Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/295

5, 1863.] key, one sentence sounded and sounded again in her ears. “It will bring me back to you.” “It will bring me back to you.”

Presently all heads were turned in one direction. A dark something was seen among the coming surf. The something came nearer and nearer,—now rolled high above the waves, now sucked back again into the hissing water; tossed at last on a shelving stone. They met at last, after so many months of separation, those two faithful lovers. The sea had not violated the pledge taken in its name. It brought the bridegroom back to his mistress. Bruised and bloody, the crisp hair dank and matted over the forehead, the frank eyes dimmed for ever, that face was once more shown to her who loved it best.

Patience looked upon it very calmly. She followed the men who bore the body reverently out of the reach of the “cruel crawling foam.” She looked, and that was all. If only she could have wept. But that was impossible. Old Kirby led her to his cart. He would have conducted her through the village to his kindly wife to be comforted with loving sympathy, but the sorrowful girl pointed so steadfastly towards home that he did not like to offer the smallest opposition.

Patience went home, fell into her mother’s arms, and then at last burst into a long passion of tears.

The story is done. The most melancholy part of it is that, in substance, it is but a simple record of facts.

The story is done; or rather we should say the incident of the story is done. Good orthodox novels always leave their hero and heroine on the point of setting out on their wedding tour. In this sad tale there is no such event with the details of which to weave a peroration. And perhaps the most useful part of this true story is the end come to by the principal character. It is no end invented to point a moral. It is what really happened to the real Patience.

She went home. She wept. She did not die. She did not go mad. She did not become another man’s mistress before the end of six months. She never married; but she did not live a peevish and useless old maid.

As long as her parents lived she nursed them patiently and assiduously. When they were laid not far from Henry Harborough in the graveyard attached to the old abbey, she was not left all alone. Certain cousins of her own, and certain nephews and nieces of the dead sailor, had a tender interest in “Aunt Patience.”

Loving and loved by poor and rich alike; never merry, but always cheerful; Patience Gale was Patience Gale to the day of her death.

Strangers who saw a grave elderly woman wandering alone and apparently purposeless and dreaming round the ruin of Filby Abbey, fancied that the poor lady was a little wrong in her head. They who had heard her story knew far otherwise.

Patience was still thinking of the old words written on every wave of the shifting sea. It will bring him back to me. So often did she gaze and think that the great deep seemed an image of a Great Love, deep and infinite, a Love on which she trusted she was being borne up, a Love which in her firm faith she believed would one day bring back, not dead, but alive, all that she had loved and lost.

hardly imagine a less eligible kind of neighbour than one addicted to snakes, or a more uncomfortable assurance than the news that a reptile is missing from the private collection next door. At any moment the absconding and concealed serpent may be detected in your wardrobe; or, what is worse, and more likely, in your bed; for snakes have a great instinct for blankets, as is well known to most men who have camped out much in the American woods. Not long ago there used to be a dealer in birds, squirrels, aquarial fishes, and other such live stock, who occupied a small basement, or cellar, in Broadway, in this city of New York where I am now writing. He likewise drove a pretty brisk business in snakes, as I gathered from the “bulletins” frequently posted up outside his door, informing those whom it might concern that “A large, lively, Black Snake” had just arrived from New Jersey, and was now on view and for sale; or inviting the passers by to “step down and see a pair of fine rattlesnakes, just received per Express from Lake George.” One morning in August, 1859, I saw a paragraph in one of the city papers, headed, “Snake killed in Broome Street.” The paragraph stated that one of the inmates of a hotel in Broome Street, near Broadway, while looking out of a back window, saw a large black snake lurking about the yard. He tried to capture it alive, but was obliged to kill it, as it “showed fight.” The snake was described as being five feet in length, and about as large in circumference as a hen’s egg; and as the snake-dealer’s den was but a very short distance from the premises on which it was found, its presence was easily accounted for.

This circumstance reminded me of a long intended visit to the snake-fancier, and I immediately walked down Broadway to his shop, for the purpose of stocking my mind from his with an extensive assortment of snake fancies. But the basement was no longer cheerful with the song of mocking-birds. It was shut up: “basement to let” was conspicuously posted upon the door, and, upon inquiry, I learned that the reptilist had been peremptorily ejected that morning, on account of the little snake business in Broome Street before alluded to. Thus I lost a fine opportunity of improving my mind upon ophidian subjects: and yet I have something to say about serpents in this western hemisphere, and will say it as briefly as I can.

There are only a few varieties of venomous serpents in North America, but the whole tribe, whether innocuous or otherwise, is looked upon with suspicion and horror, even by the hard-handed backwoodsmen most accustomed to meet with them. It is a singular fact that persons suffering from delirium tremens in America (where,