I shall never forget the look with which Rebecca rose wearily, and went to the door—not an angry look, not a look of terror nor even of pleading reproach; but it was as if her soul, sinful, crushed and bleeding though it was, in that one moment, rose above my soul and condemned it with sorrowful, clear eyes.
I listened to her step going down the stairs. I did not call her back. I heard her latch the outer door of the Ark. No thought of pity for her wrong, or commiseration for her desolation moved me. I thought only in my proud selfish passion, how miserably, how bitterly I had been deceived.
I sought out the fisherman's letter before retiring, and the one I had begun in answer, and tore them both into shreds, believing that I should as easily rid my mind of the whole miserable affair with which I had been unwittingly complicated.
CHAPTER XIII.
A MILD WINTER ON THE CAPE.
"It's be'n a mild winter on the Cape;" the Wallencampers congratulated one another, blinking, with a delicious sense of warmth and comfort, in the rays of a strong March sun.
The Wallencampers were not, perhaps, generally incited by that love of stern, unceasing, and vigorous exertion which is, geographically considered, one of the chief characteristics of our hardy northern races. True poets and idealists, they were lazy, and they had but few clothes, both excellent reasons for inclining kindly to the warm weather.
And yet, notwithstanding this, they had grown used to a wild ruggedness of nature and condition, a terrible, sublime uncertainty about life and things in general when the wind blew, missing which, in this earthly state, they would have pined most sadly. And I do not believe that they would have exchanged their rugged, storm-swept, wind-beleaguered little section of Cape Cod for a realm in sunny Italy itself; no, not even if the waves of that bright clime had rippled over sands of literal gold, and their winter had been nine months in the year instead of the customary six and a half.
"A mild winter on the Cape." Grandpa Keeler often repeated the words; and sitting by the fire at night, his eyes grew big and wild, and his tones took on a terrible impressiveness as he told of rough winters on the Cape, when the snow lay drifted high across the fences in the lane, and "every time she came in yender"—pointing in the direction of the Bay—"she licked offa slice or two o' bank, and the old Ark whirled and shuk—O Lordy, teacher!—as ef she'd slipped her moorin's and gone off on a high sea, and ef you'd a heered the wind a screechin' inter them winders, you'd a thought the"——