Sea and Shore Part 19

I heard no more, but had a glimpse of a little, eager face suddenly dashed in its expression, and of small fingers pressed to unwilling ears to shut out unwelcome truths.

The discriminating child seemed a little monster in my eyes, who ought to have been sent out of the way at once of all companions capable of _abandon_ and enjoyment; and, as to the "father" she quoted from, I could imagine him as the embodiment of asinine wisdom, so to speak--the quintessence of the practical, which so often, I observe, inclines its devotees to idiocy!

I knew very well that Wattie was not of the stamp to doubt the truth and splendor of "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," or "Cinderella," as surveyed from the stage-box, in his confiding infancy, any more than to believing in baubles when the time came to justly discriminate. Woe for the incredulous child, too matter-of-fact to be enlisted in the creations of fancy, and who tastes in infancy the chief bitterness of age--the incapability of surrendering life to the ideal!

How fresh imagination keeps the heart--how young! What a glorious gift it is when rightly used and governed! Hear Charlotte Bronte's testimony, as recorded by her biographer: "They are all gone," she says, "the sisters I so loved, and I have only my imagination left to comfort me.

But for this solace I should despair or perish." The words are not exact--the book is not beside me, but such is their substance. He who lists can seek them for himself in the pages of that wondrous spell woven by Mrs. Gaskell--that tragic and strange biography which once in a season of deep despondency did more to reconcile me to my own condition, through my pity and admiration for another, than all the condolences that came so freely from lip and pen. Every fabric that love had erected crumbled about her or turned to Dead-Sea ashes on her lip. See what a world of pa.s.sion those French letters and themes of hers betray!

The brand of suffering and suffocating sorrow is on every one of them, plain to the eye of the initiated alone, they who have gazed on the wonders of the inner temple--the holy of holies--and gone forth reverently to dream of the revelation evermore in silence.

But, above every ruin of hope, or pride, or affection, like an imperial banner flung from "the outer wall," her imagination waved and triumphed.

"The clouds of glory" she trailed after her were dyed in spheres unapproachable by death, or shame, or disappointment, and the gift described in the Arabian story as conferred by the genii's salve when he touched therewith the eyes of the traveler and caused him to see all the wonders of the earth, its gems, its gold, its gleaming chrysolites, its inward fires, un.o.bscured by the interposition of dust and clay, which veiled them from all the rest of humanity, may stand as a type of her ideality.

CHAPTER VIII.

The six weeks which had been allotted to me as the term of my captivity were accomplished, and still Mr. Basil Bainrothe came not--wrote not. I had seen the month of August glide away, its progress marked only by the changing fruits and flowers of the season, and the more fervent light that pierced through the Venetian blinds when turned heavenward, for it was through these alone that the light of day was permitted to visit my chamber.

Where, then, was the place of my captivity situated? In the environs of a great city, possibly, for the wind often blew, laden with fragrance as from choice rather than extensive gardens, through my cas.e.m.e.nt, and the shadow of a tall tree impending over the skylight of the bath-room was, when windy, cast so distinctly on its panes as to convince me of the neighborhood of an English elm, the foliage of which tree I knew like an alphabet.

And then, those fairy, Sabbath chimes! Were such musical bells duplicated in adjacent cities? or was I, indeed, near our old, beloved church, in which memory so distinctly revealed our ancient, velvet-lined pew, my father's bowed head, and the venerable pastor rising white-robed and saintly in his pulpit to bid all the earth keep silent before the Lord! Conjecture was rife! Thus August pa.s.sed away.

My birthday had gone by, and the equinox was upon us, with its rapid changes of sun and storm, when one of these tempests, accompanied by hail of unusual size, shattered to fragments the skylight of the bath-room. This hail-storm was succeeded by a deluge of rain, which flooded not only the adjacent closet, but the chamber I occupied, among other evils completely submerging the superb Wilton carpet, concerning the safety of which Mrs. Clayton felt immense responsibility.

A glazier came as soon as the weather permitted, who was carefully escorted through my chamber by Mrs. Clayton to ascertain the repairs to be made--a fresh-looking, white-ap.r.o.ned Irish lad, I remember (for a human being was a novelty to me then), who found it necessary, in order to repaint the wood-work, to bear the sash away with him, leaving behind his tray of chisels and putty, and the light step-ladder he had brought with him on his shoulder, and on whose return I vainly waited as a chance for communication with the outer world.

While Dinah was busy with mops and brooms drying the carpet, and Mrs.

Clayton thoroughly occupied with her active superintendence of the needful operations, little mischievous, meddlesome Ernie had made his way, contrary to all rules, beneath and behind my bed, and torn off a goodly portion of the gray and gilded paper which had so far effectually aided to conceal a closed door situated behind the bed-head, from which the frame had been removed. Then, for the first time since our acquaintance, did I slap sharply those little, busy fingers which I could have kissed for thankfulness, and, watching my opportunity, I replaced the paper, unseen by Mrs. Clayton, with the remains of a gum-arabic draught which had been prescribed for his cough. I knew that, after experiencing such condign punishment, he would return no more to the scene of his destruction, and that he might forget both injury and discovery, I devoted myself to his amus.e.m.e.nt during that active, long, rainy day with unhoped-for success.

The glazier had announced to Mrs. Clayton that his return might be deferred for four-and-twenty hours, and, as the succeeding day was clear and warm, I proceeded, in spite of broken sashes, to take my daily bath as usual at twelve o'clock.

Mrs. Clayton, with her prison-key in her pocket, and her snuffbox at hand, yielded herself, to the delight of ginger-nuts and her stocking-basket, and rested calmly after her fatigues of the preceding day; and Ernie, attracted by the crunching noise--the sound of dropping nuts, perhaps, which betrayed the presence of his favorite article of food--hastened to keep her company--a thing he never did disinterestedly, it most be confessed.

An opportunity, now presented itself for observation which I knew might not again occur during my whole captivity; and surely no sailor ever ascended to the mast-head of the Pinta with a heart more heaved with emotion than was mine, as I placed my foot on the last rung of the ladder, and towered from my waist upward above the skylight. I had drawn the bolt within, as I invariably did while bathing, and with a feeling of proud security I stood and surveyed the scene beneath and around me.

The angle of vision did not, it is true, embrace objects immediately below me, owing to the projecting cornices of the flat roof (a mere excrescence from the original structure, as this was), but beyond this the eye swept for some distance uninterruptedly.

Bathed in the golden light of that autumn noonday sun, I saw and recognized a long-familiar scene, and for a moment I reeled on the slender step as I did so, and all grew dark around me. But, with one of those energetic impulses that come to us all in time of emergency, I recovered my balance in time to save myself from falling; and eagerly and wistfully, as looks the dying wretch on the dear faces he is soon to see no more, I gazed upon the paradise from which fiends had driven me.

There, indeed, just as I had left it, lay the deep-green gra.s.sy lawn, with its richly-burdened flower-pots, its laburnums, and white and purple lilacs, and drooping guelder-rose bushes, and its great English walnut-tree towering, like a t.i.tan, in the centre. There was the hawthorn-hedge my father's hand had planted, and the fountain-like weeping-willow my mother had set, in memory of her dead, whose graves were far away; and there towered the lofty elm-trees, with their long, low, sweeping branches, meeting in friendly greeting, to two of which a swing had once been attached as a bond of union--a swing in which it had once been my childish pleasure to sway and read, while Mabel sat beside me with her head upon my shoulder, held securely in her place by my strong, loving, encircling arm.

Nor were these all to a.s.sure me that, after a year of melancholy and eventful absence, I looked again upon the precincts of home. A little farther on rose the gray wall and tower of the library and belfry, half concealed by its heavy coating of ivy, glossy and dark, and shutting away all other view of the mansion. Beyond these last was the pavilion my father had built for the playhouse of his children, through the open lattice-door of which I saw a girl seated at her work, with graceful, bending neck, and half-averted face. A moment later, Claude Bainrothe lounged across the sward, cigar in hand. At his approach, the face within was turned, and I recognized, at a glance, that of my young aurora-like companion of the raft, Ada Greene. Then gazing cautiously around, as if to elude observation (never dreaming of the eye dropped like a bird's upon him), he lifted the rosy face in his hand and kissed it thrice right loverly!

I saw no more--I would not witness more--for had I not learned already all that I asked or ought to know? Well might the dear old chimes ring out their Sabbath welcome to one who had obeyed their summons from her childhood up to womanhood! Well might the summer air bear on its wings greeting of familiar odors, lost and found!

This was no idle dream, no mirage of a vagrant brain like that sea-picture, or that wild vision at Beauseincourt, but sober, and sad, and strange reality. I understood my position from that moment, geographically as well as physically. I was a prisoner in the house of Basil Bainrothe (while he, perchance, reigned lordly in my own); that house whose hidden arcana I had never explored, and which, beyond its parlor and exterior, was to me as the dwelling of a stranger.

Derisively deferential, he had resigned to me this secluded chamber in the ell--his own particular sanctum, I remember to have heard--and betaken himself, in all probability, to the more s.p.a.cious mansion of his former neighbor.

Far wiser, even if sadder, than I went up its rounds, did I descend that ladder!

Half an hour after I had entered it, and with new hope, I emerged from the bath-room as fresh as a naiad, having first abstracted from the tool-box of the glazier two tiny chisels of different sizes, and a small lump of putty, which I secreted, on my first opportunity, in my favorite hiding-place--a hollow in the post of my bedstead--an accidental discovery of mine, made during Mrs. Clayton's first illness, since which I had always insisted on making up my own bed, much to her relief.

My conscience so disturbed me on the score of this theft, that I hastened to secrete my only remaining piece of gold in the glazier's box; ill-judged, as this appeared to me on reflection. The boy was an apprentice, evidently, and might else, I thought, at the time, have been the loser. I feared to add a line, and dared not seek a pa.s.sing word with him, so carefully was I watched.

I next examined, with the eye of scientific scrutiny, two ma.s.sive rulers that lay on my table, one made of maple-wood, and the other of ebony, and, having selected the first as most available for my purpose, prepared to commence the most arduous undertaking of my life--the careful shaping of a wooden key.

I had read somewhere that, during the French Revolution, a young peasant-girl, by means of such an instrument, had set at large her lover, or her brother, in _La Vendee_; having taken with soft wax the outline of the wards of the lock, in a moment of opportunity.

That day my work began--three times a failure, but at last successful.

With the aid of putty, gradually allowed to harden I obtained the mould I desired, in the dead of night, and afterward, whenever privacy, even for a few minutes, was mine, I drew from my bosom my sacred piece of sculpture, and worked upon it with knife and chisel alternately, as devotee never worked on sculptured crucifix. Never shall I forget the rapture, the ecstasy of that moment, in which, ensconced between my bed-head and the wall, I slowly turned the key, first thoroughly soaked in oil, in the morticed wards, and knew, by the slight giving of the door, that it was unlocked.

Not Ali Baba, when be entered the robbers' cave, and saw the heaps of gold--all his by the force of one magic word; not Aladdin, when the genius of the lamp rose to his bidding, bearing salvers of jewels, which were to purchase for him the hand of the sultan's daughter; not Sindbad, when he saw the light which led him to the aperture of egress from the sepulchre in which he had been pent up with his wife's body to die--knew keener or more triumphant sensations than filled my bosom as I laid that completed key next my heart, after turning it cautiously backward and forward in my prison-lock!

I dared not, at that time, draw back the bolt above, that confined it loosely yet securely, or turn the silver k.n.o.b sufficiently to set it even ever so little ajar; but I did both later, when oil had time to do its subtle work, and I could effect my experiment in silence. Yet I hazarded nothing of the sort when the quick ear of Mrs. Clayton held watch in the adjoining room. I was obliged to take advantage of those moments of rare absence, when, double-locking the doors of her chamber, both inner and outer, she would descend, for a few minutes, to the realms below, returning so suddenly and silently as almost to surprise me, on one or two occasions, at my work.

About the time of the completion of my experiment, I became aware of sounds in the room beneath my chamber, and sometimes on the great stairway (of which I now knew the largest platform was situated very near the head of my bed), that gave token of occupancy.

The rattling of china and silver might be discerned in the ancient dining-room, at morn and night. The occupant probably dined elsewhere, but the regularity of these meals was unmistakable.

I recognized, faintly, the step of Bainrothe on the stairway, distinguis.h.i.+ng it readily from any other, as it pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed my hidden door.

October had now set in, with a chilliness unusual to that bland season, and I asked for and obtained permission to have a fire kindled in the wide and gloomy grate of my chamber, hitherto unused by me.

About this household flame, Ernie, Mrs. Clayton, and I gathered harmoniously; she with her unfailing work-basket, I with book or pencil, the baby with his blocks and dominoes and painted pictures--the only happy and truly industrious spirit of the group. My true work was done--else might it never have been completed.

The presence of fire was indispensable to Mrs. Clayton, and, from the time of its first lighting, she left me but seldom alone. Her rheumatic limbs needed the solace that I had no heart to grudge her, distasteful as she was to me, and becoming more so day by day--false as I now knew her to be--false at heart.

How hatred grows, when we once admit the germ--not, like love, parasitically--but strong, stanch, stern, alone throwing down fresh roots, even hour by hour, like the banyan, monarch of the Eastern forest. I am afraid I have a turn for this pa.s.sion naturally, but for love as well, ten times more intense--so that one pretty well counterbalances the other.

To carry out the vine-simile, I might as well add at once that, in the end, the parasitical plant has triumphed, and stifled the sterner growth. In other words, Christianity has conquered Judaism.

"I suppose I may soon expect a visit from Mr. Bainrothe," I said one day to Mrs. Clayton. "I think my birthday approaches; can you tell me the day of the month? I know that of the week from remembering the Sabbath chimes."

I thought she started slightly at this announcement, but she replied, unflinchingly:

"The 5th, yes, I am quite sure it is the 5th of the month."

"Do you never see a newspaper, Mrs. Clayton, and, if so, can you not indulge me with a glimpse of one? I think it would do me good--remind me that I was alive, I have seen none since the account of Miss Lamarque's safety, for which G.o.d be praised."[5]

"No, Miss Monfort, it is simply impossible. I should be transgressing the rules of the establishment."

"Dr. Englehart's, I suppose, as if indeed there were such a person," I said, impetuously--unguardedly.

"Do you pretend to doubt it?" she asked, slowly, setting her greedy eyes upon my face, and dropping her darning-work and sh.e.l.l upon her knee.

Why, what possesses you to-day, Miss Miriam?"