REFUGEES
It was almost one o'clock in the morning when Code went into the
parlor of his mother's cottage and sank down upon the ancient plush
sofa. His eyes ached, and the back of his head and neck, where the
fire had singed him, were throbbing painfully.
There was apparently no one at home.
Even little Josie, the orphan that helped his mother, seemed to have
been drawn out into the road by the excitement of the night, and the
house, except for a single lamp burning on the table, was in
darkness.
He thought of going up-stairs to bed, but remembered that his mother
was not in, and decided he would rest a little while and then go out
and find her. Suddenly it seemed very luxurious and grateful to be
able to stretch at full length after so much labor, and within a few
minutes this sense of luxury had become a pleasant oblivion.
Voices and a bright light woke him up. Dazed and alarmed, he struggled
to a sitting posture, but a gently firm hand pushed him down again
and he heard his mother's voice.
"Lay down again, Code," she said. "You must be pretty well beat out
with all you've done to-night. We've just got some friends for the
night. Poor boy, let me see your burns!"
Schofield, who had guided schooners for years through the gales and
shoals of the Bay of Fundy without a qualm, became red and ashamed at
his mother's babying. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he sat up again
determinedly and made an effort to greet the company who, he knew, had
come into the room with his mother.
Across the room, near the old melodeon, sat Nellie Tanner, holding
little Bige and smiling wanly at him. The other two children leaned
against her, asleep on either side.
"Don't get up, Code," she said. "You've earned your rest more than any
man in Freekirk Head to-night. I'm afraid, though, we're going to make
more trouble for you. Ma Schofield wouldn't let me go anywhere else
but here till the _Rosan_ gets back from St. John's.
"Oh, I hate to think of their coming! They'll sail around Flag Point
and look for the kiddies waving in front of the house. And they won't
even see any house; but, thanks to you, Code, they'll see the
kiddies."
He knew by the tense, strained tone of her voice that she was very
near the breaking-point, and his whole being yearned to comfort her
and try to make her happy.
Cursing himself for a lazy dolt, he sprang up and walked over toward
her.
"Now, you just let me handle this, Nellie," he said, "and we'll soon
have Tommie and Mary and Bige all curled up on that sofa like three
kittens."
With a sigh of ineffable relief she resigned the dead weight in her
weary arms to him, and he, stepping softly, and holding him gently as
a woman, soon had the boy more comfortable than he had been for hours.
Mary and Tommie followed, and then Nellie, free of her responsibility
at last, bent forward, put her elbows on her knees, and wept.
Code, racked and embarrassed, looked around for his mother, but that
mainstay was nowhere in sight. He thought of whistling, so as to
appear unconscious of her tears, but concluded that would be merely
rude. To take up a paper or book and read it in the face of a woman's
weeping appeared hideous, although for the first time in many months,
he felt irresistibly drawn to the ancient and dusty volumes in the
glass-doored bookcase.
He compromised by turning his back on the affecting sight, thrusting
his hands in his pockets, and studying the remarkably straight line
formed by the abrupt junction of the wall and the ceiling.
"Do you mind if I cry, C--Code?" sobbed the girl, apparently realizing
their position for the first time.
"No! Go right ahead!" he cried as heartily as though some one had
asked for a match. He was intensely happy that the matter was settled
between them. Now the harder she cried the more he liked it, for they
understood one another. So she cried and he walked softly about, his
hands in his pockets and his lips puckered for the whistle that he did
not dare permit himself.
Ma Schofield interrupted this near-domestic scene by her arrival,
carrying a tray, on which were several glasses covered with a film of
frost and out of which appeared little green forests. Code ceased to
think about whistling.
"Oh, Ma Schofield, what have you done?" cried Nellie, her tears for
the moment forgetting to flow as her widening eyes took in the
delights of the frosted glasses and piles of cake behind them.
"Done?" queried ma. "I haven't done anything but what my conscience
tells me ought to be done. If yours cal'lates to disturb you some you
can go right on up to your room, lamb, for you must be dead with
lugging them children around."
Nellie's tears disappeared not to return. She shook her head.
"No, ma," she said; "my conscience is just like them children--sleeping
so hard it would take Gabriel's trumpet to wake 'em up. It's more
tired than I am."
"All right," said ma, with finality; "we will now proceed to refresh
ourselves."
It was two o'clock before they separated for the remainder of the
night.
Code's room, with its big mahogany double bed, was given over to
Nellie and the children while he gladly resigned himself to the humpy
plush sofa.
By this time they had received news from half a dozen neighbors that
Bill Boughton's general store had been only half destroyed and that
the contents had all been saved. The wharfs and fish-houses were at
last burning and property on the leeward side of the flames was
declared to be safe.
A general exodus began along the King's Road.
Men who had galloped up from Great Harbor, with an ax in one hand and
a bucket in the other, mounted their horses and rode away. Others from
Hayward's Cove and Castalia, who had driven in buggies and buckboards,
collected their families and departed. The King's Road was the scene
of a long procession, as though the people of Freekirk Head were
evacuating the town.
A detachment of men under Squire Hardy's orders remained about the
danger zone ready to check any further advance of the flames or to
rouse the town to further resistance should this become necessary. But
for the most part the people of the village returned to their homes.
Wide-awake and nervous, Schofield lay open-eyed upon the couch while
unbidden thoughts raced through his brain.
The very fact of his sleeping on the plush couch was enough to bring
to his mind the memory of one whom he had irretrievably lost on this
memorable night. Was she not at this moment under his own roof,
miserable and nearly destitute? He knew that, as long as he might
live, his humble room up-stairs would never be the same again.
It had been made a place sweet and full of wonder by the very fact
that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it without
its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he had considered
the divinest created thing on earth. By her presence she had
sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his meditative and wakeful
hours.
Ever since they had gone to school together, hand in hand, the names
of Nellie Tanner and Code Schofield had been linked in the mouths of
Grande Mignon busybodies. Living all their lives two doors away, they
had grown up in that careless intimacy of constant association that
is unconscious of its own power until such intimacy is removed.
To-night the shock had come.
It was not that Code had taken for granted that Nellie would marry
him. Never in his life had he told her that he loved her. It is not
the habit of men who rove the seas to keep those they love constantly
supplied with literature or confectionery, or to waste too many words
in the language of devotion.
He admitted frankly to himself that he had always hoped to marry her
when he had acquired the quarter interest in Bill Boughton's fishstand
that had been promised him, but he had not told her so, nor did he
know that she would accept him. The idea had been one to be thought of
only at times of quietness and confidence in his future such as come
to every man.
But he had not reckoned on Nat Burns. He had not realized quite to
what an extent Burns had made progress. He recalled, now that it was
brought forcibly home to him, that Nat had been constantly at the
Tanners' for the last four or five months. But Code had thought
nothing of this, for Nat had paid similar court at times to others of
the girls of Freekirk Head. He was, in fact, considered the village
beau.
And Nellie herself had told him nothing. There had been a modest
shyness about her in their relations that had kept him at an
exasperating and piquant distance.
Well, everything was over now, he told himself. He could take his
defeat since Nellie did not care for him.
Then he suddenly recalled Burns's actions and manner of speaking
during the harrowing moments of the fire.
"I wonder if Nat really loves her?" he asked himself. "And if not, why
did he become engaged?"