THE WHISTLING SALLY
I
Becky, as she journeyed towards the north, had carried with her a
vision of a new and rather disturbing Randy--a Randy who, striding
across the Hunt Room with high-held head, had delivered her fan, and
had, later, asked for an explanation.
"How did he get it, Becky?"
She had told him.
"Why didn't you tell me when I came back and said I would go for it?"
"I was afraid he might still be there."
"Well?"
"And that something might happen."
Something had happened later by the fountain. But Randy did not speak
of it. "I saw the fan in his hand and asked for it," grimly, "and he
gave it to me----"
On the night before she went away, Randy had said, "I can't tell you
all that you mean to me, Becky, and I am not going to try. But I am
yours always--remember that----" He had kissed her hand and held it
for a moment against his heart. Then he had left her, and Becky had
wanted to call him back and say something that she felt had been left
unsaid, but had found that she could not.
Admiral Meredith met his granddaughter in New York, and the rest of the
trip was made with him.
Admiral Meredith was as different from Judge Bannister in his mental
equipment as he was in physical appearance. He was a short little man,
who walked with a sailor's swing, and who laughed like a fog-horn. He
had ruddy cheeks, and the manners of a Chesterfield. If he lacked the
air of aristocratic calm which gave distinction to Judge Bannister, he
supplied in its place a sophistication due to his contact with a world
which moved faster than the Judge's world in Virginia.
He adored Becky, and resented her long sojourn in the South. "I
believe you love the Judge better than you do me," he told her, as he
turned to her in the taxi which took them from the train to the boat.
"I don't love anybody better than I do you," she said, and tucked her
hand in his.
"What have they been doing to you?" he demanded; "you are as white as
paper."
"Well, it has been hot."
"Of all the fool things to keep you down here in summer. I am going to
take you straight to 'Sconset to the Whistling Sally and keep you there
for a month."
"The Whistling Sally" was the Admiral's refuge when he was tired of the
world. It was a gray little house set among other gray little houses
across the island from Nantucket town. It stood on top of the bluff
and overlooked a sea which stretched straight to Spain. It was called
"The Whistling Sally" because a ship's figure-head graced its front
yard, the buxom half of a young woman who blew out her cheeks in a
perpetual piping, and whose faded colors spoke eloquently of the storms
which had buffeted her.
The Admiral, as has been indicated, had an imposing mansion in
Nantucket town. For two months in the summer he entertained his
friends in all the glory of a Colonial background--white pillars,
spiral stairway, polished floors, Chinese Chippendale, lacquered
cabinets, old china and oil portraits. He gave dinners and played
golf, he had a yacht and a motor boat, he danced when the spirit moved
him, and was light on his feet in spite of his years. He was adored by
the ladies, lionized by everybody, and liked it.
But when the summer was over and September came, he went to Siasconset
and reverted to the type of his ancestors. He hobnobbed with the men
and women who had been the friends and neighbors of his forbears. He
doffed his sophistication as he doffed his formal clothes. He wore a
slicker on wet days, and the rain dripped from his rubber hat. He sat
knee to knee with certain cronies around the town pump. He made
chowder after a famous recipe, and dug clams when the spirit moved him.
His housekeeper, Jane, adjourned from the town house to "The Whistling
Sally" when Becky was there; at other times the Admiral did for
himself, keeping the little cottage as neat as a pin, and cooking as if
he were born to it.
It seemed to Becky that as the long low island rose from the sea, the
burdens which she had carried for so long dropped from her. There were
the houses on the cliff, the glint of a gilded dome, and then, gray and
blue and green the old town showed against the skyline, resolving
itself presently into roofs, and church towers, and patches of trees,
with long piers stretching out through shallow waters, boat-houses,
fishing smacks, and at last a thin line of people waiting on the wharf.
The air was like wine. The sky was blue with the deep sapphire which
follows a wind-swept night. There was not a hint of mist or fog.
Flocks of gulls rose and dipped and rose again, or rested unafraid on
the wooden posts of the pier.
The 'Sconset 'bus was waiting and they took it. Until two years ago no
automobiles had been allowed on the island, but there had been the
triumph of utility over the picturesque and quaint, and now one motored
across the moor on smooth asphalt, in one-half the time that the trip
had been made in the old days.
The Admiral did not like it. He admitted that it was quicker. "But we
used to see the pheasants fly up from the bushes, and the ducks from
the pools, and now they are gone before we can get our eyes on them."
Becky was not in a captious mood. The moor was before her, rising and
falling in low unwooded hills, amber with dwarf goldenrod, red with the
turning huckleberry, purple with drying grasses; green with a thousand
lovely growing things still unpainted by the brush of autumn. The
color was almost unbelievably gorgeous. Even the pools by the roadside
were almost unbelievably blue, as if the water had been dyed with
indigo, and above all was that incredible blue sky----!
Then out of the distance clear cut like cardboard the houses lifted
themselves above the horizon, with the sea a wall to the right, and to
the left, across the moor, the Sankaty lighthouse, white and red with
the sun's rays striking across it.
They entered the village between rows of pleasant informal residences,
many of them closed until another season; they passed the tennis
courts, and came to the post-office, with its flag flying. The 'bus
stopped, and they found Tristram waiting for them.
"Tristram" is an old name in Nantucket. There was a Tristram among the
nine men who had purchased the Island from Thomas Mayhew in 1659 for
"30 pounds current pay and two beaver hats." The present Tristram wore
the name appropriately. Fair-haired and tall, not young but towards
the middle-years, strong with the strength of one who lives
out-of-doors in all weathers, browned with the wind and sun, blue-eyed,
he called no man master, and was the owner of his own small acres.
Like the Admiral, he gave himself up for two months of the year to the
summer people. If his association with them was a business rather than
a social affair, it was, none the less, interesting. The occupation of
Nantucket by "off-islanders" was a matter of infinite speculation and
amusement. Into the serenity of his life came restless men and women
who golfed and swam and rode and danced, who chafed when it rained, and
complained of the fog, who seemed endlessly trying to get something out
of life and who were endlessly bored, who wondered how Tristram could
stand the solitudes and who pitied him.
Tristram knew that he did not need their pity. He had a thousand
things that they did not have. He was never bored, and he was too busy
to manufacture amusements. There were always things happening on the
island--each day brought something different.
To-day, it was the winter gulls. "They are coming down--lots of them
from the north," he told the Admiral as they drove through the quaint
settlement with its gray little houses, "the big ones----"
There was also the _gerardia_, pale pink and shading into mauve. He
had brought a great bunch to "The Whistling Sally," and had put it in a
bowl of gray pottery.
When Becky saw the flowers, she knew whom to thank. "Oh, Tristram,"
she said, "you found them on the moor."
Tristram, standing in the little front room of the Admiral's cottage,
seemed to tower to the ceiling. "The Whistling Sally" from the outside
had the look of a doll's house, too small for human habitation. Within
it was unexpectedly commodious. It had the shipshape air of belonging
to a seafaring man. The rooms were all on one floor. There was the
big front room, which served as a sitting-room and dining-room. It had
a table built out from the wall with high-backed benches on each side
of it, and a rack for glasses overhead. There was a window above the
table which looked out towards the sea. The walls were painted blue,
and there was an old brick fireplace. A model of a vessel from which
the figure-head in the front yard had been taken was over the mantel,
flanked by an old print or two of Nantucket in the past. There were
Windsor chairs and a winged chair; some pot-bellied silver twinkled in
a corner cupboard.
The windows throughout were low and square and small-paned and
white-curtained. The day was cool, and there was a fire on the hearth.
The blaze and the pink flowers, and the white curtains gave to the
little room an effect of brightness, although outside the early
twilight was closing in.
Jane came in with her white apron and added another high light. She
kissed Becky. "Did your grandfather tell you that Mr. Cope is coming
over to have chowder?" she asked.
It would be impossible to describe Jane's way of saying "chowder." It
had no "r," and she clipped it off at the end. But it is the only way
in the world, and the people who so pronounce it are usually the only
people in the world who can make it.
"Who is Mr. Cope?" Becky asked.
Mr. Cope, it seemed, had a cottage across the road from the Admiral's.
He leased it, and it was his first season at 'Sconset. His sister had
been with him only a week ago. She had gone "offshore," but she was
coming back.
"Is he young?" Becky asked.
"Well, he isn't old," said Jane, "and he's an artist."
Becky was not in the least interested in Mr. Cope, go she talked to
Tristram until he had to go back to his farm and the cows that waited
to be milked. Then Becky went into her room, and took off her hat and
coat and ran a comb through the bronze waves of her hair. She did not
change the straight serge frock in which she had travelled. She went
back into the front room and found that Mr. Cope had come.
He was not old. That was at once apparent. And he was not young. He
did not look in the least like an artist. He seemed, rather, like a
prosperous business man. He wore a Norfolk suit, and his reddish hair
was brushed straight back from his forehead. He had rather humorous
gray eyes, and Becky thought there was a look of delicacy about his
white skin. Later he spoke of having come for his health, and she
learned that he had a weak heart.
He had a pleasant laughing voice. He belonged to Boston, but had lived
abroad for years.
"With nothing to show for it," he told her with a shrug, "but one
portrait. I painted my sister, and she kept that. But before we left
Paris we burned the rest----"
"Oh, how dreadful," Becky cried.
"No, it wasn't dreadful. They were not worth keeping. You see, I
played a lot and made sketches and things, and then there was the
war--and I wasn't very well."
He had had two years of aviation, and after that a desk in the War
Department.
"And now I am painting again."
"Gardens?" Becky asked, "or the sea?"
"Neither. I am trying to paint the moor. I'll show you in the
morning."
The Admiral was in the kitchen, superintending the chowder. Jane knew
how to make it, and he knew that she knew. But he always went into the
kitchen at the psychological moment, tied on an apron, and put in the
pilot crackers. Then he brought the chowder in, in a big porcelain
tureen which was shaped like a goose. Becky loved him in his white
apron, with his round red face, and the porcelain goose held high.
"If you could paint him like that," she suggested to Archibald Cope.
"Do you think he would let me?" eagerly.
After supper the two men smoked by the fire, and Becky sat between them
and watched the blaze. She heard very little of the conversation. Her
mind was in Albemarle. How far away it seemed! Just three nights ago
she had danced at the Merriweathers' ball, and George had held her hand
as she leaned over the balcony.
"If you can bring yourself back for a moment, Becky, to present
company," her grandfather was saying, "you can tell Mr. Cope whether
you will walk with us to-morrow to Tom Never's."
"I'd love it."
"Really?" Cope asked. "You are sure you won't be too tired?"
"Not in this air. I feel as if I could walk forever."
"How about a bit of a walk to-night--up to the bluff? Is it too late,
Admiral?"
"Not for you two. I'll finish my pipe, and read my papers."
The young people followed the line of the bluff until they came to an
open space which looked towards the east. To the left of them was the
ridge with a young moon hanging low above it, and straight ahead,
brighter than the moon, whitening the heavens, stretching out and out
until it reached the sailors in their ships, was the Sankaty light.
"I always come out to look at it before I go to bed," said Cope; "it is
such a _living_ thing, isn't it?"
The wind was rising and they could hear the sound of the sea. Becky
caught her breath. "On dark nights I like to think how it must look to
the ships beyond the shoals----"
"The sea is cruel," said Cope; "that's why I don't paint it."
"Oh, it isn't always cruel."
"When isn't it? Last year, with the submarines, it was--a monster. I
saw a picture once in a gallery, 'The Eternal Siren,' just the sea.
And a woman asked, 'Where's the Siren?'"
Becky laughed. "If you had sailor blood in you, you wouldn't feel that
way. Ask Grandfather."
"The Admiral is prejudiced. He loves--the siren----"
"He would tell you that the sea isn't a siren. It's a bold, blustering
lass like the Whistling Sally out there in the front yard. Man has
tamed her even if he hasn't quite mastered her."
"He will never master her. She will go on and on, after we are dead,
through the ages, wooing men to--destruction----"
Becky shivered. "I hate to think of things--after we are dead."
"Do you? I don't. I like to think way beyond the ages to the time
when there shall be no more sea----"
He pulled himself up abruptly. "I am talking rather dismally, I am
afraid, about death and destruction. You won't want to walk with me
again."
"Oh, yes, I shall. And I want to see your pictures."
"You may not care for them. Lots of people don't. But I have to work
in my own way----"
As they walked back, he told her what he was trying to do. As she
listened, Becky seemed to have two minds, one that caught his words,
and answered them, and another which went back and back to the things
which had happened since she had last walked this bluff with the wind
in her face and the sound of the sea in her ears.
It seemed to her as if a lifetime had elapsed since last she had looked
at the Sankaty light.
II
When Becky wrote to Randy, she had a great deal to say about Archibald
Cope.
"He is trying to paint the moor. He wants to get its meaning, and then
make other people see what it means. He doesn't look in the least like
that, Randy--as if he were finding the spirit of things. He has red
hair and wears correct clothes, and says the right things, and you feel
as if he ought to be in Wall Street buying bonds. But here he is,
refusing to believe that anything he has done is worth while until he
does it to his own satisfaction.
"We walked to Tom Never's Head yesterday. It was one of those clear
silver days, a little cloudy and without much color. The cranberries
are ripe and the moor was carpeted with them. When we got to Tom
Never's we sat on the edge of the bluff, and Mr. Cope told me what he
meant about the moor. It has its moods, he said. On a quiet, cloudy
morning, it is a Quaker lady. With the fog in, it is a White Spirit.
There are purple twilights when it is--Cleopatra, and windy nights with
the sun going down blood-red, when it is--Medusa---- He says that the
trouble with the average picture is that it is just--paint. I am not
sure that I understand it all, but it is terribly interesting. And
when he had talked a lot about that, he talked of the history of the
island. He said that he should never be satisfied until somebody put a
bronze statue of an Indian right where we stood, with his back to the
sea. And when I said, 'Why with his back to it?' he said, 'Wasn't the
sea cruel to the red man? It brought a conquering race in ships.'
"I told him then about our Indians in Virginia, and that some of us had
a bit of red blood in our veins, and I told him that you and I always
used the old Indian war cry when we called to each other, and he asked,
'Who is Randy?' and I said that you were an old friend, and that we had
spent much of our childhood together."
As a matter of fact, Cope had been much interested in her account of
young Paine. "Do you mean to say that he is still living on all that
land?"
"Yes."
"Master of his own domain. I can't see it. The way I like to live is
with a paint box, and a bag; and nothing to keep me from moving on."
"We aren't like that in the South."
"Do you like to stay in one place?"
"I never have. I have always been handed around."
"Would you like a home of your own?"
"Of course--after I am married."
"North, south, east or west?"
She put the question to him seriously. "Do you think it would make any
difference if you loved a man, where you lived?"
"Well, of course, there might be difficulties--on a desert island."
"Not if you loved him."
"My sister wouldn't agree with you."
"Why not?"
"She is very modern. She says that love has nothing to do with it.
Not romantic love. She says that when she marries she shall choose a
man who lives in New York, who likes to go to Europe, and who hates the
tropics. He must fancy pale gray walls and willow-green draperies, and
he must loathe Florentine furniture. He must like music and painting,
and not care much for books. He must adore French cooking, and have a
prejudice against heavy roasts. He must be a Republican and High
Church. She is sure that with such a man she would be happy. The dove
of peace would hover over the household, because she and her husband
would have nothing to quarrel about."
"Of course she doesn't mean it."
"She thinks she does."
"She won't if she is ever really in love."
He glanced at her. "Then you believe in the desert island?"
"I think I do----"
She stood up. "Did you feel a drop of rain? And Grandfather is
waving."
The Admiral on the porch of the closed Lodge was calling to them to
come under shelter.
It was a gentle rain, and they decided to walk home in it. They went
at a smart pace, which they moderated as Cope showed signs of fatigue.
"It's a beastly nuisance," he said, "to give out. I wish you would go
on ahead, and let me rest here----"
They rested with him. The two men talked, and Becky was rather silent.
When they started on again, Cope said to her, "Are you tired? It is a
long walk."
"No," she said, "I am not tired. And I have been thinking a lot about
the things you said to me."
He was not a conceited man, and he was aware that it was the things
which he had said to her which had set her mind to work, not any
personal fascination. She was quaint and charming, and he was glad
that she had come. He had been lonely since his sister left. And his
loneliness had fear back of it.
It was because of this conversation with Cope that Becky ended her
letter to Randy with the following paragraph:
"Mr. Cope has a sister, Louise. She thinks that people ought to marry
because they like the same things. She thinks that if two people care
for the same furniture and the same religion and the same things to
eat, that life will be lovely. She couldn't love a man enough to live
on a desert island with him, because she adores New York. Of course,
there is something in that, and if it is so, you and I ought to be very
happy, Randy. We like old houses and the Virginia hills, and lots of
books, and fireplaces--and dogs and horses and hot biscuits and fried
chicken. It sounds awfully funny to put it that way, doesn't it, and
practical? But perhaps Louise Cope is right, and one isn't likely, of
course, to have the desert island test. Do you _really_ think that
anybody could be happy on a desert island, Randy?"
Randy replied promptly.
"If you were in love with me, Becky, you wouldn't be asking questions.
You would believe that we could be blissful on a desert island. I
believe it. It may not be true, yet I feel that a hut on a mountain
top would be heaven for me if you were in it, Becky. In a way Cope's
sister is right. The chances for happiness are greatest with those who
have similar tastes, but not fried chicken tastes or identical
religious opinions. These do not mean so much, but it would mean a
great deal that we think alike about honesty and uprightness and truth
and courage----
"And now, Becky, I might as well say it straight from the shoulder. I
haven't the least right in the world to let you feel that you are
engaged to me. I shall never marry you unless you love me--unless you
love me so much that you would have the illusion of happiness with me
on a desert island.
"I have no right to let you tie yourself to me. The whole thing is
artificial and false. You are strong enough to stand alone. I want
you to stand alone, Becky, for your own sake. I want you to tell
yourself that Dalton isn't worth one single thought of yours. Tell
yourself the truth, Becky, about him. It is the only way to own your
soul.
"You may be interested to know that the Watermans left Hamilton Hill
yesterday. Dalton went with them. I haven't seen him since the night
of the Merriweathers' ball. I didn't tell you, did I, that after I
took the fan away from him, I dropped him into the fountain? I had
much rather have tied him to a stake, and have built a fire under him,
but that isn't civilized, and of course, I couldn't. But I am glad I
dropped him in the fountain----"
Becky read Randy's letter as she sat alone on the beach. It was cool
and sunshiny and she was wrapped in a red cape. The winter gulls were
beating strong wings above the breakers, and their sharp cries cut
across the roar of the waters.
There had been a storm the night before--wind booming out of the
northeast and the sea still sang the song of it.
Becky felt, suddenly, that she was very angry with Randy. It was as if
he had broken a lovely thing that she had worshipped. She hated to
think of that struggle in the dark---- She hated to think of Randy
as--the Conqueror. She hated to think of George as dank and dripping.
She wanted to think of him as shining and splendid, and Randy had
spoiled that.
But she wanted to be fair. Hadn't George, after all, spoiled his own
splendidness? He had wooed her and had run away. And he had not run
back until he thought another man wanted her.
"Of course," said somebody behind her, "you won't tell me what you are
thinking about. But if you will just let me sit here and think, by
your side, it will be a great privilege."
It was Mr. Cope, and she was not sure that she wanted him at this
moment. Perhaps something of her thought showed in her eyes, for when
she said, "Oh, yes," he stood looking down at her. "Would you rather
be alone with your letters? Don't hedge and be polite. Tell me."
"Well," she admitted, "my letters are a bit on my mind. But if you
don't care if I am stupid, you can stay----"
He sat down. He had known her for ten days, and dreaded to think that
in ten days more she might be gone. "I won't talk if you don't wish
it."
Becky's eyes were on the sea. "I think I should like to talk. I have
been thinking--about that Indian that you want commemorated in bronze
up there on the bluff. Do you think he was cruel?"
"Who knows? He was, perhaps, a savage. Yet he may have been
tender-hearted. I hope so, if he is going to be fixed in bronze for
the ages to stare at."
"Did you," Becky asked, deliberately, "ever want to tie a man to a
stake and build a fire under him?"
He turned and stared at her. "My dear child, what ever put such an
idea in your head?"
"Well, did you?"
He considered it. "There was a time in France when I wanted to do
worse than that."
"But that was war."
"No, it was a brute in my own company. He broke the heart of a little
girl that he met in Brittany. He--he--well he murdered her--dreams.
"Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing."
"He knew. Every man knows."
"And you wanted to make him--suffer----"
"Yes."
She shivered. "Are all men like that?"
"Like what?"
"Cruel."
"It can't be cruelty. It's a sense of justice."
"I hope it is." She kept thinking about George rising dank and
dripping from the fountain. She hated to think about it.
So she changed the subject. "I thought you were painting."
"I was. But the moor is fickle. Yesterday she billowed towards the
south, all gray and blue. And last night the storm spoiled it; she is
gorgeous and gay to-day, and I don't like her."
"Oh, why not?"
"She is too obvious. Anybody can paint a Persian carpet, but one can't
put soul into a--carpet----"
He was petulant. "I shall never paint the pictures I want to paint.
Life is too short."
"Life isn't short. Look at Grandfather. You will have forty years yet
in which to paint."
And now it was he who changed the subject, quickly, as if he were
afraid of it.
"My sister is coming to-morrow. I rather think you will like her."
"Will she like me, that's more important."
"She will love you, as I do, as everybody does, Becky."
They had reached that point in ten days that he could say such things
to her and win her smile. She did not believe in the least that he
loved her. He always laughed when he said it.
She liked him very much. She felt that the Admiral and Tristram and
Archibald Cope were all of them the best of comrades. Except for Jane,
she had had practically no feminine society since she came. And Jane
was not especially inspiring, not like Tristram, who seemed to carry
one's imagination back to Viking days.
Cope was immensely enthusiastic about Tristram. "If I could paint
figures as I want to," he said, "I'd do Tristram as 'The Islander.'
One feels that he belongs here as inevitably as the moors or the sands
or the sea. Perhaps it is he who ought to be in bronze on the bluff,
instead of the Indian."
"But he'd have to face the sea," said Becky.
"Yes," Cope agreed, "he would. He loves it and his ancestors lived by
it. I'll stick to my Indian and the moor."
Becky gathered up her letters. "It is time for lunch, and Jane doesn't
like to be kept waiting. Won't you lunch with us? Grandfather will be
delighted."
"I shall get to be a perpetual guest. I feel as if I were taking
advantage of your hospitality."
"We shouldn't ask you if we didn't want you."
"Then I'll come."
They walked up the beach together. Becky was muffled in her red cape,
Cope had a sweater under his coat. The air was sharp and clear as
crystal.
"How anybody can go in bathing in this weather," Becky shivered, as a
woman ran down the sands towards the sea. She east off her bathing
cloak and stood revealed, slim and rather startling, in yellow.
"She goes in every day," said Cope, "even when it storms."
"Who is she?"
"A dancer--from New York. Haven't you seen her before?"
"No. Where is she staying?"
"At the hotel."
"I thought the hotel was closed."
"Not for three weeks. There aren't many guests. This one came up a
month ago. She dances on the moor--practising for some play which
opens in October."
"What's her name?"
"I don't know. They call her 'The Yellow Daffodil' because of that
bathing suit."
The girl was swimming now beyond the breakers.
Becky was envious. "I wish I could swim like that."
"You can do other things--that she can't do."
"What things?"
"Well, be a lady, for example. That's not exactly cricket, is it, to
draw a deadly parallel? But I don't want people like that dancing on
my moor."