"But then I saw as calmly why this guarded and mysterious course had been taken, and why the same craven fears and miserable self-interest which dictated the promise would also compel the keeping of it. There was no good cause then for apprehension or despondency yet. The time agreed upon had not expired-only two of the three days. This was the last. The last!-ay, verily; for if before the next dawn those letters came not back to me, they would arrive too late; they would be waste and worthless whenever recovered; the cruel, needless mischief would be effected; and a cold, heavy shadow of suspicion and misery would have fallen, never to be chased away, upon happy and innocent lives, valued and loved almost like my own. "The consultation with myself being now over, I sought exercise and bodily relief in walking about the room, varying the direction occasionally, but preserving a regular pace for a long time; stopping when steps in the street seemed to pause at the door; and, whenever a knock was heard, opening the door of my room to know what had happened. Then my walk would be renewed. 66 Gradually this measured pace grew quicker, my strides less regular, my hands clutched at various things as I passed them, and tapped the wainscoat when I went near it. My arms took a swinging motion, and my whole body swung indeed, pendulum fashion, as I walked. "A sympathy with the large old clock below, which I could plainly hear strike, seemed suddenly to possess me-an intense sympathy it became, and then it grew malicious. I could have found some pleasure in winding it up, in stopping it, and then setting it going again; in putting it back, and swinging the great weights about; and as its loud, sharp, continuous tones-one, two, three-striking the hour, rung up the stairs, and seemed to fill the apartment with sound; they so smote upon some chord of the mind, that I could not forbear imitating the sounds in a kind of savage and impatient mockery of them. "There was a piano in the room-never opened, for you know I can't tell one key from another. But now I sat down before the instru ment (little was there, my friend, of merriment or music in me at that anxious moment), and ran my hands along it artlessly, to and fro, in any direction, making discordant noises, until I felt as though the cool smooth ivory had become hot and blistering to my fingers; when with a crash that brought up an inquiry from below, I closed the piano. 'Nothing is the matter,' I said. 'Any letter, any packet, any message, any card, any visiter whatever?' Nothing, nobody. the "Out-of-door objects looked no brighter than before; but throwing up the sash, I leaned upon the window-sill, and through the thickening fog, scanned the faces of all who approached the house, for seemed likely, from the direction they came in, to call. But they all passed on; hour stole slowly away, minute by minute; and I then sat down, placing my watch on the table to look at it, and brood upon the imperceptible motion of that apparently fixed hour-hand which, nevertheless, travelled so fast. "Long, long I looked-and yet the time so occupied was but half-anhour; a half-hour of forced calm, during which a fierce tempest of emotion had been raging in my soul, more violently because controlled and shut within. My eye had never wandered from the watch, my reckoning was never once broken, but the seconds were faithfully counted as they passed-and all that long, gloomy, horrid interval measured but half-anhour; all that anxiety, fear, anguish, torture-that suffering, dreadful as any that crime can undergo, was crowded into thirty minutes. "How many hours of the allotted three days remained yet unexpired? Several, yet very few; a time almost too short for hope; and yet an age, if measured by the torments of suspense. "Sudden and impetuous movements, or forced and painful quietude varied the time; but without rendering me unmindful of one passing moment of it. Rapid turns about the room in every direction, watching from the window as long as any creature in the shape of mortal messenger could be seen approaching, piling coals upon the fire, and hurrying to the staircase-sometimes half-down it, sometimes to the bottom, to the door, when any one knocked at it-then returning to drink large draughts of water, but eating nothing-holding the chair into which I had flung myself, very tight, as if by that muscular effort to control the restless mind, and retain myself in the seat;-these were the chief changes in my condition, as the day died, and the cold, black, bitter evening came on. "I sat in front of a large fire, my head bent over a book, on the smallprint pages of which the blaze shone. I was not reading a word; but merely counting how many letters there were in a page. As I looked into the fire, forms of picturesque beauty and wild distortion met my view; and, amidst a crowd of images formed by the bright cinders, I discerned the figure of Mirabel-the very likeness of Charles Kemble in former days -smiling amidst the horrid tortures of suspense, and masking agony with easy politeness, as the cut-throats crowded about him. I saw the whole scene beautifully acted in fire, and felt it in my brain. "Time dragged wearily and painfully. Removing from my finger a small piece of skin, I cut the flesh away with it, almost unwarned by any sensation of pain. I pared my finger-nails, for the sake of doing something, no matter what, to the very quick, and the blood started all round the tips. And then I flew to the window where all was dark, not to look out now, but to listen to footsteps. "An interval of calm, however, there was. I reasoned in favour of the remaining time. Time there yet was for the restoration of the packet, and the security of those dear to me. Yes, I again persuaded myself that there was hope, high hope; the compact had not been violated; and dark as the long day had been, the midnight might yet look golden as a summer's noon. "Silence followed, and the semblance of repose; but after some time the hush became absolutely intolerable, and feebly breaking through it, I could plainly hear the low ticking of the clock at a distance below stairs, which I had never heard before. It disturbed me. Had it been loud, sharp, it might have been unnoticed or easily borne; but it distressed me by its deadness and monotony. It was a sound of ill-omen, and announced momently that my hopes were perishing. Every tick seemed to tell me that my life-blood was oozing away drop by drop at a time-one drop for each audible tick. I could bear it no longer. "There was a crash of glass-how I caused it-and with what—I hardly know; but the act, the sound, was a welcome and indispensable relief. The next volley of discords, if less startling, was even more yet stunning than the first. The new crash came from the piano, all the powers of which I pressed into the service with a kind of frantic and solemn glee, to drown the dull, small ticking that had almost driven me mad. "Utterly unconscious of any thing save the noises thus created, and the impossibility of hearing all other sounds still more intolerable, I continued this experiment, it might be for a minute, or for an hour, or for a day. I had lost all power to reckon time. When just as the insane dashing and crashing of all the discords into one extraordinary combination had attained its height, the door was opened-though I heard no sound at all. "The loud double knock below had been unheard; the clatter of the maiden-messenger rushing up the stairs had been unheard; nay, her shrill exclamation beneficently set up within a few inches of my ear, "Sir, here's the packet l' "Even this had been entirely unheard for the exact period of two seconds; but ere the third second had fled, I could have clasped her to my heart, or trebled her wages, to atone for my neglect and insensibility. "Oh, packet invaluable! My lost treasure restored! How soon after that Long Day my heart grew young again, though my head has been twenty years older-I mean the gray outside of it-ever since!" These Long Days, which are the common lot, custom (the sure and silent alleviator of every ill that is inevitable and must be borne), so far shortens, as by slow degrees to adapt the burden to the power of endurance. The heavy task of yesterday seems lighter to-day; distance lessens when the eye, grown familiar with it, learns to measure its extent we find the two-mile walk to our own dwelling, stretched into three or four when we are travelling on an unknown road to the house of the stranger. ; The long, dull, weary day of factory-labour, restless, vigilant, and incessant, gathers, nevertheless, with a less grievous weight, hour by hour, upon the overtasked heart, than would the slow and lengthening minutes of the morrow, if on that sunless day the father saw his children, spared from grinding toil, pining with hunger. The day devoted to watchful tending by the bed of pain, when the being we most deeply revere is helpless, prostrate, and in peril-wears out less darkly than the fixed and hopeless monotony of the after-day, when such tending is needed no Short and merry is the long sad time, from early morn to noon, from eve into deep midnight, passed on the becalmed sea by the impatient heart-sick mariner, compared with that one day-that new, long, marvellous lifetime, sweet, and yet most horrible to bear-when the sunrise sees him sole survivor of the wreck, and the sunset leaves him hanging to a wave-washed point, or floating on a spar, alone and in the dark between sea and sky. more. THE LOST SHIP. THERE rose from the deep a mighty wave, That shunn'd the moss of the ocean's bed; rage Fiercer and wilder power, Now dipping its head in the surging sea, It played with the fisherman's bark so light, Then left it to follow some scheme more wild. It caught the voice of the new-born breeze, These wedded destroyers onward sped, For the sanguine heart and the hoary head! The fair, the noble, the lowly, the wise, These are her freight-her precious store, To think how soon the abysm would hide That vessel with all her living treasure. To the trembling soul of a dying friend; There were thus smoothly wafted along, And the dead still night in darkness arose, Had lull'd the wanderers to repose; side For a billowy wall is on every Like some celestial spirit stands, Inspired she braves the raging storm, And clasps to Heav'n her trembling hands. "Father! on thee I call," she cries, 66 My spirit's thine in life or death! No murmuring doubts within me rise, h; Then grant this boon-my latest breath In aching suspense, and cruel despair, In grief when they slumber, in tears when they wake, In the ocean's dark tomb was immersed, VIRGINIA. |