In weary hours to lonely heightsWhen thou hast travelled sore,A sorrowing man hath borne his crossAnd gone thy way before.Thine eyes cannot escape the signOn every hand that isOf him who bore the general woe,Nor knew a common bliss.But men, remembering his face,Dreamed of him while they slept,And the mother by the cradle sideThought of his eye, and wept.Now haunts the world his ghost whose fateMade all men's fates his own;So for the wrongs of modest heartsA myriad hearts atone.Oh! deeply shall thy spirit toilTo reach the height he trod,And humbly strive thy soul to knowIts servant was its God.Only earth's martyr is her lord;Such is the gain of loss:And, looking in all hearts, I seeThe signal of the cross.
In weary hours to lonely heightsWhen thou hast travelled sore,A sorrowing man hath borne his crossAnd gone thy way before.Thine eyes cannot escape the signOn every hand that isOf him who bore the general woe,Nor knew a common bliss.But men, remembering his face,Dreamed of him while they slept,And the mother by the cradle sideThought of his eye, and wept.Now haunts the world his ghost whose fateMade all men's fates his own;So for the wrongs of modest heartsA myriad hearts atone.Oh! deeply shall thy spirit toilTo reach the height he trod,And humbly strive thy soul to knowIts servant was its God.Only earth's martyr is her lord;Such is the gain of loss:And, looking in all hearts, I seeThe signal of the cross.
In weary hours to lonely heightsWhen thou hast travelled sore,A sorrowing man hath borne his crossAnd gone thy way before.
Thine eyes cannot escape the signOn every hand that isOf him who bore the general woe,Nor knew a common bliss.
But men, remembering his face,Dreamed of him while they slept,And the mother by the cradle sideThought of his eye, and wept.
Now haunts the world his ghost whose fateMade all men's fates his own;So for the wrongs of modest heartsA myriad hearts atone.
Oh! deeply shall thy spirit toilTo reach the height he trod,And humbly strive thy soul to knowIts servant was its God.
Only earth's martyr is her lord;Such is the gain of loss:And, looking in all hearts, I seeThe signal of the cross.
Under a thickly-branched tree in the northern part of one of the southern counties of Maine is a certain gray rock, matted over with dim green lichens that are spotted with dead gold. From under this rock springs a sparkling little stream. It is no storied fountain, rich with legends of splendor, poetry, and crime, but a dear, bright little Yankee brook, with the world all before it. That world it immediately proceeds to investigate. It creeps through thready grasses and russet pine-needles; it turns aside, with great respect, for a stone no larger than a rabbit; and when a glistening pitchy cone drops into it, the infant river labors under the burden. When the thirsty fawn comes there to drink, nearly the whole rivulet flows down its throat, and the cone is stranded high and dry; what there is left flows southward. A sunbeam pierces the scented gloom, creeps down a tree-trunk, steals over a knoll of green-and-brown tree-moss, which then looks like a tiny forest on fire, over yellow violets, which dissolve in its light, over a bank of rich dark mould veined with the golden powder of decayed pine-trees, moist and soft, and full of glistening white roots, where the flowers push down their pearly feet. Over the bank, into the water, goes the sunbeam, and the two frolic together, and the stream dives under the gnarled roots, so that its playmate would believe it lost but for that gurgle of laughter down in the cool, fresh dark. Then it leaps up, and spreads itself out in a mirror, and the elder-tree, leaning over to look at the reflection of its fan-like leaves and clusters of white flowers, gets very erroneous ideas concerning its own personal appearance; for the palpitating rings that chase each other over the surface of the water make the brown stems crinkle, the leaves come to pieces and unite again, and the many flowers in each round cluster melt all together, then twinkle out individually, only to melt again into that bloomy full moon. Over this shimmer of flowers and water big bees fly, buzzing terribly, dragon-flies dart, or hang, purple-mailed, glittering creatures, with gauzy wings, and comical insects dance there, throwing spots of sunshine instead of shadow down to the leafy bed. Then the brook flows awhile in a green tranquil shadow, till, reaching the interlaced roots of two immense trees that hold a bank between them, it makes a sudden, foamy plunge the height of a stag's front. She is a bride then, you may say—she is Undine, looking through that white veil, and thinking new thoughts.
Now the bear comes down to drink and look at his ugly face in the deepening wave, foxes switch their long tails about the banks, deer come, as light-footed as shadows, drink, and fling up their short tails, with a flit of white, and trot away with a little sniff, and their heads thrown back, hearing the howl or the long stride of the wolf in pursuit. Rabbits come there, and squirrels leap and nibble in the branches above. Besides, there are shoals of pretty, slim fishes.
So through the mellow gloom andsunny sparkle of the old forest, the clear brook wanders, growing wiser, and talking to itself about many things.
Presently the wild creatures withdraw, sunburnt children wade across from bank to bank, grassy clearings abound, there are farm-houses, and cows with tinkling bells; and then comes a bridge, and boats dance upon the water, and the stream is a river! Alas for the Indian name it brought up out of the earth with it, and lisped and gurgled and laughed to itself all the way down—the name spiked withk's and choky-lookinggh's, rough to the eye, but sweet in the mouth, like a hazel-nut in the burr. The white settlers have changed all that.
Now, indeed, the young river puts on state, and lets people see that it is not to be waded through; and when they build a dam across, it flows grandly over, in a smooth, wine-colored curve. Times are changed, indeed, since the little gray birds with speckled breasts looked with admiration at its first cascade, since the bear, setting down his great paw, clumsily splashed the whole stream up over his shaggy leg. There are farms to keep up appearances before, mill-wheels to turn, and ships to bear up. Pine-cones, indeed! Besides, a new and strange experience has come to it, and its bosom pulses daily with the swelling of the tides. And here one village street, with white houses, follows its course a mile or so, and another street with white houses comes down to its bank from the west, crosses over, and goes up eastward. This town, with its two principal streets forming a cross near the mouth of the river, a white cross at the end of a silver chain—shall we call it Seaton? It is a good enough name. And the river shall be Seaton River, and the bay into which it flows shall be Seaton Bay. But the ocean that makes the bay, and drinks the river, shall be Atlantic still.
We have spoken!
We follow the road that follows the stream on its eastern bank, cross West Street, get into a poor, dwindling neighborhood, leave the houses nearly all behind, go over two small, ill-conditioned hills, and find at our right a ship-yard with wharves, at our left a dingy little cottage, shaped like a travelling-trunk, and not much larger than some. It stands with its side toward the dusty road, a large, low chimney rises from the roof, there is a door with a window at each side of it. One can see at a glance from the outside how this house is divided. It has but two rooms below, with a tiny square entry between, and a low attic above. Each room has three windows, one on each of the three outer walls.
The kitchen looked toward the village through its north window. Opposite that was a large fireplace with an ill-tempered, crackling fire of spruce-wood, throwing out sparks and splinters. It was April weather, and not very warm yet. In the chimney-corner sat Mr. Rowan, sulkily smoking his pipe, his eyes fixed on the chimney-back. He was a large, slouching man, with an intelligent face brutalized by intemperance. Drunkard was written all over him, in the scorched black hair, not yet turning gray, in the dry lips, bloated features, and inflamed eyes. He sat in his shirt-sleeves, waiting impatiently while his wife put a patch in his one coat. Mrs. Rowan, a poor, faded, little frightened woman, whom her female acquaintances called "slack," sat near the south window, wrinkling her brows anxiously over the said patch, which was smaller than the hole it was destined to fill. The afternoonsunshine spread a golden carpet close to her feet. In the light of it one could see the splinters in the much-scoured floor, and a few fraggles in the hem of Mrs. Rowan's calico gown.
At the eastern window sat Edith Yorke, eleven years of age, with a large book on her knees. Over this book, some illustrated work on natural history, she had been bending for an hour, her loose mop of tawny hair falling each side of the page. So cloistered, her profile was invisible; but, standing in front of her, one could see an oval face with regular features full of calm earnestness. Bright, arched lips, and a spirited curve in the nostrils, saved this face from the cold look which regular features often give. The large, drooping eyelids promised large eyes, the forehead was wide and not high, the brows long, slightly arched, and pale-brown in color, and the whole face, neck, hands, and wrists were tanned to a light quadroon tint. But where the coarse sleeve had slipped up was visible an arm of dazzling whiteness. Outside the window, and but two rods distant, hung a crumbling clay bank, higher than the house, with a group of frightened alder-bushes looking over the top, and holding on with all their roots. Some day, in spite of their grip—the sooner, perhaps, because of its stress—the last frail hold was to be loosed, and the bushes were to come sliding down the bank, faster and faster, to pitch headlong into the mire at the bottom, with a weak crackling of all their poor doomed branches.
Presently the child looked up, with lights coming and going in her agate-colored eyes. "How wonderful frogs are!" she exclaimed involuntarily.
There was no reply.
She glanced at her two companions, scarcely conscious of them, her mind full of something else. "But everything is wonderful, when you come to think of it," she pursued dreamily.
Mr. Rowan took the pipe from his mouth, turned his forbidding face, and glowered at the girl. "You're a wonderful fool!" he growled; then resumed his pipe, feeling better, apparently, for that expression of opinion. His wife glanced up, furtive and frightened, but said nothing.
Edith looked at the man unmoved, saw him an instant, then, still looking, saw him not. After a while she became aware, roused herself, and bent again over the book. Then there was silence, broken only by the snapping of the fire, the snip of Mrs. Rowan's scissors, and the lame, one-sided ticking of an old-fashioned clock on the mantelpiece.
After a while, as the child read, a new thought struck up. "That's just like! Don't you think"—addressing the company—"Major Cleaveland said yesterday that I had lightning-bugs in my eyes!"
Without removing his pipe, Mr. Rowan darted an angry look at his wife, whose face became still more frightened. "Dear me!" she said feebly, "that child is an idjut!"
This time the long, fading gaze dwelt on the woman before it went back to the book again. But the child was too closely ensphered in her own life to be much, if at all, hurt. Besides, she was none of theirs, nor of their kind. Her soul was no dying spark struggling through ashes, but a fire, "alive, and alive like to be," as children say when they wave the fire-brand, winding live ribbons in the air; and no drop of their blood flowed in her veins.
The clock limped over ten minutes more, and the patch was got into its place, after a fashion, botched somewhat, with the knots on the outside.Mr. Rowan took the coat, grumbled at it, put it on, and went out, glancing back at the child as he opened the door. She was looking after him with an expression which he interpreted to mean aversion and contempt. Perhaps he mistook. May be she was wondering at him, what sort of strange being he was. Edith Yorke was very curious regarding the world she had got into. It seemed to her a queer place, and that she had at present not much concern in it.
Her husband out of the way, Mrs. Rowan took her knitting-work, and stood a moment at the north window, gazing up toward the town, with a far-away look of blunted expectancy, as if she had got in the habit of looking for help which never came. Then she drew a long sigh, that also a habit, and, resuming her chair, began to knit and to rock herself, letting her mind, what there was left of it, swing to and fro, unmeaningly and miserably, to the sound of the clock as it ticked. "O dear! O dear!"—that was what the ticking always said to this poor soul. As she sat, the afternoon sun, sinking lower, crept about her feet, climbed to her lap, got hold of her knitting, and ran in little bright flashes along the needles, and snapped off in sparks at the ends, so that she seemed to be knitting sunshine.
This woman was what remained at forty of a pretty, flaxen-haired girl of eighteen, who had captivated handsome Dick Rowan, for he had been handsome. A faded rag of a woman she was, without hope or spirit, all the color and life washed out of her in a bitter rain of tears. The pink cheeks had faded, and only the ghost remained of that dimple that had once seemed to give meaning to her smiles. The curly hair was dry and thin, and had an air of chronic untidiness. The blue-gray eyes were dim and heavy, the teeth were nearly all gone. The pretty, chirping ways that had been captivating when youth covered their silliness—oh! where had they gone? She was a weak, broken-hearted, shiftless little woman, and her husband hated her. He felt wronged and cheated by her. He was more disappointed than Ixion, for in this cloud there had never even been a goddess. If she had sometimes turned upon him, when he acted like a brute, and scorned him for it, he would have liked her better; but she shrank, and cowered, and trembled, made him feel himself ten times the brute she dared not call him, yet gave him nothing to resent. "Gentle, is she?" he cried out once in a rage. "She is not! She is weak and slavish. A person cannot be gentle who cannot be something else."
So the poor woman suffered, and got neither pity nor credit from the one who caused her suffering. It was hard; and yet, she was nobler in her misery than she would have been in happiness. For sorrow gave her now and then a touch of dignity; and when, stung with a sudden perception of her own nothingness, she flung her desperate hands upward, and called upon God to deliver her, a certain tragical power and beauty seemed to wrap her round. Mrs. Rowan happy would have been a trivial woman, meaning no great harm, because meaning no great anything; but the fiery furnace of pain had scorched her up, and what remained was pure.
When the two were alone, Edith dropped her book, and looked across the room at her companion. Mrs. Rowan, busy with her own sad thoughts, took no notice of her, and presently the child glanced past her, and out the window. The view wasnot bad. First came the dusty road, then the ship-yard, then the river sparkling, but rather the worse for sawdust and lath-edgings that came down from the lumber-mills above the village. But here all that was sordid came to an end. The meanness and misery on the hitherward bank were like witches, who cannot cross running water. From the opposite bank rose a long, grassy hill, unmarred by road or fence. In summer-time you could see from far away the pinkness of the wild-roses that had seen fit to bind with a blooming cestus the dented waist of this hill. Behind them was a green spray of locust and laburnum trees, then dense round tops of maples, and elms in graceful groups, half-hiding the roofs and gables of Major Cleaveland's house—the great house of the village, as its owner was the great man. Behind that was a narrow rim of pines and spruces, making the profile of an enchanted city against the horizon, and above that a vast hollow of unobstructed sky. In that space the sunsets used to build their jasper walls, and calm airs stretch long lines of vapor across, till the whole west was a stringed instrument whereon a full symphony of colors played good-night to the sun. There the west wind blew up bubbles of wry cloud, and the new moon put forth her gleaming sickle to gather in the sheaf of days, a never-failing harvest, through storm and sunshine, hoar-frost and dew. There the pearly piles of cumuli used to slumber on summer afternoons, lightnings growing in their bosoms to flash forth at evening; and there, when a long storm ended with the day, rose the solid arch of cerulean blue. When it had reached a certain height, Edith Yorke would run into the south room, and look out to see the rainbow suspend its miraculous arch over the retreating storm. This little girl, to whom everything was so wonderful when she came to think of it, was a dear lover of beauty.
"O dear! O dear!" ticked the clock; and the barred sunshine turned slowly on the floor, as if the ugly little house were the hub of a huge, leisurely wheel of gold.
Edith dropped her book, and went to Mrs. Rowan's side, taking a stool with her, and sitting down in the midst of the sunshine.
"I'm afraid I shall forget my story, Mrs. Jane, unless I say it over again," she said. "And, you know, mamma told me never to forget."
Mrs. Rowan roused herself, glad of anything which could take her mind from her own troubles. "Well, tell it all over to me now," she said. "I haven't heard it this long time."
"Will you be sure to correct me if I am wrong?" the child asked anxiously.
"Yes, I will. But don't begin till I have taken up the heel of this stocking."
The stitches were counted and evened, half of them taken off on to a thread, and the other half, with the seam-stitch in the middle, knit backward once. Then Edith began to repeat the story confided to her by her dead mother.
"My grandpapa and grandmamma were Polish exiles. They had to leave Poland when Aunt Marie was only a year old, and before mamma was born. They couldn't take their property with them, but only jewels, and plate, and pictures. They went to Brussels, and there my mamma was born, and the queen was her godmother, and sent the christening-robe. Mamma kept the robe till she grew up; but when she was in America, and was poor, and wanted to go to a party, she cut it up to make the waist and sleeves of a dress. Poverty isno disgrace, mamma said, but it is a great inconvenience. By-and-by, they left Brussels, and went to England. Grandpapa wanted some way to get money to live on, for they had sold nearly all their pictures and things. They stayed in England not very long. Countess Poniatowski called on grandmamma, and she had on a black velvet bonnet with red roses in it; so I suppose it was winter. Then one day grandpapa took mamma out to walk in a park; so I suppose that was summer. There were some gentlemen in the park that they talked to, and one of them, a gentleman with a hook nose, who was sitting down on a bench, took mamma on his knees, and started to kiss her. But mamma slapped his face. She said he had no right to kiss people who didn't want him to, not even if he were a king. His name was the Duke of Wellington. Then they all came to America, and people here were very polite to them, because they were Polish exiles, and of noble birth. But they couldn't eat nor drink nor wear politeness, mamma said, and so they grew poorer and poorer every day, and didn't know what they would do. Once they travelled with Henry Clay two weeks, and had quite a nice time, and they went to Ashland and stayed all night. When they went away the next day, Mr. Clay gave mamma and Aunt Marie the little mugs they had had to drink out of. But they didn't care much about 'em, and they broke 'em pretty soon. Mamma said she didn't know then that Mr. Clay was a great man. She thought that just a mister couldn't be great. She had always seen lords and counts, and grandpapa was a colonel in the army—Colonel Lubomirski his name was. But she said that in this country a man might be great, even if he wasn't anything but a mister, and that my papa was as great as a prince. Well, then they came to Boston, and Aunt Marie died, and they buried her, and mamma was almost nine years old. People used to pet and notice her, and everybody talked about her hair. It was thick and black, and it curled down to her waist. One day Doctor Somebody, I can never recollect his name, took her out walking on the Common, and they went into Mr. John Quincy Adams's house. And Mr. Adams took one of mamma's curls, and held it out, and said it was long enough and large enough to hang the Czar with. And she said that they might have it all if they'd hang him with it. And then poor grandpapa had to go to Washington, and teach dancing and fencing, because that was all he could do. And pretty soon grandmamma broke her heart and died. And then after a little while grandpapa died. And, after that, mamma had to go out sewing to support herself, and she went to Boston, and sewed in Mr. Yorke's family. And Mr. Yorke's youngest brother fell in love with her, and she fell in love with him, and they married each other in spite of everybody. So the family were awfully angry. My papa had been engaged ever since he was a little boy to Miss Alice Mills, and they had put off getting married because she was rich, and he hadn't anything, and was looking round to see how he should get a fortune. And the Millses all turned against him, and the Yorkes all turned against him, and he and mamma went off, and wandered about, and came down to Maine; and papa died. Then mamma had to sew again to support herself, and we were awfully poor. I remember that we lived in the same house with you; but it was a better house than this, and was up in the village. Then mamma's heart broke, and she died too. But I don'tmean to break my heart, Mrs. Jane. It's a poor thing to do."
"Yes!" sighed the listener; "it's a poor thing to do."
"Well," resumed the child, "then you kept me. It was four years ago when my mamma died, but I remember it all. She made me promise not to forget who my mother was, and promise, with both my hands held up, that I would be a Catholic, if I had to die for it. So I held up both my hands, and promised, and she looked at me, and then shut her eyes. It that all right?"
"Yes, dear!" Mrs. Rowan had dropped her knitting as the story went on, and was gazing dreamily out the window, recalling to mind her brief acquaintance with the fair young exile.
"Dick and I grew to be great friends," Edith continued rather timidly. "He used to take care of me, and fight for me. Poor Dick! He was mad nearly all the time, because his father drank rum, and because people twitted him, and looked down upon him."
Mrs. Rowan took up her work again, and knit tears in with the yarn.
"And Dick gave his father an awful talking-to, one day," Edith went on, still more timidly. "That was two years ago. He stood up and poured out words. His eyes were so flashing that they dazzled, and his cheeks were red, and he clinched his hands. He looked most splendid. When I go back to Poland, he shall be a general in the army. He will look just as he did then, if the Czar should come near us. Well, after that day he went off to sea, and he has not been back since."
Tears were running down the mother's cheeks as she thought of her son, the only child left her of three.
Edith leaned and clasped both her hands around Mrs. Rowan's arm, and laid her cheek to them. "But he is coming back rich, he said he would; and what Dick said he'd do he always did. He is going to take us away from here, and get a pretty house, and come and live with us."
A hysterical, half-laughing sob broke through the listener's quiet weeping. "He always did keep his word, Edith!" she cried. "Dick was a gallant lad. And I trust that the Lord will bring him back to me."
"Oh! he'll come back," said Edith confidently, and with a slight air of haughtiness. "He'll come back himself."
All the Christianity the child had seen had been such as to make the name of the Lord excite in her heart a feeling of antagonism. It is hard to believe that God means love when man means hate; and this child and her protectors had seen but little of the sunny side of humanity. Christians held aloof from the drunkard and his family, or approached them only to exhort or denounce. That they had any kinship with that miserable man, that in his circumstances they might have been what he was, never seemed to occur to them as possible. Dick fought with the boys who mocked his father, therefore he was a bad boy. Mrs. Rowan flamed up, and defended her husband, when the Rev. Dr. Martin denounced him, therefore she was almost as bad as he. So shallow are most judgments, arraigning effects without weighing causes.
Nor did Edith fare better at their hands. She was to them a sort of vagabond. Who believed the story of her mother's romantic misfortunes? She was some foreign adventuress, most likely. Mr. Charles Yorke, whom they respected, had married a native of Seaton, and had two or three times honored that town with a short visit. They knew that he had castoff his own brother for marrying this child's mother. Therefore she had no claim on their respect.
Moreover, some of the ladies for whom young Mrs. Yorke had done sewing had not the pleasantest of recollections connected with her. A poor person has no right to be proud and high-spirited, and the widowed exile was a very fiery woman. She would not sit at table with their servants, she would not be delighted when they patronized her, and she would not be grateful for the scanty wages they gave her. She had even dared to break out upon Mrs. Cleaveland when that lady had sweetly requested her to enter her house by the side door, when she came to sew. "In Poland a person like you would scarcely have been allowed to tie my mother's shoes!" she cried. The lady answered suavely, "But we are not in Poland, madam;" but she never forgave the insolence—still less because her husband laughed at it, and rather liked Mrs. Yorke's spirit.
These were the ladies whom Edith had heard talk of religion; so she lifted her head, dropped her eyelids, and said defiantly, "Dick will come home himself!"
"Not unless the Lord lets him come," said the mother. "Oh! no good will come to us except by him. 'Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it.'"
"I don't think you have much to thank him for," remarked the child quietly.
"I will thank him!" the woman cried out in a passion. "I will trust him! He is all the hope I have!"
"Well, well, you may!" Edith said soothingly. "Don't let's talk about it any more. Give me the scissors, and I'll cut the fraggles off the hem of your gown. Suppose Dick should come home all of a sudden, and find us looking so! I hope he will let us know, don't you? so that we can put our best clothes on."
The best clothes in question were a black bombazine gown and shawl, and an old-fashioned crape bonnet and veil, all sewed up and hidden away under Edith's bed in the little dark attic, lest Mr. Rowan, in one of his drunken frenzies, should destroy them. These articles were the mourning which Mrs. Rowan had worn seven years before, when her last daughter died. With them was another bag, belonging to Edith, equally precious to its owner, but from other reasons. There was a scarlet merino cape, lined with silk of the same color, both a little faded, and a faded crape scarf that had once been gorgeous with red and gold. In the innermost fold of this scarf, wrapped in tissue-paper, and tucked inside an old kid glove of remarkable smallness, were two locks of hair—one a short, thick wave of yellow-brown, the other a long, serpentine tress of ebony blackness.
While they talked, the door of the room opened, and Mr. Rowan looked in. "Aren't we going to have any supper to-night?" he demanded.
Edith fixed a look on him that made him shrink out, and bang the door behind him. His wife started up, glanced at the clock, and went about her work.
"Let me help you, Mrs. Jane," the child said.
"No, dear. There isn't much to do, and I'd rather do it." Mrs. Rowan's voice had a sepulchral sound, her head being deep in the fireplace, where she was putting one hook into another on the crane, to let the tea-kettle down. She emerged with a smooch of soot on her hair and forehead, and began flying round bringinga table into the middle of the floor, putting up the leaves, spreading the cloth, taking down the dishes, all with trembling haste. "If you want to knit a few times across the heel of that stocking, you may. But be careful not to knit too tightly, as you almost always do. You can begin to narrow when it's two of your forefingers long."
Edith took the knitting, and went to her favorite chair in the back window. The room had grown smoky in consequence of Mrs. Rowan's piling of soft wood on to the fire, and hurrying about past the fireplace, so she pushed up the window, and fastened it with a wooden button fixed there for the purpose. Then she began to knit and think, and, forgetting Mrs. Rowan's directions, pulled the yarn so tightly over her fingers that she worked a hard, stiff strip across the heel, into which the looser knitting puckered. The child was too much absorbed to be aware of her mistake, and it did not matter; for that stocking was never to be finished.
While she dreamed there, a deeper shadow than that of the clay bank fell over her. She looked up with a start, and saw Mr. Rowan standing outside the window. He had placed himself so as to avoid being seen by any one in the room, and was just turning his eyes away from her when she caught sight of him.
"Lean out here!" he said. "I want to speak to you."
She leaned out and waited.
"What makes you stare at me the way you sometimes do?" he asked angrily, but in a low voice, that his wife might not hear. "Why don't you say right out what you think?"
"I don't know what I do think," replied Edith, dropping her eyes.
"You think that I am a wretch!" he exclaimed. "You think I am a drunkard! You think I abuse my wife!"
She neither answered nor looked up.
He paused a moment, then went on fiercely. "If there is anything I hate, it is to have people look at me that way, and say nothing. If you scold a man, it looks as if you thought there was something in him that could tell black from white; and if you are impudent, you put yourself a little in the wrong, and that helps him. He isn't so much ashamed of himself. But when you just look, and say nothing, you shut him out. It is as much as to tell him that words would be thrown away on him."
"But," Edith objected, much at a loss, "if I answered you back, or said what I thought, there would be a quarrel right off."
"Did I fight when Dick gave me such a hauling-over before he went away?" the man questioned in a rough tone that did not hide how his voice broke, and his blood-shot eyes filled up with tears. "Didn't I hang my head, and take it like a dog? He said I had acted like a brute, but he didn't say I was one, and he didn't say but I could be a man yet, if I should try. Wasn't I sober for three months after he went away? Yes; and I would have kept sober right on if I had had some one to thorn and threaten me. But she gave up, and did nothing but whimper, and it maddened me. When I ordered her to mix my rum for me, she did it. I should have liked her better if she had thrown it, tumbler and all, into my face."
"You'd better not find fault with her," said Edith. "She's a great deal better than you are."
The child had a gentle, sincere way of saying audacious things sometimes that made one wonder if she knew how audacious they were.
The man stared at her a moment; then, looking away, answered without any appearance of anger, "I suppose she is; but I don't think much of that kind of goodness when there's a hard job to be done. You can't lift rocks with straws. I'm sorry for her; but, for all that, she aggravates me, poor thing!"
He leaned back against the house, with his hands in his pockets, and stared at the clay bank before him. Edith looked at him, but said nothing. Presently he turned so suddenly that she started. "Girl," he said, "never do you ridicule a man who has been drinking, no matter what he does! You may hate him, or be afraid of him, but never laugh at him! You might as well look down into hell and laugh! Do you know what it is to be in the power of rum? It is to have serpents twining round you, and binding you hand and foot. I've gone through the streets up there with devils on my back, pushing me down; wild beasts tearing my vitals; reptiles crawling round me; the earth rising up and quaking under my feet, and a horror in my soul that no words can describe, and the men and women and children have laughed at me. Perhaps they were such shallow fools that they didn't know; but I tell you, and you know now. Don't you ever dare to laugh at a drunkard!"
"I never will!" Edith cried out, in an agony of terror and pity. "O you poor man! I didn't know it was so awful. O you poor man!"
Mr. Rowan had stopped, gasping for breath, and, with his patched sleeve, wiped off the perspiration that was streaming down his face. Edith tore off her little calico apron with such haste as to break the strings. "Here, take this!" she said, reaching it out to him.
He took it with a shaking hand, and wiped his face again; wiped his eyes again and again, breathing heavily.
"Couldn't you be saved?" she asked, in a whisper. "Isn't there any way for you to get out of it?"
"No!" he said, and gave her back her apron. "No; and I wish that I were dead!"
"Don't say that!" the child entreated. "It is wicked; and perhaps you will die if you say it."
The drunkard raised his trembling hands, and looked upward. "I wish to God that I were dead!" he repeated.
Edith shrank back into the room. She was too much terrified to listen to any more. But after a moment he called her name, and she leaned out again. His face was calmer, and his voice more quiet. "Don't tell her what I have been talking about," he said, nodding toward the room. "I would sooner tear my tongue out by the roots than say anything to her."
"I won't tell," Edith promised.
"Supper's ready," Mrs. Rowan announced, coming towards the window. She had heard her husband's voice in conversation with Edith, and wondered greatly what was going on.
Mr. Rowan turned away, with a look of irritation, at sound of her timid voice, walked round the house, and came sulkily in to his supper.
Their meals had always been comfortless and silent; but now Edith tried to talk, at first with Mrs. Rowan; but when she saw that the woman's tremulous replies, as if she did not dare to speak in her husband's presence, were bringing an uglier frown to this face, and that he was changing from sullen to savage, she addressed her remarks and questions to him. Mr. Rowan was a surveyor, and a good one, when he was sober, and he was a man of some general information and reading.When he could be got to talk, one was surprised to find in him the ruins of a gentleman. Now his answers were surly enough, but they were intelligent, and the child, no longer looking at him from the outside, questioned him fearlessly, and kept up a sort of conversation till they rose from table.
It was Mr. Rowan's custom to go out immediately after supper, and not come home till late in the evening, when he would stagger in, sometimes stupid, sometimes furious with liquor. But to-night he lingered about when he had left the table, lighted his pipe, kicked the fire, wound up the clock, and cursed it for stopping, and finally, as if ashamed of the proposal even while making it, said to Edith, "Come, get the checker-board, and see if you can beat me."
She was quick-witted enough, or sensitive enough, not to show any surprise, but quietly brought out the board, and arranged the chairs and stand. It was a square of board, rough at the edges, planed on one side, and marked off in checks with red chalk. The men were bits of tanned leather, one side white, the other side black. She placed them, smiled, and said, "Now, I'm ready!"
Mrs. Rowan's cheeks began to redden up with excitement as she went about clearing the table, and washing the dishes, but she said nothing. She had even tact enough to go away into the bedroom, when her work was done, and leave the two to play out their game unwatched. There she sat in the falling dusk, her hands clasped on her knees, listening to every sound, expecting every moment to hear her husband go out. The three curtains in the room were rolled up to the very tops of the windows, and, in their places, three pictures seemed to hang on the smoky walls, and illumine the place. One was a high clay bank, its raw front ruddy with evening light, its top crowned with a bush burning like that of Horeb. The second was a hill covered with spruce-trees, nothing else, from the little cone, not a foot high, to the towering spire that pierced the sky. Some faint rose-reflections yet warmed their sombre shadows, and each sharp top was silvered with the coming moonlight. The third window showed a deserted ship-yard, with the skeleton of a bark standing on the stocks. The shining river beyond seemed to flow through its ribs, and all about it the ground was covered with bright yellow chips and shavings. Above it, in the tender green of the southwestern sky, a cloud-bark freighted with crimson light sailed off southward, losing its treasure as it went. These strong, rich lights, meeting and crossing in the room, showed clearly the woman's nervous face full of suspense, the very attitude, too, showing suspense, as she only half-sat on the side of the bed, ready to start up at a sound. After a while she got up softly, and went to the fireplace to listen. All was still in the other room, but she heard distinctly the crackling of the fire. What had come over him? What did it mean?
Presently there was a slight movement, and Edith's voice spoke out brightly: "Oh! I've got another king. Now I have a chance!"
The listener trembled with doubt and fear. Her husband was actually sitting at home, and playing checkers with Edith, instead of going out to get drunk! He could not mean to go, or he would have gone at once. She longed to go and assure herself, to sit down in the room with him, but could scarcely find courage to do so. She held her breath as she went toward the door, and her hand faltered on the latch. But at last she summoned resolution, and went out.
The lamp was lighted, the checker-board placed on the table beside it, and the two were talking over the slackening game. Edith had a good head for a child of her age, but her opponent was an excellent player, and she could not interest him long. She was trying every lure to keep him, though, and made a new tack as Mrs. Rowan came in, relating an experience of her own, instead of questioning him concerning his. "I want to tell you something I saw last night in my chamber," she said.
Edith's chamber was the little dark attic, which was reached by a steep stairway at one side of the fireplace.
"I was in bed, wide awake, and it was pitch dark. You know you put the cover over the skylight when it rained, the other day, and it has not been taken off. Well, instead of shutting my eyes, I kept them wide open, and looked straight into the dark. I've heard that you can see spirits so, and so I thought I might see my mamma. Pretty soon there was a great hole in the dark, like a whirlpool, and after a minute there was a little light down at the bottom of it. I kept on looking, just as if I were looking down into a deep well, and then there came colors in clouds, sailing about, just like clouds in the sky. Some were red, others pink, others blue, and all colors. Sometimes there would be a pattern of colors, just like figures in a carpet, only they were blocks, not flowers. I didn't dream it. I saw it as plainly as I see the fire this minute. What do you suppose it was, Mr. Rowan?"
He had listened with interest, and did not appear to find anything surprising in the recital.
"I don't know much about optics," he answered; "but I suppose there is a scientific reason for this, whether it is known or not. I've seen those colors—that is, I did when I was a child; and De Quincey, in hisOpium Confessions, tells the same story. I don't believe that grown people are likely to see them, for the reason that they shut their eyes, and their minds are more occupied. You have to stare a good while into the dark, and wait what comes, and not think much of anything."
"Yes," said Edith. "But what do you guess it is?"
Mr. Rowan leaned back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, and considered the matter a moment, some finer intelligence than often showed there kindling behind his bloated face.
"I should guess it might be this," he said. "Though the place appears at first to be dark, there are really some particles of light there. And since there are too few of them to keep up a connection in their perfect state, they divide into their colors, and make the clouds you saw. I don't know why particles of light should not separate, when they have a great deal to do, and not much to do it with. Air does."
"But what made them move?" Edith asked. "They were never still."
"Perhaps they were alive."
She stared, with scintillating eyes.
Mr. Rowan gave a short, silent laugh. He knew that the child was only questioning in order to keep him. "No reason why not," he said. "According to Sir Humphry Davy, and some other folks, I believe, heat isn't caloric, but repulsive motion. It isn't matter, but it moves, goes where nothing else can, passes through stone and iron, and can't be stopped, and can't be seen. Now, a something that is not matter, and yet is powerful enough to overcome matter, must be spirit. Heat is the soul of light; and if heat is spirit, light is alive.Voilà tout!"
He had forgotten himself a moment in the pleasure of puzzling his questioner; but catching his wife looking at him with an expression of astonishment, he came back to the present. The smile died out of his face, and the frown came back.
"Don't you want to playsolitaire?" Edith struck in desperately.
He made a slight motion of dissent, but it was not decided; so she brought out the pack of soiled cards, and laid them before him. There was a moment of hesitation, during which the heart of the wife throbbed tumultuously, and the nerves of the child tingled with an excitement that seemed to snap in sparks from her eyes. Then he took the cards, shuffled them, and began to play. Mrs. Rowan opened a book, and, holding it upside down, so as to hide her face, cried quietly behind the page. Her husband saw that she was crying, cast a savage glance at her, and seemed about to fling the cards down; but Edith made some remark on the game, leaned toward him, and laid her head lightly on his arm. It was the first time in all their acquaintance that she had voluntarily touched him. At the same time she reached her foot, and pushed Mrs. Rowan's under the table. Mrs. Rowan dropped her book, turned her face away quickly, and said, with an effort of self-control rare for her: "Why, it's nine o'clock! I'll go to bed, I think; I'm tired."
Nobody answering, or objecting, she went away, and left her husband still over his cards.
"Isn't it about your bedtime?" he said presently to Edith.
She got up slowly, unwilling to go, yet not daring to stay. Oh! if she were but wise enough to know the best thing that could be said—something which would strengthen his resolution, and keep him in. It was not yet too late for him to go out; for, when every safe and pitiful door is closed, and slumber seals all merciful eyes, the beacon of the grog-shop shines on through the night, and tells that the way to perdition still is open, and the eyes of the rum-seller yet on the watch.
"How glad I shall be when Dick comes home!" she said. "Then I hope we can all go away from here, and wipe out, and begin over."
She could not have said better, but, if she had known, she could have done better. What he needed was not an appeal to his sentiments, but physical help. Words make but little impression on a man while the torments of a burning, infernal thirst are gnawing at his vitals. The drunkard's body, already singed by the near flames of the bottomless pit, needed attending to at once; his soul was crushed and helpless under the ruins of it. If an older, wiser head and hand had been there, started up the failing fire, and made some strong, bitter draught for him to drink, it might have done good. But the child did not know, and the sole help she could give was an appeal to his heart.
It is as true of the finest and loftiest natures, as of the perverted, that they cannot always conquer the evil one by spiritual means alone. Only spirits can do that. And often the tempter must laugh to see the physical needs, which were made to play about our feet like children, unnoticed when the soul speaks, starved till they become demons whose clamorous voices drown the spirit's fainting cries.
But this man's demon was indulgence, and not denial. He was not hovering on the brink of ruin, he was at the bottom, and striving to rise, and he could not endure that any eye should look upon his struggles.
"D— you! will you go to bed?" he cried out fiercely.
Edith started back, and, without another word, climbed the narrow stair to her attic. Before closing the trap-door, she looked down once, and saw Mr. Rowan tearing and twisting the cards he had been playing with.
He stayed there the whole night, fighting desperately with such weapons as he had—a will broken at the hilt, the memory of his son, and the thought of that dear little girl's tender but ineffectual pity. As for God, he no longer named him, save in imprecation. The faith of his orphaned childhood had gone long ago. The glare of the world had scorched it up before it had fairly taken root. That there might be help and comfort in the church of his fathers never entered his mind. "Drink! drink!" that was his sole thought. "If I only had some opium!" he muttered, "or a cup of strong black coffee! I wonder if I could get either of 'em anywhere?"
The day was faintly dawning when he staggered to the window, tore down the paper curtain, and looked out for some sign of life. At the wharf opposite lay a vessel that had come up the evening before, and he knew by the smoke that the cook was getting breakfast there.
"I'll go over and see if I can get some coffee or opium," he muttered, and pulled his hat on as he went out the door.
"I'll ask for nothing but coffee or opium," he protested to himself, as he shut the door softly after him.
Alas! alas!
The next morning was a gloomy one for the two who had nursed that trembling hope overnight, but they did not say much about it. Mrs. Rowan's face showed the lassitude of long endurance. Edith's disappointment was poignant. She was no longer a looker-on merely, but an actor. The man had confided in her, had tacitly asked her sympathy, and his failure gave her a pang. She cast about in her thoughts what she should do, having a mind to put her own young shoulder to the wheel. Should she go in search of him, and give him one of those scoldings which he had acknowledged his need of? Should she lead him home, and protect him from abuse?
"Hadn't I better go up to the post-office?" she asked, after breakfast. "I haven't been there this good while, and there might be a letter from Dick."
Mrs. Rowan hesitated: "Well, yes." She disliked being left alone, and she had no expectation of a letter. But it seemed like slighting her son to make any other reply to such a request. Besides, the village boys might be hooting her husband through the streets, and, if they were, she would like to know it. So Edith prepared herself, and went out.
The ship-yard was full of business at this hour, and two men were at work close to the road, shaving a piece of timber. Edith looked at them, and hesitated. "I've a good mind to," she thought. She had never gone into the ship-yard when the men were there, and had never asked any one a question concerning Mr. Rowan. But now all waschanged, and she felt responsible. "Have you seen Mr. Rowan anywhere, this morning?" she asked, going up to the man nearest her.
He drew the shave slowly to him, slipped off a long curl of amber-colored wood from the blade, then looked up to see who spoke. "Mr. Rowan!" he repeated, as if he had never heard the name before. "Oh! Dick, you mean. No, I haven't seen him, this morning. He may be lying round behind the timbers somewhere."
The child's eyes sparkled. Child though she was, she knew that the drunkard was more worthy of the title of gentleman than this man was, for he was rude and harsh only when he suffered.
"Little girl," the other called out as she turned away, "your father is over there on board of theAnnie Laurie. I saw him lying there half an hour ago, and I guess he hasn't stirred since."
"He isn't my father!" she flashed out.
The two burst into a rude laugh, which effectually checked the thanks she would have given for their information. She turned hastily away, and went up the road to the village.
Mrs. Rowan finished her work, and sat down in the west window to watch. She was too anxious and discouraged to knit, even, and so did not discover the tight little strip of work around the stocking-heel. It was employment enough to look out for Edith; not that she expected a letter, but because she wanted company. She was conscious of some strength in the child, on which she leaned at times. As for Dick, she had little hope of good news from him, if any. She had no part in Edith's rose-colored expectations. Dick in peril from storm, foe, or sin; Dick dying untended in foreign lands; Dick sinking down in cold, salt seas—these were the mother's fancies.
After half an hour, a small figure appeared over the hills between the house and the village. Mrs. Rowan watched it absently, and with a slight sense of relief. But soon she noticed that the child was running. It was not like Edith to run. She was noticeably quiet, and even dignified in her manners. Could she have seen or heard anything of Mr. Rowan at the village? The heart of the wife began to flutter feebly. Was he lying in the street? or engaged in a drunken quarrel? She leaned back in her chair, feeling sick, and tried to gather strength for whatever might come to her.
Edith was near the house, now running a few steps, then walking, to gather breath, and she held her arm above her head, and swung it, and in her hand was a letter!
Away went all thought of her husband. In two minutes Mrs. Rowan had the letter in her hand, had torn it open, and she and Edith were both bending over it, and reading it together. It had been lying in the post-office a week. It came from New York, and in a week from the date of it Dick would be at home! He was on board the shipHalcyon, Captain Cary, and they were to come down to Seaton, and load with lumber as soon as their East Indian freight should be disposed of. He had met Captain Cary in Calcutta, Dick wrote, and, having done him a service there, had been taken on board his ship, and now was second mate. Next voyage he would sail as first mate. The captain was his friend, would do anything for him, and owned half the ship, Major Cleaveland owning the other half; so Dick's fortune was made. But, he added, they must get out of that town. He had a month to spare, and shouldtake them all away. Let them be ready to start on short notice.
Having read this joyful letter through once, they began at the first word and read it all through again, dwelling here and there with exclamations of delight, stopped every minute by a large tear that splashed down from Mrs. Rowan's eyes, or a yellow avalanche of Edith's troublesome hair tumbling down as she bent eagerly over the letter. How many times they read that letter would be hard to say; still harder to say how many times they might have read it, had there been no interruption.
A crowd of men were approaching their door—close upon them, and darkening the light before they looked up. "Had Dick come, and were the neighbors welcoming him?" was the first thought.
In her haste, Edith had left the outer door ajar, and now heavy feet came tramping in without any leave being asked; the inner door was pushed open, and—not Dick, but Dick's father was brought in and laid on the floor. This was not the first time he had been brought home, but never before had he come with such a retinue and in such silence, and never before had these men taken off their hats to Mrs. Rowan.
"We've sent for the doctor, ma'am," one of them said; "but I guess it's no use."
"I wouldn't have ordered him off, if I hadn't thought he was steady enough to go," said another, who looked very pale. "The captain was expected on board every minute, and it would be as much as my life is worth if he found a man drunk there."
"He slipped on a plank, and fell," some one explained.
Their talk was, to the bewildered woman, like sounds heard in a dream. So were Edith's passionate words as she ordered the men away. The one who had refused the dead man any better title than "Dick" was just coming in at the door, staring right and left, not too pitiful even then to be curious regarding the place he was in. "Go out!" she said, pushing the door in his face.
Some way, still in a dream, they were got rid of, all but two. Then the doctor came, and looked, and nodded his decision—"All over!"
A dream! a dream!
The bedroom was set in order, the silent sleeper laid out there, every stranger sent out of the house and locked out, and then Mrs. Rowan woke up. It was a terrible awakening.
Madame Swetchine comments upon the fact that the thought of death is more terrible in an arid existence than in the extremes of joy and sorrow. It is true not only of those who die, but of the survivors. We go out more willingly on a difficult journey when we have been warmed and fed; we send our loved ones out with less pain when they have been thus fortified. It is the same, in a greater degree, when the journey is that one from which the traveller never returns. It adds a terrible pang to bereavement when we think that our lost one has never been happy; how much more terrible if he has never been honored!
Of her husband's future Mrs. Rowan refused to think or to hear, though she must have trembled in the shadow of it. It might be that which made her so wild. She would allow no one to come near or speak to her save Edith. Those who came with offers of help and sympathy she ordered away. "Go!" she cried. "I want nothing of you! I and mine have been a byword to you for years. Your help comes too late!"
She locked them out and pulledthe curtains close, and, though people continued to come to the door through the whole day, no one gained admittance or saw a sign of life about the house. Inside sat the widow and the child, scarcely aware of the passage of time. They only knew that it was still day by the rays of sunlight that came in through holes in the paper curtains, and pointed across the rooms like long fingers. When there was a knock at the door, they started, lifted their faces, and listened nervously till the knocking ceased, as if afraid that some one might force an entrance. One would have fancied, from their expression, that savages or wild beasts were seeking to enter. They never once looked out, nor knew who came.
Still less were they aware of Major Cleaveland standing in his cupola, spy-glass in hand, looking down the bay to see if that cloud of canvas coming up over the horizon was the good shipHalcyoncoming home after her first voyage. Down-stairs he came again, three stairs at a jump, as joyful as a boy, in spite of his forty years, gave directions for the best dinner that the town would afford, ordered his carriage, and drove off down the river-road.
TheHalcyonwas the largest vessel that had ever been built at Seaton, and as its launching had been an event in the town, so its first arrival was an incident to take note of. When Major Cleaveland drove down to the wharf where Mr. Rowan had that morning lost his life, more than a hundred persons were assembled there waiting for the ship, and others were coming. He stepped over to the Rowans' door, and knocked twice, once with his knuckles, and again with his whip-handle, but received no answer. "I would force the door, but that Dick is coming," he said. "It is a shame to let the poor soul shut herself up alone."
Soon, while the crowd watched, around the near curve of the river, where a wooded point pushed out, appeared the tip, then the whole of a bowsprit garlanded with green wreaths, then the leaning lady in her gilded robes, with a bird just escaping from her hand, then the ship rode gracefully into sight on the incoming tide.
A ringing shout welcomed her, and a shout from all hands on board answered back.
Foremost of the little group on the deck stood a man of gigantic stature. His hair was coarse and black, he wore an enormous black beard, and his face, though scarcely middle-aged, was rough and scarred by the weather. Everybody knew Captain Cary, a sailor worthy of the old days of the Vikings, broad-shouldered, as strong as a lion, with a laugh that made the glasses ring when he sat at table. He was a plain, simple man, but grand in his simplicity. By his side stood a youth of twenty, who looked slight in comparison, though he was really manly and well grown. He had sea-blue eyes, quick, long-lashed, and as bright as diamonds; his face was finely moulded, ruddy, and spirited; his hair, that glistened in the sunlight, was chestnut-brown. A gallant lad he was, the very ideal sailor-boy. But his expression was defiant, rather than placid, and he did not join in the hurrahs. The welcoming applause was not for him, he well knew. They were no friends of his who crowded the wharf. He had some bitter recollections of slight or injury connected with nearly every one of them. But he was no longer in their power, and that gave him freedom and ease in meeting them. The time had gone by when he could look upon these country folks as final judges in any matter whatever, or as of any great consequence to him.He had seen the world, had won friends, had proved that he could do something, that he was somebody. He was not ashamed of himself by any means, was young Dick Rowan. Still, it was no pleasure to him to see them, for it brought back the memory of sufferings which had not yet lost their sting.
All this shouting and rejoicing was as the idle wind to the mourners across the way. Their fears of intrusion set at rest, since no one had attempted to force an entrance to the house, they no longer took notice even of the knocking at the door. Both had fallen into a sort of stupor, induced by the exhaustion of long weeping, the silence and semi-darkness of their rooms, and the removal of what had been the daily tormenting fear of their lives. There was no longer any need to tremble when a step approached, lest some one should come in frenzied with drink, and terrify them with his ravings and violence. Mrs. Rowan sat by her husband's side, leaning back in her chair, with closed eyes and clasped hands, only half-alive. Edith lay on the kitchen-floor, where she had thrown herself in a passion of weeping, her arms above her head, her face hidden, and her long hair veiling her. The weeping was over, and she lay silent and motionless. Neither that shouting over on the wharf, nor Major Cleaveland's loud knocking with his whip-handle, had made the slightest impression on her.
But at sunset came one who would not be denied. He tried the lock, and, finding it fastened, knocked gently. There was no answer. He knocked loudly, and still there was no reply. Then he set his knee against the rickety panel, took the knob in a strong grasp, and wrenched the door open. Stepping quickly into the little entry, he looked to right and left, saw the girl lying, face down, on the floor, and the woman sitting beside her dead, both as still as the dead.
Something like a dream came into the half-swoon, half-sleep in which Edith Yorke lay. She heard a slight cry, then a stifled sob, and words hurriedly spoken in a low voice. Then there was a step that paused near her. She put her hair back with one hand, and turned her face listlessly. The curtain had been raised to let in the light, and there stood a young man looking down at her. His face was pale with the sudden shock of grief and distress, but a faint indication of a smile shone through as she looked up at him.
Her first glance was a blank one, her second flashed with delight. She sprang up as if electrified. "O Dick! O Dick! How glad I am!"
The world moved rightly at last! Order was coming out of chaos; for Dick had come home!
He shook hands with her rather awkwardly, somewhat embarrassed by the warmth of her welcome. "We're to go right off," he said. "Captain Cary will help us."
"Yes, Dick!" she replied, and asked no questions. He knew what was right. With him had come all help, and strength, and hope.
The next morning, long before dawn, they started. A boat was ready at the wharf, and Captain Cary and Dick carried out the dead in a rude coffin that had been privately made on board theHalcyon. "They shall not stare at our poor funeral, captain," Dick had said; "and I will not ask them for a coffin or a grave."
"All right!" his friend had answered heartily. "I'm your man. Whatever you want to do, I'll help you about."
So the watch on theHalcyonwas conveniently deaf and blind, the boatwas ready in the dark of morning, the coffin carried out to it, and Mrs. Rowan and Edith helped in after. When they were in their places, and the captain seated, oars in hand, Dick went back to the house, and stayed there a little while. No questions were asked of him when he came away, bringing nothing with him, and he offered no explanation, only took the oars, and silently guided their boat out into the channel. The banks on either side were a solid blackness, and the sky was opaque and low, so that their forms were scarcely visible to each other as they sat there, Mrs. Rowan in the bows near her son, Edith beside Captain Cary, who loomed above her like a mountain of help.
Presently, as they floated around the point that stood between the village and the bay, a faint blush of light warmed the darkness through, and grew till the low-hung clouds sucked it up like a sponge and showed a crimson drapery over their heads. It was too early for morning light, too fierce, and, moreover, it came from the wrong direction. The east was before them; this sanguinary aurora followed in their wake. It shone angrily through the strip of woods, and sent a long, swift beam quivering over the water. This fiery messenger shot like an arrow into the boat, and reddened Mrs. Rowan's hands, clasped on the edge of the coffin. By the light of it, Dick saw all their faces turned toward him.
"The house was mine!" he said defiantly.
The captain nodded approval, and Edith leaned forward to whisper, "Yes, Dick!" But Mrs. Rowan said not a word, only sat looking steadily backward, the light in her face.
"I'm glad of it!" sighed Edith to herself. She had been thinking since they left the house how people would come and wander through it, and peer at everything, and know just how wretchedly they had lived. Now they could not, for it would all be burnt up. She sat and fancied the fire catching here and there in their poor little rooms, how the clock would tick till the last minute, even when its face was scorched and its glass shivered, and then fall with a sudden crash; how the flames would catch at the bed on which the dead man had lain, the mean paper curtains, the chair she had sat in, Mrs. Rowan's little rocking-chair, at the table where they had sat through so many dreary meals. The checker-board would go, and the cards with which Mr. Rowan had played the night before, and the knitting-work with the puckered heel, and her apron that the drunkard had wiped his ghastly face with. The shelves in the little closet would heat, and blacken, and redden, and flame, and down would come their miserable store of dishes, rattling into the yawning cellar. Fire would gnaw at the ceiling, bite its way into the attic, burn up her books, creep to the bed where she had lain and seen rainbow colors in the dark, spread a sheet of flame over the whole, rise, and burst through the roof. She saw it all. She even fancied that each long-used article of their scanty plenishing, worn away by human touch, constantly in the sight of human eyes, would perish with some human feeling, and send out a sharp cry after them. The crackling of flames was to her the cries of burning wood. But she was glad of it, for they were going to wipe out and begin anew. There seemed to her something very grand and exceedingly proper in it all.
When their boat glided from the river into the bay, others besides themselvesbecame aware of the conflagration, and the village bells rang out a tardy alarm. Dick laughed bitterly at the sound, but said nothing.
"They were sorry for you, Dick," the captain said. "I heard a good many speak of it. They would have been glad to do your family any kindness. I don't blame you for coming off; but you mustn't think there was no kind feeling for you among the folks there."
"Kindness may come too late, captain," the young man answered. "I would have thanked them for it years ago, when I had nowhere to turn to, and hadn't a friend in the world; now I don't thank them, and I don't want their kindness. Even if I would take it at last, neither they nor you have any right to expect that I will run to take the hand that has struck me so many blows the first time it is held out. I don't trust 'em. I want proofs of good-will when I've had proofs of ill-will."
"Dick is right, captain," his mother interposed in a weary tone. "You can't judge of such things if you haven't felt them. It's easier to hurt a sore heart than a sound one."
Within an hour they reached one of those desolate little sandy islands with which the bay was studded; and now the faint spring dawn was breaking, and the heavy masses of cloud lifting and contracting, pale reaches of sky visible between. By the cold glimmer they scooped out a grave, and placed the coffin in it. The water washed the shore, and a chilly, sighing wind came up from the east.
As the first shovelful of earth fell on the coffin, Mrs. Rowan caught back the captain's arm. "Don't cover him out of sight without some word spoken over him!" she implored. "He was once young, and ambitious, and kind, like you. He would have been a man if he hadn't had bad luck, and then got into bad company. He was more wretched than we were. O sir! don't cover him out of sight as if he were a dog."
The sailor looked both pained and embarrassed. "I'm not much used to praying, ma'am," he said. "I'm a Methodist, but I'm not a church-member. If there was a Bible here, I would read a chapter; but—there isn't."
Dick walked off a little way, turned his back, and stood looking at the water. Mrs. Rowan, kneeling on the sand-heap beside the grave, wept loudly. "His father was a Catholic," she cried. "I don't think much of Catholics; but, if poor Dick had stood by his religion, he could have had a priest to say some word over him. I wouldn't have minded having a priest here. He'd be better than nobody."
Captain Cary was a strict Methodist, and he felt that it would never answer to have the absence of a Catholic priest regretted. Something must be done. "I could sing a hymn, ma'am," he said hesitatingly; and, as no one objected, he straightened himself, dropped his spade, and sang, to the tune of the "Dead March in Saul,"