Chapter 7

ON THE BEACH

"The curving land, with its cool white sand, Lies like a sickle beside the sea."

The next morning dawned cloudless. Nature, radiant in her bountiful splendor, seemed to give herself to man, who, in response, thrilled with something of the primal impulse which stirred his pulses in the golden days before he had separated himself from the beneficent currents of the Earth Mother's vitality to shut himself up within brick walls with artificial heat, artificial light, and artificial stimulants.

On such a day, it is good to be alive. Flint felt the sunshine in his blood as he stepped out into the fresh, open air. For a while he hesitated as to the use to which he should put the morning in order to secure the utmost of its bounty. Then he bethought him of his duty in returning the blue golf cape which he reproached himself as an idiot for having taken. Brady had gone crabbing with Marsden, so Flint could not delegate the duty to him, as he had intended. Accordingly, slinging the wrap over his shoulder, in the middle of the morning, he started on the path which ran along among the scrub-oak and blueberry patches, to lose itself on the curving stretch of beach which lay between the inn and Captain's Point, where stood the Whites' house known in the region of Nepaug as "The White-House."

The Point stretched along at the mouth of the little harbor, one side thrust boldly out cliffwise into the ocean, the other sliding by soft degrees to the margin of the salt-water lagoon. On the crest of the cliff, and commanding a fine view of both sea and shore, rose the White-House, originally owned and built by a sea-captain who could not live without the sea, even when he had ceased to live on it. For years the Captain took his daily walk on the little platform railed in from the slanting roof, and scanned the horizon with his glass, taking note of every sail, till at length he walked and gazed no more, and his grave was made in the little hollow that dips behind the house. The places which had known him knew him no more, and the house was let to strangers.

The Point, however, retained his name; and the white railing around the Captain's walk gleamed in the sunlight from the crest of the cliff as bright as when he leaned upon it to sweep the face of the waters with his glass.

Flint did the Captain the honor to bestow a passing thought on him this morning, to be vaguely sorry for him, and to reflect that it was really a fine thing to be above ground when the sun was shining like this. To be sure, life had its vexations; but they were so brief, and there was so much time in which to be dead!

Flint had not gone many paces along the beach before he saw Jimmy Anstice digging clams out on the oozy flats left bare by the receding tides, his knickerbockers rolled well up on his legs, and a great pail set on the mud beside him.

The boy's hat was pushed far back on his head, and the sun fell full on his face. Even at this distance, the resemblance to his sister was so marked as to be almost comical. The eyes were the same. The nose, with its unmistakable upward turn, a burlesque on the short, straight one which lent piquancy to Winifred's face. The soft, subtle curve of her cheek developed in Jimmy to a hardened rotundity inevitably suggesting the desire to pinch it, which one feels toward the tomato pin-cushions on exhibition at church fairs.

Nevertheless, despite freckles bestowed by nature, and grime artificially acquired, Jimmy Anstice was a well-looking lad, and added a distinct note of human interest to the barren flats, as he stood, spade in hand, staring at Flint.

"Come out here!" he called.

"No, thank you," answered Flint. "Not with my boots on. What are you about? Clamming, I suppose."

"Oh, no--fishing!" answered Jimmy, with fine sarcasm. "Come and help me pull in the mackerel, can't you?" Then he turned his back and began his digging once more. At the same moment Flint caught a glimpse of a red hat against a seaweed covered rock. Obeying an impulse which was rather a surprise to himself, he directed his course toward it. He found, as he surmised, that it belonged to Winifred Anstice, who sat reading, comfortably ensconced with her back against the low sandbank, and her feet stretched out in front of her. She looked up at Flint's approach, but made no change in her attitude as he came and stood over her. He found it a little harder than he had expected to make a conversational beginning. After a second's hesitation he asked:

"How is the wrist?"

"Better, thanks! but still in close confinement," Winifred answered, throwing back her shawl and revealing the bandaged arm.

"You had a narrow escape."

"Very."

"I hope you have not felt the need of the cape you were kind enough to lend me. I was just on my way to carry it home."

"And, having found the owner, you need not pursue your journey any further."

Flint felt inwardly chagrined. This, then, was her interpretation of his stopping to speak to her,--that he might be rid of his trouble.

"Thank you," he said stiffly; "but unless you need it, I prefer to take it back to the house."

"Very well," said his companion, "as you please." Then, moved evidently by a prick of conscience, "Perhaps you will rest awhile before climbing the hill."

As she spoke, she moved a little that he might share the shadow of the bank.

"Don't move on my account," Flint said.

"Oh," answered Winifred, smiling, "I owe you a decent civility, since you saved my life last night."

"Don't mention it. Actions should be judged by what they cost, not what they come to; and mine cost nothing but the hole in my coat, which I don't doubt is already better than repaired under Miss Standish's skilful handiwork, so pray dismiss the subject from your thoughts. There are few, I fancy, who find it so hard as you to accept anything at the hand of another. It vexes you not to be the one always to give aid and comfort. If I knew you better, I might venture to hint that it smacks of spiritual pride."

"You generalize widely after an acquaintance of four days."

"One sees character more clearly sometimes by the flashlight of a first meeting, than when the perception is blurred by more frequent opportunities."

Again the smile, inscrutable and mocking; the eyes looked into his with a gay defiance.

"Perhaps you will be good enough to give me the benefit of these first impressions of my character. They are as comprehensive, no doubt, as those of the British traveller in America. Tell on, as the children say."

"Pardon me, I have said too much already, under the circumstances. Praise would be impertinence, and criticism insolence."

"You shall have absolution in advance. Begin then!" she added, with a little nod of command. "What is the most striking trait of my character on first acquaintance?"

"Well, if you will have it, I should say it was a restlessness which you probably call energy; but it is a different thing. Energy is absorbed in the object which it seeks to attain. Restlessness is absorbed in the attaining."

"Hm! what next?"

"Next? Next, comes a quality almost invariably allied to such restlessness as yours,--ambition. You may have all sorts of fine theories about equality and that kind of thing; but you want power--power over the lives with which you come in contact--power for good of course; but it must be yours and wielded by you. It is not enough that things should get along somehow. They must go right in your way."

Winifred laughed.

"Ah! you say that because I wanted to show you how to set off a rocket last night."

"I should say you showed us quite satisfactorily how _not_ to set off a rocket last night."

"Don't let us revert to that episode, about which we shall probably not agree. But go on. Let me hear more of your impressions. They are quite diverting."

"No more. I dare not presume further upon my advance absolution. Rather let me ask you to return candor for candor, and give me your impressions of me and my character, or lack of it."

"I have formed none."

"Is that quite true?"

"No," said Winifred, looking up, "it is not true at all. I formed impressions within the first ten minutes after I had seen you, only I called them, more modestly, prejudices."

"Prejudices? They were unfavorable then. Good! Let us have them!" and Flint settled himself more comfortably, bracing his head against his clasped hands; and, leaning back against the bank of sand, he sat watching the little tufts of coarse grass springing up close beside him. Still Winifred was silent. At last Flint began himself:--

"You thought me rude and churlish, I suppose?"

"I certainly did not think you were Bayard and Sidney rolled together; but I admit you had some provocation," she answered lightly, "at least in our first meeting. When I demolished your new fishing-rod, I think you might have accepted my apologies more gracefully; and I think you need not have been so particularly uncivil when Jimmy and I tried to come to your assistance on the pond. I have not yet recovered from the reproof conveyed on that occasion by your manner, which plainly indicated that, in your opinion, it would have been more tactful for us to sail by, and ignore your disaster, or treat it as an episode which did not call for explanation or remark. I should have felt duly humiliated, no doubt; but I have become hardened to rebuffs, since I have been at Nepaug, for I meet with many, as I go about like a beggar from door to door in South East."

"Distributing tracts?" Flint asked, with eyebrows raised a little.

"No."

"Collecting statistics, perhaps?"

"Not at all; my errand is neither philanthropic nor scientific."

"Private and personal, that is, and not to be farther pursued by impertinent inquiry?"

"Oh, I have no objection to telling you, since you are not a native. I am searching for my great-great-grandmother."

Flint looked at his companion uneasily. She smiled.

"No, I have not lost my senses. Such as they are, I have them all. I do not expect to find this ancestress of mine in the flesh, nor sitting in any one of the splint rockers behind the checkered window-panes of the old South East houses. It is only her portrait for which I am searching as for hid treasure."

"Ah!"

"Yes, her portrait. I feel certain it is hidden away somewhere in South East."

"How very odd!"

"Odd? Not at all, as you will say when you come to hear the story of the original. But perhaps it would bore you to listen?"

"Go on; I am all attention."

"Well, to begin with, my great-great-grandmother was a very pretty girl."

"I can believe it."

Winifred looked quickly round, but her companion's eyes were fixed upon the horizon with an abstracted gaze which lent an air of impersonality to his words. So she began again:

"Yes, she was a young Quakeress, born, I believe, in Philadelphia; but her father and mother died, and she came to South East, to live with her uncle, when she was about eighteen. The story of her girlhood is rather vague; but somehow she fell in love with an English officer, and made a runaway match which turned out better than such affairs usually do; for his relatives received her favorably, and she made her home with them at Temple Court in Yorkshire--doesn't that sound like a book? Well, her uncle died, and she never came back to this country; but her grandson came in the early part of the century, and, following the traditions of his race, fell in love with an American girl. They were married and settled in Massachusetts. But once, when they were visiting at the old home, my grandmother saw a portrait of her husband's grandmother hanging in the great hall at Temple Court. She was fascinated by its beauty; and when she heard the story of the runaway bride, who was an American like herself, she determined to have a copy of the portrait, and talked of engaging one of the London artists to make it for her. An old servant told my grandfather that he remembered seeing another, painted at the same time and sent over to this uncle in America. The man was sure that the address of the uncle was South East. Many a time I have heard my grandmother tell the story, which so fired my youthful fancy that I dreamed of it for years, and at last I persuaded papa to come down here this summer, and let me hunt for the picture. But I am tiring you, I am afraid."

Flint pulled his hat lower over his eyes.

"Pray go on; I am immensely interested."

"Thank you. Well, the desire for the recovery of the portrait is no longer a sentiment with me,--it is a passion. My daily occupation now is driving about and asking for a drink of water, or inquiring about early vegetables, chickens, goslings,--anything which will afford a plausible excuse for penetrating into the dark halls or stuffy fore-rooms. Of course I rule out the modern houses. I have even tried the tavern here at the beach; but the only decorations of the walls were 'Wide Awake' and 'Fast Asleep,' and other chromos of the same pronounced and distressing variety."

Flint took off his eye-glasses, and began to wipe them tenderly with his delicate handkerchief.

"Perhaps," he began, when he was interrupted by a wild whoop just above. It was from Jimmy Anstice, who shared the delusion, common to his age and sex, that nothing is so amusing as a sudden and unexpected noise.

"Oh, Jimmy!" his sister exclaimed.

"Oh, Jimmy!" mocked the boy. "I am glad to find that you are alive. I've been watching you two these ten minutes, and you've sat as still as if Mrs. Jarley hadn't wound you up yet."

"She hasn't," said Winifred, somewhat inconsequently. "Have you finished digging your clams? What time is it?"

"I've dug all the clams I'm going to; don't intend to get all the food for the boarding-house," answered Jimmy, somewhat sulkily, leaving Flint to answer the last question.

"It is ten minutes after twelve," he said, looking at his watch.

"Dear me!" ejaculated Winifred, "I had no idea it was so late. I promised Dr. Cricket to play chess with him at twelve."

She rose as she spoke, and stretched out her hand for the golf cape; but Flint kept it quietly, and started on by her side.

"Are you going all the way to the house?" Jimmy asked.

"If your sister permits."

"Oh, then, you might as well take the other handle of this basket."

"Jimmy!" exclaimed Winifred, "I'm ashamed of you."

"Well, you needn't be. You'd better be ashamed of yourself, saying one thing to a fellow's face, and another behind his back. Sitting there for an hour talking with Mr. Flint, as if he were your best friend, when only last night you said--"

"Jim, how near the shore should you say that sloop lay?" Flint inquired in even tones.

"'T ain't a sloop at all; it's a schooner," returned Jim, contemptuously.

"Why, to be sure, so it is. How stupid in me! I suppose all my nautical learning went down in 'The Aquidneck.' By the way, Mr. Brady and I are talking of going up to the wreck soon to try what can be got out of her by diving. Wouldn't you like to go along?"

"Wouldn't I!" responded Jimmy, _con brio_. "Don't you forget it!"

His sister gave a dubious glance over the boy's head at Flint; but he only smiled in return. This smile so transformed his face that the girl beside him fell secretly to wondering whether her instinct of character-reading, upon which she prided herself, had not played her false in the case of this man, and whether she might not be called upon for a complete reversal of judgment,--so apt we are to mistake the momentary mood for the index of character.

They walked on in silence along the margin of the bank, Flint with the cape thrown over one arm, while he and Jimmy carried the basket, heavy with clams, between them. The blue water shoaled into emerald at their feet; a single white gull soared and swooped above their heads. The long sunburned grasses swayed in the summer wind, and the clouds floated tranquilly over all.

How tiny the three human figures seemed in the wide setting of earth, sea, and sky!

As they passed the bluff on the other side of the cove from Captain's Hill, Jimmy suddenly dropped his side of the basket of clams. "Hi!" he exclaimed. "Why can't we go up into the light-house, now Mr. Flint is with us?"

"Not to-day," answered his sister, repressively. "Mr. Flint may have other engagements, and then, you know, Dr. Cricket is waiting for his game of chess."

"As for me," said Flint, "I was never more at leisure; and as for your appointment with the Doctor, I advise you to adopt my motto: 'Better never than late.'"

Winifred hesitated.

"Oh, come on!" persisted her small brother. "Don't be a chump, Fred. You never used to be."

"Lead on," answered his sister; "rather than be considered anything so ignominious, I would scale more alarming heights than those of the light-house, though I confess its winding staircase is not without its perils."

The path to the light-house led through a patch of bayberry bushes. Winifred stooped, as she passed, and gathered a handful, which she crushed in both hands, taking in a deep breath of their spicy aroma.

"Are they so good?" Flint asked, smiling at her childish enjoyment.

"Try and see!" she answered, holding them out to him in the cup of her joined hands.

Flint bent his face over them for an instant. Then Winifred suddenly dropped her hands and shook the fragrant leaves to the four winds. Flint smiled again, for her gesture said as plainly as words: "Here I am being friendly with this man, to whom I intended to be as frigid as an iceberg."

Flint responded as if she had spoken.

"Do you never forgive?" he asked.

"No," answered Winifred, impetuously. "I never forgive; but I have a horrid facility for forgetting."

"Cherish it!" exclaimed her companion. "It is the foundation of many of the Christian graces."

As they drew nearer the light-house, they felt the salt sea-wind strong in their faces. The bluff was so gale-swept that the trees, few, small, and scrubby, had caught a slant to westward, and the scanty vegetation clung timidly to the ground, like some tiny state whose existence depends upon its humility. From the edge of the bluff rose the light-house,--a round stone building, dazzling in its coat of whitewash. Far up in the air its plate-glass windows gleamed in the morning sun.

The keeper was standing in the open door, and cheerfully consented to show the visitors over the premises. Loneliness is a great promoter of hospitality.

As they peeped into the tiny kitchen, with its shining brasses and its white deal floor, Winifred exclaimed at the exquisite neatness of the housekeeping.

"It is a man's, you see," Flint commented with pride. "No doubt we shall drive you from the domestic field yet."

"I should think the position of light-house-keeper would suit you excellently," Winifred replied, oblivious of the slant at her sex. "Your desire for solitude would surely find its full satisfaction here."

"There might be much worse occupations certainly," Flint began; but he saw that Winifred's attention had been diverted by the keeper, who had already begun to mount the stairs, talking, as he moved, with a fluency which denoted a long restrained flow of sociability. Winifred was glad to be saved the trouble of replying, for the unceasing climbing put her out of breath, and she felt that she might have been dizzy, but for the railing under her left hand.

At last they arrived in the little room with its giant reflectors of silvered copper, and its great lamp set on a circular table. Outside, ran a narrow balcony with iron railing. Winifred stepped out onto the ledge, clinging nervously to Jimmy, who professed a great desire to sit on the railing. The wind here was so strong that it gave one a feeling that the building was swaying, though it stood firm as a cliff of granite.

Flint leaned over the railing. "See!" he said, "there is a great white gull which has beaten itself to death against the light, and fallen there, close to that fringy line of mottled seaweed on the beach."

"Don't!" exclaimed Winifred, turning pale, and leaning further back against the light-house wall.

Flint saw in an instant that she was feeling dizzy, but thought it best for her to ignore the fact.

"Come," he said, "we must be going down now, unless Dr. Cricket is to lose his game entirely. You go first, Jim! I will come next."

Jimmy started down, whooping as he went, for the pleasure of hearing his voice echo and re-echo from the bare walls.

Flint glanced somewhat anxiously at Winifred. He saw her put her foot upon the first stair and then draw back. At the same instant he caught the cause of her terror. Her bandaged wrist prevented her grasping the balustrade, or getting any better support than the smooth wall to which to cling.

"Put your hand on my shoulder, and count the steps aloud as you go." He spoke like one who does not question obedience; and, somewhat to her own surprise, Winifred found herself meekly doing as she was bid.

The last part of his advice was even better than the first, for it occupied her mind, and also gave her the encouragement of feeling that at each step she had lessened the distance between her and _terra firma_ by one.

Flint felt the hand upon his shoulder tremble like a leaf; but he never turned his head, only moved steadily onward and downward, with a regularity and solidity which soon told upon Winifred's nervous dizziness.

When she reached the ground, and stood once more in the sunlight of the open doorway, she looked at him with a little tremulous smile. "A hundred and seventeen!" she exclaimed. "I am sure I shall never forget how many steps there are leading to the Bug Light."

"What a fool you are, Fred!" Jimmy remarked, with family frankness.

"I am," admitted Winifred. "No one knows it better than I, except, perhaps, Mr. Flint."

"I know nothing of the kind," her companion answered with unwonted cordiality. "Any one may be subject to a fit of dizziness, and to be minus an arm under such circumstances makes the situation really uncomfortable. We must try it again some day, to give you an opportunity to prove to yourself that it was only an affair of the moment."

"Dear me!" thought Winifred to herself, "why can't he always be nice like that! He seems to be a queer kind of stratified rock; you never know what you are going to strike next."

Aloud, she said, "I fancy, Jim, it must be past the White-House dinner hour, and papa has grown worried and sent out scouts to look for you and me. See, here is Ben Bradford!"

Looking down the road, Flint saw approaching them a tall, long-legged youth whom he dimly remembered among the group on the porch of the White-House the night before. His hair was parted in the middle, and thickly pomaded to restrain its natural inclination towards curling. His ears were large, and set on at right angles to his face. His nose was Roman, and its prominence had rendered it peculiarly sensitive to sunburn. His manners were too frank to be polished. As he joined them now, he succeeded in making it evident at once that Flint's further presence was entirely superfluous. This juvenile candor would have had no effect, had not Winifred supplemented it by saying:--

"Mr. Bradford will take charge of me and my cape, Mr. Flint; I really cannot consent to trouble you further."

Her manner was equivalent to a dismissal. Flint handed over the cape, as she bade him, to young Bradford's eager grasp, bowed, and turned his steps homeward. As he strolled along, he felt a curiously sudden change of mood, from the elation of the morning to a depression half physical, half mental.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "if this is not another phase of my inheritance from Dr. Jonathan. I remember the old gentleman used to complain that his constitution was an unhappy one from birth, attended with 'flaccid solids, sizy and scarce fluids, and a low tide of spirits.' The description amused me in my youth; but I begin to have an uncomfortably sympathetic sense of his state of mind and body. I wonder, by the way, what _he_ would have done about that portrait. I never heard that he or any other Puritan gave away his property to any extent; and this portrait I regard as virtually mine. To be sure, I have not paid for it; but I had fully determined to purchase it, and--Yes, to all intents and purposes, it belongs to me. Now, to be expected to give it up, just because I happen to hear of some one else who wants it too, is asking a little too much. If I had avoided the girl, as I intended, I should never have heard of her search for her beloved great-grandmother. No, my mind is made up; I shall keep that picture--of course I shall. I am glad I put it into the closet before Brady came."