Part 4

An uneasy feeling of dread oppressed her, she knew not why. The heavy perfume of the honeysuckle suddenly make her sick and faint. The tall and prickly cedar stood up straight and still, covered on one side with a fret-work of silver, on the other clothed with the very gloom of darkness, and somewhere from among its shadowy branches a dove, as if half wakened out of a dream, stirred, uttered its brooding note, then sank again to silence. Hannah had heard the same dove a hundred times before, she even knew that there were purple ripples on its neck, but this time she started violently and shivered. It seemed as if the summer night had suddenly grown cold and chilled her to the heart, and with hurried steps she ran back to the house.

The porch was deserted and strangely lonesome when she passed across. Even the crimson bloom, with its thousand crowns, looked black through the shade, as if it had withered in the hour, and she heard its leaves make a weird rustle, like a complaint, as she closed the door. The sense of desolation was so strong upon her that she could hardly keep from crying out in the solitude, but she went on swiftly to her mother’s room, and entered with noiseless feet. A great sigh of relief came to her lips when she saw the peaceful face upon the pillow, for Miriam, overcome by the reaction, already slept calmly as a child. Hannah sat down beside the bed. There was a smile upon her mother’s lips. How long she sat there, whether one hour, or two hours, she did not know, but when she got up all the tumult in her heart had subsided.

She kissed the sleeping face gently and went quietly up stairs to her own room. She threw the shutters open wide, and lo! out upon the sea with her wings spread, white as the plumage of a gull, the Nereid! Lonely, spirit-like, beyond the reach of voice, she stood upon the mighty desert of the ocean. Before her prow the waves held out their wreath of down, and above, solitary in the vast moonlit sky, hung the royal planet Jupiter. Steady, radiant, it burned like the magic Star in the East. Hannah, watching, saw the ship fade away in the far-off endless isles of silver mist. A great peace had come to her soul, and when she lay down to sleep there was no trouble on her face. Gone, the Nereid was gone, but still, even in her dreams, she knew that the star in the sky was shining.

Slowly the days came and went. Miriam, yet a little feebler, was bright and happy. Never, since that night when she said good-bye, had she murmured or uttered a word of complaint. Every thing at the cottage glided smoothly on; for Hannah attended to the house, and waited upon her mother with an untiring care, but even while she went about performing her different duties her eyes, unconsciously, would wander off to sea. Often in the afternoon, when the widow nodded in the great rocking chair by the window, she would slip away down to the beach, and sit there by the hour.

Those were pleasant days to Hannah. Then the sea, clear and calm, rounded out, a great circle of splendor, to the horizon; or on its surface the giant mists reared themselves, triumphant, in towering arches. Perhaps her thoughts went out beyond these mighty phantom aisles, seeking always the two loved ones across their portals, over the vast and solemn ocean. Sometimes when the sky was warm and the wind blew shoreward it seemed to bring faintly the scent of foreign flowers; for nearer now to her were those mystical lands where Summer, almighty Summer, sat upon an everlasting throne.

Hannah knew every vessel that sailed into port; and sometimes a boat, returning, had spoken the Nereid at sea, sometimes at long intervals a letter came. Then when for weeks, for months it might be, there was no word, no sign, the royal planet, moving in its eternal orbit, hung again in the sky, a star of promise. To Hannah, as she watched it night after night above the sea, it came as a messenger bearing glad tidings of great joy.

So the time waned. The peaceful days passed by and fierce storms broke with a savage roar upon the coast. The green upon the hill-sides faded out, and the freezing spray encrusted the cliff with ice where the wintry sea threw up its bitter brine—and sometimes, farther off upon the shelving beach, it threw up more than brine, or stiffened weed. Broken spars, dreary fragments of wrecks drifted in, told of the wild desolation out upon the hoarse wilderness of beaten waves.

But even those days too passed, and the Spring clothed the land again with emerald. More than a year had worn away since the Nereid had faded out of the horizon, and presently another Fall set in.

For five months no word had come from the absent wanderers. Still Miriam made not the least complaint. Even when the storms lashed the sea, until it sent up a roar that made the young girl shiver, the widow evinced no anxiety. Had she not promised that she would wait patiently? She talked very little, and generally sat quietly by the window from morning till evening. But Hannah, saying nothing, had grown heavy-hearted with the long silence.

It was November, a dull, dreary day in November. Heavy clouds stretched themselves in a somber, leaden sky, that near the water gathered dark and frowning. The gray sea, cold and hoarse, uttered eternally its hollow roar. But for this it seemed as if a mighty silence would have brooded over earth and ocean, a silence vast and dreadful as the grave. Dead white, the hungry surf crawled sullenly up the sand. Leagues away the fishing smacks all headed to shore, and the gulls were flying landward, when Hannah looking out, counted a new sail in the harbor.

Any word to break this long heart-sick watch?

Quick she had her hat, and glancing at her mother sleeping tranquilly in the great chair, she ran out, without shawl or wrapping, and started down the hill. Once at the bottom she slackened her pace a little to gain breath. A fine drizzle already blew through the air, and the waters running in upon the smooth beach did not rumble with a great noise as at the foot of the cliff, but washed, washed, keeping up endlessly a weary lamentation. The damp settled on her hair in minute globules, and enveloped all her clothing in its clammy embrace, but she did not heed the weather. She never looked out once at the desolate, rainy sea, she hardly heard its solemn moan. Hurrying, hurrying, she went on swiftly with the one idea absorbing every power. Rapidly, half-running, half-walking, she never paused until she reached the slippery wharf.

A group of sailors parted to let her pass. So eager was she that she did not hear the sudden exclamations, or see the look of pity that had come upon more than one rough sunburnt face when she made her appearance; for living all her life in the same quiet village many of the sailors knew Hannah by sight, many by her gentle manner and kind words, and many a sailor’s wife had to thank her as a guardian angel when sickness and poverty had come upon them unawares. She, flurried, her heart throbbing with expectation, saw only it was the good ship Bonibird that had come to port. Stephen, old Steve, belonged to it now! She remembered him well. Often when she was a child had he given her curious shells, and once he had brought her, in a little bowl filled with seawater, a tiny, live fish that glittered all over with beautiful colors. Oh yes, she remembered him well! Surprised and pleased she turned to look for him among the groups of sailors, but the old man was already at her side.

Stained and weather-beaten old Steve stood there with his cap off, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, and when with an exclamation of joy Hannah held out her hand, he took it eagerly between his rough palms.

“God bless you! God bless you!” broke from his lips in a thick utterance; then he dropped her hand nervously, and drawing his breath hard passed his sleeve hurriedly across his face.

“I’m glad to see you back, Stephen,” she said. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

“Yes, you beant so tall then.”

“Is there any news from the Nereid?” she asked eagerly, hardly noticing his last reply.

The old man seemed fairly to break out in a violent perspiration. He moved again uneasily on his feet and, turning his head from her, mopped his face once more hurriedly with his sleeve.

“I’m——I’m feared thar be a storm comin’ up, Miss. Those clouds over the water do look ugly, and the gulls be all flyin’ land’ard.”

“Never mind, I’m not afraid of the storm!” she said, impatiently.

“Why you be all wet now, standin’ out in this nasty drizzle.”

“No, no, I don’t care! I want to know if you heard any thing from the Nereid. Why don’t you tell me?” an alarm gathering quickly in her voice as the first sickening suspicion came over her. “O Stephen,” she said, with a terrified cry that fairly frightened the man, “you have, and there is something wrong! O the Nereid—the Nereid is not lost! Say it is not lost!”

She had caught the man’s arm in her wild excitement, and clung to him trembling like a leaf from head to foot.

“Why, no, no!” he said, scared by the girl’s dreadful agitation; “the Nereid be all right, she be all right! I didn’t think of sich an idee comin’ to you, or I’d a said afore she be all right. Thar beant nothin’ the matter with her, nothin’, I was aboard o’ her myself—I’m afeard it’ll make you sick, Miss, a standin’ here in the drizzle like this, an’ with nothin’ to keep off the wet,”—trying to appear as if he had settled the trouble, but all the time keeping his face turned carefully from her.

In the first instant of relief Hannah had let go of his arm and put her hands to her head without one word, so intense had been the strain; then, looking up suddenly, and drawing a quick breath, she faced round to him.

“Stephen, is this the truth that you have told me? You are not deceiving me? Is there _nothing_ the matter?”

“Lord, no, Miss, it beant no lie,” but the old sailor hesitated painfully while she looked at him, worked his hands nervously about his neck, put them irresolutely to his pockets once or twice, till unable to stand it any longer, he suddenly made an end to his indecision by jerking out a letter, at the same time muttering some half-coherent sentence about how it had been given to him for her on board the Nereid.

“O, a letter!” she cried, joyfully, breaking the seal, while her face that had been so clouded lighted up radiantly.

As she looked up for a second, with a smile upon her lips, the old sailor became more distressed in his manner than ever; and when she unfolded the paper he even put out his hand once or twice, as if he would have taken it back. Evidently he could not bear to see her read it then; he had not thought she would open it there. Troubled, he looked about, shuffling again with that uneasy movement on his feet. If only he could find some means to prevail upon her first to take it home, and driven to desperation he turned once more to her, and said in an appealing voice,—

“I’m feared thar be a bad storm comin’ up, Miss; the sea it really do look ugly, and may hap you’d better run home first; thar beant much time to lose noways.”

But alas! it was too late. Hannah, utterly oblivious to the old man’s entreaty, was already eagerly reading down the sheet. Suddenly the color fled from her face. She appeared dazed and confused. For an instant she held the paper in a convulsive grasp, staring at it with a stony glare. Then she uttered a long, shivering sound, and her fingers gradually relaxed their hold.

In a second the letter was gone. A savage wind broke loose with a tiger roar from the sea. The billows, in swift rage and with frightful tumult, piled up their fierce scrolls in a chaos of towering surge. Mist and spray and foam whirled in a blinding froth to the sky.

Old Steve, half-carrying, half-dragging—for the girl seemed hardly able to take a step unassisted—drew Hannah back into the one long low building by the wharf, where most of the people that were standing about a few moments before had taken shelter from the storm. Quickly half a dozen rough hands drew out a small packing-box and placed it for a seat, and some one threw a woolen shawl around her shoulders.

She kept her lips closed tight. She looked at no one, she shivered constantly. The howling blast swept its brine up the wharf—“Washed overboard at sea.” The cruel breakers lifted and struck with thunder-crash—“Washed overboard at sea.” Bitter cold, the salt surf leaped and writhed and reached out with demoniac fury—“Washed overboard at sea.” Giant waves opened and shut with a grinding wrath their hungry jaws. Relentless, appalling, the mighty waters filled earth and sky with the terror of their strength.

And Tom, poor Tom, had been washed overboard at sea!

It was horrible. The awful words rang constantly in her ears. They repeated themselves over and over. Where, how—she knew naught, only the one sentence, with its dreadful import. After that she had read nothing, and before it she forgot all. Rocking a little back and forth on her seat, she sat there pale and dumb. Like her mother, two-and-twenty years in the past, she asked no sympathy, she heeded no comment.

The ashen clouds, racing before the wind like the scud of the sea, drove swiftly down behind the hills, and the blinding fury of the storm had spent itself. Drearily the gray sky let down again its endless drizzle, when Stephen, his honest voice painfully choked by emotion, prevailed upon her to go home. At first looking at him blankly, she seemed hardly to comprehend what he said, and it was only when he spoke of her mother that she gave any heed to his entreaty. Her mother! how could she tell her the terrible news, her patient, waiting mother! Old Stephen, many times after, used to say how in that moment, when she looked at him, he wished he had been dead before ever he brought her such a letter.

Shivering, always shivering, she drew the shawl tight about her shoulders, and slipped down off the fishy box without a word. The old sailor in his anxious care would have followed too, but she only shook her head, and without having opened her lips, he saw her go alone.

The sullen mist hung its reeking folds along the shore, and the tide, running out, left a wide dank stretch of yellow slime. Above it, where, in Summer, the green swords of the sea-wrack grew, the storm had washed up clammy masses, heavy with ooze, of the pale and sticky tangle. Fiercely the treacherous waters had swept over the shore and covered it with their bitter dregs; but more fiercely had they surged, a dreary desolation, over the girl’s young heart.

Upon the bloated girdles, on the wet sand, in the chilly damp, with the salt spray clinging to her clothes, she went, and the wild sea, calming down, mourned again at her feet, like a sinister mockery of grief, in loud lamentation. When she went up the narrow foot-path on the hill, and came to the garden gate, she stopped a moment, she hardly knew why. It was a mechanical action with her. She scarcely felt or thought. Her heart was heavy as a stone.

The branches of the great honeysuckle were black and bare. She looked at the old rock by the path now slippery with rain. She looked at the tall and prickly cedar drenched with mist and spray. She looked out at the storm-beaten sea, then she looked back once more at the dripping evergreen. The dove in its thorny spire was gone—the dove with the purple ripples on its neck. It had never built another nest. Shivering, shivering, she went on, crossed the porch, where the arms of the bloomless rose, weird and gaunt, flung down great heavy tears at her feet, and, still shivering, she went into the house and shut the door.

Miriam, used to the tumult of the sea, sat patiently in the chair by the window, as she had done so many, many times in the past. When Hannah came in she looked up with surprise. The girl would have avoided her, but Miriam, seeing her so wet became alarmed, and, rising from her seat, had met Hannah in the hall before she could escape.

“I thought you were up stairs! What took you out in such stormy weather? You’re all wet and shivering with the cold, and—why, child, your face is as white as a sheet! What is the matter?”

“Nothing, I—I—was caught in the rain, and—and got a little damp.” The words came uncertainly in a deep voice, for Hannah could hardly trust herself to speak, lest some unguarded tone should abruptly betray the terrible truth. The girl felt as if it was written all over her, or that she might disclose it in every movement; but she had turned her back to her mother, and with trembling hands was hurriedly shaking out the wet shawl. “I’ll go and change my clothes. It will not hurt me.”

“Well, do it quickly, and come down to the fire right away. I’m afraid it will make you cough.”

Hannah, eager to escape, gathered the shawl on her arm; but at the foot of the stairs she stopped and looked back.

“You—you’ve had a nice sleep, mother?”

“Yes, dear, so very sound that I only heard the wind like a gentle zephyr.”

“And you feel well?”

“Oh yes, better to-day than I have for a long, long time. I’m going to get stronger now steadily,” she said, with a smile that, for a moment, brought into the wan face a strange beauty, like a gleam of the same radiance that so far in the past poor Jacob had placed upon the shrine of his heart.

Hannah, turning her head quickly, almost overpowered by sudden faintness, went up stairs, staggered across the room, and sank down by the window in a silent agony of grief. She did not sob or cry audibly, her whole being was one mental wail of despair—her mother! her gentle, waiting mother! Fierce unspoken rebellion had taken possession of the girl’s soul. To one that had been always as a ministering spirit to those about her, why had Providence allotted so cruel a destiny? She, whose life had been but a long heart-struggle; she, that had done no evil, that had suffered without a murmur; she, feeble and bent with years, marked with the silver brand of sorrow and age; she, far down the avenue of her days, almost where the mighty mists of eternity close up their impenetrable curtains, she must yet be compelled to go on, to the last, through the darkness of new trouble! Was there no mercy, no justice?

Bitterly Hannah looked out, dry-eyed, at the relentless sea. There was no distant line against the sky; above, below, drear and empty, the gray stretched to infinity—not a sail on all the waters, and the tides were out—aye, the tides _were_ out for her.

She had never shed a tear. Forgetful of her wet clothing, she leaned a long time upon the window-sill, motionless, and the lines in her young face were hard and strained. Perhaps the memory of that night came back to her with its vision of the royal planet that had seemed a star of promise—a star of promise? A mockery it had been, a cruel mockery!

Then Miriam’s voice calling from the foot of the stairs roused her, and hurriedly she changed her damp dress, but she could not yet meet her mother. She lingered about the room. She fell upon her knees; she tried to pray, but her heart refused to utter a single petition, and Miriam had called again and yet again before Hannah went down.

“Come close to the fire. You were so long I am afraid it will make you sick.”

“No, mother, I am cold a little, that is all.”

Miriam did not ask again what had taken her out, and Hannah, shading her eyes with her hand, sat by the grate trying to prepare herself for the dreadful duty that awaited her. She knew her mother must be told, lest it should come upon her abruptly from the lips of a stranger with a shock greater than she could bear. It was a hard struggle for Hannah; the girl would gladly have borne all the trouble herself, but that could not be.

Just how she said it she never remembered, only suddenly she felt calm and strong for the duty, and with a strange desperation on her face, slowly, gently as human means could do, she told the terrible news.

And Miriam?

Sitting in her chair she did not scream, or moan, or faint. She leaned a little forward with her elbow on her knee, and looked at Hannah, looked at her long and steadily, with a strange wavering light in her eyes.

“Mother, mother, speak to me!” the girl cried, frightened at this light in her eyes, terrified that she said nothing, did nothing.

“Yes, dear, I am better to-day, yesterday I walked to the garden gate. I will even be strong enough to go down to the wharf when the Nereid comes in, and it will be such a glad surprise for him, such a glad surprise!”

She had leaned back in her chair again, and her face, like a revelation, was radiant once more almost with the lost beauty of her girlhood.

Hannah, dropping her head in her hands, could scarcely speak for the awful beating of her heart.

“No, no, Mother, you do not understand. He is—dead. He will—never come—home—”

The same wavering light flickered a second time in Miriam’s eyes as the girl spoke. She put up her thin hands for a moment and wearily stroked the silver hair back from her forehead. She looked slowly, with a bewildered expression about the room, then, smiling again, she said,—

“Home? Yes, the time is nearly up. In the Spring, in the early Spring, he shall be home, home to stay always. I know he will not disappoint me. I promised to wait patiently, and I have not complained, have I Hannah?”

“No, no——”

“And I shall be stronger then, and we must make the house pleasant for him. It will never be lonely any more when he is here. Why do you cry so, Hannah? It is not long to wait for him now.”

Hannah, trying to smother her choking sobs, slipped down on the floor with her face covered, and Miriam talked on and on of the happy times they would have when “Tommy” came back in the Spring.

She could be made to comprehend nothing of the dreadful tidings. He had promised her he would come back, and her faith never faltered. But there was a distinct change in her from that day. The quiet, reserved manner that had been with her always a marked characteristic, seldom volunteering a sentence to a stranger, was gone. She talked incessantly of her son. She would tell every person she met how much stronger she was getting, and how she meant to go and meet him at the wharf when the Nereid came in.

So months went by, and Miriam did get stronger every day. She had not been so well in years, not since long ago when poor Tom had first taken to following the sea. Bright and happy she seemed from morning till night, only Hannah noticed that sometimes when speaking most earnestly she would stop suddenly for a moment, and look at her in a bewildered way, with that same wavering light flickering up in her eyes.

All the villagers knew the sorrowful story of the Widow Aber’s waiting so trustfully for “Tommy,” her sailor son that could never come back, and they were good to Hannah that Winter. The girl had not cast her bread upon the waters in vain. When she found herself weak and faint a dozen hands were ready with some kind office, and there was little left for her to do about the house. Those bitter months as they waxed and waned were one long, mute agony, but the girl did not break down under the terrible strain. Trouble does not kill the young; thin and pale she grew, but strong in her youth, stronger in her love, for Miriam’s sake, and with something of Miriam’s early nature, she kept her grief crushed within her heart. She seldom went out of the house now. She staid always with her mother, as if fearful to leave her for an hour; and those who went to the house from the village, told how dreadful it was to see her sitting quietly, even sometimes forcing a smile to her trembling lips when the widow would say,—

“Do not look so sad, Hannah. I am strong and well, are you not glad? He said he liked to see me smile, and he must find us bright and cheerful when he comes in the Spring.”