BITTER WATERS
Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her
New England ancestry if not of her father's Celtic blood, had
brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pass. One might have said, if
one were hardened enough, that had the young woman "possessed an
ounce of sense" she would not have made herself penniless, an
outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from
an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain.
She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the
real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead. And those hours of
torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila's soul.
She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief
interview with her. Had she not shut herself away from him--refused
to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the
_Seamew_--she must have broken down, given way to that womanly
weakness born of love for the man of her choice.
For Sheila knew how Tunis Latham suffered. She felt that her course
was right; nevertheless she fully appreciated how keen the blow of
her decision fell upon the partner in her sin.
A sin it was--almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime.
To seize upon another girl's identity; to usurp another's chance; to
foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball
homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely
a phantom--the thought of it all was now a draught of which the
dregs were very, very bitter.
Over and over again she recalled all that Ida May Bostwick had said
to and of her. It was all true! Coarse and unfeeling as the shopgirl
was, Sheila lashed her troubled soul with the thought that what Ida
May had said was deserved. Neither circumstances nor the fact that
Tunis had suggested the masquerade excused the transgression.
The days of her waiting on fate, alone in the cabin under Wreckers'
Head, gave no surcease to her mental castigation. Her sin loomed the
more huge as the hours dragged their slow length by.
And yet, with it all, Sheila's keenest anguish came through her
renunciation of Tunis' love. She could see no possible way of
holding to that if she would purge herself of the fault she had
committed.
And above the stain of her false position since she had come to the
Cape was the overcloud of that accusation which had first warped
Sheila Macklin's life and humbled her spirit. She believed that she
could never escape the shame of that prosecution and punishment for
a crime she had not committed.
She believed that, no matter where she might go nor how blamelessly
she might live, the fact that she had been sentenced to a woman's
reformatory would crop up like the ugly memory of a horrid dream to
embitter her existence. Was her life linked with Tunis Latham's, he
must suffer also from that misfortune.
And so Sheila Macklin waited from hour to hour, from day to day,
dully and in a brooding spirit, for release from a situation which
must in time embitter her whole nature.
* * * * *
From the cabin at the foot of the seaward bluff of Wreckers' Head,
the coming of the black gale out of the northeast was watched
anxiously by Sheila, from the very break of this day. Tunis might be
on the sea. She doubted if the threat of bad weather would hold the
_Seamew_ in port.
There was no rain--just a wind which tore across the waste of waters
within view of her station, scattering their crests in foam and
spoondrift, and rolling them in huger and still huger breakers on
the strand. It was a magnificent sight, but a terrifying one as
well. The girl watched almost continually for a white patch against
the black of the storm which might mark a sailing craft in peril.
Steam vessels went past, several of them. They, surely, were in
little danger, were their hulls ordinarily sound and their engines
perfect. All the fishing craft had made for cover the night before.
The New York-Boston steamers would keep to the inside passage in
this gale.
Sheila had made all taut and trim inside the cabin. She had plenty
of firewood and sufficient provisions to last her for a time.
About noon she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sand. It was
little John-Ed who first appeared before her eyes. He thrust a
letter into Sheila's hand.
"Dad brought it up from the port this morning, and I got it away
from him. Say," he continued, evidently much disturbed, "he's coming
here."
"Who is coming here--your father?"
"No, no! Not dad. I--I couldn't help it. I didn't tell him. I said
you wanted to play alone here at being shipwrecked, and I was just
like you said--your man Friday."
"Who do you mean?" asked Sheila, greatly agitated. "Not--"
"I bet 'twas that Tunis Latham told him you was here," continued
John-Ed. "Anyway, don't blame me. All I done was to help him down
the path."
He disappeared. Sheila stepped to the door. Cap'n Ira was laboring
over the sands toward the cabin, leaning on his cane, his coat
flapping in the wind and his cap screwed on so tightly that a
hurricane could not possibly have blown it away.
But in addition and aside from the buffeting he had suffered from
the wind, the old man looked much less trim and taut than Sheila had
ever before seen him. He had not been shaved for at least three
days; a button hung by a thread upon his coat; there was a coffee
stain on the bosom of his shirt.
He looked so miserable, and so faint, and so buffeted about, that
the girl cried out, running from the door of the cabin to meet him.
The sweat of his hard effort stood on his brow, and he panted for
breath.
"I swan! Ida May--er--well, whoever you be, gal, let me set down!
I'm near spent, and that's a fact."
"Oh, Cap'n Ball, you should not have done this!" cried the girl,
letting him lean upon her and aiding him as rapidly as possible to
the cabin door. "You should not have done this. You--you can do
nothing for me. You can do no good by coming here."
"Humph! P'r'aps not. Mebbe you're right. Let me set down on that
box, gal," he muttered.
He eased himself down upon the rough seat against the wall. He
removed the cap with an effort and took his huge handkerchief from
its crown. He mopped his brow and face and finally heaved a huge
sigh.
"I swan! That was a pull," he said. "So you're settled here. Gone to
housekeeping on your own hook, have ye?" he said.
"Just for a little while, Cap'n Ira. Only--only until I can get
away. I--I have been expecting some money--payment of one of my
father's old bills."
She slit the envelope of the letter little John-Ed had just brought
her. Inside was a pale-blue slip--a money order.
"Yes," she said. "I can get away now. I must go somewhere to earn my
living, and as far away from here as I can get."
"So you think on traveling, do you?" said the old man. "You ain't
content with Big Wreck Cove and the Head?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ira!" she cried. "You know I can't stay here. Winter is
coming. Besides, the people here--"
"Ain't none of 'em asked ye to come an' live with them?"
"Cap'n Ball!"
"Ain't ye seen Tunis?"
The girl hid her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her
shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch
of snuff.
"I cal'late," he said, after wiping his eyes, "that it ain't Tunis'
fault that you are going away any more than it is mine and
Prudence's. You just made up your mind to go."
"Cap'n Ball!" she exclaimed faintly, and again raised her eyes to
his. "Can--can I help it? _Now?_"
"I don't know," he said, pursing his lips. "I don't know, gal, as
anybody is driving you away from Wreckers' Head and them that loves
ye here."
She was speechless. She gazed at him with drenched eyes, her face
quivering uncontrollably. A hand pressed tightly to her breast
seemed endeavoring to still the wild fluttering there.
"I don't know," he repeated, "that we got much to offer a gal like
you, and that's a fact. We learned to know you pretty well while you
stayed with us, Prue and me did. Somehow, we can't just seem to get
the straight of what you told us that night you left. It--it ain't
possible that you made some mistake, is it? Mebbe you was talking
about some other gal?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ball!" she sighed. "I am able to tell you nothing that
will change your opinion of me."
"Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in
that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our
opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's."
"Cap'n Ball!"
"No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as
you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did,
through a trick--somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem
to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that
somehow--we don't know how--what you told us that night and what you
done for us before that night don't fit together nohow."
She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and
mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief.
"No, gal, we can't understand how anybody as good and loving as you
have been to us can be at heart as bad as--as other folks might try
to make out. Fact is, we know you can't be bad."
"What--what do you mean, Cap'n Ball?" she asked faintly.
"I swan! I tell ye what I'm getting at," burst out the old man. "We
want you to come back. Prudence, she wants you to come back. I swan!
I want you to come back. Why, even that dratted Queen of Sheby needs
you, Ida May--or, whatever your name is! We've got to have you!"
"Prudence can't scurcely get around the house. And that niece of
hers sits there like a stick or a stun, not willin' to scurce lift
her hand to help. Thank the Lord _she's_ goin' home to-day. Her
visit's come to an end. She don't like it down here. She says we're
all a set of--er--hicks, I believe she calls us.
"Howsomever, we're all high and dry on the reefs, gal, and it seems
likely you're the only one can get us off. You ain't got to go away
from here, if you don't want to. I've made it pretty average plain
to that Bostwick gal that no matter what happens, she's got no
expectations as far as Prudence and me are concerned. It was money
and nothing but money she was after. Her being Prudence's niece in
kind of a far-fetched way don't make it our duty--not even our
Christian duty, as Elder Minnett calls it--to keep a gal in the
house that we don't want, nor yet die at her convenience and leave
her our money. And so I'll tell the elder if he undertakes to put
his spoon in the dish again."
Sheila was listening to words that she had never expected to hear
from the old captain. Could this be true? Were Cap'n Ira and
Prudence, in spite of what they knew about her--what she had told
them and Ida May had told them--desirous of having her back? Was
there a chance, no matter what the real Ida May Bostwick could say,
for Sheila to return and take up her peaceful life with the Balls?
Could this be real? Indeed, was it right for her to do this? Tunis--
She arose and walked to the open door, looking out almost blindly
at first upon the gale-smitten sea. It was like her heart--so tossed
about and fretted by winds of opinion. What should she do? Which way
should she turn? Not to save Sheila Macklin from trouble or
disgrace. Not even to save Tunis from possible scorn. The question
that assailed her now was only: _Was it right?_
Suddenly, out upon the mountainous waves, she spied a sail. It was
reefed, flattened down, almost tri-cornered. The two sticks of the
schooner and the jaunty bowsprit pointing skyward heaved again into
view. She stood so long gazing at the craft that Cap'n Ira spoke
again.
"What d'ye say, gal?" he asked anxiously.
"Look--look here, Cap'n Ira!" she exclaimed. "Can it be the
_Seamew_? Is she trying to head in for the channel? Oh! Are they in
danger out there?"
The old man rose with his usual difficulty and hobbled to the door,
leaning on his cane. He peered out over her shoulder, and his keen
and experienced eyes saw and identified the laboring vessel almost
at once.
"I swan! That is the _Seamew_, Ida May," he exclaimed. "Tut, tut!
What's Tunis got himself into such a pickle for? 'Tain't reasonable
he should--being as good a seaman as he is.
"My, my! Why don't he get some cloth on her? He can't have lost all
his upper canvas. Don't he know he needs tops'ls to beat up aslant
of this gale and get into the shelter of the Head? I swan! If
there's men enough there to man her proper, why don't they do the
right thing?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ball," gasped the girl, "perhaps there are not enough men
with him. Perhaps his crew has deserted again."
"I swan!" rejoined the old man. "What did he set sail for, then?
Ain't he got a mite of sense? But, I tell ye, Ida May, if he don't
get more canvas on her, and get under better way, he'll never make
that channel in this world."
"Oh!"
"The schooner's sure to go on the outer reef. She never can claw off
the land now. Without help--if that's his trouble--Tunis Latham will
never get that schooner into Big Wreck Cove. And God help him and
them that's with him!" added the captain reverently.