you not home soon from your voyage? This is indeed a pleasure." And
Lady Ferry seated herself, motioning to him to take a chair beside her.
She looked younger than I had ever seen her; a bright colour came into
her cheeks; and she talked so gayly, in such a different manner from
her usual mournful gentleness. She must have been a beautiful woman;
indeed she was that still.
"And did the good ship Starlight make a prosperous voyage? And had you
many perils?--Do you bring much news to us from the Spanish Main? We
have missed you sadly at the assemblies; but there must be a dance in
your honour. And your wife; is she not overjoyed at the sight of you?
I think you have grown old and sedate since you went away. You do not
look the gay sailor, or seem so light-hearted."
"I do not understand you, madam," said the stranger. "I am certainly
John McAllister; but I am no captain, neither have I been at sea. Good
God! is it my grandfather whom you confuse me with?" cried he. "He was
Jack McAllister, and was lost at sea more than seventy years ago, while
my own father was a baby. I am told that I am wonderfully like his
portrait; but he was a younger man than I when he died. This is some
masquerade."
Lady Ferry looked at him intently, but the light in her face was fast
fading out. "Lost at sea,--lost at sea, were you, Jack McAllister,
seventy years ago? I know nothing of years; one of my days is like
another, and they are gray days, they creep away and hide, and
sometimes one comes back to mock me. I have lived a thousand years; do
you know it? Lost at sea--captain of the ship Starlight? Whom did you
say?--Jack McAllister, yes, I knew him well--pardon me; good-evening;"
and my lady rose, and with her head nodding and drooping, with a
sorrowful, hunted look in her eyes, went out again into the shadows.
She had had a flash of youth, the candle had blazed up brilliantly; but
it went out again as suddenly, with flickering and smoke.
"I was startled when I saw her beside me," said Mr. McAllister. "Pray,
who is she? she is like no one I have ever seen. I have been told that
I am like my grandfather in looks and in voice; but it is years since I
have seen any one who knew him well. And did you hear her speak of
dancing? It is like seeing one who has risen from the dead. How old
can she be?"--"I do not know," said cousin Matthew, "one can only guess
at her age."--"Would not she come back? I should like to question
her," asked the other. But cousin Matthew answered that she always
refused to see strangers, and it would be no use to urge her, she would
not answer him.
"Who is she? Is she any kin of yours?" asked Mr. McAllister.
"Oh, no!" said my cousin Agnes: "she has had no relatives since I have
known her, and I think she has no friends now but ourselves. She has
been with us a long time, and once before this house was her home for a
time,--many years since. I suppose no one will ever know the whole
history of her life; I wish often that she had power to tell it. We
are glad to give shelter, and the little care she will accept, to the
poor soul. God only knows where she has strayed and what she has seen.
It is an enormous burden,--so long a life, and such a weight of
memories; but I think it is seldom now that she feels its
heaviness.--Go out to her, Marcia my dear, and see if she seems
troubled. She always has a welcome for the child," cousin Agnes added,
as I unwillingly went away.
I found Lady Ferry in the garden; I stole my hand into hers, and,
after a few minutes of silence, I was not surprised to hear her say
that they had killed the Queen of France, poor Marie Antoinette! she
had known her well in her childhood, before she was a queen at all--"a
sad fate, a sad fate," said Lady Ferry. We went far down the gardens
and by the river-wall, and when we were again near the house, and could
hear Mr. McAllister's voice as cheery as ever, madam took no notice of
it. I had hoped she would go into the parlour again, and I wished over
and over that I could have waited to hear the secrets which I was sure
must have been told after cousin Agnes had sent me away.
One day I thought I had made a wonderful discovery. I was fond of
reading, and found many books which interested me in cousin Matthew's
fine library; but I took great pleasure also in hunting through a
collection of old volumes which had been cast aside, either by him, or
by some former owner of the house, and which were piled in a corner of
the great garret. They were mostly yellow with age, and had dark brown
leather or shabby paper bindings; the pictures in some were very
amusing to me. I used often to find one which I appropriated and
carried down stairs; and on this day I came upon a dusty, odd shaped
little book, for which I at once felt an affection. I looked at it a
little. It seemed to be a journal, there were some stories of the
Indians and next I saw some reminiscences of the town of Boston, where,
among other things, the author was told the marvellous story of one
Mistress Honor Warburton, who was cursed, and doomed to live in this
world forever. This was startling. I at once thought of Madam, and
was reading on further to know the rest of the story, when some one
called me, and I foolishly did not dare to carry my book with me. I
was afraid I should not find it if I left it in sight; I saw an opening
near me at the edge of the floor by the eaves, and I carefully laid my
treasure inside. But, alas! I was not to be sure of its safe
hiding-place in a way that I fancied, for the book fell down between
the boarding of the thick walls, and I heard it knock as it fell, and
knew by the sound that it must be out of reach, I grieved over this
loss for a long time; and I felt that it had been most unkindly taken
out of my hand. I wished heartily that I could know the rest of the
story; and I tried to summon courage to ask Madam, when we were by our
selves, if she had heard of Honor Warburton, but something held me back.
There were two other events just at this time which made this strange
old friend of mine seem stranger than ever to me. I had a dream one
night, which I took for a vision and a reality at the time. I thought
I looked out of my window in the night, and there was bright moonlight,
and I could see the other gable plainly; and I looked in at the
windows of an unoccupied parlour which I never had seen open before,
under Lady Ferry's own rooms, The shutters were pushed back, and there
were candles burning; and I heard voices, and presently some tinkling
music, like that of a harpsichord I had once heard in a very old house
where I had been in England with my mother. I saw several couples go
through with a slow, stately dance; and, when they stopped and seated
themselves, I could hear their voices; but they spoke low, these
midnight guests. I watched until the door was opened which led into
the garden, and the company came out and stood for a few minutes on the
little lawn, making their adieus, bowing low, and behaving with
astonishing courtesy and elegance: finally the last good-nights were
said, and they went away. Lady Ferry stood under the pointed porch,
looking after them, and I could see her plainly in her brocade gown,
with the impish flowers, a tall quaint cap, and a high lace frill at
her throat, whiter than any lace I had ever seen, and with a glitter on
it, and there was a glitter on her face too. One of the other ladies
was dressed in velvet, and I thought she looked beautiful: their eyes
were all like sparks of fire. The gentlemen wore cloaks and ruffs, and
high-peaked hats with wide brims, such as I had seen in some very old
pictures which hung on the walls of the long west room. These were not
pilgrims or Puritans, but gay gentlemen; and soon I heard the noise of
their boats on the pebbles as they pushed off shore, and the splash of
the oars in the water. Lady Ferry waved her hand, and went in at the
door; and I found myself standing by the window in the chilly, cloudy
night: the opposite gable, the garden, and the river, were
indistinguishable in the darkness. I stole back to bed in an agony of
fear; for it had been very real, that dream. I surely was at the
window, for my hand had been on the sill when I waked; and I heard a
church-bell ring two o'clock in a town far up the river. I never had
heard this solemn bell before, and it seemed frightful; but I knew
afterward that in the silence of a misty night the sound of it came
down along the water.
In the morning I found that there had been a gale in the night; and
cousin Matthew said at breakfast time that the tide had risen so that
it had carried off two old boats that had been left on the shore to go
to pieces. I sprang to the window, and sure enough they had
disappeared. I had played in one of them the day before. Should I
tell cousin Matthew what I had seen or dreamed? But I was too sure
that he would only laugh at me: and yet I was none the less sure that
those boats had carried passengers.
When I went out to the garden, I hurried to the porch, and saw, to my
disappointment, that there were great spiders' webs in the corners of
the door, and around the latch, and that it had not been opened since I
was there before. But I saw something shining in the grass, and found
it was a silver knee-buckle. It must have belonged to one of the
ghostly guests, and my faith in them came back for a while, in spite of
the cobwebs. By and by I bravely carried it up to Madam, and asked if
it were hers. Sometimes she would not answer for a long time, when one
rudely broke in upon her reveries, and she hesitated now, looking at me
with singular earnestness. Deborah was in the room; and, when she saw
the buckle, she quietly said that it had been on the window-ledge the
day before, and must have slipped out. "I found it down by the
doorstep in the grass," said I humbly; and then I offered Lady Ferry
some strawberries which I had picked for her on a broad green leaf, and
came away again.
A day or two after this, while my dream was still fresh in my mind, I
went with Martha to her own home, which was a mile or two distant,--a
comfortable farmhouse for those days, where I was always made welcome.
The servants were all very kind to me: as I recall it now, they seemed
to have pity for me, because I was the only child perhaps. I was very
happy, that is certain, and I enjoyed my childish amusements as
heartily as if there were no unfathomable mysteries or perplexities or
sorrows anywhere in the world.
I was sitting by the fireplace at Martha's, and her grandmother, who
was very old, and who was fast losing her wits, had been talking to me
about Madam. I do not remember what she said, at least, it made little
impression; but her grandson, a worthless fellow, sauntered in, and
began to tell a story of his own, hearing of whom we spoke. "I was
coming home late last night," said he, "and, as I was in that dark
place along by the Noroway pines, old Lady Ferry she went by me, and I
was near scared to death. She looked fearful tall--towered way up
above me. Her face was all lit up with blue light, and her feet didn't
touch the ground. She wasn't taking steps, she wasn't walking, but
movin' along like a sail-boat before the wind. I dodged behind some
little birches, and I was scared she'd see me; but she went right out
o' sight up the road. She ain't mortal."
"Don't scare the child with such foolishness," said his aunt
disdainfully. "You'll be seein' worse things a-dancin' before your
eyes than that poor, harmless old creatur' if you don't quit the ways
you've been following lately. If that was last night, you were too
drunk to see anything;" and the fellow muttered, and went out banging
the door. But the story had been told, and I was stiffened and chilled
with fright; and all the way home I was in terror, looking fearfully
behind me again and again.
When I saw cousin Agnes, I felt safer, and since cousin Matthew was not
at home, and we were alone, I could not resist telling her what I had
heard. She listened to me kindly, and seemed so confident that my
story was idle nonsense, that my fears were quieted. She talked to me
until I no longer was a believer in there being any unhappy mystery or
harmfulness; but I could not get over the fright, and I dreaded my
lonely room, and I was glad enough when cousin Agnes, with her
unfailing thoughtfulness, asked if I would like to have her come to
sleep with me, and even went up stairs with me at my own early bedtime,
saying that she should find it dull to sit all alone in the parlour.
So I went to sleep, thinking of what I had heard, it is true, but no
longer unhappy, because her dear arm was over me, and I was perfectly
safe. I waked up for a little while in the night, and it was light in
the room, so that I could see her face, fearless and sweet and sad, and
I wondered, in my blessed sense of security, if she were ever afraid of
Lady Ferry.
I will not tell other stories: they are much alike, all my memories of
those weeks and months at the ferry, and I have no wish to be
wearisome. The last time I saw Madam she was standing in the garden
door at dusk. I was going away before daylight in the morning. It was
in the autumn: some dry leaves flittered about on the stone at her
feet, and she was watching them. I said good-by again, and she did not
answer me: but I think she knew I was going away, and I am sure she was
sorry, for we had been a great deal together; and, child as I was, I
thought to how many friends she must have had to say farewell.
Although I wished to see my father and mother, I cried as if my heart
would break because I had to leave the ferry. The time spent there had
been the happiest time of all my life, I think. I was old enough to
enjoy, but not to suffer much, and there was singularly little to
trouble one. I did not know that my life was ever to be different. I
have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against
storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them. I have
learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of every
one, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious and
frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we do
trust every thing to God. Under the best-loved and most beautiful face
we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we turn
aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet. We smile, and are gay
enough; God pity us! We try to forget our heart-aches and remorse. We
even call our lives commonplace, and, bearing our own heaviest burdens
silently, we try to keep the commandment, and to bear one another's
also. There is One who knows: we look forward, as He means we shall,
and there is always a hand ready to help us, though we reach out for it
doubtfully in the dark.
For many years after this summer was over, I lived in a distant,
foreign country; at last my father and I were to go back to America.
Cousin Agnes and cousin Matthew, and my mother, were all long since
dead, and I rarely thought of my childhood, for in an eventful and
hurried life the present claims one almost wholly. We were travelling
in Europe, and it happened that one day I was in a bookshop in
Amsterdam, waiting for an acquaintance whom I was to meet, and who was
behind time.
The shop was a quaint place, and I amused myself by looking over an
armful of old English books which a boy had thrown down near me,
raising a cloud of dust which was plain evidence of their antiquity. I
came to one, almost the last, which had a strange familiar look, and I
found that it was a copy of the same book which I had lost in the wall
at the ferry. I bought it for a few coppers with the greatest
satisfaction, and began at once to read it. It had been published in
England early in the eighteenth century, and was written by one Mr.
Thomas Highward of Chester,--a journal of his travels among some of the
English colonists of North America, containing much curious and
desirable knowledge, with some useful advice to those persons having
intentions of emigrating. I looked at the prosy pages here and there,
and finally found again those reminiscences of the town of Boston and
the story of Mistress Honor Warburton, who was cursed, and doomed to
live in this world to the end of time. She had lately been in Boston,
but had disappeared again; she endeavoured to disguise herself, and
would not stay long in one place if she feared that her story was
known, and that she was recognized. One Mr. Fleming, a man of good
standing and repute, and an officer of Her Majesty Queen Anne, had
sworn to Mr. Thomas Highward that his father, a person of great age,
had once seen Mistress Warburton in his youth; that she then bore
another name, but had the same appearance. "Not wishing to seem unduly
credulous," said Mr. Highward, "I disputed this tale; but there was
some considerable evidence in its favour, and at least this woman was
of vast age, and was spoken of with extreme wonder by the town's folk."
I could not help thinking of my old childish suspicions of Lady Ferry,
though I smiled at the folly of them and of this story more than once.
I tried to remember if I had heard of her death; but I was still a
child when my cousin Agnes had died. Had poor Lady Ferry survived her,
and what could have become of her? I asked my father, but he could
remember nothing, if indeed he ever had heard of her death at all. He
spoke of our cousins' kindness to this forlorn soul, and that, learning
her desolation and her piteous history (and being the more pitiful
because of her shattered mind), when she had last wandered to their
door, they had cared for the old gentlewoman to the end of her
days--"for I do not think she can be living yet," said my father, with
a merry twinkle in his eyes: "she must have been nearly a hundred years
old when you saw her. She belonged to a fine old family which had gone
to wreck and ruin. She strayed about for years, and it was a godsend
to her to have found such a home in her last days."
That same summer we reached America, and for the first time since I had
left it I went to the ferry. The house was still imposing, the
prestige of the Haverford grandeur still lingered; but it looked
forlorn and uncared for. It seemed very familiar; but the months I had
spent there were so long ago, that they seemed almost to belong to
another life. I sat alone on the doorstep for a long time, where I
used often to watch for Lady Ferry; and forgotten thoughts and dreams
of my childhood came back to me. The river was the only thing that
seemed as young as ever. I looked in at some of the windows where the
shutters were put back, and I walked about the garden, where I could
hardly trace the walks, all overgrown with thick, short grass though
there were a few ragged lines of box, and some old rose-bushes; and I
saw the very last of the flowers,--a bright red poppy, which had
bloomed under a lilac-tree among the weeds.
Out beyond the garden, on a slope by the river, I saw the family
burying-ground, and it was with a comfortable warmth at my heart that I
stood inside the familiar old enclosure. There was my Lady Ferry's
grave; there could be no mistake about it, and she was dead. I smiled
at my satisfaction and at my foolish childish thoughts, and thanked God
that there could be no truth in them, and that death comes surely,--say
rather that the better life comes surely--though it comes late.
The sad-looking, yellow-topped cypress, which only seems to feel quite
at home in country burying-grounds, had kindly spread itself like a
coverlet over the grave, which already looked like a very old grave;
and the headstone was leaning a little, not to be out of the fashion of
the rest. I traced again the words of old Colonel Haverford's pompous
epitaph, and idly read some others. I remembered the old days so
vividly there; I thought of my cousin Agnes, and wished that I could
see her; and at last, as the daylight faded, I came away. When I
crossed the river, the ferry-man looked at me wonderingly, for my eyes
were filled with tears. Although we were in shadow on the water, the
last red glow of the sun blazed on the high gable-windows, just as it
did the first time I crossed over,--only a child then, with my life
before me.
I asked the ferry-man some questions, but he could tell me nothing: he
was a new-comer to that part of the country. He was sorry that the
boat was not in better order; but there were very seldom any
passengers. The great house was out of repair: people would not live
there, for they said it was haunted. Oh, yes! he had heard of Lady
Ferry. She had lived to be very ancient; but she was dead.
"Yes," said I, "she is dead."
[Illustration: decoration]
[Illustration: decoration]
A BIT OF SHORE LIFE.
I often think of a boy with whom I made friends last summer, during
some idle, pleasant days that I spent by the sea. I was almost always
out of doors, and I used to watch the boats go out and come in; and I
had a hearty liking for the good-natured fishermen, who were lazy and
busy by turns, who waited for the wind to change, and waited for the
tide to turn, and waited for the fish to bite, and were always ready to
gossip about the weather, and the fish, and the wonderful events that
had befallen them and their friends.
Georgie was the only boy of whom I ever saw much at the shore. The few
young people living there all went to school through the hot summer
days at a little weather-beaten schoolhouse a mile or two inland.
There were few houses to be seen, at any rate, and Georgie's house was
the only one so close to the water. He looked already nothing but a
fisherman; his clothes were covered with an oil-skin suit, which had
evidently been awkwardly cut down for him from one of his father's, of
whom he was a curious little likeness. I could hardly believe that he
was twelve years old, he was so stunted and small; yet he was a strong
little fellow; his hands were horny and hard from handling the clumsy
oars, and his face was so brown and dry from the hot sun and chilly
spray, that he looked even older when one came close to him. The first
time I saw him was one evening just at night fall. I was sitting on
the pebbles, and he came down from the fish-house with some
lobster-nets, and a bucket with some pieces of fish in it for bait, and
put them into the stern of one of the boats which lay just at the edge
of the rising tide. He looked at the clouds over the sea, and at the
open sky overhead, in an old wise way, and then, as if satisfied with
the weather, began to push off his boat. It dragged on the pebbles; it
was a heavy thing, and he could not get it far enough out to be floated
by the low waves, so I went down to help him. He looked amazed that a
girl should have thought of it, and as if he wished to ask me what good
I supposed I could do, though I was twice his size. But the boat
grated and slid down toward the sand, and I gave her a last push as the
boy perched with one knee on her gunwale and let the other foot drag in
the water for a minute. He was afloat after all; and he took the oars,
and pulled manfully out toward the moorings, where the whale-boats and
a sail-boat or two were swaying about in the wind, which was rising a
little since the sun had set. He did not say a word to me, or I to
him. I watched him go out into the twilight,--such a little fellow,
between those two great oars! But the boat could not drift or loiter
with his steady stroke, and out he went, until I could only see the
boat at last, lifting and sinking on the waves beyond the reef outside
the moorings. I asked one of the fishermen whom I knew very well, "Who
is that little fellow? Ought he to be out by himself, it is growing
dark so fast?"
"Why, that's _Georgie_!" said my friend, with his grim smile. "Bless
ye! he's like a duck; ye can't drown him. He won't be in until ten
o'clock, like's not. He'll go way out to the far ledges when the tide
covers them too deep where he is now. Lobsters he's after."
"Whose boy is he?" said I.
"Why, Andrer's, up here to the fish-house. _She's dead_, and him and
the boy get along together somehow or 'nother. They've both got
something saved up, and Andrer's a clever fellow; took it very hard,
losing his wife. I was telling of him the other day: 'Andrer,' says I,
'ye ought to look up somebody or 'nother, and not live this way.
There's plenty o' smart, stirring women that would mend ye up, and cook
for ye, and do well by ye.'--'No,' says he; 'I've hed my wife, and I've
lost her.'--'Well, now,' says I, 'ye've shown respect, and there's the
boy a-growin' up, and if either of you was took sick, why, here ye
be.'--'Yes,' says he, 'here I be, sure enough;' and he drawed a long
breath, 's if he felt bad; so that's all I said. But it's no way for a
man to get along, and he ought to think of the boy. He owned a good
house about half a mile up the road; but he moved right down here after
she died, and his cousin took it, and it burnt up in the winter. Four
year ago that was. I was down to the Georges Banks."