A GENTLE LADY OF FORTUNE DECIDES TO FACE A STORM
The afternoon was hot and sulky. Still, as the party had fixed that day
for leaving The Island, they would not change their plan. Old Dempster
said there would certainly be “considerable of a blow.”
All the party had longed for a storm; the young ladies had rhapsodised
about billows and breakers and driving spray and heroic encounters
with warring elements. Now that the long roll of premonitory surges
was crashing in sullenly on Black Rock Head and Wrecker’s Point, they
seemed to shrink a little from billows unsunlit. Grandeur was too much
for them. To recline on the rocks under a parasol held by a gentle
cavalier, this was gay and dressy and afforded the recumbent and her
attendant knight indefinite possibilities. But ladies are not lovely in
submarine armour, and muslins limply collapse when salt showers come
whirling in from shattered waves. The great wild terror of the certain
storm made itself felt among the gay party. They were quite willing
to hasten their departure and pass the night quietly at Loggerly.
They would spend also a quiet next day there and take the train on the
second morning for Portland and Boston.
Miss Sullivan preferred to stay for the promised entertainment. She
seemed already a little excited out of her usual tranquil reserve
by the thought that Nature was to act a wild drama for her benefit.
Besides, apart from the storm, she was willing to pass one solitary
day on the rocks and along the beach. She also longed for one last
master-view from the mountain above Dempster’s house. She was glad
to see all these without the intrusion of gaiety. It may have been
a mood; it may have been character. She would visit, for perpetual
recollection, the best spots undisturbed; a storm would be clear gain.
Mr. Dempster promised to drive her over to Loggerly next evening, rain
or shine.
_Au revoir!_ and they were off, some walking, some already mounted
into the great farm wagon. They had a very lively time through the
delicate birch woods. Miss Julia Wilkes was quite sure she had seen a
deer. Blooming lips were brighter for the strawberries they crushed;
rosy fingers rosier for plucking the same. When they reached the open
country and were all seated in the wagon, taking the down-hills at a
gallop, and the up-hills at an impetus, Julia turned to her mother,
that excellent, gossipy person.
“Miss Sullivan has a strange fancy,” said she, “to wander about alone
in wild places. Did you notice how almost handsome she was to-day?”
“Yes,” put in the _fortis Gyas_ Cutus; “she looked like a cheerful
Banshee, inspired at the thought of a storm.”
“Mary Sullivan was nobly handsome once,” said Mrs. Wilkes, “and will
be soon again, I hope, now that she is rich and done with all family
troubles.”
“Is she very rich?” asked Cloanthus Fortisque, friend of Gyas. “I’m
sorry I’m so much afraid of her. She may be sweet as ice-cream, but she
is colder. A feller couldn’t sail in with much chance.”
Miss Julia pouted a little at this ingenuous remark of Fortisque and
devoted herself to Gyas Cutus for the rest of the journey.
* * * * *
It was lonely at Dempster’s when the gay party was gone. The house
looked singularly small and mean. Mrs. Dempster was baking wondrous
bread; bread for which all the visitors had gone away bulkier. Miss
Miranda Dempster was up to her elbows in strawberries. She was a
magnificent lioness of a woman, with a tawny mane of redundant locks.
The kitchen was close and the hot, heavy atmosphere affected Miss
Sullivan’s views as to the quality of her hostess’s bread. She walked
out upon the little meadow, a bit of tender culture between the forest
and the rude and rocky shore. Old Dempster and Daniel, his son,
were hurrying their hay into the ox-cart. The oxen seemed to stand
unnecessarily knockkneed and feeble in the blasting heat. Yet the sun
was obscured and there came puffs of breeze from seaward. But these
were puffs explosive, sultry, volcanic, depressing.
As Miss Sullivan approached, Dempster was tossing up an enormous mass
of hay to Daniel. A puff of wind caught it and one half “diffused to
empty air,” making air no longer empty but misty with hay-seed, and
aromatic with mild fragrance. Dempster shook himself and stood leaning
on his pitchfork. He was a grand old yeoman, worthy to be the father
of heroes. The Island, though not a solitary one, had been to him a
Juan Fernandez. He was a contriver of all contrivances, a builder of
all that may be built. He farmed, he milled, he fished, he navigated
in shapely vessels of his own shaping; his roof-tree was a tree of his
own woods, felled and cleft by himself. He had split his own shingles
as easily as other men mend a toothpick; with these he had tented his
roof-tree over. Miss Sullivan and he were great friends, and now, as
she drew near, he looked at her with kindly eyes.
“See, Miss Sullivan,” said he, “them oxen has stopped chewin’ the
cud--another sure sign of a storm. The wind is sou’west. It’ll be
short, but hot an’ heavy--a kind er horriken.”
“If the storm is severe, what will all these fishing-vessels do?” she
asked. “I have counted nearly a hundred this afternoon.”
“Most on ’em will go birds’-nestin’ ’round in the bays an’ coves along
shore. Some on ’em alluz gits caught, an’ that’s what makes me feel
kind er anxious now. You see, my boy Willum has been buyin’ a schooner
up to New Brunswick, with a pardner of his, and he’s jest as like as
not to be takin’ her down to Boston about now.”
“I hope not!” cried Miss Sullivan, shuddering involuntarily in the hot
chill of another isolated blast.
“Wal, worryin’ won’t mend nothin’,” said the father, with stoic
calmness. “Come, Dan’l, we must hurry up with this ’ere hay,” and the
two fell to work again; but the face of the elder man was very grave as
he glanced, from time to time, at the grey sky and sullen sea.
Miss Sullivan strolled on across the meadow to Black Rock Head. There
she had often sat in brilliant days and sent her looks and thoughts
a-dreaming beyond the misty edge of the ocean world. To-day a strange,
dismal heaviness in the air made dreams nightmares. Perpetual calm
seemed destined to dwell upon the ocean, so unruffled was its surface
and unsuggestive of storms to be. Looking down from the Head, Miss
Sullivan would scarcely have discerned the great, slow surges, lifting
and falling monotonously. They made themselves felt, however, when
they met the opponent crag. A vast chasm stood open in its purple
rocks, and as the lazy waves fell upon the unyielding shore, they
flowed in, filling this cavernous gulf almost to the brim with foaming
masses. Then, as the surge deliberately withdrew, these ambitious
waters, abandoned and unsupported, plunged downward in a wild
whirlpooling panic, stream overwhelming stream, all seething together
furiously, hissing, roaring, thundering, until again they met the
incoming breaker, and again essayed as vainly to rise above control and
overcome the enduring land.
Mists, slowly uprising, had given sunset a dull reception, and the
great southeastern cloud-bank was growing fast heavier and heavier.
Puffs of driving fog began to hide the mountain and lower down upon the
Dempster house. Darkness fell, and at last Miss Sullivan was driven in.