“Love!” exclaimed his companion; “love of whom?”
“Why, who should it be but the love o’ the dear girl as lies under this sod?” said the old man, putting his hand affectionately on the grave. “Ay, you may well look at me in wonderment, but I wasn’t always the wrinkled old man I am now. I was a good-lookin’ lad once, though I don’t look like it now. When poor Mary was murdered I was nineteen. I won’t tell ye how I loved that dear girl. Ye couldn’t understand me. When she was murdered by that”—(he paused abruptly for a moment, and then resumed)—“when she was murdered, I thought I should have gone mad. I was mad, I believe, for a time; but when I came back here to stay, after wanderin’ in foreign parts for many years, I took to comin’ to the grave at nights. At first I got no good. I thought my heart would burst altogether, but at last the Lord sent peace into my soul. I began to think of her as an angel in heaven, and now the sweetest hours of my life are spent on this grave. Poor Mary! She was gentle and kind, especially to the poor and the afflicted. She took a great interest in the ways and means we had for savin’ people from wrecks, and used often to say it was a pity they couldn’t get a boat made that would neither upset nor sink in a storm. She had read o’ some such contrivance somewhere, for she was a great reader. Ever since that time I’ve bin trying, in my poor way, to make something o’ the sort, but I’ve not managed it yet. I like to think she would have been pleased to see me at it.”
Old Jeph stopped at this point, and shook his head slowly. Then he continued—
“I find that as long as I keep near this grave my love for Mary can’t die, and I don’t want it to. But that’s why I think you’re right to go abroad. It won’t do for a man like you to go moping through life as I have done. Mayhap there’s some truth in the sayin’, Out o’ sight out o’ mind.”
“Ah’s me!” said Bax; “isn’t it likely that there may be some truth too in the words o’ the old song, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ But you’re right, Jeph, it wouldn’t do for me to go moping through life as long as there’s work to do. Besides, old boy, there’s plenty of this sort o’ thing to be done; and I’ll do it better now that I don’t have anybody in particular to live for.”
Bax said this with reckless gaiety, and touched the medal awarded to him by the Lifeboat Institution, which still hung on his breast where it had been fastened that evening by Lucy Burton.
The two friends rose and returned together to Jeph’s cottage, where Bax meant to remain but a few minutes, to leave sundry messages to various friends. He was shaking hands with the old man and bidding him farewell, when the door was burst open and Tommy Bogey rushed into the room. Bax seized the boy in his arms, and pressed him to his breast.
“Hallo! I say, is it murder ye’re after, or d’ye mistake me for a polar bear?” cried Tommy, on being put down; “wot a hug, to be sure! Lucky for me that my timbers ain’t easy stove in. Wot d’ye mean by it?”
Bax laughed, and patted Tommy’s head. “Nothin’, lad, only I feel as if I should ha’ bin your mother.”
“Well, I won’t say ye’re far out,” rejoined the boy, waggishly, “for I do think ye’re becomin’ an old wife. But, I say, what can be wrong with Guy Foster? He came back to the cottage a short while ago lookin’ quite glum, and shut himself up in his room, and he won’t say what’s wrong, so I come down here to look for you, for I knew I’d find ye with old Jeph or Bluenose.”