“What was it she asked?” the Portuguese was saying; but no one answered him. Nor did they look at me. They made me feel guilty, an accomplice to some dark deed they did not understand. No more did I understand it, I wanted to scream at them! The judge was taking money out of his pocket, and handed five one-dollar bills to the colored man, who had revived enough by now to take up a general collection.
“Good-by,” said the sailor genially. “I didn’t find out nothin’, but it was worth it, anyway, to be in on that. Say, he’s good, ain’t he?” He followed me to the door. “Say,” he whispered, “if anything, you know, turns up, let me know, will you? I’d take it as a favor. I’m off from three to five, short leave. See you to-morrow, corner of Long Wharf.”
I smiled hysterically. These were strange days for me. I had been at a séance, and made a date with a sailor!
CHAPTER XIV
THE FOURTH NIGHT
JUDGE BELL and I climbed up the shifting cliff of sand and paused at the top, out of breath.
While we had been in the cabin holding the séance, a fog had risen. The sun was hidden behind a gray bank, barely causing a brighter patch of mother-of-pearl in the western sky, where feathery clouds were heaped high, one upon the other, like the soft silken cushions of the fairy princess’s bed. Mist swept around the top of the dunes and filled the hollows. Lakes of fog spread themselves at our feet, deceptively solidifying the craters between the hills into opaque pools of silver. Vapor eddied in slow masses backward and forward, disclosing the dunes and hiding them again at the will of the sluggish wind. Outlines were dim; the blue of the ocean had become invisible. Distances were so distorted that it seemed as if in three strides one might reach the outside shore, where the surf was roaring.
The rain of yesterday had pounded every track out of the wet dark sand, leaving it imprinted with a wind-stamped water-mark. The grass-topped pyramid where Ruth and I had played with the children last summer was dissolved. There was no formation in all that desolate region which bore any resemblance to it. The dunes must have challenged the sea to a wild race during the hurricane, with a gale driving the bitter sand so swiftly that whole hills were moved. The pounding of the breakers was reminiscent of the orgy they had indulged in during the storm, crashing as clearly across the waste as if we were listening where the foam fell. Our damp clothes clung to us, and our faces became wet and our lips tasted salt.
I turned to the silent judge, whose rugged figure, buffeted by many tempests of the soul as well as of the sea, stood staunchly beside me in the dusk, a strong defense. His introspective vision penetrated further than the eye could follow.
“Who do you think was speaking to us, back there in the hut?” I asked.
“Why, Mattie,” he answered in a surprised tone.