MR. WADDY’S RETURN

BY
THEODORE WINTHROP

Author of “Cecil Dreeme,” etc.

EDITED BY
BURTON E. STEVENSON

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1904

Copyright, 1904
By
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published October, 1904
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

The author did not live to revise the original draft of “Mr. Waddy’s Return,” and therefore, when his other novels were published, shortly after his death, this one was not included. On looking it over again, after the lapse of years, it seemed to his sister, Miss Elizabeth W. Winthrop, too good to let die; and it was placed in the hands of Mr. Stevenson to give it such revision and condensation as it may be presumed that the author, had he lived, would have given it himself.

CONTENTS

MR. WADDY’S RETURN

CHAPTER I
A REMARKABLE EPISODE, HITHERTO UNRECORDED,
IN THE VOYAGE OF THE “MAYFLOWER”

NAMES must act upon character. Every preceding Waddy, save one short-lived Ira, from the first ancestor, the primal Waddy, cook of the Mayflower, had been a type of placid meekness, of mild, humble endurance. During all Boston’s material changes, from a petty colony under Winthrop to a great city under General Jackson, and all its spiritual changes from Puritanism to Unitarianism, Boston divines had pointed to the representative Waddy of their epoch as the worthy successor of Moses upon earth—Moses the meekest man, not Moses the stalwart smiter of rocks and irate iconoclast of golden calves.

Why, then, was Ira Waddy, with whom this tale is to concern itself, other than his race? Why had he revolutionised the family history? Why was he a captor, not a captive of Fate? Why was the Waddy name no longer hid from the world in the unfragrant imprisonment and musty gloom of a blind court in Boston, but known and seen and heard of all men, wherever tea-chests and clipper-ships are found, or fire-crackers do pop? Why was Ira Waddy, in all senses, the wholesale man, while every other Waddy had been retail? Brief questions—to be answered not so briefly in this history of his Return.

Yes, the Waddy fortunes had altered. To the small shop, the only patrimony of the Waddy family, went little vulgar boys in days of Salem witchcraft, in days of Dorchester sieges, and after when the Fourth of July began to noise itself abroad as a festival of the largest liberty: on all great festal days when parents and uncles rattled with candy money, and coppers were certain, and on all individual festal days when the unlooked-for copper came, then went brats, Whig and Tory, Federal and Democrat, to the Waddys’ shop and bullied largely there. Not only the representative Mr. Waddy did they bully and bargain into pecuniary bewilderment and total loss of profit, but also the representative Mrs. Waddy, a feeble, scrawny dame, whose courage died when she put the fateful question to the representative Mr. Waddy, otherwise never her spouse.

But there was no more bullying about the little shop. In fact, the shop had grown giantly with the fortunes of the name. A row of stately warehouses covered its site, and many other sites where neighbour pride had once looked down upon it. The row was built of granite, without ornament or gaud, enduring as the eternal hills. On its front, cut in solid letters on a gigantic block, were the words

WADDY BUILDINGS

Ginger was sold there in dust-heaps like a Vesuvius, not gingerbread in the amorphous penny idol; aromatic cinnamon by the ceroons of a plundered forest, not by the chewing-stick for dull Sabbath afternoons; tea by the barricade of chests, product of a province, not by the tin shoeful, as the old-time Waddys had sold it for a century before the Tea Party. And Ira Waddy owned these buildings, which he had never seen.

It is not necessary that I should speculate to discover where the traits that distinguished Ira Waddy from his ancestors had their origin. Of this I have accurate information. My wonder is at the delay in a development of character certain to arrive. But late springs bring scorching summers. Fires battened long below hatches gather strength for one swift leap to the main-truck.

Whitegift Waddy, cook of the Mayflower, was meek. How he came to be a Puritan, on the Mayflower, in its caboose and a cook,—out of his element in religion, in space, in place, and in profession,—I cannot say; these are questions that the Massachusetts Historical Society will probably investigate, now that the Waddys are rich and can hire cooks to give society dinners. At all events, there he was, and there he daily made a porridge for Miles Standish, and there he peppered the same. Now as to pepper in cream tarts there is question; in porridge none: I do not, therefore, blame Miles, peppery himself and loving pepper, for wrath when, one day, a bowl of pepperless insipidity was placed before him. He sent for the cook and thus addressed him:

“Milksop! Thou hast the pepper forgot. I will teach thy caitiff life a lesson. Ho, trencherman! Bring pepper!”

It was brought. He poured it all into the porridge, and, standing by, compelled Waddy to swallow spoonful after spoonful. At the screams of the victim, the Pilgrim Grandfathers, Governor Carver, Father Winslow, and Elder Brewster, rushed from on deck into the cabin and besought the infuriated hero to desist as he valued the life of Mrs. Susanna White, who was soon to add a little Pilgrim to their colony.

“Enough!” said Standish. “The pepper hath entered into his soul.”

It had, indeed! Nothing was cooked on the Mayflower for six days. On the seventh, Whitegift Waddy re-entered the caboose. He had always been a meek, he was now a crushed man. Yet there seemed to have grown within him, as we sometimes see in those the world has wronged, a quiet confidence in a redressing future.

Pepper, thus implanted in the Waddy nature, seemed to have no effect for generations. It was, however, slowly leavening their lumpishness. It was impelling them to momentary tricks of a strange vivacity. At last, the permeating was accomplished, and our hero, Ira, the first really alive Waddy, was born. I have said the first, but there was another Ira Waddy who, at one period in his brief career, showed a momentary sparkle of the smouldered flame. Of him a word anon, as his fate had to do with the fates of others, strangely interwoven with the fate of his great-nephew and namesake.

CHAPTER II
THE WADDYS OF DULLISH COURT, FROM WHITEGIFT
TO OUR HERO

WHILE Governor Winthrop was planning the future city of Boston, he went, one rainy day, to the heights of those hills that give the spot the name of Trimountain. A violent June storm had channelled the hillsides, and strong water-courses filled the valleys. No phenomenon is idle to the observing mind.

“These channels,” said the prudent governor, “shall be the streets of our future city.”

He then pursued his way downward, slipping along the oozy trails, until he paused at a small pool where several little, muddy rivulets united to form a stagnancy. Here, he contemplated for a while his grave but genial visage, and smiled as his reflected face broadened or lengthened grotesquely and his pointed beard wagged in the waves of the water.

“This,” said he at last, “shall be a place for pauses in city life. Here shall be a no-thoroughfare court, a lurking-place for shy respectability, for proud poverty; not quite for neediness, but for those who want and would, but will not.”

Boston was laid out; the streets named themselves. This court chanced to be called Dulwich Court, which soon degraded itself to Dullish, and so it remained in nature and in name.

Whitegift Waddy, and Mehitabel, his wife, floating purposeless waifs through the new settlements, drifted into Dullish Court to live dull lives and then to meekly die. There was always one son in each generation of their family, an unwholesome lad, fed on remainder biscuits and stale mince pies. Still, it gradually became aristocratic to have come in with the Pilgrims. A certain consideration began to attach itself to the family, and the current Waddy, if such phrase may be used of so very stagnant a person, was always espoused by someone of a better class than his social condition could warrant. It was generally some pale schoolmistress, or invalided housekeeper of a great mansion, who became the better half of each gentle shopkeeper of Dullish Court.

These wives brought refinement and education with them; so that, at last, could they have sunk the shop, the Waddys would have been admitted as gentlefolk anywhere. They enjoyed, too, the consciousness of being better in rank than their neighbours. They never spoke of Whitegift as the cook, but as the Steward, or sometimes the Purveyor, of the Mayflower. They liked to walk through Beacon Street and smile placidly at the efforts of new people to win position by great houses, crowded balls and routs, and promotion marriages.

By-and-by it chanced that, quite contrary to rule, there were three sons in one generation playing in the puddles of Dullish Court and slyly filching dry gingerbread from the showcases of the old shop. It was a time when there was a flame in the land, and the elder twin of the three young Waddys, Whitegift by name, who had been early taken with tin soldiers and penny trumpets, awoke one morning after booziness to find himself, to his total surprise, with a red coat on his back and a king’s shilling in his pocket. There was so little real martial ardour in his soul that he at once withered away, and being sent to the garrison of New York as a recruit of doubtful loyalty, he was there soon invalided. He finally dropped into the family trade and became a sutler. The Boston Waddys, saddened by his desertion of a cause they had vigour enough to support, soon forgot his existence—which does not at all imply that such existence terminated.

The other twin was apparently of the usual Waddy type; but when the great flame blazed forth at last unquenchable, he also took fire. He was a volunteer at Lexington and did active service, dropping several invaders in their bloody tracks. He was at once made sergeant in Captain Janeway’s company, and gained the respect of his officers by his quick, ready energy. Ira was his name—Ira Waddy, the First.

Two months later, when the British were trying that uphill work at Bunker Hill for the third time, Captain Jane way and Sergeant Waddy waited rather too long. Three or four of the British rushed at Janeway with eyes staring for plunder. One of them stared at what he got and lay there staring, with his head down-hill. To bore this fellow had occupied Janeway’s sword, and though Sergeant Waddy’s clubbed musket could brain another assailant, it could not parry two bayonet thrusts. His breast could and did; so that Janeway felt nothing more than a scratch, when, with a murderous stamp of the left foot, another soldier ran the sergeant through. Just then a rush of flying Yankees came by and cleared the spot of foes. The captain had a moment to kneel by his preserver and hear him gasp some broken words:

“Mother! Take care of them, captain. Oh, Mary, Mary!”

When, after the surrender of Boston, Captain, now Colonel, Janeway called on that Mary with the news of her lover’s death and his last words, she knew her life was widowed. There was nothing in the power of a man of wealth and growing distinction that the colonel did not offer her. She rejected all with a New England woman’s quiet independence and mild self-reliance. To become a schoolmistress, as she did, was only to return to her original destiny.

Janeway remained her friend. He alone knew her secret. She was one of those strangely spiritual beings who interfere like dreamy visions in the inventive, busy business of Yankee life. She had a great, ennobling sorrow. Her lover had been a martyr of two religions. He had died for his country and for his friend. It may be said he died instinctively; but Mary knew that only the noble and the brave have noble and brave instincts.

To most people, Mary was only a pale schoolmistress. One person, however, met her on terms of devoted respect. Governor Janeway, the pre-eminently practical and successful man, found in her society what he found not with his gorgeous wife. She became the Cassandra of young Janeway—who went to the bad, it is true, but long after her death—and the kindly guide of his infant child.

Late in life she married Benajah Waddy, the youngest brother of the three. Janeway had made him bookkeeper, secretary, agent, but he had finally, after his mother’s death, dwindled into the old shop. Mary, considering herself his brother’s widow, came to a Hebraical, religious conclusion as to her duty. With entire simplicity of heart, she told Benajah that they ought to be married. As a matter of course, they were. The usual wife found, also, in process of time, their only son, Benajah, and married him. These both died, leaving their only son, Ira Waddy, to the charge of his aged and widowed grandmother, Mary, widow in heart of Ira the First.

Her grandson was named Ira after his great-uncle, the soldier. By-and-by it was discovered that a wide river in India bore the same name, and young Waddy was attracted toward his namesake. The old influence which, now reviving, made his blood hot as flame, urged him to know the land not merely of the citron and myrtle, but of spice and pungent condiments. His grandmother lavished upon him all the beautiful tenderness of her long-suppressed and desolated love, and then she died.

Ira Waddy’s hot ardency of nature could not bear coolly any wrong. Wrong came to him. It would have extinguished an ancestor of the Whitegift class. Him it only kindled to counter-fire. He had his great quarrel with life, as many men have; he, in his young life. The Janeways had always been kind to him; so had their neighbours, the Beldens. In childish sports and youthful intercourse with the children of both families, he had often talked with enthusiasm of tropic splendours and India, his destined abode. When the world of his early associations became too narrow for him—too narrow because there his wrong would meet and hurtle him daily—then he thought again of India, and tropic indolence, and thoughtless people. Being an orphan and without kin, he could go where he chose. He chose India.

There, as the years passed, he became rich and powerful, a nabob, a merchant prince; but with all that this tale has no concern—it is written merely to chronicle the facts of his Return.

CHAPTER III
IN WHICH MR. WADDY REACHES HALIFAX AND
MEETS WITH A MISADVENTURE

THE Niagara was running into Halifax.

It was early of a bright summer morning, and all the passengers came on deck, joyous with hopes of terra firma. There was our hero, Mr. Ira Waddy; there were two shipboard friends of his, Harry Dunston and Gilbert Paulding; there was the Budlong family, to wit: old De Flournoy Budlong; Mrs. De Flournoy Budlong, his second wife, luxuriantly handsome, and greatly his junior; Tim De Flournoy Budlong, and Arabella De Flournoy Budlong; and accompanying them was M. Auguste Henri Miromenil de Châteaunéant.

They all looked fresh and well-dressed in shore toggery. The Budlongs, particularly, were in full bloom. They were always now in full bloom, and meant the world should fully know they were returning from Europe with fashion and the fashions, with a gallery of pictures and a Parisian pronunciation. Old Budlong had once been a brisk young clerk, lively and lucky. He was called Flirney then. He had traded in most things and all had yielded him pelf. He was now a capitalist, fat and uneasy, with a natural jollity which he thought unbecoming his position and endeavoured to suppress. Budlong in full bloom was as formal as a ball bouquet.

It was under the régime of the second wife that the Budlongs had blossomed. After one season of gorgeous grandeur, but doubtful triumph, at home, they, or rather the master-she of their social life, determined to be stamped into undoubted currency by the cachet of Europe and Paris. They went, were parisinés, and were now returning, wiser and worse. They were now the De Flournoy B.’s, and brought with them De Châteaunéant, as attaché of mother and step-daughter, either or both. Old Bud, on marital and paternal grounds, disliked the Gaul.

Halifax is dull and provincial, but any land ho! is charming after a voyage. Old Budlong knew all about Mr. Waddy’s wealth and position. He had lavished much of his style of civility, with much sincere good will, upon him on board ship and now was urgent that he should join the ladies and himself in their promenade ashore.

“Thank you,” said Waddy, “but I have promised to take a tramp with your boy and these gentlemen,” and he indicated Dunstan and Paulding.

So De Châteaunéant carried the day. Old Budlong walked in advance, inquiring the way, while his wife and daughter followed, making a cheerful glare of ankles through the muddy streets.

“Isn’t it delightful to be ashore?” remarked Miss Arabella to Auguste Henri.

“Yese, mees. I am mose pleese to be out of ze ice-bugs. Ah, mademoiselle,”—as Arabella made a lofty lift over a puddle,—“vous avez le pied d’une sylphide.”

Mr. Waddy and his companions soon exhausted the town. They lunched substantially on land fare, and having still time, went to drive, Dunstan and Paulding in one drag, Mr. Waddy and Tim in another. The first signal-gun recalled them. The two friends, whose steed was a comparative Bucephalus to the others’ Rosinante, drew rapidly out of sight. The rear coachman was flogging his beast into a clumsy canter, when just as they passed a little jetty near some fishing-huts, they saw a child fall from the end into deep water.

“We can’t let the child drown,” said Mr. Waddy, stopping the coachman.

“He’s none of ours. We must catch the ship. Perhaps he can swim,” rejoined Timothy.

But it was evident he couldn’t; there was no other help in sight. In an instant, Mr. Waddy was on the jetty, coat, waistcoat, and hat off; in another, he was fighting the tide for the drowning life.

Tim was no more selfish a fellow than is the rule with the sons of such merchants, and especially such step-mothers. He would, perhaps, have stayed by Mr. Waddy had that gentleman been in positive danger, but seeing that he was not only not drowning, but had the child safe by the hair, Tim whipped up and got on board just in time.

Cunarders do not wait for passengers who choose to go a-ducking after top-heavy children. Tim told his story. Mrs. Budlong and most of the commercial gentry rather laughed at Mr. Waddy. Dunstan and Paulding said nothing to them. They, however, seemed to have an opinion on the subject which prevented them from any further interchange of cigars with Master Timothy. Dunstan looked up Chin Chin, Mr. Waddy’s Chinese servant, and by dint of pulling his ears and cue and saying Hi yah! a great many times, made him understand that his master was left, and he, Chin Chin, must pack up the traps, and for the present obey the cue-puller.

It was a very tender and beautiful thing to see how Mr. Waddy raised the insensible boy up from the boat below to the jetty. He wrapped the dripping object without scruple in his own very neat and knowing travelling jacket and carried him toward the mother, who had seen the accident from a distance and was running wildly toward them. She clasped the child to her breast, and, at the beating of her heart, life seemed suddenly to thrill through the saved one. He opened his eyes and smiled through his gasping agony.

Then the mother turned, seized Mr. Waddy in an all-round embrace, and gave him a stout fisherwoman’s smack. It was a first-class salute for the returning hero.

He disentangled himself from this codfishy network; then, looking up, he suddenly fell to swearing violently in a variety of Oriental languages. The Niagara was just off under full headway. Two men, probably Dunstan and Paulding, were waving their handkerchiefs from the quarter-deck.

Mr. Waddy stopped swearing as suddenly as he had begun and burst into a roar of laughter; then he looked ruefully at his shirt.

The fisherwoman was occupied in punching the child’s ribs and standing it on its head. It was spouting water like the fountain of Trevi, and gurgling out lusty screams that proved the efficacy of the treatment.

“Mrs. Hawkins,” said Waddy, becoming conscious that he had observed her name over her door in his momentary coup d’œil before he sprang into the water; “Mrs. Hawkins, I am wet; you will have to dry me.”

“Why, so you are,” said the lady, “wet as a swab. Sammy, you jest git up an’ go in the shop, an’ don’t you be fallin’ overboard ag’in an’ botherin’ the gentleman.”

She accompanied this advice with a box on the ear of the sobbing Sammy, which started Trevi again.

Without much ceremony or disappearance into a tiring-room, Mr. Waddy doffed his wet clothes and donned the toggery of the widow’s eldest son. His cigar-case, well filled with cheroots, had fortunately escaped with his coat. He lighted his first, and sat waiting patiently while Mrs. Hawkins displayed his wet raiment before her cooking stove and turned the articles judiciously to toast on either side. Let us observe him as he sits.

He is rather young for a nabob. Many of the nabobs are lymphatic and wheezy, as well as old, and that without reference to the place of their nabobery, whether Canton, Threadneedle, or Wall Street. Mr. Waddy was none of these—he was alert, athletic, and thirty-seven. It is a grand thing to have had one’s full experience and having chased all flying destinies through the bush, to have caught one and hold it safely in the hand, while the catcher is still young and strong enough to handle and tame the captive. Mr. Waddy looked strong and active enough to catch and tame anything. But some things are tamed only with delicacy and tenderness. Was he destitute of these? At this moment, there was no exhibition of any trait beyond nonchalant patience, such as men who have had to deal with Asiatics or Spanish Americans, necessarily acquire. As the last film of his smoke-puff exhales from his lips, they close under the yellow-brown moustache into an expression of firmness, and perhaps of pride. It was easy to see that firm might become stern, and pride might harshen bitterly, if treachery should betray generosity and repel candour.

Tossing his cheroot-end into the stove, he allows an interregnum for reverie. He leans his head upon his hand; his thick brown hair half hides the keen sparkle of his grey eyes; the lines of his mouth soften. He is thinking probably of welcomes from old friends, of pilgrimages to old shrines. Suddenly he throws down his hand; the proud expression closes again about his lips, his face hardens, hardens——

“Brown man, what makes you look so ugly and black?” says Sammy, loquitur. “Ma, I know he wants to kill me for wettin’ his clothes,” and Sammy wept boo! hoo!

“Don’t cry, my boy,” said Mr. Waddy, and putting his hand into a pocket he thought his own, he drew out not the expected purse containing the presentable shilling, but a strip of pigtail tobacco. “Am I brown? I am the Ancient Mariner. I have been where the sun bakes men as brown as that loaf of gingerbread. Here are two shillings out of my vest pocket. Keep one yourself and buy that loaf from your mother with the other. My mother used to bake gingerbread and my father sold it, years ago, when I was white, not ginger-coloured.”

So Ira and Sammy came to terms of peace and good will and munched together.

“I kind er guess your things is dry now, capting,” said Mrs. Hawkins. “I’ll jest put the flatiron to that air shirt and make it as slick as a slide. Salt water don’t take sterch or them collars would stan’ right up.”

While Mr. Waddy was recovering his habiliments, Isaiah Hawkins, the widow’s eldest son, came in. He owned a small coaster and was to sail that afternoon for Portland. He came to get his traps.

“Can you take a passenger?” inquired Mr. Waddy, after the usual preliminary greetings.

“Wal, capting,” replied Hawkins, with much deliberation, “I dunno as I could, an’ I dunno as I couldn’t. What kind a feller is this ere passenger? Kin he eat pork an’ fish?”

“I’m the man,” explained Mr. Waddy. “I should think I could eat pork and fish. I’ve lived in Boston.”

“Wal, capting, come along if yer like,” said Hawkins heartily, “an’ it shan’t cost yer a durned cent. ’Tain’t every feller I’d take, but I feel kinder ’bleeged to yer fer pickin’ up Sam.”

Mr. Waddy would not consent to be a dead-head, but took pay passage at once, to start at two. Meanwhile he strolled about the town, and climbing the steep glacis, admired the glorious bay and the impregnable fort. He was entering when his way was stopped by the sentinel.

“No one admitted without special order,” announced that functionary.

“My old friend Mr. Waddy has special entrée everywhere!” cried a passing officer, laying his hand on Ira’s shoulder. “My dear fellow, you wouldn’t let me thank you at Inkerman for dropping that Cossack. Now I intend to pepper you with gratitude.”

“Oh, no! we never mention it, Granby,” retorted Ira, warmly grasping the extended hand, “unless you need reminding how you dropped the rhinoceros who wouldn’t drop me. By the way, I’ve had a match-box made of his horn.”

He pulled out his cigar-case and the match-box. They each took a cigar and walked off together to Major Granby’s quarters, as coolly as if the reciprocal life-saving they had recalled was an everyday business.

“How in the name of Mercury came you here?” asked the major, after they were seated.

“Ginger beer—gingerbread, beer,” murmured Waddy abstractedly. “Bass’ Pale Ale. Yes—ah, well!”

“What, ho! Patrick!” called the major. “Here’s Mr. Waddy come back and wants his ale!”

While Patrick grinned a cheerful recognition and drew the cork, Mr. Waddy explained his position and the gingerbread allusion.

“I sail at two for Portland in the Billy Blue Nose,” he concluded. “Why won’t you come and see me in the States?”

“Why not? I’ll join you when you please,” assented Granby instantly. “I already have a furlough. I wish I could start to-day.”

“Come by the next steamer, to-day fortnight,” suggested Ira, “and meet me in Boston at the Tremont House. I’m really as much a stranger as you; but they all know me. We’ll see the lions together.”

“You’ll have to be a ladies’ man, for my sake,” said the major. “I’ve heard the American women are the loveliest of the world, and I’ve determined to see for myself. I thought, before I saw you, of dropping in at Newport this summer. That’s the mart, I hear.”

“Certainly, we’ll go there and everywhere,” agreed Ira. “What do you say to a partnership for matrimonial speculation? You put in good looks, good name, and glory. I contribute money—the prize, of course, to be mine.”

“You say nothing about wit,” the major pointed out. “Modest! As to good looks, these are perhaps degenerate days, but you’ll do very well for an Antinous with whiskers, and I used constantly in Rome to be mistaken for the Apollo, in costume of the period.”

“Well, Apollo, I leave you to study attitudes,” said Waddy, rising. “I must be off. Good-bye! To-day three weeks.”

“So long! Here, Pat! pack up a carpet-bag for Mr. Waddy and put in some of those short shirts. My six-feet-one beats you by three inches.”

The Billy Blue Nose was quite ready. Mr. Waddy was also ready and just stepping into the boat when he heard Sammy’s voice:

“Say, mister! gimme another shilling to buy gingerbread!”

We leave the reader to judge whether the prayer went unanswered.

CHAPTER IV
A GENTLE LADY OF FORTUNE DECIDES TO FACE A
STORM

THE afternoon was hot and sulky. Still, as the party had fixed that day for leaving The Island, they would not change their plan. Old Dempster said there would certainly be “considerable of a blow.”

All the party had longed for a storm; the young ladies had rhapsodised about billows and breakers and driving spray and heroic encounters with warring elements. Now that the long roll of premonitory surges was crashing in sullenly on Black Rock Head and Wrecker’s Point, they seemed to shrink a little from billows unsunlit. Grandeur was too much for them. To recline on the rocks under a parasol held by a gentle cavalier, this was gay and dressy and afforded the recumbent and her attendant knight indefinite possibilities. But ladies are not lovely in submarine armour, and muslins limply collapse when salt showers come whirling in from shattered waves. The great wild terror of the certain storm made itself felt among the gay party. They were quite willing to hasten their departure and pass the night quietly at Loggerly. They would spend also a quiet next day there and take the train on the second morning for Portland and Boston.

Miss Sullivan preferred to stay for the promised entertainment. She seemed already a little excited out of her usual tranquil reserve by the thought that Nature was to act a wild drama for her benefit. Besides, apart from the storm, she was willing to pass one solitary day on the rocks and along the beach. She also longed for one last master-view from the mountain above Dempster’s house. She was glad to see all these without the intrusion of gaiety. It may have been a mood; it may have been character. She would visit, for perpetual recollection, the best spots undisturbed; a storm would be clear gain. Mr. Dempster promised to drive her over to Loggerly next evening, rain or shine.

Au revoir! and they were off, some walking, some already mounted into the great farm wagon. They had a very lively time through the delicate birch woods. Miss Julia Wilkes was quite sure she had seen a deer. Blooming lips were brighter for the strawberries they crushed; rosy fingers rosier for plucking the same. When they reached the open country and were all seated in the wagon, taking the down-hills at a gallop, and the up-hills at an impetus, Julia turned to her mother, that excellent, gossipy person.

“Miss Sullivan has a strange fancy,” said she, “to wander about alone in wild places. Did you notice how almost handsome she was to-day?”

“Yes,” put in the fortis Gyas Cutus; “she looked like a cheerful Banshee, inspired at the thought of a storm.”

“Mary Sullivan was nobly handsome once,” said Mrs. Wilkes, “and will be soon again, I hope, now that she is rich and done with all family troubles.”

“Is she very rich?” asked Cloanthus Fortisque, friend of Gyas. “I’m sorry I’m so much afraid of her. She may be sweet as ice-cream, but she is colder. A feller couldn’t sail in with much chance.”

Miss Julia pouted a little at this ingenuous remark of Fortisque and devoted herself to Gyas Cutus for the rest of the journey.

It was lonely at Dempster’s when the gay party was gone. The house looked singularly small and mean. Mrs. Dempster was baking wondrous bread; bread for which all the visitors had gone away bulkier. Miss Miranda Dempster was up to her elbows in strawberries. She was a magnificent lioness of a woman, with a tawny mane of redundant locks.

The kitchen was close and the hot, heavy atmosphere affected Miss Sullivan’s views as to the quality of her hostess’s bread. She walked out upon the little meadow, a bit of tender culture between the forest and the rude and rocky shore. Old Dempster and Daniel, his son, were hurrying their hay into the ox-cart. The oxen seemed to stand unnecessarily knockkneed and feeble in the blasting heat. Yet the sun was obscured and there came puffs of breeze from seaward. But these were puffs explosive, sultry, volcanic, depressing.

As Miss Sullivan approached, Dempster was tossing up an enormous mass of hay to Daniel. A puff of wind caught it and one half “diffused to empty air,” making air no longer empty but misty with hay-seed, and aromatic with mild fragrance. Dempster shook himself and stood leaning on his pitchfork. He was a grand old yeoman, worthy to be the father of heroes. The Island, though not a solitary one, had been to him a Juan Fernandez. He was a contriver of all contrivances, a builder of all that may be built. He farmed, he milled, he fished, he navigated in shapely vessels of his own shaping; his roof-tree was a tree of his own woods, felled and cleft by himself. He had split his own shingles as easily as other men mend a toothpick; with these he had tented his roof-tree over. Miss Sullivan and he were great friends, and now, as she drew near, he looked at her with kindly eyes.

“See, Miss Sullivan,” said he, “them oxen has stopped chewin’ the cud—another sure sign of a storm. The wind is sou’west. It’ll be short, but hot an’ heavy—a kind er horriken.”

“If the storm is severe, what will all these fishing-vessels do?” she asked. “I have counted nearly a hundred this afternoon.”

“Most on ’em will go birds’-nestin’ ’round in the bays an’ coves along shore. Some on ’em alluz gits caught, an’ that’s what makes me feel kind er anxious now. You see, my boy Willum has been buyin’ a schooner up to New Brunswick, with a pardner of his, and he’s jest as like as not to be takin’ her down to Boston about now.”

“I hope not!” cried Miss Sullivan, shuddering involuntarily in the hot chill of another isolated blast.

“Wal, worryin’ won’t mend nothin’,” said the father, with stoic calmness. “Come, Dan’l, we must hurry up with this ’ere hay,” and the two fell to work again; but the face of the elder man was very grave as he glanced, from time to time, at the grey sky and sullen sea.

Miss Sullivan strolled on across the meadow to Black Rock Head. There she had often sat in brilliant days and sent her looks and thoughts a-dreaming beyond the misty edge of the ocean world. To-day a strange, dismal heaviness in the air made dreams nightmares. Perpetual calm seemed destined to dwell upon the ocean, so unruffled was its surface and unsuggestive of storms to be. Looking down from the Head, Miss Sullivan would scarcely have discerned the great, slow surges, lifting and falling monotonously. They made themselves felt, however, when they met the opponent crag. A vast chasm stood open in its purple rocks, and as the lazy waves fell upon the unyielding shore, they flowed in, filling this cavernous gulf almost to the brim with foaming masses. Then, as the surge deliberately withdrew, these ambitious waters, abandoned and unsupported, plunged downward in a wild whirlpooling panic, stream overwhelming stream, all seething together furiously, hissing, roaring, thundering, until again they met the incoming breaker, and again essayed as vainly to rise above control and overcome the enduring land.

Mists, slowly uprising, had given sunset a dull reception, and the great southeastern cloud-bank was growing fast heavier and heavier. Puffs of driving fog began to hide the mountain and lower down upon the Dempster house. Darkness fell, and at last Miss Sullivan was driven in.

CHAPTER V
A WRECK AND A RESCUE

ALL night the storm did its tyrannous work over sea and land; all night, around old Dempster’s house, it howled its direful menaces. But the house stood firm, for it had been built to withstand the shock of any storm; only shivered now and then as the gale smote it with heavier hand, then tore on its way lamenting.

More than once Miss Sullivan awoke and lay listening to the storm’s wild voices—voices which recalled the past—voices whispering, pleading, sighing, moaning to be heard again and again answered. And they were answered—answered with bitter moans and tears, and at last with prayers for patience and peace, and, if need were, for pardon.

Neither Mrs. Dempster nor Miranda understood the enthusiasm of Miss Sullivan for storms and breakers. There were several things they would rather do than venture out next morning: the chief of which was to stay at home.

Old Dempster looked uneasily at the cloud-drift. The wind was as furious as ever, but the rain came only in keen showers.

“These ’ere sou’-easters,” said he, “never last long at this time o’ the year. It’ll be clear as moonshine by long about noon. But ef you’ve got your mind set on goin’ out, I’ll rig you out so you’ll be dry as a rooster. Dan’l, go down to the mill an’ bring up them short overhauls.”

Dan’l brought up a great coat of yellow, oiled canvas, and a tarpaulin with a flap like the tail of a Barbary sheep. Mrs. Dempster supplied a pair of Dan’l’s fishing boots, outgrown by him in one bare-footed summer, but still impervious.

Miss Sullivan, a person very critical in her toilet, hesitated a little at this unaccustomed attire. However, it was the sensible style. Miranda aided her in encasing herself. Stiffish were both overhauls and boots; stiffness itself, at the first interview.

When they returned to the kitchen to stand inspection, a sound was heard as if the kettle of dried apples boiling on the stove had suddenly bubbled and sputtered over. It was Dan’l, utterly unable to control his laughter. He immediately disappeared, and was heard in the wood-shed endeavouring to whistle, but constantly breaking down into a snicker.

“Poor Dan’l!” said Miss Sullivan; “I must look very droll, indeed.”

“Wal,” said Mrs. Dempster, “you are kind er like my idee of a Mormon—I mean one o’ them folks in the pictures with gals’ heads an’ more like a codfish to the other end. Now if one o’ them gals should make herself decent with a set of overhauls—an’ massy knows she wants suthin’ to cover her—she’d look jest as pooty as you do. Wouldn’t she, old man?”

To avoid other comparisons as complimentary to mermen or maids, Miss Sullivan ran from her circle of amused admirers and, passing among the pathless cucumber vines of the little garden, began awkwardly to climb the fence that kept any amphibious rodent monster of the deep from predatory excursions among the radishes and hollyhocks. Beyond the garden, a thicket of wild fruit vines nearly closed the shoreward path. Drops of rain hung heavy, crushing the bushes with pearly wreaths. A few raspberries were only waiting one sunny day to take their dull purple crimson of ripeness. It was wet work to penetrate by the obliterated path. Miss Sullivan, however, crowded steadily forward.

When the rustling of her passage through the thicket ceased, she could hear the neighbour crashing of breakers. Black Rock Head rose to the north of the rocky cove, home of Dempster’s boat. Southward stood other headlands, and southern-most, Wrecker’s Point, where all the fury of surges driven by the southeast gale would be felt. When the mingled mist, spray, and rain were drifted away for a moment, and shrank to give space to a great, howling blast, she could see a lofty white ghostly object, like a ship in full sail, dimly visible, suddenly lift itself against the dark front of the Head. Then it sank away, dashed to nothingness of foamy wreck. A hollow roar came, as the cavernous cleft of the Head was overcrowded with the breaker, and, gushing up, the mass of uprising waters overwhelmed the promontory and, spreading, mantled over its smooth surfaces and tore in many cataracts down its chasms to the sea. The Head, through veils of mist, seemed like a distant dome mountain of snow.

Black Rock Head was evidently unapproachable, so Miss Sullivan faced the blast and its blinding, driving spray, for a sheltered spot farther on toward Wrecker’s Point. She found that her foreground of vision of storm-experiences was crowding itself with quite unsatisfactory detail. There was no sieve of trees by the shore to filter the salt showers. Sometimes there was but a narrow path between slippery slopes of grass and rounded rocks glistening with the touch of the more ambitious breakers. As she passed by these perilous places, an unlooked-for wash of water would come hungrily up and hasten hungrily back, willing to sweep away fragile womanhood. The morning was well advanced when, with slow and difficult progress, the lady who, after her bold vigour of devotion to her object, merits, at least for the nonce, the title of our heroine, reached Wrecker’s Point.

Of seeing much that storms may do she had had her heart’s desire. All the dread fury of maddened winds had burst upon her till she had tottered back to some shelter of intervening rock, appalled at tempest terrors that houselings never know. In tremulous pauses, when the gale was still, she had heard the coming thunder of the long breaker, coming awfully because an infinite ocean drove it on; and as this went bursting like an upward avalanche from crag to crag beyond, in the silence while the next billow was lifting she had heard those dreadful ocean voices surrounding her, a wild atmosphere of remorse—of remorse unpardoned and forever unpardonable for all the murderous wrongs of ocean to the world. And after these came the bewildering whirl of spray and rain, the crash, the hissing fall, and then the great blow of the breaker like a knell. It hammered at the world’s foundations, until that solid world seemed an unstable thing to tread.

The rain had ceased when Miss Sullivan reached the Point. It was clearing, and she could look more widely over the immense agitation and sway of the lurid sea. She sat for an hour or wandered about over perils of wave-worn crags, that waves were now striving vainly to shatter. At last she remembered that she had the beach still to visit before her return. Her path thither was through a wood, tangled and bewildering with vines and underbrush. The storm was now almost a calm, but the thunder of the surges followed her as she hastened along the dripping trail. Penetrating slowly through the wood by paths of uneasy footing, she began to distinguish the distant part of the beach. It formed one end of a parallelogram, whose sides were dark ranges of low, broken precipice and the farther end the blank of sea. Opposite her, the precipice continued up into a wooded mountain. The sun was just breaking forth and scattering a slender, illumined scarf of mist, that wavered in among the trees of the mountain-side, and melted into that ever-fresh wonder of beauty, the calm sky of summer.

There was much rubbish strewn along the beach. Miss Sullivan could see old waterlogged slabs, logs purple with long drowning, pieces of spar, a plank or so. As she descended and looked over the nearer sands, she saw more rubbish; more than usual, perhaps of a recent wreck. Such a storm could hardly pass without touching the pockets of jolly underwriters—less jolly over their noon sandwich as the telegraph told of ships ashore.

The path began to skirt the edge of the broken cliff, and finally descended rapidly, by a series of dangerous stepping places, toward the level. It was quite evident there had been a wreck. The water deepened very slowly out from the shore, and each swell, as it swept in, drove along bits or masses of wreckage, and retiring, dragged them back, to be again heaved farther up.

Miss Sullivan had never before seen a wreck. She suddenly seemed very curious to examine this one nearer,—passionately curious, indeed,—and began to leap down the hillside rather precipitately. However, she was now used to Dan’l’s boots; otherwise her headlong speed would have been dangerous. She found it rather deep trudging in the sand, deeper and more difficult as she ran rapidly down after the returning waves; and she found it a struggle for her own life in the undertow, as she resolutely plunged forward and, grasping some wrecked fragments, fought with so much desperate womanish force as she had to drag them in to shore and safety.

These fragments had lashed to them the body of a man.

The sea had done with this object what it chose; it was weary of its plaything, and now aided her in her merciful task. For many moments she was ready to despair and drown; but hope was her ally, and a nervous, unsuspected strength, and at last she gained a firm footing and dragged the man away from the waves up on the wet sand.

She sank exhausted in a dizzy trance, blinded and fainting. It had been a terrible, heart-rending agony of combat—a very doubtful strife for two lives with the hungry sea.

Starting up at last, she seemed to shrink from quieter examination of the wrecked person. But conquering fear or superstition in a moment’s struggle, she knelt beside him. His arm was raised, covering his face, and his clenched hand held something that was attached by a strand of silk around his neck. As she removed the arm, the hand relaxed in hers and a small book fell from it; she pulled it from the silk and laid it hastily by.

Parting the hair from the sadly bruised and battered face, she looked vainly into closed eyes for any light of life. She laid her hand where the heart should be beating; she placed her lips close, nay, almost touching, livid lips, to catch a faintest breath; she did all those passionately desperate things that one may do, feeling that another life may depend on each lapsing moment’s effort. She had nothing to cut the lashings which bound him to the wreck, and tore at them furiously, vainly, with her teeth. There was a hard, dry sobbing in her throat, and her features worked convulsively as she paused, exhausted, and gazed down at that white, quiet face. She was ready again to despair. She could not leave him; would no help come? The sun seemed oppressively hot and cruel—a staring, insulting fullness of daylight.

Help was coming. She heard a cheerful woman’s voice singing a negro melody in the wood. Miranda had evidently expected that Miss Sullivan’s circuit would bring her to the beach and had come to join her.

Miss Sullivan essayed to scream, but could not. Miranda came to the bank, and seeing her standing like a ghost, vainly striving to beckon, divined the whole in an instant and sprang down the steps.

“Is he dead?” cried Miranda.

The formalising of a dreaded thought into words makes its terrors doubly terrible.

“Dead! I fear so,” said Miss Sullivan, very slowly and with a shiver.

“He shan’t die if we can help it,” said Miranda resolutely. “Here, Miss Mary, you run right up to the second field. Up there, Uncle Jake’s out with the boys, seeing if they can mow after the shower. Bring ’em down quick—I’ll cut him loose.”

Suiting act to word, she whipped out a jagged penknife of schoolmarm days from her pocket, and began to saw at the lashings.

Miss Sullivan clambered, panting, up the cliff and plunged into the wood. Presently she appeared at a run, followed by Uncle Jake and the two boys—biggish boys of six feet two.

Miranda had cut the lashings of rotten stuff. Uncle Jake supported the man in his arms. He was perfectly insensible.

“He’s not dead,” said Uncle Jake.

“He’ll live; I know he’ll live!” cried Miranda.

“Hooray!” shouted the two boys tumultuously—a view-halloo for a found life.

“Thank God!” said Miss Sullivan, with a quick, irrepressible sob of thankfulness.

CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH MISS SULLIVAN FINDS MANY REASONS
FOR DEPARTURE

UNCLE JAKE and his giant progeny made light of their burden, all the half-mile to old Dempster’s. They were confident, feeling their own vigorous blood beating healthily from end to end of their great bodies, that no man, not dead, could die. In their experience as farmers and fishermen, they had seen much more dangerous hurts recovered from than any of the stranger’s.

“He’s pretty well bunged up an’ has swallered an almighty lot o’ salt water; but that’ll do him good an’ cure the bruises. Why, I shouldn’t wonder,” continued Uncle Jake, gradually talking himself into positiveness, “ef he was jumpin’ ’round by day after to-morrer, as spry as a two-year-old. He ain’t a sailor. I kind er guess he was a passenger aboard some ’long-shore craft. That wrecked stuff looked like it belonged to some Down East schooner. I hope it warn’t Bill Dempster’s. Now, Mirandy, you take good keer o’ this here chap an’ p’r’aps he’ll be a-buckin’ up to yer, when he’s so’s to be ’round.”

Miranda and Miss Sullivan smiled. Uncle Jake was evidently a little more concerned than he pretended, and chatted to keep up their spirits. Once or twice when the bearers paused to shift hands or rest a moment, their burden seemed to make a futile attempt toward life. There was a tremor of eyelid and lip—perhaps a slight unclosing of the eye. Still, if there was any change, deathliness soon came again.

Miss Sullivan and Miranda ran on to make preparations.

“I think,” said the latter, “that we’d better put him in your room, if you still mean to go, as you decided yesterday.”

“I must go,” replied the other, with a quick intaking of the breath, “unless I can be of some service to this gentleman.” Was it her fine instinct that had recognised the gentleman?

“I don’t see what you can do more than mother and I will—except that you have kinder, pleasanter ways,” Miranda assured her. “P’r’aps this man will turn out to be a sailor ’long shore, after all, and we’ll know how to nuss him better than you would.”

“Well,” said Miss Sullivan, “we shall see;” but it was evident that in her heart she was quite certain he was no sailor.

Mrs. Dempster flurried about and had everything ready in the invalid’s room by the time Uncle Jake arrived. The three men carried their burden into his hospital, while the women waited anxiously for a report. Life or Death?

Old Dempster and Dan’l at this moment returned from catching and feeding White Socks and preparing the buggy for Miss Sullivan’s journey. While they were hearing the history of the rescue, Uncle Jake came out with a cheerful look.

“He ain’t no sailor,” he announced. “Here’s his pocket-book with three hundred an’ fifty dollars in gold. You just take that, old woman, and don’t let Dan’l use any on ’em for buttons to his new swaller-tail. Wal, Miss Sullivan, I guess your man’ll git well. He’s breathin’ reg’lar, but don’t seem to know nothin’ yit.”

Miranda went to take her place as nurse by the bedside. By-and-by, her mother needing her for a few moments, she called Miss Sullivan.

The wrecked man was beginning to stir about uneasily. He murmured and muttered names, evidently those uppermost in his waking thought. Life was struggling to regain voluntary control. He was feverish. Miss Sullivan gave him from time to time spoonfuls of stimulant; his weakness and exhaustion needed this. It was a new position for her, and she managed rather awkwardly,—more awkwardly than one would have expected who knew her usual deftness. Once, when his eyes again half opened, she shrank away, and when he again became delirious and rejected his restorative and went on speaking wildly and incoherently, mingling names, words of hate and words of love and words of dreary despair, she burst into a sudden passion of excited tears and called Miranda to come immediately and relieve her. She evidently was not fit to be a calm nurse to the stranger: a fact sufficiently curious, since her temperament was quite the nursely one. But perhaps she was too much concerned for her protégé.

The afternoon hastened away. The sufferer seemed momentarily improving. He had now fallen into a quiet sleep. Mr. Dempster appeared to ask the plans of his guest—to go or not to go?

Miss Sullivan said she felt that she could be of no real service; she was, of course, much interested in the final recovery of her waif, but she could have news of him from Miranda; she ought not to detain her friends at Loggerly.

What she did not say, in spite of a somewhat evident anxiety to find reasons for departure, was that she did not dare trust herself to encounter the stranger on his recovery, so shaken was she by certain inward tremors, so prostrated in strength and spirits—the result, no doubt, of her efforts in his behalf. An instinct of self-protection urged to flight. She gave the word, “Go.”

White Socks and the buggy came to the door. Dan’l stepped forward with a bunch of hollyhocks, pink, yellow, and purple. He got a very unexpected kiss—unexpected by giver and receiver.

“Thank you for your boots, Dan’l. I could not have gone a step without them.”

There was a very blushing Dan’l, a very pensive Dan’l, a very manly Dan’l, a very like-a-first-lover Dan’l, about the premises that evening. He doubled his fists and said “Durn it!” very often, but always ended with a pleased smile. Dan’l was having his first glimpses into fairyland; his world seemed enchanted, as he wandered out through the ferns to sunset—strawberries his pretence.

Everyone was sorry to part with Miss Sullivan. With Miranda especially, her adieux were most affectionate. These two had been engaged in the romantic duty of saving a life.

“Write me every day, Miranda,” were Miss Sullivan’s last words, and she quite blushed as she uttered them. “Write me every day and tell me how he does.”

Old Dempster drove her away in the delicious summer evening. White Socks made good play and brought them into Loggerly at late twilight.

All the party greeted Miss Sullivan cordially and gaily asked her experiences of storm life. She did not dwell upon her share in the rescue—some occult influence seemed to hold her back from speaking of it—and soon retired. Extreme fatigue saved her from the excitement of dreams, and she sank into the blessedness of a sleep undisturbed by storminess either from within or without. Sleep and change of scene will draw a blank between her and the adventures of to-day: but she will hardly forget them. Mad storms by the maddened sea are not daily events in the lives of quiet ladies of fortune; nor does it happen to every promenader by a beach to be the point of safety whither a returning wanderer may drift away from his death.

After Miss Sullivan’s disappearance, her companions all talked of her, as people always do of the dear departed.

“Odd idea, that of hers—to go out in the wet,” observed Gyas. “How would you and I look, old Clo, taking a picturesque ducking?”

“Did anyone ever see you doing anything picturesque, Mr. Cutus?” inquired Miss Julia innocently.

“Pictures are done of him—lots of ’em by Scalper,” said Cloanthus. “Scalper says his name describes him exactly—he’s the best guy he can find. There—I wouldn’t have told that, Gyas, if you hadn’t called me old Clo. You know I don’t like nicknames.”

“I wonder Miss Sullivan never married,” remarked someone, to end this controversy.

“Miss Sullivan has not been rich very long,” said Mrs. Wilkes, in a tone to indicate that no further explanation was needed; “only since the death of her step-father. He had some property in Chicago which suddenly became of enormous value. He left everything to her. You know her own family were great people once, but lost caste and wealth by a transaction of her father’s. After that, she was obliged to teach in a public school for a while. Then she became governess to Clara Waddie and Diana, Mr. Waddie’s ward. When they went to Europe, she came to us.”

“Yes!” said Julia, with ardency. “I was an immense little fool, till then. But, mamma, wasn’t there a story of a love affair of hers, while she was young?”

“Horace Belden hinted something of the kind,” replied her mother, “and that he was the object. But he is very willing to claim conquests. As soon as the news of her great inheritance came, while she was with us in Paris, Mr. Belden called upon her. He pretended great surprise that she was our governess and regret that he had not seen his old friend before.”

“He knew it, I’m sure he did!” cried Julia. “Miss Sullivan and I met him twice in the Louvre, and both times he dodged—palpably. I could not understand why.”

“Well,” continued Mrs. Wilkes, serenely picking up her story where she had been interrupted, “with the news of the fortune came Mr. Belden. Miss Sullivan was in the salon with me. He went up to her with that soft manner which he thinks so irresistible. ‘My dear Miss Mary,’ he said, ‘I had no idea that you were here with my friends. Permit me to be among the first to congratulate you. It seems that the Fates do not always err in distributing their good gifts. How long it is since we have met! Where have you been this age?’ Mary received him rather icily; and afterwards she would never speak of him, except to say that they were neighbours in childhood. I suspect that it was merely his slights during her poverty that displeased her—I don’t believe she was ever in love with him.”

“Was not that the time when he was so attentive to Diana?” asked Julia.

“Yes, my dear,” babbled the good, gossipy Mrs. Wilkes, “and she liked him, as débutantes are very apt to like men of the world; but Clara Waddie and Diana and Miss Sullivan were always together, and whenever Mr. Belden went, he found his ‘old friend’ cool and distant as possible. I don’t think Mary ever spoke of him to Diana, but there came a sudden end of sentimental tête-à-têtes such as they had had in Switzerland, and when he proposed to Diana to go off and look at some picture, or point of view, she always made it a condition to invite Miss Sullivan.”

“Ah, these duennas!” said the brave Gyas, who had frequently found his bravery of heart and toilet to become naught in their presence. “But who is this Diana? Is her other name Moonshine? I know everybody and don’t know her. Where did you pick her up?”

“Pick her up!” exclaimed Julia, in wrath. “Diana! Why, she would hardly touch anyone with her parasol, except for friendship’s sake—and she’s the dearest girl! You’ll see her this summer, but she won’t let you talk to her, because you are not agreeable enough,” and Miss Julia blushed a little the next moment and was sorry for her wrath at the brave Gyas.

“Is she rich?” asked the prudent Cloanthus.

“Of course; she is very rich. She owns Texas,” replied Julia confidently.

“Texas!” echoed Cloanthus, bewildered by the spacious thought. “Isn’t that a state or a country, or a part of Mexico, or something?”

“Perhaps it is,” admitted Julia; “perhaps she only owns half of it. But I am sure I’ve heard her speak of riding for a day over her own land.”

Mrs. Wilkes was now asleep in her chair—hence, and hence only, her silence. She awoke suddenly and reminded her friends of their early morning start. They separated for the night.

Next day, when the conductor of the railroad train came to Miss Sullivan for her fare, she transferred her purse from her bag to the pocket of her travelling dress. As she did so, she felt an unfamiliar object. It proved to be the book she had taken from the drowning man’s hand, and, without thinking, dropped into her pocket. It had been protected by a covering of oiled silk. The stitches in drying had given way and the book was slipping out. She thought there could be no harm in her opening it.

It was an old, well-worn Testament. On the title-page was the inscription “M. Janeway to I. Waddy.” It was very touching to think of this drowning man clinging to the last to this emblem of his religion, and perhaps token of an early love. No doubt it was in sympathy with some such thought as this that Miss Sullivan’s hands began suddenly to tremble, and her eyes to fill with tears as she turned over the sacred pages.

The book opened naturally in her hand at a familiar passage; she read a few lines; then the hot tears blinded her and she put the book hastily away.

CHAPTER VII
A PEPPERY INVALID WHO DREAMS DREAMS AND
BRINGS BAD NEWS

IN the morning Mr. Waddy awaked, and, looking feebly around, discovered Mrs. Dempster.

“Where is the other?” he asked, half rising and falling back disappointed.

Mrs. Dempster called her daughter.

Miranda came, splendidly fresh from her morning’s duties in full air, and her tawny locks shaken about in dishevelled luxuriance.

“Not you,” said Mr. Waddy, shrinking a little from her lioness aspect. “I want the other. She had a tarpaulin and yellow canvas clothes the first time, and then I saw her again here—I am sure it was here. Here! Where am I?”

He stopped and looked about him wildly.

“Why, you’re in my house,” responded Mrs. Dempster soothingly, “an’ I hope you’ll make yerself to hum. You’ve been drownded an’ that was Miss Sullivan that found you. Ef she hadn’t been kind er cur’us about goin’ out to see how a storm feels, massy knows where you’d be now.”

“Miss Sullivan?” repeated Mr. Waddy. “There is no one of that name who would take any trouble for me.”

“She did take a sight er trouble, though,” said the old lady, “an’ some folks’d be more thankful for ’t than you seem to be. ’Tain’t every city lady that’ll go wadin’ ’round an’ resk drownin’ herself to haul out a man. Some of them other gals would ’a’ sat down an’ screamed.”

“Madam,” said Mr. Waddy, with weak testiness, “I am not acquainted with Miss Sullivan and did not ask her to save me.”

“Wal, now!” said Mrs. Dempster to herself. “Sakes alive! What an ongrateful critter! I can’t stan’ it; but I s’pose he’s sick and onreasonible.”

So saying she marched out, and clattering pans soon banged a warlike accompaniment to her murmured wrath.

Miranda remained, and Mr. Waddy turned to her in a despairing search for information.

“You are sure that person in the tarpaulin was Miss Sullivan?” he questioned. “Sullivan, I think you said?”

Miranda nodded.

“Quite certain,” she assured him.

“Then,” murmured Waddy, “I’ve seen a ghost. I’m insane. I always wished to know what the feeling was. Now I have it. Bring a strait-jacket, quick! I’m dangerous! Hold me!”

And he sank back, looking excessively feeble and quite manageable.

Presently he seemed to revive a little.

“Miss Miranda,” he continued, “how do you suppose I know your name?”

“Perhaps you heard mother call me,” she suggested.

“No,” said he, “I heard it in a dream, an exquisite dream, such as may come to us insane men to compensate us for losing our wakeful wits. My dream was this: I thought that I was lying powerless in the dominion of a wonderful delight—a delight not strange, but seemingly familiar as a fulfilled prophecy, whose fulfilment had been forever a lingering certainty. I was lying, trammelled by a willing motionlessness, in the loveliest glade of a wood fresh as Paradise. And then my trance, so content with its own happiness, was visited with happiness inexpressibly greater. It seemed that a face, well known, as to dreams of infancy a mother’s sweet watchfulness may be,—that such a face, perhaps my own life-long dream of pureness personified, bent over me and seemed searching through my closed eyes, into my very soul, for the imperishable legends of my better life, written there beneath my earliest and holiest vows. I heard a voice, such as I may have dreamed the voice of an angel, and it said, ‘Beautiful world of God! Why are we not happy?’ Then all the vision faded into dimness and someone like you, you in fact, came between me and the angel, and the voice called you by your name, ‘Miranda.’”

“It is a very pretty dream,” said Miranda, as he stopped, visibly exhausted, “and truer than most dreams. When we were bringing you up from the beach, we rested several times in the wood, and Miss Sullivan, who seems to me like an angel, stooped over you to see whether you were reviving at all. I remember, too, that she said something like what you heard.”

“Miss Sullivan,” repeated Mr. Waddy, rather crossly; “a very respectable young woman, I’ve no doubt. But I don’t know her—well, I must have been in a trance and seen old visions.”

He remained silent for some time, buried in thought—not pleasant thought, to judge by his countenance.

“Princess Miranda,” he resumed, at last, “what may be the name of your realm? Where am I? Is Duke Prospero without?”

“You’re in father’s house on The Island in Maine,” answered Miranda simply. “There’s father, now, just come back from taking Miss Sullivan to Loggerly.”

“So she’s gone without stopping to see whether I lived or died!” muttered Mr. Waddy. “I’m glad of it. Infernal bore! to have to thank her and pay compliments to some namby-pamby plough-girl. Let’s see what I can give her—a six-inch cameo—a copy of Tennyson’s poems—an annuity of ten bushels of tracts? She won’t like money—I know these Yankee girls. This Miranda is another style. By curry!” asseverated he rapturously, “she is as grand as a lioness. Singularly like Hawkins’s partner in the schooner. Ah, those poor fellows! Not one of them left, I’m afraid.”

His reverie was interrupted by the entry of old Dempster, accompanied by his wife and Dan’l.

“Wal, sir,” began the former, with brisk heartiness, “I’m glad to see you doin’ better. Here’s some money we found in your belt—three hundred an’ fifty dollars. Count it, if you please.”

“Never mind the money,” said Waddy. “I would give that and much more to have news of the vessel I was wrecked in. Have you heard anything about her? She was a Down East schooner named the Billy Blue Nose.”

“What might the name of her owner be?” asked Mr. Dempster. “One of my boys has been buyin’ a schooner up to Halifax.”

“Hawkins was the name; but he had a partner, a very fine young fellow, who told me he lived on this coast. He lashed me to the spar and stayed by me till she struck. His name was Dempster—William Dempster.”

“Mother,” said the old man, very solemnly, after a moment, “it’s our boy Willum. He is lost.”

For another moment they were silent, as men are when fatal words have been spoken; then the women’s sobs burst forth.

“There’s no time to cry—not fer us men, at least,” added the father. “I’ve said my prayers, mother, an’ you kin pray while we’re gone. Dan’l, you go down to Brother Jake’s an’ tell him it was Willum’s schooner that this man was in. He’d better take the boys an’ go along the rocks west o’ the beach. You come after me down to our P’int—no—you go with Brother Jake—I want t’ be alone.”

He walked away heavily, as one carrying a great burden. He could have no hope, but that worst assurance of death—the sight of death, of his son lying crushed and drowned on the rocks.

Mrs. Dempster went to the bed and, stooping over, kissed Mr. Waddy softly. The poor fellow, weakened by his hurts, struck to the heart by the sorrow he had brought to this family, burst into tears. And to mother and sister, also, came the agonising relief of bitter tears.

Mr. Waddy was left alone and, overwearied, he slept. And while he slept, life was busy with his frame, renewing it again, rebuilding all its shrines of saintly images, and all its cells where lonely thoughts dwelt sadly. When he awakes, his manfulness will avail that he may again take up the old burdens, which he had, in his dream, laid down.

All that day the father searched along the shore, seeking what he feared to find. He did not speak, but all the while his heart was calling upon one name; and there was no reply. He wandered along the jagged rocks of the harsh, iron coast, little coves and clefts interrupting his progress. Into every one of these he must peer shrinkingly, seeing in each, in a hasty vision of the mind, a form he knew, caught in the sheltered shallows and swaying heavily as the tide poured in over dyke of rock or strip of shining sand. He swung himself from crag to dangerous crag, recklessly—yet not recklessly, even in spots of desperate peril, but saving strength and untremulous vigour of hand and limb; for at any moment there might be for him a burden to bear, tenderly, lovingly, bitterly.

At times he would pause and look long and earnestly out upon the sea. The glitter of summer sunshine overspread its surface. Multitudes of brilliant sails, crowded by distance, came and went, and as they passed, he might imagine the cheery hail of whence and whither, and the wish from each to each of fortunate voyage. But his look did not rest on them; he was studying each hither surge, as it mounted and sank away—looking for something that was never heaved up by any sunlit billow, and that to see among the quick swoopings of seagulls would have been to him a horror and a shuddering despair.

Father and brother and kinsmen sought the lost in vain; while in vain the mother and the sister prayed as they waited tearfully. But there was no answer to their prayers, save that universal cruel one, “Be patient! Yes, be patient!”

CHAPTER VIII
MR. WADDY MUSES UPON FATE AND UNDERTAKES
A COMMISSION

THE family were all tenderly kind to Mr. Waddy, but he needed only repose. It was very sad within the house next day. Mrs. Dempster and Miranda made one or two attempts to talk with their patient, but his connection with the wreck was too close and too saddening. He brought their loss too clearly before them. They took refuge, cheerlessly, in household duties.

As the day advanced, Mr. Waddy was able to move about, and finally, dressed in Dan’l’s clothes, to walk slowly with many halts down towards the rocks. Here he could sit with the breeze fresh upon him and basking in the bright sun. It was a very different heat to that dull, blasting one which had for years been trying to bake out all the lively juices of his system.

Cheroots were Mr. Waddy’s favourite smoking. Of course he had none at present, after his wreck. Was it for the want of these that, even through his feebleness of a half-drowned man, his old impatience began to manifest itself? He had fancied, perhaps, that years of absence would have changed him from the hot, ardent, passionate, confident, and confiding youth of three lustra before. Were not fifteen years enough to stoicise and epicureanise him? Could he not keep cool and take his luxurious opportunities of a wealthy idler with passive content? Why must the native air awaken again the old thoughts and the old forgotten hopes? Forgotten! Ah, Mr. Waddy! hopes touched with disappointment may blacken into despairs, and pass into the background of shadow, away from foregrounds of sunshine in the heart, but there they must abide unfading.

Mr. Waddy, sitting by the seaside on The Island, was not merely impatient—an invalid may naturally be so when convalescence has made farther advance with his mind than his body—he was also very sad. He could not avoid connecting himself with the terrible disaster which had marked his coming.

“Just my luck!” said he to himself. “Why must I come home without any object? As soon as I arrive on this wretched continent, my passing at a hundred yards is enough to knock one boy into the water. Then I get myself left by the steamer, and to shorten my delay, I take the Billy Blue Nose and I become its Jonah. My vessel goes to wreck; my men are drowned: I am put under obligations to some romantic old maid, and then I have to make a whole family miserable with fatal news. And I am saved—for some good purpose I am willing to believe. But for what? Have I any duties besides to be a jolly bachelor and tell a boy or two, like that young Dunstan and his friend, how to behave? I believe I have not a relative in the world—save possibly that Mr. Waddie of New York—descendant, perhaps, of my Tory ancestor—who wrote me from Paris. It is rather pleasant to think of one relative, and then Dunstan told me that the old boy had an only child, a lovely daughter. Possibly she may be a cousin within the kissing removes. Ah, pleasanter still!”

Mr. Waddy was growing steadily more cheerful; then he fell a long time drowsily silent—dreaming undefined dreams—gazing out across the sea to the horizon, where wavering warmth of air mingled with quivering waves. But at last a chill in the air reminded him that he was still an invalid, and that evening was at hand.

“I must go in,” he said, “and get ready for my start to-morrow. Dan’l must be persuaded to cede his clothes to me.”

He went slowly back along the bushy path, pausing now and then to pluck a raspberry, until he came to the kitchen. He hesitated a moment, then went in. Everything was as before—the old clock ticking hours of a bitter day just as regularly to their end as it had marked hours of happy holidays, or of careful common days; the kettle of dried apples sputtering on the stove; the hot loaf ready for supper; Dan’l depositing the evening’s milk on the dresser. But by the stove sat old Dempster, now doubly aged, stooping forward, his face covered with both his hands. Waddy hesitated about intruding his questions of business into the old man’s grief. However, he looked up more cheerily than Ira expected, and giving him a broad gripe of the hand, asked of his health very cordially.

“I am so well,” said Mr. Waddy, “that I hope to save you the trouble of keeping me longer than to-night.”

“Make yourself to home,” said Dempster. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. ’Tain’t in one day a man gits over bein’ wrecked. Besides, I kind er like to have someone ’round; it keeps the women folks from thinkin’ of their troubles. But if you’d oughter go, Jake ’ll drive you over to-morrow, over to Loggerly.”

“Yes,” said Ira, “I think I must go. Is there anything I can do for you in Portland or Boston?”

“Wal, I guess I’ll ask one thing; ’tain’t much, an’ you said my boy looked arter you a little, ’fore the schooner struck. There’s a spot down on the sheltered side of Black Rock Head, jest to the end o’ my meader, where I allers calkerlated to be buried, some day or other, along with the old woman. I can’t find my boy to bury him there,” he added simply, “but I’d like to put up somethin’ of a moniment t’ make us think of him. These gravestone pedlars don’t come very often to The Island; they tried it fer several years, but folks seemed t’ give up dyin’ and they didn’t git no orders. Wal, I wish when you git to Boston, you’d look ’round an’ buy me a handsome pair o’ stones, a big one with a round top fer the head, an’ a small one fer the feet, an’ have Willum’s name an’ age put on—I’ll write it down an’ Mirandy ’ll look up a text. Have ’em leave room enough below Willum’s for another name. When dyin’ once gits into a family, there’s no knowing where it ’ll stop. I feel as if there’d be some more on us goin’ afore long. They kin ship the stones in some of these coasters an’ I’ll pay fer ’em down to the custom house. ’Tain’t askin’ too much, I hope, mister?”

“Certainly not,” said Ira, much affected and resolving that there should be no bill at the custom house. “I’ll see that it is done just as you wish.”

“Thanky kindly,” said the old man. “When the stones come along, I’ll set ’em under the cedars. It’ll do mother an’ me a sight o’ good to see ’em an’ kind er make our boy seem near.”

“There’s one thing I wish to speak to you about,” said Mr. Waddy, after a considerable silence. “This Miss Sullivan—I have money enough and to spare. Do you know of anything I could do for her?”

The question was put rather awkwardly; Mr. Waddy knew as well as anyone that money is not the current coin to repay an act of devotion.

“Wal,” said Dempster, seeing the good feeling that suggested and checked the inquiry, “I don’t believe she wants fer money. She offered me a thousand dollars fer our P’int. I told her perhaps I’d sell out the whole farm for two thousand. I’ve been talkin’ some, along back, with Willum, of goin’ out west an’ settlin’ by some o’ them big lakes. When folks has been used to water, they don’t like to live away from it. Willum’s gone, but Dan’l’s a handy boy, an’ Mirandy’s as good as a whole drawin’ of some men. I guess we’ll go. It don’t look quite so bright ’round here as it did,” and he passed his hand across his eyes.

“If Miss Sullivan doesn’t buy it, I will,” said Ira quickly. “Can you tell me where she is to be found, so that I can have inquiry made what her decision is? This is just the spot I should like to buy—it is a good lonely place, where I can escape from my friends,—if I ever make any,” he added, in a half-voice and rather bitterly.

“She came with a grist o’ folks from York,” said Dempster; “pretty good folks, but different kind to her. Mirandy had their names on a paper, but it got lost. But she said she’d write about the farm an’ I kin let you know. Wal, if you want to go in the mornin’ I must go over an’ tell Jake. I’ll be gone to the other field when you start; so good-bye.”

He gave Waddy a crushing grasp of the hand and looked at him wistfully, as if he were recalling his son through this one who had seen him last. Then, feeling that tears—tears of that better manhood which men call unmanly—were falling over his brown cheeks, now hollow with fatigue and sleepless grief, he unclosed his hand with grave gentleness and walked slowly away.

Looking after him, something brought back to Waddy’s mind that sentence the old man had uttered a little while before:

“When dying once gets into a family, there’s no knowing where it will stop.”

He felt dimly that he had listened to a prophecy.

CHAPTER IX
THE NABOB RE-ENTERS CIVILISATION

IT was a lovely afternoon, two days after the events narrated in the last chapter, when a shabby stranger might have been seen slowly pacing the pavement that leads from one of those gates where a stream of ardent pilgrims disembogues into the purlieus of the Athens of America; pacing with reverent sloth up toward the Acropolis where, like fanes of gods still alive and kicking, tower the Boston State House, the Boston Anthenæum, and nobler than all, behind granite propylæa, the Boston Tremont House.

I said a shabby stranger might have been seen; he might, had anyone looked. But no one looks at shabby strangers, a fact for which this one was deeply grateful, for his name was Ira Waddy, and he was encased in a suit of Dan’l’s clothes. He was still gloomy after his wreck, indisposed for the hospitalities of his commercial correspondents, not unwilling to visit his old haunts, himself unknown.

His first point was of course Dullish Court, his childhood’s home; but it had changed beyond his recognition. Here, in place of the little shop, were the great Waddy Buildings, erected by his order and already trebled in value. The income of this unmortgaged property was of itself town house, country house, horses, dinners, balls, fashion and respect, the kingdoms of this world and another. Dullish Court had enlarged its borders for better perspective of these stupendous granite structures. Boston thought them more important than Mont Blanc, the Temple of Solomon, Karnac, or the Coliseum, and ciceroned the unsuspecting stranger thither.

“There, sir; what do you think of that, sir? We are plain, sir; but we are solid, sir—solid, sir, as the godlike Daniel said of us. All belong to one man. Boston boy, sir—went away with nothing; now worth millions!” and the liquid l’s of that luxurious word dwelt upon the cicerone’s tongue most Spanishly.