Temperance stayed to the house-cleaning. It was lucky, she could not help saying, as house-cleaning must always be after a funeral, that it should have happened at the regular cleaning-time. She went back to her own house as soon as it was over. Father drove to Milford as usual; Arthur resumed his school, and Aunt Merce, who had at first busied herself in looking over her wardrobe, and selecting from it what she thought could be dyed, folded it away. She passed hours in mother's room, from which father had fled, crying over her Bible, looking in her boxes and drawers to feed her sorrow with the sight of the familiar things, alternating those periods with her old occupation of looking out of the windows. In regard to myself, and Veronica, she evinced a distress at the responsibility which, she feared, must rest upon her. Veronica, dark and silent, played such heart-piercing strains that father could not bear to hear her; so when she played, for he dared not ask her to desist, he went away. To me she had scarcely spoken since the funeral. She wore the same dress each day—one of black silk—and a small black mantle, pinned across her bosom. Soon the doors began to open and shut after their old fashion, and people came and went as of old on errands of begging or borrowing.
At the table we felt a sense of haste; instead of lingering, as was our wont, we separated soon, with an indifferent air, as if we were called by business, not sent away by sorrow. But if our eyes fell on a certain chair, empty against the wall, a cutting pang was felt, which was not at all concealed; for there were sudden breaks in our commonplace talk, which diverged into wandering channels, betraying the tension of feeling.
Many weeks passed, through which I endured an aching, aimless melancholy. My thoughts continually drifted through the vacuum in our atmosphere, and returned to impress me with a disbelief in the enjoyment, or necessity of keeping myself employed with the keys of an instrument, which, let me strike ever so cunningly, it was certain I could never obtain mastery over.
One day I went to walk by the shore, for the first time since my return. When I set my foot on the ground, the intolerable light of the brilliant day blazed through me; I was luminously dark, for it blinded me. Picking my way over the beach, left bare by the tide, with my eyes fixed downward till I could see, I reached the point between our house and the lighthouse and turned toward the sea, inhaling its cool freshness. I climbed out to a flat, low rock, on the point; it was dry in the sun, and the weeds hanging from its sides were black and crisp; I put my woolen shawl on it, and stretched myself along its edge. Little pools meshed from the sea by the numberless rocks round me engrossed my attention. How white and pellucid was the shallow near me—no shadow but the shadow of my face bending over it—nothing to ripple its surface, but my imperceptible breath! By and by a bunch of knotted wrack floated in from the outside and lodged in a crevice; a minute creature with fringed feet darted from it and swam across it. After the knotted wrack came the fragment of a green and silky substance, delicate enough to have been the remnant of a web, woven in the palace of Circe. "There must be a current," I thought, "which sends them here." And I watched the inlet for other waifs; but nothing more came. Eye-like bubbles rose from among the fronds of the knotted wrack, and, sailing on uncertain voyages, broke one by one and were wrecked to nothingness. The last vanished; the pool showed me the motionless shadow of my face again, on which I pondered, till I suddenly became aware of a slow, internal oscillation, which increased till I felt in a strange tumult. I put my hand in the pool and troubled its surface.
"Hail, Cassandra! Hail!"
I sprang up the highest rock on the point, and looked seaward, to catch a glimpse of the flying Spirit who had touched me. My soul was brought in poise and quickened with the beauty before me! The wide, shimmering plain of sea—its aerial blue, stretching beyond the limits of my vision in one direction, upbearing transverse, cloud-like islands in another, varied and shadowed by shore and sky—mingled its essence with mine.
The wind was coming; under the far horizon the mass of waters begun to undulate. Dark, spear-like clouds rose above it and menaced the east. The speedy wind tossed and teased the sea nearer and nearer, till I was surrounded by a gulf of milky green foam. As the tide rolled in I retreated, stepping back from rock to rock, round which the waves curled and hissed, baffled in their attempt to climb over me. I stopped on the verge of the tide-mark; the sea was seeking me and I must wait. It gave tongue as its lips touched my feet, roaring in the caves, falling on the level beaches with a mad, boundless joy!
"Have then at life!" my senses cried. "We will possess its longing silence, rifle its waiting beauty. We will rise up in its light and warmth, and cry, 'Come, for we wait.' Its roar, its beauty, its madness—we will have—all." I turned and walked swiftly homeward, treading the ridges of white sand, the black drifts of sea-weed, as if they had been a smooth floor.
Aunt Merce was at the door.
"Now," she said, "we are going to have the long May storm. The gulls are flying round the lighthouse. How high the tide is! You must want your dinner. I wish youwouldsee to Fanny; she is lording it over us all."
"Yes, yes, I will do it; you may depend on me. I will reign, and serve also."
"Oh, Cassandra,canyou give upyourself?"
"I must, I suppose. Confound the spray; it is flying against the windows."
"Come in; your hair is wet, and your shawl is wringing. Now for a cold."
"I never shall have any more colds, Aunt Merce; never mean to have anything to myself—entirely, you know."
"You do me good, you dear girl; I love you"; and she began to cry."There's nothing but cold ham and boiled rice for your dinner."
"What time is it?"
"Near three."
I opened the door of the dining-room; the table was laid, and I walked round it, on a tour of inspection.
"I thought you might as well have your dinner, all at once," said Fanny, by the window, with her feet tucked up on the rounds of her chair. "Here it is."
"I perceive. Who arranged it?"
"Me and Paddy Margaret."
"How many tablecloths have we?"
"Plenty. I thought as you didn't seem to care about any regular hour for dinner, and made us all wait,Ineedn't be particular; besides, I am not the waiter, you know."
She had set on the dishes used in the kitchen. I pulled off cloth and all—the dishes crashed, of course—and sat down on the floor, picking out the remains for my repast.
"What will Mr. Morgeson say?" she asked, turning very red.
"Shall you clear away this rubbish by the time he comes home?"
"Why, I must, mustn't I?"
"I hope so. Where's Veronica?"
"She has been gone since twelve; Sam carried her to Temperance's house."
I continued my meal. Fanny brought a chair for me, which I did not take. I scarcely tasted what I ate. A wall had risen up suddenly before me, which divided me from my dreams; I was inside it, on a prosaic domain I must henceforth be confined to. The unthought-of result of mother's death—disorganization, began to show itself. The individuality which had kept the weakness and faults of our family life in abeyance must have been powerful; and I had never recognized it! I attempted to analyze this influence, so strong, yet so invisibly produced. I thought of her mildness, her dreamy habits, her indifference, and her incapacity of comprehending natures unlike her own. Would endowment of character explain it—that faculty which we could not change, give, or take? Character was a mysterious and indestructible fact, and a fact that I had had little respect for. Upon what a false basis I had gone—a basis of extremes. I had seen men as trees walking; that was my experience.
"You'll choke yourself with that dry bread," exclaimed Fanny, really concerned at my abstraction.
"Where is my trunk? Did you unlock it?"
"I took from it what you needed at the time: but it is not unpacked, and it is in the upper hall closet."
She was picking up the broken delf meekly.
"Did you see a small bag I brought? And where's my satchel? Good heavens! What has made me put off that letter so? For I have thought of it, and yet I have kept it back."
"It is safe, in your closet, Miss Cassandra; and the box is there."
"Aunt Merce," I called, "will you have nothing to eat?"
She laughed hysterically, when she saw what I had done.
"Where is Hepsey, Aunt Merce?"
"She goes to bed after dinner, you know, for an hour or two."
"She must go from here."
"Oh!" they both chorused, "what for?"
"She is too old."
"Shehasmoney, and a good house," said Aunt Merce, "if she must go.I wonder how Mary stood it so long."
"Turn 'em off," said Fanny, "when they grow useless."
Aunt Merce reddened, and looked hurt.
"I shall keepyou; look sharp now after your own disinterestedness."
I wanted to go to my room, as I thought it time to arrange my trunks and boxes; besides, I needed rest—the sad luxury of reaction. But word was brought to the house that Arthur had disappeared, in company with two boys notorious for mischief. His teacher was afraid they might have put out to sea in a crazy sailboat. We were in a state of alarm till dark, when father came home, bringing him, having found him on the way to Milford. Veronica had not returned. It stormed violently, and father was vexed because a horse must be sent through the storm for her. At last I obtained the asylum of my room, in an irritable frame of mind, convinced that such would be my condition each day. Composure came with putting my drawers and shelves in order. The box with Desmond's flowers I threw into the fire, without opening it, ribbon and all, for I could not endure the sight of them. I unfolded the dresses I had worn on the occasions of my meeting him; even the collars and ribbons I had adorned myself with were conned with jealous, greedy eyes; in looking at them all other remembrances connected with my visit vanished. The handkerchief scented with violets, which I found in the pocket of the dress I had worn when I met him at Mrs. Hepburn's, made me childish. I was holding it when Veronica entered, bringing with her an atmosphere of dampness.
"Violet! I like it. There is not one blooming yet, Temperance says. Why are they so late? There's only this pitiful snake-grass," holding up a bunch of drooping, pale blossoms.
"Oh, Verry, can you forgive me? I did not forget these, but I felt the strangest disinclination to look them up." And I gave her the jewel box and letter.
She seized them, and opened the box first.
"Child-Verry."
"I never was a child, you know; but I am always trying to find my childhood."
She took a necklace from the box, composed of a single string of small, beautiful pearls, from which hung an egg-shaped amethyst of pure violet. She fastened the necklace round her throat.
"It is as lucent as the moon," she said, looking down at the amethyst, which shed a watery light; "I wish you had given it to me before."
Breaking the seal of the letter, with a twist of her mouth at the coat-of-arms impressed upon it, she shook out the closely written pages, and saying, "There is a volume," began reading. "It is very good," she observed at the end of the first page, "a regular composition," and went on with an air of increasing interest. "How does he look?" she asked, stopping again.
"As if he longed to see you."
Her eyes went in quest of him so far that I thought they must be startled by a sudden vision.
"How did you find his family?"
"Not like him much."
"I knew that; he would not have loved me so suddenly had I not been wholly unlike any woman he had known."
"His character is individual."
"I should know that from his influence upon you."
She looked at me wistfully, smoothed my hair with her cool hand, and resumed the letter.
"He thinks he will not come to Surrey with you; asks me to tell him my wishes," she repeated rapidly, translating from the original. "What do I think of our future? How shall we propose any change? Will Cassandra describe her visit? Will she tell me that he thinks of going abroad?"
She dropped the letter. "What pivot is he swinging on? What is he uncertain about?"
"There must be more to read."
She turned another page.
"If I go to Switzerland (I think of going on account of family affairs), when shall I return? My family, of course, expected me to marry in their pale; that is, my mother rather prefers to select a wife for me than that I should do it. But, as you shall never come to Belem, her plans or wishes need make no difference to us. If Cassandra would be to us what she might, how things would clear! Don't you think, my love, that there should be the greatest sympathy between sisters?"
I laughed.
Verry said she did not like his letter much after all. He evidently thought her incapable of understanding ordinary matters. It was well, though; it made their love idyllic.
"Let us speak of matters nearer home."
"Let us go to my room; the storm is so loud this side of the house."
"No; you must stay till the walls tremble. Have you seen, Verry, any work for me to do here?"
"Everything is changed. I have tried to be as steady as when mother was here, but I cannot; I whirl with a vague idea of liberty. Did she keep the family conscience? Now that she has gone I feel responsible no more."
"An idea of responsibility has come to me—what plain people callDuty."
"I do not feel it," she cried mournfully. "I must yield to you then.You can be good.'
"I must act so; but help me, Verry; I have contrary desires."
"What do they find to feed on? What are they? Have you your evil spirit?"
"Yes; a devil named Temperament."
"Now teach me, Cassandra."
"Not I. Go, and write Ben. Make excuses for my negligence toward you about his letter. Tell him to come. I shall write Alice and Helen this evening. We have been shut off from the world by the gate of Death; but we must come back."
"One thing you may be sure of—though I shall be no help, I shall never annoy you. I know that my instincts are fine only in a self-centering direction; yours are different. I shall trust them. Since you have spoken, I perceive the shadows you have raised and must encounter. I retreat before them, admiring your discernment, and placing confidence in your powers. You convince if you do not win me. Who can guess how your every plan and hope of well-doing may be thwarted? I need say no more?"
"Nothing more."
She left the room. There would be no antagonism between us; but there would be pain—on one side. The distance which had kept us apart was shortened, but not annihilated. What could I expect? The silent and serene currents which flow from souls like Veronica's and Ben's, whose genius is not of the heart, refuse to enter a nature so turbulent as mine. But my destiny must be changed by such! It was taken for granted that my own spirit should not rule me. And with what reward? Any, but that of sympathy. But I muttered:
"'I dimly seeMy far-off doubtful purpose, as a motherConjectures of the features of her childEre it is born.'"
The house trembled in the fury of the storm. The waves were hoarse with their vain bawling, and the wind shrieked at every crevice of chimney, door, and window. No answering excitement in me now! I had grown older.
A few days after, I went to Milford with father, to make some purchases. I sought a way to speak to him about the future, intending also to go on with various remarks; but it seemed difficult to begin. Observing him, as he contemplated the road before us, grave and abstracted, I recollected the difference between his age and mother's, and wondered at my blindness, while I compared the old man of my childhood, who existed for the express purpose of making money for the support and pleasure of his family, and to accommodate all its whims, with the man before me,—barely forty-eight, without a wrinkle in his firm, ruddy face, and only an occasional white hair, in ambuscade among his fair, curly locks. My exclusive right over him I felt doubtful about. I gave my attention to the road also, and remarked that I thought the season was late.
"Yes. Why didn't Somers come home with you?"
"I hardly know. The matter of the marriage was not settled, nor a plan of spending a summer abroad."
"Will it suit him to vegetate in Surrey? Veronica will not leave home."
"He has no ambition."
"It is a curse to inherit money in this country. Mr. Somers writes that Ben will have three thousand a year; but that the disposal, at present, is not in his power."
I explained as well as I could the Pickersgill property.
"I see how it is. The children are waiting for the principal, and have exacted the income; and their lives have been warped for this reason. Ben has not begun life yet. But I like Somers exceedingly."
"He is the best of them, his mother the worst."
"Did you have a passage?"
"She attempted."
"I can give Veronica nothing beyond new clothes or furniture; whatever she likes that way. To draw money from my business is impossible. My business fluctuates like quicksilver, and it is enormously extended. If they should have two thousand a year, it would be a princely income; I should feel so now, if they had it clear of incumbrance."
"Do you mean to say that your income does not amount to so much?"
"My outgoes and incomes have for a long time been involved with each other. I do not separate them. I have never lived extravagantly. My luxury has been in doing too much."
A cold feeling came over me.
"By the way, Mr. Somers pays you compliments in his note. How old are you? I forget." He surveyed me with a doubtful look. Are you thin, or what is it?"
"East wind, I guess. I am twenty-five."
"And Veronica?"
"Over twenty."
"She must be married. I hope she will cut her practical eye-teeth then, for Somers's sake."
"He does not require a practically minded woman."
"What do men require!"
"They require the souls and bodies of women, without having the trouble of knowing the difference between the one and other."
"So bad as that? Whoa!"
He stopped to pay toll, and the conversation stopped.
On the way home, however, I found a place to begin my proposed talk, and burst out with, "I think Hepsey should leave us."
"What ails Hepsey?"
"She is so old, and is such a poke."
"You must tell her yourself to go. She has money enough to be comfortable; I have some of it, as well as that of half the widows, old maids, and sailors' wives in Surrey,' being better than the Milford banks, they think."
I felt another cold twinge.
"What! are our servants your creditors?"
"Servants—don't say that," he said harshly; "we do not have these distinctions here."
"It costs you more than two thousand a year."
"How do you know?"
"Think of the hired people—the horses, the cows, pigs, hens, garden, fields—all costing more than they yield."
"What has come over you? Did you ever think of money before? Tell me, have you ever been in our cellar?"
"Yes, to look at the kittens."
"In the store-room?"
"For apples and sweetmeats."
"Look into these matters, if you like; they never troubled your mother, at least I never knew that they did; but don't make your reforms tiresome."
What encouragement!
In the yard we saw Fanny contemplating a brood of hens, which were picking up corn before her. "Take Fanny for a coadjutor; she is eighteen, and a bright girl." She sprang to the chaise, and caught the reins, which he threw into her hands, unbuckled the girth, and, before I was out of sight, was leading the horse to water.
"We might economize in the way of a stable-boy," I said.
"Pooh! you are not indulgent. Here," whistling to Fanny, "let Sam do that." She pouted her lips at him, and he laughed.
Aunt Merce gave me a letter the moment I entered. "It is in Alice's hand; sit down and read it."
She took her handkerchief and a bit of flagroot from her pocket, to be ready for the sympathetic flow which she expected. But the letter was short. She had seen, it said, the announcement of mother's death in a newspaper at the time. She knew what a change it had made. We might be sure that we should never find our old level, however happy and forgetful we might grow. She bore us all in mind but sent no message, except to Aunt Merce; she must come to Rosville before summer was over. And could she assist me by taking Arthur for a while? Edward was a quiet, companionable lad, and Arthur would be safe with him at home and at school.
"I wish you would go, Aunt Merce."
"Yes, why not, Mercy?" asked father. "Would it be a good thing forArthur, Cassandra? You know what Surrey is for a boy."
"I know what Rosville was for a girl," I thought. It was an excellent plan for Arthur; but a feeling of repulsion at the idea of his going kept me silent.
"Is it a good idea?" he repeated.
"Yes, yes, father; send him by all means."
Aunt Merce sighed. "If he goes, I must go; I can be the receptacle for his griefs and trials for a while at least, and be a little useful that way. You know, Locke, I am but a poor creature."
"I was not aware of that fact, and am astonished to hear you say so, Mercy, when you know how far back I can remember. Mary shines all along those years, and you with her."
"Locke, you are the kindest man in the world."
"He feels fifty years younger than she appears to him," I thought; butI thanked him for his consideration for her.
"Veronica has had a letter to-day from Mr. Somers. What did you buy inMilford?"
"Mr. Morgeson," Fanny called, "Bumpus, the horse-jockey, is in the yard. He says Bill is spavined. I think he lies; he wants to trade."
He went out with her.
"Aunt Merce, let us be more together. What do you think of spending our evenings in the parlor?"
"Do you expect to break up our habits?"
"I would if I could."
"Try Veronica."
"I have."
"Will she give up solitude?"
"Bring your knitting to the parlor and see."
Veronica came in to tell me that Ben was coming in a week.
"Glad of it."
"Sends love to you."
"Obliged."
"Calls me 'poor girl'; speaks beautifully of his remembrance of mother, and—"
"What?"
"Tells me to rely on your faithful soul; to trust in the reasonable hope of our remaining together; to try to establish an equality of tastes and habits between us. He tells me what I never knew,—that I need you—that we need each other."
"Is that all?"
"There is more forme."
I left her. Closing the door of my room gently, I thought: "Ben is a good man; but for all that, I feel like blind Sampson just now. Could I lay my hands on the pillars which supported the temple he has built, I would wrench them from their foundation and surprise him by toppling the roof on his head."
His arrival was delayed for a few days. When he came Surrey looked its best, for it was June; and though the winds were chilly, the grass was grown and the orchard leaves were crowding off the blossoms. The woods were vividly green. The fauns were playing there, and the sirens sang under the sea. But I had other thoughts; the fauns and sirens were not for me, perplexed as I was with household cares. Hepsey proposed staying another year, but I was firm; and she went, begging Fanny to go with her and be as a daughter. She declined; but the proposition influenced her to be troublesome to me. She told me she was of age now, and that no person had a right to control her. At present she was useful where she was, and might remain.
"Will you have wages?" I asked her.
"That is Mr. Morgeson's business."
My anger would have pleased her, so I concealed it.
"Your ability, Fanny, is better than your disposition. Me,—you do not suit at all; but it is certain that father depends on you for his small comforts, and Veronica likes you. I wish you would stay."
She placed her arms akimbo.
"I should like to find you out, exactly. I can't. I never could find out your mother; all the rest of you are as clear as daylight." And she snapped her fingers as if 'the rest' were between them.
"You lack faith."
"You believe that this is a beautiful world, don't you? I hate it. I should thinkyouhad reason, too, for hating it. Pray what have you got?"
"An ungrateful imp that was bequeathed to me."
She saw father in the garden beckoning me. "He wants you. I donothate the world always," she added, with her eyes fixed on him.
I was disposed to trouble the still waters of our domestic life with theories. Our ways were too mechanical. The old-fashioned asceticism which considered air, sleep, food, as mere necessities was stupid. But I had no assistance; Veronica thought that her share of my plans must consist of a diligent notice of all that I did, which she gave, and then went to her own life, kept sacredly apart. Fanny laughed in her sleeve and took another side—the practical, and shone in it, becoming in fact the true manager and worker, while I played. Aunt Merce was helpless. She neglected her former cares; and father was, what he always had been at home,—heedless and indifferent.
One morning we stood on the landing stair—Ben, Veronica, and myself—looking from the window. A silver mist so thinly wrapped the orchard that the wet, shining leaves thrust themselves through in patches. Birds were singing beneath, feeling the warmth of the sun, scarcely hid. The young leaves and blossoms steeping in the mist sent up a delicious odor.
"I like Surrey better and better," he said; "the atmosphere suits me."
"Oh, I am glad," answered Verry. "I could never go away. It is not beautiful, I know; in fact, it is meager when it comes to be talked of; but there are suggestions here which occasionally stimulate me."
"Verry, can you keep people away from me when I live here?"
"I do not like that feeling in you."
"I like fishermen."
"And a boat?"
"Yes, I'll have a boat."
"I shall never go out with you."
"Cass will. I shall cruise with her, and you, in your house, need not see us depart. Eric the Red made excursions in this region. We will skirt the shores, which are the same, nearly, as when he sailed from them, with his Northmen; and the ancient barnacles will think, when they see her fair hair, which she will let ripple around her stately shoulders, that he has come back with his bride."
Verry looked with delight at him and then at me. "Her long, yellow hair and her stately shoulders," she repeated.
"Will you go?" he asked.
"Of course," I answered, going downstairs. I happened to look back on the way. His arm was round Verry, but he was looking after me. He withdrew it as our eyes met, and came down; but she remained, looking from the window. We went into the parlor, and I shut the door.
"Now then," I said.
He took a note from his pocket and gave it to me.
I broke its seal, and read: "Tell Ben, before you can reflect upon it, thatIwill go abroad, and then repent of it,—as I shall. Desmond."
"'Tell Ben,'" I repeated aloud, "'thatIwill go abroad. Desmond.'"
"Do you guess, as he does, that my reason for going was that I might be kept aloof from all sight and sound of you and him? In the result toward which I sawyoudrive I could have no part."
"Stay; I know that he will go."
"You do not know. Nor do you know what such a man is when—" checking himself.
"He is in love?"
"If you choose to call it that."
"I do."
All there was to say should be said now; but I felt more agitated than was my wont. These feelings, not according with my housewifely condition, upset me. I looked at him; he began to walk about, taking up a book, which he leaned his head over, and whose covers he bent back till they cracked.
"You would read me that way," I said.
"It is rather your way of reading."
"Can you remember that Desmond and I influence each other to act alike? And that we comprehend each other without collision? I love him, as a mature woman may love,—once, Ben, only once; the fire-tipped arrows rarely pierce soul and sense, blood and brain."
He made a gesture, expressive of contempt.
"Men are different; he is different."
"You have already spoken for me, and, I suppose, you will for him."
"I venture to. Desmond is a violent, tyrannical, sensual man; his perceptions are his pulses. That he is handsome, clever, resolute, and sings well, I can admit; but no more."
"We will not bandy his merits or his demerits between us. Let us observe him. And now, tell me,—what am I?"
"You have been my delight and misery ever since I knew you. I saw you first, so impetuous, yet self-contained! Incapable of insincerity, devoid of affection and courageously naturally beautiful. Then, to my amazement, I saw that, unlike most women, you understood your instincts; that you dared to define them, and were impious enough to follow them. You debased my ideal, you confused me, also, for I could never affirm that you were wrong; forcing me to consult abstractions, they gave a verdict in your favor, which almost unsexed you in my estimation. I must own that the man who is willing to marry you has more courage than I have. Is it strange that when I found your counterpart, Veronica, that I yielded? Her delicate, pure, ignorant soul suggests to me eternal repose."
"It is not necessary that you should fatigue your mind with abstractions concerning her. It will be the literal you will hunger for, dear Ben."
"Damn it! the world has got a twist in it, and we all go round with it, devilishly awry."
I said no more. He had defined my limits, he would, as far as possible, control me without pity or compassion, thinking, probably, that I needed none; the powers he had always given me credit for must be sufficing. I could not comprehend him. How was it that he and Verry gave me such horrible pain? Was it exceptional? Could I claim nothing from women? Had they thought me an anomaly?—while I thought it was Veronica who was called peculiar and original? The end of it all must be for me to assimilate with their happiness!
"Well?" he said.
"Thank you."
Then Veronica came, swinging her bonnet. "TheSagamorehas arrived, and I am going to stand on the wharf to count the sailors, and learn if they have all come home. Will you go, Ben?"
He complied, and I was left alone.
When Ben left Surrey, I sent no message or letter by him, and he asked for none. But at once I wrote to Desmond, and did not finish my letter till after midnight. Intoxicated with the liberty my pen offered me, I roamed over a wide field of paper. The next morning I burnt it. But there was something to be said to him before his departure, and again I wrote. I might have condensed still more. In this way—
When the answer came I reflected before I read it, that it might be the last link of the chain between us. Not a bright one at the best, nor garlanded with flowers, nor was it metal, silver, or gold. There was rust on it, it was corroded, for it was forged out of his and my substance.
I read it: "I am yours, as I have been, since the night I asked you 'How came those scars?' Did you guess that I read your story? I go from you with one idea; I love you, and Imustgo. Brave woman! you have shamed me to death almost."
He sent me a watch. I was to wear it from the second of July. It was small and plain, but there were a few words scratched inside the case with the point of a knife, which I read every day. Veronica's eye fell on it the first time I put it on.
"What time is it?"
"Near one."
"I thought, from the look of it, that it might be near two."
"Don't mar my ideal of you, Verry, by growing witty."
She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess you found it washed ashore, among the rocks; was it bruised?"
"A man gave it to me."
"A merman, who fills the sea-halls with a voice of power?"
"May be."
"Tut, Ben gave it to you. It is a kind of housekeepish present; did he add scissors and needle-case?"
"What if the merman should take me some day to the 'pale sea-groves straight and high?'"
"You must never, never go. You cannot leave me, Cass!" She grasped my sleeve, and pulled me round. "How much was there for you to do in the life before us, which you talked about?"
"I remember. There is much, to be sure."
Fanny's quick eye caught the glitter of the watch. The mystery teased her, but she said nothing.
Aunt Merce had gone to Rosville with Arthur. There was no visitor with us; there had been none beside Ben since mother died. All seemed kept at bay. I wrote to Helen to come and pass the summer, but her child was too young for such a journey, she concluded. Ben had sailed for Switzerland. The summer, whose biography like an insignificant life must be written in a few words, was a long one to live through. It happened to be a dry season, which was unfrequent on our coast. Days rolled by without the variation of wind, rain, or hazy weather. The sky was an opaque blue till noon, when solid white clouds rose in the north, and sailed seaward, or barred the sunset, which turned them crimson and black. The mown fields grew yellow under the stare of the brassy sun, and the leaves cracked and curled for the want of moisture. It was dull in the village, no ships were building, none sailed, none arrived. But father was more absorbed than ever, more away from home. He wrote often in the evening, and pored over ledgers with his bookkeeper. Late at night I found him sorting and reading papers. He forgot us. But Fanny, as he grew forgetful, improved as housekeeper. Her energy was untiring; she waited so much on him that I grew forgetful of him. Veronica was the same as before; her room was pleasant with color and perfume, the same delicate pains with her dress each day was taken. She looked as fair as a lily, as serene as the lake on which it floats, except when Fanny tried her. With me she never lost temper. But I saw little of her; she was as fixed in her individual pursuits as ever.
There were intervals now when all my grief for mother returned, and I sat in my darkened chamber, recalling with a sad persistence her gestures, her motions, the tones of her voice, through all the past back to my first remembrance. The places she inhabited, her opinions and her actions I commented on with a minuteness that allowed no detail to escape. When my thoughts turned from her, it seemed as if she were newly lost in the vast and wandering Universe of the Dead, whence I had brought her.
In September a letter came from Ben, which promised a return by the last of October. With the ruffling autumnal breezes my stagnation vanished, and I began my shore life again in a mood which made memory like hope; but staying out too late one evening, I came home in a chill. From the chill I went to a fever, which lasted some days. Veronica came every day to see me, and groaned over my hair, which fell off, but she could not stay long, the smell of medicine made her ill, the dark room gave her an uneasiness; besides, she did not know what she should say. I sent her away always. Fanny took care of me till I was able to move about the room, then she absented herself most of the time. One afternoon Veronica came to tell me that Margaret, the Irish girl, was going; she supposed that Fanny was insufferable, and that she could not stay.
"I must be well by to-morrow," I said.
The next day I went down stairs, and was greeted with the epithet of"Scarecrow."
"Do you feel pretty strong?" asked Fanny, with a peculiar accent, when we happened to be alone.
"What is the matter? Out with it!"
"Something's going to turn up here; something ails Mr. Morgeson."
I guess his ailment.
"He is going to fail, he is smashed all to nothing. He knows what will be said about him, yet he goes about with perfect calmness. But he feels it. I tried him this morning, I gave him tea instead of coffee, and he didn't know it!"
"Margaret's gone?"
"There must be rumors; for she asked him for her wages a day or two ago. He paid her, and said she had better go."
I examined my hands involuntarily. She tittered.
"How easily you will wash the long-necked glasses and pitchers, with your slim hand!"
I dropped into a mental calculation, respecting the cost of an entire change of wardrobe suitable to our reduced circumstances, and speculated on a neat cottage-style of cookery.
"I think I must go, too," she said with cunning eyes.
"How can you bear to, when there will be so much trouble for you to enjoy?"
"How tired you look, Cass," said Veronica, slipping in quietly. "What are you talking about? Has Fanny been tormenting you?"
"Of course," she answered. "But if am not mistaken, you will be tormented by others besides me."
"Go out!" said Veronica. "Leave us, pale pest."
"You may want me here yet."
"What does she mean, Cass?"
I hesitated.
"Tell me," she said, in her imperative, gentle voice. "What is there that I cannot know?"
"Now she is what you call high-toned, isn't it?" inquired Fanny.
Veronica threw her book at her.
"The truth is, ladies, that your father, the principal man in Surrey, is not worth a dollar. What do you think of it? And how will you come off the high horse?" And Fanny drummed on the table energetically.
"Did you really think of going, Fanny?" asked Veronica. "You will stay, and do better than ever, for if you attempt to go, I shall bring you back."
This was the invitation she wanted, and was satisfied with.
"I must give up flowers," said Veronica, "of course."
"I wonder if we shall keep pigs this fall?" said Fanny. "Must we sit in the free seats in the meeting-house? It will be fine for the boys to drop paper balls on our heads from the gallery. I'd like to see them do it, though," she concluded, as if she felt that such an insult would infringe upon her rights.