Our harbour was for many days crowded with wrecked folk—strange of speech, of dress, of manners—who went about in flocks, prying into our innermost concerns, so that we were soon wearied of their perverse and insatiable curiosity, though we did not let them know it. They were sorry for my father and sister and me, I know, for, one and all, when they came to see my mother lying dead, they said they were. And they stood soberly by her shallow grave, when we laid her dear body away, and they wept when old Tom Tot spoke of the dust and ashes, which we are, and the stony earth rattled hopelessly on the coffin. Doubtless they were well-intentioned towards us all, and towards me, a motherless lad, more than any other, and doubtless they should be forgiven much, for they were but ignorant folk, from strange parts of the world; but I took it hard that they should laugh on the roads, as though no great thing had happened, and when, at last, the women folk took to praising my hair and eyes, as my mother used to do, and, moreover, to kissing me in public places, which had been my mother’s privilege, I was speedily scandalized and fled their proximity with great cunning and agility.
My father, however, sought them out, at all times and places, that he might tell them the tragic circumstances of my mother’s death, and seemed not to remember that he had told them all before.
“But five days!” he would whisper, excitedly, when he had buttonholed a stranger in the shop. “Eh, man? Have you heared tell o’ my poor wife?”
“Five days?”
“Ay; had you folk been wrecked five days afore—just five, mark you—she would have been alive, the day.”
“How sad!”
“Five days!” my father would suddenly cry, wringing his hands. “My God! Only five days!”
A new expression of sympathy—and a glance of the sharpest suspicion—would escape the stranger.
“Five days!” my father would repeat, as though communicating some fact which made him peculiarly important to all the world. “That, now,” with a knowing glance, “is what I calls wonderful queer.”