Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20.djvu/564

556 The Rose Rollins. [November, without a word, and by and by he returned her a little pressure, and then, steadying himself up, he said: "It ain't no use to think on't, Rose,—it's all over now, and they've met beyond the seas o' time, my poor father and mother, for they both crossed long ago,—met, and knowed each other, I hope, but the one never come to himself here, nor recognized the other. My mother took straight to her bed; and when she wore the white shawl agin, and had it drawed across her bosom, it was for that journey from which none on us come back."

"Dear John," says Rose, very softly,—all the coquette gone,—only the woman left. And presently he was strong enough to go on.

"It was a good many year," he said, "not till I was a'most a man, before I came to understand rightly what it was that sot my father crazy. The captain had been agin him all along on account of his too much sperit, and that capterin' o' the whale finished up the business, and pinted his fate. It wa' n't long arter this till Captain Griscom found occasion to treat him very hardly, which bein' resented only by a look, he ordered him down below to be flogged! This, Rose, was what broke the spirit on him; he was never himself arterwards, never knowed nothin' at all clear, exceptin' about the takin' o' that whale; and that he told over and over a hundred times, arter that fust time, just as I 've told it to you, but all before it and all behind it was shadders, till the great shadder of all came over him.

"When I come to hear on 't, I said I hoped my father would meet that 'ere captain som'er's on the seas of eternity, and flog him within an inch of his life; and I ha'n't repented the sayin' on 't yet."

The tide had come up while John Chidlaw was telling his story, and his little boat slid off the bar directly, when, taking up the oars, he soon brought her to land.

"Bless your dear heart, John!" says Rose, pointing back to the boat's name, as he handed her ashore, "would you believe I was so stupid as not to see that the name o' your wessel was the same as my own? I read it the Rose Rolling, to be sure!"

But John maintained that she was not stupid a single bit nor mite, but, on the contrary, smart altogether beyond the common. "To come so nigh the truth," says he, "and yet not get hold on 't, arter all, is a leetle the slickest thing yet!"

And then he told, as they walked home together,—he with three bandboxes in one arm, and her on the other,—all about his weary years of hardship and poverty, and all about the beginning of his good fortune, the running away of the horse and of the little girl who drew him after her, because she reminded him so much of Rose herself as she used to be when he looked down upon her so fondly from the roof in Baker's Row,—told her of the child's father, and how he set him up in business,—of his prosperity since, ending with her taking passage with him, which he said was the best fortune of all.

"That was luck," says he, "that no words can shadder forth!" And then he said, "I ought n't to call it luck, my dear; it was just an intervention of Divine Providence!" Then he corrected himself. "An interwention o' Diwine Providence," says he, "that 's what it was!" And he hugged the very bandboxes till he fairly stove them in.

About a month after this blessed luck, the milliner's shop was closed one day at an unusually early hour, and the white-muslin curtains at the parlor windows above might have been noticed to flutter and sway, as with some gay excitement indoors. And so indeed there was. John had taken his Rose for good and all, and the little parlor was full of glad hearts and merry feet. All the milliner's apprentices and sewing-girls of the neighborhood were there, bright as so many butterflies, laughing, and nodding, and whispering one another, and dropping their eyes before the young sailors, and teamsters,