the procession through the forest of betsey was a very romantic affair. first came hilda and leslie, the latter carrying the lighted japanese lantern swung over his shoulder. and behind them walked mr. o'donnell, like some great monarch; and he must indeed, just then, have felt himself at least the king of all travelling men. what would his colleagues of the grip think if they could see him now? had any of them, for all their store of timetables and their samples and routes and customers, ever marched through so royal a forest, on such a night, lighted by young love and a gay paper lantern?
over the hills and through the valleys of betsey! it was a wonderful lark. of course it wouldn't last. real larks never did. he would go back to his grim bag of samples, and she would go back to her beloved tahulamaji. there would be thousands of miles between them once more, and life would settle back into the uneventful dog-trot which had become the established gait. but tonight! tonight he was parading the forest of betsey like a very king, and his way was lighted by a bright paper lantern which danced at the end of a bough.
[pg 249]
"now," he thought slyly, "if i were a poet...." however, being no poet, but only a travelling man in the employ of babbit & babbit, our friend simply walked along, like the plain mortal he was; and was content, if with a sigh, things should be as they were. "ah, this is fine!" he would exclaim in his quiet way. and hilda, for all her heart was so richly moved, would merely reply: "yes, we like it."
it had been agreed upon that o'donnell should be led directly to the scene of the assembly roast instead of being brought all the way round to beachcrest first. the needhams, miss whitcom, and barry were to walk up the beach, when it was time.
it was at length about as dark as it ever gets in moonlight season. the moon had not yet risen, but would be coming up soon. the rev. needham suggested that it was time to start.
miss whitcom was on her feet at once. there followed quite a little flurry about wraps. the rev. needham and barry strolled on ahead down to the beach. they walked slowly, and the ladies were to overtake them. both men were smoking cigars, the ministerial supply seeming happily inexhaustible. if one's faith might be as inexhaustible!
being a little ill at ease, they talked of obvious things: the broadness of the beach just here, the firmness of the sand, its pleasant crunch under the feet.
"we tried to have a board walk down from the cottage," observed the rev. needham, "but every winter[pg 250] the sand drifted all over it and buried it, so we had to give up the idea." he was wondering nervously whether barry would seize this occasion to ask for his daughter's hand.
"you really don't need a walk," replied his guest. "it's an agreeable change from the city this way."
"yes—yes, it's a change."
there was a short, awkward pause. then barry remarked. "you've got an ideal location here."
and the minister answered: "yes, we like it."
they trudged on a little way in silence.
"there certainly are a lot of stars out tonight," commented barry, transferring his gaze rather abruptly from the sands to the heavens.
"um—yes. yes, there are a great many. and there will be a full moon, later on."
"yes, i know. the moon was wonderful last night on the lake. i sat out on deck a long time."
"you said you had a good trip across, didn't you?"
"oh, yes—perfectly smooth."
another silence—an ominous desperate silence.
"well," quoth the rev. needham, turning around and peering back, "i wonder if they're not coming?"
"i think i see them coming now across the sand," remarked barry.
"yes—yes, i believe i do, too," the other agreed.
"that's louise in the white dress."
"yes, that's louise."
[pg 251]
it wasn't long before the ladies overtook them. the tension was at once both relieved and heightened. anna needham claimed her husband's arm, louise walked beside barry, and miss whitcom walked alone with her thoughts. however, the groups were not isolated. yes, there was safety in numbers. single encounters began to be desperately unpleasant.
what was the matter? in anna's day, young folks had been given, she remembered, to wandering significantly off by themselves on such rare nights as this. but louise and lynndal kept close. anna was troubled about this—even whispered about it to her husband as they walked along. alfred started and began to talk about something else. they ought to face this thing. they ought to face it squarely and with courage. but alfred couldn't. he told himself they must be only imagining things.
they passed the lighthouse, so shadowy and gaunt itself, yet with so beaming an eye! adjoining the tower was the keeper's residence. there were lights in some of the rooms. a child was calling. a dog was sniffing about. he was quite used to resorters, and did not even bark as the party approached and passed the premises. louise stooped to pat the dog's head. barry said: "hello, sir!" the dog wagged his tail slowly, but did not follow them away from the house. he had learned all life's lessons in puppyhood. he would never stray. what a grand thing, never to stray!
[pg 252]
when they were rounding the final curve of the point separating them from the rendezvous, mrs. needham cried: "oh, look—they're lighting it already!"
the cone-shaped pile was visible, and fire was leaping all about the base. flame shot up quickly to the very peak, and thence on up, higher and higher, toward the stars.
there was quite a crowd assembled about the fire when the people from beachcrest arrived. o'donnell and his delightful escort arrived from another direction at almost the same moment. then they all sat around in the sand, and kept jumping up to introduce and be introduced. naturally the needhams knew everybody on the point; and it was always quite a thing to have guests. here were the goodmans, smiling hosts to the entire assembly. had they not started the thing long ago when their married life was in its springtime? ah, the goodmans! miss whitcom remarked afterward that she felt as though she were shaking hands with royalty. "it honestly reminded me," she said, "of my first meeting with queen tess!"
in the excitement, of course the roasting sticks had been forgotten, and of course hilda insisted upon running all the way back with leslie to beachcrest after them. by the time the sticks were there, the fire had flared itself into a condition inviting the approach of wienies and marshmallows. a ring of resorters hovered round the fire with sticks held [pg 253]hopefully out and faces shielded by an arm. naturally there were some mishaps. some one, by deftly turning and turning, would coax a marshmallow to the point of the most golden perfection, only to have it plump dismally down in the sand at last. then there would be a chorus of sympathy and disappointment from a group of sitters, each of whom had perhaps more or less hoped to be favoured with the delicious smoking confection. or else it would be a frankfurter that plumped. but there never was a roast without tragedies.
and everywhere romped the children. sometimes they would throw themselves on to their stomachs and begin ambitiously digging in the sand toward water. then they would leap and chase each other, or they would go about thrusting fallen faggots back into the fiery heart of the blaze.
the provision baskets stood hospitably open. in one might be discovered a wealth of cool, slippery frankfurters; in another heaps of split and buttered buns; in still another dill pickles, a pot of mustard. and of course there were always marshmallows. some preferred marshmallows to frankfurters and some preferred frankfurters to marshmallows. but the majority ate ravenously of both alike, displaying little or no preference.
the eastern sky grew lighter and lighter. the trees stood out mysterious and very black against it.
"look, look!" cried the children.
for the moon was rising now.
[pg 254]
the young boys grew restive. their stomachs were simply closed to the incursion of any more refreshment; it was a pity, no doubt, but full was full. the boys began enlarging their area of prowess. there was a great sand bluff inland a short way, where a rift in the hills cut a deep, barren gash across the face of the forest. the boys crept far up the bluff and then leapt out, down and down.
the east was luminous, and the great moon crept higher and higher. when the boys leapt, their bodies were silhouetted against her bright disc. they would appear out of the shadow of nothing, poise a moment, leap into space, disappear.
"well," observed barry, in some surprise, "i see you've brought a book along."
she had really forgotten the book was in her lap, as she sat huddled over it so miserably in the cottage living room after dinner. when she had gone out on to the porch afterward she had carried it with her automatically, and so had brought it all the way to the roast without thinking. louise had a grimly whimsical feeling that she couldn't get away from the book. "if i'd only thrown it into the harbour this morning!" she thought. but to him she merely replied, a manufactured gaiety edging the words without lightening them: "oh, yes—it's a book i picked up by chance." she handled it carelessly, and her quick glance shot to a distant group. leslie was lying stretched out in the sand, his chin in his hands. he was looking up at hilda, who appeared[pg 255] to be recounting something of great interest. louise felt her face go hot with jealousy. "i—i don't know much about it," she went on, flapping the cover of the book listlessly back and forth. "it was recommended to me by some one who had read it."
"what is the name?" barry asked politely.
she held the book up in the firelight, flaunting it in the face of the man who had come so far with his love and his brave little ring. it was the darkest hour of her pilotless groping.
leslie's laugh rang. the little group took it up. then leslie himself appeared to become the centre of interest. he began telling a story which involved a great many gestures. at one stage he even jumped up and turned a cartwheel, and one of the girls in the crowd exclaimed: "can't you just see it?"
"oh, what shall i do?" thought louise, fighting her tears.
the moon climbed slowly up the sky, and the young boys, one after another, with loud shrieks of joy, silhouetted themselves darkly against her gleaming face.
and then the speech making began.
the rev. goodman led off. he had something in the nature of a set speech for the occasion, which varied surprisingly little from year to year. it bade the guests welcome, always in the same felicitous terms, and contained the same allusions to the salubriousness of the climate, the unmatchable beauty of their point. alluding to god's great out-of-doors,[pg 256] the rev. goodman would invariably employ the same grand gesture.
"and now," he concluded, "i am sure, dear friends, we feel a gratitude in our hearts to the father of all goodness, who has guided our footsteps," et cetera, et cetera. "and may we all bow our heads with the rev. needham, and join him in prayer."
the rev. goodman sat down and the rev. needham scrambled to his feet. he closed his eyes very tight and prayed quite loud—as though defying marjory to prevail against him here. it was the next thing to being right in the pulpit! but he felt her gazing at him in that shrewd way of hers which seemed saying: "alfred, have you really got truth in your heart?" what did marjory mean by looking at him that way? what right had she to question his faith and to speak of truth?
it was really a very good prayer, though perhaps just a little more earnest than the occasion actually required. when the prayer was finished, he sat down. (naturally there was no applause.) all the other speakers would be applauded, but no applause lightened the sitting down of the rev. needham. however, there was a general stir in the camp, just as there is in church when backs, wearied with the sabbath bending, straighten cheerfully for another seven days of sin.
and then the rev. goodman, who was the official[pg 257] toastmaster, jumped up and told a humorous story, which every one had heard before; after which he turned to the rev. blake and asked him to recite the house by the side of the road, a very great favourite at the point. then the congregation sang that cheering and beautiful hymn, rock of ages, under cover of which most of the boys escaped and ran violent races up and down the beach. then the host told another moderately humorous story, in which he very cleverly incorporated something about the brother clergyman upon whom he meant to call for the next selection. this clergyman (who hailed from dubuque, iowa), not to be outdone, scored heavily by telling a humorous story he had learnt off from the ladies' home journal, but which in the telling he so miraculously manipulated that the rev. goodman became its hero! there always was a vast amount of pleasant playfulness at these assembly roasts. later on the congregation, sitting, sang that sublimely joyous hymn called jesus, lover of my soul. since there was no judicious organist at hand to speed things up, the singing was inclined to sag, and one half of the camp finished a little bit behind the other. but this was a very small matter indeed, because, as every one knows, it is the spirit that counts most, especially at such times. innumerable other speakers, many of them purely secular, were called upon. and mrs. goodman, who was quite an elocutionist, read a little story which only the innermost circle[pg 258] could hear. and miss whitcom nudged her friend. they slipped away and strolled along the beach together.
"i thought i'd rescue you, barrett," she said.
"but i was immensely enjoying myself," he smilingly protested.
"yes, i shouldn't wonder—especially the singing! you know, i was so desperately afraid they might call upon me—just as a curiosity, you know—and how i should have shocked them!"
"you think so?"
"why, of course. i never open my mouth without shocking somebody or other. i don't really set out to do it. i simply don't seem able to help myself."
"you don't shock me."
"perhaps not—any more."
"but you know you never really did."
"never?"
"no. at worst you only opened my eyes."
"well, barrett," she said, after a short silence, "i think i've always rather felt that: that you understood, deep down—that you weren't quite shockable, in fact."
"yes," he said meditatively. they strolled along, saying nothing more for a little time.
at length she asked: "do you remember the time we swam for the allenhurst medal?"
"of course i do," he nodded.
[pg 259]
"you remember how even we were—how we outdistanced all the others?"
he smiled queerly. "they hadn't a chance!"
"right-o, barrett. we knew how to stroke in those days! well," she continued after a moment, "and you haven't forgotten how i won the race—and why?"
"a sudden cramp—i thought i was done for!"
"oh, no, my friend." they were both smiling. "time has played tricks with your memory. it wasn't a cramp. now think, think hard. you went lazy at the finish. and so how could i help pulling in ahead in spite of myself?"
"marjory, i—"
"be not forsworn, my friend. let's agree that you went lazy at the finish. after all these years, can't we? it was a singular thing," she went on, half gravely and half smilingly. "you know i was just at the age.... well, it had a most singular effect upon me. yes, i may say it altered the whole course of my life, barrett." she laughed softly.
"great heavens, marjory, you don't honestly mean ...!"
"well, you see, i was one of the first of the 'new' women, and i just simply rebelled. that was all. you haven't forgotten how i sent the medal back to you?"
he looked quite serious. "i know," he said softly. "i was stupid about it for a long time.[pg 260] there didn't seem to be any sense in your sending it back. in fact...." he hesitated.
"do let's be perfectly frank!" she invited, with another short laugh.
"well, i thought it a wilful and childish attitude to take. i didn't want them to say i'd beaten a woman. we were still living on the fringe of chivalry, you know, when it was more important to walk on the proper side of a woman and tip your hat to her at a certain angle than to give her the vote. i was brought up in a delightful victorian atmosphere, where it wasn't considered the thing even to beat a woman at tennis, if you could decently help it."
"ah, yes!" cried marjory. "just think of it! but gradually you grew wiser, barrett—you and the world."
"yes," he muttered, "i and the world."
"you came to see...."
"yes, i came at last to see that you can't go lazy at the finish any more. i told you, and i meant it, that at last i've capitulated—capitulated at every point."
they walked on a little way in the moonlight, close to the waves. all at once a bold thrill of tenderness came on him. he drew the woman into his arms. she responded slowly. afterward she professed to be not quite sure whether they had kissed.
but there was a witness. oh, yes—there was a witness who could emphatically and joyfully testify that they did kiss, and that they kissed more than[pg 261] once. the witness, of course, was our ubiquitous little pagan god, who had abandoned at least a half dozen most promising cases at the roast to chase for a moment down the beach after this pair of obdurate mortals who had held off for twenty years.
