"The trouble is," she complained, "there are so many think the same thing!""What do they think?" demanded Latimer.
"That they want to marry me."
Checked but not discouraged, Latimer attacked in force.
"I can quite believe that," he agreed, "but there's this important difference: no matter how much a man wants to marry you, he can't LOVE you as I do!""That's ANOTHER thing they think," sighed Helen.
"I'm sorry to be so unoriginal," snapped Latimer.
"PLEASE don't!" pleaded Helen."I don't mean to be unfeeling.I'm not unfeeling.I'm only trying to be fair.If I don't seem to take it to heart, it's because I know it does no good.I can see how miserable a girl must be if she is loved by one man and can't make up her mind whether or not she wants to marry him.But when there's so many she just stops worrying; for she can't possibly marry them all.""ALL!" exclaimed Latimer."It is incredible that I have undervalued you, but may I ask how many there are?""I don't know," sighed Helen miserably."There seems to be something about me that--""There is!" interrupted Latimer."I've noticed it.You don't have to tell me about it.I know that the Helen Page habit is a damned difficult habit to break!"It cannot be said that he made any violent effort to break it.At least, not one that was obvious to Fair Harbor or to Helen.
One of their favorite drives was through the pine woods to the point on which stood the lighthouse, and on one of these excursions they explored a forgotten wood road and came out upon a cliff.The cliff overlooked the sea, and below it was a jumble of rocks with which the waves played hide and seek.On many afternoons and mornings they returned to this place, and, while Latimer read to her, Helen would sit with her back to a tree and toss pine-cones into the water.Sometimes the poets whose works he read made love so charmingly that Latimer was most grateful to them for rendering such excellent first aid to the wounded, and into his voice he would throw all that feeling and music that from juries and mass meetings had dragged tears and cheers and votes.
But when his voice became so appealing that it no longer was possible for any woman to resist it, Helen would exclaim excitedly: "Please excuse me for interrupting, but there is a large spider--" and the spell was gone.
One day she exclaimed: "Oh!" and Latimer patiently lowered the "Oxford Book of Verse," and asked: "What is it, NOW?""I'm so sorry," Helen said, "but I can't help watching that Chapman boy; he's only got one reef in, and the next time he jibs he'll capsize, and he can't swim, and he'll drown.I told his mother only yesterday--""I haven't the least interest in the Chapman boy," said Latimer, "or in what you told his mother, or whether he drowns or not! I'm a drowning man myself!"Helen shook her head firmly and reprovingly."Men get over THATkind of drowning," she said.
"Not THIS kind of man doesn't!" said Latimer."And don't tell me," he cried indignantly, "that that's ANOTHER thing they all say.""If one could only be sure!" sighed Helen."If one could only be sure that you--that the right man would keep on caring after you marry him the way he says he cares before you marry him.If you could know that, it would help you a lot in making up your mind.""There is only one way to find that out," said Latimer; "that is to marry him.I mean, of course," he corrected hastily, "to marry me."One day, when on their way to the cliff at the end of the wood road, the man who makes the Nantucket sailor and peddles him passed through the village; and Latimer bought the sailorman and carried him to their hiding-place.There he fastened him to the lowest limb of one of the ancient pine-trees that helped to screen their hiding-place from the world.The limb reached out free of the other branches, and the wind caught the sailorman fairly and spun him like a dancing dervish.Then it tired of him, and went off to try to drown the Chapman boy, leaving the sailorman motionless with his arms outstretched, balancing in each hand a tiny oar and smiling happily.
"He has a friendly smile," said Helen; "I think he likes us.""He is on guard," Latimer explained."I put him there to warn us if any one approaches, and when we are not here, he is to frighten away trespassers.Do you understand?" he demanded of the sailorman."Your duty is to protect this beautiful lady.So long as I love her you must guard this place.It is a life sentence.
You are always on watch.You never sleep.You are her slave.She says you have a friendly smile.She wrongs you.It is a beseeching, abject, worshipping smile.I am sure when I look at her mine is equally idiotic.In fact, we are in many ways alike.
I also am her slave.I also am devoted only to her service.And Inever sleep, at least not since I met her."From her throne among the pine needles Helen looked up at the sailorman and frowned.
"It is not a happy simile," she objected."For one thing, a sailorman has a sweetheart in every port.""Wait and see," said Latimer.
"And," continued the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that is less CERTAIN, less CONSTANT--""Constant?" Latimer laughed at her in open scorn."You come back here," he challenged, "months from now, years from now, when the winds have beaten him, and the sun blistered him, and the snow frozen him, and you will find him smiling at you just as he is now, just as confidently, proudly, joyously, devotedly.Because those who are your slaves, those who love YOU, cannot come to any harm; only if you disown them, only if you drive them away!
The sailorman, delighted at such beautiful language, threw himself about in a delirium of joy.His arms spun in their sockets like Indian clubs, his oars flashed in the sun, and his eyes and lips were fixed in one blissful, long-drawn-out, unalterable smile.
