CHAPTER XII

THE MIGRATORY INSTINCT

During the first weeks succeeding Emil's departure, Rachel looked feverishly for a letter. It seemed to her the intensity of her longing must cause one to appear. But none came, and finally she realized that none would come. She went about with a curled lip and a scornful eye. Nora Gage might run the house as she chose and cook as many savory dishes as she pleased, the girl did not care; she was indifferent even to her grandfather; but let the one or the other cross her will, and her anger blazed forth. These violent outbursts were nature's defence.

In the painful upheaval that separated her dream from the reality, that which was the very centre of her higher life, suffered to such an extent that she must have become inert, had it not been for the responsibility felt by all the ruder faculties of her hardy young being. She had sought love, struggling albeit unconsciously, toward a supposed freedom; and driven back on herself, she would have become like a prisoner at the bottom of a cellar--bleeding, discouraged, without further hope--had it not been for the nerves that proved insurrectionary, for the temper that refused to be thwarted. The activity of these rescuers gradually amazed the girl herself and drew her from the contemplation of her trouble. But the experience, long after the actual pain of it had given place to a general dissatisfaction with existence, left its trace upon her face; and this tempestuous beauty, wrought from within, played around her lips in a smile of tragic comprehension and increased the range of her youthful and expressive eye.

At home Nora dragged her slippers over the kitchen floor with a flapping sound, and at "the barn," where even the occasional customer had ceased to appear, André played wild airs upon his fiddle. Both these sounds were intolerable to Rachel and, to escape them, she fled to the cliffs. There, even as the cold weather came on, she sat for hours, with her chin buried in her hands and her eyes on the ocean--the ocean which, unfathomable and perpetually active, built itself into gigantic walls that broke against the rocks with a reverberating report and were sucked back emitting long murmurs.

Old David, thinking that he discovered in this preoccupation with the sea a likeness to her father, approached Zarah Patch on the subject and from a distance, screwing up their eyes in the sunlight, the two ancient men observed her.

"It's her father's blood," explained old David, "often and often I seen him look the same way."

"It's jest female feelings," Zarah affirmed, "she ain't rightly found her rudder yet, and she's young. It's always so with women;"--a remark of unusual length and penetration for Zarah.

Finally old David hit on a plan for diverting her, a plan, however, which was destined to increase her malady rather than to cure it. In the Old Harbour paper that once a week found its way to the Point, there appeared an account of a private car fresh from the shops which, for the purpose of conveying his family and friends to their home in the city, had been brought to Old Harbour by a wealthy summer resident. The car was stalled on a side track, and old David proposed to his granddaughter that they go and see it.

It was a fine clear afternoon, and as the visit was in the nature of a pleasure expedition, they drove beside Zarah Patch in his cart. As they bowled along the road, the ruts of which were slightly stiffened by the frost, old David talked continuously and Rachel found herself listening.

"You know I used to work in the car shops at Philadelphy when I was a young chap," he explained. "It was an immense sky-lighted place covered with tracks and filled from one end to t'other with cars, some old to be repainted and some entirely new. Winter was the time when the old ones used to come troopin' back to us all faded and travel-stained; they used to seem like old women whose finery was a little gone-by, who came back to see how young and spruce they could be made to look. And in the summer we fitted out the new ones, and they of course was like young things jest preparin' fer their first venture into the world.

"I tell ye," he continued, "I used to feel about them jest as if they were human creatures. The men who worked there was called 'liners,' 'sign-writers,' 'hardwood-finishers,' 'decorators,' and 'rubbers-down.' The 'rubbers-down' worked with emery-cloth and water, and oh my, didn't they have to be careful about savin' the gold paint on the old cars, though! For the letters and lines of gold on a car are always left to stand, bein' as you might say, her jewellery," he added, with a cackling laugh.

But when the little party descended at the station, the magnificence of the new coach dazzled old David. He had never seen anything like it, though this fact he strove to conceal.

"They used to decorate 'em more," he said, "they used to paint scrolls along the sides, and between the winders they put on yaller tulips; and to my mind, the cars was handsomer."

The ticket agent ran across the tracks to open the new coach and the old man, to demonstrate his knowledge of the subject, began enumerating the different classes of common cars. "'P.K.' is the best of 'em," he proclaimed, "'P.K. Wide Vestibule'. But of course this car is something a little extry."

When, however, the ticket agent had left them and they once more stood looking up at the coach, he broke forth into lyric praise of it.

"'Tain't hardly been on the tracks, remember," he cried, "but think of the miles and miles it has to run, through what different kinds of country. It'll be like a good soldier followin' the leader! But the engine! Oh, that's the master of 'em all!" he continued; "great, shinin', pantin' master, that's what the engine is, the master."

Rachel looked at the car as at a traveller who is about to start on a long journey. Once she had seen the wife of the owner with a party of friends, and she began filling the seats of the new coach with these people. Oh, the ladies, the softly-turned heads; the nicely-dressed children--no common folk were to ride in this car! And she imagined how they would be carried forward, the rolling of the wheels growing ever swifter and swifter; and then how they would arrive at that spot, glimmering with a million lights, tumultuous and confused, the city containing great homes.

On the drive back to the Point, she closed her eyes the better to pursue her thoughts, and her grandfather's words mingled with them like something heard in a dream.

"Sometimes, not often, I used to paint station signs," he said, "and after I'd finished the name of a place--maybe it was Kingston, or maybe it was only Smithville,--I used to think how the sign would be hung at the end of a long platform or perhaps jest posted against a little shed of a buildin' in the midst of a great prairie, and I used to think of the rain and the snow that'd blow against it, and most blot out the letters, and the little birds that would perch on it; and somehow I felt as if I had been to the places jest through paintin' of the signs."

Rachel pictured the earth webbed with tracks like veins, and she saw the ships following certain appointed routes over seas; and again, as in the past, it appeared to her that she was the one stagnant thing in an active creation.

"But the signs I liked to paint best," resumed her grandfather's tremulous voice, "were the _Stop-Look-Listen_ signs, and the _Railroad-Crossin'--Look Out For The Engine_. They are made of cast steel now and the letters are raised, but in my time they was of wood, tall white posts with a pointin' arm, like ghosts givin' warnin'."

It seemed to the girl that at all costs she must set herself free and become a part of a moving and active world. But how transgress the law that had placed her there on the Maine coast, without experience and without outlet for all the various capacities of her being? From that time she began to coax her grandfather to leave Pemoquod.

"The president of the car shops who gave you this house," she began one evening, winding her arms about his neck, "if you looked him up--"

"Nicholas Hart ain't in Philadelphy no longer," objected the old man. "I seen in the papers years ago about the car shops failin' when he had 'em, and then about his movin' to New York City."

"Yes, I know that," she assented, "now if you looked him up, he'd probably get you a nice easy position in New York. But I don't intend you shall work much longer," she continued, "and that's just the point; I ought to be doing something to support us both. But what can I do here?"

In vain old David protested that he did not wish her to work, she overruled him, the more easily because his ever-youthful heart was pleased with the idea of a change. Then, too, he was lapsing into his second childhood and as time went on he allowed himself to be guided more and more by her.

Nora Gage was no match for the pair. She had conceived a fondness for the kitchen, for the stove, for the very pots and pans; moreover, the food that she was able to get in this house was to her liking, especially now, when secure from observation, she fried, stirred and seasoned to her heart's content. No longer driven to eat these supplementary luncheons in the privacy of her own chamber, surrounded by her mice like St. Francis by his birds, she ate when and where she chose, even under the eyes of the abstracted girl. It must not be concluded that she was ignorant of any detail of the plan that was on foot. No one knew, better than she, through listening at the cracks of doors, what was going forward. And anon she would be servile before Rachel, through sheer apprehension, and again would rage inwardly to think that the coming change in her fortunes was due to a brat of a girl. The grandfather, by the force of that will which existed in the depths of her being like a seldom-used sword in a scabbard, Nora could have managed; but Rachel was beyond the range of her power. However, when the announcement of the great news was finally made to her, her plea was ready.

"And what's to become of me, miss?" she demanded. "For more years than ye've lived I've served yer grandfather faithful, and now at a word from ye I'm turned off with no place to go."

Rachel, sitting on the arm of her grandfather's chair, regarded the housekeeper coldly. "Why can't you go back in the meat-market with your cousin?" she asked; "grandfather says you used to be there."

"Yes, but his son's growed up now and he don't need me," and Nora began to turn a corner of her apron over one stodgy finger. "It was jest as my friends warned me," she whimpered, "they said I'd be sorry if I stayed on here after yer mother died. I've sacrificed everything for ye two and ye don't seem to know it." She ended with a guttural sob.

Rachel scanned her with a swift glance from head to foot. "What have you sacrificed for us?" she asked. "Haven't you been paid?"

"Yes, but there's some things that can't be paid for," Nora muttered. "A woman can't stay in a man's house the way I have without its costing her dear."

The girl stared, then the clear colour stained her face. "Nonsense!" she cried.

"It may seem nonsense to you, miss," Nora retorted, "I can well understand that it do--actin' as you did awhile back. But it ain't nonsense to the world. I might as well be like that poor thing at the lighthouse 'stead of the decent woman I am, as far as the world knows. I've give up everything for ye two, that's what I have, and this is the way I git treated," and she began sobbing in earnest.

The old man gazed from one to the other in bewilderment. He saw his granddaughter rise and heard her draw a sharp breath, and he saw the housekeeper cower and drop her eyes.

Rachel passed to a window and stood there for some seconds; then a whiff of cookery from the kitchen stirred in her a kind of pity. Through a crack of the door was revealed that for which Nora struggled and schemed. To have food in plenty, greasy, rich food, this was the one desire of Nora's life.

"Grandfather," she said softly and a little wearily, without looking at the woman, "if you are willing, we'll take Nora with us."

Of all this interesting parley which betrayed itself in the late-burning lamp at the Beckett house, André Garins caught not an inkling. He slept above in the lighthouse, or, when chance favoured, below in his bed; and cut off as he was from news, he remained ignorant of the proposed flight.

Occasionally, after he had polished the crystal lenses and the brass trimmings of the lantern, his duties over for the day, he tapped at the Beckett door; but Rachel was too busy to see him: and to escape the belligerent eyes of Captain Daniels who drank secretly but heavily as the cold weather came on, he betook himself to the deserted barn.

Blown upon by all the winds of heaven, with whisperings at every crack and meanings in its loosened timbers, "the barn" was André's retreat. Far from finding it dismal, he had only to light a fire in the cracked stove and whip out his fiddle; and henceforth, it became a cheerful and friendly abode. He was too close to nature to be rendered unhappy by mere loneliness. The booming of the sea against the cliffs and the sighing of the wind in the vastnesses of the sedgegrass, but lit in him a fiercer gayety.

Up to this time André had resembled one of those unobtrusive plants which encumber the highway, but which are apt to escape notice until the flowering season. He was as handsome as an animal, a child or any other natural thing, and of the primitive soul at the bottom of him, his large and rolling eye revealed little. But the hour comes when the humble flower arrests our attention, if only for the fraction of a moment, by opening a corolla of exquisite perfection.

It was on a day in late autumn after the first snow had vanished from the earth, leaving it wistful and half-chastened, that Rachel sought out André. It was to be expected that her schoolfellow would feel sharp regret at her news, and for this reason she had delayed enlightening him until the last moment. They stood some distance from "the barn" in the pale sunlight and as she began to speak, he looked straight into her eyes with a kind of uncomprehending terror. Scarcely had she finished when he sank to the ground as if felled by a blow.

"Say you didn't mean it," he moaned, and at her dress she felt his clinging hands while his forehead rested hot against her feet.

She lifted his head and saw his mouth twisting like a child's, while from his eyes poured two steady streams of tears.

"Why André!" she cried, and with a movement of almost maternal compassion, she put her arms about him. Thus drawn against the sky, the young pair vaguely suggested the group of Niobe and her child.

"Say you won't leave me," he moaned, "say we'll be married and you'll never, never leave me."

Softly she stroked his hair while gazing straight before her. Through a sort of prescience she knew that this humble and suppliant love was sweeter and more fathomless than anything that would come to her again.

"No, André dear," she said finally, "I can't stay just living on day after day, and all the days just alike; I can't because there's something _here_," and she touched her heart, "that won't let me. All the same," she continued, "I'm not sure that you're not wiser. You'll stay here patiently, and, after a fashion, you'll be happy, I suppose. But it won't be that way with me," she added, with a prophetic shake of the head; "I shall not be patient and so--"

But André comprehended nothing save the fact that the innermost hope of his being was in ruins. He was sobbing now with even more abandon and through the texture of her dress Rachel felt the pure warmth of his tears.

"Look, André," she said, "do you see that they are burning wrecks down there--the lumber of those fishing boats that came ashore last spring. Why are they doing it?"

He raised his wet eyes and followed the direction of her pointing finger.

"It's because they want to use the iron bolts that screw them together," she continued. "In just the same way, life treats us--like wrecked barks, and the flames sweep over us, so that at last all that is left is the iron strength of us." She finished almost in a whisper, as if she had forgotten him.

It was clear that André's soul would continue to cling to her soul like the lichen to the wood, the ivy to the tree. And this he knew, even while he mourned the material separation.

Presently more matter-of-fact words brought him to himself. He ceased weeping, and rising, stood at her bidding.

"You'll see about the trunk lock," she said, "right away; and you'll meet grandfather and go with him to buy the tickets. I'll see you again in the morning, but this is the real goodbye."

His face was as calm as hers now, even the longing in it had died. Seeing him thus--being no Spartan, but soft woman every inch--her arms went about his neck and her lips met his. While the two young creatures stood thus the sun, faintly pink, sank into the sea and a cold wind blew over the land.

Rachel had disappeared but André had gone scarcely a hundred yards when he flung himself face downward. With his hands knotted among the sedgegrass, he wept without sound. A locust that had been lured from its retreat by the warmth of the day, looked at him from the stalk of a plantain, then changed its location to less violently agitated quarters; only the shaking of some denuded stalks marked where the boy lay.

Because of the insubmission, bravery and perseverance of a young girl, the old weather-beaten house of the former lobsterman was forsaken. No more would its rooms echo to the sound of voices, and footsteps would no more pass its thresholds; its doors were closed. The sunlight would penetrate into its unused rooms and trace the accustomed pattern on floor and wall; no one would know. And on roof and steps the rain would beat its old friendly reveille. Sagging in roof and beam under the drifted snow of winter, denuded in summer of shutter and shingle, gradually the abandoned house would disappear from the landscape; little by little it would vanish like a nest that the birds have forsaken.

When the hour for the departure arrived, several of the good wives of the Point appeared. They formed a little group around Rachel. One of them straightened her hat, another retied the scarf around her neck; then they shook hands with her gravely, looking at her with dimmed eyes. Rachel strained her gaze in the direction of the lighthouse and saw Lizzie Goodenough standing with a parcel in her hands. Instantly the girl darted up the rocky path and the two embraced, while the others exchanged glances.

Old David, all eagerness to be off, had clambered into the cart in which a quantity of household gear had been packed, and sat there holding the reins; while Zarah Patch helped André bring out the one trunk and several bags and boxes. At last all was in readiness, when Nora Gage discovered an important item of luncheon unprepared for transportation. Several baskets were offered, and in the confusion, Rachel made her escape.

Arrived at the bay shore, flushed and panting, she stooped with a graceful movement and laid her cheek against the wreck, while with her hand she patted that shadowy collection of letters that still in washed out reds and blues formed a name no wind nor tide could efface. _Defender_! Warped, dislocated, destroyed, its tarry timbers pierced with innumerable holes, its dismal hulk filled with the last lamentable cargo of seawrack and sand, the wreck lifted its broken ribs like arms toward the girl. From what would it restrain her? From what did it seek to defend her?

Rising, she approached and stood before the figure-head, and the figure-head looked back at her and, as it were, over and beyond her. With a timid movement, Rachel kissed this old comrade also. Then she ran away, and a moment later she looked back, and there she saw her--that "great-kneed, deep-breasted" Goddess of Hope--with her face set toward the Unknown,--valiant, free!