Читать книгу Shifting Sands - Sara Ware Bassett - Страница 4

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In the meantime, Marcia Howe, the heroine of this escapade, comfortably ensconced in her island homestead, paid scant heed to the fact that she and her affairs were continually on the tongues of the outlying community.

She was not ignorant of it for, although too modest to think herself of any great concern to others, her intuitive sixth sense made her well aware her goings and comings were watched. This knowledge, however, far from nettling her, as it might have done had she been a woman blessed with less sense of humor, afforded her infinite amusement. She liked people and because of her habit of looking for the best in them she usually found it. Their spying, she realized, came from motives of interest. She had never known it to be put to malicious use. Hence, she never let it annoy her.

She loved her home; valued her kindly, if inquisitive, neighbors at their true worth; and met the world with a smile singularly free from hardness or cynicism.

Bitter though her experience had been, it had neither taken from, nor, miraculously, had it dimmed her faith in her particular star. On the contrary there still glowed in her grey eyes that sparkle of anticipation one sees in the eyes of one who stands a-tiptoe on the threshold of adventure. Apparently she had in her nature an unquenchable spirit of hope that nothing could destroy. No doubt youth had aided her to retain this vision for she was still young and the highway of life, alluring in rosy mists, beckoned her along its mysterious path with persuasive hand. Who could tell what its hidden vistas might contain?

Her start, she confessed, had been an unpropitious one. But starts sometimes were like that; and did not the old adage affirm that a bad beginning made for a fair ending?

Furthermore, the error had been her own. She had been free to choose and she had chosen unwisely. Why whine about it? One must be a sport and play the game. She was older now and better fitted to look after herself than she had been at seventeen. Only a fool made the same blunder twice, and if experience had been a pitiless teacher, it had also been a helpful and convincing one.

Marcia did not begrudge her lesson. Unquestionably, it had taken from her its toll; but on the other hand it had left as compensation something she would not have exchanged for gold.

The past with its griefs, its humiliations, its heartbreak, its failure lay behind—the future all before her. It was hers—hers! She would be wary what she did with it and never again would she squander it for dross.

Precisely what she wished or intended to make of that future she did not know. There were times when a wave of longing for something she could not put into words surged up within her with a force not to be denied. Was it loneliness? She was not so lonely that she did not find joy in her home and its daily routine of domestic duties.

On the contrary, she attacked these pursuits with tireless zeal. She liked sweeping, dusting, polishing brasses, and making her house as fresh as the sea breezes that blew through it. She liked to brew and bake; to sniff browning pie crust and the warm spiciness of ginger cookies. Keen pleasure came to her when she surveyed spotless beds, square at the corners and covered with immaculate counterpanes. She found peace and refreshment in softened lights, flowers, the glow of driftwood fires.

As for the more strenuous tasks connected with homemaking, they served as natural and pleasurable vents for her surplus energy. She revelled in painting, papering, shingling; and the solution of the balking enigmas presented by plumbing, chimneys, drains and furnaces.

If there lingered deep within her heart vague, unsatisfied yearnings, Marcia resolutely held over these filmy imaginings a tight rein. To be busy—that was her gospel. She never allowed herself to remain idle for any great length of time. To prescribe the remedy and faithfully apply it was no hardship to one whose active physique and abounding vigor demanded an abundance of exercise. Like an athlete set to run a race, she gloried in her physical strength.

When she tramped the shore, the wind blowing her hair and the rich blood pulsing in her cheeks; when her muscles stretched taut beneath an oar or shot out against the resistance of the tide, a feeling of unity with a power greater than herself caught her up, thrilling every fibre of her being. She was never unsatisfied then. She felt herself to be part of a force mighty and infinite—a happy, throbbing part. Today, as she moved swiftly about the house and her deft hands made tidy the rooms, she had that sense of being in step with the world.

The morning, crisp with an easterly breeze, had stirred the sea into a swell that rose rhythmically in measureless, breathing immensity far away to its clear-cut, sapphire horizon. The sands had never glistened more white; the surf never curled at her doorway in a prettier, more feathery line. On the ocean side, where winter's lashing storms had thrown up a protecting phalanx of dunes, the coarse grasses she had sown to hold them tossed in the wind, while from the Point, where her snowy domains dipped into more turbulent waters, she could hear the grating roar of pebbles mingle with the crash of heavier breakers.

It all spoke to her of home—home as she had known it from childhood—as her father and her father's father had known it. Boats, nets, the screaming of gulls, piping winds, and the sting of spray on her face were bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. The salt of deep buried caverns was in her veins; the chant of the ocean echoed the beating of her own heart.

Lonely?

If she needed anything it was a companion to whom to cry: "Isn't it glorious to be alive?" and she already had such a one.

Never was there such a comrade as Prince Hal!

Human beings often proved themselves incapable of grasping one another's moods—but he? Never!

He knew when to speak and when to be silent; when to be in evidence and when to absent himself. His understanding was infinite; his fidelity as unchanging as the stars. Moreover, he was an honorable dog, a thoroughbred, a gentleman. That was why she had bestowed upon him an aristocratic name. He demanded it.

She would never want for a welcome while he had strength to wag his white plume of tail; nor lack affection so long as he was able to race up the beach and race back again to hurl himself upon her with his sharp, staccato yelp of joy.

When easterly gales rocked the rafters and the wind howled with eerie moanings down the broad chimney; when line after line of foaming breakers steadily advanced, crashing up on the shore with a fury that threatened to invade the house, then it was comforting to have near-by a companion unashamed to draw closer to her and confess himself humbled in the presence of the sea's majesty.

Oh, she was worlds better off with Prince Hal than if she were linked up with someone of her own genus who could not understand.

Besides, she was not going to be alone. She had decided to try an experiment.

Jason had had an orphaned niece out in the middle west—his sister's child—a girl in her early twenties, and Marcia had invited her to the island for a visit.

In fact, Sylvia was expected today.

That was why a bowl of pansies stood upon the table in the big bedroom at the head of the stairs, and why its fireplace was heaped with driftwood ready for lighting. That was also the reason Marcia now stood critically surveying her preparations.

The house did look welcoming. With justifiable pride, she confessed to herself that Heaven had bestowed upon her a gift for that sort of thing. She knew where to place a chair, a table, a lamp, a book, a flower.

She was especially desirous the old home should look its best today, for the outside world had contributed a richness of setting that left her much to live up to. Sylvia had never seen the ocean. She must love it. But would she? That was to be the test.

If the girl came hither with eyes that saw not; if the splendor stretched out before her was wasted then undeterred, she might go back to her wheat fields, her flat inland air, her school teaching.

If, on the other hand, Wilton's beauty opened to her a new heaven and a new earth, if she proved herself a good comrade—well, who could say what might come of it?

There was room, money, affection enough for two beneath the Homestead roof and Sylvia was alone in the world. Moreover, Marcia felt an odd sense of obligation toward Jason. At the price of his life he had given her back her freedom. It was a royal gift and she owed him something in return.

She was too honest to pretend she had loved him or mourned his loss. Soon after the beginning of their life together, she had discovered he was not at all the person she had supposed him. The gay recklessness which had so completely bewitched her and which she had thought to be manliness had been mere bombast and bravado. At bottom he was a braggart—small, cowardly, purposeless—a ship without a rudder.

Endowed with good looks and a devil-may-care charm, he had called her his star and pleaded his need of her, and she had mistaken pity for love and believed that to help guide his foundering craft into port was a heaven-sent mission.

Alas, she had over-estimated both her own power and his sincerity. Jason had no real desire to alter his conduct. He lacked not only the inclination but the moral stamina to do so. Instead, day by day he slipped lower and lower and, unable to aid him or prevent disaster, she had been forced to look on.

Her love for him was dead, and her self-conceit was dealt a humiliating blow.

She was to have been his anchor in time of stress, the planet by which when he married her he boasted that he intended to steer his course. But she had been forced to stand impotent at his side and see self-respect, honor, and every essential of manhood go down and he shrivel to a fawning, deceitful, ambitionless wreck.

Sometimes she reproached herself for the tragedy and, scrutinizing the past, wondered whether she might not have prevented it. Had she done her full part; been as patient, sympathetic, understanding as she ought to have been? Did his defeat lay at her door?

With the honesty characteristic of her, she could not see that it did. She might, no doubt, have played her role better. One always could if given a second chance. Nevertheless she had tried, tried with every ounce of strength in her—tried and failed!

Well, it was too late for regrets now. Such reflections belonged to the past and she must put them behind her as useless, morbid abstractions. Her back was set against the twilight; she was facing the dawn—the dawn with its promise of happier things.

Surely that magic, unlived future touched with hope and dim with the prophecy of the unknown could not be so unfriendly as the past had been. It might bring pain; but she had suffered pain and no longer feared it. Moreover, no pain could ever be as poignant as that which she had already endured.

And why anticipate pain? Life held joy as well—countless untried experiences that radiated happiness. Were there not a balance between sunshine and shadow this world would be a wretched place in which to live, and its Maker an unjust dealer.

No, she believed not only in a fair-minded but in a generous God and she had faith that he was in his Heaven.

She had paid for her folly—if indeed folly it had been. Now with optimism and courage she looked fearlessly forward. That was why, as she caught up her hat, a smile curled her lips.

The house did look pretty, the day was glorious. She was a-tingle with eagerness to see what it might bring.

Calling Prince Hal, she stood before him.

"Take good care of the house, old man," she admonished, as she patted his silky head. "I'll be home soon."

He followed her to the piazza and stopped. His eyes pleaded to go, but he understood his orders and obeying them lay down with paws extended, the keeper of the Homestead.