University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.
APPROACHING THE MYSTERY.

I WAS about to return to Seacliff that afternoon,
when business thrust its iron finger into my button-hole.
Day after day necessity said, Remain! and
in great vexation of spirit I obeyed, finding only this comfort
in my calamity, that I could send to that country-house
which was my public, a copy of the “Idler in Italy,” on
the fly-leaf of which was written, “To Miss Mary Westervelt,
with the compliments of Louis Fitz Hugh.”

Resolved not to abate one atom of my privileges as an author,
I forwarded an accompanying note, wherein I introduced
my trifling sketches of travel to Miss Westervelt, begged her
to excuse the liberty which I took in bringing them to her
notice, regretted that they were not more worthy of her attention,
and informed her, although with some misgivings as
to the propriety of personal particulars, that I hoped soon to
regain the delightful society of Seacliff. How I felt as I
dropped the billet into the post-office, and saw that it was
gone beyond recall! It seemed as if I had taken a decisive
step in life; as if I had passed bodily through that narrow
orifice; as if I could no more be the Fitz Hugh that I had been.

For an answer to this note and its printed fellow ambassador,
I haunted the post-office till all the clerks knew me by
sight, and used to look through their files without stopping to
hear my name. There are persons whose mere routine of

life it is to be ministers of fate to their fellow-creatures, and
none perform this office more constantly, more unconsciously,
than the quick-eyed men whose faces greet yours through
those plain, matter-of-fact openings labelled Delivery.
Nothing came for me, and life began to wear an aspect
of dreariness verging upon the downright disagreeable. I
suspected various annoying things: was sure that Bob Van
Leer had intercepted the book; that Mr. Westervelt had
indignantly kicked it into the fire; that Somerville had
returned to Seacliff, and slandered me; that Miss Westervelt
herself looked upon me as an impertinent; that the post-office
clerks had robbed the mail. I resolved that I would
not go back to Seacliff; and as soon as I could, I broke my
resolution. Ten days of absence had elapsed,—ten days of
two hundred and forty hours each, instead of twenty-four,—
when I again came in sight of the low, rounded bluff, its
crest of trees, and its imitation Parthenon.

“Well, Lewy, and now I suppose you are going up to the
great house right away,” said Ma Treat, smiling very cunningly
and cheerfully.

“I rather think not this evening,” drawled I, indifferently;
and was hesitating up the Seacliff steps, within an hour
thereafter. Through the wide-open door breathed the old,
well-remembered rustle of womanly robes, and, borne on it,
giving forth no other sound of motion, came Miss Westervelt,
flushed, smiling, with an outstretched hand of welcome.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh!” she exclaimed, “I am glad to see you
back again. Very, very much obliged to you for your book,
and for your letter also.”

“Ah! you received them, then?” I replied solemnly. “I
was not aware—”

“Yes, indeed. And I would have sent my thanks to you,
but you did not mention your address. You spoke, too, as if
you were not to be in New York long.”

“Ah—yes, yes—certainly, I remember. How very absurd
in me! I must apologize to you,—or rather I must

apologize to myself, for my blunder; it has deprived me of a
great favor.”

Following her into the parlor, I found the whole family,
excepting Mr. Westervelt, who had, of course, gone to New
York on business. They welcomed me heartily, abused me
for having stayed away so long, and gave me such a handshaking
as half made me think myself the president of some
country. My fingers were the most severely treated by my
sincere friend and bore, Robert Van Leer, who did not in the
least understand my smile of disgust, but showed such delight
at seeing me that it seemed as if he would not be contented
unless he could hold me in lap. Before I had been in the
room ten minutes, I felt as distinguished men, perhaps, feel,
when they first become aware of their celebrity; for my
friends were charmed with my book, all of them, down to
Robert, who only regretted there were no pictures. Miss
Westervelt, as I discovered to her confusion, had read it
privately to herself, and then read it aloud to her father,
without receiving from him the mildest provocation thereto,
by request or indirectly. Mrs. Van Leer was uncommonly
gracious, and bestowed upon me some of those attentions
with which she had been accustomed to inveigle Somerville.

“I tell you, old feller, you're a brick,” said Bob, drawing
me aside at the first opportunity. “I knew you had the
brains,—knew it the first time I heard you speak. I say,
why don't you go in for Genevieve? You could get her easy
now that you've got to be somebody. Ain't she growing
up a beauty, though? Why, sometimes I think she's pretty
near as handsome as her sister. She'll have lots of tin, too,
some of these days; and while that's a-coming along, you
could be writing these books of yours. By Jove! wouldn't
it be fun if we should all four get married together, hey?”

“How do you get on with your own suit?” I inquired,
artfully.

“Well, the old man's agreeable, of course; but Mary, she
kind of turns me off and keeps me outside of the fence; plays

me, you know, like a feller does a fish. Hang it! some fellers
that's got the grit and the brains would go right in and
win; but I can't: when she sidles away from me so, and
looks grave, I feel all shut up, and can't say a word for myself.
Hang it! I wish I could write;—I'd write it all out to
her in poetry; that would bring her to, wouldn't it? But
I'm glad you sent her that book of yours. She was mighty
pleased to get it, and thanked me for bringing it to her from
the post-office. Old feller, I'm thunderingly obliged to you,
I am so.”

Here he shook my hand again, and suffered me to slip
back into the parlor.

“Do you know, Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Mrs. Van Leer with
a killing smile, “that I am made hor—ribly jealous by that
breast-pocket of yours? It looks precisely as if there might
be a min—iature in it; and I know that it is not mine. Do
tell us whose it is.”

I cannot help laughing now to think how anxious I was to
clear myself of the charge contained in this raillery. I hastily
drew forth a tumbled copy of the New York Tattler, my
friend's paper, and then slapped my pocket to show that it
was empty.

“Oh, that is all!” said the gay lady. “I feel relieved.
Come, Mr. Fitz Hugh, read us the deaths and marriages.”

A little disconcerted by her coquettish pretences to me, I
fumbled over the paper, searching for an item which should
divert her badinage from me to some other object. I found
more than I looked for; something which, I thought, referred
to her; something which, it seemed to me, would crush her.
I debated tremulously with myself whether I should read this
paragraph aloud. Let justice have her right, I decided; let
the guilty one be called on to come out from among the innocent;
let her be commanded to brand herself publicly with
the blush of her own shame. Without any preamble or explanation,
therefore, I read from the column headed Personal,
this advertisement, “Josephine, you treat me ill; you do

not answer me. I shall reappear. Love me or kill me.
Rudolph.”

From “Rudolph,” I raised my eyes instantly to Mrs.
Van Leer, and was fairly confounded by the serene, dazzling
brass of that canty countenance. First came a stare of pure
naive astonishment, then a sudden sparkle of coquettish comprehension,
then a quick glance of roguery from me to Miss
Westervelt, and then a laugh, long, silvery, jocund, and malicious.

“Ha! ha! ha! I see,” she said. “Je commence a comprendre.
I heard that some—body wrote, and got no answer
to his letter;—sent a book, and received no thanks for it.
And so at last he fell to adverti—sing, did he? Really,
Mary, you look uncom—monly innocent; or, rather, you
try to.”

While I gasped for words under this impudence, which
seemed to hit me like a slap in the face, Miss Westervelt
replied for me, with that readiness of speech which women
have, but not without a heightening of color. “For shame,
Julia! How uncharitable you are to charge Mr. Fitz Hugh
with such nonsense!”

“Yes, indeed! I protest against it,” said I, with unnecessary
vehemence of language and manner. “I object altogether
to such an idea. I assure you that I—”

“I ask your par—don, Mr. Fitz Hugh,” put in the criminal,
with a mock humility of look, which was meant to be
excessively humorous. “Of course it was a naughty insinuation,
and of course there wasn't an atom of truth in it.”

At that moment I heard a familiar footstep on the floor of
the veranda, and saw a well-known handsome face peep
smiling through one of the front windows. Here is Rudolph,
I thought; but I only said, “Here is Somerville.”

Mrs. Van Leer started up gleefully, ran to the front of the
parlor, peered out into the evening dusk, tapped on the glass,
and then sailed into the hall, holding up her skirts so as to
expose a pretty foot and rounded ankle. Miss Westervelt

turned her face that way without rising, and I thought that
she looked disconcerted and anxious. It struck me that she
knew of the venomous mystery which lay coiled like a snake
in the bosom of the family, and that consequently she must
have understood the promise of the advertisement, and saw
now in Somerville's arrival its fulfilment. The mingled embarrassment
and hauteur with which she received his complimentary
salutations, confirmed me in this suspicion. Genevieve,
too, was stiff and reserved, although her fine eyes were
full of an excitement which I could not understand.

“Where is Mrs. Westervelt?” he asked, as he installed
himself on the sofa beside Mary; and I then recollected,
vaguely, that she had left the room while I was reading the
advertisement.

“I don't know. She will be in presently, I dare say,”
observed Genevieve, dryly.

“I supposed that she could not be away,” he said. “I had
the pleasure of meeting Mr. Westervelt this morning, and he
told me that I should find her here.”

Genevieve went out, and soon returned with a message
from her stepmother, begging Mr. Somerville to excuse her
absence from the parlor, as she had just gone to bed with a
headache.

“Certainly,” he replied. “No apology was necessary.
Please to inform her how much I regret her indisposition.”

Really, my dear fellow, you are a cool one, thought I.
Can't you see that nobody in the house wants you except
Mrs. Van Leer, who is herself but a guest, and has no right
to offer the Seacliff hospitalities? Whether he saw it or not,
it evidently did not weigh on his mind, and he talked time
away as gayly as any one. Mrs. Van Leer's impudence
kept me in perpetual amazement, so flauntingly did she exhibit
her preference for Somerville, notwithstanding that her
husband sat by, and turned his slow brown eyes upon her at
every one of her coquettish sallies. I watched his face carefully,
without being able to detect in its broad peaceful disk

one shadow of suspicion, or any sentiment but admiration of
his wife's cleverness. But the fast lady's brass shone with
the most astonishing effulgence when she snatched up that
copy of the Tattler, and in a voice shaken only by laughter,
read to Somerville the mysterious advertisement. Were they
both perfectly innocent, or were they altogether seared by
sin, that they could wear faces so devoid of guilty consciousness?
I turned away from them, for they seemed to
dazzle me, as two flaming devils might have done.

But for such thorny thoughts as these, the evening would
have passed like a dream of unmingled roses. Somerville
remained attached to Mrs. Van Leer's skirts, which literally
fluttered and wriggled with coquettish delight, making occasionally
a most liberal display of French bootees and snow-white
stockings. Genevieve seemed absent, dull, and only
changed a few commonplace remarks with Henry Van Leer.
Consequently, I had Miss Westervelt to myself; for although
Bob sat by us, he was unobtrusive and silent, like a good-natured,
speechless, unsuspecting dolt, as he was; an attentive
listener to our talk, indeed, but a most unalarmed and gratified
one; his broad eyes fixed steadily on her, and never
diverted to me by any thrill of jealousy. Were there ever
two other brothers in one moderate-sized parlor so befooled
under their own noses as was this blockish couple of Van
Leers? I got home so late that evening that Pa and Ma
Treat both assaulted me with divers knowing, kindly smirks,
previous to lighting me up stairs, pointing out how all my
things had been nicely folded away, and leaving me with a
simple good-night, which sounded like a parental benediction.

Next day brought me trumpetings heralding the entrance
of the “Idler in Italy” into the world's tourney. As it was
summer, the dull season in politics, business, and most other
serious pursuits, the papers had little to talk about, so that
my book received a flattering number of notices. To my
astonishment, however, no mention was made of the slips of
poetry which I had planted in my vegetable garden of prose.

I considered this a deliberate, studied disparagement, and suspected
secret enemies in the New York press. I wonder how
many other young authors have been haunted by the same
dark suspicion, when they have seen the fairest, best-loved
children of their brain, the very Josephs of their inner life,
impaled on some critic's pen, or, worse still, passed by in
silence. I looked to see if the lyrics had been copied into
any of the papers; but the same malicious conspirators had
taken steps to prevent that also; and so I confounded the
age for a wooden one, not worthy the veneering of my poesy.
But if the Press, that great engine of intellect and civilization,
as it modestly delights to style itself, did not admire my
verses, there was somebody who did, and whose good opinion
I coveted more even than the favor of monthly or daily.
That very day I surprised Miss Westervelt in the act of
copying from a fresh printed volume into an album. On my
appearance the “new publication” went into a writing-desk
with great celerity, while the album was slipped under a pile
of that mysterious woman's work, the ruffles and embroideries
of which no bachelor dares to touch lightly. Presently,
I saw Mrs. Van Leer abstract it from its hiding-place, and
secrete it within the folds of her morning muslin; and two
minutes after, when Miss Westervelt ran to a window to look
at a humming-bird, the album was dexterously jerked into
my lap, and a mischievous smile encouraged me to open it.
The temptation was mighty, and I yielded to it in a hurry,
after the fashion of youth. There were extracts from Dante
and Tasso, Goethe and Schiller, Milton and Wordsworth,
Bryant and Longfellow, in that dear, delightful, scrawly
handwriting, a single pot-hook of which seemed to me enough
to hang a life upon. There, too, among the deathless offspring
of the gods of song, were the lyrics of the “Idler in
Italy,” every halt and lame mortal of them; my “Alpine
Landscapes,” the whole cold and rugged series, perfect boulders
of unshapely versification; my “Ode to Trajan's Pillar,”
my “Mater Dolorosa,” and my “Youthful Raphael.” I
bestowed a glance of unutterable gratitude on Mrs. Van
Leer, and proceeded to read all the pieces at once in great
trepidation. Very soon Miss Westervelt came back to the
table; halted, paralyzed, on catching sight of the volume in
my hands; then made a sudden rustling charge upon me, and
snatched it away.

“Mr. Fitz Hugh! that is my book!” she said, amazed
apparently, and confused certainly.

I made up a face of woful penitence, and pointed at
Mrs. Van Leer, who burst into a fit of uncontrollable
laughter, and shook her white fist at me with mock indignation.

“Oh, you aw—ful coward! you mean-spirited creature!”
said she. “What! I do you a fa—vor,—give you a nice
sugar com—pliment to eat,—and then you expose me!
Well, well; this is the last time that I trouble myself to
please a man.”

“Cousin Jule, you are too bad,” remonstrated Mary. “You
have no right to play such sharp tricks on me. You make
me ridiculous.”

She was quite flushed, and looked so sincerely annoyed
and mortified, that my feigned air of repentance changed
rapidly to a real one. Mrs. Van Leer offered no regrets,
laughed repeatedly, insisted that the joke was a capital one,
not to be forgotten easily, and told Somerville of it when he
entered. “Don't you wish you were an author?” she continued.
“Wouldn't it be deli—cious to surprise young ladies
copying one's own po—etry? Oh! if I was a man, I would
write verses, if it cost me my life.”

“I congratulate Mr. Fitz Hugh,” said Somerville, with that
air of seemingly earnest respect which was his most winning
manner. “A man who has the true lyric fire burning in his
brain, is greatly to be envied. Poetry is its own exceeding
reward. A poet has no right to complain, even if he remains
till death, poor and unnoticed. Nature is kinder to him than
to most men; she pays him in advance. The mere thrill of

conception is a sufficient recompense for the labor of expression,
the lack of just appreciation, and the whole wearisomeness
of life.”

“Why, Mr. Somerville, you must be yourself a poet,” said
I, surprised into addressing him with a friendly fervor.

“You a po—et, Mr. Somerville!” exclaimed Mrs. Van
Leer. “Oh! are you? Why haven't you read me some of
your verses? Why haven't you written me a son—net?
Come, you naughty man, defend yourself, explain! Tell
me now, do you re—ally write verses?”

“I can't believe it, Mrs. Van Leer,” he replied. “Would
I have failed to put you in the poet's corner—of the newspaper?
Would I have failed to beg your admiration, if I
had anything whereby to claim it? No, the poetic feet have
never been vouchsafed me, and I have had to hobble my way
through life on the crutches of prose.”

“Poor man! your situation wor—ries me,” said Mrs. Van
Leer. “You shouldn't exhibit so much mortifica—tion,
though. It is no compliment to me, who can't write a line
either.”

Somerville smiled and bowed in the most flattering acknowledgment
of the lady's wit.

“Some of us are fortunate enough to live poetry, Mrs.
Van Leer,” said he.

“Oh! thank you,” she answered, courtesying. “That is
for me, and I accept it. I am poetry incar—nate. You can
go on now with your philosophy.”

“There is an enviable magic in the name of author,” he
continued. “It is a species of notoriety that has a more
sudden expansion than most others, and perhaps a wider
range. A popular writer always passes in society at his full
value, and generally at something above his value. The
fame of having written a book, acts upon a man somewhat as
the die of the mint does on a piece of metal. Take a plain
circlet of gold, equal in size and weight to an eagle, and
you cannot put it in circulation; no one will receive it at its

true value until he has weighed it and tested it; and few
wish to give themselves so much trouble. But let the magic
finger of the mint be laid on the circlet; then every one
recognizes it, and is anxious to possess it. It is just so with
a man: authorship can hardly be said to increase his intrinsic
value; but it certainly does increase his currency. Mr.
Fitz Hugh, I congratulate you on your prospect of an extensive
circulation.”

What he said clearly tended to diminish my glory in the
eyes of the ladies; yet his reasoning was too evidently just
to admit of controversy; and, besides, opposition would have
proved me guilty of absurd vanity.

“That is all perfectly just,” I remarked. “Authorship is
of course not an integral part of intellect; it is only one of
the most popular expressions of intellect.”

“Let me tell you one thing more,” he said, “You will find
other men's works attributed to you. You have only to wink,
and the public will crown you with a chaplet of anonymous
volumes. That,” he added with a smile which had some
scarcely perceptible curl of irony, “is another advantage
of authors, Mr. Fitz Hugh.”

He was wonderfully clever certainly, and had a rare grace
of language and utterance. The reflection, that what he had
just been saying off-hand was quite as good as anything of the
kind which I could write at my serenest leisure, forced itself
on me and produced a sentiment of proper humility. It was
rare that he talked thus weightily before women; in general,
he treated them only to the dessert, the whipped creams, of
conversation; but I imagine that just now he was determined
to make himself respected. Mrs. Van Leer felt the influence
as well as I, and listened to his deep earnest utterance with
an admiration which came as near to seriousness as her
trivial character could easily feel.

“Mr. Somerville,” said Mary, “the die of the mint is not
all that is necessary. The circlet itself must be gold. If it
is only brass, it cannot pass long for an eagle.”

“Granted, Miss Westervelt. Mr. Fitz Hugh thanks
you, of course, for the inferred compliment. Observe, I
don't dispute its justice. I have already prophesied his
currency.”

So he had, and yet under his smiling mask of compliment
I thought I could detect a quiet sneer of irony and detraction
Laugh who will at the sensitive vanity and the jealousy of
authors, I maintain that the genus dandy and woman-killer
ought to be painted with a still more enormous peacock-tail
of conceit. Perhaps, however, I did injustice to Somerville;
he may not have had the least fear of being blighted by the
moderate shade of my bays; and, if really jealous of me, he
was certainly admirable for the grace with which he complimented
me.

On the evening of that day, the four ladies of the family.
gallanted by Hunter and Bob Van Leer, drove over to Rockford
to attend a wedding. Henry had been invited, but preferred
to stay at home with a fictitious headache and a real
cigar; while Somerville and I, being strangers to the happy
couple, had not received the compliment of cards; and the
occasion was one of such tremendous privacy that there was
no possibility of smuggling us into the party. Mrs. Van
Leer charged us to keep each other company; but we soon
separated, as naturally as oil and water. Of late I felt an
aversion for him which I blunderingly called instinctive, and
considered it a proof of my quick perception of character,
not remembering how much I had admired him at first, and
how doubtfully I had faltered back from my primal estimate
of his worth. He was fixed now, however; he had grown
to be what the Italians call by their favorite word, antipatico;
the moment I was alone with him, conversation
flagged, and I seized the first chance to get away.

Leaving Somerville and Van Leer over cards and brandy,
I went home and stayed in my room till I got tired to death
of it. Then I turned out and strolled around the Seacliff
house; surveyed in detail its classic ugliness, now etherealized

to some semblance of beauty by moonlight; wandered
alone through the perfumed alleys of the garden, and finally
halted on the turfy forehead of the bluff. Empty as the
place was of all that interested me, I could not keep away
from it. Leaping a low railing, I slid cautiously down a
grassy bank, seated myself on a narrow shelf of stone which
formed the brink of the precipice, swung my legs over and
feasted my eyes on the still, star-spangled sheet of the Sound.
The air was summer soft, and I remained there an hour,
tranquillized by the gentle magic of calm night.

A rumble of approaching carriage-wheels, a rumor of
cheery voices, and, presently after, lights in the chamber
windows of the house, informed me that the departed had
returned. It was too late to call, and I remained alone with
my reveries, while a change swept over the dream of nature.
The new moon stooped lower, and fell away behind the dark
horizon. The clouds, which she had clothed with a brightness
like the robes of the just, lost their far shining glory, and disappeared
in blackness, as if, like Lucifer and his angels, they
had fallen from heaven. A sob of wind shook the trees; a
chiller breath flowed against my temples; the little waves
washed faster over the stones below my feet; and I became
sensible that a tempest was beginning to shake abroad its
sounding pinions. Through this gloom, and amid this premonitory
tremor of nature, I heard a voice speaking strange
wicked words. It came from the low bank behind me, and
was distinctly audible, although the speaker was hidden from
me, and his enunciation was but a hoarse whisper, broken, as
it seemed, by the swell of passion.

“Satisfy me!” was his first utterance. “Consent to-night;
to-morrow will be too late; to-morrow I will let all know that
you are a guilty woman. Do what I say, and I will love and
spare you; if not, I will hate you and ruin you.”

A sob,—a woman's sob,—answered; and then a whisper,—
a woman's whisper,—followed; but indistinguishable in words.
Feet moved away from near me as the sobbing whisper continued;

a rustle also, as of silken garments drawn over the
grass, floated by; and then I heard no more except indistinctly.
Cautiously, I ascended the bank; earnestly I gazed
after the receding footsteps; but the garden was darkness.
One of them was Somerville, I said to myself; and may the
Shepherd of lost sheep save the other!

Glancing at the house, I was amazed, confounded, to behold,
sitting by her window in a clear glow of lamplight, and so
plainly distinguishable that I could even see that she was
laughing, Mrs. Van Leer. The footsteps were yet faintly
audible in the garden; and now they seemed to trample
down the sweetest hopes in my soul. It was not she, then!
Oh Heaven! who could it be?

Great drops of rain pattered on the leaves; the storm
warned me in rumbling monitions to seek shelter; and, turning
away, I reached home amid the first rattling rush of the
shower. It was not yet ten o'clock, and I sat down in the
little front entry of the old house, in full face of the howling,
dazzling tempest, but made deaf and blind to it by my more
tumultuous reveries, for at this moment I could think only of
the mystery of the garden, which I felt to be also the mystery
of the boudoir. Did the wretched secret of those whispers,
the shame which they had muttered of, lay its blight
upon the good name of that family which had lately become
of more importance to me than all the rest of the world put
together? Could Miss Westervelt directly, or by connivanoe,
be implicated in it? Earth would be no place of probation,
no residence of hope, but rather a region of confirmed demonism
and of final punishment, if such as she, or, what was
the same to me, such as I believed her to be, could falsify
their natures. If these angelic spirits might fall, I said, I,
who am a mere coarsely-natured man, would fling aside my
thin virtues, and leap once for all into corruption. No; that
whispering, sobbing creature could not be Mary, I asserted;
but beyond that I had to acknowledge that all was uncertainty
and groping suspicion.

I called up the image of Genevieve to plead to the question
of, Guilty, or not guilty? I thought that I could see, now, in her
strange alternations of girlish pettishness and womanly blandishment,
a feverish sensibility to the influence of Somerville
which resembled the disquietude of love. But had he won
the cruel right to say to her, “I know that you are a guilty
woman?” Her clear smooth brow, frank and fearless eye,
spirited lip, and virginal pride of carriage, answered back in
fine scorn of the degrading supposition, “Not guilty!” Besides,
she was Mary's sister; the sharer of Mary's blood,
being, daily life; and that alone sufficed to strike accusation
dumb.

Was it Mrs. Westervelt? What faintest shadow of reason
had I for thinking it probable?

But might not the threatened one have been a servant-girl?
No, it was not at all likely: men of the world do not
talk thus to waiting-maids, and Somerville would have been
the last to waste rhetoric on one: he would have shaken her,
throttled her, struck her, sooner than that. So I said, at least,
for I was furious against him now, and believed him capable
of unmanliness and brutality.

I was unable to solve my hateful enigma. The sphinx
sat immovable, cruel, before me, perpetually repeating his
riddle, and I could not guess it.

Meantime the storm was flapping its oceanic wings over
earth and sea, like a mighty demon in his agonies. The rain
spit with eldritch rage against the panes of the old house,
rushed in heavy patterings athwart the slope of the roof,
gulched and guttered from the broken caves, and beat like a
flail upon the long grass in front of the doorway. The wind
clattered the window-frames, roared in the chimneys, and
shook until they groaned the branches of the great overshadowing
maple. Thunder-peals opened growling in the
southwest, advanced booming, clanging along the line of
shore, and fulminated overhead in prolonged, renewing
crashes, which seemed as if they would crack the air and

numb the universal life of nature. Monstrous javelins of
flame struck the dusk bosom of the Sound, appearing to fire
and consume it utterly, so blank of being was the darkness
which succeeded. In general, a thunderstorm has a charm
for me, but that one was painful and horrible.