Chapter 9

NORA COSTELLO

"We pass through life separated from many people as by a wall of glass. We see them, we are conscious of their presence; but we never touch."

The evening following the wreck of "The Mary Ann" found the friends in council, who included most of the summer population of Nepaug, gathered around the White-House hearth, on which blazed a hospitable fire, doubly cheering in its radiant contrast to the gathering darkness without. The wind, which had risen to half a gale, rattled at the window panes and roared down the chimney. The sound of the booming surf, as the great waves hurled themselves against the dunes, made itself heard, even through the heavy pine doors and shutters. The foam, which yesterday curved in lines of delicate spray below the headland, was now lashed into a lather of white terror. Above it through the twilight rose, dim and ghostlike, the masts of the wrecked vessel.

The dreariness outside lent an added charm to the snug and cheerful cosiness within the little parlor, the inmates of which drew closer than usual, as they talked in somewhat subdued voices.

Jimmy Anstice lay on his back upon the hearth-rug, his head pillowed upon Paddy, and his knees braced one on top of the other. Ben Bradford sat on a chair tipped back against the wall, with his thumbs thrust through the armholes of his corduroy vest. Winifred lounged upon the haircloth sofa with one foot surreptitiously tucked under her. Every one's attitude suggested a degree of comfort rare in society. A wonderful sense of intimacy is imparted by perils undergone together, or profound experiences shared. They seem to sweep away, as with a whirlwind breath, that thick veil of convention and commonplace which shroud many acquaintances from beginning to end. At these times the real nature has shown itself, as it does only in the great crises of life; and, once revealed, it can never wholly conceal itself again.

At the White-House that evening, the wreck was discussed over and over from every point of view. Each person wished to describe the moment when he awoke to the apprehension of the calamity,--what he said and did, thought and planned. Such conversations lead one to believe that the chief pleasure of the resurrection will lie in the comparison of post-mortem experiences on first awakening.

Dr. Cricket said that when he first heard the booming of guns, half-asleep as he was, he dreamed that the statue of William Penn was falling off the dome of the Philadelphia city hall.

Miss Standisth said that she was broad awake; but had happened not to catch any sound till she heard the commotion of people moving about downstairs. This she took to mean that breakfast-time had arrived, and that this was destined to be another dark day like the freak of nature famous in the colonial annals.

"I heard Fred call out--" Jimmy Anstice began; but his sister interrupted, "Please, Jimmy, leave me out. You know Papa forbade you to talk about me in company."

"My dear," remonstrated her father, mildly, "don't speak so abruptly to your little brother."

Thus, in one shape and another, every one said his say.

Flint alone, of the entire group, was silent, almost surly. He submitted without comment to being ensconced in the great chintz-covered chair. He even swallowed, under protest, the various pills and potions which Dr. Cricket presented to him at intervals; but the most adroit questioning on the part of Miss Standish failed to elicit any information as to his sensations or emotions, past or present. Brady, who understood his friend better than all the rest, strove to shelter him by talking longer and laughing louder than usual; but this Miss Standish resented as much as Flint's silence, and set it down to flippancy. Her ethical training impelled her to strive to improve the occasion to these young people. She shook her gray curls, and cleared her throat several times before her conversational opening arrived.

"I hope, Mr. Flint," she said at last, "that you feel as strongly as that poor girl upstairs, the mercy of the divine Providence which brought you to the rescue at that critical moment, and enabled you to save a life."

Something in Miss Standish's tone irritated Flint.

"If, for 'divine Providence,' you will substitute 'lucky accident,' I will agree to it as heartily as either you or she. If you persist in dragging in Providence, I must really beg leave to inquire where Providence was when the ship struck."

The silence which reigned in the room was like the space cleared for a sparring-match. The old combative instinct of the primitive man arises in the most civilized, and makes him delight in a fight. Brady looked amused; Winifred a little apprehensive; Mr. Anstice preserved a dignified neutrality; and Miss Standish fumbled with her cameo brooch, and smoothed the folds of her skirt, as if to make sure that all was in order before entering upon a possibly ruffling contest.

"I suppose--" she began; but old Marsden, who sat on the other side of the fire, and who was no respecter of persons, broke in: "I've heerd a deal about how you all felt, and what you all thought; but what I'd like to know is what really happened. The men at the inn wont talk without their captain gives them leave; and Dr. Cricket has got him and his sister shut up in their rooms, to git over the shawk. Now perhaps the Doctor can tell us how it wuz thet thet air ship went aground on a sandy coast, in a ca'm night like the last."

"Captain Costello says it was the light in the tavern-window which he mistook for the Bug Light off the point; but how could that have been, when it was past two o'clock, and I'll answer for it that no one at Nepaug was ever found awake after nine?"

Dr. Cricket questioned with the inflection of a man who neither expects nor desires an answer. Indeed, he had only paused for breath, when Flint, from his easy chair on the other side of the fireplace, broke in:--

"So I am to blame for the whole thing."

"You!"

"You don't say so!"

"Was the light yours?"

"What on earth were you doing at that hour?"

"Not quite so many questions at once, friends, if you please. My brain is still a little waterlogged, and my thoughts work slowly. I only remember sitting down about ten o'clock to read a novel, and the first thing that roused me was the gun, which for the moment I took for the attack of the enemy of whom I was reading. I rushed out, half expecting to find the tavern surrounded, and to have to risk my life in its defence, and instead--"

"Instead," put in Winifred Anstice, very quietly, "you risked your life to save some one else,--Nora Costello, the Captain's sister, spent the whole morning in tears, because Dr. Cricket would not let her leave her room to go and tell you how grateful she was."

"Hysterical, I suppose," said Flint.

Winifred, who had opened her lips to say something more, shut them closely again, and sat back with the air of a person determined to have no further share in the conversation.

Dr. Cricket hastened to occupy the floor. "A charming girl--upon my word, a charming girl--if she _is_ a Hallelujah lassie."

"A what?" ejaculated Brady.

"A Hallelujah lassie--Feminine of Salvation Soldier, don't you know! Why, she had one of the coal-scuttle bonnets hanging by its draggled strings round her neck when Flint pulled her in, and a number of 'The War Cry' was in the pocket of her dress, when we stripped it off."

"Oh," said Brady, with a touch of disappointment in his tone, "I took her for a different sort of a person; she looked quite the lady."

"So she is, young man," answered Dr. Cricket, with his fierce little frown. "There is no doubt of that. She told me her story this morning. I wanted her to rest; but the poor thing was so nervous I thought it would hurt her less to talk than to keep still."

Flint smiled sardonically. The Doctor's little foible of curiosity had not escaped his observant eye.

"You would have done much better to shut her up; but what did she say?" queried Miss Standish.

Flint smiled again. But the Doctor began briskly:--

"Why, it seems that the Costellos are the children of a Scotch minister; though, from his name, I should guess that he had a drop more or less of Irish blood in his veins, and their looks show it too. They were brought up in a manse on one of those brown and bare Scotch moors. The boy was to be educated for the church, like his father; but when he was seventeen, he grew restive under the strictness of his training, turned wild, and ran away. For ten years they had no word of him. The father reproached himself for having been too hard on the boy; and he never stopped loving and praying for him. On his death-bed, he charged Nora--that's the girl's name you know--to sell all the things in the manse, and start out into the world to find her brother, and never to give up the search as long as she lived."

"That is always the way," said Flint, with a shrug: "the reward of virtue is to be appointed trustee of vice--no assets--assume all the liabilities."

"Hm! wide, of the mark this time, Mr. Flint. The very day after her father's death, Nora Costello received a letter from her brother, saying that he was ashamed to come home without first securing forgiveness, and asking his sister to intercede for him, and to meet him in London with the news of his pardon."

"Exactly," resumed Flint with irritating calmness. "Prodigal son sends postal card stating that he is prepared to receive overtures looking to a resumption of family relations. No questions asked."

"He has not seen Captain Costello, has he, Dr. Cricket? or he would be more sparing of his jibes."

"Never mind, Miss Winifred, Mr. Flint is ashamed of having played the humanitarian this morning, so he is trying to atone by double cynicism this evening; but don't let him interrupt my story again, under pain of being sent back to the tavern, instead of taken care of in Mrs. White's best bed-room, under the charge of the best doctor (though I do say it) in Philadelphia.

"Well, as I was about to say, Nora Costello came up to London; and there she found her brother, a brown and bearded man in command of a schooner, 'The Mary Ann,' plying between New York and Nova Scotia. He had been looking forward joyfully to his homecoming; but when he learned of his father's death, he was all broken up, and talked about its being a judgment of God on himself."

"Rather severe on his father," grumbled Flint; but no one heeded him, and the Doctor continued:--

"Costello felt so awfully cut up, that one night he came near drowning himself; and after that his sister did not dare leave him alone, but went about everywhere with him; and one night they came upon a Salvation Army meeting, with drums and torches and things, in the streets of the East End. General Booth was there; and, my soul! to hear that girl talk, you would think he was the archangel Gabriel, with the sword of the Lord in his hand."

"It was Michael who carried the sword," came from Flint's corner, exasperating even Brady beyond endurance.

"Come, Flint, you're too bad. Hold your tongue, can't you, and let the rest of us hear the story! That girl is a trump."

"You 're right, sir," echoed the Doctor, cordially, "a trump she was, and her brother too, for that matter. General Booth preached that day, as it happened, about remnants, and argued how a man might make the most of the remnants of a life, as well as of a meal, even if the best part was gone. Well, the talk sort of heartened up Angus Costello; and, after the meeting, he and his sister went up to the General, and Nora asked to be taken into the Army. She went in as a private; and when Angus came back to Nova Scotia, Nora came with him, and was assigned to duty, first in Montreal, and then in New York. She has risen already to be an officer, and, I judge, a valuable one. She was off this month on sick-leave for her brother's ship, taking a vacation from overwork, I suspect."

"What is her work?" asked Brady, leaning forward with his square chin propped on his hands, which, in their turn, were supported by his knees,--an attitude to which he was prone when self-forgetful.

"Her work? Oh, I don't know! Everything I suppose. Taking care of sick people in tenements, talking, and singing, and selling copies of the 'War Cry,' in offices and liquor-saloons."

Brady frowned. "I don't like it," he said. "She's too pretty, with those little curly rings of hair round her pale face, and with those big blue eyes. Why don't they send some old maid on such errands?"

"Because they want to sell their papers," answered Miss Standish, dryly.

The talk around the fire had gone on so eagerly that the attention of the group was utterly absorbed; and every one started as if an apparition had appeared in their midst, when a slim figure in a dark dress, against which her face looked doubly white, glided noiselessly into the room. With eyes fixed in almost trance-like far-sightedness, she moved towards Brady, and laid her hand upon his sleeve.

"My brother," she said, "it is you have risked your life to save mine. God gave you back both. What will you be doing with your share?"

"I--I--I'm awfully sorry, don't you know!" stammered Brady, terribly embarrassed; "but it wasn't I who did it."

"Here is the man, Miss Costello, to whom you owe your life," said the Doctor, who dearly loved a "situation," turning as he spoke, with a little flourish, to the place where Flint had stood; but that gentleman had taken advantage of the mistake to bolt into the bed-room behind him. He would have bolted into the pond, rather than submit to be thanked publicly in this fashion.

"He's gone!" exclaimed Dr. Cricket, in disappointment.

"Ah!" said Nora Costello, with a quick, sympathetic smile, "it's verra natural. He did not wish to be thanked. Perhaps he is right. After all, it is to the good God himsel' that our thanks are owing."

She knelt on the rug, as simply as she would have taken an offered chair, and spoke to some invisible presence, as naturally as she would have spoken to any of those in the room. Brady was shocked at first, at the conversational tone. It was so realistic that he opened his eyes, half expecting to see the Someone--the Something--so evidently apparent to the girl herself.

Having once opened his eyes, he forgot to close them again. The actual so pursued him, that he ceased to seek the spiritual presence. The firelight, playing over the girl's face, threw strange lights, and shadows half unearthly. She seemed a spirit, of whom no ordinary restraints of the familiar social life were to be expected.

When her prayer was finished, she rose as simply as she had knelt, though now two large tears stood on the long fringe of her eyes.

"Good-night, friends!" she said with a confiding glance around. "I think I shall be able to get the sleep now. God bless you all!"

When she was gone, the hush was unbroken for several minutes. At last Winifred spoke.

"I don't know how the rest of you feel, but somehow I have a sensation of being a lay figure in the shop-window of life, and having all of a sudden seen a real woman go by."

"Jove! what eyes she has!" said Brady, continuing thoughts of his own, rather than answering Winifred's speech.

"Really," said Ben Bradford, "it wasn't unpleasant at all."

"Unpleasant!" exclaimed his aunt. "Well, I should say not, unless heaven is unpleasant, and angels, and the Judgment Day, which I daresay it will be for you, Ben Bradford, unless you mend your ways. Good-night! I'm going up to see that the child has a hot-water bag to her feet, and a mustard plaster on her chest. The Salvation Army needs an efficient ambulance corps."

"Hm!" said Dr. Cricket, as Miss Standish disappeared. "Mary may have chosen the better part; but I pity the household that's all Marys. Give me a Martha in mine every time!

"That reminds me," he added briskly, "that I must look after my patient, and not let him pitch himself into that bed, which has not been aired for a week; and nobody in this house knows the difference between damp sheets and dry ones. Do you know, Mr. Brady," he continued, as he rose from his chair with a little rheumatic hitch, "I have taken a great shine to that queer friend of yours. I don't know how it is, but I suspect it is because he is such a contrast to most folks. It's a comfort to meet a man who keeps his best foot back."

"Oh, Flint is a brick!" said Brady, with enthusiasm. "I have known him to do the nicest things. There was a fellow once in college--he was rather pushing socially, and nobody liked him--but he was 'a dig,'" and he got sick from studying too much. None of the rest of us ever fell ill of that trouble; but he did, and he was so poor he didn't want to let any one know about it, for fear he would be obliged to send for a doctor. It was found out though; and one day a doctor and nurse turned up at the fellow's room,--said they'd been asked not to say who sent them; but they stayed and pulled him through. He never knew who his benefactor was; but I did, and you may judge of my surprise, when the fellow got about, to see Flint cut him on the street.

"'What in thunder did you do that for?' I asked, for I was dumfounded to see him do it.

"'Because the fellow is a cad, and would be taking all sorts of advantages. Better ignore the acquaintance at the start.'

"'Then why did you do what you did for him?'

"'I don't know, I'm sure!' Flint answered.

"That's just the sort of fellow Flint is. He may seem crusty, but in any emergency he is a man to tie to."

"If life were a series of emergencies," said Winifred, reflectively, "Mr. Flint would be invaluable; but in every-day existence, one does not quite know what to do with him."

"I can put up with a great deal," said Ben Bradford, "from a chap like that, who shows real sand and pluck when a crisis comes. I mean to tell Mr. Flint to-morrow that I think he's a daisy, and go down on my marrow bones for the things I have thought and said about him before."

"I wouldn't, if I were you, Ben," observed Winifred, with an amused smile; "for I doubt if Mr. Flint has ever had the dimmest idea that you have not been thinking well of him all along."