University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.
TRUE WORDS ARE SOMETIMES VERY HEAVY.

EARLY next morning, whoever passed along that
part of the harbor, might have seen young Urston
standing under the Cross-way-Flake, which
covers with thick shade a part of the road beyond Marchants'
Cove, and the approach to the old unpainted house,
in which, with his youngest son and family, lived the patriarch
of his name, old Isaac Barbury, and his old wife.

From where the young man stood, the fair blue heavens
without, seemed like smooth walls rising about the earth,
over the top of which inclosure had now begun to pour,
and by and by would come in a flood, sweeping away the
airy walls,—the fresh and glorious day.

A step drew near, on the top of the flake, and the
young man left his standing-place and went forth. It was
a handsome woman, of middle age, who stood above, with
some fish which she was preparing to spread, and whom
he saluted respectfully, giving her the title of “Aunt.”

She returned his salutation kindly, but distantly; and,
as he lingered still in silence, addressed him again, while
she continued her work.

She asked, “Have you given up being a priest, Mr.
Urston?”

“Yes!” he answered, in a single word, looking before
him, as it were along his coming life, like a quoit-caster,

to see how far the uttered word would strike; then, turning
to her, and in a lower voice, added, “I've left that,
once and forever.—But why must I be so strange, that
you call me `Mr. Urston?'”

She looked at him searchingly, without speaking. He
kept his eyes fixed upon her, as if expecting her to say
more; but as she turned to her work again in silence, he
said—“I'm a fisherman, just now; I may be something
else, but it won't be a priest.”

“James Urston!” she said, abruptly as before. “Do
you know you're trifling with the very life?”

The young man started. “I don't understand,” said
he; “do you blame me for not being a priest?”

No; I'm glad of it: but what is there between you
and my daughter Lucy?”

The young heart, as if it had been touched in its privacy,
threw a quick rush of blood up into James Urston's
face. “Nothing,” he answered, much like a lover; being
confused by her suddenness.

“There ought to be nothing, and nothing there must
be!—I've told her, and I tell you, Mr. James Urston,
you must not meet any more.”

“But why?” he asked, not recovered from his confusion.

“You can see, easily,” said Mrs. Barbury. “I needn't
tell you why.”

Is there any thing so hard, or that goes in so deep, as
air made into words?

“No, I don't see,” he said. “I see how different she
is from any one else.”

How could he let himself see that wall, so suddenly
built up, but so surely?—It was not, yesterday.

“I know she is,” said the mother, “and I thank God

for it; He made her so: but her feelings are like other
people's, only they may go deeper.—They can't be trifled
with.”

“How could I trifle with her?” he asked, warmly.
“Trifling is not my character,—with man or woman!”
There was a strength in this self-assertion, in which every
feature took part with the voice, that must have impressed
Mrs. Barbury.

“I believe you don't mean wrong,” she said; “and
that makes it easier to speak plain to you. I haven't
language like yours, but I can say the truth. I'm her
mother, and must answer to God for what care I take of
her. It would be wrong for me to let you go on, and for
you to go on, against my forbidding.”

The young man's face was flushed. Happily, no one
but Mrs. Barbury was near; and happily, and rather
strangely, no one else was drawing near.

“If you forbid it, it's wrong; I don't know what else
should make it wrong,” he said.

“Difference of religion, James Urston,” she said, slowly
and gravely,—“as you must know yourself. I wouldn't
be unkind; but it can't be helped.”—It was plain that
she was thoroughly resolved.

He answered bitterly:—

“If you don't blame me for not being a priest, you'll
take good care that I never come any further. There
mightn't always be a difference of religion.”

Mrs. Barbury looked steadily at him, and severely;
she said:—

“I didn't think you'd given up being a priest for any
woman—”

Urston did not restrain himself, but broke in upon her
speech:—

“I never gave up the priesthood for any thing but conscience!
because I must be a hypocrite, if I kept on. I
can't believe every thing, like good old Father Terence;
and I can't be a villain, like —” (he did not give the
name.)

She answered:—

“You speak quite another way, when you say that I
ought to risk my daughter for the chance of making you
a Protestant! I've no right to sell my daughter's soul!”

Again the young man took fire. “We needn't speak
of trafficking in souls,” he said, “I'm sure nothing would
buy her's, and I wouldn't sell mine,—even for Lucy Barbury.”

“Then do right!” said the simple reasoner who was
talking with him. “You can't be any thing to each
other!”

Gentle as her face and voice were, the sentence was
not to be changed. It is not only in drowning, that the
whole life past,—ay, and the future's hope,—meet in an
instant's consciousness, as a drop reflects the firmament;
for, in any crisis which has power to quicken every faculty
to its utmost, all that is past comes with a sudden
sadness, and all that might have been; while, at the same
pulse, comes the feeling, that, between past and future,
we are losing hold and slipping down, forever; quitting
the results of what is gone, and the opportunity of what
was to come. Whoever has had the experience of love
discovered in his heart, only that it may be chased and
killed, may know what Urston felt.

“You can't help what she has been to me,” he said,
sadly. “You can't take away the memory, at least. You
can't take away noble thoughts she's given me. You can
take away what might have been, yet,”—he added, bitterly,

as well as sadly, “it's hard for a young man to
have to look back for his happiness, instead of forward!
I didn't think it was to be my case!”

No man living, and certainly no woman, could help
feeling with him. Mrs. Barbury and he were still alone
together. She spoke (and gently):—

“Happiness isn't what we're to seek for; but it comes
after doing what's right.—It isn't always easy to do right,”
she said.

“Not so easy as to tell others to do it,” he answered,
bitterly, still.

“And yet, it is to be done; and many have done as
hard things,” said Mrs. Barbury, “and even were the
better for it, afterwards.”

“When it takes away the very best of life, at the
beginning”—. The young man gave way to his feelings
for a moment, and his voice broke.

“We may live through it, and be the better for it,” she
said.

“Take away the best of life, and what is left?” he
asked, with his broken voice, which had been so strong
and manly only a little while before. “Or break the
heart, and what's the man, afterwards?”

Mrs. Barbury's answer was ready, as if the question
had come to her years ago.

“A `broken heart' is the very thing that God asks
for; and if it will do for Him, it may do for this world,”
she said. “I know what a woman can do, James, when
she must, and I think a man should do as much.”

“How do you know?” he asked. “Not by your own
feeling!”

“Yes, by my own feeling!”

The young man looked up at the fair, kindly face,

which, in familiarity with the free air, had given away
some of its softness, but had it's wide, clear eye unchanged,
and gentle mouth.

We, young, are often bewildered by a glimpse of the
unpublished history of some one of our elders: (for the
best of these are unwritten, and we sometimes catch a
glance at them.)—Ah! covetousness, or low ambition, or
earnest drudgery, as well as hatred of mankind, or madness,
or too early death, has taken many a one that led
another life, up to a certain time; and then it was broken
off!

So, too, a happy peacefulness and quiet strength have
taken place, like sunshine, and a new, green growth, in
many a heart where the fierce tempest had laid waste.
It may have been so with Skipper George's wife.

“You'd never know from the water, when it lays
smooth in the sun,” she said, presently, “what storms it
had been in, outside.—I was as young as you or Lucy,
once.”

She smiled, and it seemed almost as if her young self,
fair and happy, came, at a call, up within her, and looked
out at her eyes and glowed behind her cheek. Urston
could not help listening.

“I was brought up in England, you know, from a
child, in Mrs. Grose's family. I was a play-fellow with
the children, and then maid.—One time, I found I was
going to be wretched, if I didn't take care, for the sake
of one that wasn't for me; and so I went into my room,
and didn't come the first time I was called; but when I
did, I was as strong as I am now.”

“You weren't in love!” said Urston.

“I wasn't, afterwards: but I was much like you,
before—only, I wasn't a man.”

She was as calm and strong in telling her little story,
as if it had not once touched her very life. So the boat
swims, full-sailed and fearless, over the rock, on which,
one day, at half-tide, it had struck.

“Not every one can go through, so easily,” said the
young man, moodily.

“James Urston!” said she, looking steadily in his face,
“you're a man, and women's feelings are not the easiest
to get over.”

“Well, I can't stay here,” said he, looking out sea-ward,
as so many young lovers have done, before and
since; some of whom have gone forth wanderers, according
to their word, and helped to fill the breath of the
Northeast Wind with this long wailing that we hear, and
some of whom have overcome or been overcome by hard
things at home.

“Take it manfully,” said the woman, “and you'll conquer
it.”

He pressed his lips together, shook his head once, with
a gesture of anguish, and then, straightening himself and
throwing back his head, walked up the harbor.

So sings, most touchingly, the German poet, of love

with cruel scorn tossed back. He sang out of a heart
that knew what was the dreadful crush, and dizzying, destroying
backset of the life's flood, when its so many channels,
torn from their fastenings in another's being, lie
huddled upon themselves.

A little further up the road, there is on the left hand,
where the hill goes down—rocky, and soddy, and stony—
to the beach, a little stream, that loiters (as it leaves the
bosom of the earth and comes out into the air,) just long
enough to fill up a hollow with its clear, cool water,
and then goes gurgling on its short way to the salt sea.
There is no superstition in the regard the neighbors have
for this spring; but everybody knows the place, and some
have tender memories connected with it, from gatherings
of lads and maids about it in the clear summer evenings.
Har-pool, (or Hare-pool,) they call it.

If James had thought of this association, (perhaps he
did,) it would have given another touch, still, to his sadness,
to remind himself of it at the spot; but he crossed
over, and went down to it, and, where the streamlet fell
out of its basin, caught the cool water in his hand, and
bathed his brow, and drank.

His side was toward the sun, that came along, as he
does, in his strong way, not hindered by our unreadiness.
The young man's shadow, long and large, was thrown
upon the hill-side. Another shadow joined it. He
turned hastily, and saw the old parish-clerk, Mr. William
son coming. He went out into the road; met him, exchanging
salutations; passed under the Crossway-Flake,
and down the harbor.