CHAPTER XV
The Clouds Disperse
And so with the entrance into that automobile began still another chapter in Geraldine Melody's life. While they drove through the attractive avenues of the resort and Mrs. Barry pointed out the cottages belonging to well-known people, the young girl was making an effort for her own self-possession. To be alone with the mother of her knight was exciting, and her determination was not to allow any emotion to be observable in her manner. She did not yet know whether she was present as a seamstress or as a guest. She felt that in either case she had been summoned for inspection, for of course Ben had left his mother in no doubt as to his sentiments. Mrs. Barry evinced no embarrassment. Her smooth monologue flowed on without a question. Perhaps she suspected the tumult in the fluttering heart beside her, and was giving the young girl time. At all events, nothing that she said required an answer, and Geraldine obediently looked, unseeing, at every object she pointed out.
The motor rolled across a bridge. "Here you see Keefeport even boasts a little river," said Mrs. Barry. "The young people can enjoy a mild canoe trip as well as their exciting yachting. I am going to stop at my cottage and give a few orders, so long as I am here."
Another five minutes of swift riding brought them to the driveway leading to a cottage placed on a rocky height close to the sea. "We have a rather wonderful view, you see," Mrs. Barry's calm voice went on. "Perhaps you would like to get out and walk about the piazza while I speak with the caretaker."
Geraldine followed her out of the luxurious car, feeling very small and insignificant and resenting the sensation made upon her by the imposing surroundings. She wished herself back with Miss Upton and the cat; but she mounted the steps and stood on the wide porch looking on the jagged rocks beneath. The sea came hissing in among them, flinging up spray and dragging back noisily in the strong wind to make ready for another onslaught. The vast view was superb and suggested all the poems she had ever read about the sea. Mrs. Barry had gone into the house and now came out with the caretakers, a man and wife, with whom she examined the progress of flowers and vines growing in sheltered nooks. Geraldine resolutely shut out memories of her knight. The girls whose summers were spent among these scenes were his friends, and among them his mother had doubtless selected some fastidious maiden who had never encountered disgraceful moments.
"I belong to myself," thought Geraldine proudly, forcing back some stinging drops, salt as the vast waters before her. "I don't need anybody, I don't." She fought down again the memory of her lover's embraces. Ever afterward she remembered those few minutes alone on the piazza at Rockcrest, overwhelmed by the sensation of contrast between herself on sufferance in her cheap raiment, and the indications all about her of the opposite extreme of luxury—remembered those moments as affording her a poignant unhappiness.
"I won't ask you to come into the cottage," said Mrs. Barry, approaching at the close of her interview. "The rugs haven't been unrolled yet, and it is all in disorder. Isn't that a superb show of sky and sea, and never twice alike?"
"Superb," echoed Geraldine.