Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/269

 shade. It was the story of a youth who ran away and lived on an island,—one Crusoe,—a homely narrative, but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures. There too was the history, coming much nearer home, of Deborah Sampson, the young woman who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a portrait of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than lovely. A virtuous young female she was, and married well, as she deserved to, and raised a family with as good a name as wife and mother as the best of them. But perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold of her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most young persons find less entertaining than the Vicar of Wakefield, with which it is now-a-days so commonly bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the Happy Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and closing forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries of the imprisoning valley, the visions of the world beyond, the projects of escape, and the long toil which ended in their accomplishment, which haunted her sleeping and waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the Happy Valley. Of the romances and the love-letters we must take it for granted that she selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing to the contrary.

There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over her constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before her disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to her growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and coral-fans, and dried starfishes and sea-horses, and a natural mummy of a rough-skinned dog-fish. She had not thought of them for years, but now she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea-odors which still clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a tiger-shell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether in the sense or in the soul we hardly know, like that which had so often been her lullaby,—a memory of the sea, as Landor and Wordsworth have sung.

"You are getting to look like your father," Aunt Silence said one day; "I never saw it before. I always thought you took after old Major Gideon Withers. Well, I hope you won't come to an early grave like poor Charles,—or, at any rate, that you may be prepared."

It did not seem very likely that the girl was going out of the world at present, but she looked Miss Silence in the face very seriously, and said, "Why not an early grave, aunt, if this world is such a bad place as you say it is?"

"I am afraid you are not fit for a better."

She wondered if Silence Withers and Cynthia Badlam were just ripe for heaven.

For some months Miss Cynthia Badlam, who, as was said, had been an habitual visitor at The Poplars, had lived there as a permanent resident. Between her and Silence Withers, Myrtle Hazard found no rest for her soul. Each of them was for untwisting the morning-glory without waiting for the sunshine to do it. Each had her own wrenches and pincers to use for that purpose. All this promised little for the nurture and admonition of the young girl, who, if her will could not be broken by imprisonment and starvation at three years old, was not likely to be over-tractable to any but gentle and reasonable treatment at fifteen.

Aunt Silence's engine was responsibility,—her own responsibility, and the dreadful consequences which would follow to her. Silence, if Myrtle should in any way go wrong. Ever since her failure in that moral coup d'état by which the simple dynasty of the natural self-determining power was to be dethroned, her attempts in the way of