LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS BERENICE n , . BERENICE A NOVEL. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & COMPANY, 1856. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & COMPANY. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. e-nsEtoTYHD st liOBART k BOBBINS, New England Tjpe and Stereotype founder?, BOSTON. BERENICE. CHAPTER I. FRIEND of my heart ! you say you miss me from the world in which you live, and would know what I am doing in my new home in the eastern land of pine- clad hills and rock-girt shores. My new home is in the house where my father (ven erated name ! ) once dwelt ; our old homestead, long deserted, but now refitted, and made tenantable. It stands on a bleak and barren headland on one of the most picturesque of the islands of the three hundred and sixty- five that dot the blue bay of Passamaquoddy; the bay that is said to be as beautiful as that of Naples. Passamaquoddy cradles its friendly waters between the opposing shores of Campobello and Moose Island: the one, subjected to the rule of his majesty King I* 6 BERENICE. George IV. ; the other, one of the jewels of Uncle Sam's diadem of States. My island home ! Come, and see if it is not beauti ful as I tell you. My home in the house on the rock ! Here I sit and muse in the turret-chamber, where my father sat, like an eagle in his eyrie, watching the world spin round. My father's house ! Pardon the fond delight of one so long an alien. I am rapturous as a child restored to its mother's bosom. My home ! Here, when the night has darkened down, are displayed those northern streams of splendor, flashing like glimpses of immortal light from the polar zone. Night ! blessed night ! then is the fisherman's har vest-hour ; then, with the pitch-knot lighted, flaring and blazing at his shallop's prow, he casts the net into the phosphor-gleaming sea ; but, as he plies his solitary oar, he hears strange murmurings in the breeze that skims and ruffles the gently-heaving ocean. To cheer his loneliness, he chants a stave from some rude bal lad of a bygone time, which tells how the pirates of the Scorpion once infested this eastern coast, and forced a maiden, just in her May of life, to walk the BERENICE. 7 dreadful plank, and, vainly struggling, drink a briny death ; and this full in her lover's view, who sat in irons on the deck, and, helpless, saw her perish. A wailing voice, like the lone plover's cry, sounds over the watery waste, and thrills the chanter with myste rious awe. But he grimly smiles at his own foolish fancies, and pufls his checks to w r histle to the wind, though never a sound is heard. The skies smile on the fisher's toil ; the sea teems with life ; his nets are full ; he quenches his torch in the hissing waves, where so long ago the fire of that young maiden's love went out. lie pulls his boat shoreward with a steady dipping oar ; and then he re tires to his humble cottage, to dream, perhaps, of the struggles of drowning men, of gold and gems, of silks of Tyrian dye, arid of all the wealth which the ocean caverns hold. My earliest recollections of my father are of his placing me on a low bench, between his knees, when my head came just up to his heart, as we sat together in the turret-chamber in the clear afternoons. He, with his spy-glass, watched the ships in the distance sailing in various directions, or, perhaps, riding at 8 BERENICE. anchor in the bay. For years he held an office under government in the revenue department, arid was obliged to keep a sharp look-out for smugglers. I love the old place, wild and lonely as it is. I like the inhabitants of this out-of-the-way district, sim ple and illiterate as most of them are. Their quaint oddities amuse me when I am in a humor to be amused ; and, once a month, just to keep up a spirit of sociality and good-feeling among my neighbors, I give an enter tainment in the old hall, and ask all the children to make merry at the feast. The place does not look dismal to them ; they are perfectly charmed with the bright china, and nicely-flavored cakes, fruits and sweet meats, which I prepare with my own hands, for I must please something in spite of my sterner moods ; but the happy, dimpled faces, tanned and rough by expos ure, make me glad ; they are the sunshine of my life. I like children for friends ; one is sure of their unso phisticated hearts. Perhaps I am misanthropic ; but I am heartily tired of the sickly refinements of society ; they pall upon the senses. Hate, envy, pride, and ambition, lurk around the corniced galleries, or stand discontented in the BERENICE. 9 niches of the lofty halls. The orgies of dissipation are considered the classical refinements of society by those who minister at these shrines. Besides, I believe that solitude is my heritage, and I must learn to enjoy it. I am a miser of time. I hoard every moment, but I have more to give my friends than when I lived in the world. I have not forgotten, my friend, that you have oft besought me, with " Prayer of earnest heart, That I would all my pilgrimage dilate, Whereof by parcels you have something heard ; " that I should tell you, heart to heart, the story of my life. It is but an every-day experience, when all is told ; but it has been changeful enough for me ! CHAPTER II. THERE are hours when scenes and impressions long past come upon us with magical power ; when re membrances of other days stand out before the mind's eye with the coloring and outline of the present. Although the hurrying events of each successive day may seem to have swept from the memory many scenes in which we have been actors, and we deem them buried past recall, yet, in some moment of half-for- getfulness, the soul, retiring within itself, ponders un consciously upon the past, until we are startled from our revery by the intense reality of the pictures of memory. Faces and forms, which have been long wrapped in the cerements of the grave, stand before us in the warm colors of life; we can almost fancy the sweet breath playing upon our cheeks, and the voices, whose familiar tones are forever hushed, yet ringing merrily in our ears. BERENICE. 11 There came two brothers, exiles, from Switzerland, Carl and Gustav de Thou ; and after many months of wandering they settled on this eastern shore, and made their home on this island. Carl was my grandfather ; his brother pined in exile, and could not rest ; and after a time he again became a rover, and went to pitch his tent on the great western prairies. The family history is, for the most part, a sealed book to me. My father was twice married, and was an old man when he took to wife my fair and blooming mother. She was of French descent, and had Norman blood in her veins. She bore my father two children, of which I was the younger ; and, when born, I was the only one of whose existence they felt sure, for a horri ble uncertainty hung over my brother's fate. I scarcely dare say how early in my infant life I comprehended the story of my brother's loss ; but, as soon as I could speak, I was never tired of asking questions of him, or of listening to recitals of the mel ancholy story ; and, when I was but the merest infant I saw the sadness in my mother's face, and I knew why the tears streamed over her pale cheeks. 12 BERENICE. I tried to divert and soothe her by shouldering a wooden mallet, and trudging out of doors to the corner of the house, where stood a large iron kettle (for what purpose it was there I never knew). To my young fancy the ringing sounds that I produced upon it were most ecstatic music. Then back I would go to note its effect on her, till, at last, weary with repeated failures, I would run to nurse Tibby and beg her to rock me in her arms, and tell me about my lost brother. Carl was a brilliant, active little fellow, full of courage and daring, a real child of the eyrie ; but he was lost ! My parents were absent from home on a short visit of a few hours to some friends on the opposite shore. The boy was left in the care of a domestic, who had always been faithful until that day, when she inadvert ently proved untrue to her charge. Carl was in the habit of spending a great portion of his time at play in a small boat, which was moored at the beach, in sight of my mother's window. There he would sit for hours, rocking himself to the dancing waves, or making short excursions to the huge black rocks within reach of the length of the line by which the boat was fastened. He called them his " castles." BERENICE. 18 It had been considered perfectly safe to allow him to amuse himself thus, until that inauspicious day. He was at his accustomed pastime; the tide was setting swiftly seaward, the painter was broken, and the little voyager drifted out of sight before he was missed. My parents returned to their home, at night, to find a horror of which they could never have dreamed. Every effort that parental love and wisdom could suggest, for the discovery of the child's fate, proved unavailing. The boat was found, but no trace of the boy ; and from that day they knew but this, the child was not. There had been no sickness, no visible death, no little shrouded body to be laid in consecrated ground ; none of those last, dear, sad offices, performed by the hand of love, that make the aching heart lighter, even in its heaviness. But the gloom of the pall and bier fell upon my parents' hopes, as days and weeks went by, and there were no tidings of the child. It might be that some vindictive smuggler, whom my father had frustrated in his unlawful traffic, had stolen the child for vengeance. It was just possible he might have been picked up by some ships outward bound : it was a faint 2 14 BERENICE. hope, yet the doubt was almost as hard to bear as the certainty of his death would have been. They said, " The dear little infant Berenice came, like a gleam of sunshine, to illumine the darkness." I en joyed a few happy years of childhood few, and short. My father, who was one of the most eccentric of men, became, at once, my tutor and playfellow. We were constant companions. His great delight was in boating, and visiting wild and desolate tracts of land ; in botan izing ; and, in spite of wind and weather, he would take ine with him, though sorely against my mother's incli nations. It required our united efforts to conquer her aversion to these aquatic and botanical excursions ; so venturesome were our wanderings regarded, even by the fearless boatmen about the islands. They gave my father the sobriquet of Neptune ; and a rude boy made me cry one day by calling me "old Neptune's daughter." On these wild expeditions, no matter how our egg shell of a boat might be threatened, no matter how tipsily the waves might roll, and toss their white caps to the squally sky, my father would never permit me to flinch for a moment, or to shrink from my place. I had BERENICE. 15 often a mind to crouch down, and cover my eyes from the terrible sight of the sea. He would exclaim, " Sit up, my girl ! sit up, and face the danger boldly ! This is nothing to what you must encounter in your voyage through life, and, perhaps, without a pilot to bring you safe to land ! Be not afraid of the storm, and you shall ride above it ! " His encouraging tones always reassured me ; and I did " sit up," and smile, too, in the very face of the wind. Through bad management, and too great confidence in the honor of other men, my father lost his entire prop erty ; his official position had before been consigned to a younger aspirant for the honor ; and we were almost beg gared. Even the house we lived in could not be called our own. It was very hard for my father, when he was far advanced in years, to feel that he must quit this home, and that his wife and child must be turned upon the world penniless. It was not surprising that reason was hardly under his control. He soon became as dependent as an infant on my mother's care ; and yet it w r as thought best that she should leave him, for a little time, and we went, together, to some relatives of hers in a distant part of the State. 16 BERENICE. My father bade us farewell on the beach, by the side of the sea, so soon to roll between us. " Berenice," said he, u comfort, and take care of your mother." The tears were in his eyes, and the wind tossed his white hair, and he spoke very sadly. " Father," I replied, " I will always be your little philosopher." He had taught me to call myself so. He took us both in his arms, and called us his only treasures. I was lifted into the boat, and clung to my mother, weeping silently ; but I heard the monotonous jarring of the oars between the thole-pins, and knew that we were shooting swiftly from the shore. Then I looked back, and could see my father still upon the beach, wav ing his handkerchief in a last adieu. Just then the boat changed tack, we turned the point of a headland, and were lost to each other's view. In a few moments more we had boarded the vessel ; the sails were un furled ; we dropped slowly down the narrows. I fixed my eyes on each well-remembered point of land, as one after another hove in sight, and strained my vision till the last was lost in the misty distance. " Grand- BERENICE. 17 manan," " Petitmanan," " Quoddy Light," all faded successively in the dim distance, and so I looked my silent, sorrowful farewell. The voyage was altogether very uncomfortable, but I do not remember many of the incidents. I know the nights seemed interminably long, as I lay awake, beside my mother, in the narrow berth, and listened to the creaking of the rigging, as the wind whistled through it. But that was not all that kept me wakeful ; for I heard, besides, my mother's whispered prayer. I have listened to prayers, in fine churches, from the lips of men whose business it is to pray. I have heard prayers at the blessed family altar, where were gathered a happy band of loved ones ; sweet, earnest prayers, of thankfulness and blessing. I have heard trembling souls plead at the mercy-seat of God. I have heard the dying pray for life, and the living pray for death, as though death were the Lethe of forgetfulness. But I have never heard a prayer, or voice of suppli cation, like my mother's whispered utterances on the wide ocean, in the dismal night, in the narrow berth of the cabin of that ship, bearing us from home, and friends, and love. Her faith was strong, even in the 18 BERENICE. hopeless darkness of that hour. It was an agony of prayer ; a prayer which Christ would pity. I was still as death. My mother thought I slept. She never knew her child was watching while she prayed. Our vessel was but a poor one. We sailed very slowly, and were detained at a desolate and out-of-the- way port by an adverse wind. After that, part of our journey was over land, and part by boating upon a river. We had been nearly two weeks from home, when my mother received intelligence of my father's increased illness ; and there was no alternative, she must go back to him. The people with whom we were stopping (for we had not yet reached our final destination) desired that I might be left with them. They said, " She is a handy little girl, and will be useful to tend the baby." I believe, by the generally understood laws of grati tude, they were greatly indebted to my mother's family for some favor rendered long enough before to be for gotten. The " handy little girl" did not quite like staying alone with strangers ; but she saw it would be better for BERENICE. 19 the mother to go without her, and so a sobbing consent was given. She left me, with perfect confidence that such kindly care would be extended as she would have given to another, under like circumstances, till she could send or come for me. All went smoothly for a time. Tasks were set me, and I accomplished them. As they were enlarged, I exerted myself to the utmost to meet them. The weeks went by, and my mother did not return. I watched long and wistfully, with my face close to the window-pane, as the twilight came, night after night, until it was too dark for me to see any longer, down the dark way that led to the mill, through which she must pass to come to me. And no tidings of her came ; at least, none were communicated to me. I was busy out of doors, helping to pile large heaps of brush-wood (always an encumbrance of new clearings), until it was piled, and set on fire. I enjoyed the sport finely. But it could not last, and I saw, with dismay, that a change had coine over my keepers. I was told that, if I wanted bread to eat, I must earn it. I felt ready, and willing ; but I said to myself, ' ' I am such a little girl, what can 20 BERENICE. I do? that my mother would come, and take me away ! " But for me the warfare of life had already commenced. I took my place in the ranks, unconscious of what was before me. I had none of the consolations of companionship with those of my own age. There were but the two houses and the mill for miles around us. It was a pretty, wild dell ; and the newly-burnt land yielded its fruits almost with out tillage, simple productions, vegetables and ber ries of every description. If I had dwelt there alone, with those who loved me, I could have been happy forever. But I pined for the love I had lost, and was harshly rebuked. My birthday was near my eighth birthday; and I said, "Surely, now she will come ! " It dawned, waxed, waned, and set ; yet she did not come. A few days after this, Dame Coffin, my mistress, cut off my curly hair. The only beauty I could claim were those glossy brown curls, which my dear mother had taken such pride in smoothing every day over her slender white BERENICE. 21 fingers. I prized them, for she had called them "beautiful," and kissed my forehead when she said it. I thought it was robbing her to take them from me. But the few tears I dared to drop, in silent pleading, were unavailing. Shears had never touched my locks before ; and it seemed, as they clashed in my hair, that the nerves in my neck were being snipped one by one. I was a nervous child ; my long bright curls lay at my feet, and I was too sim ple to know the head from which they had been shorn would yield more ; and I really felt, for a little while, as if my head itself were off. They took away the tasteful frocks belonging to me, and dressed me in gowns made of coarse blue checked cotton, very narrow in the skirt, made, as I thought then, on purpose to make me tear them when I ran, in order to have something to scold me for; but I afterwards discovered it was to save cloth. And, worst of all indignities, I was not allowed to wear shoes and stockings, except on Sundays. I felt strange sensations the first time I found my self out of doors barefooted. But the weather was warm, and although I sometimes trod on sharp 22 BERENICE. stones, or a thorn pierced the tender flesh, I man aged to wash off the blood with my tears, and limp away on my various errands. My tasks came to be so many and excessive, that I found little time for sorrow, and less for joy. It was " Berenice, here !" and "Berenice, there!" until I fairly hated the sound of my own name. Did it ever occur to you, reader, how people man aged to sweep their floors before brooms were invented ? I will tell you and " thereby hangs a tale;" for in that country brooms were dear. The sanded floors were always flourished off in waves, or shells, or some odd fancy, with a large tuft of hemlock branches, tied neatly and strongly to a handle ; and a very nice broom do the boughs make, barring the scattered spiculne, when they become a little crisp from use. To me was given the task of gathering from the woods branches of the proper size; but I was not permitted to depart on my errand until the work was " done up," late in the afternoon. When once amid the deep shade of the wood, its solemn stillness filled me with an indescribable tranquil pleasure. The trees stood to me for my familiar BERENICE. 23 friends ; each within a certain circle was individual ized, and named for some one that I loved. I talked to them, and fancy, in return, conjured the sound of the wind in their weaving tops into words of tenderness and welcome. Occupied with pleasant rev eries, I forgot the time, the hour, and everything con nected with the half-civilized beings who claimed my duty, when the sound of my name, mingled with a faint holloa, tingled through my ears, and aroused me at once to my situation. I was suddenly aware that I was in the woods ; that trees were all around me, and that yet the boughs for my broom were un- gathered. That sound, from some leather-lunged individual, meant in effect, " Berenice, you good-for- nothing ! come right along this minute, with that ere broom stuff, or you '11 catch it ! " In an instant my songs and converse with the trees were hushed : and, with hurried scramblings, I tore from my stately friends a few of their branch ing honors, and, forcing my way through the mazes of underbrush, I stood, panting and frightened, in the presence of Dame Coffin. My trophies were exam ined. Ah, luckless child! I had "wasted the time 24 BERENICE. in play." There was "nothing fit for a broom!" I was scolded for an idle hussy, and the branches were whipped about me until there was nothing left but broken twigs. And so I must go back dis graced, blinded with tears, choking with sobs. Thus I retraced the path to my only friends. It certainly was an error to allow pleasure to hin der me from duty. My daily routine embraced a great variety of occu pations ; bringing water from the spring at the foot of the hill, at some little distance from the house ; dig ging potatoes for the pigs and people, which was in itself no small amount of labor ; tending the baby a nice, plump child, of a year old, whom I dearly loved ; watching, not only our sheep, but those of neighbors, to keep them out of the cultivated fields ; and, while at this last task, I was expected to do double duty in the shape of knitting socks for the good man of the house. Besides this, certain tasks were set me, to be fin ished before sunset ; otherwise, I should go supper- less to bed. It was well to keep me busy, but cruel to visit my shortcomings so severely. BERENICE, 25 Two several times I was whipped. Once for the falsehood of our neighbor's boy the second and last, for tearing a handful of hair from my own head, in a fit of passion. I had been commanded, in an ungentle voice, to perform what I conceived to be a degrading act. My pride rebelled. I did their bidding, but hated myself for having submitted; and, twisting my hand in my hair, I tore out and threw a handful on the floor. It was a challenge for an encounter in which I knew the odds would be fearfully against me. But a spirit of daring possessed me for the moment. I cared not what might follow. I felt insulted. Young as I was, my heart was swelling with con tempt of the authority to which I must submit. "There I maddened." The woman seized the hair with furious joy; and, as she rushed out of doors, I anticipated my doom. She quickly returned with a stout willow rod ; and, seizing me firmly by the wrist, left me the liberty of swinging about at the length of our two arms distant from* her person, while she showered the blows on my bare neck and 3 26 BERENICE. arms, I little dreamed there was in reserve for me what would make the rest unfelt. I shrieked, "My mother ! I will tell her that you have beaten me ! " "No you won't; for she is dead! I have been waiting for a good chance to tell you ; and now is the time." The willow withe whistled in the air, and fell again on my writhing flesh ; but I did not feel it. I sank on my knees, lifting my arms, blue with the wales raised by the rod, and said, " Then she is in heaven, and she will take me from you. You dare not beat me again ! " The woman said not a word, but, turning, went out of the room, closing the door gently after her. And there I sat in the dusky evening ; not a tear dropped from my fixed eyes. I recalled the image of my mother's pale, thin cheeks. I could not bear to believe her dead. I tried to think, "What is it to be dead?" I once had seen a little playmate in her coffin, and they told me she was dead. I could not see how it differed from sleep. But I saw them place her in the dark and lonely tomb, and I knew that BERENICE. 27 she was very cold. Another thing puzzled me. One day, when I lived with my parents, I saw some children weeping bitterly. "What ails you?" I said. "Our mother is dead," they replied; and now "My mother is dead," I thought, "and I cannot cry. Did they love their mother more than I mine?" Then I pictured the room at home, and she lying there, still and cold, like little Florence in her last sleep. The image grew vivid. It seemed to me that I stood in the well-remembered place. There my mother lay before me ; but to all my askings she answered not a word. And then I longed to touch her, but could not stir. I knew that tears would cool my burning eyes, if I could but rest a finger on my mother's cold brow. I tried to drag myself forward ; but something held me back. Then I re lapsed into strange quiescence, and sat quite still, thinking, " How do they know she is dead?" "How dare they fold her away in the dark, and say she is dead?" The word had a new and awful significance. I spelled it over and over again, but I could not fathom 28 BERENICE. the sense. It rang through the arches of thought, away in interminable vistas of forever and ever. I was baffled, brain-weary, and I sank into a state of torpor. Then I saw a vision that to me was a reality. It has comforted me through life. I saw that the last day had come,* and the great hour of the separation of the goats from the sheep ; of the just from the unjust. The holy Jesus had come to judge the world. I saw him gloriously arrayed ; his face unlike the pictures I had seen. I cannot describe it. It was the glory of the sun, the paleness of the moon, and the flashing of star- like rays, that combined to make it so beautiful. I thought that, taking me in his arms, and lift ing me above the multitude gathered around, he said, " Suffer little children to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven," and then he placed me beside my mother. I did not know where ; but it was light, and warm, and blissful, and my mother's kiss brought the tears in a perfect gush to my eyes. I wondered that I wept when I was so happy. I asked her to beg the good Lord that I might stay with her. She gently replied, and there could BERENICE. 2 not be sweeter music than her voice, "All will be well ! " and the vision faded from my sight. I never breathed her name to those who so cruelly apprized me of her death. But there was no more anger in my grieved heart. They might have trod den me under foot; I should not have resented it. CHAPTER III. ONE day in the week was mine, all my own. I had liberty to go where I pleased, and do what I liked. That day was the Sabbath. There was no divine worship within boating distance ; and no mission- preacher ever found our small colony in the midst of the eastern wilds. So I strolled about in the woods, singing hymns my mother had taught me at our own fireside ; or, taking my testament, I sat down on the beach, to watch the coming in of the tide, and read the "Revelations," then my favorite study. Or I went to the spring in the dell, and laughed at the crop-haired little blackamoor grinning back at me from its smooth mirror. And then, to make myself more hideous, I wove garlands of the wild flowers and leaves growing about its borders, and twined them about my sunburnt face, and laughed again at the tawny smiler in the spring. BERENICE. 31 I knew it was myself, and yet felt as though it must be somebody else. Then I would hunt the four- leaved clover; and, when it was found, Avould wish wish I hardly knew what to wish; but that some body who loved me would come and take me home home I And, then, the thought of my old home, of my parents, would make me so sad, I would go down to the sea again, and watch the great waves tumbling the seaweed on the shore. A little way down the bank stood a tree, half shivered by some furious storm, and half of it was green ; but, on the bare and ghastly limb, which seemed just breaking from the parent stem, a gray old eagle rocked quite at his ease, and I thought he looked at me, and felt quite sure he was defying me to look into the face of the sun, as he could do. But I was not to be defied. So I fixed my eyes upon the glare of the fiery luminary with the utmost bravado. I wonder now that it did not injure my sight. Thus I took lessons in sun-gazing from the eagle. There is not a doubt but he intended carrying me off, and was making up his mind as to his chances of success, considering my weight and his own strength of beak and talori. 32 BERENICE. As the feat was not undertaken, I suppose he finally thought me too heavy ; perhaps he felt too much sympathy with a being as wild and solitary as him self. The season of sunshine, and flowers, and bird-songs, went by ; and no one who loved me came to take me away, for all my wishing. The balm of Gilead trees yielded no more their pleasant odor, and the scentless air pined for the lost fragrance. The chilly winds piped drearily in the night-time through the chinks of the half- finished dwelling. The later autumn days came, and brought with them the sharp frosts so common in that north eastern corner of the world. the frosty mornings ! What a thick white coat covered the earth ! How my bare feet ached with the cold ; and how I stopped, on my way to the spring, and turned over the pine chips, lying in the- path, and stood on " the warm side," as I called it, to ease the smart for a moment ! When the snow came, they gave me some heavy, stiff shoes to wear, without stockings ; and all through the long, cold winter I slept in the comfortless loft, with a scanty BERENICE. 33 allowance of bedding, I, who had never before slept out of my mother's bosom ! I approve of children's being plainly fed, but I did not approve of the method in which my sup pers were served : a bowl of hot water and molasses, with coarse bread made of musty meal ; and, to make it more unpalatable, it was frequently spiced with "spills" from a twig of the hemlock broom which Dame Coffin thrust into the nose of the tea-kettle before pouring the water into my bowl. She gave, as an excuse for this, that there was