The Blunders of a Bashful Man

by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

I'd forget the curse of my life and be happy in spite of it.

When winter shut down, however, I didn't talk quite so much to the sea; it was ugly and boisterous, and the windy promenade was dangerous, and I shut myself up and pined like the "Prisoner of Chillon." I have lots of spunk and pride, if I am bashful; and so I never let on to those at home—when I sent them a letter once in two months by the little tug that brought my oil and provisions—that I was homesick. I said the ocean was glorious; that there was a Byronic sublimity in lighting up the lantern; that standing behind a counter and showing dry-goods to silly, giggling girls couldn't be compared with it; that I hadn't blushed in six months, and that I didn't think I should ever be willing to come back to a world full of grinning snobs and confusing women.

And now, what do you think happened to me? My fate was too strong even for Buncombe Island. It was the second of January. The tug had not left the island, after leaving a nine-weeks' supply, more than twelve hours before a fearful gale began to blow; it rose higher and higher through the night, and in the morning I found that a small sailing-vessel had been wrecked about half a mile from the light-house, where the beach ran out for some distance into the water, and the land was not so high as on the rock. I ran down there, the wind still roaring enough to blow me away, and the spray dashing into my eyes, and I found the vessel had gone to pieces and every man was drowned.

But what was this that lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I sat and lived. I put her before the fire; I heated some brandy and poured it between her lips; in short, when I sat down to my little tea-table late that afternoon, somebody sat on the opposite side—a woman—a girl, rather, not more than eighteen or nineteen. Here she was, and here she must remain for two long months.

She did not seem half so much put out as I. In fact, she was quite calm, after she had explained to me that she was one of three passengers on board the sailing-vessel, and that all the others were drowned.

"You will have to remain here for two months," I ventured to explain to her, coloring like a lobster dabbed into hot water.

"Oh, then, I may as well begin pouring the tea at once," she observed coolly; "that's a feminine duty, you know, sir."

"I'm glad you're not afraid of me," I ventured to say.

"Afraid of you!" she replied, tittering. "No, indeed. It is you who are afraid of me. But I sha'n't hurt you, sir. You mind your affairs, and I'll mind mine, and neither of us will come to grief. Why, what a lot of books you've got! And such an easy-chair! It's just splendid here, and so romantic, like the stories we read."

I repressed a groan, and allowed her, after supper, and she had done as she said—washed the dishes—to take possession of my favorite book and my favorite seat. She was tired with her adventures of the night before, and soon asked where she was to sleep.