“i can’t,” said the smooth-shaven young man—young but evidently not so very young, either. his pale face had dark circles under the strange-lighted eyes. his black, straight hair was not brushed. the wind which ruffled it brought no colour to his cheeks. his nostrils—he had rather a snub nose—twitched. at his sides his hands kept closing and unclosing, and[208] he stood stiffly, like a scarecrow absurdly taken from a field and firmly rooted in this spot on the sand of the great south beach.
the young woman who faced him, with her glowing hair and her eyes and skin which seemed to reflect every atom of the downpouring sunlight, made no gesture, but met his denial with an affirmation. two words pronounced in a low, vibrating voice:
“you can.”
they were ordinary young people of the twentieth century in appearance, the one perhaps more striking in beauty, the other certainly more distraught, than the average of their ages. but, except for the absence of any archaism from their speech, they might have been speakers in a drama as dark as “hamlet.”
“you are thirty,” began the girl; “i am twenty-four. you have a fortune—well, $200,000 anyway. enough for our needs. you have another inheritance, and i do not mean a blood inheritance. you are not likely to be the son of jacob king.”
“but the son of jacob king’s——”
“don’t say it,” she interrupted, quietly. “she has not mattered these thirty years, why should she now? no, the inheritance i mean is not of blood, but of dread, shame, and repulsion. isn’t it enough, guy, that in his crazed lifetime he did everything that a man could do to make you as bad as himself? are you going to let him rule you now that he is dead? are you going[209] to accept that inheritance? for you need not. while he lived he dominated your life, he made you share his thoughts, he made you an innocent accomplice in evil; you were an accessory after the fact of his wrong-doing. but now he has liberated you. when he shot himself dead it was an act of emancipation. he struck the shackles from you and set you free at the same instant that he went forward to meet his sentence and punishment.”
“i—i can’t,” repeated the man, hopelessly. “you forget the living tie, the woman there in the house, the one who is known as mrs. vanton.” the words seemed to hurt his throat.
the woman’s breast rose and fell, but there was tremendous control in her over herself, and she exerted some of it in her answer.
“there is only one thing to do,” she assured him. “it is to sever everything that joins you with him, dead or alive. do this: put the inheritance money in a trust. the income will care for—for mrs. vanton, completely: medical attendance, nursing, everything. give her the house, give her every dollar, but leave! you can take every precaution to see that she is properly cared for but you must get away. you must have a physical and a mental escape. you have got to renounce the past and everything in the present that threads you to the past. you have got to get out into a sunlit world, a world of normal[210] men and women, of fighting and playing and loving, of shops and homes, of marriage and children, of discomforts and hardships, adventures and trifling worries and happiness. at thirty you must act, you who have been passive and acted upon. you have a life to live. live it. oh, guy, live your own life!”
she turned away from him. something in her voice galvanized him, communicated an electric thrill along the dead circuit of his nerves, startled him, shocked him from his inertia. he looked up quickly, took a step or two, and saw that she was crying. as if it were a reflex action he took two steps more and stood beside her, then put his arm timidly about her. for one instant she relaxed slightly, so that her weight fell upon the arm, then she was alive again and turned to him a smiling face with cheeks still wet.
“it doesn’t matter what you do,” she assured him. “why don’t you do this? you aren’t in trim, physically; that’s plain. you’re in need of conditioning, some sort of outdoor life, something that will harden you. and you need company, companionship. why not stay here on the beach this summer and then through next winter with my father at the coast guard station? he can’t take you on as a surfman, of course, for you’d have to pass an examination. though you might do that, a surfman has to have had several years experience as a bayman, too. but you could be a sort of volunteer member of the crew. you wouldn’t make[211] any money but you won’t need any money. you’ll have bad hours, but fewer than you suppose. you won’t even have the ordinary loneliness, for you can’t take a beach patrol and you’ll always be out with one of the other men. and there’s tommy lupton—he’s here. you and he can travel together; you’re good friends. and uncle ho. aunt keturah can’t persuade him to leave the beach permanently. she says,” mermaid smiled at the recollection, “she says that marriage with him has made no difference, that she sees him as often as ever.
“you haven’t to look a long way ahead,” she continued. “you oughtn’t to. those who look too far ahead see the reflection of the past. you must live, as nearly as possible, from day to day. plan for a year and plan, in the circumstances, no farther. keep to the beach. keep to the men, especially uncle ho and tommy. they have something they can share with you, something you need above everything else just now.”
so it was decided and so arranged. mermaid, who was concerned over her aunt’s health, felt that to go to california might do keturah hand a world of good. it could be tried, anyway. she came over to the beach one morning to say good-bye to her father, to hosea hand, to the men generally, one or two of whom, particularly joe sayre, remembered her from her childhood among them. and to say good-bye to guy vanton.
[212]he already looked better physically, she thought, noting the trace of colour in his face and the absence of the dark rings from under his eyes. their gaze met as they said good-bye. his curious, fawn-like glance was fixed on the shining blue surfaces that hid such great deeps within her eyes, a wild creature of the shore looking with wonder on the unfathomable sea. he said:
“good-bye. i shall see you every time the sun shines on the ocean. you—you must come back. please do write to me.”
“i shall be back,” she answered, with calm warmth. only the blue opacity of her eyes concealed the great tides moving within her. “i shall write. work hard. sand and sea and sun are great chemicals to act upon the mind. the beach here is so like a desert island. you must think of yourself as on a desert island, cut off by the sea of present living from the lands of past remembrance. and eventually, like atlantis, those lands will sink beneath the sea.”
with a firm handclasp they parted.
