CHAPTER XIV.
AT EVENING TIME.
"Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.
"Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead."
—Longfellow.
It was not quite a week since Darby and Joan had so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from Firgrove; yet to the distracted aunts it seemed as if years instead of days had dragged away since that bright morning when they had bidden the little ones good-bye, and left them standing among the pussies and the flowers, looking the picture of health, beauty, and innocence. And where were they now? Dead, drowned, Aunt Catharine felt convinced, although she had no further proof of their fate than what was indicated by the finding of Darby's hat; for, notwithstanding all their efforts, not another trace of the missing children had been discovered. They had assuredly fallen into the canal, argued Miss Turner. The locks were so often open, the keepers so dull and unobservant, that their bodies might easily have drifted by without being noticed. Then, once past Barchester, they would be washed away by the next outgoing tide—far, far away, wrapped in a tangle of brown and green seaweed; or perhaps they were lying fathoms deep beneath the restless, shifting waters, whence they should rise no more until that day "when the sea gives up its dead."
Nurse Perry took the same hopeless view of the children's fate as Miss Turner. She wandered about from morning till night with Eric in her arms, searching the most unlikely places, questioning everybody she met in her eager desire to discover the lost little ones—"for all the world," said cook, "like a creature that was off her head!" She grew quite pale and thin, with a sad, frightened look in her eyes which even the blandishments of Mr. Jenkins, when he came of a morning for orders, could not banish; their rims were red, too, as from frequent tears, for many a good cry poor Perry had. She blamed herself unreservedly for the disappearance of her charges; and as Miss Turner believed that she also was in fault, far more than Perry, they mourned and lamented in company.
For during those days of sad suspense Aunt Catharine appeared an altered woman. No longer stern and stately, self-satisfied and self-sufficient, she and her sister seemed to have changed places. She it was who clung to Miss Alice for sympathy and support in the sore trouble that had befallen them. Miss Alice it was who kept brave and cheery—hoping against hope that things were not actually so black as they looked; but Miss Turner could not be coaxed to take any comfort to herself.
"It's very easy for you to keep hopeful and calm," she would say to her sister. "You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You were always soft and sweet and loving with them, whereas I—I was afraid to let them see how closely they had wound themselves about my heart for fear they should become petted and spoiled: so they thought me stern and harsh, when I only meant to be firm and judicious; they believed me hard and unsympathetic, when I was trying to teach them self-command and obedience. Oh, why did I not win their hearts by tenderness, and gain their allegiance by kindness, rather than seek to mould them after my pattern by laying down laws and holding constantly before their eyes the fear of punishment!"
"Don't grieve so, dear sister. You never were either unkind or harsh to Darby and Joan. I'm sure no one could ever imagine any such thing," answered Miss Alice soothingly. "Every one knows, and Guy knew too, before he went away, how dearly you loved the children."