Flint Part 13

"What a fool you are, Fred!" Jimmy remarked, with family frankness.

"I am," admitted Winifred. "No one knows it better than I, except, perhaps, Mr. Flint."

"I know nothing of the kind," her companion answered with unwonted cordiality. "Any one may be subject to a fit of dizziness, and to be minus an arm under such circ.u.mstances makes the situation really uncomfortable. We must try it again some day, to give you an opportunity to prove to yourself that it was only an affair of the moment."

"Dear me!" thought Winifred to herself, "why can't he always be nice like that! He seems to be a queer kind of stratified rock; you never know what you are going to strike next."

Aloud, she said, "I fancy, Jim, it must be past the White-House dinner hour, and papa has grown worried and sent out scouts to look for you and me. See, here is Ben Bradford!"

Looking down the road, Flint saw approaching them a tall, long-legged youth whom he dimly remembered among the group on the porch of the White-House the night before. His hair was parted in the middle, and thickly pomaded to restrain its natural inclination towards curling.

His ears were large, and set on at right angles to his face. His nose was Roman, and its prominence had rendered it peculiarly sensitive to sunburn. His manners were too frank to be polished. As he joined them now, he succeeded in making it evident at once that Flint's further presence was entirely superfluous. This juvenile candor would have had no effect, had not Winifred supplemented it by saying:--

"Mr. Bradford will take charge of me and my cape, Mr. Flint; I really cannot consent to trouble you further."

Her manner was equivalent to a dismissal. Flint handed over the cape, as she bade him, to young Bradford's eager grasp, bowed, and turned his steps homeward. As he strolled along, he felt a curiously sudden change of mood, from the elation of the morning to a depression half physical, half mental.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "if this is not another phase of my inheritance from Dr. Jonathan. I remember the old gentleman used to complain that his const.i.tution was an unhappy one from birth, attended with 'flaccid solids, sizy and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits.' The description amused me in my youth; but I begin to have an uncomfortably sympathetic sense of his state of mind and body. I wonder, by the way, what _he_ would have done about that portrait. I never heard that he or any other Puritan gave away his property to any extent; and this portrait I regard as virtually mine. To be sure, I have not paid for it; but I had fully determined to purchase it, and--Yes, to all intents and purposes, it belongs to me. Now, to be expected to give it up, just because I happen to hear of some one else who wants it too, is asking a little too much. If I had avoided the girl, as I intended, I should never have heard of her search for her beloved great-grandmother. No, my mind is made up; I shall keep that picture--of course I shall. I am glad I put it into the closet before Brady came."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MARY ANN

"Our deeds are like children that are born to us: they live and act apart from one's own will."

The weather of the morning, with its golden clearness, was too beautiful to last. By noon the gold had paled. The high wind which had prevailed earlier in the day subsided; but the swelling waves, which broke with thud after thud upon the shelving beach, gave evidence of a gale still whirling somewhere off the coast. The clear-cut lines of the distant cliffs faded to dim, quiet ma.s.ses. Far out on the horizon rose a line of phantom hills,--a line which, as night drew in, moved slowly sh.o.r.eward, rising as it came, shutting out sail after sail, point after point, till at last it met the land and shut out the sea itself. There is something weird and uncanny about the approach of a fog, stealing thus unperceived out of the heart of sunshine and blue weather. It has in it a hint of death.

Flint felt the weight of it. His mind was shut in upon its own resources, and did not find them altogether satisfactory. Brady added little to the gayety of nations. He came in from his day on the water sunburned, tired, and as nearly cross as it lay in his genial disposition to be. He swallowed his supper, and made haste to stow himself away in bed, leaving Flint to choose between a conversation with Marsden and the self-communion which was his least congenial occupation.

For an hour or so, he loitered in the little shop, listening idly to the yarns which Marsden rolled as sweet morsels under his tongue: of the whale which the fishermen had caught off the beach, a sea-monster of untold length, breadth, and thickness, which had been sold for a thousand dollars; of the marvellous experiences of his father, as captain of a trading-vessel in the "East Injies;" and finally of the fire-ship which he himself had seen hanging between sea and sky, out yonder between the island and the mainland.

"You say you saw it yourself?" Flint asked, partly from listless curiosity, and partly with an eye to the society of psychical research.

"True as yo' 're a settin' thar. 'Twas one night nigh onto fifteen years ago,--good deal such a night as this heer. The old cow wuz sick that night, and as I wuz out to the barn, puttin' hot cloths on her till past midnight. Ez I wuz comin' into the house, I looked out, and there, jest where the mist was breakin' away, hung a ship, lookin'

like a light under a cloud."

"Did you call any one?" queried Flint.

"Call any one? Lord! I was too scared to move hand or foot; I jest stood gapin' at her till she faded clean out o' sight."

"Mirage, I suppose," Flint murmured to himself, "unless the old fellow is lying out and out, which is not likely." Then, aloud, as he rose, stretching himself lazily, "If you ever see the fire-ship again, while I am here, let me know. I have always wanted to see a wreck, and a phantom wreck is better than none."

"Don't go to talkin' too much about it," said Marsden, mysteriously.

"They say it brings bad luck."

"Apparently it brings bad luck for anybody but you to do the talking.

Well, I think I will leave you before I am tempted to a loquaciousness which might bring down a curse on the house of Marsden."

Smiling to himself over the old man's superst.i.tion, Flint climbed the stairs to his own room, as softly as possible, lest Brady's wrath at being waked descend upon him. Having closed his door cautiously, he sat down by the open window, enjoying the soothing dampness of the fog as it came rolling in laden with the pungent fragrance of the salt marshes.

He sat a long while in the darkness. Even the Bug Light, which shone on ordinary nights from the tip end of Bluff Point, this evening formed only a paler shade in the universal grayness.

His thoughts turned to the scene of the morning. He remembered the wide-stretching purple of the sea, the yellow sh.e.l.l-strewn sand, the patch of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s on the bank against which Winifred Anstice leaned. He remembered to have noted how perfectly her dun-colored dress had harmonized with the environment, so much so, that, but for the patch of red in her hat, he might have pa.s.sed her as a part of the inanimate nature of the beach. He remembered, too, the touch of her hand on his shoulder there in the light-house, and the sound of her voice as she counted the steps, "One--two--three--four." Then he fell to thinking more closely than he had yet done of the girl herself,--that curious blending of subtlety and simplicity, of reserve and frankness; he had never seen anything quite like it. What a queer coincidence that she should be a descendant of this Ruth, in the room behind him! Now she spoke of it, there was a suggestion of resemblance, faint, but haunting. This must have been the secret of his desire to study her face again, and yet again, that day on the pond, to determine the source of the sense of familiarity which even their first meeting had given him.

How charming her frankness about the portrait had been! Ah, there the recollection ceased to be altogether agreeable! He twisted a little in his chair, and screwed the end of his moustache into his mouth, as he recalled his own lack of response when the portrait was mentioned. Had he been deceitful? No, certainly not that, for he had conveyed no false impression by word or gesture. Disingenuous? Perhaps, but after all he was in nowise pledged to equal frankness, because his companion chose to be confidential. Suppose, though, Winifred Anstice should come to the inn; should hear from old Marsden of the portrait; should learn that it was hanging in his room, and he had made no sign!

The train of thought was perplexing, and not altogether pleasing.

Flint was not sorry to have it interrupted by a call upon his attention in the appearance of two figures below, looming dim and ghostlike in the fog. Just beneath his window, they paused in their walk, and their voices came up to him first indistinctly, then with more and more clearness. The tones Flint recognized at once as belonging to Tilly Marsden and to Leonard Davitt, the young fisherman whose scarlet shirt was often to be seen on the clamming grounds, and whose rich baritone voice came ringing over the pond as he sat in his boat hauling in his nets.

To-night, it was subdued, and at first scarcely rose above a murmur; at length Flint caught the words:--

"I shall never ask you again."

"I hope to goodness you won't!" answered the shriller tones of the innkeeper's daughter.

"That isn't a very nice way to speak, Tilly."

"Well, it's _my_ way, and my name isn't 'Tilly;' it is Matilda Marsden, and very polite folks call me 'Miss.'"

"Some day you'll find out that it isn't the politest folks that's the trustiest, or sticks to you the faithfullest. Don't you remember two years ago, Tilly, when I was going to the Banks, how you kissed me good-bye, and how you promised--"

"Never mind what I promised. I was only a child anyway."

"Well, you didn't think so then, and neither did I. Mebbe, the time will come when you'll think you acted wiser then, than you're a-doin'

now."

"Oh, you needn't take the trouble to warn me, Mr. Leonard, about my being foolish to give you up. You're not the only man in the world."

"Oh, yes," responded Leonard, nettled at last, "I knew very well that was the trouble; and I know who the other man is; and all I can say is--"

"Hush," cried Tilly, with a little turning of her head, and quickly laying her hand on Leonard's arm. "Don't you say another word, Leonard Davitt, if you ever want me to speak to you again."

At this, Flint's conscience got the better of him, and he rose and closed the window noisily enough to startle the speakers below, as he perceived with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What a little minx that girl is!" he said to himself as he turned to light the lamps. "I have half a mind to devote myself to convincing Leonard that she would make his life miserable if she married him, and that he is worth ten of her; but I don't suppose he could be made to believe either. Men are such fools when they are in love! By Jove!

that portrait is like Miss Anstice!"

This last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n escaped him as he held the lamp above the mantel where all his books were piled in heterogeneous confusion. One by one he scanned their covers, with the half intention of the idler who reads for pure diversion, and at length he drew out a volume of Dumas.

He set his lamp--a large one with double burners--on the table by the window; and tilting his chair on the back legs, resting his shoulders against the wall, he plunged into the mysteries of "The Forty-Five."

In a few minutes he was absorbed, as only Dumas has power to absorb his readers. The man of action in that great romancer exercised a sort of hypnotic power over Flint. The robust virility pa.s.sed into the sinew of his soul. The romance possessed him utterly, and left him without even the power to criticise. It was he himself who stood in Queen Catherine's box, and watched the spouting of Salcide's blood, as he was drawn by the horses in the arena beneath. He sat secreted beside Chicot in the great arm-chair in the King's bed-room. He took part in the serenade beneath the balcony of the mysterious lady in the Rue des Augustines. He joined the hunting of the wolf in Navarre; and finally he had plunged into the fight between the French and Flemings, with such intensity of reality that it scarcely surprised him to hear the booming of a gun.

"It is those rascally Flemings!" he thought for a moment. "Up and at them, Joyeuse!" Then suddenly he rubbed his head like one striving to recall wandering wits. His chair came down with a crash. He took out his watch. It marked three. Again the gun! He threw up the window. The fog was breaking fast, and lights were visible too far out for the the land, too near for a vessel at sea; unless, Great Heavens! it was, it must be, a ship grounded off the Point. For an instant, the thought of Marsden's fire-ship flashed across his mind; but his head was too clear to be fooled in such fashion.

Banging on Brady's door, he shouted: