AUNT LUCRETIA
There was nothing thereafter in Aunt Lucretia's manner--surely not
in her speech--to lead Sheila to fear the woman did not accept her
at face value. Why should she suspect a masquerade when nobody else
did? The girl took her cue from Tunis and placidly accepted his
aunt's manner as natural.
Aunt Lucretia put the dinner on the table at once. They ate, when
there was special company, in the dining room. The meal was generous
in quantity and well cooked. It was evident that, like most country
housewives, Lucretia Latham took pride in her table. Had the visitor
come for the meal alone she would have been amply recompensed.
But the woman seldom uttered a word, and then only brief questions
regarding the service of the food. She listened smilingly to the
conversation between Tunis and the visitor, but did not enter into
it. It was difficult for the girl to feel at ease under these
circumstances.
Especially was this so after dinner, when she asked to help Aunt
Lucretia clear off the table and wash and dry the dishes. The woman
made no objection; indeed, she seemed to accept the girl's
assistance placidly enough. But while they were engaged in the
task--a time when two women usually have much to chatter about, if
nothing of great importance--Aunt Lucretia uttered scarcely a word,
preferring even to instruct her companion in dumb show where the
dried dishes should be placed.
Yet, all the time, the girl could not trace anything in Aunt
Lucretia's manner or look which actually suggested suspicion or
dislike. Tunis seemed eminently satisfied with his aunt's attitude.
He whispered to Sheila, when they were alone together:
"She certainly likes you, Ida May."
"Are you sure?" the girl asked.
"Couldn't be mistaken. But don't expect her to tell you so in just
so many words."
Later they walked about the dooryard and out-buildings--Tunis and
the visitor--and Aunt Lucretia watched them from her rocking-chair
on the porch. What her thoughts were regarding her nephew and the
girl it would be hard to guess, but whatever they were, they made
her face no grimmer than usual, and the light in her bespectacled
eyes was scarcely one of dislike or even of disapproval. Yet there
was a strange something in the woman's look or manner which
suggested that she watched the visitor with thoughts or feelings
which she wished neither the girl nor Tunis to observe.
Late in the afternoon the two young people started back for the Ball
house, taking a roundabout way. They did not even follow the patrol
path, well defined along the brink of Wreckers' Head as far as the
beach. Instead, they went down by the wagon track to the beach
itself, intending to follow the edge of the sea and the channel
around to a path that led up the face of the bluff to the Ball
homestead. It was a walk the girl had never taken.
The reaction she experienced after having successfully met and
become acquainted with Aunt Lucretia put Sheila in high spirits.
Tunis had never seen her in quite this mood. Although she was always
cheerful and not a little gay about the Ball homestead, she suddenly
achieved a spirit of sportiveness which surprised the captain of the
_Seamew_. But he wholly liked and approved of this new mood.
She had made herself a new fall frock and a pretty, close-fitting
hat--something entirely different, as he had noticed, from the
styles displayed by the other girls of Big Wreck Cove. And he was
observant enough to see that this outfit was more like what the
girls in Boston wore.
She ran ahead to pick up a shell or pebble that gleamed at the
water's edge from a long way off. She escaped a wetting from the
surf by a scant margin, and laughed delightedly at the chance she
took. Back against the foot of the bluff certain brilliant flowers
grew--fall blossoms that equaled any in Prudence Ball's garden--and
the girl gathered these and arranged them in an attractive bouquet
with a regard for color that delighted her companion.
They came, finally, in sight of a cabin back under the bank on the
far side of the little cove, where once Tunis had reaped clams while
Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba made their unfortunate slide down
the face of the bluff. The sea was so low now that Tunis could aid
the girl across the mouth of the tiny inlet on the sand bar which
defended it from the sea. There was but one channel over which she
need leap with his help.
The cabin captivated Sheila, especially when she learned it was no
longer occupied. It had a tight tin roof and a cement-pipe chimney
with a cap to keep the rain out. The window sashes had been carried
away and the door hung by a single hinge. However, the one-roomed
cabin was otherwise tight and dry.
"Sometimes fishing parties from the port come around here and camp
for a day or two," explained Tunis. "But Hosea Westcott used to live
here altogether. Even in the winter. He caught his own fish and
split and dried them; he dug clams and picked beach plums and sold
them in town, or swapped them for what he needed. Sometimes the
neighbors gave him a day's work."
"An old and lonely man, Tunis?" the girl murmured.
"That is what he was. All his immediate family was gone. So, when he
fell ill one winter and one of the coast guards found him here
almost starved and helpless, they took him away to the poor farm."
They went on around the end of the headland and walked up the beach
toward the port. Before they reached the path by which they intended
to mount to the summit of Wreckers' Head, they observed another
couple going in the same direction, following the edge of the water
on the firm strand. The woman was dressed in such brilliant hues
that she could be mistaken for nobody but a resident of Portygee
Town.
"That is the daughter of Pareta, who brought up your trunk when you
came here, Ida May," said Tunis carelessly.
"But do you see who the man is?" she said, with some surprise. "It
is your cousin."
"'Rion? So it is. Well," he added rather scornfully, "no accounting
for tastes. She's a decent-enough girl, I guess, but we don't mix
much with the Portygees. Although most of them are all right folks,
at that. But fooling around those girls sometimes starts trouble,
as 'Rion ought to know by this time."
As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain
places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely
watched by the other couple on the beach. There was nothing in this
to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since
her experience with Aunt Lucretia. Her present environment was so
far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed
nothing actually could disturb her again.
The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well. When they
came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of
smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead.
The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse
he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held:
"I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms that a cottage was near;
And I said, 'if there's peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'"
"That is pretty near right, don't you think, Ida May?"
"It is, indeed! Oh, it is!" she cried. "And my heart _is_ humble,
Tunis. I feel that God has been very good to me--and you," she added
softly.
"I've been mighty good to myself," he responded. "Ida May, there
never was a girl just like you, I guess. Anyway, I never saw such a
one. I--I don't know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the
only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward."
"Tunis!"
He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she,
blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long
lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes.
"You understand me, Ida May?" whispered the captain of the _Seamew_
eagerly. "I don't know, fixed as I am, that I've any right to talk
to you like this. But--but I can't wait any longer!"
She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked
up at him again.
"Have you thought of what all this may mean, Tunis?" she asked.
"You bet I have. I haven't been thinking of much else--not since the
first time I saw you."
"What? You felt--felt that you could like me that night when we sat
on the bench so long on the Common?"
"My Godfrey, Ida May!" he exclaimed. "Since that time you slipped on
the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and I caught you. That's
when I first knew that you were the most wonderful girl in the
world!"
"Oh, Tunis! Do you mean that?"
"I certainly do," he said stoutly.
"That--that you thought _that_? At very first sight?"
"I couldn't get you out of my mind. I went about in a sort of dream.
Why, Ida May, when Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue talked so much about
wanting that other girl down here, all I could think of was you! I
half believed it must be you that they sent me for--until I came
face to face with that other girl."
Her face dimpled suddenly; her eyes shone. The look she gave him
passed through Tunis Latham like an electric shock. He trembled. He
would have drawn her closer.
"Not here, Tunis," she whispered. "But if you dare take me--knowing
what and who I am--I am all yours. Whenever you feel that you can
take me I shall be ready. Can I say more, Tunis?"
He looked at her solemnly. "I am the happiest man alive. I am the
happiest man alive, Ida May!" he breathed.