_LUCY PEABODY’S DREAM._
Moby Dick went on his way, “emerging strong against the tide.” A
Nantucket ship saw him as he blew, and her boats put out after him.
“Just get off a minute, my dear,” said he to the little mermaid whom he
carried. She did so, and then, instead of swimming away from the boats,
he put down his enormous head and went straight at them.
“The white whale!” cried the sailors; and they did not throw the
harpoon, but went meekly back to the ship. They were bold enough, but
they were afraid of the white whale, for Moby Dick had sunk two or three
ships in his time and entirely reversed the whalers’ programme.
Moby Dick executed a huge frisk on the surface of the sea, flapped his
tail on the water with a noise like thunder, and then dived down to
rejoin the mermaid.
“All right, my dear,” he said, cheerfully.
“I’m so glad you are safe,” said the mermaid, patting him with her
little hands.
On they went through the water, and the coast was soon in sight. It was
growing dusk, and the lighthouse showed its red star over the sea. The
mermaid was silent, and Moby Dick did not trouble her to talk.
Suddenly a beautiful woman appeared to them on the crest of a long
rolling billow. She made no effort; she did not swim, but moved through
the water by her will alone. She seemed a part of the sea, like a wave
come alive.
“That is not a human being, surely,” said the mermaid, startled.
“It’s very like that—you know—that wooden thing—that _he_ ran after,”
said Moby Dick in a gigantic whisper, “only it’s alive.”
“She don’t seem as though she could ever have been wood,” said the
mermaid. “She looks kind. I don’t feel as though she were that—that
person. Please ask if she has seen our friend.”
“Yes; my dear child,” said Panope—for she it was—answering the mermaid’s
thought, “I have seen him;” and the immortal sighed.
“His family are very anxious about him, my lady,” said the whale, who
was conscious of an awe he had never known before, though he felt he
could trust the Sea-Nymph.
“They need be anxious no more,” said Panope, gently and sadly.
“What has happened?” asked the mermaid, turning pale, but keeping
herself very quiet.
Panope went to her, and the immortal daughter of the sea put her white
arms round the mermaid and held her in a close and soft embrace.
“My dear,” she said, very gently, “your old playmate is dead.”
[Illustration: “‘My dear,’ she said, very gently, ‘your old playmate is
dead.’”]
“You don’t say so, ma’am!” said Moby Dick, with a great sigh; and then
he swam away to a little distance and left the mermaid to the care of
the Sea-Nymph, for he was a whale of very delicate feelings.
The mermaid looked into the blue eyes of the Goddess, and felt that the
countless ages of her being had but made her more wise and kind. She hid
her face on the immortal maiden’s bosom.
“My sweet child,” said Panope, after a little while, “I cannot bring
your friend to life—it is beyond my power—but if you will, I can give
you an immortality like my own. I can carry you with me to a world where
death or pain has never come, and keep you young and lovely for ever.”
The mermaid was silent a moment. Then she looked up into Panope’s face.
“You will not be angry with me?” said she.
“Angry, my poor darling!”
“Then, my friends that I have loved have all been mortal. My mother is
dead, my twin brother was killed in the war, and now my old
companion—and I have known him so long! I think I should rather not be
so very different, but go to them when my time comes.”
Panope caressed her hair with a soft hand.
“I don’t know but you are right. Sometimes,” said the Goddess, with a
sad, tired look in her eyes, “I think I would be glad to be mortal
myself, except that I am glad to be a little comfort to you. I am sorry
I came back. Either the world has grown a sad place, or else I had
forgotten what it used to be. But I don’t know; I almost broke my heart
over Prometheus when I was quite a young thing. I could have helped him
take care of his beloved human race a great deal better than Asia, but
he never cared anything for me. It is all over long ago. Is there
nothing that I can do for you, my dear?”
The mermaid was silent a minute. Then she said:
“I think I should like to take him home to his friends. I know they
would wish it should be so.”
“It shall be,” said Panope. “Wait here, and I will bring him to you.
But, my dear child, you are so quiet. All the mortal women I ever knew
in the old days, in the sea or out, would have torn their hair and
screamed, but you are so different.”
The mermaid looked up with a little ghost of a smile, half proud, half
pitiful. “I suppose it is because I was born in American waters,” she
said.
“Wait but a little,” said Panope. “The whale will take care of you. He
is a good creature. His great-grandfathers were pets of mine long ago. I
will soon come back again;” and the Nymph was gone.
Some time after the news had come to Salem of the total loss of the brig
Sea-nymph, Lucy Peabody was walking alone along the sands. She felt
weary, and sat down under the shadow of a rock to rest. The sun was just
setting, the west was suffused with a golden glow, the water lay, hardly
rippling to a low whispering wind, a sea of fire and glass. Lucy leaned
her head against the rock, and sitting there, she dreamed a dream. Along
the sands toward her came old Goody Cobb, whom everybody suspected of
witchcraft. She appeared so suddenly that Lucy in her dream thought she
had come out of the sea.
“Ho! ho!” said Goody Cobb, with a cracked laugh; “so here is Madam
Peabody’s lady daughter come out to cry over her disappointment all by
herself? The man was a fool, sure enough, but I wouldn’t mind. Just let
me write your name down in a little book I keep, and you shall see our
fine young madam dwine away like snow in spring-time, and then we shall
see—”
“You are out of your mind, Goody,” said Lucy in her dream; “but such
talk as that is not safe, for there are those in town who are silly
enough to believe witch stories, and you might get yourself into
trouble.”
“Silly, are they!” cried Goody Cobb, growing angry. “But never mind.
Just let me have your name, and we shall see what we shall see. Look at
the pretty necklace I will give you;” and she drew from her pocket a
chain of shining green stones and held it up before the girl’s eyes.
“I will have nothing to say to you or your gifts,” said Lucy, steadily.
“Pass on your way, Goody, and leave me alone.”
“So you think yourself too good for me!” said the witch in a rage. “Let
me tell you that my family is as good as yours, and better. My
grandfather was a minister—ay, and a noted one—while yours was selling
clams round the streets.”
It was a very odd thing that while Goody Cobb had become a witch,
renounced her baptism and sold herself to the enemy of mankind, she was
yet very proud of the eminent divine, her grandfather.
“I’ll be the death of you! I’ll stick pins in you, and set my imps to
pinch you black and blue!” screamed Goody Cobb, with the look of a
possessed woman, as she was.
Suddenly, as Lucy dreamed—so suddenly that she seemed to grow out of the
air—there stood on the sand between herself and the witch a tall and
beautiful woman in shining raiment of green and silver, with golden hair
that fell loosely to her ankles. She gazed sternly on the witch; a
divine wrath made her blue eyes awful.
“You earth-born creature!” she cried as she caught the green necklace
from the old woman’s trembling hand. “This girl is a child of the ocean,
and is in my care;” and Lucy dreamed that she felt glad to remember how
she had been born on the voyage her mother made with her father to
Calcutta. “Stay where you are for ever!” continued the stranger lady,
raising her white hand with a gesture of command. “You will wreck no
more ships—you, nor your sister witch.” And then as she stood Goody Cobb
stiffened into stone and became a black rock.
“You need not be afraid of me, my dear,” said the dream lady to Lucy. “I
never hurt any one in my life. I am only an innocent Sea-Nymph, and I
am—or I was—the helper of all the sailor-folk, and your father is a bold
seaman.”
Lucy dreamed that she was very much surprised, which was curious, for in
a dream the more remarkable a thing is, the less it astonishes the
dreamer.
“But I thought there never were any nymphs,” she said, perplexed.
The sea-maiden smiled a queer little smile—half sad, half amused.
“Do you know,” she said, “that since men left off believing in them and
building temples, the gods all declare that there never were such things
as human creatures, and that it was all a delusion of ours? Keep this;”
and she dropped the necklace into Lucy’s lap. “It belonged to one who
will not care to wear it now. Farewell;” and the goddess bent down and
lightly kissed the girl’s forehead, and the next instant Lucy was alone.
She woke up, as she thought, and sat still for a moment.
“What a singular dream!” she said to herself. Then she looked round, and
saw a black rock standing beside her, “Was that rock there? I don’t
remember it, but of course it must have been.” She rose to her feet.
Something fell glittering on the sand. She picked it up. It was a long,
shining necklace of green stones.
“This is very strange!” said Lucy, thoughtfully. “But I suppose I had
better take them home. They must have been washed up from the sea and
caught to my gown some way. How pretty they are! I wonder if they
belonged to some one who is drowned?”
She put the necklace into her pocket, and turned to go home. She had
gone but a little way when she met Job Chippit.
“Uncle Job,” she said, “I have found something on the sand. Do you think
any one in town has lost it, or that it was washed up by the sea?”
Job examined closely the emerald necklace. “This never belonged to
anyone in our town, Lucy,” he said; “most likely the tide washed it up
in the last storm. Yours it is by all right if no one comes to claim it;
and be keerful of it, for I expect it’s awful valuable. But what’s
happened to you?”
“Why?”
“You’ve got an odd look about you, some way, but I never see you look so
pretty. Has anything happened?”
“No,” said Lucy, quietly, “only I sat down to rest and fell asleep, and
had a very strange dream. Good-night, Uncle Job.” From that evening
Goody Cobb was never seen in Salem town.
Job Chippit continued his walk, thoughtfully whittling a little stick.
Before long he overtook Master Isaac Torrey, who was walking along the
shore with his head down, seeming to notice nothing but the sand at his
feet. Master Torrey had quite left off his wild ways. He made no more
foolish, fanciful speeches about nymphs and goddesses, and such
nonsense. “Anna Jane had made a sensible man of him,” said his
father-in-law. “He was greatly improved,” said every one, with the
exception of Ichabod Sterns and Job Chippit.
Master Torrey had avoided the wood-carver since his marriage. His
father-in-law thought it a good sign. “He had been quite too familiar
with that person,” thought the colonel. But this night Master Torrey did
not avoid him, though he only nodded without speaking in answer to Job’s
“Good-evening,” and then the two walked on in silence.
“That’s an odd-looking thing on the beach,” said Job at last.
They went up to the dark mass Job had pointed out. There on a heap of
weed, thrown up by the late storm, lay the wooden nymph, the paint
almost washed away, and there, with its arms tightly clasped about her
neck, lay a strange creature, half fish, half human.
“As sure as the world, it’s a merman!” said Job; “and there really are
such critters, after all! Poor fellow! The human part of him was pretty
good-lookin’ when he was alive. See what a dent he’s got in his head!”
“And this is the figure-head of The Sea-nymph,” said Master Torrey.
“Don’t you know it?”
“To be sure! Well, it does beat all! What shall we do with the merman?
I’d kind of hate to make a show of him. He’s a sort of man, and I ’spose
he had his feelings anyhow. Look at the empty scabbard and the
sword-belt; and he’s got a ring on his finger.”
Job bent down and tried to unfold the dead hand from its close clasp. At
that moment, though it was very calm, a huge wave rose from the sea, and
came thundering up the beach, covering the two men with spray. When it
retreated the dead merman and the figure-head were gone, and up from the
sea came a low sobbing sound.
Master Torrey and Job stood watching, surprised and startled. Another
minute, and up came a second huge wave, bearing upon its crest the oaken
sea-nymph. On it rolled—a mountain of water. It dashed its burden upon
the jagged rocks once, twice, thrice, and strewed the shattered
fragments over sea and sand. Job drew a long breath.
“Waal,” said he, “there goes the best piece of wood I ever chipped. Tell
ye what, philosophy won’t explain everything. ’Tain’t best to be too
rational if you want to have any insight into things in _this_ world. If
that wa’n’t done a-purpose, I never see a thing done so!”
They turned back and walked toward the town. Far away in the offing a
whale sent up an enormous jet, a sea-gull screamed wildly above their
heads.
“Going to say anything about this?” said Job at last.
“What would be the use?” said Master Torrey, sharply. “Half of them
would not believe you; and who wants to set all the fools in the place
chattering?”
“Not I! I’m not over-fond of answering questions. I’d rather ask ’em,”
said Job. “Do you know, putting this and that together, and the story of
the queer fish that hung round the ship, I’ve got a notion that poor
fishy thing fell in love with that figger-head of ourn? You couldn’t
expect such a critter as he was to have more sense than a landsman, and
I expect the log fell on him when the brig went to pieces and killed
him.”
“So much the better for him if he had given his soul to a wooden image,”
said Master Torrey, bitterly. “Good-night;” and he left Job and walked
slowly back to his handsome new house. Job looked after him wistfully.
Just then old Ichabod came up and saluted the wood-carver.
“Do you know, Ichabod,” said Job, “that Master Torrey and I just found
the figure-head of the poor Sea-nymph, all shattered to bits on the
rocks? The waves brought her all this way to smash her at last.”
“I wish they had smashed her at first,” said Ichabod.
“Why?” said Job, with a curious look.
“Because,” said Ichabod, “she was an unlucky creature from the first.
She was too much alive for a wooden image, and too wooden to be a live
woman, much less a goddess.”
_FINIS_
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public
domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the
HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)
--Released the other part of this printed volume, Eva’s Adventures in
Shadow-Land, as a separate Gutenberg edition, but retained the
original combined title-page as a bibliographic record.