CHAPTER VI.

Produced by Kentuckiana Digital Library, David Garcia, Josephine

Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Transcriber's note: There are two Chapter VI's in this book.

I have moved footnotes to the end of each chapter.]

SEA AND SHORE.

A

SEQUEL TO "MIRIAM'S MEMOIRS."

BY MRS. CATHARINE A. WARFIELD.

AUTHOR OF

"THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE," "MONFORT HALL," "MIRIAM'S HOUSE" "HESTER

HOWARD'S TEMPTATION," "A DOUBLE WEDDING; OR, HOW SHE WAS WON," ETC.

"_No fears hath she! Her giant form

Majestically calm would go

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,

'Mid he deep darkness, white as snow!

So stately her bearing, so proud her array,

The main she will traverse forever and aye!

Many ports shall exult in the gleam of her mast--

Hush! hush! Thou vain dreamer, this hour is her last!_"

PHILADELPHIA:

T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;

306 CHESTNUT STREET.

1876

MRS. C.A. WARFIELD'S NEW WORKS.

Each Book is in One Volume, Morocco Cloth, price $1.75.

_SEA AND SHORE_.

_MIRIAM'S MEMOIRS_.

_MONFORT HALL_.

_THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE_.

_A DOUBLE WEDDING; or, How She Was Won_.

_HESTER HOWARD'S TEMPTATION_.

_From Gail Hamilton, author of "Gala Days" etc._

"'The Household of Bouverie' is one of those books that pluck out all

your teeth, and then dare you to bite them. Your interest is awakened at

once in the first chapter, and you are whirled through in a

lightning-express train that leaves you no opportunity to look at the

little details of wood, and lawn, and river. You notice two or three

little peculiarities of style--one or two 'bits' of painting--and then

you pull on your seven-leagued boots and away you go."

_From George Ripley's Review of "The Household of Bouverie" in Harper's

Magazine_.

"'The Household of Bouverie,' by Mrs. Warfield, is a wonderful book. I

have read it twice--the second time more carefully than the first--and I

use the term 'wonderful,' because it best expresses the feeling

uppermost in my mind, both while reading and thinking it over. As a

piece of imaginative writing, I have seen nothing to equal it since the

days of Edgar A. Poe, and I doubt whether he could have sustained

himself and the readers through a book half the size of the 'Household

of Bouverie.' I have literally hurried through it by my intense

sympathy, my devouring curiosity--It was more than interest. I read

everywhere--between the courses of the hotel-table, on the boat, in the

cars--until I had swallowed the last line. This is no common occurrence

with a veteran romance reader like myself."

Above Books are for sale by all Booksellers at $1.75 each, or $10.50 for

a complete set of the six volumes, or copies of either one or more of

the above Books, or a complete set of the six volumes, will be sent at

once, to any one, to any place, post-paid, or free of freight, on

remitting their price in a letter to the publishers,

T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,

306 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

"No fears hath she! Her giant form

Majestically calm would go

O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,

'Mid the deep darkness, white as snow!

So stately her bearing, so proud her array,

The main she will traverse forever and aye!

Many ports shall exult in the gleam of her mast--

Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer, this hour is her last!"

WILSON, "_Isle of Palms_."

* * * * *

"Then hold her

Strictly confined in sombre banishment,

And Doubt not but she will ere long, full gladly,

Her freedom purchase at the price you name."

* * * * *

"No, subtle snake!

It is the baseness of thy selfish mind,

Full of all guile, and cunning, and deceit,

That severs us so far, and shall do _ever_."

* * * * *

"Despair shall give me strength--where is the door?

Mine eyes are dark! I cannot find it now.

O God! protect me in this awful pass!"

JOANNA BAILLIE, _Tragedy of "Orra_."

SEA AND SHORE.

BY MRS. C.A. WARFIELD.

AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE."

CHAPTER I.

It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned

my face seaward from the "keep" of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see

its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There

is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that

which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its

last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted face

of friendship.

The refrain of Poe's even then celebrated poem was ringing through my

brain on that sultry August day, I remember, like a tolling bell, as I

looked my last on the gloomy abode of the La Vignes; but I only said

aloud, in answer to the sympathizing glances of one who sat before

me--the gentle and quiet Marion--who had suddenly determined to

accompany me to Savannah, nerved with unwonted impulse:

"Madame de Stael was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the

saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her

ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but

to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my

soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I look on

Beauseincourt!"

"You cannot tell, Miss Harz, what _time_ may do; you may still return to

visit us in our retirement, you and Captain Wentworth," urged Marion,

gently, leaning forward, as she spoke, to take my hand in hers.

"'Time the tomb-builder'" fell from my lips ere they were aware. "That

is a grand thought--one that I saw lately in a Western poem, the

New-Year's address of a young editor of Kentucky called Prentice. Is it

not splendid, Marion?"

"Very awful, rather," she responded, with a faint shudder. "Time the

'comforter,' let us say, instead, Miss Miriam--Time the

'veil-spreader.'"

"Why, Marion, you are quite poetic to-day, quite Greek! That is a sweet

and tender saying of yours, and I shall garner it. I stand reproved, my

child. All honor to Time, the _merciful_, whether he builds palaces or

tombs! but none the less do I reverence my young poet for that

stupendous utterance of his soul. I shall watch the flight of that

eaglet of the West with interest from this hour! May he aspire!"

"Not if he is a Jackson Democrat?" broke in the usually gentle Alice

Durand, fired with a ready defiance of all heterodox policy, common, if

not peculiar, to that region.

"Oh, but he is not; he is a good Whig instead--a Clay man, as we call

such."

"Not a Calhoun man, though, I suppose, so I would not give a snap of my

fingers for him or his poetry! It is very natural, for you, Miss Harz,"

in a somewhat deprecating tone, "to praise your partisans. I would not

have you neutral if I could, it is so contemptible."

A little of the good doctor's spirit there, under all that exterior of

meekness and modesty, I saw at a glance, and liked her none the less for

it, if truth were told. And now we were nearing the gate, with its

gray-stone pillars, on one of which, that from which the marble ball had

rolled, to hide in the grass beneath, perchance, until the end of all, I

had seen the joyous figure of Walter La Vigne so lightly poised on the

occasion of my last exodus from Beauseincourt. A moment's pause, and the

difficult, disused bolts that had once exasperated the patience of

Colonel La Vigne were drawn asunder, and the clanking gates clashed

behind us as we emerged from the shadowed domain into the glare and dust

of the high-road.

Here Major Favraud, accompanied by Duganne, awaited us, seated in state

in his lofty, stylish swung gig (with his tiny tiger behind), drawn

tandem-wise by his high-stepping and peerless blooded bays, Castor and

Pollux. Brothers, like the twins of Leda, they had been bred in the

blue-grass region of Kentucky and the vicinity of Ashland, and were

worthy of their ancient pedigree, their perfect training and classic

names, the last bestowed when he first became their owner, by Major

Favraud, who, with a touch of the whip or a turn of the hand, controlled

them to subjection, fiery coursers although they were!

Dr. Durand, too, with his spacious and flame-lined gig, accompanied by

his son, a lad of sixteen, awaited our arrival, and served to swell the

cavalcade that wound slowly down the dusty road, with its sandy surface

and red-clay substratum. A few young gentlemen on horseback completed

our _cortege_.

Major Favraud sat holding his ribbons gracefully in one gauntleted

hand, while he uncovered his head with the other, bowing suavely in his

knightly fashion, as he said:

"Come drive with me, Miss Harz, for a while, and let the young folks

take it together."

"Oh, no, Major Favraud; you must excuse me, indeed! I feel a little

languid this morning, and I should be poor company. Besides, I cannot

surrender my position as one of the young folks yet."

"Nay, I have something to say to you--something very earnest. You shall

be at no trouble to entertain me; but you must not refuse a poor, sad

fellow a word of counsel and cheer. I shall think hard of you if you

decline to let me drive you a little way. Besides, the freshness of the

morning is all lost on you there. Now, set Marion a good example, and

she will, in turn, enliven me later."

So adjured, I consented to drive to the Fifteen-mile House with Major

Favraud, and Duganne glided into the coach in my stead, to take my place

and play _vis-a-vis_ to Sylphy, who, as usual, was selected as

traveling-companion on this occasion, "to take kear of de young ladies."

"I am so glad I have you all to myself once more, Miss Harz! I feel now

that we are fast friends again. And I wanted to tell you, while I could

speak of her, how much my poor wife liked you. (The time will come when

I must not, _dare_ not, you know.) But for circumstances, she would have

urged you to become our guest, or even in-dweller; but you know how it

all was! I need not feign any longer, nor apologize either."

"It must have been that she saw how lovely and _spirituelle_ I found

_her_," I said, "and could not bear to be outdone in consideration, nor

to owe a debt of social gratitude. She knew so little of me. But these

affinities are electric sometimes, I must believe."

"Yes, there is more of that sort of thing on earth, perhaps, 'than is

dreamed of in our philosophy'--antagonism and attraction are always

going on among us unconsciously."

"I am inclined to believe so from my own experience," I replied,

vaguely, thinking, Heaven knows, of any thing at the moment rather than

of him who sat beside me.

"Your mind is on Wentworth, I perceive," he said, softly; after a short

pause, "now give up your dream for a little while and listen to this

sober reality--sober to-day, at least," he added, with a light laugh.

"By-the-way, talking of magnetism, do you know, Miss Harz, I think you

are the most universally magnetic woman I ever saw? All the men fall in

love with you, and the women don't hate you for it, either."

"How perfectly the last assertion disproves the first!" I replied; "but

I retract, I will not, even for the sake of a syllogism, abuse my own

sex; women are never envious except when men make them so, by casting

down among them the golden apple of admiration."

"I know one man, at least, who never foments discord in this way!

Wentworth, from the beginning, had eyes and ears for no one but

yourself, yet I never dreamed the drama would be enacted so speedily; I

own I was as much in the dark as anybody."

I could not reply to this _badinage_, as in happier moments I might have

done, but said, digressively:

"By-the-by, while I think of it, I must put down on my tablet the order

of Mr. Vernon. He wants 'Longfellow's Poems,' if for sale in Savannah.

He has been permeating his brain with the 'Psalms of Life,' that have

come out singly in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, until he craves every

thing that pure and noble mind has thrown forth in the shape of a song."

And I scribbled in my memorandum-book, for a moment, while Major Favraud

mused.

"Longfellow!" he said, at last, "Phoebus, what a name!" adding

affectedly, "yet it seems to me, on reflection, I _have_ heard it

before. He is a Yankee, of course! Now, do you earnestly believe a

native of New England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know,

_can_ be any thing better than a poll-parrot in the poetical line?"

"Have we not proof to the contrary, Major Favraud?"

"What proof? Metre and rhyme, I grant you--long and short--but show me

the afflatus! They make verse with a penknife, like their wooden

nutmegs. They are perfect Chinese for ingenuity and imitation, and the

resemblance to the real Simon-pure is very perfect--externally. But when

it comes to grating the nut for negus, we miss the aroma!"

"Do you pretend that Bryant is not a poet in the grain, and that the

wondrous boy, Willis, was not also 'to the manner born?' Read

'Thanatopsis,' or are you acquainted with it already? I hardly think you

can be. Read those scriptural poems."

"A very smooth school-exercise the first, no more. There is not a

heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willie--he failed egregiously, when

he attempted to 'gild refined gold and paint the lily,' as he did in his

so-called 'Sacred Poems.' He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new

word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of

his poetry."[1]

"This is surprising! You upset all precedent. I really wish you had not

said these things. I now begin to see the truth of what my copy-book

told me long ago, that 'evil association corrupts good manners,' or I

will vary it and substitute 'opinions.' I must eschew your society, in a

literary way, I must indeed, Major Favraud."

"Now comes along this strolling Longfellow minstrel," he continued,

ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with _his_ dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap

the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not

an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' is joyful in comparison!"

"You shall not say that," I interrupted; "you shall not dare to say that

in my presence. It is sheer slander, that you have caught up from some

malignant British review, and, like all other serpents, you are venomous

in proportion to your blindness! I am vexed with you, that you will not

see with the clear, discerning eyes God gave you originally."

"But I do see with them, and very discerningly, notwithstanding your

comparison. Now there is that 'Skeleton in Armor,' his last effusion, I

believe, that you are all making such a work over--fine-sounding thing

enough, I grant you, ingenious rhyme, and all that. But I know where the

framework came from! Old Drayton furnished that in his 'Battle of

Agincourt.'" Then in a clear, sonorous voice, he gave some specimens of

each, so as to point the resemblance, real or imaginary.

"You are content with mere externs in finding your similitudes, Major

Favraud! In power of thought, beauty of expression, what comparison is

there? Drayton's verse is poor and vapid, even mean, beside

Longfellow's."

"I grant you that. I have never for one moment disputed the ability of

those Yankees. Their manufacturing talents are above all praise, but

when it comes to the 'God-fire,' as an old German teacher of mine used

to say, our simple Southern poets leave them all behind--'Beat them all

hollow,' would be their own expression. You gee, Miss Harz, that

Cavalier blood of ours, that inspired the old English bards, _will_

tell, in spite of circumstances."

"But genius is of no rank--no blood--no clime! What court poet of his

day, Major Favraud, compared with Robert Burns for feeling, fire, and

pathos? Who ever sung such siren strains as Moore, a simple Irishman of

low degree? No Cavalier blood there, I fancy! What power, what beauty in

the poems of Walter Scott! Byron was a poet in spite of his condition,

not because of it. Hear Barry Cornwall--how he stirs the blood I What

trumpet like to Campbell I What mortal voice like to Shelley's? the

hybrid angel! What full orchestra surpassed Coleridge for harmony and

brilliancy of effect? Who paints panoramas like Southey? Who charms like

Wordsworth? Yet these were men of medium condition, all--I hate the

conceits of Cowley, Waller, Sir John Suckling, Carew, and the like. All

of your Cavalier type, I believe, a set of hollow pretenders mostly."

"All this is overwhelming, I grant," bowing deferentially. "But I return

to my first idea, that Puritan blood was not exactly fit to engender

genius; and that in the rich, careless Southern nature there lurks a

vein of undeveloped song that shall yet exonerate America from the

charge of poverty of genius, brought by the haughty Briton! Yes, we will

sing yet a mightier strain than has ever been poured since the time of

Shakespeare! and in that good time coming weave a grander heroic poem

than any since the days of Homer! Then men's souls shall have been

tried in the furnace of affliction, and Greek meets not Greek, but

Yankee. For we Southerners only bide our time!"

And he cut his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as

though to vent his excitement, and, setting his email white teeth

sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his

whole face contracting.

"The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he

continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need

Bellona to give tone to our orchestra."

I could not forbear reciting somewhat derisively the old couplet--

"'Sound the trumpet, teat the drum,

Tremble France, we come, we come!'

"Is that the style Major Favraud?" I asked. "I remember the time when I

thought these two lines the most soul-stirring in the language--they

seem very bombastic now, in my maturity."

He smiled, and said: "The time is not come for our war-poem, and, as for

love, let me give you one strain of Pinckney's to begin with;" and,

without waiting for permission, he recited the beautiful "Pledge," with

which all readers are now familiar, little known then, however, beyond

the limits of the South, and entirely new to me, beginning with--

"I fill this cup to one made up

Of loveliness alone,

A woman of her gentle sex

The seeming paragon"--

continuing to the end with eloquence and spirit.

"Now, that is poetry, Miss Harz! the real afflatus is there; the bead on

the wine; the dew on the rose; the bloom on the grape! Nothing wanting

that constitutes the indefinable divine thing called genius! You

understand my idea, of course; explanations are superfluous."

I assented mutely, scarce knowing why I did so.

"Now, hear another." And the woods rang with his clear, sonorous accents

as he declaimed, a little too scanningly, perhaps--too much like an

enthusiastic boy:

"Love lurks upon my lady's lip,

His bow is figured there;

Within her eyes his arrows sleep;

His fetters are--her hair!"

"I call that nothing but a bundle of conceits, Major Favraud, mostly of

the days of Charles II., of Rochester himself--" interrupting him as I

in turn was interrupted.

"But hear further," and he proceeded to the end of that marvelous

ebullition of foam and fervor, such as celebrated the birth of Aphrodite

herself perchance in the old Greek time; and which, despite my perverse

intentions, stirred me as if I had quaffed a draught of pink champagne.

Is it not, indeed, all _couleur de rose_? Hear this bit of melody, my

reader, sitting in supreme judgment, and perhaps contempt, on your

throne apart:

"'Upon her cheek the crimson ray

By changes comes and goes,

As rosy-hued Aurora's play

Along the polar snows;

Gay as the insect-bird that sips

From scented flowers the dew--

Pure as the snowy swan that dips

Its wings in waters blue;

Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face,

Like clouds on the calm sea,

And every motion is a grace,

Each word a melody!'"

"Yes, that is true poetry, I acknowledge, Major Favraud," I exclaimed,

not at all humbled by conviction, though a little annoyed at the pointed

manner in which he gave (looking in my face as he did so) these

concluding lines:

"Say from what fair and sunny shore,

Fair wanderer, dost thou rove,

Lest what I only should adore

I heedless think to love?"

"The character of Pinckney's genius," I rejoined, "is, I think,

essentially like that of Praed, the last literary phase with me--for I

am geological in my poetry, and take it in strata. But I am more

generous to your Southern bard than you are to our glorious Longfellow!

I don't call that imitation, but coincidence, the oneness of genius! I

do not even insinuate plagiarism." My manner, cool and careless,

steadied his own.

"You are right: our 'Shortfellow' _was_ incapable of any thing of the

sort. Peace be to his ashes! With all his nerve and _vim_, he died of

melancholy, I believe. As good an end as any, however, and certainly

highly respectable. But you know what Wordsworth says in his

'School-master'--

"'If there is one that may bemoan

His kindred laid in earth,

The household hearts that were his own,

It is the man of mirth.'"

He sighed as he concluded his quotation--sighed, and slackened the pace

of his flying steeds. "But give me something of Praed's in return," he

said, rallying suddenly; "is there not a pretty little thing called 'How

shall I woo her?'" glancing archly and somewhat impertinently at me, I

thought--or, perhaps, what would simply have amused me in another man

and mood shocked me in him, the recent widower--widowed, too, under such

peculiar and awful circumstances! I did not reflect sufficiently

perhaps, on his ignorance of many of these last.

How I deplored his levity, which nothing could overcome or restrain; and

yet beneath which I even then believed lay depths of anguish! How I

wished that influence of mine could prevail to induce him to divide his

dual nature, "To throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer

with the better half!" But I could only show disapprobation by the

gravity of my silence.

"So you will not give me 'How shall I woo her?' Miss Harz?" a little

embarrassed, I perceived, by my manner. "I have a fancy for the title,

nevertheless, not having heard any more, and should be glad to hear the

whole poem. But you are prudish to-day, I fancy."

"No, there is nothing in that poem, certainly, that angels might not

hear approvingly; but it would sadden you, Major Favraud."

"I will take the chance of that," laughing. "Come, the poem, if you care

to please your driver, and reward his care. See how skillfully I avoided

that fallen branch--suppose I were to be spiteful, and upset you against

this stump?"

Any thing was preferable to his levity; and, as I had warned him of the

possible effect of the poem he solicited, I could not be accused of want

of consideration in reciting it. Besides, he deserved the lesson, the

stern lesson that it taught.

As this could in no way be understood by such of my readers as are

unacquainted with this little gem, I venture to give it here--exquisite,

passionate utterance that it is, though little known to fame, at least

at this writing:

"'How shall I woo her? I will stand

Beside her when she sings,

And watch her fine and fairy hand

Flit o'er the quivering strings!

But shall I tell her I have heard,

Though sweet her song may be,

A voice where every whispered word

_Was more than song to me_?

"'How shall I woo her? I will gaze,

In sad and silent trance,

On those blue eyes whose liquid rays

Look love in every glance.

But shall I tell her eyes more bright,

Though bright her own may beam,

Will fling a deeper spell to-night

_Upon me in my dream_?'"

I hesitated. "Let me stop here, Major Favraud, I counsel you," I

interpolated, earnestly; but he only rejoined:

"No, no! proceed, I entreat you! it is very beautiful--very touching,

too!" Speaking calmly, and slacking rein, so that the grating of the

wheels among the stems of the scarlet _lychnis_, that grew in immense

patches on our road, might not disturb his sense of hearing, which,

by-the-way, was exquisitely nice and fastidious.

"As you please, then;" and I continued the recitation.

"'How shall I woo her? I will try

The charms of olden time,

And swear by earth, and sea, and sky,

And rave in prose and rhyme--

And I will tell her, when I bent

My knee in other years,

I was not half so _eloquent_;

I could not speak--_for tears_!'"

I watched him narrowly; the spell was working now; the poet's hand was

sweeping, with a gust of power, that harp of a thousand strings, the

wondrous human heart! And I again pursued, in suppressed tones of

heart-felt emotion, the pathetic strain that he had evoked with an idea

of its frivolity alone:

"'How shall I woo her? I will bow

Before the holy shrine,

And pray the prayer, and vow the vow,

And press her lips to mine--

And I will tell her, when she starts

From passion's thrilling kiss,

That _memory_ to many hearts

Is dearer far than bliss!'"

It was reserved for the concluding verse to unnerve him completely; a

verse which I rendered with all the pathos of which I was capable, with

a view to its final effect, I confess:

"'Away! away! the chords are mute,

The bond is rent in twain;

You _cannot_ wake the silent lute,

Or clasp its links again.

Love's toil, I know, is little cost;

Love's perjury is light sin;

But souls that lose what I have lost,

What have they left to win?'"

"What, indeed?" he exclaimed, impetuously--tears now streaming over his

olive cheeks. He flung the reins to me with a quick, convulsive motion,

and covered his face with his hands. Groans burst from his murmuring

lips, and the great deeps of sorrow gave up their secrets. I was sorry

to have so stirred him to the depths by any act or words of mine, and

yet I enjoyed the certainty of his anguish.

I checked the horses beneath a magnolia-tree, and sat quietly waiting

for the flood of emotion to subside as for him to take the initiative. I

had no word to say, no consolation to offer. Nay, after consideration,

rather did I glory in his grief, which redeemed his nature in my

estimation, though grieved in turn to have afflicted him. For, in spite

of all his faults, and my earlier prejudices, I loved this impulsive

Southron man, as Scott has it, "right brotherly."

At last, looking up grave, tearless, and pale, and resuming his reins

without apology for having surrendered them, he said, abruptly:

"All is so vain! Such mockery now to me! She was the sole reality of

this universe to my heart! I grapple with shadows unceasingly. There is

not on the face of this globe a more desolate wretch. You understand

this! You feel for me, you do not deride me! You know how perfect, how

spiritual she was! You loved her well--I saw it in your eyes, your

manner--and for that, if nothing else, you have my heart-felt gratitude.

So few appreciated her unearthly purity. Yet, was it not strange she

should have loved a man so gross, so steeped in sensuous, thoughtless

enjoyment--so remote from God as I am--have ever been? But the song

speaks for me"--waving his gauntleted hand--"better than I can speak:

"'Away! away! the chords are mute,

The bond is rent in twain.'"

"I shall never marry again--never! Miss Miriam, I know now, and shall

know evermore, in all its fullness, and weariness, and bitterness, the

meaning of that terrible word--alone! Eternal solitude. The Robinson

Crusoe of society. A sort of social Daniel Boone. Thus you must ever

consider me. And yet, just think of it, Miss Harz!"

"Oh, but you will not always feel so; there may come a time of

reaction." I hesitated. It was not my purpose to encourage change.

"No, never! never!" he interrupted, passionately; "don't even suggest

it--don't! and check me sternly if ever I forget my grief again in

frivolity of any sort in your presence. You are a noble, sweet woman,

with breadth enough of character to make allowances for the shortcomings

of a poor, miserable man like me--trying to cheat himself back into

gayety and the interests of life. I have sisters, but they are not like

you. I wish to Heaven they were! There is not a woman in the world on

whom I have any claims--on whose shoulder I can lean my head and take a

hearty cry. And what are men at such a season? Mocking fiends, usually,

the best of them! I shall go abroad, Miss Harz. I am no anchorite. You

will hear of me as a gay man of the world, perhaps; but, as to being

happy, that can never be again! The bubble of life has burst, and my

existence falls flat to the earth. Victor Favraud, that airy nothing, is

scarcely a 'local habitation and a name' now!"

"Let him make a name, then," I urged. "With military talents like yours,

Major Favraud, the road to distinction will soon be open to you. Our

approaching difficulties with France--"

"Oh, that will all be patched up, or has been, by this time. Van Buren

is a crafty but peace-loving fox! Something of an epicurean, too, in his

high estate. What grim old Jackson left half healed, he will complete

the cure of. Ah, Miss Harz, I had hoped to flesh my sword in a nobler

cause!"

I knew what he meant. That dream of nullification was still uppermost

in his soul--dispersed, as it was, in the eyes of all reasonable men. I

shook my head. "Thank God! all that is over," I said, gravely,

fervently; "and my prayer to Him is that he may vouchsafe to preserve us

for evermore an unbroken people!"

"May He help Israel when the time comes," he murmured low, "for come it

will, Miss Harz, as surely as there is a sun in the heavens! 'and may I

be there to see!' as John Gilpin said, or some one of him--which was

it?"

And, whipping up his lagging steeds as we gained the open road, we

emerged swiftly from the shadows of the forest--between nodding

cornfields, already helmed and plumed for the harvest, and plantations

green with thrifty cotton-plants, with their half-formed bolls,

promising such bounteous yield, and meadows covered with the tufted

Bermuda grass, with its golden-green verdure, we sped our way toward

Lenoir's Landing.

This peninsula was formed by the junction of two rivers, between which

intervened a narrow point of land, with a background of steep hills,

covered with a growth of black-jack and yellow-pine to the summit. Here

was a ferry with its Charon-like boat, of the primitive sort--flat

barge, poled-over by negroes, and capable of containing at one time many

bales of cotton, a stagecoach or wagon with four horses, besides

passengers _ad libitum_.

This ferry constituted the chief source of revenue of Madame Grambeau,

an old French lady, remarkable in many ways. She kept the stage-house

hard by, with its neat picketed inclosure, its overhanging live-oak

trees and small trim parterre, gay at this season with various annual

flowers, scarce worth the cultivation, one would think, in that land of

gorgeous perennial bloom. But Queen Margarets, ragged robins, variegated

balsams, and tawny marigolds, have their associations, doubtless, to

make them dear and valuable to the foreign heart, to which they seem

essential, wherever a plot of ground be in possession.

Mignonette, I have observed, is a special passion with the French exile,

recalling, doubtless, the narrow boxes, fitted to the stone window-sill

of certain former lofty lodgings across the sea, perhaps, situated in

the heart of some great city, and overlooking roofs and court-yards--the

street being quite out of the question in such a view, distant, as it

seems, from them, as the sky itself, though in an opposite direction.

I have used the word "exile" advisedly with regard to Madame Grambeau,

and not figuratively at all. She was, I had been told, a _bourgeoise_,

of good class, who had taken part in the early revolution, but who, when

the _canaille_ triumphed and drenched the land in blood, in the second

phase of that fearful outburst of volcanic feeling, had fled before the

whirlwind with her child and husband to embark for America. At the point

of embarcation--like Evangeline--the husband and wife had been separated

accidentally, and on her arrival in a strange land she found herself

alone and penniless with her son, scarce six years old. Her husband had

been carried to a Southern port, she learned by the merest chance, and,

disguising herself in man's attire, and leading her little son by the

hand, she set forth in quest of him, carrying with her a violin, which,

together with the clothes she wore, had been found in the trunk of

Monsieur Grambeau, brought on the vessel in which she came, but which

depository she had been obliged to abandon, when setting forth on her

pilgrimage.

She was no unskillful performer on this instrument, and solely by such

aid she gained her food and lodging to the interior of Georgia. Reaching

her destination after a long and painful journey and delays of many

kinds, she found her husband living in a log-hut, on the border of

Talupa River, a hut which he had built himself, and earning his bread by

ferrying travellers across that stream.

Yet here, with the characteristic contentment of her people under all

circumstances, she settled down quietly to aid him and make his home

happy; bore him many children (most of whom were dead at the time I saw

her, as those living were separated from her at that period), reared and

educated them herself, toiled for and with them, late and early,

strained every nerve in the arduous cause of duty, and found herself, in

extreme old age, widowed and alone, having amassed but little of the

world's lucre, yet cheerful and energetic even if dependent still on her

own exertions.

All this and much more I had heard before I saw Madame Grambeau or her

abode--a picturesque affair in itself, however humble--consisting

originally of a log-house, to which more recently white frame wings had

been attached, projecting a few feet in front of the primitive building,

and connected thereto by a shed-roofed gallery, which embraced the whole

front of the log-cottage, along which ran puncheon steps the entire

length of the grand original tree-trunk, as of the porch itself. It was

a triumph of rural art.

Over this portico, so low in front as barely to admit the passage of a

tall man beneath its eaves, without stooping, a wild multiflora rose,

then in full flower, was artistically trained so as to present a series

of arches to the eye as the wayfarer approached the dwelling; no

tapestry was ever half so lovely.

The path which led from the little white gate, with its swinging chain

and ball, was covered with river-pebbles and shells, and bordered by

box, trimly clipped and kept low, and the two broad steps, that led to

the porch, bore evidence of recent scouring, though rough and unpainted.

Framed in one of those pointed natural cathedral-windows of vivid green,

gemmed with red roses, of which the division-posts of the porch formed

the white outlines, stood the most remarkable-looking aged woman I have

ever seen. At a first glance, indeed, the question of sex would have

arisen, and been found difficult to decide. Her attire seemed that of a

friar, even to the small scalloped cape that scantily covered her

shoulders, and the coarse black serge, of which her strait gown was

composed, leaving exposed her neatly though coarsely clad feet, with

their snow-white home-knit stockings, and low-quartered, well-polished

calf-skin shoes, confined with steel buckles, and elevated on heels,

then worn by men alone.

She wore a white habit shirt, the collar, bosom, and wristbands of which

were visible; but no cap covered her silver hair, which was cropped in

the neck, and divided at one side in true manly fashion. It was brushed

well back from her expansive, fair, and unwrinkled forehead, beneath

which large blue eyes looked out with that strange solemnity we see

alone in the orbs of young, thoughtful children, or the very old.

Scott's description of the "Monk of Melrose Abbey" occurred to me, as I

gazed on this calm and striking figure!

"And strangely on the knight looked he,

And his blue eyes gleamed wild and wide."

She stood watching our approach, leaning with both hands on her ebony,

silver-headed cane, above which she stooped slightly, her aged and

somewhat severe, but serene face fully turned toward us, in the clear

light of morning, with a grave majesty of aspect.

Above her head in its wicker cage swung the gray and crimson parrot, of

which Sylphy had spoken, and to which, it may be remembered, she had so

irreverently likened her master on one occasion; bursting forth, as it

saw us coming, into a shrill, stereotyped phrase of welcome--"_Bien

venu, compatriote_," that was irresistibly ludicrous and irrelevant.

"Tremble, France! we come--we come," said Major Favraud; "there's your

quotation well applied this time, Miss Harz! It is impressive, after

all."

"Hush! she will hear you," I remonstrated, quite awed in that still,

majestic presence, for now we stood before our aged hostess, who, with a

cold but stately politeness after Major Favraud's salutation and

introduction, waved us in and across her threshold. As for Major

Favraud, he had turned to leave us on the door-sill, to see to the

comfort and safety of his horses; not liking, perhaps, the appearance of

the superannuated ostler, who lounged near the stable of the inn, if

such might be called this rustic retreat without sign, lodging, or

bar-rooms.

"Are we in the mansion of a decayed queen, or the log-hut of a wayside

innkeeper?" I questioned low of Marion.

"Both in one, it seems to me," was the reply. "But Madame Grambeau is no

curiosity, no novelty to me, I have stopped here so frequently. I ought

to have told you, before we came, not to be surprised."

Pausing at the door of a large, square room, from which voices

proceeded, she invited us with a singularly graceful though formal

courtesy to enter, smiling and pointing forward silently as she did so,

and then, like Major Favraud, she turned and abandoned us at the

door-sill, on which we stood riveted for a moment by the sound of a

vibrant and eager voice speaking some never-to-be-forgotten words.

"For the slave is the coral-insect of the South," said the voice within;

"insignificant in himself, he rears a giant structure--which will yet

cause the wreck of the ship of state, should its keel grate too closely

on that adamantine wall. '_L'etat c'est moi_,' said Louis XIV., and that

'slavery is the South' is as true an utterance. Our staple--our

patriarchal institution--our prosperity--are one and indissoluble, and

the sooner the issue comes the better for the nation!"

Standing with his hand on the back of a chair near the casement-window

of the large, low apartment, in close conversation with two other

gentlemen, was the speaker of these remarkable words, which embraced the

whole genius and policy of the South as it then existed, and which were

delivered in those clear and perfectly modulated tones that bespeak the

practised orator and the man of dominant energies.

I felt instinctively that I stood in the presence of one of the anointed

princes of the earth--felt it, and was thrilled.

"Do you know that gentleman, Marion?" I whispered, as we seated

ourselves on the old-fashioned settle, or rather sofa, in one corner of

the room, gazing admiringly, as I spoke, on the tall, slight figure,

with its air of power and poise, that stood at some distance, with

averted face.

"No, I have no idea who it is, or who are his companions either," she

replied; "unless"--hesitating with scrutiny in her eyes--

"His companions, I do not care to question of them!--but that man

himself--the speaker--has a sovereign presence! Can it be possible--"

The entrance of Major Favraud interrupted further conjecture, for at the

sound of those emphatic boots the stranger turned, and for one moment

the splendor of his large dark eyes, in their iron framing, met my own,

then passed recognizingly on to rest on the face of Major Favraud, and

advancing with extended hands, made more cordial by his voice and smile,

he greeted him familiarly as "Victor."

Major Favraud stood for a moment spell-bound--then suddenly rushing

forward, flung his hat to the floor, caught the hand of the stranger

between his own and pressed it to his heart. (To his lips, I think, he

would fain have lifted it, falling on one knee, perchance, at the same

time in a knightly fashion of hero-worship that modern reticence

forbids.) But he contented himself with exclaiming:

"Mr. Calhoun! best of friends, welcome back to Georgia!" And tears

started to his eyes and choked his utterance. Thus was my conjecture

confirmed. I never felt so thrilled, so elated, by any presence.

There was a momentary pause after this fervent greeting, emotional on

one part only.

"But why did you not meet me at Milledgeville?" asked Mr. Calhoun. "Most

of my friends in this vicinity sustained me there. I have been

discussing the great question[2] again, Favraud, and I should have been

glad of your countenance."

"I have been detained at home of late by a cruel necessity," was the

faltering reply, "or I should never have played recreant to my old

master."

"Good fortune spoiled me a fine lawyer in your case, Victor! But

introduce me to your wife. Remember, I have never had the pleasure of

meeting Madame Favraud," advancing, as he spoke, toward me, with his

hand on Major Favraud's shoulder (above whom he towered by a head),

courteously and impulsively.

"Miss Harz, Miss La Vigne, Miss Durand--Mr. Calhoun," said Major

Favraud, pale as death now, and trembling as he spoke. "These ladies are

friends of mine--one, a distant relative"--he hesitated--"within the

last six weeks I have had the misfortune to lose my wife, Mr. Calhoun.

You understand matters better now."

All conversation was cut short by this sudden announcement. Deeply

shocked, Mr. Calhoun led Major Favraud aside, with a brief apology to me

for his misapprehension, and they stood together, talking low, at the

extreme end of the apartment, affording me thus an admirable opportunity

for observing the _personnel_ of the great Southern leader, during the

brief space of time accorded by the change of stage-horses. For, with

his friends, he was then _en route_ for another appointment. He was

canvassing the State, with a view to a final rally of its resources,

preparatory to his last great effort--to scotch the serpent of the

North, which finally, however, wound its insidious folds around the

heart of brotherly affection, stifling it, as the snakes of fable were

sent to do the baby Hercules.

No picture of Mr. Calhoun has ever done him justice,[3] although his

was a physiognomy that an artist could scarcely fail to make an extern

likeness of, from its remarkable characteristics. It was truly an

iron-bound face, condensed, powerful in every nerve, muscle, and

lineament, and fraught, beyond almost all others, with intellect and

resolution. But the glory and power of that glance and smile no painter

could convey--those attributes of man which more fully than aught else

betray the immortal soul!

Just as I beheld him that day, bending above Major Favraud in his

tender, half-paternal dignity and solicitude combined, soothing and

condoling with him (I could not doubt, from the expression of his

speaking countenance), I see him still in mental vision; nor can I

wonder more at the depth and strength of enthusiasm he awakened in the

hearts of his friends.

It belongs not to every great man to excite this devotion, yet, where it

blends with greatness, it is irresistible. Mohammed, Cyrus, Alexander,

Darius, Pericles, Napoleon, were thus magnetically gifted. I recall few

instances of others so distinguished in station who possessed this

power, which has its root, perhaps, after all, in the great

master-passion of mortality, the yearning for exalted sympathy, so

seldom accorded.

This observation of mine was but a glimpse at best, for the winding of

the stage-horn was the signal for Mr. Calhoun's departure, and I never

saw him more. But that glimpse alone opened to my eyes a mighty volume!

A few days before I should have rejected as wearisome the details to

which I listened with eagerness now, and which I even sought to elicit

as to Mr. Calhoun--his mode of life, his mountain-home, and his passion,

for those heights he inhabited, and which, no doubt, contributed to

train his character to energy and strengthen his _physique_ to endure

its brain-burden, I heard with pleasure the account of one who had

passed much of his youth beneath his roof, and who, however

enthusiastic, was, in the very framing of his nature, strictly truthful

with regard to the mutual devotion of the master and slaves, the

invariable courtesy and sweetness of his deportment to his own family,

his justice and regard for the feelings of his lowest dependant, his

simplicity, his cheerfulness.

"A grave and even gloomy man in public life, he is all life and interest

in the social circle," said Major Favraud. "His range of thought is the

grandest and most unlimited, his powers of conversation are the rarest I

have ever met with. Yet he never refused, on any occasion, to answer

with minuteness the inquiries of the smallest child or most

insignificant dependant. 'Had he not been Alexander, he must have been

Parmenio.' Had fortune not struck out for him the path of a statesman,

he would have made the most impressive and perfect of teachers. As it

was, without the slightest approach to pedagogism, he involuntarily

instructed all who came near him, without effort or weariness on either

side."

"Does he love music--poetry?" I asked.

"Oh, yes; Scottish songs and classic verse, especially, are his

delights. He has no affectation. His tastes are all his own--his

opinions all genuine. He is, indeed, a man of very varied attainment, as

well as great grasp of intellect. Yet, as you see, he likes his

opposites sometimes, Miss Harz," and he laid his hand proudly on his

own manly breast.

Talking thus in that large, low, scantily-furnished parlor, with its

split-bottomed chairs, in primitive frames (and in somewhat strange

contrast to its well-polished mahogany tables, dark with time, and walls

adorned with good engravings), with its floor freshly scoured and

sanded, while a simple deal stand in the centre bore a vase filled with

the rarest and most exquisite wild-flowers I had ever seen (from the

gorgeous amaryllis and hibiscus of these regions, down to wax-like

blossoms of fragile delicacy and beauty, whose very names I knew not),

and its many small diamond-paned casement-windows, all neatly curtained

with coarse white muslin bordered with blue, time passed unconsciously

until the noonday meal was announced.

We followed the Mercury of the establishment, a grave-looking little

yellow boy, who seemed to have grown prematurely old, from his constant

companionship, probably, with his preceptor and mistress, into a long,

low apartment in the rear of the dwelling, where a table was spread for

our party, with a damask cloth and napkins, decorated china and

cut-glass, that proved Madame Grambeau's personal superintendence; and

which elicited from Major Favraud, as he entered, a long, low whistle of

approval and surprise, and the exclamation "Heh! madame! you are

overwhelming us to-day with your magnificence."

I was amused with the response. "Sit down, Victor Favraud, and eat your

dinner Christian-like, without remarks! You have never got over the

spoiling you, received when you lay wounded under this roof. I shall

indulge you no longer." Shaking her long forefinger at him. "Your

familiarity needs to be checked." Her manner of grave and kindly irony

removed all impression of rebuke from this speech, which Major Favraud

received very coolly, spoiled child that he really was, rubbing his

hands as he took the foot of the table. At the sight of the _bouilli_

before him, from which a savory steam ascended to his epicurean

nostrils, he said, notwithstanding: "Soup and _bouilli_ too! Ah, madame,

I see why you absented yourself so cruelly this morning. You have been

engaged in good works!"

"Only the sauces, Favraud!--_seulement les sauces_."

"The sauces--it's just that!--Ude is a mere charlatan in comparison,"

turning to me. "Miss Harz, you never tasted any thing before like

madame's soup and sauces. I wish she would take me in partnership for a

while, if only to teach me the recipes that will otherwise die with her.

What a restaurant we two could keep together!"

"You are too unsteady, Favraud, for my _maitre d'hotel_. Your mind is

too much engrossed by the bubbles of politics, you would spoil all my

materials, and realize the old proverb that 'the devil sends cooks.' But

go to work like a good fellow, and carve the dish before you; by that

time the soup will be removed. I have a fine fish, however, in reserve

(let me announce this at once), for my end of the table."

"Here are croquets too, as I live," said Duganne, lifting a cover before

him and peeping in, then returning it quietly to its place. "Are you a

fairy, madame?"

"Much more like a witch," she said, with gayety. "You young men, at

least, think every old, toothless gray-haired crone like me ready for

the stake, you know."

"Not when they make such steaks," said Dr. Durand, attacking the dish,

with its savory surroundings, before him.

"Ah! you make calembourgs, my good doctor.--What do you call them,

Favraud? It is one of the few English words I do not know--or forget. I

believe, to make them, however, is a medical peculiarity."

"Puns, madame, puns, not pills. Don't forget it now. It is time you were

beginning to master our language. You know you are almost grown up!" and

Favraud looked at her saucily.

"A language which madame speaks more perfectly than any foreigner I have

ever known," I remarked. She bowed in answer, well pleased.

In truth, the accent of Madame Grambeau was barely detectable, and her

phraseology was that of a well-translated book--correct, but not

idiomatic, and bearing about it the idiosyncrasy of the language from

which it was derived. She was evidently a person of culture and native

power of intellect combined, and her finely-moulded face, as well as

every gesture and tone, indicated superiority and character.

In that lonely wild, and beneath that lowly roof, there abode a spirit

able and worthy to lead the _coteries_ of the great, and to preside over

the councils of statesmen, and (to rise in climax) the drawing-room of

the _grande monde_. But it was her whim rather than her necessity to

tarry where she could alone be strictly independent, a _sine qua non_ of

her being.

The son she had led by the hand from Hew York to Georgia, and who,

standing by her side, distinctly remembered to have seen the head of the

Princess Lamballe borne on a pole through the streets of Paris, was now

a prominent member of the Legislature, and, through his rich wife, the

incumbent of a great plantation.

But the teachings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that philosophic sign-post,

still influenced his mother, in her refusal to live under his splendid

roof, and partake of his bounty, however liberally offered.

"I have a home of my own," she said, "a few faithful servants, brains,

and energy still, besides a small account with General Curzon, in his

bank at Savannah, wherewith to meet emergencies; while these things

last, I will owe to no man or woman for bread or shelter. And, when

these depart, may the grave cover my bones, and the good God receive my

soul!"

Books alone she accepted as gifts from her son, and of these, in a

little three-cornered library, she had a goodly store in the two

languages which she read with equal facility, if not delight.

She showed us this nook before we left, and I saw, lying face downward,

as she had recently left it, the volume she was then perusing at

intervals--one of Madame Sand's novels, "Les Mauprats," I remember, a

singular and powerful romance, then recently issued, whose root I have

always thought might be found in Walter Scott's "Rob Roy," and more

particularly in the Osbaldistone family commemorated in that work.

On suggesting this to Madame Grambeau, she too saw the resemblance I

spoke of, and she agreed, with me, that the coincidence of genius

furnished many such parallels, where no charge of plagiarism could be

attached to either side.

A few bottles of "wild-berry wine," as Elizabeth Barrett called such

fluids, were added to the dinner toward its close, and Marion begged

permission to have her basket of cakes and fruits brought in for

dessert, which else had been wanting to our repast; to which request

Madame Grambeau graciously acceded.

"I make no confections," she said, "but I have lived on the juices of

good meats, well prepared, with such vegetables as the Lord lets grow in

this poor region, many years, and behold I am old and still able to do

his service!"

"And a little good wine, too, occasionally--eh, madame?" added Major

Favraud, impertinently.

"When attainable, Favraud. You drank good wine yourself, when you were

here, and I partook with you moderately. But I buy none such. I drown

not, Clarence-like, even in butts of malmsey, my hard-earned gold; and I

own I am not fond of the juices of the muscadine of your hills;" and she

tapped her snuffbox.

"You are going to hear her talk now," whispered Favraud; "that is a

sign--equal to General Finistere's--the snuffbox tapping, I mean. The

oracle is beginning to arouse! Come I let me stir her further!" and he

inclined his head before her.

"I'll tell you what, madame, you must take a little cognac to keep off

the chills of age. I have some of the best, and will send you down a

demijohn, if you say the word; and in return you shall pray for me. I am

a great sinner, Miss Harz thinks."

"Miss Harz is correct; and we will both promise you our prayers. She,

too, is Catholic, I hope. No? I regret so, for her own sake; but your

brandy I reject, Victor; remember that, and offend me not by sending it.

You must not forget the fate of your malvoisie."

"Ah, madame, that was cruel! but I have forgiven you long since. I

think, however, that the grape-vines bore better that year than ever

before--thus watered, or wined, I mean.--Just think of it, Miss Harz! To

pour good wine round the roots of a Fontainebleau grape, rather than

replenish the springs of life with it! Was there ever waste like that

since Cleopatra dissolved her pearl in vinegar?"

"Miss Harz will agree with me that a principle that could not resist the

gift of a dozen bottles of choice wine was little worth. Of such stuff

was made not the fathers of your Revolution. But stay, there is an

explanation due to me, yet unrendered," she pursued, "I am a puzzled

_bourgeoise_, I confess," she said, shaking her head. "Come, Favraud,

explain. Who is this young lady?"

"A _bourgeoise_ also," I replied for him, anxious to turn the tide of

conversation into another channel for some reasons. "I had thought you

an expatriated marquise, at least, madame!" I continued. "As for me, I

am simply a governess."

"It is my glory, mademoiselle, to have been of that class to which

belonged Madame Roland herself, and which represented that _juste

milieu_ which maintained the balance of society in France. When the

dregs of the _bas peuple_ rose to the surface of the revolution,

commenced by the sound middle classes, we regarded the scum of

aristocracy as the smaller of the two evils. As soon as the true element

had ceased to assert itself in France, I fled forever from a land of

bloodshed and misrule, and took shelter under the broad wing of your

boasted American eagle."

"Which still continues to flap over you shelteringly, madame," I

rejoined, somewhat flippantly, I fear, "and will to the end, no doubt;

for, in its very organization, our country can never be subjected to the

fluctuations of other lands--revolt and revolution."

"I am not so certain of this," she observed, shaking her white head

slowly as she spoke, and, lifting a pinch of snuff from her

tortoise-shell box (the companion of her whole married life, as she

acquainted us), she inhaled it with an air of meditative

self-complacency, then offered it quietly to the gentlemen, who were

still sitting over their wine and peaches; passing by Marion, Alice

Durand, and myself, completely, in this ovation.

"Good snuff is not to be sneezed at," said Major Favraud. "None offered

to young ladies, it seems," taking a huge pinch, and thrusting it

bravely up his nostrils, as one takes a spoonful of unpleasant medicine.

Then contradicting his own assertion immediately afterward, he succeeded

in expelling most of it in a series of violent sternutatory spasms,

which left him breathless, red-faced, and watery-eyed, with a

handkerchief much begrimed.

But Madame Grambeau seemed not to have noticed this ridiculous

proceeding, which, of course, created momentary mirth at the expense of

the penitent Favraud, to whom Dr. Durand repeated the tantalizing

saying, that "it is a royal privilege to take snuff gracefully"--giving

the example as he spoke, in a mock-heroic manner, quite as absurd and

irrelevant as Favraud's own.

Lost in deep thought, and gently tapping her snuffbox as she mused--the

tripod of her inspiration, as it seemed--Madame Grambeau sat silently,

with what memories of the past and what insight into the future none can

know save those like herself grown hoary with wisdom and experience.

At last she spoke, addressing her remarks to me, as though the careless

words I had hazarded had just been spoken, and the attention of her

hearers undiverted by divers absurdities--among others the affected

gambols of Duganne--anxious to place himself in an agreeable aspect

before both of his _inamoratas_, past and present.

"I do not agree with you, mademoiselle. I am one of those who think

that in the very framing of this Constitution of ours the dragon's teeth

were sown, whose harvest is not yet produced. Mr. Calhoun, with his

prophetic eye, foresees that this crop of armed men is inevitable from

such germs, as does Mr. Clay, were he only frank, which he is not,

because he deludes himself--the most incurable and inexcusable of all

deceptions."

And she applied herself again assiduously to her snuffbox, tapping it

peremptorily before opening it, and, with a gloomy eye fixed on space,

she continued:

"In all lands, from the time of Cassandra and Jeremiah up, there have

been prophets. Prophets for good and prophets for ill--of which some few

have been God-appointed, and the sayings of such alone have been

preserved. The rest vanish away into oblivion like chaff before the

wind--never mind what their achievement, what their boast.

"In this nation we have only two true prophets, Calhoun and Clay--both

men of equal might, and resolution, and intellect--gifted as beseems

their vocation, masterful and heroic; and to these all other men are

subordinate in the great designs of Providence."

"Where do you leave Mr. Webster, John Quincy Adams, General Jackson

himself, in such a category, madame?" I asked, eagerly.

"They are doing, or have done, the work God has appointed for them to

do, I suppose, mademoiselle; but they are accessories merely of the

times, and will pass away with the necessities of the moment."

"'The earth has bubbles as the water hath, and these are of them,'" said

Major Favraud aside, between his short, set teeth, nodding to me as he

spoke, and lending the next moment implicit attention to what Madame

Grambeau was saying; for the brief pause she had made for another pinch

of snuff was ended, and she continued impetuously, as if no interval had

occurred:

"Clay is, unconsciously, I trust, for the honor of mankind, fulfilling

his destiny--this great prophet who still refuses to prophesy. He is

entering the wedge for what he declines to admit the possibility of--yet

there must be moments when that eye of power pierces the clouds of

prejudice and party, wherewith it seeks to blind its kingly vision, and

descries the horrors beyond as the result of the acts he is now

committing; and when such moments of clear conviction come to him, the

ambitions tool of a party, I envy not his sensations," and she shook her

head mournfully. "Not Napoleon at St. Helena, not Prometheus on his

rock, were more to be pitied than he! the man whose ambition shall never

know fruition, whose measures shall pass and leave no trace in less than

fifty years after he has ceased to exist--the splendid failure of our

century!"

She ceased for a moment, with her eye fixed on space, her hands clasped,

her whole face and manner uplifted, as if, indeed, on her likewise the

prophet's mantle had dropped from a chariot of fire.

"As to Calhoun--he is God-fearing," she continued, fervently. "In the

solitudes of a spiritual Mount Sinai, he has received the tablets of the

Lord, and bends every energy to their fulfillment. He, too,

foresees--not with an eye like Clay's, clear only at intervals--and

clouded by vanity, ambition, and sophistry, at other seasons--he, too,

foresees the coming of our doom! His clear vision embraces anarchy,

dissension, civil war, with all its attendant horrors, as the

consequence of man's injustice; and, like Moses, he beholds the promised

land into which he can never enter! Would that it were given to him to

appoint his Joshua, or even to see him face to face, recognizingly! But

this is not God's will. He lurks among the shadows yet--this Joshua of

the South, but God shall yet search him out and bring him visibly before

the people! Not while I live," she added, solemnly, "but within the

natural lives of all others who sit this day around my table!"

"She is equal to Madame Le Normand!" said Major Favraud, aside, nodding

approvingly at me.

"If one waits long enough, most prophecies may be fulfilled," I

ventured; "but, madame, your words point to results too terrible--too

unnatural, it seems to me, ever to be realized in these enlightened

times or in this land of moderation."

"Child," she responded, "blood asserts itself to the end of races. There

are two separate civilizations in this land, destined some day to come

in fearful conflict; and the wars of Scylla, of the Jews themselves,

shall be outdone in the horror and persistence of that strife of

partners--I will not say brothers--for there is no brotherhood of blood

between South and North, of which Clay and Calhoun stand forth to my

mind as distinct types. No union of the red and white roses possible."

"But you forget, madame, that Mr. Clay is a Western man, a Virginian, a

Kentuckian, and the representative of slave-holders," I remonstrated.

"His interests are coincident with those of the South. His hope of the

presidency itself vests in his constituents, and the wand would be

broken in his hand were he to lend himself to partiality of any kind.

Mr. Clay is a great patriot, I believe, Jacksonite though I am--he knows

no South nor North, nor East nor West, but the Union alone, solid and

undivided."

"All this is true," she answered, "in one sense. It is thus he speaks,

and, like all partial parents, even thinks he feels toward his

offspring; but observe his acts narrowly from first to last. He has a

manufacturer's heart, with all his genius. He loves machinery--the sound

of the mill, the anvil, the spinning-jenny, the sight of the ship upon

the high-seas, or steamboat on the river, the roar of commerce, far more

than the work of the husbandman. We are an agricultural people, we of

the South and West--and especially we Southerners, with our poverty of

invention, our one staple, our otherwise helpless habits, incident to

the institution which, however it may be our curse, is still our wealth,

and to which, for the present time, we are bound, Ixion-like, by every

law of necessity. What does this tariff promise? Where will the profit

rest? Where will the loss fall crushingly? The slow torture of which we

read in histories of early times was like to this. Each day a weight was

added to that already lying on the breast of a strong man, bound on his

back by the cords of his oppressors, until relief and destruction came

together, and the man was crushed; such was the _peine forte et dure_."

"Calhoun is patriarchal,[4] and is now placing all his individual

strength to the task of heaving off this incubus from the breast of our

body politic, but with small avail, for he has no lever to assist

him--no fulcrum whereon to rest it; otherwise he might say with

Archimedes, 'With these I could move a world.' He is unaided, this

eagled-eyed prophet of ours, looking sorrowfully, sagaciously down into

the ages! South Carolina is the Joseph, that his cruel brothers, the

remaining Southern States, have sold to the Egyptians, as a bond-slave.

But they shall yet come to drink of his cup, and eat of his bread of

opinion, in the famine of their Canaan. Nullification shall leave a

fitting successor, as Philip of Macedon left Alexander to carry out his

plans. The abolitionist and the slave-holder are as distinct as were

Charles I. and Cromwell, or Catharine de Medicis and Henry of Navarre.

The germ that Calhoun has planted shall lie long in the earth, perhaps,

but when it breaks the surface, it shall grow in one night to maturity,

like that in your so famous 'Mother Goose' story of 'Jack and his

Bean-stalk,' forming a ladder wherewith to scale the abode of giants and

slay them in their drunken sleep of security. But he who does this deed,

this Joshua of the Lord's, this fierce successor of our gentle Moses,

shall wade through his oceans of blood to gain the stone. God

knoweth--He only--how all this shall end, whether in success or

overthrow. It is so far wrapped in mystery."

As if she saw from some spiritual height the reign of terror she

predicted, she dropped her head upon her hands and closed her eyes, and

I felt my blood creep slowly through my veins as I followed her in

thought across the waste of woe and desolation. For there was something

in her manner, her voice (august and solemn with age and wisdom as these

were), that impressed all who heard, with or in spite of their own

consent, and for a time profound silence succeeded this harangue.

Dr. Durand was the first to recover himself. "I trust, my dear madame,"

he remarked, "that the substantial horrors realized in your youth still

cast their dark shadows over the coming years, and so deceive you into

prophecies that it is sad to hear from lips so reverent, and which, let

us all pray, may never be realized. You yourself will say amen to that,

I am convinced."

"Amen!" she murmured.

"Nonsense, Durand! don't play at hypocrite in your old age, after having

been a true man all your life," broke in Major Favraud. "What is a

conservative, after all, but a social parrot, who repeats 'wise saws and

modern instances,' until he believes himself possessed of the wisdom of

all the ages, and is incapable of conceiving of the existence even of an

original idea?"

"By-the-by," digressed Duganne, weary of discussion, "hear that old

fellow outside, how he is going on, Favraud, _a propos_ of poll parrots,

you know, as it all else, but the name of the bird, had been lost on his

ear. Just listen!"

"Yes, hear him, and he edified," was the sarcastic response of Favraud

to Duganne, who took no other notice, even if he understood the point,

than to lead the way to the portico, where swung the cage of the jolly

bird in question; and, headed by Madame Grambeau leaning on her cane, we

followed simultaneously, with the exception of Major Favraud, who

continued at the table with his cigar and cognac-flask, in sullen and

solitary state.

"Nutmegs and nullification!" shrieked the parrot, as we stood before

him. "Ha, ha, ha!"

"That is condensing the matter, certainly," I observed.

"_Bienvenu, compatriote_!" he repeated many times, laughing loudly, the

next moment, as if in mockery.

"What a fiend it is!" said Marion, timidly; "only look at its black

tongue, Miss Harz! Then what a laugh!"

"Danton! Danton! have you nothing to say to this strange lady?" said

Madame Grambeau, addressing her bird by name; "you must not neglect my

friends, Danton Pardi!"

"Bird of freedom, moulting--moulting!" was the whimsical rejoinder.

"Jackson! give us your paw, Old Hick--Hick--Hickory!"

"This is the stuff Major Favraud taught him," she apologized, "when he

used to lie on his porch day after day, after his hostile meeting with

Juarez, which took place on that hill," signifying the site of the duel

with her slender cane. "It was there they fought their duel, _a

Poutrance_, and I knew it not until too late! His wife was too ill to

come to him at that time, and the task of nursing him devolved on me,

since when, on maternal principles, the lad has grown into my

affections."

"The lad of forty-odd!" sneered Duganne, unnoticed, apparently, by the

aged lady, however, at the moment, but not without amusing other hearers

by this sally. Dr. Durand was especially delighted.

"For he is a boy at heart," she said later, "this same Victor Favraud of

ours," gazing reprovingly around. "Indeed, he is the only American I

have ever seen who possessed real _gaiete de coeur_, and for that, I

imagine, he must thank his French extraction."

"Calhoun and cotton!" "Coal and codfish!" shouted the parrot at the top

of his voice. "Catfish and coffee!"--"Rice cakes for breakfast"--"All in

my eye, Betty Martin"--"Yarns and Yankees"--"Shad and

shin-plasters"--"Yams and yaller boys," and so on, in a string of the

most irrelevant alliteration and folly, that, like much other nonsense,

evoked peals of laughter by its unexpected utterance, and which at last

mollified and brought out Major Favraud himself, from his dignified

retirement.

"You have ruined the morals of my bird," said Madame Grambeau,

reproachfully. "Approach, Favraud, and justify yourself. In former times

his discourse was discreet. He knew many wise proverbs and polite

salutations in French and English both, most of which he has discarded

in favor of your profane and foolish teachings. He is as bad as the

'Vert-vert' of Voltaire. I shall have to expel him soon, I fear."

"Danton, how can you so grieve your mistress?" remonstrated Major

Favraud, lifting at the same time an admonitory finger, at which

recognized signal, a part of past instructions probably, the parrot

burst forth at once in a series of the most grotesque and _outre_ oaths

ear ever heard, ending (by the aid of some prompting from his teacher)

by dismally croaking the fragment of a popular song thus travestied:

"My ole mistis dead and gone,

She lef to me her ole jawbone.

Says she, 'Charge up in dem yaller pines,

And slay dem Yankee Philistines!'"--

ending with the invariable "_Bonjour_" or "_Bienvenu, compatriote_," and

demoniac "Ha! ha! ha!"

"The memory of the creature is perfectly wonderful," I said. "Many

parrots have I seen, but never one like this before. It must have sprung

out of the Arabian Nights."

"I can teach any thing to every thing," digressed Major Favraud, "and

without severity; it is my specialty. I was meant for a trainer of

beasts, probably. I will get up an entertainment, I believe, in

opposition to the industrious fleas, called the 'Desperate Doves,' and

teach pigeons to muster, drill, and go through all the military motions.

I could do it easily, and so repair my broken fortunes. I have one

already at home that feigns death at the word of command. I have amused

myself for hours at a time with this bird.--Don't say a word, Miss

Harz," speaking low, "I see what you think of it all, but I have had to

cheat misery some way or other. It was a wretched device and waste of

existence, though. And when I see that great, distinguished man, who had

such hopes of me as a boy, I feel that I could creep into an auger-hole

for sheer shame of my extinguished promise."

"Not extinguished!" I murmured, "only under a cloud, still destined to

be fulfilled."

"Only in the grave," he said, sadly, "with the promise common to all

mankind;" and thus by gloomy glimpses I caught the truth.

We staid that night at the house of an aunt of Madame La Vigne's, who

received us cordially, entertained us sumptuously, and dismissed us

graciously.

The next morning at sunrise we again set out for Savannah, into which

city we entered before the noonday heat, finding cool shelter and warm

welcome at once under the roof of General Curzon, the South's most

polished gentleman and finished man of letters, of whom it may be truly

said that, "Take him for all in all, we ne'er shall look upon his like

again."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: It need not for one moment be supposed that the opinions of

the author are represented through the extremist Favraud. To her Mr.

Bryant stands forth as the high-priest of American poetry.]

[Footnote 2: The tariff.]

[Footnote 3: Since writing the above, the admirable picture of Mr.

Healey has filled this void; and those who have seen good copies of this

work, executed for and by the order of Louis Philippe, may have a clear

idea of that glorious countenance, the like of which we shall not see

again.

Perhaps it was from this very personal magnetism of which I have spoken

that Healey succeeded better with the portrait of Mr. Calhoun than any

of the others he was sent to this country to paint.]

[Footnote 4: It was about this time that Mr. Calhoun made his famous

anti-tariff crusade throughout the land, it may be remembered by some of

my readers.]

CHAPTER II.

Before leaving the hospitable roof of General Curzon--beneath which I

tarried for several days--awaiting the tardy sailing of the

packet-steamer Kosciusko, bound for New York, circumstances determined

me to leave in the hands of my host a desk which I had intended to carry

with me, and which contained most of my treasures. First among these,

indisputably, in intrinsic value were my diamonds--"sole remnant of a

past magnificence;" but the miniatures of my father and mother, and

Mabel, in the cases of which locks of twisted hair--brown, and black,

and golden, and gray--were contained and combined (dear, imperishable

memorials of vitality in most instances when all the rest was dust and

ashes), and the early letters of my parents, together with the

carefully-kept diary I had written at Beauseincourt, ranked beyond these

even in my estimation.

The cause of this deposit of valuables was simply owing to the unstable

lock of my trunk, the condition of which was detected too late to have

it repaired before sailing. Madame Curzon had suggested to me the unsafe

nature of such custody for objects of price, if, indeed, I possessed

such at all. I told her then of my diamonds, and it was agreed between

us that these, at least, had better be deposited in the bank of her

husband, who would bring them to me himself a few months later--and on

reflection I concluded to add my desk, pictures, and papers, to _my_

more substantial treasures. These, at least, I felt assured no accident

should throw into the hands of Bainrothe.

On my way to the ship I left the carriage for a moment, in pursuance

with this idea, and, followed by King, the bearer of my large and

weighty desk, entered the banking-house of my host, and was shown at

once, by attentive clerks, to his peculiar sanctum. I told him my errand

in a few words.

"Keep it until called for, unless you hear from me in the interval," I

had said in allusion to my deposit, for he acknowledged the chances were

slight of his leaving home until the following year, notwithstanding

Madame Curzon's convictions.

"Called for by whom?" he asked, calmly.

"By Miriam Monfort in person or her order," I replied, laughingly, "This

is a mystery that, by-and-by, shall be explained to you."

"I understand something of that already," he rejoined. "Marion has been

whispering to the reeds, you know, or Madame Curzon, the same thing

nearly; but let us be earnest, as your time is short, and mine precious

to-day. Life is uncertain, and, young and strong as you are, or seem to

be, you cannot foresee one hour even of the future, or of your own

existence. Suppose Miriam Monfort neither comes in person nor sends her

order for its restoration--what, then, is to become of this

treasure-chest of hers?"

"You shall keep it then," I replied, unhesitatingly, "until my little

sister reaches her majority, and cause it to be placed in her own hands,

none other--or, stay, let her have it on the day before her marriage,

should this occur earlier than the time mentioned, or when she reaches

her eighteenth year in any case; but, above all things, be careful."

"So many conflicting directions confuse and mystify me, I confess. Come,

let me write down your wishes, and the matter can be arranged formally,

which is always best in any case. There, I think I have the gist of your

idea," he said a few moments later, as he pushed over to me a slip of

paper to read and sign, which done, I shook hands with him cordially,

preparing to go. "But your receipt--you have forgotten to take it up!"

"O General Curzon! the whole proceeding seems so ominous," I said,

turning back at the door to receive the proffered scrap, which, in

another moment, dropped from my nerveless fingers, while these, clasped

over my streaming eyes, forgot their office.

"My dear young lady," he remonstrated, "I am shocked. What can have

occurred to impress you thus? Not this mere routine of affairs,

surely?--Duncan, a glass of water here for Miss Monfort."

"I do not know, I am sure, why I should be so weak for such a trifle," I

said, after a few swallows of ice-water had somewhat restored my

equilibrium; "but I do feel very dismally about this voyage--have done

so ever since I left Beauseincourt. This is the last straw on the

camel's back, believe me, General Curzon. You must not reproach yourself

in the least--nor me; and now let me bid you farewell once more, perhaps

eternally!"

These words of mine were remembered later in a very different spirit

from that in which they were then received (one of incredulous

compassion)--remembered as are ever the last utterances of the doomed,

whether innocent or guilty, in solemn awe and reverential tenderness,

not unmingled with a superstitions faith in presentiment.

"Why, you look bluer than your very obvious veil, bluer than your

invisible school-marmish stockings, bluer than the skies, or a blue bag,

or Madame de Stael's 'Corinne,' or Byron's 'dark-blue ocean,'" said

Major Favraud, as he assisted me again into the carriage, where Dr.

Durand and Marion awaited me, for, as I have said, we were now on our

way to the vessel which was to bear me and my destinies forever from

that lovely Southern land in which I had seen and suffered so much.

Dr. Durand looked serious at the sight of my woful aspect, and Marion

mutely proffered her _vinaigrette_, gratefully accepted, as was the good

doctor's compassionate silence; but, as usual, Favraud, after having

once gotten fairly under weigh, ran on. "What is the use of bewailing

the inevitable?" he pursued. "We have all seen your _penchant_ for

Curzon, and his for you, for three days past; but Octavia is as tough as

_lignum-vitae_, I regret to assure you, my dear Miss Harz, and your

chance is _as blue_ as your spirits, or the flames of snap-dragon, or

Marion's eyes. You will have to just put up with the captain, I fear,

for even the doctor there is in harness for life. Southern women, you

know, proverbially survive their husbands; and, as the suttee is out of

fashion, they sometimes have to marry Yankees as a _dernier ressort_ of

desperation! Of course, there are occasional sad exceptions"--looking

grave for a moment, and glancing at the black hat-band on the Panama hat

he was nursing on his knees, so as to let the breeze blow through his

silky, silver-streaked black hair--"but--but--in short, why will you all

look so doleful? Isn't it bad enough to feel so?"

"The loveliest fade earliest, we all know," and the tears were in his

honest, frivolous eyes, dashed away in the next moment as he exclaimed,

eagerly, "Why, there goes the Lamarque equipage, as I live! I had

forgotten all about it. The pleasantest woman in Savannah, young or old,

is to be your _compagnon de voyage_, Miss Harz, and the most determined

widower on record her escort; a perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine

little motherless children, her brother Raguet ('Rag,' as we called him

at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that 'limber as a rag'

seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity). He is handsome,

however, and intelligent, a perfect gentleman, but on the mourners'

bench just now, like some others you know of"--heaving a deep sigh. "His

wife, poor thing, died last autumn--a pretty girl in her day was

Cornelia Huger! I was a little weak in that direction once

myself--before--that is, before--O doctor! what a trouble it is to

remember!"

And again the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful

eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world--this modern

Mercutio--merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his

every mood, like the famous shield of story. When we reached the quay

the Kosciusko was already getting up her steam, and, in less than an

hour afterward, the friends I loved were gone like dreams, the bustle of

departure was over, and, with lifted canvas and a puffing engine, we

were grandly steaming past the noble forts (poor Bertie's broach and

buckle, be it remembered) on our path of pride and power toward the

broad Atlantic.

The weather was oppressively hot, and, for the first thirty-six hours,

scarcely a breath of wind lifted us on our way, so that the engine,

wholly incompetent to the work of both sails and machinery, bore us very

slowly on our northward ocean-flight. Indeed, the failure of this

engine to do its duty, at first, had sorely disheartened both captain

and crew as we found later, for upon its execution and energies, in the

beginning, had rested our entire dependence.

On the evening of the second day's voyage, a sudden and violent

thunder-storm occurred, not unusual in those latitudes; during the

raging of which our mainmast was struck by lightning, and wholly

disabled.

The fire was extinguished in the only possible manner, by cutting it

away from the decks, letting it gently down upon them, deluging it, so

that our mast lay charred and blackened after its bath of sea-water,

like a mighty serpent stretched along the ship, from stem to stern, and

wrapped loosely in its shrouds. It did us good service later, though not

by defying the winds of heaven, nor spreading forth its snowy sails to

catch the tropic breezes.

Before many hours, it was destined to ride the waves in a shape that was

certainly never intended by those who chose it among many others--taper

and stately in its group of firs--to be the chief adornment of a gallant

ship, and lift a pointing finger to the stars themselves, as an index of

its might, and, with this exception, the hope of those it served--that

of a charred and blackened life-raft.

The renewed freshness of the atmosphere, and the joyful upspringing of

the breezes, alone remained, at midnight, to tell the story of the

recent hurricane.

These tropic breezes came like benevolent fairies, to aid our groaning

Titan in his labors.

I can never rid myself for one moment of the idea that an engine really

works, with weary, reluctant strength like a genii slave, waiting

vengefully for the time of retaliation, which sooner or later is sure to

come; or of the visionary notion that a graceful, gliding ship, with

all sails set, receives the same pleasure from its own motion and beauty

that a snow-white swan must do "as down she bears before the gale," with

her white plumage and stately crest.

I think, if ever I am called to give a toast, it shall be "Sail-ships;

may their shadows never be less!" They are, indeed, a part of the

romance of ocean.

The moon was full, in the balmy summer night that succeeded the tempest,

and the ship's quarter-deck was crowded with the passengers of the

Kosciusko, enjoying to the utmost, as it seemed, the delicious,

newly-washed atmosphere, the moonlit heavens and sea, the

exquisitely-caressing softness of the tardily-awakened breezes that

filled the white sails of the vessel, and fluttered the silken scarf of

the maiden, with the same wooing breath of persuasive, subtle strength.

Around Miss Lamarque, the lady of whom Major Favraud had spoken so

admiringly, and to whose kindness he had committed me, a group had

gathered, chiefly of the young, not to be surpassed in any land for

manly bearing, graceful feminine beauty, gayety, wit, and refinement.

There was Helen Oscanyan, fair as a dream of Greece, in her serene,

marble perfectness of form and feature; and the lovely Mollie Cairns,

her cousin, small, dark, and sparkling--both under the care of that

stately gentleman, their uncle, Julius Severe, of Savannah; and there

were the sisters Percy, twins in age and appearance, with voices like

brook-ripples, and eyes like wood-violets, and feet of Chinese

minuteness and French perfection--the darlings and only joys of a mother

still beautiful, though sad in her widowhood, and gentle as the dove

that mourns its mate.

There was the brilliant Ralph Maxwell, whose jests, stinging and slight,

just glanced over the surface of society without inflicting a wound,

even as the skater's heel glides over ice, leaving its mark as it goes,

yet breaking no crust of frost; and there was the poetic dreamer

Dartmore, with his large, dark eyes, and moonlight face, and manner of

suffering serenity, on his way to put forth for fame, as he fondly

believed, his manuscript epic on the "Sorrows of the South."

All these, and more, were there gathering about the leader of their

home-society, on that alien deck, as securely as though they were

sitting in her own drawing-room at "Berthold," on one of her brilliant

reception-evenings.

How could they know--how could they dream the truth--or descry the

hidden skeleton at the festival, wreathed in flowers and veiled with

glittering, filmy draperies, which yet put forth its bony fingers to

beckon on and clutch them?

I too was joyous and unconscious as the rest, and for the first time for

many days felt the burden literally heaved rather than lifted away that

had oppressed me.

Was I not on my way to him in whose presence alone I lived my true life?

and what feeling of his morbid fancy was there that my hand could not

smooth away, when once entwined in his? Beauseincourt, and all its

shadows, had I not put behind me? The sunshine lay before, and in its

light and warmth I should still rejoice, as it was my birthright to do.

I was "fey" that night, as the Scotch say, when an unaccountable

lightness of mood precedes a heavy sorrow, which it so often does, as

well as the more usual mood, the presage of gloom. I felt that I had the

power to put aside all ills--to grapple with my fate, and compel back

my lost happiness. Truly my bosom's lord sat lightly on her throne, as

of late it had not been her wont to do.

Against my inclination had I been drawn into the current of that

youthful gayety, and now my bark floated without an effort on the

stream. I was in my own element again, and my powers were all

responsive.

The small hours came--the happy group dispersed--not without many

interchanges of social compliment, much _badinage_, and merry plans for

the morrow. The monster Sea-sickness had been defied on the balmy

voyage, save in the brief interval of tempest, and his victors mocked

him, baffled as he was, with their purpose of amusement.

"We shall get up the band to-morrow evening," said Major Ravenel, "and

have a dance; the gallop would go grandly here. See what reach of

quarter-deck we have! There are Germans on board who play in concert

violins and wind-instruments."

"Suppose we dress as sea-nymphs," said Honoria Pyne; "enact a masque for

old Neptune's benefit? It would be so complimentary, you know; bring

down the house, no doubt, I have a sea-green tarlatan lying so

conveniently. Colonel Latrobe looks exactly like a Triton, with that

wondrous beard. A little alum sprinkled over its red-gold ground would

do wonders in the way of effect--would be gorgeous--wouldn't it, now,

Miss Harz?"

"But all that could be done on shore as well, Miss Pyne," I replied, in

the way of reminiscence. "It is a pity to waste our opportunities of

observation now, in getting up costumes; and, for my part, I confess

that I have a wholesome dread of these sea-deities, and fear to

exasperate their finny feelings by reducing them to effigies. Thetis is

very spiteful, sometimes; and jealous, too, you remember."

Miss Pyne did not remember, but did not mean to be baffled either, she

would let Miss Harz know, even if that lady _did_ know more about

mythology than herself; and, if no one else would join her, meant to

play her _role_ of sea-nymph all alone, with Major Latrobe for her

Triton in waiting, tooting upon a conch-shell, and looking lovely! At

which compliment, open and above-board, poor Major Latrobe, who was over

head and ears in love with her, and a very ugly man, only bowed and

looked more silly than before, which seemed a work of supererogation.

After the rest were gone, Miss Lamarque and I concluded to promenade on

the nearly-deserted deck, in the moonlight, and let the excitement of

the evening die away through the medium of more serious conversation.

She was a woman of forty-five, still graceful and fine-looking, but

bearing few traces of earlier beauty, probably better to behold, in her

overripe maturity, than in the unfolding of her less attractive time of

bud and blossom. Self had been laid aside now (which it never can be

until the effervescence of youth and hope are over). She had accepted

her position of old maid and universal benefactress, and sustained it

nobly, gracefully. She was thoroughly well-bred and agreeable, very

vivacious, astute, and intelligent, rather than intellectual, yet she

had the capacity (had her training been different) to have been both of

these.

I remember how it chanced that, after a long promenade, during which we

had discussed men, manners, books, customs, costumes, and politics, even

(that once tabooed subject for women, now free to all), with infinite

zest and responsiveness that charmed us mutually, so that we swore

allegiance on the strength of this one day's rencontre, like two

school-girls or knights of old--I remember how the dropping of her comb

at his feet caused Miss Lamarque to pause, compelling me to follow her

example, by reason of our intertwined arms, in front of the man at the

wheel, as he stooped to raise it and hand it to her with a seaman's bow.

His ready politeness, unusual for one in his station, determined us to

cultivate his maritime acquaintance, and in a short time we had drawn

forth the outlines of his story, simple and bare as this was of

incident.

His picturesque appearance had impressed us equally during the day, but

until now we had not met in concert about Christian Garth, for such we

soon found was the name of our polite pilot.

He was a Jerseyman, he told us, of German descent, married to the girl

of his heart, and living on the coast of that adventurous little State,

famous alike for its peaches and wrecks.

"Sall had a stocking full of money," he informed us, silver, and copper,

and gold, when he married her, for her mother had been a famous

huckster--and never missed her post in the Philadelphia market for

thirty years, and this was her child's inheritance, and with this money

he had fixed up his old hut, till it looked 'e'en a'most inside like a

ship-captain's cabin.'

And now Sall wanted him to stay at home, he informed us, with her and

the children, but somehow or other he could never tarry long at the

hearth, for the sea pulled him like it was his mother, and the spell of

the tides was on him, and he must foller even if he went to his own

destruction, like them men that liquor lures to loss, or the love of

mermaids.

"All land service is dead when likened to the sea," he said, shaking his

great water-dog head, and looking out lovingly upon his idol. "But ships

a'n't like they oncst was, ladies," he added, "before men put these here

heavy iron ingines to work in 'em--it's like cropping a bird's wing to

make a river-boat of a ship, and a burning shame to shorten sails till

it looks like a young gal dressed in breeches or any other onnatural

thing--for a sailing-ship and a full-flowing petticoat always rise up in

a true man's mind together--God bless them both, I say."

"To which we cordially say amen, of course," said Miss Lamarque,

laughing. "We should have been at a loss, however, Mr. Garth, but for

our engine during the dead calm preceding the storm, when our ship's

sails flapped so lazily about her masts, and she rocked like a baby's

cradle without making progress. It is well the engineer manoeuvred so

successfully while we lay fireless on the low rolling waves; but we are

speeding along merrily enough now, to make up for it all--I take comfort

in that--"

"But not exactly in the right direction, though, to suit my stripe," he

said, turning his quid in his mouth us he looked out to leeward,

revealing, as he did so, a fine yet rugged profile relieved against the

silvery purple sheen of the moonlit sky.

"Do you see that dark object lying beyond" (our eyes mechanically

followed his), "so still on the water?" and he indicated it with the

pipe he held in one sinewy hand--for the native courtesy of the man had

involuntarily proffered us the homage of removing it from his lips, when

we addressed him.

"Yes--what is it? a wreck? a whale? a small volcanic island? Do explain,

Mr. Garth," said Miss Lamarque.

"Nothing but an iceberg, and we are bearing down upon it rather too

rapidly, it seems to me."

And so speaking, he turned his wheel in silence warily.

"But you have the command of the helm, and have nothing to do but--"

"Obey orders," he interrupted, grimly. "Ef the captain was to tell me to

run the ship to purgatory, I'd have to do it, you know."

"But surely the captain would not jeopardize the lives of a ship's

company, even if he likes warm latitudes, by ordering you to run foul of

an iceberg; and, if he did, you certainly would not dare to obey him

with the fear of God before your eyes?" remonstrated Miss Lamarque,

indignantly. "For my part I shall go to him immediately and desire him

to change his course--but after all I don't believe that dingy black

thing is an iceberg at all--an old hen-coop rather, thrown over from

some merchant-ship, or a vast lump of charred wood. You are only trying

to alarm us."

"Ef you was to see it close enough, you would find it to shine equal to

the diamond on your hand; but I hope you never will, that's all--I hope

you never will, lady! I sot on a peak of that sort oncst myself for

three days in higher latitudes than this here--me and five others, all

that was spared from the wreck of the schooner Delta, and we felt our

convoy melting away beneath us, and courtesying e'en a'most even with

the sea, before the merchant-ship Osprey took us off, half starved, and

half frozen, and half roasted all at oncst! Them is onpleasant

rickollections, ladies, and it makes my blood creep to this day to see

an iceberg in konsikence; but a man must do his dooty, whatsomever do

betide. It was in the dead of night, and Hans Schuyler had the wheel, I

remember, when we went to pieces on that iceberg, all for disregarding;

the captain's orders; you see, he meant to graze it like!"

"Graze it!" almost shrieked Miss Lamarque. "Did he think he was driving

a curricle? Graze it--Heaven, what rashness!"

"Don't--don't! Mr. Garth," I petitioned; "I shall never sleep a wink on

this ship if you continue your narrative."

"Do--do! Mr. Garth," entreated Miss Lamarque, whose penetration showed

her by this time that the pilot was only playing on our fears, for want

of a better instrument for his skill. "I quite enjoy the idea that you

have actually been astride a fragment of the arctic glacier, and that we

may perhaps make the acquaintance of a white bear ourselves when we get

near our iceberg, or a gentle seal. Wouldn't you like one for a pet,

Miss Harz?"

"It is very cold," I said, digressively. "I feel the chill of that

fragment of Greenland freeze my marrow. I must go fetch my shawl; but

first reassure us, Mr. Garth, if possible."

He laughed. "I have paid you now for making fun of me to-day," he said,

saucily. "I saw your drawing of me in your books, and heard the ladies

laughing. I peeped as I passed when Myers took the helm, and I wanted to

see what all the fun was about; then I said to myself, 'I will give her

a skeer for that if I have a chance'--but, all the same, the chill you

feel is a real one, for as sure as death that lump of darkness is an

iceberg. I have told you no yarn, as you will find out to-morrow when

you ask the captain. I'll steer you clear of the iceberg though, ladies,

never fear. Hans Schuyler has not got the wheel to-night--you see he was

three sheets in the wind anyhow, and the captain says, 'Hans,' says he,

'don't tech another drop this night, or we'll never see another mornin'

till we are resurrected,' and so he turned into his hammock and swung

himself to sleep--a way he had, for he didn't keer for nothin' where his

comfort was concerned, having been raised up in the Injies."

"Come, Miss Lamarque," I interrupted. "I must not hear another word.

'Macbeth doth murder sleep,' and I shall be nervous for a month after

this. So, good-night, Mr. Garth, and be sure you merit your first name

by taking good care of us while we imitate the example of your worthy

captain and 'swing ourselves to sleep,' or rather let the waves perform

that office for us. I shall make it my care to-morrow morning early, if

you still hold the helm, to show you my sketch, and convince you that it

was never made for fun at all, but that it is a real portrait of a very

fine-looking seaman, a real viking in appearance, and somewhat better

than one at heart, I trust. I shall hope to earn your good opinion

instead of ill-will, when you have only seen my sketch."

"You have it already, you have it already, young gal--young miss, I

mean," he said, with a wave of the hand, which meant to be courteous, no

doubt, but seemed only defiant. "An' this much I kin say without injury

to Sall--that I'd rather hear you talk and see you smile, as I has been

watchin' of you constant do to-day, than go to the circus in New York,

or even to a Spanish bull-fight, or hear a Fourth-of-July oration, or

'tend camp-meetin'--and that's saying no little--an' no iceberg shall

come near you while Christian Garth lays a hand upon this helm. But

don't be skeered, ladies; no harm will come to the good ship Kosciusko."

"I declare our pilot is quite chivalrous, as far as you are concerned,

for I marked his glance, Miss Harz," said Miss Lamarque, archly, as we

turned our faces cabinward, under the protection of our helmsman's

promised vigilance. "See what it is to be young and pretty, and remark

the truth of the old proverb, as exemplified in his case, that 'extremes

meet.' Victoria herself is not more independent of me or my

position--established facts as both are in the eyes of some--than is

Christian Garth. To him, this outsider of the world of fashion, I am

only a homely old woman; no prestige comes in to garnish the unvarnished

fact--a plain old maid, my dear--with not even the remembrance of beauty

as a consolation, nor its remnant as a sign of past triumphs, 'only this

and nothing more,' as that wonderful man Poe makes his raven say. We

never find our level until we go among people who know and care nothing

about us, who have never 'heard of us'--that exordium of most greetings

from folks of our own class. It is absolutely refreshing to be so

unaffectedly despised and slighted--it does one a world of good, there

is no doubt of that, especially when one's grandfather was a

Revolutionary notability, and other antecedents of a piece--but men are

all alike at heart, only the worldly ones wear flimsy masks, you know,

and pretend to adore intellect and ugliness, when beauty is the only

thing they care for--all a sham, my dear, in any case."

"Yes, all alike," I repeated, making, as I spoke, one mental entire

reservation. "All _vain_ alike, I mean; flatter their vanity ever so

little and they are at your very feet, asking 'for more,' like Oliver

Twist; more bread for _amour propre_, the insatiable! It was that sketch

of mine that wrought the spell, though unintentionally, of course, and

the sly fellow knew very well that it was no caricature--that is, if he

peeped, as he pretends--but a tolerably correct likeness that might have

satisfied Sall herself. By-the-by, I have a great mind to bestow it upon

him as a 'sop for Cerberus,' should her jealousy ever be aroused by your

reports of his devotion to me, or admiration rather, most unequivocally

avowed, it must be acknowledged. I really had no intention of injuring

Sally, and, if you think it best, will make the _amende honorable_ by

being as cross as possible to him to-morrow."

"No, no, carry out your first intention and conciliate him; for,

remember, he has us in the hollow of his hand. Bestow the picture, by

all means, and just as many smiles and compliments as he can stand, or

you can afford to squander; for you are worse than a mermaid, Miss Harz,

for fascination, all the gentlemen say so; and, as to Captain

Falconer--"

"They are malignants," I rejoined, ignoring purposely the last clause of

the sentence which I had interrupted; "and you are perfidious to hear

them slander me so. I hate fascinating people; they always make my flesh

crawl like serpents. The few I have known have been so very base." "Good

specimens of '_thorough_ bass,'" she interpolated, laughing.--"I am sure

I am glad I have no attributes of fascination, if a strange old work I

met with at Beauseincourt may be considered responsible. Did you ever

see it, Miss Lamarque, you who see every thing? Hieronymus Frascatorius

tells of certain families in Crete who fascinated by praising, and to

avert this evil influence some charm was used consisting of a magic

word (I suppose this was typical of humility, though related as

literal). This _naivete_ on the part of the old chronicler was simply

_impayable_, as Major Favraud would say, with his characteristic shrug.

One _Varius_ related (you see my theme has full possession of me, and

the book is a collation of facts on the subject of fascination of all

kinds, even down to that of the serpent) that a friend of his saw a

fascinator with a look break in two a precious gem in the hands of a

lapidary--typical this, I suppose, of some fond, foolish, female heart.

Fire, according to this author, represents the quality of fascination;

and toads and moths are subject to its influence, as well as some higher

animals--deer, for instance, who are hunted successfully with torches;

and he relates, further, that in Abyssinia artificers of pottery and

iron are thus fearfully endowed, and are consequently forbidden to join

in the sacred rites of religion, as fire is their chief agent. Isn't

this a strange, quaint volume, to set before a king? and how do you like

my lecture delivered _extempore_?"

"Oh, vastly! but I did not know that was your style before. Don't

cultivate it, dear, if you hope to win manly hearts. Men like to do all

the lecturing themselves, and I find it diplomatic to feign profound

ignorance on all subjects outside of a bandbox; it delights them so to

enlighten us. No wonder they fancy us fools when we feign foolishness so

admirably--lapwings that we are!"

"But I never do, in such society. My experience is different from yours.

I always pretend to know twice as much as I do, when they are about; it

bluffs them off, and they are credulous sometimes as well as ignorant,

notwithstanding their boasted acumen."

"Your lamp of experience needs trimming, my pretty Miriam," she said,

shaking her head, "if you really believe this. They never forgive

superiority, assumed or real; none but the noble ones, I mean; who, of

course, are in the minority. Give a pair of tongs pantaloons, and it

asserts itself. Trousers, my dear, are at the root of manly presumption.

I discovered that long ago. A man in petticoats would be as humble as a

woman. This is my theory, at least; take it for what it is worth. And

now to sleep, with what heart we may, an iceberg being in our vicinity;"

and, taking my face in her hand, she kissed me cordially. "It is very

early in our acquaintance for such manifestations to be allowable," she

said, kindly, "but I am a sort of spoiled child of society, and dare to

be natural. I consider that the best privilege that attaches to my

condition, that of the 'bell-wether' of Savannah _ton_--the

universally-accepted bore! You know--Favraud has told you, of course; he

always characterizes as he goes."

"He has called you the most agreeable woman in Savannah, I remember,

young or old, and was truly glad, on my account, to know that you were

on board. Of your brother he spoke very kindly also, even admiringly."

"Oh, yea, I know; but of Raguet there is little question now. His wife's

death has crushed him. I never saw so changed a man; he is half idiotic,

I believe; and I am with him now just to keep those children from

completing the work of destruction. Six little motherless ones--only

think--and as bad as they can possibly be; for poor Lucilla was no

manager. Isn't it strange, the influence those little cottony women get

over their husbands? You and I might try forever to establish such

absolute despotism, all in vain. It is your whimpering sort that rule

with the waving of a pocket-handkerchief; but poor, dear little woman,

she is powerless now; and I suppose the next will be like unto her.

Raguet would never look at any thing feminine that hadn't white eyes and

pink hair (yellow, I mean, of course)--his style, you know, being dark

and stern, he likes the downy, waxy kind. All this is shockingly

egotistical; but the question is, who that has a spark of individuality

is otherwise? Good-night, again, and may all sweet dreams attend you;

for my part, I never dream, being past the dreaming age, and realities

fortunately disappear with daylight; even cross children are wheedled

into quietness, and servants forget to fidget and giggle; and, for

mosquitoes, there are bars. Adieu."

And thus we parted, never to meet again in mutual mood like this!

Yet, had the free agency of which some men boast been ours, we had

scarcely chosen to face the awful change--to look into each other's eyes

through gathering death-doom!

CHAPTER III.

Before my dreaming eyes was the terror of a hungry, crunching tooth,

fixed in the vessel's side, that of the iceberg, lying black in the

moonlight like a great coal crystal, grimly awaiting our approach, but

the reality, as well as the figment, had disappeared when I emerged at

sunrise from the suffocating cabin, to the atmosphere of the cool and

quiet quarter-deck, which had just undergone its matutinal.

Armed with an orange and a biscuit for physical refreshment, I depended

on sea and sky for my mental entertainment; and in my hand I bore a

slender scroll, destined as a propitiatory offering to our offended

helmsman.

I was glad to find again at the wheel our pilot of yesterday.

"Your iceberg has disappeared, Mr. Garth," I said, as I extended to him

the sketch I had made of his noble _physique_ the day before, "and here

is a picture for your wife, which she will see was not drawn for fun.

Women are sharper than men about such matters. There, I bestow it not

without regret." He received my offering with a smile, and nod of his

great curly head, opened it, gazed long and seriously upon it, and, with

the single word "Good," rolled it up again, and consigned it to some

bosom pocket in his flannel shirt, into which it seemed to glide as a

telescope into its case, revealing, as he did so, glimpses of a hairy

breast, and vigorous chest, more admirable for strength than beauty,

certainly.

"I will keep it there," he said, "young miss," pressing it closely

against his side with his colossal hand, "until I get safe home to the

Jarseys, and to Sall, or go to Davy's locker, one or other, but which it

will be, young gal--young miss, I should be saying--is not for me to

know."

"Nor for anyone," I rejoined, solemnly; "all rests with God."

"With God and our engineer," he resumed, tersely; "them sails is of

little account, now the mainmast is struck away; them floppen

petticoats, wat the wind loves to play in and out, layin' along like a

lazy lubber that it is, and leaving its work for others to do. It was a

noble mast, though, while it stood--and you could smell the turpentine

blood in its heart to the very last. It was as limber as a sapling, and

never growed brittle, like some wood, with age and dryness. No storm

could splinter it, and it would fling itself over into the high waves

sometimes, rayther than snap and lash them like a whip. But there it

lies, burned with the fire of heaven's wrath, at last, and leaving its

fires of hell behind, in the heart of the Kosciusko."

"You have changed your mind on the subject of engines, Mr. Garth, I am

glad to see. Truly, ours seems to be doing giant's work; now we are

flying, to be sure."

"Rushing, not flying, young lady--that's the word; our wings are little

use to-day, you see, such as are left to us. Runnin' for dear life, we'd

better say, for that's the truth of the matter, and may the merciful

Lord speed us, and have in his care all helpless ones this day!"

The lifted hand, the bared head, the earnest accents, with which these

words were spoken, gave to this simple utterance of good-will all the

solemnity of a benediction or prayer.

I noticed that, after replacing his tarpaulin, the lips of Garth

continued to move silently, then were compressed gravely for a time,

while his eye, large, clear, and expressive, was fixed on space.

"Do you still see an iceberg, Mr. Garth? Do you really apprehend danger

for us now?" I asked, after studying his countenance for a moment, "or,

are you again desirous to try the nerves of your female passengers? I

think I must apply to the captain this time for information."

"Yes, danger," he replied, in low, sad tones, ignoring my last remark,

or perhaps not hearing it at all--"danger, compared with which an

iceberg might be considered in the light of a heavenly marcy. There is a

chance of grazing one of them snow-bowlders, or of its drifting away

from a ship, when the ripples reach it, or, if the wust comes, a body

can scramble overboard, and manage to live on the top of one of them

peaks, or in one of their ice-caves, with a few blankets, and a little

bread and junk and water, fur a space, so as to get a chance of meetin'

a ship, or a schooner; but, when there is something wrong in a ship's

heart, there a'n't much hope for rescue, onless it comes from above."

He hesitated, smiling grimly, rolled his quid, crammed his hat down over

his eyes, and again addressed himself to his wheel, and, for a few

moments, I stood beside him silently.

"The ship is leaking, I suppose," I said, at last, "so that you

apprehend her loss, perhaps," and my heart sank coldly within me, as I

spoke; "but, if this be true, why does not the captain apprise us? No,

you are quizzing me again, and very cruelly this time, very

unwarrantably."

Yet I did not think exactly as I spoke, strive as I might to believe the

man in jest. Too much solemnity and sorrow both were discernible in his

worn and rugged features, hewn grandly as if from granite, to admit of a

hope like this. His words were earnest, and some great calamity was in

store, I could not doubt, or at least he apprehended such. For some time

he replied not, then, slowing pointing to the base of the stricken

mainmast, which still showed an elevation of some inches above the deck,

he revealed to me the truth without a word.

As my eyes followed his guiding finger, I saw, with terror unspeakable,

a thin blue wavering smoke-wreath, float upward from the floor, and,

after curling feebly about the truncated mast, disappear in the clear

sunlit atmosphere, again to arise from the same point, that of the

juncture of the mast and deck, creeping through some invisible crevice,

as it seemed to form itself eternally in filmy folds, and successively

elude the eye as soon as it shaped to sight. I understood him then.

There was fire in the heart of the ship, and I knew the hold was filled

with cotton; it was smouldering slowly, and our safety was a question of

time alone!

Pale, transfixed, frozen, I lifted my eyes to the man, who seemed to

represent my fate for the moment. "Was it the lightning?" I asked, after

a pause, during which his pitying eye rested on me drearily. "Did the

fire occur in that way?"

"Yes, the lightning it was; and God's hand, which sent the shaft direct,

alone can deliver us."

I seemed to hear the voice of Bertie speak these words. Things grew

confused; I wavered as I stood, lifted my hand to my head; the face of

Christian Garth grew large and dim, then faded utterly. I knew no more

until I found myself seated on a coil of rope, leaning against the

bulwark, while a young girl stood beside me, fanning and bathing my

face, and offering me a glass of water.

"You are better now," she said, kindly; "the man at the wheel called me

as I was passing, and pointed out your condition, and I led you here,

and ran for water. Being up so early is apt to disagree with some

people."

"What are these people crawling about the deck for? Is all hope over, or

was it only a dream?" I asked.

"Oh, you are quite wild yet from your swoon; it is only the calkers

stopping up the seams, one of the captain's queer whims they say; but

how they are to dance to-night, those _magnificos_ I mean, without

ruining their slippers with this pitch, I cannot see! Thank Goodness! I

belong to a church, and am not of this party, and don't care on my own

account, nor does the captain, I believe. I was placed under his care at

Savannah, and I suppose it is only to stop the ball that--"

She was interrupted by the approach of the officer under discussion, but

he passed us gloomily and went on to inspect the workmen so unseasonably

employed, as it seemed, in a labor that, save in a case of long voyages,

is always performed in port.

His melancholy air, and the preoccupation of his manner, confirmed my

worst fears.

Again I sought the Ixion of the vessel, who calmly and stolidly

performed his duty as if, indeed, Fate directed, without a change of

feature now, or expression.

"Has the captain no hope of rescue, Mr. Garth?"

"Oh, yes; he thinks we shall meet a ship or two between now and noon--we

'most always do, you know"--rolling his quid slowly, and hesitating for

a while; "keep heart, keep heart! I had thought from your face you were

stronger; besides, the pumps are doing good work in the hold: who knows

what may come of it, who knows?"

Alas! alas! I could not rise to the level of this dim hope. "Think of

the burning crowd, the sheet of flame, the terrible destruction!" I

murmured; "I must go now and apprise those poor wretches below that

their time is short; they have a right to know."

His vice-like hand was on my arm. "You do not go a step on such an

errand," he muttered. "It is the captain's business; he will 'tend to it

when the time comes, for he is a true man, and the bravest sailor on the

line. He means to do what's right, never fear. It is my dooty to hold

you here until he comes, onless you promise me to be discreet."

"I shall be discreet, never fear--" and his grasp relaxed. I sped me

back to the coil of rope on which I had left my young companion,

intending to partake with her there my biscuit and orange, so needed now

for strength.

I found in her stead (for she had departed in the interval) a

delicate-looking young woman, plain and poor, a widow evidently from the

style of her shabby mourning and sad expression of face, bearing in her

arms a weird and sickly-looking child, evidently a sufferer from spinal

disease--an infant as to size, but preternaturally old in countenance.

The steady gaze of its large and serious eyes affected me

magnetically--eyes that seemed ever seeking something that still eluded

them, and which now appeared to inquire into my very soul.

"Is your little boy ill, madam?" I asked at last; and at the sound of my

voice a smile broke over his small, sallow features, lending them

strange beauty, but dying away instantly again into an expression of

startled suspicion.

"Yes, very ill," she answered, clasping him tenderly as he clung to her

suddenly. "He has some settled trouble that no medicine reaches, and you

see how small and light he is. Many a twelve months' babe is heavier

than he, yet he is three years old come March next, and he is 'cute

beyond his years, it seems to me."

"You seem very weak and weary," I rejoined. "I noticed you yesterday

with interest, sitting all the time with your boy on your knee. You must

need exercise and rest. Go and walk now a little, while you can;" and I

stretched my arms for her baby.

To her surprise, evidently, he came to me willingly--attracted, no

doubt, by the gleam of the watch-chain about my neck, and still further

propitiated by a portion of my orange, which he greedily devoured.

In the mean time the poor, pale mother took a few turns on the

quarter-deck, and, disappearing therefrom a moment, returned with a

small supply of cakes and biscuits which she had sought in the steward's

room.

An inspiration of Providence, no doubt, she thought this proceeding

later, which at the moment was only intended to anticipate the delay

attendant on all second-class meals.

These cakes, with a pains-taking diligence, if not forethought--peculiar

to all feeble animals, squirrels, sick children, and the like--did he

one by one cram and compel into my pocket, unconscious as I was at the

moment of his miser-like proceeding (instinctive, probably), which later

I detected, to his infinite rejoicing. In company with my slender purse,

and bunch of useless keys, a pencil, and a small memorandum-book, they

remained _perdu_ until that moment of accidental discovery arrived which

was to test their value and place it "far above that of rubies."

Light as a pithless nut seemed this little creature in my strong,

energetic arms, and yet his mother staggered beneath his weight.

She insisted, however, after a time, on resuming her charge of him, as

it was proper she should do, and then sat beside me, delivering herself

of a long string of complaints and grievances, after the fashion of all

second-rate, solitary people when secure of sympathy.

She overrated my benevolence on this occasion, however. I was lost in

painful reverie, and scarcely understood a word of her communication,

which I was obliged at last to cut short, for I had resolved, now that

my strength was recruited, on the only visible course remaining to me--I

would seek Miss Lamarque, confide to her the statement of Christian

Garth, relate to her what my eyes had seen, and be guided by her

determination and judgment, with those of her brother, a man of sense, I

saw, and whose instincts, no doubt, would all be sharpened by the

jeopardy of his children.

She was sitting up in her state-room when I knocked at the door, still

in her berth, the lower one--from which the upper shelf had been lifted

so as to afford her room and air--looking very Oriental and handsomer

than I ever had seen her, in her bright Madras night-turban and fine

white cambric wrapper richly trimmed.

Her face broke into smiles as soon as she beheld me; and she invited me,

in a way not to be resisted, so resolute and yet so kindly was it, to

partake with her of the hot coffee her maid was just handing her in bed,

in a small gilded cup, a portion of the service on the stand beside her.

"It is our Southern custom, you know, Miss Harz--always our _cafe noir_

before breakfast, as a safeguard against malaria. To be sure, there is

nothing of that sort to be apprehended at sea, but still habits are

inveterate; second nature, as the moralists and copy-books say, as if

there ever could be more than one. What nonsense these wiseacres talk,

to be sure! But there is cream, you see, for those who like it--boiled

down and bottled for the use of the children before leaving home--one of

Dominica's notions;" and here the smiling maid, with her little,

respectful courtesy, tendered me a reviving cup of Miss Lamarque's

morning beverage, Mocha, made to the last point of perfection, dripped

and filtered over a spirit-lamp by Dominica, the skillful and

neat-handed.

"But you are very pale to-day, my child--what on earth can be the

matter?--There, Dominica, I thought I heard Florry cry! Go and help

Caliste get the children ready for a trot upon deck before breakfast,

and don't forget to give each one a gill of cream and a biscuit--or,

stay, twice as much for the two elder before they go up. It may be some

time before they get their regular morning meal.--They have to wait, you

know, Miss Harz, which is such rank injustice where children are

concerned. Patience never belongs to unreasoning creatures, unless an

instinct, as with animals; men have to learn its lessons through the

teachings of experience--that strictest of school-masters. Now, you see,

I have my lecturing-cap on, and am almost equal to you or Dr. Lardner

in my way. But it takes you to define fascination! I suppose Mrs.

Heavyside, however, could help you there--for nothing short of

witchcraft could account to me for her elopement with that dreary man!

To leave her sweet children, too, as if all the men on earth could be

worth to a true mother her teething baby's little toe or finger!"

"Would she never stop--never give one loop-hole for doubt to enter?" I

thought.

"But what in the world ails you--has Dunmore, the disconsolate, been

making love again? Has Captain Falconer declared himself too soon? and

do you hesitate, on account of Miss Moore? Don't let that consideration

influence you, I beg, for she is the greatest flirt in Savannah, the

truest to the vocation, and I like her for that, anyhow. Whatever a man

or woman has to do, let him or her do earnestly. That isn't exactly

Scripture, but near enough, don't you think so?" and she laughed

merrily.

"I have been on deck this morning," I commenced, "Miss Lamarque, and saw

Christian Garth, and--"

"He has been terrifying and electrifying you again with his tale of

horrors--there, it is all out. Why, he is as sensational as 'Jane Eyre,'

this new English novel I am just reading," drawing it from under her

pillow and holding it aloft as she spoke. "Currer Bell is not more

mysteriously awful, but Garth is not artistic. I detected his intention

by the inconsistency of his expression of face, which bore no part in

his narrative, and at once exposed him, you must remember--"

"Oh, yes--but this time--"

"Nonsense, Miriam Harz! the iceberg is gone, I know. Why, what a nervous

coward you are, to be sure, with all that assumed bravery! I am twice

as courageous, I do believe, despite appearances; I really begin to be

of opinion that it is safer to be at sea than on land--now what do you

think of that for a heterodoxy?--A second cup? why, of course, and a

third, if you want it; I am delighted you like it. These little Sevres

toys are but thimbles, but I always carry them about with me by sea and

land, and have for years; I feel as if there were luck in them, not one

of the original three has been broken--there--there!--just as I was

boasting, too!--never mind, such accidents _will_ occur; but your pretty

pongee dress is sadly stained with the coffee; besides, as _you_ dropped

the cup, it is _your_ luck, not mine; and I want an odd saucer, anyhow,

to feed Desiree out of; she sleeps in that willow basket you see in the

corner of the state-room, Miss Harz, and is lazy, like her mistress, of

mornings.--Desiree! Desiree! peep out, can't you, now you have your

long-desired Sevres saucer to lap milk from?--She won't touch delft,

Miss Harz. She is the most fastidious little creature!"

"Alas! alas!" and I groaned aloud.

"Not taking on about that silly cup, I hope--no; what can it be then, a

megrim? No. Well, I can't imagine any thing worse, to save my life.

Here, let me read you this, it is fine--it is where Jane Eyre feels

herself deserted, and this comparison about 'the dried-up channel of a

river' thrills one. Just hear it;" and she was about commencing--

"Not now--not now, Miss Lamarque; stern realities demand our attention.

Lay your book aside, be calm, be firm, but listen to me seriously.

Christian Garth informs me, nor he alone--my own eyes have done the

rest--that the cotton in the hold has taken fire from the lightning

yesterday; has been slowly smouldering ever since the mast was

struck--and that the ship's hours are numbered!"

"O God! O God!" and she bowed her head upon her clasped and quivering

hands. "But, Captain Ambrose--he did not tell you so?" looking up

suddenly. "Christian Garth, indeed! his impudence is surprising--another

hoax, I suppose," and she tried to smile; "such a coarse creature, too!"

"We shall see, but for the present say nothing; only get up and dress as

quickly as you can, but it is important to be very quiet, for fear of

causing confusion. I have promised discretion."

"Call Dominica, then, for me, Miss Harz," gasping and stretching forth

her arms. "I can do nothing for myself--nothing--I am so weak, so

helpless. Yet I must believe he is--you are mistaken!"

"I trust it may prove so. But let me assist you; Dominica is best

employed making ready the little ones and giving them

food--strengthening them for the struggle. She will be nerveless if she

knows the truth, and you are not in a condition to conceal it."

"Just as you will, then. My trunk--will you be so kind as to unlock it

and give me out the tray--that picture? After that I can get along

alone."

I silently did as she desired, and saw her place a covered miniature

about her neck before she arose. Very few minutes sufficed this morning

for her toilet--usually a tedious and fastidious one--her dress, her

bonnet, her shawl, were hastily thrown on, her watch secured with the

few jewels lying upon the night-table; the rest of her valuables were

with other boxes in the hold, the repository of all unneeded baggage,

and these, of course, she could scarcely hope to save in case of fire,

even if lives were rescued.

Then, together, we went out, just in time to join the little troop of

young children and nurses on their way to the deck. Miss Lamarque did

not reply to their tumultuous greeting, but, silently taking the baby

Florry, her namesake, in her arms, kissed her many times. I had told her

while, she was dressing, of the smoke-wreaths about the base of the

broken mast, and she believed in the testimony my eyes had afforded me

far more than in the reports of Christian Garth. We did not encounter

Mr. Lamarque when we first went on deck; he had gone forward to smoke,

some one said; but Captain Ambrose was standing alone, telescope in

hand, and to him we addressed ourselves, quietly.

He seemed startled when I disclosed the result of my observation--for I

did not choose to commit the pilot--but he did not attempt to deny the

truth of the condition of things, and conjured us both to entire quiet

and composure, and, if possible, to absolute silence. The safety of five

hundred people, he said, depended on our discretion; the ship might not

ignite for days, if at all, he thought, so carefully had the air been

excluded from the cotton by the process of tight calking, so as to seal

it almost hermetically; indeed, the fire might be wholly extinguished by

the pumps, which were constantly at work, pouring streams of water

around and through the hold; and a panic would be equal to a fire in any

case. Such were his calmness and apparent faith in his own words, that

they did much to allay Miss Lamarque's fears. My own were little

soothed--I never doubted from the beginning what the end would be.

Mr. Lamarque approached us while the conference with the captain was

going on, and, under the seal of secrecy, the condition of affairs was

communicated to that gentleman.

I never saw a man so crushed and calm at the same time. His handsome

face seemed turned to stone--he scarcely spoke at all, and made no

inquiries. I think his mind, like mine, was made up to the worst. Yet he

commanded himself so far as to go to the breakfast-table and superintend

the meal of his little children, about whom he hung, like a mother-bird

who sees the shadow of a hawk above her brood, from that moment until

the _denoument_ of the drama separated us two forever.

Miss Lamarque and I sat down together on a bench, while the host of

hungry passengers crowded down to the cabin at the welcome summons of

the bell, and I was aware again of the pale widow and her patient child

standing near me.

A sudden thought occurred to me. This woman, more than any one among us,

needed the strengthening stimulus of good food, and this meal might be

her last on shipboard--on earth, perhaps--for a dull, low, ominous sound

began to make itself heard to my ear as soon as the murmur of the crowd

subsided.

"Trust me with your child again while you go down and eat your breakfast

in my place to-day. It is a whim of mine. I have had coffee with this

lady in her state-room, and shall not appear at the table. You may bring

me a slice of bread, if you choose, when you come back, and one for

baby. Do not refuse me this favor."

Much pleased at my attention, as I could see, she went to the grand

first table, with its high-heaped salvers of snowy rolls and biscuit,

its delicate birds and fowls, its fragrant coffee and tea, so different

from the dregs of the humble board at which her second-class ticket

alone entitled her to appear; and, to save her from possible

humiliation, I wrote a line to the steward; so she feasted, no doubt, in

state.

Again I enacted the _role_ of self-appointed nurse to a creature that

looked more like a fairy changeling than a flesh-and-blood creation.

"You are a strange woman, Miriam Harz! At such an hour as this, what

matters the quality of food?" said Miss Lamarque, sententiously. "After

all, what can that invalid and her child be to you in any case? They are

essentially common and mean. You never saw them before, and may never

see them again."

"In view of such a catastrophe as that before us, all distinctions fade,

Miss Lamarque. This is the last meal any one will take on the ship

Kosciusko--she is doomed! The woman might as well get strength for the

chance of saving herself and child. I doubt whether any second table

will be spread to-day!" I spoke with anguish.

"You cannot believe this! Why, after what the captain said, days may go

by before any real danger manifests itself! Ships must pass in the

interval--many ships may pass to-day, within a few hours, ready for our

relief, if needed; and see, the smoke has ceased to curl about your

broken main-mast! That shows convincingly that the fire is being gotten

under--extinguished, probably."

"Oh, no! no! no! not with that low, terrible roaring in the hold. The

fire is gaining strength, and our agony will soon he over."

I sat with, clasped hands and bowed head before her, insensible to her

words. I suppose she strove to strengthen me. I think she tried to

soothe. Failing in both, she rose and went away, and in her place came

Christian Garth, relieved from the helm, and stood a moment beside me.

"Don't be down-hearted, young gal, an' wait for me. Ef the Lord lets me,

I will save you, and the old lady, too; that is, ef she is your aunt or

mother or near of kin."

I shook my head drearily.

"You have no hope, then, Mr. Garth?"

"Hope? yes; the best of hope--the Christian's hope. God can do any thing

He pleases, we all know, and He may stretch forth his hand when all

seems dark; but Captain Ambrose is not one to run a risk of that sort,

so he has sent me to work upon a raft--one of two he is making for the

seamen if the wust comes to the wust. But you see, I have been on lost

ships afore now, an' I know there is no larboard nor starboard rules

when men are skeered. So I shall make my raft to hold the womenfolk, for

the boats will be for the sailors--mark my word--and them that's wise

will wait till the press is over and take the rafts."

"There are little children," I said; "six of them belonging to that lady

and Mr. Lamarque. Don't forget them, Mr. Garth, and the poor little

widow coming now to claim her baby; this miserable little creature I am

holding until she breakfasts. Don't lose sight of these, either, in the

crowd, if, indeed, we are obliged to have recourse to your raft."

"Pray rayther that it may float us all to safety," he said, sternly,

"for your best chance of being saved will be on that raft, if matters go

as I think they will. Trust me, for I will come;" and he passed away

just before the little widow came to my side again.

"I came up as soon as I could, to relieve you. I know how cross baby is

when he gets restless, and I was afraid you might tire of him. See! I

have brought his bread, and this waiter of tea and toast for you; now

you must take a mouthful."

She knew nothing of our danger, it was plain. "Did you leave the other

passengers at table?" I asked; "the captain, was he there?"

The question was never answered, for the attention of my interlocutor

was riveted now, as was my own, on the companion-way, from which a wild

and frightened-looking crowd was densely emerging, with a confused hum

of voices that announced their recognition of their impending danger.

The change of age, of pain, of woe, seemed sealed upon each aspect, as

one by one, and phantom-like, in rapid succession, those who had so

lately gone down to feast returned to the upper day, like grim ghosts

coming from a church-yard carnival.

It was a sight to stir the stoutest spirit.

At the close of the repast, the captain had announced the truth, to his

passengers, and followed them now to enjoin them to firmness and

efficiency, both so greatly needed at this crisis.

Mounted on the capstan, he addressed them briefly, and not without

influence. Such was the power of his simple and manly bearing over these

distracted souls, that even the wildest listened with decorum.

This was no immigrant-ship, loaded with stolid or desperate men,

insensible of high teachings, and alone desirous of personal safety. Yet

the universal instinct asserted itself, and for the time courtesies were

set aside, and family affections were all that were regarded.

Miss Lamarque, pale, yet collected, now stood surrounded by the children

of her brother, leaning upon his arm while the captain spoke. Husbands

and wives were together, sisters and brothers, servants and their

masters--each group revealed its several household affinities. We only

were alone--the dreary little widow, whose name I never knew, and Miriam

Monfort; and on natural principles we clung together.

It is true that Miss Lamarque, by many signs, implored me to come to

her, but I would not. It was like intruding on a bed of death, I felt,

to break through ties of blood at such a time, by thrusting a foreign

presence amid devoted relatives; and I was too proud, or perhaps too

selfish, to intrude where I must be secondary, unless I took away

another's rights.

The captain had promised, in his brief address, to protect his

passengers to the utmost of his power--leaving the result with God. He

had entreated them to be calm, and to preserve order--so essential to

safety; had mentioned his confidence that a ship must pass before the

catastrophe could possibly occur; but added that, to prepare for the

worst, he had ordered the construction of two rafts--one for the use of

the seamen, the other for the reception of food and necessaries.

His plan was to attach these to the larger boats, and so provide against

want; in the certainty, however, that on such a route relief must soon

present itself, in the shape of ship or steamer.

He called on all able to abet his exertions to present themselves

forthwith, so that universal safety might be insured; not only by making

the rafts, but the securing of food upon them, and comforts for the

women and children, who represented so large a portion of the

passengers. He answered for the fidelity of his seamen with his life.

There was not one among them, he knew, who would lift a finger to

disobey him. He said these words in conclusion:

"And now, if there is any one present sufficiently imbued with the grace

of God to fix the anxious minds of these voyagers in prayer, such at

least of them as are powerless otherwise to aid our exertions, let him

appear and minister to their tribulation. This task is not for me,

although the holiest. My duties call me elsewhere."

So adjured, a man, whose wild, fanatical appearance had given rise to

the rumor that the famous "Lorenzo Dow" was on board, sprang on a

bulkhead, and commenced to exhort the crowd about him, from which a file

of pale, determined-looking men was slowly emerging to join the seamen

at the other end of the vessel in their efforts for the public weal. But

many lingered, either overcome and paralyzed by the stringency of

circumstances, or unequal to exertions from personal causes--aged men,

women, and children, chiefly--and to these the frenzied speaker

continued to address his words of exhortation and warning.

Such a tirade of terrible objurgation I felt was entirely out of place

in a scene like this, and calculated to excite the worst passions of the

human mind, instead of persuading it to serenity and submission, so

essential now; for to me the captain's last words represented the final

grace of the preacher, when, with closed eyes and outspread hands, he

dismissed his flock from the temple at the close of the services. From

that vessel and all that concerned it we were virtually enfranchised

from that moment--dismissed to destruction, so to speak, by fire or

flood, or rescue from beyond, as the case might be, to life or death, as

God willed--for the ship's mission was accomplished.

I shrank as far as possible from the wild, waving arms, the frenzied

eyes, the gaunt and wolfish aspect, the piercing, agonized voice of the

fanatic, who had assumed to himself the solemn office of soul-comforter

in a time of extremity. I saw from a distance his long, lank figure

writhing like a sapling in a storm, as it overtopped the crowd; but his

words were lost on my ear, and I sat leaning back against the bulwark

with folded hands, absorbed in my own thoughts, when a young girl,

bursting from the throng, came and threw herself down before me, and

buried her face in my lap, convulsed with sobs. When she looked up, I

recognized the young person who had bathed my face in the morning during

my partial swoon--a fair and lovely-looking girl of about eighteen

years, pallid and ill now with excitement.

"Oh, it is so terrible!" she cried; "I cannot--cannot bear it, and he

says we are all hopelessly lost unless we have repented; that there is

no death-bed salvation; and this is our death-bed, you know, for the

Spanish ship passed us without stopping, and we scarcely hope to see

another. O cruel, cruel fiends! to pretend they did not understand our

signals, and leave us to destruction."

And she clasped her hands in mute and bitter despair--no actress was

ever so impressive.

"We must make up our minds to the worst," I said, as calmly as I could.

"Then, if God sees fit to deliver us, we shall be all the more thankful.

You must not believe what this ignorant and panic-stricken man tells

you. Think of the thief on the cross whom Christ pardoned in dying."

"Then you hope to be permitted to see God! You dare to hope this?" she

asked, gazing into my very eyes, so closely did she come to me.

"Oh, surely in his own good time! I have done nothing so very wicked, I

hope, as to exclude me from my Father's face forever--have you? Now,

don't be frightened; speak calmly."

"I don't know--I don't know. I should be afraid not to call myself

desperately wicked at such a time; he says we all are, you know. We are

all miserable sinners."

"It is very abject to talk and feel thus, and I don't believe that God

approves of it," I said, indignantly. "He gives us self-respect, and

commands us to cherish it. Such abasement is unworthy of Christian

souls. It is very bitter to die, as young as we are; but, if we have

done our best to serve Him, we need--we ought not to be afraid to meet

our God."

She clung to my outstretched hand. She strengthened my spirit by the

fullness of her need. The feeble widow with her child, too, crept close

to me, weeping and trembling.

"Do not leave me," she entreated; "let us stay together to the very

last."

"Nay, that may be a long time," I answered, smiling feebly, and nerved

for the first time to encouragement; "for the captain will do his best

to save his passengers--the women especially, I cannot doubt; and see

what bounteous provision he is making for their support!"

And I pointed to the piles of flour and sugar barrels, the boxes of

crackers and of hams, of figs and raisins, the hampers of wine and ale,

which were profusely piled on the quarter-deck ready for lowering to the

rafts.

"He means to take care of us, you see, by the permission of Providence,"

I said, almost strengthened by this dependence, "and we will remain

calmly together, and drink whatever cup God offers us--humbly, I hope."

Yet, even as I spoke, my heart rebelled against the fiat of my fate, and

the young life within me rose up in fierce conflict with its doom.

At this moment of bitter strife of heart, Mr. Dunmore, the youthful poet

of whom I have already spoken, stood before me.

"I have found you at last," he said, "deputed as I am to do so by Miss

Lamarque. It is a point of honor with her to care for you personally in

this crisis. You know Major Favraud placed you under her care; besides

that, her regard for you impels this request. She bids me say--"

I interrupted him hastily.

"This is no time for ceremonials, truly, Mr. Dunmore; yet, had family

concurrence been perfect, it seems to me that her brother might have

undertaken this mission. I have no wish to thrust myself undesired into

any household circle at such a crisis."

"He is wholly absorbed with his children."

"As he ought to be, Mr. Dunmore, and, when the time of peril comes, it

is of their needs alone that he will and must think, I am alone in this

vessel, as I shall remain. I did not leave Savannah under Miss

Lamarque's care. She is very generous, very considerate, but I will not

embarrass her motions, nor yours, nor any one's. It is the duty of

Captain Ambrose to see to the welfare of his female passengers. I shall

not be forgotten among these--"

He stood before me with his knightly head uncovered, his handsome face

as calm as though he were a guest at a festival instead of a patient and

interested watcher at a funeral-pyre. His birth, his breeding, his

genius even, asserted themselves in that mortal hour. He was calm,

collected, serious, but not afraid.

"The peril will be great to all, of course," he said, quietly, "but no

gentleman will prefer his own safety to that of the most humble and

desolate woman on the ship. To you, Miss Harz, I devote my energies

to-day, to you and these ladies of your party, whoever they may be--,"

bowing gently as he spoke. "I may fail in delivering you from danger,

but it shall not be for want of effort on my part. Believe my words, I

have less care for life than most people, and now let me offer you my

escort through that maddened crowd (the rest may follow closely), to

reach Miss Lamarque."

"No, Mr. Dunmore, I _must_ remain just where I am, I have promised

myself to do so; this is much; and these unhappy women--they, like

myself, are alone, or seem to be. Should you see fit to do so, and be

willing to be so encumbered, you can return after a lapse of time; but

make no point of this, I entreat you. I think that Captain Ambrose will

observe good order and save his helpless ones first. You know he

promised this--"

There was a moment's pause, and movement of eye and hand, and then he

spoke again, very softly:

"Yes, and much more that can never be fulfilled, for already the cabin

is in flames, the companion-way is closed, and the fire in the hold is

making fearful headway. I have heard the seamen have sworn to secure the

boats; you are strong and resolute--be prepared for the very worst."

Then, speaking in his usual tone, he added: "Since the banner of Spain

passed near enough to show us the rampant lions and castles on its

crimson shield, and yet made no sign, I have had little hope of rescue

from a ship. It was ominous!"

"Not intended, then," I said, eagerly. "Oh, I am glad of this, at least,

for the honor of human nature."

"A strange consideration at such a time! You are a study to me, Miss

Harz; yours is not apathy, like mine, but true courage, even in this

death-struggle, and I will save you if I can, for you have a noble

soul!"

All further dialogue was cut short by the wild shout that rose from the

crowd, the delusive cry of "A sail, a sail!" and Dunmore rushed with the

rest to descry its myth-like form, if possible. It was some moments

before hope again died down to a flat level of despair.

Too remote for signal or trumpet was that distant, white-winged vessel

gliding securely on its path of peace, unconscious of the extremity of

the mighty steamer it distinguished dimly, no doubt, by the aid of

telescopes.

However this might have been, for the second time on that day of direst

exigency, a ship went by, observed yet unobserving.

Fainter and fainter grew the accents of the fierce, fanatical preacher;

his excitement forsook him as the danger became more and more imminent.

The crowd broke into groups. Pale, stern men, with rigid features, who

had been employed aiding in the construction of the rafts, returned now

to the sides of their wives and children.

Through a vista on the deck I discerned Miss Lamarque, sitting quietly

with her youngest nursling in her arms, beside her brother. His children

and slaves were gathered around her knees. Dunmore was giving her my

message, I could not doubt, from the glances she cast in my direction,

as he stood near by. I knew that he would soon turn to come again, but

my resolution was fixed.

Captain Ambrose, with a face grown old in half a day, gray, abstracted,

wretched, passed and repassed me several times, telescope in hand.

Ralph Maxwell on the round-house kept constant watch, his attitude

dauntless, his face uplifted and keen, field-glass in hand. His

West-Point training stood him in good stead now. Captain Falconer, a

naval officer, had returned to the side of Miss Oscanyan, the woman he

had loved hopelessly for years, and, before the scene closed between us

forever, I saw him clasp her to his bosom; so that trying hour had for

some high spirits is crowning consolations, its solace and reward, and,

whatever else was in store, the martyrdom of love was over.

An eager hand caught my shawl. "He is coming back, coming to persuade

you to leave us," said the young girl; "but you have promised not to

part from us, and I feel that God will remember us if we remain together

firm and fast, we three."

Then the pale widow spoke in turn: "Let me stay beside you too," she

entreated; "it makes me feel stronger, I am so desolate--" and she bowed

her head and wept.

I would have said in the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my

soul: "What value has life to you and your deformed one? Poor, widowed,

sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live? Why encumber me?"

But thoughts like these were not for human utterance now, and we sat

together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men

may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the

coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined to consume them.

For was not this ship our world, penned in as we were on every side, and

separated from all else by an ocean inexorable and illimitable as space,

and were not we likewise looking forward to a fiery doom--our finite,

perhaps final, day of judgment?

I could understand then, for the first time, how condemned criminals

feel--well, strong, yet dying! I knew how Walter La Vigne, the

self-doomed, had felt, and some passages of Madame Roland's appeal rose

visibly before me, as if written on the air rather than in my memory. I

had read the book at Beauseincourt, and it had powerfully impressed me;

and this, I remember, was the passage that swept across my brain:

"And thou whom I dare not name, wouldst thou mourn to see me preceding

thee to a place where we can love one another without wrong--where

nothing will prevent our union--where all pernicious prejudices, all

arbitrary exclusions, all hateful passions, and all tyranny, are silent?

I shall wait for thee, then, and rest!"

So centred were my dying thoughts on Wentworth--so calmly did I await

the great change that men call sudden death!

All this time--a time much briefer than that I have taken in recounting

my sensations--the glorious summer's sun, the sun of morning, was

bathing the sea; the ship, with beauty, and a soft, fresh breeze, was

fanning every pallid brow with a caressing, silken wing, that seemed to

mock its wretchedness.

I thought not once of Christian Garth. I had ceased to strain my eyes

for a distant sail, to seek to compromise with my fate or make

conditions with my Creator. Dunmore was forgotten. I was composed to

die--not resigned. These things are different; a bitter patience

possessed me that I felt would sustain me to the end, but I was not

satisfied that my doom was just or opportune.

"Farewell, sweet, young, vigorous life!" I moaned aloud. "Farewell,

Miriam! It will not be thou, but a phantom, that shall arise from dead

ashes! Farewell, dear hand, that hast served me long and well!" and I

kissed my own right hand. I had not known until that moment how truly I

loved myself. "Sister, lover, farewell! Mother, father, receive me!

Gentle Constance, reach forth thy guiding hand and lead me to my

parents! Wentworth, remember me! Saviour, my soul is thine!"

I bowed my head. I had no more to say. Unwilling I was to die--afraid I

was not; for, as I sat there, my whole life swept before me, as it is

said to do before the eyes of the drowning, and rapidly as one may sweep

the gamut on a piano with one introverted finger, and I saw myself as

though I had been another. I had done nothing to make me afraid to meet

my God; so, with closed eyes, I lingered in the shadow, conscious of

nothing save exceeding calm, when the grasp of my gentle friend of the

moment aroused me to a sense of what was occurring, and I saw, with

horror indescribable, the fierce flames leaping from the deck, heard the

hoarse shouts, beheld the lurid surging of an agonized and despairing

multitude! But above all rang the clear, trumpet-tones of Captain

Ambrose, soon to sink in death:

"To the boats--to the boats! but save the women first--the children--as

ye are Christian men! So help ye, mighty God!"

I heard later how signally this noble charge was disregarded; how

utterly self triumphed over generosity and duty; and how, in enforcing

the example all should have followed, Captain Ambrose lost his valiant,

valuable life. But this was thought nothing of then, and I sat patiently

down to perish!

CHAPTER IV.

It was sunset when I first felt able to sit up beneath the awning of

sails which provident hands had stretched above the central platform

reserved for the occupancy of the women and children, spread thick with

mattresses on the raft, and look about me understandingly.

We were riding smoothly over the long, low, level billows of that summer

sea, sustained beyond their reach on what seemed a rude barn-floor,

composed as this was of the masts, booms, and yards, roughly lashed

together by tarred ropes, no longer needed on the destined ship, and

which had been assigned by the captain for that purpose to Christian

Garth.

A mast was erected in the front of this hastily-constructed raft, on

three sides of which were breastworks, with strong, loose ropes

attached, so that those who clung to this refuge might support

themselves with comparative safety, or rather have a chance for life,

when our "floating grave" should hang suspended perpendicularly on the

steep side of a mountain-billow, or drift beneath it.

Just below, and surrounding the small, elevated platform on which I

found myself when I revived, stretched on a slender mattress by the side

of my feeble widow and her moaning child, were rows of barrels, firmly

fastened by cleats, so as insure, to some degree, not only the

preservation of our food and water, but to form a sort of bulwark of

protection for those who occupied the central portion of the raft.

The young girl, of whom I have spoken as having attached herself to me

during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman,

whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters,

and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our

only companions on the sort of dais assigned to his female passengers by

Christian Garth.

The man himself, to whom we owed our deliverance, stood near his

primitive mast, trimming his sail carefully, and looking out with his

far-reaching, sagacious ken over the waste of waters, into which the

blood-red, full-orbed sun seemed dipping, suddenly, as for his

night-bath.

A few of the common passengers of the Kosciusko, and a knot of the

seamen, comprising not more than twenty souls, composed the groups,

scattered about the roughly yet securely lashed raft, silent and

observant all, as men who face their doom are apt to be.

I looked in vain for one familiar face, and for a moment regretted that

I had been withheld, as by some spell, for whose weird influence I could

never sufficiently account, from having cast my destiny with theirs, who

were so much nearer to me in station and congeniality of spirit than

those around me. With Miss Lamarque's hand locked in mine, I should have

vied with her, I felt, in cheerful courage; and the knightly calmness of

Dunmore might have sustained my drooping, fainting soul. These were my

peers, and, _with_ them, I should have been better content to be tried.

But the white squall, which had in no way affected us (so small and

partial was the sphere of its influence), had sufficed to separate ours

irretrievably from our companion-raft, and the squadron of boats that

had promised not to forsake as. And now the eye of agony was strained in

vain over the weltering waste, for a vestige of those refugees from the

Kosciusko--buried, perhaps, a thousand fathoms deep, by their sudden

visitors, beneath the waves of that deadly Atlantic sea.

Tears rained over my face as I thought of this probability, and,

hopeless as I was of rescue, the almost certain fate of my

companion-voyagers fell over me like a pall. "Better, perhaps--far

better had it been"--I thought so then--"had we all perished together in

that terrific sheet of flame that rose up like a dividing barrier

between us at the last. Fit emblem of the final day of doom. Our trials

were but begun. What more remained? God in heaven only knew!"

And rapidly, and in panoramic succession, all the fearful adventures of

raft and boat that I had ever read of, or heard related, passed across

my mind, ending with that latest, and perhaps the most fearful of

all--the wreck of the Medusa!

The night came down serene and beautiful. As the sun disappeared in

ocean, up rose the full-orbed moon--crimson and magnified by surrounding

vapors--that to the practised eye portended future tempest, calm as the

ocean and the heavens then seemed.

The constellations, singularly distinct and splendid, had the power to

fix and fascinate my vision--never felt before--as they shone above me,

clear and crystalline as enthroned in space--judges, and spectators,

cold and pitiless as it seemed to me, in the strangeness and forlornness

of my condition--Arcturus, and the Ursas, great and little, and Lyra,

and the Corona Borealis, Berenice, and Hydra, and Cassiopea's chair;

these and many more. I marked them all with a calm scrutiny that belongs

to terror in some phases. The stars seemed mocking eyes that

night--smiling and safe in heaven--the moon, a cold and cruel enemy with

her vapory train, so grandly sailing across the cloudless heaven--so

careless of our fate--the wreck of a ruined world as many deem

her--veiling in light her inward desolation.

A faint and vapory comet lurked on the horizon--like a ghastly

messenger--scarcely discernible to the human eyes, yet vaguely ominous

and suggestive--a spirit-ship it might be--watching in silence to hear

away the souls of those lost at sea!

There was deep stillness--unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing

waters. Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away;

and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother,

and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the

name of my young companion), were, for a season, lost alike in sleep.

Food had been distributed--prayer had been offered--all seemed favorable

so far to our preservation. We were on the track of voyage--the pathway

of ships--and the sea was tranquil as a summer lake; up to this point,

the arm of God had been extended over us almost visibly. Would He

forsake us now? I questioned thus, and yet I could not, dare not, hope

as others hoped!

The morning came; I woke, aroused by Salva's song, from troubled sleep;

and, as I rose to a sitting posture, a troop of sea-birds that had been

swooping overhead, fled with a fiend-like screaming.

The mother and child were already consuming their scant allowance of

food. Ada Greene was standing self-poised, swaying like a slender reed

with the motion of the raft, so as never to lose her balance, like a

young acrobat, with her folded arms, her floating hair, and fair Aurora

face, uplifted to the day.

Over the raft were scattered groups of men taking their morning meal;

but, as before, the stalwart form of Christian Garth was at the helm, or

rather, mast and rudder merged in one, which he controlled with calm,

sagacious power.

"Is there a ship in the distance, that you gaze so earnestly?" I asked

of the young girl as I put back my hair that had clustered thickly over

my face in my uneasy slumber, and followed eagerly the direction of her

eyes.

"Oh! no; only a school of dolphins; but it is so pretty! Some came quite

near just now; the men were harpooning them; but if we had them we could

not cook them, you know, on this miserable contrivance."

"One we should be very grateful for, Ada, since it is all that lies

between us and destruction!" I answered, sorrowfully, for the levity of

her spirit grieved and shocked me.

"I don't know about that; I think we might as well have gone down at

once as stay here, and be roasted and starved. How hot it is to-day!

What would I not give for a good glass of ice-water! Don't look so

shocked; we shall be saved, of course. I am not the least afraid about

that, for Mr. Garth says we _must_ see a ship before evening. Don't you

mark the flag flying at the mast-head? He brought it on board on

purpose, so that they might not mistake our country (the packets, I

mean), and give us the go-by as that Spanish vessel did! But they do say

that was a pirate; and that, instead of sitting on a plank, we should

have been walking a plank by this time, had they rescued us. I'm rather

glad they didn't, though, after all--things couldn't be much worse than

they are, could they, now?--There, I came very near falling, I declare!"

The moans of the sick woman at my side became almost constant toward

noon; and she was obliged to surrender her infant wholly to my charge,

for the haemorrhage of the day before had returned, and she was fast

drifting into unconsciousness. "Water, water!" was the only intelligible

cry that left her lips, and that we had to give was warm and brackish,

from the occasional lapping of the sea against the barrels, into which

it oozed insensibly.

The sun shone down hot and brazen, from the lurid heavens, covered with

filmy clouds, so equally overspreading it that a thin, gray veil seemed

to interpose between us and its scorching rays, scarcely tempering them

by its diaphanous medium.

Beneath it lay the sea, like a copper shield, smooth and glowing,

seething like a boiling caldron, with its level foam, for the long,

low-rolling billows lifted themselves but lazily from Ocean's breast,

and assumed no distinctness of form or motion. Not the faintest breeze

came to relieve the stifling closeness of the atmosphere, or lift the

collapsed sail, or furled flag, that clung around our mast. The air

shimmered visibly around us, as though undergoing some transformation

from the heat, some culinary process, through which it was to be

rendered unfit for human lips to breathe. Birds flew low and heavily

around the raft, as though their wings met such resistance as fish find

in water, alighting occasionally to pick up languidly morsels of

rejected food.

Still the old negro's crooning hymns went on, recommenced with morning

light. To my sad heart, the refrain bore a mournful significance:

"In the land of the New Jerusalem

There shall be no more sea."

She sat, a wrinkled hag, with a leering, repulsive face, with her feet

planted firmly on her mattress, her knees elevated, her long, ape-like

arms closely embracing these--her fingers, strung with brass and silver

rings, intertwined with snake-like flexibility.

On her head was the inevitable bright-colored handkerchief, the badge of

her race, or rather of her condition in those days, and she wore the

decent, blue-cotton frock, which marked her for a plantation-negro.

Large hoops were in her flat, enormous ears, that seemed to suspend her

shoulders as they touched them, drawn up and narrowed as these were,

even beyond their natural hideousness, by her attitude, one which she

maintained as stolidly as a dervish.

"You must help us," I said, at last, when the crisis came, and affairs

waxed desperate. "You must take the child, at least, and care for him.

See, it requires two persons to sustain his dying mother--one to wet her

lips, one--"

"'Deed, honey," she interrupted, coolly, "you must 'scuse me dis oncst;

I has jus' as much to do as I kin posomply 'complish, in keepin' of

myself dry, comfable, and singin' ob my hyme-toones. We has all to take

our chances dis time, an' do for our own selves, black and white; an' I

don't see none ob my own white folks on dis raf', wich I is mighty proud

of. Dar, now! I does b'leve dat is a ship sail way off dar. Does you see

it, honey?"

And she pointed to a large white gull, skimming the main at some

distance. Disgusted with her selfishness, I vouchsafed her no farther

notice at the time, and her crooning went on during the whole period of

the bitter death-struggle of that poor sufferer, whose name I never

knew, but whose little, deformed waif, the orphan of the raft, remained

my heritage.

"You will take care of him," she had said to me, in her last conscious

moments, "my baby-boy, my little--" the name died on her lips, and she

never spoke again.

When she was dead, Christian Garth caused her to be wrapped in

sail-cloth, weighted with chains, and, with a brief prayer, consigned to

the deep. His superstitious sailor's fears rebelled against the idea of

keeping a corpse on board one moment longer than necessary, so the rites

of sepulture were speedily accomplished.

When I remonstrated, feebly enough it is true, for exhaustion was

supervening on long-sustained effort, at his haste, which, even under

the circumstances, seemed to me indecent, he coolly spoke of it as a

measure essential to the good of all.

Talismanic as were these words on such occasion, mine were the lips that

murmured the brief prayer, a portion of the solemn Episcopal

grave-service that I chanced to remember, above the poor, pale corpse,

even while my weary arms inclosed the struggling child, who,

understanding nothing of the truth, would fain have plunged after his

mother into depths unknown.

A low, long roll of thunder smote on the ear, like a message to the

ocean, from the heavens above, as we saw the waters close greedily over

the form of our dead passenger. The men who had launched the body from

the raft looked up and listened fearfully, and Christian Garth hastened

to trim his sail.

It was sunset now, and the clouds gathered so rapidly about the sun,

that he sank empalled in purple to his watery bed, leaving no trace

behind to mark his faded splendor.

A sudden breeze sprang up, infinitely refreshing at first to soul and

sense, and again the thunder lumbered and crashed about us. The billows

heaved and leaped like steeds just freed from harness, tossing their

white manes; the raft shuddered and reeled with a deadly, sickly motion,

like a creature in strong throes, plunging with frantic suddenness into

the troughs of the waves at one moment, as if impelled by fear, then

rallying to their summits, only to cast itself wildly down again.

All was confusion, dire and terrible. Then burst the storm upon

us--rain, wind!

I was conscious of clutching, with one hand, a rope which strained and

swayed desperately, while with the other I grasped the affrighted baby

to my breast.

Ada Greene and the old negro woman clung together, hanging to the same

cord of safety, flung to them, to all of us, by the hand of Christian

Garth.

The barrels strained and groaned, and broke from their fastenings; the

awning was wrenched from its mooring, and swept away; the bitter brine

broke over us and choked our cries; the anguish of death was upon as

without its submission. We struggled instinctively to breathe, to live;

we grappled desperately with circumstances; we fought against our doom.

Suddenly the sea dropped to rest--the storm was spent; a low, sighing,

soughing gale swept around our nucleus of despair, and the surging of

the sea was like a bitter funeral-wail. The air grew cold and chill; one

vast, pall-like cloud enveloped the whole face of the unpitying

heavens, that seemed literally "to press down upon our very faces like

a roof of black marble."

No moon, no stars, were visible; we had no light of any kind, nor could

we ascertain the damage done until the cold, gray morning broke in gloom

and rain upon us. Then it was made plain to us that our food had all

been swept overboard--together with six seamen and five of the

passengers. There remained on the raft only three shuddering women and a

little child--and a handful of weary and discouraged men, sustained and

led to a sense of duty by the dauntless master-spirit of one alone--the

presence of Christian Garth, indomitable through, all hardships. So it

had fared with us for six-and-thirty hours of our experience on "our

floating grave."

We had been washed from our little platform, which ordinarily lifted us

above the lapping of the sea during the prevalence of the storm--and we

regained it now, glad to repose even on the sea-soaked mattresses bereft

of awning. By the mercy of God some glutinous sea-zoophytes had been

tangled among them, and by the help of the brine-soaked biscuit in my

pocket (crammed there, it may be remembered, as a precious hoard for a

time of dire necessity, on the morning of the fire, by the small,

cunning fingers of the sickly child), we breakfasted, or rather broke

our fast--we four, the child, the negress, Ada Greene, and I--and life

was aroused again in every breast by means of a briny morsel.

"A cup of coffee would not be amiss just now," said the girl, laughing,

"but the Lord knows we can wait."

There was a strange, bright light in the eyes of the young girl as she

spoke these words, and she was arraying her hair coquettishly with some

bunches of sea-weed, which had been cast up by the storm, and from which

the eager, famishing lips of the little boy had been permitted to suck

the gluten before discarding the skeleton stems.

That hair was in itself a grace and glory--rippling from crown to waist

in sheeny, golden splendor, fine as silk, and glossy as the yellow floss

threads of pale, ripe Indian-corn--beautiful, even in its dishevelled

and drenched condition, as an artist's dream. Devoid as it was of

regular beauty, the face beneath, with its clear blue eyes, red lips,

and pure complexion, the pink and white that reminds one of a sweet-pea

or ocean-shell, had struck me as very lovely from the first; nothing to

support this ground work of excellence had I discovered, however, either

in the form of the head, which was ignoble, or the expression of the

face, which was both timid and defiant, or the tones of the voice, which

were shrill and harsh by turns--yet, as my fellow-voyager and sufferer,

I was interested in this young creature, not forgetting, either, her

attention during my pending swoon, of which mention has been made.

"I am going to the party, whatever the preacher may say, and whether

Captain Ambrose wills it or no. I am under his care and protection, you

see, to go to New York to my aunt, Madame Du Vert, the famous milliner,

and I am to learn her trade. Her name is Greene, so they call her Du

Vert, to make out that she is French--_vert_ is _green_, in French, you

see; or so they tell me. Now, Captain Ambrose is a church-member, too,

and he does not want dancing on his ship, and so he made the calkers

pitch the deck--that was to break up the ball, you know; but don't tell

any one this for the 'land's sake,'" drawing near to me and whispering

strangely, with her forefinger raised--"or all those proud Southern

people would pitch into me--pitch, you understand?" and she laughed

merrily--"their white satin slippers and all!"

"You must not talk so, Ada;" and I took her hand, which was burning.

"Why not? Who are you, to prevent me? I am as good as you any day--or

Miss Lamarque either, or any of those haughty ones--though my father was

a negro-trader. Well, whose business was that but God's? If He don't

care, who need care?--An't I right, old mammy?" appealing to the ancient

negress, who had suspended her croon to listen.

"Yes, indeed--that you is, honey; right to upholden your own dad--nebber

min' what he did to serbe the debble. But you looks mighty strange,

chile, outen your eyes. Wat dat you sees ober dar--is it a ship,

gal?--or must we--" and her voice sank to a mutter--"must we fall back

on dis picaninny, to keep from starvation?--"

I understood her dreadful suggestion even before the words fully left

her cannibal lips, exposing her yellow fangs; from the glance of her

cruel eye in the direction of the child, and the working of her long,

crooked talons, rather than fingers, writhed like knotted serpents; I

understood them with an instinct that made me clutch him closely to my

breast, and narrowly watch his enemy from that hour until the time when

my brain failed and my eyes closed in unconsciousness, and with the

determination to plunge with him into the sea rather than devote him to

such a fate or yield to such an alternative as this wretch in human form

had more than hinted--even should the animal instinct, underlying every

nature, presume to dictate to reason at the last!

We could but die--that was the very worst that Fate had in store for

us--_but_ die in the body! How infinitely worse that the soul should

perish through the selfish sensuousness of cannibalism, which would

degrade life itself below dissolution, even if preserved by such means!

"I am ready now to go to Captain Ambrose for assistance," said Ada

Greene, poising herself before me, and having surrendered or forgotten

her first idea, evidently, in the new mania of the moment. "Of course,

he does not intend to leave us here to perish, and he is in the next

cabin--but a step; see how easily I can get to him, and I shall be back

before you can say 'Presto!'"

As nimbly as a sea-gull runs upon the sand, the young creature flew

across the now level raft toward the sea, but a strong hand clutched her

as she was about to step overboard, and compelled her back to her place

on the platform, where, bound with cords, she lay raving, until sleep or

unconsciousness mercifully supervened to spare me the spectacle of her

agony, which no human power could alleviate.

Hours passed before this "consummation devoutly to be wished" took

effect, and, at the end of that time, my reeling brain, my fainting

energies, warned me that I, too, was probably approaching some dreadful

crisis. With a view to the refreshment its waters could possibly afford

my head, I crept quietly from the platform on which the old negro woman

held enforced guard over the insensible form of Ada Greene, and, still

clasping the poor helpless one, so mysteriously thrust upon my tender

mercies, to my bosom, I gained the edge of the raft, unnoticed by

Christian Garth, who might otherwise have apprehended me in turn, and

borne me back to my allotted precincts, and hung above the ocean, so as

to suffer its cooling spray to fall unceasingly across my burning

forehead.

From some instinctive prompting I had lashed the poor, frail baby to my

girdle with the scarf of knotted silk I wore about my neck, and, wan

and exhausted, he lay upon my shoulder tranquilly as any Indian papoose

might do on its mother's breast. A branch of sea-weed floated past as I

looked down--some gracious mermaid's gift, perhaps, extended by her

invisible fingers to greet our famishing lips--and I caught it eagerly,

dividing the welcome nutriment with the perishing child, now patient

from weakness and instinctive consciousness, perhaps, of the entire

uselessness of cries and tears.

Whether the weed was a sort of ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I

never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my

lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast

lapsing, as these had seemed, into unconsciousness when I left my place

to seek the ocean's brink.

The rays of the declining sun seemed for a moment centred on one spot,

immediately before my impending face, supported as this was on one hand,

and my sight followed their lance-like rays to the very floor of ocean!

As the waters of the Red Sea divided for the passage of Moses and the

Israelites, so seemed these to part for my mental eyes, sundered as they

were by a golden sword of infinite splendor.

That power which neither pain nor peril can subdue had possession of me

now, and, above all, the bitter circumstances that surrounded me, and,

in the face of danger and of death, imagination asserted her supremacy.

My dream was not of passing ship or harbor gained, or rich repast, or

festival, or clustered grapes and sparkling wines, like other sufferers

from shipwreck, fevered with famine, frenzied with despair; but hasheesh

or opium never bestowed so fair, so strange a vision as that which, in

my extremity, was mercifully accorded to me.

My eyes pursued the sea-shaft to its base, as a telescope conducts the

mortal gaze to revel in the stars. Merman and mermaid, nereid and

triton, were there, rejoicing in the sunbeams thus poured upon them

through this subtle conduit of ocean, as do the motes of summer in her

rays; but soon these disappeared, a motley crowd, confused and joyous,

leaving the vision free to pierce the depths, glowing with golden light,

in search of still greater marvels.

Then I saw outspread before me the streets, the fanes, the towers, the

dwellings, of a vast, deserted city, one of those, I could not doubt,

that had existed before the flood, and which had lain submerged for

thousands of centuries; the fretwork of the coral-insect was over all

(that worker against time, so slow, so certain), in one monotonous web

of solid snow.

Statues of colossal size, and arches of Titanic strength and power,

adorned the portals, the pass-ways, the temples of this metropolis of

ocean, guarded as were these last by the effigies of griffin and dragon,

and winged elephant and lion, and stately mastodon and monstrous

ichthyosaurus, all white as gleaming spar.

Gods and demi-gods of gigantic proportions and majestic aspect were

carved on the external walls of the windowless abodes and fanes; and,

from the yawning portal of one of these, a temple vast as Dendera's

self, came forth, fold after fold, even as I seemed to gaze, the

monstrous sea-serpent of which mariners dream, more huge, more loathly,

than fancy or experience ever yet portrayed him. I still behold in

memory the stately, fearful head, with its eyes of emerald fire and

sweeping, sea-green mane, as it reared its neck for a moment as if to

scale the ladder the sunbeams had thrown down when first emerging from

its temple-cavern; and, later, the mottled, monstrous body, as coil

after coil was gradually unwound, until it seemed at last to lie in all

its loathsome length for roods along the silent, shell-paved

streets--the scaly monarch of that scene of human desolation!

I recall the feeling of security that upheld me to look and to observe

every motion of the reptile of my dream.

"He cannot come to me here," I thought. "The ark is sacred, and God's

hand is over it; besides, I hear the singing of the priests, and the

dove is about to be cast forth! Will the raven never come back? Oh, the

sweet olive-branch! It falls so lightly! We are nearing the mountain

now, and we shall soon cast anchor!"

Then, among choral chants of joy and thanksgiving, I seemed to sleep.

How long this slumber lasted, or whether it came at all, I never knew.

It is a loving and tender thing in our Creator to decree to us this

curtain of unconsciousness when nerve and strength would otherwise give

way beneath the intensity of suffering--a holy and gentle thing for

which we are not half thankful enough in oar estimate of blessings.

My sleep, or swoon, shielded me from long hours of agony, mental and

physical, that must have become unendurable ere the close. As it was, I

knew no more after the sea-shaft closed with its wondrous and mysterious

revelations (which I yet recall with marveling and admiration, as we are

wont to do a pageant of the past), until aroused from lethargy by the

hand and voice of Christian Garth.

It was night. I saw the glimmer of the moonlight on the seas, a

tranquil, balmy night; but some dark object was interposed between me

and the stars which, I knew, were shining above, and the raft lay

motionless upon the waters. I was aware, when my senses returned

temporarily, that the bow of a mighty vessel was projected above our

frail place of refuge, and that we were saved. The dove had come at

last!

When or how we were lifted to the deck of the ship I knew not, for,

having partially revived, I soon drifted away again into profound

lethargy and entire unconsciousness, which for a time seemed death.

CHAPTER V.

A woman sat sewing near my berth in the state-room in which I found

myself; a fan, lying on a small table at her side, betokened in what

manner she had divided her attentions--between her needle and her

helpless charge. I thought, indeed, that I had felt its soft plumes

glide gently across my face in the very moment of my awakening, in the

first amazement of which I but dimly comprehended the circumstances that

surrounded me.

"What brought this stranger to my pillow? Who and what was she? Where

was I!" These were my mental queries at the first. Then, as the truth

gradually dawned over my sluggish and bewildered brain, I lay quietly

revolving matters, and noticed my self-constituted nurse, and my

surroundings, with the close yet careless observation of a child.

The woman, on whom my gaze was earliest fixed (while her own seemed

riveted on the work upon her knee), was of middle age or beyond it, of

medium size, of square and sturdy make, and homely to the very verge of

ugliness. She was dressed plainly, if not commonly, in black, but there

was a general air of decency about her that seemed to place her beyond

the sphere of servitude. She wore spectacles set in tortoise-shell

frames, and she wore her iron-gray hair straight back behind small,

funnel-shaped ears, and gathered into the tightest knot behind. Her

head was flat and narrow at the summit, though broad at and above the

base of the brain. Her forehead, wide yet low, was ignoble in

expression. The mouth, shaped like a horseshoe, was curved down at the

corners, and was full of sullen resolution. The nose, pinched, yet not

pointed, showed scarcely any nostril, and might as well have been made

of wood, for any meaning it betrayed. Her eyebrows were short, wide,

rugged, and irregular, though very black; the cast-down eyes, of course,

so far inscrutable.

She was shaping a flimsy, black-silk dress, and doing it deftly, though

it was a marvel to me how hands so stiff and cramped as hers appeared to

be could handle a needle at all.

On one of these gnarled and unlovely fingers she wore a ring which, in

the idleness of the mood that possessed me, I examined listlessly. It

was an old-fashioned and slender circle of gold, so pale that it looked

silvery, such as in times long past had commonly been used either for

troth-plight or marriage-vows, surmounted by two small united hearts of

the same dull metal by way of ornament. Mrs. Austin, I remembered,

possessed one, the aversion of my childhood, that seemed its

counterpart.

My weary eyes wandered from her at last, to take in the accessories of

my chamber, tiny as this was, and I saw that against the wall were

hanging a gentleman's greatcoat and hand-satchel. Cigars and books were

piled on the same table which held the spool and scissors of my

companion, and a pair of cloth slippers, embroidered with colored

chenilles and quilted lining, of masculine size and shape, reposed upon

the floor. A cane and umbrella were secured neatly in a small corner

rack. There were no traces, I saw, of feminine occupancy beyond the

transient implements of industry alluded to.

Suddenly, in their languid, listless roving, my eyes encountered those

of my attendant fixed full upon me, while a smile distorted the homely,

sallow face, disclosing a set of yellow teeth, sound, short, and strong,

like regular grains of corn.

In those eyes, in that mouth and saffron teeth, lay the whole power and

character of this repulsive and disagreeable physiognomy.

Those feline orbs of mingled gray and green, with their small, pointed

pupils, were keen, vigilant, and observing beyond all eyes it had ever

before or since been my lot to encounter. After meeting their

penetrating glance I was not surprised to hear their possessor accost me

in clear, metallic tones, that seemed only the result of her gift of

insight, and consistent with it.

"You are awake and yourself again, young lady, I am glad to see! You

have slept very quietly for the last few hours, and your fever is

wellnigh broken. Will you have some food now? You need it; you must be

weak."

"Yes, very weak; but not hungry at all. I do not want to eat. Just let

me lie quietly awhile. It is such enjoyment."

She complied silently and judiciously with my request.

After a satisfactory pause, during which I had gradually collected my

ideas, I inquired, suddenly:

"How long is it since we were lifted from the raft, and where are the

other survivors?"

"All safe, I believe, and on board, well cared for, like yourself. It

has been nearly two days since your raft was overhauled. This was what

the captain called it," and she smiled.

"The baby--where is he? I hope he lived."

"Yes, he is at last out of danger, and we have obtained a nurse for him.

He would only trouble you now; but it is very natural you should be

anxious about him."

"Yes, he was my principal care on the raft, and I do not wish to lose

sight of him. When I am better, you must let him share my room until we

reach our friends."

"Oh, certainly!" and again she smiled her evil smile. "No one, so far as

I know of, has any right or wish to separate you; but, for the present,

you are better alone."

"Yes, I am strangely weak--confused, even," and I passed my hand over my

blistered face and dishevelled hair with something of the feeling of the

little woman in the story who doubted her own identity. Alas! there was

not even a familiar dog to bark and determine the vexed question, "Is

this I?"

Helpless as an infant, flaccid as the sea-weed when taken from its

native element, feeble in mind from recent suffering, broken in body, I

was cast on the mercies of strangers, ignorant, until they saw me, of my

existence, yet not indifferent to it, as their care testified.

"You will take some food now," said the woman, kindly. "Your weakness is

not unfavorable, since it proves the fierce fever broken; but you must

hasten to gather strength for what lies before you. We shall be in port

to-morrow."

I put away the spoon with an impatient gesture. "I cannot; it nauseates

me but to see it, to think of it. Strength will come of itself."

"Oh, no; that is impossible. Besides, the doctor has ordered panada, and

I am responsible to him for your safety. Come, now, be reasonable. This

is very nice, seasoned with madeira and nutmeg."

Making a strong effort to overcome my repugnance, I received one

spoonful of the proffered aliment, then sank back on my pillow, soothed

and comforted, not more by the unexpectedly good effects of the

compound, than the associations it conjured up, of my sick childhood, of

Mrs. Austin, and of Dr. Pemberton.

"Ah! you smile; that is a good sign," said the woman; "favorable every

way. We shall have no more delirium now, I hope; no more 'bears and

serpents' about the berth; no more calls for 'Bertie' and 'Captain

Wentworth,' and you will soon be able to tell us all about yourself and

your people--all we want to know."

I most have lapsed again into reverie rather than slumber, from which I

was partly aroused by whispering voices at the door, one of which seemed

familiar to me. Yet this fact or fancy made little impression on me at

the moment, feeble and wretched as was my will, undiscriminating as were

my faculties.

And when the door opened, and a lady entered, I did not seek to inquire

about her interlocutor. Respectfully rising from her seat beside me, my

companion left it vacant for her, to whom she introduced me as her

mistress, and stood, work in hand, sewing beneath the skylight, while

the new-comer remained in the state-room.

A handsome woman, tall and fashionably attired, apparently between

thirty and forty years of age, square faced, dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked,

and with curling hair, approached me with uplifted hands and eyebrows as

I lay gazing calmly upon her; for my food and slumber together had

strengthened and revived me wonderfully in the last few hours, and my

senses were again collected.

"Awake, and herself again, as I live, even if we cannot say yet

truthfully 'clothed and in her right mind.'--Eh, Clayton?" with a

sneering simper; "and what eyes, what teeth, to be sure! Then the

dreadful redness is going away, though the skin will scale, of course;

but no matter for that; all the fairer in the end. And what a special

mercy that her hair is saved!--You have to thank _me_ for that, young

lady. I would not let the ship's doctor touch a strand of it--not a

strand. 'One does not grow a yard and a half of hair in a month, or a

year, doctor,' I observed, 'and a woman might as well be dead at once,

or mad, or a man, as have cropped hair during all the days of her

youth.' I had a fellow-feeling, you see! I have magnificent hair myself,

child, as Clayton well knows, for it is her chief trouble on earth, and

I would almost as lief die as lose it."

"Yes, indeed, Lady Anastasia's hair is one of her chief attractions,"

observed the sympathizing Clayton, behind her chair.

"So Sir Harry Raymond thought, my dear"--addressing me--"when I married

him, ten years ago; and so somebody else thinks just now, for I am tired

of my widowhood, and intend taking on the conjugal yoke again as soon as

I reach--"

"New York," interpolated Mrs. Clayton, hastily and emphatically;

clearing her throat slightly, by way of apology, perhaps, for her

officiousness.

"And you shall stand bridesmaid, my dear. Yes, I am determined on it; so

never make great eyes at me. There is a little bit of romance about me

that will strike out in spite of all my worldliness; and it will be so

pretty to have an 'ocean-waif' for an attendant--it will read so well in

the papers! I suppose, when you reach your friends, there will be no

difficulty about a dress, and all that sort of thing, meet for the

occasion--a very splendid one, I assure you--conducted without regard

to expense; for my _fiance_ is very rich, I hear, and my own jointure

was a liberal one."

"You do me a great honor," I murmured, conventionally rebelling inwardly

at the suggestion.

"Oh, not at all!" was the gracious rejoinder. "I see at a glance, in

spite of your misfortunes, that you are one of us, which is not what I

say to everybody. True blood will show under all circumstances, though

there is such an improvement. Did any one ever see the like before? Why,

my dear, you were blistered and black when we picked you up, and

afterward sienna-colored; now you are almost a beauty!"

"I am better--much better, and have a great deal to be thankful for, I

feel," I contented myself with murmuring.

"Of course you have. It was just a chance with you between our ship and

death, you know. By-the-by, what name shall we give our

'treasure-trove?'"

"Miriam for the present, if you please. This is no time nor place for

ceremony."

"Well, Miriam it shall be," she repeated with laughing eyes (hers were

of that sort which close and grow Chinese under the pressure of

merriment and high cheekbones combined). "Miriam, I like the name--there

is something grand about it."

"But how shall we know where to find your friends when we get to port?"

asked my first attendant. "We _must_ know more than your Christian name

for such a purpose. You must place confidence in us, you must indeed!"

"Be patient with me," I entreated. "I am much too feeble yet to give you

the details that may be necessary. When we reach New York, you shall

know every thing: or is it, indeed, to that place this ship is bound?"

"I thought you knew all about your destination by this time," replied

Lady Anastasia Raymond. "Yes, yes, New York of course!" and again she

laughed. "Didn't you hear Clayton say so?"

Just then a sharp tap at the door was answered by Lady Anastasia, who

went quickly from beneath the curtain hung across it (in consideration,

no doubt, of the privacy my illness enjoined), but not before I had

caught once, and this time clearly, the tones of a voice that thrilled

to my life, the same that had haunted my delirious fancy, I now

remembered, through the last four-and-twenty hours.

I rose to my elbow impulsively, only to fall back again utterly

exhausted.

"Who was that speaking?" I asked, feebly; "can it be possible--" and I

wrung my hands.

"It was the ship's doctor," interrupted the woman I had heard called

Clayton by her mistress. "He had not time to do more than inquire about

you, I suppose, there are so many ill in the steerage; but he has been

very kind and will probably return."

"I hope so," I rejoined; "I should like to realize that voice as _his_.

It has haunted me very disagreeably in my dreams, and the tones are

those of an old, old acquaintance, one I should be sorry to see here."

"I do not believe you have an acquaintance on the ship," she said,

simply, "Under the circumstances any such person would certainly have

discovered himself; your situation would have moved a heart of stone."

"But it is sometimes wise for the wicked to lie _perdu_," I murmured,

and conjecture was busy in my brain. "I should be glad, too, to see the

captain of this vessel at his earliest convenience," I added, after a

pause.

"Will you be so good as to apprise him in person of my earnest wish? It

would be a real charity."

"Oh, certainly; but I am afraid he cannot come to-night. It is nearly

evening now, and he never leaves the deck at this hour, nor until very

late."

"To-morrow, then, I must insist on this interview, since I reflect about

it for several reasons."

"To-morrow he shall come," she said, sententiously; "and now try and

sleep again. It is very necessary you should gather strength, for we

shall be in port shortly, when all will be confusion."

I went to sleep, I remember, murmuring to myself: "The hands were the

hands of Jacob, but the voice was the voice of Esau;" and my bewildered

faculties found rest until the morning's dawn.

After a hasty toilet made by the careful hands of Mrs. Clayton, a

matutinal visit made by Mrs. or Lady Raymond, who always rose early as

she informed me, and a cup of tea, very soothing to my prostrated

nerves, the potentate of the Latona was duly announced.

Our ship's master was a tall, gaunt, sandy-haired man, with steady gray

eyes, hard features, and enormous hands and feet, the first freckled and

awkward, the last so long as very nearly to span the space between his

seat (a small Spanish-leather trunk) and the berth I reposed in. He

entered without his hat; and the swoop of the head he made to avoid the

entanglement of the curtain was supposed to do double duty, and serve as

a bow to the inmate of his state-room as well, for his I supposed it to

be at the time, and he did not contradict me.

"I hope you find yourself comfortable, marm, on board of my ship."

"And in your state-room, captain!" I interrupted promptly.

"Wall, you see it all belongs to me, kinder," he said, after seating

himself, as he rubbed his huge, projecting knees, plainly indicated

through his nankeen trousers, with his capacious, horny hands. "I'm not

very particular, though, where I sleep on shipboard, but at home there's

few more so."

"I thought a captain was more at home on shipboard than anywhere else,"

I pursued mechanically; "such is the theory at least."

"Oh, not at all, not at all; when he has a snug nest on land, with a

wife and children waiting to receive him. You might as well talk of a

man in the new settlements bein' more at home in his wagon than in his

neat, hewn-log cabin."

"A very good simile, captain, and one that kills the ancient theory

outright. Let me thank you, however, before we proceed further, for all

the kindness and attention I have received in this floating castle of

yours, both from you and others. I hope and believe that my companions

in misfortune have fared as well."

"Wall, they have not wanted for nothing as far as I knew--the poor baby

in particular;" and, as he spoke, he roughed his hair with one hand and

smiled into my face a huge, honest, gummy smile, inexpressibly

reassuring.

"The man is hideous and repulsive," I thought; "but infinitely

preferable, somehow, to the specimen of English aristocracy and her maid

who have constituted themselves so far my guardian angels"--a twinge of

ingratitude here, which I resented instantly by settling my patriotic

prejudices to be at the root of the thing, and rebuking my mistrust

sternly though silently. "Yet that voice--how could I be mistaken?" and

again I addressed myself to the task before me, having gotten through

all preliminaries.

While I sat hesitating as to what I should say, so as to both guard

against and conceal my suspicions from the captain's scrutiny, if,

indeed, he might be supposed to possess such a quality, I observed that

he drew from his pocket a long slip of newspaper, in which he appeared

to bury himself for a time, when not glancing furtively at me, as if

waiting impatiently for the coming revelation.

"I have sent for you, Captain Van Dorne," I said, at last, in very low

and even tones, not calculated to reach outside ears, however vigilant,

and yet not suppressed by any means to whispers--"I have sent for you,"

and my heart beat quickly as I spoke, "not merely to thank you for your

hospitable kindness, but because I wish, for reasons that I cannot now

explain, to place myself under your especial care until I reach my

friends."

"Certainly, certainly; but you _air_ among your friends already if you

could only think so," he answered, evasively, still caressing his potato

knees with large and outspread hands.

"Do not for one moment deem me unmindful of much kindness, or ungrateful

to those who have bestowed it," I hastened to explain. "Yet I cannot

deny that a fear possesses me that among your passengers may be found

one whom I esteem, not without sufficient cause, my greatest enemy."

"Poor thing! poor thing! what put such a strange fancy into your head?

An enemy in my ship! Why, there is not a man on board who would not cut

off his right hand rather than harm one hair of your poor, witless,

defenseless head! There was not a dry eye on the deck when you and the

rest wuz lifted from the raft!"

"I understand this prevalence of sympathy for misfortune perfectly, and

honor it; yet I have heard a voice since my immurement in this cabin

which must belong"--and I whispered the dreaded name--"to Mr. Basil

Bainrothe!"

As I spoke I eyed him steadily, and I fancied that his cheek flushed and

his eye wavered--that clear and honest eye which had given him a high

place in my consideration from the moment I met its gaze.

"You must have been delirious-like when you conceited you heerd that

strange voice," he said, presently. "I'll send you my passenger-list if

you choose, and you can read it over keerfully. I don't think you'll

find _that_ name, though, in its kolynms," shaking his head sagaciously.

"Captain Van Dorne, do you mean to say there is no such passenger in

your ship's list as Basil Bainrothe?" I asked, desperately.

"That's what I mean to say."

"Give me your honor on this point. It is a vital one to me. Your honor!"

He hesitated and looked around. Just at this moment of apparent

uncertainty, a slight tap was heard on the ground-glass eye above us

that threw a sullen and unwilling light upon the scene of our interview.

It seemed to nerve him strangely.

"On my word of honor, as an American seaman, I assure you that the name

of Basil Bainrothe is not on the ship's list at this present speaking;"

and, as he spoke, he held up his right hand, adding, as he dropped it,

doggedly, "Ef the man's on board I don't know it!"

"It is enough--I believe you, Captain Van Dorne. And now I want to ask

you, as a parting grace, to convey me yourself to the Astor House, and

place my watch" (detaching it from my neck as I spoke) "in the hands of

the proprietors as a proof of my honest intentions. For yourself, I

shall seek another opportunity."

"Not at all--not at all!" he interrupted. "Keep your watch, young lady.

No such pledge will be required by them proprietors; and, as to myself,

if it had not been for this paper," drawing from his pocket, and

flattening on his knees as he spoke, the slip I had before observed,

then glancing at me sharply, "I could never have believed that such a

pretty-spoken, pretty-behaved young creetur could have been _non com_.

But pshaw! what am I talking about? This paper is as old as last year's

krout! You don't keer nothing about seeing of it, do you, now?" and he

crumpled it in his hand.

"Not unless it concerns me in some way, Captain Van Dorne," I said,

coldly. His manner had suddenly become offensive to me, and I longed to

see him depart, having transacted my affairs, as far, at least, as I

deemed it prudent to insist on such transaction.

"It may be," I added, "that, on reaching the port of New York, a friend

or friends who expected me on the Kosciusko may be in waiting to receive

me; that is, if the fate of that vessel be not already known. In that

case, I shall not be obliged to avail myself of your services, and will

acquaint you; but, otherwise, promise that you will conduct me from the

ship yourself, either to the hotel or to your wife, as you prefer."

"Wall, I promise you," he said, doggedly, as he prepared literally to

undouble his long frame before executing another dive beneath my

door-guarding drapery, and with this brief assurance I was fain to rest

content.

At all events, I was reassured on one subject--those honest eyes, that

frank if ugly mouth had no acquaintance with lies, or the father of

them, I saw at once; and the voice of the ship's doctor had for the

nonce deceived my practised ear, overstrung by suspicion--enfeebled by

suffering.

So I rested calmly until the afternoon, with Mrs. Clayton sewing

silently by my side, when with a little tap Lady Anastasia (or Mrs.

Raymond, as she declared she preferred to be called by "Americans")

entered, bearing a basket in her hand, and wearing on her head a

Dunstable bonnet simply trimmed, which she came, she said, to place,

along with other articles of dress, at my disposal.

It had not occurred to me before that, in order to go on shore

respectably clad, some attire very different from a bed-gown would be

essential, and I could but feel grateful for such proofs of unselfish

consideration on the part of strangers, pitying both my indigence and

imbecility, and so expressed myself.

In accordance with their generous intentions, I submitted myself to be

arrayed by Mrs. Clayton and her mistress: first, in the flimsy black

silk gown now completed, on which I had seen my attendant working when I

first unclosed my eyes after long unconsciousness, and the measure of

which she had taken, while I lay in this condition, as coolly in all

probability as an undertaker measures a corpse for its shroud; secondly,

in a cardinal of the same material, a wrapping cut in the shape in vogue

at that period; thirdly, in certain loosely-fitting boots and gloves

with which I was fain to cover up my naked feet and blistered hands _in

forma pauperis_; and, lastly, in the collarette and cuffs provided by

the economic and considerate Lady Anastasia, composed of cotton lace!

The Dunstable bonnet was hung upon a peg in readiness, and I was kindly

counseled to lie still, "accoutred as I was," and exhausted by means of

such accoutrement as I felt, until evening should find us riding in our

harbor.

Then there was a little, low consulting at the door with the renowned

"ship's doctor," who positively refused to approach me because he had

just come from a case of ship-fever in the steerage, which he feared to

communicate to one in my precarious state, but who sent in his

imperative orders that I should have soup and sherry-cobbler forthwith,

and try and build up my strength for the time of debarkation--speaking

in a low, growling voice divested of its former clearness, but still

strangely resembling that of Basil Bainrothe!

"The poor man is so fagged out," said Mrs. Clayton, as she brought in my

broth and wine, "that his very voice is changed. He is a good soul, and

has shown you great interest. Some day you must send him a present, that

is, if you are able; but just now all you have to think of is getting

safe ashore. Lady Anastasia will go to her friends, probably, or to

those of the gentleman she is engaged to; but I do not mean to forsake

you until I see you better, and in good hands."

I know not how it was that my heart sank so strangely at this

announcement. The woman was kind--tender, even--and had probably saved

my life, and yet her presence to me was a punishment worse than pain, a

positive evil greater than any other.

"I shall go to the Astor House," I faltered. "The captain has promised

me his escort thither."

"Yes, yes, I know, he has told me all about it; but your friends may not

be in waiting, and it is simply our duty to see you in their hands. And

now drink your sangaree. See, I have broken a biscuit in the glass, and

it is well seasoned with lemon and nutmeg. There, now, that is right; a

few spoonfuls of soup, and you will feel strengthened for your

undertaking. I will sit quietly in the corner until you have your rest."

"No, I prefer to see Christian Garth before I try to sleep--the man who

steered our raft--and the young girl he saved, and the baby--let them

all come to me, and we will go on shore together."

I spoke these words with a sort of desperation, as though they contained

my last hope of justice or protection from a fate which, however

obscurely, seemed to threaten me, as we feel the thunder-storm brooding

in the tranquil atmosphere of summer.

"Christian Garth!" she repeated, looking at me over her tortoise-shell

spectacles, and, quietly drawing out a snuffbox of the same material,

she proceeded to fill her narrow nostrils therewith. "Why, that

shaggy-looking old sailor, and the girl, and the old negro woman and

child, went on shore at daylight this morning. He hailed a Jersey craft,

and they all left together. It is perfectly understood, though, that the

child is to be returned to you if you desire its company, but, if I were

situated as you are, and sure of its safety, I would never want to see

it again. It would be better off dead than living anyhow, under the

circumstances, poor, deformed creature--better for both of you."

The words came to me distinctly, yet as if from an immense distance, and

I seemed to see the small chamber lengthening as if it had been a

telescope unfolding, and the sallow woman with her hateful smile and

tightly-knotted, brindled hair seated in diminished size and

distinctness at its farthest extremity.

So had I felt on that fearful night when Evelyn had made her revelation

and received mine, and I did not doubt, even in my sinking state, that I

was under the influence of a powerful anodyne.

"Call the ship's doctor--I am dying!" were the last words I remember to

have articulated; then all was dark, and hours went by, of deep,

unconscious sleep.

It was night when I felt myself drawn to my feet, and roused to life by

the repeated applications of cold water to my face, "The anodyne was

over-powerful," I heard Mrs. Raymond say. "It is a shame to tamper with

such strong medicines."

"Oh, she has strength for any thing!" was Clayton's rejoinder. "I never

saw such a constitution--and he knew what he was doing."

"No doubt of that.--But, dear Miss Miriam, do speak to me. I am so

frightened at your lethargic condition.--I declare I am sorry I ever

consented to have any thing to do with this matter! See how she stands.

I cannot think it was right, Clayton, I cannot, indeed; I dislike the

whole drama."

"Do be quiet! She is coming to herself fast, and what will she think of

such expressions? You never had any self-control in your life, and you

are playing for great stakes now." These last words in a hoarse whisper.

"Nonsense! mother."

"Again! How often must I warn you?"

"Well, Clayton, then, now and forever."

"Here! rouse up, little one! We are fast anchored in port, and the

captain is waiting for us, for we go part of the way together, and our

escorts have all failed us--yours and mine. Nice fellows, are they not?"

I sat up and looked about me bewildered; yet I had heard distinctly

every word spoken in the last few minutes, and remembered them for

future observance, without having had the power to move or articulate a

remonstrance.

"Now, drink this strong coffee, and all will be well again," said

Clayton, putting a cup of the smoking beverage to my lips, which I

swallowed eagerly, instinctively. The effect was instantaneous, and I

was able to speak and stand, as well as hear and comprehend, while my

bonnet was being tied on, and my throat muffled in a veil, by the

dexterous fingers of Lady Anastasia.

When this process was completed, she stooped down and kissed me, and I

felt a hot tear fall upon my cheek as she rose again. In the next moment

I was clinging to the captain's arm, with a spasmodic feeling of relief

for which I could ill account. We passed across the plank which

connected the ship with the shore in utter darkness, guided by a

twinkling light far ahead, borne by a seaman, reached the dusky quay,

with its few flaring lamps, made dim by drizzling rain and summer mist,

and before many minutes we paused before one of a long line of coaches.

The captain handed me in, then, standing before the open door, seemed to

await the coming of some other person before taking his own place--the

dreaded Clayton, I knew; but I could not remonstrate against what seemed

an ordinary courtesy, and perhaps a step suggested by his innate notions

of propriety.

At any other time I might have agreed with him; but, feeble as I was,

and still bewildered, my whole object seemed to be to escape from the

sphere and power of those women, who had been most kind to me, yet whom

I instinctively dreaded and abhorred.

They came together, the mother and daughter, in their travesty of

mistress and maid--enough of itself to excite suspicion of foul

play--and climbed up the rickety steps of the hackney-coach, rejoicing

over their victim. It mattered not; the captain would make the fourth

passenger, and in his shadow I felt there were strength and security.

"What are you waiting for, Captain Van Dorne?" I had just feebly asked,

as the door snapped-to, and the driver mounted his box. A hand was

thrust through the window for all reply, and a card dropped upon my lap,

which I hastened to secure in the depths of my pocket. By the merest

chance, I found it there on the morrow, and later I comprehended its

import, so mysterious to me at the moment of perusal.

"My poor young lady, you must forgive me for disappointing you,

and hidin' the truth, for your own sake. May God bless and

restore you, and bring you to a proper sense of his mercies, is

the prayer of your servant to command,

"JOSEPH VAN DORNE."

My frame of mind was a very different one when I read this scrawl, from

that which bewildered and oppressed me on that never-to-be-forgotten

night of suffering and distress, both mental and physical. Formed of

those elements which readily react, courage and calmness had returned to

me before I read the oracle of our worthy shipmaster; for, in spite of

his disastrous dealing with me on that occasion, misguided as he was by

others, I have reason to so consider him.

But now the influence of the drug that had been given me so recently,

doubtless through want of judgment, by the ship's doctor, was felt in

every nerve; and, as the carriage rolled up the stony quay, I clung

convulsively to Mrs. Raymond, and buried my face and aching forehead in

her shoulder, with a strange revulsion of feeling.

"You dread the darkness," she said, kindly, putting her arm around me as

she spoke; "but it is only for a time; we shall soon come out into the

open lamplight of--"

"Broadway, New York," interrupted Clayton, sententiously; "a very poor

sight to see, to one who has lived abroad. Have you ever crossed the

waters, Miss Miriam? But I see you are quite faint and overcome. Here,

smell this ether, that the ship's doctor put up expressly for your use,

and recommended highly as a new restorative much in fashion in Paris."

Had the ship's doctor no name, then, that they never mentioned it, and

that he spoke in a demon's voice? His doses I had proved, and was

resolved to take no more of them, and I pushed away the phial, whose

cold glass nose was thrust obtrusively against my own--pushed it away

with all my strength, fast ebbing away as this was, even as I made the

effort.

The cruel potion had possession of me, and entered into every fibre of

my brain through the avenues prepared for it by the treacherous anodyne;

so that, enervated and intoxicated, I yielded passively, after a brief

struggle, to the power of the then newly-invented sedative, called

chloroform.

When the carriage stopped, or whither it transported me, or who lifted

my insensible form to the chamber prepared for me, I know not--never

knew. There was a faint reviving, I remember; a process of disrobing

gone through by the aid of foreign assistance (whose, I recognized

not), then I slumbered profoundly and securely through the entire night,

to recover no clearness of perception until a late hour on the following

morning.

CHAPTER VI.

I awoke, as I had done of old, after one of my lethargic seizures, from

a deep, unrefreshing slumber, with a lingering sense about me of

drowsiness and even fatigue.

I found myself lying on a broad, canopied bedstead, the massive posts of

which were of wrought rosewood, bare of draperies, as became the season,

save at the head-board, behind which a heavy curtain was dropped of

rose-colored damask satin.

Of the same rich material were composed the tester and the

lightly-quilted coverlet, thrown across the foot of the bed, over a fine

white Marseilles counterpane.

The chimney immediately opposite to me, as I lay, was of black marble,

and, instead of graceful Greek _caryatides_, bandaged mummies, or

Egyptian figures, supported the heavy shelf that surmounted the polished

grate. In the centre of this massive mantel-slab was placed a huge

bronze clock, and candelabra of the same material graced its corners.

In either recess of this chimney rosewood doors were situated, one of

which stood invitingly ajar, disclosing the bath-room, into which it

opened, with its accessories of white marble.

The other, firmly closed, seemed to be the outlet of the chamber--its

only one--with the exception of the four large Venetian windows, two on

either side of me as I lay, the sashes of which, warm as the season was,

were drawn closely down.

The furniture of this spacious chamber to which, as if by the touch of a

magician's wand, I found myself transported, was throughout solid and of

elegant forms, consisting as it did of _armoire_, toilet-table,

bookcase, _etagere_, writing and flower stands, tables and chairs, of

the richest rosewood.

At the foot of my bed was placed a console, supporting a huge Bible and

Prayer-book, bound alike in purple velvet, emblazoned with central suns

of gold--an arch-hypocrisy that was not lost on its object.

Freshly-gathered flowers were heaped in the vases of the floral stands,

filling the close, cool room with an overpowering fragrance. The carpet

of crimson and white seemed to the eye what it afterward proved to the

foot--thick, soft, and elastic; and harmonized well with the rich,

antique, and consistent furniture.

The sort of microscopic scrutiny that children manifest seemed mine--in

my unreasoning, half-convalescent state; and for a time I observed all

that I have described with a listless pleasure, difficult to analyze, a

sort of dreamy acceptance of my condition, the very memory of which

exasperated me, later, almost to self-contempt.

A crimson cord hung at one side of my bed, continued from a bell-wire at

some distance, the tassel of which I touched lightly, and, at the very

first signal, Mrs. Clayton appeared through the hitherto only unopened

door, to know and do my bidding.

The clock on the mantel-shelf struck nine as she stood beside me, and

made respectful inquiries concerning my wants and condition;

understanding which, she disappeared, to return a few minutes later,

followed by an ancient negress, bearing a silver waiter.

I recognized in this sable assistant (or thought I recognized at a

glance) my companion in shipwreck; but, upon making known my

convictions, was met with a prompt denial by the sable dame herself,

who, shaking her head, gave me to understand, in a few broken words,

that she "no understood English--only Spanish tongue!"

Her dress--handsome and Frenchified--her Creole coiffure, and the long

gray locks that escaped from her crimson kerchief bound over her ears,

as well as her more refined deportment, did indeed seem to discredit my

first idea, which came at last (notwithstanding these discrepancies) to

be fixed, and proved one link in the long chain of duplicity I untangled

later.

At the time, however, I gave it little thought, but partook with what

appetite I might of the choice and delicate repast provided for me, in

this truly princely hotel, whose fame I discovered had not been over

trumpeted. On my previous visits to New York, the Astor House had been

unfinished, and had made in its completion a new era certainly in the

"tavern-life" of that inhospitable city of publicans. When the delicious

coffee and snowy bread, the eggs of milky freshness, the golden butter,

the savory rice-birds, the appetizing fish, had each and all been merely

tasted and dismissed, and the exquisite China, in which the breakfast

was served, duly marveled at as an unprecedented extravagance on the

part even of John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Clayton came to me with kindly

offers of assistance in the performance of my toilet, still a matter of

difficulty in my feeble hands.

My long hair, yet tangled and clogged with sea-water, was to be at last

unbound and thoroughly combed, cleansed, and oiled, so that the black

and glossy braids, that had been my chief personal pride, might again be

wound about my head in the old classic fashion.

Then came the bath, with its reviving, rehabilitating process, and

lastly I assumed with the docility of a baby or a pauper the clean and

fragrant linen and simple wrapper that had been mysteriously provided

for me by the Lady Anastasia again, I could not doubt.

"All this must end to-day," I said, "when really clothed and in my right

mind." I requested writing-materials and more light to work by, and

composed myself to write to Dr. Pemberton (once again, I knew, in

Philadelphia), and request his assistance and protection in getting home

safely, and, if need be, in tracing Captain Wentworth.

"I suppose Captain Van Dorne has been too busy to call," I observed,

carelessly, as I prepared to commence my letter, "and Mrs. Raymond too

happy, probably, in getting safe to shore and her lover, to think of

me."

"They have both inquired for you," said Mrs. Clayton, as she arranged

pen, ink, and paper, before me, with her usual precision, while a grim,

sardonic smile lingered about her features; "several have called, but

none have been admitted."

"Who have called, Mrs. Clayton! Give me the cards immediately. I must,

must know," I rejoined, eagerly, pausing with extended hand to receive

them.

"Oh, there were no cards, and such as want to see you can come again.

There, now! write away, and never trouble your mind about strange

people. Have you sufficient light?"

And, as she spoke, she touched a cord which set at right angles with

the lower one the upper inside shutter of another window as she had

adjusted the first.

I wrote two hasty notes, one on further consideration to Captain

Wentworth himself, who might, after all, be at that very time in that

same hotel--"_Quien sabe_?" as Favraud used to say with his significant

shrug, which no Frenchman ever excelled or Spaniard equalled (albeit

they shrug severally).

My spirits rose with every word I wrote, and, when I got up from my

chair after sealing and directing my letters, a new and subtle energy

seemed to have infused itself through my frame. "There, I have finished,

Mrs. Clayton," I said, putting aside the implements I had been using.

"Now go, if you please, and bring to me the proprietor of this hotel. I

will give him my letters myself, since I have other business to transact

with him," and I laid my watch and chain on the table before me, ready

for his hand, not having lost sight of my early resolution. "But,

stay--before you go, be good enough to open the lower shutters and throw

up the windows. Cool as the weather is in this climate, I stifle for

air, and this close atmosphere, laden with fragrance, grows oppressive.

Who sent these flowers, by-the-by, Mrs. Clayton? or do they belong to

the magnificence of this idealized hotel?" She made no reply to any

thing I had been saying.

By this time, however, she had lowered the upper sashes of the windows

about a foot, and the fresh air of morning was pouring in, curling the

paper on the centre table and dispersing the noisome fragrance of the

flowers, in which I detected the morbid supremacy of the tuberose and

jasmine.

"I want to see the streets, the people," I said, approaching one of the

windows; "this artistic light is not at all the thing I need. I have no

picture to paint, not even my own face;" and, finding her unmoved, I

undertook to do the requisite work myself.

The sashes were shut away below by inside shutters, which resisted all

my efforts to stir them. After a moment's inspection, I perceived that

they were secured by iron screws of great strength and size; not, in

short, meant to be moved or opened at all. Again I essayed to shake them

convulsively one after the other--as you may sometimes see a tiger, made

desperate by confinement, grapple with the inexorable bars of his cage,

though certain of failure and defeat.

Overpowered by a sudden dismay that took entire possession of me, I sank

into one of the deep _fauteuils_ that extended its arms very opportunely

to receive me, and sat mutely for a moment, while anguish unutterable,

and conjecture too wild to be hazarded in speech, were surging through

my brain.

"I am too weak, I suppose, to open these shutters," I said at last,

feebly. "Be good enough to do it for me, Mrs. Clayton, or cause it to be

done immediately."

Was it not strange that up to this very moment no suspicion had clouded

my horizon since I woke in that sumptuous room?

"I cannot transcend my orders by doing any thing of the kind," she said

quietly, yet resolutely, as she pursued her avocation, that of dusting

with a bunch of colored plumes the delicate ornaments of the _etagere_

carefully one by one.

"Your authority! Who has dared to delegate to you what has no existence

as far as I am concerned?" I asked indignantly. "I will go instantly."

"You cannot leave this chamber until you receive outside permission,"

she interrupted, firmly planting herself at once between me and the door

through which I had seen her enter. "You must not think to pass through

my chamber, Miss Miriam. It is locked without, and there is no other

outlet."

"Woman!" I said, grasping her feebly yet fiercely, by the arm. "Look at

me! Raise those feline eyes to mine, if you dare, and answer me

truthfully: What means this mockery! Why have you been forced on me at

all? Where is Captain Van Dorne? What becomes of his promises? What

house is this in which I find myself a prisoner? Speak!"

"You can do nothing to make me angry," she rejoined, calmly. "I know

your condition, and pity and respect it, but I shall certainly fulfill

my part of this undertaking. Captain Van Dorne recognized you as Miss

Monfort by the description in the newspaper, as did my mistress, and for

your own welfare we determined to secure you and keep you safe until the

return of Mr. Bainrothe and your sisters from Europe. They will be here

shortly, and all you have to do is to be patient and behave as well as

you can until the time comes for your trial;" and she cast on me a

menacing look from her green and quivering pupils, indescribably feline.

My trial! Great Heaven! did they mean to turn the tables, then, and

destroy me by anticipating my evidence? I staggered to a chair and again

sat down silent confounded. "Where am I, then!" I feebly asked at

length.

"In the establishment of Dr. Englehart," she made answer, "a private

madhouse."

"God of heaven! has it come to this?" I covered my eyes with my hands

and sobbed aloud, while tears of pride and passion rained hotly over my

cheeks. This outburst was of short duration. "I will give them no

advantage," I considered. "My violence might be perverted. There are

creatures too cold and crafty to conceive of such a thing as natural

emotion, and passion with them means insanity. Thank God, the very power

to feel bears with it the power of self-government, and is proof of

reason. I will be calm, and if my life endures put them thus to

shame."--"You say that I am in the asylum of Dr. Englehart?" I asked,

after a pause, during which she had not ceased to dust the furniture and

arrange the bed in its pristine order, speckless, with lace-trimmings,

pillow-cases smooth as glass, and sheets of lawn, and counterpane of

snow. "If so, call my physician hither; I, his patient, have surely a

right to his prompt services."--"It is just possible," I thought, "that

interest or compassion may, one or both, still enlist him in my cause--I

can but try."

A slight embarrassment was evidenced in her countenance as I made this

request. It vanished speedily.

"He is absent just at this time," she answered, quickly. "When he

returns I will make known your wish to him, if, indeed, he does not call

of his own accord."

"Be done with this shallow farce," I exclaimed, harshly. "It shames

humanity. Acknowledge yourself at once the faithful agent of a tyrant

and felon, or a pair of them, and I shall respect you more. Confess that

it was the voice of Basil Bainrothe I heard at my cabin-door, and that

Captain Van Dorne was imposed upon by that specious scoundrel, even to

the point of being conscientiously compelled to falsehood.

"I deny nothing--I acknowledge nothing," she said, deliberately. "You

and your friends can settle this between yourselves when they arrive.

Until then, you need not seek to tamper with me--it will be useless; and

I hope you are too much of a lady to be insulting to a person who has

no choice but to do her duty."

She could not more effectually have silenced me, nor more utterly have

crushed my hopes. Yet again I approached her with entreaties.

"I hope you will not refuse to mail my notes, even under these trying

circumstances," I said, extending them to her.

"You can ask Dr. Englehart to do so when he comes," he answered, gently;

"for myself, I am utterly powerless to serve you beyond the walls of

this chamber."

"And how long is this close immurement to continue?" I asked again,

after another dreary pause. "Am I not permitted to breathe the external

air--to exercise? Is my health to be unconsidered?"

"I know nothing more than I have told you," she replied. "I am directed

to furnish you with every means of comfort--with books, flowers,

clothing, musical instrument, even, if you desire it; but, for the

present, you will not leave these walls, and you will see no society.

The doctor has decided that this is best."

"And whence did he derive his authority?"

"Oh, it was all arranged between him and Mr. Bainrothe, your guardeen"

(for thus she pronounced this word, ever hateful to me), "long ago;

before he went to France, I suppose. Captain Van Dorne had nothing to do

but hand you over."

"Captain Van Dorne! To think those honest eyes could so deceive me!" and

I shook my head wofully.

When I looked up again from reverie, Mrs. Clayton had settled herself to

work with a basket of stockings on her knees, which she appeared to be

assorting assiduously.

There she sat, spectacles on nose, thimble on twisted finger, ivory-egg

in hand, in active preparation for that work, woman's _par excellence_,

that alone rivals Penelope's. Surely that assortment of yellow,

ill-mated, half-worn, and holey hose, was a treasure to her, that no

gold could have replaced, in our dreary solitude (none the less dreary

for being so luxurious). I envied her almost the power she seemed to

have to merge her mind in things like these; and saw, for the first time

in my life, what advantages might lie in being commonplace.

It was now nearly the end of July. My birthday occurred in the middle of

September. I thought I knew that, as soon as possible after my majority,

Mr. Bainrothe's conditions would be laid before me.

I could not, dared not, believe that my captivity would be lengthened

beyond that time. I resolved that I would condone the past, and go forth

penniless, if this were exacted in exchange for liberty at the end of a

month and a half from this time.

Six weeks to wait! Were they not, in the fullness of their power, to

crush and baffle me! Six weary years! For, during all this time, I felt

that the unexplained mystery that weighed upon my life would gather in

force and inflexibility. Death would have seemed to have set its seal

upon it, in the estimation of Captain Wentworth, as of all others. He

would never know that the sea, which swallowed up the Kosciusko, had

spared the woman he loved, nor receive the explanation that she alone

could give him, of the mystery he deplored.

Before I emerged from my prison, he might be gone to the antipodes, for

aught I knew, and a barrier of eternal silence and absence be interposed

between us. So worked my fate! These reflections continued to haunt and

oppress me, by night and day, and life itself seemed a bitter burden in

that interval of rebellious agony, and in that terrible seclusion, where

luxury itself became an additional engine of torture.

Days passed, alternately of leaden apathy and bitter gloom, varied by

irrepressible paroxysms of despair. Whenever I found myself alone, even

for a few moments, I paced my room and wept aloud, or prayed

passionately. There were times when I felt that my Creator heard and

pitied me; others when I persuaded myself his ear was closed inexorably

against me.

I suffered fearfully--this could not last. The accusation brought

against me by my enemies seemed almost ready to be realized, when my

body magnanimously assumed the penalty the soul was perhaps about to

pay, and drifted off to fever.

Then, for the first time, came the man I had until then believed a myth,

and sat beside me in the shadow, and administered to me small, mystic

pellets, that he assured me, in low, husky whispers, and foreign accent,

would infallibly cure my malady--my physical one, at least; as for the

mind, its forces, he regretted to add, were beyond such influence!

For a moment, the wild suspicion intruded on my fevered brain that this

leech was no other than Basil Bainrothe himself, disguised for his own

dark purposes; but the tall, square, high-shouldered form that rose

before me to depart (taller, by half a head, than the man I suspected of

this fresh deception), and the angular movements and large extremities

of Dr. Englehart, dispelled this delusion forever. After all, might he

not be honest, even if a tool of Bainrothe's?

I took the sugared minature pills--the novel medicine he had left for

me--faithfully, through ministry of Mrs. Clayton's, and was benefited

by them; and, when he came again, as before, in the twilight, I was able

to be installed in the great cushioned chair he had sent up for me, and

to bear the light of a shaded lamp in one corner of the large apartment.

Dr. Englehart approached me deferentially, and, without divesting

himself of the light-kid gloves which fitted his large hands so closely,

he clasped my wrist with his finger and thumb, and seemed to count my

pulses.

"Ver much bettair," was his first remark, made in that disagreeable,

harsh, and husky voice of his, while he bent so near me that the aroma

of the tobacco he had been smoking caused me to cough and turn aside.

Still, I could not see his face, for the immense bushy whiskers he wore,

nor his eyes, for the glasses that covered them, nor his teeth, even,

for the long, fierce mustache that swept his lips; and when, after a

brief visit, he rose and was gone again, there remained only in my mind

the image of a huge and hairy horror--a sort of bear of the Blue

Mountains, from the return of which or whom I fervently hoped to be

delivered.

"Send him word I am better, Mrs. Clayton," I entreated; "I cannot see

him again, he is so repulsive; and, if you have a woman's heart in your

breast, never leave me alone with him, or with Mr. Bainrothe, when he

calls, for one moment--they inspire me equally with terror

indescribable," and I covered my face to hide its burning blushes.

"Look up, Miss Monfort, and listen to me," said Mrs. Clayton, at last,

regarding me keenly, with her warped forefinger uplifted in her usual

admonitory fashion, but with an expression on her face of interest and

sympathy such as I had never witnessed there before. "A new light has

broken just now upon my understanding; I can't tell how or whence it

came, but here it is," pressing her hand to her brow; "I believe you

have been misrepresented to me--but that is neither here nor there. I

shall watch you closely and faithfully until we part--all the more that

I do not believe you any more crazy than I am; I half suspected this

before, but I know it now." She paused, then continued: "I should have

to tell you my life's secret if I were to explain to you why Mr.

Bainrothe's interests are so dear to me, so vital even, and I will not

conceal from you that I knew your guardeen's good name depends on your

confinement here until you come of age. After that it will only be

necessary for you to sign a few papers, and all will be straight

again--no harm or insult is designed. To these I would never have lent

myself in any way--ill as you think of me. And as long as we continue

together I will guard your good name as I would do that of my own dear

daughter--that is, if I had one. You shall receive no visitor alone."

She spoke with a feeling and dignity of which I had scarcely believed

her capable, shrewd and sensible as I knew her to be, and far above the

woman she called her mistress, in a certain _retenu_ of manner and

delicacy of deportment, usually inseparable from good-breeding.

I could not then guess how acceptable, to her and the person she was

chiefly interested in, were these signs of my aversion for Basil

Bainrothe, and what sure means they were of access to the only tender

spot in the obdurate heart of Rachel Clayton.

Certain it is that, from these expressions, I derived the first

consolation that had come to me in my immurement, and from that hour the

solemn farce of keeper and lunatic ceased to be played between us two.

From such freedom of communication on my jailer's part, I began to hope

for additional information, which never came. It was in vain that I

conjured her to tell me where my prison was situated, whether at the

edge of the city, or far away in the country, or to suffer me to have a

glimpse from a window of my vicinity. To all such entreaties she was

pitiless, and I was left to that vague and vain conjecture which so

wears the intellect.

In the absence of all possibility of escape, it became a morbid and

haunting wish with me to know my exact locality. That it could be no

great distance from the city of New York, if not within its limits, I

felt assured, from the expedition with which my transit from the ship

had been effected.

During the first three weeks of my confinement the deep silence that

prevailed about me had led me to adopt the opinion that I was the

occupant of a _maison de sante_. I had once driven past one on Staten

Island, where a friend of my father's--about whose condition he came to

inquire personally--had been immured for years. I did not alight with

him when he left the carriage to make these inquiries, but I perfectly

remembered the old gray stone building, with its ancient elms, and the

impression of gloom and awe it had left on my mind. But this idea was

presently dispelled.

I was awakened one morning, in the fourth week of my sojourn in

captivity, by the sound of chimes long familiar to my ear, the duplicate

of which I had not supposed to be in existence. At first I feared it was

some mirage of the ear, so to speak, instead of eye, that reflected back

that fairy melody, which had rung its accompaniment to my whole

childhood and youth; but, when, after the lapse of seven days, it was

repeated, I became convinced that its reality was unquestionable, and

that neither impatience nor indignation had so impaired my senses as to

reproduce those sounds through the medium of a fevered imagination.

Were these delicious bells, a recent addition to the cupola of our grim

asylum, bestowed by some benevolent hand that sought to mark and lend

enchantment to the holy Sabbath-day--even for the sake of the

irresponsible ones within its walls--or was I indeed--? But of this

there could be no question--I dared not hazard such conjecture lest it

drive me mad in reality--I must not!

I groped in thick darkness, and time itself was only measured now by

those sweet chimes, so like our own, and yet so far away. My very clock

one morning was found to have stopped, and was not again repaired or set

in motion. Papers I never saw, had never seen since I came to dwell in

shadow, save that single one so ostentatiously spread before me,

announcing the loss of the Kosciusko and her passengers--a refinement of

cruelty, on the part of those who sent it, worthy of a Japanese.

Rafts had been launched and lost, the survivors stated (the men who had

seized the long-boat, to the exclusion of the women and children); the

sea had swallowed all the remainder. A later statement might refute the

first, but even then none could know the truth with regard to my

identity, for would not Basil Bainrothe control the publication as he

pleased, and make me dead if he listed--dead even after the rescue?

Yet Hope would sometimes whisper in her daring moods; "All this shall

pass away, and be as it had not been. Be of good heart, Miriam, and do

not let them kill you; live for Mabel--live for Wentworth!"

Then, with bowed head, and silent, streaming tears, my soul would climb

in prayer to the footstool of the Most High, and the grace, which had

never come to me before, fell over me like a mantle in this sad

extremity.

CHAPTER VI.

Unfaltering in her respectful demeanor toward me was Mrs. Clayton from

the time of the little scene I have recently described. What new and

sudden light had broken in upon her I never knew, but I supposed at the

time that the flash of conviction had gone home to her mind with regard

to the baseness of Bainrothe and the iniquity of his proceedings,

founded on the fear I had expressed of his solitary presence, and the

insight she had gained into my character.

Watching none the less strictly, she gradually relaxed that personal

surveillance that is ever so intolerable to the proud and

delicate-minded, and those suggestions that, however well intended, had

been so irritating to me from such a source. She no longer urged me to

read, or sew, or eat, or take exercise; but, retiring into her own work

(whence she could observe me at her pleasure, for her door was always

set wide open, and her face turned in my direction), she employed or

feigned to employ herself in her inexhaustible stocking-basket or

scollop-work, either one the last resource of idiocy, as it seemed to

me.

Left thus to myself in some degree, I unclosed the leaves of the

bookcase, and surveyed its grim array of "classics"--all new and

unmarked by any name, or sign of having been read--and from them I

selected a few worthies, through whose pages I delved drearily and

industriously, and most unprofitably it must be confessed. The only

living sensations I received from the contents of that bookcase were, I

am ashamed to acknowledge, from a few odd volumes of memoirs, and

collections of travels that I had happened to find stowed away behind

the others. The rest seemed sermons from the stars.

Captain Cook's voyages and LeVaillant's descriptions did stir me very

slightly with their strong reality, and make me for a few hours forget

myself and my captivity; but all the rest prated at me like parrots,

from stately, pragmatical Johnson down to sentimental, maudlin Sterne.

I found them intolerable in the mood in which I was, nothing so

exhausting as the abstract! and closed the book desperately to resume my

diary, neglected since the awful events of Beauseincourt, but always to

me a resource in time of trouble and of solitude. Of pens, ink, paper,

there was no lack, and I wrote one day, Penelope-wise, what I destroyed

the next. Yet this very "jotting down" impressed upon my brain the few

incidents of my prison-house recorded here, that might otherwise have

faded from my memory in the twilight of monotony.

I had no need to sew. Fair linen and a sufficiency of other plain

wearing-apparel, including summer gowns, I found laid carefully in my

drawers, and the creole negress brought in my clothes well ironed and

carefully mended, to be laid away by the orderly hands of Mrs. Clayton.

Once, during the temporary illness of this dragon (whose bed or lair was

placed absolutely across the door of egress from her closet, so as to

block the way or make it difficult of access), the creole, in an

unavoidable contingency like this, came with a pile of clothing in her

arms to lay the pieces herself in the bureau, by direction of my jailer,

and thus revealed herself.

By the merest accident I had found in the lining of my purse two pieces

of gold (the rest of my money had been spirited away with the belt that

contained it, or the leather had been destroyed by the action of the

saltwater), and one of these I hastened to bestow on the attendant,

signifying silence by a gesture as I did so.

I knew this wretch to be wholly selfish and mercenary, from my

experience of her on the raft--for that she was the same negress I had

long ceased to doubt--and I determined, while I had an opportunity of

doing so, to enter a wedge of confidence between us in the only possible

way.

"Sabra," I whispered, "what became of the young girl, Ada Lee, and the

deformed child? It surely can do no harm to tell me this, and I know you

understand me perfectly."

"No, honey, sartinly not; 'sides, I is tired out of speakin' Spanish,"

in low, mumbling accents. "Well, den, dat young gal gone to 'tend on

Mrs. Raymond, and, as fur de chile, dey pays me to take kear of dat in

dis very house ware you is disposed of. Dat boy gits me a heap of

trouble and onrest of nights, dough, I tells you, honey; but I is well

paid, and dey all has der reasons for letting him stay here, I

spec'"--shaking her head sagaciously--"dough dey may be disappinted yit,

when de time comes to testify and swar! De biggest price will carry de

day den, chile; I tells you all," eying the gold held closely in her

palm.

I caught eagerly at the idea of the child's presence, though the rest

was Greek to my comprehension until long afterward, when, in untangling

a chain of iniquity difficult to match, it formed one important but

additional link.

"Poor little Ernie! I would give so much to see him," I said. "Ask Dr.

Englehart to let him come to see me, Sabra, and some day I will reward

you"--all this in the faintest whisper. "But Mrs. Raymond--where is she?

Does she never come here? I desire earnestly to speak with her. Can't

you let her know this? Try, Sabra, for humanity's sake."

At this juncture the head of Mrs. Clayton was thrust forth from its

shell, turtle-wise, and appeared peering at the door-cheek.

"You have been there long enough to make these clothes instead of

putting them away, old woman," was the sharp rebuke that startled the

pretended Dinah to a condition of bustling agitation, and induced her to

shut up one of her own shrivelled hands in closing the drawer, with a

force that made her cry aloud, and, when released, wring it with agony,

that drew some words in the vernacular. "What makes you suppose Miss

Monfort wants to hear your chattering, old magpie that you are?"

continued Mrs. Clayton, throwing off her mask. "Now walk very straight,

or the police shall have you next time you steal from a companion.

Remember who rescued you on the Latona, and on what conditions, and take

care how you conduct yourself in the future. Do you understand me?"

After this tirade, which sorely exhausted her, Mrs. Clayton relapsed

into silence; and now it was my time to speak and even scold. I said:

"Now that the Spanish farce is thrown aside, it is hard indeed that I

cannot even be allowed to exchange a few words with a laundress in my

solitary condition--hard that I should be pressed to the wall in this

fiendish fashion. This woman was telling me of the presence of a little

child in the house, and I have desired permission to see it by way of

diversion and occupation, I have asked her to apply to Dr. Englehart."

"The child shall come to you, Miss Monfort, whenever you wish," said

Mrs. Clayton, with ill-disguised eagerness. "This woman is not the

proper person to apply to, however, and it is natural you should feel

concerned about it, now that you are able to think and feel again. You

know, of course, it is the boy of the wreck."

"Yes, very natural. Its mother died in my arms, if I am not mistaken in

the identity of the child; and fortunately--" I paused here, arrested by

some strange instinct of prudence, and decided not to show further

interest in his fate.

He might be inquired for, and traced even, I reflected, and thus my own

existence be brought to light. Selfishly, as well as charitably, would I

cherish him. Little children had ever been a passion with me, but this

poor, repulsive thing was the "_dernier ressort_ of desolation."

That very evening I heard the husky and guttural voice of Dr. Englehart

in the adjoining chamber, or rather in the closet of Mrs. Clayton, a

mere anteroom originally, as it seemed, to the large apartment I

occupied.

It was very natural that in her ill condition my dragon should seek

medical aid, and I paid no further attention to the propinquity of this

unpleasant visitor than I could help--sitting quietly by my shaded lamp,

absorbed in the Psalter, in which I found nightly refuge.

He came in at last, after tapping very lightly on the door-panel,

unsolicited and unexpected, to my presence--the same inscrutable,

hirsute horror I had seen before, with his trudging, scraping walk, his

square and stalwart frame, his gloved extremities, his light,

blue-glasses, hat and cane in hand, a being as I felt to chill one's

very marrow.

"Is it true vat I hear," he asked, pausing at some distance, "dat you

vant to have dat leetle hompback chilt for a companion, Miss Monfort?"

"It is true, Dr. Englehart."

"And vat can your motif be? Heh? I must study dat for a leetle before I

can decide de question, or even trost him as a human being in your

hands."

"Lunatics are rarely governed by motives at all," I replied, "only

impulses. I want human companionship, however, that is all. I sicken in

this solitude--I am dying of mental inanition."

"It is true, you look delicate indeed, I am pained to see." The accent,

was forgotten here for a moment, and an expression of real sympathy was

perceivable in his low, husky voice. "Command me in any way dat accords

wid my duty," he continued, "yes! de boy shall come! To interest, to

amuse you, is perhaps--to cure!"

"Thank you; I shall await his advent anxiously; be careful not to

disappoint me."

"Oh, not for vorlds!"

"You are very kind; I believe, though, that is all we have to say to one

another, Dr. Englehart."

"You are bettair, then?" he said, advancing steadily toward me in spite

of this dismissal. "You need no more leetle pill? Are you quite sure of

dat?"

"Not now, at least, Dr. Englehart."

"Permit me, then, to feel your pulse vonce more. I shall determine den

more perfectly dis vexing subject of your sanity."

"Thank you; I decline your opinion on a matter so little open to

difference. Be good enough to retire, Dr. Englehart. Let me at least

breathe freely in the solitude to which I am consigned."

"I mean no offence, yonge lady," he said, meekly, falling back to the

centre-table on which was burning my shaded astral lamp--for I had left

it as he approached, instinctively to seek the protection of an

interposing chair, on the back of which I stood leaning as I spoke.

He, too, remained standing, with one hand pressed firmly backward on the

top of the table, in front of which he poised himself, gesticulating

earnestly yet respectfully.

His position was an error of mistaken confidence in his own make-up,

such as we see occur every day among those even long habituated to

disguise.

As he stood I distinctly saw a line of light traced between his cheek

and one of his bushy side-whiskers.

That line of light let in a flood of evidence. The man was an impostor,

a tool, as criminal as his employer--not the footprint on the sand was

more suggestive to Robinson Crusoe than that luminous streak to me, nor

the cause of wilder conjecture.

Yet I betrayed nothing of my amazement I am convinced, for, after

standing silently for a time and almost in a suppliant attitude before

me, Dr. Englehart departed, and for many days I saw him not again.

An object that looked not unlike a small, solemn owl, stood in the

middle of the floor, regarding me silently when I awoke very early on

the following morning.

At a glance I recognized poor little Ernie, and singularly enough, he

knew and remembered me at once.

"Ernie good boy now," he said as he came toward me with his tiny claw

extended. "Lady got cake in pocket, give Ernie some?" Not only did he

recall me, it was plain, but the incident that saved his life, and the

rebukes he had received on the raft for his refusal to partake of briny

biscuit, which no persuasion, it may be remembered, had availed to make

him taste--even when devoured by the pangs of hunger. I tried in vain,

however, to recall him to some remembrance of his poor mother. On that

point he was invulnerable; the abstract had no charm for him or meaning.

He dealt only in realities and presences.

A new element was infused into my solitude from this time. In this child

I lived, breathed, and had my being, until later events startled my

individuality once more into its old currents of existence. Not that I

merged myself entirely in Ernie, sickly, wayward, fitful, ugly little

mite that he was undeniably. Nay, rather did I draw him forcibly into my

own sphere of being and find nutrition in this novel element.

So grudgingly had Nature fulfilled her obligations in the case of this

poor stunted infant, that, at two and a half years of age, he had not

the usual complement of teeth due a child of eighteen months, and was

suffering sorely from the pointing up of tardy stomach-teeth through

ulcerated gums.

To attend to and heal his bodily ailments occupied me entirely at first,

and finally, finding him ill cared for, I made him a little pallet on my

sofa and kept him with me by night and day. Surely such devotion as he

manifested in return for my scant kindness to him few mothers have

received from their offspring. To sit silently at my feet while I talked

to him, or do my bidding, seemed his chief pleasures, as they might not,

could not have been, had he been strong, and active, and more soundly

constituted. As it was, no more loyal creature existed, nor did the

Creator ever enshrine deeper affections or quicker perceptions in any

childish frame. Weird, and wise, and witty as AEsop was this child, like

him deformed; and to draw out his quaint remarks, read him fresh from

his Maker's hand--this warped, and tiny, imperfect volume of

humanity--was to me an ever-new puzzle and delight. Severity he had been

used to of late, I saw plainly. He shrank with winking eyes from an

uplifted hand, even if the gesture were one of mere amazement, or

affection, and sat patiently, like a little well-trained dog, when he

saw food placed before me, until invited to partake thereof. His manner

was wistful and deprecating even to pathos, and I longed for one burst

of passion, one evidence of self-will, to prove to myself that I, like

others he had been recently thrown with, was not the meanest of all

created creatures--a baby's despot!

Oh, better than this the cap and bells, and infant tyranny forever, and

the wildest freaks of baby folly. He suffered silently, as I have seen

no other child do, uncomplainingly even, and at such times would sink

into moods of the blackest gloom, like those of an old, gouty subject.

Hypochondria, baby as he was, seemed already to have fixed his fangs

upon him. He had days of profound melancholy, when nothing provoked a

smile, and others of bitter, silent fretting, inconceivably distressing;

again there were periods of the wildest joy, only restrained by that

reticence which had become habitual, from positive boisterousness.

All this I could have compelled into subservience, of course, by

substituting fear for affection. It is not a difficult matter for the

strong and cunning to cow and crush the spirit of a little child; no

great achievement, after all, nor proof of power, though many boast of

it as such. Strength and hardness of heart are all one requires for

this external victory; but human souls are not to be so governed (God be

praised for this!), and love and respect are not to be compelled.

It is the error of all errors to suppose that, because a child has a

sickly frame or imperfect animal organization, it is just or profitable

to give it over to its own devices, and consign it to indolence and

ignorance. Alas! the vacancy that begets fretfulness, and crude,

capricious desires, the confusion of images that arises from partial

understanding, are far more wearing to the nerves of an intelligent

infant than the small labor the brain undertakes, if any, indeed, be

needed, in mastering ideas properly presented, and suitable to the

condition of the sufferer. One might as well forbid the hand to grasp,

the eye to see, nay, more, it will not do to confound the child of

genius with the fool, or to suppose that the one needs not a mental

aliment of which the other is incapable. Feed well the hungry mind, lest

it perish of inanition. It is a sponge in infancy that imbibes ideas

without an effort; it is a safety-valve through which fancy and poetry

conduct away foul vapors; it is an alembic, retaining only the pure and

valuable of all that is poured into it, to be stored for future use. It

is a lightning-rod that conducts away from the body all superfluous

electricity. It does not harm a sensible child to put it to study early,

but it destroys a dull one. Let your poor soil lie fallow, but harvest

your rich mould, and you shall be repaid, without harm to its fertility.

Ideas were balm to Ernie, even as regarded his physical suffering. His

enthusiasm rose above it and carried him to other spheres.

Some illustrated volumes of "Wilson's Ornithology," which I found in

the bookcase, proved to be oil on troubled waters in Ernie's case; and

before long he knew, without an effort, the name of every bird in the

two folios of prints, and would come of his own accord to repeat and

point them out to me.

I found, to my amazement, that, when a cage of canaries was brought in

and hung in the bath-room at my request for his amusement, he

discriminated and gravely averred that no birds like those were to be

found in his big book, though yellow hammers and orioles were there in

their native colors, that might have deceived a less observant eye into

a delusion as to their identity with our pretty importation.

Verses, remarkable for rhyme and rhythm both, when repeated to him a few

times with scanning emphasis, took root in that fertile brain which

piled his compact forehead so powerfully above his piercing, deep-set

eyes, and fell from his infant lips in silvery melody as effortless and

spontaneous as the trickling of water or the singing of birds in the

trees.

Day by day I saw the little, wistful face relaxing from the hard-knot

expression, so to speak, of sour and serious suffering, and assuming

something akin to baby joyousness, and the small, warped figure, so low

that it walked under my dropped and level hand, acquiring security of

step and erectness of bearing. I knew little of the treatment required

for spinal disease, but common-sense taught me that, in order to effect

a cure, the vertebral column must be relieved as much as possible from

pressure, and allowed to rest. So I persuaded him to lie down a great

part of the time, and contrived for him a little sustaining brace to

relieve him when he walked.

I fed him carefully; I bathed him tenderly, and robbed his weary,

aching limbs to rest, so that before many weeks the change was

surprising, and the success of my treatment evident to all who saw

him--the comprehensive "all" being myself and two attendants.

Dr. Englehart had been suggested in the beginning by Mrs. Clayton, as

his medical attendant, but rejected by me with a shudder, that seemed

conclusive; yet one evening, unsummoned by me, and as far as I knew by

any other, he walked calmly into my apartment, ostensibly to see the

little invalid--his charge as well as mine.

For a moment the extravagant idea possessed me that, in spite of

appearances, I had done this man injustice, and that he came in reality

for humane purposes alone; wore his disguise for these.

This delusion was soon dissipated, as with audacity (no doubt

characteristic, though not before evidenced to me), he seated himself

complacently and uninvited, and, disposing of his hat and stick, settled

himself down for a _tete-a-tete_, an affair which, if medical, usually

partakes of the confidential.

"Your little _protege_, Miss Monfort," he said, huskily, "seems to be a

serious sufferer," and for a moment dropping his accent while he rubbed

his gloved hands together as with an ill-repressed self-gratification;

"come, tell me now what you are doing for his benefit," again

artistically assuming a foreign accentuation.

In a few words I described my course of treatment and its success.

"All very well," he responded, hoarsely, "as far as it goes; but I am

convinced that much severer treatment will he necessaire--"

"I think not," I replied, curtly; "and certainly nothing of the kind

will be permitted by me while I have charge of this poor infant."

"A few leetle pills, then, for both mother and child;" he suggested,

humbly.

"You are mistaken if you imagine any relationship to exist between Ernie

and myself," I answered, calmly, never dreaming at the moment of covert

or intended insult. "I might as well inform you at once, that I am Miss,

not Mrs. Monfort; you should he guarded how you make mistakes of that

nature."

And my eye flashed fire, I felt, for I now heard him chuckling low in

the shadow, in which he so carefully concealed himself.

"I shall remembair vat you say," he observed, "and try to do bettair

next visit; but all dis time I delay in de execution of my mission here.

See, I have brought you von lettair; now vat will you do to reward me?"

Holding it high above my head, in a manner meant, no doubt, to be

playful, and to suggest a game of snatch, perhaps, such as his peers

might have afforded him, he displayed his treasure to my longing eyes,

"but I sat with folded arms.

"If the letter brings me good news, I shall thank you warmly, Dr.

Englehart; if not, I shall try to believe you unconscious of its

contents."

"Tanks from your lips would, indeed, seem priceless," he remarked,

courteously, as with many bows and shrugs he laid it on the table before

me, bringing his shaggy head by such means much closer to my hand than I

cared to know it should be, under any circumstances.

With a gesture of inexpressible disgust, regretted the next moment, as I

reflected that, to bring me this letter, he might be overstepping common

rules, I raised the envelope to the light and recognized, to my intense

disappointment, the well-known characters of Bainrothe's--small, rigid,

neat, constrained.

My heart, which a moment before had beat audibly to my own ear, sank

like a stone in my breast, and I sat for a time holding the letter

mutely, uncertain how to proceed. Should I return it unread, and thus

hurl the gauntlet in the traitor's face, or be governed by expedience

(word ever so despised by me of old), and trace the venom of the viper,

by his trail, back to his native den?

After a brief conflict of feeling, I determined on the wiser

course--that of self-humiliation as a measure of profound policy.

I broke the seal, the well-known "dove-and-vulture" effigy which he

called in heraldry "The quarry" and claimed as his rightful crest. Very

significantly, indeed, did it strike me now, though I had jested on the

subject so merrily of old with Evelyn and George Gaston.

The letter was of very recent date, and ran as follows--I have the

original still, and this is an exact copy:

"On September 1st, or as soon thereafter as feasible, I shall call to

see you, Miriam, in your retirement, which I am glad to hear has so far

been beneficial. Should I find you in a condition to _make_ conditions,

I shall lay before you a very advantageous offer of marriage I had

received for you before your shipwreck. Should you accept this offer,

and attach your signature to a few papers that I shall bring with me

(papers important to the respectability of your whole family as well as

my own), I shall at once resign to you your father's house and the

guardianship of Mabel. The chimera that alarmed you to frenzy can have

no further existence, either in fact or fancy. I am about to contract an

advantageous marriage with a foreign lady of rank, wealth, and beauty,

to whom I hope soon to introduce you. I need not mention her name, if

you are wise. Be patient and cheerful; cultivate your talents, and take

care of your good looks--no woman can afford to dispense with these,

however gifted; and you will soon find yourself as free as that

'chartered libertine' the air, for which last two words I am afraid you

will be malicious enough to substitute the name you will not find

appended, of your true friend and guardian, B.B."

Had Wentworth spoken, then? Did he know of my immurement? Was it his

beloved presence, his dear hand, that were to be made the prize of my

silence and submission? Was the bitter pill of humiliation I was now

swallowing to be gilded thus? No, no--a thousand times, no! He was not

the man with whom to make such conditions--the man I loved--nay

worshiped almost. He was of the old heroic mould, that would have

preferred any certainty to suspense, and death itself to an instant's

degradation.

He deemed me dead, and the obstacle that had risen between us needed no

explanation now. The waves had swallowed all necessities like this. But,

had he known me the inmate of a mad-house, no bolts or bars would have

withheld him from my presence. His own eyes could alone have convinced

him of such ruin as was alleged against me by these friends.

From this survey of my utter helplessness I turned suddenly to confront

the deep, dark, salient eyes of the disciple of Hahnemann, real or

pretended, fixed upon me with a glance that even his blue spectacles

could not deprive of its subtle intensity.

Where had I seen before orbs of the same snake-like peculiarity of

expression, or caught the outline of the profile which suddenly riveted

my gaze as the light partially revealed it, then subsided into shadow

again! I pondered this question for a moment while Dr. Englehart,

silent, expectant perhaps, stood with his hand tightly grasping the back

of a chair, on the seat of which he reposed one knee, in a position such

as defiant school-boys often assume before a pedagogue.

As I have said, his head and body were again in shadow, as was, indeed,

most of the chamber, for the rays which struggled through the thick

ground glass of my astral lamp were as mild as moonbeams, and as

unsatisfactory. But the light fell strong and red beneath the shade, and

the full glare of the astral lamp seemed centred on that pudgy hand, in

its inevitable glove, that had fixed so firm a gripe on the back of the

mahogany chair as to strain open one of the fingers of the tight, tawny

kid-glove worn by Dr. Englehart. This had parted slightly just above the

knuckle of the front-finger, and revealed the cotton stuffing within.

Nay, more, the ruby ring with its peculiar device was thus exposed,

which graced the slender finger of the charlatan! I do not apply this

term as concerned the profession he affected at all, but merely (as

shall be seen later) as one appropriate to himself individually.

There must be beings of all kinds to constitute a world, philosophers

tell us, and he, no doubt, so long in ignorance of it, had stumbled

suddenly on his proper vocation at last. The _role_ he was playing (so

far successfully) had doubtless been the occasion of an exquisite

delight to him, unknown to simpler mortals, who masquerade not without

dread misgivings of detection. I for one, when affecting any costume not

essentially belonging to me, or covering my face even with a paper-mask

for holiday diversion, have had a feeling of unusual transparency and

obviousness, so to speak, which precluded on my part every thing like a

successful maintenance of the part I was attempting to play. It was as

if some mocking voice was saying: "This is Miriam Monfort, the true

Miriam; the person you have known before as such was only making

believe--but the Simon-pure is before you, a volume of folly that all

who run may read! Behold her--she was never half so evident before!"

But to digress thus in the very moment of detection, of recognition,

seems irrelevant. The flash of conviction was as instantaneous in its

action in my mind as that of the lightning when it strikes its object. I

stood confounded, yet enlightened, all ablaze!--but the subject of this

discovery did not seem in the least to apprehend it, or to believe it

possible, in his mad, mole-like effrontery of self-sufficiency, that by

his own track he could be betrayed.

"Vat ansair shall I bear to Mr. Bainrothe from his vard?" asked the

Mercury of my Jove, clasping his costumed hands together, then dropping

them meekly before him. "I vait de reply of Miss Monfort vid patience.

Dere is pen, and ink, and papair, I perceive, on dat table. Be good

enough to write at once your reply to de vise conditions of your

excellent guardian."

"You know them, then?" I said, quickly, glancing at him with a derisive

scorn that did not escape his observation.

"I have dat honnair," was the hypocritical reply, accompanied by a

profound bow.

"Disgrace, rather," I substituted. "But you have your own stand-point of

view, of course. The shield that to you is white, to me is black as

Erebus. You remember the knights of fable?"

"Always the same--always indomitable!" I heard him murmur, so low that

it was marvelous how the words reached my ear, tense as was every sense

with disdainful excitement. Yet he simply said aloud, after his

impulsive stage-whisper: "Excuse me! I understand not your allusions. I

pretend not to de classics; my leetle pills--" and he hesitated, or

affected to do so.

"Enough--I waive all apologies; they only prolong an interview

singularly distasteful to me for many reasons. You are behind the

curtain, I cannot doubt, and understand not only the contents of that

absurd letter, but its unprincipled references. To Basil Bainrothe I

will never address one line; but you may say to him that I scorn him and

his conditions. Yet, helpless as I am, and in his hands, tell him to

bring his emancipation papers, and I will sign them, though they cost me

all I possess of property. My sister I will not surrender any longer to

his care, nor my right in her, which, with or without his consent, is

perfect when I reach my majority. As to the suitor to whom he alluded,

he had better be allowed to speak for himself when this transaction is

over. I shall then decide very calmly on his merits, tarnished, as these

might seem, from such recommendation."

"He is one who has loved you long, lady," said the man, sadly, speaking

ever in that made and husky voice (wonderful actor that he was by

nature!), which he sustained so well that, had I not unmistakably

identified him, it might have imposed on my ear as real. "Hear what has

been written on this subject: When others have forsaken you and left you

to your fate, he has continued faithful to your memory. The revelation

of your immurement was made simultaneously to two men who called

themselves your lovers, and its sad necessity explained by your

ever-watchful guardian. One of these lovers repudiated your claims upon

him, and turned coldly from the idea of uniting his fate to that of one

who had even for an hour been a suspected lunatic; the other declared

himself willing to take her as she was to his arms, even though her own

were loaded with the chains of a mad-house! Penniless and abandoned by

all the world, and with a clouded name, he woos her as his wife--the

woman he adores!"

And, as he read, or seemed to read, these words, with scarce an accent

to mar their impetuous flow, Dr. Englehart drew in his breath with the

hissing sound of passion, and folded his arms tightly across his padded

breast, as if they enfolded the bride he was suing for in another's

name.

"And who, let me ask, is this Paladin of chivalry?" I inquired,

derisively. "Give me his name, that I may consider the subject well and

thoroughly before we meet at last."

"Excuse me if I refuse to give the name of eider of dese gentlemen at

dis onhappy season," he rejoined. "Wen de brain is all right

again"--tapping his own forehead--"your guardian will conduct the

faithful knight to kneel at de feet of her he loves so well."

"And the other--where is he?" fell involuntarily from my lips--my

heaving heart--an inquiry that I regretted as soon as it was uttered;

for, affecting sorrowful mystery, the man inclined himself toward me and

whispered in my ear confidentially:

"Plighted to another, and gone where no eyes of yours shall rest on him

again."

"Pander--liar--spy!" burst from my passionate lips as in all the fury of

desperation I turned from the creature who had so wantonly wounded my

self-respect, and waved to him to begone. Another name quivered on my

lips, but I checked it on their threshold after that first burst of

indignation instantly subdued.

I was not brave enough nor strong enough to hazard a shaft like that

which might have been returned to me so deathfully. I would let the

barrier stand which he had erected between us, and which to demolish

would be to lay myself open, perhaps, to insult of the darkest

description.

Let the ostrich with his head in the sand still imagine himself unseen;

the masquerader still conceive himself secure beneath his paper

travesty; the serpent still coil apparently unrecognized beside the

bare, gray stone that reveals him to the eye--I was too cowardly, too

feeble, to cope with strategy and double-dyed duplicity like this!

So the man went his way with his silly secret undiscovered, as he

deemed, and that it might remain so to the end, as far as he could know,

I devoutly prayed. For I knew of old the unscrupulous lengths to which,

when nerved by hate or disappointment or passions of any kind, he could

go, without a particle of mercy for his victims or remorse for his

ill-doing.

When Dr. Englehart was gone--for so I still choose to call him for some

reasons, although I give my reader credit for still more astuteness than

I possessed myself, and believe that he has long ago recognized, through

this cloud of mystery and travesty thrown about him, an old

acquaintance--the child Ernie rose from the bed on which he had lain

tremulous and observant, with his small hands clinched, his eyes on

fire. "Ernie kill bad man!" he exclaimed, ferociously, "for trouble

missy. Give Ernie letter--he carry it away and hide it; bad letter--make

poor Mirry cry."

"No, Ernie, I will keep it," I said, as I laid it carefully aside. "It

shall stand as a sign and testimony of treachery to the end. Go to

sleep, little child; but first say your prayers, so that the good angels

may sit by you all night. Don't you hear Mrs. Clayton groaning? Poor

Clayton! I most go and comfort her and soothe her pains, as Dinah cannot

do. And, now that the bad doctor is gone home, and we are all locked up

again securely, we shall rest peacefully, I trust; and so, good-night!"