University of Virginia Library

65. LXV.

THAT morning, — it was the 22d of September, in
the year 1842, — Mr. Brindlock came into his
counting-room some two hours before noon, and says
to his porter and factotum, as he enters the door,
“Well, Roger, I suppose you 'll be counting this puff
of a southeaster the equinoctial, eh?”

“Indeed, sir, and it 's an awful one. The Meteor 's
gone ashore on Long Beach; and there 's talk of
young Mr. Johns being lost.”

“Good Heavens!” said Brindlock, “you don't tell
me so!”

By half-past three he was upon the spot; a little
remaining fragment only of the Meteor hanging to the
sands, and a great débris of bales, spars, shattered timbers,
bodies, drifted along the shore, — Reuben's among
them.

But he is not dead; at least so say the wreckers,
who throng upon the beach; the life-buoy is still fast
to him, though he is fearfully shattered and bruised.
He is borne away under the orders of Brindlock to
some near house, and presently revives enough to ask
that he may be carried — “home.”

As, in the opening of this story, his old grandfather,
the Major, was borne away from the scene of his first
battle by easy stages homeward, so now the grandson,
far feebler and after more terrible encounter with death,
is carried by “easy stages” to his home in Ashfield.
Again the city, the boat, the river, — with its banks
yellowing with harvests, and brightened with the glowing
tints of autumn; again the sluggish brigs drifting
down with the tide, and sailors in tasseled caps leaning
over the bulwarks; again the flocks feeding leisurely
on the rock-strewn hills; again the ferryman, in his
broad, cumbrous scow, oaring across; again the stop-page
at the wharf of the little town, from which the
coach still plies over the hills to Ashfield.

On the way thither, a carriage passes them, in which
are Adèle and her father. The news of disaster flies
fast; they have learned of the wreck, and the names
of passengers. They go to learn what they can of
the mother, whom the daughter has scarce known.
The passing is too hasty for recognition. Brindlock
arrives at last with his helpless charge at the door of
the parsonage. The Doctor is overwhelmed at once
with grief and with joy. The news had come to him,
and he had anticipated the worst. But “Thank God!
`Joseph, my son, is yet alive!' Still a probationer;
there is yet hope that he may be brought into the fold.”

He insists that he shall be placed below, upon his

own bed, just out of his study. For himself, he shall
need none until the crisis is past. But the crisis does
not pass; it is hard to say when it will. The wounds
are not so much; but a low fever has set in, (the physician
says,) owing to exposure and excitement, and
he can predict nothing as to the result. Even Aunt
Eliza is warmed into unwonted attention as she sees
that poor battered hulk of humanity lying there; she
spares herself no fatigue, God knows, but she sheds
tears in her own chamber over this great disaster.
There are good points even in the spinster; when shall
we learn that the best of us are not wholly good, nor
the worst wholly bad?

Days and days pass. Reuben hovering between life
and death; and the old Doctor, catching chance rest
upon the little cot they have placed for him in the
study, looks yearningly by the dim light of the sick-lamp
upon that dove which his lost Rachel had hung
upon his wall above the sword of his father. He
fancies that the face of Reuben, pinched with suffering,
resembles more than ever the mother. Of sickness,
or of the little offices of friends which cheat it
of pains, the old gentleman knows nothing: sick souls
only have been his care. And it is pitiful to see his
blundering, eager efforts to do something, as he totters
round the sick-chamber, where Reuben, with very much
of youthful vigor left in him, makes fight against the

arch-enemy who one day conquers us all. For many
days after his arrival there is no consciousness, — only
wild words (at times words that sound to the ears of
the good Doctor strangely wicked, and that make him
groan in spirit), — tender words, too, of dalliance, and
eager, loving glances, — murmurs of boyish things, of
sunny, school-day noonings, — hearing which, the Doctor
thinks that, if this light must go out, it had better
have gone out in those days of comparative innocence.

Over and over the father appeals to the village physician
to know what the chances may be, — to which
that old gentleman, fumbling his watch-key, and looking
grave, makes very doubtful response. He hints at
a possible undermining of the constitution in these
later years of city life.

God only knows what habits the young man may
have formed in these last years; surely the Doctor does
not; and he tells the physician as much, with a groan
of anguish.

Meantime, Maverick and Adèle have gone upon
their melancholy search; and, as they course over the
island to the southern beach, the sands, the plains, the
houses, the pines, drift by the eye of Adèle as in a
dream. At last she sees a great reach of water, —
piling up, as it rolls lazily in from seaward, into high
walls of waves, that are no sooner lifted than they

break and send sparkling floods of foam over the sands.
Bits of wreck, dark clots of weed, are strewed here and
there, — stragglers scanning every noticeable heap,
every floating thing that comes in.

Is she dead? is she living? They have heard only
on the way that many bodies are lying in the near
houses, — many bruised and suffering ones; while
some have come safe to land, and gone to their homes.
They make their way from that dismal surf-beaten
shore to the nearest house. There are loiterers about
the door; and within, — within, Adèle finds her mother
at last, clasps her to her heart, kisses the poor dumb
lips that will never more open, — never say to her rapt
ears, “My child! my darling!”

Maverick is touched as he has never been touched
before; the age of early sentiment comes drifting back
to his world-haunted mind; nay, tears come to those
eyes that have not known them for years. The grief,
the passionate, vain tenderness of Adèle, somehow
seems to sanctify the memory of the dead one who lies
before him, her great wealth of hair streaming dank
and fetterless over the floor.

Not more tenderly, scarce more tearfully, could he
have ministered to one who had been his life-long companion.
Where shall the poor lady be buried? Adèle
answers that, with eyes flashing through her tears, —
nowhere but in Ashfield, nowhere except beside the
sister, Marie.

It is a dismal journey for the father and the daughter;
it is almost a silent journey. Does she love him
less? No, a thousand times, no. Does he love her
less? No, a thousand times, no. In such presence
love is awed into silence. As the mournful cortége enters
the town of Ashfield, it passes the home of that
fatherless boy, Arthur, for whom Adèle had shown such
sympathy. The youngster is there swinging upon the
gate, his cap gayly set off with feathers, and he looking
wonderingly upon the bier. He sees, too, the sad face
of Adèle, and, by some strange rush of memory, recalls,
as he looks on her, the letter which she had given him
long ago, and which till then had been forgotten. He
runs to his mother: it is in his pocket, — it is in that
of some summer jacket. At last it is found; and the
poor woman herself, that very morning, with numberless
apologies, delivers it at the door of the parsonage.

Phil is the first to meet this exceptional funeral company,
and is the first to tell Adèle how Reuben lies
stricken almost to death at the parsonage. She thanks
him: she thanks him again for the tender care which
he shows in all relating to the approaching burial.
When an enemy even comes forward to help us bury
the child we loved or the parent we mourn, our hearts
warm toward him as they never warmed before; but
when a friend assumes these offices of tenderness, and
takes away the harshest edge of grief by assuming the

harshest duties of grief, our hearts shower upon him
their tenderest sympathies. We never forget it.

Of course, the arrival of this strange freight in Ashfield
gives rise to a world of gossip. We cannot follow
it; we cannot rehearse it. The poor woman is buried,
as Adèle had wished, beside her sister. No De Profundis
except the murmur of the winds through the
crimson and the scarlet leaves of later September.

The Tourtelots have been eager with their gossip.
The dame has queried if there should not be some
town demonstration against the burial of the Papist.
But the little Deacon has been milder; and we give
our last glimpse of him — altogether characteristic —
in a suggestion which he makes in a friendly way to
Squire Elderkin, who is the host of the French strangers.

“Square, have they ordered a moniment yit for Miss
Maverick?”

“Not that I 'm aware of, Deacon.”

“Waäl, my nevvy 's got a good slab of Varmont marble,
which he ordered for his fust wife; but the old
folks did n't like it, and it 's in his barn on the heaterpiece.
'T ain't engraved, nor nothin'. If it should suit
the Mavericks, I dare say they could git it tol'able
low.”