A Singer from the Sea, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [best story books to read TXT] 📗

their certain end--envy and hatred for herself and dissatisfaction and loss of friends for her father and mother. Had she not already given them sorrow enough?

Her right course was then clear as a band of light. She would deposit the money at interest in a London bank. She would say nothing at all about its possession. Before leaving for St. Penfer she would buy a couple of printed gowns, such as would not be incongruous with her surroundings. She would go back to her home and village as empty-handed as she left them--a beggar, even, for a little love and sympathy, for toleration for her wanderings, for forgiveness for those deeds by which she had wounded the consciences and self-respect of her own people and her own caste.

This determination awoke with her in the morning, and she followed it out literally. The presents she had resolved to buy in order to get herself a little favour were put out of consideration. She purchased only a few plain garments for her own every-day wearing. She left her money with strangers who attached no importance to it; and, with one small American trunk holding easily all her possessions, she turned her face once more to the little fishing village of St. Penfer by the Sea.


CHAPTER XV.


ONLY FRIENDS.

"Stay at home, my heart, and rest,
Home-keeping hearts are happiest;
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care--
To stay at home is best."
--SONG.

"... Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day;
Are yet a master-sight of all our seeing."
--WORDSWORTH.

Only those who have experienced the sensation can tell how strange and sad is the feeling with which the soul turns away from a destiny accomplished. When Denas had deposited her money in the Clydesdale Bank and made the few purchases she thought proper and prudent, she felt that one room of the house of life was barred for ever against her return to it.

For a few years her experiences had been strangely interwoven with those of the Treshams. To what purpose? Why had they been so? As far as this existence was concerned, it seemed a relationship that might well have been omitted. But who can tell what circumstances went before it or what were to follow? For all human beings leave behind them as they go through life a train of events which are due either to impulses originating in a previous existence or are the seeds of events which are to be perfected in a future one; what we sow, that we shall surely reap.

Leaving London, such thoughts of something final, at least as far as this probation was concerned, greatly depressed Denas. "Never more, never more," was the monotonous refrain that sprang from her soul to her lips. But it is a wise provision of the Merciful One that the past, in a healthy mind, very soon loses its charm, and the things that are present take the first place.

"I cannot bring anything back. I do not think I would bring anything back if I could. I have been very unhappy and restless in the past. Every pleasure I had was tithed by sorrow. Roland loved me, but I brought him only disappointment. I loved Roland, and yet all my efforts to make him happy were failures. Roland has been taken from me. Our child has been taken away from me. Elizabeth I have put away--death could not sever us more effectually. I am going back to my own people and my own life, and I pray God to give me a contented heart in it."

These were the colour of her reflections as the train bore her swiftly to the fortune of her future years. She had no enthusiasm about them. She thought she knew all the possibilities they kept. She looked for no extraordinary thing, for no special favour to brighten their uniform occupations and simple pleasures. She had taken the first train she could, without considering the time of its arrival in St. Penfer. She told herself that there would be a certain amount of gossip about her return, and that it could not be avoided by either a public or private arrival. Still, she was glad when the sun set and the shadows of the night were stretched out--glad that the moon was too young to give much light, and that it was quite nine o'clock when the St. Penfer station was reached.

A few people were on the platform, but none of them were thinking of Mrs. Tresham, and the woman so simply dressed and veiled in black made no impression on anyone. She left her trunk in the baggage-room and went by the familiar road down the cliff-breast. It had been raining, of course, and the ground was heavy and wet; but the sky was clear, and the half-moon made a half-twilight among the bare branches and shed a faint bar of light across the ocean.

At the last reach she stood still a moment and looked at the clustered cottages and the boats swaying softly on the incoming tide. A great peace was over the place. The very houses seemed to be resting. There was fire or candle light in every glimmering square of their windows; but not a man, or a woman, or a child in sight. As she drew near to her father's cottage, she saw that it was very brightly lighted; and then she remembered that it was Friday night, and that very likely the weekly religious meeting was being held there. That would account for the diffused quiet of the whole village.

The thought made her pause. She had no desire to turn her home-coming into a scene. So she walked softly to the back of the little house and entered the curing shed. There was only a slight door--a door very seldom tightly closed--between this shed and the cottage room. She knew all its arrangements. It was called a curing shed, but in reality it had long been appropriated to domestic purposes. Joan kept her milk and provisions in it, and used it as a kind of kitchen. Every shelf and stool, almost every plate and basin, had its place there, and Denas knew them. She went to the milk pitcher and drank a deep draught; and then she took a little three-legged stool, and placing it gently by the door, sat down to listen and to wait.

Her father was talking in that soft, chanting tone used by the fishers of St. Penfer, and the drawling intonations, with the occasional rise of the voice at the end of a sentence, came to the ears of Denas with the pleasant familiarity of an old song.

As he ceased speaking some woman began to sing "The Ninety-and-Nine," and so singing they rose and passed out of the cottage and to their own homes. One by one the echoes of their voices ceased, until, at the last verse, only John and Joan were singing. As they finished, Denas looked into the room. Joan was lifting the big Bible covered with green baize. Between this cover and the binding all the letters Denas had sent them were kept, and the fond mother was touching and straightening them. John, with his pipe in one hand, was lifting the other to the shelf above his head for his tobacco-jar. The last words of the hymn were still on their lips.

Denas opened the door and stood just within the room, looking at them. Both fixed their eyes upon her. They thought they saw a spirit. They were speechless.

"Father! Mother! It is Denas!"

She came forward quickly as she spoke. Joan uttered one piercing cry. John let his pipe fall to pieces on the hearthstone and drew his child within his arms. "It be Denas! It be Denas! her own dear self," he said, and he sat down and took her to his breast, and the poor girl snuggled her head into his big beard, and he kissed away her tears and soothed her as he had done when she was only a baby.

And then poor Joan was on the rug at their feet. She was taking the wet stockings and shoes off of her daughter's feet; she was drying them gently with her apron, fondling and kissing them as she had been used to do when her little Denas came in from the boats or the school wet-footed. And Denas was stooping to her mother and kissing the happy tears off her face, and the conversation was only in those single words that are too sweet to mix with other words; until Joan, with that womanly instinct that never fails in such extremities, began to bring into the excited tone those tender material cares that make love possible and life-like.

"Oh, my darling," she cried, "your little feet be dripping wet, and you be hungry, I know, and we will have a cup of tea. And, Denas, there be such a pie in the cupboard. And a bowl of clotted cream, too. It is just like the good God knew my girl was coming home. And I wonder who put it into my heart to have a mother's welcome for her? And how be your husband, my dear?"

"He is dead, mother."

"God's peace on him!"

"And the little lad, Denas--my little grandson that be called John after me."

"He is dead, too, father."

Then they were speechless, and they kissed her again and mingled their tears with her tears, and John felt a sudden lonely place where he had put this poor little grandson whom he was never to see.

Then Denas began to drink her warm tea and to talk to her parents; but they said no words but kind words of the dead. They listened to the pitiful taking-away of the young man, and before the majesty of death they forgot their anger and their dislike, and left him hopefully to the mercy of the Merciful. For if John and Joan knew anything, they knew that none of us shall enter paradise except God cover us with His mercy.

And not one word of all her trouble did Denas titter. She spoke only of Roland's great love for her; of their trials endured together; of his resignation to death; of her own loneliness and suffering since his burial; and then, clasping her father's and mother's hands, she said:

"So I have come back to you. I have come back to my old life. I shall never act again. I shall sing no more in this world. That life is over. It was not a happy life. Without Roland it would be beyond my power to endure it."

"You be welcome here as the sunshine. Oh, my dear girl, you be light to my eyes and joy to my heart, and there is no trouble can hurt me much now."

Then Joan said: "'Twas this very morning I put clean linen on your bed, Denas. I swept the