Janet of the Dunes

by Harriet T. Comstock

CHAPTER V

"Well, my boy! To think of you drifting down here. Have a cigar, and put your feet on the railing. I tell you, you may travel the world over, and there isn't an easier posture known, than the Yankee one of 'feet higher than head.'"

John Devant and Richard Thornly sat upon the wide veranda of Bluff Head; and Thornly, being thus given the freedom of Yankee position, planted his feet upon the high railing, tipped back his broad-armed chair, and inhaled the smoke of his host's good cigar.

"You've caught the language of the place already I see, Mr. Devant. Had we met anywhere else, another word would have done; 'drifting' applies here. No one 'runs down' to Quinton, or 'happens' down; one just naturally 'drifts.' It's a great place."

"You like it, eh?" Mr. Devant let his eyes rove over the wealth of color and wildness, and puffed enjoyably.

"It's immense! Strange, isn't it, how a place can lie slumbering for generations, right at our doors, and no one has sense enough to look at it? And after all, it is while it is sleeping, or beginning to stir, that it charms. Two years from now, when the rabble get onto the racket, the glory will be gone. Think of picnics on the Hills! Imagine a crowd rushing for the dunes, and the bay thick with sails! No! Let's make the best of it while we may."

Mr. Devant laughed. "I'll give it five or ten years," he said. "My grandfather had a vision of its future prosperity. He bought acres here for a mere song. He built this house, hoping the family would find it comfortable for the summers. My father liked it so well that he settled the library and general fixtures for a home, living winters at a hotel in town. But the old place was too lonely for me in the past. I'm just beginning to have visions, like my forebears. I'm sick of travel. Town life ought never to charm a natural animal except during the months of bad weather. My boy, I believe I'll settle down at fifty and take to land speculation! I'll buy up round here, keep the grip of the rabble off, and preserve this spot for the—pure in heart and them who have clean, hands!"

"'T would be a missionary work," Thornly rejoined lightly.

"Who turned your eyes hitherward, Dick?"

"Why, John Mason. He saw Chatterton's famous picture and came down and discovered this garden spot. Poor old Mason! With his money pots and his struggling love for beauty and simplicity, he is sore distressed. He wanted to build a cabin on the dunes and live here summers, but Madam and the girls almost had hysterics. They have just built a gingerbread affair at Magnolia, and so Mason added a den to the structure. A huge room overlooking the sea! It has space left on the wall for a big picture, and Mason gave me an order. 'Go down to that heaven-preserved spot,' he said, 'get the spirit of the place, and put it in my den. I don't mind the price. Stay down all summer, but get it!'"

"Do you think you can?" asked Devant. Thornly's gaze contracted.

"I think I have," he replied, slowly flicking the ashes that had accumulated upon his cigar.

"Good! That means more glory. In this sordid age, and with an uncomprehending public, you've had rare fortune in getting rid of your work, Dick. Your pictures are sellers, I hear. How proud your father would have been! My old friend was one of the few men I have known who set a price upon genius above money."

"Yes: I wish father and mother could have known. It's often a bit lonely."

"But there is Katharine. At least, I suppose, there is still Katharine?"

"Yes," slowly, "there is still Katharine; and our relations are the same. She's watching my stunts in art."

"She's proud of you?"

"She's proud of my success." Thornly smiled. "There's a difference, you know."

"Oh! yes. But Katharine is young. I'd like to see the child again. Is she as pretty as her childhood promised?"

"She is very handsome."

"Full of life and dimples?"

"Oh! she's giddy enough. Superb health, and undiminished scent for pleasure! Katharine is an undoubted success."

"I must have her down. My sister is coming at the month's end. I'll write to Katharine to-night and plead my friendship for her parents. Where is she? And I'll tell her you're here."

"She's at South End, with the Prescotts."

For some moments the older and the younger man smoked in silence. The sun set in due time and Captain David's Light appeared.

"What a living thing a lighthouse is!" said Thornly; "that and an open fire have the same vital, human interest."

"I believe you are right. When I find myself bad company, I always have a fire built if the temperature is below seventy. Since I came here I've taken to this side of the veranda, late afternoons, and I grow quite chummy with Cap'n Davy's Light."

Mr. Devant got up, stretched himself and took to pacing the piazza slowly.

"You know David of the Light?" asked Thornly.

"As a boy I knew the characters roundabout here, somewhat. I'm trying to reinstate myself in their good graces. This place produces strange and unexpected types."

"Yes, I found a pimpernel flower on the Hills to-day," said Thornly irrelevantly. "Even the flora is startling."

"You found what?"

"A pimpernel. It's a common wild flower in some sandy places, but a strange enough little rascal to be seen just here. It's called the poor man's weather glass. Where it grows most common, it is not especially noticeable; but it almost took my breath this morning. It's in keeping with the surprises of the surroundings."

Devant laughed.

"Well," he said presently, "it must be a relation, same family, you know, of a pimpernel of a girl I've discovered here."

Thornly again contracted his brows.

"Solitary flower? Shutting up at approach of storm, and all the rest?" he asked.

"Solitary flower, all right," Devant rejoined. "I'm not up on plant-ology, but I've studied humans, off and on, and I cannot account for this one. I don't know whether, in my position as friend to you, I should bring this odd specimen to your notice, but I'd like to have you, as an artist, pass judgment upon her beauty."

"I might have the storm's effect upon this pimpernel of yours," Thornly put in, "make her hide within herself."

"I fancy storms would not daunt her. I don't know but that she would rather enjoy them."

Thornly yawned secretly.

"Handsome, is she?"

"Not only that," said Devant, "I suppose she is wonderfully handsome. She has grace, too, and a figure, I should say, about perfect. But it is her mental make-up that staggers me. She talks in one way and thinks in another. She clings to her g's, too, in spite of local tradition. She hasn't a passing acquaintance with 'ain't,' or the more criminal 'hain't.' Her English is good, she reads like a starved soul, for the pure pleasure of it; and she thinks like a child of ten. By Jove! she was here in my library, the day I arrived. She had a secret method of getting into the house by a cellar window,—had done it for years. She almost froze my blood when I saw her. I thought I'd struck a ghost for certain. She was reading Shakespeare! Said she hadn't been able to get beyond him for three months. She began to read when she was little, at the bottom shelf, and has worked her way up to the fifth. And yet with all that, she's a simple child, Dick. Smollett and Fielding and heaven knows who else are on the third shelf!"

"Lord!" cried Thornly, and laughed loudly; "who is this pimpernel?"

"Janet of the Dunes. Cap'n Billy's girl! Been brought up like a wild thing! Sails a boat like an old tar! Swims like a fish! Motherless—old Billy, a poor shote, according to the gossip! The women have a sort of pitying contempt for him; the men keep their mouths shut, but you can fancy the training of this girl. I'm always interested in heredity and I'd like to know the girl's mother. Something ought to account for my pimpernel." Thornly was rising.

"I'll try to account for my flower, Mr. Devant," he said. "I dare say some untoward wind bore it from its original environment; it may be that the same reasons exist in the case of this flower of yours. Good night!"

"Stay to late dinner, Dick! You know you don't want to go back to a dish of prunes and soggy cake. Better stay."

"No. Thank you, just the same. I'm going to bunk out in my shanty to-night. I've got a chafing dish there. The prunes were undermining my constitution. Good night!"

Devant watched him until the shrubbery hid him.

"I'll get Katharine down as soon as I can," he mused; "and for his father's sake, as well as his own, I'll try to keep him and the pimpernel apart until then. His engagement to Katharine is a safe anchor."

But while Davy's Light shone friendly-wise upon Bluff Head, it also did its duty by a lonely little mariner putting off from Davy's dock.

It had been a hard day for Janet. Susan Jane, with almost occult power, had seemed to divine the girl's longing to get away.

"Boarder or no boarder!" the helpless woman had snarled, "I reckon you've got somethin' human 'bout you. If you can't stop an' do fur me, I'll call David. I've had a bad night an' I ain't goin' t' be left t' myself. There's stirrin' doin's goin' on; but no one comes here t' gossip."

"I'll stay," Janet had sighed, remembering David's worn, patient face when he staggered toward the bedroom an hour before. "But I cannot gossip, Susan Jane, I don't know how; and all the other folks are busy cooking, feeding, washing for, and waiting on the boarders. City folks come high, Susan Jane."

"Well, if you can't gossip, Janet, there is them as can. Thank God! when He took the use of my legs an' arms, He strengthened my eyes an' ears. I can see an' hear considerable, though there is them who would deny me that comfort if they could. What ails you an' Mark Tapkins?"

"Nothing, Susan Jane."

"Yes, there be, too. He's more womble-cropped than ever. They say his Pa is makin' a mint of money sellin' them crullers of his'n. Who would have thought of Mark's bein' smart enough to set his Pa on that tack? The way these city folks eat anythin' that is give them is scandalous. They must have crops like yaller ducks. Have you heard 'bout Mrs. Jo G.'s Maud Grace?"

"No, Susan Jane." Janet stirred the cake she was making by Susan's recipe energetically.

"You're deef as a bulkhead, Janet! I bet you're envious."

"Envious, Susan Jane, envious of Maud Grace?"

"Oh! you have had yer eyes open, eh?"

"You just asked me about her, Susan Jane."

"Did I? Well, it's simply amazin' how Mrs. Jo G. is developin' a business talent. Actually keepin' her girl dressed up t' entertain the boarders, evenin's! She's got some one t' help wait in the dinin' room, an' she cooks. Jo G. sails the boarders, when they pay him enough, an' that girl just sparks around an' acts real entertainin', evenin's. I shouldn't wonder, with such a smart ma, if she caught a beau. I do wish, Janet, since you ain't got no one but Billy,—an' every one knows he's got 'bout as much gumption as a snipe,—I do wish you could land one of these boarders. They must be real easy from what I hear."

"I don't want them!"

"Course you don't! An' you don't want t' work fur your livin', an' Mark ain't good enough fur you. You'd better look out, Janet, I tell you fur your good, it ain't safe fur you t' trust yer leanin's too far."

So the day had passed. The afternoon had brought Mark Tapkins with his gloomy face, too, so Janet had been obliged to give the Hills a wide berth and only darkness brought relief.

Susan Jane was bewailing her woes in David's patient ears,—it was Mark's night in the Light,—so, unseen and unsuspected, Janet loosed the Comrade, unfurled the white wing before the obliging land breeze, and made for the Station.

It was a glorious summer night; full moon, full tide, and a steady west wind heavy with the odor of the Hills.

As the little boat darted ahead, Janet's spirits rose as poor David's did, when once he parted company with the burden of Susan Jane's peevish egotism. She looked back at the Light and thought, with a little sigh of weariness, that she was free from the watchfulness of the three within its walls.

"Only the Light has an eye upon me! Kind, good Light! Cap'n Daddy and I do not need you to-night, but, come storm, then God bless you!"

It was not the girl's intention to run up to the Station dock. She knew that Cap'n Billy had the midnight patrol, going east; so she planned to make for the little cove, midway between the Station and the halfway house, and take Billy by surprise and assault.

She chuckled delightedly as she constructed her mode of attack. She was hungry to feel the comfort of Billy's understanding love and trust. The more she had to conceal from Billy, the more she yearned to be near him.

The Comrade, responding to the steady hand upon the tiller, shot into the cove. The girl secured the boat and ran lightly over the dunes to the seaward side; then she lay down among the sand grasses and waited.

She seemed alone in God's world. The moon-lighted ocean spread full and throbbing before her. The sky, star-filled and blue-black, arched in unbroken splendor. The waste and solitude held no awe for this girl of the Station. They had been her heritage and were natural and homelike to her. Under summer skies and through winter's storms she knew the coast's every phase of beauty or danger. It was hers, and she belonged to it. A common love held them together. She crouched close to the sandy hillock. The night was growing old, the tide had turned, and still she sat absorbed in thought and tender memory. How beautiful the world and life were! She took from her bosom the tiny whistle, which had been for five long, delicious weeks her power of summoning unlimited joy to herself. What a new element had entered into her existence! How powerful and self-sufficient she felt as she recalled her part in those wonderful pictures that were growing day by day in the shanty on the Hills!

Her blood rose hotly in her young body, as she lived again, under the calm sky, those weeks of perfect bliss.

Suddenly the girl sat upright, put the whistle in its hiding place, and strained her eyes toward the Station.

Yes: there came Billy! He was striding along; head bowed, except when conscientiously he gazed seaward, scanning with his far-sighted eyes the bar where danger lay, come storm or fog. But could there be danger on such a night as this?

Billy, faithful soul, had not a nature attuned to the glory of the night, but he had a soul sensitive to a brother's need. If he gave heed at all to the summer beauty, it was merely in thankfulness that all was well.

"Help! help!" Billy stopped suddenly and raised his head. "Help! help! Here's a poor, little brig on the bar!"

A smile of joy overspread the man's face, a smile that drove all care and weariness before it.

"Ye little specimint!" he called, "what ye mean by burrowin' in the sand an' scarin' one of the government officials clar out o' common sense? Come here, ye varmint!"

"My Cap'n!" The strong young arms were about the rugged neck. "You were just going to send up a Coston light, now weren't you, Daddy?"

"No. I war not! I don't waste nary a Coston on a wuthless little hulk like ye. Come on, girl, I've been takin' it easy. I ain't as young as I once was. We must make the halfway in season. 'T ain't the fust time we've took the patrol together, is it, Janet?"

He held the girl's hand in his, and she accommodated her step as nearly as possible to his long, swinging gait.

"Kinder homesick?" he asked presently.

"Kind of you-sick! I wanted to be near you. I wanted—you," Janet whispered.

"Durned little cozzler!" chuckled Billy. "I know what yer up t'. Ain't got nothin' t' do yet, over on the mainland; just a lazy little tormint; an' ye want t' cozzen yer Cap'n Billy. Why can't ye jine the army that's plain fleecin' the city folks? They be the easiest biters, 'cordin' t' what I hear, that has ever run in t' these shoals. Reg'lar dogfish one an' all."

"Oh! I pick up a penny now and then;" Janet pursed her pretty mouth and set her head sideways. "I made enough to pay Susan Jane for last week and this. Susan's an old leech, Cap'n Billy. It's simply awful to see her greed in money matters. Sitting in her chair, she can manage to want more, strive to get more, and make more fuss about it, than any other woman on the mainland. You have to live with Susan Jane to appreciate her. Oh! poor Davy. We never really knew what a hero he is, Daddy. He's splendid!"

It had been necessary, unless Susan Jane was to receive double pay for her boarder, that Janet should inform Billy as to her money-getting; but once the fact was stated, the girl hurried to other thoughts, in order to divert Billy.

"How'd ye get yer money, Janet?" A serious look came into the man's face. "It's uncommon clever of ye t' help yerself on; if the money only comes in a God-fearin' way!"

"Cap'n Daddy!" Janet drew herself up magnificently. "Do you take me for Maud Grace?"

"No, I don't, I'm takin' ye fur my gal, an' it's my duty t' see that ye don't furgit yer trainin' over on the boarder-struck mainland! But what's wrong 'long o' Mrs. Jo G.'s gal?"

"Nothing. Except she keeps dressed up to entertain the boarders, and takes tips. That's what she calls them."

"Tips?" Billy wrinkled his brows.

"Yes. Money for doing nothing. Cap'n Daddy, I work for my money."

"Doin' what?" Billy's insistence was growing vexatious.

"Daddy, don't you ever tell!" Janet danced in front of him and walked backward as she pointed a finger merrily.

The moonlight streaming upon the girl showed her beauty in a witchlike brightness. It stirred Billy in an uneasy, anxious fashion.

"There ain't no call t' tell any one," he said, "you an' me is enough t' know. Us an' them what pays ye!"

"Cap'n Daddy; I'm—a—model!"

"A modil—what?"

Janet's laugh rose above the lapping water's sound.

"Why, Daddy! Don't you think I'm a model everything?"

"No," Billy shook his head; "I ain't blind, gal, ye ain't what most folks would call a modil, I'm thinkin'!"

"Well, the artists think I am!"

"The artists? Them womin in bonnets and smutchy pinafores? Gosh!"

For a moment Janet's truth-loving soul shrank from deceiving Billy, but her promise to Thornly held her. She stopped her merry dance and came again beside him, clasping the hard hand tenderly within her own.

"What do they think ye a modil of?" asked the man, and his face had lightened visibly.

"Oh! just what their silly fancy tells them. Only don't you see, Daddy, dear, they don't want any one to know until the pictures are done. It would spoil the—the—well, I cannot explain; but they want to spring the pictures upon folks by and by."

"'Cordin' t' what Andrew Farley tells," grinned Billy, all amiability now, "no one will be likely t' know ye from a scrub oak stump when the picters is done. Andrew says when he thinks of all it costs t' paint a boat an' then sees the waste of good, honest paint up on the Hills, it turns his stummick sick. Well, long as it is innercent potterin' like that, Janet, I don't know but as yer considerable sharp t' trade yer looks fur their money. It rather goes agin the grain with me t' have ye git the best of them. But Lord! as the good book says, a fool an' his money is soon parted, an' so long as they're sufferin' t' part with theirs, I don't know but what ye have a right t' barter what cargo yer little craft carries, as well as others what have less agreeable stores on board." Janet laughed merrily.

"Mark Tapkins was on yisterday," Billy continued; "he says Bluff Head's open an' Mr. Devant an' a party is there. Must be quite gay an' altered on the mainland." Janet's face clouded.

"Cap'n Daddy," she faltered, "I'm going to tell you something else."

"Yer considerable talky, it seems t' me." Billy eyed the girl.

"Cap'n Billy, have you ever wondered why I talk better than most of the others at the Station?"

"I don't know as I would allow that ye do," Billy replied; "ye talk differenter, somewhat, but I don't know as it's better."

"Well, it is. And it isn't all the teachers' doings either, Daddy, for Maud Grace and the rest never changed much; but for years, Daddy, I've been crawling in the cellar window of Bluff Head, when no one on earth knew, and I've read five shelves of books! I've thought like those books, and talked like them, until I seem to be like them; and, Daddy, the day Mr. Devant came home, he found me in his library-room, reading his books!"

"Gawd!" ejaculated Billy, and stood stock still. "Did he fling ye out, neck and crop?" he gasped at last.

"Daddy! he's a nice old gentleman!"

"Old? He ain't dodderin' yet. An' he use t' have a bit of pepper in his nater. What did he do?"

"Do? Why, he gave me the key to his front door. He reads with me and tells me what to read. We're great friends!"

"Yer 'tarnal specimint!" Billy was shaking. "I see ye've caught the mainland fever, eh, gal? Ye don't want t' bide on the dunes 'long o' old Billy, now, eh?"

"You blessed old Cap'n!" Janet struggled to hold her prize. "I'm perfectly happy! And I had to come over here to-night and tell you."

"Janet,"—Billy's eyes were dim,—"I keep wishin' more an' more that ye had a ma. I ain't never thought openly on it fur years, not since ye was fust borned. But as ye grow int' womanhood, ye seem as helpless as ye did then. I wish ye had a ma!"

The little halfway house was in front of them. Andrew Farley, who served on the crew at the Station beyond, was in the doorway.

"What ye got in tow, Billy?" he called jovially.

"Jest a tarnal little bit of driftwood, Andy." Billy rallied his low spirits.

"Hello, Janet!" Andrew recognized her. "How comes ye kin leave the mainland? I thought every one who could, stuck there t' see the show. By gracious! Billy, ye jest oughter see how things is altered." The two men exchanged the brass checks, then, before returning to their stations, they stood chatting easily.

"Been up to the Hills lately, Janet?" The girl flushed.

"Not very," she replied. "Come on, Cap'n Daddy, I'm going to stay on and sleep in the cottage to-night."

"Them artists," Andrew continued, turning slowly in his own direction, "them artists is smudgin' up the landscape jest scandalous. One of them wanted t' paint me, the other day, an' I held off an' let her. Lord! ye should jest have seen wot she done t' my likeness! I nearly bu'st when she showed me. I ain't handsome, none never accused me of that crime, but I ain't lopsided an' lantern-jawed t' the extent she went. She said I had a loose artistic pose; them was her words, but I ain't so loose that I hang crooked."

Janet slept in the cottage on the dunes that night; and when the men rose to go through the sunrise drill, she ran down the beach, across the sand hills, and set her sail toward the mainland. She had had her breakfast in the Station with the men and, recalling her difficulty in escaping Susan Jane the day before, she headed the Comrade away from the Light and glided toward the Hills.

Mark Tapkins, turning down the wick as the sun came up, saw the white sail set away from home; and something heavier than sleep struck chilly upon his heart. He knew from past spying where Janet was going!

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