THE PATHS OF THE SEA.
Around the porch there hung that day a crimson glory. It was the climbing rose about the door displaying its gorgeous bloom in a thousand crowns. Green, grass-green were the hills, but in front of the house the cliff fell abruptly, with a precipitous drop, to the sea. On either side the waving coast-line stretched away, a shining belt of yellow sand. There the breakers with unfurled banners of fleece followed each other in a never ending procession to the shore. But at the foot the billows, by day and night running in forever, dashed against the rock and chopped to a seething foam that threw up in one continual briny shower its white and glittering spray.
The surf at this point, even in pleasant weather, sounded a constant roar, and in times of storm it increased to a deafening thunder that appalled the ear and made the heart tremble before the sea in its savage ferocity. Looking off to the right, perhaps the greater part of a mile distant, the harbor discovered itself, blue, bluer than the sky. A few vessels that had grown mysteriously upon the empty horizon, and come in over the vast waste of waters, were idly lying at anchor, each one biding her time to spread her sails in the breeze and recede upon her lonely course, going, as she had come, like some spirit of solitude, dropping down silently beyond the remote sea-reaches. There the Nereid swung herself gently over the long ground-swell, patiently awaiting the coming night when again to take up her watery track that would carry her over the great Atlantic to other lands and far-off harbors. Not a trimmer ship sailed the high seas.
The sun had traveled almost down the western slope, and it lit up the mighty ocean with a splendor that burned in lances of flame along the waves, and floated in myriad rainbows over the surf. The pomp of the departing day passed across the boundless waters, a magnificent pageantry. As the sun went down, the sky became a scarlet canopy. The flying spray took up the color and spread out a thousand streamers to the wind. Long, gold-green lanes of sea ran out to where the distant mists let down their gorgeous drapery. The tireless gulls, shaking the red light from their wings, sailed and sailed and dipped and sailed again. A few fishing smacks loitered in the orange haze, and, leagues away, a single sloop in the humid north stood, like some wan water-wraith, with a garland of foam about its feet. Eastward, above the hills, the waiting moon hung her helmet, paler than pearl, and the land, transfigured by the evening light, looked on while the sea in its play flashed up a hundred hues.
The widow Aber had lived there on the cliff and seen the tides ebb and flow for more now than the quarter of a century. She was not a young girl when, twenty-six years back, poor Jacob Aber had married her. It was a sudden fancy on his part and a great surprise to the place, for Jacob was well on towards fifty, and many a girl had set her cap to catch the handsome sailor in vain. But he never rued his bargain. He was not a rich man, because he had always been a generous man, and he was content with enough merely to bring him in a modest living. When he married he took what little he had and built this cottage, built it of brick good and strong, where he could feel the salt wind blow, right in the face of the sea—the sea that, until he met Miriam Drew with her soft gray eyes, he had loved better than every thing else in all the wide world.
They were happy and prosperous for four long years. First a son, then a daughter had come to brighten their home, and it was on just such an evening as this that Miriam, holding her infant child in her arms, told Jacob good-bye two-and-twenty years ago.
It would be his last cruise, he said. The vessel was his own, and in twelve months, or less, he would come back rich enough to stay always, and if the tears were in his voice he choked them down bravely, saying again it was but for a little while he should be gone, and she must cheer up for the long and happy years that would come after.
Then she suddenly laid down her child and with a smothered sob put up her arms about his neck. It was the first time she had fairly given way, and she clung to him trembling violently, but uttering not one word. He smoothed her brow gently, with a caressing touch, for her sake keeping his own grief crushed within his heart, and said,—
“Miriam don’t you remember once saying you could always tell a sailor by the dreamy far-off look in his eyes, an expression that came only to those that lived upon the sea and watched its wide, wide fields? And don’t you remember sometimes when I was sitting quietly at home you would come up suddenly and ask me what it was I saw miles and miles away, over the summer water, in that distant sunny land? Well, do not cry so, for even when my ship has vanished from your sight, when on every side there is no trace of shore, I can stand upon her deck and look beyond the far horizon at our peaceful, happy home. And when at evening, with your eyes upon the sea, you sit and hold the children in your lap, remember I will be watching you from across its glittering line. There, that is right! You are a good, brave girl! It is but for a little while. I can look beyond this parting—I can see your waiting face turn radiant as my boat sails safely back!”
Then, when he had kissed her and the little ones, and turned and kissed them again, there was a faint smile struggling through her tears. So, striving to keep down her grief, she parted without saying one word of the terrible dread that lay upon her heart.
And two-and-twenty years ago he had sailed away.
Many days, many nights, many weeks, many months, Miriam had watched the sea with wistful eyes. For his sake she had very nearly grown to love it, and the color came again to her cheeks as the time went by and the year was almost up, when it would give back forever the one she valued more than life. In those days she scanned the water-line, and waited patiently, and went about the house singing. She chattered to her baby-daughter all how its father was sailing home, until it laughed and cooed in wild delight. Every morning she dressed little Tommy in his best, and tied about his waist the beautiful sea-green sash that Jacob had brought her from the distant Indies; and in the queer frosted vases on the mantel, that had come from some foreign port, she kept a fresh bouquet of sweet wild flowers.
But poor Jacob never came back.
Homeward bound, his vessel was wrecked off the treacherous Newfoundland shore. A storm drove her helpless, enshrouded in fog, against the rocks where she foundered, and captain and crew went down together. Only two men escaped from the terrible disaster.
When the dreadful news came and they told Miriam as they met her on the porch, she made no reply. She did not moan or scream. She only looked out for a moment at the deceitful sea, smiling in its sheen of a thousand tints, then turned and went into the house and shut the door.
She had always been a strange woman, and they left her to bear her grief alone. She asked nobody’s sympathy, she did not complain, she never spoke of Jacob. She did not, as the people had expected, sell her house. She made no change so far as the world could see, only that she held herself, if possible, more aloof from society than ever. But before three months had gone by they noticed that her brown and shining hair had turned white, and her gray eyes showed half concealed within their depths an unfathomed trouble. Then too, her figure, once erect and straight as a dart, grew bent and stooped across the shoulders, and nothing ever brought the color to her face any more that was always pale and thin. Otherwise, however, there appeared no difference. She lived economically, and sometimes took in a small amount of fine sewing, as, beside the house, she had little else, for the sea when it buried her husband had buried his earnings also in the same watery grave.
She staid at home and watched the children in whom her life was now wholly bound up. They were her world, her all. She seemed to find in them her very existence, and after the queer frosted vases on the mantel had stood empty for years, their young hands filled them again with sweet wild flowers. So the house once more was bright and sunny, and, though Miriam herself never sang, Hannah’s voice was clear and happy.
Hannah had grown up the very picture of her mother when in her early girlhood, but young Tom was like his father. He was like his father in more respects than one, and while still a boy the people said he too will prove a sailor. They were right; though Miriam had struggled against it and watched over him with an absorbing care. She saw again developed in him the same wild fascination for the sea. She knew its strength and that it must prevail, and when he came and begged so hard, with the well remembered far-off look in his eyes, she felt all opposition would be vain.
She did not reproach herself that she had lived upon the coast and played with him upon the beach, for something in her heart told her that it could have been no different, even had she raised him up in another place where the sound of the sea would not have been always in his ears. She recognized in this fatal love the heritage he had received from his father. The thought that it could be eradicated, that he would ever be satisfied with any thing else she knew to be hopeless, and so the widow had given up, and he had gone at fourteen to seek his fortune, like his father before him, a sailor on the high seas.
Now, ten years later, and two-and-twenty years since poor Jacob had started on his fateful cruise, young Tom was ready for his fourth voyage. He had climbed unaided several steps up the ladder in his calling, and the Nereid, waiting down in the harbor would carry him in a few hours, her first mate, out upon her long two years’ absence. It was a great lift to him, for, besides his promotion, Luke Denin, who this time commanded the ship, had been his early friend. There was but little difference in their age. They had been boys together, and together they had explored the shore for miles and fished for days, and they had rambled the hills and the woods over; so, as young Tom said, it would be just as good for him as if he commanded the Nereid himself.
When he told his mother this she had only patted him on the head, and said in a choked voice,—“My little sailor boy!”
The widow Aber, ever since her son took to following the sea, had been gradually breaking. From that time her health, heretofore always strong and robust, began perceptibly to decline. The people noticed it, but then she told them that she was getting old—how could they expect a woman well up into the sixties to be as active as a girl, and besides this she had the rheumatism. So she was constantly excusing her feebleness with anxious care, as if she feared they might attribute it to some other cause than age.
This evening she was even weaker than usual, though she did not acknowledge it, but sitting at the supper table her hands trembled so badly that the cups and saucers rattled a little as she served the tea. Miriam, whose life had been one constant struggle, was struggling still. No wonder the widow was proud of her son, her only son. Her gray eyes, beautiful as in her youth, would wander to him again and again, and rest upon his face with a strange, yearning expression, but whenever he turned to her she would drop them quickly and move a little nervously in her chair, striving to conceal, as she had done so many years ago, the burden of grief that lay at her heart.
It was a pleasant party to look at, for Luke Denin too was there, and the young people carefully avoided any allusion to the separation before them. Tom, always gay and happy, was more than handsome in his sailor’s dress, with the bronze of the tropical sun upon his face. And Luke, if he was not so tall by half a head, and if his hair, instead of being black and crisp with waves, was light and straight, had at least as honest and frank a pair of deep blue eyes as Hannah cared to see—not that Hannah looked at them, for she looked only at her plate, and once in a while anxiously at her mother. Young Tom was evidently determined that this last meal at home should not be a sorrowful one, as he kept up the conversation in his liveliest mood. He told wonderful tales in such an absurd vein of exaggeration, that sometimes it even called up a smile on the widow’s face; and when the meal was over he picked her up playfully in his strong arms and carried her out upon the porch. There together they all watched the moonlight gradually show itself out of the dissolving day, in long paths across the water. Then the hour came to say good-bye.
It was a desperate battle for Miriam, as she clung to her son in that parting moment. Then it was, for the first time, that something in her face went to the man’s inmost heart like a chill. She was old and frail, and his absence would be long, perhaps he might never look upon her again. In his wild fascination for the sea, was he not sacrificing her? The anguish of the thought overcame him. Had it been possible then he would have given up this voyage and staid at home, but it was too late now, and when he had turned for a moment, and with a strong effort fought his grief under control, he said gently,—
“No, no! Do not be so distressed, mother! It is all for the best; and when I come back this time, mother, I will never leave you any more.”
But Miriam, thinking of that other parting so long ago, remembered that Jacob, too, had said when he came back he would never leave her any more, and with a half suppressed cry she clasped her hands tighter about his neck.
“O, my son, you will come back! Only promise me you will come back, and I can wait patiently and long!”
There was a wild energy in her voice that frightened him, as she went on hurriedly with an accent he had never heard till then,—
“Once before, with this same dread at my heart, I parted two-and-twenty years ago, but I let him go without saying a word. I waited patiently. I even sang and tried to be happy. As the time went by I laughed as I thought how pleased he would be when he saw how his children had grown. I tied about your waist a sash of his favorite color, that he had brought me from the distant Indies, and I kept every thing in readiness for—what? They came and told me that he had gone down at sea—No, no; do not interrupt me. I let him go without saying a word. I must speak this time!”
She paused for a moment as if waiting until her excitement had calmed, and with her trembling hand put back the hair from his forehead, then went on unsteadily in a tone but little louder than a whisper,—
“You have the same dreamy far-off look in your eyes. I know you must go my child, I know you can not resist—but when your father left he said it would be only for a little while, and I—I have waited two-and-twenty years.”
There was another moment of silence, as though her thoughts had gone back over that long, long watch, then, in a wavering voice, she went on once more, calling him again unconsciously by the name she had used when he was a little child,—
“Tommy, Tommy! my boy, my only boy! if you—if the cruel sea—O, I can not say it, I can not bear it! You will come back, you must come back to me!”
A wild terror had crept into her face, then she broke down completely.
“There, forgive me, Tommy, forgive me! I did not used to be so foolish. Do not mind me. I am getting old and feeble, Tommy—I am not strong any more, but—I can wait again—”
“Why, mother, there is no danger. Look,” he said, drawing his arm close about her, “how peaceful is the sea! After you, mother, I love it better than any thing else in the whole world. It has always been gentle to me—you need not fear, I will surely come back, surely—if—if you can only wait.”
Tom’s voice had grown thick and choked, as he added the last words, and when Miriam, anxious to atone for her past weakness, said quickly,—
“Yes, yes, Tommy, I can wait—” he made her repeat it. Then rallying himself he went on gaily,—
“Why, I will come back, mother, I will come back so grand and rich that you shall be three times as proud of me, you shall, indeed! And I will take care of you always then. But, mother,” he said, the choking sensation coming again in his throat,—“promise that you will not worry about me while I am gone, or I shall never be happy, not even in any of the beautiful lands I will see—won’t you promise me, mother? Promise me that you will wait patiently, promise me that—that you will not give up—”
“Yes, yes, Tommy, if you will only come back, I can wait again—I can even wait a long while.”
“It will not be so very long! why the time will slip by, and almost before you know it you will find me standing beside you here again, when I mean you to be so proud of me that it will well nigh turn my head.”
“Ah, Tommy, you know I am proud of you now, so proud of you, that sometimes it fairly frightens me, and I dare not think of it.”
“Heaven knows,” he said, all the gay sound dying from his voice, as, stricken with remorse, he remembered the many times he had left her with no thought beyond the parting moment, “I’m not much to be proud of, but, mother—” taking up her thin hand and passing it over his face, once more driven to the last extremity to command his voice—“you and Nan are all I have on earth to care for me, and out in midocean, or in the far-off foreign ports, your love, like a constant prayer to keep me from harm, will be with me always. When I am at home once more I am going to be a good boy to you, mother. Nothing, not even the sea, shall ever part us again.”
“You have always been a good boy to me, Tommy—I only thought—I was afraid that—O never mind, I can wait for you, Tommy. I do not feel so nervous now.”
“There, that is right! We will meet again, mother, and then we will be very, very happy.”
He kissed her yearningly, reverentially. It seemed as if he stood awed before the heart that for a moment had disclosed itself in its most silent depths, and in that moment there had been revealed to him, with all its overwhelming strength, that divine love which is mightier than life. It seemed as if now, for the first time, and almost blinded by the revelation, he saw—his mother.
After a little silence, taking her face between his hands, he said, gently,—
“Mother, I want to see you smile once more before I go.”
“I will wait for you, Tommy,” she said again.
“And I will surely come back.”
When Miriam looked up there was a faint smile struggling through her tears, as there had been once before, two-and-twenty years in the past. Then he was gone.
Down by the gate Hannah stood, trying to hide in the shadow of the great honeysuckle the new shy beauty on her face that had been called there by the kiss of warmer lips than the gentle sea-breeze.
“Good-bye, Nan,” said Tom, unsuspiciously, throwing his arms about her in his rough brotherly embrace,—“why how you are trembling! You are not going to cry? Don’t, I can’t stand it!”
“No, no,” came uncertainly in a helpless voice, evidently, in her wild conflict of emotion, not knowing exactly what she was going to do.
“There, that’s right! Don’t cry, or I’ll—I’ll break down too!” said Tom, hoarsely, fairly strangling in his throat, and almost worn out by the strain he had undergone.
Hannah, surprised, raised her face, but Tom had already got the better of himself. “How your eyes shine to-night, Nan; I did not know how pretty you were before!” Down went her head again immediately, and changing his voice he said, with a sigh,—“Nannie, there ain’t many fellows that have as good a mother and sister as mine; you won’t forget me while I’m gone, or get tired waiting? I’ve been a worthless, roving chap; I’ve never been of much comfort to you or mother, but when I come back next time, I’m going to stay at home a while. Look up now and tell me you are glad.”
“O, Tom, I am! You don’t know how glad I am, if it was only for mother’s sake.”
Then, turning his head away to hide the anguish that had come over his face, he asked, slowly, trying rather ineffectually to keep his voice natural,—“You don’t think, Nan, any thing will happen to her while I am gone?”
“What do you mean?” said Hannah, struck by the awe in his tone.
“I mean,” he said, unwilling to trouble his sister by the thought that had so oppressed him, and speaking gaily again: “I mean that you must be a good girl, and keep up mother’s spirits, but don’t get so used to my absence, that neither of you will care when I come back.”
“O, Tom!”
“Come out into the moonlight where I can see you. I’m dreadfully proud of you, Nan, because you don’t take on like other girls. You see I couldn’t have stood it!” said Tom, in a frightfully uncertain state of mind, as to whether it was possible to swallow the lump in his throat. “I’m going now. Be good to mother, you know she’s—she’s not very strong—Have you told Captain Denin good-bye?”
“No, she hasn’t. Not yet. I thought I’d let you do it first; but you’ll tell me good-bye now, until I come back never to say it again, won’t you, Nanine?” said Luke, coming up in his most masterly way, right under Tom’s very nose, and almost hiding his sister from view in an embrace that this time was neither rough nor brotherly.
“Whew!” gasped Tom, as Hannah came in sight again, with no friendly honeysuckle near to conceal the carnation bloom upon her cheeks. “Is that the way the wind blows! I’ve been as blind as a bat. Kiss me, quick, both of you, or I’m a gone case!”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort. Sit down on the stone there, and recover yourself. You’ve said your good-bye, now just wait for me!” said the superior officer triumphantly. And Tom, spent, exhausted, sank down; but the next instant Hannah had her arms tight about his neck, and was hiding her face against the crisp waves of his black hair.
“Tom, dear, you ain’t sorry?”
“No, Nan, I couldn’t have wished for any thing better; but it was so sudden, it just kind of knocked the wind out of my sails for a minute.” Then, after a pause,—“I say, there’ll be a grand glorification when the Nereid comes back, won’t there?”
“Yes.”
“I—I wish it was back now! I don’t know what’s upset me so—There, kiss her, Luke, and let’s be off, quick, or I’ll disgrace myself outright, before I know it!” and Tom, gulping down great quantities of air with all his might, got up from the stone hurriedly, as if he meditated making a sudden bolt.
But he did not. He stood there quietly looking out at sea; and when, a moment after, the young captain, taking his arm, said, “Come, now I am ready,” he started as from a dream. Turning to his sister, with every trace of his rollicking manner lost, he said, as though he had not spoken of her before,—
“You must take good care of mother—poor mother. Do not let her grieve while I am gone. Oh, Hannah, you will be very careful of her, and not allow any thing—not allow her to get tired, and tell her always, while she waits, that when I am with her again, I will never leave her.”
Then they had passed through the gate and were going rapidly down the narrow foot-path to the bottom of the hill. Hannah strained her eyes after them, and when at the turn of the road both brother and lover were lost to view, still she lingered at the spot pondering over Tom’s unwonted emotion. It was not like him. Never before had she seen him so singularly affected, and now that he was gone, it came back to her with redoubled intensity. The unusual sorrow that had almost choked him, the strange tone in his voice that he had tried vainly to conceal, the sudden wish that the Nereid was back even now, his repeated charges about their mother, all troubled her.
An uneasy feeling of dread oppressed her, she knew not why. The heavy perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall and prickly cedar stood up straight and still, covered on one side with a fret-work of silver, on the other clothed with the very gloom of darkness, and somewhere from among its shadowy branches a dove, as if half wakened out of a dream, stirred, uttered its brooding note, then sank again to silence. Hannah had heard the same dove a hundred times before, she even knew that there were purple ripples on its neck, but this time she started violently and shivered. It seemed as if the summer night had suddenly grown cold and chilled her to the heart, and with hurried steps she ran back to the house.
The porch was deserted and strangely lonesome when she passed across. Even the crimson bloom, with its thousand crowns, looked black through the shade, as if it had withered in the hour, and she heard its leaves make a weird rustle, like a complaint, as she closed the door. The sense of desolation was so strong upon her that she could hardly keep from crying out in the solitude, but she went on swiftly to her mother’s room, and entered with noiseless feet. A great sigh of relief came to her lips when she saw the peaceful face upon the pillow, for Miriam, overcome by the reaction, already slept calmly as a child. Hannah sat down beside the bed. There was a smile upon her mother’s lips. How long she sat there, whether one hour, or two hours, she did not know, but when she got up all the tumult in her heart had subsided.
She kissed the sleeping face gently and went quietly up stairs to her own room. She threw the shutters open wide, and lo! out upon the sea with her wings spread, white as the plumage of a gull, the Nereid! Lonely, spirit-like, beyond the reach of voice, she stood upon the mighty desert of the ocean. Before her prow the waves held out their wreath of down, and above, solitary in the vast moonlit sky, hung the royal planet Jupiter. Steady, radiant, it burned like the magic Star in the East. Hannah, watching, saw the ship fade away in the far-off endless isles of silver mist. A great peace had come to her soul, and when she lay down to sleep there was no trouble on her face. Gone, the Nereid was gone, but still, even in her dreams, she knew that the star in the sky was shining.
Slowly the days came and went. Miriam, yet a little feebler, was bright and happy. Never, since that night when she said good-bye, had she murmured or uttered a word of complaint. Every thing at the cottage glided smoothly on; for Hannah attended to the house, and waited upon her mother with an untiring care, but even while she went about performing her different duties her eyes, unconsciously, would wander off to sea. Often in the afternoon, when the widow nodded in the great rocking chair by the window, she would slip away down to the beach, and sit there by the hour.
Those were pleasant days to Hannah. Then the sea, clear and calm, rounded out, a great circle of splendor, to the horizon; or on its surface the giant mists reared themselves, triumphant, in towering arches. Perhaps her thoughts went out beyond these mighty phantom aisles, seeking always the two loved ones across their portals, over the vast and solemn ocean. Sometimes when the sky was warm and the wind blew shoreward it seemed to bring faintly the scent of foreign flowers; for nearer now to her were those mystical lands where Summer, almighty Summer, sat upon an everlasting throne.
Hannah knew every vessel that sailed into port; and sometimes a boat, returning, had spoken the Nereid at sea, sometimes at long intervals a letter came. Then when for weeks, for months it might be, there was no word, no sign, the royal planet, moving in its eternal orbit, hung again in the sky, a star of promise. To Hannah, as she watched it night after night above the sea, it came as a messenger bearing glad tidings of great joy.
So the time waned. The peaceful days passed by and fierce storms broke with a savage roar upon the coast. The green upon the hill-sides faded out, and the freezing spray encrusted the cliff with ice where the wintry sea threw up its bitter brine—and sometimes, farther off upon the shelving beach, it threw up more than brine, or stiffened weed. Broken spars, dreary fragments of wrecks drifted in, told of the wild desolation out upon the hoarse wilderness of beaten waves.
But even those days too passed, and the Spring clothed the land again with emerald. More than a year had worn away since the Nereid had faded out of the horizon, and presently another Fall set in.
For five months no word had come from the absent wanderers. Still Miriam made not the least complaint. Even when the storms lashed the sea, until it sent up a roar that made the young girl shiver, the widow evinced no anxiety. Had she not promised that she would wait patiently? She talked very little, and generally sat quietly by the window from morning till evening. But Hannah, saying nothing, had grown heavy-hearted with the long silence.
It was November, a dull, dreary day in November. Heavy clouds stretched themselves in a somber, leaden sky, that near the water gathered dark and frowning. The gray sea, cold and hoarse, uttered eternally its hollow roar. But for this it seemed as if a mighty silence would have brooded over earth and ocean, a silence vast and dreadful as the grave. Dead white, the hungry surf crawled sullenly up the sand. Leagues away the fishing smacks all headed to shore, and the gulls were flying landward, when Hannah looking out, counted a new sail in the harbor.
Any word to break this long heart-sick watch?
Quick she had her hat, and glancing at her mother sleeping tranquilly in the great chair, she ran out, without shawl or wrapping, and started down the hill. Once at the bottom she slackened her pace a little to gain breath. A fine drizzle already blew through the air, and the waters running in upon the smooth beach did not rumble with a great noise as at the foot of the cliff, but washed, washed, keeping up endlessly a weary lamentation. The damp settled on her hair in minute globules, and enveloped all her clothing in its clammy embrace, but she did not heed the weather. She never looked out once at the desolate, rainy sea, she hardly heard its solemn moan. Hurrying, hurrying, she went on swiftly with the one idea absorbing every power. Rapidly, half-running, half-walking, she never paused until she reached the slippery wharf.
A group of sailors parted to let her pass. So eager was she that she did not hear the sudden exclamations, or see the look of pity that had come upon more than one rough sunburnt face when she made her appearance; for living all her life in the same quiet village many of the sailors knew Hannah by sight, many by her gentle manner and kind words, and many a sailor’s wife had to thank her as a guardian angel when sickness and poverty had come upon them unawares. She, flurried, her heart throbbing with expectation, saw only it was the good ship Bonibird that had come to port. Stephen, old Steve, belonged to it now! She remembered him well. Often when she was a child had he given her curious shells, and once he had brought her, in a little bowl filled with seawater, a tiny, live fish that glittered all over with beautiful colors. Oh yes, she remembered him well! Surprised and pleased she turned to look for him among the groups of sailors, but the old man was already at her side.
Stained and weather-beaten old Steve stood there with his cap off, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and when with an exclamation of joy Hannah held out her hand, he took it eagerly between his rough palms.
“God bless you! God bless you!” broke from his lips in a thick utterance; then he dropped her hand nervously, and drawing his breath hard passed his sleeve hurriedly across his face.
“I’m glad to see you back, Stephen,” she said. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Yes, you beant so tall then.”
“Is there any news from the Nereid?” she asked eagerly, hardly noticing his last reply.
The old man seemed fairly to break out in a violent perspiration. He moved again uneasily on his feet and, turning his head from her, mopped his face once more hurriedly with his sleeve.
“I’m——I’m feared thar be a storm comin’ up, Miss. Those clouds over the water do look ugly, and the gulls be all flyin’ land’ard.”
“Never mind, I’m not afraid of the storm!” she said, impatiently.
“Why you be all wet now, standin’ out in this nasty drizzle.”
“No, no, I don’t care! I want to know if you heard any thing from the Nereid. Why don’t you tell me?” an alarm gathering quickly in her voice as the first sickening suspicion came over her. “O Stephen,” she said, with a terrified cry that fairly frightened the man, “you have, and there is something wrong! O the Nereid—the Nereid is not lost! Say it is not lost!”
She had caught the man’s arm in her wild excitement, and clung to him trembling like a leaf from head to foot.
“Why, no, no!” he said, scared by the girl’s dreadful agitation; “the Nereid be all right, she be all right! I didn’t think of sich an idee comin’ to you, or I’d a said afore she be all right. Thar beant nothin’ the matter with her, nothin’, I was aboard o’ her myself—I’m afeard it’ll make you sick, Miss, a standin’ here in the drizzle like this, an’ with nothin’ to keep off the wet,”—trying to appear as if he had settled the trouble, but all the time keeping his face turned carefully from her.
In the first instant of relief Hannah had let go of his arm and put her hands to her head without one word, so intense had been the strain; then, looking up suddenly, and drawing a quick breath, she faced round to him.
“Stephen, is this the truth that you have told me? You are not deceiving me? Is there nothing the matter?”
“Lord, no, Miss, it beant no lie,” but the old sailor hesitated painfully while she looked at him, worked his hands nervously about his neck, put them irresolutely to his pockets once or twice, till unable to stand it any longer, he suddenly made an end to his indecision by jerking out a letter, at the same time muttering some half-coherent sentence about how it had been given to him for her on board the Nereid.
“O, a letter!” she cried, joyfully, breaking the seal, while her face that had been so clouded lighted up radiantly.
As she looked up for a second, with a smile upon her lips, the old sailor became more distressed in his manner than ever; and when she unfolded the paper he even put out his hand once or twice, as if he would have taken it back. Evidently he could not bear to see her read it then; he had not thought she would open it there. Troubled, he looked about, shuffling again with that uneasy movement on his feet. If only he could find some means to prevail upon her first to take it home, and driven to desperation he turned once more to her, and said in an appealing voice,—
“I’m feared thar be a bad storm comin’ up, Miss; the sea it really do look ugly, and may hap you’d better run home first; thar beant much time to lose noways.”
But alas! it was too late. Hannah, utterly oblivious to the old man’s entreaty, was already eagerly reading down the sheet. Suddenly the color fled from her face. She appeared dazed and confused. For an instant she held the paper in a convulsive grasp, staring at it with a stony glare. Then she uttered a long, shivering sound, and her fingers gradually relaxed their hold.
In a second the letter was gone. A savage wind broke loose with a tiger roar from the sea. The billows, in swift rage and with frightful tumult, piled up their fierce scrolls in a chaos of towering surge. Mist and spray and foam whirled in a blinding froth to the sky.
Old Steve, half-carrying, half-dragging—for the girl seemed hardly able to take a step unassisted—drew Hannah back into the one long low building by the wharf, where most of the people that were standing about a few moments before had taken shelter from the storm. Quickly half a dozen rough hands drew out a small packing-box and placed it for a seat, and some one threw a woolen shawl around her shoulders.
She kept her lips closed tight. She looked at no one, she shivered constantly. The howling blast swept its brine up the wharf—“Washed overboard at sea.” The cruel breakers lifted and struck with thunder-crash—“Washed overboard at sea.” Bitter cold, the salt surf leaped and writhed and reached out with demoniac fury—“Washed overboard at sea.” Giant waves opened and shut with a grinding wrath their hungry jaws. Relentless, appalling, the mighty waters filled earth and sky with the terror of their strength.
And Tom, poor Tom, had been washed overboard at sea!
It was horrible. The awful words rang constantly in her ears. They repeated themselves over and over. Where, how—she knew naught, only the one sentence, with its dreadful import. After that she had read nothing, and before it she forgot all. Rocking a little back and forth on her seat, she sat there pale and dumb. Like her mother, two-and-twenty years in the past, she asked no sympathy, she heeded no comment.
The ashen clouds, racing before the wind like the scud of the sea, drove swiftly down behind the hills, and the blinding fury of the storm had spent itself. Drearily the gray sky let down again its endless drizzle, when Stephen, his honest voice painfully choked by emotion, prevailed upon her to go home. At first looking at him blankly, she seemed hardly to comprehend what he said, and it was only when he spoke of her mother that she gave any heed to his entreaty. Her mother! how could she tell her the terrible news, her patient, waiting mother! Old Stephen, many times after, used to say how in that moment, when she looked at him, he wished he had been dead before ever he brought her such a letter.
Shivering, always shivering, she drew the shawl tight about her shoulders, and slipped down off the fishy box without a word. The old sailor in his anxious care would have followed too, but she only shook her head, and without having opened her lips, he saw her go alone.
The sullen mist hung its reeking folds along the shore, and the tide, running out, left a wide dank stretch of yellow slime. Above it, where, in Summer, the green swords of the sea-wrack grew, the storm had washed up clammy masses, heavy with ooze, of the pale and sticky tangle. Fiercely the treacherous waters had swept over the shore and covered it with their bitter dregs; but more fiercely had they surged, a dreary desolation, over the girl’s young heart.
Upon the bloated girdles, on the wet sand, in the chilly damp, with the salt spray clinging to her clothes, she went, and the wild sea, calming down, mourned again at her feet, like a sinister mockery of grief, in loud lamentation. When she went up the narrow foot-path on the hill, and came to the garden gate, she stopped a moment, she hardly knew why. It was a mechanical action with her. She scarcely felt or thought. Her heart was heavy as a stone.
The branches of the great honeysuckle were black and bare. She looked at the old rock by the path now slippery with rain. She looked at the tall and prickly cedar drenched with mist and spray. She looked out at the storm-beaten sea, then she looked back once more at the dripping evergreen. The dove in its thorny spire was gone—the dove with the purple ripples on its neck. It had never built another nest. Shivering, shivering, she went on, crossed the porch, where the arms of the bloomless rose, weird and gaunt, flung down great heavy tears at her feet, and, still shivering, she went into the house and shut the door.
Miriam, used to the tumult of the sea, sat patiently in the chair by the window, as she had done so many, many times in the past. When Hannah came in she looked up with surprise. The girl would have avoided her, but Miriam, seeing her so wet became alarmed, and, rising from her seat, had met Hannah in the hall before she could escape.
“I thought you were up stairs! What took you out in such stormy weather? You’re all wet and shivering with the cold, and—why, child, your face is as white as a sheet! What is the matter?”
“Nothing, I—I—was caught in the rain, and—and got a little damp.” The words came uncertainly in a deep voice, for Hannah could hardly trust herself to speak, lest some unguarded tone should abruptly betray the terrible truth. The girl felt as if it was written all over her, or that she might disclose it in every movement; but she had turned her back to her mother, and with trembling hands was hurriedly shaking out the wet shawl. “I’ll go and change my clothes. It will not hurt me.”
“Well, do it quickly, and come down to the fire right away. I’m afraid it will make you cough.”
Hannah, eager to escape, gathered the shawl on her arm; but at the foot of the stairs she stopped and looked back.
“You—you’ve had a nice sleep, mother?”
“Yes, dear, so very sound that I only heard the wind like a gentle zephyr.”
“And you feel well?”
“Oh yes, better to-day than I have for a long, long time. I’m going to get stronger now steadily,” she said, with a smile that, for a moment, brought into the wan face a strange beauty, like a gleam of the same radiance that so far in the past poor Jacob had placed upon the shrine of his heart.
Hannah, turning her head quickly, almost overpowered by sudden faintness, went up stairs, staggered across the room, and sank down by the window in a silent agony of grief. She did not sob or cry audibly, her whole being was one mental wail of despair—her mother! her gentle, waiting mother! Fierce unspoken rebellion had taken possession of the girl’s soul. To one that had been always as a ministering spirit to those about her, why had Providence allotted so cruel a destiny? She, whose life had been but a long heart-struggle; she, that had done no evil, that had suffered without a murmur; she, feeble and bent with years, marked with the silver brand of sorrow and age; she, far down the avenue of her days, almost where the mighty mists of eternity close up their impenetrable curtains, she must yet be compelled to go on, to the last, through the darkness of new trouble! Was there no mercy, no justice?
Bitterly Hannah looked out, dry-eyed, at the relentless sea. There was no distant line against the sky; above, below, drear and empty, the gray stretched to infinity—not a sail on all the waters, and the tides were out—aye, the tides were out for her.
She had never shed a tear. Forgetful of her wet clothing, she leaned a long time upon the window-sill, motionless, and the lines in her young face were hard and strained. Perhaps the memory of that night came back to her with its vision of the royal planet that had seemed a star of promise—a star of promise? A mockery it had been, a cruel mockery!
Then Miriam’s voice calling from the foot of the stairs roused her, and hurriedly she changed her damp dress, but she could not yet meet her mother. She lingered about the room. She fell upon her knees; she tried to pray, but her heart refused to utter a single petition, and Miriam had called again and yet again before Hannah went down.
“Come close to the fire. You were so long I am afraid it will make you sick.”
“No, mother, I am cold a little, that is all.”
Miriam did not ask again what had taken her out, and Hannah, shading her eyes with her hand, sat by the grate trying to prepare herself for the dreadful duty that awaited her. She knew her mother must be told, lest it should come upon her abruptly from the lips of a stranger with a shock greater than she could bear. It was a hard struggle for Hannah; the girl would gladly have borne all the trouble herself, but that could not be.
Just how she said it she never remembered, only suddenly she felt calm and strong for the duty, and with a strange desperation on her face, slowly, gently as human means could do, she told the terrible news.
And Miriam?
Sitting in her chair she did not scream, or moan, or faint. She leaned a little forward with her elbow on her knee, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, with a strange wavering light in her eyes.
“Mother, mother, speak to me!” the girl cried, frightened at this light in her eyes, terrified that she said nothing, did nothing.
“Yes, dear, I am better to-day, yesterday I walked to the garden gate. I will even be strong enough to go down to the wharf when the Nereid comes in, and it will be such a glad surprise for him, such a glad surprise!”
She had leaned back in her chair again, and her face, like a revelation, was radiant once more almost with the lost beauty of her girlhood.
Hannah, dropping her head in her hands, could scarcely speak for the awful beating of her heart.
“No, no, Mother, you do not understand. He is—dead. He will—never come—home—”
The same wavering light flickered a second time in Miriam’s eyes as the girl spoke. She put up her thin hands for a moment and wearily stroked the silver hair back from her forehead. She looked slowly, with a bewildered expression about the room, then, smiling again, she said,—
“Home? Yes, the time is nearly up. In the Spring, in the early Spring, he shall be home, home to stay always. I know he will not disappoint me. I promised to wait patiently, and I have not complained, have I Hannah?”
“No, no——”
“And I shall be stronger then, and we must make the house pleasant for him. It will never be lonely any more when he is here. Why do you cry so, Hannah? It is not long to wait for him now.”
Hannah, trying to smother her choking sobs, slipped down on the floor with her face covered, and Miriam talked on and on of the happy times they would have when “Tommy” came back in the Spring.
She could be made to comprehend nothing of the dreadful tidings. He had promised her he would come back, and her faith never faltered. But there was a distinct change in her from that day. The quiet, reserved manner that had been with her always a marked characteristic, seldom volunteering a sentence to a stranger, was gone. She talked incessantly of her son. She would tell every person she met how much stronger she was getting, and how she meant to go and meet him at the wharf when the Nereid came in.
So months went by, and Miriam did get stronger every day. She had not been so well in years, not since long ago when poor Tom had first taken to following the sea. Bright and happy she seemed from morning till night, only Hannah noticed that sometimes when speaking most earnestly she would stop suddenly for a moment, and look at her in a bewildered way, with that same wavering light flickering up in her eyes.
All the villagers knew the sorrowful story of the Widow Aber’s waiting so trustfully for “Tommy,” her sailor son that could never come back, and they were good to Hannah that Winter. The girl had not cast her bread upon the waters in vain. When she found herself weak and faint a dozen hands were ready with some kind office, and there was little left for her to do about the house. Those bitter months as they waxed and waned were one long, mute agony, but the girl did not break down under the terrible strain. Trouble does not kill the young; thin and pale she grew, but strong in her youth, stronger in her love, for Miriam’s sake, and with something of Miriam’s early nature, she kept her grief crushed within her heart. She seldom went out of the house now. She staid always with her mother, as if fearful to leave her for an hour; and those who went to the house from the village, told how dreadful it was to see her sitting quietly, even sometimes forcing a smile to her trembling lips when the widow would say,—
“Do not look so sad, Hannah. I am strong and well, are you not glad? He said he liked to see me smile, and he must find us bright and cheerful when he comes in the Spring.”
The Spring! Hannah hardly dared to think what might happen then. Every day, as she watched her mother, the dread upon her grew stronger. She would have held back the coming of the Nereid, the beautiful Nereid, that now, with its white wings, might return only as the angel of death to Miriam. She would understand it all then, and the shock, the dreadful shock! It was the terror of this that haunted Hannah day and night.
The last winter month had gone by, and the chilly winds of March were whistling along the coast, when, one morning, old Steve came hurriedly up the hill to the house. He brought the news that Hannah had so long dreaded. The Nereid was even then heading round the cliff. She had asked him to let her know in time, that she might keep it from her mother, at least till after the boat had landed. But while he was in the very act of telling, he stopped suddenly, and a look of fright came over his face. Hannah turned to find the cause, and saw her mother standing in the open doorway. She had overheard it all. The girl’s heart sank in her breast like a stone.
Vainly she endeavored to dissuade her from going to the wharf, but Miriam, radiant as a child in her joy, nervous in her pitiful haste, paid no heed to her remonstrances, that it was cold, that it was too far, that she would go in her place, until Hannah, driven to desperation, told her mother again of the dreadful disaster, and how poor Tom could not be there to meet her. Then the widow stayed her trembling hands for a moment in their flurried effort to tie her bonnet, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, as she had done before, with the same strange gaze in her eyes. It always seemed as if she was dimly conscious, for the instant, that something was wrong, but even as the shadow flitted over her face, it was gone.
“Come,” she said, her countenance all brilliant with eager excitement, “hurry, we must not be late. I feel young and strong, and it will be such a glad surprise for him!”
Hannah, powerless to keep Miriam back, gave up the endeavor, and went on, with a mortal agony in her heart, beside the frail woman who, in all faith, was going to welcome home her son—her son out upon the silent sea of eternity, where even a mother’s voice could never reach. No wonder the girl’s grief made her dumb. Was there no escape? She heard the waters running in, it seemed to her for a thousand leagues, sounding their dreadful dirge. At that moment gladly would she have lain down forever in the same boundless grave with father and brother, where the waves, slow and sad, were playing for them this requiem on every shore of every land. But Miriam, in the extremity of her haste, never stopping, went on steadily over the wet ground, bending, sometimes almost staggering, before the raw March wind that swept in fierce gusts from the still frozen north.
A sudden hush fell upon all the people at the wharf as they came down. With her gray hair blown about in strands, her eyes fever-bright, and her breath coming quick and short, paying no heed to any one, the widow Aber glided silently among them, like an apparition. Unconscious of every thing but the ship, even then in the mouth of the harbor, she stood, her face so thin and worn, all quivering with excitement, and her pale lips moving constantly with some inarticulate sound. Once or twice she stretched out her trembling hands toward the vessel, then, gathering her shawl, held them tight against her breast, as if she would keep down the throbbing of her heart. Frail and shadowy, she seemed hardly human, as she waited, with her garments fluttering in the bitter wind, with her very soul reaching, struggling, looking out eagerly in her gray eyes.
Slowly the ship sailed up the harbor, slowly it reached the dock, and after almost two years’ wandering, the Nereid rested once more in her native waters. As the boat touched the wharf, Hannah had taken her mother’s arm, perhaps that she might hold her back, but Miriam made no effort to move. The girl could feel her trembling, trembling, but she only put up her hand unsteadily and brushed the hair away from her face.
Too well Hannah knew poor Tom would not be there, and, as through a mist, she saw the sailors swing themselves down. In the dreadful trouble that had come upon her, she had almost forgotten Luke. During all these weeks of anguish she had thought only of her mother, but this morning the strain had been too severe. She had given up the battle, and now waited stonily; she would have waited on all day, when Miriam, suddenly breaking loose from her, in a voice half stifled by a wild delight, cried,—
“O, Tommy, my boy, my only boy!”
It was Luke that stood beside her, whom she had strangely mistaken for her son. She would have fallen to the ground had he not caught her in his arms. Unable to speak for a moment, she clung to him trembling violently. Clasping her hands tight about his neck, she closed her eyes, and, with a quivering sigh, laid her head against his shoulder. Hannah, looking at Luke quickly, made a gesture that kept him silent, then Miriam, without moving, said, brokenly,—
“I have waited for you, Tommy. It was such a long, long time, but I knew you would come—”
She paused, while a slight struggle in her breath escaped, like a sob, from her lips, then went on once more still in an unsteady tone,—
“I am so glad, so glad! I am well and strong, Tommy. I feel a little tired now, but I am well and strong. You will never leave me, never leave me any more—”
There was another feeble struggle in her throat; then when she spoke again, her voice, growing fainter at every effort, seemed to come from some far-off distance, drifting in to them as from the desert spaces of an illimitable sea.
“Do not let me go. It is cold, and the wind—Hark! Listen, oh listen how sweet and soft the waters wash! Hold me close, Tommy. I am weary. Why, it is Summer! Look! see the land, the foreign land! Stay, Tommy, I am tired—so tired—”
Her head had drooped back heavily on the man’s arm, but her lips still moved, and suddenly her face lighted up with a radiant smile.
“Nearer,—come nearer—How bright the sunlight shines upon your face! Tommy, my boy—my sailor boy—”
So, on that bleak March morning when the Nereid came in, Miriam had indeed gone to meet her son, her sailor son, on that far, far off foreign shore that is girdled by the mightier ocean of eternity.
