She was close to tears, but she smiled in spite of them.
"Well, no, Seth," she answered. "I will confess that Sarah Ann never worried me much."
"Then DON"T you care for me, Emeline?"
"I care for you much as I ever did. I never stopped carin" for you, fool that I am. But as for livin" with you again and runnin" the risk of--"
"You won"t run any risk. You say I"ve improved, yourself. Your princ.i.p.al fault with me was, as I understand it, that I was too--too--somethin"
or other. That I wa"n"t man enough. By jiminy crimps, I"ll show you that I"m a man! Give me the chance, and nothin" nor n.o.body can make me leave you again. Besides, there"s n.o.body to come between us now. We was all right until that--that Bennie D. came along. He was the one that took the starch out of me. Now he"s out of the way. HE won"t bother us any more and . . . Why, what is it, Emeline?"
For she was looking at him with an expression even more strange. And again she shook her head.
"I guess," she began, and was interrupted by the jingle of the telephone bell.
The instrument was fastened to the kitchen wall, and the lightkeeper hastened to answer the ring.
"Testin" the wire after the storm, most likely," he explained, taking the receiver from the hook. "h.e.l.lo! . . . h.e.l.lo! . . . Yep, this is Eastboro Lights. . . . I"m the lightkeeper, yes. . . . Hey? . . . Miss Graham? . . . Right next door. . . . Yes. . . . WHO?" Then, turning to his companion, he said in an astonished voice: "It"s somebody wants to talk with you, Emeline."
"With ME?" Mrs. Bascom could hardly believe it. "Are you sure?"
"So they say. Asked me if I could get you to the "phone without any trouble. She"s right here now," he added, speaking into the transmitter.
"I"ll call her."
The housekeeper wonderingly took the receiver from his hand.
"h.e.l.lo!" she began. "Yes, this is Mrs. Bascom. . . . Who? . . .
What? . . . OH!"
The last exclamation was almost a gasp, but Seth did not hear it. As she stepped forward to the "phone she had dropped her letter. Atkins went over and picked it up. It lay face downward on the floor, and the last page, with the final sentence and signature, was uppermost. He could not help seeing it. "So we shall soon be together as of old. Your loving brother, Benjamin."
When Mrs. Bascom turned away from the "phone after a rather protracted conversation she looked more troubled than ever. But Seth was not looking at her. He sat in the rocking-chair and did not move nor raise his head. She waited for him to speak, but he did not.
"Well," she said with a sigh, "I guess I must go. Good-by, Seth."
The lightkeeper slowly rose to his feet. "Emeline," he stammered, "you ain"t goin" without--"
He stopped without finishing the sentence. She waited a moment and then finished it for him.
"I"ll answer your question, if that"s what you mean," she said. "And the answer is no. All things considered, I guess that"s best."
"But Emeline, I--I--"
"Good-by, Seth."
"Sha"n"t I," desperately, "sha"n"t I see you again?"
"I expect to be around here for another day or so. But I can"t see anythin" to be gained by our meetin". Good-by."
Taking her letter and those addressed to Miss Graham from the table she went out of the kitchen. Seth followed her as far as the door, then turned and collapsed in the rocking-chair.
CHAPTER XIII
"JOHN BROWN" CHANGES HIS NAME
"So we shall soon be together again as of old. Your loving brother, Benjamin."
The sentence which had met his eyes as he picked up the note which his caller had dropped was still before them, burned into his memory.
Benjamin! "Bennie D."! the loathed and feared and hated Bennie D., cause of all the Bascom matrimonial heartbreaks, had written to say that he and his sister-in-law were soon to be together as they used to be. That meant that there had been no quarrel, but merely a temporary separation. That she and he were still friendly. That they had been in correspondence and that the "inventor" was coming back to take his old place as autocrat in the household with all his old influence over Emeline. Seth"s new-found courage and manhood had vanished at the thought. Bennie D."s name had scarcely been mentioned during the various interviews between the lightkeeper and his wife. She had said her first husband"s brother had been in New York for two years, and her manner of saying it led Seth to imagine a permanent separation following some sort of disagreement. And now! and now! He remembered Bennie D."s superior airs, his polite sneers, his way of turning every trick to his advantage and of perverting and misrepresenting his, Seth"s, most innocent speech and action into crimes of the first magnitude. He remembered the meaning of those last few months in the Cape Ann homestead. All his fiery determination to be what he had once been--Seth Bascom, the self-respecting man and husband--collapsed and vanished. He groaned in abject surrender. He could not go through it again; he was afraid. Of any other person on earth he would not have been, but the unexpected resurrection of Bennie D. made him a hesitating coward. Therefore he was silent when his wife left him, and he realized that his opportunity was gone, gone forever.
In utter misery and self-hatred he sat, with his head in his hands, beside the kitchen table until eleven o"clock. Then he rose, got dinner, and called Brown to eat it. He ate nothing himself, saying that he"d lost his appet.i.te somehow or other. After the meal he harnessed Joshua to the little wagon and started on his drive to Eastboro. "I"ll be back early, I cal"late," were his last words as he drove out of the yard.
After he had gone, and Brown had finished clearing away and the other housekeeping tasks which were now such a burden, the subst.i.tute a.s.sistant went out to sit on the bench and smoke. The threatened easterly wind had begun to blow, and the sky was dark with tumbling clouds. The young man paid little attention to the weather, however. All skies were gloomy so far as he was concerned, and the darkest day was no blacker than his thoughts. Occasionally he glanced at the bungalow, and on one such occasion was surprised to see a carriage, one of the turnouts supplied by the Eastboro livery stable, roll up to its door and Mrs. Bascom, the housekeeper, emerge, climb to the seat beside the driver, and be driven away in the direction of the village. He idly wondered where she was going, but was not particularly interested. When, a half hour later, Ruth Graham left the bungalow and strolled off along the path at the top of the bluff, he was very much interested indeed.
He realized, as he had been realizing for weeks, that he was more interested in that young woman than in anything else on earth. Also, that he had no right--miserable outcast that he was--to be interested in her; and certainly it would be the wildest insanity to imagine that she could be interested in him.
For what the lightkeeper might say or do, in the event of his secret being discovered, he did not care in the least. He was long past that point. And for the breaking of their solemn compact he did not care either. Seth might or might not have played the traitor; that, too, was a matter of no importance. Seth himself was of no importance; neither was he. There was but one important person in the whole world, and she was strolling along the bluff path at that moment. Therefore he left his seat on the bench, hurried down the slope to the inner end of the cove, noting absently that the tide of the previous night must have been unusually high, climbed to the bungalow, turned the corner, and walked slowly in the direction of the trim figure in the blue suit, which was walking, even more slowly, just ahead of him.
It may be gathered that John Brown"s feelings concerning the opposite s.e.x had changed. They had, and he had changed in other ways, also. How much of a change had taken place he did not himself realize, until this very afternoon. He did not realize it even then until, after he and the girl in blue had met, and the customary expressions of surprise at their casual meeting had been exchanged, the young lady seated herself on a dune overlooking the tumbling sea and observed thoughtfully:
"I shall miss all this"--with a wave of her hand toward the waves--"next week, when I am back again in the city."
Brown"s cap was in his hand as she began to speak. After she had finished he stooped to pick up the cap, which had fallen to the ground.
"You are going away--next week?" he said slowly.
"We are going to-morrow. I shall remain in Boston for a few days. Then I shall visit a friend in the Berkshires. After that I may join my brother in Europe; I"m not sure as to that."
"To-morrow?"
"Yes!"
There was another one of those embarra.s.sing intervals of silence which of late seemed to occur so often in their conversation. Miss Graham, as usual, was the first to speak.
"Mr. Brown," she began. The subst.i.tute a.s.sistant interrupted her.
"Please don"t call me that," he blurted involuntarily. "It--oh, confound it, it isn"t my name!"
She should have been very much surprised. He expected her to be. Instead she answered quite calmly.
"I know it," she said.
"You DO?"
"Yes. You are "Russ" Brooks, aren"t you?"