The Windy Hill Part 8

At the corner of the steep, narrow street, Cicely caught sight of Martin Hallowell talking to a man whom she recognized as an old seaman who had sailed for years upon the Hallowell ships. Something Martin had said must have angered the sailor, for he was talking loudly, regardless of who might hear.

"No," the old man was saying, "there's not every one in the world will do your bidding, though you may think so. You can defy the old one and talk over the young one to go your way, but there's one man will not sail on any ship of yours and that's Ben Barton. I'll starve ash.o.r.e first."

Cicely's quick ear caught his words as she and her father pa.s.sed by on the other side of the snow-m.u.f.fled street. It did not seem that Reuben Hallowell had heard.

One day pa.s.sed, two, three, four days, and Cicely's one thought was that the _Huntress_ was to sail in seven. Workmen were swarming all over her like bees, hammering, calking, and painting, yet it was plain that they could not do in a week what needed a month to finish. Alan was at the wharf all day, holding frequent conferences with his cousin. Reuben Hallowell went to and fro among the townspeople, urging them to say that the ship in which they were part owners must abide at home. But either because they were less sure of peace than he, or because their eyes were blinded by past good fortune and hopes of future gain, they would not listen. Between father and son no words were pa.s.sed, since each was waiting for the other's stubborn pride to give way.

On the fifth day Cicely had gone out to ride, on a clear, snowy afternoon, with the white world shining before her and with the highway iron-hard under the horses' feet. She missed Alan sorely, for this was their favorite road, up the valley to the west of the town, as far as the round bare hill with the single oak tree that they liked to call theirs. The servant with her had dropped behind, and she was just turning her horse into the bypath leading to the hill when she saw a st.u.r.dy figure coming down the slope. The brown face, tattooed hands, and the small bundle of possessions done up in a blue handkerchief could only be a sailor's, a sailor who proved to be Ben Barton.

"I'm going to the next seaport to find another berth, since I've refused to sail on the _Huntress_," he explained in answer to her questions. "Mr. Martin has had to get a new skipper and a new crew, for none of the old hands would sail when they heard it was against your father's wishes. There was a bark came in from Delaware to be laid up for repairs, with mostly Swedes aboard, and they have manned the _Huntress_ from her. The ship is to sail on Friday at midnight, with the turning tide, but she goes without Ben Barton."

He dropped his voice and came nearer.

"I will tell you this--though I should not," he said. "There's some one to join at the last minute, who will get into a boat waiting at the wharf in the dark, some one you love, miss, who ought to be stopping ash.o.r.e with the rest of us. You should find some way to keep him back."

"Oh, if I only could!" she cried.

"There's only you can do it," he answered. "Hallowell blood can only be ruled by Hallowell blood, as we say on Hallowell ships. Well, I'll be going on again. I had climbed the path, there, to take one more look at the harbor, where you can see it between the hills. Maybe your father will find a place for me when his vessels go to sea for trade again, and I'll never forget him nor you, Miss Cicely. Do you remember how you and your brother once hid under the wharf, and called out from that echoing place as though you were lost souls out of the sea? There was one honest old sailorman that nearly lost his wits for terror, since we seafaring folk have no love for ghosts. Mark my words, there will no good come to the _Huntress_ from setting sail of a Friday. For that alone I would stay ash.o.r.e though there's other things to hold me, too."

He strode away down the snowy road, leaving Cicely, smiling at first at the recollection of that game that had so frightened him when she and her brother had played at ghosts, then grave in a moment when she thought how soon that brother was to be gone. On Friday, the day after to-morrow, he would sail unless she could stop him. But how could she?

The next day she made the desperate effort of appealing to her father, but quite in vain. Reuben Hallowell would not believe either that the _Huntress_ would sail or that his son would go with her.

"And if Alan wishes to cut himself off from his own people forever, let him," he said finally, unable to endure the thought that any one should dare to defy his will. Friday came, the shadows of Friday night stole through the big house, yet nothing had been done.

Cicely sat by the fire in her chintz-hung bedroom, leaning back against the flowered cushion of the big armchair, gazing into the flames. In the next room she could hear vague sounds of Alan's preparations, feet going to and fro, a door opening and closing, a pair of heavy boots dropped upon the floor. The night was dark outside, with a bl.u.s.tering wind and occasional flurries of snow that struck sharply against the window.

It was ten o'clock. The sounds had ceased as though Alan had finished making ready and was waiting, perhaps sitting silent in the dark, perhaps lying down for an hour or two of sleep before the fateful hour of the high tide. Cicely heard her father, below, barring the door, putting out the candles, making ready for a night that would surely bring him no sleep. Presently he pa.s.sed her door, glanced inside, and came in to stand for a minute beside her fire. How worn he had grown to look just within the s.p.a.ce of this last week! He said scarcely a word; it was as though his unhappiness merely craved company and shrank from the knowledge of what the night might bring.

At last he said, "You should be in bed. Good night, my dear."

As he went out he turned to look back at her with a glance of haggard, helpless misery. It was as though he said:

"My pride has bound and stifled me. I cannot speak a word to stop him, but won't you, can't you, persuade him, somehow, not to go?"

Very carefully and without a sound, Cicely rose and went to her closet, to take down her warm fur cloak. She had realized, in the moment of seeing her father's pleading look, that she had a plan, one that had been in her mind ever since the day that she had talked with Ben Barton. What she had really lacked was courage to put it into execution. Yet now, as she drew the cloak about her and pulled down her hood, her hands did not even tremble, nor did her determination falter. The house was absolutely still as she stole noiselessly down the stairs and slipped out of the door.

For a girl who had almost never been allowed upon the street alone, the wintry night should have been full of terrors, but to Cicely they meant nothing. As she ran down the steep High Street with the gale bl.u.s.tering behind her, she saw things that she had never believed existed--a burly waterman quarreling with his wife behind a dirty lighted window, the open door of a tavern showing a candle-lit room with a crowd of shouting sailors drinking within, a furtive black shadow that skulked into an alleyway and remained there, silent and hidden, as she pa.s.sed.

She reached the wharves at last, where the wind was stronger and where the waves slapped and dashed against the barnacled piles, throwing their spray against the windows of the locked warehouses. Even now she did not hesitate. She ran, a gray, flitting form, across the open s.p.a.ce at the head of the wharf and disappeared.

There was a wait of a few minutes, then came the dip of oars through the dark and the sound of men's voices talking above the high wind.

Martin Hallowell was coming ash.o.r.e in the boat that was to carry Alan away. Beyond them, the lights of the _Huntress_ showed where she was getting up sail. Martin made the landing with some difficulty, climbed the ladder to the wharf, and stood bracing himself against the heavy wind.

"We are a little early," he said. "Hold fast there with the boat hook.

He will be here in a----"

His voice was drowned by a strange sound, an unearthly wailing that seemed to rise from the water beneath, but which filled the air until there was no saying from what direction it came. It lifted and dropped, hung sobbing and echoing above the water, then died away.

"Holy St. Anthony help us!" cried the nearest sailor. "It is the soul of some poor drowned creature caught among the weeds."

"Give way," roared the man at the rudder, and with one accord the oars dropped into the water.

"Stop, wait! It--it is nothing, you fools," cried Martin Hallowell, but his own voice quavered with terror, and carried little rea.s.surance to the frightened men.

The boat hung doubtfully a ship's length from the pier, the oars dipping to hold it into the wind, the men hesitating, ashamed of their terror yet fearing to come closer. Again the cry broke forth, resounding again and again, mingling in terrible, ghostly fashion with the splashing and gurgling of the water. The boat shot away into the dark, just as Alan came running down the wharf, shouting to them to come back. The sailors, however, bent to their oars, unheeding; the lantern in the stern dipped and jerked as they rowed away, and the light finally went out of sight as the boat drew alongside the _Huntress_. It was just possible to make out the big ship as she weighed anchor and, rolling and plunging, moved slowly out into the tideway.

"She's gone--without me!" cried Alan. "Oh, they might have come back, the cowards!"

"Did you hear that--that terrible sound?" asked Martin Hallowell. In a second's pause between the breaking of two waves, it was possible to hear his teeth chatter.

"Terrible!" cried Alan in disgust. "That was only my sister Cicely, hiding under the wharf. It was a game we once played to frighten Ben Barton. Come out," he ordered sternly, kneeling down and thrusting an arm into the dark s.p.a.ce to help her.

Out Cicely came, wet and shivering, with her hair streaked with mud and her hands scratched and cut by the sharp barnacles. Her face showed white in the dark as she looked up appealingly at her brother, but he turned from her without a sign. Before she could follow him, Martin Hallowell had seized her by the arm.

"You?" he cried. "You?"

He shook her until she was dizzy, until the dark, windy world spun before her eyes, he cried out at her with a terrible voice and with words that she only half understood. All the rage stored up within him during his bitter struggle to get his ship under way, all the baffled hopes of his small-spirited revenge, all the shame for his recent terror broke forth into blind fury against the girl who had stood in his way.

"I will teach you," he shouted, grasping her arm tighter until she winced with pain, "I will show you that you can't----"

His words were cut short by a stinging blow across the mouth from which he staggered back, dropping Cicely's arm and staring in gaping astonishment at his a.s.sailant.

"That is my sister," said Alan, very stiff and quiet and suddenly very like his father. "Whatever she has done you are not to touch her. She has ruined my chance of sailing with the _Huntress_, but at least she has shown me what--what you are, Martin Hallowell."

With his arm about Cicely, Alan went down the pier, while Martin, confounded and silenced, stood staring after them. The two said nothing as they climbed the High Street, although much must have been pa.s.sing in the boy's mind. As he pushed open their own door and came into the dusky hallway he spoke for the first time.

"Can you wait here by the fire a minute, Cicely? I am going up first to--to tell my father what a fool I have been."

The weeks of winter pa.s.sed, news came that peace had been signed on Christmas Eve, one after another the ships of war came straggling home. Some had taken prizes, all had been harried by the winter storms--and none brought news of the _Huntress_. One Carolina vessel that put in for repairs told of picking up a crew adrift in boats and of setting them aboard a ship bound for Chesapeake Bay and the coast of Delaware.

"They were most of them Swedes," the sailors told Alan, "and they were not very willing to talk of the ship they had lost, but it might have been the _Huntress_."

Reuben Hallowell was straining all his resources to send his idle ships to sea and to reestablish the trade of peace. Yet when he urged his fellow townsmen to strive to gain the commerce America had lost, lest it be gone forever, they still hung back.

"We must know first where we stand," they said. "There is hope still that we have not lost the _Huntress_ and that she will come to port with fortune for us all."

A stormy February pa.s.sed and there came at last a gusty day of March.

It was a Sunday, with the air clean after a shower, and with all the townspeople moving down the High Street from their churches at the hour of noon. There had been a tempest of wind and rain, but it had cleared leaving the waters still gray but with the sky turning to blue. Cicely was among the first, walking with her father and brother, and had stopped, as they came to their own door, to glance down at the harbor laid out in a circle of moving blue water below them.

"Oh, look, look!" she cried suddenly.

A ship was sailing slowly up the bay, a stately ship that dipped a little and rose again as she came, but held her course steady for the wharves. Her sails shone white in the fitful sun, the lines of her hull showed dark against the gray water, the tracery of her rigging and even the colors of her flag were distinct against the sky, and yet--she did not seem like any ship they had ever seen before. Cicely having drawn that vessel, line for line, masts, hull, ropes, and spars, knew that this was the _Huntress_, yet what was so strange about her? Why was she so steady in those changing gusts of wind, what was there that made her sails so shining and transparent, like the texture of a cloud?

The girl was aware that, among the crowd that had gathered to watch the strange vision, Martin Hallowell was pushing to the front, gazing with all his eyes. Ben Barton, too, who had come back the week before, to ask for a place on Reuben Hallowell's ships, was pressing close to Alan's elbow.

"The wind's dead off sh.o.r.e and here she comes straight in," she heard the old sailor mutter. "Not even the _Huntress_ could sail like that.