“She will not speak to Marion at once. And, Jean, it is as well that the awful possibility of loss should be admitted. But my hopes are stronger than my fears.”
“The awful possibility of loss?” Jean repeated the words with white lips, not knowing that she did so. They had lengthened their walk, passing Miss Jean’s house and going on to the pier. They turned now and came back in silence. At Miss Jean’s door they paused.
“It will be as well to say nothing as yet,” said George.
“Not to Aunt Jean?”
“Oh! yes. I have spoken to her already. I mean to people generally. And, Jean, go and see Marion and her mother again before you go home.”
But Jean said nothing to her aunt about what she had heard. She stayed her usual time, and discussed certain purchases that were to be made of material for the summer outfit of some of her aunt’s “puir bodies,” and went into matters of detail as to quantity, and needles and thread, and as to the help that each would need in the making of her gown. And then she went away and did all else that she meant to do when she left home, and lingered over it, till it was too late, she told herself, to go to the High-street again.
Three days passed before she went there, and the like had seldom happened since Marion came home. She did not know how she could speak to the mother of the anguish and suspense that lay before her, and she shrank from a betrayal of her own pain.
But when she went in on the fourth day it struck her with surprise to see that they were just the same as usual. No change of grief or terror had passed upon them. Mrs Calderwood was grave and pale, but she spoke about various matters cheerfully enough, though she made no allusion to the fears for her son.
Marion spoke of her brother, and said how hopeful George was about him, and how the old sailors about the pier were saying to one another, that Captain Calderwood was not the man to be caught unprepared for a storm, and being prepared, with plenty of sea room, what was there to fear? He would bring his ship home all right. There was no fear of that.
But the next news that came made even the old sailors shake their heads when the ship was spoken of. A boat had been picked up by a South American vessel, filled with men from the wreck of the “Ben Nevis” and from the Southern port to which these had been carried came the tidings.