CHAPTER XII

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*A FACE IN THE NIGHT*

Mason, the watchman at the Freeport mills, stood as was his habit when off duty, quite at the end of the dock, his red hair blowing in the wind, his hands thrust in the pockets of his oily brown jeans, and his feet planted firmly apart, notwithstanding one was an insecure wooden peg around which the leg of his trousers fluttered loosely. It was after the hour of closing, and about the doorways of the cabins, which nestled well under the bluff. groups of workmen loitered, or like Mason, enjoyed the breezier, salter atmosphere of the wharf. The sound of bagpipes came from a distant quarter up the beach, and the rival notes of an accordion floated over from a passing fishing-smack. But above all rose the deep wash of the sea. A lumber ship, with the light lines of her deckload showing above her low black hull, swung out from the upper dock and took on a boatful of tuneful sailors who had crossed the harbor from the town. Her tug, lying to the northward, awaited her cable. And out beyond the headland and its black reflection, the late sun reddened the _Phantom's_ sails.

Mason's nautical gaze rested on the yacht, and he said, addressing Hop Sing, the cook, who had been transferred from the Judge's house to the mills, "A fine craft, ay, sir; a bit too narrer at ther beam, but a fine craft, sir."

Sing smiled blandly and tucked his long yellow finders into his wide sleeves. "_Phlantom_, she all lit-e," he admitted. "Mlisser Phil, he all lit-e."

The yacht swung into the shadow of the Head; the lightening cable between the ship and tug crossed her bows. The steamer with increased belching of smoke and pounding of machinery forged away and the vessel slowly answered the straining line. Mason leaned forward with a low exclamation; then, no longer able to hold himself, he lifted his voice in a hoarse shout. "Luff, luff 'er."

Even as he spoke the _Phantom_ veered suddenly, and came around close-hauled, all but grazing the stern of the ship. And Mason saw the master at the helm, his cap pushed back, his eyes on the flapping canvas, while his lips coolly shaped the end of a chorus. A woman, young and pretty, with a cloud of blond hair, was seated near him, strumming time on a banjo, and, as Mason moved to take the line, she looked up at him with a gay laugh.

Stratton relieved Kingsley of the tiller while he went into the bows with the coiled line. The old sailor caught it and made a twist around a pile, hauling taut. "It wore neatly done," he said with the pride glowing in his homely face; "ay, sir, but it wore a close call, sir."

Philip laughed. "Not much of a trick if you know the _Phantom_, Mason. No, I'm not coming ashore. Here, give these packages to Mr. Forrest. Tell him I'm taking a run over to Tacoma. Will look in at the camp about those logs. That's all. Cast off."

Mason watched the _Phantom_ swing out, then went up the wharf to the store. It was a long, low building with few windows and a massive door. The interior was gloomy, musty; sacks of flour piled in great lines

## partitioned the room; hams and bacon hung from the ceiling. At one side

of the entrance the office was separated from the main floor by a latticed railing, and gave the manager an opportunity to work at his desk, and at the same time see those who entered. The window at his elbow overlooked the dock and informed him if an arriving vessel demanded his attention there.

Several men sauntered after Mason and joined the group gathered at the door. One entered, and Forrest turned from his desk to take the day's tally from him. Presently Hop Sing slipped through the idle and jeering crowd to collect an allowance of groceries. Mason laid his packages down and waited, leaning on the railing. His glance moved from the cook to the sawyer, a heavy, burly fellow, who stood in the entrance. As the Chinaman passed out this man turned with a sudden thrust of his powerful shoulder and Hop Sing plunged headlong on to the dock. There was a round of applause while he floundered in a broken crock of molasses and a burst bag of buckwheat, and the sawyer moved back with a gruff laugh. At the same instant something was thrown behind him, and he, too, fell, sprawling on the floor. The cry of derision was transferred to him, and Mason, having recovered his equilibrium, stooped and gravely felt of his wooden leg. "When a man's er peg like this," he said aggressively, forestalling the sawyer's anger, "he aren't to be walked over. I've known 'um to crack."

And the crowd cheered, for there was a story current at the mills that Mason had once, in an emergency, unstrapped this leg and used it for a weapon; not only to the discomfiture of his antagonist, but to the serious damage of the instrument, both having been laid up, afterwards, for extensive repairs.

The amusement shone for a moment in Forrest's eyes, but his face was tired and worn; the line between his brows had grown habitual. It deepened when the old sailor repeated Kingsley's message. He took a small packet of mail which the watchman had brought with the bundles, and hastily cut the string. "Here, Mason," he said, "take these letters over to Mrs. Kingsley.

"Ay sir." The answer was hearty, but Forrest caught the consternation in the tone. He knew that it took less courage for this crippled sailor to brave the sawyer than face a woman; and he understood, when Mason stopped at the corner outside to light his pipe, it was a subterfuge to gain time.

The Captain's house, like the cabins, stood in an enclosure filled with slabs and sawdust and covered with rough planking. The board walk, which led from the store to the cookhouse and mills, branched to this building, and, raised on higher piling, extended on around the headland to an old abandoned hotel. It was there, going slowly with her toddling baby in the direction of the ruin, that Mason discovered Mrs. Kingsley as he crossed up from the store.

The waves broke in a continuous swash under the planking, casting at intervals a piece of wreckage or rope of seaweed on the shore. The collection of drift there was wet from the ebbing tide. Far out, beyond the shadow of the Head, a pink flush still rested on he water, and the _Phantom_, moving into this glow with all her white sails set, heeled gently, a golden craft on a painted sea. And it was in that direction, towards the receding yacht, Louise's face was turned. She had stopped and the child, steadying himself with his hand on her skirt, stood dropping pebbles slowly between the rails.

Mason slackened his pace, setting his wooden peg lightly. It was difficult to approach any woman, but this one, young, pretty and with her back turned-- He halted, waiting, with a forlorn hope that she would look around. But she did not. He coughed softly and pulled off his cap. Still she stood with her eyes towards the _Phantom_. He put on his cap and removed his pipe from his mouth, regarding her in mild helplessness. The small, proud head, the high, soft knot of dark hair, the graceful, slender figure in its trim gown, the shapely hand that rested on the railing; he noted all with growing awe. Then his clutch tightened on the letters and he cleared his throat with a gentle thump of the wooden peg.

She turned, startled, and looked at him. Her eyes were full of tears.

He thrust the letters into her hand in speechless haste and fled.

"Mason," she said, "oh, Mason." But he failed to hear. She did not repeat the call; she waited, listening to the thump, thump, of the receding peg, then her glance fell to the articles he had given her. One of the letters was pencilled and unstamped. She read it first.

"DEAR LOUISE:--

"I am sorry, but business kept me in town again last night, and I am on my way now to Tacoma. I have to hunt up a boom near there, and am taking a little crowd along for company. We will look in on the Yacht Club's dance and I wish you were coming. You really ought to find some sort of a nursemaid. I would stop off half an hour to see you, but must make the most of this wind. Will be back tomorrow evening.

"Yours, "PHIL."

The hand holding the note trembled a little, and she lifted her clouding eyes again to the _Phantom_. "It is of no use," she said slowly, "I might as well be any piece of drift thrown here out of the tide. But--I had to try it. It was the only way."

She stood for a long time watching the yacht. It moved a lessening shape on the fading sea, and swung at last behind a point into the long southward sweep of the Sound. Then she was conscious that the child had left her. He was toddling to the ruin. She ran to overtake him. "Silas," she called. "No, Silas, no." But her voice and her rapid steps only hurried him laughing and crowing through the open bar-room door.

The broad floor of fine planking was still firm and smooth except about the place where the pool table had stood, and in front of the bar. The baby ran to hide there, peeping out at his mother with little exultant bursts of delight.

But this old bar, the last remaining bit of furniture in the place, guarded the sagging door of a small ell evidently once used as a tap-room. It stopped at the first story, and the flooring, made of rougher, wider lumber than that in the main building, was laid in short patched strips. It was rotting about the rusty nailheads; sometimes there were breaks. All this was lighted dimly by one small window, high up in the unfinished wall and curtained by the bluff, and she saw a dozen pitfalls in the ruin, yawning for her baby's feet. She drew the door shut, but it was without a lock and dragged back a foot or more.

The great rear door of the bar-room also stood open; it was loose on its hinges and grounded on the floor. The threshold dipped to a balcony, dismembered of railing and stairs. She caught the child up in her arms and hurried out through the front entrance back along the walk.

It was twilight when she entered her gate. A first star glimmered over the mills, and on the water front across the harbor Seattle's lamps shone whitely. Close at hand the burning slabpile at the end of the waste-chute took on a redder glow, sending long searching tongues of flame into the gloom of the bluff. She went in and lighted a swinging lamp. Its crimson shade sent a pleasing warmth through the room, which possessed the attractive element that follows the touch of a refined and orderly woman. There were no housemaids in that milling camp; no other women. The few men who had wives made their homes over in the town, where they spent the week-end. Once during the day Mason came in to make things "ship-shape," but he took the hour when she was at the cook-house, where the meals for the Captain's family, which included Forrest, were served in a small private dining-room off the main hall.

The night was cool and she lighted the fire in the grate and seated herself in a low wicker chair to read her remaining letter. It was from her sister, briefer than usual, for she expected to follow it within the week to go that promised cruise among the islands.

"... The country is being settled very fast," she wrote. "Mill Thornton is clearing on his new homestead for a cabin, and Mr. Stratton has built a charming little lodge of cedar shakes thatched with bark, on his timber claim up the headwaters. It is tucked away in a clump of fine old trees, and the first time I saw him there, leaning in the doorway, with one of Laramie's dogs fawning over him, and bargaining with the trapper over a beaver pelt at his feet, I couldn't help calling, 'Good morning, Robin Hood.' It was so pleasant to find the place unspoiled, for most of the settlers set up their homes in a great burn, with not even an alder saved; not a flower or blade of grass left to ease the eyes."

But, though she had so much to tell about these matters, of her own homestead there was not a word. Louise folded the letter, puzzled, and laid it aside. She sat for an interval looking absently into the fire. "I don't understand," she said at last. "I don't understand why she is staying up there in the wilderness. She has promised to marry Uncle Silas, and yet she has let him go to Washington without her. She is willing to have the whole continent between them; and when a woman loves, as she should love the man she is going to marry, she is ready to shape her plans and interests to his. She wants to give him her companionship, to be at hand to help him the first moment he may need her. But Alice seems happy. I wonder what her reason is."

She had learned in this solitude to think aloud, gathering comradery from the sounds of her voice, and young Silas, growing tired of his playthings, came over to her knee. He looked up into her face gravely, trying to fathom her meaning. She laughed softly and lifted him to her lap. He was a lovely child; a little copy of Philip Kingsley in form and gesture; he had the same close-curling blond hair. He returned his mother's caress warmly, putting his stout arm about her neck and kissing her mouth, her cheek, again and again. Presently she undressed him, but she deferred the bed-going, enticing him, with surprise and frolic, to stay awake. She dreaded the silence that was to follow; the interminable loneliness of the slow night. But at last he went to sleep in her arms.

When she had tucked him away in his bed in an inner room and returned, she moved about restlessly, giving housewifely touches to things already arranged. "After all, it is the business," she said. "It must be--nearly always--the business. I am too exacting. I expect too much."

She reached the window and lifted her hand to draw the blind. But she started and dropped her arm, letting the shade spring back to the roller. Someone stood on the walk without. His long figure rose in the square of light which, blocked on the piazza, included the breadth of fence where he leaned. His dark, repulsive face was raised to her, and he seemed to fix her with his small, snakelike eyes. The next instant he dropped his goblin shape and shrank writhing away into the gloom.

She shivered and her fingers trembled when she reached again for the cord and drew the blind. She went into the hall and pushed the heavy bolt above the lock on the front door. When she had gone through the house and secured every door and window, she came back, still shivering, to the fire. "It is nothing," she told herself, and put her hand on the mantel, reassuring herself as a woman must when denied human support, "it was nothing. The man stopped a moment in passing, attracted by the light. I must have some--courage. But his face--was terrible."

Presently she went over to the piano and began to sound the keys; she struck loud, clarion chords, martialling forces to put down her fears. Her shaking fingers grew surer; she commenced to shape a bit of Wagner, and then a fragment of Schubert. That was the music she loved. She opened a folio of sonatas. She played with ease and skill and her frame swayed with a slight, rhythmic motion. Her soul was in her touch and in her eyes, grown large and misty. It was then her face was beautiful.

At last she turned a page and a loose sheet fluttered out. It was that sea song of Barry Cornwall's, that had been a favorite quartette in the old days aboard the _Phantom_. She began to play it, and presently her voice flooded the night.

"For the white squall rides on the surging wave, And the bark is 'gulfed in an ocean's grave, In an ocean's grave; in an ocean's grave."

Forrest, coming that way from his customary rounds of the mills, heard it, and the passion, the despair of it, held him at the gate. But he dropped his hand from the latch at the end and turned away. "There is nothing I can do for her." he told himself. "She is past feeling the solitude now. She is past being afraid."

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