This exercise ended, at length, by her dashing the volume down upon the shingle, and exclaiming:
“Stuff!”
“Who?”
“Tennyson.”
“Surely you’re jesting? The divine Tennyson – the pet poet of the age?”
“Poet of the age! There’s no such person!”
“What! not Longfellow?”
“Another of the same. The American edition, diluted, if such a thing were possible. Poets indeed! Rhymesters of quaint conceits – spinners of small sentiments in long hexameters – not soul enough in all the scribblings of both to stir up the millionth part of an emotion?”
“You are severe, cousin. How do you account for their world-wide popularity? Is that not a proof of their being poets?”
“Was it a proof in the case of Southey? Poor, conceited Southey, who believed himself superior to Byron! And the world shared his belief – at least one-half of it, while he lived! In these days such a dabbler in verse would scarce obtain the privilege of print.”
“But Longfellow and Tennyson have obtained it.”
“True; and along with, as you say, a world-wide reputation. All that is easily explained.”
“How?”
“By the accident of their coming after Byron – immediately after him.”
“I don’t comprehend you, cousin.”
“Nothing can be clearer. Byron made the world drunk with a divine intoxication. His superb verse was to the soul what wine is to the body; producing a grand and glorious thrill – a very carousal of intellectual enjoyment. Like all such excesses, it was followed by that nervous debility that requires a blue pill and black draught. It called for its absinthe and camomile bitters; and these have been supplied by Alfred Tennyson, Poet Laureate to the Queen of England, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, pet of the sentimental and spectacled young ladies of Boston. It was a poetic tempest, to be followed by a prosaic calm, that has now lasted over forty years, unbroken save by the piping of this pair of poetasters!”
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers!” repeated Cornelia, with a good-natured laugh.
“Yes!” cried Julia, rather irritated by her cousin’s indifference. “By just such a paltry play upon words, by the imagination of small sentimentalities, and sickly conceits, plucked out of barren brains, and then machined into set stanzas, have these same poetasters obtained the world-wide reputation you speak of. Out upon such pretenders! And this is how I would serve them.”
She raised her little foot, and, with a spiteful stamp, brought her heel down upon poor Tennyson, sinking him deep into the spongy sand!
“Oh, Julia, you’ve spoilt the book?”
“There’s nothing in it to spoil. Waste print and paper. There’s more poetry in one of these pretty seaweeds that lie neglected on the sand – far more than in a myriad of such worthless volumes. Let it lie!”
The last words were addressed to Keziah, who, startled from her slumber, had stooped to pick up the trampled volume.
“Let it lie, till the waves sweep over it and bear it into oblivion; as the waves of Time will wash out the memory of its author. Oh, for one true – one real poet!”
At this moment Cornelia started to her feet; not from anything said by her cousin, but simply because the waves of the Atlantic were already stealing around her skirts. As she stood erect, the water was dripping from them.
The sketcher regretted this interruption of her task; the picture was but half completed; and it would spoil it to change the point of view.
“No matter,” she muttered, closing her sketch-book, “we can come again to-morrow. You will, won’t you, Julia, to oblige me?”
“And myself miss. It’s the very thing, this little plunge sans façon. I haven’t enjoyed anything like it since landing on the island of – of – Aquidnec. That, I believe, is the ancient appellation. Come, then, let us be off! To-day, for a novelty, I shall dine with something resembling an appetite.”
Keziah having wrung out the bathing-dresses and tied them in a bundle, the three prepared to depart.
Tennyson still lay crushed upon the sand; and his spiteful critic would not allow him to be taken up!
They started to return to the hotel – intending to go up the cliff by the same ravine through which they had come down. They knew of no other way.
On reaching the jutting rock that formed the flanking of the cove, all three were brought suddenly to a stand.
There was no path by which they could proceed; they had stayed too long in the cove, and the tide had cut off their retreat.
The water was only a few feet in depth; and, had it been still, they might have waded it. But the flow was coming in with a surge strong enough to sweep them off their feet.
They saw this, but without feeling anything like fear. They regarded it only as an unpleasant interruption.
“We must go in the opposite direction,” said Julia, turning back into the cove, and leading the way around it.
But here again was their path obstructed, just as on the opposite side.
The same depth of water, the same danger to be dreaded from the lashing of the surge!
As they stood regarding it, it appeared to grow deeper and more dangerous!
Back to the place just left.
There, too, had the depth been increasing. The tide seemed to have risen more than a foot since they left it. It was but the breeze still freshening over the sea.
To have waded around either point seemed no longer possible; and none of the three could swim!
The cousins uttered a simultaneous cry. It was the first open acknowledgment of a fear both secretly felt.
The cry was echoed by their dark-skinned attendant, far more frightened than they.
Back again to the other side – once more back and forward – and their panic was complete.
They were no longer in doubt about their situation. On both sides the path was obstructed. Clearly was their retreat cut off! Up the precipice went their eyes, to see whether it could be climbed. It needed but a glance to tell them “No!” There was the gorge running up the cliff; but it looked as if only a cat could have scaled it!
They turned from it in despair.
There was but one hope remaining. The tide might not mount above their heads; and might they not stay where they were till it ebbed again?
With quick glances they interrogated the waves, the grotto, the rocks overhead. Unaccustomed to the sea, they knew but little of its ways. They knew that the waves rose and fell; but how far? They could see nothing to tell them; nothing to confirm their fears, or assure them of their safety!
This suspense was even worse to endure than the certainty of danger.
Oppressed by it, the two girls clasped each other by the hand, raising their united voices in a cry for deliverance: “Help! Help!”
Chapter Four.
“Help! Help!”
Their cry of distress ascended to the summit of the cliff.
It was heard; and by one who had lately listened to the same voices, speaking in tones of the sweetest contentment.
It was he who carried the gun.
After scrambling up the gorge, he had faced northward in the direction of Easton’s Beach; for the reason only that this was his nearest way to the hotel.
He was reflecting upon the incident that had caused him such a toilsome détour; though his thoughts were dwelling less