THE afternoon was hot and sulky. Still, as the party had fixed that day for leaving The Island, they would not change their plan. Old Dempster said there would certainly be “considerable of a blow.”
All the party had longed for a storm; the young ladies had rhapsodised about billows and breakers and driving spray and heroic encounters with warring elements. Now that the long roll of premonitory surges was crashing in sullenly on Black Rock Head and Wrecker’s Point, they seemed to shrink a little from billows unsunlit. Grandeur was too much for them. To recline on the rocks under a parasol held by a gentle cavalier, this was gay and dressy and afforded the recumbent and her attendant knight indefinite possibilities. But ladies are not lovely in submarine armour, and muslins limply collapse when salt showers come whirling in from shattered waves. The great wild terror of the certain storm made itself felt among the gay party. They were quite willing to hasten their departure and pass the[25] night quietly at Loggerly. They would spend also a quiet next day there and take the train on the second morning for Portland and Boston.
Miss Sullivan preferred to stay for the promised entertainment. She seemed already a little excited out of her usual tranquil reserve by the thought that Nature was to act a wild drama for her benefit. Besides, apart from the storm, she was willing to pass one solitary day on the rocks and along the beach. She also longed for one last master-view from the mountain above Dempster’s house. She was glad to see all these without the intrusion of gaiety. It may have been a mood; it may have been character. She would visit, for perpetual recollection, the best spots undisturbed; a storm would be clear gain. Mr. Dempster promised to drive her over to Loggerly next evening, rain or shine.
Au revoir! and they were off, some walking, some already mounted into the great farm wagon. They had a very lively time through the delicate birch woods. Miss Julia Wilkes was quite sure she had seen a deer. Blooming lips were brighter for the strawberries they crushed; rosy fingers rosier for plucking the same. When they reached the open country and were all seated in the wagon, taking the down-hills at a gallop, and the up-hills at an impetus, Julia turned to her mother, that excellent, gossipy person.
“Miss Sullivan has a strange fancy,” said she,[26] “to wander about alone in wild places. Did you notice how almost handsome she was to-day?”
“Yes,” put in the fortis Gyas Cutus; “she looked like a cheerful Banshee, inspired at the thought of a storm.”
“Mary Sullivan was nobly handsome once,” said Mrs. Wilkes, “and will be soon again, I hope, now that she is rich and done with all family troubles.”
“Is she very rich?” asked Cloanthus Fortisque, friend of Gyas. “I’m sorry I’m so much afraid of her. She may be sweet as ice-cream, but she is colder. A feller couldn’t sail in with much chance.”
Miss Julia pouted a little at this ingenuous remark of Fortisque and devoted herself to Gyas Cutus for the rest of the journey.
It was lonely at Dempster’s when the gay party was gone. The house looked singularly small and mean. Mrs. Dempster was baking wondrous bread; bread for which all the visitors had gone away bulkier. Miss Miranda Dempster was up to her elbows in strawberries. She was a magnificent lioness of a woman, with a tawny mane of redundant locks.
The kitchen was close and the hot, heavy atmosphere affected Miss Sullivan’s views as to the quality of her hostess’s bread. She walked out upon the little meadow, a bit of tender culture between the forest and the rude and rocky shore. Old Dempster[27] and Daniel, his son, were hurrying their hay into the ox-cart. The oxen seemed to stand unnecessarily knockkneed and feeble in the blasting heat. Yet the sun was obscured and there came puffs of breeze from seaward. But these were puffs explosive, sultry, volcanic, depressing.
As Miss Sullivan approached, Dempster was tossing up an enormous mass of hay to Daniel. A puff of wind caught it and one half “diffused to empty air,” making air no longer empty but misty with hay-seed, and aromatic with mild fragrance. Dempster shook himself and stood leaning on his pitchfork. He was a grand old yeoman, worthy to be the father of heroes. The Island, though not a solitary one, had been to him a Juan Fernandez. He was a contriver of all contrivances, a builder of all that may be built. He farmed, he milled, he fished, he navigated in shapely vessels of his own shaping; his roof-tree was a tree of his own woods, felled and cleft by himself. He had split his own shingles as easily as other men mend a toothpick; with these he had tented his roof-tree over. Miss Sullivan and he were great friends, and now, as she drew near, he looked at her with kindly eyes.
“See, Miss Sullivan,” said he, “them oxen has stopped chewin’ the cud—another sure sign of a storm. The wind is sou’west. It’ll be short, but hot an’ heavy—a kind er horriken.”
“If the storm is severe, what will all these fishing-vessels[28] do?” she asked. “I have counted nearly a hundred this afternoon.”
“Most on ’em will go birds’-nestin’ ’round in the bays an’ coves along shore. Some on ’em alluz gits caught, an’ that’s what makes me feel kind er anxious now. You see, my boy Willum has been buyin’ a schooner up to New Brunswick, with a pardner of his, and he’s jest as like as not to be takin’ her down to Boston about now.”
“I hope not!” cried Miss Sullivan, shuddering involuntarily in the hot chill of another isolated blast.
“Wal, worryin’ won’t mend nothin’,” said the father, with stoic calmness. “Come, Dan’l, we must hurry up with this ’ere hay,” and the two fell to work again; but the face of the elder man was very grave as he glanced, from time to time, at the grey sky and sullen sea.
Miss Sullivan strolled on across the meadow to Black Rock Head. There she had often sat in brilliant days and sent her looks and thoughts a-dreaming beyond the misty edge of the ocean world. To-day a strange, dismal heaviness in the air made dreams nightmares. Perpetual calm seemed destined to dwell upon the ocean, so unruffled was its surface and unsuggestive of storms to be. Looking down from the Head, Miss Sullivan would scarcely have discerned the great, slow surges, lifting and falling monotonously. They made themselves felt,[29] however, when they met the opponent crag. A vast chasm stood open in its purple rocks, and as the lazy waves fell upon the unyielding shore, they flowed in, filling this cavernous gulf almost to the brim with foaming masses. Then, as the surge deliberately withdrew, these ambitious waters, abandoned and unsupported, plunged downward in a wild whirlpooling panic, stream overwhelming stream, all seething together furiously, hissing, roaring, thundering, until again they met the incoming breaker, and again essayed as vainly to rise above control and overcome the enduring land.
Mists, slowly uprising, had given sunset a dull reception, and the great southeastern cloud-bank was growing fast heavier and heavier. Puffs of driving fog began to hide the mountain and lower down upon the Dempster house. Darkness fell, and at last Miss Sullivan was driven in.