Temperance stayed to the house-cleaning. It was lucky, she could not help saying, as house-cleaning must always be after a funeral, that it should have happened at the regular cleaning-time. She went back to her own house as soon as it was over. Father drove to Milford as usual; Arthur resumed his school, and Aunt Merce, who had at first busied herself in looking over her wardrobe, and selecting from it what she thought could be dyed, folded it away. She passed hours in mother’s room, from which father had fled, crying over her Bible, looking in her boxes and drawers to feed her sorrow with the sight of the familiar things, alternating those periods with her old occupation of looking out of the windows. In regard to myself, and Veronica, she evinced a distress at the responsibility which, she feared, must rest upon her. Veronica, dark and silent, played such heart-piercing strains that father could not bear to hear her; so when she played, for he dared not ask her to desist, he went away. To me she had scarcely spoken since the funeral. She wore the same dress each day one of black silk and a small black mantle, pinned across her bosom. Soon the doors began to open and shut after their old fashion, and people came and went as of old on errands of begging or borrowing.

At the table we felt a sense of haste; instead of lingering, as was our wont, we separated soon, with an indifferent air, as if we were called by business, not sent away by sorrow. But if our eyes fell on a certain chair, empty against the wall, a cutting pang was felt, which was not at all concealed; for there were sudden breaks in our commonplace talk, which diverged into wandering channels, betraying the tension of feeling.

Many weeks passed, through which I endured an aching, aimless melancholy. My thoughts continually drifted through the vacuum in our atmosphere, and returned to impress me with a disbelief in the enjoyment, or necessity of keeping myself employed with the keys of an instrument, which, let me strike ever so cunningly, it was certain I could never obtain mastery over.

One day I went to walk by the shore, for the first time since my return. When I set my foot on the ground, the intolerable light of the brilliant day blazed through me; I was luminously dark, for it blinded me. Picking my way over the beach, left bare by the tide, with my eyes fixed downward till I could see, I reached the point between our house and the lighthouse and turned toward the sea, inhaling its cool freshness. I climbed out to a flat, low rock, on the point; it was dry in the sun, and the weeds hanging from its sides were black and crisp; I put my woolen shawl on it, and stretched myself along its edge. Little pools meshed from the sea by the numberless rocks round me engrossed my attention. How white and pellucid was the shallow near me no shadow but the shadow of my face bending over it nothing to ripple its surface, but my imperceptible breath! By and by a bunch of knotted wrack floated in from the outside and lodged in a crevice; a minute creature with fringed feet darted from it and swam across it. After the knotted wrack came the fragment of a green and silky substance, delicate enough to have been the remnant of a web, woven in the palace of Circe. “There must be a current,” I thought, “which sends them here.” And I watched the inlet for other waifs; but nothing more came. Eye-like bubbles rose from among the fronds of the knotted wrack, and, sailing on uncertain voyages, broke one by one and were wrecked to nothingness. The last vanished; the pool showed me the motionless shadow of my face again, on which I pondered, till I suddenly became aware of a slow, internal oscillation, which increased till I felt in a strange tumult. I put my hand in the pool and troubled its surface.

“Hail, Cassandra! Hail!”

I sprang up the highest rock on the point, and looked seaward, to catch a glimpse of the flying Spirit who had touched me. My soul was brought in poise and quickened with the beauty before me! The wide, shimmering plain of sea its aerial blue, stretching beyond the limits of my vision in one direction, upbearing transverse, cloud-like islands in another, varied and shadowed by shore and sky mingled its essence with mine.

The wind was coming; under the far horizon the mass of waters begun to undulate. Dark, spear-like clouds rose above it and menaced the east. The speedy wind tossed and teased the sea nearer and nearer, till I was surrounded by a gulf of milky green foam. As the tide rolled in I retreated, stepping back from rock to rock, round which the waves curled and hissed, baffled in their attempt to climb over me. I stopped on the verge of the tide-mark; the sea was seeking me and I must wait. It gave tongue as its lips touched my feet, roaring in the caves, falling on the level beaches with a mad, boundless joy!

“Have then at life!” my senses cried. “We will possess its longing silence, rifle its waiting beauty. We will rise up in its light and warmth, and cry, ‘Come, for we wait.’ Its roar, its beauty, its madness we will have all.” I turned and walked swiftly homeward, treading the ridges of white sand, the black drifts of sea-weed, as if they had been a smooth floor.

Aunt Merce was at the door.

“Now,” she said, “we are going to have the long May storm. The gulls are flying round the lighthouse. How high the tide is! You must want your dinner. I wish you would see to Fanny; she is lording it over us all.”

“Yes, yes, I will do it; you may depend on me. I will reign, and serve also.”

“Oh, Cassandra, can you give up yourself?”

“I must, I suppose. Confound the spray; it is flying against the windows.”

“Come in; your hair is wet, and your shawl is wringing. Now for a cold.”

“I never shall have any more colds, Aunt Merce; never mean to have anything to myself entirely, you know.”

“You do me good, you dear girl; I love you”; and she began to cry. “There’s nothing but cold ham and boiled rice for your dinner.”

“What time is it?”

“Near three.”

I opened the door of the dining-room; the table was laid, and I walked round it, on a tour of inspection.

“I thought you might as well have your dinner, all at once,” said Fanny, by the window, with her feet tucked up on the rounds of her chair. “Here it is.”

“I perceive. Who arranged it?”

“Me and Paddy Margaret.”

“How many tablecloths have we?”

“Plenty. I thought as you didn’t seem to care about any regular hour for dinner, and made us all wait, I needn’t be particular; besides, I am not the waiter, you know.”

She had set on the dishes used in the kitchen. I pulled off cloth and all the dishes crashed, of course and sat down on the floor, picking out the remains for my repast.

“What will Mr. Morgeson say?” she asked, turning very red.

“Shall you clear away this rubbish by the time he comes home?”

“Why, I must, mustn’t I?”

“I hope so. Where’s Veronica?”

“She has been gone since twelve; Sam carried her to Temperance’s house.”

I continued my meal. Fanny brought a chair for me, which I did not take. I scarcely tasted what I ate. A wall had risen up suddenly before me, which divided me from my dreams; I was inside it, on a prosaic domain I must henceforth be confined to. The unthought-of result of mother’s death disorganization, began to show itself. The individuality which had kept the weakness and faults of our family life in abeyance must have been powerful; and I had never recognized it! I attempted to analyze this influence, so strong, yet so invisibly produced. I thought of her mildness, her dreamy habits, her indifference, and her incapacity of comprehending natures unlike her own. Would endowment of character explain it that faculty which we could not change, give, or take? Character was a mysterious and indestructible fact, and a fact that I had had little respect for. Upon what a false basis I had gone a basis of extremes. I had seen men as trees walking; that was my experience.

“You’ll choke yourself with that dry bread,” exclaimed Fanny, really concerned at my abstraction.

“Where is my trunk? Did you unlock it?”

“I took from it what you needed at the time: but it is not unpacked, and it is in the upper hall closet.”

She was picking up the broken delf meekly.

“Did you see a small bag I brought? And where’s my satchel? Good heavens! What has made me put off that letter so? For I have thought of it, and yet I have kept it back.”

“It is safe, in your closet, Miss Cassandra; and the box is there.”

“Aunt Merce,” I called, “will you have nothing to eat?”

She laughed hysterically, when she saw what I had done.

“Where is Hepsey, Aunt Merce?”

“She goes to bed after dinner, you know, for an hour or two.”

“She must go from here.”

“Oh!” they both chorused, “what for?”

“She is too old.”

“She has money, and a good house,” said Aunt Merce, “if she must go. I wonder how Mary stood it so long.”

“Turn ’em off,” said Fanny, “when they grow useless.”

Aunt Merce reddened, and looked hurt.

“I shall keep you; look sharp now after your own disinterestedness.”

I wanted to go to my room, as I thought it time to arrange my trunks and boxes; besides, I needed rest the sad luxury of reaction. But word was brought to the house that Arthur had disappeared, in company with two boys notorious for mischief. His teacher was afraid they might have put out to sea in a crazy sailboat. We were in a state of alarm till dark, when father came home, bringing him, having found him on the way to Milford. Veronica had not returned. It stormed violently, and father was vexed because a horse must be sent through the storm for her. At last I obtained the asylum of my room, in an irritable frame of mind, convinced that such would be my condition each day. Composure came with putting my drawers and shelves in order. The box with Desmond’s flowers I threw into the fire, without opening it, ribbon and all, for I could not endure the sight of them. I unfolded the dresses I had worn on the occasions of my meeting him; even the collars and ribbons I had adorned myself with were conned with jealous, greedy eyes; in looking at them all other remembrances connected with my visit vanished. The handkerchief scented with violets, which I found in the pocket of the dress I had worn when I met him at Mrs. Hepburn’s, made me childish. I was holding it when Veronica entered, bringing with her an atmosphere of dampness.

“Violet! I like it. There is not one blooming yet, Temperance says. Why are they so late? There’s only this pitiful snake-grass,” holding up a bunch of drooping, pale blossoms.

“Oh, Verry, can you forgive me? I did not forget these, but I felt the strangest disinclination to look them up.” And I gave her the jewel box and letter.

She seized them, and opened the box first.

“Child-Verry.”

“I never was a child, you know; but I am always trying to find my childhood.”

She took a necklace from the box, composed of a single string of small, beautiful pearls, from which hung an egg-shaped amethyst of pure violet. She fastened the necklace round her throat.

“It is as lucent as the moon,” she said, looking down at the amethyst, which shed a watery light; “I wish you had given it to me before.”

Breaking the seal of the letter, with a twist of her mouth at the coat-of-arms impressed upon it, she shook out the closely written pages, and saying, “There is a volume,” began reading. “It is very good,” she observed at the end of the first page, “a regular composition,” and went on with an air of increasing interest. “How does he look?” she asked, stopping again.

“As if he longed to see you.”

Her eyes went in quest of him so far that I thought they must be startled by a sudden vision.

“How did you find his family?”

“Not like him much.”

“I knew that; he would not have loved me so suddenly had I not been wholly unlike any woman he had known.”

“His character is individual.”

“I should know that from his influence upon you.”

She looked at me wistfully, smoothed my hair with her cool hand, and resumed the letter.

“He thinks he will not come to Surrey with you; asks me to tell him my wishes,” she repeated rapidly, translating from the original. “What do I think of our future? How shall we propose any change? Will Cassandra describe her visit? Will she tell me that he thinks of going abroad?”

She dropped the letter. “What pivot is he swinging on? What is he uncertain about?”

“There must be more to read.”

She turned another page.

“If I go to Switzerland (I think of going on account of family affairs), when shall I return? My family, of course, expected me to marry in their pale; that is, my mother rather prefers to select a wife for me than that I should do it. But, as you shall never come to Belem, her plans or wishes need make no difference to us. If Cassandra would be to us what she might, how things would clear! Don’t you think, my love, that there should be the greatest sympathy between sisters?”

I laughed.

Verry said she did not like his letter much after all. He evidently thought her incapable of understanding ordinary matters. It was well, though; it made their love idyllic.

“Let us speak of matters nearer home.”

“Let us go to my room; the storm is so loud this side of the house.”

“No; you must stay till the walls tremble. Have you seen, Verry, any work for me to do here?”

“Everything is changed. I have tried to be as steady as when mother was here, but I cannot; I whirl with a vague idea of liberty. Did she keep the family conscience? Now that she has gone I feel responsible no more.”

“An idea of responsibility has come to me what plain people call Duty.”

“I do not feel it,” she cried mournfully. “I must yield to you then. You can be good.’

“I must act so; but help me, Verry; I have contrary desires.”

“What do they find to feed on? What are they? Have you your evil spirit?”

“Yes; a devil named Temperament.”

“Now teach me, Cassandra.”

“Not I. Go, and write Ben. Make excuses for my negligence toward you about his letter. Tell him to come. I shall write Alice and Helen this evening. We have been shut off from the world by the gate of Death; but we must come back.”

“One thing you may be sure of though I shall be no help, I shall never annoy you. I know that my instincts are fine only in a self-centering direction; yours are different. I shall trust them. Since you have spoken, I perceive the shadows you have raised and must encounter. I retreat before them, admiring your discernment, and placing confidence in your powers. You convince if you do not win me. Who can guess how your every plan and hope of well-doing may be thwarted? I need say no more?”

“Nothing more.”

She left the room. There would be no antagonism between us; but there would be pain on one side. The distance which had kept us apart was shortened, but not annihilated. What could I expect? The silent and serene currents which flow from souls like Veronica’s and Ben’s, whose genius is not of the heart, refuse to enter a nature so turbulent as mine. But my destiny must be changed by such! It was taken for granted that my own spirit should not rule me. And with what reward? Any, but that of sympathy. But I muttered:

“’I dimly see
My far-off doubtful purpose, as a mother
Conjectures of the features of her child
Ere it is born.’”

The house trembled in the fury of the storm. The waves were hoarse with their vain bawling, and the wind shrieked at every crevice of chimney, door, and window. No answering excitement in me now! I had grown older.