The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 56, June, 1862

Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,—
Loitering till after the low little light
Of the candle shone through the open door,
And over the hay-stack's pointed top,
All of a tremble, and ready to drop,
The first half-hour, the great yellow star,
That we, with staring, ignorant eyes,
Had often and often watched to see
Propped and held in its place in the skies

By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree,
Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,—
Dead at the top,—just one branch full
Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool,
From which it tenderly shook the dew
Over our heads, when we came to play
In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day.
Afraid to go home, Sir; for one of us bore
A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,—
The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,
Not so big as a straw of wheat:
The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,
But cried and cried, till we held her bill,
So slim and shining, to keep her still.

At last we stood at our mother's knee.
Do you think, Sir, if you try,
You can paint the look of a lie?
If you can, pray have the grace
To put it solely in the face
Of the urchin that is likest me:
I think't was solely mine, indeed:
But that's no matter,—paint it so;
The eyes of our mother—(take good heed)—
Looking not on the nest-full of eggs,
Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,
But straight through our faces down to our lies,
And, oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise!
I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though
A sharp blade struck through it.
You, Sir, know,
That you on the canvas are to repeat
Things that are fairest, things most sweet,—
Woods and cornfields and mulberry-tree,—
The mother,—the lads, with their bird, at her knee:
But, oh, that look of reproachful woe!
High as the heavens your name I'll shout,
If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.

THE SOUTH BREAKER

IN TWO PARTS

PART II

Blue-fish were about done with, when one day Dan brought in some mackerel from Boon Island: they hadn't been in the harbor for some time, though now there was a probability of their return. So they were going out when the tide served—the two boys—at midnight for mackerel, and Dan had heard me wish for the experience so often, a long while ago, that he said, Why shouldn't they take the girls? and Faith snatched at the idea, and with that Mr. Gabriel agreed to fetch me at the hour, and so we parted. I was kind of sorry, but there was no help for it.

When we started, it was in that clear crystal dark that looks as if you could see through it forever till you reached infinite things, and we seemed to be in a great hollow sphere, and the stars were like living beings who had the night to themselves. Always, when I'm up late, I feel as if it were something unlawful, as if affairs were in progress which I had no right to witness, a kind of grand freemasonry. I've felt it nights when I've been watching with mother, and there has come up across the heavens the great caravan of constellations, and a star that I'd pulled away the curtain on the east side to see came by-and-by and looked in at the south window; but I never felt it as I did this night. The tide was near the full, and so we went slipping down the dark water by the starlight; and as we saw them shining above us, and then looked down and saw them sparkling up from below,—the stars,—it really seemed as if Dan's oars must be two long wings, as if we swam on them through a motionless air. By-and-by we were in the island creek, and far ahead, in a streak of wind that didn't reach us, we could see a pointed sail skimming along between the banks, as if some ghost went before to show us the way; and when the first hush and mystery wore off, Mr. Gabriel was singing little French songs in tunes like the rise and fall of the tide. While he sang, he rowed, and Dan was gangeing the hooks. At length Dan took the oars again, and every now and then he paused to let us float along with the tide as it slacked, and take the sense of the night. And all the tall grass that edged the side began to wave in a strange light, and there blew on a little breeze, and over the rim of the world tipped up a waning moon. If there'd been anything needed to make us feel as if we were going to find the Witch of Endor, it was this. It was such a strange moon, pointing such a strange way, with such a strange color, so remote, and so glassy,—it was like a dead moon, or the spirit of one, and was perfectly awful.

"She has come to look at Faith," said Mr. Gabriel; for Faith, who once would have been nodding here and there all about the boat, was sitting up pale and sad, like another spirit, to confront it. But Dan and I both felt a difference.

Mr. Gabriel, he stepped across and went and sat down behind Faith, and laid his hand lightly on her arm. Perhaps he didn't mind that he touched her,—he had a kind of absent air; but if any one had looked at the nervous pressure of the slender fingers, they would have seen as much meaning in that touch as in many an embrace; and Faith lifted her face to his, and they forgot that I was looking at them, and into the eyes of both there stole a strange deep smile,—and my soul groaned within me. It made no odds to me then that the air blew warm off the land from scented hay-ricks, that the moon hung like some exhumed jewel in the sky, that all the perfect night was widening into dawn. I saw and felt nothing but the wretchedness that must break one day on Dan's head. Should I warn him? I couldn't do that. And what then?

The sail was up, we had left the headland and the hills, and when they furled it and cast anchor we were swinging far out on the back of the great monster that was frolicking to itself and thinking no more of us than we do of a mote in the air. Elder Snow, he says that it's singular we regard day as illumination and night as darkness,—day that really hems us in with narrow light and shuts us upon ourselves, night that sets us free and reveals to us all the secrets of the sky. I thought of that when one by one the stars melted and the moon became a breath, and up over the wide grayness crept color and radiance and the sun himself, —the sky soaring higher and higher, like a great thin bubble of flaky hues,—and, all about, nothing but the everlasting wash of waters broke the sacred hush. And it seemed as if God had been with us, and withdrawing we saw the trail of His splendid garments,—and I remembered the words mother had spoken to Dan once before, and why couldn't I leave him in heavenly hands? And then it came into my heart to pray. I knew I hadn't any right to pray expecting to be heard; but yet mine would be the prayer of the humble, and wasn't Faith of as much consequence as a sparrow? By-and-by, as we all sat leaning over the gunwale, the words of a hymn that I'd heard at camp-meetings came into my mind, and I sang them out, loud and clear. I always had a good voice, though Dan 'd never heard me do anything with it except hum little low things, putting mother to sleep; but here I had a whole sky to sing in, and the hymns were trumpet-calls. And one after another they kept thronging up, and there was a rush of feeling in them that made you shiver, and as I sang them they thrilled me through and through. Wide as the way before us was, it seemed to widen; I felt myself journeying with some vast host towards the city of God, and its light poured over us, and there was nothing but joy and love and praise and exulting expectancy in my heart. And when the hymn died on my lips because the words were too faint and the tune was too weak for the ecstasy, and when the silence had soothed me back again, I turned and saw Dan's lips bitten, and his cheek white, and his eyes like stars, and Mr. Gabriel's face fallen forward in his hands, and he shaking with quick sobs; and as for Faith,—Faith, she had dropped asleep, and one arm was thrown above her head, and the other lay where it had slipped from Mr. Gabriel's loosened grasp. There's a contagion, you know, in such things, but Faith was never of the catching kind.

Well, this wasn't what we'd come for,—turning all out-doors into a church,—though what's a church but a place of God's presence? and for my part, I never see high blue sky and sunshine without feeling that. And all of a sudden there came a school of mackerel splashing and darkening and curling round the boat, after the bait we'd thrown out on anchoring. 'Twould have done you good to see Dan just at that moment; you'd have realized what it was to have a calling. He started up, forgetting everything else, his face all flushed, his eyes like coals, his mouth tight and his tongue silent; and how many hooks he had out I'm sure I don't know, but he kept jerking them in by twos and threes, and finally they bit at the bare barb and were taken without any bait at all, just as if they'd come and asked to be caught. Mr. Gabriel, he didn't pay any attention at first, but Dan called to him to stir himself, and so gradually he worked back into his old mood; but he was more still and something sad all the rest of the morning. Well, when we'd gotten about enough, and they were dying in the boat there, as they cast their scales, like the iris, we put in-shore; and building a fire, we cooked our own dinner and boiled our own coffee. Many's the icy winter-night I've wrapped up Dan's bottle of hot coffee in rolls on rolls of flannel, that he might drink it hot and strong far out at sea in a wherry at daybreak!

But as I was saying,—all this time, Mr. Gabriel, he scarcely looked at Faith. At first she didn't comprehend, and then something swam all over her face as if the very blood in her veins had grown darker, and there was such danger in her eye that before we stepped into the boat again I wished to goodness I had a life-preserver. But in the beginning the religious impression lasted and gave him great resolutions; and then strolling off and along the beach, he fell in with some men there and did as he always did, scraped acquaintance. I verily believe that these men were total strangers, that he'd never laid eyes on them before, and after a few words he wheeled about. As he did so, his glance fell on Faith standing there alone against the pale sky, for the weather 'd thickened, and watching the surf break at her feet. He was motionless, gazing at her long, and then, when he had turned once or twice irresolutely, he ground his heel into the sand and went back. The men rose and wandered on with him, and they talked together for a while, and I saw money pass; and pretty soon Mr. Gabriel returned, his face vividly pallid, but smiling, and he had in his hand some little bright shells that you don't often find on these Northern beaches, and he said he had bought them of those men. And all this time he'd not spoken with Faith, and there was the danger yet in her eye. But nothing came of it, and I had accused myself of nearly every crime in the Decalogue, and on the way back we had put up the lines, and Mr. Gabriel had hauled in the lobster-net for the last time. He liked that branch of the business; he said it had all the excitement of gambling,—the slow settling downwards, the fading of the last ripple, the impenetrable depth and shade and the mystery of the work below, five minutes of expectation, and it might bring up a scale of the sea-serpent, or the king of the crabs might have crept in for a nap in the folds, or it might come up as if you'd dredged for pearls, or it might hold the great backward-crawling lobsters, or a tangle of seaweed, or the long yellow locks of some drowned girl,—or nothing at all. So he always drew in that net, and it needed muscle, and his was like steel,—not good for much in the long pull, but just for a breathing could handle the biggest boatman in the harbor. Well,—and we'd hoisted the sail and were in the creek once more, for the creek was only to be used at high-water, and I'd told Dan I couldn't be away from mother over another tide and so we mustn't get aground, and he'd told me not to fret, there was nothing too shallow for us on the coast—"This boat," said Dan, "she'll float in a heavy dew." And he began singing a song he liked:—

"I cast my line in Largo Bay,
And fishes I caught nine:
There's three to boil, and three to fry,
And three to bait the line."

And Mr. Gabriel 'd never heard it before, and he made him sing it again and again.

"The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows indeed,"

repeated Mr. Gabriel, and he said it was the only song he knew that held the click of the oar in the rowlock.

The little birds went skimming by us, as we sailed, their breasts upon the water, and we could see the gunners creeping through the marshes beside them.

"The wind changes," said Mr. Gabriel. "The equinox treads close behind us. Sst! Is it that you do not feel its breath? And you hear nothing?"

"It's the Soul of the Bar," said Dan; and he fell to telling us one of the wild stories that fishermen can tell each other by the lantern rocking outside at night in the dory.

The wind was dead east, and now we flew before it, and now we tacked in it, up and up the winding stream, and always a little pointed sail came skimming on in suit.

"What sail is that, Dan?" asked I. "It looks like the one that flitted ahead this morning."

"It is the one," said Dan,—for he'd brought up a whole horde of superstitious memories, and a gloom that had been hovering off and on his face settled there for good. "As much of a one as that was. It's no sail at all. It's a death-sign. And I've never been down here and seen it but trouble was on its heels. Georgie! there's two of them!"

We all looked, but it was hidden in a curve, and when it stole in sight again there were two of them, filmy and faint as spirits' wings,—and while we gazed they vanished, whether supernaturally or in the mist that was rising mast-high I never thought, for my blood was frozen as it ran.

"You have fear?" asked Mr. Gabriel,—his face perfectly pale, and his eye almost lost in darkness. "If it is a phantom, it can do you no harm."

Faith's teeth chattered,—I saw them. He turned to her, and as their look met, a spot of carnation burned into his cheek almost as a brand would have burned. He seemed to be balancing some point, to be searching her and sifting her; and Faith half rose, proudly, and pale, as if his look pierced her with pain. The look was long,—but before it fell, a glow and sparkle filled the eyes, and over his face there curled the deep, strange smile of the morning, till the long lids and heavy lashes dropped and made it sad. And Faith,—she started in a new surprise, the darkness gathered and crept off her face as cream wrinkles from milk, and spleen or venom or what-not became absorbed again and lost, and there was nothing in her glance but passionate forgetfulness. Some souls are like the white river-lilies,—fixed, yet floating; but Mr. Gabriel had no firm root anywhere, and was blown about with every breeze, like a leaf on the flood. His purposes melted and made with his moods.

The wind got round more to the north, the mist fell upon the waters or blew away over the meadows, and it was cold. Mr. Gabriel wrapped the cloak about Faith and fastened it, and tied her bonnet. Just now Dan was so busy handling the boat—and it's rather risky, you have to wriggle up the creek so—that he took little notice of us. Then Mr. Gabriel stood up, as if to change his position; and taking off his hat, he held it aloft, while he passed the other hand across his forehead. And leaning against the mast, he stood so, many minutes.