“Dan sent you this, Georgie. He hailed a pilot-boat, and’s gone to the Cape to join the fall fleet to the fish’ries. And he sent you this.”
It was just a great hand-grip to make your nails purple, but there was heart’s-blood in it. See, there’s the mark to-day.
So there was Dan off in the Bay of Chaleur. ’Twas the best place for him. And I went about my work once more. There was a great gap in my life, but I tried not to look at it. I durstn’t think of Dan, and I wouldn’t think of them,——the two. Always in such times it’s as if a breath had come and blown across the pool and you could see down its dark depths and into the very bottom, but time scums it all over again. And I tell you it’s best to look trouble in the face; if you don’t you’ll have more of it. So I got a lot of shoes to bind, and what part of my spare time I wa’n’t at my books the needle flew. But I turned no more to the past than I could help, and the future trembled too much to be seen.
Well, the two months dragged away, it got to be Thanksgiving week, and at length the fleet was due. I mind me I made a great baking that week; and I put brandy into the mince for once, instead of vinegar and dried-apple juice,——and there were the fowls stuffed and trussed on the shelf,——and the pumpkin-pies like slices of split gold,——and the cranberry-tarts, plats of crimson and puffs of snow,——and I was brewing in my mind a right-royal red Indian pudding to come out of the oven smoking hot and be soused with thick clots of yellow cream,——when one of the boys ran in and told us the fleet’d got back, but no Dan with it,——he’d changed over to a fore-and-after, and wouldn’t be home at all, but was to stay down in the Georges all winter, and he’d sent us word. Well, the baking went to the dogs, or the Thanksgiving beggars, which is the same thing.
Then days went by, as days will, and it was well into the New Year. I used to sit there at the window, reading,——but the lines would run together, and I’d forget what ’twas all about, and gather no sense, and the image of the little fore-and-after, the Feather, raked in between the leaves, and at last I had to put all that aside; and then I sat stitching, stitching, but got into a sad habit of looking up and looking out each time I drew the thread. I felt it was a shame of me to be so glum, and mother missed my voice; but I could no more talk than I could have given conundrums to King Solomon, and as for singing——O, I used to long so for just a word from Dan!
We’d had dry fine weeks all along, and father said he’d known we should have just such a season, because the goose’s breast-bone was so white; but St. Valentine’s day the weather broke, broke in a chain of storms that the September gale was a whisper to. Ah, it was a dreadful winter, that! You’ve surely heard of it. It made forty widows in one town. Of the dead that were found on Prince Edward’s Island’s shores there were four corpses in the next house yonder, and two in the one behind. And what waiting and watching and cruel pangs of suspense for them that couldn’t have even the peace of certainty! And I was one of those.
The days crept on, I say, and got bright again; no June days ever stretched themselves to half such length; there was perfect stillness in the house,——it seemed to me that I counted every tick of the clock. In the evenings the neighbors used to drop in and sit mumbling over their fearful memories till the flesh crawled on my bones. Father, then, he wanted cheer, and he’d get me to singing “Caller Herrin’.” Once, I’d sung the first part, but as I reached the lines,——
“When ye were sleepin’ on your pillows,
Dreamt ye aught o’ our puir fellows
Darklin’ as they face the billows,