LOUIE.
[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]
THE great river was flowing peacefully
down to the sea, opening its
blue tides at the silver fretting of the
bar into a shallow expanse some miles
in width, a part of which on either side
overlay stretches where the submerged
eel-grass lent a tint of chrysoprase to
the sheathing flow, and into which one
gazed, half expecting to see so ideal a
depth peopled by something other than
the long ribbons of the weed streaming
out on the slow current—the only cool
sight, albeit, beneath the withering heat
of the day across all that shining extent.
Far down the shores, on the right, a
line of low sand-hills rose, protecting
the placid harbor from sea and storm
with the bulwark of their dunes, whose
yellow drifts were ranged by the winds
in all fantastic shapes, and bound together
by ropes of the wild poison-ivy
and long tangles of beach-grass and
the blossoming purple pea, and which
to-day cast back the rays of the sun
as though they were of beaten brass.
Above these hills the white lighthouse
loomed, the heated air trembling around
it, and giving it so vague and misty a
guise that, being by itself a thing of
night and storm and darkness, it looked
now as unreal as a ghost by daylight.
On the other side of the harbor lay the
marshes, threaded by steaming creeks,
up which here and there the pointed
sails of the hidden hay-barges crept,
the sunshine turning them to white
flames: farther off stood a screen of
woods, and from brim to brim between
swelled the broad, smooth sheet of the
river, coming from the great mountains
that gave it birth, washing clean a score
of towns on its way, and loitering just
here by the pleasant old fishing-town,
whose wharves, once doing a mighty
business with the Antilles and the farther
Indies, now, in the absence of their
half dozen foreign-going craft, lay at
the mercy of any sand-droger that chose
to fling her cable round their capstans.
A few idle masts swayed there, belonging
to small fishers and fruiters, a solid
dew of pitch oozing from their sides
in the sun, but not a sail set: a lonely
watchman went the rounds among them,
a ragged urchin bobbed for flounders in
the dock, but otherwise wharves and
craft were alike forsaken, and the sun
glared down on them as though his
rays had made them a desert. The
harbor-water lay like glass: now and
then the tide stirred it, and all the
brown and golden reflections of masts
and spars with it, into the likeness of a
rippled agate. Not one of the boats
that were ordinarily to be seen darting
hither and yon, like so many waterbugs,
were in motion now; none of the
white sails of the gay sea-parties were
running up and swelling with the breeze;
none of the usual naked and natatory
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cherubs were diving off the wharves
into that deep, warm water; the windows
on the seaward side of the town were
closed; the countless children, that
were wont to infest the lower streets as
if they grew with no more cost or
trouble than the grass between the
bricks, had disappeared in the mysterious
wav in which swarms of flies will
disappear, as if an east wind had blown
them; but no east wind was blowing
here. In all the scene there was hardly
any other sign of life than the fervent
sunbeams shedding their cruel lustre
overhead: the river flowed silent and
lonely from shore to shore; the whole
hot summer sky stretched just as silent
and lonely from horizon to horizon;
only the old ferryman, edging along
the bank till he was far up stream,
crossed the narrower tide and drifted
down effortless on the other side; only
an old black brig lay at anchor, with
furled sail and silent deck, in the middle
channel down below the piers, and from
her festering and blistering hull it was
that all the heat and loneliness and
silence of the scene seemed to exude—
for it was the fever-ship.
It was a different picture on the bright
river when that brig entered the harbor
on the return of her last voyage, to receive
how different a welcome! But
pestilence raged abroad in the country
now, and the people of the port, who
had so far escaped the evil, were loth
to let it enter among them at last, and
had not yet recovered from the recoil
of their first shock and shiver at thought
of it in their waters—waters than which
none could have fostered it more kindly,
full as they were in their shallow breadth
of rotting weeds and the slime of sewers.
Perhaps the owner of some pale face
looked through the pane and thought
of brother or father, or, it may be, of
lover, and grew paler with pity, and
longed to do kind offices for those who
suffered; but the greater part of all the
people hived upon the shores would
have scouted the thought of going out
with aid to those hot pillows rocking
there upon the tide, and of bringing
back infection to the town, as much as
though the act had been piracy on the
high seas. And they stayed at home,
and watched their vanes and longed for
an east wind—an east wind whose wings
would shake out healing, whose breath
would lay the destroying fever low; but
the east wind refused to seek their
shores, and chose rather to keep up its
wild salt play far out on the bosom of
its mid-sea billows.
Yes, on that return of the last voyage
of the brig the stream had swarmed with
boats, flags had fluttered from housetops
and staffs, piers and quays had been
lined with cheering people, all flocking
forth to see the broken, battered little
craft; for the brig had been spoken by
a tug, and word had been brought to
the wharves, and had spread like wildfire
through the town, that, wrecked in
a tempest and deserted by the panicstricken
crew, the steadfast master and
a boy who stood by him had remained
with her, had refitted her as best they
might when the storm abated, and had
brought her into port at last through
fortunate days of fair weather and slow
sailing. The town was ringing with the
exploit, with praise of the noble faithfulness
of master and boy; and now
the river rang again, and no conquering
galley of naval hero ever moved through
a gladder, gayer welcome than that
through which the little black brig
lumbered on her clumsy way to her
moorings.
But though all the rest of the populace
of the seaport had turned out with
their greetings that day, there was one
little body there who, so far from hurrying
down to shore or sea-wall with a
waving handkerchief, ran crying into a
corner; and it was there that Andrew
Traverse, the person of only secondary
importance in the river scene, rated as
a boy on the brig's books, but grown
into a man since the long voyage began,—
it was there he found her when the
crowd had let him alone and left him
free to follow his own devices.
“It's the best part of all the welcome,
I declare it is!” said he, standing in the
doorway and enjoying the sight before
him a moment.
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“Oh, Andrew,” cried the little body
with a sob, but crouching farther away
into the corner, “it was so splendid of
you!”
“What was so splendid of me?” said
he, still in the doorway, tall and erect
in the sunshine that lay around him,
and that glanced along his red shirt
and his bronzed cheek to light a flame
in the black eyes that surveyed her.
“Standing by him so,” she sobbed—
“standing by the captain when the
others left—bringing home the ship!”
“It's not a ship—it's a brig,” said
Andrew, possibly too conscious of his
merit to listen to the praise of it. “Well,
is this all? Ain't you going to shake
hands with me? Ain't you glad to see
me?”
“Oh, Andrew! So glad!” and she
turned and let him see the blushing,
rosy face one moment, the large, dark,
liquid eyes, the tangled, tawny curls;
and then overcome once more, as a
sudden shower overcomes the landscape,
the lips quivered again, the longlashed
eyelids fell, and the face was
hidden in another storm of tears. And
then, perhaps because he was a sailor,
and perhaps because he was a man, his
arms were round her and he was kissing
off those tears, and the little happy
body was clinging to him and trembling
with excitement and with joy like a leaf
in the wind.
Certainly no two happier, prouder
beings walked along the sea-wall that
night, greeted with hearty hands at
every step, followed by all eyes till the
shelter of deepening dusk obscured
them, and with impish urchins, awestruck
for once, crying mysteriously
under their breath to each other, “That's
him! That's the feller saved the Sabrina!
That's him and her!” How
proud the little body was! how her
heart beat with pleasure at thought of
the way in which all men were ready to
do him honor! how timidly she turned
her eyes upon him and saw the tint
deepen on his cheek, the shadow flash
into light in his eye, the smile kindle
on his lips, as he looked down on her—
glad with her pride and pleasure, strong,
confident, content himself—till step by
step they had left the town behind,
wandering down the sandy island road,
through the wayside hedge of blossoming
wild roses and rustling young
birches, till they leaned upon the parapet
of the old island bridge and heard
the water lap and saw the stars come
out, and only felt each other and their
love in all the wide, sweet summer
universe.
Poor Louie! She had always been
as shy and wary as any little brown
bird of the woods. It was Andrew's
sudden and glorious coming that had
surprised her into such expression of a
feeling that had grown up with her
until it was a part of every thought and
memory. And as for Andrew—certainly
he had not known that he cared for her
so much until she turned that tearful,
rosy face upon him in welcome; but
now it seemed to him that she had been
his and he hers since time began: he
could neither imagine nor remember
any other state than this: he said to
himself, and then repeated it to her,
that he had loved her always, that it
was thought of her that had kept him
firm and faithful to his duty, that she
had been the lodestar toward which he
steered on that slow homeward way;
and he thanked Heaven, no doubt devoutly
enough, that had saved him from
such distress and brought him back to
such bliss. And Louie listened and
clung closer, more joyful and more
blest with every pulse of her bounding
heart.
After all, sudden as the slipping into
so divine a dream had been, it had need
to be full as intense and deep, for it was
only for a little while it lasted. A
week's rapt walking in these midheavens,
where earth and care and
each to-morrow was forgotten, and there
broke in upon them the voice of the
Sabrina's owner seeking for Andrew
Traverse.
Of course such conduct as that of one
who preferred to do his utmost to save
a sinking ship rather than seek safety
with her flying crew, was something too
unusual to go unrewarded: it must be
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signalized into such a shining light that
all other mariners must needs follow it.
And if the sky had fallen, Andrew declared,
he could have been no more
surprised than he was when he found
himself invited with great ceremony to
a stately tea-drinking at the house of
the owner of the Sabrina. “Now we
shall catch larks,” said he; and dressed
in a new suit, whose gray tint set off the
smoothness of his tanned cheek with
the color sometimes mantling through
the brown, he entered the house with
all the composure of a gentleman used
to nothing but high days and holidays.
Not that either the state or ceremony
at Mr. Maurice's required great effort
to encounter with composure—trivial
enough at its best, wonderful though it
was to the townsfolk, unused to anything
beyond. But Andrew had seen
the world in foreign parts, and neither
Mr. Maurice's mansion-house and gardens,
nor his gay upholstery, nor his
silver tea-service, nor his condescending
manners, struck the least spark of
surprise from Andrew's eyes, or gave
them the least shadow of awe.
“This is some mistake,” said the
owner graciously, after preliminary
compliment had been duly observed.
“How is it that you are rated on the
books as a boy—you as much a man as
you will ever be?”
“A long voyage, sir, slow sailing and
delays over so many disasters as befell
us, three years out in the stead of a
year and a half—all that brings one to
man's estate before his reckoning.”
“But the last part of the time you
must have done able seaman's service?”
“The captain and I together,” said
Andrew with his bright laugh. “We
were officers and crew and passengers,
cox'n and cook, as they say.”
“A hard experience,” said Mr.
Maurice.
“Oh, not at all, but worth its weight
in gold—to me, at least. Why, sir, it
taught me how to handle a ship as six
years before the mast couldn't have
done.”
“Good! We shall see to what purpose
one of these days. And you have
had your share of schooling, they tell
me?”
“All that the academy had to give,
sir.”
“And that's enough for any one who
has the world to tussel with. How
should you like to have gone through
such hard lines, Frarnie?” turning to his
daughter, a pale, moon-faced girl, her
father's darling.
“Were you never afraid?” she asked
in her pretty simpering way.
“Not to say afraid,” answered Andrew,
deferentially. “We knew our
danger—two men alone in the leaky,
broken brig—but then we could be no
worse off than we were before; and as
for the others—”
“They got their deserts,” said Mr.
Maurice.
“The poor fellows left us in such a
hurry that they took hardly any water
or biscuit; and at the worst our fate
could not be so bad as theirs, under
the hot sun in those salt seas.”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Maurice, who
loved his own ease too much to like to
hear of others' dis-ease. And to turn
the conversation from the possible horrors
into which it might lapse, he invited
his guest out into his gardens,
among his grapehouses, his poultry and
his dogs. It was a long hour's ramble
that they took there, well improved on
both sides, for Andrew of course knew
it to be for his interest to please the
brig's owner; and Mr. Maurice, who
prided himself on having a singularly
keen insight into character, studied the
young man's every word and gesture,
for it was not often that he came across
such material as this out of which to
make his captains; and to what farther
effect in this instance be pursued his
studies might have been told, by any
one keener than himself, through the
tone of satisfaction with which, on reentering
the parlor, he bade his daughter
take Andrew down the rooms and
tell him the histories of the surprising
pictures there. For Mr. Maurice, one
of the great fortunes of the seaport,
being possessed by a mania of belief
that every youth who cast tender eyes
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upon his daughter cast them not on her,
but on her future havings and holdings,
had long since determined to select a
husband for her himself — one who
evinced no servile reverence for wealth,
one whom he could trust to make her
happy. “And here,” he said, “I am
not sure but that I have him.”
When Andrew went in to see Louie a
moment on his way home that night, he
was in great spirits over the success of
his visit, and, dark as it was, made her
blush the color of the rose over the low
doorway where they stood when he
asked how she would like to go captain's
wife next voyage. And then he
told her of Mr. Maurice's scrutiny and
questioning, and the half hint of a ship
of his own to sail some day, and of the
pale-faced Miss Frarnie's interest, and
of the long stroll down the parlors
among the pictures, the original of one
of which he had seen somewhere in the
Mediterranean, when he and a parcel
of sailors went ashore and rambled
through the port, and looked in at a
church, where, in the midst of music
and incense and a kneeling crowd, they
were shearing the golden locks off of
young girls and making nuns of them.
And Andrew forgot to tell of the way
in which Miss Frarnie listened to him
and hung upon his words: indeed, how
could he? Perhaps he did not notice
it himself; but if he had had a trifle
more personal vanity, and had seen
how this pale young girl—forbidden by
a suspicious father much companionship
with gallants—had forgotten all difference
of station and purse, and had
looked upon him, nobly made, handsome,
gay, knowing far more than she
did, much as upon a young god just
alighted by her side a moment,—if Andrew
had been aware of this, and had
found any words in which to repeat it,
then Louie might have had something
to startle her out of her blessedness,
and pain might have come to her all the
sooner. But since the pain would have
been as sharp then as at any future time,
it was a pitying, pleasant Fate that let
her have her happiness as long as might
be. For Louie's love was a different
thing from the selfish passion that any
clown may feel: she had been happy
enough in her little round of commonplace
satisfactions and tasks before Andrew
came and shed over her this great
cloud of delight—happy then just in
the enjoyment of that secret love of
hers that went out and sought him every
night sailing over foreign sunlit waters,
and hovered like a blessing round his
head; and now that he had come and
folded her about and about with such
warm devotion, it was not for the new
happiness he gave her that she loved
him, but in order to make his own happiness
a perfect thing; and if her heart's
blood had been needed for that, it would
have been poured out like water. The
pale-faced Frarnie—if question could be
of her—might never know such love as
that: love with her could be a sentiment,
a lover one who added to her
pleasure, but a sacrifice on her part for
that lover would have been something
to tell and sing for ever, if indeed it
were possible that such a thing should
be made at all.
So day by day the spell deepened
with Louie, and for another week there
was delightful loneliness with this lover
of hers — strolls down through the
swampy woods hunting for moss to
frame the prints he had brought home
uninjured, and which were to be part
of the furnishing of their future home;
others across the salt meadows for the
little red samphire stems to pickle; sails
in the float down river and in the creeks,
where the tall thatch parted by the prow
rustled almost overhead, and the gulls
came flying and piping around them:
here and there, they two alone, pouring
out thought and soul to each other, and
every now and then glancing shyly at
those days, that did not seem so very
far away, when they should be sailing
together through foreign parts; for
Louie's father, the old fisherman, was
all her household, and a maiden aunt,
who earned her livelihood in nursing
the sick and attending the dead, would
be glad to come any day and take
Louie's place in the cottage.
At the end of the week, Mr. Maurice
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sent for Andrew to his counting-room;
and after that, on one device or another,
he had him there the greater part of
every day, employing him in a score of
pleasant ways—asking his advice as to
the repairs of the Sabrina, taking him
with him in his chaise jogging through
the shipyard, where a new barque was
getting ready for her launching, examining
him the while carefully from
time to time after his wont; at last
taking him casually home to dinner
with him one day, keeping him to tea
the next, and finally, fully satisfied with
the result of his studies in that edition
of human nature, giving him the freedom
of the family as much as if he had
been the son of the house.
“I've some plans ahead for you, my
boy,” said he one day with a knowing
shake of the head; and Andrew's innocent
brain began to swim straightway
between the new barque and the
Sabrina.
“Look at him!” said Mr. Maurice to
his wife one evening as Andrew walked
in the garden with Miss Frarnie. “My
mind's made up about him. He's the
stuff for a sea-captain, afraid neither of
wind nor weather nor the face of clay—
can sail a ship and choose her cargo.
He's none of your coxcombs that go
courting across the way: he's a man
into the core of his heart, and as well
bred as any gentleman that walks;
though Goodness knows how he came
by it.”
“These sea-coast people,” said his
wife, reflectively (she was inland-born
herself), “see the world and learn.”
“Well, what do you say to it? I don't
find the flaw in him. If Heaven had
given me a son, I'd have had him be
like this one; and since it didn't, why
here's my way to circumvent Heaven.”
“Oh, my dear,” said the wife, “I
can't hear you talk so. And besides—”
“Well? Besides what?”
“I think it is always best to let such
things take their own course. We
did.”
“Of course we did,” laughed Mr.
Maurice. “But how about our fathers
and mothers?”
“I mean,” said Mrs. Maurice, “not
to force things.”
“And who intends to force them?
It's plain enough the young fellow took
a fancy to our Frarnie the first time he
laid eyes on her, isn't it?”
“I mean,” said Mrs. Maurice again,
“that if Frarnie should have the same
fancy for him, I don't know that there'd
be any objection. He is quite uncommon—
quite uncommon when you consider
all things—but I don't know why
you want to lead her to like any one in
particular, when she has such a nice
home and is all we have.”
“Girls will marry, Mrs. Maurice. If
it isn't one, it will be another. So I had
rather it should be one, and that one of
my own choosing—one who will use her
well, and not make ducks and drakes
of her money as soon as we are gone
where there's no returning, and without
a `thank you' for your pains. Look at
them now! Should you imagine they
thought there was any one else on earth
but each other at this moment? They're
fond of each other, that's plain. They'd
be a remarkable-looking couple. What
do you think of it?”
“Frarnie might have that India
shawl that I never undid, to appear out
in,” said Mrs. Maurice, pensively, continuing
her own reflections rather than
directly replying. “And I suppose we
needn't lose her really, for she could
make her home with us.”
And so the conspiracy advanced, its
simple victims undreaming of its approach—
Louie sighing faintly to think
she saw so little of Andrew now, but
content, since she was sure it was for his
best interest to make the friendship of
the Sabrina's owner; Andrew fretting to
see how all this necessary submission
to superiors kept him from Louie, but
more than half compensated with the
dazzling visions that danced before his
eyes of the Sabrina in her new rig—of
the barque coming down for her masts
and sails from her launching.
The Sabrina had been so badly injured
by her disasters that it took much
more time to repair her than had at first
been thought. “I'm going to stand by
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the old brig,” said Andrew to some
one—by accident it was in Mr. Maurice's
hearing. “But if I'd known it was going
to take so long to have her whole
again, I should have made a penny
in taking a run down the bay, for I
had an offer to go second mate on the
Tartar.”
“I'll go one better than that,” said
Mr. Maurice then. “Here's the Frarnie,
nearly ready to clear for New Orleans
and Liverpool, with your old captain.
You shall go mate of her. That'll show
if you can handle a ship. The Sabrina
won't be at the wharf till the round
voyage is over and the Frarnie coming
up the stream again. What say you?”
Of course what Andrew said was
modest thanks—what he felt was a
rhapsody of delight; and when he told
Louie that night, what she said was a
sob, and what she felt was a blank of
fright and foreboding. Oh what should
she do? cried the selfish little thing—
what should she do in the long, long,
weary days with Andrew gone? But
then in a moment she remembered that
this was the first step toward going
master of that craft in which her bridal
voyage was to be taken. “And what
a long step it is, Andrew!” she cried.
“Was the like of it ever known before?
What a long, long step it would be but
for that bitter apprenticeship when you
and the captain brought the wreck
home!”
“Ay,” said Andrew, proudly: “I
served my time before the mast then,
if ever any did.”
“And I suppose with the next step
you will be master of the Sabrina? Oh,
I should so like it!”
“I don't know,” said Andrew, more
doubtfully than he had used to speak.
“I'm afraid the owners will think this is
enough. This is a great lift. I'll do
my best to satisfy them, though; for I'd
rather sail master of the Sabrina than
of the biggest man-of-war afloat.”
“We used to play round her when we
were children,” said Louie, encouragingly.
“Don't you remember leading
me down once to admire the lady on
her stern?—like a water-witch just gilded
in the rays of some sunrise she had
come up to see, you said.”
“Yes; and we used to climb her
shrouds, we boys, and get through the
lubber-hole, before we could spell her
name out. She's made of heart of oak:
she'll float still when the Frarnie is
nothing but sawdust. We used to watch
for her in the newspapers—we used to
know just as much about her goings
and comings as the owner did. Somehow—
I don't know why—I've always
felt as if my fate and fortune hung upon
her. It used to be the top of my ambition
to go master of her. It is now. I
couldn't make up my mind to leave her
when the others did that cruel morning
after the wreck; and when the captain
said he should stay by her, my heart
sprang up as if she had been a living
thing, and I stayed too. And I'd rather
sail her than a European steamer to-day—
that I would, by George!”
“Oh, of course you will,” said the
sympathizing voice beside him.
“I don't know,” said Andrew again,
more slowly and reflectively. “I've the
idea—and I can't say how I got it—that
there's some condition or other attached
to my promotion — that there's something
Mr. Maurice means that I shall
do, and if I don't do it I don't get my
lift. It can't be anything about wages:
I don't know what it is!”
“Perhaps,” said Louie, innocently,
and without a glimpse of the train her
thoughtless words fired — “perhaps he
means for you to marry Frarnie!”
laughing a little laugh at the absurd
impossibility.
And Andrew started as if a bee had
stung him, and saw it all. But in a
moment he only drew Louie closer, and
kissed her more passionately, and sat
there caressing her the more tenderly
while they listened to a thrush that had
built in the garden thicket, mistaking it
for the wood, so near the town's edge
was it, and so still and sunny was the
garden all day long with its odors of
southernwood and mint and balm; and
he delayed there longer, holding her as
if now at least she was his own, whatever
she might be thereafter.
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As he walked home that night, and
went and sat upon the wharf and watched
the starlit tide come in, he saw it all
again, but with thoughts like a procession
of phantoms, as if they had no
part even in the possible things of life,
and were indeed nothing to him. How
could they have any meaning to him—
to him, Louie's lover? What would the
whole world be to him, what the sailing
of the Sabrina, without Louie? And
then a shiver ran across him: what
would Louie be to him without the sailing
of the Sabrina! for that, indeed, as
he had said, was the top of his ambition,
and that being his ambition, perhaps
ambition was as strong with him
as love.
But with this new discovery on Andrew's
part of Mr. Maurice's desires,
Andrew could only recall circumstances,
words, looks, hints: he could not shape
to himself any line of duty or its consequences:
enough to see that Mr. Maurice
fancied his simple and thoughtless
attentions to Frarnie to be lover-like,
and, approving him, looked kindly on
them and made his plans accordingly;
enough to see that if he should reject
this tacit proffer of the daughter's hand,
then the Sabrina was scarcely likely to
be his; and that in spite of such probability,
the first and requisite thing in
honor for him to do was to tell Mr.
Maurice of his marriage engagement
with Louie, and then, if the man had
neither gratitude nor sense enough to
reward him for his assistance in saving
the brig, to trust to fortune and to time,
that at last makes all things even. As
he sat there listening to the lapping of
the water and idly watching the reflected
stars peer up and shatter in a hundred
splinters with every wash of the
dark tide, he could not so instantaneously
decide as to whether he should
make this confession or not. “What
business is it of Maurice's?” he said to
himself. “Does he think every one
that looks at his scarecrow of a daughter—”
But there he had need to acknowledge
to himself his injustice to
Miss Frarnie, a modest maiden who
had more cause to complain of him
than he of her, since he had done his
best to please her, and her only fault
lay in being pleased so easily. She
was pleased with him: he understood
that now, though his endeavors to enlist
her had been for a very different
manifestation of interest. Perhaps it
flattered him a little: he paused long
enough to consider what sort of a lot
it would be if he really had been
plighted to Frarnie instead of Louie.
Love and all that nonsense, he had
heard say, changed presently into a
quiet sort of contentment; and if that
were so, it would be all the same at the
end of a few years which one he took.
He felt that Frarnie was not very sympathetic,
that her large white face seldom
sparkled with much intelligence,
that she would make but a dull companion;
but, for all that, she would be,
he knew, an excellent housewife: she
would bring a house with her too; and
when a man is married, and has half a
dozen children tumbling round him,
there is entertainment enough for him,
and it is another bond between him and
the wife he did not love too well at first;
and if she were his, his would be the
Sabrina also, and when the Sabrina's
days were over perhaps a great East
Indiaman, and with that the respect
and deference of all his townsmen:
court would be paid to him, his words
would be words of weight, he would
have a voice in the selection of townofficers,
he would roll up money in the
bank, and some day he should be master
of the great Maurice mansion and
the gardens and grapehouses. It was a
brilliant picture to him, doubtless, but
in some way the recollection of two
barelegged little children digging clams
down on the flats when the tide was
out, with the great white lighthouse
watching them across the deserted
stretches of the long bent eel-grass, rose
suddenly and wiped the other picture
out, and he saw the wind blowing in
Louie's brown and silken hair and kissing
the color on her cheeks; he saw
the shy sparkle of her downcast eyes,
lovely and brown then as they were
now; and as he stood erect at last,
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snapping his fingers defiantly, he felt
that he had bidden Mr. Maurice's ships
and stocks and houses and daughter go
hang, and had made his choice rather
to walk with Louie on his arm than as
master of the Sabrina.
It was a good resolution; and if he
had but sealed it by speaking next day
to Mr. Maurice of his engagement, there
would not have been a word to say.
But, though he valiantly meant to do it,
it was not so easy, after all, as he had
thought, and so he put it off for a more
convenient season, and the season did
not come, and the day of sailing did.
And the outfit that went on board the
Frarnie was made and packed by the
hands of Mrs. Maurice and her daughter—
such an outfit as he had never
dreamed of; such warm woolens for the
storms, such soft linens for the heats,
such finery for port, such dainties and
delicacies as only the first mate of the
Frarnie could think to have. And as
for Louie, it was no outfit, no costly gift
of gold or trouble either, that she could
give him: she had nothing for him but
a long, fine chain woven of her own
hair, and she hung it round his neck
with tears and embraces and words that
could not be uttered and sighs that
changed to sobs, and then came lingering
delay upon delay, and passionate
parting at the last. But when the crew
had weighed anchor and the sails were
swelling and the waves beyond the bar
crying out for them, Miss Frarnie and
her mother could still be seen waving
their handkerchiefs from an upper window;
and half blind with the sorrow
and the pain he choked away from
sight, and mad with shame to think he
had found no way but to accept their
favors, Andrew felt that their signal
must be answered, and sullenly waved
his own in reply; and then the pilot
was leaving the barque, and presently
the shore and all its complications, and
Louie crying herself sick, were forgotten
in the excitement of the moment and
its new duties.
“Didn't say a word of love to Frarnie,
eh?” remarked Mr. Maurice in answer
to his wife's communications that even
ing. “A noble lad, then! I like him
all the better for it. He shall have her
all the sooner. He won't abuse our
confidence: that's it. He'll wait till
he's bridged over the gap between
them. The first mate of a successful
voyage is a better match for my daughter
than the boy who stayed by the Sabrina,
brave as he was. He's fond of
her? Don't you think so? There's no
doubt about that? None at all! All in
good time—all in good time. I'll speak
to him myself. They're going to write
to each other? I thought so.”
Short as the trip was that the Frarnie
made in that favorable season, it seemed
to Louie an interminable period; but
from the cheerful, hopeful smile upon
her lips no one would ever have known
how her heart was longing for her lover
as she went about her work; for the
little housekeeper had quite too much
to do in keeping the cottage clean, the
garden weedless, the nets mended, to
be able to neglect one duty for any love-sick
fancies it might be pleasant to indulge.
From morning till night her
days were full in bringing happiness to
others: there was her father to make
comfortable; there were the sick old
women, of whom her aunt brought word,
to concoct some delicacy for—a cup of
custard, to wit, a dish of the water-jelly
she had learned how to make from the
sea-moss she gathered on the beach, a
broiled and buttered mushroom from
the garden; there were the canaries
and the cat to be cared for, and the dog
that Andrew left with her to feed and
shower caresses on; and there was the
parrot's toilet to be made and her lesson
to be taught, and the single jars of preserves
and pickles and ketchups to be
put up for winter, and the herbs to be
dried: there were not, you may see,
many minutes to be wasted out of that
busy little life in castle-building or in
crying. One day there came a letter
with Victoria's head and the Liverpool
stamp upon it: she knew it by heart
presently, and wore it next her heart by
night and day; and even if she had
known that Miss Frarnie Maurice received
one in the same handwriting by
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the same mail, it would hardly have
made much difference to her; and one
day the Sabrina, all freshly coppered
and painted and repaired, with new
masts and sails, and so much else that
it was not easy to say what part of her
now represented the old brig, came
round to her old wharf and began to
take in cargo. Louie ran down one
evening with her father, and went all
over her from stem to stern, only one
old sailor being aboard; and she could
have told you then every rope from
clew to ear-ring; and, as if it were all
the realization of a dream, a thousand
happy, daring thoughts of herself and
Andrew then filled her fancy like birds
in a nest; and so swiftly after that did
one day flow into another for Louie that
the Frarnie lay in the mid-stream once
more before she had more than begun
to count the days to that on which her
Liverpool letter had promised that she
should see its writer come walking into
her father's cottage again.
But she never did see him come walking
into her father's cottage again. That
promised day passed and the night, and
another—a long, long day that seemed
as if it would never quench its flame in
sunset, and a night that seemed as if it
would never know the dawning; but
the threshold of the fisherman's cottage
Andrew Traverse crossed no more.
For Mr. Maurice, on his notable
errand of circumventing Heaven, had
been ahead of Fate, and had gone down
on the pilot-boat to meet the Frarnie—
with no settled designs of course, but
in his own impatient pleasure; and, delighted
with the shipmaster's report and
with the financial promise of the voyage,
the cargo, the freights, and ventures
and all, had greeted Andrew with
a large-hearted warmth and after a manner
that no churl could withstand; and
unwilling to listen to any refusal, had
taken Andrew up to the mansion-house
with him the moment the ship had
touched the wharf.
“You don't ask after her?” said Mr.
Maurice when they were alone in the
chaise together. And knowing well
enough what he meant, Andrew blushed
through all his bronze—knowing well
enough, for had he not gone below in a
mighty hurry and tricked himself out
in his best toggery so soon as he understood
there was no escape from the
visit? Louie would have been glad
enough to see him in his red shirt and
tarpaulin!
“Oh, you scamp!” said Mr. Maurice,
quickly then detecting the blush.
“Don't say a word! I've been there
myself: I know how you're longing to
see her; and she's been at the window
looking through the glass every half
hour, the puss!”
“Mr. Maurice,” began Andrew, half
trembling, but wholly resolved, he
thought—although it must be confessed
that with time, and distance, and
Frarnie's effusive letters and flattering
prospects on the other hand, Louie's
image was not so bright at that moment
as it had been at others, and for that
very reason Andrew was taking great
credit to himself for his upright intentions—
credit enough to tide him over a
good deal of baseness if need were,—
“Mr. Maurice—” he began; and there
he paused to frame his sentence more
suitably, for it was no easy thing to tell
a man that he was throwing his child at
one who did not care for her, and that
man the disposer of his fortunes.
But Mr. Maurice saved him any such
trouble. “I know all you're going to
say,” he exclaimed. “I understand
your hesitation, and I honor you for it.
But I'm no fool, and there's no need to
have you tell me that you want my
Frarnie, for I've known that long ago.”
“Mr. Maurice!”
“Yes, I have,” answered the impulsive
gentleman. “Mrs. Maurice and I talked
it over as soon as we saw which way
the wind lay; but of course we decided
to say nothing till we were sure, quite
sure, that it was Frarnie and not her
prospects—”
“Oh, sir, you—”
“Tush, tush! I know all about it
now. But it becomes a father to be
wary,” continued the other, taking the
words from Andrew's lips in spite of
himself, and quite wary enough not to
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mention that in Frarnie's easily-excited
favor a young scapegrace was very
likely to supplant Mr. Andrew if things
were not brought to a point at once.
“It was my duty to look at all sides,”
he said, without stopping for breath.
“Now I know you, and I see you'd
rather give the girl the go-by for ever
than have her think you wanted her
because she was her father's daughter,
and not some poor fisherman's.”
“Indeed, indeed—” began Andrew
again, leaning forward, his cheeks crimson,
his very hands shaking.
“Of course, my boy,” interrupted his
companion as before — “of course.
Don't say a word: you're welcome to
her at last. I never thought I'd surrender
her to any one so freely; but if
I were choosing from all the world,
Andrew, I don't know any one I'd
choose sooner for my son. She's a
sensible girl, my Frarnie is, at bottom.
We know her heart: it's a good heart—
only the froth of all young girls' fancies
to be blown off. And the Sabrina
always was a pet of mine, and, though
I've said nothing of it, I've meant her
for Frarnie's husband this many a day.”
And before Andrew, in his flurry and embarrassment
and bewilderment, could
enunciate any distinct denial of anything
or avowal of anything else, the
chaise was at the door, and Mrs. Maurice
was waiting for him with extended
hands, and Frarnie was standing and
smiling behind, half turned to run
away. And Mr. Maurice cried out:
“Captain Traverse of the Sabrina, my
dear! Here, Frarnie, Frarnie! none
of your airs and graces! Come and
give your sweetheart an honest kiss!”
And Andrew, doubting if the minister
were not behind the door and he should
not find himself married out of hand,
irresolute, cowardly, too weak to give up
the Sabrina and that sweet new title just
ringing in his ears, was pushed along
by Mr. Maurice's foolish, hearty hand
till he found himself bending over
Frarnie with his arm around her waist,
his lips upon her cheek, and without, as
it seemed to him, either choice or volition
on his part. But as he looked up
and saw the portraits of the girl's grandfathers,
where they appeared to be looking
down at him stern and questioning,
a guilty shame over the wrong he was
doing their child smote him sorely: he
saw that he had allowed the one instant
of choice to slip away; the sense came
over him that he had sealed his own
doom, while a vision of Louie's face,
full of desolation and horror, was
scorching in upon his soul; and there,
in the moment of betrothal, his punishment
began. He stole down to the Sabrina's
wharf that evening, after the
moon had set, and looking round to see
that it was quite forsaken at that hour,
he took from his neck a long, slender
hair-chain to drop over into the deep
water there; but as he held the thing it
seemed suddenly to coil round his hand
with a caress, as if it were still a part
of Louie's self. He stamped his foot
and ground his heel into the earth there
with a cry and an oath, and put the
chain back again whence he had taken
it, and swore he would wear it till they
laid his bones under ground. And he
looked up at the dark lines of the brig
looming like the black skeleton of an
evil thing against the darkness of the
night, and he cursed himself for a
traitor to both women—for a hypocrite,
a craven, a man sold to the highest
bidder. Well, well, Captain Traverse,
there are curses that cling! And Louie
sat in the gloom at the window of the
fisherman's cottage down below the
town, and sighed and wondered and
longed and waited, but Captain Traverse
went back to the Maurices' mansion.
It is one of the enigmas of this existence
how women forgive the wrong
of such hours as came to Louie now—
hours of suspense and suffering—hours
of a misery worse than the worm's
misery in blindness and pain before it
finds its wings.
At first she expected her lover, and
speculated as to his delay, and fretted
to think anything might detain him from
her; and now she was amazed, and now
vexed, and now she was forgiving the
neglect, accusing herself and making
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countless excuses for him; and now imagining
a thousand dire mishaps. But as
the third day came and he was still away—
he who had been always wont to seek
her as soon as the craft was made fast to
wharf—then she felt her worst forebodings
taking bodily shape: he was ill,
he had fallen overboard, he had left the
vessel at Liverpool and shipped upon
another, and a letter would come directly
to say so; or else he had been
waylaid and robbed and made away
with: not once did she dream that he
was false to her—to her, a portion of
his own life!
How it was with him there were
numberless ways in which she might
have discovered, for every soul of her
acquaintance knew Andrew, and must
be aware of the fact if he were missing
or ailing, or if any other ill chance had
befallen him. But as often as she tried
to address one or another passing by
the window, her voice failed her and her
heart, and she asked no questions, and
only waited on. A life of suspense,
exclaims some one, a life of a spider!
And when we are in suspense, says
another, all our aids are in suspense
with us. Day after day she stayed continually
in the house, looking for him
to come, never stirring out even into
the garden, lest coming she might miss
him. Night after night she sat alone at
her window till the distant town-clocks
struck midnight—now picturing to herself
the glad minute of his coming, the
quick explaining words, the bursting
tears of relief, the joy of that warm
embrace, the touch of those strong
arms—now convinced that he would
never come, and her heart sinking into
a bitter loneliness of despair.
It grew worse with her when she knew
that he was really in the town, alive
and well; for, from the scuttle in the
roof, by the aid of her father's glass, she
could see the Sabrina, and one day she
was sure that a form whose familiar
outlines made her pulses leap was Andrew
himself giving orders on the deck
there; and after that she tortured herself
with conjectures till her brain was
wild—chained hand and foot, unable to
write him or to seek him in any maidenly
modesty, heart and soul in a ferment.
Still she waited in that shuddering
suspense, with every nerve so tightly
strung that voice or footfall vibrated on
them into pain. If Andrew, in the midst
of the gayeties by which he found himself
accepted of the Maurices' friends,
was never haunted by any thought of
all this, his heart had grown stouter in
one year's time than twenty years had
found and left it previously.
But Louie's suspense was of no long
duration, as time goes, though to her it
was a lifetime. A week covered it—a
week full of stings and fevered restlessness—
when her father came in one day
and said bitterly, thinking it best to
make an end of all at once: “So I hear
that a friend of ours has been paid off
at last. Captain Andrew Traverse of
the Sabrina is going to marry his owner's
daughter Frarnie. Luck will take
passage on that brig!” And when
Louie rose from the bed on which she
lay down that night, the Sabrina had
been a fortnight gone on her long voyage—
a voyage where the captain had
sailed alone, postponing the evil day
perhaps, and at any rate pleading too
much inexperience, for all his dazzling
promotion, to be trusted with so precious
a thing as a wife on board during
the first trip. He had not felt that hesitation
once when portraying the possibilities
of the voyage to another.
It was not a long illness, Louie's,
though it had been severe enough to
destroy for her consciousness both of
pain and pleasure. Her aunt had left
other work and had nursed her through
it; but when, strong and well once
more, she went about her old duties, it
seemed to her that that consciousness
had never returned: she took up life
with utter listlessness and indifference,
and she fancied that her love for Andrew
was as dead as all the rest. The
poor little thing, laying this flattering
unction to heart, did not call much reason
to her aid, or she would have known
that there was some meaning in it when
she cried all day on coming across an
old daguerreotype of Andrew. “It isn't
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for love of him,” she sobbed. “It's
for the loss of all that love out of my
life that was heaven to me. Oh no,
no! I love him no longer: I can't, I
can't love him: he is all the same as
another woman's husband.” But, despite
this stout assertion, she could not
bring herself to part with that picture:
he was not in reality quite the husband
of another woman, and till he was indeed
she meant to keep it. “He is
only promised to her yet, and he was
promised first to me,” she said for salve
to conscience; and meanwhile the picture
grew so blurred with conscious
tears, and perhaps with unconscious
kisses, that it might have been his or
another's: Miss Frarnie herself, had
she seen it, could not have told whose
it was.
Notwithstanding all the elasticity of
youth, life became an inexpressibly dull
thing to Louie as the year wore into the
next—dull, with neither aim nor object,
the past a pain to remember, the future
a blank to consider. She could live
only from day to day, one day like
another, till they grew so wearisome she
wondered her hair was not gray—the
pretty hair that, shorn from her head in
her illness, had grown again in a short
fleece of silky curls—for it seemed to
her that she had lived a hundred years.
And because troubles never come alone,
and one perhaps makes the other seem
lighter and better to be borne, in the
thick of a long winter's storm they
brought home her father, the old fisherman,
drowned and dead.
Captain Traverse knew of the old
fisherman's death through the newspapers
that found him in his foreign
ports—not through Miss Frarnie's letters,
for she knew almost nothing of the
existence or non-existence of such low
people; and therefore, conjecture as he
needs must concerning Louie's means
of livelihood now, there was no intelligence
to relieve any anxiety he might
have felt, or to inform him of the sale
of the cottage to pay the debt of the
mortgage under which it was bought,
or of the support that Louie earned in
helping her aunt watch with the sick
and lay out the dead: he could only
be pricked with knowledge of the fact
that he had no right to his anxiety, or
to the mention of her name even in his
prayers—if he said them.
Poor little Louie! A sad end to such
a joyous youth as hers had been, you
would have said; but, in truth, her new
work was soothing to her: her heart
was simply in harmony with suffering,
with death and desolation, and by degrees
she found that comfort from her
double sorrows in doing her best to
bring comfort to others which it may be
she could never have found had she
been the pampered darling of some
wealthy house. Often, when she forgot
what she was doing, Louie made surmises
concerning Frarnie Maurice,
wondering if she were the noble thing
that Andrew needed to ennoble him—if
she were really so strong and beautiful
that the mere sight of her had killed all
thought or memory of an older love; trying
to believe her all that his guardian
angel might wish his wife to be, and to
acknowledge that she herself was so low
and small and ignorant that she could
only have injured him—to be convinced
that it was neither weakness, nor covetousness,
nor perjury in Andrew, having
met the sun, to forget the shadows;
wondering then if Frarnie cared for
him as she herself had done, and crying
out aloud that that could never be,
until the sound of her own sobs woke
her from her forbidden dream. But at
other times a calm came to Louie that
was more pathetic than her wildest
grief: it was the acquiescence in what
Providence had chosen for Andrew,
cost herself what it might—it was the
submission of the atom beneath the
wheels of the great engine.
It is true that as, late in the night,
when all the town was asleep and only
silence and she abroad, she walked
home by herself from some deathbed
whose occupant she had composed decently
for the last sleep, she used to
wish it were herself lying there on that
moveless pillow, and soon to be sheltered
from the cruel light by the bosom
of the kindly earth. For now, as she
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passed the birches softly rustling in the
night wind, and hurried by, she remembered
other times when she had passed
them, and had stopped to listen, cared
for, protected, with Andrew's arm about
her; and now, as the clocks, one after
another, remotely chimed the hour, the
sound smote her with a familiar sweetness
full of pain; and now, as she came
along the sea-wall and saw the dark
river glimmering widely and ever the
same, while its mysterious tide flowed
to meet the far-off spark of the lighthouse
lantern, she recalled a hundred
happy hours when she and Andrew in
the boat together had rocked there in
soft summer nights, with sunset melting
in the stream and wrapping them about
with rosy twilight; or those when whispers
of the September gales swelled the
sail, and the boat flew like a gull from
crest to crest of the bar; or those when
misty sea-turns crept up stream and
folded them, and drowned the sparkle
of the lighthouse and the emerald and
ruby ray of the channel lights, and left
them shut away from the world, alone
with each other on the great gray current
silently sweeping to the sea—times when
she knew no fear, trusting in the strong
arm and stout heart beside her, before
the river had brought death to her door;
when the whole of life seemed radiant
and rich—times that made this solitary
night walk trodden now seem colder
and drearier and darker than the grave—
that made her wish it ended in a grave.
And so at length the year slipped by,
and spring had come again, and the
sap had leaped up the bough and burst
into blossom there, and the blood had
bubbled freshly in the veins of youth,
and hope had once more gladdened all
the world but Louie. With her only a
dull patience stayed that tried to call
itself content, until she heard it rumored
among the harbor-people that the Sabrina
was nearly due again, and with
that her heart beat so turbulently that
she had to crush it down again with the
thought that, though Andrew every day
drew nearer, came up the happy climates
of southern latitudes and spread his sails
on favoring gales for home, he only
hastened to his wedding-day. And one
day, at last, she rose to see a craft
anchored in the middle channel down
below the piers, unpainted and uncleaned
by any crew eager to show
their best to shore—a black and blistered
brig, with furled sails and silent
deck; and some men called it the fever-ship,
and some men called it the Sabrina.
As the news of the brig's return and of
her terrible companion spread through
the town, a panic followed it, and the
feeling with which she was regarded all
along the shore during that day and the
next would hardly be believed by any
but those who have once been in the
neighborhood of a pestilence themselves.
Exaggerated accounts of a
swift, strange illness, by many believed
to be the ancient plague revived again
and cast loose through the land from
Asiatic ships, had reached the old port;
and aware that they were peculiarly exposed
by reason of their trade, small as
it was, the people there had already
died a thousand deaths through expectation
of the present coming of the fever
already raging in other parts. Hitherto,
the health-officers, boarding everything
that appeared, had found no occasion
to give anything but clean papers, and
the town had breathed again. But now,
when at last it spread from lip to lip
that the fever lay at anchor in midchannel,
knees shook and cheeks grew
white, and health-officer and port-physician,
in spite of the almost instantaneous
brevity of their visit to the infected
vessel, were avoided as though
they were the pestilence themselves, and
not a soul in all the town was found to
carry a cup of cold water to the gasping,
burning men cared for only by those in
less desperate strait than themselves,
and who, having buried two-thirds of
their number in deep-sea soundings,
were likely to be denied as much as a
grave on shore themselves; while to
Mr. Maurice, half wild with perplexity
and foreboding and amazement at Miss
Frarnie's yet wilder terror,—to him the
red lantern hung out by the brig at
nightfall magnified itself in the mist
into a crimson cloud where with wide
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wings lurked the very demon of Fever
himself.
Not a soul to carry the cup of cold
water, did I say? Yes, one timid little
soul there was, waiting in a fever of
longing herself—waiting that those who
had a right to go might do so if they
would—waiting till assured that neither
Frarnie Maurice nor her parents had
the first intention of going, though affianced
husband and chosen son lay
dying there—waiting in agony of impatience,
since every delay might possibly
mean death,—one little brave and timid
soul there was who ventured forth on
her errand of mercy alone. The fisherman's
old boat still lay rocking in the
cove, and the oars stood in the shed:
Louie knew how to use them well, and
making her preparations by daylight,
and leaving the rest till nightfall, lest
she should be hindered by the authorities,
she found means to impress the
little cow-boy into her service; and after
dark a keg of sweet water was trundled
down and stored amidships of the boat,
with an enormous block of ice rolled in
an old blanket; a basket of lemons and
oranges was added, a roll of fresh bed-linen,
a little box of such medicines as
her last year's practice had taught her
might be of use; and extorting a promise
from the boy that he would leave
another block of ice on the bank every
night after dark for her to come and
fetch, Louie quickly stepped into the
boat, lifted the oars, and slipt away
into the darkness of the great and quiet
river.
When, three days afterward, Captain
Traverse unclosed his eyes from a dream
of Gehenna and the place the smoke
of whose torment goes up for ever, a
strange confusion crept like a haze
across his mind, tired out and tortured
with delirium, and he dropped the aching
lids and fell away into slumber
again; for he had thought himself
vexed with the creak of cordage and
noise of feet, stived in his dark and
narrow cabin, on a filthy bed in a foul
air, if any air at all were in that
noisome place, reeking with heat and
the ferment of bilge-water and fever-
smell; and here, unless a new delirium
chained him, a mattress lay upon the
deck with the awning of an old sail
stretched above it and making soft
shadow out of searching sun, a gentle
wind was blowing over him, a landbreeze
full of sweet scents from the
gardens on the shore, from the meadows
and the marshes. Silence broken
only by a soft wash of water surrounded
him; a flake of ice lay between his lips,
that had lately been parched and withering,
and delicious coolness swathed
his head, that had seemed to be a ball
of burning fire. The last that he remembered
had been a hot, dry, aching
agony, and this was bliss: the sleep
into which he fell when waking from
the stupor that had benumbed his power
of suffering—a power that had rioted
till no more could be suffered—lasted
during all the spell of that fervid noon
sun that hung above the harbor and the
town like the unbroken seal of the expected
pestilence. A strange still town,
fear and heat keeping its streets deserted,
its people longing for an east wind that
should kill the fever, yet dreading lest
it should blow the fever in on them; a
strange still harbor, its great peaceful
river darkened only by that blot where
the sun-soaked craft swung at her anchor;
a strange still craft, where nothing
stirred but one slender form, one little
being that went about laying wet cloths
upon this rude sailor's head, broken ice
between the lips of that one, moistening
dry palms, measuring out cooling
draughts, and only resting now and
then to watch one sleeper sleep, to hang
and hear if in that deep dream there
were any breathing and it were not the
last sleep of all. And in Louie's heart
there was something just as strange and
still as in all other things throughout
that wearing, blinding day; but with
her the calm was not of fear, only of
unspeakable joy; for if Andrew lived
it was she that had saved him, and
though he died, his delirium had told her
that his heart was hers. “If he dies,
he is mine!” she cried triumphantly,
forgetting all the long struggle of scruple
and doubt, “and if he lives, he shall
-- 139 --
[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]
never be hers!” she cried softly and with
that inner voice that no one hears.
And so the heat slipped down with the
sun to other horizons, coolness crept in
upon the running river's breast with the
dusk, dew gathered and lay darkly glittering
on rail and spar and shroud as
star by star stole out to sparkle in it;
and Andrew raised his eyes at length,
and they rested long and unwaveringly
on the little figure sitting not far away
with hands crossed about the knees and
eyes looking out into the last light—the
tranquil, happy face from which a white
handkerchief kept back the flying hair
while giving it the likeness of a nun's.
Was it a dream? Was it Louie? Or
was it only some one of the tormenting
phantoms that for so many burning
days had haunted him? He tried in
vain to ask: his tongue clove to the
roof of his mouth; he seemed to be in
the power of one of those fierce night-mares
where life depends on a word
and the word is not to be spoken.
Only a vision, then: he closed his lids
thinking it would be gone when he
lifted them, but he did not want it to be
gone, and looked again to find it as before.
And by and by it seemed to him
that long since, in a far-off dream, he
had gathered strength and uttered the
one thought of his fever, “Louie, what
do you do now?” and she had answered
him, as though she thought aloud, “I
stroke the dead;” and he had cried out,
“Then presently me too, me too! And
let the shroud be shotted heavily to bury
me out of your sight!” And he was
crying it out again, but while he spoke
a mouth was laid on his—a warm, sweet
mouth that seemed to breathe fresh
spirit through his frame—his head was
lifted and pillowed on a breast where
he could hear the heart beneath flutter
like a happy bird, and he was wrapped
once more in slumber, but this time
slumber sweet as it was deep.
Morning was dawning over the vessel's
side, a dream of rosy lustre sifting
through the purple and pearly mist,
behind which the stars grew large and
lost while it moved away to the west in
one great cloud, and out of which the
river gleamed as if just newly rolled
from its everlasting fountains,—morning
was dawning with the sweet freshness
of its fragrant airs stealing from warm
low fields, when Andrew once more
lifted his eyes only to find that tranquil
face above him still, that happy heart
still beating beneath his pillowed head.
“Oh, Louie,” he sighed, “speak to me—
say—have I died?—am I forgiven?—
is this heaven?”
“To me, dear—oh to me!” answered
she with the old radiant smile that used
to make his pulse quicken, and that, ill
as he yet was, reassured him as to his
earthly latitude and longitude.
“And it was all a dream, then?”
he murmured. “And I have not lost
you?” He raised his wasted hand and
drew from his breast the little hair chain
that he had hidden there so long ago.
“It was a fetter I could not break,” he
whispered. “I wrote her all about it
long ago. I wrote her father that he
should have his vessel back again—and
I would take my freedom—and not a
dollar's wages for the voyage would I
ever draw of him. But I should never
have dared see you—for—oh, Louie—
how can you ever—”
“Hush, hush, dear!” she breathed.
“What odds is all that now? We have
our life before us.”
“Only just help me live it, Louie.”
“God will help us,” she answered.
And as she spoke a sudden rainbow
leaped into the western heaven as if to
seal her promise, and as it slowly faded
there came a wild salt smell, an air that
tingled like a tonic through the veins:
the east wind was singing in from sea,
bringing the music of breaker and shore,
and the fever was blasted by its breath
throughout the little Sabrina.
Harriet Prescott Spofford.
Back matter
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Spofford, Harriet Elizabeth Prescott, 1835-1921 [1872], Louie (J.B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia) [word count] [eaf692T].
