Chapter V: Part 5

Now I believe it was not generally known in Hendrik that Miss Wimple had narrowly escaped being a very pretty girl. She was but just in her nineteenth year when her father died. Her features were regular, her expression lovely, her complexion, before trouble nipped the roses of her cheeks, full of the country's freshness. She had tender eyes, profoundly overshadowed by long, pensive lashes; in the sweet lines of her very delicate mouth a trace of quiet pride was prettily blended with thoughtfulness, and a just-forming smile that was always melancholy. Her feet were little, and her hands were soft and white; nor had toil and sorrow, and the weariness, and indifference to self, that come of them, as yet impaired the symmetry of her well-turned shape, or the elasticity of her free and graceful carriage. Her deportment was frank and self-reliant, and her manners, though reserved, far from awkward; her complete presence, indeed, compelled consideration and invited confidence.

In her father's lifetime, she had sought, on occasions of unwonted cheerfulness, to please him with certain charming tricks of attire; and sometimes, with only a white rose-bud gleaming through the braided shadows of her hair, lighted herself up as with a star; then, not a carping churl, not an envious coquette in Hendrik, but confessed to the prettiness of Sally Wimple.

But now there was no longer a grateful life for her white rose-star to brighten; so she sat down, in her loneliness and sombre unbecomingness, between her forlorn counters with their pitiful shows of stock, and let her good looks go by, entertaining only brave thoughts of duty,--till she grew pale "and fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces," so that "how anybody could see the least beauty in that distressing Miss Wimple" began to be with many a sincere and almost reasonable expression of surprise, instead of a malicious sin against knowledge. She waited for customers, but they seldom came,--often, from opening to window-barring, not one; for the unwilting little martyr of the Hendrik Athenaeum and Circulating Library had made herself a highly disapproved-of Miss Wimple by her ungrateful and contumacious behavior at her father's death, even if the hard and sharp black lines of that scrimped delaine had not sufficed to turn the current of admiration, interest, and custom. Besides, the attractions of her slender stock were all exhausted. She had not the means of refreshing it with pretty novelties and sentimental toys in that line,--with albums and valentines, fancy portfolios and pocket-secretaries, pearl paper-knives and tortoise-shell cardcases, Chinese puzzles and _papier-maché_ checker-boards. Nor was the Library replenished "to keep up with the current literature of the day"; its last new novel was a superannuated dilapidation; not one of its yearly subscribers but had worked through the catalogue once and a half.

Since the funeral, and especially since the inauguration of the delaine, Mrs. Marmaduke Splurge had been less alive to the necessity of improving the minds of her girls; and that virginal ten-dollar investment had provided Josephine, Adelaide, and Madeline with supplies of small arms and ammunition enough for a protracted campaign of epistolary belligerence, interrupted by hair-strokes of coquettish diplomacy.

In the flaunting yellow house on the hill the widow and daughters of the late Marmaduke Splurge, Esq., railroad-director and real-estate broker, fondled and hated each other. Mrs. Marmaduke was a well-preserved woman, stylish, worldly-minded, and weak. Miss Josephine, her eldest, was handsome, patronizing, _passée_, and a sentimental fool; Miss Adelaide, who came next, was handsome, eccentric, malicious, and sly; and Miss Madeline, the youngest, was handsome, distinguished-looking, intellectual, passionate, and proud.

Mrs. Marmaduke's heart was set on marrying her daughters "advantageously," and she gave all of her narrow mind to that thankless department. Josephine insisted on a romantic attachment, and pursued a visionary spouse with all the ardor and obstinacy of first-rate stupidity. Adelaide had the weakness to hate Josephine, the shrewdness to fear Madeline, and the viciousness to despise her mother; she skilfully and diligently devoted herself to the thwarting of the family. Madeline waited, only waited,--with a fierceness so dangerously still that it looked like patience,--hated her insulting bondage, but waited, like Samson between the pillars upon which the house of Dagon stood, resolved to free herself, though she dragged down the edifice and were crushed among the wreck.

Mrs. Marmaduke talked tediously of the trials and responsibilities of conscientious mothers who have grown-up daughters to provide for, was given to frequent freshets of tears, consumed many "nervous pills" of the retired-clergyman-whose-sands-of-life-have-nearly-run-out sort, and netted bead purses for the Select Home for Poor Gentlemen's Daughters. Josephine let down her back hair dowdily, partook recklessly of poetry and pickles, read inordinately in bed,--leaning all night on her elbow,--and was threatened with spinal curvature and spiritualism. Adelaide set invisible little traps in every nook and cranny, every cupboard and drawer, from basement to attic, and with a cheerful, innocent smile sat watching them night and day. Madeline, fiercely calm, warned off the others, with pale lips and flashing eyes and bitter tongue, resenting _en famille_ the devilish endearments she so sweetly suffered in company; but ever as she groped about in her soul's blindness she felt for the central props of that house of Dagon.

All the good society of Hendrik said the Splurges were a charming family, a most attached and happy family, lovely in their lives and in death not to be divided, and that they looked sweetly in hoops. And yet the Splurges had but few visitors; the young women of the neighborhood, when they called there, left always an essential part of their true selves behind them as they entered, and an ornamental part of their reputations when they took their departure; nor were the young men partial to the name,--for Josephine bored them, and Adelaide taunted them, and Madeline snubbed them, and Mrs. Marmaduke pumped them, and the combined family confounded them. Only Mr. Philip Withers was the intimate and encouraged _habitué_ of the house.

Mr. Philip Withers was the very man for the looser principles of Hendrik,--a fine gentleman's fine son, and his only one, who, by the death of his father, had come, whilst he was yet very young, into a pretty property in the neighborhood,--a sort of idyllic man of the world, with considerable cleverness, a neat miscellaneous education, handsome person, effective clothes, plausible address, mischievous brilliancy of versatile talk, a deep voice, two or three accomplishments best adapted to the atmosphere of sentimental women, graceful self-possession, small feet, nice hands, striking attitudes, a subduing smile, magnetic whisper, Machiavellian tact, and French morals. He could sing you into tears, and dance you into love, and talk you into wonder; when he drew, you begged for his portrait by himself, and when he wrote, you solicited his autograph.

Mr. Philip Withers had taken his moustache to foreign parts, and done the Continent sophisticatedly. He was well-read in cities, and had brought home a budget of light, popular, and profusely illustrated articles of talk on an equivocal variety of urban life, which he prettily distributed among clovery pastorals, Wordsworthian ballads, De Coverly entertainments, Crayon sketches, and Sparrowgrass Papers, for the benefit of his country subscribers. From all of which you have no doubt gathered by this time that Mr. Philip Withers was a graceful scamp, and a friend of the Splurges,--who had money, which Mr. Philip Withers had not; for he had been a munificent patron of elegant pleasures abroad, and since his return had erected an addition to his father's house in the shape of a pair of handsome mortgages, as a proprietor of romantic tastes in architecture might flank his front door with mediaeval donjons.

Mrs. Marmaduke made much of that good-looking and delightful Withers. Though not a pious man, in the formal sense of the term, she felt sure he was religious according to that stained-glass and fragrant religion of the tastes which is an essential attribute of every gentleman,--that is, of every well-born man of cultivated preferences and sensitive antipathies,--and she had no doubt that gentlemen's souls could be saved by that arrangement just as satisfactorily, and so much more gracefully. She only wished, my dear, you could hear Mr. Withers express himself on those subjects,--his ideas were so delightfully "your deal, my love"--clear, his illustrations so sweetly pretty, and his manner so earnest; really, he stirred her like--"hearts, did you say?--a trump."

Josephine Splurge contented herself with letting down her back hair for Mr. Withers and making eyes at him.

"Good-morrow to the guileless Genevieve!"--Withers delighted in dispensing equivocal nothings to the dowdy Muse of the sofa and back hair.--"Charming weather!"

"There, you bewildering Joseph Surface, you need not go on,--I know what you are going to say, and I will neither be flattered nor fascinated. Come, confess now, like a dear candid creature, throw off your irresistibly bewitching mask, and own that your sentiments are all rhetoric."

"Josy, dear," Adelaide would insinuate, "what a wonderful memory you have!--so well managed, too! Now whom _did_ you hear say that?"

Josephine was wont to declare that the Admirable Crichton lived again in that kaleidoscopic creature; but he was so dazzling, so bewildering, so dangerous, that to converse with him was like having fireworks in one's boudoir.

With Madeline Withers was on strange terms, if any terms at all. She threatened to him in the middle of his best stories, smiled quietly when he preached, yawned to his poetical recitations, left the room when he sang, mistook the subjects of his sketches with a verisimilitude of innocence that often deceived even himself, was silent and sneered much whenever he was present. And all these rudenesses she performed with a successful air of genuine abstraction; they never failed of their intention by being overdone, or by being too _directly_ directed at him.

Remarks seldom passed between these two; when they did, Withers spoke always first, and Madeline replied briefly and with politeness. And yet there were occasions when a sharp-sighted and suspicious observer might have detected a strange discomposure in Madeline's conduct in the presence of Withers,--when, indeed, she seemed to be laboring under irritability, and proneness to singular excitement, which began with his entrance and disappeared with his departure. At such times she would break her haughty quiet with fierce sallies upon her sisters; but Withers stung her back into silence with sharp and telling retorts,--as you may have seen a practised beast-tamer in a cage flog an angry tigress, when her eyes flashed, and her ears were set back, and she unsheathed her horrid claws, and lashed her sides, and growled with all the appalling fee-faw-fum of the jungle,--flog her back into her corner, with nought more formidable than a lady's riding-whip, dainty, slender, and sharp. But Withers administered the chastisement with such devilish grace that it was unperceived, save by the quick, shrewd Adelaide perhaps, who perceived everything,--but never _saw_, nor ever spoke. If you could have beheld the lips and the eyes of Madeline, on such occasions, you would have cursed this Philip Withers, or beaten him to her feet.

Between Withers and Adelaide the relations were plainer; indeed, before the small Splurge set they appeared as avowed lovers. Toward "Addy" Withers was all elegant devotion and gracious gallantry, knight-like in his chivalric and debonair devoir.

For Withers Addy was, openly, all deference and tenderly wistful solicitude, but in secret not all security and exultation. Even while it seemed high triumph in her heart's camp, her well-drilled eyes and ears were still on guard, and her hidden thoughts lay upon their arms.

Still it wore the aspect of a lyric match, and the hearts of humbler Hendrik lovers set it to music.

"For other guests," Withers seemed to say,

"I wile the hours with tale or song,
Or web of fancy, fringed with careless rhyme;
But how to find a fitting lay for thee,
Who hast the harmonies of every time?"

And Addy _looked_,

"Thou art to me most like a royal guest,
Whose travels bring him to some humble roof,
Where simple rustics spread their festal fare,
And, blushing, own it is not good enough.

"Bethink thee, then, whene'er thou com'st to me,
From high emprise and noble toil to rest,
My thoughts are weak and trivial, matched with thine,
But the poor mansion offers thee its best."

So Mrs. Marmaduke exalted her horn and exceedingly magnified her manoeuvring office. On the strength of it, she treated herself to profuse felicitations and fished among her neighbors for more.

CHAPTER II.

And now I will let you into a secret, which, according to the received rules for story-construction, should be barred against you yet a little longer. I will fling it wide open at once, instead of holding it ajar and admitting you edgewise, as it were, one conjecture at a time.

Miss Wimple had a lover;--she had had him since six months before her father died, and the decayed publisher had never guessed of him nor Sally confessed him; for the good, thoughtful daughter knew it would but complicate the old man's perplexities and cares to no purpose. To be sure, his joyful consent was certain; but so long as he lived, "the thing was not to be thought of," she said, and it was not wise to plant in his mind a wish with which her duty could not accord. So Sally's lover was hushed up,--hidden in discretion as in a closet.

Simon Blount was his name, and he was a young farmer of five hundred acres in first-rate cultivation, with barns, stables, and offices in complete repair,--a well-stocked, well-watered place, with "all the modern improvements," and convenient to the Hendrik branch of the New York and Bunker Hill railroad.

The young man had inherited this very neat property from his father,--a thriving, intelligent farmer of the best class, Mr. Wimple's oldest friend, his playmate in boyhood, and his crony when he died. Simon's mother and Sally's had likewise been schoolmates, and intimates to the last, fondly attached to each other, and mutually confiding in each other's love and truth in times of pain and trouble.

But Mr. Blount and Mrs. Wimple had been dead these ten years;--they died in the same month. Simon and Sally were children when that happened, and since then they had grown up together in the closest family intimacy, interrupted only by Sally's winter schooling in New York, and renewed every summer by her regular seasons at Hendrik.

To the young man and the ripening maiden, then, their love came as naturally as violets and clover-blooms, and was as little likely to take their parents or the familiar country-folk by surprise.

When Simon took trips to New York, he "stopped" at Mr. Wimple's, and Sally's summer home in Hendrik was always "Aunt Phoebe's," as she had been taught to call Simon's mother.

You will wonder, then, that Mr. Paul Wimple should have blushed and struggled and died in the forlorn little "Athenaeum," and that Sally should sit down in her loneliness and "that fright of a delaine" to wait for customers that came not, when in their old friends' house were comfortable mansions, and in their old friends' hearts tearful kisses and welcome free as air. But you must remember that with sudden poverty comes, often, shrinking pride, and a degree of suspicion, and high scorn of those belittled pensioners who hang upon old ties; that old age, when it is sorely beset, is not always patient, clear-sighted, and just; that, when the heart of a young girl, in Sally's extremity, carries the helpless love that had been clad in purple, and couched in eider, and pampered with bonny cats, and served in gold, to Pride, and asks, "Stern master, what shall I do with this now?" the answer will be, "Strip it of its silken fooleries,--let it lie on the ground, the broad bosom of its honest, hearty mother,--teach it the wholesomeness of brown bread and cresses, fairly earned, and water from the spring,--and let it wait on itself, and wait for the rest!" Once, when the talk at the Splurge house descended for a moment from its lofty flights to describe a few eccentric mocking circles around the Hendrik Athenaeum and Miss Wimple, Madeline said, "If you have sense or decency, be silent;--the girl is true and brave, every way better taught than we, and prouder than she knows. If we were truly as scornful of her as she is indifferent to us, we would let her glorious insignificance alone."

So Miss Wimple waited in her shabby little shop and plied her needle for hire. Her lover was a handsome fellow, with a bright, frank face, and a vigorous, agile, and graceful form; there was more than common intellect in his clear, broad brow, overhung with close clusters of brown country curls; taste was on his lips and tenderness in his eyes; his soul was full of generosity, candor, and fidelity; his every movement and attitude denoted native refinement, and in his talk he displayed an excellent understanding and remarkable cultivation; for his father had bestowed on him superior advantages of education;--"as fine a young fellow, Sir," that estimable old Doctor Vandyke would say, "as ever you saw."

It was true, Simon's travels had never reached beyond New York; but, unlike Mr. Philip Withers, he had brought home solid comforts, useful facts, wholesome sentiments, natural manners, and sensible, but modest conversation,--instead of an astonishing variety of intellectual curiosities and intricate moral toys, whereat plain people marvelled--as in the case of a certain ingenious Chinese puzzle, ball within ball, all save the last elaborately carved--how the very diminutive _plain_ one at the centre ever got in there, or ever could be got out.

In another respect the young farmer enjoyed a noticeable advantage over the man-of-the-world;--he was quite able to tear down those fancy donjon additions, and erect a plain, honest, substantial, very comfortable, and very cheerful Yankee porch on their site.

But Miss Wimple said to Simon,--"For a season you will keep aloof from this place and from me. I must see you no oftener than it would be allowable for an occasional customer of the better sort to drop in; and when you do come, state your business--let it always be _business_, or pass by--and take your leave, like any indifferent neighbor who came to change a book, or purchase a trifle, or engage work. On these terms our love must wait, until by my own unaided exertions--without help, mark you, Simon, from any man or woman on earth--I have discharged the debt of charity that is due to the good people of this place who helped my father in his utmost need, and gave him this shop and these things in trust. From you, of all men, Simon, I will accept no aid. Play no tricks of kindness upon me; nor let your love tempt you to experiment, with disguised charity, upon my purpose. You would only find that you had failed, and ruined all. The proceeds of this poor shop must belong to those whose money procured it, until I shall have paid its price; on no pretext shall that fund be touched for other purposes. I will sustain myself independently; you know that I ply a nimble needle, and that my handiwork will be in esteem among the richer folks of Hendrik. And now, dear Simon, let me have my way. You need no more earnest assurance of my love than the pains I would take, in this matter, to make you respect me more. When my task is done, I will deck myself as of old, and again light up the rose-star in my hair, and stand in the door and clap my hands to call you hither, and hold you fast; but not till then. Let me have my way till then."

And Simon said,--"You are wiser than I, Sally, and braver, and every way better. I will obey you in this, and wait,--the more cheerfully because I shall be always at hand, and, if your heart should fail you, I know you will not refuse my aid, nor prefer another's to mine."

And so they passed for mere acquaintances; and there were some who said--Philip Withers among them--that "that plausible Golden Farmer, young Blount, had treated the forlorn thing shabbily."

About that time hoops came in, and the Splurge girls flourished the first that appeared in Hendrik.

One day, as Miss Wimple sat in a low Yankee rocking-chair, sewing among her books, she was favored with the extraordinary apparition of Miss Madeline Splurge,--her first visitor that day, whether on business or curiosity.

"I wish to procure a small morocco pocket-book, Miss Wimple, if you keep such things."

Miss Wimple, with a slight bow of assent, took from a glass counter-case a paper box in which was a miscellaneous assortment of such articles; there were five or six of the pocket-books. Madeline selected one,--a small, flexible affair, of some dark-colored morocco lined with pink silk. She paid the trifle the shy, demure little librarian demanded, and was taking her leave in silence, without even a "Good-day," when, as she was passing the door, Miss Wimple espied on the counter, near where her customer had stood, a visiting-card; her eye fell on the engraved name,--"Mr. Philip Withers"; of course Miss Splurge had dropped it unawares. She hastened with it to the door,--Madeline had just stept into the street,--

"This card is yours, I presume, Miss Splurge?"

Madeline turned upon her with a surprised air, inquiringly,--looked in her own hands, and shook her handkerchief with the quick, nervous, alarmed movement of one who suddenly discovers a very particular loss,--became, in an instant, pale as death, stared for a moment at Miss Wimple with fixed eyes, and slightly shivered. Then, quickly and fiercely, she snatched the card from Miss Wimple's hand,--

"Where--where did you find this? Did--did I leave--drop--?"

"You left it on my counter," Miss Wimple quietly replied, with a considerate self-possession that admirably counterfeited unconsciousness of Madeline's consternation.

"Come hither, into the shop,--a word with you,"--and Madeline entered quickly, and closed the door behind her. For a moment she leaned with her elbow on the counter, and pressed her eyes with her fingers.

"Are you ill, Miss Splurge?" Miss Wimple gently inquired.

"No. Did you read what is on this card?"

"Yes."

"You--you--you read"----Madeline's hands were clenched, her face red and distorted; she gnashed her teeth, and seemed choking.

"Why, Miss Splurge, what is the matter with you? Yes, I read the name,--Mr. Philip Withers. The card lay on the counter,--I could not know it was yours,--I read the name, and immediately brought it to you. What excites you so? Sit down, and calm yourself; surely you are ill."

Madeline did not accept the stool Miss Wimple offered her, but, availing herself of the pause to assume a forced calmness which left her paler than at first, she fixed her flashing eyes steadily on the deep, still eyes of her companion, and asked,--

"You did not turn this card, then?--you did not look on the other side?"

"On my honor, I did not."

"On your honor! You are not lying, girl?"--Miss Splurge thrust the card into the newly-purchased pocket-book, and hid that in her bosom.

"Miss Splurge," said Miss Wimple, very simply, and with no excitement of tone or expression, "when you feel sufficiently recovered to appear on the street, without exposing yourself there as you have done in here, go out!"

And Miss Wimple turned from Madeline and would have resumed her sewing; but Madeline cried,--

"Stay, stay, Miss Wimple, I beseech you! I knew not what I said; forgive me, ah, forgive me!--for you are merciful, as you are pure and true. If you were aware of all, you would know that I could not insult you, if I would. Trouble, distraction, have made me coarse,--false, too, to myself as unjust and injurious to you; for I know your virtues, and believe in them as I believe in little else in this world or the next. If in my hour of agony and shame I could implore the help of any human being, I would come to you--dear, honest, brave girl!--before all others, to fling myself at your feet, and kiss your hands, and beseech you to pity me and save me from myself, to hold my hot head on your gentle bosom, and your soothing hand on my fierce heart. Good-by! Good-by! I need not ask your pardon again,--you have no anger for such as I. But if your blessed loneliness is ever disturbed by vulgar, chattering visitors, you will not name me to them, or confess that you have seen me." And ere Miss Wimple could utter the gentle words that were already on her lips, Madeline was gone.

For a while Miss Wimple remained standing on the spot, gazing anxiously, but vacantly, toward the door by which the half-mad lady had departed,--her soft, deep eyes full of painful apprehension. Then she resumed her little rocking-chair, and, as she gathered up her work from the floor where she had dropped it, tears trickled down her cheeks; she sighed and shook her head, in utter sorrow.

"They were always strange women," she thought, "those Splurges,--not a sound heart nor a healthy mind among them. Could their false, barren life have maddened this proud Madeline? Else what did she mean by her 'hot head' and her 'fierce heart'? And what had that Philip Withers to do with her trouble and her distraction? She recollected now that Simon had once said, in his odd, significant way, that Mr. Withers was a charming person to contemplate from a safe distance,--Simon, who never lent himself to idle detraction. She remembered, too, that she had often reproached herself for her irrational prejudice against the man,--that she was forever finding something false and sinister in the face that every one else said was eminently handsome, and ugly dissonance in the voice that all Hendrik praised for its music. Was he on both sides of that card?--Ah, well! it might be just nothing, after all; the poor lady might be ill, or vexed past endurance at home; or some unhappy love affair might have come to fret her proud, impatient, defiant temper. But not Withers,--oh, of course not Withers!--for was it not well known that Adelaide was his choice, that his assiduous and graceful attentions to her silenced even his loudest enemies, who could no longer accuse him of duplicity and disloyalty to women? But she would feel less disturbed, and sleep better, perhaps, if she knew that Madeline was safe at home, and tranquil again."

Thinking of sleep reminded Miss Wimple that she had a pious task to perform before she could betake her to her sweet little cot. A superannuated and bedridden woman, who had nursed her mother in her last illness, lived on the northern outskirts of the town; and she must cross the long covered bridge that spanned the Hendrik River to take a basket full of comforting trifles to old Hetty that night.

About nine o'clock Miss Wimple had done her charitable errand, and was on her way home again, with a light step and a happy heart, an empty basket and old Hetty's abundant blessings. She was alone, but feared nothing,--the streets of Hendrik at night were familiar to her and she to them; and although her shy and quiet traits were not sufficiently understood to make her universally beloved, not a loafing ruffian in town but knew her modest face, her odd attire, and her straightforward walk; and the rudest respected her.

As she approached the covered bridge, the moon was shining brightly at the entrance, making the gloom within profounder. It was a long, wooden structure, of a kind common enough on the turnpikes of the Atlantic States, where they cross the broader streams. Stout posts and cross-beams, and an arch that stretched from end to end, divided the bridge into two longitudinal compartments, for travellers going and coming respectively; there were small windows on each side, and at either end, on a conspicuous signboard, were the Company's "Rules,"--"Walk your Horses over this Bridge, or be subject to a Fine of not less than Five nor exceeding Twenty Dollars"--"Keep to the Right, as the Law directs."

As Miss Wimple entered the shadow of the bridge on the right hand, she was startled by hearing excited voices, which seemed to come from the other side of the central arch, and about the middle of the bridge, where the darkness was deepest:--

"Speak low, I say, or be silent! Some one will be coming presently;--I heard steps approaching even now"--Miss Wimple instinctively stopped, and stood motionless, almost holding her breath, at the end of the arch where the moonlight did not reach. She was no eavesdropper, mark you,--the meannesses she scorned included that character in a special clause. But she had recognised the voice, and with her own true delicacy would spare the speaker the shame of discovery and the dread of exposure.--"Speak low, or I will leave you. If you are indifferent for yourself, you shall not toss me to the geese of Hendrik."

"You are right";--it was a woman's voice; but, whatever her tone had been before, she spoke so low now, and with a voice so hoarse with suppressed emotion, so altered by a sort of choking whisper, that Miss Wimple, if she had ever heard it before, could not recognize it;--"You are right; the time for that has not come;--I could not stay to enjoy it;--I am going now, but we will meet again."

"What would you have? I have said I would marry you,--and leave you,--so soon as I can shake myself clear of that other stupid infatuation."

"Now, Philip Withers, what a weak, pusillanimous wretch you must be, having known me so long, and tried my temper so well, to hope to find me such a fool, after all,--that kind of fool, I mean! My deepest shame, in this unutterably shameful hour, is that I chose such a cowardly ass to besot myself with.--There, the subject sickens me, and I am going. Dare to follow me, and the geese of Hendrik shall have you. I go scot-free, fearing nothing, having nothing to lose; but I hold you, my exquisite Joseph Surface--oh, the wit of my sister! oh, the wisdom of fools!--by your fine sentiments; and when I want you I shall find you. I can take care of me and _mine_; but beware how you dare to claim lot or portion in what I choose to call my own, even though your brand be on it,--Joseph!"

She hissed the name, and, with hurried steps, and a low, scornful laugh, departed. As Miss Wimple, all aghast, leaned forward with quick breath and tumultuous heart, and peered through the gloom toward where the silver moonlight lay across the further end of the bridge, she saw a white dress flash across a bright space and disappear. Then Philip Withers stepped forth into the moonlight, stood there for a minute or two, and gazed in the direction of a branch road which made off from the turnpike close to the bridge, and led, at right angles to it, to the railroad station on the right; then slowly, and without once looking back, he followed the turnpike to the town.

All astonished, bewildered, full of strange, vague fears, Miss Wimple remained in the now awful gloom and stillness of the bridge till he had quite disappeared. Then gathering up her wits with an effort, she resumed her homeward way. As she emerged from the shadows into the same bright place which Withers and his mysterious companion had just passed, she spied something dark lying on the ground. She stooped and picked it up; it was a small morocco pocket-book lined with pink silk.

Good Heaven! She remembered,--the one she had sold to Miss Madeline Splurge that afternoon,--the very same! So, then, that was her voice, her dress; she had, indeed, dimly thought of Madeline more than once, while that woman was speaking so bitterly,--but had not recognized her tones, nor once fancied it might be she. Now she easily recalled her words, and understood some of her allusions. And her wild, distracted, incoherent speech in the shop, too,--ah! it was all too plain; that was surely she; but what might be the nature or degree of her trouble Miss Wimple dared not try to guess. This Philip Withers,--was he a villain, after all? "Had he--this poor lady--Oh, God forbid! No, no, no!"

She opened the pocket-book;--a visiting-card was all it contained. She drew it forth,--"Mr. Philip Withers,"--yes, she knew it by that broken corner, as though it had been marked so for a purpose. She held it up before her eyes where the moon was brightest, and--turned the other side.

"Ah, me!" exclaimed that Chevalier Bayard in shabby, skimped delaine, "what was I going to do?"

Blushing, she returned the card to its place, and hiding the pocket-book in her honorable bosom, hurried homeward. But her soul was troubled as she went; sometimes she sobbed aloud, and more than once she stood still and wrung her hands.

"Ah! if Simon Blount would but come now to advise me what is safest and best to do!"

Should she go to Mrs. Splurge and tell her all? No,--what right had she? That would but precipitate an exposure which might not be necessary. The case was not clear enough to justify so officious a step. Madeline was in no immediate danger. Perhaps she had only taken a different road to avoid the odious companionship of Withers. No doubt she was half-way home already. She would wait till morning, for clearer judgment and information. Till then she would hope for the best.

When Miss Wimple reached her humble little nest, she knelt beside her bed and prayed, tearfully, to the God who averts danger and forgives sin; but she did not sleep all night.

In the morning a gossiping neighbor came with the news;--"that little cooped-up Wimple never hears anything," she thought.

Miss Madeline Splurge had disappeared. Mr. Philip Withers was searching for her high and low. She had not been seen since yesterday afternoon,--had not returned home last night. It was feared she had drowned herself in the river for spite. She, the knowing neighbor, "had always said so,--had always said that Madeline Splurge was a quare girl,--sich high and mighty airs, and _sich_ a temper. Now here it was, and what would people say,--specially them as had always turned up their nose at her opinion?"

Miss Wimple said nothing; but she treated Pity to two poor little lies;--one she told, and the other she looked:--She was not well, she said, which was the reason why she was so pale; and then she looked surprised at the news of Madeline's flitting.

Later in the day another report:--A letter left by Madeline had been found at home. She had taken offence at some sharp thing that sarcastic Mr. Withers, who always did hate her, had said; and had gone off in a miff, without even good-by or a carpet-bag, and taken the night train to New York, where she had an uncle on the mother's side.--And a good riddance! Now Miss Addy and Mr. Withers would have some peace of their time. Such a sweet couple, too!

Madeline _had_ left a note:--"I was sick of you all, and I have escaped from you. You will be foolish to take any trouble about it."

[To be continued.]

THE CUP.

The cup I sing is a cup of gold,
Many and many a century old,
Sculptured fair, and over-filled
With wine of a generous vintage, spilled
In crystal currents and foaming tides
All round its luminous, pictured sides.

Old Time enamelled and embossed
This ancient cup at an infinite cost.
Its frame he wrought of metal that run
Red from the furnace of the sun.
Ages on ages slowly rolled
Before the glowing mass was cold,
And still he toiled at the antique mould,
Turning it fast in his fashioning hand,
Tracing circle, layer, and band,
Carving figures quaint and strange,
Pursuing, through many a wondrous change,
The symmetry of a plan divine.
At last he poured the lustrous wine,
Crowned high the radiant wave with light,
And held aloft the goblet bright,
Half in shadow, and wreathed in mist
Of purple, amber, and amethyst.

This is the goblet from whose brink
All creatures that have life must drink:
Foemen and lovers, haughty lord
And sallow beggar with lips abhorred.
The new-born infant, ere it gain
The mother's breast, this wine must drain.
The oak with its subtile juice is fed,
The rose drinks till her cheeks are red,
And the dimpled, dainty violet sips
The limpid stream with loving lips.
It holds the blood of sun and star,
And all pure essences that are:
No fruit so high on the heavenly vine,
Whose golden hanging clusters shine
On the far-off shadowy midnight hills,
But some sweet influence it distils
That slideth down the silvery rills.
Here Wisdom drowned her dangerous thought,
The early gods their secrets brought;
Beauty, in quivering lines of light,
Ripples before the ravished sight;
And the unseen mystic spheres combine
To charm the cup and drug the wine.

All day I drink of the wine and deep
In its stainless waves my senses steep;
All night my peaceful soul lies drowned
In hollows of the cup profound;
Again each morn I clamber up
The emerald crater of the cup,
On massive knobs of jasper stand
And view the azure ring expand:
I watch the foam-wreaths toss and swim
In the wine that o'erruns the jewelled rim,
Edges of chrysolite emerge,
Dawn-tinted, from the misty surge;
My thrilled, uncovered front I lave,
My eager senses kiss the wave,
And drain, with its viewless draught, the lore
That warmeth the bosom's secret core,
And the fire that maddens the poet's brain
With wild sweet ardor and heavenly pain.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE SEA.

Every calling has something of a special dialect. Even where there is, one would think, no necessity for it, as in the conversation of Sophomores, sporting men, and reporters for the press, a dialect is forthwith partly invented, partly suffered to grow, and the sturdy stem of original English exhibits a new crop of parasitic weeds which often partake of the nature of fungi and betoken the decay of the trunk whence they spring.

Is this the case with the language of the sea? Has the sea any language? or has each national tongue grafted into it the technology of the maritime calling?

The sea has its own laws,--the common and unwritten law of the forecastle, of which Admiralty Courts take infrequent cognizance, and the law of the quarter-deck, which is to be read in acts of Parliament and statutes of Congress. The sea has its own customs, superstitions, traditions, architecture, and government; wherefore not its own language? We maintain that it has, and that this tongue, which is not enumerated by Adelung, which possesses no grammar and barely a lexicon of its own, and which is not numbered among the polyglot achievements of Mezzofanti or Burritt, has yet a right to its place among the world's languages.

Like everything else which is used at sea,--except salt-water,--its materials came from shore. As the ship is originally wrought from the live-oak forests of Florida and the pine mountains of Norway, the iron mines of England, the hemp and flax fields of Russia, so the language current upon her deck is the composite gift of all sea-loving peoples. But as all these physical elements of construction suffer a sea-change on passing into the service of Poseidon, so again the landward phrases are metamorphosed by their contact with the main. But no one set of them is allowed exclusive predominance. For the ocean is the only true, grand, federative commonwealth which has never owned a single master. The cloud-compelling Zeus might do as he pleased on land; but far beyond the range of outlook from the white watch-tower of Olympus rolled the immeasurable waves of the wine-purple deep, acknowledging only the Enosigaios Poseidon. Consequently, while Zeus allotted to this and that hero and demigod Argos and Mycene and the woody Zacynthus, each to each, the ocean remained unbounded and unmeted. Nation after nation, race after race, has tried its temporary lordship, but only at the pleasure of the sea itself. Sometimes the ensign of sovereignty has been an eagle, sometimes a winged lion,--now a black raven, then a broom,--to-day St. Andrew's Cross, to-morrow St George's, perhaps the next a starry cluster. There is no permanent architecture of the main by which to certify the triumphs of these past invaders. Their ruined castles are lying "fifty fathom deep,"--Carthaginian galley and Roman trireme, the argosy of Spain, the "White Ship" of Fitz Stephen, the "Ville de Paris," down to the latest "non-arrival" whispered at Lloyd's,--all are gone out of sight into the forgotten silences of the green underworld. Upon the land we can trace Roman and Celt, Saxon and Norman, by names and places, by minster, keep, and palace. This one gave the battlement, that the pinnacle, the other the arch. But the fluent surface of the sea takes no such permanent impression. Gone are the quaint stern-galleries, gone the high top-gallant fore-castles, gone the mighty banks of oars of the olden time. It is only in the language that we are able to trace the successive nations in their march along the mountain waves; for to that each has from time to time given its contribution, and of each it has worn the seeming stamp, till some Actium or Lepanto or Cape Trafalgar has compelled its reluctant transfer to another's hands.

Or rather, we may say, the language of the sea comes and makes a part, as it were, of the speech of many different nations, as the sailor abides for a season in Naples, Smyrna, Valparaiso, Canton, and New York,--and from each it borrows, as the sailor does, from this a silk handkerchief, from that a cap, here a brooch, and there a scrap of tattooing, but still remains inhabitant of all and citizen of none,--the language of the seas.

What do we mean by this? It is that curious nomenclature which from truck to keelson clothes the ship with strange but fitting phrases,--which has its proverbs, idioms, and forms of expression that are of the sea, salt, and never of the land, earthy. Wherever tidewater flows, goes also some portion of this speech. It is "understanded of the people" among all truly nautical races. It dominates over their own languages, so that the Fin and Mowree, (Maori,) the Lascar and the Armorican, meeting on the same deck, find a common tongue whereby to carry on the ship's work,--the language in which to "hand, reef, and steer."

Whence did it come? From all nautical peoples. Not from the Hebrew race. To them the possession of the soil was a fixed idea. The sea itself had nothing wherewith to tempt them; they were not adventurers or colonizers; they had none of that accommodating temper as to creed, customs, and diet, which is the necessary characteristic of the sailor. But the nations they expelled from Canaan, the worshippers of the fish-tailed Dagon, who fled westward to build Tartessus (Tarshish) on the Gaditanian peninsula, or who clung with precarious footing to the sea-shore of Philistia and the rocky steeps of Tyre and Sidon,--these were seafarers. From them their Greek off-shoots, the Ionian islanders, inherited something of the maritime faculty. There are traces in the "Odyssey" of a nautical language, of a technology exclusively belonging to the world "off soundings," and an exceeding delight in the rush and spray-flinging of a vessel's motion,--

"The purple wave hissed from the bow of the
bark in its going."

Hence the Greek is somewhat of a sailor to this day, and in many a Mediterranean port lie sharp and smartly-rigged brigantines with classic names of old Heathendom gilt in pure Greek type upon their sterns.

But the Greek and Carthaginian elements of the ocean language must now lie buried very deep in it, and it is hard to recognize their original image and superscription in those smooth-worn current coins which form the basis of the sea-speech. It is not within the limits of a cursory paper like this to enter into too deep an investigation, or to trace perhaps a fanciful lineage for such principal words as "mast," and "sail," and "rope." In one word, "anchor," the Greek plainly survives,--and doubtless many others might be made out by a skilful philologist.

The Roman, to whom the empire of the sea, or, more properly speaking, the petty principality of the Mediterranean, was transferred, had little liking for that sceptre. He was driven to the water by sheer necessity, but he never took to it kindly. He was at best a sea-soldier, a marine, not brought up from the start in the merchant-service and then polished into the complete blue-jacket and able seaman of the navy. Nobody can think of those ponderous old Romans, whose comedies were all borrowed from Attica, whose poems were feeble echoes of the Greek, and whose architecture, art, and domestic culture were at best the work of foreign artists,--nobody can think of them at sea without a quiet chuckle at the inevitable consequences of the first "reef-topsail breeze." Fancy those solemn, stately Patricians, whose very puns are ponderous enough to set their galleys a streak deeper in the water, fancy them in a brisk sea with a nor'wester brewing to windward, watching off the port of Carthage for Admiral Hasdrubal and his fleet to come out. They were good hand-to-hand fighters,--none better; and so they won their victories, no doubt; but, having won them, they dropped sea-going, and made the conquered nations transport their corn and troops, while they went back to their congenial camps and solemn Senate-debates.

But Italy was not settled by the Roman alone. A black-haired, fire-eyed, daring, flexible race had colonized the Sicilian Islands, and settled thickly around the Tarentine Gulf, and built their cities up the fringes of the Apennines as far as the lovely Bay of Parthenope. Greek they were,--by tradition the descendants of those who took Troy-town,--Greek they are to this day, as any one may see who will linger on the Mole or by the Santa Lucia Stairs at Naples. At Salerno, at Amalfi, were cradled those fishing-hamlets which were to nurse seamen, and not soldiers. Far up the Adriatic, the storm of Northern invasion had forced a fair-haired and violet-eyed folk into the fastnesses of the lagoons, to drive their piles and lay their keels upon the reedy islets of San Giorgio and San Marco; while on the western side an ancient Celtic colony was rising into prominence, and rearing at the foot of the Ligurian Alps the palaces of Genoa the Proud.

Thus upon the Italian stock was begun the language of the seas. Upon the Italian main the words "tack" and "sheet," "prow" and "poop," were first heard; and those most important terms by which the law of the marine highway is given,--"starboard" and "larboard." For if, after the Italian popular method, we contract the words _questo bordo_ (this side) and _quello bordo_ (that side) into _sto bordo_ and _lo bordo_, we have the roots of our modern phrases. And so the term "port," which in naval usage supersedes "larboard," is the abbreviated _porta lo timone_, (carry the helm,) which, like the same term in military usage, "port arms," seems traditionally to suggest the left hand.

But while the Italian races were beginning their brief but brilliant career, there was in training a nobler and hardier race of seamen, from whose hands the helm would not so soon be wrested. The pirates of the Baltic were wrestling with the storms of the wild Cattegat and braving the sleety squalls of the Skager Rack, stretching far out from the land to colonize Iceland and the Faroes, to plant a mysteriously lost nation in Eastern Greenland, and to leave strange traces of themselves by the vine-clad shores of Narraganset Bay. For, first of all nations and races to steer boldly into the deep, to abandon the timid fashion of the Past, which groped from headland to headland, as boys paddle skiffs from wharf to wharf, the Viking met the blast and the wave, and was no more the slave, but the lord of the sea. He it was, who, abandoning the traditionary rule which loosened canvas only to a wind dead aft or well on the quarter, learned to brace up sharp on a wind and to baffle the adverse airs. Yet he, too, was overmuch a fighter to make a true seaman, and his children no sooner set foot on the shore than they drew their swords and went to carving the conquered land into Norman lordships. But where they piloted the way others followed, and city after city along the German Ocean and upon the British coasts became also maritime. For King Alfred had come, and the English oaks were felled, and their gnarled boughs found exceedingly convenient for the curved knees of ships. Upon the Italian stock became engrafted the Norman, and French, and Danish, the North German and Saxon elements. And so, after a century of crusading had thoroughly broken up the stay-at-home notions of Europe, the maritime spirit blazed up. Spain and Portugal now took the lead and were running races against each other, the one in the Western, the other in the Eastern seas, and flaunting their crowned flags in monopoly of the Indian archipelagos and the American tropics. Just across the North Sea, over the low sand-dykes of Holland, scarce higher than a ship's bulwarks, looked a race whom the spleeny wits of other nations declared to be born web-footed. Yet their sails were found in every sea, and, like resolute merchants, as they were, they left to others the glory while they did the world's carrying. Their impress upon the sea-language was neither faint nor slight. They were true marines, and from Manhattan Island to utmost Japan, the brown, bright sides, full bows, and bulwarks tumbling home of the Dutchman were familiar as the sea-gulls. Underneath their clumsy-looking upper-works, the lines were true and sharp; and but the other day, when the world's clippers were stooping their lithe racehorse-like forms to the seas in the great ocean sweepstakes, the fleetest of all was--a Dutchman.

But to combine and fuse all these elements was the work of England. To that nation, with its noble inheritance of a composite language, incomparably rich in all the nomenclature of natural objects and sounds, was given especially the coast department, so to speak, of language. Every variety of shore, from shingly beaches to craggy headlands, was theirs. While the grand outlines and larger features are Italian, such as Cape, Island, Gulf, the minuter belong to the Northern races, who are closer observers of Nature's nice differences, and who take more delight in a frank, fearless acquaintance and fellowship with out-door objects. Beach, sand, headland, foreland, shelf, reef, breaker, bar, bank, ledge, shoal, spit, sound, race, reach, are words of Northern origin. So, too, the host of local names by which every peculiar feature of shore-scenery is individualized,--as, for instance, the Needles, the Eddystone, the Three Chimneys, the Hen and Chickens, the Bishop and Clerks. The strange atmospheric phenomena, especially of the tropics, have been christened by the Spaniard and Portuguese, the Corposant, the Pampero, the Tornado, the Hurricane. Then follows a host of words of which the derivation is doubtful,--such as sea, mist, foam, scud, rack. Their monosyllabic character may only be the result of that clipping and trimming which words get on shipboard. Your seaman's tongue is a true bed of Procrustes for the unhappy words that roll over it. They are docked without mercy, or, now and then, when not properly mouth-filling, they are "spliced" with a couple of vowels. It is impossible to tell the whys and wherefores of sea-prejudices.

We have now indicated the main sources of the ocean-language. As new nations are received into the nautical brotherhood, and as new improvements are made, new terms come in. The whole whaling diction is the contribution of America, or rather of Nantucket, New Bedford, and New London, aided by the islands of the Pacific and the mongrel Spanish ports of the South Seas. Here and there an adventurous genius coins a phrase for the benefit of posterity,--as we once heard a mate order a couple of men to "go forrard and trim the ship's whiskers," to the utter bewilderment of his captain, who, in thirty years' following of the sea, had never heard the martingale chains and stays so designated. But the source of the great body of the sea-language might be marked out on the map by a current flowing out of the Straits of Gibraltar and meeting a similar tide from the Baltic, the two encountering and blending in the North Sea and circling Great Britain, while not forgetting to wash the dykes of Holland as they go. How to distinguish the work of each, in founding the common tongue, is not here our province.