The Twa Miss Dawsons

by Margaret M. Robertson

Suspense.

And so the summer wore over, and May went home with all her children, though Jean would fain have kept one boy with her. But her mother feared the bleak east winds for the rather delicate Georgie who was the favourite at Saughleas, and she had reasons that satisfied herself for taking little Keith home also, but she promised to send them both back again as soon as the winter was over.

The summer ended, and autumn days grew short, and a quiet time came that reminded Jean of the days when May had gone to London “to meet her fate,” and she was waiting for the coming home of the “John Seaton.” There was the same long dreaming in the gloaming, before her father came in, the same listening to the woeful voices of the winds and the sea, and the same shadow on Jean’s face and in her wistful eyes that her father had seen in those days—now so long ago. He sometimes surprised it now, but, if this happened, it went hard with Jean if she did not make him forget it before he slept.

About the new year Mrs Calderwood’s old friend died, and when her will was read, to her surprise Mrs Calderwood found that she had left her money enough to enable her to live henceforth free from the cares which accompany the task of making too little do the work of enough, as had been her lot during the greater part of her life of widowhood.

George, who had gone to London to be with her at that time, insisted on bringing her back to Scotland with him. She had exhausted herself in attendance on her old friend, and she needed a change. Later she was to return and make all necessary arrangements, but in the mean time it would have been neither wise nor kind he thought to leave her there alone.

For this George had a better reason than he gave to her. News had come of terrible storms that had passed over Southern seas. Already rumours of disaster and loss had reached England, and the owners of Captain Calderwood’s ship, the “Ben Nevis,” were beginning to feel some anxiety with regard to her.

Another ship, the “Swallow,” had arrived from Melbourne, bringing word that the “Ben Nevis” was to have sailed three days after the time she had put to sea. The voyage had been a long one, though happily the “Swallow” had passed beyond the latitudes where the storms had raged most fiercely before the danger had arisen. The “Ben Nevis” was the swifter vessel of the two, and by rights, she ought to have reached England before her. And when ten days passed, and then ten more, there was good reason for fear for her safety.

Happily Captain Calderwood’s outward voyage and his stay in Melbourne had been shorter than his mother had calculated upon, so that as yet no thought of anxiety had come to disturb her, and she was glad to go with George, believing that she could pay a few weeks in Scotland with her daughter, and still be in London in time to receive her son when he should return.

It was Mrs Calderwood’s first visit after an absence of several years, to a place which had been her home during the greater part of her life. There were many to welcome her, and there was much to see and hear, and she was greatly occupied. But George wondered sometimes that she should live on from day to day, showing no misgivings, even no surprise, at the continued absence of her son.

He need not have wondered. She had been a sailor’s daughter, and a sailor’s wife, and she had lived the greater part of her life among sailors’ wives and widows, and had learned the necessity of giving no unwise indulgence to fancies and fears, and to keep quiet and face them when fears and fancies had to give place at last to a knowledge of disaster and loss.