THE MAN THAT SAVED ME.
I ran into my room, and came out with a bundle in one hand and a coarse
straw hat in the other. That group of gentlemen was just dropping down
the bank out of sight, and after them went a crowd of girls, with their
parasols flaming in the sun like a bed of poppies.
"Come," says I, all joyful animation, "I am dying to begin."
E. E. spread her parasol, and off we marched.
We came to the steep bank, and went down a flight of wooden stairs to
the sandy shore. Right under the bank was a long row of cubby-houses,
made of boards.
"This is ours," says E. E., "come in."
I went in. Sisters, what happened in the privacy of that board
sanctuary, is not for the public--let this satisfy the curious.
Two ladies went into that little retreat, with bunched-up skirts,
beehive bonnets, and a general assortment of dry-goods, such as weighs
down the ladies of the present generation to an extent that approaches
martyrdom.
Two persons came out skimped down into nothingness. They had grown tall
and slim, not to say spooky. There was a deficiency of glossy ringlets
under the two hats that squared off in front and behind, and were
flapped down over each ear.
E. E.'s plumptitudinous figure was mostly lost and gone, and I--well, I
felt like a church steeple on a very high hill. I say nothing, the
subject being one of great delicacy; but from my experience in those
Turkish--well, pantalettes--the female that begrudges her husband that
class of garments, must hanker after change more than I do. When I came
out of the little house, Dempster stood on the sand with a pair--well,
of garments like mine, only more so, on, and a flaming red upper
garment, bright enough to set the waves on fire, covering his broad
bosom.
Another gentleman stood near him--blue and brown in his sea-outfit,
youngish, and with eyes that made me wilt like a poppy the moment they
fell upon me.
My goodness, how I did feel in that dress! It was all I could do to keep
from kind of scrouching down to hide my bare feet; but it was of no use,
so I dug them deep into the sand, and felt myself blushing all over,
while that gentleman in blue fixed his eyes upon them.
Anyway, there was nothing to be so mightily timorous about, for,
according to my calculation, two smaller or whiter feet didn't leave
their prints in the sand that day, though I do make that assertion with
my own lips, that ought to be mute.
Cousin Dempster came forward, took both E. E. and my trembling self by
the hand, and led us to the water.
I took one glance: a swarm of straw hats, a crowd of men, women, and
children were floundering, swimming, screaming, laughing, tumbling
through the waves, that lifted them up, flung them down, pitched them
forward, and behaved in a way that no well-bred ocean would have thought
of doing.
I shrank--I shivered--the heart seemed to die in my agitated bosom when
the first wave kissed my feet; I gave a little scream, but checked
myself bravely. The waves were full of men, some of them were looking at
me.
I determined to act bravely, and be the heroine of the occasion. I let
go of Dempster's hand. A wave struck me, my head went down and my feet
went up. In my fright and anguish I remembered their size and whiteness,
and found consolation in the thought while I strove to right myself.
It was in vain; while I staggered with one big wave, another took me
unawares, like a thief in the night, and dragged me under, like a wild
beast growling over some poor helpless lamb--it tore me away. I
shrieked--I plunged--I fought madly for my life. Up through the vivid
green of the waters the sunshine came toward me like light upon beaming
emeralds. I clutched at it. I tried to scream; but my mouth filled with
water, green flashes shot through and through my eyes. I began to pray.
The Green Mountains, the farm, and all my life there shot through my
brain; things I had forgotten came uppermost, and those thoughts grew
pleasant while the waters seemed roaring me to sleep.
Something came toward me, bluish. Was it a monster of the deep hungry
for the life that was so fast dying out?
It seized me. I was born upward on a great wave, and swept off into the
light. The claws of some monster, or the arms of some friend, held me
close. Which was it?
Some power of good or evil, beastly or human, had dragged me into the
sand, where white foam curled around me, and the sun struck down upon my
eyes like fire.
Some man was thanking another for a great favor; a crowd of people came
swarming around me. I attempted to open my eyes, but the water dripping
down from my hair came into them sharp and salt.
"Is she sick? Is she afraid? Do tell who it is?"
These questions came from women who had rushed up from the waters, and
flocked around me like mermaids. I did not care about them, but by and
by it came to me that men might be there as well. I lifted my hand,
swept the wet hair back from my face, and, with a smarting pain in my
eyes, saw my deliverer.
His blue garments were black with dripping water, the thick hair
streamed over his forehead, his bare feet looked hard and powerful on
the sand. It was the man under whose admiring eyes I had blushed and
trembled.
"My preserver!" said I, clasping my wet fingers in an ecstasy of
gratitude; "shall I ever live to thank you for the poor life you have
saved?"
He smiled, he shook his head; I am afraid he laughed, such was his joy
and exultation; yet the modesty of true greatness possessed him still.
"It is nothing," he said. "A wave knocked you head-foremost--that was
all."
I knew better. It was the inherent greatness of a noble soul that
impelled him to make nothing of his own heroic act. He must have
supported me miles on miles in those stalwart arms. No protest of his
could lessen the bravery of his action or the force of my gratitude. If
woman's gratitude and woman's love are anything, his reward shall be
great.
They bore me into that weather-beaten cubby-house, and there, with the
help of E. E., my dripping garments were taken off, my wet hair done up
snugly under the braids that had been left behind, and, filled with
tender gratitude, I walked up to my hero in blue before going to my
apartment in the hotel.
"Let me see you to-morrow," said I, pressing the hand of that heroic
man. "Then I may find language to express my life-long gratitude."
He bowed; he drew his hand, with evident reluctance, from my clasp, and
retreated.
Ah, sisters, my destiny has come! I feel it in every breath I draw, in
every sweet thought that haunts my brain. To-morrow I shall see him
again. To-morrow!
Oh, sisters, he has just left me. Alas! alas! for human aspirations. I
had written thus far when he came.
I received him in my room, looking pale, and, I think, interesting, for
the sweet romance of my feelings left its imprint on my features. He
came in with hesitation, and sat down on the edge of his chair, looking
ill at ease, as if wishing to escape a mention of his own heroism. I
felt a glow of admiration, a thrill of tender gratitude.
"You have saved my life," I said, clasping my two hands, "and from this
hour I devote that life to your happiness. Tell me how I can begin to
repay you."
He sat uneasily; he shifted in his chair. Then he murmured:
"Anything you please; I never thought of asking. It was only my duty."
"Heroic man!" I exclaimed; "and brave as modest. It is my pleasure to be
more than grateful. Never, never can I repay you save with the warmest
and sweetest emotions of a woman's heart. I owe you--ah, how much--how
much!"
My hands were clasped, my eyes were uplifted; emotion prevented me
finishing my sentence. He spoke, while my soul halted for words--
"Well, if you think so much of just helping you out of the way of a
seaward wave, supposing we say five dollars. It is my duty, as
bathing-master, to help people up from the sand when they get face
downwards, as you did; but as you insist, I don't mind a fiver."
Oh, sisters!
XCII.
PLEASURE BAY.
Dear sisters:--I really do think that Cousin Dempster is one of the best
creatures that ever lived. He seems to understand all the wounds and
pains that a female woman's heart is exposed to, and sort of eases them
off, so that you are cheated out of half your natural suffering.
I cannot say that the bathing in the salt-sea waves was not a failure as
a matrimonial speculation; but that is my luck. In some respects, the
future to me is like a mirage--I put my hand out hopefully, and grasp
nothing but fog.
That bathing-master was a fine-looking man until he opened his mouth and
attempted to sit down on a chair. He created a pleasant delusion in my
bosom for a few moments, and then--well, we will say nothing more about
that--the private sanctuary of a female woman's thoughts are too sacred
for a Report.
If I wept in the stillness of the night, no one but the angel that
records broken love-dreams will ever know of it. With this precious
angel I am in full sympathy. He has done too much of that kind of
writing for me not to feel the cruel pangs of the long list of
disappointments with which his books are blotted.
Well, I arose the next morning after my experimental bath, heavy-eyed,
heavy-hearted, and altogether blue as indigo. Cousin Dempster saw this,
and his generous heart seized upon a remedy.
"Let us go down to Pleasure Bay," says he. "What do you think of a day's
crabbing?"
"Crabbing?" says I, "just as if I didn't feel crabbed enough already. Do
you want me to keep it up all day?"
Dempster laughed; so did E. E.; just as if I'd said something awful
funny, which I wasn't in the least conscious of, not having a spark of
fun left in me since that salt-water deluge and its consequences.
"Oh," says he, as good-natured as pie, "there is nothing like Pleasure
Bay when one has the blues--a lunch under the trees, and a boat before
the breeze."
I stopped him; the dear, good fellow was launching off into poetry
without knowing it; association with genins is doing everything with
him. There is no knowing where he might have ended, if I hadn't lifted
my forefinger, for a whole gust of poetry was riling up in his earthly
nature like yeast in a baking of bread.
"I'll go to Pleasure Bay," says I, "but, for goodness sake, don't try
that sort of thing again; genius isn't catching, and though you have
married into our family, don't expect that it will spread like an
epidemic into yours, because it won't."
"Why not?" says he; "is there nothing in association?"
"Well, I can't exactly decide," says I; "strange things do happen in
that direction. I have heard of young women marrying literary men who
never wrote a line worth reading before, who burst out into full-blown
geniuses right in the honeymoon. But it is wonderful how much their
style was like their husbands'. Of course, those must be cases of
especial affinity. When a woman has ransacked a poor fellow's heart, she
naturally begins to pillage his brain, and I reckon he must like it at
first; but after that, he subsides into himself, and she subsides into
herself, and somehow she writes just as she did before, and so does he!"
"Then there are plenty of young ladies who carry their ambition and
their flirtations in among the newspaper people and stray Bohemians,"
says E. E., kindling up to the subject; "for every time they get into a
new flirtation, which is once in about three months, their style
changes, giving them a wonderful versatility of talent that, somehow,
dies out after awhile, as she grows old and homely."
"That is," says Dempster, laughing, "every time a literary lady of this
stamp changes her lover, she changes her style, too."
"Exactly," answers E. E., "and where she hasn't any good-natured lover
she retires into modest privacy till one comes along."
I just listened, holding my breath.
"What," says I, "does fraud and deception creep into the sacred
literature of our country? I cannot believe it."
"Can't you?" says E. E.; "but you have never been in Bohemia."
"No," says I, "that is a part of Europe that I hope to visit, but never
have. Is it a popular place for Americans?"
"Oh, wonderfully popular, for people who dash off things here and there,
write for this and that, and are willing to give half that they earn and
know to any adventurer that comes along, free gratis for nothing; or, on
occasion, sell reputation by the line, and for a price. Oh, Bohemia is a
splendid place for adventurers and adventuresses to forage in!"
"What!" says I, "genius sell itself?"
"Yes," says she, "and its readers, too."
"Cousin E. E.," says I, "you slander the grandest, the purest, the most
sublime people on the earth."
"Do I?" says she, nodding her head and laughing. "Wait and see."
"Remember--you are speaking of authors, the first and purest aristocracy
known to our free nation."
"No; I speak of would-be authors--guerillas in literature--men and women
of erratic ability, who adore inspiration and scorn work; for
authorship, I am told, and believe, requires the hardest work of any
calling in the world."
"I'm afraid it does," said I, drawing a long breath, "but then such work
brings its own prompt payment. The power to write is happiness in
itself."
"But what has this to do with Pleasure Bay?" says Dempster; "we mean to
go there--not to Bohemia."
"Just so," says I, a-tying on my bonnet.
We got into Dempster's carriage, and after a delightful drive, we came
down on the edge of a little bay, with green grass growing close down to
the shore, and great, tall trees clumped here and there all around it.
I was so charmed with the scenery that I didn't realize where we were
till the carriage stopped before a white house, with a long wooden stoop
in front, when we got out and walked right away down to the shore, where
a plank platform ran out from the land, and a cunning little boat, with
white sails, lay dipping up and down like a duck in the water.
Sisters, I'm not timersome, but getting into a boat that rocks like a
cradle in the water tries me, I must own to that. With what holding on
and keeping your dress well down upon the ankles, one is seized with a
sense of being awfully unsteady. This riles up the constitution to a
state of dizziness that makes your ears buz like a bumblebee's nest.
I was thankful to get seated at last, and, tucking up my dress, prepared
at once for a long sea-voyage. E. E. had slung a great straw gypsy hat
on her arm, by the strings, when she left Long Branch, which she bent
down over her head like an umbrella with herself for a handle; over that
she spread a broad yellow parasol that blazed in the hot air like a
great sunflower.
"Phœmie," says she, a-looking up from under her straw tent, "didn't you
bring a flat?"
"No," says I; "the young fellows of that stamp didn't happen to be about
when we started."
"Dear me! you'll burn your face up," says she; "that beehive is no
protection."
"About as much as one of your York flats would be," says I. "But
supposing I hoist my parasol, too--one don't need a beau for that."
The sun was pouring down like blazes, and I was mighty glad to spread my
parasol, I can tell you; so I did it, and settled down on the same bench
with E. E.
Dempster had been awful busy on shore, pulling out fish-lines, looking
up nets that swung like a great hang-bird's nest, on the end of a pole:
and now he was on his knees, hacking a fish into chunks, which he tied
to a line and dropped into the bottom of the boat. At last he lifted his
great straw hat, wiped the blazing warmth from his face, and jumped in.