"No, not that," groaned Eve, for at the mere mention of the word the vague dread seemed to shape itself into a certainty. "Oh, Captain Triggs, don't say that if Adam gets off you don't think Jerrem's life will be spared."
"Wa-al, my poor maid, us must hope so," said the compassionate captain; "but 'tis the warst o' they doin's that sooner or later th' endin, of 'em must come. 'Twould never do to let 'em prosper allays," he added with impressive certainty, "or where 'ud be the use o' parsons praichin' up 'bout heaven and hell? Why, now, us likes good liquor cheap to Fowey; and wance 'pon a time us had it too, but that ha'n't bin for twenty year. Our day's gone by, and so 'ull theirs be now; and th' excise 'ull come, and revenoos 'ull settle down, and folks be foaced to take to lousterin' for the bit o' bread they ates, and live quiet and paceable, as good neighbors should. So try and take heart; and if so be that Adam can give they Bailey chaps the go-by, tell un to come 'longs here, and us 'ull be odds with any o' they that happens to be follerin' to his heels."
Charmed with this friendly promise, Eve said "Good-bye," leaving the captain puzzled with speculations on women and the many curious contradictions which seem to influence their actions; while, the hour being now too late to return to the prison, she took her way to her own room, thinking it best to begin the preparations which in case of Adam's escape and any sudden departure it would be necessary to have completed.
Perhaps it was her interview with Captain Triggs, the sight of the wharf and the ships, which took her thoughts back and made them bridge the gulf which divided her past life from her present self. Could the girl she saw in that shadowy past—headstrong, confident, impatient of suffering and unsympathetic with sorrow—be this same Eve who walked along with all hope and thought of self merged in another's happiness and welfare? Where was the vanity, where were the tricks and coquetries, passports to that ideal existence after which in the old days she had so thirsted? Trampled out of sight and choked beneath the fair blossoms of a higher life, which, as in many a human nature, had needed sorrow, humiliation and a great watering of tears before there could spring forth the flowers for a fruit which should one day ripen into great perfection.
No wonder, then, that she should be shaken by a doubt of her own identity; and having reached her room she paused upon the threshold and looked around as if to satisfy herself by all those silent witnesses which made it truth. There was the chair in which she had so often sat plying her needle with such tardy grace while her impatient thoughts did battle with the humdrum, narrow life she led. How she had beat against the fate which seemed to promise naught but that dull round of commonplace events in which her early years had passed away! How as a gall and fret had come the thought of Reuben's proffered love, because it shadowed forth the level of respectable routine, the life she then most dreaded! To be courted and sought after, to call forth love, jealousy and despair, to be looked up to, thought well of, praised, admired,—these were the delights she had craved and these the longings she had had granted. And a sigh from the depths of that chastened heart rendered the bitter tribute paid by all to satiated vanity and outlived desire. The dingy walls, the ill-assorted furniture (her mother's pride in which had sometimes vexed her, sometimes made her laugh) now looked like childhood's friends, whose faces stamp themselves upon our inmost hearts. The light no longer seemed obscure, the room no longer gloomy, for each thing in it now was flooded by the tender light of memory—that wondrous gift to man which those who only sail along life's summer sea can never know in all the heights and depths revealed to storm-tossed hearts.
"What! you've come back?" a voice said in her ear; and looking round Eve saw it was Reuben, who had entered unperceived. "There's nothing fresh gone wrong?" he asked.
"No, nothing;" but the sad smile she tried to give him welcome with was so akin to tears that Reuben's face assumed a look of doubt. "'Tis only that I'm thinking how I'm changed from what I was," said Eve. "Why, once I couldn't bear this room and all the things about it; but now—Oh, Reuben, my heart seems like to break because perhaps 'twill soon now come to saying good-bye to all of it for ever."
Reuben winced: "You're fixed to go, then?"
"Yes, where Adam goes I shall go too: don't you think I should? What else is left for me to do?"
"You feel, then, you'd be happy—off with him—away from all and—everybody else?"