There were two or three October days when the sea was blue and silver, sharply and brightly outlined against the far skyline where the deep blue heavens modulated to a filmy turquoise. Gulls followed the furrows of the breakers. Father and Mother paced the edge of the cliff or sat sun-refreshed in the beloved arbor. Then a day of iron sea, cruelly steel-bright on one side and sullenly black on the other, with broken rolling clouds, and sand whisking along the dunes in shallow eddies; rain coming and the breakers pounding in with a terrifying roar and the menace of illimitable power. Father gathered piles of pine-knots for the fire, whistling as he hacked at them with a dull hatchet—trimming them, not because it was necessary, but because it gave him something energetic to do. Whenever he came into the kitchen with an armful of them he found Mother standing at the window, anxiously watching the flurries of sand and rain.
“Be a fine night to sit by the fire,” he chirruped. “Guess we’ll get out the old mouth-organ and have a little band-concert, admission five bucks, eh?” Something of the old command was in his voice. Mother actually needed his comfort against the black hours of storm!
Though they used a very prosaic stove for cooking, the old farm-house fireplace still filled half the back of the kitchen, and this had become the center of their house. Neither of them could abide the echoing emptiness and shabby grandeur of the tea-room. Before the fireplace they sat, after a supper at which Father had made much of enjoying fish chowder, though they had had it four times in eight days. Cheaper. And very nourishing.
The shutters banged, sand crashed against the panes, rain leaked in a steady drip down one corner of the room, and the sea smashed unceasingly. But Father played “My Gal’s a High-born Lady” and “Any Little Girl That’s a Nice Little Girl Is the Right Little Girl for Me,” and other silly, cheerful melodies which even the hand-organs had forgotten.
There was a sense of glaring mounting light through the window which gave on the cliff.
“I wonder what that is,” Mother shuddered. “It’s like a big fire. I declare it seems as though the whole world was coming to an end to-night.” She turned from the window and shivered over the embers, in her golden-oak rocker which Father had filled with cushions.
He kissed her boyishly and trotted over to the window. The fact that they were alone against the elements, with no apartment-house full of people to share the tumultuous night, weakened her, but delighted him. He cried out, with a feeling of dramatic joy.
There was a fire below, on the beach, where there should be nothing but sand and the terror of the storm. The outer edge of the cliff was outlined by the light.
“It’s a wreck!” he whooped. “It’s the life-savers! Mother, I’m going down. Maybe there’s something I can do. I want to do something again! Maybe some poor devil coming ashore in the breeches buoy—help him ashore— Don’t suppose I could row—”
He darted at the closet and yanked out his ineffectual city raincoat and rubbers, and the dreary wreck of what had once been his pert new vacation traveling-cap.