“I'm glad to—to know he's been preserved,” Olive stammered, confused by Honora's frank speech.
“You sound exactly as if he were a jar of quinces,” the other answered impatiently; “and not a true lover coming back from California with bags of gold.”
Olive's confusion deepened to painful embarrassment at the indelicate term lover. She wondered, hotly red, how Honora could go on so, and made a motion to continue on her way. But the other's fingers closed and held her. “I wonder, Olive,” she said more thoughtfully, “if I know you well enough, if you will allow me, to give you some advice. It is this—don't be too rigid with Jason when he gets back. For nearly ten years he's been out in a life very different from Cottarsport, and he must have changed in that time. Here we stay almost the same—ten or twenty or fifty years is nothing really. The fishing boats come in, they may have different names, but they are the same. We stop and talk, Honora Canderay and Olive Stanes, and years before and years later women will stand here and do the same with beliefs no wider than your finger. But it isn't like that outside; and Jason will have that advantage of us—things really very small, but which have always seemed tremendous here, will mean no more to him than they are worth. He will be careless, perhaps, of your most cherished ideas; and, if you are to meet him fairly, you must try to see through his eyes as well as your own. Truly I want you to be happy, Olive; I want every one in Cottarsport to be as happy... as they can.”
Olive's embarrassment increased: it was impossible to know what Honora Canderay meant by her last words, in that echoing voice. Nevertheless, her independence of spirit, the long nourished tenets of the abhorrence of sin, asserted themselves in the face of even Honora's directions. “I trust,” she replied stiffly, “that Jason has been given grace to walk in the path of God——” She stopped with lips parted, her breath laboring with shock, at the interruption pronounced in ringing accents. Honora Canderay said:
“Grace be damned!”
Olive backed away with her hands pressed to her cheeks. In the midst of her shuddering surprise she realized how much the other resembled her father, the captain.
“I suppose,” Honora further ventured, “that you are looking for a bolt of lightning, but it is late in the season for that. There are no thunder storms to speak of after September.” She turned abruptly, and Olive watched her depart, gracefully swaying against the wind.
All Olive's unformed opinions and attitude concerning Honora Canderay crystallized into one sharp, intelligible feeling—dislike. The breadth of being which the other had seemed to possess was now revealed as nothing more than a lack of reverence. She was inexpressibly upset by Honora's profanity, the blasphemous mind it exhibited, her attempted glossing of sin. It was nothing less. In the assault on Olive's most fundamental verities—the contempt which, she divined, had been offered to the edifice of her conscience and creed—she responded blindly, instinctively, with an overwhelming condemnation. At the same time she was frightened, and hurried away from the proximity of such unsanctified talk. She did not go to Citron Street, and the shops, as she had intended; but kept directly on until she found herself at the harbor and wharves. The latter serrated the water's edge, projecting from the relatively tall, bald warehouses, reeking with the odor of dead fish, cut open and laid in salt, grey-white areas to the sun and wind.
A small group of men, with flat bronzed countenances and rough furze coats, uneasily stirred their hats, in the local manner of saluting women, and turned to gaze fixedly at her as she passed. Even in her perturbation of mind she was conscious of their unusual scrutiny. She couldn't, now, for the life of her, recall what needed to be bought; and, mounting the narrow uneven way from the water, she proceeded home.