# The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 1/Number 7/The Pure Pearl of Diver's Bay

[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!
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.
Dame Briton and her spouse were not one whit wiser than their neighbors. They could not see that any half-work was impossible with Clarice,--that, if she had resolved, for their sake, to live as people must, who have bodies to respect and God-originated wants to supply, she must live by a ceaseless activity. Because she had ascended far beyond tears, lamentation, helplessness, they thought she had forgotten.
Yes, they came to this conclusion, though now and then, not often, generally on some pleasant Sunday, when all her work was done, Clarice would go down to the Point and take her Sabbath rest there. No danger of disturbance there!--of all bleak and desert places known to the people of Diver's Bay, that point was bleakest and most deserted.
The place was hers, then. In this solitude she could follow her thoughts, and be led by them down to the ocean, or away to heavenly depths. It was good for her to go there in quietness,--to rest in recollection. Strength comes ever to the strong. This pure heart had nothing to fear of sorrow. Sorrow can only give the best it has to such as she. Grief may weaken the selfish and the weak; it may make children of the foolish and drivellers; by grief the inefficient may come to the fulness of their inefficiency;--but out of the bitter cup the strong take strength, though it may be with shuddering.
One Sunday morning Clarice lingered longer about the house than usual, and Emmins, who had resolved, that, if she went that day to the Point, he would follow her, found her with her father and mother, talking merely for their pleasure,--if the languid tones of her voice and the absent look of her eyes were to be trusted.
Emmins thought that this moment was favorable to him. He was sure of Dame Briton and the old man, and he almost believed that he was sure of Clarice. Finding her now with her father and mother at home on this bright Sunday morning, one glance at her face surprised him and, almost before he was aware, he had spoken what he had hitherto so patiently refrained from speaking.
But the answer of Clarice still more surprised him. With her eyes gazing out on the sea, she stood, the image of silence, while Bondo warily set forth his hopes. Old Briton and the dame looked on and deemed the symptoms favorable. But Clarice said,--
"Heart and hand I gave to him. I am the wife of Luke;--how can I marry another?"
Bondo seemed eager to answer that question, for he hastily waved his hand toward Dame Briton, who began to speak.
"Luke will never come back," said he, gently expostulating.
"But I shall go to him," was the quiet reply.
Then the old people, whose hearts were in the wooing, broke out together,--and by their voices, if one should argue with them, strife was not far off. Clarice staid one moment, as if to take in the burden of each eager voice; then she shook her head:--
"I am married already," she said; "I gave him my heart and my hand. You would not rob Luke Merlyn?"
When she had so spoken, calmly, firmly, as if it were impossible that she should be moved or agitated by such speech as this she had heard, Clarice walked away to the beach, unmoored her father's boat, and rowed out into the Bay.
Bondo Emmins stood with the old people and gazed after her.
"Odd fish!" he muttered.
"Never mind," said Old Briton, hobbling up and down the sand; "it's the first time she's been spoke to. She'll come round. I know Clarice."
"You know Clarice?" broke in Dame Briton. "You don't know her! She isn't Clarice,--she's somebody else. Who, I don't know."
"Hush!" said Bondo, who had no desire that the couple should fall into a quarrel. "I know who she is. Don't plague her. It will all come out right yet. I'll wait. But don't say anything to her about it. Let me speak when the time comes.--Where's my pipe, Dame Briton?"
Emmins spent a good part of the day with the old people, and did not allow the conversation once to turn upon himself and Clarice. But he talked of the improvements he should like to make in the old cabin, and they discussed the market, and entertained each other with recollections of past times, and with strange stories made up of odd imaginations and still more uncouth facts. Supernatural influences were dwelt upon, and many a belief in superstitions belonging to childhood was confessed in peaceful unconsciousness of the fact that it was Clarice who had turned all their thoughts to-day from the great prosaic highway where plain facts have their endless procession.
VI.
Clarice went out alone in her fishing-boat, as during all the past week she had purposed to do when this day came, if it should prove favorable. She wished to approach the Point thus,--and her purpose in so doing was such as no mortal could have suspected. And yet, as in the fulfilment of this purpose she went, hastened from her delaying by the address of Bondo Emmins, it seemed to her as if her secret must be read by the three upon the beach.
She wore upon her neck, as she had worn since the days of her betrothal to Luke, the cord to which the pearl ring was attached. The ring had never been removed; but now, as Clarice came near to the Point, she laid the oars aside, and with trembling hands untied the black cord and disengaged the ring, and drew it on her finger, that trembled like a leaf. She was doing now what Luke had bidden her do,--and for his sake. Until now she had always looked upon it as a ring of betrothal; henceforth it was her wedding-ring,--the evidence of her true marriage with Luke Merlyn.
O unseen husband, didst thou see her as anew she gave herself to love, to constancy, to duty?
She was floating toward the Point, when she knelt in the fishing-boat and plunged the hand that wore the ring under the bright cold water. How bright, how cold it was! It chilled Clarice; she shuddered; was she the bride of Death? But she did not rise from her knees, neither withdraw her hand, until her vow, the vow she was there to speak, was spoken. There she knelt alone in the great universe, with God and Luke Merlyn.
When at last she stood upon the Point, she had strength to meet her destiny, and patience to wait while it was being developed. She knew her marriage covenant was blest, and filial duty was divested of every thought or notion that could tempt or deceive her. Treading thus fearlessly among the high places of imagination, no prescience of mortal trouble could lurk among the mysterious shadows. By her faith in the eternity of love she was greatly more than conqueror.
The day passed, and night drew near. It was the purpose of Clarice to row home with the tide. But a strange thing happened to her ere she set out to return. As she stood looking out upon the sea, watching the waves as they rolled and broke upon the beach, a new token came to her from the deep.
Almost as she might have waited for Luke, she stood watching the onward drift; calculating the spot at which the waves would deposit their burden, she stood there when the plank was borne inland, to save it, if possible, from being dashed with violence on the rocks.
To this plank a child was bound,--a little creature that might be three years old. At the sight of this form, and this helplessness, the heart of the woman seemed to break into sudden living flame. She carried the plank down to a level spot with an energy that would have made light of a burden even ten times as great; she stooped upon the sand; she unbound the body; and she thought, "The child is dead!" Nevertheless she took him in her arms; she dried his limbs with her apron; she wiped his face, and rubbed his hair;--but he gave no sign of life. Then she wrapped him in her shawl, and laid him in the boat, and rowed home.
There was no one in the cabin when Clarice went in. When Dame Briton came home, she found her daughter with a ring upon her finger, bending over the body of a child that lay upon her bed.
The dame was quickly brought into service, and there was no reason to fear that she would desist from her labors until she had received some evidence of death or life. She and Clarice worked all night over the body of the child, and towards morning were rewarded by the result. The boy's eyes opened, and he tried to speak. By noon of that day he was lying in the arms of Clarice, deathly pallor on his little face; but he could speak, and his pretty eyes were open.
All those hours of mutual sympathy and striving, Dame Briton had been thinking to say, "Clarice, what's the ring for?" But she had not said it, when, in the afternoon, Bondo Emmins came into the cabin, and saw Clarice with a beautiful boy in her arms, wrapped in her shawl, while before the fire some rags of infant garments were drying.
They talked over the boy's fortune and the night's work, the dame taking the chief conduct of the story; and Bondo was so much interested, and praised the child so much, and spoke with so much concern of the solitary, awful voyage the little one must have made, that, when he subsequently offered to take the child in his arms, Clarice let him go, and explained, when the young man began to talk to the boy, that he could not understand a word, neither could she make out the meaning of his speech.
Emmins heard Clarice say that she must go to the Port the next day and learn what vessel had been lost, and if any passengers were saved; and by daybreak he set out on that errand. He returned early in the morning with the news that a merchantman, the "Gabriel," had gone down, and that cargo and crew were lost. While he was telling this to Clarice he observed the ring upon her finger, and he coupled the appearing of that token with the serenity of the girl's face, and hailed his conclusion as one who hoped everything from change and nothing from constancy.
Clarice had found the boy in the place where she had looked for Luke that night when his cap was washed to her feet. Over and over again she had said this to her father and mother while they busied themselves about the unconscious child; now she said it again to Bondo Emmins, as if there were some special significance in the fact, as indeed to her there was. He was her child, and he should be her care, and she would call him Gabriel.
People could understand the burden imposed upon the laborious life of Clarice by this new, strange care. But they did not see the exceeding great reward, nor how the love that lingered about a mere memory seemed blessed to the poor girl with a blessing of divine significance.
To make the child her own by some special act that should establish her right became the wish of Clarice. It was not enough for her that she should toil for him while others slept, that she should stint herself in order to clothe him in a becoming manner, that she should suffer anxiety for him in the manifold forms best known to those who have endured it. She had given herself to Luke, so that she feared no more from any man's solicitation. She would fain assert her claim to this young life which Providence had given her. But this desire was suggested by external influence, as her marriage covenant had been.
Now and then a missionary came down to Diver's Bay, and preached in the open air, or, if the weather disappointed him, in the great shed built for the protection of fish-barrels and for the drying of fish. No surprising results had ever attended his preaching; the meetings were never large, though sometimes tolerably well attended; the preacher was almost a stranger to the people; and the wonder would have been a notable one, had there been any harvest to speak of in return for the seed he scattered. The seed was good; but the fowls of the air were free to carry it away; the thorns might choke it, if they would; it was not protected from any wind that blew.
A few Sundays after Gabriel became the charge of Clarice, the missionary came and preached to the people about Baptism. Though burdened with a multitude of cares which he had no right to assume, which kept him busy day and night in efforts lacking only the concentration that would have made them effective, the man was earnest in his labor and his speech, and it chanced now and then that a soul was ready for the truth he brought.
On this occasion he addressed the parents in their own behalf and that of their children. The bright day, the magnificent view his eyes commanded from the place where he stood to address the handful of people, the truth, with whose importance he was impressed, made him eloquent. He spoke with power, and Clarice Briton, holding the hand of little Gabriel, listened as she had never listened before.
"Death unto sin," this baptism signified, he said. She looked at the child's bright face; she recalled the experience through which she had passed, by which she was able to comprehend these words. She had passed through death; she had risen to life; for Luke was dead, and was alive again,--therefore she lived also. Tears came into the girl's eyes, unexpected, abundant, as she listened to the missionary's pleading with these parents, to give their little ones to their Heavenly Father, and themselves to lives of holiness.
He would set the mark of the cross on their foreheads, he said, to show that they were Christ's servants;--and then he preached of Christ, seeking to soften the tough souls about him with the story of a divine childhood; and he verily talked to them as one should do who felt that in all his speaking their human hearts anticipated him. It was not within the compass of his voice to reach that savage note which in brutal ignorance condemns, where loving justice never could condemn. He had an apprehension of the vital truth that belief in the world's Saviour was not belief in a name, but the reception of that which Jesus embodied. He came down to Diver's Bay, expecting to find human nature there, and the only pity was that he had not time to perform what he attempted. Let us, however, thank him for his honest endeavor; and be glad, that, for one, Clarice was there to hear him,--she heard him so gladly.
To take a vow for Gabriel, to give him to God, to confirm him in possession of the name she had bestowed, became the desire of Clarice. One day when she had some business to transact in the market, she dressed Gabriel in a new frock she had made for him, and took him with her to the Port, carrying him in her arms half the way. She did not find the minister, but she had tested the sincerity of her desire. When he came down again to the Bay, as he did the next Sunday, she was waiting to give him the first fruits of his labors there.
He arrived early in the morning, that he might forestall the fishermen and their families in whatever arrangements they might be making for the day. When Clarice first saw him, her heart for a moment failed her,--she wished he had not come, or that she had gone off to spend the day before she knew of his coming. But, in the very midst of her regrets, she caught up Gabriel and walked forth to meet the preacher.
The missionary recognized Clarice, and he had already heard the story of the child. He was the first to speak, and a few moments' talk, which seemed to her endless, though it was about Gabriel, passed before she could tell him how she had sought him in his own home on account of the boy, and what her wish was concerning him.
A naturalist, walking along that beach and discovering some long-sought specimen, at a moment when he least looked and hoped for it, would have understood the feeling and the manner of the missionary just then. Surprise came before gladness, and then followed much investigation, whereby the minister would persuade himself, even as the naturalist under similar circumstances would do, of the genuineness of what was before him;--he must ascertain all the attending circumstances.
It was a simple story that his questioning drew forth. The missionary learned something in the interview, as well as Clarice. He learned what confidence there is in a noble spirit of resignation; that it need not be the submission of helplessness. He saw anew, what he had learned for himself under different circumstances, the satisfaction arising from industry that is based on duty, and involves skill in craft, judgment in affairs, and that integrity which keeps one to his oath, though it be not to his profit. He heard the voice of a tender, pitiful, loving womanhood, strongly manifesting its right to protect helplessness, by the utterance of its convictions concerning that helplessness. He knew that to such a woman the Master would have spoken not one word of reproach, but many of encouragement and sympathy. So he spoke to her of courage, and shared her hopes, by directing them with a generous confidence in her. He was the man for his vocation, for in every strait he looked to his human heart for direction,--and in his heart were not only sympathy and gentleness, but justice and judgment.
While he talked to Clarice, the idea which had taken cognizance of Gabriel alone enlarged,--it involved herself.
"What doth hinder me to be baptized?" she asked, in the words of Philip.
"If thou believest, thou mayest."
Accordingly, at the conclusion of the morning prayer, when the preacher said, "Those persons to be baptized may now come forward," Clarice Briton, leading little Gabriel by the hand, rose from her seat and walked up before the congregation, and stood in the presence of all.
Not an eye was turned from her during the ceremony. When she lifted Gabriel, and held him in her arms, and promised the solemn promises for him as well as for herself, the souls that witnessed it thought that they had lost Clarice. The tears rolled down Old Briton's cheeks when he looked upon the girl. What he saw he did not half understand, but there was an awful solemnity about the transaction, that overpowered him. He and Dame Briton had come to the meeting because Clarice urged them to do so;--she had said she was going to make a public promise about Gabriel, and that was all she told them; for, beside that there was little time for explanation in the hurry of preparing Gabriel and herself, Clarice's heart was too deeply stirred to admit of speech. After she had obtained the promise of her parents, she said no more to them; they did not hear her speak again until her firm "I will" broke on their ears.
Dame Briton was not half pleased at what she saw and heard, during this service. She looked at Bondo Emmins to see what he was thinking,--but little she learned from his solemn face. When the sign of the cross was laid on the forehead of Clarice, and on the forehead of Gabriel, a frown for an instant was seen on his own; but it was succeeded by an expression of feature such as made the dame look quickly away, for in that same instant his eyes were upon her.
Enough of surprise and gaping wonder would Dame Briton have discovered in other directions, had she sought the evidences; but from Bondo Emmins she looked down at her "old man," and she saw his tears. Then came Clarice, and before she knew it she was holding the little Christian Gabriel in her stern old arms, and kissing away the drops of hallowed water that flashed upon his eye-lids.
A sermon followed, the like of which, for poetry or wonder, was never heard among these people. The preacher seemed to think this an occasion for all his eloquence; nay, for the sake of justice, I will say, his heart was full of rejoicing, for now he believed a church was grafted here, a Branch which the Root would nourish. His words served to deepen the impression made by the ceremonial. Clarice Briton and little Gabriel shone in white raiment that day; and, thanks to him, when he went on to prove the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth one with that mysterious majesty on high, a single leap took Clarice Briton over the boundaries of faith.
VII.
But if to others Clarice seemed to have passed the boundary line of their dominion, to herself the bond of neighborhood was strengthened. The missionary told her all he had a right to expect of her now, as a fellow-worker, and pointed out to her the ways in which she might second his labors at the Bay. It was but a new form of the old work to which she had been accustomed her life long. Never, except in the dark summer months when all her life was eclipsed, had Clarice lived unmindful of the old and sick and helpless, or of the little children. Her kindliness of heart could surprise no one; her generosity was nothing strange; her caution, her industry, her courage, her gentleness, were not traits to which her character had been a stranger hitherto. But now they had a brighter manifestation. She became more than ever diligent in her service; the Sunday-school was the result of old sentiments in a new and intelligent combination; and the neighbors, who had always trusted Clarice, did not doubt her now. Novelty is always pleasing to simple souls among whom innovation has not first taken the pains to excite suspicion of itself.
For a long time, more than usual uncertainty seemed to attend the chances of Gabriel's life. In the close watching and constant care required of Clarice, the child became so dear to her, that doubtless there was some truth in the word repeated in her hearing with intent to darken any moment of special tenderness and joy, that this stranger was dearer to her than her "born relations."
As much as was possible by gentle firmness and constant oversight, Clarice kept him from hurtful influences. He was never mixed up in the quarrels of ungoverned children; he never became the victim of their rude sport or cruelty. She would preserve him peaceful, gentle, pure; and in a measure her aim was accomplished. She was the defender, companion, playmate of the child. She told him pretty tales, the creations of her fancy, and strove by them to throw a soft illusion around the rough facts of their daily life. The mystery surrounding him furnished her not meagrely with material for her imagination; she could invent nothing that seemed to herself incredible; her fairy tales were not more wonderful than facts as she beheld them. She taught the boy songs; she gave him language. The clothes he wore, bought with her own money, fashioned by her own hands, were such as became the beauty of the child, and the pure taste and the little purse of Clarice.
Never had a childhood so radiant in beauty, so wonderful in every manifestation, developed before the eyes of the folk of Diver's Bay. He became a wonder to the old and young. His sayings were repeated. Enchantment seemed added to mystery;--anything might have been believed of Gabriel.
Sometimes, when she had dressed him in his Sunday suit, and they were alone together, Clarice would put upon his finger the pearl ring,--her marriage ring. But she kept to herself the name of Luke Merlyn till the time should come when, a child no longer, he should listen to the story; and she would not make that story grievous for his gentle heart, but sweet and full of hope. Well she knew how he would listen as none other could,--how serious his young face would look when the sacred dawn of a celestial knowledge should begin to break; then a new day would rise on Gabriel, and nothing should separate them then.
But, lurking near her joy, and near her perfect satisfaction, even in the days when some result much toiled for seemed to give assurance that she was doing well and justly, was the shadow of a doubt. One day the shadow deepened, and the doubt appeared. Clarice was sitting in the doorway, busy at some work for Gabriel. The boy was playing with Old Briton, who could amuse him by the hour, drawing figures in the sand. Dame Briton was busy performing some household labor, when Bondo Emmins came rowing in to shore. Gabriel, at the sound of the oars, ran to meet the fisherman, who had been out all day; the fisherman took the child in his arms, kissed him, then placed in his hands a toy which he had brought for him from the Point, and bade him run and show it to Clarice. Gabriel set out with shouts, and Emmins went back smiling to look after his boatload.
"He's a good runner," said Old Briton, watching the child with laughter in his eyes. Dame Briton, drawn to the door by the unusual noise, looked out to see the little fellow flying into Clarice's arms, and she said, softly, "Pretty creature!" while she strode back to her toil.
Presently, the little flutter of his joy having subsided, Gabriel sat on the doorstep beside Clarice, his eyes seriously peering into the undiscoverable mystery of the toy. Then Bondo came up, and the toy was forgotten, the child darting away again to meet him. Emmins joined the group with Gabriel in his arms, looking well satisfied.
"Gabriel is as happy as if this was his home in earnest," said he. He dropped the words to try the group.
"His home!" cried Dame Briton, quickly. "Well, ain't it? Where then? I wonder."
The sharp tone of her voice told that the dame was not well pleased with Bondo's remark; for the child had found his way into her heart, and she would have ruined him by her indulgence, had it not been for Clarice's constant vigilance. And this was not the least of the difficulties the girl had to contend with. For Dame Briton, you may be sure, though she might be compelled to yield to her daughter's better sense, could never be constrained by her own child to hold her tongue, and the arguments with which she abandoned many of her foolish purposes were almost as fatal to Clarice's attempts at good government as the perfect accomplishment of these purposes would have been.
Bondo answered her quick interrogatory, and the troubled wonder in the eyes of Clarice, with a confused, "Of course it is his home; only I was thinking, that, to be sure, they must have come from some place, and maybe left friends behind them."
Now it seemed as if this answer were not given with malicious purpose, but in proper self-defence; and by the time Clarice looked at him, and made him thus speak, Bondo perhaps supposed that he had not intended to trouble the poor soul. But he could not avoid perceiving that a deep shadow fell upon the face of Clarice; and the conviction of her displeasure was not removed when she arose and led the child away. But Clarice was not displeased. She was only troubled sorely. She asked her surprised self a dreary question: If anywhere on earth the child had a living parent, or if he had any near of kin to whom his life was precious, what right to Gabriel had she? Providence had sent him to her, she had often said, with deep thankfulness; but now she asked, Had he sent the child that she might restore him not only to life, but to others, whom, but for her, death had forever robbed of him?
From the day that the shadow of this thought fell across her way, the composure and deep content of the life of Clarice were disturbed. Not merely the presence of Emmins became a trouble and annoyance, but the praise that her neighbors were prompt to lavish on Gabriel, whenever she went among them, became grievous to her ears. The shadow which had swept before her eyes deepened and darkened till it obscured all the future. She was experiencing all the trouble and difficulty of one who seeks to evade the weight of a truth which has nevertheless surrounded and will inevitably capture her.
Nothing of this escaped the eyes of the young fisherman. Time should work for him, he said; he had shot an arrow; it had hit the mark; now he would heal the wound. He might easily have persuaded himself that the wound was accidental, and so have escaped the conviction of injury wrought with intention. All would have been immediately well with him and Clarice, had it not been for Clarice! There are persons, their name is Legion, who are as wanton in offence as Bondo Emmins,--whose souls are black with murderous records of hopes they have destroyed; yet they will condole with the mourners!
To this doubt as to her duty, this evasion of knowledge concerning it, this silence in regard to what chiefly occupied her conscience, was added a new trouble. As Gabriel grew older, a restless, adventurous spirit began to manifest itself in him. From a distance regarding the daring feats of other children, his impulse was to follow and imitate them. At times, in ungovernable outbreaks of merriment, he would escape from the side of Clarice, with fleet, daring steps which seemed to set her pleasure at defiance; and when, after his first exploit, which filled her with astonishment, she prepared to join him in his sport, and did follow, laughing, a wilfulness, which made her tremble, roused to resist her, and gave an almost tragic ending to the play.
One day she missed the lad. Searching for him, she found that he had gone out in a boat with other children, among whom he sat like a little king, giving his orders, which the rest were obeying with shouted repetitions. When Clarice called to him, and begged the children to return, he followed their example, took off his cap, and waved it at her, in defiance, with the rest.
Clarice sat down on the shore in despair. Bitter tears ran down her cheeks.
Bondo Emmins passed by, and saw what was going on. "Ho! ho! Clarice needs some one to help her hold the rein," said he to himself; and going to the water's edge, he raised his voice, and beckoned the children ashore. He enforced the gesture by a word,--"Come home!"
The little rebels did not wait a second summons, but obeyed the strong voice of the strong man, trembling. They paddled the boat to the shore, and landed quite crestfallen, ashamed, it seemed. Then Bondo, having bid the youngsters disperse, with a threat, if he ever saw them engaged in the like business, walked away, without speaking to Gabriel, or even looking at him.
VIII.
Clarice was half annoyed at this interference; it seemed to suppose, she thought, that she was unequal to the management of her own affairs.--But _was_ she equal to it?
After Bondo had walked away, she called to Gabriel, who stood alone when the other children had deserted him, and knew not what to do. He would have run away, had he not been afraid of fisherman Emmins.
"Come here, my son," said Clarice. She did not speak very loud, nor in the least sternly; but he heard her quite distinctly, and he hesitated.
"I'm not your son!" he concluded to answer.
A sword through the heart of Clarice would have killed her, but there are pains which do not slay that are worse than the pains of death. Clarice Briton's face was pale with anguish, when she arose and said,--
"Gabriel, come here!"
The child saw something awful in her eyes, and heard in her voice something that made him tremble. He came, and sat down in the place to which Clarice pointed. It was a hard moment for her. Other words bitter as this, which disowned her love and care and defied her authority, the child could not have spoken. She answered him as if he had not been a child; and a truth which no words could have made him comprehend seemed to break upon and overwhelm him, while she spoke.
"It is true," she said, "you are not my son. I have no right to call you mine. Listen, Gabriel, while I tell you how it happens that you live with me, and I take care of you, as if you were my child. I was down at the Point one day,--that place where we go to watch the birds, you know, my--Gabriel. While I sat there alone, I saw a plank that was dashed by the waves up and down, as you see a boat carried when the wind blows hard and sounds so terrible; but there was nobody to take care of that plank except God,--and He, oh, He, is always able to take care! When that plank was washed near to the shore, I stepped out on the rocks and caught it, and then I saw that a little child was tied fast to it; so I knew that some one must have thrown him into the water, hoping that he would be picked up. I do not know what they who threw the little child into the sea called him; but I, who found him, called him Gabriel, and I carried him, all dripping with the salt sea-water, to my father's cabin. I laid him on my bed, and my mother and I never stopped trying to waken him, till he opened his eyes; for he lay just like one who never meant to open his eyes or speak again. At last my mother said, 'Clarice, I feel his heart beat!' and I said in my heart, 'If it please God to spare his life, I will work for him, and take care of him, and be a mother to him.' And I thought, 'He will surely love me always, because God has sent him to me, and I have taken him, and have loved him.' But now he has left me! He is mine no more! And oh, how I have loved him!"
Long before this story was ended, tears were running down Gabriel's face, and he was drawing closer and closer to Clarice. When she ceased speaking, he hid his face in her lap and cried aloud, according to the boisterous privilege of childhood.
"Oh, mother, dear mother, I haven't gone away! I'm here! I do love you! I am your little boy!"
"Gabriel! Gabriel! it was terrible! terrible!" burst from Clarice, with a groan, and a flood of tears.
"Oh, don't, mother! Call me your boy! Don't say, Gabriel! Don't cry!"
So he found his way through the door of the heart that stood wide open for him. Storm and darkness had swept in, if he had not.
The reconciliation was perfect; but the shadow that had obscured the future deepened that obscurity after this day's experience. If her right to the lad needed no vindication, was she capable of the attempted guidance and care? Could she bear this blessed burden safely to the end?
Sometimes, for a moment, it may have seemed to Clarice that Bondo Emmins could alone help her effectually out of her bewilderment and perplexity. She had not now the missionary with whom to consult, in whose wisdom to confide; and Bondo had a marvellous influence over the child.
He was disposed to take advantage of that influence, as he gave evidence, not long after the exhibition of his control over the boat-load of delinquents, by asking Clarice if she were never going to reward his constancy. He seemed at this time desirous of bringing himself before her as an object of compassion, if nothing better; but she, having heard him patiently to the end of what he had to urge in his own behalf and that of her parents, replied in words that were certainly of the moment's inspiration, and almost beyond her will; for Clarice had been of late so much troubled, no wonder if she should mistake expediency for right.
"I am married already," she said. "You see this ring. Do you not know what it has meant to me, Bondo, since I first put it on? Death, as you call it, cannot part Luke Merlyn and me. 'Heart and hand,' he said. Can I forget it? My hand is free,--but he holds it; and my heart is his.--But I can serve you better than you ask for, Bondo Emmins. You learned the name of the vessel that sailed from Havre and was lost. Take a voyage. Go to France. See if Gabriel has any friends there who have a right to him, and will serve him better than I can; and if he has such friends, I myself will take Gabriel to them. Yes, I will do it.--You will love a sailor's life, Bondo. You were born for that. Diver's Bay is not the place for you. I have long seen it. The sea will serve you better than I ever could. Go, and Clarice will thank you. Oh, Bondo, I beg you!"
At these words the man so appealed to became scarlet. He seemed to reflect on what Clarice had said,--seriously to ponder; but his amazement at her words had almost taken away his power of speech.
"The Gabriel sailed from Havre," said he, slowly, "If I went out as a deckhand in the next ship that sails"--
"Yes!"
"To scour the country--I hope I shan't find what I look for; you couldn't live without him.--Very likely you will think me a fool for my pains. You will not give me yourself. You would have me take away the lad from you."--He looked at Clarice as if his words passed his belief.
"Yes, only do as I say,--for I know it must be the best for us all. There is nothing else to be done,--no other way to live."
"France is a pretty big country to hunt over for a man whose name you don't know," said Emmins, after a little pause.
"You can find what passengers sailed in the Gabriel," answered Clarice, eager to remove every difficulty, and ready to contend with any that could possibly arise. "The vessel was a merchantman. Such vessels don't take out many passengers.--Besides, you will see the world.--It is for everybody's sake! Not for mine only,--no, truly,--no, indeed! May-be if another person around here had found Gabriel, they would never have thought of trying to find out who he belonged to."
"I guess so," replied Bondo, with a queer look. "Only now be honest, Clarice; it's to get rid of me, isn't it? But you needn't take that trouble. If you had only told me right out about Luke Merlyn"--
While Bondo Emmins spoke thus, his face had unconsciously the very expression one sees on the face of the boy whose foot hovers a moment above the worm he means to crush. The boy does not expect to see the worm change to a butterfly just then and there, and mount up before his very eyes toward the empyrean. Neither did Bondo Emmins anticipate her quiet--
"You knew about it all the while."
"Not the whole," said he,--"that you were married to Luke, as you say"; and the fisherman looked hastily around him, as if he had expected to see the veritable Luke.
"It isn't to get rid of you, then, Bondo," Clarice explained; "but I read in the Book you don't think much of, but it's everything to me, _If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?_ So you see, I am a little selfish in it all; for I want peace of mind, and I never shall have peace till it is settled about Gabriel; if I must give him up, I can."
Bondo Emmins looked at Clarice with a strange look, as she spoke these words,--so faltering in speech, so resolute in soul.
"And if I'm faithful over another man's," said he, "better the chance of getting my own, eh? But I wonder what my own is."
"Everything that you can earn and enjoy honestly," replied Clarice.
Emmins rose up quickly at these words. He walked off a few paces without speaking. His face was gloomy and sullen as a sky full of tornadoes when he turned his back on Clarice,--hardly less so when he again approached her.
"I am no fool," said he, as he drew near.--From his tone one could hardly have guessed that his last impulse was to strike the woman to whom he spoke.--"I know what you mean. You haven't sent me on a fool's errand. Good bye. You won't see me again, Clarice--till I come back from France. Time enough to talk about it then."
He did not offer to take her hand when he had so spoken, but was off before Clarice could make any reply.
Clarice thought that she should see him again; but he went away without speaking to any other person of his purpose; and when wonder on account of his absence began to find expression in her father's house, and elsewhere, it was she who must account for it. People thereat praised him for his good heart, and made much of his generosity, and wondered if this voyage were not to be rewarded by the prize for which he had sought openly so long. Old Briton and his dame inclined to that opinion.
But in the week following that of his departure there was a great stir and excitement among the people of the Bay. Little Gabriel was missing. A search, that began in surprise when Clarice returned home from some errand, was continued with increasing alarm all day, and night descended amid the general conviction that the child was drowned. He had been seen at play on the shore. No one could possibly furnish a more reasonable explanation. Every one had something to say, of course, and Clarice listened to all, turning to one speaker after another with increasing despair. Not one of them could restore the child to life, if he was dead.
There was a suspicion in her heart which she shared with none. It flashed upon her, and there was no rest after, until she had satisfied herself of its injustice. She went alone by night to town, and made her way fearlessly down to the harbor to learn if any vessel had sailed that day, and when the last ship sailed for Havre. The answers to the inquiries she made convinced her that Bondo Emmins must have sailed for France the day after his last conversation with her.
By daylight Clarice was again on the shore of Diver's Bay, there to renew a search which for weeks was not abandoned. Gabriel had a place in many a rough man's heart, and the women of the Bay knew well enough that he was unlike all other children; and though it did not please them well that Clarice should keep him so much to herself, they still admired the result of such seclusion, and praised his beauty and wonderful cleanliness, as though these tokens of her care were really beyond the common range of things,--attainable, in spite of all she could say, by no one but Clarice Briton, and for no one but Gabriel. These fishermen and their wives did not speedily forget the wonderful boy; the boats never went out but those who rowed them thought about the child; the gatherers of sea-weed never went to their work but they looked for some token of him; and for Clarice,--let us say nothing of her just here. What woman needs to be told how that woman watched and waited and mourned?
IX.
Few events ever occurred to disturb the tranquillity of the people of Diver's Bay. People wore out and dropped away, as the old fishing boats did,--and new ones took their place.
Old Briton crumbled and fell to pieces, while he watched for the return of Bondo Emmins. And Clarice buried her old mother. She was then left alone in the cabin, with the reminiscences of a hard lot around her. The worn-out garments, and many rude traces of rough toil, and the toys, few and simple, which had belonged to Gabriel, constituted her treasures. What was before her? A life of labor and of watching; and Clarice was growing older every day.
Her hair turned gray ere she was old. The hopes that had specially concerned her had failed her,--all of them. She surveyed her experience, and said, weighing the result, the more need that she should strive to avert from others the evils they might bring upon themselves, so that, when the Lord should smite them, they, too, might be strong. The missionary had long since left this field of labor and gone to another, and his place at Diver's Bay was unfilled by a new preacher. The more need, then, of her. Remembering her lost child, she taught the children of others. She taught them to read and sew and knit, and, what was more important, taught them obedience and thankfulness, and endeavored to inspire in them some reverence and faith. The Church did not fall into ruin there.
I wish that I might write here,--it were so easy, if it were but true!--that Bondo Emmins came back to Diver's Bay in one of those long years during which she was looking for him, and that he came scourged by conscience to ask forgiveness of his diabolic vengeance.
I wish that I might write,--which were far easier, if it were but fact,--that all the patience and courage of the Pure Heart of Diver's Bay, all the constancy that sought to bring order and decency and reverence into the cabins there, met at last with another external reward than merely beholding, as the children grew up to their duties and she drew near to death, the results of all her teaching; that those results were attended by another, also an external reward; that the youth, who came down like an angel to fill her place when she was gone, had walked into her house one morning, and surprised her, as the Angel Gabriel once surprised the world, by his glad tidings. I wish, that, instead of kneeling down beside her grave in the sand, and vowing there, "Oh, mother! I, who have found no mother but thee in all the world, am here, in thy place, to strive as thou didst for the ignorant and the helpless and unclean," he had thrown his arms around her living presence, and vowed that vow in spite of Bondo Emmins, and all the world beside.
But it seems that the gate is strait, and the path is ever narrow, and the hill is difficult. And the kinds of victory are various, and the badges of the conquerors are not all one. And the pure heart can wear its pearl as purely, and more safely, in the heavens, where the white array is spotless,--where the desolate heart shall be no more forsaken,--where the BRIDEGROOM, who stands waiting the Bride, says, "Come, for all things are now ready!"--where the SON makes glad. Pure Pearl of Diver's Bay! not for the cheap sake of any mortal romance will I grieve to write that He has plucked thee from the deep to reckon thee among His pearls of price.