“'Centum fronte oculos, centum cervice gerebatArgus, et hos unus saepe fefellit amor.'”
But there was something about Myrtle,—he hardly knew whether to call it dignity, or pride, or reserve, or the mere habit of holding back brought about by the system of repression under which she had been educated,—which kept even the old Master of Arts at his distance. Yet he was strongly drawn to her, and had a sort of presentiment that he might be able to help her some day, and that very probably she would want his help; for she was alone in the world, except for the dragons, and sure to be assailed by foes from without and from within.
He noticed that her name was apt to come up in his conversations with Murray Bradshaw; and, as he himself never introduced it, of course the young man must have forced it, as conjurers force a card, and with some special object. This set him thinking hard; and, as a result of it, he determined the next time Mr. Bradshaw brought her name up to set him talking.
So he talked, not suspecting how carefully the old man listened.
“It was a demonish hard case,” he said, “that old Malachi had left his money as he did. Myrtle Hazard was going to be the handsomest girl about, when she came to her beauty, and she was coming to it mighty fast. If they could only break that will, but it was no use trying. The doctors said he was of sound mind for at least two years after making it. If Silence Withers got the land claim, there'd be a pile, sure enough. Myrtle Hazard ought to have it. If the girl had only inherited that property—whew? She'd have been a match for any fellow. That old Silence Withers would do just as her minister told her,—even chance whether she gives it to the Parson-factory, or marries Bellamy Stoker, and gives it to him after his wife's dead. He'd take it if he had to take her with it. Earn his money, hey, Master Gridley?”
“Why, you don't seem to think very well of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker?” said Mr. Gridley, smiling.
“Think well of him? Too fond of using the Devil's pitchfork for my fancy! Forks over pretty much all the world but himself and his lot into—the bad place, you know; and toasts his own cheese with it with very much the same kind of comfort that other folks seem to take in that business. Besides, he has a weakness for pretty saints—and sinners. That's an odd name he has. More belle amie than Joseph about him, I rather guess!”
The old professor smiled again. “So you don't think he believes all the mediaeval doctrines he is in the habit of preaching, Mr. Bradshaw?”
“No, sir; I think he belongs to the class I have seen described somewhere. 'There are those who hold the opinion that truth is only safe when diluted,—about one fifth to four fifths lies,—as the oxygen of the air is with its nitrogen. Else it would burn us all up.'”
Byles Gridley colored and started a little. This was one of his own sayings in “Thoughts on the Universe.” But the young man quoted it without seeming to suspect its authorship.
“Where did you pick up that saying, Mr. Bradshaw?”
“I don't remember. Some paper, I rather think. It's one of those good things that get about without anybody's knowing who says 'em. Sounds like Coleridge.”
“That's what I call a compliment worth having,” said Byles Gridley to himself, when he got home. “Let me look at that passage.”
He took down “Thoughts on the Universe,” and got so much interested, reading on page after page, that he did not hear the little tea-bell, and Susan Posey volunteered to run up to his study and call him down to tea.
Miss Suzan Posey knocked timidly at his door and informed him that tea was waiting. He rather liked Susan Posey. She was a pretty creature, slight, blonde, a little too light, a village beauty of the second or third grade, effective at picnics and by moonlight,—the kind of girl that very young men are apt to remember as their first love. She had a taste for poetry, and an admiration of poets; but, what was better, she was modest and simple, and a perfect sister and mother and grandmother to the two little forlorn twins who had been stranded on the Widow Hopkins's doorstep.
These little twins, a boy and girl, were now between two and three years old. A few words will make us acquainted with them. Nothing had ever been known of their origin. The sharp eyes of all the spinsters had been through every household in the village and neighborhood, and not a suspicion fixed itself on any one. It was a dark night when they were left; and it was probable that they had been brought from another town, as the sound of wheels had been heard close to the door where they were found, had stopped for a moment, then been heard again, and lost in the distance.
How the good woman of the house took them in and kept them has been briefly mentioned. At first nobody thought they would live a day, such little absurd attempts at humanity did they seem. But the young doctor came and the old doctor came, and the infants were laid in cotton-wool, and the room heated up to keep them warm, and baby-teaspoonfuls of milk given them, and after being kept alive in this way, like the young of opossums and kangaroos, they came to a conclusion about which they did not seem to have made up their thinking-pulps for some weeks, namely, to go on trying to cross the sea of life by tugging at the four-and-twenty oars which must be pulled day and night until the unknown shore is reached, and the oars lie at rest under the folded hands.
As it was not very likely that the parents who left their offspring round on doorsteps were of saintly life, they were not presented for baptism like the children of church-members. Still, they must have names to be known by, and Mrs. Hopkins was much exercised in the matter. Like many New England parents, she had a decided taste for names that were significant and sonorous. That which she had chosen for her oldest child, the young poet, was either a remarkable prophecy, or it had brought with it the endowments it promised. She had lost, or, in her own more pictorial language, she had buried, a daughter to whom she had given the names, at once of cheerful omen and melodious effect, Wealthy Amadora.
As for them poor little creturs, she said, she believed they was rained down out o' the skies, jest as they say toads and tadpoles come. She meant to be a mother to 'em for all that, and give 'em jest as good names as if they was the governor's children, or the minister's. If Mr. Gridley would be so good as to find her some kind of a real handsome Chris'n name for 'em, she'd provide 'em with the other one. Hopkinses they shall be bred and taught, and Hopkinses they shall be called. Ef their father and mother was ashamed to own 'em, she was n't. Couldn't Mr. Gridley pick out some pooty sounding names from some of them great books of his. It's jest as well to have 'em pooty as long as they don't cost any more than if they was Tom and Sally.
A grim smile passed over the rugged features of Byles Gridley. “Nothing is easier than that, Mrs. Hopkins,” he said. “I will give you two very pretty names that I think will please you and other folks. They're new names, too. If they shouldn't like to keep them, they can change them before they're christened, if they ever are. Isosceles will be just the name for the boy, and I'm sure you won't find a prettier name for the girl in a hurry than Helminthia.”
Mrs. Hopkins was delighted with the dignity and novelty of these two names, which were forthwith adopted. As they were rather long for common use in the family, they were shortened into the easier forms of Sossy and Minthy, under which designation the babes began very soon to thrive mightily, turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners at a great rate, and growing as if they were put out at compound interest.
This short episode shows us the family conditions surrounding Byles Gridley, who, as we were saying, had just been called down to tea by Miss Susan Posey.
“I am coming, my dear,” he said,—which expression quite touched Miss Susan, who did not know that it was a kind of transferred caress from the delicious page he was reading. It was not the living child that was kissed, but the dead one lying under the snow, if we may make a trivial use of a very sweet and tender thought we all remember.
Not long after this, happening to call in at the lawyer's office, his eye was caught by the corner of a book lying covered up by a pile of papers. Somehow or other it seemed to look very natural to him. Could that be a copy of “Thoughts on the Universe”? He watched his opportunity, and got a hurried sight of the volume. His own treatise, sure enough! Leaves Uncut. Opened of itself to the one hundred and twentieth page. The axiom Murray Bradshaw had quoted—he did not remember from what,—“sounded like Coleridge”—was staring him in the face from that very page. When he remembered how he had pleased himself with that compliment the other day, he blushed like a school-girl; and then, thinking out the whole trick,—to hunt up his forgotten book, pick out a phrase or two from it, and play on his weakness with it, to win his good opinion,—for what purpose he did not know, but doubtless to use him in some way,—he grinned with a contempt about equally divided between himself and the young schemer.
“Ah ha!” he muttered scornfully. “Sounds like Coleridge, hey? Niccolo Macchiavelli Bradshaw!”
From this day forward he looked on all the young lawyer's doings with even more suspicion than before. Yet he would not forego his company and conversation; for he was very agreeable and amusing to study; and this trick he had played him was, after all, only a diplomatist's way of flattering his brother plenipotentiary. Who could say? Some time or other he might cajole England or France or Russia into a treaty with just such a trick. Shallower men than he had gone out as ministers of the great Republic. At any rate, the fellow was worth watching.
The old Master of Arts had a great reputation in the house where he lived for knowing everything that was going on. He rather enjoyed it; and sometimes amused himself with surprising his simple-hearted landlady and her boarders with the unaccountable results of his sagacity. One thing was quite beyond her comprehension. She was perfectly sure that Mr. Gridley could see out of the back of his head, just as other people see with their natural organs. Time and again he had told her what she was doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' their heads?
Now there was a certain fact at the bottom of this belief of Mrs. Hopkins; and as it world be a very small thing to make a mystery of so simple a matter, the reader shall have the whole benefit of knowing all there is in it,—not quite yet, however, of knowing all that came of it. It was not the mirror trick, of course, which Mrs. Felix Lorraine and other dangerous historical personages have so long made use of. It was nothing but this: Mr. Byles Gridley wore a pair of formidable spectacles with large round glasses. He had often noticed the reflection of objects behind him when they caught their images at certain angles, and had got the habit of very often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter lead to something more significant than the mystification of the Widow Hopkins.
A short time before Myrtle Hazard's disappearance, Mr. Byles Gridley had occasion to call again at the office of Penhallow and Bradshaw on some small matter of business of his own. There were papers to look over, and he put on his great round-glassed spectacles. He and Mr. Penhallow sat down at the table, and Mr. Bradshaw was at a desk behind them. After sitting for a while, Mr. Penhallow seemed to remember something he had meant to attend to, for he said all at once: “Excuse me, Mr. Gridley. Mr. Bradshaw, if you are not busy, I wish you would look over this bundle of papers. They look like old receipted bills and memoranda of no particular use; but they came from the garret of the Withers place, and might possibly have something that would be of value. Look them over, will you, and see whether there is anything there worth saving.”
The young man took the papers, and Mr. Penhallow sat down again at the table with Mr. Byles Gridley.
This last-named gentleman felt just then a strong impulse to observe the operations of Murray Bradshaw. He could not have given any very good reason for it, any more than any of us can for half of what we do.
“I should like to examine that conveyance we were speaking of once more,” said he. “Please to look at this one in the mean time, will you, Mr. Penhallow?”
Master Gridley held the document up before him. He did not seem to find it quite legible, and adjusted his spectacles carefully, until they were just as he wanted them. When he had got them to suit himself, sitting there with his back to Murray Bradshaw, he could see him and all his movements, the desk at which he was standing, and the books in the shelves before him,—all this time appearing as if he were intent upon his own reading.
The young man began in a rather indifferent way to look over the papers. He loosened the band round them, and took them up one by one, gave a careless glance at them, and laid them together to tie up again when he had gone through them. Master Gridley saw all this process, thinking what a fool he was all the time to be watching such a simple proceeding. Presently he noticed a more sudden movement: the young man had found something which arrested his attention, and turned his head to see if he was observed. The senior partner and his client were both apparently deep in their own affairs. In his hand Mr. Bradshaw held a paper folded like the others, the back of which he read, holding it in such a way that Master Gridley saw very distinctly three large spots of ink upon it, and noticed their position. Murray Bradshaw took another hurried glance at the two gentlemen, and then quickly opened the paper. He ran it over with a flash of his eye, folded it again, and laid it by itself. With another quick turn of his head, as if to see whether he were observed or like to be, he reached his hand out and took a volume down from the shelves. In this volume he shut the document, whatever it was, which he had just taken out of the bundle, and placed the book in a very silent and as it were stealthy way back in its place. He then gave a look at each of the other papers, and said to his partner: “Old bills, old leases, and insurance policies that have run out. Malachi seems to have kept every scrap of paper that had a signature to it.”
“That 's the way with the old misers, always,” said Mr. Penhallow.
Byles Gridley had got through reading the document he held,—or pretending to read it. He took off his spectacles.
“We all grow timid and cautious as we get old, Mr. Penhallow.” Then turning round to the young man, he slowly repeated the lines,
“'Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quodQuaerit et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti;Vel quod res omnes timide, gelideque ministrat'
“You remember the passage, Mr. Bradshaw?”
While he was reciting these words from Horace, which he spoke slowly as if he relished every syllable, he kept his eyes on the young man steadily, but with out betraying any suspicion. His old habits as a teacher made that easy.
Murray Bradshaw's face was calm as usual, but there was a flush on his cheek, and Master Gridley saw the slight but unequivocal signs of excitement.
“Something is going on inside there,” the old man said to himself. He waited patiently, on the pretext of business, until Mr. Bradshaw got up and left the office. As soon as he and the senior partner were alone, Master Gridley took a lazy look at some of the books in his library. There stood in the book-shelves a copy of the Corpus Juris Civilis,—the fine Elzevir edition of 1664. It was bound in parchment, and thus readily distinguishable at a glance from all the books round it. Now Mr. Penhallow was not much of a Latin scholar, and knew and cared very little about the civil law. He had fallen in with this book at an auction, and bought it to place in his shelves with the other “properties” of the office, because it would look respectable. Anything shut up in one of those two octavos might stay there a lifetime without Mr. Penhallow's disturbing it; that Master Gridley knew, and of course the young man knew it too.
We often move to the objects of supreme curiosity or desire, not in the lines of castle or bishop on the chess-board, but with the knight's zigzag, at first in the wrong direction, making believe to ourselves we are not after the thing coveted. Put a lump of sugar in a canary-bird's cage, and the small creature will illustrate the instinct for the benefit of inquirers or sceptics. Byles Gridley went to the other side of the room and took a volume of Reports from the shelves. He put it back and took a copy of “Fearne on Contingent Remainders,” and looked at that for a moment in an idling way, as if from a sense of having nothing to do. Then he drew the back of his forefinger along the books on the shelf, as if nothing interested him in them, and strolled to the shelf in front of the desk at which Murray Bradshaw had stood. He took down the second volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis, turned the leaves over mechanically, as if in search of some title, and replaced it.
He looked round for a moment. Mr. Penhallow was writing hard at his table, not thinking of him, it was plain enough. He laid his hand on the FIRST volume of the Corpus Juris Civilis. There was a document shut up in it. His hand was on the book, whether taking it out or putting it back was not evident, when the door opened and Mr. William Murray Bradshaw entered.
“Ah, Mr. Gridley,” he said, “you are not studying the civil law, are you?” He strode towards him as he spoke, his face white, his eyes fixed fiercely on him.
“It always interests me, Mr. Bradshaw,” he answered, “and this is a fine edition of it. One may find a great many valuable things in the Corpus Juris Civilis.”
He looked impenetrable, and whether or not he had seen more than Mr. Bradshaw wished him to see, that gentleman could not tell. But there stood the two books in their place, and when, after Master Gridley had gone, he looked in the first volume, there was the document he had shut up in it.
“You know all about it, Olive?” Cyprian Eveleth said to his sister, after a brief word of greeting.
“Know of what, Cyprian?”
“Why, sister, don't you know that Myrtle Hazard is missing,—gone!—gone nobody knows where, and that we are looking in all directions to find her?”
Olive turned very pale and was silent for a moment. At the end of that moment the story seemed almost old to her. It was a natural ending of the prison-life which had been round Myrtle since her earliest years. When she got large and strong enough, she broke out of jail,—that was all. The nursery-bar is always climbed sooner or later, whether it is a wooden or an iron one. Olive felt as if she had dimly foreseen just such a finishing to the tragedy of the poor girl's home bringing-up. Why could not she have done something to prevent it? Well,—what shall we do now, and as it is?—that is the question.
“Has she left no letter,—no explanation of her leaving in this way?”
“Not a word, so far as anybody in the village knows.”
“Come over to the post-office with me; perhaps we may find a letter. I think we shall.”
Olive's sagacity and knowledge of her friend's character had not misled her. She found a letter from Myrtle to herself, which she opened and read as here follows:
MY DEAREST OLIVE:—Think no evil of me for what I have done. The fire-hang-bird's nest, as Cyprian called it, is empty, and the poor bird is flown.
I can live as I have lived no longer. This place is chilling all the life out of me, and I must find another home. It is far, far away, and you will not hear from me again until I am there. Then I will write to you.
You know where I was born,—under a hot sun and in the midst of strange, lovely scenes that I seem still to remember. I must visit them again: my heart always yearns for them. And I must cross the sea to get there,—the beautiful great sea that I have always longed for and that my river has been whispering about to me ever so many years. My life is pinched and starved here. I feel as old as aunt Silence, and I am only fifteen,—a child she has called me within a few days. If this is to be a child, what is it to be a woman?
I love you dearly,—and your brother is almost to me as if he were mine. I love our sweet, patient Bathsheba,—yes, and the old man that has spoken so kindly with me, good Master Gridley; I hate to give you pain,—to leave you all,—but my way of life is killing me, and I am too young to die. I cannot take the comfort with you, my dear friends, that I would; for it seems as if I carried a lump of ice in my heart, and all the warmth I find in you cannot thaw it out.
I have had a strange warning to leave this place, Olive. Do you remember how the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to flee into Egypt? I have had a dream like that, Olive. There is an old belief in our family that the spirit of one who died many generations ago watches over some of her descendants. They say it led our first ancestor to come over here when it was a wilderness. I believe it has appeared to others of the family in times of trouble. I have had a strange dream at any rate, and the one I saw, or thought I saw, told me to leave this place. Perhaps I should have stayed if it had not been for that, but it seemed like an angel's warning.
Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken. On Monday, you may show this letter to my friends, not before. I do not think they will be in danger of breaking their hearts for me at our house. Aunt Silence cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other woman hates me, I always thought. Kitty Fagan will cry hard. Tell her perhaps I shall come back by and by. There is a little box in my room, with some keepsakes marked,—one is for poor Kitty. You can give them to the right ones. Yours is with them.
Good-by, dearest. Keep my secret, as I told you, till Monday. And if you never see me again, remember how much I loved you. Never think hardly of me, for you have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how much misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young girl's life. God be with you!
MYRTLE HAZARD.
Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the letter to Cyprian. “Her secret is as safe with you as with me,” she said. “But this is madness, Cyprian, and we must keep her from doing herself a wrong.
“What she means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other, and sail for India. It is strange that they have not tracked her. There is no time to be lost. She shall not go out into the world in this way, child that she is. No; she shall come back, and make her home with us, if she cannot be happy with these people. Ours is a happy and a cheerful home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, and your sister too, Cyprian. But you must see her; you must leave this very hour; and you may find her. Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell him your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear sister. Then give her the note I will write, and say I know your heart, Cyprian, and I can trust that to tell you what to say.”
In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way to Boston. But another, keener even in pursuit than he, was there before him.
Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that over-curious observation of the young lawyer's proceedings at the office, Murray Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions and feelings of Myrtle Hazard. He had called frequently at The Poplars to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal of talking. He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had wound himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam. He found it harder to establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for him quite as much as Olive's brother as for any personal reason. But he carefully studied Myrtle's tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman, and not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more intimate acquaintance.
Thus, she corresponded with a friend of her mother's in India. She talked at times as if it were her ideal home, and showed many tastes which might well be vestiges of early Oriental impressions. She made herself a rude hammock,—such as are often used in hot climates,—and swung it between two elms. Here she would lie in the hot summer days, and fan herself with the sandal-wood fan her friend in India had sent her,—the perfume of which, the women said, seemed to throw her into day-dreams, which were almost like trances.
These circumstances gave a general direction to his ideas, which were presently fixed more exactly by two circumstances which he learned for himself and kept to himself; for he had no idea of making a hue and cry, and yet he did not mean that Myrtle Hazard should get away if he could help it.
The first fact was this. He found among the copies of the city newspaper they took at The Poplars a recent number from which a square had been cut out. He procured another copy of this paper of the same date, and found that the piece cut out was an advertisement to the effect that the A 1 Ship Swordfish, Captain Hawkins, was to sail from Boston for Calcutta, on the 20th of June.
The second fact was the following. On the window-sill of her little hanging chamber, which the women allowed him to inspect, he found some threads of long, black, glossy hair caught by a splinter in the wood. They were Myrtle's of course. A simpleton might have constructed a tragedy out of this trivial circumstance,—how she had cast herself from the window into the waters beneath it,—how she had been thrust out after a struggle, of which this shred from her tresses was the dreadful witness,—and so on. Murray Bradshaw did not stop to guess and wonder. He said nothing about it, but wound the shining threads on his finger, and, as soon as he got home, examined them with a magnifier. They had been cut off smoothly, as with a pair of scissors. This was part of a mass of hair, then, which had been shorn and thrown from the window. Nobody would do that but she herself. What would she do it for? To disguise her sex, of course. The other inferences were plain enough.
The wily young man put all these facts and hints together, and concluded that he would let the rustics drag the ponds and the river, and scour the woods and swamps, while he himself went to the seaport town from which she would without doubt sail if she had formed the project he thought on the whole most probable.
Thus it was that we found him hurrying to the nearest station to catch the train to Boston, while they were all looking for traces of the missing girl nearer home. In the cars he made the most suggestive inquiries he could frame, to stir up the gentlemanly conductor's memory. Had any young fellow been on the train within a day or two, who had attracted his notice? Smooth, handsome face, black eyes, short black hair, new clothes, not fitting very well, looked away when he paid his fare, had a soft voice like a woman's,—had he seen anybody answering to some such description as this? The gentlemanly conductor had not noticed,—was always taking up and setting down way-passengers,—might have had such a young man aboard,—there was two or three students one day in the car singing college songs,—he did n't care how folks looked if they had their tickets ready,—and minded their own business,—and, so saying, he poked a young man upon whose shoulder a ringleted head was reclining with that delightful abandon which the railroad train seems to provoke in lovely woman,—“Fare!”
It is a fine thing to be set down in a great, overcrowded hotel, where they do not know you, looking dusty, and for the moment shabby, with nothing but a carpet-bag in your hand, feeling tired, and anything but clean, and hungry, and worried, and every way miserable and mean, and to undergo the appraising process of the gentleman in the office, who, while he shoves the book round to you for your name, is making a hasty calculation as to how high up he can venture to doom you. But Murray Bradshaw's plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by the air and tone which imply the habit of being attended to. The clerk saw that in a glance, and, as he looked at the name and address in the book, spoke sharply in the explosive dialect of his tribe,—
“Jun! ta'tha'genlm'n'scarpetbag'n'showhimupt'thirtyone!”
When Cyprian Eveleth reached the same hotel late at night, he appeared in his best clothes and with a new valise; but his amiable countenance and gentle voice and modest manner sent him up two stories higher, where he found himself in a room not much better than a garret, feeling lonely enough, for he did not know he had an acquaintance in the same house. The two young men were in and out so irregularly that it was not very strange that they did not happen to meet each other.
The young lawyer was far more likely to find Myrtle if she were in the city than the other, even with the help of his cousin Edward. He was not only older, but sharper, better acquainted with the city and its ways, and, whatever might be the strength of Cyprian's motives, his own were of such intensity that he thought of nothing else by day, and dreamed of nothing else by night. He went to work, therefore, in the most systematic manner. He first visited the ship Swordfish, lying at her wharf, saw her captain, and satisfied himself that as yet nobody at all corresponding to the description of Myrtle Hazard had been seen by any person on board. He visited all the wharves, inquiring on every vessel where it seemed possible she might have been looking about. Hotels, thoroughfares, every place where he might hear of her or meet her, were all searched. He took some of the police into his confidence, and had half a dozen pairs of eyes besides his own opened pretty widely, to discover the lost girl.
On Sunday, the 19th, he got the first hint which encouraged him to think he was on the trail of his fugitive. He had gone down again to the wharf where the Swordfish, advertised to sail the next day, was lying. The captain was not on board, but one of the mates was there, and he addressed his questions to him, not with any great hope of hearing anything important, but determined to lose no chance, however small. He was startled with a piece of information which gave him such an exquisite pang of delight that he could hardly keep the usual quiet of his demeanor. A youth corresponding to his description of Myrtle Hazard in her probable disguise had been that morning on board the Swordfish, making many inquires as to the hour at which she was to sail, and who were to be the passengers, and remained some time on board, going all over the vessel, examining her cabin accommodations, and saying he should return to-morrow before she sailed,—doubtless intending to take passage in her, as there was plenty of room on board. There could be little question, from the description, who this young person was. It was a rather delicate—looking, dark—haired youth, smooth-faced, somewhat shy and bashful in his ways, and evidently excited and nervous. He had apparently been to look about him, and would come back at the last moment, just as the vessel was ready to sail, and in an hour or two be beyond the reach of inquiry.
Murray Bradshaw returned to his hotel, and, going to his chamber, summoned all his faculties in state council to determine what course he should follow, now that he had the object of his search certainly within reaching distance. There was no danger now of her eluding him; but the grave question arose, what was he to do when he stood face to face with her. She must not go,—that was fixed. If she once got off in that ship, she might be safe enough; but what would become of certain projects in which he was interested,—that was the question. But again, she was no child, to be turned away from her adventure by cajolery, or by any such threats as common truants would find sufficient to scare them back to their duty. He could tell the facts of her disguise and the manner of her leaving home to the captain of the vessel, and induce him to send her ashore as a stray girl, to be returned to her relatives. But this would only make her furious with him; and he must not alienate her from himself, at any rate. He might plead with her in the name of duty, for the sake of her friends, for the good name of the family. She had thought all these things over before she ran away. What if he should address her as a lover, throw himself at her feet, implore her to pity him and give up her rash scheme, and, if things came to the very worst, offer to follow her wherever she went, if she would accept him in the only relation that would render it possible. Fifteen years old,—he nearly ten years older,—but such things had happened before, and this was no time to stand on trifles.
He worked out the hypothesis of the matrimonial offer as he would have reasoned out the probabilities in a law case he was undertaking.
1. He would rather risk that than lose all hold upon her. The girl was handsome enough for his ambitious future, wherever it might carry him. She came of an honorable family, and had the great advantage of being free from a tribe of disagreeable relatives, which is such a drawback on many otherwise eligible parties. To these considerations were to be joined other circumstances which we need not here mention, of a nature to add greatly to their force, and which would go far of themselves to determine his action.
2. How was it likely she would look on such an extraordinary proposition? At first, no doubt, as Lady Anne looked upon the advances of Richard. She would be startled, perhaps shocked. What then? She could not help feeling flattered at such an offer from him,—him, William Murray Bradshaw, the rising young man of his county, at her feet, his eyes melting with the love he would throw into them, his tones subdued to their most sympathetic quality, and all those phrases on his lips which every day beguile women older and more discreet than this romantic, long-imprisoned girl, whose rash and adventurous enterprise was an assertion of her womanhood and her right to dispose of herself as she chose. He had not lived to be twenty-five years old without knowing his power with women. He believed in himself so thoroughly, that his very confidence was a strong promise of success.
3. In case all his entreaties, arguments, and offers made no impression, should he make use of that supreme resource, not to be employed save in extreme need, but which was of a nature, in his opinion, to shake a resolution stronger than this young girl was like to oppose to it? That would be like Christian's coming to his weapon called All-prayer, he said to himself, with a smile that his early readings of Bunyan should have furnished him an image for so different an occasion. The question was one he could not settle till the time came,—he must leave it to the instinct of the moment.
The next morning found him early waking after a night of feverish dreams. He dressed himself with more than usual care, and walked down to the wharf where the Swordfish was moored. The ship had left the wharf, and was lying out in the stream: A small boat had just reached her, and a slender youth, as he appeared at that distance, climbed, not over-adroitly, up the vessel's side.
Murray Bradshaw called to a boatman near by and ordered the man to row him over as fast as he could to the vessel lying in the stream. He had no sooner reached the deck of the Swordfish than he asked for the young person who had just been put on board.
“He is in the cabin, sir, just gone down with the captain,” was the reply.
His heart beat, in spite of his cool temperament, as he went down the steps leading to the cabin. The young person was talking earnestly with the captain, and, on his turning round, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw had the pleasure of recognizing his young friend, Mr. Cyprian Eveleth.
Look at the flower of a morning-glory the evening before the dawn which is to see it unfold. The delicate petals are twisted into a spiral, which at the appointed hour, when the sunlight touches the hidden springs of its life, will uncoil itself and let the day into the chamber of its virgin heart. But the spiral must unwind by its own law, and the hand that shall try to hasten the process will only spoil the blossom which would have expanded in symmetrical beauty under the rosy fingers of morning.
We may take a hint from Nature's handling of the flower in dealing with young souls, and especially with the souls of young girls, which, from their organization and conditions, require more careful treatment than those of their tougher-fibred brothers. Many parents reproach themselves for not having enforced their own convictions on their children in the face of every inborn antagonism they encountered. Let them not be too severe in their self-condemnation. A want of judgment in this matter has sent many a young person to Bedlam, whose nature would have opened kindly enough if it had only been trusted to the sweet influences of morning sunshine. In such cases it may be that the state we call insanity is not always an unalloyed evil. It may take the place of something worse, the wretchedness of a mind not yet dethroned, but subject to the perpetual interferences of another mind governed by laws alien and hostile to its own. Insanity may perhaps be the only palliative left to Nature in this extremity. But before she comes to that, she has many expedients. The mind does not know what diet it can feed on until it has been brought to the starvation point. Its experience is like that of those who have been long drifting about on rafts or in long-boats. There is nothing out of which it will not contrive to get some sustenance. A person of note, long held captive for a political offence, is said to have owed the preservation of his reason to a pin, out of which he contrived to get exercise and excitement by throwing it down carelessly on the dark floor of his dungeon, and then hunting for it in a series of systematic explorations until he had found it.
Perhaps the most natural thing Myrtle Hazard could have done would have been to go crazy, and be sent to the nearest asylum, if Providence, which in its wisdom makes use of the most unexpected agencies, had not made a special provision for her mental welfare. She was in that arid household as the prophet in the land where there was no dew nor rain for these long years. But as he had the brook Cherith, and the bread and flesh in the morning and the bread and flesh in the evening which the ravens brought him, so she had the river and her secret store of books.
The river was light and life and music and companionship to her. She learned to row herself about upon it, to swim boldly in it, for it had sheltered nooks but a little way above The Poplars. But there was more than that in it,—it was infinitely sympathetic. A river is strangely like a human soul. It has its dark and bright days, its troubles from within, and its disturbances from without. It often runs over ragged rocks with a smooth surface, and is vexed with ripples as it slides over sands that are level as a floor. It betrays its various moods by aspects which are the commonplaces of poetry, as smiles and dimples and wrinkles and frowns. Its face is full of winking eyes, when the scattering rain-drops first fall upon it, and it scowls back at the storm-cloud, as with knitted brows, when the winds are let loose. It talks, too, in its own simple dialect, murmuring, as it were, with busy lips all the way to the ocean, as children seeking the mother's breast and impatient of delay. Prisoners who know what a flower or an insect has been to them in their solitary cell, invalids who have employed their vacant minds in studying the patterns of paper-hangings on the walls of their sick-chambers, can tell what the river was to the lonely, imaginative creature who used to sit looking into its depths, hour after hour, from the airy height of the Fire-hang-bird's Nest.
Of late a thought had mingled with her fancies which had given to the river the aspect of something more than a friend and a companion. It appeared all at once as a Deliverer. Did not its waters lead, after long wanderings, to the great highway of the world, and open to her the gates of those cities from which she could take her departure unchallenged towards the lands of the morning or of the sunset? Often, after a freshet, she had seen a child's miniature boat floating down on its side past her window, and traced it in imagination back to some crystal brook flowing by the door of a cottage far up a blue mountain in the distance. So she now began to follow down the stream the airy shallop that held her bright fancies. These dreams of hers were colored by the rainbows of an enchanted fountain,—the books of adventure, the romances, the stories which fortune had placed in her hands,—the same over which the heart of the Pride of the County had throbbed in the last century, and on the pages of some of which the traces of her tears might still be seen.
The literature which was furnished for Myrtle's improvement was chiefly of a religious character, and, however interesting and valuable to those to whom it was adapted, had not been chosen with any wise regard to its fitness for her special conditions. Of what use was it to offer books like the “Saint's Rest” to a child whose idea of happiness was in perpetual activity? She read “Pilgrim's Progress,” it is true, with great delight. She liked the idea of travelling with a pack on one's back, the odd shows at the House of the interpreter, the fighting, the adventures, the pleasing young ladies at the palace the name of which was Beautiful, and their very interesting museum of curiosities. As for the allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck of wheat through a bushel measure with the bottom out, without touching.
But the very first book she got hold of out of the hidden treasury threw the “Pilgrim's Progress” quite into the shade. It was the story of a youth who ran away and lived on an island,—one Crusoe,—a homely narrative, but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures. There too was the history, coming much nearer home, of Deborah Sampson, the young woman who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a portrait of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than lovely. A virtuous young female she was, and married well, as she deserved to, and raised a family with as good a name as wife and mother as the best of them. But perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold of her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most young persons find less entertaining than the “Vicar of Wakefield,” with which it is nowadays so commonly bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the Happy Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and closing forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries of the imprisoning valley, the visions of the world beyond, the projects of escape, and the long toil which ended in their accomplishment, which haunted her sleeping and waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the Happy Valley. Of the romances and the love-letters we must take it for granted that she selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing to the contrary.
There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over her constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before her disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to her growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea, horses, and a natural mummy of a rough-skinned dogfish. She had not thought of them for years, but now she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea odors which still clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often been her lullaby,—a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have sung.
“You are getting to look like your father,” Aunt Silence said one day; “I never saw it before. I always thought you took after old Major Gideon Withers. Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor Charles,—or at any rate, that you may be prepared.”
It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and said, “Why not an early grave, Aunt, if this world is such a bad place as you say it is?”
“I'm afraid you are not fit for a better.”
She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for heaven.
For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent resident. Between her and Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest for her soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory without waiting for the sunshine to do it. Each had her own wrenches and pincers to use for that purpose. All this promised little for the nurture and admonition of the young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by imprisonment and starvation at three years old, was not likely to be over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment at fifteen.
Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility,—her own responsibility, and the dreadful consequences which would follow to her, Silence, if Myrtle should in any way go wrong. Ever since her failure in that moral coup d'etat by which the sinful dynasty of the natural self-determining power was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of education had been a series of feeble efforts followed by plaintive wails over their utter want of success. The face she turned upon the young girl in her solemn expostulations looked as if it were inscribed with the epitaphs of hope and virtue. Her utterances were pitched in such a forlorn tone, that the little bird in his cage, who always began twittering at the sound of Myrtle's voice, would stop in his song, and cock his head with a look of inquiry full of pathos, as if he wanted to know what was the matter, and whether he could do anything to help.
The specialty of Cynthia Badlam was to point out all the dangerous and unpardonable trangressions into which young people generally, and this young person in particular, were likely to run, to hold up examples of those who had fallen into evil ways and come to an evil end, to present the most exalted standard of ascetic virtue to the lively girl's apprehension, leading her naturally to the conclusion that a bright example of excellence stood before her in the irreproachable relative who addressed her. Especially with regard to the allurements which the world offers to the young and inexperienced female, Miss Cynthia Badlam was severe and eloquent. Sometimes poor Myrtle would stare, not seeing the meaning of her wise caution, sometimes look at Miss Cynthia with a feeling that there was something about her that was false and forced, that she had nothing in common with young people, that she had no pity for them, only hatred of their sins, whatever these might be,—a hatred which seemed to extend to those sources of frequent temptation, youth and beauty, as if they were in themselves objectionable.
Both the lone women at The Poplars were gifted with a thin vein of music. They gave it expression in psalmody, of course, in which Myrtle, who was a natural singer, was expected to bear her part. This would have been pleasantry if the airs most frequently selected had been cheerful or soothing, and if the favorite hymns had been of a sort to inspire a love for what was lovely in this life, and to give some faint foretaste of the harmonies of a better world to come. But there is a fondness for minor keys and wailing cadences common to the monotonous chants of cannibals and savages generally, to such war-songs as the wild, implacable “Marseillaise,” and to the favorite tunes of low—spirited Christian pessimists. That mournful “China,” which one of our most agreeable story-tellers has justly singled out as the cry of despair itself, was often sung at The Poplars, sending such a sense of utter misery through the house, that poor Kitty Fagan would cross herself, and wring her hands, and think of funerals, and wonder who was going to die,—for she fancied she heard the Banshee's warning in those most dismal ululations.
On the first Saturday of June, a fortnight before her disappearance, Myrtle strolled off by the river shore, along its lonely banks, and came home with her hands full of leaves and blossoms. Silence Withers looked at them as if they were a kind of melancholy manifestation of frivolity on the part of the wicked old earth. Not that she did not inhale their faint fragrance with a certain pleasure, and feel their beauty as none whose souls are not wholly shriveled and hardened can help doing, but the world was, in her estimate, a vale of tears, and it was only by a momentary forgetfulness that she could be moved to smile at anything.
Miss Cynthia, a sharper-edged woman, had formed the habit of crushing everything for its moral, until it lost its sweetness and grew almost odious, as flower-de-luces do when handled roughly. “There's a worm in that leaf, Myrtle. He has rolled it all round him, and hidden himself from sight; but there is a horrid worm in it, for all it is so young and fresh. There is a worm in every young soul, Myrtle.”
“But there is not a worm in every leaf, Miss Cynthia. Look,” she said, “all these are open, and you can see all over and under them, and there is nothing there. Are there never any worms in the leaves after they get old and yellow, Miss Cynthia?”
That was a pretty fair hit for a simple creature of fifteen, but perhaps she was not so absolutely simple as one might have thought.
It was on the evening of this same day that they were sitting together. The sweet season was opening, and it seemed as if the whispering of the leaves, the voices of the birds, the softness of the air, the young life stirring in everything, called on all creatures to join the universal chorus of praise that was going up around them.
“What shall we sing this evening?” said Miss Silence.
“Give me one of the books, if you please, Cousin Silence,” said Miss Cynthia. “It is Saturday evening. Holy time has begun. Let us prepare our minds for the solemnities of the Sabbath.”
She took the book, one well known to the schools and churches of this nineteenth century.
“Book Second. Hymn 44. Long metre. I guess 'Putney' will be as good a tune as any to sing it to.”
The trio began,—