Hills of the Shatemuc Part 134

"The Bible makes such constant use of natural imagery, that to one familiar with it, the objects of nature bring back as constantly its teachings -- its warnings -- its consolations."

"What now?" said Elizabeth.

"Many things. Look at those deep and overlapping shadows. 'As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people, from henceforth'" --

"Stop, Mr. Winthrop!" Elizabeth exclaimed; -- "Stop! I can't bear it."

"Why?"

"I can't bear it," she repeated, in a pa.s.sion of tears.

"Why?" said he again in the same tone, when a minute had gone by.

"Those words don't belong to me -- I've nothing to do with them," she said, raising her head and dashing her tears right and left.

But Winthrop made no sort of answer to that, and a dead silence fell between the parties. Again the prow of the sloop was heard rippling against the waves; and slowly she glided past mountain and shadow, and other hills rose and other deep shadows lay before them. Elizabeth, between other thoughts, was tempted to think that her companion was as impa.s.sive and cold as the moonlight, and as moveless as the dark mountain lines that stood against the sky. And yet she knew and trusted him better than that. It was but the working of pa.s.sing impatience and bitter feeling; it was only the chafing of pa.s.sion against what seemed so self-contained and so calm. And yet that very self-continence and calmness was what pa.s.sion liked, and what pa.s.sion involuntarily bent down before.

She had not got over yet the stunned effect of the past days and nights. She sat feeling coldly miserable and forlorn and solitary; conscious that one interest was living at her heart yet, but also conscious that it was to live and die by its own strength as it might; and that in all the world she had nothing else; no, nor never should have anything else. She could not have a father again; and even he had been nothing for the companionship of such a spirit as hers, not what she wanted to make her either good or happy. But little as he had done of late to make her either, the name, and even the nominal guardianship, and what the old childish affection had clung to, were gone -- and never could come back; and Elizabeth wept sometimes with a very bowed head and heart, and sometimes sat stiff and quiet, gazing at the varying mountain outline, and the fathomless shadows that repeated it upon the water.

The night drew on, as the hills closed in more and more upon the narrowing river channel, and the mountain heads lifted themselves more high, and the shadows spread out broader upon the river. Every light along sh.o.r.e had long been out; but now one glimmered down at them faintly from under a high thick wooded bluff, on the east sh.o.r.e; and the Julia Ann as she came up towards it, edged down a little constantly to that side of the river.

"Where are we going?" said Elizabeth presently. "We're getting out of the channel."

But she saw immediately that Winthrop was asleep. It made her feel more utterly alone and forlorn than she had done before.

With a sort of additional chill at her heart, she looked round for some one else of whom to ask her question, and saw the skipper just come on deck. Elizabeth got up to speak to him.

"Aren't we getting out of our course?"

"Eg-zackly," said Mr. Hildebrand. "Most out of it. That light's the Mill, marm."

"The Mill! Cowslip's Mill?"

"Well, it's called along o' my father, 'cause he's lived there, I s'pose, -- and made it, -- and owns to it, too, as far as that goes; -- I s'pose it's as good a right to have his name as any one's."

Elizabeth sat down and looked at the light, which now had a particularly cheerless and hopeless look for her. It was the token of somebody's home, shining upon one who had none; it was a signal of the near ending of a guardianship and society which for the moment had taken home's place; a reminder that presently she must be thrown upon her own guidance; left to take care of herself alone in the world, as best she might.

The journey, with all its pain, had been a sort of little set- off from the rest of her life, where the contrasts of the past and the future did not meet. They were coming back now. She felt their shadows lying cold upon her. It was one of the times in her life of greatest desolation, the while the sloop was drawing down to her berth under the home light, and making fast in her moorings. The moon was riding high, and dimly shewed Elizabeth the but half-remembered points and outlines; -- and there was a contrast! She did not cry; she looked, with a cold chilled feeling of eye and mind that would have been almost despair, if it had not been for the one friend asleep at her side. And he was nothing to her. Nothing. He was nothing to her. Elizabeth said it to herself; but for all that he was there, and it was a comfort to see him there.

The sails rattled down to the deck; and with wind and headway the sloop gently swung up to her appointed place. Another light came out of the house, in a lantern; and another hand on sh.o.r.e aided the sloop's crew in making her fast.

"How can he sleep through it all!" thought Elizabeth. "I wonder if anything ever could shake him out of his settled composure -- asleep or awake, it's all the same."

"Ain't you goin' ash.o.r.e?" said the skipper at her side.

"No -- not now."

"They'll slick up a better place for you than we could fix up in this here little hulk. Though she ain't a small sloop neither, by no means."

"What have you got aboard there, Hild'?" called out a voice that came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the lantern.

"Gals?"

"Governor Landholm and some company," said the skipper in a more moderate tone. The other voice took no hint of moderation.

"Governor Landholm? -- is _he_ along? Well -- glad to see him. Run from the yallow fever, eh?"

"Is mother up, father?"

"Up? -- no! -- What on arth!"

"Tell her to get up, and make some beds for folks that couldn't sleep aboard sloop; and have been navigatin' all night."

"Go, and I'll look after the sloop till morning, Captain,"

said Winthrop sitting up on his sail.

"Won't you come ash.o.r.e and be comfortable?" said father and son at once.

"I am comfortable."

"But you'll be better off there, Governor."

"Don't think I could, Hild'. I'm bound to stay by the ship."

"Won't you come, Miss?" said the skipper addressing Elizabeth.

"You'll be better ash.o.r.e."

"Oh yes -- come along -- all of you," said the old sloop-master on the land.

"I'm in charge of the pa.s.sengers, Captain," said Winthrop; "and I don't think it is safe for any of them to go off before morning."

The request was urged to Elizabeth. But Winthrop quietly negatived it every time it was made; and the sloop's masters at last withdrew. Elizabeth had not spoken at all.

"How do you do?" said Winthrop gravely, when the Cowslips, father and son, had turned their backs upon the vessel.

"Thank you --" said Elizabeth, -- and stopped there.

"You are worn out."

"No," -- Elizabeth answered under her breath; and then gathering it, went on, -- "I am afraid you are."

"I am perfectly well," he said. "But you ought to rest."

"I will, -- by and by," said Elizabeth desperately. "I will stay here till the daylight comes. It will not be long, will it?"

He made no answer. The sloop's deck was in parts blockaded with a load of shingles. Winthrop went to these, and taking down bundle after bundle, disposed them so as to make a resting-place of greater capabilities than the armless wooden chair in which Elizabeth had been sitting all night. Over this, seat, back, sides and all, he spread the sail on which he had been lying.

"Is there nothing in the shape of a pillow or cushion that you could get out of the cabin now?" said he.

"But you have given me your sail," said Elizabeth.

"I'm master of the sloop now. Can't you get a pillow?"