CHAPTER XXVIPLANS FOR RESCUE“For Heaven’s sake, captain, what are you up to there?”The voice of Filhiol startled Briggs. In the door of the cabin he saw the old man standing with a look of puzzled anxiety. Through the window Filhiol had seen him take down the kris; and, worried, he had painfully arisen and had hobbled into the house. “Better put that knife up, captain. It’s not a healthy article to be fooling with.”“Not, eh?” asked the captain. “Pretty bad poison, is it?”“Extremely fatal.”“Even dried, this way?”“Certainly! Put it up, captain, I beg you!” The doctor, more and more alarmed, came into the cabin. “Put it up!”“What does it do to you, thiscuraréstuff?” insisted the captain.“Various things. And then—”“Then you die? You surely die?”“You do, unless one very special antidote is applied.”“Nobody in this country has that, though!”“Nobody but myself, so far as I know.”“You’ve got it?” demanded the captain, amazed. “Where the devil wouldyouget it?”“Out East, where you got that devilish kris! You haven’t forgotten that Parsee in Bombay, who gave me the secret cure, after I’d saved him from cholera?But that’s neither here nor there, captain! That kris is no thing to be experimenting with. Put it up now, I tell you! We aren’t going to have any foolishness, captain. Not at our age, mind you! Put it up, now.”Unwillingly the captain obeyed. He hung the weapon up once more, while Filhiol eyed him with suspicious displeasure.“It would be more to the point to see how we’re going to get the boy out of his trouble again,” the doctor reproved. “If you can’t meet this problem without doing something very foolish, captain, you’re not the man I think you!”Briggs made no answer, but hailed:“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!”The old man’s chantey—it now had to do with one “Old Stormy,” alleged to be “dead and gone”—promptly ceased. Footfalls sounded, and Ezra appeared. The cut on his cheek showed livid in the tough, leathery skin.“Cap’n Briggs, sir?” asked he.“The doctor and I are going to take a little morning cruise down to Endicutt in the tender—the buggy, I mean.”“An’ you want me to h’ist sail on Bucephalus, sir? All right! That ain’t much to want, cap’n. Man wants but little here below, an that’s jin’ly all he gits, as the feller says. Right! The Sea Lawyer’ll be anchored out front, fer you, in less time than it takes to box the compass!”Ezra saluted and disappeared.“I don’t know what I’d do without Ezra,” said the captain. “There’s a love and loyalty in that old heart of his that a million dollars wouldn’t buy. Ezra’s been through some mighty heavy blows with me. If either of us was in danger, he’d give his life freely, to save us. No doubt of that!”“None whatever,” assented the doctor, as they once more made their way out to the porch. He blinked at the shimmering vagrancy of light that sparkled from the harbor through the fringe of birches and tall pines along the shore. “Going down to see Squire Bean? Is that it?”“Yes. The quicker we settle that claim the better. You’ll go with me, eh?”“If I’m needed—yes.”“Well, youareneeded!”“All right. But, after that, I ought to be getting back to Salem.”“You’ll get back to nowhere!” ejaculated Briggs. “They can spare you at the home a few days. You’re needed here on the bridge while this typhoon is blowing. Here you are and here you stay till the barometer begins to rise!”“All right, captain, as you wish,” he conceded, his will overborne by the captain’s stronger one. “But what’s the program?”“The program is to pay off everything and straighten that boy out and make him walk the chalk-line. Between the four of us—you and I and Laura and Ezra—if we can’t do it, we’re not much good, are we?”“Laura? Who is this Laura, anyhow? What kind of a girl is she?”“The very best,” answered Briggs proudly. “Hal wouldn’t go with any other kind. She’s the daughter of Nathaniel Maynard, owner of a dozen schooners. A prettier girl you never laid eyes to, sir!”“Educated woman?”“Two years through college. Then her mother had a stroke, and Laura’s home again. She’s taken the village school, just to fill up her time. A good girl, if there ever was one. Good as gold, every way. Ineedn’t say more. I love her like a daughter. I suppose if I could have my dearest wish—”“You’d have Hal marry her?”“Just that; and I’d see the life of my family carried on stronger, better and more vigorous. I’d see a child or two picking the flowers here, and feel little hands tugging at my old gray beard and—but, Judas priest! I’m getting sentimental now. No more of that, sir!”“I think I understand,” the doctor said in another tone. “We’ve got more than just Hal to save. We’ve got a woman’s happiness to think of. She cares for him, you think?”Briggs nodded silently.“It’s quite to be expected,” commented the doctor. “He certainly can be charming when he tries. There’s only one fly in the honey-pot. Just one—his unbridled temper and his seemingly utter irresponsibility.“You know yourself, captain, his actions this morning have been quite amazing. He starts out to see this girl of his, right away, without giving his bad conduct a second thought. The average boy, expelled from college, would have come home in sackcloth and ashes and would have told you all about it. Hal never even mentioned it. That’s almost incredible.”“Hal’s not an average kind of boy, any more thanIwas!” put in the captain proudly.“No, he doesn’t seem to be,” retorted the physician, peppery with infirmity and shaken nerves. “However, I’m your guest and I won’t indulge in any personalities. Whatever comes I’m with you!”The captain took his withered hand in a grip that hurt, and for a moment there was silence. This silence was broken by the voice of Ezra, driving down the lane:“All ready, cap’n! All canvas up, aloft an’ alow,an’ this here craft ready to make two knots an hour ef she don’t founder afore you leave port! Fact is, I think Sea Lawyer’s foundered already!”Together captain and doctor descended the path to the front gate. In a few minutes Ezra, bony hands on hips, watched the two men slowly drive from sight round the turn by the smithy. Grimly the old fellow shook his head and gripped his pipe in some remnants of teeth.“I don’t like Pills,” grumbled he. “He’s a tightwad; never even slipped me a cigar. He’s one o’ them fellers that stop the clock, nights, to save the works. S’pose I’d oughta respect old age, but old age ain’t always to be looked up to, as, fer instance, in the case of eggs. He’s been ratin’ Master Hal down, I reckon. An’ that wun’tdo!”Resentfully Ezra came back to the house and entered the hall. Into the front room Ezra walked, approached the fireplace and for a moment stood there, carefully observing the weapons. Then he reached up and straightened the position of the “Penang lawyer” club, on its supporting hooks.“I got to git that jest right,” said he. “Jest exactly right. Ef the cap’n should see ’twas a mite out o’ place he might suspicion that was what Master Hal hit me with. So? Is that right, that way?”With keen judgment he squinted at the club and gave it a final touch. The kris, also, he adjusted.“I didn’t know Hal touched the toad-stabber, too,” he remarked. “But I guess he must of. It’s been moved some, that’s sure.“I guess things’ll do now,” judged he, satisfied. “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup an’ the lip, but there’s a damn sight more after the cup has beenatthe lip. That’s all that made Master Hal slip. He didn’t know, rightly, what he was up to. Forgivethe boy? God bless him, you bet! A million times over!“But that doctor, now, what’s been ratin’ Master Hal down—no, no, he’ll never be no friend o’mine! Well, this ain’t gittin’ dinner ready fer Master Hal. A boy what can dive off Geyser Rock, an’ lick McLaughlin, an’ read heathen Chinee, an’ capture the purtiest gal inthistown, is goin’ to be rationed proper, or I’m no cook aboard the snuggest craft that ever sailed a lawn, with lilacs on the port bow an’ geraniums to starb’d!”Ezra gave a final, self-assuring glance at the Malay club that had so nearly ended his life, and turned back to his galley with a song upon his lips:“A Yankee ship’s gone down the river,Her masts an’ yard they shine like silver.Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!Blow, boys, blow!Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!How d’ye know she’s a Yankee clipper?By the Stars and Stripes that fly above her!Blow, boys, blow!An’ who d’ye think is captain of her?One-Eyed Kelly, the Bowery runner!Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!An’ what d’ye think they had fer dinner?Belayin’-pin soup an’ monkey’s liver!Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!Blow, boys, blow!Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!”CHAPTER XXVIIGEYSER ROCKHal Briggs had little thought of trouble as he strode away in search of Laura. Very hot was his blood as he swung down the shaded street toward the house of Nathaniel Maynard, father of the girl. Some of the good folk frowned and were silent as he greeted them, but others had to smile and raise a hand of recognition. Still at some distance from Laura’s house, the boy caught sight of a creamy-toned voile dress among the hollyhocks in the side yard. He whistled, waved his hand, hurried his pace. And something leaped within him, so that his heart beat up a little thickly, as the girl waved an answering hand.Another look came to his eyes. Another light began to burn in their blue depths.“Geyser Rock!” he whispered. “By God, the very place!”Geyser Rock boldly fronts the unbroken sweep of the sea at Thunder Head. Up it leaps, sheer two hundred feet, from great deeps. Fifty feet from the barnacle-crusted line of high-tide a ledgelike path leads to the face of the cliff. From this ledge Hal often took the plunge that had won him local fame—a plunge into frothing surf that even in the calmest of midsummer days was never still.Few visitors ever struggle up through sumacs, brakes and undergrowth, to gain the vantage-point of thepinnacle. Rolling boulders, slippery ledge and dizzying overlook upon the shining sea deter all but the hardy. The very solitude of the place had greatly endeared it to Hal. To him it was often a solace and a comfort after his strange fits of rage and viciousness.All alone, up in that isolated height, he had passed long hours reading, smoking, musing in the tiny patch of grass there under the canopy of the white-birches’ filigree of green, or under the huge pine that carpeted the north slope of the crest with odorous, russet spills. Some of his happiest hours had been spent on the summit, through the tree-tops watching sky-shepherds tend their flocks across the pastures infinitely far and blue above him.Strangely secluded was the top of Geyser Rock. Though it lay hardly a pistol-shot from the main coast-road, it seemed almost as isolated as if it had been down among the Celebes.For that reason Hal loved it best of all, with its grasses, flowers, ferns and tangled thickets, its rock-ridges filigreed with silvery lichens or sparkling with white quartz-crystals. From this aerie Hal could glimpse a bit of the village; the prim church spire; the tiny, far gravestones sleeping on Croft Hill. The solitude of this, his own domain by right of conquest, had grown ever more dear and needful to him as he had advanced toward manhood.Such was the place toward which Laura and he were now walking along the road, with tilled fields and rock-bossed rolling hills to right of them; and, to their left, the restless flashings of the sea.Laura had never been more charming. Her happiness in his return had flushed her cheeks with color and had brightened her eyes—thoughtful, deep, loyal eyes—till they looked clear and fresh as summer skies after rain.Everything wholesome and glad seemed joined in Laura; her health and spirits were like the morning breeze itself that came to court the land, from the golden sparklings that stretched away to the shadowed, purple rim of the ocean. The June within her heart mirrored itself through her face, reflecting the June that overbrooded earth and sea and sky.Hal sensed all this and more, as with critical keenness he looked down at her, walking beside him. He noted the wind-blown hair that shaded her eyes; he saw the health and vigor of that lithe, firm-breasted young body of hers. His look, brooding, glowed evilly. Fifty years ago thus had his grandsire’s eyes kindled at sight of Kuala Pahang in her tight little Malay jacket. And as if words from the past had audibly echoed from some vibrant chord in the old-time captain’s symphony of desire, once more the thought formed in his brain:“She’s mine, the girl is! She’s plump as a young porpoise, and, by God, I’m going to have her!”The words he uttered, though, were far afield from these. He was saying:“So now, Laura, you see I wasn’t really to blame, after all. ‘A lie runs round the world, while truth is getting on its sandals.’ That proverb’s as true here as in Siam, where it originated. People are saying I was drunk and brutal, and all that, when the fact is—”“I know, Hal,” she answered, her eyes troubled. “I know how this country gossip exaggerates. But, even so, did you do right in beating Captain McLaughlin as you did?”“It was the only thing Icoulddo, Laura!” he protested. “The bully tried to humiliate me. I—I just licked him, that’s all. You wouldn’t want me to be a milksop, would you?”“No, not that, Hal. But a fair fight is one thingand brutality is another. And then, too, they say you’d been drinking.”He laughed and slid his hand about her arm.“I give you my word of honor, Laura, all I’d had was just a little nip to take the sea-chill out of my bones. Come, now, look at me, and tell me if I look like a thug and a drunkard!”He stopped in the deserted road, swung the girl round toward him, and laid his hands on her shoulders. Through the sheer thinness of her dress he felt the warmth of her. The low-cut V of her waist tempted him, dizzyingly, to plant a kiss there; but he held steady, and met her questioning eyes with a look that seemed all candor.For a long moment Laura kept silence, searching his face. Far off, mournfully the bell-buoy sent in its blur of musical tolling across the moving sea-floor.“Well, Laura, do I look a ruffian?” asked Hal again, smiling.Laura’s eyes fell.“I’m going to believe you, Hal, whatever people say,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it happened at all, but I suppose that’s the way of a man. You won’t do anything like that again, though, will you?”“No—dear! Never!”He drew her toward him, but she shook her head and pressed him back. Wise with understanding, from sources of deep instinct, he let her go. But now the fires in his eyes were burning more hotly. And as they once more started down along the road he cast on her a glance of quick and all-inclusive desire.Silence a minute or two. Then Hal asked:“Laura, have you ever been up Geyser Rock?”“No. Why?” Her look was wondering.“Let’s go!”“That’s pretty rough climbing for a girl, isn’t it?”“Not for a girl like you, Laura. You can make it, all right. And the view—oh, wonderful!” His enthusiasm quickened now that he saw her coming to his hand. “On a clear day you can see Cape Ann, to northward, and Cross Rip Light, to the south. See that big Norway pine right there? That’s where the path leads in. Come on, Laura!”“I—I don’t know—”“Afraid?”“Not whereyouare, Hal, to protect me!”He took her hand and drew her into the thick-wooded path, in under the cool green shadows, gold-sprinkled with the magic of the sun’s morris-dance of little elfin light-fairies. New strength seemed to flood him. His heart, beginning to beat quickly, flushed his face with hot blood. Something as yet unawakened, something potent, atavistic, something that had its roots twined far into the past, surged through his veins.“Come on, Laura!” he repeated. “Come on, I’ll show you the way!”Half an hour had passed before they stood upon the summit. They had perhaps lingered a bit more than needful, even with so many leaves and flowers to pick and study over; and, moreover, part of the way their progress had been really difficult. Hal had carried her in his arms up some of the more dangerous pitches—carried her quite as if she had been a child. The clinging of her arms to his shoulders, the warmth and yielding of her, the blowing of her hair across his face, the faint perfume of her alluring femininity had kindled fires that glowed from his eyes—eyes like the eyes of Alpheus Briggs in the old days when the Malay girl had been his captive. Yet still the atavisms in him had been stifled down. For Hal wassober now. And still the metes and bounds of civilization and of law had held the boy in leash.Thus they had reached the summit. Far up past the diving-ledge they had made their way, and so had climbed to the little sheltered nook facing the sky.“I think you’re wonderful, Laura!” Hal said as he pressed aside the bushes for her to enter the grassy sward. His voice was different now; his whole manner had subtly altered. No longer words of college argot came to his lips. “I think you’re really very wonderful! There’s not another girl in this town who’d take a risk like this!”“It’s nothing, Hal,” she answered, looking up at him in the sunshine with a smile. “I told you before I couldn’t possibly be afraid where you were. HowcouldI be afraid?”“Lots of girls would be, all the same,” said he. “You’re just a wonder. Well, now, let’s go over there to the edge. I won’t let you fall. I want you to see the view. Just through that fringe of birches there you’ll see it.”With quickened breath the girl peered down through the trees, at land and sea spread far below, while Hal’s arm held her from disaster. Branches and twigs had pulled at her, in the ascent. Her voile dress showed a tear or two; and all about her face the disordered hair strayed as the sea-breeze freshened over the top of Geyser. The boy kept silence that matched hers. A kind of vague, half-realized struggle seemed taking place in him—a conflict between the sense of chivalry, protecting this woman in his absolute power, and the old demon-clutch that reached from other days and other places.Now, though his thoughts and hers lay far apart as the world’s poles, each felt something of the same mysterious oppression. For the first time quite alonetogether, up there aloft in that snug, sun-warm nest embowered in greenery, a kind of mystic and half-sensed languor seemed to envelop them; a yearning that is older than old Egypt; a wonder and a dream.Hal’s arm tightened a very little ’round her body. She felt it tremble, and, wondering, understood that she, too, felt a little of that tremor in her own heart. She realized in a kind of half-sensed way that more dangers lay here than the danger of falling from the cliff. Yet in her soul she knew that she was glad to be there.CHAPTER XXVIIILAURA UNDERSTANDSThus she remained, holding to a silver birch, leaning out a little toward the chasm. Up from the depths echoed a gurgling roar as the white fury drenched and belabored the gray, sheer wall, then fell back, hissing.For a moment Laura peered down, held by the boy’s encircling arm. She looked abroad upon the sun-shining waters flecked with far, white boats and smudged with steamer-smoke. Then she breathed deep and lifted up her face toward the gold filigree of sun and leaf, and sighed:“Oh, it’s wonderful, Hal! I never even guessed it could be anything like this!”“Wonderful isn’t the name for it, Laura,” he answered. He pointed far. “See the lighthouse? And Cape Ann in the haze? And the toy boats? Everything and everybody’s a toy now except just you and me. We’re the only real people. I wish it were really so, don’t you?”“Why, Hal? What would you do if it were?”“Oh,” he answered with that heart-warming smile of his, “I’d take you in a yacht, Laura, away off to some of those wonderful places the Oriental poems tell about. We’d sail away ‘through the Silken Sea,’ and ‘Beyond the Wind,’ wherever that is. Wouldn’t you like to go there with me, dear?”“Yes. But—”“But what, Laura?” His lips were almost brushingthe curve of her neck, where the wind-blown hair fell in loose ringlets. “But what?”“I—I mustn’t answer that, Hal. Not now!”“Why not now?”“While you’re still in college, Hal? While there’s so much work and struggle still ahead of you?”The boy frowned, unseen by her, for her eyes were fixed on the vague horizons beyond which, no doubt, lay Silken Seas and far, unknown places of enchantment beyond all winds whatsoever. Not thus did he desire to be understood by Laura. The whim of June shrinks from being mistaken for a thing of lifelong import. Laura drew back from the chasm and faced him with a little smile.“It’s very wrong for people to make light of such things,” she said. Her look lay steadily upon his face. “While the sun is shining it’s so easy to say more than one means. And then, at the first cloud, the fancy dies like sunlight fading.”“But this isn’t a mere fancy that I feel for you,” Hal persisted, sensing that he had lost ground with her. “I’ve had plenty of foolish ideas about girls. But this is different. It’s so very, very different every way!” His voice, that he well knew how to make convincing, really trembled a little with the thrill of this adventuring.“I wish I could believe you, Hal!”He drew her toward him again. This time she did not resist. He felt the yielding of her sinuous young body, its warmth and promise of intoxication.“Youcanbelieve me, Laura! Only trust in me!”“I—I don’t know, Hal. I know what men are. They’re all so much alike.”“Not all, dear! You ought to know me well enough to have confidence in me. Think of the long, long time we’ve known each other. Think of theyears and years of friendship! Why, Laura, we’ve known each other ever since we were a couple of children playing on the beach, writing each other’s names in the sand—”“For the next high tide to wash away!”“But we’re not children now. There’s something in my heart no tide can obliterate!”“I hope that’s true, Hal. But you’re not through college yet. Wait till you are. You’ve got to graduate with flying colors, and make your dear old grandfather the proudest man in the world, and be the wonderful success I know you’re going to be! And make me the happiest girl! You will, won’t you?”“I’ll do anything in the world for you, Laura!” he exclaimed. His face, flushed with enkindling desire, showed no sign of shame or dejection. Laura knew nothing of his débâcle at the university. Of course she must soon know; but all that still lay in the future. And to Hal nothing mattered now but just the golden present with its nectar in the blossom and its sunshine on the leaf. He drew her a little closer.“Tell me,” he whispered. “Do you really care?”“Don’t ask me—yet!” she denied him, turning her face away. “Come, let’s be going down!”“Why, we’ve only just come!”“I know, but—”“You needn’t be afraid ofme!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t, are you, dear?”“No more than I am of myself,” she answered frankly, while her throat and face warmed with blood that suddenly burned there. “We—really oughtn’t to be alone like this, Hal.”He laughed and opened his arms to let her go. For a moment she stood looking up at him; then her eyes, too innocent to find the guile in his, smiled with pure-hearted affection.“Forgive me, Hal!” said she. “I didn’t mean that. But, you know, when you put your arms round me like that—”“I won’t do it again,” he answered, instinct telling him the bird would take fright if the trap seemed too tightly closed. He dropped his arms, the palms of his hands spread outward. “You see, when you tell me to let you go, I mind you?”“Yes, like the good, dear boy you are!” she exclaimed with sudden, impulsive affection. She reached up, took his face in both hands and studied his eyes. He thought she was about to kiss him, and his heart leaped. He quivered to seize her, to burn his kisses on her lips, there in the leafy, sun-glimmering shade; but already Laura’s arms had fallen, and she had turned away, back toward the path that would lead them downward from this tiny enchanted garden to the common level of the world again.“Come, Hal,” said she, “we must be going now!”He nodded, his eyes glowering coals of desire, and followed after. Was the bird, then, going to escape his hand? A sinister look darkened his face; just such a look as had made Captain Briggs a brute when he had shouldered his way into his cabin aboard theSilver Fleece, to master the captive girl.“Laura, wait a minute, please!” begged Hal.“Well, what is it?” she asked, half-turning, a beautiful, white, gracious figure in the greenery—a very wood-nymph of a figure, sylvan, fresh, enwoven with life’s most mystic spell—the magic of youth.“You haven’t seen half my little Mysterious Island up here!”“Mysterious Island?” asked she, pleased by the fanciful whim. “You call it that, do you?”“Yes, I’ve always called it that ever since I read Jules Verne, when I was only a youngster. I’ve nevertold anybody, though. I haven’t told that, or a hundred other imaginings.” He had come close to her again, had taken her by the arm, was drawing her away from the path and toward the little flower-enameled greensward among the boulders crowned with birch and pine. “You’re the only one that knows my secret, Laura. You’ll never, never tell, now, will you?”“Never!” she answered, uneasiness dispelled by his frank air. “Do you imagine things like that, too, Hal? I thought I was the only one around here who ever ‘pretended.’ Are you a dreamer, too?”“Very much a dreamer. Sit down here, Laura, and let me tell you some of my dreams.”He sat down in the grass, and drew her down beside him. She yielded “half willing and half shy.” For a moment he looked at her with eyes of desire. Then, still holding her hand, he said:“It was all fairies and gnomes up here when I first came. Fairyland in those boyhood days. After a while the fairies went away and pirates began to come; pirates and Indians and a wild crew. I was sometimes a victim, sometimes a member of the brotherhood. There’s treasure buried all ’round here. Those were the days when I was reading about Captain Kidd and Blackbeard. You understand?”“Indeed Ido! Go on!”He laughed, as her mood yielded under the subtle mastery of his voice, his eyes.“Oh, but it’s a motley crew we’ve been up here, the pirates and I!” said he, leaning still closer. “‘Treasure Island’ peopled the place with adventurers—Long John Silver, and Pew and the Doctor, and all the rest. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ swept them all away, all but Man Friday; and then the savages hadto come. If there’s anything at all I haven’t suffered in the way of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals and being rescued just in the nick of time up here, really I don’t know what it is. And since I’ve grown up, though of course I can’t ‘pretend’ any more, I’ve always loved this place to day-dream in, and wonder in, about the thing that every man hopes will come to him some day.”“And what’s that, Hal?” she asked in a lower voice.“Love!” he whispered. “Love—and you!”“Hal, is that really true?”“Look at me, Laura, and you’ll know!”She could not meet his gaze. Her eyes lowered. He drew his arm about her as she drooped a little toward him.“Listen to me!” he commanded, masterfully lying. “There’s never been anybody but you, Laura. There never will be. You’ve been in all my dreams, by night, my visions by day, up here in fairyland!”His words were coming impetuously now. In his eyes the golden flame of desire was burning hot.“You’re everything to me! Everything! I’ve sensed it for a long time, but only in the last month or two I’ve really understood. It all came to me in a kind of revelation, Laura, one day when I was translating a poem from the Hindustani.”“A poem, Hal?” The girl’s voice was tremulous. Her eyes had closed. Her head, resting on his shoulder, thrilled him with ardor; and in his nostrils the perfume of her womanhood conjured up shimmering dream-pictures of the Orient—strange lands that, though unseen, he mysteriously seemed to know. “Tell me the poem, dear!” Laura whispered. “A love-poem?”“Such a love-poem! Listen, sweetheart! It’s a thousand years old, and it comes from the dim past to tell you what I feel for you. It runs this way:“Belovèd, were I to name the blossoms of the spring,And all the fruits of autumn’s bounteousness;Were I to name all things that charm and thrill,And earth, and Heaven, all in one word divine,I would name thee!“Had I the gold of Punjab’s golden land,Had I as many diamonds, shining brightAs leaves that tremble in a thousand woods,Or sands along ten thousand shining seas;Had I as many pearls of shifting hueAs blades of grass in fields of the whole world,Or stars that shine on the broad breast of night,I’d give them all, a thousand, thousand times,To make thee mine!”For a minute, while Hal watched her with calculation, Laura kept silence. Then she looked up at him, dreamy-eyed, and smiled.“That’s wonderful, Hal. I only wish you meant it!”“YouknowI do! I want you, Laura—God, how much! You’re all I need to make my fairyland up here a heaven!”“What—what do you mean, Hal? Are you asking me to—to be your wife?”His face contracted, involuntarily, but he veiled his true thought with a lie. What mattered just a lie to gain possession of her in this golden hour of sunshine?“Yes, yes, of course!” he cried, drawing her to his lips in a betraying kiss—a kiss, to her, culminant with wonder and mystic with a good woman’s aspiration for a life of love and service—a kiss, to him, only a trivial incident, lawless, unbridled. At heart hecursed the girl’s pure passion for him. Not this was what he wanted; and dimly, even through the flame of his desire, he could see a hundred complications, perils. But now the lie was spoken—and away with to-morrow!Again he kissed the girl, sensing, in spite of his desire, the different quality of her returning kiss. Then she smiled up at him, and with her hand smoothed back the thick, black hair from his forehead.“It’s all so wonderful, Hal!” she whispered fondly. “I can’t believe it’s true. But it is true, isn’t it? Even though we’ve got to wait till you get through college. I’m willing to. I love you enough, Hal, to wait forever. And you will, too, won’t you?”“Of—of course I will!”“And it’s really, really true? It’s not just a fairy dream of wonderland, up here, that will vanish when we go down to the world again?”“No, no, it’s all true, Laura,” he was forced to answer, baffled and at a loss. Not at all was this adventure developing as he had planned it. Why, Laura was taking it seriously! Laura was acting like a child—a foolish, preposterous child! The web that he had hoped to spread for her undoing had, because of her own trusting confidence, been tangled all about himself.Abashed and angry, he sought some way to break its bonds. Another poem rose to memory, a poem that he hoped might make her understand. He had read it the day before in a little book called “The Divine Image,” and it had instantly burned itself into his brain. Now said he:“Listen, dear. I’ve got another verse for you. It’s called: ‘His Woman.’”“And I’m really yours, forever?”“Of course you are, dear! Listen, now:“‘In the pale, murmuring dawn she layAlone, with nothing more to lose.Her eyes one warm, soft arm espied,And lips too tired to voice her prideCaressed and kissed a bruise.’”The girl looked up at him a moment, circled with his arm, as she lay there content. For a little she seemed not to understand. Then, slowly, a puzzled look and then a look of hurt rose to her eyes.“Hal, you—you mustn’t—”“Why mustn’t I, dear?”She tried to answer, but his lips upon her mouth stifled her speech.Swift fear leaped through her as she fought away from him.“Oh, Hal!” she cried. “What—what are you looking at me that way for? Your eyes, Hal—your eyes—”In vain he tried to kiss her. Her face was turned away, her hands repulsing him.“Kiss me, Laura! Kiss me!”“No, no—not now! Oh, Hal, you have only yourself to resist. I have you to resist, and myself, too!”The thought gave him a minute’s pause. Did some instinct of chivalry, deep-buried, try for a second to struggle up through his evil heritage, or was it but surprise that loosed his grip upon her so that she escaped his hands, his arms?“God forgive you, Hal, for having killed the most wonderful treasure I had—my faith in you!” she cried from where she stood now, looking down at him with tragic eyes of disillusion. “Oh, God forgive you!”He would have spoken, but she turned and fled toward the tangled thicket through which the path led downward.“Laura! Wait!” He sprang to his feet, peering after her with hateful eyes. No answer as she vanished through the greenery.For all his rage and passion, Hal realized how absurd a figure he would make, pursuing her. Swift anger swept over him, broke all down, rushed in uncontrolled floods.A moment he stood there, brutal, venomous. Then with a laugh, the echo of that which had sounded when Alpheus Briggs had flung the Malay girl to death, he clutched at his thick hair, tugging at it with excess of madness. He broke into wild curses that rose against the sky with barbarous blasphemy.Foam slavered upon his lips. His face grew black; the veins stood out upon his neck and temples. A madman, he trampled through the bushes, stamping, striking, lusting to kill.So for a time he raged in blind, stark passion; while Laura, shaken and afraid, bleeding at her heart of hearts, made her way all alone back to the safety of the seashore road.At last, his rage burned out, Hal flung himself down in the grass. Face buried in hands, teeth set in bleeding lip, he lay there.And over him the heavens, like an eyeless face, smiled down with calm, untroubled purpose.CHAPTER XXIXTHE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANESadly returning home, Laura stopped for a moment at her garden gate to make quite sure her father was not in the side yard. With all her girlish dreams broken and draggled, the heartbroken girl stood looking at the flowers that only an hour before had seemed so wondrous gay. And all at once she heard the sound of wheels upon the road. Turning, she saw old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol slowly driving toward Snug Haven.Half-minded to retreat inside the garden, still she stood there, for already Captain Briggs had raised a hand in greeting. Every feature of the old captain’s face was limned with grief. His shoulders seemed to sag, bowed down with heavier weight than his almost eighty years could pile upon them.So the girl remained at the gate, greatly sorrowing; and peered after the two old men. Though she could not guess the captain’s trouble, her woman’s instinct told her this trouble bore on Hal. And over her own grief settled still another cloud that darkened it still more.Puzzled, disillusioned, she swung the gate and entered the prim paths bordered with low box-hedges. No one saw her. Quietly she entered the house and crept up-stairs to her own room. There, in that virginal place, she dropped down on her old-fashioned, four-posted bed of black walnut, and buried her face inthe same pillows to which, girl-like, she had often confided so many innocent and tender dreams.As the girl lay there, crying for the broken bauble, love, crushed in the brutal hand of Hal, old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol—once more back on the quarterdeck of Snug Haven—settled themselves for dejected consultation.“I never did expect ’twould be as much as that,” the captain said, mechanically stuffing his pipe. “I reckoned maybe fifty dollars would pay demurrage and repairs on Mac. McLaughlin isn’t worth more, rig and all. But, Judas priest, two hundred and a half! That’s running into money. Money I can ill afford to pay, sir!”“I know,” the doctor answered. “It’s cruel extortion. But what can you do, captain? McLaughlin holds the tiller now. He can steer any course he chooses. The fact that he started at five hundred, plus the apology that he demands from Hal on the deck of theSylviain front of the whole crew, and that we’ve pared him down to two hundred and fifty, plus the apology—that’s a very great gain. It’s bad, I know, but not so bad as having had the boy locked up, charged with felonious assault. It’s not so bad as that, sir!”“No, no, of course not,” Briggs agreed. “I suppose I’ve got to pay, though Lord knows, sir, the money’s needed terribly for other things, now that the college bill has got to be settled all over again!”“I know it’s hard,” sympathized the doctor, “but there’s no help for it. Wipe the slate clean, and give Hal another start. That’s all youcando.”The old captain remained smoking and brooding a while, with sunshine on his head. At last his eyes sought the far, deep line of blue that stretched against the horizon—the sea-line, lacking which the old man always sensed a vacancy, a loss.“Close on to six bells,” judged he, “by the way the sun’s shining on the water. Wonder where the boy can be? I’ve got to have a proper gam with him.”“Why? Where ought he to be?” the doctor asked.“He must have put back into port, after his little cruise with Laura, this morning. We sighted her, moored at her front gate, you remember?”“H-m! You don’t suppose there’s trouble brewing there too, do you? I thought the girl looked upset, didn’t you?”“Ididn’t notice anything. What seemed to be the matter?”“I thought she’d been crying a bit.”The captain clenched his fist.“By the Judas priest!” he exclaimed fervently. “If I thought Hal had been abusing that girl, I’d make it hot for him! That’sonething I won’t stand!” He peered down the road with narrowing eyes, then got up and went to the front door. “Hal, oh, Hal!” he cried.No answer. The captain’s voice echoed emptily in the old-fashioned hallway.“Not here, anyhow,” said he, returning to his rocker. “Well, we won’t accuse him of anything else till we know. I only hope he hasn’t written any more black pages on the log by mishandling Laura.”Wearily his eyes sought Croft Hill. Of a sudden unbidden tears blurred his sight.“There’sa peaceful harbor for old, battered craft, anyhow,” he murmured, pointing. “I sometimes envy all the tired folk that’s found sleep and rest up there in their snug berths, while we still stand watch in all weathers. If, after all I’ve worked and hoped for, there’s nothing ahead but breakers, I’ll envy them more than ever.”“Come now, captain!” Filhiol tried to cheer him.“Maybe it was only a little lovers’ quarrel that sent Laura home. There’s never all smooth sailing, with maid and man for a crew. Let’s wait a while and see.”“Yes, wait and think it over,” said the captain. “There’s only one place for me, doctor, when things look squally, and that’s with my folks on the hill. Guess I’ll take a walk up there now and talk it over with them. Come with me, will you?”Filhiol shook his head.“Too much for me, that hill is,” he answered. “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit right here and watch the sea.”“Suit yourself, doctor.” And Captain Briggs arose. “When Ezra comes down the lane tell him not to bother with dinner. A little snack will do. Let’s each of us think this thing out, and maybe we can chart the proper course between us.”He stood a moment in the sunshine, then, bare-headed, went down the steps and turned into the path that would lead him up Croft Hill. He stopped, gathering a handful of bright flowers—zinnias, hollyhocks, sweet peas—for his ever-remembered dead. Then he went on again.“Poor old chap!” said Dr. Filhiol. “The curse is biting pretty deep. That’s all poppycock, that Malay cursing; but the curses of heredity are stern reality. There’s a specific for every poison in the world. Even the dreadcuraréhas one. But for the poison of heredity, what remedy is there? Poor old captain!”Alpheus Briggs, with bowed head, climbed up the winding way among the blackberry bushes, the sumacs and wild roses dainty-sweet; and so at last came to the wall pierced with the whitewashed gate that he himself kept always in repair.Into the cemetery, his Garden of Gethsemane, he penetrated, by paths flanked with simple and piousstones, many of hard slate carved with death’s-heads, urns, cherubs and weeping-willows, according to the custom of the ancient, godly days. Thus to his family burial lot he came, and there laid his offering upon the graves he loved; and then sat down upon the bench there, for meditation in this hour of sorrow and perplexity.And as sun and sky and sea, fresh breeze and drifting cloud, and the mild influences of his lifelong friend, tobacco, all worked their soothings on him, he presently plucked up a little heart once more. The nearness of his dead bade him have hope and courage. He felt, in that quiet and solemn place, the tightening of his family bonds; he felt that duty called him to lift even these new and heavy burdens, to bear them valiantly and like a man.With the graves about him and the sea before, and over all the heavens, calm returned. And sorrow—which, like anger, cannot long be keen—faded into another thought: the thought of how he should make of Hal the man that he would have him be.How restful was this sunlit hilltop, where he knew that soon he, too, must sleep! The faint, far cries of gulls drifted in to him with the bell-buoy’s slow tolling; and up from the village rose the music of the smitten anvil. That music minded him of a Hindustani poem Hal once had read to him—a poem about the blacksmith, Destiny, beating out showers of sparks upon the cosmic anvil in the night of eternity, each spark a human soul; and each, swiftly extinguished, worth just as much to Destiny as earthly anvil sparks are to the human toiler at the forge—as much and no more.The poem had thus ended:“All is Maya, all is illusion! Why struggle, then?To walk is better than to run; to stand is better than to walk.To sit is better than to stand; to lie is better than to sit.To sleep is better than to wake; to dream is better than to live.Better still is a sleep that is dreamless,And death is best of all!”“I wonder if that’s true?” the captain mused. “I wonder if lifeisall illusion and death alone is real?”Thus meditating, he felt very near the wife and son who lay there beneath the flowers he had just laid on the close-cut sod. The cloud-shadows, drifting over the hilltop, seemed symbols of the transitory passage of man’s life, unstable, ever drifting on, and leaving on the universe no greater imprint than shadows on the grass. He yearned toward those who had gone to rest before him; and though not a praying man, a supplication voiced itself in him:“Oh, God, let me finish out my work, and let me rest! Let me put the boy on the right course through life, and let me know he’ll follow it—then, let me steer for the calm harbor where Thou, my Pilot, wilt give me quiet from the storm!”Thus the old captain sat there for a long time, pondering many and sad things; and all at once he saw the figure of a man in white coming along the road. The captain knew him afar.“There’s Hal now,” said he. “I wonder where he’s been and what this all means?”A new anxiety trembled through his wounded heart, that longed for nothing now but love and trust. Up rose the old captain, and with slow steps walked to the eastern wall of the cemetery. There he waited patiently.Presently Hal came into sight, round the shoulder of Croft Hill.“Ahoy, there! Hal! Come here—I want to see you!”The old man’s cry dropped with disagreeable surpriseinto Hal’s sinister reflections. Hal looked up, and swore to himself. He sensed the meaning of that summons.“There’s another damned scene coming,” thought Hal. “Why the hell can’t he let me alone now? Why can’t everybody let me alone?”Nothing could now have been more inopportune than an interview with his grandfather. Hal—his rage burned out to ashes—had come down from Geyser Rock, and had turned homeward in evil humor. And as he had gone he had already begun to lay out tentative plans for what he meant to do.“It’s all bull, what Laura handed me!” he had been thinking when the captain’s summons had intruded. “Am I going to let her throw me that way? I guessnot! I’ll land her yet; but not here, not here! I can’t stick here. The way I’m in wrong with the college, and now this new rough-house with Laura, will certainly put the crimp in me. What I’ve got to do is clear out. And I won’t go alone, at that. If I only had a twenty-five footer! I could get her aboard of it some way. The main thing’s a boat. The rest is easy. I could let them whistle, all of them. The open sea—that’s the thing! That’s a man’s way to do things—not go sniveling ’round here in white flannels all summer, letting a girl hand it to me that way!“God, if I could only raise five hundred bucks! I could get Jim Gordon’sKittiwinkfor that, and provision it, too. Make a break for Cuba, or Honduras; why, damn it, I could go round the world—go East—get away from all this preaching and rough-house—live like a man, by God!”The captain’s hail shattered Hal’s dreams.“Devil take the old man!” snarled Hal to himself as he scowled up at the figure on the hilltop. “What’s he wantnow? And devil take all women! They’re likedogs. Beat a dog and a woman, and you can’t go wrong. I’ll play this game to win yet, and make good! Hello, up there?” he shouted in reply to the captain. “What d’you want of me?”“I want to talk with you, Hal,” the old man’s voice came echoing down. “Come here, sir!”Another moment Hal hesitated. Then, realizing that he could not yet raise the banner of open rebellion, he turned and lagged toward the road that led up the south side of the hill.As he climbed, he put into the background of his brain the plans he had been formulating, and for the more pressing need of the future began framing plausible lies.He lighted a Turkish cigarette as he entered the graveyard, to give himself a certain nonchalance; and so, smoking this thing which the old captain particularly abominated, swinging his shoulders, he came along the graveled walk toward the family burying lot, where once more Captain Briggs had sat down upon the bench to wait for him.
CHAPTER XXVIPLANS FOR RESCUE“For Heaven’s sake, captain, what are you up to there?”The voice of Filhiol startled Briggs. In the door of the cabin he saw the old man standing with a look of puzzled anxiety. Through the window Filhiol had seen him take down the kris; and, worried, he had painfully arisen and had hobbled into the house. “Better put that knife up, captain. It’s not a healthy article to be fooling with.”“Not, eh?” asked the captain. “Pretty bad poison, is it?”“Extremely fatal.”“Even dried, this way?”“Certainly! Put it up, captain, I beg you!” The doctor, more and more alarmed, came into the cabin. “Put it up!”“What does it do to you, thiscuraréstuff?” insisted the captain.“Various things. And then—”“Then you die? You surely die?”“You do, unless one very special antidote is applied.”“Nobody in this country has that, though!”“Nobody but myself, so far as I know.”“You’ve got it?” demanded the captain, amazed. “Where the devil wouldyouget it?”“Out East, where you got that devilish kris! You haven’t forgotten that Parsee in Bombay, who gave me the secret cure, after I’d saved him from cholera?But that’s neither here nor there, captain! That kris is no thing to be experimenting with. Put it up now, I tell you! We aren’t going to have any foolishness, captain. Not at our age, mind you! Put it up, now.”Unwillingly the captain obeyed. He hung the weapon up once more, while Filhiol eyed him with suspicious displeasure.“It would be more to the point to see how we’re going to get the boy out of his trouble again,” the doctor reproved. “If you can’t meet this problem without doing something very foolish, captain, you’re not the man I think you!”Briggs made no answer, but hailed:“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!”The old man’s chantey—it now had to do with one “Old Stormy,” alleged to be “dead and gone”—promptly ceased. Footfalls sounded, and Ezra appeared. The cut on his cheek showed livid in the tough, leathery skin.“Cap’n Briggs, sir?” asked he.“The doctor and I are going to take a little morning cruise down to Endicutt in the tender—the buggy, I mean.”“An’ you want me to h’ist sail on Bucephalus, sir? All right! That ain’t much to want, cap’n. Man wants but little here below, an that’s jin’ly all he gits, as the feller says. Right! The Sea Lawyer’ll be anchored out front, fer you, in less time than it takes to box the compass!”Ezra saluted and disappeared.“I don’t know what I’d do without Ezra,” said the captain. “There’s a love and loyalty in that old heart of his that a million dollars wouldn’t buy. Ezra’s been through some mighty heavy blows with me. If either of us was in danger, he’d give his life freely, to save us. No doubt of that!”“None whatever,” assented the doctor, as they once more made their way out to the porch. He blinked at the shimmering vagrancy of light that sparkled from the harbor through the fringe of birches and tall pines along the shore. “Going down to see Squire Bean? Is that it?”“Yes. The quicker we settle that claim the better. You’ll go with me, eh?”“If I’m needed—yes.”“Well, youareneeded!”“All right. But, after that, I ought to be getting back to Salem.”“You’ll get back to nowhere!” ejaculated Briggs. “They can spare you at the home a few days. You’re needed here on the bridge while this typhoon is blowing. Here you are and here you stay till the barometer begins to rise!”“All right, captain, as you wish,” he conceded, his will overborne by the captain’s stronger one. “But what’s the program?”“The program is to pay off everything and straighten that boy out and make him walk the chalk-line. Between the four of us—you and I and Laura and Ezra—if we can’t do it, we’re not much good, are we?”“Laura? Who is this Laura, anyhow? What kind of a girl is she?”“The very best,” answered Briggs proudly. “Hal wouldn’t go with any other kind. She’s the daughter of Nathaniel Maynard, owner of a dozen schooners. A prettier girl you never laid eyes to, sir!”“Educated woman?”“Two years through college. Then her mother had a stroke, and Laura’s home again. She’s taken the village school, just to fill up her time. A good girl, if there ever was one. Good as gold, every way. Ineedn’t say more. I love her like a daughter. I suppose if I could have my dearest wish—”“You’d have Hal marry her?”“Just that; and I’d see the life of my family carried on stronger, better and more vigorous. I’d see a child or two picking the flowers here, and feel little hands tugging at my old gray beard and—but, Judas priest! I’m getting sentimental now. No more of that, sir!”“I think I understand,” the doctor said in another tone. “We’ve got more than just Hal to save. We’ve got a woman’s happiness to think of. She cares for him, you think?”Briggs nodded silently.“It’s quite to be expected,” commented the doctor. “He certainly can be charming when he tries. There’s only one fly in the honey-pot. Just one—his unbridled temper and his seemingly utter irresponsibility.“You know yourself, captain, his actions this morning have been quite amazing. He starts out to see this girl of his, right away, without giving his bad conduct a second thought. The average boy, expelled from college, would have come home in sackcloth and ashes and would have told you all about it. Hal never even mentioned it. That’s almost incredible.”“Hal’s not an average kind of boy, any more thanIwas!” put in the captain proudly.“No, he doesn’t seem to be,” retorted the physician, peppery with infirmity and shaken nerves. “However, I’m your guest and I won’t indulge in any personalities. Whatever comes I’m with you!”The captain took his withered hand in a grip that hurt, and for a moment there was silence. This silence was broken by the voice of Ezra, driving down the lane:“All ready, cap’n! All canvas up, aloft an’ alow,an’ this here craft ready to make two knots an hour ef she don’t founder afore you leave port! Fact is, I think Sea Lawyer’s foundered already!”Together captain and doctor descended the path to the front gate. In a few minutes Ezra, bony hands on hips, watched the two men slowly drive from sight round the turn by the smithy. Grimly the old fellow shook his head and gripped his pipe in some remnants of teeth.“I don’t like Pills,” grumbled he. “He’s a tightwad; never even slipped me a cigar. He’s one o’ them fellers that stop the clock, nights, to save the works. S’pose I’d oughta respect old age, but old age ain’t always to be looked up to, as, fer instance, in the case of eggs. He’s been ratin’ Master Hal down, I reckon. An’ that wun’tdo!”Resentfully Ezra came back to the house and entered the hall. Into the front room Ezra walked, approached the fireplace and for a moment stood there, carefully observing the weapons. Then he reached up and straightened the position of the “Penang lawyer” club, on its supporting hooks.“I got to git that jest right,” said he. “Jest exactly right. Ef the cap’n should see ’twas a mite out o’ place he might suspicion that was what Master Hal hit me with. So? Is that right, that way?”With keen judgment he squinted at the club and gave it a final touch. The kris, also, he adjusted.“I didn’t know Hal touched the toad-stabber, too,” he remarked. “But I guess he must of. It’s been moved some, that’s sure.“I guess things’ll do now,” judged he, satisfied. “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup an’ the lip, but there’s a damn sight more after the cup has beenatthe lip. That’s all that made Master Hal slip. He didn’t know, rightly, what he was up to. Forgivethe boy? God bless him, you bet! A million times over!“But that doctor, now, what’s been ratin’ Master Hal down—no, no, he’ll never be no friend o’mine! Well, this ain’t gittin’ dinner ready fer Master Hal. A boy what can dive off Geyser Rock, an’ lick McLaughlin, an’ read heathen Chinee, an’ capture the purtiest gal inthistown, is goin’ to be rationed proper, or I’m no cook aboard the snuggest craft that ever sailed a lawn, with lilacs on the port bow an’ geraniums to starb’d!”Ezra gave a final, self-assuring glance at the Malay club that had so nearly ended his life, and turned back to his galley with a song upon his lips:“A Yankee ship’s gone down the river,Her masts an’ yard they shine like silver.Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!Blow, boys, blow!Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!How d’ye know she’s a Yankee clipper?By the Stars and Stripes that fly above her!Blow, boys, blow!An’ who d’ye think is captain of her?One-Eyed Kelly, the Bowery runner!Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!An’ what d’ye think they had fer dinner?Belayin’-pin soup an’ monkey’s liver!Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!Blow, boys, blow!Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!”
PLANS FOR RESCUE
“For Heaven’s sake, captain, what are you up to there?”
The voice of Filhiol startled Briggs. In the door of the cabin he saw the old man standing with a look of puzzled anxiety. Through the window Filhiol had seen him take down the kris; and, worried, he had painfully arisen and had hobbled into the house. “Better put that knife up, captain. It’s not a healthy article to be fooling with.”
“Not, eh?” asked the captain. “Pretty bad poison, is it?”
“Extremely fatal.”
“Even dried, this way?”
“Certainly! Put it up, captain, I beg you!” The doctor, more and more alarmed, came into the cabin. “Put it up!”
“What does it do to you, thiscuraréstuff?” insisted the captain.
“Various things. And then—”
“Then you die? You surely die?”
“You do, unless one very special antidote is applied.”
“Nobody in this country has that, though!”
“Nobody but myself, so far as I know.”
“You’ve got it?” demanded the captain, amazed. “Where the devil wouldyouget it?”
“Out East, where you got that devilish kris! You haven’t forgotten that Parsee in Bombay, who gave me the secret cure, after I’d saved him from cholera?But that’s neither here nor there, captain! That kris is no thing to be experimenting with. Put it up now, I tell you! We aren’t going to have any foolishness, captain. Not at our age, mind you! Put it up, now.”
Unwillingly the captain obeyed. He hung the weapon up once more, while Filhiol eyed him with suspicious displeasure.
“It would be more to the point to see how we’re going to get the boy out of his trouble again,” the doctor reproved. “If you can’t meet this problem without doing something very foolish, captain, you’re not the man I think you!”
Briggs made no answer, but hailed:
“Ezra! Oh, Ezra!”
The old man’s chantey—it now had to do with one “Old Stormy,” alleged to be “dead and gone”—promptly ceased. Footfalls sounded, and Ezra appeared. The cut on his cheek showed livid in the tough, leathery skin.
“Cap’n Briggs, sir?” asked he.
“The doctor and I are going to take a little morning cruise down to Endicutt in the tender—the buggy, I mean.”
“An’ you want me to h’ist sail on Bucephalus, sir? All right! That ain’t much to want, cap’n. Man wants but little here below, an that’s jin’ly all he gits, as the feller says. Right! The Sea Lawyer’ll be anchored out front, fer you, in less time than it takes to box the compass!”
Ezra saluted and disappeared.
“I don’t know what I’d do without Ezra,” said the captain. “There’s a love and loyalty in that old heart of his that a million dollars wouldn’t buy. Ezra’s been through some mighty heavy blows with me. If either of us was in danger, he’d give his life freely, to save us. No doubt of that!”
“None whatever,” assented the doctor, as they once more made their way out to the porch. He blinked at the shimmering vagrancy of light that sparkled from the harbor through the fringe of birches and tall pines along the shore. “Going down to see Squire Bean? Is that it?”
“Yes. The quicker we settle that claim the better. You’ll go with me, eh?”
“If I’m needed—yes.”
“Well, youareneeded!”
“All right. But, after that, I ought to be getting back to Salem.”
“You’ll get back to nowhere!” ejaculated Briggs. “They can spare you at the home a few days. You’re needed here on the bridge while this typhoon is blowing. Here you are and here you stay till the barometer begins to rise!”
“All right, captain, as you wish,” he conceded, his will overborne by the captain’s stronger one. “But what’s the program?”
“The program is to pay off everything and straighten that boy out and make him walk the chalk-line. Between the four of us—you and I and Laura and Ezra—if we can’t do it, we’re not much good, are we?”
“Laura? Who is this Laura, anyhow? What kind of a girl is she?”
“The very best,” answered Briggs proudly. “Hal wouldn’t go with any other kind. She’s the daughter of Nathaniel Maynard, owner of a dozen schooners. A prettier girl you never laid eyes to, sir!”
“Educated woman?”
“Two years through college. Then her mother had a stroke, and Laura’s home again. She’s taken the village school, just to fill up her time. A good girl, if there ever was one. Good as gold, every way. Ineedn’t say more. I love her like a daughter. I suppose if I could have my dearest wish—”
“You’d have Hal marry her?”
“Just that; and I’d see the life of my family carried on stronger, better and more vigorous. I’d see a child or two picking the flowers here, and feel little hands tugging at my old gray beard and—but, Judas priest! I’m getting sentimental now. No more of that, sir!”
“I think I understand,” the doctor said in another tone. “We’ve got more than just Hal to save. We’ve got a woman’s happiness to think of. She cares for him, you think?”
Briggs nodded silently.
“It’s quite to be expected,” commented the doctor. “He certainly can be charming when he tries. There’s only one fly in the honey-pot. Just one—his unbridled temper and his seemingly utter irresponsibility.
“You know yourself, captain, his actions this morning have been quite amazing. He starts out to see this girl of his, right away, without giving his bad conduct a second thought. The average boy, expelled from college, would have come home in sackcloth and ashes and would have told you all about it. Hal never even mentioned it. That’s almost incredible.”
“Hal’s not an average kind of boy, any more thanIwas!” put in the captain proudly.
“No, he doesn’t seem to be,” retorted the physician, peppery with infirmity and shaken nerves. “However, I’m your guest and I won’t indulge in any personalities. Whatever comes I’m with you!”
The captain took his withered hand in a grip that hurt, and for a moment there was silence. This silence was broken by the voice of Ezra, driving down the lane:
“All ready, cap’n! All canvas up, aloft an’ alow,an’ this here craft ready to make two knots an hour ef she don’t founder afore you leave port! Fact is, I think Sea Lawyer’s foundered already!”
Together captain and doctor descended the path to the front gate. In a few minutes Ezra, bony hands on hips, watched the two men slowly drive from sight round the turn by the smithy. Grimly the old fellow shook his head and gripped his pipe in some remnants of teeth.
“I don’t like Pills,” grumbled he. “He’s a tightwad; never even slipped me a cigar. He’s one o’ them fellers that stop the clock, nights, to save the works. S’pose I’d oughta respect old age, but old age ain’t always to be looked up to, as, fer instance, in the case of eggs. He’s been ratin’ Master Hal down, I reckon. An’ that wun’tdo!”
Resentfully Ezra came back to the house and entered the hall. Into the front room Ezra walked, approached the fireplace and for a moment stood there, carefully observing the weapons. Then he reached up and straightened the position of the “Penang lawyer” club, on its supporting hooks.
“I got to git that jest right,” said he. “Jest exactly right. Ef the cap’n should see ’twas a mite out o’ place he might suspicion that was what Master Hal hit me with. So? Is that right, that way?”
With keen judgment he squinted at the club and gave it a final touch. The kris, also, he adjusted.
“I didn’t know Hal touched the toad-stabber, too,” he remarked. “But I guess he must of. It’s been moved some, that’s sure.
“I guess things’ll do now,” judged he, satisfied. “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup an’ the lip, but there’s a damn sight more after the cup has beenatthe lip. That’s all that made Master Hal slip. He didn’t know, rightly, what he was up to. Forgivethe boy? God bless him, you bet! A million times over!
“But that doctor, now, what’s been ratin’ Master Hal down—no, no, he’ll never be no friend o’mine! Well, this ain’t gittin’ dinner ready fer Master Hal. A boy what can dive off Geyser Rock, an’ lick McLaughlin, an’ read heathen Chinee, an’ capture the purtiest gal inthistown, is goin’ to be rationed proper, or I’m no cook aboard the snuggest craft that ever sailed a lawn, with lilacs on the port bow an’ geraniums to starb’d!”
Ezra gave a final, self-assuring glance at the Malay club that had so nearly ended his life, and turned back to his galley with a song upon his lips:
“A Yankee ship’s gone down the river,Her masts an’ yard they shine like silver.
Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!Blow, boys, blow!
Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!
How d’ye know she’s a Yankee clipper?By the Stars and Stripes that fly above her!
Blow, boys, blow!
An’ who d’ye think is captain of her?One-Eyed Kelly, the Bowery runner!
Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!
An’ what d’ye think they had fer dinner?Belayin’-pin soup an’ monkey’s liver!
Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!Blow, boys, blow!
Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!”
CHAPTER XXVIIGEYSER ROCKHal Briggs had little thought of trouble as he strode away in search of Laura. Very hot was his blood as he swung down the shaded street toward the house of Nathaniel Maynard, father of the girl. Some of the good folk frowned and were silent as he greeted them, but others had to smile and raise a hand of recognition. Still at some distance from Laura’s house, the boy caught sight of a creamy-toned voile dress among the hollyhocks in the side yard. He whistled, waved his hand, hurried his pace. And something leaped within him, so that his heart beat up a little thickly, as the girl waved an answering hand.Another look came to his eyes. Another light began to burn in their blue depths.“Geyser Rock!” he whispered. “By God, the very place!”Geyser Rock boldly fronts the unbroken sweep of the sea at Thunder Head. Up it leaps, sheer two hundred feet, from great deeps. Fifty feet from the barnacle-crusted line of high-tide a ledgelike path leads to the face of the cliff. From this ledge Hal often took the plunge that had won him local fame—a plunge into frothing surf that even in the calmest of midsummer days was never still.Few visitors ever struggle up through sumacs, brakes and undergrowth, to gain the vantage-point of thepinnacle. Rolling boulders, slippery ledge and dizzying overlook upon the shining sea deter all but the hardy. The very solitude of the place had greatly endeared it to Hal. To him it was often a solace and a comfort after his strange fits of rage and viciousness.All alone, up in that isolated height, he had passed long hours reading, smoking, musing in the tiny patch of grass there under the canopy of the white-birches’ filigree of green, or under the huge pine that carpeted the north slope of the crest with odorous, russet spills. Some of his happiest hours had been spent on the summit, through the tree-tops watching sky-shepherds tend their flocks across the pastures infinitely far and blue above him.Strangely secluded was the top of Geyser Rock. Though it lay hardly a pistol-shot from the main coast-road, it seemed almost as isolated as if it had been down among the Celebes.For that reason Hal loved it best of all, with its grasses, flowers, ferns and tangled thickets, its rock-ridges filigreed with silvery lichens or sparkling with white quartz-crystals. From this aerie Hal could glimpse a bit of the village; the prim church spire; the tiny, far gravestones sleeping on Croft Hill. The solitude of this, his own domain by right of conquest, had grown ever more dear and needful to him as he had advanced toward manhood.Such was the place toward which Laura and he were now walking along the road, with tilled fields and rock-bossed rolling hills to right of them; and, to their left, the restless flashings of the sea.Laura had never been more charming. Her happiness in his return had flushed her cheeks with color and had brightened her eyes—thoughtful, deep, loyal eyes—till they looked clear and fresh as summer skies after rain.Everything wholesome and glad seemed joined in Laura; her health and spirits were like the morning breeze itself that came to court the land, from the golden sparklings that stretched away to the shadowed, purple rim of the ocean. The June within her heart mirrored itself through her face, reflecting the June that overbrooded earth and sea and sky.Hal sensed all this and more, as with critical keenness he looked down at her, walking beside him. He noted the wind-blown hair that shaded her eyes; he saw the health and vigor of that lithe, firm-breasted young body of hers. His look, brooding, glowed evilly. Fifty years ago thus had his grandsire’s eyes kindled at sight of Kuala Pahang in her tight little Malay jacket. And as if words from the past had audibly echoed from some vibrant chord in the old-time captain’s symphony of desire, once more the thought formed in his brain:“She’s mine, the girl is! She’s plump as a young porpoise, and, by God, I’m going to have her!”The words he uttered, though, were far afield from these. He was saying:“So now, Laura, you see I wasn’t really to blame, after all. ‘A lie runs round the world, while truth is getting on its sandals.’ That proverb’s as true here as in Siam, where it originated. People are saying I was drunk and brutal, and all that, when the fact is—”“I know, Hal,” she answered, her eyes troubled. “I know how this country gossip exaggerates. But, even so, did you do right in beating Captain McLaughlin as you did?”“It was the only thing Icoulddo, Laura!” he protested. “The bully tried to humiliate me. I—I just licked him, that’s all. You wouldn’t want me to be a milksop, would you?”“No, not that, Hal. But a fair fight is one thingand brutality is another. And then, too, they say you’d been drinking.”He laughed and slid his hand about her arm.“I give you my word of honor, Laura, all I’d had was just a little nip to take the sea-chill out of my bones. Come, now, look at me, and tell me if I look like a thug and a drunkard!”He stopped in the deserted road, swung the girl round toward him, and laid his hands on her shoulders. Through the sheer thinness of her dress he felt the warmth of her. The low-cut V of her waist tempted him, dizzyingly, to plant a kiss there; but he held steady, and met her questioning eyes with a look that seemed all candor.For a long moment Laura kept silence, searching his face. Far off, mournfully the bell-buoy sent in its blur of musical tolling across the moving sea-floor.“Well, Laura, do I look a ruffian?” asked Hal again, smiling.Laura’s eyes fell.“I’m going to believe you, Hal, whatever people say,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it happened at all, but I suppose that’s the way of a man. You won’t do anything like that again, though, will you?”“No—dear! Never!”He drew her toward him, but she shook her head and pressed him back. Wise with understanding, from sources of deep instinct, he let her go. But now the fires in his eyes were burning more hotly. And as they once more started down along the road he cast on her a glance of quick and all-inclusive desire.Silence a minute or two. Then Hal asked:“Laura, have you ever been up Geyser Rock?”“No. Why?” Her look was wondering.“Let’s go!”“That’s pretty rough climbing for a girl, isn’t it?”“Not for a girl like you, Laura. You can make it, all right. And the view—oh, wonderful!” His enthusiasm quickened now that he saw her coming to his hand. “On a clear day you can see Cape Ann, to northward, and Cross Rip Light, to the south. See that big Norway pine right there? That’s where the path leads in. Come on, Laura!”“I—I don’t know—”“Afraid?”“Not whereyouare, Hal, to protect me!”He took her hand and drew her into the thick-wooded path, in under the cool green shadows, gold-sprinkled with the magic of the sun’s morris-dance of little elfin light-fairies. New strength seemed to flood him. His heart, beginning to beat quickly, flushed his face with hot blood. Something as yet unawakened, something potent, atavistic, something that had its roots twined far into the past, surged through his veins.“Come on, Laura!” he repeated. “Come on, I’ll show you the way!”Half an hour had passed before they stood upon the summit. They had perhaps lingered a bit more than needful, even with so many leaves and flowers to pick and study over; and, moreover, part of the way their progress had been really difficult. Hal had carried her in his arms up some of the more dangerous pitches—carried her quite as if she had been a child. The clinging of her arms to his shoulders, the warmth and yielding of her, the blowing of her hair across his face, the faint perfume of her alluring femininity had kindled fires that glowed from his eyes—eyes like the eyes of Alpheus Briggs in the old days when the Malay girl had been his captive. Yet still the atavisms in him had been stifled down. For Hal wassober now. And still the metes and bounds of civilization and of law had held the boy in leash.Thus they had reached the summit. Far up past the diving-ledge they had made their way, and so had climbed to the little sheltered nook facing the sky.“I think you’re wonderful, Laura!” Hal said as he pressed aside the bushes for her to enter the grassy sward. His voice was different now; his whole manner had subtly altered. No longer words of college argot came to his lips. “I think you’re really very wonderful! There’s not another girl in this town who’d take a risk like this!”“It’s nothing, Hal,” she answered, looking up at him in the sunshine with a smile. “I told you before I couldn’t possibly be afraid where you were. HowcouldI be afraid?”“Lots of girls would be, all the same,” said he. “You’re just a wonder. Well, now, let’s go over there to the edge. I won’t let you fall. I want you to see the view. Just through that fringe of birches there you’ll see it.”With quickened breath the girl peered down through the trees, at land and sea spread far below, while Hal’s arm held her from disaster. Branches and twigs had pulled at her, in the ascent. Her voile dress showed a tear or two; and all about her face the disordered hair strayed as the sea-breeze freshened over the top of Geyser. The boy kept silence that matched hers. A kind of vague, half-realized struggle seemed taking place in him—a conflict between the sense of chivalry, protecting this woman in his absolute power, and the old demon-clutch that reached from other days and other places.Now, though his thoughts and hers lay far apart as the world’s poles, each felt something of the same mysterious oppression. For the first time quite alonetogether, up there aloft in that snug, sun-warm nest embowered in greenery, a kind of mystic and half-sensed languor seemed to envelop them; a yearning that is older than old Egypt; a wonder and a dream.Hal’s arm tightened a very little ’round her body. She felt it tremble, and, wondering, understood that she, too, felt a little of that tremor in her own heart. She realized in a kind of half-sensed way that more dangers lay here than the danger of falling from the cliff. Yet in her soul she knew that she was glad to be there.
GEYSER ROCK
Hal Briggs had little thought of trouble as he strode away in search of Laura. Very hot was his blood as he swung down the shaded street toward the house of Nathaniel Maynard, father of the girl. Some of the good folk frowned and were silent as he greeted them, but others had to smile and raise a hand of recognition. Still at some distance from Laura’s house, the boy caught sight of a creamy-toned voile dress among the hollyhocks in the side yard. He whistled, waved his hand, hurried his pace. And something leaped within him, so that his heart beat up a little thickly, as the girl waved an answering hand.
Another look came to his eyes. Another light began to burn in their blue depths.
“Geyser Rock!” he whispered. “By God, the very place!”
Geyser Rock boldly fronts the unbroken sweep of the sea at Thunder Head. Up it leaps, sheer two hundred feet, from great deeps. Fifty feet from the barnacle-crusted line of high-tide a ledgelike path leads to the face of the cliff. From this ledge Hal often took the plunge that had won him local fame—a plunge into frothing surf that even in the calmest of midsummer days was never still.
Few visitors ever struggle up through sumacs, brakes and undergrowth, to gain the vantage-point of thepinnacle. Rolling boulders, slippery ledge and dizzying overlook upon the shining sea deter all but the hardy. The very solitude of the place had greatly endeared it to Hal. To him it was often a solace and a comfort after his strange fits of rage and viciousness.
All alone, up in that isolated height, he had passed long hours reading, smoking, musing in the tiny patch of grass there under the canopy of the white-birches’ filigree of green, or under the huge pine that carpeted the north slope of the crest with odorous, russet spills. Some of his happiest hours had been spent on the summit, through the tree-tops watching sky-shepherds tend their flocks across the pastures infinitely far and blue above him.
Strangely secluded was the top of Geyser Rock. Though it lay hardly a pistol-shot from the main coast-road, it seemed almost as isolated as if it had been down among the Celebes.
For that reason Hal loved it best of all, with its grasses, flowers, ferns and tangled thickets, its rock-ridges filigreed with silvery lichens or sparkling with white quartz-crystals. From this aerie Hal could glimpse a bit of the village; the prim church spire; the tiny, far gravestones sleeping on Croft Hill. The solitude of this, his own domain by right of conquest, had grown ever more dear and needful to him as he had advanced toward manhood.
Such was the place toward which Laura and he were now walking along the road, with tilled fields and rock-bossed rolling hills to right of them; and, to their left, the restless flashings of the sea.
Laura had never been more charming. Her happiness in his return had flushed her cheeks with color and had brightened her eyes—thoughtful, deep, loyal eyes—till they looked clear and fresh as summer skies after rain.
Everything wholesome and glad seemed joined in Laura; her health and spirits were like the morning breeze itself that came to court the land, from the golden sparklings that stretched away to the shadowed, purple rim of the ocean. The June within her heart mirrored itself through her face, reflecting the June that overbrooded earth and sea and sky.
Hal sensed all this and more, as with critical keenness he looked down at her, walking beside him. He noted the wind-blown hair that shaded her eyes; he saw the health and vigor of that lithe, firm-breasted young body of hers. His look, brooding, glowed evilly. Fifty years ago thus had his grandsire’s eyes kindled at sight of Kuala Pahang in her tight little Malay jacket. And as if words from the past had audibly echoed from some vibrant chord in the old-time captain’s symphony of desire, once more the thought formed in his brain:
“She’s mine, the girl is! She’s plump as a young porpoise, and, by God, I’m going to have her!”
The words he uttered, though, were far afield from these. He was saying:
“So now, Laura, you see I wasn’t really to blame, after all. ‘A lie runs round the world, while truth is getting on its sandals.’ That proverb’s as true here as in Siam, where it originated. People are saying I was drunk and brutal, and all that, when the fact is—”
“I know, Hal,” she answered, her eyes troubled. “I know how this country gossip exaggerates. But, even so, did you do right in beating Captain McLaughlin as you did?”
“It was the only thing Icoulddo, Laura!” he protested. “The bully tried to humiliate me. I—I just licked him, that’s all. You wouldn’t want me to be a milksop, would you?”
“No, not that, Hal. But a fair fight is one thingand brutality is another. And then, too, they say you’d been drinking.”
He laughed and slid his hand about her arm.
“I give you my word of honor, Laura, all I’d had was just a little nip to take the sea-chill out of my bones. Come, now, look at me, and tell me if I look like a thug and a drunkard!”
He stopped in the deserted road, swung the girl round toward him, and laid his hands on her shoulders. Through the sheer thinness of her dress he felt the warmth of her. The low-cut V of her waist tempted him, dizzyingly, to plant a kiss there; but he held steady, and met her questioning eyes with a look that seemed all candor.
For a long moment Laura kept silence, searching his face. Far off, mournfully the bell-buoy sent in its blur of musical tolling across the moving sea-floor.
“Well, Laura, do I look a ruffian?” asked Hal again, smiling.
Laura’s eyes fell.
“I’m going to believe you, Hal, whatever people say,” she whispered. “I’m sorry it happened at all, but I suppose that’s the way of a man. You won’t do anything like that again, though, will you?”
“No—dear! Never!”
He drew her toward him, but she shook her head and pressed him back. Wise with understanding, from sources of deep instinct, he let her go. But now the fires in his eyes were burning more hotly. And as they once more started down along the road he cast on her a glance of quick and all-inclusive desire.
Silence a minute or two. Then Hal asked:
“Laura, have you ever been up Geyser Rock?”
“No. Why?” Her look was wondering.
“Let’s go!”
“That’s pretty rough climbing for a girl, isn’t it?”
“Not for a girl like you, Laura. You can make it, all right. And the view—oh, wonderful!” His enthusiasm quickened now that he saw her coming to his hand. “On a clear day you can see Cape Ann, to northward, and Cross Rip Light, to the south. See that big Norway pine right there? That’s where the path leads in. Come on, Laura!”
“I—I don’t know—”
“Afraid?”
“Not whereyouare, Hal, to protect me!”
He took her hand and drew her into the thick-wooded path, in under the cool green shadows, gold-sprinkled with the magic of the sun’s morris-dance of little elfin light-fairies. New strength seemed to flood him. His heart, beginning to beat quickly, flushed his face with hot blood. Something as yet unawakened, something potent, atavistic, something that had its roots twined far into the past, surged through his veins.
“Come on, Laura!” he repeated. “Come on, I’ll show you the way!”
Half an hour had passed before they stood upon the summit. They had perhaps lingered a bit more than needful, even with so many leaves and flowers to pick and study over; and, moreover, part of the way their progress had been really difficult. Hal had carried her in his arms up some of the more dangerous pitches—carried her quite as if she had been a child. The clinging of her arms to his shoulders, the warmth and yielding of her, the blowing of her hair across his face, the faint perfume of her alluring femininity had kindled fires that glowed from his eyes—eyes like the eyes of Alpheus Briggs in the old days when the Malay girl had been his captive. Yet still the atavisms in him had been stifled down. For Hal wassober now. And still the metes and bounds of civilization and of law had held the boy in leash.
Thus they had reached the summit. Far up past the diving-ledge they had made their way, and so had climbed to the little sheltered nook facing the sky.
“I think you’re wonderful, Laura!” Hal said as he pressed aside the bushes for her to enter the grassy sward. His voice was different now; his whole manner had subtly altered. No longer words of college argot came to his lips. “I think you’re really very wonderful! There’s not another girl in this town who’d take a risk like this!”
“It’s nothing, Hal,” she answered, looking up at him in the sunshine with a smile. “I told you before I couldn’t possibly be afraid where you were. HowcouldI be afraid?”
“Lots of girls would be, all the same,” said he. “You’re just a wonder. Well, now, let’s go over there to the edge. I won’t let you fall. I want you to see the view. Just through that fringe of birches there you’ll see it.”
With quickened breath the girl peered down through the trees, at land and sea spread far below, while Hal’s arm held her from disaster. Branches and twigs had pulled at her, in the ascent. Her voile dress showed a tear or two; and all about her face the disordered hair strayed as the sea-breeze freshened over the top of Geyser. The boy kept silence that matched hers. A kind of vague, half-realized struggle seemed taking place in him—a conflict between the sense of chivalry, protecting this woman in his absolute power, and the old demon-clutch that reached from other days and other places.
Now, though his thoughts and hers lay far apart as the world’s poles, each felt something of the same mysterious oppression. For the first time quite alonetogether, up there aloft in that snug, sun-warm nest embowered in greenery, a kind of mystic and half-sensed languor seemed to envelop them; a yearning that is older than old Egypt; a wonder and a dream.
Hal’s arm tightened a very little ’round her body. She felt it tremble, and, wondering, understood that she, too, felt a little of that tremor in her own heart. She realized in a kind of half-sensed way that more dangers lay here than the danger of falling from the cliff. Yet in her soul she knew that she was glad to be there.
CHAPTER XXVIIILAURA UNDERSTANDSThus she remained, holding to a silver birch, leaning out a little toward the chasm. Up from the depths echoed a gurgling roar as the white fury drenched and belabored the gray, sheer wall, then fell back, hissing.For a moment Laura peered down, held by the boy’s encircling arm. She looked abroad upon the sun-shining waters flecked with far, white boats and smudged with steamer-smoke. Then she breathed deep and lifted up her face toward the gold filigree of sun and leaf, and sighed:“Oh, it’s wonderful, Hal! I never even guessed it could be anything like this!”“Wonderful isn’t the name for it, Laura,” he answered. He pointed far. “See the lighthouse? And Cape Ann in the haze? And the toy boats? Everything and everybody’s a toy now except just you and me. We’re the only real people. I wish it were really so, don’t you?”“Why, Hal? What would you do if it were?”“Oh,” he answered with that heart-warming smile of his, “I’d take you in a yacht, Laura, away off to some of those wonderful places the Oriental poems tell about. We’d sail away ‘through the Silken Sea,’ and ‘Beyond the Wind,’ wherever that is. Wouldn’t you like to go there with me, dear?”“Yes. But—”“But what, Laura?” His lips were almost brushingthe curve of her neck, where the wind-blown hair fell in loose ringlets. “But what?”“I—I mustn’t answer that, Hal. Not now!”“Why not now?”“While you’re still in college, Hal? While there’s so much work and struggle still ahead of you?”The boy frowned, unseen by her, for her eyes were fixed on the vague horizons beyond which, no doubt, lay Silken Seas and far, unknown places of enchantment beyond all winds whatsoever. Not thus did he desire to be understood by Laura. The whim of June shrinks from being mistaken for a thing of lifelong import. Laura drew back from the chasm and faced him with a little smile.“It’s very wrong for people to make light of such things,” she said. Her look lay steadily upon his face. “While the sun is shining it’s so easy to say more than one means. And then, at the first cloud, the fancy dies like sunlight fading.”“But this isn’t a mere fancy that I feel for you,” Hal persisted, sensing that he had lost ground with her. “I’ve had plenty of foolish ideas about girls. But this is different. It’s so very, very different every way!” His voice, that he well knew how to make convincing, really trembled a little with the thrill of this adventuring.“I wish I could believe you, Hal!”He drew her toward him again. This time she did not resist. He felt the yielding of her sinuous young body, its warmth and promise of intoxication.“Youcanbelieve me, Laura! Only trust in me!”“I—I don’t know, Hal. I know what men are. They’re all so much alike.”“Not all, dear! You ought to know me well enough to have confidence in me. Think of the long, long time we’ve known each other. Think of theyears and years of friendship! Why, Laura, we’ve known each other ever since we were a couple of children playing on the beach, writing each other’s names in the sand—”“For the next high tide to wash away!”“But we’re not children now. There’s something in my heart no tide can obliterate!”“I hope that’s true, Hal. But you’re not through college yet. Wait till you are. You’ve got to graduate with flying colors, and make your dear old grandfather the proudest man in the world, and be the wonderful success I know you’re going to be! And make me the happiest girl! You will, won’t you?”“I’ll do anything in the world for you, Laura!” he exclaimed. His face, flushed with enkindling desire, showed no sign of shame or dejection. Laura knew nothing of his débâcle at the university. Of course she must soon know; but all that still lay in the future. And to Hal nothing mattered now but just the golden present with its nectar in the blossom and its sunshine on the leaf. He drew her a little closer.“Tell me,” he whispered. “Do you really care?”“Don’t ask me—yet!” she denied him, turning her face away. “Come, let’s be going down!”“Why, we’ve only just come!”“I know, but—”“You needn’t be afraid ofme!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t, are you, dear?”“No more than I am of myself,” she answered frankly, while her throat and face warmed with blood that suddenly burned there. “We—really oughtn’t to be alone like this, Hal.”He laughed and opened his arms to let her go. For a moment she stood looking up at him; then her eyes, too innocent to find the guile in his, smiled with pure-hearted affection.“Forgive me, Hal!” said she. “I didn’t mean that. But, you know, when you put your arms round me like that—”“I won’t do it again,” he answered, instinct telling him the bird would take fright if the trap seemed too tightly closed. He dropped his arms, the palms of his hands spread outward. “You see, when you tell me to let you go, I mind you?”“Yes, like the good, dear boy you are!” she exclaimed with sudden, impulsive affection. She reached up, took his face in both hands and studied his eyes. He thought she was about to kiss him, and his heart leaped. He quivered to seize her, to burn his kisses on her lips, there in the leafy, sun-glimmering shade; but already Laura’s arms had fallen, and she had turned away, back toward the path that would lead them downward from this tiny enchanted garden to the common level of the world again.“Come, Hal,” said she, “we must be going now!”He nodded, his eyes glowering coals of desire, and followed after. Was the bird, then, going to escape his hand? A sinister look darkened his face; just such a look as had made Captain Briggs a brute when he had shouldered his way into his cabin aboard theSilver Fleece, to master the captive girl.“Laura, wait a minute, please!” begged Hal.“Well, what is it?” she asked, half-turning, a beautiful, white, gracious figure in the greenery—a very wood-nymph of a figure, sylvan, fresh, enwoven with life’s most mystic spell—the magic of youth.“You haven’t seen half my little Mysterious Island up here!”“Mysterious Island?” asked she, pleased by the fanciful whim. “You call it that, do you?”“Yes, I’ve always called it that ever since I read Jules Verne, when I was only a youngster. I’ve nevertold anybody, though. I haven’t told that, or a hundred other imaginings.” He had come close to her again, had taken her by the arm, was drawing her away from the path and toward the little flower-enameled greensward among the boulders crowned with birch and pine. “You’re the only one that knows my secret, Laura. You’ll never, never tell, now, will you?”“Never!” she answered, uneasiness dispelled by his frank air. “Do you imagine things like that, too, Hal? I thought I was the only one around here who ever ‘pretended.’ Are you a dreamer, too?”“Very much a dreamer. Sit down here, Laura, and let me tell you some of my dreams.”He sat down in the grass, and drew her down beside him. She yielded “half willing and half shy.” For a moment he looked at her with eyes of desire. Then, still holding her hand, he said:“It was all fairies and gnomes up here when I first came. Fairyland in those boyhood days. After a while the fairies went away and pirates began to come; pirates and Indians and a wild crew. I was sometimes a victim, sometimes a member of the brotherhood. There’s treasure buried all ’round here. Those were the days when I was reading about Captain Kidd and Blackbeard. You understand?”“Indeed Ido! Go on!”He laughed, as her mood yielded under the subtle mastery of his voice, his eyes.“Oh, but it’s a motley crew we’ve been up here, the pirates and I!” said he, leaning still closer. “‘Treasure Island’ peopled the place with adventurers—Long John Silver, and Pew and the Doctor, and all the rest. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ swept them all away, all but Man Friday; and then the savages hadto come. If there’s anything at all I haven’t suffered in the way of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals and being rescued just in the nick of time up here, really I don’t know what it is. And since I’ve grown up, though of course I can’t ‘pretend’ any more, I’ve always loved this place to day-dream in, and wonder in, about the thing that every man hopes will come to him some day.”“And what’s that, Hal?” she asked in a lower voice.“Love!” he whispered. “Love—and you!”“Hal, is that really true?”“Look at me, Laura, and you’ll know!”She could not meet his gaze. Her eyes lowered. He drew his arm about her as she drooped a little toward him.“Listen to me!” he commanded, masterfully lying. “There’s never been anybody but you, Laura. There never will be. You’ve been in all my dreams, by night, my visions by day, up here in fairyland!”His words were coming impetuously now. In his eyes the golden flame of desire was burning hot.“You’re everything to me! Everything! I’ve sensed it for a long time, but only in the last month or two I’ve really understood. It all came to me in a kind of revelation, Laura, one day when I was translating a poem from the Hindustani.”“A poem, Hal?” The girl’s voice was tremulous. Her eyes had closed. Her head, resting on his shoulder, thrilled him with ardor; and in his nostrils the perfume of her womanhood conjured up shimmering dream-pictures of the Orient—strange lands that, though unseen, he mysteriously seemed to know. “Tell me the poem, dear!” Laura whispered. “A love-poem?”“Such a love-poem! Listen, sweetheart! It’s a thousand years old, and it comes from the dim past to tell you what I feel for you. It runs this way:“Belovèd, were I to name the blossoms of the spring,And all the fruits of autumn’s bounteousness;Were I to name all things that charm and thrill,And earth, and Heaven, all in one word divine,I would name thee!“Had I the gold of Punjab’s golden land,Had I as many diamonds, shining brightAs leaves that tremble in a thousand woods,Or sands along ten thousand shining seas;Had I as many pearls of shifting hueAs blades of grass in fields of the whole world,Or stars that shine on the broad breast of night,I’d give them all, a thousand, thousand times,To make thee mine!”For a minute, while Hal watched her with calculation, Laura kept silence. Then she looked up at him, dreamy-eyed, and smiled.“That’s wonderful, Hal. I only wish you meant it!”“YouknowI do! I want you, Laura—God, how much! You’re all I need to make my fairyland up here a heaven!”“What—what do you mean, Hal? Are you asking me to—to be your wife?”His face contracted, involuntarily, but he veiled his true thought with a lie. What mattered just a lie to gain possession of her in this golden hour of sunshine?“Yes, yes, of course!” he cried, drawing her to his lips in a betraying kiss—a kiss, to her, culminant with wonder and mystic with a good woman’s aspiration for a life of love and service—a kiss, to him, only a trivial incident, lawless, unbridled. At heart hecursed the girl’s pure passion for him. Not this was what he wanted; and dimly, even through the flame of his desire, he could see a hundred complications, perils. But now the lie was spoken—and away with to-morrow!Again he kissed the girl, sensing, in spite of his desire, the different quality of her returning kiss. Then she smiled up at him, and with her hand smoothed back the thick, black hair from his forehead.“It’s all so wonderful, Hal!” she whispered fondly. “I can’t believe it’s true. But it is true, isn’t it? Even though we’ve got to wait till you get through college. I’m willing to. I love you enough, Hal, to wait forever. And you will, too, won’t you?”“Of—of course I will!”“And it’s really, really true? It’s not just a fairy dream of wonderland, up here, that will vanish when we go down to the world again?”“No, no, it’s all true, Laura,” he was forced to answer, baffled and at a loss. Not at all was this adventure developing as he had planned it. Why, Laura was taking it seriously! Laura was acting like a child—a foolish, preposterous child! The web that he had hoped to spread for her undoing had, because of her own trusting confidence, been tangled all about himself.Abashed and angry, he sought some way to break its bonds. Another poem rose to memory, a poem that he hoped might make her understand. He had read it the day before in a little book called “The Divine Image,” and it had instantly burned itself into his brain. Now said he:“Listen, dear. I’ve got another verse for you. It’s called: ‘His Woman.’”“And I’m really yours, forever?”“Of course you are, dear! Listen, now:“‘In the pale, murmuring dawn she layAlone, with nothing more to lose.Her eyes one warm, soft arm espied,And lips too tired to voice her prideCaressed and kissed a bruise.’”The girl looked up at him a moment, circled with his arm, as she lay there content. For a little she seemed not to understand. Then, slowly, a puzzled look and then a look of hurt rose to her eyes.“Hal, you—you mustn’t—”“Why mustn’t I, dear?”She tried to answer, but his lips upon her mouth stifled her speech.Swift fear leaped through her as she fought away from him.“Oh, Hal!” she cried. “What—what are you looking at me that way for? Your eyes, Hal—your eyes—”In vain he tried to kiss her. Her face was turned away, her hands repulsing him.“Kiss me, Laura! Kiss me!”“No, no—not now! Oh, Hal, you have only yourself to resist. I have you to resist, and myself, too!”The thought gave him a minute’s pause. Did some instinct of chivalry, deep-buried, try for a second to struggle up through his evil heritage, or was it but surprise that loosed his grip upon her so that she escaped his hands, his arms?“God forgive you, Hal, for having killed the most wonderful treasure I had—my faith in you!” she cried from where she stood now, looking down at him with tragic eyes of disillusion. “Oh, God forgive you!”He would have spoken, but she turned and fled toward the tangled thicket through which the path led downward.“Laura! Wait!” He sprang to his feet, peering after her with hateful eyes. No answer as she vanished through the greenery.For all his rage and passion, Hal realized how absurd a figure he would make, pursuing her. Swift anger swept over him, broke all down, rushed in uncontrolled floods.A moment he stood there, brutal, venomous. Then with a laugh, the echo of that which had sounded when Alpheus Briggs had flung the Malay girl to death, he clutched at his thick hair, tugging at it with excess of madness. He broke into wild curses that rose against the sky with barbarous blasphemy.Foam slavered upon his lips. His face grew black; the veins stood out upon his neck and temples. A madman, he trampled through the bushes, stamping, striking, lusting to kill.So for a time he raged in blind, stark passion; while Laura, shaken and afraid, bleeding at her heart of hearts, made her way all alone back to the safety of the seashore road.At last, his rage burned out, Hal flung himself down in the grass. Face buried in hands, teeth set in bleeding lip, he lay there.And over him the heavens, like an eyeless face, smiled down with calm, untroubled purpose.
LAURA UNDERSTANDS
Thus she remained, holding to a silver birch, leaning out a little toward the chasm. Up from the depths echoed a gurgling roar as the white fury drenched and belabored the gray, sheer wall, then fell back, hissing.
For a moment Laura peered down, held by the boy’s encircling arm. She looked abroad upon the sun-shining waters flecked with far, white boats and smudged with steamer-smoke. Then she breathed deep and lifted up her face toward the gold filigree of sun and leaf, and sighed:
“Oh, it’s wonderful, Hal! I never even guessed it could be anything like this!”
“Wonderful isn’t the name for it, Laura,” he answered. He pointed far. “See the lighthouse? And Cape Ann in the haze? And the toy boats? Everything and everybody’s a toy now except just you and me. We’re the only real people. I wish it were really so, don’t you?”
“Why, Hal? What would you do if it were?”
“Oh,” he answered with that heart-warming smile of his, “I’d take you in a yacht, Laura, away off to some of those wonderful places the Oriental poems tell about. We’d sail away ‘through the Silken Sea,’ and ‘Beyond the Wind,’ wherever that is. Wouldn’t you like to go there with me, dear?”
“Yes. But—”
“But what, Laura?” His lips were almost brushingthe curve of her neck, where the wind-blown hair fell in loose ringlets. “But what?”
“I—I mustn’t answer that, Hal. Not now!”
“Why not now?”
“While you’re still in college, Hal? While there’s so much work and struggle still ahead of you?”
The boy frowned, unseen by her, for her eyes were fixed on the vague horizons beyond which, no doubt, lay Silken Seas and far, unknown places of enchantment beyond all winds whatsoever. Not thus did he desire to be understood by Laura. The whim of June shrinks from being mistaken for a thing of lifelong import. Laura drew back from the chasm and faced him with a little smile.
“It’s very wrong for people to make light of such things,” she said. Her look lay steadily upon his face. “While the sun is shining it’s so easy to say more than one means. And then, at the first cloud, the fancy dies like sunlight fading.”
“But this isn’t a mere fancy that I feel for you,” Hal persisted, sensing that he had lost ground with her. “I’ve had plenty of foolish ideas about girls. But this is different. It’s so very, very different every way!” His voice, that he well knew how to make convincing, really trembled a little with the thrill of this adventuring.
“I wish I could believe you, Hal!”
He drew her toward him again. This time she did not resist. He felt the yielding of her sinuous young body, its warmth and promise of intoxication.
“Youcanbelieve me, Laura! Only trust in me!”
“I—I don’t know, Hal. I know what men are. They’re all so much alike.”
“Not all, dear! You ought to know me well enough to have confidence in me. Think of the long, long time we’ve known each other. Think of theyears and years of friendship! Why, Laura, we’ve known each other ever since we were a couple of children playing on the beach, writing each other’s names in the sand—”
“For the next high tide to wash away!”
“But we’re not children now. There’s something in my heart no tide can obliterate!”
“I hope that’s true, Hal. But you’re not through college yet. Wait till you are. You’ve got to graduate with flying colors, and make your dear old grandfather the proudest man in the world, and be the wonderful success I know you’re going to be! And make me the happiest girl! You will, won’t you?”
“I’ll do anything in the world for you, Laura!” he exclaimed. His face, flushed with enkindling desire, showed no sign of shame or dejection. Laura knew nothing of his débâcle at the university. Of course she must soon know; but all that still lay in the future. And to Hal nothing mattered now but just the golden present with its nectar in the blossom and its sunshine on the leaf. He drew her a little closer.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “Do you really care?”
“Don’t ask me—yet!” she denied him, turning her face away. “Come, let’s be going down!”
“Why, we’ve only just come!”
“I know, but—”
“You needn’t be afraid ofme!” he exclaimed. “You aren’t, are you, dear?”
“No more than I am of myself,” she answered frankly, while her throat and face warmed with blood that suddenly burned there. “We—really oughtn’t to be alone like this, Hal.”
He laughed and opened his arms to let her go. For a moment she stood looking up at him; then her eyes, too innocent to find the guile in his, smiled with pure-hearted affection.
“Forgive me, Hal!” said she. “I didn’t mean that. But, you know, when you put your arms round me like that—”
“I won’t do it again,” he answered, instinct telling him the bird would take fright if the trap seemed too tightly closed. He dropped his arms, the palms of his hands spread outward. “You see, when you tell me to let you go, I mind you?”
“Yes, like the good, dear boy you are!” she exclaimed with sudden, impulsive affection. She reached up, took his face in both hands and studied his eyes. He thought she was about to kiss him, and his heart leaped. He quivered to seize her, to burn his kisses on her lips, there in the leafy, sun-glimmering shade; but already Laura’s arms had fallen, and she had turned away, back toward the path that would lead them downward from this tiny enchanted garden to the common level of the world again.
“Come, Hal,” said she, “we must be going now!”
He nodded, his eyes glowering coals of desire, and followed after. Was the bird, then, going to escape his hand? A sinister look darkened his face; just such a look as had made Captain Briggs a brute when he had shouldered his way into his cabin aboard theSilver Fleece, to master the captive girl.
“Laura, wait a minute, please!” begged Hal.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, half-turning, a beautiful, white, gracious figure in the greenery—a very wood-nymph of a figure, sylvan, fresh, enwoven with life’s most mystic spell—the magic of youth.
“You haven’t seen half my little Mysterious Island up here!”
“Mysterious Island?” asked she, pleased by the fanciful whim. “You call it that, do you?”
“Yes, I’ve always called it that ever since I read Jules Verne, when I was only a youngster. I’ve nevertold anybody, though. I haven’t told that, or a hundred other imaginings.” He had come close to her again, had taken her by the arm, was drawing her away from the path and toward the little flower-enameled greensward among the boulders crowned with birch and pine. “You’re the only one that knows my secret, Laura. You’ll never, never tell, now, will you?”
“Never!” she answered, uneasiness dispelled by his frank air. “Do you imagine things like that, too, Hal? I thought I was the only one around here who ever ‘pretended.’ Are you a dreamer, too?”
“Very much a dreamer. Sit down here, Laura, and let me tell you some of my dreams.”
He sat down in the grass, and drew her down beside him. She yielded “half willing and half shy.” For a moment he looked at her with eyes of desire. Then, still holding her hand, he said:
“It was all fairies and gnomes up here when I first came. Fairyland in those boyhood days. After a while the fairies went away and pirates began to come; pirates and Indians and a wild crew. I was sometimes a victim, sometimes a member of the brotherhood. There’s treasure buried all ’round here. Those were the days when I was reading about Captain Kidd and Blackbeard. You understand?”
“Indeed Ido! Go on!”
He laughed, as her mood yielded under the subtle mastery of his voice, his eyes.
“Oh, but it’s a motley crew we’ve been up here, the pirates and I!” said he, leaning still closer. “‘Treasure Island’ peopled the place with adventurers—Long John Silver, and Pew and the Doctor, and all the rest. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ swept them all away, all but Man Friday; and then the savages hadto come. If there’s anything at all I haven’t suffered in the way of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals and being rescued just in the nick of time up here, really I don’t know what it is. And since I’ve grown up, though of course I can’t ‘pretend’ any more, I’ve always loved this place to day-dream in, and wonder in, about the thing that every man hopes will come to him some day.”
“And what’s that, Hal?” she asked in a lower voice.
“Love!” he whispered. “Love—and you!”
“Hal, is that really true?”
“Look at me, Laura, and you’ll know!”
She could not meet his gaze. Her eyes lowered. He drew his arm about her as she drooped a little toward him.
“Listen to me!” he commanded, masterfully lying. “There’s never been anybody but you, Laura. There never will be. You’ve been in all my dreams, by night, my visions by day, up here in fairyland!”
His words were coming impetuously now. In his eyes the golden flame of desire was burning hot.
“You’re everything to me! Everything! I’ve sensed it for a long time, but only in the last month or two I’ve really understood. It all came to me in a kind of revelation, Laura, one day when I was translating a poem from the Hindustani.”
“A poem, Hal?” The girl’s voice was tremulous. Her eyes had closed. Her head, resting on his shoulder, thrilled him with ardor; and in his nostrils the perfume of her womanhood conjured up shimmering dream-pictures of the Orient—strange lands that, though unseen, he mysteriously seemed to know. “Tell me the poem, dear!” Laura whispered. “A love-poem?”
“Such a love-poem! Listen, sweetheart! It’s a thousand years old, and it comes from the dim past to tell you what I feel for you. It runs this way:
“Belovèd, were I to name the blossoms of the spring,And all the fruits of autumn’s bounteousness;Were I to name all things that charm and thrill,And earth, and Heaven, all in one word divine,
I would name thee!
“Had I the gold of Punjab’s golden land,Had I as many diamonds, shining brightAs leaves that tremble in a thousand woods,Or sands along ten thousand shining seas;Had I as many pearls of shifting hueAs blades of grass in fields of the whole world,Or stars that shine on the broad breast of night,I’d give them all, a thousand, thousand times,
To make thee mine!”
For a minute, while Hal watched her with calculation, Laura kept silence. Then she looked up at him, dreamy-eyed, and smiled.
“That’s wonderful, Hal. I only wish you meant it!”
“YouknowI do! I want you, Laura—God, how much! You’re all I need to make my fairyland up here a heaven!”
“What—what do you mean, Hal? Are you asking me to—to be your wife?”
His face contracted, involuntarily, but he veiled his true thought with a lie. What mattered just a lie to gain possession of her in this golden hour of sunshine?
“Yes, yes, of course!” he cried, drawing her to his lips in a betraying kiss—a kiss, to her, culminant with wonder and mystic with a good woman’s aspiration for a life of love and service—a kiss, to him, only a trivial incident, lawless, unbridled. At heart hecursed the girl’s pure passion for him. Not this was what he wanted; and dimly, even through the flame of his desire, he could see a hundred complications, perils. But now the lie was spoken—and away with to-morrow!
Again he kissed the girl, sensing, in spite of his desire, the different quality of her returning kiss. Then she smiled up at him, and with her hand smoothed back the thick, black hair from his forehead.
“It’s all so wonderful, Hal!” she whispered fondly. “I can’t believe it’s true. But it is true, isn’t it? Even though we’ve got to wait till you get through college. I’m willing to. I love you enough, Hal, to wait forever. And you will, too, won’t you?”
“Of—of course I will!”
“And it’s really, really true? It’s not just a fairy dream of wonderland, up here, that will vanish when we go down to the world again?”
“No, no, it’s all true, Laura,” he was forced to answer, baffled and at a loss. Not at all was this adventure developing as he had planned it. Why, Laura was taking it seriously! Laura was acting like a child—a foolish, preposterous child! The web that he had hoped to spread for her undoing had, because of her own trusting confidence, been tangled all about himself.
Abashed and angry, he sought some way to break its bonds. Another poem rose to memory, a poem that he hoped might make her understand. He had read it the day before in a little book called “The Divine Image,” and it had instantly burned itself into his brain. Now said he:
“Listen, dear. I’ve got another verse for you. It’s called: ‘His Woman.’”
“And I’m really yours, forever?”
“Of course you are, dear! Listen, now:
“‘In the pale, murmuring dawn she layAlone, with nothing more to lose.
Her eyes one warm, soft arm espied,
And lips too tired to voice her prideCaressed and kissed a bruise.’”
The girl looked up at him a moment, circled with his arm, as she lay there content. For a little she seemed not to understand. Then, slowly, a puzzled look and then a look of hurt rose to her eyes.
“Hal, you—you mustn’t—”
“Why mustn’t I, dear?”
She tried to answer, but his lips upon her mouth stifled her speech.
Swift fear leaped through her as she fought away from him.
“Oh, Hal!” she cried. “What—what are you looking at me that way for? Your eyes, Hal—your eyes—”
In vain he tried to kiss her. Her face was turned away, her hands repulsing him.
“Kiss me, Laura! Kiss me!”
“No, no—not now! Oh, Hal, you have only yourself to resist. I have you to resist, and myself, too!”
The thought gave him a minute’s pause. Did some instinct of chivalry, deep-buried, try for a second to struggle up through his evil heritage, or was it but surprise that loosed his grip upon her so that she escaped his hands, his arms?
“God forgive you, Hal, for having killed the most wonderful treasure I had—my faith in you!” she cried from where she stood now, looking down at him with tragic eyes of disillusion. “Oh, God forgive you!”
He would have spoken, but she turned and fled toward the tangled thicket through which the path led downward.
“Laura! Wait!” He sprang to his feet, peering after her with hateful eyes. No answer as she vanished through the greenery.
For all his rage and passion, Hal realized how absurd a figure he would make, pursuing her. Swift anger swept over him, broke all down, rushed in uncontrolled floods.
A moment he stood there, brutal, venomous. Then with a laugh, the echo of that which had sounded when Alpheus Briggs had flung the Malay girl to death, he clutched at his thick hair, tugging at it with excess of madness. He broke into wild curses that rose against the sky with barbarous blasphemy.
Foam slavered upon his lips. His face grew black; the veins stood out upon his neck and temples. A madman, he trampled through the bushes, stamping, striking, lusting to kill.
So for a time he raged in blind, stark passion; while Laura, shaken and afraid, bleeding at her heart of hearts, made her way all alone back to the safety of the seashore road.
At last, his rage burned out, Hal flung himself down in the grass. Face buried in hands, teeth set in bleeding lip, he lay there.
And over him the heavens, like an eyeless face, smiled down with calm, untroubled purpose.
CHAPTER XXIXTHE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANESadly returning home, Laura stopped for a moment at her garden gate to make quite sure her father was not in the side yard. With all her girlish dreams broken and draggled, the heartbroken girl stood looking at the flowers that only an hour before had seemed so wondrous gay. And all at once she heard the sound of wheels upon the road. Turning, she saw old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol slowly driving toward Snug Haven.Half-minded to retreat inside the garden, still she stood there, for already Captain Briggs had raised a hand in greeting. Every feature of the old captain’s face was limned with grief. His shoulders seemed to sag, bowed down with heavier weight than his almost eighty years could pile upon them.So the girl remained at the gate, greatly sorrowing; and peered after the two old men. Though she could not guess the captain’s trouble, her woman’s instinct told her this trouble bore on Hal. And over her own grief settled still another cloud that darkened it still more.Puzzled, disillusioned, she swung the gate and entered the prim paths bordered with low box-hedges. No one saw her. Quietly she entered the house and crept up-stairs to her own room. There, in that virginal place, she dropped down on her old-fashioned, four-posted bed of black walnut, and buried her face inthe same pillows to which, girl-like, she had often confided so many innocent and tender dreams.As the girl lay there, crying for the broken bauble, love, crushed in the brutal hand of Hal, old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol—once more back on the quarterdeck of Snug Haven—settled themselves for dejected consultation.“I never did expect ’twould be as much as that,” the captain said, mechanically stuffing his pipe. “I reckoned maybe fifty dollars would pay demurrage and repairs on Mac. McLaughlin isn’t worth more, rig and all. But, Judas priest, two hundred and a half! That’s running into money. Money I can ill afford to pay, sir!”“I know,” the doctor answered. “It’s cruel extortion. But what can you do, captain? McLaughlin holds the tiller now. He can steer any course he chooses. The fact that he started at five hundred, plus the apology that he demands from Hal on the deck of theSylviain front of the whole crew, and that we’ve pared him down to two hundred and fifty, plus the apology—that’s a very great gain. It’s bad, I know, but not so bad as having had the boy locked up, charged with felonious assault. It’s not so bad as that, sir!”“No, no, of course not,” Briggs agreed. “I suppose I’ve got to pay, though Lord knows, sir, the money’s needed terribly for other things, now that the college bill has got to be settled all over again!”“I know it’s hard,” sympathized the doctor, “but there’s no help for it. Wipe the slate clean, and give Hal another start. That’s all youcando.”The old captain remained smoking and brooding a while, with sunshine on his head. At last his eyes sought the far, deep line of blue that stretched against the horizon—the sea-line, lacking which the old man always sensed a vacancy, a loss.“Close on to six bells,” judged he, “by the way the sun’s shining on the water. Wonder where the boy can be? I’ve got to have a proper gam with him.”“Why? Where ought he to be?” the doctor asked.“He must have put back into port, after his little cruise with Laura, this morning. We sighted her, moored at her front gate, you remember?”“H-m! You don’t suppose there’s trouble brewing there too, do you? I thought the girl looked upset, didn’t you?”“Ididn’t notice anything. What seemed to be the matter?”“I thought she’d been crying a bit.”The captain clenched his fist.“By the Judas priest!” he exclaimed fervently. “If I thought Hal had been abusing that girl, I’d make it hot for him! That’sonething I won’t stand!” He peered down the road with narrowing eyes, then got up and went to the front door. “Hal, oh, Hal!” he cried.No answer. The captain’s voice echoed emptily in the old-fashioned hallway.“Not here, anyhow,” said he, returning to his rocker. “Well, we won’t accuse him of anything else till we know. I only hope he hasn’t written any more black pages on the log by mishandling Laura.”Wearily his eyes sought Croft Hill. Of a sudden unbidden tears blurred his sight.“There’sa peaceful harbor for old, battered craft, anyhow,” he murmured, pointing. “I sometimes envy all the tired folk that’s found sleep and rest up there in their snug berths, while we still stand watch in all weathers. If, after all I’ve worked and hoped for, there’s nothing ahead but breakers, I’ll envy them more than ever.”“Come now, captain!” Filhiol tried to cheer him.“Maybe it was only a little lovers’ quarrel that sent Laura home. There’s never all smooth sailing, with maid and man for a crew. Let’s wait a while and see.”“Yes, wait and think it over,” said the captain. “There’s only one place for me, doctor, when things look squally, and that’s with my folks on the hill. Guess I’ll take a walk up there now and talk it over with them. Come with me, will you?”Filhiol shook his head.“Too much for me, that hill is,” he answered. “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit right here and watch the sea.”“Suit yourself, doctor.” And Captain Briggs arose. “When Ezra comes down the lane tell him not to bother with dinner. A little snack will do. Let’s each of us think this thing out, and maybe we can chart the proper course between us.”He stood a moment in the sunshine, then, bare-headed, went down the steps and turned into the path that would lead him up Croft Hill. He stopped, gathering a handful of bright flowers—zinnias, hollyhocks, sweet peas—for his ever-remembered dead. Then he went on again.“Poor old chap!” said Dr. Filhiol. “The curse is biting pretty deep. That’s all poppycock, that Malay cursing; but the curses of heredity are stern reality. There’s a specific for every poison in the world. Even the dreadcuraréhas one. But for the poison of heredity, what remedy is there? Poor old captain!”Alpheus Briggs, with bowed head, climbed up the winding way among the blackberry bushes, the sumacs and wild roses dainty-sweet; and so at last came to the wall pierced with the whitewashed gate that he himself kept always in repair.Into the cemetery, his Garden of Gethsemane, he penetrated, by paths flanked with simple and piousstones, many of hard slate carved with death’s-heads, urns, cherubs and weeping-willows, according to the custom of the ancient, godly days. Thus to his family burial lot he came, and there laid his offering upon the graves he loved; and then sat down upon the bench there, for meditation in this hour of sorrow and perplexity.And as sun and sky and sea, fresh breeze and drifting cloud, and the mild influences of his lifelong friend, tobacco, all worked their soothings on him, he presently plucked up a little heart once more. The nearness of his dead bade him have hope and courage. He felt, in that quiet and solemn place, the tightening of his family bonds; he felt that duty called him to lift even these new and heavy burdens, to bear them valiantly and like a man.With the graves about him and the sea before, and over all the heavens, calm returned. And sorrow—which, like anger, cannot long be keen—faded into another thought: the thought of how he should make of Hal the man that he would have him be.How restful was this sunlit hilltop, where he knew that soon he, too, must sleep! The faint, far cries of gulls drifted in to him with the bell-buoy’s slow tolling; and up from the village rose the music of the smitten anvil. That music minded him of a Hindustani poem Hal once had read to him—a poem about the blacksmith, Destiny, beating out showers of sparks upon the cosmic anvil in the night of eternity, each spark a human soul; and each, swiftly extinguished, worth just as much to Destiny as earthly anvil sparks are to the human toiler at the forge—as much and no more.The poem had thus ended:“All is Maya, all is illusion! Why struggle, then?To walk is better than to run; to stand is better than to walk.To sit is better than to stand; to lie is better than to sit.To sleep is better than to wake; to dream is better than to live.Better still is a sleep that is dreamless,And death is best of all!”“I wonder if that’s true?” the captain mused. “I wonder if lifeisall illusion and death alone is real?”Thus meditating, he felt very near the wife and son who lay there beneath the flowers he had just laid on the close-cut sod. The cloud-shadows, drifting over the hilltop, seemed symbols of the transitory passage of man’s life, unstable, ever drifting on, and leaving on the universe no greater imprint than shadows on the grass. He yearned toward those who had gone to rest before him; and though not a praying man, a supplication voiced itself in him:“Oh, God, let me finish out my work, and let me rest! Let me put the boy on the right course through life, and let me know he’ll follow it—then, let me steer for the calm harbor where Thou, my Pilot, wilt give me quiet from the storm!”Thus the old captain sat there for a long time, pondering many and sad things; and all at once he saw the figure of a man in white coming along the road. The captain knew him afar.“There’s Hal now,” said he. “I wonder where he’s been and what this all means?”A new anxiety trembled through his wounded heart, that longed for nothing now but love and trust. Up rose the old captain, and with slow steps walked to the eastern wall of the cemetery. There he waited patiently.Presently Hal came into sight, round the shoulder of Croft Hill.“Ahoy, there! Hal! Come here—I want to see you!”The old man’s cry dropped with disagreeable surpriseinto Hal’s sinister reflections. Hal looked up, and swore to himself. He sensed the meaning of that summons.“There’s another damned scene coming,” thought Hal. “Why the hell can’t he let me alone now? Why can’t everybody let me alone?”Nothing could now have been more inopportune than an interview with his grandfather. Hal—his rage burned out to ashes—had come down from Geyser Rock, and had turned homeward in evil humor. And as he had gone he had already begun to lay out tentative plans for what he meant to do.“It’s all bull, what Laura handed me!” he had been thinking when the captain’s summons had intruded. “Am I going to let her throw me that way? I guessnot! I’ll land her yet; but not here, not here! I can’t stick here. The way I’m in wrong with the college, and now this new rough-house with Laura, will certainly put the crimp in me. What I’ve got to do is clear out. And I won’t go alone, at that. If I only had a twenty-five footer! I could get her aboard of it some way. The main thing’s a boat. The rest is easy. I could let them whistle, all of them. The open sea—that’s the thing! That’s a man’s way to do things—not go sniveling ’round here in white flannels all summer, letting a girl hand it to me that way!“God, if I could only raise five hundred bucks! I could get Jim Gordon’sKittiwinkfor that, and provision it, too. Make a break for Cuba, or Honduras; why, damn it, I could go round the world—go East—get away from all this preaching and rough-house—live like a man, by God!”The captain’s hail shattered Hal’s dreams.“Devil take the old man!” snarled Hal to himself as he scowled up at the figure on the hilltop. “What’s he wantnow? And devil take all women! They’re likedogs. Beat a dog and a woman, and you can’t go wrong. I’ll play this game to win yet, and make good! Hello, up there?” he shouted in reply to the captain. “What d’you want of me?”“I want to talk with you, Hal,” the old man’s voice came echoing down. “Come here, sir!”Another moment Hal hesitated. Then, realizing that he could not yet raise the banner of open rebellion, he turned and lagged toward the road that led up the south side of the hill.As he climbed, he put into the background of his brain the plans he had been formulating, and for the more pressing need of the future began framing plausible lies.He lighted a Turkish cigarette as he entered the graveyard, to give himself a certain nonchalance; and so, smoking this thing which the old captain particularly abominated, swinging his shoulders, he came along the graveled walk toward the family burying lot, where once more Captain Briggs had sat down upon the bench to wait for him.
THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
Sadly returning home, Laura stopped for a moment at her garden gate to make quite sure her father was not in the side yard. With all her girlish dreams broken and draggled, the heartbroken girl stood looking at the flowers that only an hour before had seemed so wondrous gay. And all at once she heard the sound of wheels upon the road. Turning, she saw old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol slowly driving toward Snug Haven.
Half-minded to retreat inside the garden, still she stood there, for already Captain Briggs had raised a hand in greeting. Every feature of the old captain’s face was limned with grief. His shoulders seemed to sag, bowed down with heavier weight than his almost eighty years could pile upon them.
So the girl remained at the gate, greatly sorrowing; and peered after the two old men. Though she could not guess the captain’s trouble, her woman’s instinct told her this trouble bore on Hal. And over her own grief settled still another cloud that darkened it still more.
Puzzled, disillusioned, she swung the gate and entered the prim paths bordered with low box-hedges. No one saw her. Quietly she entered the house and crept up-stairs to her own room. There, in that virginal place, she dropped down on her old-fashioned, four-posted bed of black walnut, and buried her face inthe same pillows to which, girl-like, she had often confided so many innocent and tender dreams.
As the girl lay there, crying for the broken bauble, love, crushed in the brutal hand of Hal, old Captain Briggs and Dr. Filhiol—once more back on the quarterdeck of Snug Haven—settled themselves for dejected consultation.
“I never did expect ’twould be as much as that,” the captain said, mechanically stuffing his pipe. “I reckoned maybe fifty dollars would pay demurrage and repairs on Mac. McLaughlin isn’t worth more, rig and all. But, Judas priest, two hundred and a half! That’s running into money. Money I can ill afford to pay, sir!”
“I know,” the doctor answered. “It’s cruel extortion. But what can you do, captain? McLaughlin holds the tiller now. He can steer any course he chooses. The fact that he started at five hundred, plus the apology that he demands from Hal on the deck of theSylviain front of the whole crew, and that we’ve pared him down to two hundred and fifty, plus the apology—that’s a very great gain. It’s bad, I know, but not so bad as having had the boy locked up, charged with felonious assault. It’s not so bad as that, sir!”
“No, no, of course not,” Briggs agreed. “I suppose I’ve got to pay, though Lord knows, sir, the money’s needed terribly for other things, now that the college bill has got to be settled all over again!”
“I know it’s hard,” sympathized the doctor, “but there’s no help for it. Wipe the slate clean, and give Hal another start. That’s all youcando.”
The old captain remained smoking and brooding a while, with sunshine on his head. At last his eyes sought the far, deep line of blue that stretched against the horizon—the sea-line, lacking which the old man always sensed a vacancy, a loss.
“Close on to six bells,” judged he, “by the way the sun’s shining on the water. Wonder where the boy can be? I’ve got to have a proper gam with him.”
“Why? Where ought he to be?” the doctor asked.
“He must have put back into port, after his little cruise with Laura, this morning. We sighted her, moored at her front gate, you remember?”
“H-m! You don’t suppose there’s trouble brewing there too, do you? I thought the girl looked upset, didn’t you?”
“Ididn’t notice anything. What seemed to be the matter?”
“I thought she’d been crying a bit.”
The captain clenched his fist.
“By the Judas priest!” he exclaimed fervently. “If I thought Hal had been abusing that girl, I’d make it hot for him! That’sonething I won’t stand!” He peered down the road with narrowing eyes, then got up and went to the front door. “Hal, oh, Hal!” he cried.
No answer. The captain’s voice echoed emptily in the old-fashioned hallway.
“Not here, anyhow,” said he, returning to his rocker. “Well, we won’t accuse him of anything else till we know. I only hope he hasn’t written any more black pages on the log by mishandling Laura.”
Wearily his eyes sought Croft Hill. Of a sudden unbidden tears blurred his sight.
“There’sa peaceful harbor for old, battered craft, anyhow,” he murmured, pointing. “I sometimes envy all the tired folk that’s found sleep and rest up there in their snug berths, while we still stand watch in all weathers. If, after all I’ve worked and hoped for, there’s nothing ahead but breakers, I’ll envy them more than ever.”
“Come now, captain!” Filhiol tried to cheer him.“Maybe it was only a little lovers’ quarrel that sent Laura home. There’s never all smooth sailing, with maid and man for a crew. Let’s wait a while and see.”
“Yes, wait and think it over,” said the captain. “There’s only one place for me, doctor, when things look squally, and that’s with my folks on the hill. Guess I’ll take a walk up there now and talk it over with them. Come with me, will you?”
Filhiol shook his head.
“Too much for me, that hill is,” he answered. “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit right here and watch the sea.”
“Suit yourself, doctor.” And Captain Briggs arose. “When Ezra comes down the lane tell him not to bother with dinner. A little snack will do. Let’s each of us think this thing out, and maybe we can chart the proper course between us.”
He stood a moment in the sunshine, then, bare-headed, went down the steps and turned into the path that would lead him up Croft Hill. He stopped, gathering a handful of bright flowers—zinnias, hollyhocks, sweet peas—for his ever-remembered dead. Then he went on again.
“Poor old chap!” said Dr. Filhiol. “The curse is biting pretty deep. That’s all poppycock, that Malay cursing; but the curses of heredity are stern reality. There’s a specific for every poison in the world. Even the dreadcuraréhas one. But for the poison of heredity, what remedy is there? Poor old captain!”
Alpheus Briggs, with bowed head, climbed up the winding way among the blackberry bushes, the sumacs and wild roses dainty-sweet; and so at last came to the wall pierced with the whitewashed gate that he himself kept always in repair.
Into the cemetery, his Garden of Gethsemane, he penetrated, by paths flanked with simple and piousstones, many of hard slate carved with death’s-heads, urns, cherubs and weeping-willows, according to the custom of the ancient, godly days. Thus to his family burial lot he came, and there laid his offering upon the graves he loved; and then sat down upon the bench there, for meditation in this hour of sorrow and perplexity.
And as sun and sky and sea, fresh breeze and drifting cloud, and the mild influences of his lifelong friend, tobacco, all worked their soothings on him, he presently plucked up a little heart once more. The nearness of his dead bade him have hope and courage. He felt, in that quiet and solemn place, the tightening of his family bonds; he felt that duty called him to lift even these new and heavy burdens, to bear them valiantly and like a man.
With the graves about him and the sea before, and over all the heavens, calm returned. And sorrow—which, like anger, cannot long be keen—faded into another thought: the thought of how he should make of Hal the man that he would have him be.
How restful was this sunlit hilltop, where he knew that soon he, too, must sleep! The faint, far cries of gulls drifted in to him with the bell-buoy’s slow tolling; and up from the village rose the music of the smitten anvil. That music minded him of a Hindustani poem Hal once had read to him—a poem about the blacksmith, Destiny, beating out showers of sparks upon the cosmic anvil in the night of eternity, each spark a human soul; and each, swiftly extinguished, worth just as much to Destiny as earthly anvil sparks are to the human toiler at the forge—as much and no more.
The poem had thus ended:
“All is Maya, all is illusion! Why struggle, then?To walk is better than to run; to stand is better than to walk.To sit is better than to stand; to lie is better than to sit.To sleep is better than to wake; to dream is better than to live.Better still is a sleep that is dreamless,
And death is best of all!”
“I wonder if that’s true?” the captain mused. “I wonder if lifeisall illusion and death alone is real?”
Thus meditating, he felt very near the wife and son who lay there beneath the flowers he had just laid on the close-cut sod. The cloud-shadows, drifting over the hilltop, seemed symbols of the transitory passage of man’s life, unstable, ever drifting on, and leaving on the universe no greater imprint than shadows on the grass. He yearned toward those who had gone to rest before him; and though not a praying man, a supplication voiced itself in him:
“Oh, God, let me finish out my work, and let me rest! Let me put the boy on the right course through life, and let me know he’ll follow it—then, let me steer for the calm harbor where Thou, my Pilot, wilt give me quiet from the storm!”
Thus the old captain sat there for a long time, pondering many and sad things; and all at once he saw the figure of a man in white coming along the road. The captain knew him afar.
“There’s Hal now,” said he. “I wonder where he’s been and what this all means?”
A new anxiety trembled through his wounded heart, that longed for nothing now but love and trust. Up rose the old captain, and with slow steps walked to the eastern wall of the cemetery. There he waited patiently.
Presently Hal came into sight, round the shoulder of Croft Hill.
“Ahoy, there! Hal! Come here—I want to see you!”
The old man’s cry dropped with disagreeable surpriseinto Hal’s sinister reflections. Hal looked up, and swore to himself. He sensed the meaning of that summons.
“There’s another damned scene coming,” thought Hal. “Why the hell can’t he let me alone now? Why can’t everybody let me alone?”
Nothing could now have been more inopportune than an interview with his grandfather. Hal—his rage burned out to ashes—had come down from Geyser Rock, and had turned homeward in evil humor. And as he had gone he had already begun to lay out tentative plans for what he meant to do.
“It’s all bull, what Laura handed me!” he had been thinking when the captain’s summons had intruded. “Am I going to let her throw me that way? I guessnot! I’ll land her yet; but not here, not here! I can’t stick here. The way I’m in wrong with the college, and now this new rough-house with Laura, will certainly put the crimp in me. What I’ve got to do is clear out. And I won’t go alone, at that. If I only had a twenty-five footer! I could get her aboard of it some way. The main thing’s a boat. The rest is easy. I could let them whistle, all of them. The open sea—that’s the thing! That’s a man’s way to do things—not go sniveling ’round here in white flannels all summer, letting a girl hand it to me that way!
“God, if I could only raise five hundred bucks! I could get Jim Gordon’sKittiwinkfor that, and provision it, too. Make a break for Cuba, or Honduras; why, damn it, I could go round the world—go East—get away from all this preaching and rough-house—live like a man, by God!”
The captain’s hail shattered Hal’s dreams.
“Devil take the old man!” snarled Hal to himself as he scowled up at the figure on the hilltop. “What’s he wantnow? And devil take all women! They’re likedogs. Beat a dog and a woman, and you can’t go wrong. I’ll play this game to win yet, and make good! Hello, up there?” he shouted in reply to the captain. “What d’you want of me?”
“I want to talk with you, Hal,” the old man’s voice came echoing down. “Come here, sir!”
Another moment Hal hesitated. Then, realizing that he could not yet raise the banner of open rebellion, he turned and lagged toward the road that led up the south side of the hill.
As he climbed, he put into the background of his brain the plans he had been formulating, and for the more pressing need of the future began framing plausible lies.
He lighted a Turkish cigarette as he entered the graveyard, to give himself a certain nonchalance; and so, smoking this thing which the old captain particularly abominated, swinging his shoulders, he came along the graveled walk toward the family burying lot, where once more Captain Briggs had sat down upon the bench to wait for him.