CHAPTER XXIV.

Helen’s letters followed me.  She had heard from Rosville all that had happened, but did not expatiate on it.  Her letters were full of minute details respecting her affairs.  It was her way of diverting me from the thoughts which she believed troubled me.  “L.N.” was expected soon.  Since his last letter, she had caught herself more than once making inventories of what she would like to have in the way of a wardrobe for a particular occasion, which he had hinted at.

I heard nothing from Alice, and was content that it should be so.  Our acquaintance would be resumed in good time, I had no doubt.  Neither did I hear from Ben Somers.  He very likely was investing in another plan.  Of its result I should also hear.

My chief occupation was to drive with father.  The wharves of Milford, the doors of its banks and shipping offices, became familiar.  I witnessed bargains and contracts, and listened to talk of shipwrecks, mutinies, insurance cases, perjuries, failures, ruin, and rascalities.  His private opinions, and those who sought him, were kept in the background; the sole relation between them was—­Traffic.  Personality was forgotten in the absorbed attention which was given to business.  They appeared to me, though, as if pursuing something beyond Gain, which should narcotize or stimulate them to forget that man’s life was a vain going to and fro.

Mother reproached father for allowing me to adopt the habits of a man.  He thought it a wholesome change; besides, it would not last.  While I was his companion there were moments when he left his ledger for another book.

“You never call yourself a gambler, do you, Locke?” mother asked.  “Strange, too, that you think of Cassy in your business life instead of me.”

“Mary, could I break your settled habits.  Cassy is afloat yet.  I can guide her hither and yon.  Moreover, with her, I dream of youth.”

“Is youth so happy?” we both asked.

“We think so, when we see it in others.”

“Not all of us,” she said.  “You think Cassandra has no ways of her own!  She can make us change ours; do you know that?”

“May be.”

A habit grew upon me of consulting the sea as soon as I rose in the morning.  Its aspect decided how my day would be spent.  I watched it, studying its changes, seeking to understand its effect, ever attracted by an awful materiality and its easy power to drown me.  By the shore at night the vague tumultuous sphere, swayed by an influence mightier than itself, gave voice, which drew my soul to utter speech for speech.  I went there by day unobserved, except by our people, for I never walked toward the village.  Mother descried me, as she would a distant sail, or Aunt Merce, who had a vacant habit of looking from all the windows a moment at a time, as if she were forever expecting the arrival of somebody who never came.  Arthur, too, saw me, as he played