Six times they saw the sun rise over the path ahead, ascend to the zenith and sink away, and six times the endless procession of stars glinted on the myriad facets of the sea. The hundreds of strange faces about them grew familiar, almost homelike. The ladies made acquaintances; but Edward none. When they were accessible he never left their presence, devoting himself with tender solicitude to their service, reading to them, reciting bits of adventure, explaining the phenomena of the elements, exhibiting the ship and writing in their journals the record for the father at home. When they were gone he walked the deck silent, moody, sad; alone in the multitude.
People had ceased to interest him. Once only did he break the silence; from the ship's orchestra he borrowed a violin, and standing upon the deck, as at first, he found the love-song again and linked it forever with his life. It was the ocean's gift and he kept it.
He thought a great deal, but from the facts at home he turned resolutely. They should not mar the only summer of his heart. "Not now," he would say to these trooping memories. "After a while you may come and be heard."
But of the future he thought and dreamed. He pictured a life with the woman he loved, in every detail; discounting its pleasures, denying the possibility of sorrow. There were times when with her he found himself wishing to be alone that he might review the dream and enlarge it. It ceased to be a dream, it became a fact, he lived with it and he lived by it. It was possible no longer; it was certain. Some day he would begin it; he would tell it to her and make it so beautiful she would consent.
All this time the elder lady thought, listened and knitted. She was one of those gentle natures not made for contentions, but for soothing. She was never idle. Edward found himself watching the busy needles as they fought for the endless thread, and marveled. What patience! What continuity! What endurance!
The needles of good women preach as they labor. He knew the history of these. For forty years they had labored, those bits of steel in the velvet fingers. Husband, children, slaves, all had felt upon their feet the soft summings of their calculations. One whole company of soldiers, the gallant company her husband had led into Confederate service, had threaded the Wilderness in her socks, and died nearly all at Malvern Hill. Down deep under the soil of the old Mother State they planted her work from sight, and the storms of winter removed its imprints where, through worn and wasted leather, it had touched virgin soil as the bleeding survivors came limping home. Forty years had stilled the thought on which it was based. It was strong and resolute still. Some day the needles would rust out of sight, the hands be folded in rest and the thought would be gone. Edward glanced from the woman to the girl.
"Not so," he said, softly; "the thought will live. Other hands trained under its sweet ministry will take up the broken threads; the needles will flash again. Woman's work is never done, and never will be while love and faith and courage have lodgment upon earth.
"Did you speak, Mr. Morgan?"
"Possibly. I have fallen into the habit of thinking aloud. And I was thinking of you; it must have been a great privilege to call you mother, Mrs. Montjoy." She smiled a little.
"I am glad you think so."