AMONG THE BREAKERS.
When the boat had slipped away from Indian Point, at one side, and
Carl Yorke had strode off through the woods, at the other, Captain
Cary lifted again the dingy canvas, and entered the wigwam that Edith
had just quitted. In doing so, he was obliged to stoop very low, for
the opening scarcely reached as high as his shoulders, and, had he
stood erect inside, he would have taken the whole structure up by the
roots.
Dick still lay with his arms thrown above his head, and his face
hidden in them.
His friend bent over him, and spoke with an affectation of hearty
cheerfulness which was far from his real mood. “Come! come! don’t give
up for a trifle, my boy. You’re more scared than hurt. All you need is
a little brandy and courage. Everything will turn out rightly, never
fear!”
“Don’t talk to me!” said Dick.
Captain Cary’s heart sank at the sound of that moaning voice. When
Dick Rowan’s spirit broke, there was trouble indeed, and trouble which
could neither be laughed nor reasoned away.
“Do take the brandy, at least,” he urged; “and then I won’t talk to
you any more till the boat comes back. You must take it. You’re in an
ague-fit now.”
Dick was, indeed, trembling violently. But, more to relieve himself
from importunity, it would seem, than for any other reason, he lifted
his head, swallowed the draught that was offered him, and sank back
again.
His friend leaned over him one instant, his breast, strongly heaving,
and full of pity, against Dick’s shoulder, his rough, tender cheek
laid to Dick’s wet hair.
The poor boy turned at that, threw his arms around Captain Cary’s
neck, drew him down, and held him close, as a drowning man might hold
a plank. “O captain, captain!” he whispered, “I’ve got an awful blow!”
When the sailor went out into the air again, all the Indians had
retired into their wigwams, except Malie, and her father and mother.
The child, wide awake, and full of excitement, was swinging herself by
the bough of a tree, half her motion lost sight of in the dark pine
shadow, half floating out into the light. Now and then, she stretched
her foot, and struck the earth with it. When the stranger appeared and
looked her way, she began to chatter like a squirrel, and, lifting her
feet, scrambled into the tree, and disappeared among its branches.
Mr. and Mrs. Nicola crouched by the fire, and sulkily ignored the
intruder. When he approached and stood by her side, the woman did not
turn her head, but tossed a strip of birch-bark into the coals, and 583
watched it while it writhed, blackened, turned red, shrivelled, and
disappeared.
“I wonder if she would like to serve me that way?” he questioned
inwardly; and said aloud, “I am going up to meet my man at the ship,
and come back with him. It may save a little time, and I don’t like to
keep you up any longer than I must.”
The man uttered a low-toned guttural word, the woman nodded her head
in reply, but neither took any notice of Captain Cary.
“I am sorry to intrude,” he added stiffly; “but when a man is sick, he
must be taken care of. Captain Rowan, in there, doesn’t half know
where he is, nor what he is about. I will get him away as soon as I
can. You shall be paid for your trouble.” He tossed a silver piece
down between the two. “When I come back, you shall have more,” he
said, and, turning his back upon them, walked off into the woods.
Neither of the two elders stirred till he was out of sight; but Malie
slipped from her tree, darted at the money, and snatched it up. She
was escaping with it, when her father seized her, took the money from
her hand, and put it into his pocket. She only laughed when he let her
go. She had no use for money, except to wear it on a string around her
neck, and a string of beads was prettier. Besides, she had her
treasure--the book the lady had given her that day. She threw herself
on the ground, near the fire, drew this book from the loose folds of
her blouse, and turned the leaves, reading here and there. The page
looked like all sorts of bird-songs written out. Doubtless the birds
and beasts had had a good deal to do with making the language of it.
Who would not think that _k’tchitbessùwìnoa_ was a verse from a
feathered songster? Malie would tell you that it means a “general.”
Probably the birds call their generals by that name. One looks with
interest on a child who can read this chippering, gurgling,
twittering, lisping, growling “to-whit, to-whoo!” of a thought-medium.
While she read, Captain Cary, tramping through the strip of woods
between the encampment and South Street, recollected for the first
time that his clothes were dripping wet. “What a queer, topsy-turvy
time we are having!” he muttered, wringing the water from his cravat,
as he hurried along. “The whole affair reminds me of that fairy play I
saw last winter. There must be something unwholesome in this
moonshine.”
The play he meant was _Midsummer-Night’s Dream_. But there was now no
clamor of rustic clowns in a hawthorn brake, nor sight of Titania
sleeping among her pensioners the cowslips. There were but his own
steps, muffled in moss, and the lurking shadows, creeping noiselessly
away from the pursuing light.
By that short road across the Point, it was less than half a mile to
the wharf where the _Halcyon_ lay, and in ten minutes Captain Cary had
reached his ship. His crew were all on board, and, as he walked down
the wharf, he heard the refrain of one of their songs:
“And they sank him in the lowlands, low.”
The verse ended in that mournful cadence that sailors learn from the
ocean winds--those long-breathed, full-throated singers!
At sound of the captain’s step, silence fell, and at his call a little
imp of a Malay cabin-boy appeared, stood with twinkling eyes to take
his orders, then shot away to execute them. When the sailor who had
gone up to the bridge with the ladies came back to the ship, the yawl 584
was out, and Captain Cary sat in it waiting for him.
“Major Cleaveland wants to see you when you come up, sir,” the sailor
said, as they sped down the river. “He says you’d better bring Captain
Rowan right up to his house. He will send the carriage down for you.
He is obliged to leave town at four o’clock in the morning, in the
Eastern stage, something about a trial of his in a court somewhere, so
he can’t see you in the morning.”
“Did anybody else say anything?” the captain asked.
“Mr. Carl Yorke said that, as soon as he had gone home with the
ladies, he would come back to see Captain Rowan. He got up to the
bridge just as we did.”
Captain Cary bent low over his oars, and muttered a word he did not
choose to speak aloud. Plain men are almost always ready to have a
jealous dislike of accomplished men, and a simple nature like Captain
Cary’s can never do justice to a complex one like Carl Yorke’s. At
that moment the sailor was thinking that, had Carl been the one to
fall overboard, he would not have cared to wet his skin for the sake
of saving him. And yet Carl had treated this man with friendly
courtesy, and had admired and appreciated him thoroughly.
“Well, did any one else say anything?” he asked presently.
“Miss Edith felt pretty bad, sir. She leaned over the rail, and looked
back to the Point, wringing her hands all the way, as we came up. She
told me to say to you that she was sorry she had left Captain Rowan. I
guess, sir, she is pretty fond of him, after all,” the sailor said
confidentially.
“What business have you guessing or thinking anything about it?”
demanded his superior, with a haughty sternness that would have
delighted Clara Yorke. “Keep your opinion till I ask for it!”
“All right, sir!” responded the sailor, and shut his mouth. If he was
angry, he did not venture to show it.
“Well?” said the captain sharply, after waiting a minute.
“Why, sir, there isn’t much of anything else,” the man answered. “Miss
Yorke said that they ought to have taken Mr. Rowan up with them, and
that she did not understand how they had allowed themselves to be sent
away in such a manner. And Miss Clara she said that you--isn’t there a
boat ahead, sir?”
“No. What if there is? Go on.” He could not help being impatient.
“Well, Miss Clara she said that you knew best, and she wasn’t afraid
of leaving Mr. Rowan to your care.”
The captain sat with his oar suspended, and stared straight ahead. The
seaman hesitated, then returned good for evil. “Miss Clara was
mightily taken with the way you went overboard, sir. She thought that
you did it in a very splendid fashion. I told her I didn’t know any
other way you could have done it, unless you had gone over back’ards,
like Captain Rowan. She tossed up her head at that, and marched off,
and got into the carriage.”
The captain’s oars flashed down into the water, and he gave a pull
that made their boat skim the wave like a bird.
When they reached the Point, the fire was out, and no person was in
sight. Captain Cary hastened up the bank to the wigwam where he had
left Dick Rowan, but as he laid his hand on the fold of canvas a gruff
voice inside challenged him.
“I want Captain Rowan,” he called out. 585
A brief “He not here!” was the reply.
“Where is he, then?”
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” cried the sailor. “None of your nonsense, sir! If
any harm has come to him through you, I will hang you all to the
branches of these trees. Come out here, and tell me where he has gone,
if you don’t want to be dragged out.”
He tore open the canvas, as he spoke, and in the dim light saw a
swift, dark pantomime acted inside. One shadowy figure was springing
forward, with the flash of a blade in the uplifted hand, when another
caught him round the neck, and a slim arm ran up his arm, that held
the weapon. The knife flashed an instant in that silent struggle of
the two to possess it, then Mrs. Nicola pushed her husband back, and,
leaning forward, caught the canvas from the sailor’s hand.
“The young man took Philip Nicola’s canoe, and went down the bay in
it,” she said angrily. “That is all we know about him.”
It was not likely, indeed, that they would do him any harm: whatever
their feelings might be, they would not dare to. There was nothing to
do but return to the boat, and row down the bay in search of Dick. The
light was still radiantly clear, and the whole surface of the bay
plain to be seen. The group of islands showed like ashen blotches on
that mirror. The sailor pointed out to his captain a black speck that
floated away from among these islands.
“It is a boat, sir,” he said; “but there is no one in it.”
“Make for that nearest island,” the captain ordered; and muttered to
himself, “Dick wouldn’t do it! he wouldn’t.”
No, Dick would not, in any depth of misery, have thrown his life away.
They found him there, lying prone in the sand, where, years before, he
had buried his father. What attraction had drawn him to that spot
would be hard to tell. Possibly, now that he knew the meaning of
failure, there was some blind feeling of compunction toward one whose
failures he had reproachfully thought of.
Dick made no resistance when Captain Cary lifted him, and, after a
moment, walked to the boat with him. He sat there, with his head bowed
forward, while they rowed back to the ship. He was like one who is but
half-aroused from sleep, and has a mind to fall back into it. He
submitted to all that was required of him, took what they gave him,
did what they bade him. It was not much they prescribed--only dry
clothes and a bed.
There is a power of instinctive recoil by which some natures are saved
from being destroyed by the shock of a great blow. The senses shut
their inner doors at the jar of the enemy’s approach, and the soul, in
some remote privacy of its being, arms itself before coming forth to
see who knocks at its portal and bids it to battle. But for this
merciful interposition, it would have fared hard with Dick Rowan,
when, struck by the lightning of a glance, the framework on which all
his life had been built up gave way without a moment’s warning.
His friend left him after awhile, and went up to the Cleavelands.
Hester had expected Dick, but was too much occupied with her husband
to be very curious regarding the accident. The young man had been
knocked over by the boom, she had been told, and the result was
nothing worse than a wetting. A wetting was bad, to be sure; she was
so sorry; she hoped that Mr. Rowan had put on dry clothes at once, and 586
taken something hot. He must really take care of himself. But--and
here Mrs. Hester evidently considered herself returning to the subject
in hand--was there ever anything more provoking than this journey? Why
could not that tiresome case have been tried at Seaton instead of
Machias? Why did not the judge see about it? Why did not her husband’s
lawyer let him know in season, so that he could have driven through in
his own carriage by day, and not be obliged to post over the road by
night in those horrible coaches?
“In short,” laughed the husband, “why is not all the machinery of
civilization regulated with an eye single to the convenience of Mrs.
Hester Cleaveland’s husband?”
When no one else was present, the gentleman could take these absurd
cares with an equally absurd complacency, and really seem to believe
that he was a pining invalid instead of a stout, rubicund man; but the
grave and wondering face of his visitor made him a little ashamed of
such coddling.
The business did not take long to settle. All the preliminaries had
been fully arranged before, neither gentleman being prone to leave his
affairs at loose ends. In a few minutes they shook hands, dissolving
all connection, except a friendly one, and wishing each other very
heartily success and happiness. The _Halcyon_, which they had owned
together, was sold, and, if the sailor went to sea again, he had a
mind to go in a new ship of his own, and be quite independent.
Hester also took a kind leave of her guest, hoping to meet him again
before long, since, for the present, he was going no further than New
York. “You know we all go to Boston soon,” she said, “and it would not
be very hard for you to come on purpose to see us.”
Then he went. Everything was quiet as he walked down through the town.
It was late, and only two lights were visible. One, burning red, a
cyclopean eye, close to the ground, showed that the incentive to any
and every possible sin was to be sold by the bottle or glass, mixed or
neat, according to the taste of the person having a soul to lose.
The other light was in three windows, at the top of a building, where
the Know-Nothings held their secret meetings. Captain Cary knew what
that light meant. He stood awhile on the bridge, and watched it,
wondering how a nation was to preserve its honor if governed by such
men and such means. A secret conclave, met with closed doors and
pass-word, and not one man of proved integrity inside!
“If they are patriots, then Washington was not one,” was the
conclusion the sailor came to; and, having reached it, he walked on,
and left that nest of slanderers and plotters to do their evil work.
“I’d like to clean out that hall!” he mused as he went.
When he reached the ship, he found that Dick Rowan had roused himself
sufficiently to have one wish, and that an imperative one. “Take me
away from here, Cary!” he begged. “There is nothing to keep you now.
Clark says that you have seen Major Cleaveland, and that all is ready
to sail. Don’t wait. Sail early in the morning.”
It was true. There was nothing to keep them till noon, except their
engagement with the ladies of Mr. Yorke’s family, and it was certainly
for Dick to say whether that should be kept. There was some discussion
on the subject, but Dick was inexorable, and the captain yielded. He 587
wrote a note of explanation and apology to Mrs. Yorke; and so it
happened that, when that lady’s messenger reached the wharf in the
morning, the _Halcyon_ was miles below, standing out through the
Narrows, with a blue, sunny sea stretching in front of her straight to
the South Pole. On the deck sat Dick Rowan, leaning on the rail, and
watching the foam toss and drop, toss and drop, with a lulling motion,
like the to-and-fro of white, mesmerizing hands. And the face that
watched that motion looked half-mesmerized, pale and dreamy, with only
a groping of thought in it.
The ship went well, and within a few days they saw the rising sun
shine on the masts and spires of New York. The evening of that very
day, Father Fitspatrick, of Boston--Father John, his friends called
him--coming in rather late from a lecture, was told that a gentleman
was waiting in his room to see him. He went in, and found Dick Rowan
sitting there, but not the Dick Rowan he had baptized the year before,
and welcomed home, and talked gayly with within a few short weeks.
This man might have been Dick’s elder brother, and a stern, pale man,
too.
“Father,” Dick said faintly, “I want you to keep me a little while. I
have come here for sanctuary. If there is any help in religion when
other help fails, I want to know it now.”
“But what has happened? What is the matter?” the priest exclaimed.
Dick sank back into the seat from which he had risen. “I’ve lost
Edith, sir, and my life has all gone to pieces.”
“Is she dead?” the priest asked.
“No, sir; but she loves some one else.”
Father John drew his chair close to the young man’s side, and took his
hand. “My dear son,” he said, “are you going to despair because a
woman has been false to you?”
Dick looked up as though not sure that he heard aright. What! any one
call Edith false?
“No, sir, she was not false,” he said. “It was something that she
couldn’t help. She would marry me now, if I would let her.”
“Why, then, do you not marry her?” the father asked. “This is probably
a fancy, which will pass away; and if she is good and true, she will
do her duty by you.”
Dick stared at the priest in an almost indignant astonishment. “What,
sir!” he exclaimed, “do you think me mean enough to marry a woman who
loves another man? I always feared this, at the bottom of my heart,
though I would not own that I did. And it was always true, I suppose,
only she did not know it. I made a great mistake. I thought that, if I
tried to be good to God and to her, she would love me. But I have been
thinking it all over during the last week, and I have found out that
we choose by our hearts, not our heads, and that we do not really love
a person when we can tell the reason why. I had no right to _buy_
her. She belonged to some one else.” He shivered, looked down a
moment, then said huskily, “Yes, Edith was true!” and, dropping his
face into his hands, burst into tears.
“My dear son!” Father John said, putting his arm around Dick’s
shoulder, “don’t give up so! You have youth, and health, and friends,
and a work to do in the world. Don’t let this discourage you. She is
only a woman.”
“And I am only a man!” said Dick.
“What about your ship?” the priest asked, after a little while.
Dick raised his face, and controlled himself to speak. “Captain Cary 588
is to take charge of her,” he said. “I couldn’t sail in the _Edith
Yorke_ again, sir. I would not trust myself off alone in her, with
nothing else to think of, and no escape, unless I jumped into the
ocean. It is haunted by her. Every plank, and spar, and rope of that
ship is steeped in the thought of her. I have fancied her there,
speaking, and laughing, and singing, just as I expected she would some
day, and asking me the names of everything. When I used to walk up and
down the deck, I’d imagine her beside me. I could see her dress
fluttering, and the braid of hair, and two little feet keeping step.
Why, sir, it was so real that I would sometimes shorten my steps for
her sake. I never neglected my duty for her; but I looked at
everything through a little rosy thought of her, and that made hard
work pleasant. No, I can never again sail in the _Edith Yorke_. Have
patience with me, father. Recollect, I have to overturn all that was
my world, and have not a point to rest my lever on.”
“You a Christian, and say that!” the priest exclaimed. “Where is your
faith? Where is your reason?”
Dick started up fiercely, and began to walk the floor. “I cannot bear
it! I will not bear it!” he exclaimed. “You preachers, with your
reason, that tramples on all feeling, are as bad as the scientists,
whose science tramples on all faith. God made the tide, sir, as well
as the rock, and the storm as well as the calm, and it is for him to
say whether either is a foolishness. People who are wise, when they
sit in their safe homes, and hear the wind howling, pity the sailor,
and tremble for him; but, when you see a soul among the breakers, you
scorn it. I tell you, I will not bear such scorn! What do you think
this loss is to me?” he demanded, stopping before the priest, who sat
looking steadfastly at him. “It means that all the brightness and
sweetness of life, everything that is dear to human nature, are torn
away from me for ever. If I were a dissolute man, I could find a
miserable substitute; if I were fickle, I could fill her place; but I
am neither. I stand here, twenty-eight years old, and--I call God to
witness!--as stainless as when I was an infant in my mother’s arms. It
was Edith who kept me so. ‘Only a woman,’ you say; but that may mean
more than an angel. She was my guardian angel incarnate. ‘Only a
woman;’ but that woman’s shape walked with me through paths that might
have led to perdition, and kept me safe. If, in anger, an oath rose in
my teeth, I felt her hand on my mouth, and did not utter it. If I was
tempted with wine, I remembered her, and pushed the glass away. I can
be bloodthirsty, sir, if I am provoked, but many a sailor escaped the
lash and irons for her sake. Once I had my hand at a man’s throat,
with a mind to wring his vile life out of him, but I thought of her,
and let him go. The memory of this is not to be reasoned away. Do you
remember, sir, the time when you first thought of your vocation, and
sat down to count the costs? When you called up the vision of your
life before you, and stripped from it, one after another, wife,
children, and home, and all that they mean, did you want any one to
preach to you, in that hour, of common sense and reason? Didn’t you
feel that you must let nature have way a little while, and didn’t you
find it go over you like a wave?”
While Dick Rowan, bold with passionate feeling, poured forth this
torrent of words, the priest sat perfectly motionless, and looked at 589
him. There was no sign of anger, no consciousness of insulted dignity,
in his face, but only a profound sadness. This was no haughty
churchman, as his many lovers know, but a worthy follower of that
lowly One who said, “The servant is not above his master.” When Father
John towered in the pulpit, or spoke from the rostrum, with his “Thus
saith the Lord!” and “I am Peter, and James, and John!” there was an
authority which could not be defied, and a loftiness which would not
have bent before Cæsar; but in things temporal, and when winning and
comforting souls, his was a charity most tender, and a humility most
imposing.
Something in that face, now sleeping with Abraham and the fathers,
arrested the young man’s impetuous speech. He faltered, and stopped;
and, when the arms were stretched out to him, dropped on his knees,
and leaned his face against that kind bosom.
“Forgive me, dear father!” Dick said. “I did not mean to be rude, nor
to forget the reverence due to you. I know that all you would say to
me is true; but--I die hard!”