Home! How changed his home had become! It was a place of silence and unconfessed sorrow. All its old calm restfulness had gone. Very soon after Jan"s disappearance, Thora had taken to her bed, and she had never left it since. Peter recognized that she was dying, and this night he missed her sorely. Her quiet love and silent sympathy had been for many a year a tower of strength to him. But he could not carry this trouble to her, still less did he care to say any thing to Margaret. For the first time he was sensible of a feeling of irritation in her presence. Her white despairing face angered him. For all this trouble, in one way or another, she was responsible.
He felt, too, that full of anxiety as he was, she was hardly listening to a word he said. Her ears were strained to catch the first movement of her child, who was sleeping in the next room. To every one he had suddenly become of small importance. Both at home and abroad he felt this. To such bitter reflections he smoked his pipe, while Margaret softly sung to her babe, and Thora, with closed eyes, lay slowly breathing her life away: already so far from this world, that Peter felt as if it would be cruel selfishness to trouble her more with its wrongs and its anxieties.
Four days afterward, Thora said to her daughter: "Margaret, I had a token early this morning. I saw a glorious ship come sailing toward me. Her sails were whiter than snow under the moonshine; and at her bow stood my boy, Willie, my eldest boy, and he smiled and beckoned me. I shall go away with the next tide. Ere I go, thou tell me something?"
"Whatever thou ask me."
"What came of poor Jan Vedder?"
Then Margaret understood the shadow that had fallen between herself and her mother; the chill which had repressed all conversation; the silent terror which had perchance hastened death.
"Oh, mother!" she cried, "did thou really have this fear? I never harmed Jan. I left him on the cliff. G.o.d knows I speak the truth. I know no more."
"Thank G.o.d! Now I can go in peace." Margaret had fallen on her knees by the bedside, and Thora leaned forward and kissed her.
"Shall I send for father?"
"He will come in time."
A few hours afterward she said in a voice already far away, as if she had called back from a long distance, "When Jan returns be thou kinder to him, Margaret."
"Will he come back? Mother, tell me!"
But there was no answer to the yearning cry. Never another word from the soul that had now cast earth behind it. Peter came home early, and stood gloomily and sorrowfully beside his companion. Just when the tide turned, he saw a momentary light flash over the still face, a thrill of joyful recognition, a sigh of peace, instantly followed by the pallor, and chill, and loneliness of death.
At the last the end had come suddenly. Peter had certainly known that his wife was dying, but he had not dreamed of her slipping off her mortal vesture so rapidly. He was shocked to find how much of his own life would go with her. Nothing could ever be again just as it had been. It troubled him also that there had been no stranger present.
The minister ought to have been sent for, and some two or three of Thora"s old acquaintances. There was fresh food for suspicion in Thora Fae being allowed to pa.s.s out of life just at this time, with none but her husband and daughter near, and without the consolation of religious rites.
Peter asked Margaret angrily, why she had neglected to send for friends and for the minister?
"Mother was no worse when thou went to the store this morning. About noon she fell asleep, and knew nothing afterward. It would have been cruel to disturb her."
But in her own heart Margaret was conscious that under any circ.u.mstances she would have shrunk from bringing strangers into the house. Since Jan"s disappearance, she had been but once to kirk, for that once had been an ordeal most painful and humiliating. None of her old friends had spoken to her; many had even pointedly ignored her. Women excel in that negative punishment which they deal out to any sister whom they conceive to have deserved it. In a score of ways Margaret Vedder had been made to feel that she was under a ban of disgrace and suspicion.
Some of this humiliation had not escaped Peter"s keen observation; but at the time he had regarded it as a part of the ill-will which he also was consciously suffering from, and which he was shrewd enough to a.s.sociate with the mystery surrounding the fate of his son-in-law.
Connecting it with what Snorro had said, he took it for further proof against his daughter. Thora"s silence and evident desire to be left to herself, were also corroborative. Did Thora also suspect her? Was Margaret afraid to bring the minister, lest at the last Thora might say something? For the same reason, had Thora"s old intimates been kept away? Sometimes the dying reveal things unconsciously; was Margaret afraid of this? When once suspicion is aroused, every thing feeds it. Twenty-four hours after the first doubt had entered Peter"s heart, he had almost convinced himself that Margaret was responsible for Jan"s death.
He remembered then the stories in the Sagas of the fair, fierce women of Margaret"s race. A few centuries previously they had ruled things with a high hand, and had seldom scrupled to murder the husbands who did not realize their expectations. He knew something of Margaret"s feelings by his own; her wounded self-esteem, her mortification at Jan"s failures, her anger at her poverty and loss of money, her contempt for her own position. If she had been a man, he could almost have excused her for killing Jan; that is, if she had done it in fair fight. But crimes which are unwomanly in their nature shock the hardest heart, and it was unwomanly to kill the man she had loved and chosen, and the father of her child; it was, above all, a cowardly, base deed to thrust a wounded man out of life. He tried to believe his daughter incapable of such a deed, but there were many hours in which he thought the very worst of her.
Margaret had no idea that her father nursed such suspicions; she felt only the change and separation between them. Her mother"s doubt had been a cruel blow to her; she had never been able to speak of it to her father. That he shared it, never occurred to her. She was wrapped up in her own sorrow and shame, and at the bottom of her heart inclined to blame her father for much of the trouble between her and Jan. If he had dealt fairly with Jan after the first summer"s fishing, Jan would never have been with Skager. And how eager he had been to break up her home! After all, Jan had been the injured man; he ought to have had some of her tocher down. A little ready money would have made him satisfied and happy; her life and happiness had been sacrificed to her father"s avarice. She was sure now that if the years could be called back, she would be on Jan"s side with all her heart.
Two souls living under the same roof and nursing such thoughts against each other were not likely to be happy. If they had ever come to open recrimination, things uncertain might have been explained; but, for the most part, there was only silence in Peter"s house. Hour after hour, he sat at the fireside, and never spoke to Margaret. She grew almost hysterical under the spell of this irresponsive trouble.
Perhaps she understood then why Jan had fled to Torr"s kitchen to escape her own similar exhibitions of dissatisfaction.
As the months wore on, things in the store gradually resumed their normal condition. Jan was dead, Peter was living, the tide of popular feeling turned again. Undoubtedly, however, it was directed by the minister"s positive, almost angry, refusal to ask Peter before the kirk session to explain his connection with Jan"s disappearance. He had never gone much to Peter"s store, but for a time he showed his conviction of Peter"s innocence by going every day to sit with him. It was supposed, of course, that he had talked the affair thoroughly over with Peter, and Peter did try at various times to introduce the subject. But every such attempt was met by a refusal in some sort on the minister"s part. Once only he listened to his complaint of the public injustice.
"Thou can not control the wind, Peter," he said in reply; "stoop and let it pa.s.s over thee. I believe and am sure thy hands are clear of Jan"s blood. As to how far thou art otherwise guilty concerning him, that is between G.o.d and thy conscience. But let me say, if I were asked to call thee before the kirk session on the count of unkindness and injustice, I would not feel it to be my duty to refuse to do so."
Having said this much, he put the matter out of their conversation; but still such a visible human support in his dark hour was a great comfort to Peter.
It was a long and dreary winter. It is amazing how long time can be when Sorrow counts the hours. Sameness, too, adds to grief; there was nothing to vary the days. Margaret went to bed every night full of that despairing oppression which hopes nothing from the morrow. Even when the spring came again her life had the same uniform gray tinge.
Peter had his fisheries to look forward to, and by the end of May he had apparently quite recovered himself. Then he began to be a little more pleasant and talkative to his daughter. He asked himself why he should any longer let the wraith of Jan Vedder trouble his life? At the last he had gone to help him; if he were not there to be helped, that was not his fault. As for Margaret, he knew nothing positively against her. Her grief and amazement had seemed genuine at the time; very likely it was; at any rate, it was better to bury forever the memory of a man so inimical to the peace and happiness of the Faes.
The fishing season helped him to carry out this resolution. His hands were full. His store was crowded. There were a hundred things that only Peter could do for the fishers. Jan was quite forgotten in the press and hurry of a busier season than Lerwick had ever seen. Peter was again the old bustling, consequential potentate, the most popular man in the town, and the most necessary. He cared little that Tulloch still refused to meet him; he only smiled when Suneva Glumm refused to let him weigh her tea and sugar, and waited for Michael Snorro.
Perhaps Suneva"s disdain did annoy him a little. No man likes to be scorned by a good and a pretty woman. It certainly recurred to Peter"s mind more often than seemed necessary, and made him for a moment shrug his shoulders impatiently, and mutter a word or two to himself.
One lovely moonlight night, when the boats were all at sea, and the town nearly deserted, Peter took his pipe and rambled out for a walk.
He was longing for some womanly sympathy, and had gone home with several little matters on his heart to talk over with Margaret. But unfortunately the child had a feverish cold, and how could she patiently listen to fishermen"s squabbles, and calculations of the various "takes," when her boy was fretful and suffering? So Peter put on his bonnet, and with his pipe in his mouth, rambled over the moor.
He had not gone far before he met Suneva Glumm. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have let her pa.s.s him, but to-night he wanted to talk, and even Suneva was welcome. He suddenly determined "to have it out with her," and without ceremony he called to her.
"Let me speak to thee, Suneva; I have something to say."
She turned and faced him: "Well then, say it."
"What have I done to get so much of thy ill-will? I, that have been friends with thee since I used to lift thee over the counter and give thee a sweet lozenger?"
"Thou did treat poor Jan Vedder so badly."
"And what is Jan Vedder to thee, that thou must lift his quarrel?"
"He was my friend, then."
"And thy lover, perhaps. I have heard that he loved thee before he ever saw my Margaret when she was at school in Edinburgh."
"Thou hast heard lies then; but if he had loved me and if I had been his wife, Jan had been a good man this day; good and loving. Yes, indeed!"
"Art thou sure he is dead?"
"Peter Fae, if any one can answer that question, thou can; thou and thy daughter Margaret."
"I have heard thou hast said this before now."
"Ay, I have said it often, and I think it."
"Now, then, listen to me, and see how thou hast done me wrong."
Then Peter pleaded his own cause, and he pleaded it with such cleverness and eloquence that Suneva quite acquitted him.
"I believe now thou art innocent," she answered calmly. "The minister told me so long ago. I see now that he was right." Then she offered Peter her hand, and he felt so pleased and grateful that he walked with her all the way to the town. For Suneva had a great deal of influence over the men who visited Torr"s, and most of them did visit Torr"s. They believed all she said. They knew her warm, straightforward nature, and her great beauty gave a kind of royal a.s.surance to her words.
Peter was therefore well pleased that he had secured her good will, and especially that he had convinced her of his entire innocence regarding Jan"s life. If the subject ever came up over the fishers"
gla.s.ses, she was a partisan worth having. He went home well satisfied with himself for the politic stroke he had made, and with the success which had attended it.
Margaret had seen her father talking and walking with Suneva, and she was very much offended at the circ.u.mstance. In her anger she made a most imprudent remark--"My mother not a year dead yet! Suneva is a bold, bad woman!"
"What art thou thinking of? Let me tell thee it was of Jan Vedder, and Jan Vedder only, that we spoke."
Not until that moment had it struck Peter that Suneva was a widow, and he a widower. But the thought once entertained was one he was not disposed to banish. He sat still half an hour and recalled her bright eyes, and good, cheerful face, and the pleasant confidential chat they had had together. He felt comforted even in the memory of the warm grip of her hand, and her sensible, honorable opinions. Why should he not marry again? He was in the prime of life, and he was growing richer every year. The more he thought of Suneva the warmer his heart grew toward her.