Part 20

She did not resent living alone, but she was often conscious of her lonely appearance and of what it might suggest to others. She wished, on that account, to exhibit an occupation. When she went to the writing room or sat on the beach, she carried a book with her, turned over the pages carefully, and appreciated, perhaps, a paragraph of what she read, but many of the lines she perused might have been inscribed in some strange language as remote as a language of the Orient. Refusing to confront this incapacity to receive, mentally, the new impression, the secret of the universe was, to her, as if buried inscrutably in her own soul, and to be divulged--if ever--in a reconstructed understanding of what had happened to her, an understanding which included even the most trivial incidents of former days. To have lived, loved, borne children, and grown old was to have known everything. Why could she find no words to make this meaning of intimate things intelligible to her fellow men? Because she could not speak and make herself heard, it was often as though, in living so fully, she had never lived. Her heart beat in a troubled way. Her hands, on the leaves of her book, trembled, and she resisted being sorry for herself. She tried to take comfort in a religion in which her faith was no longer orthodox, and ended, finally, with this great pity for the world which did not ask to be pitied and despised pity--pity which was--she sometimes doubtfully conjectured it--the reflection of her own weakness. Then the only recourse from these vague and half-comprehended thoughts was to consider a change to a new scene, a journey which would tax her strength, in which, in speaking to Françoise, the old lady would ridicule weakness and make light of it. Or she would rise from her deck-chair and walk in the sunshine along the beach.

The blue waters, angry and violent in the wind that flapped her skirts, suggested to her a darkness of night in which green fields are visible. The poetry of the comparison pleased her, as the image appeared unpremeditatedly from her mind, and was like a memory of youth. As she watched that steady onward movement of waters upon the land, she experienced what was to her, in this day, a rare moment, a moment of positive happiness.

Beyond the pier, where she walked, leaning on her stick, the sea surrounded the dripping rocks of a headland. The rocks were bronze-colored and porous, like gutted and petrified combs of honey, left there by bees of a giant size. Above them, in jagged curtains of white foam, in the glow of the sun, the surf towered. For an instant the suspended curtain hung twinkling in the light, to descend, with the transcience of dew and the indolence of a floating veil, upon the agitation of waves which had conveyed it. The surface of glass which was the ocean, voluminous and rocking, like the sun-inflamed canopy of a glass tent, washed up and down magnificently, somnolently, as a cradle gently rocked, and the enormous tents of water, built up one after another, were covered all over with globules of sunshine, round and crystal, trembling like the drops that fall hesitatingly from metal which, made over-warm, has begun to cool again.

Once more the foam concentrated in seething currents, rushing together with subterranean hisses. The foam concentrated, lifted, and made a glittering edifice of snow, harsh, exquisite, and momentary, like the Gothic traceries of frost. The tower of marble, of a lacy substance, of the purity of linen left long to bleach, but with the adamant glitter of diamonds, sank easily, waned in prismatic reflections, and was no more than a pale breath, breathed on the distance of the intense sky and evaporating like mist. Little water-spouts, such as pour from the gargoyle-mouths of old fountains, ran steadily downward from crevices in the stones. The tide rattled among the boulders. The sea had subsided, only to come forward as before, but with a more implacable ease. A glass tube, transparent on the length of the shore, showed, in a bottle-blue wall, ribbon-tangles of reddish seaweed, designed in the clear substance with the design of objects caught in amber. The swell, with its mounting undulations, resolved in long blades of crystal, run high in the air in a concave symmetry in which sank massive and transparent shadows that were the reflections of the waves themselves, carving the beaches.

The old lady’s bonnet-strings whipped out under her chin, her wide black dress was full like a banner and beat her legs, yet, though she steadied herself against the onslaught of winds, felt salt vapors upon her face, and was obliged to squint and lower her wrinkled lids against the glare, she saw everything vividly. The foam, curdling the sands, sticky amber and smooth as mirrors, was a flat scallop, like a ruffle of soapsuds, and the scallops ran down coruscations and runnels that were the imprints of wavy hair, faintly golden. A cold smell of rotted fish and kelp came to the old lady on the same breeze that wafted to her the screams of the children, of the little boys in their striped bathing costumes who were wading in the shallows. And little girls in white, little girls, barefoot, with sand-buckets and shovels, their short skirts tilted behind their flying legs, were heard shrieking happily as they swooped, like a flock of small gulls, straight down to the water’s edge. More obscurely, as from a more vast distance, the old lady heard the voices of the grown-up bathers, who, swimming far out into the breakers, were carried, with heads bobbing, to an immense height, lifted, by the indifferent sapphire waters, as upon the flashing shoulders of armored giants.

Then she turned toward the sultry horizon, where the brilliance of the day succumbed to the overshadowing of clouds, and to something less visible--perhaps an emanation from the light itself--which was like unseen smoke. Beyond the cobalt welter of sun and waves, incessantly flaked as with white flowers, a boat balanced quietly under one sail, stood, upon the emptiness, like a swan upon a still lake, its head under its wing.

The old lady was fatigued by this unforeseen intensity of visual appreciation. She had come to the end of the pier, and, turning reluctantly, began to retrace her footsteps to the hotel. On the shore she noted the rosy and dusked loftiness of the retreating mountains, their peaks somber under the fogs of a summer rainstorm, while on the rusted slopes the deep green of the trees suggested a relief of velvet on an old brocade, the crushed foliage of the pines and cork oaks hinting at the tactile qualities of variegated mosses. The fashionable hotels along the waterfront, built in stucco and somewhat in the Spanish style, ancient houses in the town with walls of plaster or rubble, all showed in a violent radiance of sinking sun in which the pallor of white surfaces and the redness of far-off roofs received a remote emphasis on objects which seemed the minute dwellings of dolls.

And the old lady was suddenly overcome by an emotion which she afterwards preferred to forget. What she felt, as she turned from her promenade, the sea-wind stinging her flaccid cheeks, was an immanence of death, which came to her from nowhere out of nothing--from the cries of the children, from the boat, the breeze, from the vast water that flowed after her. Yes, most of all from the sea, the sea flashing in the sunshine, the great sea, monotonous, voracious, untouched, and merciless. “I shall die,” she thought, “but _they_ will die, too.” In “they” she included the people in the village, the bathers in the surf, and the ladies in their organdie frocks and flowered hats, with the gentlemen in flannels, gentlemen dressed so precisely, if carelessly, in imitations of the English style--the old lady, as she approached the termination of her walk, could now see them all. And the quiet gale that swept past her from some space infinitely distant, beyond even the clouds of the coming rainstorm, was the breath of a holocaust. “_They_” were all dead, all the people who covered the security of the land, people the old lady loved and had loved, indeed people who were dead already. That the sea was, had been, and always would be--long, long after these, the young, the happy, the oblivious, had ceased to live--this sea, of which she herself was afraid, so that she had never undertaken an ocean voyage without a tremor, the sea comforted her with an immense and terrible comfort, so that, for an instant, her spirit flamed coldly and intensely. All was light, sunshine, happiness, and moving waters, and all was death, forever and ever death--though she scarcely called it so exactly, or by that name.

Then her eyes grew dim. The peculiar accuracy with which, the moment before, she had viewed and absorbed the details of her surroundings, faded in her habitual hesitance and vagueness. She began to think of saving her strength, of getting back to the hotel in time for her tea when she would eat some nice little _brioches_, of buying Françoise a new dress. Entering the hotel lobby at just quarter to five o’clock, weak and at peace as after some exhausting victory, she gave to her heart the shadowy acknowledgment of its new strength, and, in spite of her cheerful resolutions, was conscious of a faint, austere bitterness.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Copyright, 1925, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright, 1926, by Evelyn Scott.

OLD MAN LEDGE[15]

By MAY STANLEY

(From _The Pictorial Review_)

Beyond Bald Head a long white curve of beach held the old house in an encircling arm. There were no other buildings in sight. A thick growth of stunted spruces ran down to a meadow covered with coarse beach-grass, and the house stood on a small rise of ground at the edge of the meadow, commanding an unbroken view seaward. On one side the foundation had rotted away, so that the gray, weather-beaten dwelling leaned slightly as though striving to catch the faint murmur of the tides.

Out at sea the waters glowed vividly, reflecting the brilliant colors of sunset in wavering bars of rose and mauve and gold. The surface of the bay heaved gently, thrusting long rollers beneath the fishing boat as it swung in a wide curve around Bald Head.

“Thar she is!” Orin Pettishall twitched the tiller-ropes as he spoke. The boat swung obediently toward an old dock which made a gray blot against the background of white sand.

The girl nodded. “Bigger’n I thought ’twuz,” she said happily. “I wuz over here onct cranberryin’ when I wuz leetle, but it’s bigger’n I thought ’twuz then.”

“Yeah, it’s a good house,” he agreed, “even ef ’tis kind uv old. Still an’ all, ’tain’t old when ye think they’s oak beams in it. Paw says Captain Beath got some uv the beams fer his house outer his vessel--arter she wuz wrecked on Old Man Ledge out thar.”

“Wonder how long ago ’tis?” Emily Widden glanced seaward. Half-tide revealed the jagged rocks of Old Man Ledge standing up sharply above the water.

“Dunno. ’Fore paw’s time, fer ’twuz grampy told him.” He swung the boat deftly in beside the dock and made it fast. “Looks like the house’s kinder settlin’ ter the one side. Hev ter straighten her up fust uv all. Come on! I got ter see how much fixin’ the dock’ll need.”

With Emily beside him he went proudly across the dock, keeping a sharp lookout for loose or rotting boards. Reaching shore, they paused involuntarily and stood, hand in hand, looking up at the old house.

“Nicer’n I thought ’twuz goin’ ter be,” the girl murmured.

“Guess she’s goin’ ter be wuth what I’m payin’ fer her.” He tried to speak calmly. “Seven hundred dollars ain’t sich a lot when ye think ’at they’s twenty acres goes with it--all this here shore-front an’ back inter the woods a piece. Paid the real estate fellers two hundred dollars cash money, an’ I got three years ter find the rest in.”

Emily nodded. She had heard the story from Orin a half-dozen times today, but it did not lose interest with repetition.

“We kin do ’at easy,” she said. “I kin hev chickens an’ put in a garden. ’Twon’t cost us much ter live.”

“An’ they ain’t no reason ter put off gittin’ married,” he declared. “We kin git married soon ez I git the house fixed up a mite an’ a fish-house built.”

“Guess we kin,” she assented shyly.

They went quickly up the slope, along a path overgrown with weeds and blackberry brambles. Emily cried out with pleasure at sight of a great hedge of yellow lilies which lifted their slender stalks defiantly above the encroaching weeds. At the front of the house a bricked walk led up to a hooded doorway. High-backed seats had once stood on either side. One of them was still in good repair, but the other sagged forlornly on its broken supports.

“’Nough fixin’ ter keep me busy fer a while, I guess,” Orin commented as he unlocked the front door. It swung open with painful creakings, showing a square hall with doors on either side. “S’pose this must ’a’ been the parlor.” He led the way into a fair-sized room with windows looking directly toward sea. Now they were so dark with dust and spider-webs that little light came through. Opposite the door a stone fireplace yawned.

“It’ll be nice here when we git it fixed up.” Emily looked about the room curiously. “Le’s see the rest uv it.”

They passed through the door at the back which led into a small bedroom, returned to the hall, and inspected in turn the dining room, kitchen, and woodshed on the opposite side of the house.

“Le’s go down in the yard an’ see what the well’s like,” Emily proposed.

“I’d oughter go down cellar an’ hev a look at the foundation,” he objected. “Ef I wait any longer it’ll be too dark ter see anythin’. You go an’ hev a look at the well while I’m down cellar.”

“A’ right. I won’t be long.”

She ran down the steps, paused for a moment while her eyes searched for a path, found it, and ran lightly along, pushing aside weeds and brambles. Near a clump of spruces she saw the well-sweep and was going toward it when her glance was caught by something at the left of the house--something which showed gray in the surrounding greenness.

“Wonder what’s thar?” Making her way through the intervening growth, she cautiously lifted a matted bramble, then dropped it with a startled exclamation and began to run back toward the house.

“Orin!” she called. “Orin!”

Orin came out on the back porch, his face reflecting the satisfaction he felt.

“’Tain’t goin’ ter be much work ter fix up the foundation. Not near so much----” He paused at sight of her white face. “What’s come ter ye?”

“Thar’s a grave out thar!” Her voice was trembling. “Somebody’s grave! I see it when I wuz goin’ down ter the well.”

“Guess ye must be mistook,” he said wonderingly. “Never heared tell uv nobody bein’ buried here.”

“I see the gravestun ez I wuz goin’ down ter the well,” she explained breathlessly. “It’s kind uv layin’ down. Ye kain’t hardly see it ’ceptin’ it ketches the light. Come an’ see fer yerself.” She led him down the path, unmindful of the brambles which caught and tore at her skirt. “Thar ’tis!”

Orin Pettishall stared at it thoughtfully, then stooped and tried to read the words cut in the moldy stone.

“Too dark,” he said at length. “Torch’s down in the boa-at. I’ll go git it.”

“Let me go fer it--I’d ruther.”

“What’s the matter?” He glanced up, conscious of the fear in her voice. “Ain’t scart uv an ol’ gravestun, air ye?”

“N-o. Only I’d ruther go.” She hurried off.

Left to himself, the boy sat down beside the grave and gazed proudly up at the house. His house! Pretty nice to be able to buy it and move into his own home this fall, when he and Emily were married. Pretty nice! If lobster prices stayed up he’d maybe be able to pay something more on it before Christmas. He was whistling jubilantly when Emily, hurrying back, thrust the torch into his hands.

“Read what it says!” she directed.

Holding the light close to the moldy stone, he read slowly: “‘Sacred--to the m--Nehemiah Hill--departed’--they’s a big chip out uv the stone here--‘May thirtieth, eighteen hundred an’ fifty-two--Greater love hath no man than this’--I kain’t read no more; it’s chipped off some.”

“‘That a man lay down his life for his friends.’” The girl finished the quotation in a hushed voice.

“Wonder who he wuz--Nehemiah Hill? I ain’t never heared tell uv no Hills ’round here.”

“Dunno.” She rose, shivering. “Le’s go back, Orin. It’s gittin’ late.”

“I wanted ye ter see the cellar afore we go.”

“At’ll keep,” she said hastily, and turned to the path which led down to the dock.

When he had started his engine and the fishing boat was chug-chugging its way back to West Harbor, Pettishall turned to the girl.

“What come ter ye, Em’ly?” he asked. “Ye ain’t said a word sense we started. ’At grave didn’t upset ye none, did it?”

“Yes--kind uv.”

“It don’t do no hurt, fur ez I kin see.” Disappointment made his voice cold. “Thought ye liked the place.”

“So I do, only----”

“Only what?”

She turned to face him. “Dunno ez I c’d live whar they’s a grave,” she said slowly. “It’s a nice place an’ all, only I dunno ez I c’d live whar they’s a grave.”

“Dunno what makes ye feel like ’at. An’ anyways we got ter live thar. I bought the place, ain’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Wa-al, we got ter live thar, ain’t we?”

She was silent.

“We got ter live thar, ain’t we? Seein’ I bought it, we got ter live thar.” Frustration, injured pride, bewilderment, were in the words.

“Dunno ez we hev,” she retorted. “Leastways, dunno ez _I_ hev. They ain’t nothin’ ter _make_ me!”

He did not reply, but stared straight in front of him, head up and lips set in a stubborn line. She could talk like that! That was all she thought of their home, the home he was planning to get ready for her! Well, if that was the way she felt about things----

“Orin!” Her voice was timid.

“Yes.”

“I ain’t meanin’ ter be cross ner spiteful. It’s only----”

“Only ye don’t like the place I bought fer us. Wa-al, guess they ain’t nothin’ more ter be said.”

“A’ right,” she replied coldly, “ef ’at’s the way ye feel. I ain’t goin’ ter stay by myself, day in an’ day out, ’ith a grave ter keep me comp’ny. I’d like the place fine ef the grave wa’n’t thar. Even ef we knowed who ’twuz----”

“I kain’t he’p it, way things air,” he interrupted. “I didn’t know ’bout the grave when I bought the place, but it wouldn’t uv made no diff’rence ter me ef I hed knowed. Way I see it we got ter live thar, grave er no grave.”

She shook her head sorrowfully. “No, I ain’t goin’ ter live thar. I knowed I wouldn’t soon ez ever I see the grave. I jes’ kain’t an’ they ain’t no use in talkin’ uv it!”

“Wa-al,” Mrs. Widden said cheerfully, “what ye think uv the place Orin bought?”

Her daughter, heavy-eyed from a sleepless night, looked up and said drearily, “A’ right, I guess.”

“Mercy me! Is ’at all ye think uv it?”

“Did ye know somebody wuz buried thar?” Emily demanded. “Right beside the house?”

“Mercy me!” Mrs. Widden exclaimed again. “I been cranberryin’ in the medder a coupla times sense the ol’ captain died, but I never seed no grave. Whose is it?”

“Dunno. Name on it’s Nehemiah Hill. D’ye know who ’at is?”

“Never heared tell uv no Hills in these here parts,” Mrs. Widden shook her head solemnly. “They’s Hills over Lewiston way an’ they’s a fambily--say, Paw,” as the door opened to admit Jeremy Widden’s bulk, “did ye know somebody wuz buried over ter the ol’ Beath place?”

“Never heared tell uv it.” Widden clumped across to the sink and drank hugely from a tin dipper. “Here’s Hannah Anne Pettishall comin’. Mebbe she’ll know.”

“’Lo, ev’ybody!” Mrs. Pettishall panted genially. She was a huge woman whose bulk almost filled the doorway and quite overflowed the rocking-chair which Mrs. Widden pushed forward. “I’m all outer crochet-cotton,” she explained, “an’ I thought I’d run over an’ borrer a mite ter last till I kin git some f’om Po’tland.”

“Yeah, I got some,” Mrs. Widden replied, “same number ez what ye’re usin’. D’ye know ’bout thar bein’ a grave on the place Orin jes’ bought?”

“Never heared tell uv one. Mebbe ’at’s what made Orin so grumpy--wouldn’t say a decent word breakfus’-time.” She wiped her face meditatively with a corner of her apron. “My, it’s hot fer this time uv year! Ef ye hurry up an’ git married, Em’ly Widden, ye’ll still hev summer fer yer weddin’.”

“I ain’t goin’ ter git married,” Emily said dully.

“Ye ain’t _what_?” her elders demanded in chorus.

“Me an’ Orin hed words las’ night,” Emily replied in a dull voice, “’bout ’at grave. An’--an’--we hed words.”

“D’ye mean ter say you an’ Orin fit?” Mrs. Pettishall demanded. “Wisht ye’d hurry an’ make up ef ye did, so’s he won’t be so grumpy.”

“I tol’ him I wouldn’t live no place whar they’s a grave ’longside uv the house.”

“Fer any sakes!” Mrs. Pettishall stared at her prospective daughter-in-law in frank amazement. “Ye don’t mean ter say ’at jes’ ’cause they happens ter be a grave----”

“Wa’al, ef’ ’at’s the way Em’ly feels I guess she’s got a right,” Mrs. Widden broke in.

“Now, Maw!” Widden counseled. “Stay out uv it an’ let the young folks fight things out fer tharselves.”

But his wife was not to be so easily silenced. “Tell yer maw ’bout it, Em’ly,” she commanded soothingly. “Tell yer maw what the trouble is. Ye didn’t want ter live thar ’count uv the grave? Wuz ’at it?”

Emily nodded.

“Wa-al, I mus’ say--” Mrs. Pettishall began heavily.

“Orin said we’d hev ter live thar,” Emily explained. “An’ I said I didn’t hev ter. An’ he said--” She dissolved into tears.

“Wa-al, he didn’t hev no right ter say it!” Mrs. Widden stormed. “Guess my girl ain’t goin’ ter set up housekeepin’ in no graveyard!”

“Orin didn’t aim ter live in no graveyard,” Mrs. Pettishall returned sharply. “I mus’ say, Lucindy----”

“An’ he kin jes’ stay ’way f’om Em’ly!” Mrs. Widden threw down the wooden needle with which she had been knitting trap-heads, crossed the kitchen, and took her disconsolate daughter into her arms. “Thar! Ye don’t need ter take on! Ye don’t hev ter do nothin’ ye don’t want ter!”

Mrs. Pettishall got to her feet.

“Ef ye’d leave the young ’uns ’lone, Lucindy, an’ mind yer own business,” she said angrily, “they’d mebbe git things patched up! Stan’s ter reason they won’t so long ez ye keep interferin’!”

“Who’s interferin’?” Mrs. Widden demanded belligerently.

“You, fer one! I mus’ say I think Orin’s patient to put up ’ith Em’ly

## actin’ like she’s doin’----”

“Thar now, Maw! Ca’m yerself!” Widden interposed.

“An’ ef I wuz in his place I wouldn’t stand fer it!” Mrs. Pettishall continued bitterly. “They’s other girls----”

“Now, now, Hannah Anne!”