The sullen mist hung its reeking folds along the shore, and the tide, running out, left a wide dank stretch of yellow slime. Above it, where, in Summer, the green swords of the sea-wrack grew, the storm had washed up clammy masses, heavy with ooze, of the pale and sticky tangle. Fiercely the treacherous waters had swept over the shore and covered it with their bitter dregs; but more fiercely had they surged, a dreary desolation, over the girl’s young heart.
Upon the bloated girdles, on the wet sand, in the chilly damp, with the salt spray clinging to her clothes, she went, and the wild sea, calming down, mourned again at her feet, like a sinister mockery of grief, in loud lamentation. When she went up the narrow foot-path on the hill, and came to the garden gate, she stopped a moment, she hardly knew why. It was a mechanical action with her. She scarcely felt or thought. Her heart was heavy as a stone.
The branches of the great honeysuckle were black and bare. She looked at the old rock by the path now slippery with rain. She looked at the tall and prickly cedar drenched with mist and spray. She looked out at the storm-beaten sea, then she looked back once more at the dripping evergreen. The dove in its thorny spire was gone—the dove with the purple ripples on its neck. It had never built another nest. Shivering, shivering, she went on, crossed the porch, where the arms of the bloomless rose, weird and gaunt, flung down great heavy tears at her feet, and, still shivering, she went into the house and shut the door.
Miriam, used to the tumult of the sea, sat patiently in the chair by the window, as she had done so many, many times in the past. When Hannah came in she looked up with surprise. The girl would have avoided her, but Miriam, seeing her so wet became alarmed, and, rising from her seat, had met Hannah in the hall before she could escape.
“I thought you were up stairs! What took you out in such stormy weather? You’re all wet and shivering with the cold, and—why, child, your face is as white as a sheet! What is the matter?”
“Nothing, I—I—was caught in the rain, and—and got a little damp.” The words came uncertainly in a deep voice, for Hannah could hardly trust herself to speak, lest some unguarded tone should abruptly betray the terrible truth. The girl felt as if it was written all over her, or that she might disclose it in every movement; but she had turned her back to her mother, and with trembling hands was hurriedly shaking out the wet shawl. “I’ll go and change my clothes. It will not hurt me.”
“Well, do it quickly, and come down to the fire right away. I’m afraid it will make you cough.”
Hannah, eager to escape, gathered the shawl on her arm; but at the foot of the stairs she stopped and looked back.
“You—you’ve had a nice sleep, mother?”
“Yes, dear, so very sound that I only heard the wind like a gentle zephyr.”