The Isle of Seven Moons/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
SPRING
It was in April that the news had come. The bottle was tossing, God knows where; the thirteenth nick had just been cut in the eighth trunk of Ben's tree calendar; and Sally was making her two-hundred and fifty-seventh trip—since that night under the Light—to the postoffice, each pilgrimage a Via Dolorosa now. Again on the top step she paused to scan the horizon, but her gaze was stopped midway by a crowd gathered in front of Comby's drugstore. She recognized its focus, a strangely gesturing courier from the sea, in tattered blouse and water-stained trousers. It was Martin Rogers, the ship s carpenter of the missing Provincetown.
Over the nodding heads of his audience he caught sight of her half eager, half-fearful look, and stopped his dramatic recital in embarrassment.
Straight to him she went.
"Where is Ben?" was all she said.
Neither in the serene sky nor in the transfixed faces of the crowd could the distressed mariner find an answer. He fumbled at his pockets, and dug the toes of his shoes, almost petrified with water, between the pavement cracks, looking almost as if guilty of the old ocean's crime himself.
But the girl's hands never relinquished their grasp, and the dark eyes gazing straight into his own compelled an answer.
"There was a storm, Sally—and Ben—wouldn't leave the ship."
She recoiled—swayed a little, then, gathering her strength, demanded in a voice whose shrillness was strangely different from the musical tones her neighbours had always known:
"But you saved him—somebody saved him—oh, tell me the rest—tell me the rest"
But Martin's answer to the plea of her voice and outstretched hands was a mute shake of the head.
There were no outcries, only a heart-quiver that made her tremble. Some of the good people stretched out their arms in pity to steady her, but she straightened, and the look on her face stayed their kindly impulses. Silently they again opened the circle and out she passed, and on over the Square and up the hill to her home. And although everyone in Salthaven saw the mute evidence in her face, no one then or ever after heard her speak of her grief. Only the wind on the dunes and the waves knew, and the Light, and for all their eloquent whispers or bright illuminings, none can ever apostrophize them into betrayal of confidence or counsel.
Quenched was all the old sparkle, broken the blithe spirit. As spring passed and summer ripened the fruit in the old orchard, Philip persisted in his wooing; and Aunt Abigail and that eternal "tamp, tamp," finally tortured the girl into an apathetic consent. When August came and the harvest moon, Ned Bowlby, the whistling printer, set up his copy that ran somewhat in this wise:
"Captain Hiram Fell requests the honour of your presence," and so on down through the old formula.
Sally refused even to look at the proof. What mattered a little letter or a misplaced comma when the whole universe was turned upside down!
All her blurred eyes caught were two fatal words, looming ominously large and black on the clay-hued sheet
"September sixth."