DEAR MISS CARRUTH,--I will call for the report to-morrow. Thank
you.
Yours, E. B.
When Bayard reached her mother’s piazza the next evening, Helen was
in the middle of the harbor.
“My daughter is considered a good oarswoman, I believe,” said the
Professor with a troubled look. “I know nothing about these matters
myself. I confess I wish I did. I have not felt easy about her; she
has propelled the craft so far into the stream. I am delighted to
see you, Mr. Bayard! I will put another boat at your service--that
is--I suppose you understand the use of oars?”
“Better than I do Verbal Inspiration, Professor!” replied Bayard,
laughing. “She is rather far out, and the tide has turned.”
He ran down the pier, and leaped into the first boat that he could
secure. It happened to be a dory.
“Can you overtake her?” asked her father with a keen look.
“I can try,” replied the young man, smiling.
The Professor heaved a sigh, whether of relief or of anxiety it
would not be easy to say, and stood upon the pier watching Bayard’s
fine stroke. Mrs. Carruth came clucking anxiously down, and put
her hand upon her husband’s arm. Bayard looked at the two elderly
people with a strange affectionateness which he did not analyze;
feeling, but not acknowledging, a sudden heart-ache for ties which
he had never known.
The sun was sinking, and the harbor was a sea of fire. A sea of
glass it was not, for there was some wind and more tide. Really,
she should not have ventured out so far. He looked over his
shoulder as he gained upon her. She had not seen him, and was
drifting out. Her oars lay crossed upon her lap. Her eyes were on
the sky, which flung out gold and violet, crimson and pale green
flame, in bars like the colors of a mighty banner. The harbor took
the magnificence, and lifted it upon the hands of the short, uneasy
waves.
The two little boats, the pursuing and the pursued, floated in one
of those rare and unreal splendors which make this world, for the
moment, seem a glorious, painless star, and the chance to live in
it an ecstasy.
By the island, half a mile back, perhaps, Jane Granite in a dory
rowed by the younger Trawl, silently watched the minister moving
with strong strokes across the blazing harbor. Drifting out, with
beautiful pose and crossed hands, was the absorbed, unconscious
woman whom his racing oars chased down.
Between the glory of the water and the glory of the sky, he gained
upon her, overtook her, headed her off, and brought up with a spurt
beside her. Jane saw that the minister laid his hand imperiously
upon the gunwale of the lady’s boat; and, it seemed, without
waiting for her consent, or even lingering to ask for it, he crept
into the cockle-shell, and fastened the painter of his dory to the
stern. Now, between the color of the sky and the color of the sea,
the two were seen to float for a melting moment--
“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran.”
“Ben,” said Jane, “let us put about, will you? I’m a little chilly.”
“Ben?” said Jane again, as they rowed under the dark shadow of the
island. “Ben?” with a little loyal effort to make conversation such
as lovers know, “did you ever read a poem called Kubla Khan?”
“I hain’t had time to read sence I left the grammar school,” said
Ben.
“What’s up with you, anyhow?” he added, after a moment’s sullen
reflection.
He looked darkly over Jane’s head towards the harbor’s mouth.
At that moment Bayard was tying the painter of the dory to the
stern of the shell. Jane did not look back. A slight grayness
settled about her mouth; she had the protruding mouth and evident
cheek-bones of the consumptive woman of the coast.
“D---- him!” said Ben Trawl.
* * * * *
Bayard had indeed crossed into Helen’s boat without so much as
saying, By your leave. Her eyes had a dangerous expression, to
which he paid no sort of attention.
“Didn’t you know better than to take this shell--so far--with the
tide setting out?” he demanded. “Give me those oars!”
“I understand how to manage a boat,” replied the young lady coldly.
She did not move.
“_Give me those oars!_” thundered Bayard.
She looked at him, and gave them.
“Don’t try to move,” he said in a softer voice. “It’s the easiest
thing in the world to upset these toys. If you had taken a
respectable ocean dory--I can’t see why they don’t provide them at
the floats,” he complained, with the nervousness of an uneasy man.
“I can manage perfectly where I am. Sit still, Miss Carruth!”
She did not look at him this time, but she sat still. He put about,
and rowed steadily. For a few moments they did not exchange a word.
Helen had an offended expression. She trailed her hand in the water
with something like petulance. Bayard did not watch her.
Captain Hap crossed their course, rowing home in an old green dory
full of small bait--pollock and tinkers. He eyed Bayard’s Harvard
stroke with surprised admiration. He had seldom seen a person row
like that. But he was too old a sailor to say so. As the minister
swerved dexterously to starboard to free the painter of his tender
from collision with the fisherman, Captain Hap gave utterance to
but two words. These were:--
“Short chops!”
“Quite a sea, yes!” called Bayard cheerily.
Captain Hap scanned the keel-boat, the passenger, and the dory in
tow, with discrimination.
“Lady shipwrecked?” he yelled, after some reflection.
“No, sir,” answered Helen, smiling in spite of herself; “captured
by pirates.”
“Teach ye bet-ter!” howled Captain Hap. “Hadn’t oughter set out in
short cho-ops! Hadn’t oughter set out in a craft like that nohow!
They palm off them eggshells on boarders for bo-o-oats!”
Helen laughed outright; her eyes met Bayard’s merrily, and, if he
had dared to think so, rather humbly.
“I was very angry with you,” she said.
“I can’t help that,” replied Bayard. “Your father and mother were
very anxious about you.”
“Really?”
“Naturally. I was a chartered pirate, at any rate.”
“But I was in no sort of danger, you know. You’ve made a great fuss
over nothing.”
“Take these oars,” observed Bayard. “Just let me see you row back
to the float.”
Helen took the oars, and pulled a few strokes strongly enough. The
veins stood out on her soft forehead, and her breath came hard.
“I had no idea the tide was so strong to-night. The wind seems to
be the wrong way, too,” she panted.
“It was blowing you straight out to sea,” observed Bayard quietly.
“Shall I take the oars?” he added.
She pulled on doggedly for a few moments. Suddenly she flung them
down.
“Why, we are not making any headway at all! We are twisting about,
and--going out again.”
“Certainly.”
“It is that heavy dory! You can’t expect me to row two boats at
once.”
“The dory does make some difference. But very little. See--she
doesn’t draw a teaspoonful of water. Shall I take the oars?”
“If you please,” said Helen meekly.
She gave them up without looking at him, and she was a trifle pale
from her exertion. Her hat was off, and the wind made rich havoc of
her pretty hair. She was splashed with spray, and her boating-dress
was quite wet. Bayard watched her. The sun dropped, and the color
on the harbor began to fade.
“I suppose you came for the report?” she asked suddenly. “I stayed
in all the afternoon. I couldn’t be expected to wait indefinitely,
you know!”
“I could not possibly set the hour. I am much overworked. I should
beg your pardon,” said Bayard in his gentlest way.
“You _are_ overworked,” answered Helen, in her candid voice. “And I
am an idle, useless woman. It wouldn’t have hurt me a bit to wait
your leisure. But I’m not-- ... you see ... I’m not used to it.”
“I must remind you again, that I no longer move in good society,”
said Bayard, looking straight at her. “You must extend to me as
much tolerance as you do to other working men.”
“Yes,” returned Helen; “we always wait a week for a carpenter,
and ten days for the plumbers. Anyhow, Johnny’s mother is in the
Widows’ Home. She’s as snug as a clam in a shell. She says she
won’t run away again till I’ve been to see her.”
“How in the world did you manage?” asked Bayard admiringly.
“Oh, I don’t just know,” replied Helen, clasping her hands behind
her head; “I made myself lovely, that’s all.”
“That might be enough, I should fancy,” ventured the young man
under his breath.
“I took her shopping,” said Helen.
“Took her _shopping_!”
“Why, yes. She wanted to buy some mourning. She said Johnny’s
father had been dead so long, her black was all worn out. She
wanted fresh crape. So I took her round the stores, and got her
some.”
“Bought her crape?”
“Yes. I got her a crape veil--oh, and a bonnet. She’s the happiest
mourner you ever saw. She went back to the Widows’ Home like a
spring lamb. She wore a chocolate calico dress with red spots on
it, and this crape veil. You can’t think how she looked! But she’s
perfectly contented. She’ll stay awhile now. She says they wouldn’t
give her any mourning at the Home. She said that was all she had
‘agin’ ’em.’”
“Oh, these widows!” groaned Bayard. “We got two starving women in
there by the hardest work, last spring, and one left in a week.
She said it was too lonesome; she wanted to live with folks. The
other one said it ‘depressed’ her. A Windover widow is a problem in
sociology.”
“Johnny’s mother is the other kind of woman; I can see that,”
replied Helen. “She sits by herself, and puts her face in her
hands. She doesn’t even cry. But she takes it out in crape. You
can’t think how happy she is in that veil.”
“Your political economy is horrible,” laughed Bayard, “but your
heart is as warm as”--
“I saw Mari and Joey,” interrupted Helen, “and Job Slip. I stayed
two hours. Job was as sober as you are. They invited me to dinner.
I suppose they were thankful to be rid of that poor old lady.”
“Did you stay?”
“Of course I did. We had pork gravy, and potatoes--oh, and fried
cunners. I sat beside Joey. I believe that child is as old as She.
He’s a reincarnation of some drowned ancestor who went fishing ages
ago, and never came back. Did you ever notice his resemblance to a
mackerel?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that light. I see now what it was. It
takes you to discover it!”
“Johnny’s mother looks like a cod, poor thing!” continued Helen. “I
don’t wonder. I should think she would. I’m sure I should in her
place.”
“You are incorrigible!” said Bayard, laughing in spite of himself.
“And yet--you’ve done a better morning’s work than anybody in
Windover has done here for a month!”
“I’m going to take tea with Johnny’s mother next week,” observed
Helen--“at the Widows’ Home, you know. But I’ve promised to take
Joey to the circus first.”
“You are perfectly refreshing!” sighed Bayard delightedly.
“Mr. Bayard,” said Helen, with a change of manner as marked yet
as subtle as the motion of the wave that fell to make way for the
next, against the bobbing bows of the empty dory, “I had a long
talk with Job Slip.”
“You say you found him sober?”
“As sober as a Cesarea trustee. But the way that man feels to you
is something you haven’t an idea of. I thought of that verse, you
know, about love ‘passing the love of women.’ It is infatuation.
It is worship. It is enough to choke you. Why, I cried when I
heard him talk! And I don’t cry, you know, very often. And I’m not
ashamed to own it, either. It made me feel ashamed to be alive--in
such a world--why, Mr. Bayard!” Helen unclasped her hands from the
back of her head, and thrust them out towards him, as if they were
an argument.
“Why, I thought this earth was a pleasant place! I thought
life was a delightful thing!... If the rest of it is like this
town--Windover is a world of woe, and you are one of the sons of
God to these unhappy people!”
She said this solemnly, more solemnly than he had ever heard her
say anything before. He laid down his oars, and took off his hat.
He could not answer, and he did not try.
She saw how much moved he was, and she made a little gesture, as if
she tossed something that weighed heavily, away.
“You see,” she interposed, “I’ve never done this kind of thing.
I’m not a good Professor’s daughter. I didn’t like it. I went
through an attack of the missionary spirit when I was fifteen, and
had a Sunday-school class--ten big boys; all red, and eight of them
freckled. We were naming classes one Sunday, and my boys whistled
‘Yankee Doodle’ when the superintendent prayed, and then asked if
they might be called the lilies of the valley. I told them they
weren’t fit to be called red sorrel. So after that I gave them up.
I’ve never tried it since. I’m of no more use in the world--in this
_awful_ world--than the artificial pansies on my hat.”
Helen picked up her straw hat from the bottom of the boat, and tied
it on her head, with a little sound that was neither a laugh nor a
sigh.
It was growing dark, fast. They were nearly at the float, now.
Bayard laid down his oars. The headlights were leaping out all
over the harbor. The wind had gone down with the sun. Boats crept
in like tired people, through the sudden calm, to anchor for the
night. The evening steamer came in from the city, and the long
waves of her wake rolled upon the beach, and tossed the little
boats. The sea drew a few long, deep breaths.
“The trouble with me, you see,” said Helen, “is just what I told
you. I am not spiritual.”
“You are something better--you are altogether womanly!” said the
young preacher quickly.
He seized his oars, and rowed in, as if they were shipwrecked. The
old clam-digger was hauling his lobster-pots straight across their
course. As Bayard veered to avoid him, he could be heard singing:--
“The woman’s ashore,
The child’s at the door,
The man’s at the wheel.
“Storm on the track,
Fog at the back,
Death at the keel.
“You, mate, or me--
Which shall it be?”--
The old clam-digger stopped, when he saw the lady in the boat. It
was now quite dark. Bayard and Helen were the last people to land
at the float. He gave her his hand in silence. She stood by, while
he helped the keeper of the float up with the two boats. He coughed
a little as he did so, and she said, rather sharply:--
“Tim! you should keep two men here, to do that work.”
Tim apologized, grumbling, and the two walked on up the pier
together; still alone. At the door of the cottage, she asked him,
rather timidly, if he would come in. But he excused himself, and
hurried away.
When he found himself far from the hotel, and well on the way to
his lodgings, Bayard drew the long breath of a man who is escaping
danger. He experienced a kind of ecstatic terror. He thought of
her--he thought of her till he could think no more, but fell
into an ocean of feeling, tossing and deep. It seemed to have no
soundings. He drowned himself in it with a perilous delight.
What would a lonely fate be, if a woman capable of understanding
the highest, and serving it, capacious for tenderness, and
yielding it, a woman warm, human, sweet, and as true as one’s
belief in her, should pour the precious current of her love into
a long life’s work? Why, a man would be a god! He would climb the
inaccessible. He would achieve the undreamed and the unknown. He
would not know where consecration ended, and where heaven began.
“He would be a freer man than I am,” thought Bayard, as he passed,
between the larkspurs and the feverfew, up Mrs. Granite’s garden.
Mrs. Granite met him at the door; she held a kerosene lamp high in
one hand; with the other she handed to him a soiled and crumpled
bit of paper.
“A boy left it here, sir, not ten minutes ago, and he said you was
to read it as soon as you came home. I don’t know the boy. I never
saw him before, but it seemed to be something quite partikkelar.”