"Would you? why, Endy?"--"To let them see my wife. Now, I mean to take her to see them."
Faith was willing he should take her where he pleased, though she made no remark. Her timidity moved in a small circle, and touched princ.i.p.ally him. Mingling with this, and in all she did, ever since half past one o"clock to-day, there had been a sort of dignity of grave happiness; very rare, very beautiful.
"I wonder if you know half how lovely and dear you are?" said Mr.
Linden, studying the fair outlines of character, as well as of feature.
But Faith"s eye went all down the pattern of embroidery on her white robe, and never dared meet his. "Have you any idea, little Mignonette of sweetness, after what fashion that proverb is true?"
She looked up, uncertain what proverb he meant; but then immediately certain, bent her head again. Faith never thought of herself as Mr.
Linden thought of her. Movings of humility and determination were in her heart now, but she knew he would not bear to hear her speak them, and her own voice was not just ready. So she was only silent still.
"What will make you speak?" said Mr. Linden, smiling. "I am like Ali Baba before the storehouse of hid treasure. Is this the "Sesame" you are waiting for?" he added, raising her face and trying two or three persuasive kisses.
"There was nothing in the storehouse," said Faith laughingly. "No words I mean."--"I am willing to take thoughts."
"How?"--"Which way you like!"
"Then you will have to wait for them, Endy."
"Mignonette, I am of an impatient disposition."
"Yes I know it."
"Is it to be your first wifely undertaking to cure me?" he said, laughing.--"It takes time to put thoughts into action," said Faith, blushing.--"Not all thoughts, Mignonette."
She coloured beautifully; but anything more pure and sweet than those first wifely kisses of Faith could not be told. Did he know, had he felt, all the love and allegiance they had so silently and timidly spoken? She had reason to think so.
CHAPTER XLIV.
In a low whitewashed room, very clean though little and plain, where the breeze blew in fresh from the sea, Faith found herself established Friday afternoon. Mr. Linden had promised to show her the surf, and so had brought her down to a little village, long ago known to him, on the New England sh.o.r.e; where the people lived by farming and fishing, and no hotel attracted or held an influx of city life. It was rather late in the day, for the journey had been in part off the usual route of railway and steam, and therefore had been longer if not wearier. But when Faith had got rid of the dust, Mr. Linden came to her door to say that it would be half an hour to supper, and ask if she was too tired to walk down to the beach.
The sh.o.r.e was but a few hundred yards from the little farmhouse; green gra.s.s, with interrupting rocks, extending all the way. Faith hardly knew what she was corning to till she reached the brink. There the precipitous rocks rose sheer a hundred feet from the bottom, and at the bottom, down below her, a narrow strip of beach was bordered with the billowy crest and foam of the sea. Nothing but the dark ocean and the illimitable ocean line beyond; there was not even a sail in sight this evening; in full uninterrupted power and course, from the broad east, the swells of the sea rolled in and broke--broke, with their graceful, grand monotony.
The beach was narrow at height of tide; now the tide was out.
Fishermen"s boats were drawn up near to the rocks, and steep narrow pathways along and down the face of them allowed the fishermen to go from the top to the bottom.
"Can"t we get down there?" said Faith, when she had stood a minute looking silently. Her face showed an eager readiness for action.
"Can you fly, little bird?"--"Yes--as well as the fishermen can!"
"If you cannot I can carry you," said Mr. Linden.--And doubtless he would have found some way to make his words good had there been need; as it was, he only guarded her down the steep rocky way, going before her and holding her hand in a grasp she would have been puzzled to get away from. But Faith was light and free of foot, and gave him no trouble. Once at the bottom, she went straight towards those in-coming big waves, and in front of them stood still. The sea-breeze blew in her face; the roar of the breakers made music in her ears. Faith folded one hand upon the other, and stood motionless. Now and then the wind caught the spray from some beaten rock and flung it in her face, and wave after wave rose up and donned its white crest; the upstanding green water touched with sunlight and shadow, and changing tints of amber and olive, down which the white foam came curling and rushing--sweeping in knots of seaweed, and leaving all the pebbles with wet faces. Mr.
Linden let her look without the interruption of a word; but he presently put his arm round her, and drew her a little into shelter from the strong breeze. It was a while before she moved from her steady gaze at the water; then she looked up, the joy of her face breaking into a smile.
"Endecott, will you show me anything more grand than this?"
"You shall tell me when you have seen the uprising mists of Niagara,"
he answered, smiling, "or the ravines between snowcaps "five thousand summers old.""
Her eye went back to the sea. "It brings before me, somehow," she said slowly, "all time, and all eternity! I have been thinking here of myself as I was a little child, and as I shall be, and as I am," she added, with her inveterate exactness, and blushing. "I seem to see only the great scale of everything."
"Tell me a little more clearly what you see," said Mr. Linden.
"It isn"t worth telling. I see everything here as belonging to G.o.d. The world seems his great work-place, and life his time for doing the work, and I--and you," she said, with a flash of light coming across her face, "his work-people. And those great breaking waves, somehow, seem to me like the resistless, sure, beautiful, doings of his providence."
She spoke very quietly, because she was bidden, evidently.
"Do you know how many other things they are like?--or rather how many are likened to them in the Bible?"--"No! I don"t know the Bible as you do."
"They seem to be a never-failing image--an ill.u.s.tration suiting very different things. "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest," and then, "O that thou hadst hearkened to me I then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.""
"There is the endless struggle of human will and purpose against the divine--"The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea." "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pa.s.s it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail: though they roar, yet can they not pa.s.s over it?" And so in another place the image is reversed, and G.o.d says, "Behold I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up." Could anything be more forcible?"
A look was Faith"s answer; it spoke the kindled thoughts at work.
"Then you know," Mr. Linden went on, "how often the troubles of G.o.d"s children are compared to the ocean; as David says, "All thy waves are gone over me." But then the Lord answers to that, "When thou pa.s.sest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the floods, they shall not overwhelm thee;" and David himself in another place declares it to be true--"O Lord G.o.d of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them."--I suppose," he added, thoughtfully, taking both her hands in his, "this is one sense in which by-and-by "there shall be no more sea"--except that "sea of gla.s.s, upon which they stand who have gotten the victory!""
Another look, a grave, full look, came to him from Faith; and grave and soft her eye went back to the sea. The sunbeams were all off it; it was dark and foamy. Speaking rather low, half to her half to himself, Mr.
Linden went on,--""And they overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony: and they loved not their lives unto the death.""
Her look did not move. Mr. Linden"s went with it for a minute or two, but then it came back to her differently.
"My darling, I am afraid to have you stay here any longer."
"We can come again!" said Faith gleefully, as she turned away. "I want to look at them a great deal."
"We will come again and try how far a "ladder" can reach from this low sand."
She looked back for another glance as she began to mount the rocky way.
The mounting was an easy matter, for Mr. Linden came close and took hold of her in such fashion that she was more than half carried up.
"Do you feel as if you had wings now?" he asked her, after a somewhat quick "flight" up half the way.
"Folded ones," said Faith, laughing and breathless. "I don"t know what sort yours can be! I can go up by myself, Endecott."
"With folded wings, as you remark, Mrs. Linden. Do you remember that infallible way of recognizing "earth"s angels," when they are not pluming themselves?"--"They never do plume themselves," said Faith, stopping to look at him.
"Not when they are carried!"
Faith"s laugh rolled down the rocks; and then as they reached the top she grew timid and quiet, a mood which came over her whenever she remembered her new position and name in the world.
There is no room to tell all the seaside doings of those days; the surf bathing, and fishing beyond the surf. A week pa.s.sed there, or rather more; then, Mr. Linden having business in New York, the "wooden horse"
went that way. We cannot follow all its travels. But we must stay with it a day in the city.
CHAPTER XLV.