She has possibilities, thought Reeves.
Next day he began his picture. At first he had thought of painting her as the incarnation of a sea spirit, but decided that her moods were too fitful. So he began to sketch her as “Waiting” — a woman looking out across the bay with a world of hopeless longing in her eyes. The subject suited her well, and the picture grew apace.
When he was tired of work he made her walk around the shore with him, or row up the head of the bay in her own boat. He tried to draw her out, at first with indifferent success. She seemed to be frightened of him. He talked to her of many things — the far outer world whose echoes never reached her, foreign lands where he had travelled, famous men and women whom he had met, music, art and books. When he spoke of books he touched the right chord. One of those transfiguring flashes he delighted to evoke now passed over her plain face.
“That is what I’ve always wanted,” she said hungrily, “and I never get them. Aunt hates to see me reading. She says it is a waste of time. And I love it so. I read every scrap of paper I can get hold of, but I hardly ever see a book.”
The next day Reeves took his Tennyson to the shore and began to read the Idylls of the King to her.
“It is beautiful,” was her sole verbal comment, but her rapt eyes said everything.
After that he never went out with her without a book — now one of the poets, now some prose classic. He was surprised by her quick appreciation of and sympathy with the finest passages. Gradually, too, she forgot her shyness and began to talk. She knew nothing of his world, but her own world she knew and knew well. She was a mine of traditional history about the bay. She knew the rocky coast by heart, and every old legend that clung to it. They drifted into making excursions along the shore and explored its wildest retreats. The girl had an artist’s eye for scenery and colour effect.
“You should have been an artist,” Reeves told her one day when she had pointed out to him the exquisite loveliness of a shaft of light falling through a cleft in the rocks across a dark-green pool at their base.
“I would rather be a writer,” she said slowly, “if I could only write something like those books you have read to me. What a glorious destiny it must be to have something to say that the whole world is listening for, and to be able to say it in words that will live forever! It must be the noblest human lot.”
“Yet some of those men and women were neither good nor noble,” said Reeves gently, “and many of them were unhappy.”
Helen dismissed the subject as abruptly as she always did when the conversation touched too nearly on the sensitive edge of her soul dreams.
“Do you know where I am taking you today?” she said.
“No — where?”
“To what the people here call the Kelpy’s Cave. I hate to go there. I believe there is something uncanny about it, but I think you will like to see it. It is a dark little cave in the curve of a small cove, and on each side the headlands of rock run far out. At low tide we can walk right around, but when the tide comes in it fills the Kelpy’s Cave. If you were there and let the tide come past the points, you would be drowned unless you could swim, for the rocks are so steep and high it is impossible to climb them.”
Reeves was interested.
“Was anyone ever caught by the tide?”
“Yes,” returned Helen, with a shudder. “Once, long ago, before I was born, a girl went around the shore to the cave and fell asleep there — and the tide came in and she was drowned. She was young and very pretty, and was to have been married the next week. I’ve been afraid of the place ever since.”
The treacherous cave proved to be a picturesque and innocent-looking spot, with the beach of glittering sand before it and the high gloomy walls of rock on either hand.
“I must come here some day and sketch it,” said Reeves enthusiastically, “and you must be the Kelpy, Helen, and sit in the cave with your hair wrapped about you and seaweed clinging to it.”
“Do you think a kelpy would look like that?” said the girl dreamily. “I don’t. I think it is a wild, wicked little sea imp, malicious and mocking and cruel, and it sits here and watches for victims.”
“Well, never mind your sea kelpies,” Reeves said, fishing out his Longfellow. “They are a tricky folk, if all tales be true, and it is supposed to be a very rash thing to talk about them in their own haunts. I want to read you ‘The Building of the Ship.’ You will like it, I’m sure.”
When the tide turned they went home.
“We haven’t seen the kelpy, after all,” said Reeves.
“I think I shall see him some day,” said Helen gravely. “I think he is waiting for me there in that gloomy cave of his, and some time or other he will get me.”
Reeves smiled at the gloomy fancy, and Helen smiled back at him with one of her sudden radiances. The tide was creeping swiftly up over the white sands. The sun was low and the bay was swimming in a pale blue glory. They parted at Clam Point, Helen to go for the cows and Reeves to wander on up the shore. He thought of Helen at first, and the wonderful change that had come over her of late; then he began to think of another face — a marvellously lovely one with blue eyes as tender as the waters before him. Then Helen was forgotten.
The summer waned swiftly. One afternoon Reeves took a fancy to revisit the Kelpy’s Cave. Helen could not go. It was harvest time, and she was needed in the field.
“Don’t let the kelpy catch you,” she said to him half seriously. “The tide will turn early this afternoon, and you are given to day-dreaming.”
“I’ll be careful,” he promised laughingly, and he meant to be careful. But somehow when he reached the cave its unwholesome charm overcame him, and he sat down on the boulder at its mouth.
“An hour yet before tide time,” he said. “Just enough time to read that article on impressionists in my review and then stroll home by the sandshore.”
From reading he passed to day-dreaming, and day-dreaming drifted into sleep, with his head pillowed on the rocky walls of the cave.
How long he had slept he did not know, but he woke with a start of horror. He sprang to his feet, realizing his position instantly. The tide was in — far in past the headlands already. Above and beyond him towered the pitiless unscalable rocks. There was no way of escape.
Reeves was no coward, but life was sweet to him, and to die like that — like a drowned rat in a hole — to be able to do nothing but wait for that swift and sure oncoming death! He reeled against the damp rock wall, and for a moment sea and sky and prisoning headlands and white-lined tide whirled before his eyes.
Then his head grew clearer. He tried to think. How long had he? Not more than twenty minutes at the outside. Well, death was sure and he would meet it bravely. But to wait — to wait helplessly! He should go; mad with the horror of it before those endless minutes would have passed!
He took something from his pocket and bent his, head over it, pressing his lips to it repeatedly. And then, when he raised his face again, a dory was coming around the headland on his right, and Helen Fraser was in it.
Reeves was dizzy again with the shock of joy and thankfulness. He ran down over the little stretch of sand still uncovered by the tide and around to the rocks of the headlands against which the dory was already grating. He sprang forward impulsively and caught the girl’s cold hands in his as she dropped the oars and stood up.
“Helen, you have saved me! How can I ever thank you? I—”
He broke off abruptly, for she was looking up at him, breathlessly and voicelessly, with her whole soul in her eyes. He saw in them a revelation that amazed him; he dropped her hands and stepped back as if she had struck him in the face.
Helen did not notice the change in him. She clasped her hands together and her voice trembled.
“Oh, I was afraid I should be too late! When I came in from the field Aunt Hannah said you had not come back — and I knew it was tide time — and I felt somehow that it had caught you in the cave. I ran down over the marsh an
d took Joe Simmon’s dory. If I had not got here in time—”
She broke off shiveringly. Reeves stepped into the dory and took up the oars.
“The kelpy would have been sure of its victim then,” he said, trying to speak lightly. “It would have almost served me right for neglecting your warning. I was very careless. You must let me row back. I am afraid you have overtasked your strength trying to cheat the kelpy.”
Reeves rowed homeward in an absolute silence. Helen did not speak and he could not. When they reached the dory anchorage he helped her out.
“I think I’ll go out to the Point for a walk,” he said. “I want to steady my nerves. You must go right home and rest. Don’t be anxious — I won’t take any more chances with sea kelpies.”
Helen went away without a word, and Reeves walked slowly out to the Point. He was grieved beyond measure at the discovery he believed he had made. He had never dreamed of such a thing. He was not a vain man, and was utterly free from all tendency to flirtation. It had never occurred to him that the waking of the girl’s deep nature might be attended with disastrous consequences. He had honestly meant to help her, and what had he done?
He felt very uncomfortable; he could not conscientiously blame himself, but he saw that he had acted foolishly. And of course he must go away at once. And he must also tell her something she ought to know. He wished he had told her long ago.
The following afternoon was a perfect one. Reeves was sketching on the sandshore when Helen came. She sat down on a camp stool a little to one side and did not speak. After a few moments Reeves pushed away his paraphernalia impatiently.
“I don’t feel in a mood for work,” he said. “It is too dreamy a day — one ought to do nothing to be in keeping. Besides, I’m getting lazy now that my vacation is nearly over. I must go in a few days.”
He avoided looking at her, so he did not see the sudden pallor of her face.
“So soon?” she said in a voice expressive of no particular feeling.
“Yes. I ought not to have lingered so long. My world will be forgetting me and that will not do. It has been a very pleasant summer and I shall be sorry to leave Bay Beach.”
“But you will come back next summer?” asked Helen quickly. “You said you would.”
Reeves nerved himself for his very distasteful task.
“Perhaps,” he said, with an attempt at carelessness, “but if I do so, I shall not come alone. Somebody who is very dear to me will come with me — as my wife. I have never told you about her, Helen, but you and I are such good friends that I do not mind doing so now. I am engaged to a very sweet girl, and we expect to be married next spring.”
There was a brief silence. Reeves had been vaguely afraid of a scene and was immensely relieved to find his fear unrealized. Helen sat very still. He could not see her face. Did she care, after all? Was he mistaken?
When she spoke her voice was perfectly calm.
“Thank you, it is very kind of you to tell me about her. I suppose she is very beautiful.”
“Yes, here is her picture. You can judge for yourself.”
Helen took the portrait from his hand and looked at it steadily. It was a miniature painted on ivory, and the face looking out from it was certainly lovely.
“It is no wonder you love her,” said the girl in a low tone as she handed it back. “It must be strange to be so beautiful as that.”
Reeves picked up his Tennyson.
“Shall I read you something? What will you have?”
“Read ‘Elaine,’ please. I want to hear that once more.”
Reeves felt a sudden dislike to her choice.
“Wouldn’t you prefer something else?” he asked, hurriedly turning over the leaves. “‘Elaine’ is rather sad. Shan’t I read ‘Guinevere’ instead?”
“No,” said Helen in the same lifeless tone. “I have no sympathy for Guinevere. She suffered and her love was unlawful, but she was loved in return — she did not waste her love on someone who did not want or care for it. Elaine did, and her life went with it. Read me the story.”
Reeves obeyed. When he had finished he held the book out to her.
“Helen, will you take this Tennyson from me in remembrance of our friendship and of the Kelpy’s Cave? I shall never forget that I owe my life to you.”
“Thank you.”
She took the book and placed a little thread of crimson seaweed that had been caught in the sand between the pages of “Elaine.” Then she rose.
“I must go back now. Aunt will need me. Thank you again for the book, Mr. Reeves, and for all your kindness to me.”
Reeves was relieved when the interview was over. Her calmness had reassured him. She did not care very much, after all; it was only a passing fancy, and when he was gone she would soon forget him.
He went away a few days later, and Helen bade him an impassive good-bye. When the afternoon was far spent she stole away from the house to the shore, with her Tennyson in her hand, and took her way to the Kelpy’s Cave.
The tide was just beginning to come in. She sat down on the big boulder where Reeves had fallen asleep. Beyond stretched the gleaming blue waters, mellowing into a hundred fairy shades horizonward.
The shadows of the rocks were around her. In front was the white line of the incoming tide; it had almost reached the headlands. A few minutes more and escape would be cut off — yet she did not move.
When the dark green water reached her, and the lapping wavelets swished up over the hem of her dress, she lifted her head and a sudden strange smile flashed over her face.
Perhaps the kelpy understood it.
The Way of the Winning of Anne
Jerome Irving had been courting Anne Stockard for fifteen years. He had begun when she was twenty and he was twenty-five, and now that Jerome was forty, and Anne, in a village where everybody knew everybody else’s age, had to own to being thirty-five, the courtship did not seem any nearer a climax than it had at the beginning. But that was not Jerome’s fault, poor fellow!
At the end of the first year he had asked Anne to marry him, and Anne had refused. Jerome was disappointed, but he kept his head and went on courting Anne just the same; that is he went over to Esek Stockard’s house every Saturday night and spent the evening, he walked home with Anne from prayer meeting and singing school and parties when she would let him, and asked her to go to all the concerts and socials and quilting frolics that came off. Anne never would go, of course, but Jerome faithfully gave her the chance. Old Esek rather favoured Jerome’s suit, for Anne was the plainest of his many daughters, and no other fellow seemed at all anxious to run Jerome off the track; but she took her own way with true Stockard firmness, and matters were allowed to drift on at the will of time or chance.
Three years later Jerome tried his luck again, with precisely the same result, and after that he had asked Anne regularly once a year to marry him, and just as regularly Anne said no a little more brusquely and a little more decidedly every year. Now, in the mellowness of a fifteen-year-old courtship, Jerome did not mind it at all. He knew that everything comes to the man who has patience to wait.
Time, of course, had not stood still with Anne and Jerome, or with the history of Deep Meadows. At the Stockard homestead the changes had been many and marked. Every year or two there had been a wedding in the big brick farmhouse, and one of old Esek’s girls had been the bride each time. Julia and Grace and Celia and Betty and Theodosia and Clementina Stockard were all married and gone. But Anne had never had another lover. There had to be an old maid in every big family she said, and she was not going to marry Jerome Irving just for the sake of having Mrs. on her tombstone.
Old Esek and his wife had been put away in the Deep Meadows burying-ground. The broad, fertile Stockard acres passed into Anne’s possession. She was a good business-woman, and the farm continued to be the best in the district. She kept two hired men and a servant girl, and the sixteen-year-old of her oldest sister lived with her. There were few visitors at the Sto
ckard place now, but Jerome “dropped in” every Saturday night with clockwork regularity and talked to Anne about her stock and advised her regarding the rotation of her crops and the setting out of her orchards. And at ten o’clock he would take his hat and cane and tell Anne to be good to herself, and go home.
Anne had long since given up trying to discourage him; she even accepted attentions from him now that she had used to refuse. He always walked home with her from evening meetings and was her partner in the games at quilting parties. It was great fun for the young folks. “Old Jerome and Anne” were a standing joke in Deep Meadows. But the older people had ceased to expect anything to come of it.
Anne laughed at Jerome as she had always done, and would not have owned for the world that she could have missed him. Jerome was useful, she admitted, and a comfortable friend; and she would have liked him well enough if he would only omit that ridiculous yearly ceremony of proposal.
It was Jerome’s fortieth birthday when Anne refused him again. He realized this as he went down the road in the moonlight, and doubt and dismay began to creep into his heart. Anne and he were both getting old — there was no disputing that fact. It was high time that he brought her to terms if he was ever going to. Jerome was an easy-going mortal and always took things placidly, but he did not mean to have all those fifteen years of patient courting go for nothing He had thought Anne would get tired of saying no, sooner or later, and say yes, if for no other reason than to have a change; but getting tired did not seem to run in the Stockard blood. She had said no that night just as coolly and decidedly and unsentimentally as she said it fifteen years before. Jerome had the sensation of going around in a circle and never getting any further on. He made up his mind that something must be done, and just as he got to the brook that divides Deep Meadows West from Deep Meadows Central an idea struck him; it was a good idea and amused him. He laughed aloud and slapped his thigh, much to the amusement of two boys who were sitting unnoticed on the railing of the bridge.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 619