We were up here in the clouds almost, for so high was the turret that often we could see little fleecy cloudlets resting over the trees in the valley far beneath. The sunrises in the east, where mountain rose o’er mountain, and hills on hills, till they hid their snowy heads in the heavens, were indescribably grand and gorgeous. Long, long before the sun itself uprose, and while the shadows of night still rested in valleys and glens, those snow-covered peaks, all jagged and toothed, were lighted up with the most delicate shades of pink and crimson, with ethereal shadows of pearly blue. Downwards and downwards the light and colour would creep, till the forests seemed to swim in a purple haze; then bars and fleeces of cloud grew before our eyes from grey to bronze, and from bronze to lake and gold, and presently the sun’s red disc shimmered over the horizon and it was day; and the whole woods awakened at once into a burst of joyous bird-music and melody.
The sunsets used to be equally lovely.
Beebee would watch the sea all day long almost. It never was lacking in charm for her, whether grey under clouds of pearl, or bright blue under a cloudless sky, or dark with trailing thunderstorms, it was always the sea; and when a ship appeared, she would clap her tiny hands for very joy, and run to procure her lorgnettes, that she might even see the sailors as they walked to and fro across the decks, or leant listlessly over the bulwarks.
“Some day, some day,” she would cry, “some day, dear Shireen, you and I will be on the ocean, and then, oh! then, at last, I shall be free. I have been by its banks, Shireen, and have heard the music of its waters. But it has a secret, a secret that it tells only to those who brave its dangers.
“‘Wouldst thou, the helmsman answered,
Learn the secrets of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers,
Comprehend its mystery.’
“But,” she added, still quoting the American bard:—
“‘Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams come back to me.
“‘Sails of silk and ropes of sendal,
Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
And the answers from the shore.
“‘Till my soul is filled with longing
For the secret of the sea;
And the heart of that great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.’”
Yet beautiful though the sunsets used to be they seemed ever to throw a shadow of melancholy over Beebee’s heart, and whether Miss Morgan was in the room or not, she would sit at the balcony casement in dreamy silence long after the glory of the clouds had left them, and the shades of night were falling over sea and land.
Then the stars would glimmer out, and their light appeared always to make her happy once more. The evening star was her especial favourite, not because it is the star of love, but because she called it and thought it her mother’s eye.
She would make her governess repeat to her, often over and over again, Longfellow’s beautiful lines to this star:—