Philip, leaning against a rock, gazed into the darkness where the
apparition had been; even Harry felt a thrill of half-superstitious
wonder, and listened half mechanically to a rough sailor’s voice at his
ear:--
“God! old Joe was right. There’s one wreck that is bound to make many.
The light-ship has parted.”
“Drifting ashore,” said Harry, his accustomed clearness of head coming
back at a flash. “Where will she strike?”
“Price’s Neck,” said the sailor.
Harry turned to Philip and spoke to him, shouting in his ear the
explanation. Malbone’s lips moved mechanically, but he said nothing.
Passively, he let Harry take him by the arm, and lead him on.
Following the sailor, they rounded a projecting point, and found
themselves a little sheltered from the wind. Not knowing the region,
they stumbled about among the rocks, and scarcely knew when they neared
the surf, except when a wave came swashing round their very feet.
Pausing at the end of a cove, they stood beside their conductor, and
their eyes, now grown accustomed, could make out vaguely the outlines of
the waves.
The throat of the cove was so shoal and narrow, and the mass of the
waves so great, that they reared their heads enormously, just outside,
and spending their strength there, left a lower level within the cove.
Yet sometimes a series of great billows would come straight on, heading
directly for the entrance, and then the surface of the water within was
seen to swell suddenly upward as if by a terrible inward magic of its
own; it rose and rose, as if it would ingulf everything; then as rapidly
sank, and again presented a mere quiet vestibule before the excluded
waves.
They saw in glimpses, as the lightning flashed, the shingly beach,
covered with a mass of creamy foam, all tremulous and fluctuating in
the wind; and this foam was constantly torn away by the gale in great
shreds, that whirled by them as if the very fragments of the ocean were
fleeing from it in terror, to take refuge in the less frightful element
of air.
Still the wild waves reared their heads, like savage, crested animals,
now white, now black, looking in from the entrance of the cove. And now
there silently drifted upon them something higher, vaster, darker than
themselves,--the doomed vessel. It was strange how slowly and steadily
she swept in,--for her broken chain-cable dragged, as it afterwards
proved, and kept her stern-on to the shore,--and they could sometimes
hear amid the tumult a groan that seemed to come from the very heart of
the earth, as she painfully drew her keel over hidden reefs. Over five
of these (as was afterwards found) she had already drifted, and she rose
and fell more than once on the high waves at the very mouth of the cove,
like a wild bird hovering ere it pounces.
Then there came one of those great confluences of waves described
already, which, lifting her bodily upward, higher and higher and higher,
suddenly rushed with her into the basin, filling it like an opened
dry-dock, crashing and roaring round the vessel and upon the rocks, then
sweeping out again and leaving her lodged, still stately and steady, at
the centre of the cove.
They could hear from the crew a mingled sound, that came as a shout
of excitement from some and a shriek of despair from others. The vivid
lightning revealed for a moment those on shipboard to those on
shore; and blinding as it was, it lasted long enough to show figures
gesticulating and pointing. The old sailor, Mitchell, tried to build a
fire among the rocks nearest the vessel, but it was impossible, because
of the wind. This was a disappointment, for the light would have taken
away half the danger, and more than half the terror. Though the cove was
more quiet than the ocean, yet it was fearful enough, even there. The
vessel might hold together till morning, but who could tell? It was
almost certain that those on board would try to land, and there was
nothing to do but to await the effort. The men from the farmhouse had
meanwhile come down with ropes.
It was simply impossible to judge with any accuracy of the distance of
the ship. One of these new-comers, who declared that she was lodged very
near, went to a point of rocks, and shouted to those on board to heave
him a rope. The tempest suppressed his voice, as it had put out the
fire. But perhaps the lightning had showed him to the dark figures on
the stern; for when the next flash came, they saw a rope flung, which
fell short. The real distance was more than a hundred yards.
Then there was a long interval of darkness. The moment the next flash
came they saw a figure let down by a rope from the stern of the vessel,
while the hungry waves reared like wolves to seize it. Everybody crowded
down to the nearest rocks, looking this way and that for a head to
appear. They pressed eagerly in every direction where a bit of plank or
a barrel-head floated; they fancied faint cries here and there, and went
aimlessly to and fro. A new effort, after half a dozen failures, sent
a blaze mounting up fitfully among the rocks, startling all with the
sudden change its blessed splendor made. Then a shrill shout from one of
the watchers summoned all to a cleft in the cove, half shaded from the
firelight, where there came rolling in amidst the surf, more dead than
alive, the body of a man. He was the young foreigner, John Lambert’s
boatman. He bore still around him the rope that was to save the rest.
How pale and eager their faces looked as they bent above him! But the
eagerness was all gone from his, and only the pallor left. While
the fishermen got the tackle rigged, such as it was, to complete the
communication with the vessel, the young men worked upon the boatman,
and soon had him restored to consciousness. He was able to explain that
the ship had been severely strained, and that all on board believed she
would go to pieces before morning. No one would risk being the first
to take the water, and he had at last volunteered, as being the
best swimmer, on condition that Emilia should be next sent, when the
communication was established.
Two ropes were then hauled on board the vessel, a larger and a smaller.
By the flickering firelight and the rarer flashes of lightning (the rain
now falling in torrents) they saw a hammock slung to the larger rope; a
woman’s form was swathed in it; and the smaller rope being made fast to
this, they found by pulling that she could be drawn towards the shore.
Those on board steadied the hammock as it was lowered from the ship, but
the waves seemed maddened by this effort to escape their might, and they
leaped up at her again and again. The rope dropped beneath her weight,
and all that could be done from shore was to haul her in as fast as
possible, to abbreviate the period of buffeting and suffocation. As she
neared the rocks she could be kept more safe from the water; faster and
faster she was drawn in; sometimes there came some hitch and stoppage,
but by steady patience it was overcome.
She was so near the rocks that hands were already stretched to grasp
her, when there came one of the great surging waves that sometimes
filled the basin. It gave a terrible lurch to the stranded vessel
hitherto so erect; the larger rope snapped instantly; the guiding rope
was twitched from the hands that held it; and the canvas that held
Emilia was caught and swept away like a shred of foam, and lost amid
the whiteness of the seething froth below. Fifteen minutes after, the
hammock came ashore empty, the lashings having parted.
The cold daybreak was just opening, though the wind still blew keenly,
when they found the body of Emilia. It was swathed in a roll of
sea-weed, lying in the edge of the surf, on a broad, flat rock near
where the young boatman had come ashore. The face was not disfigured;
the clothing was only torn a little, and tangled closely round her; but
the life was gone.
It was Philip who first saw her; and he stood beside her for a moment
motionless, stunned into an aspect of tranquility. This, then, was
the end. All his ready sympathy, his wooing tenderness, his winning
compliances, his self-indulgent softness, his perilous amiability, his
reluctance to give pain or to see sorrow,--all had ended in this. For
once, he must force even his accommodating and evasive nature to meet
the plain, blank truth. Now all his characteristics appeared changed by
the encounter; it was Harry who was ready, thoughtful, attentive,--while
Philip, who usually had all these traits, was paralyzed among his
dreams. Could he have fancied such a scene beforehand, he would have
vowed that no hand but his should touch the breathless form of Emilia.
As it was, he instinctively made way for the quick gathering of the
others, as if almost any one else had a better right to be there.
The storm had blown itself out by sunrise; the wind had shifted, beating
down the waves; it seemed as if everything in nature were exhausted.
The very tide had ebbed away. The light-ship rested between the rocks,
helpless, still at the mercy of the returning waves, and yet still
upright and with that stately look of unconscious pleading which all
shipwrecked vessels wear, it is wonderfully like the look I have seen
in the face of some dead soldier, on whom war had done its worst. Every
line of a ship is so built for motion, every part, while afloat, seems
so full of life and so answering to the human life it bears, that this
paralysis of shipwreck touches the imagination as if the motionless
thing had once been animated by a soul.
And not far from the vessel, in a chamber of the seaside farm-house,
lay the tenderer and fairer wreck of Emilia. Her storms and her passions
were ended. The censure of the world, the anguish of friends, the
clinging arms of love, were nothing now to her. Again the soft shelter
of unconsciousness had clasped her in; but this time the trance was
longer and the faintness was unto death.
From the moment of her drifting ashore, it was the young boatman who
had assumed the right to care for her and to direct everything. Philip
seemed stunned; Harry was his usual clear-headed and efficient self; but
to his honest eyes much revealed itself in a little while; and when Hope
arrived in the early morning, he said to her, “This boatman, who once
saved your life, is Emilia’s Swiss lover, Antoine Marval.”
“More than lover,” said the young Swiss, overhearing. “She was my wife
before God, when you took her from me. In my country, a betrothal is
as sacred as a marriage. Then came that man, he filled her heart with
illusions, and took her away in my absence. When my brother was here
in the corvette, he found her for me. Then I came for her; I saved her
sister; then I saw the name on the card and would not give my own. I
became her servant. She saw me in the yacht, only once; she knew me; she
was afraid. Then she said, ‘Perhaps I still love you,--a little; I do
not know; I am in despair; take me from this home I hate.’ We sailed
that day in the small boat for Narragansett,--I know not where. She
hardly looked up or spoke; but for me, I cared for nothing since she
was with me. When the storm came, she was frightened, and said, ‘It is a
retribution.’ I said, ‘You shall never go back.’ She never did. Here she
is. You cannot take her from me.”
Once on board the light-ship, she had been assigned the captain’s
state-room, while Antoine watched at the door. She seemed to shrink from
him whenever he went to speak to her, he owned, but she answered kindly
and gently, begging to be left alone. When at last the vessel parted her
moorings, he persuaded Emilia to come on deck and be lashed to the mast,
where she sat without complaint.
Who can fathom the thoughts of that bewildered child, as she sat amid
the spray and the howling of the blast, while the doomed vessel drifted
on with her to the shore? Did all the error and sorrow of her life pass
distinctly before her? Or did the roar of the surf lull her into quiet,
like the unconscious kindness of wild creatures that toss and bewilder
their prey into unconsciousness ere they harm it? None can tell. Death
answers no questions; it only makes them needless.
The morning brought to the scene John Lambert, just arrived by land from
New York.
The passion of John Lambert for his wife was of that kind which ennobles
while it lasts, but which rarely outlasts marriage. A man of such
uncongenial mould will love an enchanting woman with a mad, absorbing
passion, where self-sacrifice is so mingled with selfishness that the
two emotions seem one; he will hungrily yearn to possess her, to call
her by his own name, to hold her in his arms, to kill any one else who
claims her. But when she is once his wife, and his arms hold a body
without a soul,--no soul at least for him,--then her image is almost
inevitably profaned, and the passion which began too high for earth ends
far too low for heaven. Let now death change that form to marble, and
instantly it resumes its virgin holiness; though the presence of life
did not sanctify, its departure does. It is only the true lover to whom
the breathing form is as sacred as the breathless.
That ideality of nature which love had developed in this man, and which
had already drooped a little during his brief period of marriage, was
born again by the side of death. While Philip wandered off silent and
lonely with his grief, John Lambert knelt by the beautiful remains,
talking inarticulately, his eyes streaming with unchecked tears. Again
was Emilia, in her marble paleness, the calm centre of a tragedy she
herself had caused. The wild, ungoverned child was the image of peace;
it was the stolid and prosperous man who was in the storm. It was not
till Hope came that there was any change. Then his prostrate nature
sought hers, as the needle leaps to the iron; the first touch of her
hand, the sight of her kiss upon Emilia’s forehead, made him strong. It
was the thorough subjection of a worldly man to the higher organization
of a noble woman, and thenceforth it never varied. In later years, after
he had foolishly sought, as men will, to win her to a nearer tie, there
was no moment when she had not full control over his time, his energies,
and his wealth.
After it was all ended, Hope told him everything that had happened; but
in that wild moment of his despair she told him nothing. Only she and
Harry knew the story of the young Swiss; and now that Emilia was gone,
her early lover had no wish to speak of her to any but these two, or to
linger long where she had been doubly lost to him, by marriage and by
death. The world, with all its prying curiosity, usually misses the key
to the very incidents about which it asks most questions; and of the
many who gossiped or mourned concerning Emilia, none knew the tragic
complication which her death alone could have solved. The breaking of
Hope’s engagement to Philip was attributed to every cause but the true
one. And when the storm of the great Rebellion broke over the land, its
vast calamity absorbed all minor griefs.