CHAPTER I.
MISS DARRELL.
It had been a week of ceaseless rain—the whole country side was sodden. The month was March, and after an unusually severe January and February, a "soft spell" had come, the rain had poured or dripped incessantly from a smoke-colored sky, the state of the earth was only to be described by that one uncomfortable word "slush." Spring was at hand after a horribly bitter winter—a spring that was all wet and slop, miserable easterly winds, and bleak, drizzling rain.
Perhaps if you searched the whole coast line between Maine and Florida, you could not light upon a drearier, dirtier, duller little town than the town of Sandypoint, Massachusetts. It was a straggling place, more village than town, consisting mainly of one long street, filled with frame houses of staring white, picked out with red doors and very green shutters. Half a dozen pretentious "stores," a school-house, one or two churches, a town hall, and three hotels, comprised the public buildings. Behind Sandypoint stretched out the "forest primeval;" before Sandypoint spread away its one beauty, the bright, broad sea.
To-day it looked neither bright nor broad, but all blurred in gray wet mist; the surf cannonaded the shore with its dull thunder; the woodland in the background was a very black forest in the dreariness, and the roads—who shall paint the state of the Sandypoint roads? Worst of all, the weather showed no sign of relenting, no symptoms of clearing up. The new clock recently affixed to the Sandypoint Town Hall, was striking the matutinal hour of ten. The population of Sandypoint might all have been dead and buried, for any sign of life Independence street showed. Doors and windows were all closed in a melancholy way—a stray, draggled dog the only living creature to be seen.
Or stay—no! there was a girl besides the dog, almost as draggled as her four-footed companion. A girl of eighteen, perhaps, who walked along through rain and discomfort, without so much as an umbrella to protect her. She had come out of one of the ugliest of the ugly buildings nearest the sea, and walked along in a slipshod sort of way, never turning to the right or left to avoid an unusually deep puddle. She plunged right on through it all—a dark, sullen-looking girl in a shabby black dress, a red and black tartan shawl, an old black felt hat with dingy red flowers, long past being spoilt by rain or wind.
And yet she was a pretty girl too—a very pretty girl. Take the Venus Celestis, plump her down in a muddy road in a rainstorm, dress her in a draggled black alpaca, a faded shawl, and shocking bad hat, and what can you say for your goddess but that she isn't a bad-looking young woman? Miss Edith Darrell labors under all these disadvantages at present. More—she looks sulky and sour; it is evident her personal appearance has troubled her very little this dismal March morning. And yet as you look at her, at those big black somber eyes, at those almost classically regular features, at all that untidy abundance of blackish-brown hair, you think involuntarily "what a pretty girl that might be if she only combed her hair, put on a clean dress, and wasn't in bad temper!"
She is tall, she is slender—there is a supple grace about her even now—she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like cherries. You know without seeing her laugh, that she has very white teeth. She is in no way inclined to show her white teeth laughingly this morning. She goes steadily along to her destination—one of the "stores" where groceries and provisions are sold. The storekeeper smilingly accosts her with a brisk "Good-morning, Miss Darrell! Who'd have thought of seeing you out this nasty whether? Can I do anything for you to-day?"
"If you couldn't do anything for me, Mr. Webster," answers Miss Darrell, in no very conciliatory tone, "it isn't likely you'd see me in your shop this morning. Give me one pound of tea, one pound of coffee, three pounds of brown sugar, and a quarter of starch. Put them in this basket, and I'll call for them when I'm going home."
She goes out again into the rain, and makes her way to an emporium where dry goods, boots and shoes, millinery, and crockery are for sale. A sandy-haired young man, with a sandy mustache and a tendency to blushes, springs forward at sight of her, as though galvanized, reddening to the florid roots of his hair.