But poor Jacob never came back.
Homeward bound, his vessel was wrecked off the treacherous Newfoundland shore. A storm drove her helpless, enshrouded in fog, against the rocks where she foundered, and captain and crew went down together. Only two men escaped from the terrible disaster.
When the dreadful news came and they told Miriam as they met her on the porch, she made no reply. She did not moan or scream. She only looked out for a moment at the deceitful sea, smiling in its sheen of a thousand tints, then turned and went into the house and shut the door.
She had always been a strange woman, and they left her to bear her grief alone. She asked nobody’s sympathy, she did not complain, she never spoke of Jacob. She did not, as the people had expected, sell her house. She made no change so far as the world could see, only that she held herself, if possible, more aloof from society than ever. But before three months had gone by they noticed that her brown and shining hair had turned white, and her gray eyes showed half concealed within their depths an unfathomed trouble. Then too, her figure, once erect and straight as a dart, grew bent and stooped across the shoulders, and nothing ever brought the color to her face any more that was always pale and thin. Otherwise, however, there appeared no difference. She lived economically, and sometimes took in a small amount of fine sewing, as, beside the house, she had little else, for the sea when it buried her husband had buried his earnings also in the same watery grave.
She staid at home and watched the children in whom her life was now wholly bound up. They were her world, her all. She seemed to find in them her very existence, and after the queer frosted vases on the mantel had stood empty for years, their young hands filled them again with sweet wild flowers. So the house once more was bright and sunny, and, though Miriam herself never sang, Hannah’s voice was clear and happy.
Hannah had grown up the very picture of her mother when in her early girlhood, but young Tom was like his father. He was like his father in more respects than one, and while still a boy the people said he too will prove a sailor. They were right; though Miriam had struggled against it and watched over him with an absorbing care. She saw again developed in him the same wild fascination for the sea. She knew its strength and that it must prevail, and when he came and begged so hard, with the well remembered far-off look in his eyes, she felt all opposition would be vain.
She did not reproach herself that she had lived upon the coast and played with him upon the beach, for something in her heart told her that it could have been no different, even had she raised him up in another place where the sound of the sea would not have been always in his ears. She recognized in this fatal love the heritage he had received from his father. The thought that it could be eradicated, that he would ever be satisfied with any thing else she knew to be hopeless, and so the widow had given up, and he had gone at fourteen to seek his fortune, like his father before him, a sailor on the high seas.
Now, ten years later, and two-and-twenty years since poor Jacob had started on his fateful cruise, young Tom was ready for his fourth voyage. He had climbed unaided several steps up the ladder in his calling, and the Nereid, waiting down in the harbor would carry him in a few hours, her first mate, out upon her long two years’ absence. It was a great lift to him, for, besides his promotion, Luke Denin, who this time commanded the ship, had been his early friend. There was but little difference in their age. They had been boys together, and together they had explored the shore for miles and fished for days, and they had rambled the hills and the woods over; so, as young Tom said, it would be just as good for him as if he commanded the Nereid himself.
When he told his mother this she had only patted him on the head, and said in a choked voice,—“My little sailor boy!”
The widow Aber, ever since her son took to following the sea, had been gradually breaking. From that time her health, heretofore always strong and robust, began perceptibly to decline. The people noticed it, but then she told them that she was getting old—how could they expect a woman well up into the sixties to be as active as a girl, and besides this she had the rheumatism. So she was constantly excusing her feebleness with anxious care, as if she feared they might attribute it to some other cause than age.