Part 16 (1/2)

And the sacred ”ordinance,” with all other proprieties, was left in ruins that day. They tore along the Avenue with unexplained and most inexplicable speed, Hope being concealed by riding backward, and by a large shawl, and Blanche and her admirer receiving the full indignation of every chaste and venerable eye. Those who had tolerated all this girl's previous improprieties were obliged to admit that the line must be drawn somewhere. She at once lost several good invitations and a matrimonial offer, since Jones, junior, was swept away by his parents to be wedded without delay to a consumptive heiress who had long pined for his whiskers; and Count Posen, in his Souvenirs, was severer on Blanche's one good deed than on the worst of her follies.

A few years after, when Blanche, then the fearless wife of a regular-army officer, was helping Hope in the hospitals at Norfolk, she would stop to shout with delight over the reminiscence of that stately Jones equipage in mad career, amid the barking of dogs and the groaning of dowagers. ”After all, Hope,” she would say, ”the fastest thing I ever did was under your orders.”

XXI. A STORM.

THE members of the household were all at the window about noon, next day, watching the rise of a storm. A murky wing of cloud, shaped like a hawk's, hung over the low western hills across the bay. Then the hawk became an eagle, and the eagle a gigantic phantom, that hovered over half the visible sky. Beneath it, a little scud of vapor, moved by some cross-current of air, raced rapidly against the wind, just above the horizon, like smoke from a battle-field.

As the cloud ascended, the water grew rapidly blacker, and in half an hour broke into jets of white foam, all over its surface, with an angry look. Meantime a white film of fog spread down the bay from the northward. The wind hauled from southwest to northwest, so suddenly and strongly that all the anch.o.r.ed boats seemed to have swung round instantaneously, without visible process. The instant the wind s.h.i.+fted, the rain broke forth, filling the air in a moment with its volume, and cutting so sharply that it seemed like hail, though no hailstones reached the ground. At the same time there rose upon the water a dense white film, which seemed to grow together from a hundred different directions, and was made partly of rain, and partly of the blown edges of the spray. There was but a glimpse of this; for in a few moments it was impossible to see two rods; but when the first gust was over, the water showed itself again, the jets of spray all beaten down, and regular waves, of dull lead-color, breaking higher on the sh.o.r.e. All the depth of blackness had left the sky, and there remained only an obscure and ominous gray, through which the lightning flashed white, not red.

Boats came driving in from the mouth of the bay with a rag of sail up; the men got them moored with difficulty, and when they sculled ash.o.r.e in the skiffs, a dozen comrades stood ready to grasp and haul them in.

Others launched skiffs in sheltered places, and pulled out bareheaded to bail out their fis.h.i.+ng-boats and keep them from swamping at their moorings.

The sh.o.r.e was thronged with men in oilskin clothes and by women with shawls over their heads. Aunt Jane, who always felt responsible for whatever went on in the elements, sat in-doors with one lid closed, wincing at every flash, and watching the universe with the air of a coachman guiding six wild horses.

Just after the storm had pa.s.sed its height, two veritable wild horses were reined up at the door, and Philip burst in, his usual self-composure gone.

”Emilia is out sailing!” he exclaimed,--”alone with Lambert's boatman, in this gale. They say she was bound for Narragansett.”

”Impossible!” cried Hope, turning pale. ”I left her not three hours ago.” Then she remembered that Emilia had spoken of going on board the yacht, to superintend some arrangements, but had said no more about it, when she opposed it.

”Harry!” said Aunt Jane, quickly, from her chair by the window, ”see that fisherman. He has just come ash.o.r.e and is telling something. Ask him.”

The fisherman had indeed seen Lambert's boat, which was well known.

Something seemed to be the matter with the sail, but before the storm struck her, it had been hauled down. They must have taken in water enough, as it was. He had himself been obliged to bail out three times, running in from the reef.

”Was there any landing which they could reach?” Harry asked.

There was none,--but the light-s.h.i.+p lay right in their track, and if they had good luck, they might get aboard of her.

”The boatman?” said Philip, anxiously,--”Mr. Lambert's boatman; is he a good sailor?”

”Don't know,” was the reply. ”Stranger here. Dutchman, Frenchman, Portegee, or some kind of a foreigner.”

”Seems to understand himself in a boat,” said another.

”Mr. Malbone knows him,” said a third. ”The same that dove with the young woman under the steamboat paddles.”

”Good grit,” said the first.

”That's so,” was the answer. ”But grit don't teach a man the channel.”

All agreed to this axiom; but as there was so strong a probability that the voyagers had reached the light-s.h.i.+p, there seemed less cause for fear.

The next question was, whether it was possible to follow them. All agreed that it would be foolish for any boat to attempt it, till the wind had blown itself out, which might be within half an hour. After that, some predicted a calm, some a fog, some a renewal of the storm; there was the usual variety of opinions. At any rate, there might perhaps be an interval during which they could go out, if the gentlemen did not mind a wet jacket.

Within the half-hour came indeed an interval of calm, and a light shone behind the clouds from the west. It faded soon into a gray fog, with puffs of wind from the southwest again. When the young men went out with the boatmen, the water had grown more quiet, save where angry little gusts ruffled it. But these gusts made it necessary to carry a double reef, and they made but little progress against wind and tide.