Joseph Hergesheimer

“ Olive, reaching the top of Orange Street, was whipped with dust, her hoops flattened grotesquely against her body. The town fell away on either hand, lying in a half moon on its harbor. The latter, as blue and bright as the sky, was formed by the rocky arm of Cottar's Neck, thrust out into the sea and bent from right to left. Most of the fishing fleet showed their bare spars at the wharves, but one, a minute fleck of white canvas, was beating her way through the Narrows. She wondered, descending, if it were Jem coming home. ”

“ After he had gone—supper, she had informed him, was at five exactly—Olive had the bewildered feeling of partially waking from an extraordinary dream. Yet the buckskin bag on the table possessed a weighty actuality.
She sat for a long while gazing intently at the gold, which, like a crystal ball, held for her varied reflections. Then, recalling the exigencies of the kitchen, she hurried abruptly away. Her thoughts wheeled about Jason Burrage in a confusion of all the impressions she had ever had of him. ”

“ She had said no more to him than to the other Cottarsport youth and young manhood, perhaps a dozen sentences in a year; but the others merged into a composite image of fuzzy chins, reddened knuckles, and inept, choked speech, and Jason Burrage remained a slightly sullen individual with potentialities. He had never stayed long in her mind, or had any actual part in her life—her mother's complete indifference to Cottarsport had put a barrier between its acutely independent spirit and the Canderays—but she had been easily conscious of his special quality. ”

“ A feeling of impotence thrust its chilling edge into the swelling heat of his resentment. He would have to stand like a condemned animal before the impending fatal blow; he was held motionless, helpless, by every circumstance of his life and hopes.
He crumpled the warning in a clenched hand. How Cottarsport would point and jeer at him, at Jason Burrage who was Honora Canderay's husband, a murderer; Jason, who had returned from California with the gold fleece! ”

“ The labor and privation, the continuous immersion in frigid streams, had lessened his vitality, sapped his ability for conflict. All that he now wished was the happiness of his wife, Honora, and the quietude of their big, peaceful house; the winter evenings by the Franklin stove and the spring evenings with the windows open and the candles guttering in the mild, lilac-hung air.
Together with his uncertainty the pleasure in the sheer fact of his wife increased; and with it the old wonderment at their situation returned. ”

“ He tried again all the conventional reasons for marriage without satisfaction: the sentimental and material equally failed. Jason felt that if he could penetrate this mystery his grasp on actuality would be enormously improved; he might, with such knowledge, successfully defy Thomas Gast and all that past which equally threatened to reach out destructively into the future.
His happiness, in its new state of fragility, became infinitely precious; a thing to dwell on at nights, to ponder over walking through the town. ”

“ With Jason's ring blazing on her slim finger she drove, the day before the wedding, for the last time as Honora Canderay. The leaves had been stripped from the elms on the hills, brown and barren against the flashing, steely water. She saw that Coggs was so impotent with age that if the horses had been more vigorous he would be helpless. Coggs had driven for her father, then her, for thirty years. It was too cold for the old man to be out today. ”

“ Honora had been to Boston, and she was describing lightly an encounter with her aunt, Herriot Cozzens. He was only half conscious of her amused voice. Clouds had obscured the evening sky, and there was an air of suspense, like that preceding a thunder storm, in the thickening dark. A restlessness filled Jason which he was unable to resist ”

“ However exculpable the killing of Eddie Lukens had been, the results were immeasurably unfortunate, for a simple act of violent local justice.
They were in the carriage above Cottarsport; Coggs had died through the winter, and his place been taken by a young coachman from the city. The horses rested somnolently in their harness, the bright bits of rubbed silver plate shining. Honora was looking out over the harbor, a gentian blue expanse. “Good Heavens,” she cried with sudden energy, “I am getting old at a sickening rate. Only last year the schooners and sea made me as restless as a gull. ”

“ Memories of old stories of Ithiel Canderay, the necessary salt cruelness of punishment in ships, flashed through Jason's mind. An intolerable weight of time seemed to drag upon him. Thomas Gast gave a hoarse gurgle and lurched forward, but the relentless lash drove him back.
“You whisperer!” Honora said in her ringing voice, “you liar and slabbering coward! It's necessary to cut the truth out of you. When you talk again about Mr. Burrage and the man he shot in California don't leave out the smallest detail of his exoneration. ”

“ After the difficulty of his announcement Paret Fifield talked with animation about his plans and approaching marriage. Honora wondered at the swiftness with which she—for so long a fundamental part of his thought—'had dropped from his mind. It had the aspect of a physical act of seclusion, as if a door had been closed upon her, the last, perhaps, leading out of her isolation. She hadn't been at all sure that she would not marry Paret: today she had almost decided in favor of such a consummation of her existence.
A girl not quite nineteen! ”

“ Radlaw, the drug taker, put in. “A man couldn't be coolly derringered in Cottarsport. There's law here, there's order.” He had a harried face, dulled eyes under a fine brow, a tremulous flabby mouth, with white crystals of powder adhering to its corners, and a countenance like the yellow oilskins of the fishermen.
Jason turned darkly in his direction. “What have you or Clower got to do with law?”
“Not only them,” the apothecary interposed, “but all the other men of the town are interested in keeping it orderly. We'll have no western rowdyism in Cottarsport.” ”

“ Even the gold agitation and Jason's departure for Boston and the western wild had not given her especial concern. God was the supreme Master of human fate, and if He willed for Jason to go forth, who was she, Olive Stanes, to make a to-do? She had quietly addressed herself to the task of Hester, Jem, and Rhoda, to the ordering of her father's household—he was mostly away on the sea and a solitary man at home—and the formal recurrence of the occasions of the church. ”

“ Jason passed “Pack” and Emery Radlaw on a day of late March, and a mocking and purposely audible aside almost brought him to an adequate reply. He had disposed of worse men than these in California and the Isthmus. His arrogant temper rose and threatened to master him; but something more powerful held him steadily and silently on his way. This was his measureless admiration for Honora, his determination to involve her in nothing that would detract from her fineness and erect pride. Brawling on the street would not do for her husband. ”

“ Perhaps Honora's diversity lay in the fact that, while she seldom actually left Cottarsport, it was easy to see that she had a part in a life far beyond anything Olive, whose consciousness was strictly limited to one narrow place, knew. She always suggested a wider and more elegantly finished existence than that of local sociables and church activities. Captain Ithiel Canderay, a member of a Cottarsport family long since moved away, had, from obscure surprising promptings, returned at his successful retirement from the sea, and built his impressive dwelling in the grey community. ”

“ The carriage had climbed out of Cottarsport, to the crown of the height under which it lay, and Honora ordered Coggs, a coachman decrepit with age, to stop. She half turned and looked down over the town with a veiled, introspective gaze. From here it was hardly more than a narrow rim of roofs about the bright water, broken by the white bulk of her dwelling and the courthouse square. The hills, turning roundly down, were sere and showed everywhere the grey glint of rock; Cottar's Neck already appeared wintry ”

“ She laid a hand, in a short, furred kid glove, on Olive's arm.
“I am so pleased about Jason's success,” she continued, in a clear insistent voice. “You must be mad with anxiety to have him back. It's the most romantic thing in the world. Aren't you thrilled to the soul?”
“I'm glad to—to know he's been preserved,” Olive stammered, confused by Honora's frank speech.
“You sound exactly as if he were a jar of quinces,” the other answered impatiently; “and not a true lover coming back from California with bags of gold.” ”

“ At this Rhoda became even more unrestrained, and Olive remembered that Jem too was at sea, and that probably he had been caught in the same gale. “He'll be all right,” she added quickly; “the fishing boats live through everything.”
Yet she was infinitely relieved when, two days later, Jem arrived safely home. He came into the house with a pounding of heavy boots, a powerfully built youth with a rugged jaw and an intent quiet gaze. “I heard at the wharf,” he told Olive. They were in the kitchen, and he pulled off his boots and set them away from the stove. ”

“ Jason, too, she realized, must have developed; and California, she feared, might have emphasized exactly such traits as she would wish suppressed. The power of self-destruction in the human heart she believed immeasurable. All, all, must throw themselves in abject humility upward upon the Rock of Salvation. And she could find nothing humble in Jason's periods, burdened as they were with a patent satisfaction in the success of his venture.
Yet parallel with this was a gladness that he had triumphed, and that he was coming back to Cottarsport a figure of importance. ”

“ When Hester and Jem and then Rhoda were little they had had great joy of the boulder in the side yard: it was for them first impossible and then difficult of accomplishment; but they had rapidly grown into a complete mastery of its potentialities as a fort, a mansion impressive as that of the Canderays' on Regent Street, and a ship under the dangerous shore of the Feejees. ”

“ Truly I want you to be happy, Olive; I want every one in Cottarsport to be as happy... as they can.”
Olive's embarrassment increased: it was impossible to know what Honora Canderay meant by her last words, in that echoing voice. Nevertheless, her independence of spirit, the long nourished tenets of the abhorrence of sin, asserted themselves in the face of even Honora's directions. “I trust,” she replied stiffly, “that Jason has been given grace to walk in the path of God——” She stopped with lips parted, her breath laboring with shock, at the interruption pronounced in ringing accents. ”

“ A deep, dry sorrow constricted Olive's, heart. Suddenly the details of packing her father's blue sea chest returned to her mind—the wool socks she had knitted and carefully folded in the bottom, the needles and emery and thread stowed in their scarlet bag, the tin of goose grease for his throat, the Bible that had been shipped so often. ”

“ Thomas Gast would have gravitated quickly to their company, and their resentment of his, Jason Burrage's, place in life must have been nicely increased by Gast's jealousy. The latter, Jason knew, had not washed an honest pan of gravel in his journey and search for a mythical easy wealth; he had hardly left the littered fringe of San Francisco, but had filled progressively menial places in the less admirable resorts and activities. ”

“ I can't make out if she is freezing outside and nice in, or just polite and thinks nobody's good enough for her. She had an India shawl as big as a sail, with palm leaf ends, and——”
“Rhoda, I wish you wouldn't put so much on clothes and such corruption.” Olive spoke firmly, with a light of zeal in her gaze. “Can't you think on the eternities?”
“Like Jason Burrage and Honora Canderay,” explained Hester; “Honora Canderay and Jason Burrage. They're eternities if there ever were any. If it isn't one it's bound to be the other.” ”

“ Her mind turned again to herself and Jason's home-coming. He had been wonderfully generous in his written promises to Rhoda and Jem; and he would be equally thoughtful of Hester, she was certain of that. People had a way of overlooking Hester, a faithful and, for all her talk, a Christian character. Rhoda would study to be a singer; striving, Olive hoped, to put what talent she had to a sanctioned use; and Jem, a remarkably vigorous and able boy of eighteen, would command his own fishing schooner. ”

“ Hester, finally, with a muttered period, rose and disappeared; Jem went out to consult with a man, his nod to Olive spoke of yawls; and Rhoda, at last, reluctantly made her way above. Olive's uneasiness increased when she found herself alone with the man she was to marry.
“I don't like Rhoda and Jem hearing about all that wickedness,” she told Jason Burrage; “they are young and easy affected. Rhoda gives me a lot of worry as it is.” ”

“ But try as she might she could not picture the present man as a part of her life in Cottarsport; she could not see herself married to him, although that event waited just beyond today. She set her lips in a straight line, a fixed purpose gave her courage in place of the timidity inspired by Jason's opulent strangeness—she couldn't allow herself to be turned aside for a moment from the way of righteousness. ”

“ A glass lamp on the chest of drawers shed a pale illumination that failed to reach the confines of the room; and, for a while, she moved in and out of its wan influence.
She was thinking fixedly about Jason Burrage, and the great impending change in her condition, not in its worldly implications—she thought mostly of material values in the spirit of her admonitions to Rhoda—but in its personal and inner force. At times a pale question of her aptitude for marriage disturbed her serenity ”