CHAPTER XII
Miss Elliott was right. The next morning a soft gray mist enveloped the island, pearling each separate blade of grass and gemming each twig and leaf with tiny brilliants. The cottages appeared great confused shapes shrouded in gray. Voices coming from a distance had a queer smothered quality. The sea was shut out by a curtain of fog. "A veil before our ways," quoted Gwen, as, cloaked and booted, she stood ready to issue forth. On her way to Almira Green's she met Cap'n Ben in his sou'wester.
"Pretty thick fawg!" he remarked as the girl came up. "I couldn't quite make out whether you was coming or going, or whether you was male or female. I was hopesing for a handsome day to take Ora up to Portland."
"Has she gone?"
"Hm, hm," Cap'n Ben nodded. "Couldn't hold her back once she got the notion in her head. Went on the first boat, though when she'll get there's another thing. It'll be everlasting slow travel. Guess you'll find most folks to hum to-day. Boat she blowed and blowed this morning before she could make her wharf. Going up along? Drop in when you're passing." He gave his characteristic jerky nod, and passed on while Gwen pursued the way "up along" which brought her to Almira Green's house, a white cottage, set in amidst trees, with a little garden in front. Now the bright hues of zinnias, nasturtiums and sweet peas were clouded by fog, and the rigid lines of the house itself melted into the background of slim birches and poplars.
In answer to Gwen's knock, Almira herself came to the door, an angular woman with melancholy eyes. "Well, the land's sakes!" she exclaimed. "You don't mind fawg, do you? I cal'lated 'twas Zerviah Hackett. Nawthin' keeps her to hum. Step right in. You must be wet through. We haven't had such a thick fawg this summer. Give me your cloak and I'll dry it by the kitchen fire."
"I'm not very wet," returned Gwen. "My cape and the edge of my skirt. Thank you, Mrs. Green. I love this soft silent fog. It doesn't chill one in the least. It is quite different from those cold easterly sea-turns they have further down the coast. Is Miss Fuller in?"
"I cal'late she's up in her room. She's not one to venture out, I know. Manny was so sot on going to Portland to-day, that nothing would do but he must up and take the first boat. He's going sword-fishing soon as Cap'n 'Lias Hooper's vessel's ready, so it'll be his last chance to get to the city for some time." She gave a deep sigh.
"I suppose you hate to have him leave you."
"Yes, I do. His father was lost off the Banks, and my husband too. We was cousins, my husband and me, so I lost two in one as you might say. Manny's all I've got left, and I did hope he'd take to clerking or something. He did work for Ira Baldwin one summer, but he said he couldn't stand that kind of a job."
"There seems to be very little loss of life among the fishermen about here," responded Gwen cheerfully, "and I have no doubt Manny will come back safe and sound, and all the better for his experience."
"Maybe," said Almira, shaking her head dubiously. "Will you go up, Miss Whitridge, or shall I ask Miss Fuller to come down?"
"I'll go up," Gwen told her, and mounted the stairs leading to the upper room occupied by Ethel. The house was not a large one, and the only spare room down stairs was given over to Mrs. Dow. In answer to Ethel's "Come in," Gwen entered a low room with sloping ceiling. The walls were covered with paper of a lively pattern, violets of heroic size flung in massive bunches upon a buff ground. The border, to match, looked like a wild flight of young chickens pursuing one another around the room. The floor was covered with a bright red and green ingrain carpet. The furniture, a cottage set, painted yellow with blue and white roses upon it, added to the variety of color. Ethel was sitting by the window absorbed in running ribbons in some dainty underwear. "Well," she exclaimed, "you are a brave somebody. Isn't it a vile day?"
"I think it is lovely," Gwen declared. "Who would have eternal sunshine? I'd like to walk from one end of the island to the other."
"You certainly have more vim than I have. What in the world is there to see on a day like this?"
"Queer ghostly shapes looming up out of the mist, beautiful jewel-hung grasses and weeds. Then to feel the soft fog in your face and not to care about hurting your clothes, or getting your feet wet, or any such trivial things. I love it all. I saw a ship stealing by just now, and it looked as if it had come straight from a land of dreams."
"You sentimental thing! You ought never to marry an ordinary mortal."
"That's just what I came to talk about."
"To tell me that nothing could induce you to link your fate with steel rails?"
"Not quite that. I came to say that it is silly and ignoble, and material and all the rest of it, to talk about running races to win a man, and so, for my part, I shall leave it all to chance. You can use your eyes, and your wits too, all you choose, and I shall do whatever the moment suggests. I shall not refuse any good time that comes my way, but I'll make no promises about anything. I think such things aren't worthy of girls like us, Ethel."
"I just now said you were deadly sentimental. All right, but you must not wax indignant if I do my best to come out winner. I give you fair warning, I shall make my best effort."
"I am willing. If a thing must be fought for it isn't worth having."
"If a thing is worth having it is worth fighting for, would be my way of putting it."
"I shall not fight for a poor miserable thing which can be easily turned aside. Let it go; it is not worth the keeping."
"And I am quite welcome to this poor miserable, uncertain thing, if so it proves itself?"
"Quite welcome."
"Thanks, dear. I feel ready to buckle on my armor for the fray. It was sweet of you to come and tell me. Must you go so soon?"
"Yes, I must. I promised Aunt Cam to send off a money order for her, and you know that takes time. Good-by."
Ethel arose, took her friend by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. "You don't despise me, Gwen, and you're not angry?"
"Neither. We have different points of view, that's all. You revel in little schemes. You enjoy lying in ambush and stealing along unsuspected routes. I like the open. I hate to manoeuvre and contrive. Whatever comes to me I must get as a free untrammelled gift, not by out-generalling some one else, and then falling on the prize as if it were plunder, or loot or something of that kind."
Ethel laughed. "I am glad you are so magnanimous as to call it out-generalling instead of using some horrid word which your present virtuous state of mind might suggest. I don't say that to be nasty, my dear—about your state of mind I mean. It is only this: if for steel rails you were to read tubes of paint and rolls of canvas I don't believe you would be quite so top-loftical."
"I think you are perfectly horrid," cried Gwen, feeling the color rise to her face. "The case would be quite the same. I should never, never, never want what did not come to me freely and naturally. I'd despise myself if I won anything by scheming for it."
"Tut! tut! I am getting it now!" exclaimed Ethel. "Who says it is scheming to do your best to be sweet and agreeable, in exerting such powers of fascination as Heaven has bestowed upon you? Don't tell me you wouldn't do your level best to be nice to—"
Gwen put her hand over Ethel's mouth. "I won't hear you," she cried.
"Then don't call me names," said Ethel, freeing herself.
"I didn't."
"You said I was a schemer."
"I didn't mean exactly that. I meant—oh, I don't know just what I did mean. Go along and do your own way, and I'll do mine."
"Sensible girl! I am glad you have come down from your high horse. Our tactics may be different but the end is the same. To the conqueror come the spoils. Really good-by?"
"Yes, or the mail will be closed."
She ran down stairs, took the now dry golf-cape from Mrs. Green's hands and went forth again to perform her errand. As she turned into the road she saw Kenneth Hilary, color-box in hand, trudging along. He was near enough to recognize her, which he did by a lifting of the cap, then he plunged into the path which led to Captain Purdy's wharf and she saw him disappear in the fog. Yet she was glad at heart to have met him. She remembered that he, too, exulted in storm and fog and rain. But suddenly she was chilled by the remembrance of their last talk. Perhaps he would never give her a chance to renew their friendship. He had taken her words so seriously that he might go away and—forget. Men did that. "Oh dear, what can I do?" she said aloud. "I must do something." Then with a flush of shame she remembered her lofty attitude with Ethel, and what Ethel had said about steel rails and tubes of paint. "Oh dear, I'm no better than she, not a bit," she sighed. "I'd like to run after him this minute and pretend that I had sprained my ankle or lost my way or any other foolish thing, just that I might speak to him. Oh dear, dear, it has come, that dreadful thing that I have been so afraid of, and have been pushing away from me. I don't care one little bit who bears off Cephas—and I do care a whole dreadful lot because Kenneth would not stop and speak to me. Oh, dear, dear. I see myself manoeuvring and scheming or else a lorn maid for the rest of my life. I can't leave everything to Fate, for Fate is so stupidly cruel sometimes."
So her thought ran as she continued along the road to the post-office. At the top of the flight of steps she tried to penetrate the fog to see if she could get a glimpse of Kenneth sketching from Captain Purdy's wharf, but the fog dropped down its soft impenetrable veil and all she could distinguish was the wharf and boat-house dimly outlined.
"He will paint beautiful things to-day," she told herself as she turned homeward, "beautiful, mysterious, charming things that I would love to see, and he will never show them to me—never. Some horrid, beastly wealthy person will buy them, perhaps some one like Cephas Mitchell with pop-eyes and lanky hair. He'll hang them up in his house and gloat over them. Oh dear, I am more kinds of an idiot than I supposed, but I cannot make up my mind to offer any advances."
As she entered the living-room of Wits' End, she saw Miss Elliott kneeling before the open fire with a boxful of letters by her side. She was laying them one by one on the burning logs, which shot up a renewed flare at each fresh accession of kindling. "What are you doing, Aunt Cam?" asked Gwen, throwing off her cape and joining her aunt.
"I am burning some letters which should have been destroyed long ago. They have been packed away in this box for years, and I have never had time to look over them. I found the box in the attic when we dismantled the old house, and should have looked at them then, but I was too busy. They were sent up here with the furniture, and this seemed a good day to look at them."
"What letters are they?" Gwen leaned forward to decipher the address on an envelope which was fast being consumed.
Miss Elliott was silent, and but for the ruddy glare from the fire Gwen might have seen that she was very pale.
Getting no answer to her question Gwen remarked, "I see L. W., my father's initials, signed to one of them. Oh, don't burn them, Aunt Cam. Let me read them, too. Are they old love-letters? Oh, please."
She laid an arresting hand upon her aunt's which held another letter, but Miss Elliott thrust the envelope and its contents deep into the glowing heart of the fire, then quickly added the other letters, poking them down between the logs, and quickening the blaze by stirring the loose bits of paper. "They are only business letters," she said presently. "Letters from your father to my father. It is strange they were not destroyed before. They should have been."
"Why?"
"Because it is stupid to give house room to out-of-date things like that, to things whose chief interest is to the person who wrote and the one who received the letters." Miss Elliott gave an excited stir to the charred heap, now slowly burning and showing brown, curled edges.
"Still," said Gwen, "I'd like to have seen them. I know so little of my father, Aunt Cam."
"He was a noble man, a very noble man." Miss Elliott arose from her knees and pushed the hair back from her forehead with a nervous gesture.
"You never said that before. I—I always thought you didn't like him, Aunt Cam."
"I never knew him. At least I used to see him when he was but a lad, when I was home from school for the holidays. I was ten years older than your mother, you know, Gwen, and I went to China before she was old enough to marry. When I came back your father was—gone."
"I am glad he was a noble man. No one ever seemed to care to tell me much about him. I only know he was drowned on his way to Mexico. That was where he was going, wasn't it?"
"He was going somewhere on business." Miss Elliott spoke heavily. "His valuables were found in his state-room. The captain of the steamer sent them home. It was believed he tried to save a sailor who became entangled in some ropes. It was while the vessel was in port. Your father was an expert swimmer, and the captain thought he must have been pulled down by the desperate struggles of the sailor, for both were missing that night."
"I remember the story. I have his watch and fob, and the purse he left in his cabin. And that is why you think he was noble, Aunt Cam, because he lost his life in trying to save another's. He did do that."
"Yes, it is true that he lost his life in trying to save another's. Nothing could be nobler than that. 'Greater love hath no man than this.' Oh yes, Gwen, you can give his memory all that a hero's should have, honor and love and respect."
"I am glad," said Gwen. "I wish you had said so before. Sometimes I have had doubts. I have been afraid he might not have been exactly worthy. Why didn't you tell me, Aunt Cam?"
Miss Elliott's hands were tightly interlocked as she sat gazing at the last blackened bits of paper. "I thought—it seemed to me best—that you should not think too much about him. The more worthy you believed him the harder it would seem to you to be deprived of him."
Gwen thoughtfully watched the flames, which, rekindled, were now licking around the ends of the logs. "It is a strange argument," she said to herself, "but I suppose Aunt Cam thought she was doing the best for me. She certainly did gather up some queer theories out there in China."
Miss Elliott was watching the girl's face wistfully. "I did what seemed best at the time," she said tremulously. "I hope I didn't do you a wrong, Gwen."
"Never mind, auntie dear." Gwen laid a caressing hand on her aunt's. "So long as I know now it is all right. I suppose you thought I was too young to appreciate exactly. I am glad to know the truth." Then after a pause, "I suppose there was never any doubt that he was drowned."
"At first your grandfather hoped there might be, but as time went on there could be no other conclusion to reach."
"Yes, of course. He would have come back otherwise." The subject ended here, though Gwen still looked a little troubled and her aunt's face wore a similar expression.
Toward night the wind veered around, and the fog lifted, showing first the line of houses along the bluff, then the nearest reefs, and finally lifting the veil which all day had obscured the furthest point of mainland. At last but a dim line of gray along the horizon told that out at sea the fog horns must continue to sound their warning. The long grass, however, was still very wet, and Gwen decided that a second tramp across the hummocks would be better left undone, so she and her aunt, avoiding the dampness below, took refuge on the little balcony over the porch where they were sheltered from the wind.
"Aunt Cam," said Gwen, leaning her chin on her hands and looking off toward Seguin's shining light, "when we go back I'd like to see something of my father's people. What relatives had he?"
"Very few are left," returned Miss Elliott. "His mother died when he was still a child, his father before he married. He was an only child, therefore there would be only some cousins. The family was from northern New York. We could go there some time instead of coming here, but I fancy you would not find any very near relatives, or indeed any who could tell you much of your father. He had not been thrown with them very often, and scarce at all after he was grown."
"His father was a great friend of grandfather's, wasn't he?"
"A great friend though a younger man by some fifteen years. Your grandfather did not marry till he was thirty-five; Lewis Whitridge's father married early."
"I see. Were there only business letters in that box, Aunt Cam? None from my father to my mother?"
"No, as they lived in the same city there was little correspondence between them. I had one or two letters from Lewis, while I was in China, but I destroyed the most of my correspondence before I left there, so those with others, were burned."
"Was my father ever well off? I know mamma had nothing, but had he?"
"He was supposed to be quite well off when your mother married him, unusually so for so young a man."
"Was that why she married him?" Gwen shifted the position of her hands that she might better see a figure on the rocks, distinct against the sky, an immovable figure with back toward Wits' End.
"What a question, my dear," returned Miss Elliott. "Why should you suppose such a thing?"
"I don't know. I only wondered. One likes to know—a girl does—all about her father and mother's courtship."
"I was not there, as you well know," Miss Elliott spoke with emphasis. "I could not possibly know what was going on in Lillian's brain. She was so much younger than I that there could not be the confidence between us as between girls nearer of an age. At all events your father was worthy of any woman's love, so we ought to assume it was a love match. He certainly adored her."
"If you know that he adored her, why don't you know whether she adored him?" asked Gwen.
"What is the matter with you to-night, child?" said her aunt impatiently. "It is too damp out here. I am going in. I have some letters to write."
Gwen, wrapped in a fleecy scarf of white, sat watching the figure on the rocks till the west faded from rose to gray and the shore's limits were visible only when a white line of foam curled along the base of the cliffs.