PUT-IN-BAY
The little steamer for the islands rolled out of Sandusky Bay with
Lavinia sitting by the forward rail. She had yielded to her father's
wishes with an easy complaisance that made him suspicious, and yet, as
he stood solicitously by, he was persistent in his determination to
realize for her all the delights he had so extravagantly predicted for
the journey. He tried to rouse her interest by pointing out Johnson's
Island, but it did not possess for her, as the place where the
Confederate prisoners were confined during the war, the interest an old
soldier was able to discover in it, and though he tried his best, with
an effort at entertainment that was well-nigh pathetic, she only smiled
wanly.
He left her, after a while, her chin in her hands, looking over into the
light green waters, watching the curve of the waves the steamer tossed
away from its sharp prow. The lake was in one of its most smiling and
happy moods, though they were then at a point where storms easily lash
its shallow depths into billows that might satisfy the rage of the North
Atlantic. The lighthouse on the rocks at Marblehead had a fascination
for Lavinia; it seemed waiting for her humor, and she watched it until
the steamer had gone far on toward Kelly's Island, and left the
lighthouse behind, a white spot gleaming in the sun.
When they entered the little archipelago of the Wine Islands, with their
waters a deeper green than those out in the lake and overcast in strange
ways by mysterious shadows and cool weird reflections of the green of
the islands all about, Judge Blair came back to her and asked if she had
been seasick and how she had enjoyed the little journey. As she met him
with her strange perplexing smile, he began to doubt her again;
something assured him that she still clung to her purpose of love, and
he found himself almost wishing that she had kept to her defiant temper
of the Sunday afternoon that now seemed so far away.
When they had reached Put-in-Bay and bounded on the trolley across the
island to the huge hotel, they had their dinner and Lavinia perplexed
the judge further by retiring to her room. She said she would rest,
though she had persisted all the morning that she was not tired.
As soon as she had closed the door on her father, leaving him in doubt
and confusion, she began a long letter to Marley. She described her trip
in detail, jealous of every trifle of experience that had befallen her;
she told him of the bridal couple she had seen board the train at Clyde,
and of the showers of rice that had been thrown by the laughing bridal
party, though she omitted the lone father of the bride standing apart on
the platform craning his head anxiously for another sight of his
daughter, and trying to smile. But she gave him a sense of the romance
that had stirred in her at the sight of the lighthouse on its lonely
point of rocks and the stone towers that made the wine-cellars on
Kelly's Island look like castles.
After supper Lavinia left her father to the pleasure of renewing
acquaintance with the lawyers who thronged the lobby, and stole down to
the rocks that marked the shelving shore of the island. She saw stately
schooners, with white sails spread, and she watched, until its black
banner of smoke was but a light wraith, a big propeller towing its
convoy of grain barges across the far horizon. This calm serene passing
of the life of the lakes soothed her, filled her with a thousand
fancies, and stirred her emotions with deep, hidden hints of the mystery
of all life. As she sat there and gazed, now and then tears came to her
eyes. The waters were spread smoothly before her under the last
reflection of the sun, the twilight was coming across the lake; and as
the light followed the sun and the darkness crept behind, she looked
toward the south in the direction, as she felt, of Macochee, and thought
of her home and of her mother, of Connie and of Chad, and then she
thought of Glenn.
Far out in the lake a cluster of yellow lights moved swiftly along--one
of the big passenger steamers that nightly ply between Detroit and
Buffalo, and she read in that moving girdle of light new meanings; then
suddenly a fear seized her, a fear that was part of the ache in her
heart, and she ran into the hotel and up to her room. Then she took up
her letter again and poured out all her new sensations, her longings,
and her fears in a lengthy postscript. When she had finished, she began
to address the envelope; and she wrote on it, with pride:
"Mr. Glenn--"
And then she paused. She did not know whether he spelt his name "Marly,"
or "Marley," or "Marlay." She tried writing it each way, dozens of
times, but the oftener she tested it the less able she was to decide. It
was too ridiculous; she became exasperated with herself; then humiliated
and ashamed. When she heard her father's step in the hall, she hastily
locked her letter in her little traveling bag. The judge greeted her
warmly; he was flushed and happy, and in the highest spirits. During the
afternoon he had been meeting lawyers from all over Ohio; the evening
boats from Cleveland and Toledo had brought more of them to the island;
they were all eminent, respectable, rich, the attorneys of big
corporations. The judges of the Supreme Court and of the Circuit Courts
were there, and the excitement had reached its height when the boat from
Cleveland brought an associate justice of the United States Supreme
Court to deliver the chief address of the meeting.
Judge Blair reveled in meeting all these distinguished men; he enjoyed
the flattery in their way of addressing and introducing him. But his
conscience smote him when he saw Lavinia. He drew up a chair and sat
beside her, holding his cigar at arm's length. It was an excellent
cigar, better than he ordinarily smoked, and the thin thread of smoke
that wavered up from it filled the room almost instantly with its
delicate perfume.
"Did my little girl think her father had deserted her?" he said,
speaking of her in the third person, after the affectionate way of
parents. "He must pay better attention to her. She must come down and
meet the lawyers; they will be delighted; a justice of the Supreme Court
has just come on from Washington! She will want to meet him!"
The judge paused and twisted his head about for a puff at his cigar, and
then waited for Lavinia to glow at the prospect. But when she looked at
him, and tried to smile again, he saw the glint of tears in her eyes.
"Why come, come, dear!" he said. "What's the matter? Aren't you having a
good time? Never mind, when this meeting's over we'll go to Detroit, and
maybe up the lakes for a little trip. That'll bring the roses back!"
He pinched her cheeks playfully, but she did not respond; she looked at
him pleadingly.
"Why, Lavinia," he cried, "you aren't homesick?"
She winked bravely to stem the flood of tears and then nodded.
"Well!" he said, nonplussed. "You know, dear, we can't--"
The tears were brimming in her blue eyes, and he left his sentence
uncompleted to go on:
"So you're homesick, eh? For mama, and Connie?"
She nodded, and he studied her closely for a moment, and then he could
not resist the question that all along had been torturing him.
"And for--?"
She confirmed his fear, with quick decisive little nods. She got out her
handkerchief and hastily brushed her tears away, and then with an effort
to control herself, she looked at him and said, as if she were ready to
have it all out then:
"Yes, father, I haven't treated him right. I came away without telling
him."
Judge Blair scowled and turned away, and bit the end of his cigar. Then
he sat and studied it. Lavinia waited; she was ready for the final
contest. Presently the judge arose.
"Well, dear," he said. "Well--we'll see; of course, we can't go back
just yet--I have my address to read to-morrow, and besides, some of the
boys are talking of me for president of the Bar Association. And I had
thought, I had thought, that a little trip over to Detroit, and maybe up
to Mackinac--"
"Father," said Lavinia, looking at him now calmly, "I don't want to go
to Detroit or up to Mackinac. I'll do, of course, as you say; I'll wait
until the Bar meeting is over, but I want to go home. You might as well
know now, father--we might as well understand each other--it can be no
other way."
Judge Blair looked at his daughter a moment, and she kept her eyes
directly and firmly in his.
"Oh well," he said with a sigh, "of course, dear, if you say. I'd like
to stay until after the election though. Will you?"
"Of course," she consented.