a slight spasm, as it were, in the arm I held, and
saw the girl’s head turn over her shoulder for a second. What a kind
creature this is! She has no special interest in this youth, but she does
not like to see a young fellow going off because he feels as if he were
not wanted.

She had her locked drawing-book under her arm.——Let me take it,——I said.

She gave it to me to carry.

This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,——said I.

She laughed, and said,——No,——not all of you.

I was there, of course?

Why, no,——she had never taken so much pains with me.

Then she would let me see the inside of it?

She would think of it.

Just as we parted, she took a little key from her pocket and handed it to
me.——This unlocks my naughty book,——she said,——you shall see it. I am not
afraid of you.

I don’t know whether the last words exactly pleased me. At any rate, I
took the book and hurried with it to my room. I opened it, and saw, in a
few glances, that I held the heart of Iris in my hand.

    IRIS, HER BOOK.

    I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
    By thine own sister’s spirit I implore thee,
    Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!

    For Iris had no mother to infold her,
    Nor ever leaned upon a sister’s shoulder,
    Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.

    She had not learned the mystery of awaking
    Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow’s aching,
    Giving the dumb heart voice, that else were breaking.

    Yet lived, wrought, suffered. Lo, the pictured token!
    Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
    Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?

    She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,——
    Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
    And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.

    Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,——
    Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
    Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.

    Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
    What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
    Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.

    And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
    Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
    Save me! O, save me! Shall I die forgiven?

    And then——Ah, God! But nay, it little matters:
    Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
    The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!

    If she had——Well! She longed, and knew not wherefore
    Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
    No second self to say her evening prayer for?

    She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
    Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
    Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.

    Vain? Let it be so! Nature was her teacher.
    What if a lonely and unsistered creature
    Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,

    Saying, unsaddened,——This shall soon be faded,
    And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
    And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?

    ——This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
    Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
    With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.

    In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
    Somewhere, beneath some maiden’s tear-dimmed glances
    May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.

    Sweet sister! Iris, who shall never name thee,
    Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
    Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.

    Spare her, I pray thee! If the maid is sleeping,
    Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
    No more! She leaves her memory in thy keeping.

These verses were written in the first leaves of the locked volume. As
I turned the pages, I hesitated for a moment. Is it quite fair to take
advantage of a generous, trusting impulse to read the unsunned depths of
a young girl’s nature, which I can look through, as the balloon-voyagers
tell us they see from their hanging-baskets through the translucent
waters which the keenest eye of such as sail over them in ships might
strive to pierce in vain? Why has the child trusted _me_ with such
artless confessions,——self-revelations, which might be whispered by
trembling lips, under the veil of twilight, in sacred confessionals, but
which I cannot look at in the light of day without a feeling of wronging
a sacred confidence?

To all this the answer seemed plain enough after a little thought. She
did not know how fearfully she had disclosed herself; she was too
profoundly innocent. Her soul was no more ashamed than the fair shapes
that walked in Eden without a thought of over-liberal loveliness. Having
nobody to tell her story to,——having, as she said in her verses, no
musical instrument to laugh and cry with her,——nothing, in short, but
the language of pen and pencil,——all the veinings of her nature were
impressed on these pages, as those of a fresh leaf are transferred to the
blank sheets which enclose it. It was the same thing which I remember
seeing beautifully shown in a child of some four or five years we had one
day at our boarding-house. This child was a deaf-mute. But its soul had
the inner sense that answers to hearing, and the shaping capacity which
through natural organs realizes itself in words. Only it had to talk
with its face alone; and such speaking eyes, such rapid alternations of
feeling and shifting expressions of thought as flitted over its face, I
have never seen in any other human countenance.

I found the soul of Iris in the book that lay open before me. Sometimes
it was a poem that held it, sometimes a drawing,——angel, arabesque,
caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make
nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of
red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack
runs through a china bowl. On the next page a dead bird,——some little
favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I
saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have had
a letter sealed,——a round spot where the paper is slightly corrugated,
and, if there is writing there, the letters are somewhat faint and
blurred. Most of the pages were surrounded with emblematic traceries. It
was strange to me at first to see how often she introduced those homelier
wild-flowers which we call _weeds_,——for it seemed there was none of them
too humble for her to love, and none too little cared for by Nature to
be without its beauty for her artist eye and pencil. By the side of the
garden-flowers,——of Spring’s curled darlings, the hyacinths, of rosebuds,
dear to sketching maidens, of flower-de-luces and morning-glories,——nay,
oftener than these, and more tenderly caressed by the colored brush that
rendered them,——were those common growths which fling themselves to be
crushed under our feet and our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this
perpetual martyrdom that we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine
beauty.

Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,——just as we see
them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling
sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields, to
the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving eyes,
with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays; the
tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one after
another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra of
decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out;
the red and white clovers; the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,——“the
white man’s foot,” as the Indians called it,——the wiry, jointed stems of
that iron creeping plant which we call “knot-_grass_,” and which loves
its life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a
hoe, as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;——all these plants, and
many more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.——On one of
the pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a
piano belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that
I have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they
were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the strains
that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor’s chamber. The
illuminated border she had traced round the page that held these notes
took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for. Above, a long
monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded and sullen,
if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side an Alpine
_needle_, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the other
a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops had
a strange look,——one would say the cliff was bleeding;——perhaps she did
not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey, with
his wings spread over some unseen object.——And on the very next page
a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on the title-page
of Fuller’s “Holy War,” in which I recognized without difficulty
every boarder at our table in all the glory of the most resplendent
caricature,——three only excepted,——the Little Gentleman, myself, and one
other.

I confess I did expect to see something that would remind me of the
girl’s little deformed neighbor, if not portraits of him.——There
is a left arm again, though;——no,——that is from the “Fighting
Gladiator,”——the “_Jeune Héros combattant_” of the Louvre;——there is
the broad ring of the shield. From a cast, doubtless. [The separate
casts of the “Gladiator’s” arm look immense; but in its place the limb
looks light, almost slender,——such is the perfection of that miraculous
marble. I never felt as if I touched the life of the old Greeks until
I looked on that statue.]——Here is something very odd, to be sure. An
Eden of all the humped and crooked creatures! What could have been in
her head when she worked out such a fantasy? She has contrived to give
them all beauty or dignity or melancholy grace. A Bactrian camel lying
under a palm. A dromedary flashing up the sands,——spray of the dry
ocean sailed by the “ship of the desert.” A herd of buffaloes, uncouth,
shaggy-maned, heavy in the forehand, light in the hind-quarter. [The
buffalo is the _lion_ of the ruminants.] And there is a Norman horse,
with his huge, rough collar, echoing, as it were, the natural form of
the other beast. And here are twisted serpents; and stately swans, with
answering curves in their bowed necks, as if they had snake’s blood under
their white feathers; and grave, high-shouldered herons, standing on one
foot like cripples, and looking at life round them with the cold stare
of monumental effigies.——A very odd page indeed! Not a creature in it
without a curve or a twist, and not one of them a mean figure to look at.
You can make your own comment; I am fanciful, you know. I believe she is
trying to idealize what we vulgarly call deformity, which she strives to
look at in the light of one of Nature’s eccentric curves, belonging to
her system of beauty, as the hyperbola and parabola belong to the conic
sections, though we cannot see them as symmetrical and entire figures,
like the circle and ellipse. At any rate, I cannot help referring this
paradise of twisted spines to some idea floating in her head connected
with her friend whom Nature has warped in the moulding.——That is nothing
to another transcendental fancy of mine. I believe her soul thinks itself
in his little crooked body at times,——if it does not really get freed
or half freed from her own. Did you ever see a case of catalepsy? You
know what I mean,——transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and
limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to
a lay-figure. She had been talking with him and listening to him one day
when the boarders moved from the table nearly all at once. But she sat
as before, her cheek resting on her hand, her amber eyes wide open and
still. I went to her,——she was breathing as usual, and her heart was
beating naturally enough,——but she did not answer. I bent her arm; it
was as plastic as softened wax, and kept the place I gave it.——This will
never do, though,——and I sprinkled a few drops of water on her forehead.
She started and looked round.——I have been in a dream,——she said;——I feel
as if all my strength were in this arm;——give me your hand!——She took my
right hand in her left, which looked soft and white enough, but——Good
Heaven! I believe she will crack my bones! All the nervous power in her
body must have flashed through those muscles; as when a crazy lady snaps
her iron window-bars,——she who could hardly glove herself when in her
common health. Iris turned pale, and the tears came to her eyes;——she
saw she had given pain. Then she trembled, and might have fallen but for
me;——the poor little soul had been in one of those trances that belong to
the spiritual pathology of higher natures, mostly those of women.

To come back to this wondrous book of Iris. Two pages faced each other
which I took for symbolical expressions of two states of mind. On the
left hand, a bright blue sky washed over the page, specked with a
single bird. No trace of earth, but still the winged creature seemed to
be soaring upward and upward. Facing it, one of those black dungeons
such as Piranesi alone of all men has pictured. I am sure she must
have seen those awful prisons of his, out of which the Opium-Eater got
his nightmare vision, described by another as “cemeteries of departed
greatness, where monstrous and forbidden things are crawling and twining
their slimy convolutions among mouldering bones, broken sculpture, and
mutilated inscriptions.” Such a black dungeon faced the page that held
the blue sky and the single bird; at the bottom of it something was
coiled,——what, and whether meant for dead or alive, my eyes could not
make out.

I told you the young girl’s soul was in this book. As I turned over the
last leaves I could not help starting. There were all sorts of faces
among the arabesques which laughed and scowled in the borders that ran
round the pages. They had mostly the outline of childish or womanly or
manly beauty, without very distinct individuality. But at last it seemed
to me that some of them were taking on a look not wholly unfamiliar
to me; there were features that did not seem new.——Can it be so? Was
there ever such innocence in a creature so full of life? She tells her
heart’s secrets as a three-years-old child betrays itself without need
of being questioned! This was no common miss, such as are turned out in
scores from the young-lady-factories, with parchments warranting them
accomplished and virtuous,——in case anybody should question the fact. I
began to understand her;——and what is so charming as to read the secret
of a real _femme incomprise_?——for such there are, though they are not
the ones who think themselves uncomprehended women.

I found these stanzas in the book, among many others. I give them as
characterizing the tone of her sadder moments:

    UNDER THE VIOLETS.

    Her hands are cold; her face is white;
      No more her pulses come and go;
    Her eyes are shut to life and light;——
      Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
      And lay her where the violets blow.

    But not beneath a graven stone,
      To plead for tears with alien eyes;
    A slender cross of wood alone
      Shall say, that here a maiden lies
      In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

    And gray old trees of hugest limb
      Shall wheel their circling shadows round
    To make the scorching sunlight dim
      That drinks the greenness from the ground,
      And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

    When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,
      And through their leaves the robins call,
    And, ripening in the autumn sun,
      The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
      Doubt not that she will heed them all.

    For her the morning choir shall sing
      Its matins from the branches high,
    And every minstrel-voice of spring,
      That trills beneath the April sky,
      Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

    When, turning round their dial-track,
      Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
    Her little mourners, clad in black,
      The crickets, sliding through the grass,
      Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

    At last the rootlets of the trees
      Shall find the prison where she lies,
    And bear the buried dust they seize
      In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
      So may the soul that warmed it rise!

    If any, born of kindlier blood,
      Should ask, What maiden lies below?
    Say only this: A tender bud,
      That tried to blossom in the snow,
      Lies withered where the violets blow.

——I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always
ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what
to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly
while the world slips the collar over it. It backs into the shafts like a
lamb. It draws its load cheerfully, and is patient of the bit and of the
whip. But genius is always impatient of its harness; its wild blood makes
it hard to train.


X.

Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her
family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed look
upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the degree
to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It is an
awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily for our
friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school ourselves
not to betray our knowledge by word or look.

Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me
that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over
his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid
she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for
my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should
say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain
other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart
was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the _right_ side, as if
there were the centre of his uneasiness.

When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those
sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances
than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean some
actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and
painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time
for a single shriek,——as when the shot broke through the brave Captain
Nolan’s breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with a
loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.

I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who
were entitled to be warned. The landlady’s face fell when I mentioned my
fears.

Poor man!——she said.——And will leave the best room empty! Hasn’t he got
any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be
took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought
of his failin’ so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected.
Liver-complaint one of ’em?

I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state.
She seems nearer to him than anybody.

I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face,
except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.——Could I be certain that
there was any mortal complaint?——Why, no, I could not be certain; but it
looked alarming to me.——He shall have some of my life,——she said.

I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of a kind of magnetic power
she could give out;——at any rate, I cannot help thinking she _wills_ her
strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that
day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may
have been a whim, very probably.

One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved, as
if she were speaking; but I could not at first hear a word. Her hair
looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild
light. She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her
trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what
she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.

That night, at about eleven o’clock, I was sent for to see the Little
Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went
before me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found
myself ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious
apartment I had so longed to enter....

The house was deadly still, and the night-wind, blowing through an open
window, struck me as from a field of ice, at the moment I passed back
again into the creaking corridor. As I turned into the common passage, a
white figure, holding a lamp, stood full before me. I thought at first it
was one of those images made to stand in niches and hold a light in their
hands. But the illusion was momentary, and my eyes speedily recovered
from the shock of the bright flame and snowy drapery to see that the
figure was a breathing one. It was Iris, in one of her statue-trances.
She had come down, whether sleeping or waking, I knew not at first,
led by an instinct that told her she was wanted,——or, possibly, having
overheard and interpreted the sound of our movements,——or, it may be,
having learned from the servant that there was trouble which might ask
for a woman’s hand. I sometimes think women have a sixth sense, which
tells them that others, whom they cannot see or hear, are in suffering.
How surely we find them at the bedside of the dying! How strongly does
Nature plead for them, that we should draw our first breath in their
arms, as we sigh away our last upon their faithful breasts!

With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, dressed as the starlight
knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she
had twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone
before me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of wax-taper, and in the
other a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had
been a figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of
propriety then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out
of. She had been “warned in a dream,” doubtless suggested by her waking
knowledge and the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was
nothing more natural than that she should have risen and girdled her
waist, and lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with “_Ex dono
pupillorum_” on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through
all her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the
bedside,——a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide, blank eyes seeing
nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.——Well, I must wake her
from her slumber or trance.——I called her name, but she did not heed my
voice.

The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl
before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I
should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose
perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovel’s, in
memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance?
and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and
despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected,
and always from that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in
the glory of youth and the splendor of beauty, “My lips have touched
those roses and made their sweetness mine forever”? You think my cheek
was flushed, perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this midnight
flash of opportunity. On the contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale,
and I know that I trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the
fiercest,——it is the violence of the chill that gives the measure of the
fever! The fighting-boy of our school always turned white when he went
out to a pitched battle with the bully of some neighboring village; but
we knew what his bloodless cheeks meant,——the blood was all in his stout
heart,——he was a slight boy, and there was not enough to redden his face
and fill his heart both at once.

Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal
conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile
and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of
an impropriety, and if he were, whether he would get caught in his
indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland
gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the
head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria or Eugénie would do
as much by him, if she happened to pass him when he was asleep. And have
we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the young John Milton tingled
under the lips of some high-born Italian beauty, who, I believe, did
not think to leave her card by the side of the slumbering youth, but has
bequeathed the memory of her pretty deed to all coming time? The sound
of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal
longer.

There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind
suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an
enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance
slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had
made up my mind what I was going to do about it.

When I remember how charmingly she looked, I don’t blame myself at all
for being tempted; but if I had been fool enough to yield to the impulse,
I should certainly have been ashamed to tell of it. She did not know
what to make of it, finding herself there alone, in such guise, and me
staring at her. She looked down at her white robe and bare feet, and
colored,——then at the goblet she held in her hand,——then at the taper;
and at last her thoughts seemed to clear up.

I know it all,——she said.——He is going to die, and I must go and sit by
him. Nobody will care for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to care
for.

I assured her that nothing was needed for him that night but rest, and
persuaded her that the excitement of her presence could only do harm. Let
him sleep, and he would very probably awake better in the morning. There
was nothing to be said, for I spoke with authority; and the young girl
glided away with noiseless step and sought her own chamber.


XI.

——On my second visit, I found Iris sitting by the Little Gentleman’s
pillow. To my disappointment, the room was darkened. He did not like the
light, and would have the shutters kept nearly closed. It was good enough
for me;——what business had I to be indulging my curiosity, when I had
nothing to do but to exercise such skill as I possessed for the benefit
of my patient? There was not much to be said or done in such a case; but
I spoke as encouragingly as I could, as I think we are always bound to
do. He did not seem to pay any very anxious attention, but the poor girl
listened as if her own life and more than her own life were depending
on the words I uttered. She followed me out of the room, when I had got
through my visit.

How long?——she said.

Uncertain. Any time; to-day,——next week,——next month,——I answered.——One
of those cases where the issue is not doubtful, but may be sudden or slow.

The women of the house were kind, as women always are in trouble. But
Iris pretended that nobody could spare the time as well as she, and kept
her place, hour after hour, until the landlady insisted that she’d be
killin’ herself, if she begun at that rate, ’n’ haf to give up, if she
didn’t want to be clean beat out in less ’n a week.

At the table we were graver than common. The high chair was set back
against the wall, and a gap left between that of the young girl and her
nearest neighbor’s on the right. But the next morning, to our great
surprise, that good-looking young Marylander had very quietly moved his
own chair to the vacant place. I thought he was creeping down that way,
but I was not prepared for a leap spanning such a tremendous parenthesis
of boarders as this change of position included. There was no denying
that the youth and maiden were a handsome pair as they sat side by side.
But whatever the young girl may have thought of her new neighbor, she
never seemed for a moment to forget the poor little friend who had been
taken from her side. There are women, and even girls, with whom it is of
no use to talk. One might as well reason with a bee as to the form of his
cell, or with an oriole as to the construction of his swinging nest, as
try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their own work.
It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any special
relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She was
a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it so proved
that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry through
the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures, that
she had chosen as her share in the household where accident had thrown
her. She had that genius of ministration which is the special province
of certain women, marked even among their helpful sisters by a soft, low
voice, a quiet footfall, a light hand, a cheering smile, and a ready
self-surrender to the objects of their care, which such trifles as their
own food, sleep, or habits of any kind never presume to interfere with.

Day after day, and too often through the long watches of the night, she
kept her place by the pillow.——That girl will kill herself over me,
Sir,——said the poor Little Gentleman to me, one day,——she will kill
herself, Sir, if you don’t call in all the resources of your art to get
me off as soon as may be. I shall wear her out, Sir, with sitting in this
close chamber and watching when she ought to be sleeping, if you leave me
to the care of Nature without dosing me.

This was rather strange pleasantry, under the circumstances. But there
are certain persons whose existence is so out of parallel with the larger
laws in the midst of which it is moving, that life becomes to them as
death and death as life.


XII.

The apron-strings of an American mother are made of india-rubber. Her boy
belongs where he is wanted; and that young Marylander of ours spoke for
all our young men, when he said that his home was wherever the stars and
stripes blew over his head.

And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who made
that audacious movement,——jumping over the seats of I don’t know how
many boarders to put himself in the place which the Little Gentleman’s
absence had left vacant at the side of Iris. When a young man is found
habitually at the side of any one given young lady,——when he lingers
where she stays, and hastens when she leaves,——when his eyes follow her
as she moves, and rest upon her when she is still,——when he begins to
grow a little timid, he who was so bold, and a little pensive, he who was
so gay, whenever accident finds them alone,——when he thinks very often
of the given young lady, and names her very seldom,——

What do you say about it, my charming young expert in that sweet science
in which, perhaps, a long experience is not the first of qualifications?

——But we don’t know anything about this young man, except that he is
good-looking, and somewhat high-spirited, and strong-limbed, and has a
generous style of nature,——all very promising, but by no means proving
that he is a proper lover for Iris, whose heart we turned inside out when
we opened that sealed book of hers.

Ah, my dear young friend! When your mamma——then, if you will believe it,
a very slight young lady, with very pretty hair and figure——came and told
_her_ mamma that your papa had——had——asked——No, no, no! she couldn’t
say it; but her mother——O, the depth of maternal sagacity!——guessed
it all without another word!——When your mother, I say, came and
told her mother she was _engaged_, and your grandmother told your
grandfather, how much did they know of the intimate nature of the young
gentleman to whom she had pledged her existence? I will not be so
hard as to ask how much your respected mamma knew at that time of the
intimate nature of your respected papa, though, if we should compare
a young girl’s _man-as-she-thinks-him_ with a forty-summered matron’s
_man-as-she-finds-him_, I have my doubts as to whether the second would
be a fac-simile of the first in most cases.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have been a good while coming at a secret, for which I wished to
prepare you before telling it. I think there is a kindly feeling growing
up between Iris and our young Marylander. Not that I suppose there is
any distinct understanding between them, but that the affinity which has
drawn him from the remote corner where he sat to the side of the young
girl is quietly bringing their two natures together. Just now she is all
given up to another; but when he no longer calls upon her daily thoughts
and cares, I warn you not to be surprised, if this bud of friendship open
like the evening primrose, with a sound as of a sudden stolen kiss, and
lo! the flower of full-blown love lies unfolded before you.


XIII.

And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and
weaknesses had interested us, perhaps, as much as his better traits, to
make ready for that long journey which is easier to the cripple than to
the strong man, and on which none enters so willingly as he who has borne
the life-long load of infirmity during his earthly pilgrimage.

The divinity-student was exercised in his mind about the Little
Gentleman, and, in the kindness of his heart,——for he was a good young
man,——and in the strength of his convictions,——for he took it for granted
that he and his crowd were right, and other folks and their crowd were
wrong,——he determined to bring the Little Gentleman round to his faith
before he died, if he could. So he sent word to the sick man, that he
should be pleased to visit him and have some conversation with him; and
received for answer that he would be welcome.

The divinity-student made him a visit, therefore, and had a somewhat
remarkable interview with him, which I shall briefly relate, without
attempting to justify the positions taken by the Little Gentleman. He
found him weak, but calm. Iris sat silent by his pillow.

After the usual preliminaries, the divinity-student said, in a kind way,
that he was sorry to find him in failing health, that he felt concerned
for his soul, and was anxious to assist him in making preparations for
the great change awaiting him.

I thank you, Sir,——said the Little Gentleman;——permit me to ask you, what
makes you think I am not ready for it, Sir, and that you can do anything
to help me, Sir?

I address you only as a fellow-man,——said the divinity-student,——and
therefore a fellow-sinner.

I am _not_ a man, Sir!——said the Little Gentleman.——I was born into
this world the wreck of a man, and I shall not be judged with a race to
which I do not belong. Look at this!——he said, and held up his withered
arm.——See there!——and he pointed to his misshapen extremities.——Lay your
hand here!——and he laid his own on the region of his misplaced heart.——I
have known nothing of the life of your race. When I first came to my
consciousness, I found myself an object of pity, or a sight to show. The
first strange child I ever remember hid its face and would not come near
me. I was a broken-hearted as well as broken-bodied boy. I grew into
the emotions of ripening youth, and all that I could have loved shrank
from my presence. I became a man in years, and had nothing in common
with manhood but its longings. My life is the dying pang of a worn-out
race, and I shall go down alone into the dust, out of this world of
men and women, without ever knowing the fellowship of the one or the
love of the other. I will not die with a lie rattling in my throat. If
another state of being has anything worse in store for me, I have had
a long apprenticeship to give me strength that I may bear it. I don’t
believe it, Sir! I have too much faith for that. God has not left me
wholly without comfort, even here. I love this old place where I was
born;——the heart of the world beats under the three hills of Boston, Sir!
I love this great land, with so many tall men in it, and so many good,
noble women.——His eyes turned to the silent figure by his pillow.——I
have learned to accept meekly what has been allotted to me, but I cannot
honestly say that I think my sin has been greater than my suffering. I
bear the ignorance and the evil-doing of whole generations in my single
person. I never drew a breath of air nor took a step that was not a
punishment for another’s fault. I may have had many wrong thoughts, but
I cannot have done many wrong deeds,——for my cage has been a narrow one,
and I have paced it alone. I have looked through the bars and seen the
great world of men busy and happy, but I had no part in their doings.
I have known what it was to dream of the great passions; but since
my mother kissed me before she died, no woman’s lips have pressed my
cheek,——nor ever will.

——The young girl’s eyes glittered with a sudden film, and almost without
a thought, but with a warm human instinct that rushed up into her
face with her heart’s blood, she bent over and kissed him. It was the
sacrament that washed out the memory of long years of bitterness, and I
should hold it an unworthy thought to defend her.

The Little Gentleman repaid her with the only tear any of us ever saw him
shed.

The divinity-student rose from his place, and, turning away from the
sick man, walked to the other side of the room, where he bowed his
head and was still. All the questions he had meant to ask had faded
from his memory. The tests he had prepared by which to judge of his
fellow-creature’s fitness for heaven seemed to have lost their virtue. He
could trust the crippled child of sorrow to the Infinite Parent. The kiss
of the fair-haired girl had been like a sign from heaven, that angels
watched over him whom he was presuming but a moment before to summon
before the tribunal of his private judgment.

Shall I pray with you?——he said, after a pause.——A little before he
would have said, Shall I pray _for_ you?——The Christian religion, as
taught by its Founder, is full of _sentiment_. So we must not blame
the divinity-student, if he was overcome by those yearnings of human
sympathy which predominate so much more in the sermons of the Master
than in the writings of his successors, and which have made the parable
of the Prodigal Son the consolation of mankind, as it has been the
stumbling-block of all exclusive doctrines.

Pray!——said the Little Gentleman.

The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones, that God would look
on his servant lying helpless at the feet of his mercy; that he would
remember his long years of bondage in the flesh; that he would deal
gently with the bruised reed. Thou hast visited the sins of the fathers
upon this their child. O, turn away from him the penalties of his own
transgressions! Thou hast laid upon him, from infancy, the cross which
thy stronger children are called upon to take up; and now that he is
fainting under it, be Thou his stay, and do Thou succor him that is
tempted! Let his manifold infirmities come between him and Thy judgment;
in wrath remember mercy! If his eyes are not opened to all thy truth, let
thy compassion lighten the darkness that rests upon him, even as it came
through the word of thy Son to blind Bartimeus, who sat by the wayside,
begging!

Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone
of tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
fast-darkening shadow of the Destroyer, he forgot all but his Christian
humanity, and cared more about consoling his fellow-man than making a
proselyte of him.

This was the last prayer to which the Little Gentleman ever listened.
Some change was rapidly coming over him during this last hour of which
I have been speaking. The excitement of pleading his cause before his
self-elected spiritual adviser,——the emotion which overcame him, when
the young girl obeyed the sudden impulse of her feelings and pressed
her lips to his cheek,——the thoughts that mastered him while the
divinity-student poured out his soul for him in prayer, might well hurry
on the inevitable moment. When the divinity-student had uttered his last
petition, commending him to the Father through his Son’s intercession,
he turned to look upon him before leaving his chamber. His face was
changed.——There is a language of the human countenance which we all
understand without an interpreter, though the lineaments belong to the
rudest savage that ever stammered in an unknown barbaric dialect. By the
stillness of the sharpened features, by the blankness of the tearless
eyes, by the fixedness of the smileless mouth, by the deadening tints, by
the contracted brow, by the dilating nostril, we know that the soul is
soon to leave its mortal tenement, and is already closing up its windows
and putting out its fires.——Such was the aspect of the face upon which
the divinity-student looked, after the brief silence which followed his
prayer. The change had been rapid, though not that abrupt one which is
liable to happen at any moment in these cases.——The sick man looked
towards him.——Farewell,——he said——I thank you. Leave me alone with her.

When the divinity-student had gone, and the Little Gentleman found
himself alone with Iris, he lifted his hand to his neck, and took from
it, suspended by a slender chain, a quaint, antique-looking key,——the
same key I had once seen him holding. He gave this to her, and pointed to
a carved cabinet opposite his bed, one of those that had so attracted my
curious eyes and set me wondering as to what it might contain.

Open it,——he said,——and light the lamp.——The young girl walked to the
cabinet and unlocked the door. A deep recess appeared, lined with black
velvet, against which stood in white relief an ivory crucifix. A silver
lamp hung over it. She lighted the lamp and came back to the bedside.
The dying man fixed his eyes upon the figure of the dying Saviour.——Give
me your hand,——he said; and Iris placed her right hand in his left. So
they remained, until presently his eyes lost their meaning, though they
still remained vacantly fixed upon the white image. Yet he held the young
girl’s hand firmly, as if it were leading him through some deep-shadowed
valley and it was all he could cling to. But presently an involuntary
muscular contraction stole over him, and his terrible dying grasp held
the poor girl as if she were wedged in an engine of torture. She pressed
her lips together and sat still. The inexorable hand held her tighter and
tighter, until she felt as if her own slender fingers would be crushed
in its gripe. It was one of the tortures of the Inquisition she was
suffering, and she could not stir from her place. Then, in her great
anguish, she, too, cast her eyes upon that dying figure, and, looking
upon its pierced hands and feet and side and lacerated forehead, she felt
that she also must suffer uncomplaining. In the moment of her sharpest
pain she did not forget the duties of her tender office, but dried the
dying man’s moist forehead with her handkerchief, even while the dews of
agony were glistening on her own. How long this lasted she never could
tell. _Time_ and _thirst_ are two things you and I talk about; but the
victims whom holy men and righteous judges used to stretch on their
engines knew better what they meant than you or I!——What is that great
bucket of water for? said the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, before she
was placed on the rack.——_For you to drink_,——said the torturer to the
little woman.——She could not think that it would take such a flood to
quench the fire in her and so keep her alive for her confession. The
torturer knew better than she.

After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock
measures,——without any warning,——there came a swift change of his
features; his face turned white, as the waters whiten when a sudden
breath passes over their still surface; the muscles instantly relaxed,
and Iris, released at once from her care for the sufferer and from his
unconscious grasp, fell senseless, with a feeble cry,——the only utterance
of her long agony.

       *       *       *       *       *

——Iris went into mourning for the Little Gentleman. Although he left
the bulk of his property, by will, to a public institution, he added a
codicil, by which he disposed of various pieces of property as tokens
of kind remembrance. It was in this way I became the possessor of the
wonderful instrument I have spoken of, which had been purchased for
him out of an Italian convent. The landlady was comforted with a small
legacy. The following extract relates to Iris: “——in consideration of her
manifold acts of kindness, but only in token of grateful remembrance,
and by no means as a reward for services which cannot be compensated, a
certain messuage, with all the land thereto appertaining, situate in ——
Street, at the North End, so called, of Boston, aforesaid, the same being
the house in which I was born, but now inhabited by several families, and
known as ‘the Rookery.’” Iris had also the crucifix, the portrait, and
the red-jewelled ring. The funeral or death’s-head ring was buried with
him.


XIV.

Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the
undisguised attentions of the handsome young Marylander. Instead of
fixing her eyes steadily on him, as she used to look upon the Little
Gentleman, she would turn them away, as if to avoid his own. They often
went to church together, it is true; but nobody, of course, supposes
there is any relation between religious sympathy and those wretched
“sentimental” movements of the human heart upon which it is commonly
agreed that nothing better is based than society, civilization,
friendship, the relation of husband and wife, and of parent and child,
and which many people must think were singularly overrated by the Teacher
of Nazareth, whose whole life, as I said before, was full of sentiment,
loving this or that young man, pardoning this or that sinner, weeping
over the dead, mourning for the doomed city, blessing, and perhaps
kissing, the little children,——so that the Gospels are still cried over
almost as often as the last work of fiction!

But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our
boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the
outside. It was our friend the lady-patroness of Miss Iris, the same who
had been called by her admiring pastor “The Model of all the Virtues.”
Once a week she had written a letter, in a rather formal hand, but full
of good advice, to her young charge. And now she had come to carry her
away, thinking that she had learned all she was likely to learn under her
present course of teaching. The Model, however, was to stay awhile,——a
week, or more,——before they should leave together.

Iris was obedient, as she was bound to be. She was respectful, grateful,
as a child is with a just, but not tender parent. Yet something was
wrong. She had one of her trances, and became statue-like, as before,
only the day after the Model’s arrival. She was wan and silent, tasted
nothing at table, smiled as if by a forced effort, and often looked
vaguely away from those who were looking at her, her eyes just glazed
with the shining moisture of a tear that must not be allowed to gather
and fall. Was it grief at parting from the place where her strange
friendship had grown up with the Little Gentleman? Yet she seemed to
have become reconciled to his loss, and rather to have a deep feeling of
gratitude that she had been permitted to care for him in his last weary
days.

The Sunday after the Model’s arrival, that lady had an attack of
headache, and was obliged to shut herself up in a darkened room alone.
Our two young friends took the opportunity to go together to the Church
of the Galileans. They said but little going,——“collecting their
thoughts” for the service, I devoutly hope. My kind good friend the
pastor preached that day one of his sermons that make us all feel like
brothers and sisters, and his text was that affectionate one from John,
“My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in
deed and in truth.” When Iris and her friend came out of church, they
were both pale, and walked a space without speaking.

At last the young man said,——You and I are not little children, Iris!

She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was
something strange in the tone of his voice. She smiled faintly, but spoke
never a word.

In deed and in truth, Iris,——

What shall a poor girl say or do, when a strong man falters in his speech
before her, and can do nothing better than hold out his hand to finish
his broken sentence?

The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in
his,——the little soft white hand which had ministered so tenderly and
suffered so patiently.

The blood came back to the young man’s cheeks, as he lifted it to his
lips, even as they walked there in the street, touched it gently with
them, and said,——“It is mine!”

Iris did not contradict him.


XV.

The seasons pass by so rapidly, that I am startled to think how much
has happened since these events I was describing. Those two young
people would insist on having their own way about their own affairs,
notwithstanding the good lady, so justly called the Model, insisted that
the age of twenty-five years was as early as any discreet young lady
should think of incurring the responsibilities, etc., etc. Long before
Iris had reached that age, she was the wife of a young Maryland engineer,
directing some of the vast constructions of his native State,——where he
was growing rich fast enough to be able to decline that famous Russian
offer which would have made him a kind of nabob in a few years. Iris does
not write verse often, nowadays, but she sometimes draws. The last sketch
of hers I have seen in my Southern visits was of two children, a boy and
girl, the youngest holding a silver goblet, like the one she held that
evening when I——I was so struck with her statue-like beauty. If in the
later summer months you find the grass marked with footsteps around a
grave on Copp’s Hill, and flowers scattered over it, you may be sure that
Iris is here on her annual visit to the home of her childhood and that
excellent lady whose only fault was, that Nature had written out her list
of virtues on ruled paper, and forgotten to rub out the lines.

One thing more I must mention. Being on the Common, last Sunday, I was
attracted by the cheerful spectacle of a well-dressed and somewhat
youthful papa wheeling a very elegant little carriage containing a stout
baby. A buxom young lady watched them from one of the stone seats,
with an interest which could be nothing less than maternal. I at once
recognized my old friend, the young fellow whom we called John. He was
delighted to see me, introduced me to “Madam,” and would have the lusty
infant out of the carriage, and hold him up for me to look at.

Now, then,——he said to the two-year-old,——show the gentleman how you
hit from the shoulder.——Whereupon the little imp pushed his fat fist
straight into my eye, to his father’s intense satisfaction.

Fust-rate little chap,——said the papa.——Chip of the old block. Regl’r
little Johnny, you know.

I was so much pleased to find the young fellow settled in life, and
pushing about one of “them little articles” he had seemed to want so
much, that I took my “punishment” at the hands of the infant pugilist
with great equanimity.——And how is the old boarding-house? I asked.

A 1, he answered. Painted and papered as good as new. Gahs in all the
rooms up to the sky-parlors. Old woman’s layin’ up money, they say. Means
to send Ben Franklin to college.——Just then the first bell rang for
church, and my friend, who, I understand, has become a most exemplary
member of society, said he must be off to get ready for meetin’, and
told the young one to “shake dada,” which he did with his closed fist,
in a somewhat menacing manner. And so the young man John, as we used to
call him, took the pole of the miniature carriage, and pushed the small
pugilist before him homewards, followed, in a somewhat leisurely way, by
his pleasant-looking lady-companion, and I sent a sigh and a smile after
him.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




THE ROSICRUCIAN.

BY DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK.


I.

I know not if men would say that the face of Basil Wolgemuth was
beautiful. There were no darkly gleaming eyes, no sculptured features,
no clustering raven locks; all was fair, clear, and sunny as his own
soul. And what a soul was that! It lighted up his whole countenance, as
the sun lights up a landscape,——making that which would else have been
ordinary most glorious. It was mirrored in his eyes; it shone in his
every gesture; it made music in his voice; it accompanied him like a fair
presence, giving life, love, and beauty wherever he moved.

He sat in a low-roofed, half-darkened chamber, whose gloomy recesses
looked almost fearful. Now and then passing sounds of human voices rose
from the street below, and ever and anon the great bell of Cologne
Cathedral boomed out the hours, making the after silence deeper still.
The student——for such he evidently was——leaned his slight and rather
diminutive form in the attitude of one wearied; but there was no
lassitude visible in his expressive face, and his eyes were fixed with a
dreamy and thoughtful gaze on the blazing fagots that roared and sparkled
on the hearth before him.

The fire was his sole companion; and it was good company, in sooth.
Not mute either; for it seemed to talk like a human voice. How the
live juices hissed out, when the damp pine-wood caught the blaze, and
chattered and muttered like a vexed child! How furiously it struggled and
roared, as the flames grew stronger! How it sunk into a low, complaining
sound, and then into a dead stillness, being conquered at last, and
breathing its life out in a ruddy but silent glow. Such was the voice
of the fire, but the student beheld its form too. Quaint and mysterious
were the long fiery alleys and red caverns which it made, mingled with
black hollows, out of which mocking faces seemed to peep; while the light
flames waving to and fro were like aerial shapes moving in a fantastic
dance. Beautiful and mystic appeared the fire.

Basil Wolgemuth was a student and a dreamer. He had pierced into the
secrets of nature and of philosophy, not as an idle seeker, mechanically
following the bent of a vague curiosity, but as an enthusiastic lover,
who would fathom the depths of his beloved’s soul. He knew that in this
world all things bear two meanings; one for the common observer, one
for the higher mind of him who, with an earnest purpose and a steadfast
but loving heart, penetrates into those mines of hidden riches,——the
treasures of science and of imagination. Basil was still young; and yet
men of learning and power listened with deference to his words; wisdom,
rank, and beauty had trodden that poor chamber, and felt honored,——for it
was the habitation of genius.

And was all this sunshine of fame lavished upon a barren tree, which
brought forth at best only the dazzling fruits of mere intellect,
beautiful to the eye but deceptive to the heart as the jewelled apples
of Aladdin, or was it rich in all good fruits of human kindness? Ask the
mother, to whom the very footsteps of her dutiful son brought light and
gladness; ask the sister, whose pride in her noble kinsman was even less
than her love for the gentle and forbearing brother who made the sunshine
of their home. These would speak for Basil. There was one——one more; but
he knew it not then.

The fire sank to a few embers, and through the small window at the
farther end of the apartment the young moon looked with her quiet smile.
At last the door was half opened, and a girlish face peeped in.

“Are you sleeping, Basil, or only musing?”

“Is that you, Margareta?” said the student, without changing his attitude.

“Yes; it is growing late, brother; will you not come to supper?”

“I do not need it, dear Margareta, thank you.”

“But we want you, Basil; my mother is asking for you; and Isilda, too, is
here.”

A bright smile passed over the young man’s face; but his sister did not
see it, and continued:——

“Come, brother; do come; you have studied enough for to-day.”

He rose cheerfully: “Well, then, tell my mother I will come directly.”

Margareta closed the door, and Basil stood thoughtfully by the fire.
At that moment a bright flame, springing up from some stray brand
yet unkindled, illumined his face,——it was radiant with the light of
love. His finely curved lips, the sole beautiful feature there, were
trembling with a happy smile, as they murmured in low tones one beloved
name,——“Isilda, Isilda!”


II.

Let us glance at the home of Basil Wolgemuth. It was a German habitation
of the Middle Ages; a comfortable but not luxurious dwelling, such a one
as we see in old German pictures. In homes like this was nurtured the
genius of Rembrandt, of Rubens, of Vandyck; from such a peaceful German
home sprang the fiery spirit and indomitable zeal of Luther; and in like
home-nests were cradled the early years of most of the rude but noble
men, who, either by the sword or the pen, have made their names famous
throughout the fair land of the Rhine.

Basil, his mother, Margareta, and another young girl sat round a table,
spread with the ample fare of bread and fruits. The mother was worthy of
such a son,——a matron of placid but noble aspect; like him, too, in the
deep clear eyes and open forehead. Margareta, a sweet bud, which only
needed time to burst forth into a perfect flower, sat by her brother’s
side; the fourth of the group was Isilda.

I hardly know how to describe Isilda. There is one face only I have
seen which pictures her to my idea; it is a Madonna of Guido Reni’s.
Once beheld, that face imprints itself forever on the heart. It is the
embodiment of a soul so pure, so angelic, that it might have been Eve’s
when she was still in Eden; yet there is in the eyes that shadow of
woman’s intense love, the handmaid of which is ever sorrow; and those
deep blue orbs seemed thoughtfully looking into the dim future with a
vague sadness, as if conscious that the peace of the present would not
endure. Womanly sweetness, feelings suppressed, not slumbering, a soul
attuned to high thoughts like a well-strung lyre, and only needing a
breath to awaken its harmonious chords,——all these are visible in that
face which shone into the painter’s heart, and has lived forever in the
work of his hand. And such was Isilda.

Basil sat opposite to her; he looked into her eyes; he drank in her
smile, and was happy. All traces of the careworn student had vanished;
he was cheerful even to gayety; laughed and jested with his sister; bade
her sing old ditties, and even joined in the strain, which made them all
more mirthful still. Basil had little music in his voice, but much in his
heart. When the songs ceased, Margareta prayed him to repeat some old
ballad, he knew so many. The student looked towards Isilda; her eyes had
more persuasive eloquence than even his sister’s words, and he began:——

    “THE ELLE-MAID GAY.[1]

    “Ridest by the woodland, Ludwig, Ludwig,
      Ridest by the woodland gray?
    Who sits by the woodland, Ludwig, Ludwig?
      It is the Elle-maid gay.

    “A kiss on thy lips lies, Ludwig, Ludwig,
      Pure as the dews of May:
    Think on thine own love, brown-haired Ludwig,
      And not on an Elle-maid gay.

    “She sits ’neath a linden, singing, singing,
      Though her dropped lids nothing say;
    For her beauty lures whether smiling or singing,
      For she is an Elle-maid gay.

    “‘Thou hast drunk of my wine-cup, Ludwig, Ludwig,
      Thou hast drunk of my lips this day;
    I am no more false than thou, young Ludwig,
      Though I am an Elle-maid gay.’

    “‘Ride fast from the woodland, Ludwig, Ludwig,’
      Her laughter tracks his way;
    ‘Didst thou clasp a fair woman, Ludwig, Ludwig,
      And found her an Elle-maid gay?’

    “‘Flee, flee!’ they cry, ‘he is mad, Count Ludwig;
      He rides through the street to-day
    With his beard unshorn, and his cloak brier-torn:
      He has met with the Elle-maid gay!’

    “‘I fear him not, my knight, my Ludwig’
      (The bride’s dear lips did say),
    ‘Though he comes from the woodland, he is my Ludwig;
      He saw not the Elle-maid gay.

    “‘Welcome, my lord, my love, my Ludwig!’
      But her smile grew ashen-gray,
    As she knew by the glare of the mad eyes’ stare,
      He had been with the Elle-maid gay.

    “‘God love thee——God pity thee, O my Ludwig!’
      Nor her true arms turned she away.
    ‘Thou art no sweet woman,’ cried fiercely Ludwig,
      ‘But a foul Elle-maid gay.

    “‘I kiss thee——I slay thee;——I thy Ludwig’:
      And the steel flashed bright to the day:
    ‘Better clasp a dead bride,’ laughed out Ludwig,
      ‘Than a false Elle-maid gay.

    “‘I kissed thee, I slew thee; I——thy Ludwig;
      And now will we sleep alway.’
    Still fair blooms the woodland where rode Ludwig,
      Still there sits the Elle-maid gay.”

The student ceased; and there was a deep silence. Basil’s young sister
glanced round fearfully. Isilda moved not; but as the clear tones of
Basil’s voice ended, one deep-drawn sigh was heard, as it were the
unconscious relief of a full heart.

“You have chosen a gloomy story, Basil,” said the mother, at last.

Her voice broke the spell; and Margareta added,——

“I do not pity that false-hearted knight; his was a just punishment
for a heavy sin: for the poor bride to die thus in her youth and
happiness,——O, it was very sad!”

“Not so,” said Isilda, and she spoke in a low dreamy tone, as if half to
herself. “It was not sad, even to be slain by him she loved, since she
died in his arms, having known that he loved her. It was a happy fate.”

There was such an expression of intense feeling in the girl’s face as she
spoke, that Margareta looked at her in wondering silence; but Basil gave
an involuntary start, as if a new light had broken in upon his mind. The
living crimson rushed immediately over Isilda’s face and neck, she seemed
shrinking into the earth with shame, and said no more. Basil, too, kept
silence. No marvel was it in the timid girl who rarely gave utterance to
her thoughts, but that he whose heart was so full of poetry, whose lips
were ever brimming over with eloquence, should be dumb,——it was passing
strange! The student felt as though there was a finger laid on his lips,
an unseen presence compelling him to silence; but the finger and the
presence were those of the Angel of Love.

There was a constraint visible in all but Margareta; she, too young to
understand what was passing in the hearts of the two she loved so much,
began to sport with her friend.

“Well! I should not envy Count Ludwig’s bride, Isilda; I would much
rather live. Farewell, you dolorous folk. I will go spin.”

And she vanished with the swiftness of a young fawn. The mother followed
her with her eyes.

“A sunny and loving heart is thine, my child,” she murmured. “God bless
thee, and keep all care from that gay spirit!” And Madame Wolgemuth
leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. The mother’s heart seemed
absorbed in the past, or else dreaming of her child’s future.

But, by the two thus left together, past and future were alike
unregarded. With Basil and Isilda it was all the present,——the blissful
present, full of hope and love. They talked but little, and in broken
sentences, flitting from subject to subject, lest each should lead to the
unveiling of the delicious secret that was uppermost in both their hearts
and which they at once feared, yet longed to utter. At last the lamp grew
dim, and the moonlight streamed in through the narrow window. Isilda
noticed and spoke of it,——it was a relief.

“How lovely the moon looks, setting behind the cathedral!” And, rising,
she walked to the window; it might be she was glad to escape from the
passionate tenderness of Basil’s gaze.

The young student followed her, moving noiselessly, for his aged mother
had fallen asleep. And now the two stood together, silent, alone with
their own hearts, looking up to the quiet, star-lit sky, and drinking in
love, which seemed infinite as that heaven itself.

“How beautiful is this world!” murmured the girl.

“I feel it so; and most when thus with thee, Isilda,”——and with
what unspeakable sweetness and tenderness the name lingered on his
lips,——“Isilda,——my Isilda!”

There was a moment of tremulous silence, and then the girl felt herself
drawn closer, until her head rested on his bosom, and she heard his voice
whispering in her ear,——

“May I call thee _my_ Isilda——all mine——mine only——mine forever?”

She raised her head, and looked timidly but searchingly in his
countenance.

“Is it indeed true? dost thou then love me?”

“As my own soul!” passionately answered the student.

Isilda hid her face again in his bosom, and burst into a shower of tears.

The girl and her lover went home together that night, through the cold,
clear starlight, to Isilda’s abode. Many and many a time had they trod
the same path, but now everything was changed. They had become all in
all to each other; an infinity of love was around them; all was light,
hope, and trembling gladness. The crisp snow crackled under Isilda’s
feet, and the sharp frosty air made her shiver; but she felt it not.
She only clung the closer to Basil’s arm; he was all her own now; he,
her life’s joy, her pride, the idol of her dreams, the delight of her
soul. Such happiness was almost too much to bear; and, therefore, when
she first knew that he loved her, had Isilda wept,——nay, even when she
had parted from Basil and was alone, her full heart poured itself forth
in tears. That he,——the noble, the gifted, so rich in the greatest of
all wealth,——the wealth of genius; honored among men, with a glorious
harvest of fame yet unreaped before him,——that he should love her, who
had nothing to give but a heart that worshipped him! The girl, in her
humility, felt unworthy of such deep happiness; all that her lips would
utter were the blessed, joyful words, “He loves me,——he loves me! my
Basil, mine own!” And even in her sleep she murmured the same.

Man’s love is not like woman’s, yet Basil was very happy,——happier than
he had ever been in his life. The student, the philosopher, felt that
all his wisdom was as nothing compared to the wondrous alchemy of love.
So far from being weakened, his lofty mind seemed to grow richer beneath
the light of beloved eyes; it was like the sunshine to the ripening corn.
Basil now knew how long Isilda had filled his thoughts, and been mingled
with all his hopes. He did not even then fathom the depths of her spirit,
but he felt it was one with his; and man, proud man, ever rejoices to see
his soul’s image reflected in a woman’s heart.


III.

A year had passed over the head of the student of Cologne. It had been a
year full of changes. Death had entered the house and taken the tender
mother; the strong-hearted but gentle matron, who had filled the place of
both parents toward Basil and Margareta in their fatherless youth. The
student had now only his sister to cheer his desolate home; and little
joy was there in the young girl’s heart, or brightness on her face, for
she was still in the shadow of past sorrow, her first grief, too; and
heavily it weighed upon sweet Margareta.

Have we forgotten Isilda, the beautiful, the beloved? No change had
taken place in her. She was now the betrothed of Basil Wolgemuth, loving
him with a depth and steadfastness far beyond the first fresh love of
girlhood and romance. And Basil himself, was he still the same? Let us
see.

The student was sitting, as we first beheld him, in the room more
peculiarly his own; it looked the same as in former days; and the
fire, the brilliant and beautiful fire, which Basil loved to have as
a companion for his solitary hours, burned brightly as ever. He kept
continually feeding it with new brands, and often looked up from his book
to gaze at it. If the blaze grew dim for a moment, it seemed as if his
powers of intellect and comprehension grew dim with it. Basil was dull
and cheerless without his beloved fire; he needed its genial warmth, its
inspiring brightness; even in the summer-time he could not study without
it; and so it had been from his childhood.

There was a change in the young man, more than the one short year added
to his age could have effected. He looked like a man who had thought
much, suffered much. An expression of pain constantly hovered over his
features, and the lines of his beautiful mouth were contracted. He
read intently; but at intervals laid down the book, and fixed his eyes
vacantly on the fire, absorbed in thought.

A light knock at the door broke in upon the student’s meditations,
and a stranger entered. He was a man of middle age, tall, spare, and
meagre. His face was calm, and his bearing dignified; while on his noble
forehead, which bore not a single wrinkle, unmistakable intellect sat
enthroned; but at times there was a wildness in his eyes, and a sudden
kindling of his features, which almost belied his serene deportment.
He advanced towards the young man, who arose and greeted him with deep
respect.

“Michael Meyer need not stay to ask admittance of Basil Wolgemuth, I
trust?” said the stranger, in tones of mingled gentleness and conscious
dignity.

“My master,” answered Basil, meekly, “thou art ever most welcome; all
that is mine is thine also.”

“I thank thee, gentle scholar,” returned the other, simply, with a slight
inclination of the head, as he suffered the young man to take from him
his outer garment, and sat down on the chair which Basil offered. The
student himself continued standing until his guest pointed to a low
stool, where Basil placed himself at a little distance from his master.

“And now let us talk,” said Michael Meyer; “for it is long since I have
seen thee. What hast thou learned meanwhile?”

“Much, O master! I have been studying thy book.” And he pointed to the
open page.

A gleam of pleasure illuminated Michael’s sallow features. “And dost thou
ever regret that thou hast become one of us, one of the brethren of the
Rosie Cross?”

“Never, honored master mine,” cried the student; “but I have yet so much
to learn, before I am worthy even to kiss the hem of thy garment; and I
am so young.”

“It may be that a young heart is purer than one which has longer mingled
with the world. Thou hast not yet travelled out of sight of the home
which thy spirit left at birth; the memory of that pristine existence
dimly remains with thee still. Therefore it is well with thee, Basil.”

“Master, if I could only think so,——if I could only revive within me that
higher life,——but I fear it is hard.”

“It is hard, my son; for it is a struggle of matter against spirit. O,
didst thou but know the joys that are opened unto us who mortify the
body for the sake of the soul; the glorious and beautiful world that is
revealed to us,——a life within life, a double existence, our mortal eyes
being strengthened to behold the Invisible,——our mortal frames endowed
with the powers of angels!”

“It is glorious——glorious!” murmured the student as he gazed on his
master, whose whole countenance gleamed with enthusiasm.

“It is indeed glorious,” continued Michael Meyer. “To be as a god to
mankind; to bear in this human body the gift of healing; to know that the
riches for which men toil, and pine, and slay one another, are at our
will in such abundance that they seem to us like dust. And more than all,
to have the power of holding communion with those good spirits which God
created as he created man, more beautiful and yet less perfect, for they
must remain as first made, while man may rise through various stages of
existence, higher and higher, until he reach the footstool of divinity
itself.”

“Hast thou ever seen those glorious beings?” asked Basil, glancing
doubtfully round, his voice sinking into a low whisper.

“I have!” answered Michael Meyer. “But no more of this. To attain
this state of perfection, thou must needs deaden thyself to all human
pleasures; thou must forsake the grossness of an appetite pampered with
the flesh of beasts and the fruit of the poison-vine. As thou readest in
my book, the soul must retire within itself,——must shut out all human
feelings, all human love.”

A dark shadow came over the young student’s face.

“Must one attain all this, O father, to be a follower of Christian
Rosencreutz?”[2]

“All this, and more. Does thy heart fail thee?” said Michael, sternly.

Basil cast down his eyes.

“No, my noble master, no! but human will is feeble, and the steep is hard
to climb.”

“Then lie down, and perish at its foot, Basil Wolgemuth,” said the
Rosicrucian; and then added, with a regretful tone, “After thou hadst
journeyed half-way, I had not thought thy heart would have failed thee,
my son.”

“It has not failed me,” cried the student, earnestly. “I have followed
implicitly all thy precepts. No food, save what nature rigorously
requires, has passed these lips; I have kept myself pure as a little
child, yet still I seem further than ever from that blessed state when
the soul is free from all mortal longings, and the eyes are purged to
behold the Invisible.”

“Wait, my son; wait and faint not! the time will surely come at last;
and when it does, oh, what joy for thee! Thou wilt count as nothing the
pleasures of taste, when thou mayst banquet on celestial food; thou wilt
scorn all earthly loveliness, to bask in the smile of immortal beauty.
This, indeed, is an aim worthy of man’s aspiring.”

“It is——it is! O master, I follow thee!——teach me, guide me as thou
wilt.” And he knelt at the feet of the Rosicrucian, kissing his hands and
his garments with deep emotion.

“Thou art worthy to become one of us, my son,——nay, my brother,——for
thou wilt erelong equal the wisest of us,” answered Michael Meyer, as he
raised Basil from the earth. “Go on in that noble path; thou hast little
need of me, for thine own soul is thy best teacher. Now farewell, for
this night I leave Cologne; my work is accomplished, and I have added one
more to the brethren of the Rosie Cross.”

“And hast thou no word, no parting admonition, for me, O my father?”

“None, save this: Strive ever after the highest; content thyself with
nothing below perfection; be humble in thine own eyes; and more than all,
keep thy heart and hand from evil: sin clouds the soul’s aspirations; and
the highest life is a life of perfect holiness. With thy noble intellect
and ardent mind, keep an unspotted heart!——and so fare thee well, my son.”

Thus Michael Meyer the Rosicrucian parted from Basil Wolgemuth.


IV.

Passionately wringing his hands, or pressing them upon his hot brow,
knelt the student alone in his chamber. He muttered wild tones. He had
yearned after the tree of knowledge; he had penetrated within its shadow,
and it had darkened his soul, yet he had not tasted of its delicious
fruit for which he so longed.

“It is vain,——it is vain!” cried Basil; “I strive, but I cannot attain.
I have cast all human bliss to the winds; I have poisoned my youth,——and
thine, too, Isilda, joy of my life!——and all in vain. No immortal gifts
are mine,——I would fain pierce into Nature’s depths, but she hides her
face from me. O my master! thou didst tell me of the world of spirits
which would surely be revealed unto me. I look up into the air, but no
sylphs breathe soft zephyrs upon my hot cheek; I wander by the streams,
but no sweet eyes, looking out from the depths of the fountains, meet my
own; I am poor, but the gnomes of the earth answer not my bidding with
treasures of silver and gold. And thou, O Fire, glorious element! art
thou indeed peopled with these wonderful beings; or are they deaf to my
voice, and invisible to my eyes alone, of all my brethren?”

And lo! as the student spoke, a bright pyramid of flame darted upward,
and a voice, like that of the fire when it answers the soft breathing of
the winds, replied,——

“I hear thee,——what wouldst thou with me?”

A paleness came over the young man’s cheek, and he drew back
involuntarily.

“Dost thou then fear me, O mortal!” said the voice again, sadly. “Look
again.”

Suddenly the pyramidal flame was cloven asunder, and there appeared in
its centre a form, smaller than that of humanity, but perfect in feminine
loveliness. Wavy wreaths of golden flame fell around her like a woman’s
beautiful hair, and about her semi-transparent form twined an amber
vesture, resembling in hue and airy substance the fire from which she
sprung. Her hands were folded submissively on her breast, and her eyes
were fixed earnestly on the young student’s face as she again repeated,——

“Dost thou fear me now?”

“How should I fear thee, beautiful vision?” cried Basil in ecstasy; “and
what am I, that thou shouldst deign to visit me thus?”

“Thinkest thou that this is the first time I have visited thee?” said the
Form. “I have been with thee, unseen, from thy childhood. When, in thy
boyish days, thou wouldst sit gazing on the beautiful element which I
rule, and from which I proceed, it was I who made it assume in thy fancy
strange and lovely shapes. It was my voice thou heardest in the musical
breathing of the flames, until thou didst love the beautiful fire; and it
became to thee the source of inspiration. All this was my doing.”

“And now at last I behold thee, glorious creature!” exclaimed the
student with rapture. “How shall I thank thee for thus watching over me
invisibly, and at last revealing thyself to me!”

“We do but the will of our Creator,” answered the Salamandrine. “I and
my kindred are His offspring, even as man; but our being differs from
thine; superior and yet how inferior! We tend thee, we influence thee,
we guide thee,——in this doing alike His command who made us, and our own
pleasure; for our natures are purer and better than thine.”

“I feel it,” said Basil. “I cannot look upon thy all-perfect loveliness
without knowing that such a form must be the visible reflection of a soul
equally pure and beautiful.”

“A _soul_!” sighed the fire-spirit; “alas! this blessing is not ours. We
see generation after generation of men perish from the face of earth; we
watch them from their cradles into their graves, and still we are the
same, our beauty unfaded, our power unchanged. Yet we know there must
come a time when the elements from which we draw our being must vanish
away, and then we perish with them, for we have no immortal souls: for us
there is no after-life!”

As the Salamandrine ceased, the vapors of the fire encircled her as with
a mist, and a wailing came from the red caverns of flame, as of spirits
in grief, the burden of which was ever,——

“Alas for us!——we have no after-life.”

“Is it even so?” said the student. “Then are ye unhappy in the midst of
your divine existence.”

The mist which veiled the Salamandrine floated aside, and she stood once
more revealed in her superhuman beauty.

“Not unhappy,” she answered, with a radiant and celestial smile,——“not
unhappy, since we are the servants of our beneficent Creator; we perform
His will, and in that consists our happiness. We suffer no pain, no care;
doing no sin, we have no sorrow; our life is a life of love to each other
and to man, whose ministers we are. Are we not then happy?”

“It may be so,” said Basil, thoughtfully. “Ye are the creatures of Him
who never made aught but good.” And he bowed his head in deep meditation,
while there arose from the mystic fire an ethereal chorus; melodiously it
pealed upon the opened ears of the enraptured student.

The spirits sang of praise; of the universal hymn which nature lifts up
to the Origin of all good; of the perfect harmony of all His works, from
the mighty planets that roll through illimitable space, down to the fresh
green moss that springs up at the foot of the wayfaring child; of the
world of spirits,——those essences which people the earth and float in the
air like motes in the sunbeam, invisible, but yet powerful; how the good
spirits strive with the fallen ones for dominion over man, and how the
struggle must continue until evil is permitted to be overcome of good,
and the earth becomes all holy, worthy to be the habitation of glorified
beings.

“Happy art thou, O man!” they sang. “Even in thy infirmity, what is like
unto thee? And earthly life is thine, half the sorrow of which thou mayst
remove by patience and love; an earthly death is thine, which is the
entrance to immortality. It is ours to guide thee to that gate of heaven
which we ourselves may never enter.”

And all the spirits sang in a strain that died away as the fire sunk
smouldering down, “Blessed art thou, O man!——strong in thy weakness,
happy in thy sufferings. Thrice blessed art thou!”

The student was roused from his trance by a light footstep. A hand was
laid on his shoulder, and a soft woman’s voice whispered,——

“Art thou then here all alone, and in darkness, my Basil?”

“All was light with me,——the darkness came with thee,” answered the
student, harshly, like one roused from delicious slumbers by an unwelcome
hand;——and yet the hand was none other than Isilda’s.

“Once thou used to call me thy light of life, Basil,” murmured the girl.
“I would not come to anger thee.”

It was too dark to discern faces; but as Isilda turned to depart, Basil
thought she was weeping, and his heart melted. What would he not have
given, at the moment, for the days of old,——the feelings of old, when
he would have drawn her to his bosom, and soothed her there with the
assurances of never-ending love. But now he dared not; the link between
him and earth was broken. He thought of the immortal gift just acquired,
and he would not renounce its ecstatic joys,——no, not even for Isilda. He
took her hand kindly, but coldly, saying,——

“Forgive me; I have been studying,——dreaming; I did not mean to say thou
wert unwelcome.”

“Bless thee for that, my Basil, my beloved!” cried the girl, weeping,
as she pressed his hand passionately to her heart and her lips. “Thou
couldst not be unkind to me,——to thy betrothed wife.”

Basil turned away; he could not tell her that the tie was now only a
name; and Isilda went on,——

“Thou hast not looked the same of late; thou art too anxious; or thou
hast some hidden sorrow upon thee. Tell it to me, my Basil,” she
continued, caressingly. “Who should share and lighten it but I, who love
thee so?”

“Dost thou indeed love me so well, Isilda?”

“Thou art my all,——my life,——my soul! It were death itself to part from
thee,” cried the girl, in a burst of impassioned feeling, as she knelt
beside the bending form of her lover, and strove to wind her arms round
his neck. She hardly dared to do so now to him who had once wooed that
fondness with so many prayers.

“Woe is me, alas!” muttered the student. “Must thou also be sacrificed,
Isilda?”

She did not hear his words, but she felt him unclasp her arms from his
neck; and Isilda sank insensible at Basil’s feet.

The die was cast. Slowly the student laid her down,——her, the once
beloved,——on the cold floor. He called “Margareta!” and before his sister
entered, went out into the open air.


V.

Basil Wolgemuth had now gained the summit of his wishes. He had panted
for the river of knowledge,——had found it, and allayed his burning thirst
in its waters, which were to him a Lethe, bringing oblivion of all else.
He walked as one in a dream, or like the false prophet of old, falling
into a trance, but having his eyes open. He was gentle to his sister,
and to the patient, sorrowful Isilda; but he shrank from their society,
as he did from that of every living soul. He would disappear for days
together, wandering in the woods and mountains, far from his home.
There the student was alone, with his newly acquired sense,——there he
penetrated into the marvels of the invisible world. He saw the Sylphs of
the air floating over him, and fanning his slumbers with their ambrosial
wings. The beautiful Undines spread their cool, wavy arms around him, and
through the riven earth he beheld the Gnomes and Cobolds at work in their
treasure-caves. Borne by the Salamandrines, he viewed the caves of the
volcanoes; their lurid recesses were exposed to his gaze, and he saw the
central fires smouldering beneath the surface of the globe,——the cradles
of the earthquake.

Then, when the student returned, he would shut himself up in his chamber,
and invoke the being who had first appeared to him,——the Salamandrine. He
imbibed from her lips wisdom beyond that of man; he sunned himself in the
light of her glorious beauty, and became insensible to all earthly things.

“O my master,” Basil would often murmur, “thou wert right! What count
I now the cup of mortal pleasure while that of heaven is at my lips? I
could torture, almost destroy this poor frail body for the sake of my
soul.”

And while the student revelled in these ecstasies, his slight form grew
more shadowy, his dreamy eyes became of a more fathomless depth, and his
whole appearance was that of a spirit which had for a season assumed
this mortal coil. No thought of Isilda, no yearning for her forsaken
love, crossed his memory; the lesser feeling was all absorbed in the
greater, for the one reigning passion of Basil Wolgemuth’s soul was a
thirst after knowledge.

And Isilda, the devoted one, how fared it with her? She knew that no
other maiden had stolen her lover’s heart, and yet it was changed toward
her. She saw it to be so. Some overpowering passion had extinguished that
of love; and her life’s hope was gone. She did not pine nor weep; she
felt no anger towards Basil, for in her eyes he could do no wrong. Isilda
had worshipped him from her girlhood, with a love mixed with idolatry,
for it long seemed like “the desire of the moth for the star.” None other
had ever won a thought from the maiden, though many had wooed her; but
having once loved him, none else could have filled her heart forever.
Even Basil, when he came to measure her love by his own, dreamed not of
its intensity. So absorbing was this one passionate love, that even the
sad change in him who was its object could not weaken it. She desired
no more but to be near her betrothed; to see him; to hover round him as
silently as his shadow,——only to have the blessed privilege of loving
him, and the memory, sweet though mournful, that he had once loved her.


VI.

Basil Wolgemuth lay asleep on his couch. He had outwatched midnight, and
was very weary. The follower of Rosencreutz, the philosopher, the man of
genius, had not passed the limits of mortality; his earth-vesture clung
about him still. Fatigue had overtaken him in the midst of his vigils;
he had thrown himself down on the hard pallet, and fallen asleep, as
sound as if the rude couch of the Rosicrucian were the monarch’s bed of
down. The morning stars looked in at his casement, and the dim light of
a single lamp fell on the countenance of the student. He lay calm as a
little child, with folded hands, as if his mother had lulled him to sleep
with songs. O, if that mother could have beheld him now, how would she
have wept over the child of so many prayers!

I have said before that there was little beauty in Basil’s face, at least
that mere beauty of form, which is so dazzling,——and it is good that it
should be so, for a lovely face seems fresh from the impress of God’s
hand; we naturally love it, cling to it, and worship it as such. But
Basil’s sole charm had been the genius so plainly visible in his face,
and a sunny, youthful, happy look, which made it pleasant to behold.
Now, all this was long gone. But while he slept, a little of his olden
self returned; a smile wandered over his lips, and his sunny hair fell
carelessly, as in the days when Isilda’s fingers used to part it, and
kiss his white, beautiful forehead. Suddenly a red glare lighted up the
still shadow of the chamber,——it flashed on the eyes of the sleeper.

“Art thou here, O spirit?” murmured Basil, half roused, and dazzled by
the brilliant light, which seemed a continuation of his dream.

But it was no celestial presence that shone into the student’s room. He
awoke fully, rose up, and looked out into the night. The city lay hushed
beneath the starlight like a palace of the dead; it seemed as though no
mortal turmoil would ever more ruffle its serene repose. But far down the
dark street, in a direction where Basil’s eyes had in former times been
fondly turned waiting for the one solitary lamp which was to him like a
star, lurid flames and white smoke burst forth, and contended with the
gloom around. There was in the city the fearful presence of fire, and the
burning house was Isilda’s.

With a sudden impulse, Basil leaped at once through the low window,
and fled rather than ran to the scene. This time human love had the
pre-eminence; he forgot all but Isilda,——Isilda perishing in the flames!

Wildly raged the fierce element, as if kindled by a hundred demons, who
fanned it with their fiery breath, and leaped, and howled, and shouted,
as it spread on with mad swiftness. Now it writhed in serpent-coils,
now it darted upwards in forked tongues, and now it made itself a veil
of dusky vapors, and beneath that shade went on in its devastating way.
Its glare put out the dim stars overhead, and hung on the skirts of the
clouds that were driven past, until the sky itself seemed in flames.
House after house caught the blaze, and cries of despair, mingled with
shrieks of frantic terror, rose up through the horrible stillness of
night. The beautiful element which Basil had so loved——the cheering,
inspiring fire——was turned into a fearful scourge.

The student reached the spot, and looked wildly up to the window he
had so often watched. A passing gust blew the flames aside, and he
distinguished there a white figure,——it was Isilda. Her hands were
crossed on her bosom, and her head was bowed meekly, as if she knew
there was no hope, and was content to die.

Basil saw, and in a moment he had rushed into the burning dwelling. He
gained the room, and with a wild cry of joy, Isilda sprung into his arms.
Without a word, he bore her, insensible as she was, through the smoke and
flame, to a spot where the fire had not reached. Farther he could not go,
for his strength failed him. He laid his burden down, and leaned against
the wall.

“I might not live for thee, Isilda,” cried the student, “but I can die
for thee. Yet is there no help,——no hope? Where are the spirits that were
once subject unto me? And thou, my guardian,——spirit of fire!——is this
thy work? Where art thou?”

“I am here!” answered a voice; and the Salamandrine appeared. The flames
drew nearer, and Basil saw myriads of aerial shapes flitting among
them in mazy wreaths. They came nigh,——they hovered over his mortal
love,——their robes of seeming flame swept her form.

“Touch her not!” shrieked the student, as he bent over Isilda, his human
fear overpowering him.

“The good and pure like her are ever safe,” replied the Salamandrine. “We
harm her not.” And she breathed over the maiden, who awoke.

“O my Basil!” murmured the girl, “is death then past? Thou didst come to
save me,——thou lovest me,——thou art mine again!” And she stretched out to
him her loving arms; but Basil turned away.

“Hush!” he said, “dost thou not see them,——the spirits?”

Isilda looked round fearfully. “I see nothing,——only thee.”

The student’s eyes flashed with insanity. “See!” he cried, “they fill the
air, they gather round us, they come between thee and me. Now,——now their
forms grow fainter,——they are vanishing,——it is thou, woman! who art
driving them from my sight forever. Stay, glorious beings, stay! I give
up all,——even her.”

“Nothing shall part me from thee!” shrieked the girl, as she clung to her
lover, and wound her arms round him. “No power in heaven or earth shall
tear us asunder,——thou art mine, Basil,——let me live for thee,——die for
thee.”

“Thou shalt have thy desire!” the student cried, as he struggled in her
frantic clasp.

There was the gleam of steel,——one faint, bubbling sigh,——the arms
relaxed their hold, and Basil was alone,——with the dead!

The fire stayed in its dire path, and a wailing sound rose as the spirits
fled away. Heaven and earth had alike forsaken the murderer.

He knelt beside his victim; he wept, he laughed, he screamed; for madness
was in his brain.

“I may clasp thee now, Isilda,” he shouted, “thou art all my own!” And he
strained the cold, still form to his breast, kissing the lips and cheeks
with passionate vehemence.

“I will make thee a pyre,——a noble funereal pyre,” he continued; “I will
purify this mortal clay, and thou shalt become a spirit, Isilda,——a
beautiful, immortal spirit.”

He bore the dead to where the fire raged fiercest; he laid his beloved on
a couch; composed the frigid limbs, folded the hands, and, kissing the
cold lips once more, retired to a distance, while the flames played round
the still beautiful form that was once Isilda. Lovingly they inwreathed
and enshrouded it, until at last they concealed it from the student’s
gaze. He turned and fled. The fire hid in its mysterious bosom the ashes
of that noble and devoted heart. Isilda had found the death she once
thought so blest,——death by the hand of the beloved.


VII.

Fearfully did morning dawn on the eyes of the murderer. He had regained
his chamber unobserved, and there he crouched in its most gloomy nook.
His frenzy had passed away, and left the freezing coldness of despair.
The darkness was terrible to him, and yet when the light of morning came,
he shrank from it in horror, and buried his face in his garments to shut
out the fearful glare. All day he remained motionless. Margareta’s loud
weeping came to him from within. From her brother’s bolted door, she
thought he had departed on one of his usual rambles, and Basil heard his
name repeated often, mingled with Isilda’s,——whom all supposed to have
perished in the flames.

Basil heard his sister’s sobs; but they fell idly on his stony ears. Many
sounds rose from the street,——the widow’s cry, the orphan’s moan, and the
despairing lament of the houseless and homeless,——but all were nothing to
him. He kept the same immovable attitude until daylight waned, and then
he rose and lit the fire on his hearth.

Brighter and brighter grew the blaze, and wilder gleamed the eyes of the
student. He swayed his body to and fro with a low murmuring, and then he
passionately invoked the Salamandrine.

“The sacrifice is complete——I have no bond to earth——my desire is free.
Why delayest thou, O spirit? Come, teach me; let me know the past. Give
me wisdom,——I thirst!——I thirst! Let me become as a god in knowledge!”

But the vision came not; there was no voice.

“Spirit of Fire! art thou deaf to me still? I have done all,——I have
broken every human tie,——I have become what men would loathe. Hear
me,——answer me, or I die!”

Wreaths of dusky vapor overshadowed the fire, and from them proceeded a
melancholy voice:——

“O mortal, sin has entered thine heart; blood is on thy hand, and the
polluted can have no fellowship with the pure. Thine eyes may behold us
no more forever!”

A fearful shudder passed through the student’s frame.

“It is false! Cursed spirits, ye have deceived me!”

“It is not we who have deceived thee, but thine own soul,” answered
the Salamandrine. “We are not evil; unseen, we would have watched over
thee thy whole life through. It was thou who didst long after what
is permitted but to few,——to hold commune with the invisible. To do
this with safety, man must keep a heart pure as fearless, and such was
not thine. Thou didst seek us,——we allured not thee. Blame not us,
therefore, but thy own weakness. Thou hast sinned, and henceforth we are
invisible to thee!”

“Woe! woe!” cried Basil, in agony; “have I then lost all? Adorable
spirit, guide of my life, have mercy!——forsake me not!”

“I do not forsake thee, O poor mortal!” answered the voice, sadly. “I
am here, beautiful and tender as before; but thou art no longer able
to behold me. Sin has darkened thine eyes, and thou wilt see me no
more——forever.”

“No more?” echoed the student in tones of thrilling misery.

“No more,” replied the mournful accents of the Salamandrine; and a faint
chorus, like the sighing of the wind, echoed plaintively,——

“No more, O, poor mortal, no more!”

The vapor swept away from the fire, and the student was left to his
despair.


VIII.

Two days after the terrible fire, some who loved and pitied the desolate
Margareta forcibly entered her brother’s room. They found Basil dead.
He lay on the floor, his marble face upturned to their horror-stricken
view. There might have been agony in his last moments, for the hands were
tightly pressed upon the heart; but all was calmness now. The features
had settled into their eternal repose. How or when the spirit parted
none knew, save Him who gave it, and who had now reclaimed his gift. The
book of Michael Meyer lay beside the student; and firmly clasped in the
stiffened fingers was a long tress of woman’s hair. More than this, all
was mystery.

Many years after, when the memory of the student of Cologne had long been
forgotten, an aged nun died in a convent not far from the city. It was
Margareta, the only sister of Basil Wolgemuth the Rosicrucian.

[Illustration]

[1] The Elle-maid, or wood-woman, is a kind of sprite, who in front
appears as a beautiful damsel, but seen behind is hollow like a mask. She
sits on the roadside, offering her wine-cup and her kiss; but the moment
a youth has tasted either, he becomes raving mad. There are many legends
of this sort current in Germany.

[2] After the death of Christian Rosencreutz, their founder, the sect of
the Rosicrucians kept their doctrines secret for a hundred and twenty
years. Michael Meyer, an alchemist and physician, was the first to reveal
their secrets, by a book entitled “Themis Aurea, hoc est de legibus
Fraternitatis Rosæ Crucis,” which he published at Cologne in 1615.




[Illustration]




THE SOUTH BREAKER.

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD.


Just a capful of wind, and Dan shook loose the linen, and a straight
shining streak with specks of foam shot after us. The mast bent like
eel-grass, and our keel was half out of the water. Faith belied her name,
and clung to the sides with her ten finger-nails; but as for me, I liked
it.

“Take the stick, Georgie,” said Dan, suddenly, his cheeks white. “Head
her up the wind. Steady. Sight the figure-head on Pearson’s loft. Here’s
too much sail for a frigate.”

But before the words were well uttered, the mast doubled up and coiled
like a whip-lash, there was a report like the crack of doom, and half of
the thing crashed short over the bows, dragging the heavy sail in the
waves.

Then there came a great laugh of thunder close above, and the black cloud
dropped like a curtain round us: the squall had broken.

“Cut it off, Dan! quick!” I cried.

“Let it alone,” said he, snapping together his jack-knife; “it’s as good
as a best bower-anchor. Now I’ll take the tiller, Georgie. Strong little
hand,” said he, bending so that I didn’t see his face. “And lucky it’s
good as strong. It’s saved us all. My God, Georgie! where’s Faith?”

I turned. There was no Faith in the boat. We both sprang to our feet, and
so the tiller swung round and threw us broadside to the wind, and between
the dragging mast and the centre-board drowning seemed too good for us.

“You’ll have to cut it off,” I cried again; but he had already ripped
half through the canvas, and was casting it loose.

At length he gave his arm a toss. With the next moment, I never shall
forget the look of horror that froze Dan’s face.

“I’ve thrown her off!” he exclaimed,——“I’ve thrown her off!”

He reached his whole length over the boat, I ran to his side, and perhaps
our motion impelled it, or perhaps some unseen hand; for he caught at an
end of rope, drew it in a second, let go and clutched at a handful of
the sail, and then I saw how it had twisted round and swept poor little
Faith over, and she had swung there in it, like a dead butterfly in a
chrysalis. The lightnings were slipping down into the water like blades
of fire everywhere around us, with short, sharp volleys of thunder, and
the waves were more than I ever rode this side of the bar before or
since, and we took in water every time our hearts beat; but we never once
thought of our own danger while we bent to pull dear little Faith out of
hers; and that done, Dan broke into a great hearty fit of crying that I’m
sure he’d no need to be ashamed of. But it didn’t last long; he just up
and dashed off the tears and set himself at work again, while I was down
on the floor rubbing Faith. There she lay like a broken lily, with no
life in her little white face, and no breath, and maybe a pulse and maybe
not. I couldn’t hear a word Dan said, for the wind; and the rain was
pouring through us. I saw him take out the oars, but I knew they’d do no
good in such a chop, even if they didn’t break; and pretty soon he found
it so, for he drew them in and began to untie the anchor-rope and wind it
round his waist. I sprang to him.

“What are you doing, Dan?” I exclaimed.

“I can swim, at least,” he answered.

“And tow us?——a mile? You know you can’t! It’s madness!”

“I must try. Little Faith will die, if we don’t get ashore.”

“She’s dead now, Dan.”

“What! No, no, she isn’t. Faith isn’t dead. But we must get ashore.”

“Dan,” I cried, clinging to his arm, “Faith’s only one. But if you die
so,——and you will!——I shall die too.”

“You?”

“Yes; because, if it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have been here at
all.”

“And is that all the reason?” he asked, still at work.

“Reason enough,” said I.

“Not quite,” said he.

“Dan,——for my sake——”

“I can’t, Georgie. Don’t ask me. I mustn’t——” And here he stopped short,
with the coil of rope in his hand, and fixed me with his eye, and his
look was terrible,——“_we_ mustn’t let Faith die.”

“Well,” I said, “try it, if you dare; and as true as there’s a Lord in
heaven, I’ll cut the rope!”

He hesitated, for he saw I was resolute; and I would, I declare I would
have done it; for, do you know, at the moment, I hated the little dead
thing in the bottom of the boat there.

Just then there came a streak of sunshine through the gloom where we’d
been plunging between wind and water, and then a patch of blue sky, and
the great cloud went blowing down river. Dan threw away the rope and took
out the oars again.

“Give me one, Dan,” said I; but he shook his head. “O Dan, because I’m so
sorry!”

“See to her, then,——fetch Faith to,” he replied, not looking at me, and
making up with great sturdy pulls.

So I busied myself, though I couldn’t do a bit of good. The instant we
touched bottom, Dan snatched her, sprang through the water and up the
landing. I stayed behind; as the boat recoiled, pushed in a little,
fastened the anchor and threw it over, and then followed.

Our house was next the landing, and there Dan had carried Faith; and
when I reached it, a great fire was roaring up the chimney, and the
teakettle hung over it, and he was rubbing Faith’s feet hard enough to
strike sparks. I couldn’t understand exactly what made Dan so fiercely
earnest, for I thought I knew just how he felt about Faith; but suddenly,
when nothing seemed to answer, and he stood up and our eyes met, I saw
such a haggard, conscience-stricken face that it all rushed over me. But
now we had done what we could, and then I felt all at once as if every
moment that I effected nothing was drawing out murder. Something flashed
by the window, I tore out of the house and threw up my arms, I don’t know
whether I screamed or not, but I caught the doctor’s eye, and he jumped
from his gig and followed me in. We had a siege of it. But at length,
with hot blankets, and hot water, and hot brandy dribbled down her
throat, a little pulse began to play upon Faith’s temple, and a little
pink to beat up and down her cheek, and she opened her pretty dark eyes
and lifted herself and wrung the water out of her braids; then she sank
back.

“Faith! Faith! speak to me!” said Dan, close in her ear. “Don’t you know
me?”

“Go away,” she said hoarsely, pushing his face with her flat wet palm.
“You let the sail take me over and drown me, while you kissed Georgie’s
hand.”

I flung my hand before her eyes.

“Is there a kiss on those fingers?” I cried, in a blaze. “He never kissed
my hands or my lips. Dan is your husband, Faith!”

For all answer Faith hid her head and gave a little moan. Somehow I
couldn’t stand that; so I ran and put my arms round her neck and lifted
her face and kissed it, and then we cried together. And Dan, walking the
floor, took up his hat and went out, while she never cast a look after
him. To think of such a great strong nature and such a powerful depth of
feeling being wasted on such a little limp rag! I cried as much for that
as anything. Then I helped Faith into my bedroom, and, running home, I
got her some dry clothes,——after rummaging enough, dear knows! for you’d
be more like to find her nightcap in the tea-caddy than elsewhere,——and
I made her a corner on the settle, for she was afraid to stay in the
bedroom, and when she was comfortably covered there she fell asleep.
Dan came in soon and sat down beside her, his eyes on the floor, never
glancing aside nor smiling, but gloomier than the grave. As for me, I
felt at ease now, so I went and laid my hand on the back of his chair
and made him look up. I wanted he should know the same rest that I had,
and perhaps he did; for, still looking up, the quiet smile came floating
round his lips, and his eyes grew steady and sweet as they used to be
before he married Faith. Then I went bustling lightly about the kitchen
again.

“Dan,” I said, “if you’d just bring me in a couple of those chickens
stalking out there like two gentlemen from Spain.”

While he was gone I flew round and got a cake into the bake-kettle, and
a pan of biscuit down before the fire; and I set the tea to steep on the
coals, because father always likes his tea strong enough to bear up an
egg, after a hard day’s work, and he’d had that to-day; and I put on the
coffee to boil, for I knew Dan never had it at home, because Faith liked
it and it didn’t agree with her. And then he brought me in the chickens
all ready for the pot, and so at last I sat down, but at the opposite
side of the chimney. Then he rose, and, without exactly touching me,
swept me back to the other side, where lay the great net I was making for
father; and I took the little stool by the settle, and not far from him,
and went to work.

“Georgie,” said Dan, at length, after he’d watched me a considerable
time, “if any word I may have said to-day disturbed you a moment, I want
you to know that it hurt me first, and just as much.”

“Yes, Dan,” said I.

I’ve always thought there was something real noble between Dan and me
then. There was I,——well, I don’t mind telling you. And he,——yes, I’m
sure he loved me perfectly,——you mustn’t be startled, I’ll tell you how
it was,——and always had, only maybe he hadn’t known it; but it was deep
down in his heart just the same, and by and by it stirred. There we were,
both of us thoroughly conscious, yet neither of us expressing it by a
word, and trying not to by a look,——both of us content to wait for the
next life, when we could belong to one another. In those days I contrived
to have it always pleasure enough for me just to know that Dan was in the
room; and though that wasn’t often, I never grudged Faith her right in
him, perhaps because I knew she didn’t care anything about it. You see,
this is how it was.

When Dan was a lad of sixteen, and took care of his mother, a ship went
to pieces down there on the island. It was one of the worst storms that
ever whistled, and though crowds were on the shore, it was impossible
to reach her. They could see the poor wretches hanging in the rigging,
and dropping one by one, and they could only stay and sicken, for the
surf stove the boats, and they didn’t know then how to send out ropes on
rockets or on cannon-balls, and so the night fell, and the people wrung
their hands and left the sea to its prey, and felt as if blue sky could
never come again. And with the bright, keen morning not a vestige of the
ship, but here a spar and there a door, and on the side of a sand-hill
a great dog watching over a little child that he’d kept warm all night.
Dan, he’d got up at turn of tide, and walked down,——the sea running over
the road knee-deep,——for there was too much swell for boats; and when
day broke, he found the little girl, and carried her up to town. He
didn’t take her home, for he saw that what clothes she had were the very
finest,——made as delicately,——with seams like the hair-strokes on that
heart’s-ease there; and he concluded that he couldn’t bring her up as she
ought to be. So he took her round to the rich men, and represented that
she was the child of a lady, and that a poor fellow like himself——for
Dan was older than his years, you see——couldn’t do her justice: she was
a slight little thing, and needed dainty training and fancy food, maybe
a matter of seven years old, and she spoke some foreign language, and
perhaps she didn’t speak it plain, for nobody knew what it was. However,
everybody was very much interested, and everybody was willing to give and
to help, but nobody wanted to take her, and the upshot of it was that Dan
refused all their offers and took her himself.

His mother’d been in to our house all the afternoon before, and she’d
kept taking her pipe out of her mouth,——she had the asthma, and
smoked,——and kept sighing.

“This storm’s going to bring me something,” says she, in a mighty
miserable tone. “I’m sure of it!”

“No harm, I hope, Miss Devereux,” said mother.

“Well, Rhody,”——mother’s father, he was a queer kind, called his girls
all after the thirteen States, and there being none left for Uncle Mat,
he called him after the state of matrimony,——“well, Rhody,” she replied,
rather dismally, and knocking the ashes out of the bowl, “I don’t know;
but I’ll have faith to believe that the Lord won’t send me no ill without
distincter warning. And that it’s good I _have_ faith to believe.”

And so when the child appeared, and had no name, and couldn’t answer for
herself, Mrs. Devereux called her Faith.

We’re a people of presentiments down here on the Flats, and well we may
be. You’d own up yourself, maybe, if in the dark of the night, you locked
in sleep, there’s a knock on the door enough to wake the dead, and you
start up and listen and nothing follows; and falling back, you’re just
dozing off, and there it is once more, so that the lad in the next room
cries out, “Who’s that, mother?” No one answering, you’re half lost
again, when _rap_ comes the hand again, the loudest of the three, and you
spring to the door and open it, and there’s naught there but a wind from
the graves blowing in your face; and after a while you learn that in that
hour of that same night your husband was lost at sea. Well, that happened
to Mrs. Devereux. And I haven’t time to tell you the warnings I’ve known
of. As for Faith, I mind that she said herself, as we were in the boat
for that clear midnight sail, that the sea had a spite against her, but
third time was trying time.

So Faith grew up, and Dan sent her to school what he could, for he set
store by her. She was always ailing,——a little wilful, pettish thing, but
pretty as a flower; and folks put things into her head, and she began
to think she was some great shakes; and she may have been a matter of
seventeen years old when Mrs. Devereux died. Dan, as simple at twenty-six
as he had been ten years before, thought to go on just in the old way,
but the neighbors were one too many for him; and they all represented
that it would never do, and so on, till the poor fellow got perplexed and
vexed and half beside himself. There wasn’t the first thing she could
do for herself, and he couldn’t afford to board her out, for Dan was
only a laboring-man, mackerelling all summer and shoemaking all winter,
less the dreadful times when he stayed out on the Georges; and then he
couldn’t afford, either, to keep her there and ruin the poor girl’s
reputation;——and what did Dan do but come to me with it all?

Now for a number of years I’d been up in the other part of the town with
Aunt Netty, who kept a shop that I tended between schools and before and
after, and I’d almost forgotten there was such a soul on earth as Dan
Devereux,——though he’d not forgotten me. I’d got through the Grammar
and had a year in the High, and suppose I should have finished with an
education and gone off teaching somewhere, instead of being here now,
cheerful as heart could wish, with a little black-haired hussy tiltering
on the back of my chair. Rolly, get down! Her name’s Laura,——for his
mother. I mean I might have done all this, if at that time mother hadn’t
been thrown on her back, and been bedridden ever since. I haven’t said
much about mother yet, but there all the time she was, just as she is
to-day, in her little tidy bed in one corner of the great kitchen,
sweet as a saint, and as patient;——and I had to come and keep house for
father. He never meant that I should lose by it, father didn’t; begged,
borrowed, or stolen, bought or hired, I should have my books, he said:
he’s mighty proud of my learning, though between you and me it’s little
enough to be proud of; but the neighbors think I know ’most as much as
the minister,——and I let ’em think. Well, while Mrs. Devereux was sick I
was over there a good deal,——for if Faith had one talent, it was total
incapacity,——and there had a chance of knowing the stuff that Dan was
made of; and I declare to man ’t would have touched a heart of stone to
see the love between the two. She thought Dan held up the sky, and Dan
thought she _was_ the sky. It’s no wonder,——the risks our men lead can’t
make common-sized women out of their wives and mothers. But I hadn’t been
coming in and out, busying about where Dan was, all that time, without
making any mark; though he was so lost in grief about his mother that he
didn’t take notice of his other feelings, or think of himself at all.
And who could care the less about him for that? It always brings down a
woman to see a man wrapt in some sorrow that’s lawful and tender as it is
large. And when he came and told me what the neighbors said he must do
with Faith, the blood stood still in my heart.

“Ask mother, Dan,” says I; for I couldn’t have advised him. “She knows
best about everything.”

So he asked her.

“I think——I’m sorry to think, for I fear she’ll not make you a good
wife,” said mother, “but that perhaps her love for you will teach her to
be——you’d best marry Faith.”

“But I can’t marry her!” said Dan, half choking; “I don’t want to marry
her,——it——it makes me uncomfortable-like to think of such a thing. I care
for the child plenty——Besides,” said Dan, catching at a bright hope, “I’m
not sure that she’d have me.”

“Have you, poor boy! What else can she do?”

Dan groaned.

“Poor little Faith!” said mother. “She’s so pretty, Dan, and she’s so
young, and she’s pliant. And then how can we tell what may turn up about
her some day? She may be a duke’s daughter yet,——who knows? Think of the
stroke of good-fortune she may give you!”

“But I don’t love her,” said Dan, as a finality.

“Perhaps——It isn’t——You don’t love any one else?”

“No,” said Dan, as a matter of course, and not at all with reflection.
And then, as his eyes went wandering, there came over them a misty look,
just as the haze creeps between you and some object away out at sea,
and he seemed to be sifting his very soul. Suddenly the look swept off
them, and his eyes struck mine, and he turned, not having meant to, and
faced me entirely, and there came such a light into his countenance, such
a smile round his lips, such a red stamped his cheek, and he bent a
little,——and it was just as if the angel of the Lord had shaken his wings
over us in passing, and we both of us knew that here was a man and here
was a woman, each for the other, in life and death; and I just hid my
head in my apron, and mother turned on her pillow with a little moan. How
long that lasted I can’t say, but by and by I heard mother’s voice, clear
and sweet as a tolling bell far away on some fair Sunday morning,——

“The Lord is in his holy temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven: his eyes
behold, his eyelids try the children of men.”

And nobody spoke.

“Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Thou wilt
light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness. For with
thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.”

Then came the hush again, and Dan started to his feet, and began to walk
up and down the room as if something drove him; but, wearying, he stood
and leaned his head on the chimney there. And mother’s voice broke the
stillness anew, and she said,——

“Hath God forgotten to be gracious? His mercy endureth forever. And none
of them that trust in him shall be desolate.”

There was something in mother’s tone that made me forget myself and my
sorrow, and look; and there she was, as she hadn’t been before for six
months, half risen from the bed, one hand up, and her whole face white
and shining with confident faith. Well, when I see all that such trust
has buoyed mother over, I wish to goodness I had it: I take more after
Martha. But never mind, do well here and you’ll do well there, say I.
Perhaps you think it wasn’t much, the quiet and the few texts breathed
through it; but sometimes when one’s soul’s at a white heat, it may be
moulded like wax with a finger. As for me, maybe God hardened Pharaoh’s
heart,——though how that was Pharaoh’s fault I never could see;——but
Dan,——he felt what it was to have a refuge in trouble, to have a great
love always extending over him like a wing; he longed for it; he couldn’t
believe it was his now, he was so suddenly convicted of all sin and
wickedness; and something sprang up in his heart, a kind of holy passion
that he felt to be possible for this great and tender Divine Being; and
he came and fell on his knees by the side of the bed, crying out for
mother to show him the way; and mother, she put her hand on his head and
prayed,——prayed, oh! so beautifully, that it makes the water stand in my
eyes now to remember what she said. But I didn’t feel so then, my heart
and my soul were rebellious, and love for Dan alone kept me under, not
love for God. And in fact, if ever I’d got to heaven then, love for Dan
’d have been my only saving grace; for I was mighty high-spirited, as
a girl. Well, Dan he never made open profession; but when he left the
house, he went and asked Faith to marry him.

Now Faith didn’t care anything about Dan,——except the quiet attachment
that she couldn’t help, from living in the house with him, and he’d
always petted and made much of her, and dressed her like a doll,——he
wasn’t the kind of man to take her fancy; she’d have maybe liked some
slender, smooth-faced chap; but Dan was a black, shaggy fellow, with
shoulders like the cross-tree, and a length of limb like Saul’s, and
eyes set deep, like lamps in caverns. And he had a great, powerful
heart,——and, oh! how it was lost! for she might have won it, she might
have made him love her, since I would have stood wide away and aside for
the sake of seeing him happy. But Faith was one of those that, if they
can’t get what they want, haven’t any idea of putting up with what they
have,——God forgive me, if I am hard on the child! And she couldn’t give
Dan an answer right off, but was loath to think of it, and went flirting
about among the other boys; and Dan, when he saw she wasn’t so easily
gotten, perhaps set more value on her. For Faith, she grew prettier
every day; her great brown eyes were so soft and clear, and had a wide,
sorrowful way of looking at you; and her cheeks, that were usually pale,
blossomed to roses when you spoke to her, her hair drooping over them
dark and silky; and though she was slack and untidy and at loose ends
about her dress, she somehow always seemed like a princess in disguise;
and when she had on anything new,——a sprigged calico and her little
straw bonnet with the pink ribbons and Mrs. Devereux’s black scarf, for
instance,——you’d have allowed that she might have been daughter to the
Queen of Sheba. I don’t know, but I rather think Dan wouldn’t have said
any more to Faith, from various motives, you see, notwithstanding the
neighbors were still remonstrating with him, if it hadn’t been that Miss
Brown——she that lived round the corner there; the town’s well quit of her
now, poor thing!——went to saying the same stuff to Faith, and telling
her all that other folks said. And Faith went home in a passion,——some
of your timid kind nothing ever abashes, and nobody gets to the windward
of them,——and, being perfectly furious, fell to accusing Dan of having
brought her to this, so that Dan actually believed he had, and was cut
to the quick with contrition, and told her that all the reparation he
could make he was waiting and wishing to make, and then there came floods
of tears. Some women seem to have set out with the idea that life’s a
desert for them to cross, and they’ve laid in a supply of water-bags
accordingly, but it’s the meanest weapon! And then, again, there’s men
that are iron, and not to be bent under calamities, that these tears can
twist round your little finger. Well, I suppose Faith concluded ’t was no
use to go hungry because her bread wasn’t buttered on both sides, but she
always acted as if she’d condescended ninety degrees in marrying Dan, and
Dan always seemed to feel that he’d done her a great injury; and there it
was.

I kept in the house for a time; mother was worse,——and I thought the
less Dan saw of me the better; I kind of hoped he’d forget, and find
his happiness where it ought to be. But the first time I saw him, when
Faith had been his wife all the spring, there was the look in his eyes
that told of the ache in his heart. Faith wasn’t very happy herself,
of course, though she was careless; and she gave him trouble,——keeping
company with the young men just as before; and she got into a way of
flying straight to me, if Dan ventured to reprove her ever so lightly;
and stormy nights, when he was gone, and in his long trips, she always
locked up her doors and came over and got into my bed; and she was one
of those that never listened to reason, and it was none so easy for me,
you may suppose.

Things had gone on now for some three years, and I’d about lived in my
books,——I’d tried to teach Faith some, but she wouldn’t go any further
than newspaper stories,——when one day Dan took her and me to sail, and
we were to have had a clam-chowder on the Point, if the squall hadn’t
come. As it was, we’d got to put up with chicken-broth, and it couldn’t
have been better, considering who made it. It was getting on toward the
cool of the May evening, the sunset was round on the other side of the
house, but all the east looked as if the sky had been stirred up with
currant-juice, till it grew purple and dark, and then the two lighthouses
flared out and showed us the lip of froth lapping the shadowy shore
beyond, and I heard father’s voice, and he came in.

There was nothing but the firelight in the room, and it threw about great
shadows, so that at first entering all was indistinct; but I heard a foot
behind father’s, and then a form appeared, and something, I never could
tell what, made a great shiver rush down my back, just as when a creature
is frightened in the dark at what you don’t see; and so, though my soul
was unconscious, my body felt that there was danger in the air. Dan had
risen and lighted the lamp that swings in the chimney, and father first
of all had gone up and kissed mother, and left the stranger standing;
then he turned round, saying,——

“A tough day,——it’s been a tough day; and here’s some un to prove it.
Georgie, hope that pot’s steam don’t belie it, for Mr. Gabriel Verelay
and I want a good supper and a good bed.”

At this, the stranger, still standing, bowed.

“Here’s the one, father,” said I. “But about the bed,——Faith’ll have to
stay here,——and I don’t see,——unless Dan takes him over——”

“That I’ll do,” said Dan.

“All right,” said the stranger, in a voice that you didn’t seem to notice
while he was speaking, but that you remembered afterwards like the ring
of any silver thing that has been thrown down; and he dropped his hat on
the floor and drew near the fireplace, warming hands that were slender
and brown, but shapely as a woman’s. I was taking up the supper; so I
only gave him a glance or two, and saw him standing there, his left hand
extended to the blaze, and his eye resting lightly and then earnestly
on Faith in her pretty sleep, and turning away much as one turns from
a picture. At length I came to ask him to sit by, and at that moment
Faith’s eyes opened.

Faith always woke up just as a baby does, wide and bewildered, and the
fire had flushed her cheeks, and her hair was disordered, and she fixed
her gaze on him as if he had stepped out of her dream, her lips half
parted and then curling in a smile; but in a second he moved off with me,
and Faith slipped down and into the little bedroom.

Well, we didn’t waste many words until father’d lost the edge of his
appetite, and then I told about Faith.

“’F that don’t beat the Dutch!” said father. “Here’s Mr.——Mr.——”

“Gabriel,” said the stranger.

“Yes,——Mr. Gabriel Verelay been served the same trick by the same squall,
only worse and more of it,——knocked off the yacht——What’s that you call
her?”

“La belle Louise.”

“And left for drowned,——if they see him go at all. But he couldn’t ’a’
sinked in that sea, if he’d tried. He kep’ afloat; we blundered into him;
and here he is.”

Dan and I looked round in considerable surprise, for he was dry as an
August leaf.

“O,” said the stranger, coloring, and with the least little turn of his
words, as if he didn’t always speak English, “the good capitain reached
shore, and, finding sticks, he kindled a fire, and we did dry our clothes
until it made fine weather once more.”

“Yes,” said father; “but ’t wouldn’t been quite such fine weather, I
reckon, if this’d gone to the fishes!” And he pushed something across the
table.

It was a pouch with steel snaps, and well stuffed. The stranger colored
again, and held his hand for it, and the snap burst, and great gold
pieces, English coin and very old French ones, rolled about the table,
and father shut his eyes tight; and just then Faith came back and slipped
into her chair. I saw her eyes sparkle as we all reached, laughing and
joking, to gather them; and Mr. Gabriel——we got into the way of calling
him so,——he liked it best——hurried to get them out of sight as if he’d
committed some act of ostentation. And then, to make amends, he threw
off what constraint he had worn in this new atmosphere of ours, and was
so gay, so full of questions and quips and conceits, all spoken in his
strange way, his voice was so sweet, and he laughed so much and so like a
boy, and his words had so much point and brightness, that I could think
of nothing but the showers of colored stars in fireworks. Dan felt it
like a play, sat quiet, but enjoying, and I saw he liked it;——the fellow
had a way of attaching every one. Father was uproarious, and kept calling
out, “Mother, do you hear?——d’you hear _that_, mother?” And Faith, she
was near, taking it all in as a flower does sunshine, only smiling a
little, and looking utterly happy. Then I hurried to clear up, and Faith
sat in the great arm-chair, and father got out the pipes, and you could
hardly see across the room for the wide tobacco-wreaths; and then it
was father’s turn, and he told story after story of the hardships and
the dangers and the charms of our way of living. And I could see Mr.
Gabriel’s cheek blanch, and he would bend forward, forgetting to smoke,
and his breath coming short, and then right himself like a boat after
lurching,——he had such natural ways, and except that he’d maybe been a
spoiled child, he would have had a good heart, as hearts go. And nothing
would do at last but he must stay and live the same scenes for a little;
and father told him ’t wouldn’t pay,——they weren’t so much to go through
with as to tell of,——there was too much prose in the daily life, and too
much dirt, and ’t wa’n’t fit for gentlemen. O, he said, he’d been used to
roughing it,——woodsing, camping and gunning and yachting, ever since he’d
been a free man. He was a Canadian, and had been cruising from the St.
Lawrence to Florida; and now, as his companions would go on without him,
he had a mind to try a bit of coast-life. And could he board here? or
was there any handy place? And father said, there was Dan,——Dan Devereux,
a man that hadn’t his match at oar or helm. And Mr. Gabriel turned
his keen eye and bowed again,——and couldn’t Dan take Mr. Gabriel? And
before Dan could answer, for he’d referred it to Faith, Mr. Gabriel had
forgotten all about it, and was humming a little French song and stirring
the coals with the tongs. And that put father off in a fresh remembrance;
and as the hours lengthened, the stories grew fearful, and he told them
deep into the midnight, till at last Mr. Gabriel stood up.

“No more, good friend,” said he. “But I will have a taste of this life
perilous. And now where is it that I go?”

Dan also stood up.

“My little woman,” said he, glancing at Faith, “thinks there’s a corner
for you, sir.”

“I beg your pardon——” And Mr. Gabriel paused, with a shadow skimming over
his clear dark face.

Dan wondered what he was begging pardon for, but thought perhaps he
hadn’t heard him, so he repeated,——

“My wife,”——nodding over his shoulder at Faith, “she’s my wife,——thinks
there’s a——”

“She’s your wife?” said Mr. Gabriel, his eyes opening and brightening the
way an aurora runs up the sky, and looking first at one and then at the
other, as if he couldn’t understand how so delicate a flower grew on so
thorny a stem.

The red flushed up Dan’s face,——and up mine, too, for the matter of
that,——but in a minute the stranger had dropped his glance.

“And why did you not tell me,” he said, “that I might have found her less
beautiful?”

Then he raised his shoulders, gave her a saucy bow, with his hand on
Dan’s arm,——Dan, who was now too well pleased at having Faith made happy
by a compliment to sift it,——and they went out.

But I was angry enough; and you may imagine I wasn’t much soothed by
seeing Faith, who’d been so die-away all the evening, sitting up before
my scrap of looking-glass, trying in my old coral ear-rings, bowing up my
ribbons, and plaiting and prinking till the clock frightened her into bed.

The next morning, mother, who wasn’t used to such disturbance, was
ill, and I was kept pretty busy tending on her for two or three days.
Faith had insisted on going home the first thing after breakfast, and
in that time I heard no more of anybody,——for father was out with the
night-tides, and, except to ask how mother did, and if I’d seen the stray
from the Lobblelyese again, was too tired for talking when he came back.
That had been——let me see——on a Monday, I think,——yes, on a Monday; and
Thursday evening, as in-doors had begun to tell on me, and mother was so
much improved, I thought I’d run out for a walk along the sea-wall. The
sunset was creeping round everything, and lying in great sheets on the
broad, still river, the children were frolicking in the water, and all
was so gay, and the air was so sweet, that I went lingering along farther
than I’d meant, and by and by who should I see but a couple sauntering
toward me at my own gait, and one of them was Faith. She had on a muslin
with little roses blushing all over it, and she floated along in it as if
she were in a pink cloud, and she’d snatched a vine of the tender young
woodbine as she went, and, throwing it round her shoulders, held the
two ends in one hand like a ribbon, while with the other she swung her
white sunbonnet. She laughed, and shook her head at me, and there, large
as life, under the dark braids dangled my coral ear-rings, that she’d
adopted without leave or license. She’d been down to the lower landing to
meet Dan,——a thing she’d done before——I don’t know when,——and was walking
up with Mr. Gabriel while Dan stayed behind to see to things. I kept them
talking, and Mr. Gabriel was sparkling with fun, for he’d got to feeling
acquainted, and it had put him in high spirits to get ashore at this
hour, though he liked the sea, and we were all laughing, when Dan came
up. Now I must confess I hadn’t fancied Mr. Gabriel over and above; I
suppose my first impression had hardened into a prejudice; and after I’d
fathomed the meaning of Faith’s fine feathers I liked him less than ever.
But when Dan came up, he joined right in, gay and hearty, and liking his
new acquaintance so much, that, thinks I, he must know best, and I’ll let
him look out for his interests himself. It would ’a’ been no use, though,
for Dan to pretend to beat the Frenchman at his own weapons,——and I don’t
know that I should have cared to have him. The older I grow, the less I
think of your mere intellect; throw learning out of the scales, and give
me a great, warm heart,——like Dan’s.

Well, it was getting on in the evening, when the latch lifted, and in ran
Faith. She twisted my ear-rings out of her hair, exclaiming,——

“O Georgie, are you busy? Can’t you perse my ears now?”

“Pierce them yourself, Faith.”

“Well, pierce, then. But I can’t,——you know I can’t. Won’t you now,
Georgie?” And she tossed the ear-rings into my lap.

“Why, Faith,” said I, “how’d you contrive to wear these, if your ears
aren’t——”

“O, I tied them on. Come now, Georgie!”

So I got the ball of yarn and the darning-needle.

“O, not such a big one!” cried she.

“Perhaps you’d like a cambric needle,” said I.

“I don’t want a winch,” she pouted.

“Well, here’s a smaller one. Now kneel down.”

“Yes, but you wait a moment, till I screw up my courage.”

“No need. You can talk, and I’ll take you at unawares.”

So Faith knelt down, and I got all ready.

“And what shall I talk about?” said she. “About Aunt Rhody, or Mr.
Gabriel, or——I’ll tell you the queerest thing, Georgie! Going to now?”

“Do be quiet, Faith, and not keep your head flirting about so!”——for
she’d started up to speak. Then she composed herself once more.

“What was I saying? O, about that! Yes, Georgie, the queerest thing!
You see this evening, when Dan was out, I was sitting talkin’ with Mr.
Gabriel, and he was wondering how I came to be dropped down here, so I
told him all about it. And he was so interested that I went and showed
him the things I had on when Dan found me,——you know they’ve been kept
real nice. And he took them, and looked them over close, admiring them,
and——and——admiring me,——and finally he started, and then held the frock
to the light, and then lifted a little plait, and in the under side of
the belt lining there was a name very finely wrought,——Virginie des
Violets; and he looked at all the others, and in some hidden corner of
every one was the initials of the same name,——V. des V.

“‘That should be your name, Mrs. Devereux,’ says he.

“‘O, no!’ says I. ‘My name’s Faith.’

“Well, and on that he asked, was there no more; and so I took off the
little chain that I’ve always worn and showed him that, and he asked if
there was a face in it, in what we thought was a coin, you know; and I
said, O, it didn’t open; and he turned it over and over, and finally
something snapped, and there _was_ a face,——here, you shall see it,
Georgie.”

And Faith drew it from her bosom, and opened and held it before me; for
I’d sat with my needle poised, and forgetting to strike. And there was
the face indeed, a sad, serious face, dark and sweet, yet the image of
Faith, and with the same mouth,——that so lovely in a woman becomes weak
in a man,——and on the other side there were a few threads of hair, with
the same darkness and fineness as Faith’s hair, and under them a little
picture chased in the gold and enamelled, which from what I’ve read
since I suppose must have been the crest of the Des Violets.

“And what did Mr. Gabriel say then?” I asked, giving it back to Faith,
who put her head into the old position again.

“O, he acted real queer! Talked French, too,——O, so fast! ‘The very man!’
then he cried out. ‘The man himself! His portrait,——I have seen it a
hundred times!’ And then he told me that about a dozen years ago or more,
a ship sailed from——from——I forget the place exactly, somewhere up there
where _he_ came from,——Mr. Gabriel, I mean,——and among the passengers was
this man and his wife, and his little daughter, whose name was Virginie
des Violets, and the ship was never heard from again. But he says that
without a doubt I’m the little daughter and my name is Virginie, though I
suppose every one’ll call me Faith. O, and that isn’t the queerest! The
queerest is, this gentleman,” and Faith lifted her head, “was very rich.
I can’t tell you how much he owned. Lands that you can walk on a whole
day and not come to the end, and ships, and gold. And the whole of it’s
lying idle and waiting for an heir,——and I, Georgie, am the heir.”

And Faith told it with cheeks burning and eyes shining, but yet quite as
if she’d been born and brought up in the knowledge.

“It don’t seem to move you much, Faith,” said I, perfectly amazed,
although I’d frequently expected something of the kind.

“Well, I may never get it, and so on. If I do, I’ll give you a silk
dress and set you up in a bookstore. But here’s a queerer thing
yet. Des Violets is the way Mr. Gabriel’s own name is spelt, and his
father and mine——his mother and——Well, some way or other we’re sort of
cousins. Only think, Georgie! isn’t that——I thought, to be sure, when he
quartered at our house, Dan’d begin to take me to do, if I looked at him
sideways,——make the same fuss that he does if I nod to any of the other
young men.”

“I don’t think Dan speaks before he should, Faith.”

“Why don’t you say Virginie?” says she, laughing.

“Because Faith you’ve always been, and Faith you’ll have to remain, with
us, to the end of the chapter.”

“Well, that’s as it may be. But Dan can’t object now to my going where
I’m a mind to with my own cousin!” And here Faith laid her ear on the
ball of yarn again.

“Hasten, headsman!” said she, out of a novel, “or they’ll wonder where I
am.”

“Well,” I answered, “just let me run the needle through the emery.”

“Yes, Georgie,” said Faith, going back with her memories while I
sharpened my steel, “Mr. Gabriel and I are kin. And he said that the
moment he laid eyes on me he knew I was of different blood from the rest
of the people——”

“What people?” asked I.

“Why, you, and Dan, and all these. And he said he was struck to stone
when he heard I was married to Dan,——I must have been entrapped,——the
courts would annul it,——any one could see the difference between us——”

Here was my moment, and I didn’t spare it, but jabbed the needle into the
ball of yarn, if her ear did lie between them.

“Yes!” says I, “anybody with half an eye can see the difference between
you, and that’s a fact! Nobody’d ever imagine for a breath that you were
deserving of Dan,——Dan, who’s so noble he’d die for what he thought was
right; you, who are so selfish and idle and fickle and——”

And at that Faith burst out crying.

“O, I never expected you’d talk about me so, Georgie!” said she between
her sobs. “How could _I_ tell you were such a mighty friend of Dan’s? And
besides, if ever I was Virginie des Violets, I’m Faith Devereux now, and
Dan’ll resent _any one’s_ speaking so about his wife!”

And she stood up, the tears sparkling like diamonds in her flashing dark
eyes, her cheeks red, and her little fist clinched.

“That’s the right spirit, Faith,” says I, “and I’m glad to see you show
it. And as for this young Canadian, the best thing to do with him is to
send him packing. I don’t believe a word he says; it’s more than likely
nothing but to get into your good graces.”

“But there’s the names,” said she, so astonished that she didn’t remember
she was angry.

“Happened so.”

“O, yes! ‘Happened so’! A likely story! It’s nothing but your envy, and
that’s all!”

“Faith!” says I, for I forgot she didn’t know how close she struck.

“Well,——I mean——There, don’t let’s talk about it any more! How under the
sun am I going to get these ends tied?”

“Come here. There! Now for the other one.”

“No, I sha’n’t let you do that; you hurt me dreadfully, and you got
angry, and took the big needle.”

“I thought you expected to be hurt.”

“I didn’t expect to be stabbed.”

“Well, just as you please. I suppose you’ll go round with one ear-ring.”

“Like a little pig with his ear cropped? No, I shall do it myself. See
there, Georgie!” And she threw a bit of a box into my hands.

I opened it, and there lay inside, on their velvet cushion, a pair of the
prettiest things you ever saw,——a tiny bunch of white grapes, and every
grape a round pearl, and all hung so that they would tinkle together
on their golden stems every time Faith shook her head,——and she had a
cunning little way of shaking it often enough.

“These must have cost a penny, Faith,” said I. “Where’d you get them?”

“Mr. Gabriel gave them to me just now. He went up town and bought them.
And I don’t want him to know that my ears weren’t bored.”

“Mr. Gabriel? And you took them?”

“Of course I took them, and mighty glad to get them.”

“Faith dear,” said I, “don’t you know that you shouldn’t accept presents
from gentlemen, and especially now you’re a married woman, and especially
from those of higher station?”

“But he isn’t higher.”

“You know what I mean. And then, too, he is; for one always takes rank
from one’s husband.”

Faith looked rather downcast at this.

“Yes,” said I; “and pearls and calico——”

“Just because you haven’t got a pair yourself! There, be still! I don’t
want any of your instructions in duty!”

“You ought to put up with a word from a friend, Faith,” said I. “You
always come to me with your grievances. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
You used to like these coral branches of mine; and if you’ll give those
back to Mr. Gabriel, you shall have the coral.”

Well, Faith, she hesitated, standing there trying to muster her mind to
the needle, and it ended by her taking the coral, though I don’t believe
she returned the pearls; but we none of us ever saw them afterwards.

We’d been talking in a pretty low tone, because mother was asleep; and
just as she’d finished the other ear, and a little drop of blood stood
up on it like a live ruby, the door opened and Dan and Mr. Gabriel came
in. There never was a prettier picture than Faith at that moment, and so
the young stranger thought, for he stared at her, smiling and at ease,
just as if she’d been hung in a gallery and he’d bought a ticket. So then
he sat down and repeated to Dan and mother what she’d told me, and he
promised to send for the papers to prove it all. But he never did send
for them,——delaying and delaying, till the summer wore away; and perhaps
there were such papers and perhaps there weren’t. I’ve always thought he
didn’t want his own friends to know where he was. Dan might be a rich
man to-day, if he chose to look them up; but he’d scorch at a slow fire
before he’d touch a copper of it. Father never believed a word about it,
when we recited it again to him.

“So Faith’s come into her fortune, has she?” said he. “Pretty child! She
’a’n’t had so much before sence she fell heir to old Miss Devereux’s best
chany, her six silver spoons, and her surname.”

So the days passed, and the greater part of every one Mr. Gabriel was
dabbling in the water somewhere. There wasn’t a brook within ten miles
that he didn’t empty of trout, for Dan knew the woods as well as the
shores, and he knew the clear nights when the insects can keep free
from the water so that next day the fish rise hungry to the surface;
and so sometimes in the brightest of May noons they’d bring home a
string of those beauties, speckled with little tongues of flame; and
Mr. Gabriel would have them cooked, and make us all taste them,——for we
don’t care much for that sort, down here on the Flats; we should think
we were famished if we had to eat fish. And then they’d lie in wait all
day for the darting pickerel in the little Stream of Shadows above;
and when it came June, up the river he went trolling for bass, and he
used a different sort of bait from the rest,——bass won’t bite much at
clams,——and he hauled in great forty-pounders. And sometimes, in the
afternoons, he took out Faith and me,——for, as Faith would go, whether or
no, I always made it a point to put by everything and go too; and I used
to try and get some of the other girls in, but Mr. Gabriel never would
take them, though he was hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, and was
everybody’s favorite, and it was known all round how he found out Faith,
and that alone made him so popular, that I do believe, if he’d only taken
out naturalization papers, we’d have sent him to General Court. And then
it grew time for the river mackerel, and they used to bring in at sunset
two or three hundred in a shining heap, together with great lobsters,
that looked as if they’d been carved out of heliotrope-stone, and so old
that they were barnacled. And it was so novel to Mr. Gabriel, that he
used to act as if he’d fallen in fairy-land.

After all, I don’t know what we should have done without him that summer;
he always paid Dan or father a dollar a day and the hire of the boat;
and the times were so hard, and there was so little doing, that, but for
this, and packing the barrels of clam-bait, they’d have been idle and
fared sorely. But we’d rather have starved: though, as for that, I’ve
heard father say there never was a time when he couldn’t go out and catch
some sort of fish and sell it for enough to get us something to eat. And
then this Mr. Gabriel, he had such a winning way with him, he was as
quick at wit as a bird on the wing, he had a story or a song for every
point, he seemed to take to our simple life as if he’d been born to it,
and he was as much interested in all our trifles as we were ourselves.
Then, he was so sympathetic, he felt everybody’s troubles, he went to the
city and brought down a wonderful doctor to see mother, and he got her
queer things that helped her more than you’d have thought anything could,
and he went himself and set honeysuckles out all round Dan’s house, so
that before summer was over it was a bower of great sweet blows, and
he had an alms for every beggar, and a kind word for every urchin, and
he followed Dan about as a child would follow some big shaggy dog. He
introduced, too, a lot of new-fangled games; he was what they called
a gymnast, and in feats of rassling there wasn’t a man among them all
but he could stretch as flat as a flounder. And then he always treated.
Everybody had a place for him soon,——even _I_ did; and as for Dan, he’d
have cut his own heart out of his body, if Mr. Gabriel’d had occasion to
use it. He was a different man from any Dan’d ever met before, something
finer, and he might have been better, and Dan’s loyal soul was glad to
acknowledge him master, and I declare I believe he felt just as the
Jacobites in the old songs used to feel for royal Charlie. There are some
men born to rule with a haughty, careless sweetness, and others born to
die for them with stern and dogged devotion.

Well, and all this while Faith wasn’t standing still; she was changing
steadily, as much as ever the moon changed in the sky. I noticed it first
one day when Mr. Gabriel’d caught every child in the region and given
them a picnic in the woods of the Stack-Yard-Gate, and Faith was nowhere
to be seen tiptoeing round every one as she used to do, but I found her
at last standing at the head of the table,——Mr. Gabriel dancing here and
there, seeing to it that all should be as gay as he seemed to be,——quiet
and dignified as you please, and feeling every one of her inches. But
it wasn’t dignity really that was the matter with Faith,——it was just
gloom. She’d brighten up for a moment or two, and then down would fall
the cloud again; she took to long fits of dreaming, and sometimes she’d
burst out crying at any careless word, so that my heart fairly bled for
the poor child,——for one couldn’t help seeing that she’d some secret
unhappiness or other,——and I was as gentle and soothing to her as it’s in
my nature to be. She was in to our house a good deal; she kept it pretty
well out of Dan’s way, and I hoped she’d get over it sooner or later,
and make up her mind to circumstances. And I talked to her a sight about
Dan, praising him constantly before her, though I couldn’t bear to do
it; and finally, one very confidential evening, I told her that I’d been
in love with Dan myself once a little, but I’d seen that he would marry
her, and so had left off thinking about it; for, do you know, I thought
it might make her set more price on him now, if she knew somebody else
had ever cared for him. Well, that did answer awhile: whether she thought
she ought to make it up to Dan, or whether he really did grow more in her
eyes, Faith got to being very neat and domestic and praiseworthy. But
still there was the change, and it didn’t make her any the less lovely.
Indeed, if I’d been a man, I should have cared for her more than ever:
it was like turning a child into a woman: and I really think, as Dan saw
her going about with such a pleasant gravity, her pretty figure moving so
quietly, her pretty face so still and fair, as if she had thoughts and
feelings now, he began to wonder what had come over Faith, and, if she
were really as charming as this, why he hadn’t felt it before; and then,
you know, whether you love a woman or not, the mere fact that she’s your
wife, that her life is sunk in yours, that she’s something for you to
protect, and that your honor lies in doing so, gives you a certain kindly
feeling that might ripen into love any day under sunshine and a south
wall.

       *       *       *       *       *

Blue-fish were about done with, when one day Dan brought in some mackerel
from Boon Island: they hadn’t been in the harbor for some time, though
now there was a probability of their return. So they were going out
when the tide served——the two boys——at midnight for mackerel, and Dan
had heard me wish for the experience so often, a long while ago, that
he said, Why shouldn’t they take the girls? and Faith snatched at the
idea, and with that Mr. Gabriel agreed to fetch me at the hour, and so we
parted. I was kind of sorry, but there was no help for it.

When we started, it was in that clear crystal dark that looks as if you
could see through it forever till you reached infinite things, and we
seemed to be in a great hollow sphere, and the stars were like living
beings who had the night to themselves. Always, when I’m up late, I feel
as if it were something unlawful, as if affairs were in progress which I
had no right to witness, a kind of grand freemasonry. I’ve felt it nights
when I’ve been watching with mother, and there has come up across the
heavens the great caravan of constellations, and a star that I’d pulled
away the curtain on the east side to see came by and by and looked in
at the south window; but I never felt it as I did this night. The tide
was near the full, and so we went slipping down the dark water by the
starlight; and as we saw them shining above us, and then looked down
and saw them sparkling up from beneath,——the stars,——it really seemed
as if Dan’s oars must be two long wings, as if we swam on them through
a motionless air. By and by we were in the island creek, and far ahead,
in a streak of wind that didn’t reach us, we could see a pointed sail
skimming along between the banks, as if some ghost went before to show
us the way; and when the first hush and mystery wore off, Mr. Gabriel
was singing little French songs in tunes like the rise and fall of the
tide. While he sang he rowed, and Dan was gangeing the hooks. At length
Dan took the oars again, and every now and then he paused to let us float
along with the tide as it slacked, and take the sense of the night. And
all the tall grass that edged the side began to wave in a strange light,
and there blew on a little breeze, and over the rim of the world tipped
up a waning moon. If there’d been anything needed to make us feel as if
we were going to find the Witch of Endor, it was this. It was such a
strange moon, pointing such a strange way, with such a strange color, so
remote, and so glassy,——it was like a dead moon, or the spirit of one,
and was perfectly awful.

“She has come to look at Faith,” said Mr. Gabriel; for Faith, who once
would have been nodding here and there all about the boat, was sitting
up pale and sad, like another spirit, to confront it. But Dan and I both
felt a difference.

Mr. Gabriel, he stepped across and went and sat down behind Faith, and
laid his hand lightly on her arm. Perhaps he didn’t mind that he touched
her,——he had a kind of absent air; but if any one had looked at the
nervous pressure of the slender fingers, they would have seen as much
meaning in that touch as in many an embrace; and Faith lifted her face
to his, and they forgot that I was looking at them, and into the eyes
of both there stole a strange, deep smile,——and my soul groaned within
me. It made no odds to me then that the air blew warm off the land from
scented hay-ricks, that the moon hung like some exhumed jewel in the sky,
that all the perfect night was widening into dawn. I saw and felt nothing
but the wretchedness that must break one day on Dan’s head. Should I warn
him? I couldn’t do that. And what then?

The sail was up, we had left the headland and the hills, and when they
furled it and cast anchor we were swinging far out on the back of the
great monster that was frolicking to itself and thinking no more of us
than we do of a mote in the air. Elder Snow, he says that it’s singular
we regard day as illumination and night as darkness,——day that really
hems us in with narrow light and shuts us upon ourselves, night that
sets us free and reveals to us all the secrets of the sky. I thought
of that when one by one the stars melted and the moon became a breath,
and up over the wide grayness crept color and radiance and the sun
himself,——the sky soaring higher and higher, like a great thin bubble of
flaky hues,——and, all about, nothing but the everlasting wash of waters
broke the sacred hush. And it seemed as if God had been with us, and
withdrawing we saw the trail of his splendid garments; and I remembered
the words mother had spoken to Dan once before, and why couldn’t I leave
him in heavenly hands? And then it came into my heart to pray. I knew
I hadn’t any right to pray expecting to be heard; but yet mine would be
the prayer of the humble, and wasn’t Faith of as much consequence as a
sparrow? By and by, as we all sat leaning over the gunwale, the words
of a hymn that I’d heard at camp-meetings came into my mind, and I sang
them out, loud and clear. I always had a good voice, though Dan’d never
heard me do anything with it except hum little low things, putting mother
to sleep; but here I had a whole sky to sing in, and the hymns were
trumpet-calls. And one after another they kept thronging up, and there
was a rush of feeling in them that made you shiver, and as I sang them
they thrilled me through and through. Wide as the way before us was, it
seemed to widen; I felt myself journeying with some vast host towards
the city of God, and its light poured over us, and there was nothing but
joy and love and praise and exulting expectancy in my heart. And when
the hymn died on my lips because the words were too faint and the tune
was too weak for the ecstasy, and when the silence had soothed me back
again, I turned and saw Dan’s lips bitten, and his cheek white, and his
eyes like stars, and Mr. Gabriel’s face fallen forward in his hands, and
he shaking with quick sobs; and as for Faith,——Faith, she had dropped
asleep, and one arm was thrown above her head, and the other lay where it
had slipped from Mr. Gabriel’s loosened grasp. There’s a contagion, you
know, in such things, but Faith was never of the catching kind.

Well, this wasn’t what we’d come for,——turning all out-doors into a
church,——though what’s a church but a place of God’s presence? and for my
part, I never see high blue sky and sunshine without feeling that. And
all of a sudden there came a school of mackerel splashing and darkening
and curling round the boat, after the bait we’d thrown out on anchoring.
’Twould have done you good to see Dan just at that moment; you’d have
realized what it was to have a calling. He started up, forgetting
everything else, his face all flushed, his eyes like coals, his mouth
tight and his tongue silent; and how many hooks he had out I’m sure I
don’t know, but he kept jerking them in by twos and threes, and finally
they bit at the bare barb and were taken without any bait at all, just
as if they’d come and asked to be caught. Mr. Gabriel, he didn’t pay
any attention at first, but Dan called to him to stir himself, and so
gradually he worked back into his old mood; but he was more still and
something sad all the rest of the morning. Well, when we’d gotten about
enough, and they were dying in the boat there, as they cast their scales,
like the iris, we put in-shore; and building a fire, we cooked our own
dinner and boiled our own coffee. Many’s the icy winter night I’ve
wrapped up Dan’s bottle of hot coffee in rolls on rolls of flannel, that
he might drink it hot and strong far out at sea in a wherry at daybreak!

But as I was saying,——all this time, Mr. Gabriel, he scarcely looked
at Faith. At first she didn’t comprehend, and then something swam all
over her face as if the very blood in her veins had grown darker, and
there was such danger in her eye that before we stepped into the boat
again I wished to goodness I had a life-preserver. But in the beginning
the religious impression lasted and gave him great resolutions; and
then strolling off and along the beach, he fell in with some men
there and did as he always did, scraped acquaintance. I verily believe
that these men were total strangers, that he’d never laid eyes on them
before, and after a few words he wheeled about. As he did so, his
glance fell on Faith standing there alone against the pale sky, for the
weather’d thickened, and watching the surf break at her feet. He was
motionless, gazing at her long, and then, when he had turned once or
twice irresolutely, he ground his heel into the sand and went back. The
men rose and wandered on with him, and they talked together for a while,
and I saw money pass; and pretty soon Mr. Gabriel returned, his face
vividly pallid, but smiling, and he had in his hand some little bright
shells that you don’t often find on these Northern beaches, and he said
he had bought them of those men. And all this time he’d not spoken with
Faith, and there was the danger yet in her eye. But nothing came of it,
and I had accused myself of nearly every crime in the Decalogue, and on
the way back we had put up the lines, and Mr. Gabriel had hauled in the
lobster-net for the last time. He liked that branch of the business; he
said it had all the excitement of gambling,——the slow settling downwards,
the fading of the last ripple, the impenetrable depth and shade and the
mystery of the work below, five minutes of expectation, and it might
bring up a scale of the sea-serpent, or the king of the crabs might have
crept in for a nap in the folds, or it might come up as if you’d dredged
for pearls, or it might hold the great backward-crawling lobsters, or a
tangle of sea-weed, or the long yellow locks of some drowned girl,——or
nothing at all. So he always drew in that net, and it needed muscle, and
his was like steel,——not good for much in the long pull, but just for a
breathing could handle the biggest boatman in the harbor. Well,——and we’d
hoisted the sail and were in the creek once more, for the creek was only
to be used at high-water, and I’d told Dan I couldn’t be away from mother
over another tide and so we mustn’t get aground, and he’d told me not to
fret, there was nothing too shallow for us on the coast. “This boat,”
said Dan, “she’ll float in a heavy dew.” And he began singing a song he
liked:——

    “I cast my line in Largo Bay,
      And fishes I caught nine:
    There’s three to boil, and three to fry,
      And three to bait the line.”

And Mr. Gabriel’d never heard it before, and he made him sing it again
and again.

    “The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
      The boatie rows indeed,”

repeated Mr. Gabriel, and he said it was the only song he knew that held
the click of the oar in the rowlock.

The little birds went skimming by us, as we sailed, their breasts upon
the water, and we could see the gunners creeping through the marshes
beside them.

“The wind changes,” said Mr. Gabriel. “The equinox treads close behind
us. Sst! Is it that you do not feel its breath? And you hear nothing?”

“It’s the Soul of the Bar,” said Dan; and he fell to telling us one of
the wild stories that fishermen can tell each other by the lantern,
rocking outside at night in the dory.

The wind was dead east, and now we flew before it, and now we tacked in
it, up and up the winding stream, and always a little pointed sail came
skimming on in suit.

“What sail is that, Dan?” asked I. “It looks like the one that flitted
ahead this morning.”

“It _is_ the one,” said Dan,——for he’d brought up a whole horde of
superstitious memories, and a gloom that had been hovering off and on his
face settled there for good. “As much of a one as that was. It’s no sail
at all. It’s a death-sign. And I’ve never been down here and seen it but
trouble was on its heels. Georgie! there’s two of them!”

We all looked, but it was hidden in a curve, and when it stole in sight
again there _were_ two of them, filmy and faint as spirits’ wings; and
while we gazed they vanished, whether supernaturally or in the mist that
was rising mast-high I never thought, for my blood was frozen as it ran.

“You have fear?” asked Mr. Gabriel,——his face perfectly pale, and his eye
almost lost in darkness. “If it is a phantom, it can do you no harm.”

Faith’s teeth chattered,——I saw them. He turned to her, and as their
look met, a spot of carnation burned into his cheek almost as a brand
would have burned. He seemed to be balancing some point, to be searching
her and sifting her; and Faith half rose, proudly, and pale, as if his
look pierced her with pain. The look was long,——but before it fell, a
glow and sparkle filled the eyes, and over his face there curled the
deep, strange smile of the morning, till the long lids and heavy lashes
dropped and made it sad. And Faith,——she started in a new surprise, the
darkness gathered and crept off her face as cream wrinkles from milk, and
spleen or venom or what-not became absorbed again and lost, and there was
nothing in her glance but passionate forgetfulness. Some souls are like
the white river-lilies,——fixed, yet floating; but Mr. Gabriel had no firm
root anywhere, and was blown about with every breeze, like a leaf on the
flood. His purposes melted and made with his moods.

The wind got round more to the north, the mist fell upon the waters or
blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the
cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was
so busy handling the boat,——and it’s rather risky, you have to wriggle up
the creek so,——that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood
up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it
aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning
against the mast, he stood so, many minutes.

“Dan,” I said, “did your spiritual craft ever hang out a purple pennant?”

“No,” said Dan.

“Well,” says I. And we all saw a little purple ribbon running up the rope
and streaming on the air behind us.

“And why do we not hoist our own?” said Mr. Gabriel, putting on his hat.
And suiting the action to the word, a little green signal curled up and
flaunted above us like a bunch of the weed floating there in the water
beneath and dyeing all the shallows so that they looked like caves of
cool emerald, and wide off and over them the west burned smoulderingly
red like a furnace. Many a time since, I’ve felt the magical color
between those banks and along those meadows, but then I felt none of it;
every wit I had was too awake and alert and fast-fixed in watching.

“Is it that the phantoms can be flesh and blood?” said Mr. Gabriel,
laughingly; and, lifting his arm again, he hailed the foremost.

“Boat ahoy! What names?” said he.

The answer came back on the wind full and round.

“Speed, and Follow.”

“Where from?” asked Dan, with just a glint in his eye: for usually he
knew every boat on the river, but he didn’t know these.

“From the schooner Flyaway, taking in sand over at Black Rocks.”

Then Mr. Gabriel spoke again, as they drew near; but whether he spoke
so fast that I couldn’t understand, or whether he spoke French, I never
knew; and Dan, with some kind of feeling that it was Mr. Gabriel’s
acquaintance, suffered the one we spoke to pass us.

Once or twice Mr. Gabriel had begun some question to Dan about the
approaching weather, but had turned it off again before anybody could
answer. You see he had some little nobility left, and didn’t want the
very man he was going to injure to show him how to do it. Now, however,
he asked him that was steering the Speed by, if it was going to storm.

The man thought it was.

“How is it, then, that your schooner prepares to sail?”

“O, wind’s backed in; we’ll be on blue water before the gale breaks, I
reckon, and then beat off where there’s plenty of sea-room.”

“But she shall make shipwreck!”

“‘Not if the court know herself, and he think she do,’” was the reply
from another, as they passed.

Somehow I began to hate myself, I was so full of poisonous suspicions.
How did Mr. Gabriel know the schooner prepared to sail? And this man,
could he tell boom from bowsprit? I didn’t believe it; he had the hang of
the up-river folks. But there stood Mr. Gabriel, so quiet and easy, his
eyelids down, and he humming an underbreath of song; and there sat Faith,
so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would
brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression
in Mr. Gabriel’s face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids
were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed and quenched in
his eye like a beating pulse.

We had reached the draw, it was lifted for the Speed, she had passed, and
the wind was in her sail once more. Yet, somehow, she hung back. And then
I saw that the men in her were of those with whom Mr. Gabriel had spoken
at noon. Dan’s sail fell slack, and we drifted slowly through, while he
poled us along with an oar.

“Look out, Georgie!” said Dan, for he thought I was going to graze my
shoulder upon the side there. I looked; and when I turned again, Mr.
Gabriel was rising up from some earnest and hurried sentence to Faith.
And Faith, too, was standing, standing and swaying with indecision, and
gazing away out before her,——so flushed and so beautiful,——so loath and
so willing. Poor thing! poor thing! as if her rising in itself were not
the whole!

Mr. Gabriel stepped across the boat, stooped a minute, and then also took
an oar. How perfect he was, as he stood there that moment!——perfect like
a statue, I mean,——so slender, so clean-limbed, his dark face pale to
transparency in the green light that filtered through the draw! and then
a ray from the sunset came creeping over the edge of the high fields and
smote his eyes sidelong so that they glowed like jewels, and he with his
oar planted firmly hung there bending far back with it, completely full
of strength and grace.

“It is not the _bateaux_ in the rapids,” said he.

“What are you about?” asked Dan, with sudden hoarseness. “You are pulling
the wrong way!”

Mr. Gabriel laughed, and threw down his oar, and stepped back again; gave
his hand to Faith, and half led, half lifted her, over the side, and into
the Speed, followed, and never looked behind him. They let go something
they had held, the Speed put her nose in the water and sprinkled us with
spray, plunged, and dashed off like an arrow.

It was like him,——daring and insolent coolness! Just like him! Always
the soul of defiance! None but one so reckless and impetuous as he would
have dreamed of flying into the teeth of the tempest in that shell of a
schooner. But he was mad with love, and they——there wasn’t a man among
them but was the worse for liquor.

For a moment Dan took it, as Mr. Gabriel had expected him to do, as a
joke, and went to trim the boat for racing, not meaning they should
reach town first. But I——I saw it all.

“Dan!” I sung out, “save her! She’s not coming back! They’ll make for the
schooner at Black Rocks! O Dan, he’s taken her off!”

Now one whose intelligence has never been trained, who shells his five
wits and gets rid of the pods as best he can, mayn’t be so quick as
another, but like an animal, he feels long before he sees; and a vague
sense of this had been upon Dan all day. Yet now he stood thunderstruck;
and the thing went on before his very eyes. It was more than he could
believe at once,——and perhaps his first feeling was, Why should he
hinder? And then the flood fell. No thought of his loss,——though loss it
wa’n’t,——only of his friend,——of such stunning treachery, that, if the
sun fell hissing into the sea at noon, it would have mattered less,——only
of _that_ loss that tore his heart out with it.

“Gabriel!” he shouted,——“Gabriel!” And his voice was heart-rending. I
know that Mr. Gabriel felt it, for he never turned nor stirred.

Then I don’t know what came over Dan: a blind rage swelling in his heart
seemed to make him larger in every limb; he towered like a flame. He
sprang to the tiller, but, as he did so, saw with one flash of his eye
that Mr. Gabriel had unshipped the rudder and thrown it away. He seized
an oar to steer with in its place; he saw that they, in their ignorance
fast edging on the flats, would shortly be aground; more fisherman than
sailor, he knew a thousand tricks of boat-craft that they had never heard
of. We flew, we flew through cloven ridges, we became a wind ourselves,
and while I tell it he was beside them, had gathered himself as if to
leap the chasm between time and eternity, and had landed among them in
the Speed. The wherry careened with the shock and the water poured into
her, and she flung headlong and away as his foot spurned her. Heaven
knows why she didn’t upset, for I thought of nothing but the scene before
me as I drifted off from it. I shut the eyes in my soul now, that I
mayn’t see that horrid scuffle twice. Mr. Gabriel, he rose, he turned.
If Dan was the giant beside him, he himself was so well-knit, so supple,
so adroit, that his power was like the blade in the hand. Dan’s strength
was lying round loose, but Mr. Gabriel’s was trained, it hid like springs
of steel between brain and wrist, and from him the clap fell with the
bolt. And then, besides, Dan did not love Faith, and he did love Gabriel.
Any one could see how it would go. I screamed. I cried, “Faith! Faith!”
And some natural instinct stirred in Faith’s heart, for she clung to Mr.
Gabriel’s arm to pull him off from Dan. But he shook her away like rain.
Then such a mortal weakness took possession of me that I saw everything
black, and when it was clean gone, I looked, and they were locked in
each other’s arms, fierce, fierce and fell, a death-grip. They were
staggering to the boat’s edge: only this I saw, that Mr. Gabriel was
inside: suddenly the helmsman interposed with an oar, and broke their
grasps. Mr. Gabriel reeled away, free, for a second; then, the passion,
the fury, the hate in his heart feeding his strength as youth fed the
locks of Samson, he darted, and lifted Dan in his two arms and threw him
like a stone into the water. Stiffened to ice, I waited for Dan to rise;
the other craft, the Follow, skimmed between us, and one man managing her
that she shouldn’t heel, the rest drew Dan in,——it’s not the depth of two
foot there,——tacked about, and after a minute came alongside, seized our
painter, and dropped him gently into his own boat. Then——for the Speed
had got afloat again——the thing stretched her two sails wing and wing,
and went ploughing up a great furrow of foam before her.

I sprang to Dan. He was not senseless, but in a kind of stupor: his
head had struck the fluke of a half-sunk anchor and it had stunned him,
but as the wound bled he recovered slowly and opened his eyes. Ah, what
misery was in them! I turned to the fugitives. They were yet in sight,
Mr. Gabriel sitting and seeming to adjure Faith, whose skirts he held;
but she stood, and her arms were outstretched, and, pale as a foam-wreath
her face, and piercing as a night-wind her voice, I heard her cry, “O
Georgie! Georgie!” It was too late for her to cry or to wring her hands
now. She should have thought of that before. But Mr. Gabriel rose and
drew her down, and hid her face in his arms and bent over it; and so they
fled up the basin and round the long line of sand, and out into the gloom
and the curdling mists.

I bound up Dan’s head. I couldn’t steer with an oar,——that was out of
the question,——but, as luck would have it, could row tolerably; so I got
down the little mast, and at length reached the wharves. The town-lights
flickered up in the darkness and flickered back from the black rushing
river, and then out blazed the great mills; and as I felt along, I
remembered times when we’d put in by the tender sunset, as the rose
faded out of the water and the orange ebbed down the west, and one by one
the sweet evening-bells chimed forth, so clear and high, and each with a
different tone, that it seemed as if the stars must flock, tinkling, into
the sky. And here were the bells ringing out again, ringing out of the
gray and the gloom, dull and brazen, as if they rang from some cavern of
shadows, or from the mouth of hell,——but no, _that_ was down river! Well,
I made my way, and the men on the landing took up Dan, and helped him in
and got him on my little bed, and no sooner there than the heavy sleep
with which he had struggled fell on him like lead.

The story flew from mouth to mouth, the region rang with it; nobody had
any need to add to it, or to make it out a griffin or a dragon that had
gripped Faith and carried her off in his talons. But everybody declared
that those boats could be no ship’s yawls at all, but must belong to
parties from up river camping out on the beach, and that a parcel of such
must have gone sailing with some of the hands of a sand-droger: there was
one in the stream now, that had got off with the tide, said the Jerdan
boys who’d been down there that afternoon, though there was no such
name as “Flyaway” on her stern, and they were waiting for the master of
her, who’d gone off on a spree,——a dare-devil fellow, that used to run
a smuggler between Bordeaux and Bristol, as they’d heard say: and all
agreed that Mr. Gabriel could never have had to do with them before that
day, or he’d have known what a place a sand-droger would be for a woman;
and everybody made excuses for Gabriel, and everybody was down on Faith.
So there things lay. It was raw and chill when the last neighbor left us,
the sky was black as a cloak, not a star to be seen, the wind had edged
back to the east again and came in wet and wild from the sea and fringed
with its thunder. O, poor little Faith, what a night! what a night for
her!

I went back and sat down by Dan, and tried to keep his head cool. Father
was up walking the kitchen floor till late, but at length he lay down
across the foot of mother’s bed, as if expecting to be called. The lights
were put out, there was no noise in the town, every one slept,——every
one, except they watched like me, on that terrible night. No noise in
the town, did I say? Ah, but there was! It came creeping round the
corners, it poured rushing up the street, it rose from everywhere,——a
voice, a voice of woe, the heavy booming rote of the sea. I looked out,
but it was pitch-dark, light had forsaken the world, we were beleaguered
by blackness. It grew colder, as if one felt a fog fall, and the wind,
mounting slowly, now blew a gale. It eddied in clouds of dead and
whirling leaves, and sent big torn branches flying aloft; it took the
house by the four corners and shook it to loosening the rafters, and I
felt the chair rock under me; it rumbled down the chimney as if it would
tear the life out of us. And with every fresh gust of the gale the rain
slapped against the wall, the rain that fell in rivers, and went before
the wind in sheets; and sheltered as I was, the torrents seemed to pour
over me like cataracts, and every drop pierced me like a needle, and
I put my fingers in my ears to shut out the howl of the wind and the
waves. I couldn’t keep my thoughts away from Faith. O, poor girl, this
wasn’t what she’d expected! As plainly as if I were aboard-ship I felt
the scene, the hurrying feet, the slippery deck, the hoarse cries, the
creaking cordage, the heaving and plunging and straining, and the wide
wild night. And I was beating off those dreadful lines with them, two
dreadful lines of white froth through the blackness, two lines where
the horns of breakers guard the harbor,——all night long beating off the
lee with them, my life in my teeth, and chill, blank, shivering horror
before me. My whole soul, my whole being, was fixed in that one spot,
that little vessel driving on the rocks: it seemed as if a madness took
possession of me, I reeled as I walked, I forefelt the shivering shock,
I waited till she should strike. And then I thought I heard cries, and
I ran out in the storm, and down upon the causey, but nothing met me
but the hollow night and the roaring sea and the wind. I came back, and
hurried up and down and wrung my hands in an agony. Pictures of summer
nights flashed upon me and faded,——where out of deep blue vaults the
stars hung like lamps, great and golden,——or where soft films just hazing
heaven caught the rays till all above gleamed like gauze faintly powdered
and spangled with silver,——or heavy with heat, slipping over silent
waters, through scented airs, under purple skies. And then storms rolled
in and rose before my eyes, distinct for a moment, and breaking,——such
as I’d seen them from the Shoals in broad daylight, when tempestuous
columns scooped themselves up from the green gulfs and shattered in foam
on the shuddering rock,——ah! but that was day, and this was midnight
and murk!——storms as I’d heard tell of them off Cape Race, when great
steamers went down with but one cry, and the waters crowded them out of
sight,——storms where, out of the wilderness of waves that far and wide
wasted white around, a single one came ploughing on straight to the
mark, gathering its grinding masses mast-high, poising, plunging, and
swamping and crashing them into bottomless pits of destruction,——storms
where waves toss and breakers gore, where, hanging on crests that slip
from under, reefs impale the hull, and drowning wretches cling to the
crags with stiffening hands, and the sleet ices them, and the spray, and
the sea lashes and beats them with great strokes and sucks them down to
death; and right in the midst of it all there burst a gun,——one, another,
and no more. “O Faith! Faith!” I cried again, and I ran and hid my head
in the bed.

How long did I stay so? An hour, or maybe two. Dan was still dead with
sleep, but mother had no more closed an eye than I. There was no rain
now, the wind had fallen, the dark had lifted; I looked out once more,
and could just see dimly the great waters swinging in the river from
bank to bank. I drew the bucket fresh, and bound the cloths cold on
Dan’s head again. I hadn’t a thought in my brain, and I fell to counting
the meshes in the net that hung from the wall, but in my ears there was
the everlasting rustle of the sea and shore. It grew clearer,——it got
to being a universal gray; there’d been no sunrise, but it was day. Dan
stirred,——he turned over heavily; then he opened his eyes wide and looked
about him.

“I’ve had such a fright!” he said. “Georgie! is that you?”

With that it swept over him afresh, and he fell back. In a moment or two
he tried to rise, but he was weak as a child. He contrived to keep on his
elbow a moment, though, and to give a look out of the window.

“It came on to blow, didn’t it?” he asked; but there he sank down again.

“I can’t stay so!” he murmured soon. “I can’t stay so! Here,——I must tell
you. Georgie, get out the spy-glass, and go up on the roof and look over.
I’ve had a dream, I tell you! I’ve had a dream. Not that either,——but
it’s just stamped on me! It was like a storm,——and I dreamed that that
schooner——the Flyaway——had parted. And the half of her’s crashed down
just as she broke, and Faith and that man are high up on the bows in the
middle of the South Breaker! Make haste, Georgie! Christ! make haste!”

I flew to the drawers and opened them, and began to put the spy-glass
together. Suddenly he cried out again,——

“O, here’s where the fault was! What right had I ever to marry the child,
not loving her? I bound her! I crushed her! I stifled her! If she lives,
it is my sin; if she dies, I murder her!”

He hid his face, as he spoke, so that his voice came thick, and great
choking groans rent their way up from his heart.

All at once, as I looked up, there stood mother, in her long white gown,
beside the bed, and bending over and taking Dan’s hot head in her two
hands.

“Behold, He cometh with clouds!” she whispered.

It always did seem to me as if mother had the imposition of
hands,——perhaps every one feels just so about their mother,——but only her
touch always lightens an ache for me, whether it’s in the heart or the
head.

“O Aunt Rhody,” said Dan, looking up in her face with his distracted
eyes, “can’t you help me?”

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help,”
said mother.

“There’s no help there!” called Dan. “There’s no God there! He wouldn’t
have let a little child run into her damnation!”

“Hush, hush, Dan!” murmured mother. “Faith never can have been at sea in
such a night as this, and not have felt God’s hand snatching her out of
sin. If she lives, she’s a changed woman; and if she dies, her soul is
whitened and fit to walk with saints. Through much tribulation.”

“Yes, yes,” muttered father, in the room beyond, spitting on his hands,
as if he were going to take hold of the truth by the handle,——“it’s best
to clean up a thing with the first spot, and not wait for it to get all
rusty with crime.”

“And he!” said Dan,——“and he,——that man,——Gabriel!”

    “Between the saddle and the ground
    If mercy’s asked, mercy’s found,”

said I.

“Are you there yet, Georgie?” he cried, turning to me. “Here! I’ll go
myself!” But he only stumbled and fell on the bed again.

“In all the terror and the tempest of these long hours,——for there’s
been a fearful storm, though you haven’t felt it,” said mother,——“in
all that, Mr. Gabriel can’t have slept. But at first it must have been
that great dread appalled him, and he may have been beset with sorrow.
He’d brought her to this. But at last, for he’s no coward, he has looked
death in the face and not flinched; and the danger, and the grandeur
there is in despair, have lifted his spirit to great heights,——heights
found now in an hour, but which in a whole life long he never would have
gained,——heights from which he has seen the light of God’s face and been
transfigured in it,——heights where the soul dilates to a stature it can
never lose. O Dan, there’s a moment, a moment when the dross strikes off,
and the impurities, and the grain sets, and there comes out the great
white diamond! For by grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of
yourselves, it is the gift of God,——of Him that maketh the seven stars
and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning. O, I _will_
believe that Mr. Gabriel hadn’t any need to grope as we do, but that
suddenly he saw the Heavenly Arm and clung to it, and the grasp closed
round him, and death and hell can have no power over him now! Dan, poor
boy, is it better to lie in the earth with the ore than to be forged in
the furnace and beaten to a blade fit for the hands of archangels?”

And mother stopped, trembling like a leaf.

I’d been wiping and screwing the glass, and I’d waited a breath, for
mother always talked so like a preacher; but when she’d finished, after a
second or two Dan looked up, and said, as if he’d just come in,——

“Aunt Rhody, how come you out of bed?”

And then mother, she got upon the bed, and she took Dan’s head on her
breast and fell to stroking his brows, laying her cool palms on his
temples and on his eyelids, as once I’d have given my ears to do,——and I
slipped out of the room.

O, I hated to go up those stairs, to mount that ladder, to open the
scuttle! And once there, I waited and waited before I dared to look. The
night had unnerved me. At length I fixed the glass. I swept the broad
swollen stream, to the yellowing woods, and over the meadows, where a
pale transient beam crept under and pried up the haycocks,——the smoke
that began to curl from the chimneys and fall as soon,——the mists blowing
off from Indian Hill, but brooding blue and dense down, the turnpike, and
burying the red spark of the moon, that smothered like a half-dead coal
in her ashes,——anywhere, anywhere but that spot! I don’t know why it was,
but I couldn’t level the glass there,——my arm would fall, my eye haze.
Finally I brought it round nearer and tried again. Everywhere, as far as
your eye could reach, the sea was yeasty and white with froth, and great
streaks of it were setting up the inky river, and against it there were
the twin lighthouses quivering their little yellow rays as if to mock
the dawn, and far out on the edge of day the great light at the Isles of
Shoals blinked and blinked, crimson and gold, fainter and fainter, and
lost at last. It was no use, I didn’t dare point it, my hand trembled so
I could see nothing plain, when suddenly an engine went thundering over
the bridge and startled me into stillness. The tube slung in my hold and
steadied against the chimney, and there——What was it in the field? what
ghastly picture?

The glass crashed from my hand, and I staggered shrieking down the ladder.

The sound wasn’t well through my lips, when the door slammed, and Dan had
darted out of the house and to the shore. I after him. There was a knot
sitting and standing round there in the gray, shivering, with their hands
in their pockets and their pipes set in their teeth; but the gloom was on
them as well, and the pipes went out between the puffs.

“Where’s Dennis’s boat?” Dan demanded, as he strode.

“The six-oar’s all the one not——”

“The six-oar I want. Who goes with me?”

There wasn’t a soul in the ward but would have followed Dan’s lead to
the end of the world and jumped off; and before I could tell their names
there were three men on the thwart, six oars in the air, Dan stood in the
bows, a word from him, and they shot away.

I watched while I could see, and then in and up to the attic, forgetting
to put mother in her bed, forgetting all things but the one. And there
lay the glass broken. I sat awhile with the pieces in my hand, as if I’d
lost a kingdom; then down, and mechanically put things to rights, and
made mother comfortable,——and she’s never stood on her feet from that day
to this. At last I seated myself before the fire, and stared into it to
blinding.

“Won’t some one lend you a glass, Georgie?” said mother.

“Of course they will!” I cried,——for, you see, I hadn’t a wit of my
own,——and I ran out.

There’s a glass behind every door in the street, you should know, and
there’s no day in the year that you’ll go by and not see one stretching
from some roof where the heart of the house is out on the sea. O,
sometimes I think all the romance of the town is clustered down here on
the Flats and written in pale cheeks and starting eyes! But what’s the
use? After one winter, one, I gave mine away, and never got another. It’s
just an emblem of despair. Look, and look again, and look till your soul
sinks, and the thing you want never crosses it; but you’re down in the
kitchen stirring a porridge, or you’re off at a neighbor’s asking the
news, and somebody shouts at you round the corner, and there, black and
dirty and dearer than gold, she lies between the piers.

All the world was up on their house-tops spying, that morning, but there
was nobody would keep their glass while I had none; so I went back armed,
and part of it all I saw, and part of it father told me.

I waited till I thought they were ’most across, and then I rubbed the
lens. At first I saw nothing, and I began to quake with a greater fear
than any that had yet taken root in me. But with the next moment there
they were, pulling close up. I shut my eyes for a flash with some kind
of a prayer that was most like an imprecation, and when I looked again
they had dashed over and dashed over, taking the rise of the long
roll, and were in the midst of the South Breaker. O God! that terrible
South Breaker! The oars bent lithe as willow-switches, a moment they
skimmed on the caps, a moment were hid in the snow of the spray. Dan,
red-shirted, still stood there, his whole soul on the aim before him,
like that of some leaper flying through the air; he swayed to the stroke,
he bowed, he rose, perfectly balanced, and flexile as the wave. The
boat behaved beneath their hands like a live creature: she bounded so
that you almost saw the light under her; her whole stem lifted itself
slowly out of the water, caught the back of a roller and rode over upon
the next; the very things that came rushing in with their white rage to
devour her bent their necks and bore her up like a bubble. Constantly
she drew nearer that dark and shattered heap up to which the fierce surf
raced, and over which it leaped. And there all the time, all the time,
they had been clinging, far out on the bowsprit, those two figures, her
arms close-knit about him, he clasping her with one, the other twisted
in the hawser whose harsh thrilling must have filled their ears like an
organ-note as it swung them to and fro,——clinging to life,——clinging to
each other more than to life. The wreck scarcely heaved with the stoutest
blow of the tremendous surge; here and there, only, a plank shivered off
and was bowled on and thrown high upon the beach beside fragments of
beams broken and bruised to a powder; it seemed to be as firmly planted
there as the breaker itself. Great feathers of foam flew across it, great
waves shook themselves thin around it and veiled it in shrouds, and with
their every breath the smothering sheets dashed over them,——the two.
And constantly the boat drew nearer, as I said; they were almost within
hail; Dan saw her hair streaming on the wind; he waited only for the
long wave. On it came, that long wave,——oh! I can see it now!——plunging
and rearing and swelling, a monstrous billow, sweeping and swooping and
rocking in. Its hollows gaped with slippery darkness, it towered and sent
the scuds before its trembling crest, breaking with a mighty rainbow as
the sun burst forth, it fell in a white blindness everywhere, rushed
seething up the sand,——and the bowsprit was bare!——

When father came home, the rack had driven down the harbor and left clear
sky; it was near nightfall; they’d been searching the shore all day,——to
no purpose. But that rainbow,——I always took it for a sign. Father was
worn out, yet he sat in the chimney-side, cutting off great quids and
chewing and thinking and sighing. At last he went and wound up the
clock,——it was the stroke of twelve,——and then he turned to me and said,——

“Dan sent you this, Georgie. He hailed a pilot-boat, and’s gone to the
Cape to join the fall fleet to the fish’ries. And he sent you this.”

It was just a great hand-grip to make your nails purple, but there was
heart’s-blood in it. See, there’s the mark to-day.

So there was Dan off in the Bay of Chaleur. ’Twas the best place for him.
And I went about my work once more. There was a great gap in my life, but
I tried not to look at it. I durstn’t think of Dan, and I wouldn’t think
of them,——the two. Always in such times it’s as if a breath had come and
blown across the pool and you could see down its dark depths and into the
very bottom, but time scums it all over again. And I tell you it’s best
to look trouble in the face; if you don’t you’ll have more of it. So I
got a lot of shoes to bind, and what part of my spare time I wa’n’t at
my books the needle flew. But I turned no more to the past than I could
help, and the future trembled too much to be seen.

Well, the two months dragged away, it got to be Thanksgiving week, and at
length the fleet was due. I mind me I made a great baking that week; and
I put brandy into the mince for once, instead of vinegar and dried-apple
juice,——and there were the fowls stuffed and trussed on the shelf,——and
the pumpkin-pies like slices of split gold,——and the cranberry-tarts,
plats of crimson and puffs of snow,——and I was brewing in my mind a
right-royal red Indian pudding to come out of the oven smoking hot and be
soused with thick clots of yellow cream,——when one of the boys ran in and
told us the fleet’d got back, but no Dan with it,——he’d changed over to a
fore-and-after, and wouldn’t be home at all, but was to stay down in the
Georges all winter, and he’d sent us word. Well, the baking went to the
dogs, or the Thanksgiving beggars, which is the same thing.

Then days went by, as days will, and it was well into the New Year.
I used to sit there at the window, reading,——but the lines would run
together, and I’d forget what ’twas all about, and gather no sense, and
the image of the little fore-and-after, the Feather, raked in between
the leaves, and at last I had to put all that aside; and then I sat
stitching, stitching, but got into a sad habit of looking up and looking
out each time I drew the thread. I felt it was a shame of me to be so
glum, and mother missed my voice; but I could no more talk than I could
have given conundrums to King Solomon, and as for singing——O, I used to
long so for just a word from Dan!

We’d had dry fine weeks all along, and father said he’d known we should
have just such a season, because the goose’s breast-bone was so white;
but St. Valentine’s day the weather broke, broke in a chain of storms
that the September gale was a whisper to. Ah, it was a dreadful winter,
that! You’ve surely heard of it. It made forty widows in one town. Of the
dead that were found on Prince Edward’s Island’s shores there were four
corpses in the next house yonder, and two in the one behind. And what
waiting and watching and cruel pangs of suspense for them that couldn’t
have even the peace of certainty! And I was one of those.

The days crept on, I say, and got bright again; no June days ever
stretched themselves to half such length; there was perfect stillness in
the house,——it seemed to me that I counted every tick of the clock. In
the evenings the neighbors used to drop in and sit mumbling over their
fearful memories till the flesh crawled on my bones. Father, then, he
wanted cheer, and he’d get me to singing “Caller Herrin’.” Once, I’d sung
the first part, but as I reached the lines,——

    “When ye were sleepin’ on your pillows,
    Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows
    Darklin’ as they face the billows,
    A’ to fill our woven willows,”——

as I reached those lines, my voice trembled so’s to shake the tears out
of my eyes, and Jim Jerdan took it up himself and sung it through for me
to words of his own invention. He was always a kindly fellow, and he
knew a little how the land lay between me and Dan.

“When I was down in the Georges,” said Jim Jerdan——

“You? When was you down there?” asked father.

“Well,——once I was. There’s worse places.”

“Can’t tell me nothing about the Georges,” said father. “’Ta’n’t the
rivers of Damascus exactly, but ’ta’n’t the Marlstrom neither.”

“Ever ben there, Cap’n?”

“A few. Spent more nights under cover roundabouts than Georgie’ll have
white hairs in her head,——for all she’s washing the color out of her eyes
now.”

You see, father knew I set by my hair,——for in those days I rolled it
thick as a cable, almost as long, black as that cat’s back,——and he
thought he’d touch me up a little.

“Wash the red from her cheek and the light from her look, and she’ll
still have the queen’s own tread,” said Jim.

“If Loisy Currier’d heern that, you’d wish your cake was dough,” says
father.

“I’ll resk it,” says Jim. “Loisy knows who’s second choice, as well as if
you told her.”

“But what about the Georges, Jim?” I asked; for though I hated to hear, I
could listen to nothing else.

“Georges? O, not much! Just like any other place.”

“But what do you do down there?”

“Do? Why, we fish,——in the pleasant weather.”

“And when it’s not pleasant?”

“O, then we make things taut, hoist fores’l, clap the hellum into the
lee becket, and go below and amuse ourselves.”

“How?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard it all a hundred times.

“One way ’n’ another. Pipes, and mugs, and poker, if it a’n’t too rough;
and if it is, we just bunk and snooze till it gets smooth.”

“Why, Jim,——how do you know when that is?”

“Well, you can jedge,——’f the pipe falls out of your pocket and don’t
light on the ceiling.”

“And who’s on deck?”

“There’s no one on deck. There’s no danger, no trouble, no nothing. Can’t
drive ashore, if you was to try: hundred miles off, in the first place.
Hatches are closed, she’s light as a cork, rolls over and over just like
any other log in the water, and there can’t a drop get into her, if she
turns bottom-side up.”

“But she never can right herself!”

“Can’t she? You just try her. Why, I’ve known ’em to keel over and rake
bottom and bring up the weed on the topmast. I tell you now! there was
one time we knowed she’d turned a somerset, pretty well. Why? Because,
when it cleared and we come up, there was her two masts broke short off!”

And Jim went home thinking he’d given me a night’s sleep. But it was cold
comfort; the Georges seemed to me a worse place than the Hellgate. And
mother she kept murmuring, “He layeth the beams of His chambers in the
waters, His pavilion round about Him is dark waters and thick clouds of
the skies.” And I knew by that she thought it pretty bad.

So the days went in cloud and wind. The owners of the Feather’d been
looking for her a month and more, and there were strange kind of rumors
afloat; and nobody mentioned Dan’s name, unless they tripped. I went
glowering like a wild thing. I knew I’d never see Dan now nor hear his
voice again, but I hated the Lord that had done it, and I made my heart
like the nether millstone. I used to try and get out of folks’s sight;
and roaming about the back streets one day, as the snow went off, I
stumbled on Miss Catharine. “Old Miss Catharine” everybody called her,
though she was but a pauper, and had black blood in her veins. Eighty
years had withered her,——a little woman at best, and now bent so that her
head and shoulders hung forward and she couldn’t lift them, and she never
saw the sky. Her face to the ground as no beast’s face is turned even,
she walked with a cane, and fixing it every few steps she would throw
herself back, and so get a glimpse of her way and go on. I looked after
her, and for the first time in weeks my heart ached for somebody beside
myself. The next day mother sent me with a dish to Miss Catharine’s
room, and I went in and sat down. I didn’t like her at first; she’d got
a way of looking sidelong that gave her an evil air; but soon she tilted
herself backward, and I saw her face,——such a happy one!

“What’s the matter of ye, honey?” said she. “D’ye read your Bible?”

Read my Bible!

“Is that what makes you happy, Miss Catharine?” I asked.

“Well, I can’t read much myself,——I don’t know the letters,” says she;
“but I’ve got the blessed promises in my heart.”

“Do you want me to read to you?”

“No, not to-day. Next time you come, maybe.”

So I sat awhile and listened to her little humming voice, and we fell to
talking about mother’s ailments, and she said how fine it would be, if we
could only afford to take mother to Bethesda.

“There’s no angel there now,” said I.

“I know it, dear,——but then——there might be, you know. At any rate,
there’s always the living waters running to make us whole: I often think
of that.”

“And what else do you think of, Miss Catharine?”

“Me?” said she. “O, I ha’n’t got no husband nor no child to think about
and hope for, and so I think of myself, and what I should like, honey.
And sometimes I remember them varses,——here! you read ’em now,——Luke
xiii. 11.”

So I read:——

“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen
years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And
when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, ‘Woman,
thou art loosed from thine infirmity.’ And he laid his hands on her: and
immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”

“Ay, honey, I see that all as if it was me. And I think, as I’m setting
here, What if the latch should lift, and the gracious stranger should
come in, his gown a-sweepin’ behind him and a-sweet’nin’ the air, and
he should look down on me with his heavenly eyes, and he should smile,
and lay his hands on my head, warm,——and I say to myself, ‘Lord, I am
not worthy,’——and he says, ‘Miss Catharine, thou art loosed from thine
infirmity!’ And the latch lifts as I think, and I wait,——but it’s not
Him.”

Well, when I went out of that place I wasn’t the same girl that had gone
in. My will gave way; I came home and took up my burden and was in peace.
Still I couldn’t help my thoughts,——and they ran perpetually to the sea.
I hadn’t need to go up on the house-tops, for I didn’t shut my eyes but
there it stretched before me. I stirred about the rooms and tried to make
them glad once more; but I was thin and blanched as if I’d been rising
from a fever. Father said it was the salt air I wanted; and one day he
was going out for frost-fish, and he took me with him, and left me and
my basket on the sands while he was away. It was this side of the South
Breaker that he put me out, but I walked there; and where the surf was
breaking in the light, I went and sat down and looked over it. I could do
that now.

There was the Cape sparkling miles and miles across the way, unconcerned
that he whose firm foot had rung last on its flints should ring there
no more; there was the beautiful town lying large and warm along the
river; here gay craft went darting about like gulls, and there up the
channel sped a larger one, with all her canvas flashing in the sun, and
shivering a little spritsail in the shadow, as she went; and fawning in
upon my feet came the foam from the South Breaker, that still perhaps
cradled Faith and Gabriel. But as I looked, my eye fell, and there came
the sea-scenes again,——other scenes than this, coves and corners of
other coasts, sky-girt regions of other waters. The air was soft, that
April day, and I thought of the summer calms; and with that rose long
sheets of stillness, far out from any strand, purple beneath the noon;
fields slipping close in-shore, emerald-backed and scaled with sunshine;
long sleepy swells that hid the light in their hollows, and came creaming
along the cliffs. And if upon these broke suddenly a wild glimpse of some
storm careering over a merciless mid-ocean, of a dear dead face tossing
up on the surge and snatched back again into the depths, of mad wastes
rushing to tear themselves to fleece above clear shallows and turbid
sand-bars,——they melted and were lost in peaceful glimmers of the moon on
distant flying foam-wreaths, in solemn midnight tides chanting in under
hushed heavens, in twilight stretches kissing twilight slopes, in rosy
morning waves flocking up the singing shores. And sitting so, with my
lids still fallen, I heard a quick step on the beach, and a voice that
said, “Georgie!” And I looked, and a figure, red-shirted, towered beside
me, and a face, brown and bearded and tender, bent above me.

O, it was Dan!

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




THE SNOW-STORM.

BY JOHN WILSON.


In summer there is beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the
wayfaring man who sits down for an hour’s rest beside some little spring
that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses feels
his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On
every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the
melancholy heather,——unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may
be with its lamb, starts half alarmed at his motionless figure,——insects
large, bright, and beautiful come careering by him through the desert
air,——nor does the Wild want its own songsters, the gray linnet, fond of
the blooming furze, and now and then the lark mounting up to heaven above
the summits of the green pastoral hills. During such a sunshiny hour, the
lonely cottage on the waste seems to stand in a paradise; and as he rises
to pursue his journey, the traveller looks back and blesses it with a
mingled emotion of delight and envy. There, thinks he, abide the children
of Innocence and Contentment, the two most benign spirits that watch over
human life.

But other thoughts arise in the mind of him who may chance to journey
through the same scene in the desolation of winter. The cold bleak sky
girdles the moor as with a belt of ice,——life is frozen in air and
on earth. The silence is not of repose, but extinction; and should a
solitary human dwelling catch his eye half buried in the snow, he is sad
for the sake of them whose destiny it is to abide far from the cheerful
haunts of men, shrouded up in melancholy, by poverty held in thrall, or
pining away in unvisited and untended disease.

But, in good truth, the heart of human life is but imperfectly discovered
from its countenance; and before we can know what the summer or what the
winter yields for enjoyment or trial to our country’s peasantry, we must
have conversed with them in their fields and by their firesides, and
made ourselves acquainted with the powerful ministry of the seasons, not
over those objects alone that feed the eye and the imagination, but over
all the incidents, occupations, and events that modify or constitute the
existence of the poor.

I have a short and simple story to tell of the winter life of the
moorland cottager,——a story but of one evening,——with few events and
no signal catastrophe,——but which may haply please those hearts whose
delight it is to think on the humble under-plots that are carrying on in
the great Drama of Life.

Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire
one winter evening, in a small lonely hut on the edge of a wide moor,
at some miles’ distance from any other habitation. There had been, at
one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and
inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-laborers, who found
work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which
were rent-free, with their little garden won from the waste. But one
family after another had dwindled away, and the turf-built huts had all
fallen into ruins, except one that had always stood in the centre of this
little solitary village, with its summer walls covered with the richest
honeysuckles, and in the midst of the brightest of all the gardens. It
alone now sent up its smoke into the clear winter sky; and its little
end window, now lighted up, was the only ground-star that shone towards
the belated traveller, if any such ventured to cross, on a winter night,
a scene so dreary and desolate. The affairs of the small household
were all arranged for the night. The little rough pony that had drawn
in a sledge, from the heart of the Black-moss, the fuel by whose blaze
the cotters were now sitting cheerily, and the little Highland cow,
whose milk enabled them to live, were standing amicably together, under
cover of a rude shed, of which one side was formed by the peat-stack,
and which was at once byre and stable and hen-roost. Within, the clock
ticked cheerfully as the firelight reached its old oak-wood case across
the yellow-sanded floor; and a small round table stood between, covered
with a snow-white cloth, on which were milk and oat-cakes, the morning,
midday, and evening meal of these frugal and contented cotters. The
spades and the mattocks of the laborer were collected into one corner,
and showed that the succeeding day was the blessed Sabbath; while on
the wooden chimney-piece was seen lying an open Bible ready for family
worship.

The father and the mother were sitting together without opening their
lips, but with their hearts overflowing with happiness; for on this
Saturday night they were, every minute, expecting to hear at the latch
the hand of their only daughter, a maiden of about fifteen years, who was
at service with a farmer over the hills. This dutiful child was, as they
knew, to bring home to them “her sair-worn penny fee,” a pittance which,
in the beauty of her girlhood, she earned singing at her work, and which,
in the benignity of that sinless time, she would pour with tears into the
bosoms she so dearly loved. Forty shillings a year were all the wages
of sweet Hannah Lee; but though she wore at her labor a tortoise-shell
comb in her auburn hair, and though in the kirk none were more becomingly
arrayed than she, one half, at least, of her earnings were to be
reserved for the holiest of all purposes, and her kind innocent heart
was gladdened when she looked on the little purse that was, on the
long-expected Saturday night, to be taken from her bosom, and put, with a
blessing, into the hand of her father, now growing old at his daily toils.

Of such a child the happy cotters were thinking in their silence. And
well indeed might they be called happy. It is at that sweet season that
filial piety is most beautiful. Their own Hannah had just outgrown the
mere unthinking gladness of childhood, but had not yet reached that time
when inevitable selfishness mixes with the pure current of love. She
had begun to think on what her affectionate heart had left so long; and
when she looked on the pale face and bending frame of her mother, on the
deepening wrinkles and whitening hairs of her father, often would she
lie weeping for their sakes on her midnight bed, and wish that she were
beside them as they slept, that she might kneel down and kiss them, and
mention their names over and over again in her prayer. The parents whom
before she had only loved, her expanding heart now also venerated. With
gushing tenderness was now mingled a holy fear and an awful reverence.
She had discerned the relation in which she, an only child, stood to her
poor parents, now that they were getting old, and there was not a passage
in Scripture that spake of parents or of children, from Joseph sold into
slavery, to Mary weeping below the Cross, that was not written, never to
be obliterated, on her uncorrupted heart.

The father rose from his seat, and went to the door, to look out into the
night. The stars were in thousands,——and the full moon was risen. It was
almost light as day, and the snow, that seemed incrusted with diamonds,
was so hardened by the frost, that his daughter’s homeward feet would
leave no mark on its surface. He had been toiling all day among the
distant Castle-woods, and, stiff and wearied as he now was, he was almost
tempted to go to meet his child; but his wife’s kind voice dissuaded him,
and, returning to the fireside, they began to talk of her, whose image
had been so long passing before them in their silence.

“She is growing up to be a bonnie lassie,” said the mother; “her long and
weary attendance on me during my fever last spring kept her down awhile;
but now she is sprouting fast and fair as a lily, and may the blessing
of God be as dew and as sunshine to our sweet flower all the days she
bloometh upon this earth.” “Ay, Agnes,” replied the father, “we are not
very old yet,——though we are getting older,——and a few years will bring
her to woman’s estate, and what thing on this earth, think ye, human or
brute, would ever think of injuring her? Why, I was speaking about her
yesterday to the minister as he was riding by, and he told me that none
answered at the examination in the kirk so well as Hannah. Poor thing,——I
well think she has all the Bible by heart,——indeed, she has read but
little else,——only some stories,——too true ones, of the blessed martyrs,
and some of the auld sangs o’ Scotland, in which there is nothing but
what is good, and which, to be sure, she sings, God bless her, sweeter
than any laverock.” “Ay, were we both to die this very night, she would
be happy. Not that she would forget us all the days of her life. But
have you not seen, husband, that God always makes the orphan happy? None
so little lonesome as they! They come to make friends o’ all the bonny
and sweet things in the world, around them, and all the kind hearts in
the world make o’ them. They come to know that God is more especially
the Father o’ them on earth whose parents he has taken up to heaven; and
therefore it is that they for whom so many have fears, fear not at all
for themselves, but go dancing and singing along like children whose
parents are both alive! Would it not be so with our dear Hannah? So douce
and thoughtful a child,——but never sad nor miserable,——ready, it is true,
to shed tears for little, but as ready to dry them up and break out into
smiles! I know not why it is, husband, but this night my heart warms
towards her beyond usual. The moon and stars are at this moment looking
down upon her, and she looking up to them, as she is glinting homewards
over the snow. I wish she were but here, and taking the comb out o’ her
bonny hair and letting it fall down in clusters before the fire, to melt
away the cranreuch.”

While the parents were thus speaking of their daughter, a loud sough of
wind came suddenly over the cottage, and the leafless ash-tree, under
whose shelter it stood, creaked and groaned dismally as it passed by. The
father started up, and, going again to the door, saw that a sudden change
had come over the face of the night. The moon had nearly disappeared,
and was just visible in a dim, yellow, glimmering den in the sky. All
the remote stars were obscured, and only one or two faintly seemed in
a sky that half an hour before was perfectly cloudless, but that was
now driving with rack and mist and sleet, the whole atmosphere being in
commotion. He stood for a single moment to observe the direction of this
unforeseen storm, and then hastily asked for his staff. “I thought I had
been more weatherwise. A storm is coming down from the Cairnbraehawse,
and we shall have nothing but a wild night.” He then whistled on his
dog,——an old sheep-dog, too old for its former labors,——and set off to
meet his daughter, who might then, for aught he knew, be crossing the
Black-moss. The mother accompanied her husband to the door, and took a
long, frightened look at the angry sky. As she kept gazing, it became
still more terrible. The last shred of blue was extinguished; the wind
went whirling in roaring eddies, and great flakes of snow circled about
in the middle air, whether drifted up from the ground, or driven down
from the clouds, the fear-stricken mother knew not, but she at last knew
that it seemed a night of danger, despair, and death. “Lord have mercy on
us, James, what will become of our poor bairn!” But her husband heard not
her words, for he was already out of sight in the snow-storm, and she was
left to the terror of her own soul in that lonesome cottage.

Little Hannah Lee had left her master’s house, soon as the rim of the
great moon was seen by her eyes, that had been long anxiously watching
it from the window, rising, like a joyful dream, over the gloomy
mountain-tops; and all by herself she tripped along beneath the beauty of
the silent heaven. Still as she kept ascending and descending the knolls
that lay in the bosom of the glen, she sung to herself a song, a hymn, or
a psalm, without the accompaniment of the streams, now all silent in the
frost; and ever and anon she stopped to try to count the stars that lay
in some more beautiful part of the sky, or gazed on the constellations
that she knew, and called them in her joy by the names they bore among
the shepherds. There were none to hear her voice, or see her smiles,
but the ear and eye of Providence. As on she glided, and took her looks
from heaven, she saw her own little fireside,——her parents waiting for
her arrival,——the Bible opened for worship,——her own little room kept so
neatly for her, with its mirror hanging by the window, in which to braid
her hair by the morning light,——her bed prepared for her by her mother’s
hand,——the primroses in the garden peeping through the snow,——old Tray,
who ever welcomed her home with his dim white eyes,——the pony and the
cow; friends all, and inmates of that happy household. So stepped she
along, while the snow diamonds glittered around her feet, and the frost
wove a wreath of lucid pearls round her forehead.

She had now reached the edge of the Black-moss, which lay half-way
between her master’s and her father’s dwelling, when she heard a loud
noise coming down Glen-Scrae, and in a few seconds she felt on her face
some flakes of snow. She looked up the glen, and saw the snow-storm
coming down, fast as a flood. She felt no fears; but she ceased her song;
and had there been a human eye to look upon her there, it might have
seen a shadow on her face. She continued her course, and felt bolder and
bolder every step that brought her nearer to her parents’ house. But the
snow-storm had now reached the Black-moss, and the broad line of light
that had lain in the direction of her home was soon swallowed up, and
the child was in utter darkness. She saw nothing but the flakes of snow,
interminably intermingled, and furiously wafted in the air, close to
her head; she heard nothing but one wild, fierce, fitful howl. The cold
became intense, and her little feet and hands were fast being benumbed
into insensibility.

“It is a fearful change,” muttered the child to herself; but still she
did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and lived
all her days among the hardships of the hills. “What will become of the
poor sheep!” thought she; but still she scarcely thought of her own
danger, for innocence and youth and joy are slow to think of aught evil
befalling themselves, and, thinking benignly of all living things, forget
their own fear in their pity for others’ sorrow. At last she could no
longer discern a single mark on the snow, either of human steps, or of
sheep-track, or the footprint of a wild-fowl. Suddenly, too, she felt out
of breath and exhausted,——and, shedding tears for herself at last, sank
down in the snow.

It was now that her heart began to quake with fear. She remembered
stories of shepherds lost in the snow,——of a mother and child frozen to
death on that very moor,——and in a moment she knew that she was to die.
Bitterly did the poor child weep, for death was terrible to her, who,
though poor, enjoyed the bright little world of youth and innocence. The
skies of heaven were dearer than she knew to her,——so were the flowers
of earth. She had been happy at her work,——happy in her sleep,——happy in
the kirk on Sabbath. A thousand thoughts had the solitary child,——and
in her own heart was a spring of happiness, pure and undisturbed as any
fount that sparkles unseen all the year through in some quiet nook among
the pastoral hills. But now there was to be an end of all this,——she was
to be frozen to death,——and lie there till the thaw might come; and then
her father would find her body, and carry it away to be buried in the
kirk-yard.

The tears were frozen on her cheeks as soon as shed; and scarcely had her
little hands strength to clasp themselves together, as the thought of an
overruling and merciful Lord came across her heart. Then, indeed, the
fears of this religious child were calmed, and she heard without terror
the plover’s wailing cry, and the deep boom of the bittern sounding in
the moss. “I will repeat the Lord’s Prayer.” And, drawing her plaid more
closely around her, she whispered, beneath its ineffectual cover, “Our
Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,——thy kingdom come,——thy
will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Had human aid been within
fifty yards, it could have been of no avail,——eye could not see her,——ear
could not hear her in that howling darkness. But that low prayer was
heard in the centre of eternity; and that little sinless child was lying
in the snow, beneath the all-seeing eye of God.

The maiden having prayed to her Father in heaven, then thought of her
father on earth. Alas! they were not far separated! The father was lying
but a short distance from his child; he too had sunk down in the drifting
snow, after having, in less than an hour, exhausted all the strength of
fear, pity, hope, despair, and resignation, that could rise in a father’s
heart blindly seeking to rescue his only child from death, thinking
that one desperate exertion might enable them to perish in each other’s
arms. There they lay, within a stone’s throw of each other, while a huge
snow-drift was every moment piling itself up into a more insurmountable
barrier between the dying parent and his dying child.

There was all this while a blazing fire in the cottage, a white-spread
table, and beds prepared for the family to lie down in peace. Yet was
she who sat therein more to be pitied than the old man and the child
stretched upon the snow. “I will not go to seek them, that would be
tempting Providence, and wilfully putting out the lamp of life. No!
I will abide here and pray for their souls!” Then, as she knelt down,
looked she at the useless fire burning away so cheerfully, when all
she loved might be dying of cold; and, unable to bear the thought, she
shrieked out a prayer, as if she might pierce the sky to the very throne
of God, and send with it her own miserable soul to plead before him for
the deliverance of her child and husband. She then fell down in blessed
forgetfulness of all trouble, in the midst of the solitary cheerfulness
of that bright-burning hearth; and the Bible, which she had been trying
to read in the pauses of her agony, remained clasped in her hands.

Hannah Lee had been a servant for more than six months, and it was
not to be thought that she was not beloved in her master’s family.
Soon after she had left the house, her master’s son, a youth of about
eighteen years, who had been among the hills looking after the sheep,
came home, and was disappointed to find that he had lost an opportunity
of accompanying Hannah part of the way to her father’s cottage. But the
hour of eight had gone by, and not even the company of young William
Grieve could induce the kind-hearted daughter to delay setting out on
her journey a few minutes beyond the time promised to her parents. “I do
not like the night,” said William; “there will be a fresh fall of snow
soon, or the witch of Glen-Scrae is a liar, for a snow-cloud is hanging
o’er the Birch-tree-lin, and it may be down to the Black-moss as soon as
Hannah Lee.” So he called his two sheep-dogs that had taken their place
under the long table before the window, and set out, half in joy, half
in fear, to overtake Hannah, and see her safely across the Black-moss.

The snow began to drift so fast, that before he had reached the head of
the glen, there was nothing to be seen but a little bit of the wooden
rail of the bridge across the Sauch-burn. William Grieve was the most
active shepherd in a large pastoral parish; he had often passed the night
among the wintry hills for the sake of a few sheep, and all the snow
that ever fell from heaven would not have made him turn back when Hannah
Lee was before him, and, as his terrified heart told him, in imminent
danger of being lost. As he advanced, he felt that it was no longer a
walk of love or friendship, for which he had been glad of an excuse.
Death stared him in the face, and his young soul, now beginning to feel
all the passions of youth, was filled with frenzy. He had seen Hannah
every day,——at the fireside,——at work,——in the kirk,——on holidays,——at
prayers,——bringing supper to his aged parents,——smiling and singing
about the house from morning till night. She had often brought his own
meal to him among the hills; and he now found that though he had never
talked to her about love, except smilingly and playfully, he loved her
beyond father or mother, or his own soul. “I will save thee, Hannah,”
he cried, with a loud sob, “or lie down beside thee in the snow; and we
will die together in our youth.” A wild, whistling wind went by him, and
the snow-flakes whirled so fiercely around his head, that he staggered
on for a while in utter blindness. He knew the path that Hannah must
have taken, and went forward shouting aloud, and stopping every twenty
yards to listen for a voice. He sent his well-trained dogs over the
snow in all directions; repeating to them her name, “Hannah Lee,” that
the dumb animals might, in their sagacity, know for whom they were
searching; and as they looked up in his face, and set off to scour the
moor, he almost believed that they knew his meaning (and it is probable
they did), and were eager to find in her bewilderment the kind maiden
by whose hand they had so often been fed. Often went they off into the
darkness, and as often returned, but their looks showed that every quest
had been in vain. Meanwhile the snow was of a fearful depth, and falling
without intermission or diminution. Had the young shepherd been thus
alone, walking across the moor on his ordinary business, it is probable
that he might have been alarmed for his own safety; nay, that, in spite
of all his strength and agility, he might have sunk down beneath the
inclemency of the night and perished. But now the passion of his soul
carried him with supernatural strength along, and extricated him from
wreath and pitfall. Still there was no trace of poor Hannah Lee: and one
of his dogs at last came close to his feet, worn out entirely, and afraid
to leave its master; while the other was mute, and, as the shepherd
thought, probably unable to force its way out of some hollow or through
some floundering drift. Then he all at once knew that Hannah Lee was
dead,——and dashed himself down in the snow in a fit of passion. It was
the first time that the youth had ever been sorely tried; all his hidden
and unconscious love for the fair lost girl had flowed up from the bottom
of his heart; and at once the sole object which had blest his life and
made him the happiest of the happy was taken away and cruelly destroyed,
so that, sullen, wrathful, baffled, and despairing, there he lay, cursing
his existence, and in too great agony to think of prayer. “God,” he then
thought, “has forsaken me, and why should he think on me, when he suffers
one so good and beautiful as Hannah to be frozen to death?” God thought
both of him and of Hannah, and through his infinite mercy forgave the
sinner in his wild turbulence of passion. William Grieve had never gone
to bed without joining in prayer; and he revered the Sabbath day and kept
it holy. Much is forgiven to the human heart by him who so fearfully
framed it; and God is not slow to pardon the love which one human being
bears to another, in his frailty, even though that love forget or arraign
his own unsleeping providence. His voice has told us to love one another;
and William loved Hannah in simplicity, innocence, and truth. That she
should perish, was a thought so dreadful, that, in its agony, God seemed
a ruthless being——“Blow——blow——blow, and drift us up forever,——we cannot
be far asunder. O Hannah,——Hannah!——think ye not that the fearful God has
forsaken us?”

As the boy groaned these words passionately through his quivering lips,
there was a sudden lowness in the air, and he heard the barking of his
absent dog, while the one at his feet hurried off in the direction of the
sound, and soon loudly joined the cry. It was not a bark of surprise,
or anger, or fear, but of recognition and love. William sprang up from
his bed in the snow, and with his heart knocking at his bosom even to
sickness, he rushed headlong through the drifts, with a giant’s strength,
and fell down half dead with joy and terror beside the body of Hannah Lee.

But he soon recovered from that fit, and, lifting the cold corpse in
his arms, he kissed her lips, and her cheeks, and her forehead, and her
closed eyes, till, as he kept gazing on her face in utter despair, her
head fell back on his shoulder, and a long, deep sigh came from her
inmost bosom. “She is yet alive, thank God!” And as that expression
left his lips for the first time that night, he felt a pang of remorse.
“I said, O God, that thou hadst forsaken us; I am not worthy to be
saved; but let not this maiden perish, for the sake of her parents, who
have no other child.” The distracted youth prayed to God with the same
earnestness as if he had been beseeching a fellow-creature, in whose hand
was the power of life and of death. The presence of the Great Being was
felt by him in the dark and howling wild, and strength was imparted to
him as to a deliverer. He bore along the fair child in his arms, even as
if she had been a lamb. The snow-drift blew not,——the wind fell dead,——a
sort of glimmer, like that of an upbreaking and disparting storm,
gathered about him,——his dogs barked and jumped, and burrowed joyfully
in the snow,——and the youth, strong in sudden hope, exclaimed, “With the
blessing of God, who has not deserted us in our sore distress, will I
carry thee, Hannah, in my arms, and lay thee down alive in the house of
thy father.”

At this moment there were no stars in heaven, but she opened her dim
blue eyes upon him in whose bosom she was unconsciously lying, and said,
as in a dream, “Send the riband that ties up my hair as a keepsake to
William Grieve.”

“She thinks that she is on her death-bed, and forgets not the son of her
master. It is the voice of God that tells me she will not now die, and
that, under His grace, I shall be her deliverer.”

The short-lived rage of the storm was soon over, and William could attend
to the beloved being on his bosom. The warmth of his heart seemed to
infuse life into hers; and as he gently placed her feet on the snow, till
he muffled her up in his plaid, as well as in her own, she made an effort
to stand, and with extreme perplexity and bewilderment faintly inquired
where she was, and what fearful misfortune had befallen them. She was,
however, too weak to walk; and as her young master carried her along, she
murmured, “O William! what if my father be in the moor? For if you, who
need care so little about me, have come hither, as I suppose, to save
my life, you may be sure that my father sat not within doors during the
storm.”

As she spoke, it was calm below, but the wind was still alive in the
upper air, and cloud, rack, mist, and sleet were all driving about in the
sky. Out shone for a moment the pallid and ghostly moon, through a rent
in the gloom, and by that uncertain light came staggering forward the
figure of a man. “Father, father,” cried Hannah, and his gray hairs were
already on her cheek. The barking of the dogs and the shouting of the
young shepherd had struck his ear, as the sleep of death was stealing
over him, and with the last effort of benumbed nature he had roused
himself from that fatal torpor, and pressed through the snow-wreath that
had separated him from his child. As yet they knew not of the danger each
had endured; but each judged of the other’s suffering from their own, and
father and daughter regarded one another as creatures rescued, and hardly
yet rescued, from death.

But a few minutes ago, and the three human beings who loved each other
so well, and now feared not to cross the moor in safety, were, as they
thought, on their death-beds. Deliverance now shone upon them all like
a gentle fire, dispelling that pleasant but deadly drowsiness; and the
old man was soon able to assist William Grieve in leading Hannah along
through the snow. Her color and her warmth returned, and her lover——for
so might he well now be called——felt her heart gently beating against
his side. Filled as that heart was with gratitude to God, joy in her
deliverance, love to her father, and purest affection for her master’s
son, never before had the innocent maiden known what was happiness, and
nevermore was she to forget it.

The night was now almost calm, and fast returning to its former beauty,
when the party saw the first twinkle of the fire through the low window
of the Cottage of the Moor. They soon were at the garden gate; and to
relieve the heart of the wife and mother within, they talked loudly and
cheerfully, naming each other familiarly, and laughing between, like
persons who had known neither danger nor distress.

No voice answered from within, no footstep came to the door, which stood
open as when the father had left it in his fear; and now he thought with
affright that his wife, feeble as she was, had been unable to support the
loneliness, and had followed him out into the night, never to be brought
home alive. As they bore Hannah into the house, this fear gave way to
worse, for there upon the hard clay floor lay the mother upon her face,
as if murdered by some savage blow. She was in the same deadly swoon into
which she had fallen on her husband’s departure, three hours before.
The old man raised her up, and her pulse was still; so was her heart;
her face pale and sunken, and her body cold as ice. “I have recovered a
daughter,” said the old man, “but I have lost a wife.” And he carried
her, with a groan, to the bed, on which he laid her lifeless body. The
sight was too much for Hannah, worn out as she was, and who had hitherto
been able to support herself in the delightful expectation of gladdening
her mother’s heart by her safe arrival. She, too, now swooned away, and
as she was placed on the bed, beside her mother, it seemed, indeed,
that death, disappointed of his prey on the wild moor, had seized it in
the cottage and by the fireside. The husband knelt down by the bedside,
and held his wife’s icy hand in his, while William Grieve, appalled and
awe-stricken, hung over his Hannah, and inwardly implored God that the
night’s wild adventure might not have so ghastly an end. But Hannah’s
young heart soon began once more to beat; and soon as she came to her
recollection, she rose with a face whiter than ashes, and free from all
smiles, as if none had ever played there, and joined her father and
young master in their efforts to restore her mother to life.

It was the mercy of God that had struck her down to the earth, insensible
to the shrieking winds, and the fears that would otherwise have killed
her. Three hours of that wild storm had passed over her head, and she
heard nothing more than if she had been asleep in a breathless night of
the summer dew. Not even a dream had touched her brain; and when she
opened her eyes, which, as she thought, had been but a moment shut, she
had scarcely time to recall to her recollection the image of her husband
rushing out into the storm and of a daughter therein lost, till she
beheld that very husband kneeling tenderly by her bedside, and that very
daughter smoothing the pillow on which her aching temples reclined. But
she knew from the white, steadfast countenances before her that there had
been tribulation and deliverance, and she looked on the beloved beings
ministering by her bed, as more fearfully dear to her from the unimagined
danger from which she felt assured they had been rescued by the arm of
the Almighty.

There is little need to speak of returning recollection and returning
strength. They had all now power to weep and power to pray. The Bible had
been lying in its place ready for worship; and the father read aloud that
chapter in which is narrated our Saviour’s act of miraculous power, by
which he saved Peter from the sea. Soon as the solemn thoughts awakened
by that act of mercy, so similar to that which had rescued themselves
from death, had subsided, and they had all risen from prayer, they
gathered themselves in gratitude around the little table which had stood
so many hours spread; and exhausted nature was strengthened and restored
by a frugal and simple meal partaken of in silent thankfulness. The whole
story of the night was then recited; and when the mother heard how the
stripling had followed her sweet Hannah into the storm, and borne her in
his arms through a hundred drifted heaps,——and then looked upon her in
her pride, so young, so innocent, and so beautiful, she knew that, were
the child indeed to become an orphan, there was one who, if there was
either trust in nature or truth in religion, would guard and cherish her
all the days of her life.

It was not nine o’clock when the storm came down from Glen Scrae upon
the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve.
Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble
and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them, and
they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other’s
sake. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer who, under
Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow, the innocence and
the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so desperately
enamored; and he now thought of his own Hannah Lee evermore moving
about his father’s house, not as a servant, but as a daughter; and when
some few happy years had gone by his own most beautiful and most loving
wife. The innocent maiden still called him her young master, but was
not ashamed of the holy affection which she now knew that she had long
felt for the fearless youth on whose bosom she had thought herself dying
in that cold and miserable moor. Her heart leaped within her when she
heard her parents bless him by his name; and when he took her hand into
his before them, and vowed before that Power who had that night saved
them from the snow, that Hannah Lee should erelong be his wedded wife,
she wept and sobbed as if her heart would break in a fit of strange and
insupportable happiness.

The young shepherd rose to bid them farewell. “My father will think I
am lost,” said he, with a grave smile, “and my Hannah’s mother knows
what it is to fear for a child.” So nothing was said to detain him, and
the family went with him to the door. The skies smiled as serenely as
if a storm had never swept before the stars; the moon was sinking from
her meridian, but in cloudless splendor, and the hollow of the hills
was hushed as that of heaven. Danger there was none over the placid
night-scene; the happy youth soon crossed the Black-moss, now perfectly
still; and, perhaps, just as he was passing, with a shudder of gratitude,
the very spot where his sweet Hannah Lee had so nearly perished, she was
lying down to sleep in her innocence, or dreaming of one now dearer to
her than all on earth but her parents.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]




THE KING OF THE PEAK.

BY ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.


It happened once in a northern county that I found myself at a farmer’s
fireside, and in company which the four winds of heaven seemed to have
blown together. The farmer was a joyous old man; and the evening, a
wintry one, and wild with wind and snow, flew away with jest and mirth
and tale and song. Our entertainer had no wish that our joy should
subside; for he heaped the fire till the house shone to its remotest
rafter, loaded his table with rustic delicacies, and once when a pause
ensued after the chanting of one of Robin Hood’s ballads, he called out,
“Why stays the story, and what stops the rhyme? Have I heated my hearth,
have I spread my tables and poured forth my strong drink, for the poor in
fancy and the lame in speech? Up, up; and give me a grave tale or a gay,
to gladden or sadden the present moment, and lend wings to the leaden
feet of evening time. Rise, I say: else may the fire that flames so high;
the table which groans with food, for which water and air and earth have
been sought; and the board that perfumes you with the odor of ale and
mead,——may the first cease to warm, and the rest to nourish ye.”

“Master,” said a hale and joyous personage, whose shining and gladsome
looks showed sympathy and alliance with the good cheer and fervent blood
of merry old England, “since thy table smokes, and thy brown ale flows
more frankly for the telling of a true old tale, then a true old tale
thou shalt have; shame fall me if I balk thee, as the peasant folks say,
in the dales of bonny Derby.

“Those who have never seen Haddon Hall, the ancient residence of the
Vernons of Derbyshire, can have but an imperfect notion of the golden
days of old England. Though now deserted and dilapidated, its halls
silent, the sacred bell of its chapel mute; though its tables no longer
send up the cheering smell of roasted boars and spitted oxen; though the
music and the voice of the minstrel are silenced, and the light foot
of the dancer no longer sounds on the floor; though no gentle knights
and gentler dames go trooping hand in hand, and whispering among the
twilight groves, and the portal no longer sends out its shining helms
and its barbed steeds,——where is the place that can recall the stately
hospitality and glory of former times, like the Hall of old Haddon?

“It happened on a summer evening, when I was a boy, that several curious
old people had seated themselves on a little round knoll near the gate
of Haddon Hall; and their talk was of the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the
Manners, and many old names once renowned in Derbyshire. I had fastened
myself to the apron-string of a venerable dame, at whose girdle hung a
mighty iron key, which commanded the entrance of the hall; her name was
Dolly Foljambe; and she boasted her descent from an ancient red cross
knight of that name, whose alabaster figure, in mail, may be found in
Bakewell church. This high origin, which, on consulting family history,
I find had not the concurrence of clergy, seemed not an idle vanity of
the humble portress; she had the straight frame, and rigid, demure, and
even warlike cast of face, which alabaster still retains of her ancestor;
and had she laid herself by his side, she might have passed muster, with
an ordinary antiquarian, for a coeval figure. At our feet the river Wye
ran winding and deep; at our side rose the hall huge and gray; and the
rough heathy hills, renowned in Druidic and Roman and Saxon and Norman
story, bounded our wish for distant prospects, and gave us the mansion of
the Vernons for our contemplation, clear of all meaner encumbrances of
landscape.

“‘Ah! dame Foljambe,’ said an old husbandman, whose hair was whitened
by acquaintance with seventy winters, ‘it’s a sore and a sad sight to
look at that fair tower and see no smoke ascending. I remember it in a
brighter day, when many a fair face gazed out at the windows, and many a
gallant form appeared at the gate. Then were the days when the husbandman
could live,——could whistle as he sowed, dance and sing as he reaped, and
could pay his rent in fatted oxen to my lord and in fatted fowls to my
lady. Ah! dame Foljambe, we remember when men could cast their lines in
the Wye; could feast on the red deer and the fallow deer, on the plover
and the ptarmigan; had right of the common for their flocks, of the
flood for their nets, and of the air for their harquebuss. Ah! dame,
old England is no more the old England it was, than that hall, dark and
silent and desolate, is the proud hall that held Sir George Vernon, the
King of the Peak, and his two lovely daughters, Margaret and Dora. Those
were days, dame; those were days!’ And as he ceased, he looked up to the
tower, with an eye of sorrow, and shook and smoothed down his white hairs.

“‘I tell thee,’ replied the ancient portress, sorely moved in mind
between present duty and service to the noble owner of Haddon and her
lingering affection for the good old times, of which memory shapes so
many paradises,——‘I tell thee the tower looks as high and as lordly as
ever; and there is something about its silent porch and its crumbling
turrets which gives it a deeper hold of our affections than if an hundred
knights even now came prancing forth at its porch, with trumpets blowing
and banners displayed.’

“‘Ah! dame Foljambe,’ said the husbandman, ‘yon deer now bounding so
blithely down the old chase, with his horny head held high, and an eye
that seems to make naught of mountain and vale, it is a fair creature.
Look at him! see how he cools his feet in the Wye, surveys his shadow
in the stream, and now he contemplates his native hills again. So! away
he goes, and we gaze after him, and admire his speed and his beauty.
But were the hounds at his flanks, and the bullets in his side, and the
swords of the hunters bared for the brittling, ah! dame, we should change
our cheer; we should think that such shapely limbs and such stately
antlers might have reigned in wood and on hill for many summers. Even so
we think of that stately old hall, and lament its destruction.’

“‘Dame Foljambe thinks not so deeply on the matter,’ said a rustic; ‘she
thinks, the less the hall fire, the less is the chance of the hall being
consumed; the less the company, the longer will the old hall floor last,
which she sweeps so clean, telling so many stories of the tree that made
it, that the seven Virtues in tapestry would do well in avoiding wild
company; and that the lass with the long shanks, Diana, and her nymphs,
will hunt more to her fancy on her dusty acre of old arras, than in
the dubious society of the lords and the heroes of the court gazette.
Moreover, the key at her girdle is the commission by which she is keeper
of this cast-off and moth-eaten garment of the noble name of Manners; and
think ye that she holds that power lightly, which makes her governess of
ten thousand bats and owls, and gives her the awful responsibility of an
armory containing almost an entire harquebuss, the remains of a pair of
boots, and the relique of a buff jerkin?’

“What answer to this unceremonious attack on ancient things committed
to her keeping the portress might have made, I had not an opportunity
to learn; her darkening brow indicated little meekness of reply; a
voice, however, much sweeter than the dame’s intruded on the debate. In
the vicinity of the hall, at the foot of a limestone rock, the summer
visitors of Haddon may and do refresh themselves at a small fount of pure
water, which love of the clear element induced one of the old ladies to
confine within the limits of a large stone basin. Virtues were imputed
to the spring, and the superstition of another proprietor erected beside
it a cross of stone, lately mutilated and now removed, but once covered
with sculptures and rude emblems, which conveyed religious instruction
to an ignorant people. Towards this fountain a maiden from a neighboring
cottage was observed to proceed, warbling, as she went, a fragment of
one of those legendary ballads which the old minstrels, illiterate or
learned, scattered so abundantly over the country.

    DORA VERNON.

    It happened between March and May-day,
      When wood-buds wake which slumbered late,
    When hill and valley grow green and gayly,
      And every wight longs for a mate;
    When lovers sleep with an open eyelid,
      Like nightingales on the orchard tree,
    And sorely wish they had wings for flying,
      So they might with their true love be;

    A knight all worthy, in this sweet season,
      Went out to Cardiff with bow and gun,
    Not to chase the roebuck, nor shoot the pheasant,
      But hunt the fierce fox so wild and dun.
    And by his side was a young maid riding,
      With laughing blue eyes and sunny hair;
    And who was it but young Dora Vernon,
      Young Rutland’s true love, and Haddon’s heir.

    Her gentle hand was a good bow bearing;
      The deer at speed or the fowl on wing
    Stayed in their flight, when the bearded arrow
      Her white hand loosed from the sounding string.
    Old men made bare their locks, and blest her,
      As blithe she rode down the Durwood side,
    Her steed rejoiced in his lovely rider,
      Arched his neck proudly, and pranced in pride.

“This unexpected minstrelsy was soon interrupted by dame Foljambe, whose
total devotion to the family of Rutland rendered her averse to hear the
story of Dora Vernon’s elopement profaned in the familiar ballad strain
of a forgotten minstrel. ‘I wonder at the presumption of that rude
minion,’ said the offended portress, ‘in chanting such ungentle strains
in my ear. Home to thy milk-pails, idle hussy,——home to thy distaff,
foolish maiden; or, if thou wilt sing, come over to my lodge when the sun
is down, and I will teach thee a strain of a higher sort, made by a great
court lord, on the marriage of her late Grace. It is none of your rustic
chants, but full of fine words, both long and lordly; it begins:

    “Come burn your incense, ye godlike graces,
      Come, Cupid, dip your darts in light;
    Unloose her starry zone, chaste Venus,
      And trim the bride for the bridal night.”

“‘None of your vulgar chants, minion, I tell thee; but stuffed with
spiced words, and shining with gods and garters and stars and precious
stones, and odors thickly dropping; a noble strain indeed.’ The maiden
smiled, nodded acquiescence, and, tripping homeward, renewed her homely
and interrupted song, till the riverbank and the ancient towers
acknowledged, with their sweetest echoes, the native charms of her voice.

“‘I marvel much,’ said the hoary portress, ‘at the idle love for strange
and incredible stories which possesses as with a demon the peasants
of this district. Not only have they given a saint, with a shirt of
haircloth and a scourge, to every cavern, and a druid with his golden
sickle and his mistletoe to every circle of shapeless stones, but they
have made the Vernons, the Cavendishes, the Cockaynes, and the Foljambes
erect on every wild place crosses or altars of atonement for crimes
which they never committed; unless fighting ankle-deep in heathen
blood, for the recovery of Jerusalem and the holy sepulchre, required
such outlandish penance. They cast, too, a supernatural light round the
commonest story; if you credit them, the ancient chapel bell of Haddon,
safely lodged on the floor for a century, is carried to the top of the
turret, and, touched by some invisible hand, is made to toll forth
midnight notes of dolor and woe, when any misfortune is about to befall
the noble family of Rutland. They tell you, too, that wailings of no
earthly voice are heard around the decayed towers and along the garden
terraces, on the festival night of the saint who presided of old over
the fortunes of the name of Vernon. And no longer agone than yesterday,
old Edgar Ferrars assured me that he had nearly as good as seen the
apparition of the King of the Peak himself, mounted on his visionary
steed, and with imaginary horn and hound and halloo pursuing a spectre
stag over the wild chase of Haddon. Nay, so far has vulgar credulity and
assurance gone, that the great garden entrance, called the Knight’s
porch, through which Dora Vernon descended step by step among her twenty
attendant maidens, all rustling in embroidered silks, and shining
and sparkling like a winter sky, in diamonds, and such-like costly
stones,——to welcome her noble bridegroom, Lord John Manners, who came cap
in hand with his company of gallant gentlemen——’

“‘Nay, now, dame Foljambe,’ interrupted the husbandman, ‘all this is fine
enough, and lordly too, I’ll warrant; but thou must not apparel a plain
old tale in the embroidered raiment of thy own brain, nor adorn it in
the precious stones of thy own fancy. Dora Vernon was a lovely lass, and
as proud as she was lovely: she bore her head high, dame; and well she
might, for she was a gallant knight’s daughter; and lords and dukes, and
what not, have descended from her. But, for all that, I cannot forget
that she ran away in the middle of a moonlight night with young Lord
John Manners, and no other attendant than her own sweet self. Ay, dame,
and for the diamonds, and what not, which thy story showers on her locks
and her garments, she tied up her berry brown locks in a menial’s cap,
and ran away in a mantle of Bakewell brown, three yards for a groat. Ay,
dame, and instead of going out regularly by the door, she leapt out of a
window; more by token she left one of her silver-heeled slippers fastened
in the grating, and the place has ever since been called the Lady’s Leap.’

“Dame Foljambe, like an inexperienced rider, whose steed refuses
obedience to voice and hand, resigned the contest in despair, and allowed
her rustic companion to enter full career into the debatable land, where
she had so often fought and vanquished in defence of the decorum of the
mode of alliance between the houses of Haddon and Rutland.

“‘And now, dame,’ said the husbandman, ‘I will tell thee the story in
my own and my father’s way. The last of the name of Vernon was renowned
far and wide for the hospitality and magnificence of his house, for
the splendor of his retinue, and more for the beauty of his daughters,
Margaret and Dorothy. This is speaking in thy own manner, dame Foljambe;
but truth’s truth. He was much given to hunting and hawking, and
jousting, with lances either blunt or sharp; and though a harquebuss
generally was found in the hand of the gallant hunters of that time,
the year of grace 1560, Sir George Vernon despised that foreign weapon;
and well he might, for he bent the strongest bow, and shot the surest
shaft, of any man in England. His chase-dogs, too, were all of the most
expert and famous kinds, his falcons had the fairest and most certain
flight; and though he had seen foreign lands, he chiefly prided himself
in maintaining unimpaired the old baronial grandeur of his house. I
have heard my grandsire say, how his great-grandsire told him, that the
like of the Knight of Haddon, for a stately form and a noble, free, and
natural grace of manner, was not to be seen in court or camp. He was
hailed, in common tale and in minstrel song, by the name of the KING
OF THE PEAK; and it is said his handsome person and witchery of tongue
chiefly prevented his mistress, good Queen Bess, from abridging his
provincial designation with the headsman’s axe.

“‘It happened in the fifth year of the reign of his young and sovereign
mistress, that a great hunting festival was held at Haddon, where all the
beauty and high blood of Derbyshire assembled. Lords of distant counties
came; for to bend a bow or brittle the deer, under the eye of Sir George
Vernon, was an honor sought for by many. Over the chase of Haddon,
over the Hill of Stanton, over Bakewell-Edge, over Chatsworth Hill and
Hardwicke Plain, and beneath the ancient Castle of Bolsover, as far as
the edge of the forest of old Sherwood, were the sounds of harquebuss
and bowstring heard, and the cry of dogs and the cheering of men. The
brown-mouthed and white-footed dogs of Derbyshire were there among the
foremost; the snow-white hound and the coal-black, from the Scottish
border and bonny Westmoreland, preserved or augmented their ancient fame;
nor were the dappled hounds of old Godfrey Foljambe, of Bakewell bank,
far from the throat of the red deer when they turned at bay, and gored
horses and riders. The great hall floor of Haddon was soon covered with
the produce of wood and wild.

“‘Nor were the preparations for feasting this noble hunting-party
unworthy the reputation for solid hospitality which characterized the
ancient King of the Peak. Minstrels had come from distant parts, as far
even as the Scottish border; bold, free-spoken, rude, rough-witted men;
“for the selvage of the web,” says the northern proverb, “is aye the
coarsest cloth.” But in the larder the skill of man was chiefly employed,
and a thousand rarities were prepared for pleasing the eye and appeasing
the appetite. In the kitchen, with its huge chimneys and prodigious
spits, the menial maidens were flooded nigh ankle-deep in the richness
of roasted oxen and deer; and along the passage, communicating with the
hall of state, men might have slided along, because of the fat droppings
of that prodigious feast, like a slider on the frozen Wye. The kitchen
tables, of solid plank, groaned and yielded beneath the roasted beeves
and the spitted deer; while a stream of rich smoke, massy and slow and
savory, sallied out at the grated windows, and sailed round the mansion,
like a mist exhaled by the influence of the moon. I tell thee, dame
Foljambe, I call those the golden days of old England.

“‘But I wish you had seen the hall prepared for this princely feast. The
floor, of hard and solid stone, was strewn deep with rushes and fern; and
there lay the dogs of the chase in couples, their mouths still red with
the blood of stags, and panting yet from the fervor and length of their
pursuit. At the lower end of the hall, where the floor subsided a step,
was spread a table for the stewards and other chiefs over the menials.
There sat the keeper of the bows, the warder of the chase, and the head
falconer, together with many others of lower degree, but mighty men among
the retainers of the noble name of Vernon. Over their heads were hung the
horns of stags, the jaws of boars, the skulls of the enormous bisons,
and the foreheads of foxes. Nor were there wanting trophies, where the
contest had been more bloody and obstinate,——banners and shields and
helmets, won in the Civil and Scottish and Crusading wars, together with
many strange weapons of annoyance or defence, borne in the Norwegian and
Saxon broils. Beside them were hung rude paintings of the most renowned
of these rustic heroes, all in the picturesque habiliments of the times.
Horns and harquebusses and swords and bows and buff coats and caps were
thrown in negligent groups all about the floor; while their owners sat
in expectation of an immediate and ample feast, which they hoped to wash
down with floods of that salutary beverage, the brown blood of barley.

“‘At the upper end of the hall, where the floor was elevated exactly
as much in respect as it was lowered in submission at the other, there
the table for feasting the nobles stood; and well was it worthy of its
station. It was one solid plank of white sycamore, shaped from the
entire shaft of an enormous tree, and supported on squat columns of oak,
ornamented with the arms of the Vernons, and grooved into the stone
floor, beyond all chance of being upset by human powers. Benches of wood,
curiously carved, and covered, in times of more than ordinary ceremony,
with cushions of embroidered velvet, surrounded this ample table; while
in the recess behind appeared a curious work in arras, consisting of
festivals and processions and bridals, executed from the ancient poets;
and for the more staid and grave, a more devout hand had wrought some
scenes from the controversial fathers and the monkish legends of the
ancient church. The former employed the white hands of Dora Vernon
herself; while the latter were the labors of her sister Margaret, who was
of a serious turn, and never happened to be so far in love as to leap
from a window.’

“‘And now,’ said dame Foljambe, ‘I will describe the Knight of Haddon,
with his fair daughters and principal guests, myself.’ ‘A task that will
last thee to doomsday, dame,’ muttered the husbandman. The portress
heeded not this ejaculation, but with a particular stateliness of
delivery proceeded. ‘The silver dinner-bell rung on the summit of Haddon
Hall, the warder thrice wound his horn, and straightway the sound of
silver spurs was heard in the passage, the folding-door opened, and
in marched my own ancestor, Ferrars Foljambe by name. I have heard
his dress too often described not to remember it. A buff jerkin, with
slashed and ornamented sleeves, a mantle of fine Lincoln green, fastened
round his neck with wolf-claws of pure gold, a pair of gilt spurs on
the heels of his brown hunting-boots, garnished above with taslets of
silver, and at the square and turned-up toes, with links of the same
metal connected with the taslets. On his head was a boar-skin cap, on
which the white teeth of the boar were set, tipt with gold. At his side
was a hunting-horn, called the white hunting-horn of Tutbury, banded
with silver in the middle, belted with black silk at the ends, set with
buckles of silver, and bearing the arms of Edmund, the warlike brother of
Edward Longshanks. This fair horn descended by marriage to Stanhope, of
Elvaston, who sold it to Foxlowe, of Staveley. The gift of a king and the
property of heroes was sold for some paltry pieces of gold.’

“‘Dame Foljambe,’ said the old man, ‘the march of thy tale is like the
course of the Wye, seventeen miles of links and windings down a fair
valley five miles long. A man might carve thy ancestor’s figure in
alabaster in the time thou describest him. I must resume my story, dame;
so let thy description of old Ferrars Foljambe stand; and suppose the
table filled about with the gallants of the chase and many fair ladies,
while at the head sat the King of the Peak himself, his beard descending
to his broad girdle, his own natural hair of dark brown——blessings on
the head that keeps God’s own covering on it, and scorns the curled
inventions of man!——falling in thick masses on his broad, manly
shoulders. Nor silver nor gold wore he; the natural nobleness of his
looks maintained his rank and pre-eminence among men; the step of Sir
George Vernon was one that many imitated, but few could attain,——at once
manly and graceful. I have heard it said that he carried privately in his
bosom a small rosary of precious metal, in which his favorite daughter
Dora had entwined one of her mother’s tresses. The ewer-bearers entered
with silver basins full of water; the element came pure and returned red;
for the hands of the guests were stained with the blood of the chase. The
attendant minstrels vowed that no hands so shapely, nor fingers so taper
and long and white and round, as those of the Knight of Haddon, were that
day dipped in water.

“‘There is wondrous little pleasure in describing a feast of which we
have not partaken: so pass we on to the time when the fair dames retired,
and the red wine in cups of gold, and the ale in silver flagons, shone
and sparkled as they passed from hand to lip beneath the blaze of seven
massy lamps. The knights toasted their mistresses, the retainers told
their exploits, and the minstrels with harp and tongue made music and
song abound. The gentles struck their drinking-vessels on the table till
they rang again; the menials stamped with the heels of their ponderous
boots on the solid floor; while the hounds, imagining they heard the call
to the chase, leaped up, and bayed in hoarse but appropriate chorus.

“‘The ladies now reappeared in the side galleries, and overlooked the
scene of festivity below. The loveliest of many counties were there; but
the fairest was a young maid of middle size, in a dress disencumbered of
ornament, and possessed of one of those free and graceful forms which may
be met with in other counties, but for which our own Derbyshire alone is
famous. Those who admired the grace of her person were no less charmed
with her simplicity and natural meekness of deportment. Nature did much
for her, and art strove in vain to rival her with others; while health,
that handmaid of beauty, supplied her eye and her cheek with the purest
light and the freshest roses. Her short and rosy upper lip was slightly
curled, with as much of maiden sanctity, perhaps, as pride; her white
high forehead was shaded with locks of sunny brown, while her large
and dark hazel eyes beamed with free and unaffected modesty. Those who
observed her close might see her eyes, as she glanced about, sparkling
for a moment with other lights, but scarce less holy, than those of
devotion and awe. Of all the knights present, it was impossible to say
who inspired her with those love-fits of flushing joy and delicious
agitation; each hoped himself the happy person; for none could look on
Dora Vernon without awe and love. She leaned her white bosom, shining
through the veil which shaded it, near one of the minstrel’s harps; and
looking round on the presence, her eyes grew brighter as she looked; at
least so vowed the knights and so sang the minstrels.

“‘All the knights arose when Dora Vernon appeared. “Fill all your
wine-cups, knights,” said Sir Lucas Peverel. “Fill them to the brim,”
said Sir Henry Avenel. “And drain them out, were they deeper than the
Wye,” said Sir Godfrey Gernon. “To the health of the Princess of the
Peak,” said Sir Ralph Cavendish. “To the health of Dora Vernon,” said
Sir Hugh de Wodensley; “beauty is above titles, she is the loveliest
maiden a knight ever looked on, with the sweetest name too.” “And yet,
Sir Knight,” said Peverel, filling his cup, “I know one who thinks so
humbly of the fair name of Vernon, as to wish it charmed into that of De
Wodensley.” “He is not master of a spell so profound,” said Avenel. “And
yet he is master of his sword,” answered De Wodensley, with a darkening
brow. “I counsel him to keep it in his sheath,” said Cavendish, “lest it
prove a wayward servant.” “I will prove its service on thy bosom where
and when thou wilt, Lord of Chatsworth,” said De Wodensley. “Lord of
Darley,” answered Cavendish, “it is a tempting moonlight, but there is
a charm over Haddon to-night it would be unseemly to dispel. To-morrow,
I meet Lord John Manners to try whose hawk has the fairer flight and
whose love the whiter hand. That can be soon seen; for who has so fair a
hand as the love of young Rutland? I shall be found by Durwood-Tor when
the sun is three hours up, with my sword drawn,——there’s my hand on ’t,
De Wodensley.” And he wrung the knight’s hand till the blood seemed
starting from beneath his finger-nails.

“‘“By the saints, Sir Knights,” said Sir Godfrey Gernon, “you may as well
beard one another about the love of ‘some bright particular star and
think to wed it,’ as the wild wizard of Warwick says, as quarrel about
this unattainable love. Hearken, minstrels: while we drain our cups to
this beauteous lass, sing some of you a kindly love-strain, wondrously
mirthful and melancholy. Here’s a cup of Rhenish, and a good gold Harry
in the bottom on’t, for the minstrel who pleases me.” The minstrels laid
their hands on the strings, and a sound was heard like the swarming of
bees before summer thunder. “Sir Knight,” said one, “I will sing ye
Cannie Johnnie Armstrong with all the seventeen variations.” “He was
hanged for cattle stealing,” answered the knight; “I’ll have none of
him.” “What say you to Dick of the Cow, or the Harper of Lochmaben?” said
another, with something of a tone of diffidence. “What! you northern
knaves, can you sing of nothing but thievery and jail-breaking?” “Perhaps
your knightship,” humbly suggested a third, “may have a turn for the
supernatural, and I’m thinking the Fairy Legend of young Tamlane is just
the thing that suits your fancy.” “I like the naïveté of the young lady
very much,” answered the knight, “but the fair dames of Derbyshire prize
the charms of lovers with flesh and blood, before the gayest Elfin-knight
that ever ran a course from Carlisle to Caerlaverock.” “What would your
worship say to William of Cloudesley?” said a Cumberland minstrel. “Or to
the Friar of Orders Grey?” said a harper from the halls of the Percys.

“‘“Minstrels,” said Sir Ralph Cavendish, “the invention of sweet and
gentle poesy is dead among you. Every churl in the Peak can chant
us these beautiful but common ditties. Have you nothing new for the
honor of the sacred calling of verse and the beauty of Dora Vernon?
Fellow,——harper,——what’s your name?——you with the long hair and the
green mantle,” said the knight, beckoning to a young minstrel who sat
with his harp held before him, and his face half buried in his mantle’s
fold; “come, touch your strings and sing; I’ll wager my gold-hilted sword
against that pheasant feather in thy cap, that thou hast a new and a
gallant strain; for I have seen thee measure more than once the form of
fair Dora Vernon with a ballad-maker’s eye. Sing, man, sing.”

“‘The young minstrel, as he bowed his head to this singular mode of
request, blushed from brow to bosom; nor were the face and neck of Dora
Vernon without an acknowledgment of how deeply she sympathized in his
embarrassment. A finer instrument, a truer hand, or a more sweet and
manly voice hardly ever united to lend grace to rhyme.

    THE MINSTREL’S SONG.

    Last night a proud page came to me;
    Sir Knight, he said, I greet you free;
    The moon is up at midnight hour,
    All mute and lonely is the bower:
    To rouse the deer my lord is gone,
    And his fair daughter’s all alone,
    As lily fair, and as sweet to see;
    Arise, Sir Knight, and follow me.

    The stars streamed out, the new-woke moon
    O’er Chatsworth hill gleamed brightly down,
    And my love’s cheeks, half seen, half hid,
    With love and joy blushed deeply red:
    Short was our time, and chaste our bliss,
    A whispered vow and a gentle kiss;
    And one of those long looks, which earth
    With all its glory is not worth.

    The stars beamed lovelier from the sky,
    The smiling brook flowed gentlier by;
    Life, fly thou on; I’ll mind that hour
    Of sacred love in greenwood bower;
    Let seas between us swell and sound,
    Still at her name my heart shall bound;
    Her name——which like a spell I’ll keep,
    To soothe me and to charm my sleep.

“‘“Fellow,” said Sir Ralph Cavendish, “thou hast not shamed my belief of
thy skill; keep that piece of gold, and drink thy cup of wine in quiet to
the health of the lass who inspired thy strain, be she lordly or be she
low.” The minstrel seated himself, and the interrupted mirth recommenced,
which was not long to continue. When the minstrel began to sing, the
King of the Peak fixed his large and searching eyes on his person, with
a scrutiny from which nothing could escape, and which called a flush of
apprehension to the face of his daughter Dora. Something like a cloud
came upon his brow at the first verse, which, darkening down through the
second, became as dark as a December night at the close of the third,
when rising, and motioning Sir Ralph Cavendish to follow, he retired into
the recess of the southern window.

“‘“Sir Knight,” said the lord of Haddon, “thou art the sworn friend of
John Manners, and well thou knowest what his presumption dares at, and
what are the lets between him and me. _Cavendo tutus?_ ponder on thy
own motto well. ‘Let seas between us swell and sound’:——let his song be
prophetic for Derbyshire,——for England has no river deep enough and broad
enough to preserve him from a father’s sword, whose peace he seeks to
wound.” “Knight of Haddon,” said Sir Ralph, “John Manners is indeed my
friend, and the friend of a Cavendish can be no mean person; a braver and
a better spirit never aspired after beauty.” “Sir Knight,” said the King
of the Peak, “I court no man’s counsel; hearken to my words. Look at the
moon’s shadow on Haddon-dial; there it is beside the casement; the shadow
falls short of twelve. If it darkens the midnight hour, and John Manners
be found here, he shall be cast fettered, neck and heel, into the deepest
dungeon of Haddon.”

“‘All this passed not unobserved of Dora Vernon, whose fears and
affections divined immediate mischief from the calm speech and darkened
brow of her father. Her heart sank within her when he beckoned her
to withdraw; she followed him into the great tapestried room. “My
daughter,——my love Dora,” said the not idle fears of a father, “wine
has done more than its usual good office with the wits of our guests
to-night; they look on thee with bolder eyes and speak of thee with a
bolder tongue than a father can wish. Retire, therefore, to thy chamber.
One of thy wisest attendants shall be thy companion. Adieu, my love, till
sunrise!” He kissed her white temples and white brow; and Dora clung to
his neck, and sobbed in his bosom, while the secret of her heart rose
near her lips. He returned to his guests, and mirth and music, and the
march of the wine-cup, recommenced with a vigor which promised reparation
for the late intermission.

“‘The chamber, or, rather, temporary prison, of Dora Vernon was nigh the
cross-bow room, and had a window which looked out on the terraced garden
and the extensive chase toward the hill of Haddon. All that side of the
hall lay in deep shadow, and the moon, sunk to the very summit of the
western heath, threw a level and a farewell beam over river and tower.
The young lady of Haddon seated herself in the recessed window, and lent
her ear to every sound, and her eye to every shadow that flitted over the
garden and chase. Her attendant maiden——shrewd, demure, and suspicious,
of the ripe age of thirty, yet of a merry pleasant look, which had its
admirers——sat watching every motion with the eye of an owl.

“‘It was past midnight, when a foot came gliding along the passage, and
a finger gave three slight scratches on the door of the chamber. The
maid went out, and after a brief conference suddenly returned, red with
blushes from ear to ear. “O my lady!” said the trusty maiden,——“O my
sweet young lady, here’s that poor young lad,——ye know his name,——who
gave me three yards of crimson ribbon to trim my peach-bloom mantle,
last Bakewell fair. An honester or a kinder heart never kept a promise;
and yet I may not give him the meeting. O my young lady, my sweet young
lady, my beautiful young lady, could you not stay here for half an hour
by yourself?” Ere her young mistress could answer, the notice of the
lover’s presence was renewed. The maiden again went; whispers were heard,
and the audible salutation of lips; she returned again more resolute than
ever to oblige her lover. “O my lady, my young lady, if ye ever hope
to prosper in true love yourself, spare me but one half-hour with this
harmless kind lad. He has come seven long miles to see my fair face, he
says; and, O my lady, he has a handsome face of his own. O, never let it
be said that Dora Vernon sundered true lovers! But I see consent written
in your own lovely face,——so I will run; and, O my lady, take care of
your own sweet, handsome self, when your faithful Nan’s away!” And the
maiden retired with her lover.

“‘It was half an hour after midnight when one of the keepers of the
chase, as he lay beneath a holly-bush listening, with a prolonged groan,
to the audible voice of revelry in the hall, from which his duty had
lately excluded him, happened to observe two forms approaching; one of
low stature, a light step, and muffled in a common mantle; the other
with the air and in the dress of a forester, a sword at his side and
pistols in his belt. The ale and the wine had invaded the keeper’s brain
and impaired his sight; yet he roused himself up with a hiccup and a
“Hilloah,” and “Where go ye, my masters?” The lesser form whispered to
the other, who immediately said, “Jasper Jugg, is this you? Heaven be
praised I have found you so soon; here’s that north-country pedler,
with his beads and blue ribbon, he has come and whistled out pretty Nan
Malkin, the lady’s favorite and the lord’s trusty maid. I left them under
the terrace, and came to tell you.”

“‘The enraged keeper scarce heard this account of the faithlessness of
his love to an end; he started off with the swiftness of one of the deer
which he watched, making the boughs crash, as he forced his way through
bush and glade direct for the hall, vowing desertion to the girl and
destruction to the pedler. “Let us hasten our steps, my love,” said the
lesser figure, in a sweet voice; and unmantling as she spoke, turned back
to the towers of Haddon the fairest face that ever left them,——the face
of Dora Vernon herself. “My men and my horses are nigh, my love,” said
the taller figure; and taking a silver call from his pocket, he imitated
the sharp, shrill cry of the plover; then turning round, he stood and
gazed towards Haddon, scarcely darkened by the setting of the moon,
for the festal lights flashed from turret and casement, and the sound
of mirth and revelry rang with augmenting din. “Ah, fair and stately
Haddon,” said Lord John Manners, “little dost thou know thou hast lost
thy jewel from thy brow, else thy lights would be dimmed, thy mirth would
turn to wailing, and swords would be flashing from thy portals in all the
haste of hot pursuit. Farewell, for a while, fair tower, farewell for
a while. I shall return and bless the time I harped among thy menials
and sang of my love, and charmed her out of thy little chamber window.”
Several armed men now came suddenly down from the hill of Haddon, horses
richly caparisoned were brought from among the trees of the chase, and
the ancestors of the present family of Rutland sought shelter, for a
time, in a distant land, from the wrath of the King of the Peak.’”

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