THE WHISTLING SALLY
I
Becky, as she journeyed towards the north, had carried with her a vision
of a new and rather disturbing Randy--a Randy who, striding across the
Hunt Room with high-held head, had delivered her fan, and had, later,
asked for an explanation.
"How did he get it, Becky?"
She had told him.
"Why didn't you tell me when I came back and said I would go for it?"
"I was afraid he might still be there."
"Well?"
"And that something might happen."
Something had happened later by the fountain. But Randy did not speak of
it. "I saw the fan in his hand and asked for it," grimly, "and he gave
it to me----"
On the night before she went away, Randy had said, "I can't tell you all
that you mean to me, Becky, and I am not going to try. But I am yours
always--remember that----" He had kissed her hand and held it for a
moment against his heart. Then he had left her, and Becky had wanted to
call him back and say something that she felt had been left unsaid, but
had found that she could not.
Admiral Meredith met his granddaughter in New York, and the rest of the
trip was made with him.
Admiral Meredith was as different from Judge Bannister in his mental
equipment as he was in physical appearance. He was a short little man,
who walked with a sailor's swing, and who laughed like a fog-horn. He
had ruddy cheeks, and the manners of a Chesterfield. If he lacked the
air of aristocratic calm which gave distinction to Judge Bannister, he
supplied in its place a sophistication due to his contact with a world
which moved faster than the Judge's world in Virginia.
He adored Becky, and resented her long sojourn in the South. "I believe
you love the Judge better than you do me," he told her, as he turned to
her in the taxi which took them from the train to the boat.
"I don't love anybody better than I do you," she said, and tucked her
hand in his.
"What have they been doing to you?" he demanded; "you are as white as
paper."
"Well, it has been hot."
"Of all the fool things to keep you down there in summer. I am going to
take you straight to 'Sconset to the Whistling Sally and keep you there
for a month."
"The Whistling Sally" was the Admiral's refuge when he was tired of the
world. It was a gray little house set among other gray little houses
across the island from Nantucket town. It stood on top of the bluff and
overlooked a sea which stretched straight to Spain. It was called "The
Whistling Sally" because a ship's figure-head graced its front yard, the
buxom half of a young woman who blew out her cheeks in a perpetual
piping, and whose faded colors spoke eloquently of the storms which had
buffeted her.
The Admiral, as has been indicated, had an imposing mansion in Nantucket
town. For two months in the summer he entertained his friends in all the
glory of a Colonial background--white pillars, spiral stairway, polished
floors, Chinese Chippendale, lacquered cabinets, old china and oil
portraits. He gave dinners and played golf, he had a yacht and a motor
boat, he danced when the spirit moved him, and was light on his feet in
spite of his years. He was adored by the ladies, lionized by everybody,
and liked it.
But when the summer was over and September came, he went to Siasconset
and reverted to the type of his ancestors. He hobnobbed with the men and
women who had been the friends and neighbors of his forbears. He doffed
his sophistication as he doffed his formal clothes. He wore a slicker on
wet days, and the rain dripped from his rubber hat. He sat knee to knee
with certain cronies around the town pump. He made chowder after a
famous recipe, and dug clams when the spirit moved him.
His housekeeper, Jane, adjourned from the town house to "The Whistling
Sally" when Becky was there; at other times the Admiral did for himself,
keeping the little cottage as neat as a pin, and cooking as if he were
born to it.
It seemed to Becky that as the long low island rose from the sea, the
burdens which she had carried for so long dropped from her. There were
the houses on the cliff, the glint of a gilded dome, and then, gray and
blue and green the old town showed against the skyline, resolving itself
presently into roofs, and church towers, and patches of trees, with long
piers stretching out through shallow waters, boat-houses, fishing
smacks, and at last a thin line of people waiting on the wharf.
The air was like wine. The sky was blue with the deep sapphire which
follows a wind-swept night. There was not a hint of mist or fog. Flocks
of gulls rose and dipped and rose again, or rested unafraid on the
wooden posts of the pier.
The 'Sconset 'bus was waiting and they took it. Until two years ago no
automobiles had been allowed on the island, but there had been the
triumph of utility over the picturesque and quaint, and now one motored
across the moor on smooth asphalt, in one-half the time that the trip
had been made in the old days.
The Admiral did not like it. He admitted that it was quicker. "But we
used to see the pheasants fly up from the bushes, and the ducks from the
pools, and now they are gone before we can get our eyes on them."
Becky was not in a captious mood. The moor was before her, rising and
falling in low unwooded hills, amber with dwarf goldenrod, red with the
turning huckleberry, purple with drying grasses, green with a thousand
lovely growing things still unpainted by the brush of autumn. The color
was almost unbelievably gorgeous. Even the pools by the roadside were
almost unbelievably blue, as if the water had been dyed with indigo, and
above all was that incredible blue sky----!
Then out of the distance clear cut like cardboard the houses lifted
themselves above the horizon, with the sea a wall to the right, and to
the left, across the moor, the Sankaty lighthouse, white and red with
the sun's rays striking across it.
They entered the village between rows of pleasant informal residences,
many of them closed until another season; they passed the tennis
courts, and came to the post-office, with its flag flying. The 'bus
stopped, and they found Tristram waiting for them.
"Tristram" is an old name in Nantucket. There was a Tristram among the
nine men who had purchased the island from Thomas Mayhew in 1659 for "30
pounds current pay and two beaver hats." The present Tristram wore the
name appropriately. Fair-haired and tall, not young but towards the
middle-years, strong with the strength of one who lives out-of-doors in
all weathers, browned with the wind and sun, blue-eyed, he called no man
master, and was the owner of his own small acres.
Like the Admiral, he gave himself up for two months of the year to the
summer people. If his association with them was a business rather than a
social affair, it was, none the less, interesting. The occupation of
Nantucket by "off-islanders" was a matter of infinite speculation and
amusement. Into the serenity of his life came restless men and women who
golfed and swam and rode and danced, who chafed when it rained, and
complained of the fog, who seemed endlessly trying to get something out
of life and who were endlessly bored, who wondered how Tristram could
stand the solitudes and who pitied him.
Tristram knew that he did not need their pity. He had a thousand things
that they did not have. He was never bored, and he was too busy to
manufacture amusements. There were always things happening on the
island--each day brought something different.
To-day, it was the winter gulls. "They are coming down--lots of them
from the north," he told the Admiral as they drove through the quaint
settlement with its gray little houses, "the big ones----"
There was also the _gerardia_, pale pink and shading into mauve. He had
brought a great bunch to "The Whistling Sally," and had put it in a bowl
of gray pottery.
When Becky saw the flowers, she knew whom to thank. "Oh, Tristram," she
said, "you found them on the moor."
Tristram, standing in the little front room of the Admiral's cottage,
seemed to tower to the ceiling. "The Whistling Sally" from the outside
had the look of a doll's house, too small for human habitation. Within
it was unexpectedly commodious. It had the shipshape air of belonging to
a seafaring man. The rooms were all on one floor. There was the big
front room, which served as a sitting-room and dining-room. It had a
table built out from the wall with high-backed benches on each side of
it, and a rack for glasses overhead. There was a window above the table
which looked out towards the sea. The walls were painted blue, and
there was an old brick fireplace. A model of a vessel from which the
figure-head in the front yard had been taken was over the mantel,
flanked by an old print or two of Nantucket in the past. There were
Windsor chairs and a winged chair; some pot-bellied silver twinkled in a
corner cupboard.
The windows throughout were low and square and small-paned and
white-curtained. The day was cool, and there was a fire on the hearth.
The blaze and the pink flowers, and the white curtains gave to the
little room an effect of brightness, although outside the early twilight
was closing in.
Jane came in with her white apron and added another high light. She
kissed Becky. "Did your grandfather tell you that Mr. Cope is coming
over to have chowder?" she asked.
It would be impossible to describe Jane's way of saying "chowder." It
had no "r," and she clipped it off at the end. But it is the only way in
the world, and the people who so pronounce it are usually the only
people in the world who can make it.
"Who is Mr. Cope?" Becky asked.
Mr. Cope, it seemed, had a cottage across the road from the Admiral's.
He leased it, and it was his first season at 'Sconset. His sister had
been with him only a week ago. She had gone "off-shore," but she was
coming back.
"Is he young?" Becky asked.
"Well, he isn't old," said Jane, "and he's an artist."
Becky was not in the least interested in Mr. Cope, so she talked to
Tristram until he had to go back to his farm and the cows that waited to
be milked. Then Becky went into her room, and took off her hat and coat
and ran a comb through the bronze waves of her hair. She did not change
the straight serge frock in which she had travelled. She went back into
the front room and found that Mr. Cope had come.
He was not old. That was at once apparent. And he was not young. He did
not look in the least like an artist. He seemed, rather, like a
prosperous business man. He wore a Norfolk suit, and his reddish hair
was brushed straight back from his forehead. He had rather humorous gray
eyes, and Becky thought there was a look of delicacy about his white
skin. Later he spoke of having come for his health, and she learned that
he had a weak heart.
He had a pleasant laughing voice. He belonged to Boston, but had lived
abroad for years.
"With nothing to show for it," he told her with a shrug, "but one
portrait. I painted my sister, and she kept that. But before we left
Paris we burned the rest----"
"Oh, how dreadful," Becky cried.
"No, it wasn't dreadful. They were not worth keeping. You see, I played
a lot and made sketches and things, and then there was the war--and I
wasn't very well."
He had had two years of aviation, and after that a desk in the War
Department.
"And now I am painting again."
"Gardens?" Becky asked, "or the sea?"
"Neither. I am trying to paint the moor. I'll show you in the morning."
The Admiral was in the kitchen, superintending the chowder. Jane knew
how to make it, and he knew that she knew. But he always went into the
kitchen at the psychological moment, tied on an apron, and put in the
pilot crackers. Then he brought the chowder in, in a big porcelain
tureen which was shaped like a goose. Becky loved him in his white
apron, with his round red face, and the porcelain goose held high.
"If you could paint him like that," she suggested to Archibald Cope.
"Do you think he would let me?" eagerly.
After supper the two men smoked by the fire, and Becky sat between them
and watched the blaze. She heard very little of the conversation. Her
mind was in Albemarle. How far away it seemed! Just three nights ago she
had danced at the Merriweathers' ball, and George had held her hand as
she leaned over the balcony.
"If you can bring yourself back for a moment, Becky, to present
company," her grandfather was saying, "you can tell Mr. Cope whether you
will walk with us to-morrow to Tom Never's."
"I'd love it."
"Really?" Cope asked. "You are sure you won't be too tired?"
"Not in this air. I feel as if I could walk forever."
"How about a bit of a walk to-night--up to the bluff? Is it too late,
Admiral?"
"Not for you two. I'll finish my pipe, and read my papers."
The young people followed the line of the bluff until they came to an
open space which looked towards the east. To the left of them was the
ridge with a young moon hanging low above it, and straight ahead,
brighter than the moon, whitening the heavens, stretching out and out
until it reached the sailors in their ships, was the Sankaty light.
"I always come out to look at it before I go to bed," said Cope; "it is
such a _living_ thing, isn't it?"
The wind was rising and they could hear the sound of the sea. Becky
caught her breath. "On dark nights I like to think how it must look to
the ships beyond the shoals----"
"The sea is cruel," said Cope; "that's why I don't paint it."
"Oh, it isn't always cruel."
"When isn't it? Last year, with the submarines, it was--a monster. I saw
a picture once in a gallery, 'The Eternal Siren,' just the sea. And a
woman asked, 'Where's the Siren?'"
Becky laughed. "If you had sailor blood in you, you wouldn't feel that
way. Ask Grandfather."
"The Admiral is prejudiced. He loves--the siren----"
"He would tell you that the sea isn't a siren. It's a bold, blustering
lass like the Whistling Sally out there in the front yard. Man has tamed
her even if he hasn't quite mastered her."
"He will never master her. She will go on and on, after we are dead,
through the ages, wooing men to--destruction----"
Becky shivered. "I hate to think of things--after we are dead."
"Do you? I don't. I like to think way beyond the ages to the time when
there shall be no more sea----"
He pulled himself up abruptly. "I am talking rather dismally, I am
afraid, about death and destruction. You won't want to walk with me
again."
"Oh, yes, I shall. And I want to see your pictures."
"You may not care for them. Lots of people don't. But I have to work in
my own way----"
As they walked back, he told her what he was trying to do. As she
listened, Becky seemed to have two minds, one that caught his words, and
answered them, and another which went back and back to the things which
had happened since she had last walked this bluff with the wind in her
face and the sound of the sea in her ears.
It seemed to her as if a lifetime had elapsed since last she had looked
at the Sankaty light.
II
When Becky wrote to Randy, she had a great deal to say about Archibald
Cope.
"He is trying to paint the moor. He wants to get its meaning, and
then make other people see what it means. He doesn't look in the
least like that, Randy--as if he were finding the spirit of things.
He has red hair and wears correct clothes, and says the right
things, and you feel as if he ought to be in Wall Street buying
bonds. But here he is, refusing to believe that anything he has
done is worth while until he does it to his own satisfaction.
"We walked to Tom Never's Head yesterday. It was one of those clear
silver days, a little cloudy and without much color. The
cranberries are ripe, and the moor was carpeted with them. When we
got to Tom Never's we sat on the edge of the bluff, and Mr. Cope
told me what he meant about the moor. It has its moods, he said. On
a quiet, cloudy morning, it is a Quaker lady. With the fog in, it
is a White Spirit. There are purple twilights when it
is--Cleopatra, and windy nights with the sun going down blood-red,
when it is--Medusa---- He says that the trouble with the average
picture is that it is just--paint. I am not sure that I understand
it all, but it is terribly interesting. And when he had talked a
lot about that, he talked of the history of the island. He said
that he should never be satisfied until somebody put a bronze
statue of an Indian right where we stood, with his back to the sea.
And when I said, 'Why with his back to it?' he said, 'Wasn't the
sea cruel to the red man? It brought a conquering race in ships.'
"I told him then about our Indians in Virginia, and that some of us
had a bit of red blood in our veins, and I told him that you and I
always used the old Indian war cry when we called to each other,
and he asked, 'Who is Randy?' and I said that you were an old
friend, and that we had spent much of our childhood together."
As a matter of fact, Cope had been much interested in her account of
young Paine. "Do you mean to say that he is still living on all that
land?"
"Yes."
"Master of his own domain. I can't see it. The way I like to live is
with a paint box, and a bag, and nothing to keep me from moving on."
"We aren't like that in the South."
"Do you like to stay in one place?"
"I never have. I have always been handed around."
"Would you like a home of your own?"
"Of course--after I am married."
"North, south, east or west?"
She put the question to him seriously. "Do you think it would make any
difference if you loved a man, where you lived?"
"Well, of course, there might be difficulties--on a desert island."
"Not if you loved him."
"My sister wouldn't agree with you."
"Why not?"
"She is very modern. She says that love has nothing to do with it. Not
romantic love. She says that when she marries she shall choose a man who
lives in New York, who likes to go to Europe, and who hates the tropics.
He must fancy pale gray walls and willow-green draperies, and he must
loathe Florentine furniture. He must like music and painting, and not
care much for books. He must adore French cooking, and have a prejudice
against heavy roasts. He must be a Republican and High Church. She is
sure that with such a man she would be happy. The dove of peace would
hover over the household, because she and her husband would have nothing
to quarrel about."
"Of course she doesn't mean it."
"She thinks she does."
"She won't if she is ever really in love."
He glanced at her. "Then you believe in the desert island?"
"I think I do----"
She stood up. "Did you feel a drop of rain? And Grandfather is waving."
The Admiral on the porch of the closed Lodge was calling to them to come
under shelter.
It was a gentle rain, and they decided to walk home in it. They went at
a smart pace, which they moderated as Cope showed signs of fatigue.
"It's a beastly nuisance," he said, "to give out. I wish you would go on
ahead, and let me rest here----"
They rested with him. The two men talked, and Becky was rather silent.
When they started on again, Cope said to her, "Are you tired? It is a
long walk."
"No," she said, "I am not tired. And I have been thinking a lot about
the things you said to me."
He was not a conceited man, and he was aware that it was the things
which he had said to her which had set her mind to work, not any
personal fascination. She was quaint and charming, and he was glad that
she had come. He had been lonely since his sister left. And his
loneliness had fear back of it.
It was because of this conversation with Cope that Becky ended her
letter to Randy with the following paragraph:
"Mr. Cope has a sister, Louise. She thinks that people ought to
marry because they like the same things. She thinks that if two
people care for the same furniture and the same religion and the
same things to eat, that life will be lovely. She couldn't love a
man enough to live on a desert island with him, because she adores
New York. Of course, there is something in that, and if it is so,
you and I ought to be very happy, Randy. We like old houses and the
Virginia hills, and lots of books, and fireplaces--and dogs and
horses and hot biscuits and fried chicken. It sounds awfully funny
to put it that way, doesn't it, and practical? But perhaps Louise
Cope is right, and one isn't likely, of course, to have the desert
island test. Do you _really_ think that anybody could be happy on a
desert island, Randy?"
Randy replied promptly.
"If you were in love with me, Becky, you wouldn't be asking
questions. You would believe that we could be blissful on a desert
island. I believe it. It may not be true, yet I feel that a hut on
a mountain top would be heaven for me if you were in it, Becky. In
a way Cope's sister is right. The chances for happiness are
greatest with those who have similar tastes, but not fried chicken
tastes or identical religious opinions. These do not mean so much,
but it would mean a great deal that we think alike about honesty
and uprightness and truth and courage----
"And now, Becky, I might as well say it straight from the shoulder.
I haven't the least right in the world to let you feel that you are
engaged to me. I shall never marry you unless you love me--unless
you love me so much that you would have the illusion of happiness
with me on a desert island.
"I have no right to let you tie yourself to me. The whole thing is
artificial and false. You are strong enough to stand alone. I want
you to stand alone, Becky, for your own sake. I want you to tell
yourself that Dalton isn't worth one single thought of yours. Tell
yourself the truth, Becky, about him. It is the only way to own
your soul.
"You may be interested to know that the Watermans left Hamilton
Hill yesterday. Dalton went with them. I haven't seen him since the
night of the Merriweathers' ball. I didn't tell you, did I, that
after I took the fan away from him, I dropped him into the
fountain? I had much rather have tied him to a stake, and have
built a fire under him, but that isn't civilized, and of course, I
couldn't. But I am glad I dropped him in the fountain----"
Becky read Randy's letter as she sat alone on the beach. It was cool and
sunshiny and she was wrapped in a red cape. The winter gulls were
beating strong wings above the breakers, and their sharp cries cut
across the roar of the waters.
There had been a storm the night before--wind booming out of the
northeast and the sea still sang the song of it.
Becky felt, suddenly, that she was very angry with Randy. It was as if
he had broken a lovely thing that she had worshipped. She hated to think
of that struggle in the dark---- She hated to think of Randy as--the
Conqueror. She hated to think of George as dank and dripping. She wanted
to think of him as shining and splendid, and Randy had spoiled that.
But she wanted to be fair. Hadn't George, after all, spoiled his own
splendidness? He had wooed her and had run away. And he had not run back
until he thought another man wanted her.
"Of course," said somebody behind her, "you won't tell me what you are
thinking about. But if you will just let me sit here and think, by your
side, it will be a great privilege."
It was Mr. Cope, and she was not sure that she wanted him at this
moment. Perhaps something of her thought showed in her eyes, for when
she said, "Oh, yes," he stood looking down at her.
"Would you rather be alone with your letters? Don't hedge and be polite.
Tell me."
"Well," she admitted, "my letters are a bit on my mind. But if you don't
care if I am stupid, you can stay----"
He sat down. He had known her for ten days, and dreaded to think that in
ten days more she might be gone. "I won't talk if you don't wish it."
Becky's eyes were on the sea. "I think I should like to talk. I have
been thinking--about that Indian that you want commemorated in bronze up
there on the bluff. Do you think he was cruel?"
"Who knows? He was, perhaps, a savage. Yet he may have been
tender-hearted. I hope so, if he is going to be fixed in bronze for the
ages to stare at."
"Did you," Becky asked, deliberately, "ever want to tie a man to a stake
and build a fire under him?"
He turned and stared at her. "My dear child, what ever put such an idea
in your head?"
"Well, did you?"
He considered it. "There was a time in France when I wanted to do worse
than that."
"But that was war."
"No, it was a brute in my own company. He broke the heart of a little
girl that he met in Brittany. He--he--well he murdered her--dreams."
"Perhaps he didn't know what he was doing."
"He knew. Every man knows."
"And you wanted to make him--suffer----"
"Yes."
She shivered. "Are all men like that?"
"Like what?"
"Cruel."
"It can't be cruelty. It's a sense of justice."
"I hope it is." She kept thinking about George rising dank and dripping
from the fountain. She hated to think about it.
So she changed the subject. "I thought you were painting."
"I was. But the moor is fickle. Yesterday she billowed towards the
south, all gray and blue. And last night the storm spoiled it; she is
gorgeous and gay to-day, and I don't like her."
"Oh, why not?"
"She is too obvious. Anybody can paint a Persian carpet, but one can't
put soul into a--carpet----"
He was petulant. "I shall never paint the pictures I want to paint. Life
is too short."
"Life isn't short. Look at Grandfather. You will have forty years yet in
which to paint."
And now it was he who changed the subject, quickly, as if he were afraid
of it.
"My sister is coming to-morrow. I rather think you will like her."
"Will she like me, that's more important."
"She will love you, as I do, as everybody does, Becky."
They had reached that point in ten days that he could say such things to
her and win her smile. She did not believe in the least that he loved
her. He always laughed when he said it.
She liked him very much. She felt that the Admiral and Tristram and
Archibald Cope were all of them the best of comrades. Except for Jane,
she had had practically no feminine society since she came. And Jane was
not especially inspiring, not like Tristram, who seemed to carry one's
imagination back to Viking days.
Cope was immensely enthusiastic about Tristram. "If I could paint
figures as I want to," he said, "I'd do Tristram as 'The Islander.' One
feels that he belongs here as inevitably as the moors or the sands or
the sea. Perhaps it is he who ought to be in bronze on the bluff,
instead of the Indian."
"But he'd have to face the sea," said Becky.
"Yes," Cope agreed, "he would. He loves it and his ancestors lived by
it. I'll stick to my Indian and the moor."
Becky gathered up her letters. "It is time for lunch, and Jane doesn't
like to be kept waiting. Won't you lunch with us? Grandfather will be
delighted."
"I shall get to be a perpetual guest. I feel as if I were taking
advantage of your hospitality."
"We shouldn't ask you if we didn't want you."
"Then I'll come."
They walked up the beach together. Becky was muffled in her red cape,
Cope had a sweater under his coat. The air was sharp and clear as
crystal.
"How anybody can go in bathing in this weather," Becky shivered, as a
woman ran down the sands towards the sea. She cast off her bathing cloak
and stood revealed, slim and rather startling, in yellow.
"She goes in every day," said Cope, "even when it storms."
"Who is she?"
"A dancer--from New York. Haven't you seen her before?"
"No. Where is she staying?"
"At the hotel."
"I thought the hotel was closed."
"Not for three weeks. There aren't many guests. This one came up a month
ago. She dances on the moor--practising for some play which opens in
October."
"What's her name?"
"I don't know. They call her 'The Yellow Daffodil' because of that
bathing suit."
The girl was swimming now beyond the breakers.
Becky was envious. "I wish I could swim like that."
"You can do other things--that she can't do."
"What things?"
"Well, be a lady, for example. That's not exactly cricket, is it, to
draw a deadly parallel? But I don't want people like that dancing on my
moor."