CHAPTER I.

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Early one autumn morning, on his forty-first birthday,
Argus Gates walked down the old turfy lawn, and
felt immortal in his human powers. The elms above
him dropped warning leaves, the silver cobwebs in the
grass vanished beneath his tread, and the sere grass
rose not again; but Aurora was in the sky. The
stalwart, willing earth dipped beneath her chariot
wheels, to lave in the rays flooding from those eyes
fixed in

“The ever silent spaces of the East,”

The balm of the fading leaves distilled in the globed
dew, the soft, moveless shadows of every object round
him, the verdure tinged with the hues of autumn,
the red light spreading over him, played upon his
sensibilities, which were those of a fine and well-endowed
animal; but his imagination was not touched,
nor his heart elevated. He was supposed to be devoid
of both. He went down the steps planted in

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the front of the bank, and looked over the gate into
the road some feet below. At that moment a man
was passing, who, happening to raise his eyes, met
those of Argus; he halted, and pushing back his
tarpaulin, said, in a cheerful voice,

“Mornin' air agrees with you, Capen.”

Argus made no reply, and continued to swing his
cane over the railing.

“Harbor's smooth as a pike pond, but you don't
venture on't, no right to—shut off from a sight on't,
walled in, and fenced in, and treed in. Did the town
gully down the end of the street to please you? Why
don't it pull down old Freeman's warehouse between
you and the quay, and you pull down that mess of
mortar against it? Your folks might like a sight of the
salt water, and they'd get it by—going up stairs.”

“Keep the salt water for yourself, Mat,” answered
the Captain at last, “and go down the gully as the town
directs, unless you had rather climb King's Hill, and
roll over the plantain beds, to get to your stevedoring.”

“I've got a chance on the Lucindy. What do you
think of that ere craft? Arter she's caulked, I think
I'll retire too.” But Argus had disappeared, and Mat's
eyes could not follow him an inch beyond the gate,
even from the masts of the Lucinda, which lay alongside
the quay, a few rods from the house; the roof
and the tree tops were all he could see.

Argus paused beneath one of the elms, and peered
into its branches; the birds whose departure he was
watching had gone; no twitter escaped from the rough
nests adorned with ribbons of seaweed. Slightly

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musing on the probability of the return of the same
family in spring, he slowly mounted the porch steps.
As he went into the house the goddess of the morning
disappeared, amidst the clatter of the small demons
which preside over domestic affairs, and like the
chameleon take the hue of those who compel their
service. Simultaneously with opening the door of
the kitchen,—a barn-like apartment—Roxalana, his
sister-in-law, drawled in a clear, singularly unimpassioned
voice:

“I am about out of the suds, Argus. Your coffee
waits by the fire, clear as crystal, but my Johnny-cake
is burnt. It is impossible for me to say where
Tempe is. She pretended that our clock was wrong,
and said she would find the right time. With this
excuse, she managed to get out by six o'clock. Wash
day has no particular charm for her.”

“Nor for you, I judge,” he replied, seating himself
at a small table between the windows. She swung
round slowly, and lifted her head,—a strange one,
ringed with a mass of dense black hair,—passed her
hands up and down her bare, well shaped arms, shook
the skirt of her ragged gown, and said:

“Naturally, I am lazy; but necessity drives me to
industry.”

Taking the coffee from the fire, she poured a cup
which she handed to Argues, who took it with his left
hand, for he still held his cane with the right.

“Tempe is romping, you remarked, Roxalana.
She is a proper jade. But it is better out of doors,
consequently she is where it is better.”

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Roxalana laughed a noiseless laugh, which in no
wise lighted up her heavy face.

“She will have several races before sundown,” she
said, taking a chair at the table; “but her romping
days will soon be over. Do you realize that her
birthdays are counting up as well as ours?”

“Why don't you marry her, and tie her runaway
feet? Matrimony puts an end to the antics of your
sex, and begins ours with us.”

“Hush, Argus, she is on the stairs; keep your doctrines
for me, not for her.”

Tempe fluttered in with the air of a blackbird.
Her hair was black, like her mother's, as ruffled, but
less abundant, and more beautiful; her face was pale,
and delicate; her eyes were large, black, and constantly
darting sharp inquisitive glances.

“What am I now?” she asked; “a child, a jade, a
witch, or a hussy?”

Argus threw his cane at her, which she caught
adroitly, and put in a corner.

“If you have not quite run yourself out of breath,
Tempe,” her mother interposed, “I advise you to take
your breakfast.”

“Yes, mother, give me my coffee; they have better
breakfasts at Mat Sutcliffe's every day than this.
Uncle, is your fare pleasant?”

“Silence!” he answered; “don't call me uncle,”
mimicking her voice, “because I am this woman's
brother-in-law.”

As this was merely his way, the sally passed unnoticed,
and breakfast was dispatched. Argus spent

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the forenoon in the house, looking from the windows,
smoking, kicking the wood on the fire, and watching
Roxalana, who finished the week's wash with composure
and ease, regardless of his presence. Tempe
flitted in and out, slammed doors in all parts of the
house, moved a piece of furniture now and then, and
finally settled herself to stringing beads on horse-hair.
At midday a plain dinner was served at the same
table, at which Roxalana presided with parboiled
hands and the dignity of a Zenobia. In the afternoon
Argus went up the street into town, and Tempe
went also. Roxalana rested from her labors. She
sat so motionless in a straight-backed chair that a
mouse stole out and ran across her foot. At dark
she combed her thick hair, and changed her ragged
dress for one of some dark material, made in a fashion
she had worn for years. Lighting a pair of candles,
she carried them across the wide hall into a large
room with four windows, two facing the town, and
two the garden and the warehouse towering beyond
it. The walls were hung with green velvet paper,
somewhat frayed and discolored; heavy, dark sofas
with claws and scrolls stood between the windows;
and a heavy dark mahogany table stood in the centre
of the room. Upon this table Roxalana set the candles.
She then unlocked a glass cabinet in the wall,
took out some fragile china, a spindle-legged silver
tea set, and arranged them carefully for supper. An
array of sweetmeats, sweetcakes, and delicate biscuit
was added, which she viewed with a solemn satisfaction.

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When Argus and Tempe came home, she made tea
at the table with a ceremony which contrasted strongly
with the work and behavior of the day. They sat
at the table a long time, and this was an invariable
custom,—the sweetmeats, the sweet cakes, the ceremony
being an absolute law and bond between these
three persons who lived in Temple House.

CHAPTER II.

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The house of Argus Gates stood at the end of
an almost unused street, in the populous town of
Kent, once a great seaport. In the old Province records
there is a volume of actions in which Kent
Bay and Kent Bar figure; their storms and disasters
are the memorial treasures of the present time.
The old laws so arbitrarily provided for the encroachments,
changes, accidents of the sea, its shoals,
sands, and rocks, that the inhabitants of Kent have
ever since rested upon their provisions, and look for
no geographical change. Meantime Commerce has
gone elsewhere. Mariners found the White Flat dangerous,
the harbor not navigable, the coast to be
avoided. A hundred younger towns on the Atlantic
coast now surpass Kent; her sails are passing sails,
her hulls wrecked hulls rotting in the sand. The
old piers have tumbled in, and fallen apart; the
black seaweeds are rooted in their own decayed beds
on the foundations; and patches of sorrel grow in
the gravelly tops. The ware-houses are empty along
the water-side; their derricks rattle and swing in the
wind, like empty gibbets. The aristocracy of Kent,
as well as its crowd of laborers, has vanished, leaving
its noble names to monuments, streets, and hills. The
old estates are worse than obliterated; straggling

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lanes, crumbling tenements, and pasture tracts represent
an ancient régime, which boasted of the exiled
names of Raleigh, Halifax, and Brooks. From
King's Hill, opposite Temple House, to Apsley River,
where Cyrus Brande's forge stood, Kent was in no
wise the proud, dictatorial, prosperous Kent of former
times. Still the business of ordinary life flourished;
there was buying and selling; the land was tilled, the
sea harvested. Religion, the Supreme Court, the
newspapers, marriage, birth and death, were all established
in the old town.

Kent was not the birth-place of Argus. Temple
House had come to him when a young man, by the
unexpected will of a distant relative, whom he had
never heard of till he heard the tidings of his possession
as an elder son. Being about to sail on his
first voyage as captain, he sent his wife, whom he
had not been married to long, to take possession of
the house, and departed with the determination to
settle in Kent, and seek further fortune from that port.
His wife was dismayed at the size and splendor of
the house. It was full of antique furniture, comfortless
rubbish, in her estimation. Some of it she sold,
some she broke up and and burned, the remainder she
packed in the garret with the portrait of Madame
Temple, the donor of the house, and several other umber-colored
pictures. Argus was a poor man, and his
wages, which were those of a captain of a merchantman,
only furnished the necessities of life; consequently
she could not replace the old furniture with
new, and Temple House was never, in the common

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acceptation of the term, furnished. She only used the
great kitchen, and the green room before spoken of,
which she made habitable with the articles belonging
to her simple wedding outfit. Considering the sea
the natural grave of her family, she could not endure
the sight of it, and was thankful for the long espalier,
the stone-mortared wall behind it, and the high ware-house
which screened the quay, and almost shut out
every glimpse of the bay. She loved the old summer-house
best, and strayed with the old, old Provence
and Damask roses, herself as sweet and wild a
rose. A beautiful lawn stretched to the edge of the
bank at the back of which the house was built, so
she saw nothing of the life in the street below; it
was pleasanter for that. When not in the garden
that first long summer, she was in the green room
watching the elms on the lawn. So she lived, waiting
for the return of Argus.

In due time he came, and looked at his property
with amazement. It was the broken and depreciated
estate of the last member of a “first family.” This
was attested by the town records, which he looked into
for the purpose of discovering the antecedents of
Madame Temple. Her portrait was brought out, and
he made a study of it to see what was buried in her
face, and if there was any affinity between them. It
proved a sphinx in both particulars, but Argus hung
it in its old place in the hall. When his wife told
him what she had done with the belongings of the
house he turned red, as if some of the Temple blood
tingled in his veins after all, but he only laughed and

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chucked her under the chin. Musing upon the
matter, he concluded not to discuss the subject; the
house must remain a ruin, and he would not ask her
to be happy in it. He felt a blind compunction
towards her, but his resolve never changed. Nor did
he speak of the absolute presentiment which clung
to him, that in this ruin, whatever the vicissitudes of
the coming years, he should end his life.

One day, just before he went to sea again, when
the garden paths were full of rustling leaves, and only
the thorns grew on the rose trees, they walked to the
summer-house, and having a brighter, happier feeling
towards the place, she kissed him, and told him she
loved the garden, and would think the summer-house
her own domain. She could not love the old desolate
haunted house, however; it was not fit for poor, young
people like themselves. An echo of grandeur could not
make up for its want of comfort; but she would not
complain. Argus kissed her, but was silent. No,
she repeated, she would never complain; not if he
chose to hang the umber-colored pictures in the very
room where she slept.

“Let us get the lay of the land, now that we are
out,” he said abruptly. “I believe I do not understand
the premises thoroughly.”

They crossed the garden, went round the grounds,
and looked at the outside bounds. Argus described
and named every spot, as though he was making a
chart. On the town side they were shut in by an
alley, along which stood a row of mean houses, whose
sheds and yards came up to the empty stables and

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out-buildings inside the wall. A door, padlocked
in it, communicated with the alley at the upper end.
Beyond the premises at the rear, where poplar and
button-wood trees grew, wild, grassy pastures stretched,
marshy towards the high shores of the bay, and
hilly towards the town. On all sides they were shut
in from the bay, the town, and the common business
of life. Argus was so well satisfied with his survey,
that he was on the point of expressing his satisfaction,
but seeing that his wife's eyes were fixed on the
high dormer windows, higher than King's Hill even,
he forbore. They wandered back to the garden, and
sat in the summer-house again, and once more kissed
each other with those kisses which for the moment
disenthrall mortals from the burden and influence of
the universe.

The yellow twilight creeping round them, the flame
edged clouds rolling down with sunset, the inarticulate
noise of tree and bush, the sound of the drowsy
sea pushing on Kent beach a mile away, were always
remembered by Mrs. Gates; perhaps Argus also treasured
the hour in his memory. At last they went
into the house, and their mood naturally slipped
away. She busied herself with supper, while Argus
stood in the embrasure of the green-room window,
and continued his mental inventory of his property.

It is possible that the ownership of Temple House
influenced the temporal affairs of Argus more than
he supposed. A vessel was offered him, within a
year from this time, and a venture in the cargo, which
he accepted, and made money by. Meantime his wife

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had departed. Swiftly and silently her brief, short
life ended. He found her grave in the high hill yard
where the Temple ancestry slept—her closed eyes
and deaf ears insensible to the sight and sound of
shore and sea, to obtain which the living often sought
the hill. From the day that Argus went there, he
hated the scene which broke upon his vision. The
raging white surf breaking on the white beach, that
darted like a tongue from the headland below the
town; the sand-stained ripples of the one, and the
beating waves of the other; the glittering capes,
stretching into the circle of the sea; the restless
clouds spreading and sinking in the horizon, borrowed
his grief, and mirrored it in his mind again.
It was a moment when nature seemed only capable
of leading the soul to death.

He remained a month or two alone in Temple
House, brooding over his past, or, it may be, planning
his future, no one really knew which. Cyrus
Brande, the only man who was intrusted with his
affairs, pretended ignorance when questioned concerning
them. When Argus had been gone a week
Mr. Brande circulated a report that the house would
be closed for some time, and for information concerning
Captain Gates application must be made at the
office of Brande's Forge. Nobody ever applied, and
no information was obtained at the office; the clumsy
key of the front door at Temple House hung on a
nail for years. Meantime the velvet moss thickened
on the roof; the rose-trees and shrubs mixed their
leaves with the black mould in the garden paths;

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the mortar powdered in the crevices of the walls, and
ran down like the sand in an hour-glass; and the
edges of the bank crumbled and slid into the street,
threatening to wear the lawn to its level before Argus
returned.

But he did return, taking the key of his house
from Mr. Brande's office as quietly as he had brought
it there. He found the town at work on his premises,
walling the bank from the quay below them to the
corner of the alley above. His lawn gate now opened
into the gully, which was so deep opposite—the other
side being the walled portion of King's Hill—that
only a strip of sky could be seen over it. To make
his house more suitable for solitary confinement, he
repaired his garden wall, replaced the old brick
coping, and mended the roof with slate stones.

CHAPTER III.

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Notwithstanding his isolation, Argus soon became
a somewhat noted man in Kent; his character,
habits, and manners were observed constantly,
and considered exceptional. The mere mention of
him among his acquaintances created a fresh and
original impression in their minds. There was
something irresistible in these self-creating impressions
which impelled them to reflect upon the nature
of a man who appeared entirely unsympathetic with
all their relations. They confided to him the weakness
and vileness of their motives and acts; they
invented a history of his past life, which tallied with
the ideal of what they would themselves have been,
provided the opportunity and the courage had been
given them. The tranquil tolerance, or the terrible
coarseness, which he offered them in turn, presented no
solution to the enigma of his character. But Argus
knew himself; having gone through with certain
experiences, he had arrived at an understanding of
the traits which induced them, and stifled them.
The life that he now chose to live was at variance
with the opinions which his organism continually
caused others to form of him. The conditions of
feeling which he shunned, the agitations which make
one hour crowded, the next vacant, he had the

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power of exciting still. For himself, he was capable
of enjoying his own atmosphere—that of a well-constituted
man, whose perceptions, never attaining
the beautiful, perhaps, dwell with content upon positive,
narrow, sensuous facts. Argus, in the world,
was very discerning, cautious, and, in spite of his
coarseness and indifference, had a vein of courtesy
which gained him at least an outward respect. He
hated cant, and had a way of taking hold of the
roots of a matter which made people afraid of their
hypocrisy. For the most part, no one ever questioned
him about his affairs; but one day, a man
whom he had long known asked him if he was
aware how near he was to his brother George Gates,
a younger brother, from whom he had been separated
for years. Argus for an instant felt his cane oscillate
in his hand with the temptation to strike his
informant; but turning with a sharp laugh, he said,

“He is so near me, is he? The handsome
dog!”

“To tell you the truth, Captain, I saw him. Our
brig ran into harbor not two hundred miles from this,
and a party of us skippers went ashore. We hired
a team and drove up the country for a lark, till we
came to a place called Eastdale; the first man I
clapped eyes on was George Gates. By the Lord,
sir, he was in full feather; sleek as a porpus. I felt
riled, for he owes me five hundred dollars. Ten years
ago we met in the West Indies, you know, and I followed
him up. His father-in law”—

Argus started, and broke the sentence in two—“has

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not been dead long; he sold tobacco, snuff and spice.
You've seen those speckled lizards in India? There
was a row of them in bottles of spirit in his window.”

“I know them; but what of his she-lizard, the
one out of the bottle?”

“I did not introduce myself to George; you recollect
he had a way, at times, that a man would not
like to venture on. I reckon, however, that the old
man's death has unsettled him; he'll be off again to
parts unknown before long, or I am much at fault.”

A bitter smile ran over the face of Argus at the
thought that George, vagabond as he was, could
still keep his friend and creditor, Smith, at bay.

“I thought I would tell you,” Smith continued.
“I bore in mind the goings on of my brother, Bill,
and tried to do as I would be done by.”

“Hasn't the devil seized Bill for good, yet?”

“You see, I have not talked it over with anybody.”

“Did your wife tell you her dream this morning?
Did you throw the pillow at her for guessing your
thoughts? Off a voyage, a man is transparent
for a week or so, to his wife, excepting one or two
items. But I am indebted to you, Smith.”

Smith laughed a horse-laugh, and turned away.

Argus absently noted the way of the wind, as he
leisurely walked towards home, stopping once to toss
over a paper that fluttered in his path which looked
like a handbill. He found Mrs. Bayley, a woman
from the alley, who came every day to prepare his
meals, and put the room he used in order, busy in
the kitchen.

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“I shall not need you for several days, Mrs. Bayley,”
he said. “I am off on a journey. Take the
keys, and open the house again on Friday.”

“Yes sir. Would you wish any preparation made;
any other beds made up, or rooms put to rights?”

“You alley-strollers have hold of it then. Do
your best to spread it, and add something worth
your tongues.”

“I've got hold of mighty little, I do beg leave to
inform you, Captain Gates. I fetch and carry
nothing.”

“The invisible air is clogged with the droppings
of women's fancies. Balls of gossip stick together
like burrs, and catch on Truth's stuffy gown as she
passes by.”

“Mary Stucliffe said”—

He interrupted her with a few icy, cutting words,
spoken in the smoothest of voices, which drove her
from the room. He started immediately without
any plan, expecting with every mile that the feeling
which possessed him would explain itself; but it
evaded him. Had he really a desire to meet the
only member of his family alive, except himself?
Was the voice of the Temple blood, thin as it
might be, crying out in behalf of this reprobate
brother, as handsome as Romeo, as dissolute as Antony,
for whom in former times he had made many
sacrifices? Suppose George should propose the
same again: suppose that he might choose to avail
himself of the habitation which Temple House
would offer, with the family that Smith hinted at?

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Could such a thing be endured? And Argus fell
into a dream about the occupation of the house by
some child growing up, and watching him, while
going out of it for good, to the place where there
were different mansions.

At the Eastdale tavern he met George. He was
smoking a cigar, (which Argus instinctively felt was a
first-rate one,) in a black velvet cut-away coat and a
white felt hat; from his crown to the toe of his well-fitting
boot an atmosphere of resolved laziness emanated,
which armed Argus against him, especially as he
could not withhold a sentiment of admiration with
it. In the face of George was fierceness, weakness,
and an expectant hungry look, in spite of his air of
ease.

“Why, Arg, is that you below there? Come up,”
and he smiled, but at the same time bit through his
cigar, with the surprise the sight of Argus occasioned.
“What sent you?”

“The love of you,” Argus answered, “and an invitation
from Marm Temple's bones to come to her
house. Have you done with your pranks? Could
you amuse yourself in Kent?”

“Pranks!” George exclaimed; “my time has been
passed in a serious manner. Do you share the vulgar
judgment, that absence is the cloak for a man's
iniquity? Cannot the vagrant member of the family
have a purpose? I'll come to Kent to be wicked
openly.”

Argus laughed.

“The hells and brothels never touch on the

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prodigal son, and the husk business, do they? Have they
changed since my green and salad days?”

George touched his smooth, handsome forehead,
extended his fair hand, opened and shut the fingers.

“The husk business is entirely extinct,” he answered.

Argus took a chair inside the veranda railing,
and politely asked George for a light. It was politely
given, and the two smoked in silence, looking
towards the horizon.

“Say, Arg,” exclaimed George, turning suddenly,
“what's come to your hair?”

“Pooh! something went; what could come to me?
Your plays and novels allot nothing to middle aged
people. A life accessory to the illusions of others
at most—the gray background to their reds and
greens. I don't urge, with Shylock, that if we are
pricked, we bleed, if we are poisoned, we die.”

“I am past thirty, and would be as drunk with
life as ever, if I could but reach the draught.”

He let his hand fall lightly on Argus's shoulder,
and Argus made a slight movement by which it slid
off.

“How is that abode of the Temple ghosts,” George
continued, “the tabernacle on a hill?” By the way,
I am married; there's a little girl, too. I named her
Temple, ridiculous name—but I honored the gods.
Did you know this?”

“All Kent knows it; from your friend Moll Sutcliffe,
to your ancient chum, Smith. This must be
the reason I came; I know no other.”

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

“All Kent,” repeated George, rising, and indicating
to Argus to follow. “I never loved that good old
town. I ate dirt there, and shook what was left
from my flesh. I have rolled round the world since,
and gathered a certain mossiness, and, as one must
bring up somewhere, brought up at Eastdale. Why
not, Argus? I found my wife here; she grew into
that estate from a typhoid fever, which caught and
held me in the port below. And this is where we
live. Enter the long lost brother.”

Argus's first thought, when he saw Roxalana
was, that she was the last woman George would have
chosen; but when he heard her clear voice, and correct
accent, he forgave himself for having met her.
She received him with perfect self-possession, and
pushing little Temple towards him, said,

“Kiss your uncle Argus, Temple; he has come a
long way to visit you.”

The child was beautiful, like George, with black
eyes, close curls of splendid black hair, a mass of
ebony rings, and the same attenuated subtle features,
but with a different head and carriage.

“She may run away, also,” Argus commented;
“but she won't run so far, and she will marry without
the typhoid fever trap.” He asked her to sit on
his knee, and took her hand, which was so exactly
shaped like his own, that he could not help smiling
over it.

“What is going on, Rox?” George asked, with a
suppressed yawn, and roving eyes. Argus was induced
to believe that they had not met before that day.

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

“We are engaged as usual,” she replied.

“I think I'll dine Argus at the tavern; I noticed
Jones had some fine ducks.”

She made no reply.

“Have we had ducks, Rox?” he asked, his voice
loudening with a shade of irritation.

“Not this season, certainly, George; it is early.
I am sure you will find the ducks at Jones's good
eating.”

“I have dined,” said Argus, “on brandy and
water, and biscuit—my old sea fare—and a cigar.”

“I'll shortly furnish you with hospitality,” replied
George, leaving the room.

“Roxalana,” said Argus, abruptly, “has the time
come for George to leave Eastdale?”

“I have not a doubt of it; I have always expected
that time sooner or later.”

“What do you think of changing your quarters?
Will the old house answer for the little girl?”

“I shall be pleased to go. Having no ties here, I
can leave without regret. When I met your brother
I was almost alone. You are aware, of course, that
he has not made a worldly-wise match?”

“I am aware that you have not made a remarkably
advantageous one.”

She fixed her dense, cold eyes upon him, and continued:

“I am a fatalist. Having done badly for himself,
not me, I choose that he should select his own happiness
first, so far as he can. My happiness, at any

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

rate, is not like the happiness of others. I have long
been convinced so.”

Argus was astonished; he believed that he had
found the woman whose personalities would not
prove a nuisance in family life. He began to weigh
her merits and the exactions he knew George would
make, and the merits prevailed. When George
came in again, Argus was scrupulously considerate
with him, and it was finally settled, that at least, the
experiment of a three months' visit should be tried.
The night that Argus returned to Temple House, he
went on an enigmatical excursion over the house and
grounds, knocking on the doors with his cane, scaling
the walls with his eyes, and stepping off the measure
of paths and walls, like an auctioneer.

“Once here,” he said, “she will never go away.
As for George,”—and he whistled.

CHAPTER IV.

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

“I'd sell this mouldy cupboard, if it belonged to
me,” said George to his wife, upon his first survey of
Temple House; “Argus sticks to it. What possessed
him to believe that he could foist the rattle-trap upon
us? Do you like it?”

“Very much, George; I think it agreeable here.
I have room enough.”

“Make it as agreeable as you can for me. Rox,—
I have no money to speak of now. The sum I
married you on is exhausted. Let's see how old is
Tempe? I recollect that on the day she was born
I looked into my situation, and I must say I thought
of the Spanish Main—and of Argus. But you have
spent nothing.”

“I never spent money, George—I cannot be wasteful;
to save is my ambition.”

“Rox, you are a miser. You dress yourself and
Tempe upon what? The poor little beggar is always
a thing of shreds and patches.”

Roxalana made no effort to combat his opinion.

“I tell you I must have money, Rox.”

There was nothing for her to say on this point.

“I must and will have it. Where shall I obtain
it?”

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

Intently regarding him, without a particle of emotion
in her face, she answered:

“You must and will have it; and you will obtain
it from Argus.”

“So! well—for just now, day, day, Rox.”

He left her in a composure that would have driven
a lover frantic; but George was not her lover,—
he scarcely knew why he had become her husband.
Nothing in her nature knit itself into the temperament,
which compassed and ruined him. He knew,
though, that she would throw her soul into the flames
of hell as coolly as if it were an old glove, for his
sake; and that, good woman as she was, she would
lie for him with calm lips and unblenched eyes, to
hide his slightest fault.

With her, it was as Argus predicted; she grew to
the place as moss grows to the stone. Its space and
substantiality suited her silence-loving soul. Tempe,
having discovered the weak spot of the domain—
the door into the alley—made herself happy with
constant visits and rompings among the children there,
and was too much absorbed with its hearty, vulgar
life to miss any loving care at home.

Gradually and unobtrusively, Roxalana assumed
the control of the housekeeping; her method was as
rigid and exact as the laws of a monastery. Its basis
was an economy which George called parsimony,
and Argus prudence. Though she would have gone
to the world's end with George, had he desired it, no
prayer nor threat could induce her to allow him two
eggs for his breakfast: and when Tempe cried with

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

rage and disgust at her schoolmate's discovery that
she wore petticoats of duck, made from the fragments
of worn sails, Roxalana even shared her tears,
but said the petticoats answered the same purpose as
finer ones, and that she esteemed it a fortunate circumstance
to be so near the junk store on the quay,
for there were a number of articles in it at half price
that no one but herself would think of turning to account.
Argus was amused with her management.
He understood it after a little, when he understood
the rapacity of George; it accorded with his wishes,
that she would employ no servant, nor any outside
help. At home he must drop everything that entangled
his personality. The more limited and defined
the exterior of his life, the greater his enjoyment
of that strange internal liberty, which men of intellect
who have experienced much possess, and do not
desire to show. Roxalana herself, always sedate,
always at ease, keeping good faith with the veritable,
silent regarding the unsubstantial and visionary, came
singularly up to his requirements. Not so with
George, who existed in mental slavery to some hope,
or desire, which bore no relation to his present possessions.
To obtain his wishes he needed a lawless
liberty. Sharp and selfish as Argus was, cold and
cynical, it is certain that he allowed George to impoverish
him. In regard to this fact, Roxalana, who
knew it, made herself magnanimous for Argus. On
his side he concealed his losses from her. They never
knew what George did with the money. Every day
he declared his intention of leaving Kent, and every

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

evening deferred his departure. He soon exhausted
the town; its high life was merely respectable, and its
low life devoid of vim. His most worthy performance
was in clearing the old garden paths, resetting
the roses, and patching with vines and lattice-work
the summer-house. Roxalana knew nothing of flowers,
but in the time of roses, she like to pull one to
nibble at, and stare over. And she had a strange
fancy for tulips which George took pains to raise for
her; and when she first saw them blooming at Temple
House, her dark face borrowed their tint for a
moment, and her grave, solid eyes smiled as she
thanked him.

“You are a kind of dusky, solemn tulip yourself,
Rox,” he said.

Argus, looking at George while he was leisurely
making these repairs, acquired the habit of smoking
in the garden, and in this way they dropped into each
other's society, exchanged cigars, and scattered their
ashes in company. If they ventured on speech it was
to note the weather, to argue on trivial points, banter
each other, and to laugh; but they never touched
on any vital topic. Had they done so, there might
have been a root of bitterness revealed. Inside the
house they rarely met, except at supper in the green
room—that ceremony being religiously observed still.
Roxalana, George, and Tempe alike yielded to the
influence of Argus there.

“Where is my father?” Tempe sometimes asked,
missing him suddenly.

“He is in the place he chooses to be,” her mother

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

generally replied. “Where is your patchwork? Do
I see a rent in your frock? What is the matter with
your shoes?” And Tempe was diverted from a subject
which Roxalana preferred not to dwell on herself.
But when George was the most irregular, her regularity
was the most noticeable; never was the housekeeping
so nicely adjusted as when he was absent.

The day came when he left Kent. There was no
mystery concerning his going—no opposition, and no
conclusion. As he crossed the threshold Roxalana
went to her chamber window, and watched him going
down the lawn with a calm, heavy countenance.
Argus stood under the elms, his hat pitched over his
eyes, and Tempe was beside her father, holding his
hand. They reached the gate, where neither Argus
nor Roxalana's eyes could follow them. George
stopped and turned his head towards the house.

“God! what ails me?” he cried.

Struck by a profound and painful emotion, for a
moment he stood like the stabbed Iago, bleeding, but
not killed. He took Tempe in his arms, and gazed
at her wistfully.

“Tempe, you are a beauty,” he murmured; “don't
forget that you look like your father.”

His fine eyes filled with tears; beaded sweat burst
out on his forehead.

“I am a wretch, Tempe,” he said bitterly; “don't
forget that, either. Be sure that you can live without
the cursed fillip my nerves require. I cannot
define and settle my wants as the souls behind us
do. Well, the world—mine oyster—is no harder to

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

open, than ever. But what is the use of my trying
it again.”

He had kissed her a dozen times while speaking,
kissed her with sighs and trembling lips. She was
dumb, but observing a sound of wheels coming
down the street checked him; it was the coach which
had come for him. As it drew up at the gate, his
expression changed, those empty, foolish hopes with
which the unknown deludes, charged in upon him,
dissipating his doubt and misery like smoke in the
air.

“Kiss papa,” he begged. “Good girl; see what a
beautiful day it is for me. Ask mamma to count
the tulips this year. Tell her that I remember Roxalana's
goodness to me; she has been good, Tempe.
Mind this also; be always polite to your uncle
Argus.”

He sprang from the gate, and went down the steps
without a sound.

Tempe heard the loud morning song of the birds
flying round the elms. She watched them. These
winged creatures, afterwards embodied the remembrance
of her father, unapproachable, beautiful,
direct in their instincts—free as the ether that
sustained them, and faithless as the winds that
steered them hither and thither.

Returning, she missed Argus, and searched the
house in vain for her mother. She flew to the alley,
and played from house to house, dining with her
favorite, Mat Sutcliff, till nightfall. Then with a
new feeling of lawlessness, she boldly burst into the

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

green room, expecting to find confusion and dismay;
to her surprise, she found her mother snuffing the
same candles, and making tea in the old fashion.
The supper was laid with the usual care, accompanied
with no pungent, mournful sauce. Argus read
the Kent Chronicle as he did every evening. From
a diffidence which she could not have explained, she
avoided looking directly in her mother's face, but
kept on the alert for any sudden groan or cry. But
Roxalana wore the evening through in the old
fashion, except that she continually brushed her lips
with her handkerchief, as if they were feverish.
When they were alone, and Tempe perceived that her
mother intended to go to bed in silence, she burst
out with her father's message:

“He said, I was to tell you that he had spoken of
your goodness to him; and that you must count the
tulips. And, oh—won't he come back?”

“I never was half good enough to him, Tempe.”

“What shall I do?” asked Tempe, the tears streaming
from her eyes.

“We will count the tulips together. Now get into
bed, and dream of him, as I shall.”

No change appeared in Roxalana's manner, but
from the day of George's departure, she never went
beyond the limits of the house. The fashion of her
dress remained the same, and she never looked into
a newspaper.

For many a January and July the percentage of
Argus's diminished capital dropped into his purse
with the thought, that there might come a demand

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

for it from George. None came. The happy earth
moved eastward with its expectant lovers, but it never
rolled Roxalana's love in sight again. Tempe shot
up within the shadow of those dark walls, as the
lovely star-flower comes up from the dark ground in
spring among the dead boughs and needles of the
pines. Finally, Argus and Roxalana knew that
George was dead. They read it, perhaps, in each
others eyes; perhaps the air was weighted with his
passing soul, which burdened them.

They announced his death to Tempe, for once in
speech working together, offering the courtesy to the
last mortal Cause which should be the warrant for
the same towards themselves on a like occasion.
There were no tears, nor lamentations, but Roxalana
stared as fixedly at Tempe as if the lids of her eyes
had lost the power of closing over them; and Argus
was pale and downcast; his hands moved about in
search of something to adjust. Tempe looked from
one to the other, and with some embarrassment
asked if she should wear black. Roxalana shook
her head, and a faint, sarcastic smile played over
Argus's lips, and his hands ceased to be nervous.
When Tempe looked in the glass that night, and let
down her hair, she remembered the injunction of her
father, that she must not forget the likeness between
them, and sat motionless, watching her image, her
mind dwelling on their parting interview at the gate.
Picturing, as she did, the defacement of the dead,
and shrinking from the dull power of the unknown
grave, which had quelled her counterpart, she could

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

not resist the contrast which the sight of her own
beautiful vitality gave her, and so her father's self
faded away. From this period the routine of life
with Argus and Roxalana lost its dash of bitter
flavor; a dramatic possibility had disappeared. The
elasticity of Argus's breath-loving temperament
stretched without strain or snap; time stood equably
with him. His face looked firm and smooth; his
eyes were latent in their energy, and his bearing was
full of idle strength. Roxalana, heavy, incurious,
with slight self-love, perfectly well balanced in mind
and body, excepting a dark, crooked desert, which
was only revealed, as the mirage is revealed, when
the desert is travelled upon settled into a placid
content which did not look beyond itself. Tempe
lived as a child lives—in an unthinking flow of high
spirits, which turned each day into a series of absorbing
events.

The lapse of years sometimes kindly purls along
even with the sophisticated; when God, and the
Universe, and their own passions do not trouble
them; when their enjoyments and afflictions do not
range higher than those of the savage. It was so at
Temple House. It was a natural worship which
Argus gave to himself at the shrine of Aurora on
this September day. The day's labor of Roxalana
was a sufficient and reasonable one, and it was not
necessary that Tempe, by any thunderbolt, should
be startled from her happiness and vacuity.

CHAPTER V.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

There were but two families holding relations
with Temple House; that of Cyrus Brande, the
owner of Brande's Forge, on Apsley River, a wild,
secluded spot, two miles, by the pastures, from Temple
House; and that of Mat Sutcliffe, wharfinger,
stevedore, and retired sailor, whose house in the
alley was against the door in the garden walk, and
the nearest to the pasture path leading to the Forge.
For the most part of his sea-faring life, Mat accompanied
Argus as his second mate. When Argus left
the sea, so did Mat; but their intercourse continued:
Argus valued Mat, and Mat was devoted to Argus.
The alley inhabitants called the Sutcliffe family disreputable.
Mat slept all day on Sunday, or prowled
the fields with his boys and dogs, and Mary, his
wife, instead of going to church with her neighbors,
staid at home to do her week's ironing. Mary's
habits were somewhat cat-like; it was easy for her
to purr and play, and as easy to scratch and snarl.
She wheedled, coaxed, and bullied Mat, for she was
afraid of him; and Mat was rough with her. He
sometimes drank hard; swore a good deal at inanimate
things; had periods of skulking in the chimney
corner, and about the docks and wharves, doing and

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

saying nothing. He pretended in his talkative
moods that all women were vicious, and all men dishonest;
but his conduct belied his opinions. He
watched over Tempe Gates as if he were her guardian
angel. If a man had breathed a word against
Argus, Mat would have knocked that man down
and beaten him. He never, however, made any profession
of attachment to either Argus or Tempe;
sentiment would not have looked well coming from
him. He was a short thick-set man, with small
deep-set eyes, and burnt-looking hair. He had in
his mouth generally a short pipe, and in his leisure
moments carried an end of rope in his hand. His
jacket was apt to be tarry, and he was fond of wearing
large canvas slippers which he made himself.
Occasionally he played the stern father, and thrashed
his boys for stealing brushwood and old iron; but
oftener winked at the depredations, as they were
articles without owners. He sometimes exerted his
marital authority over Mary, but generally ended his
attempts by telling her she wasn't half as bad as he
was. Tempe abused and patronized him, and considered
him part of the property of Temple House.
What was the gate made in the wall for, if he wasn't?
And Mat assured her it was true; and if ever the
house came to be sold, he should be sold with it.
The bustle and confusion of his hut, Mary's
gipsy-like ways in her housework, the careless,
gay spirits of the whole family, were highly
attractive to Tempe. Roxalana sometimes told her
she frequented Mat's too often, but was herself

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

too much a child of Nature to have a thought that
the society of the Sutcliffes was beneath her. Argus
was quite satisfied to have her in so safe a place
as under Mat's eye. The natural separation would
come soon enough.

The acquaintance with the Brandes began with the
former business relations between Argus and Cyrus,
and continued between Tempe and the only child of
the Brandes— Virginia. Excepting the two girls,
the families seldom met; their spheres were different,
as Mrs. Brande, commonly called Rhoda Cyrus, frequently
observed, when Virginia's fondness for Temple
House was commented on,—as different as pound
cake was to molasses gingerbread. The charm that
drew Virginia to Temple House, no one comprehended;
year by year it deepened, and became a part,
or rather the whole of an interior life, apart from her
home and parents. She constantly received a double
education, one contrasting widely with the other.
The sensible, unworldly sincerity of Roxalana; the
conduct of Argus, which absolutely denied the influence
of opinion, and yet was so calm, orderly, and
cheerful without it; his indifference to money; his
idleness through which he was led to note with
critical exactness those matters usually escaping the
attention of men; his moods, urbane, candid, jeering,
bitter; the wildness of Tempe; her freedom
from all control, her loneliness; all made up a different
world, and Rhoda Cyrus was so far correct.
The fashion of the poverty at Temple House was
more imposing to Virginia than the ever-working

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

effect of her father's wealth; its worry and fuss, and
glare persuaded all Kent, outside Temple House, but
within, its effect was lost.

Cyrus Brande lived between two masks, one faced
the world, and the other faced—himself. He appeared
austere, pious, and reserved behind the former;
before the latter he felt still pious, but genial,
sensual, and cowardly; rarely, if ever, were these
masks removed for him to appear a violent, passionate,
inconsistent man. He was a great financier, was
a powerful man in his church, and, with reason, bore
an irreproachable character.

He despised books, pictures, and sentiment, but
loved personal ornament, and above all things
beauty in women, though he never took off his private
mask to speculate on it. Rhoda Cyrus, his
proverbial echo abroad, was his pest at home, and
the burden of Virginia's life; she was indolent,
whining, uneasy, and endeavored by drugs and stimulants,
to deaden herself against the torments of her
position. Cyrus was patient with her, but excused
her from none of the religious and secular duties
which he had imposed upon himself, as a portion of
the life he thought necessary to lead. To avoid
these impositions she practised much cunning, and
hence Virginia's martyrdom.

Rhoda Cyrus hated prayers, parties, and to ride in
town with the best span. It was a nuisance to her,
the wearing of her gold watch and jewelry. It was
tedious for her to follow the observance of the attentions
and charities expected of her, from the position

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

of Cyrus, in regard to the church and the body of
his workmen. To the public the machinery which
regulated the affairs of the Brandes was perfect.
The Forge was quite a settlement: there were shops,
sheds, a row of workmen's houses, and the large
house where the family lived. Apsley River, bending
below the Forge, widened before the house, and
swept round again above it. On the other side,
opposite the house, the land rose gradually, and
limited the view: nothing was to be seen on this
side but a short, dull-colored grass, and an occasional
boulder. The landscape in other directions was no
pleasanter. The house was large, well built, with
every modern improvement, and furnished as the
houses of rich business men usually are. The best
of everything was in it, in the way of curtains, carpets,
and furniture. The landscape and the house
were a clue to Virginia's obvious history. Strictly
speaking her father had compelled her to take the
advantages of money. She had been educated at
schools of note, and had travelled. She had not
taken kindly to education, and was indifferent to
foreign scenery. At twenty her acquirements were
poor, so far as music, drawing, and the languages
went; but nature had given her a gracious soul, and
experience was enriching, and deepening her whole
traits. Her faults were not numerous, but sufficiently
strong, marring many of her acts, and often
destroying her resolves; Tempe, younger by several
years, selfishly clung to her, and, like the rest of her
friends, trampled upon her yielding individuality.

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

To most people Virginia was as lovely as a star, and
as distant. Thanks to the will of her father again,
she claimed a degree of attention from those who
could go no further, from the style of her dress,
which varied so that her beauty could never be
decided upon by them. She was a brunette, because
her hair was black and red became her complexion;
a blonde, because she was pale and had the deepest
blue eyes, which contrasted well with yellow. Her
forehead was low, her nose straight, consequently
her face was Grecian, and the true way of wearing
her hair was the Greek fashion, which she sometimes
adopted. Her cheeks were full, her chin and jaw
wide and firm; therefore, when her hair was worn
in smooth bands, a likeness to her grandfather, who
was accused of being an Irishman, was plainly to be
seen. As she was uniformly reserved, her popularity
in the first circles of Kent could only be accounted
for by the original and constant change of
her wardrobe.

CHAPTER VI.

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

“What sign is the sun entering that makes you
so rampant?” asked Argus, as Tempe dashed in one
day, her cheeks dyed a hot crimson, her eyes flashing
and humid.

“I never will have my hair cut again, mother,” she
cried vehemently. “Never, don't ask it.”

“What shall I have then to wipe my hands on,”
Argus inquired, “if your hair isn't short? Come,”
and he approached her with extended hands, threaten
ing her.

Tempe bound her handkerchief over her head
quickly, and hid her hair.

“Tell me the difficulty,” Roxalana said.

“I was over to Caroline Drake's, and she told me
that John said he never heard of such a thing as
keeping a young woman's hair short to make her look
like a boy.”

Roxalana looked at Argus, and felt herself detected.
She had kept Tempe's hair short, because thereby
she looked so much the more like George. No way
of wearing it could have made her look prettier; the
jetty mass clasping her head, suited her face,—as yet
soulless, like a cameo Diana; rings of it dropped
round her forehead, the tips of her ears, round her
neck, short and fine, like the young tendrils of a
blossoming grape vine.

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

“If you wish to gain the approbation of John
Drake,” replied her mother, “I will give you permission
to tie up your hair at once. You will soon
make it ugly and straight enough to stick a comb in.”

“I don't care for John Drake, mother; but who
wishes to look like a boy, when one is not a boy?”

“Tempe,” said Argus, “you are the worst kind of
boy—tomboy.”

“Uncle Argus, why is my hair not like yours,
wiry, shiny, obstinate?”

“Because you are my dear little niece, and not
like me in any particular.”

“Gracious!” she exclaimed, reflectively, her mind
roving in search of a bit of ribbon to do up her hair
with, according to Caroline Drake's advice. “I
wish, for once, that I could have some money.”

“What would you do with it?” asked Argus.

“As other girls do. Look at Virginia Brande—
look at Caroline Drake—and now look at me. Those
girls carry pocket-books; they buy anything they
like—even give it away if they choose. Who ever
gave away any money in this house, I should be
pleased to know? Carry Drake has four silk dresses:
Virginia has a closet full, and I have this”—she
shook out a scanty, nondescript skirt with bitter contempt—
“a dress that was made for mother in the
year one; a blue, a green, a yellow piece of distress;
and I live in the biggest house in Kent, bigger than
the jail, and as pleasant; and my name is older than
the hills,—Temple Gates; for the Lord's sake tell
me who gave me such a name?”

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

“There, Tempe,” said Roxalana, quietly; “that
will do for this time.”

“Let her rail,” ordered Argus, as quietly.

Tempe tore the handkerchief from her head, and
threw it on the floor. Roxalana with ludicrous
solemnity settled herself into a serious listening attitude.
Tempe went on:

“I should like to know why I cannot have money,
and when I am going to have it! I am tired of my
shabby, mean life.”

Three lines darted down Argus's stony forehead,
between his eyebrows, and rested there. Roxalana
saw them, and made a movement to pick up the
handkerchief, for a warning to Tempe to stop, but
was prevented from taking it by the setting of
Tempe's foot upon it.

“Uncle Argus.”

He rose suddenly, and felt in his pockets.

“Roxalana,” he said, “I miss my desk key; have
you had it?”

“I thought I left it in a drawer, after I put some
flower seeds there. Do you wish for it now?”

He nodded, and she went out, with an eye on
Tempe; but Tempe was beyond heeding its dictation.

“Uncle Argus,”—she began again, but he interrupted
her.

“I will tell you why you cannot have money:
Your father robbed me of so much, that I shall never
be able to be generous to his daughter.”

“It is a lie!”

“And I will tell you a way to get money. Marry it.”

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

“My father did not rob you.”

“Not with his hand on my throat, or thrust into
my pocket, but genteelly—he asked for it. Your
mother knows it, and does not know it from me.
Now do not speak so before her again. Pick up your
handkerchief.”

It was in her hand, and she stood like a statue
when Roxalana returned with the key.

Argus had no idea of the chord he was striking
when he said, “marry money;” but John Drake, the
young man who objected to her boyish appearance,
was in love with Tempe, and she had concluded to
marry him. She felt elated and irritable at this sudden
admiration—curious, excited, and proud; but
her heart was not touched,—not an atom of it. This
stormy scene was owing to her uncertainty as to the
best way in which the affair should be conducted.

Roxalana resumed her seat, as if the discussion
was to have an everlasting continuance; but Tempe
raised her eyes to Argus, gave him a significant nod,
and walked softly away.

“She requires no money, Argus,” said Roxalana.

“What is the matter with the young one?” Do
you mean to keep her out of woman's estate? or is
she too empty-headed to inherit it?”

“She is but a child, surely?”

“Half of you are never anything more; but make
her an older child, I advise.”

“Why should I?”

“On account of these growing tantrums; not because
it is necessary she should have much sense.

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

She is very pretty; I was not aware till just now
how fast beauty had come upon her—the little
rascal.”

Roxalana gave one of her internal, joyful laughs.

“I never pretended that I could manage anybody,”
she said. “It is useless—the attempt to
govern children, just as useless as the attempt is—to
govern men and women. I never thought that the
Lord intended us for weather-cocks, to be veered by
the judgment of each other. Nothing changes my
opinion or wishes, after I once know them.”

“I believe you; yet whose acts were ever more
governed than yours?”

“By fatality.”

“Somehow Tempe's comb will be cut then?”

“Probably.”

Argus had heard that day a rumor, to the effect
that the Drake family were trying to persuade John
Drake to go to Europe, and break off the affair with
Temple Gates.

CHAPTER VII.

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

“She is not.”

“She is.”

“Well, if you think much of this ere peat fire, I
don't.” And Mat Sutcliffe, stamped on the black
mass smouldering in the fireplace, to show his
contempt for Moll's experiment in the way of fuel,
and to conceal his surprise.

“What makes you think so?” he asked, after
ruminating a space. “Tempe wears pantalets yet;
she is too young to marry.”

“I should know that something next to heaven
and earth coming together was going to happen in
the family, for Roxalana Gates has given up doing
the washing.”

“Who said so?”

“Mrs. Bayley, who is going to take it home for
so much a month.”

“And you and she have been washing dirty linen
besides; that woman is the dry rot of the alley, and
you love her. What else did she say?”

“Dry rot wouldn't say anything to 'tract you, of
course.”

“Tell me what she said, and without fooling, too.”

“She said the Drake family was as mad as fire

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

about it; that they called John an idiot, Tempe a
baby, Roxalana cracked, and Argus a pauper.”

“That's reglar dictionary talk,” said Mat contemptuously.
Then he swore at the Drakes, root and
branch. Didn't all Kent know, he demanded, that
old Jack Drake, the grandfather of John, was a
pirate? And that William Drake, John's father,
had been so long under the old man's thumb, that
nobody could tell which from t'other. Pirating was
out of date, but the land-shark was in fashion—same
thing—one was wet and the other dry. But,”—and
Mat turned upon Mary,—“he should like to know
whether anybody had aught to say against the young
feller, John Drake?”

“Nobody but yourself,” Mary replied; “you are
saying that the Drakes are pretty much of a muchness.
I guess John is his father's son, and I guess,
too, that he'll find what's trumps when he is spliced
to Temple Gates.”

“You have been telling me a pack of lies. And
now, Marm, if you will allow me, I'll take a spell of
the open air.”

“Take anything you like for all me, Mr. Sutcliffe.”

He went out, and took a seat on the top of the
wall nearest the path to the Forge, carefully filled
his pipe, and put it into his mouth without lighting
it.

“I'll wait,” he thought. “Maybe I'll smell musk
before long. Virginia Brande has it about her
lately; it ought to come up on the wind that blows
from the Forge; a reglar sou-easter's breeding. She

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

will know whether they are going to let that child
marry. Curse Argus!—he has played maroon so
long in his rotten wreck of a place, that he has forgotten
his relation to human beings. I should like
to split open the twirls of his heart with a marlinespike.”

He watched the turns of the path which glimmered
in the dusk and disappeared in the darkness;
no one appeared; neither Virginia, whom he expected,
nor any workman on his way to town. He
lighted his pipe, and changed his watch from the
path to the sky. Dun-colored clouds rolled in
threatening masses towards the bay, whose dull roar
broke and gathered again along the dreary coast below
the dreary pastures. His thoughts crept out
seaward,—rose and fell over the waves of an adventurous
past, which knew the life that rounds the
deep.

“Dirty weather, Mat,” some one said close to him.
He looked round and saw Argus wrapped in his old
camlet cloak.

“Is it the same at home that you are out on the
wall, with the salt driving up the wind? Moll mad
to-night?”

“Beats me, to find you in the same spot, without
a Moll at home to torment you, Captain,” Mat replied,
“I was just thinking of the time”—

“When”—Argus interrupted—“we were

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

“Oh no; that particular time, I mean, when your
foot happened to be stung by a scorpion. Haven't
you got a scar?”

“Not a scar, anywhere, outside nor in,” Argus
answered, furling his cloak, and placing himself beside
Mat on the wall.

“I believe you.”

“What of that time? We were off Antonio,
were we?”

“We were on shore.”

“Just as we are now.”

Mat laughed, knocked the ashes from his pipe,
and put it in his pocket. That they were well
matched, each knew. Their thoughts travelled together
in silence; it was well enough for them just
at that moment to be next each other without speaking.
The roar of the wind and sea increased; the
air was pungent in the mouth, wild in its flavor, and
exciting; the darkness settled round them like a
substance. The influence of eyesight between them
being impossible, Mat was suddenly emboldened.

“You've hated the salt water long, Captain. I
see you everywhere, but in sight on't. You can't
help feeling, though, that the world is made to tremble
by the almighty ocean. There's no more shake
in your life, hey? What's the reason? Why not
go out again?”

“Let me find the reason,” said Argus, tugging at
one of his boot-tops which had slipped down.
“Could it have been the scorpion that first sowed
dissension between me and the sea? Or”—he

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

stopped, lost in some reflection, and Mat hastily
resumed:

“There's no kind of a track of your sea-life upon
you. Every other sailor shows the strain of the
plank between him and hell. I do for one, I know.
I'd like to walk it now and then; but you,—are you
afraid?”

“That plank between me and eternity I kicked
away some years ago, for my soul to slip in at any
moment, and lose, or find itself, in the yawning
chasm it dreams of so stupidly now. As you say, I
have no love for the sea. Have you observed love
for anything in me? Love, they say, is terrible and
beautiful, like the sea you brag on: I have cut
away from terror and beauty. Peace and laziness
are the words to describe my days,—days without
desire. As for hope, you ass, that lives where sky and
sea meet. Why should I set my eves there? Because
I am afraid?”

Mat jumped from the wall.

“How happens it that you are on the way to the
Forge to-night?” he exclaimed.

“I am on my way to nowhere, but am trying to
oblige you in the matter of being catechized. So go
on. I was married once”—

“Don't go on,—I've had enough. I was looking
out for Virginia Brande.”

“Do you call her Virginia?” asked Argus, with a
slight surprise in his voice.

“Don't I say Tempe, also?”

“There's a difference.”

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

Mat concluded that Argus was ignorant of the
rumor concerning Tempe: there was no need of saying
anything to him on the subject.

“I reckon I'll put down the lane,” he said.

“Why were you looking for Virginia Brande?”

“I often see her, on her way to your house. I
rather like to keep an eye out for her, on dark
nights; she wears musk, and her silk gowns rustle;
it's easy telliing her.”

“Musk! all perfume to your tarred sense is musk,
is it?”

No more was said. Mat accompanied Argus
through the alley, saw him inside his door, and then
walked to the other side of the town, and inspected
the house where the Drakes lived. A light was visible
in an upper window, although it was past midnight.
He stared at it awhile, and then turned
away, thinking, “Well, what of it? suppose it is
so,—what is it to me?” Too thoroughly roused to
go home, however, he prowled round the town till
daylight, and then returned, to find Mary on the
hearth in her stockings, busy frying fish for his
breakfast. Before noon that day he passed Argus
in the street, and they looked at each other without
a nod.

There was a storm in the Drake family when
John announced his intention of marrying Tempe.
His father protested against it, his mother wept, and
his sisters declared it was a shame. But John
simply said, “I want her, and I am of age.” He
had the power to carry out his plan, for he was

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

his father's partner; the articles had just been
signed between them, and there was no danger of
John's being cut off with a shilling;—his income
was a sure one.

“I wouldn't have that little Temple Gates,” his
sister Caroline cried, “for her weight in diamonds.”

“I'd have her,” her brother replied, “for her
own weight; and I have got her. She is mine.
Ain't she pretty?”

After he had begged Tempe to marry him, and
obtained her consent, he wrote a polite letter to Argus,
which contained the customary phrases, and the
request that Tempe should be made ready for the
ceremony in two weeks from its date. Argus
gave the letter to Roxalana, who read it, and
asked what he was going to do.

“Nothing,” he replied; “let her marry him.
Keep her in the house, however, till I have seen
him.”

The letter remianing unanswered, and Tempe
shut within doors, John was compelled to pay Argus
a visit. There was little said on either side. Argus
made no comment on the manner in which the affair
had been conducted; remarked that John's impatience
was quite natural; invited him to come to the
house daily: and decided that there should be no
wedding, but that they should be married some
morning without any display. Roxalana shook
hands with her future son-in-law timidly and respectfully,
and then mutely looked at him, expecting
something, she hardly knew what, in the way

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

of explanation. He had seen her before, but it was
the first time they had been brought in contact, and
he was amazed at the difference between her and
Tempe.

“I hope,” she said at last, “that your family are
pleased with my daughter. I have heard her mention
her acquaintance with your sisters.”

“She will not marry my family, madam,” John
answered. “They have made some trifling objection
on the score of age; that was the only one I
noticed. I am very glad to take her as I can get
her.”

“Are you?” said Argus sharply, “and so your
family objected to the match? Where do you
intend she shall live?”

“With us, at home, for the present.”

“No; she shall remain with me, till you can provide
a house for her.”

“There's room enough for both of you here,” said
Roxalana, mildly. “It is proper that she should
stay here; she is too young to manage house-keeping.
I shall call her, and tell her so.”

Tempe was called. She pouted at John, and said
she never had the least idea of leaving home.
When they met alone he stormed about it, but
she was firm. She knew the opposition of the family,
and she never would go near them. For
an unexplained reason the Drakes veered round in
Tempe's favor when they heard of this; kissed her
in public; drove down to the door of Temple House
often, and had interviews with her on the lawn;

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

bowed with ceremony to Argus, and sent polite
messages to Roxalana. “The little beauty John is
going to marry,” they said, when talking about her.
Mr. Drake wished that if the marriage was to take
place quietly in the morning at Argus's house, that
there should be a gay wedding party at his house in
the evening. He gave Tempe some beautiful dresses
and a box of ornaments, called her his pretty dear,
and tried to take her on his knee.

“I hate him,” said Tempe,—“he makes me sick;
but I like his presents, and will take all he chooses
to give. Just think, mother, of his giving me a
crimson silk! How came he to know enough for
that? Caroline must have hinted at it for me.”

“I think the dress is a terrible one,” Roxalana
replied, “and the ornaments are not to be described;
don't let me see you wear them yet awhile. I suppose
Mr. Drake must have his way about the party
for you. I hope I may be excused from going.”

“Oh yes,” Tempe answered carelessly, “you need
not go.”

“You must go,” said Argus, “and bring Tempe
home with you. I shall go in my coat with brass
buttons,—made before Tempe was born, which I
wore when I dined with that Commissioner.”

CHAPTER IX.

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

Tempe was married on an October day. The
green room was not comfortably warm that morning;
Argus looked icy, also, and Roxalana was more
dense than usual. A vermilion spot glowed on
Tempe's cheek, and her eyes shone with a lustre
borrowed from the occasion. The Drakes were
present, and Virginia Brande. Mat Sutcliffe sat in
the hall during the ceremony, in a new pair of duck
trowsers, cut and stitched by himself, and Mary
waited upon the company in a blue and yellow dress,
bought for the purpose. A pale Episcopal priest
made John and Tempe man and wife; he rounded
off the periods of the service beautifully, but when
he said, “Whom God hath joined, let man not put
asunder,” Mat laughed, and said to himself, “curious
stuff, that, for a couple of children.”

“What do you think of that chap?” meaning the
minister, he asked of Argus a few moments afterwards.

“He seems to be a mild, cheerful prisoner and
victim.”

“What a beautiful ceremony!” said Caroline
Drake to Roxalana.

“It is sad to me,” Roxalana answered; “something

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

pronounced over dust,—just like your funeral service.”

“My dear children,” said Mrs. Drake, her face in
her lace bordered handkerchief, “it is for better and
for worse,—remember. Can't we get away soon?”
she whispered, turning from her embrace of Tempe,
and dropping a weak kiss on her chin.

“The ring pinches my finger, John,” Tempe said
under her breath.

“I know better,” he answered softly. “Will you
drink some wine with me?”

She assented, and he brought her a glass.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

Her eyes met his; the pang he deserved, lawful as
his seizure of her had been, cut his heart; nothing
in her face answered the expression of his own. The
glory and hope of the hour she did not share. In
that misty pleasure garden, which one can enter but
once and search for the enchanted fruit, he was
alone. Bright, restless, void, Tempe stood beside
him in another sphere,—unmindful of the paradise
whose portals opened within her reach. Near, yet
far from him, rose its terraces of flowers, one above
the other, in masses of sweet beauty, whose forms
and colors could bewilder the senses. Its crystal
fountains played against the pure zenith, and filled
the air with a murmur whose mystery famishes and
then feeds the soul. On the verge of two worlds
for a moment, he saw both no longer; the selfishness
of a man came to his aid then, and shut out all that
was not real.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

“Hem!” exclaimed Mr. Drake. “This is most
excellent wine, Captain Gates; I am quite astonished
at it.”

“Are you?” Argus replied, “I brought it over
myself.”

“Now, really, did you, indeed?”

The flavor of the wine so much increased his
respect for Argus, that he conversed with him till a
move was made for departure.

“There is no set dinner anywhere to-day I believe,”
he remarked, in his pragmatic way; “won't
you all adjourn to my house, and be on hand for the
entertainment?”

John looked at his watch.

“Temple and myself,” he said, “are to dine at the
Grove House. The horses should be here. I
ordered them, as I ordered the dinner,—two weeks
ago.”

Mr. Drake looked admiringly at his son for this
proof of forethought and method in his madness.

Presently they were gone. Roxalana was not in
her usual seat, but sat near the window, staring at
the murky sky, and holding her handkerchief over
her mouth. Argus was gratefully smoking, and
drumming an original air on the back of his chair
with his fingers.

“As this business has nothing to do with our purpose
in living, I am glad it is over,” he remarked.

“We might as well have philosophy now as at
any other time, Argus.”

“Roxalana,—you see how we hurry over the

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

accidents, like birth, marriage, and death, and dwell in
the slow mornings and long evenings which bring us
nothing.”

“I don't like this dark sky,” she said abruptly.

“The sunrise was no better.”

“Did you observe Mat Sutcliffe's extraordinary
appearance?” and Roxalana heaved a strong sigh, in
token that she was about to throw off her melancholy.
“I am thinking that he went home petrified.”

“I gave him a bottle of wine to put under his
jacket. The old fellow never has been able to separate
himself from an honest interest in my affairs.”

“It should be so; there is something about him
that I esteem.”

“The Drakes would appreciate that sentiment,—
don't you think?”

“I despise those Drakes.”

Argus laughed, and in an instant Roxalana joined
with him. So they chatted,—a most unusual circumstance—
till the dusk ended the autumn day,
which had been a long one.

“I invite you to give me an extra candle at supper,
Roxalana, and some of that fine tea.”

“The last box has not been opened,” said Roxalana,
feeling an agreeable solicitude concerning it.

“And the Don's sweetmeats, also.”

“Which Tempe likes so well!”

Several hours later they were in Mr. Drake's
crowded house as guests, as much apart from the
spirit of the scene as Banquo's ghost at Macbeth's

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

supper. Roxalana was immediately and adroitly
shelved by Caroline Drake, in an easy-chair in a
shaded corner, which partially obscured the effect of
a black silk dress with straight, tight sleeves, and a
large muslin collar, yellow with age. Her hair was
twisted as usual, in one heavy mass, and two scarlet
spots burnt in her dark cheeks. She watched Tempe
with calm, unwinking eyes, and kept her hands
folded.

“I am coming to sit beside you soon,” said Virginia
Brande to her, turning her head aside from a
young man who carried her fan and some beautiful
flowers. “You and I are to make an agreement.”

“Is that the witch of Endor?” the young man
asked. “I shall be fond of seeing you sit next her,
the contrast will be so fine.”

“Shall you? look at me now then.” He was despoiled
of fan and flowers so suddenly that his hands
remained suspended in the air, while his eyes followed
her as she sank like a fleecy cloud upon a low
seat close to Roxalana.

“She is beautiful to-night,—don't you think so?”
asked Roxalana, turning benign regards upon Virginia.
“And you,—you must enjoy yourself, you
are so well fitted to shine in such a place.”

“Oh, Roxalana, how much I like you; you are dear
enough to me. I am so happy to have faith in you
at all times. I am seldom satisfied with the feelings
I have towards people, duty and obligation being so
mixed with them. There's no duty between you
and me, no obligation,—is there, Roxalana?”

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

“Let me smell your flowers?” Roxalana begged,
stretching out her hand. Her clear, slow voice had
a caressing tone which was new to Virginia.

“You shall have them. Let me fasten a rose on
your dress,—your hideous dress, Roxalana, is it
not?”

Roxalana asked her if she was aware of its durable
quality. It promised to last a life-time, and what
more could be expected of a dress?

“Roxalana, are you watching Tempe with the
hope that somebody will step on that stupid veil?
It is out of place over those close curls and slender,
childlike arms.”

“The Drakes brought it to her; I did not approve
of it.”

“I am sure you said nothing to that effect.”

“Why should I object? I think Tempe wished
to do all that was customary. I observe that John
is anxious to indulge her. Don't you think he is an
agreeable young man?”

Virginia did not think so, but avoided the question,
and looked about her.

“Here comes my mother,” she exclaimed, “whom
you scarcely know. I will give her my seat, and hope
you will speak with her.”

Roxalana put out her hand with an air of respect to
Mrs. Brande, and said, “I hope your health is good.”

Mrs. Brande shook her head and her white feather
fan, and groaned. Then she chided Virginia for being
so long out of sight; complained of the crowded
rooms, the negligence of the waiters, and the absence

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

of Mr. Brande; and sat down, eying Roxalana's
dress and hair with a stiff surprise which brought
the color to the pale face of Virginia, who turned
her back, not wishing to see Roxalana's confusion;
but the latter was not to be dismayed by criticism.
How could Mrs. Gates have allowed Tempe to marry
while but a child, was Mrs. Brande's first question;
and Virginia, not waiting for its reply, moved away
and joined Tempe, who happened to be standing
alone at that moment. John's particular friends, she
said, had gone into the supper-room, to drink his
health with him. Did Virginia know that she was
to start on a journey the next day? They were going
to the best hotels, and she supposed she should
see more dress than Kent had dreamed of. John had
promised to take her to the theatre. He was going
to buy at the first jeweller's shop a set of garnet and
gold; but she must first have her ears bored. What
age was Virginia when she put in earrings? And how
becoming the turquoise she wore to night!—a mass
of fine blue pebbles round her neck, arms, and in
her comb!

Virginia replied quietly, but somehow felt out of
patience with her all at once; it seemed as if she had
fallen apart from Temple House,—dropping what she
had probably borrowed in its atmosphere—something
of its vigorous simplicity, and assumed the character
of a parasite upon the Drakes. Virginia was not
able to judge her fairly then, nor afterwards; for unless
women are strongly bound in love and sympathy
their different experiences only serve to blind their

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

comprehension of each other. Virginia made up her
mind at that moment that Tempe must be added to
that list of the weak and erratic to whom she owed
duty and endurance.

“How do I look?” exclaimed Tempe at last, having
received no comment on her appearance; “like
a fright, I suppose. I wish the people would go;
my feet ache with standing to receive their foolish
compliments. I have had rivers of them to night.”

“You are very pretty; but I do not like the veil.”

“I do.” And Tempe tossed her little head, and
wreathed her slender arms. “Don't I look like the
Bride of Abydos? What is your mother covering
up my mother with her dove-colored silk skirt for.
Tsch!—here comes the old fuss, my papa Drake, to
introduce another booby. Do find John for me,
Virginia.”

Virginia, tall and stately as a lily, swaying like one
as she yielded to the pressure of the crowd, drifted
into the centre of a noisy, familiar group, and found
herself brushing against some person taller than herself,
who was also surrounded by talkers. Half turning,
her eyes followed the outlines of a dark figure,
whose handsome, well-gloved hand was thrust behind
him, and whose handsome, well-booted foot was
crushing her flounces. An extraordinary push
caused by the waiters and their trays made them face
each other with an apology. It was Argus, and Virginia
blushed at her own surprise to see him a gentleman,
in ordinary evening costume. His cool smile
flashed round his mouth, although he, too, felt a vague

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

surprise at her aspect, she looked so perfectly a woman
of the world.

“Help me away from this beautiful lady I have
been talking with,” he solicited. “Take my arm,
and drag me on, so that I can regain composure.”

They passed into a smaller room where there were
seats.

“You are used to these matters,” he continued;
“I was not remembering till now that it was some time
since you left school.” His eyes rested on the bands
of her beautiful, blue-black hair, and the perfect
outline of her face.

“You confound me with Tempe,” she answered,
her shyness melting away with the atmosphere to
which he professed to be a stranger.

“By no means. I saw Brande, your father, a day
after you were born; he cashed a note for me. Is he
here?”

“Certainly.”

“With the elders, who are drinking the heavy
port, which is the least like wine, and the most like
medicine, or matching pins with Drake, his brother
millionnaire.”

“Shall we look for him?”

“I am quite comfortable with his daughter, who
will entertain me better.”

“Tempe is going on a journey, she says. You
will miss her.”

“I have just been speaking with that blonde puppy,
her husband, about it. I have no idea that I
shall suffer in her absence. How do you think he

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

will enjoy himself in my society? They are to be
with us, you know.”

“I am almost sorry to hear that.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“I like the house as it is; the intrusion of a
stranger may change its aspect.”

“This is one of your whims. You remind me of
those French women who retire to a convent for a
week or two of prayer and bread and water. When
they return to the world their lovers' oaths have a
new charm, and their wine a fresh sparkle.”

“Don't hurt me.”

Argus looked at her, and his eyes blazed with a
quick mischievous fire. It was impossible for her,
with all her sense of conventionality, not to show
that she felt his glances.

“I like to hurt you,” he said.

John Drake appealed to them, and smilingly nodded
to Virginia. His bright silken hair spread wildly
round his head; his delicate face was deeply flushed,
his mouth was half open, and as he approached, his
gait was uncertain.

“Damn you,” said Argus, “you are drunk.”

Virginia rose, and drew John's arm towards her.

“Come,” she said, “I want to see your mother's
celebrated cactus plants. I know where they are;
will you show them to me?”

“To death's door. They are out on the piazza,
will you go there, delicate creature?”

“Yes, yes, I need fresh air.”

She placed her hand in his arm and steered him
into the portico, with a regret for the loss of Argus.

CHAPTER X.

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

Mr. Drake was polite enough to send a note to
Argus, when Tempe had been gone two weeks,
which stated that John, for business reasons, would
extend his tour considerably; the young couple in
consequence would have an opportunity to see the
rapid growth of some of the Mighty Cities of the
West. A month, most likely, would elapse before
their return. Shortly after the note was received, a
letter came from Tempe,—her first to her mother.

“Dear Mother: You never saw such work; we lost the small
trunk, which was not marked. Have you seen Virginia? Her
society will make amends for my absence. I wish I was at home,
but I like travelling. I saw somebody yesterday that looked exactly
like Mary Sutcliffe. I had half a mind to ask her if the
cat's kittens had yellow patches, or if they were black and white:
Mary said the cat would have kittens by the time I got back.
You can't think how fish seems to be prized at these hotels, while
we care nothing for it. We stopped in Boston, and John bought
me an Indian scarf. In New York he bought me a dark blue
silk; he is very attentive, but he has a cold. I had it made, and
it is trimmed with black lace. Mother, the lace was three dollars
a yard. We are in Chicago now. The air has a flat taste to
me; it is different from Kent air. Of course, Uncle Argus has
worried about me; oh yes, I think he is pining away. There are
no good preserves at any hotel; the noise at these great houses,
would drive you wild, mother; you would never again wink your
eyes at my slamming doors, could you stay in one awhile. Have
those Drakes been to see you? I do not care for them; do you,

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

mother? I shall visit them but very little. John asked me if I
would go to housekeeping in warm weather. I said, “Er, em,
em,” which ment “yes” to him; to me, “nary housekeeping.”
Why should I wash dishes for him, and dust furniture, and learn
not to suit him in cooking—let me see, four times a day. He is
too particular about his food. Mother, I had rather eat your dry
bread; I hate to see people imagining they would like to have
this, and that, to eat. I shall be gone some weeks yet. I'll help
you knit when I return. John has snatched this from the table,
and I am mad, for he laughs loud at it, and says—“Give me a
kiss?” but I won't. It is eleven o'clock; there is no lamp burning
in Temple House; you are asleep.

“That's a great letter,” said Argus; “so full of
observation.”

“I like it vastly,” said Roxalana, with her infrequent
smile. “It is Tempe herself.”

“So it is, Roxalana, you are right; especially in
forgetting her name.”

The next news Mr. Drake presented in person. He
came hurriedly one evening, while Roxalana and
Argus were at tea, with a white, scared face, bringing
an open letter, at the top of which was an engraving
of a hotel.

“Well, sir,” said Argus, rising and pushing a chair
towards him.

“There is an accident, sir,” replied Mr. Drake,
“a dreadful one.”

Roxalana's eyes turned to stone, and she could
not speak.

“Temple is all right,” he said, addressing her; “it
is my son that is injured.”

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

A bright smile burst over Roxalana's face, and
even the iron countenance of Argus lightened.

“I say,” cried Mr. Drake, in a loud, angry, tearless
voice, for he noticed the effect of his words, “to
me it is dreadful! What shall I do? I cannot
leave my business, and John's case is hopeless.” He
looked down at the letter; and his voice failed him.
Argus took it, and read that a collision had occurred
on some Western Railroad; that John was one of
the victims; that he had been taken to a way town,
and was now in the hotel, which the letter pictured;
and that his friends must lose no time in reaching
him, for his injuries were fatal.

“You must go, Argus,” said Roxalana; “no
preparation is necessary. Will that suit you, Mr.
Drake?”

“Bring him home, sir, bring him home,” said Mr.
Drake, his tears falling. “My wife fell down in a
fit, for she opened the letter. You could not take
her; my girls would be simply an encumbrance. If
you go, it must be alone. I thank you for the favor,
sir. What can I do to forward the journey?”

“Nothing; I shall leave at once. Mat Sutcliffe
will drive me to Wing's Station, and I can catch the
down train.”

Roxalana felt it impossible to make any condoling
speech to Mr. Drake; she perceived his trouble, but
could not sympathize with it, her relief at Tempe's
escape was so great. Moreover, while hearing of
John's disaster, she discovered that she felt no real
interest in him, and was too sincere to express any

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

grief. Neither had she any thought of the influence
this event might have upon Tempe; the dear illusions
of sentiment, the hopes or desires which continually
ascend from the depths of the soul when
it must live in solitude, found no resting-place in
Roxalana. Neither did Argus make any moral or
philosophical remarks upon the disaster; with a
silent, natural respect he opened the doors for Mr.
Drake to pass out, and accompanied him to the gate,
holding his own hat in his hands. Had it been any
man besides Argus, Mr. Drake would have attempted
some utterance concerning the mysterious ways of
Providence; as it was, he concluded the interview
with a request concerning his son, and parted from
Argus with the same appearance of firmness and
composure.

Within an hour, Argus and Mat Sutcliffe were
riding along a road which crossed Apsley River just
below the Forge.

“Talk about the treachery of the sea!” exclaimed
Mat, in a triumphant tone, “what is't compared to the
continual accidents on shore? If the sea mauls and
maims us, 'tisn't above board; we are not strewed
along the ground to excite the pity and horror of
folks, but we are dragged under, out of sight, where
the affair is between ourselves.”

“The bones of the drowned do not always lie in
the caverns of the deep.”

“I know they get into coves, and sometimes drift
in along shore, but they don't make spectacles for a
multitude. So all that fol-de-rol I saw the other day

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

has come to nothing in less than two months. Well,
shall I be waiting for you and Tempe at Wing's?
I'll go along, and help you shoulder up the young
feller, if you say so.”

“He is dead, now, Mat.”

“The poor little gal!”

“Death must wake us up now and then.”

“They are fired up at the Forge, I see.”

“Brande is casting anchors.”

As they passed from the darkness into the wake
of light gleaming from a furnace door, Virginia
came into the mind of Argus, looking as she did on
the night of Tempe's wedding, in her cloud-like
dress,—tall, fair, self-collected with soft, radiant,
umber-colored eyes, tinted like a summer-brook,—
“the leopard rill,” when it flows from beneath the
alders and oaks, which bend over and conceal its
course. He looked at the house, which loomed up
beyond the Forge.

“I'll let her know, right off,” said Mat.

“Have you been to the house?”

“No; but they know me on the premises. I'll
speak to the foreman.”

“Stop at the house on your way back, and ask
Mrs. Brande, with my respects, to allow Miss Brande
to go to Mrs. Gates.”

“Just so.”

“And look in every day, will you?”

“Exactly so.”

Mat flourished his whip, proud to be commissioned
by Argus, and venting his feelings by putting the

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

horse at top speed. At the station he grew melancholy,
and followed the locomotive till it screamed
itself out of sight. On the way home he wished for
his dogs, his boys, his wife, he was so uncommonly
downhearted. Knocking at Mr. Brande's back door,
his thoughts were diverted, by a disagreeable expectation
that Mr. or Mrs. Brande might open the door,
but Chloe, a colored member of the family, came.

“Lord, save me, what kind of a time o'night is
this for bizness?” she asked.

“I have an errand to Mrs. Brande, your marm.”

“Nothing would make Missis Brande get up at
this time in the evening, I assure you. Better speak
to Miss Virginia; she's tuing round somewhere.
Come in, and say what you want to say.”

“Can I take a bite of fire meanwhile? It's coolish,
to-night.”

“I look for a frost. Address yourself to the
heat, though the fire is most down.”

When he had delivered his message, Virginia
for a moment was strongly tempted to go with him
at once; but it could not be.

“I shall have to stay with mother till she falls
asleep; and when will she fall asleep?”

“I could a-tole the man the same,” muttered
Chloe, “but he wouldn't a-gone if I had.”

“Mrs. Gates is alone,” said Mat, doggedly, “and I
expect choke full of trouble.”

He knew better, and could not help raising his
eyes to Virginia; they exchanged faint smiles.

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

“Mercy on us!” Chloe commented; “they larf
together,—and he is back-door folks.”

“Chloe,” said Virginia, in an under tone, and
handing her a key, “bring me some wine.”

“I can't a-bear wine,” said Mat, quickly.

“What then?”

“Brandy.”

“Bring that, Chloe.”

Mat had scarcely set his glass down when Mr.
Brande came suddenly into the kitchen, with a lamp
in his hand; he had heard Mat's gruff voice in the
room where he was reading.

“What is the matter, Virginia?”

She told him the tidings. Mr. Brande advanced
so near with his lamp to Mat's whiskers that
the latter exclaimed, “You'll know me next
time.”

“I do not know much good of you at any time,
my man,” Mr. Brande replied meekly.

“He was sent here, father, with the request that
I should go down to Mrs. Gates.”

“Who sent for you?”

“Captain Argus Gates,” answered Mat.

“To-morrow she may be permitted to go, if her
mother's health is good.”

Mat retreated, with a glance at Virginia, which
signified that whatever he thought of her father, it
was all right between them.

“Virginia,” said Mr. Brande, “you are at Temple
House often.”

“Not o'nights, certain,” interposed Chloe. “I'm a

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

sinner if she ain't a-waitin' too much on the missis
for many visits.”

“Sho, sho! Chloe, you astonish me,” answered Mr.
Brande, retreating.

,,Your father has not been astonished this twenty
years, missey. Can't ye get to bed, honey? Why
can't missis let my old bones crackle about for her,
instead of wearing the soft peth of yours?”

But Virginia, who was not heeding her, sighed,
and walked across the room with her head bent.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I should have offered to go
to Tempe; who else could? Had I power beyond
these little things I could define noble duties. As it
is.”—She was gone.

“I'se most tired of this world, especially when
I see men and women as I have this last five minutes
It's no use, though,” continued Chloe, “Missey Virginia
will have to help missis out of the grave when
Gabriel blows the trump, I'll bet, while Mr. Brande
is walking, 'spectable like, in long cloths, all by his
self, to judgment.”

CHAPTER XI.

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

Argus found Tempe alone. Her pretty locks
looked dull and dry, and her great eyes were heavy
with watching and weeping. For the first time within
her recollection Argus kissed her; then she crept
into his arms, laid her head against his breast and fell
into a sound sleep. He sat like a statue, noting the
faint regularity of her breath, wondering how much
of a ripple so frail a being could raise on the sea of
life, when she woke and exclaimed:

“Will Mr. Drake come afterwards, to take the—
the—John, I mean, and bury him in the family burying
place?”

“He sent me for that purpose, Tempe; you must
finish the journey, as you began it—with a difference.”
Then she wept afresh, dreading to go, in
such an awful way, for—

He wiped her eyes with his handkerchief, beginning
to feel a little impatience, which she perceived,
and was restored to herself as if by electricity. She
told Argus all that had happened in a few words,

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

and repeated John's wishes. He would have made
a will had it been possible, for he felt more anxious
about making provision for her, than to prepare for
his last moments. He was nearer to God, he said,
than she was, and would soon be entirely cared for,
while she,—who could give her money? Continual
wandering of mind and fainting turns had prevented
him from making even the slightest arrangement;
and, concluded Tempe, “He was dead, after all my
watching, before I knew it.”

“I am to have you again entirely,” said Argus;
“there is no help for it. You are returned to me
with the addition of `Drake,' to your name.”

“Remarkably short experiment, my wedded life,
Uncle Argus.”

“What induced your little, bran-stuffed brains to
marry? Do you remember a picture in your school
book of a Serene Monster, behind whom rose a
dreary, flat, lifeless desert, whose horizon receded as
the eye sought it? Did you know that the desert
was matrimony? And the monster pretended the
riddle of it could be propounded?”

“I did not want any other girl to have him,
and it pleased me to take him from his mother and
sisters. I suppose they think I am punished.”

The old provocation came across Argus to throw
his cane at her.

“You stand next to your father in nature, who let
the jaws of chance crack him as if he had been a filbert.
Let me tell you once and for all, that you are

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

foolhardy enough only to commit and sacrifice those
you are connected with.”

“If you have come all the way from Kent to
scold at me, let us sit, Uncle Argus, and have it out;
other matters may take their course.”

She sat down composedly, and fixed her eyes on
him in a way that made him laugh.

“I am a poor deputy; your mother or Virginia
should have come for you, with salve and balsam.
Are you prepared to leave at once?”

“Yes, Uncle Argus, I am ready.”

A public funeral was in preparation at home;
Tempe went to Mr. Drake's, and soon felt the restrictions
of her position. The dramatic grief, bustle, and
solicitude of the family concerning the event swallowed
up Tempe's personal concern in it: her curiosity
and attention were so absorbed that the few
hours passed there afterwards seemed days to her.

Argus shut himself up at home with Roxalana,
and both declined a place in the Drake procession.
Virginia Brande alone went to see Tempe, and was
received with the impassiveness belonging to her as
Miss Brande.

“I haven't cried a bit since I came,” said Tempe.
to her, when they were left together for a moment.
“Mrs. Drake cries into her cups of tea, which are
being brought her all the time, and the girls sob and
groan, and stare into their handkerchiefs, and then
run up stairs to see how the three dressmakers are
getting on.”

Virginia's eyes were fixed on Tempe; she

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

earnestly desired to find some index to guide her into a
way of speech which should prove a solace and
help.

“Dear child,” she began, but Tempe interrupted
her.

“Uncle Argus fled from this scene,—do you wonder?
I don't. Did you ever see anything more
foolish than the Drakes? It all seems like a show
to me.”

“Oh, Tempe, can't you see anything behind this
effect? I am sure there is heart in it.”

“Where?”

“Don't you believe that the son and the brother
will survive all this poor pomp and worry? Hereafter,
some pleasant image will come and dwell with
the mother and sisters,—a shape that will sit in
sweet and solemn quiet with them, when apart from
their worldly selves. Be wise and patient, Tempe;
consider how different people are. The mental picture
every outward act presents differs in every
mind—unless—as seems to be the case with you, we
act without interior motive. You never have referred
these matters to the judgment of the one
Solitary Spectator, have you?”

Tempe slightly shrugged her shoulders, and Virginia
blushed painfully, as if she had inflicted a
blow upon herself, but continued:

“To one half the world your mother would be very
inarticulate; but you know that all her nature is
waiting for the moment of your return.”

Even Virginia, in her way, was driven to preach

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

to Tempe, as Argus had been in his, but one sermon
made as much impression as the other; Tempe was
musing as she ceased speaking, and then absently
exclaimed:

“In doing all in his power to please me, he was
pleased and happy; there's a fact. There they are
on the stairs,—those creatures. Do you know, Virginia,
they speak to me, and of me, as a pronoun?”

CHAPTER XII.

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

On the third day after Tempe's return to Kent,
Mr. Drake's coachman drove her home.

“We shall see you soon,” said the Drake family
at parting.

“I shall see you often, of course,” Tempe replied;
but, her face set homeward, the conviction that a
final separation had taken place between them, settled
in her mind without a regret. As she walked
up the path, she queried whether it was her heavy
mourning dress, or the atmosphere which was
freighted with a storm, that made her feel as if she
were taking a wearisome burden along. She pushed
open the door of the green room, and, burden or no
burden, saw Argus and her mother in the old place
and attitude. Like a wounded child, her lips
quivered, but resolutely beating back the rush of
tears that burnt her eyelids, she ended the struggle
with a smile, and cried:

“This is an agreeable world, mother. I have been
journeying in it, and here I am again.”

Roxalana rose stiffly from her seat; shook Tempe's
hand vehemently; stared at her with strange, sad
eyes, and resumed her seat without speaking.

Argus eyed Tempe's crape with disgust.

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

“Take off those badges now,” he said; “the disconsolate
is not becoming.”

“Do,” begged her mother, “leave off those weeds
with us; I detest them, and you will find them as
irksome as convalescence. It is a poor custom to
have the dead brood in black garments; and when
one takes them off, escaping into bright colors, the
dead escape too. I think our friends should be
perceived in all the ordinary affairs of life; nothing
should be set apart for them.”

“Nonsense,” said Argus, throwing his half-smoked
cigar into the fire. “What would become of the
ancient and respectable institution of monuments
and epitaphs,—those final and selfish compliments,—
if we followed your fancies?”

“Mother,” said Tempe, “I shall wear black all
my days; I am sure it is the least I can do.”

She caught the inquiring, sarcastic smile with
which Argus regarded her, and sat down, pulling off
her gloves, and bonnet. The reception she received,
so cool, and undemonstrative, as if nothing had happened,
set her thoughts upon the wonderful talent
of self-ownership which belonged to Argus and Roxalana.
She comprehended now why they seemed
superior to the persons she had lately been intimate
with; their outside possessions weighed nothing
in comparison to that instinct of self-possession,
when well developed!

“Argus,” said Roxalana, “attend to the fire;
Tempe may be taking cold.”

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

“The fire is a rousing one, and does not need a
splinter even.”

While the evening was passing as usual Tempe
stole off to bed. There were women, who, having
borne what she had, upon re-entering that chamber
would have felt their sharpest misery; who would
have been tormented with baffled desire,—a remorse
at not having improved the moments of sympathy
and endearment which only yesterday was possible,
to-day, impossible. Women yet alive in every fibre,
crushed with the belief of an eternal separation from
love, who would have grovelled in an ecstasy of
despair, washed out the vivid colors of the past with
floods of tears, and battled away the memory of their
joys behind the shield of resignation; who would
have propped the ruined present with prayers and
vows, beseeching God to hold the loosened tendrils
of their useless affections. Not so with Tempe.
She stepped across the threshold without dread or
agitation, but a sudden howl of the wind at the loose,
old casements made her turn her eyes towards the
blank, curtainless windows, and shiver. Placing the
lamp near the glass, she shrank from catching a
sight of herself, and moved away with wandering
eyes, which at last fell on the stuffed red and green
macaw, fastened to a mahogany perch against the
wall. Her thoughts travelled back to the time
when she tried to pull out some of its feathers,
years ago, and the interval did not seem much
longer than her marriage day.

“Married!” she whispered, with a feeling of

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

consternation, and holding her left hand up to see the
ring. With nervous haste she dropped it in a
drawer, hoping she had prevented the danger of bad
dreams. Roxalana found her sound asleep, with her
head on the edge of the drawer.

“Come, Tempe, creep into bed beside m, I have
missed you, lately. There is your night-gown; let
me unfasten your dress.”

Tempe submitted with a yawn, and then woke up
enough to ask a hundred questions concerning the
past six weeks. It was midnight before the two
widows slept.

CHAPTER XIII.

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

The severity of the weather rather than the state
of her mind kept Tempe within doors for several
weeks. Outside the snow, consolidated by repeated
storms, settled round the foundations of the house,
and spread a thick, icy sheet over the grounds, binding
all things under its white silence. Inside, the
silence was almost as absolute: Tempe more than
once observed, “You might cut it with a knife.”
Her occupation was confined to keeping herself
warm, and the stripping of carpet rags for Roxalana's
rugs. Virginia Brande could no longer come by the
Forge path, but rode through town to visit them:
Mrs. Brande occasionally dispensed with her attentions,
and allowed her to stay several hours. After
these visits, despite the monotonous winter landscape,
locked in frost, it seemed to Virginia as if she
travelled home on a rainbow, which, flushing Argus's
door, faded when she reached her own. Could the
green room, and the limited scope of Argus, Roxalana
and Tempe,—contracted beings, whose existence
appeared as monotonous as the gray, wintry
sky—have suggested it?

“Missey,” asked Chloe, one day, upon her return
from Temple House, “How does they contrive to
keep that old barn warm enough to live in?”

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

“Chloe, I am surprised at you,” she answered, in
an injured tone. “It is warmer than our house, and
the heat is more pleasant.”

“I have surprised missey,” said Chloe, laughing
loud, “but she knows that no man, woman, or chile
can keep warm in Argus Gates's house. Why, he
is an icicle himself.”

Virginia observing Chloe, as she adjusted the polished
fire-irons of the polished handsome grate, contrasted
it with the fireside of Temple House; she
pictured Argus thrusting the embers against the
brass dogs in the deep jambs of the chimney, and
Roxalana watching the fitful blaze, while Tempe,
wrapped in a shawl, pretended to be suffocated with
the smoke, which the wind, roaring down the chimney,
sent into the room in little puffs.

“I like the smell of a wood fire,” she exclaimed.

“Ashes is beautiful, to litter up a nice hearth, and
smoke is wholesome for—ham.”

Of late, when the days were cold, and she had visited
Temple House, Argus had asked for coffee, and
brought it to her in the egg-shell china cups she
thought so beautiful; the last time he handed one
he split the coffee on her dress.

“I wish I had my wine-colored cashmere on to-day,
Chloe!”

“I wonder at that; the dress is a month old.
Missis even moved these yer vases, while nobody was
here; I wish she wouldn't move every piece of furniture
about, when she is left alone.”

“I wish there were coffee cups instead.”

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

“The closet is ram jam full of coffee cups; don't
follow Missis, now, and put a row up here. Massy!
if she hasn't put the books in upside down!”

Virginia glanced at a stately book-case, filled with
religious memoirs and commentaries.

“I would rather have a British Classic than these
solid pounds of mind.”

“So would I, indeed,” Chloe replied, taken with
the title; “how big be they?”

Virginia smiled absently, and said, “He often has
one in his hand.”

“Missey, you are coming down with a cold, sure.
Were you up last night much? Scuttle to your
room now you have a chance; I'll hold up the
house.”

“Thank you, Chloe, but it rests me to stay with
you. Do you mind my dropping to pieces for a
few minutes? Tell me, Chloe, why am I more free
with you, poor soul,—than with anybody else?”

While she spoke Chloe moved a hearth-brush to
and fro, as if she heard music.

“I hope the Lord knows,” she replied, “I don't;
I know nothing at all,—never did,—hope I never
shall!”

“Hear me breathe, Chloe.”

And Virginia sighed from the bottom of her
heart. Then she walked rapidly across the room,
with parted lips and hands knit together; her warm,
brown eyes were full of sweet feeling, her attitude
was beseeching.

“I dare the Brandes to come in now,” muttered

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

Chloe; “they must see she belongs to the world's
people, after all.” And her ears were on the alert
for the slightest sound without.

“What?” said Virginia sharply, her manner
changing. “I must go to mother. I have not
forgot how long I have left her.”

Chloe groaned.

“My mother was a Gay Head Indian,” she said,
“I am half Indian too; that's what makes my
hair straight. Please excuse my bad blood, and let
me advise you, Miss Virginny,—don't take on so
about your dam worthless mother.”

Virginia put her hand over Chloe's mouth and
passed out.

No other visitor disturbed Tempe's monotony for
a long time, except Mr. Drake, who made one nervous
call to inquire about her health, and present her
with a dozen oranges. She also received several
notes from Caroline, which she endeavored to answer
with the spirit they were written in, but falling short
of it, she sent no replies. When one's atmosphere
is monotonous the scythe of time seems stationary;
even the hours stand still against its edge: cloudless
summer days, with their unsparing sunshine,
starless shadows, and soundless airs, at last grow to
be wearisome. So with the present ice-bound seaon,
which Tempe fancied held her in thrall. Even
Argus and Roxalana began to mention spring.
Virginia alone would have prolonged the period,
which, according to her belief, she thought providential
in her behalf.

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

Mat Sutcliffe announced to Argus one morning
that spring had come. The ice on the shores and
inside the bay was giving way. And he asked Argus
if gales were not to be looked for? They compared
notes about the weather, and concluded to
look for southerly storms.

The weather softened so that very day that Tempe
threw aside her shawl, and Roxalana made the tour
of all the rooms, and by way of a walk went up to
the attic to look over the fields and bay. She remarked
to Argus, on coming down, that she had
never seen the White Flat so plainly; it appeared
to be stretching across the harbor's mouth.

“The ice made it look so, probably,” he replied.

The snow around the house began to melt, and in
the stillness they heard the water trickling everywhere.

“Soon,” said Roxalana, “the buds will begin to
swell.”

At sunset the day looked spungy and rotten.
Masses of vapor rolled up from the south, and extinguished
a pale, brassy band of light in the west: and
a strange wind rose in the upper air, and closed with
night.

Early in the evening Argus shook the iron bars of
the shutters on the harbor side, and fastened them;
he foresaw the storm, and would have shut out its
fury for Roxalana's sake, who appeared perturbed
and melancholy as if disasters at sea were threatened.

“The wind must be rising,” she said, holding up
her hand; “I feel streams of air from everywhere.
The candles flare: but I don't hear the surf.”

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

“You will hear it presently,” he replied.

“I don't care if it blows half the town down,” said
Tempe.

“Don't spare the other half: let the whole go, and
be damned!”

A tremendous hiss passed through the crevices of
the outer doors, which was met by a roar in the chimney.
As irruption of white, flaky ashes occurred
and covered the hearth. Next, the roof and walls
of the house were taken as a coign of vantage, by
the shrinking wind to hang out its viewless banners,
which shivered, flapped, and tore to tatters in raging
impotence.

“We must put out this fire, Argus,” said Roxalana,
“or we shall be on fire inside the house.”

“Better put yourselves in bed; I will take care of
the fire.”

Acting upon this suggestion, they left him alone.
A short time afterwards he went out on the lawn.
The dull thunder of the surf now broke so furiously
on the bar that the ground beneath his feet reverberated.

“The bay is champing its jaws on that devilish
White Flat, and any sail coming this way is lost.”

Looking overhead he discovered in the milky
darkness of the obscured moon deep vague rifts in
the sky, like the chasm in Orion. The frenzied, over
driven spirits of the storm took refuge in the piling
tumbling folds of the clouds, which seemed to be
falling into the abyss. While he stood there, the
elms bowed from bole to topmost bough, brushed

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

his face as if they paid him homage. No sound
came from the town side; he could not see a single
light. Opposite the lawn King's Hill reared its black
summit; from thence, if he clomb, he could obtain a
view of the wailing, howling bay, and,—perchance
of some vessel seeking harbor. He preferred to go
back and shut himself up in the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

Though the storm raged the next morning, as
storm had not raged for years, Argus remained in
the green room, and pored over the book of plays,
so well remembered by Virginia. About noon
Mat Sutcliffe burst in, with his tarpaulin jammed
over his head, and carrying an immense spy-glass in
a canvas case. His tidings did not astonish Argus.
A vessel putting into the bay the night before had
dragged her anchors and struck on the White Flat;
her flag was flying from the rigging, and there were
men there; it being low water when she struck, her
quarter deck might afford temporary safety, provided
the cold did not increase and freeze the crew
to death.

“What is the town doing, Mat?” asked Roxalana.

“A great many people are out doing nothing.
They are on the wharves, on the top of King's
Hill, the hair blowing off their heads, and, I believe,
there's a gang along shore somewhere,” he replied.

“No boat can live if put out,” said Argus.
“How low down the bar did the vessel drive on?”

“As near to Bass Headland as can be. If the

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

wind would chop round, somebody might get out
there.”

“So the sailors must drown,” cried Tempe, notwithstanding
she had put her fingers in her ears, not
to hear. “I'll shut myself up in the cellar till it is
all over.”

“I thought,” continued Mat, looking hard at
Argus, “it might be best to look at the shingle
below here; the ice is about gone there. If we
could start under the lee of Bass Headland a boat
might slant—”

Argus gave such a shrug and grimace that Mat
suddenly stopped, and without another word
abruptly left the room.

“Argus,” said Roxalana, with great composure,
“I shall not get you a mouthful of dinner to-day.”

“I trust you will consent to do your share in disposing
of the poor corpses,” added Tempe sharply.

For reply, Argus rose, book in hand, opened the
shutter of the window towards the quay, sat down
by it, and went on with his comedy.

Tempe telegraphed to her mother her opinion,
that he was a beast of an uncle, and even Roxalana
was moved to eye him with a mild, doubting
severity.

But he was on the alert. When he heard drops
of rain plash on the window ledge, he shut his
fingers in his book, and looked into the fire. A
shower came down, which was neither hail, nor snow,
but warm rain. He started up, stretched his arms,
like one who had long been cramped and weary, and

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

sat down again with an indifferent air, and opened
his book.

Roxalana came in from the kitchen, and said that
the vane on the summer-house had veered slightly,
and there was less noise from the wind.

“The gale is moderating, luckily.”

Something in his tone struck her. She raised her
eyes to his, and he smiled ironically; it made her
feel like asking his pardon.

“Can I have any dinner?” he asked.

“I think so; what shall it be?”

“Brandy and cigars.”

She disappeared.

Mat came in late in the afternoon, with as little
ceremony as before, and said roughly to Argus,
“You are wanted.”

“I won't go.”

“Captain, if we don't get across within twelve
hours, every soul on board that vessel now will be
in hell.”

“I supposed so.”

“She's bilged, and the White Flat begins to hug
her. It's flood tide, and the waves must be washing
the main deck; a few hours of that work will settle
their hash.”

“What's doing with the life-boat?”

“The loons have tried to launch her, but there's
something wrong, and they are trying to tinker her
up. The will of folks is good enough, but they
can't get out there,—that's the long and short on't.
Bill Bayley swore he'd go out alone; his cock-boat

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

swamped, first thing, and they had to throw him a
rope. He swore at the man who threw it,—at the
boat,—at the bay,—the wreck,—and the Almighty,
and then he cried. I never liked Bill so well.”

Mat spit into the fire furiously, and stumped
round the room, a shoe on one foot and a boot on
the other, his trousers settling over the hips in spite
of his tight leather belt. He was growing frantic
with excitement.

Argus laughed.

Mat made an energetic, beseeching motion towards
the door; he would have put up his soul for sale for
the sake of seeing Argus move with the intention he
wished to inspire him with. Argus turned back his
sleeves, baring a snow white wrist, and abstractedly
felt his pulse and the muscles of his arms.

“Push ahead,” he said.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Mat shouted, turning very pale,
and lurching towards the door.

“Stoop; where is Roxalana?”

“Roxalana!” Mat shouted.

“What is it, Mat?” she answered, coming with a
bottle.

“Yes; give us a dram, old girl,” continued Mat,
utterly oblivious of the proprieties.

Argus laughed again, and asked for his Mackintosh.

“Now then,” said Mat, having swallowed nearly
a tumbler of brandy. Argus drank a little, and
poured the rest of the bottle into a flask which he
buttoned inside his coat. Tempe ran down to the

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

door as they passed out, and Argus looking back
called out,—

“Where is your crape veil, Tempe?”

“Where the courage of Kent is,—shut up in a
band-box,” she answered.

Roxalana, after gazing at her a moment, took her
by the arm, and dragged her into the green room.

“I believe,” she said, in a breathless undertone,
“that you are possessed sometimes. Do you know
that your uncle Argus may have gone for his
shroud?”

“Was that why he inquired for the veil?”

“Could you choose no other moment to express
your insensibility? Are you never to be anything
but a child?”

“Mother, you must be crazy. You don't mean to
say, that you are going to protest against the Gates
character,—as I represent it?”

Roxalana said no more, but went her way, feeling
a painful excitement. She replenished the fires,
hung kettles of water over them, collected blankets,
cordials, and liquors, and then went to the kitchen
to bake bread.

Twilight brought Mary Sutcliffe and her youngest
boys. Dumping them in a corner of the kitchen as
if they were sacks, and threatening them with a
whipping if they moved, she rolled up her sleeves,
and said that she thought the fathers of families had
better stay at home, instead of risking themselves to
save nobody knew who. Another boat had started
since Mat had got under way, and she guessed the

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

wreck would turn out to be a great cry and little wool;
she did not think there would be much drowning
this time. She wondered if the good folks in Kent
had stirred themselves,—your religious Drakes, and
your pious Brandes, and the rest of the church.

“Hold your tongue, Mary Sutcliffe,” ordered
Tempe.

Then Mary whimpered, sobbed, and shrieked, declaring
she had known all along she should never
set eyes on Mat Sutcliffe again, who was well enough,
considering what he was. And who else would have
done what he was doing? and she gloried in his
spunk. Drying her eyes with her fat hands, and
shaking out her apron, she begged Roxalana to let
her make the bread, and put the house to rights,—in
case there were bodies coming in.

“Do, Mrs. Gates,” she pleaded, “I feel as strong
as a giant to-night; I can wrestle with any amount
of work.”

“If you will stop whining, Mary, I will accept
your services; for, to tell the truth, my head is not
very clear just now, I am afraid I may spoil something.”

“Likely as not,” replied Mary; “go right into
your sitting-room, sit down in your own chair, and
you'll come to. It won't do for you, of all persons,
to be upset, Mrs. Gates.”

Roxalana was quite ready to act upon Mary's suggestion.
Death was near, and she felt it. After
dark Mary began to walk about,—to the alley, and
into the garden, and report what she saw and heard.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

She ran down to the quay once, but came back
scared and subdued at the sight of the angry solitude
of the hoarse, black sea, though she shook her impotent
fist at it with indignation.

Roxalana felt a relief when Virginia Brande came
down from the Forge, enveloped in a plaid cloak.
She had ventured at last to come by the path, the
moment she heard that Captain Gates was making
an attempt to get to the wreck. Her mother was so
frightened and ill about it, that Chloe and herself
were obliged to make representations of the necessity
for help in Kent from every hand and heart, before
she consented to spare her. The Forge was deserted;
her father had gone into town with the intention
of offering a reward to the man who should
first reach the wreck. Mary Sutcliffe, hearing this
cried:

“And I suppose old Drake has offered as much
again,—hasn't he? Wouldn't I like to see Mr.
Mat Sutcliffe Esquire handling that reward? I wish
somebody would pay me for doing my duty. I'd
put the money right into the contribution box at Mr.
Brande's church. Oh yes, don't I see myself doing
it.”

“Mary,” said Virginia, “you are talking nonsense.
Please find some hair pins; mine must have dropped
along the path.”

She removed the cloakhood, and her hair tumbled
in a mass down her shoulders; she could have hid
herself in it.

“Goodness me!” cried Mary, “what splendid hair

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

you've got; I never thought of it before. It is as
black as the sky was just now on the quay.”

“Have you been to the quay, Mary?” asked Roxalana.
“Do content yourself within doors. Where
is Tempe?”

“I saw her kiting up stairs just now. If she
does not take care she'll keel over. It is as true as
the gospel, that she has got a look in her face as
new as a drop of cream would be to my cat.”

“Go and tell her that Virginia Brande is here, and
she will come back.”

“I have always thought,” Mary replied, sticking a
pin between her teeth, and allowing her eyes to take
a reflective cast, “that it was as much as my life was
worth to interfere with the way of a Gates; but I
may change my mind. I'll go right after Tempe.
Oh Lord-a-mercy, where do you think the two creatures
are by this time? Sho: I know they will be
along soon; it is not likely that Captain Argus Gates
is going to be lost at sea, after he has given up going
to sea; and,—it would be foolish to suppose Mat Sutcliffe
will venture more than getting his boots soaked
through.”

“Hair pins, please,” said Virginia.

“Go, immediately,” added Roxalana. “Where is
Tempe? Tell her that Virginia Brande is here.”

Tempe fell into a fit of weeping and laughing the
moment she saw Virginia, which was ended by a
dead faint.

At last the boat was launched. Argus and Mat
were afloat; so much was gained, and Argus thought

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

the danger was preferable to the labor they had undergone
in getting ready to risk their lives. The
gloomy twilight, spreading from the east, dropped
along the shore, while they were dragging, pushing,
and lifting the boat over the shingle, slush, and into
the opposing sea.

“Hell bent be it!” said Mat, apostrophizing the
waves, “if you say so. You are not alone, my
friends.”

Mat seemed a part of the storm; his spirits were
in a wild commotion, his clothes were torn and soggy
with brine, and his hands were gashed and bloody.
Argus had lost his cap, and broken his oar; he
bound his head with Mat's woolen comforter, jammed
his shoulder against the gunwale, and used the shortened
oar with much composure. They did not
make much headway; the boat appeared to be riding
in all directions in the roar and foam of the sea;
darkness pressed upon them, and shut them between
the low-hanging sky and the shaking plain of water
In the midst of his silent, measured, energetic action
the thoughts of Argus drifted idly back to the trifling
events of his life; a new and surprising charm
was added to them; they were as bright, quiet, and
warm as the golden dust of a summer sunset which
touches everything as it vanishes.

Mat swore at the top of his voice, that the wind
was more nor'rard, and it would be an even chance
about beating back—or not. Argus looked up, and
saw a circular break in the clouds, but said nothing.

“By the crucifix,” cried Mat, throwing himself

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

forward, “I heard a yell. Where away are we?
We are shoaling!”

Argus plunged his hands into the water from the
stern sheets; it felt like the wrinkled, hideous flesh
of a monster, trying to creep away.

“We are under lee, or there is a lull, for the water
don't break,” he said.

“If the moon was out we should see the White
Flat. I reckon we are on the tongue of the bar, and
the vessel has struck below. Her hull must be sunk
ten feet by this time, and her shrouds and spars are
washed off, that yell will not be heard again.”

“Damn em,” said Mat savagely, “if they have
drowned afore ever we could reach 'em, I'll take 'em
dead, carry every mother's son of 'em to Kent, and
bury 'em against their wills.”

The endless, steady-going rockers which slid under
them from the bay outside tossed the boat no
longer; the wind ceased to smite their faces, but tore
overhead and ripped the clouds apart. The moon
rolled out, and to the right they saw the ghastly,
narrow crest of the White Flat. A mass of spume on
their left which hissed madly proved what Argus
had said, that they were close to the end of the bar.
Within the limits of the moonlight they saw nothing.
In the bewildering, darkling illumination of the
shattering water around them they were alone.

“If she's parted,” continued Mat, “something
might wash this way; her gear at least. I'd like to
catch a cabin door, or an article to that effect, it
might come handy.”

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

Argus did not hear him, for he was overboard.
Missing him, Mat gave way for a moment; he felt
the keel shove resisting sand, and remained passive,
merely muttering, “I'm blasted, but she may drive.”

Argus had seen, or thought he had, to the right of
the boat, some object dipping in and out of the water
and making towards them. He met it coming
sideways, where the water was just below his breast:
missed a hold of it, struggled for it, the shifting bottom
impeding his footway, and the water battling
against his head and arms, till rearing itself up and
stranding on the beach, he stumbled and fell beside
it exhausted.

Raising himself on his hands and knees, he brought
his face close to two persons, a man and a woman,
fastened together by the embrace of death. The
woman's face was upturned; its white oval, wet and
glistening, shed a horrid light; the repeated blows of
the murderous waves had tangled and spread her
long hair over her. Tears of rage rushed into Argus's
eyes when he saw that it had been half torn
from its roots. Her arms were round the man's
head; her hands clutched his temples, his face was so
tightly pressed into her bossom that Argus instinctively
believed he was still alive in a stifled swoon.
She was dead. Take her lover away from that breast
of stone, Argus, let him not see those open lips—no
longer the crimson gates to the fiery hours of his enjoyment,
nor let him feel those poor bruised fingers
clenching his brain; those delicate stems of the will
are powerless to creep round his heart! May Satan

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

of the remorseless deep alone be destined to know
and remember the last hour of this woman's passion,
despair, and sacrifice!

Argus rose to his feet, wondering why he saw so
clearly, and possessed with an idea which was a mad
one, perhaps, but which allied him, in greatness of
soul, to the woman before him. He was still confused,
and had forgotten where Mat and the boat were,
but Mat had seen his dark figure rising against the
sky, and was ploughing through the sand with the
intention of remonstrating with Argus, on the impossibility
of ever getting it off again. But when he
came up behind him, there was something in his attitude—
a familiar one,—which imposed his respectful
attention. Mat bent over the bodies silently, and
touched them with his foot.

“She is dead?” interrogated Argus.

“Never will be more so.”

“This man is alive. Lift his head. I am out of
breath. The wind is going down, and we can run
him back easy.”

“It may raly be called pleasant. There now I
have got you, safe enough from her. God! She put
on shirt and trousers to jump overboard with him,
swapping deaths, and getting nothing to boot. He
is limber; give me the brandy and let's warm up
the boy.”

“Here,” said Argus, in a suppressed voice, “pour
it down, quick. Have you a lashing? I should
like to put her out of his sight; one of the ballast

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

stones will do. Help me to carry her to the other
side of the bar; the deep water will cover her.”

Mat pretended to be too busy to hear.

“Crazier than ever,” he muttered. “I might have
known his damned crankiness would bile out somewhere.”

Argus wrapped the poor girl in his Mackintosh,
and staggered towards the boat carrying her; there
was no help against it, and Mat rose to his assistance.
In a moment or two she was buried in the
grave she had so terribly resisted.

The gale was nearly spent, and Mat ventured to
hoist the sail. Argus tumbled the still insensible
man into the boat by the head and heels, and they
ran across the harbor, landing at the quay below the
house. Mary was there before the boat was tied to
a spile.

“How are you off for elbow grease?” cried Mat.
“Put the lantern down, and jump in; here's a bundle
for you to take up to the house. Capen and I
are clean gone, I tell you. I've lost the rims of my
ears, and expect to leave a few toes in these ere boots
when I pull 'em off. Come, quick.”

Without a word she lifted the man from the bottom
of the boat, and, with Mat's help, clambered up
the wharf, and took him into the house. Tempe ran
shrieking when she saw him stretched on the floor
before the fire, in the green-room. Roxalana sat
rigid, nailed to her chair, incapable of motion at the
sight; Virginia and Mary were collected. Mat adroitly
peeled off a portion of his wet clothes, and

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

told Mary to rub him like damnation. It was a
long time before he gave sign of life. At the first
choking breath Mat poured some brandy over his
face and neck; he rose galvanically to a sitting posture,
and fell back again, to all appearance dead.
But Mat declared he was all right, and went out to
change his own wet clothes for dry ones. Virginia
looked up at Argus, convinced herself that the man
was saved.

“Take care of me, if you please,” he said. “I
want two bottles of brandy, and a dry shirt. How
are you, Roxalana?”

At the sound of his voice she turned in her chair.
Mat returned with his arms full of clothes for Argus,
and asked her if she would be good enough to step
out with Virginia, and go to bed. There wasn't any
use in praying now, for they were back. Not one
of them thought of the unhappy crew, all lost, except
one who laid before them.

“That 'ere Virginia,” said Mat, when she and
Roxalana had gone, and he was watching the man's
eyelids, “is as mealy a gal as I ever saw in my life.
She's cool, and smooth, and soft. She beat Moll in
rubbing. Hullo! his eyes are open. Look here,
Spaniard, you belong to us. Drink this, my lad,
and let me hold you up. So—all right, young un.
Shut up, Gates, you are drunk, and have reason to
be. I reckon you are black and blue from the
bruises you got. I've had a pint of swipes myself,
and feel inwardly correct. Hark ye—he's off in a
reglar, natural sleep, aint he?”

CHAPTER XV.

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

A little after daybreak Chloe knocked at the
door, and was let in by Mat, who had dozed, and
drank, and watched with Argus all night, waiting
for the even chance to be decided with the one they
had rescued. It was decided in his favor, if life
could be called a favor. He came to himself at last,
battered, sore, and amazed—not able to speak much,
nor quite up to analyzing his situation.

“How's the Lord your way, Mrs. Ebony Cuff,”
asked Mat, as Chloe passed in; “I don't mean him
exactly, but his right hand man, Mr. Brande.”

“I forgets the Lord whenever I comes across you,
pizen thing that you are. I want Missey, right off.
There's no need of stirring anybody. I know where
she is, and I am going up these stairs, rotten as they
are, like the folks that come here.”

“Better take a handful of ashes to scatter along
your way, if you are going to look for your Missey
in this ere venerable structure.”

“Put the ashes on your own head, 'cause you are
bad all over; but I guess there's not much ashes in
this house. Go, long with you; don't watch me.”

She crept into the chamber where Virginia was,
and softly roused her.

“Better come home, Missey,” she whispered, “your

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

father has not asked for you. Your mother is dead
asleep; didn't I let her take the laudleum drops after
you went last night! 'Tis almost sunrise; the day
will be as light as if the poor souls didn't all go
down. Mr. Brande never came home till two
o'clock, and he says, says he to me—`Chloe, they
are in eternity; such was God's will. Is there any
hot water?' Did he 'spect I had hot water for him?
I had some for you waiting; I thought you would
not dare to stay all night. For marsy's sake come
on now. It isn't in the book for you to be seen
tramping backwards and forwards between here and
the Forge of nights. Let little Tempe alone; don't
wake up the kitten. Marsy on me, where's Argus
Gates been? Out of the house all the time? Musn't
stay in Argus Gates's house.”

She assisted Virginia to dress as she whispered,
with nervous haste. There was no reason for it, but
a mist, faint and chilly, settled round Virginia's
brain; there could be nothing impending at home,—
nothing had happened to sadden her, beyond the
catastrophe of which she knew nothing; what then
was the matter, that obliged her to agree with Chloe
in thinking it best to return as soon as possible?
She silently made herself ready.

“The man is doing well,” said Mat, in reply to
her salutation, when she came down. “We had
several tussles with him in the course of the night,
when he seemed to be slipping out of our hands;
but he is a sure card now. We don't know his
name yet, nor what business he is in; but I guess
he is a likely sort of man.”

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

“What do you mean?” asked Chloe, eagerly.

“Picked a man out of the water,” he answered;
“he was most pickled.”

“Is one saved? Did you find him alone?”

“All living alone. there wasn't a cuss in sight
besides him anywheres. Beats me where they did
go to. Enough's good as a feast, though.”

Chloe was much inclined to hear further particulars,
but Virginia beckoned her along. The yearning,
dispirited glance which Virginia threw back at
the house as she left it, was not lost upon the sharpsighted
Mat. As she and Chloe entered the path
beyond the alley, the fan-like rays of the rising sun
struck into the sky, and coldly shone over the wild
bay; no lucid blue nor shifting green colored its
surface; it was a leaden-hued, turbulent, hurrying
mass. Virginia found no solace in the pale light as
it spread over the pastures and leafless shrubs; the
mystery in the atmosphere which sometimes tracks
one's feelings had vanished. With the turn in the
path near the Forge the scene changed. Here
Apsley River was bordered with a grove of pine
trees whose green pinnacles crowned the air, and
whose gray shafts columned the ground with melancholy
state. The sea was no longer visible and the
town sank behind a range of grassy, shapeless hills.
Some fancy concerning the grove arrested her; its
depths she had not visited for years. She recalled
the time when she played upon its red beds, under
its feathery canopy, and pulled up the spotted moss,
or broke the yellow plate-like tops of the fungus,

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

which pushed through the sand and thatched itself
with needles; the silence and the sighing of the
pines suited her present mood. When she came
within the precincts of the Forge, and saw the high
house glittering with windows, she left her sighs and
love for solitude in the shrine of the grove. The
men about the stable were the only evidence that
the house was astir. Virginia went up to her room,
and despised herself for thinking it comfortable after
her weary, absorbing night, and compared it with
the apartment she had slept in for an hour or two—
a vast, barn-like place, containing more draughts
than furniture; whose walls represented a hunting
scene, where the hunters and their game were
equally torn, where the boscage, arcades, and sylvan
fountains had faded to a pale brown; whose floor
was gray, and shiny, and cold as ice. Roxalana's
father bed was like a dromedary's back, and her
counterpane a calico biography; Tempe's first dress
was in it, and the last Indian pillow-case of Argus.
It all seemed preferable to Virginia, for freedom was
there. When the breakfast bell rang, she went
down, attired in the morning dress her father's taste
dictated at present, and with the manners he always
expected her to serve him with. Still there was an
air of self-command about her which must have convinced
him there was the capacity for opposition.
He was standing at the back of his chair, rubbing
his sleek, shaven chin, his sharp, impassive eyes,
seeming to observe nothing, observed everything
He noted Virginia's paleness,—that Mrs. Brande's

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

hand shook more than usual, and a cracked china
cup at the same moment,—but spoke of neither.
The large diamond pin in his shirt front, the large
white perfumed cambric handkerchief which he
flourished, looked no clearer, plainer, nor fairer than he
did, in manner and countenance, as he sat at the head
of his table, tasting of every dish, even drinking both
tea and coffee, but eating only morsels after all.
Chloe continually appeared with hot cakes, hot eggs,
or hot tea, and in the intervals stood at Mrs.
Brande's elbow. It was one of Mr. Brande's
requirements, also, that his wife, in whatever
condition of nervousness, lethargy, or feebleness,
should appear at breakfast; and this morning
she occupied her usual seat before the tray, whose
silver array she was almost incapable of managing.
Her puffy eyes, and lax mouth, her hoarse sighs, the
handsome lace cap awry on her head, the mixed finery
of her dress, presented a contrast to his and Virginia's
appearance, which irritated his inmost soul. Even
with his wife, however, he found his limits. He
could compel her to rise to sit at the table,—but he
could not force her to eat, nor prevent the occasional
fall of a cup, or the spilling of coffee by her trembling
hand. He was obliged to wink at Chloe's
officiousness in taking the duties of the meal from
her, adoritly and quietly, to be sure; but for so doing
he would have been pleased to reward her services
by dismissing her.

“Your kind heart, Virginia, and some curiosity,
induced you to stay all night with Mrs. Gates,” he

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

said, sliding his chair back, after breakfast. “I
heard that Argus Gates went out, while I was down
town; several bets were made, I am sorry to say,
against his getting back. Of course he did come
back.”

“Yes, father,” she replied; “very late, however.”

“Did you find anybody requiring more care than
your mother, at his house?”

Mrs. Brande commenced shaking her head with
intense sympathy at the remarks of her husband, and
having begun could not stop.

“I went to see Roxalana, who was much disturbed.
She was gratified to have me with her. I also went
from an interest in the occasion. When they,—
Captain Gates and Mat,—returned with the man
they rescued—”

“Did Gates really go to the trouble of saving a
soul from death?” he interrupted; “well, I am glad
to hear it.”

“Then I busied myself in various ways to restore
him, and succeeded. Mother knows that your question
is answered, I hope.”

“It is not likely that Gates would row a dead man
into his house; it was not necessary, perhaps, for
you to bestow your labors upon him. I remark that
I do not like it. Did you assist in undressing him?
Were you about his person much? Do you think
the matter was quite delicate?”

Virginia made no answer. Chloe, who remained
in the room, fixed her eyes on the mild-voiced man,
the paternal inquisitor, with an expression she

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

derived from some Indian ancestor, who was in the
habit of skulking behind trees with his tomahawk.
She understood Mr. Brande no better than others
did; but she disliked him, and thought him as
hateful as she believed he was sincere.

“From whom do you take this erratic disposition?”
he continued. “What morbid appetite have
you which leads you to seek a kind of society utterly
aside from the sphere you are destined for? Gates
is a man without God in the world. Do you not
think so? Answer me, Virginia. Is he not a heathen
to all intents?”

“I think he is.”

“Is Mrs. Gates any better,—his grotesque sister-in-law?”

“No better.”

“And the little one, that Drake was unfortunate
enough to marry,—what of her?”

“She seems as pagan also.”

“And such are your friends!”

Chloe, unable to contain herself any longer burst
into the conversation.

“I 'spect Missey will come down with newralagy
'fore the night comes, Mr. Brande. She has exposed
herself for her fellow creatures; don't you see that,
sar?” It is in my Bible that a human being is a
human being when he suffers, as well as a pagan
heathen.”

Mr. Brande smiled benevolently on the ignorant
Chloe, and asked her why she was not as quick in
clearing the breakfast things away as she was with

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

her tongue? He hoped no unusual feeling hindered
her in the performance of her duties. Mrs. Brande
transferred her indignation from Virginia to Chloe,
and ordered her in a cross tone to shake the sofa
pillow up, and arrange her footstool, as she had had
quite confusion enough at breakfast, and would be
glad of a little rest. But it was Virginia who complied
with her demands, assisted her to the sofa, adjusted
her cap, and placed a handkerchief in the
inert, useless hands. Mr. Brande sat quietly before the
table still, chewing a stick, and, forgetting all that he
had said, was speculating on the appearance and
condition of his wife. The day before he had received
advice from England respecting some railroad
iron, and it occurred to him then that an opportunity
was offered him for escape from the thraldom of
home; he could profitably go to England on business.
Being absent—what then! A hundred dreams
swarmed in his mind, like stinging bees, laden with
honey. The doubts of a coward, however, stole in
with them; away from the restraints of family, society,
and the church—something in himself would
hold him back from the indulgence, the desire for
which gnawed into his life like a worm! Virginia
mistook his silence for a meditation upon the subject
of Temple House.

“Do you wish me to discontinue my visits to the
Gates family?” she asked. “My friendship never
can be broken.”

“Indeed! I have known Gates for years. At
one time he promised to be a man of energy. His

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

brother George was a rascal, but he seemed to enjoy
life; he spent Argus's money—I believe Argus is
pennyless almost. Perhaps the example of cheerfulness
may be an advantage. I don't know that it
is needful to be cheerful always, though. No; do
not end your acquaintance there; as for friendship—
pshaw, Virginia!”

“Poverty is beautiful!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, to only daughters, whose fathers are rich
enough to allow them to contemplate it at a distance
as far as Temple House, say. Absurd thing, it is, to
stick a title on a poor man's house! Chloe, I'll
thank you for my hat. I must, by the way, inquire
about the man picked up last night; possibly he
needs help. Good morning.”

“Aint he the most sensible man ever made?”
asked Chloe. “He does know what to do,—fact,—
when other people are all up side down, as it were.”

“What am I to do under my correct guardianship?”
thought Virginia.

“Virginia,” called Mrs. Brande, brightening with
the departure of her husband, “as you were at
Temple House this morning, and I didn't dream you
were going to stay, why didn't you wait for me to
send a carriage for you? I wanted to try Huber's
Balsam to-day. You know well that Chloe cannot
walk so far, and your father is not willing for me to
send one of the men on such errands. Now, tell me
if you can, how I am to get a—Bot-tle of Hu-ber's
Bal-sam? It is very unpleasant, cold, damp and
unhealthy to-day, but I am going for it. Ask Moses

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

to put one of the horses in the chaise. No, I'll ask
myself.”

Even the daughter of a hundred earls sometimes
finds that grooms, horses, and carriages, are not entirely
at her disposal. It was so with Mrs. Brande
now. Moses declared that the “chay hoss,” must
have a shoe; and there was nary horse in the stable
for her, except Mr. Brande's sulky horse.
Would she try the crittur?

The result was that Virginia walked into town,
and procured a bottle of the desired drug. The
apothecaries of Kent were familiar with Mrs.
Brande's ailments, and the remedies she most preferred;
the knowledge of this was a portion of Virginia's
hateful trouble which had gone on for years.
With the apothecaries, also, Mr. Brande's habitual
self-denial came in play; he would have liked to
forbid their selling to, or trusting, his wife, under the
penalty of the law,—but instead, he paid her long
bills with an excellent grace.

That day Virginia walked six miles. In the evening,
while waiting for her father and mother's return
from a prayer-meeting, which had been appointed
on account of the late dreadful event, in
the hope of averting the further anger of the Almighty
in regard to other shipwrecks in the immediate
neighborhood of Kent, she quilted on the silk
lining of a pair of slippers which Mrs. Brande was
fretting for.

CHAPTER XVI.

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Mat Sutcliffe went home soon after Virginia's
departure and asked Mary to pinch him, for he wanted
to be sure he wasn't in a dream. If he was awake
he would go to bed, if not, he might as well stay up,
and take it out a-dreaming, though he couldn't say
that he found the nightmare refreshing. Mary
pinched him till he roared.

“Look here, Moll,” he said, “I found this handkerchief
squeezed in his waistband; the name
marked on it is Sebastian Ford. That's the man's
name. I'll bet you, he never put the handkerchief
where I found it.”

“Who did then?”

“Never you mind, old woman.”

Argus was alone at his post. He had stretched
himself on the floor, and lay as silent and motionless
as the figure upon the cot near him. A sigh diverted
his attention from the ceiling, and he raised himself
on his elbow to find that he was observed by
a pair of eyes with speculation in them.

“Well,” said Argus, “have you made up your
mind to live? You couldn't be drowned now, if you
tried, you know”

“Was it you, who did this?” a faint voice
asked.

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

Argus nodded.

“What a debt I have incurred!”

“I think so,” Argus replied absently, his thoughts
reverting to the last scene on the White Flat.

“How did you find me?” asked the voice, this
time in a sharper accent, with a vague horror coming
into the dark eyes.

“Alone,” answered Argus promptly.

“No vestige of the ship near me?”

“None whatever.”

“That is a lie, I think.”

“You must have more brandy, for you mustn't
think.” And Argus compelled him to swallow
several spoonfuls.

“Sir,” asked the voice once more. “Was there
anything by my person—clinging to me—round my
neck—I entreat you to tell me.”

“Nothing.”

“By God there was something—it strangles me
now—she,—you ”—

“Don't accuse me of inhospitality,” said Argus,
feeling strongly drawn towards the agitated young
man. “The collar of my shirt which you have on
would not do so unhandsome a thing as to choke
you.”

“Have the goodness to sit beside me, sir. My
name is Sebastian Ford. I am as naked as Adam
was, I suppose”

“I am Argus Gates, your friend, if you say so.
Some one, Mat Sutcliffe, shared with me in restoring
to you the gift of life. I hope you will make

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

something out of it. I have taken a fancy to you; it is
natural under the circumstances you know. Don't
do the other natural thing, though,—turn round
and give me a kick, as soon as there is power in
your foot.”

“Warm the viper, and see,” Sebastian answered
with a smile which changed his weary face into
beauty.

Argus struck his breast in astonishment at the
thrill which passed through it; a new light passed
over his cold, sarcastic face, and Sebastian felt it.
Destiny was kind to him in a measure he could not
yet comprehend; he was on the threshold of an unknown
world; to save himself from the past he
must enter it. He held out his hand to Argus, with
a mournful, affectionate glance; Argus took it.

“Argus,” he said presently, “look out, I am going
to faint.”

Roxalana was called, he remained in a dead faint
so long, one fit succeeding another, that it was afternoon
before he rallied. Argus sent Roxalana away;
he was in no mood to have her beside him, and only
allowed her to come to the door for his orders.
Messages from people in the town were left during
the day which he would not hear. Tempe came to
him once with Mr. Drake's offer of help. Sebastian
caught a glimpse of her.

“What made me imagine no woman was here?”
he asked, “though last night a crowd of them
seemed to be flitting round me.”

“There are two widows living under my roof,”

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

Argus replied curtly; “one is my niece, the other
my sister-in-law.”

“Ah.”

“Do you think you can sit up?”

“Yes, if you will be good enough to send for the
other Savior; I want to see him.”

Argus propped him up with pillows, and sent for
Mat, who came from home immediately. Though
his eyes were bloodshot, his hair ragged and saltlooking,
still Sebastian recognized a certain likeness
to Argus in him, or imitation perhaps. Neither of
them were the sort of men he had been familiar
with; they were not polished and conventional, nor
did they appear like easy desperadoes. He could
not rate them.

“Mat,” said Argus sharply, “you look like a jail
bird. Hasn't Mary any comb? A three-legged stool
I know she uses sometimes.”

Mat made no answer, but gazed intently at nothing.

“Come here, please,” said Sebastian, in a weak
voice. Mat stepped forward, on his toes, and Sebastian
offered his hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

The color streaked over Mat's cheek and forehead.

“'Twas nothing,” he answered; “I am used to
paddling a boat in rough weather. You are round
again, hey?”

“I am aware what a thing it is to be saved by
such men. Of the mere facts I know but little,” said
Sebastian, looking at Mat earnestly.

“The Captian here fetched you off the bar while

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

I was manning the boat. Blarst me, if 'taint a
question, since you went to so much trouble to get
on it, and being on it with all your sensibility drove
out, whether you ought not to have been left there.
When a man is so far gone out of his misery, what's
the use of tormenting him with breath again?”

“How do you account for finding me alone?”
Sebastian asked abruptly. He made a wild involuntary
gesture with his head, and the horror came
into his eyes again.

Mat hesitated, and there was a dead silence in the
room. Sebastian fell back on the pillows, and
closed his eyes. Argus exchanged a glance with
Mat, and shook his head. In a moment Sebastian
started up as if listening.

“Sebastian!” he called, in the imploring, dying
voice of a woman; “your lips are consecrated, and I
lose them forever.”

Mat felt strangely heart-sick, but seeing that Sebastian
did not seem aware that he was speaking, he
began in a loud voice:

“When the book is written which will contain the
freaks of what I call the she-part of nature, the Sea,—
you will be able to account for our finding you as
we did. Moreover, sir, the White Flat is mostly a
quicksand; it sucks down all that goes on't. Also,
sir, the wind changed after your craft bilged, and the
crew were washed off the deep water side. If ever
they round the bar for harbor, there will be skeletons
in port.”

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

Mat did not add that seven of the crew had already
been picked up, and buried that afternoon.

“Take a cigar, Mat,” said Argus suddenly.

“Aye, sir.”

As Mat approached for a light, he felt rewarded
for his deceit when he met Argus's eyes,—no longer,
cold and hard, but vivid and sympathetic. He discovered
then that Argus was thoroughly drunk.

“Capen, I'll take my turn to watch this ere invalid;
you are about up to your notch. How much
have you had, a quart?”

Argus smiled, and held up two fingers.

“Falling off, somewhere,” continued Mat. “I've
known you to hold up three, and a quart was a quart
in them days.”

As silently as before, Argus directed his attention
to Sebastian, who had opened his melancholy eyes.

“Why won't Argus go?” he said. “Stay by me,
and perhaps he may be persuaded to rest.”

“He calls him Argus,” said Mat to himself. “It
will be pretty thick with these two.”

“Be off,” said Argus presently, now holding up
three fingers, “and come back hereafter.”

Mat, saying he had a little business outside, one
that wasn't necessary to the gentlemen present, retired
as far as the other side of the green room door,
sat down on the floor, keeping his hat on, and patiently
embracing his knees.

To be drunk with Argus, meant a revivification of
his faculties, usually in a state of neglect or suspension.
To say that one occasionally puts the noble

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

and generous enemy, wine, into the mouth, means
more philosophically than it does morally. At present
anything that would go to fill up the cup of sensation
Argus would have drained, and added to the
fine life of the moment; he was determined to attain
a certain desirable condition, when a medicine of
oblivion interposes between the vital present and
one's past and future.

Sebastian, aware of the physical strain he had
gone through, was amazed at his increasing brightness,
and deep refreshment.

“How do you do it, Argus?” he exclaimed.

“I don't do it. Do you suppose there will be
such a storm again?”

“You are a strange man.”

“Because I observe you through a number of
glasses? It is my telescopic way. I am a marine,
you know—one of the shelved monsters of the deep.
Have you a fancy to start a museum?”

“Yes,—and begin with that curiosity between
men—our friendship.”

“I said, `your friend.' I am not inclined to
twist my mouth with repeating a phrase I have not
used for forty-one years.”

“Heavens! how old are you?”

“Forty-one.”

Sebastian pulled his moustache with the air of
solving a problem, and Argus walked up and down
the room as if there was no problem left him to
solve. Each observed the other furtively, and both
felt a sentiment new to them.

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

“I have provoked Nature into a conspiracy,” said
Argus at length. “I experience something akin to
the Ideal. I have refused to learn it from ordinary
circumstances,—she has thrown you towards me.”

“And I,” replied Sebastian, “find something in
the Real, which I have struggled against. I'll try a
few steps on the floor, too.”

He slipped from the cot, and stood dizzy and reeling.

“Steady,” said Argus, approaching him; “you
still have on your sea legs.”

Sebastian flung his arms round the neck of Argus,
and kissed his cheek. Argus strained Sebastian to
his breast, and while they were in this attitude, Mat
softly entered in a pair of canvass slippers.

“Blarsted,” he said, almost aloud, “if I haven't
eaten something that's hurt me. I see double—
specks in my eyes—appears to me as if a play was
going on—twenty-five years are supposed to elapse
in the Isle of France, and home comes that ere long
lost vagabond. Raly, they might be brothers now—
in the dark.”

He sat down on the edge of a chair, moved in
spite of the contempt he tried to show, and said in
a gruff voice:

“Past midnight, gentlemen; time for old folks to
be in bed.”

“Get a light then,” said Argus, “and show me
the way to bed.”

“Mrs. Gates would be glad to know,” continued
Mat, cautiously pulling a blanket over Sebastian as

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

he dropped on the cot again, “just how comfortable
the person is.”

Sebastian laughed.

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Like a fine young fellow,” replied Mat, warming
into sudden enthusiasm.

“Get a light then,” repeated Argus, “and show
me the way to that bed you spoke of. I don't know
where it is.”

Mat hurried after a candle, and they started for
the stairs.

“I hope,” said Argus politely, “that you will allow
me to retire in my clothes. I prefer to do so.”

“All right,” answered Mat, “only be sure to undress
in the morning.”

Argus stretched himself on the bed, and closed
his eyes.

“Stop!” he called, as Mat was about to go out,
“What do you think of him?”

“There's a pair of you.”

“A pair! His face paired?”

“I aint a judge of beauty, Capen. What makes
his eyebrows meet? He has got a long, green face.
His eyes are too near together.”

“Is he handsome?”

Argus sat up to make the pillow up to throw at
Mat, in case his reply did not suit him.

“I say, yes: dead and alive, I never looked upon
a handsomer boy.”

“Now go watch him.”

CHAPTER XVII.

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Sebastian Ford was the son of an English
trader who lived in Carthagena many years, and
died there in the time of the political troubles which
convulsed that portion of South America; his
mother was a rich Spanish woman, whose beauty he
inherited. After his father's death Sebastian came
into possession of the business, which he soon closed,
and found himself thereby the owner of twenty
thousand pounds. In the latitude of his birth the
two chief ways of spending money were in glory
and gaming. He cared for neither. With youth,
health, and fortune, he went to England, and, carefully
avoiding all introduction to persons with the
name of Ford, lived both in London and Paris, as
Creoles proverbially live; spent a large share of his
money; grew fatigued; and returned home to tropical
luxury, which is cheap, and at one's door. He
met in his mother's house a Catholic priest of his
own age, who was domiciled there, and in her affections.
He make no effort to oust the priest, nor,
like Hamlet, did he discourse with his mother on
the merits of his father, but silently destroyed all
memorial of him—even ravaged her jewel box, from
which he took an ivory painted miniature, and a

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locket containing a lock of auburn hair, which he
well remembered. In like manner he made farewell
preparations for a second departure, which he
intended should be final, and one day stood before
his handsome, violent, brainless mother, in an
attitude which made the blood flow to her dusky
face.

“My Sebastian!” she said, casting her rolling eyes
over him.

He pointed, without a word, to the sea; beyond
the window, within her sight, the spars of a vessel
swayed back and forth. She understood his intention,
and, after the manner of Spaniards, poured out a
volume of words without a single gesticulation, then
stopped and stretched out her beautiful bare arms
to him.

“That for the padre!” he said, giving them a
blow with his hat, turned on his heel, and left her.
He set sail for a country where vice and religion are
not to be seen hand in hand. Whether some spark
of his mother's fire burned in his blood still; whether
the sentiment which attaches the soul to the earth
where and from which the body is moulded;
whether the formal selfishness, the conventional
barbarities of his adopted life, or the sombre melancholy
of an empty heart, sent him to his native
land again, no one knew. But for several years
some secluded spot there held him fast. Then he
fell into the hands and life of Argus Gates. So
much of his history, connected with business merely,
he related to Argus. He was a passenger in the

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

wrecked vessel, and on his way from a West Indian
port, to a port in the Southern United States. He
had credit at a foreign banking house, not unknown
to Argus, and must, of course, wait for funds,
since he had lost all he brought with him. He confessed
he had no especial aim for the future; there
was still enough of his early fortune to enable him
to live in idleness anywhere. So long as a man's
age keeps him in abeyance, one place, he affirmed,
is as good as another for existence. Argus shook
his head at the idea; he, who created motive power
from the circumstances the present offered, and subordinated
them to the completion of an enjoyment
limited to their limits, could not be expected to
sympathize in such a theory. Argus waited for no
inheritance, reversing the fable; he kept his eyes on
the shadows of sensation, and avoided their substance,—
except in the case of Sebastian himself. In
all the relations which affect men, however, Argus
and Sebastian were worthy of each other. They
were both morally deficient; alike sincere, incapable
of trifling; devoid of puerility; gifted with the faculty
of making forcible and dignified all their acts, which
in others might appear grotesque or weak; and
capable of enduring solitude. They differed also.
Where Sebastian was old, Argus was young; his
sharp, clear, positive nature fell into the depths of
a colossal character, which was generally victorious,
because of its ever accumulating reserved forces.

For a long time Sebastian was in eclipse. An
illness followed his shipwreck, which lasted for

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

weeks; when he recovered it was certain that his
mind was under a cloud. Whether he was haunted
by some recollection, or occupied with anxiety
concerning the future, Argus could not judge. At
times he was possessed by an abstraction which
affected him, as if his sight and hearing were destroyed;
for days he either sat like a statue, in
marble sadness, or walked about the house like a
somnambulist or an automaton. Tempe considered
him ingeniously arranged for a machine, but thought
it a pity he had been gifted with the power of locomotion,
since it caused the danger of his running
against one. But Roxalana, with Argus, felt
strangely attached to him; some secret association
bestowed upon her slow understanding the ability to
comprehend his condition. She thought him in the
despair of exhaustion, and wished that the next
ten years of his life were past, so that the struggle
of change might be over, and the settlement of his
affairs be resolved to the conclusion of his being one
of the family forever. The room intended for
Tempe after her marriage was plainly furnished,
and given to him. He expressed himself satisfied
that the prospect from its four windows revealed no
more of the world than the elms on the lawn, the
garden, and the warehouse above the quay. When
the vine spread its leaves over the summer-house,
and the rose trees budded; when the elms softly
brushed their green, graceful boughs against the
window panes, his mood changed. He said one day

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

to Argus, that he must go down stairs, and ask a
favor of Roxalana.

“Try it,” urged Argus, “fearful she-dragon as she
is, she may grant it. She will be so astonished
to learn that you want one.”

“Dear,” said Sebastian, kissing Roxalana's hand,
“I am awake. I ask something of you.”

“It is granted, Sebastian.”

“Not yet, possibly; will you have me here without
obtaining any knowledge of me? I would have
you accept me as if I were born on that night in
March, instead of having been threatened with death.
I am as much in earnest, as if it were not possible
that my wish comes from a whim.”

“Stay,” she said.

“It must be fondness that prompts me. Is it the
strange old house standing in primal twilight,—the
cold, melancholy, intangible landscape in which it
is set? Is it you, the passionless soul, the central
brooding heart, or Argus, the type of man, neither
existing in Utopia, nor the world of ordinary men,
that gives me these feelings?”

“Whatever reason you may put forward in your
own mind for staying, stay.”

“What I can do for you, Roxalana, will only
prove in the end that my selfishness overpowered
you.”

“I will supply myself then from that selfishness.
Our world is a lonely one, Sebastian; I do not want
society, but at times material for fresh employment.
You would not think it so,—would you? I shall

[figure description] Page 130.[end figure description]

come to you, and take what it pleases me to take, as
one dips a draught of water from a full vessel.”

“Oh,” he muttered, “I have been badly drained
before this, too. I am not so cunning as to keep
this calm woman-friend from a taint of the old
inspiration.”

Roxalana changed the direction of her eyes, but
not their expression, as Argus entered the room.

“He has thought it necessary,” she said, “to
make some appeal to me about staying here. My
faith is shaken now; I supposed, of course, that he
would remain. Can he not be as happy, Argus, as
you are?”

“You are sublime in your conceit,” he answered.

“Finding, I mean, that when the ways of happiness
are impossible, life is better without. I am sure
you would not dare a change now.”

“You are a solitary, ignorant soul. I have dared
to expect a friend in Sebastian—and have I not
dared changes before? What day was it that I left
this house in pursuit of a man no better than a Dead
Sea apple? Sebastian, what do you hope for in
me?”

“More than I have had, even.”

“The garden will be beautiful soon,” said Roxalana.
“Tempe and Virginia are walking there now.”

“Virginia?” said Sebastian inquiringly.

“Our friend, whom you have seen.”

“Where?”

“Have you not seen Virginia Brande?” asked
Argus.

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

“No.”

“You had better have your eyes couched.”

“I recollect,” said Sebastian,—“You,—Roxalana
Mat Sutcliffe, and the child—Tempe. Has any
other figure appeared to me?”

“This one,—just outside the door.”

Virginia came in, with a white jonquil in her
hand, followed by Tempe. Sebastian rose, bowed
deeply, and thought of the Queen of Heaven.

“See, this is finer than your tulips, Roxalana,”
said Virginia, advancing, and offering her the flower.

“I do not think so,” she answered. “Give it to
Sebastian; I was just speaking of the beauty of
our garden.”

Quietly handing him the flower, which he as
quietly took, Virginia turned to Argus, but her
voice was drowned in Tempe's exclamation:

“Don't believe that the garden is fine; it is an
old concern which carries on the production of toadstools.
It was laid out in the year one, by my crazy
relative, whose name I have the honor to bear,—
giving me a Sampson-like air. She thought gooseberry
bushes and fat rose trees meant shrubbery.”

“And this?” said Sebastian with a smile, holding
out the flower.

Tempe twisted her mouth, and made no answer.

He fixed his eyes on the flower, and suddenly,
passionately inhaled its peculiar, rich sweetness, as
strong as wine, and threw it away.

Virginia picked it up with an odd smile, and

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

caressed its crushed leaves with a pitiful motion.

“Needn't have given it to him,” said Tempe
crossly.

“Little Miss,” said Sebastian, “have I provoked
you? The odor stung me.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

No episodes marked the long days of the following
summer at Temple House. The inner self of its
inmates was wrapped in the necessary and wholesome
security which comes from the reciprocal surrender
and interchange of the habits of our outward
life. Carelessly speaking, no change was apparent,
but it was certain that Tempe was less a
teazing, restless presence than formerly; there was
little of the old, hasty flitting in and out of doors,
and the sharp encounters between herself and Argus
had ceased. Roxalana, also, seemed differently disposed;
her treasured odds and ends had lost their
interest to her economical mind. About the time of
Sebastian's recovery, Argus began to disappear regularly
between eight and twelve A. M. For some
reason he did not mention, he sought and obtained
employment in a Marine Insurance Company. His
income was added to, and in due time the household
comforts were added to besides. It was several
weeks before Roxalana's mind was brought to bear
on the fact of his daily absence. An unexpected
irregularity occured in regard to breakfast one morning,
at which Argus expressed some impatience; in
short, he swore.

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

“Why, Argus,” said Roxalana, “one would think
it necessary for you to have your breakfast at a set
time.”

“Yes, unless the person, like yourself, should
happen to be blind and deaf.”

She dropped into her chair and laughed; but
when he had gone, she said, with the air of imparting
a secret, “Tempe, do you know that your
uncle Argus goes out every morning, and has done
so for two months?”

“What if he does? I am willing for the furniture
to go out, too, if it chooses, and the house, or anything
else here; and I don't object to their staying
out, either.”

The gentle ministration of the season coincided with
Sebastian's mood; its temperate sunshine and breezes;
the uniform grass on hill and field, decked everywhere
with straight-stemmed flowers, yellow, blue, and
white; the even beds of harmless shrubs which here
and there covered the flat coast; and the blue creeks
lapping into brown marshes, or smooth pale sand,
were new. The ordinary inequalities of time seemed
to him to have no lodging place; there was no point
for a purpose; night met day in a bow of indefinite
shades. At present, his vitality flowed in the current
of the friendship between himself and Argus,—
a friendship of feeling, not of ideas,—and not yet to
be analysed. Sebastian, under its moral influence,
approached a repose which was better than an occupation;
and Argus, strongly moved by it, felt an
activity by which his mask of coldness, and his

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

selfish habits were lost. Still, Sebastian was sometimes
restless. Some old wound bled afresh; his
face grew passionate again, his handsome eyes, singular
and intense because they were too near together,
wore a tormenting expression. One could
not meet his glance then, without being possessed
with the desire to rend from him the secret of his
power. He muttered Spanish between his teeth, and
hummed wild, monotonous airs. Tempe heard
these, for he was, or appeared to be, unmindful of her
presence. She told him one day, that she had named
two cats that were in training at Mat Sutcliffe's,
“Colado” and “Tizona.” He stared at her, and
asked her if she knew Spanish literature.

“I only know your unhappy fits,” she replied.
“As for literature,—this looks like a place for that,
does it not?”

“They are old songs.”

“Your fits?”

“Did somebody say you were a child?”

“Yes,—when I was born.”

“I have not seen such a fire-fly, for many days.
Shall I remember you henceforth, or forget you?
I'll forget you. Here's another old ballad”—

“Oh, I know it!” and she began between her
teeth, “En el nombre del Criador”—

“I don't like to hear you.”

“Why?”

“It reminds me of the time before I was found
dead,—when women's lips opened with your accent;

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

they sang different things, though. Promise me,
little Tempe, not to imitate me again.”

He looked at her attentively, and saw that in her
face which gave him a shudder of repulsion and regret.
“The innocents,” he said to himself.

“I promise you,” she said quickly, her blood dyeing
the roots of her hair like a flash of flame. But
from that time he was as silent, when moody, as before
Argus and Roxalana.

Argus, too, occasionally returned to his dreamy
ways, passing hours under the elms, with a cigar in
his mouth, which nothing could induce him to remove.
But whatever his mood, Kent was barred
from his doors; its diurnal babble, sad or gay, rolled
into Eternity,—which was no more blind or deaf to
it than the family at Temple House. Many people,
however, knew, and were interested in Sebastian;
whenever he appeared in public, he was pointed at
as “The Passenger.”

CHAPTER XIX.

[figure description] Page 137.[end figure description]

Virginia had better have carried a sprig of rosemary
to Temple House, than the jonquil, when she
made her last visit, which was not repeated for
weeks. The rosemary is vigorous; its stiff branching
stalks covered with minute, pale blossoms, would
have survived Sebastian's crushing hand. Mrs.
Brande fell into a strange condition, which increased
her cunning selfishness, and deprived her of reason.
Mr. Brande ordained that she should appear at home
and abroad, and be treated as usual. It was terrible,
however, to see the espial of Virginia and her father
over the forlorn woman. The misery in Virginia's
eyes; the sense they expressed of her double sacrifice
to her parents; the fixed alertness in Mr.
Brande's countenance, his confidence in being able
to steer his wife through his sphere, according to the
laws of God and man, as he understood them,—must
have shaken the tactics of those beings who are said
to watch over us, and are named our guardian
angels. Summer was in her bower. The happy,
idle, full-fed days gathered round her knees, and laid
upon her breast; if stirred, it was by the scent of
flowers, the taste of fruit, the silver sound of the
creeping seas, the trickling cadence of the brooks,

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

the tree tops wafting through the air, the sight of
clouds, purple and white, rolling along the shining
horizon, the orange “sunset waning slow,” beneath the
islands of the sky. Virginia, too, should have felt
the summer-heart; but her days were tedious, her
nights hateful. There was nothing sweet, sensuous,
lovely, about her; there was nothing pure, peaceful,
holy, in the atmosphere which surrounded her. Duty
with her was a constitutional idea, to be performed
because it was placed in her hands; and once there,
she was incited to its most honest and able performance.
The subjugating contest which most women
undergo when they perceive the necessity of martyrdom,—
that crucifixion of personality, that mysterious
hypocrisy which dictates the habit of self-denial,—
was not possible to her; the powers of
happiness and pleasure were in readiness for their
natural spring when the compression forced upon
them should be removed. Yet she believed that
every event was ordered as a preparation for the
Eternity she was approaching, but in which she did
not yet exist; her senses must first become valueless.
In her opinion, all the mystery of life lay outside
of it, in the doctrines her father taught her.
How could it be otherwise? It is a common notion
that substance is no medium for anything but sin.

“The summer is nearly over, mother,” she said
one day; “you will feel better when autumn
comes.”

“Ta, ta, Virginia! Why open the door for
strange people? Shut it, or I'll yell. Keep out

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

that long streamer of wind that's trying to come in
tail foremost. I won't smell the grapevines; you
mean to have me Miss Pride and Prim. Get the
scissors, and some yellow paper, and cut me out a
row of gentlemen and ladies who don't have to wind
their watches, and wear clothes. Hush, I don't
want them now; Cyrus is coming. My dear, did
you tell me it was a grape year? Mr. Brande, how
easy grapes slip down the throat! Pray, Cyrus; I
always liked your prayers of a summer evening when
the moths would light on your nose. It is because
you never would take Hu-ber's Bal-sam. Pray,
Cyrus. Do I please you?”

“We have had morning prayers, Mrs. Brande. I
must go to the office. We are casting anchors
to-day.”

“I am casting anchors, too. Our good daughter
is my anchor. Virginia, take away this mess of
yellow paper.”

“I don't see any paper,” said Mr. Brande, making
for the door.

“Cyrus, she hides it. Cyrus, won't you send
Chloe away? Cyrus-Rhoda, Virginia-Cyrus, let us
send Chloe away, and the bar she drove through
my head the night you made that beautiful exhortation
in the conference meeting, will drop out. Come
here, husband.”

He was compelled to obey her.

“Put your ear down, Cyrus. Virginia mustn't
hear everything, you know.”

Unwillingly bending towards her, he waited for

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

her to speak. She was fumbling for something
about the bed-clothes.

“There!” she screamed, “take that for not sending
Chloe away, and casting your anchors.” And she
drove the scissors through his cheek. For a moment,
with the pain and the surprise, he lost his temper,
and caught hold of a straggling tress of her hair,
and wrenched it with fury.

“I like it, Cyrus,” she cried; “it does my head
good.”

Virginia turned so dizzy and sick, that for an
instant she was paralyzed; then she sprang forward,
and shook off his violent hand.

“Oh,” he groaned, staggering backwards; “there is
no deliverance for the manner of man I am. Virginia,
what are we to do?”

“Go, father, I will amuse her. Mamma,
deary mamma, I found something for you just
now.”

“Give it to me this very minute.”

“I am going for it. Will you stay still one little
instant? it is in the garden.”

“Yes, yes,” replied Mrs. Brande, composing
herself.

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Brande sent a note to
Virginia, requesting her to talk with Chloe on the
subject of taking service in another family. The
scene, he wrote, they had witnessed that morning
must have been occasioned by an antipathy to her;
and it was possible that a great amendment might
follow, if she were sent away. Virginia made a

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

resolution to combat him in this matter, but could
not resist asking Chloe immediately how she would
feel if she were obliged to leave. Chloe promptly
replied that wild horses couldn't tear her away from
the place whose crosses she had carried so long. No
new place, new miseries, shames and disgraces, for her,
if she knew her Indian self. Did Missey think that
Chloe would leave her own girl in the present nasty
lurch? The thought made her sick at the stomach!

The thought also made her cry. She ran away by
herself, bound up her head in a red handkerchief,
put on a clean starched apron, and sat down, clasping
her slender, coppery fingers, to indulge in the
tears of civilization. Virginia, discovering her, was
dismayed at her strange expression of grief: not a
feature moved, not a sigh escaped, but globe-like
tears chased each other down her cheeks, and
dropped on her hands. Virginia kissed her, and
said, “I love you dearly, Chloe—”

“I know I am going,” said Chloe, solemnly.

“I guess not.”

“You were three years old, Missey, when I came
here, twenty years ago. My baby had just died.”

“I never knew you were married!”

“Never was married; what was the good of one
of the Masapee tribe's marrying? My mother was a
Masapee, you know. Now, if I should have a good
offer, of course, I'd marry. I repented as soon as I
came to live with Mr. Brande.”

A shriek from Mrs. Brande startled them. They
flew to her room, and found her gleeful over the act

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

which she wished them to observe. Mr. Brande's
pulling her hair had suggested the plan of pulling it
herself; she held a handful of her silky, pretty hair
in each hand. A demoniacal intelligence flashed into
her eyes when they came in.

“You have been telling secrets to each other,” she
cried. “I'll tell Mr. Brande. Chloe, what did you
promise me?”

“Missis, I've performed more than I promised,
always I will stay by you, if you want me to
promise that, till the last drop of laudleum is
gone.”

“Chloe!” said Virginia, reprovingly.

“What does the copper convert mean,” asked
Mrs. Brande, “with her laudleums?”

“She means the best, mother.”

“I am quite ready to permit the woman's stay,”
Mrs. Brande continued, in a dignified voice; “but
why will she walk round and round me every night
of my life, with something called an infant sprawling
round her neck?”

“There, Missis, you've spoke it yourself!” exclaimed
Chloe.

“Hush, Virginia will hear you, Chloe. Now sit
down, and we will select our evening text.”

When Mr. Brande came home in the evening, he
found Virginia asleep on the floor, beside her
mother's bed. Her exhausted attitude struck him
painfully; he bent down to raise her head, and Mrs.
Brande gave a shrill laugh, which shook his nerves,
and made Virginia open her eyes to see that the

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

skirt of her dress was ingeniously sewed to the
carpet. As she tried to rise, Mrs. Brande threw herself
upon Virginia, screaming that her life depended
upon remaining there. Before the affair was settled,
every soul in the house was in the room in Virginia's
behalf, and Mrs. Brande was at last quieted. Virginia,
more dead than alive, seated herself at the
supper table, and poured tea for her father. Neither
of them ate a mouthful. Mr. Brande's eyes, however,
devoured his plate; the sweat dripped from
his forehead, and his ostentatious handkerchief came
in play.

“Father,” said Virginia, at last, in a low, steady
voice, “do you not wish mother dead? I do. Death
makes life sacred and beautiful, and her life at
present is horrible.”

For the second time that day, Mr. Brande lost his
self-command. Decorum refused to support him.
He struck the table with his clenched hand, rose,
leaned over it, and stared into her eyes, still radiant,
but swimming in tears.

“When people talk so,” he said, “they have a
narrow escape if the character of assassin is not
given them. You belie my teaching, and my example.”

“I hope so,” she answered, stung into irreverence.
“If I followed your example, what thoughts could
I indulge in, what dreams could inspire me, from
what source would my wishes rise?”

He turned so pale, closing his eyes, too, that she
thought that he would fall face downwards on the

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

table, and stepped towards him, but he raised his
head quickly, and ordered her back to her seat.

“What of Chloe?” he asked.

“I cannot give my consent to her going from me,—
me, father. I need her.”

“She is useful, I grant. Well, we will see. Should
Mrs. Brande's feelings change towards her, she shall
stay. I inform you, Virginia, that I too have my
charge concerning your mother; for a month past
she has passed half the night in crying out against
Chloe. I do not pretend to know her reason for so
doing; but do you not agree with me in thinking it
best to do all that may possibly tend to the restoration
of a health important to our well-being?
Ahem.”

“Yes, yes, she must leave us.”

“Now go to bed, my daughter. You are exhausted;
the circles round your eyes proclaim it.
Must not fade, my child. Ta, ta, good-night.”
And Mr. Brande was able to flourish her out of the
room with his old air.

She was gone, and he stood as if petrified, his
hand still extended; but his eyes moved over everything
within reach, and they were full of the mocking
hatred he dared express to no animate thing.
Being his daughter, and having spoken of dreams
and wishes, what could it mean? Was Virginia,
whose apparent character was all loveliness, accursed
with his secret bane? If it were so, could
she know herself, as he knew himself? And now
to contemplate her eternally with this suspicion!

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

Suppose two suspicions should sometime meet, and
in their lurid lightnings father and daughter stand
revealed to each other! Then he laughed, because
he saw that he could not fail to respect her for self-command.
He pushed his black coat from his
shoulders, thrust his hands in his pockets, and paced
the room, looking into his Janus faces, an able,
proud, acute, resolute, miserable man, counting one
more immolation to his creed,—Virginia,—a creed
powerful enough to shape his actions, but not mighty
enough to control a single sensation. Chloe, impatient
at the long delay over the tea-table, came in.
The silence oppressed her. The candle flames were
not stirred by any air; the moths pushed their feathery
wings through the blaze, and dropped round it
like bits of wool. The shrubbery in the window
frames had fallen asleep in the dew, and the moon
was gliding by wrapped in mist.

“How do you find yourself, this oppressive evening,
Chloe?”

“I am a cinder myself, what with this and that,
sir. There's so many candles burning. You do
like so much 'lumination, sir.”

“A room with crimson paper swallows much
lamplight. It is different in a room papered as
Miss Virginia's is,—dove-color and silver. Is she in
her room?”

“No, sir.”

“Ah, to-morrow is her birthday.”

“I know you remember it, Mr. Brande.”

He drew from his vest pocket a beautiful little

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

enamelled watch, with V. B. in diamonds and a
circle of diamonds round it.

“Glory!” exclaimed Chloe, “it beats her other
watch out and out.”

“Pretty little toy,” he said, making the diamonds
flash; “but of no more important than these moths.
Brush them out, Chloe, they are annoying.”

Replacing the watch in his pocket, and gently
withdrawing, he crept softly to his wife's door, and
listened there for a long time. It was as still within
as without, and he hoped that her composure would
last till morning, at least. But the demon who accompanied
her that day was not yet satisfied. Before
midnight Mr. Brande called Virginia up, for
Mrs. Brande had disappeared. After looking
through every room in the house, they found her
rolled up like a ball under Chloe's bed. Her excuse
for being there was, that she was determined to forestall
Chloe for once, and beat her on her own
ground.

In the morning Mr. Brande gave Virginia the
watch, and expressed a hope that on her next birthday
she would be able to recount as many good
hours, as, he was sure, she could for the past year.
She thanked him gracefully, held the watch in her
hand without looking at it, and asked him to grant
her one more favor. With a ray of impatience in
his eyes, he asked what its nature was. “Could she
take Chloe to Roxalana Gates that evening?”

He reflected a moment, and gave her permission
to do so, and added that he would send a carriage

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

into Kent, as soon as he came home. She begged
him to allow her to walk there by the path, and to
be sent for late in the evening. He again gave way,
but called it a foolish and unbecoming whim. From
the moment Virginia told her mother that Chloe was
going, a lamb-like behavior ensued. She asked for
her knitting, and kept Virginia near her all the
morning to pick up the stitches which she constantly
dropped; this employment was varied with the ringing
of a hand-bell for Chloe, and asking her if she
was gone. Chloe answered the bell, but she would
not reply; her mood was an ugly one. She stopped
praying and crying. A stern comprehension of
Virginia's future suffering filled her thoughts; as she
said afterwards, nothing would have tempted her to
believe in the Lord, or the Brandes, that day.

“Attend the meetings, Chloe,” said Mr. Brande,
when he saw them ready to go. “My interest in
you will not cease. As for money,—when you want
it, it is yours.”

Chloe made a dignified bow, and moved away in
silence.

“Why, Missey,” she said, as they struck down
the path, “'twas March when we last walked from
Temple House. I never see anything pass like the
time! How is Mrs. Gates, and little Mrs. Drake?
And what are you going to take me there for? Who
wants me? And I won't do a thing when I get
there.”

“Don't torment me, Chloe, please.”

“No, Missey; but why hasn't Marm Roxalana

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

offered us help in this distracting time? Why hasn't
Tempe run in and out, in her old fashion? Couldn't
have Capen Argus himself been polite in our affliction?”

“I asked Tempe to keep away, and affliction requires
no politeness.”

Nothing more passed. Virginia entered the house
noiselessly, and opened the green room door. There
was no person in the room with Argus and Roxalana;
Argus was reading a newspaper at the table,
and Roxalana was employed in resting. Virginia,
followed by Chloe, reached the centre of the room
before they perceived her.

“I think it is Virginia,” Roxalana uttered, without
stirring.

“Ah, yes,” said Argus, dropping his newspaper,
and advancing towards her; but he stopped when he
saw her expression.

“Roxalana,” said Virginia, “I have brought you
Chloe; will you keep her for me? She will assist
you. There is no place for her at our house.”

Roxalana's head became thick at once with the
idea; she could make no reply, but stared at Virginia
with a deep gravity.

“I'm kinder turned away from Mr. Brande's
house,” added Chloe. “My salt don't suit his bread
just now. I can't say as I see anything about me
this minute that would make my services 'ceptable.
I don't know as my services are worth anything. At
the same time I think they are, 'specially with dust
webs,” and she pointed to one hanging from the ceiling.
Roxalana's eyes mechanically lifted to it, and
remained there.

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

“Keep Chloe?” said Argus, “certainly; thank
you for bringing her. Roxalana will come to herself
in a moment; her tender nerves can bear no
surprise, you know.”

Roxalana shook with one of her sudden laughs,
and pleasantly observing Chloe, said:

“Sit down, then, and make yourself easy”

“Roxalana,” said Virginia, kneeling by her, and
speaking in the sweetest tones; “I have seen no
friend for weeks; have you thought of me? I
suffer, Roxalana; the bleeding at my heart has
stopped the flow of tears—till now.”

She hid her face in Roxalana's bosom to stifle the
sobs that strangled and convulsed her.

“Only love may save me,” she murmured,—
“dear, deep, human love; not God's now,—so far
away.”

“My poor girl—” said Argus, bending over her.

She raised her face and listened, as one hearing
music that floats through the air of a serene night,—
distant, broken, yet advancing.

“She has a heavenly face,” said Roxalana, as if
speaking of a remote object. “Argus, do you see?”

“I see,” he answered sharply,—the fool, the red
devil; and shall see a rainbow, I hope, presently.”

“It is sometime since you astonished me, Argus,”
Roxalana remarked; “but don't begin now”

“Do you enjoy that emotion, now?”

“He wishes to check me,” said Virginia; “but I
must deny him the rainbow Where is Tempe?”

“She is languid from the heat,” Roxalana replied,
“and I am sure has gone to bed.”

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

“And your new friend?”

“Sebastian goes on a journey to-morrow,” Argus
answered.

“But he will return,—not to leave us again,”
added Roxalana.

“Will he live here?” asked Virginia, in surprise.

“Why not?” said Argus.

“I cannot say why not,” she answered, smiling;
“I hardly know why I asked you. It is not strange
to me that anybody should choose to live here.”

“His being here makes your loan or gift of Chloe
very welcome. We must have our little domestic
asperities smoothed in his behalf. I fancy he is a
luxurious dog,—all the West Indians are.”

“Marsy,” exclaimed Chloe, “you havn't got an
Indian in this family, Capen Gates? It's as bad as
having Missis—”

She stopped abruptly. Argus replied to her
hastily that the Indian he spoke of was a tropical
bird.

While they were speaking the thickness left Roxalana's
head, and a sudden inspiration entered her
mind. She recognized that Virginia loved Argus,
and that Argus did not love Virginia. Here was a
situation to chain her to her chair for a year! She
said to herself, her features resisting all expression,
her eyes impervious,—“I love them as one. My
affection goes between the two,—from one to the
other, and lies between them.”

“Your father will send a carriage for you, Virginia?”
she asked.

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

“By and by, I begged him to let us walk by
the path.”

“Mat Sutcliffe saw you, I'll be bound,” said
Argus; “he constitutes himself the Guardian of the
Path. Is that not like one of Tempe's novels?
Tempe must come in. Can Chloe go for her? Try
your first errand, Chloe.”

Sebastian opened the door and came in as she
passed him, with letters in his hand. Seeing Virginia,
he adroitly stuffed them in his pocket,
approached her with a deep bow, and stood as if he
were waiting for her to speak to him.

“Where is my jonquil?” she asked, with a bright
look.

“Pardon me; it is so long since. Did you present
one to me?”

“Man's memory is like his love, I am afraid,—`a
thing apart.'”

“Hush, Virginia, he knows nothing of that rake;
it surprises me to hear you parody him,” exclaimed
Argus.

“She is not the Queen of Heaven,” thought Sebastian,
“but a noble looking creature of the earth.
And she is moved.”

She carelessly seated herself in the recess of a
window upon a high bench. A cloud of brilliant
white muslin rose about her; her beautiful foot,
sandalled with black ribbon, tossed under it; her
slender white hand, on which diamonds shone, was
half hid in its folds; a lovely flush had come into
her usually pale face; little silky bands of black hair

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

parted on her forehead, and strayed down her cheek;
her full lips were apart, as if she could not breathe
otherwise; and the blue knot of ribbon on her
breast beat rapidly. Sebastian as carelessly seated
himself on the bench beside her.

“And so you are to return?” she said, in a low
voice. “If I were you, I should not go away.”

“I am sent for. But why would you stay?”

“I love them all,—their lives enchant me. Won't
you solve the enigma for me? I have no doubt of
your being a wizard.”

“I do not love them all. I love Argus.”

Their faces were turned now to the window, which
was open; Virginia pulled off a twig from a bush
beneath it, and made no reply.

“I tell you,” he repeated, “that I love Argus.”

“I am glad you do. I know no person requiring
love more. But, is this the way with men of the
world?” He frowned slightly; she thought she
never saw eyes with so strange a lustre, nor eyebrows
so intimidating.

“Don't make me convict myself of sentiment,” he
begged. “How is it an enigma with you, since you
too say `I love them.'”

Tempe burst into the room, crying, “What has
brought Brande's Chloe here? I saw her prowling
about, and ran. Oh, Virginia, have you come at
last? Let me sit beside her, Sebastian.”

She pulled him by the sleeve, and crept into
his place, and nestled close to Virginia.

“You look mighty cool and gauzy, Virginia,” she

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

said. “This black muslin of mine makes me sick,—
mean, smutty stuff! If you haven't got a new
watch! Let me see it.”

“It is my birthday gift,” said Virginia, slipping it
from her belt.

The glittering diamonds caught Sebastian's eyes.

“When have I seen diamonds?” he murmured
absently. “I detest them. I thought they were
drowned.”

“So I should suppose,” said Tempe. “They
grow in the ground where you lived; with us they
are like stars.”

She held the watch against her cheek, which
looked a little sunken, and fixed a sideways glance
on him, with immense, haggard eyes, that nearly
covered her face. He smiled.

“How old are you, Virginia?” asked Roxalana.

“Twenty-three.”

Argus sauntered up to her from the opposite side
of the dimly lighted room.

“Take care,” he said to her. “I see lines in
your forehead. Are you hurrying to overtake the
wrinkles in mine?”

“Uncle Argus,—don't be foolish,” said Tempe.
“You are a dreadfully old man, while Virginia is a
fresh beauty. I am glad to see it.”

“The old men are immortal,” said Sebastian,
“when Aurora loves them.”

“I hear wheels,” cried Virginia, “and now I
must leave you. When,—when shall I see you
again?”

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

“Let us trust soon,” answered Argus gravely.
“It is impossible for us to offer you any service,—
that we know. Come, I'll walk down to the gate
with you. Chloe will be there, and I will shut off
her hysterics.”

“Stop,” said Tempe; “I am going home with
you.”

“No,” said her mother, “I do not wish you to
go; neither does Virginia wish it.”

“I shall go, mother.”

“Nonsense!” called out Argus from the door.
“Stay where you are, you have seen the new
watch.”

Tempe's eyes filled with rage.

“What can prevent my going?”

“Let her go, Roxalana,” said Sebastian. “It is
best.”

“To-morrow, mother, you will see me.” And
Tempe ran down the lawn, past Argus and Virginia,
and sprang into the carriage.

“The brat is going, after all,” said Argus; “but
you will take care of her.”

“She shall go,” replied Virginia; “but you know
that I cannot take care of her.”

“It takes all your powers to preserve the fine
balance we admire in you.”

“Oh, Argus,—the courtly Sebastian makes you
false.”

“I am verging on my second childhood,—that is
all.”

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

“It does not please me to see you soften so; it
threatens one.”

“Seriously, I find that I am weaker. I thought
my fibres as tough as those of your father, my ancient
ally. He is a consistent man. Admire him,
Virginia.”

“Now are you ready?” called Tempe. “Ask
Moses to drive along Bank street. Good night, my
lovely uncle.”

“Good night, little one in weeds.”

“Why do you wish to go by Bank street?” asked
Virginia.

“At the end of Bank street” answered Tempe
sharply, but shuddering at the same time,—“do we
not come upon Burying Hill? Shant we see every
white stone on its summit shining in the moonlight?
I wish to take a look at them. You may view
the bay on the other side of the street. Water and
moonshine represent that which pleases you;
the vague and the mysterious. The high, solid
mound of earth, filled with lesser mounds, numbered
with blocks of marble, represents that which I am
in search of. Here we are already, at the end of
the street.”

“A desert opens.”

Tempe leaned out of the carriage, and was silent.
Virginia, struck with the symptom of imagination in
in her, and with the scene, was silent also. Moses,
as if in sympathy with the occasion, checked his
horses, and they walked at a funeral pace down the
street along which ran the wide base of the

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

graveyard hill. The wheels grazed the edge of the bank
on the opposite side, and below it stretched the bay.
No sound came from the grassy beds of the dead;
the air passed over them without a sigh. The bay
was almost as quiet; along the sandy shore its volume
gravely, gently pressed, and rolled in illumination;
its surface, as far as the horizon suddenly
rounded the bay,—a dim dark coil,—was one mass
of swaying moon-rays,—the bed of “silvery gods.”
Virginia's senses fluttered as they came in contact
with the spirit of the night; her thoughts brought
Argus there. When he walked beside her just now,
under the drooping elms, in a sacred darkness, and
she felt the leaves softly brushing against them,—
why was she not permitted the inspiration given her
this moment? The air of night, filled with bright,
piercing sweetness, touched her lips with a fire which
should be kindled on his lips also. Icy, stern, unyielding
as they looked, they could but melt and weld
with hers in that first, and alas, only kiss born of
virgin passion,—which expires when it is born, and
whose beautiful ghost haunts men's minds forever,
tempting them to chase it through every path which
diverges from every faculty.

Her hands reached up into the air imploringly;
they fell back on Tempe—Tempe contemplating the
grave!

“Yes, yes,” she cried, “in a moment, Virginia.
Tell him to drive fast now; we shall soon be out of
sight of it.”

The carriage wound round the hill, and struck on

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

the lonely road leading to the Forge. Turning to
Virginia, Tempe said:

“That was for good. I found the sermon whose
text has been running in my mind lately. I know
now, that I never loved him. I don't care that,”
(snapping her fingers) “for his memory; the sight of
his monument did not move me one whit. I don't
believe I have been wicked. What are we to do, if
a positive feeling keeps contradicting a conscience
bought and paid for?”

“Hush, Tempe; how wild you are!”

“You can feel my pulse. I am as cool as yourself;
and am about to put myself under your
training.”

To prove the truth of her remarks, she broke into
violent weeping, and Virginia, obliged to forego her
mood,—all her entrancing speculations,—soothed
her, instead of telling her how cruel and unmindful
she was. Tempe held her hands, and laid on her
shoulder, till, irritated beyond endurance, Virginia
began humming between her teeth, and Tempe, remembering
that sign of impatience, grew gentle and
wheedling.

“Let out your voice,” she coaxed. “Come, are
you not sentimental? I know so. Sentimental
folks sing, and make verses,—especially late at
night.”

“If I sing for you, will you let me take you
home?”

“No: Sebastian must be gone first. In the

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

morning I shall go back, and find myself minus any
number of bows from his grandeeship.”

Tempe was suddenly quenched by Virginia's
voice, which smote the air with the passion of a
nightingale:

CHAPTER XX.

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

The lines which Argus avowed were on Virginia's
forehead, really appeared between her dark eyebrows,—
the bar-sinister in her history. Her father
observed the shadow in her face and misinterpreted
it; to some beholders it would have seemed as sweet
and sombre as a summer landscape in the shadows
of a setting sun, when its rays slowly change the
appearance of wood and meadow without disturbing
their character. The vision of possession impossible
to be obtained had passed across Virginia's mind,
and left a trace in her face, more beautiful now than
before. Dreary days followed her visit to Temple
House. Outside was the arid flush of August; the
grass was dry and brown, the shrubs white with
dust, and overrun with insects; the sky was like
blue enamel, beneath which white boiling vapors
spread and vanished. Inside was the wretched
spectacle which Mrs. Brande continually presented.
It seemed to Virginia that she was a mechanical
force, merely set in motion by her mother's necessities,
or her father's demands. It is certain that he
was not touched by the ordinary punishments of life.
Other men at this time would have shown anger or
dejection, or would have absented themselves for

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

business or diversion; but he applied a nicer regularity
to his and Virginia's habits. Many troubles
fell on him. His business unexpectedly went wrong;
an outside connection failed him, and he lost money.
Even the Forge was threatened; should its fires go
down, two hundred men, a large share of whom
were improvident and intemperate, would be thrown
out of employment,—and a force be thrown into the
town the consequences of which he might have to
answer for. There were no other iron works within
a hundred miles, and none in the county besides
manufactured an engine for which he had imported
many of these English and Scotch workmen. A
mad wife sat at his board and slept in his bed. The
effect of the crimson and green, the yellow and blue
of the walls, decorations, and furniture of his house,
was imprisonment. Virginia was a caged bird. Financial
ruin perched over the ledgers in his office.
The church, with its clinging, personal government,
pressed upon him, and Kent, with a hundred sapless
social interests, curbed and fretted even the freedom
of his perplexity. Through it all, however, he carried
high his smooth-shaven, long chin; flourished
his fine cambric handkerchief,—a furled flag over his
knee, or a waving banner in his hand; and kept the
pupils of his eyes within their limits. In every situation
his mind strove for the inspiration which
must come to declare safety and success. It flashed
into his mind one evening at a conference meeting,
while he was giving a short exhortation from the
text, “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit,”
and he laid hold of the high mahogany railing in
front of him as if it were the lever by which he was
raising destiny to his level. When the brethren at
the close of the meeting exchanged customary salulations,
they remarked upon brother Brande's fervor;
rich as he was in worldly favor, it appeared to them
only a mirror which reflected his piety. That night,
the old tortoise-shell cat who lived in the premises
of his office purred beside him, dozed, and blinked
her green eyes in the pleasant silence of his motionless
figure, as he sat absorbed in thought. He trifled
and toyed with the plan; let it run from him; bit it,
cuffed it, and finally closed upon it, with a sharp,
smiling energy, and mastered it. He did not leave
his office till breakfast time,—six o'clock,—on a fair,
dewy, summer morning, when the St. John's wort
blossomed everywhere, even on the borders of the
blackened path across which he walked. Meeting
Virginia on her way from her mother's room, he followed
her into her own chamber, and adjusting a
picture which hung awry, asked her how she had
passed the night.

“As usual,” was the reply.

He took a chair, and Virginia sat down also.

“You have not remained with your mother any
whole night till now, if I rightly recollect. Do
you think her incurably insane?”

At this question her experience compelled an intuitive
preparation for some inevitable change which

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

she must agree to, and its necessity sharpened her
ever-rising opposition.

“She is incurably insane,” he continued, having
obtained no answer; “but she may live for years. I
propose taking her to Dr. Tell's asylum, for I dare
not leave her with you;—she may grow violent
again while I am on my journey. I am going to see
my old friend Carfield, on business.”

“Wherever she is, sir, the burden will be the
same to me. I must still be a dutiful daughter. I
rebel against my service, though; it hurts, and
stains, and tears me. I am only saying this, you
know; the family tie so binds my feet that I cannot
advance one step in the path where my soul should
take its pride and pleasure.”

“You venture to deduct your personality from
the relatives with which Providence surrounds you!
My daughter, we may not do this. Mankind is a
grovelling herd, beneath the pressure of a mighty
hand; let no one raise his forehead above the mass,
with the excuse of `me' written on it. You astonish
me”— He paused an instant, with the thought that
she did not astonish him, except in speaking so
recklessly of treasures never to be spent. “Let me
ask you,” he resumed, “since you are so fearless with
speculations you have no business with as a well
trained girl,—to suppose one,—a man powerful
enough to dictate himself any course in life,—what
limit would there be to his subtle crimes? I say,
they would be as incessant as his breath.”

“I do suppose such a man,” she cried, with kindling
eyes, “but one incapable of crime.”

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

“He does not exist, except in the fancy of brainless
women. Virginia, comprehend yourself, if you
have the ability, but let your knowledge in no wise
be tampered with by a specious will. We are in
this world for other reasons than to live, and move,
and have our being. Ta,—your shoe-lace is unfastened.”

He moved towards the door, but suddenly turned
towards her again, and said:

“Will you be ready to accompany Mrs. Brande
to Dr. Tell's by the close of the week? Attend
carefully to her dress. The letters which may arrive
for me while I am absent must be first looked at
by yourself; if they contain no claims upon me
return them to the head clerk for answer. Please
order a new set of lace curtains for the west chamber,
as you know your mother has amused herself
with embroidering the old ones with twine. It is
possible that young Carfield may return with me.”

“I shall attend to your request.”

“Get Chloe back?”

“No.”

“Ah; come down and give me my breakfast.
Did you ask me about my business embarrassments?
They will amount to nothing; you are not to read
my letters, except with your eyes. Certainly, my
daughter, my affairs have caused the change you
and I have decided upon. Is that a new color,—the
stripe in your dress? You are too tall to wear
stripes,—broad ones, especially. I remark that I

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

dislike that stripe exceedingly. Why do you wear
the dress?”

“Shall I change it, sir?”

“Yes; I will wait for my breakfast a short time,
of course; but it will be waiting.”

He descended the stairs leisurely, whisking the
balusters with his handkerchief, and sharply listening
for a sound from his wife's room. Before he
reached the foot of the stairs, she opened her door,
and hung over the railing from above; he looked up
and stopped. There was a light in her face which
had been there before, but so long ago that he remembered
he was only twenty years old when
he married her. There was something bright and,
pleading in her poor eyes, something sad and quivering
about her poor lips,—yet he could have cursed
her for blasting so many years since then, though he
had carried them bravely.

“Cyrus,” she said, in a low voice, “are you going
to bury me in Sodom or Gomorrah? My feet and
legs are already dead. Leave my head above the
ground, sweet Cyrus, for you know I am Rhoda-Cyrus.
To tell you the truth, now, and oh, how
many times I have lied to you, my godly boy! my
head wont die; it's full of ram shackle;—see how it
goes.”

Her head nodded from side to side, but he scarcely
noticed it, he was so full of the hope that she
might be dying, and it made his heart beat. He
stretched out his hand, and mildly said:

“Come down, Mrs. Brande, for breakfast is late.

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

Come; I would like to have you see Virginia's new
dress.”

“Yes, yes,” she answered, limping along. “You'll
forget what I said about the vine-clad Noah; I never
meant it.”

Offering her his arm, he looked into her face
earnestly.

“It was the sun shining through those green
shades,” he said aloud, “nothing better.”

Just before his departure, Argus surprised him by
calling at his office,—a place they had not met in
since their business transactions were closed when
George Gates was mysteriously discovered—dead.
Mr. Brande passed the palm of his hand softly along
the green cloth of his desk as Argus approached
him at an easy pace, and a fear touched him; was it
possible that the cold-headed Gates had learned he
was in danger of foundering?

“I suppose,” said Argus, slipping into a chair,
and twisting his long legs together, “that some
cursed association has sent me here. I am in want
of money,—damnably so; not so damned damnably
as before, however, for it is for a friend this time,—
Sebastian Ford, not George Gates, my brother.
How do you suppose his spirit contrives to exist,
Brande, unless he can sponge on the saints?”

“Ta. Do you expect to get back any cash that
you may advance to your friend?”

“You will. He has drawn on me for a thousand
dollars. I have not got much over a thousand
cents.”

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

Mr. Brande tore a check out of an attractive looking
folio, filled in the required sum, and handed it
to Argus, saying, “I am glad to be able to oblige
you.” Argus perceived the ring of truth in his
accent, and asked him if he really placed no value
on a thousand dollars.

“If I were a hypocrite, I should answer that I
only value money for the advantage it gives me in
aiding others; as I am not, I own I appreciate the
fact that every age has been governed by what money
it could produce,—iron, brass, or gold. Why
don't you improve Temple House, and sell it? The
brink of ruin would not suggest that idea, though.
The brink of ruin!”

“What the devil ails you, Brande? Has the
yearly drinking of your sanctimonious sherry split
the tendons? Change your tipple.”

“So you come to me for money to-day, Gates?”

“I feel sure that this is the evidence of my so
doing.” And Argus looked at the check.

Cyrus smiled faintly. Argus rose to go.

“I do not yet know,” he said, “when Sebastian
will return; when he does, the color of the thousand
will re-appear in this very spot.”

“Very well,” answered Cyrus absently.

“I hope Mrs. Brande is better,” Argus said, with
a courteous gesture.

“Hope her dead, Gates, for God's sake!” cried
Cyrus, astonishing himself with a burst of nature.

“For Virginia's sake,” Argus answered gravely.

“I am going to take my wife to a mad-house

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

to-morrow, and keep her there; she is a beast, and a
frantic idiot, and has made my soul sick.”

“Virginia!” said Argus again.

“Let Virginia alone, and pity me.” The tears
were streaming from his eyes like rain, and he had
rolled his handkerchief into a ball, which he held
tightly. Argus backed gently to the door. It
seemed to him that the fabric of Cyrus's life was
dropping to pieces, all at once; he wished to get
away before it fell to utter ruin. The coldness in
Argus's face stopped the flow of tears from Cyrus,
as ice stops the flow of blood from a wound.

“I am astonished,” he said presently; “astonished
that I should be left to such wandering. The sight
of you, Gates, has done this. Be off, my dear sir;
I must compose my mind.”

“It is necessary, Brande, dropping all cant, for
us to arrange our condition with a view to composure.
We are tricked, however, now and then—our
opponent gets the odds; I consider you an uncommon
victim. It will blow over, though.”

“Good day, Gates.”

The office door closed, and Cyrus felt that it enclosed
a smaller man than it did when Argus entered.
He ground his teeth with hatred of the tears
which had so suddenly fallen; “Gates,” he thought,
“is what I call an adversary.”

“Brande and I are growing old,” was the comment
of Argus. “Pshaw, why hasn't he killed that
wretch before there was a chance of his crying over
her.”

CHAPTER XXI.

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

Wide vistas of sunshine opened from the doors
and windows,—spaces left bright and tranquil by
the absence of the Brandes. Neither at door nor
window, nor in any avenue, except that which leads
to the dark gate whose latch clicks in the ears of
mortality but once,—was Rhoda-Cyrus seen again.
The merciless combination, deserved in her case,
which is sometimes unaccountably made against individuals
to punish weakness, error and crime, no
more distinguished than those our experience continually
discovers, crushed her.

Mr. Brande staid away weeks instead of days, as
he had anticipated, and in consequence work was
suspended at the Forge,—to be resumed, he wrote,
upon his return. A loneliness which grew into a
revelation to Virginia prevailed in her domain. She
heard the ripples of Apsley river, as they gently
swept upon the little sand flats left bare by the
summer drouth, and inhaled the odors which silence
expresses in woods and flowery thickets. Her
wretched cares were gone; the influence of that propinquity
which governed and belittled her, shred itself
like a husk from the nature capable of being
great in solitude. Sitting in the doorways as she

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

loved to do, before the river, or facing the empty
Forge, the tract of seared ground about it, and beyond
the feathery tops of the pine grove, with eyes
watchful of all within and without, she felt that the
atmosphere was imbuing her with a new intelligence,
sad, subtle and sweet, which she might enjoy,
but not define. The halcyon day broods alone
on the placid ocean of time, and this day, covering
many mornings and evenings, ended naturally and
inevitably. Wandering to the grove one day, she
met Tempe, who sat at the foot of a tree, contemplating
a handful of cones.

“Our lady of the manor,” she said snappishly,
without raising her eyes.

Virginia held out her hand, with the feeling that
a forgotten existence was re-beginning, but Tempe
did not take it; she dropped the cones one by one,
speaking: “She loves me a little—not much—none
at all!”

“How long have you been playing in the grove,
Tempe?”

“Not as long as you have been playing solitude
at home. Mother has been looking for you at every
window in the house for a long time. We knew you
were at liberty. You couldn't even send for me;
however, I shall visit you every day from this out.
I am extravagantly fond of exercise. I intend to
ruin my constitution with walking. I will walk.
What are you looking at me for, with cucumber
eyes? I am tired to death with your coolness. Oh,

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

Virginia, can you help me? You must do something
for me. I feel as if I were about to die.”

“Come home with me, then,” said Virginia impatiently;
“but I will not have you so flighty.
Suppose Roxalana did watch for me,—she knew a
little solitude should be spared me. Well, I have had
it, it is over; I am quite ready to attend to you.”

“Attend! I conclude you are the administrator of
the estate!”

“How is Chloe?”

“She has imported her Brande customs. Mother
allows her to stand behind her chair at the table;
she keeps an Indian silence, though, before uncle
Argus.”

The picture of the past unrolled in Virginia's
mind like a dun cloud, in which the striving forms
of her mother, Chloe, and her father, were gigantically
visible. She looked about her for the spirits
of the air, but nature had withdrawn her new friends.

“Something should be done for me, Tempe.”

“The idea! As if you ever needed being done
for! I hear of your troubles, but can't see them.
You keep healthy, well-dressed, and your glacial
air. What would you have?”

“I would be turned into an old, benevolent,
crooked fairy, for the sake of conferring upon you
the power of dropping pearls and diamonds through
your speech.”

“Much obliged,” Tempe replied, with a blush;
“wouldn't it be more in your line to change rats,
mice, and pumpkins, into horses and coach, with

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

which I might go in search of the young prince?
In that case I should be happy to offer you a seat in
my carriage. Come, I am ready.”

They started arm in arm, Tempe either pushing
forward, or lagging backwards, and spasmodically
voluble in fault-finding.

“Tell me news,” begged Virginia. “How is
Argus? When does the friend, Mr. Ford, return?”

“Argus sits out of doors now, under the elms.
His chin has got an upward cant from investigating
the air for mysterious tidings of that Sebastian Ford;
but at present uncle Hunks is mild. He says `yea,'
and `nay,' without showing teeth or claws; isn't he a
miser, though? Yesterday Mat Sutcliffe caught
him. `Cuss me to dregs, marm,' he said to mother,
`if Capen Gates isn't in the summer-house trying to
sew a patch on his shoe. But he can't do it; God
has not given his otherwise able constitution the cobbling
gift.'”

“What did Roxalana answer, Tempe?”

“She answered `Sebastian;' and Mat sat down, put
his hat under the chair, and cursed him till mother
ordered him to leave.”

“Is Sebastian coming back?” Virginia asked
drearily.

“Probably.”

“Argus sacrifices himself to that man.”

“Say, rather,” cried Tempe vehemently, “that he
returns thanks, and makes offerings to himself, for
being occupied with an emotion worthy of and in
harmony with, his character. I feel a little strange

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

upon the strength of this theory; the air is full of
moving black specks.”

Her head dropped heavily on Virginia's shoulder,
and her arms fell limp and helpless.

“Keep up, Tempe, you are faint only. We are
nearly home; I see Moses now,—Moses!”

Moses hurried out of the yard at her call, and together
they carried Tempe into the house.

“Of course,” said Martha, the cook, from behind
her, where she was endeavoring to unfasten her dress,
while Virginia was wetting her face with cologne-water,
“you know the circumstances this young
woman is in.”

“I should think so,—a fainting-fit is evident
enough.”

“It won't be long,” continued Martha, in a tone of
contempt, “before this vale of tears will be burdened
with another crying soul in swaddling bands; though
I don't know that it will be allowed the bands, for
Miss Hopkins, the best nurse in Kent, says the faculties
don't approve of 'em.”

Virginia rose up in mute astonishment, and mechanically
applied the cologne-water to her own
forehead.

“'Tisn't so,” gasped Tempe, opening her eyes upon
Martha. “There isn't a word of truth in what you
have said. I'll die first.” And she struggled to her
feet, eyeing Virginia defiantly. “I never was better;
and I have come to take tea with you, Martha.”

Virginia immediately ordered Moses to harness
one of the horses, and be in readiness to drive Mrs.

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

Drake home; and Tempe, in spite of her protestations
to the contrary, soon found herself there.

“It has turned out,” said Roxalana, after reading
a note which Moses had delivered, “as I expected,—
that you would be sent home suddenly from somewhere;
and now I demand that you remain near
me.”

“Mother Roxalana Gates, you ought to be the
last person to insult me. I say, I shall go out of
doors daily.”

“It is the most absurd thing I ever heard,—going
out at present.”

Tempe stamped her foot violently, and Roxalana,
from a momentary terror, winked her usually impassive
eyelids; then, recovering herself, she lifted
Tempe, and carried her up stairs as if she had been
a feather.

“Cruel old Egyptian woman!” said Tempe, out of
breath. “I am happy to say that I do not love you,
nor any woman. I hated Virginia to-day, and I'll
tell her so to-morrow.”

Roxalana watched her in silence; and at last
Tempe kicked her shoes off, and tugged at the fastenings
of her clothes.

“You've had no supper,” said Roxalana abruptly.

“I'll taste nothing to-night, nor to-morrow, nor
the next day. Should you happen to leave the
room, I might go to sleep, however.”

Roxalana, seeing that she was in earnest, left her
with the excuse of attending to supper, but immediately
sent Chloe after Mary Sutcliffe.

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

Before morning a son was born to Tempe. At its
first cry on being compelled to breathe the air of an
alien world, Roxalana took it, and said in a voice
which sounded like the ringing bells of an under
world:

“I name this child George Gates.”

Two great tears rolled from her eyes, and baptized
the babe in sorrow, remembrance, and hope. Then
she held the treasure up to Tempe, and Tempe resolutely
shut her eyes against it.

When Mary Sutcliffe emerged from the outside
door at daybreak, Mat, who was lounging on the
steps, caught her and swept her along; then he
brought her to a stand still, stopped, and asked:
“Why the devil can't you tell me the news?”

“Poor thing!” answered Mary, with a groan,
determined to scare and punish him for his foolish
fondness for Tempe.

“Hold your jaw,” he said, planting his feet apart
to keep himself steady, being seized with a giddiness.

“She's all right, I tell you!” screamed Mary,
frightened at the effect of her trick. “Roxalana
named it George.”

Somehow Mat was not able to curse her as she
expected; he was still a moment, and then spoke,
as if to himself:

“Named it George, has she? I shall have to
give in, and own up to women's souls. 'Tis so, or
she'd never hand down that rascal's name. How is
little Tempe?”

“Tempe is a devil-cat,—same as ever. You'd

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

better go back, and wake up Argus; I don't think
he will be much pleased, either. Somehow or
rather I shall get word to the Drakes to-day.”

“It is old Drake's grandson, that's a fact; I had
forgotten all about that ere family.”

“I am in hopes they'll send something worth
while to it, though the Gates family have behaved
shamefully to the Drake family.”

“How's that, Moll?”

“They've let 'em alone so entirely.”

Mat laughed, and continued good natured all that
day, being secretly happy over the fact of what he
called the Gates Continuation; there was no other
chance for the family survivorship, and, for his part he
wanted to leave a Gates above ground, when he took
his final dip. Mary, also, was secretly proud of the
baby, and took pains, as she had promised, to have the
Drakes informed concerning it. Mrs. Drake hurried
out for appearances' sake, and bought a basket
arranged for the unhappiness of infants,—filled it
with cambric robes, and sent it with her love. Mr.
Drake sent a heavy silver cup, and congratulations.
Tempe measured the depth of the embroidery on the
robes with her languid fingers, and swung the cup
by its handle. When the baby was a week old,
Virginia called upon it with a box of toys, and
looked at the little creature with awe and amazement.

“Did you ever see so fine a child?” asked Roxalana.

“Did you know before,” asked Tempe, “that the

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

human young was uglier than anything on the
earth?”

“See its perfect hand,” continued Roxalana, “its
soft brown hair. And it knows a great deal already.”

“What does Argus say?” Virginia asked, somewhat
embarrassed at Roxalana's enthusiasm.

“He says that the world is overpeopled,” Tempe
replied.

Roxalana looked up at Virginia, with a sad, dumb
smile.

“He says what he should say,” continued Tempe.
“I had no idea till now, how much Uncle Argus
and myself are alike.”

“Oh, Tempe!” cried Virginia, indignantly, but
was prevented from going on by Roxalana's placing
the baby in a large arm chair, its present cradle, and
motioning her to go out.

“Have you had new dresses lately?” asked
Tempe, as Virginia rose hastily, and adjusted her
mantilla. “I believe you can wear every color.
A corn-colored barege is the last thing I should
have chosen, but it becomes you. Come here, and
let me examine the trimming.”

Virginia approached, and felt a degree of remorse
at the touch of Tempe's hot, fragile hand, as it
passed over the rosettes of her showy dress. “I
might as well,” Tempe continued, “expect to sit
upon a cloud with gauzy angels, as expect a dress so
rich, peculiar, and attractive as this. Do you, can
you, imagine the state I am in—a chronic shuffle
between shabby black and a night-gown? Stop!
Don't dare to offer me a present. I offer you my

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

thoughts and opinions freely, and do not wish for
the return I can guess you would like to make; but
I won't be shut up. I know you are generous.
There, go, I am tired. Give me the box of toys
first, I want to see what you have brought Old
Bunch.”

“My dear,” said Roxalana, accompanying Virginia
down stairs, “it is certain Tempe's behavior is outrageous.
She is the same under all circumstances.
She resembles Argus in nothing; I should be sorry
to have you influenced a moment by her rash
opinions.”

The expression of sincerity in Roxalana's face,
and the transparency of her diplomacy, were overpowering.
Virginia could only kiss her on each
cheek without uttering a word.

“I don't think it quite safe,” Roxalana went on
“to leave Tempe; I am not sure that in some freak
she will not hide the baby from me. I believe she
is deficient in what is called natural affection; how
can it be helped? To tell the truth, I have little
faith in it; it is a habit, a tradition,—irksome,
terrible, destroying sometimes, as I have seen; so
we will not condemn Tempe.”

Her hard, rude speech smote Virginia like a salt
breeze, wholesome because so utterly sincere; but it
toppled down not only her theory but her practice.

“Yes,” said Roxalana, a dark red rising in her
swarthy face, a steely illumination breaking through
her eyes, “I am convinced by my years that friend,
ship, love, the singular emotion which rises like a

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wall of rock, or fire, or ice, and hides, protects, and
separates two souls, man and woman, from all other
men and women, have little to do with our circumstances,
acts, and duties; they come from the nameless
Spirit in our Consciousness, whose face we never
see, and whose will we never understand.”

She paused with her heavy lips apart, as if she
had been obedient merely to the Spirit she had
named, and as if she were ignorant whether its large
utterance would continue. Virginia felt a great
envy before this simple, unselfish woman, so incapable
of being swerved from her narrow bounds;
then she grew proud because she loved her.

“By the way,” said Roxalana, “I am indebted to
you for Chloe. I should hardly know how to manage
without her. I don't think there is much waste
about her. I hope you intend that she shall
remain?”

“Now, Roxalana, will you let me breathe? You
are welcome to her. I am glad I can do that much.
Go back to Tempe; I will see Chloe, and then walk
home by the path. The shrubs, Roxalana, are turning
already before the frost. But what a long year!
It seems ten years since I last picked the umberstreaked
smilax and the yellow sassafras, going home
from my happy visits.”

“Oh, yes, Sebastian has doubled the year! You
will find Chloe in the kitchen. Farewell, Virginia.”

“Farewell, Roxalana.”

“I knowed you were here, Missey,” called Chloe,
from the half-opened kitchen door, before Roxalana

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had disappeared from the upper hall. “I'se longing
for the Forge since sunrise. There's no smell of coal
in this God-forsaken house. But I aint plagued
here, by no one. He's out in the garden now,
a-thinking these three hours. What people have to
think of when there is no religion in them, is past
my finding out. Missey, how be you, my dear child?
You have nothing good to say; keep your mouth
shut. My knees know more than my tongue can
speak. Sit down, if you will; do you think it looks
clean? Shu! Mrs. Roxalana's kitchen work pizened
me. She isn't more than half facultied, between
you and me; but the Captain is tidy, and
sharp,—nobody can say more than this in his favor;
'taint to be said. I suppose I was sent to labor in
this field; there is a reason besides why I should
stay. Can you gu ss it?”

“No.”

“They are Indians,—now they be, in spite of
white skins and learning. You needn't look so incalulous!”

“Nonsense,” Virginia answered absently, stepping
to the window and looking down the garden. “I
should like a spring of box, Chloe. How cool and
bright the dark borders look.”

“Help yourself, Missey.”

She had vanished, and was already hovering over
the mounds of antique box,—a fanciful reminder of
those slow-moving, brilliant autumnal butterflies,
whose silent, varying flight suggests that they search
for a mystery which the crooked vales of air, and

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the uneven surface of verdure, hides. Her heart
went forward to the summer-house, dictating her
feet to follow. It was the bold, trembling, inspired
moment which occasionally seizes one, and leads on
to a crisis, which becomes astounding, when it
has passed. Argus was seated on a low settee of
boughs and wattles, his arm resting on a little
table of the same material; his hand hung over its
edge. He had given over thinking, to fall into a
quiet slumber which had removed his sarcastic frown,
his contemptuous smile. Pale, yellow bars, and
patches shaped like leaves, played on the wall behind
him, dropped on his grizzled chestnut hair,
across his breast and arms, like impalpable, swift
lizards. Virginia felt rather than saw that his eyes
were closed as she approached and stood before
him. The blood thundered so at her heart that
she must wait for her breath to come and go more
quietly! She watched the light playing over his
cold steadfast face; his bowed head and long drooping
hands, so fixed and motionless in their pale hue,
reminding her of the pictures in illuminated missals.
Stooping towards him, she softly put her
hands in his, and was caught in an iron grasp.
Argus stood up, wide awake, and drew her close
to him; their eyes met, and instantly he disengaged
his hands.

“Why, my girl, Virginia,” he whispered, turning
his face away; but she struck him slightly, and
said:

“Look again, Argus, and read me something.”

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

He was obliged to meet her eyes again, and as
he did so a faint streak of color passed over his
face. It seemed to him that he was recalling something
that had happened long ago,—events, or incidents,
which perplexed him when passing, although
he did not know it till now. He shook his head
involuntarily. Virginia started backwards as if
frightened, and her hat fell off, dropping between
them. Argus frowned at it, and said,—“Damnation!”
then picked it up. As she took it from his
hand she moved towards the door of the summer-house,
still facing him; she looked so sweet, and
sincere, and so indescribably dignified withal, that
he felt a pang of regret to have her go, and said,
“Damnation!” again.

“Only oaths, Argus?”

Her face looked set now, and there were hurt
smiles in her beautiful eyes. He sprang to her.

“You would have me confess, Virginia, that I
am a man, after all, and that I know I am touched
by the flame burning in you. Does it please you
to hear me? As for oaths,—come here,—put your
head over my heart,—it swears by what it must
reject.”

“It moves, Argus, does it?”

“Yes, physically.”

She shuddered violently.

“Don't take me back,” he cried.

It appeared as if she could not speak. She was
strangely pale, and languidly allowed her head to
rest against the door which she had reached by slow

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

degrees, retreating from him; but she opened her
hands as if she were shaking something from them.
He laughed slightly, and, as pale as herself, said:

“I wish that one of us could escape.”

“I shall go,” she answered, after a moment's
silence, during which Argus felt that he was about
to pull the summer-house down, and cover a caress
which could have no hereafter.

“But let me say,” she spoke now in a clear
voice, “as I go, how rare this interview seems to
me.”

“Rare!”

“The combination never came to me before,—
when emotion suited the circumstances, and the
time and place fitting, too; I have missed them
hitherto.”

She was gone, and Argus, in spite of an astonished
disappointment at her bearing at departure,
was glad of it; his first wish was to regain composure,
the second to forget that it had been disturbed.
He left the summer-house, whose atmosphere
was stifling, and went to the lawn, where he
staid till he saw the evening star burn in the
radiant twilight, and sink behind the elms into the
crystal sea, and a wan crescent moon appear in the
emerald-tinted sky. Roxalana was waiting at the
tea-table when he went in. Chloe had told her of
his meeting with Virginia, and she discreetly managed
to be alone.

“Take your tea, Argus.”

“Certainly, give me tea. This cup is cracked.”

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

“They are all cracked; we have nothing whole.”

“The devil! And do you like it so?”

“I am sure it suits us.”

“The whole concern is a ruin!”

“True.”

“How could anybody ever be possessed with an
idea which separates me, as part and parcel, from
this decay.”

“It is remarkably strange, I confess,—such an
idea.”

“Did you, Roxalana, accuse me of being a dolt,
an idiot, in your thoughts, when you knew that
Virginia. Brande was flitting about me this afternoon?”

“Virginia Brande is a saint.”

“That was the news my veins conveyed to me;
but I'll have nothing to do with saints. I do not
love them.”

“Argus, I desire you not to speak so.”

“I never will again. I am sorry, Roxalana, that
this cup is not perfect, because I am going to break
it. Don't go yet.”

She snuffed the candles, took one, and held it up
to his face, surveying him with an impenetrable
stare.

“I think,” she said, putting it down, “that you
are the most detestable man I ever met.”

“Have you forgotten George?”

“He, at least —”

“I am not anxious to hear of the `at least.' I said
I loved neither saints nor women; but I love and

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

respect life. After having made a pretty job of it
in mending sundry fissures, do you think I am going
to allow anybody to drop the frail article in pieces
before me? Don't you go out of your natural
straightforwardness to think otherwise. Mix me
a glass of brandy and water: keep out those lumps
of sugar; I shall be as drunk without.”

She sat beside him while he sipped from his glass.

“Had I better send for Mat?” she asked.

“Send?”

“Yes, by Chloe.”

“Oh, Chloe is here, is she? Virginia's Chloe! No,
I will not have her disturbed. Go you to bed, and
I'll send the bottle after you. Look you, Roxalana,
this is my last glass; I shall never empty another
bottle. The occasion has come and gone forever,—
as it came and went with Sebastian. The rulers
shall share no cups from the brim of their will with
me. The rack was stupid in comparison with the
fine assults made on a man, which bare his system,
Have you seen a rope-dancer walk from the roof of
a theatre to the footlights, on a single cord, when
the audience had but one breath? Or do I mean
that crowd of shining angels climbing up and down
Jacob's ladder, every round a nerve? Hold on,
Jacob, or wake up.”

“I always felt,” replied Roxalana, perfectly unmoved
by his remarks, “that the time would come
when you would cease to ask me for brandy.”

“Now you may go. I like you, but have seen
enough for the present of the woman for whom—”

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

he threw the bottle against the door just as she
closed it.

At sunrise the next morning he was under the
elms tranquilly smoking. Its golden light was shut
out of Virginia's chamber. She lay in her bed with
breath rising and falling in the mute, gray air, sleeping
as one sleeps after suffering pain,—in deathly oblivion;
strands of her splendid hair half covered her
face, and a braided mass of it half wrapped her
white throat. Her hands, nervously alive, were
twisted above her head, and the outlines of her tall
figure, from her compressed lips to her crossed feet,
betrayed the anguish which slumber is merciful to.
The sprig of box lay on her Bible near her bed, her
hat was on the floor; but the dress which she had
worn was carefully folded to be put away. No one
ever saw her wear again the becoming dress, with its
velvet rosettes, which Tempe had been so envious of.

CHAPTER XXII.

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The natal day was of so little importance to Argus,
that it would have passed unobserved, had not
Roxalana's tenacious memory proclaimed the fact
he was now forty-two. The autumn, as in other
years, bestowed its tranquil, penetrating influence
upon him; its spirit, dwelling in purple and silver
vapor, the golden shafts of sunrise and sunset, the
scented, moderate wind, and the subtle, transforming
leaf, imparted the old sense of material perfection.
But the feathered arrows of change hurtled in his
atmosphere, and the passions which invest life, as
closely as lichen spreads over the incapable rock
and impassive tree trunk, began to assert their existence
in his. Between all the relations which surrounded
him,—from the absent Sebastian to baby
George; Roxalana, whose affections were mastered
by the child, and through whom vivid rays of happiness
passed to her heart; Tempe, whose manifestations
were new; Virginia, banished, and again overwhelmed
by fresh demands at home; and Mat
Sutcliffe, who had retired from the Captain, in his
devotion, apparently, and fallen into a strange
idolatry for “G. Gates,” as he had called the baby
from the beginning;—it was certain that Argus was
for the present left solitary. His dominion was
shaken, and the habits which his inflexible taste had

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

ordained for the household were breaking under a
facile hand, whose pressure he could not control. If
in these changes different moods possessed his habitual
silence; if, a vague chaos threatening his horizon,
those deep, wingless desires which sometimes
lodge themselves in the depths of one who is deserted
at the flood tide of his abilities, came,—and
and expressed their presence in his face or mien; if
restless, or quiet, if he ate, slept less; whatever he
did, it was unnoticed. Obviously he was the same
man; sensitive to insensible objects; indifferent to
vital ones; cheerful, composed, hard, disdainful, and
regardful as a miser of the outgoing of every cent
from his pocket,—a strange fact, since he never cared
to save, or earn, a dollar. The child he never spoke
of; when Roxalana approached him with it, and
made an attempt to attract his notice, he threatened
to drop cigar ashes on the little hand, or snapped his
fingers at it, with, “Here, you sir, stew boy.” He
made no remark to Mat about it, not even when,
with a clumsy tenderness touching to behold, Mat
was taking his “G. Gates” round the garden, and
allowing him to put out his eyesight, and pull his
whiskers up by the roots. Argus was pleased, however,
to worry Mary, who was jealous of Mat's devotion;
she was warned concerning the birthright of
her own boys, and was so moved thereat, that she tormented
Mat till he flew into a rage, which induced
him to pack his oldest boys off to sea, and apprentice
his oldest girl to a tailor.

“Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” he said to

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

her; “my next move will be wuss. I'll set you to
picking oakum. Where's your pride, and where's
your memory, and where's your calculation? The
time comes to such folks as the Gates's, when they all
tumble into some gaping hole, and nothing ever
rises up but a little cloud of dust dry as yellow
snuff. Who can take G. Gates by the hand then?
Who will be left to do it, but me? An old, drunken,
ignorant vagabones can do it; and blarst me if ever
he grows up, old, ignorant, and a drunkard.”

“Them Drakes can do it; and it is their right to
do it; and they ought to do it; and you've no business
to poke your nose into what isn't your own
concern; and my gal's pricking her fingers in Philip
Dyer's stinking shop,—all because of your tantrums,
Mat Sutcliffe.”

“The Drakes! Never while Roxalana Gates and
I are above ground will they get that boy. So shut
up, and clear up. Ain't it a dull time of year, I'd
like to know? I have got too much time on my
hands, just as you've got too much tongue.”

“I'll let people know how things stand, see if I
don't,” said Mary finally. But Mat knew she would
venture no further than rating him to the best of her
ability. Meantime the child grew bright and winning.
Mat went to Temple House every day before
he went to his work in the morning, or on returning
from it at night, and sat in conclave with Roxalana,
exchanging notes of admiration, and predictions concerning
him. When the teething period arrived, the
times he was passed from one to the other, and

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

experiments made upon his gums, could not be
counted.

“Let's see if he'll eat,” was Mat's prevailing request.
And “Do you think he gains in weight?”
was Roxalana's incessant question.

For the most of the time Tempe hovered in their
neighborhood silent, and with haggard looks; her
eyes were larger, and more shining. She was
tame now, but still unloving; if her child cried, she
moved farther from it, if it laughed, she turned her
head away. No one ever saw her kiss it.

“Argus,” said Roxalana, one day, “I believe that
Temple absolutely hates that child.”

“Damnation!—what did you expect of her?—
that she would sit in a blue mantle, like the Virgin
Mary, and smilingly offer it to an adoring world.”

For a moment the obdurate heartlessness of
Tempe, and the heartless coarseness of Argus, gave
her the thought that she was not quite a happy woman;
but it only brought the dark flush to her
cheek, and faded with it. Argus observed it.

“Pooh,—Roxalana, I am too old a fellow to make
a woman blush. Didn't you tell me the other day
that I was forty-two?”

“If you can tell me what age has to do with the
regular beating of the heart, perhaps I can explain
why the blood shows in my face against my will.”

“Against your will! The perpetual faculty of a
flush is given your sex; it is your rose of expectancy.
There is something cunning in you all. Is
your mind ever off the idea of assault, insult,

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

result? I notice the red flag unfurls at the slightest
contrary breath from a man's mouth.”

Roxalana laughed, and pressed her plump hands
together, as if they were a pin cushion, from which
she was trying to extract concealed pins.

“I am not to be driven away just now, Argus, by
any language; Georgey is asleep, and I am entirely at
leisure. I don't object to being badgered, as you
know.”

“Chloe will answer better for badgering; she
stands it well.”

Roxalana laughed again, and said that she thought
Chloe was invaluable; she blessed the chance which
sent her to them.

“So you do. The madness of Brande's wife, and
the loss of Virginia's nurse from babyhood, were
your gain.”

“Having made up my mind that it is impossible
for me to see God's justice in this world, I have also
made up my mind not to be affected by that which
I have no power over.”

“God's justice,” he repeated reflectively,—“how
could you make up a mind about that? I have the
fancy that you do not believe in a Divine Being.”

“I choose to have no belief. One way or the
other, Belief is a frightful thing; it assassinates
everything except itself. If I know, or feel, I am
content; when these facts become impossible with
me, of what use can Belief be?”

“You are curious—for a woman. What do you

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

think about Death—that Jack-in-a-box? A grim,
fantastic toy, but we must spring its lid.”

“I abhor Death and the Dead,—cruel, treacherous
falsifiers to all we pretend to be. How dare you
name a subject so terrible? I never dwell upon it.”

“It is a very indifferent subject to me, Roxalana;
when I die, my love for life will be gone, of course.
Underground will suit my six feet prone, as well as
the air suits my upright six feet now. Where is
your snuff box? I think I will adopt your habit.”

Roxalana gravely offered him her tortoise shell
box, remarking as she did so that snuff was her only
vice, and wondering whether all people of a certain
age did not drop into some comfortable weakness.
So the conversation started by her remark concerning
Tempe ended, and was not renewed. The
inspiration of words comes oddly and unexpectedly,
especially with those who do not study their feelings;
it has little to do with chance, and the environment
of circumstance is nothing to it. Words so spoken
may reveal, decide, and make important that which
has hitherto been unknown; sentiment may be
originated, and relations established, by the speakers
who remain ignorant till utterance has passed their
lips. Little George asleep, the accidental appearance
of Roxalana in the spot where Argus happened
to be, the few words that passed between them,
brought about the opinion with Argus that no
temptation should ever separate him from Roxalana,
and fixed one with her, that life without Argus
would be worse to endure than the pangs of hated

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

death; and that she would rather die first, and be
supported by his strength and courage, which she
knew equal to face all mortal terrors.

These ideas, extending the bond between them to
the confines of existence, had in no wise any outward
effect; they were put away for future use, and
were not even to be mentally referred to, without
occasion. Could Chloe's acuteness have discerned
all this, she might not have felt the necessity of
approaching Argus as a missionary. She perceived
that Roxalana's attention was drawn from him, and
that Mat only had eyes for “G. Gates,” and argued
that though he was no Christian, and would be
eternally damned, he ought to be considered an
authority in his family, because he provided for it,
and because there was something about him that
made the natural supply of well-ironed shirts and
carefully cooked food imperative. Who could do
this but herself? She gradually assumed the power
of ministering to his wants, and they grew accustomed
to each other in a characteristic way that
would have astonished Virginia, but which was
scarcely observed by Roxalana and Tempe. Her
first advance was made and accepted upon the slight
occasion of Mat Sutcliffe's putting his head in one
day at the green room door, while she happened to
be there putting some dishes away in the glass cabinet
beside the chimney. Argus was there, also,
drumming on the table she had cleared a slow march
with his fingers. Mat stared round the room without
speaking.

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

“Taint here,” she said sharply; “its a-waiting up
stairs with its grandma, to be cuddled and palavered
with. I hope you don't smell of tar more than
usual,—it lasts so long arter you are gone! 'Tis
most as good as having your company the whole
time. I'm feared if folks come in, they'll spect the
whole family have got the itch.”

Mat withdrew his head, and slammed the door
so hard that Argus stopped drumming, and said:

“What are you so savage with Mat for, you
chussey? Don't he like your color?”

“As the times is as they is, and I conclude they
be, I don't expect to insist your treating me in a
sarseful manner, sir. Any time that suits you, will
suit me, I think I can stand it. A man who dangles
his legs easy over the steep where the swine
rushed can be no trouble to me, as long as I do my
duty, and keep him clean and comfortable. I wash
my hands of everything else. Can't say, though, but
that I like being here; can't help myself, it's the
Indian in me that loves the God-forsaken independence
in this house.”

“If you do wash your hands, I submit to having
your fingers in my pie, though they do resemble
adders. How is it that Brande's wife never felt
your fangs? You are a fine woman, Chloe, and
belong to a past generation of females possessing
hips. How is your ankle? I don't know that I
object to the turning of the world which brings me
Africa, and the lost tribes.”

“Sarse,” said Chloe, triumphantly.

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

“You must have been the salt, up there at the
Forge. How did you lose your flavor?”

“Missey had to part with me, she sent me,—no,
he sent me from one fool to—Mrs. Gates.”

“I was sorry.” And then Argus appeared to
forget Chloe's presence; he turned his hand over
and over, scanning it as if it were an object foreign
to himself. She watched him, and wondered if ever
so impudent, self-contained a man ever lost his
balance.

“Yon are fond of ashes, are you?” she asked
sharply. “You are always on the hearth, either
here, or in the kitchen; or do you think you will
scare me from burning out the wood? I thought
every gentleman in Kent owned woodland, and that
they never begrudged waste. What may be the
worth of a few sticks of oak, hickory, or yellow
pine?”

“That was an excellent dish you served us with
at dinner,” he said, rising, looking into the cabinet,
and changing the position of the china she had
placed there; “it reminded me of one I tasted years
ago,—flavored with the Barbadoes cherry. It was
before she was born.”

“Mrs. Brande is about your age, Captain Gates.”

“Confound you, what are you talking about? I
own nothing. What is the ownership of a shell,—
named when men and women built it together, and
made themselves its kernel—Temple House? The
ties of property,—mutual interests,—those relations
which slip into each other like the scales in a coat

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

of mail, and which compose the armor worn to keep
us erect before God, and crooked with the Devil,—
are not for me.”

Chloe began to twirl her thumbs, and look vacant,
as she did at conference meeting when the speaker
was dull, though she was mindful that his language
was at variance with his quiet utterance.

“Mind you, though,” he continued, “every stick
you burn, every loaf you bake for me, I can be as
cold and as hungry as any of my neighbor-atoms,
and I love food and warmth, as well as the rapt
disciples did.”

“It was no new dish I made,” she answered. “I
never did see such folks in all my days; don't know
what's what. Miss Tempe shook her head at it, and
said she hated hash; and why did I put myself out
to make our poverty unendurable, says she?”

Argus made a motion to her, to attend to the business
she was engaged in, and not to disturb him.
She obeyed, quite contented with the feeling she
had that number two was gained over, and that she
could devote herself to Argus as she had devoted
herself to Virginia, without the hope of any reward,
and, in his case, without the hope of appreciation.

CHAPTER XXIII.

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

The anniversary of Tempe's marriage, with its
vision of a snow-storm and a bridal veil, and that of
her widowhood, passed. The Drakes, conventionally
mindful of both occasions, but disliking Tempe's
immobility, and indifferent towards Argus and Roxalana,
sent black-edged cards to the family, and presents
to Georgey, instead of paying visits. The events
were apparently forgotten by Tempe, who was no
more silent than usual, no paler, and betrayed no
emotion. No rememberance or hope drew her towards
the boy,—sole tie between herself and the
Dead,—to move her to say, “Sweet, my child, I live
for thee.” That enduring, sacred passion, the love
no desire can buy, which a mother alone knows;
that buds, blossoms, and bears at once like an orange
grove; is felt in the kisses which drop like rose
leaves in hands that bend and cling like tendrils;
in imperious feet that choose to trample upon her;
in the sobs like smiles, and laughter full of tears; in
the rapid beating of the child-heart which acknowledges
one necessity—existence with hers; this
Tempe never felt. Happily, perhaps; for would not
the time arrive when the single aim of her son's existence
might be a woman who had not attained the
state of motherhood? When all his episodes

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

connected with material life might fall as void in his
memory as a morning mist falls void in the rays of
the sun? When the years of maternal sacrifice, the
immolations of all other relations, the decay of all
individuality not bearing on the maternal interest,—
might be remembered as a dream, dead and done
with the actualities of the present?

Without dwelling on the speculations of reason,
or analyzing the instincts, Roxalana celebrated these
anniversaries; unconsciously she blended the wedding
and the funeral, and regarded them as one.
The aspect of the latter day she studied as an outlet
for certain questions which dimly rose in her mind,
and distracted for the moment her attention from
Georgey. Never leaving the house on any pretext,
the relief which one finds in the open air did not occur
to her; a look from the windows, and going
from room to room, were the limits of any unwonted
restlessness. A pale sun glimmered over the lawn
like a hollow shell; black, bitter dust whirled round
the house, and struck the panes; the grey air and
the grey ground held the roar of heavy wheels and
hoofs, the melancholy, reluctant creak of boughs,
and the wail of crowded, wandering winds. The
atmosphere within was dismal and vacant; human
business, and human interest seemed to have gone
forever; the incapable hands and feet of those whose
efforts so long ago consecrated the now unused
apartments, were waiting for the resurrection to make
them plain again. They could not now care for the
trifles which lent inspiration to the beings endowed

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with the obligations of being. The events of
thought and feeling occupy little time and space;
they may be so invisible in the ordinary drama of
the day, that the decree which decides the future is
made, and the bystanders only observe that a man is
twisting his moustache, or a woman adjusting her
ribbons. These mental experiences, while happening,
do not appear remarkable till afterwards, when they
take the possessions of facts in the mind, and the
power which belongs to acts is attached to them.
Roxalana's spirit contracted a shadow at that time,
which hid itself till ready to spring out in full and
terrible growth. Wrapped in a dark shawl, moving
through the dismantled rooms, on that side of the house
no one ever had occasion to enter, slowly and heavily,
she looked like one of those quiet, expectant, colossal
statues, whose knees are buried in the drifting sand,
whose faces are forever darkening in the desert air.
When Georgey, a few months afterwards, was carried to
one of these rooms dead,—she remembered herself,—
moving slowly, heavily, and understood her sadness.
Long before sunset, it grew so dark in the green
room and the kitchen, that she thought a gale must
be rising, and climbed to the attic to get a view of
its progress over the bay. At the sight, she recalled
Sebastian, and her heart lifted like a wave at
the thought of his escape from the sea. The shores
bristled with layers of frozen brine, with jagged
edges; dull, soiled sheets of ice gaped over the tide
line. The bay bore no sail; no winter fowl skimmed
its surface; the dark waves rolled and burst without

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glassy bubble or white foam; the coldly blue mass
travelled its bounds, within headland, cape, and bar,
and returned upon itself, baffled by the power of
frost. Though she shivered at the dreary prospect,
its wide extent and immensity of motion stirred her
sluggish mind.

“Sebastian should have returned before now,”
she said. “He must not tempt the winter sea a
second time. And yet, I wish he would come.”

“Missis Gates,” called Chloe on the passage,
“I'se looking for you, cause I can't find anything
else.”

“I came up to look at the weather.”

“Marsy on me, Missis, there's plenty weather below.”
And Chloe entered the room. “Is it likely
that I may find a cullender here?”

“Do you believe in ghosts, Chloe?”

“Why, Missis?”

“Those blasts, all over the room, that do not come
from anywhere, appear to me to be the breath of
ghosts.”

“I think they come from holes in the roof. What
may be in this closet?”

“I never noticed there was a closet till now.”

Chloe opened the door and examined the shelves.

“There's something queer,” she said presently.

“Anything useful?” asked Roxalana, the tide of
sombre feelings turning into that of curious ones.

“I wish it was a cullender,—and it ain't,” Chloe
answered, handing the something to Roxalana.

“It is a yak's tail,” said Roxalana. “My father

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had one; a friend brought it to him from India. It
is used there to brush flies away. This is set in an
ivory handle; I am glad to have it for Georgey.”

“Who put it there, Missis Gates?”

“The former owners of this house, probably.
What else is there?”

“Only the ghost's breath, that's all.” And Chloe,
shutting the door, advised a retreat from the cold.

“The devil!” said Argus, when he saw the yak's
tail. “Where have you been?—where am I?”

“Have you not been oppressed to-day, Argus?
There seemed to me a storm brewing, and I went up
stairs to look down the bay, and while I was there
Chloe came up and discovered this in the closet.”

“Chloe had better keep out of my closet.”

Chloe, being present, threw up her head contemptuously.

“Light the candles, Chloe,” said Roxalana. “It
is a relief to have the day over. I do not observe
land-marks generally, but I could not help recalling
past circumstances connected with Tempe.”

“Did you recall them? There's no prospect of a
storm. You have felt lazy to-day. Why not hibernate
entirely, since you are squeamish about
weather and it happens to be the storm season? I
should not be surprised if Hell was bad weather
merely. Should you wish to slumber through the
winter, I judge it safe to entrust Chloe with the
lictorship. Get your axe, Chloe.”

Chloe looked offended, and said that she was no
cat; and believed herself as neat as the next person.

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“If you still insist on remaining awake, Roxalana,”
he continued, “you will be obliged to endure
the fact that at last the future will be but the past.
The present sifts the future through the mind, grain
by grain, fine as dust; crag and bank, coast and
continent, crumble and slide into a shoal abyss,
which is yet wide enough to dissolve them. Chloe,
when were you at the Forge?”

He was remembering the wedding night, and saw
Virginia beside Roxalana in a cloud of tulle; her
beaming, gracious eyes spanned the distance between
them like a bridge, her brilliant black hair shone so
in the light of his candelabra under which she sat
that his eyes were dazzled. He would have turned
away had he not discovered that he was waiting
Chloe's reply, and cursed himself for asking a question
which did not concern him.

“A few days ago, sir, I was at the Forge. They
are hammering tremenjus now a-days; the fires are
so hot that the snow has melted in a ring round the
buildings, and the ground is as black as your hat.
The house is full of company. Missey is losing herself
like, and growing worldly; Martha says she has
to do up Mr. Brande's white vests oftener than ever.
There's a young man in the house—Martha thinks
he is a fixture. He plays cards, and Missey sits by
glum and attentive. He smokes, and drinks wine
for his dinner; and says she to me,—Sarah, the
girl that waits,—says that Mr. Brande sets down the
light decanter and the dark decanter as easy as if
they were vegetables. Missey, I know, winks hard at

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these things. Haven't I seen her shut her eyes
before now?”

“Brande plays a good game. It is the right news
to hear, Roxalana,—that young man is his partner.
It is proper that Virginia should be worldly.”

“It is bad news, Argus.”

“You are as wise as a bell-wether. Does Tempe
mope more than usual? I scarcely see her, and do
not know whether she broods over something gone—
her playthings, or whether she is simply impish
according to her constitution. Little women are
mostly diabolic; I am grateful to you, Roxalana, for
being somewhat overgrown.”

“I am the better for that, so far as the labor
which I perform goes. You owe me nothing.”

“You are mistaken; to your life and character I
owe an ease which mother, sister, wife, could not
give me. How shall I reward you,—by fervently
remembering that you are a respectable granite
boulder?”

“Maintain any doctrine, Argus, you like; I am
entirely accustomed to you. With Tempe you must
exercise patience.”

“I'll continue to exercise indifference; patience implies
the hope, or expectation, of a change of opinion.
I shall have but one opinion. A glittering scale occupies
the place in her breast, where, by the courtesy
your sex demands, we locate the heart. Let the girl
alone; neither to you nor me is she accountable.”

“Mother, he is crying in his bed,” said Tempe,
coming in, and languidly walking to the window.

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“He is crying!” echoed Roxalana: “I presume
you have listened to him for some time.”

There was no accent of reproach in her voice.
Tempe shook her head.

“I had rather,” continued Roxalana, with her
hand on the door-latch, “hear the most hateful
sound you can conceive of, than hear the least whimper
from that child. There should be a rigorous
law passed that children should never be suffered to
shed a tear.”

She closed the door, and Tempe looked down the
lawn as silent as before. Argus watched her with a
bitter smile.

“The Drake child is nearly six months old, isn't
he?” he asked presently.

She flashed round upon him, and twisted her
mouth for a reply.

“Hasn't the lawful time arrived for you to slip
out of this black state? Put yourself and the baby
into short clothes, and let us see if you cannot attain
a better air.”

“Give me some money, then.” And she held out
her little hand, with an exquisitely impertinent
expression.

“I haven't a dollar; Sebastian took every cent. I
borrowed some for him, besides; he is spending it
somewhere, I suppose, in a manner refreshing to
himself.”

Her face turned to flame.

“Chameleon,” chuckled Argus, “what's the matter
with you?”

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“I think Sebastian is a man,” she cried, “who has
everything; he can beat you to death, at any point.
He has always taken to himself whatever is sweet
and good, I know he has; he is a bad man, and I
would like to see him killed. And if he is a Spaniard,
why hasn't the Inquisition crushed him before now,
the cool, abundant, gorged creature? And I should
think, Uncle Argus, you would hate him, for he is
not like you at all; he just stands alone, and no man
nor woman canpullhim down. He can browse on the
clouds, if he chooses; and be insolent on the top of
the walls of heaven, if it pleases him to walk out on
the ramparts.”

“Had he walked in at my door like an ordinary
comer,” said Argus gravely, “I might feel indifferent
to him; but I saved his life, at some strange cost to
myself. I have been strained ever since, there's no
denying it. Hoh, by God,—I feel cordial towards
him!”

Argus jumped from his chair, and lunged backwards
and forwards, his eyes alight, like coals,
touched by a sudden drought.

“Didn't I say so?” said Tempe; “I call you horrid
to praise him.”

“I don't praise him.”

“I call it praise.”

“Away with you, puss; better not quite forget that
it is possible for you to make life somewhat agreeable
to yourself.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

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Virginia, so it appeared, forgot that she was
playing with the new partner, Mr. Carfield, the innocent
and ancient game of backgammon. She held
the dice box suspended over the board, and did not
shake it. Mr. Carfield's eyes were indifferently fixed
on the blazing rings which adorned her motionless
hands. He was a brave, savage looking
man, and any energetic reminder from him that the
game was at a stand still, would not have surprised
the spectator, had there been one; but they were
alone. The folding doors of the best parlors were
apart; the chandeliers were lighted, the chairs stood
in groups, the open piano was littered with sheets of
music, and gilded books of engravings lay open on
the tables, but the guests were gone. Mr. Brande,
formerly ubiquitous in his house, so long as there
was anything to be transacted, or anybody moving,
had surreptitiously gone to bed, and there was no
person up except themselves, and Sarah, the waiter,
who sat yawning in the dining room, impatiently
waiting to hear Mr. Carfield's boots going up stairs,
on their way to be placed outside his bedroom door

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when stripped from his impudent legs. Late as it
was, she was destined to remain in her place some
little time yet, which gave her the opportunity, and
she improved it, of inventing new opprobrious
names for him. The house was pleasant still with
light and warmth, and filled with that silence so attractive
at night, when all the paraphernalia of living
is perfectly adjusted without the accessories of life.
The fires were burning, the lamplight was steady,
the walls, doors, and furniture shone darkly, and the
colors, glaring red and blue by day, were now soft and
sombre. With every hour of quiet, the plants in
Virginia's conservatory leading from the upper hall
lived in deeper dalliance, and sent their perfume
through the air in shocks of delicious sweetness. A
rain-storm had suddenly begun, and though the
shutters were closed it trickled through the slats, and
modestly streamed down the panes, as befitted its
entrance into Mr. Brande's house; a murmur came
from the roof, also, and the well-built doors were
obliged to thud in their frames occasionally. It
might have been that Virginia was listening to these
faint sounds, which prevented her from throwing the
dice. Abruptly and passionately he burst out with,

“What day of the month is this?”

Mr. Carfield, not to be surprised, bowed slightly,
and answered:

“The twenty-first of March.”

“So I have just thought, and the time is nearly
past! Oh, my blind, stupid, animal memory, that
needs the blow of the wind and rain to wake it.”

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She pushed away the table that stood between
them; the faint frown, now habitual with her, concentrated
into dark lines, and altered her sweet face
to that of a woman's acquainted with trouble. Dropping
her face in her hands, she appeared to have forgotten
Mr. Carfield, as well as the game. He threw
himself back in his chair, his short, amber-colored
hair showing well against the red velvet cover,
and his wide head looking still wider in its relief;
his lids narrowed as he contemplated her, till his
eyes were mere lines, but the lines expressed a
meaning seldom allowed there.