Chapter 2

It seemed to her the
very sting of poverty, just then, that one must wear purple dresses and
blue bonnets.

At the tea-table the Doctor fell to reconstructing the country, and Miss
Dallas, who was quite a politician in Miss Dallas's way, observed that
the horizon looked brighter since Tennessee's admittance, and that she
hoped that the clouds, &c.,--and what _did_ he think of Brownlow? &c.,
&c.

"Tennessee!" exclaimed Harrie; "why, how long has Tennessee been in? I
didn't know anything about it."

Miss Dallas smiled kindly. Dr. Sharpe bit his lip, and his face flushed.

"Harrie, you really _ought_ to read the papers," he said, with some
impatience; "it's no wonder you don't know anything."

"How should I know anything, tied to the children all day?" Harrie spoke
quickly, for the hot tears sprang. "Why didn't you tell me something
about Tennessee? You never talk politics with _me_."

This began to be awkward; Miss Dallas, who never interfered--on
principle--between husband and wife, gracefully took up the baby, and
gracefully swung her dainty Geneva watch for the child's amusement,
smiling brilliantly. She could not endure babies, but you would never
have suspected it.

In fact, when Pauline had been in the house four or five days, Harrie,
who never thought very much of herself, became so painfully alive to her
own deficiencies, that she fell into a permanent fit of low spirits,
which did not add either to her appearance or her vivacity.

"Pauline is so pretty and bright!" she wrote to me. "I always knew I was
a little fool. You can be a fool before you're married, just as well as
not. Then, when you have three babies to look after, it is too late to
make yourself over. I try very hard now to read the newspapers, only
Myron does not know it."

One morning something occurred to Mrs. Sharpe. It was simply that her
husband had spent every evening at home for a week. She was in the
nursery when the thought struck her, rocking slowly in her low
sewing-chair, holding the baby on one arm and trying to darn stockings
with the other.

Pauline was--she did not really know where. Was not that her voice upon
the porch? The rocking-chair stopped sharply, and Harrie looked down
through the blinds. The Doctor's horse was tied at the gate. The Doctor
sat fanning himself with his hat in one of the garden chairs; Miss
Dallas occupied the other; she was chatting, and twisting her golden
wools about her fingers,--it was noticeable that she used only golden
wools that morning; her dress was pale blue, and the effect of the
purples would not have been good.

"I thought your calls were going to take till dinner, Myron," called
Harrie, through the blinds.

"I thought so too," said Myron, placidly, "but they do not seem to.
Won't you come down?"

Harrie thanked him, saying, in a pleasant _nonchalant_ way, that she
could not leave the baby. It was almost the first bit of acting that the
child had ever been guilty of,--for the baby was just going to sleep,
and she knew it.

She turned away from the window quietly. She could not have been angry,
and scolded; or noisy, and cried. She put little Harrie into her cradle,
crept upon the bed, and lay perfectly still for a long time.

When the dinner-bell rang, and she got up to brush her hair, that
absent, apathetic look of which I have spoken had left her eyes. A
stealthy brightness came and went in them, which her husband might have
observed if he and Miss Dallas had not been deep in the Woman question.
Pauline saw it; Pauline saw everything.

"Why did you not come down and sit with us this morning?" she asked,
reproachfully, when she and Harrie were alone after dinner. "I don't
want your husband to feel that he must run away from you to entertain
me."

"My husband's ideas of hospitality are generous," said Mrs. Sharpe. "I
have always found him as ready to make it pleasant here for my company
as for his own."

She made this little speech with dignity. Did both women know it for the
farce it was? To do Miss Dallas justice,--I am not sure. She was not a
bad-hearted woman. She was a handsome woman. She had come to Lime to
enjoy herself. Those September days and nights were fair there by the
dreamy sea. On the whole I am inclined to think that she did not know
exactly what she was about.

"_My_ perfumery never lasts," said Harrie, once, stooping to pick up
Pauline's fine handkerchief, to which a faint scent like unseen
heliotrope clung; it clung to everything of Pauline's; you would never
see a heliotrope without thinking of her, as Dr. Sharpe had often said.
"Myron used to like good cologne, but I can't afford to buy it, so I
make it myself, and use it Sundays, and it's all blown away by the time
I get to church. Myron says he is glad of it, for it is more like Mrs.
Allen's Hair Restorer than anything else. What do you use, Pauline?"

"Sachet powder of course," said Miss Dallas, smiling.

That evening Harrie stole away by herself to the village apothecary's.
Myron should not know for what she went. If it were the breath of a
heliotrope, thought foolish Harrie, which made it so pleasant for people
to be near Pauline, that was a matter easily remedied. But sachet
powder, you should know, is a dollar an ounce, and Harrie must needs
content herself with "the American," which could be had for fifty cents;
and so, of course, after she had spent her money, and made her little
silk bags, and put them away into her bureau drawers, Myron never told
_her,_ for all her pains, that she reminded him of a heliotrope with the
dew on it. One day a pink silk bag fell out from under her dress, where
she had tucked it.

"What's all this nonsense, Harrie?" said her husband, in a sharp tone.

At another time, the Doctor and Pauline were driving upon the beach at
sunset, when, turning a sudden corner, Miss Dallas cried out, in real
delight,--

"See! That beautiful creature! Who can it be?"

And there was Harrie, out on a rock in the opal surf,--a little scarlet
mermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the water
almost washed the wedding ring. It was--who knew how long, since the
pretty bathing-suit had been taken down from the garret nails? What
sudden yearning for the wash of waves, and the spring of girlhood, and
the consciousness that one is fair to see, had overtaken her? She
watched through her hair and her fingers for the love in her husband's
eyes.

But he waded out to her, ill-pleased.

"Harrie, this is very imprudent,--very! I don't see what could have
possessed you!"

Myron Sharpe loved his wife. Of course he did. He began, about this
time, to state the fact to himself several times a day. Had she not been
all the world to him when he wooed and won her in her rosy, ripening
days? Was she not all the world to him now that a bit of searness had
crept upon her, in a married life of eight hard-working years?

That she _had_ grown a little sear, he felt somewhat keenly of late. She
had a dreary, draggled look at breakfast, after the children had cried
at night,--and the nights when Mrs. Sharpe's children did not cry were
like angels' visits. It was perhaps the more noticeable, because Miss
Dallas had a peculiar color and coolness and sparkle in the morning,
like that of opening flowers. _She_ had not been up till midnight with a
sick baby.

Harrie was apt to be too busy in the kitchen to run and meet him when he
came home at dusk. Or, if she came, it was with her sleeves rolled up
and an apron on. Miss Dallas sat at the window; the lace curtain waved
about her; she nodded and smiled as he walked up the path. In the
evening Harrie talked of Rocko, or the price of butter; she did not
venture beyond, poor thing! since her experience with Tennessee.

Miss Dallas quoted Browning, and discussed Goethe, and talked Parepa;
and they had no lights, and the September moon shone in. Sometimes Mrs.
Sharpe had mending to do, and, as she could not sew on her husband's
buttons satisfactorily by moonlight, would slip into the dining-room
with kerosene and mosquitoes for company. The Doctor may have noticed,
or he may not, how comfortably he could, if he made the proper effort,
pass the evening without her.

But Myron Sharpe loved his wife. To be sure he did. If his wife doubted
it,--but why should she doubt it? Who thought she doubted it? If she
did, she gave no sign. Her eyes, he observed, had brightened, of late;
and when they went to her from the moonlit parlor, there was such a
pretty color upon her cheeks, that he used to stoop and kiss them, while
Miss Dallas discreetly occupied herself in killing mosquitoes. Of course
he loved his wife!

It was observable that, in proportion to the frequency with which he
found it natural to remark his fondness for Harrie, his attentions to
her increased. He inquired tenderly after her headaches; he brought her
flowers, when he and Miss Dallas walked in the autumn woods; he was
particular about her shawls and wraps; he begged her to sail and drive
with them; he took pains to draw his chair beside hers on the porch; he
patted her hands, and played with her soft hair.

Harrie's clear eyes puzzled over this for a day or two; but by and by
it might have been noticed that she refused his rides, shawled herself,
was apt to be with the children when he called her, and shrank, in a
quiet way, from his touch.

She went into her room one afternoon, and locked the children out. An
east wind blew, and the rain fell drearily. The Doctor and Pauline were
playing chess down stairs; she should not be missed. She took out her
wedding-dress from the drawer where she had laid it tenderly away; the
hoar-frost and fretted pearl fell down upon her faded morning-dress; the
little creamy gloves hung loosely upon her worn fingers. Poor little
gloves! Poor little pearly dress! She felt a kind of pity for their
innocence and ignorance and trustfulness. Her hot tears fell and spotted
them. What if there were any way of creeping back through them to be
little Harrie Bird again? Would she take it?

Her children's voices sounded crying for her in the hall. Three innocent
babies--and how many more?--to grow into life under the shadow of a
wrecked and loveless home! What had she done? What had they done?

Harrie's was a strong, healthy little soul, with a strong, healthy love
of life; but she fell down there that dreary afternoon, prone upon the
nursery floor, among the yellow wedding lace, and prayed God to let her
die.

Yet Myron Sharpe loved his wife, you understand. Discussing elective
affinities down there over the chessboard with Miss Dallas,--he loved
his wife, most certainly; and, pray, why was she not content?

It was quite late when they came up for Harrie. She had fallen into a
sleep or faint, and the window had been open all the time. Her eyes
burned sharply, and she complained of a chill, which did not leave her
the next day nor the next.

One morning, at the breakfast-table, Miss Dallas calmly observed that
she should go home on Friday.

Dr. Sharpe dropped his cup; Harrie wiped up the tea.

"My dear Miss Dallas--surely--we cannot let you go yet! Harrie! Can't
you keep your friend?"

Harrie said the proper thing in a low tone. Pauline repeated her
determination with much decision, and was afraid that her visit had been
more of a burden than Harrie, with all her care, was able to bear. Dr.
Sharpe pushed back his chair noisily, and left the room.

He went and stood by the parlor window. The man's face was white. What
business had the days to close down before him like a granite wall,
because a woman with long trains and white hands was going out of them?
Harrie's patient voice came in through the open door:--

"Yes, yes, yes, Rocko; mother is tired to-day; wait a minute."

Pauline, sweeping by the piano, brushed the keys a little, and sang:--

"Drifting, drifting on and on,
Mast and oar and rudder gone,
Fatal danger for each one,
We helpless as in dreams."

What had he been about?

The air grew sweet with the sudden scent of heliotrope, and Miss Dallas
pushed aside the curtain gently.

"I may have that sail across the bay before I go? It promises to be fair
to-morrow."

He hesitated.

"I suppose it will be our last," said the lady, softly.

She was rather sorry when she had spoken, for she really did not mean
anything, and was surprised at the sound of her own voice.

But they took the sail.

Harrie watched them off--her husband did not invite her to go on that
occasion--with that stealthy sharpness in her eyes. Her lips and hands
and forehead were burning. She had been cold all day. A sound like the
tolling of a bell beat in her ears. The children's voices were choked
and distant. She wondered if Biddy were drunk, she seemed to dance about
so at her ironing-table, and wondered if she must dismiss her, and who
could supply her place. She tried to put my room in order, for she was
expecting me that night by the last train, but gave up the undertaking
in weariness and confusion.

In fact, if Harrie had been one of the Doctor's patients, he would have
sent her to bed and prescribed for brain-fever. As she was not a
patient, but only his wife, he had not found out that anything ailed
her.

Nothing happened while he was gone, except that a friend of Biddy's
"dropped in," and Mrs. Sharpe, burning and shivering in her
sewing-chair, dreamily caught through the open door, and dreamily
repeated to herself, a dozen words of compassionate Irish brogue:--

"Folks as laves folks cryin' to home and goes sailin' round with other
women--"

Then the wind latched the door.

The Doctor and Miss Dallas drew in their oars, and floated softly.

There were gray and silver clouds overhead, and all the light upon the
sea slanted from low in the west: it was a red light, in which the bay
grew warm; it struck across Pauline's hands, which she dipped, as the
mood took her, into the waves, leaning upon the side of the boat,
looking down into the water. One other sail only was to be seen upon the
bay. They watched it for a while. It dropped into the west, and sunk
from sight.

They were silent for a time, and then they talked of friendship, and
nature, and eternity, and then were silent for a time again, and then
spoke--in a very general and proper way--of separation and communion in
spirit, and broke off softly, and the boat rose and fell upon the strong
outgoing tide.

"Drifting, drifting on and on," hummed Pauline.

The west, paling a little, left a haggard look upon the Doctor's face.

"An honest man," the Doctor was saying, "an honest man, who loves his
wife devotedly, but who cannot find in her that sympathy which his
higher nature requires, that comprehension of his intellectual needs,
that--"

"I always feel a deep compassion for such a man," interrupted Miss
Dallas, gently.

"Such a man," questioned the Doctor in a pensive tone, "need not be
debarred, by the shallow conventionalities of an unappreciative world,
from a friendship which will rest, strengthen, and ennoble his weary
soul?"

"Certainly not," said Pauline, with her eyes upon the water; dull
yellow, green, and indigo shades were creeping now upon its ruddiness.

"Pauline,"--Dr. Sharpe's voice was low,--"Pauline!"

Pauline turned her beautiful head. "There are marriages for this world;
true and honorable marriages, but for this world. But there is a
marriage for eternity,--a marriage of souls."

Now Myron Sharpe is not a fool, but that is precisely what he said to
Miss Pauline Dallas, out in the boat on that September night. If wiser
men than Myron Sharpe never uttered more unpardonable nonsense under
similar circumstances, cast your stones at him.

"Perhaps so," said Miss Dallas, with a sigh; "but see! How dark it has
grown while we have been talking. We shall be caught in a squall; but I
shall not be at all afraid--with you."

They were caught indeed, not only in a squall, but in the steady force
of a driving northeasterly storm setting in doggedly with a very ugly
fog. If Miss Dallas was not at all afraid--with him, she was
nevertheless not sorry when they grated safely on the dull white beach.

They had had a hard pull in against the tide. Sky and sea were black.
The fog crawled like a ghost over flat and cliff and field. The rain
beat upon them as they turned to walk up the beach.

Pauline stopped once suddenly.

"What was that?"

"I heard nothing."

"A cry,--I fancied a cry down there in the fog."

They went back, and walked down the slippery shore for a space. Miss
Dallas took off her hat to listen.

"You will take cold," said Dr. Sharpe, anxiously. She put it on; she
heard nothing,--she was tired and excited, he said.

They walked home together. Miss Dallas had sprained her white wrist,
trying to help at the oars; he drew it gently through his arm.

It was quite dark when they reached the house. No lamps were lighted.
The parlor window had been left open, and the rain was beating in. "How
careless in Harrie!" said her husband, impatiently.

He remembered those words, and the sound of his own voice in saying
them, for a long time to come; he remembers them now, indeed, I fancy,
on rainy nights when the house is dark.

The hall was cold and dreary. No table was set for supper. The children
were all crying. Dr. Sharpe pushed open the kitchen door with a stern
face.

"Biddy! Biddy! what does all this mean? Where is Mrs. Sharpe?"

"The Lord only knows what it manes, or where is Mrs. Sharpe," said
Biddy, sullenly. "It's high time, in me own belafe, for her husband to
come ashkin' and inquirin' her close all in a hape on the floor
upstairs, with her bath-dress gone from the nails, and the front door
swingin',--me never findin' of it out till it cooms tay-time, with all
the children cryin' on me, and me head shplit with the noise, and--"

Dr. Sharpe strode in a bewildered way to the front door. Oddly enough,
the first thing he did was to take down the thermometer and look at it.
Gone out to bathe in a temperature like that! His mind ran like
lightning, while he hung the thing back upon its nail, over Harrie's
ancestry. Was there not a traditionary great-uncle who died in an
asylum? The whole future of three children with an insane mother spread
itself out before him while he was buttoning his overcoat.

"Shall I go and help you find her?" asked Miss Dallas, tremulously; "or
shall I stay and look after hot flannels and--things? What shall I do?"

"_I_ don't care what you do!" said the Doctor, savagely. To his justice
be it recorded that he did not. He would not have exchanged one glimpse
of Harrie's little homely face just then for an eternity of
sunset-sailing with the "friend of his soul." A sudden cold loathing of
her possessed him; he hated the sound of her soft voice; he hated the
rustle of her garments, as she leaned against the door with her
handkerchief at her eyes. Did he remember at that moment an old vow,
spoken on an old October day, to that little missing face? Did he
comfort himself thus, as he stepped out into the storm, "You have
'trusted her,' Myron Sharpe, as 'your best earthly friend'"?

As luck, or providence or God--whichever word you prefer--decreed it,
the Doctor had but just shut the door when he saw me driving from the
station through the rain. I heard enough of the story while he was
helping me down the carriage steps. I left my bonnet and bag with Miss
Dallas, pulled my water-proof over my head, and we turned our faces to
the sea without a word.

The Doctor is a man who thinks and acts rapidly in emergencies, and
little time was lost about help and lights. Yet when all was done which
could be done, we stood there upon the slippery weed-strewn sand, and
looked in one another's faces helplessly. Harrie's little boat was gone.
The sea thundered out beyond the bar. The fog hung, a dead weight, upon
a buried world. Our lanterns cut it for a foot or two in a ghostly way,
throwing a pale white light back upon our faces and the weeds and bits
of wreck under our feet.

The tide had turned. We put out into the surf not knowing what else to
do, and called for Harrie; we leaned on our oars to listen, and heard
the water drip into the boat, and the dull thunder beyond the bar; we
called again, and heard a frightened sea-gull scream.

"_This_ yere's wastin' valooable time," said Hansom, decidedly. I
forgot to say that it was George Hansom whom Myron had picked up to help
us. Anybody in Lime will tell you who George Hansom is,--a clear-eyed,
open-hearted sailor; a man to whom you would turn in trouble as
instinctively as a rheumatic man turns to the sun.

I cannot accurately tell you what he did with us that night. I have
confused memories of searching shore and cliffs and caves; of touching
at little islands and inlets that Harrie fancied; of the peculiar echo
which answered our shouting; of the look that settled little by little
about Dr. Sharpe's mouth; of the sobbing of the low wind; of the flare
of lanterns on gaping, green waves; of spots of foam that writhed like
nests of white snakes; of noticing the puddles in the bottom of the
boat, and of wondering confusedly what they would do with my
travelling-dress, at the very moment when I saw--I was the first to see
it--little empty boat; of our hauling alongside of the tossing, silent
thing; of a bit of a red scarf that lay coiled in its stern; of our
drifting by, and speaking never a word; of our coasting along after that
for a mile down the bay, because there was nothing in the world to take
us there but the dread of seeing the Doctor's eyes when we should turn.

It was there that we heard the first cry.

"It's shoreward!" said Hansom.

"It is seaward!" cried the Doctor.

"It is behind us!" said I.

Where was it? A sharp, sobbing cry, striking the mist three or four
times in rapid succession,--hushing suddenly,--breaking into shrieks
like a frightened child's,--dying plaintively down.

We struggled desperately after it, through the fog. Wind and water took
the sound up and tossed it about. Confused and bewildered, we beat about
it and about it; it was behind us, before us, at our right, at our
left,--crying on in a blind, aimless way, making us no replies,--beckoning
us, slipping from us, mocking us utterly.

The Doctor stretched his hands out upon the solid wall of mist; he
groped with them like a man struck blind.

"To die there,--in my very hearing,--without a chance--"

And while the words were upon his lips the cries ceased.

He turned a gray face slowly around, shivered a little, then smiled a
little, then began to argue with ghastly cheerfulness:--

"It must be only for a moment, you know. We shall hear it again,--I am
quite sure we shall it again, Hansom!"

Hansom, making a false stroke, I believe for the first time in his life,
snapped an oar and overturned a lantern. Some drift-wood, covered with
slimy weeds, washed heavily up at our feet. I remember that a little
disabled ground-sparrow, chased by the tide, was fluttering and drowning
just in sight, and that Myron drew it out of the water, and held it up
for a moment to his cheek.

Bending over the ropes, George spoke between his teeth to me:--

"It may be a night's job on 't, findin' of the body."

"The WHAT?"

The poor little sparrow dropped from Dr. Sharpe's hand. He took a step
backward, scanned our faces, sat down dizzily, and fell over upon the
sand.

He is a man of good nerves and great self-possession, but he fell like
a woman, and lay like the dead.

"It's no place for him," Hansom said, softly. "Get him home. Me and the
neighbors can do the rest. Get him home, and put his baby into his arms,
and shet the door, and go about your business."

I had left him in the dark on the office floor at last. Miss Dallas and
I sat in the cold parlor and looked at each other.

The fire was low and the lamp dull. The rain beat in an uncanny way upon
the windows. I never like to hear the rain upon the windows. I liked it
less than usual that night, and was just trying to brighten the fire a
little, when the front door blew open.

"Shut it, please," said I, between the jerks of my poker.

But Miss Dallas looked over her shoulder and shivered.

"Just look at that latch!" I looked at that latch.

It rose and fell in a feeble fluttering way,--was still for a
minute,--rose and fell again.

When the door swung in and Harrie--or the ghost of her--staggered into
the chilly room and fell down in a scarlet heap at my feet, Pauline
bounded against the wall with a scream which pierced into the dark
office where the Doctor lay with his face upon the floor.

It was long before we knew how it happened. Indeed, I suppose we have
never known it all. How she glided down, a little red wraith, through
the dusk and damp to her boat; how she tossed about, with some dim,
delirious idea of finding Myron on the ebbing waves; that she found
herself stranded and tangled at last in the long, matted grass of that
muddy cove, started to wade home, and sunk in the ugly ooze, held,
chilled, and scratched by the sharp grass, blinded and frightened by the
fog, and calling, as she thought of it, for help; that in the first
shallow wash of the flowing tide she must have struggled free, and found
her way home across the fields,--she can tell us, but she can tell no
more.

This very morning on which I write, an unknown man, imprisoned in the
same spot in the same way overnight, was found by George Hansom dead
there from exposure in the salt grass.

It was the walk home, and only that, which could have saved her.

Yet for many weeks we fought, her husband and I, hand to hand with
death, seeming to _see_ the life slip out of her, and watching for
wandering minutes when she might look upon us with sane eyes.

We kept her--just. A mere little wreck, with drawn lips, and great eyes,
and shattered nerves,--but we kept her.

I remember one night, when she had fallen into her first healthful nap,
that the Doctor came down to rest a few minutes in the parlor where I
sat alone. Pauline was washing the tea-things.

He began to pace the room with a weary abstracted look,--he was much
worn by watching,--and, seeing that he was in no mood for words, I took
up a book which lay upon the table. It chanced to be one of Alger's,
which somebody had lent to the Doctor before Harrie's illness; it was a
marked book, and I ran my eye over the pencilled passages. I recollect
having been struck with this one: "A man's best friend is a wife of good
sense and good heart, whom he loves and who loves him."

"You believe that?" said Myron, suddenly, behind my shoulder.

"I believe that a man's wife ought to be his best friend,--in every
sense of the word, his _best friend,_--or she ought never to be his
wife."

"And if--there will be differences of temperament, and--other things. If
you were a man now, for instance, Miss Hannah--"

I interrupted him with hot cheeks and sudden courage.

"If I were a man, and my wife were _not_ the best friend I had or could
have in the world, _nobody should ever know it,--she, least of
all,--Myron Sharpe!_"

Young people will bear a great deal of impertinence from an old lady,
but we had both gone further than we meant to. I closed Mr. Alger with a
snap, and went up to Harrie.

The day that Mrs. Sharpe sat up in the easy-chair for two hours, Miss
Dallas, who had felt called upon to stay and nurse her dear Harrie to
recovery, and had really been of service, detailed on duty among the
babies, went home.