THE WRITING OF THE BOOK
Owen Ford came over to the little house the next morning in a state of
great excitement. “Mrs. Blythe, this is a wonderful book--absolutely
wonderful. If I could take it and use the material for a book I feel
certain I could make the novel of the year out of it. Do you suppose
Captain Jim would let me do it?”
“Let you! I’m sure he would be delighted,” cried Anne. “I admit that
it was what was in my head when I took you down last night. Captain
Jim has always been wishing he could get somebody to write his
life-book properly for him.”
“Will you go down to the Point with me this evening, Mrs. Blythe? I’ll
ask him about that life-book myself, but I want you to tell him that
you told me the story of lost Margaret and ask him if he will let me
use it as a thread of romance with which to weave the stories of the
life-book into a harmonious whole.”
Captain Jim was more excited than ever when Owen Ford told him of his
plan. At last his cherished dream was to be realized and his
“life-book” given to the world. He was also pleased that the story of
lost Margaret should be woven into it.
“It will keep her name from being forgotten,” he said wistfully.
“That’s why I want it put in.”
“We’ll collaborate,” cried Owen delightedly. “You will give the soul
and I the body. Oh, we’ll write a famous book between us, Captain Jim.
And we’ll get right to work.”
“And to think my book is to be writ by the schoolmaster’s grandson!”
exclaimed Captain Jim. “Lad, your grandfather was my dearest friend.
I thought there was nobody like him. I see now why I had to wait so
long. It couldn’t be writ till the right man come. You BELONG
here--you’ve got the soul of this old north shore in you--you’re the
only one who COULD write it.”
It was arranged that the tiny room off the living room at the
lighthouse should be given over to Owen for a workshop. It was
necessary that Captain Jim should be near him as he wrote, for
consultation upon many matters of sea-faring and gulf lore of which
Owen was quite ignorant.
He began work on the book the very next morning, and flung himself into
it heart and soul. As for Captain Jim, he was a happy man that summer.
He looked upon the little room where Owen worked as a sacred shrine.
Owen talked everything over with Captain Jim, but he would not let him
see the manuscript.
“You must wait until it is published,” he said. “Then you’ll get it
all at once in its best shape.”
He delved into the treasures of the life-book and used them freely. He
dreamed and brooded over lost Margaret until she became a vivid reality
to him and lived in his pages. As the book progressed it took
possession of him and he worked at it with feverish eagerness. He let
Anne and Leslie read the manuscript and criticise it; and the
concluding chapter of the book, which the critics, later on, were
pleased to call idyllic, was modelled upon a suggestion of Leslie’s.
Anne fairly hugged herself with delight over the success of her idea.
“I knew when I looked at Owen Ford that he was the very man for it,”
she told Gilbert. “Both humor and passion were in his face, and that,
together with the art of expression, was just what was necessary for
the writing of such a book. As Mrs. Rachel would say, he was
predestined for the part.”
Owen Ford wrote in the mornings. The afternoons were generally spent
in some merry outing with the Blythes. Leslie often went, too, for
Captain Jim took charge of Dick frequently, in order to set her free.
They went boating on the harbor and up the three pretty rivers that
flowed into it; they had clambakes on the bar and mussel-bakes on the
rocks; they picked strawberries on the sand-dunes; they went out
cod-fishing with Captain Jim; they shot plover in the shore fields and
wild ducks in the cove--at least, the men did. In the evenings they
rambled in the low-lying, daisied, shore fields under a golden moon, or
they sat in the living room at the little house where often the
coolness of the sea breeze justified a driftwood fire, and talked of
the thousand and one things which happy, eager, clever young people can
find to talk about.
Ever since the day on which she had made her confession to Anne Leslie
had been a changed creature. There was no trace of her old coldness
and reserve, no shadow of her old bitterness. The girlhood of which
she had been cheated seemed to come back to her with the ripeness of
womanhood; she expanded like a flower of flame and perfume; no laugh
was readier than hers, no wit quicker, in the twilight circles of that
enchanted summer. When she could not be with them all felt that some
exquisite savor was lacking in their intercourse. Her beauty was
illumined by the awakened soul within, as some rosy lamp might shine
through a flawless vase of alabaster. There were hours when Anne’s
eyes seemed to ache with the splendor of her. As for Owen Ford, the
“Margaret” of his book, although she had the soft brown hair and elfin
face of the real girl who had vanished so long ago, “pillowed where
lost Atlantis sleeps,” had the personality of Leslie Moore, as it was
revealed to him in those halcyon days at Four Winds Harbor.
All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer--one of those summers
which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful
memories in their going--one of those summers which, in a fortunate
combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful
doings, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.
“Too good to last,” Anne told herself with a little sigh, on the
September day when a certain nip in the wind and a certain shade of
intense blue on the gulf water said that autumn was hard by.
That evening Owen Ford told them that he had finished his book and that
his vacation must come to an end.
“I have a good deal to do to it yet--revising and pruning and so
forth,” he said, “but in the main it’s done. I wrote the last sentence
this morning. If I can find a publisher for it it will probably be out
next summer or fall.”
Owen had not much doubt that he would find a publisher. He knew that
he had written a great book--a book that would score a wonderful
success--a book that would LIVE. He knew that it would bring him both
fame and fortune; but when he had written the last line of it he had
bowed his head on the manuscript and so sat for a long time. And his
thoughts were not of the good work he had done.