In a low whitewashed room, very clean though little and plain, where
the breeze blew in fresh from the sea, Faith found herself established
Friday afternoon. Mr. Linden had promised to show her the surf, and so
had brought her down to a little village, long ago known to him, on the
New England shore; where the people lived by farming and fishing, and
no hotel attracted or held an influx of city life. It was rather late
in the day, for the journey had been in part off the usual route of
railway and steam, and therefore had been longer if not wearier. But
when Faith had got rid of the dust, Mr. Linden came to her door to say
that it would be half an hour to supper, and ask if she was too tired
to walk down to the beach.
The shore was but a few hundred yards from the little farmhouse; green
grass, with interrupting rocks, extending all the way. Faith hardly
knew what she was corning to till she reached the brink. There the
precipitous rocks rose sheer a hundred feet from the bottom, and at the
bottom, down below her, a narrow strip of beach was bordered with the
billowy crest and foam of the sea. Nothing but the dark ocean and the
illimitable ocean line beyond; there was not even a sail in sight this
evening; in full uninterrupted power and course, from the broad east,
the swells of the sea rolled in and broke--broke, with their graceful,
grand monotony.
The beach was narrow at height of tide; now the tide was out.
Fishermen's boats were drawn up near to the rocks, and steep narrow
pathways along and down the face of them allowed the fishermen to go
from the top to the bottom.
"Can't we get down there?" said Faith, when she had stood a minute
looking silently. Her face showed an eager readiness for action.
"Can you fly, little bird?"--"Yes--as well as the fishermen can!"
"If you cannot I can carry you," said Mr. Linden.--And doubtless he
would have found some way to make his words good had there been need;
as it was, he only guarded her down the steep rocky way, going before
her and holding her hand in a grasp she would have been puzzled to get
away from. But Faith was light and free of foot, and gave him no
trouble. Once at the bottom, she went straight towards those in-coming
big waves, and in front of them stood still. The sea-breeze blew in her
face; the roar of the breakers made music in her ears. Faith folded one
hand upon the other, and stood motionless. Now and then the wind caught
the spray from some beaten rock and flung it in her face, and wave
after wave rose up and donned its white crest; the upstanding green
water touched with sunlight and shadow, and changing tints of amber and
olive, down which the white foam came curling and rushing--sweeping in
knots of seaweed, and leaving all the pebbles with wet faces. Mr.
Linden let her look without the interruption of a word; but he
presently put his arm round her, and drew her a little into shelter
from the strong breeze. It was a while before she moved from her steady
gaze at the water; then she looked up, the joy of her face breaking
into a smile.
"Endecott, will you show me anything more grand than this?"
"You shall tell me when you have seen the uprising mists of Niagara,"
he answered, smiling, "or the ravines between snowcaps 'five thousand
summers old.'"
Her eye went back to the sea. "It brings before me, somehow," she said
slowly, "all time, and all eternity! I have been thinking here of
myself as I was a little child, and as I shall be, and as I am," she
added, with her inveterate exactness, and blushing. "I seem to see only
the great scale of everything."
"Tell me a little more clearly what you see," said Mr. Linden.
"It isn't worth telling. I see everything here as belonging to God. The
world seems his great work-place, and life his time for doing the work,
and I--and you," she said, with a flash of light coming across her
face, "his work-people. And those great breaking waves, somehow, seem
to me like the resistless, sure, beautiful, doings of his providence."
She spoke very quietly, because she was bidden, evidently.
"Do you know how many other things they are like?--or rather how many
are likened to them in the Bible?"--"No! I don't know the Bible as you
do."
"They seem to be a never-failing image--an illustration suiting very
different things. 'The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot
rest,' and then, 'O that thou hadst hearkened to me I then had thy
peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.'"
"There is the endless struggle of human will and purpose against the
divine--'The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up
their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is
mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of
the sea.' 'Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my
presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a
perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof
toss themselves, yet can they not prevail: though they roar, yet can
they not pass over it?' And so in another place the image is reversed,
and God says, 'Behold I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many
nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come
up.' Could anything be more forcible?"
A look was Faith's answer; it spoke the kindled thoughts at work.
"Then you know," Mr. Linden went on, "how often the troubles of God's
children are compared to the ocean; as David says, 'All thy waves are
gone over me.' But then the Lord answers to that, 'When thou passest
through the waters I will be with thee, and through the floods, they
shall not overwhelm thee;' and David himself in another place declares
it to be true--'O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto
thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging
of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.'--I
suppose," he added, thoughtfully, taking both her hands in his, "this
is one sense in which by-and-by 'there shall be no more sea'--except
that 'sea of glass, upon which they stand who have gotten the victory!'"
Another look, a grave, full look, came to him from Faith; and grave and
soft her eye went back to the sea. The sunbeams were all off it; it was
dark and foamy. Speaking rather low, half to her half to himself, Mr.
Linden went on,--"'And they overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by
the word of their testimony: and they loved not their lives unto the
death.'"
Her look did not move. Mr. Linden's went with it for a minute or two,
but then it came back to her differently.
"My darling, I am afraid to have you stay here any longer."
"We can come again!" said Faith gleefully, as she turned away. "I want
to look at them a great deal."
"We will come again and try how far a 'ladder' can reach from this low
sand."
She looked back for another glance as she began to mount the rocky way.
The mounting was an easy matter, for Mr. Linden came close and took
hold of her in such fashion that she was more than half carried up.
"Do you feel as if you had wings now?" he asked her, after a somewhat
quick "flight" up half the way.
"Folded ones," said Faith, laughing and breathless. "I don't know what
sort yours can be! I can go up by myself, Endecott."
"With folded wings, as you remark, Mrs. Linden. Do you remember that
infallible way of recognizing 'earth's angels,' when they are not
pluming themselves?"--"They never do plume themselves," said Faith,
stopping to look at him.
"Not when they are carried!"
Faith's laugh rolled down the rocks; and then as they reached the top
she grew timid and quiet, a mood which came over her whenever she
remembered her new position and name in the world.
There is no room to tell all the seaside doings of those days; the surf
bathing, and fishing beyond the surf. A week passed there, or rather
more; then, Mr. Linden having business in New York, the "wooden horse"
went that way. We cannot follow all its travels. But we must stay with
it a day in the city.