24. CHAPTER XXIV.
Moses passed rather a restless and uneasy night on his
return to the home-roof which had sheltered his childhood.
All his life past, and all his life expected, seemed to boil
and seethe and ferment in his thoughts, and to go round and
round in never-ceasing circles before him.
Moses was par excellence proud, ambitious, and wilful.
These words, generally supposed to describe positive vices
of the mind, in fact are only the overaction of certain very
valuable portions of our nature, since one can conceive all
three to raise a man immensely in the scale of moral being,
simply by being applied to right objects.
He who is too proud even to admit a mean thought —
who is ambitious only of ideal excellence — who has an inflexible
will only in the pursuit of truth and righteousness —
may be a saint and a hero.
But Moses was neither a saint nor a hero, but an undeveloped
chaotic young man, whose pride made him sensitive
and restless; whose ambition was fixed on wealth and worldly
success; whose wilfulness was for the most part a blind determination
to compass his own points with the leave of
Providence or without.
There was no God in his estimate of life — and a sort of
secret unsuspected determination at the bottom of his heart
that there should be none.
He feared religion, from a suspicion which he entertained
that it might hamper some of his future schemes.
He did not wish to put himself under its rules, lest he
might find them in some future time inconveniently strict.
With such determinations and feelings, the Bible — necessarily
an excessively uninteresting book to him — he never
read, and satisfied himself with determining in a general way
that it was not worth reading, and as was the custom with
many young men in America, at that period announced himself
as a sceptic, and seemed to value himself not a little on
the distinction.
Pride in scepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men.
It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the
power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that
there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to
trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly
sceptics generally regard their unbelief as a misfortune.
Not that Moses was, after all, without “the angel in him.”
He had a good deal of the susceptibility to poetic feeling, the
power of vague and dreamy aspiration, the longing after the
good and beautiful, which is God's witness in the soul. A
noble sentiment in poetry, a fine scene in nature, had power
to bring tears in his great dark eyes, and he had, under the
influence of such things, brief inspired moments in which he
vaguely longed to do, or be, something grand or noble.
But this, however, was something apart from the real purpose
of his life, — a sort of voice crying in the wilderness,
— to which he gave little heed.
Practically, he was determined with all his might, to have
a good time in this life, whatever another might be, — if
there were one; and that he would do it by the strength of
his right arm. Wealth he saw to be the lamp of Aladdin,
which commanded all other things. And the pursuit of
wealth was therefore the first step in his programme.
As for plans of the heart and domestic life, Moses was
one of that very common class who had more desire to be
loved than power of loving. His cravings and dreams were
not for somebody to be devoted to, but for somebody who
should be devoted to him. And, like most people who
possess this characteristic, he mistook it for an affectionate
disposition.
Now the chief treasure of his heart had always been his
little sister Mara, chiefly from his conviction that he was the
one absorbing thought and love of her heart.
He had never figured life to himself otherwise than with
Mara at his side, his unquestioning, devoted friend.
Of course he and his plans, his ways and wants, would
always be in the future, as they always had been, her sole
thought.
These sleeping partnerships in the interchange of affection,
which support one's heart with a basis of uncounted
wealth, and leave one free to come and go, and buy and sell
without exaction or interference, are a convenience certainly,
and the loss of them in any way is like the sudden breaking
of a bank in which all one's deposits are laid.
It had never occurred to Moses how or in what capacity
he should always stand banker to the whole wealth of love
that there was in Mara's heart, and what provision he should
make on his part for returning this incalculable debt.
But the interview of this evening had raised a new
thought in his mind. Mara, as he saw that day, was no
longer a little girl in a pink sun-bonnet. She was a woman,
— a little one, it is true, but every inch a woman, — and a
woman invested with a singular poetic charm of appearance,
which, more than beauty, has the power of awakening feeling
in the other sex.
He felt in himself — in the experience of that one day —
that there was something subtle and veiled about her, which
set the imagination at work; that the wistful, plaintive expression
of her dark eyes, and a thousand little shy and
tremulous movements of her face, affected him more than
the most brilliant of Sally Kittridge's sprightly sallies. Yes,
there would be people falling in love with her fast enough,
he thought even here, where she is as secluded as a pearl in
an oyster-shell. It seems means were found to come after
her, and then all the love of her heart — that priceless love
— would go to another.
Mara would be absorbed in some one else, would love
some one else, as he knew she could, with heart and soul
and mind and strength. When he thought of this, it affected
him much as it would if one were turned out of a warm,
smiling apartment into a bleak December storm. What
should he do, if that treasure which he had taken most for
granted in all his valuations of life should suddenly be found
to belong to another? Who was this fellow that seemed so
free to visit her, and what had passed between them? Was
Mara in love with him, or going to be? There is no saying
how the consideration of this question enhanced in our hero's
opinion both her beauty and all her other good qualities.
Such a brave little heart! such a good, clear little head!
and such a pretty hand and foot! She was always so cheerful,
so unselfish, so devoted! When had he ever seen her
angry, except when she had taken up some childish quarrel
of his, and fought for him like a little Spartan? Then she
was pious, too. She was born religious, thought our hero,
who, in common with many men professing scepticism for
their own particular part, set a great value on religion in
that unknown future person whom they are fond of designating
in advance as “my wife.” Yes, Moses meant his
wife should be pious, and pray for him, while he did as he
pleased.
“Now there 's that witch of a Sally Kittridge,” he said to
himself; “I would n't have such a girl for a wife. Nothing
to her but foam and frisk, — no heart more than a bobolink!
But is n't she amusing? By George! is n't she,
though?”
“But,” thought Moses, “it 's time I settled this matter,
who is to be my wife. I won't marry till I 'm rich, — that 's
flat. My wife is n't to rub and grub. So at it I must go to
raise the wind. I wonder if old Sewell really does know
anything about my parents. Miss Emily would have it that
there was some mystery that he had the key of; but I never
could get anything from him. He always put me off in
such a smooth way that I could n't tell whether he did or
he did n't. But, now, supposing I have relatives, family
connections, then who knows but what there may be property
coming to me? That 's an idea worth looking after,
surely.”
There 's no saying with what vividness ideas and images
go through one's wakeful brain when the midnight moon is
making an exact shadow of your window-sash, with panes
of light, on your chamber-floor. How vividly we all have
loved and hated and planned and hoped and feared and
desired and dreamed, as we tossed and turned to and fro
upon such watchful, still nights.
In the stillness, the tide upon one side of the Island replied
to the dash on the other side in unbroken symphony,
and Moses began to remember all the stories gossips had
told him of how he had been floated ashore there, like a
fragment of tropical sea-weed borne landward by a great
gale. He positively wondered at himself that he had never
thought of it more, and the more he meditated, the more
mysterious and inexplicable he felt. Then he had heard
Miss Roxy once speaking something about a bracelet, he
was sure he had; but afterwards it was hushed up, and no
one seemed to know anything about it when he inquired.
But in those days he was a boy, — he was nobody, — now
he was a young man. He could go to Mr. Sewell, and demand
as his right a fair answer to any questions he might
ask. If he found, as was quite likely, that there was nothing
to be known, his mind would be thus far settled, — he
should trust only to his own resources.
So far as the state of the young man's finances were concerned,
it would be considered in those simple times and
regions an auspicious beginning of life. The sum intrusted
to him by Captain Kittridge had been more than doubled by
the liberality of Zephaniah Pennel, and Moses had traded
upon it in foreign parts with a skill and energy that brought
a very fair return, and gave him, in the eyes of the shrewd,
thrifty neighbors, the prestige of a young man who was
marked for success in the world.
He had already formed an advantageous arrangement
with his grandfather and Captain Kittridge, by which a
ship was to be built, which he should command — and thus
the old Saturday afternoon dream of their childhood be fulfilled.
As he thought of it, there arose in his mind a picture of
Mara, with her golden hair and plaintive eyes and little
white hands, reigning as a fairy queen in the captain's cabin,
with a sort of wish to carry her off and make sure that no
one else ever should get her from him.
But these midnight dreams were all sobered down by the
plain matter-of-fact beams of the morning sun, and nothing
remained of immediate definite purpose except the resolve
which came strongly upon Moses as he looked across the
blue band of Harpswell Bay, that he would go that morning
and have a talk with Mr. Sewell.
