The Rev. Needham proceeded to dress and shave.
He was in a good, confident, substantial mood today; rose singing. The Rev. Needham was very apt to arise with song in his mouth, bravely defying the chance of his going to bed with a wail. This morning the selection was that fine oldLaudes Dominiwhich seemed peculiarly appropriate, both fitting the hour and reflecting the joyous state of the singer's heart.
"When morning gilds the skiesMy heart awaking cries:'May Jesus Christ be praised!'"
"When morning gilds the skiesMy heart awaking cries:'May Jesus Christ be praised!'"
"When morning gilds the skiesMy heart awaking cries:'May Jesus Christ be praised!'"
"When morning gilds the skies
My heart awaking cries:
'May Jesus Christ be praised!'"
The Rev. Needham had a tenor voice of fair quality, though not altogether true of pitch. In the wilderness, so far from pipe organs, pitch however, dwindled to comparative unimportance. It was thespiritof song that counted.
Now, one might observe that in this hymn the Rev. Needham would come out very full and strong on the more purely ecstatic lines (such, for instance, asdepict the spread of morning across the heavens, the awaking of a fervent heart, etc.), and that, almost invariably, those more climactic, particularly the more ecclesiastical, lines would issue a little muffled, as the singer found it urgent to immerse his head in the washbowl's morning plunge, or apply a towel vigorously, or perhaps bend suddenly over to lace up his shoes—by this movement naturally cutting down the egress of breath. They were subtly odd, these mufflings. It was almost as though Fate had determined sedulously to deny to this unfortunate man an indulgence in his very life-mission: praising his Maker! For another than he the intervals of competition might very easily have fallen less saliently. Yes, another would have found it possible to cloud over, if necessary, the heavenly gilding and would have been suffered to come out free, triumphant, on the diviner phrases. But not the Rev. Needham. No, alas, not he. It was a part of the Rev. Needham's destiny that the better and more satisfying arrangement of life must be withheld, or temporarily awarded only to be broken rudely off. Inquiry ought to pause here. Yes, it delicately and righteously and above all humanely ought. No, it ought not to lead one away, fiendishly to lure one on to a certain door in one of the three-quarters partitions, beyond which the slumber of a human being was giving place, at this stage, to the more irregular sounds signifying a return to consciousness. Ah, better to leave out altogether the thought of anymortal responsibility for the muffling; better to cling decently just to the adverseness of an obdurate Fate. And yet, the tenor of the conversation which now ensued between the Rev. Needham and his wife might favour the suspicion—let us call it by no stronger name—that the person beyond that door in the three-quarters partitionhadsomething to do, however slightly, with the matter of vocal emphasis.
"Anna," he asked softly, "do you suppose your sister's awake yet?"
"I don't know, Alf. Perhaps I'd better go tap on her door."
"Oh, well, I wouldn't disturb her just yet. Eliza is always late with breakfast." He sighed as he beat up the lather in his mug. "We can't expect things to run along quite as smoothly as when we're just by ourselves."
"I told Marjie we made a practice of getting up at seven," said Mrs. Needham a little anxiously. She slipped a coloured silk petticoat over her head and tied its tape strings round her waist. Mrs. Needham was growing a bit stout. "She told me if I didn't hear her moving around I'd better tap on her door."
"It's this air, I suppose, makes people sleep so," he remarked. And then he added, displaying a strong touch of nervousness in his tone: "I think, Anna, your sister is changed, somehow."
"You think so, Alf? How?"
"Well, I don't know. Perhaps it's our not being used to her after so many years."
"You may be right, Alf. But she talked real sensibly to me yesterday. We had quite a long talk in the afternoon, while you and Hilda were out after berries. She seems real sensible, Alf. Of course she does say things—"
"Yes, she makes remarks, Anna, that I could rather prefer our girls not to hear."
"You mean like what she said at dinner about the natives of Tahulamaji?"
"Yes—things like that." And then he confessed with a nervous little gesture: "I can't seem to figure out where Marjory stands any more. She talks with a freedom.... Anna, I don't think I ever heard any one talk just the way Marjory does."
"You mean—about religion, Alf?"
"Well," he resumed, "it may be her way. But I can't say I ever knew a woman to talk like that. I think Marjory's very good-hearted. She no doubt means the best in the world. But somehow...." He turned toward his mate, poising the razor in the air. He looked, without of course suspecting it, almost terrible. But he went on with merely the same inflection of nervous timidity: "Anna, there are times when I suspect she doesn't believe the way we do any more."
"Oh, Alf—do you mean—is it as though she'd gone into some other church?"
"Well, I don't know." He resumed his shaving in a troubled, fidgety way.
"Alf," she said solemnly, standing in the centre of the room with her hands on her hips, where they paused in the act of adjusting the band of her skirt, "Alf, you—you don't think she isn't aChristianany more?"
The Rev. Needham nervously cut himself a little. He laid down the razor with a startled sigh.
"Anna," said he, "how doIknow? If itistrue, then it's one of the things I've always dreaded so—having atheism break out right in the family!"
"Oh, Marjorycan'tbe one of those people!" her sister cried earnestly. "Alf, we ought not to judge her so harshly. She's lived in foreign countries so long that I suppose she's kind of gotten into new ways of speaking. She talked so sensibly yesterday, Alf—I kept wishing you could have been there to have heard."
"Well, Anna," he said quietly, "Marjory's your sister, and, whatever the facts, naturally I've nothing to say."
"You try and have a good talk with her, Alf. I never felt you two understood each other very well. She don't talk so flippantly when there aren't other people around. I'll fix it so you two can be alone together. Oh, Alf," she concluded, almost piteously, "Marjie may have gone into another church, but Ican'tbelieve she's drifted any farther!"
"I hope not, Anna." He tried to speak with anair of charitable calm; but the impression conveyed seemed rather that a disturbance of his own convictions was troubling his heart than that he was primarily moved with concern over his sister-in-law's spiritual well-being.
All persons with whom he came in contact influenced the Rev. Needham. They influenced him one way or another, however transiently. In fact, when it came to that, there was seldom what one would call any really permanent influence exerted. Contacts with life merely kept him hopping back and forth or up and down. They augmented, were perhaps more largely than anything else responsible for, the poor man's perpetual inner unrest. He could not seem to settle down to cool, steady views; could not feel his soul impregnably at peace. But then, in this regard he seemed, though perhaps in a rather acutely pointed fashion, logical fruit of his time.
To be, for the moment, quite ruthless in one's musing upon him, what would the world say if it could really pry into the tumultuous inner consciousness of the Rev. Needham? Might the world call him melodramatic, stagy? Could it actually be brought against this minister that he was, in a sense, theatrical? What a blow—and at the same time what a terrific coup of irony; for the Rev. Needham would be the very first himself to cry out against any such trait as staginess! Staginess, he would say, must certainly have something to do with the so-called"culture." But the world could never bring this charge against the Rev. Needham, because the world, one realizes with an instinctively grateful sigh, was denied the license of prying inside. No, to the world this minister appeared a being not essentially removed from the usual run of beings. The world by no means thought of him as a Chinese or Dark Age delinquent strung up for punishment in such a manner that his heels were perpetually off the floor. He might not, perhaps, strike people as a man of intense and dynamic, of unfailingly clean-cut personal persuasions about religion—or, for that matter, perhaps, about anything else in life. Nevertheless, he scarcely stood out as vivid or eccentric; scarcely like a sore thumb; because nobody realized what he was really like inside.
But now, to return to cases, here was Marjory, his wife's own sister, lodged right under his roof; and she baffled him. He couldn't deny it—could not get away from it. Yes, shebaffledhim. He felt nervous in her presence. Sometimes when she would laugh, or look at him in a certain way, it seemed to him—it seemed to him—why, as though he didn't know where he stood any more....
Marjory Whitcom was his sister-in-law, one of the family; and at his own hearthside, somehow, he could not feel quite free. He could not feel cheery and at ease. And dimly it troubled the Rev. Needham to realize that he felt this way.
That Miss Whitcom was indeed up and stirring became evident. They heard her gaily calling out to Hilda, who was coming up the stairs.
"Dear child, see here a minute!"
Two doors opened then: hers, briskly wide; the Rev. Needham's a furtive crack.
"Yes, Aunt Marjie?"
"Honey, there isn't any water in my pitcher—would you mind ...?"
"Oh, I'll fill it right away for you, Aunt Marjie!"
"Only half full, honey. I'd slip out myself to the pump, only I'm afraid of shocking Eliza with my wrapper!"
"I won't be gone a minute, Aunt Marjie!"
She took the pitcher, extended by means of a plump bare arm, and sped off with it.
"Alf," said Mrs. Needham, "I forgot to tell Eliza the pitcher would have to be filled every day."
"I suspect Marjory is a bit wasteful of water," he observed.
Here at the Point there was water, water everywhere; yet the Needhams employed far less of the fluid in their daily toilets than they did in the town.This is perhaps not infrequently the case at summer resorts of the more primitive kind, where one attains the frugal attitude generally. Then, too, having to go out to a pump for water alters its preciousness. Besides, as all the Needhams would argue: "We go in bathing so often." So the pitchers weren't refilledeveryday. They were generally refilled about two or three times a week. Miss Whitcom's pitcher, however, would have to be put in a class by itself. That was only too clear.
The Rev. Needham tied his cravat before the dresser glass. A few tiny drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead. "Yes," he sighed, "it does upset things some."
"What say, Alf?" asked Anna, who was bending over an ancient trunk in which clean linen was kept.
"I say, Eliza will just have to get used to filling her pitcher every morning."
"I guess so," agreed Mrs. Needham, straightening, her face flushed.
She held a fresh towel in her hand, which he eyed with glancing suspicion.
"I got to thinking," explained his wife. "Perhaps she's used to having a clean towel every morning, too."
The minister compressed his lips almost imperceptibly as she went to her sister's door, the towel over her arm. Hilda, with the pitcher of water, arrived at the same moment, so that mother and daughter stood with their respective burdens on AuntMarjie's threshold, and even spoke together, like rival hucksters proclaiming their wares.
"Gracious!" cried the favoured lady, opening her door and accepting the alms. "Such magnificent service! Anna," she added, "don't you let me put you out. I can easily live on the view. You really don't know what this means, after being cooped up in a place like Tahulamaji!"
Miss Whitcom was tall, and rather fine looking. She was a trifle taller, for instance, than her brother-in-law, and had a way, when any discussion with him was in progress, of standing up quite close to the minister, so that she created the illusion, a little, of towering over him. She was not, of course, actually a great deal taller, but how one could make the sly inch count at such times! Her sister looked almost dumpy beside her.
"I suppose," observed Mrs. Needham, "you do feel kind of cooped up in those foreign places." That phrase of hers "foreign places," was in the nature of a stock term. It was expansive, elastic, comprehensive. She spoke of foreign places a little as her husband spoke of the East or of "culture." Neither had travelled any to speak of. In a sort of whimsical way it seemed to Mrs. Needham that one might expect to find Bombay and Peking supporting much the same conditions of life. Or even Dublin and Rome, for that matter. "I don't suppose," she added, "there's anything like this where you've been."
"I should emphatically saynot," her sister assured her. "At Rato-muh—that's the capital, you know—we've nothing but a dirty little river. I'm dying for a glorious swim!"
"We go bathing nearly every afternoon, Aunt Marjie," Hilda announced.
"You do? Well, I'm with you!" She was just a trifle loud. "Do there happen to be any convenient islands one could swim out to?"
"Oh, no, Aunt Marjie, there aren't," replied the girl regretfully, almost with a touch of naïve apology.
"Well, no matter. You can always swim round in a circle, of course. Only I do like having a definite goal."
And then she paused a moment, even suspending her toilet; for having a goal—hadn't that been, with almost amusing steadfastness, her aim all through life? Of course, it was quite true: there had been perhaps a hundred goals, all told; but each, in its own way, and at its own time, had seemed the golden, final one. And always so incorrigiblydefinite. She had gone vibrantly and humorously on from one pursuit to another, determination taking multiple form. And yet there appeared now to have been, all along, just one permanent and unswerving determination: not to marry O'Donnell.
Miss Whitcom sighed briefly and went on hooking herself up.
"Speaking of swimming," she continued. "Iwon a gold medal once. Yep. A very long time ago."
"A medal for swimming, Aunt Marjie?"
The aunt nodded. "I entered a five-mile endurance and time. Entered against thirteen men, and got there first!"
"Oh, howwonderful!" cried Hilda admiringly.
"Yes, it was wonderful," the other admitted; then frowned. "The only trouble was that I had my subsequent doubts of its being really fair."
Mrs. Needham, who had been standing in the doorway, a faint and musing smile on her lips, received the news of the swimming match with a hurried comment about having to go down and see how Eliza was getting on with breakfast. She was always, and especially with Alfred in mind, mildly shocked at the glib way in which her sister talked about men.
"How do you mean it wasn't fair, Aunt Marjie?" demanded little Hilda, sitting down eagerly on the edge of the bed.
"Came to suspect one of them."
"One of the men?"
"Um-hm."
"Ofcheating, Aunt Marjie?"
"Um. Turning lazy at the finish."
"You mean he let you win?"
"Afraid so, Hilda."
"But I've heard papa say that women ought to be treated...."
"That men ought to go lazy at the finish and let you pull in ahead?"
"Of course papa never put itthatway. I don't believe he knows about women going into regular contests like that, with men."
"I daresay not, Hilda. Such things wouldn't conspicuously have entered into Alfred's training."
"What did you do when you found out about it, Aunt Marjie?"
"What do you mean—when I'd convinced myself he hadn't played fair?"
"Yes."
"Sent him the medal." She shrugged.
"Youdid!"
"Um. It belonged to him, not me. Yes, sir—it went right straight off to him, with a polite note. The note was terribly polite. I told him I hoped he'd get just lots of comfort out of it. Real, solid comfort." And she snorted with wrath.
"Thenwhat did he say, Aunt Marjie?"
"Then he said—say, look here, Hilda, whatisyour capacity for asking questions?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Aunt Marjie! I didn't realize how many I was asking."
And she really was sorry. Nevertheless, her eyes continued to shine very brightly. Aunt Marjie had a stimulating effect on Hilda—Hilda being just at the age of hero-worship. This age, in the life of the individual, is somewhat akin to the prehistoric age in human history; it bristles with ever suchfabulous things. And the only natural thing to do when one encounters fabulous things is to ask as many questions about them as one can think of.
But Marjory Whitcom hadn't, as a matter of fact, spoken with any dominant impatience. She had asked Hilda's capacity for questions in a spirit of ridicule which, in a conscious sense of boomerang satire, amply included her own loquacious self. And yet, for all that, there was a slight flush on her face. What brought the flush there? Ah, there are deep things in the human heart. The flush lasted quite a long time. Indeed, it had hardly faded out altogether when she was seated with the family at breakfast.
The Rev. Needham asked the blessing in a faintly grim manner. He spoke it off with a defiant assurance. His sister-in-law, he had just been deciding,wasn'tto intimidate him at his own table. He kept his eyes tight shut and spoke on almost doggedly. There were a number of graces in the minister's repertory. He was in the habit of using now one, now another. This morning, though the choice was, of course, as always, entirely spontaneous and unconscious, he chose the shortest of them all.
Breakfast was simple and bountiful. The Needhams were rather hearty eaters. There was no stomach trouble in the family, although very strong emotions had, naturally, the same effect on them as on most people. Following Louise's affair withRichard, as they remembered it, the unhappy girl had eaten almost nothing for months—or it certainly was weeks—and had grown extremely thin. In fact, during the first week following the sad climaxnoneof the Needhams had eaten quite normally, except little Hilda. She, only a child of twelve then, came up regularly enough for second helpings, despite her sister's trouble and the general depression of the household. Childhood is, when not perverted, a blessed span, the heart seeming to stand entirely out of touch with any of the homelier and more prosaic organs.
This morning there were wild raspberries—early ones, and not very large—which the Rev. Needham and his younger daughter had themselves gathered in the woods and along the sunny roadways the afternoon previous, while Marjory was conversing sensibly with her sister. After the fruit came a cooked cereal, which Mrs. Needham was annoyed to find a trifle lumpy. And then after that there followed pancakes—pancakes, pancakes—hundreds, it seemed, coming in three at a time, which was the griddle's limit.
Just subsequent to the blessing, Aunt Marjie occasioned a very slight flurry in the domestic arrangements by asking Anna if she might have a glass of hot water.
"I'm supposed to drink it now," she explained, "before each meal. It's living so long in the tropics, I suppose."
Mrs. Needham tinkled the bell for Eliza, and glanced, half unconsciously, at her husband. The Rev. Needham, it is to be feared, was growing rather opinionated about his wife's sister. There is, when one stops to view the matter wholly without passion, nothing really criminal in the request for a glass of hot water, just as there is nothing essentially felonious about using all the water you want up in your room. Of course, in such places as deserts it may often be essential to employ circumspection; but scarcely on Point Betsey, where there lay the vast resources of Lake Michigan behind even an extravagant indulgence. And as for having the water hot, well, what are kettles for? One poises the issue. Still, of course, such implications as these are hardly fair to the Rev. Needham, who was animated by no real spirit of parsimoniousness at all, but who merely disliked seeing vaguely devastated the quiet, orderly routine of the house. To tell the truth, while he didn't honestly grudge her the water, the clergyman looked upon his sister-in-law as something of an intruder. However legitimate it might be—and of course nobody could possibly deny that Marjory had a perfect right to be here in their midst—intrusion still was intrusion. The trouble was, he distrusted—all but feared her. And when men fear others, they will often be found taking exception to minor failings, real or fancied, which a sometimes surprisingly acute vigilance discovers in those who inspire their fear. The Rev. Needham, however,saidnothing: merely pressed his lips together, as he had previously done before the mirror upstairs when informed that his relative would have to have her pitcher refilled every morning. It was these repressions which permitted the world at large no too salient suspicion of what was really going on inside.
A pleasant, wholly unremarkable conversation was kept up. It wasn't the sort of talk to invite preservation, but was, on the contrary, just a normal and uneventful flow. True, there seemed an unwonted excitement in the air. The day upon which Mr. Barry was to arrive must necessarily be considered a red-letter day, and might even be expected, in a sense, to deliver up talk of some special brilliance. But to tell the truth, the great event had already been discussed in all its possible phases and from all conceivable angles, there remaining at length absolutely nothing but for Mr. Barry to put in an appearance.
Throughout breakfast the Rev. Needham maintained as consistent an attitude of dignified prosperity, beneficence, common sense, and scrupulously informal godliness as possible. Above all, he tried in his demeanour to emphasize an unobtrusive yet firm head-of-the-house bearing—and indeed succeeded, for the most part, so well as almost to persuade himself that hewasmaster of his destiny, after all; that his life was growing more solid, more dependable now.
Hilda, of course, chattered a great deal, after herwont, acquainting her hearers, for one thing, with as full an account of Louise's early departure as seemed politic. She blushed, mentioning Leslie. Miss Whitcom noted that: noted it and sighed. It was obvious the blush was no accident. Another young thing, just starting out; the rough and not always so romantic world ahead of her—and boy-crazy! Marjory Whitcom sighed again. So futile, she told herself. But another valuation just slipped in: so sweet!
Toward the end of the meal, the pancake process, hitherto quite smooth and regular, hitched very badly. No fresh cakes came in, and the supply on the table dwindled alarmingly. The Rev. Needham affected not to notice this. The management of the household, thank heaven! was not on his shoulders. His burdens were the weightier and more importantfamilymatters—aside, that is, from the business of tending to his own rather unmanageable soul and looking after his flock. There was a great difference between household matters and family matters; pancakes were not in his department; so that, not being himself responsible for the present embarrassment, he could afford to keep up a very good and cheerful front indeed, even when his eyes assured him the kitchen door hadn't opened for fully five minutes.
Mrs. Needham flushed. She always grew more or less excited when there was a break like this in the table service. As concerned her own plate, she, of course, stopped eating, directly it began to look asthough the supply of cakes on the table could not possibly survive till there was a reinforcement from the griddle. She nibbled heroically at the cake already unavoidably on her plate, and suddenly began talking with great animation.
Anna had always felt, obscurely yet unhappily, that her sister did not consider her a really expert housekeeper. In the old days, before weddings and deaths had disintegrated the family, it had always been Marjory who could do things best and most handily. She had seemed a very prize of domestic efficiency. Every one said Marjory would be married off first. There were even unkind asides to the effect that Anna would probably linger on and perhaps eventually run into perpetual maidenhood. Ah, the queer pranks of life! Anna had been carried off first, after all; and Marjory, the acknowledged flower, had gone all these years unplucked.
Anna Needham was always anxious to make a good household impression on her sister. Of course, many sorts of allowances would be made up here at the Point. Still, there seemed no valid reason why the cakes should cease coming in. At last she tinkled her bell. She tinkled it resolutely. Her husband had just helped Miss Whitcom to the last cake. Hilda still had unmistakably a hungry look.
Eliza opened the kitchen door and thrust in her head.
"Did you ring, ma'am?"
"Yes, Eliza, I did. We would like some more cakes."
"Yes, ma'am."
Eliza withdrew her head and closed the door. But while it yet remained within their view, the face of Eliza had something dark and ominous in it.
They heard her making desperate sounds about the stove. One minute, two. Mrs. Needham grew more and more excited. She talked loudly and steadily. The Rev. Needham sat with his hands on the arms of his chair, like a statue of patience. Presently, however, he began to drum with his fingers. Miss Whitcom, realizing the dilemma, adjusted herself to it—made the last cake go a wonderfully long way.
Finally Mrs. Needham pushed back her chair, excused herself hurriedly, and went out into the kitchen, the retreat being valiantly covered by her sister, who began telling her brother-in-law fresh tribal characteristics of the people of Tahulamaji.
Out in the smudge of the kitchen Anna Needham faced her cook.
"What is thematter, Eliza?"
Eliza was hot and hopeless. She pointed to the griddle upon which were three cakes, still quite pasty, and which had obviously ceased baking.
"What is the matter with the stove, Eliza?"
"It must be the oil is all gone, ma'am."
"But I thought there was plenty to last until the morning delivery from the store."
"Well, ma'am, when I came down I found two burners going, and there was the remains of breakfast on the table. Did Louise go away somewhere early?"
Eliza called the Needham girls quite simply by their first names. She might have honoured them by saying Miss Louise and Miss Hilda. But she hadn't begun that way. She hadn't done that at her last place, nor at any of the other places which constituted her Middle Western retrospect as a domestic; and Anna, in such comparatively unimportant matters as this, found it less frictional to let instruction slide.
Louise had flown, leaving the burners on; there would be no more pancakes for the remaining Needhams and their guest.
The Rev. Needham sighed, and somehow felt that the day was not beginning so very well. However, Marjory began laughing in a singularly hearty way.
"It reminds me," she grinned, "of something in an old melodrama I saw years and years ago at an impossible little theatre. The 'comic relief' was a tramp, whose weakness was the flask. He pretended, as I recall it, to have palpitations of the heart, or something like that, and at one stage of the proceedings went into a series of alarming spasms, each of which would be instantly allayed by a swig from a flask belonging to one of the other characters. Theother character dared not refuse the flask, for fear of fatal consequences, but eyed its diminishing contents with profound regret. How well do I remember! At length the tramp, in one of his worst spasms, was informed that the whiskey was all gone; whereupon he very decently revived, looked out at the audience soberly, and said, in his most mirth-provoking tones: 'Thank heavens there was just enough!'"
The Rev. Needham, as they left the table, looked at her in a half startled way. These stories of hers were never in actually questionable taste, yet they somehow contrived to upset him. There seemed to be always something just behind them which might, as it were, spring out. It was such he seemed to fear most of all: the things in life that might spring out.
"Hilda," said Aunt Marjie, still chuckling over the whole affair, "did you tell me Louise had a young man in the kitchen with her?"
"Yes, it was Leslie. But Aunt Marjie ...!"
"Ah, then that explains it!"
"Oh, but Aunt Marjie, Leslie isn't the one. You see, Louise isengaged!"
"She is?" demanded the lady more seriously, yet mockingly, too, as though the communication represented fresh news. "Well, then"—for Miss Whitcom refused to be daunted—"the empty burners are no doubt all the better accounted for, Hilda." She laughed again. Then she put her hands on Hilda's young shoulders. "Hilda," she said withgreat solemnity, "are you quitesureLeslie isn't the one?"
Hilda blushed, and did not look squarely at her aunt, but instead a little bit beyond her.
"Oh,yes!" she cried softly.
The first sunlit hours of the day fully realized the brave promise of the dawn. The air was fresh and delicious, though inclined to sultriness as one travelled inland away from the coast. The song of the locust was shrill in the trees.
Louise's way took her a good distance from sea and then brought her back to it again, circumlocutionary travel being one of the features of Point Betsey existence. It might fantastically resolve itself into a paradox: to go an inch you must go a mile. Her destination was the town of Frankfort, situated about four miles south of the great stone light-house and the cottages on the Point. The distance could easily be covered on foot, the pedestrian taking his way along the smooth curving beach of the "Big Lake." But Louise was rather a poor walker. She preferred to lie in a hammock, or, if groundmustbe covered, to depend as largely as possible upon artificial locomotion. Those who declined to walk and had no motor, must, to reach Frankfort, enlist the respective conveyance of boat and train—an almost complicated journey. There was a regular passenger ferry running on Crystal Lake, back and forth between the resorts on the west shore and the villageof Beulah. This ferry boat, propelled by gasoline, was called thePathfinder—a name always preparing passengers new to the route for unimagined nautical adventure. Passengers seemed cheerfully and nonchalantly asked quite to take their lives in their hands, or rather, which might be even worse, to sign them over entirely into the precarious keeping of the boat's owner-pilot-engineer-and-fare-collector. And yet, after all, there was nothing so very terrifying about a trip from one end of Crystal Lake to the other. On thePathfinderLouise would doubtless have travelled this morning but for the fact that the official ferry service was never to be depended upon at so early an hour. Absence of competition had led to a really deplorable state of independence, so that Leslie's little boat was indeed a blessing at such times, in spite of its general decrepitude. He escorted her, as we have seen, the first nine miles of her journey, due east, away from Lake Michigan. Then the train carried her nine miles back again, though somewhere in the proceeding the four miles separating Frankfort and Point Betsey were annihilated. The journey consumed something like an hour and a half.
Louise stepped out of the dilapidated coach. The station stood within a few rods of the seashore—a situation once accommodating the convenience of an enormous summer hotel, which a few years previous had taken fire and vanished in smoke. With it had vanished also the fondest hopes of thetown. However, the ornate railroad terminus still stood just where it had stood during the days of glory. Thank God it was spared, for it had about it a relative magnificence which the impoverished hamlet could ill afford to lose. It might, of course, be more centrally located; still, there was a kind of grace in its sad vigil.
Miss Needham, with considerable time to waste, surveyed the age-softened ruins of the vast hotel and quite cheerfully revived, for her amusement, memories of the time when she was Hilda's age and used to come here to dancing parties and occasional dinners with her family. She paced up and down upon what had once been the walk leading grandly to the hotel from the wharves and the railroad station. Now the way was rank with grass and weeds.
Ah, yes. She had promenaded here in that long-ago time, nor had she walked alone, as she was walking now. Oh, no. And a slight flush, even after all these years, crept into her face as she remembered Harold Gates. Yes, he had walked beside her here, and they had talked together of many things, and laughed a great deal. How she had laughed in the old days! How gay they were! And over there on the channel pier, close to the bowling alley, she had let Harold kiss her, also. Before the summer was over she had let him kiss her rather a good many times. Of course they did not reallyloveeach other. They were only just awfully good friends. Harold was residing in the hotel with his parents. Louiseonly saw him when the Rev. Needham decided they would go in to town and dine. Harold kept promising that he would come out to the Point some day and see her, but he never came. Oh, yes—how memories swarm back, once the tide of their return has set in! Yes, once he did come; but it was only as a member of a picnic party from the hotel. They brought baskets with them and had a fine revel on the beach, quite near the Needham cottage. In the evening they built a fire. But Louise saw her hero only for a moment on that occasion, after all. They walked down the dark beach a little way, and he put his arm around her, and she let him kiss her; but when he said he had to go back to the fire again, there was naturally nothing to do but let him go. The trouble was, he seemed to have a special girl in the picnic party on whom his attentions must be lavished. So young, yet already such a dashing man of the world! But for Louise it wasn't very satisfying.
"What a fool I was!" she cried to herself, almost angrily, even at this comfortable distance. And then she laughed: "What asillylittle fool!"
Harold Gates was all nicely married and settled down now; a Chicago girl, and they had a baby. Harold had mailed her a postcard with the baby's picture on it, and across the bottom of the picture he had written, in his firm business hand: "Merry Christmas from the three Gates." Was it not strongly to be doubted whether Harold at length even remembered how lover-like they had been thatsummer, he and she? Well, it was rather to be hoped he didn't remember; and yet, with a queer little pang for just a moment, Louise thought she couldn't endure his havingentirelyforgotten....
Well, she had certainly been free enough with her affections in those days! Yes, she had been very free. As Louise quitted the ruins (which had an odd, symbolic aspect this morning) and wandered off along the beach, snatches of the prodigality of her past flared up, distressing her, thrilling her a little, filling her heart with gloomy though not exactly acute aversion. Ah, she thought, the kisses that had been spent in vain! And yet they had not seemed entirely in vain at the time—not all of them, at any rate.
From a glancing inventory of those more trifling indulgences of her early days, she soared to the vastly more vital affair with Richard. That, indeed, was different. Yes, that was another matter altogether. Richard was her first real lover. The others were mere boy-sweet-hearts, or they were, like Harold Gates, just awfully good friends. Richard had always seemed mature to her: aman. She had always felt herself a woman in his presence. Their affair, wretchedly as it had turned out, was undeniably animated by the love that flashes between men and women. It had a new tenseness, a new dizziness, a new depth. It was magnificent and gripping; had the true ring of authority and surrender in it. Yes, it was a thing of intense intoxication, and maintained,so far, at least, as she was concerned, an unfaltering white heat.
"And yet—for him," she told herself as she walked close beside the little waves, "it wasn't like that. No, it couldn't have been, even—even during those wonderful times, when we...." And she flushed, as though not even solitude were an utterly dependable guardian of her crimson thoughts. She lowered her eyes, lest impartial nature suddenly be caught up into an impersonation which should cry shame against her.
Oh, yes. She had given her whole heart to Richard. Almost, almost.... She shuddered. "What a terrible thing it is!" she told herself. "What a terrible thing, being deceived in a man! But how is one to know? How can one always tell?"
Ah, how indeed? She went on a little way, thinking darkly and arriving nowhere.
"And yet," she wavered, a look of intenser and clearer pain drifting into her eyes, "he was—so dear! Ah...."
If Richard were suddenly to come toward her out of the past; if he were to come toward her here, along this brown beach; if he should hold out his arms to her and bid her to come back.... No, no! She clasped her hands, for it was all so real. "No, no," she whispered. "I would not go back. I would notdarego back." She had seen him coming toward her many times in fancy, stretching out his arms to her, speaking toher after his wont. And she had learned to play out her prohibiting side of the terrible ordeal so faithfully, so often, that at length the only emotion she felt was that sense of dullness that goes with things which are irrevocable.
"No, Richard," she would say. "I gave myself to you once. You might have had me then. But not now. It is too late."
She would dismiss him, calmly and sorrowfully; would permit her tongue to utter no words other than these. And yet.... She walked slowly along, pondering her life.
What changes had come with the years! What changes! Now her heart was given to another man. This was another sort of love, another sort altogether. Lynndal and Richard were so unlike! Louise wondered whether the love of any two men could be so strikingly unlike as she saw the love of Richard and of Lynndal to be. Indeed, it rather pleased her, as she set them off, one against the other, that the distinction should be so great. It seemed to argue an indeterminate yet quite thrilling variety in herself—not of course, a mere vulgar facility in shifting or adapting herself to types as chance flitted them across her horizon—ah, no!—but a real sense ofunderstanding, a genius for grasping the salient elements in many men, a cleverness in appraising their worth. She bolstered her troubled and ghost-ridden heart.
Lynndal was the opposite of Richard, in every way—in every way, that is, except that he, too, loved her. No, she would say ineveryway, for she knew now that Richard had never really cared, while Lynndal, that was certain, cared very deeply and enduringly.
Her heart quickened now as she thought of her lover. She began reviving, in a happy, drifting way, the slender accumulation of noteworthy items in their romance, hers and Lynndal's: thought of their first meeting, in the lobby of the hotel in Arizona, when she was with her father on one of his infrequent "business" trips. The Rev. Needham owned a little property in the great dry-farming district of Arizona. "This is my good friend Mr. Barry," her father had said. And she had said she was pleased to make his acquaintance, and she had given him her gloved hand. She had thought little about him at the time. And that, perhaps more tellingly than anything else, argued the palpable differences. For Richard she had loved at first sight. He had captured her, madly and hopelessly, alas, quite at the outset. Not so Lynndal. Oh, no.
Louise was much given to musing and contemplation of this sort, which often took, as now, an odd conversational expression.
"I didn't love Lynndal at all, in the first place," she told herself, as though this were the first really definite understanding of the case. "I didn't begin to care until the week was half over. But I sawhecared. I knew that I attractedhimfrom the beginning."
And then she left the beach and strolled up into the village.
Three couples passed by, arm in arm, youth and maiden, going for a promenade on the pier. They deported themselves in just the customary Middle Western summer resort manner. The couple ahead would confer in whispers. Then a simultaneous laugh would disturb the lazy stillness of the street. And then it might be that the girl would turn as she walked and whisper something in the ear of the girl behind her, who would laugh out also, at whatever it was the young man ahead had originally confided to his partner. And the companion of this second young lady would look bored and very much left out, while perhaps the young man behind him might mockingly exclaim that secrets in company weren't polite. Then the next minute all six would be singing the chorus of some contemporary rag. And when that was done there would be another chorus. Or else the young lady ahead would shout back to the young lady in the rear and demand of her in tones of such vehemence that they could be shared by all the town, whether she'd heard from John yet—or Harry or Jim or Robert, as the case might be. Whereupon the young man in the middle, who had been mocked by the young man in the rear, would very likely turn and grin, feeling, if rather obscurely,that the frivolous odds of the hour were now more evenly distributed.
Louise glanced at these careless, gay young persons as they passed, and a feeling of comfortable security crept into her heart.
"Well, I'm glad I'm past allthat!" she thought with a sigh. "They all act this way at one time or another, and it's certainly a blessing when it's over!"
She turned and looked after the noisy spooners as they bent their steps toward the pier. Suddenly, it seemed for no reason at all, she thought of Leslie. He seemed, quite vividly, to be right here beside her for a moment. It was ever so curious. She wondered why she should think of him so vividly just at this moment. Presently it occurred to her the reason was simply that Leslie, though so young, wasn't boisterous and silly, like the hoodlums she had just passed. No, she could not fancy his ever having behaved like that in his life. Nor could she conceive of his having yet to go through any such gauche, vapid period. With her he had always been very serious. Of course, she was a little older. But Leslie's whole nature was serious, she argued, and somehow—somehowdeep. She was in the mood now, perversely, to do him the most elaborate justice. Yes, she thought he might be called, in a way, really deep. Certainly she had never known any one like him. She did not, just then, consider that she had never known any one just like Richard, either, when it came to that—or even any one like HaroldGates. All she could seem to think of, for the moment, was that Leslie had come to fill a unique place in her life.
A feeling of tenderness crept upon her. Yes, they had grown intimate during the short span of their acquaintance. She had been rather lavish. It was Leslie's first summer on the Point. Vaguely she wished it might all have been otherwise, that he might have come into her life sooner, or that.... Ah, what was it she wanted?
His voice seemed suddenly ringing in her ears, as it had rung when he cried: "Friends!"
And she sighed.
Oh, Eros, wicked god! She is waiting for one lover, and you torment her with others! You revive for her sweet, irrevocable loves of the past, when one would think the present love enough....
Louise looked at her watch. It was half past seven. The day was clear and beautiful. Out against the marine horizon stood a ship. That must be Lynndal's. It would be in at eight. She decided she would stroll down the length of the main street and then return to the wharf.
Although the hour was still so early, the little town displayed about as much life as it ever did. There were women with baskets on their arms, examining produce displayed in the few shops where supplies were procurable. There were carefree resorters already about, enjoying a freshness which must soon evaporate under the scourge of the mounting sun. The main street boasted a good many quaint little curio shops, which somehow managed to do a living business. A typical drowsy Northern Michigan small town—not much of a town, yet of course infinitely better than no town at all.
Louise, as she walked down the one business street of the place, scarcely looked to right or left. She knew every nook and angle of the town—at least so she believed. Having come up now so many summers, wasn't it reasonable to suppose that one would eventually exhaust all the slender resources of aplace like this? And yet, had her eyes been really open she would perhaps have been amazed to behold spread about her a wealth of life undreamed of. Something rich and new inFrankfort? Yes, possibly even here. For those individuals in aprons, weighing out sugar and measuring potatoes so humbly, are not, as a matter of fact, mere shop fixtures, as they have always seemed. The clerk at the soda fountain, who will cheerfully dish up ice cream for the hoodlums when they return hot and famished from their walk on the pier, has, after all, other interests in life than syrups and fizz—unimportant, it may be, yet interests, nevertheless. Yon fat and shabby patriarch, who sits so calmly all day long tilted back in a red armchair outside the drygoods store, is something more, at least potentially, than a painted barber's pole. Inside the drygoods store, although Miss Needham has overlooked her, is the old man's grand-daughter, busily working, dreaming. She works hard all summer so she can go to school winters in Grand Rapids. She has a sweetheart in Grand Rapids, who is taking a business course; they are planning to be married sometime in the sweet by-and-bye.
But one with the enormous and stirring preoccupations of Louise Needham could hardly be expected to look on life with open eyes, or, so to say, analytically. Appreciations must bow and conform. A breezy, impressionistic sort of synthesis is the background such a mentally and emotionally activeperson seems inevitably to evolve. As it was with the sunrise, so was it also with the people of the world not personally bound up in her destiny. It really wasn't a deliberate narrowness, but simply a sensible recognition of time's limitations. Certainly the living of one's own personal life must always count first.
Reminiscent and dreaming, she passed down the street, while out at sea the steamer drew closer and closer. In one gaily decorated shop window was displayed an array of summer fiction: alluring titles, with often most astonishing jackets—all the season's best sellers, backed up by certain surviving relics of bygone seasons. There were actually volumes in this window (though now badly faded and of course occupying appropriately inferior positions) which had been the avowed, the lauded best sellers during that summertime, long flown, when Louise and Harold Gates indulged in so free an interchange of kisses. There had been, as a matter of fact, rather a profusion of kisses in the best sellers that year, also: how true they were, after all, to life—that best of all best sellers!
Miss Needham paused before the window. Her eyes were irresistibly drawn to examine the miscellany, fruitage of so many seasons, badges of so much smart selling. In the midst of the conglomeration she spied a certain volume, modest in title and hue as compared with some of the others, though still extravagant enough of text, which Leslie hadbeen telling her about. It was a long historical novel, and Leslie had expressed himself as well pleased with it. He hadn't, as a matter of downright fact, read the book all through, but had skimmed along, omitting all descriptions and the pages where the author philosophized about life. But he had captured the gist of the story, and had retold it to Louise one afternoon while they strolled together in delicious solitude through Lovers' Lane. And she had promised him she would read the book some time and give him her opinion—it going without saying that her opinion, at least to him, would be of moment. Louise was no great reader—certainly not an inveterate reader of long historical novels. Nevertheless, as her eye now encountered it nestling there in the window, a sudden caprice swept her right inside the shop. It was a most amazing thing, but the next moment she found herself telling the clerk she wished to purchase the volume. And then—he fished it out.
The clerk, it must be communicated—a man, by the way, with all sorts of interesting and even enthralling human complexes which Louise did not dream of suspecting, since she knew the town so well—was rather surprised that his early morning customer should desire this particular book rather than some of the more gripping things:Diana's Secret, for instance, which was easily one of the most successful works ever exploited in Frankfort. However, since he had long ago given up all hope ofever selling the historical romance, and since he expected to run out ofDianacopies before the season was ended, the clerk naturally offered no comment upon her choice. Covertly blowing a little dust off the book she had asked for, he wrapped it up, and handed it over the counter.
Louise was by this time mildly self-reproachful. "How silly of me to walk right in like that and buy it!" she sighed. "With the money—let's see. What could I have bought instead ...?"
But however nimbly her mind might exert itself in estimating the complete badness of her bargain, the book went under her arm. Just a kind of giddy, final fling, she argued.
As she proceeded on her way, the girl kept assuring herself that the embrace of the historic romance was decidedly more playful than serious. It would be amusing later on—oh, perhaps a great deal later on—to show Leslie she had been as good as her word. Possibly she might actuallyreadthe book—who could tell?—just to please him. Poor Les! After all, he was only a boy. She was two years his senior. It would be foolish of them to think of each other, even were her heart perfectly free.
"Of course it's all right," she said, "for us to be the finest sort of friends; but it must stop there. If I'd guessed how serious a thing it was going to turn out for him I'd have seen it wasn't right to let him think he had any chance...."
This, to tell the truth, tended to put it all rather more satisfactorily than had hitherto seemed possible. She was quite pleased, in fact, for it left her in the attitude of repeating "Poor Les!"
Well, yes, she had thrown him over, she admitted—in a certain sense. But only in a sense; and anyway it had to be so. However shallow her reasoning might often appear to others—however often it might fail of horizon—Miss Needham was herself seldom conscious of the slightest insincerity at the time. She had inherited, it is true, a certain intellectual shiftiness from the parent most afflicted with a similar disorder; but however often she might fluctuate to a new point of view, so long as she actually held to it the conception possessed for her all the earmarks of probity and permanence.
"Poor Les! No, no.... I shouldn't have encouraged him so much...." But she hadn't thought at first that Lynndal was coming. And Arizona is very, very far away—especially on fine summer nights, when one isn't wearing any ring....
Yet presently the book under her arm began to appear a somewhat awkward possession. However easy it might be for her totellLeslie they must be merely friends now, and however blithely she mightaskhim, after an ancient and at best pretty hackneyed ideal, to look upon her as a sister, it was going to be very hard—for him. Wasn't it? Could itbe otherwise than hard for him? Wouldn't her having bought the book, even, especially if he learned she had bought it, make it all still harder?
Louise was naturally so quick in her sympathies that it troubled her when others couldn't attain as convenient solutions for their problems as she generally did for her own. And being herself party to another's unhappiness would, of course, tend to add certain pricks of conscience to any of the more abstract, though still altruistic, sentiments she might feel. "Well," she admitted, "I guess I shouldn't have bought the book, after all—at least not just now." But of course she could keep it hidden. "I needn't show it to Les right away." For that matter, need she ever show it to him? "I suppose—I really suppose I might drop it into the harbour, and be forever rid of it!"
As though, indeed, determined to act upon this dramatic impulse, Louise turned and walked down amongst some fishermen's huts at the water's edge. Most of the fishermen were out at sea, having not yet brought in the morning's haul from the nets. The rude little huts, where the fish were cleaned and packed in ice for shipping, and where the nets were washed, stood idly open. The early sunshine lay across their doorsteps. Some children were at play, running in and out; and before one of the huts a very old woman sat mending a net, working her hard fingers in a quick, intelligent way.
Louise walked out upon a little plank dock which was flung, at this point, into the harbour. The fishermen used the dock when they unloaded their cargoes of fish. It did not extend a great way; but from its extremity, as she faced westward, she perceived the approach of a steamer, still out in the "Big Lake," but nearing the harbour channel. It was probably Lynndal's boat, though it might possibly be one of the Ann Arbor car ferries from across Lake Michigan. She must hurry to the wharf. Still, the notion of throwing the book away persisted. She must rid herself of every vestige of the past. She must come to Lynndal—and it was quite thrilling to put it that way—empty-handed! This would seem to be a formal, a conclusive, even a rather grand way of marking a close to this surreptitious, this unfortunate, yet this of course sufficiently innocent little affair with Leslie—poor Les! Yes, it would be the fitting mark of conclusion; after that her heart would be swept clean. She grasped the book. At first she thought she would fling it far out; then that she would just quietly drop it in. But after all, she slipped the book under her arm again, and made her way hurriedly back to the village street.
Her mind was busy with explanation and a readjustment not, a moment ago, foreseen. "It would have been foolish and stagy to have done that. No, it wouldn't have beenright! Perhaps—" yes,perhaps Hilda would want to read it some day. She brightened. "Leslie said there was much instructive reading in it." Why, yes—the book would do for Hilda, if not for her. Mightn't Hilda even do for Leslie, now that she had thrown him over? Ah, it might be so! The idea occurred to Louise at first as a mere flash of whimsy; however, second thought made the possibility rather too possible to be altogether agreeable....
"Why, I should think it would be the most natural thing in the world," she assured herself. "Of course Hilda's awfully young, but I should think it would be perfectly splendid if they came to care for each other in time. I'm sure it would make it ever so much easier forme." She remembered how oddly her sister had behaved earlier in the day, whenever Leslie was mentioned; how Leslie himself had promised Hilda he would be back in time to play in the tennis tournament with her. "I think it would be just splendid!" she thought. "I'll encourage it, of course, all I can!"
At last, she felt, there was a real solution in sight for poor Les. It would be the very thing! She was so pleased that she laughed aloud as she passed the fat and shabby patriarch tilted back in his red armchair before the drygoods store. But it is possible that even the patriarch, in a philosophy of age as opposed to that of youth, merely thought, as he saw her go by: "Another of the resorters."Indeed, it is even possible that he did not see her at all.
The steamer drew in through the channel. It was the coast steamer from Ludington, and connected with the Milwaukee line. Louise stood eagerly beside the freight house, peering up at the passengers on the deck. Naturally she was very much excited, and experienced a swift, enveloping sense of joyous romance in being there to welcome the man she expected some day to marry.
To marry!
Suddenly it occurred to her that, after all, she had hardly thought of itoncethat way! Yes, Lynndal was the man who would be her husband. Marrying him—no, she had somehow barely thought of that part.... Nevertheless, though the discovery was a little staggering, she strained her eyes quite gaily for a first glimpse of him; wondered if he would look to her just the way he looked during those few days when they had been together in Arizona. But just how, by the way, did he look then? All at once she thought of Lynndal Barry as an almost absolute stranger! It was an inexplicable but quite vivid, a rather terrifying sensation. It made the roots of her hair faintly prickle. No, for the life of her she couldn't think of any one's being a more perfect stranger than Lynndal!
Louise wasn't mystically inclined. Yet what shefelt seemed almost a kind of foreboding. Then she laughed to herself, a gay little nervous laugh. And she told herself it was only natural one should feel this way, and that it was all a part of her charming, her really absorbing romance.
He was standing by the rail on the upper deck of the steamer, beside a man with whom he appeared to be in conversation. She had no difficulty, after all, in recognizing him. Barry was still the tallish, brown-moustached, quiet-eyed man who had so generously exerted himself to make her brief stay in Arizona agreeable.
She saw him first, the advantage giving her time to look away again before his eyes discovered her. Just why she should want to look away was in the nature of a mystery; yet avert her eyes she certainly did, as she might have done in the case of a stranger whose presence had casually attracted her notice. The feeling that, despite what had passed between them under the discreet propulsion of government postage, she did not really know this man, returned stronger than ever. She smiled a little—she had to—at her own manifest perversity; and flushed vaguely, too.
As soon as Lynndal Barry discovered Miss Needham down on the dock his face lighted, and he grasped the arm of the man standing beside him.
"There she is!" he cried.
His companion looked, but was a moment or two trying to decide which of the several very possible young ladies standing about near the freight house might prove to beshe. To facilitate the other's search, Barry pointed. And Louise, observing the gesture out of the corner of an eye, coloured and turned still more away, maintaining, after all, though she had been just on the point of abandoning it, the pretense that she had not yet seen the man to welcome whom she had risen so early and come so far.
Somehow, a wrong note had been struck. Even the Rev. Needham—and his views on culture were widely known—had often cautioned his girls against pointing at persons or things in public. Lynndal ought not to have pointed. Yes, it was a wrong note—and a wrong note just at the most critical time. Of course in poising this action of his, Louise, it is quite patent, now failed to consider one thing; she failed, because perversely and momentarily she was out of mood, to consider that a young man who has travelled hundreds of miles to see a young lady he expects to marry would rather naturally be so carried away at the first sight of her that manners wouldn't count for the full weight of their every-day prestige. Great events sanction great exceptions. But Louise, now, was not prepared to make the requisite allowances. She had thought that her heart was swept clean; but it wasn't. What demon was it which had lured her into thinking so longabout Richard and Leslie and—and all the others while she waited for the boat to come in?
Yes, to her it really seemed that a wrong note had been struck. Miss Needham found herself in an oddly cool and critical mood—certainly not the mood she had anticipated. The next moment it softened; a feeling of shy warmth stole upon her. Still, she half wished that she had decided, after all, not to come to Frankfort, but had been content to await him quietly at home. That would have given her, if nothing else, a certain reserve of dignity, which she felt now was somehow sacrificed. Did not her being here on the wharf to meet him make her appear too eager? Would it not have been much better to come forward gracefully out of a romantic nowhere, perhaps even after keeping him waiting a few minutes? Then, at least, she needn't have undergone the minor humiliation—wasn't it almost that?—of being pointed at. She pressed the book under her arm. Suddenly she thought of Richard and his exquisite manners....
Lynndal was waving his hat now, trying desperately to attract her attention. The captain of the vessel was making rather a poor landing, and the sharp little reverse and forward signals in the engine-room kept sounding repeatedly. A strip of water still lay between the ship and the wharf, though crew huskies stood ready to heave out the gang-plank as soon as it became possible to establish shore connections. Louise interested herself in the rougheractivities aboard ship, and did not yet raise her eyes to the man who now stood almost directly above her. She felt conscious of a sum of stares in her direction. All the girls on the wharf had taken full note of the pointed finger and the waving hat. Each knew—and some, perhaps, not without regret—that these demonstrations did not apply toher. A quick inventory of wharf possibilities had convinced all present that it must be Miss Needham who was the impetuously favoured individual. He had seemed to look quite squarely at her, and she alone had not bestowed on his pains the gaze of unfortunately lacking acquaintance.
At length one of the younger girls, standing near her, touched Louise's arm. "Some one's trying to catch your eye," she said. And she nodded up toward Barry.
He observed the girl's action and called down: "Louise, dear, here I am—up here!"
And then it was that she relented, at last—thrilled a little—raised her face coyly to him, and smiled.
No, she would not appear too eager. Let him not think he was winning her too cheaply. "Did you have a pleasant trip across?" she asked.
Just the faintest shade of disappointment crossed his face. "Oh, yes," he replied. "Smooth as glass. How are you, dear?"
She merely nodded. The historical novel slipped out from under her arm and fell to the ground. She stooped hurriedly and picked it up.
"My, it's good to see you!" he communicated through a hubbub which really made it difficult to be heard.
But she was again prevented, or spared, a reply, by having to step quickly aside as the gang-plank was run out. The ship was at last securely moored. Barry's grey-haired companion called his attention to this fact, and then the two men seized their bags and hurried down.
Louise stepped aside to wait; realized an augmenting sense of strangeness and quandary—her heart in a kind of flutter. She felt now hot, now cold. An odd, frantic resolve raced through her brain: "He mustn't kiss me!" And yet—for there was a conflicting after-flash—to have him make no attempt would constitute the very essence itself of pique! In the midst of this rather extraordinary mood, Louise recoiled, as it were, and shook herself. She called her mental turmoil silly and maudlin; she even called it wicked. Then Lynndal came, and the terrible moment passed, leaving her banners waving. Emphatically it had been in his mind to kiss her; any one could plainly see that; the act itself, however (for he mustnotfeel too sure), she forestalled by a very delicate but at the same time unmistakable gesture of repulsion, unto which he bowed with a graceful disappointment that, for the time being, very materially lightened the prospect. She had won in the first skirmish; and the knowledge of victory, the delicious sense of power in her itseemed to emphasize, put her in an easier, more cheerful frame of mind.
Instead of kissing Lynndal, she held out her hand to him with shy cordiality. She fancied, in a whimsical flash, that she was meeting him all over again, for the first time. A subtle sense of romance in this new aspect of their relationship quickened her heart....
Barry's shipboard companion was still at his side. Or rather not quite at his side, either, but holding discreetly back—even courteously discovering a sudden optical interest in another quarter of the compass. From this thoughtful detachment he was recalled and introduced as Mr. Barrett O'Donnell.
Miss Needham was delighted to make his acquaintance—Miss Needham would have welcomed, just then, an acquaintance with the man in the moon, no matter how outlandish he might prove. For the moment, if in a way delightful, was also complex and curiously taut. O'Donnell jollied things up. His was a ready tongue, with, now and then, just a whisper of Irish; his smile was droll and cheering, though perhaps rather too facile—too facile, that is (for it was perfectly sincere), to be ever quite enveloping. Louise walked between them, and the three made their way to the railroad station, where the locomotive of a "resort special" was puffing quite prodigiously, and pretending, after the manner of locomotives, to be ever on the verge of pulling right out, mindless of schedule.