CHAPTER XVI
"'TWIXT TIDE AND TIDE'S RETURNING"
But there was no happy talk with Luther Williams the next day, for sad news came to the island, and at Cap'n Ben's house there was a grief-stricken girl, widowed while scarcely more than a child. It was an incoming vessel which brought the tidings of the loss of one of the Mary Lizzie's crew. Happy, careless, pleasure-loving Manny Green had been drowned during a heavy gale. Like most of the other fishermen, he could not swim, and had sunk for the last time before help could reach him. It was while trying to soothe Ora that Miss Phosie learned for the first time that the girl and her lover were married on the day when Ora had started for Bangor. Manny had met her on the boat, they had gone to the nearest clergyman to have the ceremony performed and Manny had taken his little bride on a long trolley ride for a wedding trip. They had spent a couple of days in a quiet inland town, and then Ora had gone on to Bangor, returning, before her family expected, that she might spend with Manny the last days he should be ashore. Not only poor little Ora, but Almira Green, was stricken by the blow, and they mourned together. "She is all alone," said Ora, "and she loved him. I think I ought to stay with her now, Aunt Phosie, for she has no one else." Therefore to Almira went the girl with the intention of passing her life under the roof which had sheltered the boyhood of her young husband.
The sorrowful news affected everyone, and it was a depressed and subdued girl who greeted Kenneth when he appeared at Wits' End that morning. The tears were very near Gwen's eyes, and she could scarce speak at first, for the thought constantly recurred: suppose it had been you. Kenneth, too, looked grave, and the joyousness of their past evening seemed to have gone from them.
"I feel so sorry for Ora," said Gwen. "We grew to be friends after a fashion, for we were companions in misery, that day of the storm, the very storm, I am afraid, in which Manny lost his life. We went down to the shore together. I was anxious about Ethel, and—" she hesitated, then made bravely frank in the remembrance of a grief which might have come to her—"I was anxious about you, for I had seen you go out."
Kenneth caught her hand and held it tightly for a moment, then laid it gently back on her lap. It was hard to have self-command at such a moment, and he would fain have taken her in his arms then and there. "If I had known you were anxious about me it would have made a difference," he said in a low voice.
She laid her hand lightly on his sleeve for just a second, and they sat looking at one another, their eyes full of the love their lips might not speak. Gwen was the first to break the silence. "You have brought the picture. It was so good of you to come early. May I see it?"
He set the picture on a chair and she knelt in front of it. "How lovely it is," she said presently with a sigh. "I think I like it better than the other. I can't believe that it is really mine. What shall I say to thank you?"
"You have already given me more thanks than are due me, and such as I value most, for you truly like it."
"I love it, and to think it is going to stay with me always! I don't agree with you in thinking no more thanks are due you."