So the little castle-builders talked until the sun had melted into the waves, and twilight, like a pilgrim that had been resting by the road-side, rose up from the beach, and came slowly toward the old house. Mortimer, who had been gazing dreamily at the beach-which grew fainter and fainter, till it seemed like a white thread running through the selvage of blue drapery-turned his eyes on Bell. "Bell," said he, quietly, "as you sit there in the shadows, with your beautiful hair folded over your forehead, you look like an angel!" "Do I?" "I can put my hand on your neck, yet you seem far away from me." "Come, rest your head in my lap, Mort," said the girl, tenderly, "and I will tell you of a real true angel who once came into this world." The chestnut locks of the boy looked darker against her white dress, as Bell bent over him, and commenced, in a low, silvery voice, an old angel legend. She was in the midst of a strange description of Paradise, when a tremulous voice came up the stairway "Come to tea, children!" Then the two looked at each other curiously. It was so odd to be called to tea, and they in Heaven! It was a long step from Paradise to the suppertable; but the dream was shattered. Bell laughed. Then they closed the window, and descended to the room below, where Nanny had prepared the evening meal of snowy bread and milk, and ripe purple whortleberries. It was very queer to see the three sitting at table-to see homely-looking, but kindhearted Nanny, between the two children, like a twilight between two pleasant mornings. When supper was over, and while Nanny was washing the tea-things, the children went down to the beach, shell hunting. The white moon stood directly over the sea, and the waves were full of silvery arrows, as if Diana had scattered them from her quiver. Mortimer's eyes drank in the sight, as they had a thousand times before, for Nature is ever new to her lovers. In the measured roll of the sea, he heard the diapason of a grand poem, and the far-off thunder, heard now and then, was the chorus of the gods. But Heaven rapt the heart of little Bell! The waves fell on her finer ear like subtlest music; to her they were harps, and the fingers of angels were touching them, while the thunder was "God walking overhead!" They wandered along the sands, picking up curious shells and cream-white pebbles, dashed with red or clouded with mazarine. Bell would hold them up to her ear, and listen to the "little whispers," as she called them; but the boy would skim them along the wave-tips, and shout when some great billow caught one, and hurled it back scornfully at his feet. Bell saw a ridge of rocks which looked like the back of a whale, running out some distance into the sea, where the water was whiter and leaped higher than anywhere else; and soon her dainty feet picked a way over the jagged rocks. The boy was about to send a light shell skipping through the surf, when his glance caught Bell standing on the highest jut of the ledge, the wind lifting her long hair and the folds of her dress. "Bell! Bell!" "The stars are in the sea, brother," she replied, "and the winds are wild here." "Bell! Bell!"? "I cannot come to you. I fear to walk over the rocks again! But it is beautiful here, and I am not afraid!" 66 Ah, Bell!" he spoke sadly, "that's what I dreamt. I thought that there was a gulf between us, and when I called, Bell! Bell!' you answered, I cannot come to you, brother; but you can come to me!' O, Bell-sister Bell! as you love me, come back. I tremble when you look so like an angel. Come to me, sister." Mortimer ran out on the slender bridge of stone and led Bell back by the hand. After a little while they heard Nanny calling them to come home. The children occupied a small chamber over the front door. A scented vine clomb all about the window, and taught the ruddy sun at morning to throw a subdued light into the room; and it broke the orange stream of sunset. At night the dreamers from their bed could see the stars hanging like fruit among its cloudy leaves. When Bell and Mortimer came up from the seabeach, the moonlight, breaking through this leafy lattice, made the chamber as that of Abon Ben Adhem" like a lily in bloom." Nanny brought a lamp, and kissed them good-night. "O, we don't want a lamp all this moon!" cried Bell. The boy sat half undressed at the window. "Bell loves moonlight like a fairy," he said. Bell's robe fell to her knees in snowy folds, and she stood like a petite Venus rising from the froth. Then brother and sister braided their voices in a simple prayer to Our Father in Heaven. They prayed for kind old Nanny, and for one on the wide sea. "When will father come home ?" asked Bell, for the hundredth time that day. "It will not be long now. When the boughs of the cherry trees are an inch deep with ice, and the logs crackle in the fire-place-then he will come. Let us go to sleep, and dream of him." And thus, hand in hand, the two went in to Dream-land The world of Sleep, The beautiful old World! The dreamy Palestine of pilgrim Thought! Seems like the whispering of Angels, blown Upon molian harp-strings! And we change Into a seeming something that is not! |