“And whether we shall meet again I know not,
Therefore our everlasting farewell take.”
JULIUS CÆSAR.
The days sped away all too fast, crowded full of work and talk and
earnest thought. I entered eagerly into all of Mildred’s plans; she
always knew that she could rely on me to do that, in spite of the
protestations and objections with which I generally greeted the first
announcement of each new scheme. I think she rather liked my objecting,
as it gave her so fine an opportunity to state her case clearly and
triumph over all obstacles.
“Do be charitable and indulge my garrulous propensities a little,” she
would laughingly plead. “You may congratulate yourself that I was not
born a man,—such a stump orator as I should have made, with all my
hobbies!”
In spite of her gayety and happiness, however, I could see that the
strain of attending to multitudes of things was beginning to tell, even
on her apparently boundless strength. The day before the last she was
with her lawyers, signing last papers, seeing that nothing was
neglected, no one forgotten. In the evening there was a farewell
reception for hosts of friends, at which all good-byes were said.
“I want no one but you to see me sail, Ruby dear,” she said; and so the
hour of her departure was not announced. They had planned, first of all,
a sailing voyage to the West Indies, and thence they were to go to
Spain.
“I can’t bear Europe just yet,” said Mildred. “I want to put letters,
despatches, and newspapers even, out of reach for a few weeks; to forget
immigrants, cooking schools, tenement houses, libraries, and lawyers,
and all the several problems that have been besetting me these last
bewilderingly busy months.
“I must get time to stop and think. I want to sail idly through purple
tropic seas; to skirt the green shores of volcanic islands; I want to
feel for the time being that I have banished conscience and
responsibility; in fact,” she added, laughing, “I want to become a pagan
for a while, if I can.”
“The most sensible thing that I ever heard you say,” I remarked with
decision. “If there ever was a girl who has earned a vacation, it is
you.”
They were going on the Nanepashemet, manned by Captain Roberts, a
weather-beaten seaman of Marblehead, who twenty years ago had dandled
the little Mildred on his knee. He now counted it the greatest honor of
his life that she had not forgotten him, and that he had been invited to
take this bonny bride on his plain little sailing vessel.
“Why, jest think of it, Miss,” he proudly remarked to me, “she might
jest as easy hev bought one of them crack steam yachts with fancy
fixins, and have gone in reg’lar Vanderbilt style. But it’s jest like
her, jest like her. She wa’n’t never one of the kind to make a splurge.
I knew when she got her money ’twouldn’t turn her head.”
One day Ralph and I had been down to inspect the craft and attend to
certain alterations in the cabin which were to be made for the
accommodation of the two passengers, when the captain grew quite
communicative on his favorite theme.
“I knew that little chick ’ud make something when she wa’n’t no higher
than that,” he remarked, holding his brown, tattooed hand about three
feet above the deck.
“I didn’t cal’late on her turnin’ out so mighty rich, of course,” he
continued, meditatively, leaning against the rail and evidently pleased
to find an appreciative listener, “but I allus knew, by the way the
little thing kep’ askin’ questions about everything under heaven, that
she’d got a headpiece on her that ’ud make things spin one o’ these
days. Full o’ fun, too. She could swim like a duck, and row a boat with
them little pipe-stem arms of hers, and yet—wal—she was sort o’
pious-like too, and allus askin’ me to tell her about my trips to the
East Injies, and whether I see any women a-throwin’ their babies to
crocodiles and a-bowin’ down to idols of wood and stone.
“‘I tell you, Cap’n Roberts,’ that little thing ’ud say, a-settin’ there
in my boat, when her ma let me take her out,—‘I tell you, when I get to
be a grown-up woman I’m goin’ out there and just teach those people
better.’
“‘Did you ever hear about Judson?’ says she. ‘No,’ says I; ‘was he a
sea-cap’n?’
“‘He was a missionary,’ says she, real solemn; ‘a missionary; and that’s
what I’m going to be; and you’ll take me out there in your ship, won’t
you, cap’n?’ says she. ‘And oh, I’m goin’ to take a whole trunk full of
story-books for all those poor little girls that have to get married and
don’t have any.’
“Wal, wal,” he continued, as he filled his pipe, “she begun it young, ’n
I warn’t a mite surprised when I heerd she’d got her money and see what
she was a-beginnin’ to do for those nasty Italians down to the Mulberry
Bend. She never forgits anybody, Millie don’t. Excuse me, I s’pose I
orter say Mis’ Everett now. She’s been a-talkin’ to me about the
sailors; says when we git out to sea she wants a long talk with me about
’em; wants to know what they read, and everything of that sort.”
“And that is the way she proposes to turn pagan,” I soliloquized.
The last day had come, and we were on board the ship. Mildred, in her
long, gray ulster and bright steamer hood, paced the deck arm in arm
with me, taking her last look at the bridge, the towers and spires, the
bronze goddess looming up against the blue, and all the dear, familiar
sights. The sky was cloudless; the soft south-wind gently swelled the
white sails overhead; the sea, the fawning, treacherous sea, shone
brilliantly in the golden sunlight and seemed to murmur caressingly in
our ears, as if to beguile us to forget its cruel power hidden for the
time under this shining mask.
We paced up and down in silence, breaking it now and then by trying to
say the last words, which were so hard to speak. Ralph had kindly gone
below, ostensibly to look after a hamper of fruit. There was a lump in
my throat; I could not speak.
How was it that this woman, whom I had met but little more than a year
ago, had come to be nearer to me than any kith or kin? Life had
broadened, had grown rich, since her life had come into mine. In my
little narrow routine, fashioned according to the demands of society and
its conventionalities, I had never before dreamed of its possibilities.
Mildred tried to talk, but I could not answer. At last, breaking down
completely, I sobbed out, “Oh, Mildred, Mildred, I _cannot_ let you go.
I have no one in the wide world but you. You will never, never come
back.”
I had meant to be brave and not to sadden these last moments by my
selfish grief, but a sudden premonition of evil had taken hold of me. I
was not superstitious, but I felt a convulsive clutch at my heart as I
looked up into her beautiful dark eyes through the mist in my own.
“Don’t be morbid, darling,” said she, trying to speak cheerfully, and
drawing my arm closer in her embrace. But her voice sounded to me
strange and far away.
“There are few women ever blessed with such a sister as you have been to
me,” she said tenderly. “You alone among women have made me feel this
last year that you loved me for myself, and would have loved me just the
same were I the lonely teacher among my books instead of a favored,
flattered, rich woman. Others have given me adulation, you have given me
love. And now, dear, that you may know that I know how real a sister you
have been to me, until we meet again wear this for me.”
I saw the red gleam of the rare jewel in her white hand, as over my
finger, held in her own warm grasp, she slipped the ruby ring, her dead
sister’s ring which I had always seen her wear.
I said no word of thanks. I scarcely realized what she had done. I was
dumb with the misery of those moments—a death’s-knell seemed sounding in
my ears.
We paced on again in silence, letting the precious moments pass.
Presently she said, as if in reply to the wild outburst of emotion which
had passed and left me numb and speechless, “Yes, dear, it may be as you
fear. Whether we meet again, God only knows. But whether it be you or I
that goes first into the great wonderful Beyond, of which we have so
often talked, I think we shall not be sorry, we shall not be afraid.
“‘For from the things we see
We trust the things to be,
That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
Our feet shall still be led,
Our hearts be comforted.’
“But life is sweet, oh, so sweet. I want to live, there is so much to
do,” said Mildred earnestly. Yet in a moment she added, hastily, “But
what folly for me to fancy that _I_ am needed to do the work.
“‘Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of, win.’”
We said no more, but still paced the deck together, looking at sea and
shore and sunny sky, finding no words to tell of all that was in our
hearts.
At last the signal was given, and the tug that was to carry me back to
the city steamed alongside. I knew that the moment of parting had come,
and, like an exile summoning all his fortitude to help him take bravely
the last step across the border line which divides him from home and
country, I said, calmly, “Well, dear,—
“‘If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why, then, this parting were well made.’”
I felt her warm, red lips against my cheek. I heard Ralph’s strong “God
bless and keep you, little sister,” and then, almost before I knew it, I
had slipped over the vessel’s side, and they were gone. I saw them wave
a last adieu. I saw, as in a dream, the white-winged ship, bearing its
precious freight, sail out into the dazzling east, over the dimpling
sea, the shimmering, golden sea, the cruel, cruel sea.
There is no more to tell. The world knows the rest. Seven days of calm
weather, and then from the coral reefs of the southern sea to the rocky
headlands of the north, the storm-king raged. Madly the fierce Atlantic
lashed its waves on cliff and beach and sunken ledge, sending dumb
terror to the hearts that had seen their loved ones go down unto the sea
in ships.
Somewhere on that wild waste of waters, whether in the chill, gray dawn
or in midnight blackness, amid the lightning’s flash and thunder’s
peal,—God only knows,—a little ship went down. And when the sharp, swift
summons came, two brave hearts went forth together into the great
Unseen, knowing of a surety that this, thank God, was not the end—only
the end of the beginning.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.