CHAPTER XVII.

THE STORM.

“The storm comes in fury! loud roars the wild blast— Like a quivering reed, shakes the towering mast, But on the bark dashes, proud, dauntless, and free, She rides like a gull on the crest of the sea.” CHARLES H. BRAINARD.

Hagar had gone to her chamber to write a letter. Hagar’s room was on the third floor front, at the angle of the old hall. Its front and east windows overlooked the bay for many miles up and down. Its north windows, the bay, the moor, and forest. It was like the wild girl to choose this eyrie! She selected it because its lofty height commanded the bay,—because it was far above the inhabited parts of the house, no soul, except herself, occupying or ever coming near that floor, or even the one beneath it. Then it was very large and airy, and furnished or _un_furnished, to suit the singular girl’s fancy. The walls were papered with a German landscape paper, representing parts of the Black Forest, and the exploits of the Wild Huntsman. The floor was painted dark green, and the paint had been worn off here and there in patches; so that in the dusky light the room looked not unlike a wild and darksome forest glade, the scene of some weird revel, shown in silent pantomime. A tent bedstead, with hangings of faded green damask, stood at the furthest extremity of the room; the windows were also curtained with the same material. Between the front windows stood an old-fashioned escritoire, full of innumerable drawers, closets, and pigeon-holes, which, with one or two heavy old chairs, completed the original furniture of the room. With Hagar’s varying mood, her dark and dreamy, or her free, wild mood, the singular girl would close all the shutters, and draw all the curtains, converting the room into a shadowy scene of woodland romance, from which the demon figure of the Wild Huntsman would glimmer out in the gleam of some stray ray of sunlight flickering through a crevice in the closed shutters; or, throwing open the four windows to the day, she would let in a flood of light and air, and the prospect of half a hemisphere of blue sky and salt water. Her room now, as she sought it, was light, free, and exposed as the highest peak of the promontory; and the rising wind rushed through it in a strong, fresh current, swelling and flapping the heavy curtains like the heavy sails of a ship. She entered her room, and before sitting down to write, laid off and put away her riding habit in one of the dark closets, and went to the windows and drew aside, looped up and confined the curtains, to keep them from flapping in the wind; _reefed_ them, as a sailor would say. Then she gazed anxiously out upon the boundless bay, where the freshening gale was rolling up the waves against the advancing tide, and upon the darkening sky where clouds were piled like ink-hued mountains from horizon to zenith, and upon the distant sail of a wave-tossed packet that gleamed like a snow-flake on the black bosom of the water an instant, and then, like a snow-flake, would melt and disappear in the rise of an intervening wave.

“God! if Raymond should be in that bark!” she cried, as her falcon glance descried it.

Seizing her small telescope (one of her toys when a child, one of her jewels when a woman), she levelled it at the distant bark. She gazed eagerly. On struggled the frail vessel between wind and wave, tacking from side to side, now driven forward by the gale, now thrown back by the tide. She gazed anxiously. The thunder muttered in the distance. The gale quickened, and now stronger than the tide, drove on the fragile bark before it, reeling and pitching like a drunken man. She left the window and the room, and hurrying down stairs, hastened from the house, fled to the promontory, and stood upon the extreme point of the peak gazing out upon the waters.

The sky was black as night. The bosom of the bay heaved like a strong heart in a strong agony. On came the vessel bounding and rebounding before the wind, until it was brought up suddenly by the strong current of the waves that whirled around the point of the promontory; and then it heaved and tossed between leaping and flashing waters and buffeting winds! There on that maelstrom it heaved and set like a guilty wish in an ardent soul, driven on by the gale of passion and opposed by the tide of conscience, and nearly wrecked between them. There it heaved and set, vainly struggling to round the promontory, and enter the harbor of Churchill’s Point. There it rolled and writhed and groaned; now raised by a towering wave, now thrown down a yawning ocean cavern, while the lightning glared, and the thunder breaking overhead rolled rumbling down the abyss of distance! Upon the extreme point of the peak, like the spirit of the storm, stood Hagar, her hair and raiment flying in the gale around her, her eyes fixed upon the writhing vessel. Suddenly with a sharp cry, scarce touching with her light foot the points of the crags that served her for steps, she sped down the dizzy precipice; she had recognised Raymond, just at the moment when the slight vessel, lifted by an uprearing giant wave, was pitched upon the rocks at the base of the promontory! Shot from the deck into the air by the sudden concussion, three or four men dropped into the sea at the distance. Hagar’s eyes with a rapid glance traversed the bosom of the waters. She saw one or two sturdy sailors rise, buffeting the waves and struggling to reach the shore. But she saw not Raymond, though with pausing brain, breathless lungs, and bursting heart, she watched the surface of the now subsiding waters. At last at some distance up the coast she saw him rise, struggle, catch at the air, half leap from the water, fall, turn over and disappear under the wave, that was colored with his blood! She bounded forward and sprang upon her boat. Unmooring it and casting the ropes behind her, she seized the oar and dashed into the midst of the boiling sea. Urging on her boat between flashing foam and brine, she passed the eddy around the point, and rode rocking forward upon the rising and falling waves towards the spot she had seen him sink at. Keeping her eyes down the current where she supposed he would be whirled, she again saw him rise and struggle. She pulled swiftly for the spot, reached it, while he, lashing the waves with his arms, seized the side of the boat, and turned himself suddenly and heavily in, his weight pitching the light skiff upon one end. Hagar, with her skill and presence of mind, threw her whole weight upon the oar at the other end, and thus righted the boat. With a look of earnest gratitude to Hagar, Raymond seized the other oar, and they pulled for the shore. The sudden storm had spent its fury. It was now passing off, like a woman’s fit of anger in a passion of tears, in a heavy shower of rain. They pulled for the shore, but Raymond pulled painfully. They reached the beach where the captain, mate, and two men that composed the whole crew of the small craft, were waiting under the drenching rain.

“Are all here, all safe?” asked Raymond, as he stepped upon the sand.

“All safe! thank God!” answered the skipper.

“But you, Raymond, you are wounded!” said Hagar, laying her hand upon a bloodstained rent on the shoulder of his jacket. Even at her light touch he involuntarily shrank slightly as he replied—

“Not much, dear Hagar.”

“But you _are_,” said she, speaking rapidly, “you are pale and weak, you were thrown upon a sharp rock, your shoulder was struck and wounded; you have lost much blood; it crimsoned the wave when you first rose, though now it has been staunched by the cold water, and the stains are almost effaced—come home! oh, come! lean on my arm, Raymond, it is strong if it is a little one,—for once let me assist you as you have heretofore sustained me. Come, Raymond! come, brother! come!” and her wild eyes softened into gentleness, and her proud eyes into pleading, as, standing on a point of rock above him, she held down her hand imploringly, to assist in the ascent. He smiled gently, and man-like, scorned, while he could do without it, to receive from her the help he so much needed. Turning to the sailors, he told them to seek the Hall, pointing out the shortest path of ascent. They were quick in following his direction, and had reached the top of the heath and carried the news of the wreck, the preservation of the crew, and announced the arrival of Raymond Withers, while the latter was yet toiling, pale and nearly fainting, at the side of the cliff. Hagar climbed or waited, beside him. At length they reached the top, and paused. Raymond was breathless and reeling—his wound, started by his toil, was bleeding afresh.

“My brother, why will you not let me help you?” pleaded Hagar, again offering her hand. He shook his head mournfully,—he was too faint to talk, and signed for her to lead the way to the hall, where he followed, painfully.

In the closed and curtained chamber Mr. Withers slumbered. The noise of the storm faintly murmured through that inner room, only lulling him into deeper sleep. Sophie, in her reveries, had not thought of the possibility of a packet exposed to the storm, far less of Raymond’s danger; so that before she had thought of peril, the shipwrecked sailors stood before her, claiming shelter.

Hagar and Raymond slowly approached the Hall, and entered it. “Now, dear Raymond, your father is sleeping, I think; go and change your clothes, and lie down and rest before you present yourself to him; your clothes are lost, I suppose; but come with me and I will show you into your father’s dressing-room; you can furnish yourself from his wardrobe.” Then seeing how pale he looked and noticing his bleeding wound, she hastily said;—“But oh! of what am I thinking? Let me call Sophie to dress your wound.” And conducting him into a dressing-room, she turned to leave him to summon Sophie. He had sunk exhausted into a deep chair, and holding out his arms, said, very calmly—

“Come, Hagar, my little sister, you have given me no kiss of welcome since I came. Come, Hagar!” She started, turned, made one step towards him, paused, the blood rushed to her brow, then recovered herself, waved him a smiling denial, and left the room. And yet she had met the kiss of Gusty May with saucy cordiality.