Cape Cod Folks Part 31

This first--before I realized that I had fallen asleep on the rock, and that what I had dreamed was my sister playing, was the sound of the tide coming in, and that I was already sprinkled from head to foot with the spray. The Cradlebow continued calling to me cheerily, and would not give me time to consider the terrors of the situation then, nor afterwards, when I strove, in my half-stunned condition of mind, to weigh and appreciate the peril from which I had been rescued.

The children had wandered a mile or more along the beach and had gone home by another road. It was not yet dark. No alarm had been occasioned in Wallencamp as to my absence, but the Cradlebow, knowing that I had gone in the direction of the beach, had been moved to search for me, and had discovered me on the rock, where, in a few moments more, I should have waked to find myself at the mercy of the waves.

My deliverer laughed rea.s.suringly, sending the boat leaping upon the sh.o.r.e, holding out his hand to me, as though this were merely an everyday occurrence, the close of some ordinary excursion, but, to me, life had suddenly grown significant.

The strong warm hand which clasped mine, weak and trembling, as I stepped from the boat, I must recognize henceforth, I knew, as the link between me and the living world.

For several days afterwards I considered the matter of my relation to the Cradlebow in a new and serious light, especially in the light of present grat.i.tude, with a sense of life-long obligation; but the Cradlebow was too generous and n.o.ble to recognize the obligation, or take advantage of the grat.i.tude. He loved me, I knew. He had watched for me. He had saved my life. He should know, I resolved, that if he wished it still I would wait for him.

And the idea was not foreign to my heart, but it grew, at last, too light of wing, and disposed to take up permanent abode in the realm of fancy. A poor, handsome young lover, seeking his fortune at the ends of the earth, and the future--ah, it did send a little stab to my conscience, to think that the uncertainty of that lover's future should so have heightened, to my mind, the romance of the picture. However, meeting him in the lane one evening, as I was returning from one of my parochial calls--it was just at dusk, I remember, and we stood under the balm-of-Gilead tree, in front of Emily's gate--I said very gravely and with none of that embarra.s.sment which the occasion might seem to have warranted:--

"Luther, although I seem to myself much older than you, we are really, I suppose, of about the same age. I have known very happy attachments where inconsistencies of birth, habit, education were far greater, perhaps, than with us. I have made up my mind that, if you still desire it, I will wait for you."

"Wait for me, teacher!" exclaimed the Cradlebow, opening his eyes with a solemn, wide surprise; "why, of course!"

"Why, of course?" I questioned faintly, not knowing whether to smile at being thus abruptly disarmed, or to feel the least little bit piqued at the youth's unconscious audacity.

"What else should two people do who love each other?" There was nothing either of doubt or arraignment in the Cradlebow's serious eyes.

"Besides," he continued; "I've known it all along. See here, teacher!"

and he took from his pocket, and carefully unfolded, a sheet of paper against the background of which there lay revealed a dainty star fish, most curiously twisted about with some rare and beautiful sea vine.

"You won't find that vine washed up on this beach every day," he said eagerly. "When I showed it to Granny--'If Heaven itself had spoken, boy,'

says she, 'I should be no surer it was a fair voyage waiting you than I be now;' though I was thinking of something besides the voyage, teacher, but it's all the same, it means good luck; and wouldn't you like to keep it for us?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Oh, no!" I answered, laughingly refusing the delicate talisman. "I should blast its good intentions. I should stifle it with my cold unbelief."

The Cradlebow tenderly replaced his treasure, and laughed with me good-naturedly.

"It isn't your fault, teacher," said he, "that you weren't better brought up. If you'd always lived with our people, down here, you'd be more believing."

At all events, my severe and protracted mental exertions had proved quite unnecessary, I thought, although after this there was, in some respects, a tacitly admitted change in our converse with each other. A sort of vague, venturesome house-building for the future, in which the Cradlebow seemed to wish that I would oftener show an interest in the feminine details within doors, while I had a grand and absorbing predilection for constructing imaginary grades and turrets and mediaeval door-posts, receiving any thoughtful suggestions as to tin-kettles and pantry-shelves with gracious and smiling forbearance.

The Cradlebow seemed particularly pleased, when he came into the Ark of an evening, if I chanced to be knitting on the scarlet stockings. I did have a new and not unpleasant sense of housewifely dignity while engaged at this task, and undoubtedly a.s.sumed an air calculated to serve as an impressive exponent to my emotion. The poor scarlet stockings lengthened, meanwhile, but it was a disheartening and almost imperceptible growth. Where the article should have been most voluminous, at the calf of the leg, it grew, in spite of me, more alarmingly narrow at every round. This was after I had graduated from under Grandma Keeler's tuition, and a.s.sumed my own responsibility in the matter; so that I disdained to appeal to her for a.s.sistance in the dilemma, but thoughtfully devised means of my own for widening the stocking.

"I'll tell ye what it is, teacher," said Grandpa, who had been regarding me with that wild look which sometimes visited the old man's face when a problem seemed well nigh insoluble; "I'm afeerd, teacher, I'm afeerd that that ere stockin' ain't a goin' to fit n.o.body! I'll tell ye what it makes me think on. It makes me think o' one o' these 'ere accordions that ye open and shet. I'm afeerd, teacher, that it ain't a goin' to fit!"

"Thar! 'sh! 'sh! pa," said Grandma, with all the unction of holy disapproval; but, for once, my ever dear friend and champion was compelled to turn her back upon the scene.

In this position, she exclaimed in a low, broken tone of voice, "There may be legs, pa, as we don't know on!"

Grandpa was curiously aroused.

"I tell ye, I've travelled to the four quarters of the 'arth, ma," said he; "and set eyes on the tarnalest critters under G.o.d's canopy, but I never see anybody yit that 'ud fit into that 'ere. Besides," he added, knowingly, in a milder tone; "I reckin that 'ere stockin's meant for somebody nearer hum, and a pretty straight-legged fellow, too."

I was enabled to judge something still further of the speculations waking in the Wallencamp brain, when, having to keep Henry G. after school, one night, as a means of discipline, he bawled out:--

"Ye don't keep Simmy B. after school no more! And why not?" continued the aggrieved infant, at the same time framing for himself an answer of malicious significance: "Oh, 'cause he's Lute Cradlebow's brother!"

Social converse was at its high tide, now, in Wallencamp among the birds in the trees and the fowls in the door-yards, and quite as naturally and harmlessly so, for the most part, I think, among the beings of a superior order. They had little other recreation.

The bonfire had marked the close of the gay epoch in Wallencamp. It was too warm now for the livelier recreations of the winter. Religious interest, especially, was at a low ebb. At the evening prayer-meetings, the number of worshippers appeared but as a handful compared with the number of the unconcerned who lingered outside in the pleasant moonlight.

Conspicuous among these latter, replacing the fervid debates of the winter with a calm philosophy befitting a warmer season, were Captain Sartell and Bachelor Lot.

The old songs held the same charm for them all, however. They sang them ever with pathos in their voices and tears in their eyes.

The little unpremeditated chats by gate and roadside, the neighborly "droppings-in," grew more and more frequent.

But when poor Rebecca was taken up on the tide of social wonder and debate, and I heard whisperings concerning her, and knew that an evil suspicion had taken hold of the mind of the little community, and when finally Emily said to me; "I guess you done about right shirking off Beck, teacher. I guess she ain't no better than she ought to be:" in spite of what I felt to be my own unblemished conscience in the matter and the justice of the retribution which was overtaking Rebecca, I went often to my little room and cried bitterly for her, as well as for myself.

CHAPTER XV.

DAVID ROLLIN IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM.

Mrs. Philander Keeler grew kind. At first, especially while the fisherman was in Wallencamp, her demeanor towards me had been marked by a decided touch of coldness and mistrust. She suspected me, I thought, of trifling with the Cradlebow; now, she invariably deferred to me as a person worthy of all honor and consideration--of congratulation even, in an eminent degree.

She a.s.sumed to be on the most frank and confiding terms with me. She found a thousand little ways for promoting my physical comfort that had never occurred to her before.

So I was the more surprised, when after school, one Friday afternoon, as I was sitting in my room, this same Madeline suddenly appeared before me with her eyes glittering, her lips compressed, and her complexion of that positive green hue which it always wore when she was in a high pa.s.sion.

"There's a gentleman down stairs, waiting to see you, teacher," she said, with a peculiarly dark inflection on the word gentleman. "Oh, he's got on an awful interesting look!" snapped out Madeline, with a spiteful little laugh; "and a suit of light clothes, and a new spring overcoat, and he looked at me as though I was a pane of window-gla.s.s, and he says, 'Oh--ah--yes--is Miss Hungerford in?' I wonder if he's come back to make his farewell calls--" with another unpleasant laugh. "One thing I can tell him, he'd better steer clear of George Olver!"

Was ever a zealous young devotee, I pondered, more perplexed!

"Come this way, please," I said, holding out my hand to Madeline; and leaning back in my chair with unaffected weariness, at least. "Is Mr.

Rollin down stairs?"

"They call him that, I believe," said Madeline, sententiously; "things don't always get their right names in this world."

"Well, you may tell him," I said; "that I can't see him."

Madeline's countenance changed wonderfully in an instant. She gave me a bright look, and without waiting for another word, ran down the stairs.

When she came back her tongue ran on glibly:--

"I told him," said she; "that you couldn't see him, and he kept on in that window-gla.s.s way of looking, and his head as high as ever, and he took his hat and 'I'm very sorry,' he says, 'that Miss Hungerford is indisposed, and I hope I shall have an opportunity of seeing her this evening.'

"He said he came to-day, and was going away to-morrow morning, and he had something of importance to communicate, and I knew he expected I'd go up and see you again about it, but I didn't. So he said he'd call again this evening or to-morrow morning, just which 'd be most agreeable, and expected I'd budge then, sure, but I didn't show any signs of it; and I told him rightly, I guessed one time would be about as agreeable as another; and I suppose he thought he wouldn't show mad before such common bred folks. He smiled that window-gla.s.s looking smile of his, and says; 'Ah, thank you; now I won't detain you any longer, Mrs. Keeler,' and out he went.

"I suppose he's come down to smooth everything over, and have it hushed up with Beck and her folks. Well, money'll do a good deal for a man, but it wouldn't stand him much if he got into George Olver's hands. However, teacher," concluded Madeline, in a sprightly tone; "give the Devil his due. It's better'n as if he'd run off and never showed his head again; and I don't suppose he'll get much satisfaction out of you, if you do see him, teacher. It's better to trust honest folks than rogues, and n.o.body knows that better than the rogues themselves."

I knew that this last clause was not designed as a personal thrust by Madeline, yet I could not help musing a little over it, smilingly, after she had gone. The fiction, of which I was living a part, in Wallencamp, was taking on, it seemed to me, a tinge even of the tragic--perplexities were deepening. I was becoming, more than ever, the suffering though exalted heroine of a romance.

I rose, and dressed myself before the gla.s.s, I remember, with particular care. I did not know why I should dread or avoid seeing the fisherman in the evening, since the part I had to sustain in the interview was so distinctly calm, dispa.s.sionate, and spiritually remote. At the same time, I wished that my cheeks had not grown so pale and my eyes so dark-rimmed and hollow. They bespoke the interesting part I had to play in the world's tragedy, but were not, otherwise, so becoming as I could have wished.