Part 26

You might think Mary and Joshua would have rebelled. Curiously, they seemed beyond rebelling. Joshua, especially, was a changed man. His old, hard mask was gone; the looseness of his lips had come to stay, and the wideness of his eyes. One could only think that happiness long-deferred had come under him like a tide of fate on which he could do no more than drift and smile. He smiled at every one, a nervous, deprecatory smile; to every proposal he agreed: "All right! Splendid! Let's have it done--" And one got the sense somehow of the thought running on: "--right away! Make haste, if you please. Haste! For God's sake, haste!"

If he were hailed on the street, especially from behind, his eyes came to the speaker with a jerk, and sometimes his hand went to his heart. Seeing him so one bright day, and hearing two old men talking behind me, I learned for the first time that the Blake boys' father had died of heart-disease. It is odd that it should have come on Joshua now, quite suddenly, along with his broken mask and his broken secret, his frightened smile, and his, "All right! Splendid!"--("Make haste!")

But so it was. And so we came to the day appointed. We had a dawn as red as blood that morning, and tho it was clear, there was a feeling of oppression in the air--and another oppression of people's spirits. For the bride's party had the "hack," and Mrs. Dow had spoken for the only other polite conveyance, the Galloway barge, and what was to come of all the fine, hasty gowns in case it came on for a gale or rain?

Is it curious that here and there in that hurrying, waiting afternoon a thought would turn back to another day when a storm was making and a tall ship standing down to weather the Head? For if there was a menace of weather to-day, so, too, was there a ship. We seemed to grow conscious of it by degrees, it drew on so slowly out of the broad, blue, windless south. For hours, in the early afternoon, it seemed scarcely to move on the mirroring surface of the sea. Yet it did move, growing nearer and larger, its huge spread of canvas hanging straight as cerecloth on the poles, and its wooden flanks, by and by, showing the scars and rime of a long voyage put behind it.

Yes, it seems to me it would have been odd, as our eyes went out in the rare leisure moments of that afternoon and fell upon that presence, worn and strange and solitary within the immense ring of the horizon, if there had not been somewhere among us some dim stirring of memory, and of wonder. Not too vivid, perhaps; not strong enough perhaps to outlast the ship's disappearance. For at about five o'clock the craft, which had been standing for the Head, wore slowly to port, and laying its course to fetch around the western side of the island, drifted out of our sight beyond the rampart of the bluffs.

Why it should have done that, no man can say. Why, in the face of coming weather, the ship should have abandoned the clear course around the Head and chosen instead to hazard the bars and rips that make a good three miles to sea from Pilot's Point in the west--why this hair-brained maneuver should have been attempted will always remain a mystery.

But at least that ship was gone from our sight, and by so much out of our minds. And this was just as well, perhaps, for our minds had enough to take them up just then with all the things overlooked, chairs to fetch, plants to borrow, girls' giggling errands--and in the very midst of this eleventh-hour hub-bub, the sudden advent of storm.

What a catastrophe that was! What a voiceless wail went up in that hour from all the bureaus and washstands in the length of Urkey Village! And how glad I was! With what a poisonous joy did I give thanks at the window for every wind-driven drop that spoiled by so much the wedding of a woman nearly twice my age!

The lamps on the street were yellow blurs, and the wind was full of little splashings and screechings and blowing of skirts and wraps when I set out alone for Center Church, wishing heartily I might never get there. That I didn't is the only reason this story was ever told. Not many got there that night (of the men, that is), or if they did they were not to stay long, for something bigger than a wedding was afoot.

The first wind I had of it crossed my path at Heman Street, a huge clattering shadow that turned out to be Si Pilot's team swinging at a watery gallop toward the back-side track, and the wagon-body full of men. I saw their faces as they passed under the Heman Street lamp, James Burke, Fred Burke, Sandy Snow, half a dozen other surfmen home for the Summer from the Point station, and Captain Cook himself hanging on to Sandy's shoulder as he struggled to get his Sunday blacks wriggled into his old, brown oil-cloths. In a wink they were gone, and I, forgetting the stained lights of Center Church, was gone after them. Nor was I alone. There were a dozen shades pounding with me; at the cow street we were a score. I heard the voices of men I couldn't see.

"Aground? Where to?"

"On the outer bar; south'rd end of the outer bar they tell me."

The voices came and went, whipped by the wind.

"What vessel'd you say? Town craft?"

"No--that ship."

"What? Not that--that--_India ship_!"

"Yep--that India ship."

"India ship"--"India ship!" I don't know how it seemed to them, but to me the sound of that legendary name, borne on the gale, seemed strangely like the shadow of some one coming cast across a stage.

I'll not use space to tell how I got across the island; it would be only the confused tale of an hour that seems but a minute now. I lost the track somewhere short of Si Pilot's place, and wading the sand to the west came out on the beach, without the slightest notion of where I was.

I only know it was a majestic and awful place to be alone; majestic with the weight of wind and the rolling thunder of water; the more awful because I could not see the water itself, save for the rare gray ghost of a tongue licking swiftly up the sand to catch at my feet if I did not spring away in time. Once a mother of waves struck at me with a huge, dim timber; I dodged it, I can't say how, and floundered on to the south, wondering as I peered over my shoulder at the dark if already the ship had broken, and if that thing behind me were one of the ribs come out of her.

That set me to thinking of all the doomed men near me clinging to slippery things they couldn't see, cursing perhaps, or praying their prayers, or perhaps already sliding away, down and down, into the cold, black caves of the sea. And then the shadows seemed to be full of shades, and the surf-tongues were near to catching my inattentive feet.

If the hour across the island seems a minute, the time I groped along the beach seems nights on end. And then one of the shades turned solid, and I was in such a case I had almost bolted before it spoke and I knew it for Rolldown Nickerson, the beachcomber.

He was a good man in ways. But you must remember his business was a vulture's business, and something of it was in his soul. It came out in good wrecking weather. On a night when the bar had caught a fine piece of profit, I give you my word you could almost see Rolldown's neck growing longer and nakeder with suspense. He would have made more of his salvaging had he carried a steadier head: in the rare, golden moments of windfall he sometimes failed to pick and choose. Even now he was loaded down with a dim collection of junk he had grabbed up in the dark, things he knew nothing of, empty bottles and seine-floats, rubbish he had probably passed by a hundred times in his daylight rounds. The saving circumstance was that he kept dropping them in his ardor for still other treasures his blind feet stumbled on. I followed in his wake and I know, for half a dozen times his discards got under my feet and sent me staggering. Once, moved by some bizarre, thousandth chance of curiosity, I bent and caught one up in passing.

Often and often since then I have wondered what would have happened to the history of the world of my youth if I had not been moved as I was, and bent quite carelessly in passing, and caught up what I did.

Still occupied with keeping my guide in eye, I took stock of the thing with idle fingers; in the blackness my finger-tips were all the eyes I had for so small a thing. It was about the size of a five-pound butter box, I should say; it seemed as it lay in my hand a sort of an old and polished casket, a thing done with an exotic artistry, broad, lacquered surfaces and curves and bits of intricate carving. And I thought it was empty till I shook it and felt the tiny impact of some chambered weight. Already the thing had taken my interest. Catching up I touched Rolldown's arm and shouted in his ear, over the roll of the wind and surf:

"What you make of this, Rolldown?"

He took it and felt it over, dropping half his rubbish in the act. He shook it. It seemed to me I could see his neck growing longer.

"Got somethin' into it," he rumbled.

"Yes, I know. Now let me have it back, Rolldown."

"Somethin' hefty," he continued, and I noticed he had dropped the rest of his treasures now and clung to that. "Somethin' hefty--and valu'ble!"

"But it's mine, I tell you!"

"'Tain't neither! 'Tain't neither!"

He was walking faster all the while to shake me off, and I to keep with him; our angry voices rose higher in the gale.

I can't help smiling now when I think of the innocent pair of us that night, puffing along the sand in the blind, wet wind, squabbling like two children over that priceless unseen casket, come up from the waters of the sea.

"It's mine!" I bawled, "and you give it to me!" And I grabbed at his arm again. But this time, letting out a squeal, he shook me off and fled inshore, up the face of the dune, and I not far behind him.

And so, pursued and pursuing, we came suddenly over a spur of the dunes and saw below us on the southward beach the drift-fire the life-savers had made. There were many small figures in the glow, a surf-boat hauled up, I think, and a pearly huddle of alien men.

But on none of this could I take my oath; my thoughts had been jerked back too abruptly to all the other, forgotten drama of that night, the music and the faces in Center Church, the flowers, the bridegroom, and the bride.

For there on the crest before me, given in silhouette against the fire-glow, stood the bride.

How she came there, by what violence or wild stratagem she had got away, what blind path had brought her, a fugitive, across the island--it was all beyond me. But no matter; there she stood before me on the dune at Pilot's Point, as still as a lost statue, tulle and satin, molded by the gale, sheathing her form in low relief like shining marble, her stone-quiet hands at rest on her unstirring bosom, her face set toward the invisible sea.... It was queer to see her like that: dim, you know; just shadowed out in mystery by the light that came a long way through the streaming darkness and died as it touched her.

Peering at her, the strangest thought came to me, and it seemed to me she must have been standing there just so, not for minutes, but for hours and days; yes, standing there all the length of those ten long years, erect on a seaward dune, unmoved by the wild, moving elements, broken water, wailing wind, needle-blown sand--as if her spirit had flown on other business, leaving the quiet clay to wait and watch there till the tides of fate, turning in their appointed progress, should bring back the fabled ship of India to find its grave on the bars at Pilot's Point.

She must have been all ready to go to the church; perhaps she was actually on her way, and it was on the wind of the cow street that the blown tidings of the "India ship" came to her ears. I can't tell you how I was moved by the sight of her in the wistful ruin of bride's-clothes. I can't say what huge, disordered purposes tumbled through my brain as I stood there trying to cough or stir or by some such infinitesimal violence let her know that I, Peter Means, was there--that I understood--that I was stronger than all the men in Urkey Island--that over my dead body alone should any evil come to her now, forever and ever and ever.

As I tell you, I don't know what would have happened then, with all my wild, dark projects of defense, had not the whole house of trance come tumbling about my ears to the tune of a terrified bleating close at hand. It was Rolldown Nickerson, I saw as I wheeled; my forgotten enemy, flinging down the precious old brown casket he had robbed me of, and, still giving vent to that thin, high note of horror, careening, sliding, and spattering off down the sandslope. And as he vanished and his wail grew fainter around a shoulder of the dune, another sound came also to my ears. It was plain that his blind gallop had brought him in collision with another denizen of the night; the protesting outburst came on the wind, and it was the voice of Miah White--Miah the prophet, the avenger, drunk as a lord and mad as one exalted.

There was no time for thought; I didn't need it to know what he was after. Mary had heard, too, and knew, too; it was as if she had been awakened from sleep, and her eyes were "enough to make one pity her," in the old words of Mother Poll. Seeing them on me, and without so much as a glance at the casket-thing which the roll of the sand had brought to rest near her feet, I turned and ran at the best of my legs, down the sand, around the dune's shoulder out of sight, and fairly into the arms of the angel of vengeance. I can still see the dim gray whites of his eyes as he glared at me, and smell the abomination of his curse. But I paid no heed; only made with a struggle to go on.

"This way!" I panted. "To the north'rd! She's heading to the north'rd. I saw her dress just there, just now----"

A little was enough to turn him. As I plunged on, making inland, I heard him trailing me with his ponderous, grunting flesh. His ardor was greater than mine; as we ran I heard his thick voice coming nearer and nearer to my ear.

"'She shall come back,' says I, 'with the hand of iron,' says I."

As always in this exalted state his phraseology grew Biblical.

"'Thou shalt stay here,'" I heard him grunting. "'Here to the church thou shalt stay, Joshua,' says I. 'And she shalt come back with the hand of iron--the hand of iron!'"

"Yes!" I puffed. "That's right, Miah; only hurry. _There!_" I cried.

The rain had lessened, and a rising moon cast a ghost through the wrack, just enough to let us glimpse a figure topping a rise before us. That it was no one but Rolldown, still fleeing the mystery and bleating as he fled, made no difference to the blurred eyes of Miah; he dug his toes into the sand and flung forward in still hotter chase--after a still-faster-speeding quarry.

I'll tell you where we caught Rolldown. It was before the church, within the very outpouring of the colored windows. When Miah discovered who his blowing captive was his rage, for a moment, was something to remember. Then it passed and left him blank and dreary with defeat. The beachcomber himself, pale as putty through his half-grown beard, was beseeching us from the pink penumbra of the Apostle Paul: "You seen it? You seen what I seen?" but Miah wouldn't hear him, and mounting the steps and passing dull-footed through the vestry, came into the veiled light and heavy scent of breath and flowers. Following at his heels I saw the faces of women turned to our entrance with expectation.

Do you know the awful sense of a party that has fallen flat? Do you know the desolation of a hope long deferred--once more deferred?

Joshua was standing in the farthest corner, beyond the pews where Miss Beedie's Sunday School class held. Looking across the sea of inquiring and disappointed faces, I saw him there, motionless, his back turned on all of us. He had been standing so for an hour, they said, staring out of a window at his own shadow cast on the churchyard fence.

It was a distressing moment. When Miah had sunk down in a rear pew and bowed his head in his hands I really think you could have heard the fall of the proverbial pin. Then, with a scarcely audible rustle, all the faces became the backs of heads and all the eyes went to the figure unstirring by the corner window. And after that, with the same accord, the spell of waiting was broken, whispering ran over the pews, the inevitable was accepted. Folks got up, shuffling their feet, putting on their wraps with the familiar, mild contortions, still whispering, whispering--"What a shame!"--"The idea!"--"I want to know!"

But some among them must have been still peeping at Joshua, for the hush that fell was sudden and complete. Turning, I saw that he had turned from the window at last, showing us his face.

* * * * *

Now we knew what he had been doing for himself in that long hour. His face was once more the mask of a face we had known so many years as Joshua Blake, dry, bitter, self-contained, the eyes shaded under the lids, the lips as thin as hate. He faced us, but it was not at us he looked; it was beyond us, over our heads, at the corner where the door was.

There, framed in the doorway, stood the tardy bride, a figure as white and stark as pagan stone, and a look on her face like the awful, tranquil look of a sleep-walker. Neither did she pay any heed to us, but over our heads she met the eyes of the bridegroom. So for a long breath they confronted each other, steadily. Then we heard her speak.

"He's come!" she said in a clear voice. "Andrew's come back again."

Still she looked at Joshua. He did not move or reply.

"You understand?" I tell you, I who stood under it, that it was queer enough to hear that voice, clear, strong, and yet somehow shattered, passing over our heads. "You understand, Joshua? Andrew's come back to the wedding, and now I'll marry you--_if you wish_."

Even yet Joshua did not speak, nor did the dry anger of his face change. He came walking, taking his time, first along the pews at the front, then up the length of the aisle. Coming down a few steps, Mary waited for him, and there was a kind of a smile now on her lips.

Joshua halted before her. Folding his hands behind him he looked her over slowly from head to foot.

"You lie!" That was all he said.

"Oh, no, Joshua. I'm not lying. Andrew has come for the wedding."

"You lie," he repeated in the same impassive tone. "You know I know you lie, Mary, for you know I know that Andrew is dead."

"Yes, yes--" She was fumbling to clear a damp fold of her gown from something held in the crook of her arm. "But I didn't say----"

With that she had the burden uncovered and held forth in her outstretched hand.

She held it out in the light where all of us could see--the thing Rolldown had discarded from his treasures, that I had picked up and been robbed of in the kindly dark--the old brown casket-thing with the polished surfaces and the bits of intricate and ghastly carvings that had once let in the light of day and the sound of words--the old, brown, sea-bitten, sand-scoured skull of Andrew Blake, with the two gold teeth in the upper jaw dulled by the tarnishing tides that had brought it up slowly from its bed in the bottom of the sea. And to think that I had carried it, and felt of it, and not known what it was!

It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters. And Joshua, the brother, made no sound.

His face had gone a curious color, like the pallor of green things sprouting under a stone. His knees caved a little under his weight, and as we watched we saw his hands moving over his own breast, where the heart was, with a strengthless gesture, like a caress. After what seemed a long while we heard his voice, a whisper of horrible fascination.

"_Turn it over!_"

Mary said nothing, nor did she move to do as he bade. Like some awful play of a cat with a mouse she held quiet and watched him.

"Mary--do as I say--_and turn it over_!"

Her continued, unanswering silence seemed finally to rouse him. His voice turned shrill. Drawing on some last hidden reservoir of strength, he cried, "Give it to me! It's mine!" and made an astonishing dart, both hands clawing for the relic. But my cousin Duncan was there to step in his way and send him carroming along the fringe of the crowd.

The queer fellow didn't stop or turn or try again; sending up all the while the most unearthly cackle of horror my ears have ever heard, he kept right on through the door and the packed vestry, clawing his way to the open with that brief gift of vitality.

It was so preposterous and so ghastly to see him carrying on so, with his white linen and his fine black wedding-clothes and the gray hair that would have covered a selectman's head in another year--it was all so absurdly horrible that we simply stood as we were in the church and wondered and looked at Mary Matheson and saw her face still rapt and quiet, and still set in that same bedevilled smile, as if she didn't know that round tears were running in streams down her cheeks.

"Let him go," was all she said.