Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 47

The days of her waiting on fate, alone in the cabin under Wreckers'

Head, gave no surcease to her mental castigation. Her sin loomed the more huge as the hours dragged their slow length by.

And yet, with it all, Sheila's keenest anguish came through her renunciation of Tunis' love. She could see no possible way of holding to that if she would purge herself of the fault she had committed.

And above the stain of her false position since she had come to the Cape was the overcloud of that accusation which had first warped Sheila Macklin's life and humbled her spirit. She believed that she could never escape the shame of that prosecution and punishment for a crime she had not committed.

She believed that, no matter where she might go nor how blamelessly she might live, the fact that she had been sentenced to a woman's reformatory would crop up like the ugly memory of a horrid dream to embitter her existence. Was her life linked with Tunis Latham's, he must suffer also from that misfortune.

And so Sheila Macklin waited from hour to hour, from day to day, dully and in a brooding spirit, for release from a situation which must in time embitter her whole nature.

From the cabin at the foot of the seaward bluff of Wreckers' Head, the coming of the black gale out of the northeast was watched anxiously by Sheila, from the very break of this day. Tunis might be on the sea. She doubted if the threat of bad weather would hold the _Seamew_ in port.

There was no rain--just a wind which tore across the waste of waters within view of her station, scattering their crests in foam and spoondrift, and rolling them in huger and still huger breakers on the strand. It was a magnificent sight, but a terrifying one as well. The girl watched almost continually for a white patch against the black of the storm which might mark a sailing craft in peril.

Steam vessels went past, several of them. They, surely, were in little danger, were their hulls ordinarily sound and their engines perfect. All the fis.h.i.+ng craft had made for cover the night before.

The New York-Boston steamers would keep to the inside pa.s.sage in this gale.

Sheila had made all taut and trim inside the cabin. She had plenty of firewood and sufficient provisions to last her for a time.

About noon she heard the crunch of footsteps on the sand. It was little John-Ed who first appeared before her eyes. He thrust a letter into Sheila's hand.

"Dad brought it up from the port this morning, and I got it away from him. Say," he continued, evidently much disturbed, "he's coming here."

"Who is coming here--your father?"

"No, no! Not dad. I--I couldn't help it. I didn't tell him. I said you wanted to play alone here at being s.h.i.+pwrecked, and I was just like you said--your man Friday."

"Who do you mean?" asked Sheila, greatly agitated. "Not--"

"I bet 'twas that Tunis Latham told him you was here," continued John-Ed. "Anyway, don't blame me. All I done was to help him down the path."

He disappeared. Sheila stepped to the door. Cap'n Ira was laboring over the sands toward the cabin, leaning on his cane, his coat flapping in the wind and his cap screwed on so tightly that a hurricane could not possibly have blown it away.

But in addition and aside from the buffeting he had suffered from the wind, the old man looked much less trim and taut than Sheila had ever before seen him. He had not been shaved for at least three days; a b.u.t.ton hung by a thread upon his coat; there was a coffee stain on the bosom of his s.h.i.+rt.

He looked so miserable, and so faint, and so buffeted about, that the girl cried out, running from the door of the cabin to meet him.

The sweat of his hard effort stood on his brow, and he panted for breath.

"I swan! Ida May--er--well, whoever you be, gal, let me set down!

I'm near spent, and that's a fact."

"Oh, Cap'n Ball, you should not have done this!" cried the girl, letting him lean upon her and aiding him as rapidly as possible to the cabin door. "You should not have done this. You--you can do nothing for me. You can do no good by coming here."

"Humph! P'r'aps not. Mebbe you're right. Let me set down on that box, gal," he muttered.

He eased himself down upon the rough seat against the wall. He removed the cap with an effort and took his huge handkerchief from its crown. He mopped his brow and face and finally heaved a huge sigh.

"I swan! That was a pull," he said. "So you're settled here. Gone to housekeeping on your own hook, have ye?" he said.

"Just for a little while, Cap'n Ira. Only--only until I can get away. I--I have been expecting some money--payment of one of my father's old bills."

She slit the envelope of the letter little John-Ed had just brought her. Inside was a pale-blue slip--a money order.

"Yes," she said. "I can get away now. I must go somewhere to earn my living, and as far away from here as I can get."

"So you think on traveling, do you?" said the old man. "You ain't content with Big Wreck Cove and the Head?"

"Oh, Cap'n Ira!" she cried. "You know I can't stay here. Winter is coming. Besides, the people here--"

"Ain't none of 'em asked ye to come an' live with them?"

"Cap'n Ball!"

"Ain't ye seen Tunis?"

The girl hid her face from him. She put her hands over her eyes. Her shoulders shook with her sobbing. Cap'n Ira took a reflective pinch of snuff.

"I cal'late," he said, after wiping his eyes, "that it ain't Tunis'

fault that you are going away any more than it is mine and Prudence's. You just made up your mind to go."

"Cap'n Ball!" she exclaimed faintly, and again raised her eyes to his. "Can--can I help it? _Now?_"

"I don't know," he said, pursing his lips. "I don't know, gal, as anybody is driving you away from Wreckers' Head and them that loves ye here."

She was speechless. She gazed at him with drenched eyes, her face quivering uncontrollably. A hand pressed tightly to her breast seemed endeavoring to still the wild fluttering there.

"I don't know," he repeated, "that we got much to offer a gal like you, and that's a fact. We learned to know you pretty well while you stayed with us, Prue and me did. Somehow, we can't just seem to get the straight of what you told us that night you left. It--it ain't possible that you made some mistake, is it? Mebbe you was talking about some other gal?"

"Oh, Cap'n Ball!" she sighed. "I am able to tell you nothing that will change your opinion of me."

"Well, I don't know. I don't know. What you did say," he observed in that same reflective, gentle tone, "didn't seem to change our opinion much. Not mine and Prudence's."

"Cap'n Ball!"

"No," he went on, wagging his head. "You committing such a fault as you say you was accused of, and you coming down here as you did, through a trick--somehow those facts, if they be facts, don't seem to have much effect on our opinion. Me and the old woman feel that somehow--we don't know how--what you told us that night and what you done for us before that night don't fit together nohow."

She stared at him without understanding. He cleared his throat and mopped his brow again with the big silk handkerchief.

"No, gal, we can't understand how anybody as good and loving as you have been to us can be at heart as bad as--as other folks might try to make out. Fact is, we know you can't be bad."

"What--what do you mean, Cap'n Ball?" she asked faintly.

"I swan! I tell ye what I'm getting at," burst out the old man. "We want you to come back. Prudence, she wants you to come back. I swan!

I want you to come back. Why, even that dratted Queen of Sheby needs you, Ida May--or, whatever your name is! We've got to have you!"

"Prudence can't scurcely get around the house. And that niece of hers sits there like a stick or a stun, not willin' to scurce lift her hand to help. Thank the Lord _she's_ goin' home to-day. Her visit's come to an end. She don't like it down here. She says we're all a set of--er--hicks, I believe she calls us.