"An' I'm not able, the day, for sheer want o' rum," he muttered, "t'
walk the hills."
I looked away to the sombre hills, where she might lie waiting for him
and me; but my glance ran far beyond, to the low, gray sky and to a
patch of darkening sea. And I cursed myself again--my stupidity and
ease of passion and the mean conceit of myself by which I had been
misled to the falsely meek conclusion of yesterday--I cursed myself,
indeed, with a live wish for punishment, in that I had not succored
the maid when she had so frankly plead for my strength. John Cather?
what right had I to think that she had loved him? On the hills? nay,
she was not there; she was not on the hills, waiting for my uncle and
me--she was gone elsewhere, conserving her independence and
self-respect, in the womanly way she had. My uncle fancied she was a
clinging child: I knew her for a proud and impulsively wilful woman.
With this gossip abroad to flout her, she would never wait on the
hills for my uncle and me: 'twas the ultimate pain she could not bear
in the presence of such as loved and trusted her; 'twas the event she
had feared, remembering her mother, all her life long, dwelling in
sensitive dread, as I knew. She would flee the shame of this
accusation, without fear or lingering, unable to call upon the faith
of us. 'Twas gathering in my mind that she had fled north, as the
maids of our land would do, in the spring, with the Labrador fleet
bound down for the fishing. 'Twas a reasonable purpose to possess her
aimless feet. She would ship on a Labradorman: she might, for the
wishing--she would go cook on a north-bound craft from Topmast Harbor,
as many a maid of our coast was doing. And by Heaven! thinks I, she
had.
Her mother's punt was gone from Whisper Cove.
"She've lied down there on the hills," my uncle protested, "t' cry an'
wait. Ye're not searchin', Dannie, as ye ought. She've _jus'_ lied
down, I tell ye," he whimpered, "t' wait."
'Twas not so, I thought.
"She've her mother's shame come upon her," says he, "an' she've hid."