"Oh, my man, my man!" she wailed, "My own sweetheart!"
There was a moment's silence. Then one of the widows stepped out, and approaching the girl, laid her hand on her arm.
"Are ye making a mock of me, Mary Bell?" she said, "Or is it God's truth ye're speaking to my husband lying there?"
The distraught creature called Mary Bell looked up with a sudden passion glowing in her tear-wet eyes.
"It's God's truth!" she cried, "And ye needn't look scorn on me!—for both our hearts are broken, and no one can ever mend them. Yes! It's God's truth! He was your husband, but my sweetheart! And we'll neither of us see a finer man again!"
The curate listened, amazed and aghast. Was nothing going to be done to stop this scandalous scene? He looked protestingly from right to left, but in all the group of fisher-folk not a man moved. Were these two women going to fight over the dead? He hummed and hawed—and began in a thin piercing voice—"My friends—" when he was again interrupted by the passionate speech of Mary Bell.
"I'm sorry for ye," she said, lifting herself from the coffin to which she clung, and turning upon the widow of the drowned man, "and ye can be just as sorry for me! He loved us both, and why should we quarrel! A man is ever like that—just chancy and changeful—but he tried his honest hardest not to love me—yes, he tried hard!—it was my fault! for I never tried!—I loved him!—and I'll love him, till I go where he is gone! And we'll see who God'll give his soul to!"
This was too much for the curate.
"Woman!" he thundered, "Be silent! How dare you boast of your sin at such a time, and in such a place! Take her away from that coffin, some of you!"
So he commanded, but still not a man moved. The curate began to lose temper in earnest.