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Sea and Shore by Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

M >> Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield >> Sea and Shore



[Transcriber's note: There are two Chapter VI's in this book.
I have moved footnotes to the end of each chapter.]




SEA AND SHORE.

A

SEQUEL TO "MIRIAM'S MEMOIRS."

BY MRS. CATHARINE A. WARFIELD.

AUTHOR OF

"THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE," "MONFORT HALL," "MIRIAM'S HOUSE" "HESTER
HOWARD'S TEMPTATION," "A DOUBLE WEDDING; OR, HOW SHE WAS WON," ETC.

"_No fears hath she! Her giant form
Majestically calm would go
O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
'Mid he deep darkness, white as snow!
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
The main she will traverse forever and aye!
Many ports shall exult in the gleam of her mast--
Hush! hush! Thou vain dreamer, this hour is her last!_"

PHILADELPHIA:
T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS;
306 CHESTNUT STREET.


1876


MRS. C.A. WARFIELD'S NEW WORKS.

Each Book is in One Volume, Morocco Cloth, price $1.75.

_SEA AND SHORE_.

_MIRIAM'S MEMOIRS_.

_MONFORT HALL_.

_THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE_.

_A DOUBLE WEDDING; or, How She Was Won_.

_HESTER HOWARD'S TEMPTATION_.


_From Gail Hamilton, author of "Gala Days" etc._

"'The Household of Bouverie' is one of those books that pluck out all
your teeth, and then dare you to bite them. Your interest is awakened at
once in the first chapter, and you are whirled through in a
lightning-express train that leaves you no opportunity to look at the
little details of wood, and lawn, and river. You notice two or three
little peculiarities of style--one or two 'bits' of painting--and then
you pull on your seven-leagued boots and away you go."

_From George Ripley's Review of "The Household of Bouverie" in Harper's
Magazine_.

"'The Household of Bouverie,' by Mrs. Warfield, is a wonderful book. I
have read it twice--the second time more carefully than the first--and I
use the term 'wonderful,' because it best expresses the feeling
uppermost in my mind, both while reading and thinking it over. As a
piece of imaginative writing, I have seen nothing to equal it since the
days of Edgar A. Poe, and I doubt whether he could have sustained
himself and the readers through a book half the size of the 'Household
of Bouverie.' I have literally hurried through it by my intense
sympathy, my devouring curiosity--It was more than interest. I read
everywhere--between the courses of the hotel-table, on the boat, in the
cars--until I had swallowed the last line. This is no common occurrence
with a veteran romance reader like myself."

Above Books are for sale by all Booksellers at $1.75 each, or $10.50 for
a complete set of the six volumes, or copies of either one or more of
the above Books, or a complete set of the six volumes, will be sent at
once, to any one, to any place, post-paid, or free of freight, on
remitting their price in a letter to the publishers,

T.B. PETERSON & BROTHERS,
306 CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA.




"No fears hath she! Her giant form
Majestically calm would go
O'er wrathful surge, through blackening storm,
'Mid the deep darkness, white as snow!
So stately her bearing, so proud her array,
The main she will traverse forever and aye!
Many ports shall exult in the gleam of her mast--
Hush! hush! thou vain dreamer, this hour is her last!"

WILSON, "_Isle of Palms_."

* * * * *

"Then hold her
Strictly confined in sombre banishment,
And Doubt not but she will ere long, full gladly,
Her freedom purchase at the price you name."

* * * * *

"No, subtle snake!
It is the baseness of thy selfish mind,
Full of all guile, and cunning, and deceit,
That severs us so far, and shall do _ever_."

* * * * *

"Despair shall give me strength--where is the door?
Mine eyes are dark! I cannot find it now.
O God! protect me in this awful pass!"

JOANNA BAILLIE, _Tragedy of "Orra_."




SEA AND SHORE.

BY MRS. C.A. WARFIELD.

AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSEHOLD OF BOUVERIE."




CHAPTER I.


It was a calm and hazy morning of Southern summer that on which I turned
my face seaward from the "keep" of Beauseincourt, never, I knew, to see
its time-stained walls again, save through the mirage of memory. There
is an awe almost as solemn to me in a consciousness like this as that
which attends the death-bed parting, and my straining eye takes in its
last look of a familiar scene as it might do the ever-to-be-averted face
of friendship.

The refrain of Poe's even then celebrated poem was ringing through my
brain on that sultry August day, I remember, like a tolling bell, as I
looked my last on the gloomy abode of the La Vignes; but I only said
aloud, in answer to the sympathizing glances of one who sat before
me--the gentle and quiet Marion--who had suddenly determined to
accompany me to Savannah, nerved with unwonted impulse:

"Madame de Stael was right when she said that 'nevermore' was the
saddest and most expressive word in the English tongue" (so harsh to her
ears, usually). "I think she called it the sweetest, too, in sound; but
to me it is simply the most sorrowful, a knell of doom, and it fills my
soul to-day to overflowing, for 'never, never more' shall I look on
Beauseincourt!"

"You cannot tell, Miss Harz, what _time_ may do; you may still return to
visit us in our retirement, you and Captain Wentworth," urged Marion,
gently, leaning forward, as she spoke, to take my hand in hers.

"'Time the tomb-builder'" fell from my lips ere they were aware. "That
is a grand thought--one that I saw lately in a Western poem, the
New-Year's address of a young editor of Kentucky called Prentice. Is it
not splendid, Marion?"

"Very awful, rather," she responded, with a faint shudder. "Time the
'comforter,' let us say, instead, Miss Miriam--Time the
'veil-spreader.'"

"Why, Marion, you are quite poetic to-day, quite Greek! That is a sweet
and tender saying of yours, and I shall garner it. I stand reproved, my
child. All honor to Time, the _merciful_, whether he builds palaces or
tombs! but none the less do I reverence my young poet for that
stupendous utterance of his soul. I shall watch the flight of that
eaglet of the West with interest from this hour! May he aspire!"

"Not if he is a Jackson Democrat?" broke in the usually gentle Alice
Durand, fired with a ready defiance of all heterodox policy, common, if
not peculiar, to that region.

"Oh, but he is not; he is a good Whig instead--a Clay man, as we call
such."

"Not a Calhoun man, though, I suppose, so I would not give a snap of my
fingers for him or his poetry! It is very natural, for you, Miss Harz,"
in a somewhat deprecating tone, "to praise your partisans. I would not
have you neutral if I could, it is so contemptible."

A little of the good doctor's spirit there, under all that exterior of
meekness and modesty, I saw at a glance, and liked her none the less for
it, if truth were told. And now we were nearing the gate, with its
gray-stone pillars, on one of which, that from which the marble ball had
rolled, to hide in the grass beneath, perchance, until the end of all, I
had seen the joyous figure of Walter La Vigne so lightly poised on the
occasion of my last exodus from Beauseincourt. A moment's pause, and the
difficult, disused bolts that had once exasperated the patience of
Colonel La Vigne were drawn asunder, and the clanking gates clashed
behind us as we emerged from the shadowed domain into the glare and dust
of the high-road.

Here Major Favraud, accompanied by Duganne, awaited us, seated in state
in his lofty, stylish swung gig (with his tiny tiger behind), drawn
tandem-wise by his high-stepping and peerless blooded bays, Castor and
Pollux. Brothers, like the twins of Leda, they had been bred in the
blue-grass region of Kentucky and the vicinity of Ashland, and were
worthy of their ancient pedigree, their perfect training and classic
names, the last bestowed when he first became their owner, by Major
Favraud, who, with a touch of the whip or a turn of the hand, controlled
them to subjection, fiery coursers although they were!

Dr. Durand, too, with his spacious and flame-lined gig, accompanied by
his son, a lad of sixteen, awaited our arrival, and served to swell the
cavalcade that wound slowly down the dusty road, with its sandy surface
and red-clay substratum. A few young gentlemen on horseback completed
our _cortege_.

Major Favraud sat holding his ribbons gracefully in one gauntleted
hand, while he uncovered his head with the other, bowing suavely in his
knightly fashion, as he said:

"Come drive with me, Miss Harz, for a while, and let the young folks
take it together."

"Oh, no, Major Favraud; you must excuse me, indeed! I feel a little
languid this morning, and I should be poor company. Besides, I cannot
surrender my position as one of the young folks yet."

"Nay, I have something to say to you--something very earnest. You shall
be at no trouble to entertain me; but you must not refuse a poor, sad
fellow a word of counsel and cheer. I shall think hard of you if you
decline to let me drive you a little way. Besides, the freshness of the
morning is all lost on you there. Now, set Marion a good example, and
she will, in turn, enliven me later."

So adjured, I consented to drive to the Fifteen-mile House with Major
Favraud, and Duganne glided into the coach in my stead, to take my place
and play _vis-a-vis_ to Sylphy, who, as usual, was selected as
traveling-companion on this occasion, "to take kear of de young ladies."

"I am so glad I have you all to myself once more, Miss Harz! I feel now
that we are fast friends again. And I wanted to tell you, while I could
speak of her, how much my poor wife liked you. (The time will come when
I must not, _dare_ not, you know.) But for circumstances, she would have
urged you to become our guest, or even in-dweller; but you know how it
all was! I need not feign any longer, nor apologize either."

"It must have been that she saw how lovely and _spirituelle_ I found
_her_," I said, "and could not bear to be outdone in consideration, nor
to owe a debt of social gratitude. She knew so little of me. But these
affinities are electric sometimes, I must believe."

"Yes, there is more of that sort of thing on earth, perhaps, 'than is
dreamed of in our philosophy'--antagonism and attraction are always
going on among us unconsciously."

"I am inclined to believe so from my own experience," I replied,
vaguely, thinking, Heaven knows, of any thing at the moment rather than
of him who sat beside me.

"Your mind is on Wentworth, I perceive," he said, softly; after a short
pause, "now give up your dream for a little while and listen to this
sober reality--sober to-day, at least," he added, with a light laugh.
"By-the-way, talking of magnetism, do you know, Miss Harz, I think you
are the most universally magnetic woman I ever saw? All the men fall in
love with you, and the women don't hate you for it, either."

"How perfectly the last assertion disproves the first!" I replied; "but
I retract, I will not, even for the sake of a syllogism, abuse my own
sex; women are never envious except when men make them so, by casting
down among them the golden apple of admiration."

"I know one man, at least, who never foments discord in this way!
Wentworth, from the beginning, had eyes and ears for no one but
yourself, yet I never dreamed the drama would be enacted so speedily; I
own I was as much in the dark as anybody."

I could not reply to this _badinage_, as in happier moments I might have
done, but said, digressively:

"By-the-by, while I think of it, I must put down on my tablet the order
of Mr. Vernon. He wants 'Longfellow's Poems,' if for sale in Savannah.
He has been permeating his brain with the 'Psalms of Life,' that have
come out singly in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, until he craves every
thing that pure and noble mind has thrown forth in the shape of a song."

And I scribbled in my memorandum-book, for a moment, while Major Favraud
mused.

"Longfellow!" he said, at last, "Phoebus, what a name!" adding
affectedly, "yet it seems to me, on reflection, I _have_ heard it
before. He is a Yankee, of course! Now, do you earnestly believe a
native of New England, by descent a legitimate witch-burner, you know,
_can_ be any thing better than a poll-parrot in the poetical line?"

"Have we not proof to the contrary, Major Favraud?"

"What proof? Metre and rhyme, I grant you--long and short--but show me
the afflatus! They make verse with a penknife, like their wooden
nutmegs. They are perfect Chinese for ingenuity and imitation, and the
resemblance to the real Simon-pure is very perfect--externally. But when
it comes to grating the nut for negus, we miss the aroma!"

"Do you pretend that Bryant is not a poet in the grain, and that the
wondrous boy, Willis, was not also 'to the manner born?' Read
'Thanatopsis,' or are you acquainted with it already? I hardly think you
can be. Read those scriptural poems."

"A very smooth school-exercise the first, no more. There is not a
heart-beat in the whole grind. As to Willie--he failed egregiously, when
he attempted to 'gild refined gold and paint the lily,' as he did in his
so-called 'Sacred Poems.' He can spin a yarn pretty well, and coin a new
word for a make-shift, amusingly, but save me from the foil-glitter of
his poetry."[1]

"This is surprising! You upset all precedent. I really wish you had not
said these things. I now begin to see the truth of what my copy-book
told me long ago, that 'evil association corrupts good manners,' or I
will vary it and substitute 'opinions.' I must eschew your society, in a
literary way, I must indeed, Major Favraud."

"Now comes along this strolling Longfellow minstrel," he continued,
ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with _his_ dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap
the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not
an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' is joyful in comparison!"

"You shall not say that," I interrupted; "you shall not dare to say that
in my presence. It is sheer slander, that you have caught up from some
malignant British review, and, like all other serpents, you are venomous
in proportion to your blindness! I am vexed with you, that you will not
see with the clear, discerning eyes God gave you originally."

"But I do see with them, and very discerningly, notwithstanding your
comparison. Now there is that 'Skeleton in Armor,' his last effusion, I
believe, that you are all making such a work over--fine-sounding thing
enough, I grant you, ingenious rhyme, and all that. But I know where the
framework came from! Old Drayton furnished that in his 'Battle of
Agincourt.'" Then in a clear, sonorous voice, he gave some specimens of
each, so as to point the resemblance, real or imaginary.

"You are content with mere externs in finding your similitudes, Major
Favraud! In power of thought, beauty of expression, what comparison is
there? Drayton's verse is poor and vapid, even mean, beside
Longfellow's."

"I grant you that. I have never for one moment disputed the ability of
those Yankees. Their manufacturing talents are above all praise, but
when it comes to the 'God-fire,' as an old German teacher of mine used
to say, our simple Southern poets leave them all behind--'Beat them all
hollow,' would be their own expression. You gee, Miss Harz, that
Cavalier blood of ours, that inspired the old English bards, _will_
tell, in spite of circumstances."

"But genius is of no rank--no blood--no clime! What court poet of his
day, Major Favraud, compared with Robert Burns for feeling, fire, and
pathos? Who ever sung such siren strains as Moore, a simple Irishman of
low degree? No Cavalier blood there, I fancy! What power, what beauty in
the poems of Walter Scott! Byron was a poet in spite of his condition,
not because of it. Hear Barry Cornwall--how he stirs the blood I What
trumpet like to Campbell I What mortal voice like to Shelley's? the
hybrid angel! What full orchestra surpassed Coleridge for harmony and
brilliancy of effect? Who paints panoramas like Southey? Who charms like
Wordsworth? Yet these were men of medium condition, all--I hate the
conceits of Cowley, Waller, Sir John Suckling, Carew, and the like. All
of your Cavalier type, I believe, a set of hollow pretenders mostly."

"All this is overwhelming, I grant," bowing deferentially. "But I return
to my first idea, that Puritan blood was not exactly fit to engender
genius; and that in the rich, careless Southern nature there lurks a
vein of undeveloped song that shall yet exonerate America from the
charge of poverty of genius, brought by the haughty Briton! Yes, we will
sing yet a mightier strain than has ever been poured since the time of
Shakespeare! and in that good time coming weave a grander heroic poem
than any since the days of Homer! Then men's souls shall have been
tried in the furnace of affliction, and Greek meets not Greek, but
Yankee. For we Southerners only bide our time!"

And he cut his spirited lead-horse, until it leaped forward suddenly, as
though to vent his excitement, and, setting his email white teeth
sternly, with an eye like a burning coal, looked forward into space, his
whole face contracting.

"The Southern lyre has been but lightly swept so far, Miss Harz," he
continued, a moment later, "and only by the fingers of love; we need
Bellona to give tone to our orchestra."

I could not forbear reciting somewhat derisively the old couplet--

"'Sound the trumpet, teat the drum,
Tremble France, we come, we come!'

"Is that the style Major Favraud?" I asked. "I remember the time when I
thought these two lines the most soul-stirring in the language--they
seem very bombastic now, in my maturity."

He smiled, and said: "The time is not come for our war-poem, and, as for
love, let me give you one strain of Pinckney's to begin with;" and,
without waiting for permission, he recited the beautiful "Pledge," with
which all readers are now familiar, little known then, however, beyond
the limits of the South, and entirely new to me, beginning with--

"I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon"--

continuing to the end with eloquence and spirit.

"Now, that is poetry, Miss Harz! the real afflatus is there; the bead on
the wine; the dew on the rose; the bloom on the grape! Nothing wanting
that constitutes the indefinable divine thing called genius! You
understand my idea, of course; explanations are superfluous."

I assented mutely, scarce knowing why I did so.

"Now, hear another." And the woods rang with his clear, sonorous accents
as he declaimed, a little too scanningly, perhaps--too much like an
enthusiastic boy:

"Love lurks upon my lady's lip,
His bow is figured there;
Within her eyes his arrows sleep;
His fetters are--her hair!"

"I call that nothing but a bundle of conceits, Major Favraud, mostly of
the days of Charles II., of Rochester himself--" interrupting him as I
in turn was interrupted.

"But hear further," and he proceeded to the end of that marvelous
ebullition of foam and fervor, such as celebrated the birth of Aphrodite
herself perchance in the old Greek time; and which, despite my perverse
intentions, stirred me as if I had quaffed a draught of pink champagne.
Is it not, indeed, all _couleur de rose_? Hear this bit of melody, my
reader, sitting in supreme judgment, and perhaps contempt, on your
throne apart:

"'Upon her cheek the crimson ray
By changes comes and goes,
As rosy-hued Aurora's play
Along the polar snows;
Gay as the insect-bird that sips
From scented flowers the dew--
Pure as the snowy swan that dips
Its wings in waters blue;
Sweet thoughts are mirrored on her face,
Like clouds on the calm sea,
And every motion is a grace,
Each word a melody!'"

"Yes, that is true poetry, I acknowledge, Major Favraud," I exclaimed,
not at all humbled by conviction, though a little annoyed at the pointed
manner in which he gave (looking in my face as he did so) these
concluding lines:

"Say from what fair and sunny shore,
Fair wanderer, dost thou rove,
Lest what I only should adore
I heedless think to love?"

"The character of Pinckney's genius," I rejoined, "is, I think,
essentially like that of Praed, the last literary phase with me--for I
am geological in my poetry, and take it in strata. But I am more
generous to your Southern bard than you are to our glorious Longfellow!
I don't call that imitation, but coincidence, the oneness of genius! I
do not even insinuate plagiarism." My manner, cool and careless,
steadied his own.

"You are right: our 'Shortfellow' _was_ incapable of any thing of the
sort. Peace be to his ashes! With all his nerve and _vim_, he died of
melancholy, I believe. As good an end as any, however, and certainly
highly respectable. But you know what Wordsworth says in his
'School-master'--

"'If there is one that may bemoan
His kindred laid in earth,
The household hearts that were his own,
It is the man of mirth.'"

He sighed as he concluded his quotation--sighed, and slackened the pace
of his flying steeds. "But give me something of Praed's in return," he
said, rallying suddenly; "is there not a pretty little thing called 'How
shall I woo her?'" glancing archly and somewhat impertinently at me, I
thought--or, perhaps, what would simply have amused me in another man
and mood shocked me in him, the recent widower--widowed, too, under such
peculiar and awful circumstances! I did not reflect sufficiently
perhaps, on his ignorance of many of these last.

How I deplored his levity, which nothing could overcome or restrain; and
yet beneath which I even then believed lay depths of anguish! How I
wished that influence of mine could prevail to induce him to divide his
dual nature, "To throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer
with the better half!" But I could only show disapprobation by the
gravity of my silence.

"So you will not give me 'How shall I woo her?' Miss Harz?" a little
embarrassed, I perceived, by my manner. "I have a fancy for the title,
nevertheless, not having heard any more, and should be glad to hear the
whole poem. But you are prudish to-day, I fancy."

"No, there is nothing in that poem, certainly, that angels might not
hear approvingly; but it would sadden you, Major Favraud."

"I will take the chance of that," laughing. "Come, the poem, if you care
to please your driver, and reward his care. See how skillfully I avoided
that fallen branch--suppose I were to be spiteful, and upset you against
this stump?"

Any thing was preferable to his levity; and, as I had warned him of the
possible effect of the poem he solicited, I could not be accused of want
of consideration in reciting it. Besides, he deserved the lesson, the
stern lesson that it taught.

As this could in no way be understood by such of my readers as are
unacquainted with this little gem, I venture to give it here--exquisite,
passionate utterance that it is, though little known to fame, at least
at this writing:

"'How shall I woo her? I will stand
Beside her when she sings,
And watch her fine and fairy hand
Flit o'er the quivering strings!
But shall I tell her I have heard,
Though sweet her song may be,
A voice where every whispered word
_Was more than song to me_?

"'How shall I woo her? I will gaze,
In sad and silent trance,
On those blue eyes whose liquid rays
Look love in every glance.
But shall I tell her eyes more bright,
Though bright her own may beam,
Will fling a deeper spell to-night
_Upon me in my dream_?'"

I hesitated. "Let me stop here, Major Favraud, I counsel you," I
interpolated, earnestly; but he only rejoined:

"No, no! proceed, I entreat you! it is very beautiful--very touching,
too!" Speaking calmly, and slacking rein, so that the grating of the
wheels among the stems of the scarlet _lychnis_, that grew in immense
patches on our road, might not disturb his sense of hearing, which,
by-the-way, was exquisitely nice and fastidious.

"As you please, then;" and I continued the recitation.

"'How shall I woo her? I will try
The charms of olden time,
And swear by earth, and sea, and sky,
And rave in prose and rhyme--
And I will tell her, when I bent
My knee in other years,
I was not half so _eloquent_;
I could not speak--_for tears_!'"

I watched him narrowly; the spell was working now; the poet's hand was
sweeping, with a gust of power, that harp of a thousand strings, the
wondrous human heart! And I again pursued, in suppressed tones of
heart-felt emotion, the pathetic strain that he had evoked with an idea
of its frivolity alone:

"'How shall I woo her? I will bow
Before the holy shrine,
And pray the prayer, and vow the vow,
And press her lips to mine--
And I will tell her, when she starts
From passion's thrilling kiss,
That _memory_ to many hearts
Is dearer far than bliss!'"

It was reserved for the concluding verse to unnerve him completely; a
verse which I rendered with all the pathos of which I was capable, with
a view to its final effect, I confess:

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