Susan Warner - Hills of the Shatemuc

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Down went the sun, and the shadows and the sunlight were swept
away together; and yet fresher came the sweet wind. It was a
sort of consolation to Elizabeth, that her distress gave
Winthrop a right and a reason to attend upon her; she had had
all along a vague feeling of it, and the feeling was very
present now. It was all of comfort she could lay hold of; and
she clutched at it with even then a foreboding sense of the
desolation there would be when that comfort was gone. She had
it now; she had it, and she held it; and she sat there in her
chair on the deck in a curious half stupor, half quiet, her
mind clinging to that one single point where it could lean.

There came a break-up however. Supper was declared to be
ready; and though nobody but Winthrop attended the skipper's
table, Elizabeth was obliged to take some refreshments of her
own, along with a cup of the sloop's tea, which most certainly
she would have taken from no hand but the one that presented
it to her. And after it, Elizabeth was so strongly advised to
go to the cabin and take some rest, that she could not help
going; resting, she had no thought of. Her companions were of
easier mind; for they soon addressed themselves to such
sleeping conveniencies as the little cabin could boast. Miss
Haye watched them begin and end their preparations and bestow
themselves in resting positions to sleep; and then drawing a
breath of comparative rest herself, she placed herself just
within the cabin threshold, on the floor, where she could look
out and have a good view of the deck through the partly open
door.

It was this night as on the former occasion, a brilliant
moonlight; and the vessel had no lamps up to hinder its power.
The mast and sails and lines stood out in sharp light and
shadow. The man at the helm Elizabeth could not see; the
moonlight poured down upon Winthrop, walking slowly back and
forth on the deck, his face and figure at every turn given
fully and clearly to view. Elizabeth herself was in shadow; he
could not look within the cabin door and see her; she could
look out and see him right well, and she did. He was pacing
slowly up and down, with a thoughtful face, but so calm in its
thoughtfulness that it was a grievous contrast to Elizabeth's
own troubled and tossed nature. It was all the more
fascinating to her gaze; while it was bitter to her
admiration. The firm quiet tread, -- the manly grave repose of
the face, -- spoke of somewhat in the character and life so
unlike what she knew in her own, and so beautiful to her sense
of just and right, that she looked in a maze of admiration and
self-condemning; rating herself lower and lower and Winthrop
higher and higher, at every fair view the moonlight gave, at
every turn that brought him near or took him further from her.
And tears -- curious tears -- that came from some very deep
wells of her nature, blinded her eyes, and rolled hot down her
cheeks, and were wiped away that she might look. "What shall I
do when he gets tired of that walk and goes somewhere else?" --
she thought; and with the thought, as instantly, Elizabeth
gathered herself up from off the floor, wiped her cheeks from
the tears, and stepped out into the moonlight. "I can't say
anything, but I suppose he will," was her meditation. "Nobody
knows when I shall have another chance." --

"They could not make it comfortable for you in there?" said
Winthrop coming up to her.

"I don't know -- yes, -- I have not tried."

"Are you very much fatigued?"

"I suppose so. -- I don't feel it."

"Can I do anything for you?"

The real answer nearly burst Elizabeth's bounds of self-
control, but nevertheless her words were quietly given.

"Yes, -- if you will only let me stay out here a little while."

He put a chair for her instantly, and himself remained
standing near, as he had done before.

"Walk on, if you wish," said Elizabeth. "Don't mind me."

But instead of that he drew up another chair, and sat down.

There was silence then that might be felt. The moonlight
poured down noiselessly on the water, and over the low dusky
distant shore; the ripples murmured under the sloop's prow;
the wind breathed gently through the sails. Now and then the
creak of the rudder sounded, but the very stars were not more
calmly peaceful than everything else.

"There is quiet and soothing in the speech of such a scene as
this," Winthrop said after a time.

"Quiet!" said Elizabeth. Her voice choked, and it was a little
while before she could go on. -- "Nothing is quiet to a mind in
utter confusion."

"Is yours so?"

"Yes."

The sobs were at her very lips, but the word got out first.

"It is no wonder," he observed gently.

"Yes it is wonder," said Elizabeth; -- "or at least it is what
needn't be. Yours wouldn't be so in any circumstances."

"What makes the confusion?" -- he asked, in a gentle
considerate tone that did not press for an answer.

"The want of a single fixed thing that my thoughts can cling
to."

He was silent a good while after that.

"There is nothing fixed in this world," he said at length.

"Yes there is," said Elizabeth bitterly. "There are friends --
and there is a self-reliant spirit -- and there is a settled
mind."

"Settled -- about what?"

"What it will and what it ought to do."

"Is yours not settled on the latter point?" he asked.

"If it were," said Elizabeth with a little hesitation and
struggling, -- "that don't make it settled."

"It shews where the settling point is."

"Which leaves it as far as ever from being settled," said
Elizabeth, almost impatiently.

"A self-reliant spirit, if it be not poised on another
foundation than its own, hath no fixedness that is worth
anything, Miss Elizabeth; -- and friends are not safe things to
trust to."

"Some of them are," said Elizabeth.

"No, for they are not sure. There is but one friend that
cannot be taken away from us."

"But to know that, and to know everything else about him, does
not make him our friend," said Elizabeth in a voice that
trembled.

"To agree to everything about him, does."

"To agree? -- How? -- I do agree to it," said Elizabeth.

"Do you? Are you willing to have him for a King to reign over
you? -- as well as a Saviour to make you and keep you safe?"

She did not answer.

"You do not know everything about him, neither."

"What don't I know?"

"Almost all. You cannot, till you begin to obey him; for till
then he will not shew himself to you. The epitome of all
beauty is in those two words -- Jesus Christ."

She made no answer yet, with her head bowed, and striving to
check the straining sobs with which her breast was heaving.
She had a feeling that he was looking on compassionately; but
it was a good while before she could restrain herself into
calmness; and during that time he added nothing more. When she
could look up, she found he was not looking at her; his eyes
were turned upon the river, where the moon made a broad and
broadening streak of wavy brightness. But Elizabeth looked at
the quiet of his brow, and it smote her; though there was now
somewhat of thoughtful care upon the face. The tears that she
thought she had driven back, rushed fresh to her eyes again.

"Do you believe what I last said, Miss Elizabeth?" he said
turning round to her.

"About the epitome of all beauty?"

"Yes. Do you believe it?"

"You say so -- I don't understand it," she said sadly and
somewhat perplexed.

"I told you so," he answered, looking round to the moonlight
again.

"But Mr. Landholm," said Elizabeth in evident distress, "won't
you tell me something more?"

"I cannot."

"Oh yes you can, -- a great deal more," she said weeping.

"I could," he said gravely, -- "yet I should tell you nothing --
you would not understand me. You must, find it out for
yourself."

"How in the world can I?"

"There is a promise, -- 'If any man will do his will, he shall
know of the doctrine.'"

"I don't know how to begin, nor anything about it," said
Elizabeth, weeping still.

"Begin anywhere."

"How? What do you mean?"

"Open the Bible at the first chapter of Matthew, and read. Ask
honestly, of your own conscience and of God, at each step,
what obligation upon you grows out of what you are reading. If
you follow his leading he will lead you on, -- to himself."

Elizabeth sobbed in silence for some little time; then she
said,

"I will do it, Mr. Landholm."

"If you do," said he, "you will find you can do nothing."

"Nothing!" said Elizabeth.

"You will find you are dependent upon the good pleasure of God
for power to take the smallest step."

"His good pleasure! -- Suppose it should not be given me."

"There is no 'suppose' about that," Winthrop answered, with a
slight smile, which seen as it was through a veil of tears,
Elizabeth never forgot, and to which she often looked back in
after time; -- "'Whosoever _will_, let him take the water of
life freely.' But he does not always get a draught at the
first asking. The water of life was not bought so cheap as
that. However, 'to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.'"

Elizabeth hearkened to him, with a curious mixture of yielding
and rebellion at once in her mind. She felt them both there.
But the rebellion was against the words; her yielding was for
the voice that brought the words to her ear. She paused
awhile.

"At that rate, people might be discouraged before they got
what they wanted," she observed, when the silence had lasted
some little time.

"They might," said Winthrop quietly.

"I should think many might."

"Many have been," he answered.

"What then?" she asked a little abruptly.

"They _did not get what they wanted_."

Elizabeth started a little, and shivered, and tears began to
come again.

"What's to hinder their being discouraged, Mr. Landholm?" she
asked in a tone that was a little querulous.

"Believing God's word."

So sweet the words came, her tears ceased at that; the power
of the truth sank for a moment with calming effect upon her
rebellious feeling; but with this came also as truly the
thought, "You have a marvellous beautiful way of saying things
quietly!" -- However for the time her objections were silenced;
and she sat still, looking out upon the water, and thinking
that with the first quiet opportunity she would begin the
first chapter of Matthew.

For a little while they both were motionless and silent; and
then rising, Winthrop began his walk up and down the deck
again. Elizabeth was left to her meditations; which sometimes
roved hither and thither, and sometimes concentred themselves
upon the beat of his feet, which indeed formed a sort of
background of cadence to them all. It was such a soothing
reminder of one strong and sure stay that she might for the
present lean upon; and the knowledge that she might soon lose
it, made the reminder only the more precious. She was weeping
most bitter tears during some of that time; but those
footsteps behind her were like quiet music through all. She
listened to them sometimes, and felt them always, with a
secret gratification of knowing they would not quit the deck
till she did. Then she had some qualms about his getting
tired; and then she said to herself that she could not put a
stop to what was so much to her and which she was not to have
again. So she sat and listened to them, weary and half
bewildered with the changes and pain of the last few days and
hours; hardly recognizing the reality of her own situation, or
that the sloop, Winthrop's walk behind her, the moonlight, her
lonely seat on the deck, and her truly lonely place in the
world, were not all parts of a curious phantasm. Or if
realizing them, with senses so tried and blunted with recent
wear and tear, that they refused to act and left her to
realize it quietly and almost it seemed stupidly. She called
it so to herself, but she could not help it; and she was in a
manner thankful for that. She would wake up again. She would
have liked to sit there all night under that moonlight and
with the regular fall of Winthrop's step to and fro on the
vessel.

"How long can you stand this?" said he, pausing beside her.

"What?" said Elizabeth looking up.

"How long can you do without resting?"

"I am resting. -- I couldn't rest so well anywhere else."

"Couldn't you?"

"No! --" she said earnestly.

He turned away and went on walking. Elizabeth blessed him for
it.

The moon shone, and the wind blew, and steadily the vessel
sailed on; till higher grounds began to rise on either side of
her, and hills stood back of hills, ambitious of each other's
standing, and threw their deep shadows all along the margin of
the river. As the sloop entered between these narrowing and
lifting walls of the river channel, the draught of air became
gentler, often hindered by some outstanding high point she had
left behind; more slowly she made her way past hill and hill-
embayed curves of the river, less stoutly her sails were
filled, more gently her prow rippled over the smoother water.
Sometimes she passed within the shadow of a lofty hill-side;
and then slipped out again into the clear fair sparkling water
where the moon shone.

"Are we near there?" said Elizabeth suddenly, turning her head
to arrest her walking companion. He came to the back of the
chair.

"Near Wut-a-qut-o?"

"Yes."

"No. Nearing it, but not near it yet."

"How soon shall we be?"

"If the wind holds, I should think in two hours."

"Where do we stop?"

"At the sloop's quarters -- the old mill --about two miles down
the river from Shahweetah."

"Why wouldn't she carry us straight up to the place?"

"It would be inconvenient landing there, and would very much
delay the sloop's getting to her moorings."

"I'll pay for that! --"

"We can get home as well in another way."

"But then we shall have to stay here all night."

"Here, on the sloop, you mean? The night is far gone already."

"Not half!" said Elizabeth. "It's only a little past twelve."

"Aren't you tired?"

"I suppose so, but I don't feel it."

"Don't you want to take some sleep before morning?"

"No, I can't. But you needn't walk there to take care of me,
Mr. Winthrop. I shall be quite safe alone."

"No, you will not," he said; and going to some of the sloop's
receptacles, he drew out an old sail and laying it on the deck
by her side he placed himself upon it, in a half sitting, half
reclining posture, which told of some need of rest on his
part.

"_You_ are tired," she said earnestly. "Please don't stay here
for me!"

"It pleases me to stay," he said lightly. "It is no hardship,
under ordinary circumstances, to pass such a night as this out
of doors."

"What is it in these circumstances?" said Elizabeth quickly.

"Not a hardship."

"You don't say much more than you are obliged to," thought
Elizabeth bitterly. "It is 'not a hardship' to stay there to
take care of me; -- and there is not in the world another
person left to me who could say even as much." --

"There is a silent peace-speaking in such a scene as this,"
presently said Winthrop, lying on his sail and looking at the
river.

"I dare say there is," Elizabeth answered sadly.

"You cannot feel it, perhaps?"

"Not a particle. I can just see that it might be."

"The Bible makes such constant use of natural imagery, that to
one familiar with it, the objects of nature bring back as
constantly its teachings -- its warnings -- its consolations."

"What now?" said Elizabeth.

"Many things. Look at those deep and overlapping shadows. 'As
the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round
about his people, from henceforth'" --

"Stop, Mr. Winthrop!" Elizabeth exclaimed; -- "Stop! I can't
bear it."

"Why?"

"I can't bear it," she repeated, in a passion of tears.

"Why?" said he again in the same tone, when a minute had gone
by.

"Those words don't belong to me -- I've nothing to do with
them," she said, raising her head and dashing her tears right
and left.

But Winthrop made no sort of answer to that, and a dead
silence fell between the parties. Again the prow of the sloop
was heard rippling against the waves; and slowly she glided
past mountain and shadow, and other hills rose and other deep
shadows lay before them. Elizabeth, between other thoughts,
was tempted to think that her companion was as impassive and
cold as the moonlight, and as moveless as the dark mountain
lines that stood against the sky. And yet she knew and trusted
him better than that. It was but the working of passing
impatience and bitter feeling; it was only the chafing of
passion against what seemed so self-contained and so calm. And
yet that very self-continence and calmness was what passion
liked, and what passion involuntarily bent down before.

She had not got over yet the stunned effect of the past days
and nights. She sat feeling coldly miserable and forlorn and
solitary; conscious that one interest was living at her heart
yet, but also conscious that it was to live and die by its own
strength as it might; and that in all the world she had
nothing else; no, nor never should have anything else. She
could not have a father again; and even he had been nothing
for the companionship of such a spirit as hers, not what she
wanted to make her either good or happy. But little as he had
done of late to make her either, the name, and even the
nominal guardianship, and what the old childish affection had
clung to, were gone -- and never could come back; and Elizabeth
wept sometimes with a very bowed head and heart, and sometimes
sat stiff and quiet, gazing at the varying mountain outline,
and the fathomless shadows that repeated it upon the water.

The night drew on, as the hills closed in more and more upon
the narrowing river channel, and the mountain heads lifted
themselves more high, and the shadows spread out broader upon
the river. Every light along shore had long been out; but now
one glimmered down at them faintly from under a high thick
wooded bluff, on the east shore; and the Julia Ann as she came
up towards it, edged down a little constantly to that side of
the river.

"Where are we going?" said Elizabeth presently. "We're getting
out of the channel."

But she saw immediately that Winthrop was asleep. It made her
feel more utterly alone and forlorn than she had done before.
With a sort of additional chill at her heart, she looked round
for some one else of whom to ask her question, and saw the
skipper just come on deck. Elizabeth got up to speak to him.

"Aren't we getting out of our course?"

"Eg-zackly," said Mr. Hildebrand. "Most out of it. That
light's the Mill, marm."

"The Mill! Cowslip's Mill?"

"Well, it's called along o' my father, 'cause he's lived
there, I s'pose, -- and made it, -- and owns to it, too, as far
as that goes; -- I s'pose it's as good a right to have his name
as any one's."

Elizabeth sat down and looked at the light, which now had a
particularly cheerless and hopeless look for her. It was the
token of somebody's home, shining upon one who had none; it
was a signal of the near ending of a guardianship and society
which for the moment had taken home's place; a reminder that
presently she must be thrown upon her own guidance; left to
take care of herself alone in the world, as best she might.
The journey, with all its pain, had been a sort of little set-
off from the rest of her life, where the contrasts of the past
and the future did not meet. They were coming back now. She
felt their shadows lying cold upon her. It was one of the
times in her life of greatest desolation, the while the sloop
was drawing down to her berth under the home light, and making
fast in her moorings. The moon was riding high, and dimly
shewed Elizabeth the but half-remembered points and outlines;
-- and there was a contrast! She did not cry; she looked, with
a cold chilled feeling of eye and mind that would have been
almost despair, if it had not been for the one friend asleep
at her side. And he was nothing to her. Nothing. He was
nothing to her. Elizabeth said it to herself; but for all that
he was there, and it was a comfort to see him there.

The sails rattled down to the deck; and with wind and headway
the sloop gently swung up to her appointed place. Another
light came out of the house, in a lantern; and another hand on
shore aided the sloop's crew in making her fast.

"How can he sleep through it all!" thought Elizabeth. "I
wonder if anything ever could shake him out of his settled
composure -- asleep or awake, it's all the same."

"Ain't you goin' ashore?" said the skipper at her side.

"No -- not now."

"They'll slick up a better place for you than we could fix up
in this here little hulk. Though she ain't a small sloop
neither, by no means."

"What have you got aboard there, Hild'?" called out a voice
that came from somewhere in the neighbourhood of the lantern.
"Gals?"

"Governor Landholm and some company," said the skipper in a
more moderate tone. The other voice took no hint of
moderation.

"Governor Landholm? -- is _he_ along? Well -- glad to see him. Run
from the yallow fever, eh?"

"Is mother up, father?"

"Up? -- no! -- What on arth!"

"Tell her to get up, and make some beds for folks that
couldn't sleep aboard sloop; and have been navigatin' all
night."

"Go, and I'll look after the sloop till morning, Captain,"
said Winthrop sitting up on his sail.

"Won't you come ashore and be comfortable?" said father and
son at once.

"I am comfortable."

"But you'll be better off there, Governor."

"Don't think I could, Hild'. I'm bound to stay by the ship."

"Won't you come, Miss?" said the skipper addressing Elizabeth.
"You'll be better ashore."

"Oh yes -- come along -- all of you," said the old sloop-master
on the land.

"I'm in charge of the passengers, Captain," said Winthrop;
"and I don't think it is safe for any of them to go off before
morning."

The request was urged to Elizabeth. But Winthrop quietly
negatived it every time it was made; and the sloop's masters
at last withdrew. Elizabeth had not spoken at all.

"How do you do?" said Winthrop gravely, when the Cowslips,
father and son, had turned their backs upon the vessel.

"Thank you --" said Elizabeth, -- and stopped there.

"You are worn out."

"No," -- Elizabeth answered under her breath; and then
gathering it, went on, -- "I am afraid you are."

"I am perfectly well," he said. "But you ought to rest."

"I will, -- by and by," said Elizabeth desperately. "I will
stay here till the daylight comes. It will not be long, will
it?"

He made no answer. The sloop's deck was in parts blockaded
with a load of shingles. Winthrop went to these, and taking
down bundle after bundle, disposed them so as to make a
resting-place of greater capabilities than the armless wooden
chair in which Elizabeth had been sitting all night. Over
this, seat, back, sides and all, he spread the sail on which
he had been lying.

"Is there nothing in the shape of a pillow or cushion that you
could get out of the cabin now?" said he.

"But you have given me your sail," said Elizabeth.

"I'm master of the sloop now. Can't you get a pillow?"

Since so much had been done for her, Elizabeth consented to do
this for herself. She fetched a pillow from the cabin; and
Winthrop himself bestowed it in the proper position; and with
a choking feeling of gratitude and pleasure that did not
permit her to utter one word, Elizabeth placed herself in the
box seat made for her, took off her bonnet and laid her head
down. She knew that Winthrop laid her light shawl over her
head; but she did not stir. Her thanks reached only her
pillow, in the shape of two or three hot tears; then she
slept.

CHAPTER X.

Beneath my palm-trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping; in the whole world wide
There was no one to ask me why I wept, --
And so I kept
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears
Cold as my fears.
SHELLEY.

The dawn had fairly broken, but that was all, when Winthrop
and old Mr. Cowslip met on the little wharf landing which
served instead of courtyard to the house. The hands clasped
each other cordially.

"How do you do? Glad to see you in these parts!" was the
hearty salutation of the old man to the young.

"Thank you, Mr. Cowslip," said Winthrop, returning the grasp
of the hand.

"I don't see but you keep your own," the old man went on,
looking at him wistfully. "Why don't you come up our way
oftener? It wouldn't hurt you."

"I don't know about that," said Winthrop. "My business lies
that way, you know."

"Ah! -- 'tain't as good business as our'n, now," said Mr.
Cowslip. "You'd better by half be up there on the old place,
with your wife and half a dozen children about you. Ain't
married yet, Governor, be you?"

"No sir."

"Goin' to be?"

"I don't know what I am going to be, sir."

"Ah! --" said the old miller with a sly smile. "Is that what
you've got here in the sloop with you now? I guessed it, and
Hild' said it wa'n't -- not as he knowed on -- but I told him he
didn't know everything."

"Hild' is quite right. But there are two ladies here who are
going up to Shahweetah. Can you give us a boat, Mr. Cowslip?"

"A boat? -- How many of you?"

"Four -- and baggage. Your boat is large enough -- used to be
when I went in her."