Cap’n Smiley went from the shop directly to the creek where his boat
lay. He stowed his bundles and gave several energetic turns to the
flywheel; the engine began to chug loudly, the keeper cast off his
line, and taking the tiller started back across the Great South Bay.
It was a five-mile trip across to the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station
and Keeper John had a little time for reflection. He had not meant to
quarrel with his sister; he had gone with the express determination
not to have the usual row, but this had proved impossible. No one
could avoid fighting with his sister, himself least of all. If it was
not some allusion to his wife it was some allusion to their aunt’s
will which, drawn to leave her considerable property equally to John
and his sister, had at the last moment been altered to leave all to
Keturah because of dissatisfaction with John’s marriage. The keeper
had never cared about that while he had had his wife and for a few
precious months the baby girl; and after he had lost them it would seem
he might have cared less than ever. What was money then? Never-ceasing
pain still gnawed at his heart, but for that very reason the gibes
of his sister became the more unendurable. Was it not she who was in
great measure responsible for the loss of Mary and the little Mary?
Cap’n Smiley was a clear-minded man; he did not absolve his wife from
blame, but she had been, after all, but a young girl and despite her
lightmindedness he had loved her. With all her little affectations,
with all her craving for amusement, with all her utter inefficiency as
a housekeeper, with all her childishness akin to that of the childlike
Dora whom David Copperfield cherished--with all and in spite of all
John Smiley had loved this young girl. And he could not but believe
that his sister was as much to blame for her behaviour in leaving him
as Mary’s own weak nature.
And then the baby girl! How deep the wound of losing her John Smiley
would never let the world know. Her name, too, had been Mary.
He thought of the mute little figure awaiting him and his bundles on
the beach. She was just the age, as nearly as could be surmised, that
his own child would have been if ... if....
What was that his sister had said in regard to his own experience? “No
one can play Providence to a married couple.” Well, a pretty thing for
her to say! She had certainly played a rôle anything but providential
in her brother’s marriage. But if no one could play Providence to
married folk it might still be possible for someone to be a Providence
to a single soul.
This little girl, he thought with a thrill, this little girl of the
age his own would have been, with her blue eyes and her reddish hair,
coppery, almost burnished--she could play Providence in his life,
perhaps.
He remembered how, the night of the wreck, he had put her to bed in his
own bed and had slept in some blankets on the floor. In the middle of
the night he had been wakened by her crying. Some memory in her sleep
had made her sob. Very weak, pitiful sobs. They had stirred him to try
to comfort her and after a little she had returned to sleep.