“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen
years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And
when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, ‘Woman,
thou art loosed from thine infirmity.’ And he laid his hands on her: and
immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”
“Ay, honey, I see that all as if it was me. And I think, as I’m setting
here, What if the latch should lift, and the gracious stranger should
come in, his gown a-sweepin’ behind him and a-sweet’nin’ the air, and
he should look down on me with his heavenly eyes, and he should smile,
and lay his hands on my head, warm,——and I say to myself, ‘Lord, I am
not worthy,’——and he says, ‘Miss Catharine, thou art loosed from thine
infirmity!’ And the latch lifts as I think, and I wait,——but it’s not
Him.”
Well, when I went out of that place I wasn’t the same girl that had gone
in. My will gave way; I came home and took up my burden and was in peace.
Still I couldn’t help my thoughts,——and they ran perpetually to the sea.
I hadn’t need to go up on the house-tops, for I didn’t shut my eyes but
there it stretched before me. I stirred about the rooms and tried to make
them glad once more; but I was thin and blanched as if I’d been rising
from a fever. Father said it was the salt air I wanted; and one day he
was going out for frost-fish, and he took me with him, and left me and
my basket on the sands while he was away. It was this side of the South
Breaker that he put me out, but I walked there; and where the surf was
breaking in the light, I went and sat down and looked over it. I could do
that now.
There was the Cape sparkling miles and miles across the way, unconcerned
that he whose firm foot had rung last on its flints should ring there
no more; there was the beautiful town lying large and warm along the
river; here gay craft went darting about like gulls, and there up the
channel sped a larger one, with all her canvas flashing in the sun, and
shivering a little spritsail in the shadow, as she went; and fawning in
upon my feet came the foam from the South Breaker, that still perhaps
cradled Faith and Gabriel. But as I looked, my eye fell, and there came
the sea-scenes again,——other scenes than this, coves and corners of
other coasts, sky-girt regions of other waters. The air was soft, that
April day, and I thought of the summer calms; and with that rose long
sheets of stillness, far out from any strand, purple beneath the noon;
fields slipping close in-shore, emerald-backed and scaled with sunshine;
long sleepy swells that hid the light in their hollows, and came creaming
along the cliffs. And if upon these broke suddenly a wild glimpse of some
storm careering over a merciless mid-ocean, of a dear dead face tossing
up on the surge and snatched back again into the depths, of mad wastes
rushing to tear themselves to fleece above clear shallows and turbid
sand-bars,——they melted and were lost in peaceful glimmers of the moon on
distant flying foam-wreaths, in solemn midnight tides chanting in under
hushed heavens, in twilight stretches kissing twilight slopes, in rosy
morning waves flocking up the singing shores. And sitting so, with my
lids still fallen, I heard a quick step on the beach, and a voice that
said, “Georgie!” And I looked, and a figure, red-shirted, towered beside
me, and a face, brown and bearded and tender, bent above me.
O, it was Dan!
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