"We must invite your Aunt Jane, of course," said Mrs. Spencer.
Rachel made a protesting movement with her large, white, shapely
hands--hands which were so different from the thin, dark, twisted
ones folded on the table opposite her. The difference was not
caused by hard work or the lack of it; Rachel had worked hard all
her life. It was a difference inherent in temperament. The
Spencers, no matter what they did, or how hard they labored, all
had plump, smooth, white hands, with firm, supple fingers; the
Chiswicks, even those who toiled not, neither did they spin, had
hard, knotted, twisted ones. Moreover, the contrast went deeper
than externals, and twined itself with the innermost fibers of
life, and thought, and action.
"I don't see why we must invite Aunt Jane," said Rachel, with as
much impatience as her soft, throaty voice could express. "Aunt
Jane doesn't like me, and I don't like Aunt Jane."
"I'm sure I don't see why you don't like her," said Mrs. Spencer.
"It's ungrateful of you. She has always been very kind to you."
"She has always been very kind with one hand," smiled Rachel. "I
remember the first time I ever saw Aunt Jane. I was six years
old. She held out to me a small velvet pincushion with beads on
it. And then, because I did not, in my shyness, thank her quite
as promptly as I should have done, she rapped my head with her
bethimbled finger to 'teach me better manners.' It hurt
horribly--I've always had a tender head. And that has been Aunt
Jane's way ever since. When I grew too big for the thimble
treatment she used her tongue instead--and that hurt worse. And
you know, mother, how she used to talk about my engagement. She
is able to spoil the whole atmosphere if she happens to come in a
bad humor. I don't want her."
"She must be invited. People would talk so if she wasn't."
"I don't see why they should. She's only my great-aunt by
marriage. I wouldn't mind in the least if people did talk.
They'll talk anyway--you know that, mother."
"Oh, we must have her," said Mrs. Spencer, with the indifferent
finality that marked all her words and decisions--a finality
against which it was seldom of any avail to struggle. People,
who knew, rarely attempted it; strangers occasionally did, misled
by the deceit of appearances.
Isabella Spencer was a wisp of a woman, with a pale, pretty face,
uncertainly-colored, long-lashed grayish eyes, and great masses
of dull, soft, silky brown hair. She had delicate aquiline
features and a small, babyish red mouth. She looked as if a
breath would sway her. The truth was that a tornado would hardly
have caused her to swerve an inch from her chosen path.
For a moment Rachel looked rebellious; then she yielded, as she
generally did in all differences of opinion with her mother. It
was not worth while to quarrel over the comparatively unimportant
matter of Aunt Jane's invitation. A quarrel might be inevitable
later on; Rachel wanted to save all her resources for that. She
gave her shoulders a shrug, and wrote Aunt Jane's name down on
the wedding list in her large, somewhat untidy handwriting--a
handwriting which always seemed to irritate her mother. Rachel
never could understand this irritation. She could never guess
that it was because her writing looked so much like that in a
certain packet of faded letters which Mrs. Spencer kept at the
bottom of an old horsehair trunk in her bedroom. They were
postmarked from seaports all over the world. Mrs. Spencer never
read them or looked at them; but she remembered every dash and
curve of the handwriting.
Isabella Spencer had overcome many things in her life by the
sheer force and persistency of her will. But she could not get
the better of heredity. Rachel was her father's daughter at all
points, and Isabella Spencer escaped hating her for it only by
loving her the more fiercely because of it. Even so, there were
many times when she had to avert her eyes from Rachel's face
because of the pang of the more subtle remembrances; and never,
since her child was born, could Isabella Spencer bear to gaze on
that child's face in sleep.
Rachel was to be married to Frank Bell in a fortnight's time.
Mrs. Spencer was pleased with the match. She was very fond of
Frank, and his farm was so near to her own that she would not
lose Rachel altogether. Rachel fondly believed that her mother
would not lose her at all; but Isabella Spencer, wiser by olden
experience, knew what her daughter's marriage must mean to her,
and steeled her heart to bear it with what fortitude she might.
They were in the sitting-room, deciding on the wedding guests and
other details. The September sunshine was coming in through the
waving boughs of the apple tree that grew close up to the low
window. The glints wavered over Rachel's face, as white as a
wood lily, with only a faint dream of rose in the cheeks. She
wore her sleek, golden hair in a quaint arch around it. Her
forehead was very broad and white. She was fresh and young and
hopeful. The mother's heart contracted in a spasm of pain as she
looked at her. How like the girl was to--to--to the Spencers!
Those easy, curving outlines, those large, mirthful blue eyes,
that finely molded chin! Isabella Spencer shut her lips firmly
and crushed down some unbidden, unwelcome memories.
"There will be about sixty guests, all told," she said, as if she
were thinking of nothing else. "We must move the furniture out
of this room and set the supper-table here. The dining-room is
too small. We must borrow Mrs. Bell's forks and spoons. She
offered to lend them. I'd never have been willing to ask her.
The damask table cloths with the ribbon pattern must be bleached
to-morrow. Nobody else in Avonlea has such tablecloths. And
we'll put the little dining-room table on the hall landing,
upstairs, for the presents."
Rachel was not thinking about the presents, or the housewifely
details of the wedding. Her breath was coming quicker, and the
faint blush on her smooth cheeks had deepened to crimson. She
knew that a critical moment was approaching. With a steady hand
she wrote the last name on her list and drew a line under it.
"Well, have you finished?" asked her mother impatiently. "Hand
it here and let me look over it to make sure that you haven't
left anybody out that should be in."
Rachel passed the paper across the table in silence. The room
seemed to her to have grown very still. She could hear the flies
buzzing on the panes, the soft purr of the wind about the low
eaves and through the apple boughs, the jerky beating of her own
heart. She felt frightened and nervous, but resolute.
Mrs. Spencer glanced down the list, murmuring the names aloud and
nodding approval at each. But when she came to the last name, she
did not utter it. She cast a black glance at Rachel, and a spark
leaped up in the depths of the pale eyes. On her face were
anger, amazement, incredulity, the last predominating.
The final name on the list of wedding guests was the name of
David Spencer. David Spencer lived alone in a little cottage
down at the Cove. He was a combination of sailor and fisherman.
He was also Isabella Spencer's husband and Rachel's father.
"Rachel Spencer, have you taken leave of your senses? What do
you mean by such nonsense as this?"
"I simply mean that I am going to invite my father to my
wedding," answered Rachel quietly.
"Not in my house," cried Mrs. Spencer, her lips as white as if
her fiery tone had scathed them.
Rachel leaned forward, folded her large, capable hands
deliberately on the table, and gazed unflinchingly into her
mother's bitter face. Her fright and nervousness were gone. Now
that the conflict was actually on she found herself rather
enjoying it. She wondered a little at herself, and thought that
she must be wicked. She was not given to self-analysis, or she
might have concluded that it was the sudden assertion of her own
personality, so long dominated by her mother's, which she was
finding so agreeable.
"Then there will be no wedding, mother," she said. "Frank and I
will simply go to the manse, be married, and go home. If I
cannot invite my father to see me married, no one else shall be
invited."
Her lips narrowed tightly. For the first time in her life
Isabella Spencer saw a reflection of herself looking back at her
from her daughter's face--a strange, indefinable resemblance that
was more of soul and spirit than of flesh and blood. In spite of
her anger her heart thrilled to it. As never before, she
realized that this girl was her own and her husband's child, a
living bond between them wherein their conflicting natures
mingled and were reconciled. She realized too, that Rachel, so
long sweetly meek and obedient, meant to have her own way in this
case--and would have it.
"I must say that I can't see why you are so set on having your
father see you married," she said with a bitter sneer. "HE has
never remembered that he is your father. He cares nothing about
you--never did care."
Rachel took no notice of this taunt. It had no power to hurt
her, its venom being neutralized by a secret knowledge of her own
in which her mother had no share.
"Either I shall invite my father to my wedding, or I shall not
have a wedding," she repeated steadily, adopting her mother's own
effective tactics of repetition undistracted by argument.
"Invite him then," snapped Mrs. Spencer, with the ungraceful
anger of a woman, long accustomed to having her own way,
compelled for once to yield. "It'll be like chips in porridge
anyhow--neither good nor harm. He won't come."
Rachel made no response. Now that the battle was over, and the
victory won, she found herself tremulously on the verge of tears.
She rose quickly and went upstairs to her own room, a dim little
place shadowed by the white birches growing thickly outside--a
virginal room, where everything bespoke the maiden. She lay down
on the blue and white patchwork quilt on her bed, and cried
softly and bitterly.
Her heart, at this crisis in her life, yearned for her father,
who was almost a stranger to her. She knew that her mother had
probably spoken the truth when she said that he would not come.
Rachel felt that her marriage vows would be lacking in some
indefinable sacredness if her father were not by to hear them
spoken.
Twenty-five years before this, David Spencer and Isabella
Chiswick had been married. Spiteful people said there could be
no doubt that Isabella had married David for love, since he had
neither lands nor money to tempt her into a match of bargain and
sale. David was a handsome fellow, with the blood of a seafaring
race in his veins.
He had been a sailor, like his father and grandfather before him;
but, when he married Isabella, she induced him to give up the sea
and settle down with her on a snug farm her father had left her.
Isabella liked farming, and loved her fertile acres and opulent
orchards. She abhorred the sea and all that pertained to it,
less from any dread of its dangers than from an inbred conviction
that sailors were "low" in the social scale--a species of
necessary vagabonds. In her eyes there was a taint of disgrace
in such a calling. David must be transformed into a respectable,
home-abiding tiller of broad lands.
For five years all went well enough. If, at times, David's
longing for the sea troubled him, he stifled it, and listened not
to its luring voice. He and Isabella were very happy; the only
drawback to their happiness lay in the regretted fact that they
were childless.
Then, in the sixth year, came a crisis and a change. Captain
Barrett, an old crony of David's, wanted him to go with him on a
voyage as mate. At the suggestion all David's long-repressed
craving for the wide blue wastes of the ocean, and the wind
whistling through the spars with the salt foam in its breath,
broke forth with a passion all the more intense for that very
repression. He must go on that voyage with James Barrett--he
MUST! That over, he would be contented again; but go he must.
His soul struggled within him like a fettered thing.
Isabella opposed the scheme vehemently and unwisely, with mordant
sarcasm and unjust reproaches. The latent obstinacy of David's
character came to the support of his longing--a longing which
Isabella, with five generations of land-loving ancestry behind
her, could not understand at all.
He was determined to go, and he told Isabella so.
"I'm sick of plowing and milking cows," he said hotly.
"You mean that you are sick of a respectable life," sneered
Isabella.
"Perhaps," said David, with a contemptuous shrug of his
shoulders. "Anyway, I'm going."
"If you go on this voyage, David Spencer, you need never come
back here," said Isabella resolutely.
David had gone; he did not believe that she meant it. Isabella
believed that he did not care whether she meant it or not. David
Spencer left behind him a woman, calm outwardly, inwardly a
seething volcano of anger, wounded pride, and thwarted will.
He found precisely the same woman when he came home, tanned,
joyous, tamed for a while of his _wanderlust_, ready, with
something of real affection, to go back to the farm fields and
the stock-yard.
Isabella met him at the door, smileless, cold-eyed, set-lipped.
"What do you want here?" she said, in the tone she was accustomed
to use to tramps and Syrian peddlers.
"Want!" David's surprise left him at a loss for words. "Want!
Why, I--I--want my wife. I've come home."
"This is not your home. I'm no wife of yours. You made your
choice when you went away," Isabella had replied. Then she had
gone in, shut the door, and locked it in his face.
David had stood there for a few minutes like a man stunned. Then
he had turned and walked away up the lane under the birches. He
said nothing--then or at any other time. From that day no
reference to his wife or her concerns ever crossed his lips.
He went directly to the harbor, and shipped with Captain Barrett
for another voyage. When he came back from that in a month's
time, he bought a small house and had it hauled to the "Cove," a
lonely inlet from which no other human habitation was visible.
Between his sea voyages he lived there the life of a recluse;
fishing and playing his violin were his only employments. He
went nowhere and encouraged no visitors.
Isabella Spencer also had adopted the tactics of silence. When
the scandalized Chiswicks, Aunt Jane at their head, tried to
patch up the matter with argument and entreaty, Isabella met them
stonily, seeming not to hear what they said, and making no
response. She worsted them totally. As Aunt Jane said in
disgust, "What can you do with a woman who won't even TALK?"
Five months after David Spencer had been turned from his wife's
door, Rachel was born. Perhaps, if David had come to them then,
with due penitence and humility, Isabella's heart, softened by
the pain and joy of her long and ardently desired motherhood
might have cast out the rankling venom of resentment that had
poisoned it and taken him back into it. But David had not come;
he gave no sign of knowing or caring that his once longed-for
child had been born.
When Isabella was able to be about again, her pale face was
harder than ever; and, had there been about her any one
discerning enough to notice it, there was a subtle change in her
bearing and manner. A certain nervous expectancy, a fluttering
restlessness was gone. Isabella had ceased to hope secretly that
her husband would yet come back. She had in her secret soul
thought he would; and she had meant to forgive him when she had
humbled him sufficiently, and when he had abased himself as she
considered he should. But now she knew that he did not mean to
sue for her forgiveness; and the hate that sprang out of her old
love was a rank and speedy and persistent growth.
Rachel, from her earliest recollection, had been vaguely
conscious of a difference between her own life and the lives of
her playmates. For a long time it puzzled her childish brain.
Finally, she reasoned it out that the difference consisted in the
fact that they had fathers and she, Rachel Spencer, had none--not
even in the graveyard, as Carrie Bell and Lilian Boulter had.
Why was this? Rachel went straight to her mother, put one little
dimpled hand on Isabella Spencer's knee, looked up with great
searching blue eyes, and said gravely,
"Mother, why haven't I got a father like the other little girls?"
Isabella Spencer laid aside her work, took the seven year old
child on her lap, and told her the whole story in a few direct
and bitter words that imprinted themselves indelibly on Rachel's
remembrance. She understood clearly and hopelessly that she
could never have a father--that, in this respect, she must always
be unlike other people.
"Your father cares nothing for you," said Isabella Spencer in
conclusion. "He never did care. You must never speak of him to
anybody again."
Rachel slipped silently from her mother's knee and ran out to the
Springtime garden with a full heart. There she cried
passionately over her mother's last words. It seemed to her a
terrible thing that her father should not love her, and a cruel
thing that she must never talk of him.
Oddly enough, Rachel's sympathies were all with her father, in as
far as she could understand the old quarrel. She did not dream
of disobeying her mother and she did not disobey her. Never
again did the child speak of her father; but Isabella had not
forbidden her to think of him, and thenceforth Rachel thought of
him constantly--so constantly that, in some strange way, he
seemed to become an unguessed-of part of her inner life--the
unseen, ever-present companion in all her experiences.
She was an imaginative child, and in fancy she made the
acquaintance of her father. She had never seen him, but he was
more real to her than most of the people she had seen. He played
and talked with her as her mother never did; he walked with her
in the orchard and field and garden; he sat by her pillow in the
twilight; to him she whispered secrets she told to none other.
Once her mother asked her impatiently why she talked so much to
herself.
"I am not talking to myself. I am talking to a very dear friend
of mine," Rachel answered gravely.
"Silly child," laughed her mother, half tolerantly, half
disapprovingly.
Two years later something wonderful had happened to Rachel. One
summer afternoon she had gone to the harbor with several of her
little playmates. Such a jaunt was a rare treat to the child,
for Isabella Spencer seldom allowed her to go from home with
anybody but herself. And Isabella was not an entertaining
companion. Rachel never particularly enjoyed an outing with her
mother.
The children wandered far along the shore; at last they came to a
place that Rachel had never seen before. It was a shallow cove
where the waters purred on the yellow sands. Beyond it, the sea
was laughing and flashing and preening and alluring, like a
beautiful, coquettish woman. Outside, the wind was boisterous
and rollicking; here, it was reverent and gentle. A white boat
was hauled up on the skids, and there was a queer little house
close down to the sands, like a big shell tossed up by the waves.
Rachel looked on it all with secret delight; she, too, loved the
lonely places of sea and shore, as her father had done. She
wanted to linger awhile in this dear spot and revel in it.
"I'm tired, girls," she announced. "I'm going to stay here and
rest for a spell. I don't want to go to Gull Point. You go on
yourselves; I'll wait for you here."
"All alone?" asked Carrie Bell, wonderingly.
"I'm not so afraid of being alone as some people are," said
Rachel, with dignity.
The other girls went on, leaving Rachel sitting on the skids, in
the shadow of the big white boat. She sat there for a time
dreaming happily, with her blue eyes on the far, pearly horizon,
and her golden head leaning against the boat.
Suddenly she heard a step behind her. When she turned her head a
man was standing beside her, looking down at her with big, merry,
blue eyes. Rachel was quite sure that she had never seen him
before; yet those eyes seemed to her to have a strangely familiar
look. She liked him. She felt no shyness nor timidity, such as
usually afflicted her in the presence of strangers.
He was a tall, stout man, dressed in a rough fishing suit, and
wearing an oilskin cap on his head. His hair was very thick and
curly and fair; his cheeks were tanned and red; his teeth, when
he smiled, were very even and white. Rachel thought he must be
quite old, because there was a good deal of gray mixed with his
fair hair.
"Are you watching for the mermaids?" he said.
Rachel nodded gravely. From any one else she would have
scrupulously hidden such a thought.
"Yes, I am," she said. "Mother says there is no such thing as a
mermaid, but I like to think there is. Have you ever seen one?"
The big man sat down on a bleached log of driftwood and smiled at
her.
"No, I'm sorry to say that I haven't. But I have seen many other
very wonderful things. I might tell you about some of them, if
you would come over here and sit by me."
Rachel went unhesitatingly. When she reached him he pulled her
down on his knee, and she liked it.
"What a nice little craft you are," he said. "Do you suppose,
now, that you could give me a kiss?"
As a rule, Rachel hated kissing. She could seldom be prevailed
upon to kiss even her uncles--who knew it and liked to tease her
for kisses until they aggravated her so terribly that she told
them she couldn't bear men. But now she promptly put her arms
about this strange man's neck and gave him a hearty smack.
"I like you," she said frankly.
She felt his arms tighten suddenly about her. The blue eyes
looking into hers grew misty and very tender. Then, all at once,
Rachel knew who he was. He was her father. She did not say
anything, but she laid her curly head down on his shoulder and
felt a great happiness, as of one who had come into some
longed-for haven.
If David Spencer realized that she understood he said nothing.
Instead, he began to tell her fascinating stories of far lands he
had visited, and strange things he had seen. Rachel listened
entranced, as if she were hearkening to a fairy tale. Yes, he
was just as she had dreamed him. She had always been sure he
could tell beautiful stories.
"Come up to the house and I'll show you some pretty things," he
said finally.
Then followed a wonderful hour. The little low-ceilinged room,
with its square window, into which he took her, was filled with
the flotsam and jetsam of his roving life--things beautiful and
odd and strange beyond all telling. The things that pleased
Rachel most were two huge shells on the chimney piece--pale
pink shells with big crimson and purple spots.
"Oh, I didn't know there could be such pretty things in the
world," she exclaimed.
"If you would like," began the big man; then he paused for a
moment. "I'll show you something prettier still."
Rachel felt vaguely that he meant to say something else when he
began; but she forgot to wonder what it was when she saw what he
brought out of a little corner cupboard. It was a teapot of some
fine, glistening purple ware, coiled over by golden dragons with
gilded claws and scales. The lid looked like a beautiful golden
flower and the handle was a coil of a dragon's tail. Rachel sat
and looked at it rapt-eyed.
"That's the only thing of any value I have in the world--now," he
said.
Rachel knew there was something very sad in his eyes and voice.
She longed to kiss him again and comfort him. But suddenly he
began to laugh, and then he rummaged out some goodies for her to
eat, sweetmeats more delicious than she had ever imagined. While
she nibbled them he took down an old violin and played music that
made her want to dance and sing. Rachel was perfectly happy.
She wished she might stay forever in that low, dim room with all
its treasures.
"I see your little friends coming around the point," he said,
finally. "I suppose you must go. Put the rest of the goodies in
your pocket."
He took her up in his arms and held her tightly against his
breast for a single moment. She felt him kissing her hair.
"There, run along, little girl. Good-by," he said gently.
"Why don't you ask me to come and see you again?" cried Rachel,
half in tears. "I'm coming ANYHOW."
"If you can come, COME," he said. "If you don't come, I shall
know it is because you can't--and that is much to know. I'm
very, very, VERY glad, little woman, that you have come once."
Rachel was sitting demurely on the skids when her companions came
back. They had not seen her leaving the house, and she said not
a word to them of her experiences. She only smiled mysteriously
when they asked her if she had been lonesome.
That night, for the first time, she mentioned her father's name
in her prayers. She never forgot to do so afterwards. She
always said, "bless mother--and father," with an instinctive
pause between the two names--a pause which indicated new
realization of the tragedy which had sundered them. And the tone
in which she said "father" was softer and more tender than the
one which voiced "mother."
Rachel never visited the Cove again. Isabella Spencer discovered
that the children had been there, and, although she knew nothing
of Rachel's interview with her father, she told the child that
she must never again go to that part of the shore.
Rachel shed many a bitter tear in secret over this command; but
she obeyed it. Thenceforth there had been no communication
between her and her father, save the unworded messages of soul to
soul across whatever may divide them.
David Spencer's invitation to his daughter's wedding was sent
with the others, and the remaining days of Rachel's maidenhood
slipped away in a whirl of preparation and excitement in which
her mother reveled, but which was distasteful to the girl.
The wedding day came at last, breaking softly and fairly over the
great sea in a sheen of silver and pearl and rose, a September
day, as mild and beautiful as June.
The ceremony was to be performed at eight o'clock in the evening.
At seven Rachel stood in her room, fully dressed and alone. She
had no bridesmaid, and she had asked her cousins to leave her to
herself in this last solemn hour of girlhood. She looked very
fair and sweet in the sunset-light that showered through the
birches. Her wedding gown was a fine, sheer organdie, simply and
daintily made. In the loose waves of her bright hair she wore
her bridegroom's flowers, roses as white as a virgin's dream.
She was very happy; but her happiness was faintly threaded with
the sorrow inseparable from all change.
Presently her mother came in, carrying a small basket.
"Here is something for you, Rachel. One of the boys from the
harbor brought it up. He was bound to give it into your own
hands--said that was his orders. I just took it and sent him to
the right-about--told him I'd give it to you at once, and that
that was all that was necessary."
She spoke coldly. She knew quite well who had sent the basket,
and she resented it; but her resentment was not quite strong
enough to overcome her curiosity. She stood silently by while
Rachel unpacked the basket.
Rachel's hands trembled as she took off the cover. Two huge
pink-spotted shells came first. How well she remembered them!
Beneath them, carefully wrapped up in a square of foreign-looking,
strangely scented silk, was the dragon teapot. She held it in her
hands and gazed at it with tears gathering thickly in her eyes.
"Your father sent that," said Isabella Spencer with an odd sound
in her voice. "I remember it well. It was among the things I
packed up and sent after him. His father had brought it home
from China fifty years ago, and he prized it beyond anything.
They used to say it was worth a lot of money."
"Mother, please leave me alone for a little while," said Rachel,
imploringly. She had caught sight of a little note at the bottom
of the basket, and she felt that she could not read it under her
mother's eyes.
Mrs. Spencer went out with unaccustomed acquiescence, and Rachel
went quickly to the window, where she read her letter by the
fading gleams of twilight. It was very brief, and the writing
was that of a man who holds a pen but seldom.
"My dear little girl," it ran, "I'm sorry I can't go to your
wedding. It was like you to ask me--for I know it was your
doing. I wish I could see you married, but I can't go to the
house I was turned out of. I hope you will be very happy. I
am sending you the shells and teapot you liked so much. Do
you remember that day we had such a good time? I would liked
to have seen you again before you were married, but it can't
be.
"Your loving father,
"DAVID SPENCER."
Rachel resolutely blinked away the tears that filled her eyes. A
fierce desire for her father sprang up in her heart--an insistent
hunger that would not be denied. She MUST see her father; she
MUST have his blessing on her new life. A sudden determination
took possession of her whole being--a determination to sweep
aside all conventionalities and objections as if they had not
been.
It was now almost dark. The guests would not be coming for half
an hour yet. It was only fifteen minutes' walk over the hill to
the Cove. Hastily Rachel shrouded herself in her new raincoat,
and drew a dark, protecting hood over her gay head. She opened
the door and slipped noiselessly downstairs. Mrs. Spencer and
her assistants were all busy in the back part of the house. In a
moment Rachel was out in the dewy garden. She would go straight
over the fields. Nobody would see her.
It was quite dark when she reached the Cove. In the crystal cup
of the sky over her the stars were blinking. Flying flakes of
foam were scurrying over the sand like elfin things. A soft
little wind was crooning about the eaves of the little gray house
where David Spencer was sitting, alone in the twilight, his
violin on his knee. He had been trying to play, but could not.
His heart yearned after his daughter--yes, and after a
long-estranged bride of his youth. His love of the sea was sated
forever; his love for wife and child still cried for its own
under all his old anger and stubbornness.
The door opened suddenly and the very Rachel of whom he was
dreaming came suddenly in, flinging off her wraps and standing
forth in her young beauty and bridal adornments, a splendid
creature, almost lighting up the gloom with her radiance.
"Father," she cried, brokenly, and her father's eager arms closed
around her.
Back in the house she had left, the guests were coming to the
wedding. There were jests and laughter and friendly greeting.
The bridegroom came, too, a slim, dark-eyed lad who tiptoed
bashfully upstairs to the spare room, from which he presently
emerged to confront Mrs. Spencer on the landing.
"I want to see Rachel before we go down," he said, blushing.
Mrs. Spencer deposited a wedding present of linen on the table
which was already laden with gifts, opening the door of Rachel's
room, and called her. There was no reply; the room was dark and
still. In sudden alarm, Isabella Spencer snatched the lamp from
the hall table and held it up. The little white room was empty.
No blushing, white-clad bride tenanted it. But David Spencer's
letter was lying on the stand. She caught it up and read it.
"Rachel is gone," she gasped. A flash of intuition had revealed
to her where and why the girl had gone.
"Gone!" echoed Frank, his face blanching. His pallid dismay
recalled Mrs. Spencer to herself. She gave a bitter, ugly
little laugh.
"Oh, you needn't look so scared, Frank. She hasn't run away from
you. Hush; come in here--shut the door. Nobody must know of
this. Nice gossip it would make! That little fool has gone to
the Cove to see her--her father. I know she has. It's just like
what she would do. He sent her those presents--look--and this
letter. Read it. She has gone to coax him to come and see her
married. She was crazy about it. And the minister is here and
it is half-past seven. She'll ruin her dress and shoes in the
dust and dew. And what if some one has seen her! Was there ever
such a little fool?"
Frank's presence of mind had returned to him. He knew all about
Rachel and her father. She had told him everything.
"I'll go after her," he said gently. "Get me my hat and coat.
I'll slip down the back stairs and over to the Cove."
"You must get out of the pantry window, then," said Mrs. Spencer
firmly, mingling comedy and tragedy after her characteristic
fashion. "The kitchen is full of women. I won't have this known
and talked about if it can possibly be helped."
The bridegroom, wise beyond his years in the knowledge that it
was well to yield to women in little things, crawled obediently
out of the pantry window and darted through the birch wood. Mrs.
Spencer had stood quakingly on guard until he had disappeared.
So Rachel had gone to her father! Like had broken the fetters of
years and fled to like.
"It isn't much use fighting against nature, I guess," she thought
grimly. "I'm beat. He must have thought something of her, after
all, when he sent her that teapot and letter. And what does he
mean about the 'day they had such a good time'? Well, it just
means that she's been to see him before, sometime, I suppose, and
kept me in ignorance of it all."
Mrs. Spencer shut down the pantry window with a vicious thud.
"If only she'll come quietly back with Frank in time to prevent
gossip I'll forgive her," she said, as she turned to the kitchen.
Rachel was sitting on her father's knee, with both her white arms
around his neck, when Frank came in. She sprang up, her face
flushed and appealing, her eyes bright and dewy with tears.
Frank thought he had never seen her look so lovely.
"Oh, Frank, is it very late? Oh, are you angry?" she exclaimed
timidly.
"No, no, dear. Of course I'm not angry. But don't you think
you'd better come back now? It's nearly eight and everybody is
waiting."
"I've been trying to coax father to come up and see me married,"
said Rachel. "Help me, Frank."
"You'd better come, sir," said Frank, heartily, "I'd like it as
much as Rachel would."
David Spencer shook his head stubbornly.
"No, I can't go to that house. I was locked out of it. Never
mind me. I've had my happiness in this half hour with my little
girl. I'd like to see her married, but it isn't to be."
"Yes, it is to be--it shall be," said Rachel resolutely. "You
SHALL see me married. Frank, I'm going to be married here in my
father's house! That is the right place for a girl to be
married. Go back and tell the guests so, and bring them all
down."
Frank looked rather dismayed. David Spencer said deprecatingly:
"Little girl, don't you think it would be--"
"I'm going to have my own way in this," said Rachel, with a sort
of tender finality. "Go, Frank. I'll obey you all my life
after, but you must do this for me. Try to understand," she
added beseechingly.
"Oh, I understand," Frank reassured her. "Besides, I think you
are right. But I was thinking of your mother. She won't come."
"Then you tell her that if she doesn't come I shan't be married
at all," said Rachel. She was betraying unsuspected ability to
manage people. She knew that ultimatum would urge Frank to his
best endeavors.
Frank, much to Mrs. Spencer's dismay, marched boldly in at the
front door upon his return. She pounced on him and whisked him
out of sight into the supper room.
"Where's Rachel? What made you come that way? Everybody saw
you!"
"It makes no difference. They will all have to know, anyway.
Rachel says she is going to be married from her father's house,
or not at all. I've come back to tell you so."
Isabella's face turned crimson.
"Rachel has gone crazy. I wash my hands of this affair. Do as
you please. Take the guests--the supper, too, if you can carry
it."
"We'll all come back here for supper," said Frank, ignoring the
sarcasm. "Come, Mrs. Spencer, let's make the best of it."
"Do you suppose that _I_ am going to David Spencer's house?" said
Isabella Spencer violently.
"Oh you MUST come, Mrs. Spencer," cried poor Frank desperately.
He began to fear that he would lose his bride past all finding in
this maze of triple stubbornness. "Rachel says she won't be
married at all if you don't go, too. Think what a talk it will
make. You know she will keep her word."
Isabella Spencer knew it. Amid all the conflict of anger and
revolt in her soul was a strong desire not to make a worse
scandal than must of necessity be made. The desire subdued and
tamed her, as nothing else could have done.
"I will go, since I have to," she said icily. "What can't be
cured must be endured. Go and tell them."
Five minutes later the sixty wedding guests were all walking over
the fields to the Cove, with the minister and the bridegroom in
the front of the procession. They were too amazed even to talk
about the strange happening. Isabella Spencer walked behind,
fiercely alone.
They all crowded into the little room of the house at the Cove,
and a solemn hush fell over it, broken only by the purr of the
sea-wind around it and the croon of the waves on the shore.
David Spencer gave his daughter away; but, when the ceremony was
concluded, Isabella was the first to take the girl in her arms.
She clasped her and kissed her, with tears streaming down her
pale face, all her nature melted in a mother's tenderness.
"Rachel! Rachel! My child, I hope and pray that you may be
happy," she said brokenly.
In the surge of the suddenly merry crowd of well-wishers around
the bride and groom, Isabella was pushed back into a shadowy
corner behind a heap of sails and ropes. Looking up, she found
herself crushed against David Spencer. For the first time in
twenty years the eyes of husband and wife met. A strange thrill
shot to Isabella's heart; she felt herself trembling.
"Isabella." It was David's voice in her ear--a voice full of
tenderness and pleading--the voice of the young wooer of her
girlhood--"Is it too late to ask you to forgive me? I've been a
stubborn fool--but there hasn't been an hour in all these years
that I haven't thought about you and our baby and longed for
you."
Isabella Spencer had hated this man; yet her hate had been but a
parasite growth on a nobler stem, with no abiding roots of its
own. It withered under his words, and lo, there was the old
love, fair and strong and beautiful as ever.
"Oh--David--I--was--all--to--blame," she murmured
brokenly.
Further words were lost on her husband's lips.
When the hubbub of handshaking and congratulating had subsided,
Isabella Spencer stepped out before the company. She looked
almost girlish and bridal herself, with her flushed cheeks and
bright eyes.
"Let's go back now and have supper, and be sensible," she said
crisply. "Rachel, your father is coming, too. He is coming to
STAY,"--with a defiant glance around the circle. "Come,
everybody."
They went back with laughter and raillery over the quiet autumn
fields, faintly silvered now by the moon that was rising over the
hills. The young bride and groom lagged behind; they were very
happy, but they were not so happy, after all, as the old bride
and groom who walked swiftly in front. Isabella's hand was in
her husband's and sometimes she could not see the moonlit hills
for a mist of glorified tears.
"David," she whispered, as he helped her over the fence, "how can
you ever forgive me?"
"There's nothing to forgive," he said. "We're only just married.
Who ever heard of a bridegroom talking of forgiveness?
Everything is beginning over new for us, my girl."