Jane Granite stood at the foot of the steep, uncarpeted stairs.
She had a stone-china cup filled with tea in her hand. She had
hesitation in her mind, and longing in her heart. When the
minister had sent word that he would eat no supper, it was plain
that something must be done. Her mother was out, and Jane had no
superior intelligence to consult. For Mrs. Granite was appointed
to the doom that overtakes the women of a poor and struggling
religious movement; she was ex-officio beggar for the new mission;
on this especial occasion she was charged with the duty of wringing
a portion of the minister’s almost invisible salary out of the
least unfriendly citizens of the town. The minister had observed
her from his window, tugging at her black skirts as she sallied
forth, ankle-deep, in the slush of the February afternoon; and his
brows had darkened at the sight. For the good woman would trudge
and soak five miles for--what? Possibly five dollars. How dreary
the devices of small people to achieve large ends!
To the young man who had never had to think what anything cost, the
cold, pecuniary facts of his position were galling past the power
of these simple people to comprehend.
He did not care too much on his own account. He felt more surprise
than impatience to see his coat turn shiny and frayed, and to know
that he could not get another. He was learning not to mind his
straw mattress as much as he did at first; and to educate himself
to going without magazines, and to the quality of Mrs. Granite’s
tea. When a man deliberately elects a great personal sacrifice, he
does not concern himself with its details as women are more likely
to do.
But there were aspects of his chosen work to which his soul was as
sore as a boy’s. He could not accustom himself with the ease of a
poor man’s son to the fact that a superb, supreme faith like the
Christianity of Christ must beg for its living. “It degrades!” he
thought, looking up from his books. “Lowell was right when he said
that no man should preach who hadn’t an independent property.” His
Bible fell from his clenched hand; he picked it up penitently, and
tenderly smoothed the crumpled leaf at which it had opened. Half
unconsciously, he glanced, and read:--
“Take no scrip in your purse;” his burning eye followed along the
page; softened, and grew moist.
“Perhaps on the whole,” he said aloud, “He really knew as much
about it as any American poet.”
He returned patiently to his preparation for the evening service,
for he worked hard for these fishermen and drunkards--harder than
he had ever worked at anything in his life. To make them one half
hour’s talk, he read, he ransacked, he toiled, he thought, he
dreamed, he prayed.
The only thing which he had asked leave to take from his uncle’s
house, was his own library. It piled Mrs. Granite’s spare chamber
from the old, brown carpet to the low and dingy ceiling. Barricades
of books stood on the floor by the ugly little coal-stove; and were
piled upon the stained pine table at which he sat to study in a
hard wood chair with a turkey-red cushion. Of the pictures, dear to
his youth, and to his trained taste, but two had come through with
him in the flying leap from Beacon Street to Mrs. Granite’s. Over
the table in his study a fine engraving watched him. It was Guido’s
great Saint Michael. Above the straw mattress in the chilly closet
where he slept hung a large photograph of Leonardo’s Christ; the
one from the Last Supper, as it was found in the ruined fresco on
the monastery wall.
But Jane Granite stood irresolute upon the bare, steep stairs, with
the stone-china teacup in her hand.
The minister had never concentrated his mind on Jane. He was a
busy man. She was a modest, quiet girl; she helped her mother “do”
his rooms, and never slammed the door when she went out. He felt a
certain gratitude to her, for the two women took trouble for him
far beyond the merits of the meagre sum allowed them for his bread
and codfish. But for the life of him, if he had been required to,
he could not have told anybody how Jane Granite looked.
When her timid knock struck the panel of his door, he started
impatiently, put down his pen, and patiently bade her enter.
“I thought perhaps, sir--you would drink your tea?” pleaded Jane.
“You haven’t eaten a morsel, and mother will mind it when she comes
home.”
Bayard looked at her in a dazed way; trying to see the connection
between forty-cent Japan tea and that beautiful thing said of
Whitefield, that he “forgot all else about the men before him, but
their immortality and their misery.”
“It’s getting cold,” said Jane, with quivering lip. “I stood on the
stairs so long before I could make up my mind to disturb you. Let
me get a hot cup, now, sir--do!”
“Why, I’ll come down!” said Bayard. “I must not make myself as
troublesome as this.”
He pushed away his books, and followed her to the sitting-room,
where, in default of a dining-room, and in vague deference to the
antecedents of a guest popularly reported not to be used to eating
in the kitchen, the meals of the family were served.
“Maybe you’d eat the fish-hash--a mouthful, sir?” asked Jane,
brightening, “and there’s the stewed prunes.”
Bayard looked at her, as she ran to and fro, flushed and happy
at her little victory over his supperless intentions. Jane was a
trig, neat body; small, as the coast girls often are--I wonder why?
whether because the mother was under-fed or over-anxious when the
fleets were out? Jane Granite wore a blue gingham dress, closely
fitted to a pleasant figure. She had a pleasant face, too; she had
no beauty, but that certain something more attractive than beauty
to many men,--a kind of compactness of feature, and an ease of
outline which haunts the retina; it is not easy to describe, but we
all know it. Her mother had told the minister that Jane was keeping
company--that is the Windover phrase--with some one; the details
had escaped his memory.
He looked at her, now, for the first time attentively, as she
served his tea. She flitted to and fro lightly. She sang in the
kitchen when she saw him smile. When he said, “Thank you, Jane! You
have given me a delicious supper,” a charming expression crossed
her face. He observed it abstractedly, and thought: How kind these
good people are to me! The paper shades were up, and Jane wished to
draw them when she lighted the kerosene lamp; but Bayard liked to
watch the sea, as he often did at twilight. The harbor was full,
for the weather was coming on wild. Clouds marshaled and broke, and
retreated, and formed upon a stormy sky. The lights of anchored
fleets tossed up and down in the violet-gray shadow. The breakers
growled upon the opposite shore. The best thing about his lodging
was its near and almost unobstructed view of the sea, which dashed
against a slip of a beach between the wharves of Windover Point,
within a thousand feet of Mrs. Granite’s cottage.
As he sat, sipping his green tea, and making believe with his hash,
to save the feelings of the girl; watching the harbor steadily
and quietly, the while, and saying nothing--he was startled by
the apparition of a man’s face, pressed stealthily against the
window-pane, and disappearing as quickly as it came. Bayard had
been sitting between the window and the light. Jane was dishing out
his prunes from a vegetable dish into a blue willow saucer, and
had seen nothing. Wishing not to alarm the girl, he went to the
window quietly, and looked out. As he did so, he perceived that the
intruder had his hand on the knob of the front door. Bayard sprang,
and the two met in the cottage entry.
“What are you doing here?” began Bayard, barring the way.
“I guess I’d better ask what are _you_ a-doin’ _here_,” replied
the other, crowding by the minister with one push of an athletic
shoulder. “I’m on my own ground. I ain’t so sure of you.”
Little Jane uttered a cry, and the athletic young man strode
forward, and somewhat ostentatiously put his arm about her waist.
“Ah, I see!” smiled the minister. “It is strange that we have not
met before. We must often have been in the house at the same time.
I am a little absent-minded. Perhaps it is my fault. A hundred
pardons, Mr. ----?”
Trawl. Ben Trawl was the name. Ben Trawl was not cordial. Perhaps
that would be asking too much of the lover who had been mistaken
for a burglar by another man; and the young minister was already
quite accustomed to the varying expressions with which a provincial
town receives the leader of an unpopular cause. He recognized Ben
Trawl now;--the young man who had the straight eyebrows, and who
did not drink, who had been one of the crowd at the fight in Angel
Alley on the ordination day which never had ordained.
The pastor found the situation embarrassing, and was glad when Mrs.
Granite came in, soaked through, and tired, with drabbled skirts.
She had collected six dollars and thirty-seven cents.
Bayard ground his teeth, and escaped to his study as soon as he
could. There they heard him, pacing up and down hotly, till seven
o’clock. Bayard had arranged one of those piteous attempts to
“amuse the people,” into which so much wealth of heart and brain
is flung, with such atmospheric results. His notion of religious
teaching did not end with the Bible, though it began there. The
fishermen who had irreverently named the present course of talks
“the Dickens,” crowded to hear them, nevertheless. The lecture of
that evening (“Sydney Carton,” he called it) was a venture upon
which Bayard had expended a good deal of thought and vitality.
Poor, wet Mrs. Granite waded out again, without a murmur, to hear
it; she walked beside the minister, alone; it was a long walk, for
the new people met in the well-known hall near the head of Angel
Alley.
“Ben Trawl’s kinder off his hook,” she explained apologetically.
“He wouldn’t come along of us, nor he wouldn’t let Jane come,
neither. He has them spells.”
Jane Granite watched them off with aching heart. As he closed the
door, the minister smiled and lifted his hat to her. Where was
there a smile like _his_ in all the world of men? And where a man
who thought or knew so little of the magic which his beauty wrought?
For love of this radiance and this wonder the heart of the coldest
woman of the world might have broken. Little Jane Granite looked
after him till he was drowned in the dark. She came in and stood
at the window, busying herself to draw the shade. But Ben Trawl
watched her with half-closed eyes; and when bright, wide eyes turn
dull and narrow, beware of them!
“Come here!” said Ben, in the voice of a man who had “kept company”
with a girl for three years. In Windover, the respectable young
people do not flirt or intrigue; breach of troth is almost unknown
among them. To walk with a girl on Sunday afternoon, and to kiss
her Sunday evening, is to marry her, as a matter of course. Ben
Trawl spoke in the imperious tone of the seafaring people who call
a wife “my woman,” and who lie on the lounge in the kitchen while
she brings the water from the well.
“You come here, Jane, and sit on the sofy alongside of me! I’ve got
a word or so to say to you.”
Jane Granite came. She was frightened. She sat down beside her
lover, and timidly surrendered the work-worn little hand which he
seized and crushed with cruel violence within his own.
“Mr. Granite wasn’t never wholly satisfied about Ben,” Mrs. Granite
was saying to the minister as they splashed through the muddy
slush. “His father’s Trawl the liquor dealer, down to Angel Alley,
opposite our place, a little below. But Jane says Ben don’t touch
it; and he don’t. I don’t know’s I’ve any call to come between her
and Ben. He’s a stiddy fellow, and able to support her,--and he’s
that fond of Jane”--
“He seems to be,” said Bayard musingly. His thoughts were not
with Mrs. Granite. He hardly knew what she had said. He was not
used to this petty, parish atmosphere. It came hard to him. He
underestimated the value of these wearisome trifles, in the large
work performed by little people. Nothing in the world seemed to him
of less importance than the natural history of Ben Trawl.
“The wind is east,” he said abstractedly, “and there’s a very heavy
sea on.”
He cast at the harbor and the sky the anxious look habitual with
the people of Windover; the stranger had already acquired it. He
had not been a month in the fishing-town before he noticed that the
women all spoke of their natural foe as “the terrible sea.”
The hall which the new people had leased for their services and
entertainments had long borne the grim name of Seraph’s Rest;
having been, in fact, for years, a sailors’ dance-hall of the
darkest dye.
“Give us,” Bayard had said, “the worst spot in the worst street
of this town. We will make it the best, or we will own ourselves
defeated in our work.”
In such streets, and in such places, news has wings. There is no
spot in Windover where rumor is run down so soon as in Angel Alley.
Bayard had talked perhaps half an hour, when he perceived by the
restlessness in his crowded and attentive audience that something
had happened. He read on for a moment:--
“_‘Are you dying for him?’ she whispered. ‘And his wife and child.
Hush! Yes.’_”
Then, with the perfect ease which he always sought to cultivate in
that place between speaker and hearer, “What is the matter?” he
asked in a conversational tone.
“Sir,” said an old captain, rising, “there’s a vessel gone ashore
off Ragged Rock.”
Bayard swept his book and manuscript off the desk.
“I was about to read you,” he said, “how a poor fellow with a
wretched life behind him died a noble death. Perhaps we can do
something as grand as he did. Anyhow, we’ll try. Come, boys!”
He thrust himself into his coat, and sprang down among the audience.
“Come on! You know the way better than I do! If there’s anything to
do, we’ll do it. Lead on, boys! I’m with you!”
The audience poured into Angel Alley, with the minister in their
midst. Confusion ran riot outside. The inmates of all the dens
on the street were out. Unnoticed, they jostled decent citizens
who had flocked as near as possible to the news-bearer. Panting
and white, a hatless messenger from the lighthouse, who had run
all the way at the keeper’s order to break the black word to the
town, reiterated all he knew: “It’s the Clara Em! She weighed
this afternoon under full canvas--and she’s struck with fourteen
men aboard! I knew I couldn’t raise nobody at the old Life-Saving
Station”--
“It’s t’other side the Point, anyhow!” cried a voice from the crowd.
“It’s four mile away!” yelled another.
“Good heavens, man!” cried Bayard. “You don’t propose to wait for
_them_?”
“I don’t see’s there’s anything we can _do_,” observed the old
captain deliberately. “The harbor’s chockful. If anybody could do
anything for ’em, some o’ them coasters--but ye see there can’t no
boat _live_ off Ragged Rock in a breeze o’ wind like this.”
“How far off is this wreck?” demanded Bayard, inwardly cursing his
own ignorance of nautical matters and of the region. “Can’t we get
up some carts and boats and ropes--and ride over there?”
“It’s a matter of three mile an’ a half,” replied the mate of a
collier, “and it’s comin’ on thick. But I hev known cases where a
cart--Now there’s them I-talians with their barnana carts.”
“You won’t get no fog with this here breeze,” contended a very
ancient skipper.
“What’ll you bet?” said the mate of the collier.
An Italian with a fruit cart was pushed forward by the crowd; an
express cart was impressed; ropes, lanterns, and a dory appeared
from no one knew where, at the command of no one knew who. Bayard
suggested blankets and dry clothes. The proposal seemed to cause
surprise, but these supplies were volunteered from somewhere.
“Pile in, boys!” cried the minister, in a ringing voice. He sprang
into one of the carts, and it filled in a moment. One of the horses
became frightened at the hubbub and reared. Men swore and women
shrieked. In the momentary delay, a hand reached over the wheel,
and plucked at Bayard’s sleeve. He flashed the lantern in his hand,
and saw a woman’s strained, set face. It was Job Slip’s wife,
Mari, with the little boy crying at her skirts.
“Sir,” she said hoarsely, “if it’s the Clara Em, he’s aboard of
her--for they shipped him at five o’clock, though they see the
storm a-comin’--and him as drunk as death. But it’s true--he got it
at Trawl’s--I see ’em lift him acrost the wharf an’ sling him over
int’ the dory.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Bayard with set teeth. He reached over the
wheel as the horses started, plunging, and wrung the hand of the
drunkard’s wife. He could not trust himself to say more. Such a
vision of what life meant to such a woman swept through Angel Alley
upon the wings of the gale, that he felt like a man whose eyes have
beheld a panorama on a stage in hell.
Many people, as the carts rolled through the town, followed on
foot, among them a few women whose husbands, or lovers, or brothers
were known to be aboard the Clara Em.
“Here’s an _old_ woman with a boy aboard! Seems you might find
room in one them wagons for her!” cried a young voice. It was the
girl known to Windover only by the name of Lena; she for whom the
“terrible sea” could have no horrors; the one woman of them from
whom no betrothed lover could sail away; to whom no husband should
return.
“She’s right about that. We must manage somehow!” called Bayard.
Strong hands leaned out and swept the old woman up over the wheel,
and the horses galloped on.
There was neither rain nor snow; but the storm, in the seaman’s
sense of the word, was approaching its height. The wind had now
become a gale, and blew southeast. The sky was ominously black. To
Bayard’s sensitive and excited imagination, as he looked out from
the reeling wagon, the mouth of the harbor seemed to gape and grin;
the lights of the fleet, furled and anchored for dear life, lost
their customary pleasant look, and snapped and shone like teeth in
the throat of a monster.
The wagons rolled on madly; the horses, lashed to their limit of
speed, leaped down Windover Point. They had now left the road, and
were dashing across the downs which stretched a mile farther to the
eastern shore. The roughness of the route had become appalling,
but a Cape horse is as used to boulders as a Cape fisherman;
neither wagon overset, though both rolled like foundering ships.
The lanterns cut swathes of light in the blackness which bounding
wheels and racing heels mowed down before them.
Walls of darkness rose ahead, and at its outermost, uttermost
margin roared the sea. It seemed to Bayard as if the rescuing party
were plunging into eternal mystery.
The old woman whose son was aboard the Clara Em crouched at the
minister’s feet. Both sat in the dory, which filled the wagon, and
which was packed with passengers. The old woman’s bare hands were
clenched together, and her lips shut like iron hinges. Bayard
wondered at her massive silence. It was something primeval, solemn,
outside of his experience. The women of the shore, in stress like
hers, would weep, would sob, or shriek. But to the women of the sea
this anguish was as old as life itself: to it they were born, and
of it they were doomed to die; they bore it as they did the climate
of the freezing Cape.
“That there saving service couldn’t ha’ done nothin’ agin’ a wreck
on Ragged Rock if they wanted to,” observed the old captain (they
called him Captain Hap), peering from the wagon towards the harbor
shore. “It’s jest’s I told ye; they’re too fur--five mile across.”
“But why is there no station nearer?” demanded Bayard with the
warmth of inexperience. “Why is nothing put over here--if this reef
is so bad--where it is needed?”
“Wall,” said Captain Hap, with deliberation, “that’s a nateral
question for a land-lubber. Every seaman knows there ain’t no
_need_ of gettin’ wrecked on that there reef. It’s as plain as
the beard on your face. Windover Light to the west’ard, Twin
Lights to the east’ard,--a fog bell, and a bell-buoy, and a
whistlin’-buoy,--Lord! why, _everybody_ knows how to keep off
Ragged Rock!”
“Then how did this vessel happen to strike?” persisted Bayard. The
men interchanged glances, and no one answered him.
“Hi there! Look, look! I see her! I see her spars!” yelled a young
fellow on the front seat of the wagon. “It’s her! It’s the Clara
Em!... Lord A’mighty! what in ---- was they thinkin’ of? She’s got
on full canvas! See her! see her! see her! See her lights! It’s
_her_, and she’s bumpin’ on the reef!”
Cries of horror ran from lip to lip. The driver lashed his horses
onward, and the men in the wagons flung their lanterns to and fro
in uncontrollable excitement. Some leaped over the wheels and ran
shouting against the gale.
“Clara Em, ahoy! Clara Em, aho--o--oy!”
But the old woman at Bayard’s feet sat still. Her lips only moved.
She stared straight ahead.
“Is she praying? or freezing? Perhaps she’s out of her mind,”
thought Bayard.
He gently pulled her blanket-shawl closer over her bare head, and
wrapped it around her before he sprang from the wagon.