Not till the last straggling house had been long past, not till the meadows were stretched out behind her as well as before her, spreading far off into the distance on each side, did she give way to the sense of wild exultation which was coming fast over her. But then, at last, she drew a long, long breath, and, standing up in the boat, looked all around her. The stars were shining over her head and deep down beneath her. The cool wind came fresh upon her cheek over the long grassy reaches. No living thing moved in all the wide level circle which lay about her. She had passed the Red Sea, and was alone in the Desert.
She threw down her oars, lifted her hands like a priestess, and her strong, sweet voice burst into song,--the song of the Jewish maiden when she went out before the chorus of, women and sang that grand solo, which we all remember in its ancient words, and in their modern paraphrase, "Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea!
Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!"The poor child's repertory was limited to songs of the religious sort mainly, but there was a choice among these. Her aunt's favorites, beside "China," already mentioned, were "Bangor," which the worthy old New England clergyman so admired that he actually had the down-east city called after it, and "Windsor," and "Funeral Hymn." But Myrtle was in no mood for these. She let off her ecstasy in "Balerma," and "Arlington," and "Silver Street," and at last in that most riotous of devotional hymns, which sounds as if it had been composed by a saint who had a cellar under his chapel,--"Jordan." So she let her wild spirits run loose; and then a tenderer feeling stole over her, and she sang herself into a more tranquil mood with the gentle music of "Dundee." And again she pulled quietly and steadily at her oars, until she reached the wooded region through which the river winds after leaving the "Broad Meadows."The tumult in her blood was calmed, yet every sense and faculty was awake to the manifold delicious, mysterious impressions of that wonderful June night, The stars were shining between the tall trees, as if all the jewels of heaven had been set in one belt of midnight sky. The voices of the wind, as they sighed through the pines, seemed like the breath of a sleeping child, and then, as they lisped from the soft, tender leaves of beeches and maples, like the half-articulate whisper of the mother hushing all the intrusive sounds that might awaken it. Then came the pulsating monotone of the frogs from a far-off pool, the harsh cry of an owl from an old tree that overhung it, the splash of a mink or musquash, and nearer by, the light step of a woodchuck, as he cantered off in his quiet way to his hole in the nearest bank. The laurels were just coming into bloom,--the yellow lilies, earlier than their fairer sisters, pushing their golden cups through the water, not content, like those, to float on the surface of the stream that fed them, emblems of showy wealth, and, like that, drawing all manner of insects to feed upon them. The miniature forests of ferns came down to the edge of the stream, their tall, bending plumes swaying in the night breeze. Sweet odors from oozing pines, from dewy flowers, from spicy leaves, stole out of the tangled thickets, and made the whole scene more dream-like with their faint, mingled suggestions.
