PART FOUR (continued 2)

Keturah and the servant tended to the food and drink, except that Mary herself kept charge of the brandy. The governess was busy with bandages and liniments; John stood watch over the patients and ministered to them as best he could, helping his mother. Young Guy, exhausted from the excitement, had been carried at last, half asleep, to his bed and simply dropped upon it with his clothes on. Through all the excitement the youngest child, Mermaid, had slept without waking. It was now two o’clock in the morning.

The door opened, for the one hundred and thirty-first time, perhaps, that night, and two Coast Guardsmen stumbled in carrying the lifeless body of Guy Vanton. Mary Vanton looked upon it without a tremor, kept control of herself absolutely until it was certain that he was dead. Then she had him carried into her room upstairs and herself covered his face. She came out quietly and turned the key in the door, slipped it into her pocket, and started downstairs.

Something in her expression sent terror striking right through the heart of her first-born. John was beside her, had kept beside her from the moment when his father’s body was brought in. His arm went about her.

“Mother!”

She stopped uncertainly on the staircase and looked at him. Her lips moved a little but she did not say anything. Her foot slipped on the step, but she caught herself by the handrail and then stood there in absolute quiet. The boy looked at her steadily. Their eyes met. She reached out her hand, with a weary effort, and drew him close to her.

XXIII

Dick Hand did his best to compel Torn Lupton to get in the buoy, but could not. Tom, who had muscles of iron, held back and at the same time gripped Dick with a grip that meant business and thrust him forward, yelling against the side of his face: “Skipper last! I’m skipper here ... all there is.... Get in. Wonderful work ... thanks....”

So Dick got in and was hauled back to land. He made all haste to the house and got there to find Mary Vanton at the foot of the staircase, her boy beside her.

At the sight of him she lifted her eyes, and they showed some of their usual brilliance in the joy at seeing him standing safely before her. She made a gesture up the stairs, took the key of her room from her pocket, and handed it to him.

Dick went up, not knowing what he should find. He took a long look at the face of what had been Guy Vanton, left the room, quietly relocking the door, and came downstairs. Without pausing for warmth or coffee he hurried out into the storm. He must be on hand when Tommy landed.

He gained the top of the dune and looked seaward. It was still two hours or more to faintest daybreak. Out of the blackness beyond the signal to haul away had been received. The men began hauling.

Just what happened is a matter of conjecture. Whether the whole ship dissolved in pieces all at once or whether the mainmast, weighted by the fallen mizzen carried away and fell, it can never matter. Of a sudden the line bearing the buoy collapsed into the water. With shrieks, yells, prayers, and frantic effort the men of the crew, Dick helping them, hauled away as for their lives—it was, most certainly, for one of their lives, the best, the worthiest. But the falling line had become entangled in floating wreckage; there was no light to see what had taken place; after a succession of mighty efforts the line snapped and they hauled inshore nothing but a frayed end of rope. Tommy Lupton, who had been keeper of the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station, who had risked his life to save a few poor sailors, Tommy, forever a boy, forever dreaming of doing some act of bravery, simple, devoted, courageous Tommy, had fulfilled his hope and gained his desire.

There is something priceless in the world. He possessed it.

XXIV

There was no more to do that night, although some of the crew remained always on the dune until day, dawning, showed no trace of a vessel, but only traces of where a vessel had been, pieces of wreckage floating about. The wind had gone down; the sea was still high but would soon begin to lessen in violence. Already snow was commencing to fall. It fell all day, mantling the dunes, covering all the external marks of the night’s horrors, a great winding sheet laid upon the trampled ground. Only where it struck the black and restless sea did the white blanket fail to disguise what had taken place—that which would take place again and again, from generation to generation, as long as the sea rolled and men sailed.

But even the snow did not go on falling, stopping at dusk, and the next day it was fair. The sun shone and the air was warm—the weather might have been that of late spring. And on the day following it was equally warm and pleasant; and this was Christmas.

Richard Hand remained with the Vantons for two weeks after Christmas. At length Mary Vanton decided to close the beach house and spend the rest of the winter in Blue Port. Richard Hand saw her settled there and then, with her reluctant assent, took John back to school.

He had postponed his own work, let it drop, let it wait, let it go! Work could not matter just then.

But after he had left John at school he returned to New York and pitched in as hard as he could. It was some time before he could get away to run down to Blue Port, but at last he managed it.

Mary Vanton met him at the little station, smiling. All the way to the house he was conscious of nothing but her presence beside him. When they stood together in the house, alone, facing each other, something dynamic swept over him. He could hardly see, and tears sprang to his eyes. He felt himself suffocating, drowning in a sea of feeling. The Mermaid of immortal youth who lived on in Mary Vanton was folded in his eager arms.

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.