THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL.

"My dear Friend,—Will you think it worth your while to transcribe the enclosed? These pages I have corrected and enlarged. Some of them you have never seen. They have occupied more of my time and trouble, and are now more complete, than anything you have favored me by reading. I hope you will be pleased. I care less about others.... I hope you will get something for these articles, and keep it. I am richer by several crowns than you suspect, and I must scramble to the kingdom of Heaven, to which a full pocket, we learn, is an impediment.

"Ever truly yours,W. S. L."

The manuscripts contained the two conversations between Homer and Laertes which two years ago were published in the "Heroic Idyls." I did not put them to the use desired by their author. Though my copies differ somewhat from the printed ones, it is natural to conclude that Landor most approved of what was last submitted to his inspection, and would not desire to be seen in any other guise. The publicity of a note prefixed to one of these conversations, however, is warranted.

"It will be thought audacious, and most so by those who know the least of Homer, to represent him as talking so familiarly. He must often have done it, as Milton and Shakespeare did. There is homely talk in the 'Odyssey.'

"Fashion turns round like Fortune. Twenty years hence, perhaps, this conversation of Homer and Laertes, inwhich for the first time Greek domestic manners have been represented by any modern poet, may be recognized and approved.

"Our sculptors and painters frequently take their subjects from antiquity; are our poets never to pass beyond the mediæval? At our own doors we listen to the affecting 'Song of the Shirt'; but some few of us, at the end of it, turn back to catch the 'Song of the Sirens.'

"Poetry is not tied to chronology. The Roman poet brings Dido and Æneas together,—the historian parts them far asunder. Homer may or may not have been the contemporary of Laertes. Nothing is idler or more dangerous than to enter a labyrinth without a clew."

At last the time came when there were to be no more conversations, no more drives, with Walter Savage Landor. Summoned suddenly to America, we called upon him three or four days before our departure to say good by.

"What? going to America?" Landor exclaimed in a sorrowful voice. "Is it really true? Must the old creature lose his young friends as well as his old? Ah me! ah me! what will become of Giallo and me? And America in the condition that it is too! But this is not the last time that I am to see you. Tut! tut! now no excuses. We must have one more drive, one more cup of tea together before you leave."

Pressed as we were for time, it was still arranged that we should drive with Landor the evening previous to our departure. On the morning of this day came the following note:—

"I am so stupid that everything puzzles me. Is not this the day I was to expect your visit? At all events you will have the carriage at your door atsixthis evening.

To drive or not to drive,That is the question.

You shall not be detained one half-hour,—but tea will be ready on your arrival."I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See what it is to be so young.

You shall not be detained one half-hour,—but tea will be ready on your arrival.

"I fell asleep after the jolting, and felt no bad effect. See what it is to be so young.

"Ever yours affectionately,"W. S. L."

There was little to cheer any of us in that last drive, and few words were spoken. Stopping at his house on our way home, we sipped a final cup of tea in almost complete silence. I tried to say merry things and look forward a few years to another meeting, but the old man shook his head sadly, saying: "I shall never see you again. I cannot live through another winter, nor do I desire to. Life to me is but a counterpart of Dead Sea fruit; and now that you are going away, there is one less link to the chain that binds me."

Landor, in the flood-tide of intellect and fortune, could command attention; Landor, tottering with an empty purse towards his ninth decade, could count his Florentine friends in one breath; thus it happened that the loss of the least of these made the old man sad.

At last the hour of leave-taking arrived. Culling a flower from the little garden, taking a final turn through those three little rooms, patting Giallo on the head, who, sober through sympathy, looked as though he wondered what it all meant, we turned to Landor, who entered the front room dragging an immense album after him. It was the same that he had bought years before of Barker, the English artist, for fifty guineas, and about which previous mention has been made. "You are not to get rid of me yet," said Landor, bearing the album toward the stairs. "I shall see you home, and bid you good by at your own door."

"But, dear Mr. Landor, what are you doing with that big book? You will surely injure yourself by attempting to carry it."

"This album is intended for you, and you must take it with you to-night."

Astonished at this munificent present, I hardly knew how to refuse it without offending the generous giver.Stopping him at the door, I endeavored to dissuade him from giving away so valuable an album; and, finding him resolute in his determination, begged him to compromise by leaving it to me in his will.

"No, my dear," he replied, "I at least have lived long enough to know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Whereupon he carried the book down stairs and deposited it in the carriage, deaf to our entreaties, and obstinately refusing assistance. "Now I am sure that you will have the album," he continued, after we were all seated in the carriage. "A will is an uncanny thing, and I'd rather remember my friends out of one than in one. I shall never see you again, and I want you to think of the foolish old creature occasionally."

The carriage stopped at our door, and "the good by" came. "May God bless you!" murmured the lonely old man, and in a moment Walter Savage Landor was out of sight.

He was right. We were never to meet again. Distance did not entirely sever the friendly link, however, for soon there came to me, across the sea, the following letters:—

August 28, 1861.

"By this time, my dear friend, you will be far on your way over the Atlantic, and before you receive the scribble now before you, half your friends will have offered you their congratulations on your return home."People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now."I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October days, and—and—all my money! The landlord will not allow one shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be permanent,—to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed,sitanywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all positions."I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James. I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or Montaigne, or Bacon,—I had almost added, or Shakespeare himself,—the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.' In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing, nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry, in which James, when he attempted it, failed."Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a degree it never reached before. We must have war with him before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her lost children. They willinvitehim, as the poor Savoyards wereinvitedby him to do. So long as this perfidious scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but nothing can goad his fat sides into a move."Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.

"People, I hear, are flocking fast into Florence for the exhibition. This evening I received another kind note from the Countess, who tells me that she shall return to Florence on Saturday, and invites me to accompany her there. But I abhor all crowds, and am not fascinated by the eye of kings. I never saw him of Italy when he was here before, and shall not now.

"I am about to remove my terrace, and to place it under the window of the small bedroom, substituting a glass door for the present window. On this terrace I shall spend all my October days, and—and—all my money! The landlord will not allow one shilling toward the expense, which will make his lower rooms lighter and healthier. To him the advantage will be permanent,—to me (God knows) it must be very temporary. In another summer I shall not sit so high, nor, indeed,sitanywhere, but take instead the easiest and laziest of all positions.

"I am continuing to read the noble romances of my friend James. I find in them thoughts as profound as any in Charron, or Montaigne, or Bacon,—I had almost added, or Shakespeare himself,—the wisest of men, as the greatest of poets. On the morning after your departure I finished the 'Philip Augustus.' In the thirty-eighth chapter is this sentence: 'O Isidore! 't is not the present, I believe, that ever makes our misery; 't is its contrast with the past; 't is the loss of some hope, or the crushing of some joy; the disappointment of expectation, or the regrets of memory. The present is nothing, nothing, nothing, but in its relation to the future or the past.' James is inferior to Scott in wit and humor, but more than his equal in many other respects; but then Scott wrote excellent poetry, in which James, when he attempted it, failed.

"Let me hear how affairs are going on in America. I believe we have truer accounts from England than your papers are disposed to publish. Louis Napoleon is increasing his naval force to a degree it never reached before. We must have war with him before a twelvemonth is over. He will also make disturbances in Louisiana, claiming it on the dolorous cry of France for her lost children. They willinvitehim, as the poor Savoyards wereinvitedby him to do. So long as this perfidious scoundrel exists there will be no peace of quiet in any quarter of the globe. The Pope is heartily sick of intervention; but nothing can goad his fat sides into a move.

"Are you not tired? My wrist is. So adieu.

"Ever affectionately,"W. S. L."

With this letter came a slip of paper, on which were these lines:—

"TO GIALLO,"Faithfullest of a faithful race,Plainly I read it in thy face,Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,And leave behind me all my cares.No: I shall never see again,Her who now sails across the main,Nor wilt thou ever as beforeRear two white feet against her door.""Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,September, 1861."

"TO GIALLO,

"Faithfullest of a faithful race,Plainly I read it in thy face,Thou wishest me to mount the stairs,And leave behind me all my cares.No: I shall never see again,Her who now sails across the main,Nor wilt thou ever as beforeRear two white feet against her door."

"Written opposite Palazzo Pitti,September, 1861."

"February 15, 1862.

".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:—"1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor."2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from wife and children."3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in perpetuity to the liberated."The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds, where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire that you also will remember

"1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.

"2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from wife and children.

"3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in perpetuity to the liberated.

"The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds, where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.

".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire that you also will remember

"W. S. Landor."

"January, 1863.

".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such. This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man should be lord and master of another. But Washington had slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union a third of the white population. Is it not better that the blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America. Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory, but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free."I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond protectress in ——.... Present my respectful compliments to Mrs. F., and believe me to continue

"I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond protectress in ——.... Present my respectful compliments to Mrs. F., and believe me to continue

"Your faithful old friend,"W. S. Landor."

"September 11, 1863.

".... You must be grieved at the civil war. It might have been avoided. The North had no right to violate the Constitution. Slavery was lawful, execrable as it is.... Congress might have liberated them [the slaves] gradually at no expense to the nation at large."1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised."2. None to be imported or sold."3. No husband and wife separated."4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor."5. Schools in every township; andchildren of both sexes sent to them at six to ten."A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist. Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like manner?"The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his residence. He found it difficult to express the difference between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself, sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he spent the winter."Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England. Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada will soon be independent both of America and England. Your people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of it. Believe me ever,

"1. Every slave after fifteen years should be affranchised.

"2. None to be imported or sold.

"3. No husband and wife separated.

"4. No slave under twelve compelled to labor.

"5. Schools in every township; andchildren of both sexes sent to them at six to ten.

"A few days before I left England, five years ago, I had an opportunity of conversing with a gentleman who had visited the United States. He was an intelligent and zealous Abolitionist. Wishing to learn the real state of things, he went on board a vessel bound to New York. He was amazed at the opulence and splendor of that city, and at the inadequate civilization of the inhabitants. He dined at a public table, at a principal inn. The dinner was plenteous and sumptuous. On each side of him sat two gentlemen who spat like Frenchmen the moment a plate was removed. This prodigy deprived him of appetite. Dare I mention it, that the lady opposite cleared her throat in like manner?

"The Englishman wished to see your capital, and hastened to Washington. There he met a member of Congress to whom he had been introduced in London by Webster. Most willingly he accepted his invitation to join him at Baltimore, his residence. He found it difficult to express the difference between the people of New York and those of Baltimore, whom he represented as higher-bred. He met there a slaveholder of New Orleans, with whom at first he was disinclined to converse, but whom presently he found liberal and humane, and who assured him that his slaves were contented, happy, and joyous. 'There are some cruel masters,' he said, 'among us; but come yourself, sir, and see whether we consider them fit for our society or our notice.' He accepted the invitation, and remained at New Orleans until a vessel was about to sail for Bermuda, where he spent the winter.

"Your people, I am afraid, will resolve on war with England. Always aggressive, they already devour Canada. I hope Canada will soon be independent both of America and England. Your people should be satisfied with a civil war of ten or twelve years: they will soon have one of much longer duration about Mexico. God grant that you, my dear friend, may see the end of it. Believe me ever,

"Your affectionate old friend,"W. S. Landor."

It was sad to receive such letters from the old man, for they showed how a mind once great was tottering ere it fell. Blind, deaf, shut up within the narrow limits of his own four walls, dependent upon English newspapers for all tidings of America,—is it strange that during those last days Landor failed to appreciate the grandeur of our conflict, and stumbled as he attempted to follow the logic of events? Well do I remember that in conversations he had reasoned far differently, his sympathy going out most unreservedly to the North. Living in the dark, he saw no more clearly than the majority of Europeans, and a not small minority of our own people. Interesting as is everything that so celebrated an author as Landor writes, these extracts, so unfavorable to our cause and to his intellect, would never have been published had not English reviewers thoroughly ventilated his opinions on the American war. Their insertion, consequently, in no way exposes Landor to severer comment than that to which the rashly unthinking have already subjected him, but, on the contrary, increases our regard for him, denoting, as they do, that, however erroneous his conclusions, the subject was one to which he devoted all the thought left him by old age. The record of a long life cannot be obliterated by the unsound theories of the octogenarian. It was only ten years before that he appealed to America in behalf of freedom in lines beginning thus:—

"Friend Jonathan!—for friend thou art,—Do, prithee, take now in good partLines the first steamer shall waft o'er.Sorry am I to hear the blacksStill bear your ensign on their backs;The stripes they suffer make me sore.Beware of wrong. The brave are true;The tree of Freedom never grewWhere Fraud and Falsehood sowed their salt."

In his poem, also, addressed to Andrew Jackson, the "Atlantic Ruler" isapostrophized on the supposition of a prophecy that remained unfulfilled.

"Up, every son of Afric soil,Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail,For your own glebes and garners toilWith easy plough and lightsome flail.A father's home ye never knew,A father's home your sons shall have from you.Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day,Your world that demons tore away.Look up! look up! the flaming swordHath vanished! and behold your Paradise restored."

This is Landor in the full possession of his intellect.

For Landor's own sake, I did not wish to drink the lees of that rich wine which Lady Blessington had prophesied would "flow on pure, bright, and sparkling to the last." It is the strength, not the weakness, of our friends that we would remember, and therefore Landor's letter of September, 1863, remained unanswered. It was better so. A year later he died of old age, and during this year he was but the wreck of himself. He became gradually more and more averse to going out, and to receiving visitors,—more indifferent, in fact, to all outward things. He used to sit and read, or, at all events, hold a book in his hand, and would sometimes write and sometimes give way to passion. "It was the swell of the sea after the storm, before the final calm," wrote a friend in Florence. Landor did not become physically deafer, but the mind grew more and more insensible to external impressions, and at last his housekeeper was forced to write down every question she was called upon to ask him. Few crossed the threshold of his door saving his sons, who went to see him regularly. At last he had a difficulty in swallowing, which produced a kind of cough. Had he been strong enough to expectorate or be sick, he might have lived a little longer; but the frame-work was worn out, and in a fit of coughing the great old man drew his last breath. He was confined to his bed but two or three days. I am told he looked very grand when dead,—like a majestic marble statue. The funeral was hurried, and none but his two sons followed his remains to the grave!

One touching anecdote remains to be told of him, as related by his housekeeper. On the night before the 1st of May, 1864, Landor became very restless, as sometimes happened during the last year. About two o'clock,a. m., he rang for Wilson, and insisted upon having the room lighted and the windows thrown open. He then asked for pen, ink, and paper, and the date of the day. Being told that it was the dawn of the 1st of May, he wrote a few lines of poetry upon it; then, leaning back, said, "I shall never write again. Put out the lights and draw the curtains." Very precious would those lines be now, had they been found. Wilson fancies that Landor must have destroyed them the next morning on rising.

The old man had his wish. Years before, when bidding, as he supposed, an eternal farewell to Italy, he wrote sadly of hopes which then seemed beyond the pale of possibility.

"I did believe, (what have I not believed?)Weary with age, but unopprest by pain,To close in thy soft clime my quiet day,And rest my bones in the Mimosa's shade.Hope! hope! few ever cherisht thee so little;Few are the heads thou hast so rarely raised;But thou didst promise this, and all was well.For we are fond of thinking where to lieWhen every pulse hath ceast, when the lone heartCan lift no aspiration, ... reasoningAs if the sight were unimpaired by death,Were unobstructed by the coffin-lid,And the sun cheered corruption! Over allThe smiles of Nature shed a potent charm,And light us to our chamber at the grave."

Italy recalled her aged yet impassioned lover, and there, beneath the cypresses of the English burying-ground at Florence, almost within sound of the murmur of his "own Affrico," rest the weary bones of Walter Savage Landor. It is glorified dust with which his mingles. Near by, the birds sing their sweetest over the grave of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Not far off, an American pine watches vigilantly while Theodore Parker sleeps his long sleep; and but a little distance beyond, Frances Trollope, the mother, and Theodosia Trollope, her more than devoteddaughter, are united in death as they had been in life.

"Nobly, O Theo! has your verse called forthThe Roman valor and Subalpine worth,"

sang Landor years ago of hisprotégée, who outlived her friend and critic but a few months. With the great and good about him, Landor sleeps well. His genius needs no eulogy: good wine needs no bush. Time, that hides the many in oblivion, can but add to the warmth and mellowness of his fame; and in the days to come no modern writer will be more faithfully studied or more largely quoted than Walter Savage Landor.

"We upon earthHave not our places and our distancesAssigned, for many years; at last a tube,Raised and adjusted by Intelligence,Stands elevated to a cloudless sky,And place and magnitude are ascertained."

Landor "will dine late; but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select." He will reign among crowned heads.

What flecks the outer gray beyondThe sundown's golden trail?The white flash of a sea-bird's wing,Or gleam of slanting sail?Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point,And sea-worn elders pray,—The ghost of what was once a shipIs sailing up the bay!From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,From peril and from pain,The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,O hundred-harbored Maine!But many a keel shall seaward turn,And many a sail outstand,When, tall and white, the Dead Ship loomsAgainst the dusk of land.She rounds the headland's bristling pines.She threads the isle-set bay;No spur of breeze can speed her on,Nor ebb of tide delay.Old men still walk the Isle of OrrWho tell her date and name,Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yardsWho hewed her oaken frame.What weary doom of baffled quest,Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?What makes thee in the haunts of homeA wonder and a sign?No foot is on thy silent deck,Upon thy helm no hand;No ripple hath the soundless windThat smites thee from the land!For never comes the ship to portHowe'er the breeze may be;Just when she nears the waiting shoreShe drifts again to sea.No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,Nor sheer of veering side.Stern-fore she drives to sea and nightAgainst the wind and tide.In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the starOf evening guides her in;In vain for her the lamps are litWithin thy tower, Seguin!In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,In vain the pilot call;No hand shall reef her spectral sail,Or let her anchor fall.Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,Your gray-head hints of ill;And, over sick-beds whispering low,Your prophecies fulfil.Some home amid yon birchen treesShall drape its door with woe;And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,The burial boat shall row!From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,From island and from main,From sheltered cove and tided creek,Shall glide the funeral train.The dead-boat with the bearers four,The mourners at her stern,—And one shall go the silent wayWho shall no more return!And men shall sigh, and women weep,Whose dear ones pale and pine,And sadly over sunset seasAwait the ghostly sign.They know not that its sails are filledBy pity's tender breath,Nor see the Angel at the helmWho steers the Ship of Death!

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,From peril and from pain,The home-bound fisher greets thy lights,O hundred-harbored Maine!But many a keel shall seaward turn,And many a sail outstand,When, tall and white, the Dead Ship loomsAgainst the dusk of land.

She rounds the headland's bristling pines.She threads the isle-set bay;No spur of breeze can speed her on,Nor ebb of tide delay.Old men still walk the Isle of OrrWho tell her date and name,Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yardsWho hewed her oaken frame.

What weary doom of baffled quest,Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine?What makes thee in the haunts of homeA wonder and a sign?No foot is on thy silent deck,Upon thy helm no hand;No ripple hath the soundless windThat smites thee from the land!

For never comes the ship to portHowe'er the breeze may be;Just when she nears the waiting shoreShe drifts again to sea.No tack of sail, nor turn of helm,Nor sheer of veering side.Stern-fore she drives to sea and nightAgainst the wind and tide.

In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the starOf evening guides her in;In vain for her the lamps are litWithin thy tower, Seguin!In vain the harbor-boat shall hail,In vain the pilot call;No hand shall reef her spectral sail,Or let her anchor fall.

Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy,Your gray-head hints of ill;And, over sick-beds whispering low,Your prophecies fulfil.Some home amid yon birchen treesShall drape its door with woe;And slowly where the Dead Ship sails,The burial boat shall row!

From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point,From island and from main,From sheltered cove and tided creek,Shall glide the funeral train.The dead-boat with the bearers four,The mourners at her stern,—And one shall go the silent wayWho shall no more return!

And men shall sigh, and women weep,Whose dear ones pale and pine,And sadly over sunset seasAwait the ghostly sign.They know not that its sails are filledBy pity's tender breath,Nor see the Angel at the helmWho steers the Ship of Death!

Reuben had heard latterly very little of domestic affairs at Ashfield. He knew scarce more of the family relations of Adèle than was covered by that confidential announcement of the parson's which had so set on fire his generous zeal. The spinster, indeed, in one of her later letters had hinted, in a roundabout manner, that Adèle's family misfortunes were not looking so badly as they once did,—that the poor girl (she believed) felt tenderly still toward her old playmate,—and that Mr. Maverick was, beyond all question, a gentleman of very easy fortune. But Reuben was not in a mood to be caught by any chaff administered by his most respectable aunt. If, indeed, he had known all,—if that hearty burst of Adèle's gratitude had come to him,—if he could once have met her with the old freedom of manner,—ah! then—then—

But no; he thinks of her now as one under social blight, which he would have lifted or borne with her had not her religious squeamishness forbidden. He tries to forget what was most charming in her, and has succeeded passably well.

"I suppose she is still modelling her heroes on the Catechism," he thought, "and Phil will very likely pass muster."

The name of Madam Maverick as attaching to their fellow-passenger—which came to his ear for the first time on the second day out from port—considerably startled him. Madam Maverick is, he learns, on her way to join her husband and child in America. But he is by no means disposed to entertain a very exalted respect for any claimant of such name and title. He finds, indeed, the prejudices of his education (so he calls them) asserting themselves with a fiery heat; and most of all he is astounded by the artfully arranged religious drapery with which this poor woman—as it appears to him—seeks to cover her short-comings. He had brought away from the atmosphere of the old cathedrals a certain quickened religious sentiment, by the aid of which he had grown into a respect, not only for the Romish faith, but for Christian faith of whatever degree. And now he encountered what seemed to him its gross prostitution. The old Doctor then was right: this Popish form of heathenism was but a device of Satan,—a scarlet covering of iniquity. Yet, in losing respect for one form of faith, he found himself losing respect for all. It was easy for him to match the present hypocrisy with hypocrisies that he had seen of old.

Meantime, the good ship Meteor was skirting the shores of Spain, and had made a good hundred leagues of her voyage before Reuben had ventured to make himself known as the old schoolmate and friend of the child whom Madam Maverick was on her way to greet after so many years of separation. The truth was, that Reuben, his first disgust being overcome, could not shake off the influence of something attractive and winning in the manner of Madam Maverick. In her step and in her lithe figure he saw the step and figure of Adèle. All her orisons and aves, which she failed not to murmur each morning and evening, were reminders of the earnest faith of her poor child. It is impossible to treat her with disrespect. Nay, it is impossible,—as Reuben begins to associate more intimately the figure and the voice of this quiet lady with his memories of another and a younger one,—quite impossible, that he should not feel his whole chivalrous nature stirred in him, and become prodigal of attentions. If there were hypocrisy, it somehow cheated him into reverence.

The lady is, of course, astounded at Reuben's disclosure to her. "Mon Dieu!you, then, are the son of that good priest of whom I have heard somuch! And you are Puritan? I would not have thought that. They love the vanities of the world then,"—and her eye flashed over the well-appointed dress of Reuben, who felt half an inclination to hide, if it had been possible, the cluster of gairish charms which hung at his watch-chain. "You have shown great kindness to my child, Monsieur. I thank you with my whole heart."

"She is very charming, Madam," said Reuben, in an easy,dégagémanner, which, to tell truth, he put on to cover a little embarrassing revival of his old sentiment.

Madam Maverick looked at him keenly. "Describe her to me, if you will be so good, Monsieur."

Whereupon Reuben ran on,—jauntily, at first, as if it had been a ballet-girl of San Carlo whose picture he was making out; but his old hearty warmth declared itself by degrees; and his admiration and his tenderness gave such warm color to his language as it might have shown if her little gloved hand had been shivering even then in his own passionate clasp. And as he closed, with a great glow upon his face, Madam Maverick burst forth,—

"Mon Dieu, how I love her! Yet is it not a thing astonishing that I should ask you, a stranger, Monsieur, how my own child is looking?Culpa mea! culpa mea!" and she clutched at her rosary, and mumbled an ave, with her eyes lifted and streaming tears.

Reuben looked upon her in wonder, amazed at the depth of her emotion. Could this be all hypocrisy?

"Tenez!" said she, recovering herself, and reading, as it were, his doubts. "You count these" (lifting her rosary) "bawbles yonder, and our prayers pagan prayers; my husband has told me, and that she, Adèle, is taught thus, and that theBon Dieuhas forsaken our Holy Church,—that He comes near now only to your—what shall I call them?—meeting-houses? Tell me, Monsieur, does Adèle think this?"

"I think," said Reuben, "that your daughter would have charity for any religious faith which was earnest."

"Charity!Mon Dieu!Charity for sins, charity for failings,—yes, I ask it; but for my faith! No, Monsieur, no—no—a thousand times, no!"

"This is real," thought Reuben.

"Tell me, Monsieur," continued she, with a heat of language that excited his admiration, "what is it you believe there? What is the horror against which your New England teachers would warn my poor Adèle? May the Blessed Virgin be near her!"

Whereupon, Reuben undertook to lay down the grounds of distrust in which he had been educated; not, surely, with the fervor or the logical sequence which the old Doctor would have given to the same, but yet inveighing in good set terms against the vain ceremonials, the idolatries, the mummeries, the confessional, the empty absolution; and summing up all with the formula (may be he had heard the Doctor use the same language) that the piety of the Romanist was not so much a deep religious conviction of the truth, as a sentiment.

"Sentiment!" exclaims Madam Maverick. "What else? What but love of the good God?"

But not so much by her talk as by the every-day sight of her serene, unfaltering devotion is Reuben won into a deep respect for her faith.

Those are rare days and rare nights for him, as the good ship Meteor slips down past the shores of Spain to the Straits,—days all sunny, nights moon-lit. To the right,—not discernible, but he knows they are there,—the swelling hills of Catalonia and of Andalusia, the marvellous Moorish ruins, the murmurs of the Guadalquivir; to the left, a broad sweep of burnished sea, on which, late into the night, the moon pours a stream of molten silver, that comes rocking and widening toward him, and vanishes in the shadow of the ship. The cruise has been a splendid venture for him,—twenty-five thousand at the least. And as he paces the decks,—in the view only of the silent man at the wheel and of the silent stars,—he forecasts the palaces he will build. The feeble Doctorshall have ease and every luxury; he will be gracious in his charities; he will astonish the old people by his affluence; he will live—

Just here, he spies a female figure stealing from the companion-way, and gliding beyond the shelter of the wheelhouse. Half concealed as he chances to be in the shadow of the rigging, he sees her fall upon her knees, and, with head uplifted, cross her hands upon her bosom. 'T is a short prayer, and the instant after she glides below.

"Good God! what trust!"—it is an ejaculatory prayer of Reuben's, rather than an oath. And with it, swift as the wind, comes a dreary sense of unrest. The palaces he had built vanish. The stars blink upon him kindly, and from their wondrous depths challenge his thought. The sea swashes idly against the floating ship. He too afloat,—afloat. Whither bound? Yearning still for a belief on which he may repose. And he bethinks himself,—does it lie somewhere under the harsh and dogmatic utterances of the Ashfield pulpit? At the thought, he recalls the weary iteration of cumbersome formulas, that passed through his brain like leaden plummets, and the swift lashings of rebuke, if he but reached over for a single worldly floweret, blooming beside the narrow path; and yet,—and yet, from the leaden atmosphere of that past, saintly faces beam upon him,—a mother's, Adèle's,—nay, the kindly fixed gray eyes of the old Doctor glow upon him with a fire that must have been kindled with truth.

Does it lie in the melodious aves, and under the robes of Rome? The sordid friars, with their shaven pates, grin at him; some Rabelais head of a priest in the confessional-stall leers at him with mockery: and yet the golden letters of the great dome gleam again with the blazing legend,Ædificabo meam Ecclesiam!—and the figure of the Magdalen yonder has just now murmured, in tones that must surely have reached a gracious ear,—

"Tibi Christe, redemptori,Nostro vero salvatori!"

Is the truth between? Is it in both? Is it real? And if real, why may not the same lips declare it under the cathedral or the meeting-house roof? Why not—in God's name—charity?

The Meteor is a snug ship, well found, well manned, and, as the times go, well officered. The captain, indeed, is not over-alert or fitted for high emergencies; but what emergencies can belong to so placid a voyage? For a week after the headlands of Tarifa and Spartel have sunk under the eastern horizon, the vessel is kept every day upon her course,—her top-gallant and studding sails all distent with the wind blowing freely from over Biscay. After this come light, baffling, westerly breezes, with sometimes a clear sky, and then all is overclouded by the drifting trade-mists. Zigzagging on, quietly as ever, save the bustle and whiz and flapping canvas of the ship "in stays," the good Meteor pushes gradually westward.

Meantime a singular and almost tender intimacy grew up between Reuben and the lady voyager. It is always agreeable to a young man to find a listening ear in a lady whose age puts her out of the range of any flurry of sentiment, and whose sympathy gives kindly welcome to his confidence. All that early life of his he detailed to her with a particularity and a warmth (himself unconscious of the warmth) which brought the childish associations of her daughter fresh to the mind of poor Madam Maverick. No wonder that she gave a willing ear! no wonder that the glow of his language kindled her sympathy! Nor with such a listener does he stop with the boyish life of Ashfield. He unfolds his city career, and the bright promises that are before him,—promises of business success, which (he would make it appear) are all that fill his heart now. In the pride of his twenty-five years he loves to represent himself asblaséin sentiment.

Madam Maverick has been taught, in these latter years, a large amount of self-control; so she can listen with a grave, nay, even a kindly face, to Reuben's sweeping declarations. And if, at a hint from her,—which he shrewdly counts Jesuitical,—his thought is turned in the direction of his religious experiences, he has his axioms, his common-sense formulas, his irreproachable coolness, and, at times, a noisy show of distrust, under which it is easy to see an eager groping after the ends of that great tangled skein of thought within, which is a weariness.

"If you could only have a talk with Father Ambrose!" says Madam Maverick with half a sigh.

"I should like that of all things," says Reuben, with a touch of merriment. "I suppose he 's a jolly old fellow, with rosy cheeks and full of humor. By Jove! there go the beads again!" (He says this latter to himself, however, as he sees the nervous fingers of the poor lady plying her rosary, and her lips murmuring some catch of a prayer.)

Yet he cannot but respect her devotion profoundly, wondering how it can have grown up under the heathenisms of her life; wondering perhaps, too, how his own heathenism could have grown up under the roof of a parsonage. It will be an odd encounter, he thinks, for this woman, with the people of Ashfield, with the Doctor, with Adèle.

There are gales, but the good ship rides them out jauntily, with but a single reef in her topsails. Within five weeks from the date of her leaving Marseilles she is within a few days' sail of New York. A few days' sail! It may mean overmuch; for there are mists, and hazy weather, which forbid any observation. The last was taken a hundred miles to the eastward of George's Shoal. Under an easy offshore wind the ship is beating westward. But the clouds hang low, and there is no opportunity for determining position. At last, one evening, there is a little lift, and, for a moment only, a bright light blazes over the starboard bow. The captain counts it a light upon one of the headlands of the Jersey shore; and he orders the helmsman (she is sailing in the eye of an easy westerly breeze) to give her a couple of points more "northing"; and the yards and sheets are trimmed accordingly. The ship pushes on more steadily as she opens to the wind, and the mists and coming night conceal all around them.

"What do you make of the light, Mr. Yardley?" says the captain, addressing the mate.

"Can't say, sir, with such a bit of a look. If it should be Fire Island, we 're in a bad course, sir."

"That's true enough," said the captain thoughtfully. "Put a man in the chains, Mr. Yardley, and give us the water."

"I hope we shall be in the bay by morning, Captain," said Reuben, who stood smoking leisurely near the wheel. But the captain was preoccupied, and answered nothing.

A little after, a voice from the chains came chanting full and loud, "By the mark—nine!"

"This 'll never do, Mr. Yardley," said the captain, "Jersey shore or any other. Let all hands keep by to put the ship about."

A voice forward was heard to say something of a roar that sounded like the beat of surf; at which the mate stepped to the side of the ship and listened anxiously.

"It 's true, sir," said he coming aft. "Captain, there 's something very like the beat of surf, here away to the no'th'ard."

A flutter in the canvas caught the captain's attention. "It 's the wind slacking; there's a bare capful," said the mate, "and I 'm afeard there's mischief brewing yonder." He pointed as he spoke a little to the south of east, where the darkness seemed to be giving way to a luminous gray cloud of mist.

"And a half—six!" shouts again the man in the chains.

The captain meets it with a swelling oath, which betrays clearly enough hisanxiety. "There 's not a moment to lose, Yardley; see all ready there! Keep her a good full, my boy!" (to the man at the wheel).

The darkness was profound. Reuben, not a little startled by the new aspect of affairs, still kept his place upon the quarter-deck. He saw objects flitting across the waist of the ship, and heard distinctly the coils flung down with a clang upon the wet decks. There was something weird and ghostly in those half-seen figures, in the indistinct maze of cordage and canvas above, and the phosphorescent streaks of spray streaming away from either bow.

"Are you ready there?" says the captain.

"Ay, ay, sir," responds the mate.

"Put your helm a-lee, my man!—Hard down!"

"Hard down it is, sir!"

The ship veers up into the wind; and, as the captain shouts his order, "Mainsail haul!" the canvas shakes; the long, cumbrous yard groans upon its bearings; there is a great whizzing of the cordage through the blocks; but, in the midst of it all,—coming keenly to the captain's ear,—a voice from the fore-hatch exclaims, "By G—, she touches!"

The next moment proved it true. The good ship minded her helm no more. The fore-yards are brought round by the run and the mizzen, but the light wind—growing lighter—hardly clears the flapping canvas from the spars.

In the sunshine, with so moderate a sea, 't would seem little; in so little depth of water they might warp her off; but the darkness magnifies the danger; besides which, an ominous sighing and murmur are coming from that luminous misty mass to the southward. Through all this, Reuben has continued smoking upon the quarter-deck; a landsman under a light wind, and with a light sea, hardly estimates at their true worth such intimations as had been given of the near breaking of the surf, and of the shoaling water. Even the touch upon bottom, of which the grating evidence had come home to his own perceptions, brought up more the fate of his business venture than any sense of personal peril. We can surely warp her off in the morning, he thought; or, if the worst came, insurance was full, and it would be easy boating to the shore.

"It's lucky there's no wind," said he to Yardley.

"Will you obleege me, Mr. Johns? Take a good strong puff of your cigar,—here, upon the larboard rail, sir," and he took the lantern from the companion-way that he might see the drift of the smoke. For a moment it lifted steadily; then, with a toss it vanished away—shoreward. The first angry puffs of the southeaster were coming.

The captain had seen all, and with an excited voice said, "Mr. Yardley, clew up, fore and aft,—clew up everything; put all snug, and make ready the best bower."

"Mr. Johns," said he, approaching Reuben, "we are on a lee shore; it should be Long Island beach by the soundings; with calm weather, and a kedge, we might work her off with the lift of the tide. But the Devil and all is in that puff from the sou'east."

"O, well, we can anchor," says Reuben.

"Yes, we can anchor, Mr. Johns; but if that sou'easter turns out the gale it promises, the best anchor aboard won't be so good as a gridiron."

"Do you advise taking to the boats, then?" asked Reuben, a little nervously.

"I advise nothing, Mr. Johns. Do you hear the murmur of the surf yonder? It's bad landing under such a pounding of the surf, with daylight; in the dark, where one can't catch the drift of the waves, it might be—death!"

The word startled Reuben. His philosophy had always contemplated it at a distance, toward which easy and gradual approaches might be made: but here it was, now, at a cable's length!

And yet it was very strange; the sea was not high; no gale as yet; only an occasional grating thump of the keel was a reminder that the good Meteorwas not still afloat. But the darkness! Yes, the darkness was complete, (hardly a sight even of the topmen who were aloft—as in the sunniest of weather—stowing the canvas,) and to the northward that groan and echo of the resounding surf; to the southward, the whirling white of waves that are lifting now, topped with phosphorescent foam.

The anchor is let go, but even this does not bring the ship's head to the wind. Those griping sands hold her keel fast. The force of the rising gale strikes her full abeam, giving her a great list to shore. It is in vain the masts are cut away, and the rigging drifts free; the hulk lifts only to settle anew in the grasping sands. Every old seaman upon her deck knows that she is a doomed ship.

From time to time, as the crashing spars or the leaden thump upon the sands have startled those below, Madam Maverick and her maid have made their appearance, in a wild flutter of anxiety, asking eager questions; (Reuben alone can understand them or answer them;) but as the southeaster grows, as it does, into a fury of wind, and the poor hulk reels vainly, and is overlaid with a torrent of biting salt spray, Madam Maverick becomes calm. Instinctively, she sees the worst.

"Could I only clasp Adèle once more in these arms, I would say, cheerfully, 'Nunc dimittis.'"

Reuben regarded her calm faith with a hungry eagerness. Not, indeed, that calmness was lacking in himself. Great danger, in many instances, sublimates the faculties of keenly strung minds. But underneath his calmness there was an unrest, hungering for repose,—the repose of a fixed belief. If even then the breaking waves had whelmed him in their mad career, he would have made no wailing outcry, but would have clutched—how eagerly!—at the merest shred of that faith which, in other days and times, he had seen illuminate the calm face of the father. Something to believe,—on which to float upon such a sea!

But the waves and winds make sport of beliefs. Prayers count nothing against that angry surge. Two boats are already swept from the davits, and are gone upon the whirling waters. A third, with infinite pains, is dropped into the yeast. It is hard to tell who gives the orders. But, once afloat, there is a rush upon it, and away it goes,—overcrowded, and within eyeshot lifts, turns, and a crowd of swimmers float for a moment,—one with an oar, another with a thwart that the waves have torn out,—and in the yeast of waters they vanish.

One boat only remains, and it is launched with more careful handling; three cling by the wreck; the rest—save only Madam Maverick and Reuben—are within her, as she tosses still in the lee of the vessel.

"There 's room!" cries some one; "jump quick! for God's sake!"

And Reuben, with some strange, generous impulse, seizes upon Madam Maverick, and, before she can rebel or resist, has dropped her over the rail. The men grapple her and drag her in; but in the next moment the little cockle of a boat is drifted yards away.

The few who are left—the boatswain among them—are toiling on the wet deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,—a miniature sound in that howl of the storm,—the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam Maverick,—her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More than ever too her face was like the face of Adèle,—such as the face of Adèle must surely become, when years have sobered her and her buoyant faith has ripened into calm. And from that momentary glance of the serene countenance, and that flashing associated memory of Adèle, a subtile, mystic influence is born in him, by which he seems suddenly transfused with the same trustful serenity which just now he gazed upon with wonder. If indeed the poor lady is already lost,—he thinks it for a moment,—her spirit has fanned and cheered him as it passed.Once more, as if some mysterious hand had brought them to his reach, he grapples with those lost lines of hope and trust which in that youthful year of his exuberant emotional experience he had held and lost,—once more, now, in hand,—once more he is elated with that wonderful sense of a religious poise, that, it would seem, no doubts or terrors could overbalance. Unconsciously kneeling on the wet deck, he is rapt into a kind of ecstatic indifference to winds, to waves, to danger, to death.

The boom of a gun is heard to the northward. It must be from shore. There are helpers at work, then. Some hope yet for this narrow tide of life, which just seemed losing itself in some infinite flow beyond. Life is, after all, so sweet! The boatswain forward labors desperately to return an answering signal; but the spray, the slanted deck, the overleaping waves, are too much for him. Darkness and storm and despair rule again.

The wind, indeed, has fallen; the force of the gale is broken; but the waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and burst open with the strain.

Reuben chances to espy an old-fashioned round life-buoy lashed to the taffrail, and, cutting it loose, makes himself fast to it. He overhears the boatswain say, yonder by the forecastle, "These thumpings will break her in two in an hour. Cling to a spar, Jack."

The gray light of dawn at last breaks, and shows a dim line of shore, on which parties are moving, dragging some machine, with which they hope to cast a line over the wreck. But the swell is heavier than ever, the timbers nearer to parting. At last a flash of lurid light from the dim shore-line,—a great boom of sound, and a line goes spinning out like a spider's web up into the gray, bleak sky. Too far! too short! and the line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over; with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters, Reuben goes down.

That morning,—it was the 22d of September, in the year 1842,—Mr. Brindlock came into his counting-room some two hours before noon, and says to his porter and factotum, as he enters the door, "Well, Roger, I suppose you 'll be counting this puff of a southeaster the equinoctial, eh?"

"Indeed, sir, and it 's an awful one. The Meteor 's gone ashore on Long Beach; and there 's talk of young Mr. Johns being lost."

"Good Heavens!" said Brindlock, "you don't tell me so!"

By half past three he was upon the spot; a little remaining fragment only of the Meteor hanging to the sands, and a greatdébrisof bales, spars, shattered timbers, bodies, drifted along the shore,—Reuben's among them.

But he is not dead; at least so say the wreckers, who throng upon the beach; the life-buoy is still fast to him, though he is fearfully shattered and bruised. He is borne away under the orders of Brindlock to some near house, and presently revives enough to ask that he may be carried—"home."

As, in the opening of this story, his old grandfather, the Major, was borne away from the scene of his first battle by easy stages homeward, so now the grandson, far feebler and after more terrible encounter with death, is carried by "easy stages" to his home in Ashfield. Again the city, the boat, the river,—with its banks yellowing with harvests, and brightened with the glowing tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs drifting down with the tide, and sailors in tasselled caps leaning over the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurelyon the rock-strewn hills; again the ferryman, in his broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across; again the stoppage at the wharf of the little town, from which the coach still plies over the hills to Ashfield.

On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which are Adèle and her father. The news of disaster flies fast; they have learned of the wreck, and the names of passengers. They go to learn what they can of the mother, whom the daughter has scarce known. The passing is too hasty for recognition. Brindlock arrives at last with his helpless charge at the door of the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once with grief and with joy. The news had come to him, and he had anticipated the worst. But "Thank God! 'Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer; there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold."

He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his own bed, just out of his study. For himself, he shall need none until the crisis is past. But the crisis does not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds are not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician says,) owing to exposure and excitement, and he can predict nothing as to the result. Even Aunt Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees that poor battered hulk of humanity lying there; she spares herself no fatigue, God knows, but she sheds tears in her own chamber over this great disaster. There are good points even in the spinster; when shall we learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor the worst wholly bad?

Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life and death; and the old Doctor, catching chance rest upon the little cot they have placed for him in the study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung upon his wall above the sword of his father. He fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with suffering, resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness, or of the little offices of friends which cheat it of pains, the old gentleman knows nothing: sick souls only have been his care. And it is pitiful to see his blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters round the sick-chamber where Reuben, with very much of youthful vigor left in him, makes fight against the arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For many days after his arrival there is no consciousness,—only wild words (at times words that sound to the ears of the good Doctor strangely wicked, and that make him groan in spirit),—tender words, too, of dalliance, and eager, loving glances,—murmurs of boyish things, of sunny, school-day noonings,—hearing which, the Doctor thinks that, if this light must go out, it had better have gone out in those days of comparative innocence.

Over and over the father appeals to the village physician to know what the chances may be,—to which that old gentleman, fumbling his watch-key, and looking grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at a possible undermining of the constitution in these later years of city life.

God only knows what habits the young man may have formed in these last years; surely the Doctor does not; and he tells the physician as much, with a groan of anguish.

Meantime, Maverick and Adèle have gone upon their melancholy search; and, as they course over the island to the southern beach, the sands, the plains, the houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Adèle as in a dream. At last she sees a great reach of water,—piling up, as it rolls lazily in from seaward, into high walls of waves, that are no sooner lifted than they break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands. Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and there,—stragglers scanning every noticeable heap, every floating thing that comes in.

Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only on the way that many bodies are lying in the near houses,—many bruised and suffering ones; while some have come safe to land, and goneto their homes. They make their way from that dismal surf-beaten shore to the nearest house. There are loiterers about the door; and within,—within, Adèle finds her mother at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb lips that will never more open,—never say to her rapt ears, "My child! my darling!"

Maverick is touched as he has never been touched before; the age of early sentiment comes drifting back to his world-haunted mind; nay, tears come to those eyes that have not known them for years. The grief, the passionate, vain tenderness of Adèle, somehow seems to sanctify the memory of the dead one who lies before him, her great wealth of hair streaming dank and fetterless over the floor.

Not more tenderly, scarce more tearfully, could he have ministered to one who had been his life-long companion. Where shall the poor lady be buried? Adèle answers that, with eyes flashing through her tears,—nowhere but in Ashfield, nowhere except beside the sister, Marie.

It is a dismal journey for the father and the daughter; it is almost a silent journey. Does she love him less? No, a thousand times, no. Does he love her less? No, a thousand times, no. In such presence love is awed into silence. As the mournfulcortégeenters the town of Ashfield, it passes the home of that fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom Adèle had shown such sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking wonderingly upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face of Adèle, and, by some strange rush of memory, recalls, as he looks on her, the letter which she had given him long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He runs to his mother: it is in his pocket,—it is in that of some summer jacket. At last it is found; and the poor woman herself, that very morning, with numberless apologies, delivers it at the door of the parsonage.

Phil is the first to meet this exceptional funeral company, and is the first to tell Adèle how Reuben lies stricken almost to death at the parsonage. She thanks him: she thanks him again for the tender care which he shows in all relating to the approaching burial. When an enemy even comes forward to help us bury the child we loved or the parent we mourn, our hearts warm toward him as they never warmed before; but when a friend assumes these offices of tenderness, and takes away the harshest edge of grief by assuming the harshest duties of grief, our hearts shower upon him their tenderest sympathies. We never forget it.

Of course, the arrival of this strange freight in Ashfield gives rise to a world of gossip. We cannot follow it; we cannot rehearse it. The poor woman is buried, as Adèle had wished, beside her sister. NoDe Profundisexcept the murmur of the winds through the crimson and the scarlet leaves of later September.

The Tourtelots have been eager with their gossip. The dame has queried if there should not be some town demonstration against the burial of the Papist. But the little Deacon has been milder; and we give our last glimpse of him—altogether characteristic—in a suggestion which he makes in a friendly way to Squire Elderkin, who is the host of the French strangers.

"Square, have they ordered a moniment yit for Miss Maverick?"

"Not that I 'm aware of, Deacon."

"Waal, my nevvy's got a good slab of Varmont marble, which he ordered for his fust wife; but the old folks did n't like it, and it's in his barn on the heater-piece. 'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it shouldsuitthe Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able low."

Reuben is still floating between death and life. There is doubt whether the master of the long course or of the short course will win. However that may be, his consciousness has returned; and it has been with a great glow ofgratitude that the poor Doctor has welcomed that look of recognition in his eye,—the eye of Rachel!

He is calm,—he knows all. That calmness which had flashed into his soul when last he saw the serene face of his fellow-voyager upon that mad sea ishisstill.

The poor father had been moved unwontedly by that unconsciousness which was blind to all his efforts at spiritual consolation; but he is not less moved when he sees reason stirring again,—a light of eager inquiry in those eyes fearfully sunken, but from their cavernous depths seeing farther and more keenly than ever.

"Adèle's mother,—was she lost?" He whispers it to the Doctor; and Miss Eliza, who is sewing yonder, is quickened into eager listening.

"Lost! my son, lost! Lost, I apprehend, in the other world as well as this, I fear the true light never dawned upon her."

A faint smile—as of one who sees things others do not see—broke over the face of Reuben. "'T is a broad light, father; it reaches beyond our blind reckoning."

There was a trustfulness in his manner that delighted the Doctor. "And you see it, my son?—Repentance, Justification by Faith, Adoption, Sanctification, Election?"

"Those words are a weariness to me, father; they suggest methods, dogmas, perplexities. Christian hope, pure and simple, I love better."

The Doctor is disturbed; he cannot rightly understand how one who seems inspired by so calm a trust—the son of his own loins too—should find the authoritative declarations of the divines a weariness. Is it not some subtle disguise of Satan, by which his poor boy is being cheated into repose?

Of course the letter of Adèle, which had been so long upon its way, Miss Eliza had handed to Reuben after such time as her caution suggested, and she had explained to him its long delay.

Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her, but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him, which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it forever.

Adèle has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,—once led away weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again, but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother; but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes. The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he sees the tender eyes of Adèle, which, for the moment, outshine the promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning.

"I must see Adèle," he says to the Doctor; and the message is carried,—sheherself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon her cheek.

"Reuben has sent for me,"—she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy.

She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp—that was met, and met again. The Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and the spinster is fortunately just now busy at some of her household duties.

Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that cherished bit of paper, (Adèle knows already its history,) and when he has found it and shown it (his thin fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, "Thank you for this, Adèle!"

She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden mad pressure of content, while the blood mounted into either cheek with a rosy exuberance that magnified her beauty tenfold.

He saw it,—he felt it all; and through her beaming eyes, so full of tenderness and love, saw the world to which he had bidden adieu shining before him more beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and weary world that he could leave without a pang; to-day it is a brilliant world, where hopes, promises, joys pile in splendid proportions.

He tells her this. "Yesterday I would have died with scarce a regret; to-day, Adèle, I would live."

"You will, you will, Reuben!" and she grappled more and more passionately those shrunken fingers. "'T is not hopeless!" (sobbing).

"No, no, Adèle, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is lifted,—not hopeless!"

"Thank God, thank God!" said she, dropping upon her knees beside him, and with a smile of ecstasy he gathered that fair head to his bosom.

The Doctor, hearing her sobs, came softly in. The son's smile, as he met his father's inquiring look, was more than ever like the smile of Rachel. He has been telling the poor girl of her mother's death, thinks the old gentleman; yet the Doctor wonders that he could have kept so radiant a face with such a story.

Of these things, however, Reuben goes on presently to speak: of his first sight of the mother of Adèle, and of her devotional attitude as they floated down past the little chapel of Nôtre Dame to enter upon the fateful voyage; he recounts their talks upon the tranquil moon-lit nights of ocean; he tells of the mother's eager listening to his description of her child.

"I did not tell her the half, Adèle; yet she loved me for what I told her."

And Adèle smiles through her tears.

At last he comes to those dismal scenes of the wreck, relating all with a strange vividness; living over again, as it were, that fearful episode, till his brain whirled, his self-possession was lost, and he broke out into a torrent of delirious raving.

He sleeps brokenly that night, and the next day is feebler than ever. The physician warns against any causes of excitement. He is calm only at intervals. The old school-days seem present to him again; he talks of his fight with Phil Elderkin as if it happened yesterday.

"Yet I like Phil," he says (to himself), "and Rose is like Amanda, the divine Amanda. No—not she. I've forgotten: it's the French girl. She's a —— Pah! who cares? She's as pure as heaven; she's an angel. Adèle! Adèle! Not good enough! I'm not good enough. Very well, very well, now I'll be bad enough! Clouds, wrangles, doubts! Is it my fault?Ædificabo meam Ecclesiam.How they kneel! Puppets! mummers! No, not mummers, they see a Christ. What if they see it in a picture? You see him in words. Both in earnest. Belief—belief! That is best. Adèle, Adèle, I believe!"

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