Cape of Storms: A Novel

by Percival Pollard

In the very nature of things, a place of this sort is chiefly concerned with its own affairs; the main theme of conversation are its own people. Everyone is perfectly acquainted with his neighbor's affairs, and not infrequently, in fact, is able to inform that neighbor of certain details relating to the latter, that had until then been unknown to him. So it was that, at the time of Dick's leaving Lincolnville, the good people of that place knew, much better than he did himself, the surety of his engagement to Dorothy Ware. He himself would have been only too glad to be as sure as they were, when he heard the rumors he was given to smiling rather sardonically.

He came to me once, I remember, and looked at me for a long time with those clear, grey eyes of his. "Tell me, old man," he said, "do you think she cares for me?" It is a stupid question, this; but almost every boy who is in love puts it to some friend or other, in the quest for confirmation of his fears or hopes. "Why, Dick," I said—still more foolishly, perhaps, now that I look back on it—"Why, Dick, of course she does. We all do." "Oh," he flung in, impatiently, "I don't mean that!" I knew what he meant; but who shall tell, being a man, whether a girl cares or not? Although, if ever a boy was made to be well beloved, surely it was Dick.

He was always a high-spirited youngster; some of his tricks are still legends of the old high-school in his native place. He never liked to fight, being naturally mild of temper; but when he was roused beyond endurance lie was a veritable Daniel. His father died when he was only four years old; to his mother he was the most devoted of sons.

It was when he was about ten years old that his talent for drawing first proved itself. It came to him in the way that it has come to many who have since made the world listen to their names—on the old black-board in the schoolroom. It was a caricature of Mr. Fairly, I remember, who was always very tall and very thin, and whose face was like that of a French general's under the empire. Dick exaggerated all these peculiarities most deftly with his chalk, and then it so happened that Mr. Fairly himself walked in and found the caricature. He only looked at Dick quietly, and put his hand down on his shoulder with a subdued, "I am a good deal older than you, my boy, a good deal older. You're sorry, aren't you?" And something in our minister's tone must have touched Dick, for the boy put his head down and said: "Yes, sir," with a little choke in his voice. Nor do I think that from that day to this Dick has ever drawn or painted in caricature. But in all other ways he developed his talent day by day with really wonderful results. He always had a rare notion of color; the autumn foliage thereabouts gave him the most startling effects. He used to go out into the woods in mid-summer and mid-winter—it made little difference to him—and come back with some of the prettiest bits of landscape work I have ever seen. There were, it is true, certain palpable crudities in his work, due to the lack of any training save that of his instincts, but those would undoubtedly disappear as soon as he came under the influence of a proper instructor. It was for this that he was going to leave the village and become of the greater world in town. His mother had rebelled at first; she was growing old, and she feared the thought of losing sight of him; but there was no restraining his ambition. To remain cooped up in that little corral of a place all his life—oh, no; that was not at all the thing for Dick Lancaster. That great world, out there, that he had read and heard so much about, that was where he ought to be; and it was there he wanted to wager and to win; what was there left in Lincolnville? He could do nothing more there; his life was beginning to be a mere stagnation. He must out and away. This longing for shaking off the shackles of that narrow village life was, as much as ambition, the spur that sent him out into the larger world. And I do not wonder at him. Those small places are not fit arenas for the disporting of ambitions or freedoms.

At this time, Dick was a little over one-and-twenty. He was handsome in a dark, olive-skinned sort of way, and his eyes had the longest lashes I have ever seen in a man. His hair curled a little, though he was forever trying to comb and coax the curl away; he hated it, saying that curls were all right for a girl, perhaps, but not for a man. He was, but for the fact that he was very fond of good cigars, a veritable Pierrot. He had always been very closely under his mother's influence; even his association with the boys of his own age and class had not been enough to taint him at all. He had a fancy that, now as I consider it, after all these years, seems a most pathetic one, that the world was a very beautiful place in which the wicked were always punished, if not by actual stripes, at least by the disdain of their fellow-men. It seems strange, perhaps, that a young man of his age should still hold such notions, but you must remember that in the quieter villages of our country it is possible to hold these fancies all one's life; the town is the great disenchanter. Dick considered that he had two things to live for—his ambition and Dorothy Ware.

It was beautiful, the way the boy sometimes rhapsodized; beautiful, and yet in the light of after events, sad. "One day, you know," he said in one of his bursts of enthusiasm, "I will be known all the world over as a great painter. People will come to my studio and wonder at it, and the work in it. They will invite me everywhere. I will be a lion. But I shall always place my work first; admiration shall go into the last place. And there will be Dorothy! Dear Dorothy! I haven't asked her yet, you know, but I hope—oh, yes, I hope—that it will be all right between us. Dorothy will help me in everything; when I begin to flag, or to lose spirit, she will spur me on. She will represent me to the great world of society when I am hard at work; she will be my veritable Alter Ego. And some day—some day, when I feel that my brush and my hand have in them the passion for my masterpiece, I will paint her face—her face!" He took up a photograph that lay on the table before him and looked at it steadily for an instant or two. "Sweet face!" he went on, "how shall mere paint ever represent you? There must be love, too. Love and paint. The one is a mere trick of the hand and eye; the other is mine and mine alone. For no one can love her as I do."

As for Miss Dorothy Ware, she was eighteen and beautiful. I do not know that any woman really needs a fuller description than that. As for her wit, it is too early in this chronicle to speak of that; nor do I, personally, differ much from Théophile Gautier, when he states that a woman who has wit enough to be beautiful has all she needs.

Miss Ware's father had made a great deal of money by the very simple process of growing old; he had been one of the pioneer settlers in that county and his had been most of the land that the village now stood on. Miss Ware herself, while sensible of her riches, was unspoilt by them. By nature she was of the disposition that one can call nothing else but "sweet;" she was tender and gracious; she was fond of fun, so long as that fun annoyed no one else; in a word, she was considerate and gentle and lovable. She had been brought up in the south, and she had retained a trace of the southern accent, so that her speech was in itself a charm; she had natural talents for looking pretty under all circumstances; some might have said that she had the instincts of a coquette, but I do not believe it of her. She was devoted to children and dumb animals. And whoso has those instincts is intrinsically good. But Miss Ware held that she had by no means had enough of this world's pleasures to begin thinking of so solemn a thing as marriage. Like a large number of the girls of today, she was, first and foremost, "out for a good time," as the slang of the time has it. She had certainly the intention of some day marrying the man she loved and making him as happy as she could; but in the meanwhile she wanted to test the world's ability to furnish entertainment quite a little while yet. Which was why, although she was very fond of Dick, she had invariably put him off, when he grew importunate, with a laugh. "Why, Dick," she would say, "don't you know you're absurd to think of such a thing? We're just children yet. Oh, I know we're of age, but what of that? You don't mean to tell me that you think your life has shaped, or even begun to shape itself yet? No. And as for me, I'm going to skirmish around a while yet before I settle down and become old married people! Be sensible, Dick!" And Dick, with a sigh in his heart, was, perforce, fain to say that he would try. "Skirmish around!" It grated on him, somehow, that phrase; it seemed to hold for him visions of innumerable flirtations; of contact with the world, the flesh and the devil, with the brushing off of the faint, roseate bloom of innocence.

It was on the day before Dick's departure for town that Lincolnville received the news of another intended going abroad. The Wares' were to sail for Europe before the month was out. Mrs. Ware had long been an invalid; for years the doctors had advised travel, but her husband's objections to any sort of change had hitherto prevailed against her wishes. But now the really dangerous state of Mrs. Ware's health, added to the entreaties of Dorothy, who longed, as do all American girls, for a glimpse of the old country, had brought the old gentleman to acquiescence. He would not go himself; he was getting too old for such a trip; but his wife and daughter should go, if they had set their hearts on it. So that, with the prospective departure of both Richard Lancaster and the girl that rumor had him engaged to, the tongues of the gossips had plenty to do on that day. When Dick first heard the news about the Wares' he was inclined to be downhearted; then it struck him that it would give him an opportunity for another effort at getting from Dorothy at least the promise of a promise.

Than Lincolnville in mid-summer I know few fairer places; there is a cool, green quiet all about that makes for peace and gentleness, and in the whispering of the breeze as it curls through the thick foliage of the spreading trees there is the note of happiness. Happiness, indeed, lies nearer to man in one of these small, serene villages, than anywhere else in the world, save in solitude; but it is rarely that man sees the sleeping beauty that he has sought all his life long. Dick, as he walked along toward the Ware house that splendid afternoon, caught something of the warm, comfortable languor that was in the air, and looked about him with a note of regret in his regard. "How pretty it all is!" he thought, looking at the familiar houses, with their well-kept lawns and ivy-covered verandahs, "how pretty! And yet—" he sighed, and then smiled with a proud lift of the head—"there are other things!"