And she was right; there were greater doings ahead.
Leslie sprang off along the ridge to get into tennis garb. He decided,
as was only natural, that the one infallible way of cleansing himself
was to plunge into the sea. He was consequently in his little cottage
bedroom about two minutes, and then emerged in swimming apparel.
Leslie was well-formed and sun-browned. He sped off over the sand to
the shore, and thence dived straight out of sight.
"Swims rather well," commented Miss Whitcom. "That crawl stroke isn't
by any means the easiest to master."
"Yes, Leslie's the best swimmer on the Point," said Hilda proudly.
Miss Whitcom dipped her pen, but the ink went dry on it, and the letter
lay uncompleted.
"I do believe he's forgotten all about you and is going to swim
straight across!" she declared. For Leslie was, indeed, streaking out
in fine style, making the water splash in the sun, and occasionally
tossing his head as though keenly conscious of life's delightfulness.
"He'll turn back," said Hilda quietly.
"You think so?"
"I know he will!" she laughed.
"Oh, you _know_?"
"Why how ridiculous! Nobody could swim clear across, Aunt Marjie. It's
seventy miles!"
"Really?"
"Did you ever hear of anybody swimming as far as that?"
"I'm not sure I ever did," the other admitted. They were silent a
little, both watching the swimmer. Then the lady remarked in a dreamy
way: "They always look so fine and free when they're young, and the
sun flashes over the water, and they make straight out, as though they
never meant to stop at all."
Hilda was a little at a loss to know how this rather curious speech
should be taken. She felt dimly that there was something below the
surface, as so frequently there seemed to be when Aunt Marjie spoke;
but at first she couldn't imagine what it was.
"So fine and free," Miss Whitcom repeated in the same tone. "They make
straight out. But they always turn back."
And then Hilda asked, giving voice to a sudden bold dart of intuitive
understanding: "You mean men, Aunt Marjie?"
Whereupon her aunt laughed away the odd impulse of symbolism. "Yes, the
men, Hilda. They try to carry us off our feet in the beginning. They
want us to believe they're young gods. And they can't understand why
some of us are coming to grow sceptical, and why we're beginning to
want to try our hand at a few things ourselves."
"He's turning around now!" cried Hilda, who was not paying the very
best sort of attention.
"Yes, poor dears," the other persisted. "The other shore _would_ be too
far off."
"Oh, much too far!" agreed Hilda, jumping up to wave her hand.
Whatever Aunt Marjie might be getting at, Hilda, for her part, was ever
so glad of the sea's prohibitive vastness.
2
The Rev. and Mrs. Needham came out on to the porch, he preceding her
through the doorway; there was just the faintest evidence of her
shoving him on a little.
Her whispered "Yes, Alf, yes!" might, of course, represent an
exclamation apropos of almost anything. For instance, the words might
form the tail-end of almost any sort of domestic conversation--or
perhaps a talk about holding a Sunday School rally in the fall. The
incomplete phrase might, in one's imagination, expand itself into
something like this: "Yes, we really must. Nothing like a well-planned
rally to stir up the interest of the young folks. Yes, Alf, yes!"
But as a matter of fact, Mrs. Needham and her husband had not been
discussing any such matters. The authentic conversation, to go back a
little, which had just antedated egress from the cottage living room,
ran, in fact, as follows:
"Alf, I do want you two to get better acquainted!"
"What?"
"More intimate, and not...."
"Well, Anna?"
"Not quite so--so stiff, somehow...."
"H'm-m-m!"
"Alf, she's _so_ good-hearted. If it's true she has changed any way,
who knows but you might have an influence ...?"
He sighed heavily. They stood facing each other. It became a little
formal.
"Alf, this would be a splendid chance. She's right out there on the
steps!"
"Oh, well--really! Not this morning. No, not just now, when we're all
keyed up about Barry. In the course of time, I daresay...."
"Oh, _now_, Alf," she coaxed, in a very low, throaty, persuasive
contralto. "Oh, do go out there now! I'll call Hilda in for something.
There's--there's some mending--ought to be done right away," she
quickly added, as the suspicion hovered between them that Hilda would
be called in on mere pretense.
"Anna, maybe this afternoon."
"Now! Oh, Alf--_now_!"
"Anna, I--"
"Yes, Alf, yes!"
And so he was gently pushed on to the porch.
Hilda and Marjory looked up. There was a barricade of mosquito netting
between them and the emerged pair. Hilda was flushed. She had just been
waving to some one in the water. Marjory's eyes kindled with indefinite
mirth, and at this kindling the minister's heart quaked a little. There
was something about his wife's sister--yes, he thoroughly admitted it
now; there was something about her. She was strange and incompatible.
Had she, indeed, become inclined to be atheistical in her beliefs? Was
that what made him feel so uncomfortable, always, in her presence? He a
man of the pulpit, it would be natural that the ungodly should fill him
with distrust; natural they should make him wary and cautious. Was it
that in Marjory? _Was it that?_
"Hilda, see here a minute," said Mrs. Needham; and she beckoned
discreetly. Hilda followed her mother into the cottage.
This left the Rev. Needham on one side of the screening and Miss
Whitcom on the other. Miss Whitcom still sat on the second step with
the pen in her hand. She had dipped the pen a good many times, but the
letter was no further advanced. She turned to watch Leslie get in the
last full strokes and crawl out. He lay in the hot sand a moment or so
before racing indoors.
The Rev. Needham had sunk into the nearest chair, and sat there
rocking, with just perceptible nervousness, clearing his throat from
time to time in a manner which appeared to afford that portion of his
anatomy no appreciable relief. It seemed a kind of moral clearing. It
was the vague articulation of incertitude.
As a matter of fact, Marjory had forgotten all about her
brother-in-law. She was musing. At length a more desperate laryngeal
disturbance than any that had preceded brought her back to contemporary
consciousness.
"Ho!" she cried. "I didn't know you were there, Alfred!" There were
times when he thought her almost coarse.
"I thought I'd just come out here a few minutes," he said. "It's quite
cool on this side, till the sun gets round." The minister sighed. He
had an uncomfortable inner feeling that he hadn't quite justified his
presence. It was, to be sure, his own porch; but that did not make
any difference. Dimly he hoped his relation would not relinquish her
position on the second step.
Marjory dipped her pen again, but the letter was doomed. With a gesture
of languid, smiling despair the task was conclusively abandoned.
"No, it's no use," she muttered, rather unintelligibly. "I never can
concentrate at a resort."
"Beg pardon, Marjory?"
"I just want to dream and dream all day. Isn't it dreadfully
delightful?"
"Yes--we like it up here," he replied, the least bit stiffly.
"Alfred, how did you ever happen to come so far?"
"So far?"
"Yes; aren't there any resorts in Ohio?"
"Well, you see it was, to begin with, on account of the Summer
Assembly...."
She didn't fully fathom it until he had explained: "We're a sort of
religious colony here on the Point."
"Oh-h-h!" cried the lady then, with the air of one who is
vastly--perhaps a little satirically--enlightened. "I understand now
what Anna meant yesterday when she spoke about 'visiting clergymen.'
You hold meetings, I presume, and then have some refreshments at the
end?"
"No refreshments," he replied, in a rather dry tone, reproving her at
the same time, with an almost sharp glance.
"Well," she agreed, with a touch of apology, "I suppose you wouldn't. I
was thinking of some of our Tahulamaji pow-wows."
To this he made no reply; but the somewhat chill dignity of the silence
which ensued provoked, alas, an even more unfortunate question.
"Alfred, I know you'll consider me perfectly awfully impossible, but
it's been such a long time.... I've forgotten--I really have.... It--it
isn't Methodist, is it ...?"
"Methodist, Marjory?"
"What I mean is, you're not.... Oh, Alfred, for _heaven's_ sake before
I simply explode with chagrin, do quickly tell me _what you are_!"
"My denomination?" he asked unhappily.
"That's the word! Do please forgive a poor creature who's lived so long
in out-of-the-way places that she's half forgotten how to be civilized!"
"There are certain things," the Rev. Needham told himself icily, "one
never quite forgets, unless one...." He started a little, raised his
eyes wanly to hers, but shifted them quickly to the landscape. "I am a
Congregational minister, Marjory," he said.
"Oh, dear me! Of course! I'm sure I remembered subconsciously. Don't
you think such a thing is possible?"
"You mean ...?" He seemed unable fully to concentrate, either--though
not primarily because this was a resort.
"I mean remembering subconsciously. But you see it's all because in
Tahulamaji we get so fearfully lax about everything."
Was this his cue? He fidgeted, glanced sidewise to see whether his wife
were within range of his voice.
"I presume there's a great deal of laxness in Tahulamaji...."
"Well," she pondered, accepting his wider implication. "Yes, I'm afraid
so. Still, of course, one must never lose sight of the missionaries."
"Yes!" brightened her brother-in-law. "We help support a missionary in
Tahulamaji. Perhaps you--"
"No, Alfred, no. I'm afraid I've never had that pleasure. You see I've
been so busy, and the missionary seems always so busy, too."
"There's much to be done," he reminded her simply.
She was quite serious and respectful. He began to grow more at ease;
more expansive; told her a great deal about what missionaries do in
foreign lands, and especially what the missionary in Tahulamaji was
doing. His talk grew really interesting. Then there was a shift which
brought them round to the activities of the church in America.
"We're trying to broaden out all we can," he told her. "Every year new
opportunities seem to be opening up. We have to keep abreast of the
times. For instance, there's the parish house--"
Leslie's arrival interrupted them. He was now dressed in white and wore
a purple tie. Hilda came skipping across the porch and ran down the
steps to him.
"You must wish us luck!" she called back over her shoulder.
"Just bushels of it!" Miss Whitcom called loudly after them.
Mrs. Needham had come to the door of the cottage. She stood surveying
the situation so laboriously contrived. Having Marjory out there on the
second step and her husband above in the rocker, with a wall of netting
between them, did not somehow seem very auspicious. But she sighed and
quickly withdrew; it was better than no situation at all. She thought
of a text her husband had used once: "Be ye content with what the Lord
giveth"--or something to that effect.
The Rev. Needham cleared his throat, again privately a little nervous.
For no reason at all there had seemed to him a godless twang to her
gracious, full-voiced "just bushels of it!"
Miss Whitcom recovered the threads for him. "Yes, yes, Alfred. Quite
so. You were saying something about a parish house."
"We hope to build one, in the spring ... if we can," he went on.
"The money's partly raised. Of course it takes a long time--money
doesn't seem very plentiful just now. But the parish house, when we
get it"--his eyes lighted softly--"will add so much to our practical
facilities."
She noted this softness, and it touched her a little. All the same she
had some not very soothing things to say.
"Yes, I've no doubt. I'm quite amazed--I may say almost frightened,
Alfred--at the development of the common-sense idea in America. You
notice it especially, I suppose, coming in like this from a long
absence. The change, I may say, quite smites one. It's baffling--it's
bewildering! Good gracious, all the old, moony Victorianism gone! The
whole ecclesiastical life of the community made over into something so
dashing and up-to-date that I tell you frankly, Alfred, I'd be almost
afraid to go into a church, for fear I might no longer know how to
behave! It's amazing, Alfred--it really is--how 'practical' religion
has grown. I tell you I never would have dreamed the church had such
a future! I come back from my long sojourn in heathendom, and what do
I find? I find religion all slicked up on to a strict business basis.
At last the church of God has reached an appreciation of the value and
importance of money! Everywhere you read of mammoth campaigns to raise
millions of dollars. You have to have a real business head on your
shoulders nowadays--don't you find it so, Alfred?--to be a minister.
It's wonderful simply beyond belief! If Christ were to walk in suddenly
I know he would have to show his card at the door. I _know_ they would
ask him what he came about and how long the interview would take.
Practical Christianity, you call it, don't you, Alfred?"
"Marjory, I...."
"Ah--now I've shocked you! Yes, I see I have. You mustn't mind my
speaking out so bluntly. It's a way I've rather fallen into of late,
I'm afraid. And when I say the new Christianity seems baffling to me,
I mean it's quite splendidly baffling. Practical Christianity--what
a fine idea it was! I wonder who thought of it. Yes, the church
was always too exclusive. There can be no doubt of it. Practical
Christianity--practical philanthropy--with the elaborate social
service bureaus--they've just simply transformed everything. What a
hustle and bustle--and what undreamed-of efficiency! Just _think_ how
efficiently the church stood back of the war! And yet--you must pardon
me--I somehow can't help feeling that even with all its slogans and its
hail-fellow slaps across your shoulders.... You know"--she interrupted
herself, in a way, but it was to pursue the same trend of thought--"I
had quite an adventure on the train, coming from New York. I watched a
Bishop retire! Oh, don't look so scandalized, Alfred. Of course it was
quite all right."
"I hope so, Marjory," he murmured limply.
"I must tell you about the Bishop, Alfred. He was just the kind of
man you would expect a Protestant bishop to be--his face, I mean.
Calm--so very calm--and so gently yet firmly ecclesiastic! He wore an
unobtrusive but stylish clerical costume of soft grey, and a little
gold cross hung round his neck--you know. It struck me as never before
how close the Episcopacy is snuggling up to Rome.... Oh, but I must
tell you about the Bishop's going to bed!"
The Rev. Needham sat there almost breathless on his screened porch.
His dismay might have struck one as speechless--at any rate, he was
speechless.
"The Bishop," continued Miss Whitcom, "seemed very weary. There was a
quiet, tired look in his eyes. He had his dinner early, sitting all
alone at one of the little tables on the shady side. I ate my dinner
at another of the little tables, and was quite fascinated. There was
something so patrician about him. He was so subtly sleek! I didn't see
him again until his berth was made up. But the making up, Alfred, was
what fascinated me more than the Bishop himself! The porter was just
fitting things together when I came in from my simple dinner. He spread
down one mattress, and then--Alfred, I gasped to see it--he spread down
another right on top of it!"
"Another, Marjory?" The minister appeared quite absorbed, almost
fascinated.
"Had he taken the whole section?" she demanded.
To this no reply was ventured, and she continued:
"Or did he get them both as a kind of divine dispensation? Anyway, the
bed, I must say, looked almost royal. There were four pillows instead
of two, and they were given little special pats and caresses. All of a
sudden I thought of Jacob's stone, Alfred. Wasn't it funny? I couldn't
help it. And then I thought about 'the Son of Man hath not where to lay
His head'--wasn't it curious? And then, only _then_, Alfred (you see
how slow I am), it occurred to me that this must be a part of the new
order of things! It came to me almost like an inspiration that the bed
of the Bishop must have something to do with Practical Christianity.
But I'm forgetting the last appealing touch, Alfred. The Bishop had a
huge bag of golf sticks with him. _They reposed all night in the upper
berth!_"
She ended her rather long story about the Bishop; and its precise
interpretation remained a thing of doubt for the minister. Was
she serious? Or was she only laughing? His bearing now argued a
preparedness for either mood. But whatever her motive, in a moment Miss
Whitcom appeared to have forgotten all about the Bishop and to be busy
with other matters. The Rev. Needham sat on his own side of the netting
and didn't know just what he ought to do or say. What _was_ to be done,
what said? Fortunately, at this vaguely uncomfortable juncture, there
came another, and this time a really important, interruption.
Steps were heard on the sparse planking which served for sidewalk
between Beachcrest and the road to Crystalia.
The minister, rising quickly, began rubbing his hands together. "It
must be Mr. Barry," he said.
Mrs. Needham appeared at the cottage door, as though bidden by some
psychic intelligence. "Are they here?" she asked excitedly.
"I can't see yet, for the shrubbery. But I think I hear Louise's voice."
"I _see_ her," Miss Whitcom advised them from her position on the
steps. "And what's more," she added, while her sister hastily patted
and preened herself, "I see him also!"
"Mr. Barry?"
"Um. Rather tall. Not exactly bad looking.... But," she added darkly,
"they're walking ever so far apart!"
What did she mean by that? The Rev. Needham glanced a little nervously
at his wife and unconsciously began humming the Invocation.
They arrived. Lynndal was presented to Mrs. Needham, then to Miss
Whitcom. He was, of course, very warmly greeted by the minister.
Louise looked troubled....
The Dutch clock in the cottage living room set up a spiteful striking:
one, two, three, four (each stroke tart and inimical), five, six,
seven, eight (as though from the very depths of its mechanism it would
cry out against the terrific irony of life), nine, ten....
Lynndal had come all the way from Arizona.
3
"My gracious!" cried Miss Whitcom loudly and cordially, "_I've_ been in
Arizona!"
"You have?"
"Ra_ther_! I started a cactus candy business there before you were...."
She paused, then wholeheartedly laughed a defiance at the very notion
of grey hairs. "No, I won't say it. I won't go back so far as that. For
I do believe you're thirty, sir, if you're a day."
"I'm thirty-three," confessed Barry, looking older, for just a wistful
moment, than his wont.
"Well, then, when you were a youngster, we'll say, Marjory Whitcom was
working fourteen long hours a day in an absurd little factory on the
fringe of the desert--slaving like all possessed to make a go of it.
The idea was a good one."
"Yes," he agreed, "for we're turning out wonderful cactus candy now."
"I know it. The idea was corking. Alas, so many of my ideas have been
corking! But every one at that time said it was absurd to think of
making candy out of cactus, and no one would believe the Toltec legend
which gave us our receipt. Ah, yes--there's many a slip...."
In her almost brazen way she cornered the new hero of Point
Betsey--actually got between him and the others. But Miss Whitcom was
shrewder, even, than she was brazen. You couldn't possibly deceive her
when she had her reliable antennæ out. Had she not seen the landscape
between them? Distinctly _seen_ it? Suspecting the imminence of a
rather taut situation, this was her way of clearing the air.
Louise did not altogether fathom her aunt's subtlety; but she was
grateful, seizing the occasion to disappear. She flew up to her room,
flung herself on the bed, and nervously cried a little.
Lynndal was here. The long anticipated event had actually come to
pass. But it wasn't the kind of event she had conceived. What was the
trouble? Was he not as she remembered him? Yes, but with phantoms to
dictate the pattern, how she had idealized him in the interim, and
how the correspondence had served to build up in her mind a being of
romance and fire which flesh and blood could never hope to challenge!
Well, he had come, this stranger--with his quiet kindliness, his
somehow sensed aura of patience, where she looked for passion.
Ghosts of the past played havoc with her heart, and she thought: "Can I
give myself to this man? Can I be his, all his? Can I be his for ever
and ever? Can I belong henceforth to him and no one else?"
The mood was one of general relaxation, however--though a relaxation
she had, at an early hour, been far enough from anticipating. She
reviewed the events of the day thus far. She had waked at flush of
dawn; had risen full of a gay expectation, and had gone out to meet her
lover. He had come; she had met him and had forestalled his kiss. Now
he was here. Ten o'clock. And her heart was in a curious state of panic.
But Barry, meanwhile, still down on the screened porch, was finding his
fiancée's relative an intelligent and really engaging person. For her
part, it had not taken long--with the cactus candy as bait--to lure
him into enthusiasm over his dry-farming. She knew, it developed, very
nearly as much about dry-farming as he did, and Barry, of course, knew
nearly as much about it as there was to know.
The Rev. and Mrs. Needham, having gone on into the cottage living room,
expecting that Barry, momentarily arrested, would follow, stood a
moment conferring in discreet tones.
"What do you think of him, Anna?"
"He seems like a real nice sort, Alf. What do _you_ think?"
"I've always admired Barry," he said proudly, a bit complaisantly.
"During several years of business connection...."
"Yes, Alf he's certainly looked after our interests out West."
Sly little wrinkles of worry just etched themselves across the Rev.
Needham's florid brow. Those interests in the West--heaven knew how
much they meant! They kept the wolf from the door--a mild wolf, of
course, and one that wouldn't really bite; but still a wolf. Yes, they
sustained the Needham establishment in a kind of grand way--certainly
in a way which wouldn't be possible on ministerial salary alone. And
it was Lynndal Barry's initiative which had built the dam: the dam
generated electricity and paid dividends. Yes, they certainly owed
a great deal--though of course it was all on a sufficiently regular
business basis--to Mr. Barry.
"He's a fine, fine man--one of God's own noblemen, Anna. It's only to
be hoped...."
"Hoped, Alf?" Anna was seldom able to supply, off-hand, what one groped
for in one's perplexity.
"That Louise," he began a little impatiently, "--that Louise...."
"Why, where _is_ she?" asked Mrs. Needham, looking suddenly around.
Ah, where indeed?
The Rev. Needham experienced an uncomfortable shivery sensation in his
stomach. Still, there was no reason other than what Marjory had said
about their walking rather far apart. What did she mean? What did she
ever mean? Ah, Marjory....
They looked at her. Yes, she had certainly captured Mr. Barry. Poor
Marjory had a way....
"I wonder," sighed the Rev. Needham--a little ponderously to conceal an
inner breathlessness. "I wonder...."
"What, Alf?"
He shook himself, looking dimly horrified. "Nothing, Anna." What
he wondered was whether his wife's sister had ever fallen by the
wayside....
"Alf," whispered Anna, on the point of slipping upstairs to make sure
for the last time that the visitor's room was quite ready, "how did you
two get on?"
"I can't say very well," he answered with an inflection of nervous
vagueness. "It was almost all about a Bishop on the train. Anna,
I'm--I'm afraid it's no use. You know there are people in the world
that seem destined never to understand each other...."
"Oh, Alf--she's so good-hearted!"
"That may be true," he replied, "but in Tahulamaji I'm beginning to be
convinced she led--that she may almost have led...."
"Oh, Alf!"
"And she'd forgotten...."
"What?"