He was grasped by a feverish desire to be all alone and walk, walk, walk; so he kept on up Academy Hill, passing the white building beneath the trees. When he reached the fenced-about football field, he turned to the right and took the road that led toward Wolf’s Head Point.
He took off his hat to let the cool wind from the open sea fan his hot forehead as he strode along. All the while his thoughts were busy, and within his soul a battle was taking place.
The point was reached. He passed the home of the light-keeper, but, instead of approaching the light-house, which towered in a white column on the extremity of the point, he turned to the left and mounted to the ragged top of a mass of ledges, where he found a seat, with the rising tide murmuring and swirling amid the crevices and crannies below him.
Sunset’s after-glow glinted the waves, but afar on the bosom of the sea lay a purple haze that seemed to blend with sea and sky and connect both; and out of the purple sea-mist loomed a white-winged vessel, headed for Rockspur Harbor, which it could not reach before darkness fell. Away toward the ledges by the harbor mouth some gulls skimmed the waves, uttering harsh and melancholy cries. Overhead a few vapory clouds were tinted with pink and edged with burnished gold.
Don gave little heed to his surroundings as he sat there in the ledge, staring down at the restless water that ran green and foamy over the broken rocks, but the expression on his mobile face indicated that the battle within him was waxing fiercer.
He had long known that the death of his mother had cast a great shadow on his father’s life, but never till this day had he suspected that Dr. Scott held himself in any respect responsible for the loss of his wife.
Don had discovered that his mother’s miniature, painted on ivory, was constantly carried near his father’s heart. More than once he had, without being observed, seen his father gazing sadly and lovingly at that picture; but on this last occasion the doctor’s murmured words, unintended for his ears, had given him an inkling of the truth of the great sorrow that had fallen upon his father.
Some act of the doctor, done in a moment of anger, had, as he firmly believed, hastened or brought about the death of his wife. For this angry deed he had never forgiven himself, and now he was filled with foreboding and distress because he saw his son had inherited his ungovernable temper and because he feared the end to which it might lead.
“I have no right to cause my father so much pain,” thought Don, self-reproachfully. “He’s always been kind to me. I—I don’t know about my mother, for he never told me. I don’t suppose he could bring himself to talk about it. I must do something to relieve him—something to assure him that I am trying to govern my temper and master myself. But, oh, it is hard to humble myself before that fellow Renwood! How can I do it?”
The struggle within him continued while the light died slowly in the western sky, the pink and gold left the clouds dull and lead-colored, and the blue haze deepened into darkness.