And she put both her arms round that supple, stately waist, that might have belonged to a Greek G.o.ddess, or to some queen in the Nibelungen Lied.

The party watched the swimmers as they struck out over the clear expanse. It was high noon; the fishing-boats were all off, but a few pleasure-boats swung different ways at their moorings, in the perfect calm. The white light-house stood reflected opposite, at the end of its long pier; a few vessels lay at anchor, with their sails up to dry, but with that deserted look which coasters in port are wont to wear. A few fishes dimpled the still surface, and as the three swam out farther and farther, their merry voices still sounded close at hand. Suddenly they all clapped their hands and called; then pointed forward to the light-house, across the narrow harbor.

"They are going to swim across," said Kate. "What creatures they are!

Hope and little Jenny have always begged for it, and now Harry thinks it is so still a day they can safely venture. It is more than half a mile.

See! he has called that boy in a boat, and he will keep near them. They have swum farther than that along the sh.o.r.e."

So the others went away with no fears.

Hope said afterwards that she never swam with such delight as on that day. The water seemed to be peculiarly thin and clear, she said, as well as tranquil, and to retain its usual buoyancy without its density. It gave a delicious sense of freedom; she seemed to swim in air, and felt singularly secure. For the first time she felt what she had always wished to experience,--that swimming was as natural as walking, and might be indefinitely prolonged. Her strength seemed limitless, she struck out more and more strongly; she splashed and played with little Jenny, when the child began to grow weary of the long motion. A fisherman's boy in a boat rowed slowly along by their side.

Nine tenths of the distance had been accomplished, when the little girl grew quite impatient, and Hope bade Harry swim on before her, and land his charge. Light and buoyant as the child was, her tightened clasp had begun to tell on him.

"It tires you, Hal, to bear that weight so long, and you know I have nothing to carry. You must see that I am not in the least tired, only a little dazzled by the sun. Here, Charley, give me your hat, and then row on with Mr. Harry." She put on the boy's torn straw hat, and they yielded to her wish. People almost always yielded to Hope's wishes when she expressed them,--it was so very seldom.

Somehow the remaining distance seemed very great, as Hope saw them glide away, leaving her in the water alone, her feet unsupported by any firm element, the bright and pitiless sky arching far above her, and her head burning with more heat than she had liked to own. She was conscious of her full strength, and swam more vigorously than ever; but her head was hot and her ears rang, and she felt chilly vibrations pa.s.sing up and down her sides, that were like, she fancied, the innumerable fringing oars of the little jelly-fishes she had so often watched. Her body felt almost unnaturally strong, and she took powerful strokes; but it seemed as if her heart went out into them and left a vacant cavity within. More and more her life seemed boiling up into her head; queer fancies came to her, as, for instance, that she was an inverted thermometer with the mercury all ascending into a bulb at the top. She shook her head and the fancy cleared away, and then others came.

She began to grow seriously anxious, but the distance was diminishing; Harry was almost at the steps with the child, and the boy had rowed his skiff round the breakwater out of sight; a young fisherman leaned over the railing with his back to her, watching the lobster-catchers on the other side. She was almost in; it was only a slight dizziness, yet she could not see the light-house. Concentrating all her efforts, she shut her eyes and swam on, her arms still unaccountably vigorous, though the rest of her body seemed losing itself in languor. The sound in her ear had grown to a roar, as of many mill-wheels. It seemed a long distance that she thus swam with her eyes closed. Then she half opened her eyes, and the breakwater seemed all in motion, with tier above tier of eager faces looking down on her. In an instant there was a sharp splash close beside her, and she felt herself grasped and drawn downwards, with a whirl of something just above her, and then all consciousness went out as suddenly as when ether brings at last to a patient, after the roaring and the tumult in his brain, its blessed foretaste of the deliciousness of death.

When Hope came again to consciousness, she found herself approaching her own pier in a sail-boat, with several very wet gentlemen around her, and little Jenny nestled close to her, crying as profusely as if her pretty scarlet bathing-dress were being wrung out through her eyes. Hope asked no questions, and hardly felt the impulse to inquire what had happened.

The truth was, that in the temporary dizziness produced by her prolonged swim, she had found herself in the track of a steamboat that was pa.s.sing the pier, un.o.bserved by her brother. A young man, leaping from the dock, had caught her in his arms, and had dived with her below the paddle-wheels, just as they came upon her. It was a daring act, but nothing else could have saved her. When they came to the surface, they had been picked up by Aunt Jane's Robinson Crusoe, who had at last unmoored his pilot-boat and was rounding the light-house for the outer harbor.

She and the child were soon landed, and given over to the ladies. Due attention was paid to her young rescuer, whose dripping garments seemed for the moment as glorious as a blood-stained flag. He seemed a simple, frank young fellow of French or German origin, but speaking English remarkably well; he was not high-bred, by any means, but had apparently the culture of an average German of the middle cla.s.s. Harry fancied that he had seen him before, and at last traced back the impression of his features to the ball for the French officers. It turned out, on inquiry, that he had a brother in the service, and on board the corvette; but he himself was a commercial agent, now in America with a view to business, though he had made several voyages as mate of a vessel, and would not object to some such berth as that. He promised to return and receive the thanks of the family, read with interest the name on Harry's card, seemed about to ask a question, but forbore, and took his leave amid the general confusion, without even giving his address. When sought next day, he was not to be found, and to the children he at once became as much a creature of romance as the sea-serpent or the Flying Dutchman.

Even Hope's strong const.i.tution felt the shock of this adventure. She was confined to her room for a week or two, but begged that there might be no postponement of the wedding, which, therefore, took place without her. Her illness gave excuse for a privacy that was welcome to all but the bridesmaids, and suited Malbone best of all.

XVI. ON THE STAIRS.

AUGUST drew toward its close, and guests departed from the neighborhood.

"What a short little thing summer is," meditated Aunt Jane, "and b.u.t.terflies are caterpillars most of the time after all. How quiet it seems. The wrens whisper in their box above the window, and there has not been a blast from the peac.o.c.k for a week. He seems ashamed of the summer shortness of his tail. He keeps glancing at it over his shoulder to see if it is not looking better than yesterday, while the staring eyes of the old tail are in the bushes all about."

"Poor, dear little thing!" said coaxing Katie. "Is she tired of autumn, before it is begun?"

"I am never tired of anything," said Aunt Jane, "except my maid Ruth, and I should not be tired of her, if it had pleased Heaven to endow her with sufficient strength of mind to sew on a b.u.t.ton. Life is very rich to me. There is always something new in every season; though to be sure I cannot think what novelty there is just now, except a choice variety of spiders. There is a theory that spiders kill flies. But I never miss a fly, and there does not seem to be any natural scourge divinely appointed to kill spiders, except Ruth. Even she does it so feebly, that I see them come back and hang on their webs and make faces at her. I suppose they are faces; I do not understand their anatomy, but it must be a very unpleasant one."

"You are not quite satisfied with life, today, dear," said Kate; "I fear your book did not end to your satisfaction."

"It did end, though," said the lady, "and that is something. What is there in life so difficult as to stop a book? If I wrote one, it would be as long as ten 'Sir Charles Grandisons,' and then I never should end it, because I should die. And there would be n.o.body left to read it, because each reader would have been dead long before."

"But the book amused you!" interrupted Kate. "I know it did."

"It was so absurd that I laughed till I cried; and it makes no difference whether you cry laughing or cry crying; it is equally bad when your gla.s.ses come off. Never mind. Whom did you see on the Avenue?"

"O, we saw Philip on horseback. He rides so beautifully; he seems one with his horse."

"I am glad of it," interposed his aunt. "The riders are generally so inferior to them."

"We saw Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, too. Emilia stopped and asked after you, and sent you her love, auntie."

"Love!" cried Aunt Jane. "She always does that. She has sent me love enough to rear a whole family on,--more than I ever felt for anybody in all my days. But she does not really love any one."

"I hope she will love her husband," said Kate, rather seriously.

"Mark my words, Kate!" said her aunt. "Nothing but unhappiness will ever come of that marriage. How can two people be happy who have absolutely nothing in common?"

"But no two people have just the same tastes," said Kate, "except Harry and myself. It is not expected. It would be absurd for two people to be divorced, because the one preferred white bread and the other brown."

"They would be divorced very soon," said Aunt Jane, "for the one who ate brown bread would not live long."

"But it is possible that he might live, auntie, in spite of your prediction. And perhaps people may be happy, even if you and I do not see how."

"n.o.body ever thinks I see anything," said Aunt Jane, in some dejection.

"You think I am nothing in the world but a sort of old oyster, making amus.e.m.e.nt for people, and having no more to do with real life than oysters have."

"No, dearest!" cried Kate. "You have a great deal to do with all our lives. You are a dear old insidious sapper-and-miner, looking at first very inoffensive, and then working your way into our affections, and spoiling us with coaxing. How you behave about children, for instance!"

"How?" said the other meekly. "As well as I can."

"But you pretend that you dislike them."

"But I do dislike them. How can anybody help it? Hear them swearing at this moment, boys of five, paddling in the water there! Talk about the murder of the innocents! There are so few innocents to be murdered! If I only had a gun and could shoot!"

"You may not like those particular boys," said Kate, "but you like good, well-behaved children, very much."

"It takes so many to take care of them! People drive by here, with carriages so large that two of the largest horses can hardly draw them, and all full of those little beings. They have a sort of roof, too, and seem to expect to be out in all weathers."

"If you had a family of children, perhaps you would find such a travelling caravan very convenient," said Kate.

"If I had such a family," said her aunt, "I would have a separate governess and guardian for each, very moral persons. They should come when each child was two, and stay till it was twenty. The children should all live apart, in order not to quarrel, and should meet once or twice a day and bow to each other. I think that each should learn a different language, so as not to converse, and then, perhaps, they would not get each other into mischief."

"I am sure, auntie," said Kate, "you have missed our small nephews and nieces ever since their visit ended. How still the house has been!"

"I do not know," was the answer. "I hear a great many noises about the house. Somebody comes in late at night. Perhaps it is Philip; but he comes very softly in, wipes his feet very gently, like a clean thief, and goes up stairs."

"O auntie!" said Kate, "you know you have got over all such fancies."

"They are not fancies," said Aunt Jane. "Things do happen in houses! Did I not look under the bed for a thief during fifteen years, and find one at last? Why should I not be allowed to hear something now?"

"But, dear Aunt Jane," said Kate, "you never told me this before."

"No," said she. "I was beginning to tell you the other day, but Ruth was just bringing in my handkerchiefs, and she had used so much bluing, they looked as if they had been washed in heaven, so that it was too outrageous, and I forgot everything else."

"But do you really hear anything?"

"Yes," said her aunt. "Ruth declares she hears noises in those closets that I had nailed up, you know; but that is nothing; of course she does.