 Section 87 of Uncollected Short Stories of L. M. Montgomery. It was morning, and Romney was on his way to the sand shore for a swim. With his bathing suit rolled up under his arm, a gaily striped bath towel hung over his shoulder, and his coppery head bared to the sun. He was in excellent spirits, although his three o'clock musings had been of an unsatisfactory character. At three o'clock it had seemed preposterous to dream of marrying an Edgelow heiress and sea-nile to fall in love with her. He had laughed at himself, and now he felt very wise and prudent. She was his ideal, but between them her wealth and his poverty stood like grim, unconquerable ogres. The feud counted for nothing in his eyes, but one couldn't marry on an income that served only in its most flexible moments to keep life in one. There was nothing like looking fax squarely in the face and accepting their logic. He couldn't afford to fall in love with Dorcas Edgelow, but her name must be Sylvia, and therefore he would not do it. She must remain for him only an exquisite might have been. She could only be his dream girl. Meanwhile, life was good. It was worthwhile, having been ill, to realize the tang and savor of returning health again on a morning like this when a sea wind was blowing up over the long green fields. There's nothing on earth like a sea wind, said Romney, filling his lungs with it, snuffing rapturously at it. What a tang! What a zip! What a message from vast, interminable spaces of freedom! What a magic of adventure! I feel as if I had exchanged my shop-worn soul for a fresh one, fire new from the workshop of the gods. Who is Sylvia? What is she, compared to this incomparable morning, wind and sea? I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. Sylvia shan't rock my canoe. He whistled gaily and strode on. Everything was good. He felt like a boy again. The rice lilies were as thick as ever in the shore fields and the margin of the pond as pink with water witches. Beyond, in the dunes, was a wild, sweet loveliness of salt-withered grasses and piping breezes. Far out, the sea was dotted with sails that were silver in the magic of the morning sunlight. He would have a glorious dip, a glorious wallow on sunwarm golden sands. Then, after a glamorous walk home, one of Aunt Elizabeth's delightful dinners. Then an afternoon of hammock dreams in the garden. He would not even look across the hedge. For him, edge-low espaces and heiresses had ceased to exist. He would not look at, speak to, nor think of Sylvia again. With this, he looked at her. He had reached the brink of the deep little run by which the pond waters ran through a gap in the dunes to the sea. On the other side of it, barely five yards away, Sylvia was standing, her arms full of water witches, looking in dire perplexity at the water. Then she looked at him. For a moment or two, or an eon or two, according to whatever measurement of time you prefer, they stood so and looked at each other. Romney, who had just sworn never to look at Sylvia again, fairly devoured her with his eyes. She wore green again, and she looked like a long, slender, green-flag lily with the exquisite blossom of her face at top of it. Had there ever been such a pretty woman in the world before? Had any woman ever had such an exquisite line of neck and chin? What were all the renowned, happy Edgelow beauties compared to her? They were dead and gone, broken-hearted, but she was here in her exquisite flesh and blood, looking as if no sorrow ever had or ever could have touched her. Good morning, said Romney, who wanted to say, Hail Goddess! Ms. Edgelow looked at him and smiled. Her smile was very faint and mysterious, like a half-open rosebud. You felt that the full flower could not be quite so wonderful. The plank is gone, she said plaintively. It was here when I crossed an hour ago. Romney pointed to some men who were making Marsh hay up along the pond. Likely they have taken it. And how am I to get across, she asked. It's so deep and cold, I can't wait it. No reason why you should, said Romney. I was sent here by the powers that govern for this moment. It was predestinated in the Councils of Eternity that I should be here at this precise moment to carry you across. Then I hope it is likewise predestinated that you won't drop me. The water looks fearfully cold and black, and I'm sure there are horrible, slimy things at the bottom. Romney coolly stepped into the run, though he felt slightly dubious as to what bottom he might find. Sand and mud are a treacherous combination, and to wade in icy cold water to your knees is an experiment for a man not too long over pneumonia. But what cared Romney? Luckily the bottom of the run, though oozy and squudgy, was no worse, and he got across without trouble. He was very near to her now. Seen close, she was not quite so beautiful, but infinitely more charming. Her creamy skin was powdered with delicious little golden freckles. They made her less a goddess and more a woman. You must let me carry you over, said Romney. I won't drop you. I won't wet you. But, he added internally, I won't swear that I shan't kiss you before I set you down. I'm afraid it will be too much for you, she said. You've been ill, haven't you? And you're dripping wet with that cold water. She must have been asking about him to know that he'd been ill. James Ejlo would never have volunteered the information. Romney glowed from head to foot. I'm all right. As for being wet, I came down to get wet. But not in your clothes. That, she said practically, is what makes it dangerous. Why didn't you take off your shoes and socks and roll up your trousers? That would have kept you waiting. You are a very imprudent young man, she said, then added, as if by way of afterthought. I wouldn't have minded being kept waiting. What did she mean? Romney imagined several things she might mean. He stood staring at her. What a delicious mouth she had. Her hair was like midnight under her wide green hat. But her nose was slightly irregular. Well, let us say crooked. How nice. And her voice was a sweet, throaty, summery drawl. What a voice for lovemaking. Romney stood there and imagined her making love in it. Did I frighten you last night by my crazy hoot? He asked. Oh, no, I've been told that the Coopers are eccentric. You've been brought up on the feud, I suppose, said Romney sulkily. Well, are you going to let a vile, contemptible Cooper carry you over the run? Yes, but I won't speak to him while he's doing it, said Miss Edgelow. She smiled again. It made Romney want to seize her in his arms and press kisses on the smile until he had found the heart of its mystery. This Edgelow girl had the smile of Mona Lisa, the everlasting lure and provocation that drives men mad and writes scarlet pages in dim historical records. He picked her up and waited through the run with her. He did not hurry. Every time he took a step he felt carefully about to make sure of his foothold. He did not go straight across, but angle wise, with no explanation offered. Finally however he had to make land. Then he set her down reluctantly without kissing her. Thank you, she said. I hope you won't take cold for this. There are no such things as colds in the seventh heaven, said Romney. He felt that it was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Why couldn't he think of something clever? He could think of clever things easily when there was nobody to say them to. His magazine stories were noted for their sparkling dialogue, yet now he could only be clumsy. His fiction heroes talked superbly to heroines of all sorts. They never made asses of themselves. Miss Edgelow ignored his feeble attempt properly. You must go and take your saltwater dip directly, she commanded, and dry your clothes in the sun before you put them on. Be very particular about that. I am going to stand here, said Romney, folding his arms, and watch you out of sight. And tonight, what about tonight? Can I come over into the Edgelow Garden and talk to you? Miss Edgelow smiled. The dead Edgelows would turn over in their graves. Excellent exercise forum, commented Romney. Be honest, I don't believe you care a hoot for the dead Edgelows and their feuds any more than I do. No, I don't, she said candidly. But one living Edgelow is worse than all the dead ones. Last night, my uncle commanded me never to speak to you, look at you, nor in any way become cognizant of your existence. He was emphatic, which means that he didn't scruple to enforce his decree with some fine old Edgelow oaths. Do you intend to obey him? A man, said Miss Edgelow reflectively, is master in his own domain. At least I cannot invite you into his garden. Neither, of course, can I go into yours. The whispering lane is debatable ground, said Romney. So I have heard, said Miss Edgelow. Before she turned away, she looked at him once from under her broad hat. Something in the look made Romney suddenly recall cousin Clarenda's pronouncement. Either she liked it, or she is a born flirt. Was she a flirt? That look? Was it an invitation, lure, provocation? It held more than mere friendliness, Romney knew. There was even a hint of defiance in it, though more it seemed of feuds and prohibitions than of him. He had a feeling that Sylvia, hang it, her name couldn't be Dorcas, might come to walk in the whispering lane as much to show old James Edgelow as for any other reason. I will be prudent, said Romney to himself as she went away. I shall remember the fatal hour of three o'clock. I shall not make myself miserable howling for the moon nor humiliate myself to furnish a summer holiday for a bored beauty. Only, prudence is such a shoddy virtue by times. One always feels ashamed of it. If I had been prudent, I would not have waded through this icy run water, and so would never have held that delicious armful for thirty seconds. I would never have had that exquisite white hand resting on, clinging to my shoulder. There was no engagement ring on it, by the way. Nevertheless, there are certain things I must remember henceforth. Romney held up his left hand and checked them off on his fingers. First, she is an Edgelow, therefore born to hate me. Second, she is an Arras, therefore taboo. Third, I am poor as a rat, and likely to remain so, therefore out of the running. Fourth, I think she is a bit of a coquette, therefore to be shunned. And fifth, Romney paused for a moment. And fifth, she is the sweetest, most adorable, most desirable thing that ever looked allurement had a man out of a pair of heavens. I've forgotten after all to find out what color her eyes were. Therefore I am a besotted fool. He caught up his impedimenta and hurried over the dunes to the beach. He would certainly be prudent henceforth. He would devote himself to Cousin Clarenda's school teacher by way of double prudence. He plunged into the surf thinking, her lashes are so long, it's no wonder I couldn't rightly see her eyes. And her eyebrows are straight and dark, I'm sure of that anyhow. The lady referred to was not the school teacher. At dinner that day, sitting in the cool, dim dining room of the hill, looking out on the Golden Valley, Romney was not above trying to pump Aunt Elizabeth about her new neighbor. But he got nothing for his pains. Aunt Elizabeth knew nothing about her and plainly did not want to know. She contrived to give Romney the impression that edge lows did not really exist. They might imagine they did, but they were mere emanations of the evil one to be resolutely disbelieved in by any one of good principles and proper breeding. You did not speak of the devil in good society. Neither did you speak of the edge lows. This imagined girl might be an imagined dorkess edge low, or she might not. Aunt Elizabeth relegated the whole edge low clan connection and cash to limbo with one wave of her thin, unbeautiful Coupiri in hand edge lows indeed. Thus checkmated Romney swore inwardly that he would never ask anyone about miss edge low again. And a quarter of an hour later was asking Samuel about her. He simply couldn't keep from talking to somebody about her. Samuel lived in a little house in a hollow on the side of Hill of the Winds. He was never called Sam. It simply could not be done. He was a handsome urchin of 10 with an elfin beauty of face, which Aunt Elizabeth considered clearly diabolic. Jet black eyes, limpid with mischief, laughter, lawless, roguery, brown curls, bare to the sunlight, cheeks rose red beneath golden tan, a shirt, half a pair of suspenders, what was left of a pair of pants originally fashioned for a much older boy. That was Samuel. He generally had a snake dead or living concealed about him, and he had never heard of the 10 commandments. By nature, he was honest, but he never spoiled a good story by sticking too closely to the truth. And he was as thorough a young pagan as ever ran wild on the heath. Romney loved him. Do you, said Romney shamelessly, happen to know who the enchanted princess is who walks occasionally in yonder fair pleasant beyond the cedar hedge? Meaning old Jim's garden asked Samuel transferring a vicious looking little brown snake from his pants pocket to his shirt pocket. Is that what you mean? Yes. Don't know nothing of her. Watched her through the hedge last night. She'd be good looking if it weren't for her freckles. Gee, but they're thick. Romney glared. Samuel winked at him impudently, and on second thought restored the snake to the pants pocket. How can you touch those horrible things, said Romney shuddering. He hated snakes. This snake's dead, said Samuel contemptuously. Then you have no information to give me concerning our mysterious stranger. Nope. I can find out all about her though if you're so set on it. What asked Samuel seriously? What makes you like her so well? Romney was flabbergasted. He thought he had been very cool and impersonal and detached in his questions. And here was this imp. Samuel, my boy, you have a very vile habit of jumping at conclusions. Simply because I'd betray an entirely natural curiosity regarding a lady who is my next door neighbor. Why do you absurdly suppose that I have a deep personal interest in her? Because you don't talk English when you ask questions about her, rejoined Samuel, fishing up another snake, a very live one this time. All them big words mean your bashful talking about her. Has she been here long, asked Romney, reverting to English? Never saw a round for yesterday. Samuel explored a third pocket with a disappointed expression. There he must have slipped through that hole. Just my darned luck. He was the finest snake of the bunch. Say, don't worry. I'll know all there's to be known about her for tomorrow night. But you oughtn't to be hankering after her. One of that gang over there. The cooperist of all coopers could not have expressed more contempt for that gang than Samuel, who had never heard of them a month previously. Samuel had an instinctive recognition of a foe to all boys in old gym and had adopted the feud as a convenient excuse for hostility. As for Romney, he was by now far from the three o'clock mood, and he wanted so badly to talk of his dream, lady, that he must needs talk of her to Samuel. No fitter confidant offering. I want you to find out that her name isn't Dorcas. But it is said Samuel. I heard old Jim shouting after her this morning when she went to the shore. Dorcas, you remember my dinner hour is 12. Well, thought Romney, turning away in disgust, I can think of her as Sylvia anyhow. And that is all that matters. And she is an edge low and an heiress and a coquette. Dorcas is not for me. But Sylvia has always been mine. Samuel, he added aloud, do you wish you were rich? Yep. What is the first thing you would do if you were rich? By Joe Perkins, his trotter, said Samuel and hesitatingly. And I, Samuel, if I were rich, would marry the young lady we've been speaking of. Would she have you? Asked Samuel. Chapter 3 Miss Edgelow was walking at sunset in the whispering lane. This lane ran through the beach wood at the back of the Cooper and Edgelow estates. It had been a bone of contention for generations. Both families claimed it and both used it determinedly to prove their claim. For the past 20 years, no particular fuss had been made over it. Miss Elizabeth walked through it on principle twice a year when she knew James Edgelow would see her. And James Edgelow always went to church that way when he did go, though it was the longest way around. Samuel joined Miss Edgelow as she loitered along under the great gray bowed beaches. Perhaps Miss Edgelow had been expecting someone else. Perhaps not. She did not betray any disappointment and she smiled at Samuel in a chummy fashion and proceeded to get acquainted with him. Miss Edgelow had, so it seemed, away with boys. Samuel liked her but kept his head. After all, he was the retainer of a clan that was at feud with hers. When he found out that she was not afraid of snakes, he respected her also. But for all that he had made up his mind that he was not going to have any courting between her and Romney. Samuel wanted Romney wholly for himself. He loved him and he wanted him for chum and playfellow. This would, Samuel knew with a deadly instinctive certainty, be all spoiled if he began running after a skirt. Men were no good when they began running after skirts. Besides, this particular skirt was an Edgelow and you couldn't trust an Edgelow. She would likely as not make a fool of Romney. Sarah Deen, down at Clifton, had made a fool of Homer Gibson and Homer had hanged himself. Samuel was not going to have any hangings at Hill of the Winds. This Edgelow girl must have her claws clipped in time. Samuel had been thinking over the matter all day and knew just what he was going to do. Meanwhile, he sat on the log and appeared so simple and charming and naive that Miss Edgelow thought him a delightful child. What is your name? asked Samuel. Dorcas Edgelow. I told him that. He wouldn't hardly believe it. Told who? Oh, Romney, he was quizzing me about you. Oh, indeed. And why wouldn't he believe my name was Dorcas? Dunno, he's full of queer notions. He says, went on Samuel shamelessly, that if he was rich, he'd marry you. Miss Edgelow crimsoned. She looked very angry for a moment, but Samuel intent on shifting a snake to a more comfortable quarters did not notice this. But he's poor, always was and always will be. So he says he's a writer man, you know, he likes to spoon about with girls and then put him in his stories. Oh, so that is what he does, said Miss Edgelow, still looking a little dangerous. Did he tell you so? Yep, he wants to get acquainted with you so he can put you in a book. Honest, that's his idea. Would you like to be put in a book? Miss Edgelow bit her lip. Did he tell you this too? Yes, assented Samuel unblushingly, thought I got to warn you. And he told me he always tells a girl just what he thinks she'd like to hear. Don't let him fool you. Oh, I won't. Miss Edgelow looked as if there was not the slightest danger of it. He thinks you ain't bad looking, of course, supplemented Samuel, only he doesn't like your freckles. Say, do you know what will cure Mange in a bulldog, a half bulldog? Just at this moment, Romney came along the lane on his way to have supper with Cousin Clorinda. He was dressed in white flannels and was bareheaded. His eyes were luminous and his thin, delicately cut face was dreamy and remote. He did not see Miss Edgelow until he was quite opposite to her, did not see her because he was thinking of her. Then he halted in confusion and bowed rather stiffly. Miss Edgelow stood up. He saw at once that she wore a dark red hat, very wonderful and droopy and becoming, and the palest of pale pink dresses. She turned away, but as she turned she flung him a brief, mysterious smile, a surprisingly nice smile considering the expression that it had replaced. Romney wanted to follow her but dared not. He went on feeling exceedingly and foolishly happy. He was quite as well aware of the foolishness of it as of the exceedingness. Miss Edgelow walked away also for getting Samuel, who, however, was satisfied, feeling that he had done a good bit of work. Miss Edgelow communed with herself as she went back home. So that is what he does, studies girls for types and puts them in his stories. Mr. Cooper, you need a lesson. I believe Uncle Jim was right when he said that all Cooper men believed that every girl who looked at them fell in love with them. So you would marry me if you were rich, condescending insufferable young man, wait till I'm through with you, and you don't like my freckles. Suddenly Miss Edgelow stopped and laughed. Why should I blame you for that? I don't like them myself. What do you find in this forsaken hole that is so amusing? asked old Jim Edgelow coming around a corner of the cedar walk. Uncle Jim, said Miss Edgelow, if you were a young man trying to make love to a charming young woman, I am charming, am I not? Would you object to her freckles? Who's been making love to you? demanded old Jim fiercely. Nobody. That's the trouble. Nobody has made any love to me. I flung myself quite boldly in Romney Cooper's way tonight and he passed me by. He objects, so I understand, to my freckles. Uncle, do you suppose I could make him fall madly in love with me in spite of my freckles and then spurn him in true dramatic Edgelow fashion? Do you suppose it would make any difference if he knew I don't have freckles in winter? I think you're quite mad, said old Jim. No, don't smile at me like that. Let me tell you, Miss, that you trade too much on that smile. It may work with silly young asses, but it won't work with me. I won't have you associating with this Cooper imbecile. Do you hear me? Am I to be defied at my age by a chit of a girl? He says he won't marry me, said Miss Edgelow plaintively. Good Lord, girl, have you asked him to marry you? Not yet, said Miss Edgelow. I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use. He doesn't like my freckles, as I've said. Old Jim snorted and stamped off, too angry to speak. Besides, he suspected that this girl was making fun of him. If there's one thing that I like more than another, Miss Edgelow remarked to the weeping beach, it's tormenting the men. Romney went down the lane and across the windy fields and along the shore. The sea was ruffled into a living crimson land under the sunset. The fishing boats were coming in. One incredibly white little star was just visible where the pale pink of the upper sky shaded off into paler green. Down low in the southwest there was a new moon. He saw it over his right shoulder and wondered if Sylvia saw it, too. She was not out of his thoughts for a minute during his whole walk, but he thought this was because he allowed it, never that it was because he could not help it. Cousin Clarinda's house was so near the sea that the sound of waves always filled its rooms, a gray old house fronting the sunset with leagues of satiny rippled sea before it, purple headlands, and distant fairy-like misty coasts. What a view, old Mark Wallace picked out when he built his homestead, said Romney admiringly. What a thing to have the sea at your very doorstep like this. How delightful it would be to live in this old remote place with Sylvia and walk along that shore with her in the moonlight, high hoe if it were only possible. If what were only possible, queried Cousin Clarinda billowing down the walk in blue muslin and a cherry-hued scarf, Romney told her. And why isn't it possible? He stared at her. This incredible woman scarcely twenty-four hours ago had warned him against having anything to do with Miss Edgelow, and had quoted feuds to him, and now she didn't seem able to believe that the idea was absurd. Adorable and adored Cousin, why this right about face? You amaze me. Haven't you faced about yourself, retorted Clarinda? Yesterday afternoon you were going to marry her out of hand. Now you are groaning that it isn't possible. I told you three o'clock would bring wisdom. Three o'clock in the morning is the wisest and most accursed hour of the clock. At three o'clock I saw clearly how impossible it all was. At three o'clock I saw that it was quite possible, averred Clarinda. Why not? She is, or will be, disgustingly rich. All the better. You can't live on love. Nor on my wife's money, either. Can't you make enough to live on? I've always made enough to live on myself, but I couldn't ask Sylvia to live in a garret with me. Any other reasons? She is a flirt, I think. No, I'll say a caquette. That sounds better. Infinitely more alluring and gracious. A girl like her always flirts till the right man comes. I don't suppose she'd look at me. She's half in love with you already. And finally, her name isn't Sylvia. I won't discuss the matter if you're not going to be serious, said cousin Clarinda, really annoyed. She had lain awake most of the night, constructing a gorgeous castle in the air for Romney, and it was aggravating to find that he refused to inhabit it, and refused so frivolously. Dear young thing, I am serious. Isn't it serious that that exquisite dream maiden should be named Dorcas? Serious? Why, it's a tragedy. I have known several excellent women, said cousin Clarinda severely, who were named Dorcas. I grant it, excellent women, beyond a doubt. But had those excellent women beauty, charm, distinction, did they walk and speak like queens? Could they afford to comb their hair straight back from their faces? No, admitted cousin Clarinda after a few moments of honest reflection. No, I don't suppose they were. Did. Could. You see, said Romney triumphantly. Of course she shouldn't be named Dorcas. But don't let's talk of her cousin. I had an attack of temporary insanity at four by the clock yesterday. I am sane now. I am not in love with Miss Edgelow. I am not going to be in love with her. I think I will put her into my next magazine serial as a heroine. That is her proper environment. She is not meant for human nature's daily food. I couldn't ask her to darn my socks or fry my bacon. Lead me to your jam closet, Lady Fair. Comfort me with raspberry vinegar, for I am sick of Aunt Elizabeth's Swedish ginger cordial. And stay me with an armchair. Your armchairs always fitted my kinks. I've got supper ready for you in the dining room. I want you to eat it and tell me I'm a good cook. I'm dying for a compliment. I never get any now that I'm old. Where is your school teacher? In her room correcting exercises. No, I am not going to call her down. If Dorcas Edgelow doesn't interest you, then... But she does. Haven't I told you that I'm going to write a story about her? Interest me, why I held her in my arms today for 30 blissful seconds. I won't say, but what I held her a shade more tightly than was absolutely necessary. But then I had to be careful not to drop her, hadn't I? Fancy if I had dropped her in the run. Romney Cooper. They didn't put the hyphens in when they christened me. Strawberry shortcake. Cousin of my heart, your... You shan't have one crumb of my strawberry shortcake until you've told me what you've been doing. Romney, you're overacting. You're dying to talk to me of Dorcas Edgelow and yet you pretend you aren't. I came down here to talk about Samuel Rice, protested Romney with warmth. I'm really interested in Samuel. He's a gifted, engaging orphan. I want to do something for him, uplift him. For instance, couldn't we persuade him to go to Sunday school? You can help me, Cousin Clarinda. A good woman's influence. I don't care a hoot about gifted orphans, just now, anyhow. I'm dying to hear all about Dorcas Edgelow and you. I've never known a romantic love affair, not even my own. Would you sacrifice my happiness, ruin my life, break my heart, to gratify your lust for romance, demanded Romney? Cousin Clarinda, I won't talk of her. She is charming. You've no idea how charming she is. Her freckles are enchanting, an atmosphere of perfume seems to surround her, and yet I swear she doesn't use perfume. She has a nice little way of cuddling in your arms when you are carrying her about, and her smile, Cousin Clarinda. I am a patient woman, Romney, but if you don't tell me without any further preamble what you mean by carrying her about, I'll smack your ears. Romney told her. Also, he told her of the meeting in the Whispering Lane. She was in the Whispering Lane? Yes, by chance, or God's grace, and she wore... She went to the Whispering Lane after you had suggested it as a sort of neutral ground, and you didn't stop and talk to her? You didn't? I had an engagement with you, Divinity. You are a hopeless goose. You have thrown away a golden opportunity, and you have insulted her. Cousin Clarinda, you don't really mean that you think she went there to meet me. Of course she did, said Cousin Clarinda. When she smiled at you as you say she did, you should have followed her, even if you broke 40 engagements with me, followed her to the very den of old Jim himself if necessary. What about the feud? A feud, said Cousin Clarinda solemnly, is an un-Christian thing. Besides, it would be a treat to see Mary Edgelow's face if Dorcas married you. I give up trying to understand you, said Romney. Anyhow, I've told you all there is to tell, so now may I have my shortcake? It was starlight when Romney went home. A white filmy mist was hanging over the river valley. He crossed the sea fields and climbed Hill of the Winds. The dew was cold, and the night was full of mystery, and wonder, and sheer magic. The two houses on the hill and their old gardens were veiled in it. It was an expectant night, a night when things intended to happen. Romney halted on the porch for a moment. There was a blot of white in the Edgelow garden, just across the hedge. As he looked at it, something was thrown over the hedge and struck him in the face. A soft, odorous something. He stooped and picked it up. It was a wide-blown rose, damp and exquisite with dew, a rose white enough to lie in her bosom or to star the soft, dark cloud of her hair. When Romney straightened up and looked across to the Edgelow garden, the blot of white was gone. He kissed the rose. It's too dear a night to go to sleep, he said. I will lay me down in the hammock and dream sweet, wonderful, foolish dreams that will be all the more wonderful and foolish and sweet, because they can never be anything but dreams. I will dream of a world where there is no three o'clock in the morning. In her room Miss Edgelow was looking scrutinizingly in the glass. They really don't show so much by lamplight, she said. End of Section 87. Section 88 of Uncollected Short Stories of L. M. Montgomery This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jordan P. Uncollected Short Stories of L. M. Montgomery By Lucy Mod Montgomery Hill of the Winds Part 3 Chapter 4 There is, unfortunately, a three o'clock every night, and the fire of Romney's enthusiasm was in white ashes again by morning. He got up and repeated several times allowed to himself. She is an Edgelow. Her father is rich. Her uncle will make her richer. Her name is Dorcas. By way of fortifying his determination to think no more of her and see no more of her. He was full of prudent resolution. He would not so much as look toward the Edgelow garden. He would never go near the whispering lane. If he ever met Dorcas Edgelow by accident, he would bow with easy courtesy and pass on. It did not matter a particle whether her eyes were gray or blue. Then it occurred to him that it was odd that it should require such a tremendous amount of resolution to avoid a girl whom he had not even seen 48 hours ago. It would not be 48 hours until four o'clock that afternoon. Romney whistled up roriously all the time he was dressing. One window of his room looked out on the Edgelow garden, but he never glanced that way. He talked to Aunt Elizabeth all through breakfast of his work and ambitions and his idea for his new cereal, but he did not tell her he meant to use Dorcas Edgelow for a heroine. He did not mention Edgelows at all. The curious thing is that he thought himself quite heroic because he did not. After breakfast he rushed off to the shore for a surf dip, never glancing at the Edgelow garden at all. Not that he would have seen anything if he did look. Dorcas Edgelow, being no doubt a lazy, luxurious, pampered little thing, was still asleep in bed. Halfway to the shore Romney suddenly remembered that he had left the row she had tossed him in a glass of water in his room. What if Aunt Elizabeth flung it out? She would be sure to, never dreaming that a faded flower was of any value. He turned and rushed madly home again, getting there just in the nick of time. He met Aunt Elizabeth carrying the rose downstairs. Oh, Auntie, give me that. It's very much mine. It's faded, said Aunt Elizabeth in astonishment. I kissed it to death, said Romney. It is not, said Aunt Elizabeth coldly, the sort of flower that you should have in your possession at all. So she knew it for one of the Edgelow roses. It's a Rose of Eden, said Romney. Do you know the legend of the Rose of Eden, Aunt Elizabeth? No, Aunt Elizabeth did not know it. She knew only that she wanted to get downstairs and that Romney was blocking up the way. Don't you know your Kipling, Aunt Elizabeth? What is a Kipling? asked Aunt Elizabeth patiently. Why, uh, Kipling is a poet. Romney was very flat. Was he any relation to Longfellow? No, I think I may safely say they were not connected. But he wrote a poem about the Rose of Eden. When Eve left Eden, she contrived to carry off with her one of its roses, and wherever one of its blood-red petals fell, sprang up a Rose of Eden tree. You find unhearing there all over the world. And every daughter of Eve, and every son of Adam, though Kipling doesn't mention that, shall once at least air the tale of his years be done, smell the scent of an Eden Rose, have his one glorious moment when he sees his dream, even though he may never grasp it. And that one moment, Aunt Elizabeth makes life worthwhile, even though all the rest of it be roseless. Aunt Elizabeth looked down at him. She was not a stupid woman, even if she did not know her Kipling, and she understood his meaning. An old, old memory stirred in her heart. A whiff of ghostly fragrance, painfully sweet, blew through the deserted chambers of her soul. Without a word, she handed Romney his Rose and went on down the stairs. But at the foot she turned and looked up, already repenting her weakness. She is the race of our enemies, she said, warningly and disapprovingly. It was too late now to go to the shore. The sun would be too hot for the return walk. Romney went down to the hollow and hunted up Samuel. Again he never looked at the edge-low garden. Yet although he did not look, he saw her there quite plainly, strolling up and down the acacia walk, bare-headed. When he had disappeared without looking, Dorcas Edgelow went back to the house and remarked to her uncle, who was reading in his library, I hate that young man next door. It would please me much better, Miss, if you thought nothing at all about him, said her uncle. And therefore continued Miss Edgelow, I am going to break his heart, or if that is impossible by reason of his having none to break, I shall hurt his pride so dreadfully that he will suffer still more. I should like uncle to humiliate that young man to the very dust. So he has snubbed you, has he? Serves you right for throwing yourself at his head. I only threw a rose, said Miss Edgelow plaintively. Don't make a fool of yourself, said her uncle comfortingly. I haven't any authority over you, of course. I invited you here for the summer because your father told me plainly that he wanted to feel you were in some safe place while he had to be in Mexico. I did not know then that Elizabeth Cooper was going to have a young jack-a-napes next door. Likely she brought him there on purpose. I don't believe a word of his being ill. He looks fit as a fiddle. But remember this, Miss, if you throw yourself away on that penniless fortune hunter not a cent of my money will you ever see. Throw myself away on him? Uncle, do you realize that I've just told you I hate the creature? See that you keep on hating him then, Miss. There's a proverb, if I remember a right, to the effect that hate is only love that has missed its way. Old James looked very fierce and relentless. Miss Edgelow sighed and went away. It was frightfully dull at Hill of the Winds. It was a detestable old place. It was out of the world. No decent people abode there. She would rather be in Mexico. Oh, why had she been so silly as to throw him that rose? Why did night and faint starlight and scented winds make people do such absurd things? She had been warned, hadn't she? Samuel had warned her. Well, then why had she done it? I suppose, she thought resentfully, that he doesn't even find me interesting enough to study for material. Detestable creature, I am not going to think about him again. Romney, meanwhile, was talking to Samuel. He was resolved that he would not mention Miss Edgelow to Samuel. It will never be known whether he would have kept this resolution or not, because Samuel mentioned her at once. Her name IS Dorcas, he announced triumphantly. She told me herself. Dorcas it is, said Romney eerily, not that it matters. Dorcas or Titania or Melisande? All is one. Her last name is Edgelow. Her father had to go to Mexico for the summer. He's a civil engineer, so she came to stay with her uncle, and she's 23 years old, said Samuel. Did she tell you her age, too? Nope, I found that out down at Clifton last night. Pink Ramer told me. Pink is Old Mary Edgelow's chore boy. He heard her telling Old Mrs. Franklin all about her. She's an awful flirt, Old Mary says, and her father sent her to Hilla the Winds, because he had to go to Mexico and doesn't trust her home alone. She can't help making eyes at any man who happens to be round, Old Mary says. She's even been engaged a lot of times, Old Mary says, but always broke it off. She means to marry Rich when she does marry, Old Mary says. She's so extravagant, nobody but a rich man could keep her, Old Mary says. Her dress bill every year is awful. Samuel, do you realize what an abominable thing gossip is, demanded Romley sternly? I'm sorry to find you so addicted to it. You told me to find out all I could about her, protested the aggrieved Samuel. Did you then find out whether her eyes are blue or gray? Samuel stared a second. No, scornfully. You see, the only important thing, the only thing I really wanted to know about her, you have failed to find out, and yet you were sitting beside her on a log in the whispering lane for some time last night, unobservant Samuel, but never mind, her name is Dorcas and there is no reasonable doubt in my mind that her eyes are fishy blue. Let's go a fishing. Let's, said Samuel, brightening up. Say, I've called my pig after old Jim Edgelow. So Dorcas Edgelow was a heartless caquette, who broke hearts and ruined lives for her amusement, a cold-blooded schemer who meant to ensnare a rich husband. Romley did not know that Samuel had made up all these accusations out of whole cloth, that he had never been at or near Clifton the preceding evening, that Pink Raimer was only the name of the hero in a lurid dime novel Samuel was secretly devouring. Nobody could have suspected such a thing of Samuel, the frank-eyed, open-faced, red-lipped child. He seemed too frank and honest. Doubtless old Miss Mary Edgelow exaggerated somewhat, thought Romney, ancient maiden ladies of seventy-odd seldom erred on the side of charity in their judgment of their young relatives. But the fact remained. Dorcas Edgelow was a calculating caquette. Dorcas Edgelow was mercenary. Dorcas Edgelow must be avoided. Therefore Romney went fishing. Chapter 5 He fished all day and wrote in the tower room all the evening. He would not let himself look down into the Edgelow garden. Dorcas Edgelow was sitting there reading a book. At least she had a book on her lap. At intervals she religiously turned a page. She sat facing the tower room in the Edge, but she never looked at them noticeably. She was bare-headed, and she had thought a great deal about her dress before she put on her primrose silk. She wore a star-light cluster of pink and white daisies in her hair. She knew she looked very well. But what difference did that make when there was nobody to look at her? She read until eight o'clock, and then got up and went indoors in a huff. I'm afraid she banged the door. She would die in this stupid place. Yes, die. Then perhaps people might be sorry for their behavior. Her father, for instance. Her cruel father, who had doomed her to this solitude and exposed her to unparalleled impudence from the cub editors that infested it. There was no doubt that Miss Edgelow was very much annoyed. Five minutes after she had gone in, Romney went to the window and looked down into the Edgelow garden. Nobody was there. What an intolerable, prim, antiquated, formal, unattractive place it was. How could anybody endure year after year of those endless, stiff walks and clipped hedges and old-fashioned roses? How could anybody live at Hill of the Winds anyhow? How thankful he would be when his doctor would let him get away from it. Romney stared at the Edgelow garden for ten minutes longer, then he tried to write again, failed, threw down his pen, looked at the Edgelow garden, still deserted, and betook himself to the hollow to seek Samuel. Samuel he could not find. Samuel was at that moment talking to Miss Edgelow in the whispering lane, imparting to her a few facts and considerable fiction. So he went for a walk to the shore instead. It was dark when he got back and there was still no one in the Edgelow garden. Romney was sure of that because he went to the hedge and looked over it thoroughly. He did not sleep a great deal that night. Neither did Miss Edgelow. It was a warm night and the mosquitoes were troublesome. Samuel slept dreamlessly. He had told Miss Edgelow that Romney thought she was quite struck on him, and he had told Romney that Pink Raymer had heard Old Mary say that there was a certain millionaire in Montreal to whom Miss Edgelow would be engaged in the fall. It was an understood thing, according to the mythical Pink. Therefore for two days Romney fished and wrote and ignored Miss Edgelow and thought continually about her. And for two days Miss Edgelow read novels and avoided the garden and sang so loudly and cheerfully that Old Jim told her to shut up. He had no particular ear for music. So Miss Edgelow went to the whispering lane. She knew there was no danger of meeting that detestable young man there because she had seen him striding down the hill half an hour before. Of course Romney was there. He had only been down as far as the hollow and when he came back he saw a white figure which was really that of Old Jim's housekeeper disappearing in the distance along the valley road to the shore. He was sure it was Sylvia, Pshott, Dorcas, so the lane would be safe. They met face to face. They smiled at each other as if they had expected to meet. Romney said it was a lovely evening and Miss Edgelow said it looked like rain. It didn't. And then they walked on together because there was nothing else to do. Each of them thoroughly distrusted the other but neither wanted to be anywhere else. Miss Edgelow told herself again that it would be a pleasant and righteous thing to teach this young man a lesson. Romney told himself that if Miss Edgelow wanted to flirt well and good he would play the game with zest and get as much amusement out of it as she did. So they were both ready to be surprisingly agreeable to each other and both of them felt suddenly that Hill of the Winds was a dear old quaint romantic spot full of poetry and steeped in romance. Romney as he walked beside her felt perfectly happy and satisfied. Now why, one part of him asked the other. I've often walked in lanes before. It can't be the lane. Dorcas Edgelow is a beauty but I've walked with women just as beautiful. Why? There was no answer so he gave up asking the question and enjoyed his satisfaction. The whispering lane was a delightful spot. The warm air was full of elusive wood fragrances that mingled distractingly with the faint perfume that exhaled from Sylvia's, no confounded, Dorcas's, dress. Shafts of sunlight fell through it. Now and then one struck a thwart Sylvia's hair and intensified its blue-black sheen. Robins whistled here and there. Little ferns brushed Sylvia's silken ankles. There were openings in the trees like green arched windows and one saw enchanting little landscapes through them. There was a gate at the end of the lane and when they came to it they leaned against it and looked down into the valley. The gate was narrow and crowded with dogwood bushes so that they had to stand close together. Occasionally Romney's shoulder touched Sylvia's or a frill of her lacy sleeve brushed his hand. They walked the valley in a long, delicious silence. It was luminous in hazes of purple and pearl. Great clouds piled themselves up in dazzling masses over the iridescent sea, thunder clouds with white crests and gorges of purple shadow. Miss Edgelow did not try to talk much. She knew exactly the value of significant silences when you were teaching a certain kind of lesson. She knew that foolish women chattered too much that wise ones let nature talk for them. When she did talk she talked of Samuel, his engaging devil tree, his amusing precocity. She said she was very fond of Samuel. Romney said he was too and felt that it was a link between them. He told her how he had loved Hill of the Winds in childhood and how glad he was to find it unchanged, a place unspoiled by the haste and rush of modernity, a place where one might dream dreams and cherish feuds and other impossible things. Then they were silent again in as many languages as Aunt Elizabeth herself could have been. In fact, when Romney lay awake half the night to think over that half hour in the whispering lane, he was surprised to find how little they had talked, and yet how much more he seemed to know of her. At first he struggled against thinking of her, then philosophically decided that the more he struggled, the more fictitious importance the thought of her would assume, better think her out and have done with it. So he gave himself over to his memories of her and gloated over them, the delicate, half mocking, half alluring undertones in her voice, the delicious golden spots on her face, the charming gestures of her wonderful hands. Oh, she was quite perfect just as he had always known she would be. There was no danger of his falling in love with her. There were a score of indisputable reasons for safeguard. So there was no danger in dwelling on her perfection, no danger in recalling her ways and words and glances, but he had forgotten, after all, to find out the real color of her eyes. No danger in dreaming of what might have been when one knew it couldn't possibly be. In short, there was no danger in a skillful flirtation when both parties knew exactly what they were about. I have been walking in the whispering lane with Romney Cooper, said Miss Edgelow to her uncle. Hmpf! He is a very nice young man. Hmpf! He is, I think, the nicest young man I ever met. Hmpf! I thought you said you hated him. So I did, so I do. I hate him all the more for being so nice. What business has he to be so nice when he is poor and designing at a Cooper and utterly out of the question? Out of the question for what, grunted old Jim? I'm glad you didn't say hmpf that time, said Dorcas reflectively. It was getting monotonous. It was a week later that Romney went to see Cousin Clarenda again, through a weird uncanny twilight following a rainy day. The sea was like gray satin before Cousin Clarenda's old house. The sky was curdled all over with pale gray clouds. Cousin Clarenda wore flowered organdy and kissed him. Cousin Clarenda, she is divine. Who, said Cousin Clarenda indifferently? Why, Sylvia, Dorcas, if you must have it. Oh yes, the niece of old Jims, said Cousin Clarenda, as if she just now heard of her for the first time. Try some of my shortcake, Romney. You used to be very fond of it. She's the most charming thing in the world, Cousin Clarenda. I am not in love with her. Please don't imagine I am in love with her. Oh, I wouldn't imagine it. Cousin Clarenda seemed a trifle absent. But I could be in love with her overwhelmingly if she weren't as rich as a wedding cake and a man-eater. I could adore her. She is adorable. The only thing I'm really sorry for is that I didn't kiss her that day I carried her over the run. The gods will never send me such a chance again. My white hen stole her nest and brought out ten of the dearest yellow chicks today. Chickens! Cousin Clarenda, I'm talking of Sylvia! Sylvia! It's such a luxury to call her Sylvia when I speak to you instead of Miss Edgelow or that abominable Dorcas. This morning when I woke up she was helping Mrs. Gould weed the kitchen garden and singing like a serif. I love to hear a woman singing at her work. Everybody should sing at his work. Nonsense, said Cousin Clarenda. Fancy a butcher singing at his work, or an undertaker. Romney ignored the interruption. You can't believe how deliciously her hair kinks at the nape of her neck on a rainy day. You can't believe how golden her freckles are on her creamy skin. She isn't like any other woman in the world. Nobody is, said Cousin Clarenda. Is Elizabeth troubled with rheumatism this wet day? Cousin Clarenda, I didn't expect to find you so unsympathetic, reproached Romney. Is it unsympathetic to ask about Elizabeth's rheumatism? I would have thought it quite the reverse. Darling, I came over here tonight to talk about Sylvia to you. I wanted to tell you that, lovely as she looks in flower-hued robes, she is still lovelier in a grey Macintosh under rubber cap, that exquisite as she is when she's talking, she's ten times more exquisite when she's silent, that I'll go mad if I can't solve the mystery of her smile, and you're not a bit interested. No, I don't think I am. In fact, you bore me when you rave about Dorcas Edgelow. Don't be so emotional. Romney stared incredulously, reproachfully, and the last time I was down here you were urging me to marry her. I was not, said Cousin Clarenda brazenly. I was only teasing you. I regarded the whole matter as a joke. The idea of your marrying Dorcas Edgelow is quite absurd. She wouldn't look at you. Why wouldn't she? I am kind and amiable when I feel like it. I never lose my temper though I may mislay it occasionally. I go to bed early at least once a week. I bear other people's misfortunes with equanimity, and I never tell anyone that he has a cold. I'd really make an admirable husband. And your salary wouldn't keep her in boots for a month. Cousin Clarenda, you've been lying awake at three o'clock too often and too long. That is what is the matter with you. Anyhow, I'm not going to talk or be talked to about that Edgelow Puss, said Cousin Clarenda decidedly. The world is full of other subjects. Don't you believe it? said Romney. But Cousin Clarenda was pink and white and blue draped adamant. She fed him royally, but not a word would she hear or say of Sylvia. He went away disgruntled. You'll be sorry when I'm dead, he warned her. But Cousin Clarenda sat back in her rocking chair and laughed. The less we talk of her the more he'll think of her, she reflected. If I had let him pour out all he wanted to tell me he'd have gone home empty, resolving to be sensible and eschew her and all her beguilements. Now he's gone home determined to show me he can't be shooed away. Besides, added Cousin Clarenda, he took a whole week before he came down to tell me about her. I am not going to put up with being ignored in that fashion by a young snip I pampered with cream while he was a baby. End of Section 88. Section 89 of Uncollected Short Stories of L. M. Montgomery. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jordan P. Uncollected Short Stories of L. M. Montgomery. By Lucy Maud Montgomery. Hilla the Winds. Part 4. Chapter 6 There were some transactions between Miss Edgelow and Samuel, whereby the former became possessed of two adored, orange-hued kittens, fluffy morsels of fur and mischief that gambled about her feet as she walked in the Edgelow garden and frisked after her in the whispering lane. She did distracting things with them. At least Romney found them distracting. She cuddled them under her lovely chin and kissed the sunwarm tops of their round, velvety heads. Romney knew she was doing it deliberately, on purpose, out of malice aforethought to drive him crazy, and she very nearly succeeded in spite of his knowledge of her arts. Sometimes he gloomily wished he could ring the necks of those little beasts. Only a conviction that Samuel would get her more prevented him from putting them out of the way in some underhanded fashion. Yet often the pretty picture Sylvia and her little cats made in the prim, stately, haunted old garden charmed him. He wished that he were an artist and could paint her. Failing that, he wrote her into his new serial so vividly that she took possession of it and played hob with his plot. It would never do for the magazine he meant it for or any other, and his summer's work would go for nothing and he would be minus several hundred dollars and be on short commons for the winter, but still he wrote on at it, and would have nothing to do with any other tale. Occasionally he talked to Samuel about it, and Samuel told of it what seemed good unto him to Miss Edgelow. Samuel was not satisfied with what he had done. He had meant to keep those two apart and had not succeeded. He had meant to keep Romney to himself, and Romney spent all the time he was not in the tower room at work mooning about in the whispering lane with Miss Edgelow. Samuel was disgruntled and took his revenge as he might. Both Romney and Miss Edgelow made a great pet of him, but that did not worry the vacuum where his conscience wasn't in the least. He was an artistic liar and never told either of them anything that sounded out of keeping, so they kept on believing him and mistrusting each other and hankering for each other and meeting each other. Aunt Elizabeth and old Jim were not supposed to know anything about it, and perhaps they didn't. Miss Edgelow was very curious about the story Romney was writing of which she was the heroine. But he never mentioned it to her, and she would not betray Samuel by mentioning it to him. She vowed, though, that he should have a final scene for it, which he would never forget, and with this in view she was as sweet to him as if she really had been the caquette he believed her, and perhaps she was. At least she was secretly much dissatisfied with her progress. Romney said delicious things to her and looked things still more delicious and played the part of devoted admirer to perfection. But Miss Edgelow wanted more than admiration. To spurn admiration would inflict no real wound, teach no lasting lesson. She wanted him to love her, so that he might feel it to the core of his soul when she finally laughed at him and dismissed him. And so far, in spite of three weeks' delectable companionship and pretty speeches and prettier silences and moons and stars and kittens, she could give herself no assurance that he really cared a penny's worth for her. Her failure annoyed her and caused her to say sarcastic things to old Jim. Romney considered that he was still a wise and prudent young man. He congratulated himself on his ability to refrain from loving not wisely, but too well when there was such a temptation to it. Not many men, he reflected, would have kept their heads in the face of such provocation, even though they knew her for a professed flirt and themselves for poppers. They would have been fools and fallen fathoms deep in love without being able to help themselves. Now he, Romney, was not a fool. True, sometimes at three o'clock at night, wisdom and prudence seemed rather ugly and sordid virtues, and Romney thought it might have been just as well to let himself go, to put his neck under her scornful little foot and let her play with his heart and throw it away, and spend all his wealth and power of loving in one splendid, unreasonable, unreasoning burst of folly. But around the rest of the clock, he was complacent and kept telling himself he had done well to keep fast hold of his heart. This was his state of mind when Clifford Hughes came to see him. Hughes was the owner of the string of magazines for one of which Romney had once intended his cereal. Hughes wanted to know about the cereal, and was disgruntled because Romney told him it would never do. But that was not really what Hughes had come to talk about. He had fallen hopelessly in love and got himself engaged, and he was so blindly, besottedly happy that he had to tell somebody all about the affair, and Romney was the only fellow he could tell about it. Romney had always been a dreamy, romantic chap. Romney would sympathize with him, so he sat in the tower room and raved for hours. Romney listened and sympathized, and grew more dismayed every minute. This fellow Hughes was saying about his lady just what he Romney wanted to say about Sylvia. This fellow Hughes was disgruntly happy in the very way he Romney wanted to be happy, in the very way he could be happy if Sylvia loved him as Hughes's lady loved him. Romney was shocked and alarmed and upset, and didn't know what he was saying to Hughes half the time. He only realized that a truly dreadful state of affairs had come about all at once. He loved Sylvia, loved her just as wholly and madly as ever man-loved woman. How could he have been so blind and besotted not to have known it before? Why, he had loved her from the moment he had first seen her in the edge-low garden, and she didn't care a snap for him, and he couldn't ask her to marry him if she did, and how was he ever to get himself past three o'clock that night? Then he would realize his position to the full, and even now it was quite unbearable. Hello, said Hughes, looking out of the window. Who's the pretty girl over there, Cooper? Pretty girl! Hopeless idiot, blind bat. Couldn't he see that Sylvia was the most beautiful woman in the world? Syl, Dorcas Edgelow, said Romney indifferently. Know her? I have a nodding acquaintance with her, said Romney indifferently. You know there's an old feud between the families. It has petered out pretty well in our generation, but it doesn't make for cordiality. I see. Pity. She's really quite nice looking. Then Hughes dropped the subject. To prevent any possible return to it, Romney took him fishing. He forgot to ask Samuel, and Samuel was so furious that he went straight to Miss Edgelow, and told her that he had been fishing with them and heard them talking about her, and Romney had told the city man that she was a nice small thing and he could have her for the asking, but didn't mean to ask because he was too poor and a wife was a nuisance anyway. Samuel, being angry, was less artistic than usual, and for the first time Miss Edgelow wondered if he was not painting the lily. He looked so guileless and cherubic that it was hard to believe it of him, but really Romney Cooper didn't seem like a man who would say such things to a friend about any girl. Nevertheless, Samuel couldn't be making it all up out of whole cloth. Something must have been said. She was very disdainful and saucy when Romney came that night to the whispering lane, but all her disdain and sauciness didn't keep her away from the lane nor making a very careful toilet before she went there, nor from looking radiantly and trancing when she got there. So your friend has gone, she said? Yes, thank heaven, said Romney. If he had stayed any longer I should have gone crazy. Do your friends always have that effect on you? No, not always, but he is engaged to be married. He was so insultingly happy that I couldn't tolerate him, and he kept talking about his Lady Fair when I wanted to be talking about mine. Oh, so you have one? Miss Edgelow tucked a kitten under her chin and spoke only with languid interest. Yes, I've never told you about her, have I? Not that I remember. May I? I suppose I've caught the infection from Hughes. I want to talk about her tonight. You don't mind? Oh, no. Quite graciously. Her name, began Romney gravely, is Sylvia. It couldn't be anything else. Sylvia is the only name in any language that absolutely suits and expresses her. We had an old black cook once named Sylvia, murmured Miss Edgelow reminiscently. Go on. Her name is Sylvia. She is about five feet six. She has jet black hair that grows off her face in a widow's peak. She has a creamy skin and lips as red as the rose of love. She has wonderful hands. She has straight black brows. She has eyes that are why I swear they are dark dark blue. It has only come home to me this minute what color they really are. She has such a trick of veiling them with her lashes, you know. She has no imperfections, of course, said Miss Edgelow, a trifle contemptuously. Oh, yes. She isn't Tennyson's mod at all. Not faultily faultless, not she. She has a number of little golden freckles and her nose is, is crooked, suggested Miss Edgelow. She smiled a bit. No. No, not crooked. I swear it's not crooked. Just a trifle more than Aqueline. Miss Edgelow was quite angry. She knew, let it be accounted unto her for vanity or not, that Romney was describing her to her face. He was trying out a scene for his story in all probability. It will be very witch-like when she grows old, no doubt. Sylvia will never grow old, said Romney. She is the incarnation of eternal youth. Does this paragon return your affection? Dared Miss Edgelow. Alas, no. She laughs at me. She mocks me. She doesn't care for me at all. It's just as well, of course. I can't marry her, you see. Why not? Miss Edgelow's lashes hid her eyes very securely. She is rich and going to be richer. I am poorer and will probably be poorer. Besides, as aforesaid, she doesn't and couldn't care for me. This, thought Miss Edgelow, is the point of the story where I should say, have you asked her? With the soft pedal on, I shall not say anything of the sort. Instead, I shall say, you are very likely correct in your opinion. I know I am, said Romney, folding his arms and scowling ferociously at space. I know I am. But, oh, you have no idea how madly I love her, how madly I shall always love her. How many girls have you loved, always, before her? asked Miss Edgelow impertinentally. Not one. I never even fancied I loved before. How uninteresting! Now I, Miss Edgelow paused and went through the motions of a blush. I have been in love, or imagined myself in love, several times, three to be exact, yet I am soundly heart whole at the present moment, so you see there is hope of your ultimate recovery. I shall never recover. I don't want to recover. Why didn't you marry those men? It is not permitted to marry three men, said Miss Edgelow plaintively, and there were other reasons. One of them was a young lawyer, he was the handsomest man I had ever known. He had piggy eyes, I swear he had piggy eyes, said Romney viciously. He had not, and he made love so artistically it was quite a pleasure to listen to him. He must have had heaps of practice, still more viciously. The same idea occurred to me, said Miss Edgelow compositely. I think that was why I didn't marry him. A man with a talent like that couldn't bury it in an afkin. He'd have to keep on using it. The second object of my affections was a professor of McGill. He was the cleverest man I ever met. Moon face, Percy mouth, tortoise-shell glasses, I can see him, said Romney. He was very intellectual looking, murmured Miss Edgelow, and yet he asked me my opinion about things. That was his way of making love, it was agreeable. But I had a pre-sentiment that after we were married he would stop asking my opinions. That would not be agreeable. There was a third, I think, said Romney, seeing that Miss Edgelow had lapsed into a parent reverie. Oh yes, there was a third. Note the tens. He is, was, moderately good looking and moderately clever. I think I liked him better than any of the others. Why didn't you marry him? He didn't ask me to. He, he told me he loved another lady. He even described her to me, talked to me about her. I couldn't, with any self-respect, care for him one moment after that, could I? Miss Edgelow shot an upward glance at Romney before her concluding words. Romney remembered what Samuel had said, old Mary Edgelow had said. She can't help making eyes at any man who happens to be around. She's luring me on, he thought miserably. I won't be, Lord. She can laugh at me in her sleeve, but she shall not have the satisfaction of laughing at me openly. He strode on in silence. They turned at the gate and walked back. At the entrance to the lane they paused. The old Edgelow house and garden, drowned in lilac sunset light, incredibly delicate and elusive, lay below them in a dip of the long hill. They stood and looked down on it. After a long silence Miss Edgelow said dreamily, It is a house of memories. I am haunted by them. So many Edgelow women and all unhappy. There has never been a happy Edgelow woman, or if they were happy they were never happy long. Some of them deserved their unhappiness, some of them didn't. I wonder, Miss Edgelow looked reflective. In which class I shall belong. She has taken a new tack. She is trying to play on my sympathy now, thought Romney. She is not content with my veiled avowal. She must have my scalp to dangle openly at her belt. She can't claim it yet because her name is not Sylvia. Some of the Edgelow men were to blame for their woman's unhappiness, weren't they? He said. Yes, some. I think Uncle Jim must have been a horrid sort of husband. I was here one summer when I was a little girl. I have never forgotten Aunt Fanny's eyes. She died by inches through the years. Most of the other tragedies were sudden and speedy. Tell me about them, if you don't mind talking about them. Oh, I don't. I'm rather proud of my family ghosts and demons. I shall be one of them some day, and I shall come and haunt this old place. Our house in Montreal isn't really ghostable. I shall wander about this old garden, and my ghost chum will be Thyra Edgelow, great Uncle Fairfax's bride. Just a few weeks after her marriage, she went gaily out to those woods away over there to gather nuts and never returned. What happened to her? That question has been asked a thousand times and never answered. She simply vanished from among the living that autumn afternoon. No trace of her was ever discovered. Some thought she must have been drowned in the river and her body swept out to sea. Some thought, but there were all sorts of surmises. She hadn't wanted to marry Fairfax Edgelow, it seems. She was a gay, merry creature. Then there were Tom and Dorothy Edgelow. They were married children. He was 19, and she was 17. They had one glorious summer in that old house at least. He was grandfather Edgelow's brother. They both died in the same week of Typhoid. Great Aunt Edith was a wonderful musician and very ambitious. One of her hands was so mangled by a door slamming on it that she could never play again. She went insane brooding over it. Uncle Jim's sister, Aunt Lillian, was killed by lightning in the room I sleep in, struck while trying on her wedding dress. The Edgelow fate seems to have a special hatred of our brides. None of us have been happy in our love affairs. It's the old Edgelow curse, you know. We have a family curse as well as a family feud, you see. I never heard of the curse. What of it? My great great great grandfather, Thomas Edgelow, was a harsh creditor. He sold out at a chatteled mortgage sale the household possessions of a poor old woman. She cursed him and his descendants. Your woman shall never be happy, she said. One in all they shall die in sorrow as I die. She hanged herself that night. Do you believe in curses? I don't. But it is the truth that there has never since that day been a happy Edgelow woman, whether she was Edgelow by birth or Edgelow by marriage. Uncle Jim's father was blinded by an explosion of his gun three months after he was married to Cora Graham, the great beauty. And after that he made her life wretched through his jealousy for fifty years. For they lived together that long and he never seemed to realize that she had grown old. He was as madly jealous of her when she was seventy as when she was twenty. Catherine Edgelow was jilted by her lover. She never went out of that house afterward except once. When her false lover was married in Clifton Church she dressed herself in widow's weeds and went to the wedding. She stood a little behind the bridal party during the ceremony. Nobody dared interfere with her. The bride fainted when she turned and saw her. Catherine was living when I was here that summer long ago. She was incredibly old and I was terribly frightened. But the bitterest of our ghosts must be great great grandmother Edgelow. She was jealous. She thought her husband loved Adela Cooper. That was the beginning of the Edgelow Cooper feud, you know. No, I didn't know. I never knew what began it. Thought it was something trivial. What did your great great grandmother do? She met her husband one night when he was returning so she thought from Adela and threw vitriol in his face. He was blinded for life. Romney shuddered. The sun had dropped into a bank of western cloud and a chill and a shadow swept over hill of the winds and rolled down its sides to the valley. At least she was in earnest. She didn't play at loving, he said, as they turned away. No, but wouldn't it have been better if she had retorted Miss Edgelow? Undoubtedly. Yet I think I rather like ladies who love in earnest. Would your Sylvia love in earnest? If she loved me at all. But you see she doesn't. Are you quite sure she doesn't? Quite. And you are quite sure you couldn't marry her if she did? Quite. So it is a blessing she doesn't. Exactly. Miss Edgelow turned to the gate that opened from the whispering lane into the Edgelow Garden. I think she said that I'm going to be very busy for the rest of my stay here. I shall be busy too, said Romney gloomily. Oh yes, you have your cereal to finish. Romney wondered how she knew he was writing a cereal. He had never said anything to her about it. Yes, he said very briskly. I must really hurry up with it. My time is nearly up, only three weeks more. And since we are both going to be so… busy, we may as well say a polite goodbye now, said Miss Edgelow. She held out her hand. Romney took it. Gave it the requisite friendly pressure. Dropped it. Goodbye, Miss Edgelow, he said. He lifted his hat and went away whistling. Miss Edgelow, holding her head very high, went back to the Edgelow House. Old Jim was, as usual, reading in his library. Romney Cooper has just told me that he can't marry me. Did you ask him to, pray? I think I did. And he refused you? Practically. Then he has more sense than any Cooper ever had before, said Old Jim, returning to his book. Nobody takes me seriously, mourned Miss Edgelow. I suppose I must be fundamentally light. Well, isn't that better than destroying my husband's sight with vitriol, Uncle Jim? Wouldn't you rather have a wife who laughed at you than one who threw vitriol at you? My wife did neither, said Old Jim significantly. But she died young, thought Miss Edgelow. She did not say it aloud. There were some things it would not do to say to Old Jim. She went up to her room and peeped out. There was a light in the tower room. He is busy at his story, said Miss Edgelow. I don't think he got much material for it from me this evening, of the kind he wanted anyhow. I wonder what a sub-editor's salary is. Then, oddly enough, Miss Edgelow lay down on her bed, buried her face in a pillow, and cried. Romney was not writing. He was bunched up moodily in a chair. Aunt Elizabeth was knitting lace. Samuel was building a pen in the backyard for a couple of pet snakes. Samuel was very happy. Chapter 7 Samuel was happier still for the next two weeks. Romney was his own again. He kept no more trists in the whispering lane, but devoted himself to Samuel. They fished and swam and lounged together. The tower room was forsaken, and Romney's pen rested on his ink stand. Sometimes he saw Miss Edgelow and her golden balls of fluff in the Edgelow garden, but she never looked his way. Quite often he heard her singing gaily. Soon after that he always whistled gaily. Peace and contentment apparently brooded over hill of the winds. Only Aunt Elizabeth was slightly worried. Romney's appetite was poor. Her choicest delicacies did not tempt him. Neither did cousin Clarenda's. Romney had been down to see cousin Clarenda quite often through the summer, but he had never talked to her of Sylvia, and cousin Clarenda could not ask him to. Now he went down on another cool, rainy evening when the fogs were coming in on the east wind, and the valley was gray and hidden. Beloved, how long can two weeks be? he asked her. That depends, she said. On what? In your case, I think it would depend on Sylvia, said cousin Clarenda boldly and anxiously. She did not like Romney's lack of appetite and hollowness of eye any better than Aunt Elizabeth. There is no such lady as Sylvia, said Romney. She is such stuff as dreams are made of. What about Miss Edgelow, then? An amusing young person, I haven't been talking to her lately. For two weeks, to be exact, said cousin Clarenda. She rocked slowly in her chair and looked at him very maternally. Romney had a queer, fleeting feeling that he would like to lay his head on her breast and cry as he used to do long ago when he got hurt, and have her stroke his head and say, Never mind, be brave, you'll soon feel better. Make a clean breast of it to me, said cousin Clarenda. You weren't very sympathetic the last time I tried to talk to you about her. I don't suppose I'll be sympathetic now either, but it'll do you good to talk it out. What did you quarrel over? We didn't quarrel, she just dismissed me. I suppose she had got all the amusement out of me that she expected or wanted. Tell me every word both of you said, ordered cousin Clarenda. Romney did. He had no difficulty in remembering them, they were all too deeply impressed. Cousin Clarenda listened and rocked gently. After he had finished, she continued to rock so long that Romney wondered if she meant to say anything at all. Finally, she said, Poor girl. Poor what? Poor girl, repeated cousin Clarenda. Why do you pity her? cried Romney, aggrieved. Because it must be very hard to be as deeply in love as she is with a young man so utterly insensitive and blind and pigheaded as you, said cousin Clarenda calmly. Why, thank you, Romney was very sarcastic. Thank you, I haven't received so many compliments for a long time. Incense it? Yes, incense it. A girl like Dorcas Edgelow practically offers herself to you and you practically flout her. Cousin Clarenda! Blind because you can't see she's dying for you, pigheaded because you would rather destroy her happiness and your own than ask Jim Edgelow's heiress to marry you. Dearest, you are simply darkening council by words without knowledge. Miss Edgelow doesn't care a snap of her lovely slender fingers for me. I came to you for the bread of comfort, cousin Clarenda, and you give me the stone of ridicule. Go back to Hill of the Winds, go to Dorcas Edgelow, say to her, I love you, will you marry me? Then if she says no, come back to me and I'll give you all the comfort and sympathy you can desire. I can't do that, said Romney stubbornly. Besides, I have done it, practically, as you say. I've told her I loved Sylvia, she knows well enough who Sylvia is. Yes, and immediately after telling her you informed her that you were too poor to marry her. Romney, are you really so very poor? I am. Worse, I'm in debt to my doctor. I've been depending on paying him off with the cash I'd get for my cereal this fall, and now I can't get it written, not in a saleable way anyhow. Job's turkey was a capitalist compared to me. And you have no chance of promotion? Not at present, not for years, if ever. I suppose the truth is I'm lacking in enterprise, cousin Clarenda. I'm not a pusher. And I've dilly-dallyed a bit, I know, drifted. You see, it didn't seem to matter, as long as I could pay my own way and enjoy life after my own fashion I was contented. I didn't believe I'd ever really meet Sylvia, so I've rather been sidetracked. Get back to the main line and hustle, said cousin Clarenda. Too late, I can't ask her to wait years for me. Besides, she wouldn't. Then forget her. I can't. Then for goodness' sake, said cousin Clarenda in exasperation, try some of my ginger snaps. So, after all, Romney didn't get much sympathy from cousin Clarenda. He went back to Hill of the Winds, feeling that she thought him a rather poor sort of critter. Well, so he was. He was a failure, an utter, errant failure. He had failed in everything in which a man ought to succeed. No wonder Sylvia laughed at him. No wonder Sylvia mocked him. He even wondered that she thought him worthwhile flirting with. How deep her eyes were. How perfect the curve of her throat. How kissable the sweet red curve of her mouth. Romney groaned. Matter, queried Samuel, appearing suddenly halfway up the hill, his wet, laughing face dimly visible in the rainy twilight. Sick? No, but you will be here in this cold east rain with nothing on your back but a torn shirt. Hustle home and dry yourself, you have a cold now. Oh, I'm a fish, said Samuel. Rain never hurts me, no more than a frog, but you had a new ammonia. You gotta be careful. I'm not going to be careful, said Romney recklessly. It would have been better for me if the pneumonia had made an end of me. Samuel, were you ever so unhappy that every beat of your heart hurt you? Nope, said Samuel leconically. You feeling that way? He added uneasily. Samuel, said Romney, if I could just be snuffed out tonight like a candle, I'd like it. All on account of that edge-low skirt, I suppose, said Samuel, less disdainfully than usual, however. A close observer might have thought that he felt a trifle less satisfied with himself than before. Samuel, said Romney, never fall in love. Samuel thought this warning totally unnecessary, but he was worried. He knew Romney well enough by this time to know that the more airily he talked of anything, the more deeply he felt. When Romney was indifferent, he talked quite earnestly. Samuel, when he went to bed that night, wished that after all he had not told Miss Edgelow certain things. He wished it hard for quite a while, and then he gave up wishing anything, except that he might get warm and stop shivering. Next day, his uncle sent for the doctor. Samuel was sick for a week before Miss Edgelow heard of his illness through her uncle's housekeeper. She went right down to the hollow. Romney was there, waiting on him. Samuel would have no one else, though they had brought a nurse up from Clifton. He was delirious, but he always knew Romney. Nimonia, asked Miss Edgelow, Romney nodded. He looked worn and ill himself, for he had not slept much during the week, and he was worried over Samuel. He didn't know how fond of Samuel he was until the doctor looked grave over the child. Yes, double Nimonia. We're doing all we can for him, but he's worried over something. It's against him. What is it? We don't know. He keeps saying, I wish I hadn't told her, and begging me to put things straight. I promise to do so, but I haven't an idea what he means, and I don't think he has any confidence that I'm doing what I promise. Can I see him? Oh, yes. But it isn't likely he'll recognize you. Samuel was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling with dull, fevered eyes. It was not clear whether he recognized Miss Edgelow or not, but he appealed to her. They was all lies, you know. You'll tell her, won't you? Yes, yes, dear. She was very gentle and motherly as she took Samuel's thin, strangely white and clean little paw. Romney saw a look on her face, an expression of her spirit that he had never seen before. He never said one of those things. I made him up. Tell her that. You'll get it straighter than he would. He'd mix it all up. He talks all round things. He never gets to the point. You tell her. I'll tell her. I'll make her understand, promised Miss Edgelow. What'll they do to me for telling lies, queried Samuel? Who, dear? The fellers up there, Samuel pointed to the ceiling. God, and the rest. Oh, oh, they'll forgive you, dear, if you're sorry. I am sorry. I wished I hadn't. It's made him want to be snuffed out. I don't want him to be snuffed out. You won't, Samuel gripped her hand. You won't let her snuff him out, will you? She shall not snuff him out, promised Miss Edgelow solemnly. I made pink ramer up, too, said Samuel. There ain't no pink ramer, only in a book. I took him out of the book. You'll put him back in the book, won't you? Yes, dear. And shut the cover tight? Yes. Now, mind, you mustn't let her snuff him out, said Samuel. The nurse came in then, and Miss Edgelow went out. She did not look at Romney. She paid very little attention to Romney for the next week, though she saw him every day when she came to see Samuel. Samuel was delirious at times yet, but he had evidently given up worrying. Only when he saw Miss Edgelow, he always said, You won't let her snuff him out, will you? And Miss Edgelow always replied, No, I won't let her snuff him out. But she never looked at Romney. On the evening of the day when Samuel took the turn for the better, Romney went to the whispering lane. It was three weeks since he had walked there. Miss Edgelow was standing in the shadow of the beaches. There gloomed through still darker shadows on her glossy hair and deep into the luster of her long blue eyes. She had a kitten on her shoulder and her dress was a young leaf green with a scarlet girdle. Beyond her were tossing young maples whitening in the wind, with glimpses of the purple valley beyond them. Romney came up close to her and looked down at her. He was tired and pale, but there was an air of triumph about him. Your name isn't Sylvia, he began. But it is, said Miss Edgelow. Sylvia Dorcas Edgelow. I am always called Sylvia at home. Uncle Jim hates the name. He has always called me Dorcas. Romney tried again. You are your uncle's heiress and I... I am not. Uncle Jim hasn't ever had any intention of leaving me assent. His will was made years ago. He has left everything to found a librarian Clifton. He thinks I don't know that, but I do. Old cousin Mary told me. You have been brought up in luxury and... I was brought up in comfort and father gave me a year at school in Paris. After I came back I graduated in domestic science at McDonald. I can make bread, I can make my own clothes. The number of useful things I can do is quite appalling. I am poor, but... honest. Sylvia, you must stop interrupting me. I cannot allow my wife to interrupt me. You are too poor to keep a wife. I'm not. I have a letter here in my pocket here at Crackling, from Clifford Hughes offering me the head editorship of the four magazines he owns. The salary will keep us very comfortably. Besides, to him that half shall be given. Aunt Elizabeth told me this morning that she had made her will when she took the trip down to Clifton last week, and had left everything she owned to me except the Chippendale sideboard, which is to go to Dr. John, and the colored egg dish, which is to go to cousin Clarenda. As it happens, the sideboard and the colored egg dish are the only things of Aunt Elizabeth's I've ever coveted. But it means something to me to know that someday my... My, let us say, my grandchildren will inherit this old place. So now will you be good? Have you finished your cereal? Asked Miss Edgelow inconsequently. No, I'm working it up to the Grand Climax now, though. It's coming out better than I expected. How did you know about it? Samuel told me. He also told me you experimented with girls and put their reactions into your stories. At least he did not use those words, but that is what he implied. Little beast! But I did put you in that cereal, Sylvia. Only you were so unmanageable after I had got you in, you persisted in snuffing the hero out. Well, you know, Sylvia looked straight into his eyes. I promised Samuel I wouldn't do that anymore. It might have been an hour or a hundred years afterward that Romney said, I want to kiss each of your freckles one by one. It will take some time. Aren't you afraid to marry me, asked Sylvia? There is the curse, you know. You will be a happy woman. A curse is worked out in four generations. You are the fifth. It has spent its force, as all evil things must do. The edge-low tradition of unhappiness will vanish with the old feud. You will not disappear, nor go insane, nor throw vitriol at your husband. And you, said Sylvia, will not open my letters, nor give me a silk dress I don't want and refuse me a new hat I do, nor jilt me? It's a bargain, said Romney. Old Jim Edgelow was reading in his library. Uncle Jim, said Sylvia, I am going to marry Romney Cooper in six weeks' time. She was really afraid. Nobody ever knew just how Old Jim would react to anything. But Old Jim Edgelow had been governed by contraries all his life. He loved to disappoint people. He would rather disappoint them agreeably than not at all. He shut his book, took off his glasses, and said, Marry him then and behave. Marry him then and be hanged to you. It will infuriate Old Elizabeth Cooper anyhow. She didn't seem very angry, said Sylvia. What? Does she know of it already? Oh yes, we went right to her as soon as we became engaged. She said, God bless you. It was old-fashioned, of course, said Sylvia meditatively, but I think I liked it. Uncle Jim replaced his glasses and opened his book. Those whom Elizabeth Cooper has joined together, let not James Edgelow put us under, he said. End of Section 89. End of Hill of the Winds. Montgomery. Section 90. The Chivers Light. Jack, said William Haslet one morning as they sat down to breakfast in the lighthouse. Your mother and I have had bad news. Word has just come that your aunt Grace is very ill, and we must go at once. Most likely we will not be back until tomorrow, if then, and we must leave you in charge. You must not leave the Chivers today, and be very careful about the light. But Father, the seagull races are over at Southport, exclaimed Jack. I want to see them. There will be plenty of time to get back after they are over. Haslet shook his head gravely. I'm very sorry, my boy, but I can't let you go. The wind sometimes blows up so quickly in the afternoon that you might not be able to get back, and that would be a terrible thing. Vessels might be wrecked, and lives lost, and at best I should lose my job. But Father, pleaded Jack, I'd be careful, and if I saw the least out of a gale, I'd start home at once. No, Jack, you mustn't go. I can't take the risk. I know what you are like too well. If you went over to Southport and got watching the races, a hurricane might come up without your noticing it. I don't like to disappoint you, as you well know, but it can't be helped. So don't let us hear anything more about it. When his father spoke in that tone, Jack knew it was no use to plead, but he felt that he was a very ill-used boy and ate his breakfast in sulky silence. After breakfast, Mr. and Mrs. Haslet started. They had to sail across the mainland and take the train at St. Eleanor's. Shivers Island, on which the Lighthouse was built, was a tiny bit of rock at the mouth of the harbor. The Haslets were the only people living on it, so it could not be called very lively. But it was within an hour's sail of Southport and St. Eleanor's and other villages, and Jack liked the life very well. Haslet did not feel any anxiety at leaving Jack in sole charge. He had often done so before. Jack was a tall, strong lad of 14 and understood the lighting up thoroughly. He did not mind being left alone, and he was proud of the responsibility. But today he was in a very different mood. He had set his heart on going to the cycle races over at Southport, and he thought his father very unreasonable. It's going to be a splendid day, he muttered, kicking a pebble angrily into the water as he watched his father's boat skimming over the bay. Just a fine breeze for sailing. The races would be over by four, and I'd be back by five, three hours before dark. It's too bad! The longer Jack thought about it, the worse he was convinced it was. His chum, Oscar Norton, would be expecting him at Southport, and they had planned to have such a splendid time. The races would be the last of the season, and it was unjust and unkind of his father to forbid him to go. The morning wore away slowly. Jack hadn't enough to do to keep him out of mischief. He got his dinner, and then went down to the little point where his own boat, the pearl, with her glistening white sides and new sails, was anchored. It was a glorious day. A splendid breeze was blowing up the bay, from just the right quarter. The sky was blue and clear. There was no sign of a storm. Jack came to a sudden conclusion. He would go to the races. His father need never know, and he would be back long before dark. In a few minutes, the pearl's white sails were filling merrily away before the breeze, and Shivers Island, with its huge white tower, was growing dim and misty behind her. Jack reached Southport in an hour. Oscar Norton and several other boys whom Jack knew were at the wharf and greeted him hilariously. In a few minutes, they were hurrying through the streets to the park, and Jack had forgotten all about Shivers Island and the lighthouse. They were soon absorbed in the races. The bay could not be seen from the park, and so excited were they all that they did not notice how strongly the wind was blowing up. Jack, as his father had foretold, forgot everything he ought to have remembered, and thought of nothing but the track and the whirling figures on it. At four o'clock, the races were over, and Oscar proposed a trip to a restaurant by way of a wind-up to the day. Jack had awakened to the fact that a stiff wind was blowing and that it might be wiser for him to hurry home, but the track was shuttered, and he did not realize how much the gale had increased, and the other boys assured him that there was plenty of time, and in the end he went with them. So it was fully five o'clock before he and Oscar found themselves again at the wharf. Great Scott, Jack! You can't get home tonight! exclaimed Oscar as he came inside of the bay. Why, I had no idea it was such a gale. It's a regular young hurricane. Look at those waves! Jack looked about him in dismay. Far and wide the bay was an expanse of rough waves, and far out Shivers Island lighthouse loomed dimly through the haze of spray. Too late he wished that he would obey his father. I must get home, he exclaimed desperately. Why, Oscar, father and mother are away, and there's nobody to light up! Oscar looked grave. I don't see how you can get that, Jack. You can't do it in your own boat, that is sure. She would swamp in a jiffy. What is to be done? I'll have to get some of the men there to take me over in a big boat, said Jack. There is no time to lose, either. Well, this scrape serves me right. If I get out of it, I'll mind what father says next time. You can be sure of that. But getting out of it was no easy matter. Not a man could Jack find who's willing to risk an attempt to reach Shivers in that storm. One in all shook their heads, and though they looked grave enough when Jack explained the state of affairs, they persisted in assuring him that the thing was impossible. There ain't a boat in Southport that can take you to Shivers tonight, said old Sam Buxton, who knew the Bay if anyone did. Nor a man rush enough to try it. You'll just have to make up your mind to stay here. But the light, gasped Jack, there is no one there to light it up. Father will lose his place, and maybe there'll be vessels wrecked. You should have thought of that before you came away, said old Sam grimly. It's a bad piece of business, but you can't better it by drowning yourself. You can't get home tonight, no matter what happens. And that is the long and short of it. Poor Jack was in a terrible state of mind. Oscar wanted him to go home with him, but Jack refused to leave the wharf. Although he knew quite well there was no likelihood of the storm abating that night. He was very miserable, if he had only obeyed his father. What if a vessel would be coming in amid all that tempest and darkness, with no beacon to guide her? If lives were lost, he, Jack Hislet, would be a murderer. The boys were cold and drenched with spray, but Jack was determined to stay at the shore, and Oscar stayed too. For he felt himself a little responsible for the state of affairs, since he had helped to delay Jack. The night came down early. They knew when the sun had set by the faint glow of light among the wind-rent clouds far out to sea. Suddenly Oscar gave a start of surprise and exclaimed, Jack, Jack, look! There's Shiva's light! It's all right, old fella! Jack, who had been sitting with his face buried in his hands, sprang up. Then he gave a gasp of joy and almost reeled against his friends, so great was his relief. For there, clear and bright across the harbour, through the stormy night, shone the beacon of Shiva's island lighthouse. Thank God! Jack muttered huskily, Father must have got home after all! The appearance of the light was a great relief to many others along the shore, for the men had been very anxious. Jack consented to go home with Oscar, but he did not sleep much that night, and when he did, it was to live over in dreams the horror of the last few hours. He was sure that never, as long as he lived, could he forget it. It was the afternoon of the next day before the wind calmed enough to permit Jack to go home. Even then, he had an exciting passage. As he drew near to Shiva's, a boy came running down from the lighthouse, and when Jack sprang ashore, he saw that it was his cousin Alec, who lived on St. Eleanor's. Where's Father? Isn't he here? he asked, as they shook hands. Now, where on earth have you been? Uncle John and Aunt May called at our place yesterday morning and said, they were going to be away all night, and you'd be here all alone, and wouldn't I come over? So I sailed merely over yesterday afternoon, and this is the first I see of you. I went over to the races at Southport, said Jack, shame-facedly. I oughtn't to have gone. Father told me not to, but I was sure I'd get back in time. Then the storm came up, and I couldn't. I nearly went crazy. You don't know how thankful I felt when I saw the light flash out. Did you light it? Yes, I hung around waiting for you until it got too late to go home. Anyway, I knew somebody ought to be here. When it got dark, I managed to light it up. I had seen Uncle John do it lots of times. Then I stayed up all night to feel something would go wrong. A nice cheerful time I had, you may be sure, with the waves crashing out there and not a creature to speak to but a cat. Besides, I was afraid that you would try to come home and get drowned. I've got better off than I deserved, said Jack humbly. I'll never do the like again, and I'm grateful to you beyond words, Alec. Jack's father came home the next day. Jack did not try to hide the story from him, but confessed all, frankly. Haslet did not scold him very much, for he knew the Lance punishment had already been severe enough. All he said was, You see, my son, what your disobedience might have cost you and us. Let this be a lesson for you. It will indeed, Father, I'm sure, said Jack earnestly. And it was. End of Section 90 End of Uncollected Short Stories of L. M. Montgomery by Lucy Maud Montgomery