University of Virginia Library

Uncle Roger's Story and Mine.

ROBERT BROWNING.

WE were sitting on the upper piazza—my Uncle
Roger Apthorpe and I. It was at his house in
Hingham—a country house, yet looking out upon the
distant ocean, with its countless white wings of sails,
“its million lips of shells,” the cliffs upon its margin,
the islands on its bosom. I had been talking to Uncle
Roger. He was my mother's brother; the house
in which he lived was his inheritance from my grandfather,
and here I spent with him the summer months,
to me the happiest portion of the year.

My mother had died when I was very young. My
father was immersed in the cares of business, and between
my stepmother and myself was always a thin
ice of reserve—perhaps a courteous and unexpressed
hostility. Therefore Uncle Roger was my only confidant.

I had been telling him of a visit I had received that
morning. Young Harry Holt had ridden out from
town, and, in a few manly words, had offered me his
heart and his name. Uncle Roger had listened to my
story with even more than his usual interest. Harry
was one of his prime favorites.

“And you accepted him, Ethel?” he said, inquiringly,
as I paused.

“No, Uncle Roger; why should I? It was my
first offer. I might see fifty men I like better, yet—”

Here my conscience gave me a twinge, and I added,
“Or, if I shouldn't, he knows women too well to take
my first `no' for final; he will ask me again.”

Uncle Roger made no reply. I lifted the glass
which lay in my lap, and looked listlessly, yet wistfully,
over the sea at the great ships going out and
coming in. Whence were they? Where did they
go, carrying all their freight of unquiet human souls—
weary souls that could not stay at home, and so traversed
the wide earth over, seeking rest and finding
none? It seemed to me that travel was the forlorn
hope of desperation. Those who were denied happiness
were roaming after excitement. I felt a sadness
I could not explain or define. In its shadow every
thing wore an expression of hopelessness. And yet
that June afternoon was gilding land and sea. A
golden haze, mellow as autumn, warm as summer, lay
in the air. A tender dreaminess brooded over the
whole face of nature. I could hear no sounds, save
the swell of the sea breaking upon the distant beach.
The tide was coming in. Every now and then a tenth
wave broke loftily over the others, scattering its spray
of green, and gold, and violet; its diamonds, amethysts,
and emeralds, perishing, yet how glittering. The sun
was not painfully bright; its garish beams were tempered
by the haze in the atmosphere, the fine, imperceptible
mist rising from the water, and it seemed to
hang in mid air as if conscious that it was the longest
day in the year, and there was no need of hurry in its
journey to the west. The hour and the scene were
both bright. Why was it that my heart could see in
them only images of sadness and unrest!

At length I became conscious that Uncle Roger was

watching me. I looked at him. There was a strange
gleam, a flash of youthful fire in the tempered and
quiet sadness of his gray eyes. A flush had risen to
his withered cheeks, and the fingers he had unconsciously
knitted together were tremulous. At any
other time I should have inquired the cause of his
emotion; but my thoughts were preoccupied, and he
was the first to speak.

“And so you have refused Harry Holt, as I take
it, from a mere wanton caprice—a feminine desire to
say `no.' Well, I believe happiness is offered to every
one of us, at least once in life, but not one in a
hundred is wise enough to take it. I thought you
would have been. You are a good girl in the main,
Ethel; a kind heart, not much vanity, but you are a
woman. Human nature will be human nature.”

He drew a long sigh. I looked at him in silent expectation.
I had always felt that his life had a mystery;
that he, with his shrewd mind, his loving heart,
his keen intellect, had not lived alone without a more
than ordinary reason, and I believed the time had
come when he would return my confidence with his
own. I was not disappointed. He was silent for a
while, and his face wore the look of one absorbed in
self-communion, painful but intense. At length he
spoke:

“They say every life has its own romance, Ethel;
I have often meant to tell you mine. At my age the
world would say the dreams of youth should have
long since been forgotten, and yet they are not. Old,
and gray, and sober as I am, there is one name I can
not utter, even to myself, without quickened pulses.

“Caroline Windham was no angel. I think, if she

had been, my imperfect human nature, standing afar
off, would have seen in her no charm. She was not
even one of those saint-like beings whom some men
worship—marble without a flaw, faultless perfection.
She was a woman—a girl rather, full of passion, of
pride, of quick, ungoverned impulses. There was a
dainty grace in her movements, a pretty petulance in
her manner. She was one to be loved with fervid,
jealous exactingness, once and forever. She was one
to love, but I did not know that then.

“Her very beauty was peculiar and all her own.
She had a face like a gipsy, with strong lights and
shades, framed in heavy bands of jet-black hair, with
large black eyes flashing out upon you one moment
their subtle electricity, the next veiled by the inky lashes
which swept their penciled shadows over her crimson
cheeks. Her mouth was small, though full—at once
proud and fond. Her figure was rounded and symmetrical.
A physiognomist would, perhaps, have pronounced
her wanting in ideality in the spiritual element,
but he would have told you that her undisciplined
heart was warm; her untried soul, as yet a
stranger to itself, was true.

“I remember to this day every circumstance of our
first meeting. She was the one intimate friend whom
your mother, like all other young ladies, had made at
school; and I came home, from a couple of years of
foreign travel, to find her domesticated for a long visit
in this very house. I had seen many charming women
at home and abroad; many, perhaps, far more
strictly and regularly beautiful than she; but never,
before or since, have I seen one at all like her. I
used to think her piquant, irresistibly fascinating face

should have belonged to some Moorish Circe, some
gipsy queen, rather than to Miss Caroline Windham,
daughter of Jonathan Windham, Esq., merchant, of
New York.

“I can see her now just as she looked when I was
introduced to her first—the dark, bright face; the
small head, bound round with a wreath of blood-red
garden roses; the negligent folds of her white muslin
dress, flowing loosely about her figure, and gathered
in at the waist with a crimson girdle. I do not know
but her manner—half careless, half disdainful—would
have repelled me in another. It did not in her; it
seemed perfectly appropriate.

“From that hour I worshiped her, and yet I think
the closest observer would have failed to detect my
adoration. My nature was both proud and reserved,
and my quiet manners seldom gave outward indications
of my feelings. Possibly this very reticence
and apparent stoicism attracted her. At all events,
our acquaintance soon ripened into an intimacy which
might have been friendship, but for the concealed passion
which I had determined not at that time to express,
and which effectually prevented a response on
my part to the friendly and assured familiarity of her
demeanor toward me.

“She seemed to me as winning and as artless as a
child. She uttered all her thoughts frankly, and joined
in every country pleasure with a zest, the natural
result of her city life and education, but which
seemed singular enough to one accustomed to country
life as I had always been.

“That was a happy summer. We sailed, we drove
upon the beach, we fished, we rode, and the long summer

day seemed not long enough for our merriment.
Two or three times we went, at nightfall, to watch
the sunset at Nantucket Beach. Once, I remember,
the tide was just coming in. The sun had set gloriously,
kindling the western sky with coruscations of
rainbow-colored flame. The moon was rising, and
threw a long line of silver over the waters. We had
sat down together, Caroline Windham and I, on the
wreck of an old ship that had been cast on the shore
by some of the wild storms so frequent on the rocky
New England coast. Your mother was at a little distance,
looking with dreamy eyes at the sunset clouds.
Poor Ellen, she had her own Spanish castles then—
hers was a loving heart, and it was that summer that
she first met your father. I had never seen Caroline
so quiet, almost sad. She sat there leaning her head
on her hand, watching the billows chasing each other
restlessly toward the shore.

“At last she lifted her face toward me. `There is
no pause for them,' she said; `they go on, one after
another, forever and forever. Are they never tired?'

“I answered her question by another. `Are you
ever tired, Caroline? You are always gay. You go
from one pleasure to another, a sort of human humming-bird.
Do you ever weary of flowers?'

“Tears, which yet did not fall, gathered heavily on
her lashes. She looked at me wishfully, and then
turned her eyes away.

“`Yes, ah! yes,' she said, with a low sigh; `I am
tired often; but what can I do? People look for nothing
in me but gayety. Who loves me? Who cares
to find out the secrets of my heart? Nay, who dreams
that I have a heart? And yet I have one, and it is
flame.'

“Then was my hour. Fate and fortune favored
me. Happiness held her cup to my lips. I spilled
her proffered wine on the sand. I hardly know why
I did not, then and there, show her my heart—offer
her my life and my love. I thought I had reason for
my self-control. I did not believe that she loved me.
I had hope that her love might be mine in the future,
but I feared to startle her by asking it too soon. She
was too young, I thought, to know herself; besides, I
had a sort of quixotic hesitation about endeavoring to
draw her into an engagement while she was my sister's
guest; ignorant, as I was, whether it would at
all meet her father's approval. I silenced the words
which were rising to my lips. I answered her quietly,
almost coldly,

“`I do not think you do your friends justice. Ellen,
I am sure, loves you, and—'

“I do not know what other commonplace I was
about to add, for she sprang up from my side, her
quick, petulant manner all restored, the sad tenderness
gone from her expression, the pathos from her
voice.

“`Yes,' she said, lightly, `Ellen loves me. She is
a good girl, but she loves John Hammond a good deal
better, and I—what could I do with love, after all? I
could not wear it, or spend it; it is not even tangible
to touch or sight.'

“The next moment she was shattering the fair, frail
turrets of Ellen's castle in the air, pulling at her curls,
and declaring that it was time to go—that she hated
the sea; it made her feel blue and stupid—she liked
driving, and she should drive those two horses standing
there, so impatiently, all the way home.

“She did drive us home. She insisted on sitting
alone on the front seat, while I occupied the back one
with Ellen, and, as we dashed over the sands at a rattling
pace, she would now and then look round at us,
and laugh and shake her head, threatening us with all
manner of calamities. Every trace of that sad sensibility,
which had puzzled and enchanted me an hour
before, was gone from her manner, and I began to wonder
whether her character was not more of an enigma
than I had supposed.

“Soon after this she left us. Her father came for
her one evening, and took her away with him in the
morning. I did not like him. He was a stiff, stately,
somewhat pompous man. I could not understand how
his daughter had grown up to be the free, natural, impulsive
girl she was, under his shadow.

“We were separated without my having said one
word to her of more than ordinary friendship. Her
father was standing by her side when she bade me
good-by. I thought her hand trembled as I held it,
and her eyes were humid, but then she had just parted
from Ellen.

“It was six months before I saw, or sought to see
her again. I know, in this, my conduct will seem entirely
at variance with what I have told you of my
love; and yet, was it any stranger than that of many
a girl who turns, in apparent coldness, from the very
man whose voice quickens every throb of her pulses?

“I believe I placed too much faith in her youth.
I thought her so young no one would be likely to
seek her. She seemed to me a mere school-girl, an
impulsive child. I thought I might wait with safety.

“It was early spring when I, at length, went to New

York. As I rang the bell at her father's door, a shiver
of emotion passed over me—an emotion born of love,
of hope, of a vague doubt, in itself almost as delicious
as love. I sent up my name, and was shown into a
little morning-room, leading from the parlors, through
which I followed the polite footman.

“Caroline rose to meet me as I entered the door,
her face flushed with welcome, her lips parted, her
eyes sparkling. I believe I did not speak. She was
self-possessed; women always are. She made some
inquiries after Ellen, welcomed me gracefully to town,
and then silence fell between us. I had leisure to note
now what, in the eagerness of her welcome, I had not
observed. A winter of fashionable life had wrought
its effects upon her. She was thinner. The crimson
of her cheeks and lips was less brilliant; her dark
complexion was less clear. There was a sad droop to
her eyelids, an intangible element of melancholy in
her very smile. It made my heart ache to see her.
`Decidedly,' I thought, `this kind of life is not good
for her. There is too much of the wandering Ishmaelite
in her nature to bear this conventional confinement.
I wish I had her in the country, now, for a
good race over the hills. It would bring back color
and flavor to her life.'

“I commenced by telling her this. I ended by telling
her, I know not in what phrase, that I loved her
—that I had loved her from the first moment I had
ever seen her—that my one hope in the future was to
win her for my wife.

“I was not prepared for her answer. I had expected,
perhaps, a little embarrassment, a tender confession,
or an uncertainty almost equally encouraging;

possibly, though I had not looked at the case much in
this aspect, a proud refusal. I got neither.

“She looked at me long and earnestly, as if reading
my soul. She must have seen my truth in my eyes.
The passionate tears gushed in torrents from hers.
Then her words came, low, but distinct and firm.

“`You have done me great wrong, Roger Apthorpe,
me and yourself too. Had you told me this last summer
I would have given you my love and my life.
Nay, I did love you. Did you not know it? did you
not see it, when we sat together on the wreck, and you
turned from me so coldly? But now it is too late. I
must not talk with you about it. I shall be married
in six weeks to a good man—a man who loves me.'

“`And whom you do not love,' I said. `Oh, Caroline,
can you do this great wickedness? You will
blight your own life and his, and mine too, if that
were any thing to you.'

“I had roused her temper, which was never gentle.
Perhaps her anger flamed against me all the more
fiercely for her very love.

“`For shame!' she cried; `for shame, Roger Apthorpe!
It is like you to tempt me now to break my
word. If you loved me, why did you not tell me?
No, I will not marry you. I will marry a man who
does love me—who was not too proud to say so—who
did not think me too young or too foolish to be his
wife. Do not say any more; you can not move me.
I shall not make my husband's life miserable. I tell
you he loves me, and I will be a good wife to him.'

“I tried entreaty and persuasion, but she would not
be moved. Underneath her gay, careless exterior was
the firmest will I have ever met. She had given her

promise, and she was as tenacious as a Bedouin of her
plighted word.”

“But, Uncle Roger,” I interposed here—it was the
first time I had spoken since he commenced his recital—“how
could you continue to love her if she
was so proud and so passionate; if she would commit
such a sin as to marry another when her heart and
soul were full of you?”

Uncle Roger shook his gray head and smiled sadly.

“I am fifty-four years old, Ethel. Twenty-two
years of life have passed over me since that morning;
and, with my faculties sharpened by suffering, I have
read many hearts. We talk and write of virtues with
high-sounding names, but when we love they make
very little difference. The woman at whose shrine
we worship may or may not have them. No matter!
What enchains us is not tangible, can not be defined;
it is a certain something which links soul to soul; a
subtle electricity to which all submit while they deride
it. I knew well enough that Caroline Windham
was haughty, self-willed, and passionate; that a character
would have been, theoretically, more noble than
hers, by force of which its possessor, finding or fancying
that she was not beloved by the man to whom
her heart was given, would have resolved to remain
single for life. Such was not Caroline; and yet, just
as she was, I would not have bartered one of her faults
for any other woman's virtues. To have conquered
that proud will, to have subdued that haughty heart,
would have been a sweeter triumph than a thousand
easier conquests.

“I did not quite abandon all hope, though I left
New York the next day without having made an attempt

to see her again. For six weeks after I haunted
the post-office. I had faith that her love would
yet overmaster her pride. Sleeping or waking, I
seemed to see the very shape and handwriting of the
little note which I daily expected would come to me,
with a sentence of invitation and encouragement.

“At last came—not that, but a letter from a friend
who knew of my sister's intimacy with Miss Windham,
but had no idea of my own attachment. In it
he inclosed for Ellen a notice of her friend's marriage
to Mr. Robert Eastman; and he added the information
that they were to spend the summer in traveling
for the benefit of the bride's health, which was delicate.

“It would be idle to dwell upon the bitterness of
my despair. Such epochs are indescribable—fraught
with a suffering beyond words. I sought no sympathy;
I desired none. Even your mother never dreamed
that my love for her cherished friend had transcended
and outgrown her own. She wondered a little
that Caroline had not written to her about her wedding,
but she was too much absorbed in her own happiness
to pay much heed to the circumstance. Her
marriage was arranged for that fall; and, dear as she
was to me, I could not bear to look upon her face
with the transfiguring light of happy love flooding
her quiet eyes, glorifying her whole expression. I
have sometimes thought the very effort it cost me to
conceal my misery was good for my soul's health. If
we sit down weakly under a blow, and call upon others
and ourselves for pity, we lose the recuperative
power which self-control, taken as a tonic, never fails
to give us. I always admired the Spartan boy who

let the fierce wild fox gnaw at his vitals, and made no
cry or moan.

“Early in the autumn I received a letter superscribed
in a bold, manly hand with which I was not
familiar. I broke the seal, and glanced first at the
signature — Robert Eastman — the name of Caroline
Windham's husband. It was, indeed, from him. He
told me, in a few words, that Caroline's health had
been failing ever since their marriage; that he was
convinced she had but a few days to live, and he begged
me to lose no time in coming to her. She had
told him, he said, of our friendship, and expressed a
strong desire to see me.

“There was not one word by aid of which I could
determine whether he knew of the past relations which
had existed between her and me. One thing I noticed,
that he spoke of her as Caroline, not once as his
wife. I did not waste time in conjecture. Caroline,
my love, lay dying. Oh, to be in time to see her once
more, to hear her voice, to hold her hand! The railroad
from Boston to Providence had been built the
year before. It was the quickest route to New York
then open. I was in time for the steam-boat train. I
reached New York the next morning, and hurried at
once to the address given me in Mr. Eastman's letter.
I asked for him, and presently he came to me in the
parlor, whither I had been shown. He was a noblelooking
man. Every lineament of his fine face expressed
benevolence, gentleness, kindness. He looked
pale and worn with watching and anxiety. He took
my hand in an earnest clasp.

“`Thank God you have come,' he said, in a voice
tremulous with emotion. `Poor Caroline! she has

told me all. She is more truly your wife than mine.
It was a terrible mistake. I would give the universe
if I had never married her. She might have lived
then, and been happy, but—I loved her. Come, we
are losing precious time. She is worse this morning,
but she is buoyed up now by excitement. I told her
you were here.'

“I begged him to be present at our interview; I
felt I had no right to see her alone. Caroline, he told
me, had made the same request, but he thought it better
to leave us to ourselves. We, who had been parted
in life, might surely snatch a few moments from
death and the grave.

“He led me to the door. He opened it, and closed
it again behind me. I was alone with her. She raised
herself from her pillow. Her wan face was illumined
with a glow and a glory as of a dying day. She
stretched out her arms. I sprang to her bedside, and
those thin, wasted arms fell about my neck. Her lips
met mine for the first time, and there I held her, with
death watching and waiting beside us. I know not
how long it was before either of us spoke. At length
Caroline raised her head and looked at me. Her eyes
were the same, large, bright, and full of tenderness,
though in all else she was terribly changed.

“`This is not wrong, Roger,' she said; `it can not
be wrong to love you now. Before the sun sets I
shall be where they neither marry nor are given in
marriage. I have told Robert all, and he forgives me
freely. He will not even let me blame myself. I am
so glad, so thankful that I am going to die. If I had
lived, to know, as he must have known, that I did not
love him, would have blighted all his life. Now he

will be happy again; I know his nature. He will
mourn for me a while, and then some one else will
console him. I thank God for this. It is a terrible
thing to wrong a man as I wronged him. The only
atonement I can make is in dying. We always pity
the dead and forgive them, no matter what their faults
are. I do not ask you to forgive me, Roger.'

“I can not tell you in what words I answered her;
how I poured into her dying ears the fullness of a love
no human utterance could measure. She understood
me. I did not say it, but she looked into my heart,
and knew, even as I did in that hour, that for me only
heaven could bring consolation — that my first love
would be my last.

“I think we must have been together two hours.
Much of this time had been passed in solemn silence,
much in grave and earnest talk concerning the stern
realities to which she was hastening; and blended
with all this was the strong cry, from the living to the
dying, of a love which death itself could not subdue.

“At length a swift and ghastly change passed over
her face. In a faint voice she bade me call her husband.
He hurried in, followed by the nurse and the
physician. She lifted her eyes to his with a sweet
and tender smile. In a tone so low that only he and
I could hear it, she said,

“`I have loved you dearly, Robert—dearly, though
not best. You have been very good to me. No one
could have been kinder or more tender. It will comfort
you to remember this when I am gone. Some
time, I am glad to think, you will love again, and be
loved in return as this wayward heart could never
have loved you.'

“He sat down on the bed beside her, and lifted her
head on his bosom. She was dear to him, I could see
that, as his own life. She rested there, tranquilly
lapsing away into death, `going out with the tide.' I
knelt by the bedside, and her hand was clasped in
mine. For a time she looked at me steadily, with
eyes full of clinging tenderness; then the lids closed
over them, but she did not sleep. From time to time
we could catch scarcely audible snatches of prayer;
and once she murmured, `He shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes.'

“At length she quite ceased to speak. We watched
her still, as her breathing grew slower and slower;
at last I bent my face to hers; I felt a chill, faint
breath cross my cheek. Was it the token of her passing
soul?—that moment the doctor said, `She is dead.'
Her husband laid her tenderly and reverently from
his arms, and I can remember nothing more. For
months I had borne up against my grief; I had set
the seal of silence upon my lips; I had striven with
calm front to fight the battle of life. At last my over-tasked
energies had sunk under this continual pressure.
Merciful unconsciousness seized upon my faculties.

“When I awoke from this stupor it was late in the
night. I was lying in a comfortable chamber, and
Caroline's husband was watching over me. He said
gently,

“`You have been unconscious a long time. The
doctor says it was only over-excitement. You will
do very well now, but at first we thought you would
follow her.'

“`Would that I had! would to God that I had!' I
cried, in mad insubordination.

“He gave me a strange, dreary look, as if he scarcely
understood why I should sorrow. `She loved you,'
he faltered, with a quiet pathos, which softened my
stricken heart to sympathy with a woe yet more hopeless
than my own.

“He was the noblest man I ever knew, this Robert
Eastman. In his place, how many would have pursued
me, all my life through, with vengeful hate; but
to him the very love which Caroline had borne me
rendered me sacred. Caroline had understood him
well. He had loved her deeply; he mourned for her
truly. Had he been, as I was, the beloved of her
soul, he would have consecrated all his life to her
memory. But he knew that she had never loved
him; that, in the most sacred sense, she had never
been his wife; and, after a few years, he married
again, this time a pale, blonde beauty; a gentle, quiet
woman, very unlike Caroline. They are happy.
They have passed fifteen years of their life together.
It has been like a perfect day, growing brighter toward
its afternoon. I think it is one of those heavenmade
marriages which death only makes eternal.

“For myself, after the first shock was over, I think
Caroline's death was almost a comfort to me. She
had never seemed so truly mine as when I stood beside
her grave. I am technically no spiritualist. I
do not believe in physical demonstrations; I have had
none of her presence; and yet I know that many a
midnight she has watched over my slumbers, that her
free soul walks through life at my side. I believe, as
truly as I believe in heaven, that she will be mine
hereafter; that, when the messenger comes for me
who comes for all, she will guide me across the tideless,

fathomless waters, and be mine on the other
side; mine in all the changeless radiance of her beauty,
the glory of her immortal love, and her immortal
youth. I shall be young again there.”

I looked at him as he ceased speaking. A great
light, as of a mighty hope, sat on his face. In its
transfiguring glow he looked no longer old and withered.
I could see a foretaste of the youth which death
was to bring to him. He sat for a long time silently
gazing on the distant sea. I thought the fire which
shone in his eyes must be such as had kindled them
when he looked on her.

At length he rose, and, drawing a miniature-case
from his breast, put it into my hand.

“Look at that, Ethel, and judge if I have exaggerated
her charms. It was taken when she was your
age—just seventeen.”

He left me, and when he was gone into the house I
opened the case. The face was that of a most beautiful
woman. There was a flush, a glow of buoyant,
physical life upon it, which made its loveliness seem
beyond the reach of time or death. It was not a face
to grow old, and yet, if she had lived, she must have
been past middle age now. Perhaps death was better
than life, and its stern discipline of trials and changes.

I did not see Uncle Roger again that night. The
next morning I gave the miniature back to him. As
I did so I made my own confession of wrong.

“Uncle Roger,” I said, “you were right. I love
Harry Holt almost as you loved her. I refused him
from foolish vanity. I was vexed with his hasty
wooing. I wished to make him more submissive,

more humble; and now, perhaps, I have lost him.
Is he too proud ever to come back?”

Uncle Roger soothed me with sympathy gentle as
a woman's. It was strange how well we two understood
each other. Most men in his place would have
proposed to recall the banished lover; but he knew
the pride of my nature too well. Indeed, his pride
for me was as lofty as my own, and I would have
died sooner than make one effort to bring the banished
suitor back.

Weeks passed on, and I neither saw nor heard of
him. For a long time I comforted myself with delusive
hopes. Morning after morning I more than
half expected to see his horse at the gate. But it
never came. Perhaps, wayward girl that I was, I
should have liked him less if he had forgotten his own
dignity and humbled himself to seek me again.

Never once since I gave him the miniature had
either his heart's loss or mine been mentioned between
Uncle Roger and myself. But all this time I could
feel that he gave me his tenderest sympathy. Trouble
had never hardened his heart, only made it more
earnest and more loving. He strove to gratify all my
wishes. His care over me was inexpressibly soothing
and watchful. I strove bravely against any weak indulgence
in regret or repining. I tried to make my
outer life cheerful and useful, and I think, in some
good degree, I succeeded, but in my heart was a great
void.

At length, one afternoon, I asked Uncle Roger to
drive me down to the beach. I wanted to see the
tide come in. It was a glorious August day. The
sea was still, and the ripples only broke lazily on the

shore and retreated. I was disappointed at the calmness.
The dash and roar of the wildest breakers
would have suited me better. I longed for excitement.
Soon it came, in a manner widely different
from my wishes.

I had been watching for some time the different
vessels, when my attention was attracted by a little
skiff, quite far out at sea, and rowed by two persons.

“What a perilous thing it looks,” I remarked to
Uncle Roger, “to put forth on the ocean. It reminds
me of the three wise men of the nursery rhyme, who
went to sea in a bowl.”

It quite interested me, it was so frail, and yet so
well managed. It skipped over the waves like a seabird.
It was coming toward the shore, and soon I
could distinguish the forms and faces of its occupants.
One was Harry Holt. My heart beat wildly when I
saw him. It was the first time since the morning on
which he had told me that he loved me. Would they
come on shore near us? Would he see me? Would
he speak to me? Would he ever, ever seek again
the love I had refused him once?

I was asking myself these questions, when I saw
Harry make some sudden, incautious movement. The
boat careened. He threw his arms up, seeking to
preserve his balance, but in vain. They were both in
the deep water. A thought flashed into my mind, instantaneous,
terrible—Harry could not swim. He had
told me so. He sank. I saw his companion strike
out to aid him. He rose. Will his friend reach him?
No; he has sunk again. A second time to the surface.
His comrade seizes him now, and pushes gallantly
for the shore. Will he ever gain it? The water

is deep and the burden heavy, but—on they come.
Nearer and nearer. Uncle Roger and I wade out into
the waves to meet them. We are strong now, in our
excitement. We stretch out our hands and seize
them. I do not know how, or by whom, but they are
drawn upon the beach. I see Harry lying there, pale,
ghastly, the water dripping from his hair, but—safe!
I bend over him, helpless, exhausted, and my excited
feelings find vent in a passionate flood of tears. His
arms closed round me. We cared not for the friendly
eyes which were watching us. I heard nothing but
his fond, fervent whisper,

“Ethel, Ethel, my own at last. Did you love me
all this time?”

I could say nothing but, “Oh, Harry, what if you
had died?”

There is no need of farther words. My story ends
here. Harry Holt has been for just six months my
husband. I have told you how the waves brought
him back again to my feet.