view release on metacpan or  search on metacpan

testdata/encantadas.txt  view on Meta::CPAN

to one side, and held them so. They formed an oval frame, through which the
bluely boundless sea rolled like a painted one. And there the invisible
painter painted to her view the wave-tossed and disjointed raft, its once
level logs slantingly upheaved, as raking masts, and the four struggling
arms undistinguishable among them, and then all subsided into
smooth-flowing creamy waters, slowly drifting the splintered wreck, while,
first and last, no sound of any sort was heard. Death in a silent picture,
a dream of the eye, such vanishing shapes as the mirage shows.

So instant was the scene, so trancelike its mild pictorial effect, so
distant from her blasted bower and her common sense of things, that Hunilla
gazed and gazed, nor raised a finger or a wail. But as good to sit thus
dumb, in stupor staring on that dumb show, for all that otherwise might be
done. With half a mile of sea between, how could her two enchanted arms aid
those four fated ones? The distance long, the time one sand. After the
lightning is beheld, what fool shall stay the thunderbolt? Felipe's body
was washed ashore, but Truxill's never came, only his gay, braided hat of
golden straw -- that same sunflower thing he waved to her, pushing from the
strand -- and now, to the last gallant, it still saluted her. But Felipe's
body floated to the marge, with one arm encirclingly outstretched.
Lockjawed in grim death, the lover-husband softly clasped his bride, true
to her even in death's dream. Ah, heaven, when man thus keeps his faith,
wilt thou be faithless who created the faithful one? But they cannot break
faith who never plighted it.

It needs not to be said what nameless misery now wrapped the lonely widow.
In telling her own story she passed this almost entirely over, simply
recounting the event. Construe the comment of her features as you might,
from her mere words little would you have weened that Hunilla was herself
the heroine of her tale. But not thus did she defraud us of our tears. All
hearts bled that grief could be so brave.

She but showed us her soul's lid, and the strange ciphers thereon engraved;
all within, with pride's timidity, was withheld. Yet was there one
exception. Holding out her small olive hand before her captain, she said in
mild and slowest Spanish, "Senor, I buried him," then paused, struggled as
against the writhed coilings of a snake, and, cringing suddenly, leaped up,
repeating in impassioned pain, "I buried him, my life, my soul!"

Doubtless it was by half-unconscious, automatic motions of her hands, that
this heavy-hearted one performed the final office for Felipe, and planted a
rude cross of withered sticks -- no green ones might be had -- at the head
of that lonely grave, where rested now in lasting uncomplaint and quiet
haven he whom untranquil seas had overthrown.

But some dull sense of another body that should be interred, of another
cross that should hallow another grave -- unmade as yet -- some dull
anxiety and pain touching her undiscovered brother, now haunted the
oppressed Hunilla. Her hands fresh from the burial earth, she slowly went
back to the beach, with unshaped purposes wandering there, her spellbound
eye bent upon the incessant waves. But they bore nothing to her but a
dirge, which maddened her to think that murderers should mourn. As time
went by, and these things came less dreamingly to her mind, the strong
persuasions of her Romish faith, which sets peculiar store by consecrated
urns, prompted her to resume in waking earnest that pious search which had
but begun as in somnambulism. Day after day, week after week, she trod the
cindery beach, till at length a double motive edged every eager glance.
With equal longing she now looked for the living and the dead, the brother
and the captain, alike vanished, never to return. Little accurate note of
time had Hunilla taken under such emotions as were hers, and little,
outside herself, served for calendar or dial. As to poor Crusoe in the
selfsame sea, no saint's bell pealed forth the lapse of week or month; each
day went by unchallenged; no chanticleer announced those sultry dawns, no
lowing herds those poisonous nights. All wonted and steadily recurring
sounds, human, or humanized by sweet fellowship with man, but one stirred
that torrid trance -- the cry of dogs; save which naught but the rolling
sea invaded it, an all-pervading monotone, and to the widow that was the
least loved voice she could have heard.

No wonder that, as her thoughts now wandered to the unreturning ship and
were beaten back again, the hope against hope so struggled in her soul that
at length she desperately said, "Not yet, not yet; my foolish heart runs on
too fast." So she forced patience for some further weeks. But to those whom
earth's sure indraft draws, patience or impatience is still the same.

Hunilla now sought to settle precisely in her mind, to an hour, how long it
was since the ship had sailed, and then, with the same precision, how long
a space remained to pass. But this proved impossible. What present day or
month it was she could not say. Time was her labyrinth, in which Hunilla
was entirely lost.

And now follows --

Against my own purposes a pause descends upon me here. One knows not
whether nature doth not impose some secrecy upon him who has been privy to
certain things. At least, it is to be doubted whether it be good to blazon
such. If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how,
then, with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will
hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books, should be forbid.
But in all things man sows upon the wind, which bloweth just there whither
it listeth; for ill or good, man cannot know. Often ill comes from the
good, as good from ill.

When Hunilla --

Dire sight it is to see some silken beast long dally with a golden lizard
ere she devour. More terrible to see how feline Fate will sometimes dally
with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it repulse a sane despair
with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp this catlike thing,
sporting with the heart of him who reads, for if he feel not he reads in
vain.

-- "The ship sails this day, today," at last said Hunilla to herself; "this
gives me certain time to stand on; without certainty I go mad. In loose
ignorance I have hoped and hoped; now in firm knowledge I will but wait.
Now I live and no longer perish in bewilderings. Holy Virgin, aid me! Thou
wilt waft back the ship. Oh, past length of weary weeks -- all to be
dragged over -- to buy the certainty of today, I freely give ye, though I
tear ye from me!"

As mariners, tossed in tempest on some desolate ledge, patch them a boat
out of the remnants of their vessel's wreck, and launch it in the selfsame
waves, see here Hunilla, this lone shipwrecked soul, out of treachery
invoking trust. Humanity, thou strong thing, I worship thee, not in the
laureled victor, but in this vanquished one.

Truly Hunilla leaned upon a reed, a real one -- no metaphor; a real Eastern
reed. A piece of hollow cane, drifted from unknown isles, and found upon
the beach, its once jagged ends rubbed smoothly even as by sandpaper, its
golden glazing gone. Long ground between the sea and land, upper and nether
stone, the unvarnished substance was filed bare, and wore another polish