The evening following the wreck of "The Mary Ann" found the friends in council, who included most of the summer population of Nepaug, gathered around the White-House hearth, on which blazed a hospitable fire, doubly cheering in its radiant contrast to the gathering darkness without. The wind, which had risen to half a gale, rattled at the window panes and roared down the chimney. The sound of the booming surf, as the great waves hurled themselves against the dunes, made itself heard, even through the heavy pine doors and shutters. The foam, which yesterday curved in lines of delicate spray below the headland, was now lashed into a lather of white terror. Above it through the twilight rose, dim and ghostlike, the masts of the wrecked vessel.
The dreariness outside lent an added charm to the snug and cheerful cosiness within the[Pg 140]little parlor, the inmates of which drew closer than usual, as they talked in somewhat subdued voices.
Jimmy Anstice lay on his back upon the hearth-rug, his head pillowed upon Paddy, and his knees braced one on top of the other. Ben Bradford sat on a chair tipped back against the wall, with his thumbs thrust through the armholes of his corduroy vest. Winifred lounged upon the haircloth sofa with one foot surreptitiously tucked under her. Every one's attitude suggested a degree of comfort rare in society. A wonderful sense of intimacy is imparted by perils undergone together, or profound experiences shared. They seem to sweep away, as with a whirlwind breath, that thick veil of convention and commonplace which shroud many acquaintances from beginning to end. At these times the real nature has shown itself, as it does only in the great crises of life; and, once revealed, it can never wholly conceal itself again.
At the White-House that evening, the wreck was discussed over and over from every point of view. Each person wished to describe the moment when he awoke to the apprehension of the calamity,—what he said and did, thought and planned. Such conversations lead one to believe that the chief pleasure of the resurrection[Pg 141]will lie in the comparison of post-mortem experiences on first awakening.
Dr. Cricket said that when he first heard the booming of guns, half-asleep as he was, he dreamed that the statue of William Penn was falling off the dome of the Philadelphia city hall.
Miss Standisth said that she was broad awake; but had happened not to catch any sound till she heard the commotion of people moving about downstairs. This she took to mean that breakfast-time had arrived, and that this was destined to be another dark day like the freak of nature famous in the colonial annals.
"I heard Fred call out—" Jimmy Anstice began; but his sister interrupted, "Please, Jimmy, leave me out. You know Papa forbade you to talk about me in company."
"My dear," remonstrated her father, mildly, "don't speak so abruptly to your little brother."
Thus, in one shape and another, every one said his say.
Flint alone, of the entire group, was silent, almost surly. He submitted without comment to being ensconced in the great chintz-covered chair. He even swallowed, under protest, the various pills and potions which Dr. Cricket presented to him at intervals; but the most adroit questioning on the part of Miss Standish failed to elicit any information as to his sensations[Pg 142]or emotions, past or present. Brady, who understood his friend better than all the rest, strove to shelter him by talking longer and laughing louder than usual; but this Miss Standish resented as much as Flint's silence, and set it down to flippancy. Her ethical training impelled her to strive to improve the occasion to these young people. She shook her gray curls, and cleared her throat several times before her conversational opening arrived.
"I hope, Mr. Flint," she said at last, "that you feel as strongly as that poor girl upstairs, the mercy of the divine Providence which brought you to the rescue at that critical moment, and enabled you to save a life."
Something in Miss Standish's tone irritated Flint.
"If, for 'divine Providence,' you will substitute 'lucky accident,' I will agree to it as heartily as either you or she. If you persist in dragging in Providence, I must really beg leave to inquire where Providence was when the ship struck."
The silence which reigned in the room was like the space cleared for a sparring-match. The old combative instinct of the primitive man arises in the most civilized, and makes him delight in a fight. Brady looked amused; Winifred a little apprehensive; Mr. Anstice preserved[Pg 143]a dignified neutrality; and Miss Standish fumbled with her cameo brooch, and smoothed the folds of her skirt, as if to make sure that all was in order before entering upon a possibly ruffling contest.
"I suppose—" she began; but old Marsden, who sat on the other side of the fire, and who was no respecter of persons, broke in: "I've heerd a deal about how you all felt, and what you all thought; but what I'd like to know is what really happened. The men at the inn wont talk without their captain gives them leave; and Dr. Cricket has got him and his sister shut up in their rooms, to git over the shawk. Now perhaps the Doctor can tell us how it wuz thet thet air ship went aground on a sandy coast, in a ca'm night like the last."
"Captain Costello says it was the light in the tavern-window which he mistook for the Bug Light off the point; but how could that have been, when it was past two o'clock, and I'll answer for it that no one at Nepaug was ever found awake after nine?"
Dr. Cricket questioned with the inflection of a man who neither expects nor desires an answer. Indeed, he had only paused for breath, when Flint, from his easy chair on the other side of the fireplace, broke in:—
"So I am to blame for the whole thing."
"You!"
[Pg 144]
"You don't say so!"
"Was the light yours?"
"What on earth were you doing at that hour?"
"Not quite so many questions at once, friends, if you please. My brain is still a little waterlogged, and my thoughts work slowly. I only remember sitting down about ten o'clock to read a novel, and the first thing that roused me was the gun, which for the moment I took for the attack of the enemy of whom I was reading. I rushed out, half expecting to find the tavern surrounded, and to have to risk my life in its defence, and instead—"
"Instead," put in Winifred Anstice, very quietly, "you risked your life to save some one else,—Nora Costello, the Captain's sister, spent the whole morning in tears, because Dr. Cricket would not let her leave her room to go and tell you how grateful she was."
"Hysterical, I suppose," said Flint.
Winifred, who had opened her lips to say something more, shut them closely again, and sat back with the air of a person determined to have no further share in the conversation.
Dr. Cricket hastened to occupy the floor. "A charming girl—upon my word, a charming girl—if sheisa Hallelujah lassie."
"A what?" ejaculated Brady.
[Pg 145]
"A Hallelujah lassie—Feminine of Salvation Soldier, don't you know! Why, she had one of the coal-scuttle bonnets hanging by its draggled strings round her neck when Flint pulled her in, and a number of 'The War Cry' was in the pocket of her dress, when we stripped it off."
"Oh," said Brady, with a touch of disappointment in his tone, "I took her for a different sort of a person; she looked quite the lady."
"So she is, young man," answered Dr. Cricket, with his fierce little frown. "There is no doubt of that. She told me her story this morning. I wanted her to rest; but the poor thing was so nervous I thought it would hurt her less to talk than to keep still."
Flint smiled sardonically. The Doctor's little foible of curiosity had not escaped his observant eye.
"You would have done much better to shut her up; but what did she say?" queried Miss Standish.
Flint smiled again. But the Doctor began briskly:—
"Why, it seems that the Costellos are the children of a Scotch minister; though, from his name, I should guess that he had a drop more or less of Irish blood in his veins, and their looks show it too. They were brought up in a manse on one of those brown and bare Scotch moors.[Pg 146]The boy was to be educated for the church, like his father; but when he was seventeen, he grew restive under the strictness of his training, turned wild, and ran away. For ten years they had no word of him. The father reproached himself for having been too hard on the boy; and he never stopped loving and praying for him. On his death-bed, he charged Nora—that's the girl's name you know—to sell all the things in the manse, and start out into the world to find her brother, and never to give up the search as long as she lived."
"That is always the way," said Flint, with a shrug: "the reward of virtue is to be appointed trustee of vice—no assets—assume all the liabilities."
"Hm! wide, of the mark this time, Mr. Flint. The very day after her father's death, Nora Costello received a letter from her brother, saying that he was ashamed to come home without first securing forgiveness, and asking his sister to intercede for him, and to meet him in London with the news of his pardon."
"Exactly," resumed Flint with irritating calmness. "Prodigal son sends postal card stating that he is prepared to receive overtures looking to a resumption of family relations. No questions asked."
"He has not seen Captain Costello, has he,[Pg 147]Dr. Cricket? or he would be more sparing of his jibes."
"Never mind, Miss Winifred, Mr. Flint is ashamed of having played the humanitarian this morning, so he is trying to atone by double cynicism this evening; but don't let him interrupt my story again, under pain of being sent back to the tavern, instead of taken care of in Mrs. White's best bed-room, under the charge of the best doctor (though I do say it) in Philadelphia.
"Well, as I was about to say, Nora Costello came up to London; and there she found her brother, a brown and bearded man in command of a schooner, 'The Mary Ann,' plying between New York and Nova Scotia. He had been looking forward joyfully to his homecoming; but when he learned of his father's death, he was all broken up, and talked about its being a judgment of God on himself."
"Rather severe on his father," grumbled Flint; but no one heeded him, and the Doctor continued:—
"Costello felt so awfully cut up, that one night he came near drowning himself; and after that his sister did not dare leave him alone, but went about everywhere with him; and one night they came upon a Salvation Army meeting, with drums and torches and things, in the[Pg 148]streets of the East End. General Booth was there; and, my soul! to hear that girl talk, you would think he was the archangel Gabriel, with the sword of the Lord in his hand."
"It was Michael who carried the sword," came from Flint's corner, exasperating even Brady beyond endurance.
"Come, Flint, you're too bad. Hold your tongue, can't you, and let the rest of us hear the story! That girl is a trump."
"You 're right, sir," echoed the Doctor, cordially, "a trump she was, and her brother too, for that matter. General Booth preached that day, as it happened, about remnants, and argued how a man might make the most of the remnants of a life, as well as of a meal, even if the best part was gone. Well, the talk sort of heartened up Angus Costello; and, after the meeting, he and his sister went up to the General, and Nora asked to be taken into the Army. She went in as a private; and when Angus came back to Nova Scotia, Nora came with him, and was assigned to duty, first in Montreal, and then in New York. She has risen already to be an officer, and, I judge, a valuable one. She was off this month on sick-leave for her brother's ship, taking a vacation from overwork, I suspect."
"What is her work?" asked Brady, leaning forward with his square chin propped on his[Pg 149]hands, which, in their turn, were supported by his knees,—an attitude to which he was prone when self-forgetful.
"Her work? Oh, I don't know! Everything I suppose. Taking care of sick people in tenements, talking, and singing, and selling copies of the 'War Cry,' in offices and liquor-saloons."
Brady frowned. "I don't like it," he said. "She's too pretty, with those little curly rings of hair round her pale face, and with those big blue eyes. Why don't they send some old maid on such errands?"
"Because they want to sell their papers," answered Miss Standish, dryly.
The talk around the fire had gone on so eagerly that the attention of the group was utterly absorbed; and every one started as if an apparition had appeared in their midst, when a slim figure in a dark dress, against which her face looked doubly white, glided noiselessly into the room. With eyes fixed in almost trance-like far-sightedness, she moved towards Brady, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.
"My brother," she said, "it is you have risked your life to save mine. God gave you back both. What will you be doing with your share?"
"I—I—I'm awfully sorry, don't you know!" stammered Brady, terribly embarrassed; "but it wasn't I who did it."
[Pg 150]
"Here is the man, Miss Costello, to whom you owe your life," said the Doctor, who dearly loved a "situation," turning as he spoke, with a little flourish, to the place where Flint had stood; but that gentleman had taken advantage of the mistake to bolt into the bed-room behind him. He would have bolted into the pond, rather than submit to be thanked publicly in this fashion.
"He's gone!" exclaimed Dr. Cricket, in disappointment.
"Ah!" said Nora Costello, with a quick, sympathetic smile, "it's verra natural. He did not wish to be thanked. Perhaps he is right. After all, it is to the good God himsel' that our thanks are owing."
She knelt on the rug, as simply as she would have taken an offered chair, and spoke to some invisible presence, as naturally as she would have spoken to any of those in the room. Brady was shocked at first, at the conversational tone. It was so realistic that he opened his eyes, half expecting to see the Someone—the Something—so evidently apparent to the girl herself.
Having once opened his eyes, he forgot to close them again. The actual so pursued him, that he ceased to seek the spiritual presence. The firelight, playing over the girl's face, threw strange lights, and shadows half unearthly. She[Pg 151]seemed a spirit, of whom no ordinary restraints of the familiar social life were to be expected.
When her prayer was finished, she rose as simply as she had knelt, though now two large tears stood on the long fringe of her eyes.
"Good-night, friends!" she said with a confiding glance around. "I think I shall be able to get the sleep now. God bless you all!"
When she was gone, the hush was unbroken for several minutes. At last Winifred spoke.
"I don't know how the rest of you feel, but somehow I have a sensation of being a lay figure in the shop-window of life, and having all of a sudden seen a real woman go by."
"Jove! what eyes she has!" said Brady, continuing thoughts of his own, rather than answering Winifred's speech.
"Really," said Ben Bradford, "it wasn't unpleasant at all."
"Unpleasant!" exclaimed his aunt. "Well, I should say not, unless heaven is unpleasant, and angels, and the Judgment Day, which I daresay it will be for you, Ben Bradford, unless you mend your ways. Good-night! I'm going up to see that the child has a hot-water bag to her feet, and a mustard plaster on her chest. The Salvation Army needs an efficient ambulance corps."
"Hm!" said Dr. Cricket, as Miss Standish[Pg 152]disappeared. "Mary may have chosen the better part; but I pity the household that's all Marys. Give me a Martha in mine every time!
"That reminds me," he added briskly, "that I must look after my patient, and not let him pitch himself into that bed, which has not been aired for a week; and nobody in this house knows the difference between damp sheets and dry ones. Do you know, Mr. Brady," he continued, as he rose from his chair with a little rheumatic hitch, "I have taken a great shine to that queer friend of yours. I don't know how it is, but I suspect it is because he is such a contrast to most folks. It's a comfort to meet a man who keeps his best foot back."
"Oh, Flint is a brick!" said Brady, with enthusiasm. "I have known him to do the nicest things. There was a fellow once in college—he was rather pushing socially, and nobody liked him—but he was 'a dig,'" and he got sick from studying too much. None of the rest of us ever fell ill of that trouble; but he did, and he was so poor he didn't want to let any one know about it, for fear he would be obliged to send for a doctor. It was found out though; and one day a doctor and nurse turned up at the fellow's room,—said they'd been asked not to say who sent them; but they stayed and pulled him through. He never knew who his benefactor[Pg 153]was; but I did, and you may judge of my surprise, when the fellow got about, to see Flint cut him on the street.
"'What in thunder did you do that for?' I asked, for I was dumfounded to see him do it.
"'Because the fellow is a cad, and would be taking all sorts of advantages. Better ignore the acquaintance at the start.'
"'Then why did you do what you did for him?'
"'I don't know, I'm sure!' Flint answered.
"That's just the sort of fellow Flint is. He may seem crusty, but in any emergency he is a man to tie to."
"If life were a series of emergencies," said Winifred, reflectively, "Mr. Flint would be invaluable; but in every-day existence, one does not quite know what to do with him."
"I can put up with a great deal," said Ben Bradford, "from a chap like that, who shows real sand and pluck when a crisis comes. I mean to tell Mr. Flint to-morrow that I think he's a daisy, and go down on my marrow bones for the things I have thought and said about him before."
"I wouldn't, if I were you, Ben," observed Winifred, with an amused smile; "for I doubt if Mr. Flint has ever had the dimmest idea that you have not been thinking well of him all along."
[Pg 154]
Far up the pond, at no great distance from the spot where "The Aquidneck" had met her untimely and ignominious end, Flying Point thrust out its tongue of land into the rippling water, which stole in and out between its tiny coves so gently that scarcely a murmur could be heard, except when a northeaster lashed the pond into a mimic sea; and then the teapot tempest was so outdone by the giant waves outside the bar, that it passed unnoticed, like the fury of a child beside the rage of a grown man.
The Point took its name from the flights of ducks which passed over it in vast numbers in the spring and autumn, their dark, irregular squadrons black against the intense blue of sea and sky. Its low bluff of gleaming sand was crowned by a grove of tall pines, through which purled a tiny brook perpetually prattling to the sea of its little inland life. Below the bank, stretched out a rod or more of level beach[Pg 155]where fires might be lighted and cloths spread by those who wished to return to the gypsy habits of their forebears and sit down as Nature's guests, to simple fare of their own cooking and serving.
A midsummer pilgrimage to Flying Point was a regular feature of the season with the dwellers at the White-House; and it was a point of honor for the old-timers to declare that last year's expedition was in every way more successful than that of the present season. Newcomers endured this superiority in silence, consoled by the prospect of enjoying the same triumph themselves next summer.
Several times the date of this year's expedition had been set, and as often changed. The last date had been fixed for the eighth of July; but the excitement of the wreck, and the reaction of lassitude which followed that catastrophe, put to flight, for a time, all thoughts of amusement, and a fortnight elapsed without an apparent ripple on the calm of existence at Nepaug.
On the second day after the wreck, Angus Costello and his sister took their departure for New York,—he to collect the insurance on the ill-fated "Mary Ann," she to report again for duty in the Army. With the going of the Costellos, quiet settled down once more; but the dwellers on the Point found themselves impatient[Pg 156]of the very repose for which they had sought Nepaug. Rest had turned to inanimation, quiet to dulness, peace to stagnation.
Flint, usually unaffected by environment, found himself incapable of any intellectual or physical exertion. He could not work. He could not even loaf alone. Brady was an indifferent companion, subject to fits of absence of mind,—more unsocial than absence of body.
There was only one resource left; the young men betook themselves to the White-House. Life there could not be wholly dull, while a perpetual sparring match was going on between Miss Standish and Dr. Cricket, while Professor Anstice smoked his pipe serenely on the corner of the piazza, and Ben Bradford openly adored Winifred, heedless of outside observation or amusement.
Ben himself was an endless source of entertainment to Flint, so vividly did his demeanor recall the rapidly receding days of his own youth, when he too had felt the constraint which is born of the assurance that all the world is fixing its gaze upon us and our actions.
Ben never dreamed that he could be taken humorously. He regarded himself with a deep seriousness, and planned innocent little hypocrisies with a view to their effect on the public. He was anxious to be supposed to handle a large[Pg 157]correspondence, and took pains to sort his mail in public, fingering a number of letters in his leather case with a reflective air, as if he were considering what replies they demanded, although their worn envelopes revealed them to the most casual observation as at least a fortnight old.
He had the sensitiveness of youth, and spent much useless effort in the endeavor to discover what people meant by their words and deeds; when, nine times out of ten, they meant nothing at all, but were only striving to fill up the gaps of life with idle observations or diversions. He himself was fond of side remarks, intended to be satirical, but falling rather flat, if dragged out into the prosaic light of general conversation, as sometimes happened when Miss Standish caught a word or two and exclaimed aloud: "What was that, Ben? Won't you give us all the benefit of that last observation?"
Ben loved his aunt; but he did not like her.
She interfered sadly with his pose as a man of the world, by relating anecdotes of his infancy, and stating the precise number of years which had elapsed since the occurrence.
On the occasion of one of the daily visits of Flint and Brady, they were made aware of unmistakable signs of a domestic unpleasantness. They were no sooner seated, than Ben picked up[Pg 158]again the grievance which their arrival had compelled him to drop.
"You have told that story four times already this summer, Aunt Susan," he remarked truculently; "and I don't think it is of great interest to the public at any time to know that I took a bite out of each one of the Thanksgiving pies when I was five years old."
"I havenottold it before, and you weresixwhen it happened, which was fourteen years ago next November," Miss Standish answered.
Winifred Anstice, foreseeing a battle, made haste to the rescue. She called out from her hammock:—
"When are we going to Flying Point? I think we all need change of air for our—ahem!—nerves."
Woe to the person who undertakes to divert the lightning from meeting thunder-clouds; unless he be well insulated, he is sure to fall victim to his own well meant efforts.
"Winifred, my dear," sniffed Miss Standish, "you may remember that it was only this morning whenIasked when we were going to Flying Point that you answered, 'Never, I hope—I detest picnics.'"
"Did I?" laughed Winifred; "well, it's true, and I cannot deny it."
"I must agree with you there," said Ben. "A[Pg 159]picnic is an occasion when all the food is picked and all the china nicked."
"A picnic," said Winifred, "is a place where you can accumulate an indigestion without incurring an obligation. In this, it is an advance upon a tea-party."
"Picnicking with people you know is a bore, Picnicking with people you don't know is a feat of endurance," echoed Flint.
"Professionally, I am in favor of them," threw in Dr. Cricket. "I often feel like saying, with the old Roman, 'This day's work shall breed prescriptions.'"
"Oh, come now!" said Brady, "you're all trying to be clever. This is only talk. I think a picnic is great fun, especially a tea-picnic, where you boil coffee, and light a camp-fire, and perch about on the rocks over the water. You would appreciate that last privilege, if you lived out on the prairies, where there is no water, and the rocks are all imported."
"Bully for you!" shouted Jimmy Anstice, who had been sitting by with his hands clasped over the knees of his stockings to conceal the holes from his sister's observant eye, but none the less eagerly following the conversation. "You're a peach; and why can't we go to-night?"
"That boy is all right," said Brady, smiling.[Pg 160]"He knows enough to take the current when it serves. Off with you, Jim, while the tide is out, and dig your basket of clams! Come on, Flint, and we will join them at the Point! How will you go, and when?"
"I think we'd better go up in the Whites' sail-boat. There'll be room for one of you," said Miss Standish, looking meaningly at her nephew, for she had not yet forgiven Flint's indifference.
"That's good," Flint said cheerfully. "You take Brady. He's better ballast; and I'll row up in my dory."
"A good excuse for coming late and leaving early," said Winifred, mockingly.
Flint bowed and smiled imperturbably, without troubling himself to offer a contradiction.
Miss Standish swept past him with her Plymouth Rock manner. "I will go and look after the supper," she remarked, and added, as she reached the door, "however much people may sniff, there's nobody, so far as I know, who is superior to food."
Nepaug picnic suppers had been reduced to scientific principles under Miss Standish's rule. There was a picnic coffee-pot and a picnic-dipper, a set of wooden plates and a pile of Japanese paper napkins. All these went into one basket, together with cups and glasses and knives[Pg 161]and forks. Another, still more capacious, held the sandwiches and biscuit, the cake and coffee, the pepper and salt, beside the jar of orange marmalade, and the pies surreptitiously borrowed from the pantry, where they were reposing upon the larder shelf, tranquilly awaiting the morrow's dessert. Everything was neatly stowed away,—no crowding, no crumbling. Miss Standish was willing to take any amount of trouble; all she asked was to be appreciated.
Flint certainly did not appreciate her. Her particularity he found "fussiness," her energy annoyed him, and her well-meant interest in others appeared to him insufferable busy-bodyism. More than once that afternoon he remembered her with a sense of irritation. "A confounded old maid," he called her to himself as he pushed off his dory from the beach below the inn.
But no matter how irritable the frame of mind in which he started, he could not help being soothed by the tranquillity of the scene around him as he went on. The west was one sheet of orange. The brilliancy of the sunset had faded to a tenderer tone. The spikes of the pointed firs on the mainland stood dark against it. Over in the east, the moon was rising, pale and spectral, with all her ribs showing like a skeleton leaf. Jupiter shone out more clearly as the darkness[Pg 162]deepened and the shadows fell more heavily along the strip of shore.
"The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon, large and low,"
Flint quoted to himself. "What is it that comes next? Something about
"'A mile of warm sea-scented beach.'
Must have been curiously like this. Where is Flying Point anyhow? Oh, yes; there's the camp-fire."
"Here comes Flint," cried Brady, as he heard the grating of the prow of the dory on the gravel.
"I should think it was time," grumbled Miss Standish, who had been making great sacrifices to keep the coffee hot. For some inscrutable reason, all the people with whom Flint came in contact felt impelled to do their best for him, let their opinion of him be what it would.
"Well, we thought you must be lost!" called Brady from the height of the rocks. "We have all had supper; but we have kept some for you."
"Thanks," answered Flint, from below, "I am sorry you had the trouble, for I took mine at the tavern before I started."
This was more than the descendant of Miles[Pg 163]Standish could bear. With a bang, she emptied the coffee-pot and knocked out the grounds, as her ancestor had shaken the arrows out of the snake-skin to replace them with bullets. Henceforth, she was implacable; and yet Flint never dreamed that he had given offence. Imperfect sympathies again!
Winifred Anstice, whose misfortune it was to be peculiarly sensitive to disturbances in the atmosphere, jumped up from under the pine where she had been sitting with Brady. "Come," she said, "let's all sit down around the fire. I want Leonard to recite for us. Will you, Leon?"
Flattered, yet embarrassed, the young fisherman rose from his occupation of tying up the baskets, and drew nearer. As he stood in front of the fire, Flint looked at him with a thrill of æsthetic admiration. His red shirt, open at the throat, showed a splendid chest and a neck on which his head was firmly and strongly poised. His hair, curling tightly, revealed the well-shaped outline of the skull, and the profile was classic in its regularity. "And that little fool doesn't know enough to fall in love with him!" thought Flint.
"What'll you have, Miss Fred?" asked Leonard.
"Whatever you like."
"Wal, then, ef you'd jes ez lief, I'll say[Pg 164]'Marmion.' I was learned it at school." Throwing off his cap and striking a dramatic pose, he began:—
"The Douglas round him drew his cloak."
It is marvellous, the power of strong feeling to communicate itself through all barriers. True emotion is the X-ray which can penetrate all matter,—yes, and all spirit too.
The hackneyed words burned again with the freshness of their primal enthusiasm. Again Douglas spurned, and Marmion flung him back scorn for scorn. It was not acting. Leonard Davitt could never have thrown fire into a rôle which did not appeal to him; but this lived. He put his soul into it, and he drew out the soul from his audience.
"I must go now," he said, when he had finished, having ducked his head shyly in response to the applause, and picked up his cap. "I'm goin' off at sunrise."
"Where are you going, Leon?" queried Winifred Anstice, coming up to him where he stood not far off from the spot where Flint, in dead shadow, leaned against the trunk of a giant pine.
"Goin' off bars-fishin' for a week with the men from the Pint," Leonard answered, and then added in a lower tone, "you won't forget your promise, Miss Fred."
[Pg 165]
"No, I will not forget; but you must try not to cherish hard feeling."
"Oh, I don't say it's his fault. Mebbe it's hers."
"Perhaps it's nobody's, and perhaps there's no harm done after all,—at any rate, none that can't be undone."
"Yes, there is," Leonard answered gloomily. "The past can't never come back, and things won't never be the same."
"Oh, cheer up!" Winifred answered more hopefully. "Your going away is the best thing under the circumstances, and I'll do what I can for you; but I wish it were anything else."
"Thank you, marm, and good-bye!" With another shy duck, Leonard let himself down over the rocks and sculled out into the strip of rippling moonlight which stretched across the bay.
The moonlight fell also upon Winifred Anstice's face as she stood looking after him, and showed a pathetic little quiver about the mouth. An instant later, she dashed the back of her hand across her eyes, and exclaimed, half aloud, "It's too bad; I've no patience with him."
"What a clear night it is!" said Flint, stepping out from the shadows.
Winifred started a little. "I thought you were sitting by the fire," she said rather abruptly.
"Indeed," Flint answered. It was one of[Pg 166]his peculiarities never to be drawn on to the explanations to which most people are driven by the mere necessity of saying something. After all, he had as good a right to the place where he was as Miss Anstice herself. Miss Anstice perhaps was thinking the same thought, for she made no response, only stood twisting and untwisting a bit of lawn handkerchief which bade fair to be worn out before it reached home. At length, with the air of one nerving herself to a difficult task, she turned about and faced Flint. Lifting her clear gray eyes full to his, she began hesitatingly:—
"Mr. Flint."
"Yes, Miss Anstice."
"Will you do me a favor?"
"Assuredly."
"No, not an 'assuredly' favor, but a real favor."
"If I can."
"Will you do it blindly?"
"No, I will do it with my eyes open."
"You cannot."
"Try me!"
The girl shifted her eyes from his face to the path of moon beams in which Leonard's boat floated far off like a dark speck against the ripples of light. When she went on, it was in a lower tone, with a note in her voice which Flint had never heard there before,—the note of appeal.
[Pg 167]
"I am going to ask you a very strange thing," she said; "I would not ask it if I could see any other way."
"Surely, Miss Anstice, you cannot doubt my willingness to oblige you in any way. You have only to command me."
"But it is not to oblige me. It is—oh, dear! I can't explain, but I want you to go away."
Flint rose instantly.
"No, no, not away from this spot, but from Nepaug. That's it," she went on insistently; "I want you to leave Nepaug."
Flint stared at her for a moment, as if in doubt whether to question her sanity or her seriousness. The latter he could not doubt, as he looked at her eager attitude, her hands tightly interlaced, her head bent a little forward, and a spot of deep red sharply outlined on either cheek. Suddenly the meaning of her conversation with Leonard flashed across his mind; but it brought only further puzzlement. He motioned Winifred to sit down upon the great tree which lay its length on the earth, overthrown by the last storm, and with stones and upturned dirt still clinging to its branching roots.
"Are you sure," he said gravely, as he took a seat beside her,—"are you sure that you are doing right to keep me in the dark?"
"I think so; I hope so."
[Pg 168]
"Of course I know you would not ask such a thing if there were not something serious back of it all; and since it so nearly concerns me, it seems to me I have a right to know it."
Dead silence reigned for some minutes. Then Winifred said, speaking low and hurriedly:
"Yes, you are right; I ought to tell you,—I know I ought; but it is so hard. Why isn't it Mr. Brady! He would understand."
"Perhaps if you would explain," Flint began with unusual patience.
"Well, then, it is about Tilly Marsden, who has been engaged these two years to Leonard Davitt; and now she refuses to marry him, and he thinks it is because she is in love with someone else.Surelyyou understandnow."
"No, upon my soul, I don't. You can't mean that the little shop-girl—the maid-of-all-work at the inn—is—thinks she is in love with—"
"With you; exactly."
"But I have hardly spoken to her."
The silence which followed implied that the situation was none the less likely on that account. The implication tinged Flint's manner with irritation.
"I suppose I am very dull; but I confess I don't understand these people."
"Have you ever tried to understand them?" returned Winifred, with a sudden outburst of[Pg 169]the indignation which had long been gathering in her heart against the man before her.
"Haven't you always thought of them only as they ministered to your comfort, like the other farm animals? Is it really anything to you that this narrow-minded girl has conceived a very silly, but none the less unhappy, sentiment for you?"
"I—" began Flint, but the flood would have its way.
"Oh, yes, it annoys you, I dare say. You feel your dignity a little touched by it; but does it move your pity, your chivalry? If it does—Oh, go away!"
Flint would have given much to feel a fever heat of anger, to flame out against the audacity of the girl with an indignation overtopping her own; but he only felt himself growing more cold and rigid. He told himself that she had misunderstood him hopelessly, utterly. There was a certain aggrieved satisfaction in the thought. He had risen, and stood leaning against a tree. Winifred wondered at her own courage, as she saw him standing there stiff and haughty.
"I shall go, of course," he said at length. "My absence seems to be the only sure method of producing universal content. But let me ask you one question before I go. Do you consider me to blame in this unlucky business?"
[Pg 170]
Winifred parried the question by another.
"Why should I tell you, when you don't care in the least what I think?"
"If I did not, I should not ask you, and I think I have a right to demand an answer."
"I can hardly answer you fairly. Is ice to blame for being ice and not sun? We cannot say. We only know that we are chilled. I always have the feeling that with those you consider your equals, you might be genial and responsive; but the joys and sorrows of the great world of uninteresting, commonplace people about you have no power to touch your sympathies. Of course, in a way, it is not your fault that you never noticed Tilly Marsden's manner—"
"I am not a cad who goes about investigating the sentiments of—of women like that. But you have your impressions of my character fully formed, and I shall not be guilty of the folly of trying to change them. To-morrow, I shall relieve Nepaug of my objectionable presence, and, I hope, you will cease to fear me as a disturbing element when I am far away at my office-desk."
"You are going back to New York?" echoed Winifred, uncertainly, realizing all of a sudden what it was that she was sending him away from, and to what she was consigning him.
[Pg 171]
"Yes, of course," Flint answered a little impatiently.
"I am sorry," the girl began lamely. It was just dawning upon her that it was not so easy to control the destinies of other people, as she had fancied.
"Oh, that is all right!" her companion responded more cheerfully; "New York in summer is not half so bad as you people who never stay there probably imagine."
"I don't know," said Winifred; "to me it seems dreadful to be shut up inside brick walls, or walking on hot paving-stones, when one might be sitting under green trees, or by rolling waves, breathing in the fresh country air. But I suppose I feel so because while I was growing up I never lived in a large city."
"Indeed! How was that? I should think your father's profession would have kept him in the city."
"Oh, it does now, of course; but for years after my mother's death he was so broken down that he could not bear to mix with people at all, and he chose to bury himself out on a Western ranch, and there I grew up with no more training than the little Indian girls who used to come to the house with beads and things to sell. It was a queer life for a girl; but it was great sport."