CHAPTER XI.
ALICE’S VISIT TO HUTTON ISLE.
“At eve a sail
On the blue water with a freshening gale.”
—Crabbe.
It was a bright evening near the last of October. The mail had just come in, and brought Alice letters to gladden her heart for many months. There was a letter from Magnus—that strong, confident, joyous Magnus, who always saw so much good and glory in the future. And there was one post-marked London, and ship-marked Belle Agnes, from Elsie—the healthful, hopeful, happy Elsie, who always made the best of everything, and was gladsome everywhere. No letter could be more replete with the tenderest filial affection than hers, yet there was not a word of home-sickness, or sorrow, or discontent in it. It was full of genial life, of happy love, and confident hope.
Alice kissed the loving letter again and again, and walked about, happy, restless, overjoyed. General Garnet was away from home again, as he was about half the time. And Alice, after she had read the welcome letter to all the confidential servants who loved Elsie, bethought herself—by way of expending some of the extra life she had received—of going over to see Miss Joe and telling the old lady that her nephew’s vessel was in port, for that she had got letters by it. She had frequently gone on to Hutton’s Isle to cheer the lonely old woman, and she knew the old soul would also be delighted to hear from Elsie.
Alice told Diogenes, the colored servant, to get the one-horse chaise and take her over to Huttontown. The chaise was soon ready. Alice entered it and was driven by Diogenes over to the village. She left the chaise at the ‘Neptune and Pan,’ and, attended by Diogenes, went down to the beach. The afternoon was very clear and calm:
“The air was still and the water still,”
and she felt no uneasiness in trusting herself to the little skiff and the one oar to the old servant.
As they glided over the silent waters the profound stillness of the air and water was vaguely disturbed by a distant, deep-toned, solemn moan, swelling on the horizon like the breeze upon a mammoth harp-string, and dying away in the deep of silence.