CHAPTER X
To Kenneth's disappointment he found that Cephas Mitchell had already arrived when he made his appearance at Wits' End. It was evident that having once lost an opportunity by being late, he did not intend to suffer such a thing to occur again. Miss Fuller was also on hand, and the three sitting before the fire were having a merry time over the sharpening of long sticks to be used later in toasting marshmallows.
"We did have such a jolly time this afternoon," said Ethel as Kenneth came in. "We must tell you about our search for a washerwoman."
Kenneth took the place she made for him. "Tell me about it," he said.
"We traipsed the island over," Ethel began, "and finally we discovered, away down at the other end, the woman we were looking for. She lives in a tiny bright pink house near the water's edge, and is as clean as a new pin. Her name is Minnie Hooper, and she has a houseful of children who bear the most astonishing names. One is Cleony Arminelly, another Althea Cleopatra. She is fond of the Cleos you see, and the youngest rejoices in the cognomen of Laury Violy. We didn't discover the names of any of the boys, but one; he is Grenville Leroy. Laury Violy appears to be a delicate young person, for her mother told us, in a voice like a calliope, that when the wind gets around to the east'ard Laury Violy 'hoarses up.' She also told us that she had lately moved from a house still nearer the water. She had stood it as long as she could, but when the water came in over the kitchen floor, she 'skun out.' She promised to come for the wash to-morrow if Laury Violy didn't hoarse up, so I'm anxiously watching the weather. You didn't notice when you came in whether the wind had changed."
"It seems still from the southwest quarter," Kenneth told her.
"I hope you have brought a good appetite with you," said Gwen looking up from her array of sticks. "We are to have lobster Newburg, for Mr. Mitchell has produced a bottle of wine from some mysterious hoard. I hope you like lobster a la Newburg, Mr. Hilary?"
"I certainly do, and I promise to do full justice to it."
"Mr. Mitchell is an expert in cooking up chafing-dish things we find, so I am relieved from all responsibility, and if it isn't good you can blame him, not me," Gwen went on.
"I'm willing to accept all the burden of responsibility, for I never failed yet," remarked Mr. Mitchell complacently.
"In anything?" inquired Gwen.
"In few things," he returned. "If I want a thing badly enough I can generally find a way to get it."
"Lucky man!" cried Ethel. "I wish I could say the same. Now I am dying to row over to Jagged Island, but I have not yet found the man brave enough to take me."
Mr. Mitchell looked as if he did not know whether this were a temptation or an opportunity. "I should be delighted to take you in the motor boat," he said.
"That is too tame a proceeding," replied Ethel. "I have been in that way, if you remember. I am craving some excitement, a perilous adventure of some kind, something to make my pulses beat, and my hair stand on end."
"If it promises to be as fearsome as that," put in Gwen, "I advise you to forego it."
Just here a group of young people came upon the porch. Setting their lanterns outside they came in with a rush, bringing a breath of outside air. "We had such a time getting here," said Nellie Hardy. "Dolly is afraid of everything and suggested snakes at every step. We nearly fell into a great hole full of water, and we stumbled over hummocks. Our lantern went out, and if this rescuing party hadn't appeared we should still be groping around in the dark." She nodded to the others who had come with herself and sister.
"Nell is afraid of things herself," declared Dolly. "At least she is scared to death of cows. I wish you could have seen her yesterday standing on a pile of rocks waving her parasol at Cap'n Ben's cow and shouting: 'Go 'way, sir.'"
"I was a little scared, I admit," said Nell, after the laugh had subsided. "I can't bear creatures with horns, and the cow wouldn't budge."
"Of course not when she had found a nice tuft of clover," said Dolly. "I'm not scared in broad daylight, but in the dark one never knows what unknown terror is lurking."
"Would you be afraid to row over to Jagged Island?" asked Ethel.
"By myself? I simply couldn't, I'd give out before I was half way there."
"I mean with a man, of course."
"Depends upon the man," returned Dolly. "What are we going to do besides eat, Gwen?"
"We're going to write telegrams and play nice foolish childish games, and we shall wind up with ghost stories."
"I love to play I'm a silly little child," lisped Flossie Fay rumpling up her mass of fair hair, and casting a look of appealing innocence at Cephas Mitchell. "May I sit here, Mr. Mitchell, and pretend to be a foolish little girl?"
"Does she have to pretend?" whispered Ethel to Gwen. Gwen made a little grimace and began to arrange some slips of paper she held in her hand. These she distributed. "Why didn't your sister come?" she asked as she stopped before Kenneth.
"Some friends arrived unexpectedly. I left them begging my sister to return with them to Blue Hill."
"Will she go?"
"I don't know. I think she showed signs of weakening when I came away. I appeared to be the stumbling block, though I assured her I could do perfectly well by myself, and could take my meals at the Grange."
Gwen passed on with her slips, and soon everyone was laughing over the absurdities which were written as telegrams.
One game followed another, but not once did Kenneth find himself by Gwen's side, nor had he a chance to tell her of his piece of good luck. Indeed it was Rob Denmead who made it known during the process of toasting marshmallows. "That is a stunning picture of yours, Hilary," he said. "That one you sold to Dr. Andrews."
Gwen turned eagerly. "Which was it?" she asked.
"One that shows a single big toss-up wave," Rob told her. "The doctor is pleased as Punch to own it."
"I love that one, too," said Gwen. "The doctor shows good taste. I quite envy him his possession." She looked pleased and excited. The fire had brought a brighter color to her cheeks, and exercise had loosened the curling tendrils of dark hair about her face. Kenneth's eye followed the graceful lines of the slender throat, the picturesque pose of the supple body. He thought he would like to paint her just as she looked then, the firelight falling on her face and white frock. "I don't suppose she is what the world at large would call a raving beauty," he said to himself, "for her charm is too subtle. In my opinion she is the most artistic girl I ever saw, and that expression is simply divine."
Cephas, too, thought she looked prettier than usual. "But, confound it, she needn't look so pleased," he thought. He was sitting next her in the circle gathered around the big fireplace. "Perhaps Mr. Hilary wouldn't mind duplicating the picture," he said aloud. "Would you object to making a copy for me?" he asked.
Kenneth frowned. "I don't duplicate," he said shortly.
"Then a similar one," said Mr. Mitchell, not to be thwarted.
"Inspirations don't usually come in battalions like troubles," said Kenneth. "I can't promise what I may do. The beast!" he added to himself. "At such a time and in such a place to try to drive a deal. Suppose we don't talk shop now," he said aloud. "Will you have this marshmallow, Miss Gwen? It represents my best effort so far."
Gwen examined it critically. "It is a little burnt," she decided. "You are too impatient. You should have a cool head, a steady hand, an alert eye and unlimited patience if you want to toast a marshmallow properly."
"Take this," urged Mr. Mitchell. "It is an even brown all over, you perceive." And Gwen accepted the proffered sweet.
"If I keep on I shall never want to see another marshmallow as long as I live," cried Ethel jumping up. "After indulging in lobster Newburg, and then in unlimited marshmallows, I shall be in no state to go to Jagged Island to-morrow, I am afraid, if I continue."
"Oh, are you really going?" asked Gwen.
Ethel sent a telling glance Mr. Mitchell's way. "Yes, if the weather is good. You know Mr. Mitchell never fails in anything he undertakes, so it will be perfectly safe to go with him."
"Just you two?"
"Just us two."
Gwen gave her a furtive little pinch. "Wretch!" she whispered. "Ignoble, disloyal wretch!"
"All's fair—you know the rest," returned Ethel with a mischievous laugh. Then some one proposed they begin the ghost stories. So the lights were put out, and only the glowing embers of the fire served to prevent utter darkness while the last hour was given to as blood-curdling tales as could be invented or remembered. Kenneth's was so uncanny that Dolly Hardy declared she could not listen to another one. "It is getting late anyhow," she said, "and I'd be scared of witches and hobgoblins and horrible headless monstrosities if we dared be out at midnight." So the girls gathered together their wraps while the men lighted their lanterns.
As the other girls were provided with escorts it fell to the lot of either Cephas or Kenneth to take Miss Fuller home, but she was quick to follow up her opportunity. "You go in my direction, Mr. Mitchell," she said. "May I walk in the light of your lantern as far as you are going? I've no doubt some of the others will see me home the rest of the way."
"Of course he'll have to see her home all the way," Gwen told herself as she saw them walk off. "That sly Ethel to carry off my rightful belonging, right under my very nose." She watched the bobbing lanterns casting their starry beams across the pasture, and then went indoors to find that Kenneth still lingered. "Why didn't you tell me you had sold a picture?" she asked.
"I hadn't a chance," he returned gloomily, "and besides," he added, "I didn't suppose it would interest you very much. It is much more to the point when a man is able to buy pictures."
"Do you think so?" said Gwen coldly. "I notice you didn't want to give a certain one the opportunity of buying yours. That was very unbusinesslike. You should have told him to come and see your pictures, and have made him take a dozen."
"I don't want his vile money," returned Kenneth fiercely.
"Why isn't it as good as anyone's? I am sure it was made fairly enough."
"You know he wanted to buy it for you."
"I don't know anything of the kind, and if he did, you were certainly very unkind to deprive me of such a gift."
"Would you care to have one? I'll do a dozen for you, if you like." The offer was made eagerly.
"Oh, bless me, I couldn't afford to pay the price of one."
"You could pay the only price I care for."
Gwen trembled. She was not ready for declarations. At this moment she resented Ethel's high hand in carrying off Cephas Mitchell, who just now appeared more desirable than ever before. There was dead silence for a moment and then the girl turning away, said: "You ought to sacrifice your feelings in every direction for the sake of your success. You shouldn't let anything stand in the way of it. Hard cash is the only price you should want, and it is the only one I could consider. I don't believe in allowing sentimental considerations to take the place of material benefits. If you are going to offer pictures to your friends in this wholesale way, I'm afraid you'll have a poor time of it."
Kenneth turned pale and shivered, even though he was standing by the fire. "Good-night," he said, "I am wrong to be keeping you up so late."
"Good-night," returned Gwen holding out a passive hand, which was ignored by the man pretending to be busy over lighting his lantern.
She let him go without another word and did not watch the lantern star disappearing over the hill. "I shall express my opinion to Ethel Fuller," she said as she waited for the last log to fall asunder. "I'll not have anyone poaching on my preserves. Even that silly little Flossie Fay was making eyes at him. There isn't a girl among them but would give her eyes to be Mrs. Mitchell, and why should I be more fastidious than they?" Yet she dreamed that night, not of Cephas Mitchell, but of a single great wave that tossed high, enveloping Kenneth and herself in its lucent green waters. She felt herself sinking, sinking, but awoke with the start which follows the sensation of falling, and sighed as she turned on her pillow.
Meantime Kenneth, walking through the dim perfumed night watching a gibbous moon dip behind the cove, cried out against fate. "Go slow," had been Luther Williams' warning, and he had not heeded it. Now he knew—he knew that the joy had gone out of the world for him because a girl had chosen ease and luxury rather than the battle with poverty. At first he was fierce in his hate of the man who could offer her so much, and he thought only bitterly of her for caring for those things which money could buy, but by degrees his mood changed, under the quiet stars in their limitless spaces. What did it matter after all? Life was not long, and there would be a certain reward for him. He remembered Luther Williams' words: "Life is worth living when you have made the sacrifice of doing what is best for everybody." He recalled his mother, vain, selfish, eager to receive, slow to give, hysterically tearful over her own supposed privations, thinking herself a martyr because she could not live as sumptuously as her indolent pleasure-loving nature craved. He thought of his sister and her two children. "I could do more for them, I suppose," he said. "I doubt if mother would be much happier, for with each fresh supply there would be a new demand, and if it were not met that would be another ground for grievance. It is like pouring water into a sieve, and the worst of it is that she becomes so accustomed to my sacrifices that they mean nothing to her. Poor mother!" But his mind was made up. He would not look for appreciation, and the summer over he would accept the position offered him in a broker's office by an old friend of his father's, and on holidays he would follow his painting as a recreation.
For the next few days he kept himself aloof from Wits' End and the group of young people who frequented the cottage. When he met any of them he pleaded hard work as an excuse. Meantime Gwen missed him, though she would not confess this even to herself. She knew that Mrs. Fleming and the children had gone to Blue Hill for a visit, and her conscience pricked her as she thought of Kenneth in his loneliness, but as she perceived Ethel Fuller to be in dead earnest in her effort to attract Cephas Mitchell she resolutely set Kenneth and his affairs out of her mind. The weather had not been favorable for the row to Jagged Island, but that it was surely to take place Ethel daily reminded both Gwen and Mr. Mitchell. There were other things on foot, however, and each girl vied with the other in making herself as charming as possible. Ethel did not hesitate to propose all sorts of expeditions which Gwen's pride made her reject with scorn, but she accepted such suggestions as Mr. Mitchell himself made, and he began to divide his time so equally between the two that it became known as a matter of course that if he were not walking or rowing or sailing with Gwen, he was with Ethel.
"You are a faithless monster!" Gwen declared to Miss Fuller one day when the two met on the rocks.
Ethel laughed. "'Wha' fo', son Riley-Rabbit-Riley? Wha' fo'?'" she asked.
"Who steals my purse steals trash—But she who filches from me my good manRobs me of that which while enriching herWill make me poor indeed,"
"Who steals my purse steals trash—But she who filches from me my good manRobs me of that which while enriching herWill make me poor indeed,"
"Who steals my purse steals trash—But she who filches from me my good manRobs me of that which while enriching herWill make me poor indeed,"
"Who steals my purse steals trash—
But she who filches from me my good man
Robs me of that which while enriching her
Will make me poor indeed,"
paraphrased Gwen. "Have I not been looking for a millionaire all my life, and now that I have found him, do you suppose that I am going to allow the first girl who comes along, to swoop down and bear him off in her talons? A girl who doesn't need him either?"
"I never saw a girl yet who didn't need a millionaire," replied Ethel saucily, "but all the same they don't agree with every girl. I am thinking of your development, my dear. As a true friend I am fearing the effect of riches upon your beautiful character."
"Bosh!" cried Gwen. "You are thinking of Ethel Fuller; that's the person you're thinking of. I don't receive the consideration you would give a fly. And how about your character, pray? Do you keep your hands from picking and stealing, and isn't it as bad to rob me of Cephas as of anything else?"
"I don't do it with my hands," returned Ethel in mock protest.
"No, you do it with your eyes, and your delutherin' tongue, but it's just as bad. You are a thief and a robber, and you're no friend of mine."
"Are you really in earnest, Gwen?" said Ethel altering her light tone.
"Of course I am."
"If I thought you were truly interested, but I know you are not."
"What makes you say that? How do you know I'm not?"
"I know by the expression that came into your face when Kenneth Hilary entered the room the other night, and by the same look which was evident when you heard he had sold a picture."
Gwen flushed uncomfortably. "That is all your imagination," she said after a moment's silence. "It is perfect nonsense. He is nothing whatever to me, nor am I anything to him. I should think by this time you would have found that out."
"Have you quarrelled? Of course I have noticed that you see nothing of him lately."
"No, we haven't exactly quarrelled, but he is as poor as a church mouse and has no business to be thinking of anything but his career. If he marries at all, it should be a rich girl; otherwise he will have his nose to the grindstone for the rest of his days and his future will be ruined."
"Have you told him so?" asked Ethel slyly.
"No, but he knows it, or ought to, and of course his art is the thing of first importance to him, so he is working very hard just now."
"Humph!" ejaculated Ethel. "Then tell me honestly and truly, would you marry Cephas Mitchell if he asked you? Honest Injun. It's only fair to me to tell the truth."
Gwen was thoughtful for a moment. "I don't know," she answered finally.
"That doesn't do me any good," said Ethel. "It strikes me that it is a perfectly fair race, but if you don't think so, and really in your heart of hearts feel a consuming desire to be Mrs. Cephas, I'll pull out and try to fall in love with Kenneth. He is a dear, and perhaps there would be enough for the two of us if we were not wildly extravagant."
"You're perfectly horrid!" cried Gwen.
"Dog in a manger yourself," replied Ethel laughing. "Now let us be sensible. I give you twenty-four hours in which to think it over, and in the meantime I promise to be a recluse. I shall walk, talk, row, dance, and sail with none but the girls in all that time. There shall be a cessation of hostilities until to-morrow, and then you must let me know which of the two worthies you are willing to allow me as my lawful prey. You can't take both, and it is perfectly fair that I should have one. I prefer Cephas, but I'll take Kenneth if you discover that you cannot be happy unless you have the steel man for your very own."
"We are taking a good deal for granted," returned Gwen, "when we talk about taking either of them. The taking usually is upon the part of the masculines."
"We must be prepared," returned Ethel with a show of gravity.
Gwen laughed in spite of herself. "Very well," she said, "as it has come to a question of terms I suppose I'll have to give in, and make this a subject of serious consideration, a sort of searching the heart, as they used to say."
"I consider myself very magnanimous," returned Ethel, "to give up twenty-four good hours when every moment is precious. Of course you will do the same, and for the specified time your guns will all be silenced, too."
"Agreed," Gwen responded. "Though doesn't it strike you, Ethel, that this is rather a cold-blooded transaction?"
"Not a bit of it. Only in high-flown novels do you hear of girls with such saintly reserve that they allow no one to discuss their love affairs with them. I never saw a girl yet who wasn't perfectly willing to go over all the pros and cons with her intimate friends."
"Not when she is really in love."
"That depends, perhaps. It may be before she takes the final plunge that she is ready to talk matters over as you and I have done this morning. Now I don't want any more final plunges till I know it is worth while. I have no idea of losing my sleep without just cause."
"You are cold-blooded, Ethel."
"No, I am not. I am simply philosophical. Adieu, my dear, until to-morrow, and remember, no shilly-shallying then, or I shall be perfectly merciless if I get the chance."