“Surely, Polly,” said I, “you should
not feel so much pain when you are very soon going
to rejoin your father. Have you forgotten him?
Do you no longer wish to be his little companion?”
Dead silence succeeded this question.
“Child, lie down and sleep,” I urged.
“My bed is cold,” said she. “I
can’t warm it.”
I saw the little thing shiver. “Come to
me,” I said, wishing, yet scarcely hoping, that
she would comply: for she was a most strange,
capricious, little creature, and especially whimsical
with me. She came, however, instantly, like a
small ghost gliding over the carpet. I took her
in. She was chill: I warmed her in my arms.
She trembled nervously; I soothed her. Thus tranquillized
and cherished she at last slumbered.
“A very unique child,” thought I, as I
viewed her sleeping countenance by the fitful moonlight,
and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering eyelids
and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief. “How
will she get through this world, or battle with this
life? How will she bear the shocks and repulses,
the humiliations and desolations, which books, and
my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?”
She departed the next day; trembling like a leaf when
she took leave, but exercising self-command.
MISS MARCHMONT.
On quitting Bretton, which I did a few weeks after
Paulina’s departure—little thinking
then I was never again to visit it; never more to
tread its calm old streets—I betook myself
home, having been absent six months. It will
be conjectured that I was of course glad to return
to the bosom of my kindred. Well! the amiable
conjecture does no harm, and may therefore be safely
left uncontradicted. Far from saying nay, indeed,
I will permit the reader to picture me, for the next
eight years, as a bark slumbering through halcyon weather,
in a harbour still as glass—the steersman
stretched on the little deck, his face up to heaven,
his eyes closed: buried, if you will, in a long
prayer. A great many women and girls are supposed
to pass their lives something in that fashion; why
not I with the rest?
Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched
on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine,
rocked by breezes indolently soft. However, it
cannot be concealed that, in that case, I must somehow
have fallen overboard, or that there must have been
wreck at last. I too well remember a time—a
long time—of cold, of danger, of contention.
To this hour, when I have the nightmare, it repeats
the rush and saltness of briny waves in my throat,
and their icy pressure on my lungs. I even know
there was a storm, and that not of one hour nor one
day. For many days and nights neither sun nor
stars appeared; we cast with our own hands the tackling
out of the ship; a heavy tempest lay on us; all hope
that we should be saved was taken away. In fine,
the ship was lost, the crew perished.
