Gypsy Breynton Part 7

He thought the house was a haunted castle--(he had, I am sorry to say, been reading novels in study hours), and that the ghost of old Baron Somebody who had defrauded the beautiful Lady Somebody-else, of Kleiner Berg Basin and the Dipper, in which it was supposed Mrs. Surly had secreted a blind kitten, which it was somehow or other imperatively necessary should be drowned, for the well-being of the beautiful and unfortunate heiress,--that the ghost of this atrocious Baron was going down stairs, with white silk stockings on his feet and a tin pan on his head.

At this crisis Tom awoke, with a jump, and heard, or thought he heard, a slight creaking noise in the entry. Winnie's cat, of course; or the wind rattling the blinds;--nevertheless, Tom went to his door, and looked out.

He was exceedingly sleepy, and the entry was exceedingly dark, and, though he had not a breath of faith in ghosts, not he,--was there ever a boy who had?--and though he considered such persons, as had, as candidates for the State Idiot Asylum, yet it must be confessed that even Tom was possessed of an imagination, and this imagination certainly, for an instant, deluded him into the belief that a dim figure was flitting down stairs.

"Who's there?" said Tom, rather faintly.

There was no reply. A curious sound, like the lifting of a distant latch by phantom fingers, fell upon his ear,--then all was still.

"Stuff and nonsense!" said Tom. Nevertheless, Tom went to the head of the stairs, and looked down; went to the foot of the stairs, and looked around. The doors were all closed as they had been left for the night.

Nothing was to be seen; nothing was to be heard.

"Curious mental delusions one will have when one is sleepy," said Tom, and went back to bed, where, the reader is confidentially informed, he lay for fifteen entire minutes with his eyes wide open, speculating on the proportion of authenticated ghost-stories;--to be sure, there had been some; it was, perhaps, foolish to deny as much as that.

After which, he slept the rest of the night as soundly as young people of sixteen, who are well and happy, are apt to sleep.

That night, also, Gypsy had a dream.

She dreamed that Miss Melville sailed in through the window on an oar, which she paddled through the air with a parasol, and told her that her (Gypsy's) father had been hung upon a lamp-post by Senator Sumner, for advocating the coercion of the seceded States, and that Tom had set Winnie afloat on the Kleiner Berg Basin, in a milk-pitcher. Winnie had tipped over, and was in imminent danger of drowning, if indeed he were not past hope already, and Tom sat up in the maple-tree, laughing at him.

Her mother appeared to have enlisted in the Union army, and, her father being detained in that characteristic manner by Mr. Sumner, there was evidently nothing to be done but for Gypsy to go to Winnie's relief. This she hastened to do with all possible speed. She dressed herself under a remarkable sense of not being able to find any b.u.t.tons, and of getting all her sleeves upon the wrong arm. She put on her rubber-boots, because it took so long to lace up her boots. Her stockings she wore upon her arms.

The reason appeared to be, that she might not get her hands wet in pulling Winnie out. She stopped to put on her sack, her turban, and her blue veil.

She also spent considerable time in commendable efforts to pin on a lace collar which utterly refused to be pinned, and to fasten at her throat a velvet bow that kept turning into a little green snake, and twisting round her fingers.

When at length she was fairly ready, she left the house softly, under the impression that Tom (who appeared to have the remarkable capacity of being in the house and down in the maple-trees at one and the same time) would stop her if he heard her.

She ran down the lane and over the fields and into the woods, where the Kleiner Berg rose darkly in front of her; so, at last, to the Basin, which rippled and washed on its sh.o.r.e, and tossed up at her feet--_an empty milk-pitcher_!

A horrible fear seized her. She had come too late. Winnie was drowned. It was all owing to that lace collar.

She sprang into the boat; she floated away; she peered down into the dark water. But Tom laughed in the maple-tree; and there was no sign nor sound of Winnie.

She cried out with a loud cry, and awoke. She lifted up her head, and saw----

CHAPTER V

WHAT SHE SAW

A great, solemn stretch of sky, alive with stars.

A sheet of silent water.

A long line of silent hills.

_She had acted out her dream!_ When the truth came to Gypsy, she sat for a moment like one stunned. The terrible sense of awakening in a desolate place, at midnight, and alone, instead of in a safe and quiet bed, with bolted doors, and friends within the slightest call, might well alarm an older and stouter heart than Gypsy's. The consciousness of having wandered she did not know whither, she did not know how, in the helplessness of sleep, into a place where her voice could reach no human ear, was in itself enough to freeze her where she sat, with hands locked, and wide, frightened eyes, staring into the darkness.

After a few moments she stirred, shivered a little, and looked about her.

It was the Basin, surely. There were the maples, there was the Kleiner Berg rolling up, soft and shadowy, among its pines. There were the mountains, towering and sharp--terrible shadows against the sky. Here, too, was the Dipper beneath her, swaying idly back and forth upon the water. She remembered, with a little cry of joy, that the boat was always locked; she could not have stirred from the sh.o.r.e; it would be but the work of a moment to jump upon the wharf, then back swiftly through the fields to the house.

She looked back. The wharf was not in sight. A dark distance lay between her and it. The beds of lily-leaves, and the dropping blossoms of the maples were about her on every side. She had drifted half across the pond.

She understood it all in a moment--_she had not locked the boat that afternoon_.

What was to be done? The oars were half a mile away, in the barn at home.

There was not so much as a branch floating within reach on the water. She tried to pull up the board seats of the boat, under the impression that she could, by degrees, paddle herself ash.o.r.e with one of them. But they were nailed tightly in their places, and she could not stir them.

Evidently, there was nothing to be done.

Perhaps the boat would drift ash.o.r.e somewhere; she could land anywhere; even on the steep Kleiner Berg side she could easily have found footing; she was well used to climbing its narrow ledges, and knew every crack and crevice and projection where a step could be taken. But, no; the boat was not going to drift ash.o.r.e. It had stopped in a tangle of lily-leaves, far out in the water, and there was not a breath of wind to stir it. If the water had not been deep she could have waded ash.o.r.e; but her practised ear told her, from the sound of the little waves against her hand, that wading was not to be thought of. To be sure, Gypsy could swim; but a walk of half a mile in drenched clothes was hardly preferable to sitting still in a dry boat, to say nothing of the inconvenience of swimming in crinoline, and on a dark night.

No, there was nothing to be done but to sit still till morning.

Having come to this conclusion, Gypsy gave another little shiver, and slipped down into the bottom of the boat, thinking she might lie with her head under the stern-seat, and thus be somewhat shielded from the chilly air. In turning up her sack-collar, to protect her throat, she touched something soft, which proved to be the lace collar. This led her to examine her dress. She now noticed for the first time that one stocking was drawn up over her hand,--the other she had probably lost on the way,--and that she had put her bare feet into rubber-boots. The lace collar was fastened by a bit of green chenille she sometimes wore at her throat, and which had doubtless been the snake of her dream.

Lonely, frightened, and cold as she was, Gypsy's sense of the ludicrous overcame her at that, and she broke into a little laugh. That laugh seemed to drive away the mystery and terror of her situation, in spite of the curious sound it had in echoing over the lonely water; and Gypsy set herself to work with her usual good sense to see how matters stood.

"In the first place," she reasoned, talking half aloud for the sake of the company of her own voice, "I've had a fit of what the dictionary calls somnambulism, I suppose. I eat too much pop-corn after supper, and that's the whole of it,--it always makes me dream,--only I never was goose enough to get out of bed before, and I rather think it'll be some time before I do again. I came down stairs softly, and out of the back door. n.o.body heard me, and of course n.o.body will hear me till morning, and I'm in a pretty fix. If I hadn't forgotten to lock the boat I should be back in bed by this time. Oh dear! I wish I were. However, I'm too large to tip myself over and get drowned, and I couldn't get hurt any other way; and there's nothing to be afraid of if I do have to stay here till morning, except sore throat, so there's no great harm done. The worst of it is, that old Tom! Won't he laugh at me about the boat! I never expect to hear the end of it. Then when they go to my room and find me gone, in the morning, they'll be frightened. I'm rather sorry for that. I wish I knew what time it is."

Just then the distant church-clock struck two. Gypsy held her breath, and listened to it. It had a singular, solemn sound. She had never heard the clock strike two in the morning but once before in her life. That was once when she was very small, when her father was dangerously sick, and the coming of the doctor had wakened her. She had always somehow a.s.sociated the hour with mysterious flickering lights, and anxious whispers and softened steps, and a dread as terrible as it was undefined. Now, out here in this desolate place, where the birds were asleep in their nests, and the winds quiet among the mountain-tops, and the very frogs tired of their chanting,--herself the only waking thing,--these two far, deep-toned syllables seemed like a human voice. Like the voice, Gypsy fancied, of some one imprisoned for years in the belfry, and crying to get out.

Two o'clock. Three--four--five--six. At about six they would begin to miss her; her mother always called her, then, to get up. Four hours.

"Hum,--well," said Gypsy, drawing her sack-collar closer, "pretty long time to sit out in a boat and shiver. It might be worse, though." Just then her foot struck something soft under the seat. She pulled it out, and found it to be an old coat of Tom's, which he sometimes used for boating.

Fortunately it was not wet, for the boat was new, and did not leak. She wrapped it closely around her shoulders, curled herself up snugly in the stern, and presently p.r.o.nounced herself "as warm as toast, and as comfortable as an oyster."

Then she began to look about her. All around and underneath her lay the black, still water,--so black that the maple-branches cast no shadow on it. About and above her rose the mountains, grim and mute, and watching, as they had watched for ages, and would watch for ages still, all the long night through. Overhead, the stars glittered and throbbed, and shot in and out of ragged clouds. Far up in the great forests, that climbed the mountain-sides, the wind was muttering like an angry voice.

Somehow it made Gypsy sit very still. She thought, if she were a poet, she would write some verses just then; indeed, if she had had a pencil, I am not sure but she would have, as it was.

Then some other thoughts came to Gypsy. She wondered why, of all places, she chanced to come to the Basin in her dream. She might have gone to the saw-mill, and been caught and whirred to death in the machinery. She might have gone to the bridge over the river, and thrown herself off, not knowing what she did. Or, what if the pond had been a river, and she were now floating away, helpless, out of reach of any who came to save her, to some far-off dam where the water roared and splashed on cruel rocks. Or she might, in her dream, have tipped over the boat where the water was deep, and been unable to swim, enc.u.mbered by her clothing. Then she might have been such a girl as Sarah Rowe, who would have suffered agonies of fright at waking to find herself in such a place. But she had been led to the quiet, familiar Basin, and no harm had come to her, and she had good strong nerves, and lost all her fear in five minutes, so that the mischance would end only in an exciting adventure, which would give her something to talk about as long as she lived.

Well; she was sure she was very thankful to--whom? and Gypsy bowed her head a little at the question, and she sat a moment very still.

Then she had other thoughts. She looked up at the shadowed mountains, and thought how year after year, summer and winter, day and night, those terrible ma.s.ses of rock had cleaved together, and stood still, and caught the rains and the snows and vapors, the golden crowns of sunsets and sunrisings, the cooling winds and mellow moonlights, and done all their work of beauty and of use, and done it aright. _"Not one faileth."_ No avalanche had thundered down their sides, destroying such happy homes as hers. No volcanic fires had torn them into seething lava. No beetling precipice, of which she ever heard, had fallen and crushed so much as the sheep feeding in the valleys. To the power of the hills as to the power of the seas, Someone had said, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.

And the Hand that could uphold a mountain in its place, was the Hand that had guided her--one little foolish, helpless girl, out of millions and millions of creatures for whom He was caring--in the wanderings of an uneasy sleep that night.

There was a great awe and a great joy in this thought; but sharp upon it came another, as a pleasure is followed by a sudden pain,--a thought that came all unbidden, and talked with Gypsy, and would not go away. It was, that she had gone to bed that night without a prayer. She was tired and sleepy, and the lamp went out, and so,--and so,--well, she didn't know exactly how it came about.

Gypsy's bowed head fell into her hands, and there, crouched in the lonely boat, under the lonely sky, she put this thought into a few whispered words, and I know there was One to hear it.

Other thoughts had Gypsy after this; but they were those she could not have put into words. For three of those solemn, human syllables had sounded from the distant clock, and far over the mountain-tops the sweet summer dawn was coming. Gypsy had never seen the sun rise. She had seen, to be sure, many times, the late, winter painting of crimson and gold in the East, which unfolded itself before her window, and chased away her dreams. But she had never watched that slow, mysterious change from midnight to morning, which is the only spectacle that can properly be called a sunrise.

There was something in Gypsy that made her sit like a statue there, wrapped in Tom's old coat, her face upturned, and her very breath held in, as the heavy shadows softened and melted, and the stars began to dim in a pale, gray light, that fell and folded in the earth like a mist; as the clouds, that floated faintly over the mountains, blushed pink from the touch of an unseen sun; as the pink deepened into crimson, and the crimson burned to fire, and the outlines of the mountains were cut in gold; as the gold broadened and brightened, and stole over the ragged peaks, and shot down among the forests, and filtered through the maple-leaves, and chased the purple shadows far down among the valleys; as the birds twittered in unseen nests, and the crickets chirped in the meadows, and the dews fell and sparkled from nodding gra.s.ses, and "all the world grew green again."

Gypsy thought it was worth an ugly dream and a little fright, to see such a sight. She wondered if those old pictures of the great masters far away over the sea, of which she had heard so much, were anything like it. She also had a faint, flitting notion that, in a world where there were sunrises every day, it was very strange people should ever be cross, and tear their dresses, and forget to lock boats. It seemed as if they ought to know better.