Chapter XXVII: Searching in the Depths

Joshua Leonard heard these cries, and they smote through his iron frame as lightning strikes an oak. He had been dumb till now. The sight of his child flitting by him like a ghost, with that pale face turned away from his in terror, had killed the anger in his heart. He had not heard the reproaches of his wife; for the moment every faculty of his being was locked. But the cries of that poor mother brought him to life again. It was terrible to hear them cleaving through the darkness. He started towards the mill; but, as he left the threshold-stone, the mother came across the road and passed him. Her face was ghastly in the starlight, and her teeth chattered as with cold. She had no reproaches for her husband then; but, seized with pity, threw her arms around him.

“Oh, Joshua, she is dead! We,—no, no,—I have killed her!”

In the very depths of her sorrow the poor mother was generous: for her life she would not have upbraided him then.

“Did you see her?—hear any thing?”

“No, it was all over. Every thing was still.”

He broke from her arms, entered the house, and, seizing the tinder-box, fell upon his knees, and began to strike out great sparks of fire from a flint and steel.

“Bring the lantern. She may have hid herself from fear of her father. God forgive me! Bring the lantern!”

Mrs. Leonard opened a door, and took the lantern from its nail in the cellar-way; but she was obliged to kneel down on the hearth and take hold of the candle with both hands while her husband lighted it; and then the flame quivered, as if a high wind were passing by, from the irrepressible trembling of her limbs.

When the candle was locked into its tin prison, the miserable pair went down to the saw-mill together. Pale and shivering, they wandered around the heaped-up boards and logs, calling Amy softly by her name, in dread of frightening her by loud tones; but they found nothing to indicate her presence, living or dead.

Leonard held his lantern down through the floor till the black waters reddened in its glare. His wife leaned over his shoulder, casting appalled glances into the abyss, but turning every instant to cover her eyes, overcome with dread of finding the terrible thing she sought. Leonard’s face brightened a little when he saw that the logs, which lay in the water like great monsters asleep, were dry on the upper surface. Surely, if she had plunged to her death in this spot, there would have been some motion left in the timbers she must have touched,—some marks of water dashed over the bark.

Leonard rose from his knees and stood upright, with a glow of hope in his eyes.

“Our God is merciful; she is not here,” he said, with tears streaming down his rough cheeks.

His wife gave a sob and flung herself into his arms, crying like a little child.

He kissed her tenderly, wiped the tears from her face, and pressed it against his bosom.

“Ah,” he said, with humility, “how much better you are, wife, than I am,—how much better in the sight of God!”

“Dear me! No, no, Leonard, don’t say that!”

“You had the grace to forgive at once. It was I, the strong one, who drove her away, our poor, weak child!”

“Don’t, Leonard, you break my heart. If she could but see you now, the very look of your eyes would bring her back.”

Leonard took up his lantern, and, passing one strong arm around his wife, who began to look hopefully up to his brightening face, went out of the mill. He held the lantern low as he reached the firm ground, searching for tracks in the grass. He found none, however; but in the dust of the road, rendered moist by a heavy dew, small footprints appeared, which he knew to be Amy’s.

“She is alive,—she is alive; we shall catch up with her in a little while,” cried the glad mother. “Won’t we be good to her and comfort her, and stand up against the whole world for her, Leonard?”

“With God’s help, my wife!”

“Oh, of course; I meant that only it seems so easy to forgive one’s child without help, you know.”

Thus talking together, these not entirely unhappy parents,—for true goodness is never quite miserable,—traced the footsteps of their erring child along the dust of the highway, till they disappeared in the hoof-prints and wagon-tracks of a cross-road that led from the festival at Norwich.

“She has gone back to the minister’s,” said the father, pausing in his walk.

“Yes,” answered the mother, with a thrill of yearning tenderness, “it is up yonder she has gone. Her own mother would not comfort her, so she went to our best friend.”

“Sit down here, and we will wait till she comes back,” answered the father, with a deep swell of the heart; “poor child! how tired and broken-hearted she must be.”

They sat down together on the trunk of a newly-fallen tree, which lay upon the sward on one side of the road; and thus with their arms around each other, heavy hearted, but comforted in the best of all human love, that which springs from time, they watched and waited for the coming of their child. Few words passed between them, but sometimes, when the night air chilled his wife, he would gather her in his arms and console her against his heart.

It was long after midnight when these two stricken people arose, wearily, and returned home, saying to each other.

“Never mind; our child will come back to-morrow: then she will know how much we love her.”