Clarice ceased to say that she must find the voyagers. She ceased to talk of them. She lived in these days a life so silent, and, as it seemed, so remote from other lives, that it quite passed the understanding of those who witnessed it. Tears seldom fell from her eyes, complaints never;—but her interest was aroused by no temporal matter; she seemed, in her thoughts and her desires, as far removed as a spirit from the influences of the external world.
This state of being no person who lives by bread alone could have understood, or endured patiently, in one with whom in the affairs of daily life he was associated.
The Revelator was an exile in Patmos.
Dame Briton was convinced that Clarice was losing her wits. Bondo Emmins yielded to the force of some inexplicable law, and found her fairer day by day. To his view, she was like a vision moving through a dream, rather than like any actual woman; and though the drift of the vision seemed not towards him, he was more anxious to compel it than to accomplish any other purpose ever entertained. The actual nearness, the apparent unattainableness, of that he coveted, excited in him such desires of conquest and possession as he would seek to appease in one way alone. To win her would have been to the mind of any other inhabitant of Diver's Bay a feat as impracticable as the capture of the noble ghost of Hamlet's father, as he stands exorcized by Mrs. Kemble.
And yet, while her sorrow made her the pity and the wonder of the people, it did not keep her sacred from the reach of gossip. Observing the frequency with which Bondo Emmins visited Old Briton's cabin, it was profanely said by some that the pale girl would ere long avert her eyes from the dead and fix them on the living.
Emmins had frequent opportunities for making manifest his good-will towards the family of Briton. The old man fell on the ice one day and broke his thigh, and was constrained to lie in bed for many a day, and to walk with the help of crutches when he rose again. Then was the young man's time to serve him like a son. He brought a surgeon from the Port,—and the inefficiency of the man was not his fault, surely. Through tedious days and nights Emmins sat by the old man's bedside, soothing pain, enlivening weariness, endeavoring to banish the gloomy elements that combined to make the cabin the abode of darkness. He would have his own way, and no one could prevent him. When Old Briton's money failed, his supplies did not. Even Clarice was compelled to accept his service thankfully, and to acknowledge that she knew not how they could have managed without him in this strait.
The accident, unfortunate as it might be deemed, nevertheless exercised a most favorable influence over the poor girl's life. It brought her soul back to her body, and spoke to her of wants and their supply,—of debts, of creditors,—of fish, and sea-weed, and the market,—of bread, and doctor's bills,—of her poor old father, and of her mother. She came back to earth. Now, henceforth, the support of the household was with her. Bondo Emmins might serve her father,—she had no desire to prevent what was so welcome to the wretched old man,—but for herself, her mother, the house, no favor from him!
And thus Clarice rose up to rival Bondo in her ready courage. When her father, at last careful, at last anxious, thoughtful of the future, began to express his fear, he met the ready assurance of his daughter that she should be able to provide all they should ever want; let him not be troubled; when the spring came, she would show him.
The spring came, and Clarice set to work as never in her industrious life before. Day after day she gathered sea-weed, dried it, and carried it to town. She went out with her mother in the fishing-boat, and the two women were equal in strength and courage to almost any two men of the Bay. She filled the empty fish-barrels,—and promised to double the usual number. She dried wagon-loads of finny treasure, and she made good bargains with the traders. No one was so active, no one bade fair to turn the summer to such profit as Clarice. She had come back to flesh and blood.—John came back from Patmos.
Her face grew brown with tan; it was not lovely as a fair ghost's, any longer; it was ruddy,—and her limbs grew strong. Bondo Emmins marked these symptoms, and took courage. People generally said, "She is well over her grief, and has set her heart on getting rich. There is that much of her mother in her." Others considered that Emmins was in the secret, and at the bottom of her serenity and diligence.