Kitabı oku: «Rose of Dutcher's Coolly», sayfa 16

"O God! can't somebody help them?"

"They're out of reach!" said Mason solemnly. And then the throng was silent.

"They are building a raft!" shouted a man with a glass, speaking at intervals for the information of all. "One man is tying a rope to planks … he is helping the other men … he has his little raft nearly ready … they are crawling toward him – "

"O see them!" exclaimed Rose. "O the brave men! There! they are gone – the vessel has broken up."

On the wave nothing now lived but a yellow spread of lumber; the glass revealed no living thing.

Mason turned to Rose with a grave and tender look.

"You have seen human beings engulfed like flies – "

"No! no! There they are!" shouted a hundred voices, as if in answer to Mason's thought.

Thereafter the whole great city seemed to be watching those specks of human life, drifting toward almost certain death upon the breakwater of the south shore. For miles the beach was clustered black with people. They stood there, it seemed for hours, watching the slow approach of that tiny raft. Again and again the waves swept over it, and each time that indomitable man rose from the flood and was seen to pull his companions aboard.

Other vessels drifted upon the rocks. Other steamers rolled heavily around the long breakwater, but nothing now distracted the gaze of the multitude from this appalling and amazing struggle against death. Nothing? No, once and only once did the onlookers shift their intent gaze, and that was when a vessel passed the breakwater and went sailing toward the south through the fleet of anchored, straining, agonized ships. At first no one paid much attention to this late-comer till Mason lifted his voice.

"By Heaven, the man is sailing!"

It was true; steady, swift, undeviating, the vessel headed through the fleet. She did not drift nor wander nor hesitate. She sailed as if the helmsman, with set teeth, were saying,

"By God! If I must die on the rocks, I'll go to my death the captain of my vessel!"

And so, with wheel in his hand and epic oaths in his mouth, he sailed directly into the long row of spiles, over which the waves ran like hell-hounds; where half a score of wrecks lay already churning into fragments in the awful tumult.

The sailing vessel seemed not to waver, nor seek nor dodge – seemed rather to choose the most deadly battle-place of waves and wall.

"God! but that's magnificent of him!" Mason said to himself.

Rose held her breath, her face white and set with horror.

"O must he die?"

"There is no hope for him. She will strike in a moment – she strikes! – she is gone!"

The vessel entered the grey confusion of the breakers and struck the piles like a battering ram; the waves buried her from sight; then the recoil flung her back; for the first time she swung broadside to the storm. The work of the helmsman was over. She reeled – resisted an instant, then submitted to her fate, crumbled against the pitiless wall like paper and thereafter was lost to sight.

This dramatic and terrible scene had held the attention of the onlookers – once more they searched for the tiny raft. It was nearing the lake wall at another furious point of contact. An innumerable crowd spread like a black robe over the shore waiting to see the tiny float strike.

A hush fell over every voice. Each soul was solemn as if facing the Maker of the world. Out on the point, just where the doomed sailors seemed like to strike, there was a little commotion. A tiny figure was seen perched on one of the spiles. Each wave, as it towered above him, seemed ready to sweep him away, but each time he bowed his head and seemed to sweep through the gray wall. He was a negro and he held a rope in his hands.

As they comprehended his danger the crowd cheered him, but in the thunder of the surf no human voice could avail. The bold negro could not cry out, he could only motion, but the brave man on the raft saw his purpose – he was alone with the shipwrecked ones.

In they came, lifted and hurled by a prodigious swell. They struck the wall just beneath the negro and disappeared beneath the waves.

All seemed over, and some of the spectators fell weeping; others turned away.

Suddenly the indomitable commander of the raft rose, then his companions, and then it was perceived that he had bound them all to the raft.

The negro flung his rope and one man caught at it, but it was swept out of reach on a backward leaping billow. Again they came in, their white, strained, set faces and wild eyes turned to the intrepid rescuer. Again they struck, and this time the negro caught and held one of the sailors, held him while the foam fell away, and the succeeding wave swept him over the spiles to safety. Again the resolute man flung his noose and caught the second sailor, whose rope was cut by the leader, the captain, who was last to be saved.

As the negro came back, dragging his third man over the wall, a mighty cry went up, a strange, faint, multitudinous cry, and the negro was swallowed up in the multitude.

Mason turned to Rose and spoke: "Sometimes men seem to be worth while!"

Rose was still clinging to his arm as they walked away. Mason did not speak again for some time.

"We have suffered in vain," he said at last, "and you are cold and stiffened with long standing. Let me put you in a cab and – "

"Oh, no, thank you! The walk will do me good."

"Perhaps you are right. I'll go with you to the car, and then I must go to my desk for six hours of hard work. Put this behind you," he said tenderly. "It does no good to suffer over the inevitable. Forget those men!"

"I can't! I shall never forget them while I live. It was awful!" She shuddered, but when she looked into his face she nearly cried out in astonishment at the light in his eyes.

"It had its grandeur. They went to their death like men. They have taught me a lesson. Hitherto I have drifted – henceforth I sail!" He bent to her with a mystical smile.

She drew away in a sort of awe as if she looked unworthily upon a sacred place. He misunderstood her action and said, "Don't be afraid. I have something to say to you, but not here; perhaps I'll write it. When do you go?"

"On Saturday."

"I will write you soon. Good bye."

She watched him as he moved away into the crowd, with powerful erect body – the deskman's droop almost gone out of his shoulders. What did he mean?

She was standing waiting for a chance to board a car when Elbert Harvey came pushing along against the wind, fresh and strong and glowing with color like a girl.

"O, I've been looking for you, Rose," he said. "I was at your house. They said you were over on the lake front and so – See here! You're all wet and cold. I'm going to get a carriage."

He would not be gainsaid, and she was really glad to escape the crowd in the car. He said: "I'm going to take you home to get warm."

She allowed herself to be driven to the door before she realized what it might be taken to mean, but it was then too late to insist on being driven home, it would do no harm to see Mrs. Harvey for a moment – and then she was so tired, too tired to resist.

Mrs. Harvey met her in the hall, smiling and scolding:

"Why, you reckless girl! Have you been down town? Elbert, where did you get her?"

"I found her on the street waiting for a State street car – shivering, too."

"Why, you're all wet! Come up to my room and change your shoes."

The warm air and the glow of the beautiful rooms seemed to narcotize her, and Rose allowed herself to be led away like a sleepy child. It was delicious to be so attended. Mrs. Harvey took her to her own room, a room as big and comfortable and homely as herself, and there she put Rose down before the grateful fire and rang for her maid.

"Annette, remove Mademoiselle's shoes and give her some slippers."

The deft girl removed Rose's wraps, then her shoes, while Mrs. Harvey knelt by her side and felt of her stocking soles.

"They're wet, just as I expected." She said joyfully, "Take them off!"

"O, no! They'll dry in a minute."

"Take them off, Annette," commanded Mrs. Harvey. "O, what lovely feet and ankles!" she said, and so betrayed her not too subtle design to Rose.

Rose was passive now, and yielded to the manipulations of the two women. They all had a gale of fun over the difference between Mrs. Harvey's stockings and her own, and then they brought out a fantastic pair of slippers and a beautiful wrap, which Mrs. Harvey insisted upon putting about her.

At about this time Elbert knocked on the door.

"Can't I come in and share the fun, Caroline?"

"In a moment!" she replied, and finished tucking the robe about Rose. "Now you may."

Elbert came in, radiant, unabashed, smiling, almost grinning his delight. He had changed his dress to a neat and exquisitely fitting dark suit, and he looked very handsome indeed. His cheeks were like peaches, with much the same sort of fuzz over them.

He took a place near the fire where he could see Rose, and he signaled to his mother at the earliest chance that she was stunning.

Rose lay back in the chair with the robe drawn about her, looking the grande dame from her crown of hair to the tasseled toes of her slippers. She might almost have been Colombe on the eve of her birthday.

It was delicious, and she had not heart or resolution at the moment to throw off this homage. She knew that Mrs. Harvey was misreading her acquiescence, and that every moment she submitted to her care and motherly direction, involved her, enmeshed her. But it was so delicious to be a princess and an heiress – for an hour.

The whole situation was intensified when Mr. Harvey's soft tenor voice called:

"Where is everybody?"

"Come up; here we are! There's somebody here you'll want to see."

Mr. Harvey came in smiling, looking as calm and contained as if he were just risen from sleep. He was almost as exquisitely dressed as his son.

"Well! well! This is a pleasure," he cordially exclaimed. "What's the meaning of the wrap; not sick?"

"Elbert picked her up on the street, wet and shivering, waiting for a car, and brought her home."

"Quite right. We're always glad to see you. Did you give her a little cordial, Caroline? In case of cold – "

Rose protested. "I'm not sick, Mr. Harvey, only tired. I've been out all the day watching the dreadful storm. I saw those ships go on the rocks. O, it was dreadful!"

"Did you see the three men on the raft?" asked Elbert.

Rose shuddered. How far away she was from that cold, gray tumult of water. Of what manner of men were they who could battle so for hours in the freezing sleet?

"Well, now, we won't talk about the storm any more," Mrs. Harvey interposed. "It does no good, and Rose has had too much of it already. Besides, it's almost dinner time, Mr. Harvey. Go dress!"

There was not a thread ruffled on Mr. Harvey's person, but he dutifully withdrew. He had had a busy day, and had transacted business which affected whole states by its influence, yet he was quiet, cordial, exquisite.

"What does this mean, my dear?" he asked of Mrs. Harvey, who followed him out.

"It may mean a great deal, Willis," she said. "All I know is Elbert brought her home, his eyes shining with delight."

"Not to be wondered at," Mr. Harvey replied. "I'm only afraid of actresses," he added a little incoherently, but his wife understood him.

Elbert was not lacking in adroitness. He did not presume on his position during his mother's absence. He remained standing in the same position.

"How do you like coddling? Now, you see what I get when I dare to sneeze. Caroline will coddle any one into regular sickness if you let her."

"I was chilled, but I am not sick in the least."

"You'd better straighten up and shout at her when she comes in, or she'll be for sending your dinner up to you, and I don't want that."

"O, I must go home, now."

"Not till after dinner."

"I'm not – dressed for dinner."

"There's nobody here but ourselves. You must stay."

Every one seemed determined to press her into a false position, and there was so little chance to throw the influence off.

She rose out of her cloak, and when Mrs. Harvey came back she was standing before the fire with Elbert – which seemed also to be significant.

"Caroline, don't coddle Rose any more; she's all right."

Mrs. Harvey accepted this command, because it argued a sense of proprietorship on her son's part.

They continued this intimate talk during the dinner. Elbert took her down and placed her near him. There were a couple of elderly ladies, sisters of Mr. Harvey, who sat also at table in a shadowy way, and Rose divined in a flash of imaginative intelligence how they subordinated themselves because they were dependent. "Would I grow like that as I grew old?" was her thought.

At the table she felt it her duty to rouse herself to talk, and she took part in the jolly patter between Elbert and his mother. Their camaraderie was very charming – so charming one almost forgot the irreverence expressed by his use of "Caroline."

After dinner Mrs. Emma Seymour Gallup, whom Rose had met two or three times but who always demanded a new introduction, came whisking in on her way to some party. She had everything in decidedly the latest crimp. Her sleeves did not fit; her hips seemed enormous; her bonnet seemed split on the middle of her head, and was symmetrically decked with bows of ribbon and glitter and glimmer. Her real proportions were only to be divined at the waist, all else was fibre-cloth and conjecture.

Her eyes were bright and her face cold and imperious. She had once before chilled Rose with a cold nod and insulting shift of shoulder. She was plainly surprised to see Rose in the bosom of this family, and she seized the only plausible explanation with instant readiness and smiled a beautiful smile, and Rose could not help seeing that she had a very charming face after all.

"Ah! How do you do, Miss Dutcher! I am very glad to see you again!"

"Thank you," Rose replied simply.

"You're quite well – but then I know you're well," Mrs. Gallup went on, assuming still greater knowledge of her.

"Did you see the storm? Wasn't it dreadful! I saw it all quite securely from Mrs. Frost's window. How cosy you all look. I wish I could stay, but I just dropped in to ask you to take a seat in my box on Saturday night. Bring Miss Dutcher – Mr. Gallup will be delighted to meet her."

All that she said, and more that she implied enmeshed Rose like folds of an invisible intangible net.

Mrs. Harvey calmly accepted, but Rose exclaimed: "O, you're very kind but I am going home on Saturday morning!"

"How sad! I should have liked to have you come."

After she was gone Rose sprang to her feet. "I must go now," she said and there was a note in her voice which Mrs. Harvey knew meant inflexible decision.

As they went upstairs Rose was filled with dread of some further complication, but Mrs. Harvey only said:

"I love you, my child. I wish you were going to stay here always."

She left the way open for confidences, but Rose was in a panic to get away and kept rigid silence.

In the carriage she contrived to convey to Elbert her desire to be left alone and so he kept back the words of love which were bubbling in his good frank soul. He was saddened by it but not made hopeless. It would have been a beautiful close to a dramatic day could he have kissed her lips and presented her to his mother as his promised wife – but it was impossible for even his volatile nature to break into her somber, almost sullen, silence; and when he said "Good night, Rose!" with tender sweetness she replied curtly, "Good night!" and fled.

She hurried past Mary to her own room and lay for hours on her bed, without undressing, listening to the howl of the wind, the grind of cars and the distant boom of the breakers. There was a storm in her heart also.

She thought of that lovely and gentle home, of the power wealth would give her, of the journeys into the world, of trips to Europe, to the ocean, to Boston and New York and London. It could give her a life of ease, of power, of grace and charm. O, how beautiful it all was, but —

To win it she had to cut off her old father. He never could fit in with these people. She thought of his meeting with the Harveys with a shudder. Then, too, she would need to give up her own striving toward independence, for it was plain these people would not hear to her continued effort. Even if they consented, she would be meshed in a thousand other duties.

And then she thought of Mason toiling at his desk down there in the heart of the terrible town, and the look on his face grew less and less imperious and more wistful and pleading. This day she had caught a new meaning from his eyes – it was as if he needed her; it seemed absurd, and she blushed to think it, but so it seemed. That last look on his face was the look of a lonely man.

His words came to her again and again: "Hitherto I have drifted – henceforth I will sail!"

And she pushed away the splendid picture of a life of ease and reached out for comradeship with a man of toil, of dreams and hidden powers.

CHAPTER XXIV
MASON TAKES A VACATION

As Mason walked away from the lake that terrible day it seemed as if he had ceased to drift. The spirit of that grim helmsman appeared to have entered into him. Life was short and pleasures few. For fifteen years he had planned important things to do, but had never done them – feeling all the time the power to write latent within him, yet lacking stimulus. From the very first this girl had roused him unaccountably. Her sympathy, her imaginative faculty as well as her beauty, had come to seem the qualities which he most needed.

Could he have gone to his own fireside at once, the determining letter would have been written that night, but the routine of the office, the chaff of his companions, took away his heroic mood, and when he entered a car at twelve o'clock he slouched in his seat like a tired man, and the muscles of his face fell slack and he looked like a hopeless man.

After Rose went home he seemed to Sanborn to be more impassible than ever. As for Mason himself, it seemed as if some saving incentive had gone out of his life – some redeeming grace. He had grown into the habit of dropping in at Isabel's once a week, and Isabel had taken care that Rose should be often there on the same evening; and so without giving much thought to it he had come to accept these evenings as the compensating pleasures of his sombre life.

It was such a delight to come up out of the vicious pitiless grind of his newspaper day and sit there before the fire, with the face of a radiant girl to smile upon him. Her voice, with its curiously penetrating yet musical quality, stirred him to new thoughts, and often he went home at ten or eleven and wrote with a feeling of exultant power upon his book. After she went home he wrote no more; he smoked and pondered. When he called upon Isabel and Sanborn he continued to smoke and to ponder.

He had not abandoned his allegory in talking with Sanborn, and Sanborn and Isabel together could not get at his real feeling for Rose.

Sanborn asked one day plumply:

"Mason, why don't you marry the coolly girl, and begin to live?"

"It would be taking a mean advantage of her. She's going to be famous one of these days, and then I should be in the way."

"Nonsense!"

"Besides, she probably would not marry me; and if she would, I don't think I could keep up the pose."

"What pose?"

"Of husband."

"Is that a pose?" Sanborn smiled.

"It would be for me," Mason said, rather shortly. He was thinking once more of the letter he had promised to write to Rose, but which he had never found himself capable of finishing.

He put it in his pocket when he went up in July to spend a week at the Herrick cottage at Oconomowoc. Isabel and Sanborn were married just before leaving the city.

Sanborn said he had the judge come in to give him legal power to compel Isabel to do his cooking for him, and Isabel replied that her main reason was to secure a legal claim on Sanborn's practice.

The wedding had been very quiet. Society reporters (who did not see it) called it "an unique affair." But Mason, who did see it, said it was a very simple process, so simple it seemed one ought to be able to go through it oneself. To which Sanborn replied: "Quite right. Try it!"

They had a little cottage on the bank of the lake, and Sanborn came up on Saturdays with the rest of the madly busy men who rest over Sunday and over-work the rest of the week. Mason had been with them a week, and, though he gave no sign, he was nearing a crisis in his life. He had gone to the point of finishing his letter to Rose – it was lying at that moment in his valise waiting to be posted – but it was a long way from being over with. It was a tremendous moment for him. As he approached the deciding moment the deed grew improbable, impossible. It was a very beautiful life there on the lake, with nothing to do but smoke and dream, but one evening he had the impulse to ask Isabel's advice, and after dinner he courteously invited her to sail with him.

There was some joking by Sanborn about the impropriety of such a thing on Isabel's part, and many offers to man the boat, which, Mason said, sprang from jealousy. "I consider I am doing you people a kindness in not letting you bore each other into black hatred." It ended in the two friends drifting away over the lake, while Sanborn called after them threats of war if they were not at the wharf at nine – sharp!

They talked commonplaces for a time, while the sky flushed and faded and the lake gradually cleared of its fisher boats. Slowly the colors grew tender and a subtle, impalpable mist rose from the water, through which the boat drifted before an imperceptible breeze.

The two sailors lay at ease, Mason at the rudder. The sail stood up light and airy and soundless as a butterfly's wing. It pointed at the sparse stars as if with warning finger.

The hour and the place were favorable to confidences. As the dusk deepened, a boat-load of young people put off into the lake, singing some wailing sweet song. They were far enough away to be unobtrusively impersonal. A plover was faintly calling from the sedgy shore on the other side.

"One should be forever young," said Mason broodingly.

Isabel said: "Once I heard a cow low, and a robin laugh, while a cricket chirped in the grass. Why should they have moved me so?"

Mason mused a moment. "The cow was maternity pleading for its suckling; the robin's laugh suggested a thousand springtimes, and the cricket prophesied the coming of frost and age. Love and loss are in the wail of yonder song, the loneliness of age in yonder piping bird, and the infinite and all-absorbing menstruum of death in the growing dusk."

"And the light of man's optimism in the piercing out of the stars."

"It may be so," he replied uncertainly.

They drifted on in silence. There was a faint ripple at the prow and that was all. At last Mason roused himself to say his word.

"All these intangible essences and powers are no apparent reason why I should do so foolish a thing – but they have influenced me. Today I wrote to our coolly girl – I hope to say my coolly girl."

Isabel caught her breath:

"Warren, did you? I'm very glad. If I could reach you I'd shake your hand."

"I don't rejoice. This thing which boys and girls find easy I find each year more difficult, quite equal to the revolution of the earth – perhaps the girl will save me from myself."

"She'll save you for yourself, and you'll be happy."

"It is impossible to say," he said sombrely. "I have warned her fairly. Once I should not have warned the woman of my choice. Am I gaining in humanity or losing? Please lower your head, I am going to tack."

The boat swung about like a sleeping gull, and the sail slowly filled, and the ripple at the prow began again.

After a little Mason went on in a calm, even voice:

"The world to me is not well governed and I hesitate about marriage, for it has the effect, in most cases, of perpetuating the human species, which is not as yet a noble business. I am torn by two minds. I don't appear to be torn by even one mind, but I am. I am convinced that Rose has imagination, which is in my eyes the chief thing in a wife. It enables her to idealize me" – there was a touch of his usual humor in that – "and fills me with alleged desire to possess her, but it is sad business for her, Isabel. When I think of her I am of the stature of a thief, crouching for concealment."

The two in the boat were no longer young. They had never been lovers, but they seemed to understand each other like man and wife.

"I am old in knowledge of the world – my life has ground away any charm I might have once possessed. For her sake I hope she will refuse."

She perceived he was at the end of his confidence, and she began speaking. "I promised you a story once," she began, "and I'm going to tell it now, and then we'll return to Rose."

She spoke in a low voice, with a little catching of the breath peculiar to her when deeply moved. It made her voice pulse out like the flow of heavy wine. She faced him in the shadow, but he knew she was not looking at him at all. Just how she began he didn't quite hear – perhaps she was a little incoherent.

"O those days when I was seventeen!" she went on. "Everything was magical. Every moonlit night thrilled me with its possibilities. I remember how the boys used to serenade me, and then – I was a mediæval maiden at my barred window, and they were disguised knights seeking me in strange lands by their songs.

"You know what I mean. I tingled with the immense joy of it! They sang there in the moonlight, and I tip-toed to the window and peeped out and listened and listened with pictures and pictures tumbling in and out of my head.

"Of course it was only the inherited feminine rising up in me, as you would say – but it was beautiful. It just glorified that village street, making it the narrow way in a Spanish city."

There was silence again. Mason softly said: "Bend your head once more."

When the boat swung around and the faint moon and the lights of the town shifted, Isabel went on.

"One of the boys who came on those midnight serenadings became my hero – remember, I was only seventeen and he was twenty! We used to meet on the street – and oh! how it shook me. My heart fluttered so I could not speak, and at first I had to run past him. After a time I got composed enough to speak to him" —

Her voice choked with remembered passion, but after a little pause she went on:

"All this, I know as well as you, is absurd" —

"It is very beautiful," he said. "Go on!"

"He was tall and straight, I remember, with brown hair. He was a workman of some kind. I know he used to show me his powerful hands and say he had tried to get the grime from them. They were splendid, heroic hands to me. I would have kissed them if I dared. It was all incredible folly, but I thought I was loving beneath my station, for I was a little grandee in the town. It pleased me to think I was stooping – defying the laws of my house. He never tried to see me at home – he was good and clean – I can see that now, for I remember just how his frank, clear eyes looked at me. He didn't talk much, he seemed content to just look at me."

"Well, that went on for weeks. He used to follow me to church, as the boys do in country towns, but I used to go to different places just to see if he would find out and be there to meet me at the door. He never offered to speak to me or take my arm, but he stood to see me go by. Do you know, if I go into a country church today, that scent of wilted flowers and linen and mingled perfumes almost makes me weep?"

"I understand."

Her voice was lower when she resumed.

"Well, then the dreadful, the incredible happened. He did not meet me any more, and just when I was wild with rage and humiliation came the news of his illness – and then I suffered. O God! how I suffered! I couldn't inquire about him – I couldn't see him. I had kept my secret so well that no one dreamed of my loving him so. The girls thought that he followed me and that I despised him, and when they jested about him I had to reply while my heart was being torn out of me. I spent hours in my room writhing, walking up and down, cursing in a girl's way myself and God – I was insane with it all."

She drew a long breath but it did not relieve her. Her voice was as tense as before when she spoke again. The helmsman leaned to listen, for he could hardly hear.

"Then one day he died – O that awful day! I sat in my room with the curtains down. I couldn't endure the sunlight. I pretended to be sick. I was numb with agony and yet I could do nothing. I couldn't even send a rose to lay on his coffin. I couldn't even speak his name. I could only lie there like a prisoner gagged and on the rack – to suffer – suffer!"

The shadow of the sail covered the woman like a mantle. It was as if the man listening had turned away his face from her sacred passion. She was more composed when she spoke again:

"Well, it wore itself out after a time. I got hungry and ate once more, though I did not suppose I ever should. I came down to the family a week later, a puzzle to them. They never thought to connect my illness with the death of an obscure machinist, and then in the same way I crept gradually back into society – back into the busy life of a popular young girl. But there was one place where no one ever entered. I never told any one of this before. I tried to tell Dr. Sanborn about it once, but I felt he might not understand; I tell you because – because you can understand and because you may be influenced by it and understand your wife when she comes to you. These days come to many women at seventeen and, though we can't spare them out of our lives, it doesn't mean disloyalty to our present ideals. I think you understand?"

"Very well indeed," he said. "I have such memories myself."

"Then I resolved to be a physician. I felt that he would not have died if he had been treated properly; the connection was obscure but powerful enough to consecrate me to the healing profession. Then I met Dr. Sanborn. I love him and I couldn't live without him, but there is that figure back there – to have him and all that he means go out of my life would take part of my heart away." Her voice had appeal in it.