Part 14

A passenger steamer rounded the Head behind him, her brilliant windows now thrown high, now showing a narrow rim as she rolled in the trough. She came rapidly and passed far to leeward. While he watched her, shouting repeatedly, against reason, the dugout shipped a sea that all but swamped her. He threw off his coat; loosened and kicked off his shoes. He bailed for a time, then, ceaselessly. The water was very cold; it swashed over his limbs, numbing him to the core. A cloud broke overhead, pelting him with a storm of hail. The stones cut the waves with a sharper swish, hiss; they stung his face, his hands. When he stopped a breathing space the thought of little Silas spurred him, and again and again Louise's voice seemed to reach him, audibly, in desperate appeal.

The hail passed. The city lights grew clearer, off the starboard but falling astern. Then at last he noticed that a deeper stroke of the paddle swung the dugout eastward and kept her headed so. The tide was running in. A black hulk loomed out of the darkness, showing a red lantern at her bow. Was it not the old collier that was burned at the coal bunkers, years ago, and towed here to beach north of town? This light, standing out in advance of all others, became an inspiration. The lines of a trestle detached from the gloom. His paddle struck something, presumably a sunken pile, and snapped at the handle, the blade whirling away in the darkness. He heard the sea breaking on a gravelly shore; felt the undertow. A crest swept over him, and another heavier comber lifted the dugout and hurled it full against the trestle. When the water receded he found himself clinging to a pile; the solid beach was under him, though the surge washed to his armpits. The next wave cast him on the gravel.

He dragged himself higher and rested briefly, pulling himself together, then he rose and made his way, in the teeth of the wind, down to the water-front of the town. He found a small tug, that sometimes did towing for the mills, under steam. He hailed her from the dock, sheltering his numb body behind a pile of cord-wood, while he waited for the master to answer him. Then, "I'm Forrest," he said, "of Freeport, and I want you to put me over at the mills as soon as you can. I came for a doctor and I'll have him down here in fifteen or twenty minutes."

"All right," the man replied, "I'm just starting for a run down to the Straits, but glad to accommodate you. Hell of a night."

Forrest was already out of hearing. He left a summons as brief at the doctor's door. "Tug's waiting," he called back. "Arlington Dock."

Then he hurried on to the hotel which Kingsley frequented. He glanced at the office clock as he entered the lighted room. It was a quarter past eleven. He had been over three hours making that trip across the harbor; a distance of two miles.

There was a stove near him and he put his numb hands out to the heat while he asked for Philip. It was as he had feared; the Captain had not come back from his last little run to Victoria. The sudden warmth made him faint, but he leaned on the desk, trying to shape a telegram.

His effort was manifest and the men around the stove watched him curiously. He was hatless, coatless, without shoes; and the steam rose from his remaining clothes; the water, dripping from them, formed in pools on the floor. The clerk went over to the bar and brought him a glass of brandy. "See here, Forrest," he said, "drink this; then tell us what happened to you. How did you come over from the mills?"

He drank a part of the liquor and set the glass down. "In a small boat," he answered briefly, "and I made a bad landing."

"Looks like it," the clerk said, dryly. "Come in here and get into some clothes of mine."

"No, thank you," replied Forrest, "I'm going right back; have a tug waiting. But lend me a coat, Charley, if you can, and some sort of a fit in shoes."

He wrote his telegram while the man brought the things, and he threw on the coat on his way to the door.

"Never saw such a man," said the clerk, addressing the group near the stove. "Ready to tell a story when it's another fellow, just spreads it on, but when it's himself won't say a blamed word. But he's got the nerve; yes, sir, he's all nerve and--backbone."

When Forrest reached the wharf he found the doctor waiting with the tug-master in the little pilot-house. They made a place for him, but he turned aside into the engine-room, and sinking down on a bench near the boiler, stretched his hands out again to the heat. The steam and odor of oil, the lurching of the boat, following that draught of brandy, affected him strangely. In the uncertain light the engineer seemed to expand into a figure foreign and grotesque. Once when he stooped to open the furnace door he paused, looking up at Forrest with a laugh. With the red glow on his grimy face it became an impish, insulting laugh, and the manager drew himself up to resent it; but he did not; he was too weak.

The next time he was roused was when the tug bumped the Freeport dock. The piles all seemed to be swaying and lifting when he stepped ashore, but the fresh air steadied him, and the sight of Mason's rugged face helped to clear his vision. Here also was Hop Sing out again with his lantern, and his smile rivalled the welcome of the old watchman. The sailor made fast the line with an extra flourish and thump of the wooden leg, and the cook demonstrated his satisfaction in a pigeonwing or two, as he lighted the way to the house.

Forrest was not the man to let these attentions go. "Well, Sing," he said, "I'm afraid you won't see that boat of yours again."

"Oh, I no clare, Boss, I no clare." He wheeled on his cork soles, showing his yellow teeth. "Mason, he makee belly good fire your loom. Byme by, plitty click, I bling supper; oyster soup, flied chicken, belly hot, nicee."

But Forrest was looking up across the gate and his steps quickened. The door had opened and Louise stood against the flood of light. She came forward to the edge of the piazza. "There has been a change," she said softly. "He seems to be in a quiet sleep."

Forrest waited in the parlor while the doctor followed her to that inner room. It seemed a long time before they returned, but he was rubbing his plump hands. "Mrs. Kingsley was right," he said, and smiled. "There has been a change, undoubtedly. And you should have a diploma, sir; that ammonia buoyed the child over a crisis. But it must be used sparingly; sparingly." He opened his medicine case and laid out a box of tablets and a vial with a few brief directions. Then he took up his hat and top coat,--the tug was waiting for him,--and went to the door. "Of course, he is still a very sick child, but, with careful nursing, and I see he has that, he will pull through. Good night; yes, your baby will pull through."

Forrest closed the door softly and came back to the fire. "Phil wasn't in town," he said, "but I left a telegram to be forwarded. He will be able to catch the mail steamer in the morning, if he isn't already on the way."

He lifted a piece of bark from the wood-basket and laid it on the fire. She watched him. Little clouds of steam began to curl up from his clothes. Suddenly she put her hand on his arm. "Paul," she said, "what happened? How did you cross the harbor?"

"Why, the _Success_ went by without stopping, and I took a small boat. I'm going now to change my clothes. When I come back you must lie down; you need some sleep."

"But there wasn't a small boat; the _Phantom_ is away with the tender; there isn't a ship's boat; not any kind of a rowboat on this beach. Unless--Paul, you didn't go in that dugout?"

"Yes," he said lightly, "that's what made me so long. She isn't fleet."

"Fleet." She knew what it meant. He had shared her anxiety and care; it had been one more responsibility thrust upon him; and now, in her extremity, he had risked himself for her child. She could not tell what peril the dugout had lumbered through, but it had been peril in the darkness and that sea. And Philip, her husband, who should have been the one to face it, was doubtless passing the night gaily, in some warm and brilliant room. Oh, the shame of it, the bitterness, the sting of it! A sob broke from her lips. She sank down on a sofa and dropped her face on her arm. "I cannot--bear it," she said. "I--cannot--bear--it."

She did not cry as another woman might; there was no easy rush of tears, but the long pent grief of months, borne silently through weary days and slower nights, welled and found vent to the search of a probe.

A glory from the crimson lamp-shade touched her hair, which was unbound for comfort, and held half its length in two loose braids, as she had worn it when they were children. The strained position of her arm, thrown up over the head of the sofa, pulled back her sleeve, showing its smooth whiteness from below the elbow; it tapered perfectly to the wrist. The slender, shaking figure, her whole attitude, was an unconscious appeal to him, and roused a tumult of feeling; not only resentment against Philip, but immeasurable pity, tenderness for her, out of which rose a sudden and overwhelming desire to take her in his arms and comfort her.

He turned and looked into the fire; the frowning line deepened between his level brows. "Don't make so much of it," he said. "I'm none the worse for a little wetting."

"None the worse?" He started at the vibration in her voice. She rose to her feet. "Do you think I do not know you have done a desperate thing? Do you think I have no gratitude?"

"Oh, no," he answered smiling, "I couldn't think that."

She came a little nearer. "You have a bruise on your forehead; your hand--I noticed it when you lifted the wood--is cut--terribly." She took the hand in her own palm and examined the hurt, touching it gently with her handkerchief. "How was it, Paul? Tell me."

"Why, I hadn't noticed it, but it probably happened when I made a landing." He winced slightly under her soft dabs. "I ran the dugout in at that old trestle above town, and struck a pile. Now you know the worst; there's nothing left to imagine." He laughed and drew his hand away. "I'm going down to my room now, but I shall be back in a little while. Sing is bringing me a supper."

He opened the door and went out, closing it softly. "To have a wife like that," he thought, "and yet neglect her."

*CHAPTER XIX*

*"ANDROMEDA HAS FOUND A PERSEUS"*

The great boom which cleared Duwamish Head of its big timber and cut the cable car-track across the face of the promontory, created also frequent and heavy landslides that changed the gravelly beach at Freeport into the broad and sandy expanse which became Seattle's favorite bathing resort. In the earlier times, beyond the old hotel, the high tide washed sheer to the foot of the bluff, and the incomparable view of blue sea and wooded island, framed by the shining Olympic Mountains, was limited to the outlook from the balcony at the rear of the ruin.

Louise stood upon this balcony, facing the northwest. The bluff was on her left, so near she might have lifted her hand and touched the damp soil. It was midsummer and a resinous fragrance mingled with the salt air. The distant coast was veiled in smoke, and the sun, low in the west, barred the Sound blood red.

The swell broke with a long swash and gurgle under the floor; a passing gust set the door behind her creaking; the heavier one at the opposite end of the bar-room was also swinging, and between its widening crack Stratton appeared on the walk. At sight of her he started and paused, then he came on into the ruin. His glance swept the interior, from the threshold, and rested on the door behind the bar. It was closed and fitted with a new, strong lock.

At the sound of his tread she turned, and he came forward quickly, smiling and offering his hand. "Good afternoon," he said, in his conventional way, "it is rather nice here, isn't it? I hope I do not intrude?"

"No," she said, and answered his smile, "I am glad to share it. Did the _Phantom_ bring you?"

"No, the _Success_ left me." His gesture called her attention to the small mail steamer moving westward. "I ran over about a little matter of business. I saw young Silas on the dock with that old character Mason. The boy is growing."

"Yes, he lives out of doors so much. They are great playfellows, and I can trust Mason. He takes him rowing every afternoon, often twice, out of the shadow of the Head into the sunshine."

"But you,"--he paused with a light emphasis, looking down into her sweet, inscrutable face,--"you stay in the shadow. Do you know what I thought of just now, coming up the walk? It was Andromeda--chained."

"You had the sea," she looked about her thoughtfully, "and this bluff; Andromeda--perhaps--but without a Perseus."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Yes." She met the unmistakable admiration in his eyes with a clear look and a slight uplifting of her oval chin. "It is too bad, but the comparison is misapplied."

She moved towards the doorway. He waited a moment, watching her in mingled amusement and pique. "Another touch-me-not," he told himself; "I had not thought she could be so like her sister. Don't let me take you back," he said aloud, following a step; "it is pleasanter here, away from the interminable buzz of those saws."

But she moved on into the building. He joined her. "We are sailing over to Tacoma tonight," he said. "The yacht club is arranging a little hop. Come with us. Go over the harbor with me, when the _Success_ picks me up on the return trip. I will give you a merry time, I promise you."

"It is always that on board the _Phantom_," she answered brightly. "And of course Philip would run in for me, if I could leave little Si. You see I have only Mason to depend on, and at night he is on duty."

"But bring the boy. We will tuck him away in a berth down below. He will like it. Why, he took that cruise among the islands last year like an old salt, and then he had just begun to toddle."

She shook her head. "He is better off at home. He couldn't sleep; not in that gay company."

Stratton wondered how far she meant to disregard that matter of his escort. He was not accustomed to indifference from a woman. And any other, in a like position, would grasp at the opportunity he offered. "My dear Mrs. Kingsley," he said, and his voice was no longer conventional, "throw aside those Puritan scruples, for once, and let me show you how easy it is to accomplish--what you desire. I know the Captain. Come, go with me on this moonlight excursion, tonight."

She met his gaze bravely, smiling a little, but there was in her eyes the look of one who has felt in a wound the quick turn of a probe. "Thank you, no," she said.

The child was coming up the walk and she hurried to meet him. "Muvver," he called excitedly, "Mason can take us to row, now." Then he stopped, looking at Stratton, and added doubtfully, "The boat is big 'nough for you, too."

Stratton laughed and took out his watch. "Thank you. I have over an hour to spare, but you must put me aboard the _Success_, sure, when she comes back."

Mason, who had waited at the branch walk, turned and stumped ahead to the landing. He held the boat steady and the young man stepped into the stern and lifted the boy in. But when he offered his hand to Louise she drew back and said, "Oh, I am not going; did you think so? Good-by, Silas. Take care of him, Mason."

"Ay, mum?" The old sailor's voice held a note of inquiry. He had lost his shyness, in a measure, at the time of the child's illness. And since then Forrest had seen that there was always a rowboat at the mills. He had made it Mason's duty, during the boy's convalescence, to take him and his mother out in search of the sunshine. She had rarely missed these little trips.

But whatever chagrin Stratton may have felt was not apparent. He settled into his place, lifted his hat to her, and taking a cigar from his case, occupied himself, while the boat was under shelter of the wharves, with getting a light.

She watched them out, waving her hand and smiling an answer to her baby's repeated "Good-by." Then she turned and went up from the landing. "If it was a way," she said under her breath, "then I have let it go."

She walked in the direction of the mills, on past the last cabins, to the beginning of a path that zigzagged up the side of the promontory. She pushed up quickly, finding in the tangible difficulty of the ascent relief for her hot thoughts. Sometimes the earth gave under her and she sprang to a spur of rock; she grasped the tough, springy boughs of young firs to ease her weight. She invited the touch of the prickly needles on her hands and face, and she drew full breaths of the fragrance exhaled from her palms.

She gained the summit moist and panting, and paused to look down on the rowboat, and on across the harbor to the infant city on her hills. There was no dwelling near; the trail took the contour of the bluff, which in places became a precipice, and everywhere around her stretched the forest or the sea. She crossed to the westward side and stopped where a fallen hemlock had cut a swathe through the timber, creating an unobstructed view. Out of the smoke film that shrouded the distant shore, rising columns parted in dun rolling clouds, showing where the forest fires burned; but the Olympics reared their giant heads from the pall, sometimes thrusting a shoulder through. And to this woman it was not solitude; she had come into the presence of old friends. She turned her eyes to that grand company of peaks and forgot the narrow limits of the life below the bluff; she stood above the drift and shadow and, for a moment, Philip.

Her hands were clasped loosely behind her; her lifted head exposed the beautiful lines of throat and chin; her breath came a little hard and quick and there was a soft color in her cheeks. The likeness to her sister had never seemed as marked to Forrest as it was then, when he came upon her unexpectedly, by the fallen hemlock, on his way to the mills. Was not this the trail to the headwaters? Had they not paused to choose a way through the windfall?

She did not see him, and he waited, mastered by that brief illusion. And while he watched her face she saw the heights of the Olympics change from rose to burnished brass; every peak and spur flamed a signal to the departing sun.

"'But breathe the air of mountains And their unapproachable summits will lift thee to the level of themselves.'"

She repeated the words softly with a clear modulation, deepening to a contralto note, and after a moment added a preceding line.

"'Assert thyself; rise up to thy full height.'"

But there she stopped, and lifting her arms with a little outward gesture, expressive of futile effort, let them drop, and turning her face, saw Forrest.

He came forward quickly to say, "I've only been here a moment, and I couldn't help listening; I'm fond of those lines. But, when did you ever assert yourself?" He looked down at her with his smile of the eyes. "It's there the resemblance stops."

"You mean to Alice?"

"Yes, sometimes you are very like her," and he turned his glance to the mountain-tops.

"You mean physically. I think, in other ways, I must often seem purposeless, even weak--to you."

"Ob, no," he said quickly, "I couldn't ever believe that. You are stronger than most women; strong to endure. But you lack her executive ability." Then he stopped, for he saw that she had given his words a personality he had not meant.

"What would you have me do?" The vibration in her voice hurt him; he could not meet the intensity of appeal in her eyes. "It had commenced before we came to Freeport. I felt that he was growing tired of me, but I believed, if I could be alone with him, in a dull place like this, I might win him back. It seemed the only chance; but--it has failed." The tears were streaming down her face; she reached out her hands to him. "What would you have me do?" she repeated. "Tell me."

Forrest had never known her to lose her self-control but once before; the night he had crossed the harbor in the dugout. Even then it was quickly over; she had not spoken of Kingsley's neglect; he had never heard her so much as breathe a reproach. His great heart ached for her, while he felt the futility of any sympathy he could offer her. He broke away some young growth in front of the fallen tree, and she allowed him, passively, to seat her in the crotch of a great branch. "You are pretty tired," he said gently. "It's a hard pull up the bluff. And this solitary life is telling on you; I feel the strain of it, myself, sometimes. We will both be glad to get away from Freeport."

She threw her arm up over the bole, and dropped her face on it, sobbing. He stood looking seaward. Far out the water was still barred blood-red. Presently he said, "You know the mills are about to shut down? We have been waiting for the Judge, but he will be here in another month, perhaps sooner. There isn't a doubt he will close. You know we are falling behind. Lumber has dropped to seven dollars a thousand; the San Francisco market is glutted; the bone-yard there has stopped receiving."

She knew that he had said all this to give her time, and she struggled with those crowding emotions, trying and failing, and trying again to beat them down. He waited, with his back towards her, his face to the painted sea. He was a resourceful man, quick to grasp a difficulty and its solution, for others as well as himself, but now he halted, baffled, like a man come to a blind wall. His mind ran through that first slow year at Freeport, and it flashed over him what an interminable blank it would have been without her. Confined as they were to the narrow limits of the mills, it had been as close as life on shipboard. They had taken their meals together; they had met, passed and repassed countless times daily on the short walks. He had been glad to show a helpful interest in little Silas. He had fallen easily into the way of spending his evenings, when he could, with her; she loved his violin. He saw now how those hours had dulled the poignancy of putting Alice out of his life. He remembered how he had commenced to watch in Louise for a repetition of those many little airs he liked; the lifting of the chin, the high pose of the head, the ready change of color; all modified, it was true, softened and blended with much that was not her sister's, but there, palpable, near, breathing, flesh and blood. And most of all he understood what she had done for him when that business depression laid a fatal hand on the mills. He had meant to do great things and he was one to take defeat hard; but she, this sweet, proud woman, with the courage in her voice and the heart-break in her eyes, had taught him by example how to fight a losing battle to the end, and--like a man.

The silence was broken by the neigh of a horse. It was unusual on that promontory; saddle-animals never took the foot-path over the bluff to the mills, and afterwards Forrest remembered the sound. Then, though he turned and looked in the direction of the neigh, he gave it small attention. His glance fell to her; and that attitude, the hidden face, the slender shaking figure, brought back an onrush of the tumult he had felt the night she so nearly lost her child; bitter resentment against Philip, immeasurable pity, tenderness for her, and a desire to take, and protect and comfort her.

"See here," he said, and his deep voice vibrated a a little, holding each word like a caress, "See here, don't make so much of it; he isn't worth it. No man on earth is."