第23章

She shut her novel upon her thumb, that she might have nothing to do but admire Grace's courage, as the girl walked away.

"It will do her good, poor thing," said the elder woman. "She looks wretchedly."

"I can understand just why she does it," murmured Miss Gleason in adoring rapture.

"I hope she does it for pleasure," said Mrs. Alger.

"It is n't that," returned Miss Gleason mysteriously.

"At any rate, Mr. Libby seemed pleased."

"Oh, she would never marry HIM!" said Miss Gleason.

The other laughed, and at that moment Grace also laughed. The strong~current of her purpose, the sense of escape from the bitter servitude of the past week, and the wild hope of final expiation through the chances she was tempting gave her a buoyancy long unfelt. She laughed in gayety of heart as she helped the young man draw his dory down the sand, and then took her place at one end while he gave it the last push and then leaped in at the other. He pulled out to where the boat lay tilting at anchor, and held the dory alongside by the gunwale that she might step aboard. But after rising she faltered, looking intently at the boat as if she missed something there.

"I thought you had a man to sail your boat"

"I had. But I let him go last week. Perhaps I ought to have told you," he said, looking up at her aslant. "Are you afraid to trust my seamanship? Adams was a mere form. He behaved like a fool that day."

"Oh, I'm not afraid," said Grace. She stepped from the dory into the boat, and he flung out the dory's anchor and followed. The sail went up with a pleasant clucking of the tackle, and the light wind filled it.

Libby made the sheet fast, and, sitting down in the stern on the other side, took the tiller and headed the boat toward the town that shimmered in the distance. The water hissed at the bow, and seethed and sparkled from the stern; the land breeze that bent their sail blew cool upon her cheek and freshened it with a tinge of color.

"This will do you good," he said, looking into hers with his kind, gay eyes.

The color in her cheeks deepened a little. "Oh, I am better than I look.

I did n't come for"--"For medicinal purposes. Well, I am glad of it. We've a good hour between us and news or no news from Maynard, and I should like to think we were out for pleasure. You don't object?"

"No. You can even smoke, if that will heighten the illusion."

"It will make it reality. But you don't mean it?"

"Yes; why not?"

"I don't know. But I could n't have dreamt of smoking in your presence.

And we take the liberty to dream very strange things."

"Yes," she said, "it's shocking what things we do dream of people. But am I so forbidding?" she asked, a little sadly.

"Not now," said Libby. He got out a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette papers, and putting the tiller under his arm, he made himself a cigarette.

"You seem interested," he said, as he lifted his eyes from his work, on which he found her intent, and struck his fusee.

"I was admiring your skill," she answered.

"Do you think it was worth a voyage to South America?"

"I shouldn't have thought the voyage was necessary."

"Oh, perhaps you think you can do it," he said, handing her the tobacco and papers. She took them and made a cigarette. "It took me a whole day to learn to make bad ones, and this, is beautiful. But I will never smoke it. I will keep this always."

"You had better smoke it, if you want more," she said.

"Will you make some more? I can't smoke the first one!"

"Then smoke the last," she said, offering him the things back.

"No, go on. I'll smoke it."

She lent herself to the idle humor of the time, and went on making cigarettes till there were no more papers. From time to time she looked up from this labor, and scanned the beautiful bay, which they had almost wholly to themselves. They passed a collier lagging in the deep channel, and signalling for a pilot to take her up to the town. A yacht, trim and swift, cut across their course; the ladies on board waved a salutation with their handkerchiefs, and Libby responded.

"Do you know them?" asked Grace.

"No!" he laughed. "But ladies like to take these liberties at a safe distance."

"Yes, that's a specimen of woman's daring," she said, with a self-scornful curl of the lip, which presently softened into a wistful smile.

"How lovely it all is!" she sighed.

"Yes, there's nothing better in all the world than a sail. It is all the world while it lasts. A boat's like your own fireside for snugness."

A dreamier light came into her eye, which wandered, with a turn of the head giving him the tender curve of her cheek, over the levels of the bay, roughened everywhere by the breeze, but yellowish green in the channels and dark with the thick growth of eel-grass in the shallows; then she lifted her face to the pale blue heavens in an effort that slanted towards him the soft round of her chin, and showed her full throat.

"This is the kind of afternoon," she said, still looking at the sky, "that you think will never end."

"I wish it would n't," he answered.

She lowered her eyes to his, and asked: "Do you have times when you are sorry that you ever tried to do anything--when it seems foolish to have tried?"

"I have the other kind of times,--when I wish that I had tried to do something."

"Oh yes, I have those, too. It's wholesome to be ashamed of not having tried to do anything; but to be ashamed of having tried--it's like death.

There seems no recovery from that."

He did not take advantage of her confession, or try to tempt her to further confidence; and women like men who have this wisdom, or this instinctive generosity, and trust them further.

"And the worst of it is that you can't go back and be like those that have never tried at all. If you could, that would be some consolation for having failed. There is nothing left of you but your mistake."

"Well," he said, "some people are not even mistakes. I suppose that almost any sort of success looks a good deal like failure from the inside. It must be a poor creature that comes up to his own mark. The best way is not to have any mark, and then you're in no danger of not coming up to it." He laughed, but she smiled sadly.