I cursed myself.
“Stop, Dannie!” cries my uncle. “She’s still on the hills––somewheres there, waitin’ t’ be sought out an’ comforted an’ fetched home.”
I thought otherwise.
“She’ve lied down there,” says he, “t’ cry an’ wait for me an’ you.”
I watched him pace the garden-path.
“An’ I’m not able, the day, for sheer want o’ rum,” he muttered, “t’ walk the hills.”
I looked away to the sombre hills, where she might lie waiting for him and me; but my glance ran far beyond, 307 to the low, gray sky and to a patch of darkening sea. And I cursed myself again––my stupidity and ease of passion and the mean conceit of myself by which I had been misled to the falsely meek conclusion of yesterday––I cursed myself, indeed, with a live wish for punishment, in that I had not succored the maid when she had so frankly plead for my strength. John Cather? what right had I to think that she had loved him? On the hills? nay, she was not there; she was not on the hills, waiting for my uncle and me––she was gone elsewhere, conserving her independence and self-respect, in the womanly way she had. My uncle fancied she was a clinging child: I knew her for a proud and impulsively wilful woman. With this gossip abroad to flout her, she would never wait on the hills for my uncle and me: ’twas the ultimate pain she could not bear in the presence of such as loved and trusted her; ’twas the event she had feared, remembering her mother, all her life long, dwelling in sensitive dread, as I knew. She would flee the shame of this accusation, without fear or lingering, unable to call upon the faith of us. ’Twas gathering in my mind that she had fled north, as the maids of our land would do, in the spring, with the Labrador fleet bound down for the fishing. ’Twas a reasonable purpose to possess her aimless feet. She would ship on a Labradorman: she might, for the wishing––she would go cook on a north-bound craft from Topmast Harbor, as many a maid of our coast was doing. And by Heaven! thinks I, she had.
Her mother’s punt was gone from Whisper Cove.
“She’ve lied down there on the hills,” my uncle protested, “t’ cry an’ wait. Ye’re not searchin’, Dannie, as ye ought. She’ve jus’ lied down, I tell ye,” he whimpered, “t’ wait.”