Chapter 36. A Nameless Cove

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_ CHAPTER XXXVI. A NAMELESS COVE

"We will go in my boat," said Telly the next afternoon when she and her admirer were ready to start on their trip to the cove, and unlocking a small annex to Uncle Terry's boathouse, showed him a dainty cedar craft, cushioned and carpeted. "You may help me launch the 'Sea Shell'" (as the boat was named), she added smiling, "and then you may steer."

"No, that is the lady's privilege in all voyages," he answered, "and we must begin this one right."

It was a good four-mile pull to the mouth of the inlet, and when he helped his fair passenger out he said, "Do you mean to say you rowed up here alone every day to work on that picture, Telly?" and he added hastily, "you will let me call you Telly now, won't you?"

"Why not? All my friends do, and I feel you are my friend." Then she added, "Now I am going to have my revenge and make you pose while I sketch this time. It was the other way before."

"I am glad it is," he said, "for my arms are too tired to use for an hour. How do you want me, flat on the rock fast asleep, the way I was when my boat drifted away?"

"Oh, no," she replied hastily, "that would look as if you were dead, and as this is to be my reminder of you, I want you very much alive." She seemed in unusually good spirits, and in a far brighter mood than usual, and ready to jest and joke with unaffected gayety. As for the pose she wanted Albert to assume, she could not determine which she liked the best.

"I want to sketch you in the position most natural to you here," she said finally, "and must ask you to choose that yourself."

"Let us trim the boat the way mine was that day," he suggested at last, "and I will sit beside it and smoke while you work."

The idea was adopted, and while Telly sketched, he smoked, contented to watch the winsome face, so oblivious of his admiring glances.

"There," she observed, after a half hour of active pencilling, "please lay your cigar aside and look pleasant. I want to catch the expression of your face."

When the sketch was completed she asked if he had any suggestions to make.

"Only one," he replied, "and that is, I would like you in the picture and sitting beside me."

She colored a little at this, for though utterly unused to the polite flatteries of society, she could not mistake his open admiration.

"I would rather not be in it," she replied soberly. "I only want to see you as you are here to-day. It may be a long time before you come to the Cape again."

It was an inadvertent speech, though quite expressive of her feelings, but she had no idea how anxious he was to obtain the insight it gave him.

"Would you like me to come often?" he queried.

"Of course," she answered, turning away her face; "it is so lonesome here, and there is no one I care to talk with except father and mother and Aunt Leach and Mandy Oaks."

Albert's heart began to beat with unusual speed. Never in his life before had he felt the impulse to utter words of love to any woman, and now he was face to face with the sweet though dreaded ordeal. For weal or woe, he could not go back and leave them unsaid. He had planned to say about what he had to Uncle Terry, beginning with a brief history of his life, his income, his hopes, and ending with asking her to share them. But the fortress of a woman's heart is seldom assailed that way, and with the queen of his, alone there beside him in that peaceful nook, where only the tiniest pulse of the ocean rippled on the rocks, he quite forgot his address to this fair judge and jury. "Telly," he said, "I promised to tell you a little story here to-day, but it's all said in a few words. I love you, and I want you to share my life and all that I can do to make you happy." A trifle incoherent, but expressive; and the answer?

For a moment, while the tide of feeling surged through that queen's heart, and into her cheeks, even to the tips of her ears, she was silent, and then as both her hands went to her face, she almost whispered, "Oh, no, no, I cannot! I can never leave father and mother alone here! It would break my heart!"

"But you do care a little for me, don't you, Telly?" he begged, trying to draw her hands away from her blushing face. "Just a little, Telly, only say a little, to give me hope."

And then, as one of the hands he was trying to gain was yielded, and as he softly stroked and then raised it to his lips, she turned her pleading eyes to him and said, "You won't be angry, will you? And you will come and see me once in a while, won't you? And let me paint a picture to give you when you come?"

It may have been the pain in his face added to her own desolation that overcame all else, for now she bowed her head and the tears came. "I thank you for so much, Telly," he answered tenderly, "and God bless you for it. I do not give you up and shall not, if I have to wait all my life for you. I can be patient if I only have hope." He brushed his face with one hand, and still holding hers, arose and drew her up. Then the bold wooer slyly put his arm around her waist, and as he drew her to him he whispered, "Just one, Telly, my sweetheart, to make this spot seem more sacred."

It was not refused.

It is no harm for a man to be refused; instead it is a beneficial tonic, and inevitably makes him realize how serious a step he is asking some good woman to take and how much it means to her. In Albert's case it was tempered by so many consolations, one at least of exquisite sweetness, that he did not really feel it a final refusal. That Telly's heart was very tender toward him he felt sure, and what is more, that in time he would overcome her one objection.

"Come out on the point, dear," he said as she tried to draw herself away, "so we can see the ocean better. I will tell you the story I promised last evening." He still held her a half prisoner, and when they were seated where the waves were beating almost at their feet, he began his recital. When he came to that portion in which Frye played a part, and ending in such a ghastly denouement, she shuddered.

"That is the one horrible part of taking your own life," she said, "to think how you will look and what those who find you will say. If I were to do such a thing I should first make sure no one would ever find me."

The remark startled him. "Telly," he said soberly, "do not ever think of such a thing. Would you, whose heart is so loving and tender, burden all those who know you with a lifelong sorrow?"

"No, no, not that way," she answered quickly, "only if those who love me were taken I should want to follow them; that is all. Please forget I said it." Then she told him her own brief history, and at last, after much coaxing, a little of the one sorrow of her life.

"Now I know," he said, "why you avoided speaking about the picture of the wreck the first time I came here." Then in a moment he added, "Telly, I want you to give it to me and let me take it away. I want it for two reasons: one is, it gave me the first hint of your life's history. And then I do not want you to look at it any more."

"You may have it," she answered, smiling sadly; "it was foolish of me to paint it in the first place, and I wish I never had."

When the sun was low and they were ready to return he said, "Promise me, sweetheart, that you will try to forget all of your past that is sad, and think only of us who love you, and to whom your life is a blessing."

That evening he noticed Uncle Terry occasionally watched her with wistful eyes, and, as on the evening before, both he and Aunt Lissy retired early.

"They wish me well," Albert thought, and with gratitude. He had even more reason for it when the next day Uncle Terry proposed that Telly should drive to the head of the island in his place.

"I'm sorry ye must leave us, Mr. Page," he said, when Albert was ready to bid the old folks good-by. "I wish ye could stay longer; but cum again soon, an' remember, our latch-string's allus out fer ye."

When the old carryall had made half its daily journey, Albert pointed to a low rock and said, "There is a spot I shall always be glad to see, for it was there Uncle Terry first found me."

Telly made no answer; in fact she had said but little since they started, and soon the hardest part of life and living, that of separating from those who seem near and dear to us, was drawing near. When they reached the little landing, no one else was there. No house was in sight of it, and the solitude was broken only by the tide that softly caressed the barnacled piles of the wharf and the weed-covered rocks on either side. No boat was visible adown the wide reach that separates Southport Island from the mainland, and up it came a light sea breeze that barely rippled the flowing tide and whispered through the brown and scarlet leaved thicket back of them. Over all shone the hazy sunlight of October. It is likely that a touch of regret for the sacrifice she had made came to Telly as she stood listening and hoping that the boat which was due would be late in coming, for a look of sadness came over her face, and a more than usually plaintive appeal in her expressive eyes. "I am sorry you are going," she said; "it is so lonesome here, and it will seem more so now." Then as if that was a confession he might think unmaidenly, she added, "I dread to have the summer end, for when winter comes, the rocks all around seem like so many tombstones."

He was watching her as she spoke, and the little note of sorrow in her voice gave him a hope that she might relent at the last moment, and give him the promise he wanted so much. He put out his hand as if that would aid his appeal, and as his fingers closed over hers he said, "I am going away with a heavy heart, Telly, and when I can come back is hard to say. Will you not promise me that some time, no matter when, you will be my own good and true wife? Let me go away with that hope to comfort me while I work and save for a home for us both. Will you, Telly?"

But the plaintive face was turned away, perhaps to hide the tears. Then once more an arm stole around her waist, and as he drew her close, she whispered, "When I am no longer needed here, if you want me then I will come to you."

She was sobbing now, but her head was resting on his shoulder, and as he kissed her closed eyes and unresisting lips, a boat's sharp whistle broke the sacred spell.

"Go a little way back, my darling," he whispered, "until the boat is gone. I do not want any one to see you have been crying."

When her misty eyes could no longer see the boat that bore her heart away, she turned, and all the long, lonely way back love's tears lingered on her lashes. _

Read next: Chapter 37. Amid Falling Leaves

Read previous: Chapter 35. The "Widder" Leach

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