A Singer from the Sea

by Amelia E. Barr

In truth, any letter from St. Penfer at this period of Denasia’s life hurt her. She longed for her own people. She felt heart-sick for a word from them. In some moment of confidence or ill-temper, Roland had given his wife his own version of the visit to his mother-in-law. And whatever else he remembered or forgot, he was clear and positive about Joan’s message to her daughter. She had broken her good father’s life in two and her mother was sorry she had ever given her suck. Denasia knew her mother’s passionate nature, and she could understand that some powerful aggravation had made her speak so strongly, but the words, after all allowances, were terrible words. They haunted her in the midst of her professional excitements, and still more in the solitude of her frequently restless nights.

And if Joan had felt this a year ago, Denasia knew that she now felt much more bitterly; for in one of her letters to Roland Elizabeth had written 209 freely of the passionate anger of John Penelles when he learned that his daughter had become a public dancer. Indeed, Elizabeth affected to think it very cruel of Denasia to send to her old ignorant parents the illustrated paper which contained her picture in the dance act. She thought Denasia’s vanity had overstepped all bounds and become positive cruelty, etc., etc. And Denasia, in a passion which matched any outbreak of her father’s, vowed not only that she had never sent such a paper to St. Penfer, but that Elizabeth herself must have been the perpetrator of the cruelty, unless––and she then gave Roland a glance which made him wonder where his willing and obedient Denasia of former days had gone.

In all essential points this story was a false one. It was indeed true that some person had sent to the Penelles cottage a London paper, in which there was a large picture of Denasia and the admiral dancing the famous hornpipe. But the manner of its reception was matter of speculation only, and the speculative had founded their tale upon the known hastiness of John and Joan’s tempers, without taking into consideration the presence of unknown influences.

As it happened, the pictured girl was received in the St. Penfer post-office during a storm. John had been called in the grey dawn to the life-boat, and Joan, in spite of wind and rain, went down to the beach with him. With a prayer in her heart, she saw him buckle on his buoyant armour and set his pale blue oar like lance athwart his rest, and 210 then make straight out into the breakers that dashed and surged around. Joan saw the boat’s swift forward leaping, its downward plunge into the trough of the sea, its perilous uplifting, its perpendicular rearing, its dread descent. And John felt its human reel and shudder, its desperate striving and leaping and plunging, and its sad submission when the waters half filled it and the quivering men clung for very life under the deluge pouring over them.

So for three hours John was face to face with awful death, and Joan on her knees praying for his safety, and John had but just got back to his home, and the cry of thanksgiving for her old dear’s return was yet on Joan’s lips, when the postman brought the fateful newspaper. Fortunately they did not open it at once. Joan laid it carefully aside and brought on their belated breakfast. And as they ate it they talked of the lives that were lost and saved. Then John smoked his pipe, and Joan tidied up her house and sat down beside him with her knitting in her hands. Both their hearts were solemn and tender. John felt as if his life was a new gift to him; Joan, as if her husband’s love had some miraculous sweetness never known before. They spoke seldom and softly, finding in their responsive silence a language beyond words.

It was, then, in this gentle mood that John reached to the shelf above his head and took down the paper. He opened it, and Denas in her pretty dancing dress, with her bare arms lifted above her head, looked her father full in the face. She was laughing; she was the incarnation of merriment and of 211 consciously graceful, captivating vivacity. The miserable father was, however, fascinated; he gazed and gazed until his eyes overflowed, and his hands trembled, and the paper fell with a rustle to the floor.

Joan lifted it and looked at her husband. His eyes were shut, he was sobbing inwardly as punished children sob in sleep. She spoke to him, and he opened his eyes and pointed to the paper. Then Joan met the same well-beloved face. The mother’s cheeks burned red and redder, her eyes flashed, she straightened out every crease, as if the pictured satin and lace had been real; and then turning to the printed page, she read aloud every word of adulation.

They had talked together of the men and women drowned within sight of land that morning, but here was their only child dancing in sight of eternal death, and they could not say a word to each other about her. For it must be remembered that these simple, God-fearing fisher-folk had been strictly and straitly reared in a creed which regarded dancing as one of the deadly sins. They honestly believed that there was but a step between their darling and eternal death, and if she should take that step while dancing! To have known that she was on the ship which had just gone to pieces on the rocks would not have made them so heart-sick. Their very souls shivered as they thought of her. As for John, he could find only those two words that spring instinctively to every soul in trouble, “O God!”

But he motioned Joan to take the paper away, 212 and Joan took it into the room which was still called “Denas’ room.” She kissed the pictured face, the hair and eyes and mouth, the lifted arms, the slender throat. She could not bear to crush the paper together; she opened a drawer and laid it as gently within as if she had been putting her baby in its coffin. At this hour there was no anger in her heart; there was even a little motherly pride in her child’s beauty and grace and cleverness. At this extremity of ill-doing she did not altogether blame Denas. She was certain that before Denas danced, some one had somehow persuaded the girl that it was not wicked to dance. “Denas do have principles,” she said stiffly, “and the man do not live who can make her do wickedly if she do think it be wicked.”

She looked with a sad affection around the little room. How lonely it was! Yes, it is the living who desert us that make lonely rooms, and not the dead. We know the dead will never come back, but oh, how long it seems to wait for the living! Month after month to keep the room ready for the one who does not come for our longing! Month after month to dress the bed and the table, and lay out the books they loved, and the little treasures that may tell they were unforgotten. Joan looked at the small dressing-table holding the shell box, and the satin pincushion, and the alabaster vase which Denas had once thought beautiful beyond price. The snowy quilt and pillows, the carefully kept floor and chairs, the clothing washed and laid with sprigs of lavender in the tidy drawers––oh, 213 what poetry and eloquence of untiring, undespairing mother-love were in these things!