In winter the Port is closed, the population migrates, the Collector of
the Port sails southward. There is nothing left but black rocks sheathed
in ice where icy seas clash and splinter and white squalls howl across
the headland. When the wind slackens and the inlet freezes, spotted
seals swim up and down the ragged edges of the ice, sleek restless heads
raised, mild eyes fixed on the turbid shallows.
In January, blizzard-driven, snowy owls whirl into the pines and sit all
day in the demi-twilight, the white ptarmigan covers the softer snow with
winding tracks, and the white hare, huddled in his whiter “form,” plays
hide and seek with his own shadow.
In February the Port-of-Waves is still untenanted. A few marauders
appear, now and then a steel grey panther from the north frisking
over the snow after the white hares, now and then a stub-tailed lynx,
mean-faced, famished, snarling up at the white owls who look down and
snap their beaks and hiss.
The first bud on the Indian-willow brings the first inhabitant back to
the Port-of-Waves, Francis Lee, superintendent of the mica quarry. The
quarrymen follow in batches; the willow-tassels see them all there; the
wind-flowers witness the defile of the first shift through the pines.
On the last day of May the company’s flag was hoisted on the tool-house,
the French-Canadians came down to repair the rusty narrow-gauge railroad,
and Lee, pipe lighted, sea-jacket buttoned to the throat, tramped up and
down the track with the lumber detail, chalking and condemning sleepers,
blazing spruce and pine, sounding fish-plate and rail, and shouting at
intervals until the washouts were shored up, windfalls hacked through,
and landslide and boulder no longer blocked the progress of the company’s
sole locomotive.
The first of June brought sunshine and black flies, but not the Collector
of the Port. The Canadians went back to Sainte Isole across the line, the
white-throated sparrows’ long dreary melody broke out in the clearing’s
edge, but the Collector of the Port did not return.
That evening, Lee, smoking his pipe on the headland, looked out across
the sunset-tinted ocean and saw the white gulls settling on the shoals
and the fish-hawks soaring overhead with the red sunglint on their wings.
The smoke of a moss smudge kept the flies away, his own tobacco smoke
drove away care. Incidentally both drove Williams away,—a mere lad in
baggy blue-jeans, smooth-faced, clear-eyed, with sea-tan on wrist and
cheek.
“How did you cut your hand?” asked Lee, turning his head as Williams
moved away.
“Mica,” replied Williams briefly. After a moment Williams started on
again.
“Come back,” said Lee; “that wasn’t what I had to tell you.”
He sat down on the headland, opened a jack-knife, and scraped the ashes
out of his pipe. Williams came slowly up and stood a few paces behind his
shoulder.
“Sit down,” said Lee.
Williams did not stir. Lee waited a moment, head slightly turned, but not
far enough for him to see the figure motionless behind his shoulder.
“It’s none of my business,” began Lee, “but perhaps you had better know
that you have deceived nobody. Finn came and spoke to me to-day. Dyce
knows it, Carrots and Lefty Sawyer know it,—I should have known it myself
had I looked at you twice.”
The June wind blowing across the grass, carried two white butterflies
over the cliff. Lee watched them struggle back to land again. Williams
watched Lee.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Lee, after a silence; “it is not
forbidden for women to work in the quarry—that I am aware of. If you need
work and prefer that sort, and if you perform your work properly, I shall
not interfere with you. And I’ll see that the men do not.”
Williams stood motionless; the smoke from the smudge shifted west, then
south.
“But,” continued Lee, “I must enter you properly on the pay-roll; I
cannot approve of this masquerade. Finn will see you in the morning; it
is unnecessary for me to repeat that you will not be disturbed.”
There was no answer. After a silence Lee turned, then rose to his feet.
Williams was weeping.
Lee had never noticed her face; both sun-tanned hands hid it now; her
felt hat was pulled down over the forehead.
“Why did you come to the quarry?” he asked soberly. She did not reply.
“It is men’s work,” he said; “look at your hands! You cannot do it.”
She tightened her hands over her eyes; tears stole between her fingers
and dropped, one by one, on the young grass.
“If you need work—if you can find nothing else—I—I think perhaps I
may manage something better,” he said. “You must not stand there
crying—listen! Here come Finn and Dyce, and I don’t want them to talk all
over the camp.” Finn and Dyce came toiling up the headland with news that
the west drain was choked. They glanced askance at Williams, who turned
her back. The sea-wind dried her eyes; it stung her torn hands too. She
unconsciously placed one aching finger in her mouth and looked out to sea.
“The dreen’s bust by the second wind-fall,” said Dyce, with a jerk of
his stunted thumb toward the forest. “If them sluice-props caves in, the
timber’s wasted.”
Finn proposed new sluice gates; Lee objected, and swore roundly that if
the damage was not repaired by next evening he’d hold Finn responsible.
He told them he was there to save the company’s money, not to experiment
with it; he spoke sharply to Finn of last year’s extravagance, and warned
him not to trifle with orders.
“I pay you to follow my directions,” he said. “Do so and I’ll be
responsible to the company; disobey, and I’ll hold you to the chalk-mark
every time.”
Finn sullenly shifted his quid and nodded; Dyce looked rebellious.
“You might as well know,” continued Lee, “that I mean what I say. You’ll
find it out. Do your work and we’ll get on without trouble. You’ll find
I’m just.”
When Dyce and Finn had shuffled away toward the coast, Lee looked at the
figure outlined on the cliffs against the sunset sky,—a desolate, lonely
little figure in truth.
“Come,” said Lee; “if you must have work I will give you enough to keep
you busy; not in the quarry either,—do you want to cripple yourself in
that pit? It’s no place for children anyway. Can you write properly?”
The girl nodded, back turned toward him.
“Then you can keep the rolls, duplicates, and all. You’ll have a room to
yourself in my shanty. I’ll pay quarry wages.”
He did not add that those wages must come out of his own pocket. The
company allowed him no secretary, and he was too sensitive to suggest one.
“I don’t ask you where you came from or why you are here,” he said a
little roughly. “If there is gossip I cannot help it.” He walked to the
smudge and stood in the smoke, for the wind had died out and the black
flies were active.
“Perhaps,” he hazarded, “you would like to go back to—to where you came
from? I’ll send you back.”
She shook her head.
“There may be gossip in camp.”
The slightest movement of her shoulders indicated her indifference. Lee
re-lighted his pipe, poked the smudge, and piled damp moss on it.
“All right,” he said, “don’t be unhappy; I’ll do what I can to make you
comfortable. You had better come into the smudge, to begin with.”
She came, touching her eyes with her hands, awkward, hesitating. He
looked gravely at her clumsy boots, at the loose, toil-stained overalls.
“What is your name?” he said, without embarrassment.
“My name is Helen Pine.” She looked up at him steadily; after a moment
she repeated her name as though expecting him to recognise it. He did
not; he had never before heard it, as far as he knew. Neither did
he find in her eager, wistful face anything familiar. How should he
remember her? Why should he remember? It was nearly six months ago that,
snow-bound in the little village on the Mohawk, he and the directors
of his company left their private Pullman car to amuse themselves at a
country dance. How should he recollect the dark-eyed girl who had danced
the “fireman’s quadrille” with him, who had romped through a reel or
two with him, who had amused him through a snowy evening? How should
he recall the careless country incident,—the corn popping, the apple
race, the flirtation on the dark, windy stairway? Who could expect him
to remember the laughing kiss, the meaningless promise to write, the
promises to return some day for another dance, and kiss? A week later
he had forgotten the village, forgotten the dance, the pop-corn, the
stairway, and the kiss. She never forgot. Had he told her he loved her?
He forgot it before she replied. Had he amused himself? Passably. But he
was glad that the snow-plows cleared the track next morning, for there
was trouble in Albany and lobbying to do, and a rival company was moving
wheels within wheels to lubricate the machinery of honest legislation.
So it meant nothing to him, this episode of a snow blockade; it meant
all the world to her. For months she awaited the letter that never came.
An Albany journal mentioned his name and profession. She wrote to the
company and learned where the quarry lay. She was young and foolish and
nearly broken-hearted, so she ran away. Her first sentimental idea was
to work herself to death, disguised, under his very eyes. When she lay
dying she would reveal herself to him, and he should know too late the
value of such a love. To this end she purchased some shears to cut her
hair with; but the mental picture she conjured was not improved by such a
sacrifice. She re-coiled her hair tightly and bought a slouched hat, too
big.
When, arrived at the quarry, she saw him again, she nearly fainted from
fright. He met her twice, face to face, and she was astounded that he did
not recognise her. Reflection, however, assured her that her disguise
must be perfect, and she awaited the dramatic moment when she should
reveal herself—not dying from quarry-toil—for she did not wish to die
now that she had seen him. No—she would live—live to prove to him how
a woman can love—live to confound him with her constancy. She had read
many romances. Now, when he had bade her follow him to the headland, she
knew she had been discovered; she was weak with terror and shame and
hope. She thought he knew her; when he spoke so coolly she stood dumb
with amazement; when he spoke of Finn and Sawyer and Dyce she understood
he had not penetrated her disguise, except from hearsay, and a terror of
loneliness and desolation rushed over her.
Then the impulse came to hide her identity from him,—why, she did not
know. Again that vanished when he called her to come into the smoke. As
she looked up at him her heart almost stopped; yet he did not recognise
her. Then the courage of despair seized her and she told her name. When
at length she comprehended that he had entirely forgotten her—forgotten
her very name—fright sealed her lips. All the hopelessness and horror of
her position dawned upon her,—all she had believed, expected, prayed for,
came down with a crash.
As they stood together in the smoke of the smudge, she mechanically laid
her hand on his sleeve, for her knees scarcely supported her.
“What is it; does the smoke make you dizzy?” he asked.
She nodded; he aided her to the cliff’s edge and seated her on a boulder.
Under the cliff the sunset light reddened the sea. A quarryman, standing
on a rock, looked up at Lee and pointed seaward.
“Hello!” answered Lee, “what is it? The Collector of the Port?”
Other quarrymen, grouped on the coast, took up the cry; the lumbermen,
returning from the forest along the inlet, paused, axe on shoulder, to
stare at the sea. Presently, out in the calm ocean, a black triangle cut
the surface, dipped, glided landward, dipped, glided, disappeared. Again
the dark point came into view, now close under the cliff where thirty
feet of limpid water bathed its base.
“The Collector of the Port!” shouted Finn from the rocks.
Lee bent over the cliff’s brink. Far down into the clear water he
followed the outline of the cliff. Under it a shadowy shape floated,
a monstrous shark, rubbing the rock softly as if in greeting for old
acquaintance’ sake.
The Collector of the Port had returned from the south.