VIII.
Clarice was half annoyed at this interference; it seemed to suppose, she thought, that she was unequal to the management of her own affairs.—But was she equal to it?
After Bondo had walked away, she called to Gabriel, who stood alone when the other children had deserted him, and knew not what to do. He would have run away, had he not been afraid of fisherman Emmins.
"Come here, my son," said Clarice. She did not speak very loud, nor in the least sternly; but he heard her quite distinctly, and he hesitated.
"I'm not your son!" he concluded to answer.
A sword through the heart of Clarice would have killed her, but there are pains which do not slay that are worse than the pains of death. Clarice Briton's face was pale with anguish, when she arose and said,—
"Gabriel, come here!"
The child saw something awful in her eyes, and heard in her voice something that made him tremble. He came, and sat down in the place to which Clarice pointed. It was a hard moment for her. Other words bitter as this, which disowned her love and care and defied her authority, the child could not have spoken. She answered him as if he had not been a child; and a truth which no words could have made him comprehend seemed to break upon and overwhelm him, while she spoke.
"It is true," she said, "you are not my son. I have no right to call you mine. Listen, Gabriel, while I tell you how it happens that you live with me, and I take care of you, as if you were my child. I was down at the Point one day,—that place where we go to watch the birds, you know, my—Gabriel. While I sat there alone, I saw a plank that was dashed by the waves up and down, as you see a boat carried when the wind blows hard and sounds so terrible; but there was nobody to take care of that plank except God,—and He, oh, He, is always able to take care! When that plank was washed near to the shore, I stepped out on the rocks and caught it, and then I saw that a little child was tied fast to it; so I knew that some one must have thrown him into the water, hoping that he would be picked up. I do not know what they who threw the little child into the sea called him; but I, who found him, called him Gabriel, and I carried him, all dripping with the salt sea-water, to my father's cabin. I laid him on my bed, and my mother and I never stopped trying to waken him, till he opened his eyes; for he lay just like one who never meant to open his eyes or speak again. At last my mother said, 'Clarice, I feel his heart beat!' and I said in my heart, 'If it please God to spare his life, I will work for him, and take care of him, and be a mother to him.' And I thought, 'He will surely love me always, because God has sent him to me, and I have taken him, and have loved him.' But now he has left me! He is mine no more! And oh, how I have loved him!"
Long before this story was ended, tears were running down Gabriel's face, and he was drawing closer and closer to Clarice. When she ceased speaking, he hid his face in her lap and cried aloud, according to the boisterous privilege of childhood.
"Oh, mother, dear mother, I haven't gone away! I'm here! I do love you!
I am your little boy!"
"Gabriel! Gabriel! it was terrible! terrible!" burst from Clarice, with a groan, and a flood of tears.
"Oh, don't, mother! Call me your boy! Don't say, Gabriel! Don't cry!"
So he found his way through the door of the heart that stood wide open for him. Storm and darkness had swept in, if he had not.
The reconciliation was perfect; but the shadow that had obscured the future deepened that obscurity after this day's experience. If her right to the lad needed no vindication, was she capable of the attempted guidance and care? Could she bear this blessed burden safely to the end?
Sometimes, for a moment, it may have seemed to Clarice that Bondo Emmins could alone help her effectually out of her bewilderment and perplexity. She had not now the missionary with whom to consult, in whose wisdom to confide; and Bondo had a marvellous influence over the child.
He was disposed to take advantage of that influence, as he gave evidence, not long after the exhibition of his control over the boat-load of delinquents, by asking Clarice if she were never going to reward his constancy. He seemed at this time desirous of bringing himself before her as an object of compassion, if nothing better; but she, having heard him patiently to the end of what he had to urge in his own behalf and that of her parents, replied in words that were certainly of the moment's inspiration, and almost beyond her will; for Clarice had been of late so much troubled, no wonder if she should mistake expediency for right.
"I am married already," she said. "You see this ring. Do you not know what it has meant to me, Bondo, since I first put it on? Death, as you call it, cannot part Luke Merlyn and me. 'Heart and hand,' he said. Can I forget it? My hand is free,—but he holds it; and my heart is his.—But I can serve you better than you ask for, Bondo Emmins. You learned the name of the vessel that sailed from Havre and was lost. Take a voyage. Go to France. See if Gabriel has any friends there who have a right to him, and will serve him better than I can; and if he has such friends, I myself will take Gabriel to them. Yes, I will do it.—You will love a sailor's life, Bondo. You were born for that. Diver's Bay is not the place for you. I have long seen it. The sea will serve you better than I ever could. Go, and Clarice will thank you. Oh, Bondo, I beg you!"
At these words the man so appealed to became scarlet. He seemed to reflect on what Clarice had said,—seriously to ponder; but his amazement at her words had almost taken away his power of speech.
"The Gabriel sailed from Havre," said he, slowly, "If I went out as a deckhand in the next ship that sails"—
"Yes!"
"To scour the country—I hope I shan't find what I look for; you couldn't live without him.—Very likely you will think me a fool for my pains. You will not give me yourself. You would have me take away the lad from you."—He looked at Clarice as if his words passed his belief.
"Yes, only do as I say,—for I know it must be the best for us all.
There is nothing else to be done,—no other way to live."
"France is a pretty big country to hunt over for a man whose name you don't know," said Emmins, after a little pause.
"You can find what passengers sailed in the Gabriel," answered Clarice, eager to remove every difficulty, and ready to contend with any that could possibly arise. "The vessel was a merchantman. Such vessels don't take out many passengers.—Besides, you will see the world.—It is for everybody's sake! Not for mine only,—no, truly,—no, indeed! May-be if another person around here had found Gabriel, they would never have thought of trying to find out who he belonged to."
"I guess so," replied Bondo, with a queer look. "Only now be honest, Clarice; it's to get rid of me, isn't it? But you needn't take that trouble. If you had only told me right out about Luke Merlyn"—
While Bondo Emmins spoke thus, his face had unconsciously the very expression one sees on the face of the boy whose foot hovers a moment above the worm he means to crush. The boy does not expect to see the worm change to a butterfly just then and there, and mount up before his very eyes toward the empyrean. Neither did Bondo Emmins anticipate her quiet—
"You knew about it all the while."
"Not the whole," said he,—"that you were married to Luke, as you say"; and the fisherman looked hastily around him, as if he had expected to see the veritable Luke.
"It isn't to get rid of you, then, Bondo," Clarice explained; "but I read in the Book you don't think much of, but it's everything to me, If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? So you see, I am a little selfish in it all; for I want peace of mind, and I never shall have peace till it is settled about Gabriel; if I must give him up, I can."
Bondo Emmins looked at Clarice with a strange look, as she spoke these words,—so faltering in speech, so resolute in soul.
"And if I'm faithful over another man's," said he, "better the chance of getting my own, eh? But I wonder what my own is."
"Everything that you can earn and enjoy honestly," replied Clarice.
Emmins rose up quickly at these words. He walked off a few paces without speaking. His face was gloomy and sullen as a sky full of tornadoes when he turned his back on Clarice,—hardly less so when he again approached her.
"I am no fool," said he, as he drew near.—From his tone one could hardly have guessed that his last impulse was to strike the woman to whom he spoke.—"I know what you mean. You haven't sent me on a fool's errand. Good bye. You won't see me again, Clarice—till I come back from France. Time enough to talk about it then."
He did not offer to take her hand when he had so spoken, but was off before Clarice could make any reply.
Clarice thought that she should see him again; but he went away without speaking to any other person of his purpose; and when wonder on account of his absence began to find expression in her father's house, and elsewhere, it was she who must account for it. People thereat praised him for his good heart, and made much of his generosity, and wondered if this voyage were not to be rewarded by the prize for which he had sought openly so long. Old Briton and his dame inclined to that opinion.
But in the week following that of his departure there was a great stir and excitement among the people of the Bay. Little Gabriel was missing. A search, that began in surprise when Clarice returned home from some errand, was continued with increasing alarm all day, and night descended amid the general conviction that the child was drowned. He had been seen at play on the shore. No one could possibly furnish a more reasonable explanation. Every one had something to say, of course, and Clarice listened to all, turning to one speaker after another with increasing despair. Not one of them could restore the child to life, if he was dead.
There was a suspicion in her heart which she shared with none. It flashed upon her, and there was no rest after, until she had satisfied herself of its injustice. She went alone by night to town, and made her way fearlessly down to the harbor to learn if any vessel had sailed that day, and when the last ship sailed for Havre. The answers to the inquiries she made convinced her that Bondo Emmins must have sailed for France the day after his last conversation with her.
By daylight Clarice was again on the shore of Diver's Bay, there to renew a search which for weeks was not abandoned. Gabriel had a place in many a rough man's heart, and the women of the Bay knew well enough that he was unlike all other children; and though it did not please them well that Clarice should keep him so much to herself, they still admired the result of such seclusion, and praised his beauty and wonderful cleanliness, as though these tokens of her care were really beyond the common range of things,—attainable, in spite of all she could say, by no one but Clarice Briton, and for no one but Gabriel. These fishermen and their wives did not speedily forget the wonderful boy; the boats never went out but those who rowed them thought about the child; the gatherers of sea-weed never went to their work but they looked for some token of him; and for Clarice,—let us say nothing of her just here. What woman needs to be told how that woman watched and waited and mourned?