THE PASSENGER LIST.
All days and all nights pass, therefore this night passed. The first
light of morning came palely in at the windows upon the two women
who were still by the hearth. But Leander, when half awake, had been
kind enough to yield to his mother's entreaties at about two in the
morning, and had allowed her to lead him to his room.
After that hour Mrs. Ffolliott had not slept. She grew more and more
alarmed. She fidgeted about from door to window, to the piazza, to
the grounds. But Carolyn did not accompany her; she sat by the fire,
sometimes shivering as she crouched forward. Every few moments she
repeated to herself the lines her mother had brought to her memory:
"Old love renewed again,
That loved I ever."
It was one of the clearest, loveliest mornings of September.
"They are drowned; perhaps their bodies will be washed ashore. Oh,
my poor Caro!" Thus Mrs. Ffolliott, embracing her daughter when she
came in from the piazza. She continued at intervals to say, "They are
drowned! They are drowned!"
The servants rose and began gaily the duties of Miss Carolyn's
wedding-day, but directly they also were enveloped in the gloom.
Prudence's mother had an attack of hysteria as soon as she came
into the breakfast-room, and it was Carolyn who led her back to her
own chamber. It was Carolyn who organized what search was possible,
and who sent out messages to towns along the shore. She did it
persistently and nervelessly, her face coldly set, her voice clear
and even.
Her mother looked at her in helpless wonder; her aunt repeated again
and again that she wished she had as little feeling as Caro, but then
too much feeling had always been her curse. Caro must "take after"
the Ffolliotts.
On the morning of the third day Carolyn sent word to her mother that
she would not be down to breakfast; she thought she must have taken
cold, and she did not wish anything sent up. So her mother presently
appeared in her daughter's room.
"It isn't a cold, it's a fever," the elder woman exclaimed, as she
looked in the girl's face.
"Oh, no," said Carolyn; "I'm not so lucky as that; it's only heroines
who have brain fevers and die in such circumstances; and I'm not a
heroine."
She spoke the truth in part. She only had a lingering, low fever,
from which she began to recover when the weather became frosty.
It was when Carolyn was able to walk out upon the piazza that
her mother told her that parts of the _Vireo_ had been found and
identified unmistakably; they had been washed ashore a few miles down
the coast.
"It's no use hoping any longer," she said.
"I don't hope; I haven't hoped from the very first," was the answer.
There was something so strange in the girl's tone that her mother
looked at her in a kind of terror.
Carolyn, closely wrapped, was sitting in the sunlight on the veranda.
"I don't know what you mean," said Mrs. Ffolliott, feebly. "I'm sure
I had the strongest hope for several days. It seemed to me they
_must_ have been saved somehow; and Rodney was such a good swimmer."
"So was Prudence a good swimmer," said Carolyn.
"Yes, she was. But I don't see what happened to the boat; they were--"
"Mother," said Carolyn, wearily, "don't go on talking like that."
"No, no," the mother said, soothingly, but in a perplexed voice; "I
won't say anything. We have to bear whatever Providence sends upon
us."
Carolyn suddenly sat upright in her chair. "Do we?" she asked,
fiercely. Then she made an effort to restrain her words. She sank
back again upon the seat. "They are not drowned," she said, calmly,
as if merely asserting an evident fact.
Mrs. Ffolliott came close to her daughter and gently stroked her
forehead.
"There, there," she said, as if speaking to a child; "we won't talk
about it." Then she added, as an afterthought, "But I've ordered the
mourning."
"The mourning!"
Again Carolyn sat upright. This time she laughed. At that laugh the
mother drew back a little.
"I tell you they are not drowned," the girl repeated.
"Then where are they?"
"What does it matter where they are? They are together."
"Carolyn!"
"Yes, together."
"Poor child! Don't let's talk of this any longer. When you are
stronger, your mind will be stronger, and you won't have these
fancies."
Carolyn did not reply to these words. She lay silently in her chair,
gazing off to the line where the horizon met the ocean.
She was thinking, suddenly, that it was here on the piazza that she
had been sitting when Leander had found the ring that Prudence had
given to Rodney; and then Rodney had come and had asked her, Carolyn
Ffolliott, to be his wife.
Well, it was all over. But she would not put on black because her
lover was faithless.
As the weeks went on, nothing more was heard of the two who went
out in the _Vireo_ that night; that is, nothing was heard by the
people at Savin Hill. But they went nowhere, and saw only a very few
friends; and as the season grew on towards winter they saw fewer and
fewer. The neighbors had gone back to their city homes. Prudence's
mother had left them for the South.
Flurries of snow began sometimes to hide the ocean from the girl, who
sat often at her chamber window. Then came three or four perfect days
in November, the Indian summer. It was on one of these days that Mrs.
Ffolliott entered the room where her daughter sat by the hearth.
Carolyn was reading, or seemed to be reading. She held a book in her
hand nearly always when she was not at work.
Mrs. Ffolliott had a copy of a Boston daily paper, and the paper
fluttered and rustled in her hand as she came forward nervously.
"Carolyn," she said, in a high voice, "you just read that; you might
as well read it first at last. The strange part of it is that we
haven't seen it before. Of course other folks have seen it. And they
wouldn't tell us. I call that unkind. I happened upon this paper in
a waste-basket. It had never been unfolded. I don't know what we've
done to have such a thing happen to us. I'm glad you held out about
not putting on black. How ridiculous we should have looked, going
around in black!"
While she talked Mrs. Ffolliott held the paper beyond her daughter's
reach, though the latter extended her hand for it.
"Let me see it," said Carolyn, authoritatively.
The mother hesitated an instant, then she put the paper on the girl's
lap and pointed to the list of passengers on the _Scythia_.
"Mr. and Mrs. Rodney Lawrence," Carolyn read, then she read again.
She heard her mother saying:
"It's the same steamer and the same date that you were going with
him."
Mrs. Ffolliott was not thinking of grammar as she spoke.
Carolyn looked up, a hard light in her eyes.
"Only he married Prudence instead of me," she said. "It was a fine
plan, wasn't it? No one could have made a better. Of course people
hated to tell us. Oh!"
She dropped the paper and clasped her hands. In a moment the hard
look had left her face. Her lips quivered as she said, "He always
loved her; he never loved me. No, he never loved me. Do you suppose
he'll be happy with her?"
"I'm sure I hope not," was the angry reply, "and I don't see how it's
possible, either. The scoundrel! The ungrateful wretch!"
"Oh, mamma!"
"You don't mean to say you're going to defend him, Carolyn Ffolliott!"
"No, no," she said, in a low voice that trembled piteously; "but I
can't stop loving him because he doesn't love me. You see, mamma,
I've got to love him. Oh, I wish I hadn't! I wish I could thrust him
out of my mind!"
"Got to love him!" cried Mrs. Ffolliott. "Carolyn, I'm ashamed of
you. I thought you had more spirit. Are you going to whine in this
way? Why, I'll--I'll have you shut up! Do you think I'd have gone on
like this if your father had served me so?"
The girl did not answer. She was sitting motionless, with her hands
lying inertly in her lap.
Mrs. Ffolliott, in the suddenness of this discovery, hardly knew what
she did. She grasped her daughter's shoulder and shook it.
"Have some pride!" she exclaimed.
But Carolyn did not resent the words or the touch. She was staring
straight in front of her mother, a nerveless droop to her mouth, a
touching despair in her whole aspect.
"You are not going to go about wearing the willow, are you? Oh, the
scamp! The villain!"
The sharp voice echoed in the place.
Carolyn now tried to rise. She turned indignantly to her mother, her
eyes flashing.
"If you call him such names I'll leave the house," she said, firmly.
"Good heavens! She defends him! The vile--"
"Mother!"
"Carolyn!"
The girl asserted herself. She spoke with dignity. "You are speaking
of the man who was to be my husband; please remember that. And I love
him; remember that also. By accident he met that--that--" her voice
sharpened--"he met Prudence. She, of course, tempted him; she would
tempt an angel from heaven. And he loved her. It was all a mistake,
his thinking he cared for me,--that is, to marry me. Now we've got to
bear it. Prudence--but no," coldly, "why should I talk of her?"
"You defend him!" Mrs. Ffolliott cried, with hysterical repetition.
"That a child of mine should--"
"Mother!" said the girl again, "we won't talk of this."
"Not talk of this insult!--this--I say he's a scamp, and he shall
never come into my house again!"
"He will probably never try. We shall never see him again. And
he won't be happy with her. Oh, I want him to be happy, whatever
happens!"
Carolyn said the last words as if she did not know she was not alone.
Her face at that moment had a look of such fervid loveliness that her
mother involuntarily turned away as if from something sacred.
[Illustration: "'LET ME SEE IT,' SAID CAROLYN."]