"She was a form of life and light,
That seen, became a part of sight,
And rose where'er I turned mine eye,
The Morning Star of Memory."
"Thou art more than all the shrines that hold thee."
The next morning was a very stormy one; there was an iron-gray sky above a
black tumbling sea; and the rain, driven by a mad wind, smote the face
like a blow from a passionate hand. The boats were all at anchor, with no
prospect of a fishing that day; and the fishermen, gathered in little
groups, were muttering over the bad weather. But their talk was not
bitter, like the complaints which landsmen make over leveled crops.
Regarding every thing that happened as the result of righteous decree, why
should they rail at disappointment or misfortune? Some went slowly to a
shed where boats were being built; others sat down within the doors of
their cottages and began to knit their nets, or to mend such as were out
of order.
David could take a landward route to Kinkell, among the shore rocks; for
though the path was often a mere footing, it was well known to him; and as
for the stormy weather, it seemed only a part of the darker and fiercer
tempest in his own soul. He left Maggie early. She watched him climbing
with bent head the misty heights, until a projecting rock hid him from
view; then she went back to her household duties.
The first one was to prepare the room she had rented for its strange guest
and it gave her many a pang to fold away the "kirk clothes" of her father
and brothers and lock them from sight in the big "kist" that was the
family wardrobe. For clothing has a woeful individuality, when we put it
away forever; and the shoes of the dead men had a personality that almost
terrified her. How pitiful, how forsaken, how almost sentient they looked!
Blind with tears, she hid them from sight, and then turned, as the
Bereaved must ever turn, back to the toil and need of daily life.
There was but one window in the room, a little one opening on hinges, and
glazed with small diamond-shaped bits of glass. The driving storm had
washed it clean, she hung a white curtain before it, and brought from the
living room a pot of scarlet geranium, and a great sea shell, from whose
mouth hung a luxuriant musk plant. Its cool fragrance filled the room, and
gave an almost dainty feeling to the spotlessness of the deal furniture
and the homespun linen. Before the turf fire there was a square of rag
carpet, and the bits of blue and scarlet in it were pretty contrasts to
the white wood of the chairs and table.