The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863

"Because you would watch it and care for it, water and train it, and make it doubly your own. But if you did neither?"

"I should deserve my fate," said he, sorrowfully.

XIV

The first letter we received from Mrs. Lewis was from the North of Scotland, where the party of three, increased to one much larger, were making the tour of the Hebrides. I cannot say much for either the penmanship or the orthography of the letter, which was incorrect as usual; but the abundant beauty of her descriptions, and the fine sense she seemed to have of lofty and wild scenery, made her journey a living picture. All her keen sense of external life was brought into activity, and she projected on the paper before her groups of people, or groups of mountains, with a vividness that showed she had only to transfer them from the retina: they had no need of any additional processes. She made no remarks on society, or inferences from what she saw in the present to what had been in the past or might be in the future. It was simply a power of representation, unequalled in its way, and yet more remarkable to us for what it failed of doing than for what it did.

We could not but perceive two things. One, that she never spoke of home-ties, or children, or husband: not an allusion to either. The other, that every hill and every vale, the mounting mist and the resting shadow, all that gave life and beauty to her every-day pursuits, which seemed, indeed, all pictorial,—all these were informed and permeated, as it were, with one influence,—that of Remington. An uncomfortable sense of this made me say, as I finished the letter,—

"I am sorry for the poor bird!"

"So am I," answered the minister, with a clouded brow; "and the more, as I think I see the bird is limed."

"How?" I said, with a sort of horrified retreat from the expressed thought, though the thought itself haunted me.

My husband seemed thinking the matter over, as if to clear it in his own mind before he spoke again.

"I suppose there is a moral disease, which, through its connection with a newly awakened and brilliant intellect, does not enervate the whole character. I mean that this connection of moral weakness with the intellect gives a fatal strength to the character,—do you take me?"

"Yes, I think so," said I.

"She is lofty, self-poised,—confident in what never yet supported any one. Pride of character does not keep us from falling. Humility would help us in that way. Unfortunately, that, too, is often bought dearly. I mean that this virtue of humbleness, which makes us tender of others and afraid for ourselves, is at the expense of sorrowful and humiliating experience."

"You speak as if you feared more for her than I do," said I, struck by the foreboding look in his face.

"You women judge only by your own hearts, or by solitary instances; and you forget the inevitable downward course of wrong tendencies. Besides, she has neither lofty principle nor a strong will. You will think I mistake here; but I don't mean she has not wilfulness enough. A strong will generally excludes wilfulness,—and the converse."

This conversation made me nervous.

I had such an intense anxiety for her now, that I could not avoid expressing it often and strongly in my letters to her. I wondered Lewis was not more open-eyed. I blamed him for letting her run on so heedlessly into habits which might compromise her reputation for dignity and discretion, if no worse. Then I would recall her manner the last evening she was with us, when, although her want of self-regulation was very apparent, not less so was the native nobleness and purity of her soul. I could not think of this "unsphered angel wofully astray" without inward tears that dimmed the vision of my foreboding heart.

Could Lewis mistake her indifference? Could he avoid suffering from it? Could he, for a moment, accept her conventional expletives in place of the irrepressible and endearing tokens of a real love? Could he see what had weaned her from him, and was still, like a baleful star, wiling her farther and farther on its treacherously lighted path? Could he see,—feel?—had he a heart? These questions I incessantly asked myself.

In the last days of summer we went with the children to Nantasket Beach.

We had walked to a point of rocks at some distance from the bay, above which we lodged, and were sitting in the luxury of quiet companionship, gazing out on the water.

The ineffable, still beauty of Nature, separated from the usual noises of actual life,—the brilliant effect of the long reaches of color from the plunging sun, as it dipped, and reappeared, and dipped again, as loath to leave its field of beauty,—then the still plash against the rocks, and the subsidence in murmurs of the retiring wave, with all its gathered treasure of pebbles and shells,—all these sounds and sights of reposeful life suggested unspeakable thoughts and memories that clung to silence. We had not been without so much sorrow in life as does not well afford to dwell on its own images; and we rose to retrace our steps to the measure of the eternal and significant psalm of the sea.

As we turned away, we both perceived at once a sail in the distance, against the western sky. It had just rounded the nearest point and was coming slowly in with a gentle breeze, when it suddenly tacked and put out to sea again. It had come so near, however, that with our glass we saw that it was a small boat, holding two persons, and with a single sail.

Immediately after, a dead calm succeeded the light wind which had before rippled the distant waves, and we watched the boat, lying as if asleep and floating lazily on the red water against the blazing sky,—or rather, itself like a cradle, so pavilioned was it with gorgeous cloud-curtains, and fit home for the two water-sprites lying in the slant sunbeams.

Walking slowly borne, we felt the air to be full of oppressive languor, and turned now and then to see if the distant sail were yet lightened by the coming breeze. When we reached the inner bay, we mounted a rock, from which, with the lessened interval between us, I could distinctly see the boat. One of the occupants—a lady—wore a dark hat with a scarlet plume drooping from it. She leaned over the gunwale, dipping her hands in the blazing water and holding them up against the light, as if playing rainbows in the sunset. The other figure was busy in fastening up the sail, ready to catch the first breath of wind.

As we stood looking, the water, which during the last few minutes had changed from flaming red to the many-colored hues of a dolphin's back, suddenly turned slate-colored, almost black. Then a low scud crept stealthily and quickly along the surface, bringing with it a steady breeze, for perhaps five minutes. We watched the little boat, as it yielded gracefully to the welcome impetus, and swept rapidly to the shore. Fearing, however, from the sudden change of weather, that it would soon rain, we cast a parting look at the boat, and started on a rapid walk to the house.

This last glimpse of the boat showed us a tall figure standing upright against the mast, and fastening or holding something to it, while the lady still played with the water, bending her head so low that the red plume in her hat almost touched it. She seemed in a pleasant reverie, and rocked softly with the rocking waves. It was a peaceful picture,—the sail set, and full of heaven's breath, as it seemed.

Before we could grasp anything,—even if there had been anything to grasp on the level sand,—we were both taken at once off our feet and thrown violently to the ground. I had felt the force of water before, but never that of wind, and had no idea of the utter helplessness of man or woman before a wind that is really in earnest. It was with a very novel sense of more than childish incapacity that I suffered the Dominie to gather up capes, canes, hats, and shawls, and, last of all, an astonished woman, and put them on their way homewards. However, long before we reached the house-door we were drenched to the skin. The rain poured in blinding sheets, and the thunder was like a hundred cannon about our ears. It was so sudden and so frightful to me that I had but one idea, that of getting into the piazza, where was comparative safety. Having reached it, we turned to face the elements. Nothing could be seen through the thick deluge. The ocean itself, tossing and tumbling in angry darkness, seemed fighting with the other ocean that poured from the black wall above, and all was one tumult of thunderous fury. This elemental war lasted but a short time, and gave place to a quiet as sudden as its angry burst. It was my first experience of a squall. It is always difficult for me to feel that a storm is a natural occurrence,—so that I have a great reverence for a Dominie who stands with head uncovered, with calm eyes, looking tranquilly out on the loudest tempest.

"Beautiful! wonderful!" he murmured, as the lightning fiercely shot over us, and the roar died away in long billows of heavy sound.

Afterwards he told me he had the same unbounded delight in a great storm as he had at the foot of Niagara, or in looking at the stars on a winter night: that it stirred in his soul all that was loftiest,—that for the time he could comprehend Deity, and that "the noise of the thundering of His waters" was an anthem that struck the highest chords of his nature. What is really sublime takes us out of ourselves, so that we have no room for personal terror, and we mingle with the elemental roar in spirit as with something kindred to us. I guessed this, and meditated on it, while I stopped my ears and shut my eyes and trembled with overwhelming terror myself. Clearly, I am a coward, in spite of my admiration of the sublime. The Dominie, being as good as he is great, does not require a woman to be sublime, luckily; and I think, as I like him all the better for his strength, he really does not object to a moderate amount of weakness on my part, which is unaffected and not to be helped. When animal magnetism becomes a science, it will be seen why some spirits revel and soar, and some cower and shrink, at the same amount of electricity. So the Dominie says now; and then—he said nothing.

XV

In the fright, excitement, and thorough wetting, I forgot about the boat,—or rather, no misgiving seized me as to its safety. But, on coming to breakfast the next morning, we felt that there was a great commotion in the house. Everybody was out on the piazza, and a crowd was gathered a short distance off. Somebody had taken off the doors from the south entrance, and there was a sort of procession already formed on each side of these two doors. We went out in front of the house to listen to a rough fisherman who described the storm in which the little boat capsized. He had stood on the shore and just finished fastening his own boat, for he well knew the signs of the storm, when he caught sight of the little sail scudding with lightning-speed to the landing. Suddenly it stopped short, shook all over as if in an ague, and capsized in an instant. The storm broke, and although he tried to discern some traces of the boat or its occupants, nothing could be seen but the white foam on the black water, glistening like a shark's teeth when he has seized his prey. In the early morning he had found two bodies on the sand. The water, he said, must have tossed them with considerable force,—yet not against the rocks at all, for they were not disfigured, nor their clothing much torn. As the man ceased relating the story, the bodies were brought past us, covered by a piano-cloth which somebody had considerately snatched up and taken to the shore. They were placed in the long parlor on a table.

My husband beckoned to me to come to him. Turning down the cloth, he showed me the faces I dreamily expected to see. I don't know when I thought of it, but suppose I recognized the air and movement so familiar, even in the distant dimness. No matter how clearly and fully death is expected, when it comes it is with a death-shock,—how much more, coming as this did, as if with a bolt from the clear sky!

In their prime,—in their beauty,—in their pride of youth,—in their pleasure, they died. What was the strong man or the smiling woman,—what was the smooth sea, the shining sail,—what was strength, skill, loveliness, against the great and terrible wind of the Lord?

So here they lay, white and quiet as sculptured stone, and as placid as if they had only fallen asleep in the midst of the tempestuous uproar. All the clamor and talking about the house had subsided in the real presence of death; and every one went lightly and softly around, as if afraid of wakening the sleepers.

She had never looked so beautiful, even in her utmost pride of health and bloom. Her dark luxuriant hair lay in masses over brow and bosom, and her face expressed the unspeakable calm and perfect peace which are suggested only by the sleep of childhood. The long eyelashes seemed to say, in their close adherence to the cheek, how gladly they shut out the tumult of life; and the whole cast of the face was so elevated by death as to look rather angelic than mortal.

His face was quiet, too,—the manliness and massive character of the features giving a majestic and severe cast to the whole countenance, far more elevated than it had while living.

We could only weep over these relics. But where was the deepest mourner? No one had even seen these two before, or could give any account of them.

On making stricter inquiry and looking at the books, we found that Mr. and Mrs. Lewis had arrived first. Mr. Lewis had taken his gun and a boat, and gone out at once to shoot. The lady had been in her room but a short time, when another gentleman arrived, wrote his name, and ordered a boat. She had scarcely seen any one, but the boatman saw her step into the boat, and described her dress.

A message was at once sent to "the Glades," where Mr. Lewis had gone, and where he was detained, as we had supposed, by the storm. Before he reached the house, however, all necessary arrangements were completed for removing any associations of suffering. No confusion remained; the room was gently darkened, and the bodies, robed in white, lay in such peaceful silence as soothes and quiets the mourner.

As the carriage drew up to the door, we both hastened to meet Mr. Lewis, to take him by the hand, and to lead him, by our evident sympathy, to accept his terrible affliction with something like composure. In our entire uncertainty as to his feelings, we could only weep silently, and hold his hands, which were as cold as death.

He looked surprised a little at seeing us, but otherwise his face was like stone. His eyes,—they, too, looked stony, and as if all the expression and life were turned inward. Outwardly, there seemed hardly consciousness. He sat down between us, while we related all the particulars of the accident, which he seemed greedy to hear,—turning, as one ceased, to the other, with an eager, hungry look, most painful to witness. He made us describe, repeatedly, our last glimpse of the unconscious victims, and then, pressing our hands with a vice-cold grip, said, in a dry whisper,—

"Where are they?"

We led him to the door. He went in, and we softly closed it after him. As we went up-stairs to our own room we heard deep groans of anguish. We knew that his heart could not relieve itself by tears. My husband read the "prayer for persons in great affliction," and then we sat silently looking out on the peaceful sea. In the great stillness of the house, we heard the calm wave plash up on the smiling sands, and watched the silver specks in the distance as they hovered over the blue sea. So soft, so still, it had been the day before,—and where we now saw the placid wave we had seen it then. Yet there had two lives gone out, as suddenly as one quenches a lamp.