Miss Trevor made up her mind that she must find out all about him, and she stepped out from the shadows of the rocks into the vivid, eerie light that was glowing all along the sh.o.r.e. The boy turned his head and looked at her, first with surprise, then with inquiry, then with admiration. Miss Trevor, in a white dress with a lace scarf on her dark, stately head, was well worth admiring. She smiled at him and Paul smiled back. It was not quite up to his first smile, having more of the effect of being put on from the outside, but at least it conveyed the subtly flattering impression that it had been put on solely for her, and they were as good friends from that moment as if they had known each other for a hundred years. Miss Trevor had enough discrimination to realize this and know that she need not waste time in becoming acquainted.
"I want to know your name and where you live and what you were looking at beyond the sunset," she said.
"My name is Paul Hubert. I live over there. And I can"t tell just what I saw in the sunset, but when I go home I"m going to write it all in my foolscap book."
In her surprise over the second clause of his answer, Miss Trevor forgot, at first, to appreciate the last. "Over there," according to his gesture, was up at the head of Noel"s Cove, where there was a little grey house perched on the rocks and looking like a large seash.e.l.l cast up by the tide. The house had a stovepipe coming out of its roof in lieu of a chimney, and two of its window panes were replaced by shingles. Could this boy, who looked as young princes should--and seldom do--live there? Then he was a sh.o.r.e boy after all.
"Who lives there with you?" she asked. "You see"--plaintively--"I must ask questions about you. I know we like each other, and that is all that really matters. But there are some tiresome items which it would be convenient to know. For example, have you a father--a mother? Are there any more of you? How long have you been yourself?"
Paul did not reply immediately. He clasped his hands behind him and looked at her affectionately.
"I like the way you talk," he said. "I never knew anybody did talk like that except folks in books and my rock people."
"Your rock people?"
"I"m eleven years old. I haven"t any father or mother, they"re dead. I live over there with Stephen Kane. Stephen is splendid. He plays the violin and takes me fishing in his boat. When I get bigger he"s going shares with me. I love him, and I love my rock people too."
"What do you mean by your rock people?" asked Miss Trevor, enjoying herself hugely. This was the only child she had ever met who talked as she wanted children to talk and who understood her remarks without having to have them translated.
"Nora is one of them," said Paul, "the best one of them. I love her better than all the others because she came first. She lives around that point and she has black eyes and black hair and she knows all about the mermaids and water kelpies. You ought to hear the stories she can tell. Then there are the Twin Sailors. They don"t live anywhere--they sail all the time, but they often come ash.o.r.e to talk to me. They are a pair of jolly tars and they have seen everything in the world--and more than what"s in the world, if you only knew it. Do you know what happened to the Youngest Twin Sailor once? He was sailing and he sailed right into a moonglade. A moonglade is the track the full moon makes on the water when it is rising from the sea, you know. Well, the Youngest Twin Sailor sailed along the moonglade till he came right up to the moon, and there was a little golden door in the moon and he opened it and sailed right through. He had some wonderful adventures inside the moon--I"ve got them all written down in my foolscap book. Then there is the Golden Lady of the Cave. One day I found a big cave down the sh.o.r.e and I went in and in and in--and after a while I found the Golden Lady. She has golden hair right down to her feet, and her dress is all glittering and glistening like gold that is alive. And she has a golden harp and she plays all day long on it--you might hear the music if you"d listen carefully, but prob"bly you"d think it was only the wind among the rocks. I"ve never told Nora about the Golden Lady, because I think it would hurt her feelings. It even hurts her feelings when I talk too long with the Twin Sailors.
And I hate to hurt Nora"s feelings, because I do love her best of all my rock people."
"Paul! How much of this is true?" gasped Miss Trevor.
"Why, none of it!" said Paul, opening his eyes widely and reproachfully. "I thought you would know that. If I"d s"posed you wouldn"t I"d have warned you there wasn"t any of it true. I thought you were one of the kind that would know."
"I am. Oh, I am!" said Miss Trevor eagerly. "I really would have known if I had stopped to think. Well, it"s getting late now. I must go back, although I don"t want to. But I"m coming to see you again. Will you be here tomorrow afternoon?"
Paul nodded.
"Yes. I promised to meet the Youngest Twin Sailor down at the striped rocks tomorrow afternoon, but the day after will do just as well. That is the beauty of the rock people, you know. You can always depend on them to be there just when you want them. The Youngest Twin Sailor won"t mind--he"s very good-tempered. If it was the Oldest Twin I dare say he"d be cross. I have my suspicions about that Oldest Twin sometimes. I b"lieve he"d be a pirate if he dared. You don"t know how fierce he can look at times. There"s really something very mysterious about him."
On her way back to the hotel Miss Trevor remembered the foolscap book.
"I must get him to show it to me," she mused, smiling. "Why, the boy is a born genius--and to think he should be a sh.o.r.e boy! I can"t understand it. And here I am loving him already. Well, a woman has to love something--and you don"t have to know people for years before you can love them."
Paul was waiting on the Noel"s Cove rocks for Miss Trevor the next afternoon. He was not alone; a tall man, with a lined, strong-featured face and a grey beard, was with him. The man was clad in a rough suit and looked what he was, a "longsh.o.r.e fisherman. But he had deep-set, kindly eyes, and Miss Trevor liked his face. He moved off to one side when she came and stood there for a little, apparently gazing out to sea, while Paul and Miss Trevor talked. Then he walked away up the cove and disappeared in his little grey house.
"Stephen came down to see if you were a suitable person for me to talk to," said Paul gravely.
"I hope he thinks I am," said Miss Trevor, amused.
"Oh, he does! He wouldn"t have gone away and left us alone if he didn"t. Stephen is very particular who he lets me "sociate with. Why, even the rock people now--I had to promise I"d never let the Twin Sailors swear before he"d allow me to be friends with them. Sometimes I know by the look of the Oldest Twin that he"s just dying to swear, but I never let him, because I promised Stephen. I"d do anything for Stephen. He"s awful good to me. Stephen"s bringing me up, you know, and he"s bound to do it well. We"re just perfectly happy here, only I wish I"d more books to read. We go fishing, and when we come home at night I help Stephen clean the fish and then we sit outside the door and he plays the violin for me. We sit there for hours sometimes. We never talk much--Stephen isn"t much of a hand for talking--but we just sit and think. There"s not many men like Stephen, I can tell you."
Miss Trevor did not get a glimpse of the foolscap book that day, nor for many days after. Paul blushed all over his beautiful face whenever she mentioned it.
"Oh, I couldn"t show you that," he said uncomfortably. "Why, I"ve never even showed it to Stephen--or Nora. Let me tell you something else instead, something that happened to me once long ago. You"ll find it more interesting than the foolscap book, only you must remember it isn"t true! You won"t forget that, will you?"
"I"ll try to remember," Miss Trevor agreed.
"Well, I was sitting here one evening just like I was last night, and the sun was setting. And an enchanted boat came sailing over the sea and I got into her. The boat was all pearly like the inside of the mussel sh.e.l.ls, and her sail was like moonshine. Well, I sailed right across to the sunset. Think of that--I"ve been in the sunset! And what do you suppose it is? The sunset is a land all flowers, like a great garden, and the clouds are beds of flowers. We sailed into a great big harbour, a thousand times bigger than the harbour over there at your hotel, and I stepped out of the boat on a "normous meadow all roses. I stayed there for ever so long. It seemed almost a year, but the Youngest Twin Sailor says I was only away a few hours or so. You see, in Sunset Land the time is ever so much longer than it is here. But I was glad to come back too. I"m always glad to come back to the cove and Stephen. Now, you know this never really happened."
Miss Trevor would not give up the foolscap book so easily, but for a long time Paul refused to show it to her. She came to the cove every day, and every day Paul seemed more delightful to her. He was so quaint, so clever, so spontaneous. Yet there was nothing premature or unnatural about him. He was wholly boy, fond of fun and frolic, not too good for little spurts of quick temper now and again, though, as he was careful to explain to Miss Trevor, he never showed them to a lady.
"I get real mad with the Twin Sailors sometimes, and even with Stephen, for all he"s so good to me. But I couldn"t be mad with you or Nora or the Golden Lady. It would never do."
Every day he had some new story to tell of a wonderful adventure on rock or sea, always taking the precaution of a.s.suring her beforehand that it wasn"t true. The boy"s fancy was like a prism, separating every ray that fell upon it into rainbows. He was pa.s.sionately fond of the sh.o.r.e and water. The only world for him beyond Noel"s Cove was the world of his imagination. He had no companions except Stephen and the "rock people."
"And now you," he told Miss Trevor. "I love you too, but I know you"ll be going away before long, so I don"t let myself love you as much--quite--as Stephen and the rock people."
"But you could, couldn"t you?" pleaded Miss Trevor. "If you and I were to go on being together every day, you could love me just as well as you love them, couldn"t you?"
Paul considered in a charming way he had.
"Of course I could love you better than the Twin Sailors and the Golden Lady," he announced finally. "And I think perhaps I could love you as much as I love Stephen. But not as much as Nora--oh, no, I wouldn"t love you quite as much as Nora. She was first, you see; she"s always been there. I feel sure I couldn"t ever love anybody as much as Nora."
One day when Stephen was out to the mackerel grounds, Paul took Miss Trevor into the little grey house and showed her his treasures. They climbed the ladder in one corner to the loft where Paul slept. The window of it, small and square-paned, looked seaward, and the moan of the sea and the pipe of the wind sounded there night and day. Paul had many rare sh.e.l.ls and seaweeds, curious flotsam and jetsam of sh.o.r.e storms, and he had a small shelf full of books.
"They"re splendid," he said enthusiastically. "Stephen brought me them all. Every time Stephen goes to town to ship his mackerel he brings me home a new book."
"Were you ever in town yourself?" asked Miss Trevor.
"Oh, yes, twice. Stephen took me. It was a wonderful place. I tell you, when I next met the Twin Sailors it was me did the talking then.
I had to tell them about all I saw and all that had happened. And Nora was ever so interested too. The Golden Lady wasn"t, though--she didn"t hardly listen. Golden people are like that."
"Would you like," said Miss Trevor, watching him closely, "to live always in a town and have all the books you wanted and play with real girls and boys--and visit those strange lands your twin sailors tell you of?"
Paul looked startled.
"I--don"t--know," he said doubtfully. "I don"t think I"d like it very well if Stephen and Nora weren"t there too."
But the new thought remained in his mind. It came back to him at intervals, seeming less new and startling every time.
"And why not?" Miss Trevor asked herself. "The boy should have a chance. I shall never have a son of my own--he shall be to me in the place of one."
The day came when Paul at last showed her the foolscap book. He brought it to her as she sat on the rocks of the headland.
"I"m going to run around and talk to Nora while you read it," he said.
"I"m afraid I"ve been neglecting her lately--and I think she feels it."
Miss Trevor took the foolscap book. It was made of several sheets of paper sewed together and encased in an oilcloth cover. It was nearly filled with writing in a round childish hand and it was very neat, although the orthography was rather wild and the punctuation capricious. Miss Trevor read it through in no very long time. It was a curious medley of quaint thoughts and fancies. Conversations with the Twin Sailors filled many of the pages; accounts of Paul"s "adventures"
occupied others. Sometimes it seemed impossible that a child of eleven should have written them, then would come an expression so boyish and naive that Miss Trevor laughed delightedly over it. When she finished the book and closed it she found Stephen Kane at her elbow. He removed his pipe and nodded at the foolscap book.
"What do you think of it?" he said.
"I think it is wonderful. Paul is a very clever child."
"I"ve often thought so," said Stephen laconically. He thrust his hands into his pockets and gazed moodily out to sea. Miss Trevor had never before had an opportunity to talk to him in Paul"s absence and she determined to make the most of it.