"Rainbows come after the storm, my dear lady, not before," rejoined Smearly. "If they have any prismatics in theirs, they will appear in a year or two from now." He had lowered his voice so that Helen should not hear.

"You never believe in anything. You hate women," said Mrs. Leroy impatiently in an undertone.

"True, but with some exceptions; you, for instance," with a mock bow.

"But why fool ourselves, my dear lady? The first year is one of sugar-plums, flowers, and canary-birds. We can't keep our hands off them; we love them so we want to eat them up."

"Just like any other wild beast," interrupted Mrs. Leroy, with a gurgling laugh, her head bent coquettishly on one side.

"The second year both are pulling in opposite directions." (He affected not to have heard her thrust.) "Then comes a snap of the matrimonial cord, and over they go. Of course neither of these two turtle-doves has the slightest idea of anything of the kind. They expect to go on and on and on, like the dear little babes in the wood; but they won't, all the same. Some day an old crow of an attorney will come and cover them over with dried briefs, and that will be the last of it."

Sanford took no part in the general talk. He was listless, absorbed.

He felt an irresistible desire to be alone, and stayed on only because Helen's many little confidences, told to him in her girlish way, as she sat beside him on the divan, required but an acquiescing nod now and then, or a random reply, which he could give without betraying himself.

He was first of all the guests to rise. In response to Mrs. Leroy's anxious glance, as he bade her good-night between the veranda curtains, he explained, in tones loud enough to be heard by everybody, that it was necessary to make an early start in the morning for the Ledge, and that he had some important letters to write that night.

"Don't forget to telegraph me if you get the certificate," was all she said.

Helen and Jack followed Sanford. They too wanted to be alone; that is, together,-in their case the same thing.

Once outside and under the trees of the park, Helen stopped in a secluded spot, their shadows under the electric light flecking the pavement, took the lapels of Jack's coat in her hands, and said, "Jack, dear, I wasn't happy there to-night. She never could have loved anybody."

"Who, darling?"

"Why, Mrs. Leroy. Did you hear what she said?"

"Yes, but it was only Kate. That's her way, Helen. She never means half she says."

"Yes, but the _way_ she said it, Jack. She doesn't know what love means. Loving is not being angry all the time. Loving is helping,-helping everywhere and in everything. Whatever either needs the other gives. I can't say it just as I want to, but you know what I mean. And that Mr. Smearly; he didn't think I heard, but I did."

"Dear heart," said Jack, smoothing her cheek with his hand, "don't believe everything you hear. You are not accustomed to the ways of these people. Down in your own home in Maryland people mean what they say; here they don't. Smearly is all right. He was 'talking through his hat,' as the boys say at the club,-that's all. You'd think, to hear him go on, that he was a sour, crabbed old curmudgeon, now, wouldn't you? Well, you never were more mistaken in your life. Every penny he can save he gives to an old sister of his, who hasn't seen a well day for years. That's only his talk."

"But why does he speak that way, then? When people love as they ought to love, every time a disappointment in the other comes, it is just one more opportunity to help,-not a cause for ridicule. I love you that way, Jack; don't you love me so?" and she looked up into his eyes.

"I love you a million ways, you sweet girl," and, with a rapid glance about him to see that no one was near, he slipped his arm about her and held her close to his breast.

He felt himself lifted out of the atmosphere of romance in which he had lived for months. This gentle, shrinking Southern child whom he had loved and petted and smothered with roses, this tender, clinging girl who trusted him so implicitly, was no longer his sweetheart, but his helpmate. She had all at once become a woman,-strong, courageous, clear-minded, helpful, ready to lead him if need be.

A new feeling rose in his heart and spread itself through every fibre of his being,-a feeling without which love is a plaything. It was reverence.

When Sanford reached his apartments Sam was waiting for him, as usual.

The candles were lighted instead of the lamp. The windows of the balcony were wide open.

"You need not wait, Sam; I'll close the blinds," he said, as he stepped out and sank into a chair.

Long after Sam had gone he sat there without moving, his head bent, his forehead resting on his hand. He was trying to pick up the threads of his life again, to find the old pattern which had once guided him in his course, and to clear it from the tangle of lines that had suddenly twisted and confused him.

For a long time he saw nothing but Kate's eyes as they had met his own, with the possibilities which he had read in their depths. He tried to drive the picture from him; then baffled by its persistence he resolutely faced it; held it as it were in his hands, and, looking long and unflinchingly at it, summoned all his courage.

He had read Kate's heart in her face. He knew that he had revealed his own. But he meant that the future should be unaffected by the revelations made. The world must never share her confidence nor his, as it would surely do at their first false step. It should not have the right to turn and look, and to wonder at the woman whom he was proud to love. That open fearlessness which all who knew her gloried in should still be hers. He realized the value of it to her, and what its loss would entail should a spoken word of his rob her of it, or any momentary weakness of theirs deprive her of the strength and comfort which his open companionship could give.

No! G.o.d willing, he would stand firm, and so should she.

An hour later he was still there, his unlighted cigar between his lips, his head on his hands.

CHAPTER XVI

UNDER THE WILLOWS

The mile or more of sh.o.r.e skirting the curve of Keyport harbor from Keyport Village to Captain Joe's cottage was lighted by only four street lamps. Three of these were hung on widely scattered telegraph-poles; the fourth was nailed fast to one end of old Captain Potts's fish-house.

When the nights were moonless, these faithful sentinels, with eyes alert, scanned the winding road, or so much of it as their lances could protect, watching over deep culverts, and in one place guarded a treacherous bridge without a rail.

When the nights were cloudy and the lantern-panes were dimmed by the driving sleet, these beacons confined their efforts to pointing out for the stumbling wayfarer the deep puddles or the higher rows of soggy seaweed washed up by the last high tide into the highway itself.

Only on thick nights, when the fog-drift stole in from the still sea, and even Keyport Light burned dim, did their scouting rays retreat discomfited, illumining nothing but the poles on which the lanterns hung.

Yet in spite of this vigilance there were still long stretches of road between, which even on clear nights were dark as graveyards and as lonesome. Except for the ruddy gleam slanted across the path from some cabin window, or the glare of a belated villager's swinging lantern flecking the pale, staring fences with seesawing lights and shadows, not a light was visible.

Betty knew every foot of this road. She had trundled her hoop on it, her hair flying in the wind, when she first came to Keyport to school.

She had trodden it many a time with Caleb; had idled along its curves with Lacey before the day when her life came to an end, and had plodded over it many a weary hour since, as she went to her work in the village or returned to Captain Joe's. Every stone and tree and turn were familiar to her, and she could have found her way in the pitch-dark to the captain's or to Caleb's, just as she had done again and again in the days before the street lights were set, or when Caleb would be standing on the porch, if she were late, shading his eyes and peering down the road, the kitchen lamp in his hand. "I was gittin'

worrited, little woman; what kep' ye?" he would say. She had never been afraid in those days, no matter what the hour. Everybody knew her. "Oh, that's you, Mis' West, is it? I kind o' mistrusted it was,"

would come from some shadowy figure across the road.

All this was changed for her now. There were places along the highway that made her draw her shawl closer, often half hiding her face. She would shudder as she turned the corner by the church, the one where the captain and Aunty Bell had taken her the first Sunday after her coming back. The big, gloomy oil warehouse where she had nursed Lacey seemed to her haunted and uncanny, and at night more gloomy than ever without a ray of light in any one of its broken, staring windows. Even the fishing-smacks, anch.o.r.ed out of harm's way for the night, looked gruesome and mysterious, with single lights aloft, and black hulls and masts reflected in the water. It was never until she reached the willows that her agitation disappeared. These grew just opposite Captain Potts's fish-house. There were three of them, and their branches interlocked and spread across the road, the s.p.a.ces between the trunks being black at night, despite the one street lamp nailed to the fish-house across the way. When Betty gained these trees her breath always came freer. She could then see along the whole road, away past Captain Joe's, and up the hill. She could see, too, Caleb's cabin from this spot, and the lamp burning in the kitchen window. She knew who was sitting beside it. From these willows, also, she could run for Captain Joe's swinging gate with its big ball and chain, getting safely inside before Caleb could pa.s.s and see her, if by any chance he should be on the road and coming to the village. Once she had met him this side of their dark shadows. It was on a Sat.u.r.day, and he was walking into the village, his basket on his arm. He was going for his Sunday supplies, no doubt. The Ledge gang must have come in sooner than usual, for it was early twilight. She had seen him coming a long way off, and had looked about for some means of escape. There was no mistaking his figure. She would know him as far as she could see him,-that strong, broad figure, with the awkward, stiff walk peculiar to so many seafaring men, particularly lightship-keepers like Caleb, who have walked but little. She knew, too, the outline of the big, fluffy beard that the wind caught and blew over his ruddy face.

No one could be like her Caleb but himself.

These chance meetings she dreaded with a fear she could not overcome.

On this last occasion, finding no concealing shelter, she had kept on, her eyes on the ground. When Caleb had pa.s.sed, his blue eyes staring straight ahead, his face drawn and white, the lips pressed close, she turned and looked after him, and he turned, too, and looked after her,-these two, man and wife, within reach of each other's arms and lips, yet with only the longing hunger of a dead happiness in their eyes. She could have run toward him, and knelt down in the road, and begged him to forgive her and take her home again, had not Captain Joe's words restrained her: "Caleb says he ain't got nothin' agin ye, child, but he won't take ye back s' long 's he lives."

Because, then, of the dread of these chance meetings, and because of the shy looks of many of the villagers, who, despite Captain Joe's daily fight, still pa.s.sed her with but a slight nod of recognition, she was less unhappy when she walked the road at night than in the daylight. The chance of being recognized was less. Caleb might pa.s.s her in the dark and not see her, and then, too, there were fewer people pa.s.sing after dark.

On the Sat.u.r.day night succeeding that on which they had met and looked at each other, she determined to wait until it was quite dark. He would have come in then, and she could slip out from the shop where she worked and gain the sh.o.r.e road before he had finished making his purchases in the village.

Her heart had been very heavy all day. The night before she had left her own bed and tapped at Aunty Bell's door, and had crept under the coverlid beside the little woman, the captain being at the Ledge, and had had one of her hearty cries, sobbing on the elder woman's neck, her arms about her, her cheek to hers. She had gone over with her for the hundredth time all the misery of her position, wondering what would become of her; and how hard it was for Caleb to do all his work alone,-washing his clothes and cooking his meals just as he had done on board the lightship; pouring out her heart until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. All of her thoughts were centred in him and his troubles. She longed to go back to Caleb to take care of him. It was no longer to be taken care of, but to care for him.

As she hurried through the streets, after leaving the shop, and gained the corner leading to the sh.o.r.e road, she glanced up and down, fearing to see the st.u.r.dy figure with the basket. But there was no one in sight whom she knew. At this discovery she slackened her steps and looked around more quietly. When she reached the bend in the road, a flash of light from an open door in a cabin near by gave her a momentary glimpse of a housewife bending over a stove and a man putting a dinner-pail on the kitchen table. Then all was dark again.

It was but a momentary glimpse of a happiness the possibility of which in her own life she had wrecked, but it sent the blood tingling to her face. She stopped, steadying herself by the stone wall, then she walked on.

When she pa.s.sed into the black shadows of the overhanging willows, a man stepped from behind a tree-trunk.

"Aren't you rather late this evening?" he asked.

Betty stood still, the light of the street lamp full on her face. The abruptness of the sound startled her.