第37章 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE(6)

'I made them go!'she said,turning vehemently upon Emily.'And I'll tell you why!I could not bear that we should be only muddling on,and you so rich and thriving!Now I have told you,and you may hate me if you will!'

'I shall never hate you,Joanna.'

And she proved the truth of her words afterwards.The end of autumn came,and the brig should have been in port;but nothing like the Joanna appeared in the channel between the sands.It was now really time to be uneasy.Joanna Jolliffe sat by the fire,and every gust of wind caused her a cold thrill.She had always feared and detested the sea;to her it was a treacherous,restless,slimy creature,glorying in the griefs of women.'Still,'she said,'they MUSTcome!'

She recalled to her mind that Shadrach had said before starting that if they returned safe and sound,with success crowning their enterprise,he would go as he had gone after his shipwreck,and kneel with his sons in the church,and offer sincere thanks for their deliverance.She went to church regularly morning and afternoon,and sat in the most forward pew,nearest the chancel-step.Her eyes were mostly fixed on that step,where Shadrach had knelt in the bloom of his young manhood:she knew to an inch the spot which his knees had pressed twenty winters before;his outline as he had knelt,his hat on the step beside him.God was good.Surely her husband must kneel there again:a son on each side as he had said;George just here,Jim just there.By long watching the spot as she worshipped it became as if she saw the three returned ones there kneeling;the two slim outlines of her boys,the more bulky form between them;their hands clasped,their heads shaped against the eastern wall.The fancy grew almost to an hallucination:she could never turn her worn eyes to the step without seeing them there.

Nevertheless they did not come.Heaven was merciful,but it was not yet pleased to relieve her soul.This was her purgation for the sin of making them the slaves of her ambition.But it became more than purgation soon,and her mood approached despair.Months had passed since the brig had been due,but it had not returned.

Joanna was always hearing or seeing evidences of their arrival.When on the hill behind the port,whence a view of the open Channel could be obtained,she felt sure that a little speck on the horizon,breaking the eternally level waste of waters southward,was the truck of the Joana's mainmast.Or when indoors,a shout or excitement of any kind at the corner of the Town Cellar,where the High Street joined the Quay,caused her to spring to her feet and cry:''Tis they!'

But it was not.The visionary forms knelt every Sunday afternoon on the chancel-step,but not the real.Her shop had,as it were,eaten itself hollow.In the apathy which had resulted from her loneliness and grief she had ceased to take in the smallest supplies,and thus had sent away her last customer.

In this strait Emily Lester tried by every means in her power to aid the afflicted woman;but she met with constant repulses.

'I don't like you!I can't bear to see you!'Joanna would whisper hoarsely when Emily came to her and made advances.