Women who had waited, and got patient at last after years of waitings could not endure these additional few hours. Despair was endurable, but suspense! “Ah, God! Was their man alive? What did he look like! Had he aged much?”
“He was so fatigued he could scarce speak,” said she. She had questioned him, but he was unable to reply. Give him but till the dawn, and they should know all.
So they waited, for to go home and sleep was impossible. Occasionally they moved a little way up the street, but never very far, and gathering in small knots excitedly discussed the great event. It came to be understood that the rest of the crew had been cast away on an uninhabited island, it could be nothing else, and would doubtlessly soon be with them; all except one or two perhaps, who were old men when the ship sailed, and had probably died in the mean time. One said this in the hearing of an old woman whose husband, if alive, would be in extreme old age, but she smiled peacefully, albeit her lip trembled, and said she only expected to hear of him, that was all.
The suspense became almost unendurable “Would this man never awake? Would it never be dawn?” The children were chilled with the wind, but their elders would scarcely have felt an Arctic frost. With growing impatience they waited, glancing at times at two women who held themselves somewhat aloof from the others; two women who had married again, and whose second husbands waited, awkwardly enough, with them.
Slowly the weary windy night wore away, the old woman, deaf to their appeals, still keeping her door fast. The dawn was not yet, though the oft-consulted watches announced it near at hand. It was very close now, and the watchers collected by the door. It was undeniable that things were seen a little more distinctly. One could see better the grey, eager faces of his neighbours.
They knocked upon the door, and the old woman’s eyes filled as she opened it and saw those faces. Unasked and unchid they invaded the cottage and crowded round the door.
“I will go up and fetch him,” said the old woman.
If each could have heard the beating of the other’s hearts, the noise would have been deafening, but as it was there was complete silence, except for some overwrought woman’s sob.
The old woman opened the door leading to the room above, and with the slow, deliberate steps of age ascended the stairs, and those below heard her calling softly to her son.
Two or three minutes passed and she was heard descending the stairs again—alone. The smile, the pity, had left her face, and she seemed dazed and strange.