GONE TO SEA.
A little way on in his moonlight walk James's ears were saluted by the
sound of some one whistling and crackling through the bushes, and soon
Biah Carter, emerged into the moonlight, having been out to the same
husking where Diana and Bill had been enjoying themselves. The sight of
him resolved a doubt which had been agitating James's mind. The note to
his mother which was to explain his absence and the reasons for it was
still in his coat-pocket, and he had designed sending it back by some
messenger at the tavern where he took the midnight stage; but here was a
more trusty party. It involved, to be sure, the necessity of taking Biah
into his confidence. James was well aware that to tell that acute
individual the least particle of a story was like starting a gimlet in a
pine board--there was no stop till it had gone through. So he told him in
brief that a good berth had been offered to him on the _Eastern Star_,
and he meant to take it to relieve his father of the pressure of his
education.
"Wal naow--you don't say so," was Biah's commentary. "Wal, yis, 'tis hard
sleddin' for the deacon--drefful hard sleddin.' Wal, naow, s'pose you're
disapp'inted--shouldn't wonder--jes' so. Eddication's a good thing, but
'taint the only thing naow; folks larns a sight rubbin' round the world--
and then they make money. Jes' see, there's Cap'n Stebbins and Cap'n
Andrews and Cap'n Merryweather--all livin' on good farms, with good, nice
houses, all got goin' to sea. Expect Mis' Pitkin'll take it sort o' hard,
she's so sot on you; but she's allers sayin' things is for the best, and
maybe she'll come to think so 'bout this--folks gen'ally does when they
can't help themselves. Wal, yis, naow--goin' to walk to the cross-road
tavern? better not. Jest wait a minit and I'll hitch up and take ye over.
"Thank you, Biah, but I can't stop, and I'd rather walk, so I won't
trouble you."
"Wal, look here--don't ye want a sort o' nest-egg? I've got fifty silver
dollars laid up: you take it on venture and give me half what it brings."
"Thank you, Biah. If you'll trust me with it I'll hope to do something
for us both."
Biah went into the house, and after some fumbling brought out a canvas
bag, which he put into James's hand.
"Wanted to go to sea confoundedly myself, but there's Mariar Jane--she
won't hear on't, and turns on the water-works if I peep a single word.
Farmin's drefful slow, but when a feller's got a gal he's got a cap'n; he
has to mind orders. So you jest trade and we'll go sheers. I think
consid'able of you, and I expect you'll make it go as fur as anybody."
"I'll try my best, you may believe, Biah," said James, shaking the hard
hand heartily, as he turned on his way towards the cross-roads tavern.
The whole village of Maplewood on Thanksgiving Day morning was possessed
of the fact that James Pitkin had gone off to sea in the _Eastern Star_,
for Biah had felt all the sense of importance which the possession of a
startling piece of intelligence gives to one, and took occasion to call
at the tavern and store on his way up and make the most of his
information, so that by the time the bell rang for service the news might
be said to be everywhere. The minister's general custom on Thanksgiving
Day was to get off a political sermon reviewing the State of New England,
the United States of America, and Europe, Asia, and Africa; but it may be
doubted if all the affairs of all these continents produced as much
sensation among the girls in the singers' seat that day as did the news
that James Pitkin had gone to sea on a four years' voyage. Curious eyes
were cast on Diana Pitkin, and many were the whispers and speculations as
to the part she might have had in the move; and certainly she looked
paler and graver than usual, and some thought they could detect traces of
tears on her cheeks. Some noticed in the tones of her voice that day, as
they rose in the soprano, a tremor and pathos never remarked before--the
unconscious utterance of a new sense of sorrow, awakened in a soul that
up to this time had never known a grief.
For the letter had fallen on the heads of the Pitkin household like a
thunderbolt. Biah came in to breakfast and gave it to Mrs. Pitkin, saying
that James had handed him that last night, on his way over to take the
midnight stage to Salem, where he was going to sail on the _Eastern Star_
to-day--no doubt he's off to sea by this time. A confused sound of
exclamations went up around the table, while Mrs. Pitkin, pale and calm,
read the letter and then passed it to her husband without a word. The
bright, fixed color in Diana's face had meanwhile been slowly ebbing
away, till, with cheeks and lips pale as ashes, she hastily rose and left
the table and went to her room. A strange, new, terrible pain--a
sensation like being choked or smothered--a rush of mixed emotions--a
fearful sense of some inexorable, unalterable crisis having come of her
girlish folly--overwhelmed her. Again she remembered the deep tones of
his good-by, and how she had only mocked at his emotion. She sat down and
leaned her head on her hands in a tearless, confused sorrow.
Deacon' Pitkin was at first more shocked and overwhelmed than his wife.
His yesterday's talk with James had no such serious purpose. It had been
only the escape-valve for his hypochondriac forebodings of the future,
and nothing was farther from his thoughts than having it bear fruit in
any such decisive movement on the part of his son. In fact, he secretly
was proud of his talents and his scholarship, and had set his heart on
his going through college, and had no more serious purpose in what he
said the day before than the general one of making his son feel the
difficulties and straits he was put to for him. Young men were tempted at
college to be too expensive, he thought, and to forget what it cost their
parents at home. In short, the whole thing had been merely the passing
off of a paroxysm of hypochondria, and he had already begun to be
satisfied that he should raise his interest money that year without
material difficulty. The letter showed him too keenly the depth of the
suffering he had inflicted on his son, and when he had read it he cast a
sort of helpless, questioning look on his wife, and said, after an
interval of silence:
"Well, mother!"
There was something quite pathetic in the appealing look and voice.'
"Well, father," she answered in subdued tones; "all we can do now is to
_leave_ it."
LEAVE IT!
Those were words often in that woman's mouth, and they expressed that
habit of her life which made her victorious over all troubles, that habit
of trust in the Infinite Will that actually could and did _leave_ every
accomplished event in His hand, without murmur and without conflict.
If there was any one thing in her uniformly self-denied life that had
been a personal ambition and a personal desire, it had been that her son
should have a college education. It was the center of her earthly wishes,
hopes and efforts. That wish had been cut off in a moment, that hope had
sunk under her feet, and now only remained to her the task of comforting
the undisciplined soul whose unguided utterances had wrought the
mischief. It was not the first time that, wounded by a loving hand in
this dark struggle of life, she had suppressed the pain of her own hurt
that he that had wounded her might the better forgive himself.
"Dear father," she said to him, when over and over he blamed himself for
his yesterday's harsh words to his son, "don't worry about it now; you
didn't mean it. James is a good boy, and he'll see it right at last; and
he is in God's hands, and we must leave him there. He overrules all."
When Mrs. Pitkin turned from her husband she sought Diana in her room.
"Oh, cousin! cousin!" said the girl, throwing herself into her arms.
"_Is_ this true? Is James _gone_? Can't we do _any_ thing? Can't we get
him back? I've been thinking it over. Oh, if the ship wouldn't sail! and
I'd go to Salem and beg him to come back, on my knees. Oh, if I had only
known yesterday! Oh, cousin, cousin! he wanted to talk with me, and I
wouldn't hear him!--oh, if I only had, I could have persuaded him out of
it! Oh, why didn't I know?"
"There, there, dear child! We must accept it just as it is, now that it
is done. Don't feel so. We must try to look at the good."
"Oh, show me that letter," said Diana; and Mrs. Pitkin, hoping to
tranquilize her, gave her James's note. "He thinks I don't care for him,"
she said, reading it hastily. "Well, I don't wonder! But I _do_ care! I
love him better than anybody or anything under the sun, and I never will
forget him; he's a brave, noble, good man, and I shall love him as long
as I live--I don't care who knows it! Give me that locket, cousin, and
write to him that I shall wear it to my grave."
"Dear child, there is no writing to him."
"Oh, dear! that's the worst. Oh, that horrid, horrid sea! It's like
death--you don't know where they are, and you can't hear from them--and a
four years' voyage! Oh, dear! oh, dear!"
"Don't, dear child, don't; you distress me," said Mrs. Pitkin.
"Yes, that's just like me," said Diana, wiping her eyes. "Here I am
thinking only of myself, and you that have had your heart broken are
trying to comfort me, and trying to comfort Cousin Silas. We have both of
us scolded and flouted him away, and now you, who suffer the most of
either of us, spend your breath to comfort us. It's just like you. But,
cousin, I'll try to be good and comfort you. I'll try to be a daughter to
you. You need somebody to think of you, for you never think of yourself.
Let's go in his room," she said, and taking the mother by the hand they
crossed to the empty room. There was his writing-table, there his
forsaken books, his papers, some of his clothes hanging in his closet.
Mrs. Pitkin, opening a drawer, took out a locket hung upon a bit of blue
ribbon, where there were two locks of hair, one of which Diana recognized
as her own, and one of James's. She hastily hung it about her neck and
concealed it in her bosom, laying her hand hard upon it, as if she would
still the beatings of her heart.
"It seems like a death," she said. "Don't you think the ocean is like
death--wide, dark, stormy, unknown? We cannot speak to or hear from them
that are on it."
"But people can and do come back from the sea," said the mother,
soothingly. "I trust, in God's own time, we shall see James back."
"But what if we never should? Oh, cousin! I can't help thinking of that.
There was Michael Davis,--you know--the ship was never heard from."
"Well," said the mother, after a moment's pause and a choking down of
some rising emotion, and turning to a table on which lay a Bible, she
opened and read: "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy
right hand shall hold me."
The THEE in this psalm was not to her a name, a shadow, a cipher, to
designate the unknowable--it stood for the inseparable Heart-friend--the
Father seeing in secret, on whose bosom all her tears of sorrow had been
shed, the Comforter and Guide forever dwelling in her soul, and giving
peace where the world gave only trouble.
Diana beheld her face as it had been the face of an angel. She kissed
her, and turned away in silence.