BITTER WATERS
Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her New England ancestry if not of her father's Celtic blood, had brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pass. One might have said, if one were hardened enough, that had the young woman "possessed an ounce of sense" she would not have made herself penniless, an outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain.
She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead. And those hours of torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila's soul.
She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief interview with her. Had she not shut herself away from him—refused to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the Seamew—she must have broken down, given way to that womanly weakness born of love for the man of her choice.
For Sheila knew how Tunis Latham suffered. She felt that her course was right; nevertheless she fully appreciated how keen the blow of her decision fell upon the partner in her sin.
A sin it was—almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime. To seize upon another girl's identity; to usurp another's chance; to foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely a phantom—the thought of it all was now a draught of which the dregs were very, very bitter.
Over and over again she recalled all that Ida May Bostwick had said to and of her. It was all true! Coarse and unfeeling as the shopgirl was, Sheila lashed her troubled soul with the thought that what Ida May had said was deserved. Neither circumstances nor the fact that Tunis had suggested the masquerade excused the transgression.
The days of her waiting on fate, alone in the cabin under Wreckers' Head, gave no surcease to her mental castigation. Her sin loomed the more huge as the hours dragged their slow length by.
And yet, with it all, Sheila's keenest anguish came through her renunciation of Tunis' love. She could see no possible way of holding to that if she would purge herself of the fault she had committed.
And above the stain of her false position since she had come to the Cape was the overcloud of that accusation which had first warped Sheila Macklin's life and humbled her spirit. She believed that she could never escape the shame of that prosecution and punishment for a crime she had not committed.
She believed that, no matter where she might go nor how blamelessly she might live, the fact that she had been sentenced to a woman's reformatory would crop up like the ugly memory of a horrid dream to embitter her existence. Was her life linked with Tunis Latham's, he must suffer also from that misfortune.
And so Sheila Macklin waited from hour to hour, from day to day, dully and in a brooding spirit, for release from a situation which must in time embitter her whole nature.
From the cabin at the foot of the seaward bluff of Wreckers' Head, the coming of the black gale out of the northeast was watched anxiously by Sheila, from the very break of this day. Tunis might be on the sea. She doubted if the threat of bad weather would hold the Seamew in port.
There was no rain—just a wind which tore across the waste of waters within view of her station, scattering their crests in foam and spoondrift, and rolling them in huger and still huger breakers on the strand. It was a magnificent sight, but a terrifying one as well. The girl watched almost continually for a white patch against the black of the storm which might mark a sailing craft in peril.
Steam vessels went past, several of them. They, surely, were in little danger, were their hulls ordinarily sound and their engines perfect. All the fishing craft had made for cover the night before. The New York-Boston steamers would keep to the inside passage in this gale.
Sheila had made all taut and trim inside the cabin. She had plenty of firewood and sufficient provisions to last her for a time.
About noon she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sand. It was little John-Ed who first appeared before her eyes. He thrust a letter into Sheila's hand.
"Dad brought it up from the port this morning, and I got it away from him. Say," he continued, evidently much disturbed, "he's coming here."
"Who is coming here—your father?"
"No, no! Not dad. I—I couldn't help it. I didn't tell him. I said you wanted to play alone here at being shipwrecked, and I was just like you said—your man Friday."
"Who do you mean?" asked Sheila, greatly agitated. "Not—"
"I bet 'twas that Tunis Latham told him you was here," continued John-Ed. "Anyway, don't blame me. All I done was to help him down the path."
He disappeared. Sheila stepped to the door. Cap'n Ira was laboring over the sands toward the cabin, leaning on his cane, his coat flapping in the wind and his cap screwed on so tightly that a hurricane could not possibly have blown it away.
But in addition and aside from the buffeting he had suffered from the wind, the old man looked much less trim and taut than Sheila had ever before seen him. He had not been shaved for at least three days; a button hung by a thread upon his coat; there was a coffee stain on the bosom of his shirt.
He looked so miserable, and so faint, and so buffeted about, that the girl cried out, running from the door of the cabin to meet him. The sweat of his hard effort stood on his brow, and he panted for breath.
"I swan! Ida May—er—well, whoever you be, gal, let me set down! I'm near spent, and that's a fact."
"Oh, Cap'n Ball, you should not have done this!" cried the girl, letting him lean upon her and aiding him as rapidly as possible to the cabin door. "You should not have done this. You—you can do nothing for me. You can do no good by coming here."
"Humph! P'r'aps not. Mebbe you're right. Let me set down on that box, gal," he muttered.
He eased himself down upon the rough seat against the wall. He removed the cap with an effort and took his huge handkerchief from its crown. He mopped his brow and face and finally heaved a huge sigh.
"I swan! That was a pull," he said. "So you're settled here. Gone to housekeeping on your own hook, have ye?" he said.
"Just for a little while, Cap'n Ira. Only—only until I can get away. I—I have been expecting some money—payment of one of my father's old bills."
She slit the envelope of the letter little John-Ed had just brought her. Inside was a pale-blue slip—a money order.
"Yes," she said. "I can get away now. I must go somewhere to earn my living, and as far away from here as I can get."
"So you think on traveling, do you?" said the old man. "You ain't content with Big Wreck Cove and the Head?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ira!" she cried. "You know I can't stay here. Winter is coming. Besides, the people here—"
"Ain't none of 'em asked ye to come an' live with them?"
"Cap'n Ball!"
"Ain't ye seen Tunis?"
The girl hid her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch of snuff.
"I cal'late," he said, after wiping his eyes, "that it ain't Tunis' fault that you are going away any more than it is mine and Prudence's. You just made up your mind to go."
"Cap'n Ball!" she exclaimed faintly, and again raised her eyes to his. "Can—can I help it? Now?"
"I don't know," he said, pursing his lips. "I don't know, gal, as anybody is driving you away from Wreckers' Head and them that loves ye here."
She was speechless. She gazed at him with drenched eyes, her face quivering uncontrollably. A hand pressed tightly to her breast seemed endeavoring to still the wild fluttering there.
"I don't know," he repeated, "that we got much to offer a gal like you, and that's a fact. We learned to know you pretty well while you stayed with us, Prue and me did. Somehow, we can't just seem to get the straight of what you told us that night you left. It—it ain't possible that you made some mistake, is it? Mebbe you was talking about some other gal?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ball!" she sighed. "I am able to tell you nothing that will change your opinion of me."
"Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's."
"Cap'n Ball!"
"No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did, through a trick—somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that somehow—we don't know how—what you told us that night and what you done for us before that night don't fit together nohow."
She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief.
"No, gal, we can't understand how anybody as good and loving as you have been to us can be at heart as bad as—as other folks might try to make out. Fact is, we know you can't be bad."
"What—what do you mean, Cap'n Ball?" she asked faintly.
"I swan! I tell ye what I'm getting at," burst out the old man. "We want you to come back. Prudence, she wants you to come back. I swan! I want you to come back. Why, even that dratted Queen of Sheby needs you, Ida May—or, whatever your name is! We've got to have you!"
"Prudence can't scurcely get around the house. And that niece of hers sits there like a stick or a stun, not willin' to scurce lift her hand to help. Thank the Lord she's goin' home to-day. Her visit's come to an end. She don't like it down here. She says we're all a set of—er—hicks, I believe she calls us.
"Howsomever, we're all high and dry on the reefs, gal, and it seems likely you're the only one can get us off. You ain't got to go away from here, if you don't want to. I've made it pretty average plain to that Bostwick gal that no matter what happens, she's got no expectations as far as Prudence and me are concerned. It was money and nothing but money she was after. Her being Prudence's niece in kind of a far-fetched way don't make it our duty—not even our Christian duty, as Elder Minnett calls it—to keep a gal in the house that we don't want, nor yet die at her convenience and leave her our money. And so I'll tell the elder if he undertakes to put his spoon in the dish again."
Sheila was listening to words that she had never expected to hear from the old captain. Could this be true? Were Cap'n Ira and Prudence, in spite of what they knew about her—what she had told them and Ida May had told them—desirous of having her back? Was there a chance, no matter what the real Ida May Bostwick could say, for Sheila to return and take up her peaceful life with the Balls?
Could this be real? Indeed, was it right for her to do this? Tunis—
She arose and walked to the open door, looking out almost blindly at first upon the gale-smitten sea. It was like her heart—so tossed about and fretted by winds of opinion. What should she do? Which way should she turn? Not to save Sheila Macklin from trouble or disgrace. Not even to save Tunis from possible scorn. The question that assailed her now was only: Was it right?
Suddenly, out upon the mountainous waves, she spied a sail. It was reefed, flattened down, almost tri-cornered. The two sticks of the schooner and the jaunty bowsprit pointing skyward heaved again into view. She stood so long gazing at the craft that Cap'n Ira spoke again.
"What d'ye say, gal?" he asked anxiously.
"Look—look here, Cap'n Ira!" she exclaimed. "Can it be the Seamew? Is she trying to head in for the channel? Oh! Are they in danger out there?"
The old man rose with his usual difficulty and hobbled to the door, leaning on his cane. He peered out over her shoulder, and his keen and experienced eyes saw and identified the laboring vessel almost at once.
"I swan! That is the Seamew, Ida May," he exclaimed. "Tut, tut! What's Tunis got himself into such a pickle for? 'Tain't reasonable he should—being as good a seaman as he is.
"My, my! Why don't he get some cloth on her? He can't have lost all his upper canvas. Don't he know he needs tops'ls to beat up aslant of this gale and get into the shelter of the Head? I swan! If there's men enough there to man her proper, why don't they do the right thing?"
"Oh, Cap'n Ball," gasped the girl, "perhaps there are not enough men with him. Perhaps his crew has deserted again."
"I swan!" rejoined the old man. "What did he set sail for, then? Ain't he got a mite of sense? But, I tell ye, Ida May, if he don't get more canvas on her, and get under better way, he'll never make that channel in this world."
"Oh!"
"The schooner's sure to go on the outer reef. She never can claw off the land now. Without help—if that's his trouble—Tunis Latham will never get that schooner into Big Wreck Cove. And God help him and them that's with him!" added the captain reverently.