HURRICANE ISLAND
Jane went over to him, smiling in her friendly way. The boy slipped
down from his rock with the grace of a wild animal. Jane thought that
she had never seen a more beautiful and charming looking boy. Very
tall and with a small well-set head, he had the unmistakable look of
race.
“I am Jane Pellew and this is Allen Breckenbridge,” said Jane with a
strange little thrill as she realized that she had used Breck’s full
name in the introduction.
She stretched out her hand and it was taken with the greatest poise
and courteousness. “I am Frederick Gray,” he said, dropping her hand
and giving Breck a cordial little nod.
His voice had the peculiar quality of keeping the same tone, never
rising or falling at the end of a sentence, and there seemed to be a
definite spacing between each word. It did not, however, produce the
monotonous, sing-song effect that Jane had so often noticed in the New
Englanders’ voices. The boy’s voice was full and rich and soothing.
“I didn’t see you until you stood up,” Jane told him.
“No wonder, my clothes are just the color of the rocks. I sometimes
feel that I am really part of this island, do you know,” Frederick
Gray said with a trace of wistfulness. “We watched your yacht come in
the other night. I was afraid you would go away without my seeing any
of you.”
Jane wondered who “we” were. She had an odd feeling that the boy was
the only person who stayed on the island, for as he had said, he did
seem such a part of it.
Her wonder was short lived, for as she and Breck and the boy went up a
narrow rocky path, approaching the first of the group of houses, two
tow-headed little boys emerged from the bushes and ran scuttling into
the open door of the house.
Breck called after them reassuringly, “Hey, Buddies! Come back, we
won’t hurt you!”
Frederick Gray smiled and told them that they were his youngest
brothers and that they were afraid because they weren’t used to seeing
anybody but his mother and father and his oldest sister.
“She is away at school now, so they will probably be afraid of her
when she comes back.”
“What in the world is she doing away at school this time of the year?”
said Jane, in surprise.
“I meant college; she is at Columbia in the summer school,” the boy
explained, adding rather proudly, “I am going to New York and live
with her this winter, because Daddy wants me to go to Horace Mann
before I go to Yale.”
“You are sure you have got time to show your island and sure you don’t
mind it,” Breck asked, feeling that if he were the owner of such a
near future he would no doubt be very busy.
“You don’t know how glad I am to see people. I’m always so glad when
people come on the island. It is really a pleasure to show them
around. You know, of course, that this was once a quarry, and at one
time several hundred workmen lived here.”
“We didn’t know it, but we certainly should have if we had given any
notice to that huge crane and all those slabs of granite heaped up on
the beach. The workmen, of course, lived in those cottages?” asked
Breck interestedly.
“I wish Daddy would come out and tell you about it, because he knows
so much more about it than I do, though I was a little boy when we
first came here. There is an awful lot of machinery connected with the
quarry; I never have been interested in it, and so don’t know very
much about it. Daddy knows all about every kind of machine. But I
can’t disturb him now because he is working on his plans for some sort
of submarine detector,” the boy told them as he led them past his
vine-covered home towards a frame building about a hundred and fifty
feet long and fifty feet wide.
“How did you happen to come here to live? You don’t mind me calling
you Fred, do you?” Jane asked as they entered the strangely shaped
building.
“My uncle had the contract to build a sea wall and he knew that
granite was on this island. He found that it would be cheaper to start
a quarry here and carry it over to where they were building the sea
wall than it would be to have to transport it from some other point
much farther away. After the sea wall was finished and there wasn’t
any more use for operating the quarry, my uncle took his workmen and
they went back to their regular working place. Then, you see, my
uncle didn’t like to leave all these houses and machinery without
some one as a sort of overseer, and as Daddy likes to be quiet so he
can work on his inventions, they got together and made arrangements
for us to come out here.”
“Don’t you ever get bored or lonesome,” Breck asked the boy.
“It was more fun before my sister went away, of course, but there
really is plenty to do. I made enough money off lobsters last year to
buy that boat you passed on the way in and then, of course, there are
an awful lot of books Daddy brought with us.”
“Breck,” said Jane, wrinkling her forehead, “why couldn’t Fred sail
Tim Reynolds’ boat back to Nantucket?”
Breck looked at the boy and shook his head. “Too much for him to
handle by himself.”
But the boy’s face lit up at Jane’s words. “What size is she?”
“Thirty feet, Tim said, didn’t he, Jane?”
“I could trim the jib aft and handle her all right,” the boy said with
such confidence that Breck would have believed him if he had said he
intended to give Thomas Lipton and his “Shamrock IV” time and come in
ahead of him.
“Don’t you suppose you could get some other boy to go along with you,
so it wouldn’t work you so hard?” Jane said, rather amused by Breck’s
rapid change of expression.
“Virg Bradford over on the mainland might go. I’ll row over and see
and let you know tonight.” The boy was delighted at the prospect of a
real sail.
“Then suppose you just come in time for supper and we can talk it over
with Mr. Wing and Tim and see what they say,” said Breck, not
considering it worth while to mention consulting Fred’s father, as it
was evident from the boy’s account of the inventor and from his own
quick way of deciding things, that he was the man of the family.
Fred walked them the length of the building, telling them that it was
the polishing room.
“You look mighty thinky,” Breck said to Jane, noticing that she had
wrinkled up her forehead again.
“I believe it is a real thought, too, this time. I was just thinking
that this long building might have been some ancient dining hall. You
know the kind where ‘the eagles scream in the roof trees.’ With all
these cottages and this for a sort of mess room, I don’t see why some
one couldn’t make a lot of money running this place as a sort of
summer colony. It has a marvelous outlook, wonderful boating, and the
swimming would be all right I suppose if you could ever get used to
such freezing water. How about it, Fred?” she asked, turning to the
boy.
“I go in every day and so do Mother and the kids. Dad too, if he
thinks about it,” Fred answered. “I used to think that it was an awful
pity for those houses to be empty in the summer and sometimes I tried
to get Dad to talk about it, but he always said that it wasn’t any
use, because we had enough money and he couldn’t be quiet if there
were a lot of summer people always about.”
“Do you suppose there would be any trouble about renting the island
from your uncle?” Breck asked the boy. He had been looking around at
the attractive cottages with growing interest and a decidedly
ruminating eye, since Jane had suggested the possibility of a
flourishing summer colony. Gradually the thought was taking place in
his mind that it would be an unusual and remunerative way of spending
the following spring and summer. The thought of himself as a rising
young business man was amusing to him as he remembered his position
as a deck hand on Mr. Wing’s yacht. Then he came to the realisation
that such a project would take some capital and he said a smothered
“Damn!”
But Jane heard it. “What? Breck, things in general or some person or
thing in particular?”
“Me first and next my luck, then things.” Then he told her what he had
been thinking, adding that it would give him endless opportunity for
copy and also unlimited time to write but, of course, it was a foolish
impossibility.
“Breck, you are terribly ignorant about business and I don’t suppose I
am much better, but I seem to know that there are such things as
companies and, as long as I thought of it, I think I at least ought to
have a chance to buy some stock. Besides let’s tell Mr. Wing about it,
and when I get home I will talk it over with Daddy. It would be an
awful lot of fun even if we didn’t make much off of it the first year.
I know lots of people at home that are always trying to find some new
place to spend the summer. Dad and I were wondering what I was going
to do with myself just before I left this summer. I don’t appear to
have been born with any special talents and I couldn’t bear the idea
of making my debut. Of course, I couldn’t take the housekeeping over
from Aunt Min, because that’s all she has in her life.”
“Weren’t born with any special talent! Why, Jane, you were born with
the greatest talent in the world, that of making everybody with whom
you come in contact love you. And you just wait till I can offer you a
house to keep,” Breck said, entirely forgetting Fred.
“Wouldn’t these houses be enough to start on?” asked Jane. “I’m young
yet and not much of a housekeeper.” Jane was blushing and her eyes had
a very happy light in them.
“Oh, Jane! What do you mean?” cried Breck, catching the girl’s hands
and drawing her towards him.
“I simply mean that you needn’t wait until you can get any more houses
before--before--you--before--”
“Before what?”
“Before you ask me to keep one for you. Now aren’t we modern, though?
I reckon I’ve done the proposing, but I’m not the least embarrassed
over it. Of course, if you had refused me, I might have felt a bit
shy.”
Jane’s voice was muffled by reason of the fact that Breck was allowing
very little room for speech and her sentences had more punctuations
than a mere writer can put in print.
“Refuse you! Oh, Jane, what a darling you are! I can’t believe this
thing has really happened to me, when I think how miserable I have
been during the last months.”
“Well if you doubt it you can question the witnesses,” laughed Jane.
“Oh, that boy Fred!” exclaimed Breck. “I forgot him.”
But Frederick Gray had beaten a hasty retreat when he saw how matters
were going between his new-found friends and had disappeared around a
boulder, but his little tow-headed brothers were not so nice in their
behavior. Silently they had entered on the love scene and had stood
hand in hand viewing with wonder and astonishment the surprising
carryings on of the Hurricane Island interlopers.
“Ith that girl your thweetheart?” lisped the younger one.
“Yeth, and the thweeteth thweetheart ever,” declared Breck. “Come
back!” he called to Frederick, whose figure he could see in the
distance. “The worst is over, old man. That is, over until next time.
You are going to be a member of this firm, Fred, so you must come and
let us talk it over with you.”
“All right, sir,” said Fred, whose ears were crimson from
embarrassment. He looked at Breck with even more admiration than
before. Any man who could win such a girl as Miss Jane Pellew was
surely a hero in the eyes of the island boy. Fred was almost sorry he
could not help being such a gentleman. When he saw how the wind lay,
he felt it incumbent upon him to turn his back and walk off but he had
a pardonable curiosity about how a man went to work to make love to a
girl like Jane.
Hand in hand, Jane and Breck made their way to the beach. It seemed to
the pair of lovers that the already perfect day was even more perfect
than it had been before. The sky was bluer, the sea more sparkling.
The “Boojum,” riding at anchor in the bay, looked like a fairy ship,
while the gulls that circled around her seemed whiter and more
graceful than ever gulls had been before.
“Oh, Breck, isn’t life beautiful?” said Jane, but in the corner of her
eye was a tiny unshed tear. “It is so beautiful I wish everybody knew
how beautiful it is, all the poor little sick children and tired
mothers.”
“Why, honey, I was just thinking the same thing. I don’t know why
being happier than I’ve ever been in my life should make me think of
the suffering children on the East Side, but it has somehow. Those
gulls shouldn’t make me think of little half-starved children over on
Avenue A. Heaven knows there is nothing white about them, except their
little pinched faces, but they do all the same.”
“I know why you are thinking of them!” exclaimed Jane. “It is because
this place would be such a corking one to bring the kids to. Let’s
have our scheme be not just a money making one but one to help
somebody besides ourselves. Oh Breck, let’s try to have some of those
little creatures here with us every summer.”
“Jane, Jane, what a girl you are!” and Breck wished there weren’t so
many little tow-headed boys on the island, for he felt he’d like to
try to make Jane understand a little better how much he adored her but
the little Grays were trotting along by their side totally unconscious
of how out of place they were.