A CHILD'S HOLIDAY.
When the next evening of our assembly came, I could see on Adela's face
a look of subdued expectation, and I knew now to what to attribute it:
Harry was going to read. There was a restlessness in her eyelids--they
were always rising, and falling as suddenly. But when the time drew
near, they grew more still; only her colour went and came a little. By
the time we were all seated, she was as quiet as death. Harry pulled
out a manuscript.
"Have you any objection to a ballad-story?" he asked of the company
generally.
"Certainly not," was the common reply; though Ralph stared a little,
and his wife looked at him. I believe the reason was, that they had
never known Harry write poetry before. But as soon as he had uttered
the title--"_The Two Gordons_"--
"You young rascal!" cried his brother. "Am I to keep you in material
for ever? Are you going to pluck my wings till they are as bare as an
egg? Really, ladies and gentlemen," he continued, in pretended anger,
while Harry was keeping down a laugh of keen enjoyment, "it is too bad
of that scapegrace brother of mine! Of course you are all welcome to
anything I have got; but he has no right to escape from his
responsibilities on that account. It is rude to us all. I know he can
write if he likes."
"Why, Ralph, you would be glad of such a brother to steal your sermons
from, if you had been up all night as I was. Of course I did not mean
to claim any more credit than that of unearthing some of your shy
verses.--May I read them or not?"
"Oh! of course. But it is lucky I came prepared for some escapade of
the sort, and brought a manuscript of proper weight and length in my
pocket."
Suddenly Harry's face changed from a laughing to a grave one. I saw how
it was. He had glanced at Adela, and her look of unmistakeable
disappointment was reflected in his face. But there was a glimmer of
pleasure in his eyes, notwithstanding; and I fancied I could see that
the pleasure would have been more marked, had he not feared that he had
placed himself at a disadvantage with her, namely, that she would
suppose him incapable of producing a story. However, it was only for a
moment that this change of feeling stopped him. With a gesture of some
haste he re-opened the manuscript, which he had rolled up as if to
protect it from the indignation of his brother, and read the following
ballad:
_"The Two Gordons._
I
"There was John Gordon, and Archibold,
And an earl's twin sons were they.
When they were one and twenty years old,
They fell out on their birth-day.
"'Turn,' said Archibold, 'brother sly!
Turn now, false and fell;
Or down thou goest, as black as a lie,
To the father of lies in hell.'
"'Why this to me, brother Archie, I pray?
What ill have I done to thee?'
'Smooth-faced hound, thou shall rue the day
Thou gettest an answer of me.
"'For mine will be louder than Lady Janet's,
And spoken in broad daylight--
And the wall to scale is my iron mail,
Not her castle wall at night.'
"'I clomb the wall of her castle tall,
In the moon and the roaring wind;
It was dark and still in her bower until
The morning looked in behind.'
"'Turn therefore, John Gordon, false brother;
For either thou or I,
On a hard wet bed--wet, cold, and red,
For evermore shall lie.'
"'Oh, Archibold, Janet is my true love;
Would I had told it thee!'
'I hate thee the worse. Turn, or I'll curse
The night that got thee and me.'
"Their swords they drew, and the sparks they flew,
As if hammers did anvils beat;
And the red blood ran, till the ground began
To plash beneath their feet.
"'Oh, Archie! thou hast given me a cold supper,
A supper of steel, I trow;
But reach me one grasp of a brother's hand,
And turn me, before you go.'
"But he turned himself on his gold-spurred heel,
And away, with a speechless frown;
And up in the oak, with a greedy croak,
The carrion-crow claimed his own.
II
"The sun looked over a cloud of gold;
Lady Margaret looked over the wall.
Over the bridge rode Archibold;
Behind him his merry men all.
"He leads his band to the holy land.
They follow with merry din.
A white Christ's cross is on his back;
In his breast a darksome sin.
"And the white cross burned him like the fire,
That he could nor eat nor rest;
It burned in and in, to get at the sin,
That lay cowering in his breast.
"A mile from the shore of the Dead Sea,
The army lay one night.
Lord Archibold rose; and out he goes,
Walking in the moonlight.
"He came to the shore of the old salt sea--
Yellow sands with frost-like tinge;
The bones of the dead on the edge of its bed,
Lay lapped in its oozy fringe.
"He sat him down on a half-sunk stone,
And he sighed so dreary and deep:
'The devil may take my soul when I wake,
If he'd only let me sleep!'
"Out from the bones and the slime and the stones,
Came a voice like a raven's croak:
'Was it thou, Lord Archibold Gordon?' it said,
'Was it thou those words that spoke?'
"'I'll say them again,' quoth Archibold,
'Be thou ghost or fiend of the deep.'
'Lord Archibold heed how thou may'st speed,
If thou sell me thy soul for sleep.'
"Lord Archibold laughed with a loud _ha! ha!_--
The Dead Sea curdled to hear:
'Thou would'st have the worst of the bargain curst--
It has every fault but fear.'
"'Done, Lord Archibold?' 'Lord Belzebub, done!'
His laugh came back in a moan.
The salt glittered on, and the white moon shone,
And Lord Archibold was alone.
"And back he went to his glimmering tent;
And down in his cloak he lay;
And sound he slept; and a pale-faced man
Watched by his bed till day.
"And if ever he turned or moaned in his sleep,
Or his brow began to lower,
Oh! gentle and clear, in the sleeper's ear,
He would whisper words of power;
"Till his lips would quiver, and sighs of bliss
From sorrow's bosom would break;
And the tear, soft and slow, would gather and flow;
And yet he would not wake.
"Every night the pale-faced man
Sat by his bed, I say;
And in mail rust-brown, with his visor down,
Rode beside him in battle-fray.
"But well I wot that it was not
The devil that took his part;
But his twin-brother John, he thought dead and gone,
Who followed to ease his heart.
III
"Home came Lord Archibold, weary wight,
Home to his own countree;
And he cried, when his castle came in sight,
'Now Christ me save and see!'
"And the man in rust-brown, with his visor down,
Had gone, he knew not where.
And he lighted down, and into the hall,
And his mother met him there.
"But dull was her eye, though her mien was high;
And she spoke like Eve to Cain:
'Lord Archibold Gordon, answer me true,
Or I'll never speak again.
"'Where is thy brother, Lord Archibold?
He was flesh and blood of thine.
Has thy brother's keeper laid him cold,
Where the warm sun cannot shine?'
"Lord Archibold could not speak a word,
For his heart was almost broke.
He turned to go. The carrion-crow
At the window gave a croak.
"'Now where art thou going, Lord Archie?' she said,
'With thy lips so white and thin?'
'Mother, good-bye; I am going to lie
In the earth with my brother-twin.'
"Lady Margaret sank on her couch. 'Alas!
I shall lose them both to-day.'
Lord Archibold strode along the road,
To the field of the Brothers' Fray.
"He came to the spot where they had fought.
'My God!' he cried in fright,
'They have left him there, till his bones are bare;
Through the plates they glimmer white.'
"For his brother's armour lay there, dank,
And worn with frost and dew.
Had the long, long grass that grew so rank,
Grown the very armour through?
"'O brother, brother!' cried the Earl,
With a loud, heart-broken wail,
'I would put my soul into thy bones,
To see thee alive and hale.'
"'Ha! ha!' said a voice from out the helm--
'Twas the voice of the Dead Sea shore--
And the joints did close, and the armour rose,
And clattered and grass uptore--
"'Thou canst put no soul into his bones,
Thy brother alive to set;
For the sleep was thine, and thy soul is mine,
And, Lord Archibold, well-met!'
"'Two words to that!' said the fearless Earl;
'The sleep was none of thine;
For I dreamed of my brother all the night--
His soul brought the sleep to mine.
"'But I care not a crack for a soul so black,
And thou may'st have it yet:
I would let it burn to eternity,
My brother alive to set.'
"The demon lifted his beaver up,
Crusted with blood and mould;
And, lo! John Gordon looked out of the helm,
And smiled upon Archibold.
"'Thy soul is mine, brother Archie,' he said,
'And I yield it thee none the worse;
No devil came near thee, Archie, lad,
But a brother to be thy nurse.'
"Lord Archibold fell upon his knee,
On the blood-fed, bright green sod:
'The soul that my brother gives back to me,
Is thine for ever, O God!'"
"Now for a piece of good, honest prose!" said the curate, the moment
Harry had finished, without allowing room for any remarks. "That is, if
the ladies and gentlemen will allow me to read once more."
Of course, all assented heartily.
"It is nothing of a story, but I think it is something of a picture,
drawn principally from experiences of my own childhood, which I told
you was spent chiefly in the north of Scotland. The one great joy of
the year, although some years went without it altogether, was the
summer visit paid to the shores of the Moray Firth. My story is merely
a record of some of the impressions left on myself by such a visit,
although the boy is certainly not a portrait of myself; and if it has
no result, no end, reaching beyond childhood into what is commonly
called life, I presume it is not of a peculiar or solitary character in
that respect; for surely many that we count finished
stories--life-histories--must look very different to the angels; and if
they haven't to be written over again, at least they have to be carried
on a few aeons further.
"A CHILD'S HOLIDAY.
"Before the door of a substantial farm-house in the north of Scotland,
stands a vehicle of somewhat singular construction. When analysed,
however, its composition proves to be simple enough. It is a common
agricultural cart, over which, by means of a few iron rods bent across,
a semi-cylindrical covering of white canvas has been stretched. It is
thus transformed from a hay or harvest cart into a family carriage, of
comfortable dimensions, though somewhat slow of progress. The lack of
springs is supplied by thick layers of straw, while sacks stuffed with
the same material are placed around for seats. Various articles are
being stowed away under the bags, and in the corners among the straw,
by children with bright expectant faces; the said articles having been
in process of collection and arrangement for a month or six weeks
previous, in anticipation of the journey which now lies, in all its
length and brightness, the length and brightness of a long northern
summer's day, before them.
"At last, all their private mysteries of provisions, playthings, and
books, having found places of safety more or less accessible on demand,
every motion of the horse, every shake and rattle of the covered cart,
makes them only more impatient to proceed; which desire is at length
gratified by their moving on at a funeral pace through the open gate.
They are followed by another cart loaded with the luggage necessary for
a six-week's sojourn at one of the fishing villages on the coast, about
twenty miles distant from their home. Their father and mother are to
follow in the gig, at a later hour in the day, expecting to overtake
them about half-way on the road.--Through the neighbouring village they
pass, out upon the lonely highway.
"Some seeds are borne to the place of their destiny by their own wings
and the wings of the wind, some by the wings of birds, some by simple
gravitation. The seed of my story, namely, the covered cart, sent forth
to find the soil for its coming growth, is dragged by a stout horse to
the sea-shore; and as it oscillates from side to side like a balloon
trying to walk, I shall say something of its internal constitution, and
principally of its germ; for, regarded as the seed of my story, a pale
boy of thirteen is the germ of the cart. First, though he will be of
little use to us afterwards, comes a great strong boy of sixteen, who
considerably despises this mode of locomotion, believing himself quite
capable of driving his mother in the gig, whereas he is only destined
to occupy her place in the evening, and return with his father. Then
comes the said germ, a boy whom repeated attacks of illness have
blanched, and who looks as if the thinness of its earthly garment made
his soul tremble with the proximity of the ungenial world. Then follows
a pretty blonde, with smooth hair, and smooth cheeks, and bright blue
eyes, the embodiment of home pleasures and love; whose chief enjoyment,
and earthly destiny indeed, so far as yet revealed, consist in
administering to the cupidities of her younger brother, a very ogre of
gingerbread men, and Silenus of bottled milk. This milk, by the way, is
expected, from former experience, to afford considerable pleasure at
the close of the journey, in the shape of one or two pellets of butter
in each bottle; the novelty of the phenomenon, and not any scarcity of
the article, constituting the ground of interest. A baby on the lap of
a rosy country-girl, and the servant in his blue Sunday coat, who sits
outside the cover on the edge of the cart, but looks in occasionally to
show some attention to the young woman, complete the contents of the
vehicle.
"Herbert Netherby, though, as I have said, only thirteen years of age,
had already attained a degree of mental development sufficient for
characterization. Disease had favoured the almost unhealthy
predominance of the mental over the bodily powers of the child; so
that, although the constitution which at one time was supposed to have
entirely given way, had for the last few years been gradually gaining
strength, he was still to be seen far oftener walking about with his
hands in his pockets, and his gaze bent on the ground, or turned up to
the clouds, than joining in any of the boyish sports of those of his
own age. A nervous dread of ridicule would deter him from taking his
part, even when for a moment the fountain of youthfulness gushed forth,
and impelled him to find rest in activity. So the impulse would pass
away, and he would relapse into his former quiescence. But this partial
isolation ministered to the growth of a love of Nature which, although
its roots were coeval with his being, might not have so soon appeared
above ground, but for this lack of human companionship. Thus the boy
became one of Nature's favourites, and enjoyed more than a common share
of her teaching.
"But he loved her most in her stranger moods. The gathering of a blue
cloud, on a sultry summer afternoon, he watched with intense hope, in
expectation of a thunder-storm; and a windy night, after harvest, when
the trees moaned and tossed their arms about, and the wind ran hither
and hither over the desolate fields of stubble, made the child's heart
dance within him, and sent him out careering through the deepening
darkness. To meet him then, you would not have known him for the
sedate, actionless boy, whom you had seen in the morning looking
listlessly on while his schoolfellows played. But of all his loves for
the shows of Nature, none was so strong as his love for water--common
to childhood, with its mills of rushes, its dams, its bridges, its
aqueducts; only in Herbert, it was more a quiet, delighted
contemplation. Weakness prevented his joining his companions in the
river; but the sight of their motions in the mystery of the water, as
they floated half-idealized in the clear depth, or glided along by
graceful propulsion, gave him as much real enjoyment as they received
themselves. For it was water itself that delighted him, whether in rest
or motion; whether rippling over many stones, like the first
half-articulate sounds of a child's speech, mingled with a strange
musical tremble and cadence which the heart only, and not the ear,
could detect; or lying in deep still pools, from the bottom of which
gleamed up bright green stones, or yet brighter water-plants, cool in
their little grotto, with water for an atmosphere and a firmament,
through which the sun-rays came, washed of their burning heat, but
undimmed of their splendour. He would lie for an hour by the side of a
hill-streamlet; he would stand gazing into a muddy pool, left on the
road by last night's rain. Once, in such a brown-yellow pool, he beheld
a glory--the sun, encircled with a halo vast and wide, varied like the
ring of opal colours seen about the moon when she floats through white
clouds, only larger and brighter than that. Looking up, he could see
nothing but a chaos of black clouds, brilliant towards the sun: the
colours he could not see, except in the muddy water.
"In autumn the rains would come down for days, and the river grow
stormy, forget its clearness, and spread out like a lake over the
meadows; and that was delightful indeed. But greater yet was the
delight when the foot-bridge was carried away; for then they had to
cross the stream in a boat. He longed for water where it could not be;
would fain have seen it running through the grass in front of his
father's house; and had a waking vision of a stream with wooden shores
that babbled through his bedroom. So it may be fancied with what
delight he overheard the parental decision that they should spend some
weeks by the shores of the great world--water, the father and the grave
of rivers.
"After many vain outlooks, and fruitless inquiries of their driver, a
sudden turn in the road brought them in sight of the sea between the
hills; itself resembling a low blue hill, covered with white stones.
Indeed, the little girl only doubted whether those were white stones or
sheep scattered all over it. They lost sight of it; saw it again; and
hailed it with greater rapture than at first.
"The sun was more than halfway down when they arrived. They had secured
a little cottage, almost on the brow of the high shore, which in most
places went down perpendicularly to the beach or sands, and in some
right into deep water; but opposite the cottage, declined with a
sloping, grassy descent. A winding track led down to the village, which
nestled in a hollow, with steep footpaths radiating from it. In front
of it, lower still, lay the narrow beach, narrow even at low water, for
the steep, rocky shore went steep and rocky down into the abyss. A
thousand fantastic rocks stood between land and water; amidst which, at
half-tide, were many little rocky arbours, with floors of sunny sand,
and three or four feet of water. Here you might bathe, or sit on the
ledges with your feet in the water, medicated with the restless glitter
and bewilderment of a half-dissolved sunbeam.
"A promontory, curving out into the sea, on the right, formed a bay and
natural harbour, from which, towards the setting sun, many
fishing-boats were diverging into the wide sea, as the children, stiff
and weary, were getting out of the cart. Herbert's fatigue was soon
forgotten in watching their brown-dyed sails, glowing almost red in the
sunset, as they went out far into the dark, hunters of the deep, to
spend the night on the waters.
"From the windows, the children could not see the shore, with all its
burst of beauties struck out from the meeting of things unlike; for it
lay far down, and the brow of the hill rose between it and them; only
they knew that below the waves were breaking on the rocks, and they
heard the gush and roar filling all the air. The room in which Herbert
slept was a little attic, with a window towards the sea. After gazing
with unutterable delight on the boundless water, which lay like a
condensed sky in the grey light of the sleeping day (for there is no
night at this season in the North), till he saw it even when his
eyelids closed from weariness, he lay down, and the monotonous lullaby
of the sea mingled with his dreams.
"Next morning he was wakened by the challenging and replying of the
sentinel-cocks, whose crowing sounded to him more clear and musical
than that of any of the cocks at home. He jumped out of bed. It was a
sunny morning, and his soul felt like a flake of sunshine, as he looked
out of his window on the radiant sea, green and flashing, its clear
surface here and there torn by the wind into spots of opaque white. So
happy did he feel, that he might have been one who had slept through
death and the judgment, and had awaked, a child, still in the kingdom
of God, under the new heavens and upon the new earth.
"After breakfast, they all went down with their mother to the
sea-shore. As they went, the last of the boats which had gone out the
night before, were returning laden, like bees. The sea had been
bountiful. Everything shone with gladness. But as Herbert drew nearer,
he felt a kind of dread at the recklessness of the waves. On they
hurried, assailed the rocks, devoured the sands, cast themselves in
wild abandonment on whatever opposed them. He feared at first to go
near, for they were unsympathizing, caring not for his love or his joy,
and would sweep him away like one of those floating sea-weeds. 'If they
are such in their play,' thought he, 'what must they be in their
anger!' But ere long he was playing with the sea as with a tame tiger,
chasing the retreating waters till they rallied and he, in his turn,
had to flee from their pursuit. Wearied at length, he left his brother
and sister building castles of wet sand, and wandered along the shore.
"Everywhere about lay shallow lakes of salt water, so shallow that they
were invisible, except when a puff of wind blew a thousand ripples into
the sun; whereupon they flashed as if a precipitous rain of stormy
light had rushed down upon them. Lifting his eyes from one of these
films of water, Herbert saw on the opposite side, stooping to pick up
some treasure of the sea, a little girl, apparently about nine years of
age. When she raised herself and saw Herbert, she moved slowly away
with a quiet grace, that strangely contrasted with her tattered
garments. She was ragged like the sea-shore, or the bunch of dripping
sea-weed that she carried in her hand; she was bare from foot to knee,
and passed over the wet sand with a gleam; the wind had been at more
trouble with her hair than any loving hand; it was black, lusterless,
and tangled. The sight of rags was always enough to move Herbert's
sympathies, and he wished to speak to the little girl, and give her
something. But when he had followed her a short distance, all at once,
and without having looked round, she began to glide away from him with
a wave-like motion, dancing and leaping; till a clear pool in the
hollow of a tabular rock imbedded in the sand, arrested her progress.
Here she stood like a statue, gazing into its depth; then, with a dart
like a kingfisher, plunged half into it, caught something at which her
head and curved neck showed that she looked with satisfaction--and
again, before Herbert could come near her, was skimming along the
uneven shore. He followed, as a boy follows a lapwing; but she, like
the lapwing, gradually increased the distance between them, till he
gave up the pursuit with some disappointment, and returned to his
brother and sister. More ambitious than they, he proceeded to
construct--chiefly for the sake of the moat he intended to draw around
it--a sand-castle of considerable pretensions; but the advancing tide
drove him from his stronghold before he had begun to dig the projected
fosse.
"As they returned home, they passed a group of fishermen in their long
boots and flapped sou'-westers, looking somewhat anxiously seaward.
Much to Herbert's delight, they predicted a stiff gale, and probably a
storm. A low bank of cloud had gathered along the horizon, and the wind
had already freshened; the white spots were thicker on the waves, and
the sound of their trampling on the shore grew louder.
"After dinner, they sat at the window of their little parlour, looking
out over the sea, which grew darker and more sullen, ever as the
afternoon declined. The cloudy bank had risen and walled out the sun;
but a narrow space of blue on the horizon looked like the rent whence
the wind rushed forth on the sea, and with the feet of its stormy
horses tore up the blue surface, and scattered the ocean-dust in
clouds. As evening drew on, Herbert could keep in the house no longer.
He wandered away on the heights, keeping from the brow of the cliffs;
now and then stooping and struggling with a stormier eddy; till,
descending into a little hollow, he sunk below the plane of the
tempest, and stood in the glow of a sudden calm, hearing the tumult all
round him, but himself in peace. Looking up, he could see nothing but
the sides of the hollow with the sky resting on them, till, turning
towards the sea, he saw, at some distance, a point of the cliff rising
abruptly into the air. At the same moment, the sun looked out from a
crack in the clouds, on the very horizon; and as Herbert could not see
the sunset, the peculiar radiance illuminated the more strangely the
dark vault of earth and cloudy sky. Suddenly, to his astonishment, it
was concentrated on the form of the little ragged girl. She stood on
the summit of the peak before him. The light was a crown, not to her
head only, but to her whole person; as if she herself were the crown
set on the brows of the majestic shore. Disappearing as suddenly, it
left her standing on the peak, dark and stormy; every tress, if tresses
they could be called, of her windy hair, every tatter of her scanty
garments, seeming individually to protest, 'The wind is my playmate;
let me go!' If Aphrodite was born of the sunny sea, this child was the
offspring of the windy shore; as if the mind of the place had developed
for itself a consciousness, and this was its embodiment. She bore a
strange affinity to the rocks, and the sea-weed, and the pools, and the
wide, wild ocean; and Herbert would scarcely have been shocked to see
her cast herself from the cliff into the waves, which now dashed
half-way up its height. By the time he had got out of the hollow, she
had vanished, and where she had gone he could not conjecture. He half
feared she had fallen over the precipice; and several times that night,
as the vapour of dreams gathered around him, he started from his
half-sleep in terror at seeing the little genius of the storm fall from
her rock-pedestal into the thundering waves as its foot.
"Next day the wind continuing off the sea, with vapour and rain, the
children were compelled to remain within doors, and betake themselves
to books and playthings. But Herbert's chief resource lay in watching
the sea and the low grey sky, between which was no distinguishable
horizon. The wind still increased, and before the afternoon it blew a
thorough storm, wind and waves raging together on the rocky shore. The
fishermen had secured their boats, drawing them up high on the land;
but what vessels might be labouring under the low misty pall no one
could tell. Many anxious fears were expressed for some known to be at
sea; and many tales of shipwreck were told that night in the
storm-shaken cottages.
"The day was closing in, darkened the sooner by the mist, when Herbert,
standing at the window, now rather weary, saw the little girl dart past
like a petrel. He snatched up his cap and rushed from the house,
buttoning his jacket to defend him from the weather. The little fellow,
though so quiet among other boys, was a lover of the storm as much as
the girl was, and would have preferred its buffeting, so long as his
strength lasted, to the warmest nook by the fireside; and now he could
not resist the temptation to follow her. As soon as he was clear of the
garden, he saw her stopping to gaze down on the sea--starting again
along the heights--blown out of her course--and regaining it by
struggling up in the teeth of the storm. He at once hastened in
pursuit, trying as much as possible to keep out of her sight, and was
gradually lessening the distance between them, when, on crossing the
hollow already mentioned, he saw her on the edge of the cliff, close to
the pinnacle on which she had stood the night before; where after
standing for a moment, she sank downwards and vanished, but whether
into earth or air, he could not tell. He approached the place. A blast
of more than ordinary violence fought against him, as if determined to
preserve the secret of its favourite's refuge. But he persisted, and
gained the spot.
"He then found that the real edge of the precipice was several yards
farther off, the ground sloping away from where he stood. At his feet,
in the slope, was an almost perpendicular opening. He hesitated a
little; but, sure that the child was a real human child and no phantom,
he did not hesitate long. He entered and found it lead spirally
downwards. Descending with some difficulty, for the passage was narrow,
he arrived at a small chamber, into one corner of which the stone
shaft, containing the stair, projected half its round. The chamber
looked as if it had been hollowed out of the rock. A narrow window,
little more than a loop-hole through the thick wall, admitted the roar
of the waves and a dim grey light. This light was just sufficient to
show him the child in the farthest corner of the chamber, bending
forward with her hands between her knees, in a posture that indicated
fear. The little playfellow of the winds was not sure of him. At the
first word he spoke, a sea-bird, which had made its home in the
apartment, startled by the sound of his voice, dashed through the
window, with a sudden clang of wings, into the great misty void
without; and Herbert looking out after it, almost forgot the presence
of the little girl in the awe and delight of the spectacle before him.
It was now much darker, and the fog had settled down more closely on
the face of the deep; but just below him he could see the surface of
the ocean, whose mad waves appeared to rush bellowing out of the unseen
on to the shore of the visible. When, after some effort, he succeeded
in leaning out of the window, he could see the shore beneath him; for
he was on its extreme verge, and the spray now and then dashed through
the loop-hole into the chamber. He was still gazing and absorbed, when
a sweet timid voice, that yet partook undefinably of the wildness of a
sea-breeze, startled him out of his contemplation.
"'Did my mother send you to me?' said the voice.
"He looked down. Close beside him stood the child, gazing earnestly up
into his face through the twilight from the window.
"'Where does your mother live?' asked Herbert.
"'All out there,' the child answered, pointing to the window.
"While he was thinking what she could mean, she continued:
"'Mother is angry to-night; but when the sun comes out, and those nasty
clouds are driven away, she will laugh again. Mother does not like
black clouds and fogs; they spoil her house.'
"Still perplexed as to the child's meaning, Herbert asked,
"'Does your mother love you?'
"'Yes, except when she is angry. She does not love me to-night; but
to-morrow, perhaps, she will be all over laughs to me; and that makes
me run to her; and she will smile to me all day, till night comes and
she goes to sleep, and leaves me alone; for I hear her sleeping, but I
cannot go to sleep with her.'"
Here the curate interrupted his reading to remark, that he feared he
had spoiled the pathos of the child's words, by translating them into
English; but that they must gain more, for the occasion, by being made
intelligible to his audience, than they could lose by the change from
their original form.
"Herbert's sympathies had by this time made him suspect that the child
must be talking of the sea, which somehow she had come to regard as her
mother. He asked,
"'Where does your father live, then?'
"'I have not any father,' she answered. 'I had one, but mother took
him.'
"Several other questions Herbert put; but still the child's notions ran
in the same channel. They were wild notions, but uttered with
confidence as if they were the most ordinary facts. It seemed that
whatever her imagination suggested, bore to her the impress of
self-evident truth; and that she knew no higher reality.
"By this time it was almost dark.
"'I must go home,' said Herbert.
"'I will go with you,' responded the girl.
"She ran along beside him, but in the discursive manner natural to her;
till, coming to one of the paths descending towards the shore, she
darted down, without saying good-night even.
"Next day, the storm having abated, and the sun shining out, they were
standing on the beach, near a fisherman, who like them was gazing
seawards, when the child went skimming past along the shore. Mrs.
Netherby asked the fisherman about her, and learned the secret of the
sea's motherhood. She had been washed ashore from the wreck of a
vessel; and was found on the beach, tied to a spar. All besides had
perished. From the fragment they judged it to have been a Dutch vessel.
Some one had said in her hearing--'Poor child! the sea is her mother;'
and her imagination had cherished the idea. A fisherman, who had no
family, had taken her to his house and loved her dearly. But he lost
his wife shortly after; and a year or two ago, the sea had taken him,
the only father she knew. All, however, were kind to her. She was
welcome wherever she chose to go and share with the family. But no one
knew today where she would be to-morrow, where she would have her next
meal, or where she would sleep. She was wild, impulsive, affectionate.
The simple people of the village believed her to be of foreign birth
and high descent, while reverence for her lonely conditions made them
treat her with affection as well as deference; so that the forsaken
child, regarded as subject to no law, was as happy in her freedom and
confidence as any wild winged thing of the land or sea. The summer
loved her; the winter strengthened her. Her first baptism in the salt
waters had made her a free creature of the earth and skies; had
fortified her, Achilles-like, against all hardship, cold, and nakedness
to come; had delivered her from the bonds of habit and custom, and
shown in her what earth and air of themselves can do, to make the
lowest, most undeveloped life, a divine gift.
"The following morning, the sea was smooth and clear. So was the sky.
Looking down from their cottage, the sea appeared to Herbert to slope
steeply up to the horizon, so that the shore lay like a deep narrow
valley between him and it. Far down, at the low pier, he saw a little
boat belonging to a retired ship-captain. The oars were on board; and
the owner and some one with him were walking towards the boat. Now the
captain had promised to take him with him some day.
"He was half-way down the road a moment after the words of permission
had left his mother's lips, and was waiting at the boat when the two
men came up. They readily agreed to let him go with them. They were
going to row to a village on the opposite side of the bay, and return
in the evening. Herbert was speechless with delight. They got in, the
boat heaving beneath them, unmoored and pushed off. This suspension
between sea and sky was a new sensation to Herbert; for when he looked
down, his eye did not repose on the surface, but penetrated far into a
clear green abyss, where the power of vision seemed rather to vanish
than be arrested. When he looked up, the shore was behind them; and he
knew, for the first time, what it was to look at the land as he had
looked at the sea; to regard the land, in its turn, as a
_phenomenon_--observing it apart from himself.
"Running along the shore like a little bird, he saw the child of the
sea; and, further to the right, the peak on which she had stood in the
sunset, and into whose mysterious chamber she had led him. The captain
here put a pocket-telescope into his hand; and with this annihilator of
space he made new discoveries. He saw a little window in the cliff,
doubtless the same from which he had looked out on the dim sea; and
then perceived that the front of the cliff, in that part, was no rock,
but a wall, regularly and strongly built. It was evidently the remains
of an old fortress. The front foundation had been laid in the rocks of
the shore; the cliff had then been faced up with masonry; and behind
chambers had been cut in the rock; into one of which Herbert had
descended a ruined spiral stair. The castle itself, which had stood on
the top, had mouldered away, leaving only a rugged and broken surface.
"By this time they were near the opposite shore, and Herbert looked up
with dread at the great cliffs that rose perpendicularly out of the
water, which heaved slowly and heavily, with an appearance of immense
depth, against them. Their black jagged sides had huge holes, into
which the sea rushed--far into the dark--with a muffled roar; and large
protuberances of rock, bare and threatening. Numberless shadows lay on
their faces; and here and there from their tops trickled little steams,
plashing into the waves at their feet. Passing through a natural arch
in a rock, lofty and narrow, called the Devil's Bridge, and turning a
little promontory, they were soon aground on the beach.
"When the captain had finished his business, they had some dinner at
the inn; and while the two men drank their grog, Herbert was a
delighted listener to many a sea story, old and new. How the boy longed
to be a sailor, and live always on the great waters! The blocks and
cordage of the fast-rooted flagstaff before the inn, assumed an almost
magic interest to him, as the two sailors went on with their tales of
winds and rocks, and narrow escapes and shipwrecks. And how proud he
was of the friendship of these old seafarers!
"At length it was time to return home. As they rowed slowly along, the
sun was going down in the west, and their shadows were flung far on the
waves, which gleamed and glistened in the rich calm light. Land and sea
were bathed in the blessing of heaven; its glory was on the rocks, and
on the shore, and in the depth of the heaving sea. Under the boat,
wherever it went, shone a paler green. The only sounds were of the oars
in the row-locks, of the drip from their blades as they rose and made
curves in the air, and the low plash with which they dipped again into
the sea; while the water in the wake of the boat hastened to compose
itself again to that sleep from which it had been unwillingly roused by
the passing keel. The boy's heart was full. Often in after years he
longed for the wings of a dove that he might fly to that boat (still
floating in the calm sea of his memory), and there lie until his spirit
had had rest enough.
"The next time that Herbert approached the little girl, she waited his
coming; and while they talked, Mrs. Netherby joined them with her
Effie. Presently the gaze of the sea-child was fixed upon little Effie,
to the all but total neglect of the others. The result of this
contemplation was visible the next day. Mrs. Netherby having invited
her to come and see them, the following morning, as they were seated at
breakfast, the door of the room opened, without any prefatory tap, and
in peeped with wild confidence the smiling face of the untamed Undine.
It was at once evident that civilization had laid a finger upon her,
and that a new womanly impulse had been awakened. For there she stood,
gazing at Effie, and with both hands smoothing down her own hair, which
she had managed, after a fashion, to part in the middle, and had
plentifully wetted with sea-water. In her run up the height, it had
begun to dry, and little spangles of salt were visible all over it. She
could not alter her dress, whose many slashes showed little lining
except her skin; but she had done all she could to approximate her
appearance to that of Effie, whom she seemed to regard as a little
divinity.
"Mrs. Netherby's heart was drawn towards the motherless child, and she
clothed her from head to foot; though how far this was a benefit as
regarded cold and heat, is a question. Herbert began to teach her to
read; in which her progress was just like her bodily movements over the
earth's surface; now a dead pause, and now the flight of a bird. Now
and then she would suddenly start up, heedless where her book might
happen to fall, and rush out along the heights; returning next day, or
the same afternoon, and, without any apology, resuming her studies.
"This holiday was to Herbert one of those seasons which tinge the whole
of the future life. It was a storehouse of sights and sounds and images
of thought; a tiring-room, wherein to clothe the ideas that came forth
to act their parts upon the stage of reason. Often at night, just ere
the sleep that wipes out the day from the overfilled and blotted
tablets of the brain, enwrapped him in its cool, grave-like garments, a
vision of the darkened sea, spotted and spangled with pools of
unutterable light, would rise before him unbidden, in that infinite
space for creation which lies dark and waiting under the closed
eyelids. The darkened sea might be but the out-thrown image of his own
overshadowed soul; and the spots of light the visual form of his hopes.
So clearly would these be present to him sometimes, that when he opened
his eyes and gazed into the darkness of his room, he would see the
bright spaces shining before him still. Then he would fall asleep and
dream on about the sea--watching a little cutter perhaps, as 'she
leaned to the lee, and girdled the wave,' flinging the frolic-some
waters from her bows, and parting a path for herself between. Or he
would be seated with the helm in his hand, and all the force and the
joy wherewith she dashed headlong on the rising waves, and half pierced
them and half drove them under her triumphant keel, would be issuing
from his will and his triumph.
"Surely even for the sad despairing waves there is some hope, out in
that boundless room which borders on the sky, and upon which, even in
the gloomiest hour of tempest, falls sometimes from heaven a glory
intense.
"So when the time came that the lover of waters must return, he went
back enriched with new visions of them in their great home and
motherland, he had seen them still and silent as a soul in holy trance;
he had seen them raving in a fury of livid green, swarming with
'white-mouthed waves;' he had seen them lying in one narrow ridge of
unbroken blue, where the eye, finding no marks to measure the distance
withal, saw miles as furlongs; and he had seen sweeps and shadows
innumerable stretched along its calm expanse, so dividing it into
regions, and graduating the distance, that the eye seemed to wander on
and on from sea to sea, and the ships to float in oceans beyond oceans
of infinite reach. O lonely space! awful indeed wert thou, did no one
love us! But he had yet to receive one more vision of the waters, and
that was to be in a dream. With this dream I will close the story of
his holiday; for it went with him ever after, breaking forth from the
dream-home, and encompassing his waking thoughts with an atmosphere of
courage and hope, when his heart was ready to sink in a world which was
not the world the boy had thought to enter, when he ran to welcome his
fate.
"On their last Sunday, Herbert went with his mother to the evening
service in a little chapel in the midst of the fishermen's cottages. It
was a curious little place, with galleries round, that nearly met in
the middle, and a high pulpit with a great sounding-board over it, from
which came the voice of an earnest little Methodist, magnified by his
position into a mighty prophet. The good man was preaching on the
parable of _the sheep and the goats;_ and, in his earnestness for his
own theology and the souls of his hearers, was not content that the
Lord should say these things in his own way, but he must say them in
his too. And a terrible utterance it was! Looking about, unconsciously
seeking some relief from the accumulation of horrors with which the
preacher was threatening the goats of his congregation, Herbert spied,
in the very front of one of the side galleries, his little pupil, white
with terror, and staring with round unwinking eyes full in the face of
the prophet of fear. Never after could he read the parable without
seeing the blanched face of the child, and feeling a renewal of that
evening's sadness over the fate of the poor goats which afterwards grew
into the question--'Doth God care for oxen, and not for goats?' He
never saw the child again; for they left the next day, and she did not
come to bid them good-by.
"As he went home from the chapel, her face of terror haunted him.
"That night he fell asleep, as usual, with the sound of the waves in
his soul. And as he slept he dreamed.--He stood, as he thought, upon
the cliff, within which lay the remnants of the old castle. The sun was
slowly sinking down the western sky, and a great glory lay upon the
sea. Close to the shore beneath, by the side of some low rocks, floated
a little boat. He thought how delightful it would be to lie in the boat
in the sunlight, and let it die away upon his bosom. He scrambled down
the rocks, stepped on board, and laid himself in the boat, with his
face turned towards the sinking sun. Lower and lower the sun sank,
seeming to draw the heavens after him, like a net. At length he plunged
beneath the waves; but as his last rays disappeared on the horizon, lo!
a new splendour burst upon the astonished boy. The whole waters were
illuminated from beneath, with the permeating glories of the buried
radiance. In rainbow circles, and intermingling, fluctuating sweeps of
colours, the sea lay like an intense opal, molten with the fire of its
own hues. The sky gave back the effulgence with a less deep but more
heavenly loveliness.
"But betwixt the sea and the sky, just over the grave of the down-gone
sun, a dark spot appeared, parting the earth and the heaven where they
had mingled in embraces of light. And the dark spot grew and spread,
and a cold breath came softly over the face of the shining waters; and
the colours paled away; and as the blossom-sea withered and grew grey
below, the clouds withered and darkened above. The sea began to swell
and moan and look up, like the soul of a man whose joy is going down in
darkness; and a horror came over the heart of the sleeper, and in his
dream he lifted up his head, meaning to rise and hasten to his home.
But, behold, the shore was far away, and the great castle-cliff had
sunk to a low ridge! With a cry, he sank back on the bosom of the
careless sea.
"The boat began to rise and fall on the waking waves. Then a great
blast of wind laid hold of it, and whirled it about. Once more he
looked up, and saw that the tops of the waves were torn away, and that
'the white water was coming out of the black.' Higher and higher rose
the billows; louder and louder roared the wind across their jagged
furrows, tearing awful descants from their bursting chords, and tossing
the little boat like a leaf in the lone desert of storms; now holding
it perched on the very crest of a wave, in the mad eye of the tempest,
while the chaotic waters danced, raving about, in hopeless confusion;
now letting it sink in the hollow of the waves, and lifting above it
cold glittering walls of water, that becalmed it as in a sheltered
vale, while the hurricane roaring above, flung arches of writhing
waters across from billow to billow overhead, and threatened to close,
as in a transparent tomb, boat and boy. At length, when the boat rose
once more, unwilling, to the awful ridge, jagged and white, a yet
fiercer blast tore it from the top of the wave. The dreamer found
himself choking in the waters, and soon lost all consciousness of the
buffeting waves or the shrieking winds.
"When the dreamer again awoke, he felt that he was carried along
through the storm above the waves; for they reached him only in bursts
of spray, though the wind raged around him more fiercely than ever. He
opened his eyes and looked downwards. Beneath him seethed and boiled
the tumultuous billows, their wreathy tops torn from them, and shot, in
long vanishing sheets of spray, over the distracted wilderness. Such
was the turmoil beneath, that he had to close his eyes again to feel
that he was moving onwards.
"The next time he opened them, it was to look up. And lo! a shadowy
face bent over him, whence love unutterable was falling in floods, from
eyes deep, and dark, and still, as the heavens that are above the
clouds, Great waves of hair streamed back from a noble head, and
floated on the tides of the tempest. The face was like his mother's and
like his father's, and like a face that he had seen somewhere in a
picture, but far more beautiful and strong and loving than all. With a
sudden glory of gladness, in which the spouting pinnacles of the
fathomless pyramids of wandering waters dwindled into the confusion of
a few troubled water-drops, he knew, he knew that the Lord was carrying
his lamb in his bosom. Around him were the everlasting arms, and above
him the lamps that light heaven and earth, the eyes that watch and are
not weary. And now he felt the arms in which he lay, and he nestled
close to that true, wise bosom, which has room in it for all, and where
none will strive.
"Over the waters went the Master, now crossing the calm hollows, now
climbing the rising wave, now shrouded in the upper ocean of drifting
spray, that wrapped him around with whirling force, and anon calmly
descending the gliding slope into the glassy trough below. Sometimes,
when he looked up, the dreamer could see nothing but the clouds driving
across the heavens, whence now and then a star, in a little well of
blue, looked down upon him; but anon he knew that the driving clouds
were his drifting hair, and that the stars in the blue wells of heaven
were his love-lighted eyes. Over the sea he strode, and the floods
lifted up their heads in vain. The billows would gather and burst
around and over them; but a moment more, and the billows were beneath
his feet, and on they were going, safe and sure.
"Long time the journey endured; and the dream faded and again revived.
It was as if he had slept, and again awaked; for he lay in soft grass
on a mountain-side, and the form of a mighty man lay outstretched
beside him, who was weary with a great weariness.
"Below, the sea howled and beat against the base of the mountain; but
it was far below. Again the Lord arose, and lifted him up, and bore him
onwards. Up to the mountain-top they went, through the keen, cold air,
and over the fields of snow and ice. On the peak the Master paused and
looked down.
"In a vast amphitheatre below, was gathered a multitude that no man
could number. They crowded on all sides beyond the reach of the sight,
rising up the slopes of the surrounding mountains, till they could no
longer be distinguished; grouped and massed upon height above height;
filling the hollows, and plains, and platforms all about. But every eye
looked towards the lowest centre of the mountain-amphitheatre, where a
little vacant spot awaited the presence of some form, which should be
the heart of all the throng. Down towards this centre the Lord bore
him. Entering the holy circle, he set him gently down, and then looked
all around, as if searching earnestly for some one he could not see.
"And not finding whom he sought, he walked across the open space. A
path was instantly divided for him through the dense multitude
surrounding it. Along this lane of men and women and children, he went;
and Herbert ran, following close at his feet; for now all the universe
seemed empty save where he was. And he was not rebuked, but suffered to
follow. And although the Lord walked fast and far, the feet following
him were not weary, but grew in speed and in power. Through the great
crowd and beyond it, never looking back, up and over the brow of the
mountain they went, and leaving behind them the gathered universe of
men, descended into a pale night. Hither and hither went the Master,
searching up and down the gloomy valley; now looking behind a great
rock, and now through a thicket of brushwood; now entering a dark cave,
and now ascending a height and gazing all around; till at last, on a
bare plain, seated on a grey stone, with her hands in her lap, they
found the little orphan child who had called the sea her mother.
"As he drew near to her, the Lord called out, 'My poor little lamb, I
have found you at last!' But she did not seem to hear or understand
what he said; for she fell on her knees, and held up her clasped hands,
and cried, 'Do not be angry with me. I am a goat; and I ran away
because I was afraid. Do not burn me.' But all the answer the Lord made
was to stoop, and lift her, and hold her to his breast. And she was an
orphan no more.
"So he turned and went back over hill and over dale, and Herbert
followed, rejoicing that the lost lamb was found.
"As he followed, he spied in a crevice of a rock, close by his path, a
lovely primrose. He stooped to pluck it. And ere he began again to
follow, a cock crew shrill and loud; and he knew it was the cock that
rebuked Peter; and he trembled and stood up. The Master had vanished.
He, too, fell a-weeping bitterly. And again the cock crew; and he
opened his eyes, and knew that he had dreamed. His mother stood by his
bedside, comforting the weeper with kisses. And he cried to her--
"'O mother! surely he would not come over the sea to find me in the
storm, and then leave me because I stopped to pluck a flower!'"
* * * * *
"Too long, I am afraid," said the curate, the moment he had finished
his paper, looking at his watch.
"We have not thought so, I am sure," said Adela, courteously. The
ladies rose to go.
"Who is to read next?" said the schoolmaster.
"Why, of course," said the curate, indignantly, "it ought to be my
brother, but there is no depending on him."
"If this frost lasts, I will positively read next time," said the
doctor. "But, you know, Ralph, it will be better for you to bring
something else with you, lest I should fail again."
"Cool!" said the curate. "I think it is time we dropped it."
"No, please don't," said Harry, with a little anxiety in his tone. "I
really want to read my story."
"It looks like it, doesn't it?"
"Now, Ralph, a clergyman should never be sarcastic. Be as indignant as
you please--but--sarcastic--never. It is very easy for you, who know
just what you have to do, and have besides whole volumes in that
rickety old desk of yours, to keep such an appointment as this. Mine is
produced for the occasion, _bona fide_; and I cannot tell what may be
required of me from one hour to another."
He went up to Adela.
"I am very sorry to have failed again," he said.
"But you won't next time, will you?"
"I will not, if I can help it."