Had one of the jackdaws that haunted the old church-tower taken to soaring and singing like a lark, or had the ancient yew-tree been found on some morning bursting out into rose-colored blossom, it would hardly have excited more amazement than this strange conduct of John Sands, the clerk. Franks looked anxiously at his wife, and unconsciously touched his own forehead with his finger. The same thought was passing through the mind of each: "Grief has turned the poor fellow crazy." But grief had nothing to do with the matter; Sands was as sane and as sober as he had ever been in the course of his life. If his conduct appeared odd to those who had never known him but gloomy, solemn, and stiff, it was because such a (to him) strange guest had come to the poor man's heart in the shape of joy, that it had overturned everything before it; and Sands, in the excitement of receiving such a guest, scarcely knew what he was doing.
To explain the cause of this strange new sensation of joy to one dried up, as it were, by care and sorrow, we must relate what had occurred not an hour before, when John Sands had stood in the hospital-ward by the bedside of his suffering wife.
Interviews between them had taken place regularly on every week-day. It had seemed as if poor Sands could find little comfort in his visits to Nancy. After his long walk from Colme he would sit, silent and sad, listening to his wife's complainings and moans, or enduring her gloomy silence, which was almost harder to bear. Sands was not a man of many words, at least, words of his own,—well as his voice was known in the responses in church. He never attempted to comfort, but he felt for his suffering Nancy; and—little as he guessed that such was the case—very dear was his sympathy to her who was proving, week after week, the strength of his patient, much-enduring affection. On this particular afternoon Nancy had been more silent than usual, and Sands was thinking of rising and taking his leave at his accustomed time of departure, when his wife broke out suddenly with the exclamation,—
"I'll do it! I've made up my mind she shan't never throw that at me again!"
"Throw what, my dear?" mildly inquired the clerk.
"Bell Stone was here last Saturday," said Nancy, speaking with strong but restrained emotion. "She threw out a hint,—she did,—that it is no great thing for you that I'm getting over my accident, for that a dead wife is a deal better for a man to have than a drunken one!"
"My dear!" exclaimed Sands, much shocked.
"She did say it!" repeated Nancy, vehemently, "and she thought it, and all the world thinks it, and I think it, too, for it's the fact, though I could have torn out her eyes when she said it!" The woman of fiery passions, weakened by illness and pain, lost all her self-command, and burst into a torrent of tears.
John Sands knew not how to soothe her passion of grief, and could only repeat, "My dear, my dear!" in a deprecating tone of distress.