[Pg 29]
"That girl is a hoodoo!" he muttered.
"Can I do anything for you?" inquired the voice, with that super-solemnity which results from the effort to conceal amusement,—a solemnity doubly insulting to its object, implying at once his absurdity and his vanity.
"Thank you!" answered Flint, stiffly; "if you will be kind enough to send some one over to give me a lift, I will be greatly obliged."
"Why not get in with us? Luff her in, Jim!" With this the girl and her companion, a boy of twelve years old, bare of leg and freckled of face, brought the boat around, and Flint climbed aboard with rather a bad grace.
To tell the truth, he was in a fit of the sulks. I admit that the sulks are not heroic; but Homer permitted them to Achilles, and why should I conceal the fact, unpleasing though it be, about my lesser hero.
Doubtless his ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, would have felt a like discomposure, had his pulpit given way under him in the presence of his congregation; and even that other fiery orator, Patrick The Great, might have lost his balance had his new peach-colored coat split up the back, when he was hurling death and destruction upon tyrants and pleading for liberty or death. To be ridiculous with equanimity is the crowning achievement of philosophy.
[Pg 30]
The boy addressed as "Jim" stared at Flint with open-mouthed enjoyment.
"You didn't fetch where you meant to, did you?"
"Hush, Jim!"
"Why, Fred, what am I saying wrong now? You're always hushing me up. I didn't mean to guy him, but he did look so jolly glum."
Seeing that intervention was vain in this quarter, his sister essayed a change of topic, and, womanlike, rushed on to the one she had most steadfastly promised herself to avoid.
"Were you fishing when the accident happened?" She stopped and colored nervously.
"No," observed Flint, dryly. (His remarks were the only dry things about him.) "My fishing-rod happened to be broken. It is of no consequence however," he hastened to add, seeing her blush deepen painfully. "The fish about here are not gamey enough to make fishing an exciting sport. Do you find it so?"
"I never fish."
"Ah, I am surprised."
"I hate to see the poor things suffer—"
"You are too tender-hearted?"
"Say rather too weak-nerved—I should not care if every fish in the sea died a violent death after prolonged suffering, provided I was not obliged to watch the process."
[Pg 31]
Flint smiled.
"But don't you know these cold-blooded creatures can't be made to suffer? I dare say the keenest enjoyment a fish ever feels is when his nervous system is gently stimulated by a hook in his mouth."
"Perhaps—I don't know—I tell you it is no question of sympathy. It is simply physical repulsion; and then I loathe the soft slipperiness of the bait."
"That's so," put in the boy at the tiller. "Fred groans every time I put a worm on the hook, and squeals when the fish flop round in the bottom of the boat, especially if they come anywhere near her skirts."
"Fred," repeated Flint to himself, "I might have known she would have a boy's name—" Aloud, he said: "I suppose, Master Jim, you have found all the best fishing-grounds in the pond."
Jim softened visibly at this tribute to his skill.
"Well, I know one good one over at Brightman's, and I'll show it to you to-morrow, if you like."
His sister shot a warning glance from under her level eyebrows.
"Don't make plans too far ahead, Jim. Sufficient unto the day, you remember—and unless this gentleman gets dry and warm soon, I am[Pg 32]afraid he will spend some days to come under the doctor's care. Haven't you some brandy or whiskey?" she asked, turning more fully toward Flint, and noticing for the first time that his lips were blue and his teeth chattering in spite of his efforts at unconcerned conversation.
"Yes," he answered; "a flask full of excellent old whiskey—over there," and he pointed disconsolately to the line of green water where the tell-tale fluttered above the wrecks of "The Aquidneck."
The young lady knit her brows in puzzled thought, "What is in our locker, Jim?"
"Bread and butter, cocoanut balls and ginger-ale."
"Get out the ginger-ale."
"But it is your luncheon," deprecated Flint.
"No, it isn't—it is your medicine. Try it."
Flint pressed the iron spring, and poured down the spluttering liquid, striving to conceal his wry face.
"Bully, ain't it?" exclaimed Jim, not without a tinge of regret for lost joys in his tone.
"Excellent!" returned Flint, perjuring himself like a gentleman.
"It is better than nothing," Miss Fred answered judicially. "I will send Jim up to the inn with some brandy; Marsden's stuff is rank poison. I had some once this summer when[Pg 33]I was ill, and straightway sent off to town for a private supply. If you feel able to exercise, I should advise you to let us put you off at this point, and make a run across country to Marsden's."
"I don't know how to thank you," Flint murmured as Jimmy pulled the row-boat up, and the young man prepared to climb in after him.
"There is no occasion for thanks. But if you insist on a debit and credit account, please charge it off against the ruin of your fishing-rod."
"I am humiliated."
"You?"
"Yes; I must have been a model of incivility."
"No; it was I who was in fault, rushing about the country like a jockey riding down everything in sight."
"Who except a fool would have had a fishing-rod trailing half-way across the road?"
"Look here," grumbled Jim, "I can't hold this dory bumping against the side of the boat forever—"
"Don't be impertinent, Jim. Besides apologies never last long. It is only explanations which take time—"
Flint jumped from the gunwale of the sail-boat into the dory, and took the oars. As he headed for shore, he turned his eyes once more to the sail-boat, and the glimpse that he had of[Pg 34]its skipper he carried for long after—the vision of her standing there in the stern, against the stretch of blue water, her soft handkerchief of some red stuff knotted about her throat above the gray jacket, her felt hat thrust up in front above the waves of her hair, and her eyes smiling with frank mirthfulness.
[Pg 35]
Flint was glad enough on reaching the inn to creep into bed. In spite of his cross-country run he was chilled through. Little shivers ran down his back, and his hands and feet seemed separated by spaces of numbness from the warmth of his body. The brandy arrived, and he swallowed some eagerly; but it had little effect on his chilly apathy. The dinner-bell clanged below. Flint heard it, but he paid no heed to the summons. He had forgotten what it was to desire food. A blur before his eyes, and an iron band about his head, occupied his attention to the exclusion of the outside world.
By three o'clock the headache-fiend had entered into full possession, had perched itself in the centre of consciousness, and seemed to[Pg 36]Flint's excited nerves to be working its octopus claws in and out among the folds of his brain.
Waves of pain vibrated outward to his ears and eyes. He watched the shade against the blindless window flap to and fro. Each streak of light admitted, struck the sufferer like a blow. He got up, went to the washbasin and sopped a towel, which he bound about his head and lay down again—no relief. He could endure it no longer. He dropped his boots one after the other on the floor, till at length Marsden heard the signal of distress, came lumbering up the stairs, and thumped upon his door.
Flint bade him come in and state in the fewest possible words whether there was any doctor within reach.
"There was."
"How long would it take to fetch him?"
"About half an hour."
"Let it be done."
Again Flint sank into a sort of stupor, from which he was awakened by a knock, and the entrance of a nervous, little wiry gentleman whose clothes of rusty black had the effect of having been purchased in a fit of absence of mind.
The sufferer roused himself as the physician came in.
"The doctor?"
[Pg 37]
"Yes."
"My name is Flint, and I sent for you to give me a dose of morphine."
"My name, sir, is Cricket, and I'm damned if I do any such thing."
"Why did they send for you then?"
"They sent for me to see what I thought you needed—not to take your orders for a drug. I am not an apothecary."
"More's the pity!" returned Flint, flouncing across to the inner side of the bed, and turning his back unceremoniously upon his visitor.
Dr. Cricket received this demonstration with unconcern. He took out his thermometer and shook it against his wrist. Then resting one knee on the bed he thrust the thermometer into his recalcitrant patient's mouth, saying: "Don't crunch on it, unless you want your mouth full of glass, and your belly full of mercury. Now for the pulse. Ah! too fast—I expected as much."
He took out the thermometer and held it to the light. "Over one hundred—see here, young man, it's well you sent for me when you did."
"I wish I hadn't."
"So do I, from a professional point of view. Nothing so good for doctors' business as delay in sending for us. As it is, I fear I can't conscientiously[Pg 38]make more than two calls, or keep you in bed after to-morrow."
"But what are you going to do for this accursed pain in the head?"
"Oh, that's of no consequence—only a symptom. It's the fever that worries me."
"Oh, it is—is it? Well, it is the pain that worries me, and if you don't do something about it, I'll fire your old bottles out of the window."
"Very good. Then I will send back to Mrs. White's for more bottles and a straight-jacket to boot—"
"So you live at Mrs. White's, do you?"
"No, sir, I do notliveanywhere in summer—I board."
The doctor chuckled over his little joke as genially as if it had never seen the light before; but humor does not appeal to a man with a headache, and antique humor least of all.
"That's where Miss Fred and that freckled-faced brother of hers stay—isn't it?" Flint continued.
"Ah, do you know the Anstices?"
"Not I—that is, I never saw the young woman till yesterday; but to the best of my belief she is not human at all, only an evil genius of the region who goes about with incantations which cause fishing-rods to break at the end, and boats to run onto rocks."
[Pg 39]
"So—ho! You were the skipper of 'The Aquidneck,' were you? Well, well! no wonder you're laid up with a chill. We nearly burst our blood-vessels, laughing over Miss Fred's account of you, rising up like a ghost out of the eel-grass, and the topmast of your boat sticking up out of the water like a dead man's finger."
Dr. Cricket's little black eyes twinkled with enjoyment as he recalled the scene. The misguided man fancied he was helping to take his patient's thoughts off himself, and, having measured out his powders and potions, he took his departure, leaving Flint inwardly raging.
To be made the butt of a boarding-house table! Really it was too much; and this girl, of whom he had begun to think rather well—this girl doubtless mimicked his disconsolate tones and his chattering teeth, and made all manner of fun of his sorry plight.
Folk with a headache see life quite out of focus; and at the moment it really would have been a comfort to Flint to know that this mocking maid had been drowned, or struck by lightning, or in any fashion disabled from repeating the story of his discomfiture. He writhed and twisted, and at last fell asleep, still alternately vowing never to forgive, and never to give her another thought.
[Pg 40]
In the morning when he woke, free from pain and, except for a certain languor, quite himself again, he wondered at his childishness of the night before, though in spite of reason a certain sub-conscious resentment lingered still.
At seven o'clock Matilda Marsden knocked at his door and gave warning that the breakfast-hour drew near.
"I say," he called in response, "will you please send some one with a pitcher of hot water? I'll have my breakfast in bed."
Flint knew perfectly well that she would bring the water herself; but it was necessary to keep up the fiction of intermediate agency in deference to her position.
From October until June she was "Miss Marsden," in a shop of a small New England town; and when from June to October she condescended to become plain "Tilly," and to lend her assistance to her parents at the Nepaug Inn, she made it distinctly understood that she did so without prejudice to her social claims.
She waited at the table to be sure; but she shaded her manner with nice precision to meet the condition of the guest she served. To the timid pedler, she was encouraging; to the encroaching commercial traveller, she was haughty, and to Flint gently and insinuatingly sympathetic.
Flint, on his part, treated her with the deference[Pg 41]which he accorded to all women; but it never occurred to him to consider her as an individual at all. To him she was simply an agency for procuring food and towels; and when she lingered on the stairs, or at the doorway, making little efforts at conversation, he cut her ruthlessly short.
The result of this mingling of courtesy and neglect was of course that the girl fell promptly and deeply in love with the young man, cut out from the current magazines every picture which bore the slightest resemblance to his features, and went about sighing sighs and dreaming dreams, in a fashion at once pathetic and ridiculous. Flint, meanwhile, always obtuse on the side of sympathy, went his way wholly oblivious of her state of mind. How should he know that his rolls were hotter and his coffee stronger than those of his fellow-boarders, or that to him alone was accorded the friendly advice as to the comparative merits of "Injun pudd'n" and huckleberry pie, which constituted the staple of desserts at the inn?
This morning, as usual, he was wholly unconscious of the effort to beautify the tray set down outside his door. It meant nothing to him, that the pitcher holding the hot water was of red and yellow majolica, that the coarse napkin was embroidered with a wreath of impossible[Pg 42]roses, and the coffee-cup bore the legend "Think of me" in gilt lettering. In fact the only thing which attracted his attention at all was a pile of letters on the tray. He glanced hastily over the envelopes, swallowed his breakfast, and returned to closer inspection of the correspondence. The first letter which he opened was written by the editor of an English "Quarterly," informing him that his recent critique on Balzac had found favor in high places, and that the "Quarterly" would like to engage a series.
Flint tried not to seem, even to himself, as pleased as he felt.
The next note was of a different tone, a grieved rejoinder from a young author whose book had been reviewed by Flint with more light than sweetness. Less stoical to reproaches than to compliment, Flint kicked vigorously at the bedclothes, as though they had been the offending note-writer.
"Great Heavens!" he growled. "Does the man think his budding genius must be fed on sugar-plums? What I said about him and his book was either true or false; and here he spends his whole sheet prating about 'sensitive feelings,' as if they had anything to do with the matter."
Oh, imperfect sympathies! How large a part you play in the unhappiness of the world!
[Pg 43]
The third envelope on the tray was yellow, and contained a large, careless scrawl on a half-sheet of business paper; but it seemed to afford Flint unalloyed delight.
"Brady coming to-day!" he almost shouted aloud. "That is what I call jolly. I would like to see forty Dr. Crickets keep me in bed."
Brady and Flint had been college friends in the old days, at Harvard, and after that for years had drifted apart. Flint betaking himself to a German university, and Brady to a business career in Bison, a flourishing town of the great Northwest, wherein he too had flourished mightily, and whence he sent imploring messages to Flint, begging him not to waste his life in the effete civilization of New York, but to come out and get a view of real folks in the fresh new world of the West.
To these messages Flint had replied with more candor than courtesy, that the only fault he had to find with New York was its lack of civilization, that he was saving every nickel in hopes of getting away from it to eastward, and that if he were condemned to spend his life in Bison, or any other prairie town, he would make short work of matters with a derringer.
This slight difference of opinion had not at all interfered with the attachment of the two; and few things would have roused Flint to such enthusiasm[Pg 44]as this expectation of a fortnight—a leisurely, gossiping, garrulous, quarrelsome fortnight—with his old friend. The prospect of the visit was a better tonic than any contained in the little doctor's black-box. Indeed it drove all thoughts of doctors and their medicines so completely out of his head that he was quite surprised when, having dressed and descended to the ground-floor, he saw Dr. Cricket standing at the foot of the stairs, wiping the perspiration off his forehead with a large silk handkerchief.
The Doctor looked fiercely at him from under his shaggy eyebrows.
"Is this Mr. Flint?" he asked, as if unable to believe the testimony of his eyes.
"It is," Flint answered with unconcern.
"Why did you get up?"
"Because I formed the habit in my youth."
"Didn't I tell you to lie in bed till I came?"
"I don't remember."
The Doctor quivered with rage.
"I am an old man, sir," he said, "and I've walked a mile in the heat of this devilish sun, and all for a patient who is determined to kill himself, and such a fool that it doesn't matter much whether he does or not."
Flint smiled.
"Every man, you know, must be either a fool or a physician when he reaches maturity. Some[Pg 45]may be both. However, since you were kind enough to come to my assistance last night, I cannot be induced to quarrel with you this morning, and you ought to be the last man to find fault with me for feeling the benefit of your medicine sooner than you expected."
Dr. Cricket was as easy to be placated as to be stirred to anger; and when Flint urged him to come into the stuffy little office and partake of a lemonade with the addition of a stronger fluid from a bottle in Flint's room, he forgot his wrath or drowned it in the cooling drink, and at length parted in kindliness, only bidding his patient wear cabbage-leaves in his hat, and be sure to take wraps in case of a change in the weather, not forgetting to put on his "gums" if he walked on the wet beach.
When he had gone, Flint found the Doctor's gold-bowed spectacles in a chair. "Brady and I will walk up with them this evening," he said to himself. "Perhaps I was not as civil to the old gentleman as I might have been."
When Marsden learned that Flint was planning an expedition to South East, he suggested that he would "take it kindly" if Flint could make it convenient to bring down a few packages of groceries, as some of the store supplies had run out, and the relays were not expected until the next day.
[Pg 46]
Flint reproached himself for weakness in complying, and growled still further when he saw the length of the list which Marsden handed to him as he took his seat in the carryall.
"What a cursed fool I am," he muttered as he drove off, "to hire this man's beast for the privilege of doing his errands!"
The three-o'clock train puffed into the station at South East nearly an hour behind time. The period of waiting in the intense mid-day heat had not improved Flint's temper. For all his hearty greeting to Brady, he could not shake off a sense of irritation, intensified by the fact that he had no one on whom to wreak it.
Brady's trunk was strapped onto the carryall, the various bottles, jugs, and packages which Flint, with such unusual urbanity, had consented to bring down to the Beach for Marsden, were stowed away under the seat, and nothing remained but the mail. To get this Flint drew up at the post-office. The postmaster was a grouty old store-keeper who, through political influence, retained his position in spite of the efforts of the town's-folk to oust him. This afternoon a line of wagons stood at the door, and a line of men stood at the little window within. Seeing his own name in the list of those for whom there were letters, Flint waited for the window to open, and took his place in the line.[Pg 47]When he reached the window, he asked for his letter.
"No letter for you," growled the postmaster.
Flint stepped out of line and consulted the list. There was no mistake. Again he presented himself before the window.
"What cher want?"
"My letter."
"Ain't no letter, I told cher."
"Perhaps you will be kind enough to look at the list."
The postman, in the worst of humors, went to a drawer of his desk, and, after much hunting about and turning over of parcels, he found a letter which he threw out at Flint without a remark. Flint took it also in silence, turned away and resumed his place at the end of the line. Again he returned to his old post before the little window. This time the postman grew purple with rage.
"Get out o' this you! What cher want now?"
"I simply wish," answered Flint, in his low, clear, gentlemanly voice, "to tell you that you have behaved like an insolent blackguard, and deserve to be removed from office."
Flint's words were the signal for a storm of applause from the loiterers, and he walked out a hero. He was in a more amiable frame of mind[Pg 48]when he climbed into the carryall. The old horse, feeling his head turned homeward, needed less urging than usual, and the young men lolled back, talking busily of old times and new.
Brady was a typical business-man of the West,—cheerful, practical, a bit boastful, square-shouldered, clear-eyed and ruddy-faced, confident of himself, proud of his surroundings, sure that there were no problems of earth or Heaven with which America in general, and Philip Brady in particular, were not fitted to cope.
Before he had uttered a dozen sentences, Flint began to realize how far apart they had drifted in the ten years since they had met. He experienced a vaguely hopeless sense of complexity in the presence of his friend's bustling frankness. He felt almost a hypocrite, and yet it seemed to him that any attempt at self-revelation would be useless, because the relative value, thechiaro-oscuroof life, was so different to each. He took refuge, as we all do under such circumstances, in objectivity—asked heartily for the health of each member of Brady's family, listened with polite interest to the statistics of the growth of Bison, and then began to wonder what he should talk about next. As he cast his eye downward, a very practical subject suggested itself, for he saw with dismay that the cork was[Pg 49]out of the molasses jug, from which the sticky fluid had already oozed forth, and was rapidly spreading itself over the floor of the carryall.
"This is what comes of being obliging. Just look at this mess! What in time are we going to do about it, Brady?"
Brady, being a man of action, wasted no energy in discussion. He jumped to the ground, pulled out first his overcoat and gripsack, fortunately unharmed, then the paper parcels of oatmeal and hominy, sticky and dripping. Swiftly corking the jug, he lifted it out of the carryall, together with the oilcloth strip, and deftly stood both against a fence by the roadside. Flint watched him with admiration. He felt himself supremely helpless in the presence of the direful calamity. How was he ever to get these bundles into condition to be put back into the wagon? How cleanse the oilcloth and the fatal jug?
No house was in sight.
Flint stood gloomily gazing down at his boots covered with the oozy brown fluid. "Jupiter aid us!" he exclaimed; and as if in answer to his call, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," rose on their sight, coming towards them from over the ridge of the hill. She came on swiftly, yet without hurry. She walked (a process little understood by the feminine half of the world, hampered as they are by their stays and ten[Pg 50]penny heels). This woman neither hobbled, nor waddled, nor tripped. With the leg swinging out from the hip (no awkward knee-movement, yet no stride), she swept down the hill as serenely as though she were indeed a messenger sent by Jupiter to their assistance. Beside her trotted a large dog who now and again excursionized in search of tempting adventure, but as constantly returned to rub his head lovingly against his mistress's skirt, and lick her hand, as if to assure her that, in spite of his wandering propensities, his heart remained faithful.
"The hoodoo!" muttered Flint.
"What a pretty girl!" exclaimed Brady.
The object of these widely differing criticisms moved steadily nearer. She wore a white gown. A basket was on her arm, and her wide-brimmed straw hat was pulled low over her eyes to shield them from the sun. She was close upon the scene of accident before she discerned it. Catching at the same moment a look of annoyance on Flint's face, she swerved a little, as if with intent to pass by, like the priest and the Levite, on the other side; then, reassured by Brady's look of half-comic despair, she set down her basket and paused.
"You have met with an accident, I see," she observed, as casually as though she had never before heard of any catastrophe in connection[Pg 51]with Flint. "The molasses worked, I suppose. It will, sometimes, if it is not tightly corked. It was stupid in the grocer not to warn you."
"It is kind of you," said Brady, "to lay the accusation of stupidity so far off; but, wherever it lies, the results are the same, and we are in a bad way."
"What can we find to wipe these things off with?" the good Samaritan asked, making common cause in the misfortune.
"Nothing," answered Flint, with extravagant gloom, striving as he spoke to cleanse his shoes by rubbing them against the grass-grown bank.
The girl put her finger to her lips,—a characteristic gesture when she was puzzled. Then, unfastening her basket with sudden energy, she exclaimed: "Why won't this do? Here is some sea-moss which I was taking to an old woman who lives a little further down the road. She makes some stuff which she calls farina out of it, and grieves bitterly that she is no longer young and spry enough to gather it for herself along the shore. My basket is full of this moss, and if we could wet it in the brook down yonder, we might sponge off the things with it, and then dry them with big leaves, backed up by those newspapers which I see you have in your parcel of mail."
"What a clever notion!" Brady said, as he[Pg 52]plunged down to the brook, and came up again with the dripping moss. He and the Samaritan scrubbed merrily away, while Flint stood by with an uncomfortable sense that he was out of it all, and that no one but himself knew or cared.
When comparative cleanliness was restored, and the bundles returned to the bottom of the wagon, the girl scrambled down to the brook, and, pushing back her wide cuffs, knelt by the water, where she washed the traces of sticky substance from her long slender fingers.
"You have relieved us from a very awkward situation," said Flint, as she rose; "but your basket of moss is spoiled and your long walk rendered futile. Surely you will permit us at least to drive you home."
"Thank you, no. Mrs. Davitt will like to talk a while, and to know that I have not forgotten her and her farina. So I will bid you 'good afternoon.'"
"That is the most charming girl I ever met," observed Brady, as he stood watching her disappear around the turn of the road.
"Did you ever meet one who was not?" asked Flint.
"The way she took hold was magnificent," continued Brady, unmoved by his companion's raillery. "And then when it was all over she was so unself-conscious; and the best of all was[Pg 53]her politeness in never laughing at us, for really, you know, we must have looked rather ridiculous, standing gawking there like two escaped imbeciles."
This allusion irritated Flint, as he remembered the last two occasions, when she had borne herself less seriously. The recollection colored his first remark, after they had clambered into the carryall, and persuaded Dobbin to resume his leisurely trot.
"I am afraid myself, inconsistent as it seems, I should have liked her better if she had not taken hold in such a capable, mannish fashion. There is a certain appealing dependence which is rather becoming to a woman—to my thinking, that is—it is an old-fashioned notion, I admit."
"Well, I must say I don't think an attitude of appealing dependence would have been very serviceable to us to-day; and as an habitual state of mind, while it may be very attractive, it seems to imply having some one at hand to appealingly depend upon. Our sex must have reciprocal duties; but I don't notice that you have offered yourself as a support for any of these clinging natures."
"Nevertheless," answered Flint, "if I ever did fall in love, it would be with a woman of the clinging kind. But don't let us get to talking[Pg 54]like a couple of sentimental schoolgirls! Here we are, anyway, at the last turn of the road, and there is Nepaug Beach. How does it strike you?"
"It reminds me," said Brady, smiling, "of the Walrus and the Carpenter:—
"'They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand.
If this were only cleared away
They said it would be grand.'"
"Brady, you are a sentimentalist! You sigh for brooks and willows and, for all I know,people."
"Flint, you are a misanthrope! You have searched out this God-forsaken stretch of sand just for the purpose of getting away from your kind. Now I have hunted you to your lair, and I propose to stay with you for a fortnight; but I am not to be dragooned into saying that I think your resort is a scene of beauty, for I don't; but that is a jolly, old, gray, tumbled-down building over there—a barn, I suppose."
"No, sir; that is the Nepaug Inn. As it has neither porters, waiters, nor electric bells, you are expected to shoulder your own luggage and march upstairs—second room to the right. Whoa, there!" he called out to the old horse a full minute after the animal had come to a dead halt in front of the inn door. The noise, how[Pg 55]ever, served its purpose in bringing Marsden to the door, and loading the old inn-keeper with imprecations for their unlucky experience with the molasses, Flint left him to struggle with the contents of the wagon, while he himself escorted Brady up the narrow, sagging stairs, and ensconced him in a room next his own,—a room whose windows looked out like his over the purple stretch of ocean, now opalescent with reflection of the clouds.
"Where do you take your bath?" Brady asked, looking round somewhat helplessly.
"In there, you land-lubber!" answered Flint, pointing out to sea; "isn't the tub big enough?"
Brady laughed, a hearty, boyish, infectious laugh. "All right," he said, "only it seems rather odd to come East for pioneering. Did you know, by the way, that I am to be in New York this winter?"
"No!"
"Yes. Our house is just establishing a branch office there, and I am to be at the head of it."
Flint chuckled.
"Bison establishing a branch office in New York! The humor of the thing delights me."
"I don't see anything so very funny about it," answered Brady, rather testily; "but I have no stomach for a quarrel till I have had some[Pg 56]supper—unless you supout there," he added with a lordly wave of his hand towards the ocean in imitation of Flint's gesture. "I hope, at any rate, our evening meal is not to be of farina. The associations might be a little too strong even for my appetite."
[Pg 57]
After taking leave of Flint and his companion in misfortune, Winifred quickened her pace. The lengthening shadows warned her that if she intended to return to the White House before supper was over, she had no time to lose.
"Come, Paddy!" she said, laying her hand with a light, caressing gesture on the shaggy red-brown head of the Irish setter, which had kept closer guard than ever since the meeting with the strangers in the road,—"come, Paddy! we must make a sprint for it."
The dog, glad enough to be allowed the luxury of a gallop, set off pell-mell, and Winifred followed at a gait which soon brought her, flushed and out of breath, before the unpainted house where the Davitt family made their abode. It was not characterized by great order or tidiness. Clothes-lines, hung with underwear of various shapes and sizes, decorated the side-yard, and proclaimed Mrs. Davitt's calling. A whole section[Pg 58]of the front fence had taken itself off. The gate swung aimlessly on one rusty hinge, and a brood of chickens wandered at will over the unmown grass before the house: yet the place was not wholly unattractive, for it bore evidences of human love and happiness; and, after all, these are the objects for which the most orderly and elegant mansions exist, if indeed they are so fortunate as to attain them. These are the essence of a home.
An old dory filled with geranium and nasturtium brightened the centre of the yard. Beneath the wide spreading maples, which lent their unbought adornment to the shabby old house, hung a child's swing, and near by stood a rickety express-cart, to which an unlucky goat was tethered by a multi-colored harness made of rope, tape, and bits of calico. The driver of this equipage, a tow-headed lad of some five years old, stood with his thumb in his mouth, gazing with open-eyed amazement at the young lady who thought it worth while to walk so fast.
"Good afternoon, John!" said Winifred, when she had regained her breath. "Is your mother at home?"
The practice of answering questions is an acquired habit, and comes only after long acquaintance with society. Children left in a state of nature rarely think it necessary or even safe[Pg 59]to commit themselves so far. John Davitt only pulled his thumb out of his mouth, poked his pink toes deeper into the grass, and gave a hitch at the single suspender supporting the ragged knickerbockers which formed two-thirds of his costume.
"Oh!" continued the visitor, not in the least disconcerted by the lack of response to her advances, "you don't want to leave your goat long enough to go and ask about your mother, do you? Well, I should not like to be asked to leave my colt if I were driving. People should do their own errands, I think, and not be bothering other folks with their business. You will not be afraid of my dog if I leave him here while I go into the house, will you?"
"Whath hith name?" asked John, discovering for the first time that he had a tongue and knew its use.
"Paddy," answered the visitor.
"I uthed to have a brother Paddy. He died."
"Then you must make friends with the dog for his sake. Would you like to see how my Paddy can chase a stone?" With this Winifred picked up a large pebble, and threw it far down the road. Paddy, with a bark of animated enjoyment, made after it, with wagging tail and ears laid back against his head. John laughed[Pg 60]loud, wrinkled up his little pug nose and showed his white teeth.
"Now when he brings it back, you throw it again, and I will go in and try to find your mother; I think I see her now," she added, as she turned the angle of the house and caught a glimpse of Mrs. Davitt, seated in the wooden rocking-chair beside the kitchen-table, paring potatoes.
To the casual glance she was only a homely old Irish woman who might have been the original of "The shape which shape had none." The only semblance of waist was the line drawn by her gingham apron-string. Her form bulged where it should have been straight, and was straight where it should have curved. Her face, however, had a gentle motherliness, and still bore traces of the comeliness which had marked it a quarter of a century earlier, when, as Bridget O'Hara, she had set sail from "the owld counthry" to try her fortune in the new.
After a few months' experience of city life over here, she had drifted to South East, where she found employment in a thread factory which stood on the bank of the tiniest stream that ever, outside of England, called itself a river. Its current ran swiftly, however; its mimic falls were forced into the service of trade; and the wheels of the thread factory whirred busily, except when[Pg 61]bad times brought wheels and bobbins to a standstill.
For three years after her arrival in South East, Bridget O'Hara stood beside her wheel, and fed her bobbin faithfully. Her blue Irish eyes were bright in those days, and her cheeks red as the roses of County Meath, where the thatched homestead of the O'Haras lifted its humble head. More than one of the men working in the factory took notice of the blue eyes and the red cheeks, and would have been glad to secure their owner for a wife; but she was not for any of them. Before she had been in the village six months, she had given her faithful heart to Michael Davitt, the young New England fisherman whose boat lay below the bridge which she crossed every morning on her way to her work in the factory. Many a time on bright spring mornings she loitered on the bridge, leaning over its wooden railing to watch Michael as he washed out his boat, and made ready for the day's sail. Sometimes the talk grew so absorbing that the factory bell sounded out its last warning call before Bridget could tear herself away, and afterward, through the long day, shut up among the whirring wheels, in the dust and heat of the big dreary room, she kept the vision of the white flapping sail, and of Michael Davitt standing by the tiller of the boat under the bridge.
[Pg 62]
At last the fisherman asked her to marry him, and she accepted him joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions of their united incomes.
"Sure, Mike dear," Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what's enough for wan will be enough for two, and you'll never feel the bit I'll be afther atin'."
This specious theory of political economy has beguiled into matrimony many a young couple who fail to take account of the important difference that what is enough for two may not be enough for three, and still less for three times three. So it fell out with the Davitts. For the first year of their married life, Bridget went on working in the factory, and kept her tiny tenement tidy, and Michael mended nets on the doorstep, and sold fish in summer, and loafed in the winter in contented assurance that life would continue to treat him well. But the next year opened less prosperously. Bridget was compelled to give up her work in the factory, and when, in the middle of a particularly rigorous winter, a baby was born to the house of Davitt, the outlook would have appeared discouraging to any one less optimistic than Bridget. But she found much cause for satisfaction in the thought that the baby had come at this particular time, when Michael could be at home to help take[Pg 63]care of the house; and above all in the reflection that the baby was a boy, "who'd not be thrubblin' any wan long, for before we know it, Mike, me jewel, he'll be lookin' afther you and me."
Part of her self-congratulation had justified itself, for the baby Leonard had grown up into one of those helpful, "handy" lads who sometimes are sent to be the salvation of impecunious households. At an incredibly early age, he began to feel the responsibilities of the family on his manly little shoulders, and as the procession of small Davitts entered the world, he took each one under his protecting care. Dennis, Ellen, Maggie, Tommy, Katie, and John had found their way into the family circle, and no one hinted that there was not place and porridge for the last as well as the first.
As the years went on, Michael Davitt lost whatever alertness of temperament he might once have possessed. New England seems to endow some of her children with such a surplus of energy, that she is compelled to subtract a corresponding amount from the share of others. Michael Davitt was one of the others. His experiences as a fisherman had persuaded him that it was useless to put forth effort, unless he had wind and tide in his favor. Consequently, his life was spent in waiting for encouragement from the forces of nature,—encouragement which[Pg 64]never came; so that at last he gave up the struggle, and sat by the chimney-corner all winter, as contentedly as he sat on the stern of his boat all summer, ready to move if circumstances favored, but serene under all conditions. His silence was as marked as his serenity. On occasions, he could be moved to smiles, but seldom to speech. He sat quiet and unmoved amid the family hubbub, his long limbs twisted together, his arms folded above his somewhat hollow chest, and his protruding tusks of teeth firmly fastened over his nether lip, as if constraining it to silence.
Tommy might lift off the cover of the beehive, and rush into the house shrieking with wrath and terror over the result; Maggie might upset the milk, and John drag the kitten about the room by its tail,—no matter! the father of the family continued to sit unmoved as Brahma. But when Leonard entered the door, some appearance of life began to show itself in Michael. He untwisted his legs, moved a little to make room on the settle, and even went so far as to make an entering wedge of conversation with a "Well, Leon!"
Leonard Davitt was a boy to warm any father's heart,—stout and strong, hearty and frank, cheerful as the day was long, with the smile and jest of his race ready for any chance[Pg 65]comer. This light-heartedness had made him a favorite not only in his own family, but among all the youth and maidens who dwelt in the outlying farmhouses around South East; but of late an unaccountable change had come over the lad. This merry, careless happiness had deserted him. He had taken to going about with hair unbrushed, and a "dejected 'havior of his visage."
The noisy mirth of his little brothers and sisters irritated him, and their noisier quarrels exasperated him. He kept away from them as much as he could, and when he was not off in his boat, he sat on the fence under the maples as taciturn as Michael himself. The children wondered at him, and gradually began to draw away at his approach, instead of rushing toward him as of old. Maggie, who was fifteen now, and worked in the factory, suspected the cause of his trouble, and once ventured to rally him on "the girl that was so cool she'd give a man the mitten in summer;" but her pleasantry was ill-received. Leonard scowled at her, and stalked away muttering to himself.
His mother saw him from her window, and she too knew what was the trouble with her boy; but she only dropped a few tears among the potato-parings, and resolved to make griddle-cakes for supper,—as though Leonard were still[Pg 66]a child whose heart could be cheered through his stomach. As Mrs. Davitt laid down her knife to wipe her eyes, she heard the barking of a dog, and then a rapid double knock on the half-open kitchen-door.
"Come in, Miss," she said, rising and wiping her hands on her gingham apron. "Come in and take the rocker. Don't be standin' when sittin' down is chape enough, even for the poor. It's yourself hezn't forgot me, nor me bit o' farina."
"No, indeed, Mrs. Davitt, I did not forget you: but you won't get your farina after all; for I met some poor men in distress, and I handed over all the sea-moss to them."
"Poor craytyurs! Wuz they that hungry they could ate it raw?"
"Hardly," answered Winifred, smiling at her remembrance of the peculiarly well-fed looking recipients of her bounty, "they were not hungry at all; but they had come to grief with a molasses jug. The carriage and everything in it was sticky, and I don't know what they would have done to get it clean without your moss; but you shall surely have some more to-morrow, and now tell me how you are feeling."
"Is it meself? Thank ye kindly, me dear. I'm jest accordin' to the common, save where I'm worse; me legs ache me nights, and I fale[Pg 67]the washin' in me back some days; but if me moind wuz right, it's little I'd moind the thrubble in me bones."
"Why, what is wrong, Mrs. Davitt?" Winifred asked with sympathy in her voice. "The children all look well. John's cheeks are red as apples, and Katie is as round as a butter-ball."
"Oh, the childers is all right," answered Mrs. Davitt, with an air of mystery, but evidently not unwilling to be pressed further as to the source of her trouble.
"Surely it is not your husband? He looked better than usual this morning when he came around to the White House, and he had as fine a catch of fish as I have seen this summer."
"Yea, himself's all right."
"Then it must be Leonard; but I am sure he is a boy of whom any mother might be proud."
"Proud? Yea, but many's the proud heart is the sore heart."
"Tell me all about it," said her young visitor, laying her delicate hand on the red fingers which still clasped the bone-handled steel knife. Mrs. Davitt looked down for a moment in silence, playing with the bent joint of her stiff third finger, then she broke out with a fierceness in curious contrast to her usual gentle speech.
"It's that Tilly Marsden. Bad luck to her[Pg 68]for a bowld hussy! She's put the insult on Leonard."
"The insult?"
"Yea, 'tis the same as an insult for all the neighbors to take notice of, whin a gurrl ez hez been kapin' company with a man fur goin' on two years, walks by him now with her nose in the air, lek wan wuz too good to be shpakin' with the praste himself."
"Don't be too hard on Tilly, Mrs. Davitt," remonstrated Winifred, soothingly. "Perhaps she is fond of Leonard still, but does not want him to feel too sure of her. I dare say you were a little like that yourself, when you were a girl."
"Thrue fer ye, me dear!" Mrs. Davitt answered, with that delightful Irish readiness to be diverted from her woes to a more cheerful frame of mind. "Thrue fer ye! I'd never let Michael be sayin' me heart wuz caught before ever he'd shpread the net."
"Then, depend upon it, Tilly feels the same."
"Mebbe it's the thruth you're afther findin' out; but I misthrust, and it's meself will never fergive her if she breaks the heart of the best by in the counthry."
The possibility was too much for the sorrowful mother. She threw her apron over her head, and abandoned herself once more to despair, swaying to and fro disconsolately in the black[Pg 69]wooden chair from the back of which the gilt had been half rubbed away by quarter of a century of rocking.
"Do you think it could possibly do any good for me to talk with Leonard?" Winifred ventured, quite dubious in her own mind of the wisdom of the proceeding.
"Ow, if yez would, 'twould like be the savin' o' the by. He'll not bear any of us to shpake wid him at all at all."
"Very well then, I will try to get him to talk about it. Only don't be disappointed if I do not succeed! The chances are that he will not listen to me."
"Not listen to yoursilf, is it!" cried Mrs. Davitt, once more transported to the heights of hope. "Sure, the saints in Hiven would lay down their harps to hear your swate vice. Yes, and aven to look at ye, as ye shtand there, in that white dhress, jist like what wan o' thimsilves 'ud be wearin'! How becomin' ye are to your clothes!"
Winifred smiled at the subtle flattery; but before she could muster an appropriate acknowledgment, she caught sight of Leonard loitering at the gate.
"There is Leon now; I will ask him to walk part way home with me. It is growing dark, and you know," she added, laughing, "how timid I am!"