“Cap’n, that was the closest call I’ve ever had on the Sound, and I’ve
been on it, boy and man, for five-and-fifty years.”
That was what the chief pilot said to Captain Smith when he returned
to the pilot-house after he had seen Hattie Butler to her state-room,
and taken a turn to the engine-room and forward deck below to see how
things went there.
“How on earth did we ever get in so far, with the wind holding where it
did?” chimed in the other pilot. “Our course ought to have kept us full
five miles farther out.”
“There was a stiff sou’wester all the night and day before, and with
the tide at ebb it made a terrible current setting out by Montauk. I
should have thought of it. I headed well over for smooth water, but not
enough to throw us so far in shore, by ten miles, rather than five.
I’ll never forget this experience. We have over four hundred souls on
board, and had it not been for that bright-eyed girl, where would they
be now?”
“Who is she, cap?”
“I don’t know. She gave me her name. Hattie Butler--that is all I know.
She wears the dress, and has the manners of a high-born lady; and, as
you saw, though the face was pale then, she is as pretty as pretty can
be.”
“I was too bad scared to look at her,” said the chief pilot. “I’m
hardly over it yet. The passengers will make up a purse for her when
they hear of it. If they don’t, they don’t deserve the luck they’ve
had.”
“She has begged me not to tell of it at all,” replied the captain; “but
I don’t see how I can keep my mouth shut. And there are three or four
newspaper men on board, and they’d never forgive me if I kept it from
them. But I’ll not speak of it at the breakfast table to all of ’em, as
I meant to.”
The steamer was now heading her course, and the wind going down a
little, while the rain, that fell heavier than ever, made the sea a
great deal smoother.
But the steamer was hours behind, and though Mr. Bishop, the chief
engineer, drove the firemen to their work, the steamer could not make
Fall River within four hours of the regular train time. But the captain
told his passengers at the breakfast-table that there would be a
special train ready when the boat reached her wharf to take them right
on, and he added that it was better to be late and safe than early and
in peril, adding a remark which he credited to his engineer:
“I’d rather get to Fall River six hours behind time than go to
perdition on time.”
Only the reporters on board knew, and it had been given to them on
condition that they should not repeat it there, how near to destruction
they had been; and the captain, with manly delicacy and honor, had
refrained from pointing out Miss Butler to them as the heroine, thus
saving her from the torture of being interviewed.
At breakfast Captain Smith was very polite and attentive to our
heroine, but as he was always polite to all his passengers that did not
expose her.
At last the noble steamer, much to the joy of all on board, and of
friends and agents on shore, made her port, and ran into her regular
wharf.
“Miss Butler,” said the captain, “when you return to New York please
take passage on my boat, and if you purchase a ticket I shall feel
hurt. The complimentary card, which contains my name, will pass you on
the railroad at all times, and I want you to think how much I owe you
when you do me the real favor to accept it.”
He was escorting her from the boat to the cars when he said this, and
she could not refuse to accept his card, whether she ever used it or
not.
In five minutes more the cars bore the glad passengers toward the city
so often called the “Hub”--I hardly understand why.
And now I must draw a sorrowful picture there. In a chamber in one of
the most pretentious houses on Beacon Hill, in the city of Boston,
a lady hardly past middle age, who must in health have been very
beautiful, lay dying.
A minister, two physicians, and several weeping friends were near, and
the former was speaking words which he hoped would comfort her, or
lessen the agony of that dread moment.
The physicians had endeavored to get her to take an opiate to lessen
her pains, which were wearing her out, but she would not, but kept
crying out:
“Oh, my daughter! She will come--I know she will come to forgive me
before I die. I want all my senses. I want to tell her what I have
suffered through my false pride. Her father is dead--died praying that
he might only see and bless his child. And must I die, too, without
seeing her? Oh, no. God is too merciful. Pray--oh, pray, minister of
God, that she be sent to me before I die.”
And her white, thin lips moved all the time he knelt in prayer.
And before he arose to his feet, while the others, kneeling, listened
and wept, a wild, glad cry broke from that mother’s lips.
“She is coming! My Georgiana is coming! I heard a carriage stop at the
door. It is she--thank Heaven, it is my daughter!”
How a mother’s ear, even when that mother was on her death-bed, could
hear what no one else had heard, how she could feel so certain her
child was near, is beyond our ken. But it was so.
A minute, scarcely that, had elapsed when the door softly opened, and
mother and child wept in each other’s arms.
It was a holy scene. No word of recrimination, no breath of the past,
only this:
“Mother, dear mother!”
“My child! God bless my only child--my love!”
There was not a dry eye in the room--those who had wept with grief
before over a dying friend, now wept with joy to think her eyes had not
closed before that meeting--that reconciliation took place.
But the physicians knew that the strength of Mrs. Lonsdale could not
last--that the spark so near gone, flashing up, could last but little
longer.
And the change began almost before they expected it.
We need not say that Georgiana Emeline Lonsdale was the real name of
our heroine, but that was the name of the dying lady’s daughter, and
that daughter was our heroine.
“Raise me up. Let me look at you. Oh, Georgiana--my dear--dear child!”
gasped the mother. “I prayed but to live for this--and--God has been
good. My will--here--under my pillow all the time!”
The physicians pressed forward. With a moan of sorrow Georgiana pressed
that wan face to her beating heart.
“Mother--mother--live for me,” she sobbed.
“Bless--blessed--child--thank God!”
“She lives forever in a brighter world,” said the minister, with
touching solemnity.
And our heroine, yet clasping that form, so dear that nothing of the
past could come to mind, looked down on a smiling face frozen in the
still snow of death.
Gently the kind friends removed her clasp, tenderly the good pastor
said:
“Blessed is He who gives. Blessed is He who takes away.”
Long, long the poor girl wept, and would not be comforted. What to her
was the costly mansion, furnished as few other houses in the city were
adorned? What to her a bank account second to few in Boston? What to
her, horses, carriages, old family plate, jewels that had been owned
generation after generation by her ancestors, now all her own? Her
father, ever kind, her mother, with whom she had parted in anger when
she chose a heart’s idol, all too early cast down, were gone--forever
gone from earth.
It was well her sorrow found relief in tears. She wept until exhausted,
and then herself needing a physician, she sank to sleep. She had not
till then slept one moment since the night before she started from New
York.