And then, just as she had banished him entirely from her mind, he came East.Not as once he had planned to come, only to see her, but with a blare of trumpets, at the command of many citizens, as the guest of three cities.He was to speak at public meetings, to confer with party leaders, to carry the war into the enemy's country.He was due to speak in Boston at Faneuil Hall on the first of May, and that same night to leave for the West, and three days before his coming Helen fled from the city.He had spoken his message to Philadelphia, he had spoken to New York, and for a week the papers had spoken only of him.And for that week, from the sight of his printed name, from sketches of him exhorting cheering mobs, from snap-shots of him on rear platforms leaning forward to grasp eager hands, Helen had shut her eyes.
And that during the time he was actually in Boston she might spare herself further and more direct attacks upon her feelings she escaped to Fair Harbor, there to remain until, on the first of May at midnight, he again would pass out of her life, maybe forever.No one saw in her going any significance.Spring had come, and in preparation for the summer season the house at Fair Harbor must be opened and set in order, and the presence there of some one of the Page family was easily explained.
She made the three hours' run to Fair Harbor in her car, driving it herself, and as the familiar landfalls fell into place, she doubted if it would not have been wiser had she stayed away.For she found that the memories of more than twenty summers at Fair Harbor had been wiped out by those of one summer, by those of one man.The natives greeted her joyously: the boatmen, the fishermen, her own grooms and gardeners, the village postmaster, the oldest inhabitant.They welcomed her as though they were her vassals and she their queen.But it was the one man she had exiled from Fair Harbor who at every turn wrung her heart and caused her throat to tighten.She passed the cottage where he had lodged, and hundreds of years seemed to have gone since she used to wait for him in the street, blowing noisily on her automobile horn, calling derisively to his open windows.Wherever she turned Fair Harbor spoke of him.The golf-links; the bathing beach; the ugly corner in the main street where he always reminded her that it was better to go slow for ten seconds than to remain a long time dead; the old house on the stone wharf where the schooners made fast, which he intended to borrow for his honeymoon; the wooden trough where they always drew rein to water the ponies;the pond into which he had waded to bring her lilies.
On the second day of her stay she found she was passing these places purposely, that to do so she was going out of her way.
They no longer distressed her, but gave her a strange comfort.
They were old friends, who had known her in the days when she was rich in happiness.
But the secret hiding-place--their very own hiding-place, the opening among the pines that overhung the jumble of rocks and the sea--she could not bring herself to visit.And then, on the afternoon of the third day when she was driving alone toward the lighthouse, her pony, of his own accord, from force of habit, turned smartly into the wood road.And again from force of habit, before he reached the spot that overlooked the sea, he came to a full stop.There was no need to make him fast.For hours, stretching over many summer days, he had stood under those same branches patiently waiting.
On foot, her heart beating tremulously, stepping reverently, as one enters the aisle of some dim cathedral, Helen advanced into the sacred circle.And then she stood quite still.What she had expected to find there she could not have told, but it was gone.
The place was unknown to her.She saw an opening among gloomy pines, empty, silent, unreal.No haunted house, no barren moor, no neglected graveyard ever spoke more poignantly, more mournfully, with such utter hopelessness.There was no sign of his or of her former presence.Across the open space something had passed its hand, and it had changed.What had been a trysting-place, a bower, a nest, had become a tomb.A tomb, she felt, for something that once had been brave, fine, and beautiful, but which now was dead.She had but one desire, to escape from the place, to put it away from her forever, to remember it, not as she now found it, but as first she had remembered it, and as now she must always remember It.She turned softly on tiptoe as one who has intruded on a shrine.
But before she could escape there came from the sea a sudden gust of wind that caught her by the skirts and drew her back, that set the branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles.And at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous tattoo--a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of caged wings.
Helen turned in alarm and raised her eyes--and beheld the sailorman.
Tossing his arms in a delirious welcome, waltzing in a frenzy of joy, calling her back to him with wild beckonings, she saw him smiling down at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile.In Helen's ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer stood before her and had just spoken.Only now they were no longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that brought to her peace, and pride, and happiness.
"So long as I love this beautiful lady," had been his foolish words, "you will guard this place.It is a life sentence!"With one hand Helen Page dragged down the branch on which the sailorman stood, with the other she snatched him from his post of duty.With a joyous laugh that was a sob, she clutched the sailorman in both her hands and kissed the beseeching, worshipping smile.
An hour later her car, on its way to Boston, passed through Fair Harbor at a rate of speed that caused her chauffeur to pray between his chattering teeth that the first policeman would save their lives by landing them in jail.
At the wheel, her shoulders thrown forward, her eyes searching the dark places beyond the reach of the leaping head-lights Helen Page raced against time, against the minions of the law, against sudden death, to beat the midnight train out of Boston, to assure the man she loved of the one thing that could make his life worth living.
And close against her heart, buttoned tight beneath her great-coat, the sailorman smiled in the darkness, his long watch over, his soul at peace, his duty well performed.
