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SIX TO ONE; 
 
 6 
 
 
 A NANTUCKET IDYL 
 
 GENERAL SOCIETY OF 
 ^MD TRADESMEN 
 
 OF THE 
 CITY OF N. Y; 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM S SONS, 
 187 FIFTH AVENUE, 
 
 1878. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1878, BY G. P. PUTNAM S SONS. 
 
?S 10 4 & 
 
 S.6- 
 
 IS12 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAQX 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE ONE ...... 5 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE Six ..... .18 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Six TO ONE . . . . . . .27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 YELLOW ....... 47 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 IN A MERMAID S PARLOR . . . -69 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A "SQUANTUM" ...... 88 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS ? . . . 114 
 
 M5550G9 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SlASCONSET ...... 128 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 A STRUGGLE AND A VICTORY .... 144 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 MAN MUST WORK ...... 154 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 CONFESSION 170 
 
(> ;* :/ 1) B 
 SIX TO 
 
 A If ANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 OPPOSITE each other in the sanctum of Dr. 
 Brainard, one of the most eminent of the 
 younger physicians of New York City, sit the doc 
 tor himself, a man of thirty-five, and a younger 
 man, of perhaps thirty. The doctor and Mr. Edger- 
 ton, his present caller, are close friends, whose in 
 timacy dates from college days, and many is the 
 hour of social relaxation they have passed together 
 in each other s offices or at their common club. 
 But the motive of this call is not social. Mr. 
 Edgerton is consulting his friend professionally, 
 concerning certain unpleasant symptoms that 
 have been troubling him of late, symptoms the 
 
6 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 doctor has long since noticed but has shut his eyes 
 to from a strong repugnance to regarding his friend 
 in anything like a professional light. But now he 
 reproaches himself with not having spoken long ago. 
 
 Mr. Edgerton as he sits, appears to be of medi 
 um height and is of that brown-haired, grey-eyed 
 type, as common in the temperate zone as the red 
 color among horses. The face indicates an intel 
 lectual temperament, perhaps rather more receptive 
 than self-asserting, but without any suggestion of 
 softness. He would be called fine looking if the 
 nervous wrinkles could be smoothed out of his 
 cheeks and eyebrows, and the harassed expression 
 banished from his face. He is just now dispirited 
 and gloomy. It is noticeable that his fingers have 
 a way of nervously twitching, and that he is con 
 stantly changing his position in the easy chair he 
 occupies. His eyes moreover belie their natural 
 calm and candor of expression by unsteady and 
 shifting glances, and a restless motion. He is say 
 ing to the doctor, 
 
 " I don t know what s the matter at all, but 
 
THE ONE. 7 
 
 somehow I can t take any rest lately. I don t 
 refer so much to sleeping, although I find that hard 
 enough, as I ve told you, but to the impossibility 
 of lying off, of enjoying recreation and idleness, of 
 taking a waking rest. Somehow my mind will not 
 quit fretting over my work when I leave the office, 
 as it used to. I find it next to impossible to re 
 lapse into a passive state, however tired I am, and 
 I feel dreadfully tired all the while. But more 
 excitement instead of less, is the only thing that 
 rests me, and I know that must be wrong. 
 
 " And then the last half hour at the office is ter 
 ribly long, terribly ! longer than all the rest of the 
 day. I have to use almost a literal spur to get 
 through the last of my work. At times I come so 
 squarely against a stump that it is a simple impos 
 sibility to write another line. My brain seems for 
 the nonce as completely dead as a paralyzed arm, 
 and I just have to go home, no matter what is 
 pressing. That is one of the queerest sensations 
 a man ever has, I fancy, and one of the most ter 
 rifying. The quality of my work too, falls off us 
 
8 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 the difficulty of it increases. I cudgel my brains 
 in vain, and have pretty much made up my 
 mind that I ve overrated myself and been over 
 rated, and that I ought to resign my position. 
 
 " About the only sign of vigor I have left, if that 
 be one, is a constant fretfulness and crossness. 
 The least thing puts me into an uncontrollable rage. 
 I am often utterly ashamed of myself at the way I 
 abuse my subs, but I can t help it. What on earth has 
 come over me, Harry ? Is there any name for it ? " 
 
 There are few more trying experiences in a 
 doctor s life than when he is called on to make a 
 serious diagnosis for a sick friend. His sympathies 
 would fain becloud the fatal clearness of his per 
 ceptions. After a pause the doctor replied, affect 
 ing a cheery tone, 
 
 " Old boy, your case is perfectly clear. You 
 have overworked yourself and must stop short off 
 and take a long rest." 
 
 " Drop my profession ? Leave my place ? " 
 asked Edgerton with a scared, appealing look which 
 cut the doctor to the heart. 
 
THE ONE. 
 c< 
 
 Even so, Frank," he answered in a brave tone. 
 Not for long, perhaps, but the sooner the better. 
 No doubt a little real rest will soon build you up 
 again." 
 
 But Edgerton understood perfectly what he 
 meant that he was a broken-down man. He had 
 dimly anticipated something of the sort for a good 
 while, but still the doctor s announcement fell on 
 him with a crushing suddenness. At the very 
 threshold of his best decade he was laid on the 
 shelf. His work was clone. lie was dead among] 
 the living. He might indeed ultimately recover 
 so as to be able to do some light work in easy hours, 
 but this possibility was a mere mockery. There 
 was something humiliating and wounding, at once 
 to his vanity, his pride of intellect and position, his 
 ambitions, both moral and material, in this intima 
 tion that he had become a mental invalid. 
 
 As these reflections successively came over him 
 he fell into a sinking revery, in which he felt him 
 self dropping, dropping, from one plane of depres 
 sion to another, from one step to the one below, 
 
10 A NAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 down, down, toward the bottom. He heard the 
 doctor s voice a long way off, saying something like, 
 
 " Don t take it so hard, Frank ; scores of men 
 have come to me far worse off than you are, and 
 some of them are as well to-day as any in the city. 
 Cheer up, old fellow, your case is not a bad one." 
 
 " I thank God I m not married," said Edgerton. 
 " How could I bear to go home and tell my wife 
 that I was a broken-down man ? " 
 
 "Who said you were any such thing? I 
 didn t," replied the doctor fiercely. " Your nerves 
 are in a jangle, that s all, and you ve got to let up 
 on the demnition grind of your newspaper work long 
 enough for a six months summer vacation, be 
 ginning to-morrow ; not a day later." 
 
 " To-morrow ! It s impossible ! " cried Eager- 
 ton, with a despairing sort of vehemence. 
 
 "Have I got to scare you some more! " asked 
 the doctor. "Your case is not so bad but that I m 
 sure I can cure you, but every day you stick at 
 work means a month longer to get well in and less 
 chance of a cure at that. An immediate and 
 
THE ONE. 11 
 
 vacation is absolutely imperative. You must go 
 away from the city to some place, if possible, out 
 of reach of newspapers, .telegraphs, and railroads. 
 Climate doesn t much matter with you." 
 
 " There s no such place nowadays," said Ed- 
 gerton. " I fancy you had better send me to an 
 asylum for imbeciles and feeble-minded and have 
 done with it." 
 
 " Time enough for that later," replied the doc 
 tor cheerily. " How would you like a few months 
 at Nantucket to begin with ? I was down there 
 last summer and I don t believe there is a more out- 
 of-the-way, switched off sort of place in the United 
 States." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed the other, fairly shocked 
 into a display of vivacity in spite of his depression. 
 66 That ridiculous little dead-alive down-east sand 
 bank, where there are six women to one man ! " 
 
 " Isn t that enough for you ? because if not I can 
 reassure you/ said the doctor smiling. " At this 
 season the proportion is fifteen of the gentler to 
 one of the sterner sex, a large part of the few men 
 
12 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 being now absent on the mainland at their winter 
 occupations." 
 
 "I shouldn t think of objecting to an excess 
 of ladies society/ Edgerton replied, " but these 
 Nantucket women, I suppose, are mostly fish 
 wives and ancient virgins pickled in the east wind." 
 , " The more I think of it," pursued the doctor, 
 reflectively, " the more the place strikes me as an 
 admirable selection. It is now April and for three 
 months there will be no summer visitors to disturb 
 you there. You ve no idea how much you will 
 enjoy studying the queer society and customs of 
 the place. That will give you just about enough 
 occupation." 
 
 " Good God ! Harry, you must be crazy ! 
 You can t think that a man who has lived for ten 
 years in a newspaper office, transmitting the sensa 
 tions of a world through his nerves every day, could 
 stand being exiled to such a comatose community 
 as Nantucket ! I should go mad in a week ! " 
 
 " Perhaps you will fret some at first, just as 
 the drunkard does when he forswears vinous ex- 
 
THE ONE. 13 
 
 citement for the monotony of a temperate life, but 
 you have got to reconcile yourself to a diet of 
 quiet or you will never do six months more work," 
 replied the doctor. " I don t say that Nantucket is 
 your only possible sanitarium, mind you. Perhaps 
 you may think of others as good, but to me it 
 seems about the thing." 
 
 The doctor did not press the matter, but lead 
 ing the conversation upon the topics of hygiene in 
 general and Edgerton s case in particular, finally 
 succeeded in getting his patient into quite a cheer 
 ful frame. 
 
 "It doesn t seem to me really as if I could 
 quite go Nantucket," said the latter, voluntarily re 
 turning to the subject some time later, " and yet 
 in one way it would be quite convenient. I have 
 some sort of an uncle or aunt, I don t quite remem 
 ber which, living down there, to say nothing of a 
 pretty cousin who once spent a summer at our 
 homestead in Woodstock. They ve asked me to 
 make them a visit, but though it s scarcely polite 
 to say so, I don t think anything but this would 
 
14 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 have ever led me to seriously consider their invi 
 tation." 
 
 The next day Edgerton went down to the even 
 ing newspaper office in which he held the position 
 of managing editor, and had a long, and to him 
 very trying, interview with the publishers. They 
 were pained, surprised and entirely sympathetic 
 when he told them the verdict of his doctor. 
 Much against their will he insisted on making his 
 resignation final, for thus alone, the doctor had ad 
 vised him, could he secure himself the mental quiet 
 and lack of pre-occupation essential to his cure. 
 Later he bade his colaborers and subordinates in 
 the office good-bye, and what hurt him most was 
 the look of pity which he saw in their faces. He 
 appreciated how bitter a thing pity is until the 
 spirit is wholly broken. 
 
 He came in again after all had gone, to take a 
 last farewell of the familiar apartments that had 
 known him so many years. He sat long in his old 
 arm chair and leaned his head upon the ink-stained 
 desk. Dusk fell and the office boy came in whist- 
 
THE ONE. 15 
 
 ling to sweep out the room, but seeing the editor 
 still there, hushed his piping and was about to 
 retire. To his humble eye Edgerton had always 
 been a sort of Jupiter Tonans, and little did he 
 dream that the editor at that moment envied the 
 office boy. But so it was. To Edgerton the lad 
 seemed, by his connection with the working world, 
 to stand above him, and he experienced a sense of 
 moral inferiority in his presence. He said in a 
 humble tone, 
 
 "You needn t go, Johnnie. Sweep away. 
 Never mind me." 
 
 The day had been a bitter experience for him, 
 but he already felt the better for it. He was 
 much calmer, and that night, the first for many a 
 week, he slept as soundly as a child. The next 
 day he kept away from the office, wandering about 
 the city and trying vainly to interest himself in 
 doing nothing. Such a holiday would have been 
 all too short -had he been at work, but now the 
 mere fact that he was no longer a worker made it 
 insufferably long and wearisome. He somehow 
 
16 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 could not recall a single one of the hundred de 
 lightful recreations and excursions which, while 
 still a slave to the desk, he had pictured to himself 
 as charming uses of leisure. And at evening, as 
 the newsboys began to cry his paper on the street, 
 the sound made him so sick at heart and miserable, 
 that he was fain to lock himself in his room and 
 shut the windows close. 
 
 The next afternoon and the next, obeying a 
 gravitation he could not resist, he began to haunt 
 the newspaper offices again, and to wander about 
 them after office hours, like an uneasy ghost re 
 visiting the scenes of its passion, and such in 
 deed he seemed to himself. He took pains to avoid 
 meeting the men on these visits, but his habits 
 became known to them, and it was the talk in the 
 office that poor Edgerton had become a mere 
 wreck. 
 
 The doctor got wind of the way matters were 
 going, and meeting Edgerton one day, took him to 
 task, and the big whiskered man confessed with 
 weak tears in his eyes how wretched he was, and 
 
THE ONE. 17 
 
 how hard he found it to tear himself away from 
 his old life. 
 
 " I sympathize with ghosts," he said. 
 
 " This will never do in the world, never, sir. 
 Do you want to spoil my credit as a doctor ? If 
 you do I don t propose to let you/ cried the other, 
 with great show of indignation. " You must leave 
 the city this very day if I have to carry you out 
 on my back." 
 
 And the energetic doctor took him to his lodg 
 ings, packed his trunks, settled with his landlady, 
 locked up his closets, took him to the cars, got his 
 ticket and saw him oif for Woodstock, having 
 exacted a solemn promise that in a week, at farthest 
 he would go to Nantucket. 
 
 
&3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE SIX. 
 
 IT so happened that several days after the sud 
 den departure of Mr. Edgerton from New York, 
 
 Miss Belle Macy, of street, Nantucket, had a 
 
 little tea party. 
 
 Mary Veeder, Kate Mayhew, Anna Coffin, 
 Lizzie Folger, and Addie Follet were present. 
 
 " I asked Mr. Starbuck," Belle explained to the 
 girls, u but his crutch is being^ mended and he 
 couldn t come. There was Mr. Barnard still, but 
 he is rather old, you know, and a widower besides, 
 and so I thought you would rather have just us 
 girls." 
 
 " It seems to have been a Hobson s choice," re 
 marked Anna Coffin, a pale, sharp-featured maiden 
 with a sallow complexion. " I daresay we shall 
 
THE SIX. 19 
 
 get along very well without any gentlemen. If 
 we don t it won t be for want of practice anyhow." 
 
 " It is so odd that we should miss men so much 
 when they are such common coarse things. It is 
 just as if we had all the luxuries of the table and 
 no potatoes," remarked Lizzie Folger in her honest 
 matter of fact way. 
 
 " I m really sorry for you pretty girls," said 
 Anra Coffin. " Without mankind, you are like a 
 lot of pretty worsteds with no canvas to work fig 
 ures on. You d much better have all been homely 
 like me. Homeliness makes my face ache some 
 times, but pretty faces with their constant ache to 
 be seen and appreciated, in the long run, give more 
 pain to their wearers than homely ones, I ll warrant." 
 
 "Now who d suppose," exclaimed Kate May- 
 hew, a tall spirited brunette, "judging from tho 
 unworldly tone of Anna s conversation, that she was 
 the only girl in the company who has actually 
 captured a man and got him in engagement shack 
 les. She s always saying that she isn t pretty, 
 and perhaps she isn t in the honest, fair, square 
 
20 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 and aboveboard way May and Liz are, but she s 
 got sly underhanded ways of being charming which 
 are ten times as dangerous as any of our faces." 
 
 " I ve always wondered that the Catholics, who 
 have generally so sharp an eye for church pros 
 pects, don t set up a nunnery here," observed Belle. 
 " We island girls might as well be nuns in name as 
 in fact, and make a virtue of necessity." 
 
 " I m in favor of bolder counsels," said Kate, 
 who was fond of rather shocking the others. " Let 
 us raise a crew of island girls, man a schooner and 
 go for a kidnapping cruise along the coast, picking 
 up nice young men. They say there are some 
 sweet things along shore, from New Bedford to 
 New York. It would be a sort of historical re 
 venge for the rape of the Sabine women." 
 
 " Aren t you ashamed, girls," said Belle Macy, 
 laughing. " I m so thankful there is no danger of 
 any man overhearing us. We should frighten him 
 away by the next boat, and then those horrid 
 papers on the coast would be poking more fun be 
 cause another man had gone off." 
 
THE SIX. 21 
 
 " See how we ve shocked Addle with our talk," 
 said Anna. " We ought not to be filling her young 
 head with notions. Remember Addie, that men nre 
 toys for grown-up women to play with. Little girls 
 like you have nothing to do with such things." 
 
 The calm-eyed maiden addressed in this conde 
 scending tone would certainly not have been con 
 sidered a little girl anywhere else, but on the island 
 girls are kept back, as there is nothing to be gained 
 by putting them forward ; and as Addie was by 
 several years the youngest of the party, the others 
 adopted a quite motherly tone toward her. 
 
 "0, I wasn t shocked," she replied in a low, 
 musical, effortless tone. " I was thinking though 
 that instead of kidnapping more men, it would be 
 much more romantic and nicer every way, to send 
 away the few we have left and set up as an Amazon 
 republic." 
 
 " A promising lot of Amazons you are, to sit 
 here gossipping a whole evening about men," said 
 Mary Veeder, a placid blonde. " One would think 
 we had met in convention to consider the un- 
 
22 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 manned state of the island, and I m sure I didn t 
 come for that. I ll take another cup of tea, Belle. 
 Do let s be sensible girls." 
 
 " They shall be, May, bless your serious old 
 heart," replied Belle Macy, "in just a minute. I 
 only want to tell them something first. A young 
 man, ever so nice, is coming to our house from New 
 York for a long visit. And I m going to be gen 
 erous and divide him up among you all, which is a 
 good deal more than you did, you sly Anna Coffin, 
 when that young gentleman came to see you last 
 
 summer." 
 
 "Yes, indeed it is, n cried the other girls merrily, 
 while Anna smiled complacently. 
 
 " What makes you so generous ? " she asked 
 Belle. " Does he squint, or have red hair, or 
 what is the matter with him ? " 
 
 " Oh, what a girl to impute motives ! " replied 
 Belle. " You ll be ashamed enough of saying that 
 when you see him. He is tall and handsome, with 
 M ravishing moustache. Squint indeed ! He has 
 splendid eyes." 
 
THE SIX. 23 
 
 "What color?" asked Liz. 
 
 " Oh I forget ; blue, I fancy." 
 
 " What on earth makes him come here ? " asked 
 Kate, with a bewildered contraction of her thick 
 eyebrows. 
 
 " He is sick." 
 
 " Oh ! " chorussed the girls with an accent of 
 disappointment. Anna Coffin asked, 
 
 " The interesting invalid style, or the other 
 sort?" 
 
 " The interesting," replied Belle. " Brain ex 
 haustion, nervous prostration, result of overwork 
 as editor of a New York paper; so his mother 
 writes mine. He s my cousin, you see." 
 
 The girls were somewhat impressed by the 
 mention of diseases that were unknown on the 
 island. 
 
 " Can he walk about ? " asked Liz, with awe. 
 
 " I suppose so, or they would have said some 
 thing about it in the letter," Belle thought. 
 
 "Is it something the matter with his mind?" 
 inquired Mary Veeder. 
 
24 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " I presume so, but I don t think it can be very 
 bad or they wouldn t let him come alone," Belle 
 said. 
 
 " You haven t told us whether he is married or 
 not," remarked Liz. 
 
 "Of course he isn t. You don t suppose I 
 would jest so cruelly with your feelings as that." 
 
 " Did you ever see him ? Come, tell us about 
 him/ said Anna. 
 
 " I saw him a few days that summer I spent 
 at Woodstock. The most I remember is that he is 
 a good height, has rather a full face, and wears his 
 whiskers so as to leave his chin bare, and he has 
 smiling eyes. He talks a good deal and some of 
 his talk sounds as if he wrote poetry. I went out 
 to two or three parties with him when I was at 
 Woodstock, and it was clear that he was a favorite 
 among the girls, and that speaks well for him." 
 
 "I m sure I don t think so," said Anna. 
 "Women are about as good judges of men s real 
 characters as well, as men are of women s, and 
 they couldn t be worse." 
 
THE SIX. 25 
 
 " Well anyhow," persisted Belle, " the fact that 
 the Woodstock girls liked him shows that we shall, 
 for girls are awfully alike. And now let s not talk 
 about him any more or you will be looking foolish 
 when you meet him." 
 
 The rest of the evening passed in conversation 
 on women s topics, which in Nantucket are worn 
 more threadbare than anywhere else in the world 
 outside a convent. Hecent and prospective church 
 festivals arid sociables, parties and sewing bees, 
 the new way of dressing the hair, the merits of 
 Miss Smith as a dressmaker, and the coming lec 
 turer from Boston, were successively debated. A 
 peculiarity that would have struck an observer 
 was that men s names occurred less often than is 
 usual in social gossip, there being almost no refer 
 ences to flirtations, engagements or marriages. 
 Another noticeable thing was an air of comrade 
 ship and candor in the manner in which girls not 
 present were alluded to, that is not observable in 
 some feminine circles, and which perhaps a philoso 
 pher would have ascribed to the lack on the island 
 
26 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 of men, those apples of discord among women. 
 As the party broke up, Belle said, 
 
 " There s one thing understood, girls, and that 
 is that Mr. Edgerton, when he comes, is to be 
 common property, and his society is to be enjoyed 
 on communistic principles. There s going to be no 
 nonsense about it ; no abetting by any of you of 
 any attempts at a private flirtation which he may 
 make ; men are so absurd. All the girls who 
 promise this hold up their hands, and I won t intro 
 duce him to those who don t." 
 
 They all laughingly held up their hands. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 SIX TO ONE. 
 
 attention of the reader is at this point in- 
 vited to some extracts from a letter written 
 from Nantucket by Mr. Frank Edgerton to Dr. 
 Brainard, some fortnight or so after the former s 
 arrival at the island. 
 
 " If you were not a married man, and chained 
 besides to the galley oar by the exigencies of the 
 most exacting of professions except journalism, 
 I should not dare to describe to you the felicity of 
 my present situation, and do not do so as it is, 
 save under the most solemn charges of secrecy. 
 I ve never envied the Grand Turk his seraglio ; who 
 wants a hogshead of molasses ? But of the ethereal 
 bouquet of maidenhood, the perfume of pure girlish 
 natures, who ever had enough ! To be the only 
 man in a circle of half a dozen girls, to breathe as 
 if it were common air, the fragrance of their pres- 
 
A XAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 ence, to enjoy their glances like common light, such 
 is the earthly paradise of your grateful patient. 
 Did I ignorantly say that Nan tucket is swept by 
 bleak salt winds ? it is bathed in an atmosphere of 
 attar of roses. No age but must glow again, no in 
 firmity but must shortly be rehabilitated in such 
 an air, In this reservoir of femininity, I believe 
 I have found the fountain of youth. I am already 
 quite rejuvenated. If restored health were my sole 
 thought I ought to return to-day, but I know not 
 if ever I shall return again to the rude, coarse, mas 
 culine society of the mainland, for which I become 
 daily more unfitted." 
 
 Further on in this epistle the writer grows more 
 sedate. He says : 
 
 ."My cousin Belle Macy is a very nice girl 
 indeed. She not only makes my aunt s house 
 sunshiny, but has introduced me to a circle of her 
 girl friends, all charming and different as can be. 
 Already I have attended several little gatherings, 
 at which I have been the only gentleman present, 
 except a bashful half-grown boy or two, and an 
 
SIX TO ONE. 29 
 
 elderly gentleman, invited evidently to keep me in 
 countenance. The girls apparently feared I might 
 find it odd to be alone among them, but I took to 
 the novel situation so kindly that they were prob 
 ably reassured, for of late the elderly gentleman 
 and the boys have not been present. We call our 
 clique the Rainbow, otherwise the Prism, the 
 seven of us standing for the seven prismatic hues. 
 Pretty idea, isn t it ? It was Addie Follet s sug 
 gestion, and just like her. She is a pale grey-eyed 
 girl, with just as much beauty, I fancy, in her 
 face as you have the eyes to see into. Some 
 wouldn t see any ; I ve just begun. Prettier girls 
 than they almost all are, are not often seen. The 
 east wind stole for their cheeks the bloom of Eng 
 land s rosebud garden of girls, and they have the 
 health of all island peoples. I shouldn t write so 
 rhapsodically, but you see when I m with the 
 girls I get choked up with soft things to say which 
 I dare not utter, and therefore seek relief in for 
 warding them to you. Perhaps you can work 
 them over for domestic use. Compliments needn t 
 
30 A ^ANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 be nice fits, though to be sure any pretty thing will 
 fit Miss Brainard. But I say again, as you love 
 me, don t tell any of the fellows what I ve found. 
 To be sure you might say there was enough for 
 more than one, but that fellow who said enough 
 was as good as a feast had never visited Nan- 
 tucket." 
 
 Edgerton had certainly made excellent progress 
 in the good graces of the girls. They found him 
 good-looking, very entertaining and very apprecia 
 tive of their society. He talked a good deal, as 
 Belle had warned them, but they liked prodigiously 
 the eager earnest way in which he addressed him 
 self to their minds instead of to their faces, 
 especially as it was evident he didn t overlook the 
 latter. 
 
 Without being at all of a gallant, he had a gen 
 uine fondness for ladies society, and his evident 
 sense of pleasure in it went further to commend 
 him to their good graces than would any amount 
 of officious services. He was by temperament very 
 susceptible to poetic and sentimental suggestions, 
 
SIX TO ONE. 31 
 
 and obliged as he had been in his business life en 
 tirely to neglect this side of his disposition, the 
 exclusive society of these young ladies created an 
 intellectual atmosphere delightfully genial and stim 
 ulating ; for while men don t like sentiment unless 
 they fully understand it, and not always then, women 
 always enjoy it whether they understand it or not. 
 Their sympathy outruns their comprehension in 
 this respect, while that of men lags behind theirs. 
 
 A week or two of sailing had wonderfully toned 
 up Edgerton s appearance, put a spring in his step, 
 brought back the old gay light to his eyes, smoothed 
 the wrinkles out of his cheeks and brows, and 
 bronzed his face to a tint harmonious with the 
 tawny beard. 
 
 The sensitive temperament that had made him 
 an easy prey to the fret of business, now brought 
 him at once under the influence of the rest 
 and vitality of the sea. Floating idly in his boat 
 day after day, he rested his tired eyes on bound 
 lessness. His sense of sight had a sensation of 
 intoxication every time he freshly scanned the 
 
32 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 limitless prospect of the undulating waters. His 
 eyes felt as his muscles would, were the attraction 
 of gravitation suddenly annulled and the body made 
 weightless. Limitation is to the eye what gravita 
 tion is to the muscles. He seemed resting on the 
 heaving bosom of infinity and from the contact he 
 drew a sense of moral, mental, and physical health 
 and balance, such as he had never known before. 
 The sea cure was what he needed. For a brain 
 
 I wearied by the attrition of petty things and the 
 harassment of details, this prescription of infinity - 
 
 i illusion is the specific. 
 
 One warm evening toward the end of April the 
 Prism met at Mary Veeder s. When Belle and 
 Edgerton reached the house, although they were 
 late, they found no one in the unlighted parlors, 
 which seemed the more unaccountable as Edgerton 
 was sure he had heard the sound of voices and 
 laughter as they approached the door. 
 
 " They re on the walk. Go right up," said an 
 elderly lady putting her head out of the sitting- 
 room door on the other side the hall. 
 
SIX TO ONE. 33 
 
 " Come on, Frank/ said Belle, tripping up the 
 staircase. 
 
 " Where are you going ? " he asked in bewilder 
 ment. " She said out on the walk." 
 
 " Of course she did. Come on, what are you 
 waiting for ? " Edgerton began to have fears for 
 Belle s sanity. 
 
 " The walk is out doors not upstairs, I take it," 
 he said, with mild confidence in the strength of his 
 position. She stared down at him a moment and 
 then burst out laughing. 
 
 " Oh I forgot that you are a poor innocent con 
 tinental and haven t found out that our walks are 
 heavenward in Nan tucket. Come along and I ll 
 show you something." He did so, stumbling after 
 her as she lightly tripped through the hall and 
 garret and up more staircases, with a vague impres 
 sion on his mind that he was being made the victim 
 of some practical joke. Suddenly he emerged upon 
 a large balustraded platform perched on the peak of 
 the roof, and found himself in the midst of a merry 
 party of girls. Chairs, and a table with refreshments 
 
34 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 stood about, with rugs and cushions for the in 
 dolent, making the illusion complete of an oriental 
 house-top scene. Edgerton s ignorance as to the 
 meaning of a u walk " in Nantucket struck the girls 
 as extremely funny, and it was forthwith explained 
 to him that past generations of retired sea captains 
 had built these platforms or walks for the sake of 
 commanding a sea view and preserving the illusion 
 of their familiar quarter decks. 
 
 "We have mostly torn them down of late 
 years," said Kate Mayhew. "We don t love the 
 sea as they did, for all it means to us is isolation 
 from civilization." 
 
 " Kate hates it and never misses a chance for 
 a spiteful fling," said Anna, " but I think we island 
 folks are mostly rather fond of our prison wall. 
 Addie even has a misty theory about the ocean 
 being Na-ntucket s wedding ring and making us 
 girls brides of the sea, a new order of nuns, you 
 observe. But most of us can t quite get that far." 
 
 " Oh, let s talk about the land, that God made 
 because He was tired of the sea," said Kate. " Do 
 
SIX TO ONE. 35 
 
 tell us some more about New York, Mr. Edgerton. 
 That s the sort of sea, a sea of men and women, 
 that I should like to live beside." 
 
 And so Edgerton told them for an hour or so 
 about the city and its life, being constantly sur 
 prised to see how the most trite and familiar facts 
 and reflections on that subject impressed his listen 
 ers. It seemed to them a fairy tale. In the course 
 of his talk he alluded to the Hudson, whereupon 
 Addie Follet said, 
 
 "Do tell me, Mr. Edgerton, what a river is 
 like." 
 
 " Yes, Frank, do tell her. She has never been 
 off the island and never saw even a brook." 
 
 " Then you ve never seen," said he, turning to 
 Addie, " how land and water can set each other off, 
 contribute to each other s beauty and harmonize in 
 wedded effect. Here on the sea-shore the two are 
 generally at war with brief and precarious truces. 
 And yes, if you were to see a river I think the 
 utter silence of its motion would be the first thing 
 to strike you, especially as you are so accustomed 
 
36 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 to the uproar of the beach. You would be strangely 
 moved, I m sure, as you leaned your face so that 
 your cheek nearly touched some great river s sur 
 face, and looking upward saw it come slipping to 
 ward you round a bend, resistless as ten thousand 
 avalanches, yet sweeping on as softly, smoothly, 
 silently, as a girl gliding on tip-toe, with her finger 
 on her lip. How the voiceless beauty of some 
 rivers haunts me now ! " 
 
 "Then they can t seem alive," said Addie dis 
 appointedly. 
 
 " Oh, indeed they do," he replied. " When you 
 are near them you feel the magnetism of a living 
 presence, though so silent. The dweller on their 
 banks has a sense of companionship. Why, when 
 in travelling I pass a river, I always feel that I am 
 suffering loss in leaving an acquaintance and pos 
 sible friend behind, and I carry with me always a 
 vague remembrance of its personality. 
 
 " There can be no general definition of a river, 
 because" each one has such a distinct personality of 
 its own, and especially the little river, not more 
 
SIX TO ONE. 37 
 
 than a stone s throw across. Such small streams 
 are full of a sweet racy individuality, and they are 
 not so large that one is awed by them. They 
 are small enough to know thoroughly. 
 
 But I m romancing. You must excuse me. It 
 isn t often that one has a chance to tell what a 
 river is." 
 
 " Oh, do go on," cried the girls, nor was he 
 hard to persuade, for the opportunity of airing a 
 pet enthusiasm of his before listeners, in whom 
 sight had not limited the creative potency of the 
 imagination, was too enticing. 
 
 " Which had you rather live beside," asked 
 Lizzie Folger, "a river or the sea?" 
 
 " They re not the least alike," he replied. " The 
 river is the more companionable and piquant. Its 
 size doesn t make sympathy so difficult as it is 
 vyith the ocean. The ocean is about as incompre 
 hensible as the modern one God, but the rivers 
 are more like the old demi-gods or lesser divinities, 
 not without touches of humanity." 
 
 " I should like to be there when you get your 
 
38 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 first sight of a river, Addie. You ll be dreadfully 
 disappointed," said Lizzie Folger. 
 
 " I should like to be there too," said Eclgerton. 
 u Perhaps the river will yield to the magical insight 
 of the first glance secrets of its meaning which my 
 own perceptions, blunted by familiarity, only blun 
 der at guessing." 
 
 " I will invite you all," said Addie, smiling. 
 " but there is no hurry. I doubt if I ever get to 
 rivers. The sea will last my lifetime. When I 
 have understood that it will be time enough to try 
 something else." 
 
 "Why Addie," said Belle, "you are like the 
 rustic who thought he had got to eat the whole of 
 every dish on the bill of fare before he could taste 
 the next." 
 
 " Am I so bad as that ? " asked Addie, seriously. 
 
 " No, Belle," said Edgerton, " she is rather like 
 art-enthusiasts in a gallery of grand pictures who 
 do not feel as if they could leave one masterpiece 
 for another until they have mastered its meaning, 
 even if they stand forever before it, and never see 
 
SIX TO ONE. 39 
 
 a second picture. T don t suppose they would lose 
 anything by that course, for the meaning of the 
 whole universe is in every part of it ; the answer 
 to one of its problems, if it be the ultimate, answers 
 all the rest ; the key that unlocks one heaven un 
 locks all seven." 
 
 I should like to have seen the vision of a river, 
 weird, majestic, mystical and vaguely personal, that 
 floated through Addie Toilet s dreams that night 
 
 "When do the summer visitors begin to ar 
 rive?" inquired Edgerton. 
 
 " Not for a couple of months yet, I m thankful 
 to say," replied Anna. 
 
 " Why ? don t you like them ? " 
 
 "No, we don t any of us, except the hotel 
 keepers and owners of fishing-boats," said she, de 
 cidedly. " We don t like to be regarded as curi 
 osities, or have strangers come just to play for fun 
 at a sort of life we live in sober earnest the year 
 round. People don t like to have what is practical 
 to them patronized as amusement by others. It 
 cheapens it in their own eyes. 1 
 
40 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Mary, Addie, and Belle agreed with Anna. 
 Liz rather liked the visitors ; it relieved the mo 
 notony ; while Kate said that the only reason she 
 didn t was that it made her so envious when they 
 sailed away home again. 
 
 " I do hope the island will never become popu 
 lar as a pleasure resort," said Anna. 
 
 " It is in great danger," remarked Edgerton, 
 " and so is every pretty or peculiar nook along the 
 coast or in the mountains. The people over there 
 on the mainland get so hungry for beauty in their 
 nine months of toil and moil that they are on the 
 look-out for every tid-bit of sea or landscape to 
 devour in the vacation senson, and they do devour 
 it literally, spoiling and making an end of its charm 
 by crowding to enjoy it, to say nothing of incident 
 ally demoralizing the inhabitants by turning them 
 into a crowd of lackeys and swindlers. If a tourist 
 finds a particularly charming spot in his rambles, 
 unless he has a special grudge against it, you would 
 suppose he d have sense enough to keep it a reli 
 gious secret. But the fool generally goes blabbing. 
 
SIX TO ONE. 41 
 
 It s odd how tastes differ. Now I d as soon think 
 of advertising the attractions of my sweetheart and 
 getting up popular excursions at cheap rates to 
 make the public acquainted with her." 
 
 As they talked the moon rose toward her mid 
 dle course, flooding with light the sleepy town, the 
 shining bay and the group on the housetop, shad 
 owing the eyes of the girls with a duskier light and 
 lending their forms an ideal grace. 
 
 " Oh, by the way," said Edgerton, " Won t some 
 of you please give me a name for my new cat- 
 rigged sailboat ? I have hired it for the season 
 and as you will all have to ride in it a good deal, 
 you had best select a good name." 
 
 "Naming boats is the special province of sen 
 timental people/ said Anna, " and I beg off. Ask 
 Addie. Boats are her particular department." 
 
 "Why not call it "The Dream?" said that 
 young lady. 
 
 " What s the significance ?" asked Belle. 
 
 " Oh, because a boat sails away from shore as 
 we drift out when we sleep." The idea pleased 
 
42 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 them all and it was decided to christen the boat 
 accordingly. 
 
 On Belle s finally announcing that she must 
 take her invalid cousin home, the party broke up. 
 Edgertori insisted on escorting all the girls to their 
 residences, so with one on each arm, and the other 
 three behind, the merry party set out. 
 
 He sat long in his room that night tingling in 
 every nerve with the delightful exhilaration of the 
 evening. 
 
 " There s no use talking," he finally muttered 
 to himself, " women are like galvanic batteries ; 
 the greater the number of cups the greater the 
 force of the current. I never appreciated before 
 how the womanly afflatus increases in intensity 
 with the number of women." 
 
 In a letter to Dr. Brainard the next day he 
 pursues the same train of thought, and on that ac 
 count I insert several extracts. 
 
 " Isn t it true," he says, " that while the ideal 
 marriage is that between one man and one woman, 
 a man needs attrition with a number of feminine 
 
SIX TO ONE. 43 
 
 minds to develop his full responsiveness to femi 
 nine influence ? Monogamy may be the true law of 
 marriage, but, as I take it, polygamy and polyandry 
 is the sexual law of the intellect, for it strikes me 
 that there is a marriage intellectual as well as 
 physical, complex and social as well as dual and 
 domestic. The lines of these different species of 
 sexual union may not necessarily coincide, but I 
 am at a loss to see why unions of the one sort, 
 although so entirely spiritual, are not as real as those 
 of the other, and often, no doubt, in a much higher 
 sense complete. Matrimony is by no means the 
 only web in which the souls of men and women are 
 woven together. If there strike you any oddity 
 in this sort of talk, just remember that it is the sug 
 gestion of my strange and delightful relations with 
 the charming circle of girls here. My imagination 
 is kept constantly busy seeking for those relations 
 new expressions, and poetical interpretations. 
 
 " Of course you will understand that there are 
 no incipient love affairs in this case. Whatever 
 feeling it is that a man entertains equally toward 
 
44 A NAN TUCKET IDYL. 
 
 half a dozen girls, it certainly is not love. I 
 shouldn t be human if I hadn t tried a little flirta 
 tion at first, but somehow there didn t seem to be 
 any response, and since, I have stayed where the 
 girls have put me, and on the whole I like it best 
 so. We all know what it is to touch hearts with 
 women, but to touch minds is, I am sure, an even 
 finer thrill, a subtler, more spiritual pleasure, which 
 has no reaction. I never enjoyed my mind so 
 much as now. Between us, I never felt so bright 
 as when with these girls. I am constantly being 
 as surprised at the clever ideas I find in my mind, as 
 a man is who discovers unsuspected five- dollar bills 
 in his vest pocket. Whether it is that the ideas are 
 really unusually good or that the magical medium of 
 feminine sympathy transfigures common things, I 
 can t say. Would I could bottle some of this won 
 der working feminine effluence ! With a vial thereof 
 in my desk at the office I should never have flatted 
 out as I did. 
 
 " That brings me back to business thoughts. I 
 am thankful that you persuaded me to resign my 
 
SIX TO ONE. 45 
 
 place for good, for I should otherwise deem it my 
 clear duty to return forthwith. As it is I feel less 
 like it, with every new access of health. Why, 
 bless you, if I hadn t shaken off my business I 
 should have entirely forgotten that one s mind may 
 be a source of enjoyment to oneself. I was fast 
 coming to regard it merely as a tool to make a liv 
 ing with. The world is larger, the meanings of life 
 and the modes of life more various, than I imagined 
 while stuck in my rut there in the office. It 
 seemed then as if there was but just that one point 
 by which I could grip on to the world and keep in 
 connection with it. But now I find that I died 
 out of a narrow treadmill existence, habit bound 
 and routine, to be born again into the world with 
 a youth s sense of the rich and boundless op 
 portunities of life. I believe already, on the 
 strength of my own experience, in the Ameri 
 can practice of changing one s profession half a 
 dozen times in a lifetime. Our minds do so soon 
 become habit-bound as the result of the establish 
 ment of permanent relations ! And if to be habit- 
 
46 A NA\TUCKET IDYL. 
 
 bound is our fate and normal state, let us at least, 
 like other crustaceans, change our shells periodi 
 cally. The willing, choosing, initiating faculties, 
 the exercise of which is the real joy of life, are so 
 prompt to abdicate in favor of habit, that we can 
 only maintain a vigorous vitality as we keep mov 
 ing and challenging new emergencies. I write you 
 long letters because that is all , I do. I m just en 
 joying myself, and, old boy, there is a mighty deal 
 in one s self to enjoy, if you once get the hang of 
 how to do it." 
 
4 *~ v " - _J 
 
 CHABTteR IY>^: 
 YELLOW. , 
 
 1) <* <> U D 
 
 ONE thing Edgerton had rather wondered at. 
 Although he was now upon terms of consid 
 erable intimacy with the girls and had passed a 
 dozen evenings in their society, no one of them had 
 as yet ever asked him, even in the most general 
 sort of way, to call upon her, and this too in spite 
 of some rather plain hints on his part of a willing 
 ness to be asked. 
 
 He missed this because he began to want to 
 see them separately, at least some of them. It 
 was only of late that he had experienced this 
 desire, having at first been perfectly satisfied with 
 their general effect, set, as it were, in a cluster. 
 The six girls had so long been intimate that their 
 characters had to an unusual extent come to adapt 
 themselves to one another, so that each one set the 
 others off and was herself complementary to the 
 general effect. Edgerton felt that, as regarded 
 
48 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 most of the girls, this joint effect was likely to be 
 the most satisfactory, and that if seen apart they 
 might appear to less advantage. But in regard to 
 one or two he did not have this feeling. 
 
 One afternoon being alone with Belle in the 
 sitting room, he took an opportunity of hinting in a 
 matter of course way, that he thought of making a 
 call or two on the members of the Prism. She 
 looked up quickty from her sewing, and asked with 
 evident curiosity, 
 
 " Who has asked you to call ? " 
 
 " Why none of them have exactly asked me," 
 he replied, " but I fancied that, seeing we are get 
 ting well acquainted, it would not be rude to make 
 a call or two of my own motion." 
 
 " Whom were you going to call on, if you don t 
 mind telling? " 
 
 He would not have minded, but he thought he 
 detected an accent of special interest in his cousin s 
 tone of affected indifference, and so replied in non 
 committal fashion. She glanced at him with au 
 amused little look in her blue eyes and said, 
 
YELLOW. 49 
 
 a Well, Frank, I m glad you told me, for you 
 see Island etiquette is rather peculiar in some re 
 spects, and I think I wouldn t hurry about calling. 
 I supposed that what with our little meetings every 
 day or two, you saw enough of them." 
 
 He felt like telling her that a tete-a-tete with 
 a lady, and a conversation with several ladies, are 
 as different as a sonata and a pot-pourri, but he 
 merely replied, 
 
 " Well, I suppose you know best, coz, and I m 
 much obliged for the hint." 
 
 Pretty soon Belle put on her hat and ran over 
 to Kate Mayhew s, whom she found with the 
 sleeves rolled up on her plump arms, making bis 
 cuits for tea. She arid Belle were special friends, 
 and Belle never thought that she fairly knew any 
 thing until Kate knew it too. 
 
 * Tell me what you are laughing at, directly," 
 the latter demanded, as Belle stood in the pantry 
 door, her face rippling over with fun. 
 
 "My handsome cousin is getting unmanage 
 able." 
 
 3 
 
50 A NAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Kate s black eyes were brightest when her 
 cheeks had color in them. " What do you mean ?" 
 with more interest if less incisiveness in her voice. 
 
 " Why, don t you think he started up all on a 
 sudden this afternoon and said he was going around 
 calling on some of you, and I had to tell a big par 
 able about its not being island fashions to make 
 calls, in order to stop him. At first I was afraid 
 some of the girls had broken their promises by 
 asking him to call, but he said not. He was just 
 going to do it out of whole cloth. Showed he 
 wanted to seriously, eh, Kate ? " 
 
 "Whom was he going to call on?" inquired 
 Kate, flicking away a piece of dough with her fin 
 ger and following it with her eyes as if quite ab 
 sorbed in its fate. 
 
 " I tried to get him to tell, but he wouldn t 
 allow that he had any special intentions, though of 
 course he must have had." 
 
 " Yes, he must have had," Kate assented look 
 ing around for another piece of dough to send after 
 the first. 
 
YELLOW. 51 
 
 " I don t think it can be anything serious," said 
 Belle, a but we must be on the lookout. He is 
 going to stay all summer and we can get lots of 
 fun out of him if we can prevent his being foolish. 
 You haven t noticed anything have you ? Mary 
 Veeder is very pretty, and she s always looking at 
 him while he talks, which you know is most of the 
 time. Too much blue eyes, or black ones either, 
 aren t good for any man." 
 
 "He doesn t care for her, I ll warrant," said 
 Kate, with positiveness. "I mean not in that 
 way," quite making the harmless little word blush 
 by the significant stress she laid on it. 
 
 "Well, who can it be then ?" pursued Belle. 
 " Not Anna, for he knows she is engaged ; Addie 
 is a mere child ; and Liz oh, I know it isn t Liz. 
 Why Kate, it isn t you, is it ? " 
 
 With a curious mixture of surprise, consterna 
 tion, and disgust, Kate felt that her cheeks were 
 beginning to burn. Her indignation at such false 
 witnesses only increased the insulting glow, and 
 well she knew that Belle s sharp eyes would never 
 
52 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 miss the signal. In her strait an inspiration came 
 to her. Her hands were covered with flour, and 
 instantly clapping them upon her cheeks she left a 
 covering that quite disguised their rosiness, ex 
 claiming as she did so, 
 
 " Nonsense, Belle ! By the way, did you know 
 how good flour is for the complexion. I always 
 daub my cheeks when I make biscuits." 
 
 The recording angel doubtless blots out fibs 
 told for modesty s sake, of which the number is 
 legion. 
 
 " If it would give me your complexion I 
 wouldn t mind using a barrel a week. Anna Coffin 
 would need two," said Belle innocently. " But 
 good-bye, it is time I were making biscuits myself 
 for his lordship s supper." 
 
 " By the way, Belle," said Kate, as her friend 
 turned away, " I thought you could be depended 
 on to keep Mr. Edgertou at home." 
 
 She said this with a particular significance 
 which Belle answered with an entirely natural 
 laugh. 
 
YELLOW. 53 
 
 " Pshaw, Kate ! He s my brother so far as 
 that sort of thing is concerned," and with that she 
 ran off. 
 
 Kate did noi> speak to any one about Edger- 
 ton s new departure, but Belle acquainted all 
 the girls with it and warned them to be on their 
 guard. 
 
 The only one who felt quite sure that it was 
 not herself on whom Edgerton had intended calling, 
 was Addie Follet. This was partly because she 
 was the youngest, and had been in the habit of 
 being regarded and of regarding herself as a child 
 compared with the others, but mostly because her 
 entire habit of mind and tone of sentiment were 
 peculiarly calculated to exclude the ideas of the 
 other sex and of flirtations which most girls of her 
 age are sufficiently inclined to. 
 
 On her father s side she was descended from a 
 race of sea captains. He had fallen in love with her 
 mother while she was a passenger on his ship going 
 to Italy for the purpose of art study. Both her par 
 ents had died almost before Addie could remember, 
 
54 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 and she had always lived with an uncle in a house 
 on the windy bluff overlooking the sound outside 
 the harbor. Her uncle being childless and living 
 somewhat out of the town, she had grown up 
 seeing little of other children. The beach had 
 been her playground since she was a baby, and 
 the waves almost her only playmates. As she 
 grew, up the development of strong aesthetic feel 
 ings, her mother s legacy, had given this child 
 ish devotion to the sea new and deeper interpre 
 tations. 
 
 Later on the vague aspirations and longings of 
 opening womanhood came, and in her almost con 
 ventual seclusion, they not unnaturally found play 
 in heightening her previous admiration and awe of 
 the ocean into something like a mystical passion. 
 Up to the time of which I write this nun of the 
 sea had not been conscious of any inclination even 
 toward that ideal man who is the first lover of 
 every woman, and without whose predisposing influ 
 ence no subsequent lover would have any chance. 
 For every feeling that stirred within her she found 
 
YELLOW. 55 
 
 an easy translation into some new form of sym 
 pathy with the sea, some new mood of absorption 
 in it. She would have laughed at the suggestion 
 that a human being could call forth the exalted 
 and intense emotions which the sea elicited and 
 satisfied. 
 
 I have called her a " nun of the sea," and there 
 was something of that in her feeling. Although 
 there could be nothing more spontaneous than 
 her passion for the ocean, at the same time her 
 feminine instinct was pleased with a more or less 
 vague idea of renunciation and of self devotion for 
 its sake. 
 
 It was now June, and the season for sailing 
 parties having opened, The Dream was in requisi 
 tion nearly every warm day to take out the Prism. 
 Edgerton was a very fair amateur navigator, and 
 had been out with the fishermen often enough to 
 learn the coast and the currents. One reason he 
 enjoyed these sailing parties so much was the 
 excuse they gave him to withdraw his six sweet 
 hearts completely from all contact with the rest of 
 
56 A NAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 the world, isolating them with himself upon the 
 sea. He had written to Dr. Brainard : 
 
 " It is the absurdest thing what a sense of pro 
 prietorship I begin to feel in these girls. I never 
 before understood how a man could be jealous for 
 half a dozen at a time, and consequently never did 
 justice to the feelings of the Moslem husband." 
 
 He called them his crew, and each had her 
 special seat in the boat. On his right and left as 
 he sat at the tiller, Kate and Ad die had their 
 places, and sitting between them, the others in 
 front of him, his eyes full of pretty faces, the boat 
 careering before a fresh breeze, and yet obedient to 
 the lightest touch on the tiller, he would not have 
 changed places with a sultan. lie was enthusias 
 tically fond of sailing. It combined, he maintained, 
 the special zests of swimming, skating, horseback- 
 riding, driving, and flying itself. 
 
 The girls liked sailing well enough, though with 
 all of them but Ad die familiarity had rather blunted 
 their enthusiasm. But in her Edgerton found en 
 tire sympathy with his exuberance. Often he for- 
 
YELLOW. 57 
 
 got the sea itself in watching her absorption in it, 
 her lithe figure swaying in luxurious self-abandon 
 ment to the motion of the boat, her lips parting in 
 the relaxation of sensuous emotion, and her great 
 eyes, as they rested on the sunlit foaming waves, 
 glistening with the moisture of a passionate sym 
 pathy. 
 
 It struck Edgerton also that he gained a new 
 appreciation of the girls when he had them out on 
 the sea. For the delicate beauty of women in the 
 presence of the grand and stern in nature, has the 
 charm of Alpine flowers blooming on rugged moun 
 tain sides. And not only this, but the influence 
 of women and of nature, being often felt by men in 
 much the same way, the force of a companion as 
 well as a contrast is experienced, as between two 
 sources of a similar intoxication. 
 
 One twilight after they had been out sailing, as 
 Edgerton sat smoking and reviewing the occurrences 
 of the day, he fell to wondering whether he could 
 have been so impolite as to have neglected to help 
 all the girls out of the boat, for to save himself he 
 
58 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 could recall but two hands that he had touched. 
 Afterwards going out for a stroll he was sauntering 
 along the grassy streets, lazily pondering the pie 
 bald paving, the queer, shingled exteriors of the 
 houses, and amusing himself with getting lost in 
 the multiplicity of lanes and blind alleys that ram 
 ify among the buildings, going everywhere and 
 no whither, when he saw a young lady walking 
 ahead of him. Although her back was toward him 
 he at once recognized the tall figure, fine carriage, 
 and yellow insignia of Kate May hew. 
 
 For I had forgotten to mention that one of the 
 seven prismatic hues had been assumed by each 
 member of the Prism as her or his special insignia. 
 Kate was allotted yellow, being the only one who 
 could bear it. But her it became splendidly, 
 giving a rich tropical effect to her brunette com 
 plexion. Belle took violet. Mary Veeder, who 
 was a still purer blonde, was voted blue by com 
 mon consent. Anna claimed red because she had 
 no color in her face and no complexion. Lizzie 
 Folger took indigo, which answered very well with 
 
YELLOW. 59 
 
 her rosy cheeks and auburn hair. Addie was 
 given green as the proper hue for a sea-nymph, 
 which left orange for Edgerton. The girls limited 
 their display of colors to scarfs, feathers and rib 
 bons, but the effect was very pretty and variegated. 
 
 It was thus by her yellow colors that Edgerton 
 recognized Kate, and thereupon quickened his pace, 
 to overtake her. If he couldn t call on these young 
 ladies, he could at least exchange courtesies on the 
 street. As he approached, she seemed at the sound 
 of his steps to quicken her own, but he soon over 
 took her and hat in hand wished her good evening. 
 He was not looking to see any special expression 
 in her face or he would have seen embarrassment 
 mingled with pleasure. 
 
 " After all," she was saying to herself, " I am 
 not to blame, Belle herself couldn t say so ; I can t 
 send him away. One must be civil." 
 
 He was in higt spirits and talked so fast that 
 she had little need to say much. It was the first 
 opportunity he had enjoyed for a tete-a-tete with a 
 young lady for a moivth, except of course with 
 
 t\ 
 
 V 
 
GO A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Belle, and she didn t count with him any more than 
 he with her. The very fact that he had enjoyed so 
 much feminine society, of a general, as it were pub 
 lic sort, had rather stimulated than diminished his de 
 sire for the special, private kind he had now secured. 
 
 " It seems to me," he was saying, " that if any 
 climate can encourage feminine constancy, that of 
 Nantucket must. Just think what a deal of wait 
 ing has been done here on the island by its genera 
 tions of sailors wives. The women used to wed 
 men, but their lifelong partners were often, I take 
 it, but memories and hopes. I think if my wife 
 ever proves fickle, I shall bring her here to see 
 what an air so saturated with the other sort of 
 thing can do for her." 
 
 " I fear Nantucket wives didn t always deserve 
 the praise you give them. They were not always 
 constant. Enoch Ardens have been plentiful on 
 Nantucket." 
 
 66 1 don t blame people for not being constant 
 to memories," he said. " As well fasten substance 
 to shadow ; it reverses the order of nature." 
 
YELLOW. 6 1 
 
 They had reached Kate s house. Under the 
 circumstances Edgerton rather looked and decidedly 
 hoped to be invited in. Kate was in painful 
 embarrassment. She could not ask him in, for she 
 felt it would be breaking her pledge. But to dis 
 miss him without ceremony, when he so evidently 
 wished to linger, was equally out of the question. 
 She compromised finally by continuing, almost in 
 voluntarily, to walk along past the house. 
 
 " I m so glad you give me a little reprieve," 
 said he, more pleased than disappointed by the 
 manoeuvre. 
 
 A turn of the road brought the bay before their 
 eyes. Moved by some association of ideas, he said, 
 
 u By the way, how fond of the sea Miss Fol- 
 let is." 
 
 " Yes, very," Kate responded drily, and a mo 
 ment after added, 
 
 " I don t like the sea. Let us walk the other 
 way." 
 
 With a slight surprise he at once turned with 
 her. A moment after she recalled that while be- 
 
62 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 fore it had been he who had invited himself to walk 
 with her, she had now invited him. With a guilty 
 sense that she had broken her pledge to the girls 
 came a determination to make the best of it and to 
 have as good a time as possible. Before, she had 
 been preoccupied and embarrassed, but now she 
 suddenly began to be quite vivacious, though not 
 without a haunting fear that any corner of the 
 street might bring them face to face with one of 
 the Prism. She ridiculed in rather bitter fashion 
 the various quaint and peculiar features of the 
 town as they walked along, and then began to ask 
 him questions on that theme of which the girls 
 seemed never to be weary, New York and its fash 
 ionable life. She related to him the incidents of 
 her single memorable trip to Boston, and how she 
 wanted to go to the opera so much, but her uncle 
 didn t think it was a proper place, and so she stayed 
 at the hotel and cried. 
 
 And Edge* ton as he listened, felt a great pity 
 for this rich, full nature, starved in all its aesthetic 
 longings, and had an inkling of the happiness it 
 
YELLOW. 63 
 
 would be to some man to show her the beauties of 
 art, the splendor of wealth and the pomp of the 
 great world, day by day feeding the hunger in her 
 grand eyes with new spectacles. This feeling lent a 
 tenderness and consideration to his manner of which 
 he was perhaps scarcely conscious, but which she 
 felt with an exquisite thrill. A very little real 
 tenderness goes so far with women. He talked to 
 her eloquently of the delights of the mind and the 
 taste which a great city s life aifords, and she lis 
 tened with a longing look that was to him very 
 pathetic. As they talked the twilight faded and 
 they suddenly found themselves a mile or more out 
 into the country and no houses near. 
 
 " Oh dear, how late it has got, what am I think 
 ing of, we must hurry back," she exclaimed. 
 
 " No, let s not hurry," urged Edgerton, laying 
 his hand lightly on her sleeve. " It is hurrying 
 that makes people feel late." 
 
 It was an hour later and the stars were bright 
 when they stopped at Kate s gate and she with 
 drew her arm from his. 
 
64 A NANTTJCKET IDYL. 
 
 " Good night, Miss Mayhew." 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Edgerton." 
 
 flow softly shone her dark eyes ! 
 
 When she entered the house she would not 
 have been surprised to have found her father and 
 mother ten years older, and her little brother Jim 
 grown up, such an epoch had elapsed with her 
 since she left them an hour or two before. But 
 her mother merely asked if she had any letters, for 
 it was steamer day, and she had been to the post- 
 office when Edgerton overtook her. 
 
 Anna Coffin was calling on Mary Veeder one 
 afternoon soon afterwards. Some people thought 
 it odd that a keen-witted, rather cynical girl like 
 Anna, who had one of the sharpest tongues in town, 
 and never let it rust, should have as her particular 
 friend such a placid maiden as Mary Veeder, a 
 girl who was never in a hurry, never got vexed, 
 and never was known to find fault with anybody. 
 But so it was. There was nobody that Anna so 
 well liked to talk to as Mary. She seemed to find 
 one of her quiet smiles a more satisfactory and 
 
YELLOW. 65 
 
 stimulating response to her lively sallies than the 
 brightest repartee anybody else could make. 
 
 Anna was just now sitting on an ottoman, 
 clasping her knees, in an attitude she would not 
 have taken if Edgerton had been there. One agree 
 able result of the lack of prying masculine eyes 
 on the island is that girls can take their ease instead 
 of being restricted to two or three attitudes, and re 
 quired to keep as stiff as soldiers on parade, like the 
 generality of their sex elsewhere. Anna was saying : 
 
 " You remember that promise Belle made us 
 all make, not to flirt with him nor let him flirt with 
 us, don t you ? You know I told you it wouldn t 
 amount to anything." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " The idea of supposing a girl would mind a 
 promise of that kind if she had any temptation to 
 break it ! Why such a promise is enough to break 
 itself. There are some things that won t stand 
 being promised, and that s one of them." 
 
 " What makes you think the girls aren t keep 
 ing it ? " asked Mary with interest. 
 
66 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " I saw Kate Mayhew out walking with him 
 the other evening, and they were gone two hours, 
 and Liz says she saw him knocking at Ad. Fol- 
 ]et s front door only last evening. So you see I 
 knew just how it would turn out." 
 
 " Oh, there isn t necessarily any flirting about 
 that," replied Mary. " He will call on us next. 
 But I don t so well understand his walking out 
 evenings with Kate. That looks more serious." 
 
 " Of course it does," said Anna, " and especially 
 when you remember that Kate s chief aim in life is 
 to get away from the island. She is ready to 
 take for her Moses any man who will open a path 
 for her through the sea." 
 
 " Not unless she loved him, if she wanted to 
 go ten times as much, and you know that as well 
 as I do," replied Mary with characteristic candor, 
 "and as for Addie, I don t believe she could forget 
 her sea dreams long enough to know whether any 
 body were flirting with her or not." 
 
 " Well I don t care," said Anna. " I m pro 
 vided for, and as for you, dear old darling, I be- 
 
YELLOW. (37 
 
 lieve you would see the last eligible young man in 
 the world snapped up without a sigh." 
 
 Mary smiled. 
 
 " Of course you ll get married some day, you 
 quiet old May; men are so lucky; but you won t 
 need to fall in love. You ll make as good a wife 
 without love as it takes a great deal of love to 
 make most women. Now for instance I ve got 
 such a shocking sharp temper that I shouldn t dare 
 to marry poor Ned if I didn t love him so much/ 
 and the girl s keen eyes grew very soft in their 
 expression. 
 
CHAPTER Y. 
 
 IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 
 
 r M HE foregoing bit of talk makes it necessary to 
 explain how it was that Edgerton came to the 
 point of calling on Addie Follet. 
 
 He had not been long in finding out that Belle s 
 story about its not being island etiquette to make 
 calls, was probably a fib, though what was her 
 motive in telling it he could not imagine. But he 
 still felt the awkwardness of calling in view of the 
 fact that the young ladies had so unanimously 
 neglected to extend him any sort of invitation. 
 Of course he could not suppose that they had done 
 so purposely. The friendliness and even intimacy 
 of his relations with them forbade that idea, but 
 still it would have been pleasanter if they had not 
 so curiously omitted to express the hospitable 
 feelings he could not doubt they entertained. So 
 it was with a sense of embarrassment not usual in 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. G9 
 
 a caller of his extended experience that he stood 
 on Addie Follet s doorstep one June evening. 
 
 The young lady who opened the door produced 
 the always striking effect of a face and figure 
 which correspond in expression, that expression 
 being a peculiar spirituality. The figure owed its 
 airy effect to grace in the lines, not to lack of full 
 ness. The complexion was not brilliant but pure 
 and rather pale, while away down into the grey 
 eyes the light went shimmering as into sleeping 
 summer seas. There are personal and impersonal 
 eyes ; personal eyes that are always full of an im 
 portunate individuality, and impersonal eyes that 
 are the serene meeting-places of souls. When you 
 looked into this young lady s eyes you did not see 
 her at all ; she seemed to leave her self behind to 
 come and meet you there. She wore green ribbons 
 in her wavy light brown hair. 
 
 At seeing who her caller was she appeared 
 momentarily surprised and even confused. He 
 answered her look, 
 
 " Well, Miss Follet, I know you haven t asked 
 
70 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 me to call, and if you send me away I will go and 
 make no disturbance, but I thought it was worth 
 trying." 
 
 He said this in such a serious tone that she 
 laughed. 
 
 " Of course I m glad to see you, Mr. Edgerton," 
 and she extended her hand frankly. " Come into 
 the parlor." 
 
 Accustomed as he had been of late to meeting 
 the girls only in companies, he was freshly sur 
 prised as they sat down to see how completely one 
 woman fills a room. They had numerous common 
 topics of interest, and conversation ought to have 
 been easy enough, but somehow he could not for 
 get that first look of surprise and embarrassment on 
 her face, nor could she apparently forget the sur 
 prise itself. Awkward pauses began to occur in 
 the conversation, neither of them having the least 
 endowment of the useful faculty of supplying the 
 lack of spontaneous talk with the manufactured 
 article. 
 
 [A vacuum in conversation has over some unfor- 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 71 
 
 tunately constituted minds an irresistible power to 
 draw out, in spite of the volition, whatever is in 
 them. It has been known by this sort of pure 
 suction to drag impertinent questions from the most 
 well mannered lips, or in other cases to induce in 
 voluntary and highly indiscreet confidences^ A 
 person who is unfortunate enough to have inherited 
 this vacuum abhorrence from nature, feels impelled 
 to fill up the yawning pause by throwing in what 
 ever comes handiest, whether good, bad, or indiffer 
 ent. To get that pause filled appears for the time 
 the one object of life. So it happened that Edger- 
 ton, after vainly representing to himself the indis- 
 creetness of the remark, blurted out, 
 
 " Why is it, Miss Follet, that the young ladies 
 of Nantucket don t like to receive calls ? Is it 
 really a peculiar etiquette, or is it only to myself 
 that the rule applies." 
 
 Addie blushed as red as a rose, and Edgerton 
 groaned at thought of the victim the vacuum suc 
 tion had once more made of him. Still it might 
 have been worse, for if the silence had lasted a 
 
A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 moment longer he would have been unable to 
 refrain from telling his family secrets and stating 
 his age and bank account. Addie began stammer- 
 
 "Really Mr. Edgerton that is a an odd 
 question. I really" Then raising her eyes to 
 his, she said impulsively, 
 
 " No, I ll tell you the truth ; that s the best way 
 out of it. You see, before you came, Belle made 
 us girls all promise not to not to well not to I 
 mean, you know that we were not to that is, we 
 were to entertain you as a club, you see, and not 
 as individuals." 
 
 What on earth made her blush so, he couldn t 
 guess, but this symptom did not make him less 
 desirous of pursuing the subject, and besides that, 
 his curiosity was fully roused. 
 
 "Why not both ways?" he asked with a 
 mystified expression. " You must know that my 
 taste for the society of the young ladies is only 
 piqued by the little bits of you contributed to a 
 joint entertainment." 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 73 
 
 " Mr. Edgerton, I m not going to tell you any 
 thing more about it. You may find out the rest 
 for yourself. The girls would scold me if they 
 knew I had said a word, but you cornered me and 
 that was mean of you." 
 
 "It was very mean, but if you knew how 
 puzzled I have been over the matter you would 
 excuse me, and for the matter of that I am more 
 puzzled now than ever." 
 
 The little scene had brought them into spon 
 taneous relations, and he began to be having a 
 delightful call, and on her part Addie seemed bent 
 on making him feel welcome if uninvited. 
 
 " You needn t be looking at that piano so criti 
 cally," she said after they had been talking some 
 time, " I know how ridiculous it is." 
 
 " How ridiculous ? " 
 
 " Why a piano on the sea shore ! what could be 
 more ridiculous than a little jingle like that trying 
 to beat the surf out of one s ears ! " 
 
 " Don t you play on it? he asked with some 
 surprise, for it struck him as strange that one into 
 
74 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 whose face a " beauty born of murmuring sound " 
 so evidently had passed, should not love 
 music. 
 
 " Why yes," she said, " sometimes, just to please 
 uncle, but I don t think somehow that most of the 
 music means much to me. Maybe it is because it 
 refers to the scenes of a life I haven t led. You 
 know I ve never been off the island." 
 
 " It must be that is the reason," he replied. 
 "I don t see how anybody can understand a large 
 part of music who has never seen a mountain, a 
 forest, a river, or a city. Why here upon this 
 sandbank you have not fairly got beyond the first 
 day of creation ; you don t rightly know what land 
 is. Mother earth is no mother to you." 
 
 "No," replied she, "the sea is mother of us 
 islanders and mother too of your mother earth. 
 So you see we children of the sea belong to an elder 
 branch of the family. The land is after all a new 
 fangled experiment, a mere parvenu, but the sea 
 survives from the reign of chaos." 
 
 Casting about in his mind for some repartee, he 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 75 
 
 hit upon a fact he had learned in youth out of a 
 ph} sical geography. 
 
 " After all," he said, " }^our sea is a mere drop 
 compared with the bulk of the solid earth ; like a 
 drop of dew on a mountain side compared with the 
 mountain, and the scientific people say that the 
 time will come when the seas will be wholly ab 
 sorbed into the earth as a little water soaks into a 
 great sponge, scarcely wetting it. The sea is spread 
 out in an ostentatious sort of way, but really it is 
 a very insignificant matter compared with the land 
 you despise so much." 
 
 Addie for a moment was taken aback by this 
 suggestion, and he smiled mischievously at her, 
 Then she sprang to her feet crying, 
 
 " I don t care a fig for your scientists. Look 
 there ! " 
 
 She rolled up the window curtain, and as he 
 stepped to her side the broad sound stretched out 
 before him, a majestical burnished floor beneath the 
 moon, a promenade for gods, while the noise of the 
 waves caressing the shore, rose from the beach below. 
 
76 A NAN TUCKET IDYL. 
 
 She turned to him with a triumphant expression. 
 
 " Now tell me what use has land except to view 
 the sea from ! " 
 
 " That is the only use of sandbanks like Nan- 
 tucket, certainly," he answered, " but there is a 
 diiference between land and sand, and land can be 
 put to other uses. What, for instance, do you sup 
 pose the people of the interior States of the Union, 
 who don t see the sea from generation to generation, 
 would think of your notion?" 
 
 " Oh dear, it makes me sad to think of such 
 people, nnd yet I suppose there must be a good 
 many of them," she said with a pitiful contraction 
 of her delicate eyebrows. "How do the poor folks 
 live, and what queer, tired-looking eyes they must 
 have that never get rested on a sea-view ! Why I 
 would as soon think of having no sky as no sea. 
 It is very odd that God should have made the sky 
 go everywhere so all can see it and not the sea as 
 well. Did you ever know anybody who had never 
 seen the sea ? What sort of people were they ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I have seen lots of them," he said, 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 77 
 
 smiling at the oddity of the question, and feeling 
 as if he were gratifying a mermaid s curiosity about 
 the habits of land-livers. " There is nothing queer 
 in their appearance, I assure you. In a crowd you 
 would not be able to pick them out by any pecu 
 liarity of their eyes or any other eccentricity. 
 Why, Miss Follet, a slight difference in their indus 
 trial or social conditions would affect their charac 
 ters much more than it does to miss the sea. It just 
 shows how far we are beneath the influence of the 
 greatest things. I suppose insects don t see the 
 sky or sea at all, and we humans barely see them, 
 without much better comprehending them. So far 
 from regarding themselves as isolated, I dare say 
 most of these sea-less folk in the interior look upon 
 Nantucket as a very provincial locality, quite out 
 of the way." 
 
 She smiled disdainfully. 
 
 " Out of the way ! Out of what way ? I should 
 like to know. It seems to me that islands like tins 
 are the true centres of the earth, set as they are in 
 the middle of the two skies, surrounded by one and 
 
78 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 overhung by the other. Where else in the world is 
 one so centrally located ? " 
 
 He would have liked it better to have had 
 her look at him while she talked, but as she sat by 
 the open window her eyes constantly roamed over 
 the sea and she seemed thence to draw her inspi 
 ration. 
 
 " You look quite rapt, Miss Follet," he said. 
 " Tell me what you see." 
 
 " I can t, and I would rather not if I could. 
 Just as soon as I can quite say what I feel, it takes 
 it off my heart, and I d rather have it there. I 
 don t dare try to wing my dearest thoughts with 
 words, lest they should fly away." 
 
 " I have such odd feelings," she added dreamily, 
 "as I sit in my window here and see the steamers 
 sail away to the continent. I should lose a great 
 dream if ever I went there, I suppose." 
 
 When at last he rose to go, she said, 
 
 " Although I mightn t invite you, I suppose I 
 may ask you not to hurry." 
 
 " I think I ll not risk making myself tedious to- 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 79 
 
 night," he replied, " but since you are kind enough 
 to say that I might stay longer, won t you let me 
 finish my call some other evening ? " 
 
 u It s unfair to ask me that. You know I 
 mustn t invite you. What you may be able to do, 
 I m sure I don t know," she replied demurely. 
 
 " After all," he mused going home, " the inspira 
 tion of feminine society does not quite follow the 
 rule of a galvanic battery, increasing with the 
 number of cups. Several women may diffuse a 
 greater quantity of electricity, but it is less intense 
 in quality than that of one." 
 
 Addie had enjoyed the evening quite strangely 
 well. When with the other girls she was rather 
 overborne as being the youngest, but once alone 
 with Edgerton she felt as a woman his peer. She 
 had known nothing at all of the society of men of 
 her own mental grade, and she took a girl s delight 
 in representing for the first time her sex over against 
 a man of culture, enjoying the power she wielded 
 over him as a novel sensation, and feeling its re 
 action upon herself in an unusual exhilaration. 
 
80 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 It had been for years her custom, just before 
 going to bed, to go down to the beach and sit on 
 the sand or wander there until she felt like sleep 
 ing. It was a sort of preparation for the night, 
 which wonderfully predisposed her to repose. The 
 suggestions of boundless space, of immeasurable 
 strength, of eternal patience, of motion that had 
 not paused nor rested since the impulse of creation, 
 raised her thoughts to a plane whither personal 
 preoccupations could not follow. And often when 
 her feelings were finely attempered, sympathy with 
 the eternities and infinities so grandly typified be 
 fore her would grow to an impassioned intensity, 
 and tears of a bliss almost too great to bear would 
 fill her eyes. 
 
 After such experiences with what incredible 
 pence would she lay her head upon the pillow! 
 Death itself she was wont to think could not be 
 sweeter, more serene to harassed hearts than the 
 sleep that closed eyes freshly washed with such 
 tears. And indeed it might well be so, seeing that 
 in being purged of self and personal thoughts she 
 
IN A MERMAID S PARLOR. 81 
 
 was like one who is dead. I would by no means 
 leave the impression that there was anything ab 
 normal in the experience of this most human 
 maiden. She had only, by her lonely life with the 
 sea and her spiritual nature, attained a faculty of 
 sharing to an unusual degree that calming and ele 
 vating communion which all the grand forms of 
 nature are ready to pour into any human heart 
 which turns to them in self-forgetfulness for the re 
 freshment that comes from elevation out of the per 
 sonal sphere. 
 
 For a long time after Edgerton s departure 
 Addie sat in a pleasing revery, staring into vacancy 
 and anon absently smiling, as she thought over 
 something that had been said. Suddenly she 
 started up, caught her shawl, and with an agitated 
 step hurried down to the beach. This nun of the 
 sea felt like a devotee who has allowed worldly 
 thoughts to make her forget the hour of prayer. 
 Not that she had actually forgotten her hour by 
 the shore, but she felt that she was all untuned 
 
 for the rhythm of the eternities to-night. For a 
 
 4* 
 
8 2 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 while she walked up and down, not in her usual 
 slow dreamful saunter, but with a quick, nervous 
 step, while she strove to dominate her mind and 
 drive out the swarm of profane intruding thoughts. 
 Soon she found that though she should do this she 
 could not remove the agitation and distraction they 
 left behind. 
 
 Her cheeks burned with self-contempt at her 
 folly in allowing an engrossment of such a sort to ob 
 scure and render turbid even temporarily the serene 
 and passionless frame requisite to a spiritual rapport 
 with the sea. She was not angry with Edgerton, 
 but with herself. His self-conceit indeed would 
 have received a mortal shock if he could have 
 known how insignificant he and all thoughts of him 
 appeared to her in comparison with the lofty and 
 precious communion which he had been the inno 
 cent means of interrupting. 
 
 Finally she began to cry, and it was not till an 
 hour or so later, that having wept away her fever- 
 ishness she left the beach, once more comparatively 
 soothed and calmed. 
 
6 3 < r > f . 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A "SQUANTUM." 
 
 Edgerton had never attended a squantum, 
 and the girls had fixed on the second day 
 after his call on Addie as the date on which they 
 were to initiate him into that delightful mystery. 
 Belle warned him to eat a light breakfast, and at 
 about ten o clock in the morning the party rendez 
 voused at the wharf where the Dream lay. Belle 
 and Edgerton got there first, Mary Veeder and 
 Anna Coffin soon after arrived, and then Lizzie 
 Folger, who doated on squantums and good things 
 to eat generally, tastes which she was perfectly 
 frank in avowing at all times. She was a bluff sort 
 of girl, a word that, although not a feminine one, 
 just expresses her good-humored, frank air, her 
 slight obtuseness to the finer feminine convention 
 alities, and entire lack of those affectations of refine 
 ment which, though affectations, seem in some de- 
 
84 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 gree essential to the charm of women. It was 
 these characteristics which made Belle so sure that 
 Edgerton was in no danger of being fascinated by 
 Lizzie. 
 
 Belle and Kate, Mary and Anna, naturally 
 paired, but Liz had no particular friend, being hail 
 fellow with all, while Addie was without an inti 
 mate both on account of her being younger and 
 equally, perhaps, because of her peculiar tempera 
 ment, which either did not demand sympathy or 
 found it elsewhere than among her companions." 
 
 " I wonder if Addie isn t ever coming/ said 
 Anna Coffin. " The sun is getting hot here on the 
 wharf, and it s time we were off." 
 
 Edgerton turned to Anna with an involuntary 
 gesture of surprise. In his own mind the idea of 
 Addie s being in the party had been so central to 
 the whole scheme, that he had forgotten that the 
 excursion might still seem feasible to the others 
 with her left out. But at this moment she appeared 
 at the other end of the wharf, leisurely walking 
 toward them, swinging her hat in her hand by its 
 
A SQUANTUM. 85 
 
 green ribbon. As they exchanged salutations, 
 Edgerton eagerly scanned her face to divine by 
 its expression whether their recent interview had 
 the same roseate hue in her memory as in his own. 
 But her steady glance gave no hint of anything of 
 the sort, and he even thought that he detected an 
 unusual air of indifference if not even of coolness 
 in her bearing toward him, an appearance that 
 completely puzzled and not a little disappointed 
 him, for on the strength of that delightful call he 
 had been really counting on having attained a more 
 intimate standing with this strangely fascinating 
 girl. 
 
 The squantum was to be held at a point on 
 the narrow peninsula, or rather mere sandbar, 
 that divides the ocean from the broad lagoon which 
 extends for many miles above the harbor proper 
 of Nantucket. Two men who were to prepare the 
 clambake which the party were to eat, had gone 
 on to the spot selected for it, and as considerable 
 time would be consumed in their preparations, 
 there was an opportunity for a sail before it would 
 
86 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 be necessary to repair to the squantum ground, 
 the Dream was accordingly headed out to sea. 
 It is a very bad humor or a confirmed melancholy 
 that can withstand the exhilaration of a sailboat s 
 bound on a live sea, and as the Dream rounded 
 Brant Point and shot out toward the bell buoy 
 before a freshening breeze, Edgerton s spirits began 
 to recover from the effect of Addie s coolness. 
 
 Kate, too. who sat at his side so near that 
 the tiller, as he held it well a-port ? almost touched 
 her bosom, was very pretty to-day, and very en 
 tertaining. He no more thought of analyzing 
 her unusual attractiveness tlrin that of the weather, 
 but to the girls it was a matter of ribbons, a 
 thing to get the recipe of as of a toothsome cake. 
 They inferred that she had some special motive for 
 being pretty and guessed at what that was. Wo 
 men overlook each other s cards in the game 
 against men. 
 
 " How beautiful ! " cried Edgerton, as sud 
 denly the sun burst out from behind a cloud and 
 the whole bay glowed above its shoals in a car- 
 
A SQUANTUM. 87 
 
 pet of green and blue and purple, of tints more 
 varied, more delicate, and deep, than ever tinged a 
 painter s dream. 
 
 " It is the palette of God," exclaimed Addie. 
 
 " And just to think," said Edgerton, u that if 
 we saw that every day, we are capable of getting 
 so accustomed to it that we should finally take no 
 notice at all. One would think that susceptibility 
 to the beautiful and grand was nothing better than 
 a sore spot, from the haste with which a tough scab 
 of habit grows over the sensitive place." 
 
 " Listen to the bell buoy," said Mary. 
 
 They were now sailing close by it, and the in 
 expressibly mournful notes of the wave-tolled bell 
 fell occasionally on their ears. 
 
 " The waves toll the requiem of their own vic 
 tims," said Kate, " as much as to say the} are not 
 to blame for the deeds they do, and mourn for the 
 woes they cause." 
 
 " It reminds me of an ^Eolian harp I heard at 
 Woodstock," said Belle. "It is strange what sad 
 things the wind and the sea have to say when we 
 
A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 give them a voice, and how personal it seems to 
 make them to our fancy when they are made to 
 speak by such contrivances." 
 
 Edgerton was making preparations to tack so as 
 not to get too far out in the bay, when Kate seized 
 the tiller and brought the boat again to her former 
 course. 
 
 " Girls," she cried, " we are six to one. Let s 
 mutiny and carry the ship over to the mainland, 
 and go to New York instead of to the squantum. 
 The wind is just right and we could sight Wood s 
 Hole before three o clock. We may never have so 
 good a chance again to get away from that old 
 sandheap," and she pointed contemptuously to the 
 low lying white shore in the distance, " what do 
 you say ? " 
 
 "I m willing," said Anna gayly. "Ned wrote 
 last week that he was dying to see me." 
 
 ^ I believe it is the customary procedure in 
 cases of mutiny to pitch the captain overboard. I 
 trust you will make an exception in my case," said 
 Edgerton. 
 
A SQUANTUM. 89 
 
 " Yes/ replied Kate, " we give you your life 
 on condition that you navigate for us." 
 
 Although she was smiling, her eyes flashed so 
 imperiously and her air was so resolute, that know 
 ing as they did her absorbing desire to get away 
 from the island, neither Edgerton nor the girls knew 
 exactly how much in earnest she might be, and 
 some of them began to look rather serious. 
 
 None had observed the approach of a thick 
 mist drifting from windward, and which now sud 
 denly and completely enveloped them so that vision 
 beyond a distance of ten feet was impossible. The 
 sun was blotted out, and all their bearings instantly 
 lost. Kate dropped the tiller crying : 
 
 " The island has sent the fog to overtake its 
 escaping prisoners. Here, Mr. Edgerton, take us 
 back to our dungeon. The mutineers give in." 
 
 " We shall never get back to dinner," exclaimed 
 Lizzie, disconsolately. 
 
 " If another boat happens to run against us we 
 shall never get back at all," observed Mary, sug 
 gesting the only serious danger of their position. 
 
90 A NAN TUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Edgerton could only judge of their course by 
 the way the sail was drawing, and relying on this 
 clue he put the boat about arid steered as nearly as 
 he could calculate for the bell buoy. They had 
 been on this tack for about ten minutes, listening 
 intently for the bell, when as suddenly as it had 
 come up the fog disappeared, and just in time to 
 enable Edgerton, by thrusting his tiller hard 
 a-starboard, to escape striking another boat with 
 which ten seconds more of fog would have brought 
 the Dream into collision. 
 
 " Thank God," he ejaculated. 
 
 The girls looked at each other with pale faces. 
 
 "That s spoiled my appetite," said Liz, shrug 
 ging her shoulders. 
 
 66 1 wonder how it would have seemed, 1 said 
 Kate, with a grimace of aversion at the water. " To 
 be drowned in a fog, of all things ! Ugh ! The sea 
 would have swallowed us without winking and 
 looked as sleek and purred as softly right after, as 
 a cat that has eaten a mouse. Your sea is no bet 
 ter than a cat, Addie, what do you say to that ? " 
 
A SQUANTUM. 91 
 
 Addle had been more silent even than usual 
 during the entire sail, but it was not as commonly, 
 on account of an absorbing enjoyment. She seemed 
 on the contrary, moody and absent, and as if quite 
 missing her customary exhilaration when on the 
 water. Edgerton had made several attempts to 
 draw her into conversation and would have felt 
 rather snubbed at his lack of success had she not 
 once or twice responded with glances in which 
 some other sentiment seemed strangely mingled 
 with repulsion. It was some girlish caprice, he 
 concluded, which made her more fascinating if more 
 provoking. He had erred, he concluded, in ascrib 
 ing to her a singularly limpid nature. 
 
 " I m in no humor to defend the sea to-day, 
 Kate," she replied, to that young lady s challenge. 
 
 u Let me take up the gauntlet, then," said Ed 
 gerton. 
 
 " You complain that the sea doesn t care a rap 
 whether we live or die, but that s precisely the key 
 to the highest sort of sympathy w r e mort.ils have 
 with it, for it is an impersonal sympathy, in which 
 
92 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 we as much forget our personalities as it ignores 
 them. Unless it did ignore them and compel 
 us to, we could not have that kind of sympathy 
 with it," 
 
 " Write that down on a piece of clean paper, 
 and I ll chew it up and swallow it. That s the 
 only way I shall ever get it into me," laughed 
 Kate. 
 
 " Mr. Edgerton, I didn t know you could talk 
 so hard," said Liz reproachfully ; " When I hear 
 people talk about personal and impersonal, it 
 makes me feel dreadfully stupid. I m sure I 
 could never learn what the difference is." 
 
 "It is a pity if the difference is so hard to 
 understand," replied Edgerton rather seriously, " for 
 by the cultivation of the impersonal side of our 
 natures is to be found the apotheosis of humanity, 
 which has been its aspiration ever since Adam and 
 B^e ate the apple in the hope of being as gods." 
 
 " I knew something was in the wind when I 
 saw Mr. Edgerton talking so confidentially with 
 Swain the bookseller yesterday. They were plot- 
 
A SQUANTUM. 93 
 
 ting to make a corner in unabridged dictionaries/ 
 remarked Anna Coffin drily. 
 
 By this time the Dream had re-entered the 
 harbor and rounding First Point, was standing up 
 the lagoon with the long barren peninsula of Coatue 
 on the port side. 
 
 " Aren t you going to tell me something about 
 a squantum first, to prepare my mind a little," 
 asked Edgerton. 
 
 61 Only this," replied Mary, " that whereas you 
 are already familiar with the sight of the sea, the 
 touch of the sea, the smell of the sea, the sound of 
 the sea, we now propose to give you the taste of 
 the sea." 
 
 They soon came in sight of the two men who 
 had been sent on ahead. They were busying them 
 selves on the beach, and as the Dream approached 
 shouted out to Edgerton to heave anchor as the 
 Coatue shore was too shallow to admit of near 
 approach. They then put off in the dory to land 
 the party. On the beach above where the men 
 were working stood a weather-beaten little hut, 
 
94 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 which Edgerton was informed was the dining- 
 room. 
 
 They camp there too when they come over 
 duck hunting," explained Lizzie. 
 
 " You don t mean to say people kill birds here 
 on the island," said he. " I should think in such 
 a lonely place they wouldn t want to spare any 
 company." 
 
 The party was soon safely landed by the dory, 
 not without considerable fun and fluttering of white 
 draperies. 
 
 " This is Coatue," cried Kate, as she sprang 
 ashore. 
 
 " What a name ! " said Edgerton. 
 
 " It s an Indian name and I m sure I think it 
 quite fits the place for uncouth dismalness," Kate 
 replied. " The Indians who lived here must have 
 been a melancholy set and I don t blame them. 
 All the Indian names on the island have the same 
 plaintive sound. They suit so well they have 
 never been changed." 
 
 It was indeed a dreary place a mere ridge of 
 
A SQUANTUM. 95 
 
 white sand, a hundred yards broad, barring the sea 
 from the lagoon, its surface above high water mark 
 covered with a scattered growth of long stiff grass, 
 forever bending before the constant wind, and yet 
 ever striving to assume the perpendicular posture 
 it had never attained. Anna said it was like 
 human beings, always trying to be good and never 
 succeeding, but Kate declared that if she thought 
 she cut such a pitiable figure as that grass she 
 would give over trying at once. 
 
 "I never see anything attempting to grow on 
 this island, without wanting to pull it up by the 
 roots, and put the poor thing out of its misery," 
 remarked Edgerton. "The attempts at vegetation 
 here are merely pathetic." 
 
 a So we are," assented Kate, " and it would be 
 a real charity if you would pull us all up by the 
 roots, and put us out of our misery." 
 
 " I must correct that cruel misconstruction," he 
 retorted, "for in human culture Nantucket has 
 much more than made up for her agricultural fail 
 ure. I don t know any place in the world where 
 
A NAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 the survival of the fittest has been so beautiful 
 ly illustrated : six of the spiritual to one of the 
 material sex left. The result should be for 
 warded to Darwin ; it would put him into ecsta- 
 
 cies." 
 
 ci Oh, oh, just hear that," cried Belle. 
 
 " You couldn t get Mr. Edgerton in so tight a 
 place, but that he would turn the tables on you 
 with a compliment," said Kate, with just a trace 
 of that pique which we feel to hear those whose 
 flatteries we have allowed to please ourselves, 
 making their compliments general. 
 
 " I wish he would teach our island boys the 
 gift before he goes. I am afraid we shall miss it 
 when he leaves us," said Mary. 
 
 " Oh, yes, do," cried Lizzie, " I think it s such 
 fun to be flattered, and we get so little of it. Flat 
 ter us some more, please, Mr. Edgerton." 
 
 While they had been taking their sail the men 
 had got the oven prepared and the clams dug. The 
 former process had consisted in placing a lot of 
 paving stones close together in a spot sheltered 
 
A SQTTANTUM. 97 
 
 from the wind and burning several armsful of pine 
 wood upon the hearth thus made. 
 
 " When the stones begin to scale we know the 
 oven is hot enough," explained one of the men. 
 
 This test having now been met the embers had 
 been removed and all the ashes carefully brushed 
 away from the hot stones. Near by stood several 
 buckets full of hard and soft shell clams, which 
 had been dug out of the sand while the fire was 
 burning. 
 
 " I wonder if you Nantucketesses appreciate 
 your blessings," said Edgerton. " Just think of a 
 potato bed all around the island, with nothing to 
 do but to take a hoe and dig up a dinner whenever 
 you feel hungry. You don t even have to plant 
 these sea-potatoes. They plant themselves." 
 
 "What an Irishman s paradise ! as if clams 
 were really potatoes ! " said Belle, who had been 
 to the mainland and seen Irishmen. 
 
 On the cleaned stones of the oven were now 
 dumped a couple of pails of hard shell clams. 
 They hissed and began to open their shells. 
 5 
 
98 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 * Ugh, poor fellows ! " ejaculated Addie, -with a 
 sympathetic contortion of countenance. " How it 
 must hurt." 
 
 " Oh, don t be spoiling our appetites/ protested 
 Lizzie. 
 
 A couple of pails of soft shells were now poured 
 over their hard shell brethren, the savory steam of 
 whose torment was already rising. 
 
 " If burnt sacrifices smelled that well to the 
 old-fashioned gods, I don t wonder they had a weak 
 ness for them," said Anna. 
 
 " How one has to harden his heart to keep ifc 
 soft," observed Edgerton. " If we let ourselves 
 deliberately realize the horrible cruelty we are in 
 flicting it would make brutes of us, but by going 
 ahead and refusing to realize it we can remain good 
 Christians and have our baked clams, too." 
 
 " Oh dear, do let s stop it then and not have 
 any clam bake," cried Liz, with an accent that in 
 dicated her full sense of the magnitude of the sac 
 rifice. But her appetite was reconciled with her 
 conscience by the assurance that as the clams were 
 
A SQUANTUM. 99 
 
 half roasted now it would be more cruel to take 
 them off. 
 
 " It would be so much nicer, though, 1 said she, 
 " if the clams could enjoy it as much as we do. I 
 don t see why they weren t made so they could." 
 
 The men, grinning at the talk, meanwhile went 
 on with the preparations. Upon the clams were 
 quickly laid a couple of chickens, wrapped in cloths, 
 a number of sweet potatoes and several ears of 
 green corn in the husks. Then taking a great pile 
 of wet seaweed, fresh from the sea, they packed it- 
 over and around the mass, at least six inches thick, 
 and before the steam had begun to penetrate this 
 covering, a thick layer of sand was piled on the 
 whole baking and spanked down with the shovel. 
 
 " Now, ladies and gentlemen," said the cook, 
 " in just forty-five minutes dinner will be ready." 
 
 " Come, girls, we must be setting the table," 
 was Belle s comment on this announcement, arid 
 with that she led the way to the hut a few rods 
 distant. The other girls were following her when 
 Edgerton asked : 
 
100 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " Aren t you going to detail some one on fatigue 
 duty, to entertain me while you are at it?" half 
 hoping that he might get a little talk with Addie. 
 But this hope was disappointed, for Belle replied : 
 
 " Kate, you are detailed for that purpose, and 
 let your conversation be as little filling as possible, 
 for he must save his appetite." 
 
 " You couldn t have made a fitter selection for 
 that purpose," said Edgerton, as Kate turned smil 
 ingly towards him, and then, after pausing just long 
 enough to enjoy her hurt, surprised look, he added, 
 " because her conversation always leaves you wish 
 ing for more." 
 
 "What did you make that pause for, sir?" she 
 demanded, as the others laughed. 
 
 " Because playing with edged tools is some 
 times fun, and your displeasure would have a very 
 sharp edge for me." 
 
 "I shall have to forgive you," said Kate. 
 " You have fairly plucked the flower safety from 
 the nettle danger." 
 
 He brought her a chair from the hut and stood 
 
A SQUANTUM. 101 
 
 himself on the beach hy her side, leaning against 
 the low bluff that overhangs high water mark all 
 along the shore. 
 
 " The town has a very picturesque effect from 
 here," he said, pointing away across the lagoon to 
 where the steeples and house-covered hillside of 
 Nan tucket rose imposingly from the water. 
 
 " I think it has a very hateful effect from every 
 point of view," replied she, with something that was 
 like real bitterness in her tone and the expression 
 of her brilliant eyes as they rested on the town. 
 It was an expression that gave him a sense of com 
 miseration for Nantucket. It seemed as if it must 
 feel the ban of so much beauty. 
 
 " What has it done ? " he asked. 
 
 " Why its being here at all. If it had not 
 been here, I could not have been born on it, 
 could I ? It ought to have been got out of the 
 way to prevent such accidents. So long as it is 
 left no unborn soul is safe. Indeed I never do 
 feel as if I had been born here at all, but as if I 
 had been banished here. I must have been a 
 
102 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 murderess and committed sacrilege besides in my 
 last state of existence. I should not else have 
 been punished with such a doom." 
 
 Full many a rose was born to blush unseen 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air ! " 
 
 repeated Edgerton, " and, Miss Mayhew, when 
 a poor Robinson Crusoe like myself lands, he per 
 ceives the goodness of God in the dispensation." 
 
 " You have turned a neat compliment, and I m 
 sure the rose is glad to afford gratification to so 
 gentlemanly a Crusoe, but Crusoe goes and the 
 rose is left behind, and it s dull waiting for Crusoes. 
 Nay, I m not sure but the coming and going of Cru 
 soe makes the desert yet more intolerable for that 
 very gleam of society." 
 
 A rose indeed she looked as she sat there, her 
 shining eyes fixed on the distant town while she 
 talked, and her flushed cheeks framed in with dark 
 hair. There was that touch of pensiveness in her 
 air that gives the final charm to such bold beauty 
 as hers. 
 
 " But surely you can t call a place of several 
 
A SQUANTUM. 103 
 
 thousand inhabitants, like Nantucket, a desert. 
 Nor with such delightful months to look back 
 upon can I easily understand discontent with its 
 society." 
 
 " True enough," replied Kate, " there are several 
 thousand of us, but don t you see that our inter 
 ests are so narrow and similar that there would be 
 more variety in a city company of a dozen than 
 can be found on the whole island ? And Mr. Ed- 
 gerton, perhaps you wouldn t find the society here 
 so stimulating if if you were, for example, a 
 girl," and she smiled slightly. 
 
 " And then I fancy that our lives lack a some 
 thing quite indescribable, a sort of tone and nerv 
 ous stimulus that I m sure must come from being 
 in close connection with the great world. The sea 
 might as well be a sea of glass, so thoroughly does 
 it insulate us from the electricity of the world s 
 life. That, I suppose, is the use of the crystal sea 
 about the New Jerusalem. But they ll have better 
 company and more resources there, and can afford 
 to be isolated from the earth." 
 
104 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " By the way, Miss May hew, I wish you would 
 tell me one thing. Did you really intend to run 
 off with the boat and us this morning? I couldn t 
 quite make out." 
 
 " Well I can t help you," she replied, looking 
 squarely at him, " for I m sure I don t know myself. 
 I often become so desperate about staying here 
 any longer that I don t know what I shouldn t be 
 capable of to get away. It doesn t seem to me 
 that I can ever get resigned and settle down to 
 being a clam like the people over in the town there, 
 but I suppose that will be my fate finally," and she 
 dropped her voice to a despairing tone. 
 
 " Do you know, Mr. Edgerton, that it sometimes 
 gives me very wicked feelings when I think of your 
 happy fate in returning soon to the rich, broad, deep, 
 electric life of the great world. I have such an 
 envy that I could use almost any violence to rob 
 you of your good fortune if it were possible. Were 
 it a thing transferable by fraud or force, you would 
 not be safe alone with me." 
 
 She spoke with a passionate vehemence, and at 
 
A SQUANTUM. 105 
 
 the same time with such a hopeless accent that 
 he was shocked. Touched with profound sym 
 pathy for this beautiful, brilliant girl beating her 
 life away against prison bars, his eyes glistened 
 with pitiful moisture as he looked on her. Her 
 own, hard and bright a moment before, suddenly 
 welled over at this in mere self pity, and it was 
 with a strong effort that she suppressed her sobs. 
 Her situation had never seemed so desolate to her 
 before. 
 
 In generous natures pity is so akin to love as 
 often quite to usurp its place, and by the magnetic 
 rapport established through their sympathetic emo 
 tion, she had a premonition of a coming crisis which 
 made her heart beat thick and hot. 
 
 Belle s voice came just then from the door of 
 the hut, crying : 
 
 " Come, children, the table is set and we want 
 you to help us wait for dinner." 
 
 Kate was really half relieved by this interrup 
 tion. She felt so unstrung that she welcomed a 
 postponement even of a welcome consummation. 
 
106 A XAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " You must excuse me, Mr. Edgerton," she said, 
 with rather a quivery smile, " for talking so extrav 
 agantly and so much about myself. I didn t mean 
 to force you into the confidence of my trials. Only 
 somehow it all came out of itself when you began 
 to praise that hateful town. You had better go to 
 them. I will come as soon as I have gotten over 
 this." 
 
 He pressed her hand, she looking away, and 
 left her. They did not know that they should 
 never be brought so near to each other again. 
 
 But as soon as he saw Addie he knew that it 
 was only pity he had felt. The pangs of gross 
 physical hunger which now suddenly seized him, 
 completed the discomfiture of any lingering sen 
 timent. The rude interior of the little hut fairly 
 glowed with girlish beauty, like a murky cave hung 
 with stalactites. A rough table had been set, with 
 a lot of battered and chipped crockery. Fifteen 
 minutes passed in pensive silence, waiting for din 
 ner, the mental vacancy of the company typifying 
 their physical condition. The island air nourishes 
 
A SQUANTUM. 107 
 
 an appetite which, like fire, is a useful servant, but 
 a terrible master. Finally, Edgerton, who sat in 
 the door, shouted, 
 
 " Hurrah, here they come." 
 
 A dish of smoking clams, beautiful in death, 
 exhaling blessed odors from their yawning shells, 
 was borne in and set on the table. A plate of corn, 
 the chickens, and a dish of sweet potatoes followed. 
 And then they drew their improvised chairs around 
 the board and fell to. 
 
 But all first waited to see Edgerton eat his 
 first soft-shell. A clam without blemish, of medium 
 size, swimming in the ichor of his distilled soul, 
 and with a neat head to hold on by, was selected 
 by the joint discrimination of the young Indies. A 
 somewhat spirited discussion arose among them as 
 to whether he should be advised to use any season 
 ing or not, which was finally decided in the nega 
 tive. Having been duly instructed, amid the 
 breathless silence of the company, he then en 
 tombed the morsel, and uttered a groan of shudder 
 ing delight. 
 
108 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " How do you like it ? " cried they, beamingly. 
 
 " Like it ! " he echoed. " If Descartes had vis 
 ited Nantucket, instead of cogito ergo sum, he 
 would have said, I have eaten a soft-shell, ergo 
 sum. 1 The most convincing proof of existence is 
 the flavor of soft- shells." 
 
 With jests and laughter the banquet went on, 
 and plate after plate of clams disappeared as by 
 magic. The chickens cooked with the clams were 
 redolent with their sea flavor, and supplied to the 
 palate at least the missing link between fish and 
 fowl. The corn and potatoes had not the less 
 suffered a sea change into something rich and rare. 
 
 66 You needn t be pushing your clam shells over 
 on my pile, Anna Coffin," said Belle, " I ve eaten 
 enough in all conscience without having to answer 
 for your sins." 
 
 " I wasn t," Anna protested, " and if the poor 
 little fellows were alive they would say it was 
 mean enough to eat em up without denying it 
 afterwards. But just look at that pile Liz has 
 left." 
 
A SQUANTUM. 109 
 
 "I m afraid, said Mary, "that we have all 
 hopelessly lost our reputation for spirituality with 
 Mr. Edgerton, unless perhaps Kate and Addie. 
 What s the matter with you two ? " 
 
 But they declared that they had eaten heartily, 
 while at the same time each cast a searching glance 
 at the other. 
 
 After dinner, Edgerton sat in the doorway 
 smoking cigars, and they fell to talking up the 
 programme of amusements for the coming weeks. 
 All voted for more squantums, and moonlight sails 
 were added as a corrective to their too material 
 istic tendency. And then there must be lots of 
 blue-fishing; it was just beginning to be good. And 
 they must take at least one trip to S conset, show 
 Edgerton the merits of the island cart, and get some 
 surf bathing. They had fun enough for six months 
 laid out when the girls declared it time to go home. 
 
 "But where s Addie?" said some one. 
 
 " I noticed her slip off about half an hour ago, 
 she went across the bar toward the beach on the 
 other side," said Mary Veeder. 
 
110 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Edgerton with suspicious alacrity offered to go 
 and find her. A hundred steps brought him to 
 the verge of the low sand bluff that overhung the 
 sea beach. His eye commanded its entire sweep 
 from Great Point, at the extreme end of the long 
 finger which Nantucket reaches out toward the 
 northeast, to beckon mariners upon her fatal shoals, 
 southwestward to First Point at the lower end of 
 Coatue, a hollow curve of sand beach twelve miles 
 long, more perfectly fashioned by the waves than a 
 geometrician could have drawn it. The light swell 
 of Vineyard Sound was breaking in a constant suc 
 cession of low rollers all along the shore with a 
 pleasant lapsing sound, while far over the blue 
 sunlit waters the white sails of a score of coasting 
 vessels were slipping along the horizon. 
 
 Just below where Edgerton stood, at the edge 
 of the highest ripple, a dainty figure lay half re 
 clined upon a shawl. It was one little bit of 
 humanity contrasted with the ocean, and yet it 
 struck Edgerton that that small form contained a 
 world as vast as the ocean, a life as incomprehensi- 
 
A SQUANTUM. Ill 
 
 ble, and problems, to him at least, far more piquant. 
 His footfalls on the soft sand were inaudible, and 
 Addie did not observe his approach until she heard 
 him say, 
 
 " Miss Follet, excuse me for interrupting your 
 tete-a-tete with the ocean." 
 
 Then she raised her head from her hand, looked 
 around, and seeing him, rose up quickly with the 
 dazed air of one called suddenly to pass from a 
 receptive to an active mood. 
 
 " I should scarcely think you would dare to 
 stay so near the sea, for fear Neptune or Triton 
 might run away with you." 
 
 "I m not afraid," she answered. "The sea 
 isn t a person, Tm sure ; I never liked that old 
 heathen notion. The sea would lose all its 
 grandeur if I thought of it that way. It is a great 
 life without anything personal in it ; that is what 
 makes it so restful." 
 
 " You are a genuine devotee of the sea, Miss 
 Follet," said Edgerton, with a feeling curiously 
 like jealousy. 
 
112 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 "If- you knew how much I owe it, 3-011 
 would not wonder that I love it," she answered, 
 her eyes roving joyously over the vast watery 
 plain. " Whenever I feel confused, or muddled or 
 fretted, I come and lie on the shore, and the tides 
 rise up into my heart and wash it free and fresh, 
 and leave me calm and serene. The sea confesses 
 and shrives me." 
 
 "Did you feel confused and muddled to-day ?" 
 asked Edgerton, quick to suspect, with the conceit 
 usual in young men, that he might have heen the 
 cause of her unrest. 
 
 " Perhaps I did, Mr. Curiosity," she answered, 
 " but I don t now. What did you come after me 
 for ?" 
 
 He humbly explained that the party having 
 made ready to re-embark, she was found missing, 
 and he was deputed to go in search of her. 
 
 The sail back was rather dumpish, socially 
 speaking. Kate, who generally talked briskly, 
 was very sober. Ad die was self-absorbed, and Ed 
 gerton was wondering if she were offended with 
 
A SQUANTUM. 113 
 
 him, and had himself less than usual to say. lie 
 saw moreover that Anna Coffin s keen eyes were 
 watching Kate and Addie suspiciously, and several 
 times her glance rested rather meaningly on him. 
 He would sooner have had her guess the state of 
 things than any other of the party, for he felt that 
 she was not the sort of girl to tell secrets, however 
 she might enjoy letting the interested persons un 
 derstand that she was posted. Still he began to 
 have a realizing sense of the difficulty he would 
 find in attempting to conceal from the others any 
 special feeling he might have for one of the 
 young ladies. For the first time he found it 
 rather awkward to be the only gentleman among 
 so many of the other sex, and so far perceived the 
 inconveniences of his monopoly that, had there 
 been anybody he could have divided it with, he 
 would for the moment have favorably entertained 
 the idea. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 
 
 r I lHAT evening he called on Addie, anxious to 
 -- ascertain in what way he could have offended 
 her. But he was welcomed with such a timid 
 pleasure, and treated with such friendliness, that he 
 forgot his rebuffs of the morning, save as an occa 
 sional puzzled recollection. How should he ima 
 gine that after his departure she had a fit of crying 
 at her sea-window. 
 
 During the month that followed, every few 
 evenings he turned his steps in the direction of the 
 little house on the bluff outside the town, frown 
 ing his eyebrows and chewing his moustache, over 
 the puzzle of Addie s contradictory moods. For 
 if one evening she was affable, and as he might 
 even fancy, a trifle tender, on the next he would 
 find her cold, brilliant, and airily distant. 
 
 Whether fancifully or not, he came to associate 
 
HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 115 
 
 her moods with those of the sea. On tempestuous 
 nights he generally found her in a state of nervous 
 excitement, her cheeks flushed, her eyes unnatu 
 rally bright, and her manner vivacious, headstrong, 
 and as repellant to tenderness as it was intellect 
 ually attractive. On calm, fair evenings, she was 
 on the contrary, so gentle, so yielding, so almost 
 warm in her bearing, that walking home he could 
 not contain his delight, but would break forth in 
 improvised foolishness and ejaculations that brought 
 night-capped heads out at upper windows. Strange 
 that the depth and earnestness of emotions are so 
 often measured by the incoherence of the expres 
 sion they find ! 
 
 Coquetry was so evidently unknown to Addie, 
 that he could only fancy that some counter influ 
 ence was working against him, though there was 
 almost as little chance of a rival of flesh and blood 
 as there would have been in a desert. 
 
 During all this period Addie s heart was the 
 theatre of a "singular and painful conflict of vary 
 ing balance. The whole habit of her mind predis- 
 
116 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 posed her to impersonal moods of emotion, and 
 love, with the strong personality of its passion, had 
 set her at cruel odds with herself. Her heart con 
 tended with her soul. Often, strange, warm tides 
 stirred the passionless peace the ocean had poured 
 into her breast. Her pulses throbbed with deli 
 cious languid fullness, her heart swelled with long 
 ing, and a vague stress of tenderness moistened her 
 eyes. But again, walking on the beach or floating 
 in her little dory, her ears filled with the noise of 
 the sea, and her eyes with its vastness, her spirit 
 merging with its impersonal life, she had waking 
 trances of such sublimity and all-satisfying fullness 
 that she recalled with wondering self-reproach, 
 almost with incredulity, those other times when 
 the touch of a hand, a smile, a word, had laid 
 a sweet spell on her, which made all else seem 
 vague and unreal. As one upon a mountain top, 
 exulting in the rare, chill, bracing air and god-like 
 scope of vision, remembers loathingly the heavy 
 perfumed air of slumberous valleys, as hermit 
 saints awaking, recall with indignation the volup- 
 
HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 117 
 
 tuous enchantments of their dreams, so, with like 
 self-despite did Addie then remember those soft 
 moods which gave her lover such delight. Had 
 Edgerton chanced to meet her when under the in 
 fluence of one of these re-actions, he would have 
 seen in her manner, not indeed any special unkind- 
 ness toward himself, but such a calm and exalta 
 tion, more than happy, that in mere sense of the 
 insuperable distance between them he would have 
 turned away. 
 
 During the month that followed the squantum 
 at Coatue, the programme of recreation then laid 
 out was diligently followed. Every week saw at 
 least one squantum, and such was Edgerton s in 
 fatuation for soft-shells, that Anna Coffin charged 
 him with getting so hungry between the regular 
 squantum parties, as to have slipped away up the 
 harbor with a cook, and had clam-bakes all by 
 himself on several occasions, an impeachment 
 which he did not satisfactorily refute. 
 
 Meanwhile, by day and moony nights, the keel 
 of the Dream fretted the waters of Vineyard 
 
118 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Sound, from Great Point to Muskeeget. Anna, 
 Coffin, one day when they were out sailing, inquired 
 of Edgerton what he would do if one of them 
 should fall overboard. He said he presumed he 
 should jump after her. 
 
 " That would be sacrificing the whole party," 
 replied Anna, " for we can t manage the boat and 
 should be capsized at once, and then you two 
 would drawn also." 
 
 This seemed so plausible that without more ado 
 he taught them all the rudiments of sailing, and 
 thereafter did mighty little of it himself, lolling 
 about the boat at his leisure and pulling in the 
 bluefish the girls had caught. He came to be so 
 careless about the sailing as not unfrequently to 
 endanger a capsize. The girls did not know the 
 peril, and he had a sort of superstitious impression 
 that no accident could happen to a boat tlu.it held 
 them. That even the grim forces of nature should 
 not have a certain chivalrous sentiment toward 
 fair women, is an idea which a man always finds it 
 hard to realize. 
 
HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 119 
 
 The most delightful treats of all were the 
 moonlight sails. On the one side stretched the 
 low white shore of the island, and on the other the 
 glistening water-floor reached out beneath and be 
 yond the veil of the night. The contrast of the 
 vast quietude of the lonely sea with the little 
 group of warm, bright life in the stern of the boat, 
 impressed them all with a feeling of closer mutual 
 sympathy. Night obscuring the distant objects 
 that made progress seem slow, the boat appeared 
 to glide across the scene with preternatural swift 
 ness, deluding the voyagers with a sense of pecu 
 liar lightness and power. 
 
 They sang together, Mary Veeder having a 
 clear pure treble, and Kate a rich contralto, and 
 sometimes Edgerton sat on the little half deck, 
 facing them, his back leaning on the sail, and 
 twanged his guitar to some old Spanish fandango 
 that suggested the click of castanets, the gleam of 
 dancing feet, and all the sensuous illusion of tropical 
 moonlight. 
 
 One night, by some lucky chance, his hand 
 
120 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 touched Addie s as she sat beside him in the 
 stern. It started away at first from his quickly 
 closing clasp like a frightened bird, and then yield 
 ing, I know not to what soft sudden impulse, she 
 let it nestle trembling there. The boat had been 
 standing close in shore to make a tack, but Edger- 
 ton seemed to have forgotten to come about. The 
 Dream was within a hundred feet of the beach, and 
 in five seconds more would have struck the sands, 
 when a cry from Kate recalled the dreaming steers 
 man. He was rather shocked afterwards to real 
 ize that he had pretty much made up his mind to 
 let the boat strike rather than lose his clasp of that 
 tremulous little hand. It was certainly fortunate 
 for the party that Addie generally took care to 
 keep such seductive fingers well out of his way. 
 Belle had divined that Kate was not wholly in 
 different to her good looking cousin, and willing to 
 help on in a quiet way, had several times invited 
 her to tea, and on such occasions she and Edgerton, 
 had seemed to enjoy themselves very well. His 
 liking and admiration for Kate were so hearty that 
 
HAVE MERMAID S HEARTS? 121 
 
 she was on the whole too much flattered to feel 
 distinctly conscious of the lack of any warmer in 
 terest on his part. 
 
 Going from her to Ad die, he was always 
 strongly impressed with the difference between 
 Kate s restless discontent and air of being op 
 pressed and suffocated by the narrowness of her 
 opportunities, and Addie s provoking content with 
 her surroundings, and apparent incapacity for en 
 joying other spheres of life. While Kate s com 
 plaints at times slightly weaned him, he would 
 have given a great deal to have sown seeds of a 
 similar discontent in Addie s mind. That would 
 have given him a vantage ground for the suit 
 which day by day was more entirely monopolizing 
 his thoughts. 
 
 His efforts to make Addie dissatisfied with 
 Nan tucket were indeed ingenious. Among other 
 devices he had sent to New York for his collection 
 of engravings, representing all the finest bits of 
 American scenery, and on these he descanted to 
 her evening after evening with a strenuous elo- 
 6 
 
122 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 quence. One night after they had been looking 
 over some really remarkable views of the Yosemite, 
 Addie said, 
 
 " They are grand, and I can even understand 
 now, how people can live without the sea, but I m 
 not sure I should care to see them." 
 
 " Why not ?" he asked, very much disap 
 pointed. 
 
 " Why, I don t think," she replied, speaking 
 slowly, as if thinking it out, "that persons ever 
 need change their residence for the sake of a 
 nearer or deeper sense of nature. When people 
 get tired of the sen, or sky, or mountains, or forest, 
 and want change, it only shows that they have not 
 really touched their deeper sense at all, for that is 
 inexhaustible. The deepest meaning of all these 
 forms of nature must be the same, and those who 
 understand one understand all, and don t need to 
 travel." 
 
 " But people do travel and for the very sake 
 of gratifying their taste for natural beauty," he 
 urged. 
 
HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 123 
 
 " Yes, I know they do. I suppose in travelling 
 one gets a great many new and delightful impres 
 sions of nature, but 1 can t help thinking that they 
 lose the real deep loving sympathy with it that 
 grows out of quiet contemplation. I should, I 
 know." 
 
 He began to collect the pictures with a dis 
 heartened look that struck her as at once comical 
 and pathetic. Nor could she help a certain amused 
 impatience that he should thus ply her with his 
 rivers and mountains and forests, to beguile her 
 from the sea, when if he did but know it, so much 
 stronger and tenderer and simpler a motive was 
 fighting for him in her heart. She never meant 
 he should know it and yet she could not resist the 
 temptation of touching on the dangerous theme by 
 asking, 
 
 " Why is it, Mr. Edgerton, that you are trying 
 so hard to discontent me with Nantucket? It 
 seems to me that you are very unkind." 
 
 He turned from the pictures and looked at her 
 with an expression that said plainly as words, 
 
124 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " Don t you know ? " 
 
 She did know, and at sight of her flushed 
 cheeks and quickly averted eyes, he suddenly took 
 courage, and seized her hand. The contact of a 
 burning coal would not have stung his nerves like 
 the touch of that soft palm. He poured forth a 
 passionate declaration of his love, his hope, and 
 the sense of his ill desert that made him seek an 
 ally in her discontent with her present narrow 
 life. 
 
 With dismay she felt the barriers of her re 
 serve dissolving before a sudden tropic glow that 
 burst forth she knew not whence. As a match 
 touched to a hidden mine suddenly brings a fort 
 about the ears of its unsuspecting defenders, so sud 
 denly Addie felt her heart, long ago undermined, all 
 at once giving way. She could not trust herself to 
 speak, she could not even master courage to with 
 draw her hand from his, where, in spite of herself, 
 it took delight in lingering. 
 
 Suddenly she swung open the blind of the win 
 dow by which she sat, with a desperate hope that 
 
HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 125 
 
 somehow in the sea she might find help against 
 herself. 
 
 Night covered the waters, and they stretched 
 before her heyond the narrow horizon that day 
 sets, to the further horizon of the imagination 
 which night suggests. 
 
 She conceived the houndless stretches where 
 the waves were sullenly feeling their way through 
 darkness round the earth, as they did in the ages 
 before light was. She thought of the vast sunlit 
 seas of the South, where the countless wavelets 
 are each tipped with an ephemeral foam-flower, 
 whose petals, even as they sparkle into life, are 
 scattered, and their salty fragrance up-gathered by 
 the wind to refresh some distant shore. The wind 
 was rising and the sea moaned on the beach in trav 
 ail with the coming storm. Such hours of rising 
 tempests for her were always full of a weird and 
 awful exhilaration. Never did she seem so wholly 
 to leave herself behind, as when hanging rapt on 
 the muttering lips of the sea. 
 
 It was only a moment, but as she turned to 
 
126 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 meet the passionate inquiry of his eyes, it seemed 
 to her that she turned from the face of chaos and 
 old night, to confront an interlocutor in a parlor 
 comedy. Now first withdrawing her hand from 
 his forgotten clasp, she replied in the most indiffer 
 ent manner, 
 
 " Oh, yes, I ve heard of getting married, but I 
 don t think I d like it much. It must require pecu 
 liar people to take to it." 
 
 " But," said he with a ghost of a smile on his 
 fallen countenance, and a miserable kind of persist 
 ence in spite of his perception of her utterly unpro- 
 pitious mood, if you could love me just a bit, per 
 haps it would not strike you as so peculiar." 
 
 " Oh, I never felt in love with anything yet, 
 except perhaps the sea, and you are not in the 
 least like the sea, Mr. Edgerton," she answered 
 airily. 
 
 lie was hit hard, but struggled bravely against 
 the sick sense of disappointment her words and 
 manner produced. The contradictoriness of her 
 moods, her first evident yielding, and the succeed- 
 
HAVE MERMAIDS HEARTS? 127 
 
 ing unaccountable change, left him quite as much 
 puzzled as disappointed, and prevented him from 
 quite despairing. And indeed, before he left her 
 that night her manner grew again so kind, that but 
 for the smart of so recent a rebuff, he would have 
 been tempted to try his fate again. He could not. 
 make her out at all. 
 
 In what did Addie s fascination consist? I 
 think partly in a sense of the rare distinction it 
 was for you to find a place in a fancy, peopled with 
 such fair and grand ideals. It is the society we 
 keep in another s mind, and not merely the being 
 there, which makes the charm of an intimacy. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SIASCONSET. 
 
 day came on which the club had fixed for 
 the Siasconset excursion. The programme 
 contemplated a picnic in the woods half-way, a 
 bath in the surf, and a moonlight drive home. 
 The morning dawned brightly, and by nine o clock 
 Edgerton mounted the vehicle to pick up the 
 party. 
 
 It was one of those " carts " peculiar to Nan- 
 tucket, a big two-wheeled conveyance with sides so 
 high, to protect the feet of the passengers from the 
 chilling winds, that the entrance was by steps from 
 behind. Seats there were none, and each of the 
 party had to provide a chair from the kitchen or 
 parlor. Hocking chairs were in most favor as 
 affording a partial substitute for the lack of springs 
 in the cart. 
 
 Edgerton called first for Addie, and as a fore- 
 
SIASCONSET. 129 
 
 seen result thereby secured that young lady as 
 next neighbor for the trip. She had a rocking 
 chair just suited to her, being one of those persons 
 who look best in rocking chairs and in attitudes 
 that have the least of stiffness in them. Kate he 
 next stopped for, and the other girls in the order 
 of their residences. Each had with her a little 
 bundle containing her bathing dress, and in another 
 her contribution to the picnic. They were all in 
 high spirits, and the party drove out of town with 
 horses galloping, Kate plying the whip, Addie hold 
 ing the reins, and the rest of the girls screaming 
 and laughing as the cart tilted from side to side. 
 These sailors daughters inherited the sailor s tradi 
 tional fondness for equine dissipation. 
 
 They had the day before them, with two fresh 
 horses, and as the picnic ground lay not far oft* 
 they took a roundabout course, driving for an hour 
 or so over the desolate, treeless, uninhabited moor 
 that constitutes the interior of the island. Not 
 even the bright sunshine could relieve the dreari 
 ness of the scene, and Edgerton declared that now 
 
130 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 he had found out where the hypochondria of north 
 east storms was brewed. 
 
 " I wonder," he said, " the county commission 
 ers don t put up gallows along from point to point 
 in order to accommodate persons overtaken by 
 the suicidal mania when crossing these moors. 
 And to think of you girls shut up all your lives 
 between the sea and this nightmare of a land 
 scape ! " 
 
 They laughed, as they generally did at Ed- 
 gerton s tirades against the island. They were not 
 insensible to that implied flattery which is con 
 veyed by depreciatory remarks concerning our sur 
 roundings, the suggestion being that we deserve 
 better things. 
 
 " As regards natural beauty," said Kate, " the 
 whole island doesn t afford enough to support one 
 soul on." 
 
 " Our souls," said Addie, " as well as our bod 
 ies, have to live off the sea." 
 
 " Mine calls for something stronger than water," 
 was Kate s comment. 
 
SIASCONSET. 131 
 
 "You girls may say what you please," ex 
 claimed Liz, with unusual vehemence, " I love the 
 old island, and I wouldn t change it for any place 
 I ever heard of. I should no more think of its 
 being homely, than of criticising the looks of my 
 father or mother. And I think it speaks better for 
 a place to be loved by those who know it, than to 
 be admired by strangers." 
 
 " It s always the homely places and persons 
 that get loved the most, though I say it who 
 shouldn t," said Anna. 
 
 " Of course," echoed Kate, " they have to be 
 to be loved at all. It takes more love to love 
 them." 
 
 u I really hope you won t lie awake nights pity 
 ing us, after you leave the island, Mr. Edgerton," 
 said Mary. 
 
 " Don t talk of my leaving," he replied, "I 
 don t think of it when I can help it." 
 
 " Oh do stay and settle down here," cried Liz. 
 " That would be so jolly, wouldn t it girls ? " 
 
 "It would indeed;" said Edgerton, "anyway I 
 
132 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 wish you would help me at least to-day, to forget 
 that I can t stay always." 
 
 They readily assented, and began merrily to 
 discuss the prospects of the new settler. He was 
 to be located in Abdiel Folger s house, on the main 
 street. He was to get the principalship of the 
 high school, and add to that the editorship of one 
 of the island papers. He was also to have a spe 
 cial girls class in German and Italian, and be the 
 director of a reading club and take it to no end of 
 squantums and sailing parties. 
 
 Then Anna Coffin, who, as an engaged girl, said 
 things the others wouldn t have ventured on, sug 
 gested in her dry tone, 
 
 " But we haven t settled on whom he is to 
 marry." 
 
 She said it out of pure mischief, and the result 
 answered her expectations. Edgerton looked fool 
 ish and stared hard at the horses. Kate blushed 
 hotly. Addie turned her face away, and Mary 
 Veeder flushed slightly. Then Liz began to 
 laugh, Belle joined, and the others were glad to 
 
SIASCONSET. 133 
 
 follow suit to cover their confusion, while Mary, 
 unseen by Edgerton, reached over and pinched 
 Anna s ear until she screamed. 
 
 With chatter of this sort they beguiled the way, 
 till toward noon they began to pass through a 
 plantation of scrub pines, about as high as a man. 
 It was announced to Edgerton that these were the 
 picnic grounds. 
 
 " Why, I thought we were going to picnic in the 
 woods," he said, looking around with an air of close 
 inspection, a half concealed grin on his face. " Bless 
 your dear hearts, you don t call these things trees ! " 
 
 Now Addie Follet had never seen a full sized 
 tree in her life, the island lacking that feature, and 
 in her innocence had always regarded these scrub 
 pines with a good deal of awe. When Edgerton 
 had been making light of the scenery of the island, 
 she had privately thought that he would change 
 his tone when he came to see these redoubtable 
 woods. And so at this contemptuous dismissal 
 of their merits as trees, she looked up in a disap 
 pointed way that went right to his heart. 
 
134 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 "Do forgive me, Miss Follet, for slighting your 
 trees. They are really very fine trees of their sort, 
 a little small, some would say, but I m sure quite 
 as large for their size as is usual at this time of 
 year," at which apologetic nonsense she smiled 
 ruefully. 
 
 " How was I to know they were not proper 
 trees ? Are trees ever really much bigger ?" 
 
 " I have a large circle of acquaintances among 
 trees," he replied, " which are every one of them 
 as tall as the mainmast of a frigate, and spread as 
 much sail in the shape of leaves as a seventy-four. 
 In fact, for aught I know to the contrary, they may 
 be the very sails that make the earth go round. I 
 wish to heaven I could persuade the infernal wood- 
 choppers of that, and then perhaps they would 
 quit stripping the country." 
 
 "Why such trees must be almost as big as 
 mountains," was her thoughtful comment. 
 
 " Oh no, my unsophisticated mermaid," he re 
 plied. " The biggest trees cover the mountains, as 
 the hairs cover an ox." 
 
SIASCONSET. 135 
 
 He tethered the horses, while the girls spread 
 the table-cloth on the carpet of pine needles, and 
 they fell to with island appetites. 
 
 " The balsamy odor of the pines is the nearest 
 to a sea breeze that we have in the interior of 
 the mainland," he said, " and the murmuring of the 
 wind in the pine boughs is so like the surf that, 
 what with both sensations, I have often felt the 
 illusion of the sea quite strongly in the midst of a 
 pine forest." 
 
 Lazily lying on his elbow, and looking at the 
 girls, he realized how the sylvan setting revealed 
 their charms with new effects after so often seeing 
 them grouped against the bare flat background of 
 beach and sea. The various contrasting and har 
 monious forms and contours of the trees and bushes 
 relieved the grace of the girlish figures in a re 
 markable manner. 
 
 But his admiration of the other girls did not 
 in the least lessen the peculiar distinction which 
 Addie had in his eyes. She seemed compared with 
 women, as women compared with men, a sort of 
 
136 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 third sex, an individual sex. He might scan the 
 others with a critical appreciation; on her he sim 
 ply looked. 
 
 Let me once more try to catch the glamour of 
 that face. It was small, oval, and pearly pale, the 
 forehead a shade high, perhaps, or the way she 
 wore her hair made it seem so, the lashes long over 
 the grey eyes, so deeply bright; the lips red and 
 full enough to temper to a sweet humanity the 
 dreaminess of the upper face. Her beauty would 
 not have forcibly struck a casual observer ; it wns 
 reticent like herself. 
 
 After dinner the picnickers rambled a while 
 in the woods. Coming upon Addie alone in an 
 alcove among the trees, Edgerton said, 
 
 " You don t know how happy I am for once, to 
 get you fairly out of sight and sound of the sea." 
 
 " Why ? " she asked. 
 
 u Odd as the idea is, I can t help feeling that 
 the sea is the rival I owe my sad fortunes to," he 
 replied jestingly, for though such an idea had often 
 arisen in his mind as a fantasy that would account 
 
SIASCONSET. 137 
 
 for much that was otherwise unaccountable in her 
 demeanor, to seriously entertain so extravagant a 
 notion had never occurred to him. 
 
 He was astounded when she quietly replied, 
 
 " Yes, perhaps it is something that way. I 
 suppose I can t make up my mind between you, 
 and I m quite tired trying. You must fight it out 
 together, if I m worth fighting for." 
 
 She smiled as she spoke, but the perplexed ex 
 pression of her face sufficiently indicated that how 
 ever fantastic the dilemma might appear, it was a 
 serious one to her. 
 
 "But but/ sputtered Edgerton, "how in 
 heaven s name can I fight the sea ?" 
 
 " I m sure I don t know," she replied, in a voice 
 that was decidedly discouraging, though not un 
 sympathetic. 
 
 And with that she walked away leaving him in 
 a quandary similar to that of the prince in the fairy 
 tale, who is required to remove a mountain or 
 make trees grow bottom, upwards, as the condition 
 of marrying the princess. 
 
138 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 By one o clock they were once more rolling 
 along the road toward Siasconset or S conset, as 
 everybody called it. It was a queer sort of road. 
 The valuelessness of Nan tucket land was indicated 
 by its breadth, a full furlong, with a dozen or 
 twenty sets of ruts, between which the grass grew 
 with the luxuriance of things out of place. Far to 
 the south the sea was visible, heaving up and down 
 with the motion of a huge serpent. 
 
 " It is the dragon that guards our prison," said 
 Kate. 
 
 By two they had reached S conset, and 
 promptly betook themselves to the beach, which 
 was reached by a precipitous descent from the 
 sand bluff on which the village was situated. 
 
 This was a little fishing hamlet with not half a 
 dozen real houses in it, the rest being queer little 
 huts, not much taller than a man, shingled all 
 down the sides, painted every color, especially 
 green, but mostly not at all, of all architectures, 
 but generally reminding one of the little cubbies on 
 ships decks, and adorned with all sorts of marine 
 
SIASCONSET. 139 
 
 relics and emblems. Evidently, the only idea of a 
 house the builders had was a ship s cabin, a little 
 place to huddle from the storm during the intervals 
 of the watches on deck. Their idea of comfort was 
 to have things ship-shape, and ship-shape these 
 S conset cabins certainly were. 
 
 The surf was magnificent. The waves sweep 
 ing across the unbroken breadth of the Atlantic, 
 tripped and fell thunderously at their feet. The 
 hemispherical journey of each one of them repre 
 sented an achievement of Titanic power that gave 
 a startling impression of the prodigality of force in 
 nature. With such momentum the interminable 
 succession of rollers came on, that the word of 
 God seemed freshly needed to stay each one with 
 its "thus far and no further." The invisible reins 
 of Omnipotence must needs have been upon the 
 necks of these mighty white-maned coursers to 
 curb them at the critical moment. 
 
 There in the midst of the foaming battle of sea 
 and land, scores of merry bathers were playing, a 
 sport as reckless in seeming, as safe in reality. 
 
140 A NANTUCKET JDYL. 
 
 They were as little endangered in this struggle of 
 the contending forces of nature, as grasshoppers on 
 a battle-field. 
 
 The Prism sat on the beach, watching the spec 
 tacle. After a while Kate said, thoughtfully, 
 
 " The sight of those brave waves pouring so 
 steadily on to certain destruction, one after another 
 in endless ranks, merely to wash away a mile or 
 two of land in a century what an example of self- 
 sacrifice it is. If I were a general, I d bring my 
 army down on the beach before leading them into 
 battle." 
 
 " I believe the inspiration of so much brave dy 
 ing is half the attraction of the sea shore," said 
 Edgerton. 
 
 (l And they die so gayly ; that s what I like," 
 said Belle, " Your sour heroes I never could fancy. 
 To my notion nothing ought to be gayer than 
 heroism." 
 
 "Just look at those waves," cried Edgerton, 
 " never lifting their heads so proudly as when about 
 to be dashed into spray. Surely death is after all 
 
SIASCONSET. 141 
 
 the supreme function of life, its consummate act. 
 And yet in what a shabby, broken spirited, draggle- 
 tailed fashion, most people die. 1 
 
 " Your extravagant talk has given me a great 
 desire to make the closer acquaintance of those 
 waves," said Anna, " I might say to embrace them, 
 if the personal way in which you have been allud 
 ing to them did not make such a suggestion seem 
 almost indelicate. Let s go and get on our dresses, 
 girls." 
 
 A little later the young ladies reappeared upon 
 the beach in a metamorphosed condition. Whether 
 Edgerton s company had anything to do with it or 
 not, certainly they all wore very pretty bathing 
 dresses, some of them quite coquettish, and each 
 trimmed according to the prismatic hue which its 
 wearer represented. A more beautiful group of 
 beardless boys was never seen than these disguised 
 maidens appeared to Edgerton, who insisted on 
 fresh introductions all around. Mary Veeder, the 
 ideal of dignified and self possessed carnage in her 
 maidenly weeds, was the most awkward, timid 
 
142 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 and self-conscious of them all in this new garb. 
 Liz blushed absurdly. Kate s tall, lithe figure and 
 studied bearing, well became her new attire. Anna 
 was the least changed in general effect, owing to 
 the perfectly unconscious air that she never lost. 
 Belle looked just a merry lad, and Addie, with a 
 green kerchief knotted over her hair and her green 
 trimmed bathing dress, was a perfect naiad. She 
 was dressed more in character, Edgerton told her, 
 than he had ever seen her. She was the only one 
 of the girls who swam and plunged at once into 
 the breakers and struck out into deep water. 
 
 The other dripping maidens, Edgerton led, 
 encouraged, held up and picked up, according to 
 the requirements of surf etiquette, and to the ac 
 companiment of enormous fun and the most bois 
 terous laughter. To support five substantial girls 
 at once, against an adult Atlantic breaker, is more 
 than most men are equal to, and often enough the 
 whole line sprawled on their backs upon the sand 
 with the ocean surging over them. Edgerton 
 meanwhile was looking for a chance to leave the 
 
SIASCONSET. 143 
 
 others and strike out to join Addie, who was float 
 ing at a couple of waves distance from the shore, 
 and laughing at their tussles with the breakers. 
 All but Kate had finally got enough of it and were 
 standing on the beach, radiant with fun and water, 
 looking, according to Edgerton s assurance, as 
 charmingly bedraggled as a bevy of angels who 
 had sailed through a rain cloud. 
 
 A huge wave, which Kate had insisted on wait 
 ing for, had just broken over them as she and Ed- 
 gerton stood hand in hand, when Belle cried out 
 from the shore in a terrified voice, 
 
 " See Addie ! she s drowning ! The under 
 tow has got her ! " 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A STRUG.GLE AND A VICTORY. 
 
 was a chorus of shrieks from the girls, 
 -*- and Edgerton, dashing the water from his 
 eyes, saw Addie full fifty yards away on the land 
 ward face of a wave, swimming toward them, but 
 drawn away seaward as if by the feet, much faster 
 than she could swim. The expression of her face, 
 though resolute and unterrified, showed a realiza 
 tion of her peril. 
 
 Instantly he sprang forward into the sea, burst 
 through the first breakers, and struck out with all 
 his might toward her. He was a strong swimmer, 
 and as she was swimming against the current and 
 he with it, in twenty strokes he was by her side 
 and passed his arm around her. She was pretty 
 much exhausted, and with a smile that was mostly 
 eyes, stopped swimming and leaned her head on 
 his shoulder, while a great wave broke over them. 
 
A STRUGGLE AND A VICTORY. 145 
 
 The manner of its breaking warned Edgerton that 
 the} v were drifting seaward. And indeed, now 
 that he had ceased to swim in the same direction, 
 he felt the fatal undercurrent plucking at his feet, 
 and knew that every moment was carrying them 
 further from shore and life. But how could he 
 disturb that dear head from its resting place, and 
 tax again those soft tired limbs ! It was with 
 much compunction that he lifted her away from 
 him and said, 
 
 "Now, darling, keep hold of me and try to 
 swim. It s our only chance." 
 
 She opened her eyes, arid, as if rather at his 
 request than with any clear idea of getting to land, 
 began to strike out with one hand, clinging with 
 the other to him. With powerful strokes he now 
 bent his utmost energies to gaining the shore. He 
 felt that he had the strength of a giant. He beat 
 the water into foam. One thought only demoral 
 ized him. It was that her hold might slip and he 
 lose her in the waste of waters. But the brave 
 girl was showing the tempered steel of her nerves. 
 
146 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Although long since tired out, she was putting her 
 strength into every stroke. And so they struggled 
 for life during perhaps five minutes. And yet the 
 waves broke over them from behind, and the 
 shore receded. A few moments ago Edgerton 
 could see the horrified expression in the faces of 
 the people on the shore, and now he could only 
 distinguish their figures and a crowd rushing 
 about the beach. In spite of their utmost efforts, 
 they were drifting swiftly out to sea. For a 
 while desperately refusing to entertain the idea, he 
 yielded at last to the irresistible conviction that 
 they were doomed. Their vain struggles only 
 spent their strength the sooner, and to him the 
 five or ten minutes left of life seemed just then of 
 most precious worth. 
 
 He turned his eyes from the fast receding 
 shore to the face at his side, with a sense of having 
 with him more than he was leaving over yonder, 
 a richer world than the one they were drifting 
 away from. Ceasing to swim, he began to tread 
 water with just enough vigor to support them. 
 
A STRUGGLE AND A VICTORY. 147 
 
 " There s no use, Addie we re only drowning 
 the sooner to swim any more," he gasped between 
 the strangling of the breakers. 
 
 She seemed perfectly willing to stop. Her 
 look of trust and content was worth death to win, 
 and once won made death intolerable. 
 
 u The sea and I have fought for you, my dar 
 ling, but the sea has won you." 
 
 "No," she whispered, amid the weltering 
 of the waves, and opening to him the secret 
 seventh heaven of her eyes, u You have won 
 
 me." 
 
 In spite of shivering limbs and trembling mus 
 cles, her words had power to fill him with a deli 
 cious warmth. A man alone may well doubt im 
 mortality, but who ever doubted it looking in the 
 face of his love. And especially, how could Edger- 
 ton think his day was done, when the sun of his 
 life was just dawning. It could not be that he was 
 to die at daybreak. And yet he did feel very 
 pitiful toward himself, at thought of the sweet 
 earthly happiness such a confession from her lips 
 
148 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 would have meant for him had he heard it under 
 other circumstances. 
 
 " When we sink, hold me fast," she whispered, 
 and the sea shall not, after all, come between 
 us." 
 
 For the first time then, he pressed the thousand 
 times dreamed of kiss on her cold blue lips, while 
 his eyes kissed hers, and the angry waves in vain 
 sought to sunder their betrothal embrace. 
 
 " Man, ahoy ! where away ?" 
 
 They heard nothing. She was seemingly 
 asleep upon his shoulder, and his thoughts were far 
 away, floating in the unearthly dream of a spirit 
 about to be disembodied. Was not this as good a 
 time to give up and sink as any ? His poor legs de 
 served a rest. It was a pity to tire them any 
 further for nothing. It would be manlier to die 
 voluntarily at the last, while yet he had a little 
 vantage ground of life, than to wait for utter ex 
 haustion. He would bring Death a little gift. 
 Addie was asleep, or maybe dead. He smiled at 
 the thought. It made death seem so warm and 
 
A STRUGGLE AND A VICTORY. 149 
 
 bright. Quick ! he must follow her closely, lest he 
 lose sight of her. And so clasping her tighter and 
 weaving his stiffened fingers together about her, he 
 began to sink. 
 
 " Aho-o-y ! man, aho-oy !" 
 
 Great God ! it was a boat ! 
 
 Ten minutes later, in one of the bathing houses, 
 Mary Veeder was holding Addie s head in her 
 lap, while the other girls were rubbing life into her 
 stiffened limbs, and near by in another hut Edger- 
 ton was fast reviving under the inQuence of enor 
 mous draughts of horrible whiskey. 
 
 On going forth he met Belle at the door. 
 
 " Do you feel all right again, Frank ?" 
 
 " How is Addie ?" were the questions that 
 crossed each other. 
 
 " Oh, she isn t much the worse, only chilled 
 and exhausted. But oh, Frank, what an awful 
 thing ! The nasty, nasty sea ! and to think we 
 had been praising it so ! I ll never go into the 
 water again. And to think we were so frightened 
 that I do believe we should have let you drown if 
 
150 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Kate hadn t made the men launch the dory. You 
 owe your life to her." 
 
 They found the rest of the party grouped in 
 front of the women s bath-houses, and as the two 
 approached the girls rushed forward, and well, 
 Anna Coffin led off, and the others followed suit. 
 They just kissed him, every one of them, and 
 honi soit qui mal y pense. And he had a realizing 
 sense that he never lost, of how glorious a thing it 
 is to have the genuine, warm friendship of girls, 
 where there is no question of love. 
 
 Kate was the last to follow Anna s example, 
 and she wouldn t have done it at all but that a re 
 fusal would have attracted attention. She blushed 
 like sunrise as she held her cheek to Edgerton. 
 Belle noticed it and turned away with an expres 
 sion of pain. She saw how things were going, and 
 her heart ached for her friend. 
 
 Addie, who was lying on a shawl in the midst 
 of the group, laughed at the kissing. She was very 
 pale, but there was a gladsome look in her eyes, 
 and Edgerton found there, too, the ratification he 
 
A STRUGGLE AND A VICTORY. 151 
 
 sought of her words when they hung between 
 life and death. 
 
 61 Miss Mayhew," he said, with strong feeling, 
 "It is to you we owe our rescue." 
 
 "Why, I had nothing to do with it," replied 
 Kate in surprise. 
 
 " Oh, yes, you did," Belle exclaimed. If it 
 hadn t been for you, those stupid men would never 
 have thought of launching the dory in time." 
 
 " If you hurried them ten seconds you saved 
 our lives, for we were just sinking," said Edgerton. 
 
 " Did I, really ? " said Kate, with a de 
 lighted expression. " Really ? Oh Belle, are you 
 sure ? " 
 
 " There s no doubt about it, Kate, you are re 
 sponsible for what those two may do for the rest 
 of their lives." 
 
 Addie quickly leaned forward, caught Kate s 
 hand and kissed it, and Edgerton did likewise, say 
 ing, as if to relieve the slight melodrama, 
 
 " I m just as much obliged to you as if I were 
 worth more." 
 
152 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Kate was a good deal moved, as she said 
 laughingly, 
 
 " Girls, who wouldn t go into the life-saving 
 business ? " 
 
 They resolved to drive home immediately, 
 Edgerton first, however, attending to the purchase 
 of the dory that had saved them, which he ordered 
 to be sent on to Nantucket. 
 
 " I ve got a hobby about collecting mementoes 
 of my interesting experiences," he explained, " and 
 I mean to take this old dory home for some of my 
 grandchildren to drown themselves out of, and thus 
 compensate things." 
 
 The dory was not, however, the only memento 
 of the undertow he meant to carry v home with him. 
 
 An easy seat was arranged for Ad die in the 
 cart, and Edgerton drove home at a rate of speed 
 that astonished the horses and delighted the girls. 
 
 u We can t afford to drive so fast as this on the 
 island, as a general rule," said Anna, " we haven t 
 much room to drive in, you see, and have to econo 
 mize it by going pretty slow." 
 
A STRUGGLE AND A VICTORY. 153 
 
 There was lively talking. Edgerton was re 
 quired to describe to his sympathetic listeners, 
 each successive phase of his experience in the 
 grasp of the undertow, and his realistic narrative 
 evoked appreciative shudders and bursts of sympa 
 thy from the vivacious auditors. His terrible peril 
 had made him a hero, and he had never been so 
 flattered and petted as on that drive home. Addie 
 was too tired and self absorbed, to say more than a 
 word or two during the entire seven mile transit. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MAN MUST WORK. 
 
 /~\N arriving home, Edgerton found a letter from 
 ^^ Dr. Braiuard. The portion bearing espe 
 cially on this narrative, ran as follows : 
 
 " You haven t written very regularly of late, 
 and indeed I believe not at all, and my wife, to 
 whom I have read your previous letters, says that 
 you are in love. She is a pretty good judge of 
 such things, and if she has hit it this time I infer 
 that you will soon begin to be interested in the 
 practical question of a salary. Matrimony begins 
 / with kisses, but it ends with bread and butter ; the 
 mouth is the alpha and ornega of the tender pas 
 sion. It begins by making idealists of us but ends 
 in making us materialists. 
 
 " So if Phoebe is right you may be prepared to 
 take some interest in a little talk I had the other 
 day with Thomas, the publisher of your old paper. 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 155 
 
 He inquired about you and I told him you were 
 all right again, and he desired me to write and ask 
 you to come back and take your former position. 
 They have made no permanent engagement in 
 your place, and he says the paper can t get along 
 without you. So there is your salary, any time 
 you please to begin drawing it again. Only don t 
 take your old work without some new conditions 
 and restrictions with a view to preserving your 
 nerves from wear and tear. For example " and 
 here follows a long string of hygienic counsels and 
 theories, at which point we break off. 
 
 Now Edgerton was so very much in love that 
 he would have been capable of buying a dory and 
 going into the clam-raking business on the island, 
 for the rest of his life, if he could have persuaded 
 Addie Follet to share his clams with him. But 
 that would certainly not have been his ideal occu 
 pation, and this chance to re-enter his old vocation 
 was one of the most opportune events of his entire 
 life. 
 
 The peculiar fascination of the journalistic life, 
 
156 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 so hard to throw off by those once under its influ 
 ence, would have made any other profession diffi 
 cult for him. A flood of pleasant associations and 
 anticipations surged through his mind at the 
 thought of returning again with restored health 
 and invigorated mind to his old place in the office. 
 He had compelled himself for so long a time not to 
 think of his business future, at first on account of 
 his health and later because the thought was un 
 pleasant, that now the old love for the profession and 
 the long repressed ambitions reasserted themselves 
 with such strong and delightful effect as, I fear, for 
 the nonce to take precedence even of the tender 
 passion in his imagination. But still not wholly," 
 for he was conscious of feeling that he might now 
 the more safely return to his work that he carried 
 with him in Addie a sure guarantee against that 
 too close absorption in business cares which had 
 disabled him. In her he should have an always 
 new and fresh world of recreation, relaxation, in 
 spiration. 
 
 Edgerton was rather superstitious about luck. 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 157 
 
 He didn t like to have good luck in indifferent 
 things for fear that by some law of compensation 
 he should be unlucky in important things. But 
 this time his luck had come in the nick of time 
 and in the most important concern of his life. 
 
 At about eight o clock he went to see Addie, 
 not without fear that he should find her the worse 
 for her exposure. But hers was a temperament in 
 which the spiritual part receives the chief impact 
 of all agitating experiences, thereby sparing the 
 frailer body. There was nothing unusual in her 
 appearance beyond a bright flush in the cheeks, 
 and a heightened lustre in the eyes, which were 
 indications of strong emotional excitement rather 
 than of physical disturbance. Usually when he 
 had called he had found her sitting by the window 
 facing the sea ; but to-night the curtains of that 
 window were drawn and the chair was moved away. 
 He recognized a significance in the change. 
 
 The shadow of death transfigures mortality, 
 and they who by rare chance return from under 
 that shadow, long wear a consecrating aureole. As 
 
158 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 these stood looking steadfastly on one another, each 
 plainly saw that aureole on the head of the other, 
 and a mutual reverence mingled with their love. 
 
 Their gaze began with an expression of awe, 
 of curiosity and strange new interest, and ended in 
 a long, heartwarm embrace. 
 
 " This is so much better than being drowned." 
 said Edgerton emphatically, and her smile was not 
 a contradiction. 
 
 Referring to a former speech of hers, he asked 
 maliciously, " Does it seem so peculiar to get mar 
 ried as it did, Addie ?" 
 
 She flushed, and said, 
 
 " No impertinence, sir," and laughed a little. 
 
 Shortly after she declared that she could not 
 bear the inside of a house that evening, and they 
 walked out together into the night. He told her 
 of the letter he had just received, and something 
 of his business, with a feeling that the dry details 
 were being turned into poetry by their connection 
 with her. Even his bank account he thought 
 might become a poem by virtue of this philosopher s 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 159 
 
 stone of love that promised to transmute to gold 
 the whole dull fabric of his life. 
 
 " I shall want you very soon," he said. " Will 
 it be hard to leave the island ?" 
 
 u Not hard any more," she replied. " I shall be 
 afraid in every storm that the sea is coming for me." 
 
 They were now upon the beach, and Addie, 
 whose nerves had certainly been somewhat tried 
 that day, appeared strongly agitated by mingled 
 fear and defiance of the water. As Edgerton 
 kissed her, she cried, 
 
 " Look, you jealous sea ! You would have 
 drowned him. See what you have gained. He is 
 kissing me before you !" 
 
 " But we must cross the sea once more. Better 
 not anger it," he said. 
 
 " I am not afraid, not with you, for you have 
 beaten it, but I shall never dare to come down here 
 alone again." 
 
 Suddenly she exclaimed with a poignant ac 
 cent, arresting her steps and looking at him with 
 dilated eyes, 
 
160 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 "Oh, dear! oh, dear! I had forgotten all 
 about it. i r ou won t want me when you know 
 what I ve done." 
 
 "What is it so bad that you have done?" he 
 asked, soothingly, for he was a little alarmed at 
 her excitement. 
 
 "I have broken my pledge! All we girls 
 promised each other that we wouldn t let you make 
 love to us, and I let me go !" and with a quick 
 motion she disengaged herself from the arm that 
 clasped her waist. 
 
 But though taken by surprise, he had not let 
 her escape, and so she stood with her hand in the 
 attitude of pushing away his arm, while she re 
 garded him with a perplexed expression, that 
 meant, 
 
 "Don t touch me till I can think !" 
 
 But her scruples were not rigid enough wholly 
 to withstand the grieved astonishment of his look, 
 and half resisting, she allowed him to draw her lo 
 him, although the averted face and downcast eyes 
 still showed conscience unappeased. 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 161 
 
 (t But what shall I do, what shall I say," she 
 repeated anxiously. " The girls will think me un 
 true and designing. I can t bear that." 
 
 Edgerton, who was disposed to regard the mat 
 ter as a joke, replied with affected gravity, and a 
 lurking grin, 
 
 " Of course not. A solemn pledge of that sort 
 must be kept at all costs. I ll go away and leave 
 you. That ll be the best way out of it." 
 
 "Instead of the delightful tightening of her 
 fingers about his arm as a mute detainer, which he 
 had complacently anticipated, she replied with 
 grave decisiveness, 
 
 " Yes, I think you had better go." 
 
 A cold shudde r went all over him. You might 
 have pushed him down with a straw, as he ex 
 claimed hoarsely, 
 
 " You re not in earnest, Addie ! " 
 
 " Who set the example of joking, sir ? " she re 
 plied with a merry laugh at his consternation, giv 
 ing him her cheek to kiss for amends. 
 
 " Great heavens, Addie, it won t do to fool with 
 
162 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 a man s nervous system in that way. I shan t get 
 over this in an hour. To think that you might 
 have meant it! Say, Addie, you couldn t have 
 possibly meant it, could you ? Are you not safely 
 mine forever ? " 
 
 " I can t tell, you must look out, sir," the lips 
 said, but the grey eyes said " evermore." 
 
 It is surprising how much snubbing it requires 
 to teach men, that women won t stand anything 
 that looks like taking their love for granted, how 
 ever lavishly and recklessly, like water, they may 
 themselves choose to pour it out. I don t think 
 Edgerton, who, with many good points, is slightly 
 conceited, understands to this day, just why he 
 got such a sharp set-down. 
 
 " I m afraid it s a bad omen for our love that 
 it should begin in a deceit," said Addie, tristfully. 
 
 " Deceit ! " exclaimed Edgerton. u It s not a 
 question of deceit. You made an engagement 
 with the girls in perfect good faith, expecting 
 to keep it, but you subsequently ascertained that a 
 prior conflicting engagement had been made in your 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 163 
 
 behalf by a competent authority, and so of course 
 your engagement with the girls was off." 
 
 " I don t understand you/ she said, after puz 
 zling a moment. 
 
 " Don t you believe that true love matches are 
 made in heaven." 
 
 Of course." 
 
 " Well then, our engagement was a prior en 
 gagement ordained from eternity." 
 
 She smiled, bat did not appear convinced. 
 
 " Anyhow," he said, "I will see to explaining 
 the matter to the girls. I propose to take all the 
 responsibility on myself, for it belongs to me, and 
 I m exceedingly proud of it. You, poor little girl, 
 couldn t help being loved. Nobody looking at 
 you, could question for a moment that you were 
 predestinated to that fate." 
 
 " No," she insisted, " I must tell them myself, 
 and give them a fair chance to call me names. 
 That is the least amends I can make." 
 
 " Well, promise that whatever you do, you 
 won t try to repent of your wickedness." 
 
164 A NAXTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 She promised. 
 
 It took him an absurdly long time to say good 
 bye to her at the gate. So new, so incredibly 
 sweet was she to his lips and his arms, that each 
 kiss, each embrace seemed the very first he had 
 ever taken in all his life, till at last her patience 
 was exhausted, and exclaiming, " You seem to for 
 get that there are more days to come," she ran 
 into the house. 
 
 All her womanhood, so long held in abeyance- 
 by her mystical passion for the sea, had flowed 
 back upon her that day, thronging her unaccustom 
 ed pulses with a host of delirious sensations that 
 made her afraid of herself. 
 
 She knew and loved her own beauty, and had 
 often turned at night from her mirror with a sense 
 of self-reverence that was like a prayer. But this 
 night, as the glass reflected a sweet, flushed face 
 and lustrous eyes, richly-framed in unbound hair 
 that fell adown a figure beautifully childlike in its 
 white garb, I fancy she smiled with a superior and 
 calculating complacency at the fair vision, for a 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 165 
 
 holier thing was born in her heart, to which her 
 beauty was thenceforth but the servant. Happy is 
 that love which when it is born, finds beauty 
 waiting and ready for its service. 
 
 As for him, I scarcely need to say that this 
 patient earth, which has borne the spurning of so 
 many a proud heel, never had reason to feel so 
 small and insignificant as beneath the happy, 
 haughty tread of Frank Edgerton walking home 
 ward that night. Homeward do I say ? He only 
 was conscious that he was walking toward to-mor 
 row and the endless bright to-morrows. 
 
 C 
 
 The next evening there was a meeting of the 
 Prism, and Addie, according to the understanding 
 with Edgerton, was then to make her confession, 
 and he was not to be present. So as twilight fell 
 he lit a cigar and took a long stroll through the 
 quaint town, now viewed by him, not only, like all 
 other objects, through the roseate medium of love, 
 but bathed also in the tender hue of that anticipa 
 tion of the pensiveness of retrospection which 
 tinges places we are about to leave. He wandered 
 
1G6 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 through the long main street from near the cliff, 
 away down to the water, and threaded again the 
 intricate maze of by-paths and blind allies, doub 
 ling deviously among the weather-beaten houses. 
 He strolled through the cemeteries, where the 
 women and children and old men, with an occa 
 sional sailor dying a dry death, have found burial 
 under the guarantees of so many different creeds. 
 He sauntered down to the deserted, decaying 
 wharves, stretching forth their ragged arms for 
 ships that shall fill their ample bosoms no more. 
 He inspected the flotilla of sailboats rocking at 
 their moorings. " A fleet of dreams," Addie had 
 called them, and so they looked, "with the ocean 
 stretching out beneath the darkening sky, as mys 
 terious as the soul-encompassing ocean of uncon 
 sciousness. 
 
 He climbed the long stairway up into the bel 
 fry of the lofty church tower, and by the waning 
 day and waxing moonlight, overlooked the drowsy 
 little town, the sand-filled harbor, the long lagoon, 
 and desolate Coatue, as barren as the waters it 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 167 
 
 divides. In zigzag lines of light, hither and 
 thither across the bay, his fancy traced the keel- 
 tracks of the Dream y where it had sailed by night 
 and day all that sweet summer. On the head 
 lands afar to the North and East, blazed the light 
 houses, and his imagination followed out their rays 
 as they went to meet the gaze of distant mariners 
 with messages of welcome or of warning. 
 
 The moon silvered as lovingly the desolate 
 sand heaths and sodden moors of the island, as if 
 her far-reaching eye nowhere beheld a fairer gem 
 of the ocean. And round about, encircling all, 
 shone the bright ring of the sea. He had robbed 
 it of a bride. Had he done well to fill with his 
 small self a heart sacred before to so grand a pas 
 sion ? Was not that a more ideal devotion for a 
 human spirit pure and refined enough to cherish 
 it? He could but ask himself these questions, 
 though he would not answer them. 
 
 Sweeter thoughts soon drove them from his 
 mind. He fancied himself showing the world to 
 Ad die, a world to her so utterly strange and un- 
 
168 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 known. What a wealth of wonder, what a host of 
 wide-eyed first impressions, that virgin nature 
 held for him to call out ! No miner ever gloated 
 more eagerly over his gold-veined ore than Edger- 
 ton over these unwrought capacities in Addie s 
 mind. The world s sights that had grown a 
 stale, old story to him, became again of deep in 
 terest as he thought how they would impress his 
 little girl. There comes a time in the lives of men 
 when their own curiosity having become sated and 
 dulled, they thenceforth care only for seeing the 
 wonders of the world through some fresher eyes. 
 And if such dear, fresh eyes can be found, who 
 shall say that the last state of that man is not hap 
 pier than the first ? 
 
 Rousing at last from his re very, one of those 
 few reveries in his or any life that end with a 
 smile instead of a sigh, Edgerton descended from 
 the belfry. As he reached home he met Belle 
 at the gate, just returning from the meeting of 
 the Prism. She took his hand and pressed it 
 saying, 
 
MAN MUST WORK. 169 
 
 " She is a good girl, but oh, Frank, I wish you 
 could have seen with my eyes," with which enig 
 matical remark she went into the house before 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 CONFESSION. 
 
 A DDIE had made her confession. The young 
 --*- ladies had met at Lizzie Folger s and every 
 body at once inquired where Edgerton was. No 
 one but Addie knew the reason of his absence, and 
 she volunteered no explanation, thinking no doubt 
 that she had quite enough on her own account to 
 say. The girls had come to depend on Edgerton 
 as an essential element in their social recreation 
 and were decidedly nonplussed at his lack. 
 
 " I m afraid we are getting to rely too much 
 on this young man," said Anna. " It augurs ill for 
 us when he leaves, as I suppose he will do before 
 long." 
 
 " It will go hard for a while," said Belle, " but 
 I suppose we shall live to forget him. You can t 
 deny, anyway, girls, that I did you a good turn in 
 dividing him up as fairly as I have done." 
 
CONFESSION. 171 
 
 "You shall have credit, Belle," said Mary 
 Veeder, " only I m afraid the effect on us has been 
 rather demoralizing altogether. It isn t wise to get 
 to depending on luxuries that one can t usually 
 command, and gentlemen s society is that sort of 
 a luxury here, you know. I shall never allow 
 myself to be seduced from tea again." 
 
 The talk had been carried on entirely by Belle, 
 Anna and Mary, with an occasional word of good- 
 natured acquiescence from Lizzie Folger, who was 
 not much of a talker. Kate and Addie were very 
 silent. Addie often was, but silence had formerly 
 been a rare indulgence on Kate s part. While the 
 girls had been talking she had quietly withdrawn 
 into a window, and was standing with face averted 
 from the others. 
 
 Silence had fallen on the group, which was 
 finally broken by Addie with a voice of that pecu 
 liar nervous intonation that at once attracts atten 
 tion as announcing a serious communication. 
 
 "You all remember the promise we made, not 
 to let Mr. Edgerton make love to any of us ? " 
 
172 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 Anna Coffin glanced significantly at Mary Vee- 
 der. Kate half turned from the window and 
 looked quickly at Addie. Liz giggled vaguely, 
 and Belle finally said, 
 
 u Well, what of it ? Who s been flirting? " 
 
 "Mr. Edgerton wants me to be his wife and I 
 have said I would/ replied Addie, bravely, her 
 cheeks burning brightly, and her eyes on the floor. 
 
 Belle glanced at Kate who was staring at the 
 speaker, not angrily but with a lack-lustre eye, 
 and a nervous quiver of the lip. Addie began 
 again : 
 
 " Of course I ve no excuse. I ve just broken 
 my promise and I want you to forgive me. Of 
 course, Tm not sorry. How could I be ? but it 
 doesn t seem as if I could ever respect myself again, 
 unless you forgive me." 
 
 She stopped speaking and there was a dead 
 silence. After a moment she lifted her eyes and 
 looked around. Kate was still staring at her with 
 no change in her expression, and seemed least likely 
 of all to make any reply. Liz looked uneasy, as 
 
CONFESSION. 1 73 
 
 she always did when things took a serious turn. 
 The only face that Addie saw turned on her with 
 a really unpleasant expression was Belle s, and in 
 justice to Belle it must be remembered that her 
 bitterness was wholly on her friend s account. 
 Mary Veeder met Ad die s contrite and pleading 
 look with a genial smile of amused good-nature, but 
 it was Anna who first replied in a bantering tone, 
 
 " It was naughty, but it was so nice. Poor 
 little Addie ! And she was not satisfied with her 
 Edgerton but must have our forgiveness too. What 
 a grasping little thing it is, to be sure ! well, it 
 won t do for daughters of Eve to be too hard on 
 each other for plucking forbidden fruit." 
 
 "How long has this thing been going on?" 
 asked Belle in a sharper tone than perhaps she 
 meant. 
 
 It was the involuntary expression of her sym 
 pathy for Kate. She had indeed suspected the 
 state of affairs long before, but she found it more 
 effective in pointing her reproach to treat Addie s 
 confession as a fresh revelation. 
 
174 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 " I don t know what you mean by this thing, 
 replied Addie, with becoming spirit. 
 
 " Bless your heart, Belle Macy," said Anna, 
 " where have your eyes been the past month or two ? 
 I didn t suppose Addie was telling news to any of us." 
 
 U I move," said Mary, ;< that our forgiveness be 
 formally extended to Addie. All in favor raise 
 their hands." 
 
 All hands were raised. Addie exclaimed with 
 an air of great relief and delight, 
 
 u Oh, I m so glad and so thankful. Now he 
 won t be ashamed of me. I m going to kiss you." 
 
 And she began with Belle, who responded 
 rather coldly. Liz always kissed just alike, vigor 
 ously, but without special intention. Mary took 
 the girl s cheeks in her hands and kissed her ten 
 derly, in a maidenly motherly way, with a sweet 
 and wholesome kiss that had healing in it. Of all 
 the girls, Mary was the one who liked Addie best, 
 although always entirely undemonstrative about it. 
 Anna kissed her two or three times, impulsively and 
 sympathetically, as one engaged gjrl kisses another. 
 
CONFESSION. 175 
 
 Kate was not one of the young ladies who hold 
 their lips cheaper than men do their hands, never 
 counting kisses. When she kissed any one it 
 meant something. As Ad die was embracing the 
 other girls, she was bewildered to know what she 
 should do. To kiss her with such bitterness in her 
 heart would be a hypocrisy that would spoil the 
 fragrance of her lips forever more, not indeed that 
 she cared much for that just now, poor child. To 
 refuse to kiss her would reveal a secret that she 
 would rather die than have dreamed of by her 
 friends. It was cruel, to force such a dilemma 
 upon her at such a moment, when she had enough 
 to bear. 
 
 Before she could make up her mind as to her 
 course, Addie turned to her, utterly unsuspicious 
 of the conflict in her bosom, her lips parted in ex 
 pectancy, her face wet with tears and radiant with 
 happy smiles. As motionless and unresponsive as 
 a statue, Kate received her kiss. But even in that 
 moment she experienced a revulsion of feeling 
 worthy of her noble heart. She loved Edgerton 
 
176 
 
 A NANTUCKET IDYL. 
 
 but the hope of his love had forever vanished. 
 Yet, even as she felt this, a great wave of tender 
 ness for Addie, whom he loved, as for an object 
 dear and precious to him, overwhelmed every 
 thought of resentment or pique, and just as the 
 girl was turning away, disappointed and pained, she 
 was caught in Kate s arms and pressed convulsive 
 ly to her bosom, while passionate kisses rained ou 
 her lips and eyes. 
 
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