Newport

XVIII.

THE NIGHT-VOYAGE.

WHEN Oliphant arrived at New York, the widespread rush and murmur of the city’s activity repeated, in its different way, the buffeting and general troubled noise of the waves at Newport. He had escaped their haunting effect, only to find himself standing on the edge of a second, but human, ocean ; and a leap into one seemed much the same as a leap into the other. He did not know where he was going, what he was to do henceforth : he had no purpose. To merge himself in this chafing tide of humanity, not knowing what was to be his future, struck him as little more than another mode of suicide, similar in its result to that of losing himself in the currents of the sea.

Putting up at the Van Voort House, he accompanied Roger and Mary in the final ceremony of laying Effie in Woodlawn Cemetery; then he went to his hotel and did nothing. The next day he made inquiries regarding a passage to Europe, and secured the refusal of a berth. Immediately afterwards he began planning a trip to California. In short, he was aimless. I don’t know that it was his fault, especially. The present century, which overflows with the most pronounced aims of all sorts, probably harbors more people who find it impossible to have an aim than any century heretofore.

On the third day, he received a letter from Justin, detailing some roundabout approaches which had been made by Mrs. Chauncey Ware towards a reconciliation, together with incidental items of Newport news. Mrs. Ware had allowed semi-official information to be conveyed to Justin that she would recognize his marriage with Vivian if he would abandon the musical profession, and enter a certain banking-house where she could procure him a reasonably good position, with prospects of a partnership. Justin had said in reply, somewhat truculently, that his marriage was recognized by the church, and to some extent by mankind, and that he did not think he would make a very good banker ; but that, if his mother-in-law would treat him with the courtesy he was prepared to offer her, he thought they could agree admirably. It appeared, furthermore, that Count Fitz-Stuart was believed to have ratified a treaty with Mrs. Farley Blazer, by which he consented to cede himself to Miss Ruth, in consideration of sundry state obligations, which the count had incurred, being assumed by Mrs. Blazer; and that the engagement of Lord Hawkstane and Miss Tilly Blazer had been announced.

With regard to the latter piece of gossip, Oliphant, who read Justin’s communication in Roger’s office on Exchange Place, observed, “The milk and water have coalesced at last. I don’t know which dilutes the other the most.”

Justin’s allusions to his own affairs, however, set Oliphant thinking as to how he could help the boy ; more particularly since Justin had remarked in his letter, “ I have entered on a harder struggle than I foresaw, but I am not afraid.”

He went to his lawyer, the very next morning. “ I’m about to go away from New York,” he said, “ for an extended absence. There are some little things that ought to be arranged; and I think, to provide against accidents, I’d better make a new will.”

The making of the will did not take long, but in it there was a provision for Justin. Oliphant did not expect that to be of immediate use; but he wanted to lead up to an arrangement which he now proceeded to effect, whereby certain regular payments were to be made to Justin, in such a way that he could not avoid accepting them, ostensibly to aid the continuance of his musical studies.

He also inquired of the lawyer about Raish, whose case he found had been set to come up before Judge Hixon, in the course of a month or so. “ There won’t be the ghost of a chance for him, I hear,” said the legal adviser. " Great pity — not so much on his account, but for his excellent family connections. His relatives will feel it severely.”

On returning to the Van Voort, he made up his mind to take the California trip : somehow, though he believed that he never should think of Octavia again without a repulsion that fell little short of animosity, he could not bring himself to leave the country while she was in it. And having come to his conclusion, he wrote and posted a letter to Justin, announcing his speedy departure ; giving him also a general sketch of what had happened at his last visit to High Lawn.

The next afternoon’s mail-delivery brought him the few lines that had been wrung from Octavia, the day before, by her silent self-reproaches. If this missive had come a few hours later, it would have failed to reach him, because, growing restless, he had determined to start that night for California. As it was, he read it, folded it up, and put it in his pocket with a slight sigh, and a recurrent pang of the first wretchedness which Octavia’s refusal had inflicted upon him. He took it as one more evidence of the irony which had controlled his whole career, that she should not have come to her present state of mind until she had wrought irreparable havoc with him. Of what use was her repentance to him, now ?

Before beginning to pack, he read the letter a second time, preparatory to burning it. But, as he read, a sudden and wild thrill of renewed hope coursed through him. Octavia’s words developed, as he thought, a double meaning. “ I was wrong in my treatment of you. . . . Uncertain whether you will return here, and even if you did so we should not be likely to meet, I suppose.” . . . Might not these phrases be a roundabout way of saying that she had erred in not accepting his love, and wished that he would return and see her ? He could not reason about it; he only felt; and his recent conviction that Octavia had inspired in him a resentment amounting to hatred did not seem worth even passing notice. California became an impossibility ; vanished, in short. It was imperative to get to Newport. Too late for the afternoon train, he telephoned for a state-room on the boat. Every room was engaged; but this only stimulated his eagerness to go. There was not much time remaining, and hastily packing up his things he took a coupé, drove down through the city to the wharves, and went on board the steamer, with the intention of staying up all night, or dozing in the big saloon.

Before the start, he met, in the crowd of many hundreds that was drifting about the loudly upholstered cabins, clogging the stairs, and packing itself away on the open decks, Perry Thor burn. “ How did you come here ? ” exclaimed Oliphant.

“ I had to run on for a day, on business,” Perry explained, with a smile which only half concealed some unpleasant thought. He had really come to look into his affairs, and to perfect a scheme for making up as well as he could the losses his father had inflicted upon him. “ The old man’s on hoard, too. Got a room, have you ? ” he continued. “ Awfully crowded to-night.”

“ No,” said Oliphant; “ but I’m in a hurry. I was just thinking I might have taken the late train and got oft at Providence. The boat’s cooler, though.”

Perry offered him one of the berths in his state-room, as he and his father were separate ; but Oliphant declined it, rather liking the idea of being alone and of passing a sleepless night in reverie upon his revived hopes.

Everything seemed strangely beautiful and joyous to him. As the boat swept around the Battery with easy, omnipotent motion, and steamed up East River, passing miles and miles of masonry on either side, lined by clustering ships whose spars and rigging rose in slim black lines against the background of dense brick or light sky, like the characters of some unknown language inscribed there, the scene stirred and elated him by its might of human interest. It soothed him, too. He knew what misery and squalor swarmed upon those river banks, and what anxious hearts beat in myriads behind the long front of populous buildings ; but he felt that there was a dignity in the human struggle, which was intensified by the desperation of it, and redeemed much of the pettiness and evil. He had had his struggles, also, and could sympathize ; besides, his present happiness filled him with a livelier sense of human brotherhood than he had felt for a long time.

The mellow light of a peaceful sunset that was approaching suffused with delicious radiance the smoky heaps of dulltoned architecture, and glimmered softly on the gray-green waters through which the steamer was plowing. The city melted away like a dream ; the Long Island shore crept off towards the outer ocean; the green banks of Connecticut, with rounded promontories and dim inlets, rolled by. The number of passengers on the decks diminished ; the brass band, which had been blaring with a specious brilliancy at the after end of the saloon, ceased playing: Oliphant began to enjoy comparative solitude. Perry joined him for a while, and they went to supper with old Thorburn. Afterwards Oliphant and Perry smoked a cigar or two on the after-deck. Finally the widower was left entirely alone, and went forward to the upper deck at the bow.

It was night now. The stars were shining in great multitude and beauty ; the golden points or crimson spots like fading coals, that marked the position of lighthouses on either coast, came out at irregular intervals, registering the progress of the voyage, then sank back into invisibility. The great steamer proceeded on her way with throb and beat and shudder ; with her four decks — orlop, cabin, hurricane, main; with her double cordon of state-rooms arranged like a system of cells; with her masses of costly merchandise, her heterogeneous crowd of costly passengers, her colored lanterns that glowed above her like luminous insects of large size, hovering in the air and accompanying her movement. There was no stir of life upon her at this hour ; and Oliphant, sitting close to the cabin wall, well wrapped up against the night chill, looked ahead over the dimly gleaming Sound, and meditated. He was very confident of his coming happiness ; all his doubts were over ; there was a bounding exultation in his blood. The frustrations and disappointments that had beset him all his life seemed to be at an end; he was sure that he was about to enter upon that period of contentment and enjoyable activity for the hope of which we all live. How absurd his passing thought of suicide, a few days before, must have seemed to him then !

The steamer went on: the broad, foamy wake behind her seemed to weave itself into a record of the forsaken past, and every pulsation of the engines was to Oliphant like the expectant beat of his own heart, moving towards a bright future. A thin shrouding of mist was drawn over the stars, after a while, which was occasionally dispersed, and then returned to dim the prospect. The steamer began blowing signals now and then from her pipes. Presently, signals in a similar tone were heard somewhere in advance ; a vessel of the same line was approaching. The two damp and screaming voices seemed to establish an understanding, as the red and gold and green of the other boat’s lights came into sight through the fog, like the gleaming eyes of a monster. She was steering to the right. Nevertheless, suddenly she changed her direction, swerved quickly around, and came swiftly towards the New York boat, head on.

There was a quick, excited ringing of engine-room bells ; there was more blowing of whistles; but nothing served to avert the catastrophe. The Newport boat loomed up clearly in the fog, for an instant; and then there came a violent shock, followed by the ripping and tearing and groaning of rended wood. The New York boat’s engines stopped ; she was fatally wounded by the other, and floated helpless on the tide.

At once an indescribable tumult arose among her passengers. The saloon lights went out. Innumerable people burst from the state-rooms like resurrected bodies, and ran madly hither and thither in their white garments, silent or with loud shrieks. The rush of scalding steam, escaping from the engine-room with a deep roar of release, partially muffled these cowardly cries, and strangled many of the flying figures; but the noise and tumult on board were strangely in contrast with the silence of the night that surrounded and shut in all this trouble like a vast and stilly tomb.

A few found life-preservers ; others seized upon chairs, or doors, which they or some one else had wrenched off, no one knows how ; and many who could swim leaped overboard without anything to aid them in floating. Everything that occurred, all the things that were done, occupied so short a space of time that the results did not seem to proceed from any conscious action. Countless heads of people, swimming, struggling, or drowning, were sprinkled in black dots on the water.

The steamer had lurched somewhat, but did not appear to be sinking. Immediately upon the collision, Oliphant had clambered up to the topmost deck, and had gone aft that way. Perry Thorburn, who, in the midst of a frantic, pushing throng on the open canopied deck just below, was looking vainly for his father, saw Oliphant leaning down and peering over from above. He shouted to him and pointed towards the water, and Oliphant nodded. Still, some minutes elapsed before he leaped: with many others who could not swim, he preferred to take the last chances on the doomed vessel. In a minute or two, however, after Perry bad thrown himself from the. rail, a twisted lance of flame burst from the boat’s side : fire had broken out on board.

Perry was a good swimmer, and had struck out towards the other steamer, which, after recoiling from the shock, had sheered off, and was now getting out boats. But he paused very soon, treading water and turning to look again for his father. A quantity of broken timbers, boxes, and other buoyant objects were already drifting about in the water, and he found it advisable to get hold of one of these and rest a while. When the fire leaped forth, he pushed still nearer the wreck. The flames increased, and lit up the broad, liquid surface around him: it was then that he saw the bulky form of his father sliding down a rope, which he had evidently tied to a post and flung into the water. Perry began making his way in that direction. Old Thorburn had not much skill in swimming, but he succeeded in getting a little way out. He kept casting about for some artificial aid. Near him was a woman, with a small child in her arms, who, almost by a marvel, had got hold of a long bench, and was sustaining herself by it. Thorburn came up with her and caught at the wood, apparently much fatigued. The bench was not large enough to keep them both up: the woman expostulated.

Thorburn was wild with the danger of his situation. There was to him, no doubt, something unsurpassably outrageous in the idea that he, the owner of the steamer, with all his wealth, his power in Wall Street and among the railroads, his vast plans and teeming resources, should not only sustain an actual heavy financial loss by the accident, but should be put in peril of his life, struggling there in the salt tide like a common individual of the general public, or as if he were of no more account than a drowning rat. Small wonder if his heavy mouth grew fierce and his indignant eyes more belligerent than usual.

He began to pound the woman’s hands unmercifully, in order to make her loose her hold.

Perry, who was still a good distance away, shouted to his father, sharply : “ Don’t do that, dad ! Stop, I say ! I ’m coming.” At the same time he was exerting every muscle to propel himself and his piece of flotsam to the spot.

It was virtual murder that was being attempted before his eyes, and the person who sought to destroy another’s life was his own father ! This Perry perceived clearly ; and the sight of the deed and the thought of its awful significance were more abhorrent to him than any danger of engulfment and drowning that threatened himself. Words spoken by a man in the water are necessarily somewhat gasping and uncertain in utterance ; and whether it was from this cause, or the plashing of the waves around him, or the increasing hum of the flames on the boat, or the conflict of cries from other throats, old Thorburn seemed not to hear his son’s appeal. He continued to beat the helpless woman, encumbered by her child, and to tear her hands away from her accidental raft.

So unequal a contest could not last long. It was apparently but a few seconds before the unknown woman yielded, and dropped away from the frail support. But at that supreme juncture, with the fate of suffocation and death closing upon her, the heart of the woman was unselfish: it gave what might prove to be its final beating, its last impulse, to an effort on behalf of her still more helpless baby, who, benumbed by the unwonted situation, was not even conscious of the deadly peril. She lifted her child into the air as high as she could with one arm, while with the other she vaguely and instinctively sought to delay her sinking.

Just then Perry, who was drawing nearer, saw another dark mass approaching her, only a few feet away. It was a man, clinging to a broken timber. The man signaled the woman with a cry:

“ Here ! ” She heard him, and with a last desperate turn and bewildered floundering through the thick water she succeeded in grasping the means of rescue that he offered. That, also, was very slight; insufficient for the floating of two persons. But the man who had called to her scarcely waited to test it before he abandoned it entirely.

For an instant he lifted his face heavenward, as if gazing at the stars, which now beamed mildly down upon the fearful and glaring spectacle of the steamer in conflagration and her scattered victims; for the scurrying mists had disappeared. Ay, thus he fronted those stars, which Count Fitz-Stuart had wearily dismissed as being “so old,” and Raish had adopted as figuring the glowing butts of cigars he had smoked. Then he cast himself off, and disappeared beneath the low-crested waves.

While the face was turned upward, however, the broadening wall of fire from the steamer’s side had shed upon it a vivid illumination, and Perry had been able to recognize the man.

It was Oliphant.

“ Oliphant, old boy! ” he screamed with hoarse desperation. “ Wait! Where are you ? ”

Where ? Where indeed ? no answer came to Perry’s shout. It was impossible to determine at the moment whether Oliphant rose again, or not; for, despite the ghastly distinctness of the scene, everything that happened was rapid, confused, bewildering, and almost unreal. The surface of the Sound seemed to have grown smoother, as if subdued by a terror of what was taking place. Perry swam close to the stranger woman, and began assisting her. Boats had begun to pick up some of the survivors. He could not bear to approach or even look at his murderous old father, who still puffed, fumed, and splashed, in his efforts to advance by means of the half-submerged bench. The flames poured roaring upward from the steamer, in deep volumes, wide belts, thick coils, volatile spirals, — ruddy, crimson, or like melted gold, — and the bones of the mighty structure were heard to crack as if she had been in the grasp of a fiery anaconda. Their terrific splendor was reflected in the flood so intensely, so universally, that Perry seemed to himself to be swimming through a burning lake of Hell.

Again came the question, where was Oliphant ? Perry could not abandon the belief that, somehow or other, his friend had been rescued ; yet the picture of that face looking starward was stamped upon his mind; he saw it subsiding into the vague, relentless wash of the waves. He imagined the stalwart but helpless figure of that quiet, manly man going down, down, down into the silent, unknown depths; and he could feel, very nearly as if it were his own experience, the strangling sensation, the struggle against suffocation, the final dreamy resignation which, he had heard, accompany death by drowning.

Meanwhile, high over the weltering gleams, over the black eastward smoke of the burning bulk, and the quivering mirror of water that tremulously gave back a glow of red, the stars hung poised in eternal flight — calm, restful, yet distributed over the sky as capriciously as if they had just been lodged in their places by some haphazard volley from an exploded world.

XIX.

LOVE AT LAST.

Dana Sweetser, whose great cares and responsibilities had aided in making the ravages of time more apparent upon his countenance, was engaged, on the morning that followed the steamboat disaster, in an elaborate toilet. He had mourned at length over some colored socks which his laundress had just returned in a bleached condition, owing to some vicious compound used in the washing, and was reflecting upon the disappointments of life, as he softened with powdered magnesia the over-rubicund tint which a liberal diet had begun to bestow upon his nose, when Ids valet burst into the room with a rumor of what had happened. Two or three gem eral telegrams had been received, which, among other details, announced that Mr. Thorburn had been lost. Dana was terribly broken down by this information : even his interest in his personal appearance was pathetically subdued; and as soon as he could put himself de cently together, he sallied forth to gain further particulars.

The report in regard to Thorburn proved to be wrong; for both he and Perry were among the saved. There had been a great sacrifice of life, but, consid ering the nature of the calamity, a surprisingly large number of people had been rescued. When the New York papers arrived, after noon, with fuller accounts than had yet been received, the circumstance of one man attempting to force a mother and child away from their only means of safety was related, among various other startling and curious particulars which the survivors had given to correspondents, and roused general execrations; but Thorburn, being unknown to the mother — who had also reached the shore alive — was not identified as the wretch. He was in Newport by the time the papers came, and was met by a great many telegrams and sundry effusive callers, congratulating him on his personal good fortune.

Perry remained at Watch Hill, the nearest inhabited point on the coast, whither the rescued had been conveyed, and where many bodies of the drowned either floated in or were brought ashore. He was looking for some trace of Oliphant. . . .

Late in the afternoon he entered Newport, completely exhausted, and drove in a hired carriage slowly up Pelham Street, unwilling to go to his father’s house, and bent upon engaging some bachelor quarters which he knew had been vacated a few days before. It was a lovely afternoon : the declining sun sent long, reddish rays between the old white houses, soft beams that caught the light dust and gave it a tint as delicate as peach-bloom, or smote the outstretched branches of trees, and woke them to strange ardor of coloring, set off by the cool green in shadow and the first dull brown of changing foliage. A scanty drift of fallen leaves was blown occasionally along the sidewalks by the September wind, with a dry, rattling whisper. The sunbeams twinkled, too, upon the turning wheel-spokes that were plying on the avenue, as Perry reached the Park. A pink-coated fox-hunter crossed the head of the street, with his nag at a walk, holding his hunting-crop languidly, and exhibiting himself in a light of meritorious and manly fatigue: he was doing the heroic, for the benefit of that sybaritic society which rolled by him so suavely in the comfort of its stylish turnouts. Newport was still itself: smiling, serene, light-hearted ; rejoicing in the gentle gratification of being almost English. Put the sight did not soothe Perry: it sickened him. Life at Newport, which a few days before had seemed so proud, so splendid and fair, became suddenly in his eyes a pretentious patchwork, a tiling of gorgeous shreds and tatters, gay as a fool’s motley, and covering only a mass of petty or flippant traits of character, bound together by a restless desire for superficial pleasure. He had just been brought face to face with the most fearful realities ; he had witnessed an act of perfect self-sacrifice; and now, as he came from that experience, with a burden of unspeakable sorrow on his heart, this world of ostentatious levity was a positive offense to him.

He obtained the rooms he wanted, sent for his own servant, and some clothes from his father’s house, and then despatched messengers to ascertain where he could see Josephine; lying down, meanwhile, to rest.

During the two days since she had written to Oliphant, Octavia’s mood had been brightening. The fine warm ivory of her cheeks took on a delicate tinge of rose; her vivacity, always fresh and in force, was exquisitely, unconsciously, varied by a tremor of feeling, a more genial ardor of sympathy with every one and with everything that was going on, which made it doubly enchanting. She did not dare to hope much ; she scarcely reflected at all ; the claims of the past upon her and the question of loyalty to Gifford’s memory retained no hold. She confessed nothing except that she was possessed by a sweet prescience that soon she should be at peace with Oliphant and united to him. On the night when he set out upon his journey to Newport, she went to a large ball given by the Spanish minister — one of the last and most iridescent phases of the expiring season. The entertainment was dazzling in the highest degree. An immense tent had been connected with the minister’s house, extending over a large stretch of lawn ; and in the interior, walled with an odorous wilderness of extravagant plants in flower, the dancing took place, on a floor of perfect smoothness, made for the occasion. The weather was warm, and both in order to cool the place and for the sake of decoration, a grotto of ice had been contrived at the farther end, through which changing lights of blue and green and yellow fire were thrown at intervals, transforming the glittering blocks to a fluorescent mass. The whole house was spectacular in the richness and glow of its appointments, its illuminations, its floral adornment; and the dense assembly that circulated through it flashed and shone with a fabulous magnificence of beautiful costumes and sparkling jewels. Octavia took her place in the scene as a natural part of it, and held her own with ease. She drew quietly to herself the best of attention ; she danced frequently, with the greatest enjoyment ; and those who had seen most of her noticed the uncommon buoyancy of her talk and bearing.

Yet, when the hour came for going away, she herself was surprised at the subtile depression that weighed upon her. The ice-grotto had begun to melt, and was on the point of collapse ; the chemical lights had faded; and at just about that time, the last satiated flames that had consumed the steamer on the Sound were throwing their exhausted ribbons of fire into the melancholy air.

In her room, Octavia remained awake for a while, to hear the approach of the boat; but its ominous though welcome roll of thunder from the booming paddles did not come to her ears. The failure made her somewhat uneasy, yet at last she fell asleep, without being able to explain it, and slept on until near noon. When she woke, she had a conviction that Oliphant would appear before nightfall. She prepared herself for that meeting, with the half-shy yet tender and minute care that a woman uses — in a tribute almost devout to the lover’s ideal of her — when she is on the eve of seeing the man she holds dearest. Not a detail of her personal appearance was decided upon, without reference to this great anticipation.

But alas, Oliphant did not come. On looking at her paper, which for a moment did not seem to her worth reading on a day that she believed was to be so joyously memorable, Octavia’s fluttering expectations received an abrupt check; and soon, although she had heard not a syllable from Oliphant and no hint of him was given in the report of the disaster, her suspense became unbearable.

“ Do you know,” she asked Vivian, whom she immediately went to see, " whether Mr. Oliphant was on hoard ? ”

“ Mr. Oliphant! What put that into your head ? ” the bride exclaimed. “ Of course not. He’s gone to California.”

Octavia was bewildered, and began to be pained by an unforeseen anxiety lest he had not received her letter. She told Vivian of her writing; and then Vivian was puzzled, too. It was resolved between them that Craig should try, by telegraphing, to ascertain whether such a person as Eugene Oliphant had been among the passengers.

The answer came to him at length, in the night.

That same evening, also, Perry saw Josephine. She was visiting again in Newport; but as it was two or three hours before he slept off his fatigue, he did not arrive at the house until nine. When she met him, he was so pale, so haggard, so worn, that she started back in affright.

“What is it?” she cried. “I heard of the accident, after your messenger came. Was your father really lost ? ”

“No,” said Perry, his voice choking. “ If you can come out, I will tell you.”

Josephine threw a light wrap over her shoulders, and they emerged into the grounds, which were near those of Octavia’s villa. Without a word he walked down towards the water, and she followed him. They could see the bay dancing softly, mystically, in the light of the new moon, while the boundary-trees in front of them blotted the silvery radiance with a pattern of black, twisted trunks, sharply and uncouthly distinct. Then Perry paused.

“ It was not my father,” he said. “ It was Oliphant who was lost.”

A cry of horror and of suffering escaped from Josephine’s lips. She leaned forward, and hid her face upon her arm, against one of the trees. For the first instant, her emotion seemed to Perry only what he might have expected ; but it lasted so long that he began to question. With a rush, then, the truth came to his mind.

“ You loved that man ! ” he exclaimed.

She lifted her head, at this, and met his intense, jealous scrutiny without wavering. There was a riddle in her eyes, still, as there always had been, and doubtless always would be; and in this semi-obscurity of the night it was more than ever hopeless to attempt solving that riddle. Her face was very white, he could see; yet he could almost have doubted whether the voice which answered him came from the softly moving lips, or from the shadows that surrounded her.

“ Yes,” it whispered. “ I loved him. ’

Something like an imprecation rose to Perry’s lips, but he only groaned : “ I wish I could have died in his place! ”

“ You must n’t say that,” Josephine returned, with strange calmness, though speaking hardly above her breath. “ You have no right to wish it.”

“ Why ?” he demanded, bitterly.

“ Because it was fate. You must accept what fate brings.”

“ Ah, if it had brought me you ! ” he began, in a passionate way. “ But no! You never could have married me; and even if things were different, I could hardly offer myself to you now.” He went on rapidly, pouring out an account of the catastrophe and his father’s brutal conduct. “ After that,” he said.

“ how should I hope to win a womanlike you ? The son of such a father ! I suppose I have the same traits in me, somewhere.”

“But you’re not like him,” Josephine returned, coming suddenly to his defense, against himself. “ If you were you would n’t condemn him.”

“ Then you think there’s some chance for me ? ” he asked, giving way to a slight laugh of scorn. It was succeeded by a burst of earnest entreaty. “Oh, Josephine,” he cried, “ is there any hope, any possibility, that I may win you by and by ? I will be content with any love you can give, if you think you might he happier with me than without me. Only let mo know if I may keep this hope before my mind ! ”

“ I cannot speak of it now,” she said, in her mysterious tone, that was neither cold nor warm, but neutral, and shuddering a little. “It may be our fate — but not now ; not now.” After a silence she asked, “ Is this what you came here to say ? ”

“ No,” he assured her. “ I want you to help me iu a difficult task. This news must be broken to Octavia.”

He then explained to her that he had found upon Oliphant, tightly folded in a letter case within a covered pocket, the note Octavia had sent him. It was somewhat water-soaked, but legible still, and Perry had been able to guess from it something of the events which had inspired it.

Josephine consented to go with him to High Lawn, and he waited outside the door, while she went in to see Octavia.

“It is all over, Octavia,” she said, quietly, as the widow entered to greet her. “You and I have been separated lately; but there is no need of it any more.”

Octavia came up and caught her arm, with a quick, apprehensive demand for her meaning. Briefly and tenderly, as well as she could, Josephine imparted everything.

Octavia took the blurred letter, and glanced at it for an instant; then sank into a chair, gazing wanly at the woman who stood motionless opposite her. She shrank, and seemed to wither visibly.

“ O God, O God ! ” she cried. “ I have killed him. And how I am punished ! That it should be my letter brought back to me, and that you, Josephine, should be the one to bring it! ”

A heart-broken moan buried anything further that she might have been moved to say, and the tears streamed from beneath her eyelids.

Oliplfant was interred at Woodlawn, beside little Effie; and Octavia, without vehemence, but resolutely, and setting aside every conventional consideration, took her share in all the final dispositions. With Justin she went to place the flowers around him in his coffin, and looked once more upon her hapless lover. His face was not like that of a dead man; it was that of one who had been awakened and told that he might depart from imprisonment. True, the sinister and perhaps ironical change which comes over the countenances of those who are to open their lips no more on earth had fallen upon it. But through the baffling dumbness of its slightly pinched lines — that peculiar silence that seemed to be voluntary, like a mask put on in order that the wearer might conceal some intelligence too important to be betrayed by a look — there stole a far-off, wonderful, calm light of exalted joy.

What had he last thought of, as he passed away ? She imagined the noble scorn that must have swept through every vein and nerve, when he measured the monstrous selfishness of old Thorburn, and instantly threw into the balance against it his own sacrifice. The final consciousness in his mind must have been one of absolute, magnanimous love ; not for her, nor for any one individual, but a sentiment so large and ideal that it made the laying down of his life for a woman he had never seen before, and for her little child, a pleasure surpassing any other. Whether that woman was valuable in herself or not, she came before him in that tragic hour as a type of motherhood, she presented to him an image of life in its most sacred form ; and the love in his heart went out towards it with perfect purity and power.

Such were the broken meditations that came to Octavia, while she arranged the flowers. She performed the task without flinching; yet a few irrepressible tears fell softly upon her hands, and the hands trembled slightly, like leaves wet with dew, just stirring in the breath of daybreak.

A year later, Octavia was again at Newport for a few days, soon after the season began. The place was still beautiful to her, and she remembered her old enthusiasm for it; but the spectacle of its life no longer held any charm. And yet how short a time since she had been a part of it! Was it out of that vanity and frivolity that her own folly had arisen, which led her to jest maliciously with Oliphant’s love?

Once while she was there, she saw Josephine and Perry Thorburn driving together, and was conscious in a dreamy way of the fact, which had been imparted to her, that they were engaged; but she had no meeting with them. Much more important and distinct to her mind was a long, kind letter which she received from Vivian Craig, written in Germany, whither Justin had gone after Oliphant’s legacy was made over to him.

“ I am wearing your diamonds that you gave me for a wedding present,” said Vivian in her letter, “ and baby has been crying for them. Just as I write, though, she is laughing again at their pretty sparkle.”

So, in the quick round of life, the widow’s tears had become the moment’s plaything of a child, and a rainbow coloring flashed from them.

The last day that Octavia spent in Newport, she went out on foot, and walked over the bleak downs where Oliphant had wandered on that dreary day of his defeat. She arrived at the great house near the cave ; but the place was closed and empty now, and she could go down to the rocks without intrusion. For a long while she sat lost in thought upon the lonely little ledge on which, when she last visited it, Oliphant had sat with her. It was very silent there; the waters hardly murmured in the cave : no one was near. What an immense solitude surrounded her! And how much greater was the solitude of her own heart! Yet she felt a presence attending her: the soft breeze, that crept up to her and tenderly played with a tress or two of straying hair upon her forehead, was like Oliphant’s hand caressing her. The slumbering ocean, too, which had absorbed his life, seemed conscious of him.

But had he not once loved another woman, and she another man ? “Which was the true love ? She could not unravel the knot; but at least she knew that, whatever the limitations of one heart or of individual devotion, the great ideal passion survived through all these changes. Oliphant had brought something of rare worth into her life ; had given her a higher conception of love. To this extent she shared in it, that it had touched her in passing, and that she now knew its quality. Though she had failed to grasp and keep it, the power and the fragrance remained with her still, like the lingering, lifting odor of the sea blown in at random through an artificial atmosphere.

Love had come, and love had gone. How strange that it had not stayed with Oliphant, who so well deserved to have it! How strange that he should have chosen to follow her, instead of Josephine ; and that Josephine’s passion for him should have been so blindly frustrated ! Octavia herself was also left alone. And yet, though love had thus come and gone, it was somehow here at last.

Octavia rose from the ledge to walk back : she was about to leave Newport forever. As she stood for a moment there, her small, fine figure was relieved against the gray bastion of rock like a silhouette.

She was clad wholly in black — black never more to be abandoned.

George Parsons Lathrop.