CHAPTER V

THE BARNACLE

When she was ten years old Rachel left the country school, and when she was eighteen she graduated from the High School in Old Harbour. Her course of study in that institution had been protracted by reason of the frequent spells of bad weather which, for weeks together, had kept her a prisoner at the Point. These interruptions she had accepted philosophically, for she had preferred to gain knowledge in an unhampered fashion, to look about her, to ask questions, to read the books of her own choosing. She was an exceedingly headstrong creature and had anyone wished to manage her he would have experienced great difficulty. However, apparently, no one had such an unreasonable wish.

Her lean little face was charming. With its broad forehead and high cheek bones it suggested a type of the Renaissance. The expression in her eyes was candid and thoughtful. Her nose was straight, her upper lip short, her mouth full and handsome in line, though, in meaning, asleep. Activity of the mind gives character to the eye, activity of the emotions individuality to the lips, and Rachel Beckett had not lived emotionally. She was still chained heavily by her youth, for youth has its shackles as well as age.

It was about this time that André Garins approached her with an important proposition. He came leaping down the path from the lighthouse and found her seated in the lobsterman's door. In the kitchen Nora could be heard scolding. Occasionally the words were drowned in guttural sobs.

"It's her pork pie," Rachel explained. "I got to reading and the fat just bubbled up before I knew. Now I'm going to Old Harbour to get her another," she added in a louder voice, "Want to come along?"

André nodded. He had attained his full height without losing the slimness of adolescence. "There's something I want to talk to you about," he said shyly.

But he did not broach the subject at once; instead he said tentatively as the two breasted the high wind which was all alive with the tang of the sea, and in which the girl's garments rattled like the rigging of a ship, "It's good of you to get her another pork pie; why do you do it?"

"Because," Rachel answered with spirit, "people once in a while ought to have what they want--if it's only pork pie."

André regarded her beautiful face with dull curiosity. "Then you're not doing it because you're sorry for her?" he asked.

"No," she answered shortly; "principle."

But the abstract had no meaning for André; he always thought in straight lines and his thoughts were convertible into actions. Now he took up the matter which had brought him to her.

"Mother thinks you and I could set up shop together," he said. "She thinks I can paint what are called 'souvenirs'; you know I paint very well, and you could take charge of the candy and fruit. She thinks we might get quite a little trade from the hotel people all about here, if we opened a shop in that unused barn of Shattuck's."

The proposition appealed to Rachel mightily. Now that the schooldays were past she found herself much too frequently in the presence of Nora Gage and quarrels were constant. If the young girl had had her way she would have bundled the so-called housekeeper out of the door and have done the work herself, but old David was fastidious in the matter of her hands and cherished the idea of one day seeing her a "lady." André's plan seemed to offer scope for her energy, she hailed it joyfully. A week later the youthful shop keepers were established in their odd quarters.

The situation of the unused barn was magnificent. It stood on the top of a high turfy hill which overlooked both the ocean and the bay. On going around it a narrow path, almost hidden by the tall grass, was discovered, and this path led directly to that bit of the bay shore where were the figure-head and the wreck. The door of the barn commanded the road. There was something in the bleakness of the situation that took hold on the fancy. The barn had long been an object of popular interest. It was toned by the weather to the beautiful grey of a dove's wing. It leaned lightly to one side. Its two front windows were like empty eye-sockets. As one approached it, climbing around the crumbling foundation of what years before had been a house, he imagined it the retreat of birds of prey.

The only steeds housed here were the horses of the wind, in the pauses of the storms that swept the Point. The barn was supposed to be haunted. Therefore the scene that greeted the first curious visitors, struck pleasantly on their sight.

A bit of sail-cloth bearing the inscription: _Souvenirs And Confectionery_ appeared over one window, and a little trail of smoke issued from the other. Just inside the door was Rachel. She stood behind an improvised counter of new boards on which was ranged a file of golden oranges. Oranges and girl, how they lit the gloom! When not engaged in waiting on a customer, and her duties in this direction were of the lightest, Rachel made a pretence of sewing, though oftener than not the sewing was abandoned for a book. The range of her reading at this time was remarkable. Like her father, she read everything that came her way with a kind of tragic eagerness. Frequently closing the book and leaning her elbows on the counter, she would gaze straight ahead, while the questioning look deepened in her eyes. In the background where a ray of light fell André painted the lighthouse in garish colours on the bosom of a heaven-tinted shell.

What a pair they were, to be sure! What a bouquet of innocence, youth and utterly worthless endeavour!

The enterprise brought in little, though during July and August people came from the Ocean View House and even from remoter hotels on outlying islands. At this André laughed in his heart, but after the novelty had worn off, Rachel was less pleased. The money that she earned bought her a new dress and hat; but it was not sufficient to lighten the burden on her grandfather's shoulders. Unable longer to bear the hardships of lobster-fishing, old David had sold his pots. Taking part of his scant savings he had bought four cows. He now peddled milk from one end of the Point to the other. Rachel sometimes looked at him with sudden fear, though their poverty she realized but vaguely, never having known anything different. She mended his clothes and lavished upon him every care. She opened her heart to him, and in spirit he dwelt there as in a wide, sunny room. But, though he knew her heart, neither he nor anyone else, knew what was passing in her mind. Sometimes with a vigorous motion she would clasp her hands behind her head while she stared through the doorway of the barn; then she would slip away, taking the winding path to the bay, and remain there for hours.

The groups of rocks on the bay shore differed from those fronting the ocean. They were more sad than threatening in form and were covered thickly with seaweed, like enormous heads with hair. In this hair sparkled iridescent drops left by the receding tide; these drops resembled jewels. The rocks, indeed, were decked like the heads of women, and by reason of the long tresses of seaweed that trailed from them and that undulated on the surface of the water, an uneasy restlessness seemed to pervade them.

Rachel would eye them gloomily: then, flinging herself down, she would observe the various forms of life in the little pools of water where floated crabs and jellyfish. In the prominent eyes of the crab she saw the desire for its prey. Looking upward, attracted by the sinister screech of gulls, she saw them fluttering about the nest of a sanderling which they pillaged of its eggs. Letting her glance fall again she studied the little bell-shaped barnacles, like tiny huts, which everywhere adhered to the rocks in settlements. As the water approached, one after another of the doors of these wee huts opened and a hand, vaporish, white as light, reached forth and gathered in the necessary provender. Everywhere, everything received what it needed to sustain life. She alone was starved.

With these thoughts surging in her brain, Rachel would make her way back to the barn. There, with cheeks puffed out, stooping over his work, she would find André. One day when she entered the barn he greeted her with a gleeful announcement: he had sold five little shells and one big one during her absence. She turned away. She had often watched the faces of the summer people: they bought the shells out of pity for André, or perhaps, because they admired his handsome face. As art, she suspected, the shells were nothing. Why could he not see?

"You have no ambition," she said surlily, "there are schools where one can learn to do this sort of thing, I suppose. You ought to want to get away and study."

Amazed, he looked up at her. "But the shells sell all right," he remarked. "I paint well enough for that."

She made no answer and sparks of some sort glowed in her eyes. She shook her head at him.

"You're just like a barnacle," she cried passionately, "_it_ clings to a rock, _it_ lives in a corner; everyday when the tide comes in, _it_ opens its door and gathers in food. In the same way every morning you wait for the city people. You open your door, you reach out your hand--like this, and you take in the pennies. Bah! is that enough for you?"

"Well, isn't it?" he asked, and in his eyes, as he looked at her, dawned a certain yearning softness.

But she turned away. "Then stay on your rock," she flashed out; "I want more."

He came up to her and laid his hand on her arm.

"What do you want?" he asked.

She looked at him and seeing tears in his eyes, she turned away sullenly. "I don't know," she answered, "but I want life--more'n what the sea brings me."

Then suddenly she broke from him and darted into the twilight.