CHAPTER XIX

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*"ANDROMEDA HAS FOUND A PERSEUS"*

The great boom which cleared Duwamish Head of its big timber and cut the cable car-track across the face of the promontory, created also frequent and heavy landslides that changed the gravelly beach at Freeport into the broad and sandy expanse which became Seattle's favorite bathing resort. In the earlier times, beyond the old hotel, the high tide washed sheer to the foot of the bluff, and the incomparable view of blue sea and wooded island, framed by the shining Olympic Mountains, was limited to the outlook from the balcony at the rear of the ruin.

Louise stood upon this balcony, facing the northwest. The bluff was on her left, so near she might have lifted her hand and touched the damp soil. It was midsummer and a resinous fragrance mingled with the salt air. The distant coast was veiled in smoke, and the sun, low in the west, barred the Sound blood red.

The swell broke with a long swash and gurgle under the floor; a passing gust set the door behind her creaking; the heavier one at the opposite end of the bar-room was also swinging, and between its widening crack Stratton appeared on the walk. At sight of her he started and paused, then he came on into the ruin. His glance swept the interior, from the threshold, and rested on the door behind the bar. It was closed and fitted with a new, strong lock.

At the sound of his tread she turned, and he came forward quickly, smiling and offering his hand. "Good afternoon," he said, in his conventional way, "it is rather nice here, isn't it? I hope I do not intrude?"

"No," she said, and answered his smile, "I am glad to share it. Did the _Phantom_ bring you?"

"No, the _Success_ left me." His gesture called her attention to the small mail steamer moving westward. "I ran over about a little matter of business. I saw young Silas on the dock with that old character Mason. The boy is growing."

"Yes, he lives out of doors so much. They are great playfellows, and I can trust Mason. He takes him rowing every afternoon, often twice, out of the shadow of the Head into the sunshine."

"But you,"--he paused with a light emphasis, looking down into her sweet, inscrutable face,--"you stay in the shadow. Do you know what I thought of just now, coming up the walk? It was Andromeda--chained."

"You had the sea," she looked about her thoughtfully, "and this bluff; Andromeda--perhaps--but without a Perseus."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes." She met the unmistakable admiration in his eyes with a clear look and a slight uplifting of her oval chin. "It is too bad, but the comparison is misapplied."

She moved towards the doorway. He waited a moment, watching her in mingled amusement and pique. "Another touch-me-not," he told himself; "I had not thought she could be so like her sister. Don't let me take you back," he said aloud, following a step; "it is pleasanter here, away from the interminable buzz of those saws."

But she moved on into the building. He joined her. "We are sailing over to Tacoma tonight," he said. "The yacht club is arranging a little hop. Come with us. Go over the harbor with me, when the _Success_ picks me up on the return trip. I will give you a merry time, I promise you."

"It is always that on board the _Phantom_," she answered brightly. "And of course Philip would run in for me, if I could leave little Si. You see I have only Mason to depend on, and at night he is on duty."

"But bring the boy. We will tuck him away in a berth down below. He will like it. Why, he took that cruise among the islands last year like an old salt, and then he had just begun to toddle."

She shook her head. "He is better off at home. He couldn't sleep; not in that gay company."

Stratton wondered how far she meant to disregard that matter of his escort. He was not accustomed to indifference from a woman. And any other, in a like position, would grasp at the opportunity he offered. "My dear Mrs. Kingsley," he said, and his voice was no longer conventional, "throw aside those Puritan scruples, for once, and let me show you how easy it is to accomplish--what you desire. I know the Captain. Come, go with me on this moonlight excursion, tonight."

She met his gaze bravely, smiling a little, but there was in her eyes the look of one who has felt in a wound the quick turn of a probe. "Thank you, no," she said.

The child was coming up the walk and she hurried to meet him. "Muvver," he called excitedly, "Mason can take us to row, now." Then he stopped, looking at Stratton, and added doubtfully, "The boat is big 'nough for you, too."

Stratton laughed and took out his watch. "Thank you. I have over an hour to spare, but you must put me aboard the _Success_, sure, when she comes back."

Mason, who had waited at the branch walk, turned and stumped ahead to the landing. He held the boat steady and the young man stepped into the stern and lifted the boy in. But when he offered his hand to Louise she drew back and said, "Oh, I am not going; did you think so? Good-by, Silas. Take care of him, Mason."

"Ay, mum?" The old sailor's voice held a note of inquiry. He had lost his shyness, in a measure, at the time of the child's illness. And since then Forrest had seen that there was always a rowboat at the mills. He had made it Mason's duty, during the boy's convalescence, to take him and his mother out in search of the sunshine. She had rarely missed these little trips.

But whatever chagrin Stratton may have felt was not apparent. He settled into his place, lifted his hat to her, and taking a cigar from his case, occupied himself, while the boat was under shelter of the wharves, with getting a light.

She watched them out, waving her hand and smiling an answer to her baby's repeated "Good-by." Then she turned and went up from the landing. "If it was a way," she said under her breath, "then I have let it go."

She walked in the direction of the mills, on past the last cabins, to the beginning of a path that zigzagged up the side of the promontory. She pushed up quickly, finding in the tangible difficulty of the ascent relief for her hot thoughts. Sometimes the earth gave under her and she sprang to a spur of rock; she grasped the tough, springy boughs of young firs to ease her weight. She invited the touch of the prickly needles on her hands and face, and she drew full breaths of the fragrance exhaled from her palms.

She gained the summit moist and panting, and paused to look down on the rowboat, and on across the harbor to the infant city on her hills. There was no dwelling near; the trail took the contour of the bluff, which in places became a precipice, and everywhere around her stretched the forest or the sea. She crossed to the westward side and stopped where a fallen hemlock had cut a swathe through the timber, creating an unobstructed view. Out of the smoke film that shrouded the distant shore, rising columns parted in dun rolling clouds, showing where the forest fires burned; but the Olympics reared their giant heads from the pall, sometimes thrusting a shoulder through. And to this woman it was not solitude; she had come into the presence of old friends. She turned her eyes to that grand company of peaks and forgot the narrow limits of the life below the bluff; she stood above the drift and shadow and, for a moment, Philip.

Her hands were clasped loosely behind her; her lifted head exposed the beautiful lines of throat and chin; her breath came a little hard and quick and there was a soft color in her cheeks. The likeness to her sister had never seemed as marked to Forrest as it was then, when he came upon her unexpectedly, by the fallen hemlock, on his way to the mills. Was not this the trail to the headwaters? Had they not paused to choose a way through the windfall?

She did not see him, and he waited, mastered by that brief illusion. And while he watched her face she saw the heights of the Olympics change from rose to burnished brass; every peak and spur flamed a signal to the departing sun.

"'But breathe the air of mountains And their unapproachable summits will lift thee to the level of themselves.'"

She repeated the words softly with a clear modulation, deepening to a contralto note, and after a moment added a preceding line.

"'Assert thyself; rise up to thy full height.'"

But there she stopped, and lifting her arms with a little outward gesture, expressive of futile effort, let them drop, and turning her face, saw Forrest.

He came forward quickly to say, "I've only been here a moment, and I couldn't help listening; I'm fond of those lines. But, when did you ever assert yourself?" He looked down at her with his smile of the eyes. "It's there the resemblance stops."

"You mean to Alice?"

"Yes, sometimes you are very like her," and he turned his glance to the mountain-tops.

"You mean physically. I think, in other ways, I must often seem purposeless, even weak--to you."

"Ob, no," he said quickly, "I couldn't ever believe that. You are stronger than most women; strong to endure. But you lack her executive ability." Then he stopped, for he saw that she had given his words a personality he had not meant.

"What would you have me do?" The vibration in her voice hurt him; he could not meet the intensity of appeal in her eyes. "It had commenced before we came to Freeport. I felt that he was growing tired of me, but I believed, if I could be alone with him, in a dull place like this, I might win him back. It seemed the only chance; but--it has failed." The tears were streaming down her face; she reached out her hands to him. "What would you have me do?" she repeated. "Tell me."

Forrest had never known her to lose her self-control but once before; the night he had crossed the harbor in the dugout. Even then it was quickly over; she had not spoken of Kingsley's neglect; he had never heard her so much as breathe a reproach. His great heart ached for her, while he felt the futility of any sympathy he could offer her. He broke away some young growth in front of the fallen tree, and she allowed him, passively, to seat her in the crotch of a great branch. "You are pretty tired," he said gently. "It's a hard pull up the bluff. And this solitary life is telling on you; I feel the strain of it, myself, sometimes. We will both be glad to get away from Freeport."

She threw her arm up over the bole, and dropped her face on it, sobbing. He stood looking seaward. Far out the water was still barred blood-red. Presently he said, "You know the mills are about to shut down? We have been waiting for the Judge, but he will be here in another month, perhaps sooner. There isn't a doubt he will close. You know we are falling behind. Lumber has dropped to seven dollars a thousand; the San Francisco market is glutted; the bone-yard there has stopped receiving."

She knew that he had said all this to give her time, and she struggled with those crowding emotions, trying and failing, and trying again to beat them down. He waited, with his back towards her, his face to the painted sea. He was a resourceful man, quick to grasp a difficulty and its solution, for others as well as himself, but now he halted, baffled, like a man come to a blind wall. His mind ran through that first slow year at Freeport, and it flashed over him what an interminable blank it would have been without her. Confined as they were to the narrow limits of the mills, it had been as close as life on shipboard. They had taken their meals together; they had met, passed and repassed countless times daily on the short walks. He had been glad to show a helpful interest in little Silas. He had fallen easily into the way of spending his evenings, when he could, with her; she loved his violin. He saw now how those hours had dulled the poignancy of putting Alice out of his life. He remembered how he had commenced to watch in Louise for a repetition of those many little airs he liked; the lifting of the chin, the high pose of the head, the ready change of color; all modified, it was true, softened and blended with much that was not her sister's, but there, palpable, near, breathing, flesh and blood. And most of all he understood what she had done for him when that business depression laid a fatal hand on the mills. He had meant to do great things and he was one to take defeat hard; but she, this sweet, proud woman, with the courage in her voice and the heart-break in her eyes, had taught him by example how to fight a losing battle to the end, and--like a man.

The silence was broken by the neigh of a horse. It was unusual on that promontory; saddle-animals never took the foot-path over the bluff to the mills, and afterwards Forrest remembered the sound. Then, though he turned and looked in the direction of the neigh, he gave it small attention. His glance fell to her; and that attitude, the hidden face, the slender shaking figure, brought back an onrush of the tumult he had felt the night she so nearly lost her child; bitter resentment against Philip, immeasurable pity, tenderness for her, and a desire to take, and protect and comfort her.

"See here," he said, and his deep voice vibrated a a little, holding each word like a caress, "See here, don't make so much of it; he isn't worth it. No man on earth is."

She became suddenly still. Her hand clenched on a fold of her skirt, but she did not lift her face. Her head was uncovered and he stood regarding the blue and purple lights of that high, dark coil of her hair. "See here," he went on finally, "I can't let you be discouraged. You've done too much for me. Don't you know it? Of course you made a mistake; you should never have come to the mills. But it was my mistake, too, and I don't like to think what this life here would have meant without you. Why, you and little Si have stood for what I like best; you've made a home for me. Without you I should have lived like a miserable castaway."

She lifted her face with a supreme effort. Her eyes said, "Thank you," and her lips shaped an explanation he was not slow to grasp. "You were right, it's the solitude. I exaggerate--lately--I am annoyed by the--smallest things. Just now it was Mr. Stratton. He happened--to ask me to go--with him--on an excursion aboard the _Phantom_. As if--Philip--would not run in for me--any time--that I wished. But, Paul, if the mills close, what will you do?"

"I?" he answered and smiled, "why, there's a piece of land out on the upper Des Chutes that I've been anxious to secure for a long time. I'm going to homestead it and, incidentally, prospect the hills. You see this business depression is giving me an opportunity I've been waiting for."

"The upper Des Chutes," she repeated. "I see, you are going to take up a systematic search for the lost prospect, and make your headquarters on the ground."

"Yes," he said, "or pretty close to it. I can't tell you how I want to find myself in the thick of the timber again. You don't know how I hesitated between that homestead and this position at the mills. My inclinations, every fiber in me reached out to that section at the headwaters, but, of course, I needed a little more capital to start with; that is, to carry on the developments I had in view. I am afraid, though, it was Alice who turned the scales." He paused, smiling a little and shaking his head. "You see I hadn't learned, then, to take defeat, and I never could believe her refusal was final. I couldn't ask her to bury herself up there in the wilderness."

"You mean you asked Alice to be your wife, and she--refused. Oh, Paul, how could she?" She rose to her feet. Her voice was low and thrilling, and she looked at him again through springing tears. "How could she? To--to think we have always taken so much--your best--and in return have given you--worse than nothing."

She held out her hands once more, and this time he took them in his friendly grasp. "You forget," he said, with his smile of the eyes, "You forget all I've been saying. The debt is on my side. I never can do as much for you."

While he said this a workman came down the path. He was the sawyer at the mills. Her hands dropped and she stepped back to the seat she had left. The man looked at her and then at Forrest as he passed, turning his head slowly to prolong the stare.

"I didn't know the mill men ever came up here," she faltered.

"They don't, often." Forrest stood watching the curve where the man had disappeared. "A lighter grounded on Alki Point; he has been helping to float her. That's what took me up the trail." He began to walk in the direction the man had gone. Presently he looked back. "I must hurry on," he said. "Come with me, if you are ready; I would be glad to help you down."

She followed him in silence along the promontory. When they passed beyond the curve another man pushed out of the thicket into the trail. He ran with a gliding, half writhing motion to a point where a branch track, faint, little used, dipped over the Head. He took this course, twisting, swinging himself by low boughs, doubling where the path was lost in a precipitous gully, and so gained the beach. He crept under the bluff, rounding it and splashing ankle-deep in water, for the tide was running in, until he reached the rear balcony of the old hotel. He paused a moment, listening, with his beady eyes fixed on the walk stretching from the main entrance; then he laid the saddle-bags which he carried on the platform while he swung himself up. He waited another instant,--the sea broke with a gurgle among the piles; a passing gust set one of the doors creaking,--and picking up the empty bags he ran through the tap-room behind the bar. He found a key, strung on a cord around his neck, and fitted it in the new lock and opened the door. When he came out the saddle-bags were filled, and heavy, for he made his way up the promontory with difficulty. As he reached the summit the stillness was again broken by the neigh of a horse.

Forrest heard the sound faintly, while he helped Louise down the last pitch of the trail. But again he gave it little attention, for he noticed that the sawyer was the center of a small crowd at the corner of the cookhouse. The whole group turned to look at these two as they approached; curiously, as though they were strangers but just arrived.

She raised her face to Forrest with a mute question. He felt it, though his own gaze was directed straight ahead to the quiet harbor. The right hand at his side clenched, twice, and the line deepened to a great cleft between his brows. But he knew this crew and the futility of trying to put their rough conjectures down. To call the sawyer to account was to invite a wider notoriety, such as this woman could not endure. "I have been a fool," he told himself; "a blind fool. My God, the shame, the folly of it. And the most I can do is to keep it from her."

Aloud he said, and met that question in her face with his quiet smile, "I'm afraid that was a pretty steep grade for you; I hope the outlook up there paid you for the climb." His glance moved then over the stacked lumber of the mill yard, and he paused to say to a man in the crowd, "Dickman, that pile of scantling is listing; see to it in the morning, the first thing. And say, Johnson," he added, stopping again, "that new chain came today; I'll give it to you, now, at the store. You'll need it in the morning when you hoist that big red fir from the boom."

The rowboat was waiting for the _Success_ outside the docks. The little steamer, veering from her course, slowed down to take Stratton aboard. He sprang lightly over the side and stood watching Mason pull away. Then he looked shoreward. He lifted his hat and smiled at the man and woman on the walk, and his lingering glance said, "Andromeda has found a Perseus."

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