STORM CLOUDS THREATEN
The next week Gusty Durgin made her debut as a picture actress. She
had pestered Mr. Bane morn, noon, and night at the hotel until finally
the leading man obtained Mr. Anscomb's permission to work the buxom
waitress into a picture.
"But nothin' funny, Mr. Bane," Gusty begged. "Land sakes! It's the
easiest thing in the world to get a laugh out of a fat woman fallin'
down a sand bank, or a fat man bein' busted in the face with a custard
pie. I don't want folks to laugh at my fat. I want 'em to forget that
I _am_ fat."
"Do you know, Miss Grayling," said Bane, recounting this to Louise,
"_that_ is art. Gusty has the right idea. Many a floweret is born to
blush unseen, the poet says. But can it be we have found in Gusty
Durgin a screen artist in embryo?"
Louise was interested enough to go to the beach early to watch Gusty in
a moving picture part.
"A real sad piece 'tis, too," the waitress confided to Louise. "I got
to make up like a mother--old, you know, and real wrinkled. And when
my daughter (she's Miss Noyes) is driv' away from home by her father
because she's done wrong, I got to take on like kildee 'bout it. It's
awful touchin'. I jest cried about it ha'f the night when this Mr.
Anscomb told me what I'd have to do in the picture.
"Land sakes! I can cry re'l tears with the best of 'em--you see if I
can't, Miss Grayling. You ought to be a movie actress yourself. It
don't seem just right that you ain't."
"But I fear I could not weep real tears," Louise said.
"No. Mebbe not. That's a gift, I guess," Gusty agreed. "There! I
got to go now. He's callin' me. The boss's sister will have to wait
on all the boarders for dinner to-day. An' my! ain't she sore! But if
I'm a success in these pictures you can just believe the Cardhaven Inn
won't see _me_ passin' biscuits and clam chowder for long."
In the midst of the rehearsal Louise saw a figure striding along the
shore from the direction of Tapp Point, and her heart leaped. Already
there seemed to be a change in the appearance of Lawford.
His sisters, who came frequently to see Louise at Cap'n Abe's, had told
her their brother, was actually working in one of his father's
factories. He had not even obtained a position in the office, but in
the factory itself. He ran one of the taffy cutting machines, for one
thing, and wore overalls!
"Poor Ford!" Cecile said, shaking her head. "He's up against it. I'm
going to save up part of my pocket money for him--if he'll take it. I
think daddy's real mean, and I've told him so. And when Dot Johnson
comes I'm not going to treat her nice at all."
Lawford, however, did not look the part of the abused and disowned
heir. He seemed brisker than Louise remembered his being before and
his smile was as winning as ever.
"Miss Grayling!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.
"Lawford! I am _so_ glad to see you," she rejoined frankly. And then
she had to pull her hands away quickly and raise an admonitory finger.
"Walk beside me--and be good," she commanded. "Do you realize that two
worlds are watching us--the world of The Beaches and the movie world as
well?"
"Hang 'em!" announced Lawford with emphasis, his eyes shining. "Think!
I've never even thanked you for what you did for me that day. I
thought Betty Gallup hauled me out of the sea till Jonas Crabbe at the
lighthouse put me wise."
"Never mind that," she said. "Tell me, how do you like your work? And
why are you at home again?"
"I'm down here for the week-end---to get some more of my duds, to tell
the truth. I'm going to be a fixture at the Egypt factory--much to
dad's surprise, I fancy."
"Do you like it?" she asked him, watching his face covertly.
"I hate it! But I can stick, just the same. I have a scheme for
improving the taffy cutting machines, too. I think I've a streak in me
for mechanics. I have always taken to engines and motors and other
machinery."
"An inventor!"
"Yes. Why not?" he asked soberly, "Oh! I'm not going to be one of
those inventors who let sharp business men cheat them out of their
eye-teeth. If I improve that candy cutter it will cost I. Tapp real
money, believe me!"
Louise's eyes danced at him in admiration and she dimpled. "I think
you are splendid, Lawford!" she murmured.
It was a mean advantage to take of a young man. They were on the open
beach and every eye from the lighthouse to Tapp Point might be watching
them. Lawford groaned deeply--and looked it.
"Don't," she said. "I know it's because of me you have been driven to
work."
"You know that, Miss Grayling? Louise!"
"Yes. I had a little talk with your father. He's _such_ a funny man!"
"If you can find anything humorous about I. Tapp in his present mood
you are a wonder!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Louise!" He could not keep his
hungry gaze off her face.
"You're a nice boy, Lawford," she told him, nodding. "I liked you a
lot from the very first. Now I admire you."
"Oh, Louise!"
"Don't look like that at me," she commanded. "They'll see you.
And--and I feel as though I were about to be eaten."
"You will be," he said significantly. "I am coming to the store
to-night. Or shall I go to see your aunt first?"
"You'd better keep away from Aunt Euphemia, Lawford," she replied,
laughing gayly. "Wait till my daddy-prof comes home. See him."
"And you really love me? Do you? Please . . . dear!"
She nodded, pursing her lips.
"But eighteen dollars a week!" groaned Lawford. "I think the super
would have made it an even twenty if it hadn't been for dad."
"Never mind," she told him, almost gayly. "Maybe the invention will
make our fortune."
At that speech Lawford's cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and
visibly increased. Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a
thorough knowledge of her own heart. Having made up her mind that
Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would
approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man
know his good fortune.
Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind. Cap'n Abe said:
"Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a
feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise? I thought you was a girl with too
much sense for that!"
"But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling.
"Hi-mighty! I s'pect that's so. An', anyway, he does seem to improve.
He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy
factories."
"But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed
Louise. "We could have so much better times if he and I could play
along the shore this summer and not have to think about hateful money."
"My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken
irreverently about sacred things. "Money ain't never hateful, Niece
Louise."
On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth.
Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp
came in to call on Louise. The good woman hugged the girl and wept on
her bosom.
"I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she
said. "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I
look at him. And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry
for him, too."
Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state
most of the time.
"But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he's done. Only there's no use
expectin' him to admit it, or that he'll change. If Fordy won't marry
Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him. I don't know what I shall
say to her when she does come."
"Maybe she will not appear at all," Louise suggested comfortingly.
"I don't know. I got a letter from her mother putting the visit off
till later. But it can't be put off forever. Anyhow, when she comes
Lawford says he won't be at home. I hope the girls will act nice to
her."
"_I_ will," Louise assured her. "And I'll make Mr. Tapp like me yet;
you see if I don't."
"Oh, I can't hope for that much, my dear," sighed the lachrymose lady,
shaking her head; but she kissed Louise again.
Lawford waved a hand to her at her chamber window early on Monday
morning as L'Enfant Terrible drove him in the roadster to Paulmouth to
catch the milk train. All the girls were proud of their brother
because, as Cecile said, he was proving himself to be "such a perfectly
good sport after all." And perhaps I. Tapp himself admired his son for
the pluck he was showing.
They corresponded after that--Louise and Lawford. As she could not
hope to hear from the _Curlew_ again until the schooner made the port
of Boston, Lawford's letters were the limit of her correspondence.
Louise had always failed to make many close friends among women.
Her interests aside from those at the store and with the movie people
were limited, too. The butterfly society of The Beaches did not much
attract Louise Grayling.
Aunt Euphemia manifestly disapproved of her niece at every turn. The
Lady from Poughkeepsie had remained on the Cape for the full season in
the hope of breaking up the intimacy between Louise and Lawford Tapp.
His absence, which she had believed so fortunate, soon proved to be
merely provocative of her niece's interest in the heir of the Taffy
King.
Nor could she wean Louise from association with the piratical looking
mariner at Cap'n Abe's store. The girl utterly refused to be guided by
the older woman in either of these particulars.
"You are a reckless, abandoned girl!" Aunt Euphemia declared. "I am
sure, no matter what others may say, that awful sailor is no fit
companion for you.
"And as, for Lawford Tapp----Why, his people are impossible, Louise.
Wherever you have your establishment, if you marry him, his people,
when they visit you will have to be apologized for," the indignant
woman continued.
"Let--me--see," murmured Louise. "How large an 'establishment' should
you think, auntie, we could keep up on eighteen dollars a week?"
"Eighteen dollars a week!" exclaimed Aunt Euphemia, aghast.
"Yes. That is Lawford's present salary. Wages, I think they call it
at the factory. He gets it in cash--in a pay envelope."
"Mercy, Louise! You are not in earnest?"
"Certainly. My young man is going to earn our living. If he marries
me his father will cut him off with the proverbial shilling. I. Tapp
has other matrimonial plans for Lawford."
"What?" gasped the horrified Mrs. Conroth. "He does not approve of
you?"
"Too true, auntie. I have driven poor Lawford to work in a candy
factory."
"That--that upstart!" exploded the lady. But she did not refer to
Lawford.
It was evident that Aunt Euphemia saw nothing but the threat of storm
clouds for her niece in the offing. Trouble, deep and black, seemed,
to her mind to be hovering upon the horizon of the future,
As it chanced, the weather about this time seemed to reflect Aunt
Euphemia's mood. The summer had passed with but few brief tempests.
Seldom had Louise seen any phase of the sea in its wrath.
September, however, is an uncertain month at best. For several days a
threatening haze shrouded the distant sea line. The kildees, fluttered
and shrieked over the booming surf.
Washy Gallup, meeting Louise as she strolled on the beach,
prognosticated:
"Shouldn't be surprised none, Miss Lou, if we had a spell of weather.
Mebbe we'll have an airly equinoctooral. We sometimes do.
"Then ye'll hear the sea sing psalms, as the feller said, an' no
mistake. Them there picture folks'll mebbe git a show at a re'l storm.
That's what they been wishin' for--an' a wreck off shore. Land sakes!
if they'd ever _seed_ a ship go to pieces afore their very eyes they
wouldn't ask for a second helpin'--no, ma'am!"
That evening threatening clouds rolled up from seaward and mantled the
arch of the sky. The fishing boats ran to cover in the harbor before
dark. The surf rumbled louder and louder along the shore.
And all night the sea mourned its dead over Gull Rocks.