She had a dream that night: with the strange perversity of nightly visions it seemed to mingle in one and confuse inextricably the experiences and thoughts of those last few days. She saw the sea as she had seen it that evening, streaked with night-born radiance, and on it a small boat—in the boat the dark form of the man she dreaded; in her dream she loved him, and was stretching out her arms for a place by his side in the tiny skiff. Then a gradual change: the gleaming silver passed into ruddy gold, which tinged ocean and sands and rock, and she knew that it was the hour of sunset. She was sitting on the yellow sands gazing out to sea, and suddenly as she looked into the flood of color a white speck rose from its midst—a sail, which grew larger and whiter till she saw that it was no sail, but the vast wings of a gigantic bird that was leisurely skimming the water till it rested at last at her feet. And its eyes were dark and lustrous, full of love and confidence. Ah, how well she knew them! Another change: she thought that she looked up again, and the bird was gone, but in its place Laura's father stood before her stretching out his arms to her longingly. And then she woke with a start and a shiver, to see the gray dawning begin to struggle with the darkness, and to feel at her heart a cold, cold chill.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
UNEXPECTED VISITORS AT MIDDLETHORPE.
And in pleading for life's fair fulfilment, I plead
For all that you miss and all that you need.
After this the days passed on in the little village by the sea somewhat slowly and lingeringly. Spring blushed into summer, the bright early freshness of grass and foliage deepened into summer's maturity, the gray ocean wore a mild blue appearance as it rolled in on the yellow sands, and began to reveal its depths to those who skimmed it in the boats—some bound on pleasure and some on business—that left the shore from time to time. Over the dim, vast distance Summer cast her misty veil, shutting in earth and sea with her soft halos and vapors, and to the yellow sands came women and children, vanguard of the great army that later in the season would swoop down upon this village and others of the same type.
Margaret was often there with a book in her hand or a piece of work, and her child by her side; but generally she was unoccupied, her hands listless, her eyes growing daily deeper and more weary. For the strain on heart and spirit was rapidly becoming more than her physical strength could bear. She was fading visibly, but there was no loving eye near to note how her step grew more languid and her white fingers thinner, and her beautiful face more worn and sad till its very beauty seemed to be passing away. One noted the change, however, and took full advantage of it.
Jane Rodgers was becoming a kind of household tyrant; not that she ever again attempted the management of Laura—that would have aroused what little spirit Margaret still possessed; her tyranny was exhibited in other ways. She would do precisely what she chose, leaving everything else undone—would spend days visiting her friends under the plea of change being an absolute necessity, and leave Mrs. Grey, who could not afford extra help, to manage matters for herself in the house; she would even reply insolently at times to some simple request made by her lodger, for she saw her power. A kind of indifference to life and its comforts was creeping gradually over Margaret, a numbing sense of weakness, a languid desire for rest—only rest. In such a frame she could scarcely have roused herself to undertake the exertion of moving. She felt that between herself and her landlady matters were not so pleasant as they had formerly been, but Laura was happy, and for herself she cared very little. The one great sorrow, like an open wound whose throbbing engrosses every sense, made her comparatively indifferent to the little pin-pricks of her daily life.
She had one joy in these dark days. It was in the clinging affection of her daughter. Since the day of her return Laura and her mother had been far more to one another than ever before. The child opened her heart to her mother, told of all her little dreams and fancies, and Margaret began to talk to the little one even about the long sealed-up subject; not indeed her trouble and its origin—that would have been impossible as yet—but about the vague hope toward which in her darkness her thoughts ever turned. She spoke to Laura about her father, drew from her the story of her recollections, and tried to awaken and nourish in her young heart a reverent love for the parent she might perhaps never see.
For sometimes when Margaret felt her strength failing, a sudden fear for Laura's future would take possession of her. If—if—God should take her too from the little one! But that was a possibility at which she dared not glance. To live as she was living, lonely, unloved, was bad enough, but through all its darkness was a gleam of something bright, the hope of a vague, dim to-come, that might possibly bring back her joy. To die was to shut even this out, and for ever; to pass away unforgiven, misunderstood, a stain on her fair fame.