Then Christine left the room, and when she returned the two men were ready to leave the house. “Where are you taking Neil, Domine?” she asked, in that lowered voice Fear always uses. “Where are you taking my brother?”
“Only to Moville, Christine. There may be spies watching the outgoing steamers—especially the American Liners—so he had better go to Moville, and take his passage from there.”
She did not answer. She bent her tearful, loving face to Neil’s, and kissed him again, and again, and whispered hurriedly—“Write to me often, and soon,” and when her hand unclasped from his, she left with him the money she had promised. The 335 Domine pretended not to see the loving transaction, and the next moment the two men were wrapped up in the thick darkness, which seemed to swallow up even the sound of their footsteps.
That night Christine mingled her lonely cup of tea with tears, but they were tears that had healing in them. Those to whom love has caused no suffering, have never loved. All who have loved, have wept. Christine had given away her heart, it had been bruised and wounded—but ought she to love her brother less, because he had proved himself unworthy? If anything could bring him back to her trust, would it not be the prayers and tears born from her desolation? To regret, and to desire, between these two emotions the horizons recede; they are two spiritual levers, by which the soul can work miracles of grace.
So the days went on in alternating sunshine and storm. The Domine or Jamie came every day to see if all was well with her. Sometimes Norman stopped long enough on an evening visit, to talk about Neil and to wonder over his past and future. For though he had reached New York safely, they knew little of his life. He said he had found a clerkship in the general store of a merchant in a small town on the Hudson River, about sixty miles from New York; but he intimated it was only a resting place, till he felt ready to go to California. His great anxiety was to obtain the knowledge of his wife’s hiding-place, for he was sure her brother was 336 determined to keep them apart. And this conviction was gradually making a reconciliation with her the chief aim and desire of his unhappy life. He was sure the Domine knew where she was, and his letters to Christine urged on her constantly a determined effort to induce him to reveal her residence. Christine had made three efforts to win the Domine’s confidence, and had then abandoned the attempt as utterly useless.
The herring-fishery with all its preparatory and after duties and settlements was now quite past, and the school was in full swing again, and the quiet days of St. Martin’s summer were over the land. All the magnificent flowers of early autumn were dead, but the little purple daisy of St. Michael filled the hedges, and the crannies of the moor. In the garden, among the stones of its wall, the mint and the thyme and the wall flowers still swung in sunny hours, faint ethereal perfume; but it was like the prayers of the dying, broken and intermittent, the last offering of the passing autumn. There were gray and ghostly vapors in the early morning, and the ships went through them like spirits. The rains sobbed at the windows, and the wind was weary of the rain. Sometimes the wind got the best of both fog and rain, then it filled the sails of the ships, and with swelling canvas they strutted out with the gale.
In the mornings, if the sea was willing, she saw the fishermen hastening to the boats, with their oilskins over their arms, and water bottle swinging at 337 their sides. And it was the sea after all, that was her true companion. The everlasting hills were not far away, but they were young compared with the old, old, gray sea. Its murmur, its loud beat of noisy waves, its still, small voice of mighty tides, circling majestically around the world, all spoke to her. Her blood ran with its tide, she wrote best when they were inflowing. When it was high water with the sea, it was high water with Christine’s highest nature, spiritual and mental. Their sympathy was perfect, and if taken away from the sea, she would have been as miserable as a stormy petrel in a cage. So then, with the sea spread out before her, and her paper and pencils in hand, she hardly missed human companionship.
Still there were days when she wanted to talk, when singing did not satisfy her, and one morning when she had watched a boat come ashore, broadside on the rocks, she felt this need almost like a pain in her heart. No lives had been lost, and she had watched her brother Norman playing a godlike act of salvation with the life-boat, yet she had what she called “a sair heartache!”
“It isna for the men,” she said softly, “they are a’ safe, through God’s mercy, and Norman’s pluck and courage. I think it is for the poor, poor boat, beaten and lashed to pieces, on thae black, cruel rocks! Poor Boatie! left alane in her misery and death! And she did her best! Nae doubt o’ that! She did her best, and she had to die!”