James Harrington and Lina left the
same roof within a few hours of each other, without
warning or explanation. Was it strange that Mabel
should be tortured with wild doubts, or that her son
should believe the step-brother whom he had looked
up to with such honest devotion, and the girl he had
loved so truly, domestic conspirators who had been
deceiving him all the time?
Poor Ralph! these doubts fell with
cruel force on his generous nature. His confidence
was all swept away the best jewel of his
life had fallen off. To him, love had no longer
the holiness of truth. Household trust faith
in human goodness all was disturbed.
He was wild with indignation, torn with a thousand
conflicting feelings; sometimes heart-broken with
grief again, reckless and defiant; then
a spirit of bitter retaliation seized upon him.
What was Lina, with her gentle affections and pretty
reserves, that he should waste a life in regrets for
her, while another, ardent, impassioned, and loving
him madly, was pining to death for the affection he
had thrown away so lavishly for nothing? What,
after all, was there to charm more in one woman than
another? Lina was false; why should he remain
faithful?
These were wild, rash thoughts; but
Ralph was young, tortured in his first love, and tempted
by an artful, impassioned woman, whose perverse will
carried the strength of fate with it.
Still, it was only at times that his
heart rose hotly against its old nature. There
was more of scorn and rage, mingled with the certainty
that Agnes Barker loved him, than of real passion,
but it assuaged the humiliation of Lina’s falsehood,
and the consciousness of her attachment diverted the
grief that would otherwise have consumed him.
Though maddened by all these conflicting passions,
the young man had sought desperately after the lost
girl from the moment her absence was discovered on
the morning after the storm, but she seemed to have
disappeared like a shadow from the earth; for from
the hour when she left Ben Benson’s boat-house,
not a trace of her movements could be found.
For the third time, Ralph went down
to the boat-house to question the old sailor, whom
he found housed up, as he called it, in a fit of sullen
grief, which it required some tact to break in upon.
Ben was sitting in his domicile before
a rousing fire, which he now and then stooped to feed
with hickory logs, till the whole room was filled
with a warm glow of light. So many additions and
ornaments had been added to the boat-house, that it
took the appearance of a ship’s cabin more than
anything else. The fire revealed a trap-door in
the centre of the room, which answered for a gangway,
while coils of rope, carpenters’ tools, cans
of pitch, and bits of iron, all in their place and
ship-shape, as Ben would have said, gave both a busy
and maritime look to the premises.
Everything was very comfortable in
the boat-house, but Ben kept piling on wood and raking
out the coals with an iron bar, as if the heat and
light were still insufficient, when in fact he thought
nothing of either, but was making desperate efforts
to work off the anxieties that had beset him like
so many hounds, ever since his interview with Lina.
“What can a feller do now?”
he said, looking wistfully up to the models of gun-boats,
brigs, and clippers, that occupied the rude shelves
and brackets on the wall, as if taking counsel from
them. “I have sarched the woods from hill
to hill, and nary a sign of her. She ’caint
a gone and fell through the ice, for it’s friz
two feet thick; and, as for running away, or going
for to kill herself, it wasn’t in the gal to
do no sich thing. Ben Benson, you was a
brute, beast, and two or three sarpents to boot, not
to tell the gal all she wanted to know. You obstinate
old wretch, you’ve gone and done it now, and
no mistake. It’s as much as I can do to
keep from knocking you on the head with a marlin-spike,
you sneakin’ old sea-dog! What if she was
dead now, friz stiff agin a tree, or a lyin’
in the bottom of the river, what would you think of
yourself, I’d like to know?”
Thus half in muttered breath, half
in thought, Ben gave forth the burden of his anxieties,
till at last self-reproachful beyond endurance, he
seized a fragment of pine wood, and opening his jack-knife
with superfluous energy, began to whittle, as if his
life depended on sharpening the stick to a point.
He was interrupted by the crunching
sound of snow beneath footsteps that came in haste
toward the boat-house. Ben cut a deep gash into
the wood, and sat motionless, with his hand on the
knife, listening.
“It’s too heavy she
never trod down the snow-crust like that, poor bird!”
and, resuming his work, Ben kicked the shavings he
had made into the fire, and flung the mutilated pine
after them.
“Is’t you, mister Ralph?”
said Ben, rising as the door opened, and seating himself
moodily on a bench, that his guest might come to the
fire. “You look flustered, and out of sorts,
but this isn’t no place to get ship-shape in.
It’s awful lonesome here, sin’ that night.”
“Then, you have heard nothing!”
“No, not a whisper. That
fool, Ben Benson, has been sarching and sarching,
like an old desarter as he is, but it ain’t no
sort o’ good; the gal may be dead for what he
cares a toasting hisself before a fire,
while she may be Mr. James has hearn something.”
“Mr. James Harrington has gone
also,” answered Ralph, bitterly. “It’s
no use searching further. They have fled together.
James Harrington, the man whom I have looked up to
all my life, the saint, the angel; he has disappeared
as she did. They cheated me from the beginning.
He has taken advantage of his wealth, and she what
chance had a poor fellow like me against his millions?
It was hardly worth while to deceive me so shamefully
though; but craft is natural to the sex, I believe.”
There was a struggle between grief and rage in the
young man’s voice, and while his eye blazed
his lips began to quiver.
Ben slowly stooped forward, and resting
an elbow on each knee, touched his fore-fingers thoughtfully
together, while his eyes, clear and honest as those
of a Newfoundland dog, were bent on the young man’s
face. At last he burst forth.
“Ralph Harrington, I should
say, that next to that mule-headed feller, Ben Benson,
as isn’t worth the husks he sleeps on you
was the consarnedest fool that ever sot hisself up
with an opinion. You talk agin wimmen afore the
moustachoes are black on your upper lip, because there’s
something about one on ’em, as you can’t
make out. Then, there’s Mister James, a
man as that ere shark Ben Benson ain’t afeared
to swear by through thick and thin, the most gentlemanliest
Harrington as ever drawd breath, you set up to speak
again him, it’s enough to agrivate a British
admiral.”
Ralph had scarcely heeded this speech,
but stood with one elbow resting upon the rude shelf,
that served as a mantelpiece, sullen and thoughtful.
“I was in hopes you would tell
me something. Oh! Ben, it seems impossible
to believe that fair, young creature so false,”
he said, at length giving way to the feelings that
oppressed him, “what faith can one have in human
nature after this?”
“Mister Ralph Harrington, you
ain’t no sailor, to talk in that ere way.
There’s many a stout ship as goes down in a storm,
with its timbers sound and its masts standing.
Then, agin, there’s others as give themselves
up to the storm, and lead off hither and yon, but get
back to their reckoning, and do good sarvice arter
all. Wimmen are like ships some get
unrigged some founder some go
agin wind and weather, right in the teeth of the world,
and some drift like poor little boats, without compass
or rudder, but yet, the generality cast anchor in deep,
clear water at last, and for one wreck, thousands and
thousands come in with all sails set only
Mister Ralph, remember this. The craft that ales
goes steadily and safe, cuts a still wake; but your
leaky vessels makes any amount of whirlpools as they
go down. It’s only boys,” continued
Ben, taking the tobacco from his mouth, and casting
it indignantly into the fire “It’s
only boys as knows nothing, and men as knows too much,
that ever speak in this ere wholesale way about wimmen.
Ralph, you’re young, that’s all.”
“I am distracted, Ben; Heaven
knows how gladly I would believe her blameless, but
her manner changed toward me so strangely, she was
evidently premeditating this abandonment; but that
she should go off and with him, of all
men upon earth. Oh! Ben, what man, not a
fool, could persist in his faith, after that.”
“I tell you, it wasn’t
that as driv the gal away. She wanted to know
something as I wouldn’t tell her. Something
more’en Ben Benson reckoned on, was in her mind;
she got discouraged because he wouldn’t tell
her.”
“If I’d told her, she’d
a been here now.” Here Ben covered his face
with both hands and cried out, “God forgive
me! God forgive me!”