Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/830

822 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 halt-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