[Concluded.]
V
Did she talk of flesh and blood, when she said that she would find
him?--The summer passed away; and when autumn came, it could not be said
that search for the bodies of these fishermen was quite abandoned. But
no fragment of boat, nor body of father or son, ever came, by rumor or
otherwise, to the knowledge of the people of the Bay.
The voyage was long to Clarice. Marvellous strength and acuteness of
vision come to the eyes of those who watch. Keen grow the ears that
listen. The soldier's wife in the land of Nena Sahib inspires
despairing ranks: "Dinna ye hear the pibroch? Hark! 'The Campbells are
coming!'"--and at length, when the hope she lighted has gone out in
sullen darkness, and they bitterly resent the joy she gave them,--lo, the bagpipes, banners, regiment! The pibroch sounds, "The Campbells are coming!" The Highlanders are in sight!--But, oh, the voyage was long,--and Clarice could see no sail, could hear no oar!
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!