What a pair they were, to be sure! What a bouquet of innocence, youth and utterly worthless endeavour!
The enterprise brought in little, though during July and August people came from the Ocean View House and even from remoter hotels on outlying islands. At this André laughed in his heart, but after the novelty had worn off, Rachel was less pleased. The money that she earned bought her a new dress and hat; but it was not sufficient to lighten the burden on her grandfather's shoulders. Unable longer to bear the hardships of lobster-fishing, old David had sold his pots. Taking part of his scant savings he had bought four cows. He now peddled milk from one end of the Point to the other. Rachel sometimes looked at him with sudden fear, though their poverty she realized but vaguely, never having known anything different. She mended his clothes and lavished upon him every care. She opened her heart to him, and in spirit he dwelt there as in a wide, sunny room. But, though he knew her heart, neither he nor anyone else, knew what was passing in her mind. Sometimes with a vigorous motion she would clasp her hands behind her head while she stared through the doorway of the barn; then she would slip away, taking the winding path to the bay, and remain there for hours.
The groups of rocks on the bay shore differed from those fronting the ocean. They were more sad than threatening in form and were covered thickly with seaweed, like enormous heads with hair. In this hair sparkled iridescent drops left by the receding tide; these drops resembled jewels. The rocks, indeed, were decked like the heads of women, and by reason of the long tresses of seaweed that trailed from them and that undulated on the surface of the water, an uneasy restlessness seemed to pervade them.
Rachel would eye them gloomily: then, flinging herself down, she would observe the various forms of life in the little pools of water where floated crabs and jellyfish. In the prominent eyes of the crab she saw the desire for its prey. Looking upward, attracted by the sinister screech of gulls, she saw them fluttering about the nest of a sanderling which they pillaged of its eggs. Letting her glance fall again she studied the little bell-shaped barnacles, like tiny huts, which everywhere adhered to the rocks in settlements. As the water approached, one after another of the doors of these wee huts opened and a hand, vaporish, white as light, reached forth and gathered in the necessary provender. Everywhere, everything received what it needed to sustain life. She alone was starved.
With these thoughts surging in her brain, Rachel would make her way back to the barn. There, with cheeks puffed out, stooping over his work, she would find André. One day when she entered the barn he greeted her with a gleeful announcement: he had sold five little shells and one big one during her absence. She turned away. She had often watched the faces of the summer people: they bought the shells out of pity for André, or perhaps, because they admired his handsome face. As art, she suspected, the shells were nothing. Why could he not see?
"You have no ambition," she said surlily, "there are schools where one can learn to do this sort of thing, I suppose. You ought to want to get away and study."
Amazed, he looked up at her. "But the shells sell all right," he remarked. "I paint well enough for that."
She made no answer and sparks of some sort glowed in her eyes. She shook her head at him.
"You're just like a barnacle," she cried passionately, "it clings to a rock, it lives in a corner; everyday when the tide comes in, it opens its door and gathers in food. In the same way every morning you wait for the city people. You open your door, you reach out your hand—like this, and you take in the pennies. Bah! is that enough for you?"
"Well, isn't it?" he asked, and in his eyes, as he looked at her, dawned a certain yearning softness.