ON DIGBY SHORE.
Daylight rose, gray and hollow-eyed, on the Atlantic. The sun was merely
a moving brightness in the sky. Ocean, the blind Titan, still heaved and
roared, playing his part in some grander drama than ours of flesh and
blood--ingulfing sailor or bark as we crush the poor gnat toward whom
neither pagan sage nor Christian doctor enjoins mercy--cruel without
enmity, indifferent without contempt, divider or uniter of continents
according to his chance-born mood.
The storm had scarcely begun to die. But with a clear outlook forward it
was possible once more for the sturdy Yarmouth to resume her course.
With Capt Keen himself at the wheel, she steamed into the narrow harbor
of the little city whose name she bore, situated on the nearest eastward
tip of the Nova Scotia peninsula, half a day late, but with her 300
passengers safe and sound.
Several days later, our party of four were peacefully rowing across the
calm waters of Digby bay--that isleless harbor of purest ultramarine,
where the Bay of Fundy has cloven its way through peaks still wooded to
the water's edge and lifts and lowers its huge tides as far north as
Annapolis, at the head of the valley of Evangeline. Chance would have
it that this resort was the destination of the Marches as well as
Emily and Beulah; and the acquaintance made on shipboard under such
unusual circumstances was already ripening into something like
friendship--perhaps more than friendship--between Tristram and Beulah
Ware.
She was his opposite, his complementary color, as he said to Rosalie,
and so she harmonized with him and perhaps comprehended him, as Rosalie
at times did not. In only one thing did she agree with Tristram's
sister. She misunderstood his irony; for her own speech was yea, yea.
"Let us cross over to the camp of the Micmacs," proposed the artist,
resting on his oars.
"Are they real Indians?" asked Emily.
"Full-blooded. See their tepees." A cluster of conical tents could be
seen rising from the dark foliage on the hillside. For Digby rises from
the water with a slope like a toboggan slide all the way up to the white
cottages on its crest.
"There is a specimen," said Tristram, as a canoe skimmed by them. "Isn't
he noble? The great face, the grim mouth, the high cheek-bones, the
straight hair--it is a bronze mask of Saturn. I may utilize him."
"When?"
"When I carve my life group for the Academy's grand prize."
"Have you chosen your subject?"
"Driftwood Pickers at the Sea Level."
Beulah Ware looked up. She had suggested it the day before, while
strolling alone with the man of hazy purposes.
The boat was beached without difficulty and the ladies stepped
ashore--Beulah Ware collectedly, as usual, but Emily and Rosalie as
warily as you may have seen a lame pigeon alighting.
"Let us follow my leader," said Tristram, meaning the brown canoeist,
who had shouldered his craft and was climbing the beach.
"What is that?" cried Emily, pointing to an object that was tossing on
the sands.
"A body," said the others, recoiling, but Tristram walked in the
direction indicated. It proved on closer inspection to be the body of a
woman, stout and tall. Her long yellow hair floated in the surf, but the
features were swollen beyond recognition. It was impossible to tell
whether she was old or young. Only her clothing, which was thick and of
foreign style, denoted a woman of the poorer class.
"Is it a body?" asked Rosalie, apparently doubting the evidence of her
eyes. The quick assemblage of a crowd rendered an answer unnecessary.
There were men and women watching all along the Nova Scotia coast in
those weary days. Schooners and smacks had put out before the storm,
perhaps to be blown far out of their course and suffer the hardships of
hunger and shipwreck, perhaps to founder in midocean and never to
return. So the body rolling in the surf at the water's edge had been
espied by others before the party of four landed, and there was a
converging stream of searchers from bush and cottage, and even from the
lonely tepees.
"Search her pockets," said one, and the woman's dress was torn open. A
packet of papers came out, but the ink had run and the paper was as soft
as jelly.
"She has been in the water a week," cried another.
"Perhaps it is a body from the Osric," suggested a boy.
The party of four shrunk in greater horror. There were rumors of
lifeboats that had been launched and swamped from the sunken steamer.
Could one of the bodies have been carried up the Bay of Fundy on its
swift-running tide, forced by a current through Digby Gut, and cast
ashore on this unfrequented beach?
"See if her linen is marked?" asked a woman who held a baby. But the
search proved fruitless. No stenciled initials, not even a brand on the
shoes, to identify the unfortunate. A truck was suggested to carry her
up to the town.
"One moment," said Tristram, "her ring may be engraved."
The slender gold circlet was deeply imbedded in the flesh, but a
fisherman ruthlessly cut it loose with his knife. Tristram held it up to
the light and read a name from the inside.
"Bertha Lund," he read.
Emily Barlow turned pale and glanced at Beulah Ware. If she could have
looked across the ocean to the city just then and seen Inspector
McCausland closeted with the district attorney, she would have been
confirmed in her fears. The detective was scanning a list of the
passengers on the Osric.
"Bertha Lund, Upsala, Sweden. That is her birthplace. She was to return
on the Osric," he said, uneasily.
"Then it must be she," answered the district attorney. "It is most
unfortunate. However, we have her testimony at the hearing. We do not
rely solely upon her."
But Emily did rely solely upon Bertha's knowledge, and her heart sunk
within her. Without Bertha, there was only Robert to describe the room
as she wished it described. And would people believe Robert in so novel,
so miraculous, a junction of circumstances as her theory demanded?
"Read that again, please," she cried to Tristram.
"Bertha Lund," Tristram seemed puzzled a moment by the third word,
"Bertha Lund, Upsala."