To Jean, as to the rest, the days passed slowly and heavily. To the eyes of even her aunt she was just as usual, no graver nor sadder than was natural since a friend, and one who was more than a friend to those she loved, was in danger. But no one ever heard her speak of the anxiety that oppressed them all. She listened in silence when, as is the way at such times, the causes for hope or fear were gone over, and over, and over again, or she went away and did not listen, but she never put in her word with the rest.
It was only as a friend that she had a right to grieve for Willie Calderwood, she told herself. They had never been lovers. They had cared for one another long ago—oh! so long ago now. But they had not seen one another for years, because he had not cared to see her, and it was all past now. She had been angry at first, and then sorry. Yes, she had suffered sharply for a while, she acknowledged. But she was neither sorry nor angry now. She was anxious for his safety, and she longed for his return, as all his friends did. And her heart ached for his mother and his sister, and for George, to whom he was both brother and friend. And that was all.
But a day came when her heart spoke, nay, cried out as the heart of no mere friend could cry. She was sitting one day in Miss Jean’s parlour, when her brother came in. There were tears in his eyes and a strange, uncertain smile on his lips, and he laid his hand on her shoulder as she stood by the window, pausing a moment before he spoke, as if he were not sure of his voice.
“Jean,” he said, “there is news at last.”
Jean grew very white.
“Well?” said she sitting down.
“Is it good news, George, man?” said his aunt hastily.
“It is just such news as one would expect to hear from Willie Calderwood. Yes, I call it good news, whatever may come next.”
And then he told them how another of the “Ben Nevis’” boats had been heard from. After much suffering from anxiety and exhaustion, they who left the ship in it had landed somewhere on the West African coast, and had, after some delay, been taken from thence in a Portuguese vessel to Lisbon. And now some of them at least had reached England. And this was the news they brought.
When those who were to go in the second boat were about to take their places in it, Captain Calderwood had, to their utter amazement, declared his intention of remaining with the ship for that night at least. The vessel was new and strongly built, and within the hour he had seen some tokens that led him to believe that, during the storm, it had not gone so hardly with her as had been at first feared.