Chapter XCI: The Man That Saved Me

I ran into my room, and came out with a bundle in one hand and a coarse straw hat in the other. That group of gentlemen was just dropping down the bank out of sight, and after them went a crowd of girls, with their parasols flaming in the sun like a bed of poppies.

"Come," says I, all joyful animation, "I am dying to begin."

E. E. spread her parasol, and off we marched.

We came to the steep bank, and went down a flight of wooden stairs to the sandy shore. Right under the bank was a long row of cubby-houses, made of boards.

"This is ours," says E. E., "come in."

I went in. Sisters, what happened in the privacy of that board sanctuary, is not for the public--let this satisfy the curious.

Two ladies went into that little retreat, with bunched-up skirts, beehive bonnets, and a general assortment of dry-goods, such as weighs down the ladies of the present generation to an extent that approaches martyrdom.

Two persons came out skimped down into nothingness. They had grown tall and slim, not to say spooky. There was a deficiency of glossy ringlets under the two hats that squared off in front and behind, and were flapped down over each ear.

E. E.'s plumptitudinous figure was mostly lost and gone, and I--well, I felt like a church steeple on a very high hill. I say nothing, the subject being one of great delicacy; but from my experience in those Turkish--well, pantalettes--the female that begrudges her husband that class of garments, must hanker after change more than I do. When I came out of the little house, Dempster stood on the sand with a pair--well, of garments like mine, only more so, on, and a flaming red upper garment, bright enough to set the waves on fire, covering his broad bosom.

Another gentleman stood near him--blue and brown in his sea-outfit, youngish, and with eyes that made me wilt like a poppy the moment they fell upon me.

My goodness, how I did feel in that dress! It was all I could do to keep from kind of scrouching down to hide my bare feet; but it was of no use, so I dug them deep into the sand, and felt myself blushing all over, while that gentleman in blue fixed his eyes upon them.

Anyway, there was nothing to be so mightily timorous about, for, according to my calculation, two smaller or whiter feet didn't leave their prints in the sand that day, though I do make that assertion with my own lips, that ought to be mute.

Cousin Dempster came forward, took both E. E. and my trembling self by the hand, and led us to the water.

I took one glance: a swarm of straw hats, a crowd of men, women, and children were floundering, swimming, screaming, laughing, tumbling through the waves, that lifted them up, flung them down, pitched them forward, and behaved in a way that no well-bred ocean would have thought of doing.

I shrank--I shivered--the heart seemed to die in my agitated bosom when the first wave kissed my feet; I gave a little scream, but checked myself bravely. The waves were full of men, some of them were looking at me.

I determined to act bravely, and be the heroine of the occasion. I let go of Dempster's hand. A wave struck me, my head went down and my feet went up. In my fright and anguish I remembered their size and whiteness, and found consolation in the thought while I strove to right myself.

It was in vain; while I staggered with one big wave, another took me unawares, like a thief in the night, and dragged me under, like a wild beast growling over some poor helpless lamb--it tore me away. I shrieked--I plunged--I fought madly for my life. Up through the vivid green of the waters the sunshine came toward me like light upon beaming emeralds. I clutched at it. I tried to scream; but my mouth filled with water, green flashes shot through and through my eyes. I began to pray. The Green Mountains, the farm, and all my life there shot through my brain; things I had forgotten came uppermost, and those thoughts grew pleasant while the waters seemed roaring me to sleep.

Something came toward me, bluish. Was it a monster of the deep hungry for the life that was so fast dying out?

It seized me. I was born upward on a great wave, and swept off into the light. The claws of some monster, or the arms of some friend, held me close. Which was it?

Some power of good or evil, beastly or human, had dragged me into the sand, where white foam curled around me, and the sun struck down upon my eyes like fire.

Some man was thanking another for a great favor; a crowd of people came swarming around me. I attempted to open my eyes, but the water dripping down from my hair came into them sharp and salt.

"Is she sick? Is she afraid? Do tell who it is?"

These questions came from women who had rushed up from the waters, and flocked around me like mermaids. I did not care about them, but by and by it came to me that men might be there as well. I lifted my hand, swept the wet hair back from my face, and, with a smarting pain in my eyes, saw my deliverer.

His blue garments were black with dripping water, the thick hair streamed over his forehead, his bare feet looked hard and powerful on the sand. It was the man under whose admiring eyes I had blushed and trembled.

"My preserver!" said I, clasping my wet fingers in an ecstasy of gratitude; "shall I ever live to thank you for the poor life you have saved?"

He smiled, he shook his head; I am afraid he laughed, such was his joy and exultation; yet the modesty of true greatness possessed him still.

"It is nothing," he said. "A wave knocked you head-foremost--that was all."

I knew better. It was the inherent greatness of a noble soul that impelled him to make nothing of his own heroic act. He must have supported me miles on miles in those stalwart arms. No protest of his could lessen the bravery of his action or the force of my gratitude. If woman's gratitude and woman's love are anything, his reward shall be great.

They bore me into that weather-beaten cubby-house, and there, with the help of E. E., my dripping garments were taken off, my wet hair done up snugly under the braids that had been left behind, and, filled with tender gratitude, I walked up to my hero in blue before going to my apartment in the hotel.

"Let me see you to-morrow," said I, pressing the hand of that heroic man. "Then I may find language to express my life-long gratitude."

He bowed; he drew his hand, with evident reluctance, from my clasp, and retreated.

Ah, sisters, my destiny has come! I feel it in every breath I draw, in every sweet thought that haunts my brain. To-morrow I shall see him again. To-morrow!

Oh, sisters, he has just left me. Alas! alas! for human aspirations. I had written thus far when he came.

I received him in my room, looking pale, and, I think, interesting, for the sweet romance of my feelings left its imprint on my features. He came in with hesitation, and sat down on the edge of his chair, looking ill at ease, as if wishing to escape a mention of his own heroism. I felt a glow of admiration, a thrill of tender gratitude.

"You have saved my life," I said, clasping my two hands, "and from this hour I devote that life to your happiness. Tell me how I can begin to repay you."

He sat uneasily; he shifted in his chair. Then he murmured:

"Anything you please; I never thought of asking. It was only my duty."

"Heroic man!" I exclaimed; "and brave as modest. It is my pleasure to be more than grateful. Never, never can I repay you save with the warmest and sweetest emotions of a woman's heart. I owe you--ah, how much--how much!"

My hands were clasped, my eyes were uplifted; emotion prevented me finishing my sentence. He spoke, while my soul halted for words--

"Well, if you think so much of just helping you out of the way of a seaward wave, supposing we say five dollars. It is my duty, as bathing-master, to help people up from the sand when they get face downwards, as you did; but as you insist, I don't mind a fiver."

Oh, sisters!

XCII.

PLEASURE BAY.

Dear sisters:--I really do think that Cousin Dempster is one of the best creatures that ever lived. He seems to understand all the wounds and pains that a female woman's heart is exposed to, and sort of eases them off, so that you are cheated out of half your natural suffering.

I cannot say that the bathing in the salt-sea waves was not a failure as a matrimonial speculation; but that is my luck. In some respects, the future to me is like a mirage--I put my hand out hopefully, and grasp nothing but fog.

That bathing-master was a fine-looking man until he opened his mouth and attempted to sit down on a chair. He created a pleasant delusion in my bosom for a few moments, and then--well, we will say nothing more about that--the private sanctuary of a female woman's thoughts are too sacred for a Report.

If I wept in the stillness of the night, no one but the angel that records broken love-dreams will ever know of it. With this precious angel I am in full sympathy. He has done too much of that kind of writing for me not to feel the cruel pangs of the long list of disappointments with which his books are blotted.

Well, I arose the next morning after my experimental bath, heavy-eyed, heavy-hearted, and altogether blue as indigo. Cousin Dempster saw this, and his generous heart seized upon a remedy.

"Let us go down to Pleasure Bay," says he. "What do you think of a day's crabbing?"

"Crabbing?" says I, "just as if I didn't feel crabbed enough already. Do you want me to keep it up all day?"

Dempster laughed; so did E. E.; just as if I'd said something awful funny, which I wasn't in the least conscious of, not having a spark of fun left in me since that salt-water deluge and its consequences.

"Oh," says he, as good-natured as pie, "there is nothing like Pleasure Bay when one has the blues--a lunch under the trees, and a boat before the breeze."

I stopped him; the dear, good fellow was launching off into poetry without knowing it; association with genins is doing everything with him. There is no knowing where he might have ended, if I hadn't lifted my forefinger, for a whole gust of poetry was riling up in his earthly nature like yeast in a baking of bread.

"I'll go to Pleasure Bay," says I, "but, for goodness sake, don't try that sort of thing again; genius isn't catching, and though you have married into our family, don't expect that it will spread like an epidemic into yours, because it won't."

"Why not?" says he; "is there nothing in association?"

"Well, I can't exactly decide," says I; "strange things do happen in that direction. I have heard of young women marrying literary men who never wrote a line worth reading before, who burst out into full-blown geniuses right in the honeymoon. But it is wonderful how much their style was like their husbands'. Of course, those must be cases of especial affinity. When a woman has ransacked a poor fellow's heart, she naturally begins to pillage his brain, and I reckon he must like it at first; but after that, he subsides into himself, and she subsides into herself, and somehow she writes just as she did before, and so does he!"

"Then there are plenty of young ladies who carry their ambition and their flirtations in among the newspaper people and stray Bohemians," says E. E., kindling up to the subject; "for every time they get into a new flirtation, which is once in about three months, their style changes, giving them a wonderful versatility of talent that, somehow, dies out after awhile, as she grows old and homely."

"That is," says Dempster, laughing, "every time a literary lady of this stamp changes her lover, she changes her style, too."

"Exactly," answers E. E., "and where she hasn't any good-natured lover she retires into modest privacy till one comes along."

I just listened, holding my breath.

"What," says I, "does fraud and deception creep into the sacred literature of our country? I cannot believe it."

"Can't you?" says E. E.; "but you have never been in Bohemia."

"No," says I, "that is a part of Europe that I hope to visit, but never have. Is it a popular place for Americans?"

"Oh, wonderfully popular, for people who dash off things here and there, write for this and that, and are willing to give half that they earn and know to any adventurer that comes along, free gratis for nothing; or, on occasion, sell reputation by the line, and for a price. Oh, Bohemia is a splendid place for adventurers and adventuresses to forage in!"

"What!" says I, "genius sell itself?"

"Yes," says she, "and its readers, too."

"Cousin E. E.," says I, "you slander the grandest, the purest, the most sublime people on the earth."

"Do I?" says she, nodding her head and laughing. "Wait and see."

"Remember--you are speaking of authors, the first and purest aristocracy known to our free nation."

"No; I speak of would-be authors--guerillas in literature--men and women of erratic ability, who adore inspiration and scorn work; for authorship, I am told, and believe, requires the hardest work of any calling in the world."

"I'm afraid it does," said I, drawing a long breath, "but then such work brings its own prompt payment. The power to write is happiness in itself."

"But what has this to do with Pleasure Bay?" says Dempster; "we mean to go there--not to Bohemia."

"Just so," says I, a-tying on my bonnet.

We got into Dempster's carriage, and after a delightful drive, we came down on the edge of a little bay, with green grass growing close down to the shore, and great, tall trees clumped here and there all around it.

I was so charmed with the scenery that I didn't realize where we were till the carriage stopped before a white house, with a long wooden stoop in front, when we got out and walked right away down to the shore, where a plank platform ran out from the land, and a cunning little boat, with white sails, lay dipping up and down like a duck in the water.

Sisters, I'm not timersome, but getting into a boat that rocks like a cradle in the water tries me, I must own to that. With what holding on and keeping your dress well down upon the ankles, one is seized with a sense of being awfully unsteady. This riles up the constitution to a state of dizziness that makes your ears buz like a bumblebee's nest.

I was thankful to get seated at last, and, tucking up my dress, prepared at once for a long sea-voyage. E. E. had slung a great straw gypsy hat on her arm, by the strings, when she left Long Branch, which she bent down over her head like an umbrella with herself for a handle; over that she spread a broad yellow parasol that blazed in the hot air like a great sunflower.

"Phœmie," says she, a-looking up from under her straw tent, "didn't you bring a flat?"

"No," says I; "the young fellows of that stamp didn't happen to be about when we started."

"Dear me! you'll burn your face up," says she; "that beehive is no protection."

"About as much as one of your York flats would be," says I. "But supposing I hoist my parasol, too--one don't need a beau for that."

The sun was pouring down like blazes, and I was mighty glad to spread my parasol, I can tell you; so I did it, and settled down on the same bench with E. E.

Dempster had been awful busy on shore, pulling out fish-lines, looking up nets that swung like a great hang-bird's nest, on the end of a pole: and now he was on his knees, hacking a fish into chunks, which he tied to a line and dropped into the bottom of the boat. At last he lifted his great straw hat, wiped the blazing warmth from his face, and jumped in.