ON THE BEACH
"The curving land, with its cool white sand,
Lies like a sickle beside the sea."
The next morning dawned cloudless. Nature, radiant in her bountiful
splendor, seemed to give herself to man, who, in response, thrilled
with something of the primal impulse which stirred his pulses in the
golden days before he had separated himself from the beneficent
currents of the Earth Mother's vitality to shut himself up within
brick walls with artificial heat, artificial light, and artificial
stimulants.
On such a day, it is good to be alive. Flint felt the sunshine in his
blood as he stepped out into the fresh, open air. For a while he
hesitated as to the use to which he should put the morning in order to
secure the utmost of its bounty. Then he bethought him of his duty in
returning the blue golf cape which he reproached himself as an idiot
for having taken. Brady had gone crabbing with Marsden, so Flint could
not delegate the duty to him, as he had intended. Accordingly,
slinging the wrap over his shoulder, in the middle of the morning, he
started on the path which ran along among the scrub-oak and blueberry
patches, to lose itself on the curving stretch of beach which lay
between the inn and Captain's Point, where stood the Whites' house
known in the region of Nepaug as "The White-House."
The Point stretched along at the mouth of the little harbor, one side
thrust boldly out cliffwise into the ocean, the other sliding by soft
degrees to the margin of the salt-water lagoon. On the crest of the
cliff, and commanding a fine view of both sea and shore, rose the
White-House, originally owned and built by a sea-captain who could not
live without the sea, even when he had ceased to live on it. For years
the Captain took his daily walk on the little platform railed in from
the slanting roof, and scanned the horizon with his glass, taking note
of every sail, till at length he walked and gazed no more, and his
grave was made in the little hollow that dips behind the house. The
places which had known him knew him no more, and the house was let to
strangers.
The Point, however, retained his name; and the white railing around
the Captain's walk gleamed in the sunlight from the crest of the cliff
as bright as when he leaned upon it to sweep the face of the waters
with his glass.
Flint did the Captain the honor to bestow a passing thought on him
this morning, to be vaguely sorry for him, and to reflect that it was
really a fine thing to be above ground when the sun was shining like
this. To be sure, life had its vexations; but they were so brief, and
there was so much time in which to be dead!
Flint had not gone many paces along the beach before he saw Jimmy
Anstice digging clams out on the oozy flats left bare by the receding
tides, his knickerbockers rolled well up on his legs, and a great pail
set on the mud beside him.
The boy's hat was pushed far back on his head, and the sun fell full
on his face. Even at this distance, the resemblance to his sister was
so marked as to be almost comical. The eyes were the same. The nose,
with its unmistakable upward turn, a burlesque on the short, straight
one which lent piquancy to Winifred's face. The soft, subtle curve of
her cheek developed in Jimmy to a hardened rotundity inevitably
suggesting the desire to pinch it, which one feels toward the tomato
pin-cushions on exhibition at church fairs.
Nevertheless, despite freckles bestowed by nature, and grime
artificially acquired, Jimmy Anstice was a well-looking lad, and added
a distinct note of human interest to the barren flats, as he stood,
spade in hand, staring at Flint.
"Come out here!" he called.
"No, thank you," answered Flint. "Not with my boots on. What are you
about? Clamming, I suppose."
"Oh, no--fishing!" answered Jimmy, with fine sarcasm. "Come and help
me pull in the mackerel, can't you?" Then he turned his back and began
his digging once more. At the same moment Flint caught a glimpse of a
red hat against a seaweed covered rock. Obeying an impulse which was
rather a surprise to himself, he directed his course toward it. He
found, as he surmised, that it belonged to Winifred Anstice, who sat
reading, comfortably ensconced with her back against the low sandbank,
and her feet stretched out in front of her. She looked up at Flint's
approach, but made no change in her attitude as he came and stood over
her. He found it a little harder than he had expected to make a
conversational beginning. After a second's hesitation he asked:
"How is the wrist?"
"Better, thanks! but still in close confinement," Winifred answered,
throwing back her shawl and revealing the bandaged arm.
"You had a narrow escape."
"Very."
"I hope you have not felt the need of the cape you were kind enough to
lend me. I was just on my way to carry it home."
"And, having found the owner, you need not pursue your journey any
further."
Flint felt inwardly chagrined. This, then, was her interpretation of
his stopping to speak to her,--that he might be rid of his trouble.
"Thank you," he said stiffly; "but unless you need it, I prefer to
take it back to the house."
"Very well," said his companion, "as you please." Then, moved
evidently by a prick of conscience, "Perhaps you will rest awhile
before climbing the hill."
As she spoke, she moved a little that he might share the shadow of the
bank.
"Don't move on my account," Flint said.
"Oh," answered Winifred, smiling, "I owe you a decent civility, since
you saved my life last night."
"Don't mention it. Actions should be judged by what they cost, not
what they come to; and mine cost nothing but the hole in my coat,
which I don't doubt is already better than repaired under Miss
Standish's skilful handiwork, so pray dismiss the subject from your
thoughts. There are few, I fancy, who find it so hard as you to accept
anything at the hand of another. It vexes you not to be the one always
to give aid and comfort. If I knew you better, I might venture to
hint that it smacks of spiritual pride."
"You generalize widely after an acquaintance of four days."
"One sees character more clearly sometimes by the flashlight of a
first meeting, than when the perception is blurred by more frequent
opportunities."
Again the smile, inscrutable and mocking; the eyes looked into his
with a gay defiance.
"Perhaps you will be good enough to give me the benefit of these first
impressions of my character. They are as comprehensive, no doubt, as
those of the British traveller in America. Tell on, as the children
say."
"Pardon me, I have said too much already, under the circumstances.
Praise would be impertinence, and criticism insolence."
"You shall have absolution in advance. Begin then!" she added, with a
little nod of command. "What is the most striking trait of my
character on first acquaintance?"
"Well, if you will have it, I should say it was a restlessness which
you probably call energy; but it is a different thing. Energy is
absorbed in the object which it seeks to attain. Restlessness is
absorbed in the attaining."
"Hm! what next?"
"Next? Next, comes a quality almost invariably allied to such
restlessness as yours,--ambition. You may have all sorts of fine
theories about equality and that kind of thing; but you want
power--power over the lives with which you come in contact--power for
good of course; but it must be yours and wielded by you. It is not
enough that things should get along somehow. They must go right in
your way."
Winifred laughed.
"Ah! you say that because I wanted to show you how to set off a rocket
last night."
"I should say you showed us quite satisfactorily how _not_ to set off
a rocket last night."
"Don't let us revert to that episode, about which we shall probably
not agree. But go on. Let me hear more of your impressions. They are
quite diverting."
"No more. I dare not presume further upon my advance absolution.
Rather let me ask you to return candor for candor, and give me your
impressions of me and my character, or lack of it."
"I have formed none."
"Is that quite true?"
"No," said Winifred, looking up, "it is not true at all. I formed
impressions within the first ten minutes after I had seen you, only I
called them, more modestly, prejudices."
"Prejudices? They were unfavorable then. Good! Let us have them!" and
Flint settled himself more comfortably, bracing his head against his
clasped hands; and, leaning back against the bank of sand, he sat
watching the little tufts of coarse grass springing up close beside
him. Still Winifred was silent. At last Flint began himself:--
"You thought me rude and churlish, I suppose?"
"I certainly did not think you were Bayard and Sidney rolled together;
but I admit you had some provocation," she answered lightly, "at least
in our first meeting. When I demolished your new fishing-rod, I think
you might have accepted my apologies more gracefully; and I think you
need not have been so particularly uncivil when Jimmy and I tried to
come to your assistance on the pond. I have not yet recovered from the
reproof conveyed on that occasion by your manner, which plainly
indicated that, in your opinion, it would have been more tactful for
us to sail by, and ignore your disaster, or treat it as an episode
which did not call for explanation or remark. I should have felt duly
humiliated, no doubt; but I have become hardened to rebuffs, since I
have been at Nepaug, for I meet with many, as I go about like a beggar
from door to door in South East."
"Distributing tracts?" Flint asked, with eyebrows raised a little.
"No."
"Collecting statistics, perhaps?"
"Not at all; my errand is neither philanthropic nor scientific."
"Private and personal, that is, and not to be farther pursued by
impertinent inquiry?"
"Oh, I have no objection to telling you, since you are not a native. I
am searching for my great-great-grandmother."
Flint looked at his companion uneasily. She smiled.
"No, I have not lost my senses. Such as they are, I have them all. I
do not expect to find this ancestress of mine in the flesh, nor
sitting in any one of the splint rockers behind the checkered
window-panes of the old South East houses. It is only her portrait for
which I am searching as for hid treasure."
"Ah!"
"Yes, her portrait. I feel certain it is hidden away somewhere in
South East."
"How very odd!"
"Odd? Not at all, as you will say when you come to hear the story of
the original. But perhaps it would bore you to listen?"
"Go on; I am all attention."
"Well, to begin with, my great-great-grandmother was a very pretty
girl."
"I can believe it."
Winifred looked quickly round, but her companion's eyes were fixed
upon the horizon with an abstracted gaze which lent an air of
impersonality to his words. So she began again:
"Yes, she was a young Quakeress, born, I believe, in Philadelphia; but
her father and mother died, and she came to South East, to live with
her uncle, when she was about eighteen. The story of her girlhood is
rather vague; but somehow she fell in love with an English officer,
and made a runaway match which turned out better than such affairs
usually do; for his relatives received her favorably, and she made her
home with them at Temple Court in Yorkshire--doesn't that sound like a
book? Well, her uncle died, and she never came back to this country;
but her grandson came in the early part of the century, and, following
the traditions of his race, fell in love with an American girl. They
were married and settled in Massachusetts. But once, when they were
visiting at the old home, my grandmother saw a portrait of her
husband's grandmother hanging in the great hall at Temple Court. She
was fascinated by its beauty; and when she heard the story of the
runaway bride, who was an American like herself, she determined to
have a copy of the portrait, and talked of engaging one of the London
artists to make it for her. An old servant told my grandfather that
he remembered seeing another, painted at the same time and sent over
to this uncle in America. The man was sure that the address of the
uncle was South East. Many a time I have heard my grandmother tell the
story, which so fired my youthful fancy that I dreamed of it for
years, and at last I persuaded papa to come down here this summer, and
let me hunt for the picture. But I am tiring you, I am afraid."
Flint pulled his hat lower over his eyes.
"Pray go on; I am immensely interested."
"Thank you. Well, the desire for the recovery of the portrait is no
longer a sentiment with me,--it is a passion. My daily occupation now
is driving about and asking for a drink of water, or inquiring about
early vegetables, chickens, goslings,--anything which will afford a
plausible excuse for penetrating into the dark halls or stuffy
fore-rooms. Of course I rule out the modern houses. I have even tried
the tavern here at the beach; but the only decorations of the walls
were 'Wide Awake' and 'Fast Asleep,' and other chromos of the same
pronounced and distressing variety."
Flint took off his eye-glasses, and began to wipe them tenderly with
his delicate handkerchief.
"Perhaps," he began, when he was interrupted by a wild whoop just
above. It was from Jimmy Anstice, who shared the delusion, common to
his age and sex, that nothing is so amusing as a sudden and unexpected
noise.
"Oh, Jimmy!" his sister exclaimed.
"Oh, Jimmy!" mocked the boy. "I am glad to find that you are alive.
I've been watching you two these ten minutes, and you've sat as still
as if Mrs. Jarley hadn't wound you up yet."
"She hasn't," said Winifred, somewhat inconsequently. "Have you
finished digging your clams? What time is it?"
"I've dug all the clams I'm going to; don't intend to get all the food
for the boarding-house," answered Jimmy, somewhat sulkily, leaving
Flint to answer the last question.
"It is ten minutes after twelve," he said, looking at his watch.
"Dear me!" ejaculated Winifred, "I had no idea it was so late. I
promised Dr. Cricket to play chess with him at twelve."
She rose as she spoke, and stretched out her hand for the golf cape;
but Flint kept it quietly, and started on by her side.
"Are you going all the way to the house?" Jimmy asked.
"If your sister permits."
"Oh, then, you might as well take the other handle of this basket."
"Jimmy!" exclaimed Winifred, "I'm ashamed of you."
"Well, you needn't be. You'd better be ashamed of yourself, saying one
thing to a fellow's face, and another behind his back. Sitting there
for an hour talking with Mr. Flint, as if he were your best friend,
when only last night you said--"
"Jim, how near the shore should you say that sloop lay?" Flint
inquired in even tones.
"'T ain't a sloop at all; it's a schooner," returned Jim,
contemptuously.
"Why, to be sure, so it is. How stupid in me! I suppose all my
nautical learning went down in 'The Aquidneck.' By the way, Mr. Brady
and I are talking of going up to the wreck soon to try what can be got
out of her by diving. Wouldn't you like to go along?"
"Wouldn't I!" responded Jimmy, _con brio_. "Don't you forget it!"
His sister gave a dubious glance over the boy's head at Flint; but he
only smiled in return. This smile so transformed his face that the
girl beside him fell secretly to wondering whether her instinct of
character-reading, upon which she prided herself, had not played her
false in the case of this man, and whether she might not be called
upon for a complete reversal of judgment,--so apt we are to mistake
the momentary mood for the index of character.
They walked on in silence along the margin of the bank, Flint with the
cape thrown over one arm, while he and Jimmy carried the basket, heavy
with clams, between them. The blue water shoaled into emerald at their
feet; a single white gull soared and swooped above their heads. The
long sunburned grasses swayed in the summer wind, and the clouds
floated tranquilly over all.
How tiny the three human figures seemed in the wide setting of earth,
sea, and sky!
As they passed the bluff on the other side of the cove from Captain's
Hill, Jimmy suddenly dropped his side of the basket of clams. "Hi!" he
exclaimed. "Why can't we go up into the light-house, now Mr. Flint is
with us?"
"Not to-day," answered his sister, repressively. "Mr. Flint may have
other engagements, and then, you know, Dr. Cricket is waiting for his
game of chess."
"As for me," said Flint, "I was never more at leisure; and as for your
appointment with the Doctor, I advise you to adopt my motto: 'Better
never than late.'"
Winifred hesitated.
"Oh, come on!" persisted her small brother. "Don't be a chump, Fred.
You never used to be."
"Lead on," answered his sister; "rather than be considered anything so
ignominious, I would scale more alarming heights than those of the
light-house, though I confess its winding staircase is not without its
perils."
The path to the light-house led through a patch of bayberry bushes.
Winifred stooped, as she passed, and gathered a handful, which she
crushed in both hands, taking in a deep breath of their spicy aroma.
"Are they so good?" Flint asked, smiling at her childish enjoyment.
"Try and see!" she answered, holding them out to him in the cup of her
joined hands.
Flint bent his face over them for an instant. Then Winifred suddenly
dropped her hands and shook the fragrant leaves to the four winds.
Flint smiled again, for her gesture said as plainly as words: "Here I
am being friendly with this man, to whom I intended to be as frigid as
an iceberg."
Flint responded as if she had spoken.
"Do you never forgive?" he asked.
"No," answered Winifred, impetuously. "I never forgive; but I have a
horrid facility for forgetting."
"Cherish it!" exclaimed her companion. "It is the foundation of many
of the Christian graces."
As they drew nearer the light-house, they felt the salt sea-wind
strong in their faces. The bluff was so gale-swept that the trees,
few, small, and scrubby, had caught a slant to westward, and the
scanty vegetation clung timidly to the ground, like some tiny state
whose existence depends upon its humility. From the edge of the bluff
rose the light-house,--a round stone building, dazzling in its coat of
whitewash. Far up in the air its plate-glass windows gleamed in the
morning sun.
The keeper was standing in the open door, and cheerfully consented to
show the visitors over the premises. Loneliness is a great promoter of
hospitality.
As they peeped into the tiny kitchen, with its shining brasses and its
white deal floor, Winifred exclaimed at the exquisite neatness of the
housekeeping.
"It is a man's, you see," Flint commented with pride. "No doubt we
shall drive you from the domestic field yet."
"I should think the position of light-house-keeper would suit you
excellently," Winifred replied, oblivious of the slant at her sex.
"Your desire for solitude would surely find its full satisfaction
here."
"There might be much worse occupations certainly," Flint began; but he
saw that Winifred's attention had been diverted by the keeper, who had
already begun to mount the stairs, talking, as he moved, with a
fluency which denoted a long restrained flow of sociability. Winifred
was glad to be saved the trouble of replying, for the unceasing
climbing put her out of breath, and she felt that she might have been
dizzy, but for the railing under her left hand.
At last they arrived in the little room with its giant reflectors of
silvered copper, and its great lamp set on a circular table. Outside,
ran a narrow balcony with iron railing. Winifred stepped out onto the
ledge, clinging nervously to Jimmy, who professed a great desire to
sit on the railing. The wind here was so strong that it gave one a
feeling that the building was swaying, though it stood firm as a cliff
of granite.
Flint leaned over the railing. "See!" he said, "there is a great white
gull which has beaten itself to death against the light, and fallen
there, close to that fringy line of mottled seaweed on the beach."
"Don't!" exclaimed Winifred, turning pale, and leaning further back
against the light-house wall.
Flint saw in an instant that she was feeling dizzy, but thought it
best for her to ignore the fact.
"Come," he said, "we must be going down now, unless Dr. Cricket is to
lose his game entirely. You go first, Jim! I will come next."
Jimmy started down, whooping as he went, for the pleasure of hearing
his voice echo and re-echo from the bare walls.
Flint glanced somewhat anxiously at Winifred. He saw her put her foot
upon the first stair and then draw back. At the same instant he caught
the cause of her terror. Her bandaged wrist prevented her grasping the
balustrade, or getting any better support than the smooth wall to
which to cling.
"Put your hand on my shoulder, and count the steps aloud as you go."
He spoke like one who does not question obedience; and, somewhat to
her own surprise, Winifred found herself meekly doing as she was bid.
The last part of his advice was even better than the first, for it
occupied her mind, and also gave her the encouragement of feeling that
at each step she had lessened the distance between her and _terra
firma_ by one.
Flint felt the hand upon his shoulder tremble like a leaf; but he
never turned his head, only moved steadily onward and downward, with a
regularity and solidity which soon told upon Winifred's nervous
dizziness.
When she reached the ground, and stood once more in the sunlight of
the open doorway, she looked at him with a little tremulous smile. "A
hundred and seventeen!" she exclaimed. "I am sure I shall never
forget how many steps there are leading to the Bug Light."
"What a fool you are, Fred!" Jimmy remarked, with family frankness.
"I am," admitted Winifred. "No one knows it better than I, except,
perhaps, Mr. Flint."
"I know nothing of the kind," her companion answered with unwonted
cordiality. "Any one may be subject to a fit of dizziness, and to be
minus an arm under such circumstances makes the situation really
uncomfortable. We must try it again some day, to give you an
opportunity to prove to yourself that it was only an affair of the
moment."
"Dear me!" thought Winifred to herself, "why can't he always be nice
like that! He seems to be a queer kind of stratified rock; you never
know what you are going to strike next."
Aloud, she said, "I fancy, Jim, it must be past the White-House dinner
hour, and papa has grown worried and sent out scouts to look for you
and me. See, here is Ben Bradford!"
Looking down the road, Flint saw approaching them a tall, long-legged
youth whom he dimly remembered among the group on the porch of the
White-House the night before. His hair was parted in the middle, and
thickly pomaded to restrain its natural inclination towards curling.
His ears were large, and set on at right angles to his face. His nose
was Roman, and its prominence had rendered it peculiarly sensitive to
sunburn. His manners were too frank to be polished. As he joined them
now, he succeeded in making it evident at once that Flint's further
presence was entirely superfluous. This juvenile candor would have had
no effect, had not Winifred supplemented it by saying:--
"Mr. Bradford will take charge of me and my cape, Mr. Flint; I really
cannot consent to trouble you further."
Her manner was equivalent to a dismissal. Flint handed over the cape,
as she bade him, to young Bradford's eager grasp, bowed, and turned
his steps homeward. As he strolled along, he felt a curiously sudden
change of mood, from the elation of the morning to a depression half
physical, half mental.
"I wonder," he said to himself, "if this is not another phase of my
inheritance from Dr. Jonathan. I remember the old gentleman used to
complain that his constitution was an unhappy one from birth, attended
with 'flaccid solids, sizy and scarce fluids, and a low tide of
spirits.' The description amused me in my youth; but I begin to have
an uncomfortably sympathetic sense of his state of mind and body. I
wonder, by the way, what _he_ would have done about that portrait. I
never heard that he or any other Puritan gave away his property to
any extent; and this portrait I regard as virtually mine. To be sure,
I have not paid for it; but I had fully determined to purchase it,
and--Yes, to all intents and purposes, it belongs to me. Now, to be
expected to give it up, just because I happen to hear of some one else
who wants it too, is asking a little too much. If I had avoided the
girl, as I intended, I should never have heard of her search for her
beloved great-grandmother. No, my mind is made up; I shall keep that
picture--of course I shall. I am glad I put it into the closet before
Brady came."