Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 21.djvu/16

8 and between and far beyond, till it met the gray sky and was lost in it, the great expanse of the seas, wide and wild, the dark field everywhere tossing and sinking with jets and sprays and flying falls of foam, and now and then some giant of a chance wave looming like a phantom, and powdering itself in mist upon the eager wind. If, beside all this evanescence, this yeasty commotion and change, he saw aught else, saw the fishing-craft in spite of themselves huddled in the offing, yet gallantly challenging the tempest, or any fated bark, its broken masts scarcely raking the dim horizon line, drifting helplessly towards the treacherous land that lay in wait beneath its mask of green and shifting shallows;—if the gilded chanticleer saw such a sight as this, he kept his own counsel, and, unless you suspected it from the way in which he still looked steadily into the east, dropped no hint of spent sailors clinging to the shrouds, or washed away into restless graves with every returning billow.

As for me, too many of my kindred had been rocked to their last sleep in that cruel sea to make it pleasant for any lingering thought. Then, too, I was longing to know how it went with Lucian. I busied myself about the fire, stole the Doctor's table and left him with pencil suspended in air, and rewarded him for the submission with which he received that despotic act by playing the sweet, old-fashioned tunes of our youth to him till the place was dark save for the glow of the fire thrown upon the ceiling, and, despite the whistling of the storm without, all the atmosphere of the room was quiet and dreamy.

At that point Elizabeth opened the door to tell us that tea was ready. At the same moment, above the storm, above the sound of the piano, the note of Elizabeth's voice, the cheerful hiss of the urn, fell the peal of the knocker.

The Doctor answered it in person. A man, covered with tarpaulins, who had brought his horse up the sidewalk and close to the door-stone, bent from the darkness, and announced his errand. A vessel had gone to pieces on the beach, he said,—a whaler apparently, that had sailed round the world to be wrecked in sight of her own wharf at last; some men had been washed up, perhaps drowned, perhaps not; he had ridden off without waiting,—would the Doctor come and see? "On such a night! Three miles!" I exclaimed, feeling the happy lighted tea-room undergo the eclipse he had been all the afternoon at work upon. But the Doctor never threw a glance beyond me, neither at the scrod that Elizabeth's lover had brought him in the last boat-load before the storm, and that in consequence she had browned like a segment of cocoa-nut, nor at the snowy biscuit, nor the baked russets dripping with their jelly like some Oriental conserve. "Tell Martin to put old Chestnut in, Elizabeth," said he, getting down his storm-cloak.

"The water's over the road," said the stranger," high as any carriage-floor; wind would upset a buggy too. Better go in the saddle, sir." And in five minutes the Doctor and his companion were battling their way down the overflowed road to the beach.

All my life has not yet made me indifferent to the trouble of a doctor's wife. So that night I sent the scrod to the kitchen in disgrace; and had a cup of green tea, because I knew it would have been forbidden me had he been at home. Then a fit of compunction seized me that my bad heart would have kept succor away from such a strait, and I felt a new reverence for the unselfish soul that was carrying life itself, perhaps, to one as dear to another as he was to me; and I had a little combat with the feeling, because I was angry with him for going; and just then the door opened, and the carrier threw in the evening paper.

He was earlier than common, because the dark had fallen so soon, and the storm prevented his stopping to whip his top or make his fortune in marbles on the way. I took it as I crossed the entry, and after darkening the pane,