The Earth Trembled

by Edward Payson Roe

Ella could not help hearing his loud, harsh words, and her long, wailing cry was their echo.

At this instant Mrs. Bodine burst into the room, and her slender form seemed to dilate until a consciousness of her presence filled the apartment. Her face was more than stern. It wore the commanding expression of a high-born woman roused to the full extent of an unusually strong nature. Her dark eyes had an overmastering fire, and her withered cheeks were red with blood direct from her heart.

"Listen to me, sir," she said imperiously, "and stop your raving. Do not forget for another instant that you are a man, and that there are women in this house whom you are wounding by your brutal words. You, yourself, in very truth will commit murder, if you do not become sane. Did you not hear that cry? fit response to language that is like a bludgeon. How are you worse off than I, who have lost husband, sons, all? Have you not said to your boy as cruel things as Captain Bodine has said? This son of yours was too noble, too generous, too lofty for either you or us to understand in our damnable prejudices and blind hate. Come with me," and, seizing his hand, she dragged him to where Ella lay, white as death. "There," she resumed in the same impetuous yet clear-cut tones, "is as pure and good a girl as ever God created. Was loving her a crime? Go home, and ask God to forgive you, to take you where your son is in His good time. That poor child is the real victim. Unless you are mad indeed you will ask her forgiveness, and go quietly away."

The old man trembled like a leaf, swayed to and fro between his fierce conflicting emotions, and then left the house as hastily as he had entered. As he did so, Ella called after him feebly, but her voice was unheard.

The clerk and the colored waiter stood at the open door, and received Mr.
Houghton's tottering form. "Home," he gasped.

In renewed dread they bore him to his carriage, which Sam drove rapidly away. By the time he reached his residence he was in almost a fainting condition, and was carried to his bed. The waiter, who also acted in the capacity of valet at times, gave the old man stimulants, as he said to the clerk, "Go for Dr. Devoe: Sam dribe you. Bring 'im wid you quick."

The old man at last lay still, breathing heavily, and half-consciously making an instinctive struggle for existence. The shock of his passion and the weight of an immeasurable loss had been almost beyond endurance to a man of his age and of his volcanic nature. His physician was soon at his side, and, with some degree of success, put forth all his skill to rally his exhausted patient. He at last succeeded in producing a certain degree of lethargy, which, in benumbing the brain, brought respite from mental agony.

The impression of Bodine and all the others with him that young Houghton had been drowned was natural and almost inevitable. They had seen him disappear beneath the water, and that was the last that was seen or heard. The boatman's explanation that the young man had become entangled in the rigging of the sunken vessel seemed the only way of accounting for the fact that he did not rise again and strike out for his own boat. The words of Mr. Houghton, recalling that final sentence of Bodine's, which had destroyed George's hope and made him feel that he could not approach Ella again, had greatly augmented the veteran's distress. The thought, once lodged, could not be banished that the youth, in his wounded pride, might have silently chosen to brave every danger in order to prove that he was a "gentleman," and that he would "leave them alone," even at the cost of his life. This result of his harsh words was crushing to Bodine, and to escape from its intolerable weight he tried to entertain the hope that George had found some way of attaining safety as yet unknown.

The young man had not been drowned, although he had had an exceedingly narrow escape. It was not the rigging which so endangered his life. As he rose toward the surface his head struck the pole with which the negro was accustomed to push his boat around in the shallow water, and the blow was so stunning that he did no more than instinctively cling to the object which had injured him. It sustained his weight, but, in the wind-lashed waves and darkness, he and his support were unseen. The tide was running out swiftly, and he and the pole had been swept well astern, while Bodine looked at the spot where they thought he had sunk-a point from which the negro's frantic oar-strokes were rapidly taking them.

Gradually George's clouded senses cleared, and at last he recalled all that had occurred; far too late, however, for his voice to be heard. He shouted two or three time but soon recognized that his cries were lost in the dashing waves and howling wind. So far from giving way to panic, he encouraged himself with the hope that his effort to rescue Ella and those with her had not been in vain. Pointing the pole toward the city lights, he tried to make progress by striking out with his feet, but was soon convinced that he was exhausting himself to little purpose, for both wind and tide were against him. He therefore let himself float, hoping to be picked up by some vessel, or, at the worst, to land at Fort Sumter, which he deemed to be the nearest point of safety. Before very long he heard the throbbing of a steamer's engine, and soon her lights pierced the gloom. To get near enough to make his condition known without being run down was now his aim. She seemed to be coming directly toward him, and he thanked Heaven that the wind was dying out so that his voice might be heard.