Stories of Yesteryear – After-The Deluge

January 11, 2025

After – the Deluge

By Annie Eliot Turnbull

Edited by Jane Mouttet

The somber tints of Grayhead were slightly suffused by a pink light sifting from the west through the clear air. The yachts in the harbor lay idly beneath the mellow influences of the passing of the summer day—idly as only sailboats can lie, a bit of loose sail or cordage now and then flapping inconsistently in a breath of wind, which seemed to come out of the west for no other purpose, and to retire into the east afterward, its whole duty done. On board, men were moving about, hanging lanterns, making taut here, setting free there, all with an air of utter peace and repose such as is found only on placid waterways beneath a setting sun. Occasionally an oar dipped in the still water, a hint of action, modified, softened into repose. Along one of the quaint streets of the irregular town, winding where it would, climbing where it climbed, hurried an angular figure—that of a woman of about fifty years, whose tense expression suggested unrest at conflict with the keen calmness of that of the other faces about the streets and doorways. It was not feverish in intensity; instead, it was an expression of resolution, undeviating and persistent, but not sure of sympathy or support.

“They’ve gone down yonder, to the other side of the wharf, Mrs. Pember,” said a middle-aged sea captain, whose interest in others had not been destroyed by the forced loneliness of northern sea voyages.

The woman paused and glanced doubtfully down one of the byways that led between tiny, weather-beaten houses and around disconcerting abutments to the water and then forward, straight along the way she had been traveling, which led out of the town.

“I’d planned on them going down Point-ways this evening,” she said.

“Well, they aren’t,” answered Captain Phippeny.

Mrs. Pember nodded at once in acknowledgment and farewell and, turning about, followed the path he had indicated, her gait acquiring a certain hurriedness as she descended the rough, stony slope. She paused at the foot of the descent and looked to the right and left. Captain Phippeny was watching her from his vantage ground above. His figure was one unmistakably of the seaboard. His trousers were cut after a pattern created in all its originality by Mrs. Phippeny, her active imagination working towards practical effect. In addition, he wore a yellow flannel shirt ribbed with purple, which harmonized with the captain’s sandy hair, reddish beard, and tanned skin. His mouth was like a poorly made buttonhole, which gaped a little when he smiled. He had a nose like a parrot’s beak, and his eyes were blue, kindly, and wise in their straightforwardness. When he would render his costume absolutely respectable, he wore a leather jacket with manifold pockets, from one to another of which trailed a gold watch chain with a dangling horseshoe charm.

“It’s a wonder the old woman doesn’t take a dog with her and track them; she spends so much time on the hunt,” he said to himself. “I declare, it’s a singular thing the way she everlasting does get onto them apprentices, who aren’t old enough to talk about setting sail by themselves.”

His tobacco again resumed its claim to his undivided attention, and he leaned back against the fence and waited idly as the drooping sails for a breath of something stirring. By and by, it appeared in the shape of another old sailor, between whom and himself there was the likeness of two peas, save for a slight difference in features useful for identification.

“You told her where they’d gone, I reckon,” he remarked, with a slight chuckle, as he also leaned up against the fence and looked out over the harbor.

“Yes, I did,” replied Captain Phippeny. “I didn’t have any reason to tell her a lie.”

“Kind of hard on the young ones,” observed the newcomer.

“They aren’t ever as hard on the young ones as on the old ones,” asserted Captain Phippeny, “because—well, because they’re young, I guess. That’s Chivy’s yacht that came in just at sundown, isn’t it?”

“Yes. They say she’s seen dirty weather since she was here last.”

“Has? Well, you can’t stay in harbor alleys and make your living at the same time. That yacht has tolerable good men to handle her.”

There was a pause. The soft twilight was battening down the hatches of the day to drop into the parlance of the locality.

“Well, I do suppose old Pember wan’t an easy shipmate, blow or no blow,” observed Captain Smart. He was a small, keen-eyed, quickly moving old man seasoned with salt.

“I reckon he wasn’t. And she thinks she can keep that girl of hers with the same kind of discipline that she had to take—that’s the tf it.”

“Curious, ain’t it?” ruminated Captain Smart. “A woman’s bound to take it one way or another; there seem to be more belaying pins to knock them over with than they plan on at first.”

“So there be,” assented Captain Phippeny.

Near the water, with its fading, rose-colored reflections, not so far from the anchored vessels, but they might, had they chosen, have spoken across to those on board. The monotonous, austere, and yet vaguely soft gray of the old town rising behind them against the melting sky sat Mellony Pember and Ira Baldwin.

“If you’d only make up your mind, Mellony,” urged the young man.

“I can’t, Ira; don’t ask me.” The young girl’s delicately outlined face was troubled, and the sensitive curves of her lips trembled. The faded blue of her dress harmonized with the soft tones of the scene; her hat lay beside her, an uncurled, articulated ostrich feather standing up in it like an exclamation point of brilliant red.

The young man pulled his hat over his eyes and looked at the nearest boat. Mellony glanced at him timidly.

“You see, I’m all she’s got,” she said.

“I’m not going to take you away from her unless you want to go,” he replied without looking at her.

“She thinks I’ll be happier if I don’t—if I don’t marry.”

“Happier!”—he paused in scorn—”and she badgering you all the time if you take a walk with me and watching us as if we were thieves! You aren’t happy now, are you?”

“No.” Mellony’s eyes filled, and a sigh caught and became almost a sob.

“Well, I wish she’d give me a try at making you happy, that’s all.” His would-be sulkiness softened into a tender sense of injury. Mellony twisted her hands together and looked beyond the vessels to the long, narrow neck of land with its clustering houses, beyond which, again, unseen, were booming the waves of the Atlantic.

“Oh, if I only knew what to do!” she exclaimed,—”if I only knew what to do!”

“I’ll tell you what to do, Mellony,” he began.

“There’s Ma, now,” she interrupted.

Ira turned quickly and looked over his shoulder. Across the uneven ground, straight towards them, came the figure of Mrs. Pember. The tenseness of her expression had further yielded to resolution, which had, in turn, taken on a stolidity that declared itself unassailable. No one of the three spoke as she seated herself on a bit of timber near them and, folding her hands, waited with the immobility and the apparent impartiality of Fate itself. At last, Mellony spoke; of the three, she was the most acutely sensitive to the situation and the least capable of enduring it silently.

“Which way did you come, Ma?” she asked.

“I come down Rosaly’s Lane,” Mrs. Pember answered. “I met Cap’n Phippeny, and he told me you were down here.”

“I’m obligated to Cap’n Phippeny,” observed Ira bitterly.

“I don’t know as he’s particular to have you,” remarked Mrs. Pember imperturbably.

There was another silence. Mrs. Pember’s voice had a marked sweetness when she spoke to her daughter, which was lost entirely when she addressed her daughter’s companion. Still, it was always penetrated by the timbre of a certain inflexibility.

The shadows on the water grew deeper, the glow-worms of lanterns glimmered more sharply, and the softness of the night became more palpable.

“I guess I may as well go back, Ma,” said Mellony, rising.

“I was wondering when you would decide on going,” remarked her mother, as she rose too, more slowly and stiffly, and straightened her decent black bonnet.

“I suppose you were afraid Mellony wouldn’t get back safe without you coming after her,” Ira said.

“I guess I can look after Mellony better than anybody else can, and I count on doing it and doing it right along,” she replied.

“Come, Ma,” said Mellony impatiently. But she waited a moment and let her mother pass her while she looked back at Ira, who stood, angry and helpless, kicking at the rusted timbers.

“Are you coming, too, Ira?” she asked in a low voice.

“No,” he exclaimed, “I’m not coming! I don’t want to return with your mother and you as if we weren’t old enough to be alone. I might as well be handcuffed, and so might you! If you’ll come round with me the way we came and let her go the way she came, I’ll go with you fast enough.”

Mellony’s eyes grew wet again as she looked from him to her mother and again at him. Mrs. Pember had paused, too, and stood a little in front of them. Her indifference showed no anxiety; she was too sure of the result.

“No,”—Mellony’s lips framed the words with an accustomed but grievous patience—”I can’t tonight, Ira; I must go with Ma.”

“It’s tonight that’ll be the last chance there’ll be, maybe,” he muttered as he flung himself off in the other direction.

The two women walked up the rough path together and turned into Rosaly’s Lane. Mellony walked wearily, her eyes down. In its uncurled, unlovely assertiveness, the red feather looked more like the banner of a forlorn hope than ever. But Mrs. Pember held herself erect as if she were obliged carefully to repress what might have been the signs of an ill-judged triumph.

Ira prolonged his walk beyond the limits of the little gray town, goaded by the irritating pricks of resentment. He would bear it no longer, so he told himself. Mellony could take him or leave him. He would be a laughingstock, not another week, not another day. If Mellony would not assert herself against her tyrannical old mother, he would go away and leave her! And then he paused, as he had paused so often in the flood of his anger, faced by the realization that this was just what Mrs. Pember wanted, just what would satisfy her, what she had been waiting for,—that he should go away and leave Mellony alone. It was an exasperating dilemma, his giving up and her triumph, or his uncertainty and her anxiety.

Mellony and her mother passed Captain Phippeny and Captain Smart, who still stood talking in the summer evening. The fence continued to supply all the support their hard-working bodies needed in this hour of ease. Captain Smart nudged Captain Phippeny as the two figures turned the corner of Rosaly’s Lane.

“So you found them, Mrs. Pember,” remarked Captain Phippeny. He spoke to the mother but looked, not without sympathy, at the daughter.

“Yes, I found them.”

“You reckoned on fetching only one of them home, I take it,” said Captain Smart.

“I’m only responsible for one of them,” Mrs. Pember replied with some grimness, but her eyes averted from Mellony’s crimsoning face.

“Come, Ma,” repeated Mellony, and they passed.

“Mrs. Pember is a nice enough looking woman herself,” observed Captain Smart; “it’s kind of curious she should be so set against marrying.

“‘Tis so,” assented Captain Phippeny thoughtfully, looking after the two women.

Without speaking, Mellony and her mother entered their little house. The young girl sank down in the stiff, high-backed rocker, with its thin calico-covered cushion tied with red braid, that stood by the window. Outside, the summer night buzzed and hummed and breathed sweet odors. Mrs. Pember moved about the room, slightly altering its arrangements, now and then looking at her daughter furtively as if waiting for her to speak, but Mellony’s head was not turned from the open window, and she was utterly silent. At last, this immobility had a sympathetic effect on the mother. She seated herself not far from the girl, her hands, with their prominent knuckles and shrunken flesh folded in unaccustomed idleness, and waited while the dusk grew too dark in the room. To Mellony, the hour was filled with suggestions that emphasized and defined her misery. She has reached her capacity for emotional suffering had been reached. Until now, this suffering had been of the perplexed, patient, submissive kind; tonight, the beauty of the softly descending gloom, the gentle freedom of the placid harbor, and the revolt of her usually yielding lover deepened it into something more acute.

“Mellony,” said her mother, with a touch of that timidity that appeared only in her speech with her daughter, “did you count on going over to the Neck tomorrow, as you promised?”

“I’ll never count on doing anything again,” said Mellony, in a voice she tried to make cold and even, which vibrated notwithstanding,—”never, so long as I live. I’ll never think, plan, or speak, if I can help it—of what I mean to do. I’ll never do anything but just work, shut my eyes, and live if I’ve got to!” Her voice broke, and she turned away from the open window and looked straight before her into the shadowed room. Her mother moved uneasily, and her knotted hands grasped the arms of the stiff chair where she sat.

“Mellony,” she said again, “you’ve no call to talk so.”

“I’ve no call to talk at all. I’ve no place anywhere. I’m not anybody. I haven’t any life of my own.” The keen brutality of the thoughtlessness of youth and ignoring all claims but those of its own happiness came oddly from the lips of submissive Mellony. Mrs. Pember quivered under it.

“You know you’re my girl, Mellony,” she answered gently. “You’re all I’ve got.”

“Yes,” the other answered indifferently, “that’s all I am—Mellony Pember, Mrs. Pember’s girl—just that.”

“Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that something to be—all I plan for and work for? Isn’t that enough for a girl to be?”

Mellony turned her eyes from emptiness and fixed them upon her mother’s face, dimly outlined in the vagueness.

“Is that all you’ve been,” she asked, “just somebody’s daughter?”

It was as if a heavy weight fell from her lips and settled upon her mother’s heart. There was a silence. Mellony’s eyes, though she could not see them, seemed to Mrs. Pember to demand an answer in a fashion different from their usual mildness.

“It’s because I’ve been—it’s because I’d save you from what I have been that I—do as I do. You know that,” her mother said.

“I don’t want to be saved,” the girl quickly and sharply returned.

The older woman faced a situation she had never dreamed of—a demand to be allowed to suffer! The guardian had not expected this from her carefully shielded charge.

“I want you to have a happy life,” she added.

“A happy life!” flashed the girl. “And you’re keeping me from any life at all! That’s what I want—life, my own life, not what anybody else gives me of theirs. Why shouldn’t I have what they have, even if it’s bad now and then? Don’t save me despite myself! Nobody likes to be saved despite themselves.”

It was a long speech for Mellony. A large moon had risen, and golden shafts of light from the low horizon sent almost into the room; it was as if the placidity of the night were suddenly penetrated by something more glowing. Mellony stood looking down at her mother like a judge. Mrs. Pember gazed at her steadily.

“I’m going to save you, Mellony,” she said, her dominating will making her voice harsher than it had been, “whether you want to be saved or not. I won’t have you marry and be sworn at and hit.” Mellony moved to protest, but her strength, besides her mother’s, was useless at a time like this. “I’m not going to have you slave and get blows for your pains. I will follow you about and set wherever you are whenever you go off with Ira Baldwin if that’ll stop it, and if that won’t, I’ll try another way—I know other ways. I’m not going to have you marry! I’m going to have you stay along with me!”

With a slight gesture of despair, Mellony turned away. The flash had burned itself out, and the stronger nature had reasserted itself. Silently, feeling helpless and frightened at her own rebellion now that it was over, she went out of the room to her smaller one and closed the door.

Mrs. Pember sat silently in her turn, reviewing her daughter’s resentment. However, the matter admitted no modifications in her mind; her duty was clear, and her determination had been taken long ago. Neither did she fear anything like persistent opposition; she knew her daughter’s submissive nature well.

Brought up in a country village, an earnest and somewhat apprehensive member of the church, Mrs. Pember had married the captain early in life, under what she had since grown to consider an illusion from the Evil One, but which was, perhaps, more logically due to the disconcerting good looks and restrained impulsive behavior of Captain Pember himself. Possibly, he had been the victim of an illusion too, not believing that seriousness could exist with such bright eyes and red cheeks as charmed him in the country girl. At least, he never hesitated subsequently to imply and state a sense of hurt. Captain Phippeny was one of those sailors who experienced the change of scene, the vast knowledge of men and of things, and the hardships and dangers of sea life, broadened and rendered tolerant and somewhat wise. Pember had been brutalized by these same things.

The inhabitants of Grayhead were distinguished by the suggestiveness of their profanity, and Captain Pember had been a past master of the accomplishment. Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley could have been no more discriminating than the local acknowledgment of his proficiency in this line. No wonder Mrs. Pember looked back at the ten years of her married life with a shudder. With the rigid training of her somewhat dogmatic upbringing, she listened in horrified expectancy for the heavens to strike or the earth to swallow up her nonchalant husband. Nor was this all. The weakness for strong drink, unfortunately supposed to be inherent in a nautical existence, was carried by Captain Pember to an extent inconsiderate even in the eyes of a seafaring public, and when, under its influence, he hit his wife down and tormented Mellony, the opinion of this same public declared itself on the side of the victims with a unanimity which is not always to be counted upon in such cases.

In fact, her married life had, as it were, formalized somewhat vague details of Mrs. Pember’s conception of the place of future punishment. When her husband died appropriately as the result of a brawl, he continued to mitigate the relief of the event by leaving in his wife’s heart a haunting fear, begotten of New England conscientiousness, that perhaps she ought not to be so unmistakably glad of it. It was thus that, with Mellony’s growth from childhood to womanhood, the burning regret for her former unmarried state, whose difficulties had been mainly theological, had become a no less burning resolve that her child should never suffer as she had suffered but should be guarded from matrimony as from death. That she failed to distinguish between individuals, that she failed to see that young Baldwin did not have those traits which her sharpened vision would now have detected in Pember’s youth, was both the fault of her perceptive qualities and the fruit of her unchangeable resolve. She had been hurt by Mellony’s rebellion but not influenced by so much as a hair’s-breadth.

Early one morning, two or three days later, Mrs. Pember, lying awake waiting for the light to grow brighter so that she might begin her day, heard a slight sound outside of a certain incisiveness out of proportion to its volume. With an idleness that visited her only at early daybreak, she wondered what it was. It was repeated, and this time, moved by an insistent curiosity blended with the recognition of its probable cause, she rose and looked out of the window, which was close to the head of her bed. A little pier was a stone’s throw from the house on that side, at which several boats belonging to the fishermen were moored about. It was as she thought; a stooping figure, dim and hazy in the morning fog, which blurred the nearest outlines and veiled the more distant, was untying one of the boats and had slipped the oars into the rowlocks.

“Going fishing early,” she said to herself. “I wonder which of them it is. They are all alike in this light.”

Then she stood and looked out upon the morning world. It would soon be sunrise. Meanwhile, the earth was silent, save for the soft rippling of the untired waves that scarcely rose and fell in this sheltered harbor; the land had been at rest through the short night, but they had climbed and lapsed again steadily through its hours; the paling stars would soon have faded into the haze. The expectation of the creature waited for the manifestation.

Softly, the boat floated away from its moorings. It seemed propelled without effort, so quietly, it slipped through the water. In the bottom lay the sail and the nets, a shadowy mass; the boat itself was little more than a shadow as it glided on into the thicker fog that received and enveloped it, as into an unknown vague future that concealed and yet held promise and welcome.

Mrs. Pember glanced at the clock. It was very early, but returning to bed was hardly worthwhile. The sun was already beginning to glint through the fog. She dressed and, passing softly the door of the room where Mellony slept—somewhat fitfully of late—began to make the fire.

The morning broadened and blazed into the day, and the whole town was preparing for breakfast. Mellony was later than usual—her mother did not hear her moving about, but she was unwilling to disturb her; she would wait a while before calling her. At last, however, the conviction of the immorality of late rising could no longer be ignored, and she turned the knob of Mellony’s door and stepped into the room.

She had been mistaken in supposing Mellony was asleep; the girl must have risen early and slipped out, for the room was empty. Mrs. Pember paused, surprised that she had not heard her go. It must have been while she was getting kindling wood in the yard that Mellony had left by the street door. And what could she have wanted so early in the village?—for to the village she must have gone; she was nowhere about the little place, whose flatness dropped, treeless, to the shore. Her mother returned to the kitchen and glanced up and down the waterside. No one was on the little wooden pier, and the boats swung gently by its side, their own among them, so Mellony had not gone out in that. Yes, she must have gone to the village, and Mrs. Pember opened the front door and scanned the wandering little street. It was almost empty; the early morning activity of the place was in other directions.

With the vague uneasiness that unaccustomed and unexplained absence always produces but with no actual apprehension, Mrs. Pember returned to her work. Mellony had particular mild whims, but it was surprising that she should have left her room in disorder, the bed unmade; that was not like her usual neatness. With a certain grimness, Mrs. Pember ate her breakfast alone. Of course, no harm had come to Mellony, but where was she? Unacknowledged, the shadow of Ira Baldwin fell across her wonder. Had Mellony cared so much for him that her disappointment had driven her to something wild and fatal? She did not ask the question, but her lips grew white and stiff at the faintest suggestion of it. Several times she went to the door, meaning to go out and up the street to look for her daughter, but each time something withheld her. Instead, with that determination that distinguished her, she busied herself with trifling duties. It was nine o’clock when she saw Captain Phippeny coming up the street. She stood still and watched him approach. His gait was more rolling than ever as he came slowly towards her, and he glanced furtively ahead at her house and then dropped his eyes and pretended not to have seen her. She grew impatient to have him reach her, but she only pressed her lips together and stood more rigidly still. At last, he stood before her door, his hat in his hand. The yellow shirt and the leather jacket were more audacious than ever. Still, doubt and irresolution in every turn of his blue eyes and line of his weather-beaten face had replaced the tolerant kindliness.

“It’s a warm morning, Mrs. Pember,” he observed, more disconcerted than ever by her unsmiling alertness.

“You came a long way to tell me that, Captain Phippeny.”

“Yes, I did. Leastways, I didn’t,” he responded. “I come to tell you about—about Mellony.”

“What about Mellony, Captain Phippeny?” she demanded, pale but uncompromising. “What have you got to tell me about Mellony Pember?” she reiterated as he paused.

“Not Mellony Pember,” gasped the captain, a three-cornered smile trying to make headway against his embarrassment as he recalled the ancient tale of breaking the news to the Widow Smith; “Mellony Baldwin.”

“Mellony Baldwin!” repeated Mrs. Pember, stonily, not fully comprehending.

The captain grew more and more nervous.

“Yes,” he proceeded, with a haste of despair, “yes. Mrs. Pember, you see Mellony—Mellony’s married.”

“Mellony married!” Strangely enough, she had not thought of that. She grasped the doorpost for support.

“Yes, she up and married him,” went on the captain more blithely. “I hardly thought it of Mellony,” he added, “nor yet of Ira.”

“Nor I either.” Mrs. Pember’s lips moved with difficulty. Mellony married! The structure reared with tears and prayers; the structure of Mellony’s happiness seemed to crumble before her eyes.

“And I was to give you this,” and the captain drew forth a folded paper from the lining of his hat.

“Then you knew about it?” said Mrs. Pember in a flash of cold wrath.

“No, no, I didn’t. My daughter’s boy brought this to me, and I was to tell you they were married. And why they set the job onto me, the Lord only knows!” Captain Phippeny wiped his heated forehead with feeling. “But that’s all I know.”

Slowly, her fingers trembling, she unfolded the note.

“I have married Ira, mother,” she read. “He took me away in a boat early this morning. It was the only way. I will come back when you want me. If I am to be unhappy, I’d rather be unhappy this way. I can’t be unhappy your way any longer. I’m sorry to go against you, Mother, but it’s my life, after all, not yours,

Mellony.”

As Mrs. Pember’s hands fell to her side and the note slipped from her fingers, the daily tragedy of her married life seemed to pass before her eyes. She saw Captain Pember reel into the house, shuddering at his blasphemy. She felt the sting of the first blow he had given her, and she cowered as he roughly shook Mellony’s little frame by her childish arm.

“She’d better be dead!” she murmured. “I wish she was dead.”

Captain Phippeny pulled himself together. “No, she wouldn’t—no, you don’t, Mrs. Pember,” he declared stoutly. “You’re making a mistake. You don’t want to see Mellony dead any more than I do. She’s only gotten married when all’s said and done, and there’s a sight of folks getting married and none the worse for it. Ira Baldwin is kinder light, complected, and soft-spoken—but he isn’t a born fool, and that’s a good deal, Mrs. Pember.” He paused impressively, but she did not speak. “And he isn’t going to beat Mellony, either; he isn’t that sort. I guess Mellony could tackle him if it came to that, anyhow. I tell you, Mrs. Pember, there’s one thing you don’t think about—there’s a difference in husbands; there’s a huge difference in them!” Mrs. Pember looked at him vaguely. Why did he go on talking? Mellony was married. “Mellony’s got one kind, and you—well,” he went on, with cautious delicacy, “somehow you got another. I tell you, it’s husbands that make the difference to a woman when it comes to marrying.”

Mrs. Pember stooped, picked up the note, turned, walked into the living room, and sat down. She looked about her with that sense of unreality that sometimes visits us. There was the chair in which Mellony sat the night of her rebellious outbreak—Mellony, her daughter, her married daughter. Other women talked about their “married daughters” easily enough, and she had pitied them; now she would have to talk so, too. She felt unutterably lonely. Her household, like her hope, was shattered. She looked up and saw that Captain Phippeny had followed her into the house and was standing before her, turning his hat in his brown, tattooed hands.

“Mrs. Pember,” he said, “I thought, maybe, now Mellony was married, you’d be thinking of matrimony yourself again.” As Mrs. Pember gazed at him dumbly, it seemed she must have become another person all at once. Matrimony had suddenly become domesticated, as it were. Her eyes traveled over the horseshoe charm and the long gold chain from pocket to pocket as she listened. “And so I’d like to have you think of me if you were making out the papers for another voyage. The first mate I sailed with, she says to me when she died, ‘You’ve been a good husband, Phippeny,’ says she. I wouldn’t say anything to you, I wouldn’t take the risk, if she hadn’t said that to me. Mrs. Pember, I’m tellin’ it to you now because there’s such a difference, and I feel encouraged by it to ask you to try me. I’d like to have you marry me, Mrs. Pember.”

It was a long speech, and the captain was breathless when it was finished. Still, he watched anxiously as he waited for her to reply. The stern lines of her mouth relaxed slowly. A brilliant red geranium in the window glowed in the sunlight which had just reached it. The world was not all dark. The room seemed less lonely with the captain in it as she glanced around it a second time. She scanned his face: the buttonhole of a mouth had a kindly twist; he did not look in the least like handsome Dick Pember. Mellony had married, and her world was in fragments, and something must come after.

“I never heard you weren’t a good husband to Mrs. Phippeny,” she said calmly, “and I don’t know that anybody will make any objection if I marry you, Captain Phippeny.”

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