They trudged on a little way in silence.
"There certainly are a lot of stars out tonight," commented Barry,
transferring his gaze rather abruptly from the sands to the heavens.
"Um--yes. Yes, there are a great many. And there will be a full moon,
later on."
"Yes, I know. The moon was wonderful last night on the lake. I sat out
on deck a long time."
"You said you had a good trip across, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes--perfectly smooth."
Another silence--an ominous desperate silence.
"Well," quoth the Rev. Needham, turning around and peering back, "I
wonder if they're not coming?"
"I think I see them coming now across the sand," remarked Barry.
"Yes--yes, I believe I do, too," the other agreed.
"That's Louise in the white dress."
"Yes, that's Louise."
It wasn't long before the ladies overtook them. The tension was at once
both relieved and heightened. Anna Needham claimed her husband's arm,
Louise walked beside Barry, and Miss Whitcom walked alone with her
thoughts. However, the groups were not isolated. Yes, there was safety
in numbers. Single encounters began to be desperately unpleasant.
What was the matter? In Anna's day, young folks had been given, she
remembered, to wandering significantly off by themselves on such
rare nights as this. But Louise and Lynndal kept close. Anna was
troubled about this--even whispered about it to her husband as they
walked along. Alfred started and began to talk about something else.
They ought to face this thing. They ought to face it squarely and
with courage. But Alfred couldn't. He told himself they must be only
imagining things.
They passed the lighthouse, so shadowy and gaunt itself, yet with so
beaming an eye! Adjoining the tower was the keeper's residence. There
were lights in some of the rooms. A child was calling. A dog was
sniffing about. He was quite used to resorters, and did not even bark
as the party approached and passed the premises. Louise stooped to
pat the dog's head. Barry said: "Hello, sir!" The dog wagged his tail
slowly, but did not follow them away from the house. He had learned all
life's lessons in puppyhood. He would never stray. What a grand thing,
never to stray!
When they were rounding the final curve of the Point separating them
from the rendezvous, Mrs. Needham cried: "Oh, look--they're lighting it
already!"
The cone-shaped pile was visible, and fire was leaping all about the
base. Flame shot up quickly to the very peak, and thence on up, higher
and higher, toward the stars.
There was quite a crowd assembled about the fire when the people from
Beachcrest arrived. O'Donnell and his delightful escort arrived from
another direction at almost the same moment. Then they all sat around
in the sand, and kept jumping up to introduce and be introduced.
Naturally the Needhams knew everybody on the Point; and it was always
quite a thing to have guests. Here were the Goodmans, smiling hosts to
the entire assembly. Had they not started the thing long ago when their
married life was in its springtime? Ah, the Goodmans! Miss Whitcom
remarked afterward that she felt as though she were shaking hands with
royalty. "It honestly reminded me," she said, "of my first meeting with
Queen Tess!"
In the excitement, of course the roasting sticks had been forgotten,
and of course Hilda insisted upon running all the way back with Leslie
to Beachcrest after them. By the time the sticks were there, the fire
had flared itself into a condition inviting the approach of wienies and
marshmallows. A ring of resorters hovered round the fire with sticks
held hopefully out and faces shielded by an arm. Naturally there were
some mishaps. Some one, by deftly turning and turning, would coax a
marshmallow to the point of the most golden perfection, only to have
it plump dismally down in the sand at last. Then there would be a
chorus of sympathy and disappointment from a group of sitters, each of
whom had perhaps more or less hoped to be favoured with the delicious
smoking confection. Or else it would be a frankfurter that plumped. But
there never was a roast without tragedies.
And everywhere romped the children. Sometimes they would throw
themselves on to their stomachs and begin ambitiously digging in the
sand toward water. Then they would leap and chase each other, or they
would go about thrusting fallen faggots back into the fiery heart of
the blaze.
The provision baskets stood hospitably open. In one might be discovered
a wealth of cool, slippery frankfurters; in another heaps of split and
buttered buns; in still another dill pickles, a pot of mustard. And
of course there were always marshmallows. Some preferred marshmallows
to frankfurters and some preferred frankfurters to marshmallows. But
the majority ate ravenously of both alike, displaying little or no
preference.
The eastern sky grew lighter and lighter. The trees stood out
mysterious and very black against it.
"Look, look!" cried the children.
For the moon was rising now.
The young boys grew restive. Their stomachs were simply closed to the
incursion of any more refreshment; it was a pity, no doubt, but full
was full. The boys began enlarging their area of prowess. There was a
great sand bluff inland a short way, where a rift in the hills cut a
deep, barren gash across the face of the forest. The boys crept far up
the bluff and then leapt out, down and down.
The east was luminous, and the great moon crept higher and higher. When
the boys leapt, their bodies were silhouetted against her bright disc.
They would appear out of the shadow of nothing, poise a moment, leap
into space, disappear.
"Well," observed Barry, in some surprise, "I see you've brought a book
along."
She had really forgotten the book was in her lap, as she sat huddled
over it so miserably in the cottage living room after dinner. When she
had gone out on to the porch afterward she had carried it with her
automatically, and so had brought it all the way to the roast without
thinking. Louise had a grimly whimsical feeling that she couldn't
get away from the book. "If I'd only thrown it into the harbour this
morning!" she thought. But to him she merely replied, a manufactured
gaiety edging the words without lightening them: "Oh, yes--it's a book
I picked up by chance." She handled it carelessly, and her quick glance
shot to a distant group. Leslie was lying stretched out in the sand,
his chin in his hands. He was looking up at Hilda, who appeared to be
recounting something of great interest. Louise felt her face go hot
with jealousy. "I--I don't know much about it," she went on, flapping
the cover of the book listlessly back and forth. "It was recommended to
me by some one who had read it."
"What is the name?" Barry asked politely.
She held the book up in the firelight, flaunting it in the face of the
man who had come so far with his love and his brave little ring. It was
the darkest hour of her pilotless groping.
Leslie's laugh rang. The little group took it up. Then Leslie himself
appeared to become the centre of interest. He began telling a story
which involved a great many gestures. At one stage he even jumped up
and turned a cartwheel, and one of the girls in the crowd exclaimed:
"Can't you just see it?"
"Oh, what shall I do?" thought Louise, fighting her tears.
The moon climbed slowly up the sky, and the young boys, one after
another, with loud shrieks of joy, silhouetted themselves darkly
against her gleaming face.
And then the speech making began.
The Rev. Goodman led off. He had something in the nature of a set
speech for the occasion, which varied surprisingly little from year
to year. It bade the guests welcome, always in the same felicitous
terms, and contained the same allusions to the salubriousness of the
climate, the unmatchable beauty of their Point. Alluding to God's Great
Out-of-Doors, the Rev. Goodman would invariably employ the same grand
gesture.
"And now," he concluded, "I am sure, dear friends, we feel a gratitude
in our hearts to the Father of All Goodness, who has guided our
footsteps," et cetera, et cetera. "And may we all bow our heads with
the Rev. Needham, and join him in prayer."
The Rev. Goodman sat down and the Rev. Needham scrambled to his feet.
He closed his eyes very tight and prayed quite loud--as though defying
Marjory to prevail against him here. It was the next thing to being
right in the pulpit! But he felt her gazing at him in that shrewd way
of hers which seemed saying: "Alfred, have you really got truth in your
heart?" What did Marjory mean by looking at him that way? What right
had she to question his faith and to speak of truth?
It was really a very good prayer, though perhaps just a little more
earnest than the occasion actually required. When the prayer was
finished, he sat down. (Naturally there was no applause.) All the other
speakers would be applauded, but no applause lightened the sitting
down of the Rev. Needham. However, there was a general stir in the
camp, just as there is in church when backs, wearied with the Sabbath
bending, straighten cheerfully for another seven days of sin.
And then the Rev. Goodman, who was the official toastmaster, jumped
up and told a humorous story, which every one had heard before; after
which he turned to the Rev. Blake and asked him to recite _The House By
the Side of the Road_, a very great favourite at the Point. Then the
congregation sang that cheering and beautiful hymn, _Rock of Ages_,
under cover of which most of the boys escaped and ran violent races
up and down the beach. Then the host told another moderately humorous
story, in which he very cleverly incorporated something about the
brother clergyman upon whom he meant to call for the next selection.
This clergyman (who hailed from Dubuque, Iowa), not to be outdone,
scored heavily by telling a humorous story he had learnt off from _The
Ladies' Home Journal_, but which in the telling he so miraculously
manipulated that the Rev. Goodman became its hero! There always was a
vast amount of pleasant playfulness at these Assembly Roasts. Later
on the congregation, sitting, sang that sublimely joyous hymn called
_Jesus, Lover of My Soul_. Since there was no judicious organist at
hand to speed things up, the singing was inclined to sag, and one half
of the camp finished a little bit behind the other. But this was a very
small matter indeed, because, as every one knows, it is the spirit that
counts most, especially at such times. Innumerable other speakers, many
of them purely secular, were called upon. And Mrs. Goodman, who was
quite an elocutionist, read a little story which only the innermost
circle could hear. And Miss Whitcom nudged her friend. They slipped
away and strolled along the beach together.
"I thought I'd rescue you, Barrett," she said.
"But I was immensely enjoying myself," he smilingly protested.
"Yes, I shouldn't wonder--especially the singing! You know, I was so
desperately afraid they might call upon me--just as a curiosity, you
know--and how I should have shocked them!"
"You think so?"
"Why, of course. I never open my mouth without shocking somebody or
other. I don't really set out to do it. I simply don't seem able to
help myself."
"You don't shock me."
"Perhaps not--any more."
"But you know you never really did."
"Never?"
"No. At worst you only opened my eyes."
"Well, Barrett," she said, after a short silence, "I think I've always
rather felt that: that you understood, deep down--that you weren't
quite shockable, in fact."
"Yes," he said meditatively. They strolled along, saying nothing more
for a little time.
At length she asked: "Do you remember the time we swam for the
Allenhurst medal?"
"Of course I do," he nodded.
"You remember how even we were--how we outdistanced all the others?"