Chapter VI.

Presentiments.

Mr. Granger's family took the full benefit of their holiday at the seaside. They rose before the lark, and watched the days come in: radiant, solemn mornings, all light and silence; tender, mist-veiled dawns, less like day than a dream of day; and angry, magnificent sunrises, blazing with stormy colors all over the sky, soon to be quenched in a fine gray fall of rain.

They lay in hammocks slung out under the pine-trees, till nature adopted them for her own, and little wild creatures came and went about them unscared.

"Margaret," Mrs. Lewis called, one day, out of her hammock over to the other, "you remember how the foxes went to St. Francis--wasn't it St. Francis?--and held out their paws to shake hands with him, and said, 'How do you do, St. Francis?' and he gave them his hand, and said, 'How do you do?"'

"I remember nothing of the kind," was the indignant reply. "But I know that Robinson Cru--"

"O fie!" cries the little lady. "Why won't you own that my legend is beautiful and sublime, whether true or not? And it will be true when the kingdom comes for which all good people pray. For the last hour I have been trying to get acquainted with a squirrel; but just as I thought that he understood me, and as I was about to offer my hand to him, the little wretch darted away. At this moment he is perched in the very top of a pine-tree, and peering down at me as if I were a hyena. Alas!"

They wandered on the beach at evening, singing, talking, silent; or if in merry mood, skooning little flat stones over the water, and counting how many wave-tips they would trip before falling.

"_Mon armant m'aime--un peu--beaucoup--passionnément--pas du tout!_" laughed Mrs. Lewis, seeing Miss Hamilton counting to herself. "You must only try that oracle in flower petals, my dear. To count it in salt water signifies tears."

Sometimes they floated out in the harbor, and felt the fresh breath of the ocean, while the treacherous waters lapped, and fawned, and gurgled about the bows of their boat, and overhead the sky was thick with stars.

All this was not with the ladies mere idle pleasure, but was as seriously planned as it was heartily enjoyed. They had resolved that whatever exciting discussions and differences the gentlemen should have abroad, at home they should find nothing but peace. Politics were banished; and they sometimes even restrained their impatience to hear the war-news when they suspected that the relation was likely to produce any unpleasant entanglement. Without being religious, they yet had some perception of a pathway lying changeless and peaceful, far above parties and nationalities, and they felt that woman's proper place is there.

The gentlemen soon learned to submit to a restraint which they would never have imposed on themselves. When they stepped out at the little station near their cottage, their discussions were at an end.

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"There is our flag of truce," Mr. Lewis would say, pointing to the thread of smoke that showed, over the trees, Mrs. James's kitchen-fire just kindled to prepare their dinner. "Understand, Mr. Southard, I oppose both you and Louis tooth and nail, and I'd like to fight it out with you now. But our time is up; and there are three little girls behind the trees there who would break their hearts if we should go home with cross faces. Let's shake hands till next time."

The only news of which they could all speak fearlessly and with pleasure was what concerned Mr. Granger's cousin. Scarcely a week passed that did not bring some laudation of him. He was one of those men who, without effort, are always conspicuous wherever they go. Opportunities that others sought with pain presented themselves unsought to him; and he had a gallant, dashing, and, withal, a lordly way that embellished even brilliant exploits.

"Upon my word," his cousin said, "at this rate it is not impossible that he may be made lieutenant-general."

Mr. Southard was, perhaps, the hardest to keep within bounds, probably because he felt himself religiously obliged to "cry aloud and spare not." But even he was subdued after a while. He seemed indeed too dependent on the ladies to willingly offend them. All the time he was not in the city he spent in their company, unbending as much as was possible to him, that his presence might not be a restraint on their pleasures. He brought his books to the parlor, and had his special corner there, the "lion's den," he called it, with a slight touch of reproach in his voice, when he saw how the others kept away from its vicinity. He rendered himself agreeable in many ways. He read aloud to them, he played and sang for them, sometimes he took the brush from Miss Hamilton's hand, and helped her with a bolder line than she could achieve.

"It takes a strong hand to give a fine stroke," she said. "Where I would be delicate, I am only soft." "Let me finish this for you, since the stippling is done," he said, as she paused to contemplate a major-general reposing pacifically on her easel. "I will not touch the face. Say what you will, there is a softness and richness in your shading which I can never attain. I may have a fine or bold touch, but it is hard. Shall I deepen this background a little to throw the figure out? And may I intensify his shoulder-straps?"

Margaret left her work to him, and, taking possession of his den, divided her attention between a book, and watching Dora at play with Aurelia outside.

Since they left the city the child had been set loose from all city restraints, and turned out to consort with bees and grasshoppers, harrowing the soul of Mrs. James by the number and heinousness of her soiled frocks and stockings, but drawing in full draughts of health. Both Dora and her father were bankers. But his bank in the city dealt in paper and specie; hers was a flower-bank. When she wanted him to buy her anything, she brought him buttercups, which were gold dollars with handles to them, and he scrupulously kept account and returned her change. No lover could wear in his buttonhole the rosebud presented by his lady's hand with a more tender pride than this father cherished for the bunch of wildflowers given him by his little daughter.

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Mrs. Lewis approached the minister's table, and began turning over his books. "I don't know anything," she said mournfully, opening a Greek copy of Homer, and passing her fingers caressingly over the dear little quaint letters. "Wallace, wasn't it?--that poor Horace Binney--

'Doubly dead, In that he died so young,'

writes of the 'arrowy certainty of Grecian phrases.' Woe is me! I cannot get at the point. I can only see the feathering."

Margaret looked up with an exclamation from the book in her hand. "Listen! Coleridge, _à propos_ of having republished his earlier poems without correction, writes, 'I was afraid of disentangling the weed for fear of snapping the flower.' Snapping! only a poet would have chosen that word. The flower-stem that you can _snap_ must be of sudden and luxuriant growth, made up of water and color, with just fibre enough to hold the two together. As I read that, I thought instantly of a red tulip bursting up bright and hasty through the moist, warm mould. That sends me outdoors. I want to see weeds and flowers growing tangled together."

"Wait a little and let me go with you," Mr. Southard said. "And meantime let Mrs. Lewis read us one of her poems, as she promised to do."

Mrs. Lewis had been for years one of those pretty lady writers of which the country is full, by no means an artist, or dreaming of any such distinction, but writing acceptably to her friends, and sometimes pleasing a not too critical public. But she had abjured the pen from the day when a friendly publisher, meaning to compliment her, issued a volume of "Extracts" from her writings.

"A volume!" she cried in dismay. "Why not a bottle? There were my poor little fancies torn from their homes and set up in rows, like flies and bugs transfixed on pins. I shuddered. I wrote no more."

"I forgive you for asking me," she said to Mr. Southard. "I dare say you want to hear my rhyme, and will think it very pretty. And she read:

Beating The Bars.

"0 morning air! O pale, pure fire! Wrap and consume my bonds away. This stifling mesh of sordid flesh Shuts in my spirit from the day.

"Through sudden chinks the radiance blinks, And drives the winged creature wild. She hears rejoice each ringing voice, She guesses at each happy child.

"In fleeting glints are shining hints Of freer beings, good and glad; Her dream can trace each lovely face, Each form, in lofty beauty clad.

"She hears the beat of joyous feet That break no flower, fear no thorn; And almost feels the breeze that steals From out the ever-growing morn.

"She hears the flow of voices low, And strains to catch the half-known tongue. She hears the gush of streams that rush Their thrilling waters into one.

"With longing sighs, her baffled eyes She sets where burn the unseen stars. With frantic heats her wings she beats, And breaks them on the stubborn bars.

"O light!' she cries, 'unseal mine eyes, Or blind me in thine ardent glow. O life and breath! O life in death! O bonds! dissolve, and let me go.

"'Let drop this crust of cankering rust, The only crown my brow hath won; Shake off the sears of briny tears, And dry my pinions in the sun!'"

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Margaret.

"My dear," said Mrs. Lewis, "I do not mean it as a rule, but as an exception. That was written during my equinoctial."

Miss Hamilton waited for an explanation.

"You don't know it yet," the lady continued, "but you will learn in time that every woman has her line-gale. It usually comes between thirty and forty, sooner or later, and is more or less violent. After that, we settle down and let the snows fall on us."

Ending, she laughed a little; but there was a tightening of the lines about the mouth that showed at least remembered pain.

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Margaret, going out, stopped to look over Mr. Southard's shoulder, drawn there by the absent, dreamy expression of his face. If he was painting backgrounds, she thought, what mountains of melting blue, what far-away waters, half cloud, half glitter, must be stealing to life beneath his hand!

He had placed a blank sheet on the easel, and was idly covering it with fragmentary improvisations. Under the heading of "synonyms" he had written, "_Cogito quia sum, et sum quia cogito_," the text illustrated by a drawing of a cat running round after her own tail.

"Or a mouse going in at the same hole it came out from," thought Margaret.

He drew steady, straight lines, crossing them off with wonderful regularity; then some airy grace stole down to the tips of his firm white fingers, and the ends of the lines leaved and budded out, audacious tendrils draped the severest angles, and stars and crescents peeped through the spaces. Half impatiently he returned to geometrical figures; but pentagons grouped themselves to look like five-petaled blossoms or star-crystals of frost, and hexagons gathered themselves into a mosaic pavement whereon a sandalled foot was set.

"This is the Nile," he said, going over all with bold, flowing lines; "and here comes Cleopatra's barge, the dusky queen dropped among her cushions, a line of steady glow showing under each lowered eyelid, cords of cool pearls trying in vain to press into quiet her untamable pulses.

"This is a close-shut forest solitude, with a carpet of greenest, softest moss, whereon I lie like Danae while the heavens shower gold on me."

Then, with a start, came recollection, and the rush-tip became an asp to the Egyptian, and the Greek was drowned in ink.

"Come out!" he said abruptly. "The air is close here."

"Will you come, Mrs. Lewis?" asked Miss Hamilton, looking back from the door.

The lady shook her head in an exhausted manner.

"Aura," said Margaret when they reached the veranda," will you come down to the beach with us?"

"Thank you, dear," said Aurelia gently, "I do not care to go."

Miss Hamilton's eyes flashed a little impatiently. She did not like the way in which they withdrew themselves when she was with Mr. Southard. But after going a few steps, she glanced back at Aurelia, and the two smiled. At the moment it struck her that there was something new in Miss Lewis's expression, an unusual seriousness and dignity under her sweetness.

The day was sultry, but otherwise perfect, the green as fresh as at spring, the harbor purple and sparkling, and the sky a deep azure, except where a rim of darkness lay piled around the north and west, cloud-peaks and cliffs showing as hard and sharp as if hewn of stone, but illuminated now and then by lightnings that stirred uneasily within them, changing their dense shadows to molten gold, or leaping in dazzling crinkled flashes from point to point. It seemed a gala-day of nature, so wide, so brilliant, so consciously beautiful was everything.

"'Visibly in his garden walketh God!'" quoted Margaret, looking abroad with delight.

"The god Pan, you mean," said the minister, whose little sparkle of gayety seemed to have been suddenly extinguished.

"The Creator pronounced his work good," she said.

"Yes; but we have changed all that," was the reply. "We have put the heart in the wrong place."

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"Moses and Molière," thought Miss Hamilton, amused at the juxtaposition; then added aloud, "Christ pointed to the lilies of the field."

"For a moral and a reproof, yes. He made them not a text, but the illustration of a text. This delight in inanimate nature is not harmful if subordinate to the thought of God; otherwise it is a lure. It leads to materialism, or to sentimental religion that is worse than none, since it bars the way to a true piety."

Margaret made no reply. In spite of herself, his remarks depressed her, and cast some faint shadow over the beauty of the scene.

"The breakers are coming in," Mr. Southard said presently, in a tone of voice that showed his regretful sense of having been disagreeable. "We shall have a tempest."

They had reached the shore, and stood looking off over the water, The liquid emerald wave they watched came rolling toward them, paused an instant, then rose and flung itself at their feet, rustling away in foam and sliding, silky water, no longer a breaker, but a broken.

"Mr. Southard," Margaret said after a minute, "you know that I would like to be religious, if I knew how; but it doesn't seem possible. I am like one who, in the dark, wanting to get into a house, knocks all about the walls without finding a door. I am trying--in a sort of way--" She hesitated. What would he say if he knew in what way she was trying?

"Give up all," he said; "forget self; and think only of God."

"What you propose to me is not a path, but a pedestal!" she exclaimed, turning from him to go back to the house. "And I am not marble."

He followed her, looking both hurt and annoyed. Outside the door she stopped, and bending toward a little cluster of violets that grew there, shook a warning finger in their innocent blue eyes. "Don't look at me," she said. "You're wicked!"

"Do not give all your kindness to those who think only of your temporal welfare," said the minister hastily, "Remember those also who care for your soul."

"Oh! why should I remember those who do me good for God's sake?" said Miss Hamilton coldly, "Let him reward them; I shall not."

There was no one in the parlor when they went in; but they did not perceive that at first, it was so dim. The sky had darkened rapidly, the clouds rolling up as if self-impelled; for there was scarcely a breath of air stirring. A shadow had swept the sparkle off the water, and all the western view was shrouded in gloom. Southward a single point shone out like a torch amid the surrounding obscurity, a beam of sunlight drop-ping on it through a cleft cloud, and showing in a golden path visible across the heavens. Suddenly, like a torch, it was quenched; and all was darkness.

Mr. Southard stood before an open window, with his hands clasped be-hind him, and his clear eyes lifted heavenward. Margaret heard him repeating lowly, "'Canst thou send lightnings, and will they go, and will they return and say to thee, Here we are?'"

"After all," she said, "God is love, And however circumstances may hem us in from each other, he looks down on all. Perhaps some day, lifting us, each after his own way, he will show us not only himself, but one another, face to face. I think that there are more mistakes than sins in the world; and God is love."

"God is justice!" said the minister austerely.

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His words were almost lost in a low rumble of thunder that curdled all about the heavens. Margaret stood beside him, and looked out at the piled-up blackness shot through by flying thunderbolts.

"Ossa upon Pelion," she said. "It is the battle of the gods over again, and Jove is everywhere, 'treading the thunders from the clouds of air.'"

As she spoke, a flash sprang from the north and a flash from the west, and caught in their glittering toils the grouped inky crests of the tempest, that for an instant stood out against the pale blue of the zenith, a stupendous, writhing Laocoon. Then the lightnings leaped from that height to the midst of the harbor, and stung the hissing waves till far and wide they quivered with a froth of flame. As they fell, the heavens seemed to burst in one awful report.

There were cries through the house, and the whole family, servants and all, came rushing into the parlor. Mr. Southard was leaning against the wall, with both hands over his face. The shock had been severe, and for a little while he was stunned.

"Are you hurt?" asked Aurelia, going to him at once.

He recovered himself, and looked up. "No. Where is Miss Hamilton?" Miss Lewis drew back immediately, and showed him Margaret holding the frightened Dora in her arms and hushing her cries.

"God be thanked!" he exclaimed. "We have all escaped."

"Are the skies falling?" cried Mrs. Lewis.

It seemed indeed as though they were. That thunder-clap had loosened the pent rain, and it came pouring down in floods, veiling them in grayness, the multitudinous plash and patter mingling with a sound like myriad chariot wheels driving overhead.

They closed the windows, which immediately became sheeted with water, the servants went back to their places, Dora took courage, and ventured to uncover one blue eye, with which she looked askance at the window. Mrs. Lewis began to take an esthetic view of the matter, and Miss Hamilton a practical, which she carried out by setting herself to kindle a fire against the coming of the absent ones. They were sure to be drenched.

She had wood brought, removed the pine boughs from the fireplace, and, kneeling on the hearth, began arranging the pile after the most scientific country fashion, miniature back-log, back-stick, and fore-stick, then the finished pyramid, sloping smoothly with the chimney. It was pretty enough to burn, built of birch, amber and golden-hearted, with bark of silver and cinnamon. Nothing else in woods so beautiful as those birch colors.

Then it must be lighted with ceremony, being their first fire, their beltane a little belated. Fresh, drowned roses were snatched in out of the drip to crown the pyre, and the ladies had the temerity to despatch the minister, as officiating priest, with a wax taper, to bring sacred fire from the kitchen grate. Lucifer matches were not to be thought of.

The lambent flame shone softly out through the chinks, then reddened and grew broader, tongues of fire lapped the sticks, and disappeared and reappeared, becoming bolder each time, blistering brownly the silvery bark, catching at the edges, and rolling it up and off the sticks. Columns of milk-white smoke rose, propped by half-sheathed flames, and curled over, mimicking every order of convolution. Mr. Southard recited:

"'A gleam--a gleam from Ida's height, By the fire-god sent it came, From watch to watch it leaped, that light, As a rider rode the flame.'"

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The smoke shut thickly down, a moment; then a broad blaze burst out, wrapped the logs, and began to devour them, roaring like a lion.

The others gathered about the cheerful fire which was reflected in their faces; but Margaret glanced out at the storm, then went up to the long chamber entry from which a window looked down the townward road, and began walking to and fro there, wringing her hands, and listening to the wind and the rain lash the windows. A sudden darkness and terror had settled upon her. It was more than that atmospheric influence to which many are susceptible, more than a mere vague impression of evil; it was a thought as clearly defined as if some one had that moment given it utterance in her hearing, and it held her like a conviction. Some one whom she knew was at that instant dying, or dead!

Her hands grew cold; she shook as with an ague fit.

She had been too happy. She might have known that it could not last. She had known it. In all those happy months, had she not drunk every sweet moment with eager lips that had felt, and must again feel, the bitterness of thirst? Had she not constantly said to herself, It is too bright to last?

"I was not meant for earthly happiness," she thought, wringing her hands.

The walls shook in the clutch of the blast. Noises came up from the sea; and wild voices answered them from echoing rocks and from out the hollow woods. A great wall seemed to have risen between her and paradise, with a ceaseless swing of lightning guarding the entrance.

She fell on her knees and prayed, one of those terrible, voiceless prayers when the heart strains upward, but utters no petition, because it dares not think what it fears or what it desires.

Leaning exhausted then against the window frame, whom should she see but her great drenched hero striding down the road, no form but his, she knew, though a slouched hat covered his face, and a long cloak wrapped him from neck to heel.

In a flash, the great wall changed its front, and now shut her inside paradise. She ran joyfully downstairs to open the door, and caught the wind and rain in her face, but caught also with them a smile.

"Where is Mr. Lewis?" she asked, thinking of that gentleman by a happy inspiration.

Mr. Granger stepped in and shook himself like a half-drowned Newfoundland dog. "Mr. Lewis stopped to drink General Sinclair's health. He will come down in the next train."

"General?"

"Yes; Maurice is made a brigadier. He doesn't have to climb the ladder, you see, the ladder comes down to him. And truly he is a gallant fellow. He goes in front of his men, and laughs at danger as he laughs at fortune."

"I've got a fire in the parlor for you," she said.

He looked at her smilingly, pleased at the childish delight in his coming which she did not try to hide. Why should she? "Have you? That's pleasant. Now help me off with my cloak. I cannot unfasten that buckle at the back of the neck. Stand on the stair with the railing between us, that you may not get wet."

As she stood near him, she caught a sweet breath of English violets.

"I brought them out for you," he said, giving them to her. "See! not a stem is broken."

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She ran up-stairs to put the flowers in her chamber--they were too sacred to be shared with others--and coming down, entered the parlor just after Mr. Granger. Presently Mr. Lewis appeared, and they had dinner.

The conversation chanced to turn on presentiments; and since they were all in very friendly humor, Miss Hamilton told of her afternoon terror, making it as presentable as possible. "I suffered a few minutes of mortal fear," she said. "I seemed to _know_ that some dreadful accident had happened to one of the family. What is the meaning of those impressions that are often false, but sometimes true, and that come to us so suddenly, uninvited and unexpected?"

"They are the conclusion of which a woman is one of the premises," Mr. Lewis said in his rough way. "Did you ever hear of a man having presentiments? Of course not. He may have if his liver is out of order; not otherwise."

"I'm not bilious," pouted Miss Hamilton.

Mrs. Lewis had been listening with interest. She was one of those persons who believe that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in most philosophies. Her husband called her superstitious.

"I believe in those presentiments which come to us unexpectedly," she said. "We may know that they come from outside by the shock of their coming. We may not be clear. We may think that they point to the past or the present, when really they indicate the future. I think that what we call a true presentiment is a communication from some outside intelligence."

Margaret started and looked uneasily at the speaker. Mr. Lewis regarded his wife with affectionate contempt. "There's the woman who always wishes when she sees two white-faced horses coming toward her, and when she sees the new moon over her right shoulder, and who won't wear an opal because it's an unlucky gem, though it is her favorite. That's the way with women. Their manner of arriving at conclusions is a caution to common sense.

Mrs. Lewis sugared her strawberries, and seemed to soliloquize. "'Two wings are better than ten legs,' says the butterfly to the caterpillar."

Mr. Granger good-naturedly came to the rescue. "It is my opinion," he said, "that these excessively reasonable people make as many mistakes as the most imaginative, only their mistakes are not so obvious, though often far worse. They chill fresh spontaneous feeling, they dampen enthusiasm, they wound hearts that they cannot heal. In ordinary matters, I set reason above all; but when we would measure the walls of the new Jerusalem, we must have a reed of gold, and it must be in the hand of an angel."

Mr. Southard had also his word to say in defence of woman against Mr. Lewis's slighting remarks. But his serious defence was more irritating than the others' laughing attack. He spoke honorably, and often truly; but in the tone of one who understands the subject, root and branch. The three ladies listening felt as if they were three primers with pretty pictures, and nice little good lessons in large print, which Mr. Southard had read with edification to himself in the intervals of more serious study.

"Woman," he said, "woman is--" And paused there, catching an impatient sparkle in Miss Hamilton's eyes.

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"Oh! I know," she exclaimed with the stammering eagerness of a child who can spell a big word--"I know what woman is! '_Hominis confusio_.' I--I read it in a book."

The minister sat silent and confounded.

"I propose the health of General Sinclair," said Mr. Lewis.

After dinner the party gathered about the parlor fire, and as it fell from flame to coal, told stories of hurricanes, and tornadoes, and shipwrecks, the fearful recitals intensifying their sense of comfort and safety.

While they talked, the storm passed away, and there was only the sound of vines swinging against the panes, and the ceaseless murmur of the sea. When they opened the window, clouds of perfume came in. The sky was quite clear, and there was a tinge of orange yet lingering in the west. In the east was a still brighter aurora, and the full moon, coming up, feathered with a crest of gold every crisp, bright wavelet.

They all went out and strolled down to the beach. Every leaf and twig and blossom, and the long line of the eaves, were hung full of glittering rain-drops, and the grass shone as if sheathed in burnished silver.

They sighed and were silent. A scene so lovely and peaceful is always like a rebuke.